My Top Ten Video Games of 2010... Sorta...

This top ten list is even less relevant than the last one. Just like before, it's not about games released this year, but about the games I played this year. Also, this top ten list is actually a top five list. Again, no intentional order; I list them as they come to mind.

1. Red Dead Redemption

Beautiful.

2. God of War III

It's still hilarious to me that I love this game as much as I do. When I first played God of War in 2005, I despised it for several silly reasons, most of which no longer hold sway. Now, five years later, I'm singing a completely different tune. Artistic, experimental, epic, and emotional are not words I ever imagined myself attributing to a God of War game, but here I am.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV

Really, same deal as God of War. I operated under the same gross misconception everybody else does about this series. It's not just about gunning down pedestrians or stealing cars. This game is a biting satire of our current cultural state, an unflinching examination of what it means to be an American, and a personal tale of one man's struggle to maintain some kind of morality in what seems to be a city without morals. Beyond that, the mere fact that the game works at all is impressive, and the fact that it works damn near perfectly is a wonder.

4. Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

I put a few dozen hours into these two games, and it feels like I've spent an equivalent amount of time talking about them. Yes, there are flaws; all games have them. However, short of Pope Alexander VI crawling out of my TV and trashing my room, nothing can ruin the joy these games bring me. I get to climb all over cities I will never get to visit and meet people who have been dead for half a millennium. The combat is visceral, and the story, although it reeks of Dan Brown, has me by the nose. Brotherhood took the series where I hoped it would go, and that's to the present, with a fully playable Desmond Miles climbing over modern-day shit. Not to mention the multiplayer, which is fun as all hell.

5. Suikoden V

What a way to end a marvelous series of JRPGs. This isn't the best game in the series, but even the worst Suikoden game is better than most other games of its kind. Just as mature and sophisticated as its predecessors, Suikoden V has all of what we've come to expect from Suikoden, sporting the best duel battle system in the series and a sorrowful plot filled with betrayal, attempted genocides, and the politics of war. Even if you're a Suiko-virgin, V will appeal to anyone who agrees that the PS1 generation was the heyday of the JRPG. This game is what JRPGs on the PS2 should have been, with its fully traversable overhead world map.

Honorable mentions because I'm a wishy-washy bastard:
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - This game probably shouldn't have happened, but, since it did, I will admit it's a lot of fun to play and the Cold War history-based story is quite strong. It has more content than any MGS to date.
Heavy Rain - A plot that would be mediocre in any other medium and a sore thumb of a weak ending do only a little damage to what this interactive drama achieves: the most authentic role-playing experience I have ever had with a video game.
InFAMOUS - Mix Assassin's Creed, Sly Cooper, and Marvel Comics, gradually stir in moral choices, and zap with electricity. Let stand. Serve. An impressive game from the standpoint that it may actually be two games, depending on how you choose to play it: as a hero or as a villain.  Nice twist ending.

My Top Ten Albums of 2010... Sorta...

It's that time of year when media blogs and entertainment magazines put out their retrospective top ten lists for the year in various categories.  Admittedly, I have not listened to every album released this year, so picking a best album of 2010 would have about as much credibility as me voting in the presidential election in another country.  Instead, I am going to list my ten favorite albums I heard for the first time this year.  There will undoubtedly be 2010 albums, but there could also be 1974 albums.  Also, they aren't ranked because ranking things is bullshit.

1. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

They're folk. They're heavy on the vocals and the strings. They're British. These are the facts, but they're not what you come away with after hearing this album. You come away from some of the more dramatic tracks feeling a little hollow, like only half a story's been told because the other half might be too grim to tell. But then there are tracks that leave you feeling kind of alright about things; maybe your shit's not as bad as you thought. And then you're pretty sure the rest of the tracks are about someone you know. It's a winning balance between overwhelming universality (who can't relate to the profane hook in "Little Lion Man"?) and intriguingly alienating specificity (I'd wager less than 1% of people listening to this album actually experienced the Dust Bowl).

2. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog

Sam Beam is my new favorite songwriter. Every single song on this album has at least two lyrical morsels I chew on every now and then because they are so very delicious. Plus, there's something very home-boy about this guy. Like me, he was born and raised in South Carolina, so when he mentions the "upstate" or the "state house," I get this haughty feeling that I know what he's saying better than most people. I didn't grow up on a farm, but I was about a three-minute walk from about five farms, so all that agricultural imagery in "Pagan Angel" and "Resurrection Fern" is not lost on me at all. Quite the contrary.

