Super Street Fighter IV - As seen by a 3½ year old girl

And now for something completely different: my top ten moments that came from playing Super Street Fighter IV with my 3½ year old daughter.

1. On Blanka

"He's Pascal. He's green and orange."
She, like many girls her age, is obsessed with the movie Tangled, so this wasn't surprising.

2. On Dhalsim

"He's different. The girls are better than him."

Better... why? I don't know. But speaking of the girls....

3. On C. Viper

"She kind of looks like a doctor, with those X's in her ears."
I don't follow her logic, but she proceeded to call C. Viper 'The Doctor' every time she saw her.

4. On C. Viper's ultra combo, Burst Time

"...I could do that."

She then spun around in circles in front of the Xbox, which she seemed to think was a successful attempt.

5. On Dee Jay

"He's a baninja! He has baninja things on him!"

...Yeah, I don't know what a 'baninja' is, or what he's wearing that qualifies as a 'baninja thing'.

6. On Chun-Li's vocalizations

"She said something! 'Hergoken!' She don't know what she said."
Glass houses. That's all I'm going to say.

7. On M. Bison

"Why is he showing his pink thing to us?"
I tried to tell her it was Psycho Power. She refused to listen.

8. On Hakan and his oil shower

"Is that gross, Dad?"

As far as you're concerned, yes, it is. Despite this comment, Hakan was her favorite character, hands down.

9. On Sagat

"He's a pirate. He might win, with that mustache."

...Pretty sure she meant to say eye patch.

10. On Dudley

"He looks like a baker! But our baker doesn't have a mustache...."
...She completely lost me here. We don't even have a baker.

General Blog Update

Next week, I'm going to be starting a new job that's going to limit the amount of free time I have, especially during the initial training stage. Naturally, this means less time to play through games for my playthrough posts, and less time to write content in general. This means that, for now at least, Angry Sunday is going to be put on hold since the playthroughs are a better fit for how I usually spend my off-work hours. I still intend on completing the Elder Scrolls Anthology, but posts aren't going to be as frequent as they have been... I'll be lucky if I can get one done per week. We'll see if that changes (for better or worse) once I settle in to this job, though.

I know there aren't too many regular readers of this blog but for those of you who check in from time to time, I thought I'd let you know that things will be slower than usual. We now return you to your regularly scheduled internet.

Elder Scrolls Anthology Playthrough - Arena, Part Three

Before taking Max Bloodedge into the Fang Lair, I decide to check out the shops in Rihad to see what I can afford with the 7,000 gold coins that we're carrying around. There's just one little problem with window shopping in Arena: the inventory for each shop is pre-determined from the beginning of the game and the merchants never re-stock with new items. What this means is that I checked every shop in Rihad, and the best sword I can find is a mithril saber... and that is always going to be the best sword I can find in Rihad. I buy it, because I know that we'll eventually encounter creatures that can't be harmed by iron or steel weapons and I want to be prepared when that happens. Unfortunately, while it has a better chance to hit enemies than a normal katana, the maximum damage is about the same. We get over the disappointment by buying a shiny, golden dwarven cuirass, which gives us an armor boost without any drawbacks. Now Max's character sheet looks like this:

That cuirass is really more "glam rock" than "heavy metal" but hopefully it'll keep Max from writing more bad song lyrics.

It's not a huge upgrade, but at least we have more than one sword and don't have to worry about breaking our only weapon this time. So, we're off to the Fang Lair, a trip that takes about three weeks of traveling north through the desert. The dungeon, as it turns out, is an old dwarven mining complex with tunnels that wind their way underground in every direction. If you avoid the tunnels and stick to the doors between rooms, you will eventually find yourself surrounded by walls on all sides with the tunnels as the only way to progress east, west or south. On the plus side, monsters don't seem to spawn in the tunnels and they're the safest place you have to rest. On the negative side, they like to wait for you at the exits to the tunnels and are very good at getting cheap shots in while you're trying to climb up. Enemies can also get close enough to the tunnels when you're resting to trigger the game's "you can't rest now, enemies are nearby (triple exclamation point)" message. In other words, Fang Lair is going to be difficult to get through.

A nearby sign, written in Dwarven, says "It has been [2] days since the last fang-related employee death."

The trouble starts out early with an enthusiastic skeleton welcoming party whose hobbies include murder and... not much else. At one point, we're approached by three at the same time, carrying swords and handmade signs reading, "this way to a cozy, early grave!" We can defeat them with minimal damage thanks to our heavy armor but when this is the weakest monster the dungeon throws at you, that's a bad sign. As we work our way south, we meet our old friends again, minotaurs with liver failure. There's also the occasional human enemy, possibly agents loyal to Jagar Tharn who are here to stop nosy adventurers like us. Eventually, we come out of a tunnel to find a new enemy... well, new to this game, anyway. The fact is, dungeons and giant spiders go together like undercooked chicken and food poisoning. It's only a matter of time before one of those things leads to the other.

"Do you have a moment to talk about our Lady and Savior, Lolth?"

Spiders can paralyze you with their venom but Max has a high endurance and can usually squish them before it becomes a problem. The real problem comes from a monster we've fought before: some ghouls that are still not happy about us using our bow to cheaply defeat their comrades. They make an appearance after we discover an ancient temple within the dwarven tunnels and have carve a path through the giant spiders to its entrance. We head down a hallway and a ghoul charges at us from the opposite end of the passage. Max cuts it down, but not before it hits him with a diseased claw and gives him a case of full-blown typhoid fever, straight from the Oregon Trail. Suffice to say, this is going to complicate things.

Of all the features they could have included in the first Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda just had to make diseases a thing in Arena, didn't they? They've been a part of the series ever since, too... in Skyrim, they're not so bad; they just give you a penalty to attacks or skills depending on what disease you've contracted. They're much, much worse in Arena. As time passes, your attribute scores will start falling and as soon as one of them hits zero, your character dies. Without an appropriate potion, the only way to cure a disease is by going to a temple and we're a few days away from one of those. This is going to be a major headache later. For now, we take advantage of the elevated platforms near the black altar in the center of the temple to keep out of reach of the remaining ghouls and pick them off with our new long bow. They hate it when we do that.

