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Agnès Varda’s Clèo from 5 to 7

February 16, 2015 / Austin Stearns / 0 Comments

At night, as my head sinks into my pillow, I often wonder if I’d be able to recognize love when it appears in my life. I usually arrive at the conclusion that I have, on countless occasions, obliviously waltzed right past it with a big, dumb grin on my face–and then I start thinking about Agnès Varda’s 1962 film, Clèo from 5 to 7.

There are a handful of terrific films in history that successfully portray action in real time, but none of them quite as precise, as meticulously committed to capturing real human experience, as Cleo from 5 to 7. After watching the film I feel like I’ve just spent 90 minutes marching down the Left Bank of Paris, soaking in the energy of the early sixties alongside our protagonist. Breaking away from conventional film technique, in which narrative rhythm and drama is manufactured through the manipulation of space and time, Varda embraces the subjectivity of her lead, ensuring the viewer experiences every moment the way Clèo (Corrinne Marchand) does, in real time. Every second builds on the last, adding tension, and before the end I’m totally invested in Clèo. Varda masterfully deploys the real-time structure so as to transform a story that, constructed in almost any other way, would feel utterly tedious into a gripping character study. Instead of just a vain, narcissistic, and shallow singer, Clèo changes into a relatable young woman whom we care about immensely. As Clèo learns to recognize love, what’s truly significant or insignificant in her life, we learn to appreciate and love her in return, and walk away reevaluating our own lives.

The plot is concentrated entirely within this 90-minute span of Clèo’s life. In France, the hours of 5 to 7 are considered the hours when lovers meet, but Clèo, a normally carefree young woman, is in dire straits. Clèo is disconsolate, awaiting the results of a medical test that will determine whether or not she has stomach cancer. The slice of her life we experience is the 90 minutes prior to her hospital visit, the moment of truth.

As I’ve mentioned, this is not merely a formalist exercise of cinematic virtuosity. Varda once commented on this film, calling it a “portrait of a woman painted onto a documentary of Paris,” and though I agree with her assessment, I don’t think it communicates the extraordinary elegance with which the film portrays Clèo’s subjectivity. Varda not only captures the material, physical details but also the way Clèo’s mind processes them, the way her personality and mood informs her interactions with and her perception of the world around her. It is this incredible quality that makes Clèo’s behavior, much of which seems initially unremarkable or simply quotidian, so engaging. And I believe that it’s this extremely modern and subtle form of expressionism that has helped the film age so well.

Clèo’s path along the Left Bank is, geographically, straightforward; she stops for some food, goes shopping, takes a cab, stops at her place briefly for a music rehearsal, walks through a park, etc. But emotionally, as she draws nearer and nearer to the moment that may potentially signal the final stage of her life, Clèo undergoes a significant character arc without seeming–just like in real life–to have reached a distinct instant of change.

Clèo from 5 to 7 is a pure representation of life for a young Parisian woman in the early sixties, and because of this it’s easy to crown Varda as standard-bearer for feminist cinema. She herself has rejected this title but, either way, Clèo is ahead of its time. Many critics have recently taken a new stance toward, calling it, for example, a strikingly complex instance of “postfeminism” in cinema.

Of course, for a lead character, Clèo certainly doesn’t seem well equipped to garner sympathy from the viewer, at least not at first. She is immature, shallow, vain, petulant, and, if not for her stunning beauty, would likely alienate most of the people around her. She seems detached from her small but vaguely promising career as a pop singer and she is also privileged–financially supported by her older lover who makes no demands of her. She lives in a nice apartment and can afford numerous luxuries.

Everything about Clèo is potentially repellent, but in the end compassion wins out. Clèo’s plight, and Corrine Marchand’s tremendously sensitive performance are irresistible. Watching Clèo re-evaluate her life, her possessions, and relationships is immensely gratifying, and as she matures she’s able to start confronting her more unsavory characteristics. Few films pull off this type of character transition with such grace.

Some may find it surprising, then, to learn that Agnès Varda was not trained as a filmmaker or film critic, like most directors of the French New Wave, but as a photographer. Her films bear this distinction. Of all the major directors in the French New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle, Chris Marker, and Jacques Demy–Varda’s husband), Varda seems to produce the work least influenced by the inherent smugness of being a film snob, a particular smugness often required to make a film that changes cinematic history. Though she’s displayed total mastery of cinematic form throughout her career, Varda’s primary concern has always seemed to be the characters. Her formal experiments occur within the boundaries of her narrative structure, and therefore contribute to the complexity and richness of the story. It’s all about Clèo.

That is the source of the connection I feel to Clèo, why I so often recall this film when reflecting on my own life. Clèo, like all of us, has her own concerns, her own fears and desires. Her true struggle throughout the film is learning how to keep these concerns from dominating her, from dictating her behavior and emotions. When she steps back from herself she gains perspective on the world around her, and although she begins to recognize that she’s unhappy, that she’s been oblivious to what’s truly important to her, everything remains okay. She’s also beginning to recognize how many opportunities there are for her to find the happiness and comfort she seeks. She’s learning how to truly interact with and love other people, and it’s amazing to watch.

Sweet Melancholy: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice

February 9, 2015 / Noah Fusco / 1 Comment

“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like–then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.” – Jean Cocteau

Interview with Sara Shahriari

February 9, 2015 / Brittany Livingston / 0 Comments

Sara Shahriari is a freelance journalist living in La Paz, Bolivia, and working in the Andean region. She reports on a broad range of topics with an emphasis on social justice, the environment, and politics. Her print work has appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera America, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indian Country Today, and her radio work on Deutsche Welle.

BRITTANY: Tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are now.

SARA: Well, it was a circuitous path. I studied writing in college and was always really interested in it, but wasn’t sure how that would play out into a career. I considered going to law school. I considered going back to school for a bunch of different things, and I eventually decided that journalism would be the best way to sort of merge together the things I loved. I always knew that I wanted to work abroad and I decided on Latin America because I had already studied some Spanish, and I felt that I could learn enough Spanish in a not really extended period of time to be able to work well there. I went abroad after college and spent a year teaching English at a university in Ecuador, which is also in the Andes. The Andes start in Columbia and run down through Ecuador, Peru, into Bolivia, and a little bit into Chile. So I loved the mountains and the culture and it’s such a dynamic area in terms of how a lot of forces are interacting, like governments, corporate entities, indigenous identities. It is, to me, an incredibly interesting area.

When I finished teaching in Ecuador, I applied to go to grad school for journalism. I went to the Missouri School of Journalism and got a master’s degree. While I was there, I produced a Spanish language radio show. I studied magazine journalism. I just studied radio a bit, and then I got a grant from the school to go to Bolivia to work on a project for a while.

I came to Bolivia with that support and started working, and it was at a time when a lot of international journalists were actually moving on from Bolivia, so there was just fortuitously an opening for me to pick up some work here. I ended up staying and getting more work, and staying and getting still more work, and just sort of having a chance to really learn while writing, learn through working and writing all the time.

