Well? How ’bout it? There’s really no reason not to accept the Weekly Webcomic Wrapup as your Valentine. It’s super low-maintenance, it won’t get upset if you fail to bring it any flowers or candies, and it always tries its best to keep you entertained, if only for a few moments. Sure, it’s a tad unconventional to build a relationship with a weekly feature on a video game news site, but hey — there’s nothing conventional about love.

Posted below are our seven favorite webcomics from this past week. Check them out, and vote for your favorite in the poll after the jump. If we missed any notable strips, drop a link in the comments!

Classic Sonic (Brawl in the Family)
You Know What I’m Talking About (Penny Arcade)
ValentiNES (2P Start)
Scanning Also Causes Cancer (Virtual Shackles)
It’s a Game About People (Ctrl Alt Del)
Yellow Journalism (Monday Night Crew)
On Helmet Laws (Three-Panel Soul)

Continue reading Weekly Webcomic Wrapup wants to be your Valentine

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup wants to be your Valentine originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever since Sony first announced its game industry reality show for PSN named The Tester back in 2009, we’ve been a bit wary of the idea. Can you really blame us? The show pits various personalities against each other in a variety of challenges, all with the end goal of becoming an entry-level game tester — a job often viewed in the game industry as less than pleasant. And ex-tester Matthew Burns seems to agree with us in his lengthy account of the life of a tester, detailing long hours of monotonous game playing paired with “an often grimly bureaucratic process,” that can sometimes lead to subpar products.

While offering plenty of gripes with the job, we should point out that he prefaces his complaints with the open admission that “entry-level game testing would not be found near the top of a list of the world’s most demanding livelihoods,” also repeatedly noting its importance in the development of good games. That said, we can’t help but wonder how Sony’s reality show winner is going to feel when the reality of their “prize” sets in.

[Thanks Matthew!]

‘The Tester’ contestants should probably have read this account first originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The free game wagon just keeps on a-rolling — our PC-obsessed sister site Big Download recently directed our attention to three classic installments in the Command & Conquer franchise which are currently available to download for nary a penny: Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun (with the Firestorm expansion pack), and Red Alert.

Installing the games might exact a price upon your patience — Dawn and Alert both require a fair amount of tinkering to work on your futuristic computing rig. Still, we’d rather pay for games with patience than hard-earned dollars any day of the week.

Download: Command & Conquer Classics

Command and Conquer Classics free to download, tricky to install originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you ready for the upcoming revolution (in approximately three years), when Apple’s iPad begins to deliver on the “magical” capabilities that Steve Jobs promised not so long ago? We’re not exactly on board yet either, but PopCap’s co-founder John Vechey believes that we should be prepared for such a possibility. In speaking with Eurogamer, he says, “The iPad’s important, but I think it’s going to be more important in three years … it’s probably going to take the second generation to make it really, like, ‘Wow!’”

Before addressing gaming, he admits, “This is my opinion … it’s not like it has a magical set of features, just a great package.” His perception is that the device will be perfect for both children and … his mom? “Because she can’t screw it up, she can’t download a bunch of stuff … that’s the perfect mum computer, right?” (We’re inclined to agree with Vechey’s claim, for the record.) It’s also a question of accessibility though, he says. “Here’s this new device that gets to more people with a really great e-commerce model attached to it … it’s really easy to buy on the iPhone — that’s part of what makes it successful.”

And yes, like PopCap’s Andrew Stein told us earlier this year, Vechey reaffirms the developer’s interest in games being re-developed for the iPad. “I don’t know if this is a PopCap position or my word, but we’re certainly going to support it — I want to play Plants vs. Zombies on that.” In the meantime, we’ll be playing PvZ on our iPhone while waiting for that (and the revolution).

PopCap thinks iPad will change gaming, but not for years originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over the past year it’s been pretty noticable that plastic instrument game sales have started to drop. Since that happens to be Activision’s biggest wheelhouse that isn’t good news for them, and so, in an effort “to release fewer skus for Guitar Hero in 2010“ Activsion has closed the doors on RedOctane. This resulted in the firing of 30-40 people and the movement of the rest of the team to Activision’s Santa Monica offices.