At this black altar, pray for me please / There's no cure but death from this disease
...Damn it, I knew that altar was trouble. Our glam rock cuirass can't overcome its metal energy.

So now, Max Bloodedge has a case of typhoid and still doesn't know where the piece of the Staff of Chaos is. I was hoping there would be some clue in the temple, but all we find is more ghouls and spiders. The only choice is to keep exploring the Fang Lair, but that's getting increasingly harder due to the fact that we can only rest in the tunnels for a few hours at a time and that's not long enough for us to recover our health fully. I'm pretty sure that disease causes a penalty to health regeneration, too. As a result, we start taking advantage of the monsters' inability to navigate corners and pick off as many as possible with the bow rather than engaging them at close range. Eventually, we find a part of the dungeon that looks significantly different... and a caption pops up on screen to confirm this is a significant discovery.

I don't pretend to know much about Dwemer engineering, but I'm pretty sure that a jail to hold an army of spiders wasn't part of the original design. Yet here it is, along with a booming voice that echoes in our heads, telling us that we need to answer a riddle correctly if we want to avoid a spider jailbreak. We're then presented with a logic puzzle and are supposed to figure out which cell holds the gold key to the locked door ahead of us. The puzzle doesn't make much sense, though. It sounds like the game is presenting us with three false statements, and we can determine which cell holds the gold key by eliminating the impossible choices. However, one of the false statements is "cell 3 holds worthless brass, cell 2 holds the gold key" and the gold key is actually found in cell 2. Luckily for us, the spiders don't cause too much damage to us when we get the answer wrong.

I'm pretty sure that exact scenario comes from a 1960s Batman TV episode featuring The Riddler.

After that nonsense is over, Max takes the key and opens the door that will take us to the Underdark. In Dungeons & Dragons, the Underdark is the native territory of drow elves, so our dark elf should feel right at home here. We find ourselves in a chamber full of lava canals, which is similar to the volcanic terrain of Morrowind, so this would actually be quite relaxing if not for the skeletons trying to kill us. Anyway, we need to find this staff piece before we die of typhoid, so we proceed to the large room in the center of the chamber and find another locked door... which demands that we answer another riddle. This one actually makes sense, though. "What is neither flesh nor feather, but still has a hand and fingers?" There are lots of answers to that. Skeletons, golems, statues, mannequins... but those aren't the answers the door is looking for. It wants us to say, "glove". Fine, door. I like my answers better, though.

The thing is, you want to get the right answer here because there are two hell hounds behind the door that will attack you if you get it wrong. We look past the hounds and see a floating object with a glowing purple aura. That would be the staff piece we came here for. Max grabs it and the game gives us some unpleasant information about throbbing which we choose to ignore. If we were feeling healthier, we could go back and explore the rooms we missed to see if there are any hidden treasure caches, but it seems wiser to try to get out of the Fang Lair and get our typhoid cured as quickly as possible. So, Max runs out of the Underdark and through the series of mine shafts to get to the exit to the surface. At this point, we save the game, because here comes the annoying part.

THE LESS WE KNOW ABOUT THE THROBBING, THE BETTER.

Typhoid is going to cause attribute damage every day that we spend traveling, and Rihad is a 3 week trip. There's no way we can survive that long. Our only choice is to head for a smaller town, Belkarth Guard, that's only 4 days away from Fang Lair. For those four days, however, we will be at the mercy of the random number generator. If the game rolls high numbers, the disease will kill us but if it rolls low numbers, the trip is survivable. This is why save scumming is so important in older RPGs like this one. Max dies three times before the game finally rolls the low numbers that we need to get to Belkarth Guard. There are just a few problems we have to deal with: 1) It's the middle of the night, and the temples aren't open. 2) We have about 10 hit points left. 3) We just received a vision in our dreams... from Jagar Tharn. And he's pissed off.

Look, Jagar, we already know Ria is less intelligent than the average prostitute,

but at least she was creative enough to send us visions with an interesting backdrop.

The usurper battlemage may not have noticed us when we escaped from prison, but the Staff of Chaos sent a push notification to his phone when we grabbed a piece of it. Tharn makes us a reasonable offer: give that staff piece back to his minion, and he'll grant us a quick, painless death. Cue the minion, a swordsman in chain mail who's not taking "no" for an answer. Once again, Max's heavy armor keeps him from being hit by the minion and we manage to defeat him even though we're actively dying from typhoid. After that, we duck into a tavern and rent a room where we can rest until the temples open in the morning. Ria Silmane sens us her own vision that night, saying that she knows the name of the dungeon where the second piece of the staff is but, of course, not the location of the dungeon itself. We're not worried though, because we can just ask a prostitute. Also, the dungeon is Labyrinthian and anyone who played through the College of Winterhold quests in Elder Scrolls V knows that's in Skyrim.

Anyway, we get our disease cured for 367 gold, sell the few pieces of loot we acquired from Fang Lair, and prepare to go back to Skyrim. While I might know the location of Labyrinthian personally, Max Bloodedge doesn't and he's probably going to have to deal with one of the Jarls to get that information. If they're even called Jarls in this game, that is. I'm fine with a lack of continuity between this game and Elder Scrolls V though, if it means that Labyrinthian isn't infested with frost trolls....

Elder Scrolls Anthology Playthrough - Arena, Part Two

Every Elder Scrolls game since Arena has been limited to two provinces at most, so the idea of traversing the entire continent of Tamriel seems pretty daunting at first. Thankfully, travel is actually pretty easy in this game. You just pull up the map, select the province you want to go to, then pick a town. The game gives you an estimate of the travel time, and you click the horse icon to be on your way. If I wanted to, I could just proceed to Hammerfell directly but since Skyrim lies between Morrowind and our destination, I thought I would see what the province looks like in this game. Familiar destinations from Elder Scrolls V are still on the map, including Whiterun, Windhelm, Riften and... Falcrenth? Close enough. Anyway, I choose Riften as my destination and we're there before you know it.

