Andy Laub

“Are you gonna get Red Dead Redemption?” they said. I said I didn’t know; I knew the game was a reboot of sorts for the franchise, but having never played the original (Red Dead Revolver) that didn’t mean too much to me. There was a lot of talk about how this new installment in the series would be taking a lot of cues from Grand Theft Auto 4 (the Best Game Ever™) to the point where the proper title was eventually replaced with Grand Theft Auto But With Horses for the sake of convenience.

And that was really my hangup; I wasn’t sure if I could love a GTA game sans the A. I enjoy those types of games because even after the game proper is long since finished, it’s fun for me to drive around the city and just play. I couldn’t picture doing that on a horse (or really any other means of transportation). Honestly, the earlier the game’s setting, the less interesting I find the driving experience. The Godfather or The Sabotuer are both good examples of games that are just not modern enough to make the driving element engaging to me.

So I didn’t buy Red Dead Redemption. My recent changes in both mindset (don’t buy every game) and cashflow (inconsistent) have prevented that, so far. However, when I got a “we miss you; free rental!” call from the local video store (yeah, we have those!), I knew what I had to do. Three days should be enough time to get to know a game, right?

I think it was somewhere around hour ten when the truth really hit me. This isn’t just Grand Theft Auto But With Horses; this is a real, bona fide Grand Theft Auto game that just happens to be set in a world before the automobile was ubiquitous. Everything else – the mission structure, the tone, the general story, the gameplay, the feeling – fits seamlessly into the GTA framework (I sincerely hope to come across at least one ancestor of a current GTA character), and when you start to think of this game as an endeavor on the same level with such a behemoth it becomes that much more impressive.

Suffice it to say, Red Dead Redemption is a very good game that I had a lot of fun with in my limited exposure to it. There are a few nitpicks, the biggest being that it’s difficult to tell friends from enemies which wreaks havoc on your reputation; the auto aim isn’t particularly picky about who it points your barrel at and then suddenly you’re WANTED and all hell breaks loose. I still can’t figure out the fast travel system, if there even is one. Something about setting up camp and then jumping from there to a previous settlement, which I never experienced.

In typical Rockstar fashion, though, the pros far outweigh the cons. Visuals and design are solid, and audio continues to be a strong point just as it has in the GTA series. With no radio the music instead is sparse and appropriately Western, mellow when appropriate but becoming more frantic during shootouts and other dramatic sequences. Voice acting is superb, especially in the case of main protagonist John Marston. He reminds me very much of Timothy Olyphant’s character in FX’s Justified.

Unsurprisingly, gameplay is nearly identical to Grand Theft Auto IV, with a few notable exceptions. The new(?) DeadEye system (which effectively lets you slow time to pick off a number of targets) is an absolute joy to use and may stand out as the defining mechanic of RDR combat versus GTA combat; I don’t foresee it working in the context of a more modern setting but it’s very appropriate here.

Most exciting though, is that we’re finally seeing a game from Rockstar with no health meters! RDR has gone the way of many modern shooters in that you still have a finite amount of health, but as your condition becomes more critical the screen turns red. If you can find cover, the reverse happens after a few moments. It makes for a much less stressful experience and unlike DeadEye, I hope this propagates to all future GTA games.

In short, Red Dead Redemption is both a great game by itself and, if you’d like, a worthy entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Three days was enough to get to scratch the surface but I definitely look forward to spending more time together in the future.

The last time I talked about Mass Effect I ended up off on a tangent about how you need to play through the series from the beginning. Because it’s true. But what I meant to do was compile a list of things that I loved about the game.

As it turns out that, I was too lazy to actually record them as I played (aside from the infrequent Tweet), so instead here is a haphazard-but-not-as-comprehensive-as-I’d-like list of things that are great about the series:

Environment

I’ve spent plenty of time talking about how the environment is as much of a character as anyone else in the Grand Theft Auto series. The same is true for Mass Effect; to the point where it’s at the very least on the same level as GTA. As you explore in either game, you’ll overhear conversations between other characters and be exposed to various forms of media. And in both cases, that media is extremely well-written and enjoyable to listen to, and often deals directly with the plot that you are involved in.

Mass Effect 2 continues the tradition of acquiring side missions by observing your environment, whether that be by hacking a computer terminal, talking to a bystander, or simply by picking up an item that you have to find a use for. A few times the latter resulted in me finishing a side mission that I didn’t even realize was happening, and that kind of simple entertainment can be a welcome diversion from the core story.

Experimentation

I mentioned previously that the game keeps a running tally of the decisions you’ve made throughout the series, which results in some really surprising and well-executed events in ME2 that you’d likely miss completely if you skipped the first game, and it enforces their assertion that the decisions you make may come back to help or hinder you later.

And while it’s great to see those decisions persist throughout the series, it’s likely you’ll want to approach the story in a few different ways, especially given the breadth of things you didn’t experience if you only played through once. Thankfully, the games welcome multiple playthroughs, whether you choose to replay the story with your now-leveled-up character or start fresh. They even go as far as to separate your save files for each character (so no accidentally overwriting Character 1′s file with your progress in Character 2).

