Monday's Report | E3 Rises From The Dead

Like A Lovecraftian Horror, E3 Returns!

You can almost smell it in the air; the fresh scents of nerd sweat, booth babe perfume, and shiny new electronics - E3 2009 is here. Technically it'll be here at 10:30am PST, when Microsoft gives the keynote address to really kick things off, but the point still stands. Normally, the presentations put on by the big three of the console world are supposed to deliver thrills, surprises, and incredible hype - fail to do any of these things and you're labeled an out-right failure. So why is it that all the big news has largely been spilled already? In 2009, moreso than ever before, companies have either already made many of their big announcements public or had their big news leaked and then forcibly confirmed (hello, slim PS3). It's a bizarre way to do business, to be sure, and almost takes the wind completely out of the sails of the Expo. What's the point? The biggest disappointment is that I have the sneaking suspicion we're going to get almost nothing in the way of that one big "OMG!" moment from any of the big three. We'll natually get the things the companies want to be those big OMG moments - but those when they're along the lines of something like Nintendo's somewhat depressing reveal of WiiMusic, they tend to fall flat, if not just create a meme that surges through the gaming universe like thunder. I can see that same thing happening when/if Microsoft and/or Sony unveil their suspected motion controllers and releated software. Such announcements seem deflating - especially when they're coupled with software that the audiences knows full well will be underwhelming at best. Word on the PSP Go! and slim PS3 are sort of weird for me since revised versions of hardware rarely if ever generate any sort of excitement for me - and since the slim version of the PS3 is supposedly NOT coming with a price drop, what's the point aside from saving Sony some production cash? I'm more than fine with my big and chunky 60GB PS3, even more when I remember that I have a version that still is able to play PS1 and PS2 games before the feature was unceremoniously torn from the guts of the later SKUs... One of the small benefits of early adoption, I guess. Even still, I can't help but hold out hope that something big is looming just out of sight - something that has managed to remain undetected by the seething internet horde and from shoddy corporate obfuscation. I have no idea what such a secret would be, but it's got to involve software. A big first party game that has been kept locked away from anyone not directly involved in its development - even within its own company. For me, my big money is on...well, hell with this, let me just get to my predictions. That's what we're supposed to do when we talk about E3 anyway, right?

MICROSOFT PREDICTIONS:
The Era of "Xaggle": One of the worst-kept secrets was Microsoft's keen interest in capitalizing on the Wii's unique motion control that anchors the entire development of the console's catalog. The idea of Microsoft introducing such waggle-based gaming has been swirling for at least a year, and if they're ever going to make it official, I think it's got to happen this year. Still, and I have to make this completely clear, it's a terrible idea. The Xbox 360 has its own audience, and while Microsoft is obviously trying to cater to the Wii crowds and mimic Nintendo's strategies in many ways, this one will be an absolute failure. Be careful what you wish for, Microsoft, you may want to be like Nintendo, but for every success like the Wii or DS there's also a Virtual Boy or R.O.B. - and this one might just be yours.

Casual Living: Acting as a bookend to the motion control, I'm betting Microsoft is going to "show off" a host of new casual-style games that run through XBLA, probably utilizing avatars and helmed by Rare. They're going to be party games - and that means a shit load of minigames, which have long since worn out their welcome on the Wii.

The Circular Tease: Bungie might be walking away from Halo after ODST, but that doesn't mean Microsoft is going to let their most popular and iconic franchise go out like that - expect an extremely short teaser clip showing absolutely no in-game footage for the next chapter in the proper Halo series, developed internally by Microsoft and aiming for a holiday 2010 release. They're going to try really hard to nail the viusal style of Bungie, and they're going to fail. It's going to look like a weird mish-mosh of those glossy metallic colors Bungie painted everything with colliding head-on with the dirty grime of, say, Gears of War.

Power In Your Hands: Microsoft probably won't announce a new handheld console ala the Portable 360, but I suspect that the new Zune will tie directly into your Xbox Live account and possibly even allow you to play some or maybe even ALL your XBLA games. That would be bad-ass.

SONY PREDICTIONS:
Gods Die Earlier: I'll just get this out of the way because it's what I hope for the most out of anything at E3 this year, but I'm hoping and praying that Sony announces a 2009 release date for God of War III. Traditionally, GoW games have arrived in March, putting the newest chapter of Sony's greatest saga in 2010 - and thereby making me sad. But I'm holding out hope that Sony is much more interested in making a direct impact in a holiday season that's oddly lacking any real competition from the usual likes of Marcus Fenix or Master Chief.

