Live from Austin!

A couple of weeks ago, I realized that my trusty full-size headphones were incompatible with my glasses. It wasn’t the fact that they pushed my ears up against the arms of the glasses and made them sore that clued me in, though you might have thought it would have. No, it was when they pushed my glasses sideways enough to push a sore spot onto the side of my nose. I suppose I could wear different glasses, but I really like these.

Anyway, a few weeks before my nose issues, I had bought a new headset for the PlayStation 3. There’s a bit of a story behind that.

The PS3 is weird, in that it has two sound output channels. The game sound is sent out via standard RCA jacks on the rear, as well as via HDMI. The voice chat is almost an entirely seperate system, and its sound is routed either via Bluetooth or USB. The two never mix–unless you have no headset at all, in which case the voice chat audio is mixed into the game audio, but of course you can’t reply.

I’d started off with the Logitech PlayStation 3 Vantage USB Headset. It worked fine for a few months, but when I eventually knocked it from the coffee table one evening it broke. Also, it only handled voice, so the game sound still came through speakers–and was picked up by its mic. That was tolerable with games like Team Fortress 2 where you need to push a button to talk, but didn’t work out so well with games like Burnout where the mic is always active.

For a while, I tried a Bluetooth headset–a cheap old Motorola that takes replaceable AAA cells. The problem was that, like the Logitech, it picked up game sound from the speakers. Not much, because it was also really crap at picking up sound, but it did succeed in convincing me that I didn’t want to try the official PS3 Bluetooth headset. That product may have better sound, but still has the game crosstalk issue. It also has the additional issue of a non-replaceable battery, which means that you have to worry about charging, and eventually end up with a nice piece of e-waste once the battery gains a memory.

I don’t know what Sony were thinking here. The official solution basically doesn’t work, and you can’t use a regular gaming headset or a regular USB headset.

Finally, though, I discovered the Turtle Beach P21, a headset specially designed for the PS3. They’re now replacing it with the Turtle Beach Ear Force PX21 (sic), which adds Xbox 360 compatibility. Since I don’t have an Xbox and never will, that wasn’t an issue for me, so I bought the P21 at clearance price.

The P21 actually solves the PS3 audio problem. You plug in both the RCA jacks and the USB, and an inline amp mixes the two audio streams together. You have separate sliders for the mix levels, too, and there are passthrus on the RCA jacks in case you need to pass the signal on to your TV or amp. Turn the speakers down and rely on the headphones, and you can hear everything–and people can hear your voice too, and only your voice. The only downside is white noise from the crappy badly-shielded inline amplifier, but as soon as you start the actual game you stop noticing it.

But that was a massive digression. The point is, the Turtle Beach headset is circumaural–that is, it has old fashioned full size earcups which go all the way around the outside of your ears.

I hadn’t had a set of headphones like that since the 1970s, and had forgotten what it was like. What it was like: comfortable. Or at least, more comfortable than full size earpads, with my current glasses.

So I decided it was time to swap the trusty 10 year old Sennheiser HD445s for a pair of circumaural headphones. I read a bunch of reviews, and now I’m in another situation I haven’t been in since the 1970s: I have non-Sennheiser headphones. Specifically, a pair of Shure SRH 440 headphones. They’re a slightly cut-down version of the Shure SRH840s favored by studio engineers; fully enclosed, DJ style, designed not to leak sound in or out.

So far I’ve been checking them out using the Mac, with audio routed through an external M-Audio 24 bit D/A. The main thing I notice is the incredibly clarity; they resolve details the Sennheisers didn’t, like the individual guitars on the final track of Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm, a good test for that kind of thing because of Trevor Horn’s exacting production at Sarm West.

Another good test track is “A Mile Long Lump of Lard” from The Orb’s Cydonia album. The Orb are tough for audio systems at the best of times, but this track in particular seems to be a real challenge for audio systems, sounding like a vague formless mush on the car stereo or through cheap earbuds.

