The Next "The Next Generation" of Consoles

As the Xbox 360 rapidly approaches the five year lifespan that most consoles traditionally adhere to, I frequently find myself wondering what the new offerings from Microsoft and Sony will bring to the table. In the current marketplace, graphical horsepower and raw performance matter a lot less than they did in the era before the Wii re-wrote the rules on what it took to be successful in the console world. The one area in which consoles could stand to see some improvement is in their ability to foster and maintain online communities. The 360 has admittedly done a much better job thus far than Sony and Nintendo, but moving forward the abilty to stay connected and find and make friends to play with is only going to need to improve.

Developers have certainly answered the call of the gaming public when it comes to having a social experience while gaming. The number of big AAA titles that feature cooperative play is at an all-time high. The only thing better than playing Gears of War 2's impressive single player campaign is playing it with a friend and experiencing all the action together. It really amplifies the experience when you can share it with someone in real-time and then re-live your exploits later when you go out to lunch or just hang out. Now that games are placing an emphasis on social interaction it would be nice to see console makers begin to place a strategic focus into their console design that reinforces this trend.

It would be interesting to see a console company take some cues from Social Media and add some "Twitter" like service to their dashboards or homescreens. A location based feature would also be a pretty cool thing to have the option to turn on or off that would actively try and match you with people in the same City, Town, or State. Personal touches like these might alleviate a lot of the bad behavior that one usually encounters in a more anonymous play session and put more of an emphasis on making friends. In the age of cell-phones and text messaging people are increasingly accustomed to being "plugged-in" and accessible to their friends and family at anytime anywhere. It seems like a logical step forward for this to expand into gaming moving forward as the medium continues to grow and adapt with current technological trends.

Traditional Gaming

For the last 8 years I've been heavily into video games to the exclusion of any other type of gaming. After this holiday season I find myself growing a little disenchanted from gaming though. I still love video games, but the constant onslaught of sequels and "me too!" games is really making everything seem a little repetitive and boring. I increasingly find myself longing for the good old days when most of the games I played were of some sort of physical manifestation...like the collectible card game "Magic: The Gathering." There is something to be said for gathering around with friends and playing a game. Sure you can have a "social experience" online now with your friends but the whole thing is more than a little detached. Things definitely have room for improvement in the console world when it comes to social networking and interaction.

I remember years ago when I played Warhammer 40,000, a table-top miniature game, at my local comic book shop. There was a strong sense of community and friendship that prospered there that online games have a hard time rivaling. There was also the hobby aspect of assembling my troops and hand painting them. I took real pride in the appearance of my troops and I had a strong personal investment in each piece of my army. Playing war games online is not nearly as fulfilling as I'm essentially pushing a button to deploy a polygonal avatar of what implement of destruction I want to place on the battlefield.

More often than not my opponents in video games are people I hardly know or don't know at all which limits the amount of fun I have with them. Getting to know my opponents well was part of the charm of the comic book shop atmosphere. Now and endless sea of faceless opponents awaits online, which makes finding a match easy, but I would argue it also makes the whole process much less satisfying for those looking to just have a good time instead of trying to take the top spot of the leaderboard.

I've certainly met many great people through playing games online and I certainly don't mean to diminish that aspect of video games, it just seems that there is something being lost as many young people will never have the traditional gaming experiences that I had growing up. Maybe its just the post-holiday gaming doldrums talking for me and Killzone 2, Street Fighter IV, and Resident Evil 5 will erase all the doubts I'm having about gaming right now. In the mean time anybody want to play a board game?

End of the 1Up Era

I was extremely saddened to hear about the acquisition of 1Up by UGO today and the subsequent layoffs caused in its wake. I've long been going to the 1up website for news and listening to the 1up yours podcast and watching the 1up show. All of the folks at 1up did a fantastic job with their coverage and I will miss hearing their opinions on the games industry. My thoughts are with those who were laid off. I have no doubt that all of the talented individuals who were casualties of this situation will land on their feet and I'll be there to support them in their new endeavors.

What happens when you play paintball for the first time...

Too Human Demo Impressions

After all the hype, hyperbole, and vitriol launched at Silicon Knight's latest game I was a little unsure as to what to expect when I booted the demo up. I knew going in that it had elements of Norse Mythology in its sci-fi story and setting and a gameplay philosophy that borrowed much from Diablo. What I played this afternoon ultimately confirmed these facts and left a middling impression.

First of all, I hate playing demos for games that are heavily story driven. Demos by their nature are constructed to give the user a broad overview of the game's style and gameplay mechanics. Too Human's demo is no different and launches you headlong into the story-line where you're riding along on some sort of gigantic hovership about to be dropped off into a combat zone. In the game you control Baldur, a God who is battling the "goblins" in an effort to save the humans. The bad-guys are referred to as "goblins" and "monsters" but they are obviously robotic organisms. It's a little off-putting at first to try and merge the concepts of science fiction and mythology butSilicon Knights has a done a good job of making the universe appear coherent. After the opening cut-scene ends, you are thrust straight into gameplay after seeing a splash page pop-up with all of you controls.

