So, unless there is a card for substantially less (like, if the 8800gs went down in price a bit) the 9600gt looks like the best card for me and I would be able to play Crysis on settings higher than 800×600 with everything on low.

I should probably get some RAM too, but I might just hold off until I upgrade my machine and just jump to DD3 when it finally drops to reasonable prices.  Anyways, I still have to buy an XBox 360!

I can deal with the extreme nerd factor of LARP-ing, but seriously… learn how to wield a real sword. I don’t care if its made of cardboard or foam, just learn how to look like you know what you’re doing instead of weakly tapping someone like your arms are made of rubber. Unless of course, you are a rare rubber-armed night elf.

I left out Alone in the Dark 3 because 1, 2, and 3 all look very similar to each other. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare had a significant jump in graphics quality, but it controlled very much like the originals. All the games were good, but by the time The New Nightmare came out it all felt like it had been done before with the widely successful Resident Evil and Silent Hill series. When I heard of a new Alone in the Dark game I thought that it would be another clunky survival horror game, but with some great atmosphere that is the staple for the genre. Fortunately, the new game has a little more than just a facelift and looks to be some of the best survival horror gameplay to date. Check out the video below to see what I mean because still pictures do not do the graphics justice.

The good thing is that if the game is completely broken and turns out not to be very good, at least it won’t be as bad as this.

This movie looks like the bastard child of Mad Max and I am Legend with maybe a dash of Tank Girl and Lord of the Flies. I am very intrigued by this movie and figure it will either bomb completely in theaters or its oddball characters will create a great cult following. Either way it probably do well on DVD since it looks worth a $4 rental even if it sucks.

I am looking forward to this movie, so I hope it doesn’t completely disappoint. I mean, c’mon, it has Malcolm McDowell in it. You can’t get much cooler than that. Also, searching IMDB for info, I found that the leading lady of the film, Rhona Mitra, is playing Sonja in the new Underworld movie.

This is what Doomsday would look like if I had directed it…

The only real drawback of Frets on Fire is that it is single player only.  You cannot jam out with friends like in Guitar Hero and… you still aren’t playing a real guitar.

Also, Condemned 2: Bloodshot is a mere four weeks away from being released. The first game was great, but this one promises to tighten up the story telling and include a more immersive experience with the forensic tools to further the story, so I am on the edge of my seat to see if it really delivers the same gritty experience as the first. The artwork alone looks worth the ticket price since it seems to want to put up a good fight with Manhunt and the Silent Hill series for most awkward enemies.

Image from IGN

I admit I’ve been fairly inconsistent with my posts, but I’ve been catching up on a lot of other work around the apartment and getting myself ready for my new job. Whoo!

So here’s my plan…

Altair from Assassin’s Creed (Click on picture for larger view)

Making the costume:

The main portion of Altair’s upper body is three pieces. He has his hood, which is attached to the “robe” and then he is wearing a long sleeved shirt under that. All of this would be relatively easy to make. I would need a big “urban” type white hooded sweatshirt to cut the shoulders and hood off of. Then I would sew that to a very plain white robe that has been modified and sewn together as one piece. Obviously with tails cut to resemble Altair’s. Then a simple long sleeved white t-shirt would be worn underneath that.

Altairs lower half can be made with a cheap pair of charcoal gray sweat pants. Something higher quality would be better, but jeans would be a little too modern looking and wouldn’t tuck into the boots as well. The boots are probably the hardest part of his wardrobe to recreate, so for simplicities sake I would just buy some cheap worn out leather boots from a garage sale or Goodwill and then wrap some thick brown clothe around the upper portion up to the knee. I have some old Hot Topic black buckle boots that could probably be worn down and colored to achieve a similar look as well (the buckles would have to be removed of course).

Now we move on to the really hard part, the weapons. Ideally, going to the local knife store and buying similar looking replicas would look the best, but that is REALLY expensive and I’m not sure what the local laws are in regards to walking around with multiple swords and knives. Making the upper brace would only need some brown leather and a handful of metal O-rings. The cumberbund type belt he wears again just needs leather (or fake leather) and put some sandpaper and maybe a woodburner to it to give it texture. The elaborate sword and knife holders/sheathes will depend on what fake weapons I can get my hands on. Also, he has a simple red wrap under need the cumberbund, but that just involes some stylish cuts of some basic red fabric from the local fabric shop.

Altair’s amazing gauntlets are different from each other. His right gauntlet is a simple wrap with no glove on his hand. His left gauntlet is much more involved with its metal plates and hidden dagger mechanism. Some thin sheet metal would do well and you could just give it a quick chemical dip to age it and give it a bit of a design. His left hand is missing a finger which can be folded down if I want to get that detailed, but he wears fingerless gloves with metal grommets on the knuckles. The grommets are barely noticeable, so I will most likely skip that detail to save time.  The knife mechanism is very detailed and I highly doubt I could make something like that given my complete lack of tools for metal working.

So here’s what I need:

- White hooded sweatshirt with deep hood
- Some sort of white robe
- Long sleeved white t-shirt
- Charcoal gray pants (most likely sweatpants)
- Brown left-handed glove
- Very thing sheet metal
- Red fabric
- Leather/Fake leather strabs and triangle for upper brace
- Handful of metal O-rings (Approx. 2″ Diameter)
- Large piece of leather/fake leather for belt
- Very old brown leather boots – or – age my current black Hot Topic Boots (as well as some other mods)
- Mechanism for hidden dagger
- Various fake weapons with brown sheathes
- Contacts, so I don’t have to wear my glasses (unless Altair is extremely near-sighted)

Without  any of the weapons or the leather belt and upper body brace, the costume is relatively easy and cheap to obtain the materials for.  That will be my starting point.  Then once that looks good I will move on to the more difficult portion of the costume.