Then there’s “Two Days Off” by KiloWatts (MP3 for download here), from the rather awesome album Problem/Solving. Reminds me most of Speedy J; some awesome production work, and I’m surprised he hasn’t received more attention. Apparently he’ll be in Austin at the end of the month, I should probably do the live music thing… Anyhow, it’s a good test of headphones’ ability to resolve a wall of sounds without turning them to pulp. Try it.

I was at Staple!: The Independent Media Expo at the weekend. As I browsed the stalls, I wandered into range of a conversation between (I think) a guy from Dreampunk Productions, and someone who mentioned that he was a video game developer. Nothing unusual so far, there are a lot of video game developers around Austin. They were talking about a comic strip I hadn’t heard of, and the artists’ interest in making a video game about it–also not unusual. Then, the man with his back to me mentioned which company he worked for: Retro Studios.

The comic book guy hadn’t heard of them. But I had, and couldn’t help myself. “You made Metroid Prime. The best first person action-adventure game ever.” And so it was that I found myself talking to Mike Wikan, senior game designer for the Metroid Prime series.

Returning home and searching my web site, I found that I had written very little about the Metroid series–surprising, given how impressed I was with the games.

Let’s get the obvious statements out of the way first: If you have a Nintendo Wii, you should go buy the <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ATY7JE?ie=UTF8&tag=a0ef8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002ATY7JE”>Metroid Prime Trilogy Collector’s Edition</a>. You should probably hurry to do so, as Mr Wikan tells me that it’s out of print, and no more will be produced; prices are already starting to climb.

If you have an old GameCube sitting around somewhere, you should go buy at least the first Metroid Prime, which is the all-time highest rated GameCube game on Metacritic. Yes, better than Legend of Zelda. Better than Resident Evil 4.

If you don’t think first person shooters can work on a console, then you particularly ought to at least buy Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Wii and try it out, for reasons I’ll get to later.

First, let’s go back to the mid 80s. Having achieved commercial success with classic arcade games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers, Nintendo wanted to branch out and prove that their NES console could do more. So 1986 saw two groundbreaking games: the original Legend of Zelda, and the original Metroid.

Metroid was designed to be approachable to players expecting arcade action. At first, it seems like a scrolling platform game with a heavily armed protagonist. As you continue to play, however, it emerges that there’s a more complex story going on, and that exploration and mapping are an important part of the game.

There were many details of the game which were brand new at the time: The player was given freedom to explore in any direction. The soundtrack was moody and ambient, giving a feeling of loneliness. Completing the game required revisiting already-explored areas. Power-ups were permanent, rather than timed. Most famously of all, the protagonist was revealed at the end of the game to be female.

Metroid II continued the franchise on the Game Boy, before Super Metroid moved it to the SNES and added an inventory and save points. Super Metroid was universally acclaimed, and amongst SNES games is perhaps second only to Super Mario World.

So when Nintendo decided to revive the Metroid franchise for the GameCube, there was some major skepticism expressed by fans. The announcement that the new Metroid would be in first-person 3D convinced many that it would be another dumb FPS, especially since a US development team was building the game.

Retro Studios defied expectations, however.

Metroid Prime started me off in a wrecked spaceship, where I quickly discovered I would have to scan objects for information if I was going to get very far. The screen used translucent graphics to provide a heads-up display with radar and rotating 3D short-range map, and I learned that I could switch visors to go into thermal imaging mode–a trick I often used to get the jump on enemies lurking in the darkness. Before long, I was following a trail of clues to the planet Tallon IV.

As I left my ship, I discovered that it was raining. Water droplets speckled the view through my visor. As I scouted further into the wet vegetation of this new alien world, I noticed condensation forming. Seconds later in a nearby cave, I fired my blaster at a threatening creature and caught a glimpse of my face reflected from the inside of the visor. That was it–I was captivated. Mimesis achieved.

This was also the moment I referred to back in 2006, when I said that I really didn’t need video game graphics to get any better. Metroid Prime is beautiful. Compare it to the other big console games from that year, like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the PS2, and it blows them away. Not only that, but the game runs at a rock solid 60 frames per second throughout, no matter how complicated the action on screen, and the controls feel responsive at all times.