Exploration

In a universe as deep as Mass Effect‘s, it only makes sense that the player be provided with some sort of guide to it all, hence the codex. Accessible from the pause menu of both games, the codex functions as a portable, built-in encyclopedia. The depth of knowledge and the work that went into creating and compiling this information is simply astounding as it references nearly every race and creature you’ll come across in your travels, providing you with information on biology, demeanor, culture, and other pertinent details. But it doesn’t end there; the codex serves as a reference for everything from space combat to galactic history. In short, the codex is the embodiment of everything there is to love about the series.

I bought Mass Effect a month or so after it was released in late 2007. Even after playing through the roughly 20-hour campaign (estimated), I didn’t give it more than a sentence of attention:

Mass Effect was pretty darn good once I figured out how to play it

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it; it just didn’t register as much more than a tiny blip on my “totally hawesome games” radar. There was some neat stuff that happened, and that’s all I could really say about that.

Suffice it to say, I was wrong.

I decided to embark on another playthrough of the game when I was going through my annual pre-Christmas gaming drought, in anticipation of the soon-to-be-released sequel. I spent significantly more time exploring and talking the second time around. In some games all this would do is add time to your play clock, but in Mass Effect every conversation, every scan, every hacked computer terminal held the potential for a new discovery; a little more insight into the universe Bioware labored to create.

As the first in the series, it wasn’t surprising for a game of ME‘s scope to have some teething problems. Many of the side missions were a little too generic; the environments just a little bit sterile. The inventory system was frustrating to deal with. The loading screens were frequent and generic. The elevator rides were… long. But in spite of all this, you could see what the game wanted to be, and you could appreciate it for that.

Now let’s take all of those complaints and throw them away, because they’ve all been remedied in Mass Effect 2. Bioware could’ve continued down the same path. They could’ve used the first game’s mechanicals in their entirety, pasted a new story over the top, and called it good.

But they didn’t do that, and the sequel is better for it. Yes, it’s a little different than the first game. Especially if you just (re)played the first game. But it’s for your own good. You may find it off-putting at first – get over it. If you use that as an excuse not to play it, then you’re just stupid and your face is stupid.

Here’s the thing, though: some sequels are way better than their predecessors. The Uncharted series is a great example of this. Drake’s Fortune was good, but Among Thieves was GOOD. As such, it’s easy to take that knowledge and skip the first game completely. You are doing yourself a massive disservice if you do this with Mass Effect.

Unlike Uncharted, ME‘s central focus is your relationships and interactions with other characters. And I mean all characters, not just your squad. I can’t imagine how uninteresting or confusing some of those conversations would be if you didn’t have the context and experiences of the first game. There’s a reason that the first option when starting a game is to import your character from the original: the decisions you made there do affect the ME2 universe, albeit in generally minor ways.

Bioware is trying to tell a cohesive story here, and each game is an important chapter. These add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and anyone who doesn’t experience all of those parts as they were meant to be played is missing out.

In retrospect, I’m not sure this is what I meant to write when I sat down, which means there will probably be another Mass Effect post in the near future. Still though. Seriously.

If you were to examine my recent gaming habits, you’d notice that in between my sporadic bouts of Borderlands and my re-play of Mass Effect to prepare for the sequel, the void is filled by an unlikely source: Nintendo. More specifically, Mario. And not New Super Mario Bros., even.

One of the games on my Christmas Manifesto™ was Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story for the Ninetudo DS. It’s your basic RPG: levels, hit points, etc, etc, but one that takes place in the Mario universe (but not the Mario Galaxy). I was somewhat excited for it ever since playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, which I look back upon with much fondness as likely being my favorite Gamecube game.

Bowser’s Inside Story doesn’t share the same paper atmosphere as the Paper Mario franchise; it’s actually a direct successor to Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, a game I’ve long since owned for the Game Boy Advance and struggled with, to the point of abandoning it near the end of the game.

Fortunately that problem didn’t persist with the new game. I really enjoyed the characters and the humor this time around. You’ll find yourself alternating between playing as Bowser (super fun) and the Mario duo (not quite as fun), as you attempt to thwart a villain who speaks fluent Engrish. The biggest complaint I had was the extensive explanation that accompanied every new discovery or ability. You have the option to skip it, but then you risk not know what’s going on. After about 30 minutes of the game, 15 minutes of which is text, it was awesome to hear Bowser echo my sentiments: TOO MANY WORDS!.

Actually, that’s not true. The biggest complaint I had is one that I will attach to every modern Nintendo game, and that is gimmickry for gimmickry’s sake. I can live with the touch screen, but blowing into the microphone to engage certain actions (fortunately this is rare) is nothing more than a pain in the ass, and would make me ashamed to play this game in any sort of public setting. The game still remains a ton of fun to play and I enjoyed the vast majority of it, so much so that I decided to revisit Superstar Saga after a hiatus of over 6 years.