3. Florence + the Machine - Lungs

Well, this one came out of nowhere. I listened to it for the first time about three days ago, and I knew pretty much instantly that it was gold. Florence Welch is an incredible vocalist; hearing her belt it out on "Girl With One Eye" is just one of many reasons I have been playing this album on repeat for hours on end.

4. Muse - Resistance

It's Muse. Did you think I wouldn't put it on this list? To be fair, this album is no Black Holes and Revelations. Actually, it may be too similar to BHaR to really stand out as the exemplar of Muse's talent, but among the albums I heard in 2010, it shines.

 5. Civil Twilight - Civil Twilight

These three guys from South Africa are the closest a band has come to sounding like Starsailor since Starsailor. Don't get me wrong, they have their own sound, but the similarities are there, to be sure. I saw them perform live and met them, and they're a class act. Pound for pound, this album has more emotion on it than anything else on this list, and probably on anything on any of the lists to come.
 
6. The Black Keys - Attack and Release

Played Grand Theft Auto IV some months ago. Heard the song "Strange Times" on an in-game radio station. Listened to the rest of the album. Found out I'm more okay with blues-rock than I thought.

7. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul

I don't know why this album is as good as it is. It could be the variety of artists that perform on it, or it could be the thematic consistency of the lyrics, or both. It's like 75% indie rock, 20% alternative, and 5% David Lynch, but somehow, the parts make a really strong whole.

8. Phil Selway - Familial

This album is not what one would expect from the drummer of a band like Radiohead. I have been told that you can't really expect anything specific from the drummer of a band like Radiohead, but I am certain the last thing you would expect is Familial. Call me crazy, but I just did not expect the drummer of a band like Radiohead to go minimal on instruments and introspective on lyrics and whispery on vocals to make a borderline folk album. In case the album title isn't a dead giveaway, Phil likes to sing about family matters, and he likes to do so in as haunting a way as possible. It is so many galaxies away from Radiohead, but ultimately, that's not as detrimental as it sounds. Not detrimental at all really. I hope he keeps doing solo stuff.

9. Fran Healy - Wreckorder

What is Fran Healy without Travis? That is the question I asked when I found out this album was a thing. Upon listening, however, the question became "What is Travis without Fran Healy?" He must be like 90% of that band because if I had heard it not knowing it was a solo album, I would have assumed it was the whole group. Paul McCartney plays on it, but you can't tell, which may be a good thing. Neko Case sings on it, and you can tell, which is definitely a good thing. Overall, the best word to describe Fran's solo debut is "Travis-y."

10. Radiohead - In Rainbows (second disc of special edition)

I really didn't want to do this. Radiohead doesn't need more accolades or places on people's top whatever lists. But, in the spirit of fairness and honesty, the eight bonus tracks on In Rainbows are fucking good, better than anything on the underwhelming single-disc edition. They should have been their own release, either after or instead of In Rainbows (note: all this hating on In Rainbows is purely relative. I actually like that album, but it pales in comparison to what somehow did not make it onto the album.).  There are just so many speeds here: tearjerking, danceable, sleepy. It's all over the place in the best way possible. Plus, there's a Doctor Who reference which kind of suckered me.

Honorable mentions because I'm too indecisive to leave some things off this list:
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Science fiction indie rock. Need I say more?)
Tired Pony - The Place We Ran From (Gary Lightbody makes this sound like Snow Patrol, but everyone else involved makes it sound like alt-country. Either way, it's a winner.)
Broken Bells - Broken Bells (Because this list needed more Danger Mouse.)
Carolina Chocolate Drops - Genuine Negro Jig (Bluegrass covers of "Hit 'em Up Style" and "Trampled Rose" will get your attention, and the rest of the album will hold it.)
Loreena McKennitt - The Wind That Shakes The Barley (Not her best, but still Loreena.)

The Adventures of Clip and Art #6

Duet

I'm back after a two-week hiatus.  Thanksgiving followed by the madness of the retail world in the weeks preceding Christmas and the unreasonably inflated workload of finals week left little time to do anything else.  Thankfully, all that's behind me now, and I can get back to comicking the shit out of the internet.  I'm going to try my damnedest to push another strip out before the end of the week; I'll have to tear myself away from Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood long enough to make it happen.

