“Good books tell the truth, even when they’re about things that never have been and never will be. They’re truthful in a different way.” – Stanisław Lem

If I sat down and did a count, i’m pretty sure that i’ve shot more Russian Ultra-Nationalists in video games than there are actual Ultra-Nationalists in Russia today.  They are to “modern” video games now, what communists and jihadists were to action movies in the mid-to-late 80s.  It certainly doesn’t say anything particularly promising when Homefront’s ludicrous-from-every-angle depiction of a North Korean invasion and occupation of the continental United States qualifies as “a significant change in modern FPS plots”.

Leaving the “are games art” discussion aside, we can all certainly agree that games, especially the FPS and RPG genres have a tendency to be spectacularly formulaic these days in their plots.  Sure, the details change, but the threats to your protagonist these days fall into one of three categories.

1.) Aliens

2.) Terrorists.

3.) Satan/Demons/Otherworldly Things of Unimaginable Evil

Sure, there are sub-categories for both (I personally enjoyed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare managing to merge both Jihadi Terrorists and Russian Ultra-Nationalists into one gigantic hodge-podge of silly).  And while there’s nothing wrong with fighting either of those groups in and of themselves, there has to come a point in the future when someone will step out and produce a game featuring someone/something other than these three groups as villains.

Because A Month Is Probably, Like, A Week, Assuming You’re God

An absence of a month certainly seems like less if you assume the person who has suddenly disappeared is a kind of famed vagabond or traveling raconteur, so let’s go with that and pretend it hasn’t been a significant chunk of time since I last conversed with the internet.

The NFL Playoffs began this weekend.  Being a Giant fan, I was largely a neutral observer, save for the match that took place in Seattle, where the 7-9 Seahawks surprised most people outside of the SeaTac metro area by not only defeating the defending Super Bowl Champions, but hanging 41 points on them in the process, punctuated most forcefully by Messr. Marshawn Lynch.

“Beast Mode” indeed.

Over at the Saints’ SBNation Fansite, there was a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth, and understandably so, at least to a certain extent.  The Seahawks were, by most analysis, a generally awful football team that had slunk into the playoffs after a game with the Rams that was an exceedingly terrible advertisement for the sport.  And while I understand the desire to have a “culture of winning” and not to embrace complacency at the first sign of success, part of me wants to say that Saints fans, at this point, should still be in a state of drunken bemusal at the fact that, less than a year ago, their favorite team won the Super Bowl.  A decade ago, the Saints were 7-9.  Five years ago they were 3-13 and mired in the kind of “won’t and never will” slap-dickery that had largely defined the franchise as the “Ain’ts”.  And then last year, they won the goddamn Super Bowl.

I agree with Simmons on the point that winning a championship should basically allow for a 3-5 year window of good humor and general even-tempered-ness among a franchise’s fans.  In the Saints case, it perhaps should be as much as 10 years, but all of this is to say that, while the wound certainly is the most bitter and raw in the immediate aftermath, I still believe Saints fans should simply remind themselves that they didn’t lose as the eternal no-hopers, they lost as defending Super Bowl Champions.  Moreover, they lost to a team that was in prime position to exemplify why the “Nobody Believed In Us!” theory has merit.  And they lost on the road, in a notoriously difficult stadium to play in.

Think of it this way Saints fans, you could’ve been playing your in-division rivals.  You could’ve controlled the game for the better part of 3 1/3 quarters.  You could’ve been up by 21 in the 4th, and then had your team drag a king-size mattress out to midfield, make it up with the finest linens and pillows from Crate and Barrel, and proceed to drop trou and shit the bed in one of the most epic bed-shittings in NFL history.  You could’ve had this happen.

Bleurgh.

Pro Evo, FIFA, and Making Soccer Soccer

I’m starting this post with video of Lionel Messi’s astonishing run and finish against Zaragoza last year primarily because it’s just an amazing bit of skill and stands as more proof that the “best attacking player in the world” list begins with one man and his nickname isn’t “CR7″.

I also posted it because it highlights one of the many reasons why I don’t feel that Pro Evolution Soccer, or the FIFA series really represent Football.  However, i’ve come to the understanding that it’s not the worst thing on earth that they don’t, and that they’re never really going to.

