Living Up to "360"

The whole idea behind calling it the "Xbox 360" was that the console did everything. Well, it's about to replace the crap out of your cable box. Hulu Plus is officially coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360. The $9.99/month plan will include up-to-date seasons of current ABC, NBC, and Fox television shows (and presumably their subsidiaries), and not that "Last 5 weeks" b.s. you get on the free website. You get entire seasons. So, what does this all mean?

By sometime early 2011, Xbox LIVE will be fully integrated with Netflix, ESPN, and Hulu. Neflix subscriptions start at $9.99/month, ESPN is free (for Gold members), and Hulu Plus is another $9.99/month. Throw in the $50/year fee for Xbox LIVE Gold, and you're paying about $290/year or about $24.17/month. With all the sports, serial dramas, and sitcoms you could want and the added bonus of the Netflix Instant Queue library, I think you can basically get rid of your cable or satellite. As a comparison, Dish Network starts at $24.99/month for 120 channels, DirectTV starts at $29.99/month for 150 channels, and cable has various prices, but you're not going lower than $24.99/month.

So, for people like me, you actually get more of what you want (and at your convenience) for less than the cost of satellite or cable (especially when Netflix and Xbox LIVE Gold are already sunk costs). The big drawback, however, is that you don't get NFL games (and more tragically, the Red Zone Channel). We've also yet to see just how awesome the ESPN integration is. But, it is entirely possible that your Xbox 360 will fully replace your cable box.

--Chilly P

In the News

Some random stuff, put in bullets for your convenience:

• The new iPhone operating system, iOS4, is available for download. It took like 20 minutes to everything the way I wanted, but I now have all but 10 apps (including the bottom bar) in folders and no longer have pages. I also grabbed a sweet Metroid wallpaper for my homepage. I'm currently listening to Pandora in the fuckin' background. Other than the aforementioned application, multitasking is largely worthless at this stage.
  
• I downloaded iBooks as well. It automatically downloads Whinnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, but I got rid of it because it doesn't interest me. My digital library currently consists of Alice's Adeventures in Wonderland, On the Origin of Species, The Communist Manifesto, Metamorphosis, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Art of War, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The United States Constitution, and The King James Bible. I wouldn't suggest trying to decipher my political and/or religious beliefs from that set. Anyway, there's a good amount of literary classics available for free, all of which I assume are public domain at this point. Now we'll see if I'll actually read any of them (spoiler: probably not).
  
• One last iPhone tidbit--and this one's games related--EA is having a massive $0.99 sale on over a dozen of their games. I think I'm gonna pick up Red Alert, SimCity, and maybe a racing game. I don't remember if Spore Origins (Sporigins?) was listed, but as someone who already has it, I can say that it's probably not even worth $1. Also, you'd think they'd offer Scrabble for $1 to try to compete with Words with Friends, but it's not so.
• The Medal of Honor beta for PC and PS3 has already begun, I believe. It's not available for 360 yet, but it will be "soon." I've already got a key, so I'll be sure to give my impressions.
• Onslaught for Bad Company 2 (it's like Horde, Firefight, or Nazi Zombies) is currently available for PS3 and will be available for 360 tomorrow. It's 800 Microsoft Points, which is a reasonable price; especially considering the success of Modern Warfare 2's 1200 point Stimulus Package.
• Speaking of BC2, I've officially gone platinum (1000 kills) with the M24 sniper rifle. I did it in almost exactly 20 hrs of use (no, it's not as long as it sounds). Want proof (By the way, that's a good site to use if you wanna find out how many Destruction 2.0 kills you have, or if you want to compare all of your stats with a friend)?
  
• Apparently, there's a way to get your BC2 games to stop lagging. I haven't tried it myself, but I have it on good authority that it works.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron has been getting some pretty positive reviews. I played the game at E3 and thought it was basically Call of Duty but uglier. However, that statement is quite a compliment to the gameplay mechanics. They were smooth, the control was tight, and the class system seemed surprisingly deep at first glance. In today's crowded market I doubt I'll ever give it the time it deserves, but if you've ever wanted to battle as a space robot that is also a vehicle, this looks like your golden opportunity.
• David Hale is moving on. We've both enjoyed reading him and wish him the best of luck; the Bulldog Nation will miss him.
  

--Chilly P

Gender and Crackdown

The same Crackdown 2 demo I played at E3 came out on Xbox LIVE (and presumably PSN) last night. I highly recommend getting skills for kills. In honor of the new Crackdown, I thought I'd post something I wrote about the first one late last year.

The game design course I took where I helped create Vision by Proxy was taught by a feminist. I don't mean "feminist" as in "men and women are equal," I mean it like, "men mistreat and undermine women, who must constantly fight an uphill battle for equality" type feminist. I may feel differently because I'm a man, but I'm not of the opinion that the world is out to get women. But, that's not the purpose of this post. Anyway, she made us read a bunch of papers about games and women and about how gaming is a boy's club and that 90%+ of developers are men and that 90%+ of games are designed for men. I'm not saying this isn't true, I just don't see how it's a problem. So, we had to write a blog post (ugh, b-word) about a game that either stereotyping women, overly sexualizing women, or being made for women. So, looking to my favorite girl gamer, my sister, I decided to write about her favorite game, Crackdown. Below is exactly what I wrote, but edited for typos. Just remember that I did this for a class, so I wrote it as quickly as possible and wrote just enough for a passing grade.

