Life's a Blur. Then You Level Up.

I finally understand what all the fuss was about in Modern Warfare 2. Only, the realization came from playing a racing game.

After leaving an innocuous comment on a friend's blog about Blur, I suddenly found myself presented with a golden ticket in the form of a code to join the "beta demo" - a free pass to what I'm starting to think may be the greatest racer since Burnout Paradise.

Although saying "something plus something else equals this" is a lazy comparison, I can't help but use it when trying to explain Blur. It feels very much like Bizarre Creations' Project Gotham Racing series; rooted somewhere between realistic and arcadey - a lovely niche of accessibility sans the need to dumb things down. Add to that the carnage of weapon heavy Mario Kart and you get Blur. That's right: there are Audi's shooting what are basically blue, spiky shells. And I love it for that.

What makes it so addictive is that you can stockpile up to three power-ups, which opens the game to a much more strategic play style than you usually find while burning rubber. You've seen the attacks before: forward shooting projectiles, homing missiles, mines and shields are all par for the course. What's important is the timing you use when executing said screw-over. And I don't mean just taking into account where your opponents are, either. Your load-out is subtly shown on your bumper so you can pick and choose what you want to use. More importantly, you can see your fellow drivers load-outs as well. And don't forget that they can see yours, too.

I've never really been one to use my rear view mirror in games like this; now it's imperative lest you'd like to see yourself at the bottom of the leaderboards. However, there is a hook to Blur that transcends just zipping ahead of the competition - the leveling system.

At this point I think it's asinine and rote to say Blur has "RPG-like elements"; because really, games like this and the aforementioned Modern Warfare 2 only take one of their core elements and attaches it to their titles. However, that doesn't mean it's not an effective carrot to dangle in front of people to keep them playing. In this day and age, developers want their games to be evergreen. I won't hold that against them - in fact, I applaud it. It's kept me in it's grasp since I downloaded the thing, anyhow.

Being someone whose gaming career has largely been spent in the grind, just seeing my rank go up another number is often cathartic enough for me. So far, I've unlocked enough interesting bits to keep me going 'til...well, whenever the level cap hits. It's a no-brainer that they'd put new rides out there; but what I really got excited for was the prep load-outs you can have. Much like perks in Modern Warfare 2 (man, considering I haven't played this game, I sure use it as an example a lot), you can give yourself little advantages from the get go. Right now I randomly get a weapon at the start, negate an attack and have a boost to my ramming ability. And the idea of new and more potent perks feel more important to me than having a snazzier sports car at this point.

You earn your levels by doing various things on the course such as avoiding attacks, driving fancily and winning; all of which gain you fans. It sounds really arbitrary, but it's effective at keeping people playing. Most of the time, when you can't get the checkered flag to save your life, racing games tend to lose their luster. This way, you can keep the rest of the pack involved and interested. Along with that, there's also end-of-race awards that remain entertaining all the time.

I'm surprised at how excited I am for Blur considering how little I've spent with the beta. Going in, I wasn't expecting much because the name is generic and I've respected but never been a fan of Bizarre Creations. But that's all going to change now. My only concern is it's single-player component. Granted, like fighting games, nobody means to play racers by themselves; but sometimes you find yourself doing so to bide your time until your buddies are online. Not that it'll be a total game killer if it's not rock solid; I just like to know that if I'm investing sixty bucks towards a game that I'm confident I'll get a fully rounded experience.

If you see me online, don't hesitate to send me an invite. I'll be playing this one until they cut me off the teat and sucker me into buying it.

Angels Do In Fact Wait for Slowpokes

Where the hell was I the first time I played BioShock!? I mean, I see the game saves from Point Prometheus and I have the achievements to prove it; but why wasn't I as impacted as I am now -- a few years after the fact, on my second play through?

I have to start out by saying that I'm impressed that I kept the promise to myself that I would journey through Rapture again; this time harvesting the cute little urchins with the big, big needles. I could have just as well watched the "bad" ending via YouTube; but I felt I owed it to this marvelous game to dig deeper in my second run. Which is obvious, because it ended up being a much more meaningful experience than my first go around. We can chalk it up to my maturation as a gamer--this time I was less worried about finishing it along with everyone else and bilking it for achievements, content with enjoying the sights, sounds and combat that I somewhat blatantly blasted through the first time around.

