On Sunday Night, at Armored Gopher Games, in Urbana IL, my card game made it's debut. The community at AG was very welcoming to the concept in general and I was able to get some valuable feedback from those who playtested. So, you may be wondering about now, how did it go?

In not so many words, partially horrendous and partially good. Some of my rules were overly complex and made understanding the game difficult. But SOME of the core concepts are VERY MUCH feasible and just need balanced. So the first prototype decks were pretty much horrible and came attached with many problems. Now, however, I have a stronger foundation.

Things that are getting chopped
-One of the stats on all attack cards is getting dropped and there will now be no blocking damage or residual blocking damage.
-Defensive style super moves will now be moved to the defense deck.
-Super Move meter needs balanced and may go from 9 turns to fully charge to 12 turns.
-Character Sheet is getting axed in favor of smaller, more deckable info cards.
-Counter cards need more clear iconography on what they block.
-Most of the artwork, since the next wave will be focusing on all five fighting style decks, will either be VERY generic or missing altogether.

Things that are being added
-More Signature Moves (Jade Deck) will be added to each character with a new Desperation Move dynamic.
-Rules will be better layed out and balanced
-Four new themed decks
-Master Deck list card which will provide a breakdown of the deck layouts to your opponents.
-Flashing gameplay dynamic will be added and tested.
-Card Burn discarding mechanic will be added and tested.

So where do things stand? I plan to have all five decks ready by November 15th in PDF format to make printing the decks easy. Does the concept of a card game based on a fighting game intrigue you? Well, I could use more testers. If interested, drop me a comment here and I'll add you to a list to send you out some PDFs.

Well, it's been a while since I did a blog post but I've been distacted, see. I'm designing a card game. What it is, I cannot say. What it's themed after, I cannot say. How does it play? No clue yet, building a deck as we speak. So what CAN I say? Well, I will post a card with placeholder artwork up here. Maybe you'll dig it, maybe not. IF you'd like to give this game a shot sometime, when I have a few decks together, I'll put a post up since I'll need playtesters.

I work at a Flight Simulation company and because of this, my company is ALWAYS buying the latest greatest video cards which of course come with the latest and greatest game pack-ins. These stacks of games tend to get lotteried off to workers and because of this, I had a code for a free copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum. So if the game was free, how in the hell can I find something to bitch about? Follow along kiddies, on how even free gets extensive lockdown.

To get your copy of Batman AA, you have to go to a special link on the card and enter in your unique code. This, suprisingly, gives you another code. Yes, two codes thus far, but this code is put into Steam. Which means whether I play it now or ten years from now, it's permanently owned, I hope.

But after I put this code into Steam, I start downloading and I'm alerted of a third code, a Games for Windows code. And this point my mind is absolutely 100% blown at the sheer stupidity of this rabbit hole but whatever. I boot up Batman remembering the huge thorn in my ass commonly called the Games for Windows client but also known as "Hey Dad, look at this great big clusterfuck of a client based service I just shat out and just wished would work." Steam, being the helpful little bastard that it is, has a window ready and willing to allow me to copy pasta this code.

I only have to log into Games for Windows live now. Whatever, I have this program all set up from the last time Sega wasted 5+ hours of my time with clusterfucked DRM (with absolutely no tech support provided post launch) found in the $10 copy of Universe At War that I bought a year ago. And so I log in, or try. You see, within Batman, the GFW client is trash. I have GFW remembering a password from a year ago. Obviously it's wrong so when I uncheck remember password and try to put in the new one, something bad happens. If GFW is trying to use your old password and you want to use a new one, password input is disabled from within Batman.... ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!? Sure I can click the area, but it won't accept my keystrokes.

And so I try playing anyway, and get told I cannot save my progress. Goddamit, I close Batman and go into the GFW client where I can change the saved password. Here I update the damn thing and go back into Batman, log into GFW, and now, ONLY NOW, am I allowed to put in the third goddam code to verify my purchase. Everythings cool, and now I get play and eventually beat Batman.

A couple weeks later, when a couple friends are over, I try showing a friend this game. He starts the game and begins going through the Joker sequence at the beginning. My friend and I go into the living room to try and play some Raiden Fighters Aces on Xbox 360. As Joker begins his breakout, my 360 logs into my account... and boots him out of Batman Arkham Asylum. You read that right, the game is locked down SOOOO much, that it's saying you can't play Batman and Xbox 360 at the same time.

