44 days, to be exact, when I was still evaluating the PS3. Since then it basically went Demon’s Souls – Uncharted 2 – Dragon Age – Little Big Planet (PSP). I didn’t finish Demon’s Souls, but hope to someday. I totally loved it, and would consider it one of the better games of the year. Many have said that of Uncharted 2, and I can see why, as it has great writing, excellent pacing, and plenty of gameplay variety. However, it seems a little old-fashioned. Perhaps it’s me personally rather than the industry as a whole, but I feel like we’ve moved on from linear story-based games that are trying to be like movies. The game does not allow you to make any choices other than which order to shoot the bad guys. I realize this was the case with Halo as well, and many other A-list games. But my tastes have gradually shifted.

Oh yeah, Halo ODST. Almost forgot about that one, as it was a bit of a flash in the pan. It’s interesting to note that said linear storytellers Bungie actually shifted to a non-linear, architectural model for the sections of ODST. It was certainly well-made, but short, and not really worth a full game price. Had a few epic sessions of firefight though – one game lasted two hours. Damn.

Not that it’s much different from what Bioware has been doing for years, but Dragon Age is more where I see the future of games, where every aspect of the game (gameplay, story, etc.) changes based on the player’s choices. It’s a party-based action RPG with excellent writing, mission design, and an extremely detailed world to explore. Sure, it’s elves and wizards which is a little played out, but despite that the material is strong. I’m nowhere near finished it, but still plugging away.

I rarely buy full-price PSP games, but I made an exception for Little Big Planet for some reason. I’ve never played more than the demo of the big boy PS3 version, so I don’t know how the portable game compares, but I’ve really enjoyed my few hours with this one. It’s generally a pleasant, relaxing experience playing through the story missions – I’m not a huge platformer fan but this is good stuff. I’ve played very few player-made levels, and haven’t tried to create them yet myself, but I aim to, and that’s all that counts, innit?

All the while I can never resist buying and barely playing iPhone games. The iPhone is an amazing games platform, blah blah. Great, your game uses all your batteries and then your phone is dead. A phone call interrupts your game and when you go back, it didn’t save. Or the game takes five minutes to load. Or the touch controls suck, again. Or it’s a dumbed-down version of what would be decent on another platform. I’ve definitely played some great iPhone games, but most of them I never spend more than half an hour with.

Not sure why I keep buying them.

The latest is Rogue Planet, gameloft’s attempt to rip off Advance Wars. Gameloft is like the iPhone’s Asylum studios, churning out cheap knockoffs of well-known franchises. Some of them are good in a workmanlike, the-gameplay-is-engaging sort of way, but they all feel soulless, with no originality or inspiration to be found.

It’s december – there are a million games out, and no time to play them. I’m hoping to try out the new Zelda, Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands and even Modern Warfare 2, but I probably can’t do everything I want to between now and the release of Mass Effect 2 and whatever the latest Final Fantasy is. But whatever – when it comes to video games, too much of a good thing is still a good thing.

Everyone’s favourite games conference aka press release orgy is here! The most concise way to catch up on E3 press conference porn is to read three posts from Offworld:

• Sony
• Nintendo
• Microsoft

Sony and MS are both trying to catch up to the Wii’s motion-sensing Wiimote, and MS’ Project Natal seems most interesting, as it’s a controller-free system, relying entirely on cameras to sense your body position and even recognize faces. That said, until practical questions can be answered (how much? how many games will support it?), it’s best to consider it as a rhetorical salvo in the PR wars and not an actual, tangible thing. Sony and MS both trumpeted their lists of exclusive games, most vague and ages from shipping. Some of them no doubt will be good, but neither could get through their presentations without showcasing some cross-platform games as well.

Nintendo, meanwhile, renewed its license to print money. No, they tried to make nice with the hardcore by announcing a truckload of Mario games.

A few things caught my eye. On the Microsoft side, more details of Halo 3 ODST are welcome (sounds like The Killing with space marines), and I’m happy that Bungie is doing another game in Halo Reach, but I was kinda hoping they’d give the Halo thing a rest for a while and try something new. Alan Wake looked cool, and I really hope Natal works and doesn’t cost a mint, but judging from MS’ track record, that’s unlikely. How much for that 160 gig hard drive again….?!

Sony’s PSP Go! was of course no surprise. But it looks slick, and it sounds like Sony is doing all the right things (woo developers, improve media experience, ditch UMD) to keep the PSP alive. And boy are there a lot of games coming for it, including a new Metal Gear, Assassin’s Creed, and Little Big Planet. But I’m of two minds about Sony. They’re currently fighting two losing battles and I wonder if they shouldn’t just cut their losses on the PSP and concentrate on overtaking MS for 2nd place in the living room. They’ve got so many first party developers tied up with PSP projects, it’s hard to see the logic. I was also really hoping for a price cut on the PS3. Why, why, why, are they not doing that. It’s insanity. I say that selfishly, because I’m looking to get one of the damned things, but it also seems crazy that Sony is sitting in third place with a console almost twice as costly as the competition, and not slashing their price.

In Halo Wars, two worlds collide, and not just the Covenant and human space forces as they space-battle for space-supremacy. No, I’m talkin’ real-time strategy buttin’ heads against the juggernaut Halo franchise. So is it peanut butter and chocolate, or… peanut butter and bacon?

Note: I’m cross-posting this from the Space blog over here, where I’ve been contributing. It being my employer, and I being a blogger, it seems only natural. I’ll probably continue to cross-post here, at least for longer stuff.

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I’ve sampled two recent real-time strategy games on the 360, Tom Clancy’s EndWar (also available on the PS3) and the demo to Halo Wars.

RTS is a genre born on PCs that rarely works on consoles, despite many noble attempts. The key problem is control. There simply aren’t enough buttons on a console controller, and something designed with rapid mouse movements in mind doesn’t necessarily translate to analog sticks.

EndWar presents a possible solution to the control problem: voice control. Using a simple subject-verb-object palette of grammatical chunks – “unit one attack hostile two” – it’s possible to fight a battle without using the controller at all. I played through the bulk of the single-player campaign this way, and it works surprisingly well, with maybe 90% accuracy. Sometimes, you wind up using the controller because it’s quicker. But voice control is not only more graceful, it’s actually more true to what the game is simulating.

Unfortunately, EndWar has little else to offer. The missions are all the same and the difficulty curve leaves a lot to be desired. If there’s ever a sequel, it could theoretically kick ass, though.

The Halo Wars demo has only two levels, so it’s hard to judge the game at this point. But what you are presented with is a slick, carefully packaged narrative experience with simple, almost casualized gameplay. The control is traditional for console RTS – the left stick controls your cursor, and so press one face button to select units, another to give them a target. The levels required very little actual strategy. You could beat them without anything other than ‘select all units’, and so the feel was more like an action game with a little base-building than an actual strategy game.

