Friday afternoon tidbits

We had a big rainstorm here yesterday. When I walked into my local Gamestop, soaking wet, I said, "Ironically, I'm looking for Heavy Rain." The employee did not laugh. Foiled again!

-The PAX schedule has been announced! Lots of interesting stuff on there. Having not been to this kind of thing before, I'm not sure how early I need to show up at the panels I want to see, though I'm suspecting they won't be the most popular ones. I'm instinctively passing over things I know will be heavily attended, like the PA panels and the keynote, but I don't want to miss the journalism panels. I'm already building a stockpile of spitballs to throw at Croal and Totilo.

-Sparky Clarkson has one of the most cogent takes I've seen about why No More Heroes 2 is diminished by not having an overworld. Speaking of the first game's rendering of Santa Destroy, he says "the city serves the purpose of the game. It creates a sea of banality for Travis (and the player) to escape from into the vibrant world of the assassin rankings. The city helps to characterize Travis as a loser. And the city says something interesting about other open-world games." That's dead-on. And without that counterpoint, the sequel doesn't seem nearly as savagely satirical.

-I gave up on Modern Warfare 2 long ago, for many reasons, but I still appreciated L.B. Jeffries' rigid analysis of MW2's multiplayer map style. His key insight: in this game, the map is a weapon. That certainly explains my uncanny ability to get shot by opponents I couldn't see.

-I'm only a few hours into Heavy Rain at this point, and I have to say I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Despite its healthy Metacritic score, I've been surprised both at the volume and the ferocity of the criticisms I've read of the game on message boards, blogs, and Twitter. One of the more balanced criticisms comes, naturally, from the Brainy Gamer, who says that he finds Heavy Rain to be at cross-purposes.

I think there's room to like or dislike the game, and plenty of complaints to make about it, but frankly I think a lot of the complaints I've read -- not at the above link -- are misguided. I'll say more about that next week.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Here's hoping 2010 is off to a good start for everyone. It would be great if this was the last New Year's Eve we'll have to suffer those idiotic novelty eyeglasses, but somehow I don't see that happening. Alas.

-Like "a game that will make players cry," one of those long-sought measures of cultural legitimacy has been "game reviews in the New York Times." What more could you need for a seal of approval than coverage in the paper of record? Unfortunately, Seth Schiesel still seems to feel the need to grovel to the Times' august readership. His review of Dragon Age buries some good observations under so much hyperbole that an IGN editor might call it excessive. He calls DA "perhaps the best electronic game yet made," which is not to be confused with The Beatles: Rock Band, which was merely "the most important game yet made."

Look, I get where he's coming from. Long ago, I noticed that the more highly I praised a game, the more likely my editors were to tease it on the paper's front page. Sometimes I have to resist the urge to overplay a positive review for that reason, and sometimes I feel the need to explain why a negative or middling review of a big game might still deserve promotion. I can only imagine what incentives Seth has to try to convince his editors, and his readers, that this column is worth their time. But while I don't doubt his sentiments about Dragon Age, he sounds like he doesn't trust his readers to get it without so many adjectives.

Put it another way: I don't get the same sense of desperation for acceptance when Manohla Dargis goes nuts for Avatar.

-One of the good ones, Gary Hodges, has returned to write for a new site called GeekWeek, kicking things off with a 2009 year in review. He's joined there by some former Joystick Division bros, from back before that site went to shit (and, it should be said, became massively more popular). I'll be keeping an eye out for this one.

-I'm still enjoying reading about Modern Warfare 2's single player campaign, especially because it combines so much deft execution with so many idiotic ideas. Tom Cross has a great essay on MW2 at his personal blog, who rightly excoriates everything to do with the dialogue, storyline, and characterizations. And it's not that anybody played this game for the characterizations, but Tom's trenchant observation is that the game does seem to assume that we cared about Soap and Price the first time around.

(To be fair, though, on HBO's Generation Kill, which I assumed to be fairly authentic in its depiction of wartime, they say "Oscar Mike" just as much as they do in this game.)