Now I say I think I own this game but honestly, I can't fucking tell anymore. Who's to say GFW won't die in the next five years leaving this game completely incapable of connecting to something so that it could say "Yeah, this fucker bought the game." Trust? Trust in Microsoft? By all rights, it's bought in Steam, should be fine, but yet there it is also buddying up with Microsoft. I know I have the ability to play the game currently, but I can't really say I own it.

Now think of all the bullshit that I, a computer savvy gamer, just went through and then think of my poor dear mother. She's new to gaming, you know. Nintendo DS got her in, Final Fantasy kept her, Civilization IV (ironically enough, one of her expansions refuses to verify it's code) compells her, and she would have NO clue how to deal with this shit. Her reaction would more than likely be just not play the game because she doesn't know how to work it. And in the war against pirates, that's the victim. Legitimate paying customers not playing what they bought because after spending $30 at Best Buy, their purchase is calling them a thief.

Me? I used to PC game all the time, but started getting annoyed at this bullshit 8 years ago. Quit for a long while. And everytime I try to get back in, DRM punches me in the dick while thanking me for my $40. And it's not the hassle that annoys me so much but rather the fact that a quick Google Search for "Batman Arkham Torrent" would give me a much more hasslefree experience than being a paying customer. That, or I retreat back to consoles yet again where I don't get the prompt "Look, we don't trust you.... are you SURE you bought this game?" when I put in a fucking PS3 disc.

I'm going to take you back in time for a moment. E3 2005, the first official unveiling of the Wiimote/Nunchuck controllers. Wow, what a watershed moment. When few were bashed for saying something as blasphemous as "Okay, you have my attention, now what are you going to DO with it?" everyone else was in LOVE with the Wii. Nintendo, capitalizing off that love, said something inspiring. This is going to change the way you play games and offer a Nintendo console truly exclusive experiences. Everyone bought the hype.

Three years later, very few games have proven that concept true but titles like Boom Blox and Mario Galaxy justified the differences in the controller setup. We all knew the graphics weren't going to be great on the console, it was the experience they were selling. Regardless, company after company tried to create that "true Wii" experience. Everytime, we get people wanting said game off of the platform.

This sentiment isn't new either. It's been around for a long, long time. Take Rocket Knight Adventures. "If it was on SNES, it could have a richer palette, better sound, and sell 100 times more copies like Acro the Acrobat." Really now? What was the basis for this arguement? Who's to say all that wasn't out of budget for Konami? And better sound?!? RKA was hardly stretching the Genesis abilities, let alone tapping into a Sony sound chip in SNES. But the arguement persists today with any console exclusive and with one base reason, jealousy.

"Uncharted is too good for Sony fans"
"Gears would be better with a Wiimote"
"Conduit would look much better on PS3"

Idiotic statements not really meant to insult the game, but rather showing a mental belittling of the system. The advanced layers of this phenominon turns incredibly ugly and effects metacritic userscores and just genuinely makes asses out of all gamers.

"Uncharted 2 is for stupid people who are dumb."
"Gears 2 is about as awesome as a cancerous tumor on your nose that looks like a rancor"
"Mario Galaxy? More like Mario Faggotry."


If you can make a legitimate arguement about your hopes, I'm all for it. But nine times of ten, it's typically "I can't have it, so it's shit." Now despite the victim claims from many Wii fanboys, they aren't really embroiled in the real war (check user reviews of PS360 marque titles sometime before playing the victim that not everybody likes Mario Kart and WiiFit), which is good. But along comes any number of Wii Exclusives and typically the first question is why it isn't on PS360.

Normally, I'm not one to defend Wii and even had an apparently anti-wii blogpost here where I argued some of my feelings towards the $50 Wiigame price tag. But ever since Epic Mickey has been rumored, I've seen a steady stream of "Why is this on the Wii?" and "I want this in high def" comments from both blogposts and podcasts. What we know about this game is still basically nothing and comments of this nature assume two distinctly different things.

1. Epic Mickey is NOT designed specifically for the Wii in the integral gameplay aspect. If the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo is the core of the design, this would make porting difficult/stupid and we still have NO fucking clue about the gameplay.

2. Epic Mickey has, of course, the much larger budget required to develop high resolution content. The assumption here is that Warren Spectre still pulls in an enormous amount of clout and Disney is more than willing to funnel vasts amounts of resources into an unproven concept. Who footed the bill for Kingdom Hearts again? Oh yeah, Square. Who's to say this game project has the monetary support to be a PS360 game? Gamers? Yes, they are VERY generous with other peoples money while buying used games or waiting for anticipated titles to hit clearance bins, but I digress.


