Ordeals

•2013/05/20 • Leave a Comment

Entryway

I hope you’re happy.
Sincerely do.

You hug me,
I catch you.
A life in tatters,
no plan,
no work,
no ID.

I’ll call you Conchita.

The epitome of classy,
that long stride and silk shirt.
Giddy, we’re that couple.
Necking in the frozen food aisle,
and dozing off between two
pushed-together couches
in a waiting room.

Even though you hate that couple.

I am willing to do
what you need me to do.
While you figure out what you need to do.
A hammock for your best use.

Station 3

I hope you’re happy.
As you sit on (my old) computer in the other room,
ready for the next opportunity to take
that open heart
and twirl it to the next destination.

Thankless flowers.
My unattractiveness.
(That we’d both pretend would go away with anti-perspirant.)
(That we’d both pretend was the idea that you were depressed.)
(That we’d both pretend could be fixed with separate rooms.)
Bookshelves hauled down the street with my pants sagging to my ass,
my birthday spent with a homemade chocolate-strawberry cake
and your tears.

“It’s a secret part of the recipe,” I always imagined you explaining.
Imagined because you never would.

Station 7

I hope you’re happy.
In some apartment in my city, with a dividing curtain.
I never wanted to know the address,
I never wanted it to be a tangible place in my head.

I’d like to say I imagined that you were dead.
But I’d never feel that way about you,
except in small, sarcastic, doses.

I spent a ream of apologies.
Read the responses, you know where.
My naivete exposed, I hid myself
in a pile of sandwiches and peanut shells.

My words have seemed damn powerful at times.
But how much do they matter
when you no longer give them the time of day?

When the words that mean the most are the ones that are pushed away?

Summit

I hope you’re happy.
Sincerely do. Again.

All that’s left is the crater and the stray acid reflux tablets.
And the Victoria’s Secret catalog, in your name, still forwarding from the old place.
Always were a bit of a tease.
(I loved every minute of it.)

You burned so much truth into me.
That the me needs to be more important than the you.
That the plans don’t do no good without the can-do.
To always believe a person who says they aren’t good enough for you.

Leaving me was probably the best thing you ever taught me.

I’m beginning to doubt I’ll ever
see you again.

And that’s fine.

I imagine you contained, in your own world,
with that giddy, goofy, smile on your face.

I imagine you happy because I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Posted in poetry, this isn't livejournal anymore

Revisiting MLB Showdown 2005

•2013/04/29 • Leave a Comment

I’ve been fortunate enough to have met some friends who are really into gaming recently, and it kind of re-invigorated my love for the art of gaming. I learned a couple of simple games like Dominion and Seven Wonders, and in return, I taught MLB Showdown. Which meant I had to dig up my MLB Showdown and make a couple of decks.

I figured I’d start with the 04/05 tournament format, since that was the most convenient as I still have those cards separated from my other ones in a big box. I finally built a Taking A Risk engine team, and it was able to hold off my old aggro team despite getting Go Yard!’ed twice by a 5-4 margin. Here are the full teams.

04/05 Pitching:

Players
Scott Podsednik 04 360
Craig Biggio 04 SS 420
Brian Jordan 04 130
Todd Pratt 04 promo 330
Nick Johnson 04 230
Derek Jeter 04 SS 350
Chone Figgins 05 180
Ryan Freel 05 170
Carlos Febles 04 promo 20

Troy O’Leary 04 promo 50
10 point scrubs

Warren Spahn 04 CC 650
Johan Santana 05 640
Jim Palmer 04 CC 610
Roy Halladay 04 500

Eric Gagne 04 310
10 point scrubs

There are a few big questions to be answered when trying to decide this team’s players.

Pitching-wise, I think Spahn, Santana, and Halladay are locks. The question is who among the other contenders (Roger Clemens 04 SS, Bob Gibson CC, Jim Palmer CC, Esteban Loaiza 04, Prior 04, Nolan Ryan CC) is the best option to be the fourth starter? I decided that the two biggest factors for me were icons and innings pitched. The (CY) icon is more closely tied with the card draw in the deck I constructed, and the innings pitched are important because if you resolve Out Pitch to start the strikeout engine that is at this deck’s core, you’re going to want to avoid a stray Running On Fumes. Ultimately, Palmer is my compromise. If I could pick any pitcher of these guys, it would be Prior. I think he’s got the best natural card. But the icons that are at the core of this deck aren’t there. I hate running someone who lets the batter reach on a 17. Hate it. But Palmer does have control 6, and that has to be considered. Something about paying the extra 90 points to reach Clemens and lose a control feels awkward.

