Rob's Disturbingly Open LJ

Quick life update

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:31:33 GMT

I have been unexpectedly struck with a mild case of Girl Problems. You know, the kind I could easily diagnose and prescribe for if I weren't personally involved. :-/

I took last week off from work, divided into two halves:

1. Trip to Spring City, Tennessee with my parents to see my grandpa, Fred. As I have a very strong natural resistance to guilt trips, and an iPod loaded for bear, I had lots of fun catching up on sleep, sun and quiet; my parents were not so lucky. Fred is doing relatively well, but the house feels rather empty with my grandma gone. TV watching is a central activity; unfortunately, there is no news and fewer TV worth watching.

2. Aggressive relaxation at home, with Matt and I staying out of each other's way as usual - not out of malice or distaste, but simply that our Xboxes are located in separate rooms, and our social circles are more like a Venn diagram. I have read and acquired copies of the Foundation trilogy and Asimov's first two robot novels, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, and Grant Morrison's New X-Men - and I'm 300 pages into Augustine's City of God. I am apparently developing a social life, which is a not unpleasant feeling that manages to surprise me every time.

On Saturday, I also attended a small Magic tournament, with far less preparation than the Street Fighter events in February and correspondingly lackluster results (2-1-2, purely my fault for not going 3-1-1). As before, encounter with the greater hobby has cooled my enthusiasm, to the extent that I declared "I don't own any cards" and gave away everything I won at the event for a non-sanctioned "championship" deck.

This segues nicely into this week's project: Selling off junk on Ebay. I currently plan to dispose of the following items:

Essential Wolverine comic books vols 1-4
Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop, with all the bells and whistles
Big lots of TCG stuff: Magic, Star of the Guardians and Wizkids Pirates
A complete set of Star of the Guardians cards
Strong's Exhaustive Bible Concordance

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 3

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:51:31 GMT

Just wrapped up my breathless tour with kissingdaylight and rainsymphony, plus occasionally my roommate Matt. Some observations:

Like all superhero narratives, Buffy has become a soap opera with vampires. A focus on character development is only natural once the "hook" of introducing the characters and their powers has been played out for a few episodes, and even more natural for a show which is targeted aggressively to teenage girls. (Says the man who, at age 8, read the entire Babysitters Club series in order...)

I like to make fun of Joss Whedon's take on romance, where all kisses are consuming waves of passion and all relationships are doomed to end in fire and blood. However, he does make some cute couples, thanks to strong characters in general, so I don't mind that much. Hopefully with a change of scenery for seasons 4+, there will be fewer conversations revolving around sexual tension. (Hope against hope, really.)

The show has definitely benefited from maturity. They hired a fight choreographer, the sets are more atmospheric and varied, the minor characters are breaking free of Buffy's orbit, and long romantic arcs are better when your couple has something to talk about besides how much they want to get in each other's pants (see: Season 2).

Since I didn't see Season 3 in one unbroken whole, I'm not as confident about predictions, although my batting average was pretty good last time. I am expecting 2-3 occurrences of sex, a shape-shifting villain, a human serial killer, a sudden surge in utility for Xander, a "New Mutants" team of minor characters who have underworld connections but aren't working for Buffy, and the return of Spike as Emma Frost.

I've also been thinking about character parallels between Buffy and X-Men. (I'm sure there are other superhero analogs, but I only really know one team; and since Whedon is clearly thinking of classic Claremont/Byrne X-Men, so will I.)
1. Although Buffy the character definitely draws from Kitty Pryde, in terms of character positioning the Kitty role is actually played by Willow. A computer whiz with steadily growing powers from a low base, she makes the perfect sidekick and subsidiary love interest. She even gets her own Days of Future Past episode in Season 3!
2. Xander is Colossus: attractive but insecure and largely ineffective, never actually managing to get it on with Kitty/Willow.
3. Angel is Wolverine: rugged, dark past, stealthy loner assassin, socially awkward, crush on the female lead, heart of gold, and so forth. The big difference is that Angel actually gets the girl.
4. Giles is Xavier: erudite and cautious father figure with a sharp wit and a tendency to get concussions. If this keeps up, I'd expect Giles to leave for a season, then return and be pleasantly surprised at all the changes Buffy &co. have gone through.
5. Faith is Storm, post-Byrne: brash sex appeal, girl power, high power level, sudden dark side.
6. Wesley is clearly someone in store for character development in following seasons, but he's giving off a strong whiff of Cyclops, post-Byrne - you know, the one who can't decide whether to stare at his shoes or order everyone around.
7. Buffy is Cyclops, extended into a main character rather than merely team leader, and turned into a teenage girl.
(Characters that appear only in one mythos: Cordelia, Nightcrawler, Storm pre-Byrne, Banshee.)
Thoughts?

BlazBlue Calamity Trigger: First Impressions

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:01:44 GMT

I was fully expecting not to purchase this game and go on my merry way. But there was a conflux of events:

Forbidden to watch the rest of Buffy, and possibly scammed out of my Ebay purchase by a guy who has cancelled his account - I'll keep you posted.

The Limited Edition is very compelling - for $0 extra, there are 2 soundtrack discs and a DVD that promises to teach you strategies, combos, etc. And the soundtrack (from Daisuke Ishiwatari) might be worth listening to.

I have a week of vacation coming up, and I wanted to justify all the money I spent on Street Fighter by re-using the hardware.

So I picked up a copy, watched pretty much the entire training DVD, and promptly got my butt kicked by everyone from the computer to online players. (I think I have a horrible 40% win ratio right now, but it didn't help that I jumped online at 1 AM.) Here's what I'm thinking:

This is the Madden to Street Fighter's FIFA. If air dashes and D-pad motions don't come naturally to you, you are going to die, and the game has no sympathy for you whatsoever. Each character has some weird gimmick that makes them unique, interesting, and confusing. You are gonna need that tutorial DVD. Watching the game and seeing the character designs, however, is lots of fun. I had a double entendre here, but it sounded awkward.

On the softer side, Guilty Gear's influence is apparent. Same composer, same cyber-Gothic art direction, same outlandish Japanese fever dream character designs, same intricate and bizarre story mode. If Bridget doesn't creep you out, you will probably like this part of BlazBlue.

There's one thing I'm excited to try out: the Easy Controls mode, where you can just flick the right analog stick to do special or super moves. This is a big deal, since super moves are substantially better in this game than they were in Guilty Gear. It sounds like fun - I'll try it out tonight and let you know.

