Obligatory New Year's Eve Post About Video Games.

Ten years ago, I was still a Nintendo fanboy. The only consoles I owned were an N64, a game boy color, and a Super Nintendo. I didn't care about the upcoming Playstation 2, I had no clue what was happening with PC gaming, and I only remembered the Dreamcast because it came out on my birthday in 1999. For me, the year 2000 will be known as the first year I spent hours playing Perfect Dark with my cousin. It was the year of amazing new games like Majora's Mask and Pokemon Gold and Silver. It was the year I proudly defended my console of choice to the death.

It's amazing to see how much I've changed since then.

As the decade progressed, I learned to love games from all different systems. The big turning point was when I decided to buy myself an xbox, the first non-Nintendo console I ever owned. I have Halo to thank for that.

But more importantly, I began to see video games on a few different levels. Ocarina of Time was one of the first games that made me realize the artistic and storytelling potential of a video game. But it was during this last decade where I really began to understand what that meant. The way Silent Hill 2 pulled me into it's world was something I had never experienced before. It was the first video game that I had to play multiple times just to get my head around the inner meaning of the story. Rez HD was a fantastic mixture of audio and visual design that provided total sensory immersion. And even though games like Flower and The Path were mostly artsy just to be artsy, I still found new and exciting elements in each one.

Of course I still had all the old standbys to keep me occupied as well. I had my Zelda, my Mario, my Warcraft. These were all games I could enjoy on my own time, away from other people. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't relish the Friday nights lost to massive Halo 2 LAN parties. It was the social aspect of these parties that I really enjoyed, and while I always knew that games were sociable, there was something different about a LAN party. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we had 16 players instead of the standard two to four. Whatever it was, the advent of Halo 2 helped redefine how I played games with friends. I'm reminded of this every time I plan another Team Fortress 2 party.

I could continue to talk about how important the past 10 years have been for gaming and predict how games will change in the next decade. Maybe even make a personal top 10 games of the decade list. But everybody else is doing that. Instead I'll just end by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Here's hoping the next decade of gaming is just as exciting as the last!

If you'd like to share you own stories, just write a comment.

Does Multiplayer Kill the "Games are Art" Argument?

Let's just ignore the fact the blog hasn't been updated in a long time and proceed with the article shall we?

I've been reading reviews for the ever popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, when I came across the following line by 1up.com's David Ellis about the game's single and multiplayer components: "Though still a blast, the single-player campaign isn't the reason thousands of people still play the original MW on a daily basis."

Ellis's comments, by no means, reveal some secret gamer practice. I never finished the single player campaign to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne because I was so hooked on the multiplayer. But his review got me thinking about the single and multiplayer modes in relation to the "games as art" argument.

When people talk about video games being art, narrative is a big part of the critique. Games like Bioshock and Silent Hill 2 have received acclaim for not only their stories, but the way in which they presented them. Even Halo has been prasied for creating a great story and mythology to surround that story in. The point is, game naratives can present critiques and discussions about the world in the same way famous works of literature do.

So what happens when you take a powerful story like the one in Modern Warfar 2 and add a multiplayer component to it? If we were just looking at games as art in terms of narrative, there would be a problem with classifying games as "artistic." The multiplayer aspect undermines the single player's story because there is no real story attached to the multiplayer. Suddenly the game becomes less about the consequences of war and more about killing tons of dudes, either solo or with a team. And with more people interested in the multiplayer component of the game, the single player becomes the side dish rather than the main course. At best, the hardcore multiplayer gamers will play the single player campaign to gain achievements or unlock hidden bonuses.

This is why a critique of games must cover all aspects of games, and not just the narrative. Looking at games from a design perspective, artistic games may not even include a storyline at all. Super Mario Bros. is still regarded as a masterpiece not because of it's storyline, but because of how exceptional the gameplay was. Likewise, Team Fortress 2 is a strictly multiplayer experience, but the game earned the same amount of accolade as Bioshock thanks to its unique art style and entertaining gameplay. Narrative is important in video games, but it's only a portion of what constitutes an entire video game.

I obviously believe that games can be just as artistic as movies, paintings, literature, etc. I wouldn't be writing on this blog if I didn't believe that. However, I still feel there is some relevance to the multiplayer killing the integrity of a game argument. I'm currently working on a paper about science fiction stories in video games, and my professor is worried that because so many games can be reduce down to "kill all dudes," it hurts the power of those narratives. Even when considering all the other apsects of video games, that's a powerful arguement to fight against; one that I'm still trying to refute.

What do you guys think? Leave a comment or send me a message! I'd love to hear other's opinions on this matter.

Adventures in Azeroth #1: The Metagames of Warcraft or YO DAWG I HEARD YOU LIKE GAMES!

How does one play an MMORPG? For World of Warcraft (and most MMOs), the answer seems simple enough. Starting at level 1, players are immediately told that if they wish to grow in power they must complete quests and kill things. Once you reach the level cap, a player has some options. They can choose to join with groups of about 20 players to go kill end world bosses together, play games like Capture the Flag and King of the Hill against rival factions, or hone their professional craft skills in order to make their virtual fortune by selling their goods to other players.

But what about the times when a player doesn't want to do any of that? How do they play the game when they're not actually playing the game? Being in a guild like The Knights of Arcadia (KoA), I found that the social nature of players inevitably leads to the creation of random games and events specific to that guild.

Some of those activities take advantage of what's already programmed into the game. For example, guild members will occasionally head towards a major in-game town for an impromptu dance party. As you may (or may not) have guessed, pants are optional at these dances. Naturally, I decided to follow tradition.


And yes I also dance with my pet turtle between my legs. That's just how I roll.

This was one of the first events I participated in after joining the guild, and it gave me a chance to meet some of the guild members I was not previously familiar with from the real world.

