Does Deus Ex stand the test of time?

It’s an honest question. Some would say “no” because they never cared for it in the first place. Others might say no just because of the dated graphics, but there’s a high definition texture pack for Deus Ex.

The Cable Bruddas started a thread last summer where we could all talk about games that hold up or don’t. But they’ve expanded their opinions into the first Caltrops video review, presented below. With the third game in the series shipping shortly, the Bruddas discuss the merits and failures of the original.

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If you’re purchasing a copy of Feeding Frenzy (2010, Red Letter Media) you’re doing so to support one of the funniest people on the Internet, not because you’re getting a great film. I am going to assume that co-director Mike Stoklasa wouldn’t want anyone to soften their impression of his movie, unless he’s just a huge narcissist. The man sent the Internet pizza rolls, though, so I don’t think he was trying all that hard to totally buy us off.

If you’re unfamiliar with the man’s work, Mike Stoklasa developed a character called Harry S. Plinkett (or, as we call him on Caltrops, “Stroke Guy“) and used him to savage the 1994 film Star Trek Generations. Stoklasa did such a good job, he managed to change my opinion about the movie, thus making the only time anyone’s opinion about anything was ever changed thanks to Youtube. He followed the video review of Generations by breaking his dick off into the mouth of the other Next Generation Trek flicks, and then doing the same to the three Star Wars prequels. While this was going on, the viewer gained more insight to the character of narrator Harry Plinkett. If you really shouldn’t be on the net, you found those vignettes disturbing enough to wistfully dream that the reviews stopped containing them. I don’t want to unfairly put people in categories, but everyone else who was an actual adult more or less dug them, and understood that they helped distance Red Letter Media’s video reviews from an ever more-crowded field. As it turns out, the entire time Plinkett was doing horrible things in his basement and intimately sharing them, he was prepping us for a rubber monster movie.

"Eat it with your mouff."

I was 10 when Gremlins came out, which meant I was in the theater and able to be properly disappointed for Gremlins 2. However, in much the same way that a video game becomes better when your friends are playing with you, the creative team behind Feeding Frenzy (Stoklasa, Jay Bauman and Rich Evans) have a love for rubber critter movies that probably pinballed against each other, psyching each other up. Feeding Frenzy begins by giving us insight to an average evening of Harry S. Plinkett (played by Evans). And initially, everything starts out great — we’ve got Plinkett in a scene with a call girl. Oh, I mean, it’s completely abhorrent and I modified the HOSTS file on my parents’ PC over Thanksgiving so they could never see me approve of it here, but this is pretty much everything you could hope for in the first six minutes. Then we go to the hardware store, and other people start talking.

Feeding Frenzy is an independent, amateur (not meant in the condescending way) film, and that means you’re going to see many failings of the sub-genre. The acting, on the whole, is rather poor. Most scenes look like they could have used a couple days’ worth of extra rehearsal. The less a given actor or actress has to do, the better he or she seems to come off, which is understandable for a project on what we can assume is a compressed schedule fit around the lives of its creators. The toughest jobs in the film are those of the leads, Ron Lipski and Gillian Bellinger. Lipski, playing the lead in Jesse Camp, has a lot of scenes that seem like they could have used another round of screenplay edits. Before we even begin to really know him, he’s asked to roll his eyes for a couple minutes straight. On one hand, you wish Lipski had more time to digest everything being asked of him, on the other hand, I can’t remember a flick almost immediately having such open contempt for its lead. Everybody hates this Jesse guy, and you quickly get the sense that Lipski does too.

We would love some popcorn, actually.

We get plenty of reasons to distrust and dislike Plinkett, but Feeding Frenzy takes a couple detours that don’t go anywhere. There’s a pillow fight scene, and no red-blooded man will take another to task for that. However, there is an inexplicable scene between Stoklasa (playing a separate character than he had so far) and Lora Story which is — well, it’s perfectly fine in a vacuum, but distracting as we just saw Stoklasa minus some face bandages a moment ago. I mean, I was able to successfully continue my evening and not jog and everything, but it was jarring. I don’t know if this was a homage to the genre of rubber monster movies or what. Feeding Frenzy has a weird way of making you feel you don’t have all the facts sometimes. That being said, Ms. Story could have really helped Harrison Ford as a voice coach in K-19: The Widowmaker, so there’s that.