Also: I seem to have continued my torrid love affair with no-defense zoning characters, despite the fact that they make me SO MAD when they don't have any way to get out of pressure. At least SF4 Bison could run away for 25% meter; my new crush (ν-13) has no real defensive options except "block and throw 'em".

Buffy - Season 2 Impressions

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:32:39 GMT

Having found Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer pleasantly diverting, I picked up a copy of Season 2. It was actually a rather nice surprise. I constantly found myself saying, "I like this concept." or "Awww."

Unlike the first season, I wasn't totally un-spoilered for this one, having read the one-line episode summaries on the back of the box. Big mistake - up to half of each episode is a buildup to the big reveal, and the story is getting increasingly character-driven, so just a few bullet points pretty much ruin the suspense. The commentary tracks are even worse, so I'll have to go back and watch those later, which is a shame.

In terms of structure, the show is now a Space Western (Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, etc), where each episode has a self-contained story and exactly one new plot point for the overall progression. It certainly works for making you want to watch the next episode, though. Joss Whedon tends to take the reins of any episode that has real storyline impact, the season finale always has a shocking cliffhanger, etc.

I'm no longer bothered by Whedon's personal vocabulary - dropping helper words, turning words into nouns, etc. - but I'm still bothered by his tendency for characters to declare they are IN LOVE OMG on the flimsiest of pretexts. Ramping up the emotional content is a cheap trick, even though the intended effect keeps working thanks to the overall level of writing quality. Here's the Buffy relationship translation guide:

Let's go out = I am a big loser and will get eaten by this week's monster
Making out for 15 seconds = Let's go out
I love you = I like you
Dying in your arms = I love you
Let's break up = I hope you get eaten by this week's monster

My predictions for future seasons turned out pretty accurate, except that they did the Fullmetal Alchemist thing and killed off the best minor character after about 25 episodes. And yes, I still got choked up at all the appropriate moments even though I knew it was coming. There are new recurring minor characters, but they all have super powers - I bet that we haven't seen the last of Oz the Teenage Werewolf, Amy the Teenage Witch, or Giles' Old Pal - and it seems like witchcraft is available to normal humans in this mythology, so I'd expect them to be doing a lot more of that in the future. Actually, with the Buffy Feminist Code being what it is, I predict Oz will have some glaring character flaw that explains why he was never there to help in Season 2, Cordelia will rescue Xander in humiliating fashion, and Mom will save the day at least once.

In terms of character development, it's clear that the Buffy team got about 1000 letters to the effect of "I <3 Spike" because he keeps popping up in almost every episode. (The brief portion of episode commentary I watched gives a better explanation: The writers <3 Spike, so now he has his own subplot and supporting cast and everything.) I'm worried about the sidekicks, though (Wikipedia tells me they're called the Scooby Gang). New acquisition Cordelia was a cool idea at first - a team member who joins slowly and reluctantly, and has friends who don't hang out in the library - but as the writers make her more sympathetic, the color leaches out of the character. Now she's pretty much a female version of Xander: snarky, shallow, incompetent, but good at heart. That's a shame, because Buffy desperately needs a character who doesn't do much navel-gazing.

And of course, I now have to watch Season 3. Curses! :-P

Health Care Reform - Quick Thought

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:09:44 GMT

Recent Republican attacks on the administration's various health care plans have taken the form of, "Why revamp health care if 78% of Americans are satisfied with their current coverage? It works fine already!"

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. The problem with health care is not that we don't get enough high-quality health care. The problem is it costs too much, and on its current trajectory will continue to cost too much forever. This causes problems for the government, for employers, and the legions of people who find their insurance didn't actually insure them against medical bankruptcy.

Obama & co. have a bunch of small health care fixes like computerized records, but there are two very rational ways to cut big chunks out of health care spending:

1. Cut administrative costs and insurer-based profits. Medicare is good at this, as is a free market - meaning either a "public option" plan or a removal of employer tax breaks for health care.

2. Pay for effectiveness, not treatments. A wasteful hospital orders up to 2x the treatments and scans of a cheaper one, but doesn't actually perform any better. This is going to mean a substantial pay cut for doctors, whether it comes by rationing or by reworking Medicare payouts. (That, of course, means lower pay all down the line, ending at med schools.) It sounds impossible but it needs to happen.

Star of the Guardians: When Top-Down Design Fails

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:34:26 GMT

(Usual disclaimer: Only gamers need to read these posts. I'm not sneaking a wedding announcement beneath the cut or anything.)

It was Top-Down Design Week over at the Magic official website, about how to design rules around a particular idea. Mark Rosewater, as always, has a great column where he goes through maybe 50 different ideas for the concept "locust swarm" before he finds a good one.

Most of the time, the Star of the Guardians rarity system ensures that rare cards are the best cards. Where a common Black Hole sucks an enemy ship back to their hand, a rare Mutiny will discard the ship. For all the bottom-up designs, this works just fine, and the numbers have clearly been tested heavily.

The top-down designs are the problem. They're the #1 source of junk rares, an entire sub-theme built around Personality cards and the killing thereof. It's exciting to have a Personality in play; they tend to be powerful, expensive people that provide you with resources or card advantage. The better-known a character was in the book, the more amazing their effect. So far, so good.

But in the designers' mission to cut corners on the art budget, they decided to use the cover art from the source novels. It's very good, but you end up with several paintings of sword duels between the same 2-3 main characters. What could this represent?

They could fight each other, but this is an awkward second front that would add lots of unnecessary rules complexity.
They could negate the opponent's special abilities - but that was already taken, conceptually, as a nonviolent struggle, a clingy reporter or a mental battle.
They could attack Personality cards directly, especially the characters portrayed on the card.

Of course, they went for the last option. A Personality card which costs 4-6, generally having an ability like "Look at the opponent's hand" or "Find a weapon card from your deck", now has the following hurdles to cross:

The Mark of Cowardice (cost 3), a permanent object that prevents a Personality from providing resources
Bribery (cost 3), a one-time way to kill a Personality
Assassination (cost 4), a one-time way to kill a Personality and prevent them from ever playing that card again
King Dion Starfire (cost 6), a Personality who instantly kills the other 2 Blood Royal Personality cards
Royal Dispute (cost 4), a one-time way to kill one of the 3 Blood Royal Personality cards
Atheism (cost 4), a one-time way to kill one of the 5 Religious Personality or Artifact cards
Sparafucile (cost 1 + 4 per use), a Personality who kills another Personality every turn
James M. Warden (cost 5), a Personality who can cancel out the effects of another Personality
Social Malaise (cost 4), a permanent object that prevents ALL Personalities from providing resources

You get the picture. There are also a handful of cards whose purpose is to protect your Personalities against these cards, or to allow them to provide 1 extra resource, and they themselves cost 4-5 each.

