game naked

Rumored Halo 3 Customization Confirmed

2007-05-30T17:42:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, rumor spread across the blag-o-blogs that Halo 3 would feature more in-depth Spartan customization, at least in multiplay (thanks, all you crazy beta hackers!). Today, those unconfirmed tidbits get a strong shove into the realm of confirmation thanks to the fine folks at thefinalfight.com. They've managed to collect images from the new GamePro Magazine detailing the new Mjolnir armor options, new/altered equipment details, and info on the mysterious "chopper" (now known to be a vehicle, the Brute Chopper, which is a bladed motorcycle-esque vehicle with mounted guns). Bungie, I love you too.

http://www.thefinalfight.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=524 (be sure to check the links under "Update")

Blizzard Announced StarCraft II, Koreans Find New National Sport

2007-05-19T10:04:00.001-05:00

At 1am in these parts, Blizzard announced the development of StarCraft II. No release date or pricing has been specified, since its still very early in development, but the gameplay screenshots and trailer video look superb already. Also of interest was the FAQs section (yeah, that's how I roll), where Blizzard stated that there were no plans (current or otherwise) to release StarCraft II on any gaming consoles, but that in true Blizzard fashion, the game would see a simultaneous release for Windows and Macintosh computers. The Windows side of things will fully support Vista and XP, will utilize DirectX 10, and may feature DirectX 10-exclusive graphic effects. The usual fare is to be expected: single- and multi-player gameplay, new units and a return of some older ones, amazing graphics, a new super-engine that apparently will allow for the rendering of much larger units as well as much larger armies (no more 250-unit caps), and more.

So go, check out the glory that will be the new StarCraft. And dammit, if Blizzard pulls a Ghost on us and cancels this project, there's a country out there that will probably find a new national passtime. Like crochet.

StarCraft II Official Site

P.S. At the same time Blizzard was making waves in Seoul, Spike TV's GameHead released info confirming a new Chronicles of Riddick game. This had much less effect on the gaming populace, due largely to the fact that the entire world experienced a massive mutual orgasm while looking the other way. Sorry, Riddick; its not you, its us.

Louisiana's Roy Burrell Defends his Failed Bill

2007-05-10T10:36:00.000-05:00

Despite his bill-turned-law getting overturned due to Constitutionality, State Rep. Roy A. Burrell (D) penned an op-ed piece for The Shreveport Times defending his bill. The article itself is an iinteresting read for those gamers who try to maintain an open mind (and don't immediately flip out when people don't agree with us). Honestly, though, the comments at the bottom were the more interesting read, including quote corrections from a cop.

Full article at The Shreveport Times.

An Open Letter to Microsoft, Larry Hryb, "TriXie," and Kotaku

2007-05-08T09:46:00.000-05:00

Luke Plunkett with Kotaku recently wrote a fairly heated article about Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb and his most recent podcast, in which he lambasts Gears of War developer Epic as well as 360 owners in general in response to outcry regarding the pricing of the recently-released Gears of War map pack.

You can read Luke's article here. My response to the article, what is now my "open letter" to everyone involved and then some, after the break.

What surprises me is how far off the mark everyone seems to be on this.

Customers seem divided into two groups: those who think the price is too high for the maps (the only good argument I've heard for this is that such DLC should be free within a certain time frame of a game's release), and those who think we should get it free because CliffyB said that Epic, as the content's developer, wanted to release the content for free.

Major Nelson has completely neglected his readers by omitting that last part. He's now made the very public assertion that all we want to do is get free things from Microsoft because all things should be free. The reality is not that we necesarily want the pack to be free, but that developers should have control over their own pricing: Microsoft promised this in the early days (damned if I can't find a link now). And trying to turn this around on Epic is a low blow; Epic has always been a supporter of their customers. The 360 wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the PS3 if it weren't for the RAM than Epic encouraged MS to add, and Epic's games (looking straight at the Unreal and Unreal Tournament franchises) have enjoyed a rare longevity because of free bonus map packs from Epic and continued support of community-driven development. If Microsoft wants the 360 to compete with computer gaming, they need to realize that gamers on that platform have enjoyed completely free map packs and wide-open consumer-developed content for years now, and cater to that expectation that there should be at least SOME free substantial DLC. But at this point, 360 owners are getting used to MS not living up to their promises: does anyone even remember when MS said that MS-published games would only be $50, and 3rd-party titles would carry the $60 tag? PDZ, Kameo, PGR3 - they all kept the promise. But once the super-hyped titles like Gears came out, promises to consumers were thrown out the window. And now here we are, after paying $10 more than we had been told we'd have to pay, watching MS tell their developers that they cannot offer substantial DLC for free, mocking the very customers they are suppose to serve when we point out these discrepancies, and then blaming the developer of the only game to really drive 360 sales.

On the flip side, Kotaku takes the customers' most extreme viewpoint of "these are overpriced and should be free" and runs with it. As many people have already pointed out, developers incur expenses developing things like maps. Its not enough to just design a map; it has to be thoroughly playtested and certified to meet MS's quality standards prior to release. It takes time and costs money. Developers deserve to be compensated for their hard work. In that regard, $10 is not that bad for 4 good maps ($5 would be much more reasonable in my mind, but $10 isn't out of the question if the quality is good--and we'd expect nothing less from Epic). However, should they decide that they want to offer the fruits of their labor for free, no one should be able to insist that a fee be placed on their goods. Yes, MS runs the store (I get tired of calling it the Marketplace, because markets have multiple sellers in control of their own prices, and thus have market forces such as competition) and have to pay for servers, bandwidth, etc. However, Gold subscribers are paying $50/year for exactly that: servers and bandwidth. In the case of the Gears map pack, MS's expense is already covered (if nothing else, they got their $10 when we bought the game at their inflated price). So if Epic decides they want their customers to enjoy some free gratitude for their loyalty, MS shouldn't block that.

Major Nelson should be ashamed of his unprofessional behavior, but it seems like that is going around the MS offices these days. TriXie pulled a very similar stunt after the responses to the Guitar Hero II song packs, and then turned around and whined that she shouldn't be held to any sort of professional standards because she's not PR. Two words: bull shit. If you're a public voice for a company, you're PR, whether its the job you're paid for or not. Major, Trixie, if you don't want to be the feet that get held to the fire when MS screws over their customers and developers, then don't volunteer yourselves as "community" anything or take credit for anything involving the word "ambassador."

Borrowed from Kotaku

2007-04-20T12:59:00.000-05:00

I was reading Kotaku and ran across this very well-worded OpEd regarding the VT shootings, video games, and our society's reactions to both.

Op Ed: SmartBomb Author on Va Tech Shooting
By Heather Chaplin

About 24 hours after Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and then himself, I received an email from an editor at a New York newspaper asking me to write a piece about violent videogames.

Was there any link between Cho Seung-Hui and videogames? I asked.

There wasn't, as we know now, and even the editor admitted the next day that it was a request that had come from his editor who'd been scrolling through TV that night.

My editor's editor must have stumbled on Fox News where Jack Thompson hypothesized confidently that authorities would soon find videogames on Cho's computer (they haven't as of this writing), or read the online Washington Post story saying that former high school mates said he was a Counter Strike player (a claim later cut from the story when it ran in print form), or Dr. Phil on Larry King Live lamenting the presence of violent videogames in young people's lives.

I've been writing about videogames for six years now and have answered countless questions about videogames and violence on radio, TV, and podcast. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. But there was something about the knee-jerk immediacy of the assumption that videogames must have been involved that took me aback. I wasn't being asked for my opinion, but rather to serve up one more version of an apparently accepted truth: violent videogames lead to violent behavior. Sometimes I wonder if these people don't realize that most Americans under a certain age play video games - that it's really not that extraordinary when it turns out that the sick among us do too.

The deep, deep irony in this case is, of course, that Cho's passion was not Doom - but play writing. I certainly haven't seen any op-eds about the dangers of creative writing.

(Though it may be worth mentioning that the debut of fiction as a popular form of entertainment was met with as much distaste and suspicion in its day as the videogame. Were this several hundred years ago, we may very well have been deluged by anti-creative-writing rants.)

It's natural for people to want to make sense of the disorder of the universe. When tragedy strikes at home or in one's community, one feels a keen need to understand. Why me? Why us? If only we could answer that eternal why, we could put to rest the pain of knowing the universe can deliver up something so horrific. How much easier is to say, it was the videogames! then to come to terms with the kaleidoscope of factors that leads to events such as high school shootings.

Just as I refuse to play blame-the-videogame, however, so too do I refuse to pretend that our mass entertainment isn't part of the equation. Frankly, if you're so defensive about videogames that you refuse to acknowledge that they effect us, then I'm going to have to say you're being as knee jerk as Monsieur Thompson.

I found the snap shot Cho took of himself with two guns raised in the air that he sent to NBC News the most disturbing reminder of this reality. It's an eerily generic reference to any number of pop culture images - from underground rap videos, to game stills, to action movie posters. (John Woo flashed into my mind. Who came into yours?) It was as if Cho were mimicking some vague idea of empowered cool soaked up through years of culture osmosis. His pathetic mimicry gave us a glimpse into who he felt he had become midway through his killing spree. It doesn't give us license to lay the blame for Cho's actions at the feet of pop culture, but it does remind us that yes, duh, our culture influences us.

And let's be honest. As a culture, we fetishize violence - and I don't just mean the faux-violence of games like Postal, Gears of War, or Counter strike, or of TV shows like the seemingly endless spin offs on Law & Order and CSI. The fact is, whether we want to admit it or not, we're seeped in violence both virtual and real. We don't just play violent; we are, deep down at our core, violent.

Look at our history. We've been waging war every day since manifest destiny first became popular more than a hundred years ago - some above ground like the current war in Iraq, others clandestine like our campaigns in the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Central America. You don't become the world's super power by sitting on your heels picking daisies Just a few years ago, we gave the go ahead to our government for a policy of pre-emptive strike. What is that if not an emphatic endorsement of violence as the prime solution to a given problem? Members of the Roman Empire would have been proud.

And as the Virginia Tech shootings reminds us once again, anyone who wants a gun can get one as long as they can pay for it.

Most of us learn how to abstract away the faux-violence of pop culture and to stay numb to the real violence in the world around us. But when one of us does become sick - really sick the way Cho was - perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising that the sickness manifests itself as a bloody reflection of all the culture showed him.

To blame violent videogames for this, let alone videogames as a medium, is short sighted, hypocritical, absurd, and, frankly, a little desperate. It's an argument made by people who fear a medium they don't understand and want a bogeyman more than they want real answers.

Heather Chaplin is the co-author with Aaron Ruby of
Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment & Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution. She writes regularly about games and game culture for publications like the New York Times, the L.A. Times and NPR's All Things Considered

Penny Arcade Presents: The real reason for ESRB increased play testing

2006-10-02T08:16:00.000-05:00

The good folks down at Penny Arcade have just released a new comic that analyzes the real reason why the ESRB is under attack to enhance their efforts in play testing games before rating them. It's a brilliant and likely dead-on interpretation and it'll give you a good laugh to boot. Enjoy.

2old2play Magazine Official "Podcast"

2006-06-29T22:38:00.000-05:00

For everyone who's very interested in following the happenings of 2old2play Magazine but don't want to have to check the site to see when the next issue is released, there is now an easy solution. Now, you can have each new issue delivered straight to you automatically when you subscribe to the 2old2play Magazine podcast through iTunes. Go ahead. You deserve it.

2o2p Magazine issue #3

2006-06-19T11:55:00.000-05:00

A little late in posting this, however 2o2p Magazine #3, "The History of Gaming", has been completed and uploaded to the 2old2play.com website for download and consumption.

Issue #3 weighs in at 80 pages and features some excellent content including an interview with GarageGames' Jeff Tunnell, what gamers think of the name 'Wii', and some excellent reviews of games such as Battlefield 2 (Xbox 360), Burnout Revenge (Xbox 360), Auto Assault (PC), and Breakquest (PC). Download and enjoy, everyone.

[Update] You can now have each issue downloaded to your computer automatically each month by subscribing to 2o2p Magazine in iTunes. Enjoy.

Gamer gets owned, owns owner via mother

2006-06-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

Here's a great little story of e-Detective work to bring you a good laugh, a story about someone who wanted an Xbox 360 console but didn't want to spend the full $400 amount turned to eBay and was scammed, but got sweet revenge on the scammer. It's very much worth your time to read.

Technorati Tags: Gaming, eBay, Scam, Xbox 360

2o2p Magazine issue #2

2006-05-05T14:54:00.000-05:00

After something of a long month with many late nights and early mornings, issue #2 of 2o2p Magazine is done and posted to the 2old2play website. This issue features a complete redesign of the magazine from the grid up and is a tremendous step forward in the design.

The featured article is an interview with Stardock Entertainment, developers of Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, Society, and The Political Machine. Also featured are reviews of the PSP and how it fares a year after its release, the new wireless headset for the Xbox 360, and Galactic Civilizations II.

The 2o2p Magazine issue #2 is a free download, weighing in at 9.5 mb for a print-ready PDF file.

