Exploring the Wii

Unlike the thousands of disappointed children this year, for Christmas I received a Wii (found in an HMV in late November.) It being Christmas, I was also presented with a unique opportunity to christen my new console with a real litmus test: entertaining my gaming averse aunts, uncles and cousins.

We started with the easygoing Wii bowling, but that proved to be a bit too slow to be entertaining. Furthermore, they blamed every missed strike on either controller detection error or programmed randomness. Next up was Wii boxing, which was a big hit with my father. To most, however, it was too chaotic for them to tell what was going on and therefore their successes and failures felt like pure luck.

Wii tennis, however, was loved by all. They really got into the game, jumping around much more than necessary in their attempts to return the ball. Watching my mother and aunt laughing and playing against each other just warmed the cockles of my heart. It took some serious prompting to get them to leave the system when dinner was ready.

When I had time on boxing day to finally explore the system for myself, I had fun making Miis with my sister. She in particular enjoyed the process, and insisted that I had her eyes/face/hair/etc wrong and grabbed the remote to correct them herself. I ended up with the handsome fellow you see at the top of this post, lacking only my trademark sideburns to be complete.

The rest of today was spent exploring the world of Super Mario Galaxy. I've completed the first galaxy, and what has really struck me so far is the sheer variety of gameplay. So far I have seen concave planets, convex planets, Mario 64 style areas, 2D platformer areas, and the manta races from Mario Sunshine. The boss of the first galaxy, Megaleg, was a terrific monstrosity twice as large as the planet it stood on and was lots of fun to fight (check out a video of the battle).

Beyond that, I was deeply impressed by the selection of titles available for the Wii Virtual console. While the arcade titles available on Xbox Live might make some older gamers nostalgic, it's the NES and SNES games that have made me reflect fondly on my younger days. Super Mario Bros. 3, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart 64 and Paper Mario all look extremely tempting.

While I'm a little new to how exactly this friend code system works, drop me a comment or an e-mail if you'd like to be Wii friends. My beast of a code is: 4831 9046 9295 2783.

How the Valve Stole Christmas

From the moment it was announced way back in November, I knew I had to get my hands on a Weighted Companion Cube Plush. Portal is one of the best games I've ever played, so I was eager to have a version of the WCC that I didn't have to euthanize.

However, it appears that Valve has decided to cancel Christmas in Canada this year. While proceeding to the checkout with my Weighted Companion Cube and Aperture Laboratories Coffee Mug in hand, I was blindsided by five cruel words: Shipment to U.S. Addresses Only. Heartbroken, I put the items back on the virtual shelf.

Valve: even though you broke my heart (and killed me), you're still one of my favorite game developers. Your support for the mod community is commendable, as is the fact that you've remained independent and keep making terrific games. That being said, not shipping outside of the U.S. is massively uncool, especially considering that your games are enjoyed worldwide.

So, fellow non-Americans, it's time to get proactive. I'm going to urge you to e-mail the Valve store and let them know that you're interested in purchasing from them but do not live in the U.S.A. If they see that there's enough international interest in their products, they may consider revising their exclusionist shipping policies

That concludes what may have been my nerdiest blog post yet.

UPDATE: After some additional investigation, it turns out that the shipment page is lying. They *do* ship internationally, but it costs a whopping $27.

Sunday Reading

December is a busy time of year. Busy cramming for the exams next week? Caught up in the holiday rush? Either way, you're probably online looking for an excuse to procrastinate for another hour or so. Here's some recommended reading to help you do just that.

First up is an article over at CGSociety about the visual design of Team Fortress 2. I've geeked out more than once about how much I love this particular aspect of the game, but reading this article has given me a new found respect for the team of animators at Valve. Among the piles of great concept art (including an early build of the Heavy with a mullet), the article explores how well-designed characters and maps can enhance the gameplay experience. Consider the following excerpt:

Due to the importance of the nine character classes to the gameplay, the team focused on them first. They established a "read hierarchy", a prioritized list of the information that players needed to extract from the character model. From most to least important, this was: the player's team, the player's class, and the player's current weapon, which usually implies the player's intent in our game.

They used the model color palette to represent the team, a somewhat suboptimal solution for varying lighting conditions, but a good tradeoff given the technology constraints. “We found that silhouette and animation were better long-range identification characteristics than texture detail or color,” says Jamaal Bradley, “so we used those for class identification. Finally, we tackled the weapon by using contrast and color gradients to draw the player's eye to the chest area, where the weapons are held.

