my.bicycle

I'm about 12 hours in on Saints Row, THQ's entry into the Action/Driving genre. It's really good; if you've got a 360 and are jonesing for a Grand Theft Auto fix because GTA IV has been pushed to next year, it's a must-have. In short, it's got a lot that's a direct lift from its inspiration, but there are numerous additions to gameplay, more personalization of your character, and ability to customize and keep your cars, and many of the missions are actually pretty damned challenging. Oh, and it's got online multiplayer.

Labels: games

An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world's top RPG gamers after one criminal's girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google's social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim's head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better. (full story at Gizmodo; thanks, Kev!)

Labels: community, games

DM of the Rings I: The Copious Backstory

Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign. (apologies; I can't recall where I first saw this)

Labels: comic, games, rpg, web

Get your Rube Goldberg on with Goldburgers-To-Go, a simple-machine simulator game. (Geekdad)

Labels: family, flash, games, toys

The funny thing is, I've been wanting to make a game or novel about this for some time now. The parallels between samurai movies and westerns is not only a source of historic cinematic greatness, it's heaps of fun. I look at the way Yojimbo was turned into Fist Full of Dollars, Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven... I wonder what happens when Takashi Miike of all people takes it in mind to drag some back. (synaesthesiaJP)

Labels: games, video

Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com ~ Sam Kieth cover for Anda’s Game comic
My favorite short story by Cory Doctorow, and one of my favorite short stories ever, is Anda’s Game. A comic book adaptation is planned, along with several other of his stories. Mine is on order already through Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz, California!

As with Cory’s other works, it is available for free, online. There is also a fantastic reading of the work available through his podcast, and at the story’s official page, here.

Labels: comic, games

In case you want to read large amounts of text on your TV screen, the already slick as hell Google Reader has a Nintendo Wii-specific interface. (4 Color Rebellion)

Labels: games, web

Can you imagine a world without oil? It's likely to happen at some point, but what if it happened tomorrow? What would you do? That's the question central to the ARG, World Without Oil:

WORLD WITHOUT OIL is an alternate reality event, a serious game for the public good.

It invites everyone to help simulate a global oil shock. People participate by contributing original online stories, created as though the oil shock were really happening.

The game's masters rank the participants (“players”) according to their contributions to our realistic portrayal of the oil shock. The game also places value on player-created communities, collaborative stories, and collective efforts.

Each contribution helps the game arrive at a larger truth. No team of experts knows better than a given individual what effect an oil shock would have upon that individual's life, or what action he or she will take to cope. Personal reactions to our simulated oil shock, placed in context with many other points of view, will help us all realize what’s at stake in our oil-fired culture. clickable culture (Futurismic)

Labels: games, web

Some exceptionally cool videogame related art at 2007 Into the Pixel, notification via the ConceptArt.org. Make sure to check luscious examples of previous years’ offerings under the VIEW ART category. Potential participants are here reminded: Art Submission Deadline: May 4, 2007

Labels: games

Regarding Magic: The Gathering:

Richard Garfield prefers the name 'Trading Card Game' as opposed to 'Collectable Card Game.' 'I feel it emphasizes the playing aspect rather than the speculation aspect of the game,' he's said. He added: 'Good games last forever -- collectables come and go.' Of course, the collectable nature of the game drove up prices early on, which had the designers worried. It wasn't until the 'Fallen Empires' Magic expansion that enough cards were produced that the speculative market collapsed.
FilePlanet Spotlight: Ten Things You Never Knew About Magic: The Gathering

Labels: games

Kotaku’s got several articles up that cover the anime-styled characters that are the personification of gaming hardware, and the epitome of fanboy lust. There’s PSP-tan, above. Also Xbox-tan, Wii-tan, and PS3-tan (not for the feint of heart), and even a chubby little DS-tan (maybe based on the non-Lite model?). Now they can join the ranks of the Mac girl and Win-tan. Moe-moe.

Labels: games

If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a Mac, check out maclive @ Google Code, which allows you to see who’s online among your XBL Friends and what they’ve been playing. (znf via google alerts)

Labels: community, games

Special weapons, waves of creeps, research new weapons technology and use them against an unrelenting horde of creeps, all in one flash game. It’s reminiscent of when you turtle long enough to get a good base built in Warcraft or Starcraft, but without all that whining from your opponents. (thanks, TimK!)

