• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Depth
• Two Words: Swarming Splicers
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

The Long Version

I’m pretty torn about giving BioShock 2 only a “good” and not a “great” rating. I mean, here is a game far more ambitious in its storyline and symbolism than 90% of the dreck out there, but at the same time, whenever you start to really get into exploring these new parts of Rapture, it decides to throw an army of splicers at you and bog you down in pointless, repetitive combat. The game delivers excellent dialog, creates compelling characters for you to interact with, and features a few interesting moral choices … but it also tries too hard to shoehorn the new villain into the existing Rapture storyline, so much so that one is left wondering how it would be possible to have seen no sign of her influence during the first game. On the one hand, I played the game for hours basically every day after I bought it until I’d beaten it. On the other hand, I spent a decent chunk of those hours bitching to my wife (thanks, hon!) about how little fun I was having during yet another massive firefight.

I think what it comes down to is that the net result of the changes to the game play from the first game made this one more hardcore, and it has been a long time since I was a hardcore gamer. I no longer play games, even first-person shooters, for the combat. I don’t care that I can fight with plasmids and weapons at the same time, because I never found having to switch to be particularly cumbersome in the first place, since you were rarely facing more than a couple of enemies at a time. I don’t care that the weapons and plasmids are generally beefed up from the first game, because I never thought the ones in the first game needed much improvement. I didn’t come back to Rapture because I loved fighting legions of the same four splicers in the first game and wanted to fight many more.

I came back to Rapture because its decayed, art-deco beauty and tragic history make it without question one of the most compelling video game environments ever conceived. Nearly every part of Rapture is a work of art, and to explore it means contemplating what it might be like to exist there, to live in an underwater city, never seeing the sunlight, but with constant access to the beauty and mystery of the ocean depths. The original BioShock was so damn compelling because it was so gorgeous, and had gone so horribly wrong.

Fortunately, in this aspect, the game delivers. The Rapture of BioShock 2 is even more decayed than that of the first game (though, oddly, it didn’t seem as wet), but there are still glimpses of stunning beauty all around. While I was disappointed that we didn’t revisit any of the original areas, the new parts of Rapture shown in BioShock 2 fit right in and make sense as parts of the city. We’re given information on how Rapture was built, and how people originally got around it (a sort of undersea subway system) before the invention of personal bathyspheres.  We see Andrew Ryan’s amusing attempt to indoctrinate, via a horrific version of a Disney ride, the children of Rapture into fearing and hating the surface. We glimpse the seeds of that which would eventually be Ryan’s undoing even as we gain insight into what Rapture was like in its glory days.

I remain as baffled as ever as to why it is that Andrew Ryan, Sofia Lamb and Frank Fontaine’s audio diaries (among many others) are just lying all over the damn place in the city … but it’s a plot delivery vehicle that one can overlook without too much trouble. What one can’t overlook is the incessant focus on combat.

In BioShock 2, you’re a Big Daddy. One of the prototypes, actually, if you want to get specific, but it doesn’t really matter that much. As a Big Daddy, part of your job is to “adopt” Little Sisters and use them to harvest the genetic elixir Adam. Whenever you set a little sister down to gather, you’re mobbed by splicers. Also, whenever you hit an important plot point, you’re usually mobbed by splicers. When you visit a new area of the game, you’re usually given just enough exploration time to build up a dread that you’re going to be mobbed by splicers, and then you’re mobbed by splicers. Sometimes you revisit an area that you just cleared out less than five minutes ago, you find that it has been entirely repopulated with splicers, who proceed to mob you.

Sometimes while you’re being mobbed by splicers, a Big Daddy / Little Sister combo will come stumbling heedlessly right through the firefight, at which time the Big Daddy will almost assuredly get hit by one of the bullets or plasmids you are wildly spraying around like the money shot in a porn movie, become enraged, and decide to beat the crap out of you.

