Editorial

Editorial Pieces

2012 GameStop Conference Starts Today, Wii U Launch Date Leaked Already (Updated with Statement from PDP)

Posted by Jack Rous on August 27, 2012
Posted in: Editorial, News. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 comment

Full disclosure: I used to be a GameStop store manager. The job had its ups and downs, but I enjoyed it, most of the time. The rest of the time I wanted to kill both myself and you, the customer, preferably both at the same time and in ways that would end up censored on the evening news. With that said, one of the best parts of the job was attending the company’s yearly conference and learning a wealth of secret information before the general public. Oh, and also watching fellow store managers get themselves in trouble by posting that shit online like two seconds after the PR rep tells it to them.

For instance:

“Just said at Gamestop conference. So pretty much 11/18 launch as everyone guessed, right? It’s not uncommon for accessories to release a week early but it’s on a Sunday and they mentioned a specific release date. Posting this banner as well just cause I FEEL LIKE IT”

That comes from the blog of some guy attending the conference, with the headline “PDP leaks 11/18 date for Wii U accessories,” which is sure to be the first of many leaks from Texas this year.

You see, GS managers theoretically need to know information like release dates, story details and pre-order bonuses for all your favorite holiday titles in order to convince you to reserve and purchase those games at their stores. So they hold this conference every year for all the store managers, and spend three days filling their heads with all kinds of tasty details about the titles they’ll be hawking. What managers really do there is get as drunk as possible at night and try not to fall asleep during the day, wait to see how many free games they’ll be getting, and run around like an idiot trying to stick to the events tight schedule yet still find time to smoke a cigarette after every presentation.

I assume this year will be no different. Presumably managers will not be told this, though they probably already know.

And so, with all those nerds in one place, secrets always get leaked. And they’re the best kind of secrets; the kind that are verifiable. These guys HAVE to be told the truth, after all, they’re the ones who make the money. Sure, the GameStop people tell them not to say anything, but we already see how well that works. So now we know the Wii U is coming November 18, what else will we learn this week? Stay tuned, as I fully expect information to leak from San Antonio like water from a sieve.

UPDATE: PDP’s PR firm reached out to us with the following statement from William Otte, PDP’s Senior VP of Sales and Marketing. It reads:

Performance Designed Products (“PDP”) is aware of recent rumors posted alleging that PDP inadvertently “leaked” the official release date of the upcoming Nintendo Wii U gaming system during a trade presentation earlier today. To be clear, PDP has no knowledge whatsoever of the official Wii U release date, and thus it is not possible for PDP to have “leaked” this information.

During PDP’s presentation of our fall line of gaming accessories to customers at a trade event, we stated that our Wii U accessories would be available at launch. Much later in the presentation we showed our Epic Mickey 2: The Power of 2 accessories for the Wii and confirmed that the Wii accessories will be in stores by the game’s November 18 launch date. Connecting the Wii U launch and Epic Mickey 2 peripheral launch dates is inaccurate and false. PDP has no knowledge whether this is the official Wii U release date or not.

The Curious Case of OnLive

Posted by Brad vanVugt on August 21, 2012
Posted in: Editorial, News. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

 

So when we last left OnLive just a few short weeks ago, they had just missed out (allegedly) of partnering with Sony for their future cloud-streaming needs, but had recently announced they would be partnering with Ouya to bring OnLive to the Kickstarter sensation. Imagine everyone’s surprise then when the events of this past Friday happened.

InXile Entertainment’s Brian Fargo broke news he discovered from a source inside OnLive that everyone on the staff had been let go, and a new company was being formed. OnLive deflected these rumors as being untrue, until confirming it later that day with this statement:

We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive’s apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships. The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.’s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees.

All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services. We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed, and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive’s businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.

Not only did OnLive dismiss a high percentage of their staff, they did so with reportedly a fairly cold demeanor. Commenting to Joystiq, an anonymous source said that former CEO Steve Perlman dumped the staff in a morning meeting with “no remorse.” Former staff weren’t offered severance of any kind, and any stock option they had vetted were worthless, as the company isn’t in a position to be taken public anytime in the near future. Even worse, the source alleged OnLive may even be looking to take up a form of patent trollery in the future, with OnLive looking to target Gaikai in the future with their recently granted patent for game streaming.

It has since been revealed in a press release the company who purchased OnLive was Lauder Partners, who were also an original investor in the company. Also pretty crappy: anyone who invested in the company originally, and there were well over $50 million in investments, will not see any of that money coming back their direction, despite the fact OnLive will continue operating.

Lots of news there, and I purposely wanted to wait to post this to ensure all the information was out there.

My first thought: fuck OnLive. Seriously. This is the second time this year (38 Studios, anyone?) we have seen workers of a gaming company get completely screwed over by their employers. This might be worse than the 38 debacle; at least Curt Schilling and company can partially blame the Rhode Island government for causing their woes, though the way they handled things in that instance was pretty shitty as well. OnLive completely blindsided their employees with this news; many employees thought the staff meeting was a celebratory one to announce the purchase of the company. Also for the record, OnLive had received offers from companies like Hewlett-Packard, but CEO Steve Perlman was apparently holding out for a larger payday than what was being offered. Yeah, holding out and then laying off half your staff was totally the way to go, Steve. Bravo.

I know this kind of stuff happens in corporate America every week, but that doesn’t mean we have to support companies who treat their employees, many of which likely had been there since the company’s meager beginnings, with such disdain. Despite the fact I am getting an Ouya console, you had better believe that I won’t ever fire up what’s likely to be a pre-installed OnLive application. There’s a right and wrong way to go about these things, and casting your workers out on to the street is certainly the latter.

