I can’t say the same for videogames, which is, to me, one of the ways it’s a medium distinct from books, albums, and movies. Cave Story is short by game standards — 6 to 8 hours of play — but with lots of work-related travel over the past month, I’ve struggled to keep up with Daniel and Gavin. Last week, I had “beat Cave Story” on my to-do list, underneath “fold laundry” and “clean disgusting fridge.” (Needless to say, I did my laundry and cleaned out my fridge first.) It’s easy to power through a book by giving it all of your focus and attention because there are a finite number of pages. With videogames, there are a set number of levels, sure, but an infinite number of movements. One’s interactions constitute “playing,” and Cave Story beckons to be explored. Yet I simply blew right through the game, feeling frustrated every time I had to backtrack and trying skip as much dialogue as I could, all the while recognizing that I wasn’t giving Cave Story the attention it deserved. When Curly Brace sacrifies herself, I really didn’t care. I barely remembered who she was.
Having read Gavin’s extraordinarily thoughtful post on the narrative’s emotional resonance, I found myself wondering why I didn’t get the same satisfaction out of Cave Story. I often beat games as quickly as possible — most recently Mass Effect 3, so I could see what all the hubbub was about with the ending — but Cave Story feels different. Perhaps it’s the kind of delightful game that doesn’t need to be completed so much as savored. It’s designed to give the player a lingering sense of wonderment and nostalgia. In my haste, I only picked up on hints of this feeling throughout the game. The only true nostalgia I felt was a longing for a time in my life when I had all the hours in the world to play videogames.
Or better put: For me, right now, Cave Story is the right game at the wrong time.
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Kevin Nguyen is an editor at The Bygone Bureau. His only marketable skill is an above-average knowledge of European geography. He has been useless since the introduction of the atlas in 1477. Find him at Twitter at @knguyen.
]]>First and foremost, I feel like I just blew up a lot of shit. At the end, you have to fight Misery, The Doctor, The Doctor after the red crystal takes over his body, and then the Core after the Doctor, um Red Crystal Doctor, um, a bunch of red bubbles possess the Core AND Misery AND Sue.
Basically, you just shoot a lot.
And, weirdly, it didn’t feel like the toughest fight of the game. I had a much harder time with the Dragon Sisters on my second trip through the Egg Corridor (after the big collapse). Of course, that’s not a complaint. I am, in all honesty, ready to be done. I’m happy with the game, and the experience as a whole, but I’m ready to move on to something else, too.
I don’t have a lot new to say about the narrative — I think it’s a compliment to Cave Story that most of the narrative value is embedded throughout the game rather than coming in one big burst at the end. Destroying and escaping from the floating island felt like a culmination rather than a revelation, although there are a few good additional bits if you watch the credits. Sue, for example, gets turned back to a human, but it doesn’t stick.
The most powerful moment for me was actually the quick flash to Curly Brace, still inactive and locked in the core.
In fact, saving Curly Brace is the one thing that could drag me through the game a second time, although I think there’s a good argument to be made for not going back to save her. While it’s almost assumed that a good game is one that’s designed for replay value — BioWare is famous for this, and actually puts messages on loading screens encouraging the player to start a second playthrough and make different choices — Heavy Rain director David Cage has stated in interviews that he hopes that players make a single trip through his game.
These competing desires are expressions of different theories of game narrative experience, both, interestingly, hinging on design architectures which attempt to make player choices matter. BioWare is, in effect, saying “we put a lot in this game, and you owe it to yourself to see the various outcomes your choices can lead to. See how characters react differently, find all the easter eggs, do everything.” The evidence, in this case, that choices matter comes from experiencing different outcomes, and the implied argument is that if a player is only going to play a game once, then they may as well go buy a game with a more linear, game-directed storyline. (Like maybe Final Fantasy XIII. To which I say, “Touché, BioWare. Touché.”)