The Princess Has Arrived: Sony will announce that as soon as their presentation is over, Fat Princess will be released on the PSN. My head explodes with delight. The end.

The Era of SixAxis 2 "Saggle": Motion control - it's like a plague of bad ideas that's eating all the crops. The SixAxis never really took off, no matter how much Sony would like to imagine otherwise, and to introduce yet another version of it, even if it's packaged in a new peripheral is nuts. Like Microsoft's trip into waggle-ville, expect Sony to package with a suite of poorly thought-out party games that will keep your interest for roughly 42 minutes and never touch it again.

Dave Jaffe Is A Liar: I don't know that to be true, but I'm hoping he's a liar. He's on record saying that his new company has no announcements to make at E3 this year, which (in theory) could include info on a new Twisted Metal game. Like the God of War in 2009 prediction, this has less to do with fact or even a gut feeling so much as it does pure wishful thinking. It's been almost ten years since the last proper TM game, and my mind wanders when I think how much the new leaps in technology and growth in online play could make Twisted Metal into a truly incredible online experience. *sigh*

NINTENDO PREDICTIONS:
From The Clouds, He Comes: How long have people wanted a Kid Icarus game? It's been a few years, easy - and then when Pit showed up in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it was like the floodgates let loose and Kid Icarus mania swallowed the fanbase whole. Sadly, Nintendo doesn't seem to share the same level of glee over the property, and anything regarding a revisit of the material has largely been internet lies rumor. But, like Microsoft's waggle controller, I suspect that if there's going to be big Kid Icarus news, it's got to come this year - it's just a feeling I have.

WiiBoring: Nintendo seems preoccupied with their casual catalog, and while WiiMusic was the failure that maybe WiiFit should have been, we all know Nintendo's got a fuzzy learning curve and a taste of casual cash fresh in its maw. Expect something incredibly lame - WiiWhistle or WiiBreathe or some other mundane, everyday activity perverted into a motion-controlled batch of minigames featuring the Miis. F@$%in' minigames...

The Big Guns: To bring back some of the steam the Wii has lost in the last few months, Nintendo needs to bring in the services of its #1 employee and global mascot - Mario. And I'm not talking about Mario showing up in a sports game or some other tangent title, I mean a real Mario game. Mario Galaxy was one hell of a title, and normally I wouldn't expect some sort of follow-up to arrive so soon, and perhaps an announcement will simply foreshadow, but don't be shocked if a new honest-to-god Mario game is shown. The same can be said for Link. While Spirit Tracks is inbound, I wouldn't be surprised if a Wii tie-in is announced - to make it more interesting, I'm guessing it'll return to the Wind Waker visuals the handheld titles have used for a couple years now. As for the third part of the holy trinity, Samus will be missing this year. With Retro done with Metroid, the best we're going to get is the Metroid Prime Trilogy - which doesn't offer much of anything to those who played all three games before aside from some fringe goodies I cannot get too excited about. But to each their own...

OTHER PREDICTIONS:
So Dark The Con Of Duke: This is like 1,000,000:1 odds, but there has been more than one person suspecting that the whole 3D Realms implosion earlier this year was actually part of an elaborate scam - the finale of the industry's biggest joke, if you will - and that E3 will be where they and Take Two not only show off but out-right announce a firm Fall 2009 release date for Duke Nukem Forever on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. I think a lot of this idea comes from people who have been deeply wounded by the DNF experience and cannot believe the way the whole train wreck ended, but if this were to actually be true, it would have to be the grestest prank ever played on the community. It would be astounding - and frankly, I do not believe that a company that took 12 years to make a FPS could ever think up and then properly execute such a con. But I've been wrong once or twice before...

Plasmids Inbound: I hate when games are seemingly forced into putting multiplayer in a game. Not only does it seem to simply not fit some games, but more often than not the online portion is horrible and no one plays it anyway - including all the people that cried for it to be included. I hate those people. Even with that being said, I imagine Bioshock 2 not only showing off the game's online portion, but having it blow people away. It would be a fitting revelation for a game that I whole-heartedly believe doesn't need any sort of online component.

Alright, that's all I got for now. Don't forget to check out all those live blogs out there this afternoon when E3 gets underway so you can all witness how little I actually know about anything, and also don't forget that America's part in the 1 VS. 100 beta begins at 10:30pm EST tonight on Xbox Live! Play it and I'll hopefully see you there!

Monday's Report | The Return

The Tradition Returns!