In general dancing in WoW seems to be quite popular for some reason. When guild members hold a "Pants Off Dance Off," many players passing through the town will stop and join in the festivities for a while before returning to their previous tasks. Even when I'm questing, I'll occasionally find a group of players dancing. Sometimes they'll be wearing pants, and sometimes they'll be dancing on the top of a light post. Oh, and the players will also be transformed into bears.


I'm not quite sure how three bears even get up to the top of a lamp post in the first place.

Another aspect of play built into the world mechanics is the various novelty items found within the game. At this year's Comic-Con, my friend Mathne won a free in-game item that was essentially an ethereal tiger designed to look like one of those sandbox animal rides you see in playgrounds at public parks. He brought it out for the entire guild and we all took turns riding it.


Needless to say, I think we had more fun with it than we should have.

There are also a number of items players can toss to each other. While the first thought that comes to mind is players can play catch with these items, my friend Karami came up with a better idea.


She and a few guild members would take turns holding a snowball, while the players without snowballs went to hide. The ball holder would look for the other players and throw the ball to the first person they found. The person tagged with the ball would then hunt for everyone else in the next round. It's basically hide-and-seek with magic, but the game would occasionally be structured in a way so that there was a point system. I should also note that Karami is a rouge and has the ability to turn pseudo-invisible.


Of course players who aren't rogues see this as an unfair advantage and will pelt poor Karami with snowballs whenever they get a chance.

So what does this all say about World of Warcraft as a game? Is the fact that players tend to create their own form of fun within the game a sign of poor game design? After all, why even bother playing the game if you're just going to sit and make your avatar dance all the time. I think that opinion of the game is a bit shallow in its analysis. It forgets how social WoW and many other so called "virtual worlds" are. One of the reasons many people play WoW is for the social aspect of the game. People enjoy doing things with other people, whether it be doing a dungeon raid on the latest boss, or dancing in Ironforge. The difference between those two events is that dancing is less structured than a raid and allows players to just relax and socialize with other players.

Another way to look at WoW is from a virtual world point of view. If a virtual world is supposed to simulate a real world lifestyle in a fantastical setting, then why shouldn't its inhabitants have some downtime in between epic journeys and fights against the forces of evil? Even in a fictional world like Middle Earth, Theoden and party still had time to have a couple pints before they journeyed to Gondor's aid. The point is, even in a virtual world that's centered around conflict, people will still (and should) find time to relax and play with friends.

However, there are some games that might actually suggest parts of the game are poorly designed. These games come in the form of third party add-ons that players can install in their game's GUI. One of the biggest ones? A WoW themed version of Popcap Games's casual hit Peggle:


The idea behind the Peggle add-on is that it gives players something to do on long flying mount rides across a continent or while they're waiting for their raid to start. Raid leaders can even use the game as a way of deciding who earns loot at the end of a boss fight.

While I like the idea of using Peggle as a loot divvying tool, playing the game because of waiting times inherently placed in the game definitely suggests there is a problem with some of WoW's mechanics. The game already provides players with items and animations for making their own fun, so why is a game that comes from outside of the world necessary to make the game fun? If a player is so bored that they have to play a different type of game inside of a game, then Blizzard might want to look at how to keep such a situation from happening.

Next Time on Adventures in Azeroth: Traveling the World(s)!

Gamestop Specials Come With A Catch

Is it just me, or are the discounts at Gamestop done on a foundation of flawed "goods"?

I've bought two discounted games at Gamestop. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (The Game of the Year Edition) for $29.99 and Street Fighter 4 for $19.99, and in the CoD purchase, the card that was supposed to come with the GoTY edition, which lets you purchase the extra multiplayer maps, was missing. In Street Fighter 4's case, the adorable little plastic circle thingy in the middle of the DVD box that keeps the DVD from falling out was just a little broken, making it easier pull out the DVD (the DVD still stays in place when left alone), which totally pisses me off!

So I'm curious. Is anyone else having these machinations contrived on them by Gamestop?

How so?

In what other ways is Gamestop Satan?

I actually like Gamestop?

Don't hurt me?

ICO and Braid are Boring, Yet They Are Good

Ico was tedious. That's a less harsh way of saying "Ico was boring." I reviewed Ico in 2008, telling imaginary gamers to ignore Ico. All it gave me, I said, was a strong emotional experience which culminated in a perfect moment of crying happiness for the horned boy Ico and his obviously-girl-friend Yorda. Too much of the game was a pain. A strong emotional experience wasn't enough to justify eight hours of life.

But now I partially rescind that conclusion. I now think that fun was never the point of Ico and that condemning it because of its lack of fun is folly. I think the point of Ico was to show the world that a game could elicit a powerful emotional response from a gamer. And, of course, there were other concomitant goals, like: create a sublime, castle environment; make a(nother) game comprised of thought-provoking, brain-working-outing puzzles; throw in monotonous shadow monster battles in order to remind you not to stray too far from your mate; and that's it I think.

Ico reminds me of Ian Bogost's Procedural Rhetoric. Ico makes you suffer Ico's world, and you get cutscene rewards. Seeing all the stuff you do culminate into a non-procedural-rhetorikee cutscene of desperate loyalty and love, seeing what Ico is willing to suffer so a girl can have a chance at life, and seeing the final, beautiful ending sequence that is so incredibly touching that I'm not going to write it, is very much the point of this game.

And being fun is also not the point of Braid either. The point of Braid is to give you an excuse to drink wine while wearing a fez while playing a video game, in front of anti-video game wanks, just to show 'em. Braid's pretentious story-telling and 4th dimension puzzle-solving tools and pretty backgrounds and soothing music are ... nice? Yes! That's the word. They are nice. Except for the pretentious, unaffecting story-telling. (Insert Jonathan Blow sex joke)

One of my legs still stands by my Ico review though. Do NOT play Ico or Braid for enjoyment UNLESS you enjoy puzzles. You don't need to play Ico to see how a video game can make an emotional spark. VIDEO GAMES CAN MAKE YOU CRY (and now you know). Braid has a brilliant ending sequence that is half play, half rewind (essentially a cutscene) that makes you think about good, evil, and desire. But hell. Why care? I certainly didn't go to sleep thinking about it, and you probably didn't either.

