For this edition of the weekly count, we will take a look at the best boss fights video games have to offer. As a staple ingredient to the gameplay experience, boss encounters are regarded by many as a measure of a game's overall value. Simply stated, we play for the epic, not the mundane. Without further ado, here are the best boss battles in the world of gaming.
Earthbound - Gigyas: After a lengthy journey through a myriad of crazy locales, Earthbound pitted the player up against the ultimate evil force, Gigyas. Gigyas was so hardcore that it appeared only as a slew of swirling colors in the fight screen background. What made this battle so awesome, though, was the way it ended. Throughout the fight, the party managed to do only minimal damage to Gigyas, and eventually, the crew WOULD die. It was Paula's "PRAY" ability that saved the day. After using the skill, the player viewed short scenes of various characters from earlier in the game as they prayed for the party's safety. After each cut, Gigyas would receive heavy damage, leading up to the massive killing blow dealt by the prayer of the player, whose name had been entered in the very beginning of the game. I killed Gigyas...cool.
RE4 - Krauser, El Gigante, Del Lago, Saddler, Right Hand, It: Resident Evil 4 blew everyone away when it was released back in January 2005. Some of the best parts of this game, besides EVERYTHING, were the boss fights. In my first draft of this list, many of these were included separately, but I decided to lump them together, because my list was honestly pretty boring. In any case, most of the battles in RE4 featured huge enemies in unique settings, and required some interesting slaying methodology, utilizing the game's excellent context sensitive commands. Of all of them, the interactive cinematic knife fight vs. Krauser stands out as the most unique and most riveting. It consists only of timely button presses and quick reflexes, but is ultimately one of the most intense sequences in the game.
Shadow of the Colossus - The Colossi: This game, to me, is a masterpiece. In a great example of truly innovative game design, Shadow of the Colossus contained 16 enemies. Each one was a boss battle lasting at least 10 minutes, and combined puzzle, platform, and action elements to bring the beast down. They were so huge that we see fit to call them Colossi, and the game's protagonist must scale the creatures themselves in order to launch his assault.
Mike Tyson's Punch Out! - Mike Tyson: Many people consider the defeat of Mike Tyson to be one of the top video game accomplishments of all time. This is due to the simple fact that he is one fierce warrior. For a minute and a half, he delivers his dreaded Dynamite Uppercuts, which floor Little Mac instantly. Later, his barrage includes powerful hooks and rapid jabs, not to mention Dynamite Uppercuts thrown into the mix, just for fun. I am thankful I only fight Mike Tyson in video games.
Legend of Zelda Ocarina Of Time - Ganon(dorf): As the end of TOoT drew near, Link climbed Ganondorf's tower to finally do battle with the evil menace. The fight with human Ganondorf was a grand one in itself, with the classic ping-pong -ing of magic spells, followed by light arrows and finally the slice of the master sword. The real battle was yet to come, however, and only after defeating Ganondorf and fleeing the crumbling tower was Link faced with the hulking beast known as Ganon. The two engaged in mortal combat within a ring of fire among various piles of rubble, and when the final blow was dealt to the face of the of the loathsome Ganon, the player knew that all had been settled - all was right, once again.
God of War - Hydra: For a game that began with this fantastic a boss fight, it is a shame that God of War included so few of them. The Hydra battle at the very beginning of this game was the high point of the gameplay experience. Set upon a wrecked ship on the sea, in the midst of a thunderstorm, Kratos was faced with not one, not two, but three heads of a hydra at once. Only after pinning the two smaller heads with suspended harpoons, was Kratos able to climb to the top of the mast to engage the largest of the three. The battle raged on, and Kratos finally managed to impale the Hydra on the broken mast. It was an exhilarating encounter for the gamer, since it employed God of War's signature sequences of context sensitive commands, as well as direct combat, in a cinematic presentation worthy of Hollywood.
MGS3 - The Boss: What a dramatic finish to a superb game. The battle with The Boss is an epic one. Before the fight, the Boss delivers an emotionally charged speech about the state of the world, the placement of power, and the manufacture of conflict. She calls for "the operation" to begin, and the two have ten minutes before MiGs perform an air strike on the area. Student and teacher face off in a field of flowers, using every means to emerge victorious. The player can use any combination of guns, grenades, mines and CQC to defeat his mentor in this intense two-person war. "Let's make this the greatest 10 minutes of our lives, Jack." -The Boss
Conker's Bad Fur Day - Great Mighty Poo: Last on this list is perhaps the most humorous of all boss battles. Conker enters the dung beetles' hideout, and is compelled to feed sweet corn to a strange voice arising from below. He is then greeted by The Great Mighty Poo, an opera-singing pile of dung with sweet corn teeth and feces-slinging arms. Luckily, Conker is equipped with copious rolls of toilet paper, which are the bane of the shit monster. With each successive papering, he bursts into a new, more fervent song, each more distasteful than the last, until Conker manages to flush the deuce away. It is wonderfully satisfying.
Nov 27, 2006
Our Style
Now that I have expressed how I feel about the way other critics rate games, and now that we have posted a few new reviews, I feel the time is right to explain to our dear fans how we go about rating games.
I have already described the bell curve I will be planting my ratings on, but just in case you missed it, here it is again:
9.5-10 : Best of its kind. Changes gaming. Revolutionary. These are the games EVERY SINGLE GAMER should possess, or at least experience at some point, preferably immediately.
8.5-9.5: Outstanding. Minor imperfections. "Must-buy."
7.5-8.5: Great. Games in this range are well above average and deserve your money. They will make you happy.
6.5-7.5: Solid. These are games that are enjoyable and well-made. They may not push the envelope, but they make a good showing right there within it.
5.5-6.5: Slightly above average. Looking past a few flaws will serve to find a good time with these games.
4.5-5.5: Mediocre. Playable, but not offering anything especially interesting.
3.5-4.5: Below average. Maybe rent it. Maybe not. There are lots of better games out there.
2.5-3.5: Not fun. Possibly frustrating. Various states of BROKEN.
1.5-2.5: Crap. Better off used for some alternative form of entertainment, like frisbee.
0.0-1.5: Why was this ever made? ET. Superman 64. BARF!
Due to the nature of my distribution, readers will find that my scores are likely lower than one might have come to expect reading internet reviews. This is simply a function of the normal distribution, and not a result of my intense cynicism (that part is up to Brian). Additionally, in each of my reviews I break games down into 8 constituent parts. The reason for this is that although I believe that a game should be judged as a whole rather than the sum of its parts, there are certain qualities that are integral to all video games, in some capacity. These parameters are as follows:
Game Design - level design, innovation, execution, polish, pacing, balance, challenge
Visuals - aesthetics, textures, lighting, technical, framerate, output options
Audio - voice acting, Music, SFX, Separation, output options
Control - layout, function, responsiveness, intuitiveness, variety, camera
Story - concept, plotline, captivation, character development, originality
Fun Factor - enjoyment, addictiveness, engrossment
Value - longevity, replayability, bargain, extras, options, modes, multiplayer, etc
Style - Eddie's "tilt" This is where I rate the overall feel of the game, based on my personal experience with it
Using this breakdown allows me to really determine the overall caliber of each game by looking at every aspect, from every angle. It also allows me the best capability to compare ALL games. This becomes tricky when one considers genres, however. Games in multiple genres may be very good, but to stand them side by side can be an apples-oranges situation. Also, I've found that ratings become inaccurate if all parameters are considered equally, because frankly, some of the parameters listed above are not quite as important as others.
This is where what I call genre/component weighting comes into play. Because certain elements in the list are more important than others, the individual scores in each category are weighted accordingly. Depending on the game's genre, these weights vary to most accurately describe its quality, based on the factors that are most important to that particular type of game. For example, the "story" parameter will carry a very heavy weight when looking at an RPG, but a very low one when examining a puzzle game. This weighting creates a more accurate scale for cross-genre comparison, all within the larger framework of the entire video game library.
After the parameter scores have been weighted, the weighted scores are then added up, with a maximum total of 200. Simply dividing by 20 achieves the standard format every reader looks for. The scores line up neatly in the 1-10 range, expanding out to one decimal place.
This is an example of how my ratings charts look. In the first column are the parameters, followed by the game's score in those parameters. The next column contains the multiplier denoting the value of each parameter, and the final column shows the results of multiplying the parameter scores by the weight multipliers. At the bottom right is the total of all weighted scores, and in huge red numbers it the overall score on a 10 point scale. That number is the bottom line. I also list the genre below the weighting column, so that a reader may bear in mind what type of game he is looking at.
Having always been dissatisfied with the way games are rated, I have toyed with ratings systems for a long time, and found that this formulaic approach is the most precise way of determining a game's total value. It allows accurate placement in the rankings for games of similar, as well as completely different types.
Brian, on the other hand, not having as great a penchant for numbers (or anything 100% concrete, for that matter), has opted to go with a much simpler system. He will basically offer up a recommendation with each review - a two star system. One star is his "lowest score" and two stars are his "highest score." Ostensibly these mean "not worth playing" and "worth playing," respectively.
Yes, the differences between our ratings are extreme, but each presents its own unique perspective on things. In cases where both Brian and I have some experience with a game, and one of us writes a review, the other will add his own brief take, generally in the form of an appended rating chart or star value. Hopefully this will give our readers a complete view of each game, and will make for well-rounded reviews.
EDIT: I have since changed my approach to reviews, and like to sum them up with a little image like this one:
Whichever face most accurately represents how playing this game made me feel is the rating that I will give it. X out of :-D is the proper way to read these scores. Pictured above is a :-| out of :-D, just in case that wasn't obvious enough already.
I have already described the bell curve I will be planting my ratings on, but just in case you missed it, here it is again:
9.5-10 : Best of its kind. Changes gaming. Revolutionary. These are the games EVERY SINGLE GAMER should possess, or at least experience at some point, preferably immediately.
8.5-9.5: Outstanding. Minor imperfections. "Must-buy."
7.5-8.5: Great. Games in this range are well above average and deserve your money. They will make you happy.
6.5-7.5: Solid. These are games that are enjoyable and well-made. They may not push the envelope, but they make a good showing right there within it.
5.5-6.5: Slightly above average. Looking past a few flaws will serve to find a good time with these games.
4.5-5.5: Mediocre. Playable, but not offering anything especially interesting.
3.5-4.5: Below average. Maybe rent it. Maybe not. There are lots of better games out there.
2.5-3.5: Not fun. Possibly frustrating. Various states of BROKEN.
1.5-2.5: Crap. Better off used for some alternative form of entertainment, like frisbee.
0.0-1.5: Why was this ever made? ET. Superman 64. BARF!
Due to the nature of my distribution, readers will find that my scores are likely lower than one might have come to expect reading internet reviews. This is simply a function of the normal distribution, and not a result of my intense cynicism (that part is up to Brian). Additionally, in each of my reviews I break games down into 8 constituent parts. The reason for this is that although I believe that a game should be judged as a whole rather than the sum of its parts, there are certain qualities that are integral to all video games, in some capacity. These parameters are as follows:
Game Design - level design, innovation, execution, polish, pacing, balance, challenge
Visuals - aesthetics, textures, lighting, technical, framerate, output options
Audio - voice acting, Music, SFX, Separation, output options
Control - layout, function, responsiveness, intuitiveness, variety, camera
Story - concept, plotline, captivation, character development, originality
Fun Factor - enjoyment, addictiveness, engrossment
Value - longevity, replayability, bargain, extras, options, modes, multiplayer, etc
Style - Eddie's "tilt" This is where I rate the overall feel of the game, based on my personal experience with it
Using this breakdown allows me to really determine the overall caliber of each game by looking at every aspect, from every angle. It also allows me the best capability to compare ALL games. This becomes tricky when one considers genres, however. Games in multiple genres may be very good, but to stand them side by side can be an apples-oranges situation. Also, I've found that ratings become inaccurate if all parameters are considered equally, because frankly, some of the parameters listed above are not quite as important as others.
This is where what I call genre/component weighting comes into play. Because certain elements in the list are more important than others, the individual scores in each category are weighted accordingly. Depending on the game's genre, these weights vary to most accurately describe its quality, based on the factors that are most important to that particular type of game. For example, the "story" parameter will carry a very heavy weight when looking at an RPG, but a very low one when examining a puzzle game. This weighting creates a more accurate scale for cross-genre comparison, all within the larger framework of the entire video game library.
After the parameter scores have been weighted, the weighted scores are then added up, with a maximum total of 200. Simply dividing by 20 achieves the standard format every reader looks for. The scores line up neatly in the 1-10 range, expanding out to one decimal place.
This is an example of how my ratings charts look. In the first column are the parameters, followed by the game's score in those parameters. The next column contains the multiplier denoting the value of each parameter, and the final column shows the results of multiplying the parameter scores by the weight multipliers. At the bottom right is the total of all weighted scores, and in huge red numbers it the overall score on a 10 point scale. That number is the bottom line. I also list the genre below the weighting column, so that a reader may bear in mind what type of game he is looking at.
Having always been dissatisfied with the way games are rated, I have toyed with ratings systems for a long time, and found that this formulaic approach is the most precise way of determining a game's total value. It allows accurate placement in the rankings for games of similar, as well as completely different types.
Brian, on the other hand, not having as great a penchant for numbers (or anything 100% concrete, for that matter), has opted to go with a much simpler system. He will basically offer up a recommendation with each review - a two star system. One star is his "lowest score" and two stars are his "highest score." Ostensibly these mean "not worth playing" and "worth playing," respectively.