Based on current sociological data, you will meet a Nord with a lazy eye

and an aspiring Dunmer mage who has turned his own legs into scrib jelly.

...The city-state we wind up in bears absolutely no resemblance to the Riften we're familiar with from Elder Scrolls V. It's not on a lake, there's no canal running through the city and Mistveil Keep is nowhere to be found. This city looks exactly the same as Eagle Moor except for the background and the sprites used for the NPCs. When we're in Morrowind, we can see Red Mountain overlooking the city and the wandering commoners are all Dark Elves. Here, we're surrounded by snowy mountains and there are Nords in the streets but without that, you'd have to check the map to be sure of what province you were in. I wasn't expecting much out of a game this old, but I can't say I'm not disappointed.

Still, we've arrived in Riften at night so I decide to see if maybe the monsters I'll run into will be different. While I do run into a new type of creature to fight, I'd say that it raises more questions than answers. The foe that attacks me is a lizard man... which is strange, because Tamriel already has lizard men called Argonians. For all I know, Max Bloodedge just murdered a confused Argonian adventurer who, like him, just wanted directions to the nearest tavern. The manual clarifies that these lizard men are savage and not related to Argonians but I'll still be looking over my shoulder to make sure that this lizard man's Argonian cousin doesn't come after me, looking for revenge.

"Greetingss, Dunmer friend. Perhapss you can tell me where to find-- AIIEEEE!! STENDARR'S MERCY!!"

Anyway, after being thoroughly disappointed by this game's version of Skyrim, we proceed to Hammerfell. We were able to narrow down the location of Fang Lair to this province thanks to a helpful prostitute in Eagle Moor so when we arrive in Elinhir, the closest city to the Skyrim border, the first thing we do is seek out another sex worker. Unsurprisingly, she's heard a rumor that Fang Lair has been located near a city to the south called Rihad. She then politely excuses herself and goes back to working on her thesis about the city's history during the Dragon War. Fun fact about this game: in an early beta version, it was possible to select "prostitute" as a character class, but this had to be removed because it enabled the player to finish the main quest in 10 minutes.

We arrive in Rihad after another fast travel and surprisingly enough, it actually looks more distinctive than the previous cities. Located in the deserts of Hammerfell, the streets wind through sandy terrain and the temples have white walls painted with colorful stripes, instead of granite walls and stained glass windows. It's a subtle change, but much more satisfying than the transition from Morrowind to Skyrim, even though Elinhir was wasn't much better. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the encyclopedic knowledge of the local prostitutes. Naturally, they've heard all about the Fang Lair and suggest that we ask around the Palace, which one of the ladies proceeds to point out on our map to avoid any confusion. I can honestly say that these women are some of the most helpful NPCs I've ever encountered, in any RPG. This is the one feature of Arena that I wish was retained in future Elder Scrolls games.

Doc Si, you say? Damn, guys, this prostitute has a doctorate degree and everything.

So, we head to the palace and I'd like to tell you the name of the queen that we get an audience with... but I'm honestly not sure. Arena uses a font that is hard to decipher and the letter "a" looks almost identical to the letter "o". Max guesses incorrectly when he addresses the queen as "Blubomko" so the regent decides that we have to retrieve something for her before she tells us where the Fang Lair is. Her excuse is that some nasty goblins led by a necromancer stole a document that she needs to decipher an Elder Scroll, but we're pretty sure that this is a bug hunt she's making us do out of spite. She even gives us a smug smile as she dismisses us. Like it or not, the only way to find the first piece of the Staff of Chaos is by making her happy, so we had better prepare for the second dungeon of the game.

Max Bloodedge managed to acquire some piecemeal gear and the odd magic item or two from his exploits so far, but I don't really want to delve into the next dungeon without some more experience and some better gear. To do that, we're going to have to go looking for a different kind of enemy on the city streets tonight... not random orcs or lizard men, but Redguard bandits who want to beat us up and take our stuff. While monsters have a chance of dropping gold and maybe one item, humanoid enemies often have a full set of gear that we can either equip or sell at a shop. Rangers can equip any kind of weapon or armor other than a tower shield, so we'll need plenty of gold if we want to afford something like plate mail. We could get more gold by doing some fetch quests around town too, but quests won't get us experience and killing will. Max broods for a moment, contemplating how people always seem to turn to violence to solve their problems.

Eyes filled with rage, or maybe it's fear / That I'm a tooth in a bloodied gear
...Are we doing this again, Max? PUT... THE LYRICS JOURNAL... AWAY.

Once night falls, we manage to find a couple of human attackers amidst the wolves, orcs and goblins that want to kill us and after staying at a tavern to partially heal our wounds, we sell their gear for a tidy profit the next morning. If you have a character that has a high personality stat, you can make counter-offers when a merchant offers to buy your junk but since Max is an unlikeable, angsty teenage Dark Elf, we just accept whatever the smith is willing to pay. The good news is, we've gained a respectable amount of experience and enough gold to afford better gear. By the time we go to the map to travel to Stonekeep, the dungeon that Queen Blabumki wants us to clean out, our Dunmer's character sheet looks like this:

That's right: I took away his shield with the skulls painted on it.

Maybe now he'll stop with all his embarrassing songwriting efforts.

With our ranger in full plate, Stonekeep seems like it's going to be easy at first since the entryway has nothing but rats, goblins and orcs to throw at us. We've fought plenty of these already and our new armor keeps us defended against most of the attacks. As we move south, we find a locked door between us and the rest of the dungeon but a rusty iron key can be found nearby, sitting on an island in the middle of a fountain. It's after we pass through this door that the dungeon stops messing around. Our first new enemy is the minotaur, which looks awfully skinny and appears to be suffering from liver failure, but it still packs a punch that can get through our armor. Sometimes minotaurs attack in pairs too and while we can attack both of them with one swing, we have to deal with double the chance of getting hit until one of them is dropped. In addition to the minotaurs, we start seeing skeletons that can take several hits before dying and hit as hard as their bull-headed friends can. Rangers have something of a disadvantage against the undead because they get a damage bonus against living creatures, but this doesn't apply to reanimated corpses like skeletons.

