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A plea to Infinity Ward

DDappallooza

Before this year, my purchase of Digital Download content was rather restrained with only some CoD multiplayer maps and a few cheap XBLA games and a Guitar hero song or two. Somehow this year, I’ve gone nuts for DLC and download titles. It never really hit me that the revolution has overtaken me and I’m hip-deep in this shit.

There’ve been Singstar tracks, Guitar Hero Tracks, one Fallout DLC pack, two Call of Duty World at War map packs, Halo 3 maps, Burnout Paradise add-ons, Grand Theft Auto TLAD. But then there’s also Battlefield 1943, Shadow Complex and Trials HD and Peggle and World of Goo. Suddenly, that purchase of the 120 GB Hard Drive doesn’t seem so extravagant. Expensive, yes. but worth it. No more juggling and deleting crap to make room.

Gears of War 12 reportedly cost $12 million dollars to make. Shadow Complex, however)  would have been a fraction of that, even with the costs of licensing the Unreal 3 engine.  Shadow Complex may be a small game from a small developer (recently acquired by Epic) but its managed to make a big stink with people complaining about author Orson Scott Card’s involvement with the game. Battlefield 1943 managed 600 000 downloads in its first few weeks, an amazing feat for a DD-only title. And Trials HD has every dick on my friends list beating my measly scores. DD on consoles has come of age. By come of age, I mean draining my wallet of space bucks.

DD on PC has fewer barriers to entry but a different type of dynamic. Paid DLC- such as map packs is not as prevalent. You tend to have more of the expansion pack mentality- where you still need the original game in order to play, plus the expectation of free maps and updates for some titles. The microtransaction element, that was introduced to consoles this generation is standard practice in Asia. Many games are free to play with either ads or microtransactions paying the developers and publishers for their efforts. EA has tried this with Battlefield Heroes (micro payments) and id with Quake Live (ads). You can buy a silly hat for your in-game character or a gun that shoots chocolate death. EA tried small paid map pack expansions for Battlefield 2, but theses merely fragmented the player-base between the haves and have-nots. Lousy Have-nots ruining my BF buzz.

Nowadays, you don’t even need a game in order to buy stuff that has no bearing on the game. Sony Home is the ultimate  in this regard. You pay for shit to decorate a virtual apartment that does nothing. Buy designer costumes for your avatars.  Now we have 360 Avatars with lightsabers- lightsabers that cost more than many XBLA titles  did when the 360 was launched in 2005. AND I’M SERIOUSLY THINKING OF GETTING A LIGHTSABER SO I CAN BE COOL. So we’ve come a long way from the days when Oblivion’s Horse Armour and EA Sports pay-for-cheats where  the hot topics for gamers.

Of course, PC gamers have had it pretty good with free updates over  the years. Of course that means Valve these days since Activision have more or less ignored the huge player base of Call of Duty 4 in regards to DLC and expansions, a mistake they’ve readily admitted while Treyarch’s been breaking records with WaW’s three map packs. PC gamers have been so spoiled that when Valve attempted to release a sequel to Left 4 Dead a year after the original, some vocal fans feared it would mean the end of DLC for their beloved game. They even started petitions to have Valve make L4D2 DLC for the original game. Top tip- don’t buy it if you don’t like it.

Here’s the catch. There’s been a fair bit of my DLC Odyssey that I regret buyuing. And of course, I can’t sell it on. I wish I had resisted the temptation to pick up Penny Arcade Ep 1, The Burnout DLC (thanks PS3 region coding on DLC), the Halo maps (since they’ll be part of ODST) and Grand Theft Auto Lost and Damned. I’d probably have enjoyed that more if I had played it before Infamous and Red Faction but them’s the breaks. I’m sure many people bought hyped up games and then thought “hmmmm.” Thank Christ i didn’t lay down money (Real or Microsoft points) for any game that picks an animal out  of a zoo directory and sticks the word ‘space’ on the front.

So while EA might be looking at the numbers for BF1943, how many of those customers will return for more maps that are almost guaranteed to trickle out of EA over the coming months? Bethesda have said their five expansions for Fallout 3 are the last they will release (never mind how much it costs to but the game and then all of the DLC). Mass Effect 2 is coming out early in 2010 yet EA and Bioware are just now releasing the second DLC campaign for Mass Effect the original. DLC is all over the place and its still unpredictable. Apart from Ubisoft trying to sell you the end of Price of Persia. Dicks!

