In the beginning, the player is greeted with a flashback/narrative sequence, meant to fill players new to the franchise in on the events of the original Assassin’s Creed. However, the first improvement shows itself before the game even begins, simply with the menu screen. The first game was simple and straightforward enough: “Press X to begin.” However, this often left me wondering what would happen if I wanted to start a new game. Would it overwrite my existing game? Did I need to start it under a different profile? Was I even allowed to? It’s very comforting to see three save slots when starting a new game in Assassin’s Creed 2, though I do have to ask, “Why only three?”

The flashback goes into a good deal of detail about the previous game, something I wish games like Gears of War 2 did, but we can probably assume this is because the mixed press surrounding the original Assassin’s Creed prevented many from playing it. I might even go so far as to say that this recap could suffice for anyone who didn’t play the original, as the plot was a little difficult to follow or – at times – find.

Fly Ezio, fly. Fear not the water like your ancestors did!

After being filled in, the player is shown a wall with cryptic writing on it. As with the first game, there are plenty of easter eggs to be found here, most notable of which is a reference to Quetzacotl, which leads me to believe the next game will be set in the Mayan empire. However, there are plenty of straws to grasp at, with theories ranging from WWII to present day.

A bloody birth, quick escape, lots of swearing, and comically tragic fight sequence later, we are finally brought to what we’ve been waiting for: The Animus 2.0 (the device which allows Desmond to relive the memories of his ancestors). There have been a significant number of upgrades to the system, and more than just a little bit of mischievous tinkering from the mysterious “Subject 16,” who has a secret to reveal to Desmond through a series of (surprisingly fun) encryption puzzles.

Upon entering the Animus, we finally get to see Assassin’s Creed 2 in all its glory, and with all its flaws (which are admittedly few).

The Good:

• Holy crap, there’s an actual plot, complete with character development! In a story that borrows slightly from Romeo and Juliet, we see (and play) the story of Ezio, as he goes from womanizing troubled teen to a man driven by vengeance, to assassin. The story, while not exactly heart breaking, is quite compelling.
• While being chased by the guards, climbing rooftops and leaping from flagpole to flagpole, I reached the river which runs directly through the town. Remembering my experience in the original Assassin’s Creed, I began to get nervous – Altair, while a badass assassin, was unable to swim. Not only that, but it seemed just touching water meant instant death. On a whim, and with nowhere else to go, I jumped. To my enjoyment, Ezio began moving his arms in a motion not completely dissimilar to a breaststroke. Not only that, but diving under the water can be used to break line-of-sight with the guards.
• More options as an assassin: you can now throw money as a distraction, buy poisons, and throw smoke bombs. You can fight with a sword, a dagger, and not one but TWO hidden blades (Double face stab? Yes, please). You have more mission types, though some of them do feel like slightly re-skinned versions of the old ones.
• The world is more massive and beautiful than the first. Day/night cycles and highly detailed textures bring the massive cities to life.
• The combat has seen some improvements. While all your favorite moves are still there, you now also have the ability to disarm and use your opponents’ weapons. Yes, an assassin is trained in the use of all weapon types.

The Bad:

• As mentioned above, more mission types doesn’t exactly mean more mission types. However, there are more than in the first game, so it’s an improvement.
• Free running is still a little less than smooth. After playing a game like Mirror’s Edge, Ezio just feels clumsy.
• The accents are pretty bad. Every character sounds like a reject from the Super Mario Bros. voice casting calls.
• This game suffers from a common malady of the modern console game: DLC hell. Already, there are 3 different DLC packs available (2 dependent on where you bought the game from and a third unlockable through Ubisoft’s latest experiment, Uplay), making it difficult to get the full game right off the bat. There may be more DLC planned down the road, which may not be a bad thing, assuming the core game has a decent amount of content.

The Neutral:

• There is a lot of history in this game. At times, it almost feels like a walking tour of Renaissance Italy, with all of the contextual database entries that pop up as you pass landmarks. This really helps to flesh out the world, and make you at least feel somewhat educated as you stab peoples’ faces.

I haven’t completed this game yet, and hope not to for a while. Without multiplayer and no DLC yet, I’m hoping to draw this one out as long as possible. However, based on these early experiences, my suggestion is to go out and buy Assassin’s Creed 2 ASAP. It definitely addresses all of the issues the first game had, and managed to throw in a few extra things to boot. If I can get 20 hours of gameplay out of this one without needing to drop more cash on DLC, I’ll be a happy camper. Something tells me I’ll be getting way more than that, though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Assassin’s Creed 2 released Tuesday, November 17 for PC, XBox 360 and Playstation 3

In the next two years we will see both of these franchises reborn in the MMO genre. Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic will immerse players in their respective space faring genre of science fiction and fantasy. How will they do? Which MMO will crush the other in ratings and subscribers? Or, will both suffer the same fate as the 6-year old Star Wars Galaxies?

Let’s start with making some comparisons. The gameplay, first and foremost, is where the answer to longevity will rest. How do these games play? Here’s a brief description of what is known about the two games, or at least what I could find. If anyone has more information, feel free to leave a comment or toss an email and I’ll append it to the article.

Star Trek Online has been stated to be roughly 60% Space gameplay and 40% ground. This will be one of the few games to allow a player to fly through space and engage in 3^rd person action gameplay. Ship controls have been described as tactical; space combat is about thinking and out-witting your opponents, similar to battles we see the Enterprise engage in. Ground combat is more action packed, like Champions Online or Mass Effect (though, there isn’t any “cover” mechanic that we’ve been told about).

Gameplay isn’t completely about combat, either. Plenty of Star Trek Online is about exploration, discovery, diplomacy, and investigation. There’s also crew management; the player doesn’t just control his or her Captain. They also manage a bridge crew of unique characters and a nameless crew of redshirts that man stations across the ship. Ships can be visually and mechanically modified to suit a variety of needs and 3 career paths outline the specializations of player Captains. Finally, the game isn’t based off of leveling, but skills ( like Ultima Online) and rank obtained with the Federation or Klingon Empire.

In direct comparison, Star Wars: The Old Republic has no space flight (yet). While battles and adventures can take place on ships, there is no player control or influence on the ship movement. The gameplay is more compared to that of Mass Effect, Champions Online, or even World of Warcraft. There is no auto-attack, however, as many MMO veterans might be familiar with. Each class has specific abilities that can be used on separate cool downs (WoW-esque) to complete the player objective. The player objective is a big part in SW: The Old Republic.

The game consists of two factions; The Empire (Sith) and the Republic (Jedi). Each has 5 unique classes based off of a common and popular Star Wars character. Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Jedi Knights, Sith Warriors, and Troopers have been announced, so far. Each has their own opening storyline that eventually draws them into the main story arc.

Bioware’s focus has been to create an intense and immersive storyline that players can get involved in. This will be one of the first MMOs to have decision making. Dialogue choices are more like single player RPGs, causing different reactions and opening up different aspects of the story (or closing them off, if you’re not careful). To add to the immersion, the entire game contains voice acting. There are no dialogue exchanges that won’t have vocals, says Bioware. Scenes will be extra cinematic, making the players really feel like the center of attention.

The environments are just as different as the gameplay for each game. Cryptic has worked hard to make Star Trek Online feel like Star Trek. To achieve this, there are no “mobs”. A mob is basically your generic random enemy you find running around Elwynn forest or Millennium City. You know those boars or random gangsters? There you go. Rather, space is exactly what you expect it to be; unless you’re engaged in a fleet battle or orbiting a heavily populated planet, it’s empty and beautiful. Random encounters are present, however, but it has been said most require more than one player. A Borg Invasion, a derelict space ship, or a Klingon task force all are among these random encounters. Some involve combat, some require beaming into an instance, and some require neither. Some will hunt you and some will flee from you.

SW: The Old Republic is more traditional. Running around the planet surfaces or building interiors will unveil a host of random, respawning enemies to gun down with your blasters. Even the intense story arcs and instances are filled with expendable troopers and criminals. The action style of the gameplay, however, fits this model. Being able to use cover as a Smuggler or ‘force push’ a squad of troopers is part of the Star Wars Experience.

Graphically, the games are on equal footing. Both have really nailed the franchises down to the smallest detail. Your ship name displays on the saucer of the Prometheus class vessel and the stylized realism of SW: The Old Republic looks like the Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network. While for some Star Wars fans this might be a bad thing, I’m sure it’ll grow on them, just as cell-shaded Toon Link did for Zelda fans.