Yes, the differences between our ratings are extreme, but each presents its own unique perspective on things. In cases where both Brian and I have some experience with a game, and one of us writes a review, the other will add his own brief take, generally in the form of an appended rating chart or star value. Hopefully this will give our readers a complete view of each game, and will make for well-rounded reviews.
EDIT: I have since changed my approach to reviews, and like to sum them up with a little image like this one:
Whichever face most accurately represents how playing this game made me feel is the rating that I will give it. X out of :-D is the proper way to read these scores. Pictured above is a :-| out of :-D, just in case that wasn't obvious enough already.
Nov 26, 2006
Buggin' -- Gothic 3 Review
Gothic 3 is an ambitious go-anywhere rpg. It most resembles a mix between Oblivion and Fable, as the world is enormous and explorable, and littered with plants and other random potion components for you to go out of your way to pick up, but the game itself is more linearly directed. The main town locations are tied together much more intimately by a unified storyline, with side quests relegated mostly to quick journeys to nearby caves, and rarely spanning more than one location.
The first thing you need to know before buying Gothic 3, though, is that the game is not even close to finished. I played the majority of the game with patch 1.08 applied, and there are still a lot of serious issues. The engine is horribly optimized, so even with your draw distance set to the very minimum and all other memory-consuming features turned off you can expect near constant hard-drive thrashing, even with 1GB of RAM. This game is an exercise in torture with anything less than 1.5GB. Overall, this game is more demanding than even Oblivion. Some of the graphical features are implemented incompletely or broken, and the game clearly wasn't tested much prior to release. In some cases, specifically mine, turning off bloom results in these sporadic flashes of pure white. When I say sporadic, I mean maybe you'll walk through a town and almost forget about them for awhile, lulling you into a false sense of security. That's how Gothic works. It gets in your head, makes you feel like everything is normal, then slams you with a spate of epileptic seizure-inducing flashes. Strangely, the way you orient your character can alleviate them, as if you are somehow accidentally peering into another dimension, a crappy one where everything is blinding white, and figuring out the exact way to turn your head can magically stop it. The list of bugs goes on and on.
Immediately after installing and patching the game, and before I had known what a buggy mess it was, I was excited for the rpg adventure to ensue. I had read my manual, learned all about the orc war, and was totally prepared to inflict further disfigurement on the countryside. This is my first review, so you probably don't know much about me yet, but I often (read: always) play games exclusively as evil. If there is no option to be evil, I sometimes purposely fail over and over, content as long as all good-triumphing is averted. The game began with a nice little cinema. Strangely, even within the cinema there were lots of graphical glitches with shadows warping all over the place, while the poorly-rendered character models played out their little backstory war. Unperturbed, I got down to the meat of it.
The game dropped me right in the middle of a miniature town liberation. Swords and tutorial tips flying all over the place, I rapidly crushed the orc horde and sent the survivors running out of town. Now, I'm never one to show mercy to my enemies. Besides, maybe they would tell their leaders they saw me and I would be a walking target from that day forth, so I set about to hunting them down in the most brutal fashion possible. Luckily, my task was made easier by the fact that as soon as they escaped town, the fleeing orcs began running a straight line path back and forth, totally oblivious to the arrows I unloaded on them.
Awesomely, Gothic 3 places no limitations on your inventory, so I got to walk back through the town and loot the piles of weaponry and strip the corpses. Bristling with heavy axes and ready to cause some damage, I found myself in the center of town again getting some story told to me by a man named Diego with an enormous body and a very small head. I ended the conversation as soon as possible and immediately began destroying him with the same two-swing sword combination I had spammed over and over to win all the other battles. The other surviving characters yelled "Fight!" and gathered to watch, and actually began clapping as I laid him low. I took this as a sign that Gothic 3 approved of my actions.
Temporarily bored with destruction, I headed out of town the back way and came across 1) a glowing magical dome around a city that was clearly ripped straight out of World of Warcraft and 2) a group of sleeping bandits I would get the opportunity to decimate. I decided to be stealthy this time around, as a carefully administered deathblow to a sleeping opponent gives me particular pleasure. Gothic 3 was having none of it though, and my clumsy sneak skill not only managed to wake up the bandits I was approaching, but also somehow tore apart the nature of reality so that I found myself in control of the bandit himself, who floated across the ground permanently spread-eagled, while the actual character I was supposed to be playing stood frozen in place some distance away. The other bandit pummeled him while I glided back and forth ineffectually. As he screamed in pain and fell to the ground dead, I gained a level. My introduction to the game world complete, I restarted.
As I played Gothic 3, the bugs never really abated. Any time I tried to sneak that exact same error occurred, completely ruling out playing a stealthy character. Combat itself is strangely broken, so that any humanoid, no matter how powerful, is utterly unable to retaliate to the same one-two sword swing over and over again. Confusingly, however, even the most lowly enemy hiding out in the forest can administer nearly instant death, knocking you to the ground and savaging your prostrate form. Good luck trying to put away your bow and arrow or maneuver to respond, as the animations will often be interrupted over and over again so you simply have no choice but to die.
Nearly every other action you can perform is non-intuitive. Clicking to loot a corpse requires you to mouse over to the Take All button every single time, stacking up along with all the other small frustrations, such as the way your character automatically registers a click on any character or item you happen to be facing upon rising from gathering a dropped item. Nearly every single time you pick something up, you are first made to sit through the crouching animation, then you are forced to endure the unwanted activation of any nearby characters or items right after. Your targeting will also tend to be insane, and the way the game queues up mouse clicks will often result in you accidentally chopping your friend once at the end of combat, locking that character into permanent aggro mode and basically forcing you to reload your last save. It's no help that the reloading process is really slow.
My initial reaction was complete hatred of course. It's no secret that I have no tolerance for broken games, and yet, as I forced myself to play through the constant frustration, something bizarre happened. I really started to like this damn game. I don't know what it was, but for some reason I just could not quit. I ended up playing a good character, and as I liberated my second town for the rebels, it was really neat to set in motion the events that culminated in my rebel friends and I crushing the orc occupation force. From that point on, the town was filled with rebels, and the slaves were freed. There is something strangely satisfying about the way you impact the world in Gothic 3. As you gather weapons, free slaves who can take on different supporting professions for the rebel forces, and establish conspiracies to collapse the orc leadership of town after town, you get an awesome sense of feedback every time. Characters you bring to safety immediately set to work doing their own tasks, and you really get the feeling that you are helping to develop an army. Also, despite all the bugs, the graphics occasionally look really awesome. Take out your torch at night and prepare to be amazed.
It's unfortunate that Gothic 3 was basically released in an unfinished state. Maybe if the developers had had some more time to work on it, they could've fully delivered on the basically fun premise of sowing revolution (or stamping it out) in an enormous free-form Oblivion-like world. As the game is now though, nobody should be forced to go through the hell I went through to get to the enjoyable parts. Even having come to like the game, I am still frustrated by the way the combat handles and the million little ways this game conspires to annoy you.
I give Gothic 3 my lowest score. 1 out of 2 stars.
The first thing you need to know before buying Gothic 3, though, is that the game is not even close to finished. I played the majority of the game with patch 1.08 applied, and there are still a lot of serious issues. The engine is horribly optimized, so even with your draw distance set to the very minimum and all other memory-consuming features turned off you can expect near constant hard-drive thrashing, even with 1GB of RAM. This game is an exercise in torture with anything less than 1.5GB. Overall, this game is more demanding than even Oblivion. Some of the graphical features are implemented incompletely or broken, and the game clearly wasn't tested much prior to release. In some cases, specifically mine, turning off bloom results in these sporadic flashes of pure white. When I say sporadic, I mean maybe you'll walk through a town and almost forget about them for awhile, lulling you into a false sense of security. That's how Gothic works. It gets in your head, makes you feel like everything is normal, then slams you with a spate of epileptic seizure-inducing flashes. Strangely, the way you orient your character can alleviate them, as if you are somehow accidentally peering into another dimension, a crappy one where everything is blinding white, and figuring out the exact way to turn your head can magically stop it. The list of bugs goes on and on.
The world of Gothic 3 is so fantastic lens flares even happen in caves
Immediately after installing and patching the game, and before I had known what a buggy mess it was, I was excited for the rpg adventure to ensue. I had read my manual, learned all about the orc war, and was totally prepared to inflict further disfigurement on the countryside. This is my first review, so you probably don't know much about me yet, but I often (read: always) play games exclusively as evil. If there is no option to be evil, I sometimes purposely fail over and over, content as long as all good-triumphing is averted. The game began with a nice little cinema. Strangely, even within the cinema there were lots of graphical glitches with shadows warping all over the place, while the poorly-rendered character models played out their little backstory war. Unperturbed, I got down to the meat of it.
The game dropped me right in the middle of a miniature town liberation. Swords and tutorial tips flying all over the place, I rapidly crushed the orc horde and sent the survivors running out of town. Now, I'm never one to show mercy to my enemies. Besides, maybe they would tell their leaders they saw me and I would be a walking target from that day forth, so I set about to hunting them down in the most brutal fashion possible. Luckily, my task was made easier by the fact that as soon as they escaped town, the fleeing orcs began running a straight line path back and forth, totally oblivious to the arrows I unloaded on them.
Awesomely, Gothic 3 places no limitations on your inventory, so I got to walk back through the town and loot the piles of weaponry and strip the corpses. Bristling with heavy axes and ready to cause some damage, I found myself in the center of town again getting some story told to me by a man named Diego with an enormous body and a very small head. I ended the conversation as soon as possible and immediately began destroying him with the same two-swing sword combination I had spammed over and over to win all the other battles. The other surviving characters yelled "Fight!" and gathered to watch, and actually began clapping as I laid him low. I took this as a sign that Gothic 3 approved of my actions.
Temporarily bored with destruction, I headed out of town the back way and came across 1) a glowing magical dome around a city that was clearly ripped straight out of World of Warcraft and 2) a group of sleeping bandits I would get the opportunity to decimate. I decided to be stealthy this time around, as a carefully administered deathblow to a sleeping opponent gives me particular pleasure. Gothic 3 was having none of it though, and my clumsy sneak skill not only managed to wake up the bandits I was approaching, but also somehow tore apart the nature of reality so that I found myself in control of the bandit himself, who floated across the ground permanently spread-eagled, while the actual character I was supposed to be playing stood frozen in place some distance away. The other bandit pummeled him while I glided back and forth ineffectually. As he screamed in pain and fell to the ground dead, I gained a level. My introduction to the game world complete, I restarted.
That body in the background is me
As I played Gothic 3, the bugs never really abated. Any time I tried to sneak that exact same error occurred, completely ruling out playing a stealthy character. Combat itself is strangely broken, so that any humanoid, no matter how powerful, is utterly unable to retaliate to the same one-two sword swing over and over again. Confusingly, however, even the most lowly enemy hiding out in the forest can administer nearly instant death, knocking you to the ground and savaging your prostrate form. Good luck trying to put away your bow and arrow or maneuver to respond, as the animations will often be interrupted over and over again so you simply have no choice but to die.
Nearly every other action you can perform is non-intuitive. Clicking to loot a corpse requires you to mouse over to the Take All button every single time, stacking up along with all the other small frustrations, such as the way your character automatically registers a click on any character or item you happen to be facing upon rising from gathering a dropped item. Nearly every single time you pick something up, you are first made to sit through the crouching animation, then you are forced to endure the unwanted activation of any nearby characters or items right after. Your targeting will also tend to be insane, and the way the game queues up mouse clicks will often result in you accidentally chopping your friend once at the end of combat, locking that character into permanent aggro mode and basically forcing you to reload your last save. It's no help that the reloading process is really slow.
My initial reaction was complete hatred of course. It's no secret that I have no tolerance for broken games, and yet, as I forced myself to play through the constant frustration, something bizarre happened. I really started to like this damn game. I don't know what it was, but for some reason I just could not quit. I ended up playing a good character, and as I liberated my second town for the rebels, it was really neat to set in motion the events that culminated in my rebel friends and I crushing the orc occupation force. From that point on, the town was filled with rebels, and the slaves were freed. There is something strangely satisfying about the way you impact the world in Gothic 3. As you gather weapons, free slaves who can take on different supporting professions for the rebel forces, and establish conspiracies to collapse the orc leadership of town after town, you get an awesome sense of feedback every time. Characters you bring to safety immediately set to work doing their own tasks, and you really get the feeling that you are helping to develop an army. Also, despite all the bugs, the graphics occasionally look really awesome. Take out your torch at night and prepare to be amazed.
The torch is absolutely perfect in this game
It's unfortunate that Gothic 3 was basically released in an unfinished state. Maybe if the developers had had some more time to work on it, they could've fully delivered on the basically fun premise of sowing revolution (or stamping it out) in an enormous free-form Oblivion-like world. As the game is now though, nobody should be forced to go through the hell I went through to get to the enjoyable parts. Even having come to like the game, I am still frustrated by the way the combat handles and the million little ways this game conspires to annoy you.
I give Gothic 3 my lowest score. 1 out of 2 stars.
