A Celebrity Moment

Hey guys, I have some interesting news for you:  I now possess a game with an autograph.  Specifically, Hugh Jackman's.  No, it's not for sale.  And while it isn't Todd Howard's or John Carmack's, I won't be giving it away, either.

So the skinny:  My partner, Kris, is a fan of celebrities.  Mostly people you've never heard of like Alanis Morisette, Leah Michelle and Stevie Nicks (sarcasm).  She loves getting pictures, memorabilia, etc.

Anyway, someone else you've never heard of, Hugh Jackman (sarcasm), is performing in Toronto at the Princess of Wales Theatre in downtown Toronto. 

He's doing a one-man show, which, as far as I know, is playing until the 17th or 18th of July.  So if you're in T.O., go see it!

Anyway, Kris sees this one-man show being advertised and she wants to go and get his autograph.  I figure I can capitalise on this (not in a monetary sense so much as fame/infamy), so I decide to pick up a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Not a bad game, either.

So, as you can see (sort of; god my phone takes bad pictures), he autographed the manual of my X-Men Origins: Wolverine game for the XBox 360.

Everyone who was there got something autographed, despite his somewhat prick of a rep who said he wouldn't sign anything other than tickets and programs.  I understand why the rep was being a prick - people get stuff autographed and then sell it.  What's the point of memorabilia if you aren't going to keep it?  Sheesh.

Now, as it happens, Wolverine in fact does not suck despite being a licensed game.  It is buggy as hell, though.  Shame on you, Raven.  You generally make less buggy games.  Like Hexen 2.  And Heretic 2.  And Soldier of Fortune.  And...you know, I'll just quit while I'm ahead.  Especially since it's not as buggy as CyClones (very old game that Raven did for SSI).  Maybe I'll give it a review.  Maybe I won't.  But it sure is fun playing a Wolverine game that's actually as brutal as the comic book can be. 

In fact, I'd hazard a wager that it's the best Wolverine game so far.  I mean, Adamantium Rage was like pulling teeth, and the Wolverine game on the NES was nigh-unbeatable.  But at least I got to Sabretooth.  Did you?

Getting back to the point, it's actually kinda neat having a signed game.  While I am by no means a celebrity worshipper, I am aware that Lance Henriksen will be in Toronto in August for a huge fan convention.  And I have Red Faction 2.  Which he does voice work in.  Rather underrated game if you bought it on XBox and/or Gamecube, which are the definitive versions - regardless of what Gamespot, 1Up or Gamespy believe.

I'm not sure if this adds credibility - after all, a gamer plays games more than collects or turns them into memorabilia (which I didn't exactly do because I got the manual signed, not the disc).

That said, I'd like to thank you, Mr. Jackman for clearly enjoying giving autographs to your fans.  While I respect your right not to, I'm glad that you didn't exercise that right.  I wish you all the best; you're a very talented man and you deserve respect for your ability alone.

Now, stay tuned for a long awaited editorial about the ad war going on in the gaming industry.  It will be up within the next 24 hours.  I'm going to be passing it by my neighbour's partner who's in marketing, so her perspective will undoubtedly be invaluable.

To quote the great Steve Smith, "Keep your stick on the ice", and I look forward to your perspective on my perspective on what the biggest companies in our favourite industry think of...well, perspective.  When I unleash it, or course.

Edit:  It does not look like my neighour will be home this evening, so I will be publishing the editorial tonight at midnight.

New Review Poll

Hi everyone, how are you doing?

Hopefully my Canadian brethren had an awesome Canada day weekened, and the same to you Americans, who are just rolling out the end of your 4th of July weekend.

I've posted the new review poll for the month.  Kind of forgot to do that when I made that fateful roll with my D6 to find out what the next game was, but it is indeed up.

No update on the editorial, though.

Play games, have fun, and dammit, get votin'! 

Reader Review Poll Results

Hey guys,

Looks like I was a little late with the review poll results; Canada Day weekend can be like that. 

So, it looks like Beyond Good and Evil for the XBox is the next candidate for review.  You can blame the dice.

Also, I'm in the process of writing a new editorial.  It's not coming along at the pace I'd like it to, so I'm thinking it'll be done in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully that's an underpromise followed by over-delivery.

Take it easy, and I'll see you all soon.

Update, June 28th, 2011

Hi everyone!  Been awhile since an update.  I must admit, I got lost in Fallout: New Vegas.  Again. 

At any rate, the review for Doom, the last game that you guys voted for (well, one of you did and it won the tie-breaker) is completed.

