Tangled Up In Red: ZEN BOUND 2

Zen Bound 2 is a game in which you climb metaphorical trees made of knowledge and self-discipline by slowly wrapping rope around hand-crafted wooden figures while gentle tinkly meditation music plays in the background.

It's so relaxing that even these Lunesta butterflies are having trouble staying awake.

This is a game in which the calming atmosphere is clearly the developer's first priority, and that decision suffuses the entire experience, from the opening menu to moment you hit the exit button.

To truly explain the effect that this game has on me, I must first tell a story. Recently, I lived briefly with a fellow who spent a large amount of his free time playing Modern Warfare 2. I never actually went in his room, but that did not prevent me from hearing the sound that I usually associate with MW2 players: nonstop screaming childish rage. "FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING BITCH! YEAH, WHY DON'T YOU HACK SOME MORE YOU CHEATING FUCK? AAUURRRGGHH, FUCK A DOG!" (No, really.) On more than one occasion, it got so loud and brutal that I couldn't help but comment to my other roommates that so much anger over anything, much less a mediocre FPS, was just stupid. How ridiculous. How immature.

But now I think I get it. Why? BECAUSE ZEN BOUND 2 IS THE MOST INFURIATING GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED.


The objective of the game is to paint the little wooden figurines by wrapping a rope around them. How does that work, you ask? Hell, I don't know. Maybe the rope is made of paint or something. I can tell you what it sure as hell isn't made of: ROPE. Sometimes it slides frictionlessly off of the figure, and sometimes bits of it stick to the thing like glue.

What? WHAT?!? ARRRGGH ROPE DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY

But no, it's not just made of some kind of magic paint. It's some kind of quantum uncertainty strand, a bizarre material that can arbitrarily perform the impossible as long as doing so will really piss me off. It bends at right angles (as seen above), it stretches and  squeezes illogically, and on one occasion it actually caused a spontaneous breakdown of the figurine's structural integrity and slid right through it like it was made of water instead of wood. I didn't manage to get a screenshot of that because I was too appalled at the audacity of it. Until that moment, the "rope" had been teasing at me, picking at my patience and prodding at my temper, but this... this was a declaration of war on all that is good and decent. "Physics?!?" The rope cried incredulously. "Man, FUCK your physics." And then it was on.

To complete a level, you must wrap the rope around a nail pounded into the figure. The nail becomes active as soon as you paint 70% of the figure, but you don't get full completion credit until 99%. For an obsessive-compulsive nerd expert gamer like myself, anything less than full credit is no credit... and the rope knows that. As soon as that little nail lights up, the rope leaps for it, and if I let them within fifteen feet of each other the game will exclaim eagerly: "Hey, good work on that SILVER MEDAL! Want to try again FROM THE BEGINNING?"

INFURIATING.

Hidden beneath the calm surface of this game is a monster. It lulls you, provokes a sense of calm with its new agey faux Eastern zen facade, and then as soon as you're off your guard it pounces, latching onto you like some kind of psychic vampire. It drains you, slowly sucking out every last bit of patience and dignity, until every illogical twist of the rope has you screaming at the monitor, spraying foam-flecked apoplexy over this tiny wooden figure and its ridiculous paintjob. The game's title is simply the first in the string of lies it uses to draw you in; it's really only bound to make you rage.

First Blood: ZOMBIE DRIVER

Zombie Driver is a simple game about a simple truth: It's pretty great to run a zombie over with a car. EXOR Studios focused on this point to such a degree that they almost didn't bother to put anything else into the game.

The controls are less than optimal, with your car behaving as though the entire road is made of heated butter, and the writing and voicework go beyond B-movie so-bad-it's-good horrible into just regular everyday not-good-at-all horrible. The game is fairly shallow, featuring a race mode in which you drive around, a slaughter mode in which you run over zombies, and a "story" mode where you drive around and run over zombies. And if that isn't enough for you... well, too damn bad, it's all we've got.

Given the ineptness with which the game's story and characterizations are handled, I have to guess that it is only by accident that Zombie Driver contains one of the most compelling characters in all of gaming history: THE MURDERBUS.

Hi. I kill zombies.

The MURDERBUS is an unstoppable pathos machine. I identified with it immediately and found myself fascinated by its stubborn refusal to be pulled under the wave of apathy and madness that inevitably affects man in a zombie apocalypse. It was a shining beacon in the night. Also, it had these:

FIRE THE MURDERCANNONS!

