Category: Gaming

Imagine one of the recent Grand Theft Auto games, only set in a hell hole of a private school and instead of playing a thuggish criminal trying to survive the streets you play a thuggish problem child trying to survive the hallways. There. That’s pretty much Bully.

Like the GTA games, Bully is an open world or “sandbox” game where you guide little Jimmy Hopkins (the reluctant and foul tempered hero of this story) around doing the kinds of things high school kids do: attending classes, playing pranks, stealing kisses, and beating the ever living crap out of anyone who crosses you. Jimmy may have a heart of gold, but it won’t stop him from pragmatically shooting you in the crotch with a potato launcher if you get in the way of his uniting all of the school’s cliques and becoming their benevolent dictator. He’s actually a good guy who has a thing against bullies, but his goodnesss is not, shall we say, evenly distributed.

Like with the GTA games, the gameplay in Bully is tightly compartamentalized. You’ve got your errand quests, your driving challenges, your combat sorties, your shooting galleries, and your fetch assignments. It’s rarely mixed up, and once you’ve done one type of activity there’s little that’s novel about subsequent missions built from the same template. You’ll be doing a lot of stuff over and over again.

But you know, that’s okay. Because Bully’s strength is its presentation and its charm as seen in the dialog, the character design, and the shenanigans it launches you into. The tone of the game is just close enough to serious but still staying on this side of satire and absurdity to be fun. It seems like Rockstar is having a blast filling in the same GTA outline but with a different set of colors that give the whole thing a more subversive and comical tone that stays pretty darn consistent. The one-liners, throwaway comments from other students, character design, quest objectives, and scripting are all fueled by the same sense of dark humor. It’s a great world that I hope we see more of, with some new content and game play mechanics.

It’s also worth mentioning that Rockstar needs to STAND BACK and TAKE NOTE that Bully is the perfect size for a game in this genre. The world was big enough to be interesting and diverse, but not so sprawling that getting around it was a pain. Also unlike any other GTA game I’ve played, the length of the game Bully felt just right to me, since I was just starting to get my fill of it when it wrapped itself up. Any more would have been overstaying its welcome, and any less would have been leaving some fun on the table.

Official Bully homepage for screenshots, movies, etc. And if you’ve played the game already, some of the RebelFM guys did a series of podcasts about it, starting here.

There’s a lot of things that fight zombies: Soldiers. Nuns. Children. I have to admit, though, that I’d have never thought of pitting them against vegetable matter, which is probably one of the reasons I’m not working at Pop Cap Games making ridiculously addictive downloadable games.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Ugh, I hate plant-based games. What with my allergies and all.” And I get that. But PvZ is quite a bit different. The gist is that zombies are slowly marching across your lawn to get to your precious brains. To thwart them, you place various plants in the lawn. There’s a wide variety of plants, ranging from Pea Shooters for ranged attacks to Wall Nuts for building barriers to explosive Chili Peppers for area of effect attacks to Sunflowers to produce the game’s currency, sunlight.

Ironically, this bio diversity is represented on the zombie side as well, with enemies running (well, shambling) the gamut from basic grunts to armored tanks to foes that can bypass your defenses by jumping, digging, or floating past. Like most strategy games, PvZ relies on the “rock, paper scissor” paradigm where different zombie threats are countered by different kinds of plants. Cacti counter flying zombies, for example, while laying down prickly Spikeweed will pop the tires on zombie zambonies. The strategy comes from choosing which plants with which to stock your limited arsenal at the beginning of each level, and then how to best gather resources and build your defenses once things start.

And that’s all just the main campaign mode. It’s apparent that Pop Cap also really took their time creating stacks and stacks of minigames and puzzles to further the fun, culminating in a series of survival modes where you and your flora try to hang on as long as you can.

Now, this isn’t a particularly deep game, and outside of survival mode and a few of the minigames it’s not going to challenge a seasoned RTS gamer much. But PvZ is long on personality, with the character design and the various texts in the Zombie/Plant Almanac adding so much flavor to the experience that you’ll forgive the difficulty curve for being such a gentle slope. In other words, the game is pretty fun, moderately funny, and extremely charming. I bought during a $10 sale on Steam, and it was a heck of a deal. Even at the normal price of $20 on the official site it’s worth it.