Offensively, do you go with depth or do you try to sandwich in a few 500-point guys so you can run Superstar as a true utility card? Remember that you’re not going to have a whole lot of help from the strategy cards. My original draft of this team had Robin Yount 05 CC in the two hole, hoping that I could combine Leadoff Man and Inside The Park Home Run to hit the one Go Yard!, but let’s face it, this deck isn’t going to have a lot of cards to make the opponent get rid of anyway. Speed is an important consideration. And after looking at a few combinations that bumped Brian Jordan up to Ichiro 04 ASG or Bobby Abreu 05, I decided Jordan was too cost-efficient to lose. If you want to lose the points I spent on upgrading O’Leary to Figgins and just put O’Leary back in the lineup, you can find a second reliever. I thought that was overkill and liked the balance of this lineup. Six guys can clear the bases with Inside The Park Home Run, and the other three are all stellar hitters for the points.

Strategy Deck

Offense
Leadoff Man x2
Inside The Park HR x3*
Dialed In x1

Defense
Caught Looking x4
Taking A Risk x4
Insult To Injury x4
Masterpiece x4
_________
Aces Up x4
Out Pitch x3
Power Pitching x2
Locked In x3
Working The Edge x3*
Knuckleball x2
Great Reactions x2*
Robbed x2
Fireballer x2
Foul Ball x2
Top Level Strategy x1*

Utility
Old Tricks x4
Superstar x3
Out Of Sync x4
Preparation x3

Other considerations
Broken Bat
Caught The Corner
Great Start
Whiff!
Setup Man
Paint The Corner
Split-Fingered Fastball
Swing At Anything
Revelation
Outmanaged
Good Coaching
Shell Game
Up And In

Originally I built this deck with Great Start and Whiff!, but I decided to put in Top Level Strategy as a magic bullet after tinkering with the Aggro deck, and Working The Edge has an instant discard AND a nice supplemental effect. I also added in Great Reactions because my aggro tinkering left it with some nasty cards that you don’t want stuck on  your pitcher.

Lemme explain some of the weirder choices in this deck: Knuckleball and Locked In. Rather than spending two cards for Up And In, I like these cards because you still have a chance to record an out when the offense starts splashing cards everywhere. Knuckleball can be Superstar’ed up if desired, and Locked In will almost always find you two cards in those situations,which I think is a fair tradeoff. This team’s inherent problem is that it has a hard time coming back if it is trailing, but I think that’s something you can’t really fix via the strat deck design. I suppose you could run Revelation and steal the Aggro team’s cards, but a) you’re not guaranteed to face another Aggro team and b) you’re not guaranteed to find a useful card when you do that. Anything less than 35 blue cards makes me nervous for the mirror match, and I think 40 is safer.

Aggro 04/05

Players

Richie Ashburn 04 CC 480
Joe Morgan 04 CC 470
Alex Rodriguez 04 Promo 650
Willie McCovey 04 CC 700
Mike Schmidt 04 CC 690
Willie Stargell 04 CC 620
Brian Jordan 04 130
Hee Seop Choi 04 Promo 100
Charles Johnson 10

Two other 10 point catchers.

Rich Harden 05 140
Jose Contreras 04 90
Darren Oliver 04 50
Ramon Ortiz 04 40

Billy Wagner 04 260
Tim Spooneybarger 04 260
Brad Lidge 05 250
10 pointers

I have looked at a lot of ways of improving this lineup, but this is the one I keep coming back to. Trying to add a fifth player to Superstar is a goal, but it’s just too hard to accomplish. I wanted a fifth V icon for Go Yard and had trouble finding a position I could play it at. I’m not a big fan of giving away 500 points half of the time just so I can place Robin Yount in the two hole. Morgan is my compromise — he can use Inside The Park Homer and snag Go Yard! that way. Outside of him and the Big Four, I think everyone is very affordable and cost-efficient. Dropping Choi to O’Leary is an option, but I prefer Choi. You could also argue for dropping Ashburn to Pratt and then using the resulting points to snag a guy like Figgins, but I was trying to find a way to keep generating cards and having extra catchers to sacrifice to New Strategies is a good thing.