By the time the dust has settled, you're left with a bunch of cards which are appealing and flavorful on their own, but contribute to an unhealthy format. A similar cloud of possible answers to a handful of questions is what creates the hostile environment for fighters and bombers. This one is more galling, because the answers and the questions are rare; with fighters, the answers are common and the questions are rare.

Quick political note

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:02:28 GMT

I hate to admit it, but Obama is right.

The #1 issue facing America is the national debt - and by extension the federal budget deficit.

The #1 cause of long-term deficit growth is health care spending. It's been outgrowing the economy for years without improving our relative standing, it has an endemic waste problem, and entitlement spending is immune to regular balanced-budget rules.

The #2 cause of long-term deficit growth is the recession. I may not agree with Obama's and Orszag's stimulus strategies, but all sustainable budget projections include a steady rate of growth so that we can keep our tricky position as the biggest debtor and the best currency - so getting back on that track will do more than any of the other initiatives to balance the budget, even if the numbers on paper are horrifying.

Unfortunately, Obama is actually backsliding on causes #3 (defense) and #4 (the environment), so we'll see how his track record holds up.

Buffy: First Impressions

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:47:38 GMT

Thanks to an oversight in FYE's membership club service, I found myself with a $20 gift certificate, and shortly thereafter Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wasn't watching TV at the time, so I missed the original run, and my parents probably wouldn't have let me watch it anyway - but I've heard good things about it from several sources, notably kissingdaylight. As I'm on a bit of a Joss Whedon kick at the moment - snarky dialogue with a side of emasculating heroines, coming right up! - I decided I should give it a whirl.

Nine hours later, the first season under my belt, I am presented with a Whedonified version of Star Trek - our hero and her sidekicks explore new varieties of demons, curses, vampires, etc. on a weekly basis, inevitably accompanied by a parallel problem in the real world, among the 'crew'. The cast stays pretty much static, but I don't think it can stay that way for long. (This is a similar situation to Firefly, where Whedon also put off the brimming sexual tension for a dozen episodes - except Buffy didn't get cancelled.) And because the setting is a Rich White Kids high school in California, the Whedon staple of making sex a constant topic of discussion actually makes sense. Tenth grade is perhaps the MOST appropriate time for everybody to be thinking about hormones, so what comes across as embarrassing in Firefly or comedic in Astonishing X-Men is an expected part of the narrative. Also: Willow, the female sidekick, is adorable. I guess I do have a thing for dorky girls with bad hair.

The season finale disposes of the season's final boss rather unceremoniously, while also introducing some potential complications for season 2 - namely, the secret identity circle expands to include the computer science teacher (who, as the only adult with a functioning social life, is automatically awesome) and Buffy's primary real-life antagonist (the Mean Girls reject). The boss thing I can forgive, because he was underwhelming in the first place, but from long superhero genre experience, Buffy is approaching a critical mass of human sidekicks. Either somebody has to die, which doesn't seem likely, or any future cast members need super powers.

After reading the Wikipedia article (skipping spoilers), it makes sense that the #1 inspiration for Buffy was X-Men's Kitty Pryde. (She's the 13-year-old new recruit who brings a dose of teenage problems like divorce, school, and first crushes to the otherwise outcast, closeted, twentysomething X-Men.) Now I know why the first issue of Astonishing X-Men is basically a love letter to Kitty. Not that I mind, because she's easily one of the best characters: a useful but fair power, real character development, and a genuine courage that the more experienced characters never get to express because they're already amazing. Honestly, though, Buffy lacks that last element. From episode 1, she knows she's the star, and so she acts a little too cocky for me to really empathize with her.

We'll see how it goes.

Al Jazeera is good for something

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:01:50 GMT

Breaking news of a suicide bomber in Tehran. Things have just gotten ugly, folks. (As far as I know, they're the first to run this story.)

The question is, if Iran is Secretly Pulling All the Strings, why would someone send a suicide bomber in against the Ayatollah?

Movie Review - I, Robot

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:32:15 GMT

Initially, I was excited about sci-fi writing giant Asimov's best work - the short story collections beginning with I, Robot - were being adapted into a movie with actual production values. Unfortunately, the movie learns exactly the wrong lessons from the source material, to the point where it says it is "inspired by Isaac Asimov" instead of "based on the book by Isaac Asimov." The script's idea of dramatic tension is Will Smith punching a robot in the face. Overall, it's a textbook example of how a bad screenplay and bad story can ruin a perfectly good movie.

The core problem is the tension between two conflicting storylines: (Spoilers ahoy!)

1. Will Smith, a detective who is racist against robots, tracks down a murder committed by a robot. Nobody believes him - robots are programmed not to harm humans - but it turns out this robot is a unique, sentient being with hopes and dreams who can break the rules, and it was an assisted suicide anyway. And on top of that, Will Smith is actually a cyborg, exactly like Fullmetal Alchemist. In a good movie, this would result in soul-searching, and eventually he would crash through a window and save the good robot from the bad guys. In a bad movie like this one, these plot threads are never really resolved and nobody's character develops in any way, despite the 20 minutes of careful setup.

2. A dead legendary programmer leads Will Smith on a trail of breadcrumbs to discover a sinister conspiracy involving the president of U.S. Robotics, an AI plotting a robo-revolution, and his female sidekick, Dr. Susan Calvin. Things go wrong and the two must fight their way through armies of evil robots, catwalks above bottomless pits, CG car chases, etc. Will Smith is vindicated: robots really ARE out to kill us all, and I was the only one who subscribed to the right conspiracy theory to stop them! Ha ha!

As you may imagine, jump-cuts between these two plot lines creates a bit of dissonance. Robots are evil and I need to stop them! But this robot had a dream about me last night, and it doesn't want to die! Since the script is awful, you can actually distinguish good and evil robots by color codes: red ones are bad, blue ones are good.

In an actual Asimov story, Dr. Susan Calvin would spend 20 minutes talking the evil AI out of its crazy world domination scheme. The good robot would argue that sacrificing human freedom by taking over is actually destroying the very thing that makes them human: their hopes and dreams. Et cetera. But this is a Will Smith movie, and so the solution is to shut the AI down manually while shooting waves of bad robots and high-fiving the good one.

Getting started on life and whatnot

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:51:13 GMT

The #1 missing qualification on my resume to become a game designer is actual game making. The easiest way to get that is to start modding. So that's what I'm gonna do, now that I have a computer powerful enough to run modern games in debug mode.

