Hardcasual: The Groundswell

That would be a great name for a fantasy fiction trilogy, wouldn't it?

Anyway, a post on Level Up today addresses something that's come up in this blog a few times: the incompatibility of the hardcore gaming experience with the time demands on your modern adult. Nintendo talks a lot about recapturing people who fell away from gaming. But there's another huge swath of us who never gave it up, who started playing games as young children and kept it going right through college. The games didn't leave us -- they didn't stop being fun, or become too complicated. It just turns out that when you work a full-time job and have a family, gaming in six-hour sessions becomes less appealing, not to mention impractical.

Often, I read complaints that a game is too short. This is a value consideration: if you spend $60 on a six-hour game, that's only $10/hour. If you spend $60 on a forty-hour game, that's a piddling $1.50/hour. Objectively, it's clear to see which is the better deal, especially if the gamer in question is, say, a college student with unlimited time and extremely limited funds. On the other hand, I'd think it's worth the extra money for the salaried professional whose time is at a premium. $60 isn't cheap, but it's not back-breaking either. And let's say that, realistically, you can only squeeze in an hour or so a night of game time. This six hour game now takes almost a week to complete -- or about as long as it used to take me to plow through a 40-hour game in college. Both of these straw men spent $60 on a game that they completed in a week, using most of their free time to do so. They come out even!

This isn't to say that there isn't a place for both types of games. But I would hope that publishers understand that there's a large, well-heeled segment of the market that actually does want short games, or games that can be played in bursts, without sacrificing complex gameplay or mature themes. If "hardcasual" is to be the term, then so be it. Just don't confuse lack of time with a lack of interest.

Uncharted: The reviews are in

I think I could spend the rest of my life reading the user-submitted previews at Gamestop.com and never get bored. Today, we're looking at some advance reactions to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for the PlayStation 3. It sounds like a winner!

• 5 star game from what i seen. i seen all the videos made for this game from the playstation network, from how they made it to the gameplay and i got to say i like what i see nice graphic excellent storyline and great gameplay. i got to say this is a top notch game. In my opinion they should of somehow added some online play but hey the game is already perfect as it is.
• from the trailers ive seen it looks pretty damn good i just its not a disaster like heavenly sword which was about a 5 hour game and no weapons just a stupid sword uncharted has everything you can dropkick your enemies give them a a floy mayweather haymaker punch and to mention all the weapons the graphics look reaaly good
• Uncharted Drake's Fortune is a action sort of thing. On the Playstation 3 with its Blue-Ray drive it offers the best graphics yet. If you were in to action and adventure games I would recomend you get a PS3 ( if you dont have one yet ) and get this game. About the game, it is a very action pack thriller like James Bond. If I were you I would spend 5hours playing the game. But it doesn't come out till next month. I am asking E3 please don't dissapiont all of us.
• gotta be honest with ya, at first, i thought this game was gonna be gay!! but the more and more info im seeing is changing my mind, im actually getting kind of excited for it, it looks pretty sweet!!! so ill just see how it is when it comes out!!!
• This game is obviously very good, but microsoft will probably buy this game of sony like it did with all the other games. Face it the ps3 has no exclusives. This game will be Alot better on xbox the ps3 is a dreamcast with no chance of getting any excusives and this will be another xbox gain. Way better on xbox.

Guitar Hero III multiplayer impressions

We put some time into multiplayer Guitar Hero III last night, and as I'm not reviewing it for the paper I'll just share some thoughts here.

To put it simply: the game is a blast. My understanding is that Neversoft didn't get any of the code from Harmonix, and had to build their engine from the ground up. That makes it all the more impressive that they've delivered, on a short timetable, a game that plays just as well as its predecessors. I've heard some complaints that the hammer-on/pull-off mechanic is more forgiving this time around, and while I agree that it is, I don't agree that it's a problem. You already have real guitarists getting elitist about Guitar Hero; let's not have expert-level players getting elitist too.

The tracklist is as good as I'd hoped, with the usual amount of bad songs that are surprisingly fun to play and good songs that are surprisingly lame to play. I wasn't expecting to be thrilled by the bassline of "Reptilia," but there you go. Metallica's "One" was worth the price of admission. Our biggest complaint in playing through the co-op campaign was that the final encore is a song called "Monsters" by a band called Matchbook Romance. The guitar part was ordinary, the song was boring, and coming as it did on the heels of songs by Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Living Colour, it was almost a cruel joke.

The new "battle mode" was a disappointment, at least from the brief time we spent with it. The idea of power-ups doesn't bother me per se, but it seems antithetical to the idea of Guitar Hero that a game can end within about thirty seconds. Any competitive mode ought to encourage more rocking, not less. As it is, we found that whoever sprang the lefty flip on the other guy first tended to win. Not really my idea of a good time. Fortunately, it's optional except for a couple stages in the single-player mode. I am willing to believe that battle mode is more fun when you get good at it. Still can't imagine it's worth playing over co-op or pro face-off.

I'm not sure I'll end up buying Guitar Hero III, if only because I don't know how much time I can devote to it. Plus, I'm still fairly convinced that Rock Band will be better. But it is pretty great, and the highest praise I can give it is that my wrist is hella sore today. That's rock and roll!

The walls came tumblin' down

Really too bad about Jericho. It's an ordinary game, executed ineptly. Not much to recommend it. Clive Barker seems really excited about games in general, though, so maybe he should steer clear of Metacritic for awhile.

Guitar Hero III counterpoint

Bill Harris has a different take on the demo than I did.

Rock Band video!

Again I lament that I was not able to partake of the Rock Band excitement after watching the Phoenix's video recap of their day. How great does this game look?

Guitar Hero III demo impressions

I had been anticipating Guitar Hero III: Legend of Rock with some trepidation. Harmonix is staffed almost entirely by musicians, so they really nailed the first two Guitar Hero games. Without knowing much about Neversoft, my fear was that they'd have less of a feel for the subtleties -- that they wouldn't know if what they were making accurately simulated the sensation of rocking out. On the basis of the demo, I needn't have worried. If there is a difference in the control, it's not even as dramatic as the tweaks from the first game to the second. And playing a master track of "Even Flow" was about as great as I'd hoped.

There's no denying that Neversoft has sexed the game up quite a bit. I'm not concerned about character models or anything, because that's not what I'm looking at when I'm playing. The display functions the same, although with brighter colors and funkier fonts -- again, it doesn't affect the gameplay at all, so it's hard to feel strongly one way or another. The only thing I actually didn't like was the constant text notifications in the center of the screen. Getting a "Star power ready!" message is one thing. But seeing "50 note streak!" is just distracting, especially since it bounces around a bit before disappearing. I'm trying to look at something here, dudes.

You knew it was coming

It's the Orange Box review!

Rock Band interview

Due to some last-minute scheduling issues, I wasn't able to make it to Harmonix to play Rock Band. Ryan did go, however, and he interviewed Sean Baptiste about song selection, licensing, what the team learned from making Guitar Hero, and a lot more. My favorite part was what seemed to be a subtle dig at Neversoft and Guitar Hero III:

There are a lot of musicians working at Harmonix, how would you say that helps the game as an experience to gamers?
Given that the people here are in bands themselves and are musicians, their desire to show the authenticity of rock and to show how awesome it is to make music and how rock and roll it is – that’s first and foremost above the excess, sort of cartoony aspects of it, and that’s huge for them.

Read the whole thing.

Inevitably

Okami, my pick for 2006 game of the year, is coming to the Wii. This follows up the mind-blowing Resident Evil 4 adaptation that Capcom released earlier this year. I'd still like something new on the Wii, but it's not the worst thing if people want to keep improving on already great games.

Sony gets agro on pricing

The rumors were true: the 40 GB PlayStation 3 drops in America on November 2, for the low, low price of $399. This may just be cheap enough to convince people to start buying the damn thing. The Spider-Man 3 Blu-Ray pack-in is a nice touch, too. And with the 80 GB model dropping to $499 -- which still includes a fairly decent pack-in game -- Sony is very quickly putting themselves in a tenable market position. Remember, this all happens less than a year after the 60 GB model launched at $599. That's probably the fastest price drop in history.

