Marginalia: 7.31.09

Joystiq: They say the PS3 costs 70% less to manufacture now than it once did. If you do the math, it means the PS3 now only costs $14,000 to manufacture.

Gamasutra: Gamestop is trying out this digital distribution thing. Soon, they'll start selling open digital games as new and buying back our used digital games and selling them at an 80% markup.

Joystiq: One of those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games is going to be cheaper. Cowabunga.

Gamasutra: Aaand Wii Sport earns Nintendo another ocean of money. This just in: Reggie Fils-Aime buys yacht, names it "S.S. Waggle," laughs self to death.

Destructoid: Star Wars weddings make me giggle. This one made me shudder.

1UP: Um, Nintendo’s Wii Classic Controller Pro looks a lot like those dumb prototype Boomerang PS3 controllers.  But I bet it’s easier to hold than the current Classic Controller.

GameSpot: Square-Enix launched another teaser site.  Did I really just type that?  Another one?

GameSpot:  In Guitar Hero 5, you’ll be able to use your Xbox Live Avatars in-game.  So…I don’t have to use that crazy fat Viking anymore?

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Cave Story, A Retro Labor of Love

Look, I know I’m a little late on the whole Cave Story thing.  It came out for the PC in 2004 and received an English translation about a month later.  This year, it should find it’s way to Nintendo’s WiiWare service, courtesy of Nicalis. 

In case this never even blipped on your radar, Cave Story is a retro platformer in the style of Metroid or Castlevania.  Developed Daisuke Amaya (aka Pixel) created and programmed the whole thing himself (it took him five years!), even composing all of the game’s music.  Though the WiiWare version will sport updated graphics and music, the original has an 8-bit aesthetic crafted entirely by Amaya. 

And that aesthetic is just one reason this game’s stuck with me.  Read on for why Cave Story should be considered a crucial entry into gaming canon.

If the buzz around titles like ‘Splosion Man, Shadow Complex, or Trine is any indication, two-dimensional platformers haven’t lost their appeal, especially among an aging generation of gamers who cut their teeth on 8- and 16-bit classics.  The best of them still hold up: Super Mario Bros. can still illicit both joy and nerd rage (World 8-3 Hammer Bros anyone?), and I’ve known more than a few people who just can’t shut up about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (though I’ll admit that’s of a more recent generation). But the selling point of these newer 2D-titles is often their ability to update classic mechanics on modern hardware.  They may tap into our nostalgia, but they don’t drill deep, set up a derrick and watch as a geyser of childhood memories erupts into the air.

Cave Story comes close.  It captures the spirit of adventure and exploration that so many classic games were able to do in spite of their technical limitations.  In a recent Escapist piece, Leigh Alexander examined (among other things) how the limits of early games enabled players (primarily kids playing Atari or Nintendo) to fill in the gaps with their imagination.  8-bit sprites definitely allowed room for interpretation: “Is that a moustache or a nose?” “Is that an elf or a goblin?”  I had plenty of those fun moments of in Cave Story.  Consider the recurring boss Balrog (seen right).  Is he a giant robot?  A toaster?  Amaya would rather the player make that decision.  In a 2005 interview with TIGSource, he was asked about the specifics of this bizarre character, to which he replied, “I leave that to the player’s imagination.”  Statements like that usually frustrate me; nobody likes cop outs.  But I’m with Amaya on this one.  He knew what he was doing with Balrog, whether or not he cared to weigh in on the toaster issue.  Balrog’s large face and eyes grant him a unique expressiveness – perfect for a childlike opponent who can’t decide if he wants to help you or smash you.  From the cuddly, bunny-like Mimigas to the fearsome, towering bosses, Amaya’s crafted a stylish, imaginative world out of pixels and elbow grease.

But Cave Story is more than charmingly-aliased graphics.  A common complaint about modern games (especially Western ones) is their Hollywood-bland action music.  Yes, I appreciate that the Red Faction: Guerrilla music changes when I drive a dump truck through an enemy embankment, but I couldn’t hum it for the life of me.  Amaya took his musical cues from the songs that have inspired bands like The Minibosses or The Advantage, songs with memorable themes that stay with you when you’ve finished playing, that bring you back for more.  Check out the bouncy Main Theme, with its delightful synth solo around 1:58.  Or Egg Corridor, a song so peppy and uplifting I had a hard time resisting the urge to stop playing, go outside, and just explore.  Last but not least, there’s Balrog’s Theme, which aptly blends those qualities of humor and strength that I mentioned earlier. 

So Amaya, via some sort of black magic, has successfully consulted with the Ghosts of Games Past to render unto his game qualities befitting a classic: memorable characters with inspired artwork and infinitely hummable music.  But to access any of this, you have to play the game.  And, let’s face it, all this hard work would be irrelevant if the game weren’t fun.  Cave Story isn’t afraid to wear its influences on its sleeve, featuring a host of upgradable weapons (ahem, Metroid) and plenty of stat-boosting items (Zelda, etc.).  I don’t, however, mean that derisively.  All of the weapons feel quite distinct from those of other games from the 8-/16-bit era – most notably the Throwing Knife, whose fully upgraded form launches the soul of a warrior Mimiga along with what is essentially a storm of tiny blades.  I’m also pretty sure I missed some weapons, which speaks to the vast scope of this one-man indie title.  Then there’s the jumping, which evolves with jetpack upgrades and can be further augmented by using your upgraded machine gun to propel you into the air.  It’s all been designed and balanced for ultimate fun, making traversing the various zones immensely enjoyable.

And what of Cave Story’s story, you say?  It’s got multiple twists and endings (though I only found one).  It employs the popular Amnesiac Hero device, putting you in control of a robot soldier named Quote, who recalls nothing prior to the game’s beginning.  An evil scientist is planning to use the adorable Mimigas, natives on the game’s magical floating cave island (it’s weird, I know), and it’s up to you to stop them.  Amaya uses the Amnesiac Hero well.  Other characters relate to you the way many Half-Life NPCs do: with humor, skepticism, hope, compassion and plenty more.  Be prepared to do a little bit of a reading in this one.  The whole text box convention is part of the charm, and there are lots of details about the mysterious world waiting to be discovered. 

Prior experience with platformers of yore is not necessary for you to enjoy Cave Story.  Nor should prior experience diminish your enjoyment.  But I think it’s a game that gamers should play – to remind them of what it feels like to explore this kind of environment, to triumph against some epic bosses, and to maybe, just maybe, have some good old-fashioned fun.

Cave Story is available for free on PC and should be available via the WiiWare service later this year.

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Marginalia: 7.30.09 – People Are Busy Edition

Gamasutra:  Looks like Activision might lose their Brutal Legend suit.  Sometimes being one of the biggest companies out there just isn’t enough.

Destructoid: Valve speaks out against recent allegations that Left 4 Dead 2’s New Orleans setting might be insensitive or racist.

Joystiq: Capcom delays some game called The Rocketeer Dark Void so as not to compete with Halo 3: ODST and other AAA sequels.  Am I surprised?  No.  Do I care?  Guess.

GameSpot: Nintendo’s financial numbers be slackin’.

GameSpot: Atari founder Nolan Bushnell divulges some details about his upcoming MMOFPS/RTS/ABC123 Battleswarm.  Can we just take a moment to recognize that this man brought us Chuck E. Cheese?