This story also reinforces something I’ve thought for some time now: our all-digital gaming future is much further away than many pundits seem to think. Remember, cloud streaming is thought to be a cornerstone of the eventual digital shift, and OnLive, by all accounts, was the leader in that space, and even they couldn’t sustain themselves financially. Question for anyone reading this: how many of you use OnLive regularly? Or ever have? Or even knows someone who has/does? I can tell you I don’t know anyone, not a single person, who has ever used the service. OnLive alleges they have over 2 million subscribers. I believe that, but how many are actually using the service with regularity? That same Joystiq source estimated average peak usage was around 1800 users. That’s one-thousand eight-hundred people. Out of two million. That’d be less than one one-thousandth of a percent of their users.

I have no doubt Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai will probably be one of the biggest leaps for cloud gaming once the plans for that relationship comes to light. So far though, there’s been no indication that we as a gaming community are ready for the digital/streaming paradigm shift. Let’s wait until solid state memory doesn’t cost ridiculous amounts of money the average consumer has no chance of affording. Let’s wait until gigabit internet connection speeds are the standard, and not a Google experiment. And to get back to the original point, let’s also hope the next time OnLive, or any other company, goes out of business, they have the decency to not completely screw over their entire staff.

Why nobody should be buying Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance

Posted by Carrie Wood on August 9, 2012
Posted in: Editorial. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance came out last week.

This was my exact reaction:

Can somebody please step up and give me an actual reason as to why the Kingdom Hearts series is worth playing? Because I have been trying for YEARS to figure that out. The only game in the series that was actually worth playing was the first installment, and here’s why: it didn’t take itself too seriously. The first Kingdom Hearts game knew what it was – a silly mashup of Square-Enix and Disney properties that still managed to keep the whimsy of the Disney universe while having a fun RPG engine to run on. You got to square off against classic Disney villains, save the world, the end. Cool stuff.

And then the sequels started coming out, and I started hating this series.

Once they added all the assholes with the black coats, Kingdom Hearts became dead to me. Regardless of how well-rated any of these titles are, I will firmly argue that each of them after the first game is a total waste of time. Why? The series now takes itself too goddamn seriously for games that have Mickey, Donald and Goofy as main characters. Starting with Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II, the plot started having all of this dramatic metaphorical bullshit with the Organization XIII people and Riku being this wild card and the plot and characters just got so convoluted that I decided that it wasn’t fucking worth playing anymore. And I still think I’m right.

If Square-Enix wants to make an action-RPG with a bunch of douchebags in black coats where the hero is a kid with spiky hair and wields literally the stupidest RPG weapon since the gunblade (seriously, a KEY? SERIOUSLY?!), that’s their prerogative. All of that BS is stuff the company’s known for doing in pretty much all of their games anyway. But you can’t have Mickey fuckin’ Mouse in your game and still prance around like you can be taken seriously, I’m sorry.

It also doesn’t help that the people who are really into these games all look like this:

Yes, apparently, to at least half of the fandom, all of the characters in Kingdom Hearts just want to bone each other. Everyone’s gay, the end. So let’s dress up like them and go to an anime convention and make out with each other to fulfill our heart’s desire! As someone who is a frequent attendee of said conventions, I’m pretty sick of seeing this shit all over the place. And whenever a new Kingdom Hearts title comes out, there’s bound to be a resurgence.

So please, stop buying these games. Stop asking for Kingdom Hearts 3 and stop supporting this godawful series. Once you’ve come to the same conclusion that I have about these games – that they are a huge waste of time with the worst fandom I think I’ve ever seen – you’ll wonder why you ever bought them in the first place.

Polytron Not Fixing Fez Patch Sends the Wrong Message to Its Consumers

Posted by Brad vanVugt on July 18, 2012
Posted in: Editorial, News. Tagged: , , , . 2 comments

Fez, made by Polytron Corporation, was a highly anticipated puzzle/action game released exclusively on Xbox Live in the Spring.  In June, Polytron released a patch that corrected a lot of different bugs and other issues in the game.  It was quickly discovered though for a small percentage of users, the patch actually corrupted their save file.  The patch was quickly pulled offline, and Polytron looked to fix the save corrupting issue.  Well, we received an update about that patch today, and it isn’t pretty.  From their blog on polytroncorporation.com:

We’re bringing the first FEZ patch online.

It’s the same patch.

We’re not going to patch the patch.

Why not? Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game.

And because as it turns out, the save file delete bug only happens to less than a percent of players. It’s a shitty numbers game to be playing for sure, but as a small independent, paying so much money for patches makes NO SENSE AT ALL. especially when you consider the alternative. Had FEZ been released on steam instead of XBLA, the game would have been fixed two weeks after release, at no cost to us. And if there was an issue with that patch, we could have fixed that right away too!

We believe the save file corruption issue mostly happened to players who had completed, or almost completed the game. If you hadn’t already seen most of what FEZ had to offer, your save file is probably safe. It doesn’t happen if you start a new game.

We believe the current patch is safe for an overwhelming majority of players.

The patch fixes almost everything that’s been wrong with the game since launch. The framerate issues, the loading, the skips, the death loops, everything! All that stuff is fixed!  And right now, nobody can get to it since the patch was pulled. For 99% of people, it makes FEZ a better game.

To the less-than-1% who are getting screwed, we sincerely apologize. We know this hurts you the most, because you’re the ones who put the most times into the game. And this breaks our hearts. We hope you don’t think back on your time spent in FEZ as a total waste.

Microsoft gave us a choice: either pay a ton of money to re-certify the game and issue a new patch (which for all we know could introduce new issues, for which we’d need yet another costly patch), or simply put the patch back online. They looked into it, and the issue happens so rarely that they still consider the patch to be “good enough”.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but in the end, paying such a large sum of money to jump through so many hoops just doesn’t make any sense. We already owe Microsoft a LOT of money for the privilege of being on their platform. People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM.