Stonekeep isn't finished being nasty, either. We eventually find some old journal entries that say the former residents of the keep tried to escape through a tunnel system, so we head that way to see if the new occupants can be found there. This theory turns out to be correct and unfortunately, these particular occupants are ghouls. Not only do ghouls ignore the ranger's damage bonus, they will also chew through our fancy new plate armor and ask what else we brought for the picnic. As a result, it turns out that the most valuable item in Max's inventory isn't his armor... it's the short bow we got off the body of one of those bandits in Rihad. You see, ghouls hit hard and can take a beating, but they're somewhat confused by corners. By exploiting their poor sense of navigation, we can stand back and lob arrows at the ghouls without having to worry about getting bite marks on our pauldrons. Also, did I mention that bows come with unlimited arrows in Arena? Because they do. So, the only thing we have to worry about is the bow breaking under the strain of our furious anti-ghoul onslaught.

"Enjoy your hollow victory, Dark Elf! I'll be filing a formal complaint with the Imperial Adventurers' Office over this!"

That's another annoyance of Arena, by the way. Weapons rapidly deteriorate when you use them in combat and they will eventually break if you hit too many things with them. They can be repaired by visiting a shop, but the smith will literally spend days completing the job and they'll charge you more if you want your weapon mended faster. Max finds this out the hard way when he finds some locked chests in the chamber that was being guarded by the ghouls. Since his lockpicking skills are lacking, he smashes the chests with his katana. The sword doesn't like this too much, and snaps in half while we're in the middle of breaking into one of the containers. Thankfully, we looted a saber from one of the fallen monsters and while it's an inferior weapon, it'll do fine as a backup. Also, amidst the loot is a scroll that happens to be the document that Queen Blebimka wants us to fetch, so we're free to leave the dungeon whenever we're ready. We take a detour to an area of the map identified as the "Royal Bedchambers" before leaving though, doing plenty of damage to our backup sword in order to get through the locked doors. There are more chests in there, which also must be bashed open, but they're worth it.

Max returns to Rihad with no less than three new magic belts. The Mage's Guild wants to charge an exorbitant amount to identify these items but even without their help, we can figure out which gives us the most protection. Also, the equipment shops don't care if they're unidentified and we manage to sell the two weaker ones for thousands of gold coins. I guess we don't have to worry about whether or not we can afford a new sword. Once the business of selling our loot is concluded, we return to the palace and Queen Blæbûmkí makes good on her promise to show us the location of the Fang Lair. Collecting the pieces of the Staff of Chaos had better be worth the effort, because most adventurers would have asked for a better reward than that.

...Look, there were three guys, wearing name tags that said Golthog, Galthag and Golthag.

I have no idea which one you want dead, and it would have been awkward if I killed the wrong one.

Anyway, Max is much richer and slightly better protected after that dungeon delve, so I'm hopeful that the Fang Lair won't give us too much trouble. I think that an upgrade to his sword and bow would be a good idea though, since the ghouls could take plenty of hits before getting dropped and I'd prefer not to have a weapon break in the middle of a dungeon again. Will everything go according to plan, or will things go awry as they so often do in the average dungeon crawl? We'll all find out in the next update....

ANGRY SUNDAY - Smear Campaign Backlash

For all the negativity that the gaming community has seen as of late, one good thing that can be said about it is that we've kept the vitriol limited to online discussions for the most part. This is hardly surprising, because dozens of gaming conventions take place every year, all over the world, and at least some of those attendees must be trolls. Yet you don't see the same kind of vulgar, abusive communication at cons with any frequency that's remotely close to what happens online. This example perfectly demonstrates the fact that people don't act in real life in the same way they act online, and it makes sense that people would have inhibitions about discussing controversial subjects in person even if they've been vocal about them on the internet.

This past Wednesday, however, Tim Schafer decided to use his time on stage at the Game Developer's Choice Awards to make fun of women and minorities in person. Using an actual sockpuppet, he told the following joke: "How many GamerGaters does it take to make a single piece of armor? ... Fifty. One to do the modeling, one to do the materials, and forty to tweet that it’s not your shield." In addition to ruining the punchline, Tim Schafer took the bold stance in public that he doesn't take hundreds of women and minorities seriously by mocking #NotYourShield specifically. Oliver Campbell, a black independent game reviewer who also made this video about #NotYourShield, had plenty to say on Twitter in response but his initial reply was, "shut up and try actually shipping your Kickstarted game." This comment refers to the game Broken Age, which was put on Kickstarter with a $400k budget but wound up raising $3.3 million. As of today, only act one of the game has actually been released.

This is a story that we've heard before: someone who has raised thousands of dollars on Kickstarter for a project they haven't delivered on, who then procees to attack people who criticize them. The difference this time is that Tim Schafer took an online debate that many people in the industry have been trying to avoid getting involved with, and brought it into meatspace in a lame attempt to seem clever. No one really seems to be okay with this, for many of the same reasons that people disliked Nightline's sensationalist GamerGate story: pro-GG is calling him out for making fun of minorities, anti-GG doesn't appreciate how he made GG relevant again, and neutrals didn't want to hear anything about it. Also, it must be said that as a white man, Tim Schafer doesn't get to claim any special status that certain other anti-GG people have claimed in the past, and isn't seeing nearly as many defenders.