Labels: games

(thanks, timK)

Labels: games

A new MMOArrrrPG: Wiz Kids’ Pirates Constructible game has been recreated as an online game, by Sony Online Entertainment. There's a free demo available, as well. (via Penny Arcade)

Labels: games

ワンダーフェスティバル2006夏のコスプレ: I like seeing the detail and passion that goes into cosplay, but I like it more when people break away from the mainstream game and anime stuff, and start cosplaying their favorite snackfoods. Here is the head-only hanbañero pepper snack, with the rest of the performer’s body ignored by consensual agreement through the black costume of kabuki and bunraku scene handlers.

Tonight he will visit you in your dreams.

The Tarako kewpie baby also makes an appearance.

(Warning, page contains cosplayers, and some links to not-work-safe toys and models)

Labels: games

Q: How would you compare making South Park’s traditional animation with making machinima ‘animation’? Was one method easier than the other, or more interesting, or...?

JJ: Well, as Trey said when we wrapped up the last ‘shoot,’ this is definitely where animation is headed. I know that there were frustrations, but most of them were mere technical limitations that can and hopefully will be addressed in the future. Things like the ability to record an individual character’s performance, and then have that character give the exact same performance each take would have been very useful because that way the performances could be treated almost like sound channels in an audio mixing program or video clips in an editing system. The ability to have full control over every single aspect of what is being seen in frame has got to be any director's ultimate dream. Combine that with the extreme flexibility of a virtual environment, and there quite literally is no limit to what could be done...

ES: The set up for machinima animation takes a lot longer. Originally we were going to try to produce our own video game that the South Park characters play. But we usually produce South Park in a week and there’s just no time to create our own backgrounds, props and characters. We were so relieved we could use the warcraft world to tell our story.
Machinima.com: Make Love, Not Warcraft (Thanks, Weezie!)

Labels: games

“This month, the lovely people at Microsoft have decided to let gamers experience Xbox Live Gold for over a week from 20th to 29th September so everyone can play together. This free week will be brought to you by Windows Live Spaces.
This means if you have a silver account, it will magically turn into a gold one with their magic fairy dust, meaning you can play multiplayer between those dates for absolutely nothing, so we’ll see you on Live.
Stay with Club Skill for more gaming news when we get it through our internet tubes.” (via Google Alerts)

Labels: games

A review of Rumble Roses XX: I Feel All Tingly Mama!, a game which caused the Japanese rate-of-purchase of Xbox 360s to triple:

Extras include unlockable costumes and humiliations for Queen’s matches, concept art and the like, create a character mode, and photo mode. Create a character is like Weird Science only you don’t have to wear underwear on your head unless you want to and every woman you create looks pretty much the same except for hair and skin color. Photo mode is just what it sounds like. All the joy of taking pictures of half naked women cavorting together without those nasty restraining orders and sex offender lawn signs. You can even share the pics online with other men who are still recovering from fervent masturbation.

You can play the game online, but the one time I tried no one was using voice chat out of what I can only imagine was a strong sense of shame.

Having played the original Rumble Roses, playing the sequel is much like leaving your girlfriend for a supermodel. Sure, she looks much prettier, but after awhile you realize there is nothing inside of any real value or substance. Really makes you appreciate what you’ve left behind.

Labels: games, nsfw

YUKE’S: D1 GRAND PRIX

Labels: games

Some light reading for you tabletop RPG fans out there. Both are oldies but goodies, and worthy of review from time to time:

• The Gazebo Story
• The Head of Vecna

What is strange is way I have read these stories has changed over time. The Gazebo Story was originally a tale of how lame and stupid the player was, though it has transformed into a cautionary tale about communication for me. It isn’t simply the player’s fault that the acts occurred. The DM definitely should have trotted out a more helpful description when it became clear that the player was not aware of the situation. But then it wouldn’t be so funny. There might be a corollary for The Head of Vecna, but it can be hard to avoid stupidity in groups. (thanks, Monty)

Labels: games

Comboling: Sequentially connect the arrayed squares using only vertical, horizontal, or 45° diagonal lines. (wired: table of malcontents)

Labels: games

Gamasutra: Where do you feel the fans factor into the decision-making process of a game based off a comic or other intellectual property? Do you think a more independent comic would have a better chance of making good game, since they don’t have this large and potentially rabid fan base?

