I actually asked to review this particular Sims product for GamesRadar. Oh, EA… What have you made me do?
Turns out it The Sims Medieval wasn’t very much at all like I expected, which was great news to me but bad news to my fiancée, who just wanted to build castles.
You can read the full review over at GamesRadar.com
Originally published in The Daily Toreador.
The devastating earthquake in Japan wasn’t the only tragedy to hit our world over the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, a lot of people out there are giving money to support a train wreck that probably doesn’t deserve a cent.
Most of you have probably heard Rebecca Black’s “hit” song, “Friday,” at this point. It has garnered massive amounts of attention at a fairly shocking speed, even by the Internet’s normal standards. Blog after blog and tweek after tweet have posted about the song for the sole purpose of remarking how gut-wrenchingly awful it (and its accompanying video) is.
Making fun of things that are bad isn’t a new shtick for the Internet. Most popular Internet memes start off by mocking something bad, eventually making it so bad it’s good. But there are a number of problems with giving “Friday” this sort of treatment.
One is just selfish annoyance. I really don’t want to hear this terrible song everywhere I go, but it’s been tough lately. I thought I could escape it by stepping away from the computer for a while, so earlier this week my fiancée and I went outside to look at the “supermoon,” and what could we hear from a house nearby? Rebecca Black trying to decide whether to kick it in the front seat or sit in the back seat. Please stop playing this song around me.
Another reason is more serious: Black’s age. The girl is only 13 years old, and she is currently the brunt of some pretty harsh (if true) criticism. In an interview with The Daily Beast, she said that, “At times, it feels like I’m being cyber-bullied.” That might be something of an understatement.
Yes, the song is bad. Terrible, even. It’s actually easy to believe Black didn’t write it herself — much of it was written by an adult who produced the song, which makes sense because only a naïve adult would think these lyrics would appeal to a youth audience.
But if we’re being perfectly honest, Black could be worse, especially at that age. How much are we really going to expect from someone who is barely even a teenager?
That said, the third and most serious problem I want to bring up is money.
Ark Music Factory, the “label” behind “Friday,” is a vanity company, built on the model that if people pay them enough money (in Black’s case, it was $2,000 for two songs and one video, according to The Daily Beast), they will help you produce content and could help you become famous.
Such companies exist in all entertainment fields — they’re pretty prevalent in the publishing industry — and are more often than not considered to be scams.
Ark seems to be wanting to hide this fact at the moment, given all the attention they’re getting. Their website’s “About Ark” page has gone missing, making finding information about them outside of Wikipedia difficult.
Currently, their website is teasing something titled “The Truth About Ark,” which could be either an article or a video, that will answer questions like, “Is Ark Music Factory a SCAM?” and much more importantly, “Who is the black guy in all the videos?”
I’m not joking. That’s the top question on the teaser image.
But no matter how they slice it, Ark is making money off of well-financed parents willing to spend a lot in order to try to help their children become the next Miley Cyrus or Justin Beiber. I can’t imagine all of them are aware their money could be better spent elsewhere.
By making “Friday” such a hit, even if it’s for the wrong reasons, you are giving Ark tons of money to continue taking advantage of people, as well as nice big bullet points for their ad campaigns. “You can be the next viral video hit just like Rebecca Black, as seen on ‘Good Morning America’! Just give us thousands of dollars!”
Forbes estimates that $20,000 has been made by Ark and Black from YouTube views alone at this point, and who knows how much they’ll rake in from MP3 sales on Amazon and iTunes.
I understand the joy in making fun of things that are bad — I’ve seen “Manos: Hands of Fate” more times than I’d like to admit — but remember who you’re both hurting and supporting when you ironically buy that “Friday” ringtone.
Your money would be better spent helping Japan, or at least buying a calendar so Rebecca doesn’t have to tell you Sunday comes after Saturday.
Another day, another The Sims product review for Games Radar. I don’t mind, because those guys have been tremendously helpful to me and my freelancing career.
This time, the review was for the Barnacle Bay expansion. Though the word “expansion” is used a little loosely, here.
Originally published in The Daily Toreador.
