1989 Is Hell

Now that I'm just about a month through Metal Gear Solid V: The Stupid Name After the Colon, I have found that it is both total genius and absolute bullshit on equally profound levels. But we'll get to that some other time. I mostly play it in an early morning somnambulist haze, and I just don't want to talk about it right now.

I spent the weekend internalizing Ryan Adams' wholesale cover of Taylor Swift's 1989 record. It took a treadmill, a few trips to the store, and a walk around the block to really let it seep into my auditory pores. That's probably three solid front-to-back listens, and then a few searched-for songs while sitting on the front porch with a cocktail, because those particular songs stood out above the rest. That's generally bare minimum for me to make a real judgment call on an album, but since most records are short in comparison to other populist media like film or games, this many listens is about what I would put into a movie or short game. It's easy to gloss over some of the deeper layers, even if you're listening intently while purposely cordoning yourself from the rest of the thinking world to run in place for a number of miles that only matter to you and the accountants at your gym. You really got to get in there, people.

I guess since I said that I "bare minimum-ed" it means that it's kind of bad. It isn't. I guess that last sentence is meant to imply that it's kind of good. Well, it isn't either. It's definitely more of one than the other, though, and that depends on if you are goodly enough to agree with the following statement: Ryan Adams' best album by a country mile was Love is Hell. It was his magnum opus, even though he has before and since written several other albums that he himself will consider as such. 1989 is a sequel to the Love is Hell period in just about every way save for who actually wrote the lyrics to the songs. That reads a little weird, but stick with me because like all sequels, it both galvanizes what made the original beautiful and holy and rehashes shit that should have been left well enough alone.

Let's take a quick second to explain Love is Hell, Adams' would-be follow up to his breakout album, Gold. See, Gold was a creative and commercial success at a time where the accursedly-named "alt.country" genre was in something of a stride. Wilco was selling lots of records, and I think people were just good and sick of Dave Matthews once they finally graduated from college, so while Son Volt fans were still wondering when they'd get their time in the, erm, sun, a scrappy egotist that had recently left the band Whiskeytown decided to break out on his own following the strong reviews and mediocre sales of his original album, Heartbreaker (a record that spawned "Come Pick Me Up," a single that pervaded just about every romantic comedy on the planet for a year). This was Adams, of course, and the whole world basically shit themselves over how good Gold was, including and especially one Sir Elton John whom once referred to Adams as" great one;" something fans love to recount when you tell them that much of Adams' output has been found to be overrated.

Anyway, so after Gold hit kind of big, his label, Lost Highway, was all like, hey man, make us another sweet jam like that. He was like, no, baby, I just recorded an album of mope rock songs because that's been my head space for a minute. They came back with more of a nonononononono. So, depending on which myth you believe, over the next month, or the next weekend, or while he waited for a burger to finish grilling, Adams recorded the majority of Rock N Roll, a sort of sweet ode to the music that he evidently likes, because it's chock full of callbacks and shout outs to the Strokes, Pink Floyd, U2 and a bunch of other stuff. Yet, there was overlap on this record with what he had already completed for this now-scrapped mope rock album, which was reevaluated and released in two halves (and eventually, its own standalone album with expanded songs) called, you guessed it, Love is Hell. Adams, then, recorded errant songs when pressed to compile a pretty good album in the form of Rock N Roll while still getting to release a very, very good record in Love is Hell. That's kind of the way he rolls, though. He's a pretty prolific guy.

Another thing about Adams is that he's definitely a cover song guy, too, which leads us back to the present. His superlative retooling of Oasis' "Wonderwall" was the catalyst for all of this (which, yes, was on both Rock N Roll and Love is Hell), and the guy hasn't looked back, dropping stuff like Alice In Chains songs on EPs and deep Grateful Dead tracks at live shows. Having been clear to the listening world that he wanted to do a Smiths-like re-recording of all of those Taylor Swift songs marries both what he did with Rock N Roll and Love is Hell into a goofy, if fascinating cohesion: A mope rock album that pays tribute to stuff he evidently likes.

1989, when stripped of the novelty of being covers of pop songs, sounds every bit like Love is Hell to a fault. Whole guitar parts on latter tracks like "Wildest Dreams" and "This is Love" seem like they were cut and pasted from the earlier album, which is probably the primary culprit for the back end of the record sounding way too same-y than it should have been based on the source material. The album's first three tracks present a great tonal jump from mopey to funk-furious by the time that "Style" shows up, which is maybe one of the better single picks from the whole affair, but the rest of the album never catches up with it, and it settles into being too down-tempo by the middle to the point of being boring by the end. 

