On the Paper Trail: Halo Uprising (Graphic Novel)

Welcome back everyone we are on the Paper Trail once again as I take a brief turn of the plotted course to bring you this book. First off a story: I tend to stop by and check out libraries when I am in the close area of one on my travels. Today marks the 50th anniversary at the library and they had many events taking place. From a videogame truck, a full mini golf course in the building, a book sale, cupcakes, Elmo was even there at the bowling alley they made. There was fun to be had all around and more libraries should use this as some ideas on how to make their building a community center.

Naturally while looking on the shelves I came across their graphic novel section, sure it was not the greatest selection I have seen but it was WELL more then I have seen at many libraries in the area. I picked up this book, sat down in a chair and read it in full. This book took all of the positive vibes out of a festive atmosphere and just made me pissed off.

Oh where do I begin...

First although you see Master Chief on the cover on the book and is the first person you do see in the book, the book IS NOT ABOUT HIM. I can some up his cameos in a simple phrase "Michael Baysplosions can't take down Mr. Invincible." Now I often am harsh on story that just stick to the characters of the cannon and do nothing outside of the construct of the story, so you would think I would praise this direction.

However a good story this is not.

Our "hero" is a hotel attendant who in circumstance gets caught up in a firefight between the Marines and the Coven. An alien woman asks him where she can get a gun since she wants to fight with the Marines, and sure enough a solider dies and they pick up his weapons and fight along side them. Now during the course of this the hero does nothing more then help run away while the woman simply kills any threat they come across, there is a scene were she questions killing the aliens only to be swept away for a forced romance.

As you can imagine in comic book fashion they get caught soon after and ask to be taken to a key that no one knows about, except our hero and his brother. The brother is about to be killed and was tortured before giving away information that only his brother knows about and tells them to not destroy his last location of Cleveland. Yes, the key of Cleveland is not Lebron James' jump shot but a tie they used while playing Tolkien when they were younger.

Now I know I mentioned that Master Chief is not in the story as I am taking, but we see a lot of him kicking ass in between scenes for no other reason as to remind us that we want to see Master Chief and not an art major and an alien trying to fight the incoming threat. Sadly most of the "action" sequences take place here leaving all the characters in the real story standing around or running away.

Since I don't care about spoilers here we go. The hero finally does tell a Marine about the key and he is taken to a base in the sewers and tells us the story again. Well after a lengthy exposition he decides to use himself as bait to get to the mother ship by claiming he is the key. Before that however we have another forced romance scene where our alien woman tells us that he saved her life.

BULL SHIT!

The prior 30 pages just had him driving away from aliens while YOU WERE SHOOTING THEM! He did not save your life you saved his several times over, and outside of being a guy you chose at random to find guns at the beginning has no real value to you except owning a drivers license and having sight to find a vehicle.

Well then as you can guess the hero does get taken, tell them to kiss his ass, as a weapons destroys the ship, while Master Chief is looking on giving the proverbial thumbs up at his choice. We end however with the brother that explained that they wasted all this time trying to figure out something he made up and lost great causalities due to this as proof that Man will always survive and they will win the day. He then dies off panel.

This novel is just horrible. The main person you are selling to us has a cameo just to prove he is a bad ass, the main story is told with little to no character development, our female lead depends on a man when clearly she can go and take care of herself, the reach of events to take place to prove a point, and the end result to go and sympathize with our hero who simply plays a pawn at his brother's bluff is insulting at best.

Who the hell would think this is a good idea to get people interested in Halo?

Editor in Chief: Joe Quesada

This must be what Linkara and the Last Angry Geek felt like after they read One More Day. I need to take a break, see you back on the trail with a better book (I hope).

On The Paper Trail: God of War

Welcome back folks, on this installment of the Paper Trail I am going to be talking about the God of War novel. I am in a sprinting mode with my pile to get to the meat of the Connecticon Panel so I used my 3 day weekend to finish this book. Now I should mention that if you have played the first God of War game for the PS2, this book is exactly the same to it.

No kidding, this is the entire first game, and that is it.

Now you may be wondering to yourself, "Hey I liked the first God of War game, does this book add any insite into character development or allow tangential things to be explained?" My answer to you is no, it is the first game and nothing more.

This book attempts to be filled with the greek gods and stuctures itself similiar to the game where Act 3 begins the story, then we go into Act 2, with Act 1 coming to us in painful flashbacks of Kratos. Now for a game this clearly works since the game wants to go right for the action and allow the player feel like they are doing something.

As for a novel it tends to leave you hanging in the first half and until you actually get to Pandora's Box does not really take hold to keep a passing reader interested.

The authors managed to do something in the book that I question, and that is explaining the fight scenes of God of War. Now have you ever tried to explain a quick time event to someone who never played the game before and only had words to describe the actions? If you have you might have realized it is next to impossible to paint the appropiate picture without a frame of reference to draw off of.