The problem, of course, is the 40 GB model's lack of backwards compatibility. For all the bad will generated by the initial launch price and Sony's various PR pronouncements from Bizarro World, you'd have thought a simple price cut would turn gamers around right quick. Instead, they have to go and neuter a fairly important feature to the PlayStation brand. I won't go so far as to say that backwards compatibility is essential -- the Xbox 360 seems to have done just fine with its own, uh, unique interpretation of BC -- but it's a hell of a lot more important than, oh, SIXAXIS control.

Is it a dealbreaker? I don't think so. I think the price is the single biggest thing people have held against the PS3. Sometimes it's easy to forget that we hardcore gamers -- we who read and comment on gaming blogs, for example -- really don't represent the majority of consumers in this market. We are the most vocal and most visible, but your average holiday shopper just wants the shiny new thing. And now it may nearly be affordable.

Your very own Weighted Companion Cube (contains spoiler)

Folks who have played through Portal will be delighted to learn that a Weighted Companion Cube desktop toy will be available for the holidays. Sounds like the perfect stocking stuffer!*

*Provided you don't have to throw it in the incinerator.

In praise of the episodic model

Kotaku commenters are making much hay about Nintendo's proclamation that gamers were "bored" before the Wii came along. I don't know what Perrin Kaplan actually meant by her comment, but there's one way to interpret it that makes sense to me. When you settle in for a serious gaming session, which I'd define as more than an hour of continuous play, you do eventually reach a zone where it'd be hard to say that you are having fun in the traditional sense. Instead, it's about accomplishing the goals the game has set before you. What enjoyment you derive is from the satisfaction of victory, not so much the moment-to-moment action.

Consider some of the more robust single-player experiences of recent years, like Oblivion or the recent Zelda. Both contain long sequences where you're not actually doing anything. You're walking across a field, or engaging in a meaningless fight with a weak and inconsequential enemy on your way to doing something that will advance the story. Or take one particularly silly task in Final Fantasy XII, in which you have to run around sowing the seeds of revolt by proclaiming the resurrection of Captain Basch. Is this fun? It may be satisfying or addictive, but it's not fun in the way that Nintendo has defined the term. It seems that hardcore gamers are after something else entirely.

That doesn't necessarily mean that we're bored, either. In a recent post, I lamented that I can't devote as much time to games as I used to. I enjoy playing the Wii with my friends because it's something we can start and stop as the flow of the evening dictates. I can't do that with a more hardcore single-player game. The flow of the game dictates when and how I will play. (This is the reason why I've started Metal Gear Solid 3 three times in the past year and never gotten more than an hour into it.) It means, unfortunately, that when I do get to play something, it's more about plowing through to the end than enjoying the journey.

Enter Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Like the first two Half-Life games, as well as Episode One, it's a honed, focused action-adventure that represents the apex of the genre (full review to be posted next week). But unlike so many games, it's only five hours long. This has been the sole point of contention in reviews of the game. But is there any better way to split the difference between the immersive experience I want and the "pick up and play" dynamic that suits my lifestyle? Episode Two's clearly delineated chapters made it easy to find a stopping point, but its expert pacing and ridiculous setpieces ensured that I kept coming back. And the short length made sure that it was never -- not in any tortured sense of the word -- boring.

Maybe it's not ideal for everybody, but that's my idea of fun.

Critics are irrelevant

I was poking around the "Coming Soon" section at Gamestop.com and stopped to check out the PS3 shooter Haze. Although the game doesn't ship until after Thanksgiving, that hasn't stopped some enterprising citizen journalists from weighing in with their thoughts. Here are some choice selections from the user-generated previews.

• Pre-purchased Haze just now and I've already booked 5 consecutive vacation days off from work with the first corresponding with Haze's realease date. I will be romping on you all when you get online. Watch out for the proffessional gamers lurking the big corp downtown; we watch everything you do and I'll teach ya a lesson about online gaming.
• This game looks to be pretty decent about 8 out of 10.
• This game is not another far cry because it doesn't take place on an island it goes from citys to the South America to dessert. The scenery changes and so this will be better than farcry.
• this game is gonna keep us glued to our seats. i read all the previews for it on mags and stuff and they played some demos of it and it looks big. so pre-order now guys and c'yall online
• The graphics are incredible and gameplay will be awesome. This(although it seems to be a normal FPS) will be different from the rest. I just know it will.

With insights like these available at no cost, I'm not sure if eggheads like Tom Chick have much of a future in this industry.

Board is life

EA's Skate is a solid, mostly non-flashy game that's a lot of fun. It reminds me in some way of Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis -- the emphasis is on depicting the core sporting experience, and not so much on bells and whistles. This being an EA game, there is of course a "rise to prominence" storyline, but it's not so lamely executed as in some other games I can think of. And Skate doesn't lose anything if you ignore the story aspect completely.

My anecdote is better than your data

Bill Harris says:

I checked Wii availability today and it's as low as I've seen it in months in the U.S. Nintendo has said both that they've greatly increased inventory shipments to North America AND that they still won't meet demand.

Counterpoint: I finally saw Wii units in stock just this past Sunday. It was at the Target in Leominster, and there were at least two in the case. This is the first time I've seen a Wii for sale anywhere, save for the time I got in line at 6:30 AM to buy one. Obviously this doesn't actually mean anything, particularly because the Wii probably will be no easier to acquire this holiday season. I just thought it was fascinating that it's taken nearly 11 months before I randomly encountered a Wii. Contrast that with the Xbox 360 (five months) and the PS3 (two months). And the only reason Target had the units in stock is because most people probably aren't thinking about Christmas shopping yet.

The Father, the Son, and the Master Chief

Ryan sends along an article in yesterday's New York Times about a nationwide trend: churches using Halo as a recruiting device. It's fascinating stuff, and a little difficult for me to get my head around.

On one hand, it seems like a distasteful bit of bait-and-switch. As one person quoted in the article says, "If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it." I don't necessarily agree with the comparison, but the difference between games and those other vices is, in this case, a matter of degree. The M-rated Halo has been deemed inappropriate for kids under 17 by people who (mostly) know what they're talking about. It almost seems lurid, like the holy flipside of luring a kid into the back of a van with promises of candy. Give them what they want -- and then get what you want. (In some industries, this is known as "marketing.")

On the other hand, the church officials behind the Halo congregations have their heads on straight when it comes to games. The stereotype of the foaming-at-the-mouth games censor in my head is certainly that of the far-right Bible-thumper (even though the facts don't bear this out -- some of the most stridently anti-games politicians in recent years have been Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, and Illinois Governor Rod "The Bod" Blagojevich). Instead, the pastors quoted in the article take the pragmatic approach: "We have to find something that these kids are interested in doing that doesn’t involve drugs or alcohol or premarital sex." As someone who spent all of his teen years playing video games, I can confirm that such a lifestyle definitely does not lead to drugs, alcohol, or premarital sex.

Who knows? Maybe these types of church programs will even help to turn down the heat under some of the more excitable culture warriors. As a general rule, I think whatever starts a dialogue is a good thing. If a kid has to defend Halo to his parents on theological grounds, then he's probably looking at the game more critically than most professional reviewers do. And if this is merely another fissure in America's ever-crumbling religious foundation, then we godless gamers will achieve final victory!

Wait, scratch that last part.

Krpata to gamers: Screw you

I'd like to say a little more about the Halo 3 review.

To some degree, this review criticizes the hype and the culture surrounding the game moreso than the game itself. That's for a couple of reasons. One is because I like to take a different angle than you get from the bigger publications, if I can. The other is that the hype is as much a part of Halo as the plasma pistol at this point. Between the soda cans, the fast food promotions, the MIT hacks, and the endless media coverage, well before last week it was obvious that Halo 3 was going to break all kinds of sales records. Which, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.

What bothered me was the sense of inevitablity I was detecting on various game blogs around the web. So much muted criticism accompanied by a shrugging admission that people were going to buy Halo 3, and buy it the first day it was out, as if they had no choice in the matter. In reading some reviews of the game, it seemed like a lot of critics were copping out -- admitting that they didn't love it, but assuming the public would and scoring it accordingly. The glut of pre-release scores of 9.0 and above only added more fuel to the fire. If you were a gamer, it was pre-ordained: you were buying Halo 3.