Destructoid: Valve’s Chet Faliszek flat out called games with “moral choices” impossible.  Pretty ballsy considering it’s quickly becoming an industry cliché after the success of BioShock, inFAMOUS, and pretty much every BioWare game ever.

VG247: THQ believes they could’ve done a better job marketing Red Faction: Guerrilla.  I mean, it made it into the top ten sales in June, so they must have done something right.  (You should definitely click this link just for typo: “Red Action Gorilla.”)

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dear persistent game worlds: you make me feel bad

There’s something that games have started to do in the last few years that I am not totally into. As technology has progressed, persistent game worlds have become possible. What is a persistent game world, do you ask? A persistent game world is one that always exists, even when you stop playing the game.

The thing I don’t love about these games is the external pressure on me and my time. Look, my time isn’t super important or anything, but when you come home from a full day of work sometimes the last thing you want is some game bossing you around. Let’s talk about it.

Massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft helped to popularize this concept, although they weren’t the first to have always-on worlds. This stems from the “massive,” “multiplayer,” and “online” parts of those genres – even when you sign out and go to bed or to spend time with your increasingly estranged family or something, there’s still someone, somewhere, maybe in Korea, who is playing this game and interacting with its denizens and keeping its world turning.

I guess I have less of an issue with these games because of the social aspect – the game itself, its towns and raids and scripted events, will wait for you to come and play them. The appointments are made with people who are, more or less friends, sort of like a nerdy version of going out for drinks with friends. MMOs are often derided for the alleged antisocial qualities of their player base, but if this is how you choose to make and keep friends, I can be okay with that.

A far more insidious version of the persistent game world comes in the form of Animal Crossing, one of the games that led Nintendo’s charge into the casual. The game features a persistent world that stays in sync with the real one – when it’s dark outside, it’s dark in Animal Crossing. When it’s winter, it’s winter in Animal Crossing. It’s sort of cool at first glance, but as you delve deeper into the game and develop more digital responsibilities – you have a home loan, in-game friends, fruit to plant and fish to catch, after all – it becomes an insidious leech. Not content with stealing your time from you while you’re actually playing the game, Animal Crossing begins making appointments with you.

“Hey,” it says. “Show up at 7:00pm next Tuesday. I’ll give you something neat.”

What. I stopped playing Animal Crossing the very first time I went out to play it in my car on a break at work, hoping to keep an appointment with a cartoon cat. Even more so than usual, my choice of hobby sickened me. That fucked went on Amazon for $25 – I hope that person could better work his or her schedule around the lives of the fake people in his video game.

It doesn’t end there. Even if you resolved never to watch a cartoon dog play guitar in a bar every Sunday night, you still have to keep playing the game, near-constantly, to get the most out of it. If I’m irritating Rob by playing (and enjoying!) Dragon Quest XIV but end up taking a break for a couple of weeks to move or climb a mountain or something, that game and its world and its digital inhabitants are exactly where the save file tells them to be. When I come back to the game after an extended break, everything is exactly as I left it. It is comforting, in its way. Not so Animal Crossing!

“Leave your town for three weeks and come back,” it says. “See what happens.”

Your town is desolate, utterly forlorn, digital tumbleweeds a-rolling. You’re apparently the only one who can be counted on to lift a fucking finger around the place – weeds are everywhere, your mailbox is jammed full of angry mail from porcupines you haven’t visited, and most of your friends have packed up their shit and left. Guilt-ridden, you clean up your town and try to strengthen the bonds you have with your remaining villagers. Then, you realize that what you’re doing will never have any measurable impact on anyone (heartbreaking stories aside), and you throw up and sell the game.

At least, that was my experience. Call me old-fangled, but I like my games to be on when they’re on and off when they’re not. And that’s all I have to say about that.

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The Future Was Then

Before Bethesda did mega-games like Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3, they made First Person Shooters for the Terminator franchise.

Those of you who think the light gun cabinet game Judgment Day is the only worthwhile game on the license will be forgiven (it is, after all, pretty sweet). But Bethesda’s two titles, Future Shock (1995) and Skynet (1996) were not only good – they were prescient, sophisticated and half a decade ahead of its peers.

Given the license, I’ll try to refrain from time travel jokes. But Future Shock and Skynet couldn’t be more ahead of the curve if they arrived in a fence-melting bolt of lightning.


Before I go nuts singing these games’ praises, bear in mind that this was 1995. FS was playable only in 320x200, until advances made by Skynet made it playable in a stunning 640x480. Got it? Swell. Let’s go nuts.

Ask any Terminator fan pre-Salvation, and they’ll say the only thing they ever wanted was the first five minutes of Cameron’s Terminator 2 – the battle between the resistance and the machines – expanded into a full-on, kickass movie. For those fans (for us, my friends), Future Shock was a godsend. You played as a resistance soldier reporting directly to Connor.

If the post-nuclear palate was a little drab (even for then), the thrill of creeping around nuked-out LA was undeniable. The whirr and whine of Terminators was dread-inspiring, even if their polygonal models were a little laughable.

Future Shock was one of the first games to use freelook – the mechanic used almost without exception today, whereby the mouse determines where one’s head is pointed and the arrow keys move them along. No more imagining what was outside the strict x-axis of your field of vision – you could look wherever your smitten heart pleased.

Think that’s hot shit for 1995? Get this – you could walk in and out of buildings. See a convenience store? Wonder if there might be a box of satchel charges in the back? Check it out! Just be prepared to wait a minute or two while the textures load.

If the sheer modernity isn’t redirecting your blood flow, perhaps this will – there are vehicle levels. Granted, this isn’t an open world shooter – you can’t drive-around willy-nilly – but the ability to drive a laser-turreted jeep or even (gasp!) a flying Hunter-Killer was new to me. If the controls took some getting used to, that was fine – it was neat stuff, flying above that 320x200 landscape, mostly immune to the physics that, so far as first person shooters were concerned, didn’t exist yet.

In the future, where machine conquers men in spirit if not in body, these conventions would become commonplace, even mandatory among first person shooters. But in 1995, they were revolutionary.

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Marginalia: 7.28.09

Crispy Gamer:  A detailed account of the recent Professor Layton Twitter Madness.  Long story short: some dude set up a Layton feed, people thought it was viral-marketing from Nintendo, he got caught, people were upset I guess?

Eurogamer: So…zombies in Left 4 Dead 2 may be wearing Depeche Mode t-shirts.

GameDaily:  Gaming is a low-turnover market?  Big surprise there. 

Joystiq: Germans really videogames.  How much, you say?  Enough to take civil action.

Joystiq: Portions of Midway’s tattered remains have been assimilated by Warner Bros., congealing into some new studio called WB Games.

Wired: The director of the original Saw may end up helming a Castlevania movie.  Why am I surprised when stuff like this comes up?

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – 7/28 – Zen and the Art of Electro-Pop

I know it’s going to be a fun week when I have to look up what someone from Luxembourg is called before I can do my write-up (it’s Luxembourgers, by the way).

If this week’s songs truly represent the genre, then Electro-Pop can most likely be defined as electronica with lyrics that fit a pop sensibility (love, heartache, existential crises, you know the drill).  I’m obviously making blanket statements just for the fun of it.  You should feel free to actually ride the songs and create your own definition.  Aren’t interactive dictionaries fun?

