Gaming Under Fire from Imbeciles

I don't usually cover too much about the politics around gaming. It's actually quite fascinating to me, thanks in part to how the games industry has grown and how quickly news and rumours can proliferate on the Internet. This really isn't a games politics story, however, it's just stupidity.

I'm a little late to the party, as the games media and the devoted gaming community has already rallied together since last week with their pitchforks in hand to combat this latest attack on our hobby.

Hit the jump for my tirade. (Well, I never intended to get up on a soapbox but it's inevitable when I finally do)


I'll try to keep this short, as there's already been so much digital ink spilled over this asinine situation. Putting the issue of Fox News' relevance as a legitimate news outlet aside, I always wonder when gaming culture will finally take those last steps into mainstream acceptance. Right now, it's still in a transitory phase. Wiis are still selling out the second they touch the store shelves and the latest rhythm music games a collectively selling millions of units, as well as moving a few million songs through down loadable content purchases. Gaming is bigger business than it ever was and since the dawn of the current generation of hardware, it's very much been in the spotlight of media attention.

Gaming is becoming more acceptable yet it is still not fully understood by the mainstream audience. It's quite simple enough to understand the appeal of Wii Sports and being engaged by Nintendo's brilliantly conceived motion controls, but there is obviously so much more to gaming. What is game addiction and why does it exist? How does the ESRB rating system work? What's involved in making a game? What is the history behind the most popular gaming franchises?

We can assume the general public is still ignorant when it comes to the nitty-gritty fanboy aspects of the gaming industry. And although they often behave otherwise, I'm willing to bet the major media outlets know much more about games than they let on about. They just choose not to capitalize on their knowledge to serve the public with interesting stories based on factual content. They know the mainstream population is still in the dark when it comes to the many facets of the games industry and maybe the temptation to pander to sensationalism is just too strong to resist.

In fact, maybe these major media sources shouldn't even attempt to cover games yet. There are plenty of magazines, websites and blogs dedicated to this function already. I've also read my fair share of gaming coverage from the likes of major publications like Time and capusle game reviews in my regional papers and frankly, it's embarrassing for everyone involved.

So is sensationalism the only resort left? It seems like every other week, the gaming industry comes under attack from someone who wants to restrict it, demonize it or slander it. If it's not Jack Thompson, it's Hilary Clinton. If it's not Hilary, it's some two-bit psychologist flushing away their ethics for grant money. If it's not those guys, it's apparently a little-known author by the name of Cooper Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence, who admits having not even played Mass Effect, dares to paint the most distorted picture of the game. By her account, Bioware's latest title does indeed sound like "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas". God knows, when I was deep into my Mass Effect campaign and haven't seen my girlfriend in over a week, I would have like to play this space smut opera described by Cooper Lawrence instead of taking a cold shower.

Of course these allegations are baseless and Fox News was promptly called to task by Spike TV games reporter (and all-round nice guy), Geoff Keighley. EA also responded with a highly restrained rebuttal asking for "fairness". As for the rest of the gaming pubic, we had a field day, as usual. Yes, as gaming continues to attract the spotlight of media attention, we can expect to see an increasing number of these stories develop. Fortunately, defending video games is a rather easy affair when you have such poorly conceived drivel masquerading as professional news. Surely, anyone who watched the Cooper Lawrence piece on Fox News could not have taken her seriously. She was just there to promote her book, which has nothing to do with games and she herself is no gaming expert. I can't decide if this all smacks of lazy journalism or a clever sort of pre-meditated sensationalism. Maybe Fox News' intention was to try to whip the gaming community into such a rage, using Cooper Lawrence as they patsy, they hoped to provoke an extreme enough response to somehow validate all the prevailing misconceptions of games being too violent, too base and too smutty.

All it takes is a slip of the tongue and we the gamers -- even our representatives out in the gaming press -- can help send gaming back several years. Not from a technological standpoint but from a cultural and societal perspective.

