Console Cameras: Totally Underused

With the Xbox and PS3 both supporting these internet cameras, I have to say that I think they are totally misused and underdeveloped in games. Besides the PS3 game Eye of Judgement, which uses the camera to look at playing cards, capture scanned data and bring the cards to life on screen, there is no really good software out there for consoles that make really creative use of the peripheral.

I'd say, roughly, 90% of the games that have camera support are for mapping your face onto character bodies. I'm sure a lot of people like that feature in some games, but I think it's a singular use for a camera on a console that can fold virtual proteins for science.

The Wii's remote controls have garnered more side projects and homebrewed applications based off using a Wii-mote as an infrared camera. I mean, this guy is a Wii legend now. So why doesn't Microsoft or Sony take a real camera and come up with some 3-d spatial gaming or even better communication apps like an Xbox Live Skype or a PS3 Instant Messenger.

No, they'd rather come up with their own version of the Wii-mote.

Digital is More Expensive?

Since the Xbox 360 started offering the ability to download older games from the original Xbox library of games online and store them on your hard drive, the Wii, PS3 and PSP have also taken to the idea and started doing it as well. I think it's a great service to have digital games instead of cds and cartridges (though I am a bit enamored with my own collection of stuff).

But I don't understand what's going on here. Instead of the idea of a digital service saving money by not using physical media, companies have started to offer the service at a premium, charging way too much money for games that are 5-20 years old.

It's hard to say for the PS3, since I can't seem to find any prices on their Playstation Network website, but the Xbox and Wii offer titles to download from their older consoles at about 200-400% markup on prices based off of eBay offerings ($15 from Live vs $6 average from StillLivesAtHome128 on eBay). Of course, the used games behemoth Gamestop is still selling Halo, a game from 2001, for $20, but only idiots shop there.

*crickets chirping*

Nintendo isn't doing much better. Nintendo offered the first three Mario games for download on the Wii for $5 each. You can find it on eBay for under a $1 if you can get an auction that doesn't charge $8 for shipping. That's almost a 500% markup on a game that they fully admit on their store website is 25 years old. In fact, it's the oldest commercial Nintendo game ever that they gave away with the console. I'm not even sure you could buy it because they made it available to everyone that had the NES.

And what's worse is that your paying for a transaction back into your childhood. Most people played these games when they were kids. I'd even bet that the majority of the buyers of games like Super Mario Brothers are in the 20+ age bracket and realize after buying the game that, like most childhood memories, some things are best left in the past. Games that old evoke other memories from times of yesteryear but not the ones that help you compare your new HD-loving, 1080p, BluRay watching eyes to the 8-bit bleeps and bloops that you fondly remember sitting cross-legged on the living room floor drinking a Tab.

Sure you have to manage a new set of resources when your dealing with digital distribution. Instead of trucks delivering games, your paying for bandwidth. Instead of paying retailers profit margins, your paying for server hard drives and routers. And instead of packaging, your paying for programmers to retrofit code to new consoles. But per game, I'd have to imagine that it's still cheaper to sell games digitally that it is to keep shipping out disks. Especially if sales are stagnate in brick-and-mortar stores.

So here's an offical plea to Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony: Stop trying to make money on games that are older than our kids. Here's some logic to follow: If (ParentAge-ChildAge/2) < GameAge Then GamePrice = 0. I think that's a pretty fair rule to follow.

Wii Store: http://www.nintendo.com/wii/virtualconsole/games
Xbox Live Store: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/catalog.aspx?d=5

PSN Store: http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/Store

IGN's Review System Dealing with Multiple Releases

I'm not complaining about the review system, but the way that IGN reviews multiple "copies" of games is slightly, from a technological standpoint of running a website/database, dimwitted.

I first noticed it when the Xbox team started posting reviews of XBLA games that were remakes of classic system games (ie. Galaga, Pac-Mac, Joust). Sure some of these games may add multiplayer and online modes, but we're talking about the exact same game. Then the Wii team started doing the same game. I can't imagine working for IGN over 11 years and having to review Super Mario 64 twice.

But what's worse is that when I go to check the Editior's Choice site, IGN's review/article management system shows it's true colors. Below is a screenshot of their top-to-bottom sorted "Editor's Choice", which is really nothing more than the highest rated games reviewed on the site. There are four entries for the same game with the Australian version given a lower rating because it's barely neutered.

Then we have two copies of BioShock and three copies of Fallout 3. Every review linked by the game title, including Grand Theft Auto IV, are exactly the same as their duplicate entries on the list. Here we have the top 9 Xbox 360 games which are really only 3 titles.

