G-pinions

SO. You might have noticed some big changes around here. If not, you're not on our new site. Please bookmark accordingly. There's not a whole ton of new content (though there will be once the columns go up), but it looks about a million times better doesn't it? Now if we only had some readers...

In arguably larger news, Tom and I got to play a good ten minutes of Halo 2 each at Bungie's four-city I Love Bees event this past Thursday. Yes, I realize that it's not such a big deal since hundreds (thousands?) of people have been playing the leaked version for weeks now, but doing it with Bungie's blessing in a theater full of cheering geeks was definitely the right way to be introduced to the game. It's kind of pointless discussing the actual game after such a short playtime (though we did see a good two hours of other people play it) but suffice to say it will meet everybody's expectations. If you think it will be the best multiplayer game ever, well, it will be, and if you think it's just a solid upgrade of the first Halo, well, it's that too. More important than the actual game itself is the fact that every damn gamer in the country is going to be playing together online every night for the next year. We also walked away with some cool swag:



The DVD on the left is basically a collection of the whole audio part of ILB. If you were into it at any level it's really badass, if not it's a confusing relic that you can make a quick $20 with by selling online. And the lanyard on the right is just a piece of neat memorabilia.

To jump around a bit more, has everyone seen what Bungie is doing with the Halo 2 stat-tracking? It's kind of insane. Not only can you keep track of every single detail of your performance after every game online, but you can view where on the map you were every time you were killed/killed someone and with what weapon, from several angles. Observe:



This is at least nineteen times as awesome as anything that's been done with an online game before, and will make jackin' hogs and nadin' cores all the more sweet. Oh, and everyone needs to check out this ridiculous Halo fan video; it's horribly terrible, but so sincerely made that it's compelling nonetheless. Man, that needler alone is priceless...

I imagine we won't be talking about much else for the next week or so. I estimate that I'm about four-fifths of the way through the main missions of San Andreas, and I'm hoping to get a bit closer to the end tomorrow. It's as amazing as when I posted a week ago, no doubt, and arguably the greatest game ever (that is, someone could make a good argument for it). It's just hard not to be sucked into the Halo hype, and write/think about it constantly. But anyhow, take a look around the new site, and I'll most likely bee (*bites knuckle*) back at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning with a full report.

Canada is clearly where it's at. Don't worry, I won't bore you with political rants. This is a video game site. Rather, I will dazzle you with news from the far north. In the vast expanse of space located somewhere north of New York is a tiny building known as Prince's Shanty. Here, Ubi Soft Montreal employees are finishing up Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Before this newest bit of information was leaked, I was certain this would be the best one player game released this year. Now, I have a feeling this game will, in fact, be a dinosaur who craps brownies.

PoP:WW has a Live mode. That's right; you can go online with the new PoP. That may be a bit misleading. You can't actually go online and compete in a battle arena with other Prince's from around the world. That would not only be stupid but very, very lame. What you can do sounds even cooler.

There are two modes that you can play through and post your best times online. The first is a combat mode. You are faced with a million or so wanna be Prince Killers and have to finish them off as quickly and disgustingly as possible. Feel free to decapitate Ned The Evil Killer or use Raul as a human body shield. Sounds pretty awesome.

Even better than that, though, is a time trial through an obstacle course. Clearly, the best parts of PoP were the puzzles. Platforming in 3D has never been more fun. Now there is a mode that revolves around getting past various traps as quickly as possible. This should be ridiculously fun.

The only problem is the control. I was planning on getting the PS2 version because the first was flawless. I wouldn't want to risk playing on the Xbox controller and having a lesser experience. But these two modes are exclusively on the Xbox. Oh, dilemma of dilemmas. I'll probably end up getting the Xbox version now, but I'm not too happy about this whole exclusive thing. PS2 is online after all. Why isn't this in both versions?

Anyway, yay for this game and yay for life. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to apply for citizenship in Spain.

