Editor’s Note: Every year around this time, Hates returns to Oklahoma, land of his birth, in order to spend time with those members of his family still willing to speak with him. Already a stressful time for many of us, as suicide statistics clearly indicate, the holidays are an acutely difficult time for Hates. The intersection of cold weather, good will toward men, and overt religiosity leaves him in a state of severe agitation. Despite such hardships, Hates maintained that he could stick to his writing schedule, and the Hate Speech Editorial Cabal remained optimistic..
Optimistic, that is, until the Associated Press began picking up stories of rum and eggnog-fueled chaos in the Tulsa area, including the following: swinging from holiday lights, ham theft, unlicensed freestyle caroling, and fleeing the scene of an altercation with an inflatable yard Santa...
Unable fully to confirm any connection between these events and Hates’ seasonal decline, we nonetheless feel it is a phenomenon worth mentioning, and invite readers to draw their own conclusions. It should also be noted that while there will be no column this week and Hates is presently unreachable by any means, we were in intermittent contact with him throughout the last week before things went dark. Included below, in lieu of a column, is the full text of his last email to us:
To: [Redacted]
From: BrianHatesYou@gmail.com
Subject: This Damn Column
Okay…Christ…I have no idea what to write this week. I don’t want to go with anything especially important or technical because of the whole Christmas thing, but I’m kind of at a loss, otherwise. I don’t know—I’m having a hard time thinking this through, most likely because I’m running low on eggnog. Do you realize I saw singing children today? Singing. Children. I think one of them had antlers. I tried to see if they were real, but a big woman with a glowing red nose chased me off before I could get close enough. It’s for the best; she seemed violent and unhinged, and the world was kind of spinning, anyway.
Back to the column, do you think it might be best to just embrace the spirit of the season and go with something upbeat? It could work. As you probably saw, the latest SC5 stream from Project Soul showcased plenty of things in addition to new gameplay footage. We received glimpses of both a foley artist doing sound effects and a live orchestra performing the game’s soundtrack. Some Scrooges out there might dismiss it as fluff, but I could play it up as a reminder of what large-scale projects games like this are. As a tournament player, I tend to evaluate games almost exclusively through the lens of mechanics. Diving into things like balance, strategy, and competition, we can lose sight of the complex collaborative process needed to bring us these games. By that same token, maybe I could say something about SC as a complete aesthetic experience of sight, sound, etcetera?
Forget it—lost my train of thought, actually, and decided to eat some ham. Oddly, I have no idea how it wound up in my room. It’s a Christmas miracle! Too bad I’m back to square one. Still, I think that stream remains my best bet for finding a point of departure from which I can start a discussion. What else was there…? We saw some Create-a-Soul stuff, which will interest a lot of players. Personally, I can’t wait to make a big, naked fat guy (though PS beat me to it, minus the naked part). Why did we need to wait for three games before getting the option of making a character that’s not physically perfect? Actually, that might be opening a very un-Christmasy can of worms with regard to representation and customization—not the fluff I’m going for, so I’m not sure I can get an entire column out of that. Oh hey, did you notice that the PS fat guy character was wearing the same shirt as Daishi? Now that’s a column…
Oh, screw it, I might as well stick to what I know and make some comments about the gameplay we actually did see. Being a SC4 Cervantes player, I of course paid particular attention to the matches in which he was involved. I know it’s niche, but hear me out: there’s a way I can use that to speak to some universal stuff. Take, for example, Cervantes’ loss of 1K. That was a staple low that gave advantage on hit and helped the character to create offense. Some folks are a little bit up in arms about that, but I think the pirate’s looking pretty beefy nevertheless because we can’t evaluate characters in a vacuum. A character’s strength or weakness is directly relative to how well it exploits a game’s overall system.
In terms of SC5 Cervantes, he loses an advantaged low, but gains a seriously advantaged mid in 4B BE and another mid, 2A+B, that certainly passes the eyeball test as a vertical to be respected. He also gets 3A, a horizontal mid that knocks down on all hits and prevents sidestep in both directions. Since step guard is essentially gone now and breaking an opponent’s guard meter is a persistent threat, it’s reasonable to assume that Horizontal/Vertical can become just as potent a mixup in the new system as Mid/Low ever was in the old ones. People are going to have to get used to looking at the new system on its own terms rather than fixating on the past. Best, I think, to pretend the previous games never happened.
But there I go getting a little technical again when I don’t want to. I’m not even sure I could do it justice if I wanted to, under the circumstances. I’m still a little bit wrecked right now, and my head’s fuzzy after a fight I got into this afternoon. I went outside for some reason and saw a huge old man standing on the lawn across the street. I’m not kidding when I say huge, by the way—he was easily six or seven feet tall, and decked out in this weird red outfit. Anyhow, he was just staring me down, trying to look all hard. I tried talking to him to show that I wasn’t afraid, but he stood there silently with a bizarre, mocking look on his face. Of course I got heated and yelled a bit, but still he remained motionless and quiet, all to make me look like an asshole, so I did what I had to do and took him out. He went down quick, but it still took an effort because he kept slipping my punches. That dude had skin like vinyl.
