is it worth 400 clams?

I'm actually beginning to entertain the idea of purchasing a Playstation 3 for myself. Previously I've never found any games or features compelling enough for me to shell out $400, (probably more... backwards compatibility is a deal breaker for me), but now there's a game that may seal the deal.

It isn't Little Big Planet, though if I were to have a PS3 already in my possession I would undoubtedly jump on it. It isn't Metal Gear Solid 4 either, (boy did the hype for that game fall off fast), nor is it Resistance 2 or Killzone 2. To tell the truth, I don't even care about BluRay and by the time I do care to watch all my movies in high definition, either BluRay players will be cheap anyway or there will be other solutions available.

The reason for my interest in Playstation 3 is my long-time love for Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Fahrenheit, (a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy). If that statement alone isn't enough to clue you in to what game I am anticipating, this should help a bit:

I guess the only other reason why I might go out and drop 400 clams on a big, black shiny paperweight is if I Warren Spector himself announced his plans to personally develop and bring Deus Ex 3 to PS3 exclusively.

A visual sucker-punch, courtesy of Dead Space

When I first played Resident Evil, (the original) I understood why it was termed a "survival/horror" game. I stayed up late many nights with my room illuminated only by the flickering glow of the TV playing that game. I remember not playing with a specific goal in mind so much as desperately trying to keep my intrepid characters Chris Redfield and Jill 'master of lockpicking' Valentine from suffering one form of horrific death or another. I also remember being generally scared shitless.

Since Resident Evil, I've played a lot of good, (and bad), survival horror games, but none that motivated me to move forward in the game and play to the best of my ability simply because I was scared to death of dying. Earlier today I watched a video of a boss battle from the upcoming "Dead Space" and it looks as though I might have just that sort of experience to look forward to again. In watching the boss dispatch the intrepid space engineer, I've found that maybe I'm not quite as inured to violence as I had thought and that empathy, even for a fictional video game character, can be a hell of a motivation.

Check out the video at GameCinemaHD
CAUTION: this video contains a minor boss battle and some people may consider it as a spoiler, though it doesn't contain any plot points. Also it is extremely violent.

On a completely different note; an article about how EA's DRM methods are further motivating game pirates. It's an worthwhile read.

One Small Step for Open-Mindedness

Like Rock 'n' Roll and Comic books before, video games are largely misunderstood by people who are unfamiliar with them and often criticized unfairly as a result. Of course, if you're on this website, I probably didn't need to tell you that, did I? It's a common subject of discussion for gamers. I only bring it up because the following instance is a perfect example of video games being unfairly judged, but in this case logic and rationality prevail.

Earlier tonight I was experiencing some Bionic Commando related frustration as I tried to make my way through the sixth stage. At one point, after countless drowning-related incidents I dropped my controller and said, (rather loudly), "you've got to be f**king kidding me!" (Outbursts of this sort aren't entirely uncommon for me and generally don't mean I'm not enjoying myself or ready to stop playing). My wife, who was in the room with me, then said something that I have heard many times from my mother while growing up; "If that video game is getting you so worked up that you're cursing, you need to put it down." Then she mentioned how she hates how video games get make me and her brother, (my brother in law), curse so much.

Maybe it's just me, but if I am already frustrated... not angry or pissed off mind you, just frustrated, the one thing that might push me over the edge is the feeling that I'm being patronized. Still, I kept my cool. Rather than yelling or getting upset, I simply pointed out how people act when watching a sports game on TV, or how she gets way too into watching Big Brother and I frequently hear her cursing when one of her favorite contestants makes a stupid decision. I reminded her how often both her and I and both our families spew streams of vitriolic profanity at other cars while driving.

Then I explained that I like it when games frustrate me, it means that I'm being challenged. As long as I'm not breaking things, cursing from time to time is sometimes a good sign. Games aren't fun when they're too easy and for me personally I enjoy them the most when I am being tested to my limit. If a section of a game is causing me a lot of frustration, then it just means it'll be that much more satisfying when I overcome it Of course there are times when a game truly can get so aggravating that the controller just needs to be put down, but that isn't specific to video games, just about everything in life is like that.

Lucky for me my wife is actually pretty open minded; she gets it. I just wish it was always that easy.

Nintendo remains nebulous regarding Wii storage solution

In an interview in Club Nintendo magazine, (roughly translated by the website Nintendo Everything), Reggie Fils-Aime and Shigeru Miyamoto offer vague, half answers regarding a much-needed storage solution for the Nintendo Wii.