So we’re going to go ahead and put Title Update back online, and for a vast majority of people it’s going to make FEZ a better game.

Thank you for your understanding and continuing support.

Sorry, but I don’t think this is right in the least.

I totally get for an independent developer, paying recert costs to Microsoft for an update is a hardship.  I also get it only affects an incredibly small portion of their customers.  And yeah, they pay Microsoft for the privilege of listing their game on Xbox Live.

But let’s not forget it was Polytron who decided they wanted that limited exclusivity on Xbox Live.  I’m sure they easily could’ve released Fez on Steam, maybe even PSN, and maybe even iOS if they had wanted to.  I’m not going to pretend I know how the publishing deals work for online publishing, because I don’t, but no one forced Polytron to make Fez a XBLA exclusive game.

Let’s also not forget this huge bug made it through their testing process, in addition to all the bugs that necessitated the initial patch in the first place.  Again, bugs happen to most games in this day and age and QA isn’t full-proof, but again, it’s what led to this situation happening.

What Polytron seems to be forgetting is they are beholden first and foremost to the people who decided to buy their game.  It might only be less than 1% of their users who are being hit with this save file corruption issue, but those 1% of users paid the same $10 to buy the game as the other 99% did, and they deserve better than what they’re getting in this instance.

I didn’t buy Fez because I was waiting for it to release on a platform I would prefer to play it on (see: PS3).  If I had been one of the afflicted 1% though, I would be rightfully furious right about now.  Even if it costs a substantial amount of money to recertify the game, Polytron knew that going into the deal with Microsoft.  If they couldn’t afford to release necessary updates to make the game function properly, they shouldn’t have released it on XBLA in the first place.  If I were one of these folks who’s save file got jacked up, only to then be abandoned by the game’s developer, I’d be shouting for them to refund my purchase.  After all, why should I be expected to pay for an broken product if the maker of that product isn’t willing to properly support it?

To their credit, Polytron appears to be genuinely sorry and pissed about this turn of events, and I’m sure they feel terrible for letting a subset of their users down.  It’s a bed they made for themselves though, and they have to be willing to live with the consequences.  Putting up a blog post and essentially blaming everything on Microsoft isn’t right, and it isn’t fair.  Again, they decided to go exclusive with Microsoft, so passing the buck isn’t the way to go about it.  They need to own this mistake and remedy it however they can.  It would surely be difficult to issue refunds on Xbox Live (I doubt Microsoft would be willing to partner with them on this), but how about making the game available for free to afflicted users when/if the game releases on other platforms?

I’ll be interested to see how this story evolves.  If I had the opportunity to buy Fez (or any other Polytron game) right now, I wouldn’t.  I just can’t get down with a company turning its back on its customers.  I hope Polytron finds a way to make this right, because Fez was an excellent game by all accounts, and I’m sure they will have more great experiences to give to the gaming community.  You have to do right by your customers though, and leaving a portion of your customers twisting in the wind, even if it’s a small portion, isn’t the right way to do business and won’t earn you any goodwill for anything else you want to do in the future.

Mass Effect 3′s Extended Cut Will Be the Wrong Answer to a Question That Shouldn’t Have Been Asked

Posted by Brad vanVugt on June 22, 2012
Posted in: Editorial, Feature, News. Tagged: , , . 10 comments

NOTE: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MASS EFFECT 3 STORY AND ENDING.  STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT ANY PART OF MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILED!!!  YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

Here’s the news: Mass Effect 3 will be getting its Extended Cut DLC on June 26th.  This DLC will not change, but rather expand on, the controversial Mass Effect 3 ending, and “reveals greater detail on the impact of player decisions.”  It will be a free download for anyone that wants it.  To use the content, you have to load a save file from right before your assault on the Cerberus Base.  ”The Extended Cut expands on the endings of Mass Effect 3 through additional scenes and epilogue sequences.”

I’m pissed off about this, and not for the reason you might think.

I was wary about this content when it was first announced a few months ago.   A lot has been said about whether or not Bioware should have even addressed the complaints from the vocal minority by expanding on what was an admittedly weak ending to an epic saga.  The side where I fall on the topic is I believe an artist’s work is an artist’s work, and it’s not right for us as consumers to petulantly scream at a creator to change it to fit our needs.  What we should do is be better consumers.  I’ve bought many products over the years that have disappointed me.  I don’t buy products anymore from companies that have failed me as a consumer.  It’s called voting with your wallet, and it’s what begets actual change in consumer-driven industries.  Want to know why Apple is constantly adding features to iOS that have been in other mobile operating systems for years?  It’s because they’re selling a crap ton of iPhones every year, and there’s no urgency for them to innovate at the speed of other companies.

But yet, here we are.  To quote our friends at The Nerdpocalypse, the Neckbeards reared their heads and demanded change, and Bioware is delivering.  And what are they giving us?  As I mentioned before, I was wary about the Extended Cut, and the reason was because I figured it would just be a glorified Director’s Cut that tossed in some arbitrary dialogue and cut scenes so that the whiners would be placated.  Guess what?  That’s exactly what we’re getting!  This “expansion of the meaning of the original ending” will probably amount to about 20-30 minutes of new content.  The even funnier thing is it will do nothing to change what a lot of people griped about in the first place: the dumbness of the actual ending itself, nor should it, as you can’t just blow up what already exists.