Rob Bell isn’t exactly a stranger to controversy. The young pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church has often been criticized for being too “liberal” in his views of the Bible, Jesus and Christianity.
But his new book, “Love Wins,” which I must stress is not even in bookstores yet, is already being attacked for things it may or may not actually say.
Many Christian leaders and bloggers are attacking the book for its alleged views on the Christian concept of hell. To put it simply, Bell questions the idea that only a “precious few” people will go to heaven, as well as potentially questioning what one must do in order to become one of those few.
It is, of course, almost always inappropriate for people to be judging a book so harshly when they haven’t even read it yet. However, Bell did release a trailer for the novel in which he lays out some of the things he will be talking about (such as asking the question, “Is Gandhi really in hell?”), and he does seem to lay enough cards on the table to make the criticisms not entirely crazy.
That doesn’t make the criticisms right, of course.
The first real salvo seems to have been fired by Justin Taylor, a popular Christian blogger. A good friend of mine posted a link to Taylor’s article on his Facebook page, and a debate immediately emerged — a debate that I admittedly helped to spark.
I took particular issue with the statement that “(Bell) is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.” What I found a little troubling about that sentence was that most modern Christians’ ideas of hell don’t actually come from the Bible, though they may think they do.
When most people think of hell, they think of fire and brimstone, demons and eternal suffering. The problem is, this image of damnation has been inspired more by Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” than by any of the Biblical gospels. The New Testament only uses the Greek word “tartaroo,” which refers to “being cast into hell” in the sense that much of Greek mythology refers to hell, once.
Another common word that gets translated into “hell,” “Gehenna,” refers to an actual, physical place that existed outside Jerusalem.
So is Bell really moving “farther and farther away” from the Bible by thinking a little outside the box in regards to hell? To me, it doesn’t seem like something we know much about at all.
But more than that, many of the things we teach in churches today aren’t strictly from the Bible, yet we never really single them out as being heretical.
Have you, or a pastor or teacher or someone else close to you, ever told someone the way to heaven was to “ask Jesus to come into your heart”? I’ve encountered people who think pastors who don’t use such language “aren’t teaching the Bible.”
The problem is, that phrase is never found in any book of the Bible, nor is any phrase like it. The closest thing is in the Book of Acts, in which Peter and John pray that new believers in Samaria might “receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 12).
So if you want a church that “only teaches the Bible,” yet your church teaches people should ask Jesus into their heart, you need to find a different church.
That’s not to say that the concept behind such language is wrong. I personally don’t think it is. It’s the same with the doctrine of the Trinity, which I fully accept and support, though the Bible doesn’t specifically teach the concept nor use the word “trinity.”
And our current preconceptions of hell might not be wrong, either. It might really be a lake of fire where non-believers suffer forever, with thirst that cannot be quenched and pain that cannot be abated.
And it’s not like preaching about hell has never been useful. Christian thriller author Ted Dekker has spoken before about how important it is to paint evil with a “very black brush,” because by showing evil for the darkness it really is, it makes it more amazing when God’s light shines through. There’s something to that, certainly.
But my point is, we can’t always blindly accept old traditions and beliefs just because they’ve been taught for the past 2,000 years. They may not be wrong, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t test them every now and then.
Taylor might be right when he argues hell is very real and very full, and Bell might be wrong. On the other hand, maybe hell doesn’t exist at all. Maybe hell exists but is empty. I personally hold a view shared by C.S. Lewis, in which hell exists but is essentially locked from the inside — its denizens aren’t there because God doesn’t want them in heaven so much as because they refuse to leave.
Maybe we’re all wrong, and we’re just too stupid to comprehend things outside our physical world.
But rational, reasonable discussion like Bell’s shouldn’t be discouraged. It should be welcomed.
I could talk for a lot longer about the subject of the afterlife — maybe even enough to write a book of my own. But I’ll end with something I’ve heard Chris Galanos, the local pastor of the Experience Life church here in Lubbock, say many times: We should major on the majors and minor on the minors.
That is, both Taylor and Bell accept Jesus and believe the Bible is the most important book ever written. For Christians, those are the two things you don’t really want to get wrong. Why do we have to fight with each other so much over all the other stuff, which is extremely minor in comparison?
