The “Best” Holiday Season Ever?

This fall has brought an impressive rooster of games along with the usual cries of “best holiday video game season everz!” How patriotic of the industry, to soldier on while the rest of the economy is in the toilet properly. While I can’t corroborate these wild claims, I can admit that I don’t think there’s ever been so many games out at one period that I have oh-so-desperately wanted to play. Sadly, while my passion for electronic entertainment knows no bounds, my free time has a painfully finite limit. Compounding my misfortune is that unlike all you lucky people stateside I can’t simply take a trip down to the local Wal-Mart when I feel a jonesin’. Instead, I have to get all games shipped through Hong Kong, a process that usually takes around 2-3 weeks.

Item# 1: Congratulations, Your King of the Dorks

After months of waiting, the latest “World of Warcraft” expansion has become old news . Some French guy got level 80 in roughly the space of a day and a super clan downed all the raid bosses in a couple. Yawn. I’ve played my fair share of WoW and the only feeling a remember from any marathon sessions was an overwhelming sense of shame. I can’t imagine how these guys feel, must be awful.

Item #2: Certain Doom

Damn, somebody else is reporting on stuff going down in Korea. They’ve totally beat me at my own game. The gist is that Korean company NCsoft, responsible for both “Lineage” games, has garnered an overwhelming response in the beta test for their next MMO among the home crowd. While the article tells you that Lineage has always been popular among Koreans, I can personally attest that images of the game plaster the signs for most PC rooms in Korea. Oh wait, you don’t know about PC rooms? Perhaps you should read this.

I can tell you without exaggeration that I talk to my students about video games every day. I shall have to inquire about this “Aion” game and see how it holds up to the impeccable standards of my 1st grade “Starcraft” pros. Honestly, I hope NCsoft isn’t targeting the 8-12 demographic ’cause those kids are absolutely hooked into “Maple Story.” There’s even novel-sized comic books based on the game that most kids (boys and girls) carry around. I should know, I’ve confiscated enough of them from overzealous fans during my classes.

On a side note, what started as a joke quickly spread like wildfire through the halls of my English language academy and I suddenly found myself scheduled for a “Starcraft” showdown with several of my third grade students on Sunday afternoon. Such a match-up can only result in my utter defeat. My sole hope is to convert the best players to my cause where some team play can overcompensate for my lack of skills. Seriously, there is a TV channel devoted 24-7 to this game; I’m going down.

Item #3 : Getting Steamed

In an effort to engage in some joint transatlantic RTS action on the cheap, myself and a few friends purchased copies of “Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Gold Edition” from Valve’s proprietary service, Steam. After playing the tutorial, I was quite excited to try it out against my human foes. However, when I attempted to log in to the online matchmaking service, I received an error that I was quite accustomed to though still surprised to get, “CD Authentication failed.” You see, this was something that happened to me often when I was attempting to crack a game, but never when I had ACTUALLY PURCHASED IT, YOU A**HOLES! Lo and behold, my friends encountered the exact same error.

A little digging revealed the fact that while developer Relic can make a decent RTS, they apparently fail at something even people who make crappy games get right. Often, the game’s installation will write the CD key into Windows registry wrong, even if you enter it correctly during the install. Worse, this has been happening since the first Dawn of War game and has continued into every single expansion. Worst, even manually changing the key in the Windows registry doesn’t fix the problem. It could be a problem with your router. Or maybe they misprinted the !#$!% CD key inside the manual. Then again, it’s possible they gave you one that was 20 digits instead of 16. At the very least, you can call customer service for three weeks until they fix it on their end. Idiots.

So, now it’s just me, hordes of customer service personnel and a host of possible solutions. I just can’t wait until I spend hours and hours working toward a fix that I shouldn’t have to make in the first place. Oh, hey did you know the highly anticipated sequel “Dawn of War II” is coming out? Yeah, don’t buy it, I heard it’s going to suck.

Item #4: The Rock Never Dies

“Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” continue to be popular. Honestly, I stopped paying attention after number three, but I guess their is still rock music out there to be reduced to a sequence of colored dots. At this point, I shudder to think the depths those song lists must be plumbing.

Further Side Note:

Man, Steven Seagal is perhaps one of the worse action movie heros of all time. It’s not even the hopelessly B-listness of the films but more his completely and totally bland delivery. He beats Keanu Reeves in that department hands down. His I-just-kicked-your-ass, movie-ending line to this cinematic gem? “Nobody beats me in my kitchen!” I missed the first part of the movie, so I can only guess Segal’s hobby is … cooking? Damn man, hardcore … hardcore.

