Liv Quinn

Thoughts on games, fiction, and other fun stuff.

[livjq]

Recently, I took a trip to Centralia, Pennsylvania, a nearly abandoned ghost town that became famous because of an active coal fire that has raged under the former borough since 1962. There are only a few residents left and the graveyards outnumber the buildings. It’s a spooky place, with pavement encircling empty lots. The only remaining building is the beautiful Eastern Orthodox Church that overlooks everything.

[livjq]

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It's been awhile since I've posted an amiibo update. So I'm giving the people what they want. My collection is at about 66% completion. ...... #amiibos #amiibo #videogames #figures #nintendo #videogame #mario #pikachu https://www.instagram.com/p/Bza_F6qHIV1/?igshid=4k39kxli5w2s

[livjq]

Thank you @fugitiverabbit for taking my dumb idea for a shirt and making it a beautiful reality. https://www.instagram.com/p/By6TUf_J-bN/?igshid=zdjj544te9ko

[livjq]

What a perfect fit. #yoshi https://www.instagram.com/p/BvMjfWWAiTP/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1pgsmvimu35qu

[livjq]

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IT'S CHRISTMAS CHIMI https://www.instagram.com/p/Br0HCQzgwMg/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1125xiw52y356

[greetingsfromcast-deactivated20]

Greetings From 4: My 4 Dads (Lost Episode) | Greetings From

It's a blast from the past as we pull a lost episode out of the vaults. Listen to our intrepid podcasters talk about Captain Spirit, Papa & Yo, God of War (2018), and much more.

We pulled a podcast treasure from the vaults. Listen to one of our “lost episodes” where we talk about: 

🦸Captain Spirit

🤖Papa & Yo

👴🏻God of War (2018)

and much more!

http://www.greetingsfrom.zone/episode-4

[livjq]

I haven't had a chance to promote my podcast on Tumblr yet, please give it a shot!

[livjq]

I found this old picture while cleaning out my phone. I'm dying. https://www.instagram.com/p/BrAzp5Mgo5h/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1re8gaeh15ntv

[livjq]

3 Things I Learned From Making My First Zine

You may have heard that my partner Ruby and I made a zine about Fallout: New Vegas. I wanted to take some time to write down what I learned about making a zine so that you can learn from my mistakes.

But first…

Please Download My First Zine For Free!

That’s right, you can go download a pay what you want copy of Memoirs of the Mojave on Itch.io right now. Use the widget below or follow this link:

Now that the shameless self-promotion is done, here are three takeaways I got from making a zine:

1. Plan Out Everything And Choose Realistic Deadlines

Wishing that you had spent more planning is the first thing that nearly everyone says in their post-mortems. It is still important to say that this project came to down to the wire. We were printing and binding books the night before the zine fair.

The fair helped us because it gave us an unmovable deadline which was the motivation we needed to finish the book. Unfortunately, tabling at the fair meant that we could not move our deadline.

I made changes to the story up until the moment we printed it. While I’m happy with what we made, having smaller mini-deadlines would have kept me on track. A finished story would have also given Ruby more time to paint.

Hey Look Ma, I Made That

2. Know Your Audience

I love Fallout: New Vegas. It’s a game with a compelling story and a stunning aesthetic. But, it wasn’t until I tried to sell a zine about the game that I realized how much of a video game bubble I live in.

The other zines at fair that we attended focused on personal stories, art, and political action. Even people who played New Vegas were confused about where in the Fallout timeline the story was set and how it related to their experience.

Additionally, we only had hand-bound zines with high quality paper at the fair. To earn back the cost of materials we needed to sell the zine for $15 a copy. Compared to other zines at the fair, this was exorbitant. Creating a cheaper, photocopied edition would have been a better fit for the fair.

Goddamn That’s A Good Dam

3. Take Pleasure In The Act Of Creation

I wasn’t happy with the amount of interest we generated with this zine. We put tens of hours into writing, painting, and printing the zine. I didn’t think we were going to make money, but I thought more people would care. Looking back at what we made, I should have realized that was never the point.

I worked with my partner on an art project. We made a real book. It was a small book, but you could hold it in your hands.

This was also the first time I’ve written fan fiction. It was fun, and I learned more about the Fallout universe than I ever thought was possible. Creating the zine also inspired me to play through New Vegas again, with a bunch of mods of course.

Finally, I was also able to buy a bunch of zines from fellow local artists. Getting to meet people and talk to them about their art is awesome.

If you make a zine, I would recommend not getting hung up on selling anything. Whatever you make is for you. If somebody else likes it, cool.