So yes, those two are good games.

Attack the green one! ...Wait, which one is the green one?

When I was in first grade I was diagnosed with red/green colorblindness. There's nothing really severe about it, I just occasionally have a hard time differentiating between red and green. OK, so maybe I've been asked about what a certain color is more than I'd care to think about, but apart from that, it's never really affected my life.

The same holds true for video games. In the 20 or so years I've been a gamer, I never had a problem with a game's color pallet. However, that all changed when I played the HD remix version of Super Puzzle Fighter II. I was familiar with the game as it was a staple of arcades and pizza places during my childhood. But when I played this new version I was suddenly put at an extreme disadvantage against my opponents as I could not tell the difference between the red blocks and the green blocks. This problem was never present in previous versions of the game, so it must have been the HD up-scaling that turned an enjoyable game into an unplayable one. It was the first time I ever remember wishing there was a colorblind option in a game.

Well it seems like my wish is starting to come true. I've noticed that more and more games are offering an option to make the color pallet of the game more colorblind friendly. In particular three of the games on my computer come equipped with the option: Peggle, Left 4 Dead, and World of Warcraft.

While I appreciate having the choice in these games the only time I've ever actually needed to check the colorblind box was in Peggle. The color scheme in Peggle was almost impossible for me to comprehend. The green pegs blended in with the orange ones, and it took me forever to find the purple peg amidst all the blue ones. Let me show you what I mean:

Here is a picture from Peggle on normal settings. One who has the proper number of red and green cones in their eyes would probably have no trouble discriminating the differences between peg colors. But here's an approximation of how I see it:

It's the exact same picture run through an image filter designed to simulate a person with Deuteranopia red/green colorblindness, which I believe is the type I have. The filter should work right if you have trouble finding the green pegs among the orange ones. There's a small chance this is the wrong filter, but since both images look identical to me, I'll assume I picked the right one.

As you can see, it makes sense for Peggle to have a colorblind option. Like Puzzle Fighter I have a hard time discerning colors. Adding icons that show what each peg is makes the game exponentially more playable.

But what about the other two games I listed? To be honest, I don't find a colorblind mode in either L4D or WoW any more useful than when the mode is turned off. Left 4 Dead is simply too dark and has too much of a stone gray color scheme to pose any color threat. Here's the difference between normal and colorblind modes:

The only real change I can see is the tint of the health bar. Any other silhouettes or set pieces appear to be virtually unchanged. Even if this colorblind mode might be for a different type of colorblindness than what I have, the fact remains that I find this option in Left 4 Dead less necessary than a game like Peggle. The same can be said of World of Warcraft. Each color is vibrant enough, I easily recognize the reds and the greens. The plethora of addons that allow a player to customize their interface also helps in color discriminating.

So why is colorblind mode more important in games like Peggle and Puzzle Figher and less important in L4D and WoW? One idea might be the fact that more emphasis is placed on color in some games than in others. In Peggle, you're supposed to hit every orange peg in order to win, while in Puzzle Fighter, matching colors is vital to defeating your opponent. In L4D, you're not supposed to hit only the green zombies. You're supposed to hit anything that's moving towards you in a menacing manner regardless of color. There is always the possibility that these colorblind modes are not for red/green colorblindness, but I doubt the results will be any different.

Of course, these are only four games I've mentioned so far. There may be a game out there that's not a color-matching casual game that would benefit greatly from a colorblind mode. If you know of one, leave a comment. I think it's great games are now starting to offer these kinds of options. I'd just like to see them implemented in more useful ways.

In other news, my research on cinematics in video games is going quite nicely! In fact, I may even be co-author of a poster exhibiting my research at this year's SIGGRAPH conference! More on this story as it develops.

Finished Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil

I'm not going to review Klonoa 2 (for PS2) because I made a mistake: I didn't free write about it or attempt a first draft after playing it. This mistake I made with COD4 - I waited two months before starting that review. Whoops.

The word on Klonoa 2 though: If you get it on amazon for 12 bucks, it's worth it. It comes off as childish, but not in a bad way. It's short but sweet. The plot doesn't make complete sense, but the characters become endearing. The music is mostly good, and the environments are colorful and sometimes interesting to look at. I recommend it for its solid platforming.

But really, I've got to remember this write-ASAP-after-experiencing-the-experience thing. This "reporting" thing. For reviewing a game is reporting, and notes only help so much. It's best to write down as much about an experience as possible right after experiencing it, when the memory still exists.

Anyways, I'm going to retry Metal Gear Solid in a few days. I'll be sure to review that, and MGS 2 and 3. Than I'm going to play the original Prince of Persia and review that. And then I'm going to write a parody of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. Woo! (That will go on my other blog, which isn't doing so well really.)

The Importance of Immersion in Games

Immersion is not always ideal. Sometimes you want to make an effect that is anti-immersive. Sometimes you want gamers to not feel like the world is believable because that immersion into the game world would get in the way of something happening off screen.

Will Wright uses Guitar Hero as an example. He believes immersion is not a good thing for that game to have because it would distract players from enjoying each others' maladroit plastic guitar heroics.

But of games by which we make virtual things do virtual things in a virtual world, like an avatar in an RPG or units in a strategy game, immersion is typically effective, desirable. A world that seems real leaves a powerful impression on gamers. This is not to say that a game world should mirror the real world to the point where the fun feelings from a game are negated; although there are gamers who connect electrodes to their nipples.

I can't think of anything else to say. Your thoughts?

