You probably already know the part I'm talking about. Yes, THAT one. Officially it was headlined "A game that lets you play a terrorist?" but unofficially it's know as "that embarassingly bad defense of video game violence on Fox News." Those who don't want to be MAJORLY EMBARRASSED for our medium should stop reading now. Those who want to know my initial, gut check reactions to one of the saddest defenses of video game violence ever shown on TV, read on.

I know things are gonna be bad when Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy tells his audience that "a popular new video game actually allows you to be a terrorist and kill people." Instead of showing the controversial scene in question, Doocy shows a grainy, web-pulled trailer from the game, then asks, "Is this fantasy game just a little too real? And is it appropriate. Let's have a fair and balanced debate on this Veteran's day."

First up is Jim Steyer, from CommonSense Media, who Doocy introduces by saying plainly, "You've got some problems with this game." He does, but they have nothing to do with the simulated terrorism, actually. Instead, Steyer goes to CommonSense's usual spiel about violent games not being appropriate for children and the lame assertion that "certain types of game violence can be correlated [to] aggression" (not correlated to "concrete increases in violent crime," but always to nebulous "aggression").

To Steyer's credit he finishes by saying it "really depends on the age of the user." And to Doocy's credit, he points out that the game has a "tag" that says "you gotta be at least 17 years old" to buy it.

Any credit-granting ends, though, when Slash Gamer's Jon Chistensen comes on to defend video games against Doocy's statement that, "you get to essentially be a terrorist and kill people and it's very realistic." (A pretty fair assessment, in my view). Christensen's brilliant defense against this charge?

"You're not actually a terrorist."

Really? The best mitigation you can come up with for a scene where you can take part in shooting an airport full of defenseless people is that the "game specifically says" that you're a "CIA undercover agent"? Is this sort of loophole really at the heart of the controversy here? Is that little bit of hair-splitting going to convince anyone that the scene is artistically and culturally important, despite its graphic nature? Is the medium really served by such an obviously defensive and desperate knee-jerk, nitpicky justification?

When Christensen trails off awkwardly, perhaps realizing the inanity of his argument, Doocy jumps in and asks Steyer whether it's "ever appropriate to assimilate [sic] killing people?" Steyer actually acts as gaming's best advocate in the debate at this point, saying "we live in a world of free speech, so you can create these games," and telling viewers they have to decide for themselves whether it's appropriate or not.

Well I'm glad somebody said it, even if it's a guy I don't generally agree with. Games are creative expression (even if they're "not art") and the first amendment places broad protections on that kind of expression, even if it's distasteful or disturbing, on the theory that adults can decide for themselves what to expose themselves to. Regardless of Steyer's further claptrap about the  correlation between "screen violence and aggression in real life," Steyer at least established that he understands this basic defense of the game's right to exist.

Christensen shows no such understanding when Doocy graciously gives him the "final word," arguing instead that he has a "buddy that works at a retail store" that won't sell the game to kids, so children will never, ever play this game ever, or something. When Doocy answers back that "you bring a game into a house, nothing to stop an eight year kid from becoming a terrorist and shooting people [long pause] on a video game," Christensen jumps back to his tried and true stupidity: "Yeah, but you're not a terrorist. That's ridiculous, you're not a terrorist."

When Christensen quickly pivots to a slightly better point -- "It's pixelated violence" -- Doocy pauses for an incredibly skeptical beat and says matter-of-factly, "It's violence." Christensen shakes his head and closes his eyes at this point, desperately telling viewers (and possibly himself) over and over: "It's not real. It's not real. It's not real."

Then, in perhaps the most awkward segue possible, Doocy moves on: "I'll tell you what real violence is, what went down at Fort Hood." Well, I'll tell you what figurative violence is: What just happened to the debate over the Modern Warfare 2 controversy in that last segment.

   

 

You probably already know the part I'm talking about. Yes, THAT one. Officially it's called "No Russian." Unofficially it's called "that controversial airport scene." Those who don't want MAJOR SPOILERS should stop reading now. Those who want to know my initial, gut check reactions to what's sure to become one of the most talked about scenes in all of gaming, read on.

 

As a game journalist, I certainly knew what I was getting in to when Modern Warfare 2 sent me on an undercover mission with a group of Russian terrorists. While I'd avoided detailed spoilers as best I could, I knew I was going into a scene where those terrorists would shoot unarmed civilians en masse in an airport, and that I would be expected (but not required) to help them.

Going in, I was relatively sure that the whole controversy was being blown out of proportion. I figured that the brewing anger over the scene was being driven by misleading, uninformed, out of touch or just plain inaccurate reports of the content, much as it had been with recent sex "scandals" surrounding Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

I was wrong.