What a powerfully simple idea: using colour, shading and silhouettes to draw the player's eye towards important information. It's this level of attention to detail that has garnered Valve so much critical acclaim and fan loyalty. For more TF2 reading, consider the recently released Steam statistics, which include heatmaps and other interesting tidbits (such as the fact that the Medic class is criminally underplayed.)

Secondly is a fascinating look at the Morris worm, a 99 line program that ended up infecting 10% of the Internet back in 1988. The creator, Robert T. Morris, was a grad student working at Cornell University who simply wanted to prove that it was possible to propagate a program by exploiting vulnerabilities in sendmail and Finger. However, due to a flaw in the reproduction algorithm, the benign worm ended up reproducing itself many times on the same computer, eventually tying up the CPU. While the Morris Worm has been overshadowed by some of the modern malignant worms, I highly recommend this article to anyone involved in software security as a case study from a time when the web was much more homogeneous.

Finally, a short article about one of the most famous and successful heists in MMORPG history, one that left the victim's character frozen dead in space and relieved of virtual goods worth an estimated $16,500 USD. It's a fascinating look into the world of EVE Online, a game that seems to be as much about political intrigue and skulduggery as it is about spaceships and mining. The story reads like a virtual Ocean's Eleven, and is an interesting commentary on the consequences of meeting people semi-anonymously in online worlds.

Have a great weekend, and best of luck in all your procrastinating.

Ghillies In The Mist

Call of Duty 4's storyline has all the insight and depth of a James Bond film; Russian and Middle Eastern terrorists are the modern day stock villains. That being said, there's a reason that the Call of Duty series has stood out in a sea of military shooters: Infinity Ward creates campaigns that are masterfully orchestrated and filled with stunningly cinematic moments.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun recently profiled one such scene, in which you are put in the shoes of the kidnapped President of an anonymous war-torn Middle Eastern country. Men brandishing AK-47s push you violently into the back of a car without explanation and drive you through streets where firing squads murder civilians. The shift from being an armed soldier to a scared politician makes the sense of helplessness all the more palpable. This is a terrific scene, but today I would like to expand upon another sequence, one that I would easily rank as one of the most memorable video game experiences I've had in years.

First, a little context: the game so far has mostly had you controlling rookie Sgt. "Soap" McTavish of the SAS, under the command of the gruff mustachioed Cpt. Price. This particular scene, however, is set during a flashback to a mission 15 years prior. Opportunists, including one Imran Zakhaev, have been scrounging the ruins of Chernobyl, looking to sell spent fuel rods on the black market. The British Government orders a hit on Zakhaev, and sends in a young Lt. Price along with veteran sniper Cpt. MacMillan to do the deed.

The mission begins in a small field outside the ghost town of Prypiat, Ukraine. At first you appear to be alone, but you hear a confident Scottish voice instructing you to follow him closely. Suddenly, a virtually invisible man in a ghillie suit (see picture above) rises from the weeds beside you and begins to move ahead. You sense immediately that your survival depends on following this man's instructions to the letter.

You methodically advance through the village with Cpt. MacMillan. Travelling involves slow tactical sniping punctuated with mad dashes to avoid enemy patrols and helicopters. You are greatly outnumbered at every turn, but the Captain's years of experience tell him when to hide, when to run and when to shoot, and all you need to do is listen and obey.

About halfway through the level, you're following MacMillan through an open field when he suddenly shouts to "Get down!" and assumes a prone position. As you crawl through the weeds, you suddenly hear a low rumble ahead of you. You can't see clearly through the grass, but you make out the outlines of a few dozen soldiers escorting a group of tanks through the field, and they're heading straight towards you. There's nowhere to run and fighting would be suicide. The captain lies still in the grass, and orders you to "keep low and hold your fire." All you can do is try to anticipate their paths, then pray that they don't spot you through the ghillie suit. Time slows to a crawl as boots and treads miss you by inches. After what seems like an eternity they finally move on, never aware that the enemy was right at their feet.

I'm not a great writer, but I hope I've evoked for you a little bit of what I felt during this heart-pounding sequence, one that I won't soon forget. This kind of brilliant level design is a testament to the talent of the Infinity Ward team. If you're not much into military shooters but are curious how the scene played out in game, you can catch snippets of it from E3 2007 in this video.

