tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-170161092024-03-13T21:31:26.698-06:00No More Gamers AnymoreBecause those who play all the time don't know better and those who know better don't have enough time to play.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-73727425287841112332012-10-26T12:47:00.000-06:002012-10-26T12:47:16.812-06:00Hotline MiamiPlay this game if you can handle its dark and violent themes.<br />
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Much better commentary on violence, accountability, and actions than you see in FPS's like Spec Ops: The Line, or Bioshock, or whatever. Only takes you four or five hours.<br />
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Forget all the comments on the music and gameplay and mechanics. Those are all well-executed, but the beauty is in the story, writing, and symbolism. Queue our "game is art" crowd. Maybe not quite art, but if mind-bending movies that use symbolism, alternate viewpoints and time-skipping as narrative techniques to blow your mind at the end have ever impressed you, this will not disappoint.<br />
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Also, if you loved the movie Drive, this game will remind you of it intensely.<br />
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It's rare when a game stays with you all day after you finish it, then you think about it while you're trying to sleep, then you start thinking about it when you wake up.<br />
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This is a game that really pushes the medium forward. Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-90746870134607333872012-05-30T11:20:00.001-06:002012-05-30T11:20:40.721-06:00The Molydeux Reveux is finishedYou can find the entire series <a href="http://Eat%20your%20heart%20out,%20@molydeux./">here</a>. I conclude with a top ten, honorable mentions, and a review of tweets by the games produced therefrom.<br />
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It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Here's to next year's Molyjam.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-76941791358797751802012-04-20T12:44:00.004-06:002012-04-20T12:44:32.810-06:00Upcoming Molyjam GamesThese are the Molyjam games I will be writing about soon. I recommend playing all of them. Again, you can find all the Molyjam games <a href="http://www.whatwouldmolydeux.com/archive.php">here.</a> <br />
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286: When Doves Cry<br />279: Orphanage Arsenal<br />275: A Civilized World<br />246 Friends 'til the End<br />242 Phone Frag!<br />235 You are the Road<br />227 In the Dark, the Blind Can See<br />226 Recidivism<br />Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-55667879634541156552012-04-20T12:40:00.000-06:002012-04-20T12:40:06.914-06:00Molyjam playthrough updateRight now I have played up through 225. I have played (or tried to play) 50-60 games of about 250. I have a long way to go.<br />
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I said I would make notes of all of them here but I have changed my mind. For one thing, some of them are not interesting to hear about. For another, some of them are bad and I don't want to be the jerk that is saying a game made in 48 hours isn't interesting or fun.<br />
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So, I will only be writing about ones worth writing about. In the meantime, my second piece, which is the first and only exception to this rule, is <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/features/molydeux-reveux-working-toward-new-endings/">up on Snackbar.</a><br />
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I will post more impressions later. I have another dozen or so games worth writing on and another 180 or so to play.<br />
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Onward I shall go. When I'm done, I can say I played every single one! I know <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/news/it-came-from-the-molyjam-peter-molyneux/4096/">Molyneux and his most recent interviewer</a> won't have been able to say that. <br />
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<br />Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-65750352919707533612012-04-05T14:23:00.008-06:002012-04-13T11:24:10.557-06:00Molyjam Playthrough 2012After extensive Googling, I feel confident that about no one has personally played every single one of the Molyjam games, and even more so that no one has written about all of them. I'm going to do that. I have a feature on Snackbar I'm going to be doing on the Molyjam games, of which there are over two hundred. The series at Snackbar <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/features/molydeux-reveux-the-guy-that-should-not-be-here/">starts today</a> and I encourage you to read about my experience with the very first game I played, which is still one of my favorites. Snackbar will feature the "best of Molyjam" in future posts.<br /><br />But here on my blog will I will write about playing every single Molyjam game. Every single one! No matter how boring it is. I have currently played over a dozen of them. They are hit and miss, but some of them have great ideas that I am convinced could be an element of or even basis for a full retail game.<br /><br />If you only want to read about the most interesting or good games, just read the Snackbar posts, which I will be linking to from here and on my Twitter account.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-72662897863060454232010-02-10T22:22:00.007-07:002010-02-14T18:19:29.125-07:00My "so you want to be a games writer" postI've been thinking about this for months. I could probably do a better job of this but I'm just going to do it now while I'm in a state of mind and action where I can do it--if I don't, I may never. I'm not as bitter as this is going to sound. It's been eight months since I wrote on this blog. About four since I last wrote something for which I was paid. No shame and no cares on that mark. Just a bit about why I've disappeared.<br /><br />I'm never going to "succeed" at games writing and I've known this for a while. Recently Conan O' Brian said if one works really hard and is kind, amazing things will happen. They do. "It's just true."<br /><br />It's not true. Another games/entertainment writer even <a href="http://twitter.com/benfritz/status/8125960607">explicitly said so</a> soon after that quote. Not that I needed someone to tell me that.<br /><br />Many game writers have written "so you want to be a game journalist" articles. Most of them talk about the parts of it that are not glamorous, the parts that suck. There is no money. PR people can be difficult. Most games are not fun. Sometimes you have to make it a score that it shouldn't be. And the consistency of the work is spotty as it gets, even spottier than it is for someone writes something that is in more demand, like regular news or features that have a broader appeal or fiction or poetry or articles about HOW TO TURN HIM ON WITHOUT FAIL! I have had experience with all of these except the pressure to change a score. I don't think there are many articles about the topic from people who have <span style="font-style: italic;">never made it</span>, but still did something, who actually qualify as one of the ones who wanted and did not receive. So I'm here to say that if you want to write about games, you should give up. Immediately.<br /><br />I'm going to list all the stuff I did. It amounted to little. Monetarily and accomplishment-wise. I enjoyed doing it while I did it, but now that it's done, all I've got are memories. I could have been using my time to get money, though, instead! Hmm. It's important when you're married.<br /><br />So, stuff I've done! Let's review. I have been paid by three different outlets to write about games.<br /><br />The first is GameSetWatch/Gamasutra. I have a warm relationship with Simon and he's always been patient with me and my wishy-washiness and self-consciousness. Simon, if you're reading this: hi.<br /><br />Second was Eurogamer. I wrote one feature for them. Kieron Gillen gave me advice on how to appeal to Tom Bramwell. My first pitch immediately succeeded with them, which was a surprise and a delight. The thing only got 8 comments. For Eurogamer, that is very low. None of them based the article, though, at least. I tried a couple more ideas later but nothing really stuck, they had end of year budget issues, and they've already got a staff. I thought it would be my moment where I "made" it, but it was a dead end, an additional item to add to my little vita.<br /><br />My third was as a blogger for Psu.com. The guy who owns this is in Britain. It was and probably still is struggling. They laid me off after a month. The guy who trained me there was polite and patient. He was 17 at the time. He had been there for about two years. He was convinced, and for good reason, that I was there to stay as long as I didn't bungle anything up. There were budget issues. I had to go. I believe the staff there is even smaller than when I joined.<br /><br />And that is it. I have pitched to many, many different places. All want features. The best way to break in is to suggest something they know would sell and something that no one else would have suggested. This is not as easy as it sounds. If you want to "succeed" in games writing you need a consistent gig doing news or reviews, or you need to start your own website and have such an awesome and unique personality (and uber "web 2.0 skills" or whatever) that people will trust you as a personality and seek you out by name, even if they don't like you. This is still something you'd probably be better off doing only when you've had a regular gig doing...news and/or reviews. Names: Michael Abbott or N'Gai Croal or Dan Hsu or Shawn Elliott or Jeff Gerstmann. And not even all these people get paid. The ones that don't certainly have the potential to, I'd think, but maybe they know, like I do, that it's not worth it. They do what they do for its own sake.<br /><br />I never got that big break. I got an actual response with explanation about rejection from Green Pixels, Gamespot, and Crispy Gamer (note: not that I'm happy about it, but I always wondered if/when it would crumble). Two of those mentioned their budget. I asked people connected to all of them how to approach, the way I did with Kieron and Eurogamer. When I interviewed all the game writers for my multipart piece on GSW, I felt on top of the world. I'd made connections, most or all of the people liked me. I got a lot of great advice, especially from Kieron.<br /><br />Other stuff of note that helped me think I was going to make it: I got sought out independently by a PR guy to do an interview (by Facebook, no less, not via blast) and I still get press releases to the email on this blog every day (I check that email, but is it not my "personal" one).<br /><br />I can <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/xbox_360/tomb_raider_underworld-1009.html">write a review</a> that entertains, informs, has a unique style and says something definitive. I think of all the reviews I ever wrote for Snackbar, that one is my favorite. I've also gotten awesome comments: "<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24520">that is mighty fine article craftsmanship, Mr. Walbridge.</a>" Sometimes I get the traffic too. Look at the super-l33t links I received:<br /><br /><a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2008/11/18/top-seven-gaming-tidbits-for-november-18th-2008.aspx" target="_blank"><span class="il">Newsweek</span>'s</a> <a>Level Up</a>, <a href="http://www.massively.com/2008/11/13/keeping-the-wife-happy-wrath-style/" target="_blank">AOL's Massively</a>, <a href="http://kotaku.com/5018642/team-fortress-2-and-its-less-juvenile-environment" target="_blank">Gawker's Kotaku</a>, <a href="http://fidgit.com/archives/2008/10/a-look-at-the-warhammer-online.php" target="_blank">The Sci-Fi Channel's Fidgit</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>, and <a href="http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/07/0059235" target="_blank">SlashDot</a>.<br /><br />I'm proud of what I've done. I drove up traffic at Snackbar by writing and editing in an intense burst, I learned how to help game writers write better reviews (to the point the other editor said as much), and I did all that crap I just mentioned.<br /><br />It has led to a dead end. I have been paid $1,000-$1,500 when all is said and done. That is before the taxes. My experiences will not help me get a job anywhere else (it got me one interview, though). Remember how I said most of the games aren't fun? Why would you do and write boring crap and not get paid for it? I had to remember I love games. I couldn't let my attempt to turn it into money ruin them for me. What would I then enjoy?<br /><br />Really enjoying video games is why I got to the top 50 and top 1,000 on two of the Street Fighter IV leaderboards. This is why I played about 2,000 Starcraft matches when I was in high school and college. This is why I've played hundreds of games of League of Legends and am about to play another. Games are entertainment and escapism. It is where failure is fun, at least ideally.<br /><br />You take your gaming to the next level and try to make money from it? Especially while you don't have any ideal employment options, if any? The failure isn't so fun anymore in that context.