A couple years ago, I stumbled upon a game called Masq. It’s a simple game with the art style of a comic book — a bunch of still frames with no sound — but each choice you make affects the final outcome in significant ways. I played at least four times and never had the same ending twice.

I’d forgotten about Masq until I played Heavy Rain. They’re both interactive dramas (a sparsely-populated genre, to say the least), but the new PS3 offering aims to meld the forking plotlines of Masq with the atmosphere and immersion of high-tech games.

Developer Quantic Dream is aiming to break new ground in both story and storytelling. To distinguish between them, I need only recall Indigo Prophecy, the studio’s previous game: it used fascinating storytelling mechanisms to convey a story that was utter shit.

Well, they’ve fixed that part. I spent the entire game somewhat fearful that the plot would veer into WTF territory, but it didn’t. Instead, I got a simple-yet-compelling noir plot, plenty of meaningful choices, and a unique ending. No, I mean a unique ending; there are seven in total, the most I’ve seen in a game since Chrono Trigger.

The main story is about eight hours long, but I’ve already finished two playthroughs, and I know I’ll revisit Heavy Rain at least once a year to remind myself how a game should tell a story.

The fantasy that is indulged when Bob Costas speaks breathlessly about an upcoming ski race where he already knows exactly what happened is no longer even a fragile fantasy; it's a blatant fiction that everyone knows about.

— Linda Holmes

Image: Bus Route of Tears

Misspelled protest signs have become a strange, hilarious art form over the past year. Terrence Nowicki reminds us that we only laugh at them to hide our own tears.

I’m always a little confused by this stuff. Are we supposed to believe that Barack, Michelle, and Anita Dunn are secretly Maoists, but they keep forgetting to actually seize power in a violent coup and instead got confused and put internationally famous neoliberal economist Larry Summers in charge of economic policy?

— Matthew Yglesias

For most sequels (though Mass Effect 2 is a notable exception), my expectations are largely diminished — even when the original is one of my favorite games of all time.

That’s why I was satisfied with Bioshock 2, even though it’s not as good as the first. The gameplay improvements (dual-wielding weapons and plasmids!) are much appreciated. The setting and backstory are solid; it was nice to see how Rapture’s other half lived, and how the city’s class stratification laid the grounds for a collectivist counter-movement.

But the plot, when viewed up close, grew more and more incoherent as the game progressed. The last two hours are spent communicating with an ally over radio; I started to feel like her only purpose was to explain a plausible plot rationale for why you had to go to place X and do thing Y, over and over again.

The main villain is depicted as the ideological opposite of Bioshock’s Andrew Ryan. But Bioshock documented the events that turned an ambitious mogul into a hypocritical authoritarian. Sofia Lamb, on the other hand, has no depth to her villainy, and seems to undergo no character development in the two decades she’s spent under the ocean.

But, again, I nitpick because I love. I’m in the middle of my second playthrough and will be first in line for Bioshock 3.

Don't slip a concrete dildo into someone's box of Fruit Loops. They won't be happy with your Morning Breakfast Surprise. Put the concrete dildo in a clearly labeled box, with instructions. Then when someone encounters a problem, "Hey, something is screwing me here. Maybe it's the concrete dildo?" at least they know to ask.

— The Higgs Bozo

Surprisingly, there was no press release with a rationalization for the name or any explanations of how the logo represents cutting edge technology and XFINITY's commitment to its customers. Or whatever. The new name feels at the same time pompous and clichéd — as if there is no brighter horizon than the infinity of XFINITY but, really, nothing is as depressing as a badly placed "X," a gesture better reserved for extreme games and products, for bad dot-com era start-ups and for strip-club dancers not named Destiny. It might sound more fun than "Comcast" but at least Comcast sounds like a real company with almost fifty years of experience.

— Brand New

Since the 2006 season, the most zealous of Saints fans have gone to the airport to welcome the Saints back from road games. After landing, players and coaches leave in their own cars — but fans line up along the path to the airport exit, forming a gauntlet of adulation. As he creeped along, coach Sean Payton hoisted the Lombardi Trophy out of his sunroof.