Nov 24, 2006
Bringing Games Back To The Sandbox
Most often, videogames can be understood in terms of a combination of tools or abilities and rules that define the way those tools and abilities function and interact with each other and the rest of the game world. In the original Super Mario Brothers, for instance, you only had the abilities to run, jump, shoot fireballs in certain situations, and use the star man to run through enemies from time to time. Perhaps what made the original Super Mario Brothers so enjoyable was the satisfying way the physics of the game world made those actions feel. When running, you started off slow, then sped up, building up a momentum that made it so the faster you ran the harder it was to slow down. When jumping, the faster you ran the higher and farther you could leap. As Mario games progressed, they tended to incrementally add a few new abilities at a time to the previous set. In the Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2 there was wind, and in Super Mario Brothers 3 there were the various suits allowing Mario to fly, swim, throw hammers, etc.
In the original Final Fantasy, on the other hand, the rules of the world were not rules controlling complex movement as in Super Mario Brothers. The characters and their actions were representative, rather than direct. You moved your party all at once, indicated by a single iconic character figure, and the details of their progression over various terrain were of no consequence to the game. The rules of the game were instead limited to what terrain was passable, basic interaction with NPCs, including speech, trade, etc., and the complex mechanics governing combat. Each character class had its own path of development, endowing the character with the ability to cast new spells, perform new attacks, or deal greater damage.
Both of these examples, despite being drastically different styles of gameplay, are similar in that they are both directed narratives. In Super Mario Brothers, you move from left to right, with the only opportunities from deviation occurring when warp-zones are found. In Final Fantasy, the game state is advanced by talking to the right character, learning the next step, undertaking that specific step, and so on, repeated until the final boss is defeated. The path that the developer has created is the path to game completion. In Final Fantasy, you may have decided to create a party of all mages, but the overall story, who you speak to, and what you must do to progress, will essentially remain the same. There is, however, a separate class of gameplay that has become increasingly popular more recently. That is, the sandbox game type, which depends largely on the player to direct the narrative. The basic rules and elements are provided, as before, but the actual progression is an undirected emergence from the player's usage of those elements within the gameworld. In The Sims, for instance, the player is loosely directed by economic factors; find work and earn money to purchase new goods. However, the majority of short-term goals, conflicts, and enjoyable gameplay sequences occur as a result of the player's actions. Whether players were interested in actually building the house, or the interpersonal relationships that their characters developed, the majority of goals and actions were not directly scripted by the game designer. It is an act of trust on the part of the game designer that the rules they have created and the tools they have given the player will be suitable to allow the player to craft their own satisfying gameplay experience.
Logically, the ultimate promise of videogames would be the potential for an epic interactive narrative, one were the player is the main character in a vast, rich universe of their choosing. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case, as many of the games offering sandbox play are limited to more rudimentary interactions. For instance, you will never get to read a touching poem one of your characters in The Sims has written about their recently departed family member that you caused to starve to death by luring them into the bathroom and removing the door. Conversely, those games with the most well-developed narratives, including voice acting, clever writing, and plot twists, are generally the most heavily scripted by the game developer. The path to completion in a game such as Final Fantasy 12 is so heavily directed that the actual freedoms the player experiences are of almost no consequence to the story whatsoever.
Inevitably, games are compared to movies and other less interactive forms of entertainment, and the argument is commonly made that the freedom and interaction games allow are what set them apart, but, as this Thinking Games blog post has argued, the scripted nature of many epic games makes them essentially the same. The gameworld is not a vast, functional universe. Instead, it is often a well-crafted facade, set up to appear open to the direction of the player. However, the actual opportunity to alter the experience is limited. Instead, many game developers are content to decide the entirety of the story and merely implement portions of the sandbox. Mario is a good example of this. The way you play out the given scenario on-screen is your own choice, but overall, you will progress in a linear fashion. Role playing games, by virtue of their very title, face an intrinsic conflict in design as they are, at their most basic, not meant to allow the player to deviate in their role in any way. The player serves as little more than a tool to increment the game state. Despite this, it is clear the ultimate goal of the RPG is to craft a fully realized universe in a box.
Trends in RPG development bear this out, and the movement towards ever more comprehensive gameworlds illustrates the inherent conflict. Oblivion, for instance, strives to create the feel of the sandbox, the utterly open world with which the player can do as they see fit, while also populating the world with a wide range of characters that interact in sophisticated ways. Unlike a movie, the goal of a game such as Oblivion is to give the player the power to be the star, but the reality of the game falls short. In fact, infinite play-throughs of Oblivion will not yield infinite outcomes. To satisfy the feeling of choice, the characters are given a wider range of scripted responses, allowing some variability, but the player is still ultimately limited to the paths the developer has chosen. The outcomes of the various quests and the results of conversations with NPCs will never deviate from these paths, except where the player has managed to break the game.
So will videogames ever manage to successfully create a complete world for the player to retreat to, while still maintaining a level of complexity that will allow the interactions to deliver the sort of dramatic impact that a movie like Star Wars has? That would be the holy grail of game development. It is my belief that sandbox games are a step in the right direction. As they develop in sophistication, the lexicon of meaningful interactions increase. The range of actions and responses that the self-motivated characters within a given sandbox game can make will continue to increase until they are very close to approximating the scripted actions of a linear narrative game. In the meantime, we have plenty of MMOs in which the other characters are actual humans. It is unfortunate that the quest direction, over-arcing story, and enemies are generally computer-controlled, but that is a topic for another column.
In the original Final Fantasy, on the other hand, the rules of the world were not rules controlling complex movement as in Super Mario Brothers. The characters and their actions were representative, rather than direct. You moved your party all at once, indicated by a single iconic character figure, and the details of their progression over various terrain were of no consequence to the game. The rules of the game were instead limited to what terrain was passable, basic interaction with NPCs, including speech, trade, etc., and the complex mechanics governing combat. Each character class had its own path of development, endowing the character with the ability to cast new spells, perform new attacks, or deal greater damage.
Both of these examples, despite being drastically different styles of gameplay, are similar in that they are both directed narratives. In Super Mario Brothers, you move from left to right, with the only opportunities from deviation occurring when warp-zones are found. In Final Fantasy, the game state is advanced by talking to the right character, learning the next step, undertaking that specific step, and so on, repeated until the final boss is defeated. The path that the developer has created is the path to game completion. In Final Fantasy, you may have decided to create a party of all mages, but the overall story, who you speak to, and what you must do to progress, will essentially remain the same. There is, however, a separate class of gameplay that has become increasingly popular more recently. That is, the sandbox game type, which depends largely on the player to direct the narrative. The basic rules and elements are provided, as before, but the actual progression is an undirected emergence from the player's usage of those elements within the gameworld. In The Sims, for instance, the player is loosely directed by economic factors; find work and earn money to purchase new goods. However, the majority of short-term goals, conflicts, and enjoyable gameplay sequences occur as a result of the player's actions. Whether players were interested in actually building the house, or the interpersonal relationships that their characters developed, the majority of goals and actions were not directly scripted by the game designer. It is an act of trust on the part of the game designer that the rules they have created and the tools they have given the player will be suitable to allow the player to craft their own satisfying gameplay experience.
Logically, the ultimate promise of videogames would be the potential for an epic interactive narrative, one were the player is the main character in a vast, rich universe of their choosing. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case, as many of the games offering sandbox play are limited to more rudimentary interactions. For instance, you will never get to read a touching poem one of your characters in The Sims has written about their recently departed family member that you caused to starve to death by luring them into the bathroom and removing the door. Conversely, those games with the most well-developed narratives, including voice acting, clever writing, and plot twists, are generally the most heavily scripted by the game developer. The path to completion in a game such as Final Fantasy 12 is so heavily directed that the actual freedoms the player experiences are of almost no consequence to the story whatsoever.
Inevitably, games are compared to movies and other less interactive forms of entertainment, and the argument is commonly made that the freedom and interaction games allow are what set them apart, but, as this Thinking Games blog post has argued, the scripted nature of many epic games makes them essentially the same. The gameworld is not a vast, functional universe. Instead, it is often a well-crafted facade, set up to appear open to the direction of the player. However, the actual opportunity to alter the experience is limited. Instead, many game developers are content to decide the entirety of the story and merely implement portions of the sandbox. Mario is a good example of this. The way you play out the given scenario on-screen is your own choice, but overall, you will progress in a linear fashion. Role playing games, by virtue of their very title, face an intrinsic conflict in design as they are, at their most basic, not meant to allow the player to deviate in their role in any way. The player serves as little more than a tool to increment the game state. Despite this, it is clear the ultimate goal of the RPG is to craft a fully realized universe in a box.
Trends in RPG development bear this out, and the movement towards ever more comprehensive gameworlds illustrates the inherent conflict. Oblivion, for instance, strives to create the feel of the sandbox, the utterly open world with which the player can do as they see fit, while also populating the world with a wide range of characters that interact in sophisticated ways. Unlike a movie, the goal of a game such as Oblivion is to give the player the power to be the star, but the reality of the game falls short. In fact, infinite play-throughs of Oblivion will not yield infinite outcomes. To satisfy the feeling of choice, the characters are given a wider range of scripted responses, allowing some variability, but the player is still ultimately limited to the paths the developer has chosen. The outcomes of the various quests and the results of conversations with NPCs will never deviate from these paths, except where the player has managed to break the game.
So will videogames ever manage to successfully create a complete world for the player to retreat to, while still maintaining a level of complexity that will allow the interactions to deliver the sort of dramatic impact that a movie like Star Wars has? That would be the holy grail of game development. It is my belief that sandbox games are a step in the right direction. As they develop in sophistication, the lexicon of meaningful interactions increase. The range of actions and responses that the self-motivated characters within a given sandbox game can make will continue to increase until they are very close to approximating the scripted actions of a linear narrative game. In the meantime, we have plenty of MMOs in which the other characters are actual humans. It is unfortunate that the quest direction, over-arcing story, and enemies are generally computer-controlled, but that is a topic for another column.
Nov 23, 2006
The Ratings Game
Although my greatest aspiration in life has been to become a part of the video game journalism community, I, like Brian, have always had a bone to pick with the collective...critical...mass, as I have chosen to ambiguously entitle it.
The idea of rating the quality of video games must have arisen very naturally. As human beings, we are inclined to look to others' reactions to all sorts of things, in order to aid us in the formulation of our own decisions and opinions about those things. Evolutionarily, it makes sense in terms of novel food items or potential mates, for example, because we would like to know if that berry on the bush is going to poison us, or if that partner we consider is of little use as a parent, thus making our offspring (genes) suffer. We are hard-wired through natural selection to gather feedback from other people on such critical matters, but humans also tend to apply these types of strategies to all situations that could cause us potential harm - in this case, lack of enjoyment, squandered time and liberation of dollars.
However, as Brian mentioned in his latest Weekly Count, a sort of collective mind has developed in recent years. I sometimes feel as though only a few individuals ever have their own unadulterated opinions about games, before they are influenced by the omnipresent inundation of evaluations from other media sources. Oftentimes, a certain high-profile, big-budget publication will release an early review, and others will simply use it as a template for their own work. To review a game properly, I feel it necessary to go into it with a certain degree of ignorance, which is one of a few reasons I avoid in-depth PREviews. Please, let me experience the game for myself - fresh.
This group thinking trend is merely the tip of the iceberg, and is a precursor to my primary complaint about the way games are rated.
In any sample of data points, there will be a noticeable tendency toward a particular point on the scale. Most commonly, it is the central value between the upper and lower limits of the range of numbers. This central tendency is described by the central limit theorem, and illustrated by what's called the normal distribution.
The normal distribution is what's commonly referred to as a "bell curve." It shows the mean (average) at the 50th percentile, or 5 out of 10. Manually taking the average of the numbers 0-10 will obtain the same results.
(0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)/11 = 55/11 = 5
One would expect the ratings of video games, or any other form of media, to disperse across the range in a similar fashion. Five should be an average score.
Unfortunately, in the realm of video game journalism, this is not the case. When examined as a group, rather than center around the expected mean (50%), video game ratings are a perfect example of what is called a negative skew.
Brian and I have labeled this phenomenon "IGN Syndrome," in reference to the notoriously high ratings awarded by that particular publication. The real problem here, though, is that most other sources follow the same path. It is as if we have lost half of the range of scores, and are left with a set of 50-100. This is where the VAST majority of scores lie. Luckily, there is a clear and recognizable reason for this particular skew. We need look no further than our public school system.
It is rare occasion that a school works on any grading system other than the 100 point scale. It is a percentile, and easy for students, parents and teachers to grasp. Further breaking down this system, we encounter the letter grades, A-B-C-D, which correspond to the range of scores from 100% down to 65%. An F is anything below 65, and is a FAILING grade. In essence, a roughly 50-point scale exists in institutionalized education, due to the fact that any score falling below that range is equivalent anyway. So, the educational "bell curve" that game critics are now emulating would look something like this:
This makes sense in the particular setting, considering the dropout/flunk rate in high schools in The U.S. is roughly 30%. Some simple math shows us that this percentage coincides perfectly with graph's distribution.
score-range=x x/range=%
65-50 = 15; 15/50 = 30%
However, video games are not children, and they are not in school. A rating of 30% should remain a 30%. It should NOT be called 65%. Sure, games would seem generally less magnificent when looking solely at the numbers, but it would also leave some much needed room in the upper portions of the range to distinguish the quality differences between titles. Cramming all ratings into a smaller space makes it difficult to separate game x from game y when one is ever so slightly better than the other.
After expanding the range, ratings would become much more valuable, too. For example, let's take a grade of B+ on the educational scale, which is roughly equivalent to an 88%
88-50 = 38; 38/50 = 76/100 = 76%
By converting a B+ from that system to the system based on a normal distribution, we see that a 76% would suddenly become a very respectable score. If we were to take an 88% from the normal distribution and convert it back...
