GTA IV Backlash

Perhaps the most critical review of GTA I’ve yet seen, courtesy of Dubious Quality.  I’m not nearly as critical of the game as he is, but I think he (and to a certain extent Penny Arcade) have hit on a major reason that I think the 100%ers are nuts.  Basically, this Kotaku post summarizes the issue well: when the top non-violent things to do in your game include listening to the radio, meeting strangers, and driving around, you have a problem.  In short, Rockstar has painstakingly modeled the minutiae of New York without asking whether those minutiae are fun.

Take, for example, the carwash.  Authentic?  Sure, but who enjoys going to a carwash?  After I finished the mission requiring its use, I found myself asking if I’d ever use it again.  The answer was a definite no - cars are plentiful in the game and I tend to destroy mine pretty easily.  If the carwash isn’t enjoyable, why bother?  I see similar problems with additions like the strip club, restaurants, and subway.  Yet at the same time, the violent aspects of the game have almost been toned down - you can’t rampage without serious police problems, nor is there gameplay-related customization like in Crackdown.  And for me, there’s the rub.  The city simulation is academically interesting but not compelling, whereas the violence is intriguing but circumscribed. 

If you think I hate GTA, you’re wrong.  The mission and plot are definitely holding my attention, and they’ll keep me playing through most, if not all, of the game.  But I don’t see me playing it compulsively.  After all, I don’t need a simulation of life.  For that, I just turn off the game.

Best Game since Ocarina of Time?

That’s what IGN says about GTA4.  Alright Rockstar, you’ve gotten my attention.  Will it live up to the hype?  I guess the rest of the world will find out next Tuesday.

My 2008 Game List

Yesterday I mentioned an admittedly incomplete list of games to play that I had left either incomplete or unplayed. The question, of course, is will I have the time to play them given the upcoming releases this year? I started wondering, like I did last year in the summer, what games I’m really looking forward to this year. So, aside from my household’s obvious purchases of Mario Kart: Wii and GTA IV coming up in a couple weeks, what are the games that excite me in the upcoming months? As I did last year, I’ve tried to divide these games up into “tiers”, although I’ve relabeled them some. All release dates come from IGN.com and the versions indicated are NOT necessarily all the platforms a game is releasing on, but simply the platforms I would likely consider buying the games for. In almost all cases, I picked the 360 over the PS3.

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RPG Statistics And Micromanagement

Next Gen has an interesting article on the future of RPGs, and more specifically the alleged obsolesence of translated pen-and-paper RPGs in favor of MMOs and visceral action-ized versions.  The piece doesn’t mention this, but I suspect that there are probably two key audiences for computer RPGs: first, PnP players who enjoy being able to see their game worlds translated into an interactive environment, and second, players who just like exploring a fantasy world and developing an ever more powerful character.

The use of pen and paper statistics is partly an artifact of the first group, who comprised a significant portion of the second for a great deal of the life of PC/console gaming.  If you really enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, I’d guess that you’ll really enjoy a computer version of it - and you need the stats and micromanagement to connect you to that D&D world.  But that’s not the whole story: another part of the use of micromanagement is that it lets you very effectively compare your progress against a baseline.   

At its core, much of the appeal of an RPG is that it lets you see how your character is evolving, gaining new abilities, and dispatching stronger foes.  A “sword that cuts an enemy in two” is all well and good, but how do you know if that sword is better than the “spear that impales enemies”?  If you can’t easily determine which is superior, you have no idea if you’re actually making progress within the context of the game.  In a similar vein, those menus that Ed Del Castillo reviles so much provide a far simpler means of feedback than attempting to communicate things like inventory space visually.

This isn’t to say that menus should be used exclusively, or that they’re even preferable in many situations.  But technology hasn’t yet reached a point where we can dispense with them.

The… Soul… is strong with this one?

In an announcement coming completely out of nowhere, Namco has announced that Yoda and Darth Vader will be playable in Soul Calibur 4, each exclusive to different platforms.  The XBox 360 will have Yoda and the PS3 will have Darth Vader.