Also- “That is soooo Playstation 3″

So the PS3 is now cheaper (or will be in the next week or so). Yes Sony have been a bunch of dicks this generation and behind the ball on pricing and PSN. But a great library of games. Maybe not killer but still great. If you don’t already have a PS3 think about this:

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Metal Gear Solid 4

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.

Little Big Planet

Free PSN

Excellent Blu Ray player

easy to upgrade standard laptop hard drives

as well as the upcoming: R&C:A Crack in Time, Uncharted 2, God of War III and Heavy Rain (oh and FFXIII and GT5 for those that care)

Don’t think about:

Haze

Lair

Killzone 2

Resistance 2

Motorstorm

Heavenly Sword

multi hour patch and firmware downloads

still expensive

ugly matte finish

Sixaxis

no goddamn Backwards compatibility with PS2 apart from Singstar.

In short you should buy a PS3 if you don’t have already one. If you do have one, FFS- don’t sell it to buy the slim.

REBOOT

My friends, I’d like to talk to you about the wonders of series reboots. They’re all the rage and very popular with the kids, though reboots have been part of videogames since the very beginning. I will say it started with Donkey Kong being constantly alternating between protagonist and antagonist in his early incarnations.

I mean, is each new console Legend of Zelda game a remake or a reboot. They are essentially telling the same story each time a different way with mostly the same characters. A few variations here and there but essentially the same. Perhaps its more of a remake.

Tomb Raider has been rebooted a few times but each time, its more of a technical and design reboot rather that reinventing Lara herself. The latest leaked shots of a new Tomb Raider, with a smaller bosomed Lara have hit the net. In reality it’s likely to be more of the same but it counts as a reboot. Even if it is the same, calling it a reboot  with words like survival horror and open world bandied about like common gutter trash, gets those who claim to be jaded by the series more interested in the new game. By “jaded” I mean “run out of tissues.”

People cite Resident Evil 4 as a reboot even though it’s the same storyline. It just has a more modernised control system than the original’s tank controls. Resident Evil is less about survival horror and more about horror at how many buttons you have to press to change ammo.

Prince of Persia is one of the most recent Reboots of  a franchise that has already been rebooted several times. The most recent Prince of Persia from 2008, itself a reboot of the series from 2003 which was a reboot of the 2001 Prince of Persia 3D which was a reboot of, well, you get the point. To be fair the 2008 prince is Persia is more reborn. And then when you play it you realise it is actually an abortion of a game.

Is Call of Duty 4 a reboot? The gameplay is very little changed from the original Call of Duty but the change of setting was enough for people to think of it as new. A lot of people who would describe themselves as hardcore shied away form the early CoD games. They were popular with the casual gamers but the edgier setting of Modern Warfare has attracted guys who live for the bleeding edge. “I cut myself on the CoD!” The fact that World at War, a return to WWII, has sold very well in its own right shows that a well made game is a well made game, regardless of when it is set. But the guys who love their CoD4 won’t even consider World at War. So CoD4 is not a reboot, just more of the same. They’re in the same universe (or at least, no reason to assume they’re not in the same continuum)

But maybe the gaming reboot is a myth. All it is is a retooling of the games, keeping what works whilst jettisoning the material that doesn’t. Perhaps adding a few new gameplay elements but compared to a Batman Begins or JJ Abrams Star Trek, Games just play with superfluous things. Occasionally, such as a certain kids game that was a cheesy platformer being rebooted into a serious LOTR style epic would count as a reboot, since it changes the origins and the style of characters and gets rid of platforming in place of combat. But nothing on the level of Casino Royale, which took Bond from bloated over-indulgence of Die Another Day and brought the series down to earth, but conversely took it to greater highs.

I don’t see Fallout 4 being a prequel. You want a Fallout game in a post-apocalyptic world. Mirror’s Edge with no Parkour or Medal of Honor set in WWI.

