The Ringer: All Posts by Matt James2022-08-01T06:30:00-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/matt-james/rss2022-08-01T06:30:00-04:002022-08-01T06:30:00-04:00The Calming Catharsis of ‘PowerWash Simulator’
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<p>Exquisitely soothing aesthetics, a gentle learning curve, and deceptive depth make a game about cleaning off objects one of the best titles of 2022</p> <p id="qQt7f6">I’ve just spent more than two hours cleaning every nook and cranny of a filthy, rusted Ferris wheel, and I feel incredible. The newly immaculate carnival ride is now absolutely sparkling in the sun: All 32 massive support beams are glistening and spotless, as are all 180 lightbulbs, as well as the 119 vertical slats of the fence surrounding the structure. I cleaned all of these individual elements and many more, my ears blanketed by the soothing white noise of gallons upon gallons of water pinging off various surfaces at high speeds. Of course, I didn’t actually clean anything in real life. That wouldn’t be fun at all. I cleaned this Ferris wheel in <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, a video game by British developer FuturLab. </p>
<p id="VHLk1x">Released in mid-July on Xbox platforms (Xbox One, Series S/X, and Game Pass) after more than a year in early access on Steam, <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> is the latest entry in the burgeoning genre of “simulator” games that allow players to take part in a virtual recreation of some seemingly mundane activity. <em>Road Maintenance Simulator</em>, <em>Bus Simulator</em>, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/16/22580134/lawn-mowing-simulator-video-game-alternate-titles"><em>Lawn Mowing Simulator</em></a>, <em>Farming Simulator</em>, and many more have been released in the past few years. There’s no single developer or publisher pumping out these “simulators,” so the quality and feel of the games vary. None of them, however, has come close to generating the tremendous buzz that <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> has spurred within the gaming community.</p>
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<p id="mMZtVY">Earlier this week, when I told a few <em>Call of Duty: Warzone</em> stans that my favorite first-person shooter of the year is <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, they laughed heartily. Then one of them asked, “What do you do in that game? You just … wash things?”</p>
<p id="hj208S">Hell, yeah. You just wash things. There’s no health bar, there’s no time limit, and you have unlimited water. Things are dirty, so you wash them. In execution, though, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You can choose from multiple power washers, which come with a handful of nozzles and distance extenders and a bevy of soaps suited for various surface types. You might be surprised to learn that for a game in which you “just wash things,” every single button on the Xbox controller is utilized, including different functions mapped to all four directions of the D-pad. If you were to look at only the controller while someone is playing <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, you might assume that you were watching them operate a more traditional first-person shooter.</p>
<p id="IxPKYc">You’re constantly changing nozzles as you balance your spray power and stream spread, periodically rotating the nozzle 90 degrees as you deftly trace around surfaces. You’re going to need to crouch or even go prone to hit the bottom of the monster truck with the soap specifically designed for metal surfaces. Just don’t forget to cycle back to your distance extender before you try to hit the roof with enough power to remove dirt in one pass but enough spread to keep the process from feeling tedious. If you really get deep into the mechanics, <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> can be as engrossing as any other first-person shooter without ever asking you to shoot at anyone (aside from the garden gnomes sprinkled throughout the game). As preposterous as this may sound, an enjoyable story also slowly emerges throughout <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> but the less you know about that in advance, the better. Although it might seem like the charm of digital power washing would wear off quickly, the game is captivating for the full <a href="https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=92511">25 hours</a> or so it takes to finish the story. My partner and I have probably put almost 40 hours into it, if not more.</p>
<p id="06QxLd">Somewhat surprisingly, I’m not the only person staying up past 3 in the morning as my avatar lies prone on the floor of a bathroom, attempting to clean a urinal. <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/PowerWash%20Simulator">Approximately 44,000 people</a> are following <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> on Twitch, and during the peak power washing period on Steam, more than 10,000 people were playing concurrently, with nearly 90,000 watching on Twitch. According to estimates on <a href="https://steamdb.info/app/1290000/graphs/">SteamDB</a>, a million or more people may have bought the budget-priced game on that platform, and almost 98 percent of the user reviews are positive. Not only are people from all over the world playing <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, but a ton of people are watching other people play <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>. You may ask yourself, “So they’re just watching other people wash things? They’re not even washing things themselves?” Yeah, they’re just watching people wash things. </p>
<p id="z1hI4n">While most video games are very active, high-energy experiences, <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> is exquisitely calming. There is no music in the game until you roll credits, so it’s quiet in a way that makes playing it feel similar to watching low-stakes golf on TV. You’ll sometimes hear a gentle wind or a distant bird call, but if there are other things happening in this world, they are far, far away. It’s just you and your power washer out there completely removed from time, with no one else in sight. You can play this game while listening to a podcast, or while fully engaging in a conversation with someone. It can be a bit of a fidget spinner if you want it to be—just something to do with your hands while your mind is elsewhere. Or you can play it with intense focus, putting effort into discovering more efficient ways to clean different shapes and surfaces. </p>