One thing I forgot to mention in the last Clip and Art post is that I wrote Clip's light bulb out of the story because it was a horrendous bitch to work around.  It took up so much panel space and was a major contributor to the Unreadable Text Disaster that plagued the first few strips.

The Adventures of Clip and Art #5

Priorities

Five strips woo-hoo! Now that I feel comfortable enough with this whole webcomic thing, I have officially decided on an update schedule. One strip a week, every Wednesday, with a possible Screen Bean Theatre strip on Saturday. That should also help my wicked time management issues; I might just be able to finish Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep this year.

If the lone prairie looks anything like it does in Red Dead Redemption, then sure, bury me there.

Everyone called Red Dead Redemption, before it came out, "Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wild West". The thing about Grand Theft Auto IV is that it may be the most impressive feat a game developer has ever pulled off. Actually, if you count Episodes from Liberty City, it's the most impressive feat a game developer has ever pulled off three times. Calling Red Dead Redemption "Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wild West" sets a flatteringly high bar for Red Dead Redemption, but it also raises a troubling question: how in a lifetime of sweet fucks is that going to work? GTA4 is a living, breathing recreation of present-day New York City, the likes of which did not exist in the untamed American West, not in geographic size, not in population size, not in city structure, not in transportation, not in weaponry, not in communication infrastructure. If this game is just a reskin of that game, then it will make no sense.

Thankfully, everyone was wrong. It's not just a reskin. The first thing GTA4 veterans will notice about RDR is how small it is in comparison. The biggest town in RDR is smaller than the smallest neighborhood in GTA4. The second thing they'll notice is how uninteresting traveling from Point A to Point B is in comparison. You don't get to listen to "Strange Times" by the Black Keys while you're on horseback. You don't get to dodge pedestrians, telephone poles, and other cars. You rarely have to shake pursuing cops. It may sound like I'm saying this game is boring, but it's not. All these differences work! That is perhaps why I love this game so goddamn much. The setting asked the developers to change the way they do things, and they accommodated, even though the way they do things previously yielded one of the best video games to date.

And don't get me wrong, there is a lot of fun to be had in this game world. Hunt a grizzly bear. Shoot the rope from which some innocent woman is being hung. Break a rare wild horse. Lasso and hogtie a wagon thief. Play blackjack. Duel some drunken bystander. Honestly, if there's anything quintessentially Western, this game has it, and it's fun. And again, it adds mounds of quality and believability to the setting.

In ways that GTA4 was not, RDR is beautiful. Something about riding a dark horse up a snowy slope while the sun rises directly ahead, its rays piercing the spaces between the needles of the pine trees around you is breathtaking. Standing on a clifftop in Mexico overlooking a vast desert, moonlit and barren, is awesome. Catching a herd of buffalo grazing a golden plain while storm clouds gather overhead, faint flashes of lightning flickering in the sky, is wondrous. Being charged by a bear and activating the slow-motion, bullet-time-esque Dead Eye mode just as the bear rears up, begins to roar, and swipes at you with its claw, letting you know just how fucking massive it is and just how fucking dead you're about to be, is terrific. Accidental beauty is... well... a thing of beauty. It's one of the things that made Flower so great; rare is the moment that the player must encounter something beautiful. Instead, the encounter is usually the product of being in the right place at the right time with all the right elements doing all the right things. Like all things fleeting, these moments of accidental beauty in Red Dead Redemption are to be cherished.

The game is not without its flaws, however. Particularly, it has bugs aplenty.  John Marston tries to throw a woman off her horse and steal it. Instead, he simply mounts the horse without removing the woman. What results is some Frankenmarston with four arms, two heads, and a skirt. John Marston attempts to pull the reins to stop his horse in the middle of a city street. Instead of stopping, the horse and John teleport repeatedly to the end of the street and the camera pulls back rapidly. In a gunfight, one of the enemies was invisible. No good.

Still, that said, the story is enjoyable. John Marston is hardly a relatable character; he's violent and stupid as sin, and is only humanized by his family. Me? I'm not violent, stupid, or married. I'm nothing like John Marston. It's refreshing to find games that are less concerned about putting the player directly in the game via silent protagonist or character creation system or moral choice and more concerned about depicting a character's growth from start to finish via interesting dialogue and actual character traits and choices. With John Marston, Rockstar Games joins a slew of other developers in spitting on the grave of the ambiguous JPRG hero, in all his tough yet emo, haunted yet unflinchingly good, wise yet teenaged glory, and his friend, the nameless, faceless, voiceless WRPG hero.

