Hello friends.

If you are reading this, then that means my invention worked; I now can send objects, electrical signals, etc. BACK IN TIME. It only took a few years after the breakthrough of the Anti-Heisenberg Generator to truly punch this kind of Time Manipulation through, but it seems that I might have finally done it.

Now, before I go onto to send a notice to Harvard Medicine or UCLA the cure for cancer AND an AIDS vaccine, I have a much more important issue to tackle; videogames. Yes, we still have them in the future, and they're pretty sweet. We've got Final Fantasy XVII coming out next year, Team Fortress 4 has been dominating internet cafe's for quite a while now, and Call of Duty 8: Modern Warfare 7 tackled the deep socio-political issues of World War III. I'll get back to you once we see the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 next year.

However, obviously the best thing to happen to society in this future I live in is by far the realization that games are indeed art! Hooray! I remember my Great-Grandfather telling me stories of the Great Internet Flame Wars and the Neo-Crusades, and I just remember how terrifying it must have been for people like you good people. I mean, who knew who was right? We're talking important stuff here. Videogames are serious business.

I remember after the release of Denizen Bane, the world stood up and took notice of the power of videogames. Sure, kids now days simply can't appreciate such a masterpiece, which used pure gameplay to get across the most moving story ever told by a videogame. It is surely remembered just like Gears of War 2, which taught us that shooting wives in the mouth is a sad thing, and since it was written by an actual writer, that means it's good. You might think that the previous sentence was grammatically awkward; not so. In the future, we no longer speak English.

Rather, we type it very in a very broken fashion and ad whatever emoticon we wish to get across and it plays upon a digital screen that rests on our Diabetes-induced wheelchairs for all to read. In fact, just typing this letter is taking me so long, I've actually already slept for two nights and see no end in sight.

Oh how I take pity upon you poor people of 2017 (I really hope I put the right number in...). How terrible it must be for you people to not know whether or not games are indeed taken seriously by the media. Afterall, if the media takes sex, violence, and people's personal lives seriously enough to pervert them all for ratings, why shouldn't they do the same for videogames?

Well, when you get this letter, you will truly see how beautiful the future is. Not only have we resurrected Benjamin Franklin AND Arnold Schwarzenegger, two of the greatest Presidents of American History, but we have also reanimated Roger Ebert, given him the ability to talk, and even he agrees! He finally has consented to the gaming population, and wept upon the ending of Halo 6, which is often recognized as the pinnacle of shooting things in slightly-open corridors. How did we resurrect them? You ever read Ubik? Kind of like that, but much shinier.

You see, the future is a beautiful place, where we all know exactly who's right about all subjective matters at all time. Internet geniuses are treated as royalty, despite their naivety and lack of Post-Primary education, and these great men/children are given charge to what does and does not indeed suck. Currently, the new James Cameron movie (You know, the action movie that is charading as deep-thinking film-making) is voted at the top of the FIMDB, with the new Tarintino film at a close second (Hint, people sit around a table and talk about out-dated pop-culture).

However, your concern is not films, as they are called in the future after film students everywhere decided that the term movie is out-dated as it is not pretentious enough, but rather videogames. Now recognized to be at the fore-front of artistic expression, we all rest easy knowing that we can simply go onto the internet and read an article and steal the opinion of the author and use it as our own to make our own arguments. After all, arguing on the internet is now not only productive, but indeed is seen as PMC work in fueling the on-going Second Great Flame Wars: This Time It's Personal.

The future is a beautiful place indeed. It is a place where you can say indeed a lot and not be seen as a douchebag. It is a place where the internet is not only the authority on all subjective issues, but also a haven for future pornography and the selling of penis-enlarging products (Although, now that I think about it, it hasn't changed that much...). And most importantly, videogames are taken seriously, because at the end of the day, a medium is only validated once an ambiguously large number of people we've never met say it is.

With love,
the Future

(P.S. Can anyone give me Jim Sterling's e-mail? I need to warn him about the great assassination attempt at E3, where he attacked by angry [i]Assassin's Creed II[i/] fans. Surprising that they were actually able to do something that wasn't whining...)