All of this is building towards one central point. Let Nintendo Wii have the fucking console exclusive. Let game consoles in general have their exclusives without bitching. A company had SOME business plan in action when they started development and we, as outsiders, have no clue what that is. So lets quit pretending and let every console have exclusive reasons to own it.

More than a couple Podcasts recently have commented about how only the Renegade Edition of DJ Hero has a table which would benefit the user as a place to keep the controller. Long ago, I had to solve this issue with Beatmania. Ladies and gentlemen, remember these?


That's right, a TV tray. At your local general merchandise store (Meijer, Walmart, Target), you can snag one of these babies for about $20-$30. While you're at it, grab some nonslip grip sheets from the kitchen area, and bammo, you not only have a perfect height DJ Hero/Beatmania/Scratch controller base, but dig this, it also works well for steering wheels and Steel Battalion controllers. Even flight sticks. In other words, it's going to probably be one of your most used non gaming gaming peripherals.

Cheers!

From time to time, Press or Fans of something hold an object on such a high pedestal that any attempts to touch or share this sacred object with others becomes a punishable offense. These, ladies and gentlemen, are Sacred Cows. That's why I'm going to take these beasts of burdens out back and put the bullets between the eyes that they deserve.

This times sacred cow is known as Dante's Inferno for PS3/360/PC. Admittedly, a game based around The Divine Comedy sounds pretty damn boring. If one would make a direct translation of the Inferno chapter of Divine Comedy, ignoring the Purgatory and Paradise chapters, you'd still have an excessively dry game. Don't believe me? It's been done. Hope you have a Commodore 64 lying around for it. Whether Dante's Inferno would make a great game or not is not the area of contention. Many are arguing that it simply shouldn't be done or should be done with proper respect (aka, pretty boring).

This is a cute sentiment. And that's how I'm going to take it, condescendingly. Because ALL of the critics of this game have been VERY condescending towards the developers, likening them to children or monsters for daring to touch this property which is, of course, public domain nowadays. Let's turn back the clock before Dante's Inferno was announced. Visceral Games was actually turning out to be a damn good studio. Many of Dante's current critics could not stop raving about Dead Space. And for what? Being able to craft a well done, horrifying and "unique" experience.


Oh yes, I put quotes on there. Dead Space is many things, but unique? You're investigating a derelict spaceship where something horrible happened. This theme was overused long before even Event Horizon got to it. And yet here we were claiming the Ghost Ship theme was something truly new and unique to gaming. But the game was well made and expertly crafted. Thus any unoriginality was ignored because, well, they made an awesome game.

Now let's look at the typical reactions to hands-on with Dante's, shall we? According to most, despite being a GOW clone, it's wellcrafted and fun to play. So if the games QUALITY is not in question, and shouldn't truly be a question until we all get to play it, what's the big f'ing deal, bitch? Because they are making a mockery of what Dante's Inferno was about. It wasn't a balls-out action tale about tearing through hell to retrieve his childhood crush Beatrice. Or was it?

Think back for a minute to the era when The Divine Comedy was written and compare it to it's literary contemporaries. Wow, The Divine Comedy was very much the "summer movie" of the literary world back then. Taken out of the contemporary framework and thrust into modern day, of course it's tame and introspective. Back then, a winged creature with the face of an honest man and s corpians tale was enough to thrill. Nowadays, we have Saw to confirm our morality. Consider this, in Shakespeares time, he was the Michael Bay we all spit upon. He was lowbrow entertainment for the high society. Thrilling tales expertly spun merely to leave the audience on the very edge of their seat. In our day and age, Shakespeare is looked upon as high art. In Dante's time, his poem was to thrill, to excite, to fire the imaginations on what hell could be. This was NOT high art, this was lowbrow entertainment. Fourteenth Century Pulp Fiction, The Divine Comedy. Granted, the base thrills of a society where most cannot even afford the education to read, those who can read have higher interest than what cool shapes can be formed from mud, but I digress.

The reason I make this point? To shatter illusions the lit majors will use as a rebuttal. This is a timeless tale, like Boewolf, that shouldn't be sullied by modern action entertainment designs. Obviously this means that when Dante's Inferno ships, all previous copies of The Divine Comedy ever printed will be recalled and adjusted to the new fiction. Right? No? Well then once again, what's the big f'ing deal, bitch?