88% = 88/100 = 44/50; 50+44 = 94 or an "A"
...then we see that an 88% is an excellent rating.
I have drawn up a rating scale that is based off of the normal distribution, and what I feel it means in terms of game quality. This will be the basis for all of my personal game reviews:
9.5-10 : Best of its kind. Changes gaming. Revolutionary. These are the games EVERY SINGLE GAMER should possess, or at least experience at some point, preferably immediately.
8.5-9.5: Outstanding. Minor imperfections. "Must-buy."
7.5-8.5: Great. Games in this range are well above average and deserve your money. They will make you happy.
6.5-7.5: Solid. These are games that are enjoyable and well-made. They may not push the envelope, but they make a good showing right there within it.
5.5-6.5: Slightly above average. Looking past a few flaws will serve to find a good time with these games.
4.5-5.5: Mediocre. Playable, but not offering anything especially interesting.
3.5-4.5: Below average. Maybe rent it. Maybe not. There are lots of better games out there.
2.5-3.5: Not fun. Possibly frustrating. Various states of BROKEN.
1.5-2.5: Crap. Better off used for some alternative form of entertainment, like frisbee.
0.0-1.5: Why was this ever made? ET. Superman 64. BARF!
Unfortunately, certain gaming sites list their ratings guides, seeming to approximate a normal distribution like this, but then the aggregate of their reviews blatantly fly in the face of any such regularity. The ratings remain skewed towards the top of the range. So is it possible to initiate a change in the way games are rated? Maybe not, due to the vast body of content out there. A joint effort to collectively retrofit this new system to an older industry might prove to create too much discontinuity, with older games appearing to be better, simply because of the scale on which they were rated. Some distinction would have to be made between those games reviewed "before normal" and those reviewed under the "normal" distribution.
In any case, the ratings systems of the majority of today's gaming publications are off track, and do not provide the clearest possible picture for the gamer. Game Crush advocates a change in the way games are compared and analyzed, and we will be following up soon with a more detailed description of how we plan to carry out our own appraisals.
The idea of rating the quality of video games must have arisen very naturally. As human beings, we are inclined to look to others' reactions to all sorts of things, in order to aid us in the formulation of our own decisions and opinions about those things. Evolutionarily, it makes sense in terms of novel food items or potential mates, for example, because we would like to know if that berry on the bush is going to poison us, or if that partner we consider is of little use as a parent, thus making our offspring (genes) suffer. We are hard-wired through natural selection to gather feedback from other people on such critical matters, but humans also tend to apply these types of strategies to all situations that could cause us potential harm - in this case, lack of enjoyment, squandered time and liberation of dollars.
However, as Brian mentioned in his latest Weekly Count, a sort of collective mind has developed in recent years. I sometimes feel as though only a few individuals ever have their own unadulterated opinions about games, before they are influenced by the omnipresent inundation of evaluations from other media sources. Oftentimes, a certain high-profile, big-budget publication will release an early review, and others will simply use it as a template for their own work. To review a game properly, I feel it necessary to go into it with a certain degree of ignorance, which is one of a few reasons I avoid in-depth PREviews. Please, let me experience the game for myself - fresh.
This group thinking trend is merely the tip of the iceberg, and is a precursor to my primary complaint about the way games are rated.
In any sample of data points, there will be a noticeable tendency toward a particular point on the scale. Most commonly, it is the central value between the upper and lower limits of the range of numbers. This central tendency is described by the central limit theorem, and illustrated by what's called the normal distribution.
The normal distribution is what's commonly referred to as a "bell curve." It shows the mean (average) at the 50th percentile, or 5 out of 10. Manually taking the average of the numbers 0-10 will obtain the same results.
(0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)/11 = 55/11 = 5
One would expect the ratings of video games, or any other form of media, to disperse across the range in a similar fashion. Five should be an average score.
Unfortunately, in the realm of video game journalism, this is not the case. When examined as a group, rather than center around the expected mean (50%), video game ratings are a perfect example of what is called a negative skew.
Brian and I have labeled this phenomenon "IGN Syndrome," in reference to the notoriously high ratings awarded by that particular publication. The real problem here, though, is that most other sources follow the same path. It is as if we have lost half of the range of scores, and are left with a set of 50-100. This is where the VAST majority of scores lie. Luckily, there is a clear and recognizable reason for this particular skew. We need look no further than our public school system.
It is rare occasion that a school works on any grading system other than the 100 point scale. It is a percentile, and easy for students, parents and teachers to grasp. Further breaking down this system, we encounter the letter grades, A-B-C-D, which correspond to the range of scores from 100% down to 65%. An F is anything below 65, and is a FAILING grade. In essence, a roughly 50-point scale exists in institutionalized education, due to the fact that any score falling below that range is equivalent anyway. So, the educational "bell curve" that game critics are now emulating would look something like this:
This makes sense in the particular setting, considering the dropout/flunk rate in high schools in The U.S. is roughly 30%. Some simple math shows us that this percentage coincides perfectly with graph's distribution.
65-50 = 15; 15/50 = 30%
However, video games are not children, and they are not in school. A rating of 30% should remain a 30%. It should NOT be called 65%. Sure, games would seem generally less magnificent when looking solely at the numbers, but it would also leave some much needed room in the upper portions of the range to distinguish the quality differences between titles. Cramming all ratings into a smaller space makes it difficult to separate game x from game y when one is ever so slightly better than the other.
After expanding the range, ratings would become much more valuable, too. For example, let's take a grade of B+ on the educational scale, which is roughly equivalent to an 88%
By converting a B+ from that system to the system based on a normal distribution, we see that a 76% would suddenly become a very respectable score. If we were to take an 88% from the normal distribution and convert it back...
...then we see that an 88% is an excellent rating.
I have drawn up a rating scale that is based off of the normal distribution, and what I feel it means in terms of game quality. This will be the basis for all of my personal game reviews:
9.5-10 : Best of its kind. Changes gaming. Revolutionary. These are the games EVERY SINGLE GAMER should possess, or at least experience at some point, preferably immediately.
8.5-9.5: Outstanding. Minor imperfections. "Must-buy."
7.5-8.5: Great. Games in this range are well above average and deserve your money. They will make you happy.
6.5-7.5: Solid. These are games that are enjoyable and well-made. They may not push the envelope, but they make a good showing right there within it.
5.5-6.5: Slightly above average. Looking past a few flaws will serve to find a good time with these games.
4.5-5.5: Mediocre. Playable, but not offering anything especially interesting.
3.5-4.5: Below average. Maybe rent it. Maybe not. There are lots of better games out there.
2.5-3.5: Not fun. Possibly frustrating. Various states of BROKEN.
1.5-2.5: Crap. Better off used for some alternative form of entertainment, like frisbee.
0.0-1.5: Why was this ever made? ET. Superman 64. BARF!
Unfortunately, certain gaming sites list their ratings guides, seeming to approximate a normal distribution like this, but then the aggregate of their reviews blatantly fly in the face of any such regularity. The ratings remain skewed towards the top of the range. So is it possible to initiate a change in the way games are rated? Maybe not, due to the vast body of content out there. A joint effort to collectively retrofit this new system to an older industry might prove to create too much discontinuity, with older games appearing to be better, simply because of the scale on which they were rated. Some distinction would have to be made between those games reviewed "before normal" and those reviewed under the "normal" distribution.
In any case, the ratings systems of the majority of today's gaming publications are off track, and do not provide the clearest possible picture for the gamer. Game Crush advocates a change in the way games are compared and analyzed, and we will be following up soon with a more detailed description of how we plan to carry out our own appraisals.
Happy Thanksgiving from Game Crush!
CHEERS! We hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday. Now EAT THAT TURKEY!!!!!
Nov 22, 2006
The Same Old Song -- Mortal Kombat: Unchained Review
The Mortal Kombat series is now about as old as a quarter of today's gamers, and I believe it is beginning to show. Mortal Kombat: Unchained is a generally mediocre addition in a brand that has perfected the art of mediocrity.
First off, this game is a traditional arcade fighter at its core, and is best viewed - and played - as such. It includes 30 past MK combatants, and each can fight with two hand-to-hand martial arts styles, as well as wielding one weapon. There are many unique modes available in MK: Unchained, but they generally leave much to be desired. The regular arcade mode turns out to be most enjoyable of them all.
Chess Kombat is somewhat interesting, and at first reminds me a bit of Archon, from the days of the NES. First, one must put together a team of a leader, champion, sorcerer, shifter, and grunts, which will populate the game board. Then, it is simply a turn-based game, with combat occurring when opposing units meet on the same square. Bonuses are awarded for various criteria, such as initiating the attack, or holding a special square on the board, and the special units always have more health than the grunts. Also, sorcerers are able to cast spells like teleport, imprison, heal and revive. It really does sound like Archon, however, I think I'd rather play that classic over Chess Kombat.
Puzzle Kombat is another mode I found to be semi-useless. In this mode, the player participates in a Tetris-like puzzle game while miniature MK characters duke it out on the bottom of the screen. Better performance in the puzzle game translates to victory below. There is no real connection between the two, so it is simply just a puzzle game - and not a very good one.
Attempting to add another genre to this fighting game is the action/adventure story mode of sorts, called Konquest. You begin at a dojo and spend quite some time running around looking for more places to "learn." This was annoying to me. Rather than a typical training mode, you have to jump through hoops to seek out minimal fighting tips. Afterwards comes a quest that the main character must embark upon, all the while locating unlockables and collecting money to buy others later. It is similar in execution to MK: Deception, but is nothing really full-fledged. The camera is more frustrating than two consecutive stubbed toes, and in order for it to make any sense at all, you must hold down select the entire time. Finally, annoying, but not impairing, is the voice acting. It reminded me of second grade, and my classmates attempting to read a play out loud.
As stated earlier, Arcade Mode is where this game shines the most - it's the reason to play. In traditional MK fashion, a fighter is selected and must battle up the ranks to become the best. The difficulty ramps up with each opponent, and is displayed on the match-up screen between fights. What I like the most here are the fighting arenas. Many have interesting designs, such as the pirate ship with ghosts flying all around it, and most are destructible and multi-tiered. Opponents can be knocked through walls and floors, out windows and off balconies to other areas, where the fight continues. Some of the levels are even dynamic, changing throughout the round. This leaves room to incorporate the instant death hazards Unchained adds to the mix, such as falling off a platform to be impaled on a spike, or getting knocked into a piranha-filled lake. Pains of this nature feel really rewarding to inflict on an opponent, yet awful to suffer, oneself. They just look stunning, and capture the MK feel, along with the new hara-kiri finishes. Besides administering fatalities on defeated opponents, losers can now take matters into their own hands and commit seppuku, instead. It is both gruesome and graphic.
When it comes to the game's graphics, it opens up with a very attractive FMV, but takes a bit of a break afterwards. The character models are probably the most detailed aspect of the visuals, and don't look half bad. The environments that I love so much, however, are barren, with minimal detail, and suspended in a void of nothingness. There is also quite a bit of ugliness going on in Konquest mode, with some sub-par textures, clipping and pop-in. Otherwise, animations are nice and smooth, with no dips in frame rate during the most important part of the game - the fights. Basically, its lack of detail that hurts this game's visuals the most - besides the blood. Being an MK game, one can rest assured there will be plenty of blood, and as a matter of fact, it splatters all over the place and even remains on the ground for the entire fight. Nice touch.
My main gripe with this game, besides it's overwhelmingly average feeling, is its load times. Simply stated, they are HORRIBLE..and there are lots of them. Before and after every fight, there is a LONG load screen. There is sometimes a load upon menu changes, and most ridiculously, the game will need to load and hit the UMD in THE MIDDLE OF DIALOGUE, thus freezing the flow of the game for a couple of seconds.
One other problem I noticed was with collision detection, where a few times contact was clearly made, yet didn't produce a response at all. This is nothing compared to the load times, though, which mar any kind of continuous enjoyment to be had from this game.
All in all, there is some fun to be had in Mortal Kombat: Unchained, as long as you are sure not to expect more of it than what MK has always been. My recommendation is to play the Arcade Mode...during a rental.
First off, this game is a traditional arcade fighter at its core, and is best viewed - and played - as such. It includes 30 past MK combatants, and each can fight with two hand-to-hand martial arts styles, as well as wielding one weapon. There are many unique modes available in MK: Unchained, but they generally leave much to be desired. The regular arcade mode turns out to be most enjoyable of them all.
Chess Kombat is somewhat interesting, and at first reminds me a bit of Archon, from the days of the NES. First, one must put together a team of a leader, champion, sorcerer, shifter, and grunts, which will populate the game board. Then, it is simply a turn-based game, with combat occurring when opposing units meet on the same square. Bonuses are awarded for various criteria, such as initiating the attack, or holding a special square on the board, and the special units always have more health than the grunts. Also, sorcerers are able to cast spells like teleport, imprison, heal and revive. It really does sound like Archon, however, I think I'd rather play that classic over Chess Kombat.
Puzzle Kombat is another mode I found to be semi-useless. In this mode, the player participates in a Tetris-like puzzle game while miniature MK characters duke it out on the bottom of the screen. Better performance in the puzzle game translates to victory below. There is no real connection between the two, so it is simply just a puzzle game - and not a very good one.
