A Tale of Two Diablo IIIs, or Prelude to Couch Crawl

June 2012 saw the release of the long awaited sequel to Blizzard's action RPG franchise, Diablo III. The months leading up to its release were filled with excitement and anxiety as rabid fans salivated over the return to Diablo's dark fantasy world of Sanctuary but also dreaded its lack of gothic darkness. When it finally came out, the game was a polished product for sure, but Diablo's mechanics felt gutted. Some found it difficult to call it an RPG as character customization had now been limited to what breastplate your character was wearing. To some it was a failure, but to most critics it was a decent release, garnering an 88 on Metacritic.

Since its release, the auction house has come and gone and many who missed the previous iterations' depth of character progression had left to try alternatives like Torchlight II and Path of Exile. But in September 2013, we saw the release of Diablo III again, but this time for consoles. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 users could now enjoy the hack and slash loot farming from their couches as opposed to leaning into a computer screen. Reviews for the console versions strayed not far from their PC counterpart with both versions getting an 86 on Metacritic.

This is not Diablo's first foray into the living room. The original crawled its way to PlayStation in 1998, only a couple years after its PC release. Gamespot gave Diablo for PSX an 8.1, praising it as a mostly successful translation of Diablo's addicting hybrid gameplay with a few animation hiccups. All in all, a formula for success. So it's no surprise that Diablo III saw the LCD light of flat screen televisions.

I bought Diablo III shortly after its PC release in 2012 and played it for about a week. Leading up to it, I had been playing Torchlight, which borrows heavily from the first two Diablo games (no doubt because of Torchlight's development team containing Diablo developers) and adds some unique mechanics like a pet to send all of your extra loot back to town for selling. A worthy successor for sure. Yes, it was cartoony to the point of bordering on juvenile, but the mechanics were something to write home about.

Diablo III lasted about a week for me. The story was middling at best--though who plays Diablo for the story? And while the dark aesthetic was preferable to Torchlight's, environments began to feel stale and recycled. While the randomly generated level mechanic of the Diablo series had made a return, there was only so much variety to see. Multiplayer was an alright experience when you had someone to play with, but I too was feeling miffed that I had no say in what stats to increase every time I hit a level. Sure, the monk's fisticuffs looked like a dream in full three-dimensional rendering with Havoc physics to boot, but for Cain's sake, I thought I was playing an RPG.

That's not to say I didn't like the game. I find it fun in bursts. But playing the game by one's self feels more like a chore than outright fun. So, I figure let's give the Xbox 360 version's couch co-op a shot. Sam doesn't game but she's been such a loving girlfriend to feign interest and give it a shot with Bioshock Infinite (damn her motion sickness!), and she's agreed to jump into Sanctuary with me. We'll give the demo a shot before we invest any further into the game (hello nearby Redbox).

God help us.

Castle Doctrine

This morning I went to examine our balcony door to see about fixing it. The door is crooked and there's a space that looks like a possible entryway for little critters, and I wondered if it was as easy a solution as tightening the upper hinges. Opening the door, I discovered that we had squatters. Buzzing, stinging squatters.

We've found a couple of them around the apartment before. The first one I thought was a dead roach, but it turned out to just be a soon-to-be dead wasp. The second Sam thought was a spider in the corner of our bathroom. Upon close inspection, it turned out to be a dead wasp. I long wondered where they came from. Did they have their own doorway? Did they have an embassy we didn't know about? Whatever the case, I wanted to keep them--and any other unwanted guests--out.

The nest sat in the doorway just under the threshold in front of the door. Nothing flew out but I saw a couple of them crawling around. I slammed the door. My breathing went shallow. My heart rate tripled. I don't think I have a phobia--that's an irrational fear, right? I got stung by a yellow jacket when I was ten years old at my sister's wedding reception, and cried like a rivet went through my wrist. I went inside--the reception was in our backyard--and watched TV while I kept ice on the sting. My cousin Adam came in and made fun of me.

