Into the Teeth of the Storm we march! The November Blitz Krieg, obliterating the Paris of your Wallet. Onwards! First World Middle Class Problems. Everyone duck, ignore the sirens. We’ve earned this through patience, g’damnit. There’s too many video games to ever hope to tackle, but fuck if I ain’t trying. Some games (Skyrim) I’m not even approaching until semester break. Some games (Modern Warfare 3) I lowered the right shoulder and blasted through.
This is Press Start! I’m Caffeine Powered. I play the video games. I babble about the week’s happenings in said world. I hope you’ll join me. Flap your lips, slap your gums, mash your fingers.
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#1: The Xbox Turns A Decade Old.
The Xbox. Microsoft’s enormo-console that seemed to be birthed up out of the heaving chasm of American bloat. I spent a good message board post or two deriding it before snagging it for Christmas back yonder in the annals of 2001. I mean it had Dead or Alive: Something Such. Jiggling boobies enticing my virginal hog. Can’t turn my back on that. Not in good conscience.
I didn’t get much out of that console, but what I did get titillated my taint with the leathery pleasure of a thousand masseuse’s fingers. Knights of the Old Republic. Panzer Dragoon. Jet Set Radio Future. The original Halo.
Here’s to the largest console ever. The only console I’ve ever used to repel a velociraptor attack and used as a bullet proof vest.
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#2: Nintendo, EA, and Sony Sponsor Internet Censorship Bill.
Look at these three fucking twats right here. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a nefarious-assed bill, parading as a measure for stopping online piracy. Now as someone who likes downloading the Music Album Things and the Television Experiences, I can’t really say I don’t blame companies for not wanting this sort of rampant pilfering to continue.
The problem?
Well, if you want to understand the problem more clearly I suggest watching the video above. Basically it’d give the US government free reign to firewall the fucking fuck out of shit whenever there may be something piracy-related. They’d totally use it for good, though, right? Can’t see the government exploiting something like this.
“In a few weeks’ time, you’ll be gathered around the Thanksgiving table, breaking bread with your friends and family in honor of Pure Pilgrims’ triumph over the Scary Savages. Before you stab your kid brother in the neck with the salad fork, take a peek at all of the celebrants – each one of them is a goddamn gamer. Your meathead, pigskin-huckin’ cousin is a Call of Duty fiend. Your fat little sister gets down with DDR. Gramps delays death with WiiFit. Hell, even Auntie Craggy plays Farmville and Fat Uncle Drunkard has a Sudoku app for his mobile. This is the future. And we’re all gamers.”
#1. Mass Effect 3 Beta Leaks Early
You have to understand that the only thing that leaks early for me is my penis. I’ll be sitting here on my computer chair Geek throne, awash in caffeinated bladder time. One more refresh of a pointless page!, I say to myself. Eyes watering. Have to piss. One more! Then the penis, it dribbles. Leaking. Early. I’m jealous as a mofuckah’ at those who got the Mass Effect 3 private beta early. Now that’s a leak. The piece of shit leaked through people who go to preview the new Xbox Dashboard. Another thing I did not get to participate in. I have sunblock and anal nitrate guys!, let me play.
The Mass Effect 3 story also leaked this week, so if you feel like ruining the conclusion to the dopest most ballin’ sci-fi gaming space opera since Example X Here, you can do so. Me? I’ll be awaiting. A-peeing in anticipation.
#2. PETA Claims ‘Battlefield 3′ Will Turn You Into An Animal Killer
PETA thinks that the ability to kill a rat in Battlefield 3 will turn you into some sort of blood thirsty animal killer. ‘Cause you know the corrosive moral implications of being able to stomp a rodent in a video game. It’s a slippery slope. One minute you’re doing that, the next you’re posing in the intestines of your horse with your bat-shit crazy girlfriend. Naked! That you had to euthenize. With a rifle. Slippy slopes guys, slippery slopes indeed. Dante wasn’t fucking around.
At this point, PETA just needs to shut the fuck up. There ain’t been no game that made me want to kill an animal. Outside of Super Mario Bros. I hate Goombas. If I ever saw one of those motherfuckers in real life I wouldn’t hesitate to stomp that son of a bitch until its brain-pieces were shit-muck. Stomp! Smash! I would smile as I felt their feeble spinal cord give way underneath my 200 lbs of Pure American Muscle. Muscle crafted through supplements and hormone-soaked beef and Cheese Products.
