Rumble | Blu-Ray Versus HD DVD

It's that time of the week again, time to prostrate ourselves, submit our two combatants to the Google altar and let the group mind decide the victor. This week, in typical inflammatory fashion, I have decided the battle will be between Blu-Ray, in blue, and HD DVD, in red.

It has been decided. HD DVD wins. You can run the trend search for yourself here

It remains to be seen what the Playstation 3 will do for Blu-Ray, but as of now HD DVD sales outstrip Blu-Ray by 33% according to Wikipedia. Either way, I'll stick to getting my movies the old-fashioned way, divx.

The Count | Top 10 Overlooked Videogames

We're adding stuff again. This is the first of a new column here at Game Crush. We call it "The Weekly Count," where we will cite a brief list of examples of a particular game-related theme. To start us off, the ever-popular Overlooked Games List.



Body Harvest (N64) - A personal favorite of mine, Body Harvest was not what you'd call a high-profile game by any stretch of the imagination. Released on the N64 in 1998, it pioneered gameplay lauded three years later, with the release of GTA3. Body Harvest featured an expansive 3D world, navigable indoors and outdoors either on foot or in any of 60+ vehicles - land, sea and air. A variety of weapons were available, and the game featured intense combat - including the vehicular kind. It becomes quite obvious that this paved the way for GTA's jump into the 3D realm when you consider that the developers, DMA Design, later transformed into Rockstar North. Too bad the graphics sucked - maybe more people would've given it a chance if it was nice and shiny.



Indigo Prophecy (PC, Xbox, PS2) - Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit, in Europe) is a 3rd-person adventure that unfolds like a mystery novel, but plays like a choose-your-own-adventure. You will be captivated from the opening sequence, and taken on a roller coaster chronicle of three individuals' lives, beginning with Lucas Kane's murder of an old man in a NYC diner's bathroom. Interestingly, the other two playable characters are the detectives assigned to the case, and the game goes through chapters, alternating between the three. The most appealing aspect of Indigo Prophecy besides its storyline is the feeling of urgency imposed on the player by timed responses in its dialogues, and gameplay sequences that fly off the rails into the realm of uncanny action scenes. These scenes are complex situations that are ultimately resolved by some fantastic riposte of the main character that cannot be achieved through any traditional means of game control. Indigo Prophecy incorporates these scenes though rapidly cued and mimicked successions of button-presses and control stick movements, presented over the action in a transparent command graphic. The action in this adventure gets intense and leaves the gamer exhilarated.



River City Ransom (NES) - Simply awesome. Barely recognized. This game is a harmonious fusion of classic beat-em-up gameplay mechanics with RPG-like character progression. Made by Technos Japan, RCR has a similar style to the popular Double Dragon series, but shows improvement upon just about every aspect of the game. Rather than progressing from level to level, leaving the gamer with a sense of disconnectedness, RCR features a continuous world that can be explored back and forth at any time. Town areas are interspersed throughout the area between Cross-Town High and River City High, and serve as small havens for the gamer. There are no hostile gang members here and there are a variety of shops where one can buy assorted foods to increase stats, as well as books to learn new combat techniques. Overall, RCR is an incredibly enjoyable experience, especially in two-player mode.



Space Station: Silicon Valley (N64) - Another offering from DMA Design, SS:SV toyed with vehicle commandeering way back in 1998, as well. Instead of cars, however, the means of transport is a menagerie of robotic animals on a lost space station. The operator is a small chip that crawls around like an insect and jumps into each new host, since it is unable to sustain itself in the outside environment. What makes these creatures special are their individual attributes and abilities, such as the hyena's contagious "laughter," the sheep's "floaty hop" or the penguins "snowballs." The game is undoubtedly quirky and cartoonish, but the creative puzzle-solving elements and unique level design are well-implemented to create an engaging assemblage of trials for the gamer to conquer. Yes, it's fun.



Beyond Good and Evil (PC, Xbox, PS2, GCN) - Not so much overlooked by critics, but by the masses. BG&E is an exercise in storytelling that brings to light the issues of government and media manipulation during times of crisis. The protagonist, Jade, is charged with unveiling the underlying truth of it all. The player guides her on her mission via a game that blends various genres such as stealth action and racing into a classic action-adventure experience. The pacing is excellent, and there are plenty of little side-quests to partake in. The characters, the plot and the world of Hillys make it beautiful, but the gameplay makes it great.



Killer 7 (GCN, PS2) - This game was a sort of love-it-or-hate-it affair. Brian and I rocked this one together, and I don't know that he liked it as much as I did, due to its highly scripted nature - but what a script it is! The gameplay here is simple, and actual control is limited, but the game more than makes up for it with its plotline, which is nothing short of incredible. However, even though the on-rails exploration isn't the most appealing to many gamers, the first-person shooting segments are quite satisfying. Really, though, this game is about making the gamer think, leaving its content open for interpretation. From the graphical style and overall presentation to the general insanity of the narrative, Killer 7 is an edgy and wholly enjoyable experience.



WinBack (N64, PS2) - WinBack is a tactical 3rd person shooter, with an emphasis on taking cover, then popping out to neutralize your enemy. Moves like ducks, rolls, hopping walls and dropping from balconies allow for different approaches to each situation. The fast-paced hide-and-seek gameplay is similar to the newly released Gears of War, and even includes an addicting multiplayer mode. There are a few different weapons, ranging from a pistol to a rocket launcher, and the single-player game is divided into 20+ stages, with mini-bosses interspersed throughout. In the wake of games such as Metal Gear Solid, WinBack was easily passed up by too many gamers.



Psychonauts (PC, Xbox, PS2) - Perhaps the most highly-rated on this list, and always included when people talk about under-recognized games, Psychonauts is truly a unique, fun, and fascinating entry into any gamer's library. From the hilarious depths of Tim Schafer's skull comes this tale of Raz, an aspiring Psychonaut, who has to save Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp from uncertain evil. The game is divided into a hub map and smaller worlds - a common general game design - but the worlds just so happen to be the very minds of various characters encountered along the way. Each mind is vastly different from the last, often with a novel artistic style, and always with an off-the-wall theme. Not much in this game isn't a completely original idea. It truly must be played to be fully appreciated.



The 7th Saga (SNES) - I've spent hours upon hours trying to figure out what other super-popular RPGs of the SNES era had that The 7th Saga didn't. What I've come up with time after time is that the 7th Saga has just as good graphics, sound, and gameplay as most of its contemporaries. It has an extensive list of magic, weapons and armor, and also offers a nice alternative to purely random battles. With a choice of SEVEN different main characters, the 2-person party system allows for 42 possible party configurations, with resulting rivalries or friendships between the player's selections and the characters left unchosen. The game features over 60 locales and 30 boss battles, as well as a huge assortment of standard foes in a 50-60 hour quest. It may be a difficult journey, but in the end this game offers a great sense of fulfillment to complete.



Shadow Man (PC, N64) - Developed by the now-defunct Acclaim Studios, Shadow Man is a completely non-linear action-adventure game. Level design is excellent, and the diverse environment manages to come together in a maze of grim rooms, passages, and atria. There is no such thing as a "level" in Shadow Man - the focus here is on self-directed exploration and discovery. Progression into new areas is regulated by the acquisition of new items and abilities. It feels like a hellish version of a Zelda game and makes use of the classic dichotomy of worlds - in this case Liveside and Deadside. The storyline is intriguing and is heavy with occult themes such as voodoo and serial murders, not to mention the army of hell.

There you have it, a list of games often overlooked by either the media or the general public. If you haven't played these games, you owe it to yourself to do so. Actully, it is your responsibility as a gamer to enjoy these gems!