The aforementioned Luxembourgers make up the group Avastar, who proudly declare themselves an “Electro/Pop” act.  Their stuff sometimes sounds a little videogame-y; it might make good background music for a Mega Man speed run or a masochistic Ikaruga session.  Should you get bored of all this computer-generated noise, move on to CalmaNiño, a horror-ska band from Argentina.  I’m sure some people think ska is horrible enough as is.  These guys obviously disagree.

Read on for my thoughts on the hypnotic effects of Electro-Pop and the spine-chilling results of combining heavy metal with lighthearted ska.

Recommendations

“Under My Skin” begins with abrupt industrial noises, perfect for robot busking or the time on Sprockets ven ve danse.  It then moves on to a more conventional electronica beat, replete with panning soundscapes and synth instrumentation.  Like Avastar’s other stuff, the vocals are at a near whisper (or otherwise mixed very softly).  I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the result of a DJ not being confident in his singing abilities?  From what I could hear, the lyrics were about someone you can’t get our of your head, which might sound complimentary if they were sung not creepily subvocalized.  My whining aside, “Under My Skin” presents a great opportunity to zen out.  The track is more varied than some of the other selections (thus earning a recommendation), with a few hills and curves to break things up.  And the traffic, while substantial, never flows in overwhelming patterns.  It’s possible to rack up a massive score (just check the leaderboards), but you don’t have to be superhuman to navigate the throngs of blue and yellow.

If you’re looking for the best of what this week has to offer, look no further than “1024th Floor.”  I could tell immediately I was in for something different.  The audio effects sound like they came from an entirely different library than Avastar’s other songs – they sound more organic, closer to real instruments.  And for the whole first uphill section, I thought (and hoped) it might be an instrumental.  Alas, the vocals kick in at the peak.  I’m not sure what he’s mumbling about, however.  Sometimes it sounds like counting, as if he’s tallying each floor as we climb to the 1024th.  At one point, I thought I heard screen resolutions (“1024 by 768” being particularly apropos).  And during the final downhill I began to wonder if it was chanting, if I was helping him to summon a Great Old One (reason why I think this may be it: when Cthulu came to mind, the track started corkscrewing).  Regardless, it’s mixed so low that I was able to push it to the back of my mind while riding.  What makes the track for me is the constant sense of growth, even the subtle additions of guitar toward the end.  Despite the Audiosurf sensation of going downhill, the song feels like it’s trying to lift me upward, perhaps into some gaping wormhole just past Saturn.  “1024th Floor” may have programmed me to say this, but you should play this song.

Other selections
If you come away from “Under My Skin” and “1024th Floor” really enjoying Avastar, go ahead and give “Illusive” and “It’s Your Life” a try.  Both strike that slightly creepy vibe, mostly due to the whispered vocals.  “Illusive,” a word I’d thought was a typo of “Elusive,” is about dreams being more desirable than real-life – I think.  And “It’s Your Life” sounds like it wants to be about empowerment, but comes off like an invitation to a seedy underground party.  As rides, neither one is too exciting, but if you like to zen out to some electronica at the end of the day, be my guest.  CalmaNino’s “Los Muertos” is…odd.  If you have some ska (preferably some of The Aquabats), turn it on.  Then crank up some Slipknot or Rob Zombie.  That’s kind of like what listening to the CalmaNino is like.  Oh, and the ride is boring, snare-drum-only type of stuff.

Recommended Riding
When I was listening to Avastar’s noncommittal, sparingly-harmonized vocals, I couldn’t help but think of RJD2 and his album The Third Hand.  Here’s another case of a DJ branching out to include some vocals, but RJD2 goes whole hog with it and actually carries a tune.  I’m a big fan of “Just When” and “Reality,” though both could probably use a Steep tag to make the ride challenging.  “Get It” is a great percussion-heavy instrumental with some slick downhill sections.

Author’s Note
All songs were played on the Pro difficulty at least twice, using the Vegas and Eraser characters.  I’m still a little worried about the possible link between “1024th Floor” and Cthulu.  Any Massachusetts readers would do well to alert authorities should any squid people begin rising from the ocean.

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Midnight Snack: Castle Corp

To be honest, I had a hard time not writing about Nitrome’s Twin Shot 2: Good & Evil.  But I’d be doing you a disservice having already gushed about the original (and TW2 is more of the same – in the good way).  So today I’ll recommend another of Nitrome’s gems: Castle Corp.

As is the case with a lot of browser titles, the story’s a little sketchy.  You operate some sort of castle corporation (duh), and a competitor has ousted you, capturing some of your workers (knights) and booby-trapping your castle.  You must use your limited crew of knights to defeat the enemies and restore profitability (seriously, many of the level’s start with your boss feeding you goofy corporate jargon).

Castle Corp mixes elements of the puzzle genre with real-time action.  You place your knights one at a time on predetermined spawn points, which sets them marching along the two-dimensional path.  If they run into an enemy knight, they’ll hack at each other until one falls.  The main mechanic, however, is aiming your knights Bust-a-Move-style with the mouse and sending them flying, taking out any in their path.  They’ll ricochet off pipes and collect money along the way, so precision aiming is often required.

There are weapon upgrades, of course, which can get you out of a jam by making your knights tougher or arming them with crossbows.  New enemies are introduced at regular intervals, spicing up the already varied level design.  The game doesn’t move quickly, however, so replaying failed levels can be a chore (I got stuck on Level 14 and had to take a break). 

What else can I say?  It’s a fun, unique game that stretches both the puzzle- and reflex-oriented parts of your brain.  And there’s a gun that shoots swords.  Do I need to say that twice? (In case I do: there’s a gun that shoots swords.)

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Marginalia: 7.27.09

Destructoid: The price of a silenced shotgun in Far Cry 2 has dropped from $10 to $5. How generous!

Destructoid: Let the delays begin: Splinter Cell: Conviction and Red Steel 2 pushed back to 2010.

Gamasutra: If it works, give it a movie, two sequels, record deal, Porsche, etc - Dead Space is getting the royal treatment.

Joystiq:  Remember all those people you treated like crap in Mass Effect?  Well in the upcoming sequel, they'll remember.

Industry Gamers:  Rockstar has no problem saying that a Grand Theft Auto movie would be a stupid idea.  I say anybody interested in one should just watch Gone in Sixty Seconds, Fast and Furious, and The Departed simultaneously.

1UP: Big surprise: Tales of Monkey Island dropped today for the Wii.  Check out Andrew’s review here.

1UP: Amidst all the white noise hubbub surrounding Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, Bungie continues to promise a new IP sometime after 2010.  No word, however, on who can afford to publish it.

Eurogamer: One of the people boycotting Left 4 Dead 2 dreamed up the new “Spitter” zombie-type prior to Valve’s recent announcement of the creature.  Thankfully, he’s admitting it’s probably a coincidence and is confining his complaints to the sequel’s existence, not its content.

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demo monday: ‘splosion man

Last week, I put on my sleuthing cap and my red dress and took an educational tour through a mysterious mystery in Venice, Italy. This week, I returned to more familiar stomping grounds in Twisted Pixel’s ‘Splosion Man, a recent addition to the Xbox Live Arcade.

‘Splosion Man is pretty much a two-dimensional platformer. When I say two-dimensional, I am talking about the number of dimensions that the game has, not, like, the depth of its gameplay. That being said, this demo of ‘Splosion Man isn’t particularly deep. Let’s discuss.