Oh, how I missed you, Monday's Report... A weekly trend that always brought me so much joy around the otherwise dank and empty corridors of the Bannendrome. I'm glad to have you back, old friend. Of course, today's not Monday, it's Wednesday - but Monday was Memorial Day and I was busy firing up the grill for some of my famous burgers and slaving away while putting together patio furniture that was most certainly engineered in Hell. I still have that glow of new home-ownership, and finally putting a nice set of table and chairs on a patio that was wasted last summer does nothing but make me absolutely thrilled. All I need to do now is throw a fire pit in the back yard and I'm golden. I could have also put together a Monday's Report on Tuesday, but frankly I was busy playing inFAMOUS all day - which, by the way, is possibly the greatest reason to own a PS3 since Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Expect me to throw up a Reviewish on the topic later this week. Simply put, it still may not be the one magical system-seller Sony has been searching for (Pro-Tip For Sony: God of War III), but it's easily one of the most enjoyable open-world-type games I've played, and while there's no popular hero license in sight, it might be one of the very best superhero games on the market...ever. Oh yeah, that's hyperbole all over your face, bitches. Now all I need to do is see if Prototype can live up to this level of quality. Let's just say I have my doubts.

In terms of movies, I think I've turned some kind of corner as a consumer and as someone who once took great pride in my ability to "shut my brain off" during a movie so long as I was rewarded with things exploding in new and exciting ways. Now, I'm not saying I've become a snob by any means - Star Trek was sweet. But other big name "blockbusters" that have come up so far in the last months or so I've had almost no desire to see, and for me it's weird to think thoughts like "I'll catch Terminator: Salvation on DVD" or "That Wolverine movie is garbage" - and yet here I am, having not seen Wolverine and in no real hurry to see the Future War unfold in front of my eyes. Let me tangent here a bit and say that if McG really would like to earn some sort of respect as a director, a nice place to start would be moving past the age of really dumb nicknames. McG is fond of thinking his moniker is a self-imposed scarlet letter to rise above - but reality is that it's goofy shit that audiences are swiftly starting to turn away from. Not that his name is by any means the complete reason a new Terminator film was bested by a Ben Stiller family flick opening weekend, but I doubt it helped in any regard. To think that not even Christian Bale, fresh off of the monsterous pop culture juggernaut that was The Dark Knight, could help make it that smashing success that Warner Bros. was hoping to build two more films upon... Tell me that Michael Bay, Stephen Sommers or maybe even Brett Ratner directed T4 and it stands a far better chance of getting a firm hold of my $9.00 - I take that back, Brett Ratner sucks. But let's all watch and see the crazy money that Transformers 2 effortlessly earns... All in all, the reviews for T4 aren't great and I have to wonder if this franchise is really and truly dead, if not just put on the shelf for six years until a complete reboot is considered. Modern Hollywood, you've got to love it.

The Ghostbusters video game is finally just three weeks away and I'm doing just about everything I can to distract myself. To think that it was almost a year ago that I completely lost my mind when Activision dropped the game... Oh, the memories! Reviews are slowly trickling in, and so far they at least seem positive - 8's and 9's out of 10 aren't bad by any means - though between you and me, even if the game came with a sticker on the front that read "This Game Is Shit", I'd still happily buy it... And with the game's hype mixing lovingly with the 25th anniversary of the original movie's release this summer (damn I feel so old), it has brought up a flurry of discussion over the long-talked-about Ghostbusters 3 movie actually becoming something resembling reality. Dan Aykroyd has certainly said some crazy, crazy things - including discussion of troops of "boys and girls" learning the ropes and mastering equipment that allows them to travel interdimensionally - it makes me so happy that Harold Ramis is around to shake his head "No" and bring Dan down to something resembling reality. Do you have any idea how screwed up Ghostbusters would have been had Ramis not been brought in to take the whole concept from Aykroyd and boil it down to what we know today? Kiss just about every thing you hold dear about the movie goodbye... The firehouse, the Ecto-1, the Proton Pack, Venkman, etc - all gone. I must admit that the idea of a GB3 is something I've dreamed of since I walked out of the theater in 1989, fresh off the high from my third viewing of Ghostbusters II - but it's been two decades and I was much easier to please then. Can Ghostbusters 3 manage to learn lessons that GB2 taught, namely that the movie should be less about gimmicks like rivers of neon-colored slime and more about the inter-personal relationships and banter? We'll have to see, I guess, though I've long since held the rule that I will not even begin to get my hopes up about a third movie until I see an actual trailor in the theaters. Until then, it's all evil internet-fueled lies and I'll have no part of them...