Understand: it’s not that I died a lot … I played the game on easy because I’m a wuss, and rarely found myself holding less than three first aid kits. It wasn’t so much that the fights were frustratingly difficult. No, they were just frustratingly frequent. Yes, you can set traps before the splicer-mobbing in some instances (particularly relating to the Little Sisters). No, these traps don’t do a particular amount of good, nor are they particularly fun to deploy. In a short time, the entire thing has become an exercise in tedium. “Ho-hum, another firefight with fifteen splicers. Let’s just get through this so that I can get back to the interesting part of the game.”

The parts of the game that are good are really, really good. There’s a scene late in the game involving a Little Sister that does a fantastic job of illustrating how Rapture looks through their eyes. There are small, poignant vignettes and audio logs to be found all over the place if you look for them which help to tell the story of the city. There’s even a couple of more significant moral choices to be made, beyond simply “rescue” or “harvest,” which help to shape the game’s ending … though to be honest in only one of these did I find myself actually wrestling with my decision. The other two might as well have “click here to be the good guy” show up on the screen.

So, overall, my return to Rapture was a good, but not great, experience. I found myself missing the slower pace and frequent creeping dread of the first game. I also found myself questioning the main plot quite heavily (and wondering what the hell happened to a couple of the people I met early on in the game). That’s okay. I enjoyed exploring Rapture again, thought the characters were excellent, and I was glad that they didn’t shoehorn in a “twist” just to compete with the first BioShock. If you’re a fan of lots of combat in your games, this is a no-brainer: go buy the game. If you’re less into combat, I still highly recommend it. Just be prepared for the fact that some parts of the game will become something of a slog.

Oh, also there is multi-player, if you’re into that sort of thing. I haven’t bothered with multi-player FPS’s in years, and see no reason to go back to them now, so I can’t give you any insight on that end. I assume it’s like most multi-player: jettisoning everything that’s good about the game in favor of yet more combat. As we’ve established, that’s not why I came back to Rapture in the first place.

Images borrowed from the good people at Giant Bomb

Dart Publishing

Dart Publishing, Ltd. is the official name of the business I’ve been trying to get started with my friend for a while now. We’ve made huge leaps recently, thanks in part to having some extra time due to the Crispy Gamer implosion. I’m very nearly done with the first draft of the business plan, and will be sending it out to a few folks I know with way more business experience than I have, in order to get their feedback on it. From there, it’ll be revisions, and then probably applying for some local grants. Investor money is good, but free money is even better. Might as well look for that first, right?

Writing

Last month I finished not one, but two novels — my NaNoWriMo projects from 2007 and 2009, “The Broken God Machine” and “Morgan Skylark and the Monster Hunters,” respectively. If anyone out there wants to read the first draft of The Broken God Machine, it’s ready for criticism. Just get in touch. I still need to make some tweaks to Monster Hunters before I open it up for critique from the outside world, but that should be happening soon. I’m also making some progress on the second draft of the sequel to The Blood That Bonds, currently titled “Blood Hunt.” I expect work on that to speed up significantly once I’m no longer spending my coffee shop time filling out competitive analysis forms and burn-rate spreadsheets for Dart. Speaking of TBTB …

The Blood That Bonds

I haven’t had too many responses in my agent search, and so far the responses I’ve had haven’t been positive. I’m not particularly discouraged — people are still reading the eBook and sending very positive feedback — but I’m beginning to wonder if I should revise the first chapter a little to make it a bit more attention-grabbing right from the start. There’s a little too much opening exposition and I think it’s turning agents off. We’ll see.

Photography

Unfortunately, the broken 18-55mm lens that I fixed with superglue for a while has broken again, so we’re stuck only using a distance lens on our camera, which is a pain in the ass, so we’re not taking many pics at the moment. I need to get off my ass and either re-fix the lens using a better piece of plastic (and more superglue), or just cough up the ~$140 it costs to buy a new one. Why does everything have to be so damn expensive these days? Blargh! Rotten kids … GET OFF MY LAWN!

Cocktails

I went on a bit of a beer kick the past few months, trying lots of craft beers and really strengthening my understanding and appreciation of the different types available (turns out I am way more of an ale guy than a lager guy, with a particular fondness for brown ales, porters, and stouts). I’m coming out of that now though and getting back to crafting new cocktails. I’m still experimenting right now, but when I come up with something good, I’ll post it here.