A Little Introduction

Brian

Since we began Game Crush, Eddie and I haven't bothered to properly introduce ourselves. We would be remiss to allow this to continue so we'll be taking this opportunity to drop a little knowledge. I'm sure you can guess my name. I live in Tokyo at the moment. My favorite platform is the PC, but only because I really like first person shooters, Fallout-style RPGs, tactical games like X-Com, and lots of small experimental games. I have a PSP, but I use it mainly for homebrew. I really, really want to play Gears of War and Metal Gear Solid 4, and I think the Wii looks really fun, but $250 is a little much for an overclocked Gamecube with a 3D mouse.

I have no specific love for any consoles or companies either, regardless of what you think after reading the PS3 will fail article. I gave up any sense of fanboyism a long time ago, when Nintendo released broken console after broken console. That being said, I have no problem showing respect when a company gets it right. Even though I honestly think the PS3 stands a good chance of failure, I also think it is a truly awesome piece of technology and want one on those grounds alone. Also, something important about me, I have an incredibly short attention span for games that are just not fun to play. When I was younger I could sit through 10,000 random battles in Final Fantasy, but right now I'm not interested in tolerating crap to get to the hidden fun parts of a game. I don't care how good the story is, if it is meant to be a polished, complete package, it better be fun from start to finish.

One thing that will become abundantly clear over the next few weeks, I have a black, black heart. I do love innovation though. I'm really interested in the overriding gameplay philosophy behind games. That, and the community that's grown up around them. Well, I'm interested in a lot of things. My goal is to seriously explore them all in my writing.

Eddie

I am the western division of Game Crush, stationed here in lovely New York. I began gaming during the good ol' days of the NES, and haven't stopped since. In my youth I was a console gamer exclusively, and have owned just about every major home system following the NES. Basically, any PC I had until a few years ago SUCKED, but I got down with a few key titles here and there. Now that I've built myself a somewhat badass system, though, I can enjoy all game platforms equally, and have been doing serious catch-up in the past few years. Sitting here contemplating, it has become apparent to me that I don't quite have a favorite system. As for hand-helds, the whole portable gaming premise appeals to me in theory, but I just don't really get down with it much. :-\ I have a PSP, but usually just use it for homebrew, as well.

I generally judge games on their individual merits, rather than genre or developer, but I tend to really enjoy action-adventures and RPGs, and am a sucker for well-written narrative and epic storytelling, as well as games with good artistic design, and "styyyyle," as I like to call it. I love the classics, and at risk of sounding like a fanboy, (especially after our last few articles) Mario and Zelda games rock my socks. =-o Something I very much enjoy is rigorous mental stimulation when I play a game - like a full-brain massage. Anything off the beaten path interests me, and horror games hold a special place in my heart. I absolutely HATE when a game feels like a chore, and I get sick of sequels quickly. Don't bore me, and please give me NEW stuff!

In my writing, I plan to approach overlooked aspects of gaming with a unique perspective, and hopefully provide some intelligent discourse.
As a general rule, while Brian is eager to crush games, I seem to end up having a crush on them...

Wii: Changing the Game

For the first time in years, a generation of gamers are excited for a set of totally new gameplay experiences. Since the release of the original Playstation, the evolution of consoles has mainly been an incremental development of the way 3D graphics are displayed. While the N64, Playstation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 have all intended to continue in that vein, the Nintendo Wii was designed to alter the way players interact with their games. Regardless of whatever console you favor for whatever reasons, it's undeniable that the Wii is fundamentally different from the other consoles, and developers will be forced to put serious thought into crafting innovative gameplay experiences that utilize the Wii-mote's capabilities. The most prominent innovations so far have been using the Wii-mote to simulate sword swings and to aim and shoot for FPS games, but those functions are just the tip of the gameplay iceberg. Opportunity exists to create a myriad of previously unthinkable mechanics. We here at Game Crush have begun to take a serious look at some of the new ways the Wii-mote will allow us to play our games. Here are the first of the results of our brainstorming session.

Total immersion - sort of a vague idea, but when I think of the Wii and it's input method, I feel am always seduced by the idea of the player's hands existing as permanent objects within the game world. One might think, "but doesn't that happen already in the FPS on Wii?" Well, yes and no. The hands are always there, but their function is strictly limited. My idea is that the actions of the gamer are represented in a 1:1 fashion on-screen. Consider the following:

If one should happen upon an object and decide that they simply must interact with it, then reaching a hand forward should cause a congruent gesture by the in-game avatar - it should reach for the object. At this point, the item isn't picked up, but simply pushed around. Why? Well, the Wii-mote can also simulate grasping motions. The A and B buttons oppose each other just the same as do fingers and thumbs. Pressing the two in concert can translate to gripping any object in the virtual world. If an object isn't available, the result is simply a fist - which has it's own separate implications. If something is there, however, there are multiple new options available, and all are viable with no further control-mapping required. If the object is small, then a twist of the wrist allows for examination. If it is a ladder, moving hand-over-hand allows easy ascent. A tree or rock face can be scaled in similar fashion. Large objects can be pushed or pulled to clear or block a path. The list goes on...

I can imagine countless possibilities when it comes to combat, and just as many for puzzle-solving situations. At the most basic level of combat, punching and grappling are now possible in a truly interactive way, and as I've already described, weapons can be manipulated to strike or shoot from all angles. At the same time, complex combat routines will arise from the very same set of controls. Environment interaction is key - weapon improvisation can become a fun and creative option for dispatching foes. As for general exploration, gestures as simple as turning cranks, placing items, and pulling levers can now provide the player with a feeling of accomplishment, when previously they represented the most mundane of activities. This level of interaction can essentially recapture much of the joy of gaming because it dissolves habituation to gameplay mechanics experienced by so many gamers.

The Wii has the potential to make everything fresh again.

Why The PS3 Will Fail

Sony's strategy entering this console generation has been fundamentally flawed from the start. As Nintendo has demonstrated, customer good-will from previous console generations can only extend so far. If your console is basically flawed, it will be relegated to a distant thirdplace in the ongoing battle for market-share. In the case of Nintendo, where the Nintendo 64 and the Gamecube were both highly flawed but still profitable, that was an acceptable situation. With the PS3 though, Sony is incurring a huge loss with every console sale. Banking on the widespread success of the PS3, Sony expects to recoup those losses in software sales, so ending up in the third place position would be a death knell for Sony. Sony has to know everything's on the line here right? So why are they handling the PS3 the way they are?

The PS3's future is in question

Format Wars

I can see exactly what Sony is shooting for with Blu-Ray. Sony has claimed that the PS2 was instrumental to the success of the DVD format, with some degree of truth. The PS2's release was perfectly positioned during a period when more and more movies were seeing DVD releases but stand-alone DVD players were still $100-$200. The PS2, at $300, offered DVD player capabilities and the additional perk of gaming, clearly a great value. Being able to play DVDs obviously drove up PS2 sales.

But Blu-Ray isn't the DVD format. There are very few movies currently out in Blu-Ray formats, and Blu-Ray does not offer a user experience that is vastly different from DVD in the way that DVD introduced commentary, separate language tracks, and various other advanced features that VHS lacked. Further, there are currently no stand-alone Blu-Ray players available for less than $900. Even then, only some of the exorbitantly priced players offer proper support for full 1080p at this point, and the initial wave of players only supported MPEG2 compression. Implementation of the Blu-Ray standard has been inconsistent, and where DVD was the clear successor to the VHS format, Blu-Ray is in competition with another format, HD-DVD, which has already received the backing of Microsoft, Universal Studios, and other prominent movie studios. Whether or not Blu-Ray will take off the way DVD did is very much up in the air. It doesn't help that a cheaper alternative is already widely available. The demand for Blu-Ray that Sony imagines will position the PS3 as a great value to home entertainment enthusiasts does not exist.

Unfortunately for Sony, every single other facet of the PS3 has been compromised to maintain Blu-Ray support. The cost of the console itself is vastly increased by the implementation of this new technology. Likewise, actual console production has been drastically reduced due to manufacturing issues with the new technology. In a bid to save money, the PS3 architecture has been hamstrung, and the PS3 is left going into the new console generation with only 256MB of RAM. Where Sony has been trying to market the PS3 as a sort of cut-rate computing experience, including support for USB keyboards and mice, the system is clearly deficit. My PC from 2002 had more than 256MB of RAM.