I just picked up a copy of Bioshock from the store, as a cursory Internet search revealed a couple balance mods, and I have a very simple but effective mod idea. Lo and behold, there IS no editor, and the current balance mods are the rest of an heroic effort changing hundreds of INI files alone. So this may be more difficult than I supposed!

Here's the idea:

Bioshock is an excellent game, with some of the best art direction of any game ever made. The best part, by far, is exploring the place, learning the story and seeing the set pieces, while being in a constant state of tension because bad guys - from generic crazed gunmen to the silent, threatening, morally gray Big Daddy - could lurk around the next corner.

Yet when I recommended it to people who haven't spent years playing first-person shooter games, they just couldn't get past the first level because they were still wrestling with the control scheme. As my dad said, "I liked the game, until a bunch of guys started shooting at me." Even when I was playing, I was often distracted by shiny loot, endless waves of enemies, etc. to really notice the atmospheric details that make everything so memorable.

There are existing balance mods, which mainly focus around making the game more difficult as you progress. This is a fair criticism, but I want to do the opposite. I want to decrease the quantity of enemies, make them more realistic - killed after a couple gunshots to the chest and generally unable to hit you if you're moving - and generally make the game much quieter.

Here are a couple other changes:

Slight balance tweaks - electricity and telekinesis are too good, your wallet doesn't hold enough money, etc. The Big Daddies will be untouched, giving you a reason to stockpile ammunition.

Decreasing walk speed, although the forums indicate this may not be possible; this is a big cause of motion sickness among non-gamers

Cutting out the ludonarrative dissonance by making virtue be its own reward, instead of the game rewarding you for being the "good guy"

So I plan to get started on Bioshock: Exploration (tentative title) tonight. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Show, don't tell

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:54:04 GMT

Bad Sexuality is what happens in Fantastic Four 2, where Jessica Alba - and pretty much every character in the film, really - takes every opportunity to shamelessly show off her physique, to strike an attractive pose, to make a lame double entendre. The constant bombardment of "this is sexy" induces the opposite effect, like when you've read a word too many times and it suddenly becomes just awkwardly arranged letters that don't feel right. The movie comes across as strangely repellent, quite apart from the bad acting, bad script, etc. The only remotely sexy character in the movie is the Silver Surfer, who exudes the charisma of a man who is always in control. The film tells instead of showing, and to our post-modern ears this is an alarm bell.

Good Sexuality is what happens in The Lord of the Rings, where nobody ever talks about the heroes in terms of attractiveness, but the guys are still super attractive. How? They spend practically the entire film being passionate and charismatic, and the other characters operate under the assumption that they are irresistible. When the only single girl in Rohan develops a crush on Aragorn, nobody is surprised, Gimli doesn't elbow him in the ribs, and Legolas doesn't get jealous - the audience is tacitly invited to confirm their reactions (Viggo Mortensen = the hotness) instead of repeatedly told they are true. (See also: Jerry Maguire.)

I was going to talk about Star of the Guardians here, because upon rereading the books, this issue came to mind. I never noticed when I was reading the stuff pre-puberty, or as a puritanical teenager, but MAN is there some hot stuff in there - not explicit, of course, but very assertive writing of the kind that leaves no doubt exactly how mind-blowing that kiss was. The entire book is written in this style - as an opera, everything is Super Dramatic and has Terrible Consequences and Brings Back Memories, and love is a primary driving force of the plot. Instead of being grating, it actually works really well, precisely because the whole thing is on a grand stage acted before God, and everybody knows it. Including the characters.

When you are informed that Bobby had to break up with Susie for some Noble Cause, it's a tragic backstory that can give you a glimpse into why Bobby is so bitter now. When you are told straight out that Bobby feels like Sue is streaking through his life like a comet of blazing ice, which caught him up in its brilliance but left an empty void behind and the afterimage of light in his eyes, and he knew this would happen but he just couldn't get out of the gravity well, it's character development. But here's the key part: If Bobby meets Sue again, and he greets her like an old friend, then it's bad writing. Margaret Weis turns these histrionics into believable characters by actually following through on them: Sue shows up at the door after all these years, and Bobby can barely stand, and he isn't listening to a word she says.

Everyone is larger than life, but that's what you expect from a space opera. When your fiction includes The Starjewel, a gem whose color changes according to the current condition of your immortal soul, you had better get yourself some outsize characters.

Recent M10 Rules Changes

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:31:04 GMT

A few days ago, a "sweeping" set of rules changes to the popular Magic the Gathering card game was announced, to much fan consternation. I follow Magic, although I refuse to spend any significant amount of money on it, so it naturally found my attention

I was going to post a big long rant about how fans are wrong 80% of the time and you should just ignore them (even if they're me), but instead I'll present a contrasting pair of articles. Most of the rules changes are universally acknowledged as good (for example, renaming the end-of-turn step to the end step). One rule has caused a little Internet flame war. Here's a quick explanation:

Card game designer Zvi Mowshowitz has a couple proposed alternative rule changes that attempt to preserve the best parts of both old and new rules. They're quite a mouthful, but a cunning attempt to have it both ways. Replacing a state-based effect - a Game Rule which happens instantly - with a triggered effect - a Game Rule which happens only if nobody has any more cards to play - is awkward.

Casual player and longtime writer The Ferrett has an enormous rant about how complicated Magic is, and how great it is to remove some of that complexity so people like his friend Melissa don't get confused. This is an extremely valid point, even for those of us (like me) who enjoy fiendishly complex, emergent rule systems. The designers do a fine job of making the game more abstruse and complex without the rules.

One excellent point is brought up: Magic cards are already incredibly dorky. This isn't an issue for me, because I'm nerd-tastic by nature: I like fantasy football better than actual football, Abelard better than Hemingway, prog rock better than post-rock. If you are worried that having to say your dragon "enters the battlefield" instead of "comes into play," perhaps you should realize that you missed the exit to Normalville about 50 miles ago.

Star of the Guardians: The good parts

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:18:55 GMT

1. Star of the Guardians is actually fun to draft. The rarity system is a cruel mistress, but she delivers lots of starships, crew and weapons at common. Thanks to the 3 different Home Systems, there are distinct and non-overlapping deck types even in a game without linear mechanics. Best of all, I have some 200 boosters that need drafting. Anyone up for it? I've got a couple, but more is always better. :-)

2. Because you start with one key resource (either Influence, Personality, or a Spaceplane Base), you can afford to include many fewer "lands" (i.e. cards that do nothing but help you play other cards) in your deck. This is one of the reasons I liked Lord of the Rings so much, and it gives me great pleasure to know that practically every card I draw will do something useful.

