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The Game Boy: Headcrabs, Deathclaws, and Bears – Oh My

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:24:11 +0000

Gordon Freeman is a coward. Or at least, he is when I play him. It's those damn poison headcrabs. As soon as they start hissing – shrouded in darkness, probably fresh off the assembly line from some Nightmare Factory – I turn into an orange-and-black blur and beeline for the nearest corner to cry in. When Alyx is around, I push her into the poison headcrab's Terror Lair and hide until she makes the bad things that can kill me in two hits go away. Meanwhile, in real life, I lean away from the screen until my spine feels like it's recently been on the receiving end of a Mortal Kombat Fatality. If you haven't gotten the picture yet, I really, really don't like poison headcrabs.

I love, however, that they exist. Half-Life 2's enemies in general are some of the most memorable I've ever encountered. In fact, I haven't experienced such a visceral reaction to any game enemy since.

And that's a problem.

Iconic enemies can define a whole level – or even an entire game. The headcrab's a perfect example. Sure, it may (head) crib a few attack strategies from Alien's facehugger, but excellent art/audiovisual design and level placement elevated it far beyond a mere face-munching me-too. Among gamers, the cuddly-as-it-is-horrifying jumping bean from hell is basically a cultural phenomenon.

Meanwhile, what's our hyper-advanced modern gaming scene bringing to the figurative dog show? Well, let's see: We've got the generic terrorist from Modern Warfare 3, the generic terrorist from Battlefield 3, the generic steroid-addled thug from Arkham City, generic zombies from everything, and inferior headcrab rip-offs from Gears of War, Halo, Resistance, etc. Remember that one guy from that one level of Homefront? Hey, me neither!

So, what's the deal? Why have enemies suddenly taken a tumble in the whitewashing machine? And – more importantly – what aren't they doing that older-school baddies nailed so perfectly? Well, there are a few factors to consider. First off, there's the matter of mentality. Many of the enemies in today's big-name games are basically cannon fodder – and nothing more. They pop up, you wallop them with your whack-a-mole hammer (or multi-barreled rocket shotgun that also fires reminders that the Smurfs movie exists, as it were), and then you move on.

Games like Half-Life 2 and BioShock, meanwhile, are so memorable because of the multifaceted manner in which they present their most frightening foes. For instance, Half-Life 2 initially flings you crowbar-first into a world ruled by the Combine. I mean, if you ask me what my first memory of the basic Combine soldier is, it's not even a difficult question. And no, the answer isn't “shooting one in the face.” Instead, it's a simple line: “Pick it up.” And when I refused to drop that tiny tin can in the garbage out of sheer, I'm-Gordon-goddam-Freeman defiance, he smacked me in the face. That moment – and not when I was facing down a small army of gun-toting space oddities – was when I understood how bad things had gotten in Gordon's absence.

It's the little moments that count biggest. Similarly, there was also Lamarr the friendly headcrab and controllable Ant Lions to offset the sheer otherworldly terror of Ravenholm's special brand of headcrab zombies or retch-worthy clusters of ceiling-dwelling barnacles. They showed other sides to Half-Life 2's enemies. Somewhat paradoxically, I felt an attachment to the very things I was blasting.

BioShock, meanwhile, designed an entire ecology around Big Daddies, making them far more than diving-suit-clad foils for the business end of your shotgun. Over the course of the game, you discovered their origins, purposes, and – eventually – became one yourself. (Admittedly, however, it wasn't until BioShock 2 that the franchise really perfected that concept.) Sure, having a giant drill for a hand definitely gave the Big Daddy an upper hand... drill... thing in the memorability category, but a gradual trickle of information turned Big Daddy from a giant target into a crucial part of Rapture's existence.

There's also the matter of smart, measured build up and the air of mystique it creates. Wasteland denizens in Fallout 3, for example, whispered of Deathclaws in frightened tones long before I ever met one face-to-face. And when I finally saw one loping toward me, gangly limbs flying like vital-organ-seeking missiles? I turned tail and fled for dear life while attempting to write out my last will and testament. Lamentably, I didn't exactly make it far.

Indie horror hit Amnesia, however, really steals the show in that category. It's so terrifying not because boogie men pop out and shout “boo!” around every corner, but for the exact opposite reason: they don't. Instead, there's a constant sickening dread lurking in the darkness. Slight sights, unsettling sounds, perfectly placed shadows. Together, they create a mystique that other survival horror games simply can't match. And your character, of course, is hopelessly helpless, rendering the classic “fight or flight” multiple choice test fairly easy. The answer is D) Wet Yourself.