Sony's Inferiority Complex

Besides Blu-Ray, the PS3 also possesses one other completely new technology. That is the Cell processor that Sony has claimed is on-par with a supercomputer. This technology proved decent for generating buzz early on, with articles claiming use of the processors by scientists for mass computing problems, but now you don't hear much about it. Why is that? Because CPUs don't sell consoles. The buying public doesn't actually care that much. The PS2 was the weakest of all the previous generation systems, and yet it was far and away the most successful.

Perhaps criticism of the PS2 has given Sony something of a complex, resulting in Kutaragi risking it all to compete in the hardware specs pissing match. Either way, the PS3 is now saddled with yet another piece of new technology for which the manufacturing process has not yet been perfected. The PS3 ends up being that much harder to produce and that much more expensive.

A Playstation 10th Year Anniversary ad that was pulled following protest by the Vatican

Advertising Woes?

Finally, you have Sony PR which has been one disaster after another. However, Sony PR has arguably always been a mixed bag. From the original Playstation on, Sony has pushed ads that are edgy, running the gamut from disturbing, to potentially racist, to outright confusing. The secret code in some print ads for the PS3 recalls to mind the original cryptic Playstation ads, which left to the reader the task of decoding messages such as "you are not ready."

The so-called racist ad

I remember feeling that the buzz surrounding the release of the original Playstation was palpable. This time around, Sony is doing roughly the same things it did before, advertising-wise. The feeling is much more negative this time around, but even negative buzz works in Sony's favor. However, it remains to be seen whether or not Sony, mired in manufacturing woes, will be able to actually provide the consoles to match the interest they have generated, which brings me to my final point.

Solid Alternatives

Parents and other consumers are going to go shopping this christmas, and they are going to go in wanting a PS3 and leave with an Xbox 360 or a Nintendo Wii. There are already claims that the PS3 is on-par with the 360 in terms of processing power, which I am very skeptical of. However, it is unarguable that Wii and the 360 are both much cheaper (no matter how you try to spin it) and much more widely available than the PS3. It is unclear when Sony will ever be able to get it's manufacturing act together, but the 360 has been out for a long time and faces no production shortages. Similarly, Wii production outstrips PS3 production by an entire order of magnitude.

Consumers simply will not have the option of getting the PS3 when it counts. With the Xbox 360 aimed at the same target audience as the PS3, and already being widely available and popular with developers, and the Wii attempting to create it's own complementary market, Sony's prospects for success appear grim. Perhaps it will be sustained through this period by the Japanese market, which has relatively little interest in the 360 and thus represents an entire hard-core gamer segment that is ripe for the taking, but the decline of the videogame market in Japan has been ongoing for years. Cheaper, more accessible, and innovative experiences, such as that offered by the Nintendo DS, have been dramatically more successful than traditional hardware upgrade iterations such as the PSP. Sony's future remains very much in question.

Wii's Online Future: Miispace

Game Crush has decided to begin a new mini-column dedicated to the Nintendo Wii and its adventure into the online realm. It is called "Wii's Online Future," and without further ado, here is the first article in the series. Miispace.

Nintendo is a company that has always attempted to bring creative new ideas to the table in the video game world. The upcoming Wii continues this trend of innovation, most notably with its novel input system. Aside from the controller, however, Nintendo is introducing a unique online component, as well as their "channel" system, which in conjunction have the potential to usher in a fusion of social networking and gaming.

Wii Connect 24 is a new concept that will be an integral part of Nintendo's first foray into online gaming territory. Made possible by hardware specs that don't require a nuclear reactor in order to run, it is designed to create an always-on, always connected gaming community.

The Mii Channel is a part of the Wii OS in which a players create a custom avatar, as well as define some brief profile information. These digital counterparts can then be inserted into Mii-compatible games, or interact with other Miis on other Wii Systems via Connect 24.

It is this notion of person-to-person online interaction that is the foundation for more advanced social networking opportunities. Social networks such as Myspace and Facebook have quickly become mega-hits, penetrating a considerable number of people's lives. So why shouldn't the craze spill over into the home console arena?

Miispace - Obviously and conveniently a play off of the name Myspace, Miispace is my idea for a new social networking Wii Channel. Here, the gamer would theoretically be able to take any previously saved Mii and place it in a sort of home area. This area would be analogous to the likes of a Sims or Animal Crossing house. Basically, the Miispace would be a 3D virtual residence for the selected Mii character, and using the online service, other gamers' Miis would be able to come visit and explore.

A site such as Myspace provides a written profile, images, and audio for each user, in order to convey a picture of that person's personality and individuality. Miispace could take the premise a step further. By involving a representation of a house in 3D physical space, Miispace would serve as a rudimentary emulation of a gamer's real-world lifestyle. It would be populated, along with a Mii, by game furniture and items, as well as a variety of user-introduced content. Jpeg images might show up as paintings within the Miispace, and mp3s could provide background music inside the gamer's Mii's houses.

Finally, items within each Miispace could be used to inject additional features into the channel. For example, one particular house might include a diary lying on a hallway table. When a visitor interacts with the book, it expands into a standard weblog like Blogger or LiveJournal. Other examples might be a little black book, providing a 'friends list' or a computer to act as a written message center. Clearly, the options are numerous.

There you have it. Social networking on the Wii is a distinct possibility, especially considering the Wii is capable of remaining on at all times. Miispace could exist either as a new channel available after a firmware update, or if necessary, a piece of separate software, and would be appealing to gamer and non-gamer alike. Nintendo's goal with the Wii is to convert non-gamers, so why not do it with Miispace - A Place For Mii...

All The Mega64 Videos On YouTube Ever

Hey everybody, just a quick service. I was recently all over YouTube looking for new Mega64 videos and I decided to collect them all here for your organized viewing pleasure. I didn't want to make the front-page take an hour to load, so you have to click to see most of them, but I've directly embedded the opening theme. Of course, you should check out the Mega64 site as well.

Mega64 Old School Public Access Theme

All 3 Prince of Persia Ads
Ad 1, Ad 2, Ad 3
Splinter Cell Ads
Love Story, No Money, Cool Moves
Cold Fear Ads
Ad 1, Ad 2, Ad 3

Game Spoofs
Metal Gear, Burger Time Outtake, Tetris, Hitman, Banjo Kazooie, Katamari Damacy, Ghosts n Goblins, Kid Icarus, Paperboy, Ico, River City Ransom, Shenmue, Resident Evil 4

E3 06 DVD in it's entirety
1/15 Intro, 2/15 A3, 3/15 3 e's are me, 4/15 storyline, 5/15 can coolers, 6/15 time manipulation, 7/15 Myst, 8-10 are the Prince of Persia ads, 11/15 crosscom 1, 12/15 crosscom 2, 13/15 version 2 , 14/15 extra (running over), 15/15 3 e's extra

Spoofs, public appearances, special features
GDC 2006 Intro, E3 1975, Tracy Morgan Spoof,
Timbo - Kimbo Slice spoof, Version 2 DVD Trailer

Mega 64 at Comic-Con
Link, Link, Link, Link

Horse-a-Gram Beanie Promo
Mega64: Anime Music Video "Bodies"

Merry Christmas
shaun, derek, rocco, Mr. Puppet

Version 2 Fake Trailer, Internet 2, Death Hat with Something Awful, Judgemental Night Outtakes with Tommy Tallarico, Mega64 Anime Music Video "Sorry 2004", Version 2 Real Trailer, Deleted Scenes

Abandon Ship! -- The Ship Mini-Review

This is another mini-update while we're working on our larger posts. I got the chance to play The Ship during this free multiplayer weekend, and I believe two days was sufficient for me to come to a conclusion about this game. And what was my conclusion? Deep, burning hatred.