For the pitching, I feel like the charts are more important than the control when you’re already down in this range anyway, so I went with a top two that could at least keep guys off base on their card. I had Mark Hendrickson 05 in here at one point, but I felt like the extra control was mitigated by the extra out Contreras has. At one point I had Jeff Nelson 04 and Jorge Julio 04 in the pen rather than Lidge, but the points I saved allowed me to upgrade. I still wish there was room for one more decent reliever. Maybe swapping Ashburn for Milton Bradley 04 would do that, but I’m not really interested in losing Ashburn’s work with Leadoff Man or that high OBP in front of the Big Four. Alternately, you could kick Lidge down to John Smoltz 05 and run someone like Chris Reitsma 04. I don’t like that move because if I’m paying points for pitching it better have a kick-ass chart.

Strategy Deck

OFFENSE
Dialed-In x4
Leadoff Man x2
Swat x3
Goodbye Baseball! x3
Go Yard! x3
Work The Count x3
Inside The Park HR x2
Running On Fumes x3
Upper-Deck Shot x3
Rattled x2
Shelled x1

Caught Looking x4
Locked In x2
Insult To Injury x4

Field General x3
Old Tricks x4
Swing At Anything x1
Preparation x3
Superstar x4
Out Of Sync x4
Change The Scorecard x3

Other Considerations
En Fuego (won’t get discarded)
Opposite Field Power (Spahn, Santana, Palmer)
Great Addition
Quick Thinking (to get rid of Out Pitch — but you need to have it and play it quickly, very reliant on other cards)
Pointers
Rough Outing
Think Again
Turn On It
Just Got Called Up (enough good rookies?)
High Pitch Count
Missed The Cutoff (Speed around V guys)
Rattled
Shelled
Scuffling
Steal The Sign
Upper Deck Shot
Change The Scorecard
Shell Game
Smash Up The Middle
Texas Leaguer

My first pass at this deck had Smash Up The Middle and Texas Leaguer in it, but those cards are meaningless if Out Pitch gets resolved, so I decided to just embrace Out Pitch and try to use those cards to get the pitcher tired. I was very close to pulling the trigger on Think Again. I want to run a little more testing to see if that’s a card I HAVE to run. I will if I have to. But I’d rather not.

With those cards gone, this deck becomes much more dependent on the home run. Upper Deck Shot is around to tutor cards like Rattled and Shelled into your hand at the right time if Go Yard! isn’t applicable, and Work The Count is there for the Taking A Risk decks that really love to pile on the blue subtraction cheese to get card draw. I am worried about this deck’s card draw still. I kicked De-Nied! out for Change The Scorecard because Aggro needs to be able to get it’s card draw going as soon as possible. You might have to hold a De-Nied! for too long for it to actually work. The only card I really am not sure about is Locked In, and that is likely the one to go if I have to run Think Again.

Posted in essay
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Thoughts and Prayers

•2013/04/16 • Leave a Comment

Monday, an American tragedy happened as multiple bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I took this information in, and immediately moved to close my Twitter and Facebook pages and not open them for the rest of the day. 

There are plenty of people who look to exploit a tragedy at such a time, and those people get called out. These can range from begging for news to begging for hits, as well as using it to push their varied political platforms. But even more irritating to me is a phrase that has become almost void of meaning: “thoughts and prayers.”

I know that there is an inherently selfish aspect to social media. We are distributing our thoughts for consumption, and those thoughts are usually compacted and reduced to fit character limits or be shot out in a short amount of time. But it occurs to me every time I read the “thoughts and prayers” idea that it doesn’t really mean much of anything. “Me sad,” a friend of mine translated the phrase for me. It’s almost become a social obligation to say this when the latest tragedy occurs. (Or at least the latest tragedy on American soil, but that’s a thought for another time.) 

Maybe this is because I am cynical at heart, but if you actually are thinking and praying about something, why are you tweeting about it instead of actually thinking and praying about the thing? I will be honest and admit that I have not dedicated much thought or prayer at all about the situation. I have not prayed because I very rarely pray at all to begin with, and I have not thought about it because it honestly depresses me to think about. I start thinking about the social climate that we’ve generated, where we have an incentive to hunt down “evil” brown people and demonize them. Unless the blast actually turns out to be the work of a disgruntled white guy, in which case he’ll just be deemed “mentally unstable,” and we’ll have a nice public “debate” about fixing our standards for roughly a month, and then nothing will be done about it. 