Doug Tennapel: No, because…I’m going to piss some people off here, but I don’t care what the fans think. I love my fans, but never ever design a game for your fans. When you originally made the thing, the thing that all the fans liked, you made it because it was good, and they came to you, because of what you did. Your instincts lead you correctly in that instance. So to suddenly change that formula, and follow what fans want and redesign something in the image that you think, second-guessing, that they will like, would create a different thing, that isn’t you and probably isn’t good. And you will always lose fans by doing that.
—Digging For Worms: Why Doug Tennapel Doesn’t Care What His Fans Think

Labels: comic, games

Gamasutra Yuke’s Opens North American Publishing Office:
Osaka Japan-based game development company Yuke’s Company, Ltd. has announced that it has opened its first office in North America, Yuke’s Company of America.

Labels: games

My company’s first North American game is in the final production phase; every day the whole world feels like it’s moving a million miles an hour. Regular posts to resume shortly (I hope).

Labels: games

IGN: E3 2006: SCE Conference Reports
6:42—Kaz takes the stage again. He wraps up everything we’ve seen—the best technology, the best graphics, a new controller, and much more. And one more surprise... the PS3 launch details. Two configs—one with 20 gigs—$499; One with 60 gigs—$599. Two million planned for launch worldwide at launch, another two million in time for the end of 2006 and another 2 million by March 2007.

Holy mackerel, that is a lot of semolians for a game machine.

And the new Minna-no-Golf makes the cute-anime-models look so cute and realistically plastic, it is like watching a midget in doll fetish zentai kigurumi playing the back nine. Related PSP news: Creepy underage fetish video to bring new popularity to UMD in Japan

Labels: games

I want a War Sim...

1. ...where I spend two hours pushing across a map to destroy a ‘nuclear missile silo,’ only to find out after the fact that it was just a missile-themed orphanage.
   I want little celebrities to show up on the scene and do interviews over video of charred teddy bears, decrying my unilateral attack. I want congressional hearings demanding answers to these atrocities.
2. On the very next level I want to lose half of my units because another ‘orphanage’ turned out to be a NOD ambush site. I want another round of hearings asking why I didn’t level that orphanage as soon as I saw it, including tearful testimony from a slain soldier’s daughter who is now, ironically, an orphan.
3. Every War Sim has a ‘Fog of War’ that obscures the map in darkness until units scout the landscape. Well, I want a hazy, brown ‘Fog of Bullshit’ layer below that. I want it to make a village of farmers look like a secret armed militia, I want it to show me a massive enemy fortress where there is actually an Aspirin factory. I want to never know for sure which it was, even after the game is over.

(read the full article)

Labels: games

According to The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, Anson Williams of Happy Days fame has a Bacon number of infinity. (chad underkoffler)

Labels: games

Yuke’s developing View game
Rumble Roses developer will put a combative spin on at-times contentious ABC talk show; Star Jones-Reynolds in talks for cosmetic-surgery DS title. (more)
—News at GameSpot

Labels: games

The finalists for the independent game festival are up, and reviewed at GameSpy. When they try to get you to sign up for FilePlanet subscribership, just hit the links to the developer’s page and download it directly from them or one of the file mirrors.

Labels: games

Kotaku has some shots of promotional displays for the upcoming Rumble Roses game we’re making. I guess sex does sell.

Labels: games, nsfw

Japanese publisher Yuke’s announced that they will establish a US branch called “Yuke’s Company of America” this month, and will begin to publish game titles in North America. The first game will be the PS2 racing simulation game D1 Grand Prix, coming in summer 2006.
The-Magicbox

Labels: games

My friend Andrew, over at Yukihime, notes some not-so-united states as represented in a Japanese-developed game. His description made me laugh:

This map is basically what would happen if you got a bunch of Japanese guys in a room, got them drunk, and then asked them to draw what they could remember about America on a bar napkin.