Incommunicado

2006-04-28T15:32:00.000-05:00

Broken has been a little under the radar as of late. Rest assured, he is still alive and speaking of himself in the third person, still a part of the NakedNet, just rather busy these days. Looking for a new job so I have a bit of portfolio work to get done, namely assembling sample packets to send out everywhere, and also working on a new project, acting as a contributing designer for the 2old2play Magazine. 2old2play is a community of gamers over 25 years of age that are looking to escape the lobbies of online games that are swarmed with kids and immature gamers. If you are looking to play with people who know what kinds of things are going on in your life because they are the same age, have the same interests and have the same problems and successes, 2old2play is the community that you want to be a part of. There are LAN parties that any member can take part in, they have forums and blogs, internal clans and guilds, latest gaming news and reviews, and they know how to have a good time. You can subscribe to their RSS feed or to their weekly 2old2type podcast (also available through iTunes) and be watching out for the monthly magazine. There are plans for a printed version in the future that can be subscribed to in addition to the online ezine, but until then it will be a free download only. We're currently up to issue 2 and there's still a lot that we have planned to help it grow, so stay tuned and watch how it evolves. If you like what you see, feel free to spread the word. As far as I'm aware, 2old2play is a monopolistic organization and that's how we'd like to keep it. No sense in all adult gamers splitting off into many different organizations when you can join up with the 2old2play crew and help make LAN events larger, cheaper and more fun.

Technorati Tags: 2old2play, Gaming, iTunes, Podcast, Community

Maybe it could've used a Wii bit more thought...

2006-04-28T14:49:00.000-05:00

For anyone who just didn't use the internet over the last 48 hours, Nintendo has announced the new name for the Console Formerly Known As Revolution: Wii. Think of it like saying "we," as in "We are ready to play Wii" or "Don't shake your Wii-Wii more than twice when you're done using it," but not like the word "why", as in "Wii would someone name their baby that?" Nintendo gave their reasons for the name, and honestly, the more I think about it, the more I get over it. The initial shock was severe, and I still think that I'll find myself calling it the Revolution or simply the Rev, even after its been out a few years, but I'm coming around.

The tech geek in me, though, can't get past the thought that this peculiar Nintendo name might've been somehow inspired by Intel's Viiv technology (also pronounced with a strong E sound, rather than a strong I). Viiv, for those who might be unfamiliar with it, is Intel's newest digital entertainment technology. I'm still not entirely clear on the details, but it looks like it will permeate all aspects of digital entertainment: video (movies and television), music, photo-sharing, gaming, and more. Digital entertainment and multimedia, as we all know, has been made a more central focus for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3, so it seems like more than just a coincidence that Nintendo has named its newest video game console similarly to Intel's new multi-purpose digital media technology.

Create-a-Face for you 360

2006-04-18T14:18:00.000-05:00

I had heard about this previously (a few months ago), but neglected to post about it. However, now that Nyko has released their GameFace 360, I'll post about this important (read: awesome) accessory. Ladies and gentlemen, its time to get your Game Face on.

The Xbox 360 was the first game console to allow for the use of interchangable faceplates as a means of customization. With the console's launch, MS released several different faceplates onto the market. Chances were you could find one that fit your personality, although the flame design similar to what's pictured above has been impossible to find anywhere. From the get-go, though, many gamers wanted more. 3rd-party companies like Nyko and Pelican produced more designs, and sold these faceplates at a lower pricepoint than MS's designer plates. Then the vinyl decals started coming out, allowing for unique designs to be applied to the face of the 360 as well as its side-panels and even the controllers.

Now, the more artistically-included amongst us can design their own faceplates, print them off on the cheap, and give their 360 a facelift every day of the week if they so choose. Nyko's GameFace incorporates a "baseplate" that attaches to the console like an ordinary faceplate would. You then design and print your own design onto a template. This template then sits between the baseplate and a clear frontplate which secures and protects your printed "skin."

So, design-majors, artists, and photography buffs, get designing!

Xbox Live Diamond Cards Shipped

2006-04-10T16:32:00.000-05:00

Yup, they're out. The first batches started hitting mailboxes last week, and despite the less-than-respectable typo, I for one am glad to have it in hand. Since the site went live, members of the incentive program have been able to browse the list of over 100 retailers and other companies offering discounts to Xbox Live Gold subscribers. If you haven't subscribed for Live or signed up for the Diamond program, go! Get free pizzas and sandwiches and discounted shoes and stuff!

Live: What's Not Being Said

2006-03-28T15:49:00.000-06:00

When the new Xbox Live rolled out with the first shipments of Xbox 360s, it brought something with it, something console gaming needed: all the comforts of PC gaming. Downloadable games, demos, game and movie trailers, and custom content for both games and the console itself were suddenly available to download and store (if desired) on the Xbox 360. Improved match-making, persistent online game stats and rivalries, and other improvements are changing the way we look at online gaming. Can we expect Microsoft's competitors to follow suit and play catch-up, or will they go a different direction? Can Sony follow through on their promise of an impending "Live-killer," or will they keep on keeping on with their free-but-worthless online system?

In the previous generation of video game consoles, Microsoft's Xbox and its Xbox Live online feature-set arguably reigned supreme. While Sony's Playstation 2 offered a free online gaming solution, it had more draw-backs than benefits. One the one hand, it was free, no matter what you played. However, to offset the costs inherent to an online service, Sony just decided to not provide a service at all. Instead, individual game developers/studios were responsible for providing and maintaining game servers for PS2 owners' usage. Players had to connect to this 3rd-party server, create a login (or login with one they had already created), re-connect to the server, find a game to join, and connect to that. Lag was a rampant issue. Microsoft, on the other hand, provided a simple centralized system that they maintained. For the not-at-all-unreasonable price of $50/year (just barely over $4/month), users have access to a centralized system, a system with one login, one password, and you're connected. Any game on the Xbox that supported Live could be played through this system, without complication of any sort. In addition to online gaming, Live provided users with a "Friends List," a way of communicating with your buddies, grouping with them so that you can play together on Live. You could leave messages for your friends if they weren't online when you were, and establish voice chats with them when they were online.

Now we have the Xbox 360, and with it comes improvements and new features. While we currently have voice chat, we'll soon be able to hold video chat with our friends via the upcoming USB camera peripheral. We can download trailers of upcoming games, as well as playable demos. You can customize the Xbox 360 "dashboard" with downloadable themes, and customize your gamer card with various game-inspired avatars. You can host private online games, and invite your friends to the fragging. However, the real excitement isn't in what's currently offered, or what has been promised by Microsoft. What really gets the blood going is the thought of what could be done with this system, and the rumors that have come about based on little tidbits of information.

One thing that many gamers have long enjoyed is hosting their own game server. These servers can be password-protected for privacy, or can be left open to the public. It would be a great addition to Live's featureset if Microsoft would add in the ability for a PC or Xbox 360 to act as a dedicated server for a game. It would allow the "server's" host more control over their game's controls; imagine not having to kick annoying players because they've been automatically added to your server's ban list. In addition to this feature, Microsoft could supplement Live's match-making system, which pairs a player up with other players of similar rank/skill (based on their previous Live stats), with a server browser system. Now, instead of just being thrown into a random game based on your online ranking, you can navigate through a list and connect to your friend's personal server--it doesn't matter that he's ranked in the top 100 and you have a rank of 10k+.

One thing I've been personally salivating over is the possibility of DirecTV content provided directly to your Xbox 360. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, Microsoft and DirecTV announced a "long-term agreement to expand the reach of digital content throughout the home and on the go," and went so far as to indicate that they intend to "extend the DirecTV experience to teh Xbox 360 system." The following month, Official Xbox Magazine reported on the possibility of a 5th "blade" being added to the Xbox 360's dashboard; their "mole" detailed how the DirecTV blade would make available to users the ability to "download TV episodes in high definition, HD movies on demand, and standard-definition streaming DVR (i.e., TiVo) functions."

Two words: crazy hot.

What lies in store for Xbox 360 owners in the near future? If gamers have their say (and if the rumors can be believed), Microsoft will once again dominate the realm of online console gaming in this "Next-Gen" of High-Def gaming.

XBL Diamond Program Going... Live

2006-03-23T12:36:00.000-06:00

According to the official site, Microsoft's "Xbox Live Diamond" promotion program goes live in a little over 15 hours from now (so about 3am EST). The program is offered free-of-charge to paid subscribers to the Xbox Live service ("Gold" members), and provides you with great money-saving rebates at a variety of retailers. Personally, I'm looking forward to my "buy one, get one free" discounts at Quiznos.

If you're a paid subscriber, I highly recommend you look into this. The way I see it, if you make use of this program properly, it will effectively pay for your yearly subscription to Xbox Live. That, to me, makes it totally worth it.

A must-have if we ever can have it.

2006-03-10T16:24:00.000-06:00

Today I was surfing through the intarwebs trying to fill big holes in time at work and avoid doing any actual work when I came across something interesting on Achieve 360 Points, a listing for achievements available in the Non-Western game Tetris: The Grand Master Ace, a game that I've been hoping for on the 360 since seeing the amazing things that Nintendo is doing with their Tetris DS title. I've been craving the immense fun of playing Tetris on my Xbox 360 with my wife and against my good friends IcarusFountain and his wife over Live, but my hopes were asploded upon seeing that this Tetris title is for Japan only. Now, I'm not racist or anything by any means, this is probably just plain greed and selfishness, but I ask why do the Japanese get Tetris and not us (me)? We (I) *love* Tetris, there's a huge market for it (consider how many iterations of it have sold in this country), and being able to play on Live would be a huge attraction to those who otherwise wouldn't be interested in playing games online, people such as my wife. And not only that, but for people like me who had to finnick a bit in order to actually convince their spouse to let them purchase a 360, it would make the purchase all that much more justified, or even considered a "good purchase". Then, of course, I started thinking some slightly nastier thoughts, such as how the Japanese market as a general whole doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about the Xbox 360 and wouldn't care if it never came to their shores, however *they* still get Tetris. Sorry to say, but a $40-$50 version of Tetris isn't going to make them shell out $350 for the Xbox 360. They'll wait for it to come out on Playstation 3. Bring me my Tetris!

Technorati Tags: Gaming, Japan, Tetris, Xbox 360

Battle for Middle Earth II demo today

2006-02-09T09:44:00.000-06:00

GameSpot is advertising that they'll have the world premier of the BFME2 single-player demo at 9am PST (so a little over an hour left). This demo for the much-anticipated sequel contains two maps and 2 races: Goblins and Dwarves.

You can bet your ass I'll be downloading this tonight!

Frag Doll Friday Disappointment

2006-02-07T12:32:00.000-06:00

Well, I told you before that I had been invited to play Perfect Dark: Zero for "Frag Doll Friday" last Friday (Feb. 3rd). Unfrotunately, I had some scheduling conflicts that I hadn't taken into full consideration, and as a result, found myself removed from the list of gamers fortunate enough to participate.

Friday afternoon was spent driving across two different state borders to make my trek from northwestern Kansas to central Iowa, with the intention of surprising my mother-in-law for her 50th birthday. We got into town, went out to dinner, went out for drinks, and I was still home early (by most standards for a Friday night in a college town). It was only 10pm (central time) when I logged into Live; I figured that the event would still be going strong. Imagine my disappointment when "fd jinx" no longer was on my friend list. I had been voted off the island; I was the weakest link. Good bye. (Ironically, "Semi-Charmed Life" is playing in the background as I'm typing this)

So, I've nothing to really report in regards to last Friday, other than I had a great weekend celebrating my wife's mother's (and brother's) birthday, and watching Super Bowl XL. I intend to keep writing in to get in on the PD:Z action on Frag Doll Friday events, and I know there are more coming up, so stay tuned. It will happen, and it will be quite the awesome post.

Top 5 Countdown, Day 5

2006-02-03T14:00:00.000-06:00

All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.

1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4
2/1/06 - Threat #3
2/2/06 - Threat #2

May I have a drumroll, please...

Papa Rotzi.

It might surprise you to see that the media trumped politicians as my #1 threat against American gamers. The reason is simple enough; the media reaches every single American, and affects their opinions. The danger lies in how they report the news.

Much like there’s an alleged liberal-bias in the media, I propose that there’s an anti-gaming sentiment that permeates all major news organizations. You can see it in all of the sensationalist reporting of a school shooting, or in the recent tragedy in which a couple of teenagers were drag racing and a taxi cab was impacted. No matter the incident, if it involves anyone under the age of 30, the media immediately starts hyping up the possibility that it was somehow related to a video game (or they skip the hype and go straight to blaming game x. Rarely do you see a report covering two sides of such an issue.

For instance, Jack Thompson has been invited to appear on shows like “Dateline” and “60 Minutes” several times, giving him the opportunity to belittle and berate the gaming community as being “depressed” and “[in need of] a life” nearly unopposed. I’ve yet to view one of his interviews where he has a counterpart of equal status to really challenge his twisted views. Of course, he gets invitations to do many of these appearances because he has a very persuasive way of presenting his arguments, so people just readily believe anything he has to say. It doesn’t matter that he misconstrues facts and misquotes psychological studies; when you’re Jack Thompson, if someone doesn’t take your word as irrefutable universe-defining law, then they are prejudiced, ignorant, slanderous, harassing, or a turncoat against your cause.