Do you? If so, feel free to add me to your friend’s list:

Gamertag: hjmadigan

In general, I’m really impressed with how well the Xbox Live service works. It’s smooth, seamless, and ever present without being obtrusive. I just need some more friends who have the same games I do. Or I need more games. Or both.

If any of the weekly updates get delayed, here’s the reason:

Not pictured: My new copy of Bioshock. Big thanks to my sister, my brother-in-law, my mom, my in-laws, Geralyn, and Google for giving the money to buy this as a birthday present.

Having had some time to play around with the Xbox 360, I’m pretty impressed and forced to admit that I probably should have saved up some more money and bought one instead of buying a Nintendo Wii last year. The 360 looks really good on my big HDTV, with true HD graphics instead of just widescreen. Bioshock in particular looks fricking fantastic. It sounds great, too, with things blaring through my 5.1 surround sound system.

What gave me the biggest, pleasant surprise, though was the content and features that one gets after connecting the 360 to a local area network and going online. In addition to online matchmaking from Xbox Live (which I haven’t even had occasion to try out), Xbox Marketplace offers a ton of stuff like movies (as in, entire movies you can buy and download), trailers, game demos, and more. There’s enough free stuff there to keep me occupied for quite a while, and tons more if you want to pay for the good stuff.

Of course, I can hear you saying “Yeah, I already have a machine that can download trailers, demos, and movies from the Internet. It’s called a computer.” And you’d have a point, even if you were being a bit condescending about it. But I didn’t buy the 360 to download stuff, even putting aside the fact that you can’t download Xbox 360 demos or games on a PC. I bought it for the games, and for the guarantee that when I pop a disk into the Xbox’s tray and press “Start” I KNOW the damn thing is going to work and that it’s going to work as advertised. I got sick of not having that guarantee with my PC.

This is actually the terminus of a long slide from PC gaming to console gaming that started in 2001. I bought a PC game called “Tribes 2” after seeing impressive movies and screenshots. I even saw it run on some people’s machines at work. When I got home and loaded it on my middle of the road machine, though, it choked and chugged when any of the graphics settings were raised above rock bottom. It also had bugs and performance issues even then. So I went out and bought a Sega Dreamcast, my first console I’d owned since my old Atari 2600.

Now this was a big deal for me, since i had ALWAYS been a PC gamer. I’ll spare you the usual attempts at geek cred, but suffice to say I grew up playing Wizardry and Ultima games on my Apple ][ Plus, and it was my experiences with and writing about games like Quake and Unreal Tournament that landed me a brief career inside the gaming industry with GameSpy. I could rattle off tons of games for which I have great nostalgia and great affection and they’d most be PC games –Grim Fandango, Battlefield 1942, NOLF, Warcraft II, Counter-Strike, Baldur’s Gate 2, Planescape, Starcraft, Doom, Age of Empires, World of Warcraft, Quake, Half-Life, SimCity, System Shock 2, Team Fortress Classic, The Sims, etc. You get the idea.

But enough was enough. Scenarios like the one above with Tribes 2 kept happening, and I kept playing more console games. I just got sick of not knowing if a game was going to run on my machine, or how well it was going to run. Or if it would crash. And upgrading a computer can be really expensive, even if you know enough to just do it piecemeal and assemble it yourself.

The final straw was when the demo for the PC version of Bioshock, a game by one of my favorite development teams, wouldn’t even run on my computer because I didn’t have some fancy pants video card. I decided to cut the PC upgrade cycle off at the knees and put the money towards an Xbox 360 instead. I did so, bought the Xbox version of Bioshock, and it runs great. Especially with the online and high definition capabilities of the current generation of consoles, there just wasn’t enough good reasons to put up with PC gaming’s flaws any longer.

I won’t say anything stupid like “PC Gaming is doomed!” World of Warcraft alone has guaranteed that there’s going to be some market for PCs, and there are some genres, like real-time strategy games, that just won’t work well on consoles. And I won’t say that I’ll never buy another PC game –I’m actually enjoying the hell out of Team Fortress 2 on my PC right now, in fact. But I can say that it’ll be a long time before I upgrade my PC again, and when I do it probably won’t be to play games.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll even buy a Mac. 🙂

Oh, and by the way, my Xbox Live gamertag is “hjmadigan.”