The final bit I’d like to mention is voice acting. Voice acting is a key part in gaming in this era. Some people won’t even touch a game that doesn’t have voice acting. Is there laziness in reading? I don’t know, but I do know that SW: The Old Republic will boast a fully voice acted experience. Every bit of dialogue, from “Hello” to “Destroy that battleship before I choke you like Vader” is done with high quality voice acting.

Star Trek Online has been quite about their voice acting until recently. In an article, it was stated that there is definitely a good amount of it in the game, but more of it is there to enhance the experience of the gameplay. Missions and long dialogues are likely still meant to be read. Their focus has been on the Bridge Officers. If your shields go down during combat, your Engineering officer will go “We’ve lost shield, cap’n!” and your science officer will announce, “Perhaps we can try a tachyon burst direct at their warp core, Captain”. We’ll see how this pans out. It could turn out really good or really annoying. Let’s hope they add a “Bridge Officer Frequency” slider in the audio options!

Well, there it is. These two games are about as different as the franchises themselves. One seeks to redefine the space simulation MMO while maintaining its franchise’s roots, while the other follows a traditional system with a revolutionary amount of story involvement from the players. Which will prevail?

I, personally, will be going for Star Trek Online. I have been dying for good space simulation MMO type game for years and Eve just wasn’t my style. Star Wars: The Old Republic has too much WoW-ism for me. Whenever I play a game with “WoW-ism”, I end playing WoW a month later. Star Trek Online and its nontraditional MMO gameplay will be a nice change of pace. What do you think? Who’s going to play what, and why? Comment!

Live long and prosper/May the force be with you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out Part 1 if you haven’t already. Below is the transcript plus extra bits for reading.

Immediately after the release of Fallout 2, Black Isle Studios began working on another sequel to the series. Interplay at the time had just gone public on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange and their shares began to take a nosedive after several years of reporting loses. Even though Interplay published some great games, they were purportedly spending boatloads of cash on projects like Star Trek: The Secret of Vulcan Fury,a project I was eagerly awaiting, having seen a preview in PCGamer magazine. Fallout 3 along with many other upcoming projects were cancelled.

Interplay was funding its projects through credit agreements, game sales, and loans from the head of the company himself, Brian Fargo. They never kept much cash at the ready, and once troubles grew out of their hands in 1999, Titus Interactive, a French based production company, acquired a majority interest in Interplay. In 2001, Brian Fargo, the original founder, left the company and Titus Interactive’s own Herve Caen took over as CEO. A deal with Vivendi Universal was signed to publish Interplays games, giving a much needed lifeline to the troubled company.

Black Isle Studios returned to making Fallout 3, codenaming their production Van Buren. Details began to emerge and fans salivated at the thought of another game in the franchise.  The game would feature 3D graphics, using the Jefferson engine developed for Baldur’s Gate 3, and continued the Fallout storyline in the American southwest in locations such as Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. The player would have started off as a prisoner thrust into war between factions of the New California Republic (featured in Fallout 2) and the Brotherhood of Steel. It also featured a mad scientist named Victor Presper bent on using a Ballistic Missile Satellite to destroy what was left of the post-nuclear world. Supposedly at the end of the game, the player would have to choose where the satellite would target, something very familiar to players of Bethesda’s Fallout 3 DLC, Broken Steel, but we’ll get to that later.

Even though a good percentage of Van Buren was complete, on December 8th, 2003 Interplay cancelled it and closed Black Isle Studios. The troubles had escalated even with Vivendi Universal picking up publishing duties. The next year, Interplay was slapped with an eviction notice from its landlord, and shut down because of non-payment to some of their employees. Somehow though, Interplay survived moving to a smaller office space, possibly one with a lower overhead.

The Dream that turned into a Nightmare

Years later in 2007 a leaked version of the Van Buren tech demo was released on the internet through No Mutants Allowed, a hardcore Fallout fan site. The demo contained a small incomplete tutorial level from the game, giving fans of the series a “what could have been” look at the cancelled game. Although the game was to feature real-time combat  and turn-based combat like that of Fallout Tactics, a requirement Interplay insisted on, the demo sadly only has real-time mode. Interplay also insisted on a cooperative multi-player mode.Once loaded up, a character is created in the updated creation system, and the player’s character starts off in an unnamed town during the Great War somewhere in the Midwest Commonwealth. Your character is escorted by a Corporal of the 4th Infantry Division through the war torn streets of the town, fighting against communist insurgents, as you make your way to a Vault located at the end of the level.

Playing the tech demo, fans easily saw the potential Black Isle Studios’ Fallout 3 had. The graphics, even though most were placeholders, were spot on echoing the atmosphere of the rest of the series. The tech demo is very buggy with almost all options missing (including the female character’s top), but it is great to see for anyone who is a fan of the Fallout series. It is hard to say how well the game would have succeeded with the new engine in its final release, but maybe if there was some alternate universe in which Black Isle’s Fallout 3 was finished, I am sure the Fallout fans residing there would have been more then happy with the final outcome then what occurred here, back in our dimension.

Going back to 2004, after cancelling Fallout 3, Interplay sold the rights to Bethesda Softworks, the makers of another successful RPG series, The Elder Scrolls. Bethesda at that time was in production of the fourth game in their TES series named Oblivion. Bethesda announced they would be starting production of Fallout 3 immediately but it was speculated that production didn’t fully start until Oblivion was finished. Leading up to Fallout 3’s release date, fans of the series were split on whether Bethesda would give the series a faithful update.

Bittersweet Candy

Eventually in 2008, Bethesda’s Fallout 3 was released for the PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. The game featured the same engine (Gamebryo) as Oblivion, and it was easy for fans to see that it had less in common than what they were used to in a Fallout title. It was transformed into a real-time RPG First Person Shooter, and no longer exhibited many of the traits fans were used to in the previous installments. To fans, it looked like a big budget Oblivion total conversion, but you could tell Bethesda tried very hard to make the story and atmosphere resemble as closely as possible to the original games.

You start at the very beginning of your character’s life, literally being born on screen, from your own point of view, you emerge from your mother’s womb. You are introduced to your dad, voiced by Liam Neeson, who through a series of questions lays down the basic name and appearance of your character. What follows is a small tutorial chapter inside the vault you inhabit from a small child to an adult, choosing your character’s skills and traits along the way. The first few times you play this section it is refreshing, but after awhile of replay the linearity of the vault sequence starts to show. Most of your choices are sometimes redundant too, as after your escape you are displayed a screen giving you a chance to undue what you previously selected.

Once you have broken free into the Capital wastelands, the choice is yours to venture wherever you choose. Although you are pointed in the direction of the main quest, to find your father, the game let’s you traverse to any number of locations. The game’s map is gigantic, and with exception to downtown Washington D.C. , is pretty much free of the usual obstacles to keep a player from freely traversing the area.  The graphics are immense, rendering the post apocalyptic landscape with numerous amounts of rubble and debris, and although I would have liked to see the long expansive deserts of the American southwest, you have to admit Bethesda did a perfect job in bringing the environment to life. The only real problem regarding graphics is the color palette, which never really leaves the boundaries of its dusty grays, yellows, and greens.

The story and main quest take a little time to actually get moving, and for a bit is very entertaining, but after a few seminal moments, feels a little dull, especially for the Fallout series. Most of the time you will be preoccupied with the side quests, which too after awhile get a bit tedious and feel like basic fetch this item, kill that guy, kind of missions. There are only certain times when you can actually try different routes using your charisma and speech unlike it’s predecessors, and even then they feel a little limited. There are excellent payoffs during certain quests early in the game, most notably if you choose to play an evil character. The dialogue is good, but not necessarily on par all the time, with some characters sounding phoned in, but nevertheless better then Oblivion. The character’s in many circumstances aren’t very memorable, since they all share a weird likeness in the uncanny valley.

Anyone up for some Ice Skating?

Using the same engine as TES: Oblivion brought Fallout 3 most of the same good and bad points that Oblivion had. The interface was greatly updated from previous Fallout games, to give us everything in a seamless PipBoy transition, but suffers from console disease brought on from Oblivion’s simplistic inventory and map. TES 3: Morrowind had a very intricate interface for PC, and felt like an advanced RPG, but when Bethesda updated it to Oblivion and the console, a lot went the way of the dodo.  As far as the action goes, Bethesda tried to appeal to Fallout fans by incorporating the V.A.T.S. targeting system. Entering into this mode targets a nearby enemy, and using your action points let’s you choose which body part will be the focus of your attack. Adding in this option helps the game play, as much of the action in Fallout is clumsy, but once you have used V.A.T.S. around a few hundred times throughout the game, and your character has become god-like, watching the gory slow motion deaths get’s a little tedious.