<br /><br />Don't try to be a games writer. There is no more room. There barely was then. There certainly isn't now. 1UP blew up. Crispy burned down. Are you going to compete with the leftovers? You going to accomplish a lot and then realize the field basically has no money for you, then think "well damn, what now?" Kyle Orland wrote Games for Lunch forever before it got picked up. I wrote over two dozen reviews and edited more than twice that many more. Thousands of views, most or all of them. Nothing. On his twitter Kyle links to something a <a href="http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2059152&postcount=198">former Crispy guy says</a>, and it's not pretty. This guy, he's getting out. Kyle is sticking around, but he's got years. Probably not making quite as much as he used to. What do you have? What do I have? Nothing.<br /><br />If you really have to, make sure you have something else that you enjoy a ton, in case your experience ruins games for you. It almost did for me. I'm pickier now but not completely ruined.<br /><br />But really, don't take me lightly when I say don't do it. Get out or stay out while you still know how to enjoy video games. All this advice has already been given in one way or another about writing, acting, music or anything else that is fun and inspires passion from many. This isn't that new or even that pessimistic. I just wanted to throw in a good, concrete example for games writing. This is how much you can accomplish without succeeding. Don't do it unless you're willing to do that much for that little, and to do a lot for free.<br /><br />But really, I'd say just don't do it. "So you want to be a games writer: don't." That's my advice.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-29626380991949178882009-05-08T12:32:00.002-06:002009-05-08T12:53:45.014-06:00Retro Game ChallengeSo I never got around to mentioning it, but I’ve reviewed <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/ds/big_bang_mini-1029.html">three</a> <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/ds/inkheart-1023.html">DS</a> games recently for Snackbar. The most interesting one was <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/ds/retro_game_challenge-1028.html">Retro Game Challenge</a> (I always hear it as "charrenge" in my head for some reason).<br /><br />Briefly: a crazy Japanese guy send you back in time to play games from the 80s with his former self. The games are not actually old, but they are designed and drawn to look old. You are not allowed to leave the 80s until you beat his challenges.<br /><br />On the top screen is the actual game, but on the bottom is the TV, the console, and two kids (you and the crazy guy’s younger self). The majority of the humor comes from the kid you’re playing with. He makes references to things that really happened in the 80s, asks you naïve, childlike questions, comments on your playing (“Nice!” “Ouch!” etc.), and is always there to bother you.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH0JoQXpxXIc7zwjV8jHv9ZRQXiVSBbJQ2zVce1her4yBaHO4gBybk-x6Xqbvq-Kq6GHOEtBQOoaCasJ0oCRfiFZOb_dNDYSQQwx8x_fGusxQ9S9z0py6QZ38LghW1wjGT1tE9/s1600-h/rgchaggleman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH0JoQXpxXIc7zwjV8jHv9ZRQXiVSBbJQ2zVce1her4yBaHO4gBybk-x6Xqbvq-Kq6GHOEtBQOoaCasJ0oCRfiFZOb_dNDYSQQwx8x_fGusxQ9S9z0py6QZ38LghW1wjGT1tE9/s320/rgchaggleman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333528031906900498" border="0" /></a><br />It’s all very cute, but it’s really saying something about the nature of gaming as a hobby and its big sell. At any time, you can pause the top screen and look at the magazines or manuals to learn how to play the game (or how to cheat). The brief descriptors make it really really obvious that the game companies are the master string-pullers:<br /><br />--The magazines obviously are at the mercy of the companies and perhaps owned by one (perhaps a reference to the success of Nintendo Power, which in the 80s was actually owned by Nintendo)<br />--The hints, tricks, and cheats filtered out from the magazines slowly but in time for sequels, ensuring players were hooked on game number 1 long enough to remember it but not so long they wouldn’t be enthusiastically waiting another<br />--Competition is highly desirable, as it increases a games longevity (and sales)<br /><br />The challenges themselves seem pointless. Get a certain amount of points, beat a level without using a regular move, and getting to checkpoints in the games. Then, of course, comes the glory of simply beating the game and getting to the end. No one knows of your victory but you and your friend, sitting in the living room.<br /><br />I mean, today is so different! You don’t just get high scores, you get win-loss records, experience points, and achievements. Your accomplishments can now be seen by anyone in the world.<br /><br />But has anything really changed? Magazines have, a little bit, but only in volume, not in purpose or type of coverage. Strategy guides are more important as a source of revenue and getting people to beat the games and getting the cheat codes out.<br /><br />Instead of being the best at home or in your neighborhood or even arcade, it’s being the best in the country.<br /><br />While exceptions exist, games have changed little as a cultural product or in the way they drive us. All games are now is bigger.<br /><br />For me, it’s not a bitter realization; games are still fun and there’s nothing wrong with something being entertainment. But let’s not kid ourselves. For economic and cultural reasons, games will mostly be "just games" for a very long time.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-2935310843415373202009-03-19T13:52:00.002-06:002009-03-19T13:56:57.351-06:00NewsThere is not much in the way of news. I have applied for a blogging position that may or may not pay, but would bring the prestige regardless. A few of you may not which position I speak of. There's nothing else to publicly say on that.<br /><br />Games--well, poor 'ole Snackbar had its only advertiser withdraw. The recession has even hit what few free games we (I) were (was) getting. But, I have received some DS games, some of which are awesome, and some of which are not. One of these is Retro Game Challenge. If you haven't heard of it yet, I think my review will turn out pretty well. Look for reviews of that and a couple of other games to come soon on Snackbar.<br /><br />I've mainly been laying low because 1. I haven't gotten many new games and 2. Most of the places I've pinged have ended in rejection or "looks good, but we're pretty full." There's very little open to anyone, freelancer or non. That's not news. I'm just saying that that's why I'm more sporadic and less consistent. I'm still lurking, still reading, and still keeping tabs.<br /><br />Oh, and I was laid off from my job in January, so I've had more important things. Also, my 360 red ringed the day I got SF IV, which was soon after I got laid off. Also, we're moving to another apartment in about a month.<br /><br />Economics and life leave me with little to say, but I've not gone away.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-23232327808661537552009-02-10T14:13:00.005-07:002009-02-10T21:02:34.181-07:00The F wordIt has been a very, very long time since I felt this way. I am currently very excited about the release of an upcoming game.<br /><br />Valve’s recent offerings of Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead were both games I was pretty excited about. I kept track of them months before their release and purchased them early and played them much.<br /><br />This, though—this is something different. Something has happened to me, and I do not know what it is. It has been suggested that sexuality is mostly formed before one actually engages with or recognizes it. Perhaps one’s gameality or whatever it is is the same.<br /><br />I am thoroughly and unhealthily possessed by an overwhelming desire to do nothing but three things:<br /><br />--Figure out how to procure a copy of Street Fighter IV as early as possible<br />--Become a freakin’ legend for being so good at the game<br />--Figure out which tool is best for me to personally bring this about, and then acquire said tool<br /><br />I am not interested in food. I am not interested in playing other games though I have plenty of time to do so. I am distracted. I got laid off a few weeks ago and I don’t even worry about it. This is partly because I’m waiting to hear on a good job opportunity that I interviewed well for, but it’s no guarantee and I really shouldn’t hold out for it. The last two times I got laid off I spent all my time trying to figure out how to get employment; if not that, I worked on distracting myself so I could forget about it. Games helped, obviously. But now, I spend even more time thinking about how to best acquire, enjoy, and dominate Street Fighter IV.<br /><br />The roots of this are likely fairly common; when I was 11 years old could make a dollar go for over an hour at the arcade while my parents shopped. I’d play at malls or at a store within walking distance from my house, “Fun Fever.” Fun Fever was a new and perhaps used game retailer that had consoles available for play by the hour in addition to 8 arcade units. These were only awesome arcade units, though, units like a shorter, squattier Neo-Geo unit with four rotating games, Mortal Kombat, and of course variants of Street Fighter II.<br /><br />SF II: Champion Edition was a big hit because it finally let you play with the four boss characters. I would always choose M. Bison. I fought cheaply and fiercely, for if I lost, I’d die of boredom, a fate I will never again face.<br /><br />One time when I was between 11-13 a large, jockish kind of guy in his 20s challenged me and I handily defeated him. He got angry after two or three tries; sometimes his frustration made him even closer to beating me and sometimes it caused him to make bad mistakes.<br /><br />I ended up spending 30 or 40 minutes thrashing this guy. He spent five to ten bucks getting thrashed. Later, in my 20s, I got thrashed in Marvel vs. Capcom by a kid who had to stand on his tip-toes just to see his power meter at the bottom.<br /><br />But this guy; he chose different characters. He started to shout. He cursed in between matches. A crowd gathered round. My timing was flawless; I had a definite style and could adjust it on the fly. I was king of the arcade. At the end, the guy shouted like Blanka and Zangief, grabbed my neck and put me in a choke hold and with an “AARRRRRRGHHHH YOOUUUUU” he gave me a noogie, rubbing his fist across my hair. While friendly, it was violent enough that it actually hurt.<br /><br />He let me go and through his arms in the air at the crowd of ten, which was laughing by now. I smiled sheepishly. He left the store. My mother didn’t find out about it for years.<br /><br />Fun Fever later closed and so did my opportunities to play with others, until Street Fighter II came out for the SNES. My childhood friends, whom I still hang out with (I challenged them and called them out via email recently to make sure they knew of the incoming SF IV deluge), were about my skill. I played against them and my brother for hundreds of hours.<br /><br />When I got to high school, Street Fighter was a memory until one of my friends got a Playstation and Street Fighter Alpha 3. I had discovered it at the mall near where I worked. I’d use my 30-minute break to sprint a quarter-mile to the mall and play it during the day while still in my McDonald’s uniform. I enjoyed it most when I had someone to play against. Sometimes, I’d beat a guy and then hand over my play to him, explaining I had to get back to work. Surprisingly, I was rarely late.<br /><br />That was in ’98 and ’99. In 1999 and the succeeding years, Street Fighter III came out, as well as the Dreamcast and Playstation 2. During these years I was off in Australia or at college and couldn’t afford a console. PC gaming was my only option.<br /><br />I never got the opportunity to get dragged into Tekken. Other recent releases in the Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter, and Dead or Alive franchises have failed to capture my fancy. I never learned how to play those. I think many haven’t. And now that consoles have a huge network with which to play online, the lineup of opponents is infinite.<br /><br />The EVO tournament reminds us that some people never left that world, but most of us had no choice. But it’s back.<br /><br />The ability to take on a slew of incoming challengers is now multiplied—dormant, fierce, Rocky Balboa-esque energies are being awakened and soon the day comes wherein every man who owns a current non-Wii console and can do a Hadouken will be commanded to stand accountable and show his worth. He must face his eternal rival, just as the characters will. See below.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi83eOpDk99LxYjKXQdp4Yjb6VdfsIl5rosQN1NtSfcroffLyHasBgFVsZ16fH-3eY3Oscg11sbBhZoIZVaW-JJeKjMVxzZia_Ho5ui-v3TokILybzRUxz9WZffDR0d0Myyc_-m/s1600-h/sfiv.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi83eOpDk99LxYjKXQdp4Yjb6VdfsIl5rosQN1NtSfcroffLyHasBgFVsZ16fH-3eY3Oscg11sbBhZoIZVaW-JJeKjMVxzZia_Ho5ui-v3TokILybzRUxz9WZffDR0d0Myyc_-m/s320/sfiv.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301280447784947586" border="0" /></a><br />My name is Michael Walbridge, and I have a fanboy problem.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-48854912391801123642008-12-22T10:52:00.007-07:002008-12-22T11:13:56.116-07:00Backlog statusAny games you want to hear about?