Google Watches You Game

YTMND Weekly #11: Rebecca Black Gets PWND

I've actually got quite a few people wondering WTF YTMNDS actually are; short for "You're the man now Dog," the first YTMND was a marriage of sound, text, and image that conveyed the ridiculousness of THIS SCENE (and more specifically Sean Connery) from Finding Forrester.

There have been hundreds of thousands of YTMNDS created; since the conversion to flash, video was introduced to the medium and added some much needed depth. Think of them as animated inside jokes that often riff on pop culture or internet fads.

YTMNDs are about to become way more accessible thanks to Adobe and Apple finally getting together and allowing all of Apple's mobile devices to use Flash.

• Since Rebecca Black blew up with her God-forsaken bit of auto-tuning, some YTMNDs emerged to rip her: I MAKE YOU LISTEN TO THIS, Groundhog Day (2011), Samuel L. Jackson knows no fear...
• Not much I can do to describe this, other than it's Jessica Alba making out with Kim Kardashian!
• If the Celtics want to win another NBA championship, they gotta get Shaq to rise to the occasion!
• My work here is done - off to save the world for Jesus!

New Redband Trailer for Your Highness!

Your Highness really flew under the radar, with a release date just 2 weeks away; this one already has some highly quotable moments, and it definitely has classic potential for a medievalist like me. 

Batman: Arkham City Gameplay preview!

Loved the combat in the first game, though I thought it was bogged down at times by repetitive and tedious backtracking through certain locations and objectives. This, however, looks whole shades of awesome.

I don't care if that's a friendly helicopter - it's getting Bat-slapped.

Austinite's Guide to Surviving SXSW

For an Austin local, SXSW always brings a mixed bag to the table.

SXSW's allure for the local is this "hip," nationally recognized venue dedicated to music, parties, movies, parties, technology, and blogging about SXSW at parties - all in your backyard. If you are a UT frat boy whose parents have deep pockets, it's the ultimate playground; hell if you are any sort of shade of "mildly handsome," the blogging gargoyles the event attracts from all over the world  will pose little competition in your quest to cross "alternative girl" off your bucket list.

SXSW's 2010 Tech Summit All-Star Gargoyle declares the iPad2 "best mobile porn device"

But if you are like most locals without the pockets to afford the wristband or the "all-access" badge, SXSW can quickly bring out one's inner xenophobe. Thus, I have compiled a survival guide with a few tips and tricks to getting through the corporate spring break known as SXSW.

 Blend in

 Like any chameleon, the trick is getting the right shade. The palette to choose from, unfortunately, is pretty damn eclectic. Do you go straight hipster, sacrificing sperm count as you force yourself into your lady's finest skinny jeans? How about rocking a punk's finest fohawk?

OK truth be told, the quickest way to blend is to get sloshy. Why? Because every demographic runs together when you're two sheets and can't tell a Jabba from a Princess Leia.

Listen, I don't condone binge drinking; SXSW is just one of those events where chugging coincides with eliminating the supreme annoyance of foreign yuppies and their insistence that the shitty British band you are listening to is the next Oasis. So if you fancy yourself a liquid warrior, go forth and PI your way to ignorant bliss - it makes telling your friends that you hooked up with a sea cow that much more forgivable.

Hey, that's not Natalie Portman!

Work for the "man"

You don't belong - you have accepted that.; you can't tell the Foo Fighters from Nickleback, or Ice Cube from Juvenile. Yet there is a way to appear like you know what's going on: be a part of the extensive SXSW staff!

That's right, you're official now! That dangling badge around your neck might as well be made of diamonds; people who look at you will think you know what's going on, will now nod less aloofly when you proclaim "next year, Guns N' Roses!", and men/women may even throw themselves at you to get them in the "back door." Basically, the suits figured out a way to laminate "popular," and now it's around your neck! 

Wait, they didn't tell you are working the door at that sketchy West 6th biker-bar that was almost shut down because of a "shanking" last week? The band that's playing is a metal/techno fusion group called "Painscab Superbleed?"  Why is no one else but you concerned about the toothless man puking on your foot?

It's like "Cheers," but with more bleeding and crying.

My bad, I must have forgotten to tell you. As just another faceless staff member and low man on the totem poll, you pretty much just resigned yourself to the worst venues at the worst times! 

Enjoy the the SXSW SARS from all those mouth-breathers! Oh, and that badge cannot be destroyed, even if you throw it in to the fires of mount doom.