Now, the critics may be right on one point. The public does seem to love it. But how could the press have known? They played the game before it was publicly available! Tycho of Penny Arcade said he was not willing to reject something just because idiots like it, but when consorting with idiots makes up a primary component of the experience, I'll reject the shit out of it.

By the way

Yes, the avatar in my Skate video was supposed to look like me. I think it's funny that I can put at least ten minutes into such an advanced, multifaceted character creation tool and end up with a guy who barely resembles me, but taking less than five minutes to slap together some cartoon features can result in an eerily accurate simulation.

Stranglehold review

As much as I love the film Hard-Boiled -- and believe me, I love it a lot -- Stranglehold left me a bit cold. It starts off great and goes downhill fast, so in that respect it'd make an ideal rental.

This is pretty neat

Skate allows you to edit a replay of your last 30 seconds or so of gameplay, so if you do something awesome you can make a movie and hopefully become the next Spike Jonze. The replay editor isn't terribly robust, but it is easy to use -- much easier, in fact, than signing up at skate.ea.com in order to actually view your uploaded video. It took three separate confirmation emails and several different EA web portals before I finally found my video, but here it is.

I do this for you, the readers.

Also, I am not good at this game.

The PS3 has taught me a valuable lesson about early adoption

I could deal with the price cuts, and even to some degree with the lack of quality software on the PlayStation 3. For some reason, the announcement of a Dual Shock 3 really bugs me. Besides spending $100 more on the hardware than I had to, and besides leaving it powered off for months at a time, now it turns out that my controller is lacking a fairly significant function. It would be nice if Sony sent a free Dual Shock to those of us who've kept them afloat for the past year, but of course that wouldn't happen. I'll get to spend even more money on these bastards without getting much in return. Ratchet & Clank had better be good.

Although I guess I wouldn't have gotten a PS3 yet if I didn't need one for work, so I guess it's a wash. Nevertheless, I plan to apply what I've learned here to other kinds of technology. I won't be dropping twenty grand on a 3D display any time soon, no sir!

Contrarian

The review falls short of what I really wanted to say, but the takeaway is that Metroid Prime 3 is inexplicably dull. It almost hurts me to admit it, given how big a fan I am of the series. I spent the whole time waiting to get into it. And just kept waiting.

Paste reviews online now

I just moseyed on over to Paste's game section and found that some of my reviews have finally been posted. These are a little different than the usual Phoenix reviews. With only 200 words to play with, it becomes more important to give the review a narrow focus. You've got to whittle an entire video game down to one sharp point. On a professional level, I think writing for Paste has helped me develop a more incisive critical faculty, thanks in no small part to the help from (now former) games editor Chris Dahlen.

Anyway, check out the reviews of Odin Sphere and The Darkness.

There's one thing Rock Band needs that it doesn't seem to have

Double kick drums.

Fall preview

The fall games preview is up now. This year's is exciting for two reasons: first, because it's one of the most exciting slates of games I can recall, and second, because nothing in the piece got delayed after it went to press. In 2005 they postponed Bully, and last year Super Paper Mario got pushed back right after I filed the story. This year, we actually got confirmation of one of the release dates after I'd sent the story in (Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, if you were wondering).

I think it's a sign of great things to come!

Victory strikes again

I finally did it: I completed Guitar Hero 2 on hard mode. "Carry Me Home" was the final stumbling block. I'm not entirely sure how I made it through, in fact. I'd never even made it past the intro riffage before. It's not a good song.

I know this isn't terribly impressive to at least two of my expert-level readers, but I'm pretty proud for a couple reasons. One is that I had never played beyond medium difficulty at all until shortly after I picked up the 360 version, so playing that fifth fret button was all new to me. Second is that I don't typically stick with things that don't come easily, so taking this kind of time to accomplish something is uncharacteristic.

More important, I think it speaks to Guitar Hero's quality that I have continually found time for it over the course of five months. Sometimes it's frustrating that I have to drop a game I enjoy in order to move on to the next one. As great as, say, Rainbow Six: Vegas was, once I no longer had an obligation to play it, I stopped. (Had to make time for Tomb Raider Anniversary, you know.) Since I picked up Guitar Hero 2 in early April, I've reviewed well over a dozen other games, including three that I've given equal or greater scores to. And yet I keep coming back to it in a way that I won't to The Darkness or even BioShock.

Mostly, that's because those more complex single-player games will require an extraordinary amount of effort and dedication every time I sit down with them. It would be hard to revisit them for less than an hour and feel like I'd gotten the full experience. They require a commitment that Guitar Hero doesn't, and as a result I've paradoxically been able to commit to Guitar Hero as I have to few other games. If I were trapped on a desert island, I'd want those immersive, narrative games to pass the time. In the life I live now -- the one that juggles a day job, a family, and friends -- I'll take Guitar Hero.

Uh oh, another BioShock post!

And I said I was done. Oh well.

This isn't really news, but the Cult of Rapture web site has BioShock's orchestral score freely available for download. It's pretty good, if you like strings. You like strings, don't you?

The impending Xbox 360 holocaust

Microsoft has never really owned up to the problem with the Xbox 360 hardware, but at this point it seems pretty clear that unless your system is well-ventilated and rarely used, it's going to crap out on you. It occurs to me that Halo 3 may be the death knell for thousands of units that are already on the brink. It's going to be like the scene in Star Wars when the Death Star blows up Alderaan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." I can't think of a more hilarious time for people's systems to die, and I look forward to reading the furious NeoGAF threads.

BioShock gameplay tidbits

We'll close out the BioShock coverage with a short discussion of some gameplay moments and quirks. I'll try to go easy on the spoilers, but it'll be impossible to avoid them. You may want to tread lightly if you're still waiting to play it yourself. In fact, most of this probably won't even make sense if you haven't played the game.

• I wish I had realized early on just how versatile the research camera is. The game tells you to photograph your enemies in order to unlock damage multipliers and even new powers, but you can also photograph security systems and vending machines. Apparently if you fully research a camera or turret, you can then hack it without having to do the hacking mini-game. As it happens, I liked the mini-game. But still, fully researching the machines would allow you to dedicate all your gene tonics to something other than hacking -- like wrench combat.


• You have three distinct tracks along which you can upgrade with gene tonics: combat, engineering (hacking), and physical. What's neatest is that you can find complementary tonics in each track for whichever your primary path is. So when I decided I wanted to focus on hacking, I was able to use a physical tonic called "Medical Expert," which gave me a boost of health and EVE every time I successfully hacked a machine. It's a great incentive to open up all your tracks even if you're single-minded in the way you want to play. There is one thing I don't get, though. You purchase new slots at a machine called a Gatherer's Garden. Each GG only allows you to buy one of each slot, and then you have to find a new place to buy another one. Wouldn't it grant you greater control over your destiny if you could choose to spend all your ADAM on one track? I'm sure they had a reason for this decision, but I'm not sure I know what it is.


• The "natural camouflage" tonic seemed silly when I first got it, but it turned out to be indispensable. It turns you invisible if you stand still for about a full second. This was great when I tripped security alarms, as I could just run around a corner and stand still, and then none of the security drones could see me (alas, it doesn't work if you turn invisible while you're still in their line of sight). Plus, I saved money on activating the bot shutdown. While invisible, you can still turn and aim your weapon, so natural camo plus the crossbow made for an elegant sniping arrangement.


• I was reading a discussion on a message board about how to kill the Big Daddies. The strategies were endless, most involving some combination of trap bolts, the Electro Bolt plasmid, and fire. People had devised some Rube Goldberg-like ways of taking them down. And it all sounds cool. I just shot grenades at them until they keeled over. After about my second encounter with them, I'd nailed the technique and they no longer gave me much trouble at all. In fact, one of the ways you can upgrade your grenade launcher is to make it so that you take no splash damage from it. Then you can just plug away at close range like it was nothing.


