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No words can really justify a lot of these. But that won't stop me from trying. Make sure you check the full gallery at the bottom, as I'll just highlight a few. The gallery comes from two events. The first was the pre-E3 party hosted by the gracious Kyle and Donna, and almost all of the Destructoid E3 coverage team showed up. The second was the front page advertised first annual KarE3oke, which was attended by various industry types, including Carlos Ferro, best known (in our circles) as the voice of Dom in Gears of War.
With the editors showing up in a van, the party got into full swing.
Dyson (and his cape) on the top of the giant slide.
Colette rocking out the Punch-Out!
Snuggle time in the retro room!
The poster outside was there to prepare us for the awesomeness inside. It hardly did its job.
KARE3OKE!
It's Yo Burling!
Don't stop, believin'!
Anthony, the antisocial butterfly that he is, peaced out early. This is one of the few shots of him in existence.
Robot sighting!
Galileo! Galileo!
It's Samit, the most beloved Podtoid member!
Some of us got to try on the new robot helmet. You're jealous.
Since there were so many people at the party, people would sit down, order food, and then get up and mingle before it would arrive at the table 45 minutes later. Thus, Razak is shown here eating somebody else's hamburger, after it sat on the table, unclaimed.
I love this picture, because they both look so much drunker than they were. And they were both pretty drunk.
If you don't know Travis Roop, then you are a poor, unfortunate person.
One word: AMAZING!
Dale North and his legendary rendition of R. Kelly's "Bitch, I Believe I Can Fly."
Last (and probably least), Nick Chester singing some obnoxious song. Jonathan Ross sings with him, and seems to actually enjoy the song. read more
Over the years of its existence, the game industry has undoubtedly matured. What once was simply a neat pastime for a handful of geeks has become a multibillion dollar industry, servicing a huge portion of humanity. With this coming of age, there are bound to be some pretentious scholars who seek to legitimize the medium as one that can be used as art. I am one such pretentious scholar.
The debate has raged on long enough, with thoughtful, cohesive arguments on eitherside. I personally believe that games can be art, just like movies can be, books can be, and music can be, but there are examples in each medium that can also function purely as entertainment.
Thus, I think it is important to examine individual titles, to draw meaning and emotion from each. Before having thought about it much, I never would have imagined that a first person shooter revolving around the impending zombie apocalypse could be anything more than glorious entertainment. Having thought more about it, Left 4 Dead might be the best example of gaming as a unique medium for artistic expression.
Let me begin with an excerpt from Ron's blog. In it, he describes one experience he had on the rooftop finale of the No Mercy campaign.
"I stayed on the mini-gun to clear the horde that appeared to rain on our parade. As I laid into them, the other three survivors rushed to the chopper. I hopped off the mini-gun, grabbed the gas can, and high tailed it to the EZ. As Bill and Francis boarded the chopper Zoey got tackled from behind by a hunter. I tossed the gas can pulled up my shotgun and put that hooded freak back in the dirt. Zoey got up and ran to the chopper. No sooner than she got to the chopper I got bashed in the back by a giant piece of concrete. Another Tank had appeared and he was pissed... I was already low on health so that hate bomb he tossed knocked me to the ground. As I bled out the zombies surrounded me and gave me a prison style gang beatdown. I fired up into their faces, just trying to thin the herd so the thundering tank could finish me off... I was on the ground next to the ramp up to the EZ. On the ramp was the gas can I chucked to rescue Zoey. I took aim...made my peace... and screamed "GO, GET TO THE CHOPPEEEERRRR!", then fired through the crowd into the can. I really don't know what killed me, the fire or the burning Tank fist, but all I do know is it looked badass..."
At first, it seems like it's just a haphazard retelling of a generic zombie movie, but there are a few key points that truly stand out and highlight gaming as being more than just "cinema with a gimmick."
First off, the anecdote was told in the first person. No other form of art can present to the audience such a personal experience. Certainly, one could say, "I looked at that painting," or "I watched that film," or "I listened to that composition, and it made me feel X." But those are all passive verbs; the audience simply observes and comments (aloud or otherwise), whereas the player has active involvement in the events to unfold. From the excerpt, we have "I laid into [the zombies]," "I fired up into their faces," and "I don't really know what killed me," which are statements that no other form of entertainment could bring out.