Bunker Down

"OK," you say to yourself, "I am going to facestab the next guy in an affliction t-shirt." 

Well in that case, friend, maybe it's best to treat SXSW week as a mock zombie-apocalypse. Throw out a "no event parking" sign on your lawn, gather all the necessities you would need if you were under siege, and find that serious gun-collecting friend with a mild twitch and request some "heavy ordinance." 

All that's left is to wait it out. 

Hey, this will be easy!

Dr. Pepper after Dr. Pepper courses through you as you plow through hours of life-sustaining video-gaming. Those whispers you had told your mother you suppressed long ago start to become louder, beating like a drum in your ears, "Screw them, who needs people." 

You begin to distrust your dog. 

What hour is it? You can hear sounds of laughter and music in the distance, but you know that joy to be false. 

You are the only one that is real. 

Clothes...who needs them? Ah, that feels good, doesn't it? 

You know what else feels good? Taking that squirrel's life. He's taunting you, you know.

STOP LAUGHING AT ME!

-----

Days after the police arrest you for indecent exposure while you were feeding on that squirrel, you can decide for yourself whether or not a psychotic break was worth more than a wristband or "all-access" badge. 

It's wasn't.

 Happy SXSW 2011!

Top 10 Anime Intros: Part 2

 Continued from Part 1

#4: Bleach (Intro 10)

 I unabashedly love Naruto,  though I have a sense of love/boredom with Bleach. Though Naruto's story has gotten progressively darker and more original in its twists and turns, Bleach has become akin to Dragonball Z in its waning years. Bleach is dressed up in a new a different mythology, which while interesting in its complexity, still has the misfortune of having it's conflict resolution feel as rote as DBZ's eventually became.
Basically, the story antagonist is super strong, while the hero must build his powers through each successive fight with the antagonist's underlings. Each time the hero seemingly reaches a new power-level plateau, he then miraculously breaks through and transforms into something exponentially greater by some vague means, and is able to defeat the antagonist in a final earth-shattering fight.Thankfully, the manga seems to have shifted a bit in this new story arc, since the uber-baddy that has threatened the world for 5 years has been defeated. Oh wait - the intro? Yeah, the other thing that's nice about the series is it's attention to cleavage.

#3 Bleach (Intro 6)

The best intro Bleach has ever done, during what I would argue was the peak of the story so far. Singing stuffed animals is the stuff of nightmares though...

#2 Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Intro 1)

Fullmetal Alchemist (both series) has a special place in my heart; there just hasn't been a better anime devoted to what it's like to be brothers that look out for each other. There have been two whole anime series based on the FMA manga; the first and more widely known anime is from the early 2000s and followed the comic closely until it had to veer off on a tangent because it ran out of source material (and thus, the ending had been widely panned).

A whole new series debuted in 2009 entitled FMA: Brotherhood. This "new" anime is seemingly identical to the first one in most respects, up until the point where the original anime jumped the shark. Brotherhood instead also features a style and action closely resembling the manga, as well as adhering strictly to the superior and more affecting canon of the comic. The episodes are now dubbed and free on Hulu - you won't be dissapointed.

#1: Naruto Shippuden (Intro 6)

This intro pretty much has it all: action, badass music, and sentimentality. I won't spoil the series for you, but the old guy at the beginning and then fighting on the giant frog at the end is the main character's surrogate grandfather and all around pimp. Suffice to say, he goes out with a bang; all anime fans are thankful that the intro paid such an amazing homage to a beloved character (believe me it gets better once you get passed the dude trying to speak English with a mouthful of peanut butter).

That's my list - hope ya'll have enjoyed it. Post some suggestions if I missed any, and I'll do and updated list later.

Legend of the Fist Trailer!

Rumor has it, the war-zone scene that opens the trailer is one of the most butt-nuts things ever to be digitized. Word of mouth on this has been stellar, and I have been looking for a film to sate my Ong-Bak-sized bloodlust for skull-crushing. Throwing rocks at squirrels just isn't doing it.

X-men: Anime Trailer

Yeah, the character design looks a bit "Fem" to me, but anime is the perfect medium for mutant-on-mutant action.

YTMND Weekly #8

• Even Hip-Hop is made better with a little Walken: Listen muddafucka
• (NSFW)Dr. Phil does not like to be upstaged by the Cleveland Cavaliers: You Blow This
•  I probably will never try Vince Young's restaurant here in Austin, but I hear Dr. Dre's is pretty legit: Hold up! Wait a Minute...
• Had to break the Hip Hop Theme: Chinese Guy Get's Into It
• So to sum it up: The Most Annoying Pop-Star in the World

Resolving 2010

2010 was personally the best year I think I have ever had. A wedding, a honeymoon, family, friends - everything seemingly fell into place as it should. It's probably a bit egotistical to think that there was this sense of destiny and purpose to my 2010, but in the end, everything just seemed too right.