Regardless of who he is though, this incident seems to show is that GamerGate is transitioning from something that is widely seen as a harassment movement to something that non-GG people are simply uncomfortable with. It's hard for anyone to believe but the extremists to believe it's an internet hate mob exists when so little hate has actually come out of it for so long, and many gamers are just tired of hearing about it. It's possible this is even true in the case of Brianna Wu, a transgender woman who has claimed to be one of the biggest victims of GamerGate harassment. This past week, she tweeted that she sat down for coffee with Brad Wardell, a developer who has not hesitated to identify himself as being pro-GG. She stated that she felt it was unprofessional for the two of them to be trading insults online, and rightfully so. Liana Kerzner stated in a YouTube video that she believes that being able to work effectively with people you disagree with and/or don't get along with is an important skill in any business, and Wu was trying to do the responsible thing. Some of Wu's supporters didn't feel the same way however, and didn't hesitate to attack her for being civil with Wardell.

To borrow another quote from Oliver Campbell, "it's not hard to see who's hurting gaming." Most of the outrage these days is coming from the people who vehemently believe that there's a culture of misogyny in gaming and they're unable to compromise with anyone who disagrees with them. Just like Mark Kern's petition to have game journalists act as peacemakers, anti-GG sees Wu's act of peace as treason. This, more than any other reason, is why an increasingly large number of people have stopped believing their rhetoric. For all their talk about increasing diversity and wanting new voices to be heard, their actions demonstrate that they only have tolerance for one perspective: theirs. They don't support all women, just the women that they like personally. Proof of that could be seen when they refused to support Cytherea, a porn star who was raped during a home invasion last month.

Tim Schafer provides us with just another example of someone who is unable to back up his words with actions and will create enemies to defame because that's an easy way to avoid criticism. This is what anti-GG in general is starting to be seen as, and it's due to the fact that they ignored the well-established risks of running a smear campaign. By going negative on gamers, they opened themselves up to increased criticism and pro-GG proved they were pretty good at doing that. More problematic, however, is the fact that they have alienated moderate people by becoming extremists themselves. This is pretty short-sighted, considering how they tend to lump neutrals and pro-GG in the same group, because it means they're strengthening their own opposition. Some neutrals have pointed out that you don't need a hashtag to be concerned about ethics and thankfully, that's becoming increasingly true. Many anti-GG people will still brand you a filthy GamerGater if you use the phrase "ethics in gaming journalism" but no one in their right mind will take those accusations seriously.

TL;DR: No one wants to hear about why GamerGate is awful anymore, especially not in person.

Elder Scrolls Anthology Playthrough - Arena, Part One

Now that I've completed my year-long, 43 part playthrough of the Dragon Age trilogy, I guess it's time for a new undertaking. At first, I considered playing something shorter, something with less lore to wade through, and maybe something other than an RPG. Then I said, "to hell with that," and picked up a copy of the Elder Scrolls Anthology.

If I had this back in college, it's a safe bet that I never would have left my dorm room.

Originally released in 2013, the Anthology includes all five of the core Elder Scrolls games, complete with the expansions where applicable. Since then, the price has been dropped to $30 which would be a great value for Skyrim and all its DLC alone. You get that, plus 1994's Elder Scrolls: Arena, 1996's Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, 2002's Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (with Tribunal and Bloodmoon) and 2006's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (with Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles). In addition, there's a code to download the three most recent games on Steam if you want, plus five maps for each of the games' locations. As someone who's been a fan of the series since Daggerfall, I was really glad when Bethesda announced this.

The only game in the Anthology that I haven't played is the first one, Arena, and that's the game we'll be starting with for this playthrough. We'll begin with a bit of background on the game's development: it was originally conceived as a game where the player's character would be an arena fighter, competing in locations throughout the empire of Tamriel. Side quests and other RPG elements started getting added to the game, to the point where they overshadowed the arena fighting aspect. Ultimately, the gladiatorial combat was cut from the game completely, and only the game's subtitle of "Arena" remains. I would say that this game serves as a proof of concept for the Elder Scrolls games that came after it, but I can see why it didn't become a hit when it was released about 20 years ago.

Play as a knight, a barbarian, a mage or... a stripper with a sword.

As a first-person RPG, you could compare it to other first-person games that came out in 1994, namely Doom II and Heretic by id Software. While those two games are great examples of why first-person shooters were so popular back then, Arena's controls are, to put it blunty, sluggish. You feel like you're operating a tank in cold weather, regardless of how heavy your character's armor is, and when you defeat enemies in combat, you get a little blood splash and the monster's sprite changes to its "dead" version. This is incredibly dull compared to the more elaborate death animations for the monsters in id Software's games, and their action which was legitimately considered fast-paced at the time. Spellslinging in Arena can't hold a candle to the destructive magic you could wield in Heretic.

How does it stack up against other RPGs of the time, though? Is it as open-ended and elaborately interactive as 1992's Ultima VII? No. It's somewhat open-ended, but it lacks the "go anywhere, do anything" aspect found in later Elder Scrolls games. Does it offer clever puzzles and memorable characters like 1992's King's Quest VI or 1994's King's Quest VII? Not really. Puzzles are pretty much non-existent and the characters are severely lacking in personality. Can you advance your character with the same range of spells and abilities as you can in 1994's Final Fantasy VI? No again. Sabin and Cyan get unique abilities based on their combat focuses but all warriors are basically the same in Arena and their one ability is "point and click with weapon".

It's not until Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall that you get a fantasy sandbox in the form of Iliac Bay and the series starts to show its true potential. Of course, Daggerfall had some issues as well... but we'll get to that eventually. For now, we're going to jump into the character creation in Arena and complain about that a little.

I forget what the question is, but I pick whatever answer is least likely to get me killed in the first dungeon.

The first thing that Arena introduced which became a staple in Elder Scrolls games was the questionnaire to determine your character class. Based on your responses to multiple choice questions, your answer will illuminate either the warrior, mage or thief constellation and after 10 answers, the game will tell you which class best matches your personality. You have the option of either accepting this, or choosing your own class. What Arena does though, which no other Elder Scroll game has since repeated, is make you choose one of the pre-generated classes rather than just choosing which skills you want to focus on and creating a custom class. In addition, some classes require more experience to level up than others and the game manual admits that certain classes will have it easier than others. So, rather than play around with this choice too much, I'm just going to stick with what I know and choose the combat-focused Ranger class.