The incongruity of the scene is evident from the start, as my character and a group of four Russians walk casually out of an elevator, into a busy airport waiting area, armed with heavy automatic weapons. As the Russians arrange themselves in a semi-circle behind a ticket line, guns on their shoulders, it's easy to deny that what I know is about to happen will be so bad. It's only when we actually draw our weapons on the unsuspecting crowd that the gravity of the situation begins to sink in. This isn't the usual shoot-or-be-shot carnage of countless first-person shooters. This is going to be a massacre.

Even though the gun in my hand is my only way of interacting with the world around me, I'm not about to fire the first shot into the crowd. This ends up being a non-issue, as my four companions quickly and wordlessly open fire simultaneously, spraying an indiscriminate spread of bullets into the unsuspecting travellers. I find myself struck dumbfounded, not so much by the act, which I knew was coming, but by the incredible detail in its rendering. The squirting blood, the collapsing, slumped piles of bodies, the panicked shrieks, the survivors congealing into a confused mass of motion as they desperately try to get away -- they all combine to give the scene a raw intesity that I wasn't expecting.

And there's nothing I can do to stop it. I mean, I could turn the game off, but that's just avoiding the situation, right? So, grimly, I follow my terrorist companions as we march down the terminal, watching as they fire at disconnected groups of panicked survivors. By the escalators, I notice one man in a blue checkered shirt who somehow survived the initial assualt, crawling on his knees with one hand and clutching a wound in his side with the other. I walk up to him and aim right at his temple, considering for a long moment whether or not to put him out of his misery, but I just can't pull the trigger. An unseen terrorist ends up making the decision for me as I hear a bullet whiz by and see the man slump over, a red line shooting out of his skull as he does.

From 30 yards off, I watch as another terrorist lays down fire from a balcony to the gate area below. I hear the screams of the victims, but for some reason the game won't let me sprint or jump over obstacles to get to his side fast enough for a better view of the carnage. When I do finally catch up and look down, all I see is a chilling mass of still, crumpled bodies littering the floor.

As we walk downstairs into that pile of bodies, I'm already feeling a little numb. I thought I as prepared for this, but the sheer realism of the scene is proving to be a little too much for me. This time, when I notice a few more survivors slumped against the wall, bloody and coughing, I feel I have to do something. I end up putting myself between the terrorists and these victims, turning and pointing my gun at the attackers as if to say, "If you want to finish the job on these guys, you have to go through me."

Soon we're out on the tarmac, eagerly awaiting the inevitable and expected police response to our massacre, and the game switches from "kill unarmed civilians" mode back to its usual "kill armed guys that are in turn trying to kill you" mode. I hide silently behind a plane tire and watch as my Russian "friends" fire on the riot-shielded cops, hoping I can just wait this out and get through this awful mission without firing a single shot. After a few minutes of waiting, I realize this isn't an option, and that the game won't continue unless I break out my rocket launcher and help bust through the cops.

So I bust out the heavy weaponry and turn towards the riot police, and that's when I notice my targeting reticle turn green as I pass briefly over one of the terrorists. And that's when it hits me. That's when I realize... I could have stopped them.

I mean, I had a gun the whole time. What was stopping me from turning it on these terrorists and trying to prevent the massacre I knew they were planning? Sure, in the context of the story firing on the Russians would definitely blow my cover (and definitely go againt the spirit of the game) but such academic concerns flew out the window when I saw that first spray of bullets hit that quivering, panicking crowd. I didn't have to just watch the carnage unfold. I could have done something!

I try to make up for my tardy revelation by firing a rocket at the Russian in my sights. "Traitor!" cry my former allies, turning on the spot and gunning me down almost immediately. I'm such an idiot. I could have stopped them. I could have at least tried! When the game starts again, throwing us back slightly to the airport hangar, I immediately fire on the Russians again, only to be left a bloody heap mere seconds later. What was I thinking? I could have done something! Again and again I try to exact revenge on the terrorists that caused all this brutality, and again and again I'm gunned down. I know these efforts won't bring back the people they killed -- and on a deeper level, I know that the people they killed are just digital bits in a computer and pixels on a screen -- but I don't care. I have to do something. Why did I just stand there as they killed those people? Why didn't I try to stop them?

These questions haunt me during the dozen or so belated, failed attempts I make to take out the Russians. It's clear the game isn't going to let me be the hero here and avenge the mass murder they've pre-ordained. I eventually submit, becoming a good little undercover soldier and blasting through the riot cops, on my way to the somewhat shocking twist ending to the whole sordid scene.