*cough* screw you Texas football teams *cough*

Seriously, 2010 was so good that my conscious outlook on life has invariably shifted to be more future-oriented, rather than this perpetual dawdling in the present; simply, I want more years like this.

We are all guilty of falling into the routine of the day to day. It's weird, but reaching the pinnacle of happiness has etched in my brain that need to always maintain that feeling - that way of life. For me, it was about finally thinking seriously about resolving what I wanted with what I needed.

It was about the goal. My goal last year was to marry my partner for life. Since then, it's been this spider-webbing of possibilities in mind about what my potential could be. I want to be a better husband. I want to be a better friend. I want to one day be the best brother/son/dad/uncle ever. I want more years like 2010.

We are taught by society that in our college years, it's all about carpe diem, to enjoy the day while it lasts. It's like I have been in this protracted tug of war between that mentality and figuring out what comes next. Now I want to know what comes next.

I shifted my perspective.

Take the concept of Captain "Save-a-ho" that was introduced the other night by my wife: it's a pretty loose social work description of that guy that gets stuck in the rut of dating the same ol' "fixer-uppers." Cpt. SaHs always seems to attract, or be attracted to, those women with unresolved emotional baggage or neediness complexes (from trauma or abuse) that invariably will blow up the relationship anyway because in reality, it is impossible for Cpt. SaHs to save them.  I have friends and family that are Captains, and they are the nicest guys in the world - and you really just want them to learn from their mistakes, because they start to wear that cape like a curse.

I want to tell those guys that there are no knights in shining armor anymore. There are no magic moments, epiphanies, or celestial beings that will come along and guide you to where we need to be. There is no need to stay in those ruts, to still wear that "Save-a-ho" cape. "Save-a-bro" and save yourself.

2010 felt like destiny because I made it my destiny. Last year taught me that there is not only joy in the present, but ultimate satisfaction in reaching the present having achieved a lifelong goal.

Now, I have about 1000 lifelong goals parading through my consciousness, vying for my attention.

Nice to meet you 2011, I have been looking forward to it.

Fatality

The hardest Football hit ever. Credit to AtM for recruiting someone who could turn into a brick wall.




X-men got it right.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Trailer!

I hope it may just be a weak trailer, but Pirates 4 looks like more of an unfunny rehash of what has come before; or, I might just be cooling to Depp's Jack Sparrow. Sparrow was a stronger character with a full ensemble to riff with, but this movie very much represents a full solo adventure, so I am hoping they just threw in the stalest bits to get a trailer out there for the Tron audiences. Then again, the last two Pirates' sequels were muddled and maybe too dense with plot threads for their own good.

Gore Verbinski begged off this sequel (not a good sign), and Rob Marshall is at the helm. Verbinski had a strong cinematographic sense about incorporating the supernatural into the Caribbean setting, and Rob Marhsall did, uh...musicals? Marhsall's strongest efforts were Nine and Chicago, which are great genre films, but I don't know for the life of me how they prepared him for this type of summer fantasy action-adventure. God help us if Sparrow bursts into song...

Clint's Guide to Tron: Legacy

Let me be the first to say that that a movie that requires multiple viewings doesn't equate to it being great, or even necessarily good for that matter. Tron: Legacy isn't a great movie, but after a couple of showings and some time to digest, I could argue that it is a good movie with some great ideas that gets lost under the weight of weak pacing and a script that is sublimely subtle.

It's probably best start with the question most who see this movie for the first time must have been thinking as they left the theater: Why did I spend $13-$16 on that?

Well, what most people will take away from a first showing is that the action scenes were badass (when they happened), and the score by Daft Punk is one of the best movie soundtracks ever. Seriously, I defy anyone not to get pumped when Sam Flynn busts out his lightbike for the first time with the slow build of Daft Punk echoing in the background. There are scenes that are goose-pimply with their sense of complete techno-synergy between the score and the eye-popping action. Unfortunately,  those scenes only occupy about 20 minutes of the film's run-time, with 15 of those minutes running concurrently before half the movie is over (remember that thing about pacing?)