Optimistic, that is, until the Associated Press began picking up stories of rum and eggnog-fueled chaos in the Tulsa area, including the following: swinging from holiday lights, ham theft, unlicensed freestyle caroling, and fleeing the scene of an altercation with an inflatable yard Santa...
Unable fully to confirm any connection between these events and Hates’ seasonal decline, we nonetheless feel it is a phenomenon worth mentioning, and invite readers to draw their own conclusions. It should also be noted that while there will be no column this week and Hates is presently unreachable by any means, we were in intermittent contact with him throughout the last week before things went dark. Included below, in lieu of a column, is the full text of his last email to us:
Image was enclosed with the email.
To: [Redacted]
From: BrianHatesYou@gmail.com
Subject: This Damn Column
Okay…Christ…I have no idea what to write this week. I don’t want to go with anything especially important or technical because of the whole Christmas thing, but I’m kind of at a loss, otherwise. I don’t know—I’m having a hard time thinking this through, most likely because I’m running low on eggnog. Do you realize I saw singing children today? Singing. Children. I think one of them had antlers. I tried to see if they were real, but a big woman with a glowing red nose chased me off before I could get close enough. It’s for the best; she seemed violent and unhinged, and the world was kind of spinning, anyway.
Back to the column, do you think it might be best to just embrace the spirit of the season and go with something upbeat? It could work. As you probably saw, the latest SC5 stream from Project Soul showcased plenty of things in addition to new gameplay footage. We received glimpses of both a foley artist doing sound effects and a live orchestra performing the game’s soundtrack. Some Scrooges out there might dismiss it as fluff, but I could play it up as a reminder of what large-scale projects games like this are. As a tournament player, I tend to evaluate games almost exclusively through the lens of mechanics. Diving into things like balance, strategy, and competition, we can lose sight of the complex collaborative process needed to bring us these games. By that same token, maybe I could say something about SC as a complete aesthetic experience of sight, sound, etcetera?
Pictured: A complete aesthetic experience of sight and sound.
Forget it—lost my train of thought, actually, and decided to eat some ham. Oddly, I have no idea how it wound up in my room. It’s a Christmas miracle! Too bad I’m back to square one. Still, I think that stream remains my best bet for finding a point of departure from which I can start a discussion. What else was there…? We saw some Create-a-Soul stuff, which will interest a lot of players. Personally, I can’t wait to make a big, naked fat guy (though PS beat me to it, minus the naked part). Why did we need to wait for three games before getting the option of making a character that’s not physically perfect? Actually, that might be opening a very un-Christmasy can of worms with regard to representation and customization—not the fluff I’m going for, so I’m not sure I can get an entire column out of that. Oh hey, did you notice that the PS fat guy character was wearing the same shirt as Daishi? Now that’s a column…
Oh, screw it, I might as well stick to what I know and make some comments about the gameplay we actually did see. Being a SC4 Cervantes player, I of course paid particular attention to the matches in which he was involved. I know it’s niche, but hear me out: there’s a way I can use that to speak to some universal stuff. Take, for example, Cervantes’ loss of 1K. That was a staple low that gave advantage on hit and helped the character to create offense. Some folks are a little bit up in arms about that, but I think the pirate’s looking pretty beefy nevertheless because we can’t evaluate characters in a vacuum. A character’s strength or weakness is directly relative to how well it exploits a game’s overall system.
You know in SC3 someone complained about this being removed. Someone always complains.
In terms of SC5 Cervantes, he loses an advantaged low, but gains a seriously advantaged mid in 4B BE and another mid, 2A+B, that certainly passes the eyeball test as a vertical to be respected. He also gets 3A, a horizontal mid that knocks down on all hits and prevents sidestep in both directions. Since step guard is essentially gone now and breaking an opponent’s guard meter is a persistent threat, it’s reasonable to assume that Horizontal/Vertical can become just as potent a mixup in the new system as Mid/Low ever was in the old ones. People are going to have to get used to looking at the new system on its own terms rather than fixating on the past. Best, I think, to pretend the previous games never happened.
But there I go getting a little technical again when I don’t want to. I’m not even sure I could do it justice if I wanted to, under the circumstances. I’m still a little bit wrecked right now, and my head’s fuzzy after a fight I got into this afternoon. I went outside for some reason and saw a huge old man standing on the lawn across the street. I’m not kidding when I say huge, by the way—he was easily six or seven feet tall, and decked out in this weird red outfit. Anyhow, he was just staring me down, trying to look all hard. I tried talking to him to show that I wasn’t afraid, but he stood there silently with a bizarre, mocking look on his face. Of course I got heated and yelled a bit, but still he remained motionless and quiet, all to make me look like an asshole, so I did what I had to do and took him out. He went down quick, but it still took an effort because he kept slipping my punches. That dude had skin like vinyl.
I've been waiting all year for an excuse to post this.
You know what? This is all too nuts. The lights, the crowds, and the cheer are really freaking me out, and I’m not in the mood to compound all of that with writing on a deadline, too, so no column this week. Ugh, time to wrap this up. There’s a helicopter or something outside and the noise is driving me crazy. Sorry about flaking this week, but come on, we’re talking about the day after Christmas. Nobody’s actually going to read anything posted on December 26, right?