You may remember that Red Octane were the guys who had enough faith in Harmonix to not only publish the original GH, but also make the plastic guitars for it. I don’t suppose the company is entirely innoncent when it comes to the eventual whoring out of the brand to the nth degree, but it’s easier just to look at Activision as the big bad guy here. DAMN YOU ACTIVISION! *Shakes fist at the sky*

This closure shouldn’t actually come as too much of a surprise since Dan Rosensweig, COO of the Guitar Hero brand, stepped down two weeks ago and was not replaced with another COO. What is a bit more surprising is that in their efforts to publish less GH games Activision also closed Underground Development, which worked on GH: Van Halen. Two companies closed because Activision was too stupid to pace their GH releases a bit better. Quite a shame.

Everyone here at Dtoid wishes all those who lost a job the best of luck.

Activision Shutters Guitar Hero Creators, GH: Van Halen Developers [Kotaku]

We sure hope you’ve gone through the rigors of grabbing the Platinum trophy in Uncharted 2 already, because it’s about to get a tad harder to unlock. On February 25, a patch for the multiplayer component of the 2009 Game of the Year[TM] will be released, adding 12 new trophies and 12 in-game medals. You can find a list of both of these unlockables after the jump.

In addition, a batch of Uncharted 1-themed DLC will be simultaneously added to the PSN, giving players access to six character skins from the original title: Original Drake, Elena, Atoq Navarro, Eddie Raja, Gabriel Roman and Javier. There will be two new maps as well: The Flooded Ruins, which takes place in the customs house from the first game, and The Facility, which is based on Uncharted’s submarine dock area. The maps and skins will be bundled together for $5.99, or sold piecemeal for $3.99 and $2.99, respectively.

Continue reading Uncharted 2 getting multiplayer trophies, more DLC Feb. 25

Uncharted 2 getting multiplayer trophies, more DLC Feb. 25 originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday I began picking apart No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle to see what meaning I could derive from the game. For me the entire series speaks volumes about the world of gaming and analyzing it is a great way to get conversations going about gaming in general. It’s also a good way to have people tell me I’m over-analyzing stuff. But I like doing that, and I think that art needs to be discussed and analyzed and that we should share our differing opinions on what games mean to us. So I’m continuing on.

In the last post we discovered that the world of Desperate Struggle was indeed a representation of the current state of gaming, which lacks depth and is comprised of tired genres. Along with this Travis, Shinobu and Henry were also parts of the same character that represents the gamer. Up until these parts came together there was no real drive for Travis to change the style and events that were taking place. However, once Travis becomes whole (a true representation of what gamers are now) something changes. It’s this change that leads the game to get much more interesting.

Oh yes, and then there’s Sylvia. Read on to find out what the rest of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle really means.

It’s pretty obvious to anyone who has played the game that the first half of the game’s bosses are strikingly different from the second half’s. In fact the feeling of the entire game is strikingly different in the second half. Whereas in the first half of the game the killings seemed fun and the bosses passed by like almost nothing, the second half’s bosses all have an impact on Travis and his world. This starts with Ryuji and escalates as the game continues.

As I mentioned in the previous post, both Shinobu and Henry are representations of other types of gamers than Travis, and Travis isn’t really complete until they’ve taken over his role for a while. This becomes even more apparent when we consider his battle with Ryuji. Ryuji is the first battle in the game that actually matters and it comes after Travis rejects Shinobu, in essence rejecting the new comer gamer and where he himself came from. Ryuji is a reminder of just that. With the thoughts of his interaction with Shinobu fresh on his mind Travis finally goes to do battle with an actual warrior, not one of the cut and paste assassins he’s been battling before.