Review: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (XBOX 360)

Infinity Ward's first game, Call of Duty, was a welcome punch in the face. I still can't believe so many of us dared to enjoy Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, that game released a couple years before CoD. Even lamer, it was one mere level from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault that convinced us our allowance was worth it: the recreation of the Omaha Beach landing, the battle resulting in the deaths of 6,000 U.S. and German troops in Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Almost all of Call of Duty was like that level, except better. In CoD your allied NPC soldiers were actually useful (in that they distracted enemy fire). Because of this brilliant game design, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences gave Call of Duty their Game of the Year award, and the Game Developers Conference gave Infinity Ward their Rookie Studio of the Year Award.

And the Pegasus bridge defense mission, the one where you, an S.A.S. commando, fought off waves of german troops and tanks, with your Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle and the magic, self-loading Flak 88. That still remains the best mission from the Call of Duty series, oh yes.

But now for something truly shocking. Infinity Ward are the 2nd best developers of first-person shooters. "How?" you rhetorically ask. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is how. What makes this disturbing and awesome at the same time are two facts: 1. Infinity Ward are younger than most other AAA FPS developers; and 2. CoD4 gameplay mechanics are barely different from CoD2.

The Singleplayer:

World War II offers plenty of intense, cinematic gaming experiences, but the horrible, most unfortunate thing about WWII is that it has been milked to death. That is probably why Infinity Ward decided to make a game loosely based on Operation Enduring Iraqi Freedom Liberty & Justice 4 Apple Pie Umm Good. And what a good decision. Modern warfare has a tendency to look way cooler than ancient warfare; and consequently, Call of Duty 4 is the coolest first person shooter ever made. It's a spectacle squared. Some call it military porn; it's hot despite lacking romance.

It's so hot, putting on your night vision in the game. In fact, it's so hot taking off your night vision in the game. You feel like a big, bad, third-world liberating, WMD-finding mofo, with your state-of-the-art gadgets and your bad ass allies in their wittle Marine Corps helmets and that baseball cap Gaz the S.A.S. commando wears that has the U.K. flag on it. And the Gillie suit missions are so cool, sneaking around alongside your older, more mature S.A.S. captain, doing every crazy thing he says, deadly assassins disguised as shrubbery. It's so cool and hot, when you first meet your S.A.S. commando pals, they dressed in their lovely gas masks that make them look like unusually large insects with machine guns and British Isles accents.

And the level design. If you've never played Call of Duty 2 or any of the Call of Dutys that came later, here is their typical level design. In each mission, you proceed from point A to point B to win. The levels are linear, and sometimes there is a countdown. As you proceed toward point B, you activate checkpoint triggers, each showing something like "Checkpoint Reached"; the latest checkpoint you reach is where you get to respawn when you die. Because enemies usually respawn, you advance by killing enough enemies and, when it's clear enough, dashing to the next cover closer to the finish. You repeat this process till you win. On paper it's monotonous, but the levels are varied and cool-looking and cool-sounding enough that it's not; at least, not in CoD4.

Call of Duty 4 on Regular difficulty plays differently from Call of Duty 4 on Veteran difficulty. This is potential replay value. Regular difficulty makes Call of Duty 4 an interactive movie you can play and view with your visiting friends. Veteran difficulty makes every decision count and kills you often. It turns COD4 into a puzzle game, one where your skills with the gun matter. Auto-aim arguably makes Veteran on the consoles less frustrating than Veteran on the auto-aim-less PC. (In one mission, enemy infantry pinned me down. I was prone in the grass and couldn't see my enemies through the blades. I used auto-aim to clear away my enemies.)

If you only want to play the campaign once, try this: the missions you MUST play on Veteran are the ghillie suit missions - "All Ghillied Up" and "One Shot, One Kill" - and the mission after the credits - "Mile High Club." The mission you SHOULD NOT play on Veteran is: "Charlie Don't Surf." The mission I tepidly encourage you not to play on Veteran is "Heat." "No Fighting in the War Room" on Veteran can be managed with minimal frustration if you restart the level from the main menu, as this gives you an M4 with an optical sight and a grenade launcher (and this mission has a countdown - if you're too slow, checkpoint triggers won't activate). You should play all the other missions on veteran. This, I believe, is a good balance between depression and fun. Playing it all first on Regular isn't bad though; it will let you better understand the environments, making your deaths less common.

The other great thing about CoD4's campaign is the writing. Even though the marines forget to swear, the lines and voice actors give the characters enough personality that I wish the game were longer than eight hours. Unfortunately, the plot isn't as good as the rest of the writing. The ending feels like a mess (realistic ending? arguably - but realism isn't the goal anyway). The writing has way more wit than humor, which works well. The soldiers speak clearly and are all about business, communicating as appropriately as militarily possible. Call of Duty 4 might be the best recruitment tool ever made.

Yet, it's arguably the opposite. Call of Duty 4 is one of the most anti-war war games I have ever played. Really bad things happen to its heroes. One squad of marines die because they decided to rescue a downed chopper pilot. And your S.A.S. officer, Captain Price, is no Mother Teresa to his PoWs.

It's one thing to fight in Arab streets against Arab muslims, but it's another thing to name a level "Shock and Awe" and make it a combined arms assault on Baghdad where something really horrible happens to the innocent and the honorable.

And everytime you die, you are shown quotes like these:

"War is delightful to those who haven't experienced it."

-Erasmus.

"The press is our chief ideological weapon."

-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing."

-Edmund Burke.

"Teamwork is essential. It gives them other people to shoot at."

-Unknown

Multiplayer:

Call of Duty 4's multiplayer has enough modes to please millions of fans of people-shooting. Modes like 1-on-1 death match to Counter-Strike to ...... ermm, there are more; it's just that I've lost my list of modes and my console is 1,130 miles from me.

A study came out that said people like getting killed in multiplayer shooters. It's like a climax to an exciting story, and it happens over and over again until finally the player is done for the hour, waiting a few minutes to do it over again. I, however, find this kind of play hopelessly monotonous. That is why I forgo CoD4's team deathmatches and free-for-alls. They are chaos. Your teammates don't do the teamwork thing, and matches become a matter of all individuals fighting individually to rake up the most points for their team.