<p id="rqWiac">The complete lack of any urgency in this game makes it a fantastic training tool for anyone who’s ever been intimidated by the modern first-person control scheme of moving your character with the controller’s left stick while looking around with the right stick. If you know someone who has tried to play <em>Halo</em>, only to end up being repeatedly killed while spinning in circles looking up at the ceiling, this is the game for them. There is no way to fail in <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>. Even if you’re slow, in career mode the game will never confront you with a “clear time” for a level. By removing the prospect of failure or judgment, the game invites novices to learn the controls at their own pace and develop the skill and confidence to play an entire world of games that had previously felt out of reach.</p>
<p id="pJ7Wjr">Prior to playing <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, my year of gaming had been headlined by a couple of brutally difficult games. I finished both <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/3/3/22958621/elden-ring-fromsoftware-dark-souls-open-world"><em>Elden Ring</em></a> and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/2/18/22939801/sifu-playstation-sloclap-difficult-kung-fu-brawler"><em>Sifu</em></a>, two games in which failure is not only expected, but central to the experience. These games destroy you and force you to either adapt your approach or give up in a <a href="https://youtu.be/2xjhD86zzXM">violent whirlwind of frustration</a>. In the past, I tended to avoid extremely difficult games in the same way that I avoid the hottest of hot chicken. Ultimately, I still want to enjoy what I’m doing. But <em>Elden Ring</em> and <em>Sifu</em> were phenomenal games that teach a valuable lesson of perseverance—that we’re defined by our successes, not our failures. The pathway to that lesson, of course, is bombarding the player with so much failure that one can’t help but come away somewhat immunized to it. <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, which I can also easily call one of my favorite games of the year, opts to remove failure completely, and delivers a vastly different yet equally powerful gaming experience.</p>
<p id="Z6eqOW">No matter the length or difficulty of your gaming résumé, <em>PowerWash Simulator</em> can be cathartic and soothing, cleansing in more ways than one. Real life can slowly but inexorably become chaotic and entropic. Objects or relationships that we once treasured can get so degraded that we don’t even remember what they used to be like. Maybe the cushioning on your good headphones is falling apart, or your bond with your cousin isn’t what it once was, or you’ve lost confidence in the dependability of your once trustworthy car. This game obviously can’t fix those things. But whatever is put in front of you in <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>, there is never any doubt: You can fix it. You can fix it your way and at your pace, and when you’re done, it’s brand new again. And for a little while, at least, you can forget about everything that you can’t fix. You can give your brain time to totally disconnect from worry and consequence.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="IxNHie">So really, you don’t “just wash things” in <em>PowerWash Simulator</em>. You defy time and age, and you make everything around you better. You tell all the ugliness to fuck right off, and you make things beautiful, the way they’re supposed to be, one lightbulb or fence slat at a time. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/video-games/2022/8/1/23286447/powerwash-simulator-first-person-shooter-steam-xboxMatt James2021-02-24T06:40:00-05:002021-02-24T06:40:00-05:00Why Tails Became the Ultimate Sidekick—and Star of Some of the Strangest Fanfic Around
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<p>The orange (or is it brown?) fox was created to play Luigi to Sonic the Hedgehog’s Mario. But as his run through our bracket has shown, he’s got a strong identity of his own, even if Sega doesn’t understand that.</p> <p id="jZD8I4"><em>This week on </em>The Ringer<em>, we’re hosting the Best Video Game Character Bracket—an expansive competition between the greatest heroes, sidekicks, and villains of the gaming world. And along with delving into some of those iconic figures, we’ll also explore and celebrate the gaming industry as a whole. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/22/22295088/welcome-to-video-game-week"><em>Video Game Week</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p id="b8quuK">If you had an older sibling when the <em>Sonic the Hedgehog 2</em> cartridge hit your Sega Genesis, you never played as Sonic. You played as Miles “Tails” Prower, Sonic’s brand-new sidekick. As Player 1 sped Sonic through glorious 16-bit landscapes, Player 2 could jump around and grab rings as a plucky two-tailed fox. Tails was a clear second fiddle. He existed solely to aid Sonic’s progress. Tails couldn’t even “die” on his own. The camera followed only Sonic. Whenever Sonic left Tails behind, you had to wait until the game flew Tails back into frame to continue controlling him. He was inserted into the game just to keep younger siblings like me from futilely whining that it was “my turn” to play. And it worked. Shockingly, in my potentially inaccurate recollection, I never whined, because I was able to hop into the game at any moment and play the role of sidekick. I celebrated our shared slot-machine luck in Casino Night Zone while shouldering none of the responsibility for inexcusably early demises in Emerald Hill Zone. It was a familiar, if not comfortable, dynamic for younger siblings everywhere.</p>
<p id="O0RZDd">Sega created Sonic as an answer to Nintendo’s Mario. And although Sonic is known for collecting rings, his primary mission was to sell Genesis consoles. To the surprise of many in the industry, <a href="https://kotaku.com/how-sonic-helped-sega-win-the-early-90s-console-wars-1653185046">he did just that</a>. Sega made a dent in Nintendo’s seemingly impenetrable market share and Sonic became the face of Sega, just as planned. <em>Sonic the Hedgehog</em> was a massive hit. Since Sega had created a character who could rival Super Mario, it figured, surely it could create a sidekick at least <a href="https://twitter.com/rtYourLuigi/status/601109208470196224?s=20">as cool as Luigi</a>. An internal design competition yielded Miles “Tails” Prower, the two-tailed flying fox. There was some initial dispute about whether his name would be Miles Prower or Tails, but a compromise was eventually reached. Tails proved to be the name with the most staying power, but it’s easy to appreciate the miles-per-hour wordplay of Miles Prower.</p>