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Prototype Gameplay Reel Disappoints

G4TV games minx, Morgan Webb recently interviewed Chris Ansell from Radical Entertainment about their upcoming open-world title, Prototype and showcased a snippet of an early build of the game in progress.

I first read about Prototype last year in Game Informer and it looked amazing. They were promising the super-powered, free-roaming gameplay of Crackdown with the graphical splendor of a game like Assassin's Creed. (Indeed, Prototype's protagonist Alex Mercer takes more than a few stylistic cues from Creed's Altair)

The game also hints at an intriguing storyline, using the standard amnesiac plot device to give players a blank slate at the start of the game, slowly connecting the dots as they progress through the story. This ties into a power they will be giving to players, which is the ability to not only take on the appearance of the enemies they dispatch, but to also consume them and by doing so absorb their powers and memories for themselves. Memory fragments retrieved from your victims will provide clues that will help drive the story along.

This is all well and good. Radical is totally cherry-picking the best elements of many recent A-list games to create a recipe that is exceedingly unoriginal, but could end up being one of the most ambitious projects of the year. So it's sort of sad to see our very first look at real gameplay footage deflate my expectations for the game.

Although it's touted as being only a 20 percent build of the final game, what I see so far looks playable but hardly exciting. Things are looking more skewed towards a Crackdown style of gameplay. I love Crackdown, don't get me wrong, but I can't accept another open world game that doesn't have a decent narrative behind it. I also want more interaction in these types of games besides pushing cars aside in traffic and jumping between rooftops.

The GTA series represents the other end of the spectrum in the open world genre. In their world, story and narrative play a huge role and I think most gamers are used to that. Gamers are used to being assigned tasks and given a basic path to follow. There's a main quest, with several side quests branching out from it. I still think this is a solid, successful formula. If Prototype really wants to impress, Radical is going to have to find a way to strike that perfect balance between driving a compelling narrative through out the course of the game, as well as giving the player the unbridled freedom that was the core (and sadly, the sum) of the Crackdown experience.

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My (High) Definition

Last weekend I finally gathered my courage and took the ultimate plunge: I proposed to my girlfriend.

Psyche. No, last weekend I finally "man'd up" and pulled the trigger on my first HDTV. It's not the top of the line or even the biggest around (a "mere" 42 inches) but it's a beaut and I can't wait until the delivery crew comes to my door this Wednesday.

Buying such a big ticket item in late January feels a little strange. It's very much a guilty pleasure. While most people are still recovering from post-Christmas credit card trauma, you have scrooges like myself who actually didn't break the bank during the holiday rush and managed to save a few pennies.

Not to say I had a wad of cash burning a hole through my wallet. The time was just right for me. I was really beginning to itch for something bigger and crisper than my tired old 27" Toshiba standard def, I had transferred to a new, better paying job and there just so happened to be some modest sales going on to capitalize on the Super Bowl next month.

I'll come back with a "launch day" report after I've spent some time with the new screen. You can just imagine I'm more excited than a little school girl in the spring time about this. I'll test run a bunch of my games and give some opinions from a HDTV virgin's perspective. It's going to be a blast popping in some of my old favourites and see if the jump to hi-res really breathes new life into them. The first games I'll play on the new TV, in no particular order are:

Call of Duty 4
BioShock
Mass Effect
Gears of War
Rainbow Six: Vegas

Honourable mention: Crackdown

I think the first 4 of my picks are rather self-explanatory. Those games already look fantastic on my old Toshiba set and, with the exception of Mass Effect, they were good enough to support full screen on 4:3 aspect ratio.

I'm definitely popping in RS:V since it's my perennial favourite and I've been logging more hours into it recently in my quest to earn my Elite rank. As for Crackdown, I fully recognize that this is not the prettiest game on the block, but I've always loved the presentation in that game and the pure scope of the open world environment. I've also felt very ripped off by their choice not to support full screen 4:3. The letterboxing has really affected my enjoyment of the visuals, more so than shinier games like Mass Effect, if you can believe.

But who am I kidding? Once I have my 42" LCD plugged in, I'm eventually going to take any one of my games that's worth a damn for a spin, so to marvel at the size and crystal clarity of the image.

