Use Tax Dodgers Are Destroying Small Businesses, 2011 Edition

Without fail, every year as April 15 approaches, there is a story somewhere in MSM about the Use Tax, which is the tax you're supposed to be paying for all the online purchases that year in which you weren't charged by the merchant. Yes, you are not exempt when you buy from an out-of-state retailer.

Anyway, everytime this story is posted, there is invariably a discussion of Amazon.com and how everyone wants them to start charging sales tax so that there is some kind of price parity between online stores and brick and mortar stores, presumably so people would have more incentive to patronize the latter. The argument has some folksy appeal, but let's not get too out-of-hand:

Outside the halls of state capitols, Main Street is also feeling the sting.

"They can come in my store and look at it... they can touch it, they can feel it, but then they can go home and order it online... and not pay sales tax," says Kristin Kohn, owner of two brick-and-mortar stores in downtown Indianapolis. Kohn has found it increasingly hard to compete with out-of-state online retailers who aren't collecting the local 7% sales tax.

Ms. Kohn makes the incredibly obtuse (or disingenuous, take your pick) argument that the 7% sales tax is to blame for losing business to online retailers, when a) any tax savings is far outweighed by shipping fees that are not charged at the B&M store, and b) the real issue is suboptimal pricing. The aforementioned store Ms. Kohn runs is called Silver in the City, where you can purchase All Cakes Considered for $24.95. Amazon price? $16.47. Add 7% hypothetical tax to the price for a total of about $17.62, and I'd still opt to order it. If she is selling that book for $16.47 in the store, I'm sympathetic to her argument, but I doubt she is.

I do understand that she cannot match Amazon's price in-store because of overhead costs and smaller economies of scale, and I am not saying that she should, but to implicate sales tax as a major factor in lost sales is badly missing the point.

Policenauts Review

Just like Mel Gibson, only with blue hair and not as hateful of Jews

Let's be clear about one thing from the outset - Policenauts is not a game. For the most part, the extent of its required "interaction" is repeatedly pressing the circle button down long lists of text options. I am convinced that your subjective Policenauts experience would not differ significantly if you chose to merely watch a video of someone else playing through the title.

But to be fair, nobody's ever pretended it was a game anyway; I've usually seen Policenauts (and its spiritual predecessor, Snatcher) called a "digital comic." And make no mistake - that's what it is. You have no real inventory other than a few token items that you cannot manipulate, so it can't even be called an adventure game. Granted, I knew this going in, but I thought I was prepared, as I had already endured Disc 2 of Xenogears. Alas, I was not.

You navigate through the story as the chief protagonist and pervert (more on that later), Jonathan Ingram. Jonathan is a member of the "Policenauts," essentially five space policemen charged with enforcing the law in the human space colony of Beyond Coast. On a routine spacewalk, Jonathan's suit malfunctions and he drifts off into space...where he floats in stasis for the next 25 years before being rescued and waking up in a world that--unlike him--has aged a quarter-century. He becomes a private eye in L.A., when one night his ex-wife walks in to ask his assistance in locating her missing husband. And thus, the story begins.

If it isn't blatantly obvious by now, Hideo Kojima pays homage to (or shamelessly cribs, depending on your perspective) the Lethal Weapon movies, much like he did in Snatcher with Blade Runner. In fact, this homage runs much, much deeper than just the physical appearances and mannerisms of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; if you've seen the first couple of Lethal Weapons, you'll be able to guess much of Ed's (Jonathan's partner) background and even how the game ends, in true Hollywood deus ex machina fashion.

That's not to say that the substantive plot is anything like the Lethal Weapon movies, because it most assuredly is not, but the style of interaction of the two remains quite faithful to the source material, from Glover's "I just want to retire already and not deal with this horny renegade kid" shtick and Gibson's affections towards the fairer sex. It is the latter aspect that Kojima parodies by slathering it in every possible nook and cranny.

For starters, there is not a single ugly woman in this game. Not one. And naturally, when a game flashes a hot woman on screen and the primary game mechanic is clicking around at objects that interest you, the smutty 15-year old inside you will be compelled to click on various parts of her body. The sheer amount of dialogue that Kojima has devoted to breasts is a playful reminder that he already knows that you won't be able to resist doing it.

