TL;DR: Skyrim is uncanny.

Exhibit A:  nightmare fuel.

I've played a lot of Skyrim and emerged feeling unsatisfied.  Being a thoughtful sort, I started to ponder why that's the case.  Even if the interface, incongruities, scripting glitches, bugs, etc., were all tip-top, the game would remain unsatisfying for me.  What is it way deep down in Skyrim that's wrong?   And I've concluded Skyrim's basic problem is that it's uncanny.  As in “uncanny valley.”  When a human replica looks or moves almost—but not quite—like an actual human it provokes strong negative emotions in human observers.  Think of corpses and zombies.  The idea is that the high fidelity of the imitation makes its unnaturalness grotesquely obvious.

I’m only using the concept loosely here because Skyrim’s simulation of a world inhabited by agents and artifacts ruled by psychology and physics doesn’t even loosely resemble the real and what it inspires in me is not revulsion but an eerie feeling of emptiness.  Skyrim’s design underlines the game's limitations in a way that forever sabotages its illusions and reduces my investment in its world.

How much is Wasteland 2 worth to you?

Oh Prostitute, the wasteland is no place for a nice girl like you.  Why did you ever leave British Columbia?

Think about it now, because you’ll want an answer ready when a doe-eyed Brian Fargo jingles his change cup at you next month.  He hopes to raise something like $1m to fund Wasteland 2.  As I recall, his studio inXile has owned the license for several years, meaning this Kickstarter idea probably comes after frustration with the limitations of traditional financing.  If nothing else, the ongoing Kickstarter Fever tells us developers have been chafing under the restrictions of the current publishing model for some time.  I hope we're watching the beginnings of their liberation.  The most interesting work of recent years has been done by independent studios publishing digitally but I'm certain there's great talent languishing in studios hidebound by conservative publishers and it will be good for all of us if they can take more risks.

Kickstarter is the new black

The heady stench of hot cash lies heavy over Tim Schafer’s wildly successful Kickstarter telethon and is attracting the attention of other developers who worked on beloved IPs.  Enter Chris Avellone of Fallout 2 and Torment fame, asking what people would pay Obsidian to make.  Hmmm, let me think.  Baldur's Gate 3?  My Little Brony:  the MMORPG?  An Alpha Protocol reboot that doesn't so closely resemble a twisted mass of flaming wreckage?  Something with the Lost Vikings?  An extraordinarily high-budget roguelike?  There's a world of possibilities here.  Do what you do best, internet:  pour your wildest RPG fantasies out in a rambling stream of consciousness.  Tell us why it needs to be turn-based or nothing!  Do it here, do it now! 

Double Fine kickstarts an adventure before I can even get my pants on

There's some double fine advice for you.

I put my pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else, except it takes me 8 hours.  I understand this is not common but for the life of me can’t figure out how it’s done more quickly.  What do you do with all the busted sprockets?  Anyway, I’ve just learned that today, while I was strapped into my pantsing apparatus, grunting and straining to reach the levers, Tim Schafer was out on the internet hustling for cash at Kickstarter.  He wants to return to his roots and produce another classic point/click adventure, something like Grim Fandango or Day of the Tentacle, precisely the sort of game today's risk-averse publishers aren't keen to finance.  So he made his pitch direct to the SCUMM-hungry masses instead.  And they are hungry for SCUMM—he asked for $400,000 and has been buried in a funding avalanche we hope he will not embezzle.  Looks like we’ll be stealing rubber chickens with pulleys in their middles and caching hamsters in freezers this fall. Wow, that Schafer’s a go-getter. I bet he can get his pants on in like 3 hours.

Half-Life protest running out of steam?

Indifference is the true plague of locusts.

The paradoxically violent and atomized non-confrontational mass protest hurled at Valve’s wall of frigid taciturnity has come and gone.  When I first heard it was in the offing I thought the protestors could ride the recent wave of whingey internet empowerment all the way to success.  I expected tens of thousands of cinderblocks would be used to solve tedious physics puzzles and millions of faceless Combine thugs would be gunned down without regard to their race or creed.   

Now I learn that on the big day only 13,216 of the 50,000+ members of the Steam group participated in the action.  Nigh unto forty thousand confirmed Half-Lifers couldn’t be motivated even to alt-tab out of a game that, with all its faults, is way better than Man vs. Machine.  I’ve always thought average netizens capable of complaining and being lazy in roughly equal amounts; perhaps I misunderstood the balance of forces in the internet’s soul.