To be honest, I don't really know a whole lot of women who play "hardcore" video games. I mean, my mom's been known to play Solitaire on her iPhone for hours, but I'm talking about games made for gamers. My little sister is actually the only woman I know who owns and Xbox 360, which has to be the most testosterone-laden console of the big 3 right now. She even has her own $50/year Xbox LIVE Gold membership (which she mostly uses for Netflix streaming). So, what kind of Xbox games does she own? Well, she has Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, staples on any 360 collection, but she doesn't play them very often. She tends to play a good amount of Fable II and Tiger Woods PGA Tour '10 (not that she likes real-life golf), but I'd have to say that her favorite game has to be Crackdown. This game is all about non-stop shooting, kicking, and blowing up faceless gang members, so why is it so appealing to her (and I'm just going to assume that she's not just some weirdo and that there are other women who enjoy this game)?

Crackdown definitely requires those quick reflexes and spatial abilities that Fron and friends say are tough for women to master. However, unlike your typical Haloz, Crackdown has a very intuitive (so nothing like GTA) lock-on system that I'm sure eases that difficulty. In fact, I'd probably have to say that it has the best lock-on system I've seen in a sandbox game. Throw in the fact that explosive rounds have huge splash damage, and the difficulties of aiming are greatly reduced. There's also the added bonus that you can kill people with melee attacks that easily lock-on to the nearest enemy. It's a lot easier for my sister to use this method, and I find that she uses it far more than guns and explosives combined.

Jenkins says women like to explore games at their own, gradual pace. I would say that Crackdown epitomizes that in its genre. It's a sandbox game, a genre popularized by the Grand Theft Auto series. These games are built around exploration. Crackdown does separate itself in this regard, however, by not really even having missions. Unlike other sandbox games where you're free to do anything until you start a linear mission, Crackdown just has three gangs in its city who's leaders you must kill. These leaders are placed in strategic parts of the city and have a lot of gang members protecting them, but you never have to tell the game, "Okay, now I'm going to try to kill this leader." You just go do it. In fact, you can get through half of that leader's health, and then just leave if you want and try to go kill someone else. When you come back, he'll still have half of his health gone. You really do beat the game at your pace, in (almost) whatever order you want.

One aspect of the game that does go completely against what women typically look for is the existence of a story. Laurel says women typically enjoy deep stories, rich character, strong values, and all that other stuff that makes them think The Notebook is better than Die Hard (which it's not). Crackdown has none of these things. The story is pretty much non-existent, it's just, "Go kill these bad guys, agent," and "Skill for kills, agent. Skills for kills." You play as a nameless, faceless agent who is easily replaced, has no dialogue, and is quite literally a tool for a totalitarian government. It's easier to identify with Pac-Man and the Weighted Companion Cube than The Agent (You can even change what your Agent looks like each time you play the game, so there's precisely zero importance placed on identifying with your character) . As the "story" goes, when you die, another one of you is just cloned and sent to keep on cleaning up the city. I think many women who grew up with Super Mario Bros. aren't used to video games telling compelling stories, so that expectation is forgone from the beginning. In the absence of story, all that is expected is tight, responsive control in a virtual playground. Like Super Mario Bros., the physics and rules of Crackdown's Pacific City are quickly and easily understood. Character progression is streamlined and fully automated, and the game can easily be played in short bursts. For women who don't play a lot of action games, accessibility is key, and Crackdown is about as accessible as they come, even more so than Mario's 3D iterations.

Just about the entire game is full of those dangerous and contested spaces that Fullerton et al. say women don't typically enjoy. I think the big difference here between Crackdown and other vertical sandbox games like [Prototype] and Spider-Man 2 is that you never really die. Or rather, you die all the time, but you're never really punished for it, just inconvenienced. When you die in Crackdown, you just respawn as a whole new agent at a checkpoint of your choosing (a checkpoint simply being a spot on the map, not a spot of progress) and the world is exactly as you left it. If you had taken off half of a boss's health and killed half of his guards before you died, it'll be just like that when you come back. I feel like this aspect is key for getting women into hardcore games, and you're starting to see it more and more. Even some of the most critically acclaimed games of the past few years, like Bioshock and Fable II, use this philosophy. While this kind of reward-without-punishment system can be frustrating to people like me who feel that beating a game like this on the hardest difficulty means nothing, it's almost a must-have for my sister. I understand why developers would want to do this, too. Beside the fact that it'll appeal to more people, these developers spend years working on these games and they want you to finish it. They're not making revenue a quarter at a time anymore. But I digress. A significant event that helped both of us discover how important trivial deaths are to her is when I got her to play [Prototype].