Ryuji comes from Japan (most likely), which is the the birthplace of modern gaming. It’s also no coincidence that his name closely mirrors a fighter from one of the greatest fighting franchises of all time. He is so important because he is the past of gaming, and he reminds Travis of everything he learned about fighting and the world (gaming and the gaming world) in the first game and all the reasons Travis fell in love with the battle (or why we fell in love with gaming). While Ryuji opens with a bland mini-game-esque motorcylce battle he closes with the first real sword fight of the game. He’s a reminder of the challenge and experimentation that went on with in the early days of gaming. At the end of the fight is the first time Travis cares about another opponent and he begs Sylvia (we’re getting to her) not to destroy his body, though he eventually lets her anyway.

He doesn’t want Ryuji’s body destroyed because Ryuji is not a toss away boss like all the previous ones. Ryuji represents actual gaming, where we have come from, and getting rid of him would mean we would become stuck in the shallow world of gaming we are in now. Ryuji also helps Travis accept Shinobu by linking him back to his own past and reminding him that he came from the same place that she did. However, Ryuji does get destroyed as Travis does not stand up to Sylvia and lets her do her thing as he walks away. Travis isn’t strong enough yet, he needs Henry. He’s found his past, but he doesn’t know where he needs to go with it or why it is important and so he allows it to be destroyed. In turn many of us gamers have no clue about our past, especially younger generations who have not experienced the older games at all and have no desire to. Even when we do know our past it is impossible to know why older games are so important to how the gaming world will develop without knowing where we want that world to go. As it stands after Ryuji’s battle, Travis is where most hardcore gamers are now: knowing our past is important, but clueless as to why we need to keep it around.

Then Henry arrives. I’ve already discussed why he’s important so we’ll jump over it here, except to say that he’s the understanding that allows Travis to see why remembering the past and pushing for a new and different world are so important. In regards to the game, this means challenging the way the assassinations take place and the United Assassinations Associations rules and methods (more on them soon too). In the case of the metaphor, this means looking past the gloss of the fun, but shallow mini-games and genres and trying to push for games that really challenge the status quo. This brings us to the final four bosses, which I could analyze forever as well, but Tron did a lot of that already.

Margaret Moonlight, Captain Vladmir and Alice Twilight all represent different aspects of deeper and more thoughtful gaming. Travis remembers all of the, and in the case of Vladmir, actually stand up to Sylvia and does not let her destroy his body. For lengths sake I’m going to glaze over these three, except to point out that at the end of Alice Twilight’s battle is the only time Travis ever gets blood on himself. This is where full realization of what he is doing dawns on him and he (and you) can actually see the consequences of what he as been doing all this time. What follows is an epic blood covered speech bemoaning the fact that all these lives have been uselessly lost and the proclamation that it doesn’t matter that these people are assassins set up for fights by the UAA. They are still people and they can’t be treated like meat. The bosses should be respected, not tossed out one after another like cheap, knock-off games. This means that they can be more than just the fight, there can be more behind it if they’ll let there be and they’ll stop simply pumping out assassins (games) over and over.

But who is they? Say hello, to Sylvia and the UAA. Travis’ final speech is yelled at her and she’s the one who is setting up all the fights as well. If Travis is the gamer and Santa Destroy is the world of gaming then this means that Sylvia is the game creator. The director, the developer, the producer; whomever you believe is responsible for the final product that you play (I’m a fan of auteur theory as you can tell, so we’ll refer to her as the director). I will be the first to admit that I totally missed this in the first game and didn’t even discuss it in my pieces, but it fits really well in there too. The greater emphasis on Travis’ and Sylvia’s relationship brings it to the forefront in Desperate Struggle, however, and it’s a brilliant relationship. It also turns out that Sylvia is the one that stopped the battle between Henry and Travis. Something only the director of a game could do to two forever battling game characters or gamers.

Travis loves and hates Sylvia. She teases him with promises and often doesn’t deliver. She’s constantly insulting the game, telling us what do and do not need to know and she always seems out to screw Travis over. Yet Travis always comes back. He berates her over and over, tries to shun her when he realizes she’s feeding him crap and then shoveling it out of the way. At the same time he loves what he gets from her. He loves that she’s sexy and good looking and he’s strangely attracted to her inability to ever act the same way. As gamers we do the same thing. We’ve had crap shoveled at us and we’re drinking it up. The game industry shovels away the last game and presents us with a new one, and we gobble the repeat up again despite it often not challenging any of the norms or pushing any boundaries. We do it as blindly as Travis does his assassinations for the first half of the game.