Attempting to add another genre to this fighting game is the action/adventure story mode of sorts, called Konquest. You begin at a dojo and spend quite some time running around looking for more places to "learn." This was annoying to me. Rather than a typical training mode, you have to jump through hoops to seek out minimal fighting tips. Afterwards comes a quest that the main character must embark upon, all the while locating unlockables and collecting money to buy others later. It is similar in execution to MK: Deception, but is nothing really full-fledged. The camera is more frustrating than two consecutive stubbed toes, and in order for it to make any sense at all, you must hold down select the entire time. Finally, annoying, but not impairing, is the voice acting. It reminded me of second grade, and my classmates attempting to read a play out loud.
As stated earlier, Arcade Mode is where this game shines the most - it's the reason to play. In traditional MK fashion, a fighter is selected and must battle up the ranks to become the best. The difficulty ramps up with each opponent, and is displayed on the match-up screen between fights. What I like the most here are the fighting arenas. Many have interesting designs, such as the pirate ship with ghosts flying all around it, and most are destructible and multi-tiered. Opponents can be knocked through walls and floors, out windows and off balconies to other areas, where the fight continues. Some of the levels are even dynamic, changing throughout the round. This leaves room to incorporate the instant death hazards Unchained adds to the mix, such as falling off a platform to be impaled on a spike, or getting knocked into a piranha-filled lake. Pains of this nature feel really rewarding to inflict on an opponent, yet awful to suffer, oneself. They just look stunning, and capture the MK feel, along with the new hara-kiri finishes. Besides administering fatalities on defeated opponents, losers can now take matters into their own hands and commit seppuku, instead. It is both gruesome and graphic.
When it comes to the game's graphics, it opens up with a very attractive FMV, but takes a bit of a break afterwards. The character models are probably the most detailed aspect of the visuals, and don't look half bad. The environments that I love so much, however, are barren, with minimal detail, and suspended in a void of nothingness. There is also quite a bit of ugliness going on in Konquest mode, with some sub-par textures, clipping and pop-in. Otherwise, animations are nice and smooth, with no dips in frame rate during the most important part of the game - the fights. Basically, its lack of detail that hurts this game's visuals the most - besides the blood. Being an MK game, one can rest assured there will be plenty of blood, and as a matter of fact, it splatters all over the place and even remains on the ground for the entire fight. Nice touch.
My main gripe with this game, besides it's overwhelmingly average feeling, is its load times. Simply stated, they are HORRIBLE..and there are lots of them. Before and after every fight, there is a LONG load screen. There is sometimes a load upon menu changes, and most ridiculously, the game will need to load and hit the UMD in THE MIDDLE OF DIALOGUE, thus freezing the flow of the game for a couple of seconds.
One other problem I noticed was with collision detection, where a few times contact was clearly made, yet didn't produce a response at all. This is nothing compared to the load times, though, which mar any kind of continuous enjoyment to be had from this game.
All in all, there is some fun to be had in Mortal Kombat: Unchained, as long as you are sure not to expect more of it than what MK has always been. My recommendation is to play the Arcade Mode...during a rental.
Nov 20, 2006
The Count | Top 6 Overrated Videogames
I've had a serious bone to pick with the videogame journalism establishment since 2002. You see, the community of players and journalists is small and sometimes a bit incestuous, so it's only natural that opinions and ideas can become a little contagious. That's why we have top 10 and top 100 lists published and recited and recreated ad infinitum, each one managing a strange sort of revision of the past that has evolved into a twisted group history that everybody recalls in the first person, like it happened to them and they've felt the same from the start. So what happened in 2002? The EGM top games of all time list happened, and it's managed to screw up videogame history ever since. That's why I'm going to do my little part to set things straight. I bring you, the top 6 overrated games of all time.
Super Metroid - Back in 2002, EGM chose this as the greatest game of all time, and all of a sudden Super Metroid is universally adored. Forget that. I was alive back when it came out, I had it, I should know. There is no way in hell this is the best game of all time. Metroid was a great game, it had no glaring flaws, and was generally a strong update of the original. It added some decent but unobtrusive story elements, a few items and abilities, and great boss battles to the mix, but it was not by any stretch a drastic reenvisioning of the platformer. This is just a sequel. It's a good one, but it didn't somehow knock the planet off its axis when it came out.
When I think of the best games of all time, I think of games that actually changed something, like Super Mario 3, the single greatest game for the original NES, and the embodiment of platforming perfection. I tend to think of Tie-Fighter, a masterpiece of accessible space flight-sim mechanics, or Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So while I'm here thinking of Half-Life 2, the most playable, smoothly controlling, and brilliantly paced and evisioned story-based fps ever, or Fallout, the single greatest rpg of all time, one that an entire generation of fans want a sequel for so bad that they are willing to build it themselves, EGM came out with this Super Metroid garbage and everybody started parroting them. Sure it's a good game, but calling it the best ever is an insult to all the games that really did something new and amazing. Now I'm done with this game forever. Let's never mention it again.
Resident Evil - This game came out to good but not perfect reviews. Why? The controls were horrible, the voice acting was a joke, and the gameplay consists of the type of nonsense, do a sliding puzzle to unlock a door crap that I have prayed for years that videogames would just get past. Tacking on a random puzzle doesn't equal good gameplay. It doesn't even make sense. Nobody builds houses like that.
Resident Evil did a lot of things right. It was the first survival horror game, creating an entirely new genre. More importantly, this is the game that gave everybody that classic scare when the dogs jumped through the window. That's awesome, but the key factor here is this is a game that you enjoyed despite the poor gameplay mechanics. It deserves its place in history, but more as a brilliant idea that had its flaws than as one of the greatest videogame masterpieces of all time.
Goldeneye - This game deserves some love because it was the first fps to actually manage to be decent for the console. Congratulations. Can you hear my disinterested golf clap? In August, 1997 when Goldeneye was released, I had already been playing Duke Nukem 3D on my PC for a year and a half. I was playing without the blurry television graphics and the horribly slow and imprecise controller aiming.
Everybody lovingly remembers Goldeneye's multiplayer, and granted, it was good for a console fps, but I was already used to Doom and Duke 3D where I didn't have to split my screen. Half of the maps my friends and I played in Duke 3D were user made, good luck finding that on your N64. Even better, Duke 3D had taunts you could say to each other, holograms you could use to trick people, remote-detonating pipe bombs, the ability to shrink and stomp each other, and freaking jetpacks. In Goldeneye you couldn't even jump. So here's Goldeneye in a nutshell: great multiplayer experience for those who were horribly deprived.
Ico - People love to trot this one out and talk about games as art. It had a nice atmosphere, but all of the mystery came from the fact that nobody really talked and the storyline was basically incomprehensible. Also, everything was brown. Then, 3 hours later, your mostly acceptable gameplay experience ended. If they didn't call this art, would anybody still talk about it?
Final Fantasy 7 - Oh yes, the grand-daddy of all overrated games, Final Fantasy 7. I played it and enjoyed it, like a lot of others, but do you know why Final Fantasy 7 is really overrated? The Playstation made videogames more mainstream than ever before and Final Fantasy 7 just happened to be the first rpg that the kiddy PS-X generation happened to play. Nice, but nobody claiming this is one of the best games ever has any real street cred.
The real gamers had already played Final Fantasy 6, released as Final Fantasy 3 in the US. FF6 elevated videogame story, character development, and especially music to a brilliant new height. The world was vast and changed dramatically over the course of the game. The battle system was highly customizable and, with mastery, allowed you to effectively decimate your opponents. All of the mini-games, underwater sequences, and flight sequences started here. FF6 was the original videogame equivalent of the big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. FF7 was just an extension. Besides, Cloud was sort of a baby and the actions and development of the characters just didn't translate as well as they did in FF6, where, despite just being 2D sprites, you knew far more about the lives, feelings, and fears of your party-members than you ever did in FF7.
Diablo 2 - Last but not least, we have Diablo 2. I'm going to preface this one with a little info. I loved the original Diablo. The manual was full of brilliant satanic back-story, the music was completely incredible, and the eternal nighttime of the town, with its sparse but tortured inhabitants, combined with the increasingly horrific scenes you encountered as you returned again and again to the cursed cathedral, venturing deeper underground by yourself until you literally set foot in the pits of hell and encountered the devil himself, lent this game an enduring element of pervasive fear that only the greatest games or movies have managed to make me feel. The sheer creepiness of the catacombs, the first time you hear the soundtrack wash out to a chorus of children screaming, was maddening and amazing. Having met with and killed the devil himself, the game ends without you ever venturing beyond the town.
A little later, Diablo 2 came along to perfect the gameplay formula. But what was the formula? Clicking all over the place. A lot. Diablo 2 traded the single creepy town of the original for a number of vastly different continents that, basically, weren't that scary. Stripped of much of its dramatic tension, the game became an exercise in clicking all over the place, swinging your sword or casting your fireball at the same pallette-swapped enemies over and over, only with different names, strengths and resistances that scaled to match yours. My roommate used to run through the entire game over and over again to level his characters, gaining new equipment and abilities that amounted to absolutely nothing of lasting consequence as the enemies became more difficult to compensate. Welcome to the treadmill, before it offered even the ephemeral rewards that World of Warcraft does.
The single most interesting thing about Diablo 2 was the secondary economy that evolved around it. As the game was botted all to hell, the actual game currency devalued completely and powerful items became the new unit of currency for trade online. On the US East servers, the currency in use was the Stone of Jordan, or SOJ, that you traded other good drops to get. I believe Diablo 2 was one of the first videogames that, if you didn't get your account hacked, allowed you to generate real-world cash, something I have a sort of interesting past with. At any rate, I will talk about monetizing your online gameplay time another day. For now, all you need to know is the common game of Diablo 2 was generally an exercise in clicking from one side of the map to the other and rushing through the story objectives to get to the bosses with high-value drops. Over and over and over. That is, unless you had PindleBot doing the work for you. Then your average gameplay experience consisted of coming home, checking your loot, setting the bot again, and going out to watch a movie.
So that's my list. My beef with the videogame journalism community is finally over. Well, for now I guess. I don't really have many other overrated games. I mean, there's always 7th Saga, but nobody actually rated that grey, cartridge-shaped turd highly except Eddie, who somehow imagines that shoddy, characterless piece of crap has superior sound and graphics to all other SNES rpgs, including Final Fantasy 3 which had an ORCHESTRA. Good luck with that.
Nov 19, 2006
Wii Got It!!
Well, I did, anyway. Please take a moment to behold the un-boxing of what may be the best-packed console I've ever owned. It is sleek and lovely, and clearly bigger than 3 DVD cases.
Besides mentioning that the sensor bar is pleasingly slim and the nunchuck is really small, I will talk about this thing at a later date. For now, I'm off to put it to some good use.
Besides mentioning that the sensor bar is pleasingly slim and the nunchuck is really small, I will talk about this thing at a later date. For now, I'm off to put it to some good use.
Timeless -- Medieval II: Total War Review
It appears that Creative Assembly is unable to fail when it comes to their Total War series. Their latest effort, Medieval II: Total War, builds upon previous entries and comes out looking as solid as ever.
Being a Rome: TW fan, I was eager to try out the familiar strategy game design applied to Medieval Europe. The game officially spans the High and Late Middle Ages, years 1080-1530 C.E., but includes some content from the Dark Ages, as well.
The game includes a number of different modes to play with from the start. Single player mode offers the most options. There is a tutorial, where new players can have their hand held as they learn the ins and outs of basic gameplay, a quick battle mode, which throws you right into the action in a randomly generated, large-scale battle, and a custom battle mode, which allows the player to detail the opposing factions, battle type, time limit, time of day, terrain, and settlements involved. These two options can be implemented into multiplayer as well, either over a LAN or via Gamespy's network. Also, making its return is the historical battle section, which contains a slew of particular scenarios from conflicts throughout history, represented accurately and accompanied by a small history lesson. Who says you can't learn from video games?
In each of these modes, gameplay boils down to immense, dramatic, real-time strategy conflicts, with an emphasis on tactical maneuvering and using the various types of units optimally, to one's advantage. There are many different troops, ranging from peasant militia to armored cavalry to riflemen. The time frame involved allows for such diverse combatants, and keeps things fresh after many hours of play. It is worth noting that troops get in each other's way much more realistically now, so it is advantageous to avoid running your units into each other while trying to achieve your goals. As in Rome, Medieval II features pre-battle speeches by your army's leader. It is a really awesome touch, drawing the gamer in and upping the adrenaline to ready for combat.
The game features an apparently overhauled graphics engine, which looks great, with lush vegetation and detailed character models. On the battle screen, the range of zoom is quite large. The perspective can remain at the typical RTS level, drawn far back with wide scope and small units, or the player can zoom all the way in to witness the melee as it develops - nearly at the level of the individual warrior. At any distance, battle unfolds smoothly with little error, and anyone who is running this game on the same PC that they used for Rome will notice that Medieval seems to run more steadily during battle sequences, using similar settings.
Now, beyond the battle-centric game modes mentioned above is the meat and potatoes (spaghetti and meatballs?) of Medieval: TW - the Grand Campaign. This is the same epic affair from Rome, tweaked and re-perfected for this new piece of software. It adds multiple layers of empire-management on top of the already stellar RTS engine, in a slower-paced turn-based strategy configuration. Unfortunately and curiously, though, the grand campaign intro is horribly ugly, and matches no other part of the game. I can only think to myself, "Why?" each time I behold the sight. It is a good thing it is over quickly, and can be skipped should you begin a new campaign. Despite its slightly offending commencement, however, the grand campaign is a more than worthy piece of work, indeed.
