Wasting the same amount of time, but less efficiently

When it comes to things that are shit, not having the internet is one of them. Not having the internet for 2 weeks in 2009 is the equivalent of sleeping from 1942-1964, accounting for inflation and all that.

In case you also have not had the internet for 2 weeks I would like to share some things I missed:

-Han Solo, PI memed all over the place.

-Penny-Arcade did a thing. My vote goes to Lookouts. I would confidently bet my life savings that Rook has already started a letter writing campaign to ensure Automata is selected.

-Little Wheel was released with a sort of polite golf clap from the indie community.

-Magic: the Gathering was ruined.

-E3 blew its load on every gaming site and nobody cared.

To juxtapose, here are the things that I did instead of the internet:

-Played InFamous

-Played Sacred 2

-Played Red Faction: Guerilla

-Finally got 100% wins in 100 games of free cell.

-Drew a funny picture.

My funny picture

Of all the things listed I would most like to talk about InFamous. Well, I would most like to talk about my awesome FreeCell record but let’s go with InFamous. I will begin by describing it as a bastard child birthed from an orgy involving GTA, Crackdown, and Star Wars: the Force Unleashed. You play a dude with super powers of an electrical nature, able to shoot lightning, make lightning grenades, heal people with lightning, lightning surf, and make shields out of lightning. When you are not doing these things you crackle…sort of like lightning.

More like In-lightning-Famous mirite?

Aside from lightning, one of the neat things is that the city has a feeling of feeling of being alive and not just become people the citizens and bad guys driving and walking around. The game opens with a bomb going off (A lightning bomb) and it turns out you are the bike courier that has unwittingly delivered this bomb. Anyway, when it goes off you get powers and half the people in the city die. It’s apocalyptic destruction on albeit on an island scale and as you play through the game your choice of actions, including how carefree you are with your powers, not only do you change, with your appearance leaning towards a light or dark side reminiscent of the Knights of the Old Republic, but the city itself either gets worse or becomes rejuvenated.

I tried to get a screenshot of lightning but IT'S SO FAST!

So you run around the city leaping from rooftop to rooftop shooting people with your powers and it is good. The short of it is that it has a good story with some big twists, plenty to do, strong controls even with the number of powers available, and stellar visuals. Standing crouched atop a building looking out over your city you can’t help but feel like you’re having a Batman moment. Also, the cut scene are done up like a comic book which adds to the whole superhero thing. So if you have the chance to play the PS3 exclusive I say go for it, and play it evil. I normally play karma games light side but in this case the powers are more enjoyable and the gameplay smoother if you’re not worrying about hitting the civilians your targets are holding hostage. Plus, dark side get's force lightning

Until next time, if you kill someone by accident consider doing it again.
-King

Been through the desert on a bus with no name

Penny Arcade's yearly toy fundraiser, Child's Play, is purring along for the sixth time. Founded in 2003 by web-comickers Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik as a means of rebutting negative media portrayals of gamers. Since then, over 4 million dollars worth of games, books and toys have been donated to children's hospitals around the world, a remarkable feat of media mobilization and charity. As a symbolic act, it succeeds as a modest claim: that gamers are decent human beings, no better or worse than most. Attention must be paid.

A reassuring proof that we aren't psychotics.

This year, a good bit of attention has been given to a sister-project: Desert Bus for Hope. Organized by LoadingReadyRun, a comedy troupe in Vancouver, B.C., Desert Bus is a curious sort of virtual marathon, raising money to devote to Child's Play. In this instance collected donations relate not to miles ran, but hours spent playing video games. While that might sound like a fun arrangement, the game in question is anything but.

Bundled in the never-released Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, Desert Bus is one of several parody games. While the others are used to prank your friends by setting up Penn and Teller style magic tricks, Desert Bus was something else: a "simulation" of the most fastidious sort. The object of the game is to drive from Tuscon, Arizona to Las Vegas, a feat that takes 8 hours of real-time play to achieve. The road is empty but for you, and the bus veers slightly right, requiring constant correction. It cannot be paused. Should you veer of the road, you are towed back to the start, also in real-time. If you make it to your destination, you are awarded one point.

Then you turn around, and begin the drive back.

Desert Bus: Putting the "sissy" in "Sisyphus"

Penn Jillette has described "Desert Bus" as the "world's most boring video game", but that isn't quite right. It can better be described as a non-game, an exercise in tedium that serves to make a point in being not played. Where other non-games like You Have to Burn the Rope comically condense everything exciting about platform gaming into 30 seconds of play, Desert Bus pushes in the opposite direction, insisting that you play ad infinitum despite there being no rational reason to do so. Just as Warhol's Sleep is only a film insofar as the artist insists that it is, Desert Bus works as a game only by pretense.

So to actually play Desert Bus - in fact, to play it for days on end, spelling off in shifts, staring at the screen as trips are made to and fro through a digital purgatory - becomes a feat in itself. In drawing attention to their playing of an unplayable game, they have produced precisely the thing that Desert Bus avoids: the significance of event. And in playing on the idea of gamers as listless and inert, devoted to doing nothing for hours on end, they've managed to produce something impressive: a chance to do real, tangible good, precisely by doing nothing for hours on end.

This is the Stone Soup method of charity, where from nothing (in this case, the barren virtual landscape of the desert), a small something is scraped together. Gamers of all types understand the humour in endorsing other gamers to sit around and do nothing, and have given generously, if only to be a part of the event as well. And so it's here that an oddball game like Desert Bus has found its home, not as play but as performance.

- Rook