I prefer the one-on-one deathmatches and the hardcore modes. Going against just one other XBOX Live user is thrilling. It's a mixture of stealth - being as quiet as possible, walking through deserted, windy streets and into buildings, tip-toeing with your submachine gun or assault rifle - and sudden loud violence - when you sneak up on the other XBOX Live person, the devil, and you strike like lighting. The tension is beautiful. There is nothing like that thrill of hunting someone else down and killing him (or her). And sometimes you will converse with your opponent. In one match, my enemy asked me what I was wearing, asked where I lived, and asked if I would like a ride on his private jet.

The hardcore modes are different from the non-hardcore modes in that bullets do hardcore amounts of damage (if you get shot, you're probably dead) and your HUD becomes less useful; and less people are allowed to play in a hardcore match. I like this mode because it's less of a chaos.

Perks! That's the no-longer-novel-because-even-Killzone 2-has-it feature in Call of Duty 4. As you level up, you get awarded more weapons and "perks."

Perks are basically special abilities. You can use three at a time. You might want the dropping-a-grenade-when-you-die perk or the pull-out-your-pistol-and-shoot-people-as-you-bleed-to-death perk; these will make people hate you, which is good. Unfortunately, as you play, you will realize that some combinations of perks are better than others.

Leveling up and getting awards keep many players playing. You can unlock unlockables for your weapons by getting enough headshots or killing enough people or yadda yadda yadda. And when you reach the highest level on the XBOX 360, you get the option of restarting from scratch, except the next run through gives you another country's ranks to show off to your XBOX 360 friends. (The first run through gives you a version of the U.S. Marine Corps ranks.)

Conclusion:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare does almost nothing new. But it does it so well. I still think the best Call of Duty experience is the Pegasus bridge defense level, but the ghillie suit missions are the coolest levels I've ever played, and playing "Mile High Club" on Veteran might be the most exhilirating minute in FPS singleplayer. The multiplayer has a little something for everybody who likes military shooters. Call of Duty 4 is a classic, and you should play it.

Unmentioned Nitpicks:

-The shadows on the XBOX 360 version are shit.

-The Information Age Military-style introductions to the levels may come off as grandiose to some wine-drinking gamers.

-Heavily scripted level design saps the campaign's replay value, which may turn off thin-walleted gamers who hate multiplayer shooters or people or both. (Although it is counter-arguable that misanthropes and team work-discouraging multiplayer shooters such as all-shooters-that-require-XBOX-Live go perfect together.)

-Some multiplayer maps are better than others.

Games That Make You Vomit

I don't want to finish Katamari Damacy. I've stopped playing it. The game fills me with nausea. Luckily, I feel as if I at least understand the game, so my self-esteem isn't hurt.

This game-nausea thing has only happened to me with one other game. Psychonauts. I remember almost finishing that game, but I couldn't take it anymore. I almost regurgitated my dining hall food onto my laptop. I think those games made me feel nauseous because they were very disorienting. I'm not sure how they were disorienting exactly, but they most definitely were.

I don't think I could ever fairly judge Katamari Damacy, but I will say that a game in which you are the son of a substance-abusing god who accidentally destroys almost every star while under the influence is epic-storytelling. At least, it feels like epic-storytelling. I'm going to go throw up now.

Two more things. The music in the game is fun, kinda silly really. And you have to see the intro-movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpFFzWPzA2c&fmt=18

BAD ASS POEM ABOUT FIGHTING GAMES!!!

The Fighter's Spirit

The fighting stick stuck to my fingers.

The fighting stick wouldn't let me go.

Despite my mashing the buttons,

The endless fire flying from Ryu's fingers,

The fighting stick wouldn't let me go.

Thus, I had the fighter's spirit,

Till the end of my days.

-Robert Frost

What to Review a Game on

I'm almost ready to write better reviews, but before I write one, I'm going to list the criteria I should consider when reviewing — that is, a checklist of qualities a game has that, when analyzing them, help me decide how good or bad said game is.

I would love for you to add ideas in the comments section again.

Here are the criteria I have so far:

1. Variety. For the amount of time I invest playing the game, does the game provide enough different experiences to avoid being monotonous? One of the problems humans have with fun is that experiencing a particular fun thing too long or too often bores them. The cliché "variety is the spice of life" is true. If God of War had not had puzzles in between its mostly homogeneous fighting, it would have been boring. The only way to keep a monotonous game, one with few environment types or mechanics or whatnot, the only way to keep that from boring yourself is to play it sparingly; games shouldn't have to be played like that (not that it's bad if you do, of course).

2. Pacing: the feeling a player has that urges them to do something in a game — the consequence of inaction being some sort of loss, like player death or loss of experience or missing out on seeing something cool happen or complete loss of the game (damn Metal Gear Solid Torture Sequence of Awesomeness Because Losing it Makes You Lose the Entire Game if You Somehow Don't Save). Level design should impose different levels of urgency on players at different times in order to be varied enough (variety has a place in pacing).

One good analysis of pacing is this feature by Jacek Wesolowski of People Can Fly (Painkiller)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4032/beyond_pacing_games_arent_.php

3. Graphics. Crysis is not the standard, and World of Warcraft has better graphics than F.E.A.R.

This is a reflection on what the visuals of a particular game do to me. Do they make me smile? Is it pretty? Is it funny? Does it strike me emotionally? Is it sublime? What does it do? Judging whether the visual art is good or bad will be based on what I believe the developers are trying to shoot for, if there visual design accomplishes it, and how well it does it. I still have mixed feelings about this because a strong effect that I believe the developers aren't shooting for may be worth assigning awesomeness to.

4. Uniqueness. In this, I look for two things. Either the game does something new (and well), or it does something old but better than all the games before. Meeting one of these criteria is important because I don't want gamers to waste money and time on a new, expensive product when there is an older, cheaper product that does the same thing, perhaps better.