Also, you will notice that you have to log in to Blogger to comment.  No worries, if you don't have a Blogger account, they're free. 

Back onto the reason for this update:  The Doom review.  It can be found here.

While my review may come across as biased (and it is, I hold Doom with the highest level of esteem because few games have ever raised the bar so high), my perspective is also different because I've made a few mods for the game as well, and I briefly mention that in the review.

If you've never played the game, you really should.  It's cheap, there's a crapload of quality user-made stuff for it and the multiplayer, as simple as it is, is frickin' amazing.

And of course, the source mods make what is old new again.

The ones I recommend are EDGE and ZDoom, and they're very easy to set up.  Pretty much, you dump it into the directory where your main game file is (a .wad, or WADfile) and then run the executable for the source mod.

The only source mod I would recommend you stay away from is Doom 95, aka WinDoom (it's the one that comes with Doom: Collector's Edition).  Mouse support is broken and I've had some major stability issues.

On that note, have a good weekend, everyone.  In case I don't add anything until later next month, happy Canada Day (July 1st) to my fellow Canucks and happy Independence Day (July 4th) to my neighbours to the south.

Announcement: Censorship

Hey guys,

I've seen a few people posting comments and having links to obscene material.  From this point forth, this is not going to be tolerated.

If there are any links to pornography in any comments, whether it be the body or the username, it will be deleted.

I have no problem if your personal website is a business, but if it's not family-friendly (or at least within reason), it's not welcome.

That said, I will be actively censoring comments from this point forward.

Tech Tip: Batteries

 Date: June 1st, 2011
Author: Nate

Let's talk about batteries. Why?  Because all of the current consoles rely on controllers that use rechargable batteries. This is no surprise; they need a power source if there's no cord.  Ultimately, game systems are money-pits if you want to get the most from them, but there are a few ways to save some cash in the long run.

The first is to not buy the rechargable battery packs. Yeah, I know, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony swear by them. However, what MS, Nintendo and Sony don't tell you is that a bad dashboard update can mess with the charging cycle, which can ultimately screw up the battery.

Further - and this came as a shock to me - my Nickel Metal Hydrate (NiMH) AA rechargables are lasting more than 50% longer than the Lithium Ion (LIon) batteries for my 360 remotes. I call shenanigans on that. Why? LIon is more stable and longer-lasting than NiMH. And yet I've never gotten the same performance. That means the batteries are low-quality, and you pay a heck of a lot for them.

Admittedly, there are different battery qualities, and I use high-quality NiMH batteries. But for 8 batteries and a charger, I paid a little less than the cost of 2 XBox 360 battery packs, so you get twice the bang for the buck.

The batteries that I recommend are The Source brand batteries and charger. Partly because that's what I use, and also because I generally found their batteries to be better overall – at least in high-demand devices. And, their rechargables have so far been the most reliable. Reliability of rechargable batteries has two-fold accountability – the first is the quality of the batteries. The second is the quality of the charger.

If the charger sucks, you're going to get fewer charges and you won't get the same life between charges as you would with a good one. And price does not dictate quality here. Crap batteries, same thing, so these are both very important factors.

Another thing to take into consideration is the rating of the battery, which is MAh, or Milli-Amp hours. The AA batteries I currently use are 2 pairs of 2000 and 2600 MAh rated batteries respectively, and the 2600's do get better life, but only by a day or so. Mind you, I'm usually 2 - 3 weeks between charges for each pair, so it's fairly moot. I maybe get 7 to 10 days with the 360 battery pack. I also play quite a bit, 2 to 4 hours a day, so both accounts reflect a lot of hours, but the time between recharges makes the difference.

Your best bet would be to get a charger that comes with two pairs of batteries. A good one is usually $30 - $40 CDN. Bear in mind that the 360 battery pack is $30 on its own, is good for 7 – 10 days – and there's only one of them.

To add more value to the whole idea, buying more batteries is fairly inexpensive, what with the better pairs coming in at only $20 for two pairs. Again, MS, Sony and Nintendo can't compete with that.
It all comes down to dollars and cents. Or is that sense?

But hey, you're the gamer, it's your call. Regardless of whether or not you get a battery pack or rechargeables, it's still cheaper than buying non-rechargeable alkaline batteries. But the rechargeable batteries are cheaper than a battery pack by over 60%, and the charger isn't attached to the system, which means it can't be affected by screwy updates.

And it goes without saying that you can use the batteries in more than just your controllers.