Make sure to check out the actual map; it looks like it would be a fun place to live.

Labels: games

“First, let me state one fundamental rule of game design that has emerged from the talk of various game professionals: If something’s important to your setting, you need to have rules that encourage it, provide benefits for it, or suggest rewards for it. Sure, you can play without such rules, but they’re often helpful to get new people on the same page and understand what’s expected of them, as well as reminding Keepers of what should be stressed with regard to the setting.”
—Daniel Harms at the Yog-Sothoth.com forum

Actually, this rule works not only in games, but in real life, especially in a professional environment. I’ve worked at many companies that said they encourage sharing of resources, and collaboration, and efforts to improve the company culture, but I’ve never seen a anyone publicly acknowledged for their efforts, let alone a reward program in place to support these “play mechanics.” of the office. (thousand faced moon)

Labels: games

Americans get hot and sweaty over seeing screenshots of HALO characters in the Dead or Alive 4 game. For the same game, during a recent trip to Osaka I saw a major electronics and games retailer, Sofmap, dedicate a 60 inch plasma display to showing an HDTV freeze frame of a girl-on-girl battle that featured a panty shot.

Labels: games

Despite the web being a surrogate for a real-world social life, there are plenty of people who don't want to check five different places to keep up with me. Go figure. I am pondering how to best lasso all my presences, My.Bicycle, Flickr, LiveJournal, into a unified whole.

Flickr's easy; I can drop it in the sidebar.

LiveJournal lets me restrict access to some entries, and that's really convenient. Probably what I want is to tie the Comments here to my LiveJournal account. Essentially I want to mirror the posts here to my LiveJournal, and let Comments happen there. This is largely what Game Politics does, and I think it is what Josie Nutter does.

How can I implement this, LazyWeb?
Can anyone see any drawbacks, other than losing the anonymity of my LJ?

Labels: administrivium, games, web

Something Awful tackles honesty in game titles.

Labels: games

I also meet people at E3 and various other conferences. I go to these conferences and I enjoy myself, but I’ve noticed that very few people actually talk to me. It’s almost as if there’s a giant bubble around me or I’m completely invisible. Wherever I go, the crowd splits or I’m not seen at all, and someone comes running into me, knocking me over.

I’ll try and wave at someone and get no recognition. I’ll walk up to someone and say, ‘Hey, what’s the PvP like in this game?’ The presenter will look at me in shock for a minute, whisper to a friend and then attempt to explain to me what PVP is. I know what PVP is; otherwise I wouldn’t have asked the question.
—The Escapist: OMG Girlz Don't Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1

Labels: games

• Throw Paper!
• shoot and loot for the romero flick (it's dark)
• harder-than-it-looks cat game by orisinal
• Wax on. Wax Hoff. (get your hassel hoffed)

Labels: games

BBC NEWS: Nintendo in McDonald’s wi-fi deal
Nintendo has joined forces with McDonald’s to offer free wireless internet access in the US for its DS handheld games console.

The service means McDonald’s customers will be able to play selected DS titles against other gamers around the globe.

Rivals Sony and Microsoft already offer online gaming on their game consoles.

Could that last sentence be any less without point? Could it be any more misleading? It makes Nintendo sound like they are pulling up to the game late. It reads like they are responding to something that Microsoft and Sony have established.

It’s not. What Sony and Microsoft have, in their home consoles is the ability to connect one’s home system to one’s existing internet service. So these are stationary machines in people’s homes that they can connect to the internet service they are already paying for on their own. With Sony’s PSP, and its built-in 802.11g wireless capability, the statement is marginally more reasonable; a PSP can be brought anywhere with wireless access and can connect to the internet. Provided one can find a free hotspot (does the PSP work with paid hotspots?) one can get online and play. Sony has talked extensively about PSP Spots that are coming soon. It seems as though Nintendo has manifested this plan first, and apparently very thoroughly.

What has happened now with the Nintendo has partnered with McDonalds to bring free internet access to enable online gaming at one of the most ubiquitous, child-friendly establishments in America. With people knowing that they can bring their DS to McDs, you can bet that not only will there be chances for online gaming, but head-to-head matches with other patrons and pictochat to meet new child predators... er, friends.

