Reflections on Far Cry 2

As the hype cycle for Far Cry 5 begins its spin cycle, there is one type of comment that I can count on seeing whenever the latest trailer is being discussed: How frustrating/bullshit Far Cry 2 was. I totally understand this point of view (because the game is absolutely unforgiving which can be grating), but I have a problem with the common examples people cite for this position, like:

• "Your guns would jam all the time but it never happened to the enemies."
• "Your character suffers malaria attacks which can literally kill you if you don't have any medicine, which you have to keep track of."
• "Once you drive outside of a town, literally everyone you encounter shoots you on site."
• "Every time you clear out an enemy outpost and drive away, the enemies would instantly respawn 30 seconds later. Makes no sense!"

Now, there are a lot of things I wish I could change about Far Cry 2. I wish I could fix the hilariously sped-up dialogue that sucks all the gravitas from the plot whenever you have to actually talk to an NPC. I wish I could alter the driving behavior of the vehicles, which all seem to have been designed to get bottomed out on the smallest possible impediments. I wish I could cut some of the main faction missions so that the actual plot of the game doesn't disappear into a hazy jungle of indiscriminate war crimes so quickly. The difference between my complaints and the common criticisms I see levied against this game are that most people have problems with fundamental systems (weapon degradation, the checkpoints) whereas I am fine with those as they are and mostly just wish more time to polish the overall experience would have been available to Ubisoft Montreal. The reason I'm pointing this out is so that you can plainly see that I am biased towards liking this game and treating its decision with some charity. So let's go through these complaints, starting with the easiest:

"Every time you clear out an enemy outpost and drive away, the enemies would instantly respawn 30 seconds later. Makes no sense!"

This is a very strange thing to hold against the game in my view. Far Cry 2 is an open world shooter, so of course you can expect to spend most of your time invoking stand-your-ground laws on foreign soil. Shooting = content in this game, so the infinitely respawning checkpoints doesn't seem that egregious, especially since the game does have an actual end to the campaign that forces you to begin a new game or load an older save file if you want to continue your mayhem. Yes, it is frustrating that the checkpoints re-populate basically the moment they are out of your field of vision but we have to remember that this was 2008. The only other open world shooters the team had to go off of was the original Far Cry - the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game and Crysis wouldn't drop until 2007.

People are definitely less forgiving of this system now that Far Cry 3 and 4 showed us how the concept of these checkpoint/outpost areas that were secluded little combat arenas could be handled (along with a change in the random patrol encounters) that were much less stressful. Although I would like to point out that one of the solutions discussed by the FC2 team was to have the checkpoints never re-populate, which is what happened with the outposts in FC3 originally, before everyone realized how boring open world shooters are when there are no enemies left.

"Once you drive outside of a town, literally everyone you encounter shoots you on site."

This seems like kind of a strawman but it really is something I have seen repeated often. I suspect this is more offensive to most peoples' suspension of disbelieve - it's just very "game-y" to them that every enemy would be immediately ready and willing to gun the player down. But... you're a mercenary, just like them. Doing bad shit, just like them. I dunno, maybe this one is dumber than the checkpoint respawns thing.

Another thing that people mention that is related to these checkpoints, is the frequency with which you are forced to blast through the same checkpoints during a single mission. This is a bit more subjective and problematic as just having to get through 1 more checkpoint on the highest difficulty can mean 30+ minutes of lost progress, which sounds sufficiently blood pressure-raising to be pretty memorable. Personally I can only think of 1 mission that 100% forces you to slog through the same checkpoints multiple times, but I can understand people who feel that this happening at all is ridiculous. Luckily the environments are designed in such a way that you can often juke or sneak past checkpoints (especially at night), but this would require you to get out of your vehicle, look at your map, and figure out the best route. Maybe too much effort than many are willing to expend.

"Your character suffers malaria attacks which can literally kill you if you don't have any medicine, which you have to keep track of."

