Fable 2:

A wonderful fantasy world to lose yourself in for hours on end. If you liked the original Fable, you'll love the sequel. Visually the game is stunning, and I found myself really enjoying doing sidequests off of the critical path much more than I normally do. The simplified combat works just fine - though I found that an initial Raise Undead blast (to summon shock troops to distract enemies) followed up by a powered-up Inferno could kill almost anything. My only real disappointment was the ending... it was fine, but that's about it. Felt significantly weaker than the rest of the game preceeding, but that said, certainly wasn't "bad" per-se. Did make me think over my final decisions... but I wish the impact upon the world was a bit more earthshaking. Final tip: start buying real estate early on and renting it out. You'll soon build up a siginificant ongoing revenue stream (even when the game is off!) that helps a lot down the road.

Fallout 3:

Have just started, so will keep this short. Never played Fallout 3, but played Oblivion a great deal. The overly-large, rambling world that I faulted in Oblivion has been tightened up... the world feels much more dense and real. Visually stunning... really captures what a post-holocaust world could look like, and I often myself just staring at the sun rising above the ruins. (Of course, I'm easily distracted by shiny objects, too... so take it for what it's worth.) Biggest complaint so far is character animation, especially in the third-person view... just doesn't look right, especially when compared to titles like Gears of War 2. Stick to the first-person view IMO.

 

Found a link in my mail to Edge Online's "Oh. My. God!!!" article where they go through 50 of their favorite moments in gaming. This is obviously a subjective exercise, but I really enjoyed the article as it reminded me of some of my favorite moments. Those include:

• Final Fantasy VII - Aeris
• Ico - The relationship with Yorda
• Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - Going "insane"
• Knights of the Old Republic - Darth Revan revealed
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - Meeting Farah again at the end of the game
• Dead Rising - The lawnmower
• Bioshock - "Would you kindly"
• Call of Duty 4 - Shock and Awe

Fair warning - the article has what some might consider minor spoilers if you've never played the respective games. It's a tricky line to follow - at some point a storyline becomes well enough known that there really shouldn't be any hesitation about talking about spoiler points... everyone who watched Titanic pretty much knew the boat sunk at the end, right? Still, I tweaked my favorites above to not be as specific as the article.

I wish they'd caught a few of the really old school moments from games like Zork or King's Quest. "Count Leaves" or "Plugh" or learning to spell "Rumpelstiltskin" leap to mind... ah well.

I like Halo. That's probably not a shock to anyone - in fact, you probably expect a love of Halo to be a part of the Microsoft indoctrination process. That said, I really do like Halo, even without the brainwashing. I'm not a big fan of the multiplayer (I know, I know - heresy!), but I love the story and Halo mythology. There's just something epic about the Forerunners and the hints you glean about them as you play the game that's completely hooked me, and I'm looking forward to finishing the story arc with Halo 3.

The game isn't perfect. In fact, I'll expose myself to the Microsoft snipers and say that in many ways Halo is over-rated. The weapons are good, but nothing mind-blowing. Gameplay is a lot of fun (and extremely well-balanced), but man... can it be repetitive! I just finished replaying Halo 2 (on Windows) and was reminded of this when I went through the umpteenth cloned hallway and walked through nigh-infinite series of ambushes. <sigh> And for the sake of not breaking my keyboard against the wall, I won't even mention Halo 2's non-ending.

All that said, probably the most frustrating aspect of Halo for me is the wonky audio mixing. As I said, I just played the single player game of Halo 2 through to remind myself of the story and try and catch aspects I'd missed before. Unfortunately, even the second time through there are many places where Cortana tries to speak but you can't hear her clearly, or one of the sentinels (Penitent Tangent in Halo 2) hints at backstory but you just can't catch it. It's incredibly frustrating, but luckily someone pointed out a great Halo Universe "bible" that you can read to get a great summary - including integrated details from the novels.

Take a read if you've never "gotten" the Halo mythology. And do check out the games if you haven't... they're a ton of fun, especially co-op. Frankly, the most fun I've ever had on a console was playing through Halo 1 and Halo 2 on the Xbox with a friend on the couch. Good times!

Yes, oddly enough they're related.

I wrote some thoughts earlier on Crackdown that were super-positive. Having played through and "finished" the main storyline as well as received quite a few of the achievements, I thought I'd give you a few more thoughts.