Perhaps it's my bleeding heart for times long gone or my need to gobble down fun facts like I was some sort of historical Cookie Monster, but whatever the reason be, I am a History major, and I specialize American history. Now, when it comes to America as a nation, one time shines a grim spotlight upon the once separatist nation: the Second Great War, or as it's better known, World War II. I don't think I need to go into the details of this conflict, but for those of you with an outside view on things, it was basically the last time that we didn't start a war we were involved in, and was definitely a high-point for us as a nation; after all, because of our involvement, the Allies were able to overcome the Axis powers.

Now, I'm not one to think it was only because of us American, G.I. Joe heroes that the war was won for what basically amounts to the "good guys", but I will say that they Allies would have been in an even rougher spot than if we didn't become involved. However, it seems many game developers, movie studio executives, and literary authors, almost all of them being American, have forgotten that there were other nations in the war apart from the U.S., Japan, and of course, that good old punching bag of 20th century history, Germany.

I say this because, without a doubt, almost every property that is based upon the darkest days of history are all primarily about Americans, and their struggles against a tenacious Japanese nation and a Jew-hating Germany. However, very rarely do we see the other side of things, or really, any other side at all.

Why is that?

Well, for one, no one in their right minds like Nazis. No one. Nazis represent the epitome of historical evil, and only a bigoted, racist, ubermensch of a force such as the Nazis could overshadow a tragic nation under the most-notorious sociopath of all-time, Joseph Stalin. Hitler's regime made people forget about the U.S.S.R (Well, Hitler and the fact that they were allies...), and Stalin killed over twice as many people as Hitler's Horrific Concentration Camps.

We have seen the evils of Hitler and his Nazis time after time, and that's not to say that it's lost it's effect, after all, we're talking about the worst genocide ever seen by history this side of Christian Theology, however there comes a time when other angles should be explored. Whether it's terrific games like Valkyria Chronicles (Number 8 spot? HELL YES.) or terrible ones like Velvet Assassin, or really even just pretty good ones like Wolfenstien, I think we've got the idea; Nazis are evil.

However, that is one of the things that I hate about videogames, and really, basically all of entertainment as a medium; we never get to see it from a German perspective. Unless it's a film like Inglorious Basterds, where a sympathetic Nazi officer is one of the main characters, Nazis are painted as larger-than-life, Captain America-era goons that stomp babies for pleasure and eat they're cereal with the blood of homosexuals (Not that they aren't like that in the Tarintino film, but I digress).

Despite what many will claim, while the majority of Nazi officers were inhumane swine, there were many foot soldiers who were simply the victims of circumstance; forced to fight a war for a country they loved but a government they hated. Nazi Germany sought turncoats and their family almost as much (well, okay, not that much, but a lot) they sought the Jewish. There was no "hopping the border"; it was fight and die for your country, or you and your family will be arrested, or worse, killed on the spot.

I'd love to see this angle; a Nazi campaign in a videogame from this perspective. A game where you are are playing the role of a German soldier who must fight a war he doesn't believe in. Or even better, how about a campaign as a complete and utter beats of a man; a true-blue Nazi. It can be a character piece about the state-of-mind of a man who has been turned into a faceless, nameless cog in the machine of Nazi Germany because of Hitler's charismatic performances that literally turned a nation of normal German people into a group of Ultra-Nationalist Bigots.

To switch countries, but not sides, how about a game based upon a Japanese perspective? A game about a man who is bound by a code of honor and sent to fight the Americans in Guerrilla Warfare. He could be sympathetic character, or rather, he can be a brainwashed machine, angered by the American Internment Camps, or rather, it could be post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and he could seek vengeance against a nation that killed thousands of civilians.

We will rarely see these, and that's a shame, because these are things we haven't seen much of before. People are reluctant to build any type of story based upon an enemy that society has deemed, and for good reason, irredeemable, even though often, a serious, fair treatment of taboo subjects such a sympathy for historical enemies make for some incredibly great stories. Hell, just look at Arrested Development! Half that show is incest jokes! And it was the best show television has ever produced!

Joking aside, there are a few examples of games that really surprise me in terms of how they tackle the War we're all so obsessed with reliving. One of these is very recent in fact: Call of Duty: World at War. As the black sheep of the series, being lodged between two of the largest games of all-time, I thin kit's unfair to pass upon such a wonderfully under-rated game.