Anyways, today I got notification that I was accepted to a new position at Microsoft working with the XBox Live Marketplace team through a local contract company. Words cannot describe how excited I am to start working again, especially in a position that I have been searching for almost a year. The people I met at the interview were very cool and seemed to have a lot of the same interests as I do, so it should be a good time.

Now I am off to go run the streets naked in celebration… or just sit in front of my PC to do paperwork and play CSS and TF2 until my fingers bleed.

Here is where things stop making sense. In Crysis, by the middle of the game I have easily figured out that it takes a couple rockets to take down a helicopter. No one told me this, I just figured it out. So, when I hear a helicopter I make for the closest rocket launcher and start firing away. Also, I figured out that shooting a guy in the noggin’ is going to be the easiest way to kill him (who would have known!?). So, like Crysis, most modern games require you to learn some simple gameplay mechanics to progress through the game. If gamers can figure all of this out, then why the hell do we still get stupid little messages like “Press F to trade Gun A for Gun B” or “Press E to Open Door”? These are the simplest actions in any game and we usually figure this all out in the tutorial and give it no thought throughout the rest of the game. To me, its just like saying “Press Mouse Button 1 to Shoot Bad Guy”. I don’t get it.

Games should be intuitive enough that we don’t need little messages like that to hold our hand throughout the experience because in reality they take away from the immersiveness of the action. I mean, if you have to tell people how to switch guns or open doors on the 6th Chapter of the game, then maybe your game is too complex or you aren’t giving us gamers enough credit.

Dark Sector appears to be built on the newest version of the Unreal Engine since the graphics have a similar feel to Gears of War and the cover point system appears to work exactly the same. The graphics look gritty and realistic, especially the blood splatter. Though the triple bladed boomerang weapon looks a little strange since it can pick up attributes from your surroundings like electricity or fire, the rest of the melee attacks are fluid and very cinematic. The overall feel of the game reminds me of a slightly more sci-fi version of the Resident Evil series. The one thing I am very curious about is if the suit that the main character, Hayden Tenno, wears has any special abilities that were hinted at in the original Dark Sector trailer.

The coolest, though smallest, innovation in the game is the fact that there is no heads up display at all. Everything you need to know is told to you from your character. Ammo levels are displayed on the guns and when your health is low the screen flashes red like you’re at a bad rave. Though I think the flashing red needs to be toned down a bit, it is a good concept.

Anyways, there seems to be a lot left to find out about this game, so I look forward to playing it when it is released in March.  Of course, I don’t own an XBox 360 yet, so I’ll be fighting 12 year olds for playtime at the local game store.

Anyways, here is a list of games I am looking forward to in 2008 and hope they don’t fall short of my expectations (dates from IGN).

2/12 – Penumbra: Black Plague – Moody, psychological thriller

2/19 – The Club – Bet on Soldier meets Counter Strike

2/26 – Lost: Via Domus - The fantastic television show gets its first game.

2/26 – Turning Point: Fall of Liberty – Alternate telling of WWII where the Nazis invade NYC

3/18 – Turok – Guns and melee versus dinosaurs in the middle of a lush jungle… sweetness

3/25 – Assassin’s Creed – I heard mixed reviews about this game, but since I want to dress up as the lead character for next Halloween I guess I better play the game. And I’m curious as hell of how the combat system works.

3/25 – Farcry 2 – No monsters? In Africa? Dynamic, sandbox gameplay? This ought to be interesting.

Q1 2008 – Legendary: The Box – What happens when Pandora’s Box is unleashed on modern civilization? Gamecock is going to let us know.

May 2008 – Alone in the Dark - Have you seen the videos yet? Wow, just wow.

May 2008 – Age of Conan – This game looks completely brutal, but in a fun way.

June 2008 – Left 4 Dead – Humans vs. Zombies taken to a whole new level. This looks like a heart attack waiting to happen.

Q2 2008 – Wall-E – I usually stay away from movie tie-ins, but the movie looks fantastic, so who knows…

Q3 2008 – Fallout 3 – I hate to admit it, but I have never played the first two. I better get caught up because this game looks to dethrone Oblivion (even though I didn’t like that game).

TBA -American McGee’s Grimm – I want this just so I can say American McGee’s name with pride like I did back when Alice came out. No offense to him as he is a talented guy, but Bad Day L.A… really? C’mon…

TBA – Ghostbusters – ‘Nuff said

TBA – Gore: Special Edition – I didn’t like the Gore series when I first played it, but I played the pre-release of the SE and was very surprised.

TBA – Half Life 2: Episode 3 – I must know what happens! How is Alyx? Who is the G-man? Can I finally rid the world of the Combine? Where’s Barney!?

TBA – Project Offset – This looks like someone took Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and gave it a makeover, got it drunk, and made sweet, sweet love to it. To say this game looks good is an understatement.

TBA – Rogue Warrior – Tactical Shooter that looks pretty fun to play from the screen shots I’ve sen in the past. Developed by local Seattle company, Zombie Studios.

It’s obvious that I can’t buy and play all of these games, so choosing which few to buy will be hard. Assassin’s Creed for sure, but the rest are still up in the air. If you have any suggestions or think I missed a game, let me know.