Not to get all Sun Tzu here, but that’s a problem with console RTSes. Because the control is a lot harder and slower, the developers can never assume you’ve figured out how to command more than one group at a time, and so the combat never requires much in the way of strategy. A certain level of difficulty is required for strategy games to make sense. It’s not just the usual rock-paper-scissors system of unit strengths and weaknesses, it’s feinting, luring, splitting the defence, etc. Select all and attack isn’t really a strategy.

After watching an “Inside Xbox” video about Halo Wars (which seems to be a console exclusive, so I can’t share it with you) I can say that the potential for more advanced control is certainly there. The developers seemed to have thrown a bunch of possible control schemes at the wall in hopes that one or more actually sticks. Problem with that is the controls can get confusing. I think that Lord of the Rings RTS (Battle For Middle Earth? MiddleWar? Lord of the Wars? EndFrodo? can’t remember what it was called) had a much touted control scheme, and you could in theory assign groups and send them this way and that, but in the heat of fake battle I could never remember how to do it.

Time will tell. I’ll almost certainly buy Halo Wars, if only go get a fresh dose of Halo story action. Let’s hope the controls work out.

I’ve been struggling with Fable 2 – struggling with a dying Xbox and some frustrating bugs – but enjoying it greatly. I was originally going to compare it to Fallout 3, but it seems somewhat unfair. Suffice it to say that even as someone who vastly preferred Oblivion to Fable 1, I feel Fallout 3 – as the belle of the 4th quarter Western RPG ball, earning review 9s and positions on “Best of the Year” lists – is tremendously overrated, and poor Fable 2 is fabulously under-.

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The big three’s announcements were a little underwhelming. The least underwhelming was Microsoft’s; besides the stream of sequels that were all the rage for all three, they had a couple worthwhile things to announce – the Netflix deal, the Final Fantasy coup.

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Prolly the big ones are: a dashboard update to feature Mii-like avatars; a Netflix partnership – netflix members will be able to access the Netflix catalogue from their 360s; and Final Fantasy XIII will be on 360 as well as PS3.

The 360 will see an upgrade to 60GB of hard drive (it used to be 20). Also, there were release dates for Fable 2 (october), Gears of War 2 (november 7), and Resident Evil 5 (march 13 2009). A new Portal game, Portal: Still Alive, will come to Live Arcade sometime in ’08. The Rock Band track list is revealed (“Livin’ on a Prayer”, sweet!) In non-sequel news, a karaoke game called Lips is on its way, and a camera-enabled game called You’re in the Movies.

There’s still supposed to be a big Bungie announcement today.

We came, we played, we slayed. Halo 3’s Legendary Map Pack dropped yesterday, and the Robot Crew gave them a test run. Here’s what we each thought about the new maps, Avalanche, Ghost Town and Blackout.

It’s also the subject of this week’s Robot Sounds, so if you’d like to absorb more or less the material you can read here in convenient audio form, go check it out.

Blackout

D – I consider Lockout the best of the Halo 2 maps – it’s not my personal favourite, but it’s almost a perfect map from a more objective standpoint: it’s well balanced, small but not cramped, allows for different play styles and gametypes, and it’s got depth to it, mostly in the form of different jumps you can learn.

Beside the obvious visual overhaul, the main areas and paths of Lockout are largely unchanged in Blackout. But the details are different. Some spaces are slightly adjusted – the little lip underneath that was often used to hide with the oddball? That’s gone now. Also, there’s a modicum of cover down in the shotgun tunnel. A couple platforms underneath are closer together, making jumping easier. It’s a little harder to get cover on top of the BR tower. Most of the trick jumps have changed.

All told? If you loved Lockout, you’ll love this.

Nadine – Lockout was one of my fav maps of all time, up there with Headlong, Ascension, and Foundation. The ease of jumping, the dynamics of close combat with the added bonus of so many great long distance shooting points was brilliant. I loved Oddball, Slayer, and Crazy King on that map. Since this is almost an exact remake, save for a few adjustments to the lower levels for more distance shooting points, I was not disappointed. The odd thing for me was I thought they had actually overdone it visuals-wise. There was no need to add all the UNSC consoles and noisy, garish textures on the walls. I find them distracting and ugly, give me Forerunner tech any day, but even in High Ground the UNSC stuff isn’t that overwhelming.

Maybe it’s because it’s a weird kind of oil rig they had to mess with it so much, but I just find the noise unnecessary. I did love the backgrounds though, the added details of the sky and the coastal cliffs really gives you a better sense of “oh shit I could fall off on all sides into icy cold waters” whereas in Lockout I only felt that in certain areas. Now you really feel that isolation at every point on the map.

Toku – I never liked Lockout in the first place, but maybe that’s because I was never really good at it in the first place. I’ve been told that once I learn the jumps I’ll love it, but I don’t understand the point of a map that you can only play if you happen to know the little tricks that go along with it. To me, I find it too tight quartered and narrow for my own enjoyment. I don’t mind learning a map, but I think a design that requires you be able to play it blind just to be able to compete competently is…well…shitty.

The remake, Blackout, is the same map and I still have the same problems. My style of gaming gears toward more of a military style. This could be from a long history of playing such gems as Halflife, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Gears of War, and so on. I like being able to strafe without falling off the map, I like to be able to crouch and dodge using the terrain, and I like to think my way laterally out of situations without the risk of being sworded by a camper hiding around a corner. The Blackout map leaves little room for any of this and for that reason it’s going sit slightly below Guardian and Midship on my list of Halo maps…

…I’ll still play it though.

I am indifferent on the new look, personally I don’t mind the gritty oil-rig look… but it still doesn’t make up for the fact that some asshole will always shotgun my face from some little perch he found from playing the map ten trillion times.

Ghost town

D – Ghost town is a medium-small asymmetrical map. We were divided on this one; I found it overly complicated. For a small area, there’s a lot going on. Not only are there up to three levels, multiple entry points to every room, and compromised sightlines, but there are bits of wreckage all over the place that I found myself tripping over when trying to make timely retreats.

That said, it looks great, and it does present some interesting possibilities. We had white-knuckle thrills and moderate success holding down certain areas, like the base and the ‘green room’ (where the sniper spawns). I’m just not sure I’ll ever prefer it to some of the other maps.

Nadine – I thought I was going to hate this one, but I really like it. Almost instantly I took to its broken, bombed out corners and gutted floors. It reminded me of an overgrown Turf that had the shit kicked outta its bawls. We played some games online against some pretty heavy hitters, way beyond my skill level, but the map gave us hope and kept us in the game with some dignity to boot. The level is made for offense/defense objectives for sures. There is one main base with several ways for enemies to get in on the right, center, and left but if you have your points covered and a man to back you up, things can work out.

Grenades are also great on this map. Long distance throwing is kinda moot, but tossing around corners and into all those openings I mentioned is super sweet. You can really do above and below attacks on this one, you can be surrounded by three guys from so many sides in such a short time the desperate guerilla feeling is painfully present. If that’s how all those Call of Duty 4 dudes feel when they are playing, well, damn. But I guess you need to feel high anxiety levels to get that exquisite chemical victory flush in your brain. This map is a goodie, I’m looking forward to lots of Assaults, Capturing Flags, and Zombies.