By the time I acquired the ability to switch into the morph ball, I was so engrossed in exploring ancient alien ruins that I didn’t stop to worry about the physics of the transformation. Instead, I delighted as the Tron-like neon glow from the ball left subtle tracer effects.

More beautiful still was the scene that greeted me once I managed to make my way through the old transport tunnels to the snow-covered Phendrana Drifts. That was where I learned that different alien creatures would require different tactics to defeat them, with my scanner providing hints.

Yes, there were boss fights–something I personally dislike–but they were mostly fair, and required some intelligence to get past rather than simple twitch reflexes. When the game was finally over, I was genuinely sad that it had to end.

I wasn’t as happy with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The first and most obvious annoyance was that I suddenly had to worry about ammunition. Coming to the new episode straight from the freedom of the first game, this was an unwelcome development.

The second annoyance was that Prime 2 had me travel to a dark energy world where the atmosphere continuously ate away at my suit’s shielding. This effectively introduced an arbitrary time limit to exploration, and I hate arbitrary time limits almost as much as I hate random mazes.

The third annoyance was the level design. I’m not a big fan of bottomless pits, and I started falling into them with annoying frequency towards the end of the game. So overall, a disappointing outing compared to the first Metroid Prime, but still worth playing.

Third time was the charm, though. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption made the jump to the Wii, and that allowed a whole new control scheme. Now I could move around in any direction at any speed using the analog control stick on the nunchuk, while simultaneously aiming and firing at any part of the screen using the Wii remote. (This is called “expert mode”, and isn’t on by default.)

As IGN put it, this new control scheme “simulates the accuracy of PC first-person shooters almost perfectly”. In fact, I’d go further–when I try playing games with keyboard and mouse, I find the lack of precision achievable with WASD movement keys extremely frustrating.

The nunchuck was also used for the grapple hook and for ripping armor off of enemies, giving battles a very visceral and physical feeling. The switch to 16:9 format for the graphics also helped improve my feeling of immersion in the game.

The annoyances from the previous game were mostly gone. I fell into infinity a few times in the cloud city, but it never felt as frustrating as leaping over chasms in the dark in Prime 2. Also gone was most of the annoying backtracking, as I could now call up my spaceship to travel between distant parts of the world, an innovation so welcome that I remember saying “Aww, yeah” when it was revealed to me.

I don’t really understand some of the negative reviews the final installment received. Perhaps those reviewers didn’t find Expert Mode, or were expecting an FPS? I had a wonderful time, and resolved to replay the entire game some day.

So with that in mind, I’ve ordered a copy of the now-discontinued <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ATY7JE?ie=UTF8&tag=a0ef8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002ATY7JE”>Metroid Prime Trilogy</a> for the Wii. If you are any kind of video game fan, I strongly suggest that you do likewise. If nothing else, you’ll get the chance to play the greatest GameCube game ever, with the added bonus of precision aiming via Wii controls and widescreen graphics.

From “Stay Free” magazine:

Here’s a road-trip game that won’t exactly change the world but will at least give you a laugh at SUV drivers’ expense. Take almost any SUV model (the Ford Explorer, for instance), add “Anal” to the title, and— presto!—you have the Anal Explorer, or the Anal Rodeo, or whatever. There’s something about SUVs that makes them more conducive to this semiotic game of revenge than cars (the Anal Civic doesn’t really work, nor does the Anal Camry). That’s because most SUV names are all about dominance and penetration: of nature, puny cars, or pedestrians. If SUVs are the tops of the vehicu- lar world, then I guess that makes the rest of us bot- toms, and if you’ve ever had an Anal Blazer on your ass, then you know what I’m talking about.

—Kembrew McLeod

Joel Johnson, Gizmodo, 2010-02-03:

It’s taken me a couple of days for me to understand the wet sickness I felt in response to all the post-iPad whining, until it finally came up in a sputtering lump: disgust.