That isn't to say it's without it's flaws, but I think that one half of this game is the greatest Wold War II FPS I've ever played when it comes to the narrative it tells, and really, now that I think about it, the intensity of the thing. I'm talking about the Soviet side of WaW, which for my money, is the best depiction of the USSR soldiers that games have ever offered, which is in stark contrast to the rather hackneyed, jingoist American side, which is decent in it's own right.

The strength of USSR campaign is in the trio of characters that lead it: Dimitri Petrenko, Reznov, and Chernov. More than any other trio of characters in any other World War II game, they symbolize the different types of USSR soldiers that existed. Reznov is a charismatic, heartless leader who has a grudge against the Nazis and a stern way of leading, Chernov is the hesitant, frightened man who is picked on by Reznov for being a coward, and Petrenko is the faceless soldier who never dies and never defies orders given to him.

You see, you as Petrenko are given no way to respond to Reznov's horrific, if not totally badass, enjoyment to killing Nazi; you are voiceless, faceless, forced to carry out these orders, yet unflinching and unquestioning to any order given. To a certain effect, you have no conscience, much like Reznov. But unlike Reznov, this is not because you are amoral, but rather you have been trained to never question such orders, especially against such an irredeemable foe.

Chernov serves as the players conscience, the man who is seen as a coward by his comrades, but in reality is a deep-thinking, questioning soldier who fights for the fear of losing his own life to both the Nazis and to Reznov himself. SPOILER ALERT, after spending much of the game believing your allies and Reznov that this man is merely a hesitant coward, you find his diary after he is killed, and in it, it is revealed that he has always seen the Reznov's actions as extreme, and to a point, evil, for the way he revels in his enemy's death.

These three represent the different kinds of people that fought the war for the USSR; some sought vengeance for the Motherland, others followed their orders, and some wished they could turn away from the atrocities they were witnessing upon both sides of the fence.

In the end of the game, after raiding the Nazi stronghold, Petrenko is mortally-wounded by a dying Nazi soldier, who is summarily eviscerated by Reznov, and despite your grave wounds, Reznov asks you to place the Soviet flag upon the pole; the final act of Petrenko is an order from Reznov. He sacrifices his presumably dying breath to follow an order by Reznov; that is the kind of steadfast belief these people had in their cause.

When it comes to WWII, we've seen it from every possible angle of the American side, but we rarely get to see it from a different perspective, and I truly am thankful for a game like World at War for taking a step toward seeing something different. After all, the Soviets may not have been America's enemies, but they we're surely almost as inhumane as our enemies, and it's great to see this kind of depiction of them in a game. A damning, yet sympathetic depiction that truly shows the faces that a war can create. Faces of inhumanity, faces of skepticism, and sometimes, faces of nothingness.

How many times will we have to hear about Modern Warfare 2? Well, a lot, and this blog is no exception; the biggest game of the year also happens to be the shortest (Not really, but BURN). However, at 5 hours, it's also the most jam-packed, adrenaline-filled, action-packed adventure of the year, surpassing even the likes of Nathan Drake's sophomore attempt. It's well-paced and it never holds up until the last shell cartridge hits the ground, even if the "No Russian" level is the game's only misstep (Various people, Rice and Rev in particular, have gone into why). But I'm not here to talk about "No Russian"; I think we all know where we stand on it at this point; I'm here because this game, as well as others, begs a few questions about the length of a game and it's relation to the quality of the experience.

Now, let me get off of MW2 for a while to talk about a few other games, one of those in particular being Portal. Remember Portal? Of course you do; it took the gaming world by storm only two years ago and has yet to leave the collective consciousness of the videogame-playing audience. Well, the biggest complaint about the game was that the game was too short; at a terse 4 hours (and that's being generous), it was an experience that was brief to say the least. But in my opinion, and in the opinion of basically everyone else on the planet by this point, is that it's brevity was the best part about it. Well, okay not the best part, but it was the perfect length for that game; it never overstayed it's welcome and it left the player satisfied with the experience after completion. The mark of a great game is the desire to have more of it and still feel as if the experience was enough to qualify the time you put into it.

Portal and Modern Warfare 2 stand together as the very definition of "short but sweet". These games simply work at the length that was appropriated to them, and if they were cut down or bulked up at all, they would lose a very big of their appeal; their ubiquitous nature. Let me use an analogy: you have a peanut butter sandwich. Now, you only have so much peanut butter you can use, but you have tons of bread you can use. However, you know that the peanut butter will be spread perfectly over a single slice and simply folded in half; the bread-to-butter ratio is perfect. You could use two slices and make it a bigger sandwich, but by doing so, the bread-to-butter ratio becomes 1:2. God forbid you make the ratio 1:3.