From the website:

"We are working on a storage solution and it is especially important in America because our consumers are using Wii Points for the Virtual Console and WiiWare. I want the people to have the right expectations; We have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentioned how we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way to store the games." Miyamoto added that gamers should expect an announcement in the future, as Nintendo is researching different technologies to provide Wii owners with some sort of relief.

So it seems that Nintendo plans to investigate and possibly release a storage solution of some sort that may or may not be a hard drive and they plan on announcing it in the future rather than shocking everyone by hopping in the Delorean, going back in time and announcing it in the past. Boy am I glad that's cleared up!

Also in the article

• Miyamoto reiterates that Nintendo is working on the next Zelda, which I'm happy about but honestly isn't any more shocking than Toyota saying they plan on releasing a 2008 model Corolla.


• Miyamoto states that there shouldn't be too many more peripherals for the Wii.


• There will be no Wii demos on the Nintendo Channel and no Nintendo DS redesign until sales slowdown.

Xbox 360 to see holiday sales 20% higher than last year?

During his most recent gaze into the crystal ball, famed Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has discerned that Xbox 360 sales may rise 20% over last Fall holiday season. In an interview with Gamasutra he states, "with a little help from correct marketing, Xbox 360 sales stand to lift 20 percent in the Fall-Holiday season over the same period last year."

So what information is this latest oracular vision based on?

The $199.99 price of the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU and the continuing supply-constraints of the Wii. As Pachter says:

"I'd guess that there will be some substitution of Xbox 360 Arcade for Wii as gifts," Pachter says.

"More important, I think, is the low price itself; I think that Wii owners may consider buying a 'next gen' console and look hard at the Xbox 360 at the $199 price point, and don't think Sony is particularly competitive at $399 for the cost-conscious crowd."

Meanwhile, Sony corporate communications department employee Julie Han replies:

"We're really confident that consumers are making choices driven by value," she says, "and we know PS3 offers that value across the board, with the built-in Blu-ray player the broadest and deepest software lineup in the industry, with LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Motorstorm [Pacific Rift]... we're quite confident our holiday sales will be good."

So how will the so-called "console wars" play out this holiday season? The only way to find out for those of us without crystal balls (not a pun) is the tried and true "wait and see" method.

Who else enjoys Good Old Games?

The fine folks over at CDProjekt who made The Witcher, one of my favorite games of last year, are rolling out their "old school" games website: Good Old Games and if you sign up before September 8, you can get in on an early access beta. Not only are fantastic, classic games available for a mere $5.99 - $9.99, ("less than the cost of a lunch at some lousy diner" as the website reminds us), but the games will all be DRM-free and optimized to run on Windows XP and Windows Vista. If any of you are like me and have run into countless hassles attempting to play classic games on your modern PC, (thank the Maker for ScummVM), you'll appreciate that last point.

Did I mention that the games will include various extras like soundtracks, guides, instruction manuals, artwork, add-ons and bonus packs to make that six to ten dollar price point even more appealing? I didn't? Silly me. Get your arse on over to their website and check it out for yourself, whether you miss the good old days and want to relive them, or you flat out missed the good old days and want to live them for the first time.

Google picking up steam

Google has just released Google Chrome. Previously Google has already released several other products and services to compete with and undercut Microsoft, (Google Docs, Gmail, Google Talk). Google has also created a mobile development platform called Android.

Who wants to take bets that Google announces a complete PC operating system within the next five years?

Halo 3... Mythic?

There has been rampant speculation following the release of the following screenshot taken by the guys at Addict Gaming during PAX.

Not much is known regarding what this Halo 3 "Mythic" screen means, although since then, more screenshots have been taken from PAX of new map-pack related achievements and the the website theorizes on what this "Mythic" thing might be. An expansion to the campaign, perhaps?

While I certainly wouldn't mind more Halo sooner or later, what I really want is a patch or update that lets Halo 3 render at a higher resolution, or some sort of severe antialiasing support. While the textures are sharp and the artistic design is fantastic, if you play on a big TV there are some unpleasant jaggies that make my eyes sad.

How do you review an MMO, or Little Big Planet for that matter?

There is a long standing disagreement among many gamers as to how reviews should be written for massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs as I will henceforth refer to them. There are a variety of reasons for this, but many of them stem from the fact that MMOs are made to be played for a long, long time.