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What I'm playing or have recently finished</span>:<br />Wrath of the Lich King<br />Left 4 Dead<br />Team Fortress 2<br />Gears of War 2<br />King's Bounty<br />Fallout 3<br />Lock's Quest<br />Tomb Raider: Underworld<br />The World Ends With You<br />Drill Dozer<br /><a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/ds/metal_slug_7-1008.html">Metal Slug 7</a><br />Ninjatown<br />Geometry Wars: Galaxies (that's the DS one)<br />Contact<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What I've recently gotten but haven't played or have barely played</span>:<br />Darwinia<br />Multiwinia<br />Space Rangers 2<br />The Political Machine 2008<br />The Witcher: Enhanced Edition<br />Audiosurf<br />S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What I still hope to get, in no particular order</span>:<br />Far Cry 2<br />World of Goo<br />EDF 2017<br />Aquaria<br /> Defense Grid<br /> Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Season 1 (35 bucks for the whole season now)<br />Immortal Defense<br />Some GBA games and DS games; I cannot access my Amazon list for a while<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">One</span> racing game for the 360 (wouldn't want to get burdened with too many games to catch up with!) from the following list:<br />Midnight Club: Los Angeles (leaning towards this one)<br />Need for Speed Undercover<br />PURE<br />Burnout: Paradise<br />Baja: Edge of Control<br />GRID<br /><br />I think that, apart from these lists, the list I have on Amazon, and the games I will receive for Christmas, I will be well-covered for the first half of the year. Yes? Also, hooray! I see patterns erupting. Someone needs to hire me to be the casual MMO guy. I don't know of any casuals who understand or care about MMOs. I also haven't seen anyone compare the vast range of tower defense games that came out in 2008. Along with the downloadable revolution, tower defense has really come of age recently; Lock's Quest is awesome so far and I'm enthused about chewing on the many others.<br /><br />It's a good thing I haven't gotten a Playstation 2 yet.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-91732947627843591382008-12-22T10:09:00.002-07:002008-12-22T10:17:07.001-07:00Slight UpdateSo!<br /><br />I have not heard word back regarding some freelance offers. There is one more place I will take a stab at; I have discovered by reviews are pretty bad, and am going to be a bit more bold in my next three reviews. One of them is pretty much done. The games are Metal Slug 7, Lock's Quest, and Tomb Raider: Underworld. I only really liked one of them. Can you guess which one?<br /><br />Upon writing these three (ironically, the one I like seems like it will be the hardest to write about), I'll send them as part of the samples to one more place.<br /><br />After that, I'm going to take it slow, think about what I'd really, really like to do. Not really sure what it is I'm best at yet, and not really sure what to do with the blog, the idea of freelancing, or the time that I have to do writing. <br /><br />Also, the post below was going to be up for my column, but my editor rejected it, for he did not get it. That doesn't mean it was his failing, it means that it sucks! Oh well.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-72387425112588042112008-12-22T09:58:00.002-07:002008-12-22T10:01:15.588-07:00Finding someone to play your game with: a guide for the lonely and/or obsessed<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It doesn't seem like the reasons for excessive gaming zeal are mysterious are complex. If you want someone to read a book you read, you can at least join a book club, go online and discuss it, or ask someone to read who might pretend to, satisfying your need for book comraderie.<br /><br />And movies! It's easy to get people to watch a movie; it's two hours. You, or someone else, can fake it 'til you make it through any movie of any genre. Men who have succeeded in relationships can tell you all about it: to endure a "chick flick" often means scoring major points.<br /><br />Games, on the other hand, require not just an investment of time, but of effort. To play a game and then not really try or not really enjoy it makes it awkward. Finding someone else to play any game that isn't popular can be very difficult.<br /><br />If you don't know anyone who likes your game it is imperative, therefore, that one of two things occurs: you either persuade people to like your game and <a href="http://www.neogaf.com/" target="_blank">make arguments on its behalf</a>, or you learn to find people who already feel the same as you do. The first method is one that people are doing all the time; no doubt if you are online you are already able to persuade people to play something other than what they already do! Finding someone who already likes what you play is difficult, though.<br /><br />That's why I've made a handy guide on how to find people to play the games you want to play. Can't find anyone who wants to play <span style="font-style: italic;">Band of Bugs</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Quake 4</span>, or <span style="font-style: italic;">Fury</span>? <b>NO PROBLEM</b>! I, Michael Walbridge, can show you how. Not all options work, but for any system or game, there is a <i>guaranteed method</i> by which you will be able to find someone to play your game with you.<br /><br />For just $9.95 a month or by continuing to read below, I will share my secrets with you about how to find people to play any video game with you, <i>not</i> just World of Warcraft or Gears of War 2!<br /><br /><b>Nintendo Wii </b><br /><br />The Nintendo Wii can't be played online, unfortunately, but there is an option through which you can play with your Wii with other people, and it's the most important option there is.<br /><br /><i>The Wii Option</i><br /><br />1. Find friends or groups of people who like to play video games, or who also have this system.<br />2. Send a communication of some sort to this person. Say something like, "Hey, have you tried this game? Want to play it sometime?"<br />3. Wait for a response.<br />4. Go from there, treating it like any other planned social event, such as playing soccer, going shopping, going on a bow hunting or hog hunting trip or a trip that <a href="http://www.bowhunting.net/artman/publish/Deerhunts_2008/Cory_Gets_The_First_Hog.shtml" target="_blank">involves both</a>, drinking alcohol, drinking coffee, or drinking both alcohol and coffee mixed together.<br /><br />The steps in the Wii option are a common and effective way to play games with people. Also, this option works for a surprising number of systems, ranging from as early as the Atari 2600 (earlier, some claim) and onward to systems like the Atari Lynx, the Atari Jaguar, and even more recent offline systems such as the Nintendo Gamecube. In fact, exhaustive studies have proven that <span>the Wii option</span> works for any system!<br /><br /><b>Playstation 2</b><br /><br />Unfortunately, the Playstation 2 doesn't have online capabilities, just like the Nintendo Wii. See options for the Wii, listed above.<br /><br /><b>Playstation 3</b></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span>The Playstation 3 has severely changed its method of social interaction; fortunately, I have delved the secrets of multiplayer success and am sharing them with you.</span><b><br /></b><br /><i>Option 1</i><br /><br />1. Sign into Home.<br />2. Start up the game of your choice and go into a game lobby.<br />3. Wait.<br /><br /><i>Option 2<br /></i><br />1. Walk around the town, displaying which game you'd like to play.<br />2. If no one comes, log out or go to a place where no one can see you and change your avatar to a female avatar.<br />3. A female avatar's effectiveness is reduced if your name is something like xXxDUDExXx. If a female avatar won't get anyone to play a game with you, option three will not work.<br />4. Remember to fake your voice or manage to pretend that you don't have a mic. Act feminine!<br /><br /><i>Option 3</i><br /><br />1. Go to the official Playstation forums, or some other forum online.<br />2. Talk up your game, leave your ID and get the names of others.<br />3. Send and accept friend invites.<br />4. Try to get people on these lists to play with you. Send a message that says something like "Hey, do you have this game? Want to play it sometime?"<br />5. Go from there, etc.<br /><br /><b>Xbox 360</b><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Xbox 360 is home to some of the most disgusting version of male known to man. Fortunately, there are ways you can play games that are not Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Gears of War 2. Did you know that you can play card games like Uno and Texas Hold 'em? These games never have anything unpleasant occur in them; that's why the online interactions don't need to be rated!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There are other games, too, and the secrets to finding people to play with lie below.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Option 1</i><br /><br />1. Sign into LIVE.<br />2. Start up the game of your choice and go in to the game lobby.<br />3. Wait.<br /><br /><i>Option 2</i><br /><br />1. Go to the official XBox forums; look for the forum for the specific game you are thinking of. Add your name to the "Who plays this game anymore?" and/or "If you still play this game, put your name HERE" threads.<br />2. Send and accept friend invites.<br />3. See option three for the PS3 above.<br /><br /><b>Nintendo DS</b><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Nintendo DS cannot be played online, but there are plenty of places where a large number of people have a DS. There are numerous options for finding people to play the DS with you.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Option 1</i><br /><br />1. Go to a place where it is known that many of the people have a DS. Make sure popular titles such as Mario Kart DS and the latest edition of Pokemon are on your person.<br />2. Attempt to socialize with these people.<br />3. It is likely this will be difficult; parents, teachers, administrators, or even the DS owners themselves might not approve of your attempts to play the DS with them. It is probably best to not even try this option, but instead to try the Wii option.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Important note: make sure that the person has the game that you do, because for every person playing you need a copy of the game!<br /><br /><b>PSP</b><br /><br />The Wii option seems to be the only effective option for the Sony Playstation Portable. Rumor has it that watching movies is a more popular social activity than is playing video games; the PSP is often-touted as an effective movie-watching device, something that the other consoles do not boast of! This may account for why it is difficult to even find the mention of a PSP being used to play multiplayer games. This is still being researched and I'll reveal the findings as soon as they are discovered.<br /><br /><b>PC</b><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The personal computer is a complex device with numerous options. Sometimes the methods through which you will find people to play will vary depending upon the type of game you play!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Option 1</i><br /><br />1. It is worth noting that the options for the Wii can actually work on the computer! Grab two controllers, Lego Batman, a bunch of ROMs (these are widely available and the gaming companies provide them for FREE) or whatever, sit yourselves down, and like magic you can have your own creatively created console experience! Right at home!<br /><br /><i>Option 2</i><br /><br />1. Use the servers or network that the game features; this is particularly relevant for first person shooters or real time strategy games.<br />2. Wait.<br /><br /><i>Option 3</i><br /><br />1. For MMOs, consult the instruction manual or one of many Internet sites on how to be in these unique game worlds.<br /><br /><i>Option 4</i><br /><br />1. Use forums or websites in a manner similar to the options used for consoles.<br /><br /><i>Option 5</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. Go to a LAN cafe. You may need to combine <span>the Wii Option</span> with this option in order for it to work effectively. Get your LAN cafe's permission before installing games they don't have.<br /><br /><i>Option 6</i><br /><br />1. Use game socialization software combined with the approach of forums and/or <span>the Wii Option</span>; Steam, MiRC, Xfire, Facebook, Raptr, GamerDNA, and MyGameMug are all examples. Combine with option number two. </p>Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-54685532251776939112008-12-10T16:04:00.002-07:002008-12-10T16:04:59.708-07:00Lists. Everyone likes listsLists are so cool. Actually, I've seen a few I liked recently.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/news/2008s_most_scrutinized_games-3017.html">Here's one</a> I wrote. I tried to be a little original. If you follow my twitter feed, I already posted a link to this.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-23038068365765335572008-12-08T15:54:00.002-07:002008-12-08T16:05:45.162-07:00Review Terms and Structure: The ExperimentI wrote a review, but decided to post it first so visitors would see this post at the top, the why before the how.<br /><br />This is ambitious; I'm 1. proposing common terms and regrouping games' features and 2. demonstrating an alternative structure for a review. The first point has my stronger convictions, but the second could still be of value and open up thinking about reviews in a different light. The alternative structure is better for reviews than criticism since reviews are about being buyers' guides.