When taken as individual tracks, though, Adams does some cool rejiggering with these very dreamy pop numbers, even if they wind up sounding like stuff he's put to tape a dozen times over at this point. "Out of the Woods" is sappy, but ends with a nice, long fadeout that added some texture to the song. Same with "Bad Blood," probably Swift's most idiotic single, when he ripped away its overproduced faux-hip hop sound. Yes, Adams' song wound up sounding like adult contemporary dad rock, but this was probably the only thing from this whole experiment that fixed a problem that didn't really exist; something covers albums always try to do. There's really nothing edgy or dangerous about any of these songs --not that there needed to be-- in Adams' hands, but since they're coming from the prevailing pop princess of the moment, they actually kind of are for her, which is a little weird. Still, a lot of what you'll hear on this album will probably wind up in that many more romantic comedies, I suppose, because their middle-range tempo and calm, syrupy demeanor are custom made for montages that involve rain and the people that silently stare at it. 

What we have, then, is a boring album of mostly good covers which sound nothing like Smiths songs if you've ever listened to a Smiths album. But they sound like Ryan Adams songs of a certain vintage. If that kind of thing flips your lid, then you'll find something to love about 1989, more than just what it might represent. The rest of the world, though, can just listen to the original album and be equally satisfied.

See You in the Morning

Between the hours of 4:30 and 8:30am, when the sun is still just remembering that it can peak its fiery head above the small growth of trees in my tiny, overpopulated suburb, there is a man screaming at me. Short bursts come out of the crackled audio of a two-way radio, getting more intense as he realize that I don't respond. Always it is intense, this other man's screaming, though I try to avoid it as best I can. But being the meticulous guy that I am, sometimes the constant chorus of "Snake? SNAKE? SNAAAAKE?!" just cannot be avoided. Like everything, I suppose, you even get to like it.

Let me briefly point out that I'm not being screamed at in this manner --which we can heretofore refer to as "playing Metal Gear Solid V"-- for the four solid hours that I've listed above. Rather, let's call that a very generous range. As the proud-yet-confused father of a 3 week-old baby, I take these fleeting moments of tactical espionage action when I can, and I'm certainly grateful for them. In all seriousness, I didn't expect to have any time playing video games at all for these first few weeks or so as life goes through the typhoon of finding the best way to rear a child while also letting the people that birthed it retain some sanity. Every parent will tell you the same. On the other hand, I've always been an early riser, so the schedule of me putting her down at midnight, my wife feeding her between 2:30 and 3:00, and then me feed her again early in the morning has been found to be most agreeable to both our sleeping schedules, and also my appetite for sneaking up on an unsuspecting military goon and choking the hell out of him. Wouldn't you know it, when she's off her sleeping schedule, that's gratifying for a different reason, too. Metal Gear, man.

It's hard, this whole parenthood thing, but so is Metal Gear Solid V. At least, it is the way I've been playing it. Though I typically go through most video games in as bloodthirsty a manner as possible, and past Metal Gear Solid games have certainly been no exception, I'm doing my best to be as holy and true a pacifist as my tranq gun will let me through the whole ordeal so far. You can perhaps imagine my frustration, then, when I get through 45 minutes of silence --almost surgical in precision from one interrogated mook to the next-- before getting caught by some idiot that catches me in the act of doing good soldier-y spy stuff and blows my cover. Pause. Restart. Contain my screams. Plenty of right-thinking people have written reviews and articles these last few weeks about just saying "well, fuck it" and going pro-lethal, but this has become a hurdle that I simply cannot overcome. Call it pigheadedness, I suppose, but when I finish that mission, when I get that child soldier on the chopper, when I extract the opposing faction's commander, when I swipe all of the fuel that I need and nobody sees me doing any of that stuff? Elation, I tell you. There's a tickle in my chest that, well, I also get when my kid is awake and has just cracked a smile, however briefly.

The first week of fatherhood, honestly, sucks. Not this is bullshit -sucks, but more like Jesus, when is this going to get better -sucks. It is action packed in all of the ways you wish it weren't; the baby is crying, you're trying to figure out why, and sometimes feeding it and changing its diaper actually won't get your baby to stop crying. Figuring all of that out is rough going, man, no matter how much help you might be getting from the kind folks at the hospital. The last two weeks, though, have been better. You're surprised how quickly life finds its own small routines (in between the sleep when you can get it and the shrieks of a 7 pound human you love uncontrollably). Still, everything is challenge. You begin planning your day in 3 hour increments. Often, you get a half a bag of chips and call it dinner because cooking is a luxury of time you don't have. Taking care of yourself and your home must be meticulously timed, and abandoned immediately if necessary. Everything takes planning and a little bit of forethought to be executed with maximum efficiency. That is, until something out of the norm happens (like a short growth spurt that makes a baby scream and eat --somehow at the same time-- for days on end) and you have to adjust on the fly. You know, like Metal Gear.

