Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Tonight I explored F.A.T.A.L.: the worst RPG ever.

Like many stories, this one will begin at the end. Jason Sartin, one of the first two humans to review FATAL (the poor bastard read all 900 pages of it), said this: "Personally, I want to believe FATAL was created by an AI that was instructed to 'Create the crappiest possible work that can still technically be considered a RPG' [...] the truth - that FATAL was created by actual human beings who weren't joking - is all the more depressing."

FATAL stands for "From Another Time, Another Land." This mundane title speaks little of the true experience of the game. Its original title does a much better job: "Fantasy and Tales of Adult Lechery." It comes off as hokey or even lightheartedly dark... It is not. This is the thankfully now defunct RPG whose mission was to "realistically" depict a "historical" fantasy environment in which Europe is the only continent that exists (an openly stated decision of the game's authors), women are mentally weaker than men (despite the game's own admittance that the highest recorded IQ was female), and violent rape is not just a possibility, but rather, a heavily emphasized center of game mechanics. All of these features are putrid examples of some of the lower points of human creativity, spawned from a P.h.D. no less, but no single feature of the game is quite as harrowing as the miasma which seems to spew forth from the work as a unified entity.

The sheer violence of FATAL as an experience dwarfs even the violence portrayed in the game. I say this about a game which includes rules for determining A) vaginal circumfrance and B) fist circumfrance as well as rules for when, during interaction, a character's B) exceeds another character's A)... Let's just say that I gave up on exploring the actual rulebook when I came to the section on miscarriage. It seemed that, as I skimmed from page to page, the book became ever more subtly twisted. This is not to say that it is not immediately apparent how disturbing this book is from the first page, but rather, that the pieces in conjunction really begin to work on one's mind. An otherwise random description of rules for pregnancy is much more disturbing after about 300 pages of rules for rape. I cannot begin to believe what reading all 900 pages would be like.

What I find to be most bothersome about the text is the straightfaced comfort of the voice it speaks in. On the first page of the book, the author explains a potential roleplaying choice:

"assume that you are an adventuring knight who has just fought his way to the top of a dark tower where you find a comely young maiden chained to the wall. Some may choose to free the whimpering wench. Others may free her while hoping to win her heart. Instead of seeking affection, some may talk to her to see if they can collect a reward for her safe return. Then again, others may be more interested in negotiating freedom for fellatio. Some may think she has no room to bargain and take their fleshly pleasures by force. Others would rather kill her, dismember her young cadaver, and feast on her warm innards."

At the same time that there is a rising crescendo of lust and depravity, there is the disconnected interest of a statistician. Here's a list; here are its contents. Alone, this passage is blandly gross like a B movie. In concert with the rest of the text it has an effect which, for me, at the moment, is incomprehensible. At this point, my reading of FATAL has really collapsed. It began as a playful romp through the "worst RPG ever," and now it has become something very different.

While I am quite aware of the power of communication, I am not generally of the camp which points its finger at violent media as dangerous or inflammatory. And I am not doing that in this case either. After the slow transformation of my reading of FATAL, I am, however, forced to think about what effect media violence has on us. Censorship and book burning are far more stupid than this book (which says a lot). But, from an anti-censorship point of view, I question what desensitization to violence does to us. While I could easily understand FATAL as the coded notes of a sociopath, it is most likely just the misguided attempt of stupid people (including a stupid PhD) to write a gross-out B movie style game. Either way, as a mass of the desensitized portayal of violence, it has developed the gravity to throw my evening off center. All I am saying is that that is worth note.

My reading of FATAL was heavily assisted by this satyrical review by Darren MacLennin and Jason Sartin as well as its Wikipedia page.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

The Hamburger Strikes Again...

That's right you babies. I hope those diapers you are hiding in your pants are not instantaneously filled with poop when you watch this.

If you are not a total idiot, go here.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Thinking About APB, Procrastinating

So, I have generally escaped my APB obsession, however, it comes back in little bits every once in a while. Tonight, I have been thinking about character names. Of course, the only name that will show up, even if you could name your different characters, is your account name, but for the sake of the stories I will write in my brain, here are some of the names I will distribute between my 10 character slots:

Aladdin Sane (yes, yes, I stole it from Bowie)
Lovely Nightshade
Honest John
Sarin Regicide
Arbin Regicide
Tabun Regicide
Soman Regicide (the Regicides are extremely close knit)
the Alchemist (my name for my clothing designer alter ego)
Pencil Bomb
Methyl Stiletto
Agent 15
Mustard Brown (as in gas... obviously I am digging the horrible toxins theme)

I can just imagine my little sect within Kitsune. A bunch of strangely artsy and vicious Yakuza thugs. Classy, sleek, and freaked the hell out. Sort of the Kakihara/Vicious vibe... Hedonist murderers who really take pleasure in nothing.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Notalgia

The first random internet video I ever saw...



It's the birth of a legacy for me.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The Truth

You know it is.

Musica Nueva

Janelle Monae


She may be a little more R&B than some of your tastes, but she's pretty awesome. On top of that, she is releasing her albums as short suites which seemingly maintain one story across the whole piece.

She only has one of these short albums out so far but get this, it centers on the story of an android who falls in love with a human and is marked for death by the city in some crazy game show violence system of laws ("no phasers, only chainsaws and ELECTRO-DAGGERS!" said in the excited voice of a sports announcer -from the album's intro).

Checkout the video to get a sense of her sound.

I, for one, am hooked. "Y'all wanna shutup!?"

Sunday, December 6, 2009

As soon as I get back to DC...

It's going down. None of your will be able to defeat me in:

SUMITORI!

Download it and practice your heart out. You will need it!

Ever Heard of Eternal Sonata

Ok, so I am generally uninterested in JRPGs. Final Fantasy is the closest I'll get and I haven't played an FF for at least a couple years (I may have glanced at 6, but that is only because we had a love child together and it is behind on paying its child support).

All this said, when I watched this episode of Unskippable, I had to ask, what the crap could this game possibly be about. The game in question is a little something called Eternal Sonata.

Now let me preface any further statements with, I am 95% sure that I will never play this game. The opening scenes displayed in Unskippable look like they redefine slow-pacing in a way that would leave Kurosawa antsy and restless. The majority of the 9:00 minute trailer is a description of some little seaside village and a pervasive species of wildflower that fills it. This said, when I went to read what the hell this slow ass game could possibly be about, I was blown away.

Here is my short description based on the short description in the Eternal Sonata Wikipedia article. At age 39 Frederic Chopin, the composer is dying. Within his fevered dreams, he creates a peaceful world for himself to live in. The entire game exists between Chopin beginning to die and entering the dream state and his death. The world is highly musical, with each chapter of the game being named after a Chopin composition. Death and disease are also major themes. In fact, the ability to use magic in this story is a sign of some terrible disease that people are ostracized for having...

I dunno about you guys, but this just sounds impressively awesome to me, especially for a video game. Its too bad its an RPG though. The artistic concept seems as if it could be ruined by me grinding for two hours to get a new pair of boots. If anyone ever plays it, tell me how it is.