-We talked about it a bit on the Brainy Gamer podcast, and now you can read Tom Bissell's piece on difficulty in Demon's Souls at Crispy Gamer. It's obviously an exaggeration to say, as I did on the podcast, that games weren't fun when I was a kid, but it's very much true that once you knew how to beat them, most of them took about 20 minutes to get through. All the replay value came from how hard they were to get through. You just had to keep throwing yourself at them over and over, maybe for months.

(And nothing about Demon's Souls sounds fair to me, not remotely. No pause? A guy who kills all the merchants, rendering your in-game currency useless? Higher-level players who can come into your game at any time and kill you? What the hell would make this game unfair?)

-I broke down and bought tickets for PAX East before early-bird pricing ended (you can still buy three-day passes for $50 each), so I will probably see a bunch of you there. I've never been to something like that before. I don't really know what to expect. Since it's in my hometown, I've been flirting with the idea of throwing some kind of pre-show bash the night before, but I don't know. Does anybody even show up early for these things?

Before anyone asks: no, you can't sleep on my couch.

To the weekend!

Year in review: Honorable mentions

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: 2009 honorable mentions.

We may never see another year like 2007 again, when we were treated to one astonishing game after another. But 2009 was no slouch. Like last year, quality was generally high, with just a few stinkers, and even those often suffered more from understandable fatal flaws than from all-encompassing ineptitude. No doubt about it, I played a lot of good games this year.

In chronological order:

Skate 2: Still extremely challenging, Skate 2 improved upon its predecessor mostly by giving you the ability to walk up steps, which was very necessary.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin: A mish-mash of styles that didn't all work together, this game had enough high points to be worth playing.

Killzone 2: Graphically impressive and with a fun, team-based multiplayer mode, it wasn't one of the best FPSes ever made, even if you do have a functioning brain. But it was a good one.

MadWorld: Sort of a better idea than it was a game, MadWorld was striking and unusual, and comically violent.

Guitar Hero: Metallica: I'll be honest with you. This, not The Beatles, was my favorite music game of the year.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena: This would be here if it were only the high-definition remake of Escape from Butcher Bay. The Dark Athena chapter is not quite as good, but actually better than I thought people gave it credit for.

Punch-Out!!: Absolutely worthy of the name. Extremely fun. Also controller-throwingly difficult. (But what isn't, really?)

Ghostbusters: The Video Game: Funny, breezy, colorful -- the definition of good but not great. It's also my nephew Sam's favorite game to play with me, besides X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Which reminds me...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: I never wrote about this game, but I played it a little and found it to be a fun, good-looking beat-'em-up with some neat cinematic events. It's also unbelievably gory. Did I mention Sam is four years old?

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal: Telltale is doing a fine job with the LucasArts relaunches. Not so fine that I sought out the subsequent episodes, but hey, I'm a busy man.

'Splosion Man: Another challenging throwback to the sidescrolling era, this played like Sonic the Hedgehog mixed with the "Barrel Blast" level of Donkey Kong Country.

Fat Princess: A surprisingly relaxing take on competitive capture-the-flag gaming.

The Beatles: Rock Band: Well, it is the Beatles, after all.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: A really slick package.

Assassin's Creed II: It takes a good eight hours to get to the point where this game is fun. Once there, it can be, at times, brilliant, but it still gets in its own way too much.

Tomorrow: The worst games of 2009.

Year in review: Year-end superlatives

Above: A winner is you, everyone.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

Today, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Welcome Trend: Co-op for All

Cooperative gameplay isn't exactly new. It's almost as old as video games themselves. But the past year seems to have shown an increased emphasis on multiplayer games that are less about competition and more about cooperation. We're seeing more and more games that want to give groups of players a chance to write their own stories. The Left 4 Dead games may be the ultimate example of this. Borderlands is another. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, though I didn't appreciate it, is another. From Resident Evil 5 to Uncharted 2 to Modern Warfare 2, co-op is everywhere.

There was a time when I preferred single-player gaming to any other type. Today I'm finding myself always looking for the next great co-op experience. Keep 'em coming, developers!

Noble Failure of the Year: Brütal Legend

Everybody roots for Tim Schafer. He seems like such an awesome guy, and his games, especially for LucasArts, are uncommonly literate, funny, and character-driven. Brütal Legend is, too, but unfortunately it's not so fun to play. I was thinking about Schafer's Full Throttle recently, and how much the two games have in common. A beefy protagonist with a strict code of honor, who feels like the world is passing him by. A fascination with a dark but principled subculture. And gameplay segments that feel shoehorned in, and which don't work at all.

