anal retentive critics

Just watched the amazing movie Children of Men, and after I was curious to see what the critics had thought when it came out.

Unsurprisingly, most of them raved about it, but I was curious to see who wouldn't like it and why. And I found a truly idiotic review by someone named William Arnold.

To summarize, at the beginning of the movie there is a quick reference to a siege in Seattle. It's just there to give a sense of a world in chaos, it's never mentioned again, and I didn't even notice the line.

But the Seattle film critic did. And he spent several paragraphs explaining what a stupid line it is, because Seattle simply could not withstand a 3-year siege.

He uses this as an example of why the movie is poorly thought out, which would be fine, if he offered other examples that actually related in some real way to the movie. He does mention a major flaw of the movie, which is that the basic debate over what to do with the central woman doesn't make much sense (this could be seen as a major flaw, since the entire story hinges on it, but it's basically just the MacGuffin to set in motion an exciting tale and stick in a ton of political commentary).

The critic is a perfect example of someone who can't see the forest for the trees. He spends a third of his review on the single line about Seattle. It seems like he just couldn't get past it.

This happens. I once read a comment by someone who felt The Matrix was fatally flawed because the science of powering a city in that unusual way was scientifically impractical, but that at least is a major plot point. But one line about Seattle? If I saw a movie that began with a quick blurb about the Empire State building being in Brooklyn, I wouldn't spend a huge chunk of my review on it unless the entire movie was set in New York, in which case I would think it was a bit of an issue.

Seattle is mentioned once in all of Children of Men. I would never trust a critic who trashes a brilliant movie because of a single sentence that isn't even going to register with anyone who doesn't live in Seattle. William Arnold, you are an idiot.

(Even if I hated Children of Men, I would still think this was an incredibly lame criticism. I could trash this movie much more intelligently than this guy if so inclined.)

after the merge

Recently I heard someone was moving to another country because his "partner" got a job there. It took me a moment to realize "partner" meant boyfriend/significant other/whatever and refers to a "domestic partner" or "life partner," because it's a really lame way to describe a relationship.

A partner is the guy who co-owns your steel factory or has made it to the top of the law firm. It has to be one of the least romantic words in the human language. It should not be used to describe someone you're moving to another country with.

Yes, I know it's a popular word among gay people because it's nice and generic and won't offend the relatives. It's the equivalent of how in old movies if a girl got pregnant they would say she was "in trouble," and if you were a kid you would get really confused as to what the trouble was.

But when there's an out gay guy whose move is being discussed between two people who don't have a problem with it, "partner" seems like a horrible choice of words.

The problem of what to call people you're involved with is a strangely thorny one. I personally am happy with boyfriend/girlfriend, but my ex-girlfriend used to complain that she was no longer a girl, and my mother corrects anyone who calls her boyfriend her boyfriend, preferring "man friend" or just an ambiguous "my friend."

I am okay with being a boyfriend, but then, I gladly suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome.

If you don't like the boy/girl thing, and admit that something like "manfriend" sounds pretty dumb, there are other options. "Significant other" used to be popular, but while it is slightly more specific than "partner" it is about as lame. You can get even lamer by using "lover." "Lover" most often turns up in comedies nowadays as a way to indicate a character is a pretentious ass.

POSSLQ, for Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Quarters, was briefly popular, but that doesn't help gay people, since I can't think of any way to pronounce PSSSLQ.

Beau isn't too bad a word, but there is no female equivalent (arguably the female equivalent is belle, but no one uses that for girlfriend).

Sweetie and sweetheart sound rather saccharin, but they are gender and age neutral. Still, they're problematic when you've just had a fight. You don't want to say, "This is my damn sweetie, who never knows when to shut the hell up."

There are also handy phrases like old man, old lady, main squeeze, ball and chain, gentleman caller and lady friend, but none seem ideal.