The elephant in the room with Legacy is the story, which has been widely panned and decried as imperceptible - and I agreed after the first showing. There are points of exposition where Jeff' Bridges' "Dude"-Flynn is abstractly relating the history of the grid and why the audience should care, that I looked around the room at all the kids who showed up for a Disney movie and I just shook my head; there was just no way a child under 15 would even begin to grasp the "why" to this movie - which is a travesty on the part of the director and screenplay. When you reintroduce a franchise that was already widely considered esoteric to begin with, the last thing you want to do is confuse the masses even more.

The ultimate failing of Legacy is that there is too much brevity to the showing, and nowhere near the clarity on the telling. A first showing of this movie is really like a crash-course on any foreign language, you have to learn and accept the lingo to start and appreciate the complexities that exist under the surface.

  So, to clear up some of the why, I compiled a few frequently asked questions (SPOILER ALERT):

• How long was Kevin Flynn trapped in the grid?
• Zeus mused at one point that Clu has searched for Flynn's disk for over 1000 cycles/years. Time within the grid moves slower relative to the real world, so the grid's advancement in 28 earth years then would make more sense. Sucks for K. Flynn - but he did make a sweet ass bike in those 1000 years.
• What's up with Rinzler/Tron?
• Tron was the program Flynn created to serve as the champion of the Grid - an ultimate gladiator and fighter who fought for the users (which is a fight for digital "freedom" of information).  Clu overpowers Tron's programming and turns him into his own undefeated Boba Fett named Rinzler. Once Rinzler comes into close proximity with his creator and friend after 1000 years, Kevin Flynn, he is reprogrammed back to Tron (an ability of K. Flynn that was previously established in the night-club when Flynn touches the floor and incites the neutral programs to defeat the guards).  Tron's backup light-jet is stolen by Clu and he plunges into the grid-sea, fully reverting back (as indicated by a color switch) and in limbo until a sequel that will probably never happen. 
•  Um, why can Quorra the ISO exist in the real world? 
• The crux of what the ISOs actually are, and why their miraculous appearance in the grid is important to religion and science can only be found if you are paying attention to the scene where K. Flynn is healing Quorra after her arm is derezzed. When Flynn brings up her programming matrix - surprise - it's actually a DNA strand. This small scene is probably the most important scene in the movie for explaining the importance of the grid for humanity, but it is frustratingly glossed over with Jeff Bridges mumbling his "Dude"-isms about it being "radical man." Really? 
• The implications of the ISO's for science are vast. If you can digitize an ill person's DNA into the grid, you could simply fix their code and return them to the real world (as proven by Quorra being healed in the grid and then transferred into the real world). 
• As for the implications for religion, that's where the movie, and perhaps Disney, is sublimely subtle in pushing through their Jonas Bros' theology; K. Flynn created the world, and the DNA structure for humanity naturally manifests itself in the ISOs to fill the digital void. Basically, God (K. Flynn) created the Earth (grid) and then humanity (ISO) appear in his image to fill the void. No digital monkeys or evolution here folks, humanity just appears. Riiiight.

Hopefully that cleared up some of the more mystifying aspects of the film. I didn't get a full grasp until a second viewing, which many of you might not feel  Legacy is worth. I would vote to give it a second chance for the story alone - but lightcycles, laserdisks, and Daft Punk will still make it worth it.

Tree of Life trailer!

Terrance Malick is already gifted at capturing the visual essence of the abstract and emotional when it comes to the nature of humanity, so consider this probably his finest work with a lot of Eternal Sunshine mixed in:

SNL review

Paul Rudd's SNL was pretty hit or miss, with a few gems peppered in. Paul McCartney did an obscene 4 performances, which I am sure was included with his hefty price-tag (pimping the release of the Beatles on itunes). I get it, he and Susan Sarandon are merging into one being.

I have to hand it to Sir Paul, he can sing the hell out of that "Walking in slow motion."

Stumblin

Weekend Update: Stefon

What's that name?

OD: That's my Neal!

I can't remember the last year when watching the Spurs from the get-go has been such a pleasure. The perennial stalwarts on defense have been replaced by a more up-tempo and free-shooting team. Don't get me wrong, they can still lock other teams down when they need to, but clearly the philosophy has changed as the the roster has gotten significantly younger.

The usual Spurs' detractors always like to point to age, but guess what - the Lakers are now the oldest team in the NBA. With new faces like Tiago Splitter, Gary Neal, and James Anderson all putting in quality minutes and energy while learning the system, as well as sophomore-year stars like DeJuan Blair and Richard Jefferson finding their stride (although I could do without R.J.'s continual Michael Jackson-like cry of "and one" every time he goes to the rim) alongside a budding George Hill, the "Big Three" have found the support they need to make a deep run into the playoffs.