Heavy Rain, while seeming to be similarly focused on crating meaningful player choices, actually takes an entirely different approach as to what it means for a choice to matter. Instead of encouraging the player to go back and find out what could have happened differently, the game instead focuses on creating a more seamless experience.1 In fact, without a second playthrough (or some digging online), it’s not entirely clear at the end of the game what exactly could or should have gone differently, and one of the things I admire about the game is the way that players who reach wildly different endings can leave the game with the impression that they achieved the “best” ending.
All of which is to say, while part of me wants to save Curly Brace, her loss was the most affecting narrative moment in Cave Story for me, and I’m not totally sure I want to defeat that.
So what do you say, Daniel and Kevin? Will you be playing again? Or was the first trip enough (or more than enough)?
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1. I use the phrase “more seamless” rather than “seamless” intentionally. There’s a whole column (at least) in Heavy Rain‘s seams and joins, but I’m supposed to be talking about Cave Story, so I’ll leave it there for now.
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Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.
]]>I’m still not sure exactly how everything is going to end up, but the game has me convinced that every little thing matters, every character, every snippet of information I’m given in conversation with an NPC, and it is perhaps exactly the smallness of the game that has me paying such close attention. In big open world JRPGs, there’s so much information, and so much world that most of it has to be drawn in broad strokes. The things that matter can’t be subtle, and while the individual corners may be drawn in great detail, you can often leave most of that behind as you move on. In Cave Story, everyone knows everyone else, and things can’t help but get a little incestuous. There are only six Mimiga living in Mimiga village. You fight Balrog again and again, and when you get to the Sand Zone and meet Jenka, you find out that even though she’s (mostly) on your side, she’s on (mostly) friendly terms with Balrog and has even worked with him in the past.
The world, in Cave Story, isn’t large enough for impermeable boundaries to be drawn, and that’s really striking. The bad guys (except for maybe the Doctor) aren’t completely bad. The good guys aren’t simplistic selfless paragons. Sue, for example, is a bit of a jerk, who has alienated most of the Mimiga Village except, it seems, Toroko. King, the leader of Mimiga Village, locks up Sue after you find her to hand her over to the Doctor in hope of rescuing Toroko (who was mistaken for Sue and kidnapped by Balrog). Jenka doesn’t really want to help you destroy the red flowers, because that would mean giving you access to them, so she gives you busywork finding her dogs, which ends up allowing the bad guys to come and take the flowers instead.
For such a small game in such a small world, everyone’s motivations are complex, and often end up having unintended consequences. (Kind of like the physical navigation, the story has you double back, and double back again.) That, to me, is pretty close to the definition of good writing.
I’m also really happy that you brought up Curly Brace, Daniel, as I found myself surprisingly affected by the way she left the story. Cave Story actually has a lot of death — so far I’ve lost King, the Professor, and I actually had to kill Toroko, which was pretty harsh — but I might end up thinking of Curly Brace as my Aeris. After defeating the Core, the room fills with water, leaving the player nowhere to go for air. You lose consciousness, and then wake up in Curly Brace’s air bubble, with Curly motionless beside you. If you try to talk to Curly, you’re told that there’s no reply. If you examine your inventory, you have Curly’s air tanks. There’s no cutscene that shows the transfer. There’s no big moment where you see Curly’s decision to sacrifice herself. You simply run out of air, and when you wake up, she’s dead.
I think this is actually a brilliant immersive narrative move, as it leaves the player to reconstruct — and absorb — what has taken place. As you noted, Daniel, the player has to decide to walk away, and there’s nothing in-game telling you whether that’s the right decision or not. You have to make a choice based on incomplete information and live with the consequences, especially when the blast door seals shut behind you.
It’s a real “wow” moment, and a welcome reminder of what games can do with narrative, even without flashy graphics or cinematic cutscenes. (I’m going to leave the issue of the Tow Rope to the side for now, but I’d be happy to return to it next week if you want, since it ties into some other interesting elements of Cave Story‘s game design.)
So, onward, one last time, to boss battles and the end!
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Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 3 post
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Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.