There's another factor, though, that I think has played a major role in the shift away from interesting, well-designed enemies: graphical fidelity. Madness, you say? Well, consider this: The more realistic graphics are, the easier it is to design enemies that look and move like people. However, as humans, we naturally fear difference. My poison headcrab phobia? I bet it wouldn't be nearly as bad if I wasn't also violently afraid of spiders. Point is, we're pre-programmed to fear things that are unlike us, because nature's creepy crawlies have a tendency to, you know, murder us with poison.

Earlier games, though, were perfectly positioned to take advantage of that. A lack of detail became creepy, inhuman abstraction. Awkward animations became herky-jerky, unnatural movements. Enemies like Legend of Zelda's life-sapping Re-Deads and dungeon-crawling (literally) Wallmasters were – on some level – a product of necessity. Technology was limited, so developers had to be creative.

Ever played SkiFree? Yes, that SkiFree. Same idea. The yeti didn't trigger minor heart attacks just because it signaled insta-death. Its rapid, oddly terrifying movements gave Child-Me many a pixelated nightmare because it ambled ever forward in a manner that was downright wrong. Happily, Minecraft's enemies – Creepers, especially – carry that torch today to some extent today, but they're the exception, not the rule.

By and large, it's all hyper-realistic terrorists this, hyper-realistic zombies that. Oh, and there's the occasional hyper-realistic giant spider in there – just to make me feel frightened in spite of myself. I want more than that, though. Give me a love-hate, life-death relationship for the ages – not another shooting gallery. Press start. Find me a new challenger.

The Top 10 Smartphones Set to Ship in 2012

Seamus Bellamy — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:12:43 +0000

Humans are a fickle species: Easily distracted by anything shiny and new, the majority of us are always on the lookout for the next big thing, especially where technology is concerned. Fortunately, as we saw at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, there's a whole universe of new-fangled gadgety goodness being cooked up by the high-tech powers that be--especially in the area of smartphones.

There's a lot of anticipation surrounding a number of the handsets due for release this year, and with good reason: As more and more companies vie for a cut of the coin consumers are dumping into the smartphone market, hardware manufacturers are being forced to up their game, bringing innovative products to market in the hope of squashing their competition like a bug. We've assembled 10 of the most anticipated handsets due to drop in 2012, and as you'll see, they're all lust-worthy.

20 Key Stages in the Evolution of the Internet

Seamus Bellamy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:12:11 +0000

The Internet’s 43 years old this year—that’s the same age as The RZA and Patton Oswalt—putting 1969 in the running for Best Year Ever. But for all we know about the Wu-Tang Clan and KFC Famous Bowls, the mass majority of users surfing the interwebz know next to nothing about its history. To get you up to speed we’ve put together a pictorial timeline of 20 of the most significant events in the history of the Internet, from its inception right up to the meme, kitteh and rickrolling phenomenon it is today.

The Game Boy: Best Games You Missed in 2011 – To The Moon

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:49:36 +0000

My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So instead, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. Previously, I turned into a quivering pile of mush on BioShock 2: Minerva's Den and The Binding of Isaac. And now, a game that may very well top both of them: masterful indie heart-breaker To The Moon.

To The Moon made me cry. Like, eight times. And I don't mean in the “single dramatic tear meandering down my cheek” sense. I'm talking about gushing waterfalls of salty face liquid. You'd have thought everyone I'd ever known and loved acted like they never knew or loved me and then promptly died. Of a disease whose main side effect is tragic irony.

And that's weird, because I figured myself one who'd be impervious to the game's barrage of gut-wrenching sadness bullets. I mean, its two controllable (notice I didn't say “main”) characters often turn humor into a weapon of mass face-palm-worthy irritation, and – aside from largely unneeded end-of-area puzzles – there's hardly even any interactivity to speak of. You walk around and click on predetermined objects. That's it. I'm a gamer. Why should I care about any of that?

However, if nothing else, let To The Moon serve as a lesson on why reductionist thinking is Bad and Wrong. Because if I'd given the game the cold shoulder over those concerns – or even just written it off as another tear-jerking, smile-seeking indie missile – I'd have missed out on one of the most genuinely heartfelt stories I've ever experienced. Videogame or not.