5. Bugs. Perhaps shooting up a game for bugs is unfair, since most games can be expected to be patched enough to make a bug judgement obsolete. That is why I have mixed feelings about this. If I ever get a journalism job, in which I'll most likely be expected to score games, I'll use the publishing house's policy on bugs for scoring. In general, bugs are bad because they break games.

6. Fairness. In this, I dock points for two things. If I have reason to believe that the enemy AI is cheating, (like in ArmA: Combat Operations, where players who duck into tall grass can't see the enemy AI but the enemy AI, with their developer-endowed x-ray vision, see the players) than points be docked! If in multiplayer I have reason to believe that players automatically get unfair advantages over other players based on....at least one of many things (There are so many ways to give players unfair advantages over each other) than damn the torpedoes, and get to the choppaaa!

7. Story-telling. If a game has some kind of story-telling, I will talk about how it makes me feel. If the feeling the game is giving me is weak, than I dock points. Cinematics and writing count, even if they aren't part of play.

8. Sound. Do I feel the game's sound accomplishes what I think the developer is shooting for? If not, than I dock points UNLESS I end up liking the sound.

9. Flow. Does the game put me in Flow for what I feel is an appropriate amount of time during play? Does it put me in Flow too little or too often? For those who don't know or forgot, in psychology, Flow is that state in which the task you are doing is neither too easy nor too hard (although in activities such as computer gaming, the Flow state is ideally reached when the presented challenge is just above your skill level, making you put out your 110% effort); it is a state of immersion in which doing the activity is intrinsically rewarding; you are 100% focused on what you are trying to achieve in the game world. The original idea in psychology comes from the University of Chicago's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

10. Intellectual Stimulation. Is there anything to learn about the analog world from the game. Does it make special information that I helps me understand my world or myself better? Games that do this deserve major credit. To a certain extent, all games are intellectually stimulating (even the stupid ones). Intellectual stimulation is extra credit.

11. Does the game always reward the player with something? Even when the player loses? (for example, in the Call of Duty series, when you die, you're shown an interesting/snarky quote about war) Reward in both victory and failure is important because people who like happiness don't like being punished for playing. Paradoxically, this doesn't mean there should be NO punishment; it's just that, even in the punishing, the player should get something they can consider fun or meaningful or both.

And that's what I use, as of now, to decide whether a game is good or bad for consumers.

Here are things I won't deem good or bad about a game:

1. Agency/Effectance. This is an essential element of computer games. For those who don't know or don't remember, it is the idea that you can make things happen on screen. If you can't make anything happen in a video game world, you have no agency/effectance; it might as well be a painting or a movie or a novel. If a "game" does not give you agency, than it is not a game, and I won't review it as if it is one.

2. It has Agency, but is not a game. Here is Jesper Juul's definition for the word "game":

"A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable" (P 36 Juul, half-real).

Undoubtedly, I will review non-games in my video games journalism career, (like the Sims 6, which will probably be a computer toy instead of a computer game). Maybe I will be an Interactive Electronic Entertainment Journalist.

Things I will review but won't go into detail about are the concrete details that reveal plot I feel are important for the player to experience in the game.

And that is all I can think of for now. When I restart reviewing next week, I will consider all these but not explicitly state them in reviews unless I believe I should. (And I haven't forgotten about "immersion." I'll discuss immersion in another article.)

Feel free to add ideas or dispute my definitions in the comments section. Teach me. Me like.

In the meantime, check out this old Gamasutra.com article about games that make players happy; not just provide mere, transitory fun/bliss/orgasm.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3675/the_pursuit_of_games_designing_.php?page=1

Some questions, some updates, and some announcements.

Those of you who made your spot checks before you read the blog might have noticed the new layout. I've been playing around with the various Blogspot aesthetic layouts, looking for one that was a bit lighter and more cheerful looking than the one we were previously using. I like this new one out of most of the options available, but I hope it's only a temporary fix. What I'd really like to do is get some nice game related pattern for the background of the blog, but sadly my artistic/photoshop skills are minimal at best. Is there anyone out there who would be willing to contribute something or even give me some pointers on how to design one myself?

In other news, I just wanted to let everyone know that I've started working at Calit2 again doing more video game research. The difference is that this time they're paying me! :D If I can, I'll occasionally post some excerpts from the work I'm doing for discussion or critique. First up on the agenda is examining the use of cutscenes in video games. More on that as I continue my research.

But now, on to the actual reason why I'm posting this blog:

I'm playing World of Warcraft again.

...I'll pause for a moment so you can gasp, cry, or yell at me.





Finished? Excellent! Let's continue.

WoW has always been an unusual game for me. Before you ask, no I've never been addicted to the game. I'll have sudden bursts of desire to play it followed by an extremely long period of time in which I forget the game is even installed on my computer. Since buying the game about three years ago, I've approximately played the game less than 24 hours, which would explain why I never made a character that leveled fully from 1 to 60 (or 70 or 80 as the expansions were released).

Part of the problem was that I never had anyone to play with. I have two main characters on two different servers. The servers I picked were based on the social potential of those servers. For my human mage I chose a server a good friend of mine played on, while my undead warlock was assigned to the server my old Warcraft III clan had moved to when WoW was first released. However, I eventually ran into problems. About a month after I started playing my friend on my Alliance server (you know who you are) suddenly moved to a different server, leaving me stranded to level my mage alone. Meanwhile, my warlock was suffering the same problems. I was an active member in my clan during the Warcraft III days, playing games/griefing with them on a weekly basis, and posting on the clan forums as often as possible. But I was late to the party when it came to WoW; two years too late to be precise. By the time I started playing, almost everyone I knew from Warcraft III was gone. They had stopped playing, or left the guild either for real life issues, or personal issues with the management of the guild. All that remained were new recruits that I never connected to as well as the old members.