I feel it burning in there, this new and perhaps final Metal Gear game. It is searing itself into my memories already, and finding a suitable mnemonic host in the first month of my first baby's life. Ever will the two be linked together, as other games in life-altering moments have been. Metal Gear Solid V, and all of its confounded screaming, will remind me when I took her home, fed her, swaddled her, and tried as hard as I could to get her back to sleep at 6:45 when a pivotal cut scene begins. When I look at pictures of her sleeping in mommy's arms, freaking out over the bottle we've just fed her, and wearing her first "future Batgirl" onesie, I will remember when I attached a balloon to a tank and sent it off into the clouds. Somehow, it all makes perfect sense.

At least, that's how I felt at 5:35 this morning.

Updates From Yesterday

We'll do this in bullet form:

• I still have a baby. She's very cute, if loud at times I wish she wouldn't be
• I still haven't jumped into Metal Gear Solid V yet, but that's not for a lack of wanting. The cool thing about having a baby is that everybody and their brother wants to come over to see her, and they often bring food with them. Sure, that can get kind of old, but since it's mostly in the evenings when less stuff is going on, I'm still fine with it. Currently, though, the TV that is attached to the PlayStation 4 is having a semi-family viewing of Beetlejuice. I don't have it in my heart to stop it.
• On that note, for only being less than a week old at the time, my newborn baby girl has seen a fair amount of the cannon of Movies All Humans Should Watch, and mostly by dumb ass luck since they were on television at one time or another since we got home on Friday. These include: The Dark Knight, ET, Back to the Future, and to a lesser extent, Whiplash (which was good, but a little too new for such a prestigious list). I'm hoping that the teachings of cinematic prophets Spielberg, Zemeckis, and Nolan will somehow seep into her, even if their current track records are a little on the spotty side. 
• Google has a new logo. They didn't need it.
• I am slowly chipping away at compiling interviews for a huge story I'm writing for USGamer next month. Not a whole lot of responses yet, but the key people are already on board, and that's what counts. I don't want to spoil what I'm doing yet, but it's a pretty cool project that I'm super excited to work on. If the stars would have aligned and I would have scored an interview from a specific person, it would have cracked the whole thing open and made this piece my Sistine Chapel, but alas, the world isn't full of people that want to talk about their past work, if you can believe it. 
• Still about half way through the first edit of the book (remember that?), but I'm hoping to get an edit done in the next few weeks and sent out to a few very hip cats and kittens that agreed to proof it. This is a total bullshit vanity project for me, but I still need to constructive criticism, so let's see how that goes. I'm definitely up early enough, now that I think about it, so I should probably start taking advantage of the golden hour to get this mopped up. We'll see, I s'pose.
• Beyond reasoning, my wife has forced me to go to the gym the last few days, and has reasoned enough that I'll be spending an hour or so outside of the house every day for this purpose. I was comfortable with skipping for another week, but sainted woman that she is, she knew that if I didn't stick to some sort of routine in my life I would be kind of a house-dwelling ogre. Nobody needs that. Tomorrow: chest, legs, and vomit.
• Holy shit, Jamestown+ is a smashing video game. I can't even count how long it's been since I've really sat down with a bullet hell shooter, and this really hit the spot for a two hour binge the other night when I was totally wired and couldn't get any sleep. I know that I have a giant funky chunk of open world stealth-ery waiting for me, but goddammit, I want to go back to Jamestown+ right effing now.
• Contrary to that, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is...good...I guess. No, it actually is pretty decent. A little more on the shoot-y side compared to it's isometric, more puzzle heavy progenitor Lara Croft and the Mysterious something something I'm too lazy to look up the name. I actually really liked that first game, and I was pretty happy to get this new one as a PS+ download last month. So far, it seems to be a bit more of an overhead metroidvania, but I really only got about an hour or so into it, so I can't tell you for sure. Man, I love unlocking upgrades and digging through environments for secrets and stuff, though, and it kind of felt like this had that kind of thing going on. Compared to Jamestown+ (you know, that game you're downloading right now, right?), I don't want to run right back over to my PS4 to play it, but I can see myself going back to it, post MGSV.
• Yeah right.
• I'm about 60% of the way through a download of Guild Wars 2, a game I have no business getting into at the moment. It probably won't work on this low-rent laptop anyway, but, well...

Huh. A lot happened, didn't it?

This Is Good, Isn't It?