Soccer Snobbery, and the MLS Cup Final

I watched the end of the MLS Cup Final Sunday night.  Well, I watched part of the first half, switching between it and the Giants game (turnovers, bleurgh), and watched part of the second half, switching between it and The Walking Dead (Zombies!  Hooray!), and watched almost all of extra time.

As the title states, i’m afraid i’ve become an inadvertant soccer snob, because Arsenal’s capitulation vs. Tottenham at 7:30 AM Saturday morning was must-see TV (not that I was particularly expecting Arsenal to fold in such a spectacular manner), but I didn’t even realize that the MLS Cup Final was tonight until ESPN.com enlightened me.  Moreover, despite my purported stance as being a person who says you should support your local team, my interest in the MLS and the New York Red Bulls is… middling, at best.  Sure, one of the first posts on this site is re: Thierry Henry’s move to RBNY, but in all honesty, I didn’t watch a single game of their season this year.  Fulham?  Every single one I could access via FoxSoccer.tv.

Regarding Talking About Sports

I’m no podcast fiend, personally, there are too many out there and too few I enjoy.  Bringing sports into the equation just makes things harder, since pretty much anyone can sit around and chat about sports for 75 minutes, without a understanding of how to be informative/engaging/personable/humorous (looking at you, Colin Cowherd).

When it comes to talking about sports, the major issue is that, even moreso than in regular journalism, noone is unbiased.  If you care enough about sports to spend time talking about sports, you have a team, or a player, or something in particular you feel a great deal of affection for, and it’s hard to pretend that you don’t care about these things as much as you really do.   This is why I generally enjoy Sports shows and podcasts that are, at least, upfront and honest about the fact that they are in some way biased, and that you’re going to want to keep that in mind while listening.

So, in that light, there are a few sports podcasts that I am given to listening to without fail, as often as possible.  They are Pardon The Interruption (which is just a recording of the TV show but whatever), the BBC’s World Football Phone-In and Fighting Talk, The Guardian’s Football Weekly, and ESPN Soccernet’s podcast.  I enjoy all five of these for various reasons, but largely because all five make me laugh, all five usually give me some opinion or information I find entertaining, and I find all five to be the kind of podcast I enjoy.

Ratings and Sliders – A Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Hate/Love/Love Story

Nearly a decade ago now, back when Sammy Sosa was still black, I owned a copy of High Heat Baseball.  I don’t remember the year particularly, although I do remember that Scott Sauerbeck was pitching for the Pirates at the time, and his video game iteration would somehow manage to surrender 14 hits in 5 innings of work, and only give up 3 runs.

At the time, High Heat was one of the real sim-heads preferred baseball games, because it had a robust and detailed slider system that allowed players to tweak and tweak and tweak the game, to try and get the most realistic outcome possible.  Batting averages, pitch counts, fielding, and this was in the days before Sabremetrics exploded onto the scene and concepts like “Wins Over Replacement” became part of the advanced baseball vernacular.

But I fell out with High Heat Baseball, because the game eventually reached a point where I spent as much, if not more time fiddling with sliders than actually playing the game itself, which I think most people would agree is antithetical to the point of playing a video game.

Meanwhile, back in 2004 or 2005 or so, I bought a copy of Madden Football.  Finding myself incredibly frustrated with the opposing coaches play-calling, which essentially amounted to throwing the ball like they were down 17-7 with 3:41 left in the 4th when they were down 10-7 in the 2nd, I found guides online that taught you how to make the game’s own ratings for the coaches better represent reality.  To do this, however, one had to take control of all 30 teams, and manually tweak the coaches’ ratings and tendencies every single game.  My ending here was the same as my ending with High Heat Baseball.

Gameplay Sliders and Ratings are part of the sports-gaming world, and they’re almost certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.  The only issue with them is that they can be a game’s greatest strength and a game’s greatest weakness at the same time.

Regarding The Tricky Nature Of Who Is and Isn’t Good

A few quick notes before we get to the main article here.  First: A quick side-note here.

Sure, in terms of overall conference perception, we’ve basically set the Big East on fire and pushed it down a flight of stairs, but I, for one, do not care.