Lately I've been wondering why everyone calls out BioShock as a classic. Not that I disagree by any stretch of the imagination; instead, I question it because I felt the game play shined brighter than the plot, which is an unconventional opinion considering most people herald the story. Don't get me wrong--the power struggle between Ryan and Fontaine (it's been three years, I'm blowing the statute of limitations on this baby) is leaps and bounds better than most digital storytelling; however, I was soured by the end game in which they take Fontaine's power play and turn it into an unnecessary boss battle. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why don't I take it from the top first?

BioShock has a lot in common with 30's and 40's pulp magazine stories. It pulls you in almost instantly with it's introductory plane crash and scenic bathysphere ride to Andrew Ryan's supposed utopia. It was common back then for writers to start their books off with a bang in the hopes that they could get a dime off of a wanting reader, and it's easy to see the parallel here as I can't think of anyone I know of who wasn't drawn in by the first fifteen minutes of the game.

Even more of a similarity is that the entire game takes place in an underwater city that's frozen in that time frame thanks to the fallout over ADAM. Irrational did an amazing job keeping it stylistically relevant to the 40's; a submerged historical note to the times. These days, I really like poking around the nooks and crannies in game worlds and Rapture easily scratches that itch with it's art deco vibe and architecture, and more importantly the little details that kept me addicted for a few weeks. You can tell there was a lot of thought put towards the environments, whether it's the layout of abandoned apartments or a bloodied corpse left crucified after the civil war. What's nice is that I was usually rewarded for my incessant snooping with an audio log detailing the background of Rapture, ammo or just another minute detail pulling me further into the rabbit hole. Considering most shooters are a glut of realistic military campaigns or epic space battles, BioShock is a breath of fresh, salty sea air.

When I wasn't waist deep in overflowing H2O, I found myself slowly warming up to taking on Splicers with what I think is one of the more customizable combat systems. Unfortunately, I'm one of those folks who takes the mindless approach of blasting first and remembering strategies after. Which might explain why no one ever wants me on their team during multiplayer in other shooting games. The firearms are traditional fare: pistols, shotguns and grenade launchers are all par for the course. What gives the fighting it's bite are those lovely plasmids: crazy mutant powers that can be all yours for the low, low price of unwavering addiction.

It's readily apparent that all the direct offense plasmids like Incinerate, Winter Blast and Insect Swarm are similar in use, even if they are visually distinct. It's a sound strategy to distract or incapacitate Splicers and Big Daddies -- in fact, I think I primarily used Electro Bolt almost exclusively during my first play through. They're all rock solid, to be honest; but the fun didn't begin until I started using some of the more quirky powers.

I began to envision my version of Jack as something of a magician or hypnotist; hiding behind the Natural Camouflage tonic and pulling the strings of Rapture's denizens. As much as I enjoyed the hacking mini-game (Pipe Mania FTW), I eventually souped up my gadgetry skills and photographed enough foes to where I just played by setting traps the whole time. I never usually get to see how AI works in first-person shooters because of my itchy trigger finger, but with this play style I was able to understand and enjoy what makes everyone tick. Setting up dummies, pissing off Splicers and having them attack each other, using cyclones as perimeter triggers and marking Big Daddies as targets for threatening turrets became a steadfast hobby of mine.

I rarely ran out of ammo because I rarely shot anything. It was awesome. Except for in that last fight against Frank Fontaine.

I digress; maybe calling out the plot wasn't a wise choice on my part. I just think people take it at face value and nothing more. I've read numerous articles citing Irrational as being inspired by Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism, but really that's just the canvas that the painting is spread upon. Sure, Rapture was built because maybe Andrew Ryan read Atlas Shrugged; but the true heart of the proceedings are due to the fact that no ideology will truly work on it's own, and someone is willing to argue that point. In this case it was Frank Fontaine, whom decided to capitalize on the remote underwater city when ADAM was discovered and he chose to exploit it's potential rather than share it with everyone.