Why doesn't IGN work with single reivews for multiple releases of games? Sure, one game might come with a metal tin or a t-shirt, but all of their reviews point to the same URL anyway. Can't they just say that there are multiple releases (and most articles do) and be done with it.

There you have it. I wasted a whole post to complain about what is essentially a database query.

Tip for Bands: Don't Be the Load Screen

Don't let a video game developer license one of your songs for the into/load screen of a game. The people who play that game on a regular basis will learn to hate your song. You'll be associated with waiting. Waiting for fun.

Yes, I'm talking to you Guns 'N Roses and Criterion (Burnout Paradise). And Lil' Jon and EA (Need for Speed: Underground).

Instead, be the end credits. Be the happy moment.

I hate this generation!

(inserted by Justin, to lighten the mood in here!)

I remember being a kid in the early 80’s when the NES was at its peak. There was hundreds of game that came out every year. If you liked sports games you would buy Bases Loaded, Tecmo Bowl, Double Dribble, Ice Hockey, etc. If it was racing, action, role-play games you had plenty to choose from. You would talk you parents into buying it for you or renting it. So you would open the box on the way home and salivate over the instruction book. Most games gave you a instruction book with a storyline that would set up the action that you would face for the rest of that afternoon, and into the night till you went to sleep.

Fifteen percent of the games made you feel like it was well spent time when you were done with it. The majority left you thinking, “Well it wasn’t great, but I was having fun playing a video game. And that makes it worthwhile”. Then you’re left with roughly ten percent that were just dreadful. You would rather be stuck at home sick watching your moms’ soaps than play that junk. (And let’s face it we have all played hooky to stay home and play games. Hell, I still do it now!)

You didn’t critique these games. You either liked them and they went to the front of your game drawer, or you didn’t and they collected dust in they back. At least until trading games became popular. Then Nintendo Power came out and it would let you know what was slated to come out soon. They didn’t do reviews, (of course because it was an in house project) you would get tips and codes.

I hate people the think their professional video game reviewers.

Now everywhere you turn around everyone has written a review. Everyone nit picks a game and forgets why we play games to start with. Is it fun? No, people worry if the lighting was a little too dark, the shadows are bad, the AI was lazy, and god forbid, the game was short.

Let me give you some examples of where the fun factor is more imortant the HD'ability. Madden looks better than it ever has, plays great but, it is the NFL (No Fun League). There is no real sense of impact with tackles. No subtle celebrations. Where did the injuries go? Ace Combat 4 is a beautiful presentation. We don’t need the storyline. We need a fun dog fighting experience, not monotonous bombing runs and drawn out, looping dog fights. Far Cry might have the best environment in a FPS. But there are only so many times you can enjoy the same mission they give you. GTA4 is a great idea, but there is the repetitive thing again. The Forza series looks and feels great. How many laps do you want to take on that same track, woo hoo! Assasins Creed, great story but the game could have been half as long and it would have been a better experience. All of them looked pretty, but missed the fun factor throughout the game.

On the other hand CoD4 has a short single player story but the online multiplayer is great. They got it right with the audio/visual to make you feel the experience. GOW 1&2 has an awesome single player game, but the online is glitchy. Crackdown may not be the most beautiful game but the entire game is on point. Mercenaries 2 is fun, glitchy and a little ugly but fun.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Now that you have that in your skull here is my other issue.

I was playing a nice quiet game of Hardcore Team Deathmatch on CoD4 when I was rudely interrupted.

My phone rings and it’s one of my best friends. “Hey man, can you do me a favor? If your not to deep in a game. Can you pop in Mercenaries 2?” Now I stopped what I was doing for what I was doing, and for what? He wanted the viral achievement that I had so he could have 50 gamer points.

I hate Microsoft, I hate Sony. I hate Achievement Points and Multiplayer Challenges. It has made them money, because the dumb monkeys have been sucked in to this gimmick.

People play games just to get those achievements and do not return to enjoy the fun in it. For example my friends and I played Horde on GOW 2. We completed the 50th wave and had a blast doing so. But now I can’t anyone to do it again. Now that the achievement was accomplished they are done with that game.

You know where I think Cod4 got it right. The Achievements where all single player, and the Challenges for multiplayer are not attached to the achievements at all. The Multiplayer Challenges that open items in multiplayer are related to kills and headshots, not some outrageous happenstance situation. The happenstance situation were just extras for fun to see if you could it it. (they don't give you anything)

Other than trying to find the orbs in Crackdown I have never tried to complete any Achievements just for the sake of getting them all done. I just have fun, play the game, and get my Achievements along the way.

I’m not an Achievement Whore, just a Gamer!