I have been to Boston twice in my life, and each of those times happened over the course of the last six months. My boss lives around the Boston area, but he was perfectly fine. I have a couple of friends around the area. They were fine. I’m not going to pretend to understand this event through their lenses, because I don’t think I ever can. Isn’t it rather selfish to pretend that you can step in those shoes?

Maybe it’s the proliferation of news, or maybe it’s the proliferation of the speed at which news hits us, but I feel like I’ve become completely desensitized to all this stuff. I’m totally over the empty social cues and gestures and how they are selectively applied. I don’t not care, and obviously I don’t want cities in my country to have random explosions rock them, but I’m at a loss for ways to help beyond the general stuff (like donating blood). They aren’t going to be able to fix a guy’s leg with my good intentions. 

My thought is that I hope the victims and their families recover as best as they possibly can, and are helped by a number of kind souls who are more fortunate that they are. 

My prayer is that we learn from these attacks and apply rational analysis to find the right way to keep things like this from happening. 

Posted in essay

On CSN Houston

•2013/01/22 • Leave a Comment

The Rockets and Astros employ some very smart people. The CSN Houston debacle has not been their finest hour.

If you are not a Houstonian, or are unfamiliar with the situation, the Rockets and Astros joined forces on a new cable network: Comcast Sports Houston. That seemed like a reasonable venture, and it’s nice to see the local teams cooperating and playing off each other. The problem is that only 40 percent of Houston (those that have access to Comcast and a few smaller providers) actually can see CSN Houston, because the company and the other service providers (AT&T U-Verse, DirecTV, Dish, among others) can’t come to terms on a pricing structure. That means that even when the Rockets were featured on NBA TV, fans without Comcast were blacked out. Only three of Houston’s games have been picked up by ESPN, and those are the only three Rockets games that yours truly has had the opportunity to watch this season.

The Houston Press ran a report late last week that essentially blamed the delay on the Astros, noting that they had a larger interest in the channel and that they had pulled the plug on a deal before the season. All parties on the CSN side of  the negotiations denied that a deal was ever close, but that’s not the important thing to take away from David Barron’s Houston Chronicle column on the subject:

In the vast space between those viewpoints, CSN Houston this week will launch an ad campaign featuring Rockets and Astros fans, mentioning their providers by name and demanding action.

“It’s called ‘I Want My CSN,’ but really, it’s ‘I want my teams. I want my Astros. I want my Rockets,’” Hutchings said. “We will have fans and VIPs and sports figures and politicians looking into the camera and saying, ‘I pay my provider ‘X’ per month. I want my teams. I want to watch the Astros and Rockets. I want my CSN. Get it done.’”

From the outset, CSN and team officials willing to go on record have decried the unfairness of these cable companies that were unwilling to give them “the market rate.” Here’s a clue-by-four, guys: the James Harden trade was exciting, but neither the Rockets or Astros have done diddly since Yao Ming retired. That’s the main reason nobody is willing to pay you “the market rate.” Your teams are completely irrelevant right now. These new terrible commercials on the way, after an already-failed campaign before the Rockets season started, only accentuate the key difference between you and the carriers you wish to have: you are the only ones pushing this. You are bartering from a position of no power. That might work in local government, where city officials roll over and give up stadium funds the instant a wind shifts in from a city without a franchise, but cable service providers know a thing or two about the monopoly game. They’re not going to buckle under because you ran some cheesy ads with the only 20 diehard fans to complain about not being able to watch the games that don’t realize that plenty of seats are available.

I’m sure there are studies to back up the idea that fans will eventually come back and watch a winner no matter how much scorn and abuse a team puts on them. That’s how it always works. The fans will be sacrificed first.

I’m no Harvey Globetrotter, but I enjoyed watching the Rockets the past few seasons. Now that they’re gone, I can’t say I really miss them that much. I’d ask the powers that be on these teams to realize that while winning is an important facet of drawing fans, it isn’t the only factor. The Rockets are playing in front of half-empty arenas right now. I’m not sure how much of a dropoff that is from where they’ve been over the past couple of years (basketball-reference says it’s non-existent, but that’s tickets sold, not seats filled), but I think they’ve definitely earned it this season. I hope they feel residual effects from the blackout, because they are the ones that deserve them. The Rockets and Astros have had many options to put their teams on the air: letting the channel be on a lower tier, lowering their demands, or even reaching a temporary workaround or a short-term deal while they shore up their brands. Crying foul because the Los Angeles Lakers got “fair market value” — probably due to the fact that they are a consistent championship contender with Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, and so on — is just silly.