#3. Next Microsoft Console Codenamed “Loop”
Microsoft’s next console has its own codename, so you know that shit is getting real. The name isn’t as cool as Project Dolphin which was the nickname for the GameCube in-house at Nintendo back in the day. But what is? Besides, reading the title as an accurate text for the predicament of the console-generation, it makes a lot more sense. The Loop!
“The Loop! Welcome to Microsoft’s Everything Center! A closed-circuit cycle of multimedia entertainment! The Loop! A labyrinthine nexus of the distractions you love in one convenient place! You’ll never, ever want to get out of the Loop!, and you couldn’t if you tried! Give way to the diegetic absorptions that keep you if not happy, complacent! Gaming into television into the Internet back into the gaming! You’ll love it! You have to! Otherwise there’s only the darkness and oblivion of the status quo! The Loop! From Microsoft.” (more…)
Lords of the Joystick, deliver me from critical analysis. Let me find myself in the next soothing great misdirect, awash in stimuli and polygon. I’m but a man, with strained (brain) stem I hunger for video games as escape. Dedicated to the Temple, I scavenge weekly for details pertaining to this World I love so much.
The remnants, the scraps, pulled together into something is this banal Top 5 list. It’s not much, but it’s easy.
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#1: Video Games Help a Little Girl Walk
In stark contrast to the diegetic wunder-bliss that video games offer to the unfathomably discontent middle class white male like myself, they on occasion participate in something more grand. Take this fuckin’ shit for example. Grace Windrum is a five year-old girl. She’s also an unfortunate reminder that us flesh bags are here by chance, suffer a rather inelegant design, and often come without fully functioning parts. Enough to drive someone into a Brothers K-sort of madness pertaining to the need for such things to serve as balance for the glory of the world.
Anyways.
Grace can’t walk, suffering from cerebral palsy. Her parents needed some legitimate dough to get an operation performed that would allow her to walk with the assistance of crutches. That’s where games developer Big Ideas Digital came in, running “a promotion for its Say What You See: The Collection puzzle game (available on iPhone and iPad), which contributed a further £21,000.”
Fucking solid. Mark one for the good guys.
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#2: What If Quake Was Made In 2011?
It’s a simple enough premise, what the fuck do you want me to say? I’m just setting up the clip, man. The talented guys and gals who devised the spoof are doing the heavy lifting on this one. It made me chuckle. A bit of the (non-literal) LOL if you will. Anyone who has had the pleasure of trying to play a game these days can at the very least silently nod their head in agreement with the satire. Saying yes. Yes, this makes a bit of sense.
Far be it for me to be too jaded about how gaming has changed. I still have my G(aming)-Spot rubbed all too often. There’s just been certain…shifts towards hands-holding, infinite slicing of a game’s content into its DLC and other unfortunate things that the game amusingly comments on.
This is the latest edition of Press Start. It’s also the latest edition to be late. What more can I say? Regardless, this is the gaming column where I give a rundown of the shite that I came across in the World of First Person Proxy Murder and Motion-Controlled Assholery.Top five something such conceit gimmick yadda yadda. Essentially the internet foyer equivalent of a video game shit shooting wunderfest. Let us blah. Let us blah together.
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#3: Grand Theft Auto V Revealed, Trailer Coming Grand Theft Auto V was announced this week. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that all the rumors were right, and the kazillion dollar franchise was carrying on. It’s almost like there’s profit to be made! Not only have they dropped the logo for the title and confirmed the barely muted desires for aspiring digital sociopaths, but the good Uber-Lords at Rockstar Games have announced that a trailer is being foisted onto the fat pipes of the Digi-Waves next week. November 2 to be precise. Mark it down. Or ignore the video game sites on that shit. Big shit gonna be poppin‘.
The most interesting thing that came out of the announcement was an article by Stephen Totilo where he speculated on the implications of what system this pig comes out for. The Grand Theft Auto series is a King Maker, and wherever it descends upon shall be covered in jewels and have their genitals slathered with orgasmic consumerism glee.