This idea that interactivity is what sets games apart from cinema is nothing new. Destructoid's own Jim Sterling has made that point on several occasions, in writing and on Podtoid. However, another thing that sets Left 4 Dead apart can also be gleaned from Ron's retelling. That story he passed on was his, but more importantly, it was his alone.
Contrary to what Aaron Linde had to say on the matter on Podtoid, I don't think powerful narrative is the necessary element to bring games to the level of cinema. What that does, in fact, is exactly what games-as-art detractor Devin Faraci claims: it makes it so games are just cinema with little gamey gimmicks thrown in. No, I think that the story told above is so important for legitimizing games as a unique medium for artistic expression because although Ron's story could have been told through other media, and perhaps with better descriptions or more dramatic angles, there are millions of unique stories generated like this one, and they continue to generate, months after the game has released.
This is the single most defining aspect of gaming with respect to cinema, music, literature, or other forms of art. When an artist creates something using those latter forms of media, the end product is what it is. Two viewers can take in the same piece and get out of it something completely different from one another, but it is still an entirely static work once it is deemed complete by the artist. In procedurally generated or directed games, it is not until the player puts thumb to joystick that the piece becomes complete, and the story told will vary from player to player.
Left 4 Dead is the best example I could come up with for these ideas. I've never played the original Fallout, though I have been led to believe it is another good one. Are there others I've forgotten? Or more importantly, does interactivity and the ability to tell an infinite number of unique stories sufficiently differentiate games from other forms of media, and does it elevate them from purely entertainment to high art? How do you feel about it? read more
Throughout history, humans have watched bird soaring, insects buzzing, and even some mammals navigating the open air, and they thought, "Man, I wish I could do that..." And indeed, many flying contraptions were devised and built, but none succeeded until the historic flight of the Wright brothers in 1903. Since then, we have been taking to the skies for travel, combat, and simple recreation.
The power of flight is awe-inspiring to us humans, bound as we are to the earth, incapable of surmounting gravity without some sort of mechanical aid. The gift of flight instills the same feeling I imagine a sailor has when he owns his own boat, a feeling of limitless freedom.
It should be no surprise that so many games have simulated flight, so the average person can feel what it's like to be a fighter pilot, or a space explorer, or mosquito, without having to go through years of training (or in the latter case, some poor karmic reincarnation). Unfortunately, given the medium's limitations, most games involving flight only allow the illusion of freedom, severely stifling what it truly feels like to fly.
Simply put, a game's world is usually either finite, or infinitely barren and uninteresting. So designers of games featuring flight have had to limit the player's freedom; good designers do so without letting the player know.
The game Pilotwings for the Super NES is the first of two games in the series, focused on relatively non-traditional human flight.
The gift of flight... Players have the ability to achieve in three aerial activities: skydiving, light plane flying, and (my favorite) jetpacking.
...and the lack of freedom Infinite nothingness. The game takes place on several different air bases, in different locations such as "in the middle of a huge green expanse" and "in the middle of a huge brown expanse." In other words, all that exists in the world of Pilotwings are the air bases where you practice and mountains in the distance that never get any closer no matter how long the player could fly toward them. Couple that with the fact that both the jetpack and the light plane have fuel gauges, and there are exactly two places one could go: somewhere on the air base, or some solid color expanding infinitely in all directions off the air base.
The game Super Mario 64 is Mario's first foray into the 3D world, and it is considered to be the first 3D platformer. Peach's castle acts as a hub world for the fifteen themed worlds to explore.
The gift of flight... When Mario collects a winged cap from a red floating block, he can initiate flight with a simple triple jump.
...and the lack of freedom Good old fashioned player death. The levels in Super Mario 64 are finite, and should the player attempt to leave the play area with his newly acquired hat wings, he is treated to the classic Charles Martinet "Waaaaaahhhhh!" and is kicked out of the level's painting. Take that for trying to explore the great beyond.