“This is not a matter of compromise. It’s a matter of making sure we get it right. The concept of compromise is really the idea of real negotiation, That is where we are trying to be.”

Call it what you want to call it, but trying to leverage the fans that you alone have kept from seeing games due to your unrealistic expectations is something that rankles my blood.

You want a deal done? Get it done. Leave the fans out of it, just like you did when you created the network in the first place.

Posted in sports, Uncategorized
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Grieving

•2013/01/16 • Leave a Comment

One of the things I set out to do over the holidays was to write letters to a bunch of family and friends, dead or alive, that played a large part in my life. I failed pretty miserably at that, mostly because football season stole my time, but also because I got stuck on writing my thoughts about my father out on paper. They seemed to continually evolve, to the point where the original draft of what I wrote was completely junked. They’re still continually evolving right now.

From the day my mom died, to the day my ex finally moved out of my house — about the span of two years — my personal life has been such a throbbing priority that I haven’t been able to connect with my true feelings on my father. Accepting that things would never be the same again, finding fully gainful employment, going back to school, finally leaving the house behind, watching the ideal relationship I tried to create dissolve in front of my very eyes. All I could do is reach a certain stages of peace, of acceptance, that let me put the issue away for awhile. Now every time I pull it out, I feel like there’s a fresh layer of mud caked on top of it.

I hate to say this, but I almost feel like grieving the relationship has attuned me to my father’s mindset more than anything else ever could have. Going through his old letters, his entire life was built on the premise that without having a woman, he would never have the validation to be the person he wanted to be. And, well, as much as I know that’s a stupid construct, I found myself at the same basic stage of life. I don’t think I set out to find “anybody,” and I don’t think I had my sights low in the slightest, but I definitely hit a rock bottom. One where I allowed pent up romantic thoughts from 10th grade to run wild, one where I allowed myself to be taken advantage of and used because I wanted, so badly, for something to work out that was never going to. So in a way, I can finally tap into his despair, because I was finally in deep enough with someone to understand what he was going through.

Maybe that was the real point of it all. To bring me into his shoes.

I know that there’s still a lot of work to put in on myself. And on my thoughts of him. Right now most of them revolve around what a shitty role model he was for relationships, because that’s on my mind first and foremost. He taught me the exact wrong way to value people I was attracted to. His constant romanticizing (and one-ism) of my mom went beyond the bounds of logic. And, unfortunately, I think that took root in a lot of my early actions, and again, in my more recent ones.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but instead of being angry about it, I find myself filled more with pity than anything. I’m emboldened by how much further along the right path I am, but I think that his inability to find the right time and place for those feelings was the exact source of a lot of his problems. And it just shows me how important it is that I leave “the right path” in the dust and fully achieve that balanced mindset that leaves me cool with just about anything. I know I’ll always be a little sappy. That’s not ever going to change. But finding the right time and place for that within my life rather than just making it something that is granted unconditionally is important to keep me from getting overextended or hurt again.

It’s been a long couple of years. I miss so many people, thoughts, and ideas that will never come back again. I miss being able to be completely irresponsible and do nothing of importance for days at a time. I miss sweeping her messy hair for the first time. I miss calm summer days where I hung basketball jerseys from my ceiling fan. I miss discussing my dreams with my mom and watching her almost always come to the real root of them. I miss the poker games at grandma’s house, where I wouldn’t wear a coat outside because I wasn’t feeling cold even though it was 45. I miss Hot Cheeto lunches in the hallway and toys in the bathtub. I miss the rescue.

And dad, I miss you too.

Posted in essay, memoir
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Video Game Review: Madden 2013

•2012/12/29 • Leave a Comment

I have avoided buying Madden for the past three or four years. I believe I bought one after I first received a Wii, because I just wanted a sports game on a next-generation console. My main reason for passing on the game since that time was that I didn’t think it was created for a consumer like me.

But after seeing Football Outsiders head honcho Aaron Schatz enjoy the game at FO headquarters, I decided to give it another chance. Not only did I find that my base feelings for the game were justified, I discovered that they were even truer than I first imagined.