The gist of the game is as follows: You “play” as – or really, experience events from the perspective of – two Future Doctors, Rosalene and Watts, with a machine that allows them to grant people's dying wish by altering their memories as they lay at death's door. In this case, it's an old man named Johnny who's dealing with a rather pesky, er, coma. He wants to go to the moon, but here's the thing: he honestly doesn't know why. So you hop inside his head and go on a big scavenger hunt for items from his past that might reveal the origin of his oddly uncharacteristic desire.

Basically, it's Inception meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But there's that pesky reductionist thinking again, and as before, it doesn't hold water. To The Moon's conceit is just a vehicle for incredibly nuanced characters and a story that unfolds, well, backwards. But it still somehow feels like it's moving forward. Ultimately, the game explores characters' entire lives from finish to start – acting as the boat-rocking cannon blast to games like Dragon Age II, which have merely dipped a pinky toe into exploring their timestreams. I'm pretty sure its creators are story wizards.

Moreover, unlike, say, Final Fantasy VII – whose most-revered moment is undoubtedly its Shocking and Unexpected Death Scene – To The Moon prefers to extract all sorts of tears for all sorts of different reasons. Whether in action or storytelling, most games know only one language: brute force. To The Moon, on the other hand, applies a far gentler touch and runs a full gamut of emotions. It's not really about the tears at all; it's about the moments in between them. That, above all else, is key, so let me explain.

(SKIP THE FOLLOWING IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS.) To The Moon first made me cry when I realized why there were so many origami rabbits. Before she passed away, Johnny's wife, River, obsessively crafted mountains of the fuzz-free fuzzballs, but her intentions were a complete mystery to Johnny. Ultimately, he wrote it off as yet another quirk that arose from River's rather severe case of autism, which – for obvious reasons – always put a strain on communication in their relationship. Slowly but surely, however, the game peeled back the layers of meaning surrounding River's excessive obsession.

The large-scale arts and crafts project began after – when they were middle-aged adults – Johnny confessed the reason he first asked River out way back in high school. He thought she was unique, and he wanted to use her to avoid being another “typical” person. “Points is, I know what I need,” he had told a friend over lunch. “And she has it.” It was, admittedly, sickeningly self-serving, but he was a dumb kid at the time. Clearly, that wasn't how he felt anymore. From that day forward, however, she became an origami machine – right up to the day she died many years later. And Johnny kept each and every rabbit – right up to the day he finally joined her.

(SPOILERS CONTINUE.) So, mystery solved? Hardly. Rabbits appeared elsewhere in Johnny's memories as well. On Johnny and River's wedding day, the mostly happy couple encountered a bunny that'd lost a rather lopsided battle with a truck. River refused to leave the flattened, obviously flat-lined animal's side even though she and Johnny sort of, you know, had something of an important engagement to attend. It didn't make any sense. The memory ended with Johnny simply pleading for River to join him instead of mourning some random forest creature. That, however, didn't bring Rosalene and Watts any closer to the bottom of the rabbit-themed rabbit hole.

Stumped, they nearly gave up on fulfilling Johnny's last wish. But then Watts discovered that – for reasons a bit too complicated (and messed up) to go into here – Johnny had been put on memory destroying drugs as a very young child. So Rosalene and Watts managed to force their way into memories Johnny didn't even remember. And, among other things, they discovered the real first time he met River.

Johnny had wandered away from his mother during an annual festival. In doing so, he discovered a cliff-side with a positively glorious view of the stars. “Hey,” a voice rang, piercing clean through his moment of silent awe, “that's my spot.” It was, of course, River. Eventually, the two began to discuss stars – specifically, what they were. In confidence, she revealed that she believed stars to be lighthouses – shining and beautiful, but individually separate from all others. Though she never admitted it, the implication was obvious: she identified with them. Her autism alienated her from other people. She was alone.

She quickly changed the subject to tracing constellations, presenting Johnny with a puzzle: what did the moon and its nearby star clusters form? He studied it intently before reaching an age-appropriate loud and overjoyed conclusion: A BUNNY. “...And the moon is its big, round tummy!” Then Johnny's mom came a calling. Before he fell in step behind her, however, he made a promise to River: he'd meet her same time, same place next year. “But what if one of us moves or gets lost?” she asked. “Then we'll meet on the moon,” was his exuberant reply.