The game Final Fantasy VII is the seventh installment of the long running series, and the first to be in full 3D. As a classic JRPG, it features a world map that isn't going to traverse itself.
The gift of flight... Around halfway through the story, the party commandeers the Highwind, an airship that allows them to fly around the world map with ease.
...and the lack of freedom Severely impaired landing capability. To solve the problem of players wanting to fly further and further away, Final Fantasy VII employs a common RPG trope: the wrapping world map. Once the player flies across the western edge of the map, he reappears on the eastern edge. But the bigger offender here is that the game tells the player, "Yes, now you can fly anywhere you want. You just can't land there." The Highwind can't land on mountains or forests, and there just so happens to be a remote island made up entirely of mountains and forests. How do you get there? By riding a flightless bird, of course.
The game Grand Theft Auto III is the first game in the famous get-points-for-killing-hookers series to take place in a fully 3D world (only now as I am writing this am I noticing a pattern...). Its sandbox gameplay advertises the ability to "go anywhere, do anything."
The gift of flight... On the third island of Liberty City, there exists an airport, and in this airport, there exists a single plane that protagonist Claude can enter: the Dodo.
...and the lack of freedom It's really friggin' difficult to fly. If the name weren't already any indication, it takes intense practice just to get the thing off the ground for more than a few seconds. Many players just assumed it was impossible to fly the Dodo, but a few intrepid souls found a technique that would allow them to reach the highest heights of Liberty City, as dull and as tedious as the journey up there would be. The later games in the series would go on to provide competent air vehicles, so to keep players around the cities, Rockstar used a more cheap and frustrating mechanic: invisible walls.
The game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is the third game in the Banjo series, and it takes a pretty substantial departure from classic 3D platforming to vehicle-based gameplay.
The gift of flight... Not long into the game, the player is allowed to build vehicles using propellers and wings. Given the right configuration, Banjo's car can be turned into a plane.
...and the lack of freedom Walls. Plain old walls. Each of the game worlds are completely enclosed, all the way up to the ceiling. Even the Nutty Acres world, which appears to be outdoors, in encased in a giant sphere. The game gives no illusion that there is anything beyond what the designers specifically put in the game for the player to interact with. The hub world, on the other hand, is open, and the player can see areas in the distance that he could never get to. Why? Because the game does not allow custom modifications of the trolley Banjo uses to traverse the town, and none of the built-in upgrades allow flight.
The game Flower is one of the headlining "zen games" that encourage the player to just kick back, relax, and go with the flow. Players control the wind itself, making flower petals flutter along with it.
...and the lack of freedom Other gusts of wind. While it is certainly more elegant than a blatant invisible wall, the game blows the player in the opposite direction should he try to fly anywhere he isn't supposed to. The lack of freedom is especially frustrating in Flower (and indeed, Flower is what inspired this whole topic), because the player can see grassy fields stretching far into the distance, and the whole point of the game is to relax and fly, but the player is forced to stay in bounds, by other asshole gusts of wind.
Have you noticed that flight in games tricks the player into thinking he can go everywhere, when he is actually still extremely limited? Or better yet, have I missed a game that actually gives the player limitless freedom to explore? read more
A computer scientist named David Collins at Sam Houston State University has developed a tool that would allow investigators to easily extract data from an Xbox hard drive for use in criminal investigations. Apparently, some people hide incriminating evidence in game systems in hopes that only searches on PCs would be conducted.
It's actually a little surprising that this is coming out now, for a few reasons. First, I didn't think it was terribly difficult to search game hard drives, even though, in the case of the original Xbox, the hard drive isn't easily removed. Secondly, and possibly more pertinently, this tool is just coming out for a game system that is more than seven years old. Wouldn't the people who are savvy enough to hide illicit materials in their game systems be a little more up on the technology? Is anybody actually hiding unsavory data in an original Xbox?
Still, it's a step in the right direction, and while I feel like it would be more useful to have these tools for the current generation of consoles, if it helps catch just one criminal in its current state, then it's worth it. What do you think?