Reviewish | PUNCH-OUT!!

Chocolate Bars Are Your Friend!

Welcome to Reviewish, where I kinda-sorta "review" games I haven't actually completed yet. See, I play games at my own pace - which is a nice way to say I play them very slowly. But after I play what I deem to be enough of any one game to get the proper feel of what it is and has to offer, I'm ready to put my not-entirely informed stamp on it. Enjoy!

Oh, and feel free to play this clip while reading my reviewish of Punch-Out!!, I think it adds a little something to the experience...



I can only assume that for dedicated game developers, bringing back classic and charished games can be an incredibly difficult task. If you stick too close to the original (which in the case of games like Punch-Out!! can include gameplay that over the course of a couple decades got more than a little stale) you end up with a cheap rehash, but if you try to innovate too much you end up ruining the nostalgic feel you meant to capture in the first place and that fans will be expecting. What a bitch... Last year's Bionic Commando: Rearmed was a step in the right direction, although outside of some seriously awesome remixed music tracks, it was simply the classic NES game with a new and impressive coat of paint. Punch-Out!! on the Wii first seems like the same formula at work - after all, it has the familiar music and sound effects and the roster of fighters is almost 100% comprised of fighters you may have fought when you were a kid. Facing foes like Glass Joe and King Hippo are certainly no brainers, but when you realize that every fighter is one you've seen in Punch-Out!! lore before, you may start to think that this game is simply a new coat of paint too, but shockingly that's not the case. It's nice that the game has you once again battling all the foes from your past, and aside from one two new fighters (one in particular I certainly had no idea I'd see popping up here, and he is AWESOME), the roster shapes up nicely. I also like how the game manages to touch on the concept of ethnicity but never tread so deep into stereotype territory as to truly be insulting. Yeah, Piston Honda (oops, I mean Hondo - I'll assume lawsuits were involved somewhere along the line) has sushi circle his head when Mac dazes him, but outside of that sort of example and him speaking Japanese, the rest of his personna seems more interested in cultural influence than out-right mockery.

Visually, Punch-Out!!'s biggest strength is that it's cel-shaded look allows the fighters to really express their surprisingly deep personalities and quirks that go far beyond the ways they telegraph their various moves. For example: Glass Joe, the world's worst gaming opponent, is no longer simply just a lifeless punching bag you get to train on - he's also funny as hell to watch, and while he speaks his native French (sadly, Punch-Out!! offers no subtitles for the foriegn languages many of the fighters speak, which is slightly annoying), the animation is so colorful and spot-on that you know he's waaaaay too over-confident - perhaps this unfortunate and comical attitude is the result of a brain tumor that formed from all the people that have leveled him out with a TKO over the years. But this level of expressive body language and physical comedy is present throughout the game, and it's really quite enjoyable to watch. It really brings a level of depth to the game that the old pixels couldn't even quite convey - though they sure did an excellent job... On the audio side, Punch-Out!!'s sound relies a lot on the original NES and borrows and remixes many of the memoriable sounds and cues that old time fans might recognize, the music too is lifted from the classic and reborn through all sorts of new genres, many of which fit the cultural tones of the fighters Little Mac will face.

In terms of gameplay, Punch-Out!! manages to take the control concept of the original and tighten it to today's standards. Punch-Out!! has always been more of a reflex-based puzzle game than an actual fighting game, and this version holds on to that proud tradition by making sure you succeed or fail on your own merits. This is one of those rare games where if you lose, it's because you were at fault - not the game. The game follows a simple structure at first, with Little Mac going through three classes of fighters before winning the championship belt. Amusing as it is, pros may find that to be not much of a challenge, but the trick is that once Mac wins the belt, you open up the Title Defense mode. Here you'll face all your foes again - only now they've been working on their game and they're ready to take you on with a whole bag on new tricks. Glass Joe, forever the loser, shows up in a facemask, taking away the liability of the jaw that earned him his dubious moniker. How you deal with the loss of an enemy's once-reliable weakness is key to holding on to your belt. And aside from some costume changes, these second versions of all your enemies also have new suites of moves and their timing has changed. In short, they become a hell of a lot more of a challenge, which is certainly welcome to die-hard fans. It's not all about getting the belt though, as Punch-Out!! has an exhibition mode that is sort of like it's own version of Achievements. You're presented with all sorts of challenges for each fighter, and successfully meeting those challenges earns you all sorts of rewards from music to play to bios and such. All in all, it's a great way to extend the game's replayability and make sure you get your $50 worth, which is not a problem here...