Sylvia promises Travis sex as a reward if he wins, a promise never fulfilled in the first game, and when the second game begins one that seems to be a false hope. Even Travis knows this as he doesn’t commit to the fighting fully until his friend is killed (however trivial that murder is). The promise of the ultimate joy has gone flat on him, he knows she is just teasing. We as gamers are teased as well. We are promised the world if we keep on taking what they give us, but the world isn’t delivered. We always seem to be chasing that ultimate experience (here represented by sex), but it’s never given to us.

The message here though is that we aren’t demanding it. Travis is fine with the false hope and minuscule amount of motivation that he has to continue on his path. At least this is true for the first half of the game, which has barely any development between Travis and Sylvia (gamer and director) at all. She swoops in and delivers another challenge and you move on to it while a few cut-scenes have her teasing Travis with the big promise of sex. However, once Travis challenges her after becoming a whole gamer and being reminded of what is important, she suddenly starts to look at him in a different light. It’s clear to see respect developing and in the end she comes to Travis and they… well they fuck, to put it bluntly. It isn’t until Travis starts demanding more out of Sylvia and her organization that she realizes she hasn’t been giving him anything real.  When the realization does hit (the last few boss battles) and Travis calls her on the difference she starts to realize she really hasn’t been delivering and she can’t just shovel him more and more battles because he knows better and deep down so does she.

Travis and and Sylvia’s fucking becomes less of an ultimate reward when it does happen and more of a final understanding and union between the two. The gamer and the director coming together to create a better understanding of what the two need. Of course this is represented in classic Travis fashion by him screaming “Downward Fucking Dog!” at the top of his lungs, but it is that exaltation that sums up very well what happens when a gamer and director (via his/her game) can actually come together and connect on a deeper level than just the developer shoveling out game after game to the gamer. It is with this understanding, that assassin and bookie (gamer and director) should work together, that Travis moves forward to do battle with his final opponent, Jasper Batt, Jr.

Batt, Jr. is the epitomy of what is wrong with the shiny Santa Destroy. He’s a weakling hiding behind the cover of his shiny toys that he attacks Travis with. Hell, he’s the one who built it into the empire Santa Destroy is now. Travis goes there to destroy that empire and end the UAA so that he and Sylvia can be together. The gamer, then is there to finally confront the one who has created this world of simplistic games and sequels. Travis has finally connected with the person in charge of the game’s rules and creation, he just needs to destroy the world it’s being played in so that he and Syliva can work together for a better future. If he can take down Batt Jr.’s world then he can build his own world (possibly something akin to the world of the first game) with Sylvia. I’m pretty sure any gamer out there would love the chance to construct their perfect gaming industry as well. Travis believes killing Batt Jr. will do this.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. After defeating the first two incarnations of Batt, Jr. with the aid of Henry, Batt, Jr. returns in the most cliche of all boss battle cliches, the giant version of the original boss who tries to hit you with is hands. Henry, the educated gamer, is so off put by the mere site of such lazy design that he leaves Travis alone to finish the battle off not wanting to dirty himself with such a trite boss. Travis even rolls his eyes with annoyance and exclaims how predictable it all is. However, in his quest to make his world better he pushes forward; revenge, by the way, now a long forgotten memory since he’s found out that Batt, Jr. didn’t kill the people he really cares about (Henry, Sylvia and Shinobu). But what Travis finds is the same thing that he found in the last game. He can’t get out without dying himself. We can’t get out without quitting the game either, we have to turn it off and disconnect to keep moving forward to a better game.

And so in order to destroy Batt, Jr. Travis makes what he believes will be a suicidal leap off the edge of a top building. He slices through his giant opponent and as he falls is at peace knowing that he can at least leave the killing behind. The gamer then is at peace knowing that we have tried to confront the world of gaming and change it as best we could, but it was too hard for us to stop alone. “Fine,” Travis thinks (and thus the gamer thinks), “I’m leaving, but I’m going out on my terms.” If he can’t change the world then he’s not going to play the game anymore and that seems to be the only way out.