Make no mistake, Sony and Nintendo have both been hard at work on this for some time, and I would not be surprised to see a similar announcement from Sony very soon. For now, when the system rolls out on November 14, Nintendo has seized the lead.

Labels: games

GamesIndustry.biz - GameStop, EB merger results in job cuts and warehouse closures
Hundreds of redundancies and EB outlet closures planned until summer 2006

Having just completed its acquisition of Electronics Boutique, videogame retailer GameStop has announced the intended closure of EB's Philadelphia headquarters, resulting in hundreds of redundancies.

In other news, E3 2006 expects a 50% decrease in sullen, rude, retail register jockey attendees next year.

Labels: games

Remember the Shockwave/Flash “falling woman game”? It wasn’t very fun; maybe it was just the theme, because Falling Bush is lots of fun. (del.icio.us/popular?new)

Labels: games

SNK Playmore is partnering with Production IG to bring King of Fighters to TV anime.

That’s almost as exciting as the Blood+ anime that is starting up weekly broadcasting next weekend. It looks like a sequel or re-interpretation of Production IG’s earlier movie, Blood: The Last Vampire.

Labels: games

Old Grandma Hardcore chronicles the reactions and attitude of a very sassy grandma while she plays videogames.

It took Grandma a long time to get through Chapter 9 in the game. Her surprise was in the effectiveness of blade weapons over rifles against her enemies. She could target them much easier, finish them off without worrying about the awkward reloading vulnerability period or running out of ammo. She could focus on what is important in life: killing the undead.

“No!!! Fucker! ...got me with a FIREBALL, where the hell am I supposed to RUN?”

“.....SHIT! No, RELOAD. ‘B’ Button! BEE BUTTON!!! I pressed the fucking thing!”

“Fuck this I’m using a sword.”

2nd best grandma, evar.

Labels: games

BEHOLD, the hawt babes and questionable androgyny of tgs: booth companions and cosplayers galore.

Labels: games

...but it will only spread to the USA if they start hiring actual native English speakers for their marketing materials (and preferably game content as well) when they do an English-language launch. Rakion looks and sounds like a lot of fun, but if the website is indicative of what the in-game help will be like, it’s doomed.

We did not intend to create similar game. Feel free to browse through new concept that Rakion provide for you.

If Engrish is Japanese English, what is the Korean equivalent?

Labels: games

This is really making the rounds, but somehow I missed it until Timmeh pointed it out: This Spartan Life is an episodic machinima talkshow “filmed” in the Halo 2 online environment. What I find most interesting and humorous is the way that it discards the game’s fiction while maintaining the validity of the hostile environment.

Labels: games

I am a big fan of Advance Wars for Nintendo GBA even though I haven't finished the first one. It turns out, in terms of fan-ness, I am a lowly n00b compared to the creators of this set of inspired papercraft models and the guy who reverse engineered the game to make it playable on the web

Labels: games

Way back in the day, I heard about Kindgom of Loathing (KoL). When I went to check it out, it looked silly and amateurish and maybe influenced by the hipster æsthetic. Then, months ago, my anything but hipster-positive friend Monty pointed it out, so I looked again but still somehow resisted registering. Today I finally caved, and I am in like with this game. Not in love, but definitely something positive, as I am jonesing for more Adventures. Some compulsive statistician rules guy in the forum made a FAQ with a lot of the basic functionality, and there is a good article at wikipedia about it, but I am more enjoying the brief stun followed by chuckles that come from figuring out a game that uses meat as its main currency, and requires a language test administered by the Ghost of the English Language before allowing use of the chat feature. (thanks, monty!)

Labels: games

Makers of DragonQuest VIII, Level 5’s upcoming Rogue Galaxy looks to be the prettiest PS2 RPG so far. And I still won’t have enough time to play it, or the only game that looks to top it, Final Fantasy XII.

Labels: games

Dad 'n Me, the new brawler from the makers of Alien Hominid, is playable as on online Flash game.