It was a little weird to try playing it again; at first I tried loading up my last save, which was at the front gate of the final area, but I quickly found myself outclassed. I cursed my past self for being so unprepared for these sorts of situations and decided it would be best to start from scratch. I’ve adopted a philosophy in playing RPG’s recently that seems to pay off more often than not: fight everybody. Fighting equals experience equals power equals victory. For comparison’s sake, the duo in my saved game was hovering around level 30, while my new game ended with them having reached level 40. That doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but trust me, it was worth the extra effort, especially when the main difference in my playing was confronting enemies that were nearby instead of avoiding them.

All of this Mario RPG-ness has made me hungry for the other games in the series. I’ve already found myself giving Super Paper Mario another chance, and Paper Mario 64 and Super Mario RPG are available on the Wii Virtual Console. As if that’s not enough, I just found out that there’s a third game in the Mario & Luigi series that will be requiring my immediate attention as soon as I can find a used copy of it. So I have to go find a used copy of it.

Earlier this year I wrote about how much money my video game habit has been costing me, and how I hoped to be more judicious in my purchasing habits. My goal was to better evaluate potential purchases and determine their worth based on how much entertainment they’d provide. Forza Motorsport 3, for example, is a game where I’m very close to (if not past) the $1/hour mark. On the other end of the spectrum, Modern Warfare 2, while a lot of fun, would’ve cost me somewhere around $6/hour if I had bought it versus renting.

It’s the games in the middle that get you. I knew I could hammer through MW2 well within the 72 hours that it was in my possession, but that’s not always the case. I had been toying with the idea of a GameFly subscription (like Netflix, but for video games), but never made the leap until a recent promotion came along.

The Honeymoon

My initial experience was extremely positive. The first game in my “Q” (ugh) was Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The game shipped on Monday and I had it on Thursday, just in time for a relatively uncluttered weekend. I plowed through it and had it back in the mail early the following Monday.

The Marriage

Then I waited. GameFly claims that they work with the postal service to scan games as soon as they’re put in the mail. When a game gets scanned, GameFly treats it as a return, and immediately prepares your next game. However, I didn’t experience this. Uncharted didn’t process as a return until Thursday.

In the meantime, I eagerly awaited my opportunity to play The Saboteur. Unfortunately, being a brand-new game, it must have been in short supply, as they skipped it and moved on to the next game on my list: Prototype. When I read the shipping confirmation email, my heart sank.

Which is odd. I was really excited for Prototype when it first came out, and then I gradually lost interest in it as time wore on. By the time it reached my door (this past Monday), I had little interest in actually playing it (admittedly, this is all my own fault) but I persevered.

The Divorce

Whether the game itself is good or not is irrelevant here. But in playing it I’m finding the achilles heel of GameFly membership: you feel forced to play whatever game is in front of you at the expense of doing anything else you may have preferred to do; only by moving through games and returning them as quickly as possible are you getting the most value out of the membership. Even then, you’re handicapped by the shipping speed.

Netflix somehow manages to avoid these issues, at least in my mind, for two reasons:

1. The time spent “experiencing” a movie is not the unknown that it would be with a game.
2. Netflix’s digital distribution methods offer instant gratification.

it would be interesting to see GameFly (or a similar service) explore methods of digital distribution, but I don’t know how it would work. In the meantime, this trial membership has been effective in determining that GameFly just isn’t my thing.

I took a brief hiatus from my Forza 3 marathon on Thursday to pay a final visit to Liberty City with The Ballad of Gay Tony, Rockstar’s latest (and likely last) installment of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV. Given my fondness for all things GTA, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that I was watching the credits roll by lunchtime Saturday.

Rockstar’s approach to TBoGT doesn’t differ much from the previous installment – once again you’re put in the shoes of what was previously only a supporting character. As I said before, the experience you enjoy the most really depends on which character and lifestyle you are most comfortable with. In this case, that character is Luis Lopez, ex-con turned bodyguard of/business partner to nightclub impresario “Gay” Tony Prince (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark).

As a result, the game is centered around Algonquin, Liberty City’s equivalent to Manhattan, and the high-roller atmosphere extends to fast cars, great new music, and a slew of new over-the-top missions. Of course it’s not all fun and games, but I’ll just leave it at that with regards to plot. You’ll run across plenty of characters that you’ve been previously introduced to, including one loose end from the core game that I was glad to see tied.

I have to say, I really liked Luis as a protagonist – while he kept getting thrust into situations that were less than ideal, I never felt that things were completely out of control like I did with Niko or Johnny. One constant across all GTA games is that you can continue to experience the city even after completing the missions. You may find it telling that when presented with that option in TLaD I opted instead to return to the original game. I don’t expect that to be the case this time around.

I bought my Xbox at the end of the product cycle. It was late 2005 and the 360 had just hit the market, but I wasn’t ready to make the leap yet (mistake). The Xbox was intended as a sort of stopgap, and a way to catch the games I had missed out on in the years where my time was occupied first by the Gamecube and later by the PS2.