I finally finished the PS2 game Final Fantasy XII the other night. After over 70 hours playing time over a couple of months (a lot, but not a record –I put in over 250 hours on Baldur’s Gate 2 for the PC) I was ready to call it quits and move on, but I have to say this is probably my favorite Final Final Fantasy game yet and one of the best games overall on the PS2. There’s very little that the producers, their legion of workers, and their millions of dollars didn’t get just right.

I love, for example, the new combat system. I had tried to play Dragon Quest 8 a while back, but couldn’t get past all the awful, terrible, old-school goodness. Turn based battles are boring, and outside of some interesting boss fights they were always my least favorite parts of the FF games. FFXII, however, combines exploration and combat, giving us something closer to what you see in massively multiplayer online games (such as the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, I assume). Finally there’s more freedom to explore, engage, and mitigate risks when it comes to the frequent combat.

Now, that’s good to start with. But mix in FFXII’s Gambit system and you’re really talking. Gambits are essentially ways of automating the actions of your characters, relying on simple “If this condition THEN do this action” snippets of logic. So you could set up one of your characters to automatically share an antidote if he or another character gets poisoned. This takes a lot of the tedious micromanagement out of the game, but strangely it also adds a whole new layer of strategy and tactics. Gambits can be prioritized and concocted according to a number of different conditions and outcomes, so you’re faced with new questions. Should you set a gambit up to use a potion or cast a healing spell? Should you prioritize casting a protection spell on remaining party members or casting a spell to revive one who has fallen in battle? Who should get the gambit to dispell beneficial enchantments on enemies? Especially by the end of the game, managing multiple gambits across three characters is a game in and of itself. And it’s a fun one!

Of course, I could go on about the production values, too. The animation, graphics (on a Playstation 2 no less), music, and sound are all superlative. So is the writing, which sports a much more adult and darker story than previous FF games. Sure there’s still giant chickens (Chochobos, whatever), magical doo-dads, and assorted cute little creatures, but there’s also genuine character development, political intrigue, romance, drama, war, regicide, and weighty moral dilemmas. I greatly prefer all this to the relatively shallow and cheerful fare of previous games, especially when it’s done this well.

All that said, there were still a couple of things that I didn’t like. I hated the license system, for example, which required you to accumulate “License Points” from combat to spend on a special board so that you could gain the ability to cast certain spells or even wear certain pieces of equipment. Only the two-part development process also required you to find and/or purchase the equipment or spells. Given that the license board didn’t actually describe the equipment or spells it was asking me to spend LPs on, I was often annoyed and left wondering what I should do. I would have greatly preferred a simpler approach.

And, of course, there weren’t nearly enough save points. Like recent FF games, you can only save your game at designated spots, and at certain points in the game they are few and far between. So if the baby wakes up or you just really, really need to go to bed, it’s easy to get frustrated if the game requires you to play for another hour or more before you can save your progress.

Those two complaints aside, though, this was a fantastic (har har) game. If you’re looking to squeeze another title out of your aging PS2, this is the one.

Well, as I mentioned I would do in my screed against the PS3 launch, I got up this morning in an attempt to procure a Wii, the new Nintendo gaming console that went on sale today (and in some places, at midnight last night). Here’s what’s sitting in front of me right now (spoiler alert!):

Actually, I turned out to be that guy. The guy who ended up getting the very last one the store had in stock, the guy hated by everyone in the line behind him. My morning unfolded thusly:

6:55 – Wake up, throw on clothes, brush teeth
7:05 – Eat a hearty breakfast of Pop Tarts and Diet Coke. Check e-mail.
7:15 – Leave house
7:25 – Arrive at Target. Get line pass, numbered 42 of 42. Queue up.
8:00 – Store opens. Line moves inside.
8:35 – Leave store, Wii and Zelda in hand.

When I first got there I saw four people lined up outside the store, so I thought no big deal. I had seen people up the street at Best Buy with couches and tents, so I had actually been a little worried. Then as I was walking up to join them, the store manager came out and started handing out line passes. When I greeted her with a sunny smile, the grinned back at me and passed me a ticket, saying “You got the last one, buddy.” They had received a shipment of exactly 42 Wii consoles, and I was number 42 in line. Apparently people had been showing up since the wee hours (ha! get it?) to get line passes and being told to come back at 8:00, but I just barely slipped in.

Several people gave me exasperated and faintly malicious looks as they fell into line behind me, but it looks like I barely made it. Now it’s time to hook this sucker up and see if it’s as wondertacular as everyone is expecting it to be.