In Full Throttle, it was the highway duels, and in Brütal Legend, it's -- well, everything, really. If this game had been a beat-em-up or an open-world action game or a real-time strategy game, and Double Fine had taken the time to polish it, it might have been spectacular. Instead, it's all of them, and it's none of them. I have read that this game is too awesome to be confined in something as simple as genre, but I've said before and I'll say again that I'd rather a game do one thing well than several things badly.

It's too bad because the story is so great, and because I want people like Tim Schafer to succeed. But it can't be a good sign when you're hurrying through the gameplay segments so you can get to the next cutscene.

PR Knuckleheads of the Year: Infinity Ward

Let's first say that Bobby Kotick should probably win this award every year, but since we gave it to him last year, we'll retire him from consideration.

Maybe it's because my memory only goes back six weeks, but even when I think of other noteworthy controversies from the year, I feel like the companies involved acquitted themselves pretty well. Capcom's reps did a decent job of defending Resident Evil 5 from racism charges (even if the game itself didn't), Chair made it clear that they do not hate gays, and so forth. Infinity Ward could only offer lame excuses in defense of the silly things they did. Which, in case you forgot, were:

• Making a level where you kill a bunch of civilians, and then being proud of it
• Dropping dedicated servers for the PC players
• Releasing a viral video with homophobic slurs

I don't envy Robert Bowling having to defend this stuff all the time, and it's not like he was responsible for any of those things, but pretending not to notice the acronym in the grenade spam video was pretty weak. Compare IW's response to any of these things to the way Valve handled the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, and you start to see what I'm talking about.

I'm sure this post will have everybody at Infinity Ward crying themselves to sleep, on top of a pile of money.

Game Blogger of the Year: Ben Abraham

In the past, this has been an award for an individual blog, but Ben's work across two sites this year deserves notice. On his personal blog, Ben's Permanent Death saga was both a feat of storytelling and a penetrating look at a great game, Far Cry 2. The 391-page PDF, with full-color screenshots and a forward by Clint Hocking, is a terrific package.

Ben also launched Critical Distance, a site devoted to spotlighting the best games writing from around the web. Each week, Ben rounds up entertaining and thoughtful work on a variety of subjects. A spectacular group of writers contributes critical compilations, which are comprehensive lists of links about specific games, and spotlights, which are in-depth looks at individual writers. This is a great site, and long overdue. We're at the point now where the problem isn't a lack of good writing -- it's how to find it all. Ben is doing the leg work.

Developer of the Year: Rocksteady Studios

Here's why: who the hell is Rocksteady Studios? You know what to expect from Valve and Insomniac and Naughty Dog and Infinity Ward and Gearbox. They're all developers that have a track record, and whatever you think of the games they make, they are consistent. Before this year, Rocksteady had exactly one game to their credit: Urban Chaos: Riot Response, a game with a weak 73 Metacritic average, and which I am willing to bet you had not heard of, let alone played.

How they followed that up with Batman: Arkham Asylum, a rich and fully-realized action-adventure game that can fairly be compared to Metroid and BioShock, I have no idea. And how Eidos, DC Comics, and whoever else that needed to sign off on this thing saw the potential in them to make Arkham Asylum is a sign of uncommonly good judgment all around.

Let's put it this way: Will you be paying attention to whatever Rocksteady does next? Of course you will.

Publisher of the Year: Sony Computer Entertainment

That's right. I'm about to dump some more praise on these guys in a minute, so we'll keep this quick. From MLB 09 to Uncharted 2 to Ratchet and Clank, they kept standards sky-high for their most important properties. Well-received exclusives like Killzone 2 and inFamous set the table for future sequels. Games like Flower and Fat Princess and PixelJunk Shooter helped PlayStation Network stand toe-to-toe with Xbox Live Arcade. No doubt about it, Sony had a very good year.