Modern Warfare 2, Portal, and games of this ilk are the perfect 1:1 ratio; a set amount of gameplay (peanut butter) spread over an appropriate amount of time (bread). In terms of narrative-lite shooters, the 1:1 ratio floats between 4 to 8 hours, where as other games like Half-Life 2 or Bioshock have enough gameplay differentiations and plot to make the 1:1 float at a much higher place; you have an equally satisfying experience, but it lasts longer. In other words, as a purely single-player affair (say the buyer doesn't have Xbox Live or internet capabilities), Bioshock has more economic value than Modern Warfare 2.

Since quality is a subjective thing, the measure of economic value for videogames is their length of able enjoyment; Modern Warfare 2 has 5 hours of fun for 60 USD and Bioshock has 12 hours of fun for 60 USD; in this case, the obvious choice would be Bioshock. But this scenario brings us to the big question: does economic value, determine the quality of a game? I say no; absolutely not. This is not an argument about modern reviewers or something, God knows they go through enough undeserved chagrin to cause a mass suicide. No, this is about the relationship that this article is titled over.

You see, if we are to measure a game's economic value through the amount of enjoyment that can be derived from it, then we are leaving out the biggest part of the equation; some games are too damn long, and therefore, are less valuable since the overall experience is underwhelming. Take for instance the difference between Persona 3 and Persona 4; both games are equally long, both floating around the 50 to 60 hour mark, but I'd say without a doubt that Persona 4 is the better game. It's a matter of pacing; in Persona 4, you are always moving forward, and not very often are you going through the same motions week after week like you do in Persona 3.

Plot is doled out in generous chunks and special events like camping trips or school trips happen frequently, always giving the player a goal; a mark to show their progression. In Persona 3, which is by no means a bad game, and is in fact one of the best JRPGs on the PS2, but you spend much more time in Persona 3 just going through the motions with no events coming up anytime soon than you do in Persona 4. If Persona 4 is the 1:1 ratio of a 60 hour JRPG, Persona 3 is the 1:2 ratio; you still have a good amount of peanut butter, but sometimes you feel like there might be just a bit too much bread.

You see, length and pacing are synonymous with each other; in my mind, they occupy the same space. You see, Modern Warfare 2 is a much more intense game then Uncharted 2, not because it's any better at pulling your adrenaline strings (A train barreling down on you and nearly falling off an icy slope are both cardiac killers), but because the experience is so much more brief. This is not to say Modern Warfare 2 is better than Uncharted 2 or that Uncharted 2 needs to be shorter, but that the marked quality of Modern Warfare 2, intensity, is elaborated due to it's brevity.

Much like MW2, Uncharted 2's primary quality, it's roller coaster nature, is perfectly fitting for a more protracted, 13 to 15 hour experience. You see, its the set of falls and climbs, slow parts and intense parts, that make the experience so much more fluid. Uncharted 2 is extremely well-paced for such a cinematic, action plot-centric piece; if the game were only 5 hours, you'd be left with a mouth full of peanut butter, which takes a really long time to get off the roof of your mouth (and even after, the taste sticks with you in the worst way...). You would lose a big part of the impact; the fact that, in the vein of Metal Gear Solid 4, it's a globe-trotting adventure. If it were only 5 hours, it'd seem much too brief.

You see, games can only have so many gameplay innovations/types and plot points to support the length of time that they occupy; if you don't find that tasty 1:1 ratio, then you could be left with a game that feels like a sandwich that lacks substance. It would have too much bread.

Videogames, as I've said before, are a very young medium; we have only some bare bones examples of what true, magnum opus videogames can be; ones that can get across the theme or message of themselves more effectively through the interactive medium than if they were anything else. When you look at the highest rated games on sites like Gamerankings or Metacritic, we see the obvious ones like Ocarina and Super Mario Galaxy, which are respectively, the very first successful venture into 3D Action/Adventure and the most polished 3D platformer of the current generation (and by extension, all-time pretty much).

