I'm just going to go ahead and accept that my excitement for this game will come across as vapid and flavourless, because liking things on the internet makes you a pussy. So instead I'm going to focus on the faults. I was under the impression that the controls were really simple and, excuse the pretentiousness -- elegant. Somehow I had construed the idea that duck was mapped to LT and jump to RT. So you'd be jaunting over a cluttered rooftop and tap LT to slide under a pipe, then tap RT to bound seamlessly over another.

That would have been fantastic, probably. But LB is jump, and LT is crouch? I scoffed when a friend told me it felt like you were playing with one side of the controller, but I'm an asshole, because he was right.

I'm not that stupid, so I got the hang of the controls pretty quickly; it's not that it increases the barrier to entry or affects the learning curve, it's just that they're asinine. Punch is mapped to RT...you know what? If punch needs to take RT, remove punching. Remove the NEED to punch. Remove enemies from the game. Save yourselves some work, DICE. Don't hurt the free running with negotiated controls.

Now I've lost my train of thought...well the next thing that comes to mind is the colour red. I've heard you can turn the red markings off in the full game, but I didn't try in the demo. There's really nothing wrong with the system of marking things you need to interact with red, except that they screwed it up. I'm not sure how you do that -- well I am actually; you also colour things that have nothing at all to do with the player red. I spent about five minutes shimmying across a pipe with a large red line above it, and then trying to grab onto some red overhangs. Turns out you IGNORE all of that, and just keep on running to the left. Silly me.

So I came away from the demo thinking "Wow, that main menu is really cool". I guess the game is OK too.

I do some reviewing for a site called Evergeek, check out the latest review here.

[Cross-posted on Vancouver Game Design]

Assassin’s Creed was built up to be a period piece, a historical thriller and a look inside the mind of ancient assassin. Gamers were preparing to gear up and step into those medieval shoes. With such a lack of actual information gamers were clinging to a premise. And when that premise turned out to be a lie when they slid the disk into their machine, a crowd of spiteful gamers let everyone know that they thought the game was complete garbage. Ubisoft had wasted their time and money on a failure of a game.

But you don’t really believe that, do you? As someone who read about the leaked premise, I wasn’t surprised by the game taking a turn into sci-fi territory within the first five minutes. What I witnessed was a simple but well executed action game, that in fact benefitted from its simple nature and leant itself to real free roaming.

Did the marketing team at Ubisoft fail catastrophically, or were gamers living in two different realities? Well the game was in fact critically hailed (even Zero Punctuation liked it) and sold extremely well, so it should be safe to say that the game is not objectively as poor as some gamers made it out to be. Prospective players had built their own idea of the experience over the game’s long road to release, and when they saw that the actual game ran counter to their previously held beliefs, they exploded. Call it cognitive dissonance — they couldn’t accept that Assassin’s Creed was not the game they thought they would love, and so they just had to hate it.

And now it’s happening again with Dead Space. Reviewers have been kind to it so far, and it has an 89 on Metacritic — so expect a sequel. Yet the gaming audience is divided again. Some people love it, and some people fervently hate it. Some people find it scary, and some people don’t. But how can that be? Games are a relatively subjective medium, but there’s something fishy going on here.

Most of the complaints railed against the game are easily dismissible — it copies mechanics from other games, but what game doesn’t? It isn’t scary, it’s just tense; but the same can be said about Resident Evil. They seem more like invented dislikes than genuine flaws. People have chosen to not enjoy Dead Space, perhaps before they have even laid hands on it — and maybe they never will.

And because I’m a professional unprofessional psychologist, I’m going to label this the ‘collective anticipation’. People who see eye to eye have a tendency to congregate and bounce their beliefs off one another for affirmation. ”Dead Space sucks because it’s derivative” says one gamer, and another answers back “Yeah, it’s shit”. And so for those two gamers, Dead Space is going to be shit. But it isn’t just two gamers who share the same opinion, it’s hundreds and thousands, maybe more. Obviously it isn’t enough to negatively impact a game’s sales, but they are a loud minority.

So next time you’re yapping about a game, ask yourself if you’ve placed yourself in an echo chamber — because you might be missing out on a good time.

Originally posted on VGD Sister Site, Heatwaves & Gamma Rays

I’ve been on a Battlestar binge lately, but the reference is perfect. When a Cylon dies their conciousness is downloaded into a reproduction facility and transferred to a new body. Essentially, there are no inexperienced Cylons. Like videogame players they learn from death and adjust accordingly in their next life.

And now, as World of Warcraft reaches its peak playerbase, you can see the same thing. That level 40 Hunter isn’t really a level 40 Hunter, he’s a level 70 Paladin, who is a level 70 Rogue on another server. It’s hard to find someone that’s still on their first character, who hasn’t transferred their experience to another class.

