Twilight … with Cheeseburgers

A video sketch I wrote for the UCB Midnight Show just went up at YouTube, Funny or Die, and various sites around the internet.  Click on the featured video to watch it right now!

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

This article originally appeared on Playmagazine.com

Sometime before the year 2000, or maybe just after the first winter of the new millennium had settled in, I picked up a copy of Silent Hill for my PlayStation and sat down in my Chicago apartment to play. Assuming this was Konami’s Resident Evil knock-off, I figured I was in for a couple silly screams and a few laughs. I wasn’t prepared for what was to come. I brought a bag of Dorito’s to Silent Hill.

See, the first time I heard a baby crying in Silent Hill, the first time I heard an air-raid siren, the first time I wandered through the fog to find the edge of the world — these were the first times I was actually frightened by a video-game. Resident Evil had shocked and surprised me; dogs jumping through windows are the kind of cheap scares that are followed by a room-full of laughter. Not so with Silent Hill. Silent Hill’s abandoned elementary school filled me with anxiety. Silent Hill’s store-fronts were harrowing, their faceless fronts suggesting an anonymous dread. The creatures crushed into the margins of Silent Hill, hiding between dumpsters and desks, weren’t recognizably anything. They were suggestions of something terrible, their limited poly counts serving as a framework for my more graphically sophisticated imagination.

I put down the controller and said to no one, “I don’t want to play something that makes me feel this way.”

Years later, Silent Hill 2 would be one of my favorite games of all time.

Konami knows that the first Silent Hill was special, but perhaps it doesn’t know how or why. Recent attempts to bring Silent Hill into our homes have been conceptual and critical failures, full of half-aborted ideas and misplaced machismo. Perhaps that’s why they’re returning to the beginning of it all. Not the beginning of the story, but the foundation of the franchise. Konami is re-releasing Silent Hill.

We’re getting our Wii-make, of course. Konami’s press release states that, “Designed to make full use of the Wii’s unique controllers, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories uses the Wii Remote™ as a torch and cell phone as Mason looks for clues.”

The press release explains, “The torch is vital for scouring the darkened, abandoned buildings of Silent Hill, while the phone acts as a secondary user interface, allowing the player to access maps via its GPS capabilities and take pictures of interesting elements. Likewise, the Wii Remote also can be used to pick up, examine and manipulate items to solve puzzles along the journey.

“Such technology was not available when the original Silent Hill was released in 1999, and its inclusion showcases Konami’s determination to enhance the playing experience with new, available technology.”

Already, my stomach sinks. Silent Hill wasn’t about an enhanced experience. If anything, the original game was defined by the PlayStation’s technological shortcomings. The city of Silent Hill is shrouded in fog not just because the unknown disturbs us, but because the PlayStation wasn’t capable of rendering that far in front of Harry Mason. Shallow draw distances were masked with a layer of cool grey, the constraints of the PSOne re-purposed for Silent Hill’s triumphs.

Perhaps someone had played Turok on N64 and thought, “You know, if we made a game out of this, it would be really scary.”

Likewise, the Wiimote’s weaknesses should be employed to enhance the game’s atmosphere. Sure, we can point at the screen, and shake the stick, and waggle ourselves around town, but what if the limitations of the Wiimote’s technologies were harnassed to make the game scarier? The Wiimote is notoriously innacurate — can’t we use that to Silent Hill’s advantage? If draw distance was the given in 1999, perhaps the Wii controller can be the fog between the player’s intentions and the character’s actions. Perhaps the inconsistent targeting can become the metaphor for Harry Mason’s shaking hands. A challenge for Konami: Make the Wiimote an instrument of fear.

Whatever Konami decides to do with the WiiMote, the game will also come out for PS2 and PSP with a more traditional control scheme. Konami (and developer Climax, of Silent Hill Origins fame) promises enhancements for all three versions, but without a real preview of the game, it’s impossible to know what they mean. My nervousness as expressed in this article is not baseless trepidation, but the result of a lot of thought I’ve put into the Silent Hill series.