The game does have some faults, but their so silly and probably limited only to me as to not even be worth noting - but I will. For one, why the hell isn't Mario the ref? Don't get me wrong, Ref from Super Punch-Out!! does a fine job, but it would have added one more little touch of old school class if Mario had been able to once again don the striped shirt. Also, I'm sure it would be a licensing nightmare and maybe a PR one as well, but why not just toss Mike Tyson in the game as a hidden character, you know - just for fun. I'd love to see him rendered in this art style, dumb face tattoo and all. Oh well. On a more realistic note, however, the multiplayer mode feels tacted on big-time. You're limited to playing offline and only Mac VS. Mac, and I find that really lame. Why not allow Soda Popinski to face off against Bald Bull? So much work went into the fighters (which are really the stars here) it seems a shame to waste them in what could have been a more solid 2-player experience. Heck, with this roster you could have even set up a bracket sytem, which would be fun as hell at parties. I suppose that will have to wait for another edition of the game - and if the delay between Super Punch-Out!! and the Wii reboot are any indication, could be quite some time.

Simply put, Punch-Out!! is one of the best titles you're going to find on the shovelware wasteland that is the Wii. It stands comfortably alongside games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl and deserves to be part of any Wii owner's library, especially if you still have fond memories of getting your ass handed to you by a pixelated Mike Tyson...

The Dumbing Down

Challenge Aversive

My Wii has become something of a trophy paper-weight. While others still struggle to find the elusive machines, I was lucky enough to trip over one a year or so ago. The thing is, I barely use it. Outside of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl marathons, the Wii just hasn't done much for me. Casual and Hardcore may be unfortunate labels, barriers keeping a united gaming front seperated, but the there is some truth in the different groups. The Wii, to me, is a hotbed of party game collections and shovelware with only a handful of gems to really get the most out of the console. The success of the Wii is not exactly something you can deny, but the savvy "gamer" can see why. Nintendo's decision to aim squarely at the casual (oh, those labels again) crowd was brilliant - it put them back on top and made the a cultural phenomenon again, but the cost of that success is that many of us, the "hardcore" (oh boy, cursed labels!), feel abandoned. This argument is flawed somewhat, since it was only a year ago that we received great Metroid and Mario titles, and Zelda needs time to bloom again after the awesome Twilight Princess... But there is some truth in what has been spoken. Looking over the Wii library is like staring at rows and rows of gray. Nothing stands out except the few usual suspects. And while games like No More Heroes and the upcoming Madworld break the mold, how often do games like that show up on this platform? The answer is obvious. But even Nintendo is adding to what many see as a problem, with the lackluster WiiMusic (well, lackluster at $50) and, for me, Animal Crossing: City Folk.

I'll admit it, I like me some Animal Crossing. The first game and the DS title came out at the exact right times, allowing me to unwind and relax after long session of FPSs and such. I liked the way the game sort of flowed, how the world seemed alive and had a schedule of sorts. City Folk, however, is something of a kick in the face. To old AC fans, you'll notice right away that this game is familiar - suspiciously so. In fact, this is basically the DS's Wild World with a slight coat of paint. Now, I think part of the charm of the AC games is in the simplicity and the hidden level of challenge - of planning ahead to get the things you want for your home and take part in the events waiting for you. AC did expect a certain level of dedication. Missing any one day might cost you the chance to buy a rare carpet, see KK Slider play, or perhaps miss your last chance to build a proper snowman and get that sweet themed chair. With City Folk, all of that goes out the window. Can't make it on the next day Red visits your town, expensive and shady items in tow? No problem in City Folk - just go to the city and visit his shop. The same goes for every other merchant you know. In the other games, if you missed a holiday or something, you could be evil and adjust the GameCube or DS clocks, but City Folk allows you to change the time from inside the game - allowing people to just go to the dates they need to. To me, this strips away a lot of AC's charm - it's also a sad sign of dumbing down a game that required almost nothing to dumb down. Animal Crossing isn't rocket science, and it's the same thinking that has given many games created lately a fourth difficulty level, one lower than easy. This sort of thinking leads to things like a re-relased Super Mario 3 where you have all the Warp Whistles in your inventory for the very start of the game. Why not!? Maybe toss in a handful of Starmen so that you can get through the pesky airship armada and beat Bowser without the threat of defeat!?