But it’s not really Jack’s fault; the reporters involved aren’t doing their research like they should. For instance, on occasion I hear about a psychological study or research project that links video games to acts of violence. Having actually researched as many finished studies as I can get my hands on, and being close friends with a leading psychologist in this very field, I can tell you that there have been no studies that could prove that video games cause violence. Definitely, there are plenty of studies that indicate that video games, and any other media portraying violence, can and frequently do elevate aggression levels in their users/viewers. However, higher aggression doesn’t mean a decrease in moral values; it most often translates into a competitive mood, and all of the studies I’ve read show that the effects that video games have on the mind are temporary at best. If reporters were to read the research that they’re reporting on, they’d know this to be true, and it would change their stories. But the media doesn’t seem to want to check itself when it comes to video games and crimes allegedly caused by them. They want their ratings, and if that means conveying a misinterpretation of data as a fact, then they aren’t above it.

Where this gets dangerous, of course, is when that news hits their audience. A large number of people in America don’t play video games, so when they’re told that today’s games are violent “murder simulators,” they understandably react very negatively towards video games. More often than not, they’ll take what they hear on the news as absolute fact (why wouldn’t it be?) and don’t do any more research for themselves. Now these people, victims of disinformation, write to their congressmen and file lawsuits against game developers over things they don’t really know enough about. Parents see these broadcasts and immediately become concerned about what their children are playing, despite the fact that they themselves bought the children’s games to begin with. As I discussed in yesterday’s article, there was a grandmother who filed a suit against Take-Two and Rockstar Games over the disabled content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that was re-enabled via the “Hot Coffee” modification. She filed the suit because of the risk that game put her grandchildren in when they played the game. She bought the game for her grandkids in the first place, despite its “M” rating.

And of course, don’t forget that these newly-concerned members of society take the little information and lots of disinformation they’ve been fed, and go straight to the polls to vote for whichever candidate says they’ll fight for our children’s safety from the video game menace.

Perfect Dark Zero: Review

2006-02-02T16:52:00.000-06:00

Perfect Dark: Zero was released as a launch title to the Xbox 360 with some very heavy hype and high expectations. Many were hoping that PDZ would be an adequate substitute for Halo 3, Microsoft was hoping for both a new blockbuster shooter franchise and for a title that would make 360s fly off of shelves. You know, considering the shortage of the consoles didn't do that to begin with. Whereas PDZ is a very enjoyable shooter with some excellent features and good solid gameplay, it does have its shortcomings and pitfalls.

There are a number of things that PDZ has going for it, such as the numerous weapon functions that are sported. Every gun in the game has a secondary function (note: not necessarily a secondary fire mode) and there are a few that even have a tertiary function (which is pretty much limited to silencers, flashlights, etc). This attention to detail is a very nice feature that Rare has included that ads a good degree of depth to the game through functionality. Only real shortcoming with this is that the flashlight is rather useless, as all areas of the game are lit well enough that a flashlight isn't needed. This is true at least on standard definition TVs, however it may be different on HDTVs, since games such as Need for Speed: Most Wanted are noticably darker on an HDTV. Another really big feature that I think is simply excellent is the weapons and inventory system, taking cues from Counter-Strike and Deus Ex. Your character, Joanna Dark, has 4 blocks that are designated for weapons and 4 blocks for inventory items. The way you load Jo up with weaponry depends on what you can fit into these blocks, for example, pistols and handheld items such as grenades, flashbangs and a weapon known as the Hawk Boomerang (a circular blade thrown from a special glove that will bounce off walls and penetrate any enemy in its path until it returns to the glove), while weapons like the automatic rifles, shotgun, superdragon, etc all take up 2 blocks and finally the heavy weaponry such as sniper rifles, rocket launcher and M60 all take up 3 blocks each. This brings a very good means of balance to the weapons that isn't present in many other shooters. For instance, in games such as Unreal Tournament and Quake your character can hold as many guns as he comes across and can stockpile ammo for each.

In games such as Halo your character can only hold 2 weapons, but they can be a combination of any 2 weapons, leaving someone able to carry the sniper rifle and the rocket launcher and still be able to throw grenades. What this bin system creates is a situation where you can't just select the most powerful weapons in the game, but instead have to weigh the facts such as what map you're going to be playing in, what you can expect in a certain level, etc when planning your layout. You're able to grab the rocket launcher and a pistol, however if you're going to be playing a level that has a lot of snipers in it with a good deal of armor you're going to be more or less screwed. This keeps people from having too much of an unfair advantage, as you can't take the rocket launcher for close-quarters quick kills and a sniper rifle for all distance kills as you could in Halo. You can still use 2 automatic weapons, which are decently powerful, but you need to keep in mind that each weapon is contained within a category like 'Pistols,' 'Handhelds,' 'SMG,' 'Assault,' 'Close Combat' and 'Heavy' and if you select 2 weapons from the same category (with the exceptions of 'Heavy' and 'Handheld') they will both use the same ammunition supply and you could be left with no weapons very quickly.

Perfect Dark: Zero sports a feature that doesn't appear much in first person shooter titles: a cover system. When Jo approaches a wall, a visual cue shows that she is able to take cover against that wall and the camera will shift to a third person view, allowing you to peer around corners, over the top of a short wall, etc. This allows you to be able to see any advancing enemies, security cameras, etc, and be able to step out from cover and begin shooting while still in third person view. This makes the game a great deal easier than it'd be otherwise, especially since, for the most part, you don't have the risk of bodily harm while in cover to see how enemies are advancing on your position and see how security cameras are moving about. After playing PDZ for a fair amount of time, you'll very well be attempting to take cover in any other FPS game.

Another feature that PDZ has is the roll, where the camera will once again shift into a third person view while Jo dives and rolls on the ground. The purpose of this is to help in evading enemy fire, as the game explains, it makes it harder for the bad guys to lock on to you. Certainly has its advantages, but the part where it really shines is in the final boss battle. The roll is a substitute for jumping, which is absent from PDZ. Developers have stated that it was a conscious decision to help balance the dynamic of gameplay, hoping to keep players out of areas they aren't supposed to be able to get to in multiplay, as well as avoid having players bouncing around to avoid enemy fire. Some say a majority of the reason why jumping is not an option is because the game is rushed. Only the developers know for sure. The third person view is also taken when Jo goes up or down a ladder or takes a zipline to a new location. Similarly to taking cover, when a ladder or zipline is within reach, a visual cue will appear to let the player know. The cue for taking a ladder is much nicer than the walk up to it solution of so many other shooter games where it can be all too easy to interact with the ladder incorrectly and either have a difficult time getting down or managing to fall to your death. You are shown when you are allowed to interact with each when “Press 'A' to Use *x*” (*x* being replaced with whatever you are interacting with) appears on your screen and when you are climbing down a ladder you can hold 'A' to slide down the ladder, which is quite slick and a very nice game detail.

A nice new dynamic that has been added to the world of Perfect Dark is the ability that has previously been found in classic titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Loom, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, etc, which is being able to talk to certain enemies, what you say influencing what happens next. For instance, when facing off against the first boss briefly when your objective is to disable his jet before facing him for the last time later in the level, he will yell something at you and you are given the ability to choose between 1 of 3 categories for response: “Insult,” “Taunt,” and “Intimidate”, to which he'll reply in suit and continue to shoot at you. That part is fun, but what's better is later in the game when you attempt to infiltrate a safeguarded mansion and you kill a security guard and attempt to use his radio to convince people inside to shut down radio coms. At that point, activating the radio your voice pattern is remapped with a male's via a high-tech choker that Jo is wearing and a voice at the other end comes on, asking a question or making a statement and you have to figure out which out of the options of “Bluff,” “Charm” or “Threaten” is the correct response to get that person to shut down the coms. Definitely a nice throwback to a dynamic that was used long ago and a nice element to the story.

PDZ also features an inventive health system that borrows from the now all-but-standard Halo shield system but isn't 100% similar. Jo has a health bar that's encased by another bar that shows how much armor you have. The armor is fairly standard, when you get shot the level of shielding you have gets lower, but the health bar is where things get creative. Damage isn't simply taking away from your health, but you also don't have regenerating health in the true sense of the word. Most of the damage that occurs is known as “shock damage”, where your health will decrease, but not all of it is permanent. For example, if you fall off of a balcony and hit the ground, your green bar of health will go down but there will be a white bar that is either at the 'full' level or slightly close to full and if you don't get shot or fall off any other balconies in a certain amount of time your green health bar will refill to that spot. In certain firefights you can get shot a fair amount and still go back to full health if you are able to get to some cover and heal yourself for a few moments before attacking again. The harder the difficulty the longer your health takes to recharge and the less shock damage you take and the more permanent damage you take. It's a very interesting dynamic that is a welcome break from the norm.

The single-player campaign is a good enjoyable time, however multiplayer is where PDZ really shines. Not only is there the standard local, system link and Live multiplayer events such as Killcount (Deathmatch), Team Killcount, a territorial gain mode and Capture the Flag, there are some other modes such as an assault-like game known as Dark Ops, which has a few different modes to it: Eradication, Infection, Sabotage and Onslaught, each of which is supposed to support up to 32 players and up to 15 bots. The inclusion of bots is absolutely fantastic and a feature that is missing from way too many shooters these days. There has obviously been a good deal of effort put into the multiplayer aspect. Eradication is basically Last Man Standing from Unreal Tournament, Infection plays a great deal like the Virus mode in Timesplitters: Future Perfect where you try to be the last person to be infected, Sabotage is where your primary goal is to cause as much damage to the enemy's base as possible, and then there's Onslaught, in which your objective is to make an assault upon the enemy base to fulfill a particular objective.

Unfortunately, there are a number of negative things that can be said about PDZ and areas that can be addressed where it simply falls short of the rather sizable potential it had for being a fantastic shooter. Even more unfortunate is the fact that some of the things that make it a really good game are the very things that make it rather frustrating for one reason or another. The throwback of being able to taunt, charm, bluff, etc your enemies is very interesting, but when it comes to the point in time when you're expected to use the radio to have the comms shut down to make your infiltration of the mansion easier and soon after to get the person to open the main door to let you into the mansion it can be quite difficult because you can choose the wrong option of the 3 and the correct answer isn't always obvious so you can end up replaying the level a number of times in order to get it right (there are multiple things you have to respond to, so the one you had last time will be different next time) and in the harder difficulties when it takes quite a bit of effort to get to those points to begin with it can be very frustrating if you think you're going to say the right thing and you don't and have a tactical squad sent after you to “help”, as they say over the comms. What's especially annoying is in the 'Perfect Agent' difficulty (Hard), at the very end you need to use a voice recognizer in order to finish the first part of the level before facing off in a boss battle and if you do that wrong you fail the mission and have to play the entire thing over again. Frustrating barely covers it.

One area that's not particularly negative, just an opportunity missed, deals with the cover system. It's a nice feature and really proves to be invaluable, but it's slightly bugged and not all that it could've been. For instance, when you sneak up to the left edge of a metal crate to take cover and check to see where the enemies are located, sometimes your character will take cover on the right side instead of the left and there are other times where Jo will even take cover on the right side of the other face of the crate so that you're standing out in the open and any hopes of covert operations have been shot (no pun intended). It'd be nice if those little bugs had been cleaned up, but what would've really been nice is if cover mode was more interactive and the player had been given a greater deal of control. It would have been excellent if you could press yourself against a wall at any location on the wall and then slide alongside it to the edge to peek out and shoot or duck down, slide along a low flower planter and stand up at a location of choice to take some shots before ducking down again and moving to a new location and repeat.

Having such carefully and concretely scripted cover locations really limits a player and can also create problems since it's not like an enemy doesn't know where you're taking cover and it's pretty hard to take them out in later levels where there are swarms of them all shooting on your location at once. Furthermore, it's not like it isn't possible to make Jo able to slide along a wall in cover, such as in the games WinBack and Kill.Switch, both are third person games that depended a great deal on such maneuvers in order to take out enemies and remain alive, and this was back in January of 2001. There are other games that allow you to slide along walls and peek out to open fire on enemies and we will be seeing it again in the game Gears of War, an upcoming title for the Xbox 360. This isn't a new concept and it just goes to show the game was a wee bit rushed in its lack of a really robust cover system.

An interesting feature of PDZ that is a new twist on an old concept lay in the method of zooming in with a scoped weapon. Instead of having a click-style graduated scope as is in Halo / Halo 2 of zooming in one stop per button press, the scope will zoom in to each step depending on how far in the trigger is held. Each scoped weapon has 4 steps of scoping capability, so when the trigger is held at 1/4 of the way in the scope will go to 2x zoom, at 1/2 it will be at 4x (or 3x, depending on the weapon) and 3/4 is 8x (or 6x). It's an interesting concept, however if you are under heavy fire from multiple enemies the last thing you want to have to worry about is concentrating really hard on how you're pulling the trigger to zoom in for a headshot. Perhaps a better solution may have been to have the left joystick button zoom in and the right zoom out, but to each his own. It also would have been more effective if the trigger had a click stop of sorts to it, giving sensory feedback to what step of the scope you are on, making it less of a conscious thought and more of a reactive action.

Another giveaway that the final build of the game probably isn't the shining example of all it could've been comes in the shadow effects. A fair amount of the time that you see Jo's shadow, it looks like it's composed of pixels roughly 1" squared. In the rooftops level in a co-op game, the person who plays Jack has to enter a building and run up 3 flights of stairs, each has a hallway from one staircase to another and while in these hallways, the shadows of the enemies in the floor above can be seen on the walls.
The biggest pitfalls of the game have to do with the difficulty levels. It was excellent that like in the original Nintendo 64 game Perfect Dark the amount of objectives Joanna has to do increases depending on what difficulty it is, however in PDZ there is maybe one more objective and it's more of a side objective. There could've been a number of other objectives that could've been added, the storyline could've taken a bit of a detour to add a new objective, such as using a datathief to access a mainframe to track down a particular character in the building only to find out that your contact or contract or whoever is being escorted out of the building and you need to quickly figure out how to get there and stop the evacuation, etc. Another opportunity missed.