First, the game really is just that fun. It reminds me of the old days when you could hop into a quick shooter on the 2600 and just play for an hour or so. The sandbox world is wonderfully realized, and even as you head off and chase down different bosses you'll find yourself distracted by a missed orb, a great place to put a ramp truck, a huge collection of explodable things just begging to go bang... the list goes on and on.

That said, the game is not perfect. As you attack bosses you quickly realize they're really nothing more than a differently-named henchman with buffed-up health. It's still lots of fun finding different ways to get to them, but the actual end-fight is pretty anticlimactic. A couple of rockets or kicks and you're done. Targeting can be finicky, and sometimes you stay locked on a target that you just don't want anymore. And the majority of the music is disappointing; I like a few of the rave/ambient tracks in the Volk territory, but that's about it.

It would be unfair to say that co-op is the saving grace for the game because even if it hadn't been included you'd still have a ton of fun. The good news is that co-op does add yet another layer of replayability, and I just can't stress enough how much fun it is. But even there one wishes there were more cooperative requirements or objectives. While you can attack bosses together, there aren't any "co-op only" bosses or puzzles that would require you to coordinate and solve the problem. Some might consider that a strength (in that you can individually attack the world independently), but I'd love to be a little more closely-connected to my partner. There was a social intimacy when playing Splinter Cell cooperatively that Crackdown is missing.

But here's the funny thing - even though I can highlight areas I'd like to see Crackdown (or hopefully, a future sequel) improve, it's sort of crass to criticize the game. In the end it really does deliver an incredibly fun experience. I saw a blog post somewhere (which I can't find again unfortunately - please send if you know it!) where someone compared Crackdown to watching a Ninja jump a flaming motorcycle over the pit of death but being disappointed because the Ninja wasn't juggling. (Note that I'm not remembering the description correctly either, but you get the gist.) It's still an amazing experience, built on an firm base, and being able to experience it with a friend (game-design flaws and all) is a blast.

So how does this all relate to Zelda: Twilight Princess? Simply put, I think I'm done with it. I'm about half-way through Zelda and enjoyed what I've played of it. But when Crackdown came out it won over my time and I didn't even think about Zelda for weeks. Now that I'm "done" with Crackdown I could return to Zelda at any point - but I just don't have the urge. And when I try to analyze why, I realize it's for two reasons.

The first is simply that it's the same game I've played a million times before... it's good, but hasn't advanced in, what, a decade? And much as it pains me to say it, there are enough new experiences out there that I fear I may have outgrown Zelda as it exists today.

The second is that I realized that what would have brought me back to Zelda, as-is, would be the ability to play through with a friend. Just as Crackdown adds a whole layer of replayability thanks to its co-op support, being able to play co-op in Zelda would be absolutely magical. I think it could even hit that magical level of social intimacy Splinter Cell was able to achieve in cooperative play. I can only hope that future versions of Zelda will take that online, connected experience seriously. If so, I'll be back in a heartbeat.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Crackdown and have been playing pretty religiously. It's the first game in a while that's been able to break my Zelda addiction. I'm probably two-thirds of the way through Zelda (desert region now), so that's a pretty big achievement! Not going to write a review since I'm nowhere near finished, and there will be plenty of official reviews coming out sometime in the near future. But I did want to share some thoughts/impressions.

Overall, love the game. For what it's worth, I was never a Grand Theft Auto fan; there's something about the gangster/crime theme and overly-hip attitude didn't do anything for me personally (though I'll admit I'm obviously in the minority here). The only fun I ever had with GTA was when I ignored the story and just played in the world - and that's what Crackdown has really nailed well. It's pretty apparent that an immense amount of time was spent building out the city you play in. The regions (three islands) feel quite distinct from one another, and many areas just "feel" right - meaning that you could easily imagine places like this existing in the world today.

A few folks have written about the verticality of the game - don't underestimate this aspect. When you first start playing your character's stats are pretty low. You might be able to jump to the eave of a low-hanging roof and pull yourself up. But as you start finding power-up orbs (green candy/so tasty!) you quickly start being able to jump higher and further - and that's when you find that the design of the city I just described extends up as well. You can climb higher and higher over time and there's a great feeling of satisfaction from finding a choice perch to rain death and destruction upon your opponents.