So the Playstation 3 (PS3) launched today, providing unequal measures of relief and frustration to the hundreds (thousands?) of numskulls who camped out in all kinds of awful circumstances ranging from bad weather to drive-by shootings (with BB guns, but still) to robberry to near riots when hapless store managers tried to move the line a few feet to the left. Personally I’m completely baffled by all this, but still utterly fascinated.

Why on Earth would people do this? The obvious answer is that some portion –perhaps a generous, man-sized portion– of these people hope to snag a PS3 and flip it on e-Bay. With bids on preorders for the $600 console reportedly going for $2,000 or more, it’s easy to see the appeal of that get rich quick scheme. Well, until you realize that because Sony botched their production leading up to launch, you’re not guaranteed a PS3 just because you show up outside Best Buy with a pop tent, a cell phone, and a stack of peanut butter sandwiches. Apparently a lot of those exasperated store managers –guys and gals who no doubt wish this obscene madness would just vanish so they could go back to rearranging the latest 50 Cent CDs– were coming out to these semiprofessional loiterers and and telling them “Look, we’re only going to get ten consoles. There are like fifty of you people out here blocking the fire exits and trying to bathe in the bathroom sinks. Could forty of you JUST GO AWAY?” But they didn’t, because they’ve got sunk costs and don’t want to be wussies about it. Shine on you crazy nincompoops.

But what really boggles me are the unknown proportion of gamers who really want the consoles for themselves. Not that they’d want it at all, ever, but that they’d want it RIGHT NOW to the point that they’d wallow in their own filth for days, braving other overzealous shoppers just to get a chance at buying one. Why? Looking at the list of launch games for this thing isn’t exactly an invitation to hyperventilate with joy. Most of them are ports of games already released on other systems! If I had the time I’d have gone down to Best Buy to stand outside the exit and pelt them with slumped shoulders and confused expressions.

If I had to guess what really drives these people, especially the ones who aren’t just e-Bay flippers, I’d say it’s the desire to be part of an event. It’s not about getting a PS3, it’s about taking part in the launch craze and boosting your fan credentials. It’s the journey, not the destination, because the destination is where some minimum-wage earning register jockey in a blue polo shirt (a clean shirt, unlike yours at the moment) just shrugs at you and points to the guy who just bought the last console. The guy who’s walking out the door and composing his auction posting on his cell phone as he goes. That and what my psychology textbooks called Escallation of Commitment. But still, it’s fun for some people.

And I’m not completely immune, either. When the Playstation 2 launched, I got up at an ungodly hour and went down to the megastore to see them open the doors. I didn’t actually buy one, but I felt like I should be there since I was working for GameSpy at the time and was kind of part of the biz. And honestly I’m kind of excited about the Nintendo Wii this weekend, too. I plan on trying to buy one on launch day, in part because I want to play the new Zelda game, but also because I want to contribute to and revel in the buzz and excitement that’s already been building up in various online communities for months. Sometimes it’s fun to boost your geek chic rating through being a hardcore, early adopter.

The difference is, I guess, that I’m not camping out. Since Nintendo actually produced a few million consoles to have on hand for launch day, my plan revolves around moseying into Target on Sunday afternoon and seeing if I can pick one up. No tents or grousing about line management involved. Failing that, I may wander over to a few more stores in the area to see if they have the Wii in stock, but if I can’t find one I’ll just sigh and go back home to play some more Guitar Hero on my trusty ole’ Playstation 2 and try again next week.

Here’s another sign that I’m playing too much World of Warcraft, and maybe working too much to boot.

I’ve been working out of remote offices for most of the last 3 weeks, which has put me really behind on my work e-mail. Yesterday I sat down to get a handle on it and decided that an important first step was to sort it indo different categories based on how old, important, and easily actionable it was. So, basically, I’d assign it a label based on its stats in these areas.

I tried “Critical” “Important” “Low Priority” and the like, but they just felt clumsy. Then, in a flash of inspiration, I seized on this:

(If you don’t get it, don’t worry. And DON”T start playing WoW to find out. It’s not worth it)

My friend Sean put up a very interesting commentary on video game criticism on his blog, and it’s really worth a read by anyone even mildly interested in the topic. Sean’s comments are in response to an article in Esquire Magazine on the same subject.