Madden‘s central reason for existence, at this point, is the ability to take on someone across the country in a game of football. While there have been subtle improvements in that regard from the last time I owned a version of the game, especially in the collision animations, the game is rather stagnant. That’s not to say that this is a bad thing – Madden hasn’t had the kind of graphical breakthrough that would allow them to put every fiber of hair in the right spot, but it’s still a very realistic depiction of football — it’s just that dressing the game up with a new feature or two doesn’t really give it the differentiation that it seems to desire so badly. The game designers can put as many passing cones on it as they want; it’s always going to be football.

In fact, my central conflict with Madden comes from the fact that I don’t really want to live, eat, and breathe Madden. I put in about three weeks with the game. The loading screens en route to the actual game advertised Madden tournaments I could attend to try to win hundreds of thousands of dollars with my game play. While I was playing on the default difficulty setting. In fact, even after three weeks with the game, I don’t think I know the perfect football move to make from every potential tackler angle. There’s an Ultimate Team mode where you can buy virtual packs of cards in an attempt to improve the squad you have. Before I even knew what the whole point of this play mode was, packs were pushed at me in exchange for actual money. As much as I try to stay mentally healthy and not get addicted to a game, I know that a game always has the potential to hit that point within me. Madden never came close though, because it was trying to sell me an experience rather than actually deliver it to me. In Madden‘s eyes, I should want to win $400,000 tournaments and buy packs of cards because … Madden. That might have worked if the game experience was actually enthralling, or at least not so damn intrusive, but instead it just made me chuckle.

Problem A with Madden was that the presentation was designed and organized with all the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old who was promised dessert only if they cleaned their room first. How do I feel about the loading screens? Get used to them. On average it took me about two-to-three minutes of waiting just for the game to start, even when skipping the trailers. There’s a scroll ticker that brings actual NFL news that happened today, because of course there is. Why load up an internet browser on your phone or laptop while you’re waiting for this monstrosity to load when you could get little snippets of news and not the full story? Using the right analog stick to navigate between screens is awkward. If you spend any time in Ultimate Team or (especially) Connected Careers, you will quickly begin to think something along the lines of “Huh, where the fuck is that, anyway?” Trying to find the actual standings for the league you’re in? Good luck with that. Want to find out if a player currently on your roster is a good fit for the scheme you’re running? Haha, good one. Want to know what the Raiders traded for Geno Atkins rather than the fact that they did? Yeah, well, content is overrated. You can eventually find all this stuff — but you shouldn’t have to search for it.

It’s not that this content that EA has put in is necessarily so base as to be unhelpful. Despite the fact that it contained some fake opinions from a few people (OK, one person) who I could live without, the fake Twitter feed in We’re Not Calling This Franchise mode is a nice tool that can make you suspend your disbelief. Likewise, the draft storylines the game creates are very detailed and fun. It’s just that there is nothing backing it up — there is no foundation under the thing. If your company spends a metric assload of time trying to create more realistic in-game physics, I don’t think it’s too much trouble to create 300-to-500 tiny fake AP pages that actually discuss what happened in a level of detail beyond “reactionary.” Likewise, EA would be smart to look at some Out Of The Park-style standalone screens with the basic standings and some assortment of awards races or statistics on a sidebar — this would not be a hard thing to implement and would be much better than putting actual information about what is happening in this game world about five button clicks away.

I have stayed fairly diplomatic so far, but you will have to forgive my carping here, because Not-Franchise mode is still a disaster. While I think it’s fair to say that AI-ran teams will never completely understand the relative value of a player,  this game takes a strange approach by just flat-out refusing to let you negotiate for some players. If you offer three first-round picks for Justin Houston, and the fake Chiefs think he is important, they will still pass on the offer. “How many first-round picks would it take to part with this guy?” is Bill Simmons-101-level stuff here. For that matter, the fact that you can only offer three picks or players in any given trade is asinine. There is a trade block, which is new to me, but it is completely ineffective. If you put a guy on the block, you get to see all of the offers for him and decide whether you want to accept them or decline them. When someone else puts a player on the trade block, you get one chance to try to trade for him, and you know nothing about what the other offers are like. What happened to the art of negotiation? For that matter, if you try to craft your own trade, there is zero indication of how interested a team is in actually making the deal. Going through the tediousness of navigating Madden‘s slow trade menus to try to cobble together the right offer gets annoying when you realize that, even in past Madden installments, there was a bar that would quickly gauge for you if exploring this was worth your time.