Also, if you are a game developer/publisher and want me to review one of these games for the site, feel free to pass me along an email at eric.doty@aberrantech.com.

We are so passionate about our gaming that we even have a platform war, which is really nothing more than drinking the proverbial [sugary beverage] of your favorite console’s marketing campaign. We have Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all vying for our undying attention and obviously our money. Each company’s marketing campaign is a bit different, but overall they just want to get their console into your home. In reality, anyone that plays a game is a gamer. If you can sit down and enjoy a video game and want to play it again and possibly branch out to other games, then you are a gamer. Don’t believe this crap that someone playing a casual game is less important to the industry than someone who plays Halo for 30+ hours a week. Both are gamers and both are equally important to the evolution of the industry. People that fight over which platform is better are ignorant fools who have joined the cult and have stopped thinking for themselves. We need open-minded individuals to be aware of big picture and take advantage of the industry’s strengths. The industry is constantly growing and changing, mostly for the better, so you are either with it or against it.

The big three companies responsible for gaming in your home are Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Nintendo’s Wii has the Wii-mote which allows control through motion sensing. It even has a little speaker built into it. Sony has incorporated motion control through its Six Axis Controller, which is fairly intuitive, but it still hasn’t been taken advantage of to the degree it should be. Microsoft’s XBox 360 controller is a slightly more streamlined version of their last controller. It doesn’t have any major features as far as intuitiveness goes, but it is a solid controller and can interface with a headset and a small add-on keypad. The XBox Live! service allows for decent network play and voice chatting, which has yet to be match by the other two consoles. Each system has its weakness, but they are fun to play nonetheless.

This brings me to my main point. Each console has its target demographic, but overall they want to win everyone over. They have made advancements in wireless controller technology, networking. voice chatting, and intuitive gameplay with motion sensors and analog controls. A lot of the technology is something similar to what PC gamers have had for years, but it is in a more streamlined and in an easily accessible package. The unfortunate thing about PC gaming is that it is the equivalent of the crotchety old man of the industry. We buy our fancy and expensive hardware, monitors, and speakers to make us feel like we really are in the game, but we have been using the same controls since the “dawn of Doom”.

You can buy mice and keyboards that cost a hundred dollars or more a piece, but they are pretty much the same thing as their $10 siblings from 10 years ago. Buying a laser mouse and fancy keyboard doesn’t make you better… it just proves you have more money and you like having “new” technology. We use the WASD keys to move around and the mouse to look or navigate menus. Need more buttons for new gameplay features? Just assign them around the WASD set. Now, I’m not saying that PC gamers should drop their keyboards and mice and pick up a controller, but for all the engineering prowess that we have in the PC industry, you would think that we could invent some better equipment to interface with. To think that in ten or twenty years people will still be playing first person shooters with a mouse and keyboard is ridiculous since a handful of keys and a mouse will not be enough to control a realistic character in a digital world just as complicated as our own. The controllers of the future may resemble mouse and keyboards, but they will be more intuitive, more ergonomic, and have all the bells and whistles that we should already have today. I’ve been a huge fan of Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 and can’t imagine playing them any other way, but for newer games that keep trying to revolutionize the way we think in games (Bioshock and Crysis, for example) why can’t we include gameplay and peripherals that make our movements just as intuitive as our brains solving the puzzles?

All of our games are getting more intelligent, but we continue to play harder, when we should be playing smarter. Imagine the freedom that PC game developers would have with making drastically new gameplay dynamics if we started using more intuitive peripherals instead of continue using peripherals for that old school-button pushing-linear gameplay that we have grown so accustomed to.

Moral of the story: We need to play smarter, not harder, and we won’t be able to do that until we work together to have the right tools to do so.

Lawrence recently told the New York Times,

“I recognize that I misspoke. Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography.”

“I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke,” she continued. “I’ve seen episodes of [the ABC television show] Lost that are more sexually explicit.”

Fox News has yet to apologize, but they have offered EA the chance to come on the air and set the record straight. They have yet to take FNC up on its offer. Read more about the incident and EA’s response over at ShackNews.

Anyone that knows me I love Star Wars (like Star Trek too, so don’t judge me) and I was a huge fan of the Jedi Knight games, so when I saw this image uttered, “Hell yeah!”.  This game cannot come out soon enough, but I guess Summer 2008 is reasonable if they don’t delay it like every other game.  Unfortunately, it looks like it is only coming out for consoles as I did not see the typical PC logo listed near the XBox or PS logos.  I’m wondering if this is going to stay on consoles, or if it will eventually be ported over to give us PC Gamers what we really want.  I mean, c’mon they ported over Podracer, so we better get Force Unleashed.   Of course, most people have a console of some sort, but I still have yet to get an XBox 360 since I’m pretty strapped for cash right now.

Song: “Sexual Healing” by Marving Gaye

Yeah… I was that bored.

Fox News “SE”XBOX Video Segment

Here is a comparison of what was said by the people at Fox and the reality of the situation.

Fox: “-the person playing the game gets to decide exactly what’s going to happen between the two people, if you know what I mean”
Reality: The person can choose to enter a sexual relationship if they want to and it is not a simple yes or no choice from the beginning of the game. Also, it is not an interactive porn. It plays out like a normal scene you would see in PG-13 movies or basic cable programming… if you know what I mean.