Red Faction: Guerilla, my current gaming fancy, is half and half. It completely changes the gamplay from the first two Red Factions, going from a first person shooter to a third person blow the crap out of everything. Linear maps to open world. Its still set in the same universe by having this be a later Red Faction uprising. So is it a reboot or does beating the game mean you’re going to fail anyway since the next game is going to be another uprising? Like the feeling of elation at the end of Terminator 2 only to have Terminator 3 come and undo the good work.

SUMMER MOVIE BLISS- WHAT ABOUT THE GAMES?

We have a bunch of blockbuster movies over the next few months but once again some of the biggies are missing that all-important game tie in. Wolverine had a tie-in with more gore than  the movie whereas Watchmen has a tie-in with less dong. Star Trek was an even bigger hit but only spawned Star Trek DAC on iPhone and XBLA. What gives, baby?

Let’s have a look at the biggies still to come.

Terminator Salvation. While its a safe bet McG’s terminator film is not going to be the greatest cinematic experience, you can bet GRIN’s game version will do good business before becoming a perennial bargain bin sweller. Just like their Wanted game. Terminator as a franchise has had more than a few videogame adaptations (I recall playing a decent T2 game on the Gameboy back in the day) but few have been very advanced so expectations aren’t the greatest.

Night at the Museum 2. This means Paul Blart will get a sequel and a game version. Oh Christ. There’s something to be said for a big budget version of Indian in the Cupboard but there’s nothing to be said for the sequel, nor its game.

Land of the Lost. There’s no game tie in. Where’s my Wil Ferrel alike in poorly animated cutscenes?

Transformers 2: …

Ice Age 3: So, hell has frozen over and there’s a third Ice Age movie courtesy of Activision, who seem to love having these games on their books. Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters no, but Ice Age 3, yes. People tell me the Ice Age movies aren’t bad but that’s like saying speed bumps aren’t bad. That doesn’t automatically mean good.

Harry Potter: When you look at it, this may well be EA’s last big movie licenses since they let go of Bond. It prints money despite the fact if you wait 2 months you’ll get it for half price. If you needed to. Of course, the Wii version already has a controller that looks like a wand or maybe there’s a broomstick with a space to clip on your wiimote and clench it bewteen your thighs while you play pretend Quidditch.

GI JOE: Well, EA obviously hasn’t completely gotten out of the biz of these tie in games since here’s a GI Joe game. Why GI Joe? Did I miss the memo that GI Joe was any good? I was a sorta fan in my youth for GI Joe but this film version- where every fucka wears Black. Jesus- Snake Eyes was always the guy in Black but now so is Scarlet and Duke, Hawk, Clutch Flash and whoever else. No colour left at all. Does this mean they’re reusing the Madworld engine?

But there’s no Inglourious Basterds game. A Tarantino flick is guaranteed to have more violence than nerds who don’t shower attending Blizzcon. Tarantino’s already had one poor game based on any of his movies (unless there’s a Jackie Brown RTS I’m unaware of), so there’s no real reason we could get a decent Kill Bill Part 2 game. There’s no reason we couldn’t get a decent Kill Bill Part 2 movie, but that’s a different story.

PRINT IS DEAD. ORLY?

Print is dead. You hear it all over the place in regards to gaming magazines. EGM is no longer (thought it was wasting away and THANKS FOR MY REFUND ZIFF DAVIS YOU PARASITIC SCUM!) and it seems the biggest selling platform agnostic title is sponsored by Gamestop. So print is dead. Well EDGE is alive and kicking and apart from the fact the online entity just experienced a mass-exodus, it seems as though the rather expensive print version is going from strength to strength.