Like Crackdown, [Prototype] is a vertical sandbox game where you play as a superhuman defeating large numbers of inferior foes. [Prototype]'s Alex Mercer is even more agile than The Agent in that he is capable of running up walls and gliding over long distances. The game even has a more fleshed-out story, and the primary form of attack is via melee. The problem is that when my sister got to the Time Square boss 3/4 through the game, she became frustrated. It's a long boss fight, to say the least, and when she died merely seconds from defeating it and was forced to start all over, that's when she called it quits. She enjoyed the game for the most part, but the penalty of death was so frustrating for her that she hasn't picked it back up since then.

I'm not really sure whether or not Crackdown was in any way designed for women, but I would probably guess that it wasn't. While you can choose from several character-models to play with, they are all overly-macho men. The game does have a nice, kinda cartoony art style, but I'm betting that was used to make the game stand out in a crowded genre (games with guns). While I doubt many women picked the game up themselves out of curiosity (my sister never would have played it if I hadn't encouraged her to), I do think it lays down a nice foundation for a game that can be enjoyed by both sexes.

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (2007). The Hegemony of Play. In Situated Play: Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association 2007 Conference. Tokyo, Japan. 1-10.

Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (2007). A Game Of Ones Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Game Space. In Proceedings, Digital Arts & Culture 2007, Perth, Australia. 1-11.

Jenkins, H. (2004). Game design as narrative architecture. The Game Design Reader, 670-686.

Laurel, B. (2001). Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

--Chilly P

E3 Wrap-up

I'll get this out at the beginning: Game of the Show? Vanquish. I did some further research about the game because I'd been largely ignoring it up until I played it, and I'm excited to say that it's the latest game by Shinji Mikami. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he's the genius behind the Resident Evil series, specifically Resident Evil 4. If that name doesn't sound familiar, well, it's the dude who made Resident Evil 4. Now, for a little history...

Third-Person Shooters (TPS) were always kind of wonky. The camera was always way out from and centered on the character because that's how Super Mario 64 (a 3D platformer) had the camera. Just look at the early Resident Evil games, Jet Force Gemini, Splinter Cell, or Grand Theft Auto III and you'll notice how inferior TPS gunplay had always been to FPS gunplay. Then came Resident Evil 4, which pioneered the Over-the-Shoulder Third-Person Shooter (OtSTPS). Unlike a typical TPS, Resident Evil 4 had the camera directly over the right shoulder of the main character. By placing the player character on the left side of the screen, players could play the game like an FPS, but still have the benefit of seeing their character. Fast forward almost a couple years later and we get the next major evolution in OtSTPSes, Gears of War. Gears took the OtSTPS formula and made it more action oriented and made going into the cover work better than in any game before it. Turns out that using a cover mechanic in an OtSTPS worked beautifully. Vanquish is the next step.

Next to Gears of War, Resident Evil 4 & 5 feel very deliberate and slow-paced. Next to Vanquish, Gears of War feels downright sluggish. Vanquish also ups the complexity of the controls. Where Gears maps cover, run, and dive all to the 'A' button, Vanquish gives each of those functions their own mapping. Dive is 'A', cover is 'X', and roadie-running is replaced by rocket sliding, which is mapped to 'LB.' The game is fast, throws all sorts of ballistics your way at all times, and just kicks all around ass. There's only one thing that downgrades this game from "Must buy" to "Must play": no multiplayer. It's a shame because outside of the bullet-time aspect, the game seems perfectly suited for multiplayer and could easily garner a sizable online community. Here's to hoping they change their mind.

Vision by Proxy has gotten a little bit of attention, which is really flattering. It was really such a treat to be showcased by the booth that got The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom off the ground. So, thank you, IndieCade, for by Vision by Proxy a chance.

Did I mention I met Bear Grylls?

I watched a demo of F.3.A.R., and I gotta wonder what they were thinking. The game is all co-op now (like Resident Evil 5), and one person plays as a dude with a gun, and the other person is a mother fucking ghost. The ghost is able to levitate people, shoot them with ectoplasmic goo, and fly across the screen to possess them. The poor sap playing the other guy gets to use bullet time, but it isn't all that much of a bonus when both players get to have it when he activates it. If that's not enough, the ghost gets to solve all the puzzles, and in large firefights the other guy usually just gets shot at while the ghost possesses someone behind enemy lines and then kills everyone from behind. Seriously, what the hell was thinking process behind this? Who the hell wants to be the useless asshole who isn't a damned ghost? I mean, the ghost can't use guns unless he's possessing someone, but who cares? You get to use guns in every other game. I don't see the point unless you have a friend who loves laying down cover fire while you do all the cool stuff.

--Chilly P

E3 Day 3

Well, it's over. I think I might cry.

I did manage to get into the Portal 2 showing. In a word? Delightful. I was just in awe the entire time I was watching it. You really can't appreciate the complex puzzle possibilities of the new environment elements until you see them in action. This is particularly true for the excursion funnel. This apparently asbestos-based device (pictured above) creates a tunnel in space that moves people and objects through it. It also travels through portals. One puzzle they showed us (which is the one pictured above) had them using the tunnels to move a block around. They'd move the block horizontally for a while, and then shoot a portal beneath it to quickly move it upward. It was pretty cool to watch. On top of the new puzzle elements, it was also delightful to hear the new dialog from GLADoS. I had very high hopes for this game before, and now they're even higher. I just hope I'm not setting myself up for disappointment.
[Update] If you'd like to see some of the exact footage that I saw behind closed doors with Valve, you can watch it here.