Personally, I think everyone who's been together longer than two years can be called a spouse. In my experience, once you've been dating a girl a couple of years everyone starts calling her your wife anyway. Gay people may not be able to get married in most states, but I don't believe you can be arrested for impersonating a married person. I'm not a doctor, but if I can convince my friends to call me Dr. Charles it's legal as long as I don't perform surgery. So I'd be all for saying the guy is moving to another country with his husband.

What is odd is that while no one seems to be able to come up with a satisfactory word or phrase for an important romantic relationship, there are two descriptions for the person you have uncommitted sex with: "fuck buddy" and, for the more gentile, "friend with benefits."

Why is that so much easier? How long did it take someone to think up "fuck buddy?" Can that person sit down and come up with a boyfriend/girlfriend/lover equivalent of some sort?

I don't know if anyone will ever find a solution that will satisfy everyone. Probably not. In the meantime, I just wish I could find myself a girlfriend, sweetie, main squeeze, old lady or fuck buddy of my own. Whatever she wants to be called will be fine with me.

farmer and nazi are two words that should not routinely be linked

Just watched an episode of 30 Days in which a hunter lives with PETA activists for a month. The hunter at first considers all of PETA's stories of animal abuse exaggerations, but eventually he gets to see it for himself and becomes more sympathetic to animal rights, although he doesn't give up hunting or become a vegan.

So I began wondering if there is a place in the world for omnivores who support humane farming, and I found the same answer I found the last time I wondered about that: no, there's not. I tried googling for "meat eaters for humane farming" and found nothing but a list of articles about how "humane farming" is a contradiction in terms and that there's basically no such thing as a humane carnivore.

This is unfortunate. Those who call for humane farming are organizations like PETA whose ultimate goal is to make this world vegan. They've got members, like a woman on the episode of 30 Days, who compare eating animals with the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. And I think that's nuts.

I actually think the PETA people are similar to the anti-abortion people, in that they divide the world up into the innocent and the guilty. Animal rights people think of animals as innocent beings that should be saved, and humans as fairly evil (like a friend of mine who doesn't care if children are starving in Africa but is broken-hearted about animal deaths). Anti-abortion people think of babies as innocents that must be saved, but once you're out of the womb you're no longer innocent, which is why the anti-abortion people who are pro death penalty are not actually being inconsistent; they just want to save the "innocent."

The problem with extremists is that they don't change the world nearly as much as if they set realistic goals. The world will never be vegan. Ever. Forget about it.

But when I once joined a mailing list for humane farming, I started getting a lot of anti-meat email. And even though I was a (non-judgmental) vegetarian for many years, I considered all those vegetarian-activist emails a waste of my time and dropped off the list. Because there just wasn't much about making animal farming better, only stuff about stopping it altogether. Which as I mentioned before, ain't gonna happen.

(Once again, anti-abortion forces are in the same boat, so focused on ending abortion that they fail to sufficiently focus on stuff they they could actually change - if every person picketing an abortion clinic would volunteer with an organization devoted to giving pregnant women the help they need to bring a baby to term and care for it they could lessen the number of women getting abortions, but by choosing an all-or-nothing approach they fail to achieve much beyond the occasional murder of a doctor.)

PETA, by focusing on a narrow agenda, pushes away people who would support more humane farming. But because extremists have the most energy, they control the agenda because they're willing to do the work. I don't have the motivation to start an organization to make farming more humane, and the people with that motivation tend to be the people who are thinking of each animal as a little innocent person being murdered by Nazi-like carnivores.

It's a shame. If anyone knows of an organization working for humane farming that is not connected with PETA and is not set on vegetarianism, let me know. I may go back to vegetarianism one of these days - I probably eat 90% vegetarian anyway - but I'm never going to support an organization wasting resources on an impossible goal.

how to be unpersuasive

I've been trying to get more reading done lately, grabbing the books I've collected off my shelves and actually looking at what's inside. The latest book I began to read was Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.