For the Cylons that means they’re incredibly dangerous to their enemies, and the same thing applies to WoW players. In fact, I would guess that a WoW player who has lead several different virtual lives with different characters has built up a wealth of experience within that game system that is unparalleled. An FPS player might be an excellent shot with the MP-5, so it should go without saying that he’s a crack shot with a pistol — it’s not like other games don’t have this transfer of knowledge, but firing a virtual weapon at a target isn’t a skill that takes long to learn. It may take a long time to master, yes, but WoW’s nine classes all play quite differently. A player who used to be his enemy has a lot of valuable knowledge at hand.

But I wonder if this isn’t detimental to a virtual world. At the outset of the experience I felt quite a bit of wonder and excitement as I explored the world with others. But now we all know where everything is, and what everyone does, because we’ve been there before.

Back when the Day of Defeat mod was the bees knees in the Half-Life community I remember there was a big deal made out of the gun balance. It's expected that a WWII game is going to attract gamers with an eye for history as well as people who 'just want to shoot bitches'. When it was discovered that although the German and American side had different weapon models most of the guns were in fact exactly the same statistically, people were pissed. If the guns were the same, what's the difference between the sides? I'm not sure whether the guns were changed or not, or if they were updated in the Source mod, but that event sticks in my memory.

Now, as I watch the gameplay trailer for Call of Duty: World at War, I'm wondering what those disgruntled gamers would think. I myself was a bit confused when I saw the Japanese toting a Thompson submachine gun. While it may have made sense for Call of Duty 4 to have weapons that weren't dependant on your side in the conflict, it just doesn't seem to make sense in the WWII setting.

It would be interesting to see a poll on the subject and to see what sort of gamers the game will attract. I'm quite aware that there is probably a majority that would call me nitpicky and love the idea of shared weapons. But at the risk of sounding like a senior citizen -- what is happening to my beloved first person shooters? Most shooters have already rid themselves of fire modes (single, burst, automatic), and now they're not bothering to differentiate the teams through gameplay mechanics.

Nobody will be complaining about the stopping power and semi-automatic capabilty of the M1 Garand, and the frightening versatility of the MP44 won't be quite as frightening when both teams can grab it from the get go.

That's what gave these games flavour -- when my clan would lose the coin toss and take the American side on an open bocage map in Call of Duty 2 we would have to use trench clearing tactics and cunning to get around the superior German bolt-action rifles. The few snipers on our team were a godsend, and it was thrilling to flank a team of riflemen with submachineguns. It might have been imbalanced, but my God it was fun to have to make up for it with skill, wit and teamwork.

Is it a concession in balancing, like when Blizzard gave both the Alliance and Horde access to paladins and shamans, or do gamers not want these kind of polarizing choices anymore?

Or is it more telling that games like Call of Duty: World at War aren't even available on the PC, and I'm just not the 'target audience'?

The U.S. economy isn't looking too great right now. Despite the smirking visage of Senator
Joe Biden gracing my page here I'm Canadian. That means that should the world devolve
into some sort of war torn desert hellscape, I won't be the first guy to enter the
Thunderdome. So what will I be doing while your father is fighting for his life in some
deathmatch, and what will you be doing while you wait for your turn?

Chances are I'll be playing games for as long as I live, even as the earth consumes itself in
awesome post apocalyptic violence. So the issue at hand then, is what the hell am I going
to be playing?

1. World of Warcraft.

The Why: I don't know a gamer that, in an economic crisis, wouldn't trade in their
food stamps to keep their WoW account up and running. It might not be a healthy pastime,
but if the world is going down the tubes I can bet you that smokers will be stuffing their
faces with stogies, so what the hell is wrong with me doing my dailies?


The How: We're assuming that we've still got power, and that enough other people
are still alive to play against. Big assumptions but gamers aren't daft -- are you above
stealing power from the fear mongering mega corporation that takes over the world after
the United States collapses? Just try not to get caught.

2. Fighting Games

The Why: While Blizzard might still be able to pump out new content, using their
subscription funds to supply a small army and keep Mega Corp at bay in their Californian
haven, other games are going to get mighty stale. But not fighting games!

The How: Be it a 2D fighter or one of those new-fangled 3D fighters, all you need is
a friend and you're good to go. But don't worry, if your friend dies of malnutrition you can
always play single-player versus matches!

3. Dungeons & Dragons

The Why: Ok, ok, so it's not a videogame, but listen: you don't need to steal vital
power to play and pretending to save a town from an orc invasion will take your mind off of
the situation.

The How: You'll need some rule books, lots of dice (many sided), friends, and
snacks. Ok, well you can do without the snacks -- the point is D&D cannot be stopped by
'The Man'. Although it is only a matter of time before you and your friends are sent to the
salt mines, so get your fill while you can.

What will you be playing as the world burns around you, and why?