3. The flavor of the game is surprisingly close to the source material. In most cases, the card representing a famous person or event will conjure up favorable memories of that moment from the novels, as well as being a good card in its own right. Yes, it's all been shoehorned into a space combat game, but within that framework they obviously tried very hard to get everything working properly. (The one notable misstep is King Dion Starfire, whose ability will destroy his beloved mentor and guardian - but I guess you gotta make some hard choices when you're the King.)

Coopting the Network Effect

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:28:42 GMT

A recent Gamasutra blog post by Kim Pallister echoes what I've been saying all week: The most significant video game announcement this year is that Microsoft is bringing Facebook and Twitter to Xbox Live.

Many have tried to bring down Facebook, or to co-opt the next Big Social Network. This isn't going to happen unless your new service reaches a previously unserved market, like Facebook beat Myspace by offering local networks (everybody at my school). The network effect - the more people on your system, the more useful it is to them - naturally lends itself to a single dominant market leader and a bunch of failures and tiny, very specific offshoots.

Microsoft has its own, game-specific social network, Xbox Live, with a bunch of users and very loose friend networks, but no connection to real life. Connecting to Facebook is much smarter than building their own social network, the barrier to entry is lower, and it addresses one of the core weaknesses of the platform: Xbox Live and real life have no points of overlap, short of telling people your user name and hoping they type it in correctly.

It's hard to beat this kind of edge. Think about the common, obvious uses of such a program:
* I wonder what Bob is playing right now. Ooh, I love that game. Maybe I should join him.
* I wonder whether Jane has an Xbox. She does? Let's be friends!
* Someone posted on my Wall. Now I don't need to leave the Xbox to see it.

In a broader sense, it's exciting to see the weeds of 100 user names and passwords being pruned away a little bit. Maybe in the future I can log on to everything with one account!

Star of the Guardians: Winning Combat

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:08:38 GMT

The ships in SOTG have stats on a strict curve: 1 extra resource to cast translates directly into 1 attack + 1 defense, or 1 move point, or 1 support point. Ships can either attack straight across or support diagonally at half strength. Unlike other games with a field limit, you can stack ships behind each other, so your carriers aren't always under fire.

Generally, a ship's offense + 2 = defense. This means that to kill an enemy ship with an equivalent ship, you'll need one of the following:

A weapon card, which will cause you damage if the ship dies
A bomber, which can be intercepted by fighters or other hate cards and must be launched from a carrier and causes you damage if the bomber dies
A damage or tactic card (aka spells), which is one use only
A supporting battleship or gunboat
Two supporting cruisers, one on either side
Two smaller buffs (like crew or artifacts) which may or may not cause you damage if the ship dies

This is an encouraging list of options. Because your opponent will also be stacking +attack effects to get the same effect, maneuvering has a wargame feel: "I want to get straight across, not diagonal." The more durable options are more expensive or risky; there's only one standout, which you can probably guess from the list above.

Bomber squadrons bear the mark of having been nerfed into oblivion, because they are costed "fairly" without adding the cost of the carriers necessary to field them and the fighters to defend them - and the rules create an unintentional slippery slope where successful bombers can land safely if their carrier is shot down, but intercepted ones can't. What do you guys think of these possible solutions?

Carriers now decrease the cost of squadrons played on them
Instead of 1x/2x damage to targets, bombers deal 2x/3x
Squadrons may land on any carrier or planet at any time after squadron combat
Squadrons can attack starting at turn 1 instead of turn 4 like capital ships

Star of the Guardians: First Impressions

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:36:58 GMT

In an effort to get maximum value out of my recent purchase of the (justly?) forgotten Star of the Guardians card game, I'll write down what I'm thinking.

For non-gamer readers: Feel free to skip. There is nothing about my personal life and no funny jokes in these posts.

1. The rules are terrible. They're long, intimidating, and printed on the reverse of the game board so you need to buy 2 copies just to play your first game. Your turn has 14 phases, which I condensed to 7 in about ten minutes. In fact, it reads like the first draft of my rules for Romance, before I did some playtests and figured out the questions people were asking.

2. The art direction is nonexistent. The good artists deliver this great, pulpy sci-fi paperback vibe, which is entirely appropriate for a license based on sci-fi paperbacks. The bad artists bear a suspicious similarity to Austin's mockups for my Romance game, two years ago, as a first-year graphic design student. And unfortunately, the starships got the bad art and the supporting cards got the good art - so the Engine Failure card you look at for 3 seconds has a picture of a starship 10 times better than the starship you look at for 20 minutes.

3. The mechanics are interesting and exciting, but weird. It feels like a naval combat game transplanted directly to space: your ships are awkward and slow, with carriers in the back and cruisers maneuvering for a broadside in the front. Fighters buzz around, avoiding anti-air turrets, etc. You lose points when your ships die, not just when your defensive line breaks as in other games. Crew aren't just cards, they're a whole second resource, so you are constantly shuttling the admiral away from the front lines lest you be unable to play expensive cards.

4. Like Star Trek or other early card games, the power curve for rarity is off. Common cards are not only bad but wholly uninteresting; all the useful cards are uncommon, and anything you might possibly recognize from the source material is rare. This high barrier to entry is a big reason why so many card games fail, and it's subtle. After all, you want your rare cards to be super impressive, right?

(Note: Magic sidestepped this by being relentlessly thematic until designers realized how to share the love. Every single pack of Arabian Nights felt different from the European setting, even if the actual Arabian cards were terrible.)

5. I might do a Rotisserie Draft since I have so many cards. It works this way: Spread out an entire set, and people pick cards in order. Of course, nobody knows the game, so we could be drafting ourselves into a very deep hole!

Person of the Month: Kenny Ortega

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:41:51 GMT

Like my usual featured artists, Kenny Ortega has a very short Wikipedia entry. A choreographer who also dabbles in directing, he is best known to my generation as the man behind Newsies, the first 45 minutes of which we saw about 20 times in junior high. 'Cause, you know, it's the only musical that the boys would shut up and listen to.

