As anyone who knows me is aware, I have a tendency to be kind of an impulsive buyer.  This, however, was a carefully planned purchase, right from the start.  I had a deep-seated need to know exactly what the deal was going to be with 4th edition.  I have a lot of friends who cursed Wizards of the Coast repeatedly (and some with good cause) over the last few months.  I was among them.  There was so much wild speculation about what would or would not make it into the core rulebooks for the new edition, that it was really difficult to glean any sort of actual truth from any of it.  A state of affairs that I’m certain WotC was counting on.

Well, I bought the PHB and read it.  My verdict: Not half bad.  In fact, I would even say that it is pretty cool.

The core mechanic is the same.  Roll a D20, add some stuff, high numbers are good.  But the vast majority of the rules beyond that have changed fairly dramatically.  It’s still the same game, but the changes that they’ve made, while making character creation and progression almost unrecognizable, point to an interesting trend in what table top role playing is sort of becoming.

There was some talk about dumbing down the game.  Making it simpler.  This is not 100% accurate.  While some things were streamlined (the nice way of saying “simplified”), looking at it, I don’t see any evidence that this is actually an attempt to dumb anything down.

The thing that anyone interested in checking out 4e ought to know, is that this who thing is set up for a particular kind of experience.  There’s an aesthetic being promoted here that reflects some sort of group desire.  People who play D&D, on the average, have always wanted a “badass” combat-centric system.  This is certainly the most combat-centric system I’ve ever seen.  It’s really designed to make combat something that’s actually kind of fun to do.  I’ve never liked combat in 3.5 nearly as much as I’ve liked all of the other stuff.  The actual “role-playing.”

Wizards has acknowledged that gaining a level only ever serves the purpose of making you more able in combat.  All of your abilities are designed to make you better at killing stuff.  Right.  But one of the problems with 3.5 is that some level gains are really lame.  Level 7, for instance.  No feat.  No ability point.  Nothing.  Just some hitpoints and skill points.

In 4e, every level appears to have meaningful decisions to make.  Which is interesting.  It makes leveling up kind of an interesting and new thing.  It does seem a little munchkiny, at first, but I think in the end, the new mechanics will promote teamwork in a way that 3.5 didn’t.  The emphasis on powers means that each player will be able to make meaningful decisions each round.

Like I said, there’s a specific aesthetic that they are going for with this system, but in my opinion, it’s not a bad one.

There are, however, some objections that I have.

The Dragonborn are lame.  Really, really lame.  They fit even worse than the Warforged did in Eberron.

The PHB does not have Bards, Druids, Barbarians, or Monks.  I really always felt that these (especially bards) were standard.  These classes are so fundamental to the game, that their absence is palpable.  It’s something that leaves a pretty nasty taste in my mouth.  I understand that they will be in future installments (a PHB2), but this feels like a pretty big plot to make gamers spend another $34 on another book.  However, given that aforementioned emphasis on powers, the class chapter in the book is really big.  Each class has its own “spell set” in essence, and it takes up a lot of pages.  I just think that they could have included bards at least.

This is a very high magic game.  It almost feels like you need a +1 weapon right out of the gate. This is part of the aesthetic that I’ve mentioned.  I think the game can work in a lower magic world, but that’s going to require a DM that knows how to adjust the CRs of various encounters.

The 3.5 campaign that we played a couple of years ago ended with five characters at level 12-ish.  I only had one magic item and it wasn’t a weapon.  So, I’m not used to high magic.  I’m much more used to a sort of LOTR feel.

This high magic thing is an aesthetic.  You can’t pass a value judgment on it except as an expression of personal taste.  I think it can work.  I want to play it.  I will play it eventually.  I think we should give it a chance.  The only problem is deciding whether $34 is going to be worth it.

I normally don’t play video games that are directly based on movies. I love movies that are based on video games. No matter how bad they are. But movies almost never translate as well to the interactive screen. Some of the iterations of Spiderman might be exceptions to this rule, but even they are not really “games” in the sense that they exist intrinsically as an interactive, standalone experience. These games are inextricably tied up in the films that they are based on, and not necessarily the respective mythos that the films are drawn from.

In every way, Iron Man is a product of this Hollywood machine that knows people will pay good money to further their experience with the film. Robert Downey Jr. does the voice of Tony Stark in the game. The character model also looks vaguely like RDJr (something I will get to in a moment).

The fact of the matter is, Iron Man was a really fun movie to watch. But the game is…well, it’s bad. I read a few reviews, and they were mostly poor. Interestingly, Game Informer was somewhat more forgiving (it was this review that convinced me to give it a whirl). And there is a reason for this. Parts of the game are fun. Certain things in the game are cool. They include, but are not necessarily limited to: flying, shooting, hovering, and switching back and forth between these activities.

Alright, let’s judge it as a game first: The character models are awful. Tony Stark only has the most passing resemblance to RD Jr. This in itself would not be a problem, except that he’s supposed to look like RD Jr. This game is based on the film. They move in a really wooden, half-assed motion capture way. The sound is passable. The music is…cliched, but unremarkable enough that it serves a functional purpose without being annoying. The dialogue is not quite so snappy as the film.

The game itself is punishingly difficult. It makes no apologies either. Why do these bad guys have so many fucking attack helicopters anyway? And jets? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Since the film is the primary vehicle for this particular story, and it’s obviously meant to net the most cashola. The game suffers. The game cannot be taken as an alternative to seeing the film, which ideally, it ought to be. But there’s just not a lot of substance. There is no cohesiveness to the story being told either. It only makes sense insofar as it is based on a film. And yet, it doesn’t have the same story as the film. It’s different in several ways. Someone who had seen the film will have just barely enough of a frame of reference to understand what’s going on in the game.