Oops, All Zines

So, What Now?

I learned so much from making my first zine. Working with my partner on a creative project was rewarding and seeing the words that I wrote inspire paintings was awesome. I plan on making more zines and will continue collaborating with other people. Moving forward, my zines are for me and they are going to be even weirder.

[livjq]

Breaking down my first video game secret

Do you remember the first time that somebody showed you a mystery or easter egg in a video game? Can you recall the thrill of someone finding out that a game could be more than you thought it could? Did your mind start racing to figure out what else could be out there?

I have thought a lot been about game secrets since I watched the NoClip documentary about rediscovering mystery. Nowadays, I have limited time and cannot spend hours poking and prodding at the limits of video game worlds. I miss this sense of mystery and often find myself falling down a YouTube hole of videos about game secrets. So, I wanted to revisit the first time someone showed me a secret in a video game.

My first video game console was a second-hand Nintendo Entertainment System that was ten years old when my family bought it. The old console came with a bunch of games ranging from the confusing Silent Service to the straightforward Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. Many of the games did not make a lot of sense to a kid, except Super Mario Bros 3 (Mario 3).

I played Mario 3 for hours, and while I got most of the basics, I was still a terrible player. I understood how to crush enemies and throw shells but rarely beat World 1. With this experience, I thought I had a clear idea of the game mechanics and levels.

The mechanics of SMB3

To understand how this secret works and why it is cool, I will go over how a few of the basic mechanics in Mario 3. The game has eight different worlds which are comprised of levels that scale in difficulty. Most of the levels are straightforward side-scrollers, where the player must overcome obstacles such as blocks and enemies. The player can jump, shoot fireballs, and, in some limited circumstances, fly. The levels can vary in difficulty, with challenge spikes at the Fortress and castle levels.

Only a block

Source: http://protipoftheday.com/node/496.html

Placed throughout the level are large blocks that the player can jump on to get to higher places. These blocks are indestructible and innocuous. There is more to these blocks that we will get to later.

I want to fly

Source: Edited map from http://www.mariouniverse.com/maps-nes-smb3/

The first world in Mario 3 acts a tutorial that introduces players to the core concepts of the game. In the first level, there is a flat area that is unremarkable except for a few flying enemies. This flat space acts as a training ground for one unexplained aspect of the game, flying.

If a player can run along a flat area, they can build up speed by holding down the B button. By building up momentum, the player can fill their “P-meter.” Players that have a full “p-meter” while in raccoon or tanooki form can fly for a limited amount of time. Flying allows players to access parts of the world that they cannot get to any other way.

Source: Super Mario Bros 3 (NES) Playthrough / Walkthrough: World 1 ½, Chilean Retrogamer

The game does not explain the “p-meter,” and when I played Mario 3, I did not have the game manual. I figured out that Mario could fly by playing the game and following context clues. The developers left hints in this section by having coins that are just out of reach.

Sieging the Fortress

Every world has at least one level called a Fortress. These Fortress levels are dark corridors full of lava pits, enemies, and obstacles. At the end of a Fortress, the player must win a mini-boss fight in a small room. These challenging levels offer a taste of what the player will see at the final level of the world. Fortresses seem to be straightforward levels that players progress through while dodging obstacles.

To recap the mechanics of Mario 3:

Players move through the world from left-to-right, with limited verticality

There are walls and obstacles that players cannot phase through

The player can fly if they have a full “p-meter” and are in the right form

The Fortress levels are tests of skill that may confuse and kill players

Hiding in not so plain sight

Now that we have reviewed the mechanics, we can get back to the secret.

When I was a child, my older cousin would come to my family’s house for events. We would often hide in my room, away from the party, and play video games.

One time, while I played Mario 3, he became bored because we could not get past the first world. He told me to use the warp whistles. I had no idea what a warp whistle was and why I needed one. I remember him saying, “Let me show you something cool.”

My cousin then went to the first level in the first world. I had played this level at least 100 times and knew it well. He jumped on top of a white block in the level and pressed down on the controller. Mario sat there for a few seconds, crouched and grabbing his hat.

I did not think that anything would happen, but then Mario phased through the block and fell behind the level. Behind the stage, Mario could walk through the level without having to jump over obstacles. Getting access to behind the scene was unfathomable to me

In addition to walking behind the stage, he entered a hidden door at the end of the level. Once in this secret room, my cousin got a warp whistle from a Toad. The Toad said that the whistle would take the player to “A far away land.”