The iPad isn’t a threat to anything except the success of inferior products. [...]

This noxious attitude has permeated our tech culture for the last couple of decades, from a half-decade of open-source devotees crying about Microsoft on Slashdot, on toward the last few years of Apple ascendency. It’s childish. It’s defeatist. And it shows a simultaneous fear to actually innovate and improve while spilling gallons of capitulative semen to a fatuous, dystopian cuckold wank-mare. [...]

Apple is selling a product. They’ve chosen to keep it closed for demonstrably reasonable benefits. And—yes, okay!—several collateral benefits that come from controlling the marketplace that services their products.

Three weeks later, Joel Johnson, Gizmodo, 2010-02-23:

If you need another example of why the iTunes App Store’s walled garden is flawed, Apple has been only too happy to oblige, capriciously and arbitrarily removing an unknown number of “sexy” apps without warning. [...]

With a closed ecosystem comes a lot of responsibility. Apple has taken on the heavy mantle of arbiter, ostensibly to manage quality. I can forgive them for that, even if I don’t like it. But the only reason to ban blue apps is taste. And if these apps were a matter of taste, why were they approved in the first place? What will the next set of apps be that Apple decides are inappropriate long after people have spent hundreds of hours creating and marketing them? [...]

Apple has made a declaration: that sex and sexuality are shameful, even for adults. But only sometimes. And only when people complain.

Unfortunately, they’ve accomplished the opposite. The only thing I’m ashamed of is Apple.

Looks like Joel Johnson was fine when Apple was blocking things he didn’t care about, like open source software and apps he didn’t use; but when they started blocking stuff he cared about, like jiggling boobs, suddenly he started to have second thoughts.

He still doesn’t quite get it, though: He still likes having nanny tell him what he can run on his phone “to manage quality”; he just wants nanny to make only decisions that he agrees with. Good luck with that.

Last night I dreamed that we got a new pet. A horse. Except it was a micro-horse, about the size of a hamster. It loved to gallop across the floor and jump into my hands. I was a little concerned about how manageable a pet it would be once it grew to full horse size.

Since this was one of my dreams, obviously the horse could speak too. I decided that eventually it would need to be an outdoor pet, so I’d better tell it about man’s relationship with horses so that it wouldn’t be surprised. I had just finished telling it about horseless carriages, and was trying to decide how to approach the topic of horse racing, when I woke up.

Full title: Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species

This is an important book. It’s not an easy book to read, by any means, but if you’ve ever considered getting any kind of parrot as a pet, you need to read this book. (Yes, the author’s real name is “Tweti”, and yes, it’s pronounced “tweety”.)

There are estimated to be 50-60 million pet parrots in the USA. They range from the tiny budgerigars, to the large macaws that most people think of when they hear the word “parrot”. The book starts out by examining the situation of these pet birds.

It used to be believed that parrots were just brightly colored birds with a talent for mimicry. Thanks to the groundbreaking work of Irene Pepperberg and other researchers, we now know that parrots are as smart as human children. They also have long lifespans. While a parakeet may only be as smart as an 18 month old baby and live for just 10-15 years, an African Gray can be as smart as a 6 year old and live for over 50 years. Parrots are also noisy and messy, something which people often don’t understand before it’s too late. Like many small children, they will screech when they are angry, sad, or just overexcited.

Take budgies, for example. Their normal morning routine is to fly around for a couple of hours tweeting and squawking to each other to keep in touch, and forage for food on the ground. If you don’t spread the food on the ground, they’ll do it for you. They’re quiet compared to any larger parrot, but their noise can be heard anywhere in the house–or even at the far end of the back yard, with all the doors and windows shut.

Take a look at online pet forums and you’ll find people begging for ways to get their pet birds to quieten down. It’s not surprising, then, that there are thousands of unwanted parrots. The lucky ones end up in parrot sanctuaries; the unlucky ones are euthanized. The really unlucky ones live for years in solitary confinement, trapped in a cage, neglected, fed on cheap unhealthy bird food until they die young.