Toku – Huzzah, a map that appeals to my combat sensibilities, unlike Blackout, Ghost Town makes me feel at home and it could be a simple case of “I like the way it feels.” I tried to explain why I like this map poorly on the podcast, but I’ll give’r a better shot here.

The map feels like playing in a block of Swiss Cheese, and that’s a good thing…It’s chock full of holes. If you are playing Team Slayer you can get with a group of friends and defend any number of points on this map with some degree of success, but not so much so as to ruin the challenge. If you are playing on the attack it is very easy to invade any “base” on this map through any number of side passages.

I was afraid this would be a “shotgun” map, and that the Guru’s online would just camp with each other and wait for the one shot kills, yet this doesn’t seem to happen, and I think it is because it is very difficult to stay in one place for any length of time. Any hideaway you might find is most likely easily accessible from other points. I can’t see playing King of the Hill or Hammer matches here enjoyably, but Zombie and Carry the Skull would be a riot.

Avalanche

D – Avalanche is a ‘re-imagining’ of Sidewinder from Halo 1. The improvements come in the form of teleporters and man cannons, ensuring footsoldiers can move about almost as quickly as their vehicle-borne counterparts.

I love this one, but as a large map I’m not sure how much I’ll get to play it. You’d need a lot of people to get a good custom game going on it, and outside of Big Team Battle I can’t see it showing up in the matchmaking playlists much. The vehicle mayhem is fun, but we think the Hornet might have been nerfed just a little bit too much.

Nadine – I adore outdoor maps with wide spaces for dog fights and tank busting. Avalanche was a surprise because I really did not like the original Sidewinder that much, kinda too big and too barren. This horseshoe shaped map is a great size with excellent tunnels, lots of great default weapons, and an interesting base design. The bases are very small, pretty much just a ramp up to a man cannon and a teleporter to a turret and rockets. In Assault you gotta haul ass to grab the rockets and get back to base, station a man at the turret to block the midpoint overpass from enemy vehicles, while another person should most def man cannon out to the mountain tunnel entrance to either get the spartan laser, or guard that entrance.

See, that’s just basic strategy though, there’s a lot of variation depending on how many players you have. I’d love to play six on six flag on that map, it would be crazy town. I’m very pleased with the look of this map and I really enjoy it. It’s that outdoor feeling, I love the big open spaces, makes me feel like I’m playing campaign I think. Great map, most awesome indeed.

D – Just wanted to add: Yeah, that campaign vibe. You hit the nail on the head.

Toku – Oh, sadly this is not going to be a often played map and I can see why. It will be a hard one to jump online and play with a few friends because you really need the numbers, and joining with strangers really runs the risk of matching up with TARDS who think driving mongooses headlong into enemy territory yelling “Take this you bitches!” is a fun idea… and then of course DYING on the vast expanse that is Avalanche because a much better player pops him with a well placed sniper shot. The map is VERY open and vast, and yet allows for quick movement on foot using a variety of teleporters and man-cannons. There are also plenty of tricky little tunnels and ridges which means a guy on foot won’t immediately die to another guy in a wraith or hornet. We proved this week through some random playing that vehicles DON’T mean you have the upper hand, and that is a nice change (Valhalla Anyone?).

That said… I DON’T like the fact that you practically have to ONLY play Team Objectives if you want to get any use out of this map. Social Slayer would bite steaming piles of ass, and don’t even get me started on Zombie or Crazy King.

Oh yeah…and to the guys who want to play Rocket Race in this map. If there weren’t so many jerks out there who just play beat-downs and don’t race it would be fantastic on this map. To all those who DO do that, screw you and the horse you rode in on, you ruin Rocket Race for the rest of us.

Word is in on the remaining map from the Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack: it’s Blackout, a remake of Lockout. I didn’t think that would happen as Guardian is so similar, but there we go. Bungie producer Allen Murray says “Lockout was leaps and bounds ahead of every other map in terms of games played and the public demand.” It’s a classic, that’s for sure.

Hey, Team Halo! Your new, expensive maps are here. Or rather they’re coming April 15th. The New Legendary Map Pack includes the huge “Avalanche”, an update of Halo 1’s Sidewinder (with Hornets and tanks and Men Cannon).

There’s also Ghost Town, a new, asymmetrical, smaller map.

There will be a third, as-yet unrevealed map that the press release describes as a “returning classic… fans of smaller Slayer maps, it’s time to get excited.” I don’t think it will be lockout, so.. Foundation? The Map Pack costs the same as the Heroic pack did, 800 Microsoft Points. There will also apparently be some new Forge options.

Okay…I’m not done playing this bitch yet but I’m determined to push my way through. There are many ‘chievies which come easily and I want them, even if the rest of the game leaves me wanting.

And leaves me wanting it does! But not in the way you might think…

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I’m now about 7 hours into Lost Odyssey and my feelings are mixed. On the one hand this is a quality traditional Japanese role playing game with many powerful, emotional moments. On the other hand, it’s got a massive learning curve issue that goes by the name “Bogimoray”. But I’ll help you beat that bastard in another article (over here).

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Bogimoray. Bogmeister. Bog-sucking bog-fucker from the planet bogg. Man did this dumb worm piss me off. (This is the boss in Lost Odyssey that’s waay too hard waaay too early.) So I wrote this up to spare some poor souls the grief. If you’re not a google searcher for ‘bogimoray’, you probably don’t want to read this, but if you are, read on for the Angry Robot patented anti-bogimoray success™ recipe!

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Winter is made for gaming. With the blizzards we’ve been having in my city, gaming has practically been hibernation for me, allowing me to fully enjoy the season’s hottest games while snow slowly tries to bury me alive. One of my favorites has been the recently released Devil May Cry 4.

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Last week, Nadine and I attended the launch party for N+, the Xbox Live version of N, Metanet Software’s kickass ninja platforming flash game (which you can get right here) N+ is coming to the ‘Arcade on wednesday. It’s also in development for the DS and PSP.

The party was at the Gladstone Hotel. There was a little play area for trying out the game. Why not experience it in video form, it’s like you’re really there!

And then read on for the interview with the creators of N and N+, the charming Reigan Burns and Mare Sheppard. Symbolically anyways, it’s robots interviewing ninjas.

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To double-dip in the ‘NPD group sales reports’ dip bowl: January sales reports are in, and the PS3 has outsold the 360, PSP and the DS for the month. And with 269,000 units to the Wii’s 274,000, damned near beat out the Wii, too, which would have taken a dump in everyone’s “casual games are the future” theories.

OK let me never again mention dump-taking and dip bowls in the same paragraph.