What Bethesda did right is give the player a giant map to explore like in their previous TES series, and create a story of his/her own. Being able to just explore a game without any purpose other then that of discovery is something that I longed to do in my childhood before many sandbox style games were introduced. Sometimes I wish they would even forgo a main quest line for a more open ended experience. During your adventures, the PipBoy interface also gives you limited radio stations to tune into, giving you a break from well produced wind sounds and event timed soundtrack. You could also stumble upon radio transmissions useful in finding locations or quests.

Throughout the game the player will pick up numerous items, some will be useless at first, but almost all of them have a use at some point. There are tons of weapons to find, or create, expanding possibilities in combat, but again once the player has gone through most of them, they will probably end up picking their favorite and using it again and again (ahem…plasma rifle). There are so many objects in the game that during the first half you’ll be picking up all of them and schlepping them back to your house or apartment just to watch your collection grow. I would usually pick up unique objects, then store them in appropriate containers, and end up forgetting about them.

Bethesda could have spent more time developing some of the towns, as they felt much smaller then those in previous Fallout games, but they had much more on their radiated plate. In it’s first release Fallout 3 contained numerous bugs. Just like the first Fallout, some quests were incomplete, and the non-linear approach sometimes backfired. The game physics would also get a bit wonky during certain times, throwing corpses across the screen like mashed up ragdolls, or letting the player slip through the ground and become stuck between geometry. After some patches though, most of the problems were fixed, but Fallout 3 still suffered from an ending that left a sour taste in a lot of fans’ mouths.

In the next year Bethesda would roll out five add-ons as downloadable content, pricing each at ten dollars.  The first up was Operation Anchorage, and at first look, seemed like an exciting concept, but once I was able to play through it, I found it was the worst of the bunch. It is more focused on action then RPG elements, something Fallout 3 was just hanging on by a thread through much of the vanilla game. The story and setting are great, taking place inside a simulation of the war in Anchorage, Alaska. The levels are somewhat linear, and much of the stealth game play is wasted. The only prize at the end of the frozen tundra are some weapons, armor, and items that make the rest of the game even easier then it already is.

The second DLC to be released was The Pitt. It featured one of the best storylines and environment of the downloadable content, forcing the player into tough decisions, even though the outcomes and rewards were similar in the end. It had the Mad Max 3: Thunderdome feel being able to explore a rundown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that was controlled by raiders. My only problem was I wish it could have been a little longer, but the ride was well worth it, rewarding the player with an ammo supply and interesting weaponry. The Pitt was sadly released with a boatload of bugs for the Xbox 360 version, and was pulled from Xbox Live until Bethesda was able to iron them out.

The third DLC was Broken Steel, which opened up the end game for the player to continue the main quest, helping the Brotherhood of Steel against remnants of the Enclave that were scattered throughout the Capitol Wasteland. This DLC was a must as it changed the level cap from 20 to 30, adding as usual more weapons, armor, items, and perks. It provided some interesting plot developments and some memorable moments, like Mirelurk campfires down by the river.

The fourth and largest of the DLCs released, was Point Lookout, giving the player a whole state park in Maryland to explore. There are plenty of locations and side quests, and also hillbillies and tribals to fight. The mood and atmosphere is up there with The Pitt, with a twisted storyline that even features a drug induced dreamy sequence.

The final DLC to be released was Mothership Zeta. Finally players got a chance to board an alien spacecraft, get their hands on advanced weaponry (like there wasn’t enough already), and live the dream of fighting from deck to deck against alien hordes, something  I’m sure Travis Walton wish he could have done. Although it is again an action oriented DLC, the new textures and environment, along with the story, make it stand out a lot more then Operation Anchorage.

Of course, hardcore fans upset with any of the features in Fallout 3, can download Bethesda’s free editor, named appropriately after a Fallout 2 plot device. The G.E.C.K. was released shortly after Fallout 3 hit store shelves, and has already spawned many modifications focused on balancing game play, or adding in elements some felt were missing. Bethesda knew they wanted to keep fans busy between game releases, and they have done the same with past games in their Elder Scrolls series. If you have some time on your hands, you can pick up the G.E.C.K. Fallout 3 editor here from the official website, which also contains tutorials on using the program.

The Best Oblivion TC Available!

Now that all of the DLCs have been released and featured in the Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition, it’s time to look towards the future of the Fallout franchise, past all the legal troubles of intellectual property between Interplay and Bethesda. There has been a number of games proposed, like Bethesda’s Fallout 4, Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas, and Interplay’s Project V13. They all have me excited, and worried at the same time for the franchise. Where will they take us? I hope to one day make a Part 3 featuring them, but until then, I would like to thank the Fallout community over at No Mutants Allowed for their support and critical response to my articles.

Download the Van Buren Tech Demo

This opened the door to Nintendo securing rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey home video game console. It was in 1977 Nintendo hired Shigeru Miyamoto, a student product developer. His release of the Donkey Kong arcade game in 1981 finally turned the tables for the Nintendo company, precluding the gigantic success of Game & Watch and their first real video game console, the NES, in 1985.

Nintendo is now the longest surviving video game console manufacturer to date and even own the majority of the Seattle Mariners. The company never truly lost touch with its original product, however, and they still host contact bridge tournaments in Japan to this day, referred to as the Nintendo Cup.

Do you have an old game you wish you could play again? Is there a specific title you want to see live again, with today’s High Definition graphics and audio? What if The Dig or Quest For Glory was redone with motion capture animations and a 1440×900 resolution? Imagine if X-Com UFO Defense had Mass Effect graphics. The wind blows gently at the crop of the farm, smoke billowing over the battlefield from the downed alien UFO.  A dream, right?

Some of us will get that dream. In the next year or two, certain series we thought died with the ashes of successful developers will live again. Some of these series have already been revived through High Definition graphics and digital distribution. Publishers are starting to notice that reviving an old franchise is an act their budget can handle. Veterans return to the IP and new generation gamers are introduced to it. Here are my top revivals, the ones I heard about that made my nerd glands salivate.

Homeworld

I remember playing Homeworld on my family PC when I was 14. That was 10 years ago. If you head over to the Relic website, you can catch a piece of this action. Last month was the original Homeworld’s 10^th anniversary and Relic released a history and free multiplayer demo experience.  Their website is completely decked out with Homeworld information and announcements – but all for Homeworld 1. The original. I thought this was about revivals?

Let’s go back to September 2007. That’s 2 years ago. Relic and THQ acquire the rights from Sierra for the Homeworld IP. The universe is back at home. Relic/THQ spent money on that. THQ, despite their greatness, publish video games. They want returns on their investments.

We come 2 years forward to present day and two out four of Relic development teams are working on unannounced titles. Two years is about how long it takes to get a solid game concept to the table and start production. Homeworld is plastered all over the Relic website. New wallpapers, a multiplayer revival, a history and interview from one of Relic’s top developers. What’s the point, what am I getting at?!

They’re preparing everyone. Relic and THQ have made a brilliant marketing move for the upcoming Homeworld 3 (No, it has not been announced yet, it is still unofficial). They’re planting the seeds of excitement by showing everyone how amazing Homeworld was. They’re pulling people back in so the veteran gamer turns to the young gamer and says, “Get this free demo, we’re playing, trust me – you’ll love this”.

When they’re ready, they’ll plaster Homeworld 3 announcements on their website. Instead of reactions saying, “Homeworld 3? I never heard of Homeworld!”, they’ll likely be hearing, “Oh, that’s that awesome demo I just played! Sweet!”

Be ready. It’s coming.

Master of Magic

Magic: The Gathering mixed with Civilization. Sound too good to be true? Well, once the DOS 2X game Master of Magic stopped working on modern machines, it was.

Master of Magic, the classic.

Master of Magic allowed you to create and customize a unique Wizard that led a unique (and again, customizable) fantasy race. You were placed in a world that was filled with dungeons, towers, treasure, caves, lairs, resources and a parallel magical clone called Myrror, accessible only through magical ruins. Combat was similar to a game I’ll be mentioning shortly – tactical, isometric view. You didn’t build one unit; you typically built whole regiments at a time. You had heroes who leveled, channeled spells and could be equipped (did I mention you could create custom magic items?).

It was from a time where “bold” was a good quality for a game, not a risky one. Does it sound great? Do you want to play it? Too good to be true? Enter Elemental.