I played some Marvel vs. Capcom 3. If you liked Marvel vs. Capcom 2, you'll like 3. If you didn't like 2, then you won't like 3. That's really all there is to it. Personally, although it was a lot of fun, I'm probably going to skip it. I already have Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and the new one feels a whole lot like the first one but with shinier graphics. Plus, I'm tired of getting my ass kicked online when I play fighting games.

I got my full ten minutes with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Since I had an exhibitor pass I was able to get in line before any of the media or 'Exhibits Only' people could, and I chose Zelda over the 3DS. Why? Zelda was giving out free t-shirts, and they weren't giving out bupkis for the 3DS. Anyway, Zelda: SS (Link's a fascist now) looks like someone took Twilight Princess and painted over it with Wind Waker's palette. I guess the idea is to make it immediately distinguishable from the past two console Zeldas. Anyway, the game feels pretty good with the motion plus controls. The side effect that I find unfortunate is that you really have to get into your sword slicing now. A friend was telling me how much he liked and he then posed like he was clutching an imaginary sword and shield. I found it hard to get into it that much with some Nintendo rep constantly trying to help me. Sure, I might not have figured out that Link can sprint now without him, but it was still annoying.

My team members were telling me that LeVar Burton came by IndieCade and that he really enjoyed Vision by Proxy. This was particularly awesome for one of my team members who said she grew up Star Trek. I just know LeVar Burton as that guy I saw on Reading Rainbow when they forced me to watch it at school. Still, it's pretty cool, though. Several smaller bloggers wanted to write pieces abut us, so I'm going to keep an eye out for that. There were also some other independent devs who want me to try out their game and give them feedback, so it felt pretty nice to be part of this indie community. We may actually have to finish our game now, so stayed tuned for that.

Well, that'll pretty much do it. I'll write a wrap-up for the show when I get back to the ATL and I've had time to mull it over. I'm just so sorry that it's over. Going there and having a game of mine on display was a dream come true.

--Chilly P

E3 Day 2

Man, oh man, did I get some swag today. I have now doubled the amount of shirts that I have to take back home with me. I also saw Felicia Day and got my picture taken with Bear Grylls. But, on to some game impressions...

Sega might have a real winner on their hands with Vanquish. I'm not sure about the whole story behind it (I'm pretty sure some famous Japanese designer is behind it), but I know it's Japanese and I never expect Japanese shooters to feel this fantastic. It plays a lot like Gears of War, but faster. It also has a much more...titanium-feeling art direction. Oh, and holding the left bumper makes you slide around on your knees. It's to the same effect of the roadie run, but it's way cooler and distinctly Japanese. There's also the fact the you fight a whole bunch of robots instead of aliens. Oh, and if you tap the slide button while sitting in cover, the dude pulls out a cigarette and lights up. How ballin' is that? I had so much fun with it today that I had to demo it twice. It's definitely my favorite demo so far. I hope it has multiplayer. Good multiplayer. And co-op.

My least favorite demo, on the other hand, has to be the Conduit 2 demo. The graphics don't even look good for a Wii game. They also really need to work on their control scheme. Holding 'Z' pulls up a box and health bar around an enemy, yet if you want to aim down sight, you have to toggle it by pressing down on the d-pad. It looks ugly, feels terrible, and it's really just a shame because I like seeing small studios succeed.

Bungie, because they have to be cool, was holding hands-off demos every thirty minutes. I was able to skip the 2-3 hour line by showing up 3 minutes before one demo time and mixing into a crowd of people waving and hollering for t-shirts. By the time they ran out of shirts, I had miraculously blended into the front of the line :). Anyway, they demoed a space battle and the new Firefight mode for Reach. The space mission was one where you're in a limited area and you fly around in circles shooting banshees. It looked really dull, just like every other dog-fighting game or level ever, and maybe it's just me, but I doubt banshees are space-worthy. Firefight definitely looked cool, though. There's a new armor ability and class called 'Medic' where the player drops a bubble shield that heals people who are inside it. It worked nicely for Firefight, though I'd think it too overpowered for multiplayer. They also showed a new weapon that's a cross between the Hammer of Dawn from Gears and Bad Company's mortar strike. It was cool.

I saw a fat guy eat a booger. It was gross.

I found out today that my Exhibitor badge gets me into the private meeting rooms upstairs, so I checked that out a little bit today. I got some sweet Portal 2 swag, so I geeked out pretty hardcore about that. I'm going to sign up for some appointments tomorrow to preview those more private games for the good of all of us...except the ones who are dead.

--Chilly P

p.s. In case you haven't heard, ESPN is coming to the 360. It's gonna be killer.

E3 Day 1

I'm gonna try to be quick, so please excuse any typos.