Update June 1st, 2011

Hey guys,

For all those waiting with bated breath, the winner of the review poll is Doom.  There was a 3-way tie, and my D4 came to the rescue to help me break it.  Good thing, I had a bugger of a time tracking down my dice. 

Time to clean the office again.

If you scroll down, you will also find the latest editorial, Video Games as Art.  Sorry it took so long, I was trying not to come off as a pompous git.  Oops, too late for that!

So, what's next month's poll going to include?  You'll just have to find out.  And vote.  That always helps.

Until next time, and don't drop your controller on the tile.  The tile will win.

Video Games As Art

Title: Video Games As Art

Date: May 19^th, 2011

By: Nate

As of the beginning of May, 2011, the U.S. government has officially recognised video games as an art form worthy of public funding from the National Endowment of the Arts.

To the outside world, this is fairly significant considering that gaming has often been more associated with long-haired basement dwelling male nerds and young children – despite the fact that as of now, most gamers are in their thirties, and there's a large female demographic, too.

It's also significant because the movie industry has been fighting against this for years, and why not? As of right now, gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry that keeps getting bigger. Hollywood would undoubtedly feel threatened by this, and we've seen this fear through the printed opinions of revered critics/pundits such as Roger Ebert. There are even people within the gaming industry who claim that video games are not and cannot be an art form.

Ironically, Kojima Hideo also feels this way . Kojima-san has worked on many series for Konami, including but not limited to the Metal Gear series – which in many ways tries to meet and exceed artistic merits. We see this with the carefully crafted storylines as well as the deep gameplay that many of the titles in this series provide.

It's not just visuals, music and storytelling that transforms a game into art. How you play the game – character abilities, interactivity with the virtual world, characters, enemies, weapons, sound effects and how the world itself is built are equally – if not more – important than how it looks. This is because a game is very different from a movie; it can contain the narrative of a novel, a museum's worth of art, a concert hall of music and on top of that, you have a measure of control as to how it all comes together at the end. It's a culmination of most of our art forms (excluding the culinary arts, at least for now) on top of technology.

I could say without any pangs of guilt that some of the programmers of a game have to be artists; they need to have a vision, and they need to be both fearless and, I think, a little eccentric.  They need to be able to think in both the practical and the abstract.  Furthermore, they need to understand the value of language; Programming languages are still languages. It takes an estimated 5 to 10 years to become a highly skilled programmer, and while the techniques are fairly similar from language to language, you also still have to a) learn the languages you will need to use - which can change from console to console, but rarely ever with PC's - and b) keep these skills up to date.  Especially when you start factoring in middleware – software engines that are independent of a core game engine, such as the Havok physics engine – and scripting languages that operate on top of a game engine to add more definition to objects within the world such as weight and density. (editied June 14th, 2011) And thus, programmers could be seen as poets.

I think a lot of opinionated gamers are champing at the bit about what should be included and what shouldn't, but being that what defines the true art of a game transcends most concepts of art, I really don't think that anything should be excluded.

From Tennis For Two to Space Wars! to Doom, there are many games that define genres, concepts and standards. It could be as groundbreaking as The Guardian Legend (NES), as mundane as Corridor 7 (DOS PC), as overlooked as Deathrow (XBox) or as horrible as Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (N64). It can define a genre or merely inhabit it for better or worse - and all genres are evolving.

This is a necessity for an artform, too. Architecture can't live on Baroque alone much like gaming can't be a smorgasbord of first-person shooting.

Regardless of merit, video games are an accepted art form. My intention is not to rub this in the faces of the nay-sayers. I really don't have to, the American government has already done a good enough job by showcasing 80 games at the Smithsonian that they deem to be the most important titles in the industry.

My fellow gamers, pat yourselves on the back.  Whether you know it are not, we're now art afficionados - whether we like it or not.

New Article Template

Hey guys,

I have finished the template for the Series Review articles.  These can branch across multiple platforms and while some may be short, others could wind up taking months to complete (if, for instance, I were to do an Elder Scrolls feature).

These will also be much lengthier review articles, and the games will not be scored.  This isn't so much for the sake of objectivity and fairness so much as keeping it simple and straight-forward.

The Games as Art Editorial is also nearly ready.  I'll post that up later this evening.

The first game series in the Series Review will be the NES Metal Gear titles, Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge.  I have already finished Metal Gear (not like these are long games, after all), and Snake's Revenge is about the same length (having beaten it back in 1996), so I should be ready to post the prototype Series Review in a few days.

Take care, and I'll see you all again tonight!

Bionic Commando Review Is Up

Hey guys,

The Bionic Commando (2009) review is up!  You can catch it here.

Enjoy!