On the Death of the Hero

The invention of 'lives' in gaming wasn't because video games had some morbid sense of accomplishment or denial. It was to make you spend quarters. Arcades being the first invention in electronic gaming had to have some way to keep you in the poor house, so 'lives' were created to give you three chances to resurrect yourself and complete your task.

But as games got older and moved away from spaceships and centipedes, people were introduced as the main characters and gave the meaning of 'life' a whole new purpose in games. They took on a resemblance of a cat's nine lives.

Man jumps. Falls in pit and dies. Tries again.

Before games were created, comics flourished as superheros wildly took over the imagination of children and adults everywhere. Virtually invincible heros that fight crime and save the world. Bullets riccochet. Punches glance. Danger is averted.

As the gaming picked up on the whole hero idea, gamers got to save princesses of imaginary worlds and stop evil from ruling the land. There were normal heroes; humans charged with super hero-like duties to save princesses from evil dinosaurs or returning the land from the creeping darkness of evil pigs. But there were also these superhero characters, still fighting their longtime battles from their comic book worlds, transported into digital form for us to experience with our two, human, mortal thumbs.

So why still have lives for these unbeatable heroes? Why should characters who span generations of our lives live any different in a video game.

To my knowledge, Superman Returns was the first game to address this issue. When it came out last November, Superman was indestructible. The mechanic of 'life' was removed. The paradigm was shifted. No matter what I did, nor what anyone else did, I was an indestructible superhero. Unbeatable. But then I realized what Superman Returns had done. It had gone and made things much more difficult.

Supes' objective was still the same: save the world. But this time, he had to save everyone else too. As destruction and evil rampaged across the map, Superman had to make sure that damage to the city and the lives of the people didn't reach epic proportions. Now, instead of a health meter for Superman, there's a health meter for the world.

As Halo 3 denies people everywhere the right to read books and go outdoors, again we are charged with the duty of controlling a hero. A super-human soldier. Not the virtually indestructible Superman we've come to know and love, but the protagonist of a story that inevitably will finish the fight and save humanity. Does dying as this character create a challenge is the game or does it take away from the experience we are meant to experience as the developers have intended?

Halo 3 is a short game, yet complex in it's story. Only on the easiest difficulty setting do most gamers get to experience the story as it was meant to be. But as gamers, we want a challenge. We want to be tested, yet we do not want to fail. We want to experience the hardships of our beloved Master Chief and still be protected by his armor and super abilities. We don't want to die.

So instead of creating immense levels and filling them with wave after wave of enemies armed to the teeth, is there some other way to test the mettle? To prove that I am capable of being a hero without suffering the mortal's death?

What Superman Returns did was just that. It created other factors to consider when fighting the generic enemy. You were faced with life altering changes that weren't meant for you, but for others. Choices that superheros make every day.

But maybe it's easier to program the destruction of your life than it is to create scenarios of lives to save or puzzles to solve or missions to complete in timely manners. With superhero games already having superhero-sized budgets, it could be too much to ask for every role playing game to have "next generation" ideas in gaming along with those "next generation" graphics and "next generation" prices.

Why I Don't Play RPGs

Here's the deal: I really, really want to play RPG games. Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, etc. They're beautiful, usually have a better story that most games, and offer up really long game times. They have a lot of bang for their buck. They are basically a novel on a disk.

So why don't I play them?

Well, let me preface this by saying I absolutely loved Earthbound on the SNES. It's the only RPG I've played beginning to end. I rented it from the rental store two or three times in a row to complete it. It was my RPG gateway drug. But oddly enough, whenever I need another 'hit', the initial taste is sour and annoying.

The most annoying facet of RPGs that I don't like is the inactivity. Racing games like Gran Turismo and Forza are RPGs of sorts. You have to upgrade in one way or another to continue. Side scrollers test you with button mashing and timeing and puzzles in between powerups and levels.

RPGs are simply the most boring activity known to man. You read text. You read action. You read battle. You manage menus, stats, weapons, armor. It's sort of like reading a book and playing a board game at the same time.

I consider myself an average gamer. A guy's guy. I like sports and cars and women. So why don't I agree with the millions of people (yes, I know they're mostly kids) who buy Pokemon every couple of years, even though it's the same game over and over. I guess it's the same reason why I never collected baseball cards or know who won the World Series in '82 and who was the MVP that year.

And even though I love information like databases and websites, I'll never be able to get past that hump that is an RPG game. It seems to me to be the one area that people don't really flirt with in gaming. I know I'm missing out on a great deal of games. And when I think about that I immediately gawk at the nearest game rack for Pokemon and Final Fantasy cover art.

Maybe, just maybe, this weekend I'll pick up a used GBA Pokeman or DS Final Fantasy redux and sit myself down in the funeral home this weekend next to the other 8-year-old addicts and "behave myself".