]]>Cave Story is rife with quirky, odd-ball characters. Some are talking rabbits. Others are crazy robots. And still others are people in Cthulu costumes. Each one is quirky and interesting. In this way, Cave Story really reminds me of the Nintendo games of my youth. I think the video game medium makes it easier to accept strange characters. I don’t really know why. Maybe it is the cartoonish nature, or that as a player, you are forced to interact with the cast. In Cave Story’s case, you best get accustomed to chatting with robots and rabbits ASAP.
But then, maybe it is just me. Being one who enjoys quirky humor, oddball characters, and writes fantasy stories, talking animals don’t bother me. Nor do floating islands or disgruntled robots. I still think “being in” the game makes one more accepting of the strangeness, be it Cave Story or Final Fantasy VII. A casual observer might be more likely to question the world of the game.
Case in point, my girlfriend. Now, she is no stranger to fantasy or science fiction, and I don’t bring this up as a sexist, archaic “Girls Don’t Understand Video Games” argument (I know plenty of ladies who are hardcore gamers). No, I bring it up, because her casual observations helped me appreciate the strangeness of the game even more.
“Who’s that?” she asked when Curly Brace joined me. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” I said between mashing buttons. “She’s just some robot.”
“A robot?”
“I’m a robot too.” A jump. A shot. “I think.”
I bested a boss, and the cave flooded with water. The screen went dark, and when my character came to, Curly was immobile next to me. Steph said as I walked away, “You’re leaving your girlfriend!”
“She’s not my girlfriend! And besides, I can’t take her with me. There isn’t a Drag the Dead Robot command.”
“I’m surprised there isn’t.”
I found out later, there is a way to rescue Curly — using the Tow Rope. So, I suppose there is a Drag the Dead Robot command. Oops.
I bet the strangeness of Cave Story will turn some folks off, but it kept me interested. I wanted to see how strange it would get in the end, and it did not disappoint. Like any good platformer, Cave Story ups the ante for the final boss battles.
I am curious to see what Gavin and Kevin’s final thoughts are of the game. I loved it, and I think the odd-ball characters and story kept me interested. If the game was void of any kind of quirky story, or characters, I may not have enjoyed it as much.
And further research shows there are additional endings. Back to the cave!
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Read Gavin Craig’s week 3 post
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Daniel J. Hogan’s webcomic and humor blog, Clattertron, features very few dead robots. So far. Follow him on Twitter, @danieljhogan.
]]>Like Cave Story, Diablo III is a game that panders to one’s nostalgia, in this case nostalgia for Diablo II, released way back in 2000. I remember coming home from summer camp and pouring all of my time into accumulating new weapons and armor for my Amazon. The point of the Diablo games isn’t to defeat monsters; it’s to collect more stuff, which is good for helping you collect more stuff. Diablo III is certainly a vast improvement upon its predecessor, but overall, it’s really the same game built for 2013. I won’t say too much more about Diablo, since I’m supposed to be talking about Cave Story, but basically Diablo III has all the talent and polish of a triple-A title. And for those reasons, it basically has no heart.
Few games have more heart than Cave Story. It was painstakingly hand-crafted (so to speak) by Daisuke Amaya, who designed and developed the game by himself over the course of five years. There’s a decent interview with Amaya, where he explains that his work on the game paralleled his life: “At the time I started work on Cave Story, I was a student, but now I’m an office worker. My entire life had changed by the time this game was finished.”
That’s right: Amaya is not a game developer by trade, so he created the art, music, and story, as well as all the code, in his free time. It may be a nostalgic platformer, but Cave Story feels like the personal expression of one man. We all love the game’s weirdness (or in Daniel’s words, the “WTF factor”), which is something that can only come from the vision and imagination of singular vision.
So why am I not compelled to play more Cave Story?
For me, the appeal of Cave Story is its charm. Sure, it’s fun to jump around and fire rockets, but I love uncovering the uniqueness buried beneath the Metroid and Castlevania-inspired platforming. Diablo, on the other hand, is designed to be addictive. And it is very good at that, almost to the point of blandness. The game says and means nothing.