BRITTANY: I’m also interested in journalism and I know I’ve heard mixed things about going to grad school for journalism or even majoring in journalism given the state of the industry today. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that going to grad school was necessary?

SARA: It was good for me because I hadn’t focused on journalism as an undergraduate. If I had focused on journalism in any way as an undergrad, however, I don’t think a master’s degree in journalism would have been the right move. But for me, it was good to be able to do it. As an undergrad, if you’re already focusing on journalism, I don’t think you need a graduate degree too unless your aim is to acquire very specific new skills, like perfect video reporting, that will place you better in the job market.

BRITTANY: What was your major in undergrad?

SARA: Creative writing and English literature. So I was very writing-oriented but more in the essayist line of things. I was not very good at planning for the future, but at the time it seemed likely that I would end up going to law school. So an undergraduate English degree seemed like a good precursor to that if that’s what I decided to do. Then after working with a law firm for a couple of years as a paralegal, I just decided that law wasn’t right for me. So I reoriented my career direction.

I think you can go to grad school or you can just get a job at a paper and do it. I was fortunate in that I didn’t have to go into much debt for grad school because I TA’d while I was there, and ran this Spanish-language radio program, so actually most of my tuition was waived. I personally would never have gone into a lot of debt to get a master’s degree in journalism because I knew I wasn’t going to make that money back. It’s not like you go to a medical school and you get a zillion dollars into debt and then it’s pretty established that you get a high salary afterwards. In journalism, most of us are not going to make a very high salary. So I thought going into a lot of debt was not a great idea.

BRITTANY: When did you know that you wanted to report on the specific issues you focus on, like the social justice, environmental and political side of things?

SARA: I think that’s just what personally speaks to me and interests me as a reporter. I don’t really like being in a scrum of reporters jockeying to get near the political figure who’s going to comment on the issue of the day. I like to be talking a lot of times with people who have never spoken with the press before, or have very limited contact with the press. I like finding voices that are hard to find and hearing the voices of people who are not often approached to share their experience. That, to me, is important and compelling and gives journalism that intensely human connection that I think is one of the best things about it.

BRITTANY: What do you think is the most rewarding piece that you’ve written?

SARA: A couple of years ago, I did a series of stories on the pollution of Lake Titicaca—that’s on the border between Peru and Bolivia—and those stories together formed what I think is a pretty diverse journalistic look at the issues affecting that area, which is really important environmentally and also home to so many people. So in that situation, I liked that I was able to spend a long time looking at that issue and examining it from different angles.

Also—and maybe there’s not one story on this topic that I think is the best thing that I ever did, but in terms of understanding the topic: the issue of child labor in Bolivia and how children have in some cases organized to defend their right to work as children. Getting to know the issues driving child labor was particularly rewarding because child labor is one of those topics that if you grow up in the States, you’ll hear it like, “That is bad, that is bad. It must be stopped. That factory must be closed. That person must be prevented from working.” And it’s not great, that’s for sure, but if you get to know young people who are working and see the reality of their daily lives, you understand why that work is necessary for their survival, and how diverse the reality of child laborers really is. So my knowledge on that topic and the time that I’ve spent reporting it is probably one of the things I’m most proud of because I think I may have helped people understand the issues behind what’s really a very controversial topic.

BRITTANY: Describe your typical day at work.

SARA: I have a home office. So my typical day is to get up maybe around 7:30, take my dog out, come back and get ready for work. Working from home or working freelance is always a challenge because nobody keeps you on a schedule. So you can sleep until noon if you want—although doing that would not be very good for your work overall. So I try to get up, get dressed, have breakfast and go to the office—even though the office is still in my house. In the morning, I skim all of the headlines from the big national newspapers in Bolivia to keep up-to-date on what’s happening across the country.

I might make phone calls to setup interviews. It sort of depends because freelance writing and writing in general is pretty cyclical, like sometimes you’re in an interview phase, sometimes you’re in a research phase, sometimes you’re in a writing phase, and each of those means different things. In the research phase, I’ll just go to a coffee shop with 300 pages of PDF documents and read and highlight and take notes.

If I’m in the reporting phase, I’m going to be calling people, setting up interviews, maybe traveling to other cities out in the field, getting to know people, talking, listening, recording, and just trying to get all the information that I need. And then of course I take all that information to my office and I just lock myself in the office and try to listen to all my interviews, transcribe sometimes and put together the text. So the day varies depending on which of those phases I’m in.

BRITTANY:With freelancing, do you have connections to certain papers like The Guardian or something, where you have to do a number of pieces for them, like two a month or something like that, or do you just pitch your own ideas?

SARA: I pitch my own ideas usually. It’s extremely fluid and that’s the interesting thing about freelance. It all depends on you to generate and then execute the idea, which can be an exhausting cycle to always be stuck in. But at the same time, it’s amazing because 99% of the time you’re doing what you want to do, not what somebody’s told you to do.

BRITTANY: What’s your tactic? Do you have any strategies for finding new stories and creating new ideas and coming up with new content?

SARA: I think the best thing that you could do if you’re a foreign correspondent is talk with people. I mean, I have a really interesting group of friends and contacts in Bolivia that work on a variety of issues. So we just talk. Talk about my work and listen to other people talk about their work, bounce ideas off people who aren’t necessarily journalists. I mean, it’s all about having your ear to the ground in that way, and staying on top of the national press. Those are the people who are out there following stories every single day. Of course they have to write a different kind of story than you have to write.

You’ve got to stay on top of what’s happening not just in the city that you are in but across the country. So you might be able to identify some national trends. So I think, yeah, just listening and reading are good ways to get your story ideas together.

BRITTANY: My mom is a freelance writer too and she talks about the challenges of working at home and the sleep-until-noon thing, how you can actually do that. I don’t know if I could be disciplined enough to do that.

SARA: It really requires . . . it’s like the best of jobs, the worst of jobs. It offers you such freedom but occasionally it’s like, “If only somebody would just tell me what to do!”

BRITTANY: Right, exactly. So I guess that may be one of the difficulties, but other than that, what do you think are the difficulties for being a freelance writer as opposed to working for a single company?

SARA: I think that when you freelance you often don’t have benefits like health insurance, like paid vacation. I mean, that’s certainly a challenge and I think that those are issues that drive a lot of people out of the freelance business because it’s so unstable in that way. Some people are married people or people who have a partner and they use their health insurance and that person has a more stable income and it’s good for the other person to be more flexible. But if you’re relying on yourself, a lack of paid vacation, lack of benefits, lack of retirement contribution funds… These are all things you might not think about when you’re 18 or 19, but then in your 30’s you’re definitely like, “What am I doing?”

So I think it takes a lot to stick with it once you realize those difficulties, and then of course things as boring as taxes. Taxes for freelancers can be hard to deal with, especially if you’re working abroad. The law is not very simple. It’s hard to find a simple tax program that’s going to help you do things the right way. So there’s a lot of nitty-gritty to it—the unglamorous, unexciting side of it. I mean, it’s wonderful to do the work that you want to do every single day but there’s a whole side of it that is a bit of a drag.