<br /><br />One huge problem with reviews is numeric scores. Why do readers demand them? Because reviews are too long to read, or because too much of it is redundant? By having categories like this, a reader is served; numbered scores can be removed with fewer repurcussions because (1) new readers can be introduced to the game while at the same time (2) anticipatory fanboys and enthusiasts can skip the parts they have already passed judgment on prior to release.<br /><br />Instead of writing a 500-word newspaper/website article, I'm simply listing these new terms as categories and proceeding through them in a logical fashions. In order, they are Content, Gameplay, Sociability, Playstyle, Innovation, and Summary. Most of these are familiar, especially if you've been reading recent posts. The "graphics/sound/gameplay/multiplayer/presentation/replay" groups we often see are narrow categories that fail to address other important questions; I also think these terms could manage help tackle the problem of describing the game so that someone will be able to tell whether he will or will not like it regardless of whether you do or do not like. It will also indirectly address the problem of how long a reviewer spent playing the game. Some parts of a game take time to review; others do not.<br /><br />It seems two goals everyone can agree on are 1. to judge the game by its intent and 2. to explain it well enough that the player will know whether he likes it or not whether the reviewer likes it or not. I think doing it this way meets those goals.<br /><br />I am choosing to do a review on Atlus's <i>Contact</i> (below) and Jonathan Blow's <i>Braid</i> (forthcoming). Contact is a very strange and different game, the kind traditional reviews serve the poorest. The opinions on it varied <a title="widely" href="http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ds/contact?q=contact" id="oump">widely</a> and hardly anyone played it. It's hard to explain why you would or wouldn't buy this game; it is a game that would make a person tremendously happy or tremendously disappointed. It is a game that, if you like it, you hope everyone who would want to see it will see it, and that anyone who hates it will never see it. Braid is different, too, but it's recent and many more people have played it or are at least familiar with it. Reviewing Contact and Braid means I'll have both an obscure and famous game to display as examples. Braid also elicited divided opinions, and I also hope to write a review that would explain to those both new and familiar with the game why they would or wouldn't like it.<br /><br />And now, a review of the categories:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Content</span>: graphics, sound, story, presentation, plot, characters, voice acting, writing, campaign length, "ludonarrative dissonance", etc.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Gameplay</span>: controls, option, game design, bugs, glitches, etc. The part game reviews are most likely to do right because they are simply mechanics and issues each player is forced to acknowledge no matter how seriously they do not take games.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Sociability</span>: Multiplayer modes, communication and behavioristic design. It's one thing to have good multiplayer modes that play well because of good singleplayer gameplay; it's another thing to have a good match-making system or design choices that make the players more likely to stick around or more likely to be mean/helpful, etc. Most <a title="Game Anthropologist" href="http://www.gamesetwatch.com/column_the_game_anthropologist/" id="mtrn">Game Anthropologist</a> articles I've written are really just in-depth reviews of the unique multiplayer and sociability design choices that some games feature.<br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">Playstyle</span>: regarding playstyles, there seem to be two types, explained in a earlier post. This means I'm harping on it, but it's convenient to leave it in this post.<br /><br />Reckless people go into the game with no set purpose. They want to see what it is, then make their choices. Some want to goof around, some want to explore; the key here is that they want to let go of their inhibitions while they play.<br /><br />Deliberate gamers have already decided beforehand what they want; if the game meets their desires, they will keep playing. If not, they will either not like it or say "Gee, not in the mood for this right now, even if its good." This also boils down to immersion; deliberate gamers are the kind who like to forget they are playing games while taking themselves in; reckless players are aware they are playing a game and aware they are being someone else.<br /><br />Most games allow for both of these playstyles, but some are very much only one or the other, making them niche titles that are highly hated and loved at the same time: Spore, Little Big Planet, JRPGs, etc. Either way, each game has to allow for at least one of these playstyles to be nourished. How well does it do it? Traditional ambiguous terms surrounding these playstyles are "freedom", "linearity," and "interactivity", which are all terms that are a matter of preference rather than standard.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Innovation</span>: Does it adhere to conventions? If not, are the innovations inspiring, creative, and interesting and do they work well? If they do, are they polished and done better in anyway? Do they matter? Why or why not?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Summary</span>: Does anything not mix well? Basically, do the failings of one area weaken the strengths of another or vice-versa in a way that lessens or greatens the game as a whole? Who would like this game? Who wouldn't?<br /><br />One note on "replayability" or "game length": these are important, but don't warrant lengthy discussion; I feel they can be mentioned in content and sociability.<br /><br />I highly welcome and desire feedback on the review, and the terms. Do you like the terms? Should these be the trees, terms, and umbrellas used? What about a review with each aspect written in a separate section, only loosely referring to each other?Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-51765210846158590522008-12-08T15:49:00.006-07:002008-12-08T16:06:59.634-07:00An Experimental Review: Contact for the DSRead the section(s) you are interested in.<b><br /><br />Content</b><br /><br />Contact has one of the most unique openings to a complex, twisted plot laced with extremely subtle humor and foreshadowing. It is in fact so unforgettable that I wouldn't want to spoil it (thought most reviews and all comments threads invariably already have). If someone ever said to me, "rent this game, and you'll not regret the money spent even if you only played it for half an hour because the game is just so full of ideas and and creative storytelling mechanisms", I'd have never believed it. Now that I've played Contact, I find that a possible statement.<br /><br />Contact is one of those games for people who want to see something different, and that's true of almost everything about it. The game's manual and the back of the box champion its willingness to be different, to be a different kind of JRPG. It is clever without being too blatant, for all its oddities, if you give it a chance you will find the premise (un)believably absorbing.<br /><br />To be short, the main protagonist is Terry, a random silent protagonist kid of indistinguishable age. He gets into some trouble and ends up being abducted on a spaceship by a kind, absent-minded professor who likes like he could sub in for the Monopoly guy. The professor fails to fill Terry in on the details but tells him he needs Terry's help in collecting some organic cells that got scattered across the world; as they are potentially dangerous, it's imperative that Terry collect them.<br /><br />He spends the entire game at the top screen except during some boss fights and when you are in the inventory system; these are perhaps the only two moments you're guaranteed to be completely absorbed in the game, anyway, so it's unavoidably disturbing that he sits at the stop screen muttering to himself through the entire game while Terry is in mortal danger ("don't let the insects bug you, Terry! hee hee"). They are also illustrated using radically different textures; the professor and his spaceship look 8-bit, while Terry and his environs try to look a little more simple and realistic in perspective, not unlike an improved version of Donkey Kong Country.<br /><br />Terry gets called by his parents, who are extremely worried, looking for him. The professor shrugs this off in the name of the mission. The armor and weaponry and abilities are also contemporary; if you've played Earthbound, Contact feels similar, especially in its use of quirky soundtracks to enhance locale, but is so different it could convince you that JRPGs have a sub-genre that isn't about swords and magic but about baseball bats and aliens.<br /><br />I haven't finished the game yet; I suspect the events and ending will highly impact how interesting or satisfying Contact is to the player in a subjective way. Contact is made or broken by its story even more than other JRPGs; playing it is almost like reading a book; it flows quickly, easily, and yet its unique combat system makes the game feel more like work than fun; the story is what will compel the player to keep playing.<br /><br />Contact is approximately 15-20 hours long.<br /><br /><b>Gameplay</b><br /><br />So the gameplay feels like work, because it usually plays like grinding in an MMO. Terry never gets a party; he is always alone. You can see his outfit and weapon in action, and fighting is a simple matter of entering combat while he and enemies hit each other every 2 seconds until they die. Combat is even avoided or engaged in the same way; if you get too close, they chase you and you can outrun them. If you don't, you can walk through an entire dungeon without being hit. Monsters occasionally throw projectiles; unlike in an MMO, these move in real time, and you have to dodge them the way you would in a 2D Zelda game. Money or items is not guaranteed upon victory; if you do get any, they appear on the ground and you walk over them.<br /><br />Sure, there are special moves you can use at will, there are stickers you peal with the stylus, an interesting muscle-based, use-it-or-lose-it, Obvlionesque stat system with no levels whatsoever and a stomach-based food system where food doesn't just give health but takes an amount of time to digest while also taking up a certain amount of space in the stomach. Seriously, your inventory contains the outline of a stomach with tubes on each end and it gets filled up to a certain horizontal line; if it's full, you can't eat anymore.<br /><br />It's easy to pick up after a while, but it takes a while to get used to. While an interesting diversion, it still comes down to grinding, avoiding enemies, and working your way through the story. The quirky inventory and systems (you change clothes and armor only on ship in the changing room, and before you can eat it, the meat that monsters drop on the ground must be cooked on the ship too.) It does manage to mix in with the world and the story rather well, though, so it manages to stay out of the way of the world and the dissonance between Terry and the Professor's world.<br /><br />The saving is location based, which is unfortunate; were it not for that, Contact would take hold of you like a good TV show; the combat would simply be something you'd do just to see what happens next, like characters, commercials, side plots you put up with. Location-based saving makes it more work rather than going through the motions. Death is frustrating; you lose no money or saved game, but are sent back to the ship. These two flaws work against it; at least the combat is mostly easy and the save points are not brutally spaced-out.<br /><br />Also, the save point is always a bed and it always has a bathtub with hotwater in it next to it; bathing in it gives you full HP. Contact refuses to do anything by the book.<br /><br />Also, the bosses are more like bosses in Zelda; lots of dodging; it's awkward though; instead of dodging, then pressing a button and immediately seeing your sword swing, you must dodge, run up to the enemy, and wait for the auto-attack. This is challenging, but they are beatable enough to not crush the player into believing the next attempt will mean imminent defeat.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sociability</span><br /><br />Contact is a single player game.<br /><br /><b>Playstyle</b><br /><br />The plot in Contact is tightly controlled and highly deliberate; if you don't like anything, you can't ignore or destroy it. (You can actually kill any villager, but there are no repercussions, and they reappear once you revisit the area, even if it's by double-backing through a door five seconds later). There is no world map but simply locations you choose to fly or sail to. The ship then lands and when you walk out there is a town or small area or both. This makes the game technically composed of levels that you can revisit; the content and gameplay fortunately make it still feel like an RPG. And it actually has room for exploration; very early in the game you have the choice to visit an island that isn't the place the professor tells Terry to go to. So you go there, and there is a guy with no clothes on who explains he's washing them, sorry he's naked (see screen below, which shows the contrasting graphic styles). A monkey takes off with his clothes. You can then pursue it, and it gets attacked by a large carnivore; upon defeating it, the monkey gives you the clothes and follows you out of the cave.