<aside id="ch0Rn2"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Best Video Game Character Bracket: The Sweet 16","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/24/22291928/best-video-game-character-bracket-sweet-sixteen"}]}'></div></aside><p id="lBJEBM">It’s been almost 30 years since Tails debuted in <em>Sonic 2,</em> and in that time, the beloved fox (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/23/22291431/best-video-game-character-bracket-round-2">who is crushing it in our Video Game Character Bracket at the moment</a>) has managed to star in only three games of his own: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W35oJcnF7qo"><em>Tails Adventure</em></a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/ztYaepXSn6Y"><em>Tails’ Skypatrol</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inFIzJUjCzM"><em>Tails and the Music Maker</em></a>. <em>Tails Adventure</em> was released, in 1995, during the dying days of Game Gear—Sega’s unsuccessful attempt at a Game Boy killer. (Six AA batteries for four hours of playtime!) <em>Tails’ Skypatrol</em> was also released in 1995 on Game Gear, but only in Japan. <em>Tails and the Music Maker</em> was released on a trivia answer of a console: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uEWpGiH9tE">Sega Pico</a>, Sega’s educational kids computer. Despite the fact that the video game world’s other famous sidekick has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Luigi_video_games">a number of successful solo games</a>, Tails has never really had any significant time in the spotlight. A pitch for a game named <a href="https://www.sonicstadium.org/2020/08/meet-treasure-tails-a-genesis-mega-drive-pitched-by-sega-technical-institute/"><em>Treasure Tails</em></a> was made in 1993, but it never came to be. Even divisive antihero Shadow the Hedgehog got a solo game (<a href="https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-2/shadow-the-hedgehog">that critics mostly hated</a>). Tails has had a significant presence in almost every Sonic game, but much like his function in <em>Sonic 2</em>, it’s been mostly in service of Sonic. </p>
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<p id="6jrnoC"><br>From Tails’s genesis (sorry), he’s been overlooked. Just look at how many times Sonic is referenced in the Tails origin story that appeared on <a href="https://manuals.sega.com/genesismini/pdf/SONIC_THE_HEDGEHOG2.pdf">page 3 of the <em>Sonic 2</em> instruction booklet</a>. The entire backstory of the character was essentially “Tails is obsessed with Sonic and always tries to copy him.” (Typical little sibling behavior.) Like most games of the early ’90s, the Sonic series wasn’t exactly a great work of fiction, and Sega didn’t seem to care much about keeping its characters or stories consistent between the games, comic books, and cartoons that followed <em>Sonic 2</em>’s success. The animated series <em>Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog</em> debuted in late 1993, almost a year after <em>Sonic 2</em>’s release, and featured a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fknU2eavPg">brown version of Tails</a> despite Tails’s debut in <em>Sonic 2</em> as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2#/media/File:Sonic_2_US_Cover.jpg">much more orange</a>. Two different Sonic comic series debuted in 1993, and Tails was <a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/sonic-the-hedgehog">brown in one</a> and <a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/sonic-the-comic#i8">orange in the other</a>. Sega handed off the characters to a bunch of different people and let them all walk in different directions. For a game series known more for its gameplay than its story, it might surprise you to learn that there are hundreds of issues of Sonic comics and <a href="https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Shows">hundreds of episodes of Sonic TV shows</a>. There is so much Sonic and Tails lore outside of the actual video games, across so many different, conflicting cartoons and comics, that the Wiki pages keeping track of everything have banners at the top of character pages letting you know which <a href="https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Miles_%22Tails%22_Prower_(Sonic_the_Comic)">version of Sonic reality the character exists in</a>. The one constant throughout all of the various Tails origin stories is that he had <a href="https://www.svg.com/145487/tails-from-sonic-has-the-most-depressing-back-story/">a very rough time</a> before Sonic entered the picture.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="n1y3A0"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Character Study: Luigi, the Other Mario Brother","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/24/22298021/luigi-mario-bros-character-study-inferiority-complex"},{"title":"Character Study: Link, the Quiet Hero of ‘The Legend of Zelda’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/22/22291859/link-legend-of-zelda-character-study"},{"title":"Waluigi Is Nintendo’s Cult Hero. Will He Ever Be Something More?","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/24/22298128/waluigi-nintendo-cult-character"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="gtRnWS">While Sega hasn’t been a fierce defender of Sonic and Tails continuity, it also hasn’t really defended the Sonic and Tails intellectual property. Nintendo seems to delight in sending out cease and desist letters to well-meaning fans, but Sonic and Tails fan fiction, fan art, and fan video communities are stunningly massive and completely out of control. Tails love abounds within these communities, sometimes in distressingly explicit ways. (No, I am not going to link.) Sega might not give us enough Tails, but you still have access to <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/search/?ready=1&keywords=tails&categoryid=253&genreid1=0&genreid2=0&languageid=0&censorid=0&statusid=0&type=story&match=&sort=&ppage=1&characterid1=0&characterid2=0&characterid3=0&characterid4=0&words=0&formatid=0">5,139 works of Tails fan fiction (many of which are erotic) across 12 languages</a>. You can also find fan-made Tails YouTube videos on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTFBrIlufYVR80kMyIj-XUw">channels that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers</a>. There are expensive-looking videos of <a href="https://youtu.be/mEVJHpVElBI">Tails getting deep in his feels about the past</a>, but even fan videos with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKIN8Nopatk">lower production value often have millions of views</a>. Two and a half million viewers watched a video in which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBfO9_YKhI">voice actors playing the roles of Sonic and Tails react to DeviantArt drawings of the characters suggestively embracing</a>. This is canon, right? Tails belongs to the people.</p>