This book just feels like a cash in to a popular game that gives the reader nothing more then what was presented to them in the game. Sure the inner monolouge of Kratos as he goes from set piece to set piece is supposed to be entertaining but it comes off more as a bore that I willed myself to get to the end of the book.

Next stop on the Paper Trail I think we are going to go close to the end of time, see you then.

On the Paper Trail: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Official Casebook: Vol. 1

Ladies and Gentlemen here we are, back on the paper trail and at the last manga book for a while. I will explain why in a little bit but as a recap we took a look at Zelda, Mega Man, WoW, among other titles however I can clearly say that the Phoenix Wright was the fist manga that literally had me go WTF out loud to myself.

For those who do not know Phoenix Wright is a point and click adventure that has a twist where you are a lawyer who is defending you clients in trial there is no win/lose situation right away but the various evidence you collect plus the connections you make with them will allow you to either win or lose the trial. This Manga does not cover that aspect, it is more of a slice of life of things that occur outside the court room.

This collaborative piece has various authors going and portraying the characters from this series as they would go and interact with them in vignettes about things that could take place in every day life. These range for adopting a kitty cat, piecing together why they actually choose their profession, finding a lost ball, and explaining to a little girl that a professional relation doesn't have to be a loving one.

This book does not take itself seriously even having two stories referring to the fact they are in the manga and needing to go and spice it up, one has a makeover from phoenix wright as done by the side characters while another holds a trial in an arena like environment playing to the crowd for dramatic effect.

There are MANY authors in this story and none of them connect with one another, which leaves you sometimes confused and lost in the various narratives that take place at random intervals of the Phoenix Wright saga. Now if all these stories took place say between the first or second games that would help the reader ground themselves in the environment the authors are working in, however this book has it scatter shot throughout the series. This allows non gamers to get into the stories without an issue but as a narrative makes it really disjointed.

Final verdict, if you enjoy Phoenix Wright style humor and the slice of life stories this is a pick up, otherwise there is nothing here that stands out to get you into the series based on this game. Next time we are going to do a double feature!

The Paper Trail is Going on the Road

I could not think of a better title for this one to be honest, however I wanted to let you all know that if you are close to the North Eastern part of the United States I will be doing the Paper Trail live at connecticon!

Yes it is a convention that has decided to take my video game book fascination and present it to you all in person. Which is one of the reasons why I will be pulling back slightly from the blog. I will still do reviews however some books I will feature in the panel will not be on here prior to its presentation.

Now if you are going, AWESOME! Let me know and I be happy to say hi, also if you have access to a decent camera and would like to film this even better! Mine is well...its seen better days and if you do film will try to not only post it here but also on TGWTG as well! W00T!

What could make this even better? ANOTHER PANEL! Yes this is not the only one I am doing, no no no no. I will also be doing a video game music panel in which I try to break the norms of what people think of VGMusic and educate them on awesome bands and composers.

So what have you got to lose? Tell the convention you want more of me and I hope to see you at Connecticon!

On The Paper Trail: Homefront: The Voice of Freedom

Yes Virgina, this game actually had a novelazation based off of it. You be suprised sometimes on books that simply get publised based on the game it is based off of, or the amount of titles that it spawns. For example Homefront was supposed to be a powerhouse that THQ was supposed to use to pave the way against your Call of Duties and Battlefields. Although it did pull a profit it simply was not that AAA winner THQ was going for.

Now as someone who only played the game breifly I thought it was average at best, sure there were flaws but the concept at its core, having a war taken place on American soil rather then a foriegn country added a depth that some series simply did not have. Now what does this book have to do with game?

Practically nothing.

Yes even if you have never played the game prior to picking up this book you can still very easily get into the narrative in itself. Honestly I thought this was a great move on the book's part, being penned by the author of Red Dawn you have some interesting things they go through.

Now the book is more or less a prequal to the game following Ben/DJ Ben/The Voice of Freedom on where he was before the events of the Train bombings and the EMP that took out most of the United States, we follow him as he meets up with various characters both in the game and outside of it as he vowes to get the information out there after an attack on Vegas.

Now to its credit it introduces the Korean not as a super evil bad guy being evil for the sake of it, but rather as a fanatical follower of the leader Kim John Un and his mission to go and expand the Korean empire. The primary reason they bombed the harmless city of Las Vegas is when they intercepted a radio transmission where DJ Ben was insulting the Koreans on the anniversity of the attack and wanted to surpress any idea of a revolt from its citizens.

