July 2009 Archives

Evolving my race into space was a threshold moment in Spore for me until I discovered that instead of a galaxy of fun, there was little to do once I had actually gotten there. Arriving at the center of the galaxy proved to be a temporary injection of excitement because afterwards, I found myself back to running the same spice routes and while drawing from the same, tiny glass of mind numbing activities.

So it was with some anticipation that I loaded up the expansion pack, Galactic Adventures, hoping to see if it could help reinvent what could have been the best part of the game. The good news is that it adds a fun wrinkle to the daily grind of spice running and planet hopping while allowing you to run wild with your own ideas. The bad news is that it also has a few holes in its heat shield..

I'm always going to remember the mid-to-late '80s. It was a simple time for me, and a lot of people my age (I'm 30). School was easier, life issues were easier ... and if you wanted to know who the best person was at almost anything, there's a chance his first name was Mike, and there was a chance he had an unearthly talent.

You had young Michael Jordan building his mythos through the air. You also had the other MJ, dubbed the "King of Pop" and always a moonwalk away from another chart-dominating piece of work.

Then, there's this guy:

I can't remember anyone who seized my attention more when I was younger than Iron Mike Tyson. Jordan soared, Jackson dazzled, but there was something about Tyson's contained feral energy that captivated me and millions of other people. As a gamer, the only real taste we had was in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, and he was a boss battle.

All this sentiment is why Fight Night Round 4 was especially important for me. I had a thought in my head that maybe I didn't need to invest myself into it as much, since my fighting jones would be sated with UFC: Undisputed. I was kidding myself: UFC's a fine game, but I don't remember watching those dudes when I was 10. I remembered Tyson, and I wanted to see if EA was watching the same guy.

Niko has a new ride in the PC version of GTA IV thanks to a clever mod. No siren yet, or Ghostbusting equipment, but if modders can figure out how to get Doc Brown's DeLorean time machine into Vice City, then GTA IV's world might start to become a lot more interesting in the same way.

And if driving around the city isn't your thing, there's always Mr. T and Gandhi fighting it out in Street Fighter IV. Yes, you read that right.

You can read up on the details on how you can try this out in the modding thread hosted at Street Fighter uber fansite, Shoryuken. In the meantime, here's Mr. T and Gandhi smashing each other up. The names are still listed as Zangief (Mr. T) and Dhalsim (Gandhi) and the voices haven't changed, so Mr. T sounds like a mad Russian. I'm sure someone's bound to figure out just how to get around that, but in the meantime, enjoy the show.

Personally, I had never seen or heard it until Bren Lewis from our online department passed this along. I felt the need to share.

Even those who despise Nintendo's little white box and it's wacky waggle control system, have to agree that the original Wii Sports was a great title. It was easy to pick up, fun to play and even though it was an original IP, there was something about it that was very Nintendo. It was the game that defined the system and that demonstrated motion control as a viable way to play games, one that the other software giants have been desperately looking to emulate.

The problem with Wii Sports however was it's brevity. All of the sports (with the exception of boxing) were indeed a lot of fun, but the game lacked depth and with the absence of online multiplayer the game (and in a lot of cases the system) ended up in the back of closets or pushed under the sofa to collect dust. With the release of Wii Sports Resort (with the 3rd best opening week sales of any Wii game in Japan) it looks like the system might be finding it's way back into a lot of living rooms.

This'll do.

I wonder if Michael Vick had this in his house.

It's a washing machine for dogs. It's from France. Thanks to design editor Gina Dvorak for sending me the link. Good god. Side effects may include death or extreme bodily harm.

Maybe it's just the ComicCon hype that's in the news this week, but it seems increasingly evident to this writer that the geeks have taken over American culture.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although journalists probably fit in more with the "dork" or "nerd" subgroups than the geek demographic. But the announcement that "Spider-Man" and "Evil Dead" director Sam Raimi will direct a movie based on the "World of Warcraft" universe seems to confirm the geek ascendancy.

Geek culture has taken many forms in post-WWII America. "Star Trek." "Star Wars." Dungeons and Dragons. Comic books. Science fiction film and novels. What they all have in common is a fascination with the amazing and fantastical, whether the subjects of the stories are rooted in speculative science or the realms of myth.

Fans of geek culture, generally speaking, enjoy immersing themselves in the imaginary worlds created by writers as varied as J.R.R. Tolkien, Stan Lee and Alan Moore, and for several years, endured the scorn of cooler Americans.

But things have changed. Many of the biggest - and best - movies of the decade have been aimed at the geek demographic. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was the first fantasy film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and the first two "Spider-Man" films, the most recent pair of Batman movies and "Iron Man" were all excellent.