One of the first games I bought was Halo – a staple for any collection. It was enjoyable enough, and was really one of my first experiences with the modern first person shooter (FPS). I was indifferent to the overall art direction (generic) and level design (repetitive) but I played through it with Abe and it was a fun, co-op way to kill some time.

Halo 2 followed shortly thereafter, but for whatever reason didn’t receive our immediate attention. By the time we started to play through it, it was on the Xbox 360. Console choices aside, Halo 2 was a struggle for us to stay interested in. The frequent switch between characters and storylines was confusing, and the environments weren’t any better than the first game. We spent a fair amount of time just trying to figure out what we were supposed to do. I’m being generous if I say we made it roughly halfway through the game before it got shelved, and that was my last experience with the Halo series aside from some occasional local multiplayer on Halo 3.

So maybe it was the lull in games, or the recent release of Halo 3: ODST that made me want to try to continue the adventure. Two weeks ago I put in Halo 2 once more in hopes that my interest would be rekindled. A couple ugly, repetitive, frustrating levels later, it was becoming clear that this was not going to be the case. With no achievements to keep me motivated, it was roughly a couple of hours before the game found itself shelved once again.

Still lacking for games to play, I ended up borrowing Halo 3. I’ve been told that a) I didn’t miss much by skipping the rest of the second game and b) the third is a much stronger game. Both of these assessments proved to be accurate, for while I still experienced some of the same typical Halo frustrations, I can look back and say that I did enjoy playing the game when all is said and done.

The Good

As the first of the series to appear on the Xbox 360, you’d expect that Halo 3 would be both visually and aurally superior to the previous iterations, and it is, if only in a technical sense. I found the story to be engaging enough that I at least wanted to continue playing through the game, and the gameplay is solid as ever; even the vehicle controls felt much less frustrating than the previous games. There wasn’t nearly as much repetition to the environments which meant that I spent less time getting lost and backtracking and more time enjoying myself, and I also enjoyed that a good portion of the game took place on earth. I also especially liked the sequences where I fought alongside the Arbiter and/or the Covenant Elites – both make solid teammates.

The Bad

The thing is, where Halo was once the king of shooter games thanks to its solid gameplay, it seems like dozens of similar games have since flooded the market, some of which offer things that seem to be a staple in games nowadays. Gears of War and its emphasis on finding cover during battle comes to mind, something that a first person game such as Halo would have a hard time dealing with. The problem is, there are a myriad of situations in Halo 3 where running and gunning is the last thing you should be doing; you need to hunker down and pick off enemies from a safe vantage point, but there’s no mechanic to encourage this sort of behavior.

Aside from that, all the processing power in the world can’t disguise the fact that this is merely an update to the artwork from the original game. Obviously trying to change character designs midstream is a bad idea, so I suppose more of my issue is that I’ve always found Halo’s style to be incredibly generic. I also had trouble occasionally following the story, particularly in one sequence where I felt as though I missed a cutscene.

Fortunately for me (and for Halo 3), I didn’t go into the experience expecting something groundbreaking; I just wanted to shoot guys for awhile. Which brings me to my final critique: it’s hard to shoot guys when you can’t find any ammo.

Video games, at least those that revolve around you controlling a single protagonist (so for the most part, not sports or party games) seem to be fairly fond of depicting your character as an average joe who got sucked into the action. This isn’t universally true, but it’s common enough.

In the best examples, you’ll either feel like the hero’s actions are totally justified and he had no other choice, or at the very least the game is so good you’re able to suspend your disbelief. In terrible examples, you’ll just find yourself frustrated as you try to figure out why this person would ever even let himself get into this situation in the first place. Fortunately, I played a few good examples this year:

Prince of Persia

Yes, it’s just called Prince of Persia now. Again. Ubisoft can do that, because they decided to throw in the towel on the previous generation of PoP games (those which lived their lives on the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. I guess they had gotten a little crazy while also managing to get a little stagnant; I wouldn’t know. I only played the first of that series: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I will say that while it had some frustrating parts, the overall game was just phenomenal.

This new game, on the other hand, is a little different. At the beginning of the game you’re just an average (ripped) prince (or not; I have no idea) looking for your donkey. Then you end up meeting this princess and you have to save the land from corruption and blah blah blah. Yeah, it sounds tiresome already. And it sort of is. Unlike the previous games, this game is significantly less linear. You have to collect a certain amount items before you can unlock abilities to get to more items to unlock more abilities, which gets old quickly.

There are some really fun acrobatic elements, but they end up being repeated so frequently that by the end of the game you just want to be done so you don’t have to play it anymore. But being a prince (or not; I have no idea), you are amazingly strong and acrobatic and also a great fighter. You’re also witty and charming and have completely won over your witty female companion by the end of the game. And all because of a donkey.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

I mentioned Uncharted briefly last year, when I tried the demo from PSN. Something about it just didn’t resonate with me so I ended up skipping it at the time.