First off, the new locomotion system in Madden 11 feels incredible. They've been long overdue in that department, and I think they;ve finally gotten it right. I'm not at the point yet where I can implicitly trust their newfangled Gameflow system, but I did give it a try. They have a nice addition where you can choose a basic fourth down play on the fly, so no more having to search through plays when you want to fake it. Not having a sprint will take getting used to, but I think it's better in the long run.

Crackdown 2 feels a lot like the first one, and that means it feels good. I probably spent more time with that demo than any other today. It just speaks volumes about how fun the basic game mechanics of that series are.

I gave Dead Rising 2 a little bit of playtime today. It, too, feels exactly like its predecessor, but in this case it feels a little clunky. I was also disappointed with the seemingly small number of zombie character models. It's particularly noticeable when you kill identical twin zombies standing next to each other, especially when they're dressed the same. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 felt terrible during my playtime. It takes a full 2 seconds to get up to speed, what's that about? The new Tron game felt surprisingly fresh. I only played cycle racing, but it was pretty intense. I played Medal of Honor a little bit. Felt exactly like Bad Company 2. I'll wait for the beta to make a call on that one.

Metroid: Other M is an interesting game. Metroid Prime is my all-time favorite game, and Other M feels nowhere near as good as that game. That new Zelda game uses Motion Plus for more accurate sword mapping, and I can confirm that they did a pretty good job with it. Unfortunately, the graphical style is disagreeable. It's like a cross between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. It needs to commit to one.

I saw Cliffy B and Shaun White.

I'm on a personal mission to snag as much swag (stuff. we. all. GET!) as possible. I've kinda been sucking it up on that part so far, but I'm going to work harder at it tomorrow. I missed out on Bulletproof-themed free burgers with T-shirt give-aways. I feel like a real sucker for that. I also feel like a sucker for not getting a business card from the Activision exec who checked out Vision by Proxy. Tomorrow will surely be more successful. I gotta go, it's eatin' timez.

--Chilly P

E3 Day 0

Alright. My E3 experience starts today. I'll try to give updates daily, but I might not be able to. You know, too busy partying with nerds. Anyway, I'll actually be using my twitter account, so you can follow that off to the right. It's easier to tweet from an iPhone than post. IndieCade arranged for me to stay with some UCLA art design students, so I'm excited to see how they party. Anyway, more to come.

--Chilly P

Tids and Bits for Monday 061410

Well, Clyde is down in South Africa for the World Cup, so I'm sure he'll have some interesting stories about that when he gets back. I tried watching the U.S.A. - England game. Ugh, I just don't like soccer. It's boring, and that's coming from a pretty avid baseball fan. They just kind of slowly trot around a giant field--sorry, pitch--kicking the ball back and forth to each other. Soccer games--sorry, matches--just feel devoid of events. It's unfortunate that Britain's influence spread soccer to all their colonies because had that not happened, maybe they'd like a better sport. I get it though, when you live in a third world country, soccer is accessible because it's cheap. Anyway, I'll let Sweet Clyde handle the rest of the soccer talk.

So, the second best Flash game ever made is getting an update, so I posted the video advertising it above. That's right, a Flash game is getting an update and they're advertising it. That just speaks to its monumental awesomeness.

So, you may ask, if that's only the second best Flash game ever made, what could possibly be the best? Why, it's Vision by Proxy, of course! All kidding aside, that little game I was a part of was apparently good enough to be recognized by IndieCade. In fact, they've decided to showcase it at E3, so that's where I'll be this week. Whether or not I'll be able to update (I'm not using the b-word) from there is to be seen, but you can be sure that I'll be back Friday evening with plenty to write about. Since I'm going as a developer and not as part of the media, I probably won't be able to get into the keynotes. However, I'll be sure to try out some demos and just soak up the nerdy atmosphere.

--Chilly P

Halo Wars, the Big XII, and Strasburg, D.C.

I'll start off with the quote of the week:

"There might come a day where I don't feel like a twat using an iPad in a public place, but that day isn't here yet. It's a little too ostentatious, like toting around a scepter. I don't like it. The only thing it can do that my iPhone can't is be more expensive."
--Tycho Brahe

A friend of mine gave me access to one of his two Starcraft II beta keys, but my laptop can't run the game particularly well. So in order to quench my recent RTS thirst, I've picked Halo Wars back up, and it's been sublime. I absolutely love Halo Wars. I've never been particularly adept at playing games with a mouse and keyboard, and games like Red Alert and Starcraft demand a kind of multitasking that I've yet to adapt. Halo Wars, on the other hand, works extremely well with a controller, and they've done a good job of shrinking the decision space so that RTS novices like myself can stay competitive. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the Call of Duty of RTS games where any asshat can come in and wreck your day; you still have to be a thinking man, but it's on a scale that I can cope with. Its Rock-Paper-Scissors framework is very thinly masked (intentionally), so I can usually stay competitive with a handful of strategies that I've gotten pretty decent with. The unit cap also keeps battles on a manageable scale, and each army can only get so powerful. The side effect of this is that 3v3 games, which I usually play, typically devolve into a race to max out your army before attacking. It just so happens that that's my favorite flavor of battle. It's a great game for people who love RTSes and would like to be competitive at one, but can't commit the time it takes to get good at a game as hardcore as Starcraft.