Fox: “It’s a MAN in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with”
Reality: You can play as a woman. Also, they seem to totally skip over the fact that the female gamers account for a significant portion of the market. In fact, in online games they hold the majority.

Fox: “Who can argue, possibly, that, uh, Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas is a good thing? It’s not”
Reality: Maybe if they played the game they would realize that, uh, this statement doesn’t make any sense because the sex scene doesn’t even remotely resemble porn. This is no different than what you can find on just about any lame-ass Fox show. Also, I think porn is easier to access since much of it is free on the internet and there isn’t any standard lock-out mechanism on a computer like the V-Chip or the Parental Controls on an XBox.

Fox: “We live in a day in age where our children are not always supervised. It’s not the days of the Playboy magazine where a lot of moms were home for a majority of the day.”
Reality: I find this argument strange. Is she arguing against violence and sex in video games or is she arguing that women should stay at home?

Fox: “I’m not sure why it didn’t get an Adults Only rating. That’s the highest rating it can have, so first of all this board that rates them needs to have their head examined.”
Reality: The board, called the ESRB (never once mentioned in the segment), rates games on a scale that is standardized. The thing that really pisses me off about this comment is that they basically say that everyone at the ESRB is stupid and not doing there job. Maybe they should do their job and actually play a game before making snarky-ass comments about it and the organizations behind it. By the way, the ESRB has programs in effect to teach parents about the rating system and how to make better judgments on what to allow their kids to play.

Fox: “This made me feel old watching this. What happened to Atari and Pinball and Pac-Man”
Reality: It’s called technological advancement. Also, if you knew anything about the gaming culture, you would know that retro gaming still has a huge following. Ever hear of the movie King of Kong? Probably not because you are too busy building up your arguments for the next debate you know nothing about.

Fox: “There’s all kinds of bad stuff coming through the internet, through video games, and the reality is, I would argue, the government cannot and should not censor everything across the web and in video games… It’s up to parents to control what their kids are seeing”
Reality: I’m not sure who this guy is, but he’s the only one that really seemed to have a valid point and thought out the argument. I agree with him and wish that everyone else here had that sort of social responsibility. He never once said something about the game because he probably didn’t play it, and that is the smartest thing he could have done.

Overall, Fox and Cooper Lawrence were trying to argue against kids seeing graphic material which really comes down to game ratings and parental responsibility, but they started attacking Mass Effect instead. It doesn’t make any sense since none of them have played it and thus cannot make a valid argument against it. Cooper Lawrence, who comes off as a snobbish bitch in the segment (Check times 1:44 and 2:35) was strongly trying to make the case against that the sexual content warps young boys’ minds. Has she seen any of the shows on Fox lately? They are mostly geared towards the the stereotypical male and as a side effect they pull in younger audiences as well. The content they see on some of those shows are more graphic than anything you will find in Mass Effect and artistically, they don’t even deserve to be compared to the critically acclaimed Mass Effect.

Kudos to Geoff Keighley, who represented the gaming community well and kept his cool while Lawrence basically blabbered on with her own agenda against sexuality in the media and made no real argument against Mass Effect (at least any valid ones). I don’t understand why she didn’t attack modern movies or cable television programming, which both have rating systems and are just as easily accessed by children. It felt like Keighley was there to defend a game that really needed no defending. It all felt like one big plug for Lawrence’s new book and a chance for the people at Fox to show just how little they know about the gaming culture (even though Fox owns IGN, one of the largest sites for video game coverage).

I had never heard of Cooper Lawrence before so I checked out her books. Her newest book, The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with your Inner Overachiever, has her standing on the cover in a typical “sassy meets sexy” pose, and her other two books I found were titled Been There, Done That, Kept the Jewelry: Find True Love–Turn Your Tarnished Dating Past into a Brilliant Romantic Future and The Fixer-upper Man: Turn Mr. Maybe into Mr. Right in 5 Easy Steps. Besides the obvious that she really likes long book titles, I realized that Amazon had removed her ratings on her newest book. I assume that it was hammered by bad reviews by her comments on the Fox News segment. Maybe that will teach her to save her opinions for things she might actually know something about.

Anyways, Cooper Lawrence and most of the Fox News Panel looked like complete idiots and Geoff Keighley should get some sort of award from the gaming community because he went into a debate that he was destined to lose, but still kept his composure and stated the facts.

Update: Apparently EA filed a letter of complaint to Fox News that aims to set the records straight. Below are some excerpts from the letter (from Kotaku).

“As the parent company of BioWare, the studio which created the game, EA would like you to set the record straight on a number of errors and misstatements which incorrectly characterize the story and character interactions in Mass Effect.

Your headline above the televised story read: “New videogame shows full digital nudity and sex.” Fact: Mass Effect does not include explicit or frontal nudity. Love scenes in non-interactive sequences include side and profile shots – a vantage frequently used in many prime-time television shows. It’s also worth noting that the game requires players to develop complex relationships before characters can become intimate and players can chose to avoid the love scenes altogether.

FNC voice-over reporter says: “You’ll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex.”
Fact: Sex scenes in Mass Effect are not graphic. These scenes are very similar to sex sequences frequently seen on network television in prime time.

FNC reporter says: “Critics say Mass Effect is being marketed to kids and teenagers.”
Fact: That is flat out false. Mass Effect and all related marketing has been reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and rated Mature – appropriate for players 17-years and older. ESRB routinely counsels retailers on requesting proof of age in selling M-rated titles and the system has been lauded by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In practical terms, the ratings work as well or better than those used for warning viewers about television content.”