Saints 31, Colts 17

The last 24 hours have been warm and tingly. Congratulations to Drew Brees — who finally might get treated like the best quarterback in the league — and to the rest of the team, too. The best part of winning the Super Bowl? The victory is preserved for posterity by NFL Films. It will be shown on countless TV specials and DVDs in awe-inspiring slow motion with orchestral accompaniment.

On one hand, it boasts a story of comparable quality and a leap forward in combat gameplay. It easily warrants more than one playthrough.

On the other hand… must they excise so much of what makes a game an RPG? I’m speaking mostly about the level system, looting, item customization, and a handful of other things that were completely retooled from the previous Mass Effect.

But in one other aspect, too. In the real world, stuff exists on the edges of the frame. Stuff you’ll never end up examining in detail, but which exists even so. This stuff is important! It lends crucial verisimilitude to the game’s universe! When it’s trimmed, as it seems to have been in Mass Effect 2, that universe feels stark and linear, as though you were on a “save the galaxy” amusement park ride. Tycho explains it better.

I was at the Saints' first playoff victory in 2001. On the way out, walking along the concourse, we were high-fiving perfect strangers as they walked in the other direction. Last night, my parents called me as they drove home from where they'd gone to watch the game. I could hear people yelling, cars honking, and fireworks cracking.

Saints 31, Vikings 28

Unless I've been dreaming for the last eight hours, the Saints are going to the Super Bowl. Here, Tracy Porter celebrates the interception that kept the score tied at the end of the fourth quarter.

Useful if you're working on a website meant for mobile devices. Firefox 3.5 has geolocation, but I use this with Safari and GreaseKit. Replace with whatever latitude and longitude you prefer, naturally.

if (!('geolocation' in navigator)) {
  navigator.geolocation = {
    watchPosition: function(success, f, options) {
      var broadcast = function() {
        var position = {
          coords: {
            latitude: 30.2696384,
            longitude: -97.74947,
            accuracy: 10000,
          },
          timestamp: (new Date()).valueOf()
        };        
        success(position);
      };
      
      broadcast();
      window.setInterval(broadcast, 10000);
    }
  };
}

A stream-of-consciousness browsing session brought me to this writeup on how the Source engine deals with lag. Also serves as a parable for web developers — don’t rely on the client to validate input, for the same reason that a game server can’t trust a participant to tell it if that bullet hit anything. See also Ninjam, a clever latency workaround for online jam sessions. And consider that even without the inherent delays of Internet traffic, the speed of light would be a constraint on distant collaboration.

You don’t need me to tell you how good this game is; the rest of the gaming world got there first. I don’t know if any one game can be a “system-seller” — but if you already own a PS3, it’s inexcusable not to own Uncharted 2.

It’s not just good; it’s unusually, surprisingly good. It’s unusual for a game to be this much better than its prequel. It’s unusual for a game to make such large graphical leaps over its prequel on same-generation hardware.

But most of all, it’s unusual for a game to have this much polish. Video games are developed according to rigorous schedules, lest the technology become outdated before the game’s done. Nearly all games, regardless of quality, have to scale back their ambitions in order to ship on time.

Maybe there’s stuff that didn’t make it into Uncharted 2. But it doesn’t look that way from the outside. If Naughty Dog have figured out how to streamline the game development process, then they possess a competitive edge far more important than tech specs.

Maggie

My parents’ Yorkie rests atop my brother-in-law Mike.

Cat in a basket

Stayed with friends in Houston last night. Claire, one of their cats, prefers the basket (which is meant for holding cat toys) over his cat tent.

Starlite Theatre

Took this today while passing through Brenham on my way to Houston. A few minutes on Google tells me this theatre was opened in the 1950s and closed in 1980.

I was saying around the office that I think what was missing from the Lieberman public option sellout deal was a healthy dose of liberal catharsis. Like if Lieberman got the leadership to agree to drop the public option, but in exchange Bernie Sanders gets to slap Lieberman five times in the face as hard as he can.

— Matthew Yglesias

Incorrect

I feel like Prof. Layton and the Diabolical Box is intentionally messing with me as part of some oblique meta-puzzle. Is this a geometric font or not? When was the last time you saw a font with a perfectly round O but an oval C?