This one is a bit tricky. I'm curious to know whether most players who stick with FC2 just go about their business believing that they have a finite supply of medicine or clue in to the fact that your medicine is actually infinite for the vast majority of the game. Yes, you actually have infinite medicine while out in the world, free roaming, on a mission, whatever. The only times (that I know of) when the game actually puts a limit on your medicine supply is after a certain threshold of main story missions have been completed, usually after 3 or so. At that point instead of having the option to pick up another main mission or a side quest, you will be forcibly given a mission to "find someone who can provide medicine", which is marked on your map.

Aside from that, the malaria attacks are pretty widely spaced (1 every 45 IRL minutes) so it's unlikely you will experience more than 2 during a single session. Even if you are caught without medicine (this is a very difficult scenario to engineer by the way), if you pass out you just wake up at the church in Pala or Mosate Soleo, depending on how far along you are. That said, I'm not sure how successful this mechanic is in the end, since you either 1) have medicine and thus can just ignore it or 2) don't have medicine and lose a lot of progress for kind of shitty reason.

"Your guns would jam all the time but it never happened to the enemies."

 The magnum opus of Far Cry 2 message board criticism and the grievance I have the least amount of sympathy for. It is frustrating that the enemies don't suffer weapon mishaps like the player but to me its just another gameplay element that contributes to the generally hostile atmosphere of FC2.