Game Console of the Year: PlayStation 3

Honestly, there were times I thought Sony would have to pull the plug on the PS3. The first few years were a disaster. A company with less deep pockets probably would have given up long ago. But Sony persevered, and in 2009 things fell into place for them. They made a necessary price cut, to $299. They released a true killer app, Uncharted 2. They launched a marketing campaign that people actually like. And all the things that had kept the flame flickering for the beleaguered console -- great downloadable games, stellar first-party properties, Blu-ray -- just kept burning brighter.

Sure, much of what Sony has done this year can be found on other platforms (it's not exactly a coup that the PS3 streams Netflix), but they've finally put their system on solid footing. This was the first year since they announced a $599 launch price* that people have discussed either Sony or the PS3 without using the word "fucking." And the debate -- Xbox 360 or PS3? -- has never been further from a resolution.

Tomorrow: 2009 honorable mentions.

*Yes, that really was the first Insult Swordfighting post.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Christmas is just one week away, which probably means this will be the last Friday links post of 2009. Better make it a good one!

-All 12 parts of Slate's Gaming Club are up now. At over 1,000 words a piece, that's a lot of debating. I hope it was worth people's while to read. I had a great time writing it, and interacting with Chris, Jamin, and Leigh. The blogosphere is a conversation in some ways, but it's so indirect that it can still feel like you're just talking to yourself. I always enjoy a chance to do something like this. I also want to mention the editor of the piece, Josh Levin, who worked as hard as any of us and did a great job putting it all together.

-In a decade-in-review piece, the Phoenix's Ryan Stewart says that now that games have reached critical mass, it's time for some anti-establishment developers to rise up. He says gaming needs its "Nirvana moment," a phrase he tried to resist using but which sums it up too well not to. As is often the case when people say "Why don't we have x, y, or z," I'll say that they are out there somewhere, but he's right that popular games are still sort of in a hair-metal phase.

-Tom Armitage has some ideas to fix "No Russian." I think they're really smart, and would have gone a long way toward alleviating some of the problems I had with it. Still, though, the biggest issue is the tonal clash with the rest of the game, and that wouldn't be solved unless they changed everything else.

-Thanks to my new Kotaku features feed (thanks, Sal Paradise), I didn't miss Leigh Alexander's piece about developers getting appropriate credit for games. This is an issue that goes back to the very beginning. It's why Activision started in the first place. Things are better now than they were then, sure, but it's nuts that you have to basically be enslaved for the duration of a development cycle if you want to get credit for your work.

That's all I've got for this week. Have a great weekend!

A well past due Modern Warfare 2 review

Above: Much rushin'.

My review of Modern Warfare 2 is up now at thephoenix.com. After playing long enough not to totally embarrass myself in multiplayer (harder to do than you'd realize), I settled in on liking it, but not loving it. The multiplayer is fully featured and robust, if the single-player is much less effective than that of Call of Duty 4. So it's good, not great.

I find myself asking the same question I always ask when a game is this commercially successful: Why this game? Why Modern Warfare 2 and not, say, Killzone 2? I'd put those games about on par in terms of quality. They both have splashy, unsatisfying campaigns, and deep multiplayer modes with tons of character progression and unlocks (excessively so, in the latter case). Yet Killzone is already forgotten, while MW2 is the biggest entertainment launch of all time. It's strange.

That said, it's certainly not a negative review, and I'm glad to have had a chance to play the game. I hope that Infinity Ward shows a little more restraint the next time out as far as the campaign goes, but they have a solid multiplayer foundation that's obviously working for a lot of people. What can you do but tip your cap to them?

Leveling the playing field

Above: Capitalism, a love story.

Designing a multiplayer game has got to be tricky. With a single-player game, a player who finds the game too easy or too hard can usually make an in-game adjustment to suit his tastes. In multiplayer, that's not possible, especially in a game like Modern Warfare 2, in which new players are constantly rotating in. The risk is that players who are much better than average will tend to dominate, while players who are much worse than average will have a hard time competing. And that's not fun for anybody.

Developers generally choose from at least one of three approaches to level the playing field:

1. Match players by skill
2. Give help to bad players
3. Give incentives to good players

Matching up players based on their ability or rank always seems like a good idea, but it never seems to pan out in practice. Besides which, how are bad players ever going to improve if they aren't operating outside their comfort zone? The ideal situation, from a training standpoint, would be to constantly be playing against players one tier above you, if such a thing could be calculated. But you won't ever get to win in that case, either, even as you're improving.