It's a famous feminist book, but what struck me about it is how little it bothers to actually try and persuade anyone at the beginning. First there's an interesting intro in which Brownmiller says she herself once didn't take rape too seriously. That's a nice, disarming way to start. Then she spends a couple of pages pointing out how thoroughly ignored rape was by people like Freud and Krafft-Ebbing, which is well worth noting. But within a couple of pages she wanders into pure conjecture, using the phrase "must have" repeatedly in sentences like "one of the earliest forms of male bonding must have been ... gang rape ...." She ends with a remarkable blanket statement, stating rape is "a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women[/i] in a state of fear" (her italics).

I have two problems with this. As a reader I just don't like sweeping statements and generalities, because I feel they are almost invariably false. But I have a greater problem with the book as a writer, because for me this book represents a soft-headed preaching-to-the-choir approach that will resonate with those who already agree with Brownmiller while alienating everyone who doesn't.

Great feminist literature like The Second Sex or Backlash (two of the most elegantly reasoned, insightful and persuasive non-fiction books ever written) makes a case the way a lawyer does, introducing evidence and drawing conclusions based on that evidence. To refute a book written like that, one would have to do research, find flaws in the evidence and holes in the logical approach to analyzing that evidence. It's not that it can't be done - you can pick holes in anything - but it would be a lot of work. But it is no work at all to pick apart a book that keeps saying this "must have" happened or that is "probably" the case. If you say, "prehistoric man must have learned to flavor meat with garlic early on," I can say "prehistoric man probably believed garlic was poisonous." We would both just be talking out of our asses if we couldn't offer evidence to support our positions.

There's probably something of interest and value in Against Our Wills. It's almost 500 pages long and it's a famous book, so I will give it that much. But by tossing away all pretense at objectivity or scholarship by the end of the first chapter, Brownmiller fails to make a case for herself as the person qualified to analyze the place of rape in civilization, and thus failed to convince me that it was worth slogging through her seemingly baseless opinions to find what was of value in her book.

For the angry feminists of the 1970s, the book was probably great, because there was a lot of justifiable resentment at the way women had been (and continue to be) treated in society. But that's the problem with the book; if you're not angry already, you are going to instantly notice that Brownmiller is talking out of her ass. And that is no way to convince anyone of anything.

the fat grey lady has sung

Well, that's it, my final game review for the New York Times has run, and I'm feeling melancholy about it. I wish I could have gone out at least with a great game, instead of a couple of decent ones, but at least my final review wasn't of Wii Fit, which I only reviewed to pacify my editor not realizing I was going to get fired a week later anyway.

Now I just need to start pitching ideas to USA Weekend; they appreciate me there.

screwed by the New York Times culture department

After eight years as the New York Times' video game reviewer, I have been unceremoniously dumped as of one month from now. The reason given is that the Culture Department, a.k.a. Arts & Entertainment, convinced the powers that be that video game reviews should be in their section rather than in Circuits, which is part of the Business section.

This infuriates me, because at one point my column was in Culture and the editors treated me like shit.

I was in Circuits for years, but when it stopped being its own section and was made a part of Business I was tossed to Culture. I ran on Fridays in Arts & Entertainment. Arts & Entertainment was, and probably still is, in two sections, the top section, with movies and TV, and the other section with opera, classical music and restaurant reviews. Culture put my column on the back page of the second section, right beside the restaurant review. That pretty much guaranteed it was going to be ignored, but that's what they did.

But I kept writing, occasionally sending email questions and requests to an editor who absolutely never replied (and who, when I started, told me how he was determined to make the Times as important to video games as it was to Broadway).

Then one day I was told that I was being transferred to the Sports section where my column would be paired with one on poker.

That's right, Culture, which just took my job because they had to have video game reviews for themselves, once had video game reviews and tossed them away.

