Would it be funny to write an entire blog in the title bar? I wonder how much text it allows…
Anyway, I wrote this thing with my brother, Digitally Stimulated. It’s a magazine you read on your Kindle, phone, iPad, iPod, butt, whatever.
It’s available for a buck on the Kindle store, and by the way, if you have a computer or a smartphone or a tablet, you can read it. You don’t have to have a Kindle to read Kindle stuff. That’s why the world is great.
Below is an excerpt from a thing we wrote about Gears of War 2 to give you an idea what you might find inside. If you like it, give us a buy, won’t you?
Canon: Gears of War
Ian: This is the first in a series of discussions between Pete and me about various video games and their place in the pantheon of canonical games.
Pete: The Mount Olympus of games! The Asgard! Other places where the best stuff goes!
Ian: We decided to borrow a concept from a great podcast, The Canon, which spends each episode debating whether or not a particular film belongs in the canon of the truly great (perhaps transcendent?) films. At the end, listeners vote yes or no.
Pete and I decided this format would work well, but we’ve divided things up a little differently.
Pete: Because, let’s face it, nobody is going to vote on this the way they do for a podcast. We’re not podcast-popular. We have to Stevie Nicks this shit and go our own way.
The plan is for each of us to build his own canon filled with the best games. And, because our tastes and ideas of greatness are so different, it should be pretty interesting to see how our canons develop.
Ian: The reasons for something to be in a canon of great games might be really different depending on the game and who’s proposing it. It could look more like a player’s canon, or maybe a historical canon. Think about films. There are films that are really great and enjoyable, but probably won’t fall into a historical canon. Something like Anchorman or Pacific Rim comes to mind for film, and maybe Ready Player One for books. These are things that are well-crafted, interesting, but perhaps lacking influence beyond a certain time frame. These are works that you recommend widely, but part of you hesitates to call them “great.”
The difference is that we can recognize something is a “great” work without really liking it. Pete will never, in a million years, sit and watch Citizen Kane. Won’t happen. He would not recommend it on the Canon. That’s because, if you asked him about which films were important, he wouldn’t know. Pete’s ignorance about film is only surpassed by his ignorance of games. A smart film person, like me, would say that film as we know it wouldn’t exist without Citizen Kane. I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone that wasn’t interested in classic film or the history of film, but I recognize its greatness.
Pete: Totally. I am pretty stupid about film. And that’s what also makes me great. See, as a former English major, I can recognize that there’s a real problem when we talk about canon.
Sometimes a canonical work is important, but holy hell is it boring. Sometimes a canonical work influenced a lot of things, but it’s not always the best version of that thing. First isn’t always best, and to me, the greatest achievement of an artist isn’t always the work I get the most joy out of.
If we’re talking video games, we’ll probably argue about this later, Donkey Kong is a good game. It certainly has historical significance. I’m SURPRISED when someone hasn’t played it, and playing it seems like part of a gamer education. But is it a game that’s much fun to me? No. It’s too hard. Screw that monkey. Ape? Well, whatever he is, screw him and his stupid custom ties. What a pompous asshole.
I don’t know if I’d put Donkey Kong in the Canon. It’s got a great backstory, the origin of Shigeru Miyamoto is tied to it, but I love the story of Donkey Kong and what it represents more than I love playing that game. I liked the movie King of Kong more than I liked the game.
Ian: Donkey Kong is easy. Get gud.
Pete: This canon is Digitally Stimulated’s version of the classic Top 100 list.
You know what kills me about the top 100 list thing? You can be inclusive and thoughtful as hell, and no matter what, comment number one will be “What about [Game X]?” Well, you can shove it with your Game X. Or better yet, shoot us a message if you think there’s a game that’s canon-worthy. But just know that the induction of one game doesn’t mean the exclusion of another. If Halo is in there, that doesn’t mean Halo: Reach won’t be.
What makes this cool is that it’s not limited, and that means we can have more than one type of game, or we can go through brand new AAA titles and indie titles equally.
Ian: Anyway, Gears of War, Pete’s proposal for a first game in the Canon.
I think it’s fair to evaluate this franchise as a series. Partially because I feel like playing them through is part of a larger experience. However, I’m probably going to recommend only playing one of them. Just tipping my hand in advance. I’ve played all three main series games, but I didn’t play Gears of War: Judgment.
Look, for the rest of this article, can we just call them 1, 2, or 3? Judgement is going to be 0, or whatever. I don’t know.
I’ve played 1,2, and 3. I’ve finished them all on Hardcore mode solo (Pete hasn’t, as far as I know). I’ve gone back through 1 and 3, but I took my copy of 2 over to a woman’s house while we were dating, and she faded on me and won’t return my calls or my copy of 2. That means I didn’t go back through 2, even though it’s the only one I’d recommend playing. I’ve played 2 and 3 the most frequently in co-op. I’ve played the Ultimate Edition on Xbox One, and even a little multiplayer. I’ve played the co-op with people of variable degrees of experience, from Pete who had played the series before I did, to someone who had never played a third-person shooter before.
I play a lot of shooters, and this one has its moments, but I have some reservations about its entry into canon. I’ll get into my objections, but I want to make sure Pete has some space to talk about the novels, expanded universe, and how much rule-of-cool can make this series worthwhile.
Pete: Well, you called me out here. It’s so early for people to know how nerdy I am. And by that I mean the shitty kind of nerdy. Not the Chris Hardwick kind.
Yes, I have read most of the Gears of War novels. Which aren’t novelizations, by the way. They expand the universe with stories of the Pendulum Wars and…you know what? I’m making things worse.
I fucking love these games. Gears 1 was the first thing I played on Xbox 360, which I bought about six or seven years after it launched. I was pretty far behind, hadn’t played a new game in years. Gears was my intro into what gaming was in 2012. Or, I guess, what gaming was in 2006, but I saw it for the first time in 2012.
Gears 2 was the second game I played on Xbox 360. Gears 3 was the third. After I finished the trilogy, I spent a long time chasing that dragon, or giant destructive underground hellworm, as it were, and nothing else quite cut it. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of great games on 360. But once I’d played through the Gears trilogy, the smart thing to do would have been to play something totally different, scratch a completely different itch instead of playing lesser versions of Gears.
That’s the basis of why I put this game up for debate. I loved it, and I think it’s the best version of a kind of game.
I agree with what you said, Gears 2 is the best distillation of the series. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you took Gears 2 to a lady’s house rather than 1 or 3. And I think it’s a telling choice. So let’s go with that game. Let’s talk about Gears 2 instead of the whole series.
Ian: Actually, it was two different ladies’ houses. That means I took the game twice. Both times, they played it once and didn’t really want to play it again or finish it.
Pete: Ah, I see what you did there. Just to let everyone know, Ian is a ladies’ man. Played Gears 2 with not one, but TWO different women. 10-4, good buddy. 10-69-4.
I’m a grown-up.
Tell me why you picked 2 as a game to play with the ladies. Teach me, love guru.
Wanna find out the tricks to Gearsing a Lady’s War? Wanna find out what in the hell it means to Gears someone’s War? You gotta buy, sucker. Chump. Asshole. Buy it.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DIENNSK/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_Epf.wb0MAWGAN