So I didn't want to get stung. It hurt like hell the first time, and I didn't want to see the sequel. I needed a solution quickly. YouTube served me well in the past in terms of instructing me on how to dice onions and make egg salad, so I figured I could find a recipe for serving up a main course of wasp annihilation.  One video showed using this incredible death foam on a large nest above a garage. The uploader suggested doing it at night so the wasps would be asleep and you could cut their throats in bed, but I didn't have that kind of time. It was going to hang over me forever, or at least until winter when I could pull the nest down by hand and punt the bastards into the snow. He also suggested wearing protective covering, but I don't have any jeans.

Then I considered a professional. Let them get stung to hell. They get paid for that. Orkin. Or a local guy. Then I saw something about a special for $50 off on a visit and figured they were well out of my budget.

My breathing was still heavy, and my heart hadn't slowed. I didn't even want to stay in the apartment. I left. I saw our neighbor Mark as I came down the stairs, likely on lunch. I just met him last night on our balcony. He asked me how it was going. I didn't know how to explain to him that we had home invaders and I was going to buy a big gun--maybe a .357, maybe, a 12-gauge shotgun--to cleanse my dominion of winged stinging filth. But I just told him, "Good."

I was seething with rage, in response to my own fear of things no bigger than my little toe and to the idea that there could be just a couple of the little shits or a well-connected network of miniature pain-bringers and I had no clue. Immediate threats first.

The Ace Hardware isn't far, so I ran by there. I wondered if I needed that industrial strength foam that may have been weaponized Barbasol. I then wondered if, should there be more, do I buy some sort of beekeeper outfit? Would they even have that at Ace?

Entering Ace, I was greeted by an employee. He walked with a slight limp and spoke with the southern drawl I'm still getting used to. He asked me what I was looking for, and I told him: "Wasp spray." I was headed in the right direction anyway but he escorted me there, suggested the Ace-brand stuff because that's what they used on "the farm" and it seemed to work good. Then he saw the price for Raid-brand was practically identical. I went with Raid out of some twisted brand loyalty.

I return home. No sign that they had breached. I debated waiting until later. It was a short debate. I grabbed a broom, the very broom I used to smack the roach-turned-wasp only weeks before. I readied it by the doorway. I grasped the can of Raid Wasp & Hornet that I had already removed the safety plastic piece outside. Opened the door. Two of them crawled about. Let off a burst, squeezing the trigger as I had learned to for the rifle shooting merit badge. Dead wasps fell lifeless. I slammed the door shut.

I spray a heavy dose on the cracks around the door like I'm laying down a barrier. None shall pass. I sat in a chair near the door and waited. Seconds passed as I expected some to break through like buzzing berzerkers. But none did pass. I opened the door again, doorknob slick with Raid Wasp & Hornet formula. I sprayed another volley, seeing no dead wasps fall. Was it empty?

Taking the broom, I gently prodded the small nest. Then I speared it like a Spartan. It came down easy enough, falling square in the center of the balcony. I shut the door, unsure if there would be retaliation. I thought back to things I'd heard about wasps returning to help fallen comrades because of some pheromone released in death. Thought back to me dropping their home so effortlessly and ungracefully. I needed to get rid of the nest. I batted it off the balcony into the woods using the broom. The wasps on the balcony remained still, no signs of life. Or further conflict.

Dansonwatch, Day 1

Recently I've moved from Central Illinois to Arkansas, which was a hell of a move. While Little Rock isn't quite the change that moving from the prairie to, say, Chicago would be, it's still a change. And I'm getting used to it. If you had asked me a year ago that I'd be moving to Little Rock, I'd have probably asked you, "Where is that again?"

I didn't know much about Little Rock, but I've slowly been learning more about it. Nice little city. Got to see one of my favorite bands last night, so that I was nice surprised. Almost felt like fate. We live next to a large park that we've yet to explore (and yes, it requires the verb "explore"), and we're not far from Pinnacle Mountain State Park, which I've heard good things about. Bugs are a bit of a problem, but a problem everyone shares and deals with. So far, so good.

