G-pinions

In the early afternoon yesterday, word got out that TeamXbox, some website I had never heard of before, was going to reveal to the world a brand new Xenon title on the night of March 31. Though the pessimistic internet community held strong in the belief that this was merely an elaborate April Fools prank set to crush the dreams of raving Xbox fanboys the world over, I stood strong knowing no website would be so foolish. Thankfully, TeamXbox proved they were not only above such childish pranks, but they also have some rather lofty contacts within the industry. They secured the exclusive first information about an upcoming Xenon title and the world was finally privy to their secrets last night. Introducing Huxley - a title so far off the map I'm not even sure the genre it resides in currently exists.

Huxley is a First Person Shooting Massively Multiplayer Online... experience. We'll call it an FPSMMO for short. That acronym looks so unwieldy I can only assume my guess that no other title could be categorized as such has to be true. To dash one Scott Hannan's hopes completely, the Huxley universe is not a medieval fantasy one. Rather, it takes place in a near apocalyptic future where energy is scarce and anger is high. The name Huxley comes from the author of Brave New World... though I don't remember much shooting in that book.



Don't get Huxley confused with games that take place in a first person perspective but focus on strategy. This is a pure action title, in the same vein as Doom, which just happens to take place in a huge online world. A persistently changing online world at that. As I have lived and died where my console will take me, I have no real experience with a persistent online world. Any online game I've played, like Halo 2 for instance, is a static world that, while it may change slightly during the course of a match, suffers no permanent changes. The idea of a living breathing world, which can change and be manipulated by thousands of gamers, is a concept so far beyond what I have experienced I almost cannot fathom it. I guess consider what Fable was supposed to be - a world where one can plant a tree and watch it grow or create their own path through a dense forest - only translate it to a first person shooter setting.

There will be three character classes in the game. Definitely less than any MMORPG out there (which probably have about fifty different classes including Chef Boys and Bards) but more than most FPS. There's your standard Sapiens (like Dan), Alternatives (Eddie Vedder) and Hybrids (Prius). We can only speculate on differences at this time, so I'm going to guess that Hybrids can fly, Sapiens can swim and Alternatives can dance. If I am wrong, someone should definitely steal my idea. "Dancing into battle" isn't currently a phrase, but it should be.



In the broadest of strokes, there are two ways to play this game: following the story or leveling up. Both are played online but have different focuses. Like most FPS, there is a story which forces you through different worlds and enemy encounters. Either by your lonesome or with a group of like-minded friends, you can go through the natural story progression if you chose. Imagine something like a co-op Halo only on a much, much larger scale. If story is for lames, though, you can just attack every man, woman or child you come across to improve your own standing. Obviously, Player vs. Player will not only be allowed but encouraged. Even though I would rather have a medieval setting, the idea of rounding up twenty friends with a couple choppers and flying into battle seems amazing.

Other than that not much is known at this time. It does use the Unreal 3 engine, easily the most advanced graphics engine in existence. It will also come out on the PC, though it is unknown if Xenon and PC players will be able to join up together. If they can it may have to sport a simplified control scheme to ensure PC gamers don't have an unfair advantage. It is being made by some Korean development team I have never heard of - Webzen - who apparently has some experience with online PC games. Oh, and it should be out within the next 12 months.

So how did you like my blatant plugging of this game? Quite the shill, eh? But if a game sounds awesome what can I do? Objectivity be damned, I want this game. Here's hoping I don't have to pay a subscription fee to play.

While I didn't end up dropping the funds on a PSP, I've still gotten plenty of playtime thanks to my generous coworkers. Yesterday I received a good helping of Untold Legends, and I must say it's a pretty odd bird. On the one hand, it's like a very poor man's Norrath - the so-so graphics chug along painfully slowly, there are even less ways to customize your character, the story and dialogue is somehow even more terrible (and believe me, the Everquest universe was LAME), it seems like you almost exclusively fight spiders, and music is typical fantasy MIDI, and using the analog nub to control your character in such a manner makes your thumb bones splinter. In short, it was a bit rushed.

On the other hand, there are a few new features that, while small, all but eliminate the most annoying problems of it's console brethren. The biggest one being the ability to directly compare an item you're shopping for with what you currently have equipped with the touch of a button. Considering how much time you spend collecting, buying and organizing your items, this is an incredibly nice feature to have. The other big fix is harder to explain, but basically makes it so you don't accidentally enter new areas too soon by pressing the pickup item button, which I beat Tom about the head for many a time.