“They have had zero experience with Mass Effect and are largely ignorant about videogames, the people who play them, and the ESRB system that governs their ratings and sales.”

“The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.

Do you watch the Fox Network? Do you watch Family Guy? Have you ever seen The OC? Do you think the sexual situations in Mass Effect are any more graphic than scenes routinely aired on those shows? Do you honestly believe that young people have more exposure to Mass Effect than to those prime time shows?

This isn’t a legal threat; it’s an appeal to your sense of fairness. We’re asking FNC to correct the record on Mass Effect.

Sincerely,

Jeff Brown
Vice President of Communications
Electronic Arts, Inc.”

I do not own an Xbox 360 (yet), so unfortunately Condemned: Criminal Origins never crossed my path. I had heard very little about the game and didn’t actively pursue finding out any more. Besides the Halo series, the FPS genre has mainly resided on my PC. One day while browsing the local department store I happened upon a single copy of Condemned for the PC for $5. Since all the other games for $5 and $10 were terrible games that I could play for free online, I picked up the lonely little game and headed home.

Once the game was installed I began playing the game naively, unknowing that I wouldn’t be getting up again until I had beat the game. It starts out with a sweet credits video that set the mood perfectly with gritty film shots . Then the game moved on to introducing the main character Ethan Thomas who is voiced by the talented Greg Grunberg (from Heroes). You get thrown right into a gritty crime scene where you need to find evidence in an easier version of what you would find in a CSI game. The game picks the tools for you, but finding the evidence isn’t always easy. Then you send the results off to the lab. “This is easy enough”, I naively thought and then the lights went out and all hell broke loose.

Few games have had such an impact on me as Condemned did. The guns are realistic and have no crosshair (though I assume some auto-aim was in effect). Although there are guns, the best conflicts were solved with a blunt object pulled from the world such as boards, sledge hammers, or loose pipes ripped right off of the wall. Each weapon had its advantages and disadvantages mostly related to its weight and how fast you could attack with it. On top of all that, if you only stunned an enemy you could perform a finishing move that was so over the top its obvious why the game got an M rating from the ESRB. In fact, Condemned: Criminal Origins was listed as one of the 10 Most Violent Video Games by the people over at Family Media Guide.

The story has some minor fantasy-type elements to it, but overall it stays rooted in the real world. The game revolves around serial killers and crazy homeless people, so there is plenty of gore and inventive mutilations. Condemned was developed by Monolith, who has had major success with F.E.A.R, so you can imagine what kind of nightmares they have over there. I don’t live that far away from Monolith’s studios, so every now and then I try to listen for maniacal laughs or bloodcurdling screams. Nothing yet, but they might have all been dragged away by men in white coats if these games are any indication of their mental state.

Anyways, the game slowly gets more gritty and just plain weird. The level in the department store with the manequinns is easily on the top of my list for most rattling gameplay environment. I won’t spoil it for you, but it is just plain weird and if you’ve already played Bioshock then you might see a bit of a connection. By the end of the game you are slaughtering crazies left and right and meet up with the oddest looking enemy in the game. The boss is a little more over the top than the rest of the enemies, but it is so intense and brutal that I didn’t care because by that point it is obvious that Ethan is going through some pretty difficult times and it sounds like he’s going a little crazy himself. By the time I was done playing I felt like I had just suffered a couple heart attacks and just drank a few [insert energy drink of choice here]. The game is a little scary, but mostly just intense like any good drama with some horror twist. I still consider this game to be the best blend of FPS and Survival Horror.

So, if you have an Xbox 360 or a half decent PC to play games on, I would suggest going out and finding Condemned: Criminal Origins. You can most likely find it for $10 or less on Ebay or in your local bargain bin*. It is definitely worth a play through just to get caught up with Ethan’s story to prepare yourself for Condemned 2: Bloodshot which is coming to Xbox 360 and PS3 in March. I would bet that it is coming to the PC eventually, but like any port we will have to wait. *twiddles thumbs*

* After searching for the game on various websites the Xbox 360 version can be found around $15 to $20 and the PC version can be bought for as little as $2. Hooray for no trade-in value!

High Altitude isn’t exactly a pretty map, but it is solid and provides for some pretty insane CTF action. I’m quickly learning how to do some cool effects, so hopefully my next map will have a little more smoke and mirrors involved in the design. Enjoy… by the way, there is a Readme included this time to show you how to install the map.

Download CTF-Doomz_High_Altitude (Approx. 5.6MB)

Has anyone else read the newest Wired magazine? Normally I only care about half of the articles, but I read the whole magazine just to know what is going on in the world. This months issue is amazing and I would suggest going out and buying it at your local news stand. There are some great articles and very funny joke that you might actually miss if you aren’t paying attention.

Anyways, be ready for a new review and a map that I think will cause a lot of laughs and cursing at the same time.

Ideally, I feel the map is best suited for 2 or 4 players, but more is obviously acceptable as well. It will just make it even more chaotic. There is bot support if you can’t get enough people online for a full match. Anyways, feel free to download my first map and give it a whirl. Just unzip all three files into Documents/My Games/Unreal Tournament 3/UTGame/Published/CookedPC/Custom Maps (Directory may be slightly different for those on XP).

Download DM-Doomz_TwinAngelsv10

Besides the whole next-gen issue, there are a lot of problems that I have with games. Mainly, First Person Shooter (FPS) games, but some of the issues show up in other genres as well.

