Thursday, April 12, 2007

Battle for Suburbia

With so many types of meat, cheeses and spreads in the world, it may seem presumptuous of me to select just two ingredients that combine to make a perfect sandwich. I may not be an expert in fine cuisines, but I know my sandwiches. Despite the wide array of cured meats and gourmet mustards available, two ingredients have been able to rise about the rest and become the staple against which every other sandwich is measured. Of course, I am talking about Peanut Butter and Jelly. It doesn't matter if your butter is smooth or chunky, your jelly made from grapes or strawberries or if your bread is cut with a horizontal or diagonal touch. These are the two best ingredients in the world of sandwiches.

In the world of gaming, there are two elements that also combine to form a delectable offering that even the most prudent connoisseur would not be able to turn away from. The first ingredient comes in the form of reckless destruction that would make a nun cry. The specific actions are not important. It doesn't matter if you are tossing a caber, swinging decapitated mannequins or firing a simple pistol powered by rocket fuel, blowing stuff up satisfies an inherent human desire that cannot be satisfied within the confines of the real world. However, just like peanut butter alone can leave your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, mindless action needs a partner to truly succeed. And that partner is, of course, a human partner to help you along the way. It is impossible to shy away from the deadly combination of cooperative play mixed with blowing stuff up. And yet, in this modern world of gaming, where marketing dollars can guarantee sales and each title requires a multi million dollar investment, it is nearly impossible for an unlicensed game from a small publisher to get the recognition it truly deserves.

This post was inspired by the upcoming X360 game Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia. I have heard the game mentioned before, mostly from a giddy Nick who was practically foaming at the mouth in anticipation, but I had not put together one coherent thought about the game until today. The publisher is South Peak Interactive. I had never heard of them before. They clearly do not have much of a budget to work with. I have not seen previews for this game. I have not read any gushing impressions. I have not even seen screaming fanboys countdown its release on message boards. It is an unknown entity in a sea of huge releases. It's hard to take notice of such a silly game when Mass Effect is right around the corner, right?

But this is a game worthy of your time. And I want to applaud South Peak for supplying a demo of this game on Xbox Live today. Without the usual hype I expect for noteworthy releases, this game was not even on my radar. But after only five minutes of playing it, and without even a friend by my side, I was in love. This is the next generation spiritual successor to Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It has the same isometric perspective that has been on the endangered list since real 3D became standard. And it is silly, stupid fun. The demo level places you in a house overrun with zombies. You know what you're supposed to do: grab anything that isn't bolted to the floor and blow stuff up. Pure entertainment. The demo even lets you play online with a friend so you get the full Monster Madness experience.

I am so happy I had a chance to play this game before release. I may have missed out on this completely had South Peak not supplied a demo. Which leads me directly into a major problem I have: why didn't D3 Publishing make a demo for Earth Defense Force: 2017. With average graphics and no online play, EDF is bound to struggle at retail. But with just a taste of the ridiculous enemies and intense combat, I guarantee casual gamers around the world would have been sucked in. It's practically impossible to blow up a mound of teeming ants and not smile. Like Monster Madness, it combines relentless destruction with cooperative play. This combination has worked for the last twenty years, providing the backbone for some of the most memorable gaming experiences of my lifetime. As games become more complicated and the costs continue to rise, simple experiences like these will become less and less frequent.

D3 Publishing, please get an EDF demo on the marketplace now, before people aren't willing to give an "old" game a chance. People can listen to me gush about the game until my fingers bleed, but they are going to have to blow up a giant spider for themselves to understand why I am such a strong supporter of this game. If you have finished with EDF, the Monster Madness demo should fill your mindless destitution void nicely until the finished product comes out next month. I just hope there are more games like these on the horizon.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

No more rocking in the free world

The easiest way to test human intelligence: if a person says, "Communism works in theory," forcibly remove their belt and shoelaces and escort them to the nearest poo poo farm. There is no "theory" in which humans will dutifully work together for the good of the community, ignoring their dark, greedy belly. However, there is a sliver of hope buried in this idiotic statement. When left to their own devices in this bleak Free Market World we currently reside, people will always try to screw over their neighbors. I'm not talking about biblical screwing either; I'm talking about anal rape that stops at the wallet. Give a seemingly honest company an inch and they'll take an acre along with every daughter, sheep and bathhouse you own. Oh Activision! You could have saved face with gamers after forcing a litany of soulless yearly licensed crap on the public for the last decade. But instead you spat on the olive branch that is Guitar Hero 2 and opted to buy a silk box to hold your wide array of ivory back scratchers. To hell with you and your greedy ways.