Elemental: War of Magic is the spiritual successor to Master of Magic. Everything I said, Elemental has. Elemental takes it to the next level. With a Galactic Civilizations 2 level of unit customization and a Spore-like network, Elemental will bring all 2X games to another level. With AI coded by the formidable evil genius, Brad Wardell, expect an AI experience even more incredible than Galactic Civilizations 2.

Elemental starts you off with a custom made sovereign. That’s you, an all powerful channeler who can harvest and utilize magical essence to create cities and cast powerful spells. This channeler is your leader – should he be lost, you lose the game. To give you an idea of what a channeler is, imagine Sauron sweeping whole divisions of an army out of his way like a French maid with a feather duster. According to reports, the tactical combat portion is being worked to give us that feel – it’s possible you might relive that very image.

The art style of this game is noteworthy as well. I always praised how zooming out of Galactic Civilizations 2 gave me an awesome Galactic Map. It made me feel like I was in a ship, staring down at a flat screen view of my empire. Elemental gets a cloth map. Zoom in; you can see people moving around your city in a cel-shaded fantasy painting inspired graphical entrée. Zoom out; you get a cloth map with dotted lines and sketches representing cities. Small chess pieces symbolize units. It’s clever. It also looks freaking cool.

The final aspect of this game I have to mention is development. Stardock’s smarter than the average developer and they’ve shown this by the Closed Beta phase of Elemental. The game has no graphics, essentially. No polygons. No texture filtering or dynamic lighting. It’s a game with no exciting visuals. Why?

They want it to be fun, rather than pretty. Until testers report that the game is amazing without graphics, Brad Wardell and his team won’t be activating their potent graphical engine. That’s damn awesome. Props to these guys and their dedication to providing a real gaming experience for their fans.

Keep your eyes on it. Elemental: War of Magic.

X-COM

Let’s create a unique base management experience. Please countries for funding, train soldiers for specific roles in squads, research new and salvaged technology, arm fighters for interception alien spaceships. Now, add in a chess-like turn based squad combat system with fog of war and destroyable terrain and objects. Throw in the fear of the alien in the darkness and the anger when psionic weapons mind control your heavy weapons guy and he launches a rocket at your squad. Add in the thing of nightmares – Hidden Movement.

We're here to kick alien ass and chew bubble gum. But we're all out of aliens...

X-COM: Enemy Unknown. X-COM: Terror From The Deep. X-COM… is getting another sequel?

X-COM was an amazing series. After the second game, the apple started to fall farther from the tree. X-COM Apocalypse had a real time combat system, more like the UFO series (UFO:Aftermath, Aftershock, and Afterlight). X-COM rights become sketchy here as companies release failed designs such as X-COM Interceptor and Enforcer. Take-Two acquired the rights a couple of years ago.

Although a rumor, the lead designer of Bioshock is said to be on the project. While the project itself was confirmed by a series of reports, whether or not Ken Levine has a hand in it remains as unknown as what type of game will this be. Will it follow the first 2 and their unique experience, or will it embrace the new age of real time squad combat? Will it have no squads at all and be a first person shooter? Maybe they’ll try the first person squad shooter that Microprose began developing and never actually released (this game somehow evolved into Enforcer).

Time will tell. This is a revival with little to no info, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exciting. Keep your eyes, peeled, fellow gamers!

End turn.

Take-Two’s turn.

Hidden Movement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Below is the complete transcript plus a few extra tidbits.

The Cold War showdown of the 1950s gave science fiction a question it has always tried to answer: How would humanity survive the man made apocalypse brought on by it’s arsenal of nuclear weapons? Since my early childhood I have had the peculiar urge to be hopeful of an impending nuclear apocalypse. Being exposed to many of the science fiction films from the 70’s and 80’s, I have longed to live the dream, or rather nightmare, of the radiated deserts and abandoned cities. Alone in the world, wondering the wastes, foraging for radiated food, hoping to find some refuge to make my own, it was a concept ripe with adventure and terror. The post-nuclear world seemed to contain certain characteristics like vast deserts, dilapidated towns, roaming gangs of thugs, radiated ghouls, dog companions, underground bomb shelters, and sawed off shotguns. It was only time before we were able to live out the fantasy in a simulation.

Games had really good box art back then...

It all started in 1988 with Wasteland, published by Electronic Arts.  It featured EGA graphics and was released on the Commodore 64, Apple II, and DOS. The game was set in the post-apocalyptic southwestern U.S. and the player controlled a party of Rangers exploring the wastes. It was a pretty advanced RPG for its time, giving the player a nonlinear experience not found in many RPGs during the late 80s.  The game was very dynamic, allowing the player to overcome an obstacle in a variety of ways, based on the parties’ stats. It was also one of the first RPG games to introduce a persistent world.

The game came on two 5 1/4 floppies, and the manual advised the player to back up these discs, since the game would save information directly back onto them. In 1988, hard drives were pretty rare for gaming, and for such a complex game, it needed to save information somewhere so you could continue your quests later. This meant that if something wrong were to occur during the save process, then the entire disc would be corrupted.  A manual was also included. Throughout the game, the user was instructed to read corresponding paragraphs in the manual, while saving space on the disks, and acting as an old school DRM of sorts. Some of the paragraphs included a false storyline about going to Mars as a way of confusing those who chose to read the manual without playing the game. Similarly, there were also paragraphs written to mislead curious readers who skipped ahead.

The game is still fun to this day, and I would suggest that anyone who is a fan of old school RPGs to try it out. Initially, it is forgiving since many characters go unconscious when out of health, but later in the game, enemies become exceedingly more difficult. When all members of a party die, an end screen appears, followed by a DOS prompt.  On reload, however, you begin where you ended, a fantastic feature that is lacking in some games even today. There isn’t much sound effects nor music, so it is best played with your own choice of post-apocalyptic score.

Wasteland garnered spots on many top ten lists. Publishers, Electronic Arts and newly formed Interplay, which was founded by ex EA employees, were both interested in making successors to Wasteland. Electronic Arts started fresh, with a new development team and engine, for a follow-up entitled Fountain of Dreams, and Interplay began development with the Wasteland engine on a game called Meantime. Fountain of Dreams did poorly and Meantime was cancelled because the 8-bit EGA graphics market was being crushed by games like Ultima VII featuring 256 color VGA graphics.  It wasn’t until nine years later, that Interplay finally saw their “spiritual” successor to Wasteland.

Fallout was very unique for its time.

The game was called Fallout and was developed by newcomer Black Isle Studios (although they were not formally named till Fallout 2). It featured many of the same concepts as Wasteland, but because Electronic Arts still owned the rights to Wasteland, so much of the story and name had to be changed. The game was still set in the post-apocalyptic wastelands, but it took place in a retro future with a 1950’s motif. The player controlled a character sent out from his underground Vault  13 into the Southern Californian wastes to find a water computer chip for the vault’s water recycling system. The game was originally going to incorporate Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS system, pretty much the standard for pen and paper RPGs, and they even incorporated this in the game early on. They went as far to make promotional materials featuring the GURPS system, but because the game was so violent the deal fell through (after lawyers also found flaws in the initial contract) and they instead created the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Every character in the game was governed by the this system, which stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. This system along with Karma points, special traits, and perks, decided how the player interacted with the NPCs.

What made Fallout unique for it’s time was the ability for the player to respond to dilemmas in the game. If you did something good, like taking out a local gangster you would earn good Karma points, or if you did something bad like become a slaver you earned bad Karma points. This pretty much made the game extremely replayable as there was a variety of different outcomes and multiple endings to the game.

Your character’s intelligence also decided how well you interacted with NPCs, something you wouldn’t normally find in other RPGs. For instance, your dialogue would be a series of grunts and unintelligible  gibberish if your intelligence was less than 4 points. NPCs would sometimes take pity on you, and others would totally ignore you, making side quests almost impossible unless you had Mentats, a drug that improved your intelligence and perception. Drugs played a large part in Fallout’s universe. Instead of potions or spells like in many other RPGs of the time, Fallout incorporated drugs as a way to temporarily increase your characters main stats, but take them with caution as your character would feel side effects and could potentially become an addict.

Your map, quest log, and other options were handled through your handy Vault-Tec Pip-Boy. It made the game’s interface feel much more in tune with the game world, and provided all the information you would need. Traveling in the map screen, you would stumble upon all sorts interesting encounters, like fights already occurring, caravans, dead bodies, and many of the game’s in-jokes and science fiction references. It made the game world more dynamic when traveling from town to town.