Ahem, I apologize for the drastically negative tone of this post. Maybe if certain parties could program their games correctly I could have enjoyed Mr. Segal’s action-packed POS or WoW’s social life crippling success.

Column: A Review Manifesto

The great wide world of the Internet holds a pure deluge of information and articles and links. And while it’s always good to read the opinions of people who are paid to give you an opinion, I’m also thankful for the Net’s more plebeian voices. Of particular interest are those contained in the comments section following most articles. While most of the time said activity gives me only humor, it also occasions a more introspective thought.

I was a bit skeptical when I found out that the damn good “Call of Duty 4″ would be getting a quickly produced sequel, “Call of Duty 5: World at War,” made by the less-than-stellar Treyarch. The fact that they decided to return to a World War II setting only reinforced this notion, despite the clever manipulated titled. Seriously, why not just call it “Call of Duty 5: Nazis, Just One More Time and Then We Are Done, Promise.” But lo and behold, this article appears, bestowing upon CoD5 a perfect score. My issue is not that Treyarch has managed to produce a superior game (though I remain skeptical until further evidence presents itself). Rather the problem and contradictions implied by the “perfect” 10/10 score, something pointed out by a brave soul in the torrent of comments.

The central fallacy of a flawless score is that it suggests there is no way the product can be improved upon. Most, I think, would agree that “Call of Duty 4″ had everything you could ask for in a shooter. Ah, but was it perfect? Where there not occasionally things that irked, annoyed or frustrated you? That didn’t stop it from being highly enjoyable and an accomplishment in it’s on right. Giving a game a near-perfect 9/10 seems to be saying that if maybe there was just one more gun or one more level or one more gimmick then it would be vaulted to that most coveted of levels. People wonder why games aren’t taken more seriously and I think the anachronistic review system employed by most publications shares some of the blame.

There are some parts of the gaming community who would like to see the industry move past pure entertainment and into art, similar to the way movies and music have one foot in each door. By using such a reductive formula for criticism, the room for growth and expression is inherently stymied. While movie critics may employ a numerical scale, you would be hard-pressed to find a movie critic who would tell you that directors should stop making movies because the perfect one has been made already.

The scale is even furthered narrowed by the fact that since a 10/10 represents such a high threshold of excellence, most publication shun it entirely in order to show their “independence.” So, in the end, you’ve got an 8, which represents “pretty good,” and a 9, which signifies “pretty awesome.” Thus, a full 20 percent is in common use throughout much of the games industry. This practice hurts developers, journalists and consumers alike by sustaining a system riddled with hypocrisy.

This is just a small bit of what can be a much larger argument. The scale also threatens journalistic integrity by creating a glut of games that fall in the 8-10 because a 7 is feared to be a mark of total shit. That’s what a zero is for. Theoretically, a 7 is still above average, and there is nothing wrong with an average game if it’s something dig. If a game has a couple of things you enjoy in its mix, say turn-based strategy, zombies and medieval settings, but only garners mediocre reviews, it’s actually entirely possible that you still might like it.

I believe that a grading system (a la 1up.com) is a better way to rate games. By using pluses and minuses, it offers broader range of opinion while still saving room at either end of the spectrum. If it’s a damn good game that is completely fun and enjoyable slap an A on that sucker and that is simply all you are saying. Barring that, the only recourse I can see is Metacritic. where at least you can get a compilation of reviews instead of being subject to those wild editorial swings between 8 and 9.

In the end, no rating system can be perfect (just ask the ESRB, har har). It’s up to the consumers to take the time to actually read reviews and form opinions for themselves, rather than relying on numerical snap judgments. This also means the professionals on the other side should focus on writing copy that’s compelling enough to merit deeper reading and advance the gaming industry forward.

Something I’m excited about

Actually, I lied, there are really two things (games) that I’m waiting for with a high amount of day-dreaming anticipation. First, is a title from Ubisoft. For me, they represent a company with a long personal history of failing to deliver on titles they relentlessly build up, most recently “Assassins Creed” and before that “Heroes of Might and Magic V.” While I’m on the subject, I should mention that the first three incarnations of the latter are among the greatest PC strategy games of all time, check them out if you never have. Again, Ubisoft has been feeding me videos and screen shots that seem to be the pieces of a truly enjoyable overall experience. I’ve been doing my best to keep my standards low, but they seem to be trying hard to make that a nigh impossible task.