Do the Koreans do evil things? Absolutely they are clearly made to be the bad guys in this novel, but slight looks into them show a meathod behind the madness that as a stregy justifibly make sense within their culture. One that stands out was killing a blogger who was antigovernment and then dropping leaflets with his picture on it saying to fight back against the Koreans. The Koreans thought it would bring a message that Americans to not do this in order to save their lives. However if you know Americans...well it did the opposite.

Since it was a prequal it actually explain how in the world America got to where it was and why the Korean did what needed to be done. In all honesty the games opening explains this as well but did so in a clunky meathod that simply made you question the valinity of this.

Now there is some of that in the chain of events and knowing some world politics you would call bullshit on the fact that North Korea would be the nation proposing peace to South Korea in 2013 or the fact that America turned back into an isolationist society after being ask to leave the Asian allies and the Middle East. If you can turn off your brain and not scream at the various and obivious moments where you can say that will never happen you can get into the narrartive enough to enjoy the characters as they first survive and then try to attack the Koreans at each opportunity.

All in all, this is a solid book. Sure it might be as good as Red Dawn or Freedom Fighters in some people's eyes but it has enough to go and engague you and sets up the event that lead into the story presented into the video game. Pick it up if this concept appeals to you. Next time on the club I am thinking of a historical book, stay tuned.

On the Paper Trail: Persuasive Games

Welcome back boys and girls we are back on the paper trail. This time we are going to hit the text books hard with the new title called Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames by Ian Bogost. Now as you can imagine this is a book for game designers who design video games. Whenever I read books talking about game design or game theory I tend to lose a little of myself in the process since I realize the process behind the curtain. So if you want to protect the innocence and play games for games sake do not look into these titles, however if you play games merely to study them (like myself) read on.

So this book talks about the essence of persuasion. What exactly it means to convince someone to go an either take action to do something or give an opinion on the means that the game presents itself. Now for the vast majority of the titles mentioned in this book you are going to not likely hear about in the past, since the topic of persuasion tends to go into either education, advergames, or political tones. However the core mechanics is as such that you can infer to use in other genres.

The core of the book is a discussion about how mechanics can be tweaked to the point to encourage an outcome that will make the player either do the appropriate action you want them to do (volunteer to support a local candidate), expose a fundamental flaw in the process something is using thus causing a call for action (boycotting Kinko's due to the poor practices they use) or even make social commentary that may influence people (eating healthy items is harder to do due to the food industry setting a premium on them).

The crux of the manner is simply writing the various procedures to influence the action that takes place to learn an inherent message that is not presented directly to the player, but rather inferred when analyzing the mechanics and drawing out a conclusion for it. Now as you might have guessed this can be a very powerful tool if used in the wrong hands. In all the cases the main message done took place and overall can either be a positive or negative message depending on how crafty the designers incorporate it. A great example pointed out by the book is the fact a beer company endorsed their beer to be incorporated into Tapper, a game which highlights the flaws of going out drinking.

At the end it poses the ultimate question of whether or not the creation of a game that's sole purpose is to convince the player to go and take a specific action. It leaves it ambiguous due to the nature of the titles of this book being both positive and negative in their messages, however ends with the notation that, as with all other media, we should know that the medium is doing this, realize why they are doing this, and then make our own decision to follow it or not.

This book allowed my analysis eye to open up a bit and made me go and look back at some titles that I actually own, one of which being Actraiser. The whole point of the game is to give your holy help to the various towns in the world by taking away the very threats given to them in the first place. However at the end of the game, once the ultimate threat is gone no one actually praises your deeds anymore and every city moves on to have a more free thinking environment then one governed by the God who actually created them. Is the game trying to convince me that religion is nothing more then a crux society uses to call for help, and once all them are gone will we forget about it?

All of these games are trying to convince you of something when you play whether they intended to or not, however the one point can be made is that in order to ensure the message gets sent correctly designers need to ensure that they are sending it correctly and as gamers we are recognizing this and take an informed stance on the issue rather to simply agree or disagree on it solely based on what the designers intended to be. If you are a game studier pick up this book. Next time will be...a novelization of a game. Which game will it be? Stay tuned to find out.

On the Paper Trail: Weird Careers vs Virtual Apprentice

Hoo boy, have we got an interesting pair of book for you today on the trail. On the left it is weird careers in science while on the right is the virtual apprentice. Both book clock under 70 pages and if you could not guess as of the covers, they were geared to the teenage audience and boy does it show. Now to have book to teens about various career paths and letting them know what is involved is something that I think EVERYONE should embrace, but sometimes they could be made of fail.

First the Weird Career, it has some filler that confused me. Do teens need a chapter on the types of video games that are out on the market? I could assume that if they picked up this book that they had a good chance of playing games in the past before and could omit that section for something more interesting for them to understand. It does go into the amount of work it takes to get the various aspect of game development and include a short interview with Will Wright that had some good points about his past, including how he did not finish college but still managed to find a way into the industry.