My wife buys lots of magazine each month. Her zine collection rivals my DVD collection and we both have had to make hard choices as to what we display and what we “consolidate” in order to make room for new zines and DVD’s. But Oprah magazine (which is filled with Wii ads each month) is going from strength to strength. Why do I mention that? Well Oprah is published by Hearst (owners of UGO and now 1up.com) and when they stopped Oprah at Home they gave my wife credit for the Oprah Magazine (WHY THE FUCK COULDN’T YOU AT LEAST DO THAT YOU FUCKS, ZIFF DAVIS. NOT OPRAH BBUT SOMETHING, ANYTHING, YOU LEECHING FUCKS!)
Anyhoo, Famitsu in Japan is still going well as are the slew of platform specific “Official” magazines. Even though the exclusive demoes are now available on PSN and XB Marketplace, these platform evangelist mags still do ok. Is it because everyone in America has a computer at home and the “kids” use the net to get this stuff of Kotaku and blogs (like this one)? Or is it something else?
Print still has its place. Yes, and for magazines like you and I read, its the toilet. The toilet is the best place to catch up with 2-month old news, previews of cinema releases just about to be released on DVD (yet I still buy Empire) and advertorials about how to look slick whilst holding a DSi. So you can download mags digitally from some websites, but I ain’t taking the laptop in the toilet. That’s just gross. You might as well lick the floor of a men’s room. Ewww.
Another use for Print is a place trip. Yes, because all though we have iPhones, PSP’s and laptops when we travel, we can’t use them for between 30-60 around take off and 30 minutes during the descent. So a mag is perfect here. And conveniently, places provide a place to dispose of your casually flicked through copy of PC Gamer once your done with it.
That’s really the thing though. With so many ways to distract us in the modern world, there are limited opportunities for picking up a zine and staring at the screenshots. Waiting rooms in surgeries and dentists rarely have anything to read for switched on types. A really old copy of Wired if you’re really lucky (or really unlucky, perhaps) is about the best you’ll hope for along with lots of celebrity mags and maybe a really old Time.
Will we shed a tear for the loss of gaming mags? Well if you haven’t already maybe you should think of drowning puppies to get the waterworks going because gaming zines have gone the way of the 3DO-3DO. The future is electronic, baby, and the magazines that are suffering most are those that, surprise surprise, cover Electronic hobbies such as gaming.
The people who buy the Wii and a copy of EA Sports Active, will read a magazine. They won’t however buy Nintendo Power, it’ll be Conde Naste Traveller.

How to Make a Hit

Here are some surefire tips for game developers for making sure your game is a surefire hit. Follow these tips and you will see your game gobble market share and reach the tops of the sales charts in no time. NOTE to developers: These are more guidelines than steadfast rules. You should follow these guidelines with caution and seek legal and medical advice. Your mileage may vary.

1. Stick ‘War’ in the title. Warcraft, World of Warcraft, CoD World at War, God of War, Gears of War. All these games were mega hits. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest the reason is because the word ‘war’ is in the title. There are no other redeeming features to these games apart from the use of that word in the title.

2. Put guns in the game. The main difference between Oblivion and Fallout 3 is the fact there are guns in Fallout 3. If you’re making a platform game, take the platforming out and put shooting in there instead. It worked for Ratchet and Clank.

3. Coop. Let’s face it. Army of Two was pretty ordinary without coop. Resistance 2 is pretty ordinary without coop. Killzone 2 is without coop altogether. Do I need to draw a venn diagram?

4. Swears. Every popular game has swearing in it. The more you swear, the more the fun the game is. Just think how good Pikmin would have been if there was a little more casual use of curse words. Katafuckingmari would have been the bomb. “We’re sorry but the princess is in another castle, bitch!”

5. Levelling up. All the best games have levelling up these days as a way of making people with addictive personalities play shitty parts of the game just to get achievements and perks. TF2 would have been completely buried by Left 4 Dead if not for the achievements so you can make formerly unplayable classes into merely boring to play classes.

6. Tits. Even if your game doesn’t feature any human characters, you need to add sex appeal to your game. People who have time to play games to get all achievements in a game also like swearing like a docker and lusting after porn stars. So why not get the porn stars to do publicity for your game so your target audience can zip up their semen stained pants and catch the bus down to the mall to pick up Saint’s Row 2

7.Quick Time Events. Everyone says they hate these but secretly they love QTE’s. Shenmue’s failure to sell is in no way linked to the abundance of QTE’s. Shenmue’s failure is linked to the fact the game is a monument how not to spend $70 million. QTE’s can add value to your game. Look at Ninja Blade, where QTE’s are listed on the box. That must mean its good.