These games deserve this recognition not because of their excellent narratives (Nintendo and Narrative for like a square block and a circular hole), but because of their achievements and advancements in terms of gameplay; I don't think I need to go into the laundry list of innovations Ocarina sported or the absolute perfection that was Galaxy. But while we certainly have matured vastly in terms of gameplay, we still are growing in terms of game-specific narratives, which range from cinematic abortions (Lost Planet for example) to the top tier of meaningful storytelling (Braid, Silent Hill 2, Shadow of the Colossus, etc.). We have yet to find that one title we can all latch onto and say, yes, this is the sign that we have come into our own, not as a "Citizen Kane" to show the world, but as an achievement that the gaming world can look upon as the prime example.

As of now, Braid or Shadow of the Colossus are those games which we call into action when videogame narratives need defending, so some say we already have the Knight in Shining Armor title, but to me, we are still missing a few pieces that we can add to the unfinished thematic puzzle that are Braid and Shadow of the Colossus. While Braid is about the power one human being can achieve, Shadow of the Colossus is about how trust can lead to destruction. These are lessons every medium has to tell at some point, and thankfully, we have tackled them very early on in the videogame time line, however, as I said before, there are other themes that need to be explored for myself, and others, to be satisfied and say that this is it. One of those themes is sexuality.

Now, modern society as a whole has yet to mature to a stage of tolerance and acceptance in terms of the treatment of sexuality in communities, with even the most open-minded nations still not tackling the issue. Now, as a citizen of the United States, where homosexuality is still not accepted by the majority of people or outright hated by others, so it's very hard for a medium as young as videogames to tackle such an issue. Japan is no more ready to do so; on a whole, the Japanese still have an extremely shallow idea of other cultures, homosexuality included. So with the two largest developing countries basically unready to tackle the subject as a whole, I get the sneaking suspicion that it will be a while before we see commentary on one of the biggest issues in the free-world.

However, with the debacle over Modern Warfare 2's lovely anagram (F.A.G.S.: Fight Against Grenade Spammers) and Rev's recent Rant, I have to put my two cents out there. As a Floridian, homosexuality hits very close to home; after all, out Governor, Charlie Crist, may very well be a closeted homosexual. We recently had an election on whether homosexuals could have civil unions, which was, sadly for me, turned down; not because I'm a homosexual, but because I'm surprised we, as a society, still have not come to terms with the existence of homosexuality.

The hardest thing to tackle about homosexuality is the fact that it is a sexual subject, which are a sort of taboo in most places. People are unwilling to discuss sexual topics on an open forum simply because of the immaturity of the people that surround it; i.e. people that use the word "gay" as an insult. I tell you all of this not because I want you to hear me ramble about modern sociopolitical issues (this is a videogame site after all), but because this is the climate that surrounds and permeates the videogame industry.

This is not to say that modern societies will have to accept homosexuality before we see videogames that tackle the issue maturely, but what I will say is that the indifference to the subject and the unwillingness to discuss it is what is holding developers from discussing the topic. However, that said, that does not mean we haven't had at least a couple of examples of mature discussions on the topic, my favorite, and my pick for best example yet, is one many of us are familiar with: Kanji from Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I am extremely impressed with Persona 4; it tackles quite a few issues that resonate very loudly with it's primary audience, that audience being teenagers. Persona 4 primarily deals with the High School experience, with each character having to deal with the stress and issues that come with post-adolescence. For Kanji, that issue was not homosexuality exactly, but rather gender identity.

Kanji is an extremely masculine character, as well as being the obvious melee fighter in your group; in a way, he's basically the JRPG's teenage version of Francis from Left 4 Dead. However, this is juxtaposed by his true inside character, which is that he has much more in common with what society generally considers femininity; he likes to sew, he has an attraction to cute things, etc. However, the clincher, and the beginning of his true gender crisis, is his obvious attraction to Naoto, an androgynous character who is hiding the fact that he, in fact, is a she.

However, at this point in the game, neither you nor Kanji know that Naoto is in fact a woman, which leads him to questioning his sexual identity, which is resolved yet called into question at various parts in the game. Now, I don't believe Kanji is actually a homosexual, which I think is the most important part in understanding Kanji as a character; he is sexually ambiguous. He never really shows any attraction to any male other than Naoto, but also never really shows any attraction to any female other than Naoto. I think his crisis of gender identity is simply amplified by the existence of Naoto, who's own gender crisis multiplies Kanji's.