Video Games

I went out and picked up BioShock 2 the other night at my wife’s urging (one of many reasons why I married her!) and have been playing through it. I’ll post a full review here when I’m finished, but I’m pretty far in and while I’m enjoying it, I’m kind of disappointed in how much more they’ve chosen to focus on combat. You’re constantly being swarmed with enemies, and while I’m not dying a lot, it’s just not a whole lot of fun to be in non-stop firefights. After BioShock 2, I’ll be picking up Mass Effect 2, and Assassin’s Creed 2 … apparently it’s all about the sequels right now.

Reading

Sadly, given how many activities I have going on, I haven’t done much reading since Christmas, when I burned through Bill Simmons’s Book of Basketball in a week or so. I’ve got three novels and a short story collection all waiting for my attention, not to mention a non-fiction book on real estate investing that I really should finish

French

Mon francais n’est pas superb … but it’s getting better. I do a half an hour of studying per day almost every weekday, and Charlotte and I are beginning to try to speak to each other more in French. We’ve also found some French cultural events to go to around town, and I’m about to start in on French grammar in addition to speaking/listening. It’s still a halting, frustrating process — I don’t like being bad at things — but all these little steps should hopefully add up to me being able to hold something of a coherent conversation with her friends and family back in the homeland, sometime within the next couple of years. Hopefully!

Travel

Speaking of the homeland, Charlotte and I will be making another France trip in May. Her sister is getting married in the south of France, which gives us the opportunity to fly into Barcelona in Spain, and spent the next week driving to Toulouse (actually, the nearby town of Albi), where we’ll attend the wedding, hang out for another day or two, and then I’ll fly back while she goes to Paris to take her finals for the French Lit program she’s working on. We’ve also got a trip to Florida happening in March, to visit my parents and sister, and a trip to Syracuse happening … sometime. Then as summer rolls into fall, we’ve got a wedding in New York City and a wedding in New Hampshire (I think) to attend. Yeesh!

… So that’s what’s up with me, in case anyone was wondering!

In, I think, 1993 I graduated to a black and white Stratocaster clone by the seemingly defunct company Regal Guitars, which cost me $210. That thing had sticky tuners, couldn’t hold a low E to save its life, and sounded like pig anus unless you ran it through multiple effects pedals. Nonetheless, I rocked out for many years on it, using my DOD 3RTR pedal (which I still have!) to get big-hair 80s metal tones when what I really wanted was some Billy Corgan-esque, fat layers of bass-heavy Les Paul distortion. D’oh.

In, 1997 or 1998 I bought a Fender DG20CE acoustic-electric for about three hundred bucks, which has since moved with me from Syracuse, to SoCal, back to Syracuse, to Philadelphia, to New York, and finally to Indianapolis. It’s got nice tone (though the pickup kind of sucks), and after I brought it to a “guitar doctor” the action’s not bad, but it’s not exactly a fine instrument. Amusing side note: my dad brought my old, $139 guitar to a “doctor” a few years later, and it now plays better than the Fender. Dude lowered the action by like six inches.

Finally, in 2004 I managed to get my hands on an Epiphone Elitist Les Paul Standard Plus in heritage cherry sunburst, for about $750 from eBay. While not a true Gibson Les Paul, the Elitist line (discontinued in 2009) was way above the standards of the rest of the Epiphone offerings. The guitar is beautiful. It sounds beautiful, plays beautiful, and looks beautiful. I love it and have no regrets whatsoever about not springing the extra couple hundred bucks to get an inferior Les Paul with “Gibson” on the headstock, or the extra grand it would’ve cost to get a Gibson that was actually superior. I also came in second in an online poker tournament and converted the prize money into a POD XT multi-effects unit that complements the Les Paul wonderfully.

I run all of my (electric) guitars through a vintage, late-70s Fender Bassman 10 tube amp that my uncle gave to me back when I was in high-school. It’s got great tone, helps me get the deep bass I like in my guitars, and looks pretty swank to boot!