I'm left a little numb by what I've witnessed. I had thought years of violent games had hardened my heart to pretty much any violence I could take part in on a video screen, that I was desnsitized enough to watch dispassionately, knowing all along that it was "just a game."

I was wrong. I don't know whether or not "No Russians" crosses some invisible line of bad taste or morality or anything like that. But I do know that it is easily the most affecting scene I've taken part in in a video game so far, and for that alone it deserves careful attention.

Right now, even as you read this, thousands of gamers are affecting coughs and dialing their employers to let them know that they won't be coming into the office today, thanks.

The truth? They were totally up all night totally playing Modern Warfare 2, dude.

Well, while you were meeting your buddies online and living it up at 4 a.m.--I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW AWESOME THIS IS FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!1--far craftier folks were busy trying to unload their pre-ordered copies on eBay and Half.com in the name of making a quick buck.

A quick scan of eBay this morning revealed several hundred Modern Warfare 2 auctions. And, from what I could gather, nobody is really making any money. An auctioneer known as spearhead64 sold his copy of the Xbox 360 version of the game for $60. Yes, the final bid was for $60.

Over on Half.com, someone named bigsexyc21 was trying to unload the Harden (?) edition of the game for $69.99. To bigsexyc21's credit, he/she (OK, it has got to be a he) admitted to having already opened the package/fondled everything inside. Thus, his item was under the "LIKE NEW" listing (a.k.a. I Made A Mistake and Took Off the Shrink Wrap).

Another one from Half: punti_in must have gone temporarily insane when he posted a listing for the PC version of MW2 for--here it comes--$105.

Most dubious auction? The person trying to sell a DL code for Modern Warfare 2 wallpapers. "I will email you the code after the auction," he writes in his product description. Riiiiight.

So what's the takeaway here? It's this: There is no shortage of MW2 whatsoever, meaning Activision printed and shipped enough copies of the game.

One more takeaway: CEO Bobby Kotick is setting fire to dollar bills today BECAUSE THAT'S WHO HE IS. NOW SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE BAD GUY.

 

Random dude #1: Yo, I'll see you at the club, Dawg.

Random dude #2: No you won't, I'll be playing this!

(Outside the Squirrel Hill Gamestop in Pittsburgh, PA) 

The results are in: Confessor is the randomly selected winner of the PopCap booty featured in last week's Swag Tester.

Commenter girlgamer21 receives the honorable mention—a random bit of swag and, of course, the usual Crispy Gamer T-shirt—because she used the phrase "bad telly tubby" in her comment:

I saw a guy on the news dressed as the purple telly tubby with a suitcase turns out he was stealing things from people's homes on halloween night. This is no joke this really happened. Bad telly tubby.

There was also a good tale from togmkn, who took heed of my advice to make something up (or did he?):

I saw a little kid dressed up as Batman. It was a decent Batman costume, as far as little kid ones go.

Thing was, I just bought Arkham Asylum and have been having a hard time beating Bane. I just snapped! I was like, "I WILL FOLD YOU LIKE PAPER!!" and charged towards him. But the little tyke threw a batarang and jumped out of the way! I ran into the garage door, stumbled back, and the snot bubble jumped up and kicked me in the nose.

I gave him a Snickers. It was the worst Halloween ever.

Look for a new Swag Tester next week.

While in NYC last week, I frequented a number of local game stores, including the totally batshit-insane GameStop on 33rd and Broadway (be sure to stop by there the next time you are in New York; it's worth the trip). Each and every store I walked into featured the same digital countdown clock for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2. As those clocks wind down today--THREE! TWO! ONE!--as launch events nationwide fete the game (actual disturbing subject line from an email: MODERN WARFARE 2 TAKES OVER NYC'S UNION SQUARE!), I find myself experiencing one of those rare, exclusionary, I-don't-get-it moments in my beloved medium.

I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I didn't play it when it first came out because I was too busy playing the shit out of BioShock at the time. But I got around to it eventually. I think I saw what everyone else saw: a tight, taut single-player experience that clocks in at a lean six hours, and some terrific multiplayer.

Make no mistake: Infinity Ward can do things that no other developer can do. The visuals in the first game, and from what I've seen in the second, are nothing short of stunning. I have no idea how they get the PS3 and 360 to dance the way that do. Few games achieve the ridiculously high pants-crapping-to-minutes-played ratio that the original Modern Warfare did.

I get it; it was great.

But at what point did Modern Warfare, and the Call of Duty series, go from being quality games to achieving cult status?