As hard as it is to act and take direction in an indie film, the cast and crew aren’t helped by the monsters themselves. Teethy little mongrel spheres, we’re never quite clear how dangerous they’re really supposed to be. Jesse seemingly loses a chunk of his leg at one point, but the plot doesn’t call for him to really hobble. They look ridiculous, and that’s the point, but we’re never invited to be afraid of them. And I think that’s the biggest misstep of the film, except for a lot of the delivery: is Feeding Frenzy trying to elbow its way above Critters, Troll and Ghoulies? Just be alongside them, or something else entirely? Does it have no ambition in this regard? I can accept anything in a schlock genre as long as I get what I came in for and what defines the genre. Feeding Frenzy never quite reaches the point where the monsters make you uncomfortable.

All that being said, there is one scene in the movie that demands attention. I can say, quite categorically, that I laughed harder at it than anything else I can think of in recent memory. I don’t want to spoil anything, because it is so perfectly executed, so I will just say that it involves Jesse’s roommate, and it happens at fifty-one and a half minutes. It’s quietly set up throughout the entire movie and provides a delightful payoff to some earlier scenes that lacked any at the time. It’s my favorite bit about Feeding Frenzy, and completely got me on their side for the third act. Making the viewer laugh because you earned it is tough, and made me respect this movie, even if I can’t recommend it to all audiences without reservation.

This guy cracks me up, and I hope he cracks you up, too.

But look, we live in a world where there’s new and exciting art being released every week. Cash Cash came out with a new album. And… God, what a time to draw a blank. OK, wait, there’s Cash Cash, and the cops got that van Gogh sketch back from that one dumb fuck who wore loafers with no socks — what I’m saying is that there’s new stuff and we can’t even get rid of the old art. You have a lot of choices, and buying a copy of Feeding Frenzy supports all the right people. I don’t regret my purchase, and Christ, that take by Jay Bauman hasn’t stopped cracking me up yet and I’ve been watching it for the last two hours. Stoklasa, Bauman and Evans do not need encouragement from various Failed Romeros reviewing their work because you can tell this stuff is in their blood. They’re going to be fine if they keep doing these and learn from each one. I’m looking forward to their next effort, and will happily tag along provided they show passion in improving their craft each time out. Feeding Frenzy is a wonderful point to get on a roller coaster ride filled to bursting with characters and creators that get a little turned on by your puking if you haven’t already.

Ice Cream Jonsey

The Half-Life 2 series of programs have crossed paths with the wrong man!

Tdarcos

While both video game consoles and home computers allowed their owners to play videogames, home computers also gave people the ability to create their own. Through BASIC and other languages, home computer owners were able to create their own games. Unfortunately, many young programmers found out the hard way that creating a game from scratch was rather difficult.

From this need, a new genre was born — the “construction kit.” The first one I remember seeing was Electronic Arts’ “Pinball Construction Set,” a program that allowed budding programmers to place bumpers at will and create their own virtual pinball tables. Pinball Construction Set would soon be followed by Arcade Game Construction Kit, Adventure Construction Set, Shoot-Em-Up Contruction Kit and Wargame Construction Set. All of these programs greatly simplified the process of creating your own programs by managing the majority of the code, allowing young game makers to focus on things like graphics, sound and gameplay.

One of the weirder additions to the “construction kit” genre was Activision’s “Complete Computer Fireworks Celebration Kit.” Dubbed “the fireworks construction kit” by gamers, Activision’s 1985 release allowed users to create their own virtual firework displays. Seriously. The Complete Computer Fireworks Celebration Kit (CCFCK) was written by Jon van Ryzin, the same man that wrote H.E.R.O.

Like any other “construction kit” program, CCFCK offers a multitude of options that allows virtual fireworks maestros the ability to customize every part of their display. Users can choose one of six backdrops (a bridge, a city, a castle, etc) and from a list of twenty songs, from The Star Spangled Banner to Happy Birthday. The program is compatible with Music Studio, so custom songs can also be imported. The fireworks displays also include text messages displayed at the bottom of the screen which can be customized as well.