Virtual Apprentice on the other hand...well to put it bluntly it is too rad to be entertaining. I do not mean the good rad, I mean the Save by the Bell 90s rad that when looking at it you wonder if they had any sense into what they are doing. This book does include a nice Q & A section with various people in the industry that work day to day on games however the majority of the questions asked were done by children ages 7-11 and are more Nintendo Power related then actually job related.

If I were a teenager looking at these there is no way in hell I would have a good idea on what either one of the books were trying to appeal to, but if I must pick up one to give to a small child interested in the ins and out of the game industry, weird careers gets the nod since it does not assume you are functionally dumb about video games and tries to inform you about things you may not know.

Wow...that was painful next time I am going out of the YA section and into the grown up area to find something with some meat on it.

On the Paper Trail: Mega Man ZX Volume 1

We are back to the trail with our Manga celebration, needless to say due to me thirsting for something different on this list we are going to turn the corner on this after one more title, but for right now we are back to Mega Man and Udon with their ZX title. For those who do not know the ZX games are good Mega Man games that were on both the GBA and DS and are known for their old school difficulty and frustrating level designs. As for the story line it was not known for that being top notch but its an effort to say the least.

So what is this story about? Well yes it is about Mega Man ZX, but its the origin story. Mega Man in this scenario is a delivery man who is running late for a job where a package that needs to be delivered. This universe has the mavericks causing chaos and attempting to destroy the rebels who are fighting against them. One thing leads to another and the delivery agents get attacked from the Mavericks, our hero falls down a cliff with the package only to find that it is a Bio-Metal which fuses with him in his attempt to save other people and turns him into Mega Man X. His coworker also get fused with this and turns herself into Mega Man Z.

After some explanation on how the alliance attempts to counter act the Mavericks civilians get attacked by the Mavericks to expose both Mega Men and destroy them. Sure enough Mega Man Z gets mortally wounded and at her last ditch effort gives her Bio-Metal to Mega Man X therefore making him Mega Man ZX, after defeating the area boss Mega Man vows to avenge his friends' death by going to join the alliance.

There are two more filler stories about Mega Man outwitting boss characters and leaning it on a cliff hanger for volume 2. The story itself is ok, it is clearly aiming for a younger audience as most of the key players are of teenage years. The art is alright with small touches brought to you by game graphics like the power meters and some explosions. Everything else reminds me of a slightly more detailed chibi style, it works for the age group that it is trying to attracted to this title however older readers won't get anything out of it.

Overall this story is made for teens but has enough for older readers to go and pique their interest, the emotional Mega Man may have you think he listens to Lincoln Park however once he isn't emotional is tolerable to relate to. The Mavericks pose a good threat and has an interesting back story that they only tell you in small doses that will encourage you wanting to more. The story gives you enough back story and lays the foundation enough to make you want to know more of the environment however I could easily see people turned off by this younger iteration of Mega Man.

Final verdict, check it out at the library/book store and if it interests you then continue with the series otherwise avoid it. For the last installment for the Manga celebration we will take a look at a title I got from Too Many Games, stay tuned.

On The Paper Trail: The Dragons of Outland

Welcome back to Manga Month...or sooner. The amount it time it takes me to read Manga is much less an actual book so it might not be a month but expect me to at least finish up the titles I have on my book shelf. So where were we...oh yes.

Welcome back to the Paper Trail in the celebration of Manga, this time we are going to talk about the Shadow Wing series as we look into The Dragons of Outland (volume 1 of the series). Now I am going to specify that I do not play WoW, nor follow the story close enough to consider myself solid within the universe to claim to know all the details, so I am coming at this simply as a fresh point of view.

Our story involves our hero meeting up with a friend who just so happens to be a blue dragon that can turn into a human form every now and again. They go together after a message was intercepted from Lord Trueblade requiring urgency to a demon attack. The story takes great pleasure in not telling us anything having multiple pages of characters giving action to events that we are told are very uncharacteristic of them and just accept that it will be explained to us later down the line.

For a first volume it does not give too much away of the plot but instead gives us a lot of action instead. There are reasons the characters simply move from set piece to set piece, fight some enemies and move on. What story we do have is having our hero attempt to gain redemption for past actions (which are not explained) to regain the power of light.

Our evil foe however dealt with the same predicament and instead of searching for redemption simply changed sides since it was easier for him to do. The main goal from this story is to go and expand the empire to a portal that will allow easy access to the main land to go and take over the world. To accomplish this he uses the help from Orcs that are reluctant to serve but are honored to do so.