I went to the Apple store here in Vancouver yesterday. And my personal shopper, Elliot, and I lapsed into a discussion of games. What couldn't he stop talking about? Modern Warfare 2.

Canada, need I remind you, doesn't even have an army. And if they did, it would be a very polite army. "EXCUSE ME, ENEMY, BUT I'M ABOUT TO SHOOT IN YOUR DIRECTION." (Blam.)

And whenever I purchased anything at any game store in the last few weeks, I was asked repeatedly if I'd like to pre-order Modern Warfare 2. "We can hold a copy for you for only five bucks," I was told. And when I'd decline, without fail, each and every cashier looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

On a more global scale, what's interesting is how a host of other AAA titles, suddenly, and very mysteriously got delayed until Q1 of next year. Bayonetta. BioShock 2. Mass Effect 2. Lost Planet 2. (I've never seen such a loaded Q1 as the one we'll experience in early 2010.) It's as if everyone just said, "The hell with this," and got out of the way of the Modern Warfare 2 juggernaut.

Will it be awesome? Yes.

But while the rest of the gaming world floods the MW2 servers over the next 48 hours, I'll be here, quietly playing Dragon Age: Origins, and trying to five-star that one set list in DJ Hero, and listening to the sad, mournful ballad of Gay Tony.

You kids have fun out there without me.

Fry It or no, I’m going to be playing Tekken 6.

I’ve played it since college and it’s too late to back out now. Elsewhere, I’ve compared fighting franchise loyalties to allegiance to a political party. Getting me on KOF or Street Fighter would be akin to asking a Republican congressman to sign off on health care reform. The last Tekken game would blurt out the phrase in this post’s title when the character select screen opened up and it’s always stuck with me. It’s always been a bit weird to have a super-friendly announcer welcome you to a brutal bare-knuckle fighting tournament, but that’s the least bizarre thing about Tekken. Anyhoo, I’m planning on using these “Welcome to the King of Iron Fist!” posts to be an informal journal of my progress in all things Tekken 6.

Tekken 6 Diary: 11-6-09, 1:15 am

Fight Record: 30-10 right now.
Rank: 1st kyu

Every first Friday of the month, John Teti hosts a stand-up comedy showcase called John Teti’s Nite of Laffs. Myself and several other Crispy folks were in attendance and much hilarity was on display. After that, Teti and I enjoyed some ramen at Menkui-Tei in NYC’s East Village, where he told me the correct way to say fried chicken in Japanese. John didn’t feel like drinking alone so I ordered a small bottle of sake. I pretty much drank the entire thing by myself and was well tipsy by the time I got home. Despite the fact that it was after midnight, I decided to fire up the PS3 for a few quick Tekken bouts. Right now, I’m choosing not to play with voice chat. I’m letting Lei Wu Long’s fists do all the talking. I probably would’ve slurred my words anyway. More...

I've been chipping away at Final Fantasy XII over the past 10 days or so. And, to my surprise, I'm actually getting into it. I find myself looking forward to the little theme song that plays when the game first loads up. Doot, doot. Doot, doot. Doot, doot, etc.

One thing I've been having to learn how to deal with is the inherent ambiguity of the genre. I can't stand ambiguity. I need the world, and my books, and my movies, and my games--especially my games--to make perfect sense. (Music, less so.) I have a friend in Boston who made a baby about a year ago, and since his gaming time is severely limited now, he refuses to play anything but Rock Band. His reasoning: There is absolutely nothing about Rock Band that is ambiguous.

But FF XII throws a bunch of stuff at me--armlets and wolf pelts and fancy leather wear and various types of stones--and basically says, "Here. You figure out what to do with all of this shit."

Each time I collected something new for my inventory, a little bit more panic accrued in my panic tank.

And, in the vernacular of Gus Mastrapa, I had the unnerving, futile feeling that I was doing it wrong.

So I went on a real world question over the weekend, to Brooklyn, to seek the counsel of Old Man John Teti. (I also went out there to see the new cats, and his new apartment, and his lovely wife, AND his mom, who was in town for the weekend. But also to seek counsel regarding FF XII.)

While his wife and mom were busy doing other stuff, Teti and I had a private moment. I told him that I was going out into this desert area, and there were some hyenas, and I killed them, and some annoying bunny things (killed them), and some strange bipedal owl-like creatures (killed them; but sometimes they killed me). Penelo and I would kill as many of these things as we could, collect our XP, and then we'd limp back to the nearest Save Stone, and rejuvenate our health. Then, it was back to the desert to basically do the same thing. Then, some werewolves killed me and Penelo, and I remembered that an NPC had previously told me to STAY AWAY FROM THE WEREWOLVES, but I didn't heed said advice.