Once that's settled, the game takes you to the map of Tamriel to choose your race. While the Imperial Province is shown, you can't select it and play as an Imperial. Also, the Khajiit don't look like cat-people and the Argonians don't look like lizard-people. Anyway, your choice of race will impact which attributes your character will get bonuses in, so it's recommended that you choose a High Elf or Breton if you're playing a mage, a Khajiit or a Wood Elf if you're a thief and a Nord or a Redguard if you're a warrior. It seems as though someone wasn't paying attention to the balancing of male Dark Elf characters, however, because they get higher bonuses to their attributes than any other race/gender combination. Said bonuses are also optimal for our Ranger class, so we're going with the Dark Elf.

To calculate your character's starting gold, fill out the attached 1040-ES tax information form.

From here, the game takes you to a character sheet where scores are generated for your strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, speed, endurance, personality and luck. Your hit points are also randomly generated, so it's strongly suggested that you take advantage of the reroll option and keep generating numbers until you get a loadout you can live with. Once that's settled, you can pick one of a handful of faces for your character, and you're ready to go. The only thing that we're missing is a name... back in 1994, I was 11 years old and a big fan of the bloody direction video games were going in with titles like Doom II and Mortal Kombat II. I also wasn't very creative when it came to my character names. Putting myself in that mindset, I decide to name my Dark Elf ranger MAX BLOODEDGE.

The first item I found in the starting dungeon was a black and red shield with skulls and the word "DIE" painted on it.

...I take this as a sign that the game approves of how metal this character concept is.

Now that we have a character, here's how the game's plot begins: Emperor Uriel Septim VII is called to an emergency meeting one day by his court battle mage, Jagar Tharn, who has important information to share about possible treason. Tharn surprises the Emperor by revealing that he's the traitor, and proceeds to trap the Emperor and his closest advisers in another dimension. Once that's accomplished, he uses his magic to disguise himself as Uriel Septim VII, and transmutes the remaining elite guards into loyal, monstrous servants. However, a court sorceress by the name of Ria Silmane spots him using this magic and plans on telling the Elder Council all about it. Tharn stops her before she can do that though, killing her with a blast of magic from his powerful staff.

Ria Silmane then appears in a dream to Max Bloodedge while he's rotting in the imperial dungeons. She tells us that while she's already dead, Tharn made a mistake by assuming that Max was just a minor member of the imperial court and we wouldn't be a threat to him. Ria sees our potential and tells us she's going to help us escape from the dungeon because we're the last, best hope to bring Tharn to justice. She goes on to say that we'll find a ruby key in our cell when we wake up and once we're out, we should proceed west, then south to find a "shift portal" that she has created. This portal will take us far away from the Imperial Province, so we can start plotting against the false emperor without having to worry about the overzealous legionnaires in the Imperial City who will declare us criminal scum (sorry, getting ahead of myself again).

Ria also emphasizes that she can only speak to us in our dreams, and we should rest after gaining more experience.
This is Secret Sorceress Speak meaning, "get to level 2, then sleep to advance the plot."

True to her word, the key is on a nearby table and we exit to find that the imperial dungeon is completely infested with rats and goblins. It's hard to say whether this is due to Jagar Tharn's influence, or if Uriel Septim's guards were just really lazy about keeping this place secure. Since there are piles of gear laying around in random locations in this dungeon too, I'm going to guess that the empire is just really bad about performing routine maintenance on its infrastructure (seriously, that's important). The game manual tells you in no uncertain terms that this area is designed to give you experience and some random gear so that you have a better chance of surviving once you get out into the overworld. We're definitely not going to balk at that opportunity, so Max Bloodedge lives up to his name by slashing his way through every ugly critter he comes across.

The poor, misunderstood goblin offers the dark elf his axe as a peace offering.

Max, blinded by angst and love for deathcore music, cuts him down and scribbles something in his lyrics notebook.

Here's another aspect of Arena that you'll never see in any other Elder Scrolls game: you gain experience by killing monsters, and only by killing monsters. Even if your chosen character class is Burglar and most of your skills are focused on picking locks and stealing things, you still have to slay monsters to get better at picking locks. The designers admitted in the game manual to Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall that this system "never made sense" to them, and it's why certain classes are better choices than others in this game. Our Dark Elf ranger has some nice bonuses to hit and to damage with both melee and ranged weapons, which makes him ideal for advancement through monster murder. At least in theory. We'll see how things are going when I'm halfway through the game and struggling with the more difficult dungeons.

Speaking of getting through this game, Max easily reaches level two and decides to take a short nap to recover his health. The game will tell you that there are niches in the dungeon that are safe to sleep in since they're out of reach of the rats (not actually true, but they're trying to appeal to their niche audience). Anyway, as soon as we're asleep, Ria Silmane sends us another dream that fills us in on her idea to expose Jagar Tharn. He was apparently able to accomplish his plot by using a powerful artifact called the Staff of Chaos. Now that he no longer needs it, he recognized that it could likely be used against him to undo the magic. So, it was split into eight pieces and scattered across Tamriel. Ria knows where one piece is: a dungeon called Fang Lair. However, she doesn't know where Fang Lair is. Great. I think I'm beginning to see why she didn't survive her own attempt to overthrow Tharn.

Inside my head, the dead woman screams / She shows me chaos in all my dreams
...Max, don't quit your day job as an adventurer, okay?

After exploring some more to be sure we've gotten as much loot and experience out of this dungeon is possible, we find the shift portal and prepare to step through. However, another quirk of 1990s game design rears its ugly head: archaic anti-piracy measures. These were, honestly, way less intrusive than the digital rights management software or "always online" requirements that some modern games have, but they were a huge pain if you ever happened to lose the game manual. Many games asked you to look up random words, decipher a secret code or, in the case of Arena, provide the mana cost of a particular spell by consulting the manual or a cheat sheet that came in the box. This wasn't the most effective way of dealing with piracy, and it was swiftly rendered irrelevant once you could post the pertinent info on the internet, but it remains in the game as a quaint reminder of a bygone age.