All that said, I find that moving on up in the guitar world has, rather than satisfying my cravings, only increased my interest in acquiring all kinds of different guitars. So, for the hell of it, here are the ones I’ve got my eye on as “near-future” (hopefully next five years) purchases:

Taylor 414ce Acoustic-Electric

When it comes to high-level acoustic guitars, you’re either a Martin man, or a Taylor man. Martin makes some beautiful, highly playable instruments, and have been doing so since approximately the dawn of time. They make their guitars using traditional methods, and the results are outstanding. Taylor has taken a different approach, using the latest industrial methodologies — laser guidance systems, computer-controlled sonic imaging, etc. I respect both brands and would be happy as hell to have one of either, but I love the thin body, grand-auditorium shape and clean sound of the Taylor *14ce series. The 414ce is a bit more within my expected budget (about $1900), otherwise I’d be all over the 914ce, which is a goddamn work of art.

Fender American Standard Stratocaster

I went through a period where I was all “The Les Paul is the be-all and end-all of electric guitars and there’s no point in owning anything else.” I’ve since softened that stance significantly, though I do still feel that if you sent me to a desert island and told me I could only take one electric guitar on earth, it’d be a Gibson Les Paul Standard from their custom shop (probably the ‘59 or ‘60 VOS). However, there’s something to be said for the versatility and tone of the Fender Strat, and the American Standard is, at $1150, the model I’ve got my eye on. I like the Sienna Sunburst with Maple Fretboard option, myself.

G&L Tribute L-2000 Bass

Sooner or later, you gotta buy a bass. While I don’t expect to ever be a virtuoso at it, I still want to be able to lay down my own bass tracks when recording music, so this is my choice. Why? Well, it’s expensive enough to not be cheapshit (about $600), and it’s cheap enough that I won’t feel like I’m throwing away money on things I can’t appreciate. Also, it passed the all important “Charlotte flipping at random through the pages of Musician’s Friend and going ‘I want that one!’” test. She digs the blue one, and I am pretty fond of it as well. Second choice would probably be Walnut Satin.

In late 2009 Crispy Gamer acquired GamerDNA.com, 360Voice.com, TweetMyGaming.com, and an associated ad network running ads on multiple privately-owned gaming websites. The board of directors, excited by the massive increase in page views and ad sales opportunities, decided that it was time to cut costs on the Crispy Gamer front, consolidate down to one company, and focus mainly on revenue. They laid off Crispy Gamer’s entire editorial staff, including the managing editor, the copy-editor, the senior writer, and several contract writers. They alerted the other freelancers that there would be no further work coming in. They also told the development team, consisting of myself, my friend Gabe, and our Junior Engineer Stanley, that our services would only be needed for a few more weeks as they transitioned Crispy Gamer to a more basic website.

To that end, Gabe and I were still technically employed by Crispy for a few more weeks, working on some back-end changes to the site. It felt a little creepy, like dressing up a friend for his own funeral, but this is a part of the internet startup world: sometimes things don’t go as expected and the board, who let’s not forget invested $8mm in this company, jumps in and assumes control in order to try and recoup their initial investment.

For my own part, I find the timing unfortunate. Beginning with the redesign in May 2009 and moving forward into the summer and fall of 2009, I thought the site had really turned the corner. It was much easier to use, much easier to navigate, and much easier to read than the previous design had been. We’d developed some really cool technology using current AJAX and DHTML techniques, and were looking forward to building even more. Our user community was taking off, with nearly every article getting several comments, and some of them getting dozens. Our numbers were holding steady despite dramatically decreasing the amount of paid traffic … in short: people were using the site, liking it, and coming back without having to be enticed by marketing or ads.

That’s exactly what you want, when you build a website. Unfortunately, that tipping point came too late. Instead of happening at about six months in, it took about eighteen, because there was a lot of stumbling in the first year. This, also, is not exactly uncommon in the world of startups, and I don’t blame the Crispy founders or employees for it — sometimes it takes time to find your voice and establish who you are. It’s just sad, because I’ve been on the other side of things. I started working for GameSpy in 1999, just as it was making its move from “three guys in an office running a couple volunteer sites” to “investment-backed real company with multiple product types”. It was touch-and-go during that time and a single different — not even necessarily bad — decision could’ve submarined the entire company. Instead, we struggled through, figured things out, and became profitable. It’s a great feeling and an amazing thing to have gone through, and I’m sorry that many of my fellow Crispy staffers don’t get to find out what it’s like.