‘Splosion Man is, ostensibly, the tale of a science experiment gone wrong. The result is you, a guy who can explode, and you want to get out of the lab that created you. You can leverage your new exploding powers to do that – exploding will make you jump, and exploding while sliding down a wall will make you wall jump. You can jump three times before you need to land and recharge, and you never get any other skills – the whole thing is very N. There are, however, a number of special exploding barrels that hurl you up and down and across the maps, and I assume the later levels will make more challenging use of them.

Because, see, part of this demo’s problem is that the demo isn’t very good. A demo is supposed to leave a good impression, best foot forward and all that. The demo for ‘Splosion Man is the first three levels from the game, which in any basic platformer are guaranteed to be the most elementary, boring levels in the game. To close, it teases you with the prospect of a boss battle, and then cuts to commercial. If I wanted to be tantalized with the mere promise of some potentially interesting gameplay, I’d go to GameTrailers and watch a video.

The game’s tied up in a very slick package, and it looks good. Framerate is smooth, character designs have character, and the thing was obviously put together by people who have some idea what they’re doing. The camera will occasionally focus on an area of the map, clearly intended to draw your focus to a particular element of the map, and after you leave that area it’ll stick there for a second and then lurch back to following you, but otherwise it zooms in and out when it needs to and doesn’t get in the way.

There’s not a lot to say about the nuts and bolts of the thing – it’s competently done, from top to bottom, and there’s just not a lot to say about a game like this in the context of a blog where all the readers have had some exposure to a game like this before. Unfortunately, you’ll have to get the full game to get the full effect – like I said, there’s not a lot of meat on this three-level demo’s bones.

Similarly damning for the demo is the exclusion of any Xbox Live multiplayer. If Resident Evil 5 and Army of Two have taught me anything, it’s that nothing spices up a technically-competent but otherwise average game like bringing a snarky friend along. There’s a whole other fifty levels to the game that I couldn’t get a taste of because of my self-imposed hermitage. Too bad.

‘Splosion Man is not without its promise, and I really wish this demo had given me the chance to play the game I’ve read about. It just has sort of a boring demo, and I don’t think it’s going to do anything to persuade people sitting on the fence. If you’re going to buy this one, you’ll do it based on the relative strengths of its review scores, not because of this demo.

Twisted Pixel’s ‘Splosion Man is available from the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft Points, or $10.00. Played single-player demo to completion.

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Marginalia 7.25.09

Kotaku: An overview of Netflix Party Play, which some are referring to as "MST3k mode."

Gamasutra: Rumor has it that Bungie is this close to finishing out the Halo franchise and starting to do something else. Rumor also has it that as soon as one of their new games flops, they'll come running back to the franchise with their tail between their legs.

Gamastura: Xbox Live Indie Games are given price points more attuned to the relative quality of the games available on the service.

Joystiq: Scribblenauts is getting some of the attention it so sorely deserves. This game could end up being quite a Big Deal...

Destructoid: Bungie says Microsoft's waggle-tech Natal won't work with Halo. But it will, for one reason only: teabagging.

Destructoid: Nintendo gives us yet one more reason to vomit. Continue...

War Stories

I recently watched this slick little animated short based on Call of Duty 4. Titled “The Call,” the short tells the story of an American convoy, which gets ambushed in some vaguely Middle Eastern country. Its bang-bang-boom-boom is all done very tastefully, harvesting Modern Warfare’s rich palate of explosions and urgent shouting.

Yet, after a few minutes of beautiful drawing and talented directing, I had a nasty taste in my mouth. I had just watched a (mostly) convincing depiction of contemporary urban warfare in the Middle East – and it was based on a videogame.

We’ve been fighting virtual Nazis for longer than our grandparents fought real ones. We’ve sniped insurgents in dead-on simulacrums of modern battlegrounds. We’ve done this for so long, we’ve not only lost our frame of reference – we forgot there was one to begin with. We’ve crossed a line.


Before you rain down hellfire upon my shoddy little argument, let me be the first to confess that I’m one of the worst indulgers of what can be most charitably called “War Porn” – anything with a Tom Clancy or Call of Duty branding, I play and love. I gobble it up shamelessly. Seriously: I’m first in line to buy Modern Warfare 2.

But an Uncanny Valley-ish effect is creeping in. The closer games get to nailing the visceral experience of war – the sounds, the explosions, the jargon – the farther away they move from the reality. During the course of MW, I paused hundreds of times in sheer that’s-so-cool awe; also during the course of MW, I was greased hundreds of times for doing so. Don’t worry, I was fine; I respawned ten feet and two minutes ago. Checkpoints unburden us of a sense of consequence. Tension, fear, and I’m-still-alive exhilaration play no part in modern war games.

Some advocate the play-without-saving model. Rock on, I say, but take it one step further: after you die, throw the disc out the window. Pause. Reflect.

I’m being glib, but you get my point: war games are becoming impossibly distant from the source material, not because they aren’t trying, but because they’re trying too hard. Look at Army of Two: I love it mostly because it hardly tries at all. Games like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, however, do their best to immerse you in what a room full of programmers would like to believe is an authentic warzone.

Really, nothing makes me laugh harder than seeing a group of code monkeys gussied-up in flack jackets, holding M-16s loaded with blanks. Many design teams will pay good money to run through a military-chaperoned wargame, sweating and puffing to dive behind a barrier before a few chalk rounds snap over their heads. Guys? I’ve played paintball, too. Not even close.

The thing about “The Call” is it resembles a videogame more than it does real war – the ambush, the vague, shouted Arabic, the cinematic showdown with the Hind. While it’s under no obligation to pay rigid homage to real warfare, we need to recognize that there’s something morally hazardous in making fake war while across the globe, Americans wage war that is very, very real.

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Marginalia: 7.24.09

Destructoid: Watch 2K use a stupid fruit metaphor to describe their upcoming RPG/shooter Borderlands. Don't let it sully your opinion, though. This game looks shit-hot.

Destructoid: I'd say how unsettling and perverse it is to love a pillow, but I have the emotional life of a Marlboro butt; suffice it to say, this is really fucking strange.

Gamasutra: Band Hero gives us a new way to annoy people on airplanes - a drum peripheral!

1UP:  Activision’s getting in on the old-school adventure rerelease action.  As retro adventure gaming continues to gain steam (pun intended), I can’t help but reiterate: LucasArts where’s my Full Throttle?

Industry Gamers: Epic Games VP Mark Rein confesses that developing for the Wii would be a waste of their time.  I have to give props to a developer who admits their limits; it wouldn’t make sense for the people trying to push the bar technologically to design for Nintendo’s party machine.

Joystiq: Remember that Peter Jackson Halo project that just kept getting delayed and delayed?  Yeah, it ain’t happening.

Crispy Gamer: Used games, despite pissing off a lot of publishers, may help increase aggregate demand.  It may not be proven, but it’s an interesting theory.

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When Final Battles Fall Short - Do Games Know How to End?

Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo recently posted about a discussion re: game endings on a 1UP podcast.  Garnet Lee and Gamasutra’s Christian Nutt debated about how the traditional Final Battle prevents games from having dénouement, in the literary sense. 

Is dénouement absolutely necessary for a good story?  No, not necessarily.  Plenty of good stories (whatever the medium) end abruptly, but that is usually done to emphasis certain themes or motifs. 

It’s almost become cliché to disparage game narratives.  Why?  Is there something inherently flawed about storytelling in an interactive medium?