And then there are the fireworks. There are several different types of fireworks than can be used, and each one can be modified using sliders, giving users the ability to alter each fireworks size, color, speed, and so on. The sliders, like every other part of the program, are controlled using a standard joystick. CCFCK requires very little keyboard interaction (other than the custom display messages users can enter).

Each event is ultimately stored on a vertically-scrolling event list. Each entry can be changed, inserted or removed. With enough time and effort, a person could theoretically synch their fireworks display up with the background music.

Once your masterpiece has been completed it can be saved to disk, where it can be reloaded or traded amongst friends (assuming they also own the program — from what I can tell, the saved firework displays are not stand alone executables).

While many people apparently have fond memories of this program, I have to admit I found the whole thing pretty boring. I mean … seriously, virtual fireworks? For a fraction of this program’s original retail cost (about $50) I could have put on a real fireworks display on in my own backyard. After ten or so minutes of messing around with Activision’s Complete Computer Fireworks Celebration Kit, I actually wanted to to turn off the computer and go outside — and that’s really saying something. I suppose kids wanting to orchestrate their own grand-scale fireworks displays might get a kick out of this title, but everyone else would get more enjoyment from simply lighting the disk on fire and chunking it high into the air.

Flack

Admitting to fellow gamers that you play (much less enjoy playing) Angry Birds is similar to letting your old headbanging friends from high school know that you actually enjoyed Metallica’s self-titled “Black” album. The last Metallica album fans are officially allowed to like is 1988’s bassless “…And Justice For All.” Period. Likewise, no retro or current-gen gamer worth his or her weight in Pokebucks should ever publicly admit to partaking in the virtual flinging of fat, flightless birds.

You know it’s sad but true.

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The investigations and interrogations were the best parts. That’s good since it was the main focus of the game. The car chases were a nice addition to break things up from time to time, but got a little bland by the end because of repetition. The shootouts were a nice diversion at first, until they got longer and more frequent, reminding me how terrible shooter controls are with analog sticks. How are FPS games popular on consoles? The controls are terrible. LA Noire recgonized that they’re such a complete joke that it aims for you. They might as well have just made the shootouts a QTE event. PUSH BUTTON TO KILL GUY.

It’s a good thing upper-management doesn’t know anything about video games, because if they did we’d be reading about how people in charge of LA Noire’s development got fired. They’d have been pissed to find out they spent millions on a team of people to meticulously recreate a model of 1940s Los Angeles and license dozens of songs from the time period only to find out they’re completely unnecessary and wasted. There is no reason for this game to be an open-world game at all. Even the game agrees by letting you hold down a button and skip driving to a crime scene location. There’s random street crimes you can drive to, but the few I tried were all shootouts with horrible console shooter controls and they started putting street crimes a million miles away from your location with no option to teleport there. There were also hidden cars you could find, but they added nothing to the game so who the fuck cares about finding any of them.

And on the subject of pressing a button to skip the game, I failed a really awful bulldozer chase segment enough (3 times) for the game to ask me if I wanted to skip it with no consequences at all. I’m not hot-shit game designer Shigeru Miyamoto or even pretend hot-shit game designer Tim Rogers, but here’s what I know about game design: if at any point you find yourself implementing a feature that says, “PUSH BUTTON TO SKIP GAMEPLAY,” go ahead and remove that whole section right out of the game. You’ve just admitted it sucks, so might as well take it out.

This game is also F U C K I N G R I D I C U L O U S about failure. At one point I had to choose between 2 suspects and charge one with a crime. I picked the wrong one, and literally as I was walking out of the interrogation room the police chief was standing there and started laying into me asking how I could fuck up so bad and finger the wrong guy for a crime. No passage of time, no “two weeks later.” Just interrogation room -> charge -> police chief instantly does a Macho Man Randy Savage through the wall and calls me a stupid asshole. That’s an awfully fast turnaround time in the criminal justice system. I knew the war on drugs was clogging up the legal system, but holy shit. I would have loved the option of asking the chief why he made me go through questioning if he already knew the guy wasn’t guilty. “Oh, I saw you were close to leveling and wanted to let you earn some xp ^__________________^”

I think it was IGN that mentioned supporting it for the sake of someone trying something new. Yeah, no. Maybe if it goes on sale for $19.99 you can pick it up to see what the hype was about. But it’s not really anything new. It’s 3D Phoenix Wright with a bunch of confused gameplay elements sewn together. I think there’s a good game buried in there, and maybe if they skipped creating a pointless open world and the crappy shootouts they would have had more time to find it.