BRITTANY: So on the flip side, what would you say are the benefits?

SARA: The benefits are doing the work that you really want to do and doing it on your own schedule. It’s really amazing to think that every day you’re going to wake up and think of what’s most interesting to you, or something that’s exciting, or a compelling person that you want to talk with and then make all that happen and get to know that issue and really engage with it on an intense level. And of course there’re all different sorts of freelancing. I mean, people freelance on every possible issue, but I am talking about my life as a freelance foreign correspondent. It gives you a lot of freedom. I think freedom is probably the thing that a lot of us appreciate about the job.

BRITTANY: Tell me a little bit about the prep. Do you come up with an idea and then you have a certain newspaper or magazine in mind of like who you’re going to pitch it to, and if they don’t like the idea, do you go to another magazine? Tell me a little bit about how the pitching process works.

SARA: Well, pitching is really crucial to any freelancer. I’d say before I start talking about this that if anybody is considering freelancing internationally, I highly recommend sort of doing an internship or building contacts with editors at the places you want to publish before you start traveling.

In my case, I started working while I was still finishing my master’s degree and I did not really have contacts with editors back in the States at the places I wanted to publish and so it took me a lot of time to really get off the ground and establish those contacts; whereas if I had worked on establishing them before I came down to start working, I might have been in a better situation to start publishing sooner.

I feel that your relationships with your editors are so important because you’re trying to create something together, and as a freelancer your job can be really solo and isolating. I mean, you work on your own. You’re not in a newsroom. You see your peers or other journalists at events and social functions, but you’re not working with people every day. So that editor is your way to the larger world, and there has to be a lot of trust between you because you may be writing about a place that the editor doesn’t really know, or that they don’t have a really deep knowledge of, and that editor is going to be preparing your work for publication in an international outlet. So there’s got to be a really strong working relationship there.

When I first started pitching to people, a lot of times I would meet somebody who knew an editor at a publication and they’d gotten familiar with my work and they would put us in touch, because cold pitching a publication with no contact can be difficult. Editors receive so many pitches that they might not really have time to look specifically at yours. So networking and contact building are absolutely crucial, and I had never thought of myself as much of a networker when I started this job.

But when you like your job, networking is natural because you want to talk with people who are interested in and doing similar things. So you start to build up these contacts with people who are in the same field. And then once you get an editor to accept your pitch, you do the story, you send it over to them. I find that the first three or four times you work with an editor, you’re still really feeling out the situation, but if you get through that phase, then you can really start to build this relationship of trust where you put ideas back and forth and they’re responsive to you.

In my case, there were editors that I had worked with multiple times and when I think of a story or an issue, first I start to think, “Okay, this is happening. This is an interesting topic. This could be something that would work well for a story. And then I’ll think, well, how would I present it to make it interesting to outlet A, or how might it work for outlet B,” and normally I’ll just think of the editors that I know and think, “Okay, this story, the way that I want to do it, will probably work best for A.”

And they say yes or no. I think they say yes more than no because you get to understand what people are going to be interested in. Then once they say yes, I do the story, I send it, we go through the edit and then it’s published.

People ask me a lot of times, “Do you just write a story and then send it to an editor and ask them if they want it?” No, I don’t write my stories and then send them to an editor because writing a story the way that I do it is a really big investment of time. I can’t survive by investing my time in things that I then subsequently can’t sell.

BRITTANY: Right. Okay, so I guess I alluded to this before with the usefulness of the journalism degree but what about journalism as an industry, print journalism, specifically? I took a journalism class at Dickinson and my teacher would tell us all the time how print journalism is a dying industry. So what would your advice be to college students who are interested in pursuing a career in what a lot of people think is a dying industry?

SARA: I would say, think about how much you really love journalism. If you really love it, you’re going to get into it anyway. I mean, I always used to think it was so strange when people would talk about being in love with a job. But now I understand it. I mean, I love it. Will I be able to do it for my whole life? I don’t know. Would I like to? Yes, but I really just feel that this is the job that clicks for me and I know there are lots of other people out there who feel that way.

So whether or not the industry is dying, people are still going to go into journalism because they are going to feel a connection to it. But you need to really think realistically about the situation. I mean, your teacher was not kidding We have gone in recent years through massive layoffs at newspapers. Other organizations may not be growing or hiring as they once were. It’s a really difficult job market. At the same time, lots of people who went to graduate school with me are happily working as newspaper photographers and newspaper writers or magazine editors – while others went down different job paths. I mean, jobs do exist. You just have to accept that it’s an industry that is not flourishing at the moment.

But I don’t think that newspapers are going to end. I think maybe it’s not a death as much as a moment of profound change that is very traumatic to the industry. But the industry will continue onward. I think that people who are coming out of college, who really understand the consumption of news online and what it means to consume news through technology are a big part of defining how we’re going to consume news in the future.

BRITTANY: Right. Well, that’s the end of my questions. Do you think that there’s anything else that’s extremely interesting about you that you would want published?

SARA: I would just comment that if people are interested in international reporting and freelance, it’s not for everyone but I think it’s a great opportunity and really a privilege to get to know another country and another culture. I think it profoundly changes the way that you perceive the whole world when you’re just constantly immersed in a place that sees the world differently from the way that you once saw it. As a reporter, you become so involved with it that you start to see these details and intricacies and nuances that you would probably not see as a traveler or even as somebody working short-term in another country.

Of course you need to be realistic about whether you can financially survive in a place, in some cases people need to seriously consider their personal safety, and then whether living abroad long-term fits in with your greater life plans. If people are able to do it, I think that it can be a wonderful experience.

League of Legends for the Uninitiated

February 9, 2015 / Patrick Meier / 0 Comments

The sudden popularity of a certain new video game has a lot of people asking a lot of questions: (1) What is this new video game contraption that all the young folks are doing? (2) How does one play this game? (3) Why does my chest hurt after drinking a bunch of lemonade? (4) Will I ever truly be happy?

Let me try and answer some of those fascinating queries:

League of Legends.
Read the rest of the article
You might have acid reflux
Probably not but hey might as well try

Not that all of those questions aren’t worth discussing, but I’ll be focusing on #2 for the remainder of this article.

There are a lot of reasons you might be reading this. Maybe you want to be the next Faker (Korean pro player, some call him the Lionel Messi of League, others just call him… Faker-sempai) and be a professional League of Legends player. Or perhaps you’re just wondering what it is your roommate is doing that has him clicking so loudly that it sounds like a woodpecker lives in your ear! Whatever the reason, read on, and find out just what the hell your roommate is doing awake at four in the damn morning on a Wednesday night. (Seriously, Jeremy. I’m trying to sleep. I have a math test tomorrow, I’m late with this article– I do not need this right now.)

