Season of the Witch: A Review of Blair Witch (2016)

         

             I finally watched director Adam Wingard’s 2016 revival of the Blair Witch franchise. I use the word “watched” loosely here, however, since I spent most of the movie looking around first a bag of SweeTarts and then, later, my phone. This might sound like high praise at first—that I was apparently so frightened of Blair Witch that I couldn’t even look at it straight on—but the whole experience ended up frustrating me more than anything. I spent most of the film looking at the screen through some sort of filter not because the actual events unfolding onscreen were genuinely frightening, but because at this point, the threat of getting jump-scared has made me second-guess every second of modern horror that I watch. There’s an argument to be made that jump scares should be accepted as a necessary and important feature of the genre; however, I would debate their ultimate usefulness at scaring an audience.

Sure, the fear of getting jumped puts you on edge, and, sure, the actual moment of the jump is frightening on an animal level since almost no one is immune to sudden loud noises, but few of these so-called “scares” have any real staying power. Oftentimes, once the jump has passed, it’s over. The viewer is released; the moment is forgotten. I don’t regard this as true horror. Jump scares have their place in the horror genre, but their overuse has, I think, become more of a deterrent to watching modern horror films. I’m highly biased in this regard, but I’m just really over jump scare-saturated horror. I tend to prefer films that instill a creeping, lingering dread or that focus their horror on specific creepy or frightening images or figures. A terrifying mood sticks with you long into the night. Films like The Babadook, It Follows, The VVitch, and, yes, The Blair Witch Project itself focus on cultivating atmosphere, and they’re all the scarier for it.

Let’s not forget that the original Blair Witch has one of the most iconic frightening images in horror cinema: At the climax of the film, the two surviving characters discover an abandoned house in the woods. They’re drawn inside by the cries of someone or something that sounds like their disappeared friend. The mad search of the house ends with the protagonist Heather racing into the basement and spotting her friend Mike standing silently, dutifully facing the far corner of the room. Heather screams and screams as she (and we) recognize the modus operandi of local legend and murderer Rustin Parr. Someone or something strikes Heather while she is screaming, silencing her and knocking the camera she’s been carrying to the ground. The film ends. Just thinking about that dimly-lit, low quality image of a man standing in a dirty basement corner while his friend screams her head off before being murdered gives me the chills. Why? Because it’s genuinely creepy, well-presented horror that doesn’t rely on any sudden loud noises to spook the audience.

The entire Blair Witch Project is a study in the measured, steady building of dread culminating in the final encounter in the abandoned house. The movie’s low budget meant that the creators had to focus on human drama and fear over flashy effects and action. Another iconic shot from the film (the one that graces the DVD case’s cover) is of a crying girl’s face—Heather, documenting what might be the last moments of her life to the audience through her camera. It’s intensely personal and raw, and it works so well in this seminal work of found footage horror because of the project’s scope and budget, the DIY spirit of the thing. The same sort of shot loses its poignancy in something like the sixth season of American Horror Story (which is itself quite good) because now we’re in the land of bigger budgets and special effects—the land occupied by the new Blair Witch.

Although the 2016 Blair Witch is positioned as a direct sequel to the first film, it feels more like a remake of the original with the budget to do the sort of things that the original might have done if it had the money. At heart, though, the story of Heather’s brother and his search for his missing sister hits all the same story beats as the original movie. There is new stuff in the mix like more body horror, an actual monster (that we see), an excruciatingly claustrophobic tunnel sequence, and some monkeying with… let’s say “time travel” with heavy air quotes. However, all of these new elements are ultimately embellishments on a plot that very closely mirrors that of the original film:

Our (larger) band fools around a bit good-naturedly before getting to the woods, and this opening includes a scene in a hotel where everyone is happy pre-frightmare. Once they’re in the woods, there’s a lot of in-group fighting, and some member(s) betray the trust of the others with regard to the group’s navigation. In the first film, Mike threw the map in the stream. This time, we find out that local volunteers Lane and Talia don’t actually know their way around the depths of the woods… after the entire group is already well and truly lost. The gang tries the sensible thing of walking in a straight line to get out but find themselves doubling back on their own trail instead. The creepy stick people show up. The piles of rocks make an appearance. One of the group members trashes the stick people and is the first to disappear. Eventually, once their numbers have been thinned out, the characters find the abandoned house in the woods, and the movie ends with our protagonist getting struck by someone or something off-screen as the camera falls to the ground and records for a few moments longer before the movie ends. This time, though, the mad dash through the house ends in the attic and not the basement. There’s more to it than that—and maybe I’m simplifying unfairly—but there’s no escaping the fact that at its core Blair Witch hits a lot of the same story beats as the earlier movie.

To give the new film some credit here, there is a suggestion that there could be some supernatural cycle at work that may be intentionally causing events to follow a similar trajectory to the first film. This comes as an actually fun, clever little reveal that happens in an understated way during the climax. The “time travel” I’m referring to very vaguely here in order to avoid unnecessary spoilers is one of the best embellishments new Blair Witch brings to the table. The tunnel scene is another good addition. It made me incredibly uncomfortable, but it was a great example of horror that will likely play on the fears of a large number of its audience members without having to resort to jump scares.