At the same time, breeders are still adding to the problem. The book continues by examining the legal parrot trade in the USA. The life of a lonely captive pet parrot may be bad, but the conditions in the industry are often like a concentration camp for birds.

Apparently many big breeders know little about the birds they raise; they’re only in it for the money, after all. Many believe that birds will breed more if they are kept in the dark; ironically, the exact opposite is true, as birds are triggered to breed by lengthening daylight hours. Nevertheless, thousands of parrots are kept confined in cramped, dark boxes, fed a poor diet. As soon as they raise young, the babies are taken from them. They will scream and grieve for days, but eventually they will try again.

As I said, this is not an easy book to read–and the first half of the book, about the legal parrot trade, is light relief compared to the second half, which considers the illegal parrot trade.

The 1992 Wild Bird Conservation Act in the US made it illegal to import any wild bird, unless it could be demonstrated that the capture of that species did not damage exotic bird populations in the wild. Before the law changed, the US was responsible for 40% of the captured wild bird trade; since the law, that has dropped to almost nothing. But of course, some trade continues in the underground economy, and conditions there are horrific.

Texas is the destination for a lot of parrot smugglers. Head into Mexico for 20 minutes and you can find all kinds of illegally caught wild parrots openly on sale–and being kept in deplorable conditions. Street vendors will help you stash the birds in paper bags or cardboard tubes, and secrete them about your person–or even inject the birds with ketamine or other illegal drugs, to knock them out for a few hours while you cross the border. If they live, you save hundreds of dollars over the cost of a legally bred pet bird. This potential markup makes parrot smuggling more lucrative than cocaine–and yet, the chances of being caught are lower, and even if you are caught red handed, you can often escape jail.

The birds, of course, aren’t so lucky. They end up in solitary confinement for years until they can be used as evidence in a trial; after that, the government often sells them at auction, typically to the very people who pay the smugglers. Many birds are just euthanized.

Then there are the practices of some of the people who keep parrots as pets in Mexico. I’m not going to describe them here; I feel lucky that I haven’t had nightmares about it. By the time I was two thirds of the way through the book, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it any further.

I did, though, and got to the final section, which talks about parrot conservation in Latin America. In many communities where the birds were once viewed as a cash crop, they are now seen as a precious resource thanks to the development of ecotourism. Rich gringos can now travel to research stations where they take part in long term studies of parrot populations. Instead of being sold for $25 each to smugglers, the parrots are now attracting tens of thousands of dollars a year in ecotourist trade.

If you’re looking for a happy ending, though, the book will leave you disappointed. Even if we save the parrots from poaching, we’re only postponing what currently seems inevitable. Before long, their forests and jungles will be clearcut to grow soybeans and make toilet paper and books, and the parrots will die off quietly as their habitat disappears. The book ends with a plea for readers to consider going to Eco-Libris to pay for a tree to be planted to offset the destruction caused by reading the book itself. I wish I could believe that that would be enough to make a difference.

2007: Apple introduces OS X 10.5, with its new quarantine feature. Applications which are downloaded from the Internet now show a warning dialog if you try to run them. At the same time, support is added for code signing, and notes that the user is likely to be bothered with additional dialog boxes and prompts for unsigned code that they don’t see with signed code. Developers are advised that they should sign all code.

2008: Apple introduces the iPhone SDK, and explains that for security reasons, the iPhone will only run code signed with a public key and co-signed by Apple.

2010: At WWDC, Apple introduces new security features for OS X 10.7. Developers are told that unsigned code will produce a new more strongly worded warning dialog every time it is run. A bundle of SDK, code signing key/cert and some new tools is announced for $99. Fanboys point out that you can turn the dialog off, so what’s the problem?

2011: Mac OS X 10.7 is launched with the new Mac App Store as an icon in the dock that cannot be removed. Anyone can sell signed applications via the App Store, with Apple taking a 30% cut of the profits and handling fulfilment. A developer feeding frenzy ensues. Soon, the Mac App Store is the main way to sell Macintosh applications. The old free OS X SDK is quietly discontinued. Fanboys point out that there are still the GNU tools and scripting languages, so what’s the problem?