<p id="mkrDoz">If you cast aside all of the cringey (and erotic) elements of the Sonic and Tails fan communities, you’ll find that they care very much about Tails, in particular. Tails speaks to anyone who has been unwillingly ushered into a sidekick role. He overcame his fears, his insecurities, and bouts of bullying to become a hero. The Tails of the thousands upon thousands of fan-generated Sonic realities is more often Sonic’s equal than his sidekick. When Sonic leaves the frame, the camera stays on Tails. When the sequel to 2020’s <em>Sonic the Hedgehog</em> movie comes out next year, <a href="https://screenrant.com/sonic-hedgehog-2-movie-title-confirmed-logo-tails/">and heavily features Tails</a>, it’ll be interesting to see which version of Tails we get.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="H2h3cU">Hopefully it’s not the erotic one. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2021/2/24/22297981/tails-character-study-sonic-the-hedgehogMatt James2018-11-29T06:00:02-05:002018-11-29T06:00:02-05:00‘Half-Life’ Turns 20: The Enduring Legacy of Valve’s Revolutionary First-Person Shooter
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<p>A video game that pioneered advancements in immersive storytelling evolved even further when its makers outsourced development of online modes to its fans </p> <p id="mgfjCp"><em>Art may largely be a matter of taste, but one conclusion is close to inarguable: </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/8/29/17795406/1998-the-best-year-ever-for-video-games"><em>1998 was the best year ever for video games</em></a><em>, producing an unparalleled lineup of revolutionary releases that left indelible legacies and spawned series and subcultures that persist today. Throughout the year, </em>The Ringer<em>’s gaming enthusiasts will be paying tribute to the legendary titles turning 20 in 2018 by replaying them for the umpteenth time or playing them for the first time, talking to the people who made them, and analyzing both what made them great and how they made later games greater. Our series continues today with a look at </em>Half-Life<em>, a revolutionary first-person shooter whose influence has only grown stronger over the years.</em></p>
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<p id="Hry7Ex">Hosea, Charles, and I are in a carriage riding south alongside a roiling river. We’re heading for Horseshoe Overlook, planning to set up camp and lay low for a while. It’s a beautiful spring day. I’m struggling to pay attention as Hosea fills me in on the history of this fertile land and how it was violently ripped away from the Native Americans who once lived here. It’s an awful, tragic story, contrasted starkly by the overwhelming beauty of our surroundings. After a few more minutes of ruminating about the fleeting nature of life, our conversation trails off, but the unnerving words linger in the crisp air. We ride the rest of the way in silence except for the sounds of our rickety carriage and plodding horse hooves, with the river at our side and birds soaring overhead.</p>
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<p id="yqREEm"><em>Red Dead Redemption 2</em>, which came out earlier this month, is easily <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/11/2/18054612/red-dead-redemption-2-review">one of the most immersive games of all time</a>—rich with story, full of dialogue, and overflowing with detail. My ride to Horseshoe Overlook was an experience that set the tone for my new surroundings. The game could have easily showed me a cutscene and plunked me down at my next location. Instead, I was present for the whole journey. While listening and observing—and consequently, intensifying my connection to the game world—I drove my crew to Horseshoe Overlook. </p>
<p id="TTlXSN">Twenty years ago, I took a similar journey, only this time on rails. Through the chunky pixels of a CRT computer monitor, I looked out the windows of a tram car as I slowly made my descent deeper and deeper underground into the heart of the Black Mesa Research Facility. A slightly inhuman voice unravelled procedural information over the tram’s loudspeaker for the duration of the ride as I marveled at the scale and complexity of my bustling industrial surroundings. I felt uneasy.</p>
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<p id="oPCTpv">Released in November 1998, Valve Software’s <em>Half-Life</em> changed the way we experience video games. <em>Half-Life</em> sought full player immersion in its game world. In the heyday of video game cutscenes, there were none. In an age of long loading times, <em>Half-Life</em> found clever ways to hide them, creating the illusion of a fully connected, seamless environment from start to finish. <em>Half-Life</em> was a conceptual and technical marvel at the time of its release, and its influence is more enduring and wide-reaching than we could have imagined 20 years ago. It still sits in a tie for the <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/pc/filtered?sort=desc">highest-rated PC game of all time on Metacritic</a>—a tremendous accomplishment, especially when you consider that <em>Half-Life</em> was the first game released by Valve. Valve cofounders Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington essentially won a championship in their first year in the league. </p>