The even crappier part about the whole thing: the fact that you’ll need to trudge through about 5 hours of gameplay that you’ve already played through just to experience this new content.  That’s right, 90% of this extended ending will be you replaying the end of Mass Effect 3.  The end that the majority of Mass Effect players have already played through, and this time without the excitement of experiencing that content for the first time.  Maybe to some gamers, they don’t mind that.  For me, having to replay something I’m not particularly wanting to replay just for this little bit of story feels like work, not fun.

Experience it again, for the first time!

I can hear what a lot of you might be saying right about now.  ”Why is he bitching about something he hasn’t even played, will be free of charge, and doesn’t even have to play if he doesn’t want to?”  It’s a fair question, and here is my answer:

I loved the Project Overlord DLC from Mass Effect 2.  I loved the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC.  I even enjoyed Arrival quite a bit.  Thanks to the Neckbeards and their internet rage, I might not get to experience a new separate wrinkle to the Mass Effect story, and to me, that sucks a whole lot more than a weaksauce ending.

Don’t get me wrong, Bioware deserves their fair share of blame as well.  I respect an artist who stands by their convictions.  Halo 3 comes to mind as a game that also provided a little controversy for its ending (certainly not as much as Mass Effect did, but I digress).  If the vocal minority had flung the same vitriol at Bungie, I’d like to think Bungie would’ve stood by their vision, and went right back to making multiplayer maps and Halo Reach.  That’s dealing in a huge hypothetical, but it’s what I gather would’ve happened being as Bungie then went on to make two more Halo games that forced you to play as characters far underpowered than that of your old friend Master Chief.  They did so, because the felt those games would speak for themselves and tell a solid story.  Bioware did the opposite.  During a podcast that released alongside the Extended Cut announcement, Mass Effect 3 director Casey Hudson said the reason they did the DLC is because the development team felt bad about the criticism they received about the ending, despite that fact that the reviews for the game were overwhelmingly positive across the board.

Well guess what, Casey Hudson?  You’re going to receive criticism when you work in an artistic medium (roll with me, folks; that’s a discussion for another day).  Don’t let your feelings get hurt just because a small amount of people took issue with a tiny part of a 120-hour experience.  You think David Fincher would’ve gone back and filmed additional scenes for the ending of Se7en if people got pissed off that it wasn’t what they were expecting it to be?  Hell no!  It’s his damn movie!  Bioware probably thinks they’re doing the community a service by expanding on the ending.  What they’re actually doing is devaluing their vision of how the Mass Effect story ended.  People may not have been happy about it, but there was no issue with leaving things up to people’s imagination.  I don’t need definitive proof of what happened to Detective Mills at the end of Se7en; I can draw whatever conclusion I want to.  Before this controversy erupted, I do feel like Bioware originally wanted people to draw their own conclusions about what happens as a result of all of their choices at the end of Mass Effect 3.  Regardless of whatever they say about it, I’m always going to believe the only reason this extended ending is happening is they caved to the pressure of their “fans’ and abandoned their vision as a result.

The proper way to expand your story

If they truly wanted to expand on the story, they could’ve done so by adding actual new storylines and content.  Hell, they could’ve addressed some of the perceived deficiencies of the ending in this new content!  Maybe a rogue Salarian scientist manages to create a new Genophage, and you have to help/stop him delivering it to the Krogans.   Maybe a new endgame mission where the remaining members of your team have to find a way to reactivate the now-dormant mass relays.  I’m just spitballing, but you get what I’m trying to say.  There were ways to address this without having to slog through already-played missions and events.  The Extended Cut feels like an ineffective Band-Aid being slapped on a gaping wound whose purpose is to stop the bleeding, but in reality, it probably won’t help at all.  The same Neckbeards that cried and threw a tantrum like 6-year olds whose toy was taken from them will still likely find fault with whatever they get in this new content.

The grim reality is people who bitch and moan about other people’s artistic works won’t ever be placated unless they get exactly what they want.  And what one person wants from the Mass Effect ending isn’t the same thing that I want from it, and that’s not the same thing the next guy wants.  Hudson said himself during the podcast you can’t please everyone.  So why try to?  Instead, those Neckbeards need to get with it and vote with their wallets.  Didn’t like the Mass Effect ending?  Fine.  Don’t buy another Bioware game ever again.  If you really feel like the final 30 minutes of Mass Effect 3 destroyed the other 120 hours you invested, why would you ever give that company your hard-earned money in the future?  Instead, Bioware and the Neckbeards have opened the door to a slippery slope that we shouldn’t be going down.  What’s going to happen if the eventual end of the Assassin’s Creed story turns out to be a giant disappointment?  Will the internet rise up again to get its way?  More importantly, will Ubisoft cave much like Bioware did just to try to appease the masses?

Maybe I will end up playing through the Extended Cut.  Maybe I’ll still eventually get the real DLC content I desire.  Maybe seeing Bioware get artistically castrated by their “fans” will sour me from ever buying another one of their games; after all, how can I trust them as storytellers if they can’t even defend their own vision?  All I know for sure is I wish this rant had never had to have been written, as I much would’ve rather written a news post about how excited I was about the new Mass Effect 3 DLC.

Source: Mass Effect Extended Cut

Image Credits: Hex 19, Game Informer

Dishonored Apparently Lacks Boss Fights, and I’m Totally Fine With This

Posted by Brad vanVugt on June 12, 2012
Posted in: Editorial, Feature. Tagged: , . 1 comment

Kotaku put up a post this morning where they pointed out 10 things to know about the upcoming Bethesda-published action title Dishonored.  For those uninitiated, Dishonored is a first-person action game that has a Deus Ex-ish vibe.  Stealth is an important tool, and while the story is linear, the gameplay is not.  Among the things discussed in the article were the fact that Dishonored has multiple solutions for every objective, different ways to take out opponents (to the extent that your character can theoretically complete the game without killing anyone by his own hand), and apparently, the developers are encouraging people to see if they’re able to “break” the game as much as they can.  Pretty cool, and it’s certainly a game I’ve been looking forward to.