The Esquire piece wonders why there are no legendary game critics in the same vein as rock and roll music critics from the 60s and 70s. Why is the gaming press, of which I myself am an occasional member, content with limiting itself to Consumer Reports type publications instead of writing something that examines video gaming in a larger cultural and artistic context? Why don’t they talk about the meaning of video games and gaming? The Esquire piece, which is also an excellent read, examines several possible answers to this conundrum with the help of Steven Johnson, author of the thoroughly fantastic Everything Bad is Good For You. Games are unique in that their merit typically isn’t derived from their plot, characterization, or dialog. They offer different experiences each time you play. The author of the Esquire piece ends with a plea for someone to come in and fill the role of the super critic the way Lester Bangs filled it for the nascent rock and roll scene way back when.

Sean’s blog entry picks up this thought and expands on it in an insightful way when he notes that “[Rock critic Lester Bangs] had the rare fortune of writing about music at a time when people really liked to read about music — because fans, true fans, wanted to extend the experience of music beyond the record.”

That phrase, “extend the experience of music beyond the record” jumped out at me and immediately made me think of something that Sean expands on a paragraph later: replace “music” and “record” with “gaming” and “game” and it brings to mind all the wonderfully kooky and sublime things that the gaming community is creating to extend the experience into their own lives. Comedy skits featuring game characters. Game walkthroughs. Fan fiction. Music videos. Game mods, maps, models, and levels. The Internet is replete with examples of people not just writing about video games, but creating fan films, podcasts, and just about any kind of artistic expression you can think of. Sean nails it a few pixels down the monitor when he says “I think ol’ Chuck K [the author of the Esquire piece] sort of misses the boat is by looking at the wrong medium.”

This also rings true given what I recently read in The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century about the power of uploading. The Internet and associated technologies have given rise to a new kind of critic that’s alien to what the rock and roll scene had. It’s not the lone expert cranking out manifestos about Cream or Phish or whoever and pushing them out to the masses via a magazine. The new kind of gaming criticism that the Esquire piece is starts off talking about is coming from an army of enthusiasts and up-and-coming professionals who are creating and uploading it themselves. What Chuck from Esquire ends up asking for at the end of the article is the antithesis of the entire video gaming scene and the forces that spawned it in the first place.

Or to quote Sean from his blog again:

Anyone who is looking to writers to fill the need for video game criticism is looking in the wrong place — not just because they’ve come to serve the same function as tv shows or pop songs on the radio (namely, as means by which to get you to encounter advertising — they don’t just write “consumer guides,” they are an integral part of the entire consumptive experience), but perhaps because the form of writing is, itself, totally inappropriate to address the ecology of video game culture.

Read the Esquire piece
Read Sean’s blog post

You know you’re playing too much World of Warcraft when you’re picking out medicine for your feverish daughter and you think –actualy think the words– “Well, both Tylenol and Advil reduce fever, but Tylenol has a cooldown period of four hours while Advil is six. But Tylenol stacks with the Robitussin, so…” In other words, I was min/maxing Sam’s medication.

I guess it works both ways, though. Last night my Dwarven Hunter tamed a wild bear and I promptly named it “DooDoo” after Sam’s word for teddy bears. It’s all a rich tapestry.

I’m obviously a gamer, and as such I amassed quite a collection of games. This is especially true of the years I spent working at GameSpy, as that time represents not only my most active gaming period (so far, anyway), but also the time in which I received the most free copies of games. And thus half the space in my office closet came to be occupied by video games, some of which had never even been opened. Every few months I’d look at it think “Why do I keep all these? Should I get rid of them or hang on to them for nostalgia’s sake?” Then I’d just kind of shrug and slide the closet door closed. Dilemma solved for another couple of months.

Well, this Christmas season things kind of changed. Ger and I both really wanted a new digital camera, but money has been quite tight with only 1/3 of the household bringing home a paycheck. So when Ger suggested that we just buy each other a camera for Christmas but not spend more than we could afford, I brought up eBay on my web browser and slid open the closet door again.