Earlier today, I posted a comment on USGamer.net --a very cool website that's been publishing a lot of my work over the last few months (all of which will renew your faith in whatever you lost faith in)-- that ran along the lines of what you're about to read. After a little more thought, though, I've decided to expand on that because of how important this particular moment in history really is for me. I guess we can couple this with that monstrous write up on Final Fantasy X I did a little while back as another nerd compass-altering moment in my life. Anyway...

In about four hours, which would be midnight Eastern time, Metal Gear Solid V will have completed downloading and will be unlocked for my verbose cut scene-watching pleasure (as if I could stay awake for any of them at that point). As the media has been reporting close to nonstop for months now, this will absolutely be series director Hideo Kojima's final game in a franchise he's shepherded for 25ish years now, and will (maybe) bring the nutty sci-fi saga of a group of cloned soldiers and their genetic "father" to a close.

Equally nutty is how buying this game for me was far from a no-brainer with what I'm about to tell you. I soured on the series a bit over time, and Kojima's quirks and odd personal obsessions have gone from charming, if a little obtuse over the years to grating and often childish. I agree that he's a very intelligent guy that's done some really great things, but having nearly absolute control over that which he had made was slowly turning Metal Gear into a shell of itself. But that's an argument for another time.

What's important is this:

Without Metal Gear Solid, video games would no longer exist to me.

Hyperbolic, sure, but from where I'm sitting --especially this far after the fact-- it's no less true. I have a friend that likes to tell me that he simply gave up on playing video games after he played Super Mario Bros. 3 as a little kid. In his mind, nothing would be as great ever again, so there was no point in continuing on. Yes, I certainly find this to be defeatist reasoning, but I can't really call him out on his choice; Mario 3 is pretty much a masterpiece by all accounts, and if you're going to hang it up somewhere, that's as good a place as any.

After many, many mowed lawns and shoveled snow, I had owned a PlayStation since its launch. The first year or so was kind of rough, really. Only the first Wipeout was a standout game to me (and I'm not into racing games), while Toshinden and Jumping Flash, however swell they may have looked, just weren't really good games. After the languish of the launch window had ended, though, legitimate, great games were starting to trickle out before the deluge of spectacular software arrived that the PSOne is now known for. Resident Evil. Tekken 2. Final Fantasy VII. All good, and even one or two deservedly revered games (though I've warmed to FF7 over the years). This was a pretty exciting time, really. Studios and publishers could still make high quality games relatively cheaply, and the advent of accessible 3D technology for consumers meant that it was the dawn of the gaming medium's angsty adolescence --one we're just on the verge of moving past now, sort of. By the end of '97, though, none of that heady shit mattered.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night, set up next to its contemporaries, looked old as frozen dog turds thawed from a late spring. It had the nerve to a pixel sprite game in an age where it had no business sitting on the same shelves as most other releases during such a monumental year. But that's just what the publishers and certain corners of the gaming press wanted you to believe at the time. History has proven my, and I suppose the entire world's opinion valid in saying that it is a strikingly beautiful game, then and now, with a soundtrack that just about any video game since Spacewar! would kill their mothers to have. I don't need to get into what makes SotN such a transcendent masterwork (though I probably have before) since it's been universally praised these last 18 or so years. But it's not a joke when I say that if a gun was held to my head, Symphony of the Night is probably my favorite video game of all time. Full stop.

It was also a game that was released during the middle of my final year of high school, though. So, for as optimistic as I was for the future of gaming at a time when astounding evolution was happening at such a rapid pace, life for me was changing right along with it, just in its own, almost mundane way. I played through it at least five times before my prom, and once or twice more over that terrifying limbo summer leading up to moving into a dorm, so I was firmly entrenched in SotN and made no bones about telling whomever that would listen how much of a goddamn buffoon they were for not playing this game. But, you know, life isn't all about that when your comfort level is blown all to hell during your first few months of college.

Honestly, games were starting to kind of leave me cold when I was a confused college freshmen in 1998. I had plenty of other things to deal with, like school work, meeting new people, trying to meet girls, hoping I didn't gain the Freshmen 15, freaking out that I didn't belong where I was, and wishing that life was back to the way it had been 12 months earlier. I had brought my PSOne and my Genesis with me to school and still lived on a steady diet of Tekken 3 with the poor saps on my floor that dared throw down with me, but new games weren't that exciting anymore. I had given up reading magazines, and only checked the Imagine Games Network site once in a while when I was bored. By then, I was getting comfortable with the idea of letting go, and finding other hobbies to fill my time, like, you know, college.