Sports hated me even more than Culture. On the website they never even bothered to tout my column. There would be a tout for the poker column describing what it was about, and then below that a link that just said "video game column." Then the poker column was canceled, because WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO READ A POKER COLUMN, and thankfully, I was transferred back to Circuits, where I had a few more good years.

I think the problem is that Culture didn't want me, they wanted Seth Schiesel, because he's their guy. Seth is a good reporter, but is he as good a columnist as I am? Circuits didn't think so; he was one of the applicants for the game review position and they hired me (and Peter Olafson, with whom I alternated the column until it was turned biweekly and Peter was let go) rather than him. I'll admit I'm biased, but compare my review of God of War II with Seth's and decide for yourself.

So what's in my future? Fuck if I know. If anyone knows of any openings for video game reviewers, or, for that matter, television or movie reviewers (which is what I wanted to be years ago before I ever played video games), let me know.

Maybe I should just finally sit down and write that book on storytelling in video games I've been talking about for the last 9 years?

go fuck yourself up the ass, Microsoft

Excuse my language, I'm just feeling pissed. I've been meaning to write a rant about Windows Vista, which I foolishly "upgraded" to some time ago, and I never have time to get into all the things done wrong (the "security," of course, being the biggest issue, causing many problems with upgrading and removing programs and also just being annoying as hell, followed by problems with stuff not working, including myriad games from small developers), but here is something that just particularly bugged me.

I have Office 2002. It is not fully compatible with Vista. That's right, 5 years after releasing a product, Microsoft released an operating system that breaks their product, and they don't support it because their attitude is, pay us more money for a newer version. This is why I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird (which is at this point a very good program), since Outlook 2002 is no longer capable of storing my email password when running under Vista.

Anyway, when I exited Word today it crashed, and as usual after a crash Windows searched for an "online solution." These are almost never actual solutions. They either tell you there's a bug they don't have a fix for or they tell you they couldn't find anything at all, so it's just a huge waste of time.

Word has crashed before, but this time I got a "solution" for the World 2002 crash I haven't seen before, so it must have been recently added. It says:

Problem caused by Microsoft Word 2002: consider upgrading

The problem was caused by Microsoft Word 2002, which was created by Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Word 2002 is in its "Extended Support" phase. This phase of support for Microsoft Word 2002 began on July 11, 2006. Only security-related solutions are created by Microsoft for this version of Microsoft Office.

To translate:
Hi, your software doesn't work because we are incapable of designing an operating system that supports any kind of backwards compatibility, even for our own products. Of course in theory you can set programs to run with compatibility settings that are the equivalent of letting them run under one of our older OSes that actually worked halfway decently, but that's fairly broken. Please help us profit from our arrogance and incompetence by spending a shit load of money on our latest software, which is probably also riddled with bugs and which we will stop supporting in a few years.

Fuck you Microsoft. Go jump off a fucking cliff and fucking die. Just fuck off.

Now this is the Internet

Recently a blogger got access to a backup drive of a shared network from Infocom, which published most of the great text adventure games of the '80s. He decided to post correspondence about a proposed
Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that was abandoned.

For fans of Infocom it's an interesting article, but the most interesting part is an almost endless comments section populated with posts from old Infocom employees. The comments make a lively discussion. Michael Bywater, who is the subject of some negative correspondence, expresses fury that the blogger didn't bother to contact anyone involved to get a fuller story, and there's a lively discussion about the responsibility of journalists and bloggers and the legality of releasing this information. There are also a lot of nasty shots at Bywater, whose fury does not sit well with the blogger's fans (the nastiest comments were apparently removed by the blogger). This is mixed in with comments from other Infocomers discussing and clarifying the game, most notably a long, detailed post by Steve Meretzky. The best post is from Bywater, who after a couple of days of furious emails calms down and posts a wildly funny mock up of a text adventure and announces that he has agreed to write about the abandoned game for Wired. There are also a lot of people writing in just to say they loved Infocom games, which is less interesting (Bywater, by the way, apparently was the main writer on my favorite Infocom game Beauracracy).