Before actually playing The Ship, I had read the concept behind it and was vaguely interested. Not $20 interested, but it sounded fun to me. So when I heard there was going to be a free multiplayer weekend, I was all over it. I got the game pre-loaded and waited a few days for the free weekend to kick in. I live in Japan so timezones are all backwards for me, I'm actually living in the future. But around mid-saturday or so, I was finally free to play!

With some anticipation, I login to Steam and load up the game. Immediately, I get busy adjusting my controls and the graphical settings. The second I touch the gamma slider the game locks up hard. I lose all the crap I had written to myself in my notepad window and this immediately changes my mood from anticipation to annoyance.

I do a full computer restart, login once more, and begin adjusting the configuration. The second I touch the gamma slider it locks up again. My mood changes from annoyance to subtle anger.

Fine then, I resolve to play the game in the dark then. By the time I'm back into the game, configured, and joining a server, a lot more time has passed than I planned for. Precious minutes of my free weekend have been squandered! I finally get into a server. It's laggy as hell, I walk incredibly slowly, and some random person named Landlubber, the default name, begins attacking me. I have no weapon with which to retaliate, and I am immediately killed. Alright then, I grit my teeth. It is common to deal with some frustration when you're just starting a competitive online game.

I spawn as a new character and immediately get to work securing some weapons. I see a fire axe on the wall, so I grab that. This should do nicely. I go to my inventory and click on it, assuming I have to equip it. I am immediately arrested. Subtle anger has given away to smoldering and undirected rage.

In prison, I walk around, examining cabinets and drawers. For some reason there are books littered all over the place. I equip one, and my character starts reading, while a little indicator shows my desire to read returning to normal. What the hell? I decide not to worry about it for now.

As the game progresses, I am murdered over and over again without the opportunity to retaliate, I die from thirst, I am arrested repeatedly the few times I have actually sighted my quarry and managed to have a weapon in my possession, I get lost on the gigantic ship, I come inches away from killing somebody only to have the round end, I walk so very, very slow and my run bar never ever refills. Battle after battle is lost and the overarcing war, my desperate struggle to enjoy this damn game, is rapidly seeming less and less likely to end in success. My smoldering rage has transformed into a Moby Dick vs Ahab-level lust for carnage.

Some of the many weapons you will either never find or be too busy eating, pissing, and sleeping to get a chance to use

Why? Perhaps it is a function of the server I join, but right after the round starts I'm already receiving warnings that there are only 90 seconds remaining to find my quarry. Each round you have a specific player to hunt, and, likewise, there is a player hunting you. However, even by the time I have mostly learned how to navigate the maps, all too often I am unable to locate a weapon and find my quarry in time. I become better able to survive though. With increased survival, however, a whole new series of obstacles present themselves. Playing The Ship is like playing as your whiny, needy character from The Sims in an fps. You need to eat, sleep, drink, piss, crap, READ, talk to people, and stay clean. What happens if you fail to maintain these needs? Death. That's right, in this game, your desire to read a book is so pressing that you are unable to wait even a couple minutes while you commit murder.

In the game's favor, the graphical style and the ambience of the ship, along with the radio samples and general chatter, are fairly good. But it's unfortunate, by the end of my free multiplayer weekend I was not very entertained. In fact I was barely able to contain my desire to destroy everything around me. Sure, it was technically free, but by my estimation somebody owes me two goddamn days back.

Rumble | PS3 Versus Wii

Just a little mini-update, I've been playing with Google Trends, which is completely awesome, and I got these results for PS3 (blue) versus Wii (red):

The link for this search is here.

So what does this mean? There have consistently been more searches overall for the PS3, although the news references tend to favor the Wii. I think this is a result of the effect the PS2 has on Sony's mindshare. Everybody owns a PS2, in Japan it vastly outsells the XBox 360. As a result, even the most casual gamer will have some interest in the next generation Playstation. The Wii, on the other hand, has been game journalists' favorite topic for awhile now. I guess critical acclaim doesn't always equal mass-market results.

My take on this? There is still no way in hell I'm shelling out that much for a PS3. It looks like a powerful system, and I am pretty interested in playing the next Metal Gear Solid, but I just cannot afford that thing. I already have a computer. The Wii is looking affordable and, more importantly, like it offers me something I've never seen before. I am no Nintendo fanboy, I've been pissed with them since the N64, but the DS got a lot of things right, and I'm seriously getting excited for Wii.

surREALism: A fork In The Road?

A big topic nowadays is the "direction" of the games industry. When examining the next-gen console race, this is often approached in terms of technological power vs. game-play and innovation. I believe it has been made abundantly clear in which direction each company is heading, but for those of you who have been on spelunking excursions for the past 2 years, it is Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox360 on the path of power, Nintendo's Wii meandering in the other direction, alone. Within this grand framework, however, is another fork in the road. It is the question of realism vs surrealism.

It can certainly be argued that in its infancy, the games industry was changed radically, and propelled into the public eye by a little game called Super Mario Bros. This is one of the earliest examples of a game that created a legitimate world in which the content of the game was contained. It was not simply a screen, an arbitrary 'space,' a table, or a 'board.' This was an expansive environment (relative to other offerings at the time) with characters, landmarks, and new paths all unfolding as the game progressed. It responded to the gamer's actions, and displayed change, accordingly. However, it never sought to be realistic, and never attempted to emulate the real world. Sure, certain rules of reality and familiar rules of physics were in place, but the composition of the world itself was completely fantastical.

Since that time, games have evolved. Now, developers are capable of rendering fully three dimensional worlds with photorealistic appearances. Games are no longer visually limited to 2-D drawings, so they often try to recreate the 3-D world we live in. I question whether this is the right approach, or if it is a practice that removes much of what makes (made?) gaming so enjoyable in the past.

People play games for many reasons - one of which is to remove themselves from the outside world, even if only for a short time. In this case, the most appealing of games will be ones that are not directly linked to the world as we know it, but are imaginative creations with new details to uncover, new rules to learn and new concepts to explore. The real world can frequently prove to be boring in routine and drab in appearance. Representing that sort of setting in a pass-time intended to be fun seems somewhat counterproductive.

The presentation of any game can be quite important. In conceptualizing a game, I think it is necessary to consider what type of mood will be created for the gamer by the subject matter of the game, in conjunction with the visual representation on-screen. If each of these two aspects can be split into either realistic or fantasy then there are several combinations available. The most harmless, of course is a fantasy theme in fantasy images, and is barely worth noting, as it is in no way objectionable. At the opposite end of the spectrum is realistic subject matter in a realistic graphical style. This type of game creates the most intense atmosphere, as it provides no attenuation of the content in question. It is this type that has time and time again been used as an avenue in presenting grim yet glorified history lessons, by recounting real-world events such as World War II. (Are there enough WW2 fps yet? Maybe we could use about 37 more...)


A simple method of diluting such an effect is to mesh realistic and fantasy elements. A game with heavy themes can instantly be softened by displaying it in an unrealistic art style. A couple of games that make use of this technique are XIII and Killer 7. Had it been presented in a photorealistic manner, the latter would have likely had trouble ever being published - due to 'extremely controversial' subject matter. The surreal, cartoon-like presentation of these games belies their content, and almost excuses them of it.


Lastly, there are games that provide a realistic visual presentation, while maintaining a fantasy setting. Games like this, such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, rarely cause a stir at all, as the images are completely offset by the absolutely imaginary backdrop. If we are to examine the biggest "stir" of the modern games era, we must look no further than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - a game that caused more uproar than many of us would care to see in this industry. Furthermore, if we classify it in our grid of realism and fantasy, it falls squarely in the category of realistic theme AND visual style. It is no wonder it was such a victim of assault by much of the less-informed media community.