In this mode, the goal is to guide one of the games many factions (5 of the 21 available to start) to glory by achieving particular imperialistic goals, such as wiping out key rivals and holding multiple territories. This is achieved through the careful manipulation of military and financial resources, as they apply to every aspect of your nation's operations and growth.
New to this installment of the Total War series is the inclusion of religion as a key component of a developing empire. Players must be aware of their papal standing, based on the pervasiveness of faith throughout their settlements. Building churches is always helpful, and priests can even be recruited and sent on converting missions - maybe even landing themselves in the college of cardinals. The Pope can't simply be ignored, either, because heretics are often investigated, tried and executed.
There are a few new agents available, as well, such as merchants, princesses, and more involved diplomats. The merchants are a sort of throwback to RTS games of old, and are assigned to resources on the world map, in order to generate revenue for the faction. Princesses earn the trust of other factions through marriage, and diplomats negotiate trade rights, map information, ceasefires, allegiances, etc, to make for an easier rise to power. Spies remain a part of the strategy as well, disclosing important information about opposing armies, and raising the gates of besieged settlements, so your armies can waltz right in. Newly added are the mildly funny animations accompanying their infiltration of a settlement.
The greatest difference from previous Total War games is the separation of settlements into two distinct types. There are now "town" and "castle" designations, and each serves a different purpose. Towns are primarily financial locations, and castles are military focused. The buildings available are different for each type, and go hand in hand with the aim of the settlement. Castles are able to produce more and better military units, as well as training and outfitting them, and have better defenses. Towns can be taxed through the nose, and provide more trading and population growth options. Any settlement can be converted to the other type, but it costs time and money, and certain buildings are destroyed upon conversion.
One last refinement to the overworld management is that recruitment of troops is severely limited this time around. There is no such thing as a rich emperor producing a town full of heavy cavalry (my favorite strategy in Rome). In Medieval II, the buildings and their level of development provide set amounts of recruitment availability for each type of unit. To increase the number of recruits available, existing structures can be upgraded, or new buildings can be added to accommodate, and to gain recruitment slots for the entire settlement, it must be taken to its next stage, as well.
At this point, I'm not sure whether I think the settlement dichotomy or the recruitment system are improvements on an underdeveloped system or simply complications and annoyances added to something that wasn't broken to begin with. Either way, they are in implementation, and require more focused attention to see your empire flourish. There will simply be more time spent doing so. Add this to the agonizingly long AI turns, and you have a slow-going endeavor on your hands. (Luckily, the AI turn can be avoided in the options menu)
Other than the aforementioned, the game remains largely the same as its predecessor. The GUI is very similar, but with a visual theme relevant to the era. The various screens are relatively unchanged, and the gameplay mechanics of managing the settlements is completely familiar. A nice adjustment, though is the option to make HUD less intrusive, allowing for greater viewable area.
Gameplay during the grand campaign can be slow but is still terribly addictive. Players will easily fall victim to the "one more round" syndrome that I am personally afflicted with, and might also find themselves flying through the rounds in the early stages just to gain a foothold. The financial game is the most oppressive aspect, and scrounging for every penny is not uncommon - until your army is somewhat powerful, that is. At that point, military prowess = financial success, and money becomes more plentiful as you conquer more territory. The old adage "it's good to be the king" comes to mind.
Overall, Medieval II: Total War is an excellent real-time/turn-based strategy experience and definitely worth a look, if not a sure-fire purchase. It sometimes lacks the utterly epic feel of Rome, but manages to change the formula just enough to create a deeper venture than ever before.
Being a Rome: TW fan, I was eager to try out the familiar strategy game design applied to Medieval Europe. The game officially spans the High and Late Middle Ages, years 1080-1530 C.E., but includes some content from the Dark Ages, as well.
The game includes a number of different modes to play with from the start. Single player mode offers the most options. There is a tutorial, where new players can have their hand held as they learn the ins and outs of basic gameplay, a quick battle mode, which throws you right into the action in a randomly generated, large-scale battle, and a custom battle mode, which allows the player to detail the opposing factions, battle type, time limit, time of day, terrain, and settlements involved. These two options can be implemented into multiplayer as well, either over a LAN or via Gamespy's network. Also, making its return is the historical battle section, which contains a slew of particular scenarios from conflicts throughout history, represented accurately and accompanied by a small history lesson. Who says you can't learn from video games?
In each of these modes, gameplay boils down to immense, dramatic, real-time strategy conflicts, with an emphasis on tactical maneuvering and using the various types of units optimally, to one's advantage. There are many different troops, ranging from peasant militia to armored cavalry to riflemen. The time frame involved allows for such diverse combatants, and keeps things fresh after many hours of play. It is worth noting that troops get in each other's way much more realistically now, so it is advantageous to avoid running your units into each other while trying to achieve your goals. As in Rome, Medieval II features pre-battle speeches by your army's leader. It is a really awesome touch, drawing the gamer in and upping the adrenaline to ready for combat.
The game features an apparently overhauled graphics engine, which looks great, with lush vegetation and detailed character models. On the battle screen, the range of zoom is quite large. The perspective can remain at the typical RTS level, drawn far back with wide scope and small units, or the player can zoom all the way in to witness the melee as it develops - nearly at the level of the individual warrior. At any distance, battle unfolds smoothly with little error, and anyone who is running this game on the same PC that they used for Rome will notice that Medieval seems to run more steadily during battle sequences, using similar settings.
Now, beyond the battle-centric game modes mentioned above is the meat and potatoes (spaghetti and meatballs?) of Medieval: TW - the Grand Campaign. This is the same epic affair from Rome, tweaked and re-perfected for this new piece of software. It adds multiple layers of empire-management on top of the already stellar RTS engine, in a slower-paced turn-based strategy configuration. Unfortunately and curiously, though, the grand campaign intro is horribly ugly, and matches no other part of the game. I can only think to myself, "Why?" each time I behold the sight. It is a good thing it is over quickly, and can be skipped should you begin a new campaign. Despite its slightly offending commencement, however, the grand campaign is a more than worthy piece of work, indeed.
In this mode, the goal is to guide one of the games many factions (5 of the 21 available to start) to glory by achieving particular imperialistic goals, such as wiping out key rivals and holding multiple territories. This is achieved through the careful manipulation of military and financial resources, as they apply to every aspect of your nation's operations and growth.
New to this installment of the Total War series is the inclusion of religion as a key component of a developing empire. Players must be aware of their papal standing, based on the pervasiveness of faith throughout their settlements. Building churches is always helpful, and priests can even be recruited and sent on converting missions - maybe even landing themselves in the college of cardinals. The Pope can't simply be ignored, either, because heretics are often investigated, tried and executed.
There are a few new agents available, as well, such as merchants, princesses, and more involved diplomats. The merchants are a sort of throwback to RTS games of old, and are assigned to resources on the world map, in order to generate revenue for the faction. Princesses earn the trust of other factions through marriage, and diplomats negotiate trade rights, map information, ceasefires, allegiances, etc, to make for an easier rise to power. Spies remain a part of the strategy as well, disclosing important information about opposing armies, and raising the gates of besieged settlements, so your armies can waltz right in. Newly added are the mildly funny animations accompanying their infiltration of a settlement.
The greatest difference from previous Total War games is the separation of settlements into two distinct types. There are now "town" and "castle" designations, and each serves a different purpose. Towns are primarily financial locations, and castles are military focused. The buildings available are different for each type, and go hand in hand with the aim of the settlement. Castles are able to produce more and better military units, as well as training and outfitting them, and have better defenses. Towns can be taxed through the nose, and provide more trading and population growth options. Any settlement can be converted to the other type, but it costs time and money, and certain buildings are destroyed upon conversion.
One last refinement to the overworld management is that recruitment of troops is severely limited this time around. There is no such thing as a rich emperor producing a town full of heavy cavalry (my favorite strategy in Rome). In Medieval II, the buildings and their level of development provide set amounts of recruitment availability for each type of unit. To increase the number of recruits available, existing structures can be upgraded, or new buildings can be added to accommodate, and to gain recruitment slots for the entire settlement, it must be taken to its next stage, as well.
At this point, I'm not sure whether I think the settlement dichotomy or the recruitment system are improvements on an underdeveloped system or simply complications and annoyances added to something that wasn't broken to begin with. Either way, they are in implementation, and require more focused attention to see your empire flourish. There will simply be more time spent doing so. Add this to the agonizingly long AI turns, and you have a slow-going endeavor on your hands. (Luckily, the AI turn can be avoided in the options menu)
Other than the aforementioned, the game remains largely the same as its predecessor. The GUI is very similar, but with a visual theme relevant to the era. The various screens are relatively unchanged, and the gameplay mechanics of managing the settlements is completely familiar. A nice adjustment, though is the option to make HUD less intrusive, allowing for greater viewable area.
Gameplay during the grand campaign can be slow but is still terribly addictive. Players will easily fall victim to the "one more round" syndrome that I am personally afflicted with, and might also find themselves flying through the rounds in the early stages just to gain a foothold. The financial game is the most oppressive aspect, and scrounging for every penny is not uncommon - until your army is somewhat powerful, that is. At that point, military prowess = financial success, and money becomes more plentiful as you conquer more territory. The old adage "it's good to be the king" comes to mind.
Overall, Medieval II: Total War is an excellent real-time/turn-based strategy experience and definitely worth a look, if not a sure-fire purchase. It sometimes lacks the utterly epic feel of Rome, but manages to change the formula just enough to create a deeper venture than ever before.
Rumble | Microsoft Versus Mac
It's that time of the week again - it is time to submit our combatants to the perils of Google's digital colosseum, and await the bloody results. This week, the battle will be between Microsoft, in blue, and Mac, in red.
It has been decided. Microsoft wins. You can run the trend search for yourself here
Microsoft has held the upper hand for some time now, but Apple is certainly on the rise. We shall see what the next generation of OS brings, with Vista just around the corner, and Apple always pushing to create their best possible product.
It has been decided. Microsoft wins. You can run the trend search for yourself here
Microsoft has held the upper hand for some time now, but Apple is certainly on the rise. We shall see what the next generation of OS brings, with Vista just around the corner, and Apple always pushing to create their best possible product.
Nov 18, 2006
Zelda: Twilight Princess Discussion
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Brian: F*** the Super Mario games already. F*** Mario! He's not an interesting character he appeals to f***ing little kids, mainly, I guess. I dunno who he even appeals to. Self respecting adults see Mario and think they want to play? I can't picture that. Your Nintendo love may make you unobjective. Is there any way you could ever talk s*** about the new Zelda? I mean, you loved Wind Waker right?
Eddie: I liked it, but it needed more to it. More dungeons, and less sailing.
Brian: Do you ever think to yourself, "Hmm, rehash of Ocarina of Time?" F*** it.
Eddie: Well, yeah. I think 3D action-adventure game based on dungeon exploration and completion, slight puzzle solving.
Brian: What you should really be thinking is, alright, more of this Zelda s***. The same story is rehashed every time with slight variation.
Eddie: But the thing is..."this Zelda s***" is fun.
Brian: Blah, blah. Triforce every time; successive dungeons to get you a boomerang, hookshot, bottles, etc - the same weapons every time. If it's basically enjoyable, that's cool, but nothing is basically enjoyable after 3 rehashes, or 4 or 5 or whatever. I don't play Tony Hawk anymore
Eddie: Yeah, I understand, however, Zelda is a game that has a slight plot to it.
Brian: The same plot, slightly different.
Eddie: Yes, the same damn plot, in general, but it has a new world to explore each time.
Brian: A new world offering many of the same elements and challenges over and over.
Eddie: But still different
Brian: Not by much
Eddie: Right, there always seems to be just enough added to keep it familiar but at the same time, fresh. Maybe not in the case of Majora's Mask.
Brian: Ocarina was good. It was taking it to 3D. Cool. But Wind Waker and Twilight Princess? They're still just 3D - nothing drastically new. WW has a boat...
Eddie: Well, they're not going to be f***ing 4D, are they?
Brian: Yeah, but they need to move to the next level - the new gameplay paradigm - and the Wii-mote isn't that for TP. It was made for GameCube.
Eddie: Right, nobody could use that as a defense. It is mapping. Map to button, map to gesture - same idea. Well, the boomerang and bow are done up well.
Brian: I was sort of getting excited but then I realized something... I sort of wasn't so much. Like, "wow a new Zelda, I should care about this," but my heart is black, Eddie, black as night.
Eddie: I know, I know.
Brian: Black as a brick of coal under a bridge at night. I have no love for anything, except for what is purely fun and awesome.
Eddie: Put a little love in there, Brian.
Brian: I won't give a game love that doesn't deserve it. I am the best reviewer this world will ever see, because I don't give a damn.
Eddie: And I won't try too hard to defend a game I have yet to play.
Brian: I will destroy it for you, so you can't enjoy it, hahahaha. I will make you see every flaw, till even the games you love most are horrible.
Eddie: Well, I can use history as an indicator. I enjoyed the previous Zelda games, so the newest iteration is expected to please.
Brian: I enjoyed 3 of them. Zelda 2 ate s***, Wind Waker just couldn't hold my interest at all - I just didnt care - and TP looks like an Ocarina upgrade.
Eddie: Well, even if it doesn't impress, at least it will make for an enjoyable time. Of that, I can be certain.
Nov 17, 2006
PS3 Launch Day Adventure: The Eddie Chronicles
If you were wondering where I've been lately, then have I got a story for you. What fun I've been having! I feel like a child on his first visit to the dentis- I mean, Disneyland...