And then everything clicked for me. The origami began when River realized that Johnny didn't remember the first time they'd met. Rabbits always meant so much to her because she linked them to her love for Johnny. But he didn't get it. And she didn't understand how to express it. And she died without being able to do so. As soon as the lightbulb went off in my head, I put on a waterworks show that probably could've put Seaworld out of business. (SPOILERS END HERE.)

And that's barely even touching on all the incredibly happy moments in their relationship that To The Moon depicts. Or the myriad of other equally important items the game constantly references. Or the entire third act, which could have told me I'd won the lottery and the chance to punch each and every person involved in the creation of SOPA, and I'd have still started bawling. Or the ending, which is one of the most happysad things I've ever seen. I still can't even read about it without tearing up.

But there's one commonality between all those events: They are by no means flashes-in-the-pan. To The Moon builds to them meticulously. Item-by-item. Moment-by-moment. It rarely spells things out for you, though. This is a game that expects your brain to flex its cortexes and do some very heavy lifting. Don't take that to mean, however, that To The Moon blindly shoves you into shark-infested waters and expects you to sink, swim, or cry so hard that the sharks actually evolve a conscience. It's not merely some ill-fitting story masquerading as a “smart” work of “art” – a square peg forcing its way into the gaming medium's round hole.

To The Moon works well as a game precisely because it so thoroughly focuses on one gameplay element. You collect items. Over-and-over-and-over. That's pretty much it. But in doing so, I became extremely well acquainted with each and every one of them on an individual basis. I was better able to remember details: when, where, how, why. As a result, I rarely had to short circuit my brain to understand more nuanced plot points. The entire process was shockingly natural. In its mechanical simplicity, To The Moon is utterly brilliant. It is not, as one might say, rocket science.

Neither, might I add, should be your decision to buy this game. Even my spoiler section hardly scratched the surface of what makes To The Moon so wonderful. Play it. Experience it. Love it. Oh, and don't forget to bring some tissues.

Browser Extension of the Week: Google Translate

Seamus Bellamy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:02:22 +0000

Depending on your state of awareness and the depth of your internet search habits, you may have noticed that not everyone posting content to the internet can speak or write in English. Shocking, right? You could disregard the foreign characters and move on to the next page returned to you by your search results, but there’s a very good possibility that the piece of information you’ve been looking for is hidden amidst all those crazy looking words. Instead of risking the loss of an important piece of data, Chrome users can turn to Google Translate, our Browser Extension of the Week.

Leveraging the same power as Google’s website-based translation service, the Google Translate extension cuts out the linguistic middle man by translating whatever page you’re currently viewing into the language of your choice. Once installed, all users need do to translate a page is click the icon and wait. In under a minute you’ll be reading the best english Google’s translation algorithm can afford.

While the extension's default language is set to English, there’s nothing stopping users from switching it up to any of the other language options offered by Google. Want an American English language newspaper translated into Welsh? By tinkering with the extension's settings, making the linguistic leap takes nothing more than the a single mouse click.

The Game Boy: Best Games You Missed in 2011 – The Binding of Isaac

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:26:13 +0000

My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So, for the next few days, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. Last week, I turned into a quivering pile of mush on BioShock 2: Minerva's Den, and today, I'm taking a crack at Team Meat teammate Edmund McMillen's blood-soaked solo smash, The Binding of Isaac.

The Binding of Isaac is the game that finally pulled me away from Skyrim.

Like any gamer in the target demographic of Bethesda's behemoth (read: “a human capable of drawing breath”), I pretty much sacrificed my every waking hour on Skyrim's altar. Sometimes, it was 30 minutes here or there. Other times, it was 30 minutes here, there, and everywhere until a family of mice had taken up residence in my flowing gray beard. Point is, that game consumed my life.

That is, of course, until I bought Binding of Isaac and learned a very valuable lesson: Most modern big-budget games? Yeah, they're kinda crappy.

Granted, Skyrim's not as guilty of the design woes Binding of Isaac so deftly re-purposes as, say, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, or numerous other games that treat you like you're a deaf, dumb, and blind kid in need of constant hand-holding. See, Binding of Isaac does the polar opposite: It doesn't tell you anything.