Giving help to bad players is a good idea, but it has to be done delicately. Nobody thinks it's fair when the best player loses thanks to heavyhanded intervention by the game gods. How many times have you been cruising to a victory in Mario Kart, only to be undone by a succession of lightning bolts and purple shells? Often in games like that, it seems like being skillful is a detriment. What you want to be is second best, so you can zip past the leader right after Zeus strikes him down.

Incentivizing good play tends to work the best. In Modern Warfare 2, you earn XP for killing an opponent, but you earn more XP for killing him with a headshot. That's a nice touch. You're rewarded for being good, without being punished for not being quite as good. On the other hand, the killstreak rewards can seem like a case of the rich getting richer. It's not easy to get a killstreak long enough to call in the heavy artillery, and when you're still hanging out at the bottom of the learning curve, little is more terrifying than hearing the whine of your opponent's jump jet hovering over the battlefield. 25 kills in a row gives you the ability to deploy a tactical nuke -- if you can kill 25 people in a row without dying, you basically are a tactical nuke.

But the killstreaks are balanced nicely. They don't get out of hand. For one thing, I initially thought that you could only use one reward per killstreak -- i.e., call in your UAV after three kills, and your counter resets to zero -- but it turns out that you can use each killstreak ability as it comes. And the UAV is even persistent, after a brief cooldown. A big killstreak may be hard to come by, but even a mediocre player can occasionally luck into smaller ones, and it's nice to know they will be immediately rewarded.

Infinity Ward's other good idea is the deathstreak, lower-level help given to players who are getting killed over and over with nothing to show for it. Die a few times in a row and you're given the option to steal another player's class. It's a good way to switch it up when things aren't working for you. Die a little more and you might get the "last stand" perk, which lets you keep firing for a moment after dying. It's a smart way to keep bad players in the game without giving them an inordinate amount of help. If Modern Warfare followed the Mario Kart model, then the tactical nuke would come from a deathstreak.

Overall, the multiplayer is very well balanced. The best reap the biggest rewards, but the worst have a strong safety net. And for the rest of us in the middle, we are at least competitive, and who knows? Maybe the next care package will have that nuke in it.

Friday afternoon tidbits-

Nobody's asked how NaNoWriMo is going, but I'll tell you anyway: I expect to cross the 50,000 word mark tonight or tomorrow, although the story itself will go on for a bit longer. It's been a rewarding, if taxing, experience, and I'd recommend anybody who's ever thought about writing a book give it a go next year. Or, hell, just try it in December! Writing is sweet.

-Kyle Orland has the definitive look at the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott. Not having paid attention to any of it while it was happening, I didn't realize there was a story with so many twists and turns. This just proves, once again, that Valve is one of the smartest companies around. But the boycotters made their point too, and overall the whole thing seems much more successful than the MW2 boycott.

-Speaking of MW2, I don't see a need to weigh in on the "No Russian" scene because so many others have already said basically what I would have, only better -- Kieron Gillen and Tom Chick chief among them. Nick Dinicola has a more sanguine take, arguing that Modern Warfare 2 accurately reflects the senseless state of warfare in the 21st century. He may not be totally wrong about that, but it's important to remember the extent to which we've sanitized World War II in our collective memory. Maybe there was a good reason for fighting it, but you can't tell that to the 50 million people who died, the majority of them civilians.

-Also at PopMatters, L.B. Jeffries stands up for the merits of linear narrative. He's right to frame it the way he does -- there's always a lot of excitement about emergent narratives and player-as-author design philosophies, but there's room for more than one approach. Well-scripted, linear games may not be sexy, but they'll never go out of style.

-Steve Gaynor puts together his picks for the definitive games of the decade, which he says "defined the state of the art in game design in the 00's." Good list with lots to think about. Like one of the commenters, I too think that Guitar Hero and Rock Band should be on that list in some form. They are simply too big a cultural and commercial phenomenon to ignore, and although music and rhythm games had existed in some form before, the original Guitar Hero is clearly the demarcation point between the genre as a niche and as a powerhouse.