Basics of the game

We’ll start out simple. Two teams of five players each face off in a large square arena, with one team’s base in the top right corner, the other in the bottom left. Three paths (lanes) connect the two bases. The object of the game is to get into the other team’s base and destroy their nexus. Getting to this point and finishing the game will typically take around 30-45 minutes. With me so far? Good, because we’re just getting started. In each lane is a series of turrets. These turrets do a LOT of damage, so the game helpfully provides mindless minions to die for you! Small, weak, computer-controlled minions (or creeps) regularly spawn in each lane, and will slowly walk down the lane towards their enemy. Walk into the turret without a healthy supply of minions to back you up, and you might as well drop your weapon, pick up a shovel, and start digging yourself a grave. The players in each lane try to kill enemy minions so that their team’s minions will push towards the enemy’s tower. As long as your minions are in range of the tower it will prioritize the minions instead of you. This will allow you to hit the tower without fear of being pounded into the dirt. Be warned though, the towers do not take kindly to you attacking the champions of their team and will turn on you as soon as you damage a champion, minions or no.

Through landing killing blows on minions, blows on enemy players, and blows on towers, and through just sheer persistence (you generate a small amount of gold every second just for participating) you will acquire gold that can be spent back at your home base to buy items. Each champ can carry six items, and it takes quite a lot of time and gold to get all six. But with close to 200 items in the game, there are tons of possible item combinations (typically called item builds) that a player can have. Each item’s primary function is to give stat bonuses, and every champ requires different stats to do well. Every character has certain things they are good at and things they aren’t so good at. So pick a champion that fits a play-style you like and build items that fit that play-style! You wouldn’t buy a hockey stick for a football player, right? So don’t buy Archangel’s Staff for Garen. Just don’t. Please don’t. You’ll understand when you’ve played a few games.

Phew. Well there you have the basic objective of the game. Let’s make that a list so it’s a bit easier to understand.

Go to a lane and start killing minions.
Your minions will help you destroy enemy towers.
Use gold gained from killing minions to buy items to make yourself stronger.
Keep taking towers until you reach the enemy base.
Destroy the enemy nexus.

Of course, your opponents will be trying to do the same to you the entire time, so you can’t just walk into lane and mindlessly hack away at minions. You have to deal with a human opponent, controlling a character of similar strength to yours. This is where the “meta game” comes in.

At this point, it would be the acme of foolishness not to mention that the game is free to download and has a tutorial built in. If what I’ve just described sounds like a game to which you might enjoy devoting a bit of time (or your entire life) and spending no money (or over a hundred dollars) then download it and give it a shot (I’m so lonely). There are a lot of small details that I won’t be going over (damage types, resistances, scaling, turret agro, ip and rp, possible item builds, how to last-hit, runes, masteries, summoner spells, how to play while eating a sandwich, wards, dragon and baron, blue and red buff), which are all kind of boring, require lengthy explanation and are best learned by simply playing the game a bit. Those are the mechanics of the game, but what really makes League of Legends (or LOL, for short) so much fun is the massive number of characters that you can play. You thought Super Smash Bros. had a lot of characters? Man Smash Bros. ain’t got NOTHING on League.

Garen: The League’s favorite Beyblade

Champions

There are currently 123 champions to choose from, and a team must have five UNIQUE champs. There are millions of potential team compositions, which by itself should suggest the complexity of the game. Champions are divided into a few categories based on how they play. Assassins are champs that do a lot of close range damage extremely quickly but are very easy to kill. Most mages function similarly to assassins, but their damage is usually long range. Tanks (my favorite role) are beefy damage sponges that like to wade into a fight and soak up damage, but they aren’t too good at dishing out hurt themselves. Marksman (usually called Attack Damage Carries or ADCs) are long range champs that prefer to stay in the back of the fight while pumping out a steady stream of damage per second. Obviously these are just generalizations and there is a lot of diversity within each category. You’ve got bruisers, bursty marksman, melee damage-per-second champs, champs with high mobility, low mobility, split-pushers, champs with no crowd control, champs with lots of crowd control, fat champs, skinny champs, champs who climb on rocks. (If you got that reference give yourself a pat on the back).

Though each champ differs greatly, there are a few aspects that every champ shares:

Stats – Every champ has stats that all do different things. (This, by the way, is the kind of in-depth analysis that makes my article a must-read). The most important stats are health, mana (some champs use other resources or no resource, but that doesn’t matter right now), attack damage, ability power, armor, magic resistance, movement speed, and critical chance. Most of those are pretty self-explanatory if you’ve played an RPG before, but the main thing you need to know is that every item gives stats, and certain stats are good on certain champions.

Basic Attacks – All champions get basic attacks, some ranged and some melee. Basically all the dudes with axes and swords have melee basic attacks, and everyone who uses a gun or magic staff has ranged basic attacks. The higher the attack damage stat, the higher the damage on basic attacks. Easy enough.

Abilities – Every champ has a passive ability (no key binding), three basic abilities (Q,W, and E), and an ultimate (R). The maximum level in the game is level 18 and each level gives you one point to spend on your abilities. Each basic ability can be skilled five times, and your ultimate three times. All your basic abilities are available from the outset but you’ll have to wait until level 6 for the extremely sexy ultimate ability. Most abilities increase their damage the more ability power you have (wow, what a coincidence!) but some will cause more damage more as your attack damage increases. Every ability costs mana, so keep an eye on that pretty blue bar under your health.

So before we end this thing, quick wrap-up on how champions work:

You control one character, and you use basic attacks and abilities to do the big damages
As you disregard real life and acquire currency, spend that currency on items that fit your champion. Ex. Attack damage on Ashe, Health Armor and Magic Resist on Garen, and Ability power on Annie.
Proclaim your victory, dance on the desecrated corpses of your fallen foes.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and give League a try! I’ll see you on the Summoner’s Rift or at Gaming Club in Tome 115 on Satudays at 8pm where we play lots of League and other games. Be there or be square!

A Problematic Vision of Gamers

February 9, 2015 / Jeremy Barnes / 0 Comments

I like video games. Some say I like them too much, but only those who’ve seen me write “Mrs. Jeremy Games” on the inside of my school notebooks. Recently, my interest in them has started to become academic in addition to recreational; I’ve started to think and write about video games from a scholarly perspective, as you might do with a classic film or piece of literature. To many, writing academically about video games might sound completely ludicrous, like if someone wanted to exhibit paintings of Nicolas Cage at the Louvre or if someone said that spray cheese actually tasted like real cheese. Why is it that most people fully accept paintings, novels, or films as works of art with the potential for analysis, but video games are merely toys for children, not worthy of any scholarly merit?

While it is true that video games are becoming more popular among scholars, they certainly don’t have the widespread acceptance that other forms have; it would be rare to find a professor of video games or someone majoring in Sonic the Hedgehog for his or her college degree. While it is true that video games are a relatively young art form, I think a bigger problem is how the public perceives games, and even how video game fans perceive games. Games are often seen by more traditional and conservative media outlets as purveyors of violence and sex, objects that seek to corrupt our children and turn them into gun-toting sex fiends. Not only can detractors harm the public perception of video games, but sometimes supporters can as well. Both people working within the industry and self-proclaimed video game fans and supporters often infantilize video games and create another juvenile image of the medium as a whole.