Also relating to the difficulty level is the difficulty curve that comes with it. Unfortunately, the harder the difficulty is set to, the harder it is to kill your enemies. This makes sense to a degree, as making characters harder to kill increases the difficulty of the game and forces a player to take more cover and be more strategic and less run-and-gun, but when it requires 8 headshots to remove a helmet and *then* be able to get a headshot kill, things are starting to be a little ridiculous, especially considering that starting weapons have a maximum of 3 clips or so. It would've been a more intelligent solution for the game to simply generate more opponents rather than have those that already exist end up being extraordinarily hard to kill at times. As is typical with many other shooters, the harder the difficulty is, the easier Joanna dies in combat. This is especially true when it comes to armor-piercing rounds of sorts, such as from a sniper rifle or a magnum that will only take up to 3 shots in order to put your character down. When there are 3 or more enemies on the screen, your chances of survival nearly flatline to nothing. More or less, the harder the difficulty gets the more you have to rely on taking cover and simply waiting for them to stop firing to attempt a headshot (unless they're wearing helmets). In the earlier levels this is mostly a minor annoyance, however in later levels it becomes quite aggravating, such as in the rooftops level when you must cover Jack. Jack does not seem to believe in cover and therefore you must put down anyone shooting at him exceptionally quickly or he will die from running into a room, firing his magnum blindly while multiple enemies unload on him, which segways in to the next point, AI.

Overall, the AI of PDZ is decent, but certainly not as good as we've seen in other games. The aforementioned point of Jack failing to ever take any sort of cover (with the exception of a cutscene or two, but that doesn't at all matter) makes the game unnecessarily difficult when you are forced to cover him from several enemies, half of which have sniper rifles. Without cover, he tends to die in a few seconds if you aren't quick enough. If you happen to be close to the end of a level and he dies, you'd better hope you have a good system going because you will be starting over. Another pitfall of PDZ is the lack of semi-frequent checkpoints, forcing a significant amount of whole level restarts. It would've been nice if Jack were given the enemy AI, as they tend to take cover fairly often and have decently coordinated attacks. They also have exceptional accuracy, making for another annoyance when it gets to the point that the only time you can take a shot at people is when no one happens to be shooting at you because in hard mode they *will* hit you and you will suffer significant damage. This obviously creates a real problem should you be in the aforementioned infiltration mission and fail to figure out which response you should have for the guard over the radio and a squad is sent out to nullify you. there are a couple checkpoints that are available to help thin their numbers, but with limited ammo allotted to you for the mission it's a pretty bad situation to be in at all.

As is typical of a majority of first person shooter titles nowadays, there are vehicles in PDZ. However, there are only 2 vehicles, a hovercraft and a personal-sized walker that is able to spread some wings and take flight. The hovercraft has a mounted turret that a second player can take control of and handles alright, however the walker / flyer is a little easier to use, however the only single-play level it appears in is a jungle level, which makes the enemies almost impossible to see from the air, typically leading to them gunning you down. A downside of the walker / flyer is that it's fairly weak and doesn't take a lot of damage. Some bad programming on the developer's parts is a welt in the eye of PDZ when you realize that if you are to very carefully snipe an enemy out of a flyer, you are unable to use their perfectly fine vehicle yourself, you can only use it in that one jungle level when you come across one that's unoccupied, and that's very close to the end as well, making it pretty much a worthless vehicle that probably shouldn't have even been in it.

The multiplayer of PDZ is quite good, especially the co-op play, that can be done on local, system link and Xbox Live. The maps in the game are scalable, depending on how many people are involved the maps can get larger or smaller, and these things really help contribute to the funfactor and replayability of the game. Headshots are a little too easy to have, though, and the bot skill is fairly high, even on the lowest difficulty. Another interesting aspect is that the game seems to move at a slower pace in multiplay than it does in single play. Not really a bad thing, just slightly disappointing. It is quite nice that up to 32 players can be in a single arena simultaneously, that makes for some heated, exciting battles.

Ultimately, PDZ is a very enjoyable game with a great deal of replay value, both from the multiplayer (deathmatch and co-op) and from the single player campaign, definitely a good title for rental if you are a fan of first person shooters or purchase if you have a tendency to love them all, however there are a fair amount of areas that could've been improved upon and some areas that show just how rushed the game was. As always, play for yourself to see whether or not you personally enjoy it.

Technorati Tags: Gaming, PDZ, Perfect Dark Zero, Rare, Review, Xbox 360

Top 5 Countdown, Day 4

2006-02-02T13:53:00.000-06:00

All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.

1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4
2/1/06 - Threat #3

And now to continue...

Next on the Agenda: People with Agendas

Politicians are infamous for trying to control aspects of our lives that we feel should be in our own hands. They're particularly notorious for trying to gain popularity (and votes) by latching onto a fad issue and making as big a fuss over it as possible. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce #2 on the countdown, today's threat -- Politicians.

We've all heard about it in the news: politicians trying to make a name for themselves have been very quick to make a stand against video games. Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) have been leading the "war" on our lifestyle, but others have been doing their part as well; you may recall my recent article on Texas governor-hopeful Star Locke. These people care very little about whether a game gets banned or its age rating heightened; they claim they're taking a stand for our safety, but in fact are only publicly denouncing video games because they think its what America wants. Well, that and the fact that many (if not all) of them only know what they've been told about games, and haven't actually sat down and personally played them.

For instance, take Clinton; here is a senator with aspirations for the presidency. The current scapegoat for any and every crime committed is the influence of video games; she teams up with another democrat and spearheads an initiative to hold game developers and retailers responsible for consumers' actions. By speaking out loud and proud about the evils of the digital world, she's trying to garner support from essentially anyone that isn't a gamer (the voting constituency she's aiming for is voters 35 and older, and younger females). I don't blame her for trying; it would be thrilling to have a woman take office. Hell, it would be nice to just have a change in office. I just don't approve of the use of slander in order to gain political power on false pretenses. At least its got one thing going for it; its one of the very few things that both sides of our bipartisan system agrees on.

Then there's folks like Jack Thompson, the anti-game lawyer from Miami, FL. He's not in any political office, nor has he ever publicly stated that he intends to run for anything. He's obviously trying to make a name for himself by targetting games, however, and is actually succceeding quite nicely (it doesn't hurt that he's becoming sickeningly rich off of all the people he's suckering into his never-ending string of lawsuits against the gaming industry). It can't be said that he doesn't try, though; he's filed more lawsuits against Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive than I can even keep track of, all on behalf of families who've lost loved ones to crimes that he blames on the Grand Theft Auto games and others, or families who feel their children are being corrupted by the content in those M-rated titles.

Hmm, there's that "children who somehow have M-rated games" thing again...

The thing we should be wary of with Jack Thompson is that he isn't the friendly-but-concerned 3rd-party, trying to fight for your right to not take responsibility for your own offspring. Jack Thompson is just a greedy lawyer, the greediest of lawyers. If you're not aware of what a typical lawyer's fees are, they usually take a percentage of whatever you win in a lawsuit. The more prestigious the lawyer, the higher his fees usually are. Jack Thompson excels at artificially inflating his prestige by being the go-to "video game expert" for the news media. Of course, he shows his ignorance in the field time and time again, but he's very charismatic, and the media just eats up him. He's gotten his name everywhere, and for that kind of publicity, he gets to charge as much as he wants (I expect the usual fee of 50% for high-profile attorneys). See, he'll fight to get you as much as possible, but his concern is how much of your award money he can take from you. Suddenly, Mr. Thompson doesn't seem so noble, does he?

Just remember the saying "the people who deserve to be the president would never run." The people we see in high positions in government aren't always the people we think we voted for; they are usually quite unscrupulous in their rise to power, and only tell us what they think we want to hear in order to get there. Likewise, be wary of people who stand to make vast fortunes off of tragedies; they typically care much less about the tragedy and much more for the money they can make off of you while you're feeling vulnerable.

Top 5 Countdown, Day 3

2006-02-01T17:27:00.000-06:00

All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.

1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4

And now to continue...

When Bigger Isn't Better

Its a common belief that, with most things in life, bigger is better. Your bankroll, your office at work, your home, your Apple Cinema Display; as they say, "the more, the merrier." Unfortunately, the old adage doesn't necessarily hold true when it comes to the corporate world and its business models.

#3 on my list of "Top 5 Threats to Gamers" this week is Conglomerate Game Studios. We all know who they are, and we've seen both the good and bad they're capable of. For example, EA Games is known for the amazing variety of games it publishes, franchises like Command & Conquer, Medal of Honor, and the huge array of sports franchises under the "EA Sports" label.

What you may or may not be aware of, however, is the working conditions that developers work with when working for a publisher such as EA. Just in the past year, there has been public attention drawn to the blog of an EA employee. His blog details the horrible time constraints, unrelenting pressure, and lack of downtime between projects that--as it turns out--is practically the industry standard. Of course, that isn't to say that only the big game farms push their employees thusly; one of my old college buddies took a game design job with a small company, and he left the job only months later after being driven to the point that he never wants to work in the industry again. What made it worse was that he went to college to do that kind of work.

Putting working conditions aside, the game development industry is something that most gamers follow pretty closely; after all, what they do impacts our personal (and frequently professional) lives. What really makes the big-name development studios so bad isn't how hard they push their employees, but the effect that such a big entity has on its own products, and on the rest of the industry.

I'm going to pick on EA Games again (sorry guys, its nothing personal; I really do love your work), or rather EA Sports. Take their NBA Live franchise: there's a line of games that effectively never changes. Certainly, you don't want it to change too wildly; the idea behind the game's development is to make it as authentic as possible. However, each iteration of sees very little change over its predecessor. With the exception of console changes, these games saw very little improvement in graphics, literally no change in gameplay mechanics, and no innovation. The only real changes the average gamer ever saw was updates to the team rosters to reflect those currently in the NBA. Even their Medal of Honor franchise has seen little improvement since it first hit the original PlayStation. Certainly, the graphics have improved, but little else has improved. Of course, I'll be the first to stand up and say that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was and remains to be one of my favorite FPS games, but that's because of all the fun I had playing the multiplayer mode.

Companies like EA operate like this: they develop a few games on their own, but most of their product line comes from other developers that they've "acquired" (bought up). This is how the Command & Conquer line came to be an EA title; Westwood Studios was devoured into the greater beast that was EA. Its a two-edged sword, and not at all unlike playing the game Monopoly; on the one hand, the larger publisher/studio can secure their financial placement in the industry by owning more intellectual properties (IPs). However, with so many "properties" to oversee and invest in, the parent company is less compelled to take risks. This lack of ingenuity leads to a track record of sequels (as mentioned before, look at all the sports game franchises under EA Sports; a new version is released every year) and very few new innovations to the franchise or genre as a whole. Of course, when they do decide to take a risk and invest in something new and unique, they don't finance it as well as they do their "tried and true" franchises. The results are games like Psychonauts from Double-Fine Productions and published by Majesco. Psychonauts was a game that was really inventive and fresh, but lacked the marketing budget to properly spread the word, and its sales reflected that. Sadly, too many games end up overlooked because of their lack of support from their own publisher.

All of the above only really reflects how a publisher's desire to be big forces them into a very small corner. The problem is, a company's decisions can also adversely affect the gaming industry in its entirety. For example, EA Sports bought the exclusive rights to develop games for pro athletics. Yes; that means that EA Sports and only EA Sports can develop officially licensed games for the NBA and NFL. This is why you see games like Midway's Blitz: The League. Because Midway couldn't make a game truly representative of the NFL, they made games that are terrible, unauthentic (the "league" can't be the NFL), and actually have very little to do with even playing football. And because EA owns the rights to make the official games--which forces their competitors to make crappy knock-offs--EA doesn't feel any pressure from competitors, so it doesn't strive to make its games genuinely better. The same applies to 2k Sports and their exclusive rights to MLB games.

When companies strive to become bigger and better, they invariably narrow their outlook and inventiveness. Sure, its a safer way to invest your money, but you can't contribute to the health and longevity of a franchise, genre, or even the industry if you refuse to think outside the box and take a few risks. The gaming industry needs risk-takers, inventive thinkers to help keep our shelves stocked with refreshing new ways to play. Besides, who wants to play yet another Doom when you could be playing the next Psychonauts?

Review: TimeShift Demo

2006-02-01T14:15:00.000-06:00

As I reported on a couple of days ago, Atari released the single-player demo for their upcoming game TimeShift. I picked it up from FilePlanet and got it installed late last night, so I took the time this morning to play through it.

The first thing I really noticed was the graphics. After playing games like Doom 3, F.E.A.R., FarCry, and even Half-Life 2, the graphics seen in TimeShift (or rather, its demo) are pretty lack-luster. It had its moments, but in general I felt that the graphics were awfully pixelated, the fire effects were only slightly better than those in Unreal Tournament 2004, and the player models weren't nearly as detailed as I would have hoped. This normally is of little concern to me, as I feel that gameplay is what truly defines a gaming experience (and trust me, I'm getting to the good stuff). I'm just slightly concerned about how TimeShift is shaping up, graphically speaking, when its supposed to be released for the Xbox 360 as well as the Xbox and PC.