I really want to emphasize the amount of work the game does to shield you from this mechanic. The opening tutorial of the game explains that weapon stores always have an infinite number of "clean" copies of your bought weapons so you can never run out. The game's currency, diamonds, are scattered everywhere around the world, frequently in pretty in-the-way areas so you won't ever be hurting for funds to buy guns with. And then the guns themselves reflect their level of wear and tear visually: the longer you keep any 1 single weapon on your person while putting it through regular use, the grimier and dirtier it will get. In addition to the weapon stores you can buy storage crates for your safehouses to house singleton copies of weapons that are available out in the field, further reducing the need to rely on a single dirty AK for multiple missions. And if your gun gets super rusty and totally disintegrates? Yeah, it sucks and you could die. But you will probably also have to dive for that rifle that guy you just killed dropped, which will probably jam at the worst possible moment, forcing you to toss a molotov as a distraction that ends up causing a brushfire that sets off a nearby ammo pile, etc. The emergent gameplay possibilities are endless!

~~~

My intent with this wasn't to put the "cajualz" on blast for not liking the thing I like, just to vent a bit about the common complaints I see leveled against this game and how most of it is really overblown. Of course you are totally 100% within your rights to continue not giving a shit about Far Cry 2 (mea culpa: it took me over a year to even consider playing Nier:Automata) but hopefully this makes at least someone consider it or even just doing some more research on it before writing it off completely. Especially if you are bored to tears of the modern, whistle-clean Far Cry franchise as it is now.

Kevin Gilbert - Thud

Coming off the dissolution of art rock semi-supergroup Toy Matinee and the more freshly released debut smash of his then-girlfiend Sheryl Crow's career, Kevin Gilbert's first and unfortunately only fully-finished solo album Thud should've been just the first step of one of the more consistently fascinating singer-songwriters of the 90s. Shedding the prog rock excess of his previous work, Thud is far less self-conscious and pompous than the sometimes tiring squeaky-clean sheen of Toy Matinee got to be without losing any of the songwriting punch. Sadly it would end up becoming his only truly complete solo work aside from the stitched-together remains of his grandiose rock opera follow up The Shaming of the True.

Don't mistake a lack of art rock gloss for a "heavier, rawer" approach, though - Thud treads much of the same adult contemporary pop/prog ground that Gilbert had traversed before, just at a less frantic pace this time as more laid-back pieces form the bulk of the material, from the sleepy sing-a-long "Tears of Audrey" to "Joytown"'s darkly shuddering groove and the strangely familiar-feeling intro acoustic number "When You Give Your Love To Me". Gilbert indulges his Genesis-loving side only on a few select pieces, in particular the album highlight "Shadow Self" which is blessed with, among other things, a bass line so firmly in the pocket it would make Doug Wimbish jealous and "Waiting", a textbook Gilbert song if there ever was one: off-kilter arrangement, lyrics that lean heavily into black comedy, and a chorus that never takes the easy way out. Other highlights include the infectious toe-tapping polemic of "Goodness Gracious" and the lush backup vocals and lilting sway of "All Fall Down" while more pedestrian selections such as "Shrug (Because of Me and You)" and "Tea For One" are enjoyable but feel like they lack a certain oomph that would elevate them into the same altitudes as the other tracks.

From a production/technical standpoint, Thud is just as excellent and clear-sounding as you would expect from these types of industry veterans. Gilbert's voice is sharply audible and just loud enough to cut clearly through the the tracks without sacrificing the breadth of sounds provided by the backing instruments and the whole thing sounds quite simple and pleasant - definitely easy on the ears, with a nice dynamic range in the teens. And with the whole gang packing it in before the 50 minute mark is reached you've got a nearly perfect run-time as well. It's a rare piece of art that can provide such strong returns on such a meager investment, and that makes Thud more than worth the trouble of digging it up.

Brand New Immortals - Tragic Show

Stealthily dropping while soft rock hits from Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson and Matchbox Twenty were ruling the roost, Tragic Show is the first and only full length product of the union between singer-songwriter David Ryan Harris (think Dan Wilson if he hadn't met up with Adele), formerly of Follow For Now cult-fame; drummer Kenny Cresswell, who went on to work with Avril Lavigne (remember her??) and Candlemass; Johnny Colt, former bassist for The Black Crowes. Produced by Brendan O'Brien, who also worked with The Black Crowes and produced King's X's Dogman album, Tragic Show is one of the better obscure albums you might find in the $2 rack. As confident as any post-grunge mid-00's band banking on a middle-school-dance-friendly power ballad to take them to the top but packing the songwriting and production heat of industry titans, Tragic Show is a master class in song craft that would make even Kevin Gilbert jealous.