My roommate, though, contended with his own home sickness in the polar opposite way. A nice guy, and not a really hardcore gamer, he came from a somewhat affluent background that meant that if he needed or wanted something, it was only a phone call and a UPS box away. This included games. Normally, I wasn't interested; they were mostly N64 games that nobody gave two shits about (ok, until Mario Party came out and the entire end of our campus flooded into our room for nightly screaming matches that, to this day, makes a vein pop from my forehead. I hate Mario Party). But when Metal Gear Solid found its way to our disproportionately small PO box that October, our poor post-high school brains were blown all over the dorm room walls. Nobody had seen a game like this before, with its cinematic production value and sweeping, well-voice narrative. Word got out around the rest of the floor, and long, nightly parties playing MGS began in earnest; jumping from room to room, an ever growing crowd of guys following a couple of CDs and a memory card from one PlayStation to the next. It was all anyone wanted to talk about. But not for me.

No, for me, Metal Gear Solid was downright seismic. I resigned to play the game on my own, with nobody else present, and between the larger sessions that were happening all around me. I was so entranced with the game and transfixed with playing it on my own terms that I would avoid conversations about it, and even proto-internet spoilers that happened in the campus rec center or in the cafeterias were met with loud grunts of displeasure and looks of savage disgust. MGS was something that we could talk about, but we will talk about it after I finished it on my terms, and in my own way. This made me something of the dorm floor asshole for a minute, but the fury of mostly drunk 18 year-olds was a repute I was willing to accept. Metal Gear was changing me. It made video games mine again.

I don't often think about this, actually, which is really sort of strange for how important it turned out to become in the long term. I mean, college has plenty of pivitol memories attached to it no matter who you are, so when I think about that 4ish year stretch of my life, for whatever reason, MGS gets a little lost in the shuffle. Whenever I read a retrospective, though, my heart flutters a little bit, and  I drift back to punching Liquid in the mouth and going toe to toe with Ocelot. Getting the unlimited ammo bandanna for my next playthrough where I would intentionally save Otacon instead of Meryl. Killing Raven with claymore mines and not conventional weapons around the corner. I don't really love military-based games, and again, haven't been too psyched about the rest of the series for a long, long time, but Metal Gear Solid spoke to me in a way that was profound enough to drag me back into video games by the scruff of my neck.

Last week, my wife and I had our first baby. During the five days we spent in the hospital, I finally got a chance to steal about an hour or so of silence (at roughly 4:00am on Thursday) to listen to my early backer episode of this week's Retronauts retrospective on the series leading up to tonight's release of Phantom Pain. And I sat there, stupid grin from ear to ear, taking stock of not only the moment in time I found myself in, but how far I had come since 1998. It wasn't nostalgia, it was legitimate, bittersweet growth. All in the span of a podcast. It's been a long, strange, sometimes brutal and absolutely irreplaceable 17 years.

I have a different problem now compared to then, I suppose. Where I was getting to the point that I was fine with giving up on playing video games altogether --Symphony of the Night winding up being my Super Mario Bros. 3-- I'm in a place now that I want to play games more than ever, and one of them in particular. But who knows if I can anymore? I'm guessing probably a lot less, but I suppose you never can tell. I have something else going on for the next 17 years.

I'll let you know what happens.

Memorable Quotes From E3 That Nobody Said

Hi!

I'm not at E3, but I play one on my PlayStation. That's the same thing, right?

So anyway, I have a pile of things to say about the things that I'm virtually seeing (THROUGH SCIENCE), but I don't have that kind of time today. Instead, let's make up a bunch of quotes from press and devs alike that don't actually exist. That'll be more fun. You may want to watch some press conferences before reading these, but whatever.

-A vegan, a Crossfit-ter, and a Dark Souls player walk into a bar. I know because they won't shut up about it.

-Developers went from jerking people around to jerking people off. Thanks for the Final Fantasy remake!

-Microsoft has turned into Sony turned into Microsoft. "Backward compatibility" is now platform holder parlance to "sit and spin, dipshits."


-Wait, you all saw that there's going to be a Nier sequel, too? So, I didn't do a boatload of peyote early this morning? Weird.

-Amiibo: brought to you in partnership with Platinum Games

He's Already Gone, Chief

It's time we talked about David Letterman.

On my various feeds over the last few days, half of the internet has written heartfelt (and almost heartbreaking) recollections of the talk show host and what he's meant to their lives. The other half of the internet didn't find time for that --as the internet does-- and simply noted on Facebook and Twitter that between the ages of 12-19, David Letterman was there for them.