Guns

Since 1999, FPS games have made little progress except looking prettier. All FPS games give you a set of guns which are always similar and usually have a pistol, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, a crossbow/railgun, and grenades. The only difference is if the game is set in the extreme levels of sci-fi the guns look different but serve the same exact purpose. There have been some advancements in gameplay enhancing guns liek the Gravity Gun and the Portal Gun, but you’ll hear more about those later on.

Story

Ever play a game that feels like another game? Maybe this story sounds familiar. You are just a lonely scientist/loner/badass and something bad happens involving the military/aliens/generic bad guys and you have to beat them and stop some big event from happening and most likely go home. The only thing more frustrating than a regurgitated story is a story with no real ending hoping to get your money on the sequel. If I just spent $50 on a game to play through 15+ hours of story and then have it leave me hanging just to wait two or three years for the sequel is terrible. Go ahead and hint at a follow-up, but don’t get lazy and make us wait years for anything resembling a conclusion. Half-Life’s episodic content is pushing it, but playing a few hours and waiting a year isn’t too bad, but definitely not ideal. A game that really frustrated me was Indigo Prophecy (a.k.a. Fahrenheit) for a slightly different reason. I was playing it and about 80% in the story was getting really good and I was blown away at how different this game was to other adventure games. Then the game introduces a whole new villian with a weird sci-fi twist which was the complete opposite of where the story was going before. I don’t mind stories that change direction, but don’t take me in two directions at once without leading up to it.

Graphics

I don’t mind if companies buy the license to use the engine from another company’s game or a company using the same engine from one of their other games, but I’m getting sick of having games that look exactly the same. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Gears of War and am currently engrossed in UT3, but they look the same. Sure there are minor differences here and there, but they are both gritty futuristic dystopias filled with musclebound warriors set on a mission to kill aliens. The level design is different for each game because of their respective gameplay require different layouts, but the dull gray broken down buildings just feel too much alike.

Special Feature

Half-Life 2 has the gravity gun, F.E.A.R. had the sweet slo-mo ability, and Portal added the gravity gun. All three of these games added a new dynamic to the gameplay and they looked great while really adding to the experience. Games are an experience and should always aim to be new and exciting. The only problem is that these games were hailed for their achievements and now you can bet that every generic shooter to come along is going to copy one or all of these features.

Marketing

This hasn’t effected me too much, but I know others that are really peeved about this. You’ll see a commercial for a game or a preview where the game looks absolutely amazing with advanced graphics. Then you get the game and realise that the commercial was only a prerendered cutscene and the in-game graphics look terrible in comparison. Or, you watch a commercial and it shows promise of a huge epic battle and then you play through the game and its just the same ol’ linear gameplay you’ve played a million times over. C’mon, I know the developers and publishers need to make money by selling these games, but don’t lie to us. You don’t see commercials for movies that advertise for a completely different plot or show a pretty actress and then not have her in the movie. That just doesn’t happen.

Multiplayer vs. Single Player

Too many times though the multi-player almost looks like an afterthought and doesn’t play nearly as well as the single player. It seems that the developer could have saved their time and not even made the multiplayer component and spent that time on making the single player experience better or making more add-on content. The opposite is true with multiplayer-centric games. Don’t tell me there is a single-player component if the game is really meant as a multiplayer game. The best example of this is UT3. I really enjoy playing UT3 online, but was surprised by the single-player option. I fired it up and got an amazing rendered cutscene that put many of hollywood’s CGI movies to shame. Then when the cutscene was over I was essentially playing the same online portion of the game, except against bots. The only story is in the cutscenes and the rest of the game lacks that same character. Halo is one of the few games where everyone seems to enjoy both the single player and the multiplayer experience. Its not often that you can play co-op through the story, and I would like to see more games adopt this.

Extras

What is with the retailers offering extra character models, or a USB thumb drive, or a spork with a logo on it (I haven’t seen this, but it would be sweet). Why should I have to decide what extra character I want by choosing which retailer I want to make richer? I shouldn’t be forced to shop at a store I don’t like just to get that cool little extra. If you are going to make it available, just ship a limited number of them to every store. That way you can improve first-day sales across the board and everyone, especially me, will be happy. Also, what is up with giving people special codes to unlock an extra character? From what I have seen these are not exclusive to the actual game you bought from the store, so if you tell everyone what the code is they get the character too. After getting the collectors edition of UT3 I found that people that bought the game from Best Buy got a certain extra character. A simple search online took me to a forum that listed all the bonus codes to unlock those characters in my game. Why even market it as a Best Buy exclusive when it obviously is not?

Digital Distribution

Many of today’s gamers have decently fast internet connections, so giving us the option to download the game instead of buying it is a great idea.  Even being able to pre-load it and activate it when the game is released saves us the hassle of traveling to the store at what usually turns out to be midnight releases.   The downfall of digital distribution is that the game usually cost the same as its retail kin.  Why should we pay the same amount when downloading the game when we do not get the media or any of the booklets that come with it?  The thing that really confuses me is that I would assume that it would cost the company more money to produce the physical media than it would to just put the game image on servers.  Another problem with digital distribution is that you cant trade it in for credit on buying your next game.  It was bad enough that most game stores have stopped letting you trade in PC games, but now you can’t even sell them to your friends because everything is tied to your online account with all your other downloaded games.  $50 used to buy me a game and I could sell it for anywhere between 50% and 75% to allow me to buy my next big game.  Now I have to decide whether the game I’m going to spend $50 on is really worth having forever.

