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

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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.