But this is still just The Blair Witch Project done flashier and without the low-budget charm of the original. It feels like they could have (and arguably should have) gotten more creative with the storytelling this time around. The aforementioned American Horror Story: Roanoke uses several different framing devices throughout its season, changing from a Dateline-style drama with the “real people” who experienced the horror narrating a re-enactment of the events performed by “actors” to a found footage horror film shot with cellphones and police body cameras to a collage of different genres (news reports, an episode of a fake paranormal investigation show, and so on) while also toying with occasional meta-commentary on itself. It does pull the Blair Witch Project card of telling the audience that such and such footage was assembled from such and such place after so and so disappeared without a trace, but that’s just one aspect of the show. It knows that just trying to sell the audience on the supposed verisimilitude of the found footage subgenre isn’t enough anymore—that the whole approach to horror filmmaking has gone stale—so it broadens the scope. Yes, this is fiction, but see how many layers of “fiction” and “fiction-pretending-to-not-be-fiction” that we can layer together using all these different lenses? The audience knows that none of this is actually real, so they have fun with it. Blair Witch 2016 still feels like it’s still trying to be Blair Witch Classic—like this is still a time when people will watch the film and be uncertain enough about whether these people are actually still alive or not to lend the whole viewing experience some extra level of dread. It needed something more to differentiate it from all the pretenders to the throne that have come out since the original film and that have, over time, caused the appearance of yet another limited point of view in a horror film filtered through yet another shaky handheld camera to be met with groans instead of excitement. There are more points of view (more babes lost in the woods equals more cameras) to use this time to construct more elaborate shots, but something more inventive like the drone camera that is very much under-utilized in the film is still missing.

The one area where this new Blair Witch matches OG Blair Witch that doesn’t feel like a shortcoming this day in age is with regard to the rawness of its performances. As viewers, we’re used to screams of supposed agony, used to seeing people supposedly fly into violent rages and lose their minds and experience all these extreme heights of emotion that we (hopefully) don’t experience ourselves. We know the screams are fake, but we buy into the emotion of the moment anyway because the approximation of what those real emotions might look like is close enough for us to pretend while we watch. Of course, one of the most well-known factoids concerning the production of The Blair Witch Project is how far everyone went to try to achieve something more real-seeming with the film: actors literally camping in the woods while being spoon-fed direction and tormented by the rest of the crew at night. I presume this wasn’t the case with Blair Witch given that this is a “proper” Hollywood film now, but the performances of distress in this movie are still very powerful. The noises that our protagonist makes at the climax of the film, as she films herself walking backwards to avoid accidentally seeing the titular Blair Witch are the sort of labored, disturbing, awful sounds you would hope to never hear coming out of a human mouth. Earlier, when the character Talia is losing her mind and jumping at shadows, she really does seem to have snapped thanks to the emotional intensity of the performance.

That rawness that I mentioned before with regard to Heather’s speech directly into the camera in the first Blair Witch is perfectly recaptured here at the film’s most emotionally-fraught moments. You feel like you’re actually watching someone come apart at the seams, which isn’t something I feel about a lot of horror films. One of the best examples of this, for me, has been and remains Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The sheer amount of screaming that Sally (Marilyn Burns) does later in the film and especially during the dinner scene where the cannibal family alternatively hurls abuse and screams back at her makes one worry for her sanity. At the very end, when she’s safe in the back of the pickup truck and racing away from Leatherface, her screaming transitions quite naturally into laughter, and it’s not relief that we feel hearing her laugh—it’s dread. It’s like watching someone’s mind finally break under the strain of what they’ve endured. The new Blair Witch captures this same feeling, and I only wish that the horror responsible for the breakdowns was more inventive and more consistently, genuinely scary. It was probably unreasonable to expect a classic in the found footage horror sub-genre to return after all this time and show everyone how it’s done once more, but it’s hard to resist the poetic allure of such a narrative. Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened here. Blair Witch is serviceable—It’ll jump-scare you a bit, if nothing else—but it can’t escape the inertia of years upon years of similar films or the gravitational pull of its far groundbreaking predecessor’s achievements.

To Smooch (Not Smite): A Review/Analysis of Polygon’s PeaceCraft

All images in this post were captured from the PeaceCraft videos on Polygon's YouTube channel.

            Admittedly, I have had little previous experience with either World of Warcraft or the McElroy brothers and their various online ventures. While I have no plans to get into the former, I have started to get more familiar with the latter after listening to some episodes of the three brothers’ comedy advice podcast—My Brother, My Brother, And Me—and watching the web series of the same name developed by Seeso. The McElroys as a family just seem very funny, charming, and, above all, sweet. In a very shrill, angry, cynical world, there is something engaging about the general sense of sweetness and happiness the brothers seem to bring to their projects. Today I would like to focus on some of the work of the “sweet baby brother” Griffin McElroy, who, in addition to his work with the other brothers, also creates several video series for the site Polygon that deal with video games in some way. The first of these that I watched was Touch the Skyrim, a series in which Griffin attempts to essentially break the massively popular fantasy role-playing game by altering it with mods that co-host Nick Robinson must try to identify. Such modifications to the game have included: giant bears, the ability to stop time, “sexy” outfits, transforming the entire world into an undersea paradise, and adding the option to make any characters in the game kiss, which just gets even weirder when modded in characters like Sonic the Hedgehog get involved. Across the two “seasons” of the show so far, Griffin and Nick have built some loose narratives around their various mods, though the series is ultimately less about story and more about hijinks like humping Batman in a cavern filled with giant Sonics. The series I want to focus on here is a solo effort for Griffin that revolves around an attempted nonviolent run through the world of World of Warcraft using a gnome rogue named “Raandyy” (Both “Randy” and “Randyy” were already taken).