Then E3 happened back in June, and all the previews of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves started to surface, and I thought perhaps I should give the original another chance. I found it to be significantly more tolerable the second time around, and picked up a cheap used copy. Basically, you play as Nathan Drake, treasure hunter extraordinaire (maybe?) and descendent of explorer Francis Drake, and you are trying to recover some kind of treasure (as is bound to happen in such an occupation). Also there’s kidnapping and stuff.

Spoiler Alert: towards the end of the game, there are zombies (or something similar). This almost completely ruined it for me. I also couldn’t figure out how all these mercenaries kept showing up in caverns that were supposedly long-lost and unexplored.

Being a treasure hunter extraordinaire (maybe?), you are amazingly strong and acrobatic and also a great fighter. You’re also witty and charming and have completely won over your witty female companion by the end of the game. And all because of El Dorado.

Shadow Complex

I’ll be honest: this post has been sitting in draft status for something like a month. For the other two games, I had a brief sentence of notes covering what I liked and didn’t. For Shadow Complex all I wrote was holy shit. That’s game of the year material right there.

Shadow Complex is an Xbox Live Arcade release from August that just totally blew my mind. The intent was to make a modern day side-scrolling Metroid (basically one big open map, but certain sections are unavailable until you find the abilities you need to access them) and they achieved that goal and more. But I wouldn’t be writing about it if it didn’t fit into the very same template.

In the game you find yourself on a hike with your hot new girlfriend that you picked up at the bar, but things quickly go awry when you stumble on a massive underground base and she goes and gets herself kidnapped. And what choice do you have but to save her? Fortunately, you happen to have some military training under your belt. And by “some”, I mean “a lot”, because you are a force, and you only get more awesome as the game progresses.

Being an awesome military hero man, you are amazingly strong and acrobatic and also a great fighter. You’re also witty and charming and have completely won over rescued your witty female companion by the end of the game. And all because of wanting to get some.

But Wait…

Here’s where it gets ridiculous – all three games, in spite of being handled by three different developers, used the same guy for the voice of the main character. Because they’re all so similar in personality and ability, it’s a little bit of a challenge to keep them all separate. So depending on which game you played first, there’s the imminent danger that that game’s character becomes the one you imagine in the other scenarios.

Still though, go play Shadow Complex. Seriously.

Since its inception, Xbox Live has been hailed as the definitive online experience for gaming consoles. Originally only available as a paid service, it branched off into two tiers with the launch of the Xbox 360. A free Xbox Live Silver account (which every owner should have, at least) lets you browse the online marketplace and try demos. The real money for Microsoft lies in the Gold account, which allows for online play.

I’ve had a Gold account basically since the day I bought my 360, but truth be told, I wasn’t always convinced that it was worth the money I spent to keep it going. I realized that I really didn’t enjoy playing online competitively, because I basically suck at games (relatively speaking). I don’t have the patience to commit a huge span of time to getting good at Call of Duty or Gears of War, because it’s not even fun – it’s just work.

But recently so many of the games I’ve been playing have been offering some pretty attractive online co-op options. Fable 2 and Saints Row 2 both have modes for jumping into a friend’s game and playing through it, the same as you would when you’re alone. Then there are games like Valve’s Left 4 Dead, in which a single-player mode exists but really is not the point of the game at all – I’ll come back to this shortly.

With so many interesting games out there, my other frustration was that I had nobody to play them with. I am pretty shy about just jumping into games (well, any situation, really) with some random strangers, and that is another big factor that has prevented me from just randomly playing online. There was the occasional game with someone on my friendslist, but for the most part we all were emerged in completely different worlds, and they rarely intersected.

Something seemed to click, though, earlier this year. My BFF Jill (srsly) picked up a 360 in the spring, and so we started to play some stuff together. Then I started to become friends with her friends, and suddenly there were eight of us playing Team Fortress 2 and we all actually knew each other and it was amazing.

What’s even better is that Live now has something called parties. You can start a party with another friend, and it basically opens a voice chat session between the two of you. More interestingly, your other friends can look at their friendslist and see that you’re in a party with others, and join in if they’d like. If you’re all playing together in the same game, this doesn’t function much differently than the lobby of the game itself – and in some cases (such as team-based competition) that’s a more practical solution.

Where parties shine, though, is in their ability to unify two people who may not even be playing the same game. Single player games are still my preference, but if I’m working through some levels in Prince of Persia or blowing through some races in Forza, I can open up a party and talk to my friend who’s playing Portal and we can bitch about our respective challenges. Or there was that one time where three of us were trying to see who get through Half Life 2: Episode 1 the quickest.

Epilogue: Left 4 Dead edition

Left 4 Dead is a game about zombies. This in and of itself is not particularly enthralling to me. What makes L4D unique is its near insistence on playing with others in the campaign mode. The game puts you in control of one of four survivors, who are working as a team to escape the zombie hordes. Interestingly, you will always be working as a team of four – the only variable is what percentage of that team is real people versus AI.

As I mentioned above, you can play the game alone, and mechanically it’s very good. But it’s not really any fun. Much better to save the (only) four campaigns for nights when you and a couple of friends are all in the mood for some zombie hunting. Those are the times when the game becomes truly special and suspenseful.