Two characters in one game, Kanji and Naoto, say more about issues of sexuality and gender than basically all of videogame history before it. That is why I choose that game as an example of mature sexual discussion, yet I am still holding out for a game that puts that subject at the forefront. However, until then, I'll have to deal with the medium's state of either malignant indifference or ignorant homophobia; but at least I have Persona 4 to remind that some people are trying, and in the end, that's what really counts.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Three words, three sentences. That's how damn bored I have been for weeks on end. Why? Well, in short, I'm flat-ass broke. More broke (Yes, broke, not broken.) than a redneck's backyard car. More broke than eggshells on Halloween night. (Thanks you prick kids. I'll hunt your asses down and make you lick that shit off of my car...) More broke than an old PC jewel case that you stepped on by accident one day. More broke than...well, I'm as broke as I am out of analogies. However, between checking random forums and swearing I'll finish the last chapter of Valkyria Chronicles, I've been slowly working my way through my established catalog of games.

So far, my Wii and PS3 (barring that damn cheap last chapter of VC...) collections are totally beaten, meaning all I have left is my backlog of old PS2 JRPG save files (Kill me now...) and my good old collection of NES, SNES, and Genesis games. In fact, before deciding I was actually bored enough to write a new blog (Just kidding...), I beat Mega Man X3 for what seems like the 20th time. However, I also have games I've never even touched for more then twenty minutes in my collection, many of which I'm working my way through.

In fact, the last games to feel my wrath include Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, by far the hardest Castlevania of all-time, but also my personal favorite after beating it, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which I think is actually superior to the first Zelda, Ducktales, and even Vectorman. All of these games were ones I was very familiar with, but not one of them have ever been beaten. It's really a freeing sense, like I'm getting a monkey off of my back; after all, I spent upwards of 5 bucks on each, which isn't much, but when you consider my collection of NES and SNES games (Let me count them, hold on a second...43 games. 24 on NES, 21 on SNES), that shit adds up.

This isn't to say I have an amazing collection or anything, but I do have more than an average person. However, unlike the average person, I actually have been going through these and beating them slowly but surely. Why is it that we buy these older games, play them for 15 minutes or so, and then never pick them up again? Perhaps it's simply the differences in design that games from the past have, maybe its their extreme difficulty, maybe their charm wears off soon since we have newer, more advanced technology now, but whatever the reason, we nickel and dime ourselves to death on these things.

Not that that is a bad thing, but sometimes I wonder if I buy them to play them or just the have them. I'm not really a collector or anything, but there is a certain appeal of seeing that cart or that box on your shelf; in fact, sometimes I think that is my true motivation for not pirating games; I have nothing to show for it. Are we that fickle? It seems like everyone with a camera and a false sense of nostalgia is just waiting for the chance to show off their collection of NES-era videogames, as if it's some sort of badge or rite of passage.

In fact, I'm no less guilty of these odd practices than anyone else, however, let me defend myself. When I bought Mega Man 6 a couple months back, it's not because I wanted to finally finish my NES Mega Man collection (Well, okay, it was a factor), but because I really, really like Mega Man! Much like how Jim Sterling's amazing show points out, sometimes I wonder if the easy access to emulation programs has lessened the value of older games. It seems like not many people see the value of owning these treasures anymore, especially when about 90% of purchasers will never actually beat the games.

Whatever the case, it seems that these old carts have been turned into mere legends, people talking about them, yet never actually playing them. When was the last time you beat Super Mario Bros. 3? Have you ever even best it once? Owned it even? Sadly, I'm going to guess that people will either say no, or simply lie and say yes to keep their cred intact. I'm included in the category; I own it, but I've never actually beat it. I get stuck on the last Bowser stage, which is quite a bit better than the majority of people out there.

Remember the days when beating Super Metroid in under 3 hours was a badge of honor by which many people judged if you were a true gamer or not? What happened to that? Whatever, enough nostalgic ranting. The point is that it is a sad day when absolute, soul-crushing, apathetic boredom is my motivation to beat what are general considered classics. However, the worst part is that is that it's almost worse then those who don't value oldies at all, or rather on the flip-side, evangelize them and say gaming has gotten worse. There I sit, in the middle, but at least I'm actually playing Mega Man 2 instead of bitching about it.