Source: Super Mario Bros 3 - All Warp Whistle Locations, Typhlosion4President

I begged my cousin to use the whistle so that I could see where it would take us. He smirked and told me to wait. He then went to the Fortress in World 1.

After getting through most of the Fortress, my cousin double-backed and built up P-speed. With the meter full, he could fly above the level and jump over a solid wall that I thought was a ceiling. He flew into a secret door that led to a hidden room that held a chest. When my cousin opened the chest, he received another warp whistle.

Source: Super Mario Bros. 3 Warp Whistles - All 3, EmeraldLantern2814

After just learning that warp whistles existed, finding two in the game was remarkable. The whistle allows players to go to The Warp Zone. This Zone shows all the levels in the game, which the player can choose from at will. Players who use a whistle while in the Warp Zone can immediately go to the last level of the game.

So, imagine me, a young kid who felt accomplished after beating only a few levels in Mario 3 now having access to the entire game. I could see all worlds without having to struggle through every level. I found giant enemies, lakes of lava, and even rideable shoes.

What else is out there?

This event was a spark for me. I played through as many levels in Mario 3 as I could to try to find more whistles. Video games felt mysterious, and every pipe in Mario could contain a new world. I started talking to my friends and comparing notes about the games we played.

Only a few of my friends had access to the internet, so we traded rumors and tested everything. I remember trying to catch Mew under the truck in Pokémon Blue and hitting signs with a motorcycle to unlock levels in Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I was shocked when we learned you could actually catch a Missingno.

Secrets make the worlds of video games feel larger and mysterious. Even rumors give players a springboard to expand a game’s world. From there, we find canon mythologies and create urban legends. For me, secrets still make me feel like that kid who is discovering that games are not always what they seem.

[livjq]

Hey y'all @fugitiverabbit and I are at the Sugar City Zine Fair today until 5pm! Please come down and say hi. We have very limited physical copies of our zine, but free digital copies. (at Sugar City) https://www.instagram.com/p/BneICpRH_Hd/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1t0z445bkf0gn

[livjq]

.@fugitiverabbit and I spent the night binding our Fallout: New Vegas zines for the Sugar City Zine Fair! P.S. I suck at using a needle. https://www.instagram.com/p/BnaIX6Ln7S5/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=mr3apuzlb2pq

[livjq]

The Aesthetic Horror Of 90s Video Games

Resident Evil for the PlayStation should not be a scary game. The character models are simple, the textures are muddy, and sometimes, it is hard to things apart. It still scares the crap out of me.

I do not like playing scary video games. I have always been a coward, especially when it comes to making my characters press forward into the unknown. This made the 90s a difficult time for me to play games.

90s Games Are Wrong

32-bit era games feel off-putting. The PlayStation and N64 make games feel oppressive and claustrophobic. I have played through the entire Dead Space series and dabbled in the Five Nights At Freddy's series. I do not think these series compare to the seeping dread that games from the 90s give me.

For many 90s games, a horrific aesthetic does not feel like intentional design. Instead, it seems like the minds behind these games were grappling with both the technical limitations of the consoles and the new ways of think about 3D space. For me, the three hallmarks of this style are low-resolution textures, awkward camera angles and extensive use of fog.

Wait, What Is That?

The time before bump mapping

Goldeneye is an amazing game that broke boundaries for console first-person shooters. It is also difficult for my eyes to look at. I found it hard to tell what the background is and what an enemy is. This is also the case with Tomb Raider, Syphon Filter, and countless other games from the era.

With only muddy textures and sharp polygons to rely on, my brain filled in the holes. The giant bugs in Jet Force Gemini became things of terror. The weird blobs in Silent Hill wracked me with fear. Even Solid Snake and Cloud Strife look like terrifying aliens made of blocky pixels.

How Can The Camera Be This Bad?

There are surely no zombie dogs in this hallway.

Game developers that cut their teeth on 2D consoles should not receive blame for having to create a new system of camera control. That being said, unwieldy camera controls are a hallmark of the 32-bit games. Right stick camera control was not the standard and the D-pad or shoulder buttons were a poor replacement.

This lack of standardized controls means that developers had to get creative with their camera implementations. Resident Evil uses a static camera to build dramatic tension and create jump scares. The camera controls in Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64 are not supposed to be scary. But, I wrestled with them while trying to avoid charging enemies. Every encounter is a potential jump scare when you have no idea where the attackers are coming from.

The Fog Of War

But it’s a good green fog

Heavy fog is the quintessential look of a 90s game. Whether it is a light mist or a black darkness, these consoles have trouble generating large 3D spaces. Not being able to see enemies and having them disappear into inky blackness is freaky. What about the games that are not mean to be scary?