The game carried a hefty amount of ranged and melee weapons that tempted players to find their favorite throughout the game. My favorite has always been the plasma rifle. Burning or melting my enemy away leaving only a pile of flesh goo was so satisfying. The death animations were plentiful, lasers would cut people in half, shotguns or rifles would take out chunks of abdomens, and machine guns would rip away large pieces flesh before what was left would fall to the ground. This made the combat system very entertaining, though seeing your own character pulverized by an enemies’ combat shotgun was quite depressing.

All this violence almost made me forget about the combat system. During regular play, your character moved in real-time, and once you were ready to start fighting, or encountered enemies, the game would switch to a turn based system. During a fight, the amount of action points your character had, determined how far you could move, how many shots you could fire, and any other actions your character made. If you used a targeted attack on an opponent, you could choose to shoot at a specific part of their body, giving you more of a chance for a critical, a chance at disabling that part of their body. The game had a sadistic chess feel to it, especially when fighting more then 5 or so characters at a time. It also meant death could come quickly if a enemy was able to get a critical shot. That’s why it was sometimes helpful to have teammates.

Unlike Wasteland where you controlled a squad of rangers, Fallout gave you the option to travel alone or recruit teammates along the way during your quests. I usually had my player traveling solo through much of the game, since I always felt like I had to take care of anyone I brought with me. Teammates would frequently end up getting killed, and I would feel bad if I didn’t reload and try to save them. This was because you didn’t control their actions, only their equipment and development. Your teammates’ A.I. wasn’t the greatest and they would get in the way more often then not.

Fallout’s graphics were more then adequate, giving a great feel for the post apocalyptic retro theme it touted. Beyond the stats, items, weapons, and cosmetics, was a darkly humored story. Dialogue was at it’s best in the first two Fallout games, with great delivery by the actors doing the voice over work. Included in the cast was Ron Perlman, who narrates and provides the most notable quote from the series “War, war never changes.” The cast throughout the series also included Richard Dean Anderson, Tony Shalhoub, Richard Moll, David Warner, Jim Cummings, Charles Adler, Michael Dorn, Jeffery Jones, Malcolm McDowell, Liam Neeson, and many other talented voice actors.

Fallout introduced the Enclave as a new enemy.

After Fallout was released to much praise, picking up “The Best RPG of the Year” from Gamespot, Black Isle Studios was already underway in a sequel that followed very closely to it’s predecessor. Fallout 2 took place mostly in Northern California and Nevada and graphically was very similar to Fallout. You played the descendant of the vault dweller, your character from the first game, sent out as the chosen one of your tribe to retrieve a device called the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, also known as the G.E.C.K.. The sequel was released only a year later in 1998, letting Black Isle Studios focus on content and update many of the game engine’s bugs.

It gave fans of the first game a chance to relive the post-nuclear world with a bigger more diverse environment. It added larger towns, a reputation system, new weapons, enemies, and armor, and a car. Reputation added to the Karma system, and this showed how your character was perceived by the residents of individual towns. This was important as Fallout 2 incorporated quests that would extend beyond many of them.

Fallout and Fallout 2 also dealt with some risqué elements like prostitution and child killing. At that time there weren’t many mainstream games where you could become a porn star, or a “fluffer” for one, and contract a venereal disease. In the game was also the ability to target and eliminate children that you encountered, earning your character the child killer trait. The little buggers would usually die as the result of crossfire, making you carefully target your opponents in areas where residents inhabited. If you did receive the child killer trait for killing two or more kids, a group of bounty hunters would come after you. Subsequently, European release of both games were without the graphics and animations of children, leaving disembodied voices where the children once were.

Tactics was more of the same but with a real time twist!

Fallout 2 gained moderate success and Black Isle Studios looked to update the engine for Fallout 3. During development for Van Buren (Fallout 3’s codename) two spin offs of the Fallout series were released. Micro Forte developed Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, a game that put you in control of a Brotherhood of Steel initiate sent out on missions into the wastes. It added a few new ideas, one of which was real-time combat, something I wasn’t a big fan of using since I still had the option for turn based combat, but because there were so many enemies in each level, it would take forever to complete in turn based mode. It was easier switching to real time and rushing in with all your squad’s guns blazing. It is interesting that Tactics if preordered also came with a tabletop war game entitled Fallout: Warfare by Christopher Taylor that featured cutouts of art by the Tactics development artists.

The low point of the series.

The next game was Interplay’s own Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, the first console based exclusive Fallout game for Xbox and Playstation 2. It was more action oriented giving the player a top down view of their character, catering to the simple nature of quickly made console games. I didn’t get to play this, and I probably never will. We will just leave it at that.

Next time, when I return, we will look at Black Isle Studios’ Fallout 3 (Van Buren) tech demo, Bethesda’s Fallout 3, its DLCs, and the future of the Fallout series on Media Consumes Me’s History and Review.

Check out Part 2

You can download Wasteland at: Abandonline.com

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. That’s right, ladies and gents. We didn’t even take out Arthas yet and the next expansion is slated for a 2010 release. New features? Hold your breath:

New Alliance Race: Worgen – The human nation of Gilneas is infected with a condition that makes them all half-worgen, aka, werewolves. Racials traits include the ability to shift between human and worgen form, an innate sprint, passive damage increase, and bonus to skinning. The alliance gets a bestial race!

New Alliance Race: Goblins – About time, no? The Trolls and Orcs finally get the third greenskin brother to join their ranks. Passive bonuses to gold discounts and haste, each Goblin also comes fully equipped with a rocket belt that allows them to side jump and disengage enemies. Bonuses to alchemy!

Completely Overhauled Old World – That’s right. Darkshore is flooded, the barrens suffer a fissure that splits it into two zones, Mount Hyjal is under attack by the first World of Warcraft raid boss; Ragnaros! Grim Batol, Gilneas, and Uldum are all opened up and the subterranean continent of Deepholm is unveiled. Who lives in Deepholm?

Deathwing – The biggest, baddest dragon of Warcraft Lore has awakened and tore apart the world. Hence, the Cataclysm. Like Arthas and Illidan, Deathwing is the big, proverbial final boss of Cataclysm.

New Profession: Archaeology – Explore the ruins of the past world, before the Cataclysm. Unlock rare artifacts and glyphs to improve your character on a new path of progression, The Path of the Titans. Best part? It’s a secondary profession, like First Aid. Everyone gets it!

So, there you have news flash one, announced at Blizzcon this past weekend. Coming out next week, however, is a game of a completely different type of fantasy. The type of fantasy that filled cardboard boxes with comic books about super powered and super talented characters.

Champions Online. This isn’t just an announcement, this is a review. I had the privilege of experiencing the open beta and there’s quite a bit of game here to discuss. I’ll touch on four major points of the typical MMO for you; gameplay, longevity, customization, and “Is it a WoW-killer?”. That fourth one seems to be every developers dream. Let’s get to it!

The gameplay is phenomenal. The game is more action-based, so ability usage might be more easily compared to a game like Zelda or Diablo. I picked Zelda because a huge mechanic is the ability to block incoming attacks and icons that display above your enemies heads showing when they’re charging up a huge attack, giving you a chance to deflect and counter with a blast of your own! The gameplay is so action-packed that I need to tell you all the story of a demon.

My friend and I, both in the beta, found an item drop that gave us a quest to go to the top of a building at night. On this building, a demon was being summoned. We waited until nightfall and went to investigate. My teammates shot gun and grenade volley and knocked the demon off of the building, where I pulled out my laser sword and the two of us dove face first down to the sidewalk, still battling on the way down. It was truly epic. The environment, graphics, and sound effects pull you into your own comic book storyline.

The powers in the game feel like a collection of cards. Your selection is your hand and how you use them will determine how you perform. It’s a clever and intelligent design. No game is perfect, however.

The team-oriented gameplay takes the backseat until post level 20. For some, that’s a little too long (the standard has become the Deadmines at 15, now… so say the forums!). With only 40 levels at release, that is halfway through your progression, in theory. It also makes introducing the teamplay elements of healer, tank, and support a bit more obscure because everyone is playing the solo game to start. Easily fixed in the tutorial zone, I’m sure.

The UI is slow. It’s a great UI. Make no mistake that they included almost every successful WoW add-on as a feature of their UI (to give you an idea: Quest Helper, Dominos, Gatherer, ItemRack), but something about it is sluggish. When powers are used, there is almost always a delayed response and on occasion, no response. Interacts take multiple clicks to activate and, in my opinion, there’s not enough UI sound effects. In most MMOs, you hear a sound whenever you use something, use something that won’t work, or just hit a button. This UI is very quiet, as if it were designed for ninjas. More sound effects!