Beyond the worlds of cinema, the Harry Potter books (rumor has it the film adaptations are also popular) and television series like "Lost" and "Heroes" have gained popularity. Video games are big business and even those who would never play "World of Warcraft" know what that the game exists.

Somewhere along the line, geek became cool.

It's this writers view is that somewhere on the timeline was 1999, when "The Matrix" hit theaters. A lot of people didn't like the sequels - I thought the second made no sense and didn't bother to see the third - but the first edition of the trilogy featured a band of cool, black-clad rebels who had access to big guns, advanced technology and knew kung fu.

The movie offered nothing less than a new geek archetype. The geeks were no longer the men or women who understood computers and had a large collection of X-Men back issues, the geeks were mankind's last hope, and they looked awesome in that role.

Compare "The Matrix" to another 1999 film, "Star Wars: Episode IV: The Phantom Menace." On the surface, both are geek fare with mainstream appeal, but "The Phantom Menace" was old geek. Where "The Matrix" was slick, rebellious and forward-looking, "The Phantom Menace" was comparatively slow, silly (Jar Jar Binks) and chock full of stilted dialogue.

I liked "The Phantom Menace" more than "The Matrix" when they were released, but that's because I grew up watching Star Wars movies and have never been a Keanu Reeves fan. But in retrospect, "The Phantom Menace" didn't have much for people who were not young kids or already fans of the franchise. "The Matrix" was a cultural bridgehead that offered the red pill of geek culture to mainstream society.

Ten years later, a movie based on "World of Warcraft" is in the works. This very year has already seen such cinematic releases as "The Watchmen," "Terminator Salvation" and "Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen." "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," is still waiting to be released.

The geeks have taken over.

In the latest example of how war is awesome for those who don't actually have to face kill-or-be-killed situations, the Internets are abuzz with reports that gamers will be able to unpack working night vision goggles with the "Prestige Edition" of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Here is but one example of the coverage.

Gamers will have to wait to see how functional these goggles really are. But this writer remembers that during Desert Storm, war correspondents highlighted the actual U.S. military's possession of night vision goggles as a major technological advantage against the Iraqi army.

I don't know if this promotion is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing, but it seems kind of weird that this kind of technology is now being given away to fake soldiers fighting a polygon war.

Regardless, the rules of marketing dictate that Modern Warfare 3 or another future combat-themed video game will have to raise the bar even higher. Short of creating a game that actually allows players to strike enemy terrorists from the comfort of their own homes, perhaps it could be possible to sell a SpecOps edition that gives players field-ready equipment.

This writer and fellow blogger Redmond Carolipio suggest that video game makers package a working firearm, a cell phone with contacts to human intelligence sources, fake passports and a phrase book that would enable players to participate in their own covert action. C'mon video game companies, America needs you.

Jewish Journal writer Brad Greenberg posted it on his Facebook, and it leads to the LeBron 2010 blog, which features really shaky and blurry TMZ video of King James getting dunked on by youngster Jordan Crawford at his hoops camp recently. However, the video you see above actually comes from ebaumnation.com and makes the TMZ stuff look like poor surveillance video.

The story of how Nike (and possibly Bron Bron himself) had a tape of the dunk confiscated has become the stuff of legend. You'll see the dunk at about :35 into the video ... a solid, two-handed flush from Crawford (a Xavier freshman) off one foot that the King isn't able to stop.

My first thought ... that's it? The dunk itself looked like a solid piece of work against someone defending the rim, and that someone happened to be LeBron. Was it really worth all the trouble?

Think about this in comparison to the story of another legendary dunk, this one involving a guy by the name of James Felton, who was on the receiving end. The bringer of pain? Tracy McGrady, circa 1996. The dunk was chronicled in a great piece in ESPN the Magazine, and it served as a visceral catalyst for two careers.

Check out this description:

Entering the camp, McGrady was a 17-year-old mystery from central Florida, unmentioned on most top-500 recruiting lists. So everyone in the gym took notice as he slowed at the top of the key to wait for the much-hyped Felton. When the big man caught up, McGrady stared him down, then took off a couple of strides inside the free throw line. Felton jumped too, but just as his fingers grazed the ball palmed in his opponent's right hand, McGrady whipped it down to his waist. In the next instant, he grabbed it with his left and windmilled it through the hoop so fiercely that it should have dented the floor. By the time the unheralded prep landed, he was the next big thing. Dozens of fans and players tumbled onto the court, yelling and high-fiving, temporarily halting the game. All Felton could do was shake his head, scratch his cheek and try not to look the victim. But the damage was done. The country's most-sought-after big had been owned. "It was one of the best basketball moments of my life," recalls (Lamar) Odom. "An I'm-ready-to-get-drafted type of move. I'd never seen anyone do something like that, not even in the NBA."