Playing Superman 64 is a scary experience and not empowering. You cannot see anything beyond five feet in front of you and buildings pop in out of nowhere. The Misty Bog level in Spyro the Dragon also has an unsettling look. Rather than the sunny, bright color palette, a sickly green fog covers the world. The weird, flesh-eating trees do not help.

A Bad-Good Look

Some critics have pointed out that the transition from the 16-bit era to 32-bit consoles was a step backward in the graphics department. I can understand how people who loved the sprites of Final Fantasy VI would be let down by character models from Final Fantasy VII. However, art does not need to look pleasing to be memorable.

The aesthetic of the 32-bit era stands out because it does not look quite right. Bubsy 3D has a striking look that was parodied by Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. King's Field is an awful and confusing video game that was the precursor to the Dark Souls series. 90s games are a difficult to look at mess, and I love them.

[livjq]

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She just looked so sad https://www.instagram.com/p/BmywPPgh3fx/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1fm70cwf7louc

[livjq]

Completionism, DOOM, and Everybody's Gone To The Rapture

When I play a game, I like to imagine I will just let myself have fun with it. But after I complete a level I hear a voice say “You missed a few collectibles back there, maybe you should use a guide?” This voice grows into me opening a YouTube guide and replaying all of the levels. This culminates in maxing out skill trees and getting everything done in the name of completionism. After I'm done with the game, I question if I actually enjoyed myself or if I let the fear of missing out take control. I found myself asking these questions after playing DOOM 2016 and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (EGTR).

These games could not differ more in how they handle their story and gameplay. The narrative in DOOM is a vehicle to get players from one aggressive death arena to another. EGTR is a somber game about loss and regret where the only verb is a slow paced walk.

With both of these games, I struggled to get past the introduction and restarted them a few times. DOOM pushed me to keep moving forward but the constant reminder of missed collectibles weighed on me. EGTR was impenetrable at first and I hoped that finding the secrets would help me understand it.

Doom is a power trip

With DOOM I collected all the secrets and maxed out the weapon upgrades. I felt exhausted and it wasn’t until I replayed earlier levels as a fully-powered character that I felt happy. I started to question if I could have had a better experience by letting go and just playing the game. The game does not even require you to collect all the secrets, you finish it with 20 extra upgrade points.

While playing EGTR I checked every home and bucolic backyard, trying to find all the scenes and radios. The problem was that I went so far off the critical path, I broke the game's scripting. I almost missed an entire section of the game because I wanted to make sure I got everything. My refusal to follow the game’s light guides caused me to unintentionally skip several important scenes.

My horrible, horrible notes

Upgrading all the weapons in DOOM let me play with my favorite gun in the game (the Sniper Rifle Gauss Cannon is amazing). Finding out more about Stephen Appleton’s relationship with Lizzie made me hate him even more at the end of EGTR. Trying to unpack my instinct to beat a game 100% has made me rethink my relationship to them. Unlocking the secret endings in Hatoful Boyfriend and We Know The Devil made me love those games. But, finding all the hidden terminals in Halo 3 didn't give me much.

I am starting to believe that the best games don’t make you choose. Breath of the Wild is a joy to play even if I never get all the Korok Seeds. Pony Island gave me an interesting narrative even without finding all the tickets. I may be coming to terms with the fact that I have limited gaming time. Losing free time is liberating in a small way, now I can focus on experiences that matter. No more checklists, only experiences.

[livjq]

Why I'm Still Playing Fallout: New Vegas

This is a blog post from 2014 that I’m reposting because I have yet again gone back to New Vegas.

Fallout: New Vegas has been one of those games that I come back to once every couple of months. It is by no means the greatest game ever created, it has tons of problems with repetitive gameplay and sometimes being flat out broken. But I've beaten it before and I keep coming back to it. Returning to the game feels like coming back home. 

Fallout: New Vegas is a twisted world of 50s americana, with some oppressive loneliness and dark humor to keep you interested. The reasons you should give Fallout: New Vegas a shot are the interesting story choices, the bevy of mods that fix most of the original problems, and the depraved Western background