Your character's ability to power-up is pretty impressive. I had a chance to play co-op with Ken Lobb for a few hours, and as you might imagine he'd pretty much maxed-out his character. The result was pretty amusing as I'd start "hopping" my way toward a location and he'd just jump a few city blocks and make it in one leap. There's also something amusing about exploring the world, hearing "You forgot your car!" and then ducking as it sails over you to crash and roll on the beach. The agency vehicles are also fun in that they literally expand and evolve in front of your eyes based upon your skill. Ken would jump in and the SUV would basically beef up in front of you, sort of like a mad Transformer. But if he hopped out and I hopped in our ride quickly toned down. The fully maxed-out vehicles also have some great bonus powers that I won't disclose - the fun is in the finding!

Speaking of fun, obviously there's a game here where you'll go chase down crime lords and their minions. I won't go into tons of details, but I will say that you should listen to the descriptions of what the different bosses enable for their organizations, and the effect your removing them has on the overall crime syndicate. What's described is actually exactly what happens in game terms - if you remove the guy who supplies explosives, you won't have to face those (oh so fun!) rocket launchers at a later point in the game. The effects are subtle when playing on the standard level, but they're key if you play on the harder levels. It's almost a puzzle to figure out the best way to dismantle the organization.

The final aspect I love about Crackdown is its co-op support. I've been evangelizing co-op for many years now and I have to say this title is one of my favorite examples yet. (May god have mercy on my soul the day Nintendo delivers a co-op Zelda Twilight.) Anyway, I spent a few hours playing with Ken and it was a blast. Interesting trivia - when you're playing co-op, each person's game world is actually running on each console, in lockstep. What this enables is that each person sees their world in terms of orbs/power-ups they need to collect, but share in-game experiences such as battles, explosions, etc. You can do some really fun stuff - I think one of my first questions to Ken was why I couldn't shoot stuff when sitting in the passenger seat of the car he was driving. Answer? Why sit inside when you can stand on top? And that's what we did. I think we spent 15 minutes just rampaging around city freeways as he drove. I stood on the roof (feet nailed), picking off cars with the rocket launcher and watching them soar past our heads as we raced by.

What else can you do when playing co-op? I'll just say that things go bang really, really well in this world:

[YouTube:eaWqseH2A60]

So obviously I've been gushing about the game, which no doubt helps my pro-Microsoft flunkey credentials in the community. Sadly, the game is that good... so be it. Is it a perfect game? No - the auto lock-on controls are sometimes a bit touchy and miss the target I'm looking for. And co-op, while incredible fun, does take a bit of focused attention if you want to stay and play together. It's easy to get a decent distance away from your partner while playing... but then again, the fact that you can attack the problem your own way could be seen as a positive as well.

Check out the reviews when they hit to get more detail. I'll be curious to see if GTA-loving fans like the game, especially as I know three people (not including myself) who didn't like GTA but really do like Crackdown. And download the demo from Marketplace! It's how the video above was made, and you'll get a really good sense of whether you like the game or not. Look forward to your thoughts when you get your hands on it!

Just hit the web. Wanted to highlight it as it's a great, non-technical summary of the current console war that really boils the current state down quite succintly (and accurately, in my opinion). Couple of quick quotes:

If you or your loved ones are even halfway-serious gamers who want to experience world-class high-definition graphics and an online gaming service populated with millions of other players, go buy the top version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 ($399). On the other hand, if you do not really care about the latest graphics and want instead a riotously fun experience that can be shared by the entire family, including the nongamers who usually flee from a joystick, try to get your hands on Nintendo’s new Wii ($249).

And what about Sony, and the Playstation 3?

No problem. In fact, if you are anything other than a complete Sony fanboy (that’s Internet lingo for an obsessed, myopic groupie) go ahead and forget about the PlayStation 3 this year. Even if you find one, the overhyped PS3 does not deliver an entertainment experience commensurate with its cost ($599 for the top version, not including special cables to connect to a high-definition TV), and falls short of its main competition in important ways.

The big picture is that Microsoft and Sony are duking it out for dominance at the top end of the video game business while Nintendo has essentially carved out the less hard-core, more budget-sensitive swath of the market for itself. The Wii (pronounced “we”) is a mass-market entertainment device. The 360 and PS3, by contrast, are each trying to be the world’s best top-end video game system and also high-powered living room media hubs.

The big problem for Sony is that the 360 performs those functions better right now, and for less money, than the PS3. Sony may get the PS3’s act together in the future, but right now there is basically no rational reason to buy a PlayStation 3 instead of an Xbox 360.