The final issue with maintaining realism in games is the limiting factor it places upon gameplay opportunities. There is far less one can do if completely bound by the restrictions of reality. A completely realistic game will never embrace the joys of casting a lightning spell on an unfortunate foe, nor will it see a man scale a building in short-order, using nothing more than his body and his INSANE acrobatic talents. As a matter-of-fact, if I REALLY wanted to be a stickler, a realistic game could never have "health packs" that instantly healed the protagonist, nor could that particular character be shot more than once or twice before dying. After being killed, of course, the game would be over. This is realism. There are no extra lives...

Ok, so that is a bit extreme, but still, the point is that realism is limiting. A fantasy world allows for a poetic license of sorts, with which a game designer is free to grant abilities to his characters, and create items and situations that couldn't possibly exist in the real world. Ostensibly, this adds a certain feeling to these surreal games that a realistic game could never offer. It is a feeling of discovery that applies not simply to what is around the corner, selected from a definite set of POSSIBLE elements, but one that applies to the very fabric of the game world - what EXISTS in this place of INFINITE possibilities.

Interview With A Custom Map Legend

After my last post talking about Half Life and Counterstrike, I ended up doing a little bit of digging and I managed to get in contact with everybody's favorite custom map maker, Nipper. He turns out to be a really cool guy, and he was okay with me sending him a bunch of questions about his map work. His answers were all really good, I am posting them in their entirety here. So without further adieu, read on and learn how it all got started.

To start off, I was just wondering if you could give some background on yourself, and how you got into making maps.

The nickname Nipper came from my two older brothers. It started when I was very very young so I don't even remember why they started calling me that.

There was a little clan called $tL or something. I was asked to join that clan when I had first started mapping. That clan disappeared pretty quickly except for me and one other member. The two of us then jokingly formed the Cherryclan, named after the candy (the candy is
now called Cherryheads). I played a few league matches with a clan called Malicious Intent. We did really bad and that never went anywhere.

The Cherryclan was originally just a small group of my first "fans" who would regularly join my listen server to play my maps with me and bots.

My first ever map was a horrible attempt at a D-Day map for Day of Defeat beta 1.1. I didn't have much luck with DoD mapping so I figured I would try CS.

The first CS map I made was cspaintball, a simple arena deathmatch map. It seems pretty lame now but back then there were no fy_ or aim_ maps.

To many players, the original crazytank map is legendary, what is the story of the crazytank? Where is it coming from and where is it going, and what were your inspirations, goals, and thoughts, going into making that map?

crazytank started as a thread in forums.joe.to where I asked people what I should put in my next map. Most of the suggestions were ignored but a few of them weren't. There's a billboard easter-egg in the bottom of the chasm that references the people who contributed. I knew I wanted one team to have to pile into a big transport vehicle. And I knew I wanted the Ts to try and set up an ambush for the big vehicle. It was the same concept as crazycar which was one of my first maps.

I have no idea how it became so popular. It was one of my many experimental maps that I didn't think anyone would play besides me and my buddies.

It seems as if throughout your map-making career, you've gone through a few distinct styles of maps. There are lots of the vehicle concept maps, such as crazytank, airfight, and supercrazycar, then you have the series of crazy maps, such as nippers_opus (which I love by the way), and finally you have a lot of maps that are inspired by movies or other media, such as xcom, black hawk down, etc. Just wondering if you can give some background on the process of deciding how to make maps. Do you sit down and say, alright, today I'm going to make a map just combining every creative idea I can make work in the engine? Do you try to build for playability or overall look? What's your goal been with your different maps throughout the years?

I've always tried to do a variety of maps.

The main reason for so many car maps was a small 4-person lan party I went to right after I had started mapping. We got around to playing crazycar and it was ridiculous. Everybody there loved it. There was talk of having another lan party so I started making a lot of car maps just for us to play. Crazycar_v2 was made, car_fight, supercrazycar and a bunch of others.

Sometimes with my gimmicky maps they will start by taking an aspect of one of my existing maps and then focusing on that. Like ow_cc_even_owyer is a simplified version of ow_cc.

Or something funny will happen while playing a normal map and I'll make a map that revolves around that. Like when I noticed smashing breakable windows with grenades was a lot of fun I went and made he_glass.

I have done plenty of "normal" maps too but nobody plays them, at least not in 1.6.

Almost all my maps are inspired by some movie or tv show or commercial or a building I saw in real life. It doesn't matter if it's not an action movie or even if I hated it. Like de_cliffcabin was inspired by some horrible Sandra Bullock movie.

The whaaa / huhhh / blahhh / nippers_opus maps have always been the most fun to make. I just love the idea of abstract level-design. They are a lot more structured than people think though. I probably spend more time planning those maps than I do any other. Blahhh has a right-brain vs. left-brain theme for example.

"whaaa" was the first map of that kind and it was my excuse to make an odd map. The first version had a button that spawned gibs and when the button was pressed multiple times in a row it would crash the server. I wanted to fix it but I couldn't find the .rmf for it so I made "huhhh" to replace it. When "huhhh" became so well received by my server regulars I knew I had to make more maps like that.

(editor's note: Nipper's series of abstract maps are actually incredibly creative uses of the game engine, while playing nippers_opus I found myself genuinely surprised from room to room, delivering an experience more akin to what I would expect from a single player map)

The first time I found a server running a lot of your maps, it was pretty surprising, it was almost like your maps were this big secret I discovered. From the beginning, how have you gotten maps out there? Besides the FPS Banana site, how have you gotten your maps to players and on servers? Is there any center of the custom map community?

Originally I was making maps for me to play with bots. I would create a listen server and just play by myself. Occasionally someone would download the map from me while connecting to my server. I kept making more and more maps and I started to notice the same people would be back every time I was playing a new map.

My maps didn't get out much until I found a custom map server that let people upload their own maps directly to the server. They had a website with an upload map area so I uploaded the first version of playground and a few of my other first maps. The server was pretty popular so a lot of people ended up playing my maps from there.

Then joe from www.joe.to tracked me down and offered me my own forum. Then after the forum he offered me my own 24/7 nipper maps only server.

Moving from the original CS engine to Source, is there a lot more freedom and capability you have making maps? Do you prefer one over the other for what you can do or any other reasons?

Overall I like Source more. For one thing I can do a lot more weird entity-related stuff. The displacements and props make it a lot easier to do outdoor areas that don't look horrible.

The one downside to Source is that it relies so heavily on props and since I can't make custom models I am limited with what I can detail my maps with.

Do you plan to or have you already done any map work for any engines besides Half Life and Source?

Well I had mapped for BUILD engine games like Duke Nukem 3d, NAM, and WWII GI before HL1. As far as new games go I don't plan on mapping for anything else.

Do you have goals to make it into the videogame industry, and maybe design maps or mods professionally?

No. But if anyone wants to offer me a job in the industry feel free. :p

Do you get a lot of fan feedback or other forms of recognition about your work?

I used to get emails from people all the time, mostly asking for my .rmf files. Not so much anymore. Not that I mind.

I'm always amazed when I am playing BF2 as Cc_NIPPER and someone will ask me if I'm the map-making guy.

On the state of vehicle work in Source, I saw your crazytank_hq map, where the tank doesn't move. At the moment, Source vehicles don't work so well, but if you look at some of the work going on with Garry's Mod, http://www.garry.tv/?p=159 you can see progress is being made. Is there any chance of seeing a brand new version of crazytank, or some new vehicle map ideas, coming from you for Source?

Unless valve actually goes and adds the func_vehicle entity to CS:S it's not going to happen. The garrys mod thing is using HL2 models as the vehicle and I don't think I'll ever learn how to make custom models. I just can't do crazytank with the airboat.

I've seen stuff using physboxes and thrusters but it's just not the same.

What are your favorite maps and weapons in CS? Any server configs you prefer?

The m3 is my favorite weapon. Default server configs are my preference. I hate annoying plugins. I always liked cs_siege back when it had the APC.