Why did this happen? Well, there’s that thing called Blu-Ray. Also, supplies of both other consoles may have been constrained. And I do think the 360’s hardware problems are catching up with it – more than once, people asking me for console-buying advice have voiced concern that the 360 would fall apart on them.

Now I know why we get beat on Live so often when we play Halo 3 – there are actual soldiers playing that shit. It’s an interesting article, not really because it talks about soldiers playing games, which we know they do, but because it places it in the therapy context. It’s really only one quote: “video games are a way of calibrating and managing the overwhelming pulses of stress that comes with combat zone living.” Normally that sort of statement gets lost in the noise of the videogames-and-violence debate, but that obviously doesn’t apply to soldiers – or maybe if they didn’t play so many violent games, we wouldn’t have war in Iraq? Yeah.

So are games good for regular people? Do we calibrate and manage our stress by playing them? I think so. Shooters like Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 are indeed stressful situations, requiring situational awareness, lightning-quick perception, and tranquility in the face of multiple stressors, not just motor skills. They’re almost training for multitasking. And then there’s the quick communication and group coordination required to advance in their multiplayer modes.

Okay so like what a year ago this trailer was released and I went crazy insane over the song. The trailer had me, I didn’t need to know anything other than I wanted to play it so badly. The music was epic and struck right to my core.

The recent ads have given me pause, however.

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First off, speaking of Sid Meier, Sid Meier’s Pirates will be released as a download in the Xbox Originals category next week, along with Black and Ninja Gaiden Black. I’ve been meaning to play that bastard for some time, but have been unable to track down a copy, so I’ll give it a whirl upon release.

In other sort-of Xbox news, Xbox Media Center has been ported to Intel Macs. I say sort of because you don’t actually need an Xbox to run the software. It’s free, open source media center software developed for the original Xbox, but has been ported to Linux and now Mac OS X. Why would you run that and not Front Row or the AppleTV? This interview with lead programmer Elan Feingold gives some reasons:

• Resolutions up to, including and even surpassing 1080P (AppleTV is currently at 720P)
• DTS/AC3 passthrough (which is great for playing DVD/BluRay/HD-DVD sourced audio). This means if you have a surround receiver you can have it decode multichannel audio
• Almost unlimited video and audio format support since we can play anything ffmpeg supports
• A great virtual file system layer with support for protocols like UPnP
• There is a great looking weather item that puts very useful info in front of your eyes.
• Since it is an open platform, the sky really is the limit, things like Youtube browsers, RSS readers, visualizers, MAME/Other emulators are all being integrated seemlessly. Heck, one could even imagine running an Xbox emulator on my quad-core machine…now that would bring us full circle!

So there ya go.

I love my x-box. It makes me almost as happy as my MacBook Pro and Sex makes me (separately, of course. The USB ports are not nearly big enough.) However, the other day my rage nearly got the best of me.

Naruto induced my rage.

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Two weeks ago I encountered my most favourite Live title ever. What’s that you say? Something you love more than Geometry Wars? Are you mad? Have you gone the way of the belfry bats? The answer is yes, yes I have. This game is so awesome in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin!

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Okay so I don’t know jack all about the Devil May Cry series, and right now I’ve been estranged from my PS3 (it’s temporary but already I feel this horrible ache to have her back, it’s horrible really) and I’m not going to be playing it on the 360. Anyway, these dudes at PS3 Fanboy made a retrospective of the series and if you are like me and want to play the next installment but have no idea what it’s about, then enjoy.

What will happen if I get sucked into a computer from the 80s and have to battle my pixelated way out?

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It’s a delicious cocktail of button-mashing coke and character-leveling smack, and that’s why I’m still playing Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom, a game with so many flaws you fear it might shatter into a million pieces in your 360’s drive tray. But I’m not going the way of Belushi, Phoenix and Farley, I’m gonna kick this habit. Or at least find a dealer with a better supply.

You face wave after wave of submoronic AI, the quote-story-endquote is so incomprehensible the developers don’t even try to tell it – why am I selling swords to the Buddha? Fuck knows! – and if the repetitive level designs don’t get you, the shamelessly linear paths through them will. Hope you like invisible walls! Yet, it has the odd charm – monsters like the four-headed spinning top turtle boss and the ‘flesh spears’, aka Freud’s nightmare aka subterannean rape sticks, are pretty neat-o.

Some people love action games; I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. But throw in some RPG elements like leveling up, modifying weapons and unlocking spells and suddenly gameplay takes a giant leap from the 80s into – well, at least the mid-90s. This game has just enough different characters and nice weapons and spells to keep you hacking and slashing just a little more to see what new kind of ‘bommyknocker’ or ‘headbanger’ or ‘gunsword of piercing’ fat, slow Duane might rend from the bones of his vanquished foes’ magically vanishing corpses.

But I’m trying to quit. I could probably find a better action RPG on the DS, say, or just find a Mac port of Diablo and be done with it. Yet in the back of my mind there’s Duane, flailing the shit out of some poor mentally-challenged Lightning Knight. Damn!

Nadine and I both wanted to talk about Crackdown in the context of “game of the year”. So we both are; in classic back-and-forth style, we’ll hammer the Crack ball around a touch.

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So one of the downloadable maps for Halo 3 last week was Foundry, a blank canvas sort of map intended primarily for use with Forge, Halo 3’s built-in level editor.

Literally overnight the community was bulging with Forge creations, including an ATV race, soccer, a Pac-Man remake, and much more (check Rampancy’s new Forge Database).

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At ars, Jacqui Cheng debunks the Microsoft HD/DVD conspiracy theories. Or does she? She notes that there’s no proof that Microsoft wants to keep the format wars going in order to champion (Microsoft-supplied) downloads. But where’s the proof that they want to win?

If Microsoft wanted the format wars over and a clear winner decided, they would either a) not be in bed with Toshiba behind the HD DVD format, ceding the fight to Sony’s Blu-Ray or b) put everything at their disposal into HD DVD. Have they really done the latter? Microsoft still doesn’t include an HD DVD drive with the Xbox 360 – they sell an add-on drive. While the drive is cheap (now $129 in the US, $200 in Canada), it’s still $579 for the console + drive, while the entry-level PS3, with its built-in Blu-Ray drive, is $400. So if they were really trying to battle Blu-Ray, they’d be competing on price at the very least.

Microsoft makes no money from Blu-Ray, whereas they earn licensing fees from HD DVDs, and they must take a substantial cut from their own digital downloads. They clearly don’t want Blu-Ray to win, but the question of how badly they want HD DVD to win could be answered if you knew how much money they made from downloads vs. HD DVD. Since we don’t know that, we can only speculate… and from their actions, they’re not backing HD DVD that hard.