            The premise for this “PeaceCraft” series on the first episode on YouTube reads, “Join Griffin McElroy and Raandyy on an unforgettable journey through Azeroth in PeaceCraft, a new Polygon video series. Can sweet Raandyy find a way through the various checkpoints Griffin has arbitrary [sic] established for him in way-too-high-level zones without killing a single creature?” In essence, Griffin starts a new game on a PvP server with the intent to guide his rogue (so chosen for its learned stealth abilities) through various zones of the game without committing any violent acts. Griffin himself notes that pacifism in Warcraft is not new or entirely unsupported, so what makes this series special is that trademark McElroy sweetness and the way that his goals for Raandyy do not conform to those of the game. This is more of a cross-country marathon than it is a quest to save the realm, and with no attempt to make Raandyy appropriately-leveled for the challenges he faces (the goal is to cover distance, not grind out levels), the approach puts the character at a greater disadvantage than that faced by other characters with similar nonviolent intentions. The PvP elements in particular just makes the world even more dangerous for sweet Raandyy.  

  

            PeaceCraft is rife with comedy: Raandyy running around with no pants on, hiding behind trees to try to harvest plants when enemies’ backs are turned, running howling into a town with an enemy in tow to die while other players do not notice or refuse to intervene. And then there are moments that I found really affecting like when early in the game Raandyy ends up begging for in-game currency, again, from largely seemingly disinterested players. The tone is comedic, but the subtext is powerful because of the real world echoes of poverty and because the structure of the game is literally such that Raandyy cannot start to level up and progress without experience, which he cannot get without killing unless he has the money to pay to learn a trade. The hump is a real one imposed by both the game’s systems and by the limitations (no killing) Griffin has set on his own run. It is both funny but also very serious, and it makes for a more compelling narrative given how flush with currency Raandyy later becomes thanks to the contributions of his “fan-diies.”

Another source of comedy in PeaceCraft: the editing and the use of visuals and music beyond what is "native" to the game. Here we see Raandyy celebrating leveling up.

            Similar mixes of humor and genuine pathos arise thanks to Raandyy’s consistent characterization as both nonviolent and kind. He blows kisses to most of the people he meets; he refuses to kill (even by engaging in such an innocuous video game staple like fishing); he makes peace by laying out a blanket, umbrella, and picnic basket and encouraging other players to do the same; he tries to avoid being killed by other players by lying on the ground; he cheers on other players involved in fights even if he will not fight himself. The nonviolent premise of the show translates to character traits for Raandyy, and Griffin role-plays as him with consistency and some sincerity. This fundamental kindness is very “on brand” for the McElroys. The nonviolence of the run comes to head in the most recent (as of this writing) episode of the show when Raandyy and his followers go to a carnival and get into an arena. Although some players try to practice peace, others are killing. One in particular kills Raandyy multiple times, resulting in Griffin’s decision to have Raandyy “do a hit” on the person in question. Although some “fan-diies” try to hold Raandyy back verbally and by transforming him into animals, he eventually succeeds in attempting his hit… only to miss because the character is so under-leveled. A second attempt at a hit moments later produces the same results, and seeing the game’s own systems ultimately serve to further characterize Raandyy as someone who is not only opposed to violence but also incapable of inflicting it even when he tries only adds to the sense of him as a consistent character. It is funny but also actually makes sense within the narrative Griffin is building as the series goes on.

PeaceCraft is highly edited, both for time (since each episode is only about 20 minutes long) and for humorous effect.

            One of the things that makes PeaceCraft appealing to me in ways that Touch the Skyrim is not is the way that the former series does not so much attempt to break the game as it does try to examine the ways in which the game’s systems can be used in non-traditional ways. At its most simple it asks: How effectively can a person move through the game using only non-violent sources of experience and money? Of course, because this is an MMORPG, most sources of experience and money involve killing, either solo or as part of a team, so Raandyy’s adventure reveals how slim the pickings can be for players who might try to test those limits. The character is behind the progression curve at every turn since his primary sources of income and experience are picking flowers, harvesting minerals, and selling both. Consequently, Raandyy is under-leveled (usually dramatically so) for whatever zone he happens to be in, resulting in his being one- or two-shot by almost every enemy or hostile player he encounters. Again—This pushes the limits of the game’s systems. What was meant to be a straight-forward RPG where the player moves through an area mowing down enemies at or around their current level turns into a sort of stealth or puzzle game at times, where Griffin uses Raandyy’s rogue class power of cloaking (once he has earned it) and/or the environment itself to try to gather resources or just avoid enemies. In a forest filled with deadly spiders, for example, Raandyy takes to a nearby river to swim through the zone, only to discover that that is not a totally safe route either.

Each episode tracks Raandyy's progress along a certain "leg" of his journey.