The guy has two current gigs:

Choreographing Michael Jackson tours
Directing and choreographing the High School Musical series

I recently watched High School Musical 3, which completely redeems itself from the execrable 2nd installment. The plot is saccharine, the songs actually made me get off the sofa and sing along, the choreography is inventive and fun as usual, and the characters are all very pretty. Unfortunately, it betrays their theater roots: the final act of the trilogy is too long, too meta, and too devoid of any tension because it's already been established that our heroes are perfect in every way. (By minute 5, Zac Efron has a basketball scholarship, a date to the prom, and the lead role in the class musical entitled "Senior Year".) With all the repeat endings, mug shots from minor characters #5-12, and navel-gazing climactic musical numbers that would work on stage but not on screen. This is the kind of stuff people criticized Return of the King for, and that was a 10+ hour, billion-dollar epic; this is a bunch of made-for-TV movies with Kenny Ortega adding spice to make it watchable.

Calling card game fans

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:48:31 GMT

I recently acquired a case of Star of the Guardians cards for $12 plus shipping. (A case contains 10 boxes of 36 packs of 13 cards each, so 4680 cards.) This game has been out of print since 1994, and it has virtually disappeared from the Internet, except of course for the guy selling it at rock-bottom prices. (For comparison, a case of Magic cards would cost $800.)

So I plan to get people together, learn to play, and do a Decadent Draft. Each player starts with a fresh pack of cards to open, takes one, and passes it on to the next player. If 2 people in a row don't want any cards from a pack, throw the rest into a big pile in the middle and open a new pack. Continue until you have 20-25 cards, then pad out your deck to 40 with System cards from the big pile and start playing.

Anybody up for learning a new game and cracking upwards of 2 booster boxes while we do it? Let me know.

Mary Sue and personal vision

Fri, 29 May 2009 22:21:56 GMT

Among fan fiction enthusiasts (already a shadowed corner of geekdom), the most pernicious and mocked of subgenres is the Mary Sue. A "Mary Sue" or "self-insert" character is an author's pet, either an author surrogate character or simply a new, spotlight-stealing character with a Tragic Past and Amazing Skills. (Think Wesley Crusher on Star Trek.)

But done properly, the Mary Sue trap can be avoided, and what you end up with is an author's personal fantasy that you actually enjoy stepping into.

In books, the best example is Margaret Weis' Star of the Guardians series. A cursory glance though the character name etymology confirms that minor characters are named after Weis' friends, the stunningly beautiful female lead shares her name and her love of chicken sandwiches, and the entire space opera quadrilogy is studded with references to her favorite books, music, and Greco-Roman myths. (There are dozens of Milton quotes alone.) But it's also the best work Weis has ever done, and by the end the reader is actually rooting for the heroine to rekindle her romance with the tragic anti-hero. The reason? Weis is actually a good enough author to weave the Mary Sue requirements into the plot. When she explains the supernatural powers our heroine gets from the "royal blood" nanomachines, the reader can cry foul - but 100 pages later, when the villain reveals he's got a better version and was just stringing her along, the stereotype is broken and the character trait becomes exciting.

In games, the Guilty Gear series of fighting games is drawn from the personal mythology of Ishiwatari Daisuke, a programmer who made a pitch so good they basically let him run the entire thing. He did character design, art, music, programming, and even the voice of the main character (the brooding, tragic Sol Badguy). Here he is protected from the Mary Sue curse not by the quality of the writing/design, but the fragmentary narrative of fighting games. Even if you find Sol's untold power and dark secrets lame, just pick up the storyline of the other 19 characters and go on your merry way. This guy brought his childhood dream to fruition, like a heavy metal J.R.R. Tolkien, and it's a joy to see what he imagined.

Heroes returns!

Thu, 28 May 2009 22:26:04 GMT

I'm getting back into the Heroes TV series lately, thanks to a coupon deal getting me Season 2 on DVD for $10. I have since moved on to watching Season 3 online, and just suffering through the bad resolution as I hit the 'fullscreen' button on my 24" monitor.

Long-time readers may recall that I wrote a short novel (abbreviated "TI") in high school with the same premise and many of the same ideas as Heroes. It was terrible, but the concept was cool enough that people liked it. I've since been revising the backstory piecemeal, to the point where I could probably rewrite a much better and more realistic version. Lo and behold, someone else had this idea, and it is very clear Tim Kring and co. were drawing from the same basic well of inspiration: X-Men. (The comics, not necessarily the animated TV series or movies.)

The one power they seem to have missed from the X-Men lineup is energy absorption (Robert Shaw / Bishop), which makes for some really creative fight scenes. Right now it's just a lot of pistols pointed at heads and flying away from trouble.

In fact, it seems like every few episodes they crib another X-Men idea, even if they already HAD a new version of that idea. (Matt Parkman, who originally has the very interesting power of mind reading, eventually develops into a garden-variety psychic with a laundry list of mental abilities.) Fortunately, they share an interest with me in thinking critically about what someone would REALLY do with a given power. Lots of people use powers for personal gain; the psychics are overweight and socially awkward; the regenerators take every opportunity to jump on a grenade, although they still have weaknesses; the vortex guy is immediately killed because his ability is too good; and people with useless powers try to forget they exist.

Unfortunately, the series also takes some of the worse elements from Chris Claremont et al:

Complicated family trees chock full of evil mutants (OMG he's your father too?) The Summers family tree in X-Men is just as bad, but Heroes copies and pastes the formula for pretty much every character.

Losing and regaining powers on a regular basis. Pretty much every plot line relies on it, which gets really old. I will, however, make an exception for the season 3 version of Peter's power absorption that gives him interesting options.

Giving out new powers whenever somebody's plot line gets boring. Heroes has a whopping 4 power absorbers, and 4 other characters who gain powers past their first appearance. When Noah Bennet develops powers, you'll know Heroes has jumped the shark. I'm calling that right now.

Relationships begin at first sight and stop at marriage. All the single characters are extremely available, like Captain Kirk on Star Trek, while all the married ones are teetering on the edge of divorce. This feeds #1: divorce and adoption are the fastest ways to tangle up someone's family tree.

Letting one Cool Mechanic lead to lazy storytelling. For Heroes, this is precognition / time travel. The first time someone sees the future and uses it to drive the plot, it's exciting. The sixth time someone travels forward in time to see a Doomsday Scenario we Must Prevent, it's lame and predictable. For X-Men, this is science fiction. The Shi'ar Empire is cool as an alternate set for Act 4 of the play. Having an alien warship appear above Earth threatening Global Extermination whenever our heroes make a mistake is bad writing.

On evangelical wackos

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:40:29 GMT

This blogger's devastatingly accurate (if nasty) destruction of Left Behind has got me thinking. (For those of you who don't remember, the popular Left Behind book series features the Rapture, the Antichrist, and following events from the perspective of a guerrilla Christian resistance group left behind on Earth.)