Until the last second when Sylvia swoops in and saves his life. The director saving the gamer from leaving the world of gaming for good. This is how it has to be Suda is telling us. Creators and gamers together, pushing each other and making gaming better. As Travis rests on Sylvia’s back while she drives him home he utters “Paradise.” This is a reference to the end of the last game where Travis and Henry’s endless battle led Travis to “the exit they call paradise.” Paradise has thus changed. Before the only escape was getting a game over because the game wasn’t changing, but now with Travis and Sylvia together the game can change. Sadly, neither Sylvia nor the world is ready for that and she ditches Travis at his hotel.

This brings us to the game’s narrator. Every battle throughout the game has been introduced by an attractive girl working in one of those strip clubs where the girl undresses behind glass. These scene are all in first person, putting the gamer directly in the body of the character watching the narrator. In the end we discover that we’ve been watching Sylvia through the eyes of Travis (I told you we were him!) as she tells the story of Travis. She’s obviously fallen on hard times and as she says, so has the rest of the world. One can assume that this is a predication of the inevitable downfall of the world of gaming we live in now. With nothing to stand on, and the only ones who really care (Travis/gamers) thrown to the curb, gaming collapses. Yet Travis returns to Sylvia as gamers will always return to gaming and support those creators that want to do something good and provocative and thoughtful.

Travis and Sylvia’s love story is the love story of gamers and their games, which are director’s games as well. Travis and Sylvia’s final touch through the glass (we’re always separated somehow from a game’s creators) is a hopeful look at the future of gaming where we can learn from the stories of our past and develop into a brighter future.

That’s my view of it anyway.

So what if Sophie/Samuel didn’t return your request for a weekend getaway to that little bed and breakfast in New Hampshire? Wouldn’t you rather spend your weekend falling in love with a handful of indie games — And Yet it Moves, Auditorium, Aztaka, Eufloria, Machinarium, and Osmos — from an all-star list of developers? We knew you’d see our point! Besides, it’s only $20 — that’s way less than the price of two nights for two people at The Buttonwood Inn, not to mention a steal considering each game individually purchased would add up to 85 buckaroos. And hey, now you can spoil yourself with an extra large box of tissues and a matching ice cream tub.

Indie games bundled on the cheap for V-Day originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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_{[Editor's Note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]}

I rock at antagonizing jerks. Not random players, not amicable players, not even quirky, mildly irritating players. I prey on the big game. I prey on the douchebags who spend their time elevating themselves by using pre-made strategies to dominate and demoralize people trying to enjoy a game. I enrage those same douchebags who like to tell you what they did to your mom when really they’ve only ever been intimate with their hand.

During such a morally blurry undertaking I attempt to honor four rules: Never play alone, do not antagonize anybody who has not demonstrated dickhead behavior, never quit, and be good to your teammates when they are not jerks. Karma/divine justice/lag punishes me each time I transgress.

Where do I do this? Somewhere most Dtoiders recognize immediately for high character: Halo 3 on Xbox Live. Here’s a lowdown on the archetypal schmucks and how I goad ‘em. 

Hillbillies

After the close of the civil war 145 years ago, some guys in the south were still angry about their unproven masculinity. They went on to perpetuate this culture where masculinity is roughly connected to being white, being straight, and being good at playing soldier. Men who fall outside of those noble criteria receive slurred, drawling exclamations of “fa**ot” or “ni**er.”

Bearing some minor disagreements with lynching, beatings, and irrational hatred, I found the Hillbillies worthy victims of a little creative aggression.

In fact, I tailored my gamertag to that purpose. When President Obama introduced healthcare reform months ago, my tag “Angry Liberals,” was a deliberate jab in the ol’ moonshine gut. The moment the player roster became visible, any of the literate confederates went apeshit. “Angry Liberals? Wut the fuck, you some kind of fa**ot?” Some of them even mispronounced the tag “Liberials.”