            Oftentimes, progress through a region in PeaceCraft seems to slow to a crawl as, unable to avoid enemies entirely, Griffin instead has to resort to fudging his way through using the game’s respawn system. At times he can count the number of steps he takes forward from one death to another on one hand. No doubt this was arduous to record—especially since there is a cooldown on respawns—but it is highly engaging to watch: not only because of the humor of the action and that comes from Griffin’s running commentary, but also because it made me think about the nature of games. It was interesting to me because I thought about how video games like Warcraft are, to some extent, the extension of the imaginative play of children (which has few set rules) and the sort of traditional role-playing games that have rules but also allow for imaginative play when the GM is willing and the stats and roll of the dice allow for it. Warcraft, though ostensibly a “role-playing” game, only allows mechanical role-play within very strict limitations. Simply put: The game’s goal for the player, regardless of their imagined role, is levelling up (most often through killing), and the goal of peacefully maneuvering through the world on a cross-country trek is not as well-supported. Add to that that Griffin’s run ignores much of the “content” of the game—another goal of an RPG like this one: to complete as many quests as possible and to advance what story there is—in favor of a self-selected goal of simply reaching certain milestones on the map. PeaceCraft is less Warcraft than it is Forrest Gump—and that comparison becomes especially apt when you consider how the narrative of the series evolves once the fans get directly involved in Raandyy’s quest.

            Superficially, PeaceCraft reminds me of Forrest Gump because of its initial premise: Lovable Simpleton Runs Around The World. Like the sequence from the movie, however, what starts out as a solitary journey eventually turns into one filled with other hangers-on. I said before that PeaceCraft does not break the game like Touch the Skyrim does (with mods), but once Raandyy starts getting generous care packages from his “fan-diies,” he begins to acquire copious amounts of gold and other items (like armor sets) that he otherwise would likely never have acquired on his own during the run, thus bending, if not breaking, the game to some extent. He is able to use the gold, for example, to buy up a bunch of items from a vendor, who then, after sufficient patronage, offers Raandyy a cool motorcycle mount. The mount ends up not moving significantly faster through the world than Raandyy could have on foot—particularly with his new impressive stash of swiftness potions courtesy of his fans—but it is glamorous, and its easy acquisition stands out in stark contrast to the early moments of the series when Griffin was forced to beg for money and sell Raandyy’s pants to make ends meet. The involvement of the “fan-diies” fundamentally changes the limitations and tone of run, and the way that they steadily play bigger roles in the series adds to the narrative appeal.

Raandyy checks the mail from his "fan-diies."

            The “fan-diies’” involvement begins small—with some fan letters and donations and the creation of characters that riff on the name “Raandyy”—but slowly expands to include multiple player factions that in some way use Raandyy’s name (Some are evil, of course), an inbox that takes increasingly long periods of time to empty during each episode, and a physical presence that enables Raandyy to accomplish what is arguably his most daring feat of the series so far, which is to infiltrate the hostile Horde capital and “smooch” their ruler. The entire sequence, which at one point involves Raandyy climbing onto a follower’s mount and then parachuting onto the roof of the capitol, plays so well mechanically and narratively when you consider that this dynamic with the fans began with a few letters and some reluctant interaction with one or two people in the wilderness.

Raandyy dropping in for a smooch through the power of teamwork.

            The whole story arc of the series first takes a turn, though, when a small group of “fan-diies” blocks for Raandyy as he tries to evade a hostile and make his next checkpoint on his journey in a town called Booty Bay. While the other players draw off the opposition, Griffin is able to race Raandyy into the town. In the episodes following this team-up, the “fan-diies” have only grown in number and in their significance to the narrative. There is the aforementioned gentle assault on the Horde, followed by an episode that is roughly the equivalent of the beach/hot spring episodes of an anime series, where Raandyy and friends simply go to a carnival and pal around. At this point, the future goals for the series seem to have shifted. Raandyy made his way across an entire continent on foot and mostly unaided, but the move to another continent and the carnival sequence have all been “fan-diies”-focused. The question becomes whether Raandyy will resume running around the world and, if so, what role his followers will play. Like any series, however, more escalation moving further away from the initial premise seems likely since Griffin noted after pulling off the smooch raid against the Horde that this was actually a little easier than he thought. With the help of the “fan-diies,” he has a lot of resources available to consider other self-selected goalposts for Raandyy to reach. One man’s quest to simply circumnavigate the world of Warcraft peacefully has evolved, even if the core values—of peace and kindness—have largely remained unchanged despite the more ambiguous “peaceful" characteristic becoming a bit more concrete with the decision to make Raandyy a vegan.