<p id="ItVejo"><em>Half-Life </em>stars the <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3bj7a8/its-time-to-rethink-voiceless-video-game-protagonists-137">somewhat controversially mute</a> Dr. Gordon Freeman, a crowbar-wielding MIT grad with a degree in theoretical physics. A new employee at the ominous Black Mesa Research Facility, Gordon quickly finds himself fighting for his life after a failed experiment rips a tear between dimensions and unleashes a horde (gaggle? pride?) of aliens upon the facility’s inhabitants. What begins as a fairly routine plot of monster invasion soon becomes much more nuanced as Gordon encounters a military agency dispatched to cover up the incident. Released in the same year as the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120902/"><em>X-Files</em> movie</a>, <em>Half-Life</em>’s main “bad guy” is not an alien, but rather a shadowy, <a href="https://youtu.be/smkF9T2ECRs">omnipresent</a> agent known only as G-Man.</p>
<p id="OmBWgq">At the time of <em>Half-Life</em>’s release, PC first-person shooters like <a href="https://youtu.be/1cHfqrLxlQ0?t=2258"><em>Unreal</em></a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fExTxueBVZQ"><em>Quake II</em></a>, and the <a href="http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/you/">racially problematic</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpoqXwN7Ul8"><em>Shadow Warrior</em></a><em> </em>were very simple player-versus-everyone affairs. All of the bad guys were out to get you—the grizzled one true hero. Gordon Freeman, however, was caught in the middle of a plot that was much bigger than himself. There are moments of being trapped and helpless in <em>Half-Life</em>. There’s a built-in vulnerability that drives the player to panic as you stumble into situations that no physicist should be able to handle on their own. You’re not always expected to kill the huge monster in the room—you’re expected to find a way to survive another minute. A world is more believable when <a href="https://www.space.com/41749-elon-musk-living-in-simulation-rogan-podcast.html">you don’t perceive yourself as being at the center of it</a>.</p>
<p id="TwzFTm"><em>Half-Life</em>’s innovations in immersive storytelling and game-world fluidity can’t be understated. We take them for granted in modern games. But some of the more dated elements of <em>Half-Life </em>are hard to miss upon revisiting Black Mesa. They ripped a hole between dimensions, so obviously there’s some heavy-hitting science going on, but it would be easy to mistakenly believe that the primary focus of the facility is actually the study of <a href="https://youtu.be/jQGF0mwie4M?t=222">empty or near-empty wooden crates</a>. (They are <em>everywhere</em>.) The voice acting is <a href="https://youtu.be/scmURokPzDA">quite uneven</a>. The <a href="https://youtu.be/YmndYNUkiz0?t=31">AI is buggy</a>. The same handful of character models are repeated ad nauseam. If we really want to scrutinize a landmark game an unfair number of years after its release, there is a lot of room for improvement in <em>Half-Life</em>. But there’s also undeniable charm in many of <em>Half-Life</em>’s imperfections. There’s a winking dark humor in seeing the same scientist model over and over again in new distressing situations. There are subtle nods to the camp of B-horror movies. <em>Half-Life</em> was clearly<em> </em>a labor of love, but it never took itself <em>fully</em> seriously. It oozed personality and provoked curiosity at a time when first-person shooters mainly peddled inarticulate machismo.</p>
<p id="pCVYhF">In retrospect, one of the most incredible elements of <em>Half-Life</em>’s legacy is that its off-the-charts review scores were doled out when the game barely had an online component. It was only after receiving countless accolades that <em>Half-Life</em> evolved into something that completely revolutionized the online gaming landscape. <em>Half-Life</em> was released in 1998, but online, it’s still evolving today.</p>
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<p id="mk02Lc">Having won more than 50 game of the year awards on the strength of its single-player campaign, <em>Half-Life</em> also originally shipped with an online multiplayer “deathmatch” mode. Here’s what <em>IGN </em>had to say about <em>Half-Life</em>’s initial multiplayer offering in its <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/11/26/half-life-5">1998 review</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p id="lqPRaW">It’s obvious that Valve spent all its time and energy perfecting the single player experience, and so as far as deathmatches go, Half-Life’s is just that, a standard deathmatch. But who cares? You shouldn’t be buying this game to play deathmatch.</p></blockquote>
<p id="7O0a78">At the time, <em>IGN</em> was right. <em>Half-Life</em>’s multiplayer experience felt like an afterthought. The<em> </em>bread and butter of the game was so clearly the single-player experience. Was Valve forced to tack on a trendy online game mode? Did it even care about providing an online multiplayer experience? Well, it turned out that Valve had big plans for <em>Half-Life</em>’s multiplayer—plans that could begin only after the game had been released: The company outsourced the development of multiplayer modes to its fans.</p>
<p id="1NGk2v">At the start of the game’s development, Valve licensed the existing <em>Quake</em> engine from Id Software and used it as a foundation to build upon. The result of Valve’s extensive modifications and additions to the <em>Quake</em> engine became known as GoldSrc (or “Goldsource”). Valve also created a piece of level-editing software called Worldcraft (later renamed Valve Hammer Editor), which the company used to design all its game environments. Both the GoldSrc engine and the Worldcraft level editor were eventually released to the public, for free. Inspired by Id Software cofounder John Carmack’s <a href="https://www.wired.com/2013/12/john-carmack-doom/">open encouragement of user modifications</a> to the <a href="https://www.moddb.com/games/doom/mods"><em>Doom</em></a> and <a href="https://www.moddb.com/games/quake-2/mods"><em>Quake</em></a> series, Valve encouraged novices to dive in and design their own maps, or even create their own games using the engine. Valve provided documentation and resources to anyone trying to understand their tools. The user-made games that came about from modifying <em>Half-Life</em> were known as “<a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/08/total-converts-a-potted-history-of-half-life-modding/">mods</a>.” Before long, teams of strangers who had never met in real life were assembling in online forums to make their own mods. Mappers hooked up with texture artists who knew someone who could massage GoldSrc code. Entire communities sprung up around the creation of <em>Half-Life</em> mods. Similar communities already existed for games like <em>Quake</em>, but Valve made modding easier than ever and virtually every PC gamer already had a copy of <em>Half-Life</em>. You didn’t need a computer science degree to make your own <em>Half-Life</em> map. You just needed Worldcraft and some time and patience.</p>