How long did it take you to make the leap to HD? Did your love for gaming push you over the edge or was it something else?

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Microsoft Apologizes with Undertow

As I'm sure many of you are well aware, Microsoft has announced that the XBLA game, Undertow will be available for free download sometime this week. This comes on the heels of the public apology from Xbox Live GM, Marc Whitten, for the poor performance of the Live network during the busy holiday season.

I don't have too much to say about the chose of game to "make amends" with the many dissatisfied Live customers. I wasn't particularly taken with the demo for Undertow. I'm not fond of "capturing and holding control points" game play which this game is built around and really think it only fits well with genres like RTS's. I can't imagine it would have been hard to issue a coupon code for Live subscribers to use to download any Arcade game they wished. Offering up a game that's already been available for several weeks is uninspired, lazy and instantly rubs owners who already purchased the game the wrong way, right away.

As for Whitten's apology, well, keep apologizing. Xbox Live is still in shambles. I'm plagued by frequent disconnects, slow sign-ins and perpetual loading icons for the Marketplace, Live and Game blades of my dashboard. Quite frankly, they could have offered Xevious as their free game and I wouldn't care, so long as Live is functioning as it should be.

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Guitar Hero Cravings Satiated by Rock Band

I walked into Future Shop the other day, expecting to drop $100 on Guitar Hero 3 and browse some 42" LCD flat panels. Instead, I dropped $200 on Rock Band, browsed a very paltry selection of 42-inchers and lugged the mammoth Special Edition box two blocks back to my car.

I really wasn't expecting to find a mountain of Rock Band Special Edition boxes stacked up in the aisles. I had resigned myself to waiting another couple months before the supplies of the game normalized. In the meantime, I would be honing my guitar chops on GH3 so that when it came time to go on a rock band world tour, I'd just migrate the excellent GH3 over and use the RB guitar as the backup guitar for the bass player.

As it turned out, all the major retails chains are woefully understocked on Guitar Hero 3 and I supposed I just lucked out on this particular day. Two bills is a lot of money to spend on a single game. Fortunately, Rock Band is no mere game. It's the ultimate party game; the perfect synthesis of a casual game for the hardcore gamer. The wide appeal of it can be credited to any number of things, be it the wonderfully constructed peripherals (the drum kit is compact and light and avoids the feel of a cheaply made Fischer-Price toy), the dazzling song list (by my tastes, it puts the Guitar Hero 3 song list to shame) or the stylish presentation (the graphics are less detailed than those found in GH3, but the visual design is top-notch).

I'd chime in with a more complete review of the game, but really, does the world need another gushing Rock Band review? My only beef now has nothing to do with the game itself. Again, the technical issues with Xbox Live rear their ugly heads in the way I've been thwarted when I try to buy some of the extra tracks provided as DLC. I was all ready to buy "My Sharona", "Interstate Love Song" and "Buddy Holly" but all I got handed was the dreaded circular Xbox loading icon.

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Now Playing & Why Anyone Cares

Hello. I'm here to tell you about the games I'm currently playing. You're going to give a damn and read about it.

Do "play lists" bore you? Doing play lists is a tradition now in our age of blogs and podcasts. It's customary for podcasters now to open or close their shows with a rundown of what all the hosts are playing at home. Sometimes these segments stretch on for an eternity, as is the case when the discussion goes off on a tangent or someone is playing a particularly controversial or provocative game. Other times, people are playing fantastic games and can't help but gush on and on about the amazing time they're having.

There was a period not very long ago when I really resented the play list format on podcasts. I thought it wasted time and found it to be indulgent of the hosts to presume their listeners gave two shits about their personal gaming time and would dedicate 15 minutes or more to it. Then I realized the whole idea of sharing play lists is what the foundation of gaming communities are built on. To ask someone what they're currently playing really isn't so different than a sports fan asking another fan, "Hey, what about them INSERT TEAM NAME HERE?". As generic and lazy as it is, a question like that is a great opener. Similarly, asking a games enthusiast about the things that are keeping them awake at night is probably one of the easiest ways for gamers to start talking amongst themselves. Throw in some cold beers and a bag of potato chips, and you've got yourself a night-long, roundtable discussion.