A group of students at Georgia Tech were apparently dissatisfied with the way Atari games look when played on current LCD displays. While the ROMs are still available for download around the dark reaches of the Internet, they believe that a lot of what made the Atari graphics special back in the day could be attributed to the CRT televisions they were played on, and the shoddy RF adapters used to get the signal to the display.
These students developed add-on software for Atari emulation that supposedly replicates some of the artifacts that would have occurred with this more traditional setup. These include texture, afterimage, color bleed, and noise. Above, you can see the difference where the left half of the screen has the filters applied, while the right half does not.
Personally, I don't foster any sort of nostalgia for how Atari games looked, so I actually prefer the crisper right half of the image to the more washed out left half. Still, it is apparently more authentic to the original experience, and it's neat that they've done this.
What do you think, would you prefer a more accurate representation of how we used to game, or do you feel like now that we have better visual technology, we should embrace it?
Yesterday, Grim posted an article about Black Rock Studios saying that the racing genre is dying. I don't disagree, but I can offer an idea as to one of the possible reasons behind it.
See that image above? Four different racing games, developed by three different studios. One features ATVs. One revolves around rally racing. One has more traditional street racing. One has not been released yet. The problem? I had to look up all of that information, because off the top of my head, they are all indistinguishable from one another.
Somebody, somewhere though it'd be a good idea to give a racing game a curt, four letter title. It's short, it's uncomplicated, and it'll stick in the consumers' minds. Unless, I don't know, all the other racing games out there do the exact same thing.
What's worse is that most of them don't really imply racing, and half of them don't really make sense at all. Fuel, I'll concede, makes some sense. It takes fuel to drive a car. Got it. DiRT makes sense if you already know the game is about rally racing, and the box art conveys that just fine, but the title itself could easily be on an ant simulator. But Pure? Pure what? Pure could mean anything. Grid might actually be the worst of the bunch; as it conjures an image of a slow-paced strategy game, rather than the street racing actually involved.
When I think of non-Mario Kart racing games, the two that come to mind first are Project Gotham Racing and Forza Motorsport. Now, I can't say much for how much sense either of those two titles make (Project Gotham had me thinking I'd be driving the Batmobile and I don't even know what a Forza is), but at least they let me know what I'm getting into. Racing. Motorsports. All right, got it. And more importantly, the titles can't be confused with one another, or with anything else.
So my message to racing game developers is this: please stop with the single-word four-letter titles for your games. I have already ignored these four and I lump them all together in my brain despite that they are all presumably different from one another. What about you guys, have you gotten any of these confused? read more
As the "games as art" debate rages on, and as one on the side that games can be art, I have taken to attempting to find meaning in some of the games that I have played recently. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that Mirror's Edge, the beautiful-but-frustrating first-person platformer, is a game focused entirely on a single idea: perfection. There is just one tiny problem: the narrative and the gameplay are completely at odds with one another.
Before I go any further I'd like to clarify one point. I am not arguing that Mirror's Edgeis perfection, just that the game's main theme is about perfection. While I think the game is fantastic, I am not blind to its flaws.
In case you haven't personally played it or read much about it, Mirror's Edge takes place in a fictional dystopian city where crime is a distant memory and everybody's communication is monitored. If you've read 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, then you already have an idea about the main theme of Mirror's Edge: while ultimate government control can create the illusion of perfection, the actuality is that life in the dystopia is far from ideal.
This manifests itself in Mirror's Edge pretty plainly, as the opening narration by protagonist Faith explains that the city used to be dirty and full of life, after which the player is plunked into a sterile world that, while beautiful solely due to the contrast to many current generation muddy-paletted games, is clearly lacking in soul. Not far into the game, the player sees that the clean, white look is indeed simply a facade, as Faith traverses through dingy back alleys and corridors housing the occasional--but blatant--rat, an unquestionable symbol of uncleanliness.
What this all points to is the theme that perfection is unattainable, and anything that looks perfect on the outside is certainly imperfect when one takes a closer look. That in itself is an entirely reasonable theme, and were the game based entirely on the narrative alone, there would be no issue. Alas, our preferred medium has another component to it: gameplay.