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<cite>Valve Software</cite>
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<p id="9wIk7k">Promising mods emerged from the community that Valve fostered. In 2000, Valve purchased the rights to <em>Counter-Strike</em>—a mod that featured SWAT-inspired gameplay. <em>Counter-Strike</em> raised the stakes for online first-person shooters: Damage from one bullet could be fatal and fallen players stayed dead until the end of each round. <em>Counter-Strike</em>’s creators, Jess Cliffe and Minh Le, were not only paid for the rights to their mod but also hired on at Valve to continue to develop it. Valve made similar arrangements with the development teams of <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/"><em>Team Fortress</em></a> in 1999 and <a href="http://www.dayofdefeat.com/"><em>Day of Defeat</em></a> in 2003. The fourth game in the <em>Counter-Strike</em> series—<em>Counter-Strike: Global Offensive</em>—had <a href="http://blog.counter-strike.net/">more than 11 million unique players</a> in October 2018. A professional players association was <a href="http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/23947731/counter-strike-pros-form-counter-strike-professional-players-association">formed earlier this year</a>. <em>Team Fortress 2</em> is estimated to have been played by <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/steam-data-leak-reveals-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/">more than 50 million people</a>. Valve opened <em>Half-Life</em> up to the world and supported its community, and it’s still benefiting from that decision nearly 20 years later. </p>
<p id="1ukJ7C">The wide-reaching influence of Valve’s games is easy to spot in the present-day gaming landscape. Would <em>Overwatch</em> even exist if it weren’t for <em>Team Fortress</em>? Probably not. <em>Overwatch</em> developers consider Valve’s <em>Team Fortress 2</em> team to be “<a href="https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/blizzard-on-overwatch-and-team-fortress-2-comparisons-theyre-an-enormous-compliment">geniuses</a>.”</p>
<p id="syDTmD">And if it weren’t for the success of <em>Half-Life</em>, Valve would never have created <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/">Steam</a>—the digital distribution platform they launched in 2003 that is now the largest digital PC game distributor in the world, with sales of <a href="https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-revenue-2017">over $4 billion in 2017</a>. If you’ve never played <em>Half-Life</em> or would like to revisit it, I have a suggestion for a game you should download in Steam: <a href="https://www.blackmesasource.com/"><em>Black Mesa</em></a>. It’s a higher-res, painstakingly faithful (and sometimes respectfully embellishing) re-creation of the original <em>Half-Life</em>, created entirely by a group of adoring fans who had absolutely nothing to do with Valve. It took them eight years of hard work to make. Valve could have sued them into oblivion. Instead, <a href="https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-20-valve-gives-black-mesa-permission-to-be-a-commercial-product">Valve proudly sells <em>Black Mesa</em> in its online store</a> and allows their development team, Crowbar Collective, to profit from their work. <a href="https://youtu.be/TAIJich73NY"><em>Xen</em></a>, the final chapter of <em>Black Mesa</em>, will be released in Q2 of 2019—21 years after the members of the Crowbar Collective were initially inspired by a mute nerd smashing open empty crates. Or if you’d rather revisit the very first, original <em>Half-Life</em> from 1998, now’s a great time. <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/games/70/announcements/detail/1691552256141034259">Valve just released a new patch for it a few weeks ago</a>. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="JhkO9d">In physics, “half-life” is a term used to measure decay. The “half-life” of something is the amount of time it takes for that property to decrease to half of its initial value. Improbably, after two decades, <em>Half-Life</em>’s value to the gaming world has remained constant.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2018/11/29/18116704/half-life-20th-anniversary-valve-fps-black-mesa-xenMatt James2018-10-10T08:46:10-04:002018-10-10T08:46:10-04:00‘Grim Fandango’ at 20: The Year the Grim Reaper Came for Adventure Games
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<figcaption>LucasArts/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Once upon a time, the adventure genre was a hallmark of video game culture. Slowly but surely, it began to fade. But not before the gloriously macabre ‘Grim Fandango’ came along. </p> <p id="HLkAUM"><em>Art may largely be a matter of taste, but one conclusion is close to inarguable: 1998 was the best year ever for video games, producing an unparalleled lineup of revolutionary releases that left indelible legacies and spawned series and subcultures that persist today. Throughout the year, </em>The Ringer<em>’s</em> <em>gaming enthusiasts will be paying tribute to the legendary titles turning 20 in 2018 by replaying them for the umpteenth time or playing them for the first time, talking to the people who made them, and analyzing both what made them great and how they made later games greater. Our series continues today with </em>Grim Fandango<em>, LucasArts’ adventure classic.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="JdVzK2">A few weeks ago, I found myself trying to explain “adventure” games to a present-day adolescent. His <em>Fortnite</em> character’s bunny skin had reminded me of Max from the popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEZCscBl_Pw"><em>Sam & Max</em></a> series of adventure games. As the 13-year-old tuned out my ramblings and deftly descended upon Loot Lake, it occured to me that no one but us “olds” had likely ever played a traditional adventure game. And that means that this kid has probably never even heard of one of my favorite games of all time: <em>Grim Fandango</em>.</p>