Half-Life protest takes on Steam

Emboldened by the recent success of internet whinging, viz. the forestalling of SOPA and PIPA, something like 30,000 Half-Lifers are gathering to protest the vortex of mystery that seems to have swallowed Half-Life 3.  Their plan:  to play Half-Life 2.  All at the same time.  They appear to be following Gandhi’s playbook here, protesting a lack of one thing by consuming a lot of something else.  Gandhi probably wouldn’t have chosen a game about shooting anonymous quislings in the face as the venue for one of his protests, but this Half-Life thing is actually quite similar to his celebrated salt march.  You know, the one where he gathered together thousands of Indians to protest the Salt Act and then sent everyone home to drink a lot of water.  Time will tell if Valve is as unshakable as the British Raj.

Much Different? More like Much Potemkin Village.

It’s a world record people.  Most concurrent players in an online FPS ever.  And I was on the scene.  Fifty years from now when I’m appearing before awestruck school assemblies to tell the harrowing true story of my war, I’ll get a little misty-eyed as I gaze into the distance and say, “you can’t know what it was like unless you were there.  I was there, man.”  But I hope the kids won’t ask for any details.

Still enjoying Skyrim despite crippling implausibility

Perhaps, Philosoraptor, but let's not get in too deep just yet.

I’m still enjoying Skyrim, warts and all.  It plays rather like I imagined Daggerfall would in my pre-release fantasies circa 1995.  Others have noted the unlikely omnicompetence of the Dragonborn and I agree the whole setup is thoroughly ridiculous when viewed objectively.  It takes effort for me not to obsessively nitpick over some of Skyrim's painful implausibilities.  I've uncorked many ancient crypts sealed and ignored for centuries, finding every one lit up like a circus with torches and braziers.  Have the restless dead spent the decades of their shuffling afterlife tending the fires for my eventual convenience?

Still, I continue to suspend my disbelief.  Like most stories and all high fantasy Skyrim overflows with unlikelihoods and if you want to play, you just have to play along.  You can’t enjoy magic, amphibious lizard men wearing clothes or soul-powered cutlery if you can’t make peace with the attendant silliness.  Star Wars wouldn’t be very interesting if Luke Skywalker grew up to be moisture farmer after all, and a fantasy RPG wouldn’t be much fun if the protagonist were a dashing, moustachioed NPC and the player a bowlegged, muck-ranching peasant with ringworm who struggles to raise turnips and taxes.  No, the hero of a story needs to be remarkable in some respect, even if flawed in others.  If Skyrim wants to remove all doubt by making me remarkable in every conceivable way, a demigod who shouts people off mountains, summons cabbages by the thousands and craps critical hits, well that’s cool—I always wanted to be the life of a party.

Value added? Terraria being shrinkwrapped

The best Super Nintendo game never made?

I don't understand marketing but I've seen enough MacBook Pros to know it works.  So when I read Terraria—a year-old game that's already sold more than 1 million $10-or-less copies and is practically given away during Steam sales—will soon be available in a retail box for $30, I wasn't baffled by the apparent superfluity.  No, I assumed the same marketing genius that brought us the five-blade disposable razor is at work here and certain to strike gold again.

Oh, except Terraria Exclusive Collector's Edition is exclusive to both collectors and the English.  If you're in the colonies and want to be overcharged for the posters and keychain, you'll need a pal across the pond.  That's a sticky wicket.

TL;DR: Torment is a bad game.

How dare you criticize me, mortal?

For years, if you’d asked me what the best game I’d ever played was, I would’ve said “Torment.”  I bought my copy way back in 1999, before the horseless carriage conquered our streets.  Things were simpler then.  If you failed to doff your bowler to a bemonocled gentleman passing you on the promenade, why, his valet would strike you square on the jaw and you’d deserve it, too.  

Torment didn’t sell well but is fondly remembered for its poignant story and remains a cult favorite that routinely tops best-ever lists.  When Roger Ebert opined that video games can never be art, he was repeatedly offered Torment as refutation.  I agree that its story was superbly compelling, but if we set that aside and consider Torment as a game, it’s far from artful.  It’s bad.