I worked with a lot of good, smart, talented people at Crispy and I’m happy to have spent the last two-plus years there. We may not have made it over the hump, but we came damn close, and I’m proud of what we accomplished with the site. Now it’s time to move on to the next adventure. Gabe and I have both accepted some work with a San Francisco-based startup, for one thing. For another, I’m 35 pages and counting into a business plan for our own internet startup, which we’re hoping will allow us to raise some grant money and be able to employ ourselves full-time. It’s a very busy, very interesting time, but I’m excited about the possibilities out there and looking forward to continuing to learn and improve as a web designer and development director.

Oh, and now that I’m done with CG, you can expect more frequent updates to this blog, too. Woohoo!

I am officially on the job market, so if anyone out there in cyber land has any leads, please send ‘em my way!

Anyway, here they are:

Christmas Food

Christmas People

Paris in Winter

Freezing Versailles

Enjoy!

Chrismas Day Lunch: Two geese, sausage and giblet stuffing, squash, salad, god knows how many baguettes, two plates of cheese (none of it recycled from the previous night), a gigantic “log” made from choux and carmelized sugar, chocolate, coffee, red wine, white wine … and a few things I’m forgetting!

Vive la france, and may god have mercy on my waist-line!

With the exception of the photo source used in the Blue Rust pic, all of the photo source was acquired from GrungeTextures.com and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. If you’re looking for free, quality photo source, GrungeTextures.com and its associated sites have tons!

Without further ado, here are the textures

Blue Rust

Download High Res

Big Bricks

Download High Res

Grimy Wood

Download High Res

Mossy Rock

Download High Res

“Bonjour Chris, comment ca va?”

“Uh, la fille a un chapeau noir dans sa main droite?”

“… Vous etez un bouffon.”

Anyway, after the annual gift-fest of your religious or non-denominational choosing is over, you get another few days of anticipation for New Years, which is usually an enjoyable night, unless you’re one of those crazy people who goes and stands in freezing cold Times Square for six to ten hours in a pool of your own bodily fluids (no, seriously – there are no bathrooms available out there to non-police/military persons). If that’s the case, then you have my sympathy, not so much because your night will suck, as because you’re clearly out of your mind. I’ll be someplace warm, drinking champagne and watching the festivities on TV … because I’m sane.

Once that’s over with, you hit January second, and that’s when the realization sets in for everyone who lives north of South Carolina: there is now nothing but arctic wasteland between you and mid-april. It’s going to snow, then it’s going to get “warm” (about thirty-eight degrees) and then the snow will become gross sludge, and then it will freeze solid, and then the cycle will repeat. This will go on until everyone is wishing only for the sweet embrace of death, on the off chance they’re going to hell, which at least will be warm. Then we’ll get two months of rain before things are nice.

Remind me again why it is that I don’t live in St. Martin?

Anyway, the point of this post was to say that I hope everyone has an excellent holiday season and new years, and that I sincerely hope your winter is as short and warm as it can be.

Oh, and these items are listed from most recent to least recent. For example, the first two albums are from 2009, and the last album is from 2000.

Swoon – Silversun Pickups

With their third release, Silversun Pickups continue to realize their considerable potential, moving further away from “that band that sounds like the Smashing Pumpkins” and into their own style. Definitely the most ambitious and complex of their albums so far, Swoon shows improvements across the board, from individual instrument mastery, to the quality of the lyrics, to the intricacy of the songs. Just a fine album on all levels.

Hazards of Love – Decemberists

Pretentious? Absolutely. Whiny? Yeah … I can see that. Nonetheless, Hazards of Love is a terrific album made by a group who understand their instruments and how they work together, and graced with not one but two amazing guest-singers. Hazards of Love tells a complete story in an interesting, catchy fashion. The final song on the album is arguably the strongest, wrapping everything up in a bittersweet bow.