Or, as Bell himself has said, God has spoken, and the rest is just commentary. Let other people comment. None of us have this world or its creator figured out completely. Let’s figure it out together instead of getting up in arms about it.
Originally published in The Daily Toreador.
Fans of dungeon crawlers have been waiting many years for Blizzard Entertainment to release “Diablo III.” Back in 2009, some of the great minds behind the original “Diablo” helped make the wait easier by releasing the fantastic “Torchlight” at a budget price for the PC.
In fact, “Torchlight” was more than a simple “Diablo” clone that would only serve to keep us busy until some bigger, better game came along. Despite its low price and lack of multiplayer, PC players latched onto the game and championed it as one of the best dungeon crawlers in a long time.
They weren’t wrong. And now, “Torchlight’s” audience can expand with its release on Xbox Live Arcade.
“Torchlight” starts by letting you choose one of three classes — a limited number, sure, but the usual bases are covered. You can choose to be a master of magic as an Alchemist, an expert of taking enemies out by afar as a Vanquisher, or you can get up close and personal with monsters as a Destroyer. Each class plays differently and has different abilities, so pick one that fits well with your play style.
You start the game in the town of Torchlight, and you’ll return often to buy, sell and upgrade items, get new quests and so on. You can return to Torchlight whenever you want by using a “Town Portal” scroll, which is useful, though not always necessary as you can send your pet to town to sell unwanted items for you (something I wish my real dog was smart enough to do).
But you spend the vast majority of your time in the dungeons underneath Torchlight, which are amazingly diverse for what they are.
The levels start off innocently enough, with you venturing into a series of mining tunnels directly beneath the city. But they quickly get weirder, showcasing an Atlantis-esque underwater area, a hell-like setting and more. It helps progression through the game feel fresh.
But what makes the game extremely addictive is the loot lust. This is nothing new to those familiar with action RPG games. It’s the feeling you get when exploring a dungeon, getting more and more powerful, and getting the feeling of, “Man, I really want whatever powerful piece of equipment I’m going to find down here.” There’s certainly an addictive nature to collecting new weapons and armor, especially when you get lucky and find really rare ones.
But this is all very much like “Diablo” and other PC games. The big question about this Xbox 360 version is how well it controls, as these games tend to be best and most popular when they’re played with a mouse and keyboard. How well does it control with a console controller?
Surprisingly well. Rather than clicking on where you want your character to go and
what monsters you want to attack, you have direct control over movement with the left analog stick, and you can attack in real-time by hitting the X button. Skills (spells and abilities) can be mapped to other face buttons, as well as the triggers, and health and mana potions can be quickly used by hitting the left and right bumpers, respectively.
The menus have also been retooled to work better in the console environment, and I think the folks at Runic did a really good job with it all. Things may not be as quick as they could be with a mouse pointer, but they work just fine here.
The only thing the console gamers lose compared to PC and Mac players, really, is the lack of mods. Runic released its development tools to the community not long after “Torchlight” was first released, and fans of the game quickly took to making new items, new character classes, new pets, etc. Playing around with this stuff can be fun, but there’s not really an infrastructure for mods on the Xbox 360.
That said, mods are certainly not a requirement for enjoying the game. Personally, I’ve messed with a few of them on the PC version of “Torchlight” but spent a vast majority of my time playing the game without them.
The only other downside to “Torchlight” is something that plagues all versions of the game: a lack of multiplayer. One of the reasons “Diablo” became a huge success was because you could play it with friends, exploring dungeons, killing tough monsters and trading items. You don’t get any of that here. Personally, I still think the game is fantastic without it, but it’s certainly something to point out.
Multiplayer will, however, be a component of “Torchlight II,” due to hit PCs later this year. No word on if that game will also come to the 360, but I imagine it will if the original “Torchlight” does well on the system.
For its low $15 price tag, “Torchlight” on the 360 is easy to recommend for RPG players, especially if you’re just dying to get your hands on something until “Diablo III” hits. If you’ve never experienced the game before, you can’t go wrong with any version.
The game will be available on Xbox Live Arcade on March 9 and is available now on PC and Mac. The Daily Toreador was sent an early review copy of the 360 version for review.