"What is the cost of invisibility?" ...Wait, I know this one. It's in the Teal Book of Riddles.
"When no one can see a wicked person's face, they will be seen instead for who they really are." Am I right??

Anyway, since we're a Dark Elf, Ria Silmane's shift portal transports us to a random city in the province of Morrowind. In this case, it's Eagle Moor and it's the middle of the night. As a result, we're promptly greeted by a random orc wandering the streets. This is not one of the less savage orcs we will see starting in Elder Scrolls III. This is a radical, barbaric orc whose people are still campaigning for equal rights in Tamriel, and he sees us as an oppressor. This is just my way of saying that since there are no wilderness areas in Arena, monsters will appear on the city streets at night instead. It makes you wonder where in the hell the city guards are but, once again, this is a game where you can only earn experience by killing monsters, so it's good to have them around. This is especially true because you can just duck into a tavern when you get low on health, which is what Max is going to do since he's already sore from crawling through the imperial dungeon.

I should note at this point that finding taverns is easier said than done in this game. Every city consists of a large stretch of rectangular buildings with key structures like temples, shops and taverns laid out in a seemingly random order. You can either wander until you stumble across the appropriate destination, or you could find an NPC to ask. Most NPCs aren't around at night, but you can actually find prostitutes hanging around corners or under street lamps. They know the streets pretty well and can point you in the right direction for just about any local business. Since the lady of the night we find is so helpful, Max decides to ask her where Fang Lair is. Sure enough, she gives us a better lead than our dead sorceress did.

So, this prostitute can half-remember a legend about Fang Lair and give me a province, while Ria Silmane is stumped?
The Emperor was clearly making some bad decisions about who he let into his court.

...Hammerfell is literally on the other side of Tamriel. The only way we could be further away from it would be if we were in Black Marsh. Once again, I question the value of Ria Silmane's "help" here. Anyway, Max needs to rest up, find somewhere to sell his loot in the morning and then... traverse the province of Skyrim. Seems awfully early in the game to be doing that.

So, that's the beginning of Elder Scrolls: Arena! Going from the fifth game to the first game is certainly proving to be an adjustment. Next time, we try to find a more precise location for the Fang Lair. You can rest assured that it will involve ignoring Ria and finding more prostitute-sages.

ANGRY SUNDAY 2: ANGRY MONDAY

This past week, we learned that The Escapist would be bringing on three new writers in a freelance capacity, including two women: Lizzy F., who will be writing about retro games and Liana Kerzner, who will be writing about cosplay. Many saw this as good news because it shows that at least one major gaming journalism site is willing to let women write about a hobby they love in a positive way. Others, however, declared that The Escapist was hiring "unacceptable people" due to the fact that the individuals in question are either pro-GG or neutral in that debate. This raises the question, once again, about whether or not these supposedly pro-women game journalists are truly interested in giving women a voice, or if they just want people to pay attention to the women they agree with specifically. I feel like this is a topic I've written enough about for now though, so I'm going to focus this week's column on another issue that I've been thinking about recently.

About a month ago, Scott Cawthon released the teaser trailer for Five Nights at Freddy's 3 on Steam. Just to recap, the original Five Nights at Freddy's was released on Steam on August 18th, and Five Nights at Freddy's 2 was released on November 11th. You don't normally see a game get a sequel less than three months after the release of the original, and the fact that this series is going to become a trilogy in less than a year is unheard of. Although I've never played the games, you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about them by watching one of many YouTube videos that feature the series. In a nutshell, you're an overnight security guard at a pizza restaurant for kids that features animatronic characters that go a little funny (not "ha-ha" funny, but "homicidal" funny) at night, and you have to avoid getting killed by them. Although the methods that you use to avoid death are different in FNAF 1 than they are in FNAF 2, the plot and many of the characters are the same. Which begs the question... why is a third game necessary, especially so soon after the second game?

Similar questions have been asked about many other video game franchises over the years, any time there has been a sequel that has failed to innovate, update or otherwise improve upon a predecessor. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has referred to this issue as the "Nintendo Holding Pattern" specifically in reference to Nintendo's apparent reliance on established franchises to create new releases for their consoles. This provides a good example to demonstrate some of the nuances of the debate, and I'm going to use The Legend of Zelda specifically since I know the series pretty well. The original Legend of Zelda, for the Nintendo Entertainment System, was a top-down adventure/RPG game that had you exploring dungeons, solving puzzles, fighting monsters and discovering a wide variety of magic items to make Link more powerful. Every game in the series, including the most recent entry, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii, has maintained most of these elements. However, the second game released on the NES, LoZ: The Adventure of Link, was a side-scrolling game that significantly changed the gameplay and overall feel compared to the first game. Fans remain somewhat divided about whether or not it was a good game, let alone a good Zelda game.

Cut to the Super Nintendo era, and A Link to the Past was released as a top-down game that was very similar to the original. It remains one of the best Zelda games ever made, as far as fans are concerned. In this case, the game served as a much-needed update to the original which added new features, provided a better story and improved on the first entry in the series in every way. Opinions on the series get more contentious following the release of Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64, though. Some fans say Ocarina of Time is one of the best games ever made. Others say the next game in the series, Majora's Mask, was better. There are others that prefer the cartoony look and open ocean exploration found in the Gamecube's The Wind Waker. Then there are people who disliked Wind Waker and prefer the next game in the series, Twilight Princess. Some say Twilight Princess was better than Ocarina of Time and/or Majora's Mask, while others say it was an inferior title that was derived from the N64 games. Then, there are people like me who say that Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon on the CD-I was their favorite Zelda game, just to annoy people who take this whole thing too seriously.