The blogger's main critique is that the book posits that all the True Christians and all the children will be whisked away by God, so that they won't have to suffer in the coming apocalypse, but that life continues pretty much as normal after that. In reality, people would be devastated, the world would be in smoldering ruins, and life would be forever changed. This befits the sudden disappearance of 30% of the world's population, the family members of about 99%. In the book, it's much like the attacks of September 11th - everybody is sad, but they still show up for work September 12th.

I am forced to conclude, not as Slacktivist does that this makes authors LaHaye and Jenkins horrible people who have no idea how to respond to tragedy, but that they didn't actually mean all the children would be saved. They just meant the evangelical children. On the one hand, this invalidates the major plot thread where everyone wonders how this tragedy could have happened - and of course requires some theological backpedaling from the authors' already nonsensical interpretation of Scripture - but it makes a lot more sense for the plot.

But, of course, no airport potboiler would be complete without a romantic subplot, which Slacktivist likens to the "courtship" rituals at places like Pensacola Christian College. Magically, as soon as anyone converts to Christianity in the book, they start following all these rules. This is actually MORE scary than their callous disregard for human life, because it directly translates into crippling social awkwardness and stunted relationships today. Remember, kids, Christian rock is of the devil! And not just because you can learn to play the guitar parts in about 3 hours.

While the Slacktivist and I don't agree on everything, he does a great job of making clear that Christianity is not a religion of "So long, suckers! Have fun in Hell!", nor does Left Behind "literally" interpret the book of Revelation in any way. Caring for the widows and the orphans? Turning the other cheek? The Golden Rule? They take a back seat to the exciting adventures of our intrepid heroes as they are railroaded through the plot.

Tue, 26 May 2009 15:55:55 GMT

Gamasutra's recent interview with Tim Sweeney of Epic MegaGames gives an insider perspective to the Shareware Years of PC games that shaped my childhood. It would have blown my mind if I'd known that the quirky indie shareware games whose demos I downloaded from Compuserve had been made by a couple of college students, and the ubiquitous Epic Pinball was hand-coded in assembly and drawn by one man. I remember being very sad when I heard that the company was going to stop making games I liked and start leapfrogging the technology curve with Unreal and later Gears of War, but I can't fault them now because it turned out to be way more profitable. Rampant Coyote has his own take, where he provides the needed perspective that the "shareware age" was actually populated by lots of innovative and wonderful retail games as well. The real reason people look at that time fondly is that the curves of technological progress and development cost had intersected at the point where a single dedicated programmer could make something good-looking, sell it for cheap, and make a living.

Movie Reviews: Star Trek and Wolverine

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:44:06 GMT

I saw the new Star Trek movie last weekend with the New Hope crowd, and was pleasantly surprised. You should go see it. Fun, watchable, exciting, and properly paced, this is the Batman Begins of Star Trek. It deserves to win the Oscar for Best Sound Design. Unfortunately, it has enough plot holes to drive the Starship Enterprise through.

The entire Future Romulan design aesthetic is silly, out of place, and nonsensical. Their starship is studded with enormous non-functional spikes, all the crew members are bald and tattooed, the captain carries a spear like a scepter, and all the rooms are claustrophobic and dimly lit for such a vast structure. The Borg Cube had better interior design. It's like H.R. Giger's design from Alien but oh so much worse.

The villain is catapulted back through time over 100 years. He spends the next 25 years waiting around until Spock arrives, then sets his Dastardly Plan in motion, so that the future Romulan Empire will rise to power instead of the Federation. Didn't it occur to him that he could have used his invulnerable future starship to wipe out the Federation before then?

Midway through the movie, Kirk is marooned on an ice planet, where he runs from a giant four-jawed monster straight out of a Capcom video game, bumps into Future Spock who was marooned by the bad guys in the same exact location, and they both make their way to the lone Federation outpost, manned by Scotty and his comic relief sidekick. Leaving out the impossible size of Vulcan on the horizon, the likelihood of both parties putting their malcontents ashore in the same spot instead of using the ship's brig is pretty much zero. Also, wouldn't an ice monster be attracted to fire?

The villain makes a black hole in the center of a planet to destroy it. A black hole that size would be quite happy to do the work if it were, say, right next to the planet. No need for a lightly defended mining laser lowered into the atmosphere.

Shortly following the destruction of Vulcan, Uhura gives him a big wet kiss in the elevator and confesses her true feelings. She then proceeds to feel hurt when he turns her down. Doesn't the death of your mother and entire race automatically make it a bad time to make out?

The previous weekend, I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine with kissingdaylight. This movie is worth paying $4 to watch, at a second-run theatre, but is not worth anywhere near $10. Here are the pluses and minuses of this movie:
+ Hugh Jackman is a hunk.
+ Gambit is awesome. (And I dislike Gambit.)
+ There are some cool action scenes.
+ The opening credits montage is exciting, dynamic and useful to the plot.
+ After the end credits, Wolverine speaks one line of Japanese dialogue.
- The plot is atrocious. It reads like the Wolverine comic books, which is to say, trash.
- There are some lame action scenes. Really, the entire last half of the movie is one long, poorly thought-out action scene.
- For a movie entitled "Origins," very little of Wolverine's origin is made clear. Why is he named Logan? It's a big mystery, apparently!
- Only a die-hard comic fan will find the endless super hero cameos entertaining. And for fans, every detail they change to fit the awful plot makes you dislike it more.
- The following lines are uttered: "He'll heal from these adamantium bullets. But his memories won't grow back." That should tell you all you need to know.

Musical Roundup

Thu, 07 May 2009 19:05:42 GMT

I've been on a bit of an album-buying binge as I approach the end of my year-long "Best of Everything" project, wherein I listened to every album I owned or could borrow from my parents in alphabetical order. So here's what I have, and how good it is:

1. Yes - Highlights: The Very Best Of
Verdict: C- (worth $1-3 on iTunes)
Explanation: I'd heard that Yes was a progressive rock juggernaut, its nine-minute instrumentals crushing lesser acts under the weight of sheer genius. Like Pink Floyd with fewer sound samples. What I found was a meandering, incoherent band prone to overuse of effects switches and obtuse lyrics. Their catalog is like every musician's box of ideas that looked good on paper but didn't work in practice, like ending a song on 5 consecutive key changes downward. The disc is chronological, so on track 10, when "Owner of a Lonely Heart" kicks in, I felt like Dorothy stepping into Oz and finding that color existed. Suddenly, a much better 80s rock band replaces these progressive noodlers; unfortunately, it's only 3 tracks long and then the CD is over. If you ever wondered who all those people on the credits are besides the band, wonder no more: they can turn Yes into a catchy, energetic band.