Drawing lines in the sand between Casual and Hardcore is stupid sounding, and it shares space with shameful Fanboys - but the fact remains that games are becoming less and less about challenge and a little committment, and more about seeing the credits roll. While I can appreciate developers wanting me to see their stories or experiences from beginning to end, I like to think that I earn the honor by working a little for it. I'm not saying every game needs to be Ninja Gaiden, but this constant lowering of the bar for things standing in the way of completing a game is ridiculous. I never thought I'd see a game like Animal Crossing treated like this, where it simply doesn't need to be done. Here's looking to the future...

Reviewish | FALLOUT 3

How Many Rads Are In Chicken McNuggets?

Welcome to Reviewish, where I kinda-sorta "review" games I haven't actually completed yet. See, I play games at my own pace - which is a nice way to say I play them very slowly. But after I play what I deem to be enough of any one game to get the proper feel of what it is and has to offer, I'm ready to put my not-entirely informed stamp on it. Enjoy!

I never played the other two proper Fallout games before. In fact, the first image of the franchise that pops in my head is Brotherhood of Steel, the Xbox game with the horrible box art that looked like absolute garbage. I have also never played Oblivion or anything else created by Bethesda Studios. The Fallout games passed me by because I was never big on the PC as a game platform, and as a younger Bannen I simply never heard of the series - Oblivion is fantasy based with its medieval stylings, and I'm really not keen on that genre. But now I'm hip-deep in Fallout 3, and I think that being clueless about the Fallout legacy and of Bethesa's previous efforts have made Fallout 3 easier on me. I've read a lot of things on the interwebs from die-hard Fallout devotees who either see Fallout 3 as deeply flawed but enjoyable or think it's the worst game ever created - ever. I can't say I don't know where the bitter feelings are coming from. As a Twisted Metal fanatic, things went horribly wrong when SingleTrac left the franchise and 989 Studios took over. Of course, the major difference is that 989 Studios made feces pressed into the shape of a disc, while Bethesda's masterwork is one of the best games I've ever played. It might not be the same creature the fans fell in love with, but just maybe its soul has carried over into something new, something that shows itself to be glorious over time...

I know a few people that have already played through the game a couple times, and I simply can't figure out how they did it. My guess is that they either quit their jobs or work from home, allowing them to spend upwards of 15 hours a day wandering what's left of Washington DC. I envy them. I scrape and claw for a scant few hours a night so I can explore the wastes, and after investing almost 40 hours so far, I feel like I have accomplished practically nothing - and I don't mean that in a bad way, oh no. Fallout 3 is one of the most detailed, rewarding worlds ever constructed, and you can easily spend hours at a time wandering this way and that, constantly bumping into new buildings and locations to explore, items to either aid you or sell for a profit, people to chat with, and enemies to battle (or run from). I've only completed a handful of side quests and just a few of the "main" missions - there's just something rewarding and unique about trying to make it through DC and the surrounding area. Finding a new spot on the map is a rush, and raiding it for its various treasures is even better. I spent two hours last night around Bethesda Ruins, in and out of wrecked buildings and taking on those damn Raiders (who, perhaps not entirely by chance, look like actual Oakland Raiders fans). I remember thinking that GTA's San Andreas was a feat, and while it certainly was at the time, the Capital Wasteland is unlike anything I've ever seen before in a game - a full realized slice of land that seemingly never ends. The most awe-inspiring show of how big this game's world is arrives early in the game once you manage to leave your life-long home in Valut 101. The view from the ridge, seeing the Capital Building so far off in the distance, is one of those "Events" in a game that will stay with me for a long time.

Just as deep and winding as the world is the freedom you have in your choices. Some games act like you have choices. GTA IV created the illusion of you having free choice from time to time - kill this person or let them live and so on - but in Fallout 3, the quests allow for you to tackle it primarily however you want and feel you should, and the best thing is that the world reacts to your decisions. The best example I one that happens early in the game and shouldn't be much of a spoiler to anyone who has followed the game even a little. Blow up or save the tiny settlement of Megaton. It's easy enough to break it down into you being bad or good, but let's say you choose to blow it up. Moira Brown, the shop owner who gives you a certain quest doesn't just up and die. Instead, your action alters her path, and she'll show up in a slightly different form later on. That's just small example, but it makes dealing with people and their quests all the more important. This isn't just black and white - Fallout 3 deals morality in many shades of gray. This makes the game feel a little bit more real and complicated since it'll challenge you trying to be entirely good or truly evil. I began the game trying to walk the straight and narrow from beginning to end - but when the realities of the wasteland kick in, when money, ammo, and food get low, I've had to make a few hard choices in hopes of getting my hands on the goods I needed. Things have been stolen, people have been threatened, lies have been told, lives have been lost. While I have done enough good to still have high karma, I still know what I've done, and how the game world largely pinned me in a corner to do it. It's all about survival, after all.