I'm personally amazed to see mainstream press writing articles like this. Last generation it was painfully obvious many writers weren't gamers themselves, and didn't really understand the topic they were writing about. As such, you'd see a lot of regurgitation of press releases and PR speak. This time around people are obviously using and playing the systems themselves, and writing what comes of that experience. Very cool!

Just saw this on Major Nelson's site, but you can download a couple of Dead Rising "webisodes" off of Marketplace, and view at least one of them on the web here. (Not quite sure what a webisode is vs. a trailer, but why not? <shrug>)

I'm really looking forward to this one. I've had the pleasure to try it out at E3 and it reminds me of a video game version of Shaun of the Dead... a very good thing indeed. I'll share some thoughts on it once I've had a chance to dig into it.

I wrote some thoughts last week about problems with game journalism in this industry. In that article I pointed you to a great piece Chris Buffa of Gamedaily.com wrote, and I wanted to highlight that he's since then written a second follow-up article with his thoughts on how to fix some of those issues. I wanted to highlight just one quote that I thought was dead on; one can hope management at these gaming publications and sites read Chris' article and take heed.

"The bottom line is it's better to have ten good writers that require very little editing than ten awful ones. Restaurants don't want chefs that don't know how to cook, NBA basketball teams don't want players who can't play the game, and websites and magazines certainly don't want journalists that require an hour or more of hard editing each and every day. We should want to surround ourselves with the best people. Sadly, that means that some of our colleagues have got to go."

A couple of you also sent me another article from Gamedaily on what game developers think of game reviewers. No stated author (which makes sense as it's mostly a collection of quotes from industry folks), it gives an interesting point of view from game creators on game journalism.

Ok - back from the Gamedaily love-in. In my earlier article I also gave you my opinion on some of the better writers out there today. I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I missed a few who I should definitely have included, and wanted to take a moment to give them some kudos to them as well.  (For the record, a kudos and a buck might get you a cup of coffee here in Seattle… so take it for what it’s worth. )

First, let me quickly recap the folks I listed last week (cut and paste):

Penny Arcade - it's impossible to say too many good things about Gabe and Tycho (and the rest of their crew). I've had conversations with them in the past about their attitudes to accepting advertising. Simply put, these guys turn away free money because they don't believe in the product that some people would like to promote on their site. Most importantly, the whole crew are gamers, and when they speak to you it really is just as though it's one of your gaming friends giving you their honest opinion. (Much to our chagrin at times.) They also play a huge role in keeping this industry honest - believe me, a lot more than you might expect.

Evil Avatar - sort of a combination of Slashdot and Digg, but for gamers. I’ve found that the Evil Avatar editors tend to be pretty fair about what they post on their front page, and just as important, readers tend to have reasonably thoughtful comments. You’ll still see fanboy wars, but they’re usually damped down pretty quickly. Also appreciated is that a lot of industry insiders frequent the boards which tends to drive more insightful discussion (albeit with a lot of passion). :)

GameSpot – especially Executive Editor Greg Kasavin’s reviews. Gamespot’s news reporting tends to be slightly more objective than some of the other large sites, but they do fall prey to the PR hype machines almost as much as the rest. (Sony’s infamous PS3 video renders from E3 2005 are a great example.) However, GameSpot does have a few excellent writers, Greg Kasavin being one of the best. He scores fairly, and it’s obvious from the history of his reviews that he’s played the games enough to write about them intelligently. It doesn’t hurt that he can string a decent sentence together, as well.

IGN – specifically Douglass Perry’s reviews. I know a bunch of you are rubbing your eyes in amazement as we speak with my inclusion of IGN. Yes, the site is notorious for rumor-mongering and just bad writing overall, but I have to point out one of the exceptions with Doug. Just as with Greg Kasavin above, Doug’s writing is definitely far above par, and more importantly, his reviews are tightly written and don’t wander off into the strange padded verboseness you often see from other writers on the site. A good example of his writing can be found in his Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II review for Xbox 360. It’s three pages long, but hits all the major areas you care to know about, including the key question of how a RTS controls have made the transition to console.

To that let me add a couple of the folks I missed. I somehow doubt these guys have trouble sleeping at night due to my omission, but I’m hoping some other readers might appreciate knowing who to keep an eye out for.

