tiltawhirl

too scared

I played the BioShock demo last week on the 360 and it was pretty awesome, but very scary. It reminded me of the first scary game I played, Resident Evil on the original Playstation.

So yesterday was the official release day and I picked up a copy at Circuit City on the way to work. (It's $10.00 off, there, by the way, if you have a Circuit City near you). But I couldn't play last night because we had tickets to see Wilco at Marymoor Park. When I got home, it was after 10PM and I didn't want to play a scary game after 10. We might need to have rules around this game, like the rules we have in our house about "No Court TV after 10PM". (Otherwise I will wake Ryan up at 2AM,  confirming that he has no plans to kill me and bury me out in the desert.

games update for August

Every few months, I'll be talking to a friend or family member about games and find out that they didn't know something that I thought was like "totally common knowledge". Some upcoming new release, etc. Some thing that they should have preordered for their kids for Christmas - that kind of thing. For example, EVERYBODY knew an XBOX 360 price break was coming, but sure enough, I know someone who just bought a 360 a few weeks ago.

So, I'm going to try to make a post every once in a while about games stuff, especially with the holiday shopping season just around the corner.

The first thing worth talking about is thatXBOX 360 price break. They've cut the price of the 360 by $50.00 on the Premium edition. This is a permanent reduction, nto a short time offer. The other thing they've done is stealthily added an HDMI port to the Premium version. Without going to far into it, HDMI is a better way of connecting your XBOX to your TV, nice to have if you have a TV with an HDMI port on it. Originally, only the new Elite (black, bigger hard drive) version of the XBOX 360 was going to have HDMI, but now it's showing up on the Premium XBOX 360s. So some of the Premium XBOX 360s on the shelves in stores have HDMI, some don't. Supposedly the ones that have it will list HDMI as a feature on the outside of the box, in the "Contents" section. The ones with HDMI are hard to find on the shelves right now, but as the stuff that is currently in stock sells out, you'll see more and more of them on the shelves.

Guitar Hero 2 continues to be lots of fun on the 360, and Wii owners won't be left out of the fun for much longer - Guitar Hero 3 ships on October 21st for the Wii. It's awesome. You need this, and you need an extra guitar controller so two people can play together. Ryan and I have played this game for hours at a time, until our hands are permanently stuck like disfigured claws and everything in the room is swirling around from staring at the screen. That might sound bad, but I'm just saying it has high replay value and is worth every penny of your $89.99. Guitar Hero 3 is also coming for the Xbox 360, but if you have a 360, you might want to wait until November 20th for....

Rock Band! So, take Guitar Hero, and get the same people who originally developed Guitar Hero to work on it, and add DRUMS and a MICROPHONE! And a cooler guitar with more buttons that are more like real frets than on the original Guitar Hero controllers. Then, commence rocking. But, of course, stardom has its price. For the full Rock Band bundle (that's the drum set, the new cool guitar, the microphone, and the game itself) you'll pay $200. I believe you'll be able to buy the game alone (with no controllers), and then the instrument of your choice separately. So if you just want the drums, you can buy those. I've heard you'll be able to jam with friends on XBOX Live via your Internet connection, so if your friend has the guitar and you get the drums, you can play together online (or the old fashioned way, he can bring his gear to your house.) I've heard good things, especially about the drumming part of it, from people who play drums in real life. It's not easy, but it's fun.

If you have a Halo player in the house, you probably already know that September 25th is the last day you'll be able to talk to them for a few months. Halo fever, in the form of Halo 3, hits that day. People have high hopes for the new version, that it will eliminate some the issues that have made Halo 2 multiplayer less fun than it could be (weapon whoring, the dual wield combo, standby-ing, suiciding de-rankers on your team). Bust out that lingo in front of your 14 year old, he'll be impressed. Or think you've been listening to his in game chat. Halo 3 will probably be available at a discount at the MS Company store. If you know someone who works at MS, you can get it for cheap, if you can wait a couple days after release for the shipping, of course. I'm betting it will be $25 or $30 at the MS Store, compared with $59.99 retail.

How I won the Civil War

I've played several first-person shooter games on various gaming platforms but always wondered why most of them focus on World Wars I and II. Why aren't there more FPSs based on, say, the Civil War.