-Sarah Palin may think she's going rogue, but it turns out to be a pretty weak build.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Week one of National Novel Writing Month seems to be going well, at least where word count is concerned. Quality, not so much. That's the point! But with Dragon Age on the docket, week two promises to be much more challenging. Fortunately, there's always time for links.

-Paste posted their list of the 20 best games of the decade, to which I contributed both a ballot and a blurb for the #5 pick. For the most part it's an unsurprising list, though Guitar Hero III at number 10 strikes me as a disgrace. Otherwise there are a bunch of games I loved (Portal, BioShock, Shadow of the Colossus), and a bunch of games I didn't love but can't quibble with their inclusion (Halo, Grand Theft Auto, even Metal Gear Solid 2). People love to bitch about lists, but not as much as publishers love publishing them.

-I didn't see the video before it got pulled, but apparently Infinity Ward released a promotional video for Modern Warfare 2 in which Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels warned players against being grenade-throwing pussies, in a mock PSA brought to you by "Fight Against Grenade Spam." Har, har. There have been several decent reactions to the promo from around the web, but I think Denis's gets the closest to the root of the problem.

People seem to think that if stuff like this isn't "intended" to be hateful, then it isn't. There is some strange logic by which people convince themselves that if they call somebody a fag meaning that the person is an asshole, and not a homosexual, that somehow drains the word of bigotry. But of course that's silly. That's exactly where its power comes from. We have to be responsible about things like this, in the same way that we wouldn't walk around carelessly brandishing a weapon.

(Regarding the somewhat bizarre objection I've seen in a few comments threads that people should also be complaining about the violence in the game: That's irrelevant to the subject. Obviously everybody is welcome to criticize violence as entertainment, if they so choose, but it's really not the same thing. Besides which, conflict through violence is one of the oldest forms of drama, and I, for one, am not comfortable criticizing a game's portrayal of violence until I have the full context. I'd be happy to know of any extenuating context for a commercial that employs anti-gay slurs to sell a game. By the same token, I'd have no problem playing a game with homophobic characters in it, but I'd have a problem playing a game with homophobic depictions of characters. That's the difference.)

-The Boston Globe ran an article about computer and game addiction earlier this week, and while it's obviously an interesting subject, it's kind of weird to distinguish this from any other addiction. If you do anything to excess, it's a problem, whether that means drinking yourself into oblivion or being the crazy cat lady I saw on an episode of A&E's Hoarders. Still, it is of course helpful to be aware of the signs of compulsive behavior.

-It's a little late for Halloween, but I wanted to spotlight the Phoenix's new geek-lifestyle blog, Laser Orgy. Last week they ran a list of the 10 games that shouldn't have scared them, but did. I tried to suggest some things, but it was a lot harder to do than you might have expected.

-You know, I think I need to rep some new and different gaming blogs in my reader. Anybody have any suggestions?

Gamestop.com User-Submitted Previews: Modern Warfare 2

Above: This week's best game ever made.

With only one week to go until the release of Modern Warfare 2, many charming folks are clamoring to join the fight against grenade spam. They've gathered on the MW2 "user buzz page" on Gamestop.com, where comments generally fall into four categories.

1) Sales Potential

SPARTAN B15:

Anyone who doesn't reserve is going to have to wait a couple weeks to buy it because this game is going to be sold out! There are going to be people fighting over this game.

christophermaster1:

Call of Duty MW 2 will be a big hit mostly half of u.s will potentalliy buy it and i also will look forward to it

king balla:

over half the world is probably gona buy this.

2) Quality Assurance

pizzaboycool:

This game is gonna be 10 times better than COD 4 and 100 times better than COD 5.

EPiCMATT:

Theres no way this game will not be GAME OF THE YEAR!!!

P.J The beast:

COD: MW2 is the best firts person shooter of the century.

Renegade0528:

This is going to be the best shooter 2 date.

Kilr Stud:

There is a very good chance that this will be the best game ever.

Forster:

Personally, I think this is going to be the greatest game ever created for any game console.

AIRO:

This will be the best game ever created.

RE fan!:

this an 11 outa 10 game without a doubt

3) Sickness Quotient

UberBerger:

This game however looks sicker than anything I have ever seen.