I want to dissect that latter sentiment for a second, because it was far and away the only thing I think the internet, and maybe culture as a whole, has pretty much agreed on. By that, I mean, like, ever; as in the history of the planet (if that history has existed for the 33 years that Dave was on TV). From your physically awkward and emotionally angsty fart joke years to your entitled and terrifying post high school well-shit-what-do-I-do-now limbo, David Letterman was there for you. He was there for me. And, like most of us lapsed-Letterman true believers, I had ceased watching his show and basically all of late night comedy for years since then. But these last two weeks have done more than stir my nostalgia with the affixed rose-tinted glasses, it finally gave me a chance that only an adult can have upon reflecting on those formative television years to understand. See, I finally figured it out, this thing that is David Letterman. Let's share that together.

Dave, really, was teaching a master class insecurity, disdain, and cynicism almost every night of his show. I know how that sounds, and I can imagine how it reads, but hear me out. Upon his leaving of NBC in the early 90s, the decision to replace Tonight Show host Johnny Carson with Jay Leno would always follow Dave and even dog him no matter what network he found himself on and what show he decided to do following Late Night. Dave is a smart guy, though. Affable, maybe, but still bruised by the wound of being passed for promotion, he turned the insult into armor, and it galvanized his comedy with it for the next two decades. Remember all of those people that said that the years of 12-19 belonged to Dave? That's because they might speak English, but they understand insecurity, disdain, and cynicism better than anyone. Dave, in his way, was teaching them to laugh at the laughter; to poke holes at the bullshit. Dave left NBC for CBS and took his show with him, but you couldn't really say it was a metaphor for going your own way because he took what worked and ditched what didn't from the old show. But the wounds actually left scars, and he would occasionally show them to the world and then make fun of them. Then he would make fun of where they came from. A 14 year-old up a little too late to maybe catch the musical guest would see that and be enlightened. He was our high priest.

As a kid, I watched more TV than I probably should, and my brothers and I could collectively recall whole seasons of reran shows line for line. It was at this moment in my life that I discovered Letterman, and made a point check in with him every night of the week, saddened as no teen should be at yet another Dave-free Saturday at midnight (high school was weird). When I got to college, some strange switch flipped inside me and I ceased watching television completely. For years, all of that burned-in knowledge of the Simpsons, Seinfeld, GI Joe, and whatever else slowly slipped away from me, drifting out of my memories like evaporating rain. These past two weeks of re-acquainting myself with Dave has filled a hole in my chest that I had simply covered up long ago with other things. I'm fine only remembering "Homer at Bat" and "The Marine Biologist" as my favorite episodes of those specific series and letting everything else slip away. With Dave and the Late Show, though, it's harder to reconcile those memories and favorite moments. There would be no syndicated reruns of all 33 years to remind you of the good times and bad, just a few "greatest hits" moments you can probably find on the internet for the highlights.

That's not what life is, just those highlights. For David Letterman to let the Foo Fighters play Everlong last night and take a final kiss goodbye, he was taking what was years of his life and the entirety of mine thus far for a ride into the sunset. He taught me how grow up all those years ago. Now, with the Late Show's passing, he's finally teaching me how to be an adult. He's teaching me to move on.

I could tell you how much his humor in entrenched in me. I could tell you about the low times in my adolescents where he was the just the right kind of stable security every night at 11:30. I could probably tell you, too, how his influence, strangely, directly led to my parents buying me a double-breasted suit for Christmas (that I loved more than a 15 year-old probably should). But I needed to tell you that I get it, Dave.

And thanks for the lesson.

The Destiny Gestation Period

Let's quickly list off some things that really don't matter that much:
-It's Sunday
-It's comfortably temperate in the Midwest
-I'm in a coffee shop and forgot my headphones
-The music in here is ok, actually.

So, bearing all of that in mind, let's talk about Destiny. Mostly because I've been between games since my second run of Bloodborne (I'm saving myself for a third and that ephemeral, worthless platinum trophy) and this Tuesday's release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We're closing in on a three week gap between the them, and since Destiny has been resting unplayed on my hard drive for a spell, it seemed like as good idea as any to take another look at the game, now a little more than half a year since it's much ballyhooed release in September.

Destiny is a game you probably heard about: it's the one where you're a guy in space fighting against a random number generator, because there wasn't that much to do outside of running around and repeating mission after mission hoping for newer and better gear so you could redo those missions again in harder modes, if only a bit easier. For a little while, Destiny wasn't so far removed from the pre-World of Warcraft spectrum of MMORPG: you had a fair amount of space and plenty of stuff to kill, but after you hit the ignition there really wasn't that much to do except for grind, grind, grind. Most people, you may be surprised to learn, found this to be a bit of a letdown. Then, behold! A raid! A six-man mission featuring complex puzzles to flex your mental muscle as well as challenging combat to put that finger dexterity you've been building to use. The raid changed the game, as well as some smart, if late, tweaks to the main game's giving of gear and materials to reward players for ultimately doing nothing over and over again.

A few caveats...