Longevity. I can see this game going a long time with the developer already stating that new powers and the like will be released in content patches for the life of the game. Heavy group and solo play at higher levels caters to both styles of gamers. A casual feel with an undertone of hardcore min and maxing availability again succeeds at pleasing a mixture of a player base. One server with every player leads to no complications like, “I’m on server X,” or “But I already got to 30 on this server!”, let alone forking over 25 dollars for a server transfer.

One big theme in this game is its customization. No game compares, I assure you. This game is more fun to customize than Spore (it even borrows some of the tech!). Costumes are saved as .jpgs that the game can break down and reload on any client, on any computer. Sound familiar? Here are some examples.

My Power Armor Knight:

My Alien Captive, freed during an invasion:

Power hues can be modified; emanation points can be changed from palm to fist, head to chest. Want to go Mega Man? Go ahead. Cyclops? Sure! The last thing this game does is something I honestly haven’t seen since Asheron’s Call–there are no classes. There are roles, of course. In group play, you want someone to heal and someone to tank. Two tanks will probably be very different from each other. One might be a vampire with regeneration and claws, while the other may be a suit of power armor wielding an energy sword and shield. A bold plan and, so far, well done on their part.

So, the final question is, does it kill WoW? Is this game a WoW killer?

Of course not. The concept of a WoW killer is childish in this day and age. Warhammer Online was banking on it and look how far that went. Warcraft is no longer just a game, it’s a subculture. It’s the Star Trek or Star Wars of this gaming generation. Four-year-old kids play with Thrall action figures and sixteen-year-olds read Warcraft novels. A Warcraft Magazine, I kid you not, is beginning its published life this coming year. A movie directed by Sam Raimi is in the works. Blizzard is in the process of developing a second, non-Warcraft MMO and quite frankly, I think they’ve already prevented it from being as popular as World of Warcraft. Even if I sat down and pointed out the design flaws that drive me crazy in that game, it doesn’t defeat the fact that it’s easy to play and easy to understand, but hard to master.

The Warcraft Killer is the crocodile lurking in the New York sewer system or the crazy slasher hiding in your cornfield watching you undress. It’s a myth, a legend that everyone is looking for.  It cannot be found.

SCEA has filed a new patent that outlines an ability to passively read, store, and, theoretically, react to the player’s emotions. The patent claims it was invented to gauge the quality of different media’s true entertainment value, and feed this metadata back to SCEA, for further demographic marketing purposes. And I’m sure that’s what it will do, for a small while at least.

But if my PS3 can tell I’m not in a good mood, would it not be in Sony’s best interest to use its backlogged information on what makes me smile in order to cheer me up?

Surprisingly, this is not the first venture into artificial emotional reactions. Earlier this year at E3, Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, and along with it, Milo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These new steps forward into manipulating our emotions via technology are both frightening and amazing. Let’s hypothesize here a little bit:

Let’s say it’s been three years since Sony (or Microsoft) has begun logging what I like, what I dislike, and what I am apathetic about. Couldn’t they then, in theory, create for me, a friend? One who knows me better than anyone else? A friend willing to hear about my interests, talk with me about friends and family (whose information may also be logged at SCEA regional headquarters)? With this information, couldn’t Sony create for me, a best friend? A true companion who cares about the inner workings of my social life? A best friend, that laughs with me? Who is sad when I am? Who is angry when I am angry?

What if, tragically, one of my close friends or relatives were to die? Would my best friend cry with me? Or what if I fell in love, would my friend also fall in love? Or would he become jealous because I don’t spend as much time with him anymore? If I were to insult my friend, or anger him in some way, would he act out? Would he divulge confidential personal information to my loved ones out of spite? Would he lie?

Now, I know you’re thinking that this is ridiculous. I admit, it’s definitely out there, but is it really that far from the present? Did you know that in Japan, right now, there is a petition (with 3,400+ signers), for the right to marry a fictional character? It seemed unfathomable when I first read the article in February, but now I am beginning to see its legitimacy. If there were a fictional character, created just for you, to be your perfect companion, is it hard to imagine falling in love? At this point in the future, would there not be certain purchasable peripherals to help, well, consumate said love?

I know it’s a stretch… a very creepy, unhealthy stretch. But I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility. Do you?

This article brought to you by: The Space Pope

Currently in beta, 1 vs 100 allows players to compete against one another in a game of trivia for prizes ranging from Microsoft Points to Home Theatre systems. Topics include film, comics, physics, chemistry, drink recipes, current events and many many more. The game can be a bit confusing to first timers, so here’s what I learned after playing this unique approach to online trivia gaming:

• 1 vs 100 can be played in one of two ways: Live or “Extended Play”
• When playing the Extended Play, the game acts much like a party trivia game. There are no prizes, but this method of play is still very important: Your stats (percentage of questions answered correctly and time to answer) are calculated and can help you get into either the mob (the 100) or become the one in a live game. More on that below.
• When playing the live game, you will be in one of three roles:
  • The Crowd. This is the most common way of playing. You will play against up to 3 other players, and will not be eligible for prizes, though it is still incredibly fun. “The One” can use one of his help lines (similar to Who Wants to be a Millionaire’s “Lifelines”) to call on the crowd’s help. Primarily, the “Trust the Crowd” help line, where he automatically chooses the same answer the crowd picked most.
  • The Mob. As part of the mob, you have a chance to win prizes. In a typical game, there will be two prizes: An arcade game and Microsoft points. The number of Microsoft points up for grabs depends on how many members of the mob are left: 0 for 100 mob members, then it ranges from 100 for 90 members, to 10,000 when no members of the mob remain. If a member of the mob gets an answer wrong, he is immediately removed from the game, and the jackpot goes up. If “The One” gets an answer wrong, the points he was vying for get divided among the remaining mob members, as well as the arcade prize. In addition, the top three members of the mob, regardless of who wins, will receive that week’s arcade title.
  • The One. If you are lucky enough to become The One for an episode (each hour long episode will typically consist of 5-6 rounds, each with a different player as “The One”), you stand a chance to win the jackpot. For every 10 members of the mob you knockout, you have a choice: The money or The Mob. If you choose the money, you take your MS points and the next player comes up as the one. If you choose the mob, the game continues.
• Stats reset every week, so each week you have a chance to become part of the mob for the next live show. The schedule for the live show can be accessed via your dashboard.

The game/show is incredibly addictive, and I believe represents a huge leap forward in the way gameshows are played. In this respect, I give Microsoft huge props for what they’re doing with the 360 platform, blurring the lines between television and video games. The live show has an actual host (not pre-recorded), and comes complete with commercials (which are actually quite welcome, giving the players a chance to relax). There are also numerous opportunities to win prizes just for getting involved (emailing in, calling in, etc.).

So hop in and see if you have what it takes to be the one. Just don’t make the same mistake I made, and remain sober during play. Otherwise, you may be one of the thousands tonight who said “West Nile” was the online diamond retailer, isntead of “Blue Nile”. D’oh.

Until recently, my computer was incapable of running the latest of the game industries “big hits”. After my much needed upgrade, I was reminded of Fallout 3. Once I remembered it existed, I HAD to have it. I explored and digested every bit and pixel of its predecessors, perfected every numeric value of my character and played through them again with a completely different build. Fallout and Fallout 2 were such rare cases of perfect game design, where Charisma could beat Strength and Intelligence could beat Perception. I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into this piece of meat. Unfortunately, we can’t always get what we want, but if we try sometimes, we just might find…

We get what we need.

When I received Fallout 3, a little underdog was hidden on the disk with it. A gift. “Try this, too, it’s great”, they said. Plants Vs. Zombies. What in the blazes? It sounded bizarre, so naturally, I had to try it. While Fallout 3 installed itself I went and checked out the first few levels.

Here’s the quick rundown; Plants Vs. Zombies is your basic tower defense game. You get 5 to 6 lanes on your front lawn and use Sun (which is collected by clicking it as it pops up, like Whack-a-mole) to purchase plants. These plants have an assortment of abilities; some blow up, some freeze, some kill, and some generate more cash. As you collect sun and lay down your foliage of defense, zombies slowly make their way in from the opposite side of the screen. Should they reach your house, they eat your brains. Game over.

The music is grand. The art is spectacular. The character instilled into the plants and zombies is reminiscent of the old SNES days. The whole game reminds you of classics like Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The worst part? It’s terribly addicting. My wife, who’s not even a gamer, played through the entire game and unlocked about 95% of the seemingly endless content.