After an hour or so of this, as I explained to Teti, I began to wonder: Am I doing it wrong?

And this bit of anxiety gave rise to other bits of anxiety. Did I have the right equipment, you know, equipped? Was I on some advanced quest that I shouldn't even be on? Should I travel to the far side of the map and look for the zebra-unicorn thing that w1ndstorm suggested I look for?

Teti said: "You're fine."

Then he explained that one of the great pleasures of the game, and the FF series in general, comes from figuring out how to play the game. "Nothing is ever explained," he said. "Just stay with it, and you'll figure it out. No matter what you're doing, you're not doing it wrong."

In other words: the answers will reveal themselves eventually.

Later that night, back in Queens, I purchased a couple of +15 Broadswords for Penelo and myself. "We've really earned it," I reasoned. "Look at all the Hyena Bs and Hyena Cs we've slaughtered!" But when I went to equip them, the game had the Broadswords grayed out in my inventory. I cursed a blue streak.

Then, just as Teti has promised, the answer revealed itself to me. 

Duh, I thought. I don't have the proper LICENSE to wield these swords.

Back into the license menu I went. Proper licenses were acquired for both of us. And the two of us went back into the desert, leaving a trail of perpetually vanishing Hyena corpses behind us. My AT Rating (Ambiguity Tolerance): +2. 

Swag Tester is like backwards American Idol. We do the results first, and then we ask the contestants to perform. Yet it works. So first things first: Here are the results from the last Swag Tester. Randomly selected Killstring walks away with a Dark Void travel bag. And This_is_suicide gets a runner-up swag gift, grabbed haphazardly off my desk, because s/he came right out and begged for some swag. Note: That trick will only work once. (Also, This_is_suicide, see the note at the bottom of this post.)

Here's the thing about the good folks at PopCap. They make excellent games—generally well-loved in the Crispy offices, even if Jones turns his nose up at Peggle—but the above-and-beyond part is that their swag is pretty good, too. It seems they put as much creative energy into coming up with swag as they put into the actual software.

I've gathered up all my PopCap treasures, mostly PvZ stuff with a little Bejeweled thrown in. One of you will be gifted with the whole shebang, seen here as photographed in our conference room, also known as The Hall of Inconsistent Lighting.

Clockwise from left:
- PvZ "Ask Me About Moustache Mode" T-shirt
- Bejeweled Twist kaleidoscope
- Real-life Bejeweled jewel
- PvZ Brain Ooze energy drink
- PvZ zombie and sunflower masks
- PvZ "no zombies" sticker
- PC/Mac boxed copy of PvZ
- Plants vs. Zombie Bedtime mini-comic

Here are close-ups of a couple especially choice items:

Moustache T-shirt.

Bejeweled jewel, shaped like a huge cut diamond. Much cooler in person.

I chose the zombie mask for experimentation in the Swag Tester labs. Here are the results:

If you want this hulking pile of swag, leave a comment in the thread below answering this question: What was the best game-related Halloween costume you made/wore/saw this year? And if you didn't see any game-related Halloween costumes, just make something up. This ain't The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour here.

One eligible commenter will be chosen at random to get the PopCap stuff, and another commenter who makes me laugh might get a different crazy prize from the Great Stack of Swag on my desk. I'll toss in some Crispy hats, too, because we have thousands of them in the back room. And we don't even have a back room! You see the problem, then.

Important boring note that I have to put here mostly because of the crazy Facebook Connect stuff that I don't understand: If you don't have a valid email address in your Crispy profile (a group that apparently includes everyone who registered on Crispy through Facebook), we can't contact you if you win! Please email prizes at crispygamer.com if there's any doubt. And This_is_suicide, I don't know if you're a Facebook guy or not, but in any case, we couldn't reach you, so email us. That way, we can send you free stuff.

Final boring note: We can only ship prizes within North America.

Inspiring call to action, so that we don't end on tedious logistical stuff: Let the repartee commence, readers!

1."Now who the hell is this guy?"

2. "Battle legs? I have to put my 'battle legs' on? These ARE my fucking legs!"

3. "Where should I go? Queens Harbor or Container Terminal 3?"

4. "Ooof, that Hillary Clinton clone snuck up on me."

5. "Hello infamous panty-flash juggle."

6. "He's a big one; I'm going to get a lot of chicken from him! And money!"

7. "Shit, I should have opened those crates. Shit, man!"

8. "Man, why not just MAP IT TO THE RIGHT STICK?"

9. "I need to get my eggs over here."

10. "It's funny. No, wait; it's stupid."