• After I beat the game, I read the list of achievements to see what I had missed. Strangely, I'm sure I did what one of them asked, but never got credit for it (and it's a big spoiler, so I can't get more specific than that). There's also an achievement for fully upgrading all your weapons. I missed that by one measly upgrade. But with 730 total achievement points from BioShock, it's easily the most I've ever gotten. I hope to play again someday, and if I do I think I could pick up some more.


• BioShock is a great game, but like any game it's not perfect. Its problems are mostly with the interface at the various machines. For example, you can invent new items at the U-Invent station, which is great, but the station won't let you know how many of an item you already have in your inventory. You can waste resources making something of which you're already carrying the max. And you can't see what gene tonics you have equipped unless you're at the machine that allows you to swap them. The lack of access to important information can be frustrating at times, but the good part is that you're usually not so far away from a relevant machine that it ends up hurting you.


• BioShock is awesome.

BioShock!

BioShock review is up now. This review focuses almost totally on the story and themes, so later on I'll try to post some more detailed thoughts about the gameplay.

It's too early for "game of the year" proclamations, but it's safe to say that if I had to make the list now this game would be on top.

King of Kong

In the world of competitive video game playing, Billy Mitchell is the 800 pound gorilla. He was the first person to complete all 256 Pac-Man boards. He held unofficial world high scores in Donkey Kong Jr., Centipede, and Burgertime. His greatest achievement, however, was his world record Donkey Kong score of over 800,000. Set in 1982, the official record stood for over 20 years without any serious threat. And Billy Mitchell liked it that way.

In the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, he's depicted as a man concerned, above all, with his image. Billy Mitchell even looks like a villain. His sleepy blue eyes gaze from under a mane of glossy black hair. His beard is groomed to perfection. A typical outfit is a black dress shirt tucked into black jeans, accented by an American flag necktie. He seems to relish his role as the heavy. The staff of Twin Galaxies, the governing body of gaming high scores, seems fully in awe of him.

Steve Wiebe, when King of Kong begins, doesn't seem to have any idea who Billy Mitchell is. He doesn't seem to care, either. He's shown as a likable, talented guy who's never really been able to put it together. We witness him playing the piano and the drums, see his skillful drawings, and home videos of his once-promising athletic career. His friends and family lower their voices when discussing all the times he's come up short. It's tough to see from the outside, though. Wiebe lives with a wonderful family in a gorgeous house in suburban Washington. But even the house came with a sucker punch: Wiebe lost his job the day he and his wife signed the papers.

Unemployed and aimless, Wiebe sets up a Donkey Kong machine in his garage and gets to work attacking Billy Mitchell's high score. Director Seth Gordon intercuts shots of Steve playing the drums, clips of his old baseball games, and little Jumpman scurrying ever closer up the ladder toward Donkey Kong. The implication is clear: this has all the potential to be another case where Steve Wiebe is almost good enough. Then a funny thing happens.

He breaks the world record.

He doesn't just beat Billy Mitchell's score; he pulverizes it. He races right on through and doesn't stop until he's earned over a million points, some 200,000 higher than the long-standing record. Having finally accomplished something in his life, he sends the tape in to Twin Galaxies to be verified.

The refs won't allow it. They think he used a modified board.

You get the impression that it isn't so much the score that matters to the Twin Galaxies crew -- it's that the challenger isn't one of them. He's an outsider. They can't even pronounce his name right. It's "wee-bee," two syllables, yet even after being corrected most of the refs continue to say the monosyllabic "weeb." It's a passive-aggressive attack that reminded me of the tendency of some right-wing politicians and commentators to refer to the "Democrat party."

Even as Wiebe flies to New Hampshire to break the record in person, the Twin Galaxies refs keep in touch with Billy Mitchell by phone, providing him nearly real-time updates. One of Mitchell's biggest sycophants, a guy named Brian Kuh, seems on the verge of tears as Wiebe closes in on the fabled "kill screen," which would make him the only person besides Mitchell ever to do so on Donkey Kong. Even so, Kuh can't help telling everybody in the arcade to come watch.

Just when you think King of Kong has gone about as far as it can go, the scheming and backstabbing suddenly escalate to an unbelievable degree. The film stops being a quirky look at an American subculture and becomes a baroque good vs. evil story. There's no question that some creative editing makes Billy Mitchell come off like Darth Vader and Steve Wiebe like the second coming of Jesus. We never see Mitchell with his kids, although presumably he has spawned a few. And on Wiebe's rejected Donkey Kong tape, he's interrupted by his crying son who needs his rear end wiped. Does Steve help? No -- he keeps going for the record. That's how you get ahead in this world.

Talk about last minute

Stranglehold delayed a week, making the week of August 27 fractionally less awesome.

But practically doubling September 3's fortunes!

Tom Chick on BioShock

Tom Chick's BioShock review is solid the whole way through, but his closing passage is absolutely killer:

Games like BioShock are what we need. They are what we deserve. This is one of the best examples of where we should go. It's silly to argue whether games are art, which doesn't matter one whit, when you can simply point to BioShock and say: "Games are this."

I couldn't agree more.

Open wide for some soccer

Obviously multiplayer is the draw for something like Mario Strikers Charged, but the people I played with last week certainly didn't seem any more enamored of it than I did.

I am aware that this review makes me sound like an old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn.

While you're exploring Rapture

You may emerge from your BioShock cocoon, as I did, to find that next week sees the release of the following games:

• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
  
• Blue Dragon
  
• Stranglehold
  
• Warhawk
  

Any of those would have been a no-brainer to cover at any time during the year. Now? Well, Metroid is. Beyond that, I'm not sure. And it's only getting better from there.

Rock Band nails it

It's official. Rock Band will include a master recording of this song:



That's got to be one of the five best choices they could have made.

I don't usually like to talk about games before the review goes up

If you have a 360, you should get BioShock.

If you don't have a 360, you should get one.

Fun with the freelance police

It's good to have Sam and Max back.

Why I won't download the BioShock demo

All I needed to hear was the invocation of System Shock 2, way back when BioShock was announced, to know that I didn't need to hear anything else. I've been under a self-imposed news blackout since then, and for the most part it's succeeded. I've seen a couple of screenshots, I know what a Big Daddy is, and I skimmed a Gamers with Jobs article about the game. That's it. I still don't know what the plot is, or what the game mechanics are like (well, okay -- I know it's an FPS).

Now that we're only a week away from the actual release, I figure there's no reason to try the demo. How is that different from screenshots or trailers? I'm told it's an "edited" version of the beginning of the game. If BioShock actually has the complex narrative and philosophical overtones that I'm expecting, then the demo won't shed light on any of that. It's a commercial, that's all. No thanks. I can wait.

The Wii doesn't seem like a well-made machine

The Xbox 360 gets all the bad press, but I've encountered a couple of problems with the Wii now that make me wonder if Nintendo's cost-cutting measures didn't go too far. First there's the overheating problem with Connect24. Apparently if you leave it running for a long time -- months, say -- without ever actually powering the system fully, it can overheat and damage some of the hardware. Well, I didn't turn it on from April until July, and then when I did I was getting some graphical artifacting. So there's that. And just now, my B button got stuck in the down position and I'm not sure how to fix it. This is going to render just about everything unplayable.

In the meantime, my 360 works just fine!

Ask a ninja

Q. Does Tenchu Z suck?

A. Yes.

Resident Evil 5 and racism

Okay, I'm going to wade in here. This may end up being a somewhat disjointed post, but I've been following the meme around the blogosphere and the story is the same anywhere it goes. As far as I can tell, the whole thing started with a post by Bonnie Ruberg on VillageVoice.com entitled "Resident Evil 5: White Man Shoots Black Zombies." It's a pretty interesting take -- in particular, Ruberg suggests that the parasites or T-virus of Resident Evil mythology could be playing out here as an allegory to the AIDS situation in Africa. That post was linked to by a blog called "Black Looks," which was then picked up on Kotaku. The Kotaku post currently has 671 comments and is still going strong.

That's the background. What's fascinating to me is the response from commenters. Readers of the Voice, Kotaku, and Black Looks are all united in their firm convictions that Resident Evil 5 is not racist. Most responses tend to fall in one or more of the following categories:

• The enemies in Resident Evil 4 were white, so why wasn't anyone upset about that?