I like the Grand Theft Auto series, though IV let a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Time heals all wounds. Sensational events are monuments I have to survey. I can’t help it. I’m a consumerwhore.
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A: Dude Builds Lego Contraption To Get Gears Achievement
There’s an achievement in Gears 3 that requires you to play a piano 2,000 times. Developers have really begun fucking us in the ass over achievement points, knowing that the masses of us (not me, I’m a scrub) like to stare at numbers on a gamer profile and gently caress our zipper line. And I’m not talking the enjoyable roaring prostrate message or lady-centric butt play. I’m talking Jesus Christ you’re going to tear my tubing like that dude in the Horse video. That sort of anal play. Anyways, Epic Games pulled this sort of shit, but one dude rallied and got around the insipid achievement. Motherfucker built a contraption out of Legos to do the work for him.
It’s a glorious middle finger to the game.
However after thinking about it, I’m wondering if this was actually quicker than just mashing the button for the allotted amount. None the less, well done. Well done indeed.
This is Press Start! A column where I generally go ‘blah blah blah video games Top 5′ for 800+ words or so. Generally longer. Generally unedited. Today I’m tired as fuck and the room is spinning and the voices are encouraging me towards knives, so instead I’m going to cop-out and just post the dope gaming videos I came across this week. If you don’t like them, feel free to hit the comments box with your own video game happenings of the week. You swine.
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#1: Blast Processing Shits On Super Nintendo
Clearly not from this week, and I’m already breaking my own rules. All I know is that when I was a kid, if you said Blast Processing wasn’t the dopest shit ever there was a knuckle-fucking-sandwich coming your way.
Who gives a shit if the Super Nintendo has the best library of all time (it’s a scientific fact, fuck you), Blast Processing was the X-Treme ejaculation of my kid-tech-dreams.
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#2:’Uncharted 3′ Launch Trailer Is Video That Launched a Thousand Boners Uncharted is my favorite piece of work that Nathan Fillion has ever done. I know it’s not his likeness, nor is Drake voiced by him. But it’s Nathan Fillion. Fillion is about to star in what could be one of the most glorious action games of all time.
Just watching the trailer gets me so amplified. I begin gritting my teeth, barking in staccato guttural blasts at my computer monitor, inviting it to tell me the tales of Truth and Glory. Demanding that my computer processor bend time. Warp space. Take me to this game. I need it.
I build my column with a (puerile) brick. Then add another brick. Brick by brick I manufacture juvenile columns where the news in gaming goes. What’s up friends. Enemies. Catty Tumblr fighters. This is Press Start!, the column where shit that was the happenin’ in gaming in the previous week gets noted. Blathered about.
I encourage, nay demand!, that you spit your own happenings into the comments box’s mouth.
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#1: Steve Jobs Dies
Alright so it’s not really directly gaming related, though I think we can concede that it’s sizable in importance whether or not you want to dismiss the prowess of Sir Jobs and his legion of automatons. Secondly, the iPad and mobile gaming powered by his fetishsized and masturbated devices is continuing to increase its share of the gaming market. Little by little these previously niche avenues are taking a bite of the gaming Apple. Oh shit!, cheesy metaphor ahoy.
It’ll be an interesting endeavor to see where gaming is in say – five years. While there will always be zealous console gamers like me who demand subwoofer 5.1 plasma action that rattles their balls and ovaries while simultaneously fingering their mushy retina-stems, more and more will continue to become casual. iPad flick-flick gaming! Playing the Farms and the whatever-hotness I’m not aware of.
Jobs was icon, at the very least. May he rest with those ninja stars he loved so much in an info-stream in the Wunder-Land.
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#2: Dude Puts Up Billboard To Win DOTA 2 Beta Key Steve Addison dreams fucking big. For that there’s a bag of miniature Butterfingers and slow clap waiting for him in my dungeon. Come hurr boy, and claim your prize. Step over the bones and skulls – ornamental, I swear! – and don’t jump as the door swings shut! Your eyes will adjust.
—What was I saying? Oh yeah! Addison wanted to win a beta key so bad for DOTA that when he entered a contest that asked for submissions of you “holding a sign that reads ‘Dota 2′ and your ‘PlayDotA.com Username’ in any creative fashion,” dude took out a fucking billboard.
A billboard.