While it is often true that new forms of entertainment and media are met with disdain and scorn from members of the old-guard way of doing things, it seems like video games have gotten an especially bad reputation within traditional media. As far back as the Columbine shooting, video games were blamed for heinous acts of violence; Doom was partially blamed for influencing the two teens that then went on to shoot up their school and harm their fellow classmates. The 1992 game Night Trap was also put on trial by Senator Joe Lieberman for encouraging rape fantasies and violence against women.

Even today video games are still being demonized. For example, take the release of Mass Effect in 2007. Fox News aired a segment that put Mass Effect on trial for its depiction of “graphic sex” and questioned the game’s general merit. Most of the conversation focused on its potential impact on children, and how depictions of sex and violence such as those they thought depicted in Mass Effect could inhibit or damage the development of a child. In fact, all of those on the panel that attacked the game had never actually played it; they had only seen trailers and pictures, and actually scoffed at the idea of actually playing the game. All of these controversies begin with the assumption that video games are inherently for children and that children will find some way to get their hands on them. Even today when many modern games explore very adult themes and involve extremely mature content, why is it that many still assume that video games are children’s toys? I believe that one of the biggest factors keeping this myth alive are members of video game fandom whose intentions come from a place of enjoyment and admiration, but whose actions ultimately betray their intentions.

A number of events and films that appear to be on the side of video game success, for instance, can actually do more harm than good. Events and features that are meant to celebrate games and those who play them, such as the Spike TV Video Game Awards (VGAs) and the documentary Video Games: The Movie (2014), treat their audiences (and their source material) like children. The VGA’s are meant, in theory, to celebrate the best titles of the year; however, their actual purpose and existence is something far less noble and worthwhile. The awards are actually something of an extended commercial, with various trailers shown and revealed for the next year’s upcoming releases. When they’re not trying to sell you something, the VGAs fill the rest of their air time with skits that would make Dumb and Dumber look like a dark satire on the duality of mankind. Nothing impresses twelve-year-olds more and says ‘class and elegance’ like Neil Patrick Harris’ entrance to the 2010 VGA’s where he shoots up an entire troop of dancers. At the 2007 awards, the nominees for ‘Game of the Year’ had their likenesses painted onto scantily clad women who then presented themselves on stage. All jokes aside, the VGAs aren’t bad because of the trailers or the lack of awards, but because the awards assume that their audiences can’t be entertained without a copious amount of blood and boobs.

The recently released Video Games: The Movie aims to justify a love for video game and seeks to briefly chronicle their history, but comes off as more of a love letter or a puff piece. Stated more harshly: it doesn’t do anything but lick the metaphorical boot of the video game industry. Director Jeremy Snead, along with an ensemble of movie stars and video game industry figures, guide viewers through a very condensed history of video games. Although informative for the uninitiated, the history that the film outlines feels like an encyclopedia article with little to no insight or analysis put forth. The film itself is a sort of pre-pubescent love poem to the video games industry: video games occupy the place of a middle school girl who’s just bought her first bra while the generic video game fans are like boys trying to get a gander at them yams.

The whole film is filled with larger-than-life claims about video games and their potential, but not a lot is said with actual substance. Various celebrities who have nothing to do with video games, such as Zach Braff and Donald Faison, have their voices heard in this film not because of any expertise that they hold, but just because they like video games. While there are prominent figures from within the industry in this film that do offer their insight–for example Cliff Blesinski and Reggie Fils-Aime–they too offer little more than their childhood experiences with Space Invaders or their first time playing the Legend of Zelda. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with sharing these experiences, when put into a film that places itself as an ambassador for video games as a whole, it makes the industry and the medium look extremely childish and unsubstantial. Moreover, the formal elements of the film are often lazily done and riddled with errors; at one point, one of the graphics has a typo and instead of displaying ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ the text reads ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocatina of Time.’ If a film can’t even be bothered to check its spelling, how can the viewer trust that the film’s message and content isn’t any less erroneous?

If VGAs and Video Games: The Movie are the wrong ways of talking about video games, then what are the right ways? I think that some form of justification of the medium is probably necessary, but not to the point of worship. One example of a representation done well is Indie Game: The Movie. It manages to tell the story of three groups of game developers without turning them into jokes, or worse, Big Bang Theory characters. These developers appear to be real people with a passion for video games, but not to the point of worship. I think the best part of Indie Game is that it doesn’t treat its audience with contempt; it assumes that the viewer can do his or her own thinking without having his or her hand held.

But seriously, liking video games doesn’t make someone a nerdy caricature because there is nothing wrong with video games in the first place. Video games can be taken seriously, but not if the only reasons given for the validity of the medium involve childhood memories and exorbitant flattery. If the general public is ever going to take games seriously, those who enjoy or play them need to take them seriously first. Not everyone needs to be the next great video game scholar, but simplifying games down to boobs and guns doesn’t do justice to the potential that video games offer as an art form or as a mode of storytelling. Hopefully the problems within the medium are caused by some kind of formal puberty, because I know that the medium of video games should and will one day become an art form that will be respected in its own right.

Grant Morrison’s Multiversity

February 9, 2015 / drabkins / 0 Comments

Ever since I really started reading comic books, I feel like I’vve been waiting for Multiversity. Each year since 2010, I read that this would be the year when Grant Morrison’s follow up to Final Crisis would come out. Multiversity became almost a mythical comic in my mind. I heard rumors of a page in it that had 300 panels, and that the series would change the way I read comics. Whether or not Morrison intended it to be, in my eyes Multiversity was going to be the writer’s magnum opus. With DC Comics’ New 52 revamp in 2011, I had all but given up hope of seeing the series. But here, at long last, it is. And it’s weird.

Multiversity is a 9-issue miniseries; so far 5 of the issues have been published. Each story is written by Morrison and set in a different universe with drawn by a different artist. The stories seem somewhat connected, but it’s not easy to summarize how. If I had to give a brief synopsis, I would say that Multiversity is a story about different universes, collectively known as the Multiverse, interacting with one another in the form of comic books (the comic books of one universe are the reality of another and vice versa). There is also a neigh-omnipotent evil force called The Gentry which may be the cause of the conflict in most issues. The eighth issue, titled Ultra Comics, while yet unreleased, seems to be cursed and may be the source of The Gentry.

If from my synopsis it sounds like I’m not exactly sure what’s happening in this series, then that’s pretty accurate. As with other titles that Morrison has free range on, Multiversity rides the thin line between brilliant and incomprehensible–often times leaning more towards the latter. The first issue, Multiversity #1, is particularly difficult to read (as does also the fourth, Pax Americana). Indeed, in both its tone and complexity Multiversity #1 is most directly reminiscent of Final Crisis; it shares the older book’s apocalyptic feel, strange characters, and bizarre ideas. The characters of this issue include Stubbs the pirate chimpanzee and Captain Carrot, who is basically Superman but a cartoon rabbit. The main character (if there really is a main character) is a “multiversal monitor” who travels between the comic books in a brightly colored, vibrating spaceship so as to fight threats to the multiverse. Despite all this silliness the first issue does a good job of instilling an eerie feeling of impending doom, partly through its unique (and distinctly Morrison) narrative style that directly warns the reader to “stop reading.”