Initially I would claim that I was indeed homosexual, that I was sipping an organic latte, and that I was becoming attracted to them the more they spoke in their robust, masculine voices, but eventually I found that I didn’t need to provoke them. They provoked themselves. I distinctly recall one of them screaming “Fucking Angry Liberals! Why are you so fucking angry?” without any prompting.

As the game began, I typically chose one or two ragers, and my compadre and I would seek them out if they were on the opposition. We’re solid players — not spreadsheeters, but good at improvising — and after a minute or two we would down them. That’s when I would teabag them and erotically moan, adding things like “Mmm, yeah, Nancy Pelosi!” or “Obamacare!”

You know you’re doing your job when the opposition starts to sputter conglomerations of expletives. I’ve been called a “fuck-gort” and a “quashhole.” To this day, however, the best is still plain old “trash.”

Ball Hogs

These are the guys who kill you for the power weapon. In Halo 3, it’s usually the sniper rifle or the laser. Sometimes it’s the flag because they want credit for the score, although you and your partner killed the enemy team twice over and humped the damn thing on foot back to your base.

I hate Ball Hogs a lot more than Hillbillies because in this case I’m actually innocent of wrongdoing. I’ll grab the sniper rifle if nobody is using it, both to use it and to keep it away from the opposition. There’s no sense fighting over who gets what when you’re in the company of strangers. Besides, it’s good to be solid all-around.

But then I die mid-snipe, only to find some idiot teammate with acne in his name — you know, like xxXSniPeRjerKoFFXxx — just grenaded me, sprayed his AR at me, and is now recovering his precious.

That’s when I inform my compadre Mr. Fees (never play alone) that we have a new game objective. It’s time to punish the grabby child. This shit just got real.

Halo 3 varies in terms of how many betrayals you can get away with. At no point in years of playing have we found ourselves able to boot said idiot on his first infraction. However, we run the risk of being booted for our vigilante justice ourselves, so Great Justice requires the finesse of aiding the enemy in shooting down Mr. Ball Hog, informing him of how he died, and teabagging his corpse. Personally I like to place a bubble shield over their corpse so I can enjoy my retributive necrophilia in peace. Ball Hogs usually start swearing profusely after that, but I then inform them “you are being muted, thank you for your comments.” Or I start “crying” on the Mic, saying “but I wanted the rifle! WAAAAH!”

Sometimes this conflict is over scoring with the flag. My compadre, gamertag named “Minority Fees”
for some enforced reverse discrimination at the University of Minnesota, was near our blue base on Valhalla, carrying the enemy flag. From the beginning of the match an acne-named teammate had been verbally obnoxious and largely useless. Now he was stalking Fees.

“This guy is going to betray me,” Fees said. Fortunately I was above in a Banshee and had an approach angle. Fees died defending himself. I swooped in, blew acne-fucker away, announced “fuck you!” with gritty glee, got out of the banshee and finished the job while singing insults to the tune of the A-Team theme. After a high-five, I got back into the Banshee and resumed the slaughter. Acne-name didn’t speak the rest of the match.

The I’m So Awesomes

These guys play Slayer. That’s all they know. They’re good at it, but to be good at it, they sacrifice teamwork, honor, discipline, common sense and sometimes victory. And when that’s the case, it’s never their fault.

If you’re playing Capture the Flag, they’re the guy who has 47 kills to your ten but you still lost because he was camping somewhere and didn’t give a rat’s ass when the opposition drove around his field of fire, blew the back line away, took the flag and scored. He could have stopped the vehicle or at least reported it, but that would deprive him of his all-important killing spree.

If you’re playing Neutral Assault, he’s the guy who claims he won the game with his 40 kills when he never once touched the bomb even when it dropped near him, and let four of his teammates die recovering the bomb while he hid behind a rock. Then, when you and your buddy finally break through the line and hold the enemy base while the bomb timer depletes, he’s nowhere to be found, but at the end he tells you how you fucking suck and he saved the day.