One note caught my eye in particular, though, and that’s the fact that Dishonored will not contain traditional boss fights.  Color me positively ecstatic about this one.  Seriously, I am sick and tired of traditional boss fights in many games today.  Bosses had their purpose back in the days where platform games were the dominant genre.  With the variance in gameplay that exists in today’s games, the need for boss battles has largely been negated.  I’m not saying they’re completely unnecessary.  RPG’s should always have them at the end of dungeons, otherwise you’re just tearing through enemy fodder the entire time.  They also work when games incorporate them organically into the experience.  A great example would be the Legend of Zelda series.  At the end of each dungeon, there is a boss that usually requires you to use a special item obtained somewhere in their dungeon.  The gameplay is consistent throughout the level; you just have to use a newly acquired tool when engaging the boss.

Boss fights done right

Lately though, there have been many examples where a boss fight has not only had nothing to add, but has even taken away from the game experience as a whole.  Take the aforementioned Deus Ex as an example.  In last year’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Eidos Montreal crafted an excellent action game with an engaging story that allowed you to augment your character with any combination of stealth and action (sound familiar?) abilities to advance through the different missions and complete your objectives.  All things being equal, the game was awesome, not to mention one of the surprise hits of last year.  It’s biggest issue?  The terrible, shoe-horned boss fights that existed throughout.  We’ll just use the first boss, an augmented mercenary by the name of Lawrence Barrett, as an example.  This huge brute of a boss lobbed grenades and let loose automatic weapons on you with reckless abandon in an enclosed arena with only small columns to duck behind for cover.  When playing as a stealth character, as I was when going through Deus Ex, this fight provided a ridiculous spike in the game difficulty, as to that point I hadn’t bothered dumping any of my upgrades into weapon improvement or health upgrades.  It took me about 45 minutes (and several frustrating deaths) to realize that the room was lined with gas tanks that could be thrown into Barrett to damage him, as there was no way my stealth character could go toe-to-toe with this guy.

And that leads me to another reason the boss fights in Deus Ex pissed me off: in a game where being completely non-lethal was a plausible playing style throughout the normal levels, you were forced to kill the bosses you encountered.  What a load of crap!  Now some of you might point out the Metal Gear Solid franchise as a series committing the same sin, but I’m going to disagree (the first MGS notwithstanding).  Even though I’m aware almost every MGS boss dies after your encounter with them, at least there is a non-lethal method to winning that fight.  The other reason I’m discounting that argument is simply for the fact MGS kept the gameplay consistent throughout those boss fights.  We later would find out the boss fights in Dues Ex actually weren’t developed by the Montreal team; rather those particular sections of gameplay were outsourced to another developer, which certainly explained why they felt so different from the rest of the game.  Those fights, while a small part of the game, effectively tarnished an otherwise excellent experience for many people.

Hey, forget all that stealth crap you’ve been learning, cause you gotta kill this fool!

Deus Ex is far from the only game to be saddled with unfortunate boss encounters.  The Titan-enhanced Joker battle at the end of Batman: Arkham Asylum left a bad taste in my mouth after 10 or so hours of pure awesomeness.  The same can be said for the final encounters in the original Bioshock and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.  Hell, even the few boss fights in the Assassin’s Creed series feel unnecessary.  Even though they use the same combat mechanics the rest of the game does, I’d rather be stalking and surprising my prey as opposed to going one-on-one with them in a de-facto arena.  There are just some games whose stories are so engrossing, and the levels so varied, that boss fights in the traditional sense aren’t needed.  I’m very happy that Arkane Studios, the folks developing Dishonored, decided this would be one of those games.  I’ll have much more fun taking down corrupt noblemen with inventive and varied methods as opposed to being forced to deviate from whatever style of play I choose for myself.

Are you opposed to erroneous boss fights as well?  Think of any other games that have crappy boss battles shoe-horned in?  Confab below and tell us about it!

Image Credit: 1-Up.com

Metal Gear Rising: Anger

Posted by Rob Jackson on June 7, 2012
Posted in: E3 2012, Editorial, Feature. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

In Metal Gear Solid for the PSX, it was revealed Solid Snake is a genetic clone of Big Boss, the result of a secret government project.  For Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, it was revealed at E3 that it is actually a clone of about 40 different Dynasty Warriors games; the result of Hideo Kojima withdrawing from the directing role to an executive producer role.  We have seen in the past what happens when a brilliant mind takes a back burner approach to a project.  For example: Steven Spielberg directed a movie about an alien that was nominated and won multiple Oscars.  He also was an executive producer on a movie about alien robots which featured the likes of deep characters such as skids and mudflaps, so never let the name fool you.

An announcement that came out from the Konami camp late last year notified fans Kojima and his team were passing the baton on to Platinum Games, creators of titles such as Bayonetta and Madworld.  From its original unveiling back in 2009 where we were shown the complete control of Rising’s main character (and Metal Gear alum) Raiden, it was clear that Hideo Kojima’s ambitions were high.  Featuring a demonstration of the sword play capabilities that would be in the game in an early on tech demo, we saw where you could use the PlayStation Move to dissect a watermelon.  From a man who has developed deep, involved characters and generated innovative ideas like the Psycho Mantis battle in Metal Gear Solid or the Vamp battle in Metal Gear 4: Guns of the Patriots, these sort of standards were nothing new.