Once starting up the level featured in the demo, I had very little concern for the graphics; you start off within several yards of two enemy agents, and they see you. You don't really get enough time to check out your weapons before-hand, nor do you have much time to think about using your time-shifting options. Equiped with my "knuckle duster" (a pistol with a spiked handguard for a brutal melee attack), I immediately lept into action and perforated the chests and heads of my new-found foes. Then, with my immediate area secure, I set about checking out my 3 weapons and my 3 timeshift options. Once I figured out that I wanted to sport my machine gun for whatever I might face next, I started trying to find my way out of the demolished subway station I was in (my boss was on the horn, yelling at me to get a move on and get to my next obstacle). As I approached a burning pile of debris, my HUD prompted me to use my ability to stop time to walk through fire without getting burned. Although I accidentally hit my "reverse time" function, I managed to walk through the blaze unscathed.

From there, I managed to climb up some rubble to the city sidewalk above. I found myself along a fence, which ran the perimeter of the "Imperial Building" which I was expected to infiltrate. I crouched down and snuck up on the front gate, which was armed with 3 or 4 automated machine gun turrets. My HUD prompted me to "use [my] timeshift powers" to bypass the turrets. Vague, but still pretty simple. Anyone with any imagination at all can figure out how to slip past security like that when you can manipulate the fabric of time itself.

I moved on, and found that I had to get through an energy barrier to infiltrate the front courtyard. Using my timeshift options, I froze time and stole the firearm right out of the hands of the guard posted there, and killed him before time could resume. Poor sap. As I inspected the guard house there, my HUD prompted me again, this time telling me to flip the switch that would disable the barrier. I did, and wasn't surprised to see that the shield quickly re-activated. Hmm... can I give myself more time? Of course! I flipped the switch again, and quickly froze time. I was able to walk right through before the barrier closed again.

From there, I simply had to make a quick run across the courtyard and make my way into the underground garage for the building. I decided to slow time so that the manned machine gun turrets couldn't keep up with my progress, and I simply bolted as quickly as I could across the yard and down the ramp to the garage. Figuring in the slowed time, I had to have been running at 2-3 times as fast as your typical freeway speed.

See? See how much I focused on what I experienced in the game? I seriously couldn't tell you how much detail was put into the agents I so ruthlessly (and instantaneously) killed, partly because of how each timeshift ability distorts the player's view of the environment around him. I didn't even focus on that very much, sadly, as I was having far too much time playing with security guards as if they were a video in my VCR; I'd watch them walk by, then "rewind" them and watch it again, trying to find my best option for sneaking past them undetected (I typically ended up just blowing everyone away for good measure). It was particularly nice to rewind time if I got caught, as I could just "undo" the guards' awareness of my presense, and find a better place to hide in the process.

The hype for the game offers sweet promises of aerial, indoor, outdoor, and urban environments, vehicles you can drive, turrets you can man, and of course, time you can shift. If the previews are to be believed, you can even expect a 16-player multiplayer mode, which will include some sort of timeshift weapons (or something). The demo only really demonstrated the timeshifting aspect, but what I saw I liked. Sadly, it was an incredibly short level, and the only level in the demo.

Based on my short-lived experience with the TimeShift demo, I'll have to give this game a rating of about 70%. The graphics really need to improve before it hits the Xbox360 or PC, the levels need to be much longer, but I think that Saber Interactive and Atari have really hit upon something big with this new spin on the first-person shooter. The demo left a lot to be desired if this game is going to reach its full potential, but I still have high hopes for TimeShift, as it brings something extra to the bloated FPS genre. I'll most likely re-review this game based on its retail release, and I expect that it will get a much higher rating at that time.

Top 5 Countdown, Day 2

2006-01-31T17:22:00.000-06:00

All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.

1/30/06 - Threat #5

And now to continue...

Parents, Don't let your kids grow up to be you...

#4 in my week-long countdown is the Irresponsible Parent. Generally speaking, an irresponsible parent is a bad thing, and I firmly believe that there are plenty of people out there who should never procreate. They simply lack the maturity and sense of responsibility that should be requisite of someone who's responsible for the care and raising of another human being.

However, many otherwise wonderful parents fall short when it comes to their kids and video games. We hear all too often of some lawyer going after a game developer/studio/publisher because a parent felt that a game their child played was too violent. I know I'm not the only person who sees the problem with this situation. I ask one simple question: "Who bought the game for the kid in the first place?" Its the underlying problem that's frequently being overlooked; the kid had to get the game from somewhere, and someone had to have bought it for him/her.

Its becoming increasingly commonplace for people to blame everyone they possibly can, except themselves. The Irresponsible Parent epitomizes this fad in gaming society. How many minors have an income aside from the paltry weekly or monthly allowance? Not too many. So when I read or hear about a parent who's aghast at the violent video game their child has been exposed to, the only one who's truly at fault in my book is the parent. After all, they're the one who supplied the greenbacks to buy the game in the first place.

Now, that still leaves two possible ways that things could have played out in the store. When I worked retail at a store that sold video games, the most common scenario was as follows: the parent and child came into the store, the kid picked out a game, and the parent just took it to the cashier and paid for it. They never once paid attention to the icon in one of the two bottom corners of the game packaging that explicitly states the game's ESRB rating. That rating, had the unaware mother or father paid attention to it, would have told them that the game was rated to be appropriate for an audience little Timmy wouldn't be a part of for at least another half a decade.

The other frequent case, and again something I encountered personally when working retail, is that an aloof parent will simply give their kid the money to get the game they want. The parent lets the kid shop on their own (with the parent looking in another department, or sitting out in the car), so the kid purchases the game on their own. This is when you can start blaming the retailer a bit, because they're technically responsible to verify the age of a customer before selling age-limited products. Wal-Mart's PoS terminals actually prompt the cashier to verify a customer's ID when they ring up tobacco, alcohol, R-rated or unrated films, and video games that aren't rated E (for Everyone), and many other national chains are following suit. The store I worked for (which shall remain nameless) had no such system in place, but I tried to enforce a similar policy at the store level in hopes that it might become a chain-wide policy. Still, the parent is not involving him or herself with their child enough to know what their child is being exposed to, so the majority of blame still rests squarely on their shoulders.

One kind of Irresponsible Parent that seems to be increasing in numbers is what I like to refer to as the Opportunist. For example, there was a grandmother in the news recently who filed a lawsuit against Take Two and Rockstar Games after hearing about the "Hot Coffee" mod scandal surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. She had purchased the game (rated M for Mature) for her grandson, and then was appalled when she found out that the "Hot Coffee" mod existed. I won't even go into the fact that a company shouldn't be held responsible when a 3rd-party reverse-engineers their product to release something like "Hot Coffee," as hacking/reverse-engineering a game violates a game's End-User License Agreement (EULA).

Obviously, some reform should happen at the retail level to help prevent young children from buying games like Doom 3. Stores need to start verifying the ages of the customers on video games just as they're supposed to do with movies and explicit music. However, all the lawsuits in the world won't change that the gaming industry is protected by 1st amendment rights, and have every right to produce that bloody, violent shooter game. Its the parents, above all else, that need to become more vigilant in what they allow their kids to be exposed to. If you think that GTA:SA is going to turn your kid into a criminal, don't buy it for them in the first place.

Xbox360 Update Available

2006-01-30T17:13:00.000-06:00

Hot off the presses at Microsoft and Major Nelson's blog, your Xbox 360 is now patiently awaiting an automatic update for the Dashboard via Xbox Live.

This update provides the following improvements:

Improvements to the Xbox Guide
Option to retain your saved games when you delete a profile
Increased accuracy of "Last time played"
Network configuration improvements for Xbox Live members in the Netherlands
More detailed messaging for unreadable disk or region errors

So its lacking all of the improvements we were really hoping for, like the ability to have background downloads, or the heavily rumored web cam support. Still, "Improvements to the Xbox Guide" is awfully vague, and could contain all sorts of goodies not specifically listed by MS.

TimeShift Demo hits 'Net

2006-01-30T14:20:00.000-06:00

Many of you may not have heard about the upcoming FPS from Atari and Saber Interactive, titled TimeShift. In it, you play the part of a test pilot who tests a new technology that allows you to alter the regular flow of time; you can slow, stop, and even reverse time. The game features timeshifting challenges to progress through the game, an alternate time stream, and in general lots of what should be great gameplay. Its due to hit shelves on March 21.

GameSpot just released the world-premier of the single-player demo to subscribers, and you can be sure that the demo will be available on sites such as FilePlanet, FileCloud, and others. As I don't have a subscription with GameSpot, I'll be waiting until tomorrow to see about getting it from FilePlanet. Once I've got it, I'll be sure to post a review of the demo gameplay!

Weeklong Countdown - Top 5 Threats to Gamers

2006-01-30T10:44:00.000-06:00

This week, I decided I'd take the blog into a different direction (temporarily). I just got done reading about two different car accidents, and each of them are being blamed on one of my favorite new games for the Xbox 360: Need For Speed: Most Wanted. The apparent ignorance of the media's claims overwhelmed me, but it made me think, "what threats do we as gamers face in America today?" So this week, I'm doing a countdown of the top 5 threats I perceive American gamers facing in today's world of "Blame first, understand later." With the help of Luke from Game Naked, I hope to not only open the eyes of gamers, but to better educate non-gamers as to what is going on in our world, and hopefully eliminate some of the misconceptions floating around about our little corner of society.

#5 on my list of threats to gamers and gamedom in general is "game zealots." By "zealot," I'm not referring to the console-specific fanboys; as annoying as they can be, the only threat they really pose to the gaming community is to our sanity. No, the infamous Game Zealot makes himself known all-too-well when gaming hits the mainstream news.

Allow me to provide an example situation in which you might have run into a Game Zealot (all quotes are fictional, although the general scenario may be taken from real life).

News Article: "Today, Miami-based attorney Jack Thompson issued a statement regarding the recent suicide of a 'gamer.' From Thompson, (insert a quote here)."

Game Zealot: "That is ridiculous. So because I play games, I'm depressed and want to commit suicide? How about this, Jack? I'm going to hunt you down and kill you."

A Game Zealot may not even be that well-spoken. His e-threat may also come out a little something like this: "Jack Thomson is a n00b. Hes st00pid and I will pWn h1m liek teh n00b he si. Ur gonna die Jack Tompson!"

At first glimpse, the rabid rantings of a Game Zealot may seem like just heated, over-emotional responses to... anything. However, this type of gamer poses a very real threat to the rest of us, those of us who are completely normal, level-headed, and productive members of society.

The problem they pose is simple: they are quick to display an open aggression/hostility towards something they disagree with. Its that quick temper and public threat of hostility that only feeds non-gamers' view that we as gamers are made more violent by our frequent video game playing. How can we, as a community, refute claims that games can cause people to become physically violent while gamers are quick to hop on the internet and threaten people with their very lives? Sure, we're talking about the internet, where nothing can or should be taken at face value, but that doesn't change the fact that the gaming community has to effectively battle an internal struggle. We can't make any progress because some of us are refuting the claims that we're all homicidal/suicidal/irresponsible, while just as many gamers are displaying the exact behavior that they say we all exhibit.

Sure, we as gamers get painted in a bad light nearly every day, but we all need to learn to curb any irrational reactions we may have to these baseless accusations, stand up, and show the rest of the world that they're wrong.

The Battle of the Handhelds

2006-01-27T11:27:00.000-06:00

For anyone who's been waiting to buy a Nintendo DS, the time is quickly approaching that you'll want to reach for your wallet (and realize you still need to search between your couch cushions). Behold, the fast-approaching Nintendo DS Lite!

Yesterday, Nintendo announced the upcoming Nintendo DS Lite (in Japan; you'll want a translator to parse that announcement for you), which will be smaller, thinner, and lighter than the existing DS. To be exact, the Lite will weigh in at 5.24 x 2.91 x 0.85 in. (or 12.96 cubic in.) and 20% lighter than the original DS (which measures 5.85 x 3.33 x 1.13 in., or 22.01 cubic in.). That's roughly a 40% decrease in volume (if you kids care about how much water a DS displaces vs. a DS Lite). To offer a standard by which to compare these, though, try this on for size: the Game Boy Micro is 5.6 cubic in., the Game Boy Advance SP is 9.81 cubic in., and the Xbox360's power brick holds roughly the same volume of water as Lake Michigan.

Of course, this bird's-eye view of the two consoles side-by-side doesn't quite offer the best representation of the two sizes (since you can't determine thickness at this angle), but the decrease in footprint alone is rpetty remarkable.

Now doesn't that just make you start to salivate all down the front of your shirt?

Of course, no announcement of this magnitude can be left untouched by our good friends at Microsoft; BusinessWeek Online ran an article outing some insider information hinting at the possibility of a Microsoft-brand portable something. Primarily, they've formed a research team to look into the feasibility of an iPod-like portable digital media device. BW didn't have to make a large leap in logic when they wrote: “any Microsoft media device would have to leverage the company’s most significant consumer strength, video gaming.” Obviously, the likelihood of another "iPod beater" succeeding in a market already saturated by lack-luster music players, vying to compete with the heralded Apple iPod, is remarkably slim. Of course, Microsoft doesn't like to play unless they can win, and with their success in the video game and console market, they'd have to be... slow, to say the least... to not want to create a new type of portable device, an amalgam of digital music and portable gaming.