Each issue of the series is so densely packed with information and ideas that a Dickinson humanities major could write an entire senior thesis on any of them. This is not necessarily a positive thing. Morrison’s style of storytelling can sometimes seem more like the ramblings of a madman’s diary that a finely crafted narrative. There are, nevertheless, certainly some stand out moments in this series. In Pax Americana for example, paired with longtime collaborator Frank Quitely (on art), we see Morrison really come into his prime. Some pages can be read backwards (!) and the story itself–though it encourages many readings and still doesn’t always make sense–is engaging. All in all, it’s experimental, bizarre, and utterly fascinating.

Despite its flaws, I can still definitely recommend Multiversity. Although it certainly isn’t for everyone, in terms of unique ideas and interesting designs this comic is a breath of fresh air for DC comics. Whether or not you’ll feel it succeeds in pushing the envelope for superhero comics may depend on personal preference but it certainly tries. For my part, before I can offer a final judgment on this series I really need to wait till all the issues have come out. Then maybe I’ll read it backwards, alternating issues, or read it in one-minute intervals occurring only at noon and midnight, or read it while rollerskating through the Hub in a gorilla costume. This is the sort of experimental thinking that a series like Multiversity makes you consider. It’s shaping up to be either one of my favorite comics in recent years or a mish-mash of complete nonsense. Either way, every issue feels like another clue and I like to think that its leading up to something incredible that may have been there the whole time. It’s good to have you back, Mr. Morrison. I’ve missed you.

What Is Feminism?

February 9, 2015 / AVeryStrangeHoard / 0 Comments

When writing a column about feminism the first thing I would like to do is be clear: What do I mean by feminism? In society and the media today, feminism is rarely given a clear definition. Feminists, however, are clearly implied to be ugly, single, man-hating lesbians. No one is sure what feminism really is or does; it’s just clear you shouldn’t want to be a part of it. Though I don’t deny that there are some man-hating, lesbian feminists, the theory of the movement is focused not on Men or Women, but gender.

Gender is the performance of either masculine or feminine characteristics. I say performance, not because gender is not real, but because it is public. Gender is how you publicly identify, either as man or woman. People do this in almost every way: clothing, hair, voice, ways of moving, how one sits, etc. And being a man or woman comes with a heap of responsibilities! Men are expected to be emotionally closed, always into sex with women, and career-driven so as to provide for their eventual families. Women are expected to be over-emotional, mother-ready, and simultaneously sexually available and sexually pure. Our society is steeped in this gender binary. And in this binary, feminine traits are seen as inherently degraded or degrading while masculine traits are praised. When men act like Men they are celebrated, but when women act like Women they are belittled for the performance.

The easiest example of this double-edged sword is the virgin/whore complex. A woman should have sex, but not too much sex and not outside of monogamy (or marriage), and only with men, etc., etc., etc. But there are other places in society where we can see the gender hierarchy at work: English curriculums, for example. I challenge anyone to look at the books they read for high school English and not find the vast majority to have been written by male authors.

So how does this binary oppress people? There is no Patriarchy Headquarters. No Ivory Tower of Male Glory (though there is the Washington Monument, but that’s another story). The patriarchy is all around us, in our TV shows and movies, our politics, our schools, our families–even in our relationships and our sense of self. It’s there every time someone says, “She needs to get laid,” “He’s a pussy,” “Don’t be a bitch,” “Look at my big strong baby boy,” “That’s my sweet little baby girl,” or “When are you going to get married?” Patriarchy is at work every time we employ gender to assume something about a person’s character. It’s there every time we assume gender at all. In fact, it’s so engrained that we can’t even refer to someone without gendered pronouns. Once your gender is defined, then many other things about yourself become restricted: what you can wear, who you can have relationships with, even your personality.

This is where feminism comes in handy. Feminism is about confronting in ourselves, and deconstructing in the world, the uses of gender. You may say then why feminism? Why not humanism? And you’re right that feminism doesn’t just deal with women but also men. In fact, feminists don’t think that gender exists. Gender only exists because we use it. There is nothing inherent or true about gender. However, the way our culture employs the concept has a tremendous impact on society today and in the past. Man has always been the gender discussed. So much so that man literally means all humans. Men have had their stories told in film, television, history, and politics to the exclusion of all others. Because of this normalization of masculinity, men are often not even identified by their gender. Women, however, have their identity reduced to the fact of their gender daily. Women’s voices have been ignored and belittled as have so many outside the mainstream, white, male, heterosexual discourse.

So here’s my main point: Feminism is not about women being better than men. Let me repeat that: Feminism is not about women being better than men. Feminism is about listening to the voices that have been silenced, marginalized, and excluded by the gender binary and its inherent male-centric attitude. It’s about trying to push beyond the gendered portrayal of humanity.

So let me be clear. In this column, I plan to examine the role and rules of gender. As a feminist, I plan to look into how society teaches and learns gender, how this binary excludes other voices, and how the restrictions of gender identities disenfranchise all people.

Return to The World of Thedas

February 9, 2015 / Genevieve Veres / 0 Comments

Bioware loves dramatic protagonists. The company did the hero of legend in Dragon Age: Origins, the underdog-turned-champion in Dragon Age II Origins–and in Mass Effect, the main character was the savoir of the entire galaxy. How could they hope to create a protagonist to top that? With, it turns out, a hero as potential new messiah, embroiled in a good old battle of the gods. Dragon Age: Inquisition thrives on the dramatic and the epic: in the plot, in the characters, and in the imaginary world of Thedas. The first plot point is an explosion seen on the title screen when “new game” is selected, which sets the story in motion. From then on–throughout more than 100 hours of content–the game is one of wonders both big and small.

Meet the Inquisitor

The Inquisitor is entirely your character. You get to customize everything about her (or him), from her race and background to her appearance, and even her voice. When the game begins, your character is the sole survivor of the aforementioned blast, which happens to have killed hundreds, ruined hopes of peace in a war-torn country, and unleashed its own chaos into the world via a magical scar left in the sky. You were saved by a mysterious figure many believe to be the spirit Andraste, the Jesus-figure in the game’s mythology, giving you a great amount of influence and power whether or not you yourself believe yourself warranting it. It falls to you and your supporters to build up a politically and militarily powerful sect known as the Inquisition, gaining followers and influence as you do so, in order save the world.

Narrative premise out of the way, let’s look at how the game actually holds up; in other words, the Good, the Bad, and the In-Between!

The Good

Thedas Is Really Big and Really Beautiful

There are ten main areas, along with several smaller ones, spanning across the countries of Fereldan and Orlais, and every one of them is impressive in size and aesthetically stunning. Not only is the world big, it also manages to feel varied enough to be interesting while yet cohesive enough to function convincingly as a world. The areas clustered together, such as deserts in Western Orlais, are similar in a way that makes sense with their geographic location but are also unique enough in their design that each is its own interesting experience. In contrast with Dragon Age II, where every single room you entered looked identical to every other one in the game, even the smaller locations are uniquely put together and thus satisfying to explore.