It's weird, but I actually see this becoming a trend in PSP games that are more or less ports of console games - the graphics, sound and control will obviously all be a bit worse, but they'll fix numerous little problems with the time in-between the releases. I guess I'd rather have those things fixed than further tweaked graphics, but it's a weird trade-off, especially if it becomes a trend.

And, because this wouldn't be a proper post without at least some bit of news, it appears that Mitch Hedburg is dead. I really hope to hell not, as he's easily the funniest man in the last decade. My intuition tells me that this is a slightly early April Fools joke; let's hope I'm right.

A whirlwind tour through the world of gaming. As the outcry for brevity grows louder with each passing post, I'll whittle each of my topics down to one tidy paragraph.

Most important topic first so this tasty game doesn't get lost in the dirty sex and utter stupidity of my next two topics. Sony finally officially announced 24: The Game yesterday. I realize this is a rather anti-climatic announcement seeing as I wrote a huge preview for this back in January. However, that was all speculation and this is finally the real deal. So how excited am I for 24: The Game? Let's just say I eschewed the pencil entirely and wrote it down on my Must Have list with a thick, black Sharpie. The gameplay is being divided up between the different portions of the show. So there will be driving based missions; missions where you have to take on the terrorists with your gun; stealth based infiltration; interrogation; and even some intelligence work. As cool as the gameplay sounds, the real reason I am excited about this is the story. It's being penned by one of the writers of my favorite show and, since it takes place during the tumultuous period between seasons two and three, should tie up all the questions that have been lingering these past few years. Add to that the real life voices and images of Keifer, Elisha and others and I am so sold it's not even funny. I finally understand what it's like to be an ignorant casual gamer. After lambasting the unwashed masses for years as they bought all the licensed crap that was produced, I will follow the same path with 24. I don't even care if the game is good or not; I will own this game.



According to this news story, Electronic Arts is finally going to make a portable Command and Conquer game. Do you think EA decided to make it on the GBA, one of the best selling systems in the history of gaming? Or do you think they're going to make it for the DS, a system pretty much designed for Real Time Strategy games? Tough decision, no? Well, actually it isn't. Since this is EA we're talking about, the new Commmand and Conquer will be on the PSP. I know I rip EA all the time but this isn't even about them. This is about the sheer stupidity of many of the higher ups in the industry. Yes, the PSP is the most powerful handheld on the market, but does anyone think it would be the ideal platform for an RTS? The DS, with its touch screen control, could very nearly replicate the keyboard and mouse combo for PCs. When you factor in the wireless/internet play, Command and Conquer DS could be a system seller. As it is, EA is just going to release another crappy Command and Conquer console game to a user base that will just ignore it. Such a waste. Hopefully Blizzard will see this and realize they could make a ton of money porting Starcraft to the NDS.

And now... the moment everyone has been waiting for... Hot and Dirty Gamecube Sex!

Click here to see the whole spread. Yummy.

I am probably the most masochistic gamer out there. No, I haven't rigged my controllers to give me a little extra punishment with each rumble, but I have been known to engage in a few acts that are far from typical gamer behavior. Check out these three atrocities I have forced upon myself in the last month alone: first, I played through all forty hours of Paper Mario 2. When you factor in the length and almost hypnotic redundancy, this is probably the worst RPG I have ever played all the way through. If you're keeping track of my all-time least favorite RPGs, Paper Mario 2 has now knocked Granida II off the perch it held strong for almost five years. Final Fantasy VIII still comes in as the worst RPG I've ever had the misfortune of playing - I could only make it five hours into that. From torturing myself with Paper Mario, I went down the Gandhi path of masochism: resisting the urge to buy Timesplitters: Future Perfect simply because Electronic Arts is evil. You have no idea how much it's killing me to know that Nick owns the game but is still playing freaking Halo 2 every night.

The most recent act of pure self-hatred is my current jaunt through Knights of the Old Republic II. I can hear the gasps rising from my fellow readers already, and I haven't even posted this column yet. Yes, KotOR II, a game I penciled in as the best of 2004 after my first 10 hours, is turning out to be quite an ordeal. What makes this a masochistic experience is that, despite the huge flaws proudly flaunting their ineptness, I am still enjoying this game fully. I am a sick, sick man.

While complaints of bugs and glitches in the original Star Wars RPG ran rampant through the internet, I was lucky enough to play through the title nearly unscathed. There was the occasional dialog glitch - removing some of my choices so I was forced to do things I would not have normally done - but as a whole it was as solid as any other epic adventure out there. Somehow, using the same basic engine as the original, Obsedian has butchered that outdated mold so much that my Xbox literally creaks and groans as it attempts to spit out the garbled code.