If you want to, could you talk about one moment you had playing CS or Source that really stands out for you? Anything fun or interesting would be cool.

cs_spooks beta test, it was the first round. I was on CT, I tell everyone I have a plan. "Get ready to rush the front room" I say. Everyone stacks up and is ready to rush in. "Go go go!" and the whole CT team rushes in the front door and falls to their death.

Do you have any advice for other map makers trying to get started?

Don't decompile.

Any shoutouts or final words?

Shout out to my j2 buddies! Hooah!

Hope that gives everybody a little insight into Nipper's work. I cannot thank him enough for the opportunity to conduct this interview! If you're looking to download his map packs, and see what Nipper is currently up to you could go here or check into the forum where he has his own subsection, here. Feel free to post a comment if you've had any interesting experiences playing Nipper maps!

Steam: Finally Delivering?

In the past I've been pretty critical, but the most recent news about The Ship's free multiplayer weekend has finally forced me to grudgingly acknowledge that Steam has been upgraded to at least minor ass-kicking status. Those who were around, most likely playing Counterstrike, during Steam's inception will remember that the service had some growing pains. Around version 1.4 of Counterstrike, Valve heaved out the wet, quivering mass of incomplete network code that was Steam, and really, it was hugely annoying.

The History

As a new interface and authentication system, jury-rigged to lay on top of the current Half Life engine, Steam was more unrealized potential than anything else. The friends list, which promised a comprehensive instant messaging system built in to the system, basically only worked when it decided to, which was rarely. The patch delivery process, which was the whole point of Steam in the first place, ended up having lots of downtime as well, as Valve servers struggled to meet the distribution demands.

Much like the ugly-ass caterpillar, or the seed that somehow ends up buried in a huge pile of dook, though, Steam has blossomed into a beautiful butterfly. Somehow, the patch delivery system became a complete software distribution network. The servers and bandwidth are now in place so that users can expect to receive the content they pay for, and more and more games are finding their way onto the service. Steam has become a nice complement to putting physical boxes on retail shelves, which is good for hermits like myself.

Somewhere along the line, while easily redownloading Counterstrike and all the original Half-Life games for a little nostalgia, and beer, fueled fun, I realized something. All of the hassle of cds and cd keys that I had long since lost was wiped away. In the past, I would've had to search through piles of old hardware and crap just to find one of the shattered jewel cases upon which one of my cd keys MAY have been printed. In addition, I most likely would've found a torrent, or, at that time, checked on Kazaa Lite or Direct Connect just to get the actual game because god knows I wouldn't have a functioning cd. With Steam, all I need is to remember my username and password, which is easy for me because I've used the exact same ones for every single authentication procedure since 1994. Well, don't that kick a little ass.

From Shitty to Ubiquitous

Whereas Steam was, at its inception, merely another series of obstacles to getting to a damn server in CS, it has now grown into a fully self-contained system, offering content from a very wide range of sources complete down to the transaction procedure, all within the same Matrix-stylish black and grey interface. Additionally, everybody who has played CS or Half-Life 2 already has it. So, within a few years, Steam secretly sprouted all this extra functionality, and all of a sudden a user like me realizes that he's been getting demos, videos, and complete games over the service for a long time now. Steam has gone from a steaming pile to a basic fact of my gaming experience.

That is not to say that Steam is completely without problems though. There are still a lot of random issues. I don't know many people who actually use the friends list, which still goes down semi-frequently. Also, the requirement that I have to log into Steam just to play a single-player game that I own on the service can be a huge hassle if my torrents are hogging all the upstream connections. I don't like there being any barriers to me playing my own games. That being said, that little piece of DRM is the single most annoying thing about Steam at this point, and I can honestly say that, despite my years as a software pirate, I don't mind paying for my content if it's reasonable and I am almost always connected to the internet anyway, so the chances of me being in a situation where I am unable to access one of my own games are low. However, this is definitely an issue for some.

Looking past the hiccups though, Steam has slowly infiltrated all of our homes with the ability to get content directly. This has opened the gates for many modders and full-on development groups. In releasing content on Steam, one of the largest financial commitments in developing a game, that of physically producing the boxes and getting them on store shelves, has had its role obviated. As Steam sees higher penetration and more actual sales within the service, it becomes clear that user confidence in the system is solid and many games that normally may not have been made, such as Darwinia, are finding large audiences and making it into end-user hands.

So, Steam is managing to circumvent traditional distribution systems and get a wider range of titles, including the very obscure, to users at price-points that range from retail-level to what may almost be considered microtransactions. But wait, doesn't all this talk of an online distribution system seem sort of... familiar?

Steam as a Redundant System

That's right, Steam, Gabe Newell's grand vision of a network to make store-shelves obsolete, is basically a rehash of an idea that's already been perfected elsewhere. The piracy network. While Valve was dumping cash into servers and vast quantities of bandwidth, lightweight and very portable tools for decentralized distribution have already been in place for ages. It's called Bit Torrent. Every single issue that the Steam developers have had to deal with, and many that they are still dealing with, have long since been solved. Realistically, how could they expect to compete with a group that is composed of enormous numbers of individuals, all working out of their own desire to produce a functioning system for games, movies, and other data to be processed, cracked, released, and then distributed to the masses, free of hassle? In fact, as tracker sites become more and more sophisticated, even going so far as to offer RSS feeds of your searches, allowing you to set your torrent client to automatically download new episodic content as it's released, it's clear that the piracy networks in place do a far better job of helping users retrieve content than Steam ever could. Why bother inventing the wheel twice, especially if your version of it isn't as good anyway?

If the issue is compensation models, I would argue that many peer to peer networks are, in fact, already monetized to varying degrees. The ad revenue and worldwide goodwill generated for the large bit torrent tracker sites is clearly enough to keep many of them functioning. How difficult could it be to create completely legitimate tracker sites, functioning via a subscription model, perhaps, and incentivizing extra sharing? With just some minor retooling, I believe it would be fairly simple to leverage the existing file sharing communities to do what Steam has struggled to do from the outset: deliver content to people in an efficient manner.

Why didn't something like that happen? Because it's not obvious enough to everybody yet. File sharing still operates in a legal grey area, at least in some places, because the rest of the world is too slow to catch up. Large publishers such as EA are convinced they have a stake in controlling their content and how it can be used, but the internet is a tool that, more than anything else, empowers individual users. Steam works to surpass the traditional distribution system, but it doesn't go far enough in that it still tries to set up shop with its own set of servers from which people download directly. If you just surrender that control and let go of that shiny interface, you already have all the tools in place to allow the clamoring masses to get a copy of your game and share it with others. That's how you distribute some damn games! Heck, there are tons of people who will even go to the trouble of patching it for you! The original Half Life 2 release was faster if you got the pirated version.

Until that day when file-sharing protocols are as accepted as radio broadcasts, people like me, who are totally willing to compensate content creators in exchange for the ability to view what we want, how we want to, will be forced to operate in a grey area. I'll use Steam when I must, I am really looking forward to playing The Ship, but I'll always know that no matter how efficient the system becomes, it ultimately can't compete with the one I already use for everything else.

Videogame History Part 1: Half Life And Counterstrike

This kicks off a new series here called Videogame History, where I'll be replaying and talking about some old videogames, and recounting some old war stories. I've been playing a lot of Counterstrike: Source recently, and it made me a bit sentimental for the original, and all the fun I had with the old Half-Life engine. Getting all misty-eyed, I decided to dust off the first Half-Life and give it another play-through, and recount some Counterstrike memories.

Half-Life

I've been playing the hell out of the original Half-Life. I had it back in the day, but on my pentium 166 (overclocked to 200!), I had to run it in a tiny window. Imagine playing an entire game in somebody's animated gif avatar for a forum or something, and you basically have it. Of course, I've played Half-Life 2 semi-obsessively, and by semi I actually mean ridiculously. I've gone through much of the game switching to noclip mode over and over to check out the surroundings and overall level architecture. If I ever get a pet dog I'm going to name it Robot.