The game in question is the new “Prince of Persia.” A venerable franchise if there ever was one, it’s got roots sunk deep in the ancient era of the late 1980s. Back then, the game was renowned for its remarkable fluidity and imagination, contributed in part by the developer’s passion to get the Prince’s movements just right. This next-gen incarnation doesn’t look like it’s gunning to beat “God of War 2″ or “Grand Theft Auto IV” in the pixels department and that’s not such a bad thing. There’s already enough pretenders to that particular throne and those who choose graphics as a shortcut to gameplay usually fail at both. What the new Prince seems to lack in raw power he makes up in grace and style. The drawn-and-painted feel of the art direction lends the game something that all the normal-mapping and HDR Lighting of “Crysis” can’t: individualism.

The video game market is big and serious enough now that it has entered the same push-and-pull that it’s respective comrades in the music and move industries feel. The tension between creating a product that sells and furthering the form sometimes intersect and sometimes seem so remote as to make one cynical. Is the new “Prince of Persia” garb just a flashy distraction or will it add feeling and spirit to the experience? As I brought up earlier, the gameplay must come first and, for my part, I’m hoping the Persian royal’s new duds are a product of an overall design philosophy.

In the end, I must admit, I’m a sucker for cell-shaded, painstakingly animated 2D graphics (see “Odin Sphere” if you think 2D is outmoded), or anything else with a drawn or artsy feel. This brings me to exciting thing #2, the JPRG soon to reach American shores “Valkyrie Chronicle.” In addition to its animated nature, it also falls into the strategy genre, another of my favorite things. Some games you know you will enjoy despite their quality because they just have too many things you like for it to be possible to wholly disown them. “Valkyrie” seems such a game and leaves me with a tranquil, patient anxiety in juxtaposition to the my nervous fretting about whether or not Ubisoft will spoil a promising premise.

Blizzard has a con and Sony signs a deal

And I’m back!

I apologize for my extended absence, but sadly, life demands responsibilities from me other than just playing video games and that pressure has been rather strong of late. Still, I have managed to snatch a spare moment from its chaotic midst and will now put forth some news and opinion.

Item #1: Lingering Questions
This weekend, Blizzard paraded its immense wealth and popularity in front of the video game industry during Blizzcon 2008. The company showcased new and upcoming content in all three of its massive franchises and still found time to coyly dodge questions about a yet-to-be-announced fourth project. My interest centered on new “Diablo III” information in particular. I have high hopes for the title, but I can’t help but wonder what place such a game has in an RPG world-made anew by MMOs. It was essentially a proto-MMO in its time, driven primarily by the desire for the best lootz and the most uber buildz. I’ll be interested to see if Blizzard can breathe new life back into the action-adventure genre without creating a dumbed-down WoW clone.

Item #2: A Big Idea for the Black Box
Sony recently forged a partnership with the ubiquitous video-sharing service YouTube to create an exclusive Playstation 3 channel on the ‘Tube’s site. Visitors can browse through videos and trailers for Sony’s latest offerings as well as developer interviews and the like. This in and of itself is not so exciting as one can already find such things online. The interesting tidbit is where Sony hopes to take the service, with PS3 users able to capture their own videos and upload them directly to the site. The first implementation of this is planned for “LittleBigPlanet,” combining custom-created levels with homemade videos.

The success of the endeavor will show itself in due time, but it’s good to see Sony is looking for more ways to enhance the online experience of their console, which of course still pales in comparison to the robustness of Live. Well, as long as the service isn’t down or your Xbox 360 bricked from the red ring of death, that is. However, it also strikes me as just another piecemeal attempt that fails to offer anything truly unique. Sony needs to stop adding an update here or there and go ahead and get Home out the door. Without a cohesive online support structure for the titles, they will allows stand a little bit behind the Xbox 360.

Ye Olde School

As the cost for developing graphically stunning titles increases, the modern gaming industry is beginning to resemble the movie biz more and more. Publishers don’t want to pour a lot of time and resources in a new idea only to see it tank, so formulas and franchises are the norm.

That’s where downloadable content comes in. Cheap to buy and cheap to make, the fair offered on both Xbox Arcade and the Playstation Store can be quirky and fun because it can afford to take a few risks.
Another plus is that such bite-sized stimulation doesn’t require the heavy time investment that say, delving deeply into Metal Gear Solid 4 does. You can get your video game fix and quickly be on your way, allowing for the development of a fully functioning social life and career.