http://images.wikia.com/metalgear/images/d/d9/Mantis_Castlevania.jpg

From the first introduction of Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, it had been an uphill battle for stateside gamers to buy in to the character.  After his revamped display put on in Guns of the Patriots, there was new hope for the kid.  The idea of a full-blown Metal Gear game with him as the main character now seemed like an appetizing thought.  Then, like going to an upscale top rated restaurant, the waiter shows us steak and potatoes on the menu and we were ready to sink our teeth in to this title. We grabbed our forks, looked down, and there in our mashed potatoes was a dirty greasy hair.  This dirty greasy hair was now Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

Take everything that was good about this franchise: the stealth, the movie-like story line equipped with beautiful cut scenes, the intensity of a character driven piece.  Now remove that, add a hack-and-slash battle system with God of War like boss battle prompts, and we are now left with this ridiculous piece of trash.  Have we not learned anything from the past?  Case in point: Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus.  Not only is there a hair in our mashed potatoes, but we come to find out the chef knew about it and told the waiter there wasn’t enough time to make a better batch.

I have never been rendered speechless, but that was exactly what I felt while watching the first trailer released nearly a year ago, after the announcement of the change in developers.  I do not want to fall in to the category of a fanboy who criticizes a franchise for trying something new, but there is nothing new about this formula.  This has been one of the most amazing rides of any IP in video game history, and initially I applauded the idea of Kojima not committing to directing the game if you aren’t going to release what your real vision is.  However, stamping a executive producer credit on it and still allowing it to use the Metal Gear brand is evidence of a pure fiscal decision.

Hideo Kojima is currently working on a new project that takes a different approach to the type of game he wants to release.  He was quoted as saying: “There are a lot of real world issues I want to address, but the reason I kept making the MGS saga and its sequels is that it allowed me to explore my ideas.  But now I’m starting a new series, focusing on new set of issues.  It’ll probably be different to what MGS addressed.  Of course, I’m turning 50 now, so if I’m going to approach new topics, it might be something more on a human level, like the concept of love, or rearing a family, things of that nature.”  Giving his overall body of work and commitment to groundbreaking gaming, I have no doubt that his new project, dubbed “Project Ogre,” will give us more of the same forward thinking gaming.

None the less, no matter how many times I watch the trailer for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, I still find myself unable to defend it at all.  At the end of this trailer, the tag line for the game is “Make it Right.”   Maybe Kojima should take that advice.

WTF Guys? Terrifying And Confusing Moments At E3 2012

Posted by Jack Rous on June 7, 2012
Posted in: E3 2012, Editorial, Feature, Staff Posts. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I’m not going to get into Usher dancing, or uncomfortable french dudes bantering with Reggie, or Aisha Tyler and her nerd minion, or any of the things we can all agree were awful about this year’s E3. No, I want to hit you with a few things that were a little more subversive, things you may not even have realized yourself.  As you were hungrily absorbing every second of shiny new trailer goodness, I was busy watching for what those trailers were saying beneath the surface. Some of what I discovered is terrifying, some simply perplexing, but I’m here to report it to you, and damn the consequences.

It’s cool. It’s what I do.

Crystal Dynamics apparently hates either Lara Croft, or all women everywhere

I’m all for gritty, and violent, or “Violent n’ Gritty,” which was the title of my debut album. But watch this trailer again, and tell me they’re not taking it a little too far.

In the first sixty seconds of the trailer, Lara gets set on fire, impaled, nearly drowned and almost crushed by a cave-in. Then she gets dropped on her face, and shortly thereafter gets attacked and chewed on by a wolf for awhile. Oh, she also gets her leg caught in a bear trap. This is the two-minute mark, by the way. She then gets caught and pimp-slapped to the ground by a bad guy. I’d like to mention, this is just the physical damage she’s enduring that I’m describing, not the psychological damage taking its toll as well.  The developers make that clear by showing Lara after her first kill, covered in blood and sobbing, in case you weren’t getting it. Then gunfire, gunfire, explosion; falling, drowning, falling off a waterfall, tumbling down a cliff, explosion.

If the only evidence was that first trailer, I might be wrong for calling them a bunch of misogynists. But then, at E3, this trailer debuted:

Seems pretty normal at first. We get some great-looking gunplay, some smart combat tactics, all’s well. Then Lara gets washed off a waterfall, slammed through the crumbling wreckage of a crashed plane, and falls too her doom, only to be saved by a decrepit old parachute and the highly recommended survival technique of smashing your helpless body into every tree in the forest.

Do you really need to beat teenage Lara Croft with sticks like a pinata at a Mexican quinceañera, Crystal Dynamics? I grasp what you’re trying to get across; it’s her first adventure, she’s vulnerable, she’s in danger. She’s the female Nathan Drake, which is such an obvious inspiration for your new project that “Uncharted” should be the subtitle. I know you need SO BAD to remind the kids what an awesome pedigree Tomb Raider comes from, and dark and edgy is the new “thing.” However, please remember Drake might’ve gotten shot up, beat up and hurt with the best of them, but he still got a soft lap to lay his head in when things got too hard to handle alone. I imagine your new Lara gets a wet blanket, a bed of glass to sleep on, and in the middle of her lonely, sleepless night, gets raped by a cave bear.

Far Cry 3: Every black tribe needs a white savior

Every black guy I know had some choice words for Ubisoft regarding the new trailer. But first, to clarify;

In Far Cry 3, this is you:

You are white. This is not a surprise. In most games, you are white, and male. I’m not here to comment on that, but what I AM here to draw your attention to is the fact that Ubisoft, in their epic Canadian wisdom, decided to show off the below trailer at E3, which I’m positive you remember seeing. It was the only one that featured hot mohawked chick nipple stimulation:

So what we have here is either a conscious or subconscious attempt at a terrible, clumsy Jesus metaphor, or our friends up north didn’t understand how every black male in America who plays video games (read: all of them) were going to feel about this. I’ve even heard online rumblings of a possible boycott of the game. I mean, seriously guys, you couldn’t achieve your desired creative goal with, say, a black protagonist? Just off the top of my head. But again, they’re Canadian. I’m not even sure they have black people in Canada, so this could all be a terrible misunderstanding. Either that, or they’re all a bunch of f**king racists.