I just don't want to see this on shelves (thanks to Joystiq for the image).

Beware, Gamers of Texas...

2006-01-25T18:21:00.000-06:00

If gubernatorial candidate for the Texas GOP Star Locke gets his way, you could be seeing a tax placed on your favorite "violent" video games.

In a bold proposal, Locke wants to do away with property taxes in the state of Texas. That's right, no property taxes in the largest of the contiguous 48 states, where there's the most property to go around. Of course, that would mean a lot of lost revenue for the state, so how does he plan on balancing the budget? Get this: he wants to place a 10% sales tax on soft drinks, a $10,000-per-abortion tax (I'll give you a second to let that sink in), and a 50% sales tax on the vaguely-defined "violent" video games.

Okay, let's face it: in most parts of the U.S., sales tax is ~ 7%. That's not really too bad at all, and most people overlook it entirely when they purchase everything they purchase on a day-to-day basis. A 3% increase on your favorite soft drinks isn't that big of a change, and while people might complain at first, it would quickly be forgotten. However, it should be noted that tobacco products have a higher sales tax in nearly all (if not all) 50 states. Is Mr. Locke trying to group Pepsi© or Coca-Cola© with mind-altering, addiction-forming controlled substances? I would surely hope not, but hey, we have to give those oil barons and ranchers one hell of a tax break, and a property tax cut would certainly save them a ton of money.

Games. They've been under public scrutiny and political debate since the early days of Doom. We're in an age where everyone likes to point a finger and blame everyone but themselves, and games are the victim du jour. Some kid goes to his school with a gun and shoots someone, and suddenly Doom is the cause of his irrational behavior. Some inner-city thug carjacks an old lady and beats her to death, and Grand Theft Auto is at fault. Let's ignore the fact that there are literally millions of people who play video games in this country, billions around the world, and none of them commit any crimes. None. Hell, I've been playing video games since my first NES, and my wife's been playing them just as long, if not longer. We've never gone on a shooting spree. There have been no psychological studies that show a definitive causal relationship between violent video games (or any media, for that matter) and violent acts of aggression. I won't deny that there is plenty of psychological evidence showing that violent games can induce a higher level of aggression, but there's as-of-yet no evidence at all to suggest that this heightened aggression will invariably lead to a high risk of lashing out violently at another human being.

*sigh* But I digress.

In an attempt to do what Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and of course our favorite Miami-based assclown... err, attorney Jack Thompson have so far failed to accomplish, Star Locke is hoping to effectively prohibit the sale of video games through simple economics, rather than actually prohibit such sales through legislature. As much as I resent all of these politicians who seem to have nothing better to do with their time than to try to fight the 1st Amendment, I feel I owe Mr. Locke a round of applause on this. Its the first time a politician has thought outside the box on this subject. Rather than trying to fight the Constitution, he just decided it would be easier to make us not want to buy the games by making them ridiculously expensive. A 50% tax hike on games deemed "violent" by a board of 10 appointed evaluators (and you know that it won't be unbiased because us gamers haven't quite succeeded in infiltrating the highest tiers of our government yet) would be absolutely devastating to both the consumer and the gaming industry as a whole. Let's put that 50% in perspective: a new Xbox game retails for $50, but would now cost you a total of $75. A game for the Xbox360 retails for as much as $60, but you'd have to shell out $90 before you could take it home.

Lastly, I'm not even sure that there's much I can say about the ridiculous $10k/abortion tax. In a rough draft of this article, I had written much more, but it really detracts from the gaming atmosphere I'd really like to maintain here. Suffice to say that I'm not happy, that I think its probably the dumbest, most inhumane idea for a tax I've ever heard, and that I pray for the women in Texas who might end up affected by this.

Review: Xbox360 - Wrapped in Criticism, Still a Hot Package

2005-12-07T16:03:00.000-06:00

As we near Christmas, one item is on the top of everyone's gift list: the Xbox360, Microsoft's new offering in the world of video game consoles. Due to limited production numbers, these consoles are virtually impossible to find in stores, and not just because its another new tech gadget. I was fortunate enough to receive one for free through a promotion run by Pepsi Co. and Microsoft, so I didn't have to worry about the incredibly short supply (as of the time of this writing, EBGames.com reports that orders placed after October 26 may not ship until after March 2006).

The stuff you know

With the 360, Microsoft planned to release a multi-faceted unit: a next-generation gaming powerhouse, a multimedia hub, and an online communication device all rolled into one sleek machine. Not surprisingly, the 360 is smaller than its predecessor (the original Xbox could have easily doubled as a small coffee table), but packs a lot of power for its size. The 360 is powered by a triple-core PowerPC processor, each core running at 3.2 GHz. The system has 512 MB of GDDR3 memory shared between the system and its custom-designed ATi video chipset. Both of these high-end architectures are air-cooled using direct airflow over two fairly basic aluminum heatsinks. The sides, top and bottom of the case have a grill of air holes to help ventilate the 360. The console is available as part of a $399 "premium" bundle (which is the standard kit) and a $299 "core" bundle (for gamers who don't want to play over Xbox Live or store media on the console). The "core" package includes a wired controller and composite A/V cable, so you can hook everything up and be playing in no time. The higher-end package, which is considered to be the standard model, includes a wireless controller (powered by two AA batteries, included), component A/V cable for high-definition televisions or older sets with only composite A/V jacks, a headset for communicating with fellow gamers via Live, and a media remote for playing DVDs, music, and navigating the 360's menus without a gaming controller. The 360 in both packages has the ability to use the wireless controllers, and both versions also work with the media remote or more advanced Media Center remote right out of the box.

I feel this deserves its own paragraph, no matter how short. The power supply for the Xbox360 is external, much like what you would find on a laptop computer. This one is, however, large. Quite large; in fact, it has rightfully earned its nickname of "the Brick." It also need to be adequately ventilated, as it generates heat just as any other computer power supply does. Keep this in mind when you're running cables and getting your Xbox360 set up.

To try to encourage (somewhat limited) customization of the Xbox360, Microsoft built it with the ability to remove and reattach the faceplate. Now you are able to swap our faceplates and change up how your 360 looks depending on your mood or decor, just like your cellphone. Microsoft released several faceplates at the same time as the console, each with an MSRP of $19.99. 3rd-party companies have already jumped on the opportunity to make and release their own custom designs, as well as decals to further decorate the sides of the concave case.

The 360 was even designed to be backward-compatible with many of the original Xbox's games, including "Halo" (which practically defined the Xbox) and its sequel "Halo 2". In fact, I've spent more time playing Halo 2 and the recently-released "Stubbs the Zombie" than I have on the one 360 game I own "Perfect Dark: Zero" (click here for my review of PD:Z). In addition to its own titles and the growing list of original XBox games, the 360 can download "arcade" games from the Xbox Live Marketplace, ranging from classics such as "Joust" and "Gauntlet" to virtual pool and puzzle games (the non-Core 360 comes with a web game called "Hexic" preinstalled on its hard drive).

However, I try to report on things that matter to gamers, not the tech/geek-heavy stuff like hardware specifications. With that in mind, let's just get into the meat of what the 360 is like when you're behind the controller.

The stuff you want to know

From the moment you get the Xbox360 hooked up, its apparent that this is designed to not only be a gamer's dream, but an integral part of your living room and multimedia setup. Although most sites show it standing on end, it also has attached feet for laying on its side, which is much more useful if you'll be putting it on a shelf in your entertainment center. The console can be turned on using its power button on the front of the console, or by pressing and holding the "Xbox Guide" button in the center of your game controller (both the wired and wireless controllers work). The media remote included with my console also has a power button on it, as well as an eject button, putting these basic controls on par with other media devices such as DVD players. Around the console's power button is what Microsoft calls the "Ring of Light", and it has a counterpart on the game controllers. This light acts as a multi-purpose indicator. As the console turns on, the lights in the ring spin around, fade in and out, and just basically tell you that things are running. Once the 360 is loaded to the dashboard, the Ring of Light will indicate how many controllers are detected. Each quadrant of the circle corresponds to one of up to four controllers than can be used (either wirelessly, or connected to one of the 360's 3 USB2 ports). Likewise, the indicator on the controllers will indicate each player's player number (so if you're player #1, the top-left quadrant of your Ring of Light will be illuminated). This is incredibly handy, as it also addresses the matter of which quadrant of the screen belongs to which player in split-screen games. What I thought was really cool about these player indicator lights is that, on the 360 console itself, the quadrants are relative to the position of the console: if you have the 360 standing upright with only one controller connected, the top-left quadrant illuminates to indicate that there's just the one controller, and is player 1. If your 360 is laying on its side, though (and again with only one controller, for comparison), the indicator light is still the top-left! It isn't too terribly important, but I think its a nice bit of continuity and foresight on Microsoft's part.

As for the controllers themselves, I've already stated that the "Core" bundle ships with one wired controller, while the standard package ships with one wireless controller. History has shown that wireless connectivity of any sort, be it networking or controllers, can be flaky at times, and any "hardcore" gamer tries to avoid using such devices because of the delay that can occur between a gamer's reaction/response and the signal being received/interpreted by the console. There have been few exceptions to this rule, namely the Nintendo Wavebird wireless controller, which had an impeccable reaction time, but was fairly bulky. I've always followed this unwritten rule of video gaming, but I'm overjoyed to say that Microsoft has done a remarkable job with their wireless controllers. I've used their wireless controllers exclusively at home, and have yet to notice any delay, no matter how minute, in the reaction time. I've used the controllers on the kiosks at retail stores (I presume they're the wired USB2 controllers), and there's no difference in performance at all. Even if the kiosk controllers are wireless, I still feel like the 360 wireless controllers are just as responsive as my wired Xbox controllers. What's really mind-blowing is that these amazing wireless controllers are actually smaller, slightly, than the Xbox's S-type controllers, and retain the same comfortable feel. To help reduce the notorious wireless lag, MS implemented a system in which each wireless controller has to synchronize with a 360 console before it can be used. This synchronization helps to narrow the spectrum of "stations" the console's receiver has to monitor for active controller signals. Basically, its a preliminary handshake between the console and controller, so the console knows exactly how to communicate with the controller at optimum efficiency.

The wireless controllers run on 2 AA batteries, but those can be replaced with optional rechargeable battery packs. At $11.99 a piece, your decision to buy one should be heavily considered. If you're a casual player, these may not be the best option for you, considering that a pair of rechargeable AA batteries would cost you less. However, the battery pack from MS boasts a whopping 25 hours of continuous gameplay (I've been using the same battery pack for 2 weeks straight without recharging), and have an added bonus: using the optional Play & Charge Kit, you can plug your wireless controller into your Xbox360 (or any computer with a USB port) and recharge the battery pack while you play. That's right; you get continuous, uninterrupted gameplay if your battery starts to run low. What's more, your Xbox360 will warn you when the charge starts to run low, so you know to plug your controller in before it dies on you. You may be asking what happens if you let the battery pack run dead anyway; I can assure you MS planned for such an event. If, for whatever reason, the signal to/from your wireless controller gets interrupted, your game automatically pauses and prompts you to reconnect your controller (turn it on, plug it in, whatever you have to do). This, of course, won't help you much if you're in the middle of an online battle, but it certainly won't cost you the match if you're busy trying to beat the last fighter in "Dead or Alive 4" when your controller cuts out on you. Priced at $19.99, the Play & Charge Kit is quite a good deal, in my opinion, and includes a rechargeable battery (so no, you don't have to spend $20 on a stupid cable to recharge your $12 battery).

If you absolutely refuse to trust these wireless marvels, you do still have the option of the wired controllers. For the Xbox360, Microsoft threw away the proprietary plug used for the Xbox's controllers (they were actually a reshaped USB port/plug) and went with good old USB2, with standard ports and plugs. The wired controllers look and feel just like the wireless ones; they just have a cable running out of them. The benefit to these controllers is that, with a small download from Microsoft's website, you can use the wired controllers on your WindowsXP-based computer. Microsoft's intent here was to create a common controller that could be used for both Windows and 360 games, as part of their ambitious XNA project. Unfortunately, there's a drawback to the wired controller, as well. The Xbox360 only has the three USB2 ports (two up front, one in the back), so if you choose to exclusively use hard-wired controllers due to their lack of signal loss, you have to forgo having four players on one system. The wireless connectivity does support a full four players, though, and the system can manage up to four players using a combination of wireless and wired controllers, so you're not completely shooting yourself in the foot.

...I still won't trust wireless LAN for my gaming, though. Call me old-fashioned, call me hardcore, or call me cheap; I just can't convince myself its worth throwing down $99.99 for a simple USB2 Wi-Fi adapter, especially with the signal loss inherent to Wi-Fi networks. It helps that the Xbox360 wireless ethernet adapter supports 802.11a/b/g networking, but I personally feel that its overpriced. I spent $9 and ran a 25ft ethernet cable from our office (where the router is) to the living room (where the 360 is, of course), and I'll never have to worry about my ping shooting up because of any metal or concrete in the walls separating the two rooms. But I digress...