So without further ado, here's my play list for last couple of weeks. Hit the jump if you care (and you do, don't you?)

Puzzle Quest
"Cheat any?"

I have some seriously unresolved rage issues reserved just for this XBLA gem. This seething anger is probably a very unhealthy thing to harbour within my heart and I should get it looked at by a professional. Until that happens, I'll find myself returning to the game like a battered wife, too abused to derive any pleasure from the relationship, yet too weak and demoralized to find something better.

Puzzle Quest has the usual variable difficulty settings, such as Easy, Normal, and Hard. But we all know these settings may as well be renamed "Cheats a Little", "Cheats With No Shame" and "This game is RIGGED: You'll Hate It". Full disclosure: I haven't even touched the Hard difficulty and I have no intention of ever doing so. In my mind, the AI on Normal cheats plenty enough. I know this sounds like sour grapes, but I can never shake off the suspicion that the opponent AI in Puzzle Quest knows something that I don't. Luck does play an enormous factor in the game's "match three" style of play, however, the occurrences of lucky breaks really does seem very heavily skewed towards the computer.

Steve Fawkner and his merry band of programmers have insisted time and again on Puzzle Quest forums that the AI plays on an equal footing with humans. That's cold comfort for when I'm sitting there, glancing at my watch as I wait for my turn to come while the AI sets off a fortuitous chain reaction of skull attacks, 4-of-a-kind and 5-of-a-kind matches. When my turn does come, I'm maybe thrown a bone of getting a skull attack set up for me, then it's back to my opponent for another domino-style drubbing. What exacerbates my perception of cheating is the Hint Arrow. This aid is great at helping me spot 4-of-a-kind matches that I've overlooked. When no such matches are on the board, however, the Hint Arrow behaves like a mole for the AI opponent, often suggesting matches that set me up for an easy counter-attack on the next turn and alternates between being glaringly obvious about it or even worse, not obvious at all.

The developers seriously need to tweak their algorithms. Even if the game is completely unbiased, that's not the perception its giving off. And as we know, perception can count for a lot. Every time I sit down to play this game, I don't feel like the luck is not on my side or there's a deficiency in my skill. No, I feel cheated, time and again, and that's a terrible feeling to give to a player.

Oblivion
"It's a wide open world out there"

I really didn't mean to go off on Puzzle Quest for so long but that game just steams my bean so much. I've also been trying to put a dent into Oblivion for the last few weeks. I love coming to this game so late because I feel like I have the entire experience at my finger tips. I bought the Game of the Year edition, which includes the larger DLC of The Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. In addition to those, I also have the Thieves Den and the Wizard's Tower quest lines courtesy of an old OXM demo disc.

There's just so much content to dig into but I've recently lost my momentum with the game. While it does scratch that basic, traditional RPG itch that I developed after playing Mass Effect, it suffers a bit for being so wide open and almost desolate. The NPCs in Oblivion are really not very engaging and I keep thinking how much better the game would be if it supported some co-op multiplayer. I really am just this faceless, nameless hero character who has no real sense of identity or place in the world. In contrast, Mass Effect did a marvelous job of establishing your identity and situating you within its world. Other characters reacted to you based on your social position and your reputation, as well as the choices you made within the game. It's this sense of identity and place that is so sorely missing from Oblivion.

Mass Effect
"How many play throughs do I need?"

I'm blown away by people who have finished the campaign upwards of 3 or 4 times. This is a good game, but it's not that good. I restarted with a fresh Vanguard character on Hardcore difficulty. I got thoroughly thrashed, so I restarted using my Level 48 Soldier. It's a bit of a slog, even though I'm making an effort to pick different dialog choices. The conversations are becoming a chore to skip or sit through and the story of course holds no more surprises. I just want to blaze through, pick up a few more achievements and then shelf the game until some worthy DLC gets released for it. Then, and only then will I even consider restarting the campaign yet again. I admit to being curious about playing as a female Commander Shepherd. I hear the voice actor for the female is several degrees better than the generic male prick who voices the male version.