And knocked Felton off of it.

Now that sounds more fitting of oohs and ahhs, doesn't it? That's the video I want to see.

The Sims 3 is selling like hotcakes on the PC, nearly doing more than twice the number of sales that Prototype did on the Xbox 360 in the same period according to Gamasutra, and you can bet that there are those that are more interested in finding out how many ways that their collection of simulated life can meet and greet the Grim Reaper as opposed to each other.

I'll admit, I've done one or two of the things described in the video posted below such as removing the ladders on a pool. But I really did try to play the game as intended later on.

At one point, I had visited my brother during his internship and he had the game on a PC so I created a small house with a sim. Everything seemed to be going okay, so when we both left to get some Chinese, I left it running. When we came back an hour or so later, my sim was a pile of ashes and there were tombstones in the kitchen. I'm not sure what happened, but this time, it wasn't my fault.

Anyway, aside from the immaculate neighborhoods with manicured lawns, knowing what might happen when a Sim mixes poor cooking skills with an oven have led to quite a few videos that cover the consequences. If you need a refresher course on what went on in the Sims 2 and what COULD happen again in the follow up, you might want to check out this next clip.

And here's a little from the Sims 3.

Disclaimer: BTW, I take no responsibility for the consequences that may arise out from the significant others that may become upset at your own attempts to reproduce any of the above in their game without their knowledge. Like that will stop anyone.

I'm not sure I want this. Iron Man beating the hell out of even more machines sounds like a fun time, but the first game also featured one of the crazier spikes in difficulty I've experienced in a while. It was like the game had a sudden mood swing and decided to hurl unavoidable waves of missiles and ordinance at you until you were ash. This wasn't like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry 3, games that made you fully aware of their hate for you early on. The first Iron Man practically betrayed you. It wasn't a bad-looking game, though -- just not particularly fun for me.

Polish developer Techland's Call of Juarez was a western-styled shooter filled with plenty of spaghetti-styled trappings and action that told of a story between outlaw-turned-preacher, Reverend McCall, and Billy Candle whose mixed Native American ancestry had made him something of an outsider on both sides of the fence in the Wild West. Centering around the legend of the treasure ransom paid by the Aztec Empire in the sixteenth century for Montezuma to Cortez, everyone was convinced that they would find it first...as long as they survived the standard curse that accompanies such vast amounts of loose change.

Bound in Blood is the prequel to the first game, telling the story of the three McCall brothers and how a crack shot and vicious bastard like Ray had turned to religion, although you needn't have played the first to get an idea of what is going on here. Putting you in Ray's shoes as a Confederate sergeant in 1864 defending a series of trenches against the Union army, it's clear that Techland will be spinning as much of a western yarn as it will put six shooters and rifles into the player's hands.

Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frasier. Manny Pacquiao vs. Oscar De La Hoya. Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago. Daigo Umehara vs. Justin Wong...wait, what?

Gamers, especially those of the fighting variety, will likely know what that last matchup is all about especially after this weekend when the EVO 2009 Championship Series hosted in Las Vegas had wrapped up over 50,000 matches spread across many of the most popular fighting franchises in video gaming today. The largest annual fighting tourney of its kind in the world, they've been gathering many of the most competitive players on the planet under one roof for a chance at glory over the last ten years.

I had a lot of Erin Andrews in my life over the weekend. Not because I wanted to simply ogle the ESPN sports reporter some have dubbed the "Sideline Princess," but because she's a central part of one of the game's more intriguing features -- the Road to Glory. It's a takeoff of last year's Road to the Heisman and the college football franchise's long-standing equivalent to Madden's career / superstar mode.

The premise is that EA (the woman, not the company) has picked you to be part of her special series, which aims to follow the path of a student-athlete and his accomplishments from his last days of high school to the time he leaves college. It has a kind of Hoop Dreams sentiment to it, but with more flashing lights and graphics. You obviously have to suspend reality a bit here, since we're talking about four to five years of work, and this is the kind of stuff that usually shows up in dramatic documentary form after the fact. Also, a lot can happen in that time: What if you stink up the joint and never start a game in your life? Hell, what happens if you're completely average? In the real world, you probably wouldn't be worth a story.

At some point, I want to see how Road to Glory handles a clearly unglorious prospect. Perhaps one day we'll see a concept of building a player in college who is "followed" by Andrews or any other sports reporters from the first time he steps on the field (NCAA Football) to the day he retires from the NFL (Madden), culminating in some sort of retrospective report. It adds a bit of role-playing, something I think can be undervalued in the world of sports games. Imagine having your path from college walk-on to NFL superstar chronicled in a larger scale sports fantasy series. Just a thought.