Sorry I Shot You, I Was Trying to Sprint

Video game enthusiasts have had a deluge of great titles to choose from this fall. What started building momentum back in August with the release of Bioshock is coming to a head in November, with hotly anticipated titles such as Assassin's Creed, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect and Rock Band arriving within scant weeks of each other.

While I'm by no means a sucker for all shooter games, it so happens that I've picked up a few excellent ones in the last few months: Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box (which includes Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and the brilliant Portal.) These games earned scores of 94, 95 and 96 respectively on Metacritic, and are each thoroughly enjoyable in their own way.

However, playing all of these games in such a short period of time has made me realize how little consensus there is among FPS games with regard to controls. The A button is commonly used to jump, and the left and right sticks control movement and aiming respectively, but from there things become muddled. Consider the following:

	Half Life 2	Team Fortress 2	Halo 3	Call of Duty 4
B	Reload	Reload	Melee	Crouch
X	Pick Up	Taunt	Use Equipment	Reload
Y	Flashlight	Show Scoreboard	Swap Weapon	Swap Weapon
L Bumper	Sprint	Previous Weapon	Select Grenade Type	Throw Secondary Grenade
R Bumper	Toggle Weapon	Next Weapon	Reload	Throw Frag Grenade
L Trigger	Secondary Fire	Secondary Fire	Throw Grenade	Aim Down Sights
Click L	Crouch	Crouch	Crouch	Sprint
Click R	Zoom	Call for Medic	Zoom	Melee

To summarize:

• Reload: A, X or Right Bumper.
• Change Weapons: Y or Left/Right Bumper.
• Throw Grenade: Left Trigger or Left/Right Bumper.
• Sprint: Left Bumper or Click Left.
• Melee: B or Click R.

Should there be one standard control scheme for shooter games? I don't think so. There's a reason I don't manually edit the default controls for most games: programmers design games with the control scheme in mind. For instance, the three types of grenades in Halo 3 all do the same thing: blow up and cause damage. Therefore, it's not important to map them individually. In Call of Duty, however, being able to choose between a flashbang and a frag in an instant is critical, so each warrants a unique button.

That being said, there are some key functions that could benefit from a little consistency:

• Reloading is important in every FPS title, so it deserves a standardized button. I think X would work well, but using Right Bumper seems to be the new trend.
• If meleeing is a game option, it should be available without changing weapons (I'm looking at you Team Fortress 2.)
• Map infrequently used functions, such as Taunt or View Scoreboard, to the D-pad (again, Team Fortress 2 got this wrong.)

As the interface between manual and digital, it is absolutely crucial to get game controls right for a game to feel fluid and natural. Here's hoping that future designers keep this in mind, or I might be cursed to accidentally frag my teammates for the next decade.

Superstitions in MMOs

Normally I try to resist the urge to make a post devoted entirely to linking to another article; adding the Google Reader widget was supposed help me develop discipline in that regard. However, this post about superstitions in MMORPGs from The Daedalus Project was just too excellent and funny to pass up.

Embarassing confession #1: I played Final Fantasy XI for over 2 years. As such, I can attest to the fact that the superstitions profiled in this article are held as articles of faith for most players. For instance:

One of the most persistent superstitions (and for all I know, it might be true) was that facing in certain cardinal directions would affect how your crafting came out. It was the perfect superstition, because it took so little effort to follow that even if it wasn't true, you didn't lose anything by acting as if it was true.

Whenever trying to make an item with a particular kind of Crystal, there were rumors that if your character was standing and facing, for example, Southeast with a Wind Crystal, they would be less likely to fail the synthesis and lose the crystal and items. I even once saw an entire investigative guide that said the directions to face were linked to the time of day in-game, and that each crystal had its own favored 'direction' depending on the time of day.

Embarrassing confession #2: Not only do I remember reading that guide, I timed my crafting to it more than once. One of the most prolific and succesful crafters on the Odin server (Mikesjustice) absolutely swore by it, claiming that's how he made so many HQ Haubergeons. I also remember eating a Lucky Egg in Dynamis on the off-chance that it might improve the odds of a Sorcerer's Petasos dropping, another silly superstition.