Also cocks.

Screams of putrid lucidity that mesh together in the air to form the grating physical manifestation of barbarism itself. People turn on each other, each more narrow minded than their counterpart, savagely scrawling their hatred upon whatever they can find. A thick, pungent air of fear and ignorance cloak the Earth like a fog. Radiated men eat the flesh of radiated men, and there is the most beautiful silence, never to be heard. That's right, I'm talking about the reaction to the days, hours of waiting for Valve to release the Left 4 Dead 2 demo. (I ripped off Bukowski! Im uh riter!)

Was it really that bad people? I can't recall the exact day it was supposed to be out, but I'll give a generous guess of Tuesday, or rather, October 27th. Here we are 2 days later, and we have what we waited so long for. 48 hours. Jesus Christ. What were they doing all that time? Probably last minute server correction or playtesting that ran late, which is actually a good thing...why are we bitching about this again? As if bitching about waiting 48 hours to play a 45 minute demo of a game that's coming out in another 3 weeks anyways, now we have PC Elitists writhing in pain over the fact that Xbox 360 users got the demo first and for free. Holy shit, someone start a crusade, cause God forbid inferiors get to do things mere hours before we do! Isn't this how wars racial cleansing gets started?

For Christ sakes, why is Left 4 Dead 2 itself the least talked about thing on the topic of Left 4 Dead 2. First you have idiots that want to boycott it because...it's too similar? They might stop supporting Left 4 Dead? It's a full retail priced "Expansion Pack"? Whatever the argument, they're all bullshit. Think it's too soon for it to come out? Tell that to people that have been waiting 2 arduously dry years for even the slightest inkling of information on Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Boycotters: go back into your hole. PC Elitists: don't be so petty (As if the fact that you had any interest in the game before release you wouldn't have pre-ordered it anyways). Bitching about delays: It's called patience, virtue, etc. On with the show.

Now that it's finally out (Longest two days of my life! I've never had to wait for things before!), we can talk about our first impressions of Left 4 Dead 2 from the side of regular joes. What do I have to say about it? Well, my word on anything isn't necessarily going to tip anyone's hand or drive mobs to go buy the game, so who gives a fuck. But, for what it's worth, here's a little preface on the subject of where I'm coming from on this thing; I love Left 4 Dead. It's a game that has to balance being a First-Person Shooter, an increasingly overpopulated and increasingly stale genre, and being a Zombie property, an equally increasingly over overpopulated and increasingly (exponentially I might add, hold Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland) stale genre, and it pulls it off better than any other game has to date.

If you're unfamiliar with the story of Left 4 Dead, join the club; no one knows what's going on, where it's taking place specifically, who these people are, how any of this began, or how it may end. And you know what? Good. In fact, I'm willing to say, as far as I'm concerned,Left 4 Dead may be one of the first games to completely rely upon non-linear characterization to tell a story, and it does it well. You see, a story is only as interesting as the people in it and what they have to say, and in this regard, the characters of Left 4 Dead are stunningly realized, Three Dimensional people that you genuinely care about and like.

Now, lots of people will cry fowl when I say Left 4 Dead has a good story, but what they consider story, I consider filler. You don't need cutscenes, dialogue boxes, conversations trees, or any other thing to tell a story; all you need is a few people talking like real people in revelatory banter that doesn't sound like revelatory banter and a rich, textured setting, and Left 4 Dead has these things. Everything is darkly ambiguous, with no knowledge of where the zombies came from or where the survivors are going to go, much like the survivors themselves; you are trapped alongside these poor souls as they try and light up the dread with some fun conversations or reveal what they feel with smartly-written and perfectly delivered dialogue. Yeah, I like this game.

I tell you all of this because Left 4 Dead 2, from my first impressions, retains basically everything I just ejaculating all over mostly. It's too early to tell for right now, but basically most in-game chatter has been cut down a bit, save Ellis revealing something about his friend Kieth in the first saferoom, which I won't spoil here. The writing on the wall is still here; not as good as the masterful Crash Course campaign of the original, but still good, funny, revealing stuff. As for the characters, the most important element of Left 4 Dead's anti-narrative, they fit right in.