2012: Mac OS X 10.8 is announced. OS X Server is rebranded as OS X Professional, aimed at developers, and shipped with Pro grade machines (MacBook Pro and Mac Pro) and servers. The regular OS X 10.8 is shipped on MacBook and Mac Mini systems. Development is still possible on the basic OS X, if you pay $99 for the SDK and a code signing key. Fanboys point out that you can easily jailbreak OS X 10.8, so what’s the problem?

2013: Mac OS X 10.9 no longer runs unsigned code. For that, you need to buy Mac OS X Professional, or the developer SDK and a signing key. The Mac is now locked up the same way as the iPhone or iPad. Fanboys explain that this was necessary for security reasons. Besides, what are you going to do, switch to Linux?

LittleBigPlanet

(PS3 only)

If you’re looking for a kid-friendly game for the PS3, this should be top of your list. Rated E, it provides classic 2D platform game action rendered with state-of-the-art 3D graphics. The ragdoll physics and ability to grab objects are interesting game tweaks, though the automatic switching between layers on the Z axis can be a little frustrating at times. Mostly it’s not a problem with the story levels, because of careful level design.

The plot is like a fairy tale, and unfolds gradually. You catch glimpses of what’s going on while playing the levels, and then when it’s revealed that someone is abducting characters and imprisoning them, it’s up to you to free them. Even the bad guy turns out just to have been lonely and desperate for friends.

One great thing about LittleBigPlanet is that it has a full level editor, capable of building levels as good as the ones in the game. The artwork is fabulous, a real visual feast with levels inspired by (amongst other things) Day of the Dead, Indian art, and African crafts. Levels can be shared online with friends, or publically; there are over 1,000,000 user-created levels out there. Sony and MediaMolecule seem to be doing a pretty good job of making sure they’re kid-safe.

Burnout Paradise

(PS3, Xbox 360, Windows)

My experience is that all young boys love cars. The only thing better than playing at racing cars, is playing at crashing cars. The Burnout games understand this–unlike serious racing simulations like Gran Turismo, Burnout rewards you for dangerous driving, and rewards you with detailed action replays of your crashes. Glass smashes, sparks fly, bodywork crumples.

The open world design lets you drive around and explore the city; each intersection of streets has some kind of challenge you can choose to start by pulling up and hitting a button. There are straight races, stunt jump challenges, stock car style survival modes, and contests where you have to cause as much vehicular carnage as possible in the time limit.

The online mode allows for contests between players, but also has social modes where you join up with friends to compete challenges together, or just hang out driving around and chatting and doing whatever you want.

Rated E, as there’s no blood–it’s all A-Team crashes. Obviously, online modes may expose your offspring to rude words spoken by other players, if you allow play with unknown strangers.

It’s also available as a downloadable from PlayStation Network.

Katamari Forever

(PS3 only, but earlier Katamari games are available for Xbox 360 and PS2)

When the original Katamari Damacy was launched on the PS2, the game mechanic was something completely new to video games–roll a ball of stuff (the “katamari”) using tank-like controls, making it larger and larger as more and more stuff sticks to it. As the katamari grows, it can roll over larger objects–but it also has more momentum, and becomes harder to maneuver.

The game consists of variations on that basic theme. The King of the Cosmos tasks you with making a nice big katamari, sets you a time limit before he’ll lose patience, places you somewhere on earth, and off you go. Sometimes the challenge is a little different–for example, maybe the katamari is on fire, and you need to roll up hot and burning stuff, and avoid cold or wet things.

It’s all very cute. If your katamari is big enough, you can roll over people–but although they scream, they just stick into the katamari, they’re not killed. The game therefore gets an E rating.