However, after laughing at the superstitions from other MMOs, I realized that the beliefs I held in FFXI were equally stupid. I believe I was aware at the time that they were dumb, but since most of them were easy to follow I did so "just in case". As the author put it:

Other people’s superstitions always seem crazier. When reading through the superstitions, I felt more sympathetic towards ones in games I’ve played and more likely to laugh at superstitions in games I haven’t played. But, of course, most of the superstitions are incredibly similar across games and I think reading superstitions from other games will help us think more seriously about the ones in the games we do play.

If you've ever played an MMORPG, I strongly urge you check out the whole thing, and even if you haven't the stories will give you a good laugh. Enjoy!

The Screwfly Solution

In keeping with my love of excellent short stories, particularly dystopian science fiction, I highly recommend Raccoona Sheldon's Nebula Award-winning The Screwfly Solution. The title is a reference to the sterile insect technique used to eliminate the Screwfly worm in the USA, Mexico and parts of Centreal America. The story is a shocking one, dealing with themes of sexuality, violence and femicide, and is told in a great disjointed style through a combination of several narratives, letters and newspaper articles.

Read the story first (seriously, do it!), then consider the following: wouldn't it be great to see a video game set in the middle of an end-of-the-world scenario (not after one)? One where you start out in the near future, in a big city living a normal life. You start to hear dangerous rumours, maybe a deadly manmade pandemic, a militant religious organization, or some other Margaret Atwood storyline. From there you could have branching paths: do you petition the government? create a militia? go into hiding out in the country? Perhaps there could even be an element of randomness, where sometimes the rumours really are just rumours and you end up a paranoid conspiracy theorist!

This idea would definitely need some polishing and refinement (and I may have drawn liberal amounts of inspiration from Indigo Prophecy), but properly executed I think it could be really interesting. Leave a comment if you have any ideas on how this game could be implemented (or just call me crazy! That works too).

Ōkami for Wii

Great news for you Wii owners: Ōkami, one of the overlooked gems of the Playstation 2, is being ported to your system. One of my personal favorites, Ōkami is an adventure game not entirely unlike The Legend of Zelda in execution. However, what has made the game truly iconic are the unique graphics and the creative Celestial brush system.

Ōkami is done entirely in the style of a Japanese Suibokuga (Ink & Wash) painting, and is steeped in Japanese mythology as well. In continuing with this theme, the hero Amaterasu has access to a weapon called The Celestial Brush which allows her to stop time and use paintbrush strokes to draw in various effects. For instance, a straight line cuts objects in half and an arced bolt can control lightning. Furthermore, Amaterasu can banish colourless cursed zones and restore life by reviving the trees with her brush.

While critically acclaimed, Ōkami sold poorly, which may or may not have contributed to the closing of the terrific Clover Studio. It's nice to see the game get another shot at success for the game-starved Wii, especially considering how well the Wii control scheme will work with the Celestial Brush. So spread the word to your casual gaming, Wii owning friends: buy Ōkami!

I Love You Weighted Companion Cube

Having picked up the Orange Box late last week, I finally got a chance to play through Portal this weekend. Despite its brevity (3-4 hours for the main story), I can say with conviction that it will be remembered as a classic for years to come.

Valve could have easily rested on their laurels and sold Portal on its unique first person puzzle gameplay alone. Instead, they went the extra mile to really flesh out incredible atmosphere, terrific voice acting and quite possibly the greatest video game ending I've ever seen. They mix genuinely hysterical dialogue with a terrible sense of dread, which puts you on the edge of your seat while you're chuckling to yourself. It's as if someone mixed Cube and Brazil, then threw in an awesome portal gun for good measure.

The enemy turrets say "No hard feelings!" in a sing song voice when you deactivate them. The ubiquitous AI voice promises you cake at the end of the test, but when you venture behind the scenes you find scrawled graffiti saying "The cake is a lie!" There's danger everywhere, and your only friend is your stalwart Weighted Companion Cube.

Portal is awesome!

Rainy Woods Trailer

Rainy Woods has been described as "Silent Hill meets Twin Peaks", but it reminds me of the film Se7en more than anything. Either way it looks fantastic, I'll be looking forward to this next year.

On a slight tangent, not only does the Orange Box come out this week, but it seems that Puzzle Quest is set to arrive on XBLA on Wednesday as well. With today being a holiday, this is shaping up to be one fantastic week. Happy turkey day, fellow Canucks!