What I find interesting about the whole thing is that the film has a certain amount of drama. People go to see these films because its gives you that motivation that human side of the character. Sure, they could have two hours of Iron Man flying around blowing shit up, and while it might be entertaining, it would also be exhausting, and more than likely boring after a while. With no way of connecting to the characters, it just isn’t a very good story.

Arguably one of the best parts of the film is the sequence where Tony is building the Mark II suit. All his witty repartee with his robots and with Pepper Pots makes Tony seem human. The film is successful because, on the one hand, it has a decent script, and on the other, they managed to cast a real, honest to gods, actor in the title role.

But you can’t necessarily have that fluff and plot development in a video game like this. Unless you’re Square-Enix, cutscenes need to be short and to the point. Players want to be blowing shit up, not rehashing all the same crap that they saw in the movie. A very tricky balance needs to be struck in order to make the whole thing work. More often than not, it fails.

In a film, we don’t get constant action because of plot development. In a game, we don’t get plot development because we want to blow shit up. At least in this case. It would be fine if the blowing shit up part wasn’t so frustrating. All they had to do was make it less frustrating and this would be a fun little number for maybe $35 retail (not the $60 they’re actually charging).

The game falls flat because there’s no depth, it’s too punishing, and it stops being fun once you’ve played around with the suit for a while. The controls are wonky.

The graphics in missions are actually pretty good.

As much as we’d all love to play a game where we actually get to be Iron Man, it’s going to have to wait until they find a way to separate what’s good about a video game from what’s good about a film. Until that day, we’re just going to have to wait patiently and play the games that were born that way.

I bought an Xbox360 a little late in the game, which is to say, I’ve had to play a little catch up. How fortunate for me, then, that Gamestop has used games for pretty cheap (especially if you have the discount card). I picked up Overlord at the suggestion of a friend for around fifteen dollars. I can’t stop playing.

Just to make it absolutely clear what I mean, I want to make some comparisons. I typically use Gamespot as a sort of benchmark for how wrong people can be about games. Grand Theft Auto IV just came out. It has a perfect 10 on Gamespot. Overlord came out some time ago, and scored a 7.5. I bought Overlord just before GTAIV came out on the assumption that when said car-crash extravaganza was officially released, it would probably eclipse Overlord. The verdict? It’s complicated.

Last night, I got pissed off at GTA and threw Overlord back in. It’s strange because GTA was known as one of those games that you could supposedly get lost in for hours upon hours. And yet, I’m having a difficult time “getting lost” in Liberty City like I used to. I think the reason is obvious, and it doesn’t necessarily speak ill of GTA, but instead speaks volumes about Overlord.

So far, I like GTAIV. But I’m addicted to Overlord. That a game like this can eclipse what is forecasted to be the highest grossing video game of all time, is telling to say the least.

Both games place you in the game as an avatar of “evil.” You’re a bad guy. You kill people for fun. You maraud the innocent and slaughter anyone less evil than you (everybody). I joke of course, neither game boasts the vileness that the conservative media think they do. Overlord is too cartoony, and GTA is…well…I think we should talk about GTA another time.

So what’s the deal with Overlord? What makes this game so compelling that GTAIV will sit and languish in its case for at least a couple more days? Did you ever play Pikmin? It’s kind of like that only it isn’t as frustratingly hard. I don’t know, maybe Pikmin isn’t hard and I just suck at it, but there’s something about this game that has you solving tasks that are actually possible to complete.

Similar to the way today’s underground nightclubs blur the lines between genders and maybe even species, Overlord blurs the lines between genres of video games. It’s got an an awfully slick visual design, the art direction is cartoony, but still pretty awesome. It’s got humor (if a bit toilet-centric). You have far more control over your minions than you did in Pikmin. You can fine-tune and tweak your little dudes’ strategies with an ease that is not apparent right out of the box. The controls are far from intuitive, but once you realize why they are the way they are, they become a toy in your hands. I take that back. The controls are intuitive; it’s just that this sort of control scheme has only been attempted once before (with Pikmin) and not with as much grace.

I have a couple of gripes, but in a strange way, they point more to the game’s strengths than to its weaknesses. First and foremost: I want more control of the camera. All you have is a button that centers it behind you and a button that locks it on a target. That’s it. You can’t free look. And it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I’d really like to be able to swing the camera around to see my minions trailing behind me like a rabid pack of attack terriers. That have swords and clubs.

I’ve given this camera thing a lot of thought, and considering that there’s only two joysticks on the controller, it would be tricky to implement. All of the other buttons have useful functions. I’m telling you, if you play this game right, you will use every button on the controller. It is packed with functionality. It works really, really well. A possible solution that I came up with (all by myself) would have been to use the left bumper as a multi-purpose button. Perhaps if you tap it (and the game routinely differentiates between taps and holds, another stellar layer of control configuration), it will center the camera behind your dark lord. But if you hold it, maybe it changes the right analog stick to camera control (or maybe the right stick). This would be tricky, because in either case, whenever you’re trying to just look around, you won’t be able to control either your avatar, or your minions. What I’m saying is, they did absolutely everything that they could with the controller, and if there was one bit of functionality that had to be left out, I’m glad it was this one, because everything else is utterly indispensable. I think from here, it’s just the limitations of the console game as a medium and not the fault of Overlord at all.