Gamedaily.com - especially Chris Buffa for writing the series of articles referred to above. Yes, back to the Gamedaily love-in; so sue me. I'll admit I wasn't aware of Chris before the whole video game journalism issue flared up again, but I'm glad I do now. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some more of his work; the boy can string a mean sentence together and I've really appreciated his insight on the matter.

Next-gen.biz – especially their editor-in-chief, Colin Campbell. It’s great to see a publication stamped with the “Next Generation” imprimatur again as it’s been sorely missed since shutting down in the 90’s. Next Generation was one of the few gaming magazines to take both the business and art of games seriously, and Next-gen.biz has adroitly taken up that mantle so sadly dropped.  You’ll generally find tight, to the point reporting on events on the industry and significantly better than average “analysis” than most other sites are capable of. Also highly recommended is their Daily News Bulletin, which you can sign up for here.

Edge-online.co.uk – the online arm of the British Edge magazine. Edge was the only other significant competitor to Next Generation back in the day (this was before Games(tm), now sadly defunct), and thankfully has managed to survive to this day. Both Edge and Edge-online are characterized by thoughtful writing that treat both games and the game industry with a great deal of respect. A great example is Edge’s “Time Extend” retrospective on the original Prince of Persia (at least, the original revitalizing of the series in the last generation). To quote, “Time Extend is a series of retrospectives examining the accomplishments of significant games and assessing their impact. In this Time Extend, we consider Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time and discover how it broke the mould, and why the sequel broke our hearts.” Both the magazine and website are highly recommended, though I’ll warn you the magazine will cost you a pretty penny if you live outside of the UK. And you have to put up with the occasional wonky use of the King’s English.

IGN.com – yes again, this time for Matt Casamassina’s writing. Matt is an unapologetic Nintendo fan and doesn’t hide it (nor should he). However, his reviews are in-depth, well-written, and complete. Also appreciated is that Matt is very thoughtful about his journalism role. A great example is this recent blog entry of his where he ponders reviewing launch titles on the Nintendo Wii, and the challenges that reviewers will face both with the graphical differences between platforms and Wii’s new controller.

As before, I’m sure I’m missing folks, and you guys have been great with suggesting some of the people you really respect and appreciate. Please feel free to send them my way so I might be able to add them as well in the future. And as always, appreciate your thoughts!

[Edit: fixed up some paragraph spacing issues.]

[Edit: added link to Prince of Perisa "Time Extend" article from Edge. Thanks to BrokenSymmetry for reminding me!]

Just wanted to introduce you guys to a good friend of mine, Loraan, who I used to work with years back. Loraan came up to Seattle this weekend to hang out, and as we often do, we ended up chatting about games and the game industry. The interesting thing about Loraan is that I've used him for years as a touchstone for the "lost" or alienated gamers in the industry. In my mind these lost gamers are people who love games, used to play at least somewhat regularly, but have gotten frustrated with clichés and inevitable problems in game designs. One example might simply be called "approachability," or making the game easy to pick up, play, and eventually, finish (which doesn't necessarily mean dumbing it down). Another might be the repeated use of difficult or repetitive Boss Creatures, and the frustration (and game-quitting) mentality they engender. Another might just be poor story design, clichéd plots, or just bad writing overall.

These (and many other issues) all cause people to lose interest in playing games. This isn't a good thing for you and the industry. Ever gamer we lose means fewer sales for the industry, which in turn reduces the amount of money available to invest in game quality, technology, and properties. In addition, there's the personal aspect in that every one of those gamers who drops out who is a personal friend reduces the number of people you might want to spend time playing games with. That's a drag on online communities as well.

What I've found interesting over the years is that Loraan is the sort of person who wants to play, starts many of the games we all love (on multiple platforms), but ends up getting frustrated and never finishing... and it's often for the same reasons each and every time. I'll state that I finish more games than Loraan only because my pain threshold is probably higher (as you might expect, as it's also part of my job). However, I completely agree with a lot of the reasons he's highlighted in the past that are issues to him, and I thought his thoughts on the topic might drive some good conversation and perhaps might even spark a few ideas in the industry.

Think of Loraan as a guest writer. We're not sure how often he'll be able to post, but I'm hoping we'll see something once or twice a week, and I'm sure we'll see his thoughts in comments as well. Please feel free to jump in and give your thoughts. My hope is to drive some constructive conversations to drive us forward. We look forward to hearing from you!