Before the Internet, where could you read a corporation's internal memos and then have a lively discussion with the people who wrote those memos? It's so cool.

Clinton's 5 percent

Someone in the Times says Hillary's campaign is dead, that she only has a 5% chance of winning the nomination. This annoys me. First off, I would like to see some math here, not just some pundit tossing out a random figure. But more importantly, what is Obama's percent chance of winning? I can't find anyone throwing out a number for this. My understanding is that in terms of numbers, neither candidate is likely to win on a first ballot. So is Obama's chance of actually winning on the first ballot much higher than this mysterious 5 percent?

And if we're basing this percentage on the actions of the super delegates, well, they'll do what they do, and since they aren't required to vote for anyone in particular, there's no serious way to predict the odds of one candidate or another taking the super delegates.

i predict

When my old TV died I bought a new one that supported HDTV. That was mainly for the sake of gaming, since the new systems are designed for HDTV meaning the text on screen tends to be unreadable on anything else. But I figured I might as well also get a new DVR from Time Warner that supported HDTV. And shockingly that new box, which should represent the top technology, has inferior features to the non-HDTV DVR I had before.

So I emailed a complaint to Time Warner, reproduced below, and here is my prediction, based on past experiences with Time Warner:

They won't understand what I'm talking about. They will reply in a way that ignores every single point below, and give me detailed instructions on how to search for things even though it is obvious from my email that I have already familiarized myself with all the new features of my new DVR. They will not acknowledge that there are any real differences between the two DVRs and they will most definitely not assure me that they are working to upgrade the new DVR to contain the features of the older one (because, as I mentioned before, they won't even understand what I'm saying).

I let you know when I hear back whether I am right or whether my email miraculously gets to someone who is not a complete idiot.

Since I just bought an HDTV TV, I swapped my old DVR, the Explorer 8000, for the Explorer 8300HDC, and was shocked to discover that while I gained a few HDTV channels, I lost a number of important features.

Most notably it is no longer possible to auto-search for movies and actors. With the old DVR I could do a keyword search and choose to tell my DVR to record anything with that keyword. My new DVR will not let me search by keyword at all, only by title, and there is no way to tell it to automatically record all of anything (for example, I can't say, record everything directed by Alain Resnais nor can I say record any movie with "juno" in the title." Oddly, the search can turn up shows for which there are no upcoming episodes (perhaps it contains a list of all current TV shows) but it won't give you the option to tell it to record that show whenever it comes on even though it has the name of the show in its records!

The series record options are also more anemic. There are less options: you can no longer choose specific times & channels.

The way search is implemented is also inferior. With my old DVR, if I had the guide on a particular show and switched to the search interface it would show me all upcoming instances of that particular show, which was a very quick way to find a time to record a show that wouldn't interfere with anything else I was recording. Now it just starts the list at the top, and if you want to find that particular show you just had in the guide you have to use the text input.

The last thing I've noticed in the mere HOUR I've had this is more minor, but the remote is quite inferior in design to the old one, which was the best designed remote control I have seen anywhere. So that's a shame.

So I gave up all those good features on my old DVR just so I can watch a handful of channels in HD, like ONE of my HBO channels (but not HBO on demand). I find this hugely disappointing, and hope you are planning to raise what one would have expected to be your most advanced box, since it supports HDTV, up to the level of your most basic box.

just microsoft being microsoft

A while back I was having problems with my Xbox 360 finding all disks unreadable. The first thing the tech support person had me try was clearing the memory cache. This is a simple procedure that, as far as the tech support person knows, doesn't do any harm to the 360 or change any settings; it just clears up some problems.

So how do you clear the memory cache? Do you go to settings and memory and choose the "clear cache" option? You do not, because there is no "clear cache" option. Instead, you go to settings, memory, and then press X X left bumper right bumper X X.