My other problem, and this might actually be unforgivable: Where the fuck is the map? Did I just miss it? Have I not turned it on? A peasant says “east of here is the castle that’s overrun by evil halflings” or whatever, how in the fuck am I supposed to know where east is, without a map or a fucking compass? Huh? Where’s the fucking map? I get annoyed with stuff like this. I’ve pressed every button, tweaked every option, but there is no map. Even a map that comes up in a menu would be nice. How hard could it possibly be? It’s it just a standard assumption? I really, really, really want for there to be a map.

But. Of course, you knew there was a but. I’m still playing the game. And somehow, not having a map became a minor inconvenience. You learn to navigate by landmarks (which is really how normal people navigate in the real world anyway, what with real-time HUD maps inserted in your retina having not been invented yet), and you get pretty good at it. You get pretty good at making mental notes about where everything is in relation to this or that warp portal. And since you spend a considerable time running back and forth across the landscape collecting treasure, slaughtering sheep and hobbits, you get a pretty good feel for it. What this says is that the world is so vibrant and interesting, that you notice things about it. There is something palpable here. You can really bite into it. Yes, no map is a problem. But because of other things that work in the game, it’s actually pretty minor.

I really like the look of the game. You can choose to swing your sword or axe or whatever, cast spells and whatnot, but you can also choose to simply raise your arm and send a stream of little demon imps piling on top of your enemies and breaking stuff. The simple fun is just watching it all work. The graphics, as I said, are cartoony. And some people have criticized the game for not letting you be evil enough. I don’t know about you, but slaughtering every peasant in Spree seems pretty evil. How much more indulgent do you need it to be? Besides, I think the game strikes a pretty ironic tone with it all. If you don’t like that tone, you’re probably not going to like the game, but it really fits pretty well. It’s funny, it’s indulgent, but it’s very lighthearted. You can even choose to play as “not so evil,” where simply conquering the world is enough, and mass murder does not need to be in your agenda (though killing halflings ought to be in everyone’s agenda).

I would like to hear some criticisms of this game. Some legitimate criticisms that are inexcusable. I want to know why this game got a 7.5 when it clearly deserves something higher. Leave them in the comments section, and I will be sure to call you a noob.

I’ve been playing Pirates of the Burning Sea for about a week now. I’ve probably logged about ten or so hours. I am currently right in the middle of the fourteen day free trial that came with my brother’s account, and it got me thinking about MMOs.

First of all, the nuts and bolts of PotBS. The game is okay. There are two things about it that could make it truly worthwhile. The first, is ships and ship combat. The second is the player-driven economy.

In order for a game like this to succeed and be good, it must have developed, deep, interesting combat. And it most certainly has that. When you become engaged in a battle on the open sea, you and your opponent(s) go to an instanced bit of water and maneuver around each other, lobbing chunks of metal at high speed in an effort to punch holes in each other’s ships. The cool thing is, you can see these holes. Zoom in on your ship and you can see the tears in your sails, and the huge gaping wounds in your hull. Grapeshot kills crew, chain shot busts masts, and good old fashioned canon balls blast holes in your hull and sinks your ships. The combat is fun, intense, interesting, and there are lots of special abilities and whatnot that keep it interesting. For example, if you are a pirate (as opposed to a privateer or merchant with a nation), one of your special skills is the ability to flog your gunners so that they reload your canons faster, thus allowing you to lob more frequent volleys of death at your opponents.

The ocean looks good, the ships look cool, and the combat is fun.

The other big draw for this game is the economy. There are four “factions.” You can choose to be British, French, Spanish, or Pirate. Whatever. If you choose one of the first three, you can choose between Privateer, Merchant, or Naval Officer. If you’re a pirate…you’re a pirate. But there’s a vast and complex economy no matter which faction you choose. Almost all worthwhile items in the game are player-created. This includes ammunition, swords, guns, rum, and, of course, ships. In order to make any of these commodities, you must build warehouses and manufacturing buildings. To that end, each character is allotted ten plots of land on which to build factories, warehouses, and such. For instance, if I wanted to build hull patches (a very useful consumable object which restores hull integrity in the heat of battle), I would have to have a lumber camp (for the wood), a hunting lodge (for animal hides), a tannery (for leather), and I think a couple of other buildings. In order to build one thing, you’re going to have to be able to produce a lot of different goods.

No one, however, can build enough buildings to build ships. You can have a shipyard, but the raw materials needed to construct a ship are numerous and varied. Thus, there is an auction house, where you can buy timber, rum (for your workers), fabric, etc. However, every town has an auction house. Depending on where goods are available, you might want to go to a different auction house in order to get goods cheaper. You might want to sail to Mexico to get iron, or to the Bahamas to get sugar (for making rum). You can put in an order for any material from any auction house, but you are going to need to sail to the place where that good is in order to pick it up. So you’re constantly going to be micro-managing your goods in an effort to keep business running.

But everyone is a merchant to some degree. So everyone has the possibility of making some serious cash if they play their cards right. If you want to build ships, you’re going to have to have a guild with a complex structure for determining who produces what goods. On the other hand, if you’re more of a solo guy, you can totally just distill rum and sell it on the black market for quick cash. Make a lot of it, though, and you’ll flood the market, driving the price down.