<p id="OzL2xJ">From the mid-’80s through the mid-’90s, adventure was one of the biggest genres in gaming. Typically slower paced and narrative-driven with an emphasis on characters and puzzle solving, adventure games were often unforgiving. They rarely made an effort to nudge a perplexed player in the right direction. The brain-racking challenges of adventure games were a big part of the genre’s allure. During its heyday, top developers Sierra and LucasArts were releasing new blockbuster adventure games as quickly as they could develop them. Until <em>The Sims</em> came along in 2000, the best-selling PC game of all time was <em>Myst</em>, which was <a href="https://www.wired.com/2008/09/sept-24-1993-beautiful-myst-ushers-in-era-of-cd-rom-gaming/">largely responsible for the CD-ROM age</a> in personal computing. Today, traditional adventure-game releases are few and far between. They’re quietly released with minimal commercial impact and yet still rigorously consumed by a <a href="https://adventuregamers.com/">devoted niche of gamers</a>.</p>
<p id="CMoKnL">In 1998, the same year that landmark games such as <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/9/3/17813620/metal-gear-solid-20-years-1998"><em>Metal Gear Solid</em></a>, <em>Half-Life</em>, and <em>The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time</em> shaped the future of gaming, a LucasArts adventure game named <em>Grim Fandango</em> served as a dazzling swan song for a stagnating genre. <em>Grim Fandango</em> was the last truly great entry in the Age of Adventure Games.</p>
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<p id="Xm75R4"><em>Grim Fandango</em> was the brainchild of Tim Schafer, who arrived at LucasArts as a programmer in 1989 and quickly ascended to the role of project leader/writer/director within just a few years. Schafer was instrumental in the development of several seminal LucasArts adventure games such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgRIXntFhww"><em>The Secret of Monkey Island</em></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoF0apBRqTg"><em>Day of the Tentacle</em></a>. These vivid and meticulously animated games injected some much-needed humor and personality into the genre. Schafer’s first chance to conceptualize and lead the development of an original game resulted in the biker gang caper <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj_1s_X3I-0"><em>Full Throttle</em></a>, which became a huge commercial success for LucasArts in 1995. So when it came time to make a new game, LucasArts allowed Schafer to run with his idea for a Day of the Dead–themed game—an idea he had originally pitched alongside <em>Full Throttle</em>. If it wasn’t for the success of <em>Full Throttle</em>, LucasArts might not have been willing to give him the green light on a game as eccentric as <em>Grim Fandango</em>. </p>
<p id="HpF6Yc">The setting of <em>Grim Fandango</em> is the Land of the Dead, essentially a layover between our world and our ultimate destination: the Land of Eternal Rest. For the altruistic and good-hearted, the journey through the Land of the Dead could be as brief as a four-minute ride aboard the Number Nine train. But less than stellar humans face the long and perilous journey on foot with nothing more than a fancy walking stick. The game’s protagonist, Manny Calavera, is stuck in the Land of the Dead working a job as a travel agent to pay off “the powers that be.” When a well-qualified client named Meche is mysteriously ineligible for quick passage to the Land of Eternal Rest, Manny begins to uncover a wide-reaching web of corruption that leads him all over the Land of the Dead.</p>
<p id="Y2PcjU">Schafer’s expansive story would have been challenging to produce even if LucasArts had decided to use its tried-and-true <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUMM">SCUMM</a> game engine, but <em>Grim Fandango</em> was to be the company’s first adventure game rendered in three dimensions. To make the jump from 2D to 3D, the company used pre-rendered 2D sets as backgrounds while the 3D characters and objects were rendered in real time. Functionally, this idea is somewhat akin to walking on top of a piece of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/nov/17/3d-street-art-in-pictures">3D sidewalk art</a>. They designed the environments in 2D, and the characters moved through rendered snapshots.</p>
<p id="BTJRYO">Aside from creating an entirely new game engine, making the jump to 3D also brought a new hurdle for Schafer’s team to clear: 3D cutscenes. The compact disc (AltaVista it, kids) allowed games to hold hundreds (!!!) of megabytes, and with all that added space, the gaming world of the 1990s became more “cinematic,” dropping cutscenes into everything. Almost every story-driven game in the ’90s made you put the controller down for minutes at a time while the characters advanced the story without your input. Games were becoming <a href="https://youtu.be/fx3fK5kve-M?t=1941">films made by people who were not filmmakers</a>. Cutscenes were essential to game storytelling at the time. There is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTqIXZ1jQQ">a cutscenes and dialogue video</a> of <em>Metal Gear Solid </em>(also released in 1998)<em> </em>that lasts three hour and 15 minutes—<a href="http://www.gamelengths.com/games/playtimes/Metal+Gear+Solid/">roughly one-third of the game’s average playtime</a>. With <em>Grim Fandango</em> being the company’s first foray into 3D adventure, it was no small feat for LucasArts to produce over 40 wonderful minutes of fully animated 3D cutscenes<em>.</em></p>
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<p id="B7AVd3">But perhaps the biggest reason that <em>Grim Fandango</em> is so memorable is the myriad of disparate cultural influences that shape the sights, sounds, and ethos of the game. Dialogue, camera angles, lighting, architecture, and character design all draw heavily from film noir of the 1940s and ’50s. Those American, French, and German influences that characterize noir were then blended with Mexican and Aztec folklore, traditions, and design. Manny Calavera wears a suit that could have been lifted straight out of <em>The Maltese Falcon</em> while he resembles a Mexican <em>calaca</em> (a skeleton figure made for the Day of the Dead). </p>