Yesterday I learned something that makes me proud about my move: Ted Danson. He's not from here, originally, but he and wife Mary Steenburgen I guess have a place in the city. I'm in the same city as Sam Malone. I might run into Dr. John Becker.

So that's why I've started "Dansonwatch," an initiative to catch a glimpse of the silver-maned devil in the wild. A bit harder to pull off when most of my time has been spent inside job seeking, but that might change in the coming months. For right now, my eyes are peeled.

If I call out "Norm!" downtown, will it catch his attention?

Whose Story is This Anyway?

Grand Theft Auto V offers a unique twisting of video game narratives with its new character switching mechanic. While the idea of switching from character to character on the fly is hardly a new idea--tactical World War II pseudo-shooter Hidden & Dangerous comes to mind--GTA V's concept offers an alteration to the concept that may be aped and explored in future games.

For the uninitiated, GTA V follows three protagonists--Michael, Trevor, and Franklin--as they paint the great fake state of San Andreas all the morbid shades of red that a vicious psychopath can fantasize about. At almost any given time, players can knock over a convenience store in Trevor's boots, press a button, and drive a (stolen) taxi as Michael, or go golfing with Franklin. The world is your blood-soaked oyster in which the player is arguably in three places at once. While playing as one character, the other two don't go into cold storage in a base location--they live their own lives. As the camera descends on a newly selected Trevor, the player discovers the unhinged self-made man shirtless and vomiting into a fountain. Switching to Franklin might show a less visceral scene of the rising young criminal Franklin washing his car in the driveway. 

GTA V's mechanic isn't mere suit-changing, however. While Hidden & Dangerous and GTA V couldn't differ more, H&D exemplifies the closest example to what we've seen of GTA V's quick head-switching. The same novel simplicity of pressing a button and seeing a different body with a different gun and different skill sets is present in a game that predates Rockstar North's latest release by over thirteen years. The basic AI can control the non-player-controlled characters to some degree while the player can select his own unit to play soldier with. They all work in tandem to complete their Nazi-blasting objectives.

But unlike GTA V, each character lacks a defining narrative. While each one might have a rich, elegant back story (unlikely) written up by the developer, they are inherently separate from the narrative of the game or the gameplay itself. Michael, Trevor, and Franklin's narratives never let up until the player takes the reins, and even then the player's agency in each character's story extends only so far. In between missions, players are left to their own devices--steal cars, evade police, sex up strippers--but when they get to the mission side of things, they only have so many choices to make. The choices increase during the game's exhilarating heist missions, such as who to hire on your crew or what approach to take, but then there is a struggle between whose tale the game is telling.

In Hidden & Dangerous, the player was not the commandos simultaneously but their commander. GTA V, however, wants us to believe that the player is an unholy trinity of sociopaths, three-in-one. I can't help but wonder if Rockstar wanted to revise the experience of GTA IV and its Episodes from Liberty City into a singular new game, and also grant players the ability to choose who to play as and when. In truth, GTA IV's collective protagonists never team up except for Niko and Johnny, but translating that dynamic into V would only serve to problematize the narrative. Players might find it harrowing to choose between playing as Niko present from a smuggled diamond deal or to play as Luis who interferes with said deal with the sharp report of an AK-47. But GTA V doesn't share that problem. The characters are allied.

From its beginning, I found myself wondering whose story is told in GTA V. The game continues to tell me that it's all three of their stories, but my brain keeps arguing otherwise. I find myself relating to Michael insofar as he is a white male with a keen interest in movies. But could this be an answer in itself? Could my relation to Michael be what makes the game his story? Could it be Trevor's story for another person? In a sandbox game like this where the characters come pre-developed, it's hard to say it's the "player's story," but in a series dominated by lone wolves, it's a shock to the system to have three rabid dogs with their own personalities. But GTA V is, after all, a game of freedom and choices. Choose your gun, choose your wheels, choose your avatar of destruction.