Because of its design, Fallout 3 has been very hard to talk about with friends. It's impossible to play the game the same way between people, so discussing mission and things found has been very hard. Luckily, there is always talk of how we have handled the growth of our Vault Dweller (or just "101" as Three Dog would say). The character creation system is as flexible as the rest of the game, and all the Stats and Skills and Perks allow you to craft a character that you think best suits you. I have a sneaky brainiac that also does well with Small Guns, but gets slaughtered in close combat scenarios. A friend of mine is a brawling brute loves his minigun and getting hands-on with Super Mutants, but he couldn't hack a computer if it only had one button. The Perks, naturally, are the shining part of character creation - mostly because they run from being helpful and logical to being out-right bizarre. From what I can gather, Mysterious Stranger and Bloody Mess seem to be the peoples' favorites, and while I haven't picked them up yet, I'm hoping to before I reach that cursed Level 20 cap. The problem is that ALL the Perks are awesome and useful, and I'm willing to bet that everyone is like me, spending most of their time Leveling Up staring at that list, debating which Perk to select.

So, Fallout 3 is an epic in every sense of the word. For $60, it's insane how much it gives you. If you haven't already, get it now - make it #1 on your Christmas list if you must. And while the die-hards may not accept Fallout 3 as their own, it has made me want to go out and get the original two games and try them out. If that isn't living up to the promise of a series, I don't know what is...

Fringeworthy

Science Will Kill Us All


Thanks to last year's Writers Strike, television as I knew it decided to curl up and die, leaving me with an ever-growing list of reality/game shows. Hole In The Wall, for example - if that's not a sign of the End Times, I'm not sure what is. Frankly, I blame the Hadron Collider for this. For one, it's very easy to see that whatever it's going to do once it really gets going, it's going to affect the past, and that's going to result in all this garbage on my TV. Secondly, it's becoming increasingly easier to blame just about anything on the Hadron Collider. For example, it will be magnetic fields from the Collider that causes Google Chrome to become self-aware, leading to our demise at the hands of the machines. See? It's not just easy - it's fun. We need something like the Hadron Collider, and I don't mean for scientific discovery. We need it as something to pin our fears on, to be the focus for a time when America, and likely the world, is feeling the squeeze of terrorism, global economics, and Dane Cook's movie career. Zing. But I do think that's true, that the Collider is a great way to vent frustration and concern - even though it sort of makes some people look like idiots of the Flat Earth variety. I also though it was ironic that on the eve of the Hadron opening up a wormhole, Fox would premiere it's big sci-fi show, Fringe. And it opened with a bang - with an airliner filled with helpless folks who soon become what I like to call "People Soup". Damn. Aside from hoping for a great excuse to break the chains of America's Got Talent, I also follow the works of JJ Abrams closely, because I am an devout LOST fan, and hope for the best here. Abrams' newest baby is about our world reaching that point where science and technology are on a runaway course where progress becomes carnage, though it seems to me that's more about science without ethics. Who knows, though - maybe it's all run by an AI that's gone mad. So far, the show is promising. Storywise, it's got a good hook, and if it can keep the plotlines interesting (like the "Question him" moment at the end of the premiere), we could have a winner. I'm not so sure the early "X-Files Ripoff" statements were entirely fair, since this has less to do with aliens and more to do with rogue science - at least for now. My biggest gripe with Fringe is that the writing seems hit or miss. Sometimes it was rather smart, but sometimes the characters fell into easy clichés and hard-to-believe decisions. Take, for example, the show's lead character, Agent Olivia Dunham. What started for a few moments as a strong female lead was prone to stereotypical female reactions, like when she meets Peter Bishop in Iraq to ask for his help, and resorts to tearing up and giving the "I need to save someone I love" line. My wife, who liked the show up to that moment, let out a cynical laugh and rolled her eyes. I felt the same way. Dunham would later take part in an incredibly questionable experiment with a very crazy Dr. Walter Bishop that involved getting a device shoved in the back of her neck, taking LSD, and being locked in a water tank. All this to save a guy that she seemed somewhat apathetic about at the show's start. And Dr. Bishop walks the fine and dangerous line of becoming a truly obnoxious and unwatchable character. I think his madness largely came from his wily beard, because once he shaved he was much more tolerable - kind of like Samson, but with insanity, not strength...