Black Holes and Revelations – Muse

The best Muse album so far, as the band continues to deviate further and further away from their Radiohead and Nirvana roots, exploring new styles of music. Standouts “Map of the Problematique,” “Exo-Politics,” and “Knights of Cydonia” (aka: “Laser Horses!”), are my favorites, but the album’s littered with highly listenable tracks.

10,000 Days – Tool

Some have criticized 10,000 days as being a bit less heavy than previous Tool albums, and I will agree that there are a few songs that sound more like A Perfect Circle than traditional Tool. Nonetheless, Tool’s fourth full album contains plenty of pounding drums and syncopated guitar work. Even if I didn’t like the rest of the album (which I do), I’d have to include it on this list for “Jambi, “The Pot,” and “Rosetta Stoned” alone … the latter of which is eleven solid minutes of fantastic, deranged raving.

Nude – VAST

VAST has yet to disappoint me with an album, but I think Nude is his best work so far in that it’s the most complete, featuring more real songs and less filler than the two that came before it. His acoustic album, April is also high up on the list, but didn’t quite make the top ten because I’m too much a fan of harder rock. Nude has all the VAST hallmarks which I really enjoy, including great guitar work and absolutely impeccable taste in drum loops.

Demon Days – Gorillaz

When they set out to make a sequel to 2000’s unexpectedly popular, self-titled album, I kind of expected Gorillaz to fail. Dan The Automator projects don’t usually get sequels, since they’re mostly about capturing lightning in a bottle, and since Nakamura wasn’t even involved with this one, I wasn’t expecting much. As it turns out, Demon Days is superior to the original album in pretty much every way. It features fantastic engineering from Danger Mouse, superior lyrics from Damon Albarn and a stable of guest-rappers, fewer throwaway tracks, and an awesome sense of gloom and despair which lends a real depth to the album. If I had to pick a best album of the entire decade, it’d either be this one or Hazards of Love.

The Pleasure and the Greed – Big Wreck

This band apparently imploded due to Ian Thornley’s ego, which is a shame, because The Pleasure and the Greed was definitely one of the best “just give me some good old rock and roll” albums of the decade. With the exception of a mediocre first track, everything else on the album is catchy and enjoyable. I particularly enjoy “Undersold,” “Breakthrough” and “Head in the Girl.” Also, I bet “Ease My Mind” is one of the most fun songs ever to play live.

Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By – Lovage

Take one part Mike Patton (the most versatile male vocalist in Rock and Roll), add one part Jennifer Charles (quite possibly the sexiest female vocalist in Rock and Roll), and one part Dan the Automator. Shake them all up with a bottle of spanish fly and you’ve got Lovage. Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By is a slinky, smoldering set of trip-hoppy songs, all of them about the many and varied joys of sex. While I wish Patton wasn’t relegated so much to a background role, it allows Charles to absolutely steal the show. Great, great album.

Lateralus – Tool

Lateralus suffers from the same problem that every other Tool album does: half of the tracks are filler, made up of weird noises, chanting, and other oddities. On the other hand, the tracks which are actual songs are almost universally fantastic. There’s plenty of classic, heavy Tool on display in songs like “The Grudge” and “Ticks & Leeches,” but my two favorite tracks — “Parabola” and “Lateralis” — are both heavy and melodic, continuing the Tool tradition of marrying metal with progressive rock. If you combined the best songs from Lateralus with the best songs from 10,000 Days, you’d have quite possibly the best album of the decade.

Mer De Noms – A Perfect Circle

This band was originally formed by a guy who was a guitar tech for bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, and you can hear that big-rock sound in some of the songs. Maynard does more singing and less growling here than he does on Tool albums. The result is melodic, complex, and well-written. Though it features few radio-friendly songs, the album as a whole is a definite cut above the average modern rock offering of its era.

Honorable Mentions

April – VAST
V is For Vagina – Puscifer
The Garden – Zero 7
Absolution – Muse
Busted Stuff – Dave Matthews Band
Gorillaz – Gorillaz
R – Queens of the Stone Age