            Finally, I would like to say that one reason PeaceCraft and its creative use of existing game systems to accomplish imaginative, player-created goals appeals to me so much is that it reminds me of my childhood—when I knew that I wanted to make games but did not have the know-how or software. What I did instead was to sometimes create new narratives inside existing games like The Legend of Zelda and Spyro, sometimes for my younger brother and sometimes just for myself. What is really affecting to me about my experience as a child and about watching PeaceCraft is the way that videogames, which present limiting imaginative experiences with set parameters, can still be bent to some extent to the imagination of players in a manner reminiscent of the most basic state of “play,” where the only true limit is the player’s (or players’) imagination and where things like narrative and the goals for the game are not imposed but changeable. There is just something childlike and fun (albeit with a lot more swearing) to be found in PeaceCraft, which seems to find genuine elements of play in the process of playing a game with clear and obvious expectations for an entirely different sort of interaction with its world and systems. I do not think any substantial knowledge of World of Warcraft is necessary to enjoy the show either, so I would not worry too much about the MMORPG angle if you, like me, do not know much of anything about it. I started watching the series on a lark and ended up catching up on all six existing episodes in a single sitting. If you are at all into this sort of content (people talking over videogames on the internet), PeaceCraft is absolutely worth checking out. It is immensely charming, sweet, and features a fun narrative developing in real-time.

Link to the first episode of PeaceCraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEGdSEOAis  

How Grand is the “Grand Mac”?

Take that, The Mainstream Media!

            When some people want to get effed up and have a regrettable time, they drink. When I get the same feeling, I seek out certain disreputable types of food—fallen foods, foods that have been divorced and then have remarried, the foods that loiter and smoke in conspicuous places and do not care that they’re not supposed to be there. The one dollar French bread pizzas and hotdogs, the forty-cent burritos, your assorted fast food-eries. I don’t reach for a bag of something illegal and my credit card; I go to Burger King. Or McDonald’s. This is a piece about McDonald’s and about their new Grand Mac and about whether it finally makes eating their burgers a comparable experience to going to, say, Hardee’s instead. What I mean by this is that I’ve never really enjoyed McDonald’s burgers from a value-for-your-dollar sort of angle apart from that brief stint where they had the Deluxe Quarter Pounder on the menu. The Deluxe Quarter Pounder was the closest McDonald’s, in my memory, has come to having some form of the Everyburger. You know it—your standard beef, cheese, tomato, pickle, onion, and lettuce deal that basically every other burger place has on its menu. When McDonald’s had the Deluxe Quarter Pounder, I got it exclusively when I went there to eat. It had all your standard burger toppings and was also bigger than their usual fare. Ultimately, the toppings are important, but size has been the problem. I like the taste of the regular Big Mac just fine, in fact, but I’ve never eaten one—as a part of a combo even—without feeling somewhat dissatisfied afterward, like I wanted more. But since I’m not a hedonist, I’m not going back for another burger; I’m going home thinking about how I should have eaten at Burger King instead even though I like McDonald’s fries better. (They are delicious stale. I love stale fries, from everywhere. I’m just an overcoat filled with raccoons, I swear. Quit stepping on my nose, Bob! Chitter chitter! Scritch scratch!) There is something very uniquely upsetting in this late-capitalist nightmare about wanting to spend your money on something and being held back from doing so for some reason.

            Enter the so-called Grand Mac. Like the Angry Whopper, this was a burger variant I’ve been magnetically drawn to, at least in part for the reasons mentioned above: that the prospect of A Big Mac But More makes me wonder if McDonald’s is finally going to give me my heart-clogging money’s worth in a single combo. I’ve been seeing ads on billboards around town, and I’ve even seen a few pictures of the G-Mac itself online; however, one question continued to nag me and make me at once both curious to try one myself and leery of getting burned. Everyone knows that fast food sandwich advertising is the equivalent of putting a glorious front door on a silo filled with manure. The ads present the most beautiful sandwich with the greenest lettuce and fluffiest bun, and you know that the actual thing is going to be squashed flat, with the fiber-y, white part of the lettuce leaf on it, and possibly the cheese so far so off-center that counting it as a part of the sandwich and not a side is generous. This isn’t a knock against the workers who prepare the food either. The simple truth of the matter is that advertising for any food product involves a little mendacity. We use glue instead of milk in cereal ads because milk isn’t actually white enough to look like milk. I’ve heard stories of lipstick on tomatoes to make the color pop more in advertising. The ideal sandwich—Sandwich Jesus, the Ubersandwich—doesn’t actually exist in a form we could (or would want) to consume. It’s a mirage. The real deal can’t measure up because the sandwich is just like us: the poor mortal cast in a mold that cracked irreparably when our heavenly counterparts sprang into being. The real sandwich behind the façade is us. We eat the sandwich to make peace with the fact that we will only ever be less than perfect. Less than perfect fare for less than perfect beings. We deserve one another. (Yes, Richard, we get that you went to seminary. Congratulations: You’re part of an ideological state apparatus.)

            Anyway. Looking at the promotional materials for the Grand Mac, I couldn’t quite tell what was so “grand” about it. How was it meant to be taller than the original Mac? The images and even product descriptions for the sandwich did not make this any clearer. There’s an extra slice of cheese on the bottom apparently, but the height differential between O-Mac and G-Mac is too large for the cheese alone to be the deciding factor.

            Maybe the patties are thicker? I thought, though, again, the images I was looking at didn’t suggest as much. I was starting think this was actually a painfully obvious trick. I’d been had by false promises of large sandwiches before. (We’re looking at you, Burger King’s Long Jalapeno Burger Thing with your actually small size so small that you weren’t actually any bigger than a regular burger somebody cut in half and then rearranged so that the thing was longer than it was wide.)