<br /><br />Jean Pierre then lets you keep his chef's outfit, which gives you the ability to cook.<br /><br />Again, exploration isn't necessary; the sites are interesting, but not more so than the main plot, which is a problem some RPGs possess. It may give the ability to beat the game more quickly, though, since money is not easy to get and food is important and expensive and the chef's outfit is necessary for cooking uncooked food you find.<br /><br /><b>Innovation</b><br /><br />Contact is literally the defining game on handheld innovation. Interesting, unnecessary, revolutionary, pointless, boring, barely noticable, head-scratching, incomprehensible--if there are styles and kinds of innovation, it feels like every single one is here. It manages to work because its most unique processes are the storytelling devices, narration, characters, story. What's fascinating is that the silly and stupid creative liberties taken with every single game feature still work in harmony with Contact's plot, world, and sense of humor.<br /><br /><b>Summary</b><br /><br />Do you like weird Japanese stuff? Earthbound? Issues of narration in gaming? Studying "ludonarrative dissonance"? Atlus games? JRPGs for the story more than the combat? Quirky villains and characters? Games that are actually funny? Japanese humor? The more of these you love, the more you'll love Contact and put it on your secret list of games you'd put in your personal top ten but wouldn't dare to name in public.<br /><br />If unique scenery, stories, music, and characters aren't enough to make the journey easier and you require RPGs that reward you with difficult, interesting or intense combat you will detest it for its simplicity, ease, and MMO-like auto-attack system.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-9772735734737552202008-12-06T23:37:00.002-07:002008-12-06T23:38:15.179-07:00Game Anthropologist Entry: Left 4 DeadI think this is one of my <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/6mfjeb">better ones</a>.</span> Valve is so easy to write about.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-85305419868364370562008-12-03T10:11:00.010-07:002008-12-05T21:27:55.064-07:00Shawn Elliott's questionsShawn Elliott <a href="http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/2008/11/unrealized-reviews-symposium.html">put up some questions</a> he was going to do for a symposium with <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/">N'Gai Croal</a>; the first person I know of to answer them was <a href="http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/2008/12/reviews-symposium-partly-badly-realized.html">Mitch Krpata</a>; I do not wish to steal thunder, and will say he's been reviewing longer than I have, and he's done it much more profesionally, too. So! Read his first.<br /><br />I interviewed all three of them when I was even more wet behind the ears than I am now, and ever since then I've pretty much hung on everything they have to say. Considering that the questions are loosely related to the stuff I talked to them about a while ago, I have been thinking about them for a while.<br /><br />So I'm going to hop on the "me-too" train. I know that I'm not the most famous reviewer you've heard of, nor have I done all that many--I just counted and I've written 20 reviews at<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/"> Snackbar</a> </span>(formerly etoychest.org), 12 of which have been in the last 2 months. I'm also the editor at the same place I wrote them, and have had to decide the policy on content, especially reviews; there have been 53 reviews in the last two months, all of which I've edited. So while I don't necessarily count as part of the "game reviewers club", I feel it's not outrageous to claim they are questions that affect me.<br /><br />Take this as the viewpoint of a writer and a site that wants to "break in"; the kind that is getting PR copies in the mail, but not of every game; the kind with hundreds of page views every single day, but not thousands.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 1:</strong> How much is on our minds before we begin playing any given game for review purposes? Will we imagine a range of probable scores that a heavily marketed, highly budgeted, and hugely anticipated game will get? What when the game is branded “budget” or is the work of a lesser-known, less-storied studio? If so, how closely have actual scores correlated with our assumptions?</blockquote>This ends up being a double-edged sword for us, because some of our reviews are of copies we purchased with our own money. Think free games have an impact on game reviewers? So does a lack of them--we get more of the less-desired titles and use them to trade-in for what we really wanted and anticipated in the first place. We did not receive a copy of Fallout 3, Fable II, or Far Cry II, but our writers purchased the first two mainly using review copies of games they didn't like.<br /><br />On the other hand, these lesser-desired titles do a lot to fuel our content, so I like to think our self-consciousness ensures that we give them a fair shake; budget titles and indie-titles, if they're good, are more likely to receive attention from us.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 2:</strong> Ought reviewers settle on a score before, during, or after writing a review? How consistent are our practices with our prescriptions? Have we, for instance, revised a score after writing our reviews, even though we advocate against it, and if so, why?</blockquote>I don't see why before should ever be a good idea; you should also be discovering the score in the writing process. While the number, if you use one, can be in your head at any time, it should be edited and reviewed like the text. A few times we've had a 4/5 or a 3/5 have inconsistent tone with the corresponding text; it's telling that the writers I have have been more willing to change the text rather than the number (though that may be due to the smaller scale we have).<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 3:</strong> When possible, do we look at the scores that other critics give to the games that we're reviewing, as we review them? If so, are groupthink or iconoclasty potential problems?</blockquote>I try not to, but confess I've had a couple games I reviewed that I read about much earlier. We got Silent Hill: Homecoming for the 360 over a month after it came out, and I'd already read all the conversation about it by Leigh Alexander and <span style="font-style: italic;">Variety's</span> Ben Fritz. This made it much harder to review--I was then reviewing it in context of everything I knew that has been said about it. It was as if I were a literary academic being publicly asked what I thought about <span style="font-style: italic;">Finnegan's Wake</span>.<br /><strong></strong><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 4:</strong> Often times we will have repeatedly played and/or previewed games in development prior to reviewing them. Does this familiarity with a particular game's developmental process influence the scores that we assign to the final product in the way that a professor will take into consideration her students' limitations and proven potential when she evaluates papers at the end of the semester?</blockquote>This hasn't been an issue for us for obvious reasons. A few of us went to some shows once but I don't think any reviews correlated with any pre-release exposure since I've been there<strong></strong><strong>.<br /></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 5:</strong> Review writing carries real consequence, especially among members of the enthusiast press. Once-warm PR people and game producers can become cold upon our publication of undesirable review scores, diminishing or eliminating our ability to secure subsequent interviews and access. Postmortem discussions and exclusive looks at the publisher and/or developer's forthcoming products are less likely. Conversely, a few publishers will permit us to post reviews before competitors, provided our review scores are favorable. Do such pressures produce a subliminal background or even enter our thoughts as we write reviews and assign scores?</blockquote>As a small site, we end up getting games last, usually. EA has recently warmed up to us and sent us Warhammer and Dead Space before release date, but they ended up getting good scores (by me, incidentally), so this has not become an issue, though it has the potential to. I already tell my writers to give more priority to reviewing the games we get earlier rather than the ones we get later; while this seems fair, it has the potential to be a problem.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 6:</strong> Is grade inflation an ongoing problem?</blockquote>As a whole, yes. Not all outlets suffer from it, but many do. Metacritic and Gamerankings become problematic, especially in the 50-70, 70-80, and 80-90 range. Like, what's the big difference amongst them? Is a 74 average really mixed reviews and 75 really generally favorable?<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 7:</strong> Do scores determine our tone? Can a “3” encourage us to explain an aspect of a game in clearly negative terms where our attitude is actually less decided? Example: Game X's camera obscures the action, combat is irritatingly difficult, and “save” stations are few and far between. In our reviews, is Game X's plot, which we're still thinking through, more likely to become miserable than plain?</blockquote>Ah, interesting throwback to question 2. At Snackbar, the 5-point scale was introduced to be more practical and not have to deal with so many of these problems. However, since 1 point is a huge deal, the writers stick by their scores once they give them to me.<br /><br />The process can become muddled, but at the end of the day the final version is what the reader will see, and for me the most important thing is that the score and text correspond and complement each other; it needs to be clear why the game ultimately got the score it did. If the review doesn't do this, I tell them to make them align.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 8:</strong> Do scores encourage our readers to conduct a sort of text-to-number calculus where the two obviously negative statements in an otherwise positive-sounding review necessarily translate into every point deducted from the “10” that the game didn't get? Does this make reviews with high marks more likely to overlook fault, and reviews with low marks less likely to celebrate accomplishment?</blockquote>I agree that many reviews tend to have this problem. However, if it looks obvious that the game was simply a 3/5 or 4/5 because they started at 5 and docked it points for game "penalties", I send it back. However, due to our scale this usually hasn't been a problem.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 9:</strong> Which is more important to us, our scores or our copy? If the latter, have our responses revealed any inconsistencies between our attitudes and actions? Are we still convinced of the importance and power of scores?</blockquote>The copy, obviously--I already ended up answering this.<br /><br />As a small site, we have to place value on the number in some way because we fear the readers wouldn't accept a lack of numbers since we aren't mainstream with highly-experienced writers. Also, we (*sigh*) want to get on Metacritic so we can increase exposure. It's become this necessary evil; it seems like bigger sites have to set the example and thus a precedent before we could ever get away with doing differently. And the bad part is that I suggested we switch to a 10-point scale soon for the sake of getting listed because 20/40/60/80/100 seems too constrictive if we have to play with everyone else.<br /><a name="txtMsgBody"></a><br /><strong>Related suggestions for Ethics section:<br /></strong><blockquote>Have we ever submitted review scores to publishers prior to their publication? If so, why?<br /><br />Have we ever submitted review copy to publishers prior to its publication. If so, why?<br /><br />Have PR people suggested that specific critics review specific games? Have we complied with their suggestions?</blockquote>No to all the above as far as Snackbar is concerned. We have, however, been asked when a review will be posted, but that seems harmless.<br /><br />On the last question, though, I was once approached by a certain PR rep (through Facebook!) to cover a certain game because of an article I once wrote (not on Snackbar). That someone who has written as few paid articles as I have had already been singled out to cover a game because I would be predisposed to liking it was an uncomfortable wakeup call.<br /><br />It's been fascinating how someone who has written as little as I have and done work at a site as small as Snackbar has already experienced firsthand many of the little dances that writers and journos have with PR. I'm convinced there other industry has an environment where newcomers can be so easily...uh, accosted.<br /><br /><strong>Reviews Vs Criticism</strong><br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 1:</strong> What is the object of a review? What are the review writer's obligations?</blockquote>Right now, it seems like most are like an automobile review, doing a checklist of features and how well they work mechanically.