Nothing that happens in L4D comes across as particularly scary – the game only has so many weapons in its arsenal in the form of a few specialized zombie classes. The real action happens when you or one of your allies gets pinned or knocked down, and you have to figure out how you can rescue them without getting taken down yourself. When you’re playing with the computer, you only want to save them because you need the firepower. But when you’re playing with friends, you want to save them because you feel bad – you’re emotionally attached by default, and that’s where the game really succeeds.

I remember the first time I played a Super Nintendo. The game was Super Mario World (was there any other?), and it was a demo machine set up in the local Kmart. During that time, I always relished shopping trips, as I knew that if I was lucky nobody else would be playing and I could spend a few minutes with my favorite plumber.

Imagine then, going back home, and trying to enjoy Super Mario Bros on the original NES. It wasn’t bad by any means – it just wasn’t “special” anymore. Mario World boasted multi-tiered backgrounds and sprites bigger than anything I’d seen before – remember the giant Bullet Bills? It had amazing new environments! It had Yoshi!

What’s interesting, then, is that no 2D platformer came along after Super Mario World that really made it look outdated and stale. The next huge Mario game was Super Mario 64 – and while it’s notable for the fact that it brought a third dimension to the Mushroom Kingdom, comparing it to any Mario game that came before it is basically apples and oranges.

An eternal plus for Mario is that the game was never meant to be photorealistic; so even today the NES and SNES titles manage to keep some freshness. The original SMB is a little flat, sure; but Mario 3 will always be an exceptional game. While the graphics in this day and age could easily be surpassed by my phone, it doesn’t matter, because they were what they were. They were, and always will be, classics.

Where am I going with this?

I just finally got around to playing Indigo Prophecy. It’s not a new title, having seen release on the PS2 and Xbox a few years ago. My curiosity was piqued during a discussion about it last year, and recently reinvigorated by the news on the developer’s follow-up title Heavy Rain.

My point here doesn’t require me to go into too much depth regarding the plot of Indigo Prophecy, so suffice it to say that it was in their best interest to make things look as realistic as they could. That is an admirable and common goal among a good portion of games nowadays. And I suspect had I played the game 3 or 4 years ago when it came out, I would’ve found it perfectly acceptable.

However, I have been playing games almost exclusively on the Xbox 360 for nearly three years now; games that have truly raised the bar in terms of what video games should be. It’s not really a stretch to say that these games have spoiled me with their bright colors and slick graphics – that’s kind of the point.

So from the minute I put in Indigo Prophecy, the deck was stacked against it. It probably didn’t help that I had just finished Prince of Persia, one of the most beautiful games available on the current crop of consoles, the night before. Everything about Indigo Prophecy was blocky, muted, flat… stale.

The thing is, I’m not convinced that these modern 3D games can ever be enjoyed the same way classic 2D games can. Why would I want to play the original Gran Turismo when I know that Gran Turismo 5 is even closer to the game Polyphony Digital really wants to make? I think that when the paradigm of game design shifted away from traditional 2D, sprite-based platforming games towards 3D polygonal mishmash, all of the 2D games that were great at that time (Mario, Metroid, Zelda) were immortalized.

I don’t think we’ll see that sort of phenomenon again for awhile, what with the massive leaps in technology happening so frequently. Look at Grand Theft Auto IV, versus Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, versus Grand Theft Auto III. You’d expect the differences between this and the previous generation to be pronounced, but even the two games on the same console are worlds apart after only 4 years.

This is going to end in one of two scenarios:

1. Games will continue to develop and advance, graphically, until they can’t go any further. We will have games that are truly photorealistic to the point where the only way to improve is to increase the scope of the game and continue to expand the player’s environment.
2. Console games as we know them will phase out due to some dramatic shift in technology. True, immersive 3D, I suppose. A sort of holodeck type of thing? Once this happens, it will basically render the current types of games moot, leaving the last of their kind to become legendary like some of the great SNES games have become.

So basically what I’m saying is that I like new games, and I like old games. It’s the in-between area that fails to light my fire.

I like the concept of comments on blogs. While I don’t see too many comments here, I like that the few people that follow my bouts of incoherence have the option for feedback. Of course the occasional spam seeps through, but Akismet is pretty effective in catching that sort of thing.

But I woke up this morning to a comment on a post I wrote months ago about video games, in which the commentor basically just called me biased and said I was a fanboy. While the bias accusation just leaves me stupefied (in terms of bias, that particular article ranked pretty low – you may be more interested in this one or this one or this one) but as a whole I’m not sure how I’m even supposed to react to a comment like this. I could write a real rebuttal or offer a slightly less mature response (the PS3 sucks and so does your face), but both of those would be based on the assumption the commentor is going to show up again, which seems unlikely – they took their shots, why would they come back?