Rainbow Six: Vegas
"A hunting we will go"

RS:V snuck back onto regular rotation after I started reading previews for the sequel that's due out sometime in March. That's two more months for me to grind my rank up to Elite and finally find some closure with this game. My ongoing issue with this is the fact the game is still relentlessly buggy and offers a surprisingly unstable online gaming experience. When you couple that with the stuttering performance of Xbox Live, I've probably spent more time looking at loading screens and the opening Xbox 360 splash screen than actually playing a match.

Condemned: Criminal Origins
"The best and only First Person Beater"

I come late to the party once again. This game is often cited as one of the best and most ignored launch titles for the 360. I can see what this is. The quality is there, but the subject matter is more on the mature and disturbing side of the spectrum. This is not something you play right after a fun-filled hour with Wii Sports.

The story has me drawn in despite the ridiculous premise used to justify all the level designs and plot twists. Seriously, how many homicidal hobos can you fit into one subway system? According to this game, once night falls, the city's populace becomes a teeming mass of gas pipe wielding psychopaths. And dead birds. Lots of dead birds.

Xbox Live
"I'm thinking that I want more than a free game now"

As much as I'd like to derive some joy from "playing" Xbox Live, it's really been just a big headache lately. The situation is a bit of a joke if you really think about it. While I wouldn't go as far as to file a lawsuit against Microsoft as others have done, I'm expecting the big wigs up in the corporate towers to really think long and hard about how they plan to improve the reliability of Live and to set things right with the legion of subscribers who have had to endure regular disconnections and high latency. Playing single-player games doesn't help you much either, unless you disconnect from Live completely. A sluggish Live connection still has an adverse affect on load times in single-player games. It's a total joke and I'm at a complete loss for words on why something so glaringly basic has not been corrected yet.


As you can probably tell, I'm in a pretty grumpy mood when it comes to gaming. I think the only antidote to my foul mood would be to play some Guitar Hero 3. Sadly, the bundle is still sold out everywhere I go and I'm starting to feel the withdrawal symptoms after having spent so much quality time with the PS2 version last week. Just give me GH3 and all will be forgiven.

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KUF: Circle of Doom Demo

KUF: CoD is a gorgeous looking button masher of an action-RPG. The demo that's available on Marketplace seems to last forever and allows you to play a relatively interesting melee-style character.

I have no experience with this franchise but apparently it got its start as a popular series on the original Xbox. All the previous games were a blend of hack n'slash action and simple real-time strategy elements. The latest iteration really just throws out all the strategy considerations out the window, leaving you with a pretty shallow button mash-a-thon.

Again, I've never seen a fantasy action-RPG look this good. The inclusion of online co-op play in the full retail version also had me thinking about putting this title on my shopping list. However, I have a giant bone to pick with the game play that was on display during the demo.

What I don't understand is, if you're a developer and spending serious effort to make a decent action-RPG, why bother cribbing from the likes of Dynasty Warriors when you have other superior templates to borrow from, like the venerable Diablo series on the PC? The combat in KUF: CoD is almost an exact copy of the anemic action found in your typical Dynasty Warriors outing, only this time it's wrapped in a gloriously beautiful package. The enemy mobs in the demo are brain-dead practice dummies. Most of them do not attack and mill around in closely knit packs only to be mowed down by your endless strings of combo attacks.

The standard attack combos are impressive to watch at first, until you realize that, while the mobs are stupid, they don't fall down and die quite as quickly as you'd like. So you end up repeating the same attack patterns over and over again. As the enemy ranks thin out, you often want to change the direction of your attacks. This can be a difficult proposition, as your player-character has a penchant for getting locked into their combo sequences. You eventually end up swinging your swords through air as you meander about trying to cut down the last of the creatures before trudging off to the next enemy spawn point and repeating it all over again.