With that preamble in mind, I highly suggest investing $10 bucks in the downloadable remake of the NES classic “Bionic Commando,” dubbed “Bionic Commando: Rearmed.”

The game combines both old and new elements into something refreshingly different. For once, there are no invading alien species hellbent on the destruction of mankind, i.e. “Gears of War,” “Halo,” Resistance” and practically any other shooter in recent memory. Instead, your task is a simple “rescue this dude, kill the bad dude.” The game throws in plenty of snarky dialogue and other interactions, though, to compensate for the lack of dramatic depth.

The gameplay mechanics offer the kind of challenge almost completely forgotten in today’s convenient age of constant checkpoints and endless lives. The game’s titular hero possesses a bionic arm that can grapple onto any metal object or platform. Traversing of the levels is accomplished by using this ability to swing, grab and lift yourself up and across the many obstacles.

The modern update adds a wickedly (and often brutally) refined swing mechanic, a host of upgrades and weapons, challenging level design and numerable boss fights. For those thirsty for even more, the game also throws in over 50 special challenge rooms, which present the player with a virtual obstacle course to navigate in just 30 seconds.

A warning for those easily frustrated: The difficulty level of this game can be absolutely insane at times, with each swing requiring exact timing and a limited amount of lives allotted for each level (Trust me, the challenge rooms will test even the most mild-mannered). But hey, that’s all just part of the old school charm.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed First Impressions

For those that don’t know, the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed went live last night on XBOX Live’s game download service. At this point, you need a gold account to access the demo currently, but for everyone else, wait about a week and you’ll be able to grab it.

I’m incredibly impressed with this game, moreso than I thought that I would be. In fact, it may be the most fun Star Wars third person game that I’ve ever played. Shadows of the Emipre was amazing, but it’s been over ten years. We’re overdue for a great third person Star Wars game. You take the role of The Apprentice (some may recognize him as one of the worst characters to play in Soul Calibur 4), Darth Vader’s secret pupil and you’re really not on anyone’s side here. Your mission is to seek out and destroy the Jedi and annihilate anyone (Rebel or Imperial) that stands in your way. This is where the fun begins.

While I won’t give away anything that happens plotwise in the demo, you start out with a whole lot of force powers. You’ve got Force Push (which can be charged to repel objects and bend locked doors so that you can enter), Force Lightning (which can be chained to your lightsaber so that it becomes infused with deadly blue sparks), and Force Jump (…it’s exactly what it sounds like. You jump really high.). The objective of the demo is to get to a Jedi, destroy him, and bring Daddy Darth his lightsaber. That means destroy anything that gets in your way.

You can pick up and destroy pretty much any object in the game. The way that you choose to dispatch your enemies is entirely up to you. You can take a lightsaber to their body, shock them with force lightning, throw an exploding barrel at them, or crush them with a TIE Fighter (Yes, you can pick up a TIE Fighter.). The possibilities are endless, and that may be what makes the demo so much fun. At the end of the demo, you don’t get to fight the Jedi, but you do get to go up against a full squadron of Stormtroopers and an AT-ST walker. You whittle down its health and at the very end, deliver a finishing blow by inputting the correct button commands.

If the demo is any indication, this game is going to be incredibly fun. I just hope that there are going to be other force powers and combos that can be dealt in-game. As fun as shooting force lighting at your enemies is, it starts to get old after a while.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed releases in September.

The Status of Batman Games

I am excited to play next-gen Batman games. In fact, I’ve been excited to play most every next-gen Batman game since Batman: Vengeance for the Playstation 2….

However, every installment following Vengeance has been a terrible disappointment for me both as a gamer and as a comic book fan.

Batman games traditionally have not been top tier games, never scoring higher than a 7 in most reviews. To be fair, most of Batman’s comic book compatriots have received much worse treatment than the Caped Crusader himself, (Remember Superman 64? [Shudders]) but Batman’s transition to the video game world has never been as smooth as fans would have liked. Bats has gone through several next-gen developers in his life on console, many of which have been criticized for their repetitive nature, or bad AI, or awful storyline…