Ballads seem to stick to supergroups more strongly than rubber cement to model car parts and Brand New Immortals are no strangers to the sappy stuff. Late album slow-burners like "Satellites" and "Ill Conceived" would normally ruin any semblance of momentum that the previous tracks had accumulated but... well, Tragic Show has more hooks than your local Bass Pro Shop and even these mid-tempo pieces fail to bring the record down (particularly the spot at 5:10~ of "Ill Conceived" which is straight-up Zeppelin worship) as the atmosphere built by them never feels fake or out of place. Coupled with O'Brien's talent/obsession with creating and recording incredibly full band sounds, the guitar and drums thankfully never suddenly evaporate as they tend to do during other bands' softer moments. It isn't until the trio really opens up the throttle on more strident numbers like "Blacksun", "High Time" and "Let Me Up" that O'Brien's production really pays dividends though, as the fullness of these tracks elevate the material which would've been strong enough on its own. The term "heavy melody" was originally coined by producer Sam Taylor to describe King's X's early sound but I find it applies to Tragic Show as well as these pieces, in particular the aforementioned 3 fatter tunes, orbit around choruses that are downright bouncing. I still tend to think that the slower tunes drag what a might have been an utterly spotless rock record down a notch, but they have been growing on - in particular "Satellites" and "Ill Conceived", which I find is a lovely send off to the whole thing.

After all is said and down, Tragic Show is a stereotypical rough gem: arresting when held up to the proper light, but not without some rough edges.I emphatically recommend it for anyone interested in an album that arrived a couple of years too late to really make a splash while still bearing the mark of top-notch writing and production.

Living Colour - Shade

I have to something to confess: I haven't to anything Living Colour has put out more than half-heartedly since Collideoscope dropped in 2003, which itself was their first release since Stain put an end to a triple threat of excellent records 10 years prior. A couple of months ago I stumbled on their first EP released since before I was born entitled Who Shot Ya?, which was basically a cover of The Notorious B.I.G.'s titular track packaged with a couple of remixes by other artists. I saw that they had actually done a music video for the song and gave it a shot, curious to see how these guys had aged in the last decade and a half (the video itself is pretty good, if you haven't seen it yet and like hip hop or rock I recommend it). More than anything in the video itself I was blown away by Vernon Reid's guitar tone as I had never heard it sound so thick and chunky - he's always been an amazing player long suffering from a less-than-befitting tone which was never quite as full-throated as I would have liked, even at his heaviest. Who Shot Ya seemed to indicate a change to all that and when the full album Shade finally arrived after many years of delays, setbacks, and scheduling conflicts, I was very pleased to discover that his tone hasn't sounded this good in a long, long time. Truthfully his guitar and Doug Wimbish's bass both sound so huge I would've believed you if you had told me Brendan O'Brien had produced the album.

In reality Shade was produced and partially engineered and written by Andre Betts, a low-key industry vet with production and writing credits from the likes of Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, and Living Colour themselves. Credit where credit is due: Shade blasts out of the gate with all cylinders firing and basically never lets up until the last track is finished, which unfortunately don't quite end things on a super satisfying note despite a nice feature from Celebrity Jeopardy stary George Clinton. The pieces that work the best here are the ones most liberally soaked in the blues: the fantastic trombone and keyboard accent of "Who's That", the so-low-its-almost-crawling cover of Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues" and the straight-ahead blues rock of muscular opener "Freedom of Expression (F.O.X)", although that isn't to say the more hard rock oriented tracks disappoint. "Pattern in Time" sounds like a time capsule stretching back to the group's early 90's sound from their first two albums while unassuming foot tappers like "Invisible" and "Blak Out" are just plain groove machines. The thick, raw production really elevates the material here and erases any doubt that Living Colour might have lost their bite, even as they focus more heavily than ever before on topics of racism and inequality on the aforementioned "Who Shot Ya", "Program" (Why do I only ever hear black groups doing little skits like the one at the beginning of this song? It does a lot to humanize these bands) and a nice cover of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" to round the whole package out. I mentioned the production before but I really have to stress again how rich of a an experience Shade is sonically. Doug Wimbish in particular sounds better than ever (think Rick Skatore on Strength In Numbers or Heavy Metal Soul By the Pound or dUg Pinnick on Dogman) while Corey Glover's pipes don't seem to have worsened with age an iota (his enthusiasm is infectious, especially on "Invisible", "Blak Out", and "Who's That"), and I've already noted how much fuller Vernon Reid's guitar tone is here. If it seems like I'm singling out stickman Bill Calhoun I'm really not, truthfully he's just been giving the same insanely tight performance for the last thirty years so it's hard to find much to say besides "he killed it again here". I find that the he isn't quite as in the pocket as he was on Stain but that was almost 25 years ago.