It seems Valve took particular care to make every character for Left 4 Dead 2 almost nothing like the previous brilliant characters, meaning there is no bullshit. These people are completely different and very interesting, and I'm dying to find more out about them. In fact, the place where you learn most things about them is between the lines of whats provided; it's the little things. Ellis is always getting into trouble in the intro movie, Rochelle pushes the pistol off of the map shes reading; things like this show us who these people are better than any dialogue can. Rochelle pushes the pistol off instead of holstering it because shes a rational thinker; get a plan, then action, much the opposite of Ellis. Nick and Coach are equally fleshed out, but I need to get to the game part of this game, but suffice it to say these people are likable, relatable, real people that are dying for more time in the full game.

How does Left 4 Dead 2 play? Well, in fact, extremely well. It seems that since the release of the last game, Valve has tightened things up a significant bit. Big things first, there are the new special infected, who are awesome. The Jockey is the most instantly noticeable, as he will no doubt be on your head within minutes of the demo. All of the new special infected add something to Left 4 Dead 2 that really makes a motif of weight noticeable; stakes. Now, with uncommon infected like the armor-clad riot zombies that must be shot in the back, which is easier said than done during a horde, and three new special infected along with the old, ever-present three, as well as walking witches and deadly tanks, every corner is treated as a challenge. Sticking together is more important than ever before, and it works.

Continuing what I stated earlier, there is a gameplay motif of weight that I'm sensing personally, and while probably not strictly intentional on the part of Valve, I sense lots of things that add weight to the experience. There is the added stakes of a ton more enemies, but there is also the new weapons as well. Melee weapons are extremely satisfying and visceral, even if a bit archaic, but more than that, guns pack a much more noticeable punch, and this is due in part to two things; added power and new enemy reactions. The guns, while new and pretty and fun to use, are also very different then before; sure they're basically the same style weapons, but they're all feel much more powerful, with the SCAR in particular being a semi-automatic kick in the chest to undead bastards.

Also, like I said before, enemies react differently than before; not in the way the move, that's basically unchanged, but it's all in the new level of violence. Now, in most games, this means nothing, but zombies offer something that most enemies don't: fragility. These things, now three weeks into the infection, are falling apart. They'll rip you to shreds in seconds, but a shotgun blast to the stomach will create a satisfyingly large hole in the chest filled with viscera, gore, and bone that will make an Aussie burn their national flag. Blowing off limbs and the subsequent recoil is such a terrific indicator that the gun your using is a gun, not a plastic imaginary toy that goes "bang"; this is a bullet-spitting, zombie-gibbing son of a bitch machine, and it feels good.

Added to this continuing motif is the movement of you and the undead, which seems much different. For one, the undead seem a bit slower than in the first game, and much in the same way, you do as well. This isn't problematic in any way, as much of the design of the campaign is based upon tight corridors and rooms that chute you through the campaign at a brisk, intense pace, with only a few sprawling moments that feel all the more large in comparison. What it comes down to, is that while small and hardly noticeable, Valve may have adjusted the movement, but in a way that improves upon Left 4 Dead, which could sometimes feel a bit floaty when the momentum of your character seems a bit odd. It's idiosyncratic for series to say the least.

There are lots of things about the map itself that I want to talk about, but I'm not going to spoil it for you here. Suffice it to say, this is one of the best-designed maps that the series has offered to date, with an incredibly intense crescendo event that raises the stakes of the campaign in a way that is unlike any other before it, including Crash Course. The levels are well-designed, well-populated with zombies, and weapon pick-ups aren't limited to "find all three second tier on one desk"; instead, you can find any random amount of any tier weapon lying around, including melee weapons, which include police batons, machetes, frying pans/skillets, and even a Gibson SG.

Well, before this post gets too long (like every other one of my blogs), let me just say, this is the game we've been waiting for, distilled into two brisk, adrenaline-fueled stages that highlight most of the new aspects of the game to come. It's still far from what we're getting on November 17th, but it's enough to bet that Left 4 Dead 2 may just surpass it's predecessor in many ways; go and check it out if you have any interest in good games period. Also, this applies to Left 4 Dead as a whole, play it with friends. Not public people you'll never talk to over the mic; play it with people you know, friends in real life or over the internet, but playing with real buds is what really makes the experience, because when you're shooting a Jockey that is riding your screaming friend like a Coin-operated mall machine, it's euphorically fun.