AIRO:

The graphics look sick and the gameplay looks sick. Everything about this game will be sick

king balla:

man this game looks siiiiiiiiiik.

4) Cries for Help

Kristoph44:

you can say i'm preety much pumped for it and you can be sure i'm picking it up at midnight and playing it for about 3 months straight without sleep even tho it is impossible i'll still try to attempt it!!!

A Customer:

im not going to get it right away not sure why i think im going to get borderlands first. o and to answer friar's question operation flashpoint: dragon rising blew cod 4 out of the water o and next time dont sound like a 3rd grader when righting your preview thing.

Dawn of war fan:

This game is going to be infested with little kids. Oh god i seriously mean it. I wont be able to enjoy this game because of all the little children bantering about nothing. Talking everyone ears off.

OzCueball:

I'm just afraid that it will be too over hyped and not deliver on the expectations that the hype and ads are making it out to be. I'm praying i'm wrong and it blows everyones minds and is the best selling game of all time, but if i were Infinity Ward i'd be shaking in my shoes right now in fear. Who ever reads this pray with me that i'm wrong. Just pray.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Going to be an interesting weekend. I made the mistake of signing up for National Novel Writing Month, which starts on Sunday. There goes my November.

-Brinstar wrote an interesting and all-encompassing look at Uncharted 2. Her comments on the game's portrayal of its female characters are right on. Despite the hyper-sexualized appearance of Chloe, both of the female leads are given actual personalities and motivations. Even better, they act like adults. They're not catty broads who fight over our bashful hero. Brinstar says that "[creative director] Amy Hennig stood her ground on gender issues like this many times over," which certainly wouldn't surprise me, and goes to show how much your game can be improved when you have a diversity of voices onboard.

-Torchlight seems to be dominating a lot of people's time right now. Elysium at Gamers with Jobs writes about the joy of being surprised by a game, which is something I couldn't agree with more. There's some fun in anticipating things, yes, but it always seems like you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you get too excited. Much better to be gobsmacked by something out of nowhere. (Re: Torchlight, it sounds interesting, but I can only accommodate one soul-consuming dungeon crawler at a time, and there's this game called Borderlands.)

-Shawn Elliott (him again?) predicts the upcoming controversy about Modern Warfare 2. I've not yet watched the opening sequence of the game, and in fact wish I didn't know anything about it before playing the game (thanks, Twitter!). Still, I respected the way that Call of Duty 4 coldly regarded the devastating impact of modern military technology, and I would expect its sequel to similarly pull no punches. The notion of killing civilians is, of course, shocking. I suspect that is the intent. Without context, it's impossible for us to say yet whether this serves a greater philosophical point, or, at least, a compelling narrative.

-Congratulations to Ben and the gang at Critical Distance, whose "Week in Game Criticism" roundups are now being syndicated at GSW and Gamasutra. Here's hoping this means a whole new audience for all the great writers Ben spotlights each week. And that he starts including Insult Swordfighting more often!

Fall games preview

Above: A game whose promotion you are already sick of.

It's September, so it must be time for my fall video games preview in the Phoenix. Given that you use the Internet, I imagine there is not much news in this piece for you. It's a snapshot of the biggest games coming out this fall, at least as I interpret them from looking at Gamespot's "new releases" section. That means it's tilted more toward big-budgeted titles whose art will look good in the paper. I'm not passing any kind of value judgment here; I'm just telling you what it is.

The fun for me is finding out which game gets delayed immediately after the preview goes to press. One year it was Bully, and one year it was Super Paper Mario. It's also enjoyable to see what game I overlook that ends up knocking my socks off. In 2007, I failed to mention Call of Duty 4; last year, I couldn't spare the column inches for Far Cry 2.

There's no doubt that this year is lighter on big names than some past years, but I've been doing these previews since... 2005, I think, and only in 2007 was I genuinely enthused about the selections. (With good cause, as it turned out.) I still think it's a blessing in disguise that so many games have been delayed, giving us more time with the games that do come out this fall. There's plenty to be excited about, too. I'm always up for first-party Sony titles, Valve has never stepped wrong, and it's an Infinity Ward Call of Duty. I mean, come on.

Still, I look forward to the real work, which will be playing and reviewing these games. That'll be much more fun.