And the gameplay provides an entirely different view on perfection. In order to successfully navigate the city, to come to the next part of the story that reminds the player that perfection is a lie, the player must play perfectly.
Beginning a jump a split-second early leads to death. Slightly mistiming a disarm leads to death. A small difference in angle could spell the difference between landing safely on a crane and falling hundreds of feet to the street below. The gameplay not only punishes mistakes (quite brutally, at that), but it encourages perfection.
Outside of the main story, there are time trials and speed runs, challenging the player to complete entire levels or smaller courses in under a set amount of time. These not only require the player to find the best route, but to execute the route perfectly as well. Additionally, there are various Achievements that require perfection. For example, "Test of Faith" asks that the player completes the entire game without shooting an enemy, forcing reliance on hand-to-hand combat and parkour flight, a task much more difficult than the alternative.
Why are the story's theme and the gameplay's theme so conflicted with one another? Were the two developed independently, by two teams with different views on perfection? Was the discrepancy dismissed for the sake of making a fun game whose message is irrelevant? Or am I just reading too far into it all? read more
For the majority of my childhood, my mother would tell me to cut back on video games, blaming them for my deteriorating vision, rather than her own bunk genetics. Well, the tables have turned, because researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that action video games (first-person shooters in particular) can actually improve eyesight.
Contrast sensitivity is defined as the ability to detect small increments in shades of color, and it is the primary limiting factor for one's vision. The study showed that regular action video game players demonstrated higher contrast sensitivity than non video game players. One could argue that people with naturally higher contrast sensitivity might be more likely to play action video games, so the researchers did an additional experiment to show causality.
Two groups of subjects were tested on their contrast sensitivity, then each group was instructed to train on a video game. Subjects in the experimental group were allowed to play Call of Duty 2 or Unreal Tournament 2004, while subjects in the control group were allowed to play The Sims 2, which was described as being like the experimental games in that it is visually complex and engaging, but differing in that it is more slowly paced and does not require visually precise actions. The subjects who trained on the first person shooters scored higher on the contrast sensitivity test than the subjects who trained on The Sims 2.
The really interesting part of this study is that vision is improved not by improving the eye, but by actually altering the brain in some way. It is not yet known exactly how the training changes or creates any particular synapses.
The results of the study shouldn't be too surprising, if you ask me. I can recall Halo LAN parties, where each of us had a quarter of a 26" SDTV screen, and we were tasked with picking out blue opponents on top of light blue backgrounds. If our contrast sensitivity weren't heightened, some parts of that game would be almost unplayable. Don't you wish this study had been done years ago, so you could show your parents and tell them just how wrong they are?
Back in September of 2007, shortly before the release of Halo 3, I finally took the plunge and bought an Xbox 360. I did my research, though. I had heard of the rampant failures of launch 360s, and I wanted to do everything I could to prevent it. I wanted to make sure I got a 360 with the Falcon chipset, with a 65 nm CPU. And since they had just come out, I went out of my way to find a 360 with it.
I had heard that the Jasper chipset was in the works, that made the CPU and the GPU are shrunken down to 65 nm. But I didn't want to wait. So I grabbed a 360 Pro with HDMI out, and it has been making me happy for a year and a half now. Certainly, I have had a fear in the back of my mind the whole time, but I have taken care of my 360, kept it in a well-ventilated area, and even adorned it with a custom faceplate so it is too happy to act up.
My fears elevated a week or two ago when Necros's Gmail status message mentioned having gotten the red ring. I blooped him about it, apparently he also made sure to buy a Falcon 360, and his crapped out. A few days ago while playing the underappreciated EndWar, my 360 froze up. I held my breath, as I always do, as I restarted it and it worked fine. Not ten minutes into playing some more, it froze again. For the past two days now, I have been able to turn it on, and play for five or so minutes before having it freeze.
It's a frustrating place to be in, because after reading around the Internet, I had determined that it was coming. Classic symptoms showed up, constant freezing accompanied by a weird short static sound, and no help by clearing my hard drive's cache. But for two days, all my 360 would do is boot up and freeze. It wasn't until this morning that it started freezing mere seconds after turning it on. I figured this was it. I stressed it. I turned it on and off over and over. I would rather have the red rings and be able to send it in for repair than have a 360 that freezes constantly.