Is this my favorite non-MGS game of the console generation? Probably. It's better than Assassin's Creed II, and she's my darling. Grand Theft Auto IV is undoubtedly a better game, but I'm a sucker for unfamiliar settings that are depicted with great detail and accuracy.

The Adventures of Clip and Art #4

!

Who is the shadowy figure attempting to break into their apartment?  Where did Clip go?  Stay tuned for the answers to these questions and more!

You may notice a few changes.  Clip now has feet.  Speech now has bubbles.  I had wanted to avoid speech bubbles since they're extra work and they obstruct the image, but they're just too helpful to not use them.

Screen Bean Theatre #2

It's All Downhill From Here

This strip is not affiliated in any way with any webcomics you may have seen in the past, specifically one which employs "FUUUU" as a recurring punchline.  I testify that I had not even heard of that particular comic before I made this strip.  I also testify that that comic is fucking brilliant.

This week reminded me of that one episode of Stressed Eric where Eric goes to the hospital and continually sustains more injuries while he's there.  I had fully intended to do another Clip and Art strip on Thursday, but between covering extra shifts at work and having to pick up unexpected slack for a school assignment, time kind of got away from me.  But hey, at least we completed Red Dead Redemption; expect a thorough analysis of that beauty of a game next week, along with our regularly scheduled two Clip and Art strips.

I'm off to New England Webcomics Weekend tomorrow.  I am effing-fucking excited.  No idea what to expect, really, but I'm hoping I can get Ryan North and David Malki ! to sign my vine-fresh copy of Machine of Death, which is, incidentally, fantastic so far.  Only two stories in, but they were delicious.

The Adventures of Clip and Art #3

College Technology

This strip was inspired by a customer I helped last week. A rather elderly gentleman needed to find a particular film. I found it and handed it to him. He complained because it was on DVD, not VHS. What followed was me trying to convince him that DVD is a superior format and him trying to convince me of the opposite. During our discourse, he referred to DVD as "college technology." The term, I believe, has longevity.

In case you're wondering exactly how old Cybart is, he is as old as any given situation calls for him to be.

Screen Bean Theatre #1

The Only Other Possibility

I put together this strip a week or so ago, half as a Photoshop test run and half because I thought this was the sort of thing I would do for the main strip, but it turned out to be too minimal and too self-contained. But it's still kind of cute, so I don't want to just throw it away. Every weekend, I'll post one of these Screen Bean Theatre strips as a little side comic, just for shits and giggles.

Alex-Induced Epiphanies

Inevitably, in the course of talking to Alex Wroten, you will realize you are wrong. What you are wrong about and how long it takes you to realize it will vary, but it is guaranteed to happen, and when it does, it will suck so fucking hard. Trust me, I know; I'm pretty much always wrong when I talk to him. Unless it's about killing babies, in which case, for the sake of babies everywhere, I hope I'm right.

In this particular Alex-Induced Epiphany (AIE), I have come to grips with the fact that I was wrong about dinner. Frankly, I was wrong about a lot of things, included but not limited to vegetables, farmers, metabolism, Potassium, and the Sun. If it still matters, my only remaining assertion about my meal-eating habits is that I pretty consistently eat a bowl of cereal right when I wake up, no matter what time it is.

What sucks hardest about the AIE is that the boy means well. Most people, when they won't let something go because they just know they're right, get pretty ugly about it. Most debates, no matter how trivial, degenerate into personal attacks; true colors are revealed, and relationships are left in ruin. Alex, however, keeps it clean and civil, but more than that, he's somehow doing it for your own good. That's the part that really drives you mad. If he didn't let debates die because he just likes being right all the time, then it would be easy to just go "Fuck that guy" and move on. But in truth, he wants to help you not look like a jackass in front of large crowds. Unfortunately, I published that last post before receiving his aid, so that ship sailed.

What sucks second hardest about the AIE is the amount of introspection one must subsequently do. Why are my eating habits so fucked? Am I getting enough nutrients? Why did I think I was right for so long when I was so clearly not? What the hell arguments was I trying to use to support that false rightness? What else am I wrong about?

Please share your own experiences with AIE, or any other brand of epiphany with which you've had trouble coming to grips. You're not alone out there.