Collectors Editions

Collectors Editions are a great product to have if you are a diehard fan of a series, but sometimes it looks like it is an afterthought just to get people to spend an extra $10 or $20 on the game. If I am spending a lot of extra money on a game I want it to look like they spent a lot of time adding the extras. Two games that really took it up a notch were Halo 3 and UT3. I think everyone knows by now what diehard fans could get if they had the money, but UT3 is a different animal. Instead of going all out on extra products, they went fairly subtle and being a UT fan from way back I was very pleased with what I got. I little book with some art and a bonus DVD with a couple behind the scenese videos and a 20+ hours series of Unreal Engine tutorials. As someone who enjoys games beyond just playing them, this made me feel that the company wanted me to enjoy the game to the fullest and create some content of my own to play and share. It was way more satisfying that getting a 2″ tall toy that I’ll probably toss in a closet a couple months from now.

Game Manuals

Where have all the game manuals gone? If you buy a game today you are lucky to get more than a single sheet of paper explaining the controls. Having zero documentation really doesn’t bother me as I generally never read them. All the game mechanics should be explained to me while playing the first level of the game as well as any backstory, but there is no reason that you should not include proper documentation if there is going to be a $20 guide sold next to it at the game store. Granted these guides are walkthroughs and no one should really need those (especially with the internet around), but they also usually offer some more insight into the game’s stories or characters. Would it have been too hard to include that with the game?

Don’t get me wrong, I really love playing video games. But I am not going to ignore the fact there are some major flaws that constantly arise in them. I cannot wait until technology and graphics programming reach a point where developers literally can do whatever they want. Then they can start focusing on areas where they are truly lacking and that generally turns out to be the story writing and the mechanics which effect the experience much more than graphical “smoke and mirrors”. I do have one game mechanic I would like added to many newer FPS games, but I will save that for another post.

Anyways, having massive credit card debt does have its benefits. Every so often when I earn enough points for being poor, the Thank You Network lets me choose a “gift” thanking me for paying them every month just to add that amount back on to my debt the next month. After a couple months of waiting, I had the chance this week to choose another gift. I chose a $50 gift certificate to Circuit City. I had a choice between Circuit City or Best Buy, and on average Circuit City is a bit cheaper on video games (according to their website). So, in a week I will have a $50 credit and don’t know what I want. Right now I’m deciding between Bioshock (I haven’t played yet), The Witcher, Crysis, or maybe just buying a nice headset since I am still using my cheap $10 headphones from Walmart I bought a year ago.

Besides deciding how to spend my $50, I have been checking out t-shirts from Huzzah! They are some of the sweetest shirts I have ever seen. I don’t have that kind of money to spend on a t-shirt, but I am jealous of whoever does. The two new shirts based on Beatle album covers are amazing. Its nice to see some nerd designs pop up every now and then that aren’t reprints of “All ur base…” shirts. Yeah, yeah, I still own one of the originals, wanna fight about it?

I hope you all enjoy your New Year. I’m going to bed early so I get a fresh start tomorrow working on a UT3 map and listen to some more of my Learn Japanese CDs.

The game industry, for the most part, is a completely different breed than most other markets. Its not like selling an iPod or Zune and you just have to have a sweet ad to attract both the techies and the plebs. Gaming is full of sub-genres that attract different groups of gamers and even non-gamers. And worse than the high-risk behavior of the movie industry, games cannot rely on both box-office sales and then the residual revenue from DVD sales. In games you get one shot and then it gets tossed into the bargain bin.

I shouldn’t even have to mention this, but Nintendo has made it clear that they have completely owned the industry in both hardware and software sales this year with the Wii constantly selling-out at retailers. The smart thing about Nintendo is that both their Wii and DS handheld are easily accessible by both enthusiast and casual gamers. Even people that haven’t played a game since Pac Man can pick up one of these new devices and get the hang of it relatively easy. If I had an award to give out Nintendo’s UI/UX designers would receive it for their ability to bring in outsiders into what is usually a “Members Only” club. The problem with these systems is that beyond the hardware, they do not sell a lot of games. The average person buying a Wii is buying it for the experience of playing Wii Sports or Mario Galaxy. The same goes for the DS where a lot of “older” gamers probably bought the DS for Brain Age and have yet to buy another game for it. There is nothing wrong with this as selling the experience is important, but it is pushing profit and not the actual advancement of the industry. The tidal wave of terrible third-party software doesn’t help much either, but that is a whole story of its own. Now, before I get hatemail I want you to know that I do like Nintendo and always have, but I feel that they carved themselves into a niche market and it will be interesting to see where they go from here.

Okay, so we are four paragraphs in so I better start getting to the point. In November 2002 (Wikipedia) the Xbox video game console received the now infamous Xbox LIVE service. It was suppose to create a community among console gamers that had only been available in PC Gaming. It allows Gamertags and it tracks what games you played and what achievements you have received. Since you can see anyone’s Gamercard, it make you want to be the best you can and get as many achievements as possible to avoid looking like a “n00b”. The advantage for Microsoft and game developers is that when they track achievements, they can see how easy certain tasks are for the majority of gamers. If a certain achievement was meant to be obtained easily, but not many people who played that game got that achievement then that could mean that the developers need to make their next game slightly easier. Simply put, achievements can help fine tune the difficulty of future games for better playability. Today, no other console has a service like this can offer what the LIVE service does. Sony is releasing Home for Playstation 3, but nothing that I have seen makes me think that it will have the same success as the Xbox LIVE service.