Anyway, the following are some random musings from a weekend with EA:

Concert? Symphony orchestra? Video games? Combine these together, and you get Video Games Live which I had finally managed to attend a show of after hearing so much about it. Hearing some of gaming's most famous themes backed by a full orchestra, choir, and stand out vocalists in a vast music hall is definitely an experience to remember.

When someone is looking for a good reason to keep playing on the PC, you might want to point them to M.U.G.E.N.. It's a free, 2D fighting engine that allows modders to create, you guessed it, 2D fighting games like the ones in the old arcades when they weren't an endangered species.

It's been around for years and hobbyists have managed to blend nearly every character imaginable into their vision of the "perfect" fighter creating some fantastically bizarre duels. There's also a thriving community out there doing everything from technical support in helping newcomers get a grip on how to run it to pixel artists trading characters and backgrounds for designers to make use of in their own releases.

And when I said bizarre, I wasn't kidding. Check out this matchup between Darkstalker's own Morrigan and the Japanese version of Ronald McDonald in front of a Burger King. I guess neither one of them wanted to use the drive through.

Overworks' Skies of Arcadia's continues to hold a dear place in the hearts of many RPGers that have taken to the skies in the game as good hearted pirates in search of riches and adventure. Filled with memorable characters, clever sky combat, and traditional RPG gameplay on the ground, many of us are still waiting for an official sequel.

But it looks like Ignition Entertainment may have something that might be the next best thing.

Being bad is often good fun, but when gameplay problems plague would-be conquerors with issues keeping their pawns from their appointed rounds, it quickly becomes a case of where if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

.. or heaven, depending on how fanatical a Michael Jackson fan you are. I was just sent a link to a site that features the moonwalks of the world, an everlasting Flash tribute to the newly deceased King of Pop and his signature move.

Just be warned: Some of these folks are absolutely terrible at this. Here you go ... the Eternal Moonwalk.

You can, of course, load up your own rendition of the moonwalk to site. Like you didn't think about doing that.

PC penguins have something new and exciting to look forward to in Linux land.

Most PC gamers know the film "Wargames" and chuckle at seeing Matthew Broderick hook up a synthesizer speaker to hear what a PC would sound like if it could talk. At the time, though, the crude, halting sounds were state-of-the-art stuff.

Now, more than two decades later after WOPR nearly gave everyone a permanent orange afro and Max Headroom had entered our living rooms, we have synthesized pop divas.

A few teaser videos have led up to an official announcement and interview on IGN that Piranha Games are developing a new Mechwarrior, unleashing howls of cautious joy among the FASA faithful. Jordan Weisman, one of the original co-founders of the Mechwarrior franchise and FASA's RPG workshop, will be teaming up with Piranha on rebooting the mechanized series for newcomers. With over twenty five years of lore, Weisman and Piranha's president, Russ Bullock, hope to ease players back into the world without having to rewrite it.

From Weisman's take on the idea, you won't have to know what the Third Succession War was, who the Clans are, or why the game takes place in 3015 to enjoy the feeling of piloting a walking war machine several stories high. Instead, the game takes place during a crisis point in Mechwarrior's long and storied history at just the right time for new arrivals to get a crash course on how to survive the world around it. Sounds like fantastic stuff and to read the interview, Weisman sounds just as dedicated to keeping Mechwarrior exciting for both veterans and the current-gen of players who may have never picked up any of the series' sourcebooks.

Anyway, here's the trailer courtesy of Youtube. The wait is almost over.

San Gabriel Valley Tribune writer Maritza Velazquez set some geek boards ablaze with her profile of Chris Casamassa, the lead man of Red Dragon Karate, which has studios spread out over SoCal. He was the man who played Scorpion (he of the spear attack) in the first Mortal Kombat movie, and Maritza's piece contains this gem:

According to Casamassa, he's set to start filming the third Mortal Kombat film in September.

Now, the third MK movie is supposed to be a rebooted film version of the franchise, what with Warner Bros. purchasing Midway Games and its assets, which include the Mortal Kombat universe.

Slamming video-game movies seems to be the vogue thing to do, but I actually enjoyed the first one, in all of its cheesy glory. It had characters loyal to the franchise (although Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa laid on a little too much sneering evil as Shang Tsung) and some decent martial arts work on the part of Robin Shou (Liu Kang). As for the second one ... not so much. Here's one reason why.

I'm curious to see what kind of "reboot" awaits this newest incarnation. The IMDB page doesn't tell me much, except that Christopher Lambert still gets to play a Chinese god. Sure. Why not?

Loyola media professor, David Myers, discovers that role playing won't make you any friends online in City of Heroes.