Why Console Gaming is Better Than PC Gaming

I had originally considered a more moderate title for this post, but I thought a bit of tongue-in-cheek flame baiting might be fun. First, a bit of exposition: outside of the RTS genre, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool console gamer. PC elitists frequently scoff at console controls, the mouse and keyboard interface for shooters becoming a virtual sacred cow among those raised on Quake and Unreal Tournament. As someone who loves lively pointless debating, I've decided to strike back and offer my perspective on why console gaming is better than PC gaming.

#1: The Posture

To quote Bill Nye the Science Guy, consider the following:

Gamers and couches go together like zombies and shopping malls. Let's face it, most sedentary relaxing activities take place on a couch. They're comfortable for both sitting and lying down and it's virtually impossible to get any work done while on one. Now contrast this with the following:

I dare anyone to try and play a PC shooter in anything but an upright sitting position. Call me lazy (true) and insult my posture (also true), but after working at a computer all day I have no interest in assuming the same position in my leisure time.

#2: The Controls

As any handyman will tell you, use the right tool for the job. Let's face it, standard keyboards are not designed with gaming in mind. Moving with the WASD control scheme is at best like writing a novel with an oversized novelty pencil; you can do it, but it's sub-optimal and there are better tools available.

Of course, what PC gamer gladly clamour about is the precision of mouse aiming. This is, of course, a strong point of contention in my mind. See, I like a bit of imprecision in my shooter games; it gives a game that run-and-gun, "relying on instinct" feel. The precision needed to headshot someone from half a mile away with a mouse is more akin to the later levels of Trauma Center: Under the Knife than to an actual firearm.

#3: The Cost / Technical Requirements

Gaming is an expensive hobby, just ask any PS3 owner (zing). However, this cost is compounded by the ridiculous system requirements of cutting edge PC games. To keep up requires frequent upgrades to your system. Ponying up $500 for a new video card to run Crysis on the lowest graphics setting is utterly inconceivable in my mind.

Furthermore, with the endless PC hardware permutations it's often a toss up as to whether or not a game will run on your particular setup. If it doesn't, you have hours of potentially fruitless forum reading / driver & patch downloading ahead. As a software engineering student, I'm a fairly technically minded guy, but even I prefer the convenience of coming home with a console game and knowing that it will work from the moment I put the disc in.

Conclusion

Before I loose this fairly inflammatory piece on the world, I'd like to emphasize its generally facetious nature and also make a few concessions. I'm well aware that PC gaming does many things spectacularly well. One could argue that most console games are ported over PC eventually, so the game selection is rather terrific (although lacking in Nintendo and platformers). While Xbox Live and Playstation Network are good and getting better, they're years behind the online capabilities of PC games. The modding community is also especially top-notch, and having complete control over the platform you play on is definite boon. It's that very control that, unfortunately, leads to gross inconvenience when things don't work.

Ultimately, your choice of platform comes down to a cost-benefit analysis with your own particular values. As someone who appreciates convenience, comfort and cost over customization, processing power and control precision, I'm going to stick with console gaming. Snobbery is for jerks; either way you choose to game, game on!

Halo 3 Lucky Shot

Regardless of how you feel about Halo 3, you've got to admit that's one lucky shot!

First Impressions of Halo 3

All the hype and anti-hype about Halo 3 left a sour taste in my mouth and made me question whether or not I should bother writing anything about the game. While it certainly doesn't deserve the release madness it has created, the fact is that Halo 3 is a very solid FPS with extremely refined balance and great production value. Taken objectively without the fanboy hype, the game is just good fun.

I never owned an original Xbox, but I did play the first two Halo games occasionally at other people's houses. As someone whose last shooters had been Goldeneye and Perfect Dark at the time, the wide open spaces and vehicles blew me away. The repetitive level design and waves of Flood, however, bored me to tears. Halo 2 fared much better on the levels at the cost of the weapon balance (can't say I'm a fan of dual wielding, losing easy access to grenades and melee is too restrictive.)