Recently, Microsoft released the Games for Windows platform which is supposed to offer a way for all the games released under the GFW label to go through certain QA tests which is a great thing because I can recollect two distinct games that I purchased that flat out didn’t work without first applying a patch. That’s right, I’m looking at you Chronicles of Riddick: EFBB and Chaos Legion. With the GFW label comes the Windows LIVE service, which is almost identical to the Xbox version. It tracks what games you have played, what Achievements you have gotten, your reputation, etc. Its been a tough sell to PC gamers who have had online play for free for over a decade and already have clans and voice chat available to them, but overall it has been successful. The promise of the ability to play against console gamers was very intriguing, but the first Windows LIVE game Shadowrun fell short. It was a deathmatch only game for $50 and to play against console gamers you needed to pay for the Gold service (beyond the first free month). My only real issue with the game is that it took upwards of 15 minutes just to get connected to an online game. Since Shadowrun, Halo 2 and Gears of War have come up to the PC and done the job a bit better. I personally bought Gears of War for PC and found it to be very enjoyable. Connecting to a game only took a couple minutes and it played well with the mouse and keyboard. It still wasn’t as convenient as firing up Counter-Strike and just connecting to a server in a massive list, but it was definitely showing progress.

So you’re probably thinking to yourself that you already knew all about Xbox LIVE and Windows LIVE, so why am I babbling on about it? Because what is going on behind the scenes is absolutely genius and just as important as what you are seeing on your screen. Each and every game you play is tracked as well as every demo you play or game trailer. Microsoft can keep track of how many people download and play a game demo. Then they can track how many of those same people buy the game after playign the demo. This can be compared to how many people that buy the game without playing the demo. This can guide them in deciding what content should be in the demo to sell the game and if some games shouldn’t have demos if they feel that it might jeopardize the sales. I’m sure there are a few shovelware titles out there that have done better than they should have because people weren’t sure what they were getting into. Also, having complete access to the number of hours that people play the game can be used for selling in-game advertising to outside clients. Being able to tell your client there is potential to have gamers see their ad every few minutes as they drive around in a game for an average of X amount of hours is a great selling point. As a gamer I really don’t mind in-game advertising as long as it makes sense in the context of the game. Seeing billboard ads for Axe body spray in GRAW didn’t distract me, but the fact that EVERY billboard had an Axe ad did. I think once more companies realize that in-game advertising is valid and we get some variety then games will be one step closer to looking realistic.

They can also track how much of a game is played online vs. offline (or even co-op).   If a majority of gamers play online only, then that could mean that more games could be released catering to your preferences. I know a lot of people get paranoidabout software that tracks them, but this is one of the handful of cases where it is very beneficial to the user.  They use the stats about how games are played to make sure that games that come out in the future cater to the preferences of their customers.  If used properly, that can mean more top-notch entertainment for you and less shovelware wasting developers time and money.

The ability to track all gamer activity and use it for sales and future game development is a priceless tool to have at your disposal, but the ability to sell games via digital distribution puts it into the “genius” category. Allowing independent developers to distribute their games in a centralized area without worrying about the hassle involved with retail packaging and sales. Also, with internet speeds finally picking up in the U.S. (don’t even get me started about how slow internet in America is) we can now download classic Xbox games that we might have missed the first time around. They might be a bit pricey compared to buying them in the bargain bin at your local games store, but ask any PC gamer and they’ll tell you that playing games directly from the hard drive is the ideal way to play.

With the success of Xbox LIVE and the emergence of Sony’s Home and Steam’s Community, it is obvious that the video game industry is truly going next gen. Because even though every fanboy is head over heels in love with their fancy new graphics, it is the community and extras that are constantly evolving the industry. Those of us who don’t get caught up in the hoopla know that graphics will always continue to be next gen as each new piece of technology comes out. It is the ability to accurately predict sales, advertising, and the reception within the community that really determines the success of a game and that in turn affects the development of the next game to come out after that one. Even Facebook and MySpace run with the same goal in mind and even though they appear to be simple online communities, you can bet that a lot of numbers and sales talk is going on in some dark conference room regarding their traffic and their next big improvement or ad campaign.

So, next time you play a demo on LIVE and then go buy the game, or spend hours playing against your friends online, you are quite possibly effecting how the industry will approach its next big game. Now if they could only figure out a nice simple filter to properly(and permanently) mute the screeching 12 year olds that I always seem to get paired up with.

I dialed Microsoft’s Activation phone number and was required to give them nine sets of numbers in groups of six. Then the robotic female voice proceeded to tell me that she couldn’t activate Windows for me and had to send me to a Microsoft representative. I almost immediately transferred over to the representative and he had me read the first six numbers to make sure I was the same person the robot talked to. Then he asked me what version of Vista I was installing, if I purchased it or if it was OEM, and then he asked me if it was installed on any other computer. Then he read me off 54 numbers to type in and Windows activated successfully.

The thing that surprised me was that the whole process was much easier than expected.  It was a bit frustrating sitting there talking to the robot at first and then the slightly robotic representative, but I had Vista activated in under 10 minutes without giving out a ton of information. I’m curious to know how many people call in that can’t activate after installing Vista once before and even more intriguing is how many people call in without legitimate versions of Vista and still get them activated.

You can get more information about the game over at 3D Realms website.