Shade certainly isn't subtle either musically or lyrically, but I don't think that's a bad thing in its case. As someone who has been listening to this band for a while it's a bit difficult to divorce myself from that experience and put myself in the shoes of someone who has never heard of Living Colour, much less the idea of an all black hard rock outfit. I like to think that Shade being released at this point in time with it's socially aware lyrics and Mike Brown liner artwork is less of a re-invention to the band's core audience and a wake-up to a larger music industry complex that found a place for Pharrell and Kanye but left this group, 24/7 Spyz, Follow For Now and others to fend for themselves in a post-grunge landscape. These groups have been a revelation to me in the last few years, and I can't even imagine the impact hearing a song like "Program" or "Preachin' Blues" would have on a black teenager in this era (if they dig it). More than just a collection of good tunes, Shade is a shoreline beacon for the next generation of disaffected youth of America that have grown tired of the current pop music scene.

Mafia III: One Year Later

Mafia III has generated a lot of strong reactions in the year since it's release, with many comments focused on its buggy initial release to its film-quality cutscenes and beefy, immensely satisfying gunplay while the game as a whole seems to have slipped into the back of peoples' minds while developer Hangar 13 plugged away for a year, releasing a major DLC expansion every couple of months until finally calling it after July's offering, Sign of The Times. While I think all of the DLC is worth the entry price, I don't think I'm going to cover how it all shook out in the same way that I talked about the base game, especially as Noah Caldwell-Gervais just put out another solid video going over exactly that and I'm still figuring out how what I think about all of it. If I had to give a quick hits list, I would say Stones Unturned is my favorite and the overall most well-done despite it throwing the "grounded exploration of racism" vibe of the base game out with the bathwater, out of the Sears Tower.

Faster, Baby! and Sign of The Times both have problems with their relation to the tone of the base game as well, but Stones Unturned felt much more committed to a singular tonal experience and consequently a bit more compelling to follow. Yes, that experience was naked Predator worship but the DLC's island setting was stunning and the focus on linear combat arenas, plus the new toys gifted to Lincoln along the way made the experience more than just passable. To me the cracks showed more visibly in the other 2 DLC packs as they failed to mesh their gameplay with their tones - the pairing of stunt driving a la The Dukes of Hazzard with violent rural bigotry in Faster, Baby! is about as natural a duo as you can imagine and Sign of The Times' earnest and very affecting portrait of a person who was psychologically ruined by a freaky cult features slo-mo gun battles in nightclubs with knife wielding Manson sisters who cruise around in funny car hearses with motherfucking Addams Family spiderweb grills. Also, there are "psychedelic" drug trip sequences because why not. So maybe Stones Unturned is my favorite because it just picked 1 thing and did it well without stretching itself out over a thinner, more repetitive sequence of missions like the other DLCs.

Past the DLCs and their individual experiences, though, I wanted to talk about an aspect of the Mafia III package that I haven't seen as many people mention as I would have figured: its presentation, from graphics to UI, and music choices in both its licensed soundtrack and original soundtrack. Because this game has some of the strongest presentation and sense of style that I have experience in quite a while.

Presentation

Lighting

Since Mafia III does not have a photo mode its difficult to produce screenshots that really do the lighting system at work here justice, but I've spent some time trying anyway and so have some other auteurs. Take a look:

No screenshots of the pre-rendered scenes, because that is cheating. Everyone has already mentioned how utterly amazing they look, and I am in complete agreement. I've played through Mafia III 3 times at this point and still find myself glued to the screen whenever a scene is playing, no matter how trivial. They're all executed with such style and pathos (as is the writing), and the performances are rendered so powerfully, particularly by Alex Hernandez, who plays Lincoln Clay, although truthfully the whole cast of characters is wonderfully portrayed.

Anyway, the lighting. You can probably tell by the daytime shots above that there is a noticeable amount of blur present, and while it isn't something everyone enjoys I feel like it fits the cinematic nature of the game. When you choose to open the main menu with a countdown reel and frame the whole narrative as a years-later documentary it tracks that the resulting images will be a bit more film-like than life-like, and while the overexposed sunlight can be a bit frustrating when it blocks out the road during the sunrise, it is more than when worth it when you find yourself in the bayou at a quiet moment as the wind breezes through the trees and the warm orange Louisiana light seeps through the canopy. Nighttime is where the lighting truly shines, though, as billboards and neon signage cut through the darkness and the rich interior illumination of bars, clubs, and even modest homes lend a real sense of place to the environments of New Bourdeaux. It's also the best time to enjoy the many minute details that dot the game's world and objects that contribute significantly to immersion, mostly related to the cars. Such as:

- The reflection of lights on car exteriors is fantastic at this time. Reflections also bounce of chrome bumpers and trim with equal fidelity, unlike during the day when they just look off.
- Headlights and taillights turn on & off slowly as the bulbs heat up/cool off instead of the instantaneous on/off of modern halogen lights.
- Car bodies shift noticeably when people get in and out, as well as when you turn the wheels while the car is stationary.
- Exhaust pipes start rattling once the car is started and fumes are only visible issuing from the pipe when the car is actually revving.
- A handful of cars in the game are customizable and feature different Mad Max-sized blowers that can be installed. Some of these are visible jutting through the hood a la the Black On Black's famous Weiand supercharger while some have custom hood scoops modeled specifically for that ride. Another little thing, but a nice touch all the same.

There are also a couple of more simulation-ish mechanics supposedly functional in the game code that were either removed during development such as the need to manage your car's fuel gauge and occasionally top up, and methods for the engine to track tire traction by factoring in different treads and fuel levels (!). Whether or not it was a good decision to remove these pieces is not the point of this piece, but even as Mafia III stands today it is obvious that a huge amount of work went into the design, modeling, and texturing of the cars in this game and in my mind it really stand out as great stuff. The Mafia series has always been a period piece and American cars a huge part of the time and place that is part of all of the games in this series, and Mafia III impresses in that area.



Audio

Like all period pieces, the visual side of things is only one piece of the puzzle. Creating and utilizing a suitable stable of sound effects and tracks is essential for building and maintaining the atmosphere Hangar 13 was trying to create here, and Mafia III is probably more successful in this realm than the visual aspect of its presentation - at least, I've heard a lot more people praising the soundtrack and included licensed songs than the graphics outside of the custscenes, and probably for good reason. The combination of original music and licensed tunes is so strong and well-used in this game I have a hard time of thinking of other examples that do a similarly good job. Like Grand Theft Auto, Mafia III's are never really mentioned or commented on by the game itself, unless you count the collectible album covers in the latter which seems like a stretch. The original pieces recorded specifically to fill out the game's aural space remind me of Red Dead Redemption in how they so excellently match the tone and feel of the game's themes while elevating the minutia of the experience like loading screens, small repetitive bits of combat, etc. Then there is a third group of pieces that could probably fall under the "Original Soundtrack" heading as they are found solely out in the open world as the "b-sides" of Mafia III, popping out from stereos, leaking audibly out of houses, and filling the jazz clubs found in the game's version of the French Quarter.

The influence of popular music in Mafia III cannot be overstated. Between the softly plucked notes of the OST accompanying the concept-art loading screens and menus and the naturalistic beauty of the title screen featuring Jimi Hendrix's iconic cover of "All Along The Watchtower" swirling all around, even the more technical "game-y" elements aren't permitted to deviate from the atmosphere Jesse Harlin and Jim Bonney's rich score have woven. Normally the main menu of a video game is the least immersive piece of it, affixed with a grid of options for tweaking controls and deleting old save files, but Mafia III's main menu has none of that: two simple options - continue, and new game. The PC version has a bit of a cop-out in the form of a splash screen menu that comes up before the game properly launches allowing you to tweak settings but it's clear that even the under-the-hood maintenance of difficulty settings and different resolutions are intended to be just as much a part of the Mafia III experience as the actual gameplay. The title screen's heavily stylized nature reminds me of similarly pathos-drenched titles like those of Frictional Games, notably the gut-twisting dirge of Amnesia: The Dark Descent  and the harsh glitch-horror aesthetic of Soma; Red Dead Redemption remains the closest point of comparison in terms of atmosphere and sound design to Mafia III in my mind.

Original Soundtrack & Other Assorted Noises