Consider it a small consolation for all the clicking and squinting you'll do over the course of the title. You progress the plot by essentially exhausting all the possible "hotspots" on every screen. Ask the guy about the book. Ask the guy about the computer. He mentions so-and-so. Ask about so-and-so. Ask about so-and-so again. He mentions X. Ask about X. Repeat ad infinitum. You don't ever really "solve" anything. You just keep methodically going down the dialogue tree until the person (or your character) has nothing to say and the game automatically advances you or points you towards a new scene. This is problematic at times, because you'll think you've asked about every object and exhausted every branch of the dialogue tree but the game is not advancing you. So you have to painstakingly visit every previous location and work your way through all the conversation menus to find out which obscure branch you missed. That is when the game can get a bit frustrating and tedious, though generally speaking, it doesn't happen too frequently; it's usually pretty obvious what you need to say or do.

The plot, while frequently slowed by the tendency of characters to prattle endlessly like they're reading out of the Encyclopedia Britannica, is actually fairly compelling. While ostensibly a cyberpunk thriller, Policenauts is also a missive about the inexorable human limitations that gird the march of progress, and warns us of the price of that progress. And while I wish that they had put a little more effort in concealing your enemies (one major one is apparent almost immediately), there are some genuinely surprising twists dispersed among the telegraphed ones. Additionally, the ending is rather abrupt and feels a little rushed considering the care and time with which the title builds up the framework of the story.

Occasionally your...ahem...reading is punctuated by action segments, most of which involve you trying to shoot a target by positioning the crosshairs of your gun via the directional pad. I don't know if those segments are more enjoyable for those who use the light gun or mouse peripherals, but controlling it with the regular PSX controller is a little bit of a nightmare. These sequences are not fun because it's hard to quickly and precisely locate the crosshairs, but the game is forgiving enough to start you at the beginning of those segments and not dump you back at your last save. In fact, it's worth dying a couple of times just for the occasional funny fourth wall-breaking commentary on your ability. Other than the shooting segments, there are two other decent puzzles and one task that reminds me of those old LucasArts PC game copy protection schemes ("Enter the third symbol from the left on page 23 of the manual..."). Oh yeah, you'll need this.

It is important to note that I played the patched English translation of Policenauts, and I am compelled to say that the translation is absolutely, utterly terrific. The highest compliment that I can confer is that the dialogue sounded completely natural - there are no "You spoony bard!" moments. It is quite a remarkable achievement, considering the sheer amount of text that populates this game, and a testament to the resourcefulness of the fan community. This is especially noteworthy considering Policenauts wasn't localized in the first place because it was supposedly too difficult from a technical standpoint.

When all is said and done, it's hard to know what to make of a game that basically amounts to a 10-hour movie; I suspect you'll either love it or hate it. But I will say this: it's a hell of a ride, from beginning to end, and along with Snatcher, it will probably be the most unique game you've ever played. Coupled with the quality of the story, it's a package that you shouldn't miss, minor warts and all.

8.0/10

The Paradox of Development

I've been reading Steven Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games, and while it's not as good as David Sheff's Nintendo-centric Game Over, it's an enjoyable read nonetheless. Mind you, this comes right on the heels of completing Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, so hopefully by the time I finish, I will know the entire history of the universe. Awesome.

Whenever I read any kind of history book, I always think, "Man, those people really had it rough, thinking Pong was a really mindblowing game," or "God, life would have really sucked without air conditioning or cars or the Internet." I've always assumed that the more developed the civilization you're born into, the happier you're going to be, but it turns out that that may not be the case.

The survey involved college students, but I think that those results would generalize to the entire population. Everyone is worried. Worried about security, worried about the economy, worried about their health, worried about their lives. I would never argue that more information is a bad thing, but regardless, sometimes even I am tempted to wish that we didn't know so much.

Stress, as a matter of fact, is evolutionarily a good thing. It ramps up all your body systems so that when the tiger is sniffing around your cave, you have the energy and attentiveness to run away from it or kill it. Ultimately, the long-term effects of stress hormones are harmful to your body, but if you don't get away from the tiger, any long-term concern is, of course, moot. So you're designed to stress for a little while and then once the immediate threat is gone, you go back to a state of biochemical balance.

What our more advanced brains and civilization have allowed us to do, however, is extend that stress response to ALL THE F'ING TIME by permitting us to stress about things in the future that haven't even happened yet. What's going to happen to my 401(k)? What if I lose my job? Am I going to go to hell when I die? Is my dental x-ray going to give me cancer? Will my career recover if I don't get promoted to VP soon? Every day is full of nothing but stress for all of us. I even stress during vacation, because I worry about getting charged for accidentally bumping the sensor in the minibar and bringing home bedbugs.

So at some level, I do think that maybe those primitive old farts did indeed have it better. Would I trade my life now for a life of exploring and fishing and hunting my own food in whatever land was the Pre-Columbian Hawaii of the time? Maybe. I'd probably be eaten by something by age 25, but I would never have to ride the DC Metro, so it's a wash.