As for the beginning of a story, it does discuss the characters well and gives motivation (on the surface level) to what is driving them in this story. The action is fast paced and plentiful to encourage a sense of war and constant threat in this story, but the dialogue is suspect at best. Many things are said and you are often just as confused as the characters as to what is going on, the ending of this book uncovers the plot on how our villains are going to take over the world with...Shadow Wing. Which one could guess by looking at the cover of the book or knowing the title of this Manga series.

This is a tentative recommendation at best. If you are into WoW and want to explore the origins of Shadow Wing then by all means the story is going to get you interested in it. However if you are an outsider who really isn't into the lure of WoW, this might not be the best jumping off point for the series in manga form. Until next time, take care.

On the Paper Trail: The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Howdy partners and welcome back to the Paper Trail, you know what that May means right? It is Manga Month! This is where we go and take a look at various Mangas that relate to video games to celebrate Free Comic Book Day. So the first one we have is The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, based off of the game of the same name.

This Vizkids title and as you can image this book was made for kids. The story and direction ooze 7 year old it is somewhat sad. i understand this is a zelda game and that it is going to be summarized with just the main plot points, and that the side quest element is going to be eliminated so the story is more streamlined, I get this. However it is another thing to entirely lose any sense of character and suspense in the story.

To put it bluntly you know the hero is going to win because the plot device in each battle will come out exactly when it will be needed, the various characters will point Link in the right direction each time, and the only character growth will occur at the end when the hamfisted lesson takes place.

The art is done consistently and unless you are a fan of the game's direction you are going to be turned off by it. In short even if you are a zelda fan I am going to tell you not to pick this up. Its simplistic story and omission to many of the tones of the original game makes this a waste of time and a waste of the $5 I used to get this. Next time, let's hope for something better.

On the Paper Trail: Halo Encyclopedia

Welcome back to the paper trail, and in this installment we are going to look at something a tad fanboyish. Halo Encyclopedia is a over sized book on everything in the Halo universe, if one would not assume otherwise. This is going to appeal to many people who are fans of the series, however in a unique twist I am not a big fan of Halo, this series had game play that simply didn't appeal to me and I can not consider myself a fan, therefore this review is going to come from an unbiased opinion as one could get.

So the book is going to talk about the Halo universe, and it will go into detail about it. However many books like this often cater towards what we call "Gandalf Girthers." Originating in the Lord of the Ring series and has collectively carried over to any other sorts of fan base, the process of justifying various details using logic and facts presented in the works that may or may not be vital to the plot.

For example if you ever attempted to figure out how fast a speeder bike was on Endor by attempting to calculate the speed it would take to crack the average stormtrooper's helmet; have postulated the terminal velocity of a "little pony" as Rarity falls towards the Earth to determine how high cloudsdale was above the surface; or have ever attempted to calculate who would win in a race around the world between Superman and the Flash, then you have practiced the art of Gandalf Girthing.

Now the good news is that this book does not cater itself solely to these fans, there is information that one would need to answer various questions in the Halo universe, however the bulk of this book is told in a sudo-narritive as a historical tome that would be used as a reference for the UNMC historians. It goes into great detail into the story line describing various quotes from the game, what each mission was in the campaign and how it relates to the overall war, and separates itself between the various games without outright telling which vehicle came from which game.

Now you might be asking yourself that this is all fine and dandy, a look on halopedia can get me any bit of information that I would need to have on the series so what is the real motivation on me getting this book to place on my coffee table? Well the answer to that is simple, the artwork displayed is absolutely amazing.

I am serious you would think they would go with the graphics of the various games for the majority of the book, however I can say you have a mix of sketch work, full color paintings, computer graphics, and original art. For the vast majority of the time with this title I kept being bewildered at the various art in the background looking for the attention to detail the artist took to recreate the graphics of the game with various moods they were trying to emulate.

This book has all the information fans would like and brings enough to the table that a non fans can grab towards. Not a must own in my book, but worth seeking out to at least look at the amazing artwork and get a solid history of the Halo campaign without have any of the 4th wall being broken as you go and read it. Until next time finish the fight or at least that chapter in the next book.

On the Paper Trail: Confessions of the Game Doctor

Hello everyone and welcome back to the trail in this installment we are going to talk about a pivotal book in my personal life, Confessions of the Game Doctor. A book that I reread and received a new opinion on since I read it last two years ago. Now first off the name is something important, he is the co-father of video game journalism.

This person was credited for being the first person to use the screenshot in a video game review, yes he was in the game reviewing business that far back. He got the Oddessey 2 because he thought it would fair better then the VCS, and he was at CES back in the mid 70s. To say his work on Electronic Games was not pivotal is something of a lie to any gamer today.

Now when I first read this book I came away with the impression that the gaming coverage was vastly improved then what it once was back in the 90s. Bill talks about how he would use a phone and a Rolodex to contact PR reps to get information to add to a story off of a press release that was given to achieve a better story and how he would go to great lengths to have sketch artists and even translators go and read off Japanese player guides to simply go and get information for making modern guides.