Up here in the barren, snowclogged wasteland of Canadia, if you’re not slipping on poorly cleared sidewalks or getting tasered by renegade Mounties, you’re complaining about how it’s hard out here for a nerd when all the tech companies treat you like second-class assholes: no iPhone, TiVO, Kindle; no movies or TV on the iTunes Store. Well forget you, iTunes, as Microsoft announces that on December 11th, movie rentals will come to Xbox Live, for “as little as 310 Microsoft Points for Standard Definition movies and from 460 Microsoft Points for High Definition movies.” Let me quote Steve here on the translation from funny money: “Movies will cost 310 Microsoft Points ($4.34) for older films and 440 points ($6.16) for newer releases, with high-def versions going for 460 points ($6.44) and 660 points ($9.24) respectively.” Confused yet? As a comparison, $8 is what Rogers charges to stream a slightly out of sync HD movie.

And of course, no TV shows, because everyone knows Canadians hate TV and just like to watch the whale fat congeal on the wall of our igloos as we chug maple syrup. Good times.

Damn you, Mass Effect. Damn you for everything you arte going to do to me. For all those hours you are going to steal from my life, for making me listen to your droning Codex for hours in fascination…

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So, I’ve already talked a bit about Assassin’s Creed in my comic last week. This game has pretty much taken over my life over the last few days. I haven’t beaten it yet, possibly because of my anal-retentive way of trying to do uncover every little facet of the game (Oblivion has taken me like… forever.) Why am I taking my time with this game?

Well, let me tell you…

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So I’m finally finished this badboy. Might as well check in with updated thoughts.

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Every so often a good friend and I meet up to eat VERY good Pizza and geek out on our latest toys. It’s a fun way to unwind after work and great way to test-drive the latest and greatest. So when my friend Chris told me that he wanted me to check out his new Ace Combat 6: Fires Of Liberation game, I thought it was a great opportunity to also test the camera on my new Iphone. Here are the results:

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Wow, get a load of this AV Club review: “blunt, dumb, ridiculous, and almost never funny.” We totally didn’t play the same game. Sure, it could be a whole lot better; its shoddy camera nearly wrecked the thing for me. And I’ll admit that the first few levels are probably the weakest. That Lard Lad level is a little too early in the game, and a little too close to the intersection of hard and tedious. But later levels more than make up for it. The Overlord-style controls for Marge (who uses a megaphone to recruit angry mob members) were a great change-up, and who can argue with the boss fights towards the end: Matt Groening, Shakespeare, and God?

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After a long wait, through months of delays, Bioware’s RPG epic Mass Effect is finally here. I’ve gotten about 12 hours in, although I’ve been playing for 14 hours. More on that in a moment.

Mass Effect is many things, and your enjoyment of it will likely reflect what you expect it to be. If you’re looking for a rich scifi storyline set in a detailed world, you will love it. If you like RPG shooters – an odd category to be sure, but one shared with Bioshock at the very least – you’ll enjoy this, after a steep learning curve. If you’re looking for a step forward in interactive entertainment, or (even less modestly) the pinnacle of modern gaming experiences, you’ll be somewhat disappointed.

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So I sit here charged with the heavy task of reviewing the new Halo comic title. Like many, I waited for the midnight release of Halo 3 so that Nadine, D and I could run home like a gaggle of ADD kids on crack and play it through hopped up cola till the wee hours of the morning. Through the wonder of XBOX live, we played the co-op campaign, swearing like sailors while Flood pods rained down on us.

It was wonderful…

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The single player campaign of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 was probably my most memorable game experience of last year. From the start, everything felt right. The controls were intuitive and responsive, the action fast paced. The environments were richly detailed, and the music deepened the gritty, harsh atmosphere.

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The first thing that I encountered this weekend on my quest to play Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was the distinct lack of Xbox 360 copies available anywhere within the downtown Toronto area or Etobicoke (the only part of the surrounding area I could get to).

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So funny story, this past weekend I arbitrarily decided to go to Northern Digital Expo (NDEX or as we better know it, NAMBLA) and the first Canadian Open Major League Gaming Event (yippee.) I was greeted kindly by a young girl standing beside an enormous bin filled with IceBreakers breath mints and was promptly informed that I entered through the wrong door. Oh well…

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Nadine was fired from the show and replaced by the much more Harvest Moon-friendly Mark. Kidding, Nadine will be back next time. In a perfect world, it will be all three of us!

Anyway, Mark and I do go on, about: first person shooters (incl. Halo of course), post-Oblivion RPGs, “you got your narrative chocolate in my nonlinear sandbox experience”, the lack of a good giant robot game, and retired pipefitters playing Wii games. And yes, Mark defends Harvest Moon’s honour.

Angry Robot Sounds 6 (16MB mp3, 49mins)

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It’s no secret that thus far I’ve really enjoyed the Viva Piñata franchise. The episodes I’ve seen of the show were well animated, colourful and quite entertaining. The original game was a lot of fun and it complimented the show nicely. Well, I had the opportunity the other night to get a little hands-on time with Viva Piñata – Party Animals before it comes out on Tuesday. I’m happy to say it did not disappoint.

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We talk Halo 3, Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, and how Nadine is racist against anime(?). Plus, games we are looking forward to.

Angry Robot Sounds #5 (16MB mp3, 35mins)

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Well, here I am, waiting for my Gamertag to finish migrating from one of our household’s Xbox 360s to the other, and thanks to a certain recently released game, it’s taking for-bloody-ever. Since this little hiccup has got me thinking all things 360, I figure I may as well make use of the time and talk a little about one of my favourite pastimes: Collecting Achievements.

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Nothing comprehensive here, but I just wanted to mention a trio of good articles about everyone’s favourite hype-fattened juggernaut. This interview with Brian Jarrard of Bungie is mostly about how Bungie was disappointed with Halo 2. Then there are good pieces by Clive Thompson in wired, one about AI in Halo 3, and another on the topic of the game’s level design.

There’s also an interesting interview with Claude Errera, webmaster of halo.bungie.org, in Online Journalism Review.

Here’s the complete video of us dorks ODing on Halo on saturday.

The Angry Robot Halo Marathon from Angry Robot on Vimeo.

Big thanks to Chetan, Chris and Steve for taking part. And now back to Halo 3.

Recorded just after we played Halo 3 campaign for the first time, this episode naturally concerns Halo and only Halo. It’s not really a review since we didn’t finish the game, just the thoughts that came to mind.

Angry Robot Sounds #4 (5MB mp3, 10mins)

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So, there go the end credits… and now the little post-credits cut scene… and it’s over. Well, that was anti-climactic. I’ve just finished Halo 2 for the first time (yes, I’m a little late to this party) and I can honestly say that I get why people were a little miffed by the ending. I understand that Bungie was focusing primarily on creating “the greatest multiplayer experience in history,” but come on…

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As previously mentioned, this weekend we get all cra-Z and play Halo and Halo 2 all the way through. We will ingest beef jerky and Guinness and meatzas. We will relive fabulous memories, and get pissed off when Nadine charges ahead blindly without telling me.

For what it’s worth, we’ll update throughout the weekend. There’s a delicate balance between doing something and recording the doing of the thing, and we’re not sure how it will play out, but I’d expect some kinds of updates through the day and certainly when the whole affair is done.