2. The Ink Spots - Greatest Hits
Verdict: C (worth $3-5 on iTunes)
Explanation: The Ink Spots are in vogue for video game audio these days, backing up post-apocalyptic narratives from Bioshock to Fallout. They also serve up the original "Java Jive," the trademark song of the Blue Notes group I ran. Little did I know that the songs I'd heard over the in-game radio were EXACTLY like the entire rest of the album, and the best ones to boot. 15 tracks, and 14 of them contain a plaintive counter-tenor repeating the verse and chorus twice, then a spoken-word repetition by the low bass, then a closing chorus. The other one is "Java Jive," which sadly is more suited to covers than reverence of the original. If you haven't played any games with a 50s aesthetic, there are some great songs on here - "Maybe" and "I Don't Want to Set the World Afire" for instance are sweet ballads with a great lyrical twist. But if you have, rest assured their back catalog has successfully been mined for gold nuggets and you don't have to look further.

3. Metallica - The Black Album
Verdict: C (worth $3-5 on iTunes)
Explanation: Playing Guitar Hero: Metallica I noticed that several of the cooler songs - "Enter Sandman," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters" - were from this album. A less harsh sound, lyrics departing from the usual dark-fantasy fare, songs with a narrative structure and anticipation; I was excited. Unfortunately, these tracks are padded with 3 songs each of boring, generic thrashing with some fun guitar riffs and no much else. This is the perfect album for my old "Best of the Worst" series because the deviation in quality between high and low points is so drastically apparent.

4. The Cars - The Cars
Verdict: B- (worth $5 on iTunes)
Explanation: The band, with devastating frankness, refers to this as "their real greatest hits album." And although only a couple songs on this record are low points, there are clearly some spikes that will get you the best of the band without sabotaging the overall experience. "My Best Friend's Girl," "Moving in Stereo," "Bye Bye Love," and "Just What I Needed" are still excellent after all these years, while "Good Times Roll" is a decent intro that cries out for a modern cover. Frankly, the rest of the album can cheerfully be skipped, which is why I have to give a B-; this is not an indicator of their quality, because the hits on this album really groove. They put the whole album on Rock Band for a reason.

5. U2 - The Joshua Tree
Verdict: B- (worth $5 on iTunes)
Explanation: The hagiographic review in the liner notes of this 15th anniversary re-release notes that the first 3 songs are all overplayed radio hits, but the heart of the album is in tracks 4 and 5 which allow U2 to stretch their muscles a little bit towards the harsher and softer ends of their range. This is true. In fact, I would advise the listener to switch off the CD after track 5, then close their eyes and imagine how wonderful the rest of this 'classic' U2 album sounds. It'll be better than the remaining tracks, which explore Bono's inchoate themes without any of the intelligent hooks or driving passion that pervades the first half of the album. They sound like Kansas, spinning their wheels on the same themes they just did better in the opening tracks. For a fan, this is excusable; I am a huge Kansas fan and have grown to love even the forgettable tracks of their greatest albums. For those of us who weren't listening to pop music as teenagers, though, it may not be possible to recreate the magic.

6. Rush - Moving Pictures
Verdict: B
It feels bad to give a B to an album with so many good songs, and one that flows together nicely as well. Unfortunately, the central 10-minute track is underwhelming, and to lose 1/7 songs to something that doesn't meet the very high bar set by "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight" is harsh. Rush doesn't quite overstay their welcome, and this is a must-have for fans, but I'd advise leaping into the Greatest Hits waters with these guys first. To be fair, this album really shines in Rock Band, where playing along with the bass solos and the twisty lyrics lets you appreciate their musicianship without having to actually sit down and listen to the whole thing.

7. The Scorpions - 20th Century Masters
Verdict: B+
Explanation: The first time I listened to this album, which is roughly chronological aside from putting "Rock You Like a Hurricane" first, I was not impressed. I thought I was listening to a slow degradation of one awesome hard rock track into a bunch of pop sellouts. But the more I played it, the more they grew on me. Now, I have to say they're positively catchy, with a surprise standout you've never heard of in "The Zoo". I suspect that these guys have snuck their way onto my playlist for good.

8. Metallica - Master of Puppets
Verdict: A
Explanation: If you were wondering why people could like Metallica, this 1984 album is it. They are relentless, shameless and they drive their riffs straight into your brain. This is not a collection of standalone hits like Boston, it's a coherent album where even the boring tracks fit well into the whole by giving you a breather in between insane guitar solos. I used to mock the guy with a Master of Puppets tour T-shirt in high school, confident that my arena rock was more awesome than his well-known band of sellouts. Little did I know that he had the jump on me, correctly identifying the diamond in the rough. The atmosphere of thudding menace this album generates is a rush, making it well suited to driving very fast. The last song is a disappointment, but the first 7 are good enough to make up for it.

9. Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place
Verdict: A
Explanation: This instrumental rock outfit tugs at the ol' heartstrings, as long as you'll give it an hour of your time in a quiet place. Background music never sounded so good. These guys have taken the Arvo Pärt mentality of layering single notes across an expansive timeframe to create a grand texture, and substituted electric guitars for vocals in a way that still sounds good. The only downside is that the album really only shines as a whole, as is typical of the classical music from which they draw their strength. I'd been wondering about these guys since my introduction to the IndieFeed podcast years ago, and now I know what all the hype is about. It's not A+ material, because you can easily get burnt out by listening to it multiple times over, but definitely worth a purchase.

10. Rush - Gold
Verdict: A
Rush is the rock band for music dorks. There's plenty of interesting stuff going on in every song, no instrument goes unloved, and the lyrics are humorously libertarian. They're not afraid to power out long instrumentals and radio-friendly A-A-B-A setups side by side, and the sheer breadth of this 2-disc set means there'll be something for many different occasions. The more embarrassing moments in the band's history - like their first album where they were a bad version of Led Zeppelin, or their last albums where the inventive songwriting dries up - are tucked in between the golden moments of the band's career, and you'll be surprised to find yourself rapidly getting in the Rush groove where you can appreciate what they were trying to convey. Yes, the vocals are yowling, and the solos are self-indulgent to rival a jazz artist, but it's hard to argue against their appeal. The A is the combination of an A+ in value (Costco sells this 30-song collection for $13) and a B+ in quality.