Two years ago I thought with the advent of the Internet and my naive nature that we would learn from all of the boils of the past and overall become better then we once were. So two years later do I have the same opinion on the video game journalism market as a whole? Not even close, I actually believed we regressed in the journalism aspect of gaming media to be more of a glorified fans with access role then an active journalism.

This is going to take me a bit to explain.

Some of you may know I once was a review/reporter for the site blisteredthumbs.net and although the editor in chief did not see eye to eye with what I presented with as far as news stories went I had a wild month and a half to discover news on an almost daily basis on top of reviewing new games that were being released on steam.

There was a pivotal contention I had and it was my use of press releases, I tended to use them a lot. My rationale was simple, what better place to go and discover news then to read the PR statements given from the people behind the games themselves? Add some research to check on facts and compare to other stories at the time, plus a dash of opinions and leave it open for the reader to interpret. I was actually doing the same thing as what Bill did in the 70s but with email instead.

The turning point I had was a story I received from a contact in Australia (the Internet was world wide when I checked last) for a story that involved a 3 day event where students would learn the fundamentals of game design as well as have fun workshops in a 72 hour no sleep event. I was given the press release on a silver platter and was told that I had first access to this story. HOLY SHIT! An exclusive that was awesome, I was actually doing journalism at this point!

However since at the time I was on a writing probation I couldn't actually publish the story so I talked to a fellow site writer to see if he could get the okay from the EiC to run with the story, granted I knew it wasn't the best thing to report on at the time, but this was fresh news that I thought we could drum up as a "look at us we are truly covering the world's news."

Then it was rejected, did not even take 5 minutes to get that, stating that the material in the story was not relevant to the site.

I was just flabbergasted but kept pushing forward to try to find more and more unique stories from outside markets and uncover gold that was not being covered by the large sites like Destructoid or Kotaku. Sure enough it happened, by proxy no less, that I was let go from writing duties from the site and did not have a chance to plead my case or return. Ultimately what did me in was several mistakes done on my part on formatting, my inexperience on news writing, and the content of the stories I brought to the table.

I believe the term used was "too fresh." He wanted me to link the source to another news site and then post it to the site adding a dash of me. Which is okay however what will it take for you to then visit their site and stop looking at the original site? This is where I have to sigh is disbelief that truly the whole online journalism when it comes to gaming is having select individuals experience the actual product, get the scoops, and generate the incite and then pass the story around over and over again adding opinions that have no foundation on the original story itself.

Sorry for that tangent there, but looking back at my experiences I was trying to be the 70s reporters like Bill was doing when the industry is simply less of a formal journalist and now more of a character driven environmental. I prefer the former myself, but as many sites out there appeal to the latter and they are doing much much better.

This review did not include about the much the book did it? Well since I have already wrote a review of the book before it was difficult to simply retread on my opinion two years ago, however all the wiser I can tell you the stories mentioned here are a must if you want to be a games journalist. To remember the trials and tribulations that came from the early news days and how the industry changed in the 90s. Also Bill provides some interesting input into various court cases in the 90s and went 3 for 3 for the clients who hired his services.

In short if you are interested in gaming at its very early days from the perspective of a journalist/comic book writer at the time, this is an excellent read and highly recommend this title to you. Also it gives hope to people like me that there are still people out there that care enough to look for pockets of gaming journalism that are willing to act more professional then fan.

Off the Beaten Path: Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

Hello everyone welcome to...well we are not on the trail per say just merely off the beaten path. This will contain books that do not have a direct interaction with gaming however can easily be tied into them. It may sound confusing right now but when I talk about Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks you will get a better idea.

This book at its core is a chronicle of a midlife crisis and one man's journey to figure out his fantasy desires in the real world. It started with a D&D obsession as a teenager, and then college came and vowed never to play it again...until he turned 40. As with many people at that age people tend to think if they chose the right decision when they were younger and through a series of events find his old D&D books. To figure out where his fantasy urges lay in the real world he sets off for an adventure to discover the fantasy side of people.

This book goes into a modern D&D game session, a reunion of old D&D players, LARPs, Dragon*Con, Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) areas, Wizardrock (i.e Harry and the Potters), and yes even fantasy video games with the focus on WoW. Through this journey he talks about various reasons of escape as a means to cope with reality, and even going as far as trying to find a proper balance between the fantasy world and the real world.

Now if you have been following these reviews you know a title I have done earlier was Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal and the various themes of explaining how escapism is used to deal with real world issues on a person hit home in an unscientific manner. Jane uses the escape to allow us to achieve more then what we believe we can in reality with Fantasy Freaks argues that we escape to make reality simpler to manage and easier to control.