While both are designed to make you think about the good old days, I think there’s a single key difference between the two games: Cave Story celebrates nostalgia, while Diablo III exploits it.
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Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 2 post
Read Gavin Craig’s week 2 post
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Kevin Nguyen is an editor at The Bygone Bureau. His only marketable skill is an above-average knowledge of European geography. He has been useless since the introduction of the atlas in 1477. Find him at Twitter at @knguyen.
]]>So instead I’d like to continue to talk about the ways in which the game mixes RPG and 2D platformer mechanics — primarily how a strikingly simple design choice serves to open up what would otherwise be a fairly linear world. In the 8-bit platforming world which is my (admittedly outdated) primary point of reference, games largely ask the player to navigate in one direction, often from left to right. The basic model would be, of course, Super Mario Bros., which doesn’t even let you backtrack once the screen has scrolled to the right, but even when games like Castlevania include vertical and right-to-left elements in their level design, there’s usually a specific forward direction at any given time, and it’s rare for a game to ask you to retrace your steps.
This might be one of the most brilliant components of the 2D platform game — particularly in systems with severe technical limitations (like an 8-bit console), the 2D platform game architecture creates a perpetual feeling of active progress. The game, when played, is in constant motion, and that motion is always directed toward a specific end. Thus, as long as the player is in motion, they can be confident that they’ll eventually reach the goal. The game may include rewards for exploration — hidden power-ups, warp zones, or bonus areas — but even a new player can just keep moving forward and progress through the game.
Cave Story, on the other hand, pushes the player back and forth within a level like no other 2D platformer I’ve ever played. I’ve created a map below of the path I followed to complete the Bushlands level (known in some versions of the game as the Grasslands). [Click on the map for a larger version.]
You’ll note that in addition to all of the smaller back-and-forths, the game requires the player to return to the very beginning of the level at least three times. While the level largely follows a progressive back-and-forth — that is, you could basically divide the level in half, and the player is required to thoroughly explore the first half, and then can largely move on to thoroughly explore the second half — but then the game violates this neat division when it makes the player return to the beginning to fetch charcoal as a bomb component.
The effect of all this, at least in my play, was to make the area much more of a map (in RPG terms) than a level (in 2D platformer terms). Rather than simply being able to progress (and then return to the teleporter after completing the level), I had to continue to re-explore, and continue to converse with non-player characters (NPCs), just like returning to a town after defeating a major monster, accomplishing a specific goal, or acquiring new items in an RPG. In fact, the player’s relationships with NPCs in Cave Story are more dynamic than in many 40-hour RPGs I’ve played.
And, in all honesty, Final Fantasy XIII could learn a thing or two from Cave Story‘s level design. (Too often, running around in Final Fantasy XIII is like Super Mario Bros. without the jumping. Ugh.)
So, story next week, I promise, and I’m hoping to look back on how the robot works as a blank slate/player identification character compared to Ness from EarthBound. (My initial take is that the robot works a lot better, but I need to do some noodling as to why and how.)
Thus far, we know that Daniel is enthusiastic about Cave Story‘s power-ups, and Kevin is a bit skeptical about the jumping mechanics (which is a pretty big problem for a platformer). I’m curious to know, though, on the whole how is the game working for the two of you? What genre would you cram it into? What, as you head towards the end, would it take to make or break the game for you?
I can’t believe that we wrap up next week! Well, onward! (And maybe back again.)
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Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 2 post
Read Kevin Nguyen’s week 2 post
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Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.
]]>But first, a quick aside. Gavin pointed out you do not have to fight Balrog, the “Oh Yeah!” shouting baddie, in your first meeting. He asks if you want to fight, and well, I selected “No,” just to see what would happen. Balrog said, more or less, “OK, see you later,” and left. Interesting.