Here in no particular order are my impressions of the third game after roughly two hours of playtime in campaign mode:

• Right off the bat, I'm not sure why anyone was whining about the graphics. The game looks at least as good as Gears of War to me. My only quibble is with the marines and other humans, who have rather poor face modeling and lip syncing.
• The game does a good job of guiding you to where you need to go. This is nice, because I frequently got lost and disoriented in the first game (although that may have just been the bland level design...)
• The new equipment is good fun, and adds some interesting dynamics to the game. You'll see a lot of the Bubble Shield in the first level. I'm personally especially fond of the Grav Lift, I'm really looking forward to using it against a vehicle.
• I used to enjoy using the sword in Halo 2, but the Gravity Hammer is my new weapon of choice. I just can't resist the appeal of batting enemies halfway across the map. I was also impressed by the AI of the hammer wielding Brutes, they're very effective
• Watching yourself in third person in theatre mode is neat, and pausing the animations makes you appreciate how good the game looks. However, the lack of a Rewind button and a Fast Forward that caps at roughly 3x speed are really glaring flaws. Having worked a little with animated replays in the past, I have some idea as to the challenge of adding those two particular features. However, having to sit for 10 minutes to get to a kill 30 minutes in and praying that you don't accidentally skip it is quite frankly ridiculous.

My Xbox tag is MrQuixotic, feel free to drop me an invite if you're up for some co-op or competitive Halo 3.

Bioshock Posters

I found something great the other day that I thought I should share: apparently someone (who I can't find and am therefore unfortunately unable to credit) searched through the PC version of Bioshock's files and extracted Rapture's posters and advertisements as images. Since they're right from the game, most of them still have great water damage effects for authenticity. The kind fellow uploaded these pictures as a set which you can download here*. I'm sure you can come up with all sorts of fun ways to use them; I plan to turn the above picture into a birthday card for a friend.

[Update: Much thanks to Mantrid for uploading these great images]

*Note: I did not upload these files and am therefore not responsible for their content. Download at your own risk.

Meet the Engineer

Considering the name of the site, it seemed oddly appropriate to post this video. Everything you see is true to life: we engineers frequently sit and play guitar in the middle of battlefields, and we most definitely wear orange helmets at all times. If you haven't been following the amusing character profiles, you should also check out Meet the Heavy and Meet the Soldier. The cartoon-like visual style is really striking; I'm really hoping that the light-hearted approach translates into the actual game.

These videos are promos for Valve's Orange Box video game compilation, set to be released on October 10th. The set is a bargain, including Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for the price of one regular game. Furthermore, if you pre-order the game off Steam then you'll not only get into the TF2 beta, but also get Orange Box themed Peggle Extreme (pictured above)!

Update: Rock, Paper Shotgun has been doing a really great 9 part series detailing each class in TF2. If you're beta-less like me, this might help tide you over.

Zero Punctuation

If you haven't heard of this fellow Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw and his Zero Punctuation reviews, allow me to introduce you. Croshaw is a fast-talking Brit with an acid tongue whose brutal Bioshock review has recently garnered a great deal of well-deserved praise and attention. He started out on Youtube, but was quickly picked up to do a weekly feature in The Escapist. His videos are sharp, humourously animated and quite simply hilarious. Be sure to check out his old reviews as well as his weekly Escapist feature.

Embedded below is his review of The Darkness demo, which more or less encompasses the impression I got as well.

Grateful for Rock Band

Hot on the heels of last month's full albums goodness, Harmonix has recently announced that they will release a sizable number of downloadable Grateful Dead tracks for their upcoming game Rock Band. Here's the abridged official announcement:

New York, NY - September 5, 2007- Harmonix [...] announced a deal that will bring the legendary band Grateful Dead to the highly anticipated music videogame Rock Band. The iconic group is making 18 master recordings from its diverse catalog available as digitally distributed game levels following Rock Band's release this holiday season. Among the songs available will be the classic Dead tracks "Truckin'," "Uncle John's Band," "Touch of Grey," "Sugar Magnolia," and "Casey Jones."

"Grateful Dead's unique fusion of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, and jazz challenged traditional musical boundaries and pushed the limits of creativity to produce a signature sound that is undeniably their own," stated Paul DeGooyer, MTV's Senior Vice President of Audio, Home Video and Electronic Games. "With an enormous legion of fans all over the world, Rock Band will give players a chance to interact with the music of these beloved rock pioneers and experience what Grateful Dead did best - jam from the depths of their souls." [...]

Grateful Dead's journey ignited in San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury district during the psychedelic '60s. The band, well known for constantly touring, continued to spread their message of peace and love for another three decades with a devoted community of fans known as Dead Heads, many of whom traveled the country with them. Earlier this year, the Recording Academy awarded Grateful Dead a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for its contribution to the evolution of rock music.