And here’s the surprise ending: we’re going to play a few hours of Halo 3 sunday afternoon. Shortly thereafter we’ll provide some thoughts sunday night. Probably in the form of a podcast.

There’s more news. In conjunction with Space, we are doing a Halo 3 tournament, tentatively titled “The Master Chief Challenge”. It’s Team Space vs. Team Angry Robot. We’re shooting it next weekend, and the first of three segments will air on Hypaspace the following friday (the 5th of october). We’ll give you a heads-up before then, though.

Excited!

So Halo 3 will have a map-tweaking mode, “Forge”, and Bungie has written three articles – one two three – about how it works. But nothing brings it to life like the idea of rocket baseball, which Frankie mentions in this interview, and a poster on this forum speculates how it could work:

Everyone has rockets on D everyone has gravity hammers on offense, and on the pitchers mound is a quickly respawning pack of grenades with really long fuse timers (take a while to explode). The pitches are with grenades, and obviously hit with the gravity hammer. as soon as the grenade, after being hit with the gravity hammer, hits the ground in fair territory, the fielders can start to shoot rockets at the runners.

Each base is protected by a bubble shield with a infinite (or really long) timer so they cant be hit with rockets while “safe” on a base.

Craziness, huh? It’s beautiful to see Bungie enabling fan creativity with both Forge and the saved films, and it’s also beautiful to think of what insane possibilities are yet to be invented. We used to play a homebrew gametype called “Smashy Smashy” on Coagulation that was intended to be an all-vehicle bang-em-up, but it was hampered by our lack of control over vehicle numbers and spawn times. That would no longer be the case. And of course it just sounds pathetically uninspired next to Rocket Baseball. Oh man.

(As a cheap player, I’m always looking to pick up back catalogue games at bargain rates and I know many of you do the same, trolling the used aisles and “platinum hits collections” for sub-$30 game bargains. So it’s worth taking a look at some of these games and talking about them. Maybe they weren’t worth $70 a year ago, but are they worth $20 now? First up: Dead Rising.)

Oh Dead Rising, I really want to like you.

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So says research group. We’ll see what happens with the PS3 price cut.

I stepped up and finally bought the HDTV I mentioned a while ago. I got the newer, 4ms refresh rate one. I also got a HD PVR and a fancy-ish universal remote. They are all handsome creatures, but my was it a shock to be thrown back into the sweaty, confusing land of the AV nerd for the past few days, what with all the setting up of things and cabling them together and the fussing over how to achieve maximum quality. Thought I might share some frustrations and possibly even pointers for those who may follow after.

Disclaimer: boring. Not really I suppose, but the following information won’t be that exciting to people who aren’t planning on going HD any time soon, or who did it long ago.

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Stephen Tolito plays the entire Halo trilogy. Retronauts writes up Halo and Halo 2 and even the entire Marathon trilogy.

Clearly, Bungie retrospectives are in the air. And we’re getting in on that.

The weekend before Halo 3’s release, Nadine and I are going to rock the preceding Halos co-op style. We’ll ‘cover’ that as best we can… (air quotes because hell, we’re not in Darfur or Kabul, we’re playing videogames. But whatever.) And then onto the third big ring. For which we also have big plans, but more on that later.

And oh yeah… I lied about the podcast. I forgot the mic, so we just played games instead. Tee hee!

This irks me.

Halo bashing is lame.

“Halo suxors!” “XbxSUCKS!” “Sony RULZS!*&%$!”

Lame, super lame, uber lame.

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So my favourite sneak peek at this year’s delightful fall preview for Xbox 360 was the highly anticipated Age of Conan. When I first heard about this game I was a bit freaked by the thought of having to share my Conan experience with thousands of other people online. How dare they intrude upon my conquering of the Hyborian Age! The sheer gall of it, to force players to work together and create guilds and villages based on a common love of all things Cimmerian and Stygian. Of course, it didn’t take me long to shake myself out of my instinctual distain for the MMO concept and realize that I wouldn’t be playing with just any kind of gamer. I would be playing with Conan-loving-brain-spattering-gore-
hounding-ancient-ruin-thieving barbarians like me!

Relief flowed through me…then concern. How could a design team possibly be able to capture the world, the myth, the legend, the universe of Conan? Jason Stone, one of the lucky members of that design team showed me and holy damns Batman…Age of Conan looks epic. First he showed me beautiful Aquilonian vistas, then we traveled to Stygian temples and finally to an ancient ruin site complete with roaming hordesmen just waiting to be sliced and diced with a great axe through the head. Body quivered. Mouth watered. So very close to satisfaction…

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Says developer Real Time Worlds. That sucks, although this smacks of an ongoing contract negotiation.

I played it at X07 last week, but I’m off on vacation in Ireland right now and haven’t had any time to get it up on the site… until now.

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Well, that’s a not a full truth. I felt like I was in Stargate whilst playing The Halo 3 multiplayer map Sandtrap. It’s my new all time favourite map ever (yes yes I’ve only seen five maps so far but this one is awesome).

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And I’ll tell you why.

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Today I got a peek at Halo 3. We played some multiplayer, and then I saw about a half hour of the campaign as played by a very pleasant Steve Scott, lead effects designer on the game.

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We got a look at some stuff at Microsoft’s fall press event today: Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Halo 3. I’ll be writing ‘em up imminently; I hope to have Halo 3 impressions later today.

The avalanche of Halo 3 media is going to bury us all, and I won’t try to link to all of it, but it’s worth noting that Halo 3 was the surprise final game of the Omegathon at Penny Arcade’s enormous PAX expo – here’s a joysitq writeup. More entertainingly though, there are videos of the gameplay here and here, featuring commentary by Tycho.

There’s a delicious cover article in the new Wired by Clive Thompson, entitled Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play. It focuses on the rigorous play testing that has gone into the game, but contains plenty of interest, including admissions from Bungie employees that Halo 2 wasn’t anywhere near what they wanted it to be.

There are a few other bits and pieces, including sidebars, new screens, and a so-called video primer. Of interest to Halo nerds: the number of vehicles has doubled to 16, the brute hammer is a playable weapon, a remade Lockout will be one of the multiplayer maps.

The demo is out now, the game is out tomorrow, and everyone loves it. More than one reviewer has indicated that they consider it art, i.e. more grist for the “can games be art?” “debate” (it’s only a debate because Ebert is racist against games). Tycho vows to buy an extra copy “exclusively to shove up Roger Ebert’s ass. If Bioshock isn’t “art,” then art is the poorer for it.” Well said.

I’m not sure emotional power is enough to make something art; there tend to be a lot of other checkboxes to tick such as complexity and (practically, cynically speaking) acceptance in the canon. But Bioshock certainly has it, judging by the demo, which presents a failed society, an underwater Xanadu, peopled with lonely madmen and with cracks forming everywhere.

If a game is primarily about exploring space, you could hardly find a more menacingly beautiful space than this. It’s great to see a game referencing things outside the medium that aren’t the usual space and/or monster cliches, such as art deco design and, say, Citizen Kane.