So you, as Isaac – a boy being hunted down by his crazed mother thanks to an alleged “message from God” – fall into the game's hauntingly lonely dungeon. And then you fall on your face. Repeatedly. Isaac's diabolical gameplay concoction – made up of one part Rogue-like dungeon-crawling, one part Robotron-style twin-stick shootery, and zero parts kindness – doesn't leave room for mistakes. When I took my first wobbly, Bambi-like steps, it pounced and sank its teeth into my fluttery little heart. And then I had to start the game all over again. At first, I definitely didn't succeed. But I tried again. And again. And again.

Other games make failure an absolutely dreadful chore. But in Binding of Isaac, that's the whole point, and – believe it or not – it's really, really fun. An arsenal of hundreds of incredibly varied (and absurdly demented) items can take a bow for that nearly unbelievable achievement. Some of them are so powerful that entire universes quake at the mere mention of their name. Others, er, kill you. And others still turn you into a rainbow unicorn of pure destruction. I'm not making that part up.

The beauty of Binding of Isaac, however, is that I had to discover all of that for myself. If other games' items are willing to spill their guts at the drop of a hat, Isaac's force you to ring them dry until your palms are red and blistered. The only way to learn is by doing. Anywhere else, that'd quickly devolve into rote trial-and-error – perhaps one of my absolute biggest gaming pet peeves. Isaac, though, never removes the possibility of success from the equation. Each do-over is accented by a teensy dash of luck that staves off hopelessness with Gandalf-like fervor.

Every time you start anew, the dungeon's floors and rooms are randomized. Enemy types, placement, which items you'll find and their locations, bosses – all of it. It's as thrilling as it is completely compulsive. One attempted playthrough might roll out a red carpet so that you can cakewalk through an entire floor. Another, however, might have so many murderous flies and blood-spewing disembodied faces leap out at you that you'd think it was some kind of surprise deathday party.

Regardless, each room feels like opening a Christmas present. Will I find some awesome new item? Will I have to fight tooth-and-nail just to keep my tenuous pinky finger grip on life? Both? That element of unpredictability positively permeates Binding of Isaac. It's the game's exposed, beating blood pustule of a heart, and it creates some absolutely incredible moments.

For instance, I once discovered an item that claimed to “increase my chance of Curse.” It auto-equipped to my character and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing for two floors, so I sort of, you know, forgot all about it. After a while, I found myself face-to-exploding-death-spore-pod-things with a boss – a charming pile of bleeding intestines by the name of Gurdy – that had me against the ropes. I was one hit away from death's door when – out of nowhere – I transformed into a giant horned monstrosity with a snazzy emo haircut. “What the he-- Curse!” I bellowed in confusion, followed by understanding. And then I made Gurdy regret the day it was... um. Congealed? Honestly, the less I know about stomach monster physiology, the better.

And yet, in spite of all that craziness, Binding of Isaac never made me feel like things were out of my control. In fact, it's subtly insidious in that respect. The game rarely – if ever – put me in any cheap insta-death situations. Instead, it chipped away at my health in bits and pieces. It gave me time to understand and regret my mistakes. When I screwed up, I knew it and – more importantly – I knew why. I learned, discovered, and ultimately succeeded. I did it. Me. Without help from anyone else.

Too many games are enjoyable in spite of themselves. They force you to endure endless tutorials and frustrating drudgery to get to the “good parts.” Binding of Isaac, however, beats even the religion it so openly criticizes at miraculous acts. Instead of turning water into wine, it turns typical videogame fat into meat. Isaac, then, is one of the most sublimely satisfying games out there. Unless you use a guide (see also: “doing it wrong”), you can't help but own the experience.

Here, though, is where it gets crazy (and SPOILERY): By the time I reached the game's conclusion, Isaac – transformed by countless occult items and mementos from his abusive mother – looked just as hideous as any of the malformed creatures he'd been fighting. The abused becomes the abuser. It's a very real, very disturbing cycle of helplessness and dis-empowerment that Binding of Isaac depicts with horrifying effectiveness. And yet, paradoxically, it's a game designed to make the player feel utterly empowered. Isaac battles foes – literally – with his blood, sweat, and tears, but my blood, sweat, and tears were what ultimately won the day.