Honorable Mentions

Dead Space 3 becoming un-scary. Michael Ironside getting replaced by someone far less gravelly-voiced. Dana White looking embarassed as his game is forcibly traded to the Dark Side. Magic bullets in Call of Duty. Nintendo making a great-looking zombie game and forcing you to play it with their stupid controller. “Girl wood.” And on and on and on. You tell me, but I’m pretty sure this was the most head-scratching E3 ever. And Ubisoft? For REALS yo, fire your entire marketing team and start over from scratch. Trust me, you’ll be better off.

What Does the PlayStation Vita Need to be a Success?

Posted by Brad vanVugt on June 6, 2012
Posted in: E3 2012, Editorial, Feature. Tagged: , , . 2 comments

There was much speculation before Sony’s Monday night presentation at E3 this year, as to what Sony was going to do to “save” the PlayStation Vita.  Even though the Vita has only been on the market since December (February in North America), slow sales, inconsistently announced upcoming software support, the resurgence of the 3DS in the east, and the meteoric rise of mobile and tablet gaming has many industry analysts and even developers speculating that the Vita is dead in the water.  Because of this, it was assumed Sony would be pushing a lot off chips into the middle for Vita during their press conference.

Some of the things predicted by many were the announcement of a Vita price drop, the expansion of the PlayStation Plus program to include Vita, and a ton of new Vita game announcements.  What we got was about 5 minutes spent on Vita where Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified was announced (with no screens or gameplay), Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation was announced (with a small trailer), the announcement of a variety of video services coming to the Vita, and confirmation that the new Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale will be releasing on Vita alongside the PS3 version.  Add in PSX classics support coming soon to Vita (in limited form, it would seem) and that was the extent of the Vita talk.  No price drop, and the PS Plus announcement concerned the 12 free PS3 games that are being given away this month.  Not exactly making anyone jump off the couch to run out and buy one, right?

To be clear, I purchased a Vita on day one, and love it.  Unlike my 3DS, which only got played when Pokemon White (a DS game) came out last year, my Vita is used almost daily.  My addiction to Hot Shots Golf was rekindled with World Invitational, Unit 13 was a pleasant surprise, and there are a bunch of PSN releases like Escape Plan and Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack that kept my hands glued to Sony’s new portable.  WIth all that said, the feeling I got about the Vita after Monday night was worry.  I truly wonder what third-party developers are thinking about the Vita’s future, and whether or not they want to be a part of it. Watch the Ubisoft and EA shows again, and notice that they didn’t acknowledge the Vita at all.  Aside from what was shown during Sony’s event, the two Vita games that have been shown most prominently at E3 were Sound Shapes and Guacamelee!, both of which are PSN titles.  Hell, Sony’s announcement that they are taking PlayStation Suite (now PlayStation Mobile) to other mobile manufacturers shows they are doubling down on the Vita.

So what does Vita need to be a success?  Sony needs third-parties to buy in heavily to the console’s future, and needs it bad.  It speaks volumes that the cross play functionality Sony debuted in MLB 12: The Show,  and that is also coming to PlayStation All-Stars, is not coming to big Vita titles like Madden NFL 13 and FIFA 13.  FIFA is a title that sells over 10 million copies annually around the world.  Madden usually sells right around 5 million in the US alone.  If fans could pick up their franchise or Ultimate Team and take it with them while on the commute to work, or play while they’re on their lunch break, you don’t think a decent chunk of them would pick up a Vita to do that (especially where FIFA is concerned)?  Personally speaking, if they released NHL on Vita and gave it cross play support, I’d be all over it.  It’s also telling that past the announcement of Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed for Vita, we have yet to see any gameplay footage for either, and these are games presumably releasing in 5-6 months.  We have seen a handful of other third-party titles at E3, but nothing that I would say is going to move Vitas out of the stores.  Sony have themselves published some top-notch titles for the Vita, but they alone can’t shoulder the load and expect to find success.

You won’t be taking your franchise or Ultimate Team on the road this season

That said, it’s important that those big budget experiences are still tailored to take advantage of the fact that the Vita is a portable system meant to be played on the go.  Unit 13 was so brilliant to me because while it played like a console shooter, each mission didn’t take more than 30 minutes to complete, with most clocking in around 10-15 minutes.  Lumines Supernova was great because they had a variety of different and shorter game modes aside from the standard marathon mode.  A game I didn’t play a whole lot of was Uncharted: Golden Abyss.  The reason was because it felt exactly like Uncharted on the PS3, expect with Vita specific (read: touch) controls tacked on.  The game was fine, but I felt like I needed to play for long periods of time; the experience didn’t feel very…digestable.  At that point, I’m playing on my couch, and if I’m playing on my couch, why wouldn’t I just be playing on PS3?  I look forward to Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, but I also sincerely hope that it is a different experience than Assassin’s Creed III (aside from having a female assassin, which really won’t be all that different).  That means tweaking things like having to travel on foot to get from one end of the city to the other for your next objective.  I have no issues doing that on my PS3 when I’m sitting down playing a game for a couple of hours, but if I only have 20 minutes to play my Vita on a given day, I want to be able to feel like I accomplished something in those 20 minutes.  The reason games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies revolutionized the mobile landscape is because titles like that are very easy to pick up, play for 20-30 minutes, and put down again.  Developers making games for the Vita would do well to keep that notion in mind.  Having console-like gameplay that can be picked up and put down on a whim is exactly the optimal experience that only a device like the Vita can deliver.