I’ll be buying this fer sure and giving it a good workout, time permitting.

So I sat down to try this Eternal Sonata Demo on the Xbox 360 because I heard it was highly anticipated and I like nothing more than high anticipation. The only trouble is I’m not really one for fantasy RPGs unless they are of the action RPG variety…and are Jade Empire. Nevertheless, I can see many good things in Eternal Sonata, I just couldn’t get over the characters to enjoy it much.

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Currently Playing: Guitar Hero II, “Thunderhorse” by Dethlok
Reasoning: Fulfilling my inner cartoon Metalhead’s desire to rock out.
Thinking About: Bioshock, Heavenly Sword, Yahtzee’s Reviews

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Topics: Heavenly Sword, PS3 vs. 360, the problem with talking about games before they come out, immersive games and film, Oblivion, hesitancy to commit to World of Warcraft.

Angry Robot Sounds #3 (13MB mp3, 29mins)

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Most importantly, the 360 gets a $50 pricedrop to help it compete with the price-lowered PS3, and Grand Theft Auto IV is delayed until 2008.

In personal gaming news, the nostalgic nausea with Marathon: Durandal got too bad for me to keep playing. What a shame.

Here’s episode? chapter? 2 of our podcast thing, Nadine and D stylee. The central theme is casual vs. hardcore gaming, with stops along the way at the following topics: the DS, the Wii, Viva Pinata, Marathon: Durandal, Halo, Silent Hill, and Guinness. I managed not to edit the hell out of it this time. I only took out a pause and one instance of me saying, “I guess I’ll edit this out.” Thanks, self!

Angry Robot Sounds #2 (16MB mp3, 36mins)

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• the port is well done; the interface is by necessity different, but true to the original. They even kept the loading screen illustrations.
• Was that menu music in the original? It must have been. No one would make music like that today.
• Graphics shock. I’m not someone who fetishizes graphics, but nonetheless you can’t help but notice that cutting edge graphics from 12 years ago are very different from those today. It’s like watching a bunch of modern $100-million films and then switching to a Cassavetes film.
• Juice notes, “that must be an old school game.” True school, baby.

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is coming out on the 360 Live Arcade tomorrow. Ah, Nas Illmatic, joints with Dave and playing this on my shitty LC 475.

Two related items came to my attention today: this article about the growing importance of game trailers, and Narcogen’s shot-by-shot analysis of the E3 Halo 3 trailer – the latter clearly an example of the ‘forensic approach’ detailed in the former.

It is worth noting that the two examples the article gives of trailers backfiring were Halo 2’s 2004 E3 trailer, and Killzone’s 2005 trailer. The article implies that gamers’ expectations can be raised too high, and thus trailers can backfire. Sure, that can happen. But the reason for the backfire is clear, in both cases: the trailers were deceptive. The Halo trailer contained gameplay footage of levels that didn’t appear in the game. The Killzone trailer was pre-rendered, so it had no relation whatsoever to what the game itself would look like. Small deceptions abound in film trailers (different music, sound effects, severe dialogue editing), but if you made a trailer that different from the actual film, you’d likely run afoul of fraudulent advertising laws.

I can’t see how the forensic approach to video is anything but an exciting development. Perhaps it’s only coming now because the technologies required – the pause button and the internet – are relatively recent phenomena. (I think of those poor structuralist film students in the 70s and before, having to watch repeated showings of the same film before they could perpetrate a shot-by-shot analysis). Anyway, it seems of a kind with ARGs, and signifies that techniques previously only practised in ivory towers can now be done by anyone, for entertainment even. The motivation is clear, too; it’s not that “these internet losers have too much time on their hands” but rather that – as the Traxus reference indicates – the material is layered with meaning in such a way that rewards close viewing. Sure, it’s hyped-up graphics porn for the mainstream, but it’s rich with detail for the story nerds, too.

Joystiq’s trailer analysis:

Couple things I’d add. First off, we see two Spartans on screen in one shot. This could simply be an indication of co-op play and not a story element, but as we know there will be different Spartan armour models, and as Bungie tends to have story motivation for things like that, we can speculate that there will be more than one Spartan in the Halo 3 plot. Also, Nadine noticed that there’s a shot of a four-seater Warthog. It has no cannon, just two passenger seats in the back. We speculated this could be handy for the rumoured four-player online co-op.

There’s also this description of part of the first campaign level, although there’s nothing that exciting going on.

Scene It on the 360, new Resident Evil and Call of Duty trailers, yawners. Bungie heads will want to get the Halo campaign trailer, and take note that Marathon is coming to the Live Arcade. Sure, you can download it for free for Mac or PC, but for couch potatoes, $10 might be an okay price to pay.

Update: missed a couple things. Halo-wise, there’s a rather interesting video made by Peter Jackson’s Weta – you can find it at the bottom of this page. It’s directed by Neil Blomkamp, who would have been the director of the Halo film, had it not been shelved, and presumably the intention is not only to promote the game, but also to inspire a little thirst for the live-action film. There’s also a Halo 3 Xbox 360 model, and the Live Video Marketplace, Microsoft’s film and TV downloading service, is coming to Europe and Canada at an unspecified date.

The Xbox 360 Live Arcade plays an important role. You don’t always want to play a game with crazy mind-melting graphics, 20-hour story arcs and 5-minute loading times. Sometimes you just want to boot ‘er up and play for 10 minutes. Also, with the game costs maxing out at about $10, you get a lot for a little. And it’s easy to convince your brain to make a sub-$20 purchase. Here’s my faves.

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A content embargo must have just dropped, as IGN has a writeup of a few new Halo 3 details, and new screenshots. Details include the maps Shrine, Epitaph, and Last Resort (Zanzibar); the armour variants, the Brute chopper, and implementation of the saved films feature, which I can’t wait to see. Oh, and an interview.

I’ve been playing rather a lot of this child’s game lately. I’ve got a lot of options on the go – Saint’s Row, Call of Juarez, some insane mech fighting game that Ubisoft released, and Battlestations: Midway. But the pinata garden calls every time.

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From an interview with Shane Kim from Microsoft game studios: “Bungie is working directly with Peter Jackson on the Halo interactive series.”

What exactly does that mean? Is it a series of games? Is it a TV series with forked narrative choices? How is it distributed?

Is it Halo’s Next Top Spartan?

How about a little Halo 3 news? Yeah, I thought so. Looks like people have figured out how to get into the custom game menu, which reveals a boatload of options. Adjustable gravity, powerups, speed, etc. People have also figured out how to actually play custom games, which seems to require having already joined a custom game – and it has spread like a virus.

Right when the beta launched there were modders poring over code and finding all sorts of weird stuff (that is by no means guaranteed to make it into the final game.) An upcoming issue of gamepro yields some images that appear to prove some of the modders’ finds true: customizable Spartans, a Brute vehicle.