The Adventures of Clip and Art #2

Fair Trade

Clip and Art are building a spaceship?!

My proficiency with Photoshop grows by the day. Not bragging or anything. Hardly. I feel like I have so much to learn. Just watching Alex Wroten wield its tools and produce an image far more complex than this webcomic in a fraction of the time it took me to finish this strip makes me realize exactly how far behind the curve I am. Still, they say the best way to learn a foreign language is to live in a place where the natives speak it, so I will continue ambling my way around this software until it is my bitch.

Is it me or is the text in my strips too damn small? What do you think?

dinner [DIN-er]: n. Whatever the hell I say it is

Recently and frequently, I have found myself quite on the defensive in a couple of debates over the definitions of certain food-related terms, specifically "dinner" and "sandwich".  "Ehab!" you have undoubtedly exclaimed. "How can there be any debate? Dinner is obviously the third meal of the day."

Oh, reader.  You think with the simplistic naïveté of a child.  I want nothing more than to pat you on the head and say, with the condescending smile of someone who has seen too much, "Of course it is," but the truth is so much more important than your feelings.  And the truth is that dinner is so much more than just the third meal of the day.

Each meal is the marriage of what you eat and when you eat, relative to when you start your day.  Breakfast must occur shortly upon waking up, even if you wake up at noon or later, and must consist of things like eggs, cereal, biscuits, pancakes, waffles, etc.  Lunch should take place a few hours later, in the middle of your day, with soup, a sandwich, a bagel, a salad, chips, etc.  Dinner is, granted, the third and typically last meal of the day, but it must involve the consumption of some entreé, like steak, burger, pasta, pizza, or even salad if it's hearty enough, with a side dish or a dessert (I'm a little more flexible with defining "side dish"; despite being very different in taste and texture, both corn and chili qualify as side dishes, since neither really fits in any other food category.  Dessert is fairly self-explanatory: something sweet after a meal).

I hate to have to get all Etiquette Nazi on your ass, but any derivation from these norms requires you to relinquish your right to say you eat three square meals a day.  Waking up and eating pasta with breadsticks does not count as breakfast.  Eating an omelet at midday if you woke up at 7 a.m. does not count as lunch.  A peanut butter and jelly sandwich after having a legitimate breakfast and lunch does not count as dinner.

An important fourth element here is the snack.  A snack can be almost anything, as long as it doesn't already fit into breakfast, lunch, dinner, or side dish, and any combination of snacks, so long as there is ample time in between each individual snack, does not qualify as a meal simply by virtue of the amount of food being consumed.  For example, if one eats a bag of popcorn at 8 p.m. and then some grapes at 10 p.m., that's two separate snacks, not dinner split into two parts.  Desserts are snacks if they do not follow a meal and instead stand alone.

This debate started because my job does not have me working regular hours every day.  Sometimes, I work in the afternoon and evening.  Sometimes, I work in the morning.  Try as I might, I cannot get into a regular routine of eating three meals, as I have defined them.  So I take what I can get when I can get it, and because of that sporadic eating, I most often have to skip dinner.  Certain other individuals do not buy that claim, believing instead that it's all about the absolute time you eat, not the relative time, and that what you eat matters little.  To them, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 7 p.m. is dinner simply because I am eating it at 7 p.m.  Such unrefined logic makes me frown with lost hope.

Now that I've codified what has always seemed to me to be a set of self-evident truths, I shall allow you, dear reader, to attempt to thwart me with counterexamples.  If, as I expect, you cannot thwart me, then feel free to share your own rigid or cavalier definitions of meals.

The Adventures of Clip and Art #1

Kväårtdning

Welcome to The Adventures of Clip and Art, the webcomic made entirely with Microsoft Clipart.  Maybe it's funny?

I must apologize for one of my design decisions.  Try as I might, I could find no substitute for the kitsch, the levity, or the ubiquity of the world's most overused and underinspired font: Comic Sans.  I have employed its fugly face here, but my tongue is so deep in my cheek it's about to punch through.

Feedback is compulsory.  Just think of it as the "If You Don't Vote, You Can't Complain" argument on a much, much, much smaller scale.  I am too new to Photoshop and not far enough removed from what I have created to know what needs more attention, so I need you to tell me.  Please.

There Will Be Posts

There will be webcomics.  There will be asinine essays.  There will be video game analyses.  There may or may not be blood, I don't know.