My first reaction to this is, huh?

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Activision Gives a Big F-You to Consumers (Updated)

It was bad enough that Activision was making dumb excuses for not supporting the Rock Band guitar in Guitar Hero, but now they’ve really topped themselves. According to Harmonix, Activision has actually blocked Sony from releasing an already complete patch for Rock Band on the PS3 that would enable compatibility with the Guitar Hero Les Paul PS3 controller. I only hope that they don’t end up trying to take legal action to have Harmonix actually remove GH guitar compatibility from Rock Band, but it wouldn’t surprise me at this point. I’m not sure exactly what the legal specifics are for why they can prevent (or cause) another company from patching a game they don’t control, but frankly, I don’t care. It’s ridiculous and completely anti-consumer.

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How Not to Learn a Lesson

You’d think that with all the controversy surrounding media hype, inaccurate previews, publisher pressure and the internet’s eagle-eyed denizens who, among other things, are able to discern the number of pixels actually used in games, that publishers would wise up about releasing doctored gameplay photos of their games.

You’d think that this would be even more the case with Guerilla, the team responsible for Killzone 2, since they were already criticized for trying to pass off a CG trailer as gameplay footage back in 2005 and actually given somewhat of a reprieve this year when they showed a real gameplay trailer that actually came somewhat close (according to media reports anyway) to matching the fake 2005 one.  But some people apparently just don’t learn from their mistakes, as Guerilla has admitted that recently released screenshots are “the tiniest bit touched up.”  Here’s the comparison shot provided:

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Killing The Messenger

It’s fashionable (for obvious reasons) to beat up on Sony, but I don’t know that it’s fair to blame their advertising agency for the PS3’s troubles.  The issue, as always, has been much more of an internal marketing problem - primarily around feature inclusion and pricing - rather than an ad-based issue.

Can you really blame TBWA/Chiat/Day for failing to sell a product that was, barring some obvious design and price problems, practically able to sell itself?  I think you’re deluding yourself if you try to argue that the PS3 was going to fly off the shelves… if the agency had just come up with some better advertising.

Fun With Statistics, Part IV

You have to love a press release that names percentages rather than whole numbers.  For example, this Sony release on the sales of PS3s this Black Friday vs. last year’s.  When you have nice round numbers like 178%, you know things are looking good.

Square Struggles, Sony Cries (Update)

It seems like I’m reporting a new one of these every week now.

Destructoid is reporting that at Square’s recent yearly fiscal meeting they announced that Final Fantasy XIII may not make it out until 2009. Apparently, they are having trouble developing the “White Engine”, which is supposed to power all of their PS3 development.

I can’t say I’m extremely surprised with the news, as we’ve heard next to nothing about the game since the first “footage” of the game was released. But once again, another huge title for the PS3 looks like it’s being pushed back to the point of what could be near irrelevance. By the time it comes out, Microsoft will probably already be talking about its next console and we’ll probably start hearing rumors about the next Playstation and Wii. Obviously, it’ll still be a big release, but with rumors swirling about the NEXT system, it doesn’t seem like it will have nearly the impact that it could have had if released on time.

As a side note, it’s still unbelievable to me how many companies have had trouble creating game engines for the PS3. Valve, Epic Games, Bethesda, Ubisoft. Midway, and EA have all experienced issues either releasing games on time or getting their engines up to par with the 360 version. How could Sony made such an impossible to develop for console? The only company that seems to be able to do amazing things with the hardware is Insomniac. If only Sony had several companies like them, then they wouldn’t have to worry as much about their big exclusive 3rd party games not releasing on time.

*Update* - In yet another exclusive (and unsurprising) delay, Joystiq is reporting that Haze has been delayed until next year. Although Haze doesn’t have nearly the following (or hype) that a game like Final Fantasy has, Sony still seems to have an epidemic of delays on its hands. Will Little Big Planet make it in Q1 next year?