• Lighten up, it's only a game.


• There's no such thing as racism anymore;


• But if there is, it's black people who are racists.


• Women who complain about racism are racists themselves, or need to get laid.


• It's so hard to be white these days.
  

I would back up each of those points with actual quotes, but it's too depressing to keep wading into those swamps. Seriously, just scan the Kotaku thread. I'm not cherry-picking here. The latent racism getting stirred up is really something to behold. Hardly anybody seems to see the contradiction.

Certainly, I didn't come away from the Resident Evil 5 trailer thinking it was racist. That's because I had the benefit of knowing the context. If you had to sum up the entire series in one sentence, a good one would be: "A powerful organization infects an innocent group of people with a virus that turns them into monsters." That's an over-simplification, but it's basically accurate across every Resident Evil game.

In particular, the fifth installment seems to borrow most heavily from Resident Evil 4. At the end of RE4, there's a short series of stills that shows the happy villagers going about their lives until the arrival of Lord Saddler. It is the first time we are meant to feel pity for them. It doesn't really make up for having mowed down about a thousand of them over the course of the game, but it does show that they are victims in their own way. I feel confident in predicting that the premise of RE5 will be much the same, and that before the game is over you'll find that Umbrella Corp. has been victimizing these people because they thought they could get away with it.

This is, of course, another example of video games wanting to have it both ways: you get the adrenaline-fueled thrill of combat and kill a ton of people, but it's okay because you actually saved all the people in the town afterward. RE4 isn't quite so explicit in that regard, but it's true that video games tend to resort to this kind of fascist mindset. Pick your cliché: "might makes right," "burn the village to save it," and so on.

It's the same across way too many games, and publishers keep getting to duck responsibility because they're only video games. It's ironic that people want Roger Ebert to take games as seriously as he takes movies, when they themselves do not take games as seriously as Roger Ebert takes movies. Read Ebert's review of Dirty Harry and try to imagine any video game reviewer on the face of the planet subjecting a game to that level of scrutiny. Did people tell Roger Ebert he was being overly sensitive? That he should relax and just enjoy the movie? No, they gave him a fucking Pulitzer Prize. If you agree that games should be part of the cultural conversation -- and I do -- then you don't get to draw up a list of exemptions every time somebody says something you don't like.

It's easy to see why someone unfamiliar with the Resident Evil canon would be taken aback by the trailer. What you see are mobs of frenzied black people swarming the good-looking, militaristic, and, oh yeah, white protagonist. Take that at face value. The solution, of course, would be to educate people who express concerns about what the series is really all about. It may not totally change their minds, but at least they might see your point of view.

Here's what I don't think works: telling someone that they're the racist, or that they need to lighten up. Or extrapolating one person's opinion to be the shared opinion of every black person in the world. Or saying that talking about race in games is distracting attention from the real issues. Or pretending that there's no such thing as racism. Anyone who's ever spent five minutes on Xbox Live is all too aware that racism in the gaming community is a legitimate issue (it's also a major reason why I spend as little time on XBL as possible).

In fact, this entire ugly episode has made it more clear than ever that games really are a mirror to our culture. A few comments about a game that doesn't come out for two years has sparked an extremely revealing conversation. There's no way of knowing to what degree the commentariat represents the prevailing attitude of gamers in general. Even so, the latent hatred and resentment that's been unleashed is really something to see. Only now it's cloaked in a sense of white victimhood. Racism hasn't really gone anywhere; it's just gotten better at hiding.

One can only hope that the light is what kills it.

Walter Raleigh Championship

The headline to this post is a shout-out to exactly one reader. Anyway, this week's review is of DiRT, a decent enough rally racing game that served to make me realize that I could never play another racing game again and I'd be okay with that. Okay, Burnout sequels excepted.

I am considering whether to weigh in on the Resident Evil 5 brouhaha. I suppose it is time for my semi-annual multi-thousand word rant, right?

The Heavenly Sword demo is weak

Powerful weak. I'm not sure how it could have been an entire gigabyte, because there's nothing to it. A brief, God of War-like button-pushing sequence, and then two, er, God of War-like melee battles. Then it just stops. Total play time is probably three minutes. The combat seemed like pure button mashing, although certainly it's hard to experiment in the brief time the demo gives you. All in all, I don't know why they bothered releasing this. Isn't the point of a demo to get people excited about a game?

Required viewing

The Resident Evil 5 trailer is up at gametrailers.com. I suppose the inevitable strike against it is that the gameplay doesn't look any different from RE4, and even though that's not a bad thing in itself, you always hope for a big leap forward. Then again, it took several years for the original Resident Evil style to get stale (I didn't get tired of it until Zero, which was the last one before RE4). I can certainly take another game in the vein of RE4.

Additionally, I greatly enjoyed the unexpected face punch in this trailer, and I can only hope that I will get to do plenty of face punching once I'm finally playing the game.

In 2009.

Damn it.

Teh best game EVAR

Still Resident Evil 4.

Miyamoto gets it right

In an interview with Wired's Chris Kohler, Shigeru Miyamoto has a lot to say about Nintendo's upcoming projects. The conversation drifted to video games' place in the public consciousness, and I think what Miyamoto had to say was wise:

Up until now, the biggest question in society about video games has been what to do about violent games. But it's almost like society in general considers video games to be something of a nuisance, that they want to toss into the garbage can. And so really what we feel is that rather than answering the question of what to do about violence in video games, we can, through the games that we create, once again make video games a topic of popular discussion and popular culture, then gradually you're going to see society come to understand video games better and understand what they're all about. At that point, once that understanding is there, people will become able to address their concerns about violent video games from a position of understanding rather than a position of being on the outside looking in.

And so I think that Nintendo's role in that is not to answer the question of what to do about violence in video games, but to expand the overall market in an effort to expand people's understanding of video games.

People who don't play games don't interpret them as anything but loud noises. I'm not fully on board with everything Nintendo's done on the Wii so far, but if developers want to stop feeling like concerned parents are out to get them, maybe the solution is just to make better games.

What a horrifying photo

I honestly don't remember seeing a Darkling sawing off a guy's head as I was playing through The Darkness. It would seem to undercut my thesis that the game had a moving, well-told story.

Happy Fourth of July

Let's celebrate by casting off the bonds of another British tyrant.

Coming next week: A surprisingly awesome game!

Vegas, baby

Rainbow Six: Vegas is a very good game.

Manhunt 2: The Clusterf**k

By now you've probably heard what's happening with Rockstar's Manhunt 2. Briefly: After the ESRB tagged it with the dreaded Adults Only rating, Nintendo and Sony both announced that they would not allow the game to be released for the Wii and the PlayStation 2. Even if they had, major chains like Wal Mart and Target wouldn't have carried it anyway. This raises all sorts of interesting issues, none of which I plan to illuminate in any meaningful way here. Just a few thoughts on the matter.

As distasteful as it seems to make this into a free speech issue, in a sense that's what it is. Nobody's going to prison or anything, so let's not act as though the constitution is under attack. But what's happening here is that an authority is placing a barrier between a producer of ideas and consumers of ideas. In the guise of protecting the children from pernicious influences like violent video games, the console makers and retailers are also making the decision for me about what I can and can't play. I don't know how much I wanted to play Manhunt 2. I never even played the first one. What bothers me is that the decision was taken out of my hands. Now I really want to play it.

The other thing I find striking has to do with the way the big box stores tend to sell games. Have you ever tried to purchase a game at Target or Wal Mart? They keep all of them -- from E-rated games on up -- locked inside display cases. It's nearly impossible to find somebody to open the case and sell you a damn game in the first place, no matter what it's rated. I'm surprised that that's not good enough. As a corollary, I'm not sure about Target, but I know Wal Mart sells guns. I'm not interested in arguing about which is more dangerous, a hunting rifle or a video game that lets you rip off somebody's testicles with a pair of pliers. The salient point of the comparison is this: We're trusting Wal Mart to be vigilant enough to sell firearms only to responsible adults, but we don't trust them to keep video games out of kids' hands. That sounds like the store's problem -- not the publisher's.