I have never played the first raid, the Vault of Glass. I dipped out of Destiny not long after it was released a few months ago for a few reasons, but mostly because I was rapidly losing interest in running the same four or five strike missions every night with the three different character classes, and while I had met plenty of other Destiny players within those first few months of the game (as I played off and on until roughly Christmas), I never wanted to beg five of them to be my momentary BFF for a Vault of Glass run. Destinly, you're a fine-looking woman, but you're about as shallow as it comes.

Neither, too, did I drop the $20 into the game's first expansion, Crota's End. I don't really put too much stock into reviews for DLC, but Destiny was a game released with just too little actual meat on it's bones, so I studied the release window of Crota's End with an academic interest. It turns out that there certainly was a consensus, but not in the game's favor. While the new raid gave it some spice, it seemed, it wasn't as rich of an experience as the Vault of Glass, and the new story missions and strike combined were not enough for most, and definitely wouldn't have been justifiable for that kind of cash.

So here we are again; three weeks totally engrossed into Destiny on the eve of its second expansion, The House of Wolves, also being released on Tuesday, and also for a cool twenty clams. Here's what I found:

First, and most importantly, is that Destiny is, erm, destined to become a free-to-play game. This much was obvious to me after I dim-wittedly spent $60 on a new copy, but as more and more expansions are released, it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. There are two major forms of FTP games, those with "energy" components that only let you partake in a certain amount of the game at any given time (like Candy Crush, Final Fantasy Record Keeper, or Terra Battle...which may be the only one to do it right), and those that let you play as much as you want so long as you know that you will be grinding constantly for materials and upgrades to take on the higher-level challenges (like Warframe or AirMech Arena). By design, Destiny already falls into the latter category with it's loot and material-heavy game grind when a character hits the maximum experience level (something an able player can hit in a day or so, with a good foot under them). As the only to play the raids --which stand as endgame content for the moment-- is to level up armor to push the level limits, Destiny forces players to partake in a set routine of activities (which we're going to come back to in a second) to farm for one of three upgrade materials to level that gear, and these three materials are randomized upon collection, forcing players to either continue to another point of item-farming/hoping, or log back in with another character class that hasn't farmed those materials for that day.

That last part is important. FTP games make their money in taking part in what we'll call calculated limitation, or CL. In the fenced in housing development of CL, players cannot, say, play the game as much as they want (like the "energy" requirement), forge new weapons or armor, carry as much in their inventory, or take part in certain tasks more than once until a set time limit has passed. These things, again, already take place in Destiny. Once per day, a player can take part in a public event and be awarded high-level crafting materials. They can also enter a high-level story mission for these same materials. But that's it. While this isn't too egregious, the weekly CL is much heavier. From Tuesday to Tuesday, a Guardian in Destiny can only do the following:

-Take part in a weekly "Nightfall" Strike mission for special item currency (what we're considering upper-level crafting materials)
-Take part in a "Heroic" (hard mode) strike mission mission for upper-level crafting materials
-Amass 100 "Vanguard" currency for high level gear
-Amass 100 player vs. player "Crucible" currency, also for high level gear

There are a few things to note about that list: First, a player can grind as much as they want in missions for the Vanguard and Crucible currency, but it caps at a certain amount from week to week. With a well-equipped avatar, this currency can be plateaued in a night or two of playing. The problem here is that if a player is completely dry of this currency, they can only, perhaps, buy one piece of gear per week, depending on wants and needs. The Vanguard characters that sell this stuff prices armor at around 75 credits or more per item, and firearms will run you the low, low cost of roughly 150, which you cannot obtain in a week's time from starting at zero. There's another twist, though; the Vanguard and Crucible currency has a hard cap in your inventory of 200. This means that if you're down to stockpile weapons and armor currency until you spot whole sets of stuff that you want, think again. But while you can cap out at 200 and get two pieces of armor (which you will probably just break down to hope for, you guessed it, upper-level crafting materials), the simple math equates into really only some armor or one weapon after two weeks of work.

This is textbook CL. It stops you from doing exactly what you want when you want so you can look forward to playing again, keeping the carrot dangling in front of you for an amount of time that you (may or may not, I suppose) find reasonable. The alternative to this is to basically roll the dice with missions. As each strike mission grant a random chance for gear rewards, there's always a low chance of coming up with either a super rare piece of gear or upgrade materials, but there's also a chance that this good fortune can be marred by it being gear for a character you're probably not using or not leveled up enough to take advantage of it. In that case, you better keep playing so that you might.