Seriously, Microsoft has a hidden key combination to fix memory issues with your 360. What the fuck?

is the press giving Hillary a raw deal?

My mom has virtually stopped reading and watching the news. Why? Because she says all they do is bash Hillary Clinton. And I'm wondering if she might not have a point.

Mom is pretty hostile to Obama. She considers his talk of "change" vague and meaningless, which isn't unreasonable. I'm leaning towards Obama myself (although in the New York primary I still voted for Kucinich even though he dropped out of the race, just as a statement), but it's a slight lean. I have not liked Clinton as a senator, I feel she blows with the wind and is a political opportunist and I have found her very disappointing. On the other hand, while Obama did come out against the war, once he got into the Senate he voted for every war appropriations bill and it wouldn't surprise me if, were he in the Senate at the time he also would have voted for the war; all the serious presidential hopefuls did because they thought it was politically expedient (although none of them will admit that was the reason).

So I support Obama because I know Hillary's not great, but honestly I doubt Obama is great either.

So it's probably six of one, half a dozen of the other, but it does seem that I hear more criticism of Hillary than Barack on the one news show I watch, Countdown. And I have begun to wonder if that makes any sense. Politics is politics, and logically, both sides should do bad stuff. And while Keith Olbermann did criticize Obama for suggesting Hillary's supporters would vote for him in the general election but that things would not goo the other way but not adding that Obama would still fight for whoever won, he has spent more time criticizing Hillary for attacking Obama, and has implied that Hillary's complaints about Obama are fairly baseless.

Paul Krugman, who appears to be a solid Clinton supporter judging from recent columns, says he finds the Obama camp to be more venomous.

Is he right? I don't know. My mom says yes. Certainly someone like Chris Matthews is always talking trash about Hillary, but then, Matthews is an unmitigated moron, so his bizarre comments on Hillary may well have as much to do with the fact that he's short a few marbles than that he's out to get Clinton.

The press likes a story, and it seems the story they're going for is shrill white chick going off on the charming black guy. But that's just a particular story. When Howard Dean said "yeehaw" or whatever it killed his campaign not because it was a big deal but because the press thought it was a great story and beat it into the public consciousness. As much as I dislike Clinton, I don't like the idea that she is a victim of press storytelling.

Hillary might still get the nomination, and if so I just hope the press doesn't go for the, shrill white woman versus cool straight talker story, because then we're all screwed.

you see, there are things men who care about more than sex

Ah, those passionate Englishmen. A poll indicates half of them would temporarily give up sex for a big TV. Interestingly, only a third of women said the same, although there's no way of knowing whether that means women love sex more than men or love big TVs less than men.

I'd like to see a reverse poll. Something like, would you give up your big screen TV for sex with Shakira. Or something.

how many times did the Bush administration lie about Iraq?

The answer? 935. Now all in a searchable database.

"muslims," a word that makes women faint and brave men weep

Twice in the last month I've received endlessly forwarded emails warning the world of the dangers and threats of Muslims. First was an email from the boyfriend of an acquaintance of mine who decided to contact everyone in her email address book to let them know Barack Obama is a Muslim pretending to be a Christian for political purposes. Eek! Then yesterday I got an email from an acquaintance who occasionally sends me conspiracy theory crap or cute jokes. It told me that England had dropped the Jewish Holocaust from their history courses because of pressure from Muslims who deny it ever happened.

Obviously, neither of these things is true, as anyone who has the sense to check Snopes.com before sending out crazy emails would have known. Snopes, which looks into the truth or falsity of every rumor you can find on the internet, handled Barack's Muslim connections here and England's holocaust policy here.

The one of England is, I suspect, a typical example of a game I believe is called telephone where each person tells the next person what they were told, resulting in a story that completely changes by the time it gets to the last person. One school in England didn't teach at least one Holocaust class because of fears of anti-semitic comments from Muslim students, and emailers embellished the story. One interesting fact noted in Snopes is that while the email I got says "the UK" in its reference to England, there is an alternate email that says this is happening in the University of Kansas, which shows how emailers will edit and "clarify" stories before sending them on.