This brand of sub-mindless game design must appeal to a segment of the gaming population, because developers still dish it out to us. Just witness all the iterations and clones of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, including the recent, sad spin-off set in the Gundam universe. Honestly, someone needs to study the Diablo games more closely and figure out the simple magic of creating an addictive hack-fest. I'll give you some starter tips to get them going:

#1 - It's not about flashy 10-hit combo attacks: I like impressive attack moves as much as the next fool, but maybe save them for special abilities that can be purchased or unlocked as players level up their avatars. This would make the leveling up process more meaningful and rewarding.

#2 - Create an interesting game world that players can actually explore: from what I've seen in the KUF: CoD demo, players progress along a linear path and rarely get to break off from it.

#3 - Perfect the loot system: infrequent item drops will frustrate players but if you drown them in loot, you'll fatigue and bore them. Grabbing shit off the ground is a key game play element in action-RPGs, so make it rewarding or don't even bother.

There, that should get you game developers headed in the right direction. With all that out in the open, it's ironic that I might still pick up the retail version of KUF: CoD, but only if I really have $50 burning a hole in my pocket one day and I can be reassured that the online co-op play really enhances the overall experience. Until then, I'll quietly wait for Sacred 2 to take another shot at dethroning Diablo 2 as the king of all action-RPG click fests.

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The Worst of the 360 in 2007

I reviewed some of the best highlights of my first year with the Xbox 360 a couple weeks ago. It's now time to look back on some of the moments that I truly regret experiencing and perhaps make a resolution for the new year to never play another crappy game again.

So in no particular order, here's my round up of bad moments in gaming for 2007.


Ridge Racer 6
I suppose only an Xbox 360 neophyte would have ever think this game would be an appropriate substitute for PGR 3. That's exactly what happened when I ran to Future Shop one day to find myself a car racing fix and all I could pick from was Ridge Racer 6 and some other lowly racing launch title. I convinced myself into thinking the $30 price tag on RR 6 made it okay to take a chance on it. What's even worse is, for the first couple of days I actually got myself to believe I was playing a fun, arcade racer. The graphics, music, announcer and car handling physics may have been complete crap, but I somehow enjoyed the experience while it lasted. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident of gaming delusion.

Perfect Dark Zero
PDZ was supposed to be another "risk-free" purchase. The game had already been released as apart of the Platinum Hits series and the price reduced to a reasonable $35. Having never played the first Perfect Dark on the N64, I nevertheless knew enough about the franchise to at least expect a solid first-person shooter experience. The online co-op play was a big enough selling point to push me over the edge and plunk down my loose change for this stinker.

I know that Rare is a respected games developer but there is no excusing their shoddy work on Perfect Dark Zero. For a game to be released in 2005, I was shocked by how little it had refined or improved upon the more than 10-year old FPS genre. From top to bottom, everything about this game was poorly conceived, from the bubblegum sci-fi aesthetics all the way to the downright terrible game play mechanics. Even very basic attributes, like the field of vision, was calibrated incorrectly. The game's depth of field made everything in the game world feel like it was too close and claustrophobic. Even the aiming crosshairs were not done right, for crying out loud. The reticule looked like it was stenciled in with a child's crayon and was literally the size of the moon. And whoever was responsible for the design decision to paint flashing waypoint arrows on the ground really should be fired from Rare and disbarred from working on a game ever again.

The list of transgressions continues, but I think I've said enough. I always have it in my mind to resell this game to EB or over eBay but I doubt if there's any amount of money I could even pay someone to take this game off my hands.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
I'll start by saying that I never bought this game. It came bundled with my Halo 3 preorder, so I've absolved myself of the responsibility and embarrassment of owning this game. However, I am guilty of sacrificing an hour of life to playing this atrocity of a movie license. The play controls are bad, the graphics are even worse and the level design is practically non-existent. Perhaps the only redeeming feature of this game is that I was able to eke out a lousy achievement during my sole, torturous play through of the first few levels.

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