Part of the problem may be the terminology we attach to finishing a game.  More general terms aside, books are read and movies are seen.  Games are “beaten.”  This comes, of course, from gaming’s preteen years, when most titles were primarily challenges of skill.  Some, designed to ravenously consume your quarters, didn’t even allow you to complete the game – limited hardware prompted games to commit seppuku lest they carry on indefinitely.  The challenge-based design aesthetic still pervades an industry characterized by Achievements, High Scores, and Time Trials.  Of course, presenting the player with puzzles and tests is something movies and books can’t do.  I’ve never, upon finishing a book remarked that I “beat” it (though I may about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, if I ever get through it).  So do we need to dump skill-based, challenge-to-challenge design if we’re evolve narrative in games?

Hopefully not.  As I said, it’s one of the things games have over other media.  Unfortunately, this holdover from the Golden Age of arcades has led to widespread implementation of the Big Boss/Final Battle.  And this is where so many game stories go astray.  I’ve tried to be an apologist for BioShock’s final battle, something Andrew’s railed against repeatedly.  But really, I can’t argue with him.  A game dealing primarily with the illusion of choice and the power of the individual should not have a boss that uses minions.  In fact, were BioShock to end at its infamous twist (no spoiler, I’ll be nice), I’m sure we’d be having a much different discussion.  Mass Effect’s final fight, while certainly tense, felt anticlimactic, especially given the scope of the space battle being waged offscreen.  Half-Life 2, a game critically renowned for its ability to deliver an entertaining yet straight-faced and linear narrative, should not have ended with a glorified gravity gun puzzle. 

How should these games have ended?  I’m not sure.  But isn’t it interesting these critically-acclaimed stories end with underwhelming or out-of-place boss battles?  I think it’s, in part, an issue of player agency.  Games have evolved to point where the truly memorable moments can either be created entirely by the player (the gleeful, wanton destruction of Red Faction: Guerrilla) or seen to evolve organically out of the player’s actions (the carefully orchestrated encounters of Half-Life 2).  I’m reminded of a moment in HL2: Episode Two, when a massive Strider attacks Gordon and Alyx in a riverbed, and the robot DOG leaps off a nearby cliff, engaging the alien monstrosity in melee combat.  You, playing Gordon, can still move.  You can fire upon the Strider.  Sure, DOG will always be the one to kill it King-Kong-style, but doesn’t the negate the feeling of player participation. 

Contrast moments like these to the cut-scene epidemic.  BioShock, after making you fight a senseless final boss, tosses a ten-second cut-scene (one whose content depends entirely on whether or not your morality lapsed just once) at you.  Mass Effect dazzles with its seamless transition from everyday Walking-Around-to-Gather-Intel to I-Need-to-Shoot-These-Dudes combat.  Yet it cannot relay a worthwhile end to the story without resorting a scripted movie sequence.   Even though it maintains the first-person perspective, Half-Life 2 ends with an immobile, one-sided conversation with a well-dressed, time-stopping supernatural man.

There’s a paradox here. Games thrive on the player’s ability to shape, impact, and help co-author the narrative, yet they have no say in how it ends other than to turn off the power button prematurely.  That’s not necessarily the developer’s fault.  Gamers want story.  And they want to participate in it, as well.  But I think this “I’m going to beat this game” mentality limits the developers’ options.  Shadow of the Colossus is one of the few games where upon completion I felt pangs of regret.  The ten-minute, largely playable sequence that follows the final colossus aptly drives home the story’s themes and overall message.  I was left wondering if I should have beaten it. 

If game stores are to clear this storytelling hurdle, more developers will have to employ tactics similar to Shadow of the Colossus or the first half of BioShock.  Toy with our completionist expectations.  Dare to tell stories that don’t end triumphantly.  Perhaps then we can distance ourselves from the Final Battle trope and embrace a wider variety of narratives. 

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marginalia 7.23.09

Digitimes: Someone got a contract to develop a "new Xbox 360."  I wonder if by new they mean, "just like the old 360 but with a camera stapled to it."

LA Times: At Comic-Con, Ubisoft and Microsoft are rolling out short films based on the Assassin's Creed and Halo franchises.  What's so special about that?  They made them completely in-house, sans Hollywood movie-machine involvement.

AP: A service called Raptr (not a typo) is aiming to be a "Facebook for gamers."  I don't know if that's something I need, but...whatever floats your boat? (Ed: can’t we just use the Facebook everyone else uses?)

Joystiq: Someone sure likes The Sims 3! And by someone, I mean everyone.

Joystiq: Hold it! More Ace Attorney coming this way February 16th, in the form of a game starring Miles Edgeworth. Nice.

Gamasutra: Kongregate’s Jim Greer and Greg McClanahan (whose names make them sound like they should be hard-boiled cops this fall on NBC, by the way) elaborate on what you shouldn’t do when making a flash game.

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More than Just Mario and Sonic at the Olympics?

In a recent GameLife blog post for Wired, Tracey John spoke with four Olympic athletes, asking whether or not they felt gaming should be given consideration as an Olympic sport.

Despite two of the athletes identifying themselves as big gamers, none of them were ready to make any form of gaming an Olympic sport.  Canadian snowboarder Matthew Morison pointed out that many real sports get turned down, making it a contentious, slippery slope were gaming added to the calendar of events.  Lindsey Vonn, an American downhill skier, joked that – were gaming included in some form – she’d “definitely try to win an Olympic medal in virtual skiing.” 

Vonn’s comment got me thinking about the simulation aspect of modern gaming, and why it should prevent games from making a serious Olympic bid.  If a game is a representation of a skill already present in the Olympics (say, shooting a gun or sword fighting), there’s no way it should make the cut. 

I then started thinking about how I’ve never seen people play Chess at the Olympics, which would support arguments against something competitive yet uniquely game-y like Starcraft (despite its South Korean popularity).  But then I went to the “Recognised Sports” section of the Olympic website.  These are not Olympic-caliber sports, but are somehow close?  They support the Olympic Movement (whatever the hell that is).  Chess is on there.  As is Life Saving, something called DanceSport, and Orienteering (which is kind of like racing on foot or a bike but there’s an element of boy-I-hope-I’m-not-fucking-lost). 

Maybe specific games will end up on this Recognised Sports list.  Damn it.

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not a success, but close enough: army of two post-mortem

I will go out a limb for this, Charge Shot!!’s last declarative statement about Army of Two: If you can’t make new IP that is either revolutionary or a masterful refinement, make new IP like this.

Let me clarify. Army of Two starts off as stupid as hell. It’s a little clunky. Every terrorist is some awful caricatured mash-up of every post-9/11 movie villain ever. Its writing wasn’t great, its treatment of its subject matter uninformed and insensitive. And yet, by the end, the game actually left me wanting more.

Consider how poorly Army of Two handles long-distance combat. Many of its earlier levels – a desert oil refinery, a hulking aircraft carrier – feature long stretches of map with clusters of cover at either end but not much in between. Its AI is programmed to scramble for shelter and hide forever, meaning that if you want to stay behind cover yourself you’re shooting at the hands of an enemy who is fifty yards away from you, and moving in on your target is sure to draw fire not just from him, but from half a dozen of his buddies behind adjacent crates. Also consider that your main and secondary weapons are almost uniformly unsuitable for sniping and that your sniper rifle’s paltry stock of complementary ammo evaporates all too quickly, and all of a sudden you’re in a pretty bad place.