The more-or-less lack of invisible walls and departure from the series’ branching-hallway maps is definitely a contributor to the expansive feeling of the areas. Though invisible walls do exist, they are few and far between. The maps are instead given natural limitations; cliffs that can’t be climbed, sand storms that can’t be crossed, and bodies of water that can’t be forged. When a part of the edge of the map is left open, it will usually lead to a map of the rest of Thedas rather than just act as a blank barrier. The result being that you can go almost everywhere you can see, and in most areas you can see pretty far.

The War Table

Another clever trick Bioware uses to show both the size of the world and the reach of the Inquisition is the war table. This feature is a map, the same map you use to select your destination when traveling, with markers for missions that require your attention. You can select one of your three advisors to handle the situation, and after a certain amount of real-time passes you are delivered a report on how the mission went and any rewards gained.

Although the Inquisitor can themselves only travel to a limited number of locations throughout two countries, the war table can go far beyond that, allowing the Inquisition to still have a presence in every part of the world. By selecting which of your advisors to turn to for any given mission, you can also gain influence in whichever way you choose, be it diplomacy, espionage, or military strength. It’s also a tidy way to bring up nods to past games in the series and individual world states without losing newer players by bogging down with story references and cameos designed for returning players.

The interactions with the war table mostly include reading reports of the problems you have to deal with, reading proposed solutions by your advisors, and then reading reports of the effects once the mission is completed. Basically, it’s a lot of reading. If you don’t bother looking through these reports, it’s probably going to seem like a fairly boring feature. But taking the time to read the short passages, makes the experience more than just clicking and waiting. It puts you in the position of the decision maker and authority figure that your character is supposed to be.

Skyhold

Skyhold is the Inquisition’s base of operations, and it is awesome. You can spend hours just investigating this area alone, trying to figure out how to navigate your castle and finding all the nifty hidden nooks. Your companions and advisors each have their corners where they hang out if you want to talk to them and each corner has a personal touch related to its character. Throughout the game you’ll find or be able to buy various items to personalize Skyhold’s décor in ways that suit your Inquisitor. Beyond that, you will also have a couple opportunities to make upgrades to Skyhold that reflect your priorities and decisions in the game, such as supporting the Templars versus supporting the Mages. This is where you’ll be able to bond with your followers, visit the war table, and upgrade or forge new equipment.

Another interesting aspect found at Skyhold is a feature called Judgement. At several plot points various characters that have worked against the Inquisitor or the law of their respective locations can be captured and sent to Skyhold, where you get to decide their fate for yourself. This is one more way that the game puts the power and authority of the Inquisition directly into your hands and allows you to literally experience it, rather than just telling you about it or even merely showing it. The various options that you have for dealing with the captives is also personalized, and certain options won’t be available to Inquisitors of certain backgrounds or mindsets, or will only be available if certain decisions are made.

The Characters

Bioware’s strength has always been more in its games’ casts than their play mechanisms–and more in its writing than anything else. This remains just as true for Dragon Age Inquisition. The snippets of dialogue between your companions that occur as you run around the world are always either wonderfully entertaining or interesting and insightful, and a new feature allowing your character to join in the conversations helps to solidify the group’s bonds. The companions that you gather are a diverse and lively lot that feel like real people, as opposed to the companions of Dragon Age II, who by the game’s end seemed big archetypes (or, less generously, caricatures) of single big ideas by the end. In this game, they all have distinct personalities and motivations, and while some might not get along as well with you as others, they are all convincing, well-written characters who, the more you play, feel more and more like real people about whom you actually care.

This is helped by the changes made to the approval rating that has been continually evolving throughout the series. While past games allowed you to treat the companions strategically, giving them gifts and leaving them behind on certain missions to get the desired results, interactions in Inquisition are much more natural as no approval meter is displayed, and changes in approval are not assigned numeric value. What the characters think of you is thus more strongly based on your actions in the world and toward them individually.

The Bad

Mounts

The system of mounts introduced in Inquisition is a smart idea that was unfortunately lazily executed. With the exception of the largest dessert area, the mounts don’t maneuver well enough in any of the areas to be more useful than going on foot, and even in the Hissing Wastes they aren’t fast enough to feel much different than simply running. Your companions disappear into black smoke when you mount your steed, just as it itself will do if it’s nearby during combat (as it likely will be, since it’s difficult to avoid being thrown off as soon as you encounter enemies until much later in the game). This both breaks the sense of immersion built up so carefully during the rest of the game and means that you don’t get any of the delightful companion discussions while you’re on your mount. Add to that the fact that there are only really four different mounts in a variety of color swaps and all the exciting potential it the concept might have had disappears.

Our Antagonist

The antagonist of the game peaks very early on in the story, with a legion of crazy followers and an epic first appearance. However, from that first appearance on, the impression of the story’s bad guy continues to fade until the game’s rather lackluster ending. An unknown being seeking to become a God sounds good at the beginning, but the little backstory we are given is not enough to make up for his evil-villain cookie-cutter motives. A good story requires a strong antagonist, one who thinks he himself is doing the right thing even if we, as the audience, can clearly tell that he is not. We see this in both of the first two games, but Inquisition’s biggest bad guy isn’t much but a tired archetype, making his followers even more shallow and unbelievable still.

Almost to add insult to injury, there are clear hints throughout the game of a darker, more interesting conflict brewing just beneath the surface. Though the story is cool on its own, I almost felt like it was little more than a place-holder for the slow development of a series-long conflict which has yet to manifest.

The Loading Screen

By far the pettiest of my Inquisition complaints is how the loading screen is handled. When switching areas, the screen displays three tarot cards and information from the game codex for players to read and learn about the world while they wait. While this is a cool idea, it’s not well executed. The codex entries shown are usually fairly long, and the player only has time to read a few sentences at most before it disappears . . . only to be replaced by another plain black loading screen? Really?

The In-Between

Combat

The battle system in this game is interesting. The lack of any healing spells in favor of a set number of health potions is a daring but successful switch from past games, allowing for more variety in party combinations and forcing more of a focus on defense rather than support. There’s a wide variety of new ways to experiment with specializations and party dynamics and a lot of potential for any play-style. The pause-and-command tactical view can be helpful, and is even entirely necessary for tougher battles and higher difficulty settings, but it definitely brings the flow of the battle to a halt as you issue commands to your teammates, resume time again as they carry out your orders, and then repeat.

The biggest negative in regards to the combat for me was the tactics screen in Inquisition. For a game that fixed so much from its predecessors and advertised the combat system so heavily, the tactics screen here is a surprising and disappointing step down. Whereas in past games it was possible to customize a lengthy list of “if-then” statements dictating every followers’ action during combat, Inquisition limits the behavior set of characters to (1) how often they use heath potions and moves and (2) their default target, resulting in many decisions being left to an AI that is, frankly, not that great. In easy battles it may not matter, but in many scenarios it is very jarring to have to constantly try to micromanage all of your companions for the sake of efficiency.

