Bioshock

As I predicted in my last post Bioshock totally kicked RE4 right out of my life. It's a fantastic game I'm really enjoying.

There is a debate raging on the Internet questioning whether games can be art or not. Roger Ebert basically started whole thing by saying that games would never be art comparable to cinema. Of course this ruffled the feathers of more than one gamer and it's lead to some interesting reading if nothing else.

The gist of Roger's argument is that because players have a choice in the outcome of the game, it destroys the artist's ability to craft a specific emotional experience. I kind of understood where he was coming from, but I had a really cool experience that lead me to think otherwise.

Bioshock is a game with a pretty significant backstory that would not only bore you to tears but would wear my fingers out if I were to type it all up. For this particular experience of mine to make sense you just need to know of 2 characters that show up in the game known as Big Daddy and Little Sister.

The Little Sisters are essentially resource harvesters. They wander around the city world of Bioshock taking raw genetic material from dead bodies and storing it. They look like 9 year old girls and if you leave them alone to do their thing, they'll act like 9 year old girls too. The sing little songs and skip from place to place. Of course, being a horror game, they're suitably creepy as well with glowing eyes and pasty skin. They're skipping and singing their way from body to body with a gigantic syringe which they poke into the various bodies to extract the genetic material.

The Little Sisters are always accompanied by a Big Daddy. The Big Daddy is essentially the guardian for the Little Sisters. They're hulking giants in old school diving suits that simply follow the sisters around and protect them.

Bioshock is a unique game in that you can choose to not interact with these and other characters and simply watch them do their thing if you want to. In the case of these two, the Little Sisters will hold the Big Daddies' hands, chatter at them and constantly refer to them as "Mr. Bubbles". They also cry over their guardian's bodies after you kill them.

There comes a point in the game where you have to make a choice about whether you're going to harvest the Little Sisters and kill them in the process, or release them from their situation unharmed. If you choose to harvest them you get the material they've been collecting. If you choose to release them you get some token compensation but mostly you just get to feel good about yourself. For me this was an easy decision, I harvest. They're creepy little girls anyway. Jeremiah is a releaser. Kind of cuts to the core of our differences I reckon.

You get to make this decision many times throughout the course of the game, but really once you've decided to go one way or the other, there isn't any reason to change your mind.

So, I'm over half way through the game and I've harvested many of these Little Sisters. At one point I was a little bit lost as to what to do next so I was just wandering around kind of enjoying the scenery and I come across a Big Daddy just lumbering around. He looks kind of lost, so I decide to just watch him for minute while I ponder my next action. He wanders around the room looking under things, banging on the walls and making frustrated crying like sounds. And then I realize what he's doing: he's trying to find the Little Sister I harvested! He's walking around actively checking places she could hide and whining and moaning about her absence.

And I felt guilty! You could probably lay the bodies of everything I've killed in video games over the last 20 years end to end and it would stretch to the Sun and back. And I've never felt guilty about any of it. And here I felt guilty about taking this lumbering diving dork's friend away. Pretty impressive emotional manipulation if you ask me.

Of course this only lasted a few minutes and then I went back to harvesting the little witches. But for a few short moments, I had reflected on my own selfish nature and felt bad about how it might hurt others. That's an experience not even a movie could have created.

Resident Evil 4 for Wii

I got RE4 for the Wii from Gamefly. I just wanted to try a shooting game on the Wii and see how it would handle. I forgot what a great game it is. I keep telling myself that I'm going to just play one more night and then send it back but I'm having so much fun with it I keep going. I'm about half way through the game now.

It works great on the Wii once you get the hang of having all the buttons moved. It was a great looking game 4 years ago on the GameCube; it's not so hot on the Wii. After playing most my games in HD, it seems very pixelated and fuzzy. But it still has the RE magic. At first it's a little irritating that you can't move and shoot at the same time, but it's really what makes the game so tense. You have to constantly be evaluating your position relative to all the zombies and make very tactical decisions about where to make your stand. It's easy to see why it's one of the all time greats.

For all the weaklings out there that couldn't finish it on the 'cube, it's actually much easier on the Wii because you are so much more accurate and can aim so quickly. I still die regularly, but often I get through things that took several tries on the 'cube in one try. And I find I'm struggling with ammo a lot less.

Now that I have BioShock in hand, I don't know how much time I'll spend on it. But it's been darn fun and it gives me high hopes for future shooters on the Wii. Like Metroid Prime 3 that comes out next week...

Moving to Mac

I ordered a Macbook Pro today to serve as my work machine. My experience with Apple products to date hasn't been so hot. I'm really hoping that this time is different. I'm doing this because I'm constantly frustrated with Tomoko's machine and I'm not familiar enough to do anything with it. I'd like to learn how to use one as well as I know how to use Windows. Seems they're getting more and more popular and everyone else I talk to swears by them. I'm actually hoping I'm a convert.

Another Injection

Last Friday I had another injection into my right SI joint. Actually it was more than just the joint, I had one injection into the joint itself and then 4 more injections into the fascia and tendons of the surrounding areas.

This is an entirely new stream of treatment with a new doctor. This doctor is a ND which means he is an actual doctor but he does natural treatments. Now you all know how desperate I am to get this fixed because I really don't trust natural medicine stuff. At this point I've pretty much exhausted all the traditional options short of surgery. I'll try anything out now.

If I were to go forward with surgery it would involve fusing the SI joints on both sides of my lower back. basically they open you up, shave off the outer layer of both the bones and then keep the joint immobile for several months. It would take me out for quite a while and I just don't think I can afford to do it.

So, I'm trying this other thing which is Prolotherapy. The idea in Prolotherapy is to introduce a proliferant into the tissue that encourages the body to restart the healing process. They've been doing this for years with chemical proliferants but in the last few years they've found that Platelet Rich Plasma is actually the most effective proliferant. Evidently blood platelets contain most of the growth factor hormones related to healing. By injecting the PRP they get the same effects as a chemical proliferant on the cell structure but the healing is much more dramatic because the platelets are already in place to produce the right hormones as they are metabolized.

So, the procedure involves drawing blood with a very large needle as to not disturb the cell structure, spinning it down to red blood cells, plasma and platelets and then drawing off most of the plasma and all of the red blood cells and then injecting it into the joint and surrounding tissues.

I don't really know if this is going to work or not, but I thought I should at least try. It's $700 per shot and insurance isn't covering most of it, so it's going to be expensive. But it's the last option I have.

The shot itself is quite painful and it put me in bed for the entire weekend. You wouldn't think it would hurt to put your own blood back into your body but it really hurts. I'm supposed to repeat 2-3 more times at one month intervals. I'm praying this is the one.

I've moved my blog

I've moved my blog. There are a few different reasons why but the big one was that spaces didn't really support Firefox very well. Everytime I wanted to post about something I had to open a totally new browser window etc. It was a pain in the neck, and really it's a small thing, but it kept me from posting at time that otherwise I might have.

The only reason I used live spaces was it had nice integration with XBox Live. But I found this site called My Gamer Card.net which hosts custom gamercards you can use just about anywhere. So, since I can put my gc anywhere and the family is all here, this is where I moved. So, while you're here, admire my new card up there in the top right corner. Nice eh? Your eyes do not betray you; that is Ken from Puzzle Fighter which is coming to xbl arcade soon.