The success of the show will largely depend on creating episodes that play off what the premiere showed - which walked a fine line between today's horrors of science and far-out sci-fi, like Massive Dynamics' Nina Sharp, who has a very Terminator-esque (and totally bad-ass) robotic arm that goes lightyears beyond what we have available to amputees today. It's sort of like the weirder parts of LOST, but with even a touch more crazy. I'm also already hooked on the whole "Pattern" thing, almost as if it's 2008's answer to the numbers. What is the pattern? What does it all mean? Who the hell would do these horrible things to so many innocent people, and more importantly, why? I want to know more about the whole thing. With any luck, they'll slide in a few sly nods to LOST. Well, a guy can dream, right? In the end, it's largely good stuff, and it's a great excuse to try and put mindless reality programming behind me. If you didn't watch Fringe, I suggest you check in as soon as possible - it looks like this show might start to form quite a mythos, one you're going to need to get into on the ground floor if you want to keep up.

Gaming On My Mind

As is the rule, my Xbox 360 finally fell victim to the dreaded red rings. It was really only a matter of time, as each and every person I know who has a 360 has suffered the same fate, and I'm lucky I went this long without issue. But now, my entertainment center has a sad empty spot where my favorite hunk of white plastic used to be. It makes me sad. Even my latest spot of fun, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, is subject to the aftermath, as it sits trapped inside a now-useless HDD. Damn! In the meantime, I'm doing a few things to try and keep my mind off the demise of my 360. One thing that helps is Warhawk - lots and lots of Warhawk. Unhealthy amounts of Warhawk. And what really doesn't help is that this all happened at a real Catch 22 moment. I'm glad that the 360 tanked now instead of in a month or two, because I don't think I could deal with missing out on Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 when they hit. But right now is that time of year where nothing is really out - the result of which is you reading way too much about me and Warhawk. I have been toying with the idea of getting something like Mercenaries 2, which everyone seems to agree is a (wait for it) blast - but then I start to remember that I never bothered to finish Super Mario Galaxy. Poor Mario. So, as I do each and every August/September, I comb through my backlogged games and look for something to play that I might have let slide earlier in the year or one that deserves a second look. Uncharted is just such a game. Not only is the game strong enough to support a second playthrough, and remain fun, but thanks to Sony's new Achievements Trophies, I can at least feel productive. Also, I realized that while I originally hated Uncharted's mutant-filled ending, the game's entire plot was miles better than the one in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull... I'm also seriously thinking about playing Resistance again. I hate FPS controls on the PS3 controller, but the weird timeline and atmosphere of Resistance is worth the hassle. I'm also prepping for R2, which looks like one of the more impressive games of the year if it can keep up with the hype.


Looking ahead though, there's a serious clusterfuck a-brewin'. It's been a long time since a holiday season dropped so many great looking games on our heads, and I'm caught wanting them all and regretting not having some sort of device that extends a day to 38 hours - just so that I can have more time to enjoy them all. October is chock full 'o' games, and it seems the majority of them are being released in the span of a week, near Halloween. Dead Space began as another EA project that I was primed and ready to ignore - especially after Army of Two turned out to be such a let-down. But as time has gone on, Dead Space looks like less and less of the Old EA at work, and makes me think that (just maybe) EA is ready to use its place in the gaming universe to create a flurry of really awesome titles and franchises. I've heard nothing but great things about Dead Space from a multitude of sites, and it looks like it could have what it takes to be seriously creepy and take off as a new series with a somewhat unique feel. But how much time can I spend hacking up creates from The Thing when on the same damn day (give or take), the PS3 sees the arrival of LittleBigPlanet? I didn't care much about LBP at first, but all the talk about what you can do with the game, and how you can fashion your own levels and build set-pieces from scratch pulled me right in. Having spent months and months to fashion an epic quest via RPG Maker, the idea of being able to craft entire experiences appeals to me - especially since I can now share them thanks to the magic of the interwebs. Besides, Sackboy is a horribly cute little guy, and it looks like Sony is really pushing to make LBP and it's star the official mascot of the console. Will it work? Who knows - though it seems like the game's profile and the number of people talking about it has grown a lot in the last few months. Then, a week after those two big games, I have to deal with Fallout 3. Now, I'm not an Oblivion fan, but Fallout 3 is right up my alley, with it's retro-carnage look and dark humor. And a game like this isn't going to just need some attention, it's going to require almost all my free time... That's a tall order. It's just chaos. Too much awesome, not enough time.