Back to the power-ups — Cave Story has you collect items which increase the power, or Level, of your weapons. With each Level, the weapon takes on new abilities. It is a double-edged sword, however. Each time you take damage, so does your weapon, and after several hits, your weapon Level drops, making you weaker. This was an unique mechanic, which added a bit of extra drama to boss battles.
I had a lot of fun powering up the weapons to their maximum Levels, just to see the difference it made. Missiles became larger, rates of fire were increased, and so forth. My favorite discovery of the game was when I realized I could propel myself skyward using the powered-up Machine Gun. Just press Down and Fire — no more pit deaths or trying to make difficult jumps. Granted, one must exercise caution — the Machine Gun’s ammo needs to recharge after a lengthy burst.
The variety of weapons keeps the game fresh too, as each weapon has its own advantage or disadvantage. For example, the Fireball just bounces along the ground (not unlike in Super Mario Bros., just larger). This makes the weapon pretty much useless for ground-to-air attacks, but the Fireball can plow through herds of enemies on hills or slopes. The Bubble weapon was also fascinating, as it doubled as a shield (handy for running through a cloud of baddies).
It seems I get a new weapon every few levels or so, and I look forward to seeing what the rest of the game offers. I just hope I don’t end up having to use jelly beans against baddies.
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Read Gavin Craig’s week 2 post
Read Kevin Nguyen’s week 2 post
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Daniel J. Hogan’s webcomic and humor blog, Clattertron, is nearly jelly bean free. Follow him on Twitter, @danieljhogan.
]]>Anyway, before we get too far into a “who’s older than whom” argument, let me say that I’m digging the choice of Cave Story as our Gamers’ Club game. I’m sometimes a bit jealous of the world of indie or other unusual downloadable games that exist in the PC world or on the XBox Live Arcade service. I do have Steam installed on my Mac, but it’s old and underpowered, and I’ve been burned before, spending hours downloading a game only to find that my lappy couldn’t even open it. So I’m blissfully happy to not only be able to get Cave Story on WiiWare, but to have something to do with my woefully underused Wii and an excuse to pull my WaveBird out of storage. (I’m a little bit put off that the game is $12 on WiiWare when it’s only $10 on Steam, but I’ll get over it.)
I’ve played about an hour and a half of Cave Story so far, and already it’s grabbed me in a way that EarthBound never did. I’m not deep enough into the story to say much in narrative terms about why that might be — and I’ll admit that I do want to go back to EarthBound on my own another day to try and figure out why so many classic RPG fans love it so much — so my initial take is that Cave Story does a really great job of mixing the architecture of the 2D platform game with the narrative techniques of the classic 2D RPG. (That is, it’s another example that game architecture isn’t determinative of genre.) The game uses platform mechanics to allow the player to navigate the world, but RPG mechanics to deliver the story. The player jumps from ledge to ledge to get around town, and explore new areas, and has conversations with non-player characters (NPCs) to find out what to do next.
And for me, right now, that mixture is magic. The platformer elements add a bit of challenge and interest as I’m exploring, and the RPG story elements give me a reason to keep exploring, and to keep jumping in the difficult parts. I’ve written before that I’m not a big fan of platformers, but I’m enjoying Cave Story, and looking forward to playing more.
There’s more I’m looking forward to talking about, hell, we could probably do an entire post just listing the cultural and video game references — Balrog alone cites both Lord of the Rings and Kool-Aid Man, and there’s something very Metroid about the way the game makes you navigate vertically and horizontally, and retrace your steps rather than moving in a single direction à la Mario. Finally, I’m curious to know if anyone else noticed that when the Balrog asks if you want to fight, you can actually say “no” and he goes away. If the game is short enough, I my play though a second time just to find out if not fighting the Balrog has an impact later in the game. (I wanted the “experience” triangles, so I didn’t fight the Balrog in the demo, but I did fight him in my current playthrough of the full version. I also did some grinding in the graveyard, killing and respawning the knife-slasher frog until my pistol was at full power.)
I’m actually a bit giddy, boys. It’s taking all my willpower to not start chanting “Genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix genres.” (That’s right. I just threw down some Derrida. Bla-dow.)