Over the course of about a month, I liquidated a good chunk of my collection, including the following:

• 007 Nightfire (PC)
• Advance Wars (GBA)
• Age of Mythology (PC)
• Age of Mythology the Titans expansion (PC)
• Alien vs. Predator 2 (PC)
• Black & White (PC)
• Blood II The Chosen (PC)
• Clive Barker’s Undying (PC)
• Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 special collector’s edition (PC)
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (PC)
• Crimson Skies (PC)
• Deus Ex: Invisible War (PC)
• Devil May Cry (PS2)
• Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (PC)
• Drakan: Order of the Flame (PC)
• Dungeon Keeper Gold (PC)
• Dungeon Siege (PC)
• Emperor: Battle for Dune (PC)
• Enter the Matrix (PC)
• Far Gate (PC)
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA)
• Golden Sun (GBA)
• Gore (PC)
• GUN (PC)
• Madcatz racing wheel
• Max Payne (PC)
• Max Payne 2 (PC)
• MDK 2 (PC)
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (PC)
• Metroid Fusion (NGC)
• Metroid Prime Pinball (NDS)
• Nintendogs (NDS)
• Pikmin (NGC)
• Prince of Persia Sands of Time (NGC)
• Real War: Air Land Sea (PC)
• Red Faction (PC)
• Saitek flight stick
• Serious Sam: Second Encounter (PC)
• Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
• Sim Golf (PC)
• Skies of Arcadia (NGC)
• Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus (PS2)
• Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (PC)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC)
• SWAT 3 Elite Edition (PC)
• Syberia (PC)
• The Longest Journey(PC)
• Tribes 2 (PC)
• X-Men Legends (PS2)
• Zelda The Minish Cap (GBA)

I still held on to the core of my collection with some of my favorites that I may actually play again or want to bust out for party games, but I now have a lot more room in that closet. Especially since most of the PC games above were from before the industry moved to the smaller boxes. Some of the games commanded surprisingly high prices. For example, the apparently rare Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 collector’s edition got me nearly $50, and games like Blood II or Drakan that I thought would go for maybe a buck got $25 or so each. The end result was that the sale of these games and a few other items (like all of my hardback Wheel of Time books, curse you Robert Jordan) got us more than enough to buy a really nice digital camera that should hopefully be arriving today or Monday.

So there you have it. Some people say that video games train people to be killers and misfits. But in this case? Video games totally saved Christmas.

Pst, hey. If you’ve been hearing a lot about these new-fangled video games but aren’t familiar enough with them to make a judgement about their value, go read this article in The Economist right now. It’s well researched, level-headed, fair, sensible, and generally brilliant.

There are many little gems in there, but here’s one of my favorites:

Even games with no educational intent require players to learn a great deal. Games are complex, adaptive and force players to make a huge number of decisions. Gamers must construct hypotheses about the in-game world, learn its rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies and get help from other players via the internet when they get stuck. The problem-solving mechanic that underlies most games is like the 90% of an iceberg below the waterline—invisible to non-gamers. But look beneath the violent veneer of “Grand Theft Auto”, and it is really no different from a swords-and-sorcery game. Instead of stealing a crystal and delivering it to a wizard so that he can cure the princess, say, you may have to intercept a consignment of drugs and deliver it to a gang boss so he can ransom a hostage. It is the pleasure of this problem-solving, not the superficial violence which sometimes accompanies it, that can make gaming such a satisfying experience.

Pair that one with this one and you’ve got pretty much what I think about the whole “are games bad for you?” question:

So games are inherently good, not bad? Actually they are neither, like books, films, the internet, or any other medium. All can be used to depict sex and violence, or to educate and inform. Indeed, the inclusion of violent and sexual content in games is arguably a sign of the maturity of the medium, as games become more like films.

The article also contains some interesting tidbits about the use of video games in educational and business settings. One teacher played through a video game while projecting it before a class of students, then improved their English skills by having them write descriptions of what he was doing. There are also companies that apparently use video games for training employees, saying that “Gamers are skilled at multi-tasking, good at making decisions and evaluating risks, flexible in the face of change and inclined to treat setbacks as chances to try again. Firms that understand and exploit this can gain a competitive advantage.”

Of course, the obvious, gaping flaw in that argument is that people who already possess those skills might be attracted to gaming while those without them take up other hobbies. Like beating up kids who are gamers. But still, many biodata tests used to select prospective employees ask applicants to agree/disagree with items like “I was active in organizations while in school” or “I participated in organized sports.” Why not ask “I rescued the elf princess, hurrr…” ?