College football's cannibalizing of the Big XII has been very interesting to watch unfold. I'm an SEC man myself, but my family is from Texas and I come from a long line of Big XII guys. The Texas, Texas A&M, and Okie St. grads in my family all refuse to acknowledge that the SEC is simply the best conference in college football, so the fact that the Big XII is so close to extinction is like sweet redemption. For those not following the events, the basics are that the Big 10 might acquire some combination of Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Missouri. They also want Texas, but everyone wants Texas. This includes the Pac 10, which is rumored to be looking at acquiring Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., and Colorado. The caveat here is that wherever Texas goes, the Aggies are sure to follow, as well as some other schools who depend on their rivalry with Texas for relevance. While I'd find it hilarious if the Big XII dissolved, I in no way want the Pac 16 becoming the new power conference in the country. A conference with USC, Texas, and OU will probably get a title contender every year. However, if the Pac 10 and the Big 10 both expand to 16 teams and the SEC follows suit by gobbling up Florida St., Clemson, and two other schools, it's going to be really hard to not have at least a 4 game playoff for the National Championship. That being said, the Pac 16 could inevitably become the powerhouse conference that usurps the SEC in national coverage, especially if the SEC expands with lame-duck schools like Clemson and Florida St. that aren't especially noteworthy athletically or even academically. Should that happen and we don't move to a playoff system, the SEC won't get essentially automatic bids into the National Championship game anymore. After that, it's going to be a whole lot harder for SEC schools to recruit against Pac 16 teams in Mississippi Delta area.

One of the most interesting things about all of this, and Colin Cowherd pointed this out, is that nobody is going after Kansas, Duke, or North Carolina. These conferences are looking at expansion so they can make more money, and the money is in football. Colorado, which isn't particularly good at anything but still sells out their football games, is more coveted than storied basketball powerhouse Kansas. Maybe the Jayhawks should've held on to Mangino.

Finally, who watched Stephen Strasburg dazzle the Pirates last night? I don't watch a lot of baseball games that don't feature the Astros, but I might watch this kid every chance I get. Watching him pitch is more exciting than the World Series (unless my Astros are in it...which won't happen again for a long time). How is it fair that one guy can throw a 99 mph fastball in the 7th inning and follow it up with a Barry Zito-esque curveball? He was making hitters look stupid, and outside of a fluky homerun ball, he was almost perfect. Let's hope the MLB knows they have a LeBron on their hands and promote the hell out of him. It's a crying shame that only people with Direct TV and/or the MLB Network got to see him last night. Wake up, Selig, here's your white knight.

--Chilly P

Bad Company 2 "Fixes" I'd Like to See

I posted yesterday about a couple of patches coming to Bad Company 2. For the most part, I think DICE has done a very good job with keeping its game balanced. In particular, I think the folks over at Bungie could learn a thing or two from DICE about vehicle balance. That being said, there are still some minor bug and balance fixes I can think of that I'd like to see in the near future:

• Fix that bug where you get stuck in the weapon screen if someone revives you while you're changing kits and you have to suicide to get out of it.
  
• Get rid of the glitched games.
• Make the PP2000 the way it was before the before it got nerfed. It's just useless now.
  
• I would like to see the tracer dart become part of a class instead of being available to every class. I'd also like to see that class not be the Engineer, so that it takes two people to take down a chopper (now that the tracer dart is so easy to use). The helicopters become pretty worthless when an entire team of Engineers is using darts. I know it's never going to happen, but I'd like to see it.
• Give the Blackhawks stronger armor so they can survive the first RPG.
  
• Take the 500 point cap off the marksman bonus, and then add a marksman bonus leaderboard.
  
• Make it so you can see other players' K/D's in the leaderboards menu.
• Make it so friends who've never played Bad Company 2 don't show up in the friends leaderboard.
• Get rid of the whole extra lines for SPECTACT classes. Just make it an option at the end of the row to turn SPECACT on or off. It's stupid that I have to scroll through eight classes now.
  
• I've had some glitch ever since I got the SPECACT classes where my Recon class resets at the beginning of every game. Fix that.
• Don't automatically change the pistol for every class if you change it for one. I never want a Tracer Dart on my Recon class. Ever.
• UAVs should explode if a C4 pack attached to it damages an enemy crate, player, or vehicle (but not if some jerk teammate blows it up because he wants to take it from you).
• Don't let people be temporarily invincible after a revive.
• I don't know if it's a glitch or a design choice, but you can't knife or throw a grenade within 3 seconds of spawning. Get rid of that.
  
• Buildings should collapse sooner. It's too easy to escape a collapsing building.
  

As you can see, most of those are very minor issues. Anyway, just food for thought.