Rafiki

I don’t find myself regularly in a lot of exotic cities, so my list of what they smell like is going to be meager and unimpressive. That’s fine, because we were all going to think less of me when this article is over anyway. Denver smells like dust. Rochester smells like a fish fry. Vegas smells like burning. And the first experience I had with Oklahoma City was that the area just outside the airport smells like the inside of an arcade cabinet.

There’s a difference between an arcade and an individual cabinet. Arcades, the place, often smell like bung. Nerds don’t bathe anywhere near as well or as often as they should, so they get their sweat on everything. I will never understand the mentality that lets guys think that a long shower at an expo or convention is optional. You’re on vacation. Time has no meaning. I’m in there rotating around like me and spam are gonna feed a dozen hungry Hawaiians.

Arcade cabinets, though, have a not-unpleasant scent like old wood and electricity. I know that’s not really poetic, but I (honestly) left my Kindle on my flight home from Oklahoma City and I was (honestly) reading Wodehouse for the first time before I lost it to prep for this. All I am left with are insipid comparisons like that one since the bulk of the weekend was spent around media that dealt with two-word commands, but I’ll get to that.

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Pros!


-The inventory isn’t nearly as messy as DA:O (this is because 90% of what you pick up is “Junk” and gets put in your “Junk” item list so when you go to a vendor you just hit the “Sell Junk” button and it sells it all. So what’s the point of junk? I don’t even have to read the name of each individual thing I’m selling so why not just give me gold instead of having me pick up 4 randomly generated Moth Eaten Scarves? I guess this is actually a con)

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What’s the first thing you think of when you remember a great RPG? For Deus Ex you probably think of the story, choices, and combat whereas Diablo 2 probably makes you just think of the story and the combat. Linear RPGs are not bad by default and Dragon Age 2’s real problem has nothing to do with it being linear. The problem is that it is pretending to be something it isn’t and it’s a really poorly told lie.

When I think of DA2 I’m reeling to bring up positive things I guess I liked the NPCs, but the negatives just flow out: the main plot is only a vehicle for nerd politics, the game is full of illusory choices designed to fool retards, and the combat is the same uninspired shit they couldn’t properly port to the console with DA1. I could even be happy with a completely linear CRPG, but putting in so much effort into trying to fool me is just a waste of my already worthless time.

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The site Metacritic is OK in that whatever number it spits out for a game gives me a really rough idea of what to expect, though not according to anything the site was designed for. If it’s extremely high, like it is for Ocarina of Time, I realize I’ll despise it, because it’s for babies who have way too much of themselves wrapped up in a game. If there is a wide variation in “Critic’s” score versus “User’s” then the game is awful and we’re once again faced with the fact that many reviewers are whores consumed with working, somehow, for a game company. Reviewing is something they do in the meantime till their career really takes off.

I don’t know how else to explain that almost every single person on Caltrops hated Dragon Age 2, for completely different reasons. It wasn’t like it didn’t have support for the Mad Katz Throat Communicator and therefore opinion was split 50/50. Dragon Age 2 was brilliantly designed to offer something abominably unique to every single player, as if it were a fine selection of post-wedding hors d’oeuvre and you didn’t know enough people there to shame you into not stuffing as many of them down your face as possible.

Hating Dragon Age 2 is like trying to pick the best sweet in an European candy store. There’s this bit, where BioWare writer Jennifer Hepler says that what video games really need is a fast-forward button. There’s this bit, where LupoTheeButcher moderates a BioWare forum and can’t wait to give his own game a “10.” An applications engineer for BioWare did the same thing. They’re so proud of what they’ve put together here that they’re willing to throw any sense of etiquette out the door to mung aggregates. This means that absolutely no punches should be pulled on this insipid piece of garbage and it means that professional reviewers had a responsibility to be as strict as possible, if the people who made it are saying how perfect it is. What I’m talking about is, for professional reviewers, the nuclear option: the score 6.9/10.

None of them bothered to do it because they’re all whores. We’ll post reviews of people who played it in its entirety this week. HGLUAHGLUAHGLUA.