In the end, Isaac snaps out of his morbid, religion-inspired dungeon fantasy and huddles in a chest to escape his mother's wrath. That's when I finally realized what was going on, and suddenly, I didn't feel so powerful anymore. Other games force us to jump through all sorts of tedious hoops to get to the explodey, artificially ego-boosting bits. Binding of Isaac, on the other hand, gives us the most authentic power trip of any game in years – all to drive home the point that, no, this isn't actually real at all.

Cool Site of the Week: TweepsMap

Seamus Bellamy — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:13:39 +0000

There’s no denying that Twitter’s become an important part of our lives, bringing us a first hand view of the profane, mundane and everything in between from around the globe. By firing off a tweet, you’re not just speaking your mind, you’re adding to a far-reaching cultural mosaic that speaks of our thoughts, dreams, loves and hates, moment by moment. If you’ve ever wondered who’s reading the 140 character toots you’ve been spewing, you’ll love TweepsMap, our Cool Site of the Week.

TweepsMap is a web app that analyzes the whereabouts of your Twitter followers and then, as the name suggests, visualizes their whereabouts on a map. Using TweepsMap couldn’t be easier: Just enter your Twitter credentials, tell Twitter that you’re cool with allowing TweepsMap to access your account and watch as your followers pop up on a map of the world. TweepsMap shows users what percentage of their followers hail from each country of the world. These numbers can also be broken down in to regional, state, and province information, making it a cinch to find out how many people are following you in County Galway, Ireland and monitoring your movements in Maryland.

Best of all, users can switch from a map view of the statistical breakdown to a piechart to better visualize the breakdown of their follower’s locations at a glance.

Browser Extension of the Week: Lazarus

Seamus Bellamy — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:45:45 +0000

Whether you're making a purchase from an online store, signing up for a new service or renewing an old one, when online forms work, they work very well... until your web browser crashes and the burning rage of one thousand suns eats all that was once good in your life as a result. Fortunately, for Chrome and Firefox users, the days of form-related hissy fits may soon be nothing more than an ugly memory, thanks to Lazarus, our Browser Extension of the Week.

Designed to save your form-related bacon in the event of a browser crash, error message or network time out, Lazarus preserves the data you've entered into a given form, encrypts and saves it to your rig just in case you wind up needing it. What's more, Lazarus can even be tweaked to suit your particular needs with options such as the ability to decide how many days form data is preserved by the extension, password protection and the ability to disable form preservation on selected sites.

For all that Lazarus can do, it's worth mentioning that there are some things still doesn't handle very well: Chiefly, preserving the information entered into WYSIWYG editors of the sort employed by many popular Content Management Systems. That said, the extension's developer is hard at work trying to solve this issue.

The Game Boy: Best Games You Missed in 2011 -- BioShock 2: Minerva's Den

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:05:45 +0000

My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So, for the next few days, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. First up, the PC version of BioShock 2's ages-in-coming story DLC, Minerva's Den. Oh, and I'm also gonna go ahead and slap a Big Daddy-sized SPOILER WARNING on this one -- just to be safe.

I shoot first and ask questions later. I'm not much of a talker. I just do what I'm told. Who am I?

Give up? OK, fine, I'll uncover my nametag. Yep, that's right: “Hello, my name is... Every First-Person Shooter Main Character Ever.” Yeah, my parents had an odd sense of humor. (If you think that's bad, you should meet my brother, Racist 14-Year-Old's Xbox Live Gamertag.) Anyway, I have a teensy bit of a problem: My entire existence makes no sense.

Main characters who communicate almost entirely through cricket chirps and whatever sound a tumbleweed makes have always been something of a silly conceit. Yes, we as players are supposed to become the brain our scarecrow of an avatar sings showtunes about, but it's only possible to suspend your disbelief for so long in the face of complete silence. On top of that, it's generally pretty boring -- especially in the context of highly scripted, otherwise character-centric stories where everyone else acts like you're Mr/Ms Charmer McCharisma.

Don't get me wrong: If Gordon Freeman ever speaks, I'll hold the world's entire supply of crowbars hostage until Valve's act of sacrilege is nothing but an unpleasantly unholy memory. However, as a general rule, I don't want to be the disembodied brain manning a floating gun. I can be me any time. Games give me the chance to think and act like anyone else.

And yet, the main character of Minerva's Den is one of my favorites of all time. He never speaks a word.

That's because Minerva's Den is the silent protagonist perfected. It creates a story in which a non-speaking main character makes perfect sense, and then it turns the whole thing on its head entirely.

