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.