Dragons

Living up to the series’ title, the dragons in Inquisition are (finally) plentiful and suitably epic. They’re just as terrifying as they should be until you’re at a high enough level, and they’re such a distinct part of the environments that it’s almost a shame to kill them. That said, after taking a few of the giant beasts down, the battles do all start to feel the same. There’s very little diversity in the combat with the dragons except for each dragon’s elemental resistances/weaknesses, and though the attempt to make dragons feel different from other enemies by breaking them up into parts has potential it ultimately never seems to matter much.

Crafting

The crafting system of Inquisition is another new feature to the game, and it has it good parts and bad parts. You can craft some really powerful items, easily more powerful than anything that could be found through looting. You get to pick out what materials to put in different statistic slots on the crafting screen with each type of material having different benefits, so you get to designate whether you want your armor to have more melee defense/magic resistance/etc. The bad, on the other hand, is that the only effective way to gather all of these materials is to walk around, which is a tedious and time consuming process. Also, the fact that the chosen materials also affect the appearance of what you are crafting occasionally leads to choices such as whether running around in bright pink and green armor is worth the higher stats. You also get to name everything you craft, however, which almost makes up for the fashion problems.

Roundup

Dragon Age: Inquisition is more than a fixed version of the first two games. It holds onto the best parts of each of its prequels and improves upon the worst, but most importantly it throws in its own unique flair, which ultimately re-shapes the entire experience. There are endless moments, from the epic scenes that give chills to the small conversations that warm the heart, which all work together to make this an amazing game. The hundreds of hours of content are not just busy-work running around gathering (mostly not, anyway), but are filled to the brink with an unbelievable amount of unique and exciting things to do and features to play with. While it certainly has some issues, they’re nothing compared to the immersive, expansive, emotional world that is Thedas.

Nin-TOY-do

February 2, 2015 / Theo Xenophon / 0 Comments

A few months ago, Nintendo released its latest iteration of its much beloved and anticipated Super Smash Brothers series. In this beat-em-up party game, players take control of the most popular characters from Nintendo’s most popular franchises to fight friends, computers, and even total strangers from around the world via its online mode. With this new version of the game comes a variety of new features, including 8-man multiplayer, character creation and customization, new challenge modes, and as always, lots of new stages and fighters. Perhaps one of the most interesting new features, however, is completely external to the game itself: small figurines called Amiibos.

Similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity figures, Amiibos are toys containing computer chips that allow them to interact with designated video games. However, unlike these examples, which are figures containing a playable character that saves certain stats and items, Amiibos instead contain an AI capable of learning and leveling up through training, essentially becoming a digital pet that plays Smash. Furthermore, they can be scanned while playing various other Nintendo games in order to unlock bonus content, such as extra outfits in Mario Kart 8 or special items in Hyrule Warriors. Another key difference between Amiibos and the Skylander/Disney figurines is that the former are not required to play their compatible games. Amiibos promise what sounds like an interesting new style of play, but is it worth buying one?

Currently, there are 18 Amiibos available; with 11 more hitting markets this month, next month, and so on. In stores, these figures sell for $12.99; however, due to limited availability, many characters have become difficult to find and can reach prices over $50-100 online. Besides varying price and availability, another thing to take note of when getting an Amiibo is which games they can interact with, for some Amiibos can unlock content in a large variety of games, while others have less uses. For example, Kirby can be used regularly in Super Smash Brothers, and also to unlock content in Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, Mario Party 10, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse; while Pikachu can only be used in Smash Bros, Hyrule Warriors, and Mario Party 10. It would appear not all toys are created equally.

For this review, I’ve purchased Link from The Legend of Zelda series, mostly in admiration for the character. Once being scanned into your copy of Super Smash Brothers, you will be asked to choose a costume and give your new Amiibo a name. My fellow play testers and I have affectionately named this particular Amiibo Splip’Blop. After naming your Amiibo, you can feed it items to bring up its stats, and customize its abilities. From here, you can begin “training” your Amiibo by playing with it in the multiplayer mode. The figure will level up with each game you play with it, reaching max ability at level 50, and it will pick up new habits along the way, such as taunting after a kill. While Splip’Blop’s skills did seem to grow over time, it’s unclear to me whether or not his AI “learned” or merely began to play better as it leveled up; I frequently noticed Splip’Blop using certain moves and tactics which I did not use when facing him, although perhaps his learning is more based on reacting than copying. Over all, leveling up Splip’Blop took only a few hours, and it was as easy as playing a few matches with friends. Once Splip’Blop was fully leveled, he became a genuinely threatening foe: easily able to fend off against a few human players at once.

A couple friends and I getting ready to face off against the Amiibo

It’s hard to say what the main use Nintendo had for Amiibos is, and instead there simply seem to be a multitude of small uses for them here and there. For people desiring to train against a more difficult AI, this might be a good way to hone your skills. For more casual gamers on the other hand, fighting the Amiibo might prove more annoying than useful or fun. Besides battling with the figure yourself, you can also pit it against your friend’s Amiibo to see who has trained their fighter better. If this was the Amiibo’s desired use, however, then one must wonder why they didn’t simply design similar figures for their Pokemon series, which is a game built on the premise of training characters to battle with friends. The Super Smash Brothers games by contrast are more centered on active play.

So returning to the main question, is it worth buying an Amiibo? Well honestly, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you play competitively and want a stronger AI to practice with, then buying an Amiibo of a character that you have trouble fighting might be beneficial to you. If you enjoy the train and battle style of Pokemon, then maybe getting a few friends to each invest in their own Amiibo might be enjoyable as well. Collectors are another group that may be interested, as these are premium figures with well-detailed molds and painting. Further more, many of these characters have never been made into toys before, so some fans will be eager to get their hands on merchandise for the more obscure characters.

These particular reasons aside, it might be better to wait if you plan on buying one. As of now, there are only a few games other than Super Smash Brothers compatible with Amiibos, and for the most part, the toys’ only real function in these games is to unlock small bits of extra content. Most of this content is only items and bonuses that are relatively minuscule or uninteresting. The most significant of these unlockables would probably be the mii racing suits in Mario Kart 8, most of which are suits based on characters that are already in the game (an exception being the Captain Falcon suit, which when paired with a properly designed mii allows to get as close as possible to driving as the legendary F-Zero racer). Nintendo has claimed many of their new games will be made with Amiibos in mind, so in the future there may be more of an incentive to buy one, but if you’re not a Smash fan or you’re not interested in training and collecting, then it may be best to hold off on getting one just yet. Still you have to admit; there is something cool about seeing your favorite video game characters come off the screen and onto your shelves.

Postscript

Page 6 of 6

Agnès Varda’s Clèo from 5 to 7

Sweet Melancholy: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice

Interview with Sara Shahriari