Now I'd like to take you on a hilarious sidetrack. One where Will Smith and Jeff Goldbloom helped save the world from an alien invasion in War of the Worlds. What's that? You say they did that in Independance Day? No, sir. They did it in the War of the Worlds remake entitled Independance Day. There are MORE than a couple modernization tactics at work in this famous remake. As an example, the saucers were crescent shaped with an eye on top, the small aliens walked about on huge walkers (which were obviously scaled down), the larger ships were 10 miles wide, and they were ultimately defeated by a virus. Independance Day was VERY MUCH a War of the Worlds ripoff. So why didn't we care?

1. Hardly anyones familiar with War of the Worlds aside from pop culture mythos (when Orsen Welles drove the nation mad with a radio play... supposedly)

2. Independance Day didn't have the respect to acknowledge their obvious source material and as such, didn't get called out on it.

I point this out because a LOT of the Alien Invasion imagery in pop culture still comes from a blatant ripoff. Most people don't care if something is a ripoff. It's not in their nature despite the claims to the contrary. Gamers? FChrists sake what a bunch of children arguing over petty, petty, petty shit. I once saw someone post that a LIGHTING EFFECT was stolen from another game. So let's look back at an imaginary meeting at Visceral as Dante's was being concepted.

Guy No 1: I'd really like to do an action platformer next.
Guy No 2: Yeah, but with what setting?
Guy No 3: Hells popular...
Guy No 2: Everyones done Hell... I mean they did hell on Mars for fucks sake.
Guy No 3: We could do a Hell people haven''t done before...
Guy No 1: Yeah, like the hell they talk about in the movie Seven... with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie...
Guy No 2: You're an idiot with a brilliant idea... nobody's done the nine layers of hell in a video game...
Guy No 3: But guys, The Divine Comedy is a beloved tale enjoyed by lit majors through the ages... we cannot tarnish such a name.
Guy No 2: But if we don;t acknowledge our inspiration, gamers will give us endless layers of shit.
Guy No 1: There's no solution...
Guy No 2: Of course there is. Fuck the lit majors. They're still fapping about Braid anyway. 98% of the population doesn't care about how accurate we are to a thousand year old poem. And really, most gamers just want to be entertained. We'll acknowledge the inspiration but update it to gameplay standards. Blowing around in a giant whirlwind doesn't sound very fun to me anyway....


I'm sure that's exactly how it happened. Visceral wanted to make an action game based on the nine layers of hell, but the source for that concept was, in fact, the Inferno chapter of The Divine Comedy. So the question becomes how do you USE another persons idea without stealing it outright? Why NOT completely reenvision Dante's Inferno to a more modern gameplay sensability? Oh yeah, the complainers. The ones who will talk about how it shows a lack of respect towards the source material. Consider this concept for a second, someone bashing another for not showing Vaudeville the utter respect it deserves. That's what the complaint really is, at it's core.

o let's take that sacred cow out for one last drink from the stream while I load my shotgun. The arguement has been made that Visceral COULD make this game without the title and avoid a vast majority of this backlash. That is 100% correct. Visceral could create another generic action hero, another damsel in distress, and we could ultimately hear nothing about Julius Caesar and not get to see Judas being chomped about the middle mouth of a six winged Satan trapped in ice. A vast majority of the complaints would instantly disappear overnight. Who knows, maybe even Reverend Anthony could enjoy this game. At this point, I could see Visceral Games temptation to do just that and quit all the bitching.

But as an artist, if I attempt to draw something I see somewhere, I'm compelled to acknowledge the source. If I'm making a game that's a character based twin stick shooter, you bet your ass I'm acknowledging the game designers of Robotron 2084, Smash TV, and Cannon Spike in my credits. Point is, most decent people are compelled not to claim ideas as their own. Most decent people are compelled to give credit where it's due. Dante's Inferno is not a remake of The Divine Comedy in gameplay form. Instead, it's a reimagining. Visceral Games doesn't want to try and outdo the original, it's fine as it is. The entire time, the message has been "this is OUR version of this, not Dante's." Them saying they want Dante to be badass or hell to be a horrifying vision is something they are owning themselves. They've long since seperated their property from the source material. It's about time the Dante's Inferno Sacred Cow Cult do the same.

*Blam* I'm Done....


Next Sacred Cow: The Citizen Kane of Gaming....