My Wednesday evening began with a call from my sister around 6pm, informing me of the lines developing at the Walmart in my hometown. This was startling news, as I hadn't anticipated TWO nights of pure endurance, and wasn't yet prepared to embark on this crazy journey. The journey, of course, was to acquire my very own PS3.
So I readied myself for the quest, and armed with a bag full of food, clothes, a tent, a sleeping bag, and my trusty spiral notebook, I set out to the nearest Walmart store. Too late - the six PS3s allotted to that store were already spoken for. A resourceful group had pitched a tarp pavilion and were lounging comfortably with collapsible chairs and copious amounts of blankets. They even had two portable DVD players set up, along with plenty of food to ration. I bid them a fond farewell and pressed onward.
The next stop was the Walmart Supercenter in Central Square, where I was greeted by the lovely sight of multiple tents and more lounge chairs. There were certainly more people than PS3s here, so I departed discreetly. The Walmart in Clay, NY was just the same, so I decided to stop and speak to a few queuers in hopes of scraping up some info on good waiting sites. One of them recommended Best Buy. Thanks Captain Obvious. I knew that Toys R Us was only slated to receive enough units to cover their preorders, so I eschewed that store on my way to Target. As I tried to attract the attention of the night staffer, I was approached by a couple of guys with the same intent as myself. They educated me about Target's plan to allow a line to form beginning at 10pm Thursday night, and said they were headed for the Carousel Mall in Syracuse. It was only 2am at this point, so I opted to follow a similar path.
Upon my arrival at the shopping center, I was fortunate enough to encounter a security guard who I could only describe as a particular human orifice. He sent me away, citing the mall's policy to keep everyone off the premises until 5am. A handful of cars were running laps around the exterior of the mall parking lot, but I spent my time eating bagels at the nearby bus station.
As 5:00 drew near, people came out in droves to line up at the mall doors. Security guards shouted orders to stay back while the mob approached as a collective unit. One sneaky teenager hid behind a column adjacent to one set of doors, but was quickly exposed by a few vociferous consumers. Finally, the guards remitted, and the crowd stormed the entrance, only to remain in wait for another hour, when the doors were to be opened. It was to be a race to the far end of the mall, where Best Buy and Circuit City silently waited.
What a race it was! When the doors opened, everyone crammed forcefully through and scrambled up static escalators, scattered through the food court, and sprinted down corridors to their retail outlet of choice. Best Buy was further away, but attracted more crazed customers, due to a higher projected stock of the elusive PS3. Soon after the pandemonium had abated, the shouting of men looking for someone who threw a garbage can down the escalator set the mood for a possible UFC-style throwdown. Somehow, the perpetrator was never found, and things calmed again, but the event had certainly seen its fair share of bumps, bruises and sprained ankles. I overheard tales of dropped phones, lost keys, and one case of a wad of money being deftly swiped off the ground, mid-stride. Unfortunately, being that I was wearing boots and carrying a duffel bag, I only managed to earn 40th place in the race for 35 consoles. It was somewhat disappointing, but there were still many establishments to consider, and I was off yet again.
I headed to the Best Buy in DeWitt, where operations were much more civil. There was a line--that's all. The group had organized itself in a methodical, peaceful fashion, and did a much better job than the "ready, set, go" approach the mall had taken. Of course, all the spots were taken here, as well.
Feeling slightly defeated, I returned to the Target store in Clay, where the pair I had met there earlier were waiting in their car. They had decided to work in opposition to Target's plan for a repeat of the mall parking lot, and had a list prepared with their names on it. I put my name down as well, and jumped in my car for a bit of a nap. It was 8am, and I had yet to sleep.
By the time I woke up, it was 10, and another car had arrived. Looking around, I noticed everyone else was in dreamland within their vehicles. I took the opportunity to visit a nearby EB Games, where the sales associate was quick to tell my why the PS3 was so amazing and why Sony would easily win the console race again. I left the store with a magazine.
"The list" endured until later in the afternoon, with 12 names on it. That just so happened to be the very number of consoles this particular store was slated to receive, although we didn't know that at the time. The group was very peaceful and friendly - the way it should be when gamers come together like this. Everyone stood by the list and was prepared to honor it, whether they were first or last in line. However, disaster struck when we had our first meeting with the store managers. We were informed that our list held no value, and that the original plan to begin a line after the store closed at 10pm still stood. People waiting since the morning held NO priority. I tried my best to apply my keen skills in diplomacy, offering up explanations of why this avenue would be unfavorable, and suggesting solutions to remedy the situation, but to no avail.
Around 3pm the police were invited to join in the discussion, and the party was soon disbanded.
The parking lot filled to capacity sometime around 7pm, and a repeat of the Carousel Mall began to slowly materialize. By 8:30, a raucous gang had taken shape directly across from the store entrance, inching ever closer. The group was beaten back by the manager's threats, and by cars driving down the roadway everyone was standing in. At one point, complaining about the obstructed thoroughfares and hindered business, he even eloquently shouted, "...I hope you people beat each other to death!" What a nice guy!
Eventually the police were called back, and I couldn't help but have strange feelings of Deja Vu, and tried to recall whether I had predicted the events leading up to the riot at the doors. I decided that I had.
In the last minutes before 10pm another employee had taken over the responsibility of holding back the looming peristyle of flesh, but as they encroached upon his position, it seemed he just couldn't handle it, and suddenly shouted, "OK, the line starts right here, right now!" There was a terrible dogpile and many people were crushed, either between others or up against the brick wall. Yes, the store was still open.
After the line was finally sorted out with the help of a few state troopers, the number of consoles was announced (a paltry 12), and everyone else was sent home. I managed to ask a few unfortunate shoppers how they felt about the whole situation, now that it was over and they hadn't secured a spot on line.
"This is bulls***! I think they handled this horribly." -Jeb
"I got yolked." -Chad
I was also able to speak with one lucky gamer who had emerged victorious. I asked if it was worth it, now that all was said and done. His reply:
"F***ING HELL YEAH!! I never thought I'd be one of 200,000 in the country [to get a PS3 at launch], so YEAH!"
There you have it. The PS3 launch was an enormously popular event, where individual cases ranged from peaceful and pleasant pow-wows to savage and unsafe scenes of chaos. We can only hope that as few people as possible were seriously injured during the proceedings, and that Sony will keep their collective nose to the grindstone and churn out more of these systems... soon.
My Wednesday evening began with a call from my sister around 6pm, informing me of the lines developing at the Walmart in my hometown. This was startling news, as I hadn't anticipated TWO nights of pure endurance, and wasn't yet prepared to embark on this crazy journey. The journey, of course, was to acquire my very own PS3.
So I readied myself for the quest, and armed with a bag full of food, clothes, a tent, a sleeping bag, and my trusty spiral notebook, I set out to the nearest Walmart store. Too late - the six PS3s allotted to that store were already spoken for. A resourceful group had pitched a tarp pavilion and were lounging comfortably with collapsible chairs and copious amounts of blankets. They even had two portable DVD players set up, along with plenty of food to ration. I bid them a fond farewell and pressed onward.
The next stop was the Walmart Supercenter in Central Square, where I was greeted by the lovely sight of multiple tents and more lounge chairs. There were certainly more people than PS3s here, so I departed discreetly. The Walmart in Clay, NY was just the same, so I decided to stop and speak to a few queuers in hopes of scraping up some info on good waiting sites. One of them recommended Best Buy. Thanks Captain Obvious. I knew that Toys R Us was only slated to receive enough units to cover their preorders, so I eschewed that store on my way to Target. As I tried to attract the attention of the night staffer, I was approached by a couple of guys with the same intent as myself. They educated me about Target's plan to allow a line to form beginning at 10pm Thursday night, and said they were headed for the Carousel Mall in Syracuse. It was only 2am at this point, so I opted to follow a similar path.
Upon my arrival at the shopping center, I was fortunate enough to encounter a security guard who I could only describe as a particular human orifice. He sent me away, citing the mall's policy to keep everyone off the premises until 5am. A handful of cars were running laps around the exterior of the mall parking lot, but I spent my time eating bagels at the nearby bus station.
As 5:00 drew near, people came out in droves to line up at the mall doors. Security guards shouted orders to stay back while the mob approached as a collective unit. One sneaky teenager hid behind a column adjacent to one set of doors, but was quickly exposed by a few vociferous consumers. Finally, the guards remitted, and the crowd stormed the entrance, only to remain in wait for another hour, when the doors were to be opened. It was to be a race to the far end of the mall, where Best Buy and Circuit City silently waited.
What a race it was! When the doors opened, everyone crammed forcefully through and scrambled up static escalators, scattered through the food court, and sprinted down corridors to their retail outlet of choice. Best Buy was further away, but attracted more crazed customers, due to a higher projected stock of the elusive PS3. Soon after the pandemonium had abated, the shouting of men looking for someone who threw a garbage can down the escalator set the mood for a possible UFC-style throwdown. Somehow, the perpetrator was never found, and things calmed again, but the event had certainly seen its fair share of bumps, bruises and sprained ankles. I overheard tales of dropped phones, lost keys, and one case of a wad of money being deftly swiped off the ground, mid-stride. Unfortunately, being that I was wearing boots and carrying a duffel bag, I only managed to earn 40th place in the race for 35 consoles. It was somewhat disappointing, but there were still many establishments to consider, and I was off yet again.
I headed to the Best Buy in DeWitt, where operations were much more civil. There was a line--that's all. The group had organized itself in a methodical, peaceful fashion, and did a much better job than the "ready, set, go" approach the mall had taken. Of course, all the spots were taken here, as well.
Feeling slightly defeated, I returned to the Target store in Clay, where the pair I had met there earlier were waiting in their car. They had decided to work in opposition to Target's plan for a repeat of the mall parking lot, and had a list prepared with their names on it. I put my name down as well, and jumped in my car for a bit of a nap. It was 8am, and I had yet to sleep.
By the time I woke up, it was 10, and another car had arrived. Looking around, I noticed everyone else was in dreamland within their vehicles. I took the opportunity to visit a nearby EB Games, where the sales associate was quick to tell my why the PS3 was so amazing and why Sony would easily win the console race again. I left the store with a magazine.
"The list" endured until later in the afternoon, with 12 names on it. That just so happened to be the very number of consoles this particular store was slated to receive, although we didn't know that at the time. The group was very peaceful and friendly - the way it should be when gamers come together like this. Everyone stood by the list and was prepared to honor it, whether they were first or last in line. However, disaster struck when we had our first meeting with the store managers. We were informed that our list held no value, and that the original plan to begin a line after the store closed at 10pm still stood. People waiting since the morning held NO priority. I tried my best to apply my keen skills in diplomacy, offering up explanations of why this avenue would be unfavorable, and suggesting solutions to remedy the situation, but to no avail.
Around 3pm the police were invited to join in the discussion, and the party was soon disbanded.
The parking lot filled to capacity sometime around 7pm, and a repeat of the Carousel Mall began to slowly materialize. By 8:30, a raucous gang had taken shape directly across from the store entrance, inching ever closer. The group was beaten back by the manager's threats, and by cars driving down the roadway everyone was standing in. At one point, complaining about the obstructed thoroughfares and hindered business, he even eloquently shouted, "...I hope you people beat each other to death!" What a nice guy!
Eventually the police were called back, and I couldn't help but have strange feelings of Deja Vu, and tried to recall whether I had predicted the events leading up to the riot at the doors. I decided that I had.
In the last minutes before 10pm another employee had taken over the responsibility of holding back the looming peristyle of flesh, but as they encroached upon his position, it seemed he just couldn't handle it, and suddenly shouted, "OK, the line starts right here, right now!" There was a terrible dogpile and many people were crushed, either between others or up against the brick wall. Yes, the store was still open.
After the line was finally sorted out with the help of a few state troopers, the number of consoles was announced (a paltry 12), and everyone else was sent home. I managed to ask a few unfortunate shoppers how they felt about the whole situation, now that it was over and they hadn't secured a spot on line.
"This is bulls***! I think they handled this horribly." -Jeb
"I got yolked." -Chad
I was also able to speak with one lucky gamer who had emerged victorious. I asked if it was worth it, now that all was said and done. His reply:
"F***ING HELL YEAH!! I never thought I'd be one of 200,000 in the country [to get a PS3 at launch], so YEAH!"
There you have it. The PS3 launch was an enormously popular event, where individual cases ranged from peaceful and pleasant pow-wows to savage and unsafe scenes of chaos. We can only hope that as few people as possible were seriously injured during the proceedings, and that Sony will keep their collective nose to the grindstone and churn out more of these systems... soon.
Nov 14, 2006
Gamers Grow Up: Taking Back Videogames
Up until now, videogames have been relegated to a sort of ghetto of artistic expression. Parent groups and sensationalist quasi-activists like Jack Thompson constantly remind us that games are for children, and the industry must be regulated in some sort of bizarre prohibition for the digital age. To them, videogames are not a legitimate arena for expression and first amendment laws do not apply. It's time we did something about that.
Retaking Videogames
We are the first generation to have grown up playing videogames our entire lives. From Atari to Nintendo and on down through the years, gaming has just been a fact of our existence. To us, videogames are nothing new, and we continue to play them as we get older. At this point, the majority of active gamers are over the age of 25, it is only economics that games will increasingly be designed for and sold to us, the adult gamers. So why is it that an opportunist like Jack Thompson can wield the power to incite a public backlash against a game that takes on adult subject matter even when it is marketted as such?