It's all very interesting, from the back story given in audio logs to the bizarre twist in which you find yourself having played the entire game as a slave under Fontaine's guise of Atlas. My point of contention lies in the fact that the reality BioShock gets you to believe in is shattered because someone didn't dip their pen deep enough into the creativity well. The point where you chase Fontaine and he suddenly becomes a superhero is jarring, only to totally feel like "just a game" when it turns into a halfhearted boss battle. Not that I can think of a better premise for the end game personally; I just feel it could have been handled differently, just like the rest of the game was. The choice as to whether or not to harvest little sisters also didn't play out as strongly as it could of; I didn't feel bad about pulling the slugs from their stomachs until the very end. It was emotionally gripping and made me feel guilty--but not until it was too late.

Regardless of my personal gripe, BioShock stands as perhaps my favorite game of this generation. It made me care about the story, it made me care about the game play and every little thing I did felt like as big an accomplishment as any arbitrary achievement or level finish could. So much so that I'm already contemplating a third play through; this time on the hardest difficulty in order to get a 100% completion rate and to see if my play style is still a viable one.

And on that note, I now wait with bated breath for when I inevitably pick up BioShock 2. I've kept myself intentionally naive about it; having heard both good and bad things, in the end I'd like to just experience it for myself. Could BioShock simply been a singular experience? Absolutely. But as popular as it is, I'm not surprised that 2K chose to go back, and my curiosity is strong enough to bite that dangling carrot.

At least they didn't ask if I would kindly play it.

Not Even Scott Wolf Could Save This

There are bad games, and then there's the arcade version of Double Dragon.

A few weeks back I had to re-license all my 360 content after it unceremoniously red ringed on me, and I came across an old remake of Double Dragon I had downloaded and had completely forgotten about. For a good reason. This version is something of a digital rarity because it was de-listed from Live thanks to it's publisher, Empire Interactive, going under. Or so Wikipedia says.

It's for the best, though. Unlike great games that were de-listed (Lost Cities, I wish you had found an audience), I don't think anyone should have to suffer through this under any circumstances. No, not even for historical study. I don' t think Double Dragon was the first side-scrolling beat 'em up, but it definitely popularized the genre. And that, kids, is all you really need to know.

Unfortunately, the reason it fails is because of it's lineage as a quarter munching arcade game. You never get to see the glaring flaws because twenty-five cents just didn't get you far enough in to experience them. Replaying it with my brother and an infinite well of coinage; we found ourselves on a thirty minute adventure of how games were made back in the day, and how not to make them today.

The word cheap comes to mind when I think of Double Dragon. I know the term was thrown around a lot in the eighties -- whether it was falling into a pit that you swear up and down the game wantonly tossed you into or you found yourself trapped against an impenetrable wall of flying bullets in a shmup -- but in this case it's true. But that's the nature of the beast when something is made for stealing money from unsuspecting kids and not for genuine enjoyment. The hit detection would be best described as loose, there's an excruciating part where you have to get the Lee brothers across a seemingly impossible one foot gap and the last boss brings a gun to a fist fight.

In the end, my brother and I invented our own fun; either from trashing it's shortcomings or role-playing that we were traveling in the steamy underbelly of Hollywood. Don't ask me why; there was a baddie who looked a bit like Steve Guttenberg and it felt cathartic to thump him, and it just steamrolled from there. Sometimes you just have to make your own fun; in this case it's the only way to have any. After the laughing subsided and one of us beat the other up after defeating the last boss for the chance at a one night stand with Marion, Double Dragon was summarily put to bed and forgotten about.

Normally I have issues about writing musings that put down anything (I'm obnoxiously nice like that, sometimes), but damn it -- Double Dragon deserves it. It's not as good as you remember it being kids. Or, if you're like me, you're actually thinking of the NES version that, for all it's technical shortcomings, was vastly superior to it's arcade progenitor. Not even Scott Wolf* could save this.

*Scott Wolf starred as Billy Lee in the unabashedly terrible film adaptation. I'm sure he'd rather be known for being in Party of Five.