Okay, so the economy does one other thing. Say you’re a Spanish merchant. And you look at the map and there’s a British town that has access to a raw material that you want, you can coordinate with your fellow Spaniards to flood that town’s market with Spanish goods, sowing the seeds of unrest. Eventually, if all goes well, the area will become contested, and a full-scale brawl will ensue. Open PvP combat seems to be one of the draws of this game. Unlike World of Whorecraft, the endgame for PotBS is all about PvP. There’s not high-level raiding, here (oh, it exists, but this is a PvP heavy game).

But, like I said, it got me thinking. The game has a couple of fundamental flaws. One: the avatar combat is not very good. It doesn’t look cool, it’s not a lot of fun, and it’s difficult, sometimes, to see what’s going on. When you board an enemy ship, it’s just a melee, and meaningful tactical decisions are a moot point. The best strategy always seems to be: everyone attack the leader. It’s usually over quickly, and, if you’re lucky, you win.

The other problem with this game: server population. And here’s the clincher. The really big problem. And it’s a problem with MMOs in general. Auto Assault had problems with this, and so did others. The problem, is this: how do you compete with World of Whorecraft? How do you stay in the game? How do you keep it running in the midst of a damned near saturated market.

There are something like eight or ten servers for PotBS, and players are already screaming for a server merge. Populations are so low, that the game is not balanced. Interestingly enough, the British faction always seems to be the most populated, followed by the Pirates, and, go figure, the French are not very popular in the USA. Weird.

There are those MMOs that manage to keep a dedicated fanbase. You’ve got Ultima Online, which, despite all odds, continues to have a dedicated, almost obsessive fanbase. Only the hardcore need apply here. You’ve also got EverQuest II, which also manages to keep a number of people online, if only because they’re unified in their hatred for WoW. Also, there are the other niche games, such as Anarchy Online, and Eve Online, and a whole slew of free MMOs that pop up all the time. Stuff like Maple Story, etc.

How does a game compete with WoW?

Warhammer Online seems to have an idea of how to do it. If you watch some gameplay videos, you’ll see that they’re just going to copy everything that Wow does and make it look cooler (i.e. more violent). I swear to god, it’s been so long since I’ve played WoW, that when I first saw this video, I thought I was watching a WoW video. I thought the video was mis-labeled.

I don’t know if I’ll buy into PotBS. It hasn’t latched onto my imagination yet. And I don’t know if the few things that I like about the game are enough for me to let it latch onto my wallet on a monthly basis. I’ll try to log a few more hours, and I’ll let you know what my decision is. But for now, I’ll say this: if the game wants to survive against the likes sof WoW and Warhammer Online (which is probably going to be as popular as WoW, and may even kill WoW to a certain extent), it needs to perform a server merge, and do something to make the melee combat less stupid. I think the game could be great for the niche market, but they’ve got to be careful. Maybe reducing the fee to $10/month, would help.

That’s all I have to say about it. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

I’ve played Mass Effect up to the critical moment. I’m sitting a hair’s width away from saving the entire galaxy from total annihilation. All I have left is to fight my way through the gauntlet of death, confront the final nemesis (or two), and stop the switch from being thrown. I kind of like it this way. I played it last on Friday, and then a bunch of things got in the way. I had to grade a bunch of papers, visit a friend on his birthday, and finish reading Dune for a paper that I’m writing.

And so the fate of the myriad races in BioWare’s opus sit, waiting for Shepard to wake from his trance. They sit in a sort of limbo, much like denizens of Ivalice in my save files for Final Fantasy XII. However, unlike FFXII, I do intend to finish Mass Effect. Tonight. The fate of trillions upon trillions of humans, aliens, and life of all types will be decided. Tonight. In my easy chair.

Mass Effect is not perfect. It’s got its share of issues, but I think one thing that it does is push forward the ideal that gaming perfection is not always utterly necessary. Take for instance, the Mako in ME, your all-terrain-tank-thing. Its similarity in control and function is almost too similar to the ol’ Warthog, except for a certain something that’s missing. It’s controed almost identically, but there’s something frustrating. When cruising around in the Mako, I almost always feel like I’m an amateur at it. There’s no way to make it look cool when it’s bounding up the side of a mountain. It’s unwieldy and poorly produced. And the stupid Thresher Maws piss me off every time they burst up underneath me. And yet, there’s still a little bit of cool here. The act itself is cool. Put together an away team, drop your super car out of the cargo hold of your ship and bound across an alien world searching for fame and adventure and crazy leftist biotics that want nothing more than to kill you.

Of course, the Mako is probably the biggest problem with Mass Effect. Other than that, I think a few people have had some things to say about the A.I., but I never had any problems with it. I would always just order my party members to stay under cover. Issuing them specific orders, such as, “Sabotage that guy’s rocket launcher,” makes everything work better than just letting them run amok and use their powers how they see fit.

I will say that the learning curve was a little steep. But I have some theories about why. There’s a certain mindset that you need to approach this game with. It’s not a shooter. That must be known before understanding can occur. It looks like a shooter once combat starts. In fact, you’ll be aiming your own gun. You’ll be firing your own bullets. You’ll feel the intensity of the fire fight. But it’s not a shooter. It must not be approached as though it were a shooter. Quick aiming is not always your best weapon.

Skill helps, but you must also make sure you understand your enemy. What kind of ammo are you using? Tungsten rounds against robots. Shredder rounds against meatbags. Know your enemy, as Sun Tzu says. You must play it as an RPG with shooter elements. You also have to know the limitations of the interface. It feels powerful, like you can run into the thick of battle and blast everything in sight, but even at higher levels, this is almost certainly going to spell your doom. The cover system is there for a reason. Let the enemy come to you. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re surrounded, your first order of business should be to pause the game, use a bunch of powers, and then find cover. The two bumpers on the X360 controller pause the game when held to allow you to queue up powers and change weapons. It’s a slick interface during combat.

It took me a long time to figure out how the powers should work together. They’re sort of like force powers, only less spectacular. You can throw, lift, create localized singularities, that sort of thing. You can also cause weapons to explode in your enemies’ hands–one of my favorites. Nearly every power in the game can be useful when used at the right time. And you should always be using them.

Unlike Knights of the Old Republic, where you have magic points, Mass Effect’s abilities just have cool downs. Use a power, wait for it to cool down, use it again. While one power is cooling down you can just use a different one. The rule, I think, is use your powers early and often.

One of my biggest peeves about this game, however, is the decryption and electronics talents. You need them. You always need someone in your party who is skilled in both of them. There’s nothing more annoying than coming up to a terminal with some info on a sidequest, or maybe data about Geth troop movements, or even some sweet weapon upgrades, and your skill is just too low. Too low to even make the attempt. You can’t even try at a severe penalty. This is, without even the slightest doubt, bullshit. If I did have the requisite skill, then I can play the little button-mashing mini-game, or smear omnigel on it to get it open and get the thing I want. But without that skill, I can’t even try. Personally, I don’t think it makes much sense, and the folks at BioWare are going to have to have some sort of a sit down in this issue, because it’s annoying. The thing that annoys me about it is that it limits me in what sort of a party I can put together. I know that since my version of Shepard doesn’t have either talent, I need either Talia or Garreth, and probably Talia because she’s a hair better. It’s frustrating to be constrained in the variety of party that I can bring on my away team.

There are two things that get you in Mass Effect. Combat and story. If you’re not interested in either of these two things, then don’t bother. The combat is wicked cool. The story is truly epic. I’m not going to spoil it; suffice to say, you’ll be trucking all over the galaxy saving the universe from a bad guy. But there are some interesting sci-fi storytelling conventions that have been broken, and some new ones that might be born. If you played Knights of the Old Republic, you’ll know about the extensive dialogue trees. This game totally nails it though. The dialogues are slick, believable, and your choices really seem to make a difference. I mean, really, your choices are 1)I’m a super nice guy, 2) meh, and 3)I just like killing things. But the subtle shades of meaning in these three choices give the game a certain panache. There is so much damned dialogue, and it’s so well voiced, that you’ll almost think it’s you that’s acting like an undiagnosed homicidal maniac. And that’s something really special.

I am a little concerned, however, about Mass Effect 2. If KOTOR 2 was any indication, BioWare doesn’t always fix its problems in subsequent installments. Only time will tell.

I don’t do this professionally. The reason for that is because nobody will pay me to do it. As soon as I find a way to make money doing whatever it is that I am doing, I will pursue it with a fervor and zeal that knows absolutely no bounds. I tell you this because, while I don’t feel I need to defend my actions, I do feel that there are some crucial details that you need to be aware of before I embark on my discussion of Assassin’s Creed.

Basically, you need to know why I don’t own a 360 or a PS3. And it’s because I can’t afford it. That’s why I write about the Wii all the time. I have a Wii. I have no way of getting one of the other machines (though this might be remedied soon). But I do feel that I might have some unique insights into A.C. that few people have touched on. Namely, the realization that this game is almost beyond my ability to describe with mere words. This is the kind of game that video games were invented to be.

I played it on a buddy’s 360. As an opening note, I’d just like to point out three words that are the epitome of gaming convenience for me: wireless controller standard. Making this an integral part of a gaming system was a stroke of genius. It’s utterly liberating.

Assassin’s Creed is not the sort of game that you should zip off and try to beat in as few hours as possible. This is the sort of game where you need to chew carefully, thoughtfully, with joy. Remember what I said about No More Heroes? How there was little merit in just running around exploring? Well, Assassin’s Creed is a wonderland playground that can keep you occupied for hours. Literally, we’re talking about world interaction–on a basic level–that is so entertaining that you will literally spend a very large chunk of your time with this game just taking in the goddamned sights.

The setting is the area around Damascus during the Crusades as near as I am aware at this point. And what a city Damascus is. There’s a part where you’re riding a stolen horse up to the edge of a cliff and the entire city stretches out before you. Up until this point, you’ve had just a taste of what Altair is capable of–and it is sweet indeed. But now, you look out over the spires and rooftops of the great city of Damascus. You might get a little choked up. “For me?” you say.

The guy puts Spiderman to shame. I never knew that Damascus was so uniquely suited to the kind of acrobatics Altair is capable of. It’s not really Prince of Persia shit, but it’s almost cooler in a way. It doesn’t feel nearly as scripted and in certain ways it’s even more spectacular.

The game constantly reminds of you of how vast the setting is. One of way of navigating the city is by means of a map. But that map isn’t revealed unless you can get a really good birds-eye view of the city and, presumably, can get a really good feel for the layout of streets and buildings. You do this by climbing to the highest points in the world. These high perches–and they are unbelievably high–trigger brief events that cause the camera to do a sweep of the city around you. It’s almost overwhelming. Like I said, it’s also a constant reminder of setting. Interestingly, on top of being a constant, tantalizing reminder of a very huge world, I am impressed to a certain extent, at how far the draw distance is on the 360 hardware. You can see from city wall to city wall and we’re talking about a metropolis.

It’s not like GTA in the sense that you drive everywhere. It’s not a high-speed thrill thing. Except on those occasions where you’re stealing a horse to get from one city to another, you’re mostly a pedestrian. Er… a pedestrian who can climb up anything. Sure, you can kind of see how the world was specially built for Altair to be able to show off his crazy free-running skills, but it’s blended so well, that you don’t care. Every ledge is believable and if they just happen to be spaced a little to perfectly, well… so be it.

About the plot: okay, I wasn’t paying that close attention. I was at a buddy’s house, there were people over, and I often was distracted during cutscenes. But, I did get a sense for how it was supposed to go down. You are this one guy who’s been kidnapped by this laboratory where some mad scientist thinks that the entire life story of an assassin that lived like a thousand years ago in the Holy Land is stored in your DNA. Right. I know, impossible and retarded. But it’s actually kind of cool. It explains a lot of how the game works. It makes for a very interesting framework for this game.

You are this guy who’s trying to remember an ancestor’s actions by going through that ancestor’s footsteps. Recreating those events. If you fuck up–either die or fail a mission–then the computer program has to reset itself so you can try again to recreate the memory. You know how Hamlet had a play within a play? Well, this is a game within a game. You’re this dude that’s playing this elaborate virtual reality simulation (video game). It explains how the missions restart when you screw up. It explains why the world seems to be designed for your own amusement.

Assassin’s Creed is, in many ways, a sort of manifestation of everything that video games should aspire to be. It’s excellence on every major front–from it’s stellar graphics and visuals (with, admittedly, a little bit of poor clipping), its intuitive and elegant control scheme, to the openness of its world–are a testament to what entertainment can and perhaps should aspire to be. I don’t really know what else needs to be said. It’s the best game I’ve played in a long time. It’s better than Bioshock. It’s better than Mario Galaxy. It’s better than No More Heroes. It’s better than Metroid Prime 3. It’s going to sell me a 360. I will purchase an Xbox 360 because of this game. That’s right. I will drive myself into financial ruin so that I might continue to taste of these forbidden fruits.

I wonder who coined the term “nerd” or “geek” or, even, what these two words mean.  I’ve always thought they should be worn with a certain amount of pride.  A certain amount of…shall we say, reverence.  To think of them in pejorative sense is to conjure up images of swirlies and getting stuffed in a locker or jocks and their ilk.  Like many other pejoratives, they lose their power over time as the group they are assigned to begin to adopt it for their own use.  Plenty of people proudly assert nerd-hood, or geek-dom.  These are things that have become “good.”

Perhaps it’s just my availability heuristic, but I never experienced any real persecution for being a nerd or a geek.  I’ve always had a pretty easy time getting along with just about everybody.  Perhaps it’s just my own raw charisma.

Look at the above picture.  Good ol’ Gary is explaining something to you.  He’s trying to tell you something.  What is it?  We don’t know.  No one knows.  Not anymore.  Not even the guy who took the picture will remember exactly what Gary was saying at this exact moment in time.

Of course, you all know that Gary passed away yesterday.  I think I would be shirking some sort of duty by not saying something about it.  As a video-game column, you might have your complaints about that, but don’t think for one second that Gary Motherfucking Gygax had anything but the most profound influence on video games as well as table top games.  And besides, no matter what Froyd says, if I feel like talking about table top gaming, I’m absolutely going to.

Baldur’s Gate comes to mind.  Neverwinter Nights.  NWN 2 (which I got kind of bored with, I don’t know why).  And those are just the games that directly use the D&D ruleset.  But hell, there are tons of games out there that are directly influenced by the stat models of Dungeons and Dragons.  Look at Knights of the Old Republic.  I can’t confirm that it’s D20 rules, but it really seems like it.  And, unless I’m mistaken, the P&P Star Wars game uses D20, these  days.

“Wait,” you’re saying.  “Gygax had nothing to do with D20.”  However much influence Gygax had on 3rd edition rules, however much gamers hate and despise Monte Cook for all his assholery, everything that is  D&D started with this one incomparable human being.  This is a guy who had an effect on everyone who plays games whether they are aware of it or not.  He has had as much or more of an effect on fantasy mythos as Tolkein, and definitely more influence on gaming.  Not all gaming has orcs.

And so, I want you all to know, that while Gary failed his last fortitude save, and he won’t be around anymore, his legacy, his mind, his work is all still with us.  We will soldier on.  We’ll go on without him.  We’ll swill brown liquor in salute for this great man.  And we’re sure as shit going to play some D&D tonight.

I had read so many good things about Galactic Civilizations 2 that I was utterly convinced that it would be the perfect game for me. Indeed the whole concept of the 4X game really appeals to my sensibilities. Indeed, I went into GalCiv2 expecting something as amazing as Civilization IV in outer space. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I got.

GalCiv2 is a great game, but something about it doesn’t click the right buttons in my brain. It’s got all the ingredients. Slick interface, epic scale, cool-looking stuff! Customizable ships! But, alas, it’s just too damned slow. It just doesn’t feel right. There was so much positive buzz around it, that my disappointment, indeed, my complete and utter boredom with the game came as something of a shock. And that’s when I found Sins of a Solar Empire. They’re calling it RT4X. Imagine my surprise when developer Ironclad, publishing through–as if you had to ask–Stardock finally found a way to make space strategy work properly.

You see, you can’t just have it work like any old strategy, it wouldn’t feel right. It can’t be StarCraft. That’s too fast. You can’t make it work like a Civ IV clone, that also doesn’t work right, no matter how pretty the spaceships are. Then, some genius intellect over at Ironclad says, let’s do both. Essentially, they took Supreme Commander and GalCiv2 and melded them together into something magical. They built an entirely new kind of interface that surprises and delights.

I’ve been playing the game for about three days now, and I haven’t seen anything like this before. The scale is monumentally gigantic. I’ve been playing a small map, one measly solar system, and the feel of this, the hugeness of it, is impressive. How did they do it? I think their success has two reasons.

One: Slow things the fuck down. I would hesitate to say that the game is plodding. Deliberate might be a better word. It’s got the feel of a turn-based game, because you have plenty of time to make decisions. Nobody is here to rush you. Hell, you can have a whole fleet of pirates knocking on your back door, and you will have plenty of time to decide just which of your fleets to send in and take care of them. There is time for reflection. It’s not a zergling-rush game. You can’t just build a fleet of frigates and sent them careening into the enemy’s gravity well. You have to carefully craft these fleets with just the right balance of things that shoot stuff and things that make those other things shoot stuff better. Capital ships become important investments that become more powerful over time. You put time in. You make these things your own. When one of my carriers was blown up, I felt the pain of its loss. So many good men. So many broken families. So many damned funerals.

Two: Fluid Interface. Of course, I refer to what the pundits–or somebody at any rate–have been calling the “Empire Tree.” This is a collapsible hierarchical list of every object in the universe. Or at least, every object that will have any effect on your possible success at conquering said universe. Look at some screenshots, and you’ll most definitely be unimpressed. It looks messy and illogical at first glance. It looks like screen clutter. But it is so much more than that. The information that is so readily available via the Empire Tree is so vital to your world-conquering exploits that without it, you have no hope of victory. It is this mechanism that makes the entire game possible. You can find any ship in your entire empire and see the relative strength of your presence around any planet with but a glance. Couple the Empire Tree with a queuing mechanism similar to that found in Supreme Commander, and you’ve got one hell of an interface.

The A.I. is another thing that’s braggable. It’s really slick. Ships behave intelligently, allowing you to concentrate on larger strategic decisions rather than the small tactical ones. Of course, those small decisions are available to you, but for the most part, you can automate it without losing battles. Sometimes, you’ll find it important to issue an order to all of your fighters to concentrate their fire on this or that capital ship, but for the most part, your role in battle is as a supervisor. And it’s pretty satisfying. The hard choices that you make aren’t so much how to arrange your fleets, as much as which planets they need to be next to. And you’re not going to be worrying nearly so much about how quickly you’re building stuff as you are worrying about exactly which buildings ought to be orbiting which planets.

If you have any love whatsoever for large-scale strategy, this is an absolute must have. Only an indie developer like Ironclad could have pulled it off, too! Seriously, no big-name developer would have even attempted something so clever and refreshing in the genre. Oh, and did I mention that, like No More Heroes, this game has one fucking cool title?

Sins of a Solar Empire will rock your face off.  Right the fuck off.

It’s interesting that Gamespot was so lenient on this one. I often get the feeling that those guys are just a bunch of haters. Especially when it comes to the Wii. Granted, when it came to Path of Radiance, I guess I’m going to actually go back on my word and go ahead and agree with them. I sold the game back to Gamestop for $17 after only playing half the game and felt really good about it.

No More Heroes (aside from having one of the coolest names for a video game to date) gets a 9 from Gamespot. Game Informer gave it a 6! Don’t know what Nintendo Power has said yet, but these two extremes are very revealing. No More Heroes is a very special game for the Wii, because it has the potential to change, not only the way the consumer views the system, but, perhaps more importantly, how developers see the system. Let’s see some third-party games that are not light fare. Let’s see something really violent!

First thing’s first, SUDA-51 has finally, once and for all, solved the lightsaber conundrum. This is a debate that I’ve had with friends several times over a number of years. This nerd paradox involves how can we maintain that the lightsaber is cool, even though we know that it’s a complete and utter impossibility. NMH presents to the rest of the world: the beam katana. Don’t be fooled by a name that smacks of lameness. The hilt of the weapon has a telescoping rod that extends out to hold in place some sort of reflector. The beam is projected from the hilt, where it hits the reflector, creating a beam blade that we can actually suspend our disbelief for. The best part? It looks fucking sweet.

Okay, so there are some expectations that need to be adjusted. I don’t subscribe to Game Informer, but I can see why a review could come out so low. The graphics are “bad” (a statement I will qualify shortly). Also, people have billed it as a GTA clone. If you think you’re going to be playing an ultra-violent Grand Theft Auto (and, indeed, that’s what you’re looking for), you’re going to be so completely disappointed that you’ll probably give up pretty quickly.

This game needs to be approached with a wide open mind. Like Killer 7, another SUDA-51 spectacular, this game is very high-concept. I get the feeling that SUDA definitely subscribes to the idea that video games are art. Or at least that they can be. The guy really takes the medium seriously, and it does my heart good to know that these people exist. I mean, the blood fountains are so visceral and so frequent, that they become a sort of mantra, an ever-present poetry in motion that propels the game forward to new heights of ultra-violence.

Every single kill involves a blood fountain of some sort. A vertically-propelled shower of vital humours showers Travis (your avatar in the game) from every single decapitated enemy. Every single cleaved foe. It’s an orgy of violence.

But there’s something else here. As I said, the graphics are “bad.” That is not to say that the game doesn’t look good. In fact, the artistic style is closer to Frank Miller with its moody high-contrast colors, deep shadows, and gritty angular world. The world is so stylized and has such a bizarre aesthetic that really clicks in the mind.

A few words about aesthetic. The 8-bit sound effects that pop up when, say, you charge your beam sword, or get a bonus super-killer mode, or some such thing, are really nice. The campy atmosphere, the comedic dialogue, the bizarre characters, all add a jocularity to the extreme violence. Any individual element of the look and feel of the game, wouldn’t work. It’s the combined effect of all of this strangeness, this otherworldly insanity, these sounds and sights and motions that create a world unlike any other.

I am fairly certain that SUDA-51 has some sort of strange obsession with lucha libre. I mean, one of the playable characters in Killer 7 wore a luchadore’s mask, and scattered all around NMH, are tons of references to Mexican pro-wrestling. It’s a strange aesthetic touch, because there really aren’t that many people who know…well…anything about lucha libre. I mean, Nacho Libre was probably one of the worst movies that Jack Black decided to ever do, but it doesn’t reveal much about this strange pastime. For those that don’t know, I think this video will be educational enough. Holy crap, that’s some crazy shit. It’s like, okay, here’s SUDA-51, and he automatically gets points for being the first person to point out lucha libre to normal people. It’s like being a fan before something is popular. He was known to wear a luchadore’s mask to promotional events involving Killer 7. No one would deny that lucha is clearly way cooler than American pro-wrestling (for what it’s worth).

Personally, I dig it.

The problems. Okay, well, the biggest problem: the GTA thing. I downplay it because the game really is pretty cool. But the world outside of missions is only as cool as its surface appeal. The fact that it looks cool. On the surface. Underneath, it is not a place where you can spend any time just enjoying it. There’s nothing really going there.

Take GTA, you’ve got this whole world to explore and just exist in it. One could spend hours just running around exploring GTA’s game worlds. In NMH, you’re going to spend your game world time getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible on your–admittedly pretty cool-looking–motorcycle…thing. There’s nothing in the game world that keeps you wanting to be there instead of involved in a mission, whether it be an assassination job or a part-time job collecting coconuts or mowing lawns. Seriously, mowing lawns is more fun than cruising around on your damned motorcycle…thing.

There is a side quest involving collecting objects in the outside world…but, well, there’s nothing else in that world that will make the search itself inherently rewarding. You can’t run around killing people senselessly. You can’t even activate your beam sword except in missions. You can’t do a lot of the things that make GTA so much fun.

The fun in No More Heroes is all in the missions. The meat and potatoes of this game lies in the story, the dialogue, the blood fountains, and the addictive gameplay.

If you liked Killer 7, play this game. If you like unmitigated carnage with no sense of logic or coherence, play this game. If you like Frank Miller, play this game. If you like GTA and only GTA, don’t play this game. If you’re a square and aren’t interested in video games except as the “next new thing” as opposed to a possible artistic expression, then don’t bother. This game is unique and uncompromising in its mission to deliver an experience unlike many others. Perhaps unlike any other.

I haven’t talked about World of Warcraft yet here. The reason for that is because I gave up the game more than a year ago and haven’t looked back. In the end, it was a surprisingly easy addiction to break. I played it for about a year solid and then got bored and quit. The thing that’s interesting about it is that I did play the game for a year solid. That’s more than I play any game. I get bored very easily, and WoW, managed to keep me wanting it for a pretty long time.

However, my tendency to get bored shows up on my WoW account. I think I started and abandoned probably about twenty or more characters. I think I had six characters over level 20, two over level 40, and my highest level character was 55 (a human mage, if you must know).

Anyway, the reason for this discussion is this. In case you didn’t read the article, I’ll summarize: the Chinese government is putting time limits on how long their people are allowed to play World of Warcraft during a period of time. Basically, if you play the game for more than 3 hours, your character’s ability scores will suffer (if you live in China). I suppose, being the government of China, they have certain powers, even over the copyrights on the software that they import. I don’t know if Blizzard has much of a say in the matter.

There are a couple of interesting angles that one can look at this development from. First of all, this is actually going to be hardwired into Asian servers that host the game. This means that Blizzard has to actually make a special patch for their servers in Asia. I honestly don’t know who has to pay for this to be done, but it ain’t going to be cheap. Millions of Chinese people play MMO’s, so they probably have tons of servers, and while the software only has to be fixed once, all of the servers are going to have to be patched. But since this is a mandate from the Communist Party, Blizzard pretty much has no choice.

Now, what about morality? Does the Chinese government have the moral authority to dictate how much time its people spend playing WoW or Lineage 2? I mean… are somebody’s rights being infringed? Now, whether or not playing MMO’s is healthy or not, should this type of paternal ethic be allowed? I would compare it, to a certain extent, to the argument over the legalization of marijuana.

Oh, and another thing, there’s the little issue of professional gold farmers and level grinders. These are those plucky China-men who play this game for 12 hours a day for cold, hard cash! In case you’re aware of this practice, these are the dudes that are paid by lazy gamers to harvest tons of mobs (mobile objects: i.e. monsters) for gold and loot and then sell the virtual gold to virtual tourists (not really gamers in any real sense) for real-world currency. Or, you can give your account info to these cats and they will level-grind your character for you, saving you the mind-numbing dullness of doing it yourself. Of course, you pay them for the service. What’s going to happen to these honest laborers doing all the hard work for you, so you don’t have to?

How are they going to feed their children? Think of the children!!

Anyway, just some food for thought.