I deal with these guys by identifying them early. Often they announce themselves telling me or a teammate how we must have Down’s Syndrome because one of us died facing three enemies as he again hid, then cleaned up the remaining two with hoarded rockets. Once I know who the Mr. Awesome Narcissist is, it’s not hard to deprive him of his perfect game. I gently help the enemy locate him with a shot to his shields, which creates a visible shield flare and causes him to move precipitously. Enemies catch him on radar. I let them blow him away before cleaning up. Sucks to be alone, huh?

Clanners

Playing with a group of friends is one thing. It can lead to some obnoxious behavior, and Mr. Fees and I are as guilty of that as any. But playing as a clan is another. These guys think the game is a sport, and that they’re earning respect from people in some imaginary world where dudes whisper about them reverentially and girls will make eye-contact with them outside of GameStop. The aforementioned obnoxiousness is exacerbated to reduce their collective age to around four.

Now, there are clans with some core nobility. I was in one back in the days of Myth II: Soulblighter. I’ve heard good stories about good people enjoying games together. But this is Halo, this is Xbox Live, and the only indicator that a clan is tolerable is if they aren’t in private chat yet aren’t saying anything.

When they are audible, the dynamic works like this. You have the older guys saying stupid obscene things, like rape and anal sex and whatever words give you joy when you’re 13. You have slightly younger guys huh-huh-ing and running verbal interference for them. And you have the kids with squeaky voices in awe of the oldest counterparts, laughing waaaay too hard at the foul-mouths’ boldness and giddily thinking they’re now accepted.

Clanners are nearly impossible to defeat in verbal combat before the match. They all chime in with huh-huhs and the same predictable insults, and within that bubble of insecurity they are temporarily safe. (I have overcome this on one occasion: there was an aggressive clan with the hand icon and a red stop sign behind it. I asked, “What are you guys, the hand-job clan?” They went apeshit and we trounced ‘em.)

They’re not safe once the game begins. Bruce Lee wrote in Tao of Jeet Kun Do that defeating a man is about defeating his ego. Somehow that can be easier when you’re taking on a clan.

Assuming I have decent teammates beyond Mr. Fees (unlikely), I try to break the opposition’s strategy down by demoralizing them the same as anywhere else. I drop one and teabag him with a few choice comments. He respawns breaks formation to get revenge. Exploiting that gap, I begin catching more of their teammates off guard, provoking them to lose focus. If they stop watching their lanes to teabag me, I’m getting results. Against some of those rowdy but experienced (no life) clans, it’s best to win the ego battle by foregoing your own and finish the game feeling content.

Bros

They have a mic, they have roommates to impress, they’re on your team, they won’t shut up. Borrowing from the last few, wait for a good moment to throw in a decent insult if you want, let ‘em know you’re muting ‘em, mute ‘em, help them die if necessary. Then watch them because they’ll be out to assert their masculinity by returning the favor. Sigh.

The Humble

Once every three or four months I enounter a player who has self-esteem and a brain. These two things are actively filtered out on Xbox Live. This means they got here by accident (which says something about me). You know these people because they communicate during matches, pull their weight and are generally positive. “I just saw two of them over by the turret.” “I’m coming to get you with the warthog.” While 99.9% of Live players would never make it through the application process for the Specwarriors they idolize, these people seem like they’re veterans: they’re friendly and relaxed, they’re capable and confident. And then, after rocking the frick out of two or three matches, they disappear again, back to wherever heroes go after their tour in nerd hell.

Generally I just salute these folks.

The Arrogant Dudes who Should have Quit a Looong Time Ago

Yeah, these guys are douches too. Why can’t they just leave shit alone and use the mute button more often?

Listen, we know how hard Valentine’s Day can be on some of you jilted lovers out there, so we went ahead and got you a little something to keep you occupied tomorrow: A copy of ThatGameCompany’s microbiotic PS3 title, flOw. You can download it right now from the PSN for free, without having to deal with any cumbersome coupon codes. Our generosity only extends so far, however — the free download will stop being offered at midnight EST tonight. Hurry up and grab it — and don’t say we never gave you nothin’!

(Fine, we’re not the party responsible for the game’s free-ness. We suppose you can say we never gave you nothin’ to your heart’s content.)

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

PSA: Download flOw for free until midnight EST originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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