The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 'Golden' age of gaming By PAUL TASSI Daily Film Editor Games these days don't have a real multi- player option anymore. Everything's on "Xbox Live," and there's no real sense of urgency or fair play. Why would anyone want to play "Gears of War" with four friends together in the same room? That's ridiculous. It's clearly more fun to log on and get shot in the head instantaneously by every member of "Das Kill." Winning - and subsequently taunting - is far more fun when you can show you're the best player in the room, rather than trying to prove you're the best player in the world. One game single-handedly shows the rise and fall of that perfect era of competition - no one had seen anything like it before and no one has since. That game is "Goldeneye 007" for the Nintendo 64. Multiplayer in "Goldeneye" stands as one of the most innovative and best-designed game modes ever. The first controller to have an actu- al trigger, N64 makes it feel like you were really shooting your friends. And with four people playing simultaneously for the first time, "Gold- eneye" helped turn living rooms into frenzied war zones full of kids hopped up on Tang. There was an unspoken code of honor among "Goldeneye" players that was abided by most - well, some. You couldn't be Oddjob, because he's so small even grenade shrapnel would seem to work its way around him. You could be Jaws, but only if you were an idiot - random bullets would always find their way to his lumbering ass. "Wait till I have a gun, bitch!" was the cry of a victim of a violator of the second unspoken rule: (the b-side} Thursday, March 8,2007 - 5B All of Shakespeare in all of ahalf hour Crucial decision: switch to KF-7 or grenade launcher? never shoot an unarmed player. Combatants in "Goldeneye" had access to some mean karate- chop action when lacking a gun, but to kill some- one you'd probably have to make them stand still next to you for an hour while you hacked away. The intensity of the rounds were unheard of for a multiplayer game. In the best level of all time, the Temple, two players would stand on opposite sides of a monolithic stone door until one of them had the courage to press B. As one player unloaded a Cougar Magnum and the other pumped rounds out of a KF-7 Soviet. In addition to the game's multiplayer mode, single-player also had its moments. Remember being tempted to shoot quivering scientists in the Silo who wouldn't give you that damn key- card? or getting lost in the godforsaken statue maze for hours, only to fail when Trevelyan gets spooked at the sight ofyour PP7?And how many times did you scream "Why wont you die!?" at Jaws after you unloaded eight assault rifle clips into his dumb, grinning, metallic face? And then there were the cheats. They ranged from the ridiculous (Donkey Kong Mode, where everyone has a giant head) to the impractical (Enemy Rocket Mode - why the hell would I want to give rockets to my enemies?) to the fan- tastic (All Guns, including a taser made out of a Game Boy). The cheats made for some entertaining sin- gle-player scenarios. There's nothing quite like setting off the alarm in the Surface level then unloading double RCP-90s with unlimited ammo into 700 Soviet soldiers. I'm pretty sure "Goldeneye" was a covert government project to make kids want to join the army, because after every level you were ready to ship off and machine gun some commies or terrorists or pretty much anyone holding an AK-47. Government conspiracy? Maybe, but "Gold- eneye" is still a treasure of video-gaming his- tory and stands alongside "Doom" and "Grand Theft Auto" as one of the games that's molded our generation into the mindless, soulless serial killers our parents predicted we'd all become. But seriously, being locked in a dark room by yourself for 16 hours whispering into a head- set playing "Half-Life 2" online? Dangerous. Shouting with a room full of friends blasting the hell out of each other with digital assault weapons with characters dressed in formal- wear? Classic. By CATHERINE SMYKA Daily Arts Writer Do you like Shakespeare? Do you like theater? Even if you The answered no to both questions, Complete it's not a problem. Works of The RC Player'sW production of Adam Long, Dan- Shakespeare iel Singer and Jess Winfield's Tomorrow "The Complete and Saturday Works of Wil- at 8 p.m. liam Shakespeare $3 -$5 (Abridged)" will At the East Quad make you laugh Auditorium anyway. In just 97-min- utes, a dozen actors run through all 37 of Shakespeare's classics. Some scenes are slightly improvised, but it's the RC Players' loose style that really makes it feel like the jokes and one-liners burst spontaneously from the actors. "Complete Works" riffs freely on Shakespeare's esteemed profile. In reference to the Royal Shakespeare Company, the on-stage actors call themselves the Reduced Shake- speare Company, complementing the craze the original RSC stirred up with their campus visit last fall. "There has been a lot of hype around Shakespeare with the RSC coming," RC senior and direc- tor Lisa Fetman said. "This show does handle the Shakespeare text very honestly but it's also silly and absurd." Never has a statement been more true. Titus Andronicus has his own grotesque cooking show. Four peoples rap and beat-box their way through Othello's tragedy. And the ebullient actors don't ever show signs of exhaustion. "The play is unique and over the top," Fetman said. "And actually, because of the improvisation, the performance on Friday will prob- ably turn out differently from the performance on Saturday." Watching these players perform is like stepping in as the special guest on a sitcom, especially in the audience-participation component of the show, when the audience becomes involved in the clowning around onstage. The cross-dressing, interpretive dance and Shakespear- ean Expert (having read two books on Will) are pure entertainment. "With people playing so many different characters and changing roles, this show combines every- thing entertaining in the world into one performance," Fetman said. "The show never grows old." Perhaps most enjoyable and inge- nious is the cast-wide football game in Act One, which depicts a combi- nation of several Shakespeare stor- ylines. When a character proclaims, "Why can't this Shakespeare stuff be more like sports?" the rest of the actors get into position to pass a crown as if passing a football. King Lear dodges left and Macbeth runs ' for the end zone. Unconventional, yes, but the characters stay true to the plots of their respective plays. Among other shockers - nota- bly a robotic dinosaur and Scottish accents - it's initially surprising so much time is dedicated to the first Shakespeare play of the set. With only 97 precious minutes, "Romeo and Juliet" consumes about seven. To make up for the extravagance, all 16 of Shakespeare's comedies are combined into one fabulous creation. It's a gutsy scene, but just after preparing to wince, you real- ize itworks. ..- . i... i mmew- _ ...m . mmb- Mbma ll I d I 1 r1 I DAILY ARTS. WE CAN'T SPELL THERMOPOLAE. BUT CAN YOU? LA-M Summer Language Programs Intensive courses available in 1 6 languages! Les -commonltg-taugtlanguage courses include: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and 5wedish. , . f ^ ~ f . _ '' Od rot.oo rt OCR 734-214-0011 Limited area, 6-9 pm. stud tie language of dour ckoice! Descriptions of all spring and summer term language courses are available at: WWW.ii.UmicI.eJU/5i 'lease note: * Students may register directly into most courses during registration. * Asian Lan gage courses recuire application k3 March o, 2007 (see web site). * Frogram Lee (not-for-credit option) attractive to graduate students. arellowships available for the studs of less--commonli- taught languages. *ellowship application deadline: March 0, 2007. I .1_______________________________________________ 0