I just finished playing "The History Channel's Civil War" on the XBOX 360, and now I understand it completely. Let me sum it up for you in three simple words.

Musket reload time.

I want to say it was the worst game I've ever played, but I don't think that is fair. After all, I completed the game. There have been other games that I started and they just never drew me in, like Star Trek Legacy. Those games might be "worse" for me, since I wouldn't even spend time on them. I had high hopes for the game, as an Activision title since they make the Call of Duty series.

It might be more accurate to say that it was the most unintentionally hilarious game I've ever played.

Let's start with the weapon reload issue. In the interest of authenticity, the reload time on the musket is somewhere around 20 seconds. That is, an eternity, if you're sitting there watching your character tamp down the gunpowder and do various things onscreen while you wait for the weapon reload to complete. On the worst weapons in the game, you can fire exactly one shot before needing to reload. At best, I think you get like 9 shots. This resulted in a pretty funny situation whenever you encountered an enemy who also needed to reload - the two of you, standing there, fussing with your weapons in a race to see who could reload first. You can just imagine the people standing there in real life, muttering "Oh man, once I get this thing reloaded, I am going to blow your head off. Just wait..one.. more... second, I swear, I am going to kill the hell out of you..." The big problem with this is I am easily distracted, and I would start looking out the window while waiting for the reload, then the other guy would shoot me.

You would hope, that once you got the weapon reloaded, that you'd get the satisfaction of shooting someone's face off to make it worth it. But the targeting and hit registering in the game is such that you seem to be able to shoot right through people sometimes, and have it not register as a hit. This is greatly disappointing, after spending 20 minutes packing your musket.

In contrast sometimes enemies and teammates would fall over dead inexplicably, without any shots fired. I attributed those deaths to influenza, or boredom.

I noticed that the enemies had a habit of charging me and hitting me with their weapons (and who could blame them? It beats reloading), so I decided to try using a knife instead. This was much more satisfying. I never needed to reload. All I did was run up to enemies, crouched to reduce the chances of being hit by gunfire, then stab them with my knife. However, all this crouching kind of reduced my view of the setting, the scenery, and the enemies' faces - all I could see was their crotches. Using this technique, I killed somewhere around 800 people - almost all of them, stabbed in the crotch.

The only exceptions came at the end of the level. After each level of the game, there were bonus points (XBOX Live GamerScore achievement points) if you got a high level of weapon accuracy, so I made sure at the very end of the level to shoot the last guy square in the face. This resulted in a 100% accuracy rating, and was also a nice way to end the level.

If you're interested at all in this game, or just like the idea of stabbing 800+ dudes with giant Civil War era beards in the crotch, I will warn you to rent, not buy this game. I rented it through GameFly and honestly milked it for all its crotch stabbing value within 6 hours. It does give you a load of GamerScore points though.

Fortune: Wii Will Rock You

From the upcoming July 11th, 2007 issue of Fortune.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/06/11/100083454/?postversion=2007053109

It's here!

In retail stores on the 29th.

It's the Wildest Party Ever! The world’s most popular party video game franchise is getting a lot crazier in Mario Party 8 for the Wii.  Whether you’re shaking up cola cans or lassoing barrels, you and your friends will be drawn into the action like never before, using the Wii Remote! Play with motion control!  Row your way down a river, punch a statue to pieces, steer race cars and mopeds, and handle a balancing pole while walking a tightrope!

Geometry Wars for Wii and DS

One of Ryan's favorite games is rumored to be making its way to the Wii and Nintendo DS - Geometry Wars!

http://www.dsfanboy.com/2007/05/22/geometry-wars-galaxies-defects-to-wii-and-ds/

I'm curious to see how the different control schemes work in this game.

i think i am ready to operate on someone...

Today on NPR, a reporter talks about how she is concerned that playing Wii Sports on the Nintendo Wii is making her kids erroneously think they are good at sports. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7361034

I am with her 100% on this one. This happens to me all the time. We played Trauma Center for a while, and I'm pretty sure I am ready to perform surgery on my friends and family. That is, as long as they are suffering from an ailment I have experience with, like "Lung insects".