Labels: games

The Microsoft Xbox 360 Summit at the renowned Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo was a lot more interesting and inspirational and believable than the E3 Kickoff. No talk of “one billion users!” this time around, for one, and more importantly MS announced that they are benefiting from the support of every major Japanese developer, including major publishers and the upstart... er, startup studios of famous name, independent developers. I briefly met Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez, Lumines, Ninety Nine Nights), Yannis Mallat, XP of the Prince of Persia series, and Andrew Vestal late of TheGIA.com and more recently of Official Playstation Magazine correspondent business.

What is more stunning than gaining the support of every major developer is that many of them are developing 360 exclusives. Many of the publishers remained coy on upcoming titles; I think they’re trying to keep a bit back for announcements at Tokyo Game Show in September. Yuke’s games were shown there as well: Rumble Roses XX (“double X”) and Wrestle Kingdom.

Labels: games

This article shows gorgeous, high resolution scans from the upcoming Unreal Engine 3 powered game, Gears of War. Does anyone know what book the article is referring to? Some kind of E3 giveaway?

Labels: games

With all the controversy surrounding a sex game in GTA: San Andreas, how can no-one be paying attention to the highly questionable, fetish-oriented Very Strange Sims?

Labels: games, nsfw

Russian Shockwave "game" that sends a bikini-clad contortionist careening through a bunch of bouncy spheres. At turns painful, tasteless, and hypnotic. (imomus)

Labels: games

Check out the whole thing at Bizarre Creations. Are they really going to get that many hi-resolution textures in the game? Holy moly. (kotaku)

Labels: games

Peter Jackson’s new King Kong trailer. Very pretty. The movie-based game from Ubisoft is being made by the same team that did the excellent but woefully unappreciated Beyond Good and Evil.

Labels: games

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
— A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

In college I was a huge fan of Star Trek the Next Generation, but was still unable to overlook many of the episodes’ convenient glossing over of details. “If Guinan is on board, why don’t they ask her if she’s ever heard of this ancient race?” “It’s a science/math/memorization problem; why don’t they ask Data?” “Why are they taking a shuttle down? Did someone say something about the transporters? Are the transporters not working this episode?” It became a fun game among the truly devoted to try and come up with a set of circumstances, within “canon” in which the oversight actually makes sense.

That’s what this fan is trying to do with Star Wars, in reconciling the original movies with the arguably less-canon prequels.

Labels: games

Tsubuchi: test your schoolyard bad-boy kiai against all comers. (it’s a flash game)

Labels: games

Grand Theft Auto III (GTA3) blew my mind. There were some game design issues, and the graphics were sub-average, but there was so much to do, and so few limitations how to do it, I really enjoyed trying to get through as near to 100% as I could manage. (The most memorable mission for me in GTA3 was killing the snitch in protective custody, after throwing a Molotov through his 2nd story window. The first time I tried it, he came jetting out of the garage and took off, and I lost him in the ensuing chase. The next attempt on the same mission, I lost him again. Finally I parked a semi in front of that garage, and when that door opened, they couldn’t get past the truck. I threw a bunch more grenades into that garage, and viola, mission cleared. I felt like all they’d have to do is release expansion packs for this game ad infinitum, and they’d have me permanently.)

GTA: Vice City came out not that long after its predecessor, but looks significantly better than GTA3. While Rockstar extolled the size of the game, all of the terrain was so flat as to make driving through it boring. In contrast, the third (and final) island in GTA3 was so hilly as to make navigation nearly impossible; Vice City overcompensated for this by seemingly performing a 10% scale on the Y-axis on all terrain. The addition of big name actors for voice talent was nice in the cutscenes, but I missed the voiceless protagonist from GTA3 -- I’d rather choose exactly how my character responds in a game that is so focused on freedom. Still, there were a number of additional sub-missions (R3) added to the game, and some balancing. Somehow though, with all the flat terrain, and over-attention to crassness overlaid on the ’80’s as a theme, I felt a bit distanced from the game.

GTA: San Andreas, somehow, has reversed this feeling, and I’m now back to thinking that I’ll buy more of the same as long as it’s not just more of the same. Maybe it’s the addition of non-urban locations, and how the countryside has been used to generate a feeling of SIZE that lends the whole game world more validity and immersiveness. Maybe it’s the way they’ve nailed the genuine feeling of location and made the popular gang-culture theme work in an interactive environment. Maybe it’s a dark sense of humor that pervades all the dialog, especially with the pedestrians. Maybe it’s the fact that they went back and re-thought some of the game mechanics and ramping that didn’t work in the last two, and revised game systems to make it all more accessible. Maybe it’s all this stuff put together. It’s been said before, more concisely than I’ve managed: “GTA is greater than the sum of its parts.”