Onward! Next time I talk about the actual story, rather than just acknowledge that it exists.
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Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 1 post
Read Kevin Nguyen’s week 1 post
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Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.
]]>In contrast to Dan (who I believe is about 100 years old), by the time I was in high school and college, platformers were already nostalgic. Now that I think about it, I’ve played through more side-scrollers using an emulator than on an actual console.
So here’s Cave Story, which I am playing on my Mac (it’s only $9.99 on Steam), a platformer designed deliberately to evoke nostalgia. The Kool-Aid Man reference, as Dan pointed out, is a great example of Cave Story‘s bizarre sense of humor and its playful self-winking. I’m not much further than the Balrog — ostensibly the first boss — but I’m guessing that’s just the first of many nerdy inside jokes. And I’m looking forward to them all!
One thing that bugs me is that the physics of Cave Story seem a little off. The jumps feel sort of loose, almost floaty. Of course, platformers don’t have to adhere to Earth’s physics, but it has to feel like there’s sort of predictable gravity. When I jump I want to know where I’ll land.
I have a friend who has this theory that the original Super Mario Bros. has the perfect platformer physics. I believe that. There’s something natural and predictable about the way Mario jumps. Is it because Miyamoto engineered the jump perfectly, or because Super Mario Bros. defined what that perfect jump is supposed to feel like? I don’t know. But I’ve seen people who don’t play video games give a spectacular run through Super Mario Bros. for that reason.
Outside of pure nostalgia, I think that’s the ultimate appeal of platformers today. If you’ve ever tried to teach someone all the buttons to play Halo, you realize just how complicated games have become. Platformers have a familiar linearity to them. Cave Story is a largely two-button game, and I find its simplicity comforting and endearing. So while I’m charmed by Cave Story‘s idiosyncracies, I’m waiting to fall in love with its mechanics.
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Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 1 post
Read Gavin Craig’s week 1 post
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Kevin Nguyen is an editor at The Bygone Bureau. His only marketable skill is an above-average knowledge of European geography. He has been useless since the introduction of the atlas in 1477. Find him at Twitter at @knguyen.
]]>So, when Andrew suggested the throwback title Cave Story for our next Gamers’ Club adventure, I was eager to give the ol’ thumbs a much-needed workout. I downloaded the WiiWare version for 1200 points (roughly $12), and I was hooked the moment I saw the title screen, in all of its pseudo 8-bit glory.
In an era of overly complex and “realistic” games, it is nice to go back to something simple: Run. Jump. Shoot. Repeat. No lengthy tutorial stages, no overlong exposition-filled cut scenes, and no listening to characters tell you how to play the game. The gameplay reminds me of Metal Slug, and in two very important aspects: you can shoot up, and you can shoot down.
Not being able to shoot up (or down) was always a criticism of most side-scrollers of my youth, mainly the original Mega Man games. I was also happy to see Cave Story didn’t feature one of the most annoying platform devices ever (at least so far): death or injury by falling from great heights.
Don’t even get me started. Yes, I realize injury or death by dropping from several levels up adds a bit of realism, but it is super annoying, and a cheap kill. I was disappointed to see this device was still in use for modern games when I played Epic Mickey. Pit deaths, and the like, sure. I accept those. If I timed a jump wrong, and fell into a hole, I deserve to be punished. But loss of health, or life, just for dropping a few screens (or less)? C’mon.
I am only about a couple hours into the game (far less if you factor in all my pit deaths), but I love the world and the characters. The Kool-Aid Man referencing Balrog gets me every time he shows up with a jovial, “Oh yeah!” I really enjoy the cartoonish and quirky WTF factor of the game. I don’t see enough of that these days.
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Read Kevin Nguyen’s week 1 post
Read Gavin Craig’s week 1 post
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Daniel J. Hogan’s webcomic and humor blog, Clattertron, has a high WTF factor too. Follow him on Twitter, @danieljhogan.
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