The Obama email looks to be more of a purposeful attempt to smear Obama, created probably by some hate group like the KKK. The email is full of bolded phrases like "parents divorced, atheist, he is a muslim, radical teachings, catholic school" (among the crazy fundamentalist right "catholic school" is almost as bad as "Muslim"). The Obama email is more disturbing because it is basically saying, be scared of Obama because he is a Muslim. That sort of direct, unabashed religious hatred is scary.

But what is scariest is that it is so easy for people to believe this. Neither of the people who sent me these things are drooling idiots. They are well-spoken, seemingly educated people. Yet they unskeptically accepted transparently nonsensical emails as a truth so important that it should be immediately emailed to all of their friends and acquaintances. And the most foolish of those acquaintances have probably all sent out the same emails to their friends and acquaintances. And all these stupid, stupid people are helping to perpetuate the concept that Muslims are essentially what Communists were though of as in the 1950s, a dangerous group of fanatics trying everything in their power to destroy our world through lies and manipulation for their own evil ends.

And all this, essentially because a small handful of Muslims belonging to an extremist organization in the Middle East killed a few hundred people by running a plane into a building, apparently thus giving permission for everyone to believe all Muslims throughout the world are dangerous, evil fanatics.

I have sometimes thought about what happens as oppressed groups get higher standing. Blacks, Hispanics, gays, while all still oppressed, have achieved greater acceptance throughout the years, and optimists would look at this and say, eventually we will end prejudice. But the hatred of Muslims proves otherwise; as some groups are accepted, new groups are nominated to take their place. Muslims, enjoy the bottom, because people are going to keep you there for quite a while.

TV news summed up

I recommend going to this petition against "big media." You can sign the petition or not, but watch the little video on this page, because it's brilliant.

it's simple: right wingers are insane

Fox News airs bizarre claim that Hillary ordered hit on cats

Frank Rich speaketh: Is Hillary Clinton the New Old Al Gore?

This pretty much sums up my thinking about Hillary, although of course Frank Rich always says it better than I think it.

screw you, fanboys

Recently I came across a pretty aggravating thread trashing me for my review of Bioshock. It was remarkable both because it was a collection of furious diatribes against me in spite of my generally glowing review and because it was full of nonsense, include a statement that I just took over the column from a guy who has never written it.

It annoyed me enough that I decided to register for the forum so I could reply to that thread, but it seems new members have to be okayed by a moderator who has apparently gone AWOL, since it's been a couple of weeks and I'm still not able to post. So just for the record I'm putting my reply here. I'd been meaning to blog at some point in more detail about the problems with Bioshock's story anyway; it drives me crazy how critics keep acclaiming the game's storytelling, which is really quite weak.

Some fanboy also recently graffitied my wikipedia entry; probably someone mad that I didn't declare Halo 3 the greatest game in the history of the universe.

Here's the reply I was going to post to quartertothree [WARNING: BIOSHOCK SPOILERS BELOW].

Just came across this thread. It’s fine that you disagree with me, I disagree with critics all the time. Although I don’t usually rant and rave about people who positively review something I like because I disagree with a couple of points. (The last thing I felt like ranting about was the San Francisco movie critic who said “Click!” was almost perfect; that’s just insane.) But there are a lot of things said about me in this thread that simply are untrue, so I wanted to respond.

First off, I played BioShock all the way through, down to the very sweet final cut scene where you grow old and all the little girls love you. I saved almost all the little sisters and only killed one just to see what it was like, but restarted from a save point after that so I wouldn’t sully my good guy status (I like playing good guys in games, it’s just a preference).

I don’t know why, since I repeatedly talked about how great the game was, you would assume I hadn’t played it. Why would I not play a brilliant game? Is it really impossible to believe someone could play the same game as you and disagree with your take on it?