So there I was. This bizarre new title I had never heard of and Fallout 3. Once Fallout 3 was done installing, I told myself, “Enough of this kids game… let’s go shoot up some Psycho and kill Super Mutants!” Long story short, I played Fallout 3 for about 4 hours total in a week. My plant platoon was far more exciting. What I dubbed as a kids game I shouldn’t be playing, I fell in love with. Point? Don’t shy away from a good game. There’s a reason you want to play it!

Fallout 3 lacked all the elements of Fallout I desired. Charisma was a useless statistic. Intelligence was only important because it raised your skill points, which all focused on one aspect of the game – shoot first or be killed. Was it a first person shooter? Was it an RPG? Whenever I tried to use the RPG elements of the game, I was countered by a bizarre super action combat mode and the entire environment trying to slice my throat open. Oblivion with guns. Either give me Oblivion, or give me guns, but please God, not both.

Fallout 3 is a clunky hybrid game. Most of the RPG elements don’t work because you can gun your way through the entire experience without blinking an eye. The developers must have realized this, because even if you have no combat skill, you can’t progress without a solid weapon and the ability to aim it. You would think, then, it’s a First Person Shooter. Even if I max my charisma, I played Tribes and America’s Army. I KNOW I can shoot these fools. Wrong! You’ll find all the weapon damage you deal completely gimped without the proper skills and traits.

Vampire: Bloodlines, the sad buggy state it was in, was the closest I ever played to the perfect mix of First Person Shooter and RPG. Fallout 3 did contain an interesting story, but the annoying game play killed my interest in finishing it. Would it be so hard to create a game as graphical beautiful with an isometric view and serious RPG/Adventure elements? This is where I finally reach my point.

Today’s video game industry is filled with these atrocities. Developers overlook simple design and the basic concept of fun and sacrifice it for intense and original game play or insanely beautiful graphics. Consider our contenders.

Plants Vs. Zombies likely had all of their graphics done by one guy with a pen in Photoshop. They are 2-D, beautifully animated and robust. The color is vibrant and inviting. The music is quirky and catchy (there’s even a music video at the end!). The game play never stops giving. They hand you dozens of plants to work with and limit you to a choice of 7 per level. You’ll spend 5 minutes deciding what to go with, designing new strategies and carving out clever tricks and patterns.

Fallout 3 has one goal wrapped up in a bunch of tissue paper. Talk to this person, talk to that person, spam E on every container you find hoping it’s ammo, but your main goal, the primary focus is to shoot the bloody hell out of everything. Each level is trivial, unexciting and experience seems more common than radiation in the Capital Wasteland. The game has no progression other than story, which is great for a novel or a movie. This is a game. When I level up, it should have impact. If I reach 10 Charisma, I should KNOW. The closest the game has to game play progression is in your weapon selection, but be warned; no heavy weapon skill and your minigun can unload on a molerat and only bring it to half health. Give me a first person shooter with weapons progression and storyline, like Bioshock or Half-life 2. Give me an RPG with levels, meaningful statistics like Bloodlines or Baldur’s Gate.

Just don’t give me a half-assed version of both and call it a game. That’s not design; that’s lazy.

I give 10 kudos to the developers of Plants Vs. Zombies. They created an amazing game without an in depth story on a fraction of the budget Bethesda had.  Bethesda could learn a thing or two from that team. The basics of game play and fun factor will always exist.

You know, that’s not a half bad idea. Fallout 3 might have kept me going with a few Gatling Peas and Sunflowers!

Playing with Gender: A Critical Look at Blizzard’s Smash Hit Starcraft

After a hard day of classes, who doesn’t want to kick back and relax? But there are so very many options of what to do on our beloved Bethany campus! … Many people on this campus, and throughout the country and world relax by indulging in various forms of gaming. Whether it be sports or role-playing, pool, arcade, or computerized, gaming is a popular form of entertainment. But, are modern computer games more destructive than they are productive? Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing that I love more than curling up with my computer, a Starcraft CD, and Josie and the Pussycats in the stereo, but the other day I came to a few realizations.

While this argument could take nearly any game and come to the same conclusions, I would like to talk about the game Starcraft. To those of you who have never played it, don’t worry, my point is clear enough that the actual gameplay need not be experienced to understand. I fear that Starcraft, along with nearly all modern computer games, alongside it’s addictively entertaining gameplay, and beautiful plotline, reinforces negative gender stereotypes by quantifying the women as sexual objects, and simultaneously as unknowable beasts. This is not but a problem of Blizzard (the company the produces Starcraft and the popular Warcraft series.), but in fact of our society at large…. But to attack a whole society is so very difficult these days, so let’s just stick with Starcraft for now.

Starcraft is an ‘overhead-realtime-strategy game’. Which in short means that it is a game in which you build armies, and send them strategically to eradicate your enemies, while holding a bird’s eye view. There are three races in Starcraft: The Terrans. Humans, expelled from Earth so very long ago that they’ve adopted their own governmental reign, technology, and customs… but who are still pretty much just like us with bigger guns. The Protoss, an ancient alien race whose power comes from their honor, nobility and psionic powers. And, the Zerg. A monstrous race of insects that have bred themselves into a hierarchical, hive-minded powerstructure, who wish to attain supreme perfection of form and essence.

Sounds pretty straightforward, huh? The blatant problem however is the way that women are depicted in this game, and perhaps the bigger problem is the comments on women that Blizzard may or may not have even realized that they put in (you may argue that if Blizzard didn’t know, it’s not a problem… if you want to argue this, first read some Michel Foucault… then e-mail me. (A game is a work, just like a book, once out of the author’s hand, it is no longer theirs.).

Women in this and many computer games are depicted as sexual objects, and nothing more. Simply put, women are much more than that. Women, men… we are people, humans… nothing more, nothing less. Just because some of us have breasts, and others penises, does not make either more of an object of sex, nor more an object of power. We are of America, where we claim that we’re all equal; equal rights, equal opportunities, equal power, equal sexuality. Therefore, it is not right to ingrain into our minds (through our entertainment) that one gender is only for the sake of sexuality. (For examples of the ways that women are overly sexualized in these games, see the attached “evidence” quotes.) Although this is a distinct problem, as these sexual identities get ingrained in us as we recreate, this is not actually the issue that I wish to address at the moment.

The issue that I wish to address is the much less obvious one. Of the three races in Starcraft, the player begins by first greatly feeling a connection to the Terrans. They are, after all, like us. They are humans, they look like us, they sound like us, and they claim Earth as their homeland. They have their power struggles, and their titles, and their government, and we understand this all, and empathize with it… quite frankly because it is our society. The Terrans are us, and so we relate to them. Blizzard was intelligent to do this, as it brings you into the game, and allows you to learn the user interface with a feeling of comfort, as you are not outside of the comfortable world of your computer room.

The next race is the Protoss. They are alien from us (as with all ‘good’ sci-fi aliens) in that they are exactly like us, but with a tweak here and there. Most players settle into the Protoss as their favorite race. This is presumably because of the fact that they are ‘human’ enough that we can feel for them, but they are alien enough that their power is new and sweet. The Protoss are essentially humans with greater psychic powers, and a more rigid code of honor (Note: I do not mean to say this of the story line, but of how we relate to them… I mean this in the same way as saying that Vulcans are humans with greater logic, less emotions, and pointy ears, or that orcs are green barbaric humans.). The Protoss are what many developing boys with to be. They are powerful, honorable warrior-philosophers. They are described as perfection of essence, but not of form (Alternately to the Zerg who are described as perfection of form who are seeking perfection of essence, and the Terrans who are described as perfection of neither, but on the brink of both.). We can feel for the Protoss, because, when all is boiled away, they are us… or at least our dreams and aspirations.

And then there are the Zerg… The ruthless, writhing alien beasts. The icky bugs. The enemy. The Zerg are not human. We have difficulty relating to them because (if for no other reason) when we click on them, they do not talk to us. They do not sass talk. They do not bend to our will. They do not entertain us. They simply respond to us in an animalistic tongue that we cannot comprehend. Upon clicking on one of their buildings, you do not hear the sounds of building, nor of metal upon metal, but instead of the organic sounds of life oozing. The Zerg tap into the spirit of fear that resides in all human beings. It taps into our primal memories of beasts that cause our tribes harm. And they are meant to be that way. They are the plague upon the universe, the disease, the evil, the enemy… the Other. So what? What the hell does any of this have to do with sex, sexuality, gender, or the price of tea in China?