Who among us can turn his back on such majesty? Truly, the MURDERBUS represents all that is hopeful and good in man, seemingly the only inhabitant of this wasteland with the agency and vitality to do what needs to be done.

My work here is done.

Indeed, the MURDERBUS was such an unstoppable slayer of all things zombie and otherwise that I often felt as though it was driving me, compelling me to perform acts that in my foolishness and lack of vision I often did not understand, such as killing this TARDIS:

Taste the PAIN, Tennant!

But I trusted in the MURDERBUS, and not once did it steer me wrong (LOL BUS PUN). Unfortunately, as it must in this sort of well-planned serious drama, tragedy struck: In the final mission, the MURDERBUS could neither drive fast enough nor stop its murderous rampage against inanimate objects long enough to escape the cliche zombie containment nuke, and I had to abandon it in favor of a police car covered in sharp metal bits and guns. Ordinarily this would be fairly awesome, but alas, it was feeble before the elegance and animal magnetism of the MURDERBUS.

Well, this is just silly.

In the end, the MURDERBUS fell to his hubris and blind dedication to principles, as have so many great heroes. I prefer to remember him as he would have wanted to be remembered: a giant bus studded with cannons devoted wholly to the destruction of all things, living or otherwise.

Here, the MURDERBUS kills a fence and prepares to pounce on an inferior automobile.

MURDERBUS, we salute you.

Once upon a time, on the outskirts of the small hamlet of Detroit, there lived a boy named SB. SB was pure, noble, and beloved by all, but he could be said to have one great flaw: poor impulse control. (If he could have been said to have a second, it would be his overwhelming modesty.)

One day, while scouring the vast fields of the interweb for data, intrepid SB happened upon a merchant with a great storefront overflowing with wares. The merchant introduced himself as Steam, and said that he could satisfy SB's every whim and urge. After a few very uncomfortable inquiries, Steam clarified that he really only meant whims and urges related to video games.
Every day SB returned to Steam's market, and while the offerings were often obscure or bizarre, Steam's technique and salesmanship were unmatched.
"I don't even know what that is," SB would say in response to Steam's latest proferrence.
"Ah, but do you need to know what it is... when it's EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT OFF?" Steam would reply, eyes shining with a bizarre mixture of altruism and naked avarice.
"Uh, no, I guess not." And with that, SB would bring forth his $1.70 and the exchange would be made.

Many months later, SB was displaying his grand collection of video games to a visiting noble who was also something cool and fantasy-appropriate like maybe a dragon or a grell.
"Ah, very impressive!" Quoth the noble. "Which of them are good?"
SB surveyed his treasures and hesitated. "Well...." To his horror, he realized that he had actually played only a quarter of them! Caught with the virtual pages of his books uncut like some sort of low-rent Gatsby--not even a great one!--he was mortified. He resolved never to be so embarrassed again.

----------------------------------------------------

The above is all true, except for the fact that I have never had a conversation with a grell. Steam offers me games at absurd prices and I think "Why, I'd be a fool not to buy that!" and then I purchase it but never play it. A conversation with a friend brought me to the very realization mentioned above, and I decided that the time had come to finally play all the games on which I've spent so much (little) money. This justifies the purchases and, of course, gives me solid rationale for further such purchases in the future, but that simply EXTENDS THE LIFE OF MY BLOG. It's a win-win!
... for Steam.

So, read along as I blunder through my slowly swelling Steam games list and attempt to chronicle my journey towards some kind of video game enlightenment.


SB Plays It Eventually FAQ:
Q: What exactly will you be writing?
A: Long-form beat poetry with accompanying Youtube videos of me performing interpretive dance.
No, I probably won't be doing much of that. Probably. I'll just try to write a little something insightful, humorous, or crummy about each of the games that I play. I expect that the amount will vary somewhat based on how much time I spend with the game.

Q: What constitutes "playing" the game?
A: Enough play to get a legitimate idea of what the game is about. I don't necessarily have to beat it, but I do have to make a good faith effort to "get" the game unless it is frustrating garbage like Zen Bound 2.
Uh, spoiler alert, I guess. I didn't like Zen Bound 2 very much.

Q: Why blog about this at all? It sounds really boring.
A: Well, that hurts my feelings.

Q: Will there be any particular order to your play?
A: Reverse alphabetical, because that is what the coin flip decided. I will play things out of reverse-alpha order occasionally (to play a game before its sequel, for instance). Games I buy during the journey will be added in arbitrarily according to the results of a star chart consultation and a series of more complicated coin flips.