            The truth of the matter is that the presentation of the burger is the problem. McDonald’s ads kept stressing height, but as I mentioned before, height is ultimately a pointless quality to stress in the Urburger when your audience is well aware that the promise will be broken by the reality. The ads that I’ve seen try to pass the G-Mac off as taller than the O-Mac and the new Mac Jr. However, the height is actually comparable to that of an O-Mac on a good day (after the squashing). I noted this before I bought one when I was looking at photographs online. The reality is that the G-Mac is noticeably bigger than the O-Mac, but the ads stress the wrong dimension. The burger isn’t taller—It’s wider. I would say that the G-Mac is roughly the size of a Whopper, with the attendant wider patties the increased bunnage entails, and that’s a nice step up in size. After consuming the Mac and its fry brethren, I was pleased to find that I was experiencing the familiar somewhat queasy over-stuffed feeling I usually get after eating this stuff. This was after going some time without a meal, mind, and being in a mood to really Consume something.

 

As you can see here, height is clearly not the G-Mac's greatest strength.

            In terms of taste and quality, this is just more Mac we’re talking about here. Do you like Mac? If so, then you’ll like this Mac too. The one possible downside is that more surface area means more of that delicious Mac sauce, and said sauce has an admittedly strong sweet/tangy taste that might be a bit much depending on how much you get of it. This is a factor that might vary from McDonald’s to McDonald’s and from saucertizer to saucertizer. It wasn’t a huge deal, but I did think to myself that it might be possible to have too much of the sauce on the burger. On the other hand, the mere possibility of excess is a mark in the G-Mac’s favor when you consider my original dissatisfaction with the value I was getting in the O-Mac…

*The clarion call of someone tossing a fresh bag of garbage into a dumpster sounds in the dusk.*

            in conclusion tha g-marcis very good for….. if you loved Mcd’s but alays wantd morjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjkl;k;

Editor’s Note: I have just been informed that Ira M. Humanington is not actually a journalist but is instead a pack of raccoons hiding inside a trench coat. Mr. Humanington no longer writes for the site as of this time, and loyal patrons should disregard anything untoward he might have previously posed about either this country, its president, or the sweet, sweet taste of hot garbage. (We’re trying to remove it.) Please be advised that there may be more hungry raccoons attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the citizens of America; therefore, if you encounter any journalists, you should assume that they are all actually a pack of raccoons disguised as a human being until the truth of the matter can be determined. I recommend packing your pockets full of raw, stinking garbage. If the journalist begins to disintegrate into a squirming pile of hungry raccoons, you can then throw them the garbage to buy you time to escape. May God have mercy on us all. 

My Video Game Meme Thing Response

1.       Very first video game.

This is a little difficult to answer because it depends on whether you exclude “edutainment” like the Muncher or Blaster series. I played a lot of those titles at school and at home when I was a kid. The first “real” video games I played, though, were the PC ports of Sonic titles like Sonic CD and possibly the first Rayman. If you consider a videogame something that is played on a console, then my first one was Sonic Spinball on the SEGA Genesis.

2.       Your favorite character.

Probably Dante from the Devil May Cry series. He’s superficially devil-may-care but has real heart. His ability to laugh in the face of whatever odds he faces really helps soften the blow of playing the games on the harder difficulties and failing because Dante’s own ability to shrug off whatever comes his way helps empower the player to keep going. It’s a great characterization in cinematics that carries over into the gameplay by encouraging the player to embody that same attitude.

3.       A game that is underrated.

Onechanbara Z2: Chaos. The game is ultimately a mess in a lot of ways and can become repetitive quickly with its Dynasty Warriors-style “throw one hundred enemies with broken AI at the player at once in lieu of actual balancing” approach to level design, but there is a surprising amount going on with the game under the hood. There are a lot of little details that indicate some real care went into designing this thing, like a robust practice mode more action titles should include and full bios for every character (including the bland zombie enemies). The game isn’t a hidden gem by any means, but it feels like a diamond in the rough.

4.       Your guilty pleasure game.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan. I recognize that almost every criticism of this game is valid: Many enemies aren’t fun to fight, the companion AI is completely moronic, too many missions are badly-balanced and often just involving holding the circle button in front of an object. BUT—I unironically love this game. Granted, I got a great deal on it on Amazon when the PS4 version was deeply-discounted for no particular reason, but I really enjoy it. I like the graphical style and the emphasis on outright brawling over styling on opponents (which put off people who went in expecting the finesse of something like Bayonetta and instead got the undisciplined roughness of Anarchy Reigns).

5.       Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were).

I’m not sure I really feel like any character, but I would probably most like to be Bayonetta. She’s stylish, sassy, and basically omnipotent. In a dreary, nasty, overwhelming world, that seems like something to aspire to.

6.       Most annoying character.

The Gadgetron vendor in the Ratchet & Clank remake. He embodies everything I hate about games/media seemingly designed for younger players these days—He never shuts up. It would be one thing if he only talked to you when you were near his shop, but he also somehow has the ability to call you when you’re out in the field and will constantly remind you that he has X weapon for sale or that you have “a lot” of Raritanium and should come by something. He only has a few lines, and they get old very fast.

7.       Favorite game couple.

I don’t think I have a favorite couple specifically, but my favorite relationship (of any sort) between characters is probably between the members of Dedsec in Watch Dogs 2—They’re bright, excited, eccentric, dorky, and just fun to be around.