The controls were one aspect of Too Human that I immediately found to be quirky. You have no control over the camera when you are moving about the screen. Instead, the right analog stick is engaged for melee combat. When an enemy is in front of you, all you need do is press the right stick in their direction and your character will hurtle at them engaging in melee combat. This control scheme makes for a fun gameplay tactic of bouncing across the stage from one enemy to the next while hacking them to pieces. In some of the bigger battles in the demo I found the lack of an ability to rotate the camera problematic when I got surrounded by mechanical foes and had no quick way of changing my characters on screen orientation. You do have some degree of control over the camera's properties by pressing up and down on the D-Pad. Three modes are available to toggle through in the camera settings: Near, Normal, and Back. I found little difference in usability between the three modes and left the camera on normal for my playthrough.

In addittion to melee, there is also a shooting mechanic in Too Human as each character class has the ability to wield firearms. Using the left and right triggers fires whatever ranged weapon your character has equipped. There is an auto lock on that is engaged as you depress the trigger and move towards enemies. I found it frustrating not being able to tell which creature I was going to be targeting until I was expending ammo. Sometimes randomly I would begin firing and my character would turn around firing behind himself and I struggled to try and turn his fire around towards the enemies that were barreling towards me. My impression on game-play overall is that it is mostly fun, but the camera and wonky lock-on system will occasionally spoil things.

Graphics and sound are more or less average. Surround effects are put to good use but the gun sound effects and melee sound effects lacked any visceral punch. The voice acting was below average and very B-movie like. The acting wasn't bad enough to pull me out of the experience but it certainly didn't immerse me further into the game either. The grapnics are okay, there are a few areas where they truly shine and other areas that are less than inspired. Animation is stiff and awkward, especially the animation of Baldur sailing from one enemy to the next in combat, he appears to just glide across the ground and it looks a little silly.

Borrowing from games such as Diablo, there is a loot system in Too Human that allows you to get new armor and weapons and equip them. It is also possible to level your character up and assign skill points to different specialization trees. The menus for equipping loot and assigning skill points I found to be very bland and hard to navigate. Everything at first blush appeared to be a little too complex for its own good, especially for a game that is all about fast-paced combat. Eventually I got the hang of navigating the different menus and equipping items, but I still wish the interface were more streamlined.

I find it hard to predict if this demo is going to prove to be an accurate barometer of the final game's quality. I would like to experience the narrative of this title first-hand to see just how fleshed out this game's setting is. It's hard to get a feel in the demo for what the game is going to offer in terms of story but the setting is intriguing enough that I want to find out more. Despite the concerns I have about the title I plan on renting it and digging deeper into it. There is a chance that despite a few design nit-picks this game could have a lot of potential, especially when you factor in two player co-operative play.

World of Warcraft Patch is Live

After a long wait the latest WoW patch is here bringing with it the long awaited ability to get player ride-able mounts at level 30. It looks like Blizzard is intentionally making the game more casual friendly through the leveling process. Since the level cap will very soon be level 80 I think it's a step in the right direction.

It used to be that leveling from 1 to 60 was a Herculean effort that took months for the average person. In the old leveling structure players were not able to get their first mount until level 40, which always seemed a bit odd given that the next tier of mounts was available at 60. Now in the new patch as soon as your character hits 30 you can visit your local riding trainer and pay the 35 gold to learn how to ride your racial mount of choice. There's no excuse now for folks not being prepared to explore the frosty snow covered regions of Northrend in "Wrath of the Lich King" this fall!

Microsoft E3 Conference Impressions

Bring on the casual market seemed to be the rallying cry for the big M in today's conference presentation. The opening moments of Microsoft's event focused on some of the "hardcore" fare headed to the retail chain this holiday showing titles such as "Fallout 3," "Fable 2," and "Gears of War 2." Along with the updates and hands-on demos of these titles Xbox head honcho Dan Matrick also teased that they were going to revolutionize the console race with a new innovation.

This new innovation is apparently a redesigned from the ground up Xbox Live interface. The main bullet-point in this redesign appear to be "avatars." These avatars are 3-D rendered embodiments of your online persona, much like Miis on the Wii. Rare studios came up with the avatar editor system and promise thousands of pieces of content to customize your unique avatar with. Other than the addition of avatars the new Live interface will sport a streamlined design that consists of floating windows representing the different areas of the Xbox 360. From there the conference began to focus on party games and yet more casual fare espousing a more online, connected, and social atmosphere being their goal moving forward for the Live service.

As a gamer, I found myself ultimately left wanting by this conference. The big announcement was obviously the re-imagining of Live and I was left scratching my head mostly as to how this was going to "revolutionize" the way I play and experience games. It seemed to me that Microsoft is very content with their position in the marketplace (as they should be) and they are playing things related to their core users very safe by not making any new announcements or revealing any future franchises. It seems that their #1 priority is attracting a more casual market to their system by syphoning off the target audience of the Wii.

Microsoft has a maddening tendency to want to try and be all things to all people and this conference personified this trait in my eyes. Looking at the conference as a whole, Microsoft essentially lead off with demos of hardcore titles, then spent the rest of the conference hammering their new casual approach while ending with a hardcore appeasing announcment from Square. I was hoping for more excitment from the 360 camp out of this conference and in my eyes they did not deliver. I am excited for Gears 2, Fable 2, and Rock Band 2 at the end of this year but Microsoft failed to stimulate much interest or excitement from me on what lies ahead in 2009. What is your reaction to the conference?