Despite these previous setbacks, Batman has a chance to gain glory through video games in two upcoming titles: Lego Batman and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The Lego series has already shown its appeal in a formula that has been proven time and time again to be a veritable gold mine for Traveler’s Tales come its release in September. After four LucasArts games, Warner Brothers has jumped on the bandwagon for a Lego Batman adaption. I have no doubt that the gameplay will be just as compelling and innovative as the other installments in the Lego franchise, but what I am most interested to see is the storyline. Previous Lego games have taken a previously constructed story, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, and adapted it. Lego Batman is supposed to have an original story, so it may be time to see if a Lego game on a popular franchise can stack up to other titles with an original story.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was just announced for Playstation 3 and XBOX 360, and I have to admit that I’m skeptical. Rocksteady Studios, the developer of the title, have only published a Playstation 2 game called Urban Chaos. While the title got higher reviews than most Batman games, it still lays in the mediocre range of a 6 to 8 score. At the very least, the story has a great chance of being excellent due to Detective Comics’ Paul Dini being involved in the scripting. However, a great (even excellent) story cannot mitigate mediocre gameplay in a title, and Arkham Asylum needs to bring their A-Game for Batman’s first real solo outing on current generation consoles. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to play it, especially since Dini will be writing the story, but with the track record that Batman’s had in video games, it’s hard to get as excited for the game when we know next to nothing about it.

Hopefully, Arkham Asylum will be the game that fans have been waiting for. Otherwise, fans are probably going to be disappointed for another generation of consoles before another developer takes a crack at making a good Batman game.

Notes from the Field

Sorry, dear readers, for my extended absence here on the blog, but my Korean teaching gig has been demanding of late. It’s vacation season here, and I’ve been filling in for a couple of instructors who took a holiday (and taking a trip or two of my own). Since I’m on the subject of my erstwhile home, I thought I would dispel some myths and reinforce some stereotypes about the gaming culture here in Korealand.

The image on everybody’s mind when South Korea comes up is a legion “Starcraft”-obsessed pros who can Zerg rush you in no less than five separate ways. While it is true that there is a television channel which broadcasts professional S’craft matches 24-7 (complete with over-enthusiastic announcers), its place in Korean culture is hardly monolithic.

Among the younger set, the game de jour is the “free” online MMORPG “Maple Story.” Its popularity is due to the fact that most Koreans play PC Games (no one here plays video games) away from the comfort of their own home. Instead, in an effort to escape the watchful eye of strict mothers, they congregate at the ubiquitous PC Rooms that occupy most Korean buildings. The owners of these businesses are cheap bastards, so they don’t splurge on the computing equipment. Therefore, 10-year-old games like “Starcraft” and simple downloadable affairs such as “Maple Story” feature prominently. In addition, the friendly and colorful design lures them in.

Among teenagers, there might be one game that actually surpasses “Starcraft” in popularity. The game pops on the PC Game channel every once in a while and, from what I can tell, seems to be a cheap-looking “Counterstrike” ripoff. Called “Sudden Attack,” the mere mention of it can sometimes cause students to start reeling off a list of the game’s available weapons (”AK-47, M16, Sniper!”), which is kinda disturbing when it’s coming from a sixth grader. If you ever meet any young Koreans, mention “Sudden Attack” and I guarantee it will earn you instant credibility.

In closing, I’d like to come to the defense of the Koreans. While it is true they like to play computer games, there simply isn’t much time available between the 10-12 hours of school they attend six days a week. The average U.S. teen easily matches their fervor. Just check out the Youtube video of the guy getting a 100 percent on “Through the Fire and the Flame” or all those damn-near impossible achievements for Xbox 360 games. It’s clear, we love to waste our time in front of the screen, too.

-Frank

WiiWare and Virtual Console Releases - 8/11/08

This week, we’ve got a real treasure coming to WiiWare. Telltale Games has finally released Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People (or SBCG4AP if you’re web-savvy) for Nintendo’s download service. Here is the full list of releases for this week!

WiiWare
Strong Bad Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner (Telltale Games, 1 player, 1,000 Wii Points): Strong Bad and Homestar Runner come to the third dimension! A point and click adventure from the makers of Sam and Max, this game is sure to provide laughs and puzzles galore.

Virtual Console
Break In (TurboGrafx16, 1-4 players, 700 Wii Points): A billiards game with many different modes of play, it’s really the only way to experience pool on the TurboGrafx16.

Star Parodier (TurboGrafx16 CD-ROM, 1 player, 900 Wii Points): A parody of the classic Hudson game Star Soldier, Star Parodier (See what they did there?) provides much of the same great gameplay found in Star Soldier with a humorous twist.

Ghostbusters to be published!

This just in! Ghostbusters will be published, confirmed by Mark Randel of Terminal Reality. While he couldn’t give a tentative release date, he did indeed confirm that Ghostbusters is not on the chopping block!