Normally the fucking billboard would run to the tune of $3,000 in dollar bills, but when he explained his situation to a dude at Clear Channel they slashed the price. Corporo-Fascists, you don’t trick me. This empty gesture meaning to ingratiate yourselves into our arteries with capitalistic ringworm!
–What was I saying? Oh yeah! Addison, you’re boss.
We are entering the teeth of the Albatross, my friends. October is nigh, and with that comes the beginning of the super boner jam that is the Fall/Winter gaming schedule. Game after game shall be released, fucking your wallet and titillating your tits. The most double-edged of swords as you moan in glory and horror.
This is Press Start!, the weekly column where we – you, me, and that guy in the corner in the sweat pants – talk about the happenings in the gaming world. My list is out of order, not reflective of the impact, and most importantly: not proof read.
Let’s dance.
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#1: Fan Makes ‘Twin Peaks’ Atari 2600 Game.
I haven’t watched Twin Peaks. Doesn’t that make me such a scrub? One of those things where I know I’ll like it and I totally want to get into it but for one reason or another I haven’t taken the dive. Most similar to this in my life is my creepy obsession with wondering what it’d be like to inject saline into my testicles. Ever since Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein I sometimes pat my crotch lovingly and imagine walking around with elephantitis for a couple of hours. The balls! How they hang.
Anyways back to this game.
Created by indie developer Jak Locke, the game is free to download for PC and Mac. For fans of the show or for those of us who rub our sadly not-swollen testicles contemplating enjoying the game and series it seems like the most dopest of endeavors.
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#2: 3D Gaming’s Popularity Is Low. Finally Sense.
The Nintendo 3DS was a fucking dumb idea from the get-go. Nintendo tried to ride the (perhaps nonexistent) wave of 3D popularity, parlaying it into an entire console. Overpriced and under loved. They’re stapling another analog stick onto the side of it and are rubbing their testicles not with imagined love like myself, but with the knowledge consumers are aiming for their low-hanging fruit.
There’s a report with some hilarious statistics. From owners of the 3DS, 28% said the 3D detracted. 13% played with it off. This is in contrast to a mere 22% who thought the THIRD DIMENSIONenhanced the gameplay. They probably also loved the shit out of CD-i and thought the Jaguar was going to make a solid run.
Burn, Nintendo 3Ds!, burn! I shall dance on your slightly nauseating from the burning plastic ashes!
Man, I have to write myself a new edition of Press Start. Harumph! I haven’t written one in a few weeks. Out of a lack of a time, out of a lack of interest. Combine those two and you can almost hear Hegel groan under the power of his dialectic! Shazam! Synthesize. Out of the opposite of those two comes! New column! Press Start! Five things that caught my eye in gaming this week.
The joke! Of course! I’ve been too busy to really come across anything. I mean fuck man, I have an unopened copy of Gears of War 3 sitting in my car. I haven’t even brought that shit in yet. Since Tuesday. I am not elite. I am not select. Definitely not worthy of considering spelling my name using numbers and the what-not.
So let’s go exploring the internet together!
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#1) Diablo 3 Beta Invites Went Out
Listen here pig-pleasurers of the world. There is one thing that happened in the game world that I am aware of this week. I know of it, for my lack of invitation to participate in it has scarred my ass cheeks a mighty flaming red. A deep red that is befitting of the Dark Lord. Diablo. For all the fields tilled on the internets, for all my groans of labor, and groans in general. Blizzard rewards me not.
There are people playing the Diablo 3 beta right now. The invites went out this week. The pictures are there. Taunting me. The video available. Giving me the finger that is in the middle. Oh, you’re in the beta? Know that my jealousy of you burns with the white-hot heat of a thousand burning asshole Fajita craps.
Curse you.
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#2) Wii On An Android Tablet With 360 Controller
Ah! I actually do remember seeing this earlier in the week. I wasn’t really impressed by it. That’s how spoiled we are within the geeky subcultures of modernity. Such wizardry of coding and finesse and idea-hood no longer inspire anything other than an “Oh yeah!” I mean, Jesus Christ. Look at this.
It’s a Wii running on an Android Tablet, using 360 controller.
I feel like there should be props handed out. High-fives exchanged. Instead I’m just like “Yet another person mercilessly superior to me in ingenuity and intellect has come up with something great”. For it truly is neat. But it is a hack within a wave of hacks. A tweak in a sea of tweaks.