E3 is over. Actually, it’s still going on today, but I only stayed two days again this year. Just like last year, at the beginning of the first day I thought “Wow, there’s no way I’m going to be able to see everything I want in just two days.” But then towards the end of the second day I think “Wow, I’m so sick of this and I’ve seen everything I want.” I mean, I’d still like to get more behind-closed-door demonstrations of games and I’d like to get more actual play time with some of the games on the showroom floor, but I don’t have the energy or patience for either at this point. So see ya next year, E3.

Funny E3 story for the day:

Around 5:00 yesterday I’m cutting through the outdoor walkway en route to my last appointment of the show. My feet hurt from 2 days of almost constant walking and standing. I mean they ache from my heels all the way up to the top of my calves. Halfway to my destination, I notice a booth with signs saying just “Ouch!”. The signs themselves seemed to be filled with some kind of pills. Here, here’s a pic:

She’s not in this picture because I went back and snapped it later at closing time, but staffing the booth at the time was a woman –a typical E3 booth model with a huge chest and too-blonde hair. I didn’t really notice her, though. Partially because I’d seen dozens just like her by that point, but mainly because of what she was holding in her hand and offering to all passers-by: sample packets of Tylenol. Feeling the ache in my legs renew, I walked straight over, pointed at what she was holding, smiled at her, and said “Man, I sure would love a couple of those.”

She had seen me coming, but she looked kind of surprised when I spoke and gave me a look like she was trying to figure me out. This threw me off until I suddenly realized that between the time I had pointed my finger at the Tylenol packets she was holding and looked up at her face to make contact, she had moved her hands. I had said what I said while pointing directly at her unnaturally large breasts.

My mind kind of locked for a second while I tried to think of a follow-up that wouldn’t dig myself deeper, but thankfully she got what I meant and decided that I wasn’t dropping some awful line on her. She smiled back and said “Feet hurt, huh?” as she passed me a couple of Tylenol packets.

Funny thing is, I never even had a chance to take the pills, rushed as I was and lacking anything to wash them down. I still have them, and they’re probably the best schwag I walked away with.

Speaking of schwag, I once again succeeded by walking away with as little of it as possible. You can always spot an E3 newbie by looking for the people completely overburdened by tee shirts, inflatable swords, keychains, press kits, mouse pads, balls, and pamphlets. Every year I see people make fools out of themselves for the sake of a black tee shirt riddled with company logos. Or else they’re waiting hours in line just to get an inflatable plastic ball with more company logos on it. This stuff not only weighs you down in an otherwise tiring gauntlet of dashing between appointments, but you get home and realize that with few exceptions it’s all a bunch of crap that just takes up space. And the only time they wear those tee shirts is at next year’s E3 when they want to show how hardcore they are while waiting in line to get more tee shirts.

This year my schwag take consisted of the following:

• One tee shirt for the Alan Wake game (given to me by my PR contact; would have been rude to refuse)
• A poster for some World War II game (again, handed to me by my PR contact)
• A badge holder (picked up to replace the crappy one I got when registering)
• A Myst 5 mouse pad signed by the game’s lead developer (that’s kind of cool, actually)
• A copy of Magic the Gathering: Online (looked valuable, maybe I can sell it on eBay)
• A playable demo disk for Sly Cooper: Honor Among Thieves for the PS2 (definitely glad to get this)
• Two sample packs for Extra Strength Tylenol (see above)

Not bad. I could have done a lot worse and gotten a lot more.

So that’s it for another year. This was my 6th E3 convention, and I hope to be back again next year. I had considered myself a veteran last year, but my friend Sluggo taught me something new this year: how to use the L.A. Convention Center’s back hallways. These are the halls that convention center staff use to transport equipment, food, and other items around without having to cut through the crowds. They save MASSIVE amounts of time and frustration by completely circumventing the gawkers and idiot cell phone users who decide to suddenly stand still in the middle of a stream of people. I think the halls are supposed to be off limits to non-employees, it’s surprising how few people will give a crap if you just act like you belong there.

I’ll wrap up my E3 coverage tomorrow by posting some of the many photographs I took. Some great stuff in there.

Just like last year, I’m off to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) to cover it for GameSpy.com. Actually, I’m here right now in the GameSpy/IGN (or IGN/GameSpy, whatever) “war room.” Unfortunately the power is out in half of the LA Convention Center, including the Media Registration room. So I can’t get my badge to get into any of the show rooms. In fact, one of the HUGE halls where the majority of booths are apparently doesn’t have power. It’s not a pretty situation, but hopefully it’ll get cleared up soon. ‘Til then, I’m just kind of sitting on my hands.