There are two accumulating bonuses you get as a coach: XP and Scouting points. XP can be put into areas like raising individual player XP (thus making them get better), luring free agents at particular positions, or being better in negotiations with players at a certain position. While the system is a little crude, and I don’t understand why you get more points from running a practice than you do for most in-game events, I actually think the XP system works rather well. If anything, it might make players get better a little too quickly.

But the draft? Tear that sucker down and start over again. You accumulate 2000 scouting points per week during the regular season, and that adds to about 12,000 more during the offseason. You wind up with roughly 50,000 scouting points by the end of the year, or 100,000 if you save up enough XP to buy the coach upgrade that doubles the number of SP you receive each week. This sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that it costs 2000 SP just to get a rough grade of how talented a player is. That’s about 20-25 players a year that you will actually get a rough grade on. Want an exact rating for them? Cough up 10,000 points. Want to know if they actually fit your scheme? 1,000. And so on. If you tried to actually get a perfect read on one player in the draft, it might cost you your entire stock of scouting points for a season. Now, it would be one thing if you actually started with a rough understanding of what each player actually was, but all you get is a view of where they should go on a draft board. Pick someone who fell three rounds and you may discover that they are a) terrible and b) a terrible fit for your scheme. But that’s the only thing the game gives you to work with if you don’t actually spread around your rare scouting points. And once you hit the draft, you can’t scout in real time. You might as well just throw names at a dartboard.

Look, at this point, I’ve got to believe that EA knows a little something about developing a better franchise mode than this. There are multiple games on the market that are beautiful simulations of how an actual league and front office should operate. I’ve simply got to conclude that improving that experience isn’t a high-priority thing for them. And that’s too bad, because that is the main reason I bought Madden in the past.

What makes that a shame is that Madden is the sole NFL-approved video game. I don’t have a problem with a company acting in its best interests, and it was amazingly smart of EA to corner the market while they were still leading it. My problem is: if you are going to be the only game in town, make a game worthy of being the only game in town. Don’t give us this dopey half-baked franchise mode because you wanted to take your crack at NBA 2K12‘s create-a-player option. Don’t build a game where we need a map just to find the basics. Don’t release something that has crashed, by my count, no less than seven times. I’m not asking for another OOTP, Madden, I would  accept something that is competent-but-flawed.

Madden has instead chosen to focus almost exclusively on its hardcore online fan base, building the overall brand to “more than a game” status. I can’t say its an unwise decision, because I don’t know any of the monetary particulars, but I’m guessing that this is another decision made to target those who would drop $500 on the game rather than just the initial $60. That’s all fair and good, but much like the actual NFL, it just makes them another franchise more concerned with the bottom line than with the actual content of their game. There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as they know that it’s going to alienate actual hardcore football fans. My money and I know when we aren’t wanted.

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Video Game Review: Parasite Eve

•2012/11/30 • Leave a Comment

Parasite Eve PS1 1

Ah, one of my nostalgic favorites.

Parasite Eve, released in 1998, was one of the first games that I thought actually nailed the “modern” RPG. I say this as someone who was really turned off by Final Fantasy VII because, in my mind, if a guy has a gun in his arm and shoots you, you should probably be dead or near it. Dealing with the introduction of modern weapons in a non-comedic matter is hard, I admit, but keeping them on the same basic scale as the other weapons doesn’t strike me as a good way of honoring the difference. Anyway, Parasite Eve got around this by making the main character battles against sci-fi creatures rather than other human beings. Mutated mitochondria turn normal animals into disgusting creatures that should be superhuman enough to stand a chance against a gun shot or two.

The battle system itself is interesting to me. You have the JRPG-ish cut to battle, but you don’t just stand there and take turns. You’ll be constantly moving around trying to get away from enemy attacks while the action time (AT) bar fills up. The environments constantly change due to terrain, and the programmers sometimes take advantage of this by forcing you into a tight space. My only issue, and it’s a slight quibble, is that the AT recharge when you’re shooting a gun probably should have been related to actually having to change clips rather than an internal game clock. Either way, it works out nicely. Unless you’re hyper-leveled, you’re not going to be able to just stand around and wait out the game’s battles. Especially against the bosses.