Splitter has the potential to supplant Pau Gasol at his own game, he is just really green right now and plays antsy when he gets some minutes; his progression is going to be the most important thing to watch as the playoffs approaches, as he'll probably need to take over some of Duncan's minutes to get him rested (even though Timmy is already only averaging just under 30 minutes - and they are 19-3).

The early surge is vastly important, as last years team had to struggle to even make the playoffs and force their aging crew onto the floor longer than they probably should have been. The good news this year, is that all of the Spurs' young guns that will one day be the bedrock of the franchise - DeJuan Blair, George Hill, Matt Bonner, and Tiago - have shown tremendous upside and have reinforced just how talented the Spurs' main-office has been at building toward a post-Duncan era.

Hell, Gary Neal has already proven that he is a one man team:

Blizzard's marketing strategy

With the recent release of it's fourth expansion, Cataclysm, WoW and its developer Blizzard makes no mistake in what their primary marketing strategy is. I'll let Penny Arcade elaborate:

Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon teaser!

You know, I don't even know why Michael Bay makes attempts on a coherent story; no one, except for the very fringe Transformers purists who hold onto some notion that an 80s cartoon for children had a functional lore to begin with, cares about the why robots are fighting, just that they are.

Just less LeBouf going to robot heaven plz.

My new wedding dance....

It's going to take the nation by storm, I know it. The problem I see is not having enough chin action. Oh well, there are implants for those things I guess...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

On Fallout: New Vegas

The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around the town.  The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside.  The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun’s rays.  Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert.  Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange.  But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion.  Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert – a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth.  ~Jean Baudrillard

I was low on ammo; My two main rifles were broken due to overuse, leaving me to survive on a faulty sawed-off shotgun and a laser rifle. My leg was still crippled from the grenade blast pack in Primm and I barely had enough caps to pay a doctor to mend it. My sleep depravation meter was ok for the time being, but my hydration and food meters were reaching critical levels. I was miles from the nearest settlement, and without a means to run meant any hostile encounters may be my last. My companion had already saved me more times than I could remember, but he was burning through his own ammunition faster than I could replenish it. A damn fine shot, just a bit trigger happy with even the easiest of foes. My Pip-Boy said it was past 3 in the morning, meaning I had a chance to make it to safety before the sun dried up the rest of my baked flesh. Boone catches sight of an approaching soldier ant the size of a steer and readies his custom-made sniper rifle. You hear it all the time from folks across the desert, but it never takes hold til you’re at the end of your own rope—the Mojave desert is a harsh place, and it’ll tear you apart the first chance you get.

The Fallout series began as a sort of cult hit in the 90′s that envisioned an all too familiar apocolyptic future, but it wasn’t until Bethesda Game Studios developed Fallout 3 that people were truly offered a chance to experience this bleak landscape. 200 years after nuclear war shredded humanity, a lonely vault dweller emerges to search for his father in the wastelands of Washington D.C. The following story is one of hope amidst greed and despair as mankind strives to rebuild society as newly crowned orders seek to control the destiny of the world. But Obsidian Entertainment knew this was only one of many tales across our war-torn country, and with the debut of Fallout: New Vegas, we learn that we are given another reason to believe the everlasting mantra that this series is known for. As famed actor Ron Pearlman innaugurates yet another Fallout entry, “War. War never changes”.

New Vegas takes place 4 years after the end of Fallout 3, but the designers at Obsidian make it clear from the beginning that their Fallout entry has little connection to the events that took place in Fallout 3. While honoring the world that Bethesda created, Obsidian contains many employees that worked on the original Fallout game and felt their expertise would help breathe even more life into the world they began so many years ago. As a result, the overall experience of New Vegas is very similar to its predecessor in terms of gameplay, combat and character progression, but at the same time exploring new depths to the established dialogue system as well as the lasting impacts of choices made by the player. Unfortunately, these new depths are not enough to properly distinguish New Vegas from the previous entry, and when coupled with a myriad of game-crashing bugs, the final presentation of the Mojave Desert leaves something to be desired and ultimately prevent New Vegas from being a fantastic Fallout experience.