An orgy of conflicting hardware allegiances that involves neither moans nor lube.
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#3) EA CEO Wants To Eat The Soul of Zynga
In some metaphysical sphere, where corporations have corporeal forms, you can only imagine EA. A vast blinding blackness, constantly engulfing the (meta)physical surroundings around it. Engaged in an endless desire to consume, to dominate. Its tendrils flicker, impaling its enemies. Yearning to conquer. Its only thought is “Consume” and its only emotion is hatred for those who dare consume as much as it.
That explains why the EA CEO John Riccitiello is taking aim at Zynga. Zynga is known for making all those annoying games on Facebook that it seems like everyone makes fun of but in reality apparently everyone but me is fucking playing. Oh yeah man. Farmville! Till the fucking land! Speaking at a speaking at a US Chamber of Commerce where undoubtedly he began by buying off two or three Capitol Hill Senata-whores and making them blow one another in a bathroom stall for campaign funds, Riccitiello then stated that the next thing his Vast Black Infernal Machine will engulf will be social gaming.
The Sims Social! He proclaimed. It has 53 million users. In three years! He proclaimed. They’ll have 3 billion in revenue. And yet! Reality interjected. Even with EA’s 100 million users, they’re still less than half of Zynga’s might.
The Endless Black Gulf groans, jealous and yearning to conquer.
Someday my children will not understand what a start button is, and that saddens me. Their wrists affixed to controls with duct tape, my commands clear. Play my little bastard spawns of my testicles, play and master the games. I want you to win gaming tournament, I want to be the gaming world equivalent of Jimmy Hart. Taunting the competition of my children. “Dad I have to pee!” they’ll lament. “Shut up, press fucking start!, and earn your nightly gruel!” They won’t know what I mean. “Start…?” and I’ll curse progress and yell “Press that button that looks like a triangle! To the right of the X!, fuck.”
Such is progress.
Until such a time, I hold you close. My gaming friends. This is Press Start! The weekly gaming slop culture fiasco, where I highlight five things that are this week only tacitly connected to gaming. What caught your eyes the past 7? Hit me.
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#1: Back In 1991, Parents Pissed About New Nintendo Console
One luxury that my children will be afforded that many have not through the years is that I shall purchase them the newest of gaming systems as they are rolled out into existence. Surely Tiger Woods’ dad didn’t deny him new golf clubs. This is an investment. I have plans. I shall unwrap these new consoles and drink deep the smell of plastic, getting high momentarily while berating them to hook up the gizmos quicker. To dance faster. There are plans. There are plans.
No they won’t have to endure the rigors of fighting with parents for a new console. Look at those jabronis in the video above, angered that the NES gave way to the SNES so quickly. Don’t they understand, this is the price of progress. Forever churning. Forever eating the past and regurgitating the shiny and new.
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#2: Kim Jong-il Has Gamers Farming Gold To Fund Nuke Development. Seriously
Undoubtedly in my endeavors to forge the perfect gamers, I will come under assault. There will be those who question my tactics, impugn my parental edicts, my way of raising my offspring. They may call me fascist. Comment that my children don’t see the sun. Of course they don’t, work to be done. Comment that my children are stapled, clothing to chairs. Of course they are, they have to concentrate.
Yet I am no evil man, not like Kim Jong-Il. It’s come out that Kim Jong-il has a crack team of gold farming wizards. These gold farming wizards have “made $6 million, 55 percent of which went to the hackers, and some of that to Kim’s agents in Pyongyang, Seoul police said. Officials believe the hackers report to a mysterious Communist Party agency named Office 39″. This man is evil. Why is he evil? Because he’s using the money to fund nuclear arms development? (Which he really is, no seriously, check out the article.)
No.
He’s evil because he’s using gold farmers to destroy the economy in Lineage. Hemingway would not think this man has courage. He is not true. He is breaking the game with his wizards all in the pursuit of monetary gain. You claim I am raising my sunlight-deprived, stapled-to-chairs children for the same thing? You don’t get it, plebeian.