You can pretty much guarantee that Friend of the Devil is going to be on there, but I'm hoping for New Speedway Boogie, St. Stephen and New, New Miglewood Blues as well. With any luck Harmonix will catch the bootleggin' spirit and release the tracks for free.

What do you think the next big announcement might be? Clapton? Zeppelin? Queen?

Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

I've never been a big fan of puzzle games. Even the really classic ones, (Tetris, Bust-A-Move, etc.) only manage to entertain me for a short time before I'm compelled to move on. While I can certainly appreciate the sheer genius of deriving complex strategy from simple rules, the truth is that these games quickly become mind-numbingly difficult. It's been my experience that there comes a point in the learning curve of every puzzle game, usually right after you've wrapped your head around the game's mechanics, where it takes immense dedication and practice to make any kind of headway. Clearly some players thrive under these conditions; I am not one of them.

After hearing various rave reviews, however, I was urged to try Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (what a mouthful) on the Xbox Live Arcade. Demoing arcade games is free, so in effect I had nothing to lose. Needless to say I was quickly hooked on the game's intuitive and fast-paced gameplay, which warranted downloading the full version for 800 Microsoft points (~$10). I won't go into detail here about the mechanics of the game, since it's the sort of thing that's best learned through seeing and doing. I will, however, describe what makes this game so enjoyable to me.

First and foremost are the incredible comebacks. My experience with Tetris leads me to believe that, for the average player, if you're approaching the top of the screen you've essentially lost. By that logic, a slip up or two can cost you the game. In Puzzle Fighter, however, it's really not over 'til it's over. A player with a large pile of bricks under them also has massive potential for a huge combo which will reverse the situation. Furthermore, the diamond bricks which destroy every brick of a single colour can give a struggling player a respite from which to launch a counter-offensive.

This leads me to my second point: playing head to head actually feels like a fight. Indeed, the symmetric nature is inherent to the game; the closest thing to a single player mode is you against the computer. Unlike Tetris, "staying alive" in Puzzle Fighter would be trivial if not for your opponent's actions. In that sense, just trying to keep your own pile of bricks small is not a viable strategy; the only way to win is to actively work at hindering your opponent. Playing against a friend on the couch the other day was tremendous fun, with taunts, near-wins and miraculous comebacks flying both ways. My Xbox Live tag is MrQuixotic if you're ever up for a friendly bout!

All in all, Puzzle Fighter is a terrific game even for us non-puzzle lovers. This experience has taught me that modern puzzle games don't have to be gruelling affairs with steep learning curves. I'll now be looking forward to Puzzle Quest when it hits XBLA sometime in the coming months.

The Best Things in Life are Ad-Supported

I'm a big fan of things that are free: free food, freeware, free speech, free Tibet. To keep you up to date on the state of the free world, I'm happy to inform you that EA is offering a free download of the original Command & Conquer, a terrific RTS game that spawned a million sequels and spin-offs. The game comes as two .iso files, which are disk images that can be burned right onto a playable CD with software like Nero. A few simple steps, explained on their website, make the game Windows XP compatible. Did I mention it's free?

While they're not quite free, Ubisoft has kindly offered us the PC versions of Far Cry, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Rayman Raving Rabids at the reasonable cost of the game being interrupted by advertisements every once in a while. The latter two strike me as games better played on a console, but that's more than likely my own prejudice at work.

Finally, the Gears of War "Hidden Front" map pack which previously set you back 800 Microsoft points becomes free on Monday. It includes the Bullet Marsh, Garden, Process and Subway maps. 4 games and a map pack for $0 is a fine way to spend the long weekend, so happy gaming!

Little Sister, Big Heart

In my anticipation for the game, I had made myself a little plan for Bioshock. I was going to harvest the little buggers the first time around and go buckwild with ADAM. I would then know which plasmids were worth picking up to use the second time around, when I would rescue them all. It was a good idea, in theory...

...but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Rapture is a city filled with people who have compromised their morality in order to survive. If I did the same, would I be any better than they are? I decided that being kind of guy who clings to his values under pressure better fit the narrative I was building up in my head. I've saved five of them so far, and exploring the alternate reward scheme is turning out to be quite interesting.

Is it silly to personalize a video game in this manner? Yeah, it is. It's also, in my mind, the mark of a great work of fiction.