Proper use of the game’s aggro system – one partner draws attention to himself by laying down suppressive fire while the other flanks the enemy – can help in this situation, but at best the both of you are going to get into some tight spots, and this goes doubly for a duo like Team Suck. I hated every moment the game made me shoot at the feet of an unfriendly from across a fucking airport hangar.

You’ve got to get to the home stretch before the level design really hits its stride. The last level takes place mostly in the office building of Rios and Salem’s former employer, and the closer quarters really help to pull the experience together. Rob and I were deftly using aggro, strategizing, and dispatching targets with our weapons and melee attacks. Cover was more evenly spread, allowing us to move without getting bombarded and encouraging our adversaries to occasionally venture out from safety. All of this gave the gameplay a much-needed shot of dynamism.

Next, consider the thing we’re always talking about, the uberterrorist towelheads who populate the early levels of the game. Rob has summed this up more eloquently than ever I could, so I won’t embarrass myself by doing it again. The last third or so of the game finally does what America can’t and pulls out of the Middle East, and it benefits greatly – instead of giggling at and being made uncomfortable by its less-than-subtle racial profiling, we’re back to fighting Evil White Dudes.

These Dudes still talk trash and spout poorly-written dialogue, but my twenty-three years of gaming have prepared me for this. I am good, they are evil, I have to do something about it. No awkward pseudo-statements about The World We Live In, no cartoonishly earnest suicide bombers, nothing to raise the eyebrows of anyone who has ever played a game before. It’s not new or edgy, but if it ain’t broke…

It’s funny that Army of Two chose to be the game that it did. It has aspirations to be Ripped From Today’s Headlines and to take on some Touchy Issues – private military contractors, the Middle East, terrorism – but the game is honestly at its worst here, feebly grappling with its intentions. If the entire game had taken place in an urban setting, as its last levels and much of its DLC do, it would have seen more love from the press and from gamers alike.

I maintain that Army of Two is the second-best kind of new IP that a developer can take its chances with. It didn’t set the world on fire, and it didn’t deserve to. But at its core, what you have is a solid, often fun game with a high level of potential. What I sometimes saw in Army of Two made me legitimately interested in its forthcoming sequel, and I hope that EA takes the opportunity to sand off the rough edges and make The 40th Day capitalize on the potential of the original.

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Marginalia 7.22.09

Kotaku: Sam Raimi to direct a Warcraft movie. Can we please stop tackling big franchises until we've learned to make not-piss-poor movies out of games?

1UP: In case you were worried, there will be a tie-in game for the upcoming adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. Maurice Sendak better have a design credit on this stupid idea. It would make it slightly less stupid.

LA Times: To argue that there's a correlation between car surfing and videogames because the “increase in injuries corresponded to the release of the Grand Theft Auto video games" is sensationalism. They did well to actually mention Jackass and YouTube, but I don't even think you can car surf (or "ghost ride the whip") in a GTA game. No, wait, I'm wrong.

Joystiq: Insomniac sez: sure, we're fine with releasing our games to compete with the other five hundred games coming out between October and December! Will no one ever learn.

Joystiq: The ESA is suing the Chicago Transit Authority for discriminating against game advertising. I've seen some graffiti on those trains that makes Grand Theft Auto ads look like child's play.

Joystiq: Remember when they added the safe, familiar Call of Duty moniker back to the upcoming Modern Warfare 2? Looks like it worked.

Destructoid: I had a suspicion the peripheral/gun Novint Falcon was worth investigating; Destructoid agrees. Continue...

Handheld Through the Danger Zone

Every gamer has a genre or franchise for which his or her standards go out the window. For Andrew, it’s Dragon Quest; for Craig it’s…something. Look, who cares: I’m a sucker for adrenaline-fueled pseudo-sims that strap me into the acceleration couch of a modern jet fighter and throw enough ordinance under my wings to level empires.

I loved Ace Combat 6, despite its perfectly absurd dialogue and stilted voice-acting. There’s something about the reassuring hum that issues through my controller when I trigger the afterburner that never gets old. Having beaten AC6’s campaign multiple times, I wanted something new, and turned naturally to Ubisoft’s entry in the franchise, HAWX.

When I could look past HAWX’s odious attitude and hack-job story, I found a competent, if shallow, shooter, capable of entertaining, but not quite fulfilling.


Grin and bear it, Kunzig: HAWX casts you as some crack Air Force fighter pilot, lured away from his squadron by the promise of fortune and glory with Artemis Inc., a military contractor with a small air wing. You’re with Artemis as it goes from pulling small escort jobs to acting as an army-in-full for nations like Brazil. Eventually, Artemis turns its guns on America, and you’re forced to chose a side – wait, no you’re not, the game chooses for you, and you go about your linear way to the game’s entirely predictable and unsatisfying conclusion. But we’re not here for the story, are we? We’re here to get our skull caved in by some serious positive G’s.

Summarizing HAWX’s flight model might be done best in contrast to that of Ace Combat 6, which does it right. In AC6, airflow is a real thing. Pull an aileron (corkscrew) roll, and the changing airflow over your fuselage forces your nose down; in order to pull this maneuver at a low altitude, the pilot must compensate. Likewise, pull a knife-edge – bank so that your wings are perpendicular to the horizon – and the airflow changes, again necessitating compensation.

Flying an F-16 in AC6, one learns to appreciate the nuances of individual aircraft, and be mindful of the hazards of flight – like, for instance, pulling negative G’s. The simple act of tilting your nose down at mach 1.5 will send blood rushing to your head, causing a “red-out.” While few games actually simulate the red-out, AC6 makes a negative-G maneuver more difficult, requiring instead an aileron roll and dive to decrease altitude.

In HAWX, such realism has been bulldozed in the name of accessibility. Going mach 2? Want to pitch down? Go ahead! It’s exactly the same as pushing up, and the game won’t impede you a bit. For that matter, do an aileron roll, pull a knife edge, fly inverted for as long as you wish without altering your flight path in the slightest. After playing AC6, the “accessibility” seems more like shallow gameplay. The act of flying simply isn’t as enjoyable – there isn’t the satisfaction of mastering a difficult mechanic.

HAWX does, however, add something entirely new to the pot with “Off Mode.” The idea behind Off Mode is it disables the safeties that, while protecting your foolish ass, also hinder you from pulling off totally sweet maneuvers (bro). With a double-tap of either trigger, your view jumps to a detached exterior view of your aircraft, which suddenly becomes more maneuverable – slam on the brakes, and you can flip about in the sky like a stunt kite, invulnerable to physics.

Off Mode is supposed to make dogfighting and missile evasion easier and more entertaining. Good news: for once, HAWX meets and exceeds expectations. When in Off Mode, the camera immediately trains on whatever threat is most immediate, giving the player the opportunity to pull a tight loop, dodge a missile and return fire in one deft maneuver. When it happens – and it happens often – it’s exhilarating and supremely satisfying. Strange, that HAWX is at its best when it pitches anything approximating realism and goes for pure action.

HAWX could have been saved by a varied and engaging spread of missions; what it serves instead is a predictable platter of escorts, strikes and interceptions across celebrity locales like Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles. At no point will you be surprised during the HAWX campaign; very rarely will you be challenged. While the opportunity to engage in fairly entertaining combat across a beautiful landscape (and HAWX is nothing if not really, really pretty) is enough most of the time, I found myself wanting more.