The environment of the game is suitably creepy, which is a big plus. The developers used a lot of greys and darkened areas, so if you want any shot at finding all the game’s hidden treasures, be sure to crank the brightness up all the way or consult GameFAQs. There isn’t actually much horror in the plot line, but they effectively introduce elements of it just in the areas they have main character Aya Brea tackle — abandoned museums, a hospital basement with the lights off, and so on. The settings alone create a lot of tension that you won’t find in other RPG’s in this same era.

Plot development itself tends to be a little hit or miss. Some of that is due to the graphical and technical limitations of the system, though. For instance, a lot of the character hand motions are re-used, and so sometimes you’ll see an ancillary character shake his hands in a rage when it isn’t really a completely appropriate time for it. While the main storyline isn’t flawless, it is fascinating. If anything, I think the game overexplains itself and falls into some plot holes that way. All the scenes with Dr. Klamp add a lot of background to the story, but because he’s so detailed, it almost feels like he is the convenient “magic bullet” plot analyst, especially the last time he’s on screen. At other times, it tries to shoehorn some weird side plots that don’t really ever get developed properly — Torres’ abstinence from guns and Maeda’s feelings for Aya are the two biggest examples here — that divert attention from what’s really going on. Then again, it was still the 90′s, I guess we had to point out that gun violence is still a Very Very Bad Thing so that we could play a video game where we shoot fantastical creatures.

Obviously, you improve Aya’s skills by leveling up. One thing that the developers showed a deft touch with was making sure that you don’t have to do a lot of grinding. In fact, they discourage level grinding at the end of the game by making it almost impossible to achieve the number of experience points you need to get past level 37 in any normal playthrough. Beyond that, you improve your attack and defense with bonus points gained from leveling up and by changing or fixing weapons and armor. The game has a really long explanation for this, but the basic point is that you have two ways of improving your equipment: tools and items. Items are generally found in chests and will add “+2 to range” or “+1 to PEnergy,” and you use them like a consumable. Put them on a weapon or armor, and they are gone. Tools can transfer innate traits of a weapon to the other one, but you’ll destroy the gun you’re moving things from in the progress unless you have a rare “Super Tool,” which surprisingly is not illustrated in the game with a picture of Carlos Mencia. While there are a few traits that are really handy (the command x2 and burst effects, especially), most of the transferable traits are pretty useless. Which stinks, because generally speaking, the game doesn’t give you much incentive to consider most of the classes of guns. If you opt to hunt it down, the Rocket Launcher is your boss killer. Otherwise, you’ll likely be using a Rifle for its power and range. Pistols (and shotguns) lack range, grenade launchers don’t add anything, and machine guns that can shoot more than two or three shots at a time are weakened by the fact that standing still that long is liable to get you killed. It’s a system that has a lot of potential in theory, but wasn’t properly balanced.

Playing it through over the past couple of weeks, most of the things that irked me were related to the dimensions of the PS1. The arm gestures, the brightness problems, and especially how annoying it was to try to find the exact spot to trigger a door detection so Aya would open the damn thing. However, if you are just trying this game for the first time, let me advise that you do not go up the Chrysler Building. It’s not that the sidequest isn’t illuminating, or that it doesn’t add anything to the plot, it’s just that it takes way too long to deliver that to you. Going up 70 floors of (essentially) the same floors with only minor cosmetic changes starts to feel less like a challenge and more like a slog after you’ve gone up the first 20 floors. Was it really that hard to throw in the same kind of attention to detail seen throughout the rest of the game? Hidden treasure chests here or there? Maybe a soundtrack that didn’t pop up during the main game? It’s about seven hours of gaming that are completely unneccessary. Enjoy the main game for what it is, don’t bother with the Chrysler Building unless you’re a masochist or the game has seduced you. Since it only pops up when you’re playing the EX game, it shouldn’t be a problem. (Speaking of the EX game, having to restart at level one is also pretty stupid.)

Two of the things that I really appreciate about this game are its brevity and linear nature. Outside of one optional area, there is not much revealed to you as glaringly optional. If you are sharp enough to catch some hidden treasures, that’s about as far as it gets. And if you aren’t focused on those, you can probably tackle the thing in 10-to-12 hours, which is a real breath of fresh air compared to how convoluted and ridiculously long games of this genre have tended to be in the past 15 years.

This is an RPG that defies a lot of conventional norms and does it well. There are obvious flaws, but it’s a fun and enjoyable play for me even nearly 15 years past its release. I give my seal of approval.

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