--Chilly P

More Bad Company Updates

Update 1
Update 2

Some more Bad Company 2 updates are rolling in. The first is mostly bug fixes and the second is more on the balance side. Changes of note:

• The Garand's stats will finally be tracked correctly, meaning you can now finish out your medal collection.
• The Isla Inocentes fence glitch is getting fixed. I'm actually kind of upset about this one.
• The minigun on the blackhawk is going to more powerful at range. Maybe it won't be so worthless now (although it's just going to make my island hopping on Isla Inocentes just that much more difficult).
• The points awarded for objectives are being increased. Now playing to win may actually be worth it!
• They're making Conquest suck less: that God-awful horn isn't going to last as long, and the number of tickets is being increased while the speed those tickets are drained when your team has no flags is also increased. Maybe people will actually go for flags now.
  
• The G3 and M14 can now use AR Marksman.
• The stats in the weapons menu now reflect the updated stats from the previous patch.
  

The first update is going to the PS3 first and coming to the 360 "soon." The second update says that an optional update is coming to 360 tomorrow, which I believe means that it's not just a server update. The whole thing is pretty confusing; read for yourself if you want to figure it all out. I just hope they find a way to fix the East Coast lag.

VIP Map Pack 3 is also coming out. It adds Squad Deathmatch for Nelson Bay and Squad Rush for Laguna Alta. Yeah, I don't when they're going to release new maps for realsies.

Onslaught mode is also coming at some point soon. It's Bad Company's version of Horde/Firefight/Nazi Zombies. Joystiq has a preview of the mode here.

--Chilly P

Top 10: Most Disappointing Sequels

What's nice about movies is that when a sequel comes out, you can just expect it to suck. It's only once in a blue moon that an Empire Strikes Back comes out and eclipses the original. In the video game world, however, I'd say it's about a 50/50 chance that the sequel will be better than the original. Often times, even if it's not as good, it's still close. Sometimes, though, you let yourself get too excited and just set yourself up for disappointment. The following is the list of the ten sequels I found most disappointing. It's important to note that these are not all bad games, but some of them definitely are.

10. Burnout Paradise
Burnout Revenge was the first racing game not featuring turtle shells I ever played that got me hooked. It had a blinding sense of speed, physics built for fun before realism, and spectacular car wrecks. The only drawbacks were the lacking online mode, limited car models, and 2-player only local multiplayer. All I wanted for the first true next-gen Burnout was a larger variety of cars (instead of just two basic models), giant multiplayer races, and next-gen crashes. I only got one of those things (and *damn* did the crashes look good). Unfortunately, the good people at Criterion decided that we a sandbox racing game. I'm not going to lie, the game is very impressive, and there are a lot of people who like it and play it to this day. Hell, they even managed to have an in-game DJ who actually succeeds in sounding cool. I'll also give Criterion major props offering arguably the best post-release support this generation. The problem, though, is that every race just goes from point A to point B. Point A is a random stoplight and point B is one of eight cardinally-directed finish lines. The races are too short, too hard to organize, and it takes way too much memorization to stay on course. Burnout always succeeded in balls-to-the-wall racing where you always felt a little out-of-control, but the courses did a good job a directing you. When you have to quickly react to turn signals and turn down the right road, it's pretty easy to accidentally find yourself going 90 degrees in the wrong direction. Plus, having to take right turns just interrupts the flow of the race. It certainly has its great moments, but they're too short-lived and too few-and-far between.

9. Gears of War 2
If you were to pick this game up for the first time today, you might wonder why it's on this list. However, those of you who picked this up week 1 know exactly what I'm talking about: glitches and head-scratching balancing issues. Why, for the love of everything holy, would you let everyone spawn with a stun grenade that ragdolls players for 2 agonizing seconds? Why would you let ragdoll physics impact the outcome of each confrontation and why would you stun someone that long? In the heat of battle, 2 seconds is an eternity. Aside from that issue--which they've fixed--there were the unlimited and nearly indestructible grenade plants, the unbalanced weapon cycling, the broken matchmaking, the nonsensical ranking system, and the schizophrenic shotgun with a mind of its own. I'd list more, but at this point it's beating a dead horse. I've harped on this before, but the lesson here is that you should always do a beta test for a highly anticipated game. Epic got caught with their pants down big time.

8. Resident Evil 5
This is another game that wasn't necessarily bad, just not as good as I'd hoped. Resident Evil 4 was the critically-acclaimed and 100% bitchin' revamp that the series desperately needed. The big thing that game accomplished was being smooth. It was an incredibly well-crafted experience from beginning to end, which stood in stark contrast to its clumsy predecessors. RE5 kept RE4's revamped control scheme, but added back a healthy dose of clumsiness. The cooperative play was a nice idea, but it just didn't work particularly well. It just felt so forced, and by consequence, RE5 was stripped of a large number of the nice touches that pushed RE4 into the all-time great category. The weapon, inventory, treasure, and upgrade systems were all greatly reduced and felt naked in comparison. Not only that, but inventory was strictly limited and had to be managed in real-time. There's a reason co-op shooters don't give players inventories. On the story side, the Uroboros were way less cool than las Plagas, and while RE4 had some of the best boss fights in recent memory, RE5's boss fights ranged from dull to uninspired. Had the co-op been an in-game spin-off like Assignment Ada, the game could have been a lot better. Forcing co-op throughout the entire game (and I say "forcing" because trying to play it with an AI partner was excruciating) ended up crippling the experience.