When the 360 powers on, you're taken to the Dashboard, which is similar in function to the dashboard on the original Xbox or on the Sony Playstation 2, accessible when no game disk is present in the drive. Even if there is a disk in the drive (which will cause the 360 to auto-load that game), you can quickly access the dashboard via the Xbox Guide button previously mentioned. In the Dashboard, there are 4 main menus, or "blades": Xbox Live, Games, Media, and Settings. You can navigate between each of these using the remote, or using the directional pad or left joystick of the game controller. Each blade's title is pretty self-explanatory -- the first one covers features that utilize Xbox Live, like the Xbox Live Marketplace, friend lists, and messages. The "Games" blade covers access to your game statistics, accomplishments which contribute to your Xbox Live "Gamer Score", and games that you have stored on your hard drive. "Media" contains controls to access and play music stored on your 360's hard drive, as well as photos, videos, and music stored on a Windows XP or Media Center PC, on an external USB drive, iPod or other audio player, or your digital camera. You can also access the music player by pressing the Xbox Guide button on your controller or remote. Streaming music from your XP/MCE computer does require an established Windows Media Player music library/playlist; it doesn't just go searching through your "My Music" directory. Lastly, "Settings" covers all the system settings and controls for your Xbox360. The dashboard as a whole has visual themes than can be changed just like themes for Windows, and the hard drive comes with around 10 themes to get you started, most of them based on previous or current Xbox/Xbox360 games (Halo, Kameo, and Gun, among others). More themes are, of course, available for download via the Marketplace.

The Xbox Live Marketplace is a new feature added with the release of the Xbox360. Via the Marketplace, users can spend "Marketplace Points" (virtual currency purchased with real currency) on all sorts of file downloads for their 360. There is a section dedicated to the "Arcade" games already mentioned, as well as sections for downloading game trailers (which are free) and other videos, dashboard themes, and gamertag images. Not all of the Marketplace content is direct from Microsoft, though; there happens to be a healthy (and growing) base of gaming community contributors. One of the first 3rd-party contributors were the gents at Penny Arcade, releasing a Penny Arcade-inspired theme and two gamertag image packs.

One thing that has been a point of controversy and speculation is also a feature I think is pretty cool. Via your Xbox Live GamerTag, people on your Friend List can see what you're currently doing on your Xbox360. Say, for instance, you're in the mood for some multi-play "Call of Duty 2", and you want to see which of your online friends might be online and interested. When you pull up your friends list, you can select each profile and see if they're currently on their system (as long as its connected to Live). Furthermore, the read-out will tell you if they're already playing CoD2, or if they're maybe playing "King Kong." If they're using their 360 for multimedia purposes at the time, the profile will tell you if they are listening to music, watching a movie, or viewing pictures. It doesn't say what song they're listening to, what movie they're watching, or how indecent the pictures may be, just that its the feature they're using at the time. Some people fear that the Xbox360 is revealing too much information to your peers, but I personally have yet to see any evidence to suggest that there's anything malicious with the way things are working as of yet.

In all-too-general terms, the Xbox360 makes (compatible) Xbox games play better. You don't get the added features that are native to X360 games, like custom playlists, but all the features included in the original game work, and work well. The only noticeable difference is that the old black "Xbox" screen that first shows up when a game is loading now has a white background (but same green X). As for the 360's native games, everything I've seen so far indicates that even these launch titles are graphically amazing, particularly when compared to the same titles on other consoles (in cases where the title is cross-platform). "King Kong", for instance, is multi-platform, but it looks absolutely stunning on the Xbox360; the jungles are lusher, the details of Kong and the T-Rex are the closest to photo-realistic I've ever seen in a console game. The dynamic lighting is absolutely top-notch, as well.

What you probably don't want to know...

The Xbox360 isn't without its problems, though. Just like any high-powered computer, it has problems with overheating. There have been reports all over the internet from Xbox360 owners complaining about their 360 crashing randomly, apparently from overheating. For anyone looking at getting an Xbox360, let me make this one thing painfully clear to you: heat is bad (and the Xbox360 spews a lot of it, trust me), but you have to help it ventilate. Don't put the 360 on carpet, as that will keep air from flowing into the case. Don't keep the console in an overly-restrictive area, as that again limits the amount of airflow. Another thing to keep in mind is that the power supply generates a considerable amount of heat on its own, and has vent holes and feet to help it get cooler air into it. Don't rest the brick on carpet, and don't position it right up against the 360, either, as the two can cause each other to heat up more. If you have problems with your Xbox360 crashing, try repositioning the power supply first, as most sources indicate that the bring, not the console itself, tends to be the cause of most heat-related 360 crashes--the brick will just shut itself down if it gets too hot. One gamer on the web apparently had a great amount of success in preventing heat-related crashes by suspending the power brick in the air using string; other web-posters have since confirmed that this idea works very well. I can honestly say, though, that I have yet to have any problems with my 360 crashing. I've had it standing up, laying down, and in an entertainment center cubby hole, and even playing PDZ for hours on end has yet to cause it to have a problem. So please, don't worry too much about overheating. Just be reasonable when you set up your system. If all else fails, the console comes with a 3-month warranty, which can be extended to an additional 2 years.

Another problem that's been reported on the internet (yet again, I haven't had to deal with it myself) is that the console can occasionally scratch concentric rings into your game disks, DVDs, and music CDs. Apparently, this happens if a disk is spinning in the drive, and the console is bumped, jostled, or moved. All I can say is, don't bump, jostle, or move your Xbox360 while you're also playing it. However, if bumping, jostling, and moving are absolutely unavoidable, there are steps you can take to prevent damage to your expensive disks: one article on the internet covers details on how to apply 3 foam pads to the interior of the disk drive to keep a spinning disk from scratching itself. Unfortunately, to accomplish this tweak you must open the Xbox360's case, which immediately voids the warranty. We can probably expect MS to include a fix of some sort in 360's that ship later, but in the mean time, just be careful. Yet again, this could/should fall under Microsoft's 3-month extendable warranty.

As I've indicated previously, the Xbox360 comes with a 20 GB hard drive (the Core bundle lacks this drive) on which it stores game saves, ripped music, etc. However, I was a little surprised when I powered on my Xbox360 the first time and discovered that the system told me I had 12 GBs of free space. Where in God's name had 8 GBs gone? I went through the contents of the hard drive and found some things that are included by default on the drive. As is MS's style, they like to include video and audio files (like they do on Windows) to help you test out your system and see how things work. To be honest, I wasn't too thrilled by the music selection (about 12-15 songs, some artists I knew of, some unknowns, all new music I hadn't heard), so I deleted that off the drive. Then I ran across the video files: a trailer for the game "King Kong", and 4 videos from MS detailing some of the behind-the-scenes work done on the Xbox360. I actually watched them all, beginning to end, before deleting them. Then I continued my Quest for the Lost Gigabytes. I had to remind myself that MS included ~10 dashboard themes, and maybe twice as many gamer tag icons. I left all those in place, although I don't plan to use even a fraction of the default options (I've decided to go with a Penny Arcade-themed dashboard). These themes and icons still don't account for all the missing drive space. Today, however, I ran across an interesting article that explained everything quite nicely. From XboxAddict.com, "From the beginning, we’ve all known that the HDD is necessary for playing backward compatible games from the Xbox, so the emulator is also included in the HDD, along with some reserved space to download compatibility updates for more games as they become available (Burnout 3 anybody?). Space is also reserved for title updates and patches, probably not too dissimilar from what we’ve seen with Halo 2. Says Microsoft: 'Some space on the HDD is set aside to increase overall system functionality, including things like the Xbox emulator to enable backwards compatibility and console and title updates to allow for continued innovation and expansion of the console experience.'" Also, on Xbox.com (Microsoft's Xbox/Xbox360 site), Todd Holmdahl (Corporate VP of the Xbox Product Group) indicated that the first Xbox360 systems incude an "early version" of the Xbox emulating software. "An early version of the emulator that supports Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 offline is included on Xbox 360 Hard Drives right out of the box as a special bonus to devoted fans of the franchise. However, to play Halo 2 online, or to play any other titles on the launch list, the full emulator update is required." The required software updates can be pulled directly from Xbox Live, burned to a CD from Xbox.com, or can be ordered on a disk from Microsoft (via Xbox.com) for the cost of shipping. Apparently, the hard drive also includes a music database so you can rip music from your personal collection without having to be online to receive song titles, etc (or having to enter each track's title manually). iTunes and other programs work similarly, although they access an online database when ripping tracks from a CD. Presumably, the database preloaded on the 360's hard drive automatically updates itself when connected to the internet, so it stays current with newly-released music. With all this content preloaded--an extensive database of music album info, Xbox emulation software, reserved space to handle updates and patches, etc--its no wonder that they found a way to cut my 20 GB HDD down to 13 GBs (after I deleted music and videos). Heh... this coming from the company who once told us that the typical computer user would never need more than a gigabyte of hard drive space. Thanks, Bill!

There is also a lot of argument over whether or not the Xbox360 is truly a "next-gen/HD" console. The 360 includes a standard dual-layer DVD drive (like all other DVD drives/players), instead of going with an HD-DVD drive as was previously speculated. Sony's PS3, now scheduled for release sometime next year, is expected to come with Sony's Blu-Ray drives (disks that are capable of holding up to 50GBs of data) as a standard feature; current dual-layer DVDs can only hold ~8.5 GBs of data, and the proposed HD-DVD format is supposed to have a maximum capacity of 30GBs. The decision was made, no doubt, because there hasn't been a final decision on which format will become the standardized format for the next generation of high-definition multimedia. Obviously, there's no chance for the 360's standard DVD drive to compete with the PS3's Blu-Ray technology, but it may not have to. First off, Blu-Ray technology is supposed to be unveiled next year as well, and as history shows, new high-tech gadgets always cost an absolute fortune. The first DVD players were in the $1k range, and the first DVD burning drives were similarly high-priced. Also an important matter to keep in mind, the original Xbox used the same dual-layer DVD drives (for reading DVD movie disks). No Xbox game ever used more than a third of it's disk's full capacity, which is absolutely astounding when you take into account games like "Doom 3" and "Half-Life 2", both of which pushed PC hardware to its limits when they came out (hardware still isn't available to really let "Doom 3" run the way it was designed to; fortunately Id software made the game quite scalable). So with the 360, we can still have games that are ~3 times the size (higher-res textures, larger maps, etc) and it should still fit on the same disks. It makes you wonder what Sony is planning on using their 50GB disks for...

After setting up my Xbox360, I decided I wanted to change some settings; in particular, I wanted to change the dashboard theme. I pulled both user manuals out of the box, removed them from their plastic wrap (yes, the console is that easy to set up) and set about trying to find information on customizing the Xbox360's layout. After a half hour of searching, I gave up. The manuals contain no information whatsoever on how to adjust visual settings on the 360, and mostly just cover setting up the hardware. All in all, I was pretty disappointed with the lack of information supplied with the Xbox360. Granted, I managed to find how to access nearly every feature in the 360 either by just poking around the Dashboard, but there are still things I'm trying to learn about, and the web is my only helpful source.

One last thing that I have to admit I'm not fond of (and I've actually experienced this first-hand) is the way the Xbox360 synchronizes data with Xbox Live. For example, my wife loves to play "Hexic"; since we got the console home, she plays it at least once a day, for prolonged periods of time. However, I didn't get an ethernet cable run to get the 360 on Live until a day or two ago. During the time that the console did not have an internet connection, she managed to get some remarkably high scores, even breaking the 1-million-point mark at least once, which would put her in the top 25-30 "Hexic" players on the Live leaderboards. Unfortunately, when we got the 360 onto the internet and connected to Live, the console did not synchronize the top scores it had gotten while offline onto the gamer profile online, so her 1M score is now completely lost. She doesn't look forward to trying to regain that status. To be fair, though, the console does keep track of any predefined Achievements for the game, and uploads those to your gamer profile when it can, so you don't get shortchanged on your Gamer Score (the total number of points you've gotten from earning Achievements).

So, what are you waiting for?

I've had my Xbox360 for a couple of weeks now, and I've yet to be disappointed with any facet of its operation. The 360 game I have is fantastic (again, check out my review of PDZ), and my small collection of original Xbox games all play wonderfully through the 360's backward-compatibility. The few problems that have been reported seem to be few and far between, and easily fixed. All I can say is that Microsoft really pulled it off with the Xbox360; they were the late-coming underdogs in the last console race (Sony PS2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox), and did quite well for themselves, but this time around, they really pumped up the "wow" factor. That, combined with their early entry into the "next-gen" race (360, PS3, Nintendo "Revolution") and Sony's recent blunders with their music department and its distribution of illegal rootkits disguised as Digital Rights Management, and Microsoft has a very strong standing going into the HD era of multimedia. So go, reserve one at your nearest retail store. Just don't try to find one on eBay; they're selling for far more than any reasonable person should be willing to pay.

[Update on disk scratches]
On 360Insider.net, there is now a story detailing one man's battle with the Xbox360's issues with disk scratches. Matt had never bumped/moved/jostled his Xbox360, but it repeatedly scratched his disks. He called tech support, and a representative told him to try laying it down horizontally (he had it positioned vertically, as all the advertisements show it--it looks damn cool that way). Immediately, it stopped scratching his disks. The customer service representative told him (get this) that the Xbox360 isn't designed to play games in the vertical position.

I'm going to sit here, quietly, whilst that sinks in.