<br /><br />What it ought to be is something Ebert said, which I quoted in an earlier post:<br /><blockquote>"Provide a sense of the experience. No matter what your opinion, every review should give some idea of what the reader would experience in actually seeing the film. In other words, if it is a Pauly Shore comedy, there are people who like them, and they should be able to discover in your review if the new one is down to their usual standard."<br /></blockquote>For Snackbar, I want them to craft it around a thesis statement; basically "it is good/bad in this/that way(s); here's why" kind of thesis. We are actually trying to figure out what we want to do as a site that offers something of unique value to readers, making the issue of reviews a very fuzzy and haranguing one.<br /><br />On a personal note, I am going to shop around an article I'm pitching on the 5 dealbreakers that can apply to every game: sociability, reckless and deliberate gaming, and (again, from Mitch) games that are rewarding in the areas of skill and content. The lack of recognition on these leads people to say irrelevant, useless things like Bionic Commando is bad because there's no jumping or an RPG or FPS campaign is bad solely because it is "linear" or a game is bad because the player isn't able to change the outcome enough. These are preferences, but not standards.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 2:</strong> If the purpose of a review is to suggest to consumers how they should spend their time and money, why do we avoid less-granular grading scales such as Buy, Try, or Avoid? Example: Giant Bomb founder and former Gamespot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann told MTV's Multiplayer blog that “'How can I save people money today?' is basically the kind of mentality that I tackle this stuff with.” Under Gerstmann's directorship, Gamespot reviewed games on a hundred-point scale. Is a 9.6 different than a 9.7 when the wisdom of a purchase is what the reviewer wants to communicate?</blockquote>If reviews are serving the purpose of being buyer's guides, the scale should not be more than 1-10, and even those can be difficult enough. The closer the scale is to 10 or below, the better. Crispy's scale (buy it, try it, fry it) is not something I'd want to see everywhere, but it's a view I can appreciate; I'm always curious what their score is on any titles I'm interested in.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 3:</strong> Actual sales rarely correlate with review scores in cases where games are not also heavily hyped and marketed. Increasingly, gamers pre-order games prior to the publication of reviews. Interactive demos allow our audiences to decide for themselves whether or not a game will be worth their dollars. In addition, word of mouth and message board discussions inform our potential audiences' purchasing decisions with an intimacy and directness that we cannot provide. Finally, review aggregation sites such as Metacritic mute the bias of individual reviewers and provide a bigger picture. Do these circumstances suggest that our self-perception is, well, delusional – a throwback to a time when magazines and websites were gaming's gatekeepers? If our audiences believe this, even if we do not, what are they really reading for?</blockquote>I don't know! This is the question that has gotten everyone talking and self-analyzing again, but I tackled it in my last 3 or 4 blog posts.<br /><br />I find it telling that it takes a very long time for people to figure out whether a game is <a href="http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=343145">one they would like</a>. Even forums struggle; Dead Space is still a game people <a href="http://etelmik.blogspot.com/2008/10/challenges-of-reviewing-dead-space-and.html">most people cannot figure out</a> by reading about it, and I wish the recent arguments on innovation had taken place around that title rather than Mirror's Edge, since it did not innovate that much but did have solid delivery. It really should be the other title mentioned (also by EA's push for a little bit more IP, interestingly enough) in these discussions, but I think everyone's burned out now.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 4:</strong> Can criticism (concerned with telling our audiences what they're spending time and/or money playing as opposed to whether or not a game is worth spending time and/or money to play) coexist with reviews? Is a competent review also a critique -- as is so often the case where lit, movies, and music are concerned -- or should we separate the two?</blockquote>As with most elements of pop culture, it seems inevitable that the two will combine. However, the buyer's-guide-reviews will still exist without critique, so I hope criticism gets its own spot in culture at large later on. It drives me crazy that you can discuss music, movies, books or anything else with a stranger or in groups, and to talk about them as critical and cultural products, but not games.<br /><br />One thing at a time, I guess; though ideally there would be space for all three types, with criticism and criticism/reviews in a state of growth. I don't worry about buyer guides, obviously, because economics is a stronger force here; they will obviously never go away.<br /><strong></strong><blockquote><strong>Question 5:</strong> What can (or should) such criticism take into account? [Note: I don't want to jump the gun on the Evolving Reviews section here, so bear with me if you're wondering why I'm not yet asking certain obvious questions about the shape and challenges of videogame criticism.]</blockquote>The framing of this question suggests this is a very, very big question. It deserves as much space as the rest of these combined, perhaps. However, to be uber-brief, I do wish for more analysis that is similar to literary criticism, the kind done by Ian Bogost, and for analysis of games as social systems. The latter is a space I try to tackle; I'm kind of bad at it, but I get to mumble about it <a href="http://www.gamesetwatch.com/column_the_game_anthropologist/">elsewhere</a>.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-72159424480669832482008-12-01T09:17:00.004-07:002008-12-01T09:23:16.024-07:00Amazon is Insane Right Now (Gaming on a Budget)<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=vg_nav_deals_computer?ie=UTF8&plgroup=5&docId=1000170001&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=browse&pf_rd_r=0X19WWMYZRQVEHVRA0KZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463647691&pf_rd_i=409566">Spore and Far Cry 2</a> for the PC? <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fable-II-Xbox-360/dp/B000FRVAD4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1228148378&sr=1-3">Fable II</a>? Star Wars: The Force Unleashed? Ninjatown? A DS with a breast cancer ribbon on it?<br /><br />20, 18, 40, 30, 15, 99. Dollars.<br /><br />This is the time to browse. This is even more interesting than the <a href="http://www.gamefly.com/store/">Gamefly store</a> (though that's year-round) right now.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-28845888875753417082008-12-01T08:37:00.003-07:002008-12-01T08:55:05.734-07:00Like Fine WineSometimes being late to the party is more enjoyable because you already know how to make yourself comfortable. I'm convinced that consumption of older media is the only honest way to enjoy it. If something is new, I get too caught up in wondering what everyone else's thoughts are; if a game is older, we know that everyone else made their minds up and that what's been said and done is over. And if anything to be said is new, it's more in the style where time is not urgent, the way it is with more academic topics. Fitting that an academic is the first one to treat games like books by having a <a href="http://www.websitetoolbox.com/mb/brainygamer">book club of video games</a>. I hope that's a trend that catches on. (Btw, Michael, there should be a link to it from the main page--I had to dig through posts to find a link to it, or would have had it not been <a href="http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/12/childs-play.html">referenced today</a>.<span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>)<br /><br />I've had a DS for 3 months and I picked up some GBA games; they are games no one plays anymore. I have no option but to enjoy them for their own sake. Also picked up the hard-to-find <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ds/contact?q=contact">Contact</a>, an invisible game that I suspect is much better than the reviews gave it credit for (I've only played it for 1.5 hours). Unforgettable beginning, and I mean literally unforgettable. I wish I could see some non-review writing on that title. Anyone know of anything?<br /><br />When you want to enjoy games just for their own sake, what do you play? What would you be playing instead?<br /><br />Also, an update on the last post: upon seeing some more <a href="http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/2008/11/unrealized-reviews-symposium.html">writings</a> that are <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/6/30/">far superior</a> in experience and expression, I'll admit I now think the post below doesn't really mention anything original except the deliberate--reckless scale. Between that and Mitch's content--skill scale as reasons for playing, I think those two categories and four aspects (they aren't dichotomies because a game could have both, or even all four aspects covered) being taken into account would get rid of most criticism that is purely uninformed preference. Tired of "linearity", "freedom", "interactivity", and "narrative" issues being used as justification for negative criticism instead of simply the first elaboration of style? Me too.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-32700787425651110032008-11-26T09:50:00.007-07:002008-11-26T11:12:28.331-07:00What Game Reviews Don't Do, and Some Suggestions<span style="font-weight: bold;">The Problem</span><br /><br />So we have a problem. Games writing and reviewing is useless (my term), recognized frequently even by those who actually produce it. Leigh Alexander put it best (make sure to read the link) in the midst of a lengthy response to some criticism from N'gai Croal:<br /><br /><blockquote>"And as I <a href="http://kotaku.com/5097355/i-gamer">illustrated at Kotaku yesterday</a>, the large majority of game consumers do not currently read reviews because they don't find them useful or relatable. The disconnect between the consumer who reads reviews and the one who doesn't is just a precursor to the rampant disconnect between those tasked with communicating about games and those who enjoy playing games.<br /><br />This particular chasm, I feel, is one of the largest obstacles to games attaining widespread cultural value beyond that of a plaything. And it's also one of the most addressable."</blockquote><br />Reviewers of other products have a sort of use; growing up, I heard my mom say she likes Roger Ebert's reviews because he usually <span style="font-style: italic;">likes the same things she does</span>. That is not something I can think of anyone saying about any game reviewer anywhere, ever. This difficulty is exascerbated by the length of time required to play, meaning that partaking of a game that someone recommends is a bigger deal than watching a movie or listening to some music. Music and movie obsessors can get together and talk while sharing music or movies with each other and the fact that it's much easier to share movies and music make it easier for them to have a discourse. We envy them for this, or should. (Sidenote: this is another reason I think that for critical purposes, games are more similar to books than they are to movies or music, but there isn't room for that here.)<br /><br />People have not truly learned how to recommend games to each other yet, but reviewers should be the first to learn how to do so. There is no broadly accepted way to recommend them. Right now, it takes a personal relationship and intimate knowledge of someone's playing habits to tell a person whether or not he will like a game. There is no common notion that everyone wants to play even Smash Bros. Brawl or Madden or Halo; when asked, a guy at my work just keeps repeating, mildly, that he doesn't like Halo, and doesn't want to play Halo.<br /><br />We need to evaluate by intent. While some reviews are <a href="http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3170428&p=39&sec=REVIEWS">blatantly prejudiced</a>, most won't admit it. Dead Space (<a href="http://etelmik.blogspot.com/2008/10/challenges-of-reviewing-dead-space-and.html">I wrote about why this was hard to review</a> and why the discussion, even in forums, makes it difficult for people to explain it), Mirror's Edge, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Fable II (a lot of people hated its 5-hour story and Sims-based methods of exploring the world), Red Alert III, Braid, Mega Man 9, Warhammer Online, and Spore. These games are receiving disparate reviews and opinions, especially by users and consumers; their quality or lack thereof is justified for different reasons from person to person. If the reader has to do extensive research, what use is a review?<br /><br />The main problem is pretended objectivity. Games may be programmed, binary creatures, but with the exception of perhaps controls, everything in it is a matter of subjective taste.