The original soundtrack is a rich stew of delta blues, swamp rock, and quietly plucked acoustic mood pieces that accentuate combat and cutscenes, never actually playing while the player is just roaming around, which is an interesting choice. If you're in a car then it obviously makes more sense to just listen to the radio but if you're pounding the pavements you are left with the raw sounds of the city to occupy your ears - cars fading into and out of earshot, the idle conversations of NPCs around you, and snippets of muffled songs faintly heard playing from within houses and buildings. While the conversations between NPCs are generally pretty funny and decent enough at selling the period (discussing that goofy new show Star Trek or remarking on L. Ron Hubbard's fantastic new book), the sequestering of the OST tunes into combat arenas and discrete story moments is maybe more common than I am aware of, as I have not played any open world games besides the Far Cry series and Mad Max in the last couple of years and both of those games weave their music into their minute-to-minute gameplay which I assume is the default way of implementing soundtracks. I would be curious to see if GTA V does this as well?

The rest of the music you'll hear outside of licensed material is more ephemeral - random jazz tunes and other forms of semi-elevator music not really significant enough to be included as part of the OST proper apparently. Just like Red Dead Redemption with it's saloon piano pieces! I haven't been able to find any credits for these tracks so I'm not sure who to give credit to for them, but they are another square in Mafia III's atmospheric quilt ranging from free jazz to instrumental slot-fillers on the radio to commercial jingles and more.

Licensed Songs and Radio Programs

Here we get to the real meat n' potatoes of Mafia III's audio - 100+ tracks ranging from set-in-stone classics (Rolling Stones, Jimi, Aretha Franklin) to long forgotten standards (CCR, Sam and Dave) down to (as someone who was not alive in the 60's) some fairly deep cuts, in particular "Needles and Pins" by The Searchers which is just bizarrely funny to me as a longtime Megadeth fan . That "100+" number seems a little high to me as someone with 120 hours in the game, because I experienced a lot of repeats on the radio during my time with Mafia III but whatever. This is the part of Mafia III people mention the most besides the cutscenes and for good reason, because it is incredibly impressive how well the soundtrack fits this game. You could write a whole essay on the relationship between the game and just Credence Clearwater Revival's music as it fits the game so well it's almost scary. Fuck, maybe I will because blasting through the bayou in a knockoff Ford Torino with "Born On The Bayou" piping in through the speakers is way way way more enjoyable and thematically on point than you would think it is reading it on a screen. Of course if you aren't a fan of AOR than you probably won't be spending too much time with the dial cranked but if you were willing to try the game at all I think you self-selected for enough of a tolerance of vaguely cinematic historical stuff that you will either grin and bear it or find something else to enjoy with the game.

Anyway, the final piece of the auditory puzzle I wanted to mention is the nature of the radio programs in Mafia III because they are a bit different than the ones you have heard in GTA and Saint's Row. There are only two actual "shows" in the whole game (three if you count the news bulletins that chime in about the latest interchangeable Sopranos extra that you rapidly ventilated and sprinkle in references to topical news events), one being a kind of revolutionary BLM type after hours rant (delivered by the golden-voice goodness of Dave Fennoy) and the other a landed-gentry polite racism talk show. What is most interesting to me about these smaller chunks of the radio content is how easy they are to miss, because as far as I am aware none of them are mandatory even though they are queued up to coincide with particular story beats, and they are surprisingly lengthy, coming to a total of about an hour of runtime throughout the game's narrative. If you aren't interested in buying the game just for the opportunity to listen to the in-game radio you can check out one of the shows here .

Prey First Impressions

One of my friends is a big fan of slower-paced action games, the kind that emphasize player agency and freedom instead of setpiece moments and cutting-edge design trends. Referred to as "immersive sims", these types of games are an endangered species in today's game development environment with just a handful of studios and projects carrying the torch that Deus Ex and System Shock set aflame - the Bioshock series by 2K Boston / Irrational Games (featuring former members of System Shock creators Looking Glass Technologies), Dishonored 1 & 2 by Arkane Studios (another harbor for former Looking Glass employees), Far Cry 2 by an Ubisoft team headed by emergent gameplay maestro Clint Hocking and GSC Game Worlds' S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, among others. Prey, the newest title by Arkane Studios, follows in these footsteps with an open-ended design methodology that will feel very familiar to any fans of the 'Shock series or its many children.

The game takes place aboard a space station called Talos I with you filling the shoes of Morgan Yu, who is basically a space-age yuppie caught up in a conflict with your brother Alex and a mysterious race of aliens known as the Typhon who have infested the station. While the premise is new and the CryEngine tech is quite nice looking the core gameplay will feel very comfortable to immersive sim old hands:

• You start off with a wrench and then can acquire further weapons in mostly whatever order you want
• You use "Neuromods" to upgrade Morgan's abilities and to unlock new ones. These are basically just Plasmids in space.