Though millions of people flocked to the PlayStation 2 release of Guitar Hero 2 last fall, a few strong willed individuals decided to hold off on that sizable purchase. Though their fun organs needed some serious coaxing to put down the shiny, black box, it seemed like a good decision at the time. Not only would the Spring release of Guitar Hero 2 (X360) bring with it Achievement and Leaderboards, you would be able to download the original Guitar Hero tracks as well. Obviously, those who choose this path understood the financial responsibilities they were committing to, but it was for the greater good. With the whole gang of Guitar Hero tracks on one shiny disc, it seemed like a dream come true for fans of the plastic instrument game. It was a perfect plan until Activision realized how much they enjoy bathing in soiled money.

Activision released the first nine downloadable tracks today, and it is not a pretty sight. Instead of allowing people to choose which songs they wish purchase and which should be left floating in the ethers of the Marketplace, Activision has jacked up the price and packaged the songs in evil little groups of three. If, for instance, you just want to play Killer Queen, you will have to spend 500 Points and be saddled with Take It Off and Frankenstein. For those not well versed in XBL pricing, 500 Points is $6.25 in the real world. The original Guitar Hero had 30 tracks in it. If the pricing remains the same for the rest of the downloadable content, you would have to spend $62.50 to buy all these songs. Add in the 17 bonus tracks and you would have to spend $100 to own the entire setlist from the first Guitar Hero. That is more than it would cost to buy a new copy of the game complete with plastic guitar and stickers. I am not a big fan of this.

The problem is, there are other music services available. Let's look at iTunes for a second. A downloadable track off iTunes will run you just $1. Furthermore, you don't have to buy songs you have no interest in listening to. Apple does not force you to buy an entire album or songs with a similar theme or any other worthless crap. You simply give them money, a reasonable amount of money, for the one item you wish to own. Activision's ridiculous pricing is even more egregious when you consider what you are purchasing. iTunes offers the original version of the songs you love. The songs in Guitar Hero are predominantly covers. So you have to pay more money, buy songs you don't want in the first place and wind up with inferior versions of those tracks. This is a huge ripoff.

I realize this website is but a tiny blip on the vast landscape of the internet, but I feel I must use what little power I have to inform my readers what a horrible situation this truly is. The only way to vote against this pricing is with your wallet. If you agree that charging twice as much money as iTunes is a bad thing, I implore you not to purchase these songs. If you think it is unfair that Activision is forcing you to buy bundled songs, instead of being able to choose which songs you do and do not want to own, please do not purchase these downloads. The only way these horrible companies will listen is when we refuse to give them any more money.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

36 more days

The worst part is, I have been lying to myself. For all my posturing, for all my forced separation from the drooling masses, I am still just another weak man. Try as I might, I cannot run away from this ever stalking presence. I have been flooding the internet with my slanted view of gaming's undeniable truth for far too long. As I stand on my tiptoes, listening for a whisper about the next Banjo and Mario games, or another peak at the Fable'd dog, I am clearly avoiding the Blue Whale of Happiness right in front of my face. Try as I might to avoid certain realities, it has come to my attention earlier today, in brutal terms even I could not avoid, that Halo 3 is unquestionably the one game I want to play right now more than any other title. The countdown has begun. Only 864 more hours until my first real taste of Halo 3 is served.

In some ridiculous circles, I have been treated as a lightweight, pencil pushing, dine with the fishies member of the Halo Brigade. I have not been invited to stay in the Grand Fandom nor has my love of the franchise ever reached fanatical levels. I was considered a guy who may have owned and played through the first two Halo games, but was not involved enough to speak about the Battle Rifle in polite company. I will admit to a few of these claims. My nose was buried in the likes of Perfect Dark Initial Vector instead of Halo: The Fall of Reach. I do not know a thing about the Halo mythology, who Cortana is and why the Flood seems to be made of something other than water. And I still don't understand why anyone would willingly choose to sit in the passenger seat of the Warthog. While my lack of certain aspects of Halo may prevent me from working for Bungie or composing a Halo Opera, I think my insatiable appetite for the game itself is strong enough to convince anyone but the blindest loyalist that I am a Halo Fan. I belong on the front lines, driving my own Warthog, with everyone else who chooses this path.