<br /><br />We could take the advice of someone who is much more experienced with criticism, my <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/eberts_little_rule_book.html">mom's favorite movie reviewer</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Provide a sense of the experience. No matter what your opinion, every review should give some idea of what the reader would experience in actually seeing the film. In other words, if it is a Pauly Shore comedy, there are people who like them, and they should be able to discover in your review if the new one is down to their usual standard.</blockquote>Game reviews don't really do that. Hell, even <a href="http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=343145">casual conversation on forums</a> struggles to do that. Figuring out whether someone likes a game, even if everyone jumps in and tries to be as helpful as possible, is difficult. To figure this out, we need to take a step back and remind ourselves about how and why different people play games. Again, we need to evaluate by intent.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ideas for Evaluation By Intent</span><br /><br />These are some recommended do's and don'ts on how to evaluate by intent while trying to explain to everyone whether they will like a game. I admit some of these are more radical than others.<br /><br />Do these consistently:<br /><br />--Evaluate the single player and multiplayer as separate games. This doesn't necessarily mean equal time and space, but it does mean equal attention. Far Cry 2 sold well and received good reviews but plenty didn't realize it was more a single-player game than a multiplayer one and were left highly disappointed.<br /><br />And when you mention multiplayer, mention if anyone actually plays it! Reviews do not mention this; this is why the XBox and Playstation forums are loaded with "Does anyone play this?" threads.<br /><br />--How "economic" is it? Economics are only mentioned when a game gives a very small or big amount per dollar or if it has an atypical price (note how many console downloadable titles have the price mentioned in reviews). Make it a regular feature. You may have money and loads of free games as a game reviewer; your 20-something and 30-something friends may not need to buy used; but your average game player can only buy so many games and many are on a budget. Economics can't be ignored, and we are usually talking sixty bucks, not ten to twenty. It doesn't matter if it doesn't matter to you; it matters to too many people, parents, students, teenagers, and more.<br /><br />--Evaluate how competitive and cooperative the game is. Changing trends show that readers want to know how much the multiplayer supports teamwork, competition, or both.<br /><br />--In a similar light, make sure to mention how sociable the game is. Just because there's multiplayer doesn't mean it feels like you're playing with other people. It's unfortunate how little mention is made of how much a game brings people together, online or no. Culdcept Saga is highly competitive, co-operative, and sociable at the same time, making it an extremely unique multiplayer experience. No game reviews mention this but in the long run, that is <a href="http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/07/column_the_game_anthropologist_culdcept.php#more">half the reason a reader would want to buy it</a>.<br /><br />This issue has been brought to light by zombie modes in three new shooters that have come out, but it was always there.<br /><br />--How well does the game work for deliberate and reckless playstyles?<br /><br />I am not the first to highlight this issue--Penny Arcade and <a href="http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-taxonomy-of-gamers-table-of.html">Mitch Krpata</a> were on this beat long before I ever even thought about it. I'd like to review the differences and see what kind of effect it can have on reviews.<br /><br />Reckless people go into the game with no set purpose. They want to see what it is, then make their choices. Some want to <a href="http://www.mygamemug.com/results.php?t=RSFV">goof around</a>, some want to <a href="http://www.mygamemug.com/results.php?t=RSSV">explore</a>; the key here is that they want to let go of their inhibitions while they play.<br /><br />Deliberate gamers have already decided beforehand what they want; if the game meets their desires, they will keep playing. If not, they will either not like it or say "Gee, not in the mood for this right now, even if its good." This also boils down to immersion; deliberate gamers are the kind who like to forget they are playing games while taking themselves in; reckless players are aware they are playing a game and aware they are being someone else.<br /><br />Most games allow for both of these playstyles; MMOs and creativity-based games such as Little Big Planet can be big dividers. Even learning LBP's tools requires recklessness that deliberate gamers lack, which is what made the opinions of it so intensely divisive. A deliberate gamer wants to play LBP and have fun platforming and playing the great levels others have made; they will be <a href="http://www.crispygamer.com/gamereviews/2008-10-28/littlebigplanet-ps3.aspx">disappointed by LBP's awkwardness and the shortness of its "campaign."</a><br /><br />Reckless gamers, on the other hand just viewed the campaign as a prelude, an introduction to exploration.<br /><br />Each type lends itself to different genres; the problem is that some of the most popular genres allow room for both, making this another issue that is neglected. Some games are much more friendly only to one type. Survival horror is quite friendly to deliberate players but not reckless players, which is why opinions are so divisive on them as well.<br /><br />And quickly, an opposite example where a reviewer expecting a reckless experience found Eternal Sonata to be highly deliberate, which yielded an <a href="http://www.crispygamer.com/gamereviews/2008-11-04/eternal-sonata-ps3.aspx">atypically critical review</a>.<br /><br />These reviews are basically saying "I wanted this, but didn't get it, and feel cheated out of what I think I was promised" and "This game genre should adhere to these conventions I like, and it doesn't at all, so it fails." Instead, they could have said, in essence, "Creative gamers with no expectiations are more likely to love Little Big Planet, but gamers wanting a stellar platforming experience will be disappointed; that's not what it was made for," and "Eternal Sonata is an extremely linear RPG, so if the need to explore villages and continents is a requirement for you, that will turn you off."<br /><br />Don'ts:<br /><br />--Don't make mention of every piece of control or features. Summarize. Go into specifics only if it's something that has not been mentioned in previews and advertising. That nifty new cover system? Everyone's heard of that. It's on the damn box. Don't waste your time doing what Gamestop, the game box, marketing, and most of the other reviews are going to do. This will be elaborated further down this list.<br /><br />--Spend very little time on graphics, especially on sprites, characters, textures, and scenery. People who care about this will look at these long before your review was every written and already have made up their minds. Those that aren't don't want to read about it. Animation or anything that causes the game to glitch, slowdown, interfere with gameplay are fine since that spills over into gameplay and other parts of the experience.<br /><br />--Don't review the music. You are reviewing a game, not music, and you don't have the room to review everything. Most game reviewers do not know a damn thing about reviewing music, and most readers don't know anything about music criticism, either. Talk about it on your blog or in a feature if you must, but leave it out of the review. Say what kind of music it is and move on. Offer a sample if possible. If it's obnoxious, has limited tracks, or strangely limited options, you can mention this.<br /><br />Also, those who care about music usually care about graphics, and well, they've also made up their minds. Acclaimed Japanese composer? Mention his name. No need to say anything else.<br /><br />--Don't spend much time on the story unless it's an RPG or text-based game. There are no other genres for which a story makes or breaks the game. <span style="font-style: italic;">None</span>. Any game that is not an RPG that manages to make use of the story to enhance the game experience is just giving icing on the cake. Be brief when you mention voice acting and story arc and plot twists. The state of games stories is very dry. Anyone who wants to know more will either just play the damn game or read about it in forums. Simply mention whether it complements or detracts from the rest of the game's package.<br /><br />Example: Grand Theft Auto IV's story was nice, but given way too much damn attention. Would it have still gotten the score it did if the action sucked? What about if the story were worse than it is? Hmm.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-44098640999363085552008-11-21T13:41:00.003-07:002008-11-21T13:42:15.179-07:00I know that EVE Online is nerdsville, but....Man does <a href="http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/11/21/eve-online-player-election/">this</a> make it look cool. Make sure to note the responsibilities and benefits for being elected.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-28467238863276470382008-11-12T08:17:00.002-07:002008-11-12T09:00:16.219-07:00No, I'm not an ARG person<a href="http://gangles.ca">Matthew Gallant</a> just emailed me to say "So <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com">Snackbar</a> isn't a front for an ARG, right? Just making sure." No, no it's not. He was joking, but I wasn't sure at first. I mean, look at it. There are plans to change the design, be assured.<br /><br />To everyone, especially <a href="http://brainygamer.com">Michael Abbott</a>, I'm sorry. I knew about <a href="http://www.pixelvixen707.com/">her</a> for a while, and I didn't realize there would be any harm or foul; had I known Michael was engaging in solicited emails with her, I'd have given him the tip. I've known for a month.<br /><br />I was not aware that ARG's are highly offensive to some; it was no harm to me that the blog served as a low-importance backstory for a supporting character in some book I don't care about. One of the <a href="http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/11/on_pixelvixen707_brinkvale_ins.php#c850674">comments</a> on Simon's breaking of the story says<br /><br />"Mark, most writing about games is simply not of a quality and most critique superficial, but the blog was well-written and attempted to delve in deeper critique. <div class="comment-content"> <p>A sad reflection on the state of games writing? Probably."</p> </div>And that was why it didn't bother me. It was unique, quality content. Why is it fine to accept vanilla crap content with blatant advertising but not quality, bloggy type of content with non-intrusive advertising?<br /><br />The deceipt, you say. But deceipt happens all the time. People tell white lies all the time. Strangers, acquiantances, and co-workers lie all the time, and we accept that. And technically, the site never lied--the "about me" page was <a href="http://www.pixelvixen707.com/?page_id=5">short</a> and had only two links, both of which were highly telling. The handler has basically admitted that it was a mistake and they'd wished people had figured it out sooner--they didn't want this to happen. Even they are a little unhappy with how it turned out. It is possible someone could have figured it out immediately--the fact that no one did until now is just as telling about our Internet habits as it is about how convincingly real a fictionaly game blogger like Rachael Webster is.<br /><br />Engaging in lots of <a href="http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/11/a-bit-thick.html">email conversations</a>--being upset about that is something I understand. But the fact that she did it at all doesn't just have to elicit feelings of anger because "oh no, we were marketed to"--instead, it can remind us that we still have much to learn about interaction on the Internet and about the state of the game blogging community. We can be introspective instead of pissy.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-66002489162522420432008-10-28T14:11:00.008-06:002008-10-28T15:17:22.968-06:00The challenges of reviewing Dead Space, and why I had to call it goodOne time when I was doing some interviewing at Disney Avalanche, a game developer drily told me that for them "an 8 is a 10". It prompted a brief discussion on reviewing game for what they are and what they're trying to accomplish rather than using a universal standard.<br /><br />We wouldn't rate juvenile literature as poor because it has a lower level of vocabulary and doesn't have new and super-complex themes; we rate it as art (and sometimes morality) for the kids, tweens, and teenagers. It has a different purpose, and is reviewed and judged by different standards than what exists for adults.<br /><br />This has led me to judge a game by whether or not it accomplishes what the designers intend it to. At best are games in which every single element, design choice, and design execution supports the game's overall intentions. At worst are games that have no intention but to simply exist and be purchased, such as 10-minute DS games that are worse than browser-based Flash games. Some games don't even seem to have figured out what they are trying to do.