UPDATE: Kotaku has instructions on how to get into custom games. Pretty elaborate.

IGN has it right, when you first learn about The Xbox 360 “Gamerscore” aka Achievement Points, you’re like what’s the big deal about some nerd count. But that’s before the obsessions and compulsions kick in. I try and keep them under control, and I’m not about to play a shite game just to raise that number. But that doesn’t keep me from checking every game’s list of achievements, or being thrilled when I got about 100 points just for Nadine and I playing a half hour of Viva Pinata. Why do we care about such things? I mean, we know money and power are but illusions, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting to drive a solid gold mech and rule the world. It’s like a suspension of disbelief.

I want Achievement Points for doing the dishes.

So we did a podcast, Nadine and I. Starts off with general gaming nonsense and then is all Halo 3, all the time for the rest of the half hour. This one is pretty rambly and chaotic, we’ll figure things out better next time, hopefully. Also, we recorded it on wednesday, and then I took forever to cut it down to a listenable length. But hell, you learn on your feet. I’ll update this with an iTunes link when it shows up.

Angry Robot Sounds #1 (12MB mp3, 25mins)

UPDATE:

My old friend mageebags and I are similar gamers. We will play hard and often if there are good games to be played, or not at all if nothing catches our interest. Or, we’ll catch up by playing old games that we might have missed years ago. So the two of us were talking about what we were looking forward to, and the conversation yielded results that were just begging to be repurposed as a blog post here.

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Microsoft and the New York Television Festival’s Xbox Live Originals contest asks you to make a pilot, between 5-15 minutes long, that will air on Xbox Live. The winner will get $100,000 to make six episodes.

That sounds like a great idea, and a great way to start a whole new market for independent producers. Except for this part:

NYTVF and the Designated Entities [read: Microsoft] shall have the perpetual and exclusive right to exhibit, disseminate, or broadcast each entry (and any portion(s) or element(s) thereof) in any manner, media or format now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe. Each entrant agrees not to exhibit, disseminate, or broadcast, or authorize any third party to exhibit, disseminate, or broadcast, in any manner, media, or format, his or her entry (or portions thereof) and, by entering the Competition, each entrant irrevocably and perpetually waives any copyright and intellectual property rights in and to the entry, including, without limitation, rights of droit moral or similar rights which entrant may now have or may hereinafter become entitled to.

Perhaps this is just boilerplate festival legalese¹, but does this not grant Microsoft your copyright? And prevent you from taking the project anywhere else? And allow them to sell your show, on Xbox live or wherever, without ever paying you a dime?

So we should all run out and spend thousands making a pilot, and then donate it to one of the world’s largest corporations?

This is the spectre hanging over TV’s future: that “TV 2.0” will be nothing other than different corporations gatekeeping the content, with even more brutal terms than the old regime.

¹ Note that this particular passage of legalese does not appear in the regular NYTVF application form, which merely dictates you not exhibit the film during a six month period, but contains nothing about waiving copyright.

I try not to get too into previews, but this game looks good.

I’ve been heavy into the vids since getting the 360 a few weeks ago, so there are many more games posts on the way. Anyway, this is some further thoughts about aspects of the 360.

achievements

First, achievements. That is a very clever idea. In a nutshell, accomplishing certain goals in a game (clear level 3, survive one minute without dying, etc.) earn you “achievements”, which have different point values; these points accrue in your “gamerscore”, a number on your “gamercard”:

which basically measures how much of a nerd you are. Now it’s not so much for the gamerscore, I don’t think, but I find these achievements damned addicting. (As if the games themselves weren’t bad enough.) Perhaps it is the score, in that it tricks me into thinking playing games is adding to my value.

But one of the nicest details of this system is that the achievements you earn are tracked by the system and are added to your profile. So you can look at anyone’s profile and see in alarming detail what games they have been playing, how recently, and how far they have gotten in them. I was playing Gears with a friend of a friend and he said “I see you’re in the thieves’ guild in Oblivion,” because yeah, he can see that. So we chatted about how to do a particular mission, etc. This is a good thing, in that the image of one’s self is primarily constituted by one’s achievements, unlike say MySpace, where it is made up of one’s spam image of one’s self.

Live Arcade

Fucking A! Not to argue that Microsoft’s version of the downloadable vintage/casual game marketplace is any better than, say, Nintendo’s, but that the overall service is something very nice to have. You can now get Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the equivalent of $10. That’s sweet; apparently it’s one of the best games ever made. I’ve never played it. I am able to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the canon, I get games far below the typical $70 CDN new game price, and it doesn’t even require my lazy ass to pop in a disc, it’s right on the HD. I can see why some people wouldn’t be happy paying money for 25-year old arcade games that they had poured all their hard-earned quarters into as kids, but it really all comes down to pricing. Frankly, Microsoft should include more free Live Arcade games on the system, since it sounds like a lot of people don’t even think of downloading them at all. Worth it though!

This game is like a gangbanging Super Mario Bros. It’s more or less a platformer – substitute orbs for coins, and violent cliched thugs for the little turtles. That said, the explosive skill does come into play more as you move to the harder gangs, who like to hang in groups, often near exploding barrels. Strength can be useful, too, but much less so. Once you get to two stars, I think, you can kill a man with one kick, which is a nice shotgun replacement. But it’s less rewarding than the other skills since your only real melee move is the one Norris-style roundhouse kick. Jump kicks don’t really work, and you can’t uppercut people to cartoonish altitudes. Lifting cars looks good, but it takes too long to be a good option when you’re being attacked by more than one thug.

By the time you get to four stars in agility, you’re really wishing there was more to the game. It’s quite likely it was rushed out, maybe because of the Halo 3 beta. It’s a shame, because it could have been really incredible. As I mentioned there are no interiors at all, the missions are not varied or even really that hard. In fact the game encourages you to speed through them: since many of the thugs regenerate, there’s no point in trying to be a completist and taking them all out. You’re better off bouncing right into the boss room. You could probably beat the game in an hour if you were really blazin’. Also, while I love the general idea of these cranked-out magic superagents, the game is just crying out for some enemy agents of similar skill to challenge you. Beatin’ on multiple hapless goons gets stale. Let’s hope the sequel steals a lot more from GTA, and keeps the sweet co-op mode.

I thought maybe I had a problem. In Oblivion I crafted a sneaky, leapy tiger-character. And now in Crackdown, I am far more interested in building-to-building superjumps than I am in “taking down” cliched gang leaders. Tragic irony, given my athletic incompetence in meatspace? But I’m not the only one. Okay, that’s good.

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I just got one of these things last week.

There was a lot of hype last console generation about living room convergence, about consoles becoming “computers in your living room”. To some extent this was true – on the inside, they are indeed computers, albeit specialized ones. But on the outside it was not. We did not use the machines in the way we use computers. We’d load in a game and play it. Full stop. End transmission.

With the 360, the feeling is different. The software is a lot more robust than I expected. But more on that in a second.

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