Anyway, while playing the original Half-Life, I had some initial difficulty dealing with the look, having become accustomed to Source and its delicate, understated beauty. As you can guess, I like the Source engine, but I got used to the original Half-Life and its modified Quake engine again pretty quickly. The gameplay still holds up really well. The feel of movement is awesome, except for the horrible time I had trying to grab some ladders, which I believe may have been a change to the engine wrought later on, perhaps for the multiplayer part or something. Overall though, the shooting, running, and jumping are all fun. There is also a decent degree of physics implemented fairly well.

The game takes you through some interesting situations. Although the massive, chunky architecture, due to lack of polygons, unsophisticated textures, and pixellated static backdrop images make it a bit of a harder sell than modern games, the game still does a great job of immersing you in the locations, and the story which unfolds through non-compulsory character speech and the occasional scripted event is actually really awesome. Being Gordon Freeman kicks ass. Inexplicably, at one point in the game I found myself all of a sudden thinking the phrase "it resembles nothing more than a crystalline beef processor." It was probably around 5am when I thought that, but it made no fucking sense even to me, and I was the one thinking it.

I've been playing the game in hard mode of course, and this shit is HARD. I usually have to replay each encounter, and then cleverly engineer the situation ahead of time, rigging different spots with trip-mines and moving boxes to create cover. It almost makes it into a puzzle game, because some of the enemies just attack too rapidly and devastatingly for me to fight off in pure, simple combat.

All of the set pieces are still cool, and you can really see how Half-Life 2 grew out of this. Similar to many HL2 scenarios where the Combine soldiers are getting their asses kicked by antlions, or the rebels are fighting Striders, you'll often come upon battles in HL where you can wait for the military and Xen forces to wipe each other out, sometimes giving you control of a cannon to kick a little ass of your own with. You also get nice scenes like fleeing from the giant creature long enough to call in an airstrike on it.

One retarded thing, playing in retrospect, all of the security guards have Barney's voice, and many scientists have Dr. Kleiner's voice. It actually doesn't bother me as much as it may bother others, but it's like I'm playing with a cast that consists of a vast collective of clones of just those two characters from HL2, and they are horribly slaughtered over and over for my enjoyment.

Another problem, I have to turn off my damn bit-torrent downloads to log in to Steam to play. It's fine to turn back on later, but executing the game runs like its setting up a server and then you log into it. Also, maybe due to the fact that I downloaded this iteration on Steam, I got all these weird bugs, like occasionally loading a new map only to have it half load, leaving me either stuck in place staring at half-formed crap or running through a level without some vital creatures and objects spawned. There are some other issues as well, like the fact that the last few levels are pretty crappy. Also, sometimes I'll be riding elevators and just get stuck in them, and the vehicles are mostly buggy pieces of crap, although hilarious and fun as hell to use. I owe hours and hours of my life to the buggy Half Life vehicle code, but I'll get back to that in a bit. First, I have to talk about the most important mod ever created.

Portal to Xen

Counterstrike

Everybody knows about Counterstrike, it's the greatest mod for any game ever made. It's still got more players than Counterstrike: Source, and it's been the main event at videogame tournaments for years running. The first game to take a realistic approach to bullet damage and burdened movement, Counterstrike raised the bar on competitive gameplay for first-person shooters to a degree that Source couldn't even surpass. Up until version 1.4, where the jump lag that is the bane of my existence was implemented, no online shooter could possibly compete with CS for purity of control and balanced combat. Before World of Warcraft, CS was the original online destroyer of lives.

In addition to the regular map rotation in CS, dust, dust2, office, aztec, seige (at one point), assault, and a few others, eventually some custom user-made maps began to see some regular play. Almost any CS player is likely to have played fy_iceworld at some point or another, and probably scoutzknivez as well. These maps were and still are far more common than some of the original maps and playmodes implemented by the designers of CS, such as the escape missions. The real fun starts with the more rare custom maps, usually played on all custom servers.

In the climber maps, your job is to make increasingly impossible-seeming jumps

Nipper

Any true veteran of custom Counterstrike maps will be familiar with the name Nipper. An incredibly prolific map-maker, specializing in unrefined but conceptually innovative maps, produced such classics as crazytank, megacrazycar. All of them feature the buggy Half Life engine vehicle code at length. For those who haven't played crazytank, imagine the CT's starting off next to an enormous drivable tank with multiple floors, traversing a set path to the escape zone, including a cliff you have to drop down, versus a group of terrorists each with their own personal motorcycles and mounted turrets assailing the CTs as they are trying to escape. It was neverending fun. Half the time the tank driver would get you stuck in the walls and smash half of his own team, but the times I would slam my motorcycle over a ramp, crash headlong into the tank, infiltrate it and slaughter the entire enemy team from the inside stand out as some of the greatest times I've ever had playing any game in my life.

As the years following Half Life's original release went by, Counterstrike maps saw increasingly over-the-top retrofits to keep things fresh. I remember an entire 48 hour period straight my friends and I spent on one server that had ninja ropes that let you swing like spiderman across the map. On crazytank3, Nipper's third version of the legendary battle, the tank is placed on a giant boat that the CTs are trying to navigate through mine-infested waters. The Ts get smaller boats, but with ninja ropes the boats were meaningless, you were already totally free. Getting good with them turned battles into graceful airborne carnage.

Interestingly, Nipper still makes maps for CS:Source, much more refined in look this time, but still hilarious. His website can be found here. If anybody has any of their own crazy custom map experiences they want to talk about, hit the comments people!

Toys R Us Pre-Order Day!

So I arrived just before 7am at my local (30 minutes away) Toys R Us store, only to find the most hardcore of consumers already camped out with tents, chairs, blankets and the like on the sidewalk in front of the store. I was lucky number 13 in line, which I was half-expecting, and half disappointed to discover. Although the desire for these two consoles burned strongly within my heart, I was simply unequipped for late October camping in upstate New York (plus, I already have a Wii and Zelda preordered at EB). What I could do was wake up at 6:00 and get on the road, managing an average of about 85 mph to this conveniently located store. I was quite glad to avoid New York's finest on the way.

Shortly after my arrival, I was told that a handful of people had been camping out as early as 6pm on Saturday, only to be kicked off the premises around 1am. Security from the mall across the parking lot had evicted them from their cozy concrete homes, and the store director had taken thew names of the first six in line, telling them to return before 7:00 to guarantee their console.

I guess this turned out to be a good thing for them, because rain, wind, and utter frigidness attacked the night, as well as any hapless nocturnal wanderers. Moreover, it was REALLY good news for those people because this particular store had only SIX PS3s available, along with 15 Wii Systems. 13/15...I sure do know how to cut it close.


When it came time to let us in, I was very pleased with the organization of the 'event.' In a compassionate move, they allowed the first six iced-over customers into the store around 9:30 - a half-hour before opening time - to get their PS3 orders. They were let back on line, and Wii customers were ushered in five at a time. Everything went quite smoothly, with no rushing, pushing, or violence. The only annoyance was that Toys R Us had each pre-order customer sign an agreement that they would also purchase an insurance plan of either $39.99 for one year or $69.99 for two years at the time of pick-up, or else forfeit the reservation. Irritating...

Finally, I was in for a little surprise, because today also happened to be the day that the new Tickle Me Elmo arrived. Thinking in an eBay sort of way, I decided to grab one of them, too. After the video games were taken care of, Elmo customers came in 15 at a time, with a one-per-customer limit.

So, I managed to leave Toys R Us this morning with one Wii preorder, and THREE TMX Elmos...