For aircraft aficionados, HAWX is an unlikely goldmine – the list of flyable aircraft is astonishing not only in length but depth. Predictable models like the F-22 Raptor, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-14 Tomcat all show up to play, but so do some fairly eccentric choices. HAWX fully indulges my fetish for Vietnam-era aircraft, dusting off the all-but-forgotten A-7 Corsair, A-6 Intruder, F-4 Phantom, F-5 Tiger and MiG-21 Fishbed. The cockpits are recreated in loving fidelity, even if the flight models aren’t.

HAWX is pretty but dumb, to be enjoyed for what it is but with low expectations – despite the advantage of a late entry, this is not the best pseudo-sim of this generation, not even close. It can be brought new on Amazon for $30, which makes it worthwhile for curious parties – or weirdos with a fetish for third-world fighters, looking to take up and F-5 and make it flip around like a goddamned tossed coin.

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Marginalia: 7.21.09

Gamasutra: Julian Wera talks about industry PR - how it goes, how it could be improved. I know! More free stuff.

Destructoid: Sony is so ahead of the curve, their motion control is...just like everyone else's. And unproven, to boot. Chalk one up for megalomaniacal PR.

Destructoid: Pandemic's interesting new shooter The Saboteur just got dated for Dec. 8. My wallet screams anew.

Joystiq: You heard it here eventually! Xbox dashboard update hits August 11.

Gamasutra: I know this is the same story I just linked, but let's talk about "co-op Netflix watching." I think it might be more difficult for Team Suck to watch an Adam Sandler movie than it was to make it through Resident Evil 5.

Kotaku: Boivin, look over here! 8-bit Weezer!

1UP: Andrew, look over here! More info regarding Beatles Rock Band. 

CNET: The guy in charge of reprimanding idiots on Xbox Live looks like he might be imposing in real life, too.  Who knew?  Here, he discusses the challenges he faces moderating the community, including keeping his team up to date on the latest slang from Urban Dictionary.

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – 7/21 – Give The Bassist Some Props Edition

Can you name your favorite band’s bass player?  If not, shame on you.  Not every bassist can be a Sting, a Geddy Lee, a Paul Chambers, or an Edgar Meyer (PS if you don’t know who these people are, shame on you again).  So go the extra mile and give credit where credit is due. 

Since Huxley Met Soda is an electronica artist from France, I can’t guarantee that the person playing bass isn’t actually a computer.  But there’s enough soul in their playing that I’ll give him/her/it the benefit of the doubt.   I’d also love to tell you who’s playing bass for pianist Joel Holmes on “African Skies,” but his website insists on telling me all about the guy who played sax on the track.  That’s cold.

Stop disrespecting bassists.  Put on your noise-canceling headphones or crank up your subwoofer and show these musical anchormen some love.

Recommendations

I’m not an ethnomusicologist, so I can’t really qualify why this song’s titled “African Skies.”  I presume it has something to do with the percussion and perhaps the syncopated repetition of the main phrase.  Don’t be fooled by the opening.  It’s a little Free Jazz-y, but just like “Red Clay” (which has a similarly loose opening) it settles into a great groove.  Despite the Steep tag, the traffic isn’t too heavy, which should give you time to pay attention to the great work being done by the bassist.  It’s athletic, complimentary, and in wonderful sync with the drummer.  You’ll probably get a little tired of the saxophone midway through its solo, so turn your ear to the bass.  Just make sure you then pay attention to the frantic keyboard solo.  Be prepared for the traffic to pick up; the drum fills should be shooting shotgun blasts of red in the direction of your face.  Because of my personal tastes, I always try to push jazz when there’s a worthwhile track on Radio.  This, my friends, is certainly worthwhile.

The first thing you’ll notice about “The Wave” is the awkward scansion of the vocalist.  Say the word “follow” out loud to yourself.  Then say it again with the emphasis on the second syllable, making the first syllable as short and clipped as possible.  Luckily, he stops saying “follow” pretty early on and decides to just keep repeating “I didn’t know” over and over, even adding a digital static effect to his voice.  You might be wondering why I’m taking the time to rip a song I’m recommending.  Well, “The Wave” is one track where the ride is better than the music.  You’ve got rolling hills, curvy red tunnels taken at breakneck speeds, and uphill quarter note sections.  So what if the music’s only okay, the track’s got more variety than some eight-minute techno pieces.  And the transitions between these sections is organic while still being surprising.  The first big changes in topography occur as the drums open up, allowing the space between drum hits to stretch the track up and down.  It’s a little short, but after you hear “I didn’t know” for the eightieth time, you’ll be ready for the finish line.

“Stalkers” calls to mind, among other group, Radiohead with its intelligent use of rhythm and ambience.  There is a guitar playing over the other instruments, but it doesn’t dominate the soundscape.  The bongos and other auxiliary percussion do a wonderful job of propelling the song forward without making it feel urgent.  The downhill section builds without becoming so intense that it needs to culminate in a Tool-like freakout (re: the screaming at 6:59).  Listen carefully in the downhill and you’ll hear the evolution of the bass part from a simple thumping accompaniment to something more melodious.  My right hand on the mouse, I pushed my earbud in a little with my left index finger to make sure I could hear all of it. “Stalkers” pirouettes on that thin line between relaxing and engaging; it pulls you in while it calms you down.  Not quite sure what I’m talking about?  Then play this song.

Other selections
Huxley Met Soda’s other tracks just don’t capitalize on the band’s apparent talent.  “Ulan Bataar Motel” (named after a motel in Mongolia?) might be fine if I just wanted to smoke a bowl relax and stare at a visualizer.  But it was too short and airy to really draw me in.  I had similar issues with “Runner,” which never develops past the opening.  The bass work is still mildly impressive, but the rest of the composition fails to go anywhere.  Occasionally, songs end up in Other Selections limbo because they’re merely more what I’ve already recommendation.  These tracks, however, are damn boring rides.  You need not waste your time.

Author’s Note
All songs were played on the Pro difficulty at least twice using the Eraser and Vegas characters.  “African Skies” was rough going the second time through, mostly because I just wanted to skip the saxophone and get to the keyboard solo.  My apologies to any sax players out there.

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marginalia 7.20.09

Kotaku: Valve's Gabe Newell dreams of a world where gamers will help finance game development.  I mean, I'll give a few bucks to Half-Life 3's development if it means I get a free copy and a slice of the profit pie - but I don't think that's how it would work.

GameDaily: President Obama again implored parents to "put away the Xbox" sometimes and keep their kids from becoming zombies.  The wrinkle this time round is that Microsoft publicly issued a statement agreeing with the Parent-in-Chief.

1UP: Remember Midway?  Remember NBA Jam?  Apparently there was a proposal to put a goofy Mortal Kombat-themed court in the arcade basketball title.  Sigh.  I would've enjoyed that.

Giant Bomb: I want you to be as excited about Shadow Complex as I am.  Not because it's based off Orson Scott Card's bizarrely right-wing novel Empire, but because it looks damn good.

Destructoid: A surreal essay from the perspective of one who has been rolled up into a ball and atomized into a star.

Destructoid: I don't care what Will Wright is saying; what the fuck is he wearing?

Gamasutra: Ken Levine says Bioshock 2 will bear the unique culture and mentality of 2K Marin. Which begs the question: do these people sleep in diving suits?

Joystiq: Wanna see some new Xbox update stuff before everyone else? Get in line. No, really, get in line.

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demo monday: nancy drew: the phantom of venice

You are reading that title right now and you are probably all like “what.” Yeah me too.