One issue is that the average MMO player will put hundreds to thousands of hours into their MMO of choice, (several thousands for hardcore players), yet for professional game journalists deadlines are a fact of life and simply cannot put in the hundreds of hours necessary to adequately assess and weigh in on an MMO and still get a review out before everyone who cares has already read reviews from all the competitors. In most MMOs, the first 20, 40, or even 100 hours play very differently than later on, once the higher levels are reached. If a game's lower level gameplay is all flowers and gumdrops, that's all well and good but how will the game keep the experience rewarding later on? On the other hand if a game is dull or merely slow in the early stages, it still might ramp up after 20-40 hours once the player begins getting in on high level activities like raids and is powerful enough to access new areas and better quests. Of course it might just be a snoretacular feat of boredom straight through.

Another issue is that an MMO six or more months after release is very different from what it was at release, which is when it receives the majority of its reviews, (a prime example being Tabula Rasa). No matter how long a game is in beta, developers cannot perfect all balance issues, kill every bug and eliminate every exploit prior to the release date but in the following months MMOs often become more streamlined; bugs are squashed, exploits are eliminated and interfaces, quests, etc. are tweaked hopefully to improve the game experience. Also, around the release date there isn't much of a community surrounding the game and the number of people inhabiting the world isn't indicative of how well the game will be populated months or even years down the road. Social interaction is a major aspect of MMOs, and a review written within weeks of a game's launch, (and in some unfortunate situations, prior to launch), can't take a large part of it into account. Perhaps games should not be reviewed based on how many people play and what they do, yet I can understand the argument that if a reviewer hasn't gotten the change to join a guild and set up a large-scale raid/siege/assault on a super high-level boss or rival guild, then said reviewer has not really experienced all that MMO has to offer. The sort of highly organized, tactical experiences that require co-operative seasoned players simply don't occur in an MMOs earliest stages.

The big question becomes: how does one review an MMO? Should it be reviewed based on the game exactly as it is at launch or should bugs, exploits and other issues be ignored based on the assumption that they will be fixed in the future? Should a reviewer have to guess whether the game will build up a thriving community and economy?

In my opinion an accurate MMO review would have to be written about four to six months after launch and the reviewer should make it at least 70% of the way to the highest level in the game if not more. Unfortunately for mainstream video game press that isn't an acceptable option, not to mention that most people who were interested in the game will have already either tried a free trial or read one of the early reviews. MMO-specific websites sometimes put out late reviews after putting loads of time in, but those must be taken with a larger grain of salt than usual because they are often written by people who

Another possible answer that I've heard is the idea of re-reviewing a game from time to time or after major updates. It's a fantastic idea but there are two major problems as I see it. The first problem is that as it is gaming publications and websites are already swamped trying to find time for their journalists to research and write previews, set up interviews, play through the games that they have to review and then write the reviews. We're not talking about movies here that only need to be watched for an hour and a half to three hours. Games take anywhere from ten to upwards of fifty hours to play through for a proper review. Try adding in the responsibility of re-reviewing games on a regular basis and it can just be too much. The second problem I see with re-reviewing games is that if re-reviews become the norm, then developers and publishers will be that much less motivated to make sure a game is adequately complete before releasing it. If an MMO is going to get re-reviewed anyway then why not just release the beta version in stores and say it's done. It can always be patched for a higher score. A similar mentality is already on the rise on the console game side. Ever since the current generation of consoles has allowed games to be updated, I've seen a lot more games being released in an unfinished form, (Alone in the Dark... you broke my heart).

Soon, we'll have a whole new style of game that may raise similar and possibly more questions regarding how reviews should be written. Little Big Planet is set to come out in October this year and the game is essentially a super-intuitive game creation tool that you play within. The game itself almost mirrors the Playstation 3 in the manner that the creators have created a fantastic and powerful tool, but since the people who use it won't be able to instantly grasp everything it is capable of, the most delicious fruit that it will bear won't show up until later on down the road. As it has taken Playstation 3 almost two years to before games could show what the system was really capable of, (largely due to developers learning how to program for the system), it may quite some time as well after the game's launch before we see the really good content for Little Big Planet.

So how does one write a review for Little Big Planet? If the single-player game that comes bundled in is amazing and the design tools are fun and intuitive then obviously the answer is easy, you score it nice and high, discuss the game as-is and mention future potential. On the other hand, what if the game as it is at launch is simply an awesome game design tool with an afterthought single player game bundled in? Do you review it based on the promise of great community content popping up in the future? Can a review truly be written based on the potential of a game rather than what is actually there?

So undoubtedly now you're looking for my answer to all these problems. Truth is, there's no "right answer" and any way that a review for Little Big Planet or an MMO is handled, it will be forced to make assumptions and walk a fine line between not giving a game enough of a chance and giving a game too much credit. As more non-traditional games are released that, by design, won't reach their innate potential until long after they have been released, (hopefully many more), it will be interesting to see how reviews are handled going forward.