7. Perfect Dark Zero
The current generation of games got off to a really rough start. Where Super Mario 64 and Halo: Combat Evolved let us know that their respective generations were going to take us places we'd never thought possible, Perfect Dark Zero introduced us to the Xbox 360 with a whimper. Never has the premier launch title of a hotly anticipated console sucked so much. Not only that, but it was supposed to announce the return of Rare, who was of the former king of console FPSes. Honestly, I can't really list off a bunch of specific problems because I returned it the day I bought it. It was archaic, unpolished, clunky, and ugly. The graphics weren't even noticeably better than Halo 2's. Had it not been for the surprisingly solid Call of Duty 2, there wouldn't've been any reason to own an Xbox 360 for the first year of its existence. Oh, and seriously, what is with the redesign of Joanna Dark's character model?

6. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite games of all time and remains my favorite RPG. When Bioware decided to turn the sequel over to Obsidian, I was understandably nervous. Turns out my fears were completely justified. The game just felt like it had no soul. Like the developers just didn't have any passion for the Star Wars universe. The story felt empty, the characters were uninteresting, and your character got too powerful too quickly, so the game was too easy. It was impressive technically, but the experience just felt hollow.

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
I've never seen a developer get so cocky as to blatantly remove functions that gamers wanted, and then scoffed at their complaints. PC gamers like dedicated servers? Well, screw you, you don't get them because their stupid. Xbox gamers like party chat? F that, we're taking that away, too. May your Modern Warfare sessions echo with the prepubescent screams of nine year-olds. On top of that, there's the whole knifing issue, the terrible maps, the incoherent single-player, and infinite grenade launcher rounds. This game was so close to being the best online shooter ever made, but IW got out of control.

4. Twisted Metal III
Twisted Metal 2 was awesome. Then, 989 Studios took over for the sequel, and it was just terrible in every way. That's about all there is to it.




3. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
I don't I've ever been more excited for a game's release as I was for this game's (maybe Melee). Metroid Prime is my favorite game of all time, but its sequel was a huge let down. First off, let's just forget that I was actually excited for the multiplayer, which ended up being little more than a afterthought. The first Prime was incredibly atmospheric. Echoes was half purple. Half of the game was spent in a parallel, dark version of the planet where everything was an ugly purple. The enemies here looked like they were handcrafted by a 4 year-old, and for some reason it was necessary for the player to take damage in this world when outside of protective light bubbles. Traveling to the dark version of the planet was not something one did with anticipation, but with agitation. Add to that that three of Samus' four beams required ammo, something that had never been a part of Metroid and hasn't since. As a result, instead of getting to wield fire, ice, or electricity at will, the player basically stuck to the boring old power beam and saved the light and dark beams for boss fights. The game wasn't exactly terrible, but it's just so much worse than its predecessor.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV
This is the only game on this list that seems to be universally acclaimed by reviewers (Modern Warfare 2 had good initial reviews, but it quickly fell out of favor), and I'll never understand why. Is it because of the convoluted, meandering story line? The annoying incomprehensible accents? The impossible-to-drive vehicles? The clunky aiming and running controls? The God-awful cover mechanic? The blatant disregard for checkpoints? The constant pestering of in-game characters? The confusing world map? The creepy character models? The boring side missions and mini games? Niko's inability to buckle a seat belt? The absence of tanks? The fact that at no point during the entire 90 mission long campaign was game fun? I'm tellin' ya, I just don't get it. They took away everything that was fun about Vice City and expanded on everything that was annoying about it. Ever wish they went down a more Vice City-esque path? Go play Saints Row 2.

1. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
And here we have the inspiration for this entire list. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one of the most surprisingly good games of the last generation. Hell, it was great, and even won some Game of the Year awards. It started the whole parkour game thing, and the level design puts Assassin's Creed II to shame. Sure, the game was entirely linear, but it worked well that way. The Sands of Time also had an incredibly moving story about lost love, and the ending was pretty gut-wrenching (but still very good). The Prince was also a very well-crafted character who was very likable (which is very rare for an action game character). He had a softer side, but could kick ass when necessary. The problem is that while The Sands of Time was critically acclaimed, it sell as well as, say, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. So for the sequel, Ubisoft decided that the parkour platforming needed to take a back seat to the combat, and that the prince needed to be more of a badass. So, in the opening sequence to this sequel to an extremely tasteful game, the Prince is on some ship in the middle of a storm, doing battle with some "bitch" in a metal thong. See that America? The Prince swears now! He's so much cooler. So instead of trying to regain his lost love, he's running around killing random people and forcin' out swear words at every turn. I fuckin' love swearing as much as the next guy, but it was just so out of place here. There are games on this list that were worse sequels to better games, but no other game on this list completely bastardized everything the original stood for like Warrior Within.

--Chilly P