Both people are correct for vastly different reasons, I wonder if Fantasy Freaks went ahead and read Reality is Broken if he would agree with Jane's viewpoint or stick with his own.

As for the video game point of view he does talk about being addicted to video games, even talks to a self help survivor of it. Although the addict argues that video games are evil he simply states at the end that he was really into self help tapes, thus indirectly saying that it might not be video games but the addict within a person that latches on to a particular vice and rolls with it.

In the end he came to a realization where he realizes the true meaning of imagination and dreams, it is not to simply live in a fantasy land instead of reality. We escape or use our imagination in order to create. I believe he hit the nail right on the head with this, as imagination allow us to make world or things that we know do not exist and them into a somewhat tangible reality for people to interact with, some people take it to the extreme and actually try to immerse themselves into their fantasy 24 hours a day but as Jane pointed out in her book doing it for more then 3 hours a day is unhealthy for anyone to do.

All in all a book I can highly recommend if you ever dreamed about Harry Potter, Tolkien or even the fantasy genre itself. It gives a great perspective on how to balance the adult life with your inner child and has valuable advice to anyone who has the same issue the author has in this.

On the Paper Trail: Mega Man MegaMix Vol. 1

Welcome back to the trail partners and for this installment we are going to talk about Manga. You know Manga, its the Japanese comic Book where you need to read it backwards in order to read it properly. All kidding aside I have nothing wrong with manga, except that the majority of them are serialized so much that to do a proper review requires me to take out a loan to afford it all. So from the jump I am only talking about Volume 1 of mangas unless otherwise specified.

Now for Mega Man MegaMix it is a series created by Hitoshi Argiga and published by Udon. Udon has been known for taking Capcom licensed mangas and treating them with respect. Simply holding the art to the original form, leaving more then enough translation notes, and keeping everything as close to the original as possible. In short, this is a good publisher if these books are up your alley.

Now the book is actually comprised of three unique stories using the various characters from Mega Man 1,2 and 3 to great effect. The first story covers Mega Man 1 where Dr. Wily takes over the robots created by Dr. Light (Right if you are from Japan) and attempts to take over the world. Rock, a service robot demands to become a combat robot to save the humans and Light reluctantly does so. By happenstance Rock discovers the powers of coping abilities and uses them to defeat the various foes and defeats Wily before a cunning escape.

Story two has a more terrorist plot involved as Wily's own creations are used to launch giant skull satellites into orbit to destroy the world and have robot reign supreme. I won't spoil the ending of this one but needless to say Item 2 makes a great cameo in this story.

Story three has Wily recreating Yellow Devil from the original Mega Man but this time Wily's robots are working with Mega Man trying to stop Yellow Devil from causing more harm then good. The ending is bittersweet and reminds you that not all stories have to be used in cannon in order to be effective.

The art and attention to detail is amazing, various minor characters are used to great effect on being general goons and the action fits with the series itself. All the robot masters act appropriately and designed authentically to the various chibi incarnations that you have seen. The ending of the stories do include various character profiles to give you more information on each robot master that was presented in the story and a humorous message from the author detailing some changes he made to the story to make it work better.

All in all if you are a fan of the original Mega Man games give this a look through, currently there are three volumes available with a GigaMix being rumored as well.

On The Paper Trail: Reality is Broken

Howdy partners welcome back to the Paper Trail and in this installment we are going to look at the popular book by Jane McGonigal called Reality is Broken. Jane has recently spoken at GDC, PAX East 2011, has had her TED Talk gain notoriety and been on the Colbert Report.

Jane has been a big proponent on getting more games into gamers hands. Yes she wants gaming to save the world, if you think about it we have been gaming for over 10,000 hours, thats about the same amount of time that we have been in school since the 5th grade (barring perfect attendance). We are master gamers and to think that it is a waste of time is nothing more of being closed minded to the world.

This book talks about games, even going as far as describing the gaming lexicon to people of non gamers. How do you go and explain the "epic win" to a non-gamer who does no understand gaming itself? Jane not only manages to do this, but also talk about various games she has created to go and fix reality.

Reality is boring, dull and has no real motivation to go and achieve something. Gaming allows us to go and achieve something great every single time we play something, why not make the games entertaining, fun, and be a cause of us trying to go and fix the problems with reality? By simply curtailing games to real world scenarios and leaving open ended answers we can collaborate with people all over the world to go and solve problems in our everyday lives.

I totally agree with this theory, however there is one big hurtle that she does not address, and that is the gamers willingness to go and participate in these ventures. Almost all of the examples she mention are ARGs (Alternative Reality Games) where by the game and reality have a common plane of existence to interact with one another. Now there have been ARGs in the past (see Perplex City) where it flopped due to the lack of participation from gamers as a whole. The fact is when something like Find the Future comes along and when I tell people about it I get an overwhelming "meh."