Perhaps it is because the word videogame itself is perceived solely as the domain of children. As Doug Lowenstein, the chairman of the Electronic Software Association, or the ESA, the group that represents the game industry, believes. In a recent keynote address, Lowenstein argued that videogames would be taken more seriously if they were called something more serious, like entertainment software. A name is just a name, but he may have a point. It is not the reality of games so much as the perception of them that has made them a target. Whether it is that simple to just call them something else, though, is another matter. There are other points in the debate that require addressing.
A Game By Any Other Name...
The argument about games being art is an old one, but we need to move past it. Art is just a word, with a lot of associated meanings. Ask people to define the word art, and you will probably get as many separate answers as people. Likewise, people can think of games however they so choose. One thing that is not debateable however, is the fact that games are a way of telling stories and conveying ideas. Different from books, tv, or movies, games empower the gamer, so the actual story is a collaboration between the developer and the player, but this in no way lessens the value of the message you take from it. If anything, it increases it. Whether or not games fit into an arbitrarily defined framework of art is irrelevant. As a medium of expression, the same first amendment rights should be extended to videogames.
Similarly, the impact of violent videogames on developing children has no place in this debate. Even the famous study that Jack Thompson frequently cites uses the language "violent media." Violent media includes television and movies, and is not limited to videogames. Nobody protests when an R-rated movie is released, regardless of whether or not the violence depicted therein may endanger young minds. It would be absurd to do so. Movies are made for and marketted to adults and children separately. There is no reason why videogames should be handled any differently.
How to Fight Back
The debate for what is accepable in videogames is ongoing, but we can't win if we don't participate. The lack of a powerful videogame lobby group makes us an easy target, politically. The ESA has time and again proven insufficient to combat the alarmism and widespread misinformation surrounding videogames. Parents and newscasters have been making outright incorrect statements publically, saying things like in Bully you play as a bully yourself, or that you are able to injure teachers. The public uproar surrounding Bully characterizes where the ESA falls short. The ESA's response to these blatantly wrong statements was minimal. A proper lobbying organization would have, at the very least, gone on the air correcting these statements. Where the ESA should have been working to reform this negative image, publicizing the actual facts, and making attempts to connect with and calm concerned parents, it was doing nothing. Either the ESA requires further funding from its members, primarily large game publishers, or a secondary lobby should be established.
One of those things has already happened. The Entertainment Consumer's Association, or the ECA, was founded recently to act as the voice of gamers such as ourselves. It is a non-profit advocacy group devoted to providing us some political protection as consumers. On the site, you can learn which states have game censorship legislation in progress and which politicians are sponsoring that legislation. The goal of the ECA is to let those politicians know that gamers are an enormous body of voters that care about keeping videogames protected by laws of free speech. You can join the ECA for about $20 as well, which gets you some extras like free issues of EGM and the positive feeling that you have done something to help keep videogames free.
It is important to note that the ESRB, the ratings system run by the ESA, has come under fire as well since the Hot Coffee mod as being insufficient to properly rate games and inform consumers. Despite this, it is arguably better for the ESRB to remain in place, as the alternative would be a rating system imposed from outside of the game industry, allowing a political group to force game developers to alter their content to get better ratings, similar to the MPAA in Hollywood.
The Moral of the Story
Even though videogame censorship advocates like Jack Thompson didn't succeed in getting Bully pulled from store shelves in the United States, they have succeeded in making videogame violence a serious issue. In many different states, there are new laws regulating and outlawing the sale of certain games, the first step in the road to more severe forms of censorship. In Britain, Bully has been pulled from the shelves of several large retailers, despite actually being relatively non-violent. If we are going to avoid the same fate, we, as the first generation to grow up playing videogames, must take responsibility.
We are the first generation to have grown up playing videogames our entire lives. From Atari to Nintendo and on down through the years, gaming has just been a fact of our existence. To us, videogames are nothing new, and we continue to play them as we get older. At this point, the majority of active gamers are over the age of 25, it is only economics that games will increasingly be designed for and sold to us, the adult gamers. So why is it that an opportunist like Jack Thompson can wield the power to incite a public backlash against a game that takes on adult subject matter even when it is marketted as such?
Perhaps it is because the word videogame itself is perceived solely as the domain of children. As Doug Lowenstein, the chairman of the Electronic Software Association, or the ESA, the group that represents the game industry, believes. In a recent keynote address, Lowenstein argued that videogames would be taken more seriously if they were called something more serious, like entertainment software. A name is just a name, but he may have a point. It is not the reality of games so much as the perception of them that has made them a target. Whether it is that simple to just call them something else, though, is another matter. There are other points in the debate that require addressing.
The argument about games being art is an old one, but we need to move past it. Art is just a word, with a lot of associated meanings. Ask people to define the word art, and you will probably get as many separate answers as people. Likewise, people can think of games however they so choose. One thing that is not debateable however, is the fact that games are a way of telling stories and conveying ideas. Different from books, tv, or movies, games empower the gamer, so the actual story is a collaboration between the developer and the player, but this in no way lessens the value of the message you take from it. If anything, it increases it. Whether or not games fit into an arbitrarily defined framework of art is irrelevant. As a medium of expression, the same first amendment rights should be extended to videogames.
Similarly, the impact of violent videogames on developing children has no place in this debate. Even the famous study that Jack Thompson frequently cites uses the language "violent media." Violent media includes television and movies, and is not limited to videogames. Nobody protests when an R-rated movie is released, regardless of whether or not the violence depicted therein may endanger young minds. It would be absurd to do so. Movies are made for and marketted to adults and children separately. There is no reason why videogames should be handled any differently.
The debate for what is accepable in videogames is ongoing, but we can't win if we don't participate. The lack of a powerful videogame lobby group makes us an easy target, politically. The ESA has time and again proven insufficient to combat the alarmism and widespread misinformation surrounding videogames. Parents and newscasters have been making outright incorrect statements publically, saying things like in Bully you play as a bully yourself, or that you are able to injure teachers. The public uproar surrounding Bully characterizes where the ESA falls short. The ESA's response to these blatantly wrong statements was minimal. A proper lobbying organization would have, at the very least, gone on the air correcting these statements. Where the ESA should have been working to reform this negative image, publicizing the actual facts, and making attempts to connect with and calm concerned parents, it was doing nothing. Either the ESA requires further funding from its members, primarily large game publishers, or a secondary lobby should be established.
One of those things has already happened. The Entertainment Consumer's Association, or the ECA, was founded recently to act as the voice of gamers such as ourselves. It is a non-profit advocacy group devoted to providing us some political protection as consumers. On the site, you can learn which states have game censorship legislation in progress and which politicians are sponsoring that legislation. The goal of the ECA is to let those politicians know that gamers are an enormous body of voters that care about keeping videogames protected by laws of free speech. You can join the ECA for about $20 as well, which gets you some extras like free issues of EGM and the positive feeling that you have done something to help keep videogames free.
It is important to note that the ESRB, the ratings system run by the ESA, has come under fire as well since the Hot Coffee mod as being insufficient to properly rate games and inform consumers. Despite this, it is arguably better for the ESRB to remain in place, as the alternative would be a rating system imposed from outside of the game industry, allowing a political group to force game developers to alter their content to get better ratings, similar to the MPAA in Hollywood.
Even though videogame censorship advocates like Jack Thompson didn't succeed in getting Bully pulled from store shelves in the United States, they have succeeded in making videogame violence a serious issue. In many different states, there are new laws regulating and outlawing the sale of certain games, the first step in the road to more severe forms of censorship. In Britain, Bully has been pulled from the shelves of several large retailers, despite actually being relatively non-violent. If we are going to avoid the same fate, we, as the first generation to grow up playing videogames, must take responsibility.
Nov 13, 2006
System Launch
As the highly anticipated launch days of the PS3 and Wii draw nearer, the gaming community is reaching fever pitch. Internet buzz is overwhelming, as anyone with gaming RSS feeds can attest to. Personally, I'm getting exhausted trying to keep up with reading all the incoming news.
This all makes me wonder. What, honestly, is so great about new system launches? Why is it that everyone goes absolutely apeshit over events such as these?
Launch Day
So, on launch day of any new console, there is a mass exodus from cozy homes across the nation. The rate of attendance to schools and places of business sees a sharp decline, and later, electricity usage spikes in unusual fashion. These are the days, usually in the cold months of late autumn, when adoring fans of electronic entertainment descend upon retail establishments in an inundation of nerd-speak, historical discussions, storytelling, and general fanboyism. Do I mock this custom? Yes. Am I guilty of participation? No comment...
The problem with this design is that it is a horribly uncomfortable experience until the hardware is actually secured and whisked away from the madness. The mob of consumers stand, sit, or lay out in the cold, invariably for many hours, and often overnight. Here in New York, the usual equips consist of multiple sweatshirts and pants, gloves, hats, facemasks, blankets, sleeping bags, fold-out chairs, and of course, tents. This is not even taking into account the basic needs of nourishment and electronic stimulation, often in the form of junk food - the kind that makes one nauseous after heavy consumption - and one or more hand-held game systems. Fingers and toes go numb first, with the rest of the body following in a centripetal fashion, until ice feels strangely warm.
Doors open, chaos ensues, and everyone is happy. Or crying...or in the hospital...
Spoils of War
So what is the reward for this trial of stiff joints, streaming (and steaming) tears and frozen boogers? A shiny new console! With...a game...maybe. "What do you mean, Eddie? Launch games are awesome!"
Yes, you refer to the multitude of awesome new games available on launch day. I don't think so. History (and GameRankings) shows us that launch titles have an average critical rating hovering somewhere right around 7.5 out of 10. This, if you haven't noticed from today's review trends, is a score more realistically approximating a 50% on a 100 point scale. (I will discuss this topic at a later date, rest assured)
Generally, there are one or two good games at launch, and as such, not much of a selection for everyone's varying tastes. Gamers are almost compelled to get that "good game" at launch, even if it's something they might not be particularly interested in down the road, when there are more alternatives available. Also, people are often more willing to settle for substandard games, just to have SOMETHING to play. Then there's the subsequent drought of quality titles, which is just plain disheartening. It's really not until later on in the life-cycle of a console that the really good pieces of software show up, and the first few months after launch are the loneliest.
The Future
So, I return to my original query... What, honestly, is so great about new system launches?
I contend that the excitement is the result of expectation. There is a promise of the future - of what is to come. We are excited for the implications of a new product, and a new platform. Thoughts of new opportunities and experiences float through our minds as we brave the bitter winds and dark nights on a quest to procure our prize. So even if your glistening bounty breaks in the first week (which it very well may), or if you find yourself lost in a void where no new games dare tread, think of the future, and all the theoretical fun you will one day enjoy.
This all makes me wonder. What, honestly, is so great about new system launches? Why is it that everyone goes absolutely apeshit over events such as these?
Launch Day
So, on launch day of any new console, there is a mass exodus from cozy homes across the nation. The rate of attendance to schools and places of business sees a sharp decline, and later, electricity usage spikes in unusual fashion. These are the days, usually in the cold months of late autumn, when adoring fans of electronic entertainment descend upon retail establishments in an inundation of nerd-speak, historical discussions, storytelling, and general fanboyism. Do I mock this custom? Yes. Am I guilty of participation? No comment...
The problem with this design is that it is a horribly uncomfortable experience until the hardware is actually secured and whisked away from the madness. The mob of consumers stand, sit, or lay out in the cold, invariably for many hours, and often overnight. Here in New York, the usual equips consist of multiple sweatshirts and pants, gloves, hats, facemasks, blankets, sleeping bags, fold-out chairs, and of course, tents. This is not even taking into account the basic needs of nourishment and electronic stimulation, often in the form of junk food - the kind that makes one nauseous after heavy consumption - and one or more hand-held game systems. Fingers and toes go numb first, with the rest of the body following in a centripetal fashion, until ice feels strangely warm.
Doors open, chaos ensues, and everyone is happy. Or crying...or in the hospital...
Spoils of War
So what is the reward for this trial of stiff joints, streaming (and steaming) tears and frozen boogers? A shiny new console! With...a game...maybe. "What do you mean, Eddie? Launch games are awesome!"
Yes, you refer to the multitude of awesome new games available on launch day. I don't think so. History (and GameRankings) shows us that launch titles have an average critical rating hovering somewhere right around 7.5 out of 10. This, if you haven't noticed from today's review trends, is a score more realistically approximating a 50% on a 100 point scale. (I will discuss this topic at a later date, rest assured)
Generally, there are one or two good games at launch, and as such, not much of a selection for everyone's varying tastes. Gamers are almost compelled to get that "good game" at launch, even if it's something they might not be particularly interested in down the road, when there are more alternatives available. Also, people are often more willing to settle for substandard games, just to have SOMETHING to play. Then there's the subsequent drought of quality titles, which is just plain disheartening. It's really not until later on in the life-cycle of a console that the really good pieces of software show up, and the first few months after launch are the loneliest.
The Future
So, I return to my original query... What, honestly, is so great about new system launches?
I contend that the excitement is the result of expectation. There is a promise of the future - of what is to come. We are excited for the implications of a new product, and a new platform. Thoughts of new opportunities and experiences float through our minds as we brave the bitter winds and dark nights on a quest to procure our prize. So even if your glistening bounty breaks in the first week (which it very well may), or if you find yourself lost in a void where no new games dare tread, think of the future, and all the theoretical fun you will one day enjoy.
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