8.       Best soundtrack.

Best soundtrack of a game I have played—Bloodborne. Best soundtrack of a game that I (regrettably, somehow) haven’t played—Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

9.       Saddest game scene.

The most melancholy scene from a game that I can think of is the one that ends The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Although the story ostensibly ends “happily” after Majora is destroyed and we get to see so many of the characters enjoying their happy endings, the sequence ends with depressing music and a shot of the Deku butler beside the twisted tree players encounter in the “things betwixt”-like area before the proper start of the game when Link is travelling from Hyrule to Termina. The implication of this scene is that this tree is all that remains of the butler’s own son who left home long ago. This is a real gut punch of a final note that drives home how deeply melancholy Majora’s Mask is. It’s not just “sad”; it’s sad at heart in a way that few stories are. I’d most compare it tonally to the live-action Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are.

10.   Best gameplay.

I am completely addicted to the Souls games’ gameplay loop, and I love the weighty combat and emphasis on managing the stamina meter. The mixture of exploration, esoteric storytelling, atmosphere, levelling, and gradual progression despite or even because of repeated failure is just great. I can’t get enough of it.

11.   Gaming system of choice.

GameCube—the last time Nintendo had a solid third-party lineup of titles like the excellent Prince of Persia trilogy and the simple but enjoyable Lord of the Rings movie tie-in games. The system also had two Pikmin titles and multiplayer games like Kirby Air Ride and Mario Kart: Double Dash that I played a lot with family. Luigi’s Mansion, a Skies of Arcadia port, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. As much as I have enjoyed owning both a PlayStation 3 and 4, I can’t stop thinking of GameCube games I played and enjoyed and have fond memories of. The system was also originally supposed to be the exclusive home of Resident Evil 4, so… there you go?

12.   A game everyone should play.

When I think of the criteria for a game “everyone” should play, I can’t help but try to think of games everyone could play. Although I love the Souls series, for example, and do not think they are actually as prohibitively difficult as some claim, I also do not think everyone could play them. At least not to completion. Similarly, I think God of War III is the ultimate distillation of everything that series is about and absolutely should be played by anyone with an interest in the franchise. However, once again I don’t know that everyone could play it. I’m thinking a bit about my mother here—someone who enjoys games like Kirby Air Ride but isn’t up to tackling something as seemingly straightforward to many people as Call of Duty. Ultimately, I want to say that Rayman Legends is a game everyone should play—particularly fans of platformers. It’s a beautiful, high-energy game that improves on the classic platformer formula by completely doing away with lives and offering frequent checkpoints. It can still be difficult, but the difficulty can be mitigated in a few ways like playing multiplayer or ignoring optional collectibles and side challenges like the “invaded level” time trials.

13.   A game you’ve played more than five times.

I’m not sure I’ve played it more than five times, but the original Darksiders is one of the few games I’ve played through more than once or twice. The game is obviously, heavily influenced by other titles like Zelda and God of War, but it’s ultimately greater than the sum of its parts. In particular I think the mixture of Zelda-style adventuring and dungeon-ing with a flashier, meatier, but also accessible combat system makes it great to me.

14.   Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.

I don’t actually use gaming-related wallpapers. The closest I came to doing it was when I saw this image of 2B from Nier: Automata, in Raiden's pose from Metal Gear Rising’s box art, by MoonFace on Twitter recently. It’s just too cool.

Source

 

15.   Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now.

(Lords of the Fallen—a Souls-like with a number of technical issues that nonetheless does pretty well replicating the gameplay of those titles. If Dark Souls is Western fantasy by way of Eastern sensibilities/comics (like Berserk), then Lords of the Fallen is Western fantasy by way of Western comic books: ludicrously big, bright, and over-designed.)

Captured by my PS4

16.   Game with the best cut scenes.

Devil May Cry 3 has the best choreographed action in its cinematics I’ve ever seen (even compared to Devil May Cry 4 and both Bayonettas).

17.   Favorite antagonist.

Majora’s Mask/Majora. I like under-explained villainous forces that cannot really be understood (like the Great Ones in Bloodborne).

18.   Favorite protagonist.

Dante (again).

19.   Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in.

I love horror movies, and I’m retiring to Yarnham to become some kind of monster.

Source

20.   Favorite genre.

Stylish "Beat 'em up"s like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. The mixture of replayability (on higher difficulties) and skills/systems to master really appeals to me.

21.   Game with the best story.

I’ve never replayed it again, but I remember really liking Metal Gear Solid 4 when I first played through it a few years ago. Since the story is about 90% of the game, I guess you either get very invested or stop playing. I might also offer up Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, though I don’t necessarily think it individually has a great story—It’s just a very fitting capper for the trilogy both textually and metatextually. It’s a return to form tonally from Warrior Within and essentially redeems both the Prince and the developers in one go.