The Halo Beta is coming out on May 16th and will dominate the video game landscape until it is unceremoniously pulled on June 6th. With two fell swoops, Bungie has grabbed the retinas of every blue blooded gamer today and forced them to pay attention to their future. The release date for the Halo 3 Beta is already strong enough to warrant a news story from every video game website on the internet. It is on that day that developers the world over will see how flawed their own projects are. It is on that day that people will remember why they bought their X360 in the first place. It is on that day that Resistance and Gears of War will be forgotten. Every other FPS will seem stale and lifeless after tasting a pre-release version of Halo 3. They will seem inadequate and lacking. What tasted like sweet Lemon Meringue mere hours before will turn into a bucket of bum urine. Worthless and disgusting. Possibly containing diseases. The aura of Halo is so powerful it automatically takes two points off the score of every game within ten feet of it.

The news of the Beta was certainly important. It gave the timeline other developers have to live by now and a calender gamers should strictly follow. But what is even more exciting, what forced me to face the reality of my ridiculous Halo obsession, was the Video Documentary. Their third entry in this epic series, today's VidDoc documented the biggest time waster in the history of mankind: Halo 3's multiplayer mode. Not even World of Warcraft will be able to rival this masterpiece. Even with extremely early graphics, the VidDoc reaffirmed why Halo is the best shooter franchise of all time. I couldn't help but smile when brief flashes of new footage from the screen. I'm not good enough to start plotting strategies through these new levels, but I did imagine how much fun it would be to ride a Warthog recklessly over hills and through gates. I laughed during their demonstration of the in game video recorder. I imagined for a brief moment how fun it would be to send Nick a flood of videos of his death at my hands... only to remember that Nick is my superior in all things Halo. So I imagined making friends with a small child so I could spam his inbox with lasting mementos of his embarrassingly inept play.

I am literally shaking with anticipation for this game. I am ready to download those new Halo 2 maps one week from today. I am ready to once again lose myself in Ghosts and SMGs. I'll never admit that Halo is my favorite franchise, but I can unequivocally say it it my most wanted game right now. This wait will be painful.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Guitar Hero and Paper Mario make bunnies cry.

I may not be a religious man, but I understand the purpose of Easter. It was originally some sort of pagan ritual with lots of dancing and maybe even a little hot coal walking. I don't know the specifics. But I do know one things - it is supposed to be about rebirth. Those dead trees and still saviors you see littering the road are supposed to come alive. And with their new life a whole sea of new beginnings is supposed to spread across the land like Ebola on an airplane. Here I am, watching the world turn green from my window, and I have to wonder why nature is able to follow a tidy schedule but the video game industry is so reluctant to stir even slightly. I didn't play Grabbed by the Ghoulies last week for my health! I try to write a column about the weekly releases. I am supposed to play a fancy new game every week. How am I going to do that with one last generation port coming out each week and not a single thing more?

Sorry I didn't inform you earlier, but Guitar Hero 2 came out last week... again. The biggest difference between the X360 version and the PS2 original is the new guitar design. The best engineers in the world put their heads together and drew up a tool that could turn my normal human hand into an unsightly claw in no more than three songs. This is a notable improvement from the first Guitar Hero, where it took as many as five songs to make my hand revoltingly unusable. In fact, I feel it is time to official wrestle the Most Painful Game Ever trophy away from the first Mario Party and crown Guitar Hero 360 as the king of pain. Guitar Hero 2: It will contort your hands, damage your ears and empty your wallet in one fell swoop.

I have one suggestion for future music games: no more covers. There are ten new tracks in this edition, two of them by a pair of my favorite bands of all time. The Toadies contributed their master tape, the original recording, of their one hit wonder from 1994, Possum Kingdom. Pearl Jam merely allowed less talented musicians to cover Life Wasted, the opening track of their most recent album. One of these songs rocks quite hard while the other feels dull and lifeless. Please, no more covers. It's for the good of the world.

If you don't own an X360 or have no interest in shelling out $100 more to play a last generation port that doesn't even have the decency to include online play, there is a new game coming out this week for the Wii. Sadly, it is just another port. Like Twilight Princess, Nintendo was content to slap some motion controls on an already finished game and announce it as a Wii Exclusive Extravaganza. Sadly, while a GC version of Zelda did surface a few weeks later, you have no choice but to play Super Paper Mario on your Wii. Thankfully, it's a port that may actually be worth playing (hide your head in shame Ubisoft). Super Paper Mario is the third game in the exceptionally verbose Paper Mario series. You may remember my slightly critical posts about its predecessor, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I still can't believe I played through that whole game. Hours upon hours of dialog that tried to be funny but ended up stale coupled with never ending fetch quests and combat that would be too easy for a zygote. One of my least favorite games from last generation, and I played P.N. 03 and Brute Force. And yet, I am still interested in Super Paper Mario. This is what happens when nothing new comes out. I'm stuck playing through a sequel to a game I didn't even like. Wish me luck!

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