So the only option left is to ignore it, which just irritates me. I just can’t figure out what compels someone to Google “MS NXE vs PS3 XMB” and leave a half-baked comment on the first site they find about how M$ sucks and Sony r000lz. It’s sad, because I love discussing this sort of thing and would be totally willing to have this conversation with a total stranger regardless of bias, yet these are the sort of people who share this hobby.

Oh look – option four is whine about it. I can do that!

It was big news when Rockstar announced that Grand Theft Auto IV would see a simultaneous release for both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Arguably even bigger news was that Microsoft basically showered Rockstar in cash in exchange for the exclusive rights to two episodes of downloadable content.

That was in 2006; Grand Theft Auto IV hit stores in April 2008 with the promise that the first portion of DLC would follow in the fall. And true to form, it was delayed. But finally, last Tuesday, The Lost and Damned arrived and set out to redefine what downloadable content can be.

Instead of continuing your experience as Niko Bellic (protagonist of the core storyline) TLAD puts you in the shoes of biker Johnny Klebitz (of The Lost Motorcycle Club), one of the ancillary characters that you previously crossed paths with. I really like this approach, as the entire cast of GTA IV is ripe for this sort of extrapolation. I was a little hesitant about the choice of a biker as I wasn’t a huge fan of the motorcycle-oriented missions in the original game, but fortunately those fears turned out to be unfounded.

Whether you prefer Niko or Johnny as a “hero” boils down to personal preference; I found both to be likable enough, with a sort of “why does this keep happening to me?” quality about them. As noted above, you’ll end up in a few missions where both characters are involved simultaneously and that may be my favorite aspect of this whole experience – seeing a whole new viewpoint of a scenario that you had previously only witnessed from one angle. Furthermore, relationship between Niko and Johnny versus Niko and the rest of TLMC is quite interesting to follow as they rarely seem to be consistent.

Aside from that the missions are par for course, but enjoyable. I probably spent around ten hours on the story mode, and didn’t find any one level particularly frustrating. Interestingly, Rockstar has reworked the continue system with this expansion, so restarting the mission often puts you at a checkpoint instead of at the beginning, finally.

Liberty City has also received some upgrades in the form a couple new interiors and some new vehicles; most of which are motorcycles. But most notable is the addition of all sorts of new music and dialogue on the radio stations. It’s pretty rad and remarkably satisfying to hear Deep Purple’s Highway Star and Bon Jovi’s Wanted blaring over the exhaust of your bike. Odd though – I can’t help but notice that Rockstar seems to have raided the Rock Band catalog. And while I believe the new vehicles are only available when you’re playing TLAD, the media additions are universal.

So is it worth $20? If you spent countless hours with the original, then yes, no thought required. Buy it and see Liberty City in a whole new light. If you weren’t crazy about the core game, than nothing TLAD brings to the table can remedy that aside from perhaps the continue system. Still, though, it’s not nearly as satisfying or interesting to play if you weren’t already emotionally invested in the characters. It’s not an entirely different game, and it’s not an entirely different story. What it is, is a very strong addition to what was already a very good game.

While I’ve made it clear that my love for the Xbox 360 and next generation gaming in general is nearly boundless, I’ve also harbored a resentment towards Microsoft (and Sony for following suit), for using this latest technology as an excuse to bring back $60 games. If that sounds like a lot of money, don’t worry – that’s also what it feels like as it leaves your wallet.

I can think of at least ten titles that lightened my bank account by at least $60 in 2008. Sadly, I feel that only about half of them were worth the MSRP, which means I probably could’ve saved a hundo or so by being a little more patient – money that could’ve been spent on more games/car parts/hookers/groceries. I tweeted earlier this year about my resolve not to fall into the $60 game trap again, and so far Skate 2 has been the only game to test that.

The thing is, it’s not that hard to find games for less. Half.com and Amazon are obvious places to look, but you have to give it some time before they start to reach the “worth it used” threshold (I consider this to be about $40-45, depending on how desperate I am). Skate 2 has actually reached that point, if you want it for (cringe for effect) the PS3.

I’m not NOT buying stuff.

But a place I’ve found great success in the past is our local Family Video. Since I hadn’t been in awhile, I decided to stop in and browse over the weekend – and ended up with the latest Prince of Persia. Thus far I haven’t been disappointed – it’s a fun game with good mechanics, and I’ve found that it works really well in short bursts – maybe 30 minutes or so.

This week also marked the release of some classic hotness: Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection landed, bringing with it over forty full Sega Genesis games in high-def with achievements. I have to thank Sega for realizing that nobody in their right mind would pay $60 for disc full of 15-year-old games, and instead pricing the whole thing at half that. As the owner of either two or three Genesis..es(?) (but only one while they were actually relevant), playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog series brings back a lot of memories, while making me wonder how I ever played this stuff as a child.

Finally, I know where my next $20 in gaming will be spent, and it really is probably pretty obvious. Not bad for $80 total.

Yesterday I mentioned that two devices that I tend to use frequently would benefit from the addition of one more wireless standard (infrared). When I made this statement, the general consensus (okay, two people) was “why?”

It’s a Blu-ray player!