I've also been playing "The Godfather: The Game" on the Xbox 360. I am currently an underboss in the Corleone family, and I am beginning to think that I do have a knack for this organized crime thing. Next time we visit my folks in NJ I am going to try my hand at extortion. After all, I'm pretty good at the game.

Sarcasm aside, her point is that if they pick up a real tennis racket, she is concerned that they will be discouraged when they realize that real sports can be hard, and will take some effort. I'm not sure that it matters anyway. No matter how bad they are at real baseball or tennis, if they play they will get some sort of "participation award", and no one will keep score anyway. Isn't that how kids' sports work now?

microtransactions

If you've played games on the Xbox 360, chances are you're familiar with microtransactions - the additional content for a game, or even a mini game, that you buy right through the Xbox Live Marketplace using Xbox live points. For example, a racing game might have additional cars you can purchase.

I'm playing "The Godfather:The Game" right now and it seems like EA has taken the microtransaction model a bit too far.

You can buy in game money in exchange for Xbox Live points, which doesn't bother me much. If you don't want to do it, don't pay. Just play and earn the money yourself, in game. But, there are also top-tier weapons and team members that are only available for purchase. You can play all day long - that level 4 tommy gun isn't available unless you pony up an additional $1.87 worth of Xbox Live points. That unlocks the *ability* to purchase the gun for $250,000 in game dollars. Don't have that kind of money? EA will sell you those in game dollars for another $1.87. On top of the $59.99 you already paid for the game, of course. Or at least I would have paid if I wasn't using GameFly.

So how is it different from a spiffy new car in PGR, or additional quests for Oblivion (neither of which I have bought)? I think the thing that is most appalling about it is that there are NPCs (non-player characters, you know, the dummies in game that stand around doing nothing until you come over to talk to them) selling these items. So I walked up to a vendor guy and talked to him and he said "Hey, I've got this awesome gun, you interested?" and the game immediately initiated an Xbox Live Marketplace window, offering to sell me the content! Which of course, I indignantly declined. Then I shot the vendor.

See, most of the time you have to go looking for this content. You have to say "Hey, I enjoy this game so much, I want to see if there is anything else I can download for it." Having a tout standing around in game pushing it makes it feel like content was held back to milk more real life dollars out of me.

gamerscore

I've mentioned the Xbox Live gamerscore in previous posts. When you play an Xbox 360 game, as you accomplish various things you unlock "Achievements". An achievement is something as mundane as "Complete the initial training missions in G.R.A.W." or "Kill everyone in the level with hedge clippers in Hitman: Blood Money." As you unlock achievements, you get achievement points which increase your gamerscore. People on the XBox team describe your gamerscore as your "cred" - these points are just for bragging rights. I don't think of myself as someone who is especially concerned with "Cred" or "Rep", but I still find myself thinking about increasing my gamerscore.

Gamerscore is like crack to the game achievement junkie. Maybe it doesn't work on everyone, but its effect on me is that it increases the replay value of my games. I find myself going back and playing games a different way because I've GOTTA have those points.

For example, I just finished Hitman:Blood Money on Normal difficulty. That was worth  (I think) 50 achievement points. But now, I feel like I want to go back and replay the game on the higher difficulty rating to get ANOTHER 50 points. Without the gamerscore, I probably wouldn't bother. I do also need to go back and get the aforementioned achievement "The Gardener" which involves the aggressive use of hedgeclippers. Sounds too fun to miss.

Although it sounds tedious (the replaying of a game to get the gamerscore bump), it actually can expose a side or feature of the game that you might have missed otherwise. For me, a great example of this was Call of Duty 2. I started out at an average level, working my way through a few of the missions. Like a lot of shooter games, the average level of difficulty makes you sort of a Superman. You take bullet after bullet but you are able to keep going. But if you play the game on Veteran difficulty to get that "War Hardened" achievement (beat the game on Hardened or Veteran difficulty), it becomes a whole different game. You can be killed in one or two shots - more like real life. So the game becomes more tactical, more about staying covered and waiting for the right moment to take your shot. Realism and immersion are greatly increased, because you're not running around shooting everything that moves, all the while under a hail of bullets bouncing off your chest.