Here are a few examples of the torture I go through trying to get to the meaty parts of the game. A few weeks ago, after loading up a saved game, I found that none of my party members were present. I assumed it was supposed to be that way - there are certain moments of both KotOR I and II where you are forced to go it alone. So alone I went, to take on a whole room full of Mandolorians. Those are the brutish rebels with a penchant for throwing grenades and shooting high tech guns. After using most of my medkits and all of my grenades, as well as more than an hour of my precious time, I finally defeated the lot of them. It was a heroic battle to be sure, one I was proud of at the time. As the story continued to unfold I realized with some surprise that my precious party members were not returning to me. It was only then that I realized the game had made a mistake - my party was removed without my knowledge even though they were more than welcome to join in the melee. Making the game ultra hard by dwindling my firepower to a mere one third of what it should be is quite lame.

While that was only one section of the game, there is a much larger problem which unfortunately is present throughout the journey - the AI. More specifically, the artificial intelligence of my party members. Yesterday, I went through a mini mission killing slavers who illegally boarded my beautiful ship, the Ebon Hawk. Fighting took place in relatively tight quarters, but that is no excuse for what I witnessed. My teammates simply refused to fight. I would manually switch to them, order them to attack a certain enemy in a certain way and then realize, with horror, that no one was actually helping me. I would switch back to the characters and find them running around in circles. Or they would simple be standing there, watching me get beat to hell, while they refused to fire a gun.

This breach of AI ethics is a recurring problem throughout the game. I'm on the forest fields of some moon at this point and cannot make my third party member, an aging Jedi woman, actually fight with me and my partner. At the end of every battle I see her casually walking towards me, her sword never even drawn.

The game is so fantastic in most other areas that horrible glitches like these are just so frustrating. I want to just play through this game in peace, but the designers simply would not make it that easy. Why couldn't this game be delayed a few months to work out all the kinks? Except for Mario, which should have a new title every summer, and sports games, no title should have a sequel sooner than two years after its predecessor. Sadly, as much as I believe those words, I will gladly buy KotOR III this Christmas if it happened to materialize.

Thanks to Brendan's unabashed love for all that is new and shiny I was finally able to get my hands on the PSP this weekend. Finally, I don't have to listen to Nick tell me that my opinion is worthless because I haven't actually played the system. Have my feelings changed now that I've experienced Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix and Darkstalkers Chronociles for myself? Not in the slightest.

Ok, that may be a mild exaggeration. While I used to say the biggest problem with the PSP was its exorbitant price point, I would now place the controls at the head of the class. While I experienced no problems with any of the face buttons, that seemed to be the only area I didn't have some complaints. Upon first looking at the system the digital pad seems much nicer than any of the current consoles. It's much tighter than what you would find on the PS2 controller - finally removing those gaping holes that have haunted me the last ten years - and is large enough that I can confidently say the target audience is not a fetus. Unfortunately, the days of pin-point control are long gone.

It may have simply been a problem with sloppy programming, but Darkstalkers was nearly impossible for me to play. It's easier to play through Ninja Gaiden blindfolded than correctly pulling off two consecutive fireballs. And don't even try to do a dragon punch. Capcom anticipated the problems people would have and included a simplified control scheme. This means you can hit right and punch to pull of a dragon punch. However, this only solves a little bit of the problem. Because of the way I have to hold the PSP, my hand would cramp up after two fights. I tried holding it every way I could, including resting the system on my lap and pretending it was an arcade stick, but I couldn't find a way to hold it that both gave me good control and didn't cramp up my hand. It was like being forced to play P.N. 03 over and over again. Bad times.

The other major problem is the shoulder buttons. They just don't feel right. While I was able to pull off grinds and air moves in Tony Hawk's Underground with moderate success, I just couldn't get the revert to work. The timing is always difficult on that - you have to hit R just as land an air move - but this felt like pure luck. It may have simply been my own incompetence, but I have enough confidence in my THUG abilities to think this may not be the case. The shoulder buttons are actually less responsive than the GBA SP's. I would place it around the level of the Z button on the Gamecube. They work but aren't something you'll want to use if you can avoid it.

Oh, and the R button tends to stick if you don't hit it hard enough. It's a mild complaint, sure, but it just makes the shoulder buttons that much worse.

The system isn't a complete failure but I was disappointed with it. The graphics are slick, though not as good as what I've seen on the PS2, and the sound seems to be of the highest quality. But that's all pretty pointless if it's hard to control the actual games. I'll give it another look if any of my friends buy one, but I really don't think I'll have any reason to purchase this any time soon. Maybe I'll just wait for the redesigned PSPee to come out.