Second, Seth Schiesel never wrote the game theory column, except for a couple of columns when the Times was auditioning new game columnists. I have been writing the column for years and years. Seth writes articles on gaming but not, for the Times, reviews (with one or two exceptions). But I imagine it’s more fun for some of you to read Seth’s articles because, since they are reporting rather than reviewing, they don’t say anything critical about a game that could upset you.

What I write are reviews, in spite of what one poster said. This poster also mentioned my review of Daikatana, which is odd since I never reviewed Daikatana for the Times, although I did briefly pan it for some long-forgotten publication that I’m sure he never read.

The reason I write about more than one game in a review is because that’s what the Times wants from me (it started when they changed the column from weekly to biweekly and decided they didn’t want to lessen the number of games reviewed). Rather than trying to find two thematically similar games, I try to find the games I feel most deserve attention and then write a transition between them. People have complained about this before, but I have actually grown to like the approach. Anyway, there are already so many good games I don’t have space for that I would hate to leave out any more than I already have to.

Now as for the Art Deco thing, people seem to be making the assumption that I believe all the buildings should have been rebuilt to reflect modern architecture. Yes, that would be a stupid point, but it’s certainly not one I was making. Keep in mind that Art Deco doesn’t just mean the shell of the buildings. It means all the furnishings, fixtures, posters and ads on the walls. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that it’s odd that a society would stay that aesthetically static for so long; it would suggest that there is not a single creative person trying out new ideas. But it was a pretty brief comment so I don’t know why there’s such a focus on it. I love Art Deco, it’s my favorite architectural style and I think it’s a tragedy that when it went out of fashion many of those buildings were destroyed because people considered them tacky. But I don’t think it’s wrong to point out that it is highly unusual for a city to be so creatively stagnant.

I did not, as a couple of people pointed out, write the article’s headline, and I was surprised that was what the editors focused on, but I am okay with their choice. Since my main concern was telling people what a great game BioShock was, I did not spend much time on the faults with the story, but here’s something I wrote to someone who emailed me when the game came out:

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Because of a lack of space I didn't get to critique the narrative structure of BioShock as much as I would have liked. I actually find the seemingly universal ecstasy over the story puzzling. The game starts strong, but once it gets started it really just relies on that momentum. Half-Life had an interesting twist (discovering the army was trying to kill you) and the intriguing ongoing mystery of the guy in the suit. Max Payne started off with a cool opener, but it also had cool dream sequences to keep up that sense that this was a game that was really trying. I don’t feel BioShock made the same effort to keep the story moving. BioShock has a completely expected twist and a wandering plot; a big chunk of the game is simply killing people for some guy; that's not a story that moves forward, that's a story that wanders off into the alley and does some shit and then wanders back into the main plot.

BioShock is like Myst; the only real story is the back story. I don't say that's terrible, but I really don't think it's an especially brilliant approach either. To me it seems like the praise for the story has more to do with how poorly most action games tell stories than it does with the quality of BioShock's own narrative.

I was also disappointed when someone told me that even if you kill all the Little Sisters, they still save you at that point in the game where you are lead to safety by them. To me, that seems lazy; if I play the game as a bad guy, I expect the story to change as a result. I don’t just want a different final cut scene. (If the guy who told me that is wrong, and the little girls don’t save you if you kill them all, then I apologize for this criticism.)

Fortunately it’s easy to find critics that will give every popular game a rating of 100, so it should be pretty easy to avoid nasty people like me who dare to offer minor criticisms of a game in their rave review of it.

I thank the couple of people who pointed out themselves some of the things I have just pointed out. I salute your thoughtful consideration.

what some say in 1200 words, others say in 7

I spent about 1200 words talking about how I thought Halo 3 was just Halo 2 in better graphics. But in the user review section of metacritic, someone beautifully summed up everything I had to say in only 7 words:

A very fancy patch for Halo 2.