And then it happened. The Red Ring of Death. Jeff from Earthbound has never looked so unhappy. I'll be calling Microsoft this afternoon. So now, I am wondering if maybe I should have held out for the Jasper chipset. But then, will we be hearing similar stories a year from now about Jasper? read more
Schizophrenia is something I sometimes worry about myself. It is more likely to affect males than females, and it typically shows its first signs during the late teens to mid-twenties. In other words, I sometimes neurotically think that I could end up schizophrenic tomorrow. And the worst part? I probably wouldn't even realize it.
Luckily, some new research has shown that brain training video games can help to ease certain symptoms in schizophrenics, namely attention and memory deficits, and perhaps more importantly, distortion or complete lack of inhibition. Indeed, this could possibly be the first real tenable study that demonstrates a possibility that playing a video can help to prevent violent behavior.
The study, done at UC San Francisco, involved one group of schizophrenia sufferers to play a brain training game (one developed specifically for research purposes rather than commercially, it seems), while another group played unspecified "ordinary video games," after which both groups were tested with several different cognitive tasks. The test group scored better than the control group on the aforementioned functions, though they showed no statistically significant difference in speed of mental processing or verbal working memory.
Have you written off these brain training games as being a neat little novelty with little real life use? I know I had. Now, though, I may fire up Brain Age again and get into the habit of playing it daily. You know, just in case I become schizophrenic.
I'm a graduate student in Chemistry at Caltech. I've been reading Destructoid since June of 2006. I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy. I've got far too many posts on the forum.
I play all types of games except realistic sports games and real-time strategy games. The former because I think they're boring and the latter because I utterly suck at them.
Games I'm currently working on:
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360)
Crush (PSP)
Gears of War 2 (360)
Left 4 Dead (360)
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (PSP)
Rock Band (360)
Tom Clancy's EndWar (360)
Games that are on the back burner:
BioShock (360, need to go back and get the Achievements I missed)
Culdcept SAGA (360, the battles just take way too long)
Grand Theft Auto IV (360, it just didn't draw me in like the old games)
Ikaruga (XBLA, SO. HARD.)
Mario Kart Wii (Wii, I just never feel like playing its single player)
The Orange Box (360, just need two more Portal Achievements)
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, need to complete with Luigi)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, same issue as with Mario Kart)
Games I haven't even touched yet:
Big Bang Mini (DS)
de Blob (Wii)
Eye of Judgment (PS3)
God of War (PS2)
No More Heroes (Wii)
Okami (PS2)
Persona 3: FES (PS2)
Games I have finished 100% during this console generation:
Aegis Wing (XBLA)
Bionic Commando: Rearmed (XBLA)
Bomberman Live (XBLA)
Call of Duty 4 (360)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (XBLA)
Halo 3 (360)
NEVES (DS)
Omega Five (XBLA)
Pac-Man C.E. (XBLA)
Picross DS (DS)
Professor Layton & the Curious Village (DS)
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3)
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty (PSN)
skate. (360)
Uno (XBLA)
Worms (XBLA)
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
With the editors showing up in a van, the party got into full swing.
Dyson (and his cape) on the top of the giant slide.
Colette rocking out the Punch-Out!
Snuggle time in the retro room!
The poster outside was there to prepare us for the awesomeness inside. It hardly did its job.
KARE3OKE!
It's Yo Burling!
Anthony, the antisocial butterfly that he is, peaced out early. This is one of the few shots of him in existence.
Robot sighting!
It's Samit, the most beloved Podtoid member!
Some of us got to try on the new robot helmet. You're jealous.
Since there were so many people at the party, people would sit down, order food, and then get up and mingle before it would arrive at the table 45 minutes later. Thus, Razak is shown here eating somebody else's hamburger, after it sat on the table, unclaimed.
I love this picture, because they both look so much drunker than they were. And they were both pretty drunk.
If you don't know Travis Roop, then you are a poor, unfortunate person.