<p id="8PpfrT">The blending of cultures in <em>Grim Fandango</em> is best exemplified by the game’s original soundtrack, which blends the jazz and swing music of the film noir era with more traditional South American strings as well as an orchestral score. Composed by LucasArts’ own Peter McConnell, <em>Grim Fandango</em>’s soundtrack is commonly celebrated as <a href="https://kotaku.com/5827410/the-video-game-that-got-jazz-so-so-right">one of the best video game soundtracks of all time</a>. Great adventure games such as <em>Grim Fandango</em> feature worlds so cohesive and rich with detail that they’re transportive for the player, and McConnell’s soundtrack is the glue that binds the game’s elements.</p>
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<p id="h7s04h">From the moment the player meets Manny Calavera, decked out in Grim Reaper attire and angling for a sale, until the surprisingly moving conclusion, <em>Grim Fandango</em> oozes personality. Like <em>Full Throttle</em> and <em>Day of the Tentacle</em>, <em>Grim Fandango </em>features a tremendous amount of dialogue. By 1998, voice acting was commonplace in games but often <a href="https://youtu.be/smkF9T2ECRs?t=54s">atrocious</a>. Just two years prior, the entire gaming world had suffered through the astoundingly painful voice acting of <a href="https://youtu.be/pVyOCssIXgQ?t=26"><em>Resident Evil</em></a>. For <em>Grim Fandango</em>, LucasArts employed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177822/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">qualified, legitimate actors</a> for their snappy dialogue, investing in a common strength of the adventure genre: the characters.</p>
<p id="NPIsAp">So revered are the sounds of <em>Grim Fandango</em>, that a script reading/concert was held at this year’s E3 to celebrate the game’s 20-year anniversary. Composer Peter McConnell played selections from the soundtrack and the original voice actors—with the added support of superfan Jack Black—took the stage to reprise their roles.</p>
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<p id="msEDtZ">Upon release, the effervescent <em>Grim Fandango</em>—the Land of the Dead that Tim Schafer’s team lovingly brought to life—garnered glowing reviews and numerous industry awards including GameSpot’s <em>PC Game of the Year</em>. And yet, despite being universally and effusively praised, <em>Grim Fandango</em>’s sales were a major step backward from <em>Full Throttle</em>. Although ultimately profitable, <em>Grim Fandango</em> massively underperformed. After <em>Grim Fandango</em>, LucasArts released one more adventure game—<em>Escape From Monkey Island</em>—and then never made another ever again. Adventure games as a whole quickly faded from relevance.</p>
<p id="XgATVg">The biggest mystery of <em>Grim Fandango</em> was not “Who sabotaged the journey of good people on their way to the Land of Eternal Rest?” but rather “Why didn’t people buy one of the best games of the year?”</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Where were you 20 years ago? 1998 was the greatest year ever for video games, and to celebrate, we'll spend this year taking a look back at the best of the best.<br>First up, <a href="https://twitter.com/BenLindbergh?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@benlindbergh</a> on the elusive cult classic ‘Panzer Dragoon Saga’:<a href="https://t.co/xg5ha8zbyb">https://t.co/xg5ha8zbyb</a> <a href="https://t.co/Id4NEZ1Q6D">pic.twitter.com/Id4NEZ1Q6D</a></p>— The Ringer (@ringer) <a href="https://twitter.com/ringer/status/958040808065785856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2018</a>
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<p id="SYhCfL">For all of <em>Grim Fandango</em>’s glaring successes, at its core, it functioned within the well-established framework of the genre. The main character still walked around an environment, examined it, found objects, and figured out how to use those objects to gain access to the next environment. Transitioning the adventure genre into 3D did modernize the controls, but those controls were already antiquated by the time of the game’s release. Manny Calavera had the “tank” controls of 1996’s <em>Resident Evil</em>. You’d press up or down to move him forward or backward, and left or right to rotate him. Less than a month after <em>Grim Fandango</em>’s release, <em>The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time</em>’s control scheme set a new bar for movement of a character within a 3D space. In <em>Metal Gear Solid</em> you could hide in a box, emerge from the box, tap on a wall, sneak around a corner, and shoot multiple enemies in the time it took to find and withdraw an item from Manny Calavera’s inventory. <em>The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, </em>and <em>Xenogears</em> all made significant innovations within their respective genres. But they all had something else in common. They all excelled at what was once the hallmark of the genre: storytelling. </p>
<p id="ZOJ4y0">Modern control schemes and more robust game design have all but killed off the traditional adventure game, but only after absorbing the most valuable elements of the genre. The storytelling, humor, characters, and world-building of <em>Grim Fandango</em> and other adventure games have undoubtedly influenced games of many other genres. Recent indie games like<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/6/16045236/intimacy-in-video-games-achievement-oriented-robin-hunicke-luna-virtual-reality-cf321c4f27e2"> <em>Firewatch</em></a> and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/4/28/16036454/what-remains-of-edith-finch-walking-simulation-video-games-e228fe93e476"><em>What Remains of Edith Finch</em></a> are in many ways spiritual successors to the old adventure games. They both control like a first person shooter but are narrative- and character-driven works with purpose and humor. Your objective isn’t to kill anyone or anything but instead to live and breathe in a rich environment, exploring at your own pace and treasuring your discoveries. There will always be a place for people who want to play those games.</p>
<p id="43PJqp">And in <em>Fortnite</em>, that place is on the ground, underneath the kid who just shotgunned you to death and won’t stop Milly Rocking on your corpse.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="0waQbx">Maybe you just had to be there.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2018/10/10/17958570/grim-fandango-20-years-anniversaryMatt James