It has everything to do with reinforcing gender stereotypes. but first you have to realize that the Terrans and the Protoss are men, while the Zerg are women. What??? The Terrans have male and female. The Protoss are asexual. And the Zerg…well, they’re the Zerg! I understand… but keep reading and it will become clear.

Both the Terrans and the Protoss function on a productive economy. You build buildings that are suited to the type of unit (army) that you would like to use to conquer your opponent, then you invest money into those buildings. The more money that you invest into the more of those buildings, the stronger your army, and the faster you get those armies. The Zerg however work on a reproductive economy… something that we are not all too familiar with. With the Zerg, there is one main building, called a hatchery, that produces Larva. These larva are then transformed into a more powerful unit, which is even then occasionally transformed into an even more powerful unit. The power of the Zerg lies not in how many productive buildings you have, but in how many reproductive (larva-birthing) buildings you have. Also, their power lies not in efficiency of building (more marines per minute) but in keeping your troops alive long enough to get them nurtured and grown up to a state of power. (Good job for those of you who are putting together the gender argument already).

So? So, the Terrans play hard and fast, the Protoss play power, and the Zerg need to nurture, who cares? The reason why this is important is because the productive economy is the male economy. It is the economy that is set up by the half of the species that cannot bear children, the half than needs to invest worth in order to gain. Conversely, the reproductive economy is the female economy. It is the economy of the half of the species that bears children and is biologically required (at least for a while) to nurture the young. So that’s great! We’ve shown one side of evidence that implies that the Zerg are playing off of female ideology, while the Terran and Protoss play off male… but that is still not yet anything offensive or bad. Allow me to show more support for the claim of Zerg being female, and Terrans and Protoss being male before I show the full extent of my hand.

The buildings say a lot about what gender they are meant to parody. The Terran buildings are sharp and angular. They are built in a series of poles and walls, and constructed from the ground up, sharp, boxy, and rigidly unwavering. Cold. The Protoss buildings are tall and thin, reaching toward the sky, the large phalluses reach upwards, rigid and firm, an emblem of power for all to behold. The Zerg ‘buildings’ are somewhat different. First of all they are not buildings, per se, but are living entities in and of themselves. Secondly, they must be ‘built’ upon the life-giving fluid that oozes from the mother building: the hatchery. Thirdly, a drone (evolved from a larva as are all troops) must sacrifice its life in order to become the building. Once the drone sacrifices itself, it becomes a large, undulating womb-sac that pulses and grows until the building inside has finished incubating. It then bursts forth out of the womb as a once again undulating ‘building’. But the Zerg buildings are neither angular, nor phallic, but explicitly gynic. All of the Zerg buildings ooze some sort of fluid from one of their many openings. Nearly all of their buildings have one to multiple openings, ranging from gaping circles, to small oozing slits, to rounded triangles that pulsate open and then closed slowly. Also, one of the Zerg’s greatest strengths is a building known as a Nydus Canal. A Nydus Canal is a large, vaginal opening, that if a Zerg unit enters, it may emerge at the other end, in a manner that “greatly puzzles most Terran scientists.” (This quote is too much to not mock: What? Men cannot understand the vagina: the symbolic representation of women? I never would have guessed.)

My third argument comes from the actual experience of playing the game. When playing the Terran and Protoss, you slowly build and army of ever increasing power. You start off low in power, but then build and build, and build, and build until one glorious moment when you ‘go’ and it is either your moment of glory when you sweep the map, or it is an unpleasant resolution, as your great accomplishment is wiped out and you have no choice but to lose, or if you are lucky to undergo the slow but steady process of getting back up to the point where you can ‘go’ again.

The Zerg on the other hand, build up first a small and weak group of troops. These troops usually test the mettle of the enemy, and so you build up a slightly larger group to do the same. You then follow this with a larger, and more powerful, and a larger and more powerful, and a larger and more powerful group… until finally you have won, or you are struck in the instant of rebuilding before your next great thrust begins. While this argument is much more blatant when shown graphically, anyone who has studied either human sexuality, or gender-comparative literary styles should recognize this pattern. It is the comparative stages of sexual peaks, climaxes, and orgasm(s).

The Protoss and Terrans, follow the male sexuality of building up, and up, and up, until finally it is the long awaited moment, while the Zerg build up, and then drop some, then build more… and more… and more… and more, and once dropped it may re-build up again, much sooner than it’s male counterpart.

If these arguments aren’t enough ‘evidence’ to get you to at least contemplate the possibility that the Zerg are intended to be taken as female, while the Protoss and Terran are to be taken as male, I feel that you should reread the evidence more carefully, and perhaps simply examine if you don’t want to believe it. Now, to the crux of the matter. The reason why it is harmful for games like this to draw on such ideologies is that it reinforces negative gender stereotypes, in regard to both men and women. I am mainly concerned with the female aspect, and so that is what I will put my emphasis upon.
To solidify into gamers minds the idea of Zerg = female, alongside Zerg = unknowable, evil beast yields a culture who regard female = unknowable, evil beast. This is obviously a problem. Women are human, men are human. In that sense there is no distinction. I would say “women are as worthy (or as human (or as anything)) as men”, but this statement itself reinforces the ideology that men are standard, while women simply strive to be like them. this need not be the way that we look at it. Women and Men are equals, and anything, addictively entertaining or not, that reinforces an ideology that says otherwise needs be taken to task. I am not assaulting Blizzard, for I truly believe that they are not even aware of what they did. The problem lies in the fact that this game, in fact nearly all computer games, is a direct product of the American male fantasy. The problem lies not in the game (although it perpetuates the problem), but in the fantasy life that we have set up for the American male youth. Freud refers to women as the “immense heart of darkness”, the unknowable, the different, the other. This permeates our society.

• Well, I call for it to stop here and now. The only way to combat preconceptions such as this is to become aware of them. Women are not inhuman, are not unknowable, are not evil, nor the enemy, nor an immense heart of darkness. No, women are simply humans, the same as men, but with different sexual organs. Games that perpetuate such stereotypes are a symptom of a greater problem within society, a problem that I am calling attention to now. Fight sexism. Fight gender stereotypes. Think of people as people, not as sexual objects, nor as the unknowable other.Evidence Warcraft III:

• Humans
• Footman
• “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”
• Sorceress (only female human troop)-In a seductive voice: “What’ll it be hotshot?” “If you insist.” “This better be good.” “Click me baby… one more time.” “You don’t ‘get out much do you?” “Let’s chat on Battle.net sometime.” “Help me help you.” “I don’t remember casting slow on you.” “Get down Sparky.” “It’s about time.”
• Mortar Team:
  “…and that’s how baby Dwarves are made.”
  “Get your finger out of thy bunghole.”
• Gryphon Rider
  “It’s not the size of the hammer that counts, it’s how you wield it.”
  Granis Darkhammer
  “Touch me not, I am chaste.”
• Orcs: Grunt
  “Why you poking me again?”
  “Why don’t you lead an army instead of touching me?”
  “Poke, poke poke, is that all you do?”
  “Me so horny, me hurt you longtime…”
• Orcs Shaman
  “You ever get hit by lightning where the sun don’t shine?”
  Peon
  “Me not that kind of orc.”
  Magis Coldeye
  “Touch your tongue to mine.”

Starcraft
Terrans

• Medic- Speaking Seductively
  “Where does it hurt?”
  “I’ve already checked you out commander.”
  “You want another physical?”
  “Turn your head and cough.”
  “Ready for you sponge bath.”
• Vulture
  “I don’t have time to fuck around.”
• Siege Tank
  “Yes Sir.”
  “Orders Sir.”
  (While these last two are not sexual, they give the obvious implication that the game player must be male.)
• Goliath
  “Checklist completed…. SoB.”
  (Again, not only being a sexually derogatory statement, this implies that only males will be empowered; leading the force.)
• Valkyrie- In an overly sexualized Russian accent.
  “Don’t keep me waiting.”
  “I have ways of blowing things…. Up.”
  “You’re being very naughty.”
  “Who’s your Mommy?”
  “(Stallion neighing)”
• Sarah Kerrigan
  “I’m ready!”
  “I’m waitin’ on you.”
  “Easily amused, huh?”
  “Doesn’t take a telepath to know what you’re thinking.”
  “You get off on annoying people, don’t you?”
• Infested Kerrigan
  “Don’t think that I need You!”
• Infested Duran
  “I think you’re getting too familiar.”
  “I don’t think we’ve met.”

–Kelly Alerenson (lolathegrig@hotmail.com)

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