Everybody knows this about the PS3. And that’s because Sony has been shoving that information down your throat since well before it launched. But if you’re going to send your console into the world masquerading as a home theatre component, then the very least it should be able to do is conform to the standards set by other components. If you have to sell a proprietary remote for it because other “universal” remotes don’t work, that may be a hint that you’re doing it wrong.

As someone who is enthusiastic about home theatre, it strikes me as an obvious omission. No matter what I do, I can’t avoid having two remotes on the coffee table – one for the PS3, and the other for everything else. Even the PS2 gained an IR port in the middle of its life, and the Xbox 360 has had one forever.

Fortunately the PS3 is a stationary item with ample USB ports, and one would think it’d be relatively simple to design a small USB dongle with an IR receiver. Of course, Sony won’t do it because they don’t care.

It’s a phone…?

The reasoning in the iPhone’s case is not so obvious. I don’t know how many current phones have IR these days (is it even a “thing” in phones anymore?). But wouldn’t the iPhone be the most amazing universal remote ever? Plus, it has Bluetooth, so it could even talk to the retarded PS3.

I was extremely happy to reach the conclusion of Dead Space for a number of reasons:

1. No more monsters jumping out of vents
2. I can play another game without feeling guilty

I had initially started playing Far Cry 2 while in the midst of Dead Space, and all the freedom it offered had the interesting effect of making me long for the more structured missions of the very game I was avoiding. I managed to put about five hours into it before giving it up and returning to the land of linearity.

And so with the conclusion of Monster Zombies in Space™, Far Cry was forgotten in favor of a new contender: Metal Gear Solid 4. I’ll be honest; I didn’t have high hopes. I’ve played games in the series before and not done overly well, but given that this is the flagship game for the PS3 and beat out my favorite game ever for GameSpot’s Game of the Year, I expected that it would at least provide for an interesting and entertaining experience.

I was not wrong.

Like other games in the Metal Gear Solid line, MGS4 has a healthy serving of dialogue and cutscenes to accompany the gameplay – there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be watching just as much as you’ll be playing. But the Metal Gear universe is so deliciously convoluted that every bit of dialogue becomes important to understanding just what the hell is happening. Before playing through I had only a passing knowledge of the series, and even I wasn’t completely confused.

That’s not to say it’s brilliant or clever; more appropriate descriptions would be weird, or twisted, or just plain crazy. Still, it’s definitely interesting and keeps you intrigued. And you’re rewarded for your wait with some really good gameplay. Metal Gear games have always relied heavily on stealth elements, and while this one certainly is no exception, you’re provided with adequate firepower from the get-go that will make the occasional skirmish less of a punishment.

There’s not much else I can really say about this game except that it’s really fun, and you should play it if you have a PS3. After a stream of averageness, this is the first game I’ve played that really gives me hope for the console.

On Christmas day, I found myself with a conundrum: four games with great potential, accumulated at various times leading up to the holiday season, sat before me and I had to figure out which one to play. I made Abe choose for me, and that’s why I am playing Dead Space, a survival horror sci-fi spaceship 3rd-person shooter thing with an emphasis on “strategic dismemberment combat.”

Why did I buy this game in the first place? I am not sure. I hate horror anything. I dislike being scared. Playing through Bioshock was a stretch for me. And yet, I elected to spend money on something that I knew – knew – would not be a good fit for me. The problem is, the game is good, both technically and creatively. It’s so good at what it does that I don’t want to play it anymore.

I am trying to force myself through at least a chapter a day (I started out strong, hitting the first 7 chapters on Thursday and Friday, and I’m up to chapter 10 now), and then when it ends I can finally play something I actually want to be playing. Everything about the game is too stressful for me. I’m not a fan of scary alien combat. I’m not a fan of not being able to find enough ammo. And I’m definitely not a fan of non-regenerative health, which shouldn’t even be allowed in a shooter in this day and age.

Seriously, give me a damn break. I am stuck on this mining ship, 600 years in the future, wearing what is some sort of incredibly advanced armor that allows me to store a ridiculous amount of weapons and ammunition (if I can find it) without weighing me down, but the same suit can’t restore my vitals over time? To me that just smells like an arbitrary way to make the game harder – it doesn’t really add any enjoyment or value. Alternatively, as you upgrade your suit throughout the game, make it an unlockable ability. But really, health packs? So 90′s.

So yeah, Dead Space – once it’s done, it’s done.

Last month I spent some time rambling about Microsoft’s new dashboard for the Xbox 360, and the general verdict was that I liked it more than the XMB used by Sony’s PS3. But the slight preference exhibited here was just that – slight. The two experiences are both consistent, attractive, and refined enough that you can’t complain too loudly about either.

Which is a good thing, because that means I can save all the complaining for whatever that crap is that I see every time I power on the Wii. Honestly – Nintendo can do product design. They can do packaging. Even the DS GUI isn’t bad. So how did the crapshoot that is the Wii dashboard even happen?

I admit, this started out as some sort of diatribe but turned into an excuse to play with FancyZoom.