Assassin’s Creed and other third-party titles need to deliver unique experiences that are still tailored around a pick up and play style

PlayStation Plus support is also going to be integral.  Sony looks to be really pushing for a wider adoption rate for PS Plus, which for my money is a much better value than what people are spending on Xbox Live.  Instead of making you pay money annually for the pleasure of using their servers and premium services, Sony gives you that stuff for free and instead uses your money to deliver tons of free games, early releases for new games, and discounts on a variety of titles.  You also can take advantage of features like cloud saving and automatic overnight downloading of game patches.  The 12 free games (6 of which are full retail games) that are being given to members this month are going to bring in a ton a new subscribers.  Case in point: Cheetimus, one of our writers, has long been a detractor of PS Plus, with his assertion being that you are paying money to “rent” free games, as you lose the ability to play any free titles you earned through Plus if you let your subscription lapse.  Last night, Cheets bought himself a 3-month Plus subscription.  Clearly the service is going to be gaining steam.  So why the hell are there no Plus benefits to Vita owners?  Imagine if Sony had also included, say, free downloads for Hot Shots Golf, Wipeout 2048, Super Stardust Delta, and Unit 13 in the Plus bundle this month.  Do you think a few people would’ve been buying a Vita this week if they could get 4 free games to start out with?  Hell, Sony could’ve even driven that further by giving new Vita owners a free month of PS Plus just to get them in the door.  PlayStation Plus is becoming quite the value service, and getting the Vita involved will help both products be that much more successful.

No Vita games in the bunch, and that has to change

Vita isn’t done just yet, but clearly Sony must do more to keep it from fading away.  Right now, it’s clear customers don’t see the system as valuable enough to justify the price tag.  Anything they can do to change that, from cross play to PlayStation Plus to unique console-like experiences, must be done.  There’s a lot more besides what I mentioned that could help dig the Vita out of the perceived hole it’s in, like more PS3 connectivity (which was touched on during their press conference).  Sony had better get started quick, because every day that they don’t is a day closer to the Vita becoming irrelevant.

Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts?  Have any other suggestions to improve the Vita?  Confab below!

Harvest Moon, will you ever change? …Do I even want you to?

Posted by Carrie Wood on June 2, 2012
Posted in: Editorial, Feature. Tagged: , . 1 comment

Of all the series that have been successful over the years using the same formula and gameplay over and over and over again, the one that absolutely baffles me has got to be Harvest Moon. The series, beginning from a Super Nintendo game released in 1996, hasn’t really done much different game-to-game over the last decade and a half. Sometimes games seem like a remake of a previous title – and sometimes they are! It absolutely blows my mind that this series is not just still around, but still successful.

It’s not even like a Pokemon-style series, where the gameplay and main point of the game is the same – get eight badges, defeat elite four, become champion, ruin villainous team’s plans along the way – but you at least have something new each generation to go along with the basic rehash. Every new Pokemon generation gives you new gym leaders, new characters, new areas to explore and, of course, new creatures to catch.

It’s not like that at all in Harvest Moon. Every new game you’re still tasked with trying to revitalize a run-down or abandoned farm in order to help the nearby small town prosper. Every Spring you still raise turnips and potatoes. You still have the same cows and sheep and chickens. You still get to woo a potential marriage partner over the course of the game – and even those fall into the same tropes game after game (the red-headed farm girl, the pink-haired flower chick, and the slutty barmaid, to name a few). The same festivals happen in the towns at the same time every single in-game year. At times, the game feels more like a chore than an actual gaming experience.

The series has sometimes innovated – take A Wonderful Life for Gamecube and Playstation 2, for example. It still featured much of the same gameplay mechanics, but was divided into chapters. After each chapter, the characters were shown to age, and even pass away. Unlike most other Harvest Moon titles, the main character actually passes away, and the game is shown to have a definitive ending. This was a fantastic game. I thought this was the direction that the series would stay in… and I was wrong.

Many of the games released following A Wonderful Life were re-hashes of Harvest Moon 64 – Friends of Mineral Town, More Friends of Mineral Town (literally the same game but with a female main character), Harvest Moon DS, and Harvest Moon DS Cute.  All of these were just rehashes of rehashes. The console games had new and unique things going on, but none of them had the emotional attachment that was developed during A Wonderful Life.

And yet, here I am. Still playing Harvest Moon. The most recent title, Tale of Two Towns for DS and 3DS, is at least trying to do something different. At the beginning of the game you have to choose which town to live in, and that will dictate your playing style – livestock-focused or crop-focused. I went with the crop town. For what it’s worth, ToTT also has a weird undertone of political commentary on U.S.-Asia relations, but you should probably just play it to find out for yourself. The gameplay, while still the same as always, maintains the addictive quality that the series has always had. I still want to talk to all of the villagers and see what’s new in their lives. I still want to harvest all of the turnips. While nothing is really ever riveting in this series, I still feel compelled to play.

The next game in the series, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning for 3DS, released in Japan earlier this year and is bound for our shores sometime soon. In this game, you apparently have full character customization, as well as farm customization – being able to change where the location of fields, barns and what have you on the farm. It also introduces yaks as a livestock option. You also have to make the town appealing for people to live in via your farm, because apparently everyone in the village up and left. For the 15th anniversary of the series, it looks as if Natsume and Marvelous Entertainment are at least trying to do something new and exciting with what has become an otherwise stale series. Whether or not this title will be true to its name is something left to be decided. We’ll hear more about it at E3 next week, according to Natsume’s Twitter page.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go harvest some turnips.