Gaming has many facets, some people like to stick to their FPS, RPGs, or even D&D campaigns. However to consider yourself a true gamer, you need to be willing to play ANY game of any capacity. Once you get to your gaming life as an elder game player then you can benefit from the things McGonigal talk about.

All in all this is a fascination book on where games need to go in order to change the lives of mankind. We have the technology and know the techniques to execute them, all we need to do now is remove the stereotype of games being nonproductive and actually a benefit to the society as a whole. Once we achieve this anything is possible to be solved in the context of the game.

On the Paper Trail: Masters of Doom

Howdy partners welcome back to the trail, in this stop we have ourselves a geek classic here. Masters of Doom tells the tale of John Carmack and John Romero, how they once started as lowly programmers trying to push the edge of technology and somehow changed the entire culture of gaming for better or worse.

This story is madly fascinating by being brutally honest about the Johns and their rise to power. Carmack is a self motivated nerd who just wants to hammer out the code to get the job done, Romero is an experimental jackass that takes no solace in anyone else's emotions. These people are in essences uncaring pompous pricks that are really good at computers, they do the things their way and everyone hates them because of it. However at the end of the day there is still a passion that you can not deny from them.

This book is blunt, in the same manner as the Johns and pulls no punches with foul language and tells it like it was. It includes great mini biops on various people you know (American McGee and the ID Mom were among my favorites) as well as incorporate the culture at the time as well. One fact that I found hilarious was that one day after the US government forced the ESRB to come into existence Doom was released to the public via shareware.

It also tells you that both together managed a rise and fall for the glory that was Doom and Quake I, and how they were apart made Ion Storm and Id crash from its mighty perch. The various business dealings would make you head tilt upon how Eidos managed to put up with all the nonsense that Romero was cooking, or how in the world no one thought Carmack was a terrible business owner and not just a hard worker.

This book is a time capsule about early computer gaming, the excitement of having two people and a bastion of friends pushing computer hardware to the absolute maximum and creating the games that they wanted to have created and making a boat load of money using unorthodox methods. The book does not sugar coat anything it simply tells it like it was and excepts you to be mature enough to think it is awesome or just question why Microsoft would allow a Giant Vaginal door to take place with the members of Gwar hitting people with dildos (yes that actually happened).

If you grew up in the 90s this will be a blast from the past that you will love to revisit, if you are wondering where trolling started it also tells you that as well, or if you wondered how two people with no business skills managed to finance an empire based around video game it talks about that as well. A must read if you are a gamer to find the zenith into FPS that is still tried and true to this day.

On the Paper Trail: Gamers...in the library?

Howdy gamers, welcome to the first stop on the trail and in this installment we are going to talk about video games and libraries. Sure you may think that these two things would not go hand in hand with one another however recently studies have shown that this can be a power house mix to attract teenagers and children to the hallowed book hall.

So the goal of this book is simple: get more people to the library and have video games to be one of those "services" that are made available to the patrons. Eli Neiburger is both a librarian and a gamer and has seen his hobby become a major success in his district and has the plan to make it a success for your own.

Now as you might imagination the core of this book is not for "gamers" but rather librarians who may or may not know about video games. Therefore several parts of this book address things like which games you should look into, what consoles you may want to get, what cabling is required to set up an event and the logistics of the event to attract people into coming.

As a facilitator it does an amazing job into breaking down the various aspects of planning of the tournament season at your library, from convincing a person who does not think video games belong in the library to using your budget to get the most bang for your buck. It breaks things done into simple terms and tells even the non technologist how to pull an event like this off and keep the gamers coming in.

As a gamer the biggest takeaway from this is the tournament system they use to ensure that no one would be bored at the event. As well as how the rules need to be both structured enough to be understood and flexible enough to change on the fly in case an issue arises. This in combination with how to set up a room for a tourney comes into play if you were wanting to set up one at a convention, your basement, or in another public space. This is a great guide to ensure you get the maximum amount of fun from the experienced player to the novice.

All in all this book was made for librarians, as it was published by the ALA directly. Yes the American Library Association has published a book on how to create video game tournaments at your local library to encourage gamers to come. If that alone does not tell you that libraries are not cool I am not sure what will. If you are an adult that wants to run a tournament to attract people to come and keep coming back to your public venue this is right up your alley.

As for a gamer this is something you may want to skip since it deals with more of an open venue management rather then the nuts and bolts on setting up ways to get the clan structure set. Plus since it is an ALA book the price point of this one is $50. Which in my opinion is way too much for you to go and purchase this title, my best suggestion is to check this out at your local library (heck my library had it on its shelves for me to go and check out) take some notes and return when finished. You can check out the book on Amazon which provides you with a nice Kindle version for those reading on the electronic device.