<br /><br />Almost all games fall in between these two extremes; the phrase "tacked on" is applied when a part of a game does not mesh with the whole. A game is more than the sum of its parts, but some of those parts have no business mixing with the others. Many a game has a pointless multiplayer that just seems included to extend replay value and sales. Sometimes there are minigames that serve as diversions from everything else enjoyable about the game. Even if they're good, in actuality they're often a hindrance, like an unnecessary poem, letter, journal entry, or story within a story that has nothing to do with the real story.<br /><br />This led me to some huge problems when reviewing Dead Space, dubbed as both a shooter and a survival horror game. First, it doesn't do either of those well. Second, shooters are my specialty, the genre I have reviewed the most and easily spent the most time playing. Dead Space is not much of a shooter. The only challenges for me were instant deaths, ammo issues, and cheap surprise attacks that take one third of your health. Any time I knew they were coming, they were slow and either poor shots or easy to dodge; I just had to line them up and shoot. This made Dead Space feel like work. And the survival horror stuff wasn't there that much; it's space, everything is in the open, it hardly even got dark, and it was more or less predictable; and you can upgrade your weapons and armor! To add to that, at the outset almost every single freaking part of it I could attribute to other games. Far Cry 2. Half Life 2. Bioshock. Doom 3 and Quake 4, even, which were mostly generic and looked to be a last hurrah for terrible, icky monsters in space that you shoot at close range with powerful guns. Bad + bad + derivative = bad, right?<br /><br />I started to get excited. I, Michael Walbridge, would convincingly break down for the masses why Dead Space is overrated; and even if no one would read it, I'd have a good sample for a heavily-hyped game; I want a well-rounded selection to draw from when I start pitching for reviews. I must be getting somewhere if I didn't like what everyone else did, and can make a convincing and persuasive case as to why.<br /><br />I got farther into Dead Space and my review thoughts and worried I was being unfair to the game. How many people are so aware of every single other freaking game, even all the shooters? What would a typical reader think of the game? That's something I want to respect. They don't give a damn about all those games combined or about narration or whatever, they just want a game that's "cool."<br /><br />I played with headphones and I often played in the dark. I thought of what Dead Space was really aiming to be, a standard I promised I'd live by and had temporarily forgotten. Did EA say it was supposed to be a shooter and survival horror? No, those were attributions others had given it to summarize it. Dead Space was supposed to be Dead Space. But what was Dead Space supposed to be?<br /><br />On the horror front, it still disappointed, and that is criticism I didn't change. It is predictable and it is really more gory and gross than it is scary. A lot of average guys would still want to play it because of the production values. And it did have some challenges that were not related to shooters or horror; the instances with zero gravity or zero air, or both were crisply presented, unique, tense, and they didn't seem "tacked on", or simply there just to be cool. They blended well with the whole package.<br /><br />In fact, as I got into it very few of the elements seemed to be pointless, even the ones I didn't like. So what did I do in my review? I mentioned why some people (me, really) might not like it, and tried to say why everyone else would.<br /><br />And by being patient with it, I found it is a little deeper than many others have given it credit for. Dead Space is a subtle horror story and manages to do something new for silent protagonists and game narration. Gordon Freeman, Jack, and Chell are you, and that forces you to feel as if you are part of their world. In Dead Space, Isaac is a silent protagonist just like them--or so you'd think. He actually has his own opinions. All his objectives have texts with his own opinions, and you see him on the outside. He rarely shows his reactions, but there is one time where he does which is rather poignant. And some of his decisions look obviously stupid. They often do not feel like decisions that I, the player, made.<br /><br />Most subtly of all, on the last two levels, you, the player, gain a big distance from him. There are plenty of plot bombshells that surprise Isaac, but a couple of them are revealed to the player and <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> to Isaac. This is the game accomplishing something new: it draws you in as close as possible without making you the actual character. You don't feel like you are Isaac, you just become convinced you know how he feels. Then the game jerks you away from him; you now know how he feels but you also know something he doesn't. This is a blending, to me; you have your Bioshock/Portal element combined with something classical and effective, dramatic irony. You know that Romeo isn't really dead, and that Juliet doesn't know what's going on, and it gets to you. Isaac becomes a Juliet. And in the end, there are a couple parts people call plot holes that are in fact not holes but simply missing information. There are a couple of parts that, after you beat it, don't make sense (biggest bombshell, without spoiling it: if a certain person at the end of the game knew a certain thing, what did that mean for the beginning of the game?); but there are plenty of possible, rational explanations, none of them which aren't freaky or shocking.<br /><br />This is Dead Space's saving grace as a horror story: it masterfully tells you plenty without telling you everything, and it isn't until you sit back and think about it that the lightbulb hits you and you have an "OMG! Why?" moment. You, like Isaac, don't have the answers you want, and you are left chilled.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-4641499244418759002008-10-27T09:56:00.002-06:002008-10-27T10:29:08.536-06:00Where I've beenI've been quite busy; I guess I should take it as a good sign that I have something other than my blog to pour writing into, though, yes? I've been writing airy, proud stuff on GSW for a while and have been wanting to expand my reach and range of topics; other than an article for Eurogamer and some links to my GSW/GamaSutra/Blog stuff, I've not got much to brag about. I've also been receiving some encouragement from a writer or two and came to the realization that I don't know how to review, or at least have not had much experience at it.<br /><br />At the same time, <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/">Snackbar Games</a> has been growing a bit and its owner, Chris Rasco, finally got a lot of personal life stuff in order and has been spending a lot of time on the site. Chris Rasco and I had talked for a long time about really pushing the site. Get it enough traffic to make money, and we'll start paying people, he says. I've been the editor there for over a year; over 90% of all the final stuff in that time period is due to my amateur editing. Some mom and pop sites don't do much, or get anywhere, but then again <a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s38snackbar">some do</a>. It's true Snackbar is just some little volunteer site, but it's way ahead of all the others. First, it used to be etoychest (technically making SB 6 years old), a metacritic-indexed site that people had actually heard of, headed in large part by Jason Dobson, who is now a respected writer for Joystiq and other places. Second, our traffic is so big we get unsolicited games we get over 20 games a month. We're in good with THQ, 2K, Activision, EA, and others. Not bad!<br /><br />Anyway, Chris's efforts have had me doing a lot more editing and <a href="http://videogamesjournos.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1409274%3ATopic%3A33892">grabbing a lot more staff</a>, so content here will slow down and I'll probably be posting on there more. I have written <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/ds/prey_the_stars-963.html">four</a> <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/ds/naruto_path_of_the_ninja_2-965.html">reviews</a> in the last <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/pc/brothers_in_arms_hells_highway-967.html">two</a> <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/reviews/xbox_360/dead_space-968.html">weeks</a>, a news post or two, an interview with the devs for <a href="http://www.leagueoflegends.com/">League of Legends</a> (the first one they've given that I know of, coming later this week), and a first impressions piece on <a href="http://www.snackbar-games.com/news/call_of_duty_world_at_war_first_impressions-2963.html">Call of Duty: World at War</a>.<br /><br />To anyone who reads (or writes!) reviews, I'd love feedback; I wonder if and why these are good enough to use as samples when I approach other outlets; if I have style weaknesses, I need to overcome them. The other editor, <a href="http://colorninja.com/">Graham</a>, has thankfully been taking some of my workload and recently begun editing my stuff; before that, I wrote it, I usually didn't get any other eyes on it and then edited it, then it was posted. Feedback on the SB site is welcome, too, as Chris is making a lot of changes to it.<br /><br />So that's where I've been, and that's where I'll be much of the time.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17016109.post-13987666480340946882008-10-18T18:12:00.003-06:002008-10-20T10:14:50.543-06:00Protoss: "Snobbery Has Arrived"Good 'ole Kieron recently said that game critics are starting to <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08/21/steps-towards-an-elitist-critic-future/">move in the direction</a> that other critics of other media are. He points out that one of the practical uses of critics is that they turn us on to titles we may not otherwise have heard of.<br /><br />I mentioned it in chat with him the other day and he said he may have changed his mind about it. The money isn't really in that kind of criticism, at least not yet. But we still have it. It's still in operation. Braid is a game many would not have heard of had the critics not jumped out and said "OMG BRAID! LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL!" Maybe not everyone is an artist, and maybe not everyone looked at it for very long, but many people went to the exhibit.<br /><br />King's Bounty and World of Goo. Man, World of Goo has been all over my twitter feed and were it not for Michael Abbott or RPS's frequent references to it, I'd have not known about it. I once saw a trailer for it a very long time ago, but I'd long forgotten the name. And how would I have found it? Little Big Planet? A bit bigger scale, yes, but the buzz and prereviews have to have boosted its reach. Partially due to shows, events, and meetings that only game journalists and writers get to go to, sure, but still.<br /><br />Blogs like <a href="http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/">Leigh's</a>, <a href="http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/">Mitch's</a>, <a href="http://fidgit.com/">Tom's</a>, <a href="http://brainygamer.com/">Michael's</a> or <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/">N'Gai's</a> will sometimes politely and quietly turn me on to hits before many people, even Internet readers, hear about them. And the Twitter feeds! Oh man. Yakuza 2, a recent PS2 exclusive, <a href="http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/10/yakuza-2.html">fits this pattern</a>. Note the comments and where people say they are hearing about it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.avclub.com/content/games">Onion AV</a>, <a href="http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/media-type/games/">Paste</a>, <a href="http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=reviews_layout&dept=videogames">Variety</a> and of course <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/">Penny Arcade</a> are financed operations that will still cover some of the bigger titles, but also make sure to find gems for you too. As in, "Hey, here's this one. Did you guys know about it? It's actually quite good. I don't see anyone talking about it. Sad, because I need some to talk about it (or play it) with."<br /><br />There are plenty of "gamers" who have played so much that they are demanding and wanting to see the new big thing. This isn't because they are picky (even if they are), but because they have seen so much that they have a vampire's hunger for the blood of the new and sensitivity to the blindness of the redone or reused. Whenever another freaking first person shooter comes my way, I am always sniffing for the difference.<br /><br />Game criticism has really gotten somewhere. If you say "I didn't like Braid," that's like saying you don't like the Dark Knight or that you didn't like <a href="http://www.reason.com/news/show/29196.html">Ulysses</a>. This may sadden us, but really, if we've gotten to game snobbery where it's cool to like or dislike something, it means games are being taken more seriously.<br /><br />Obsessed with innovation? I think not. Games are not nearly as broad or diverse as other forms of entertainment. They are also expensive. Why would we use money, time, and even perhaps emotion or curiosity on something so similar to what we already have? This type of criticism may not have the money in it, but just wait; the demand for this will inevitably grow.Etelmikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017669493751322863noreply@blogger.com3