Dragon Quest IX Review: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

My first foray into Dragon Quest began identically to many other kids in 1990: begging my parents to buy me the $15 Nintendo Power subscription that generously included one of the many unsold copies of Dragon Warrior that Nintendo couldn't convince anyone to buy. It was unlike any other game I had ever played on the NES, and armed with the Nintendo Power guide and youthfully resilient eyes, I ground my way through it and verily, I was hooked on the genre. Lest I get too mushy, the game was often terrible; the plot inarguably had the depth of a rain puddle and its mechanics were unnecessarily clunky. You have to go to a church to find out how many experience points you are from the next level? Really? Now, on iteration number nine(!) the frustrating aspects of the game experience remain distressingly familiar while the driving essence of the series breaks new ground - but in a barren landscape.

Dragon Quest has always occupied a unique niche in the JRPG ecosystem; it is to Quentin Tarantino as Final Fantasy is to Martin Scorsese - always willing to smirk at itself and lacking the occasionally heavy-handed gravitas of Square's flagship games. Would Nester ever have appeared in a Final Fantasy, as he does in Dragon Warrior? Doubtful.

It's one of many legacies that DQIX proudly inherits from its progenitor. One desert in the game is cheekily named "Djust Desert," no doubt delighting philosophy and criminal justice majors all over the world. Unfortunately, the other legacy that DQIX stubbornly clings to is its insistence on making everything more difficult than it has to be. This is a menu-driven series and always will be. But is it really necessary to make you manually transfer items ONE-BY-ONE between characters and from the bag, instead of just letting players pick items from a common pool in bulk? And why the stinginess towards resurrection items and spells? If there is a resurrection item, I never found it once in an entire playthrough. Your standard resurrection spell, Zing, only works half the time. You WILL at some point be fighting a boss who kills a member of your party, and then you WILL spend four turns unsuccessfully trying to bring him/her back to life while said boss proceeds to slap you silly. That kind of capricious battle flow would be okay if the game didn't take away half your gold when you died.

Still, even those sins are forgivable if the story is good, and here, it is not. Despite also having all the aforementioned problems, I look back on predecessor DQV very fondly for its simple but sentimental and well-executed story. DQIX unfortunately has much of the former but little of the latter. Instead, it is content to fall back on all of the standard RPG tropes: a mysterious fall from grace, an evil empire, a desert town, a snow town, a port, etc., and no greater than about four music pieces, total. These elements are bound together by the tired "go from town to town solving each one's problems as they first distrust you and eventually come to be filled with gratitude" story structure into a JRPG Mad Libs plot that is so predictable that you need only have played maybe two RPGs to guess where it's going.

Compounding the lackluster story is an utter dearth of character development. Your hero says nothing, of course, but neither does the rest of your party. There is a stated emphasis on multiplayer and freely interchangeable party members in this game, and the price is an utter lack of any kind of attachment to your blank slate of a team. You can change your party members' vocations, but since you're relatively far into the game when you gain this ability and you're forced to start at level 1 for any new jobs, there's little incentive to do so unless you're willing to grind the new vocation up to snuff - as if there isn't enough grinding already. Combat is straightforward and while it lacks any glaring faults, it unfortunately also lacks any creativity or innovation whatsoever while perfectly capturing the experience of working on an assembly line.

All that said, it's a competent game. It looks great for a DS game and one change (seeing enemies on the map before you encounter them) is welcome and long overdue. The quests can be interesting diversions and it is eminently thoughtful to allow each piece of equipment to be visually reflected in your character. It's just too bad that that level of thoughtfulness didn't extend to the plot. It was, again, by design that DQIX was to be a more social game (and by "social game," I mean a pastiche of tiny side quests), and it is. Quite frankly, it's a soaring love song to Pokemon and Monster Hunter's slavish devotion to the Pavlovian surge of dopamine at the acquisition of rare virtual trinkets.

Where you fall on your judgment of this game will depend on what you view as the most critical, defining aspect of the genre with regard to your expectations for the title. This is not a new dichotomy; we've had "tactical system" RPGs and "story" RPGs for as long as the genre has existed, plus the relatively scant few which excel at both. Dragon Quest IX is oddly neither - its narrative exists only as a framework for its mishmash of miniquests to achieve some semblance of continuity. Collectors and completionists, your game has arrived.

Don't get me wrong; I am under no illusion that Dragon Quest will ever be a dramatic masterpiece transcending the narrative permutation du jour of "find the evil guy and defeat him." But at least it's always had heart, and that, sadly, is what is lacking in the paint-by-numbers quest number nine.

6.5/10