Game as Art, Art as Revelation

For the past few days, I have been engrossed in a unique new game called Okami. Brought to us by Clover Studio, this fantastically stylish offering is the kind of game that seems to generate mountains of acclaim, yet build molehills of revenue at cash registers around the world. So far, I have heard that Okami is considered a failure in Japan, but after briefly consulting my friend the internet, I haven't the evidence to either support or refute such a claim. Maybe my partner in crime has a standpoint on this matter, considering he is the sole member of the Japanese branch of our little endeavor here. Brian...??

Anyway, in terms of general game design, Okami, when stripped down, is a basic action-adventure game in the vein of Zelda and the like. If I was here to write a typical review, I could tell you all about every aspect of the game, from combat mechanics to plot nuances (and I will probably touch on much of what lies in between, anyway), but those reviews are a dime a dozen these days, and can be had twenty times over with as little effort as a couple of mouse clicks, so I will let you filter through that pile as you see fit, for now.

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What I would like to talk about today is the idea that the medium of the video game is much more than it has ever been in the past. It is evolving into (and in my opinion, has already become) a fine art just as legitimate as any symphony or concerto, novel or poem, statue or sculpture, fresco or portrait. As such, the video game is a prime candidate for study and analysis in academia or the general public arena. Of course, not all selections will carry the same weight in terms of underlying meaning or intellectual significance, and there will always be mindless entries into the extensive and growing library of interactive entertainment, but with ever-increasing frequency, titles are released that offer much more to the mind than point-and-shoot.

Okami is one such project that seems to offer more depth for the gamer to swim about in, not necessarily in game mechanics, but in provocation of thought and 'blossoming,' as it might be, of ideas. And these 'ideas' I refer to are in stark contrast to what the likes of Jack Thompson might try to preach to the nation about video games. Nearly every action, represented in brush strokes similar to sumi-e ink wash paintings or the art of Bernard Buffet, carries a positive message and uplifting imagery. (Buffet's art: Example 1, 2, 3)

An overarching theme that is quite apparent in Okami is the restoration of natural beauty. Early objectives in the game include the revitalization of withered trees, which when revived bloom wildly in an explosion of bright, pastel-colored leaves and flowers. This eruption doesn't stop at the branches, either. It flows over the countryside on a wave of light, vivifying large areas of previously "cursed" land. Scattered about the game world are many smaller areas tainted by similar clouds of unsightly purple smoke. These must be restored by drawing flowerbeds over them, after which they burst back to life in the same grand fashion as described above.

Parallels can be drawn between these cursed areas and certain aspects of the real world. An obvious connection would be to the issue of pollution, with the metaphor meaning "clean up the environment to make the world a better place" or "take care of nature's flora and nature will reciprocate." While this may be the most clear of comparisons, my contention is that these cursed zones can be expanded in scope to represent any of the world's ills: elements that must be treated in order to restore harmony.

What makes Okami's actions so meaningful, however, is the way many are performed. By holding R1, the action can be stopped and the screen will tilt into a sort of canvas, above which is suspended a a large paintbrush, wielded by no one but the gamer. The celestial brush, as it's called, allows one to draw on the screen the result he or she desires. Filling in a section of land sprouts a bed of flowers, encircling a gnarled and bare tree grants it a lush canopy of leaves, dotting the ground sprouts new saplings, etc. This sort of interaction is a way of absorbing the player into the game world, making that world, as well as the changes made to it, more tangible. "It is by my hand that these results are borne," says the subconscious mind.

Even the color palette chosen by Clover seems to have significance. Rather than the drab earth tones of many modern games, the bright pinks, greens, and blues communicate a sense of hope to the gamer. It is as if the game is implying that even in a world marred by darkness, attention to nature (which is considered of the utmost importance) is paramount to achieving happiness or success.

Another deed encouraged of the gamer, and likely performed quite often, is to feed the many animals encountered during the adventure. There are 4 different types of feedbags available to the main character, Amaterasu, and when she runs into any wild animal, there is an option to feed it. The better a match to the preferred diet of that particular species, the more "praise" the player will receive. Praise is actually Okami's unit of experience, accrued and then allocated to different attributes, allowing for growth throughout the game.

Basically, without praise, Amaterasu is weak. praise = happiness ... praise = success.

Praise serves as a reward not only for feeding critters, but for all of the actions mentioned earlier, as well. Incentive is always there for the player to do right by mother nature, even if the magnificent displays of art in each short cutscene aren't enough motivation. So, if all of the good deeds in Okami garner praise, and we already know praise equals happiness and success, then by the law of syllogism, performing those deeds clearly equals happiness and success. This is the game's take-home lesson.

One last point worth noting: in Okami, with every act of destruction comes new creation. Every time an enemy is defeated, flowers sprout from the spot where it met its demise. Every tree that is cut down returns to its former glory shortly after, and often bears fruit for Amaterasu. Every explosion yields not flame, but confetti and fireworks. Even when breaking jars, pots, boxes, and the like, Amaterasu has foliage sprouting from under her feet. As a matter of fact, this happens wherever she runs at all. With all the violent imagery people consume on a daily basis (which, for the record, I'm not necessarily opposed to), this subtle touch is quite refreshing.

Refreshing. Certainly a good description of Okami as a whole, and absolutely applicable to any game presented in a similar fashion - as a fine art form.

Portals and Whatnot

Summer is upon us, and thusly I find my thoughts turning once again to portals. Oh sweet slipgate, how I long for thy totally neato manipulation properties. Seriously, watch this damn video if you haven't seen it 47 times already in the month it's already been up, and tell me you wouldn't punch an infant child right in it's face for a portal gun.

Valve's Portal

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All I have to say is start lining up the babies. My question is, what's the deal with the robot voice girl? I like what she's saying, but wouldn't voice synthesis have made a little bit more progress by the time we have portable hole technology? The stupid Eliza voice that used to get packaged with old Macs was better than this. I used to sit around in the computer lab in high school and make her talk about sex acts all day. God that was one hot-ass text-to-speech converter. I'd like to get my zero-point energy manipulator in HER portal...

Dark Messiah Of The Worst Load Times Ever -- Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic Preview

So late it is already irrelevant, here is my highly educated, videogame rock star opinion on the Dark Messiah demo:


Ohhh yeahhhh. That's a pretty sweet loading screen there. After watching the download bar progress on this demo for like 3 fucking hours, I got to start the game and immediately watch this totally awesome loading bar progress for like a minute solid. This was for the MENU. Luckily, my endless tenacity prevailed, and I made it to the main menu, only to be greeted by yet another loading screen before the first level loaded. I stepped out to take care of some other business.

Finishing up on my taxes, I made it back to the room just in time for the first level to load. Not bad, I could adapt my Counterstrike play style easily enough, game runs smooth, etc. That's when my computer locked up. This gave me an awesome opportunity to watch the loading screen again!


So I made it into the game finally and some old dude was telling me what to do. I didn't mind it that much, because the character I decided I was going to role-play during the 12 separate minute-long load screens had grown up in a poor family, and was often abused by his drunken father. His mother long dead, my character had often tried, in vain, to make some connection with his father. As such, he longed for fatherly affection. So the old guy was okay.

Thankfully, he mostly just told me how to do stuff like kick guys into spikes, which I enjoy. I got a spider diamond and then progressed to the next level.


Awesomely, I wound up in a giant underground castle. Who decides to build a castle underground? I'll never know. Naturally, I immediately leapt off a cliff and was forced to load the autosave.


That's right, there's an incredible load time even for loading a quicksave in the exact same level you're already in. RADICAL!

Finally I got somewhere, and then I kicked some guy right in his ass and knocked him off a cliff!


I like that. Naturally, I went about killing every enemy I met by kicking them off things, breaking things on their heads, and knocking heavy things on top of them. That's when I learned Dark Messiah's greatest feature. You can kick people into fire and they start burning! Sweet fucking FIRE! You can burn crates and then throw them on to things and light those things on fire too! I didn't take a picture though, so here is another loading screen:


This game lets me be a giant asshole, which I like, and the load screens are pretty cool too. I give this my highest rating: 1 star.