Dante's Inferno

It’s hard not to be cynical about EA’s Dante’s Inferno. A game that scrambles its source material so hard conventional terms like reboot and retcon fail to do it justice. A game with a marketing campaign which hit most of the Deadly Sins.

But when Tor released the Longfellow translation of Dante’s Inferno as a tie-in, complete with cover art based on the game, did anyone expect this?

From Aramis, a local librarian:

Something amazing happened last Friday. I’m still not sure what to make of it.

I was at the library Reference Desk ready to answer questions and help people find stuff when a teenage boy came up to me looking for Catcher in the Rye. I checked the catalog for Salinger and didn’t see any hard cover copies available so I walked the kid over to the uncataloged Classic Paperbacks. His mom followed behind us and while I was browsing the S’s I overheard this incredible bit of dialog.

‘Hey, Mom! See this book?’ He grabbed a copy of Inferno, the first book in Dante Alighieri’s trilogy The Divine Comedy. ‘Remember that game you bought me? This is the book it was based on, but this book is even sicker the game! It was awesome!’

This blew my mind completely. It’s like something out of a marketer’s wet dream. A ridiculous video game induced a teenage boy of average coolness (he had a skateboard and was sporting a Bieber) to read not just a book, but a classic allegorical, epic poem written in the 14th century in which an Italian poet and a dead philosopher traverse the afterlife to find the poet’s deceased girlfriend and possibly meet God in terza rima (three part rhyme).

What do you guys think? Is this a thing™ or more of a fluke? Also will “literary” games become the latest trend replacing sandbox and/or post-apocalyptic casual zombie tower defense MMORPGs? What classic book would you like to see made into a game?

Image from the Valve game Left 4 Dead 2, rated M by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

The Supreme Court decided yesterday to review Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) v. Schwarzenegger putting video gaming on the highest court’s docket. This case stretches back to 2006, when Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law criminalizing the sale of “ultra-violent” video games to minors and requiring retailers to separate Mature-rated games from games intended for children and the posting of signage explaining the ratings system used by the industry.

Finding fault with the state’s definition of violence and opinion-based labeling, the 9th Circuit Court upheld a lower court’s decision to overturn the law before it was enacted. This prompted Schwarzenegger to head to the court of last resort.

“By prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children under the age of 18 and requiring these games to be clearly labeled, this law would allow parents to make better informed decisions for their kids,” said Schwarzenegger, adding “I will continue to vigorously defend this law and protect the well-being of California’s kids.”

Countering this, the Entertainment Software Association’s Michael D. Gallagher said, “Courts throughout the country have ruled consistently that content-based regulation of computer and video games is unconstitutional. Research shows that the public agrees, video games should be provided the same protections as books, movies and music.”

While gamers will have to wait until September to see if the Supreme Court agrees that video games are protected under the First Amendment, the court of public opinion is now in session.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. ]]> http://www.pbpulse.com/games/2010/04/27/supreme-court-to-rule-on-violent-video-games/feed/ 4 http://www.pbpulse.com/games/2010/04/17/three-lighthouses/ http://www.pbpulse.com/games/2010/04/17/three-lighthouses/#comments Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:17:37 +0000 Terry Bosky http://www.pbpulse.com/?p=48209

Lighthouse Hill, Edward Hopper (1927)

Oblivion, Bethesda (2006)

The Needles’ Lighthouse from Keyhaven, Hampshire
Charles Tennyson Turner (1868)

The downs and tender-tinted cliffs are lost,
And nothing but the guardian fire remains –
That crimson-headed tower on the rough coast,
Whose steady lustre ceases not, nor wanes
Till sunrise from the east reveals to us
The mightly Vectian wold, and tawny tract
Of shingle, seen through bowers of arbutus,
Like some fair corn-field, mellow and compact.
How that deep glow the deepening gloom attests!
How much is by that noble lighthouse taught!
Mine eye rests on it, as the spirit rests
In sorrow, on some holy, ardent thought,
The sole beam in our darkness! Those who dwell
Near these great beacons are instructed well.

_____________________________
According to Roger Ebert, one of these isn’t art.

Dark Forces was a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars Universe. History lesson: back in 1995, the term “first-person shooter” didn’t exist. Games like this were called “Doom clones.” But Dark Forces fought the clone wars, presenting innovative features like looking up and down, ducking and jumping. Yes, in 1995 simulating movement of your character’s neck, legs and spine were breakthrough accomplishments.

In Dark Forces you played as pixilated mercenary Kyle Katarn who went on secret missions for Mon Mothma – black ops stuff the main characters couldn’t handle. Need the Death Star plans? Done. Crix Madine needs rescuing? Done. The Empire rolling out a line of Dark Troopers? Done.

And Katarn accomplished all of this with a combination of blasters, detonators and – when necessary – his fists. Obviously, his fists were a fallback weapon; something