That's right, apparently the 360 isn't designed to play games in the position its always advertised in. It seems that the DVD drive lacks any stabilizers to allow for vertical play, or to prevent disks from scratching when the console is up-right. The worst part is that, as of posting this information, Microsoft refuses to fix Matt's system to play disks in the vertical position, and has no plans to add in any stabilization system in future shipments of the Xbox360.

Now, as I try to be the voice of reason, its quite possible that this is a fluke case; this is the first report I've read on this problem, and many Xbox360 owners have come out to say that their consoles work fine standing up. Also, as we all know, frequently customer representatives aren't the most informed employees in a company (lord knows I've seen more than my fair share of this in dealing with Pepsi Co. over my free console). Its easy to understand that the console works better when laid flat, but it may not be a re-occuring issue with all the Xbox360 consoles.

More information on this particular matter can be found at the link I provided above.

Review: "Halo" Just won't Die, Creates an Army of Undead for fun

2005-12-06T18:48:00.000-06:00

After November 9th, 2004, the gaming world waited in impatient eagerness for the next installment in the Halo series of games from Bungie Studios. What they didn't expect was Wideload games, started by the founder of Bungie Alexander Seropian, and what it brought to the party: namely, a former traveling salesman named Eward "Stubbs" Stubblefield. "Former", of course, meaning that he was "former"ly alive. Always down on his luck, his story truly began when he was brutally murdered. Over 20 years pass while he lays rotting in a shallow grave, until one day in 1959 when a rich industrialist decides to build the city of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania. Punchbowl, a technological marvel, a futuristic utopia, a light on the hill for all the world to look to, is built atop Stubbs' final resting place. Alienated in this new world around him, he does what any self-respecting zombie would do in his place: eat brains.

In Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse", you play as... you guessed it, Stubbs the Zombie. With an arsenal truly fit for the undead, you take on the best a technologically-advanced city in the 1950's has to offer: flying cars, robot labor, Barney Fife-esque police officers, and only the tastiest brains. As you progress through the game, you learn more about your abilities now that the restrictions of life no longer hold you back. Jump twenty feet into the air, attack the fine people of Punchbowl PA, and eat their brains. Better(!): rip off your arm and control it as it runs around looking for a victim. Found one? Great! Now grab them by the head and control them like a puppet to achieve your goals. Control a cop to shoot at other armed officers! If you feel like you're too much the center of attention, attack someone (brain-eating optional). Once they're dead, they'll rise up and join you on your mission! If you find yourself being attacked from afar, reach into your chest through the rotting hole in your ribcage, pull out a decaying organ, and chuck it. It will explode on-command from the build-up of gases. If you feel the urge to go bowling, you can pop your own head off and roll it at your foes; it'll knock them right over, and if that doesn't do the trick, it'll even explode, and with more force than your guy grenades! Rip arms off of passers-by, and beat them mercilessly with it; I'm sure the irony won't escape them. Heck, if you find yourself surrounded by Punchbowl's finest, just cut loose a wickedly foul fart to stun them while you snack on their grey matter. The world's cranial cavities are your oyster!

Complete with all the same features you'd expect from a game built on the Halo engine, there are vehicles you can drive (and flip over, should you get caught upside down), gravity-defying jumps, and rechargeable health (hey, no wonder zombies never seem to stay down in the movies!). Unlike Halo, however, you play the game in 3rd-person view from start to end, and the graphics are greatly improved since Halo first graced the store shelves. True active reflections accurately show your every action perfectly, and high-detail shadows add to the immersive environment that is the towering city of Punchbowl. To be fair, I actually played the game on the Xbox360 via the console's backward-compatibility. I can't verify that the graphical performance of Stubbs is any different than playing it on Xbox. I just know that the reflections, shadows, and other effects seen in this game were far better than I witnessed in the original Halo.

The soundtrack for Stubbs is quite impressive, featuring modern remakes of 50's classics, such as Cake covering "Strangers in the Night", the Raveonettes remake of "My Boyfriend's Back", Death Cab for Cutie's rendition of "Earth Angel", The Dandy Warhols' "All I Have to Do is Dream", and my personal favorite, The Flaming Lips take on "If I Only Had a Brain". They add an extra level of humor to an already hilarious game.

Gameplay is effectively the same as playing Halo (surprise). Wideload really spared nothing with the humor found in the game; nearly every citizen Stubbs attacks has something to say about it. As I've only played the first couple of levels, I don't feel I can do the game much justice yet in regards to plot, but so far I've had nothing but fun playing it.

One thing I immediately noticed about Stubbs the Zombie is that there is no multiplayer mode, so once you take over Punchbowl with your zombie horde, that's it. You don't get to duke it out in a police-vs-zombie undeath match, although there is a co-op mode where you and a buddy can team up and tackle the town! The only other downsides I ran into were only visual in nature. I did notice what I interpreted to be visual glitches when playing Stubbs: the first level is played after an "old time" movie (black and white reel-to-reel clip), and the "old time" feel stuck around while I moved through the first level, with vertical black lines moving along the screen as I played. After moving on to the next stage, I noticed that this effect went away, but it was unfortunately replaced with a slight blue hue to the world, and grainy visuals, almost like looking at an old photograph. I'm not sure if these issues are an intended aspect of the game, if they're a glitch that shows on other versions of the game, or if they only show up on the 360 due to an issue with the backwards-compatibility.

Considering the lack of multiplayer gaming, and the apparently short campaign (I've yet to beat it myself, but the reports aren't very kind in this regard), I'd recommend this game to anyone who's always wanted to know how our undead brethren really feel. If you want to be able to sit down and really enjoy a game for what's been put into it, Stubbs is right up your alley, but if you're looking for a game to play for 13 hours straight at a LAN party, this one just won't measure up. I give Stubbs the Zombie an 8.5 out of 10.

Review: Perfect Dark: Zero for Xbox 360

2005-11-29T17:17:00.000-06:00

After a half-day of gameplay, I can safely say that Prefect Dark: Zero has a lot to offer, but your experience may vary, depending on what you're looking for from it. On the one hand, its got vast improvements in graphics and AI over the original. They've added vehicles and a (somewhat) destructible environment. Instead of being a walking armory, Joanna's inventory is managed similarly to that in Deus Ex, in that you've got 4 "blocks" in which to hold weapons. Pistols, melee weapons, and throwables/grenades take up one block, so you can carry a maximum of 4. SMGs take up 2 spaces, MGs and Rifles typically are 3, and there are a couple of weapons that take up 4 blocks.

The story line is pretty interesting thus far (I'm still working on beating it). As before, you play Joanna Dark. As this game is a prequel to the original, you're a younger Joanna (~20 years old), and work as a "bail bond agent" (bounty hunter) for her father Jack Dark (head of Dark Bail Bonds), and tech-savvy mission coordinator Chandra Sekhar. At least up to the point that I've gotten to, you play through your missions fighting against dataDyne, developers of the DeathMatch system--imagine playing your current DeathMatch games in a virtual reality booth, and losing the match means you forfeit your life).

As far as playing the campaign is concerned, I have to give Rare to big thumbs up on their implementation of difficulty settings. Its nothing too complicated, just four options: Agent, Special Agent, Perfect Agent, and Dark Agent. However, each difficulty level will spawn
different elements of the levels in different places (like security cameras, for instance), which will require you to rethink your strategy for each level. You can start off on any difficulty setting, but each new level you start can only be played at the difficulty level at which you played the previous mission, or easier. There will be no more playing through the game on the easiest setting and then replaying the last mission on the hardest setting, like with the Halo games. If you want to beat the game in the hardest difficulty, you get to play through it completely in the hardest difficulty.

One of the coolest features I've seen so far is the ability to respond to enemy taunts, etc, during combat. For instance, I was facing off against a guy in a ship, and he taunted me, and suddenly on-screen it gives you a selection of ways to respond (taunt, charm, threaten). The amount of detail that went into the combat system is fairly remarkable, too; if you're firing at an armored enemy, his armor gets blown off in chunks (yours does, too, as you take damage from combat). If they have a helmet on, a head shot will simply blow the helmet off--a second head shot is then required to make the kill. The coolest facet of this attention to detail really shows later in the game when you start facing guys who use a riot shield for protection. Its hard to notice in the heat of battle, but once you take out one of these troops, you can pick up his riot shield. Any damage you did to the shield will show as you're carrying it, and is even zone-accurate (damage to the bottom or top half, left or right side, for instance). If an enemy fires 3 rounds at you, his gun will be missing those three rounds if you pick it up for ammo or swap it into your inventory. It adds another level of gameplay dynamics that just helps draw you in and keep you there.

Speaking of weapons and ammo, all of the weapons have a secondary mode, and many have tertiary options (at least using a mounted flashlight, sometimes jamming radar or mimicking enemy radar signatures, etc). Several of the weapons can be used as alternatives to be swapped into and out of mounted gun emplacements, and when a weapon is mounted to a fixed emplacement, it receives the benefit of unlimited ammo (while being restricted to a fixed position and a 180° aiming/viewing arc). Also, players are finally able to duck, dodge, do diving rolls, use the environment as cover, etc, just like enemy AI has been able to do for quite some time.

One thing I found interesting was the way Rare designed the health/armor/damage system. As you play through the game, there are two forms of damage you can take: "shock" damage (which includes falling damage, environmental damage such as burns, and even some combat
damage), and then your typical permanent damage. Because there are two forms of damage that Joanna can take, the health bar reacts differently to each one. If you take shock damage, your health bar drops, but it leaves a white line as an indicator of what is basically your "maximum" health. If you can avoid taking more damage in this state, your health will quickly regenerate back up to that white indicator line (kind of similar to your energy shield in Halo 2). If you fail to take cover and protect yourself, further damage will begin to drop that white line. When your health recovers, it won't exceed past that white line. Playing through the game in the easiest difficulty setting showed that you very seldom drop that white line unless you just stop moving and shooting, at which point you'll be turned to Swiss cheese anyway. What's more, different weapons will affect your health/armor in different ways; armor-piercing weapons will affect your health and leave your armor mostly intact, while weaker weapons will have to destroy your armor before they can really harm you.

The multiplayer aspect of PD:Z (Or "P-dizzle" as I have come to call my limited edition copy of the game--PD:Z-LE) is pretty typical in many regards. There are your standard versions of Free-For-All deathmatch, Team deathmatch, a territory-grab mode similar to UT2k4's "Onslaught", CTF... you get it. The normal spread. However, Rare also added in what they call DarkOps, which is very reminiscent of Counterstrike, in that its round-based, and if you die during the match, you stay dead until the next match begins. Aside from that, the weapons are the same and the gameplay's the same. I had originally only played it with three other people locally on my 360, but I eventually decided to really see what the game could do when unleashed on Xbox Live. The game was virtually lag-free (to the point I could snipe some head shots on moving targets). There are a lot of mundane things that we take for granted when gaming, so I'm not sure what all I can easily point at as being contributing factors, but playing online with PD:Z was just down-right pleasurable. There's not much else I can say to describe it.

One of the most exciting features in PD:Z has to be its Co-op campaign. Its all the same missions as the single-player campaign, but your objectives are definitely more focused on player cooperation. Example: In the SP campaign, your first mission is to monitor the perimeter of a weapons dealer's nightclub base of operations. The first thing you're supposed to do is ID one of three or four "enforcers" who are overseeing guard duty at the club. No big deal; just avoid a firefight and use your visor on everyone you see. However, in the co-op version of the same mission, each player has to ID an enforcer before you can progress. Another example: in the SP campaign, you frequently have to use your hacking tool to bypass security and get through a locked door. In co-op, you'll find two security terminals instead of one. The only way to get through that door is for both players to activate a console at the same time. And again,
some details of the levels change between single-player and co-op mode; things like security cameras may be in different places, or there may be more of them to contend with. Most importantly (I can't believe I forgot to mention this before "publication"--This should be news of epic proportions for any avid gamer), PD:Z's co-op campaign can be played between two players on the same Xbox360, over two consoles linked via a network, or over Xbox Live! That's right, kiddies, the 360 is heralding a new age of co-op gaming, and its finally internet-capable!

To be fair, I have to say this though: as far as the core gameplay, its essentially just like playing the original, be that for good or bad. You're moving around, shooting. You have fairly specific objectives, some required, some optional, that you need to complete in a fairly linear manner to progress. The maps aren't as linear as the mission objectives, though, which is a breath of fresh air and a curse at the same time; in one of the most recent levels I played, I drove around in my hovercraft for a good half hour before realizing that I had gone past my current objective several times.

The pace is slower than a lot of games currently out; in this regard, its less like Unreal Tournament 2004 and more like the Halo games. Inventory handling was similar to Halo 2 in that you could only carry a few weapons, and the buttons used to switch guns, drop/swap weapons on the ground, meleeing your enemies, etc were all almost identical to the control scheme in Halo 2. You can't jump, but I've yet to find a circumstance where I really needed it. There were times when it would've been really nice to just jump over a barricade or box and go where I wanted how I wanted, but sometimes you're just not meant to climb up on a crate to give yourself a better vantage point to snipe out your foes.

So to sum things up, Perfect Dark: Zero gets my vote as "Strongest Launch Title" for the 360. I don't think it will do as much for the console as Halo did for the original Xbox, but its definitely the best thing going for the 360 at this time, beating out its FPS counterpart Call of Duty 2 both in ingenuity and in gameplay mechanics. Zero is not just a reheated Perfect Dark; its a whole new generation.