• You are guided throughout the station by a mostly unseen character while picking up audio logs and reading emails to give context to life on the station before everything went to shit (sensing a pattern yet?)
• Instead of scripted missions, you are given a loose narrative thread to follow and numerous optional objectives to complete at your leisure.
• The game has several systems you can interact with, including keypads you can hack, turrets and robots you can deploy, items you can craft, and enemies to fight, evade, and scan for research all nested in several expansive hub areas that are partitioned off with loading screens.

Sounds a lot like one of the 'Shock games, right? That's because Prey basically is the System Shock 3 we never got, and it is fantastic if you are a fan of that genre. I'm 12 hours in and I'm pretty sure I'm on the B side of the main plot and I still have several side quests I'd like to wrap up as well as a few more areas to comb through, all while continuing to make tough choices about how to upgrade Morgan and my weapons and making plans in the back of my mind about the strategies I'll pursue when I inevitably run through it again. 

So if this sounds at all like fun to you, I highly recommend Prey. It's on sale on Steam right for $40 and is well worth it for such well-wound package. After I finish it I would like to talk more in-depth about its design but I still feel like there is a lot to learn and absorb with this one, so we'll see when I get around to that.

Video Games as UBI and the Unnecessariat

Recently I was recommended this article about young guys my age are turning to video games in favor of that old chestnut gainful employment and found it pretty interesting. The rising importance of video games in my demos life doesn't seem very surprising to me, especially considering how quickly we've gone from:

to

The big takeaway: "For Hurst, the pull that games exerted on his son helped illustrate what's happening to young men in the broader economy. Between 2000 and 2015, he said, the percentage of lower-skilled men aged 21 to 55 who had a job dropped from 84 percent to 77 percent, "a massive change relative to historical levels." The decline is particularly acute among men in their 20s. Employment fell 10 points over the same period, from 82 percent to 72 percent. In 2015, he noted, 22 percent of men in their 20s who lacked a college degree had not worked a single day during the previous year—up from 10 percent in 2000." A couple of things here. First, as someone who enjoys video games quite a lot I think it would be insane not to admit their addiction potential (and if that isn't the right term for it I'm not sure what is) - its in their nature as games to be at least somewhat addicting dopamine release tools, they just require a significantly lesser amount of effort than playing a game of basketball or something. Since we all love dopamine (internet porn is pretty big I hear) it tracks that some people will choose to forsake their less-than-dope waking existence, especially if their choice of jobs is between flipping patties at Wendy's or stocking shelves at Ace Hardware and they can maintain a sufficient standard of living by either living with their parents or taking handouts from Uncle Sam. 

If this was really such a historic phenomenon you would think that we have begun to see at least some indication of these missing dudes' presence, but I don't I personally have noticed anything. As far as I can tell houses are still being built, roads are being maintained, and trucks are being driven... but to be fair, the type of guy that this article talks about probably isn't one that I would've really had much experience with in my life regardless. I grew up in a fairly affluent small town in Michigan and was pretty solidly middle-class so college was more of an inevitable thing to be planned for than a potential option among many, and right now I can only think of 1 guy I knew from high school who I know for sure did not go to college, and he is going to be in prison soon so... yeah. This trend of under educated guys dropping out of the workforce like this reminds me of another article I read about a year ago about a torrent of people, disproportionately white, women, rural and not well-off, who are not even "unemployed" at this point. They've been rendered obsolete by technology and automation and are currently committing quiet heroin/alcohol-aided suicide in pretty historic numbers as the global information economy leaves them in the dust (another great piece on this situation). This phenomenon of young men passing by the hours in front of video games seems like a companion piece to what is happening to their female counterparts, and while it certainly isn't ideal I wonder how much worse this will get before it gets any better, since I doubt Amazon has plans to slow down anytime soon. Luckily these gaming fiends seem to be pretty cool with it for now so we won't be seeing molotovs through the windows of Congress just yet, but I'm very interested to see how (if at all) the government begins figuring out new, more constructive pursuits for all of us in the unecessariat after the singularity.

(And yes, I acknowledge that games are a valid entertainment art form just like movies and books blah blah blah, that isn't the issue. The problem is that when you give people a relatively cheap and easy way to feel happy/engaged/challenged like you normally would at some crappy minimum wage job I'm not sure how surprised we can be that they choose illusion instead of reality).