Update: Whew, it’s the end of the day and as usual I’m exhausted. Given that the power problems knocked the media registration area out, I had to borrow someone else’s badge. So, just for today, I was known as “Alfonzo.” It’s actually better than the first badge they handed me, which read something like “Ying Jin Jang.”

Stuff I saw:

1. Prey
2. Allen Wake
3. America’s Army
4. Spellforce 2
5. Dungeon Siege 2
6. Unreal Tournament 2007
7. Soul Calibur 3
8. Rise of Nations Rise of Legends

And a bunch of other stuff. Previews to show up on GameSpy.com soon. I’ve got a lot more to see tomorrow, including a few just for myself.

The following is an open letter to Sony Computer Entertainment Studios:

Dear SCE Studios,

I’ve recently been playing your God of War game and I have to ask: What’s it like to be possessed of your special kind of idiot savant mind?

You do so much in this game that’s so completely, over the top, crotch-hardeningly awesome. The environments are amazing, replete with inspired layouts and scenery that got me to stop every so often just to look at it. That’s a rare achievement, so thanks! But out of this entire hearty stew of bad-assitude, the combat in God of War is particularly superlative. I could have spent hours (and come to think of it, I did) just trashing enemies with the tight, easy to learn and fun to master combat, slapping the hordes of Ares around like undead step children. Remember that part where Kratos has the attitude-off with the giant minotaur guarding Pandora’s Temple? Dude, I was like totally cheering at the TV at that point, shaking my PS2 controller at the big bad wolf (bull, whatever) and telling him that if that was all he’s got, I was going to totally kick his ass. And I did! And it was great!

Then, shortly after that highlight the “idiot” part of the “idiot savant” equation kicked in. It was like you thought to yourself, “Hey, this sublime blend of combat and exploration has worked so well so far, I think it would be great if we utterly screwed it up.” And so the game promptly devolves to The Adventures of Kratos, The Amazing Hopping Hoplite. In Hell. Hades, whatever. Log rolling across beams with spinning blades? Death defying (or more often than not, death accommodating) jumps across floating platforms? Are you kidding me? What happened? You had this big tub sloshing over with brilliance and then someone yanked the plug and guffawed like a moron while it all drained away. I quit playing your game when it asked me to climb up a spinning column decorated with also spinning blades. I hear that there’s actually more game after that point, but I couldn’t get myself to give a crap after the 20th time I died on that thing.

So, to recap: Your game makes me want to come over to Santa Monica and alternatively hug you and punch you in your flabby throat. Thanks a lot.

-Jamie

Right, so as I’ve mentioned and as I’m sure Geralyn will grumble about if you ask her, I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately. Short description of the game: You role-play, on your computer, fantasy themed characters with thousands of other people around the world. I’ve been experimenting a lot with different classes to see which I like best and to relieve the boredom that seems to set in around level 20. So far I’ve played a druid, a rogue, a paladin, a warlock, and most recently a mage.

I like the mage, but something weird has happened. For variety’s sake, I made this character using the human female avatar. Here’s a screenshot:

As you can see, she’s um …built. But apparently Blizzard knows what its customers want, because that’s pretty much the only way she comes.

At any rate, the really weird thing is that when I play with this character, I’m constantly being hit on by other players. It’s creepy. They say stuff like “Hey, hot stuff, how’s it going?” Or they use the “/flirt” and “/kiss” commands. Or they just give me free stuff. Actually, the last one isn’t so bad, as I have a pretty good supply of potions as a result. And I finally know what it’s like to be a pretty little girl. …Who can throw fireballs and turn people into sheep.

The flirting thing baffles me in a lot of ways, because those other players must know that there’s a really good chance that I’m a dude, no matter what I look like in-game. While there are some women players, the vast, vast majority are guys. And since there are a lot of female avatars running around, a few whacks with the logic stick should lead you to the conclusion that you’re not really flirting with a hot chick any more than you’re really slaying that dragon. But people either don’t understand this or don’t care. Either of which is kind of off but to my credit I either ignore them or say “I’m a guy, Captain Stupid.”

Anyway, you’ll find Sanza the Human mage on the Uther server, spamming the Trade channels with “WILL CYBER 4 STACKS OF COARSE STONE!! MEET U OUTSIDE IRONFORGE AUCTION HOUSE!!!”