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#3: FIFA 12 Gets In-Game Hair Transplant
Every once in a while, a friend or so of mine will try and tell me about this soccer thing. They yell it over the telephone, over the din of the white noise machines running in the basement dungeon that my children practice their prowess within. The white noise machines must run, must continually blot out the Irrelevant. These kids have a mission. I have a plan.
“Soccer?” I’ll say. “You mean that sissy game they have the kids play in pre-school?” “Yeah, it’s getting really big! It’s huge in Europe.” I laugh. I laugh at sissy liberal friend referencing silly socialist continent. This week I realized, maybe it really is big, that weird UK-Eurasia-Something Place really loves the fuck out of it. Respects its players.
You see, there is this man Wayne Rooney. He plays for “Manchester United” and is a “Striker” which I always thought was a word only reserved for a Mortal Kombat character. Get this. This Rooney, he gets a hair transplant. I know what you’re saying, what sort of soccer player is important enough for this. Well he does get this hair transplant and then EA of all people acknowledges this by updating his hairline in FIFA 12.
Tremendous. A child’s game getting a man millions, placing him as a prominent figure. If such a ludicrous happening can occur within our space time, I am reassured. My children-slaves will be famous. Rich. With never-ending and persistently refreshing hairlines. The future is beautiful. (more…)
What’s up, you fraggin’ funk masters. This is Press Start!, the column where I go “Blah, blah blah, Top 5 things in gaming that caught my eye this week. Please tell me yours too.” After I say that, this is the rest of the column, “Blah, blah, blah, moderately cool thing, dick joke, blah blah, half-baked attempt at cultural criticism, blah, blah, sort of cool thing, repeat.”
Well, shall we?
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#1: Meet Noah, Street Fighter Prodigy
One of the most difficult things for me to accept since the proliferation of the Internet and online gaming is that I am not the talented gaming wizard I once thought I was. I was the baddest motherfucker on the block. Whuppin’ friends, takin’ names. Then all of a sudden the Internet comes out, fuck you very much Al Gore, and I realize I’m mediocre. At best. On my very best days when the stars are aligned. Case in point: this eight-year old Street Fighter prodigy named Noah. Motherfucker has skills. Maybe even skillz if you will. Watch as he takes a round from Gooteck and then spits some fire in the interview. I predict big things from this kid.
I need to connect myself to him. Connect myself done well. Set myself up as his manager and slowly siphon all of his funds, after I manipulate him to push his parents away and pick up some sort of substance addiction. You and me Noah, we’re going places.
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#2: Lollipop Chainsaw: Because Grasshopper Doesn’t Give a Shit
The amount of fucks that Grasshopper Manufacture doesn’t give is astounding. It’s commendable. Having just completed their Shadows of the Damned, I want to support these bros just for their sheer insanity. It’s like they simply don’t give a fuck about what sells, what you think, and most importantly coming off as sane individuals. Their newest game only confirms this. Meet Lollipop Chainsaw.
You’re an uncomfortably sexualized cheerleader named Juliet. Your task should you choose it, is to mow down a high school full of zombies. Hacking and slashing your way through hordes of brainless automatons whose sole task is to bring you down. This sounds a lot like high school in general. It’s pure, pure, pure madness. Which is only what I’m expect from the same studio that brought the Blue Marble, the likes of Shadows of the Damned, and No More Heroes. Hell yeah.
While it wasn’t technically announced this week, the title’s Western release was confirmed within such a span. Besides, temporal linearity is for bitches. You’re not a bitch, are you?
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#3: British Girl Wins Excel World Championship
Rebecca Rickwood will fuck you up at Microsoft Excel. Don’t believe me? The 15 year-old girl from England just won the Microsoft Excel World Championship. While this surely is yet another herald of our forthcoming cultural implosion, it’s also something I must tip my cap to. I cannot use Microsoft Excel. I try to use it as a spreadsheet to keep track of student absences and their grades, and well…it bests me. Time and time again.
Rickwood beat out 228,000 contestants in a variety of timed tests. In fact, she scored a 100/100. Well done. I don’t really know what the tests consisted of, because the reputable news sources that pronounced the winner didn’t cover that. I am assured that these tests would also fuck me up. For that effort, she took home $5,000. This is also no laughing matter, and it is almost half the money I’ve made this year as a teaching assistant. Who is laughing now? Not me. I weep, condemning myself for my inability to wield Excel.