In a Tarantino-esque fashion, the game begins with your character’s death. Shot in the head by a man in a checkered suit and buried in a shallow grave, you awake days later in the care of the town’s doctor and have no memory of what happened to you. As with most amnesia related stories, you set off to piece together your past and find the man who murdered you. But all is not so simple in the land of New Vegas as the story unfolds into a much larger plot that reaches to the far edges of the wasteland and even beyond. As in the previous Fallout journey, your journey across the game’s vast landscape will bring you to many NPCs of various factions, but rather than choosing between an apparent good side or evil one, New Vegas introduces several various factions for you to explore and possibly ally with, each fighting to carve out a piece of decent life for themselves. The character branching system introduced in Fallout 3 is further fleshed out in New Vegas to a substantial degree as the consequences of your choice are felt throughout your entire experience, rather than just for the immediate hours after making that decision. These choices will only intensify as the game progresses, sometimes forcing you choose between the lives of not just a few, but an entire town, regiment or even race of people. Choosing to ally with certain factions also closes off the possibility of allying with others, thereby closing off entire quest branches for you to complete. While there is no shortage of quests to complete out in the desert, this practice is often a double edged sword. A healthy breadth of content is enjoyable for any person, but when you begin to realize that the entirety of the game can only be experienced by completing it three times (each time choosing a seperate faction) the game begins to feel daunting and, sometimes, grinding.

It is unfortunate to note that what does set New Vegas apart from its predecessor is undoubtedly its polish, or lack thereof. It was clear from the beginning of Fallout 3 that Bethesda took every effort to ensure every single detail, however minute, looked and functioned precisely as it was meant to. While Obsidian was able to borrow heavily from Bethesda without too much problem, the sheer amount and frequency of glitches, lag, and bugs in the new content make one wonder how much QA time was spent when putting the world together, if any. NPCs will often disappear into the ground, enemies will become stuck and yet are still able to attack you from hundreds of feet away, and very often the game will simply freeze up for no reason at all. Whether you’re in the heat of battle, or simply walking out into the desert, you must learn to save early and often in hopes of avoiding a freeze from erasing an hour or two’s worth of exploring the wasteland. The vast majority of these flaws are relatively minor, and can be easily repaired simply be loading an earlier save, they become increasingly tiresome and, toward the latter half of the game, really begin to take the player out of the experience altogether and hinder the level of enjoyment out of the game. No game can ever be truly perfect, and as gamers we learn to overlook minor nuisances and view the game as a whole, but this understanding go only go so far before we start crying foul play is afoot.

When the game does succeed, however, it does so in very nice ways. Newly introduced is the companion system which allows the character to enlist the aid of special NPCs across the desert to join you in your travels. The characters themselves are all unique in voice and combat techniques, but this isn’t where the system itself really shines. Among many details of their Fallout experience, the designers at Obsidian took the time to not only craft unique personas to each potential companion, but also a history and quest line that directly influences the main story. Whether you choose to bring the King’s dog Rex along to help him find a brain transplant, or keep Veronica along to learn more about the intentions of the infamous Brotherhood of Steel, they all have a stake in this world as you do. Details like these immerse the player deeper in this chaotic place by reminding him that the story is not simply about them, but about all of the people of the Mojave Desert. This reverberates even further when combined with the exhaustive choice system discussed earlier, as many characters will voice their opinions regarding your actions. Anger them enough, and they will leave your side. I was impressed at how fragile the world of New Vegas can be with even the smallest of changes, but this is not unlike our own world, where the actions of one person can change the lives of thousands.

Ultimately, I felt as though the final hours of New Vegas illuminated a bigger message resonating through all of the Fallout games—that is, to survive. And I do not mean that simply as living through fire fights and beating the final boss at the end and watching the credits roll; I mean it by its grander implications. What can start as one man’s journey of revenge and survival can quickly turn into a struggle for the salvation of an entire city’s worth of innocent people just trying to stay alive one more day. Despite all of our reasons and decisions that lead us to the game’s conclusion, I guarantee they will not be the same as when it started. With the help of many people I forged my path through the desert of New Vegas, and I don’t see it any differently in our own lives. We effect others, and in turn we are effected by them. It is a cornerstone of the human experience, and it is one mirrored quite well in New Vegas. If you are able to look past the glitches and accept the occational freeze (or three of four), you will find this place has much more to offer than a simple adventure through a post apocolyptic world. With the spontaneity of lady luck, the charisma of a grizzled sheriff and charm of an Elvis-Presley look-a-like, enjoying Fallout: New Vegas is a pretty safe bet.

****

 See you in the next level,
Gray