The second thing that's important to note about Destiny's CL methods is a problem that's about to exacerbate on Tuesday: the haves vs. the have-nots. During the routine of Heroic and Nightfall strikes and story activities, the game randomly chooses which missions to use to give you the rewards. This includes missions from the first DLC pack, The Dark Below. Not buying The Dark Below blocks you from the daily story mission or worse, weekly strikes, which means it also slows your character's growth as you can't use the two strikes which are some of the more reliable methods for obtaining upgrade materials and currency. Destiny does not seem to be on a rotation for which of these missions will be one of the weeklies; it hasn't been impossible for The Dark Below stuff to show up more often than not, which is conspicuous. When House of Wolves is released on Tuesday, this problem will not only persist, but grow. This doesn't seem like too much of a crisis from the outside looking in, but a week is a long time, even by CL standards. Not being able to participate in your own growth, and possibly (probably) keeping you away from friends that are already playing these missions is yet another method of preying on your interest to spend the money.That's the way FTP games work.

Having said all of this, then, let's briefly and cynically list how Destiny will crack open its FTP structure once Activision eventually finds that people are no longer spending $60 on a copy of the game. You will:

Pay for a larger Vanguard "purse"
Pay for a larger Crucible "purse"
Pay for larger vault inventory space
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for weekly Nightfall strikes
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for weekly Heroic strikes
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for daily Heroic story missions
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for weekly raids (as rewards for completed raids can only be obtained once per week)
More, and repeatable daily bounty missions
Strange Coins the randomized high-level currency, will be bought with real world cash, meaning:
Strange Coin shops will be available at all times in social hubs (no more waiting once a week for Xur)
Strange Coins will buy you weapons and armor when you want it, no grinding necessary
Players will can purchase more Exotic Gear "slots" (normally, you can only have once piece of Exotic Armor/ Weapons equipped at a time)

This doesn't take into account The Dark Below and House of Wolves story missions, strikes, raids, and other larger wads of the game that come with content updates, something Bungie/ Activision is already charging for.

All of this was baked into the game already. Had Destiny been a total disaster upon release, it would have happened by now, as many, many MMORPGs like DC Universe, Elder Scrolls Online, and pretty much everything else I can think of has already shown us. Since Activision has been especially cagey about detailing exactly what kind of sales the game is pulling in, it's not totally unreasonable to believe that this kind of change is right around the corner depending on how things are faring during its one year anniversary in September. Remember, Bungie and Activision were very keen on reminding the world that this was a $500 million game to produce and market, and no matter how much they want us to believe that they recouped that cost, by not telling people what the exact sales were of the game, you can't really believe that. The FTP business model is turning more and more reliable by the month for the video game industry, while the ultra high budget AAA release is not. Believing that this game will stay with its current revenue model is naive.

Destiny launched with some problems. Problems the game already had. Problems that players found and exploited. Problems with there just not being enough content. Honestly, a lot of games of this scope launch with similar issues. Most MMOs, World of Warcraft included, are not quite in fighting shape on day one, so it's fair in my mind to give Destiny a pass for it's first nine months or so. However, we're about to hit a second batch of content expansion next week. That's two expansions in this same 9 month grace period. That's too much.

The problem is twofold: first, it draws attention to the fact that Destiny, for as vague as Bungie and Activions have been about it being an MMO, is as close enough to an MMO as can be for a game like this, and that means that there just wasn't that much content for a $60 buy-in on day one. DC Universe took a lot of flack for this when it was released, too, and content packs have come fast and loose since then. But the game went FTP very quickly after the first set of content updates came out, which mitigated with problem. Destiny is a somewhat shallow game from a content perspective since most missions are slight variations on kill guys, open a door, kill guys, open a door, kill a boss. The fact that they are asking you to pay for two additional expansions for what could be more of the same is a concern.

The second eyebrow-raiser is that this is an expensive proposition for a game's first year. A new copy of the game will run you roughly $40 right now, and with the full amount of content from both expansions, you're paying about $75-80 at the moment depending on if you bundle both The Dark Below and House of Wolves together (which is a gamble on your enjoyment of one or both). Now, weighing on person's worth of a penny vs. another is really subjective, but from a total content perspective, the same amount of cash for Destiny compared to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will buy you a lopsided amount of content, even if that $80 is only buying you about four months of an MMORPG subscription. Not a 1:1 comparison, sure, but still appropriate. It took a few years for the WoW to have The Burning Crusade, and it will have been well over a year for FFXIV to have it's first official expansion with Heavensward, and both of these are after substantial, free content updates for their games. Destiny isn't interested in this; the free content that the game slowly doles out is in occasional weekend PvP arenas and specialty missions that, like usual daily bounties, are used to grind for reputation, not instant rewards. It is playing the long game, and that long game will eventually cost you.

Weezer is now playing overhead. I retract one of my above statements.