Katamari Forever basically gives you all the levels from all the previous Katamari games. Graphically, it’s not a whole lot better than the PS2 versions, but it’s such a charming game that the graphics don’t really matter. However, the lack of anything really new meant that it suffered in review scores.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

(PS3 only)

If you don’t mind guns and epic battles of cartoon violence, the Ratchet and Clank series offers E10-rated action adventure platformers that I personally think are the best around. In Tools of Destruction, it’s insectoid monsters who are on the receiving end of the violence this time: they’re an invading army ruled by a crazy emperor who has ordered them to lay seige to the galaxy. It might not be the most socially conscious message, but at least it’s anti-imperialist, right?

The genius of the Ratchet and Clank games is that their difficulty level is self-adjusting. Smashing enemies and scenery releases metal in the form of bolts, which are apparently the currency of engineers. You can spend the bolts to get ever more powerful (and ridiculous and fun) weapon upgrades. Hence, if a particular part of the game keeps defeating you, each time you try you gain more bolts. Before long you can afford a better weapon that’ll give you the edge against the enemy and let you succeed.

The weapons are varied, and allow for different styles of game play. You can stand back and pick off roachlike enemies from a safe distance, or you can (say) launch the Groovitron to make them all break out in disco dancing, and then whack them with a wrench while they’re occupied.

This long-running game series had numerous outings on the PS2 as well. My personal favorite was Ratchet & Clank Going Commando.

A friend recently commented on the imperialist narrative of most video games: travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, kill them, and exploit their resources.

Well, yes, there are a lot of video games like that, ranging from the hundreds of first-person shooters that only an enthusiast could tell apart, to the cerebrally imperialist Civilization series. However, there are also video games which manage to have a more progressive message. I thought I’d write about a few of them.

(Note that there are a few mild spoilers below; this is a guide for parents, rather than necessarily for players. If you’re a video game enthusiast you should have played these all by now…)

Beyond Good and Evil

(PS2, Xbox, Gamecube (or Wii), Windows)

This game is something of a cult classic, though it sold badly on initial release. Designed by French software house Ubisoft, it’s a 3D third-person action-adventure in a mostly open world, with some puzzle solving. The protagonist, Jade, is a female journalist investigating the activities of a military dictatorship which has emerged to defend the planet Hillys from an apparent alien invasion. Jade mostly relies on sneaking around and collecting photographic evidence, though she does resort to martial arts when necessary.

I have the PS2 version, and I strongly recommend the game, even though the PS2 version was the most criticized. For what it’s worth, I didn’t have any problems with the frame rate or other alleged shortcomings. Metacritic scores are 83% or higher for all platforms.

Like most cult games, BG&E commands a hefty price for a new copy, but used copies in good condition can be tracked down. You can also rent the Windows version on Steam or GameTap. Rated T for Teen.

Psychonauts

(PS2, Xbox, Windows)

Another cult game, this time from Tim Schaffer. Also another 3D third-person action adventure with puzzle solving. The protagonist this time is a psychically gifted kid named Raz, who runs away from the circus to sneak into a summer camp and try to become a Psychonaut. Before long, he must psychically journey into the minds of various disturbed individuals in order to heal their minds. Each person’s insanity manifests as a different surreal world with its own logic and graphical style.

Again, I played the PS2 version. I found it worthy of the praise it has been given (Metacritic scores in the high 80s on all platforms), though the final circus/tightrope world was infuriatingly difficult and spoiled an otherwise delightful experience. Unlike BG&E, I didn’t keep my copy.

Commands an even higher price than BG&E, and you’ll pay like-new prices for a good used copy. Rated T for Teen.

Ico

(PS2 only)

Third person action-adventure, again, but with a more distant look that often resembles classic isometric games. The most graphically beautiful game on the PS2, in my view, and one of the most sadly overlooked when it was new. Now commands premium pricing even for a used copy. (No, I’m not selling mine.)

The young boy Ico, apparently born with horns, wakes up in a mysterious ancient fortress. He is forced to go on a perilous quest to save himself and a young girl who is apparently some sort of princess. On the way, he learns about the mystery of what the fortress is for, and why he was placed there.