As a result of these setbacks, I never played. I would log off for about six months to a year before I got the urge to play again. After a month and $15 down the drain, I remembered that having no one to play with was boring, and I stopped playing again.

That has all changed though. Recently, a group of my friends harassed me enough that I decided to start playing again. Except this time, I transferred my mage character to their server. They also let me into their guild: The Knights of Arcadia, which is a guild originally founded by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade.

I can safely say that since the move, playing WoW has actually become fun. Having the social connection has helped exponentially. Not only do I have friends to talk to and who can guide me, but the guild itself is comprised of quite a number of entertaining people. Because of this, I am now determined to finally experience WoW from 1 to 80.

And I'll be writing about it too.

I'm going to start a semi-regular series of articles detailing my experiences within the virtual space of World of Warcraft. These articles will cover everything from my opinions on questing to the role of narrative within a persistent world, to important milestones in my character's career. I'll also occasionally talk about the people in the guild including the few members that introduced me to The Knights of Arcadia (who will be referred to as Mathne, Squibbie, and Karami unless they don't care if I use their real names). So be prepared to see a lot of this guy:

This is Lizezul. Also know as Lee, Liz and Lizezuzlzulele (long story). I'll be playing him on this journey to level 80 and beyond. Along with him will be Lizezul's pet turtle Speedy:

Adorable, isn't he? He provides no inherent bonuses to my mage other than to sit there and look cute while I'm killing random creature X. You'll be seeing Speedy a lot too.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm ultimately going with these WoW articles. The game is such a case study already I'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said. But my goal is to point out something interesting about the game in each article. Some will be more thought provoking than others, and some will be more entertaining than others. Either way, it's an experiment and I hope to learn something from just being a part of the process.

I can't make any promises, but I hope to have the first article up within the next week or two. The topic? How people play WoW when they're not actually playing WoW. Until then, I'll be on the docks with my turtle:


Speedy really likes the water.

Gears of War 2 (XBOX 360): Review

Gears of War 2 takes itself too seriously. Even though the game features dinosaurs that wear machine guns and missile launchers, even though one of the game's Non-Playable Character teammates talks about everything in terms of basketball, says bitch a lot, and is black, even though it has assault rifles that have chainsaws (because grenade launchers aren't bad-ass enough), this game manages to be too much stuck up its anus.

Take the protagonist's friend/co-op buddy or Non-Playable Character: Dominic Santiago™. The game makes one of the goals to search for his wife (the game doesn't say so until later, but you see it coming). Cutscenes try to make you actually care about her, and they fail.

It would have been way, waaaay better if Epic Games had instead made Dominic obsessed with finding his husband, and gave the protagonist, Marcus Fenix™, an IQ of 3.

Just imagine...

First lines by lead characters:

Dictator Richard Prescott™: Shiver me timbers! There be many a locust horde ready a waitin' to board our sanctuary!

WENCH!!

Anya Shroud™: Yes sexy?

Wiener Richard Prescott™: Where be Corporal Dominic and Sergeant Marcus?!

[Scene changes]

Dominic Santiago™:

O woe!

Where art mine gay lover [Developer must come up with creative, yet politically correct, name]

Johnny Depp™?

Shalt see him I again?

[Marcus Fenix™ stares at him and drools]

That would be the best introduction to a game about steroid-using men who save humanity from orcs ever.

Now, I'm not trashing the story-telling. I'm just saying it could have been way more fun and way more insulting to women and minorities. The lead writer, Joshua Ortega, did an excellent job making the game's lines entertaining and the plot conducive for varied gameplay scenarios, and he and the lesser-human writers deserve cookies and beer. Some critics give hate to the seemingly unconnected-to-the-main-plot research facility part of the game. To that, I remind everyone that the story isn't to be taken seriously. Gears of War 2 is not the video game equivalent of Pride and Prejudice, and it's not trying to be. (Okay, so it tries to be Pride and Prejudice for a bit, but, some how, it fails.)

So what I'm really trying to say about Gears of War 2 is that it should have been (and the sequels better be) a comedy.

Could you imagine the box art of GoW2 if they had done this?

Title: Pony Princess of Depressing Death 2: Bigger, Badder, and More Bad Ass

Description on back of box: "Humanity's baseball players must save humanity from a race of orcs who use steroids so much that they look terrible. This game features guns, chainsaws, and dinosaurs."

Rated eC for Early Childhood.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot to discuss the gameplay part. The gameplay is good. It is mostly comprised of running into cover and shooting things from behind that cover. You can always run up to the enemy and chainsaw them to death, providing that you can get close enough and providing that have a chainsaw.

The reasons why the gameplay is good is because of two things:

One: the game puts you in manifold shooting-from-cover situations, so the core gameplay experience is not monotonous.

Two: when you aren't shooting from behind cover, you are riding things, driving things, carrying boxes (woo!), and shooting things while doing those three.

This game is a lesson about the importance of variety in games and the importance of shooting things. Even an achievement highlights that (use every weapon and you get the "Variety is the Spice of Death" achievement).

But the gameplay isn't perfect. While playing co-op split screen with my Danish flatmate Carsten Hoilund, he told me that switching weapons using the D-pad was difficult. I myself had no problems, so I assumed that the reason he couldn't select the desired weapon using the D-pad was because he was Danish. [Note: playing co-op with someone you don't hate is more fun than playing with yourself (lololol), and co-op is easier since you lose only if BOTH of you die. Extra Note: if you're a hardcore gamer, you will probably enjoy this game most on the hardest difficulty since the casual and normal modes are easy; insane difficulty is unlocked only after you've beaten the game on another difficulty mode.]

Later, after my Danish roommate had moved back to Vikingland, I began to have problems fingering the d-pad. Obviously, this meant I really missed my friend and that part of his Danish spirit had become part of mine, making me eat healthier food and suck at switching weapons in Gears of War 2.