See, the thing is, sometimes Demo Monday is boring. I tend toward things that I think I will like anyway, and I end up going for a bunch of known-quantity indie games that I’ve heard good things about before. Sometimes you just feel like picking the goofiest thing on the list and seeing what’s what.

Her Interactive’s Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice is one of four Nancy Drew games that have just now shown up on Steam. They were actually released as boxed products in 2008, which was frankly surprising. My first impression was that this was a game stuck in time.

From the outset, it was clear that this game was not meant for me, or probably for anyone reading this site. It’s firmly aimed at the K-12 crowd, the kind of thing my grammar school chums and I would play while gathered around the Power Macintosh. These Nancy Drew games actually reach all the way back to that era, around 1998 or so, and while I didn’t go all the way back to play Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger, I’d be surprised if it looked or played any differently from this iteration.

The game opens with a screen full of text and some moderately hokey voice acting, and it moves straight into some pre-rendered moderately hokey video. When you move around in a room, you’re panning across a flat image. No 3D engine, no polygons. It’d feel much more modern if you could move around and interact with your environment in a way that current gamers were used to. Movement is accomplished via a series of clicks, and it’s not always clear what you need to click to go where. You’ll figure it out, but it’ll take a second. You know, if you ever decided to play the game.

To say the game looks dated is very very generous. It does the task it sets out to do, though. It taught me some stuff about Venice, and some Italian. That doesn’t mean I didn’t check the developer’s Web site just to make sure I was playing a new game and not some old chestnut cleaned up and dusted off for Steam’s sake. Have I made this point clear enough? It looks old.

Music is okay and ambient but there is not enough of it. You’ll enter a room or start working a puzzle and some music will start playing and then fifteen seconds later it will stop and you’ll be left clicking on stuff in dead, awkward silence. It’s weird.

So really, Complaint Number One is that this particular branch of edutainment game has not developed apace with the action-packed explodey games of which we are so fond. That’s not necessarily that big a deal – Nancy Drew is still mostly entertaining, and kids will probably like it just fine. But part of entertaining and educating through games is going to involve making them as stimulating and interesting as the more mainstream games that the politicians and lawyers all say waste our valuable time. Come on, guys. Put this stuff in three dimensions already.

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pod shot: super mario?

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Craig and I were having a conversation about what we wanted to talk about this week. At a momentary loss for ideas, I jokingly responded “Super Mario.” Craig, perhaps unwisely, acquiesced. The result was a forty-six minute oft-rambling discussion that is mostly but not exclusively about Mario. You have been warned.

In other news, I think we’re taking a break for a few weeks after this one. I’m moving and my access to the Internet may be sporadic for a bit in there. Also, we obviously need some time to have some ideas. I’d say you can expect us back on Sunday August 9.

As for music, my Game Boy bent continues, this week featuring a song from Link’s Awakening, the original Game Boy’s entry into the Zelda canon. It is the song that plays while you are up in the mountains. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in a couple weeks!

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Marginalia: 7.18.09 – Afternoon Reading Edition

Saturday news is always slow.  But that doesn’t mean you have to stop reading about games.  Take your laptop outside, relax in the sun (hopefully your weather’s nice), and check out some interesting game-related pieces.

Bitmob: How one man’s experience with Jedi Outcast’s multiplayer contributed to a change in games coverage.  Personalized, anecdote-based reviews are a growing trend (just look at Charge Shot!!!), and it’s worth looking at this style’s roots.

Gamasutra: Ken Levine’s working on a new game “substantially more ambitious than BioShock.”  He also has some wise things to say about stepping back from an IP, developing a studio, and storytelling in games.

NY Times: Schiesel on how Facebook’s growing as a gaming platform.  Sure, you can look down at some of its goofy browser games.  But when your friend’s outscoring you in Boggle, you can’t tell me it doesn’t make you want to kick his ass.

The Escapist: Bad or overly elaborate game tutorials can turn off a player before he even completes the first level.  But some games have found a way to explain their mechanics while allowing the player to, you know, play.

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Why Giant Mechs Fighting Each Other Is Totally Awesome And Essential To Action Gaming

Smith & Tinker’s announcement of a new Mechwarrior game dovetails with the IP’s 25th anniversary – as does S&T’s decision to release Mechwarrior 4, the last game in the franchise, for free on the internet. The nine-year old mech game would be downloadable “soon,” along with its expansion packs.

In between yips and whinnies, I realized the offer isn’t just generous – it’s smart. While S&T shops Mechwarrior around to different publishers, they make a case for a form largely forgotten by time – the giant robot game, a fusion-powered slugfest that melds the best elements of action and simulation.


Brace for the inevitable history lesson: Mechwarrior 2 was released in 1995 to smashing critical acclaim. It was a good reason to buy a joystick. The view of a flat, featureless landscape through your polygonal cockpit was, at the time, incomparably thrilling. Your mech tilted slightly with each footfall, which resonated with a thud from your Soundblasters. Visuals aside, Mechwarrior 2 established the formula which would remain essentially unaltered as the franchise grew and flourished.

You’re not a marine sprinting through corridors. You’re a giant walking war machine, 10 meters of death and 100 tons of steel. You are destruction incarnate, but dear god, are you slow as sin, so plan your moves. Even the smaller, fleeter mechs need to think two moves ahead. Duels between skillful mechwarriors are an impressive display of premeditation: the fighters circle each other, lining up shots on legs, arms and ammo banks, the order of which is determined by make and configuration. A Daishi (nee Dire Wolf) keeps the majority of its firepower in its arms; the Atlas, on the other hand, socks its world-ending autocannons away in its torso.

Your success was determined by your ability to make yourself a difficult target while knowing your opponent’s weakenesses. Or, fuck it – level him from a kilometer away with salvo upon salvo from your long-range missile racks.

Often, the guy shooting at you was the least of your worries – it was the guy after him, or the four guys between you and your extraction point, and your ability to defeat them without running out of ammunition, overheating your reactor or getting shot to slag. Heat management meantthe difference between life and death – the ability to sneak in one last blast from the lasers whilst dumping excess heat with the coolant has saved my ass more than once.

Mechwarrior 2 – and Mechwarriors 3 and 4 after it – was slow and deliberate, anything but a run-and-gun game. While this isolates the Mechwarrior franchise from the twitch gamers, its refusal to compromise won it a devout following, a large one, too. Just after S&T announced Mechwarrior, the game appeared on IGN and Gamespot as most popular. In the week since, it’s held its own in the top three.

Mechwarrior 4 was everything great about Mechwarrior 2, streamlined and made accessible. MW2, for example, allowed you to customize every shingle of armor on your mech – if you could puzzle out the incomprehensible Mech Bay system. In contrast, MW4 employs a simple click-and-drag system, allowing gamers without degree in mechanical engineering to slap together a custom war machine within minutes.

The gameplay picked up speed as well. No longer did gamers have to spend minutes closing the two-to-three kilometer gap between their mech and an enemy; the game moved much faster, upping the action without making the game into a shooter (See: Mechassault, Mechassault 2).

It’s been more than five years since the franchise’s last entry, Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries – when Halo 2 was released, MW4: Mercs had been on shelves for a while. I feel the industry needs another Mechwarrior, something to add a dash of intelligence to the guns-and-lasers genre. It needn’t be Steel Batallion, a game that practically dares you to play it – it need only stay true to the credo of Mechwarrior 2, the game that taught us the undeniable joy of dealing death and destruction from atop a 10-meter engine of death.

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