It’s not perfect. I’m occasionally stunned at how primitive some of the graphics appear, and within that, some pretty lame glitches that destroy immersiveness. I’ve crashed the game three times, and encountered other bugs that have prevented me from completing missions. This happened 5 times in San Andreas before completing the game; it only happened once in Vice City. The new “girlfriend” missions are poorly explained, very frustrating in terms of progressing the completion gauge, and generally seem out of place. It is one of the worst-implemented features I’ve ever encountered in a game I otherwise love; I should simply thank my lucky stars that they had the common sense to remove the sexual intercourse mini-game. The new Burglary missions are repetitive, and don’t offer much reward. Speaking of repetitive, this new Fat-vs-Muscle workout thing is not frequently needed, but ’s a far cry from being fun.

Still, the places where they’ve improved gameplay subtlely have really impressed me. Unlike the last two games, the fact that money is useful and means something to one’s progress. Early missions are played for Respect only, forcing the player to find a way to fund his “ammo habit.” The variation in the lock-on distances for weapons make each of them feel very different, as opposed to having a powerful weapon that can’t be easily aimed (as in 3 and VC). The idea that doing things makes one better at them is cool, and has kept me playing during sessions where I’ve raised stats, rather than just reloading, which has increased my feeling of immersion. Oh, and having earned a very high Bike Skill means that I almost never fall of the mother-fucking-motorcycle, which was one of the lamest things about the implementation of motorcycles in Vice City — and what’s more, I feel like I’ve earned that skill. The previous games had the main character gradually suffering from increased enmity from rival gangs, making it increasingly difficult to impossible to complete some missions. San Andreas takes the reverse approach; it is common to face some opposition anywhere one goes early in the game, but through Gang Warfare, players can establish complete dominance over an area, eventually leading to complete ownership of all disputable territories.

In all, GTA: San Andreas is a fantastic installment in a groundbreaking series. One can only wonder what setting, and what change in scope will be managed for future installments.

(Largely written in January, prior to completing the game, and significantly prior to experiencing the even more progressive Mercenaries.)

Labels: games

How cool would it be to have well-made adverts for games? Check out this French adverstisment for a well-known videogame (NSFW due to breastfeeding imagery).

Labels: games

ArmJoe is a free, 2D fighting game based on Les Miserables. Loosely based. There's a mini-Cooper in one screenshot. Pretty sure there weren't any British cars in revolutionary France.

Labels: games

PukiGame is the trench sequence from the old Star Wars arcade game, combined with evil tiki dolls. [joystiq]

Labels: games

...and if you can find them, maybe you can hire some Mercenaries.

While I’m tempted to wait until after writing my review of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, especially since the two games are so similar, I am having too much fun in the game right now to resist talking about it while it is still available on shelves. Admittedly, this is somewhat selfish; it is my fervent hope that Pandemic will be given a chance by Lucasarts to make a sequel to the game, and if there’s any way I can push a few extra sales of the game to happen, so much the better.

Mercenaries has been called “Grand Theft Auto: Pyonyang” and that’s pretty accurate. The basic gameplay mechanic of a 3rd-person, over-the-shoulder camera, while alternately running around on foot or driving/piloting any vehicle you can find your way into, is the same. However in this, its first iteration, Mercenaries offers numerous changes in the execution that make it an evolutionary improvement over what GTA has accomplished in three (or five, if one counts the top-down GTAs).

First and foremost among these improvements is the breadth of freedom in achieving mission goals. The last two GTAs have found the player led through a series of scripted goals, A then B then C, and a lengthy trip back to the boss to restart any mission, as well as re-arming or reloading the game to deal with equipment loss. In Mercenaries, each mission consists of one or more goals, some of which can be achieved only with difficulty, or at the sacrifice of subtlety in the need for efficacy. Achieving th