With all that said, I certainly understand where the stores are coming from. Having worked at a video store, I know the kind of hellfire angry parents can rain down upon well-intentioned but oblivious retailers. They can choose to sell or not sell anything they want, and there's absolutely no reason for them to shed a tear for the video game publisher. And if Nintendo and Sony want to dictate what sort of content can appear on their platforms, I suppose that's their right too. (I'm not sure what the legal basis is for that, though -- clearly, some higher up at Rockstar/Take-Two signed something to that effect. Otherwise, why not go for the "Unrated and Totally Out of Control!" release?) I also find it a little hard to believe that the AO rating took Rockstar by surprise. They had to know what was coming, but that in itself doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.

Still, something just doesn't seem right about the way it all went down. I'll live without playing Manhunt 2, if that's what it comes to. I just wish I could have chosen not to play it.

Shadowrun

Shadowrun is an interesting game. Not that it feels unfinished or anything, but as you play it you can almost sense it struggling to come into its own. I think the direction the community takes over the next couple of months will ultimately make or break the game. I also think it would be more fun if I had a regular team to play with; alas, the days of Clan 437 are long past.

Do I just not like video games anymore?

Is that the problem? Everybody freaking loves Forza Motorsport 2. To me, a realistic driving sim is one of the last things I want from a game. Maybe we're growing apart, the Xbox and me.

Red faction

Wired has a neat article on Soviet arcade games. The Soviet Union didn't import any foreign games, obviously, so the article says that Russian developers created about 70 games between the late 70s and early 90s. Could this be why the USSR ultimately collapsed? I don't know what else you can point to. You can take away people's freedom and they'll live with it, but they won't live with crappy games.

David Jaffe is going to murder me

Under their new editor, the Phoenix has taken to putting punchier heds and subheds on my reviews, such as this Calling All Cars! review. That's all well and good, but I think in this case it might get me punched in the nose if Dave Jaffe sees it.

I would play this game

When this Duke Nukem Forever trailer premiered at E3, I remember thinking "Hey, this might be worth the wait after all."

That was in 2001.

Edit: Holy shit, I hadn't even seen this new 2007 trailer. Surprisingly enough, it looks like they haven't wasted ten years of development time.

Great Odin's beard!

Odin Sphere is a pretty interesting action-RPG hybrid for the PS2. It's actually getting less fun the more I play it, but even so it's a unique title that may be worth checking out if you're into weird Japanese stuff.

Does whatever a spider can

I wouldn't tell you to go out and buy it or anything, but Spider-Man 3 really isn't as bad as you may have been led to believe. The editors did change the review to make it seem as though I liked it a little more than I did, though (not hugely, but I said it was "pretty fun" and they changed that to "a lot of fun." There's a big difference).

Gotta catch 'em all?

No. No, you do not.

What's this? A Guitar Hero post?

I'm not sure which is weirder: That I'm in the top 20% on the Guitar Hero II leaderboards, or that the points differential between me and the first place person is 1.4 billion. Yep, my total score is pushing 7,000,000, and the top person is currently at over 2,100,000,000. How is that even possible? That's not a rhetorical question. I want someone to explain to me how it's possible to score that many points. If you play Free Bird on expert mode and score 100% with diligent use of star power, is it worth 50 million?

Shreddin' heaven

Is there really any reason to read another review of Guitar Hero 2?

Well, no, probably not.

Super Paper Mario

At long last, another Wii game came out. It's the first one I'd say was genuinely good, too, although it's still lacking something. Anyway, check out Super Paper Mario if you feel like it.

Probably worth mentioning

I no longer have any problem with the X-Plorer. It's not surprising that I got used to it. Pretty much every complaint I had about Guitar Hero II has faded away at this point, and all that remains is serious hard rocking.

Puzzle Quest

Puzzle Quest is puzzling indeed.

It's probably a lot more fun two-player.

Guitar Hero downloadable content

No review this week, so I'm still high on the Guitar Hero horse. Major Nelson reports that downloadable content is available now. At first glance, it seems like a rip. There are three separate packs of three songs, which cost 500 MS points each. That's 1500 points for nine songs, or nearly $20. No thanks. I'd really like "Ace of Spades," "Bark at the Moon," and "Frankenstein," but their selections also include some of my least favorite tracks from the original. This is disappointing. Fortunately, I've got plenty of enjoyment ahead as I attempt to complete the game on hard mode. Current status: failure.

Update: I've been thinking about this for a bit, and I think there were two other things they could have done to justify the price. One would be to release brand-new songs. That would be worth a premium. The other would be to let you choose any three songs from the first Guitar Hero, sort of a custom "best of" pack. Still might be a bit pricy, but that would sting less.

Guitar Hero II (360) quick impressions

I put off getting Guitar Hero II for the PS2 because my controller had broken (it turns out that spilling beer on it is bad). Didn't make sense to pay for an all-new guitar and game when I could wait a few extra months to get it on the 360 instead. I think it was the right call, but it's not all wine and roses for the next-gen version. A few quick impressions follow.

The Good:

Achievements -- Well, duh. It's not as though achievements are even optional. But they add something to most games, especially when the developer has a sense of humor as Harmonix does. One of the achievements: decline to play an encore.

Hardware -- Less time saving and loading games means more time rocking. The performance boost is noticeable. So too are the HD graphics, but as I've always felt about this series, the graphics only matter when you're not the one playing.

The Motherfucking Trooper -- The song selection really does seem weaker in the sequel, but the addition of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" to the 360 version is practically worth the purchase all by itself. This has been one of my top-five most wanted songs for Guitar Hero, and now I've got it.

The Future -- There's no downloadable content yet, but there will be plenty of new songs -- not to mention the entire tracklist from the original Guitar Hero. Score!

The Bad:

The Gibson Explorer -- The new guitar is a big problem, and it's probably going to assuage much of the dismay that PS2 owners might feel about the game's port to the 360. First of all, it plugs into the USB port on the back of the console. I can get to mine more easily than a lot of people probably can (I've got the system lying flat on my desk), but even so it's a pain to have to run a cable around my desk like this. This has got to be much more annoying to people with full-blown home entertainment setups. Why isn't it wireless?

Even worse, the asymmetrical contours of the Explorer are much less comfortable than those of the SG. There's a sharp protrusion right where my forearm naturally rests when I put my hand on the strum bar, so I can't lay my arm flat to play. So far I'm using a combination of three less than ideal solutions: 1) I can tilt the guitar upward and come at it from a different angle, but this causes the star power meter to go off when I don't want it to; 2) I can loop my arm around the protrusion at a right angle, which basically works but puts more stress on the arm than the more natural position; 3) I can angle it so that the top of the guitar faces a little bit upward rather than straight ahead. The third option is the one that seems to work best.

No doubt I'll be getting used to this, but what a horrible sensation the first time I strapped on the Explorer. Furthermore, didn't anybody else have this problem when they were designing the peripheral? Am I an exception? Or were they just married to the idea of using the Explorer? I think almost any other design would have been more comfortable. It's a huge, huge drawback.

Online Multiplayer -- Doesn't exist. Lame. On the other hand, I'm not even sure how you get offline multiplayer to work. It doesn't say anything about it in the instruction manual, and I only saw one USB port on the back of the console. It is a puzzlement.

GRAW 2

Hey, check out this review of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. I'm finding myself lately a little distressed by how blithely games can deal with controversial subject matter. Here, and in Crackdown, that doesn't really detract from the quality of the gameplay, but there are big questions raised and then dodged. If the industry is really to grow up, they're going to have to stop turning a blind eye to what they're creating.

In which I tout my powers of perception

Apropros of the official announcement for Rock Band (more info at Kotaku), I wanted to look back at a post I made in June of last year, in which I said this:

...it seems reasonable to assume that within a few years it will be possible to assemble an entire GH-style band, with a couple of guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer.

Well, that's not so impressive in itself. Why? Because this is the most freakin' obvious thing they could have done. Really, was there any other direction to go? Instead, I want to talk about what came next.

I'll up the ante even further: once that's done, I bet we'll see clubs hosting competitions in which groups of gamers get in front of a crowd and rock virtually. At the very least, people would participate just for the chance to get onstage under the auspices of some truly bitchin' band names.