Play readers understand that a game is not just a series of programmed events, but a sequence of moments that can, either by accident or intention, make for a remarkable experience. Sound, visuals, story, and perhaps most importantly, control, are all conscious choices that conspire to create the unique voice of each game. I’m excited, as you should be, about the upcoming Silent Hill revamp. Climax already has a great piece source material on their hands — it could be argued that the less work Climax puts into Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the more incredible the experience could be. Or perhaps Origins (a worthwhile game on its own) was the practice lap for Shattered Memories’ more extraordinary show. All I ask, all I beg, is that we don’t just to play the game when it comes out, but think about it after, because only through the deconstruction of what these games are doing — how they achieve their effects — can we elevate the industry above barrels and health packs.

For more articles like this one, please visit Playmagazine.com!

The Wrong Place for the Button: An Angry Review of the PS3 Remote

This article currently appears on Playmagazine.com.

I know the Sony PS3 remote control has been out for some time now, but I’ve got a soap box here and I’m going to use it. It’s been more than two years since the PlayStation 3 was released, and Sony is still selling dysfunctional remotes.

Okay, so they’re not actually dysfunctional. They, uh, “work” just fine. But they’re counter-intuitive to the point of uselessness.

Who here watches their television with the lights on? Anyone? Anybody? Nobody? We all watch Blu-Ray movies with the lights off, right? Good. So, we’re all in the same position when it comes to the PS3 remote, right? With no light-up LCD buttons, nor glow-in-the-dark screens on the official PS3 Blu-Ray remotes, we have to make a few educated guesses when it comes to controlling our films in the dark.

Which means, dear reader, that you have made the same mistake I’ve made when it comes to watching your Blu-Ray movies. You’ve paused the film to get a refill on your Pellegrino, come back to the couch and plopped down, grabbed the remote and pressed “Play” … only to have your copy of Blade Runner: The Final Cut come to a grinding halt. A few agonizing moments later, your PS3 drops you off at the Xross Media Bar.

You look down at the remote, and realize it wasn’t your mistake. It was Sony’s.

Years of market research and testing and focus groups have been forcibly ejected from the stadium. Sony wants their system to be different, to be extraordinary. And their remote is going to be no exception. Screw price drops. Screw backwards compatibility. And screw common sense.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

I’m talking about the placement of the Pause Button in relation to the Play Button. I’m talking about the brain-numbing, counter-instinctual road block between them. The giant, arrogant, offensive Stop Button. On the PS3 Blu-Ray remote, this button is nestled between Pause and Play. And on Sony’s PS3, this button doesn’t just mean “stop playback.” No, it means exit. It means discontinue the film. It means, “I’d rather look at the main menu — not on the disc — but on my console.” I’m surprised the button doesn’t shred the disk and eject it into a local landfill.

Think I’m over-reacting? Look at these remotes. Look at them, and see what they have in common.

See where Pause and Play sit? Next to each other. Even on the clunky Xbox 360 remote (designed in defiant, stain-attracting white), Microsoft has the sense to put the buttons next to each other, while Play remains the default central button. Sony’s PS3 remote doesn’t even have the decency to do just that.

But this isn’t the first time Sony has confused stop and start, yes and no, X and O. You know what I’m getting at, reader; I’m getting at the same senseless problem on the Sony Dualshock 3. For the whole of our social lives, we’ve been trained that X means NO, OFF, or STOP. O means YES, ON, or GO. No one would drink from a bottle marked “X” unless they were thirsty and suicidal. Yet on the PS3 controller, we’ve become numbly accustomed to X meaning “correct” and O meaning “back.”

Now, I know that in Japan these buttons are tethered to more accurate definitions; X means no and O means yes. You can see it in many Japanese-developed games; Final Fantasy games, for example, use O to describe a positive action. Maybe it says something profound about Japanese society that your thumb rests on “no” by default … but maybe it doesn’t. The point isn’t about Japanese society, or their thumbs in contrast to ours. It’s about my thumb, my couch, and “No” being in-between myself and enjoyment of Sony’s Playstation 3. It’s about the countless times I’ve paused a movie when a friend was talking, left my thumb on the remote, and then pushed it up towards Play to begin the film anew … only to scream in frustration when I arrive back at that watery XMB screen. I’m a gamer. I’m impatient. I can’t handle the fifteen seconds it takes to start the film up again.

So, consider this a plea, Sony. A petition without signatures. Fix the buttons, Sony. Fix them. My Samsung Television is in danger of having a remote thrown through it.