To give you a bit of background, the Fallout series is a post-apocalyptic role playing game with a bit of dark humor thrown in. The world is an alternate history of the United States wherein the world is basically the future as seen through the eyes of a 1950s World of Tomorrow exhibit. This world has cars that run on nuclear energy, the Cold War escalated and is now fought between the US and China. The games take place hundreds of years after nuclear war between the United States and China have destroyed civilization and irradiated the entire planet, leaving only a desert called the Wasteland. New Vegas is the Fifth entry in the Fallout franchise and was made by the studio Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian was founded by key people from Black Isle Studios the original creators of the Fallout series. The game features first person shooting as well as a stat based targeting system called VATs. The series is owned by Bethesda, creators of the Elder Scrolls series and features an open world. Like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you can do the missions for the game in any order or choose not do any of them and just mess around in the world.  The openness of the games mission structure allows the players to write their own narrative and a player can get really into the roleplaying aspect of their character. Fallout: New Vegas was published in 2010 and even at that time it was starting to show its age.

ugh

Fallout: New Vegas takes place at time when humans have rebuilt society to the point that nations are starting to form and full scale war is possible. You play a character called The Courier who exists in the world post-war Las Vegas, aka of New Vegas. New Vegas is a place relatively untouched by the nuclear apocalypse with gambling and electricity. Your character holds the key to determining who wins the war. The main factions that you are working with are the New California Republic (NCR), Caesar's Legion, and Mr. House. The NCR a democracy and the biggest organization in the Wasteland, but is also unable to protect its land, feed its people. The NCR is colonizing New Vegas to send resources back home to California. Caesar's Legion is a brutal yet effective tribe of homo-erotic, slave holding, crucifying jerks with a charismatic leader named Caesar. Caesar wants to unite the Wasteland as a dictatorship that doesn't use any technology so as to prevent another nuclear catastrophe from happening. Finally there is Mr. House, a genius billionaire from the pre-war world who has kept himself alive via a life support system for over 200 years. He plans to turn New Vegas into an autocracy by using his robots. Your actions allow you to choose which faction becomes the ruler of the one bastion of pre-war society or if you'd rather rule it yourself. As compared to the other Fallout games this world feels alive and it feels like your choices actually have an effect on what happens to this city.

Ahahahaha Rain

Even though I love New Vegas let me be clear, it is a buggy mess that crashes constantly. Replaying this game on my PC has been really amazing because the game actually loads in a reasonable time frame (as compared to the Xbox version) and the mods are able to take out a lot of the annoying issues of the vanilla game.  It started innocuously at first, I got a high resolution texture pack and a mod that allowed the game to utilize more memory. Then I started adding plants everywhere and got an overhaul that lets you run and sets up a grenade hotkey.  Finally, I added weather and a giant lighting system to the game. It was at this point the weight of the mods start to conflict too much and caused the game to crash. I am not an experienced modder and my PC is relatively old so this is probably just a limitation of my own skill. Breaking the game and learning console commands has been one of the more fulfilling experiences I've had PC gaming. I was able to fix most of the annoying problems. I'm also a pack rat and was able to set my carry weight (the amount of stuff you can hold) to unlimited. That alone made the game 1000 time better.

That mojave wasteland life

The last reason the Mojave wasteland has stuck with me, an Arizona native, so long is because it is set in the Southwest. There aren't that many games explore this region, I mean you get your cowboy games, like Red Dead Redemption, and that Hoover Dam level in Tony Hawk, but that's about it. In my experience Vegas is an awful nightmare place with a fake veneer of elegance in a shitty part of the desert. But driving up Highway 90 and seeing nothing except desert makes me want to go back and play New Vegas again. I flew into Vegas via the  McCarran Airport and it took me a few minutes to realize that I had flown into the NCR’s base of operations. I stood there looking at the signs like a dork and realizing that Fallout’s world was based on something real and tangible. New Vegas makes this even more apparent by highlighting the general awfulness of the casinos and the shitiness of the families that run them. The dirty, free-for-all of Fremont Street looks even worse when compared to Vegas's amazing bathrooms and fancy richness. Freeside is the Fremont Street of New Vegas and it's filled with drug addicts, murderers, and thugs who all desperately want to live the dream of New Vegas. New Vegas may not feel geographically correct but it captures the feeling of the two sides of Vegas: The clean party city that the rich come to blow their money on nothing and the dirty, gross, sad life of the locals who keep the party running.

Fallout New Vegas is one of those games that entranced me and I'm still not out of it's grip. I saw this game in pre-production and it made me heart swoon. I remember being a snotty little college student at E3 who thought they were asking the hard hitting questions about if it was possible to kill everyone. I would recommend you check this broken busted game with a bunch of heart. It's an exercise in how to make an interesting game that has really bad mechanics but can now at least be bandaged with the mods. There aren't enough games set in the desert that really capture the spirit of what it means to live in a desolate hell. Fallout: New Vegas gets as close as I've ever seen at capturing that feeling.