This is an opportunity I hope nobody blows. Can you imagine hordes of Rock Band players descending on legendary clubs like the Middle East, which have hosted some of the greatest actual bands in history? We're reaching the next level here, which is why I want to throw out yet another prediction:

Harmonix will create a song editor that will allow Rock Band players to write and share their own songs.

I think that's the next step. We're going to have people writing and releasing songs made entirely on virtual instruments. And I'll bet you that some of the songs will be good.

Brutal!

Here it is: the lowest score I've ever given.

(N.B. Online they only grade it from .5 to 4 stars, but in the paper it'll be a 1.0/10.)

You don't say

I was looking for a specific bit of information for my Def Jam: Icon review, and came across this tidbit from the press release announcing the game's shipment:

Written by renowned Hollywood writers Virgil Williams and Cle "Bone" Sloan, DEF JAM: ICON delivers an intense storyline unrivaled in any other hip hop lifestyle/fighting game.

I could not agree more. This has the best storyline of any hip hop lifestyle/fighting game I've ever played.

God of War II

God of War II isn't exactly perfect -- occasionally it could use fewer enemies and a little bit less neck-snapping -- but you'd be hard-pressed to find a better platformer released within the past couple of years. It's a genuine must-play. And if it turns out to be the last great game for the PlayStation 2, then it's hard to imagine a more impressive way to go out.

Controversy!

The incendiary blog post that's been getting all the play this week comes courtesy of Destructoid. Written by someone called Reverend Anthony, it's called "Why Video Game Reviews Suck." (The article is split into two parts; feel free to read part one and part two.) This is pretty well-worn terrain at this point, but it's still a subject worth exploring because video game reviews do, in fact, suck. Unfortunately, the author never actually gets around to discussing the problems with video game reviews. The entirety of his screed is dedicated to tearing down game review scores, which are a totally different beast.

Let's start with where the author and I are in agreement. Game scores are essentially useless. That's about where our agreement ends. I'll explain my take on this a little further down, but first let's look at what Reverend Anthony is actually saying.

He thinks scores are useless because they are overwhelmingly positive. The data don't actually back that up. Blogger Bill Harris ran the numbers, and found that less than 2% of the games released in 2006 had a Metacritic score of 90 or above. We can take this even further. Overall, Metacritic lists the aggregate scores of 1,417 PlayStation 2 games. Of these, 62 have a score of 90 or higher. That's about 4.3%. (I'll be sticking to the list of PS2 games for this post, but the GameCube and Xbox are about the same, each coming in around 5%). If you assume that scores should be evenly distributed along the 1-100 range, then you'd expect 10% of the games to be ranked in the top 10% of scores. That doesn't happen. Clearly, reviewers are more reluctant to hand out such accolades than the good Reverend gives them credit for.

But what about the other end of the scale? Why are crappy games given anything but the lowest possible score? Here he has a point. Of those 1,417 PS2 games, only 6 have a score in the 20s. The lowest score is 24, given to Gravity Games Bike: Street. Vert. Dirt. In fact, only 112 PS2 games, or about 8%, have a Metacritic score below 50. If you consider the mid-point of this scale to be the pinnacle of mediocrity, than something seems off. The majority of scores are clumped between 5 and 9. In other words, 40% of the possible scores are assigned to 88% of the games. That actually doesn't bother me. It makes sense to me that you'd see some kind of a bell curve if you were to graph game scores. I think it would make sense to the Reverend Anthony, as well. The difference is that he really wants that peak to come in at 5. I'd expect it to be around 7.

Partly, that's because of the analog between game scores and other types of scoring systems. If you compare it to the four-star rating system favored by most movie critics, you'd get a comparison like this:

**** = 10
*** = 7.5
** = 5.0
* = 2.5

Most critics don't give zero stars, or only do in special circumstances. That's why on Metacritic, which has ranked "virtually every film since the beginning of 1999, and selected films from prior years," only 105 movies have a score below 20. That's 105 more movies than games with that score, but the point stands: it's pretty rare. The two are not so far apart in this way.

The other argument for a clumping of scores above 5.0 is the academic argument, which the author addresses. It goes something like this:

A = 95 (9.5)
B = 85 (8.5)
C = 75 (7.5)
D = 65 (6.5)
F = 64 (6.4) and lower

The logic here is that there's not much difference between giving a game a 6, a 4, or a 2, because they're all an F. I agree with the Reverend Anthony that this doesn't work for video games, and I think he nails why:

But video games do not simply "pass" or "fail." With video games, you most definitely CAN enjoy a sub-average game for some of its aspects. ... Just because a game is sub-average doesn't mean certain people won't enjoy it, and therefore it matters that sub-average games are differentiated from other sub-average games through use of the 1-5 section of the scale.

I'm not sure if anybody would seriously argue that there's little difference between a game with a Metacritic score of 60 and one with a score of 20. Which would you rather play? But I disagree with the implication that there should be an even distribution of scores, instead of the grouping around the C range, or the 70s. Here's Reverend Anthony's take:

If someone was to walk into an EB Games, close their eyes, and randomly choose a game from the shelf, they would most likely not get something good. You might think there’s a 50-50 chance you’d come up with God of War or at least something kind of cool like Red Dead Revolver, but all the more likely is that you’d end up holding a crappy bowling sim or a licensed platformer starring The Olsen Twins.

He's probably right about that. But there's one aspect that he's not mentioning: Nobody reviews those games. I'm exaggerating slightly; Mary-Kate and Ashley Sweet 16: Licensed to Drive was reviewed by four outlets, for a Metacritic score of 49. I agree that that does seem high, but to be fair I have not played the game. The point I'm making, however, is that even publishers whose job it is to review games do not touch this crap. Gamespot didn't review it. EGM didn't review it. Nintendo Power did review it, but they have about as much journalistic integrity as Pravda. On the flipside, why would a publication that is not focused exclusively on games ever even consider reviewing a game like this? You'll occasionally see a Metacritic entry from the New York Times for blockbuster titles. Of course that will raise the aggregate. Those of us who get to pick and choose what we cover will tend to focus on giving exposure to quality games. That's not a bad thing.

I've already gone on a bit longer than I intended to about the game scores themselves, so let's move on. The biggest problem I have with the Reverend Anthony's piece is that he never acknowledges that these scores are usually accompanied by text. In focusing solely on the problems with review scores, he inadvertently proves why I think they should be eliminated. They keep people from actually reading reviews. When readers are more concerned with the score than with the review, there's less incentive for critics to say anything interesting. That, frankly, is what I thought "Why Video Game Reviews Suck" was going to be about.

Why do video game reviews really suck? Because they're attempting to justify an arbitrary score! As soon as you quantify the experience of playing a game, you have to start running down the checklist: graphics, sound, control, "fun factor," and so on. Suddenly you're not applying a critical eye to what the game is about, putting it into a context the reader can understand. You're judging a show dog. You can't simply isolate each part of a game in order to render judgment on the whole. I mean, you can, but it results in the same formulaic, workmanlike reviews we've reading for decades. It's like the difference between listing the ingredients and actually tasting the soup. What does a 7.5 game have that a 7.0 game doesn't? How, pray tell, do you know when a game deserves a 9.7 and not a 9.6?

Video games are pretty amazing these days. Just within the past month, I've played games with some really interesting things to say about subjects like free will (God of War II) and freedom versus security (Crackdown). Would you ever know that from reading reviews of these games? Of course not. What you're likely finding out about them is that they have great graphics and many hilarious ways to kill people (I'll be totally honest here and admit to being guilty of this myself). But there's more to say about games, if someone would just say it. Scores be damned. As the medium grows up, it's going to be necessary for the critics to grow along with it -- and the readers, too. Until they do, game reviews will keep right on sucking.

Retrospecticus

To coincide with the release of God of War II, I put together a list of essential PS2 games for the Phoenix. It's not a ranking of the "best" games or anything like that, just a bunch of games that I think a lot of people have good memories of. I await the inevitable "list fails" comments.