8. Hype. Get your publisher to tout your game as a *****-killer. Halo-Killers, WoW-killers, etc. Take the king of the genre- ie the game you’ve cribbed most heavily from- and tell the world that your game is better. Just look at how that worked for Hellgate London, Resistance 2 and Warhammer Online.

9. Stick Wii in the title. Worked for Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii-fit, Mario Kart Wii. Super Mario Galaxy is one of the best games on Wii but has been outsold by shit. If they only called it Super Mario Wii.

10. Unique controller. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Buzz, Singstar, Eye Toy all have a controller. Rock Revolution doesn’t. Never mind it was shit.

With these simple rules, developers will never have to actually make a good game, they can just apply some or all of the above rules and make a killing. Works for Ubisoft.

SPELLING AND GRAMMAR- INTERNET EDITION- The world after 1337

Just a quick post today. Spelling is a useful skill to have. Maybe its not as useful as using your quadcore PC with two graphics cards in SLi config to play Quake III in 2009, but it does do one very necessary thing (apart from making clear what it is you are writing/typing). It separates the tards from the rest of us. Sure, we’ve all accidentally typed ‘teh’ instead of ‘the,’ but there are thousands of guys who do it deliberately so we know how cool they are.

You can also use this list to explain these terms to your Wiimote waving grandparents.

Pwned is an interesting word. (I know because its in my online handle ClivePwned). Its pronounced owned, as in the hacking term. On a Qwerty keyboard, P is next to O and so pwned has become the internet’s way to saying “Oh gosh, I’ve won this rally. Jolly good show.”

‘Should of.’ This is one that flies under many people’s radar. Instead of using should have as in “I should have paid attention in school” or used the contraction should’ve, people are now typing should of. Despite this making no sense, it is now commonplace, just like AIDS. Just as the spread of AIDS makes it a reality to those who haven’t contracted it, so too does the use of  should of instead of should have as a reality for those literacy level is greater than that of

Rediculous. Despite the existence of spell checkers, predictive text and education, people add a superfluous letter E to replace the primary I in the word ridiculous. Why is this a big deal? Because the concept of ridicule only works if the ridiculer is able to articulate an argument belittling the object of intended ridicule without undermining the argument with spelling errors. Saying “this recession is rediculous” completely undermines your argument because you cannot spell. If you wrote “this recession is ridiculous,” then I would wholeheartedly agree with you. wat?

Prolly. This is a bastardisation of the word probably. This is what happens when Probably goes out and gets a little bit too  drunk for her own good and wakes up the next morning with a hangover and a $50 bill wrapped around a bottle of morning after pills on the nightstand.

There is/are Now this is a weird error that almost everyone makes everyday. I’m one of them. There is: used to describe one thing. There are: used to describe many. “There is many ways to do this is wrong.” It should be “There are many ways to do this.” It is abused by us all.

1337 speak has faded  a lot since its heyday at the turn of the millennium. There is probably still the odd fuckwit writing R0x0R in emails. Do you say LOL out loud with other geek-minded friends? I used ‘LOL’ ironically once in front of someone I’d just met at E3 one year and got a quizzical look back at me as if I were a main character from an off-Broadway production of  ‘Of Mice and Men’ and I was standing over the freshly squeezed corpse. Of course I’m using English spellings on this blog so you may ROFL at my use of non-US spelling conventions.

We could get into the proper use of its and it’s, who and whom, and of course passer-bys or passers-by. But this is a videogame blog dammit and all your base, yada, yada, yada. What gets your goat up about the way people write these days? Pointless articles like this, anyone?

Anyway tomorrow we have something more relevant to gaming and less relevant to Spelling Nazis, Grammar Gestapo and other people with assorted levels of StickUpTheButtedness.

Edited: because Clint found an error. Owned is not a wrestling term, its a hacking term. I bow to the master.

iDoD

I don’t usually have much of an up-to-date PC gaming machine. Over the last few years, I’ve only really had a work PC that was semi recent. My latest work PC is a screamer with a 1GB videocard, that also thankfully restarts itself when some new games get busy and has firewalls blocking everything but WoW, CoD4 and Steam. So I’ve been playing Day of Defeat Source, which is a remake of the original DoD. I hear there’s another graphical revamp of DoD (though I’m not sure if its official or unofficial) in the works.