Believe it or not, I believe that the Zelda series shows that video game franchises aren't necessarily a bad thing. People who dislike a series will always say that it has nothing new to offer but if you're a fan of the series, subtle changes to the formula (such as the "cartoony" look of Wind Waker vs. the "darker" look of Twilight Princess) are exciting and you look forward to seeing what the designers will do with the franchise in the next iteration. On the surface, no, Nintendo isn't bothering to make many changes to the Zelda formula but The Adventure of Link proves that changing that formula too much wouldn't make their fans happy. The reason that Legend of Zelda games keep getting made is because this series has a fandom that both expects and demands certain things from these games, and the innovations that Nintendo has made are more than enough to satisfy most fans. If you didn't like the Legend of Zelda series to begin with, the games aren't and will never be for you. Nintendo seems to be fine with that.

The real issue is when a series stops innovating and simply makes cosmetic changes to an earlier title, secure in the knowledge that fans of the series will pick up the latest entry. Perhaps no company is more guilty of this than Electronic Arts, with its EA Sports franchises. After the Madden NFL series became popular and EA secured exclusive rights to produce NFL video games, many have pointed out that with each passing year, EA has done nothing more than produce games with updated rosters, tweaked graphics and some new periphery features. The same can be said for their NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA and NCAA sports titles. While it's true that these real-life sports don't change in any significant way from year to year either, it begs the question of why a new sports game from EA is necessary every single year. It would make far more sense to produce a new version of an EA Sports game with each new console generation and simply provide consumers with the updated rosters as downloadable content.

One undeniable factor in this situation is the fact that major developers like EA are corporations, and they're going to operate like any other business would. If they know that there are enough EA Sports fans out there who will buy the new version of Madden every year just for the updated rosters, it doesn't make sense for them to spend more money than necessary to update the game. Similarly, Nintendo is still a Japan-based company and has a history of balking when it comes to localizing games for a U.S. release. They know that what appeals to Japanese audiences won't necessarily appeal to audiences in the U.S.-- such as an infamous character named Tingle who debuted in Majora's Mask-- and they recognize that taking developers away from series like Mario and Zelda to work on new intellectual properties come with a large amount of risk. In many ways, these businesses are merely responding to market conditions and trying to stick to a course of action that is most likely to ensure their continued success.

It's equally difficult to blame an indie developer like Scott Cawthon for making FNAF 3 when he's published two games in the series that have sold well and attracted plenty of attention. If and when people stop getting excited about Freddy Fazbear, I hope that he'll start exploring new ideas and will develop other interesting games in the future. For now though, the success of these games means that he's able to continue doing a job that I assume he loves, and that he'll have funding for those future projects. However, there's definitely more pressure on independent creators to not use a business mindset when it comes to deciding on what they'll work on next. Many of them do, in fact, end a series when they realize they've run out of ideas, or no longer find a project personally interesting, or when they believe a given project has run its course. Other creators wind up getting contractually bound to keep working on something they're no longer passionate about... or they decide that they like the money more than the creation itself. So maybe what we should be asking is, does the business aspect of the hobby keep us from seeing new and interesting games?

Honestly, the answer to that is: yes and no. On the one hand, major developers push their designers to create new games for established franchises even if those designers have ideas with greater potential. On the other hand, who's to say those designers would be able to create games for a living if it wasn't for the financial backing of a major developer? For all the indie developers that are out there, very few actually manage to find success on their own. In a perfect world, a good designer would have all the time and resources they needed to produce the game of their dreams but in reality, they're limited by very real factors such as the need to earn an income in order to feed themselves. So, most designers are going to have to prove themselves by working on someone else's game before they can take on projects of their own. Are some of these developers are too cautious when it comes to taking a risk on a new idea? Most definitely, but then again, producing a video game isn't cheap. One too many commercial failures in a row and it won't just be the developer's reputation that suffers, it'll be everyone who works there when the developer is forced to close their doors.

In many ways, these franchises that have produced so many successful sequels have proved themselves, in the same way that a designer has to prove his or herself. Companies are more willing to invest in them as a result, which is why recent games with the biggest releases have been titles like the fourth Smash Bros, the eighth Mario Kart, the fifth Grand Theft Auto and the third Dragon Age. They're not bad games, unless you're sick of a particular series, in which case this trend is going to be a continuing source of frustration. The good news for this group of gamers though, is that it's easier than ever for a dedicated person to teach themselves game design and start creating things. A creator doesn't need a major developer like EA to publish their game for them because outlets like Steam Greenlight are available to them. This means that plenty of original games are available and while they may not be as polished, they're original and definitely worth a look if you're someone who is bothered by how many sequels you've been seeing lately.

This may not seem like the most fair trade off... I'm basically saying that if you want original ideas, the quality will take a hit in some areas, but sequels to established franchises are more likely to be well-designed. However, I would say that this is one of the drawbacks of video games as a medium as compared to something like the film industry. Movie studios can use established actors like Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie or Samuel L. Jackson to attract audience attention to a new movie. In video games, the stars are Mario, Master Chief and Lara Croft. Microsoft can't just take Master Chief and use his star power to sell a new game that looks like Viva Piñata. To appeal to their fans, these companies have little choice but to make more Mario games, more Halo games and more Tomb Raider games, respectively. Even the designers themselves aren't separate from these franchises in many cases: people want Gabe Newell to work on the next Half-Life, they want Markus Persson to work on the next Minecraft, and they want Hideo Kojima to work on the next Metal Gear.

As the industry stands these days, everything suggests that franchise building is important to the success of both companies and designers. Like it or not, that means we're going to continue to see plenty of sequels in the future. What we should hope for then, is that the industry will recognize that we still want to see new things within established franchises and they'll work on innovating within successful brands. Nintendo already did this when they created Super Mario Kart to do something new with their Mario characters, and when they did the same on a larger scale with Super Smash Bros. It can also happen within a given series of games, which is what we saw when Mario and Zelda made successful transitions from 2D to 3D. So, I wouldn't call it a holding pattern. I would say that they're defending their established position, and trying to expand on it through calculated risks.

TL;DR: Get used to sequels. If you don't like them, you can always play something else.