Also on the comments tip, it's been brought to my attention that someone calling himself "Elebit" just recently commented on my Elebits review, employing the phrase "graphic noob" several times. Onward and upward!

MotorStorm

The MotorStorm review is up now. All in all, it's a good game with some problems that are representative of the first wave of software for a new system. I am encouraged about the PS3's future prospects.

I also thought it was charitable not to mention the many people in the MotorStorm online community who tend to quit races whenever they're not winning. More than once, I've had every other racer drop out when I've had the lead. I don't get it. Even when I'm putting along in last place, which is usually the case, I take my medicine like a man.

Free online play is great and all

I've been going online with MotorStorm, and I have to say it's pretty fun (review coming next week). But in the vein of my last post on the subject, I just don't know what the architects were thinking in some cases. For instance, you have to accept the online agreement every single time you sign in. Not just the first time you go online with your PS3, or the first time you play MotorStorm, but literally every time you sign in. That's retarded.

The stupid thing about it is that you can't just pick an option to get into a game as quickly as possible. You have to pick a server at random, and then pick a game at random, and then sit in the lobby until the current race finishes. You can't watch the race in progress or pass the time except by looking at the list of players. Or by writing a blog post.

The last thing that's irritating me is that, despite my five-day headstart on most of these people, many of them are already much, much better than I am. At least I won my first race.

In which I clear the slate

This review of Battlestations: Midway is among the most negative I've ever written. I don't doubt that WWII nuts may derive some pleasure from it, but by video game standards it hardly does anything right.

It always feels a little satisfying to slag off a game, though, if only to remind myself that my critical faculties aren't fading. I don't want to fall into the trap of scoring on a scale of 7-9.

Blog note: I've enabled anonymous commenting, but you still need to do the word recognition thing.

Sony! Soni! Soné!

I'm not going to attempt an in-depth analysis of the Sony-Kotaku kerfluffle, as the implications seem fairly self-evident. A part of me thinks that the scoop was not nearly interesting enough to merit the blow-up on either side, but as a matter of principle I will always side with the free press.

The larger thing to take away from this is Sony's continued, baffling incompetence in almost every phase of the PS3 launch. And I'm not just referring to their continuing PR arrogance and pronouncements from Bizarro World ("We can't keep them on the shelves!" being the most notorious of these). I finally acquired a PlayStation 3 a couple of days ago, and while I have yet to stretch its legs, I've already raised an eyebrow or two at some of their more illogical decisions.

First, it's no secret that the PS3 has been sold as the most powerful game system around -- one tech site even calling it a supercomputer. That may or may not be true (the only thing I can say for sure is that the thing runs freaking hot), but I'm willing to accept the claim of raw hardware power. So if this thing is so powerful, why did Sony only decide to include a composite video cable in the box? No component cables, no VGA or DVI, no HDMI. Surely it was a cost-cutting consideration, but a boneheaded one. In the meantime, it does come with an ethernet cable despite native Bluetooth support. I think they made the wrong compromise here.

But even worse is the front-end interface. Xbox Live may have spoiled us all, but my mind is already blown by the inefficiency on display here. The only thing I've done so far is download the Resistance demo. It took about five steps more than I would have thought necessary. I selected the option to log into the PlayStation store and got a little message that I was logging in -- at which point I was returned to the home menu and had select the store option again to access the storefront. Why isn't that one step? What am I missing? As for the store itself, well, Penny Arcade sums it up much better than I can. Suffice it to say that you need to perform about three actions in order to accomplish any one thing. It's bizarre.

I did want to help out, so when the PS3 asked me to take a survey, I accepted. It was standard stuff: how many video game systems do you own, what kind of games do you like, that sort of thing. When they asked what was the primary reason I bought a PS3, I said for the Cell processor. But I lied. I bought it because I'm bad with money.

The best game so far this year

Even just looking at what's coming in the next couple of months -- including God of War II, Mass Effect, and BioShock -- it's hard to imagine that Crackdown will end up being the game of the year. But it's the first possible contender.

Open wide for some soccer!

Some Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007, that is. I was pretty happy with this game, as I haven't found a sports game enjoyable in quite some time.

The Mii creator is a powerful tool

Apparently my nephew, who is not yet two years old, was able to correctly identify my Mii as "Unka Mitch." I was pretty proud of the likeness myself, but it's not like I put any effort into it -- five minutes max. Goes to show what a great job Nintendo has done with their whole front end, though.

It's a Wii, Wario!

I've yet to be totally blown away by a Wii game. WarioWare: Smooth Moves is another one that left me wanting more. The potential is there for something really amazing, but so far the Wii has offered a bunch of novelties, and one fully fleshed-out game that A) didn't take full advantage of the control scheme, and B) sucked. Ah well, the system is young yet.

Objection!

In my review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, I convicted the game of being awesome. Now Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney -- Justice for All is out, and it brings to mind the legal concept of double jeopardy -- that you can't try someone twice for the same crime. Too bad. How many times can we let this pointy-haired lawyer rob us of our valuable time and assault our funny bones?

Getting it done early this week

Check out this Lost Planet review.

So far I've been disappointed with Capcom's Xbox 360 offerings (Dead Rising was the other one), even though each has had more than its fair share of selling points. I'm still expecting them to knock my next-gen socks off one of these days.

Another gloomy review

This time, it's for Elebits.

Things are looking up, though. Should be getting Wario Ware: Smooth Moves this week, and we'll follow that up with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney -- And Justice For All, for which I am more excited than I can express. After that, who knows? Wintertime is barren. I may have to pick up a PS3 for the MotorStorm-Heavenly Sword one-two punch.

Guitar Hero 2

It's been confirmed that Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 will include Iron Maiden's "The Trooper," one of the ten best songs they could possibly have chosen. Right there, I'm glad that I've been dragging my heels on acquiring the PS2 version. On the other hand, the 360's Gibson Explorer controller is only about 3/5 as cool as the PS2's SG. But here's why I'm really excited about Guitar Hero II for the 360:

Expansion packs.

I've heard people bitching about these, as though they are opposed to microtransactions in principle. And I should probably point out that we don't know for sure whether Harmonix et al. are actually planning to introduce downloadable content at all, much less whether they intend to charge. But it's not a far-fetched proposition. If Bethesda can release whole new missions for Oblivion, it couldn't be hard for Harmonix to put together five new songs. I certainly wouldn't have any problem throwing down five bucks, or the MS points equivalent, to download a whole new group of songs every couple of months. Would you?

Castlevania

Here's a review of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. While I was writing this review, I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the series and discovered that there has been approximately one new game released every year since 1986. What's astonishing is the consistent quality. Super Castlevania IV and Symphony of the Night are bona fide classics, both among the best games of all time. Below that are the excellent original game, Castlevania III, Bloodlines, and the recent GBA and DS titles. The 3D games have been lacking, but really, what other series have been so good for so long? Every notable franchise I can think of has either had more failures than successes (Mega Man) or simply not had enough sequels to compare (Resident Evil). Maybe Mario or Zelda would count, but they've each had multi-year stretches without a good game (and in the case of Zelda, as you know, I'm not even a fan). Maybe Final Fantasy is the only good comparison -- fairly regular release schedule, consistently high quality. More to the point, when you think of the greatest franchises of all time, does Castlevania even enter your mind? It never occurred to me until now.

Those Gamestop guys are good

I stopped into Gamestop today to trade in a couple of games and reserve Lost Planet, and somehow walked out of there with a pre-order for Halo 3, which doesn't come out until November. Why did I do that? Did I want to help out the fumbling, obviously inexperienced clerk who was helping me out in full view of his overbearing, bluetooth-earpiece-wearing manager? Was I transfixed by the 60 GB PlayStation 3 units sitting on the floor behind the desk? Hard to say.

In other non-review news -- because I don't have anything in the paper this week, but I need to maintain my one post a week quota, dammit -- I actually did own a PS3 for about three hours last Friday. I spent four hours refreshing the Amazon page until the order button appeared, and reflexively hit the one-click button. After a few hours of deliberation, I realized that $600 isn't worth it right now for a system that has no games I want to play. So, you know. I've got principles. Also, my apartment doesn't have a buzzer and I didn't know how I'd be able to take delivery.