Tag: gaming

Categories
Enjoyed

Gaming 2008: The Xbox 360

Not counting carry overs from Christmas 2007, I played exactly two disc-based games for my 360 this year, largely due to fears of the hardware failing again. One game was purchased in February, the other in November. The number of disc read errors I’ve gotten on the second game have not subsided this fear – even a post-NXE installation needed multiple tries.

But the appeal for me with the 360 continues to be Xbox Live Arcade, which is where most of my (space) bucks went.

## High Points & Surprises

Rez HD made a fantastic translation into an Arcade title. It provided me with a chance to finally work all the way through the game, and it now has a solid place in my heart. I would’ve bought it at retail at full price.

Culdcept Saga finally came out in the US, 15 months after the game came out in Japan. It was worth the wait for those into deep board games.

Braid made a strong statement for indie games on the 360; the story may not have made much sense, but the puzzles were inventive and the experience was a thrill. I wish I could play it with fresh eyes again.

Geometry Wars 2 showed the rest of the gaming industry how to do leaderboards. Hopefully people will follow Bizarre Creation’s lead in 2009.

n+ took my favorite flash game *ever* and turned it into some online behemoth. Bravo, metanet!

I didn’t end up buying it (due to lack of friends with it), but the translation of Ticket To Ride was well done.

## Low Points & Disappointments

Castle Crashers‘s broken network code. Horribly, horribly broken, enough so that I wouldn’t touch the online portion in fear of losing my saved game. It took three months to get a patch out, and in that time the community has mostly died off.

I was so turned off by the voice acting in Blue Dragon I didn’t get much past the tutorial before trading it back.

I was deep into Mass Effect when the year started, and finished it out within the first week. While the core story and plot were enjoyable, my completionist streak kicked up and I did all the side missions. And between the repetitive architecture, the horrible combat controls, and the general lack of variation, they ruined the game for me. Side missions matter.

While there were certainly enhancements to the core functionality, Gears of War 2 felt like more of the same. Another year, I would’ve given it much more attention; this year, it got lost in the pile.

## Open Questions

Why is Netflix now the reason I’m turning on my 360 the most?

Categories
Debated

Contemplating Home

Contemplating Home

It’s been a strange eighteen months in the private Home beta. It’s hard to believe it’s coming to an end tomorrow.

Sony has announced that yes, tomorrow, December 11th, is the day Home finally goes into Open Beta. The indication I’ve gotten from the in-beta documentation is that we’re looking at a roughly 6PM Eastern launch, with a downtime tomorrow morning so some final housekeeping can be done.

Now, technically, the closed beta doesn’t end until tomorrow at that time, so I perhaps still cannot talk in great detail about the last 18 months. But here’s some things I’ve been mulling over about the service lately:

Gamers who spend a lot of time in a particular title tend to memorize maps. The terrain is always the same, the shopkeepers are always standing in their stores, and the town never changes. But serving 18 months in the Home beta can mess with your brain. Almost all of the areas have undergone multiple overhauls. The “Central Plaza” is on its third or fourth major version. Whatever you may remember from the early demos is probably gone now, so come in with a clean mind.

Home is not the cure to all of Sony’s woes regarding online play. It does not fill in the common holes that people point to when they line PSN up next to Xbox Live Gold. But is it supposed to? Was it ever? I’m not sure. I’m not sure Sony’s sure.

There are two things I’ve seen other fellow testers really get into: spontaneous dance parties, and wall hacks. Expect more of the first than the second as time progresses. R1 opens the Emote menu, and the dance options are at the bottom. They are all pretty awesome. (It is intentionally difficult to see in the picture above, but I am in a position only obtainable through a wall hack. I am explaining this to those who ask as only being possible through “incredible balance”. I’ve only had one person respond with an expletive.)

Above all else, Home is a good encapsulation of what Sony has focused on this generation: a reasonably pleasant user experience, missing a few things you’d probably expect, including a few things you wouldn’t have thought of, and providing a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it a fun place to visit but leaving you unsure if you really want to live there. I’m not sure if I’ll be spending a lot of time in Home, or it’ll just be something to fill the gaps – but it’s nice to know it’s there.

Categories
Debated Disliked

A Moment Of Disturbing Honesty From Activision

Stephen Totilo of MTV reporting on a moment of honesty from today’s Activision/Blizzard earnings call, emphasis mine:

During today’s Activision Blizzard earnings call, a financial analyst asked the company’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, why the company didn’t keep all of Vivendi’s games when the two gaming companies merged.

The analyst didn’t name any games, but technically, he had to be referring to the likes of “Ghostbusters,” “50 Cent: Blood On The Sand” and the new “Riddick,” which all appear to have found new publishing homes…

Kotick responded not by addressing any of the games by name, but by talking about Activision’s publishing philosophy. The games Activision Blizzard didn’t pick up, he said, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now…You still need to have production of new original property but you have to do it very selectively… the focus at retail and for the consumer is to continue to be on the big narrow and deep high profile release strategy… We’ve had enough experience that I think the strategy we employ is the most successful.”

I suppose I can appreciate the honesty, but as a gamer, I couldn’t be more nauseated.

That’s not to say I’m particularly surprised – what was the last significant franchise they created?

Tony Hawk? 1999.

Call Of Duty? 2003.

Guitar Hero? 2005.

I often love the games that are too quirky, too weird, too inaccessible, or too obscure for the mass market. And it’s sad that a company that was there when I started gaming 25 years ago has become so unwilling to take risks with their titles.