22.   A game sequel which disappointed you.

Darksiders 2. I think this one was a real step sidewise—The RPG systems are ok but unnecessary additions, the story is worse/less urgent (partly because the game isn’t a true sequel), the lore is less interesting (less riffing on the Biblical apocalypse, more generic fantasy adventuring), and there’s the added problem of more glitches. Don’t get me wrong, though, as Darksiders 2 is still a great game. It still mixes Zelda with better action and manages to use its obvious influences to great effect, but it feels like a misstep in a number of ways. Most importantly, I suppose, it failed to make good on the hype from the end of the first Darksiders. Rather than blasting forward and leaving it all out there with a proper follow-up, the developers chose to do a sort of side adventure with Death that takes place before and during the events of the original game. They couldn’t have known that this would be the last Darksiders game they would get to make, of course, but if nothing else this is a very real lesson in not hesitating when it comes to what you’re making as a creator: No saving stuff back for later, as there may not be a later.

23.   Game you think had the best graphics or art style.

Killer7—a style that not even Grasshopper itself has managed to one-up despite obvious attempts like Killer Is Dead. Child of Light is also a beautiful, beautiful game undermined only slightly by the protagonist’s character model (which looks too 3D compared to the other models and landscapes). The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker also has a highly-expressive graphical style that truly withstands the test of time.

Source

24.   Favorite classic game.

What is a “classic”? (It’s probably Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I loved that game to death as a kid to the point that what I wanted most was a level editor in it. I actually wrote SEGA about this at one point.)

25.   A game you plan on playing.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole and The Stick of Truth later this year. I remain a South Park fan despite the rough quality of more recent seasons. To me, both of these games seem to embody one of my favorite aspects of the series, which is the child POV vs that of the adults: magic vs reality. They’re games about playing games as a kid, and one of the moments that really sold me on The Fractured But Whole is the one during the “Civil War” fight in the street when the fight actually pauses briefly for an irate guy in a car to drive past and yell at the kids for playing in the road. As “edgy” as South Park can be, there is just something charming about the whole scenario of playing fantasy adventure or super heroes.

26.   Best voice acting.

Uh… the English voice acting in Devil May Cry 3? Look—voice acting usually doesn’t make a huge impression on me unless it’s noticeably bad. Maybe I take it for granted. What I like about Devil May Cry 3’s presentation of its story is that it is both melodramatic and genuine. I think it has moments of anime ludicrousness—“Dude! The party’s over!”—but also genuine pathos—“I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.” It made an impression on me when I first played it because of how well it balances its sillier moments with family drama that I found surprisingly effecting.

27.   Most epic scene ever.

I’m not sure I think of things as “epic” or not. It felt appropriate to use something from God of War here—a series built on the promise of “epic” moments—but I’m not sure what I want to use qualifies. Similar to Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones there is a moment at the end of God of War III that I think really caps off the series very well. At the end of the final fight against Zeus and then his ghost(?), you grab the boss and are prompted to press the circle button to pummel him, and the more you punch the boss the more the screen fills with blood. The catch is that you can actually keeping jamming on the button forever here and that it is up to the player to realize this and finally let go. It’s a powerful moment of using direct gameplay/input to influence the emotional quality of what is essentially a cinematic scene. After everything the player and Kratos have been through together, of course the instinct is to grab the boss to get to “safety” from a game over in the QTE and then mash like hell to win. It’s incredibly effecting (to me at least) to have that “Stop, he’s already dead!” moment and realize you’ve been bashing a corpse for longer than was necessary. More than any other QTE in the series, it makes the player embody Kratos’s rage and (I think) be somewhat surprised or repulsed by it when they finally realize what they’re doing. It’s not “epic” so much as it is “draining,” but forcing the player to literally quit playing the game so that it can end is a nice finale to the series. (And as far as I’m concerned, the series chronology ended there. I'm not enthusiastic about what I've seen of the new God of War so far.)

28.   Favorite game developer.

PlatinumGames—for the simple reason that they’re basically the only folks around still making triple-A entries in the genre I most enjoy.

29.   A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.

Bloodborne (and the Souls series). Despite playing stuff like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, I was genuinely worried that the game(s) would be too difficult for me and that I would have bought a PS4 for a game I wouldn’t enjoy. (I literally did buy a PlayStation 4 for Bloodborne.) However, I did enjoy it, and it wasn’t too difficult. If anything, Ninja Gaiden in particular prepared me for it pretty well since that game also has overly-powerful, frustrating grabs and an emphasis on most actions being un-cancel-able once initiated.

30.   Your favorite game of all time.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is an astoundingly good game—made over a shorter development cycle with many recycled assets and using a new system of time management wholly unique to the series, it somehow managed to become one of the most compelling games I can think of. I love the creepier, moodier atmosphere and the way that it turned bit players in Ocarina of Time like the mask salesman into important, compellingly strange people. As much as critics tend to praise open world titles today and talk about advances in AI, I don’t think any game has sold me on a world as well as Majora’s Mask has. Every character has a story that plays out over the three day cycle, and revelations like the boastful sword master hiding in his back room for fear of dying or how Anju and her family relocate to Romani ranch to try to escape the moon’s falling help sell these characters as people in ways that “radiant” AI still can’t replicate (by virtue of it being random and not artfully orchestrated). The game makes up for a lack of proper, longer dungeons with many more shorter, self-contained side areas like the infested spider houses and the three-night delve into various graves on the way to Ikana Canyon. As a games player and as someone who wanted to make games, Majora’s Mask inspired (and continues to inspire) me in ways that only a select few other games—like Devil May Cry 3 (had to get that one in here again)—have ever done.

Source