I'll admit that I was initially skeptical. Incredibly so, in fact. The game unceremoniously sealed me inside the diving suit of some random Big Daddy, and chattering voices in my ear told me everything short of when I should draw my next breath. Translated from Big Daddy whale sounds, that's about as close to “Hi, I'm Every First-Person Shooter Main Character Ever” as you can get.

But, as I slowly unraveled the story surrounding a Rapture-running AI called “The Thinker,” I also sipped on a gradual trickle of information about the machine's creator, Charles Porter. I picked up plenty, of course, as present day Porter ordered me from place-to-place in an attempt to liberate his creation from Rapture's increasingly insane depths, but the more interesting tidbits -- as per usual -- came from audio recordings scattered around the crumbling undersea utopia.

Porter was a brilliant man. Incredibly ambitious. A pioneer of technology. But he wasn't just another top-of-the-heap, bottom-of-the-barrel Rapturite. Folks pointed out that he -- as a black man living in a time of heavy racial persecution -- refused to “splice white” for better chances of success. Meanwhile, he didn't merely want The Thinker to be a giant, talking calculator. He attempted to give it a crash course in humanity -- for better or worse -- while his closest colleague advocated adapting it for increasingly criminal acts. Ultimately, though, Porter used recordings that he made with his wife to give The Thinker an identity.

But then, Andrew Ryan's pesky case of homicidal madness struck, and Porter got hauled off under suspicions of treason – which, in post-craziness Rapture, translated roughly to “being alive.” But why kill a man when he'd make a perfectly good Big Daddy? And then, in that brief moment, it all made sense. Porter wasn't Porter. I was Porter, post-Daddification. The Thinker was only guiding me by reproducing a “familiar” voice: my own. Big Daddies, after all, aren't so big on sophisticated thoughts beyond “Help Little Sister” and “KILL EVERYTHING.”

In essence, I'd spent the whole game learning about myself. My avatar was – like me – completely in the dark about the circumstances surrounding the situation. So we had the exact same “Holy sh**” moment. My jaw dropped, and so did Big Daddy Porter's helmet grating... thing. His state of mind mirrored mine. Confusion. Amazement. Shock. Understanding. Grief.

Mostly the last one. After I toppled my/Porter/Big Daddy's arch-nemesis, Minerva's Den slid a final ace out of its sleeve. I picked up one last audio recording. It was Porter testing The Thinker's newly completed personality replication function. The subject? His wife. “No,” Porter's recording sputtered and cracked upon hearing her voice. “This isn't right!” “What's wrong, Charles?” Thinker-emulated Pearl replied. “Don't you still love me?” Then the recording came to an abrupt halt.

I walked forward. Eventually, I reached a wall completely coated in newspaper clippings illuminated by a nearly endless row of flickering candles. Also featured: a picture of Pearl smiling serenely while Porter held her close. And an apology note. Porter – long before he grabbed the nearest bathysphere to Rapture – had buried himself in his work, leaving Pearl all by her lonesome in London. There was also another apology – from the desk of Winston Churchill. Pearl, it explained, had died in a Nazi bombing of Britain – just before Porter had the chance to set things right. I may have been in a city under the sea, but I couldn't shake a sudden sinking sensation. My stomach felt like it had just consumed a thousand chocolate bars and then ridden an equal number of rollercoasters.

So I just stared on. Speechless.

Chrome Web App of the Week: Polldaddy

Seamus Bellamy — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:16:36 +0000

To paraphrase Kurt Cobain, we have no right to express our opinion until we have all of the answers. To help you get one step closer to blathering on at length about what you think, Polldaddy is here to help you get the answers you need, when you need them.

Available as a free to use or paid service with varying tiers of functionality, Polldaddy offers Chrome users the means to easily collect data through the use of customizable polls and surveys with ease. For users that opt to use the free iteration of the service, Polldaddy allows for 200 survey responses per month, 10 questions per survey and basic reporting for all of your posted content uploaded to the service. For many users that should be more than enough data to build a rough idea of what those you've polled are thinking.

Once users have set up their account, creating new polls is a breeze, as Polldaddy offers a simple drag and drop interface full of different poll and survey content. Just pick a title, select a theme drop a piece of content in, customize it as you see fit. Why it's so easy to use that you may never feel compelled to ask anyone a face-to-face question again.