Painfully Obvious

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Alan Wake

Verdict: 61/100 (Minimum score is 0; maximum is 100.)

“Stephen King once wrote that nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations. They’re antithetical to the poetry of fear. In a horror story, the victim keeps asking, ‘Why?’ But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end.”

That’s the voiceover that begins Alan Wake, a game that borrows more than a little from King’s oeuvre. The game was written by Sam Lake, who also wrote the stories for the Max Payne series, but I fear he’s taken the wrong message from King’s words, and purposefully set out to write a story that makes no sense. That’s not quite the same thing.

Alpha Protocol

Verdict: 61/100 (Minimum score is 0; maximum is 100.)

The Zero Punctuation review of Alpha Protocol fails to convey just how awful the core gameplay is. It feels like they wanted to adapt the Unreal Engine in the same way that BioWare did for Mass Effect, but got only halfway there before they needed to ship.

Yahtzee does mention, however, one of my other frustrations: the game fails to convey the consequences of possible actions. Twenty minutes in, you find yourself standing in front of a computer terminal at the headquarters of the titular agency. The game offers you the option to hack the terminal. A guard is standing right next to it.

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[USA] players actually look like they like each other and are having fun. England, on the other hand? I have never seen a more joyless group of players in my life. They are having no fun. It’s no fun watching them.

Michael Davies

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I can handle [Russell Brand] in 30‐second clips every month or so, and I think he’s hilarious. I have a sneaking suspicion that any longer exposure to him would instantly make me want to hit him with a shovel, therefore I can never see a movie in which he stars, or read his booky‐wook. Don’t tempt me, Russell. I have a shovel.

mdemone

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If a player doesn’t happen to share a language with the referee, he might yell in his native language just to convey that he’s upset. “Any kind of fellatio comment is inevitably understood,” says Alexi Lalas, who was on the U.S. World Cup roster in 1994 and 1998.

The Explainer

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Feast on slides: How Custom Events Will Save the Universe, a talk I gave yesterday at TXJS. (Travel can be fun, but you can’t beat conferences held where you live.)

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An excellent illustration of how the procedural complexities of Congress make it hard for non‐wonks to understand what the hell is going on. Even if government were 100% transparent, we’d still need people familiar with parliamentary procedure to “translate” for us.

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Helvetica looks great in many contexts. This is not one of them.

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Mr. McDonnell may be compounding the damage by insisting that nonviolent former felons — people convicted of shoplifting and other property crimes, for instance — must do more than just apply to the state if they wish to vote, a process that until now has been time‐consuming but generally successful for those who stick with it. Mr. McDonnell would have them submit a letter making the case that they have contributed to society since their release — an utterly arbitrary standard. What’s more, they are asked to explain why they think they should get their rights back. As we see it, the correct answer is: Because they are rights. Period.

Washington Post