The friendly AI, however, is pathetic. Only when you have three friendly NPCs shooting beside you does the AI feel like it's helping you fight more than being live-duck-in-mouth annoying. You can consider the NPCs as an extra challenge :)

My only other complaint against the campaign is the very last gameplay sequence. I beat it by holding down the trigger button for around fifteen rubber-ducky-pounding seconds (You don't want to know).

The last parts of the game are easy compared to the other parts, but I'm not complaining. If every game made the ending the hardest part, games would be even less interesting, no?

The best way to play Gears of War 2's campaign is to play it with a friend in the same room with two screens and two XBOX 360s (and two controllers and two chairs and two sets of clothes — unless you really like each other — and etc.).

Now for the multiplayer. The competitive multiplayer is boring. It's all been done before, and better. To console gamers, all the modes may still come as novel, but to the PC gaming master race, it isn't. It's also annoying that at the end of competitive matches, the game talks about your team's awesomeness or suckness as if you're twelve.

The multiplayer mode that can be lots of fun is Horde (the non-competitive multiplayer). What happens in Horde is five players (you want five) start a map and work together to survive increasingly challenging hordes of AI-controlled, steroid orcs; ideally, the team survives for all 50 rounds (which wins a self-esteem-boosting achievement). If you die during a round, you respawn the next round. Every time you beat a round, the game tallies your team members' scores, and every score is accompanied by a gun shot sound, except for the total round score which comes with an explosion sound. This is much more eloquent than the annoying announcer at the end of the competitive matches.

Every ten rounds of Horde, the game resumes sending small hordes at you but increases their efficacy (health, aim, sexual performance, etc.). Usually, players decide to defend one area. You will not survive unless your team uses teamwork, and well.

And that is the problem.

I don't think beating Horde is impossible when no one communicates (sometimes, on XBOX Live, that's preferable). And often you can just tell what others are trying to say when you see their chainsaw going through an enemy's body. What makes teamwork a problem is that PEOPLE KEEP DROPPING OUT. And unlike Left 4 Dead, people can't drop in on a match that has already started.

And that's it.

Pros:

-It's not going to win a pulitzer prize, but the silly plot and most of the dialogue are a win.

-Varied gameplay experiences and environments in the campaign; good pacing.

-Features guns, chainsaws, and dinosaurs.

-Horde mode can be very fun.

Cons:

-Some of the writing sucks, especially most of the "wife" stuff. Ironically and sexistly, the part where something really bad happens to her ends up being the most effective sequence with her.

-The only fun, not-too-cliché multiplayer is Horde, and the only way to enjoy it is to play with people who won't drop out (AKA your non-dropping-out friends).

-Friendly NPCs in campaign mode have lettuce for brains.

-It is hard to switch weapons if you are Danish.

-The ending sequence will come off to many as laziness on the developer's part.

-Shadows and texture quality in the game show the XBOX 360's obsolescence. (PC GAMING! RAWR!)

Worth getting? Yes. But not for $49.99.

Mini Review: Ninja Gaiden Black (XBLA)

Today (three months ago), I beat Ninja Gaiden Black, an improved version of the XBOX game Ninja Gaiden by Japanese developer Playboy Mag-I mean Team Ninja.

Ninja Gaiden Black is a 3rd person action game in which you play as Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja. For most of the game, you wear a black jump suit and kill everything except for an old man and two hot-sex ninja women who help you by giving you tips, coating themselves in liquids, and putting themselves in danger so you have to rescue them (the old man doesn't do some of these things; he does offer you services for a fee, if you know what I mean).

The game has a story, but it’s only an excuse for moving you to different fights in different environments. You're on a revenge quest against a bad person who something about a sword that something something end of the world must prevent. Romance avoided. Not enough porn.

The story mode offers you 10 melee weapons and 5 projectile weapons and a few magic attacks (assume I'm right). Assuming you decide to play this game no more than once because you don’t have brain damage, the only melee weapon you’ll use for most of the game is the dragon sword, i.e. a katana.

Bad things about the game. Many people claim that the game is too difficult: that the enemies do too much damage; that you have to memorize visual cues and react to them quickly (And there are different cues with every kind of enemy, and many save points are not placed close enough to the hardest battles). I agree that difficulty is a problem, but not for those reasons. The real difficulty problem is that you have to manage the camera a lot or die 2 billion times instead of just 1 billion times. If you don’t press the right trigger button more than all the other buttons combined, your view of your enemies won’t exist well. Another morally bad thing about NGB is falling to your death due to the camera moving a lot - and fingering the right stick in the right direction ALL THE TIME becomes impossible and unorgasmic. Another annoying thing about this game is that the writing and voice acting blow. But they don't suck in a laughter-inducing way; they just blow. A missed opportunity the story is; they should have made it a comedy. Also, enemies respawn. Maybe the developers put this in because an endless supply of enemies provides an endless supply of the-thingy-that-is-used-for-money-in-the-game, but because the average enemy will kill you if you finger the buttons wrongly, re-fighting enemies is tedious.

I found the puzzles tediously easy. Most of them make you go from one place to another collecting stuff and squirreling it to other places. They, like the story, are just an excuse for moving you to different fights in different environments.

Good things about the game: Many colors. Varied environments. You fight everything from tanks to dinosaurs to Arnold Schwarzenegger to the skeleton ghosts of fish. The challenges that stretch you to your limit, in which you just barely win or lose, are awesome (however, they don’t occur as often as the battles in which you may-most-certainly suffer 50% damage). And mission mode is arguably more fun than story mode. (Mission mode was introduced in the Black edition of the game.)

Conclusion: I'm not sure if this type of game is dying, games that are penis-mashingly hard. I say, skip it (unless playing a game that makes you feel like a super ninja who dies a lot is one of your childhood dreams). Prefer getting your master-difficult-game-for-increased-button-pressing-skills from completing achievements in games that do achievements right, like games by Valve Software.

Note: I read somewhere that you can activate easy mode (which is merely hard) by dying a lot on the first level. (Only in the Black and Sigma editions)