The game is mostly environmental puzzles. Monsters are the spirits of the dead manifesting as black smoke, and they are driven away with a simple wooden stick or torch. Rated T for Teen, because although it’s less violent than the above games, it’s creepier.

Okami

(PS2, Wii)

Another video game which was unfairly overlooked by players on initial release, in spite of winning numerous awards, this one has the advantage that you can buy it new for a reasonable price. A 3D third-person action-adventure steeped heavily in Japanese mythology.

The graphics are unlike any other game, with cel-shaded animation and textures inspired by Japanese ink and wash painting. The protagonist is Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess, who manifests as a wolf and attempts to lift a curse that has fallen on her native land. Combat is carried out, and puzzles solved, by painting mystical brush strokes on canvas using the celestial brush. This game mechanic makes the game a natural for the Wii’s remote, and I kinda wish I hadn’t played the PS2 version so I could play the Wii one fresh.

Rated T for Teen. There were a couple of instances of smutty innuendo that made me raise an eyebrow, but I suspect a kid would have missed them. There’s also some cleavage and a little partial nudity. Not a game for Christian conservatives, but then again they probably wouldn’t like all the Japanese gods either. Somewhat slow to start, and probably not a good game for anyone who lacks patience.

According to Huffington Post, after the iPad launch Walter Mossberg cornered Steve Jobs to ask a pertinent question:

Mossberg asks why users would want to shell out $14.99 for an ebook on the iPad, when they can buy ebooks for Amazon’s Kindle for $9.99.

Steve Jobs’ retort: ‘Well, that won’t be the case.’ Mossberg presses him on whether that means Apple’s prices will go down, or Amazon’s will go up, to which Jobs offers a cryptic, non-committal, ‘The prices will be the same.’

On Friday, this exchange was explained. Macmillan demanded that Amazon jack up the prices of e-books to $14.99. In response, Amazon stopped selling Macmillan books. That includes all books from Tor and Forge, the science fiction and fantasy publishers.

As it happens, next month’s book at the book club I go to is published by Tor. I went to buy a copy on Friday, not knowing about the dispute. I had seen it available for Kindle before, and wondered why it was no longer available.

Then I shrugged, and bought a dirt-cheap used paperback copy instead. If Amazon had given in and upped the price to over $10, rather than refusing to sell it, I’d have done the same.

The thing is, a book is something I rarely read more than once. There are so many good books out there, I feel like it would be crazy to re-read when I could read something new to me. Hence $15 for a book is expensive entertainment, compared to $15 for a CD I’ll listen to many times, or $3 for a movie rental.

I suspect that I’m not unusual in this respect, and that Amazon have done the market research, and concluded that DRM-crippled e-books are never going to sell for more than $10–particularly not when you can pick up a paperback for $5 including shipping. Rather than devalue the Kindle and allow other publishers leverage to introduce their own disastrous price increases, Amazon is playing hardball and opting not to sell Macmillan books–which is their right in a free market, isn’t it?

Apple did the same thing with the music industry, pushing them to keep prices at 99¢ per track. Later, the big music companies were allowed to increase prices in return for dropping DRM. Everyone loved it when Apple forced prices down, but this time there are some angry voices.

John Scalzi is one of them. He’s pretty angry at Amazon. Reading between the lines, I think he’s pretty angry at his publisher too, for trying to sell his books at a price he doesn’t think most people will buy at. Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow proposes the iTunes Music Store solution: allow publishers the freedom to set prices however they like, if they drop DRM and abusive EULAs. (Sounds good to me, as it makes the problem somewhat self-correcting–if publishers jack up the prices too high for the market, copyright violation ensues.)

I can understand why Macmillan’s authors are upset by what Amazon have done, but fundamentally, I think this is a very simple problem: Macmillan has decided to set its prices higher than Amazon thinks it can sell books at, so Amazon is choosing not to sell Macmillan books. If you’re an author published by Macmillan, I think the people you really need to be directing your ire at are at your publishing company, for attempting to raise prices in the middle of a terrible recession. In the mean time, well, I guess I’ll buy your books used.