Brace yourself, I am about to write about a topic I have, for the most part, steered completely clear of throughout G-Pinions 9 month existence. While I have trudged up my favorite argument - EA is evil - on at least 2 occasions, there are two huge segments of the gaming world that I have completed ignored. This isn't by design mind you - these two particular segments just don't make their way into my collective thoughts very often. The time for that has changed.

Behold! A column about PC Gaming and Arcades! What is this, 1993? Am I still playing Dune II every weekday of my life? Am I still bugging my mother to drive me 30 minutes to the closest arcade that has my beloved Mortal Kombat waiting to be played? Is Nintendo still the king of the gaming world? Is Sony still pushing Beta? More importantly, why was Sony pushing Beta in 1993?

The answer to all those questions, except the last, is a resounding no. For you see, there is actual news to be laid forth in regards to PC gaming and coin operated machines. Curious to know what it is? Desperate for me to get to the point after wading through more than 200 words? Exhausted by pointless question after pointless question?

Half Life 2 is coming to an arcade near you.

I really have no right talking about this at all as I am the only "Hardcore" (HNKaG? Nope...) Gamer in the world who still hasn't played the original Half Life in any form, but I am talking about it anyway. This is actually very exciting news to a gamer like me, who doesn't own the most powerful computer, and would really like to take part in the Half Life experience.

The most important question and one I'm sure you are all straining at your seat in anticipation of its eventual answer, is this: what sort of controlling mechanism will a PC shooter use in an arcade environment? Unfortunately, I have no idea. Clearly, they will not simply build a cabinet with a built in keyboard and removable mouse. This is a bad idea for at least 52 reasons, mostly centering on someone switching the W and S keys.

I assume they'll make something similar to that, though. My first thought was a track ball, but I'm not sure how that would work. Most PC shooters use one mouse button for shooting and another for jumping. Using a track ball and hitting buttons with the same hand would be ridiculously hard. But, just throwing those two buttons on the left side of the console and force players to move their characters and shoot with the same hand would be difficult as well. So, I still have no idea how this will work.

Nevertheless, this is a reality. Next summer, you will be able to go to your local arcade and play one of 3 modes in Half Life 2 - story mode, co-op and deathmatch. The two modes closest to the period are done with network connections within the same arcade or across the country. There is no information on how the story mode will work, but I assume it will severely restrict the amount of health available and make you insert more coins whenever you die.

Anyway, I am very excited about this. I'm sure there will be a control scheme designed with console/arcade gamers in mind as adapting strictly PC controls is impossible in an arcade setting. I'll just have to hope they can design a system that works, as clearly that will be the most important aspect of this deal. I would like to say this will pave the way for other games to follow, but I honestly don't think we will see many situations like this in the future. If it's successful we may see Unreal 2K5, but don't expect World of Warcraft or Doom 3 to appear anytime soon.

So, Resident Evil 4 will be appearing on Playstation 2 as well, later next year. Funny how things work. Capcom seem to be developing a pattern here - Killer 7? No longer exclusive. Viewtiful Joe? No longer exclusive. P.N. 03? Well, Tom can tell you about that. Resident Evil exclusivity agreement? Gone to hell. What did they get out of that in the end, a RE1 remake and RE0 which no one seemed to care about? Pretty weak. I mean, it's nothing but sensible to release as many things on PS2 as possible at this point because of the massive installed user base, but it's gotta be a bit of a rectal harpoon for GC stalwarts. Announcing it at this point also seems like kind of a jerk move, especially if it's only being released much later. There will be a good deal fewer Gamecubes requested this Christmas once the news gets out, and that's not good for anyone in the long run.

So can PS2 handle it? Well, it can obviously handle a version of it. If they Silent Hill-filter it up it could probably end up looking just short of great, though it will never touch the GC version. In fact, I'll bet it will be a fairly different game by the time it hits Sony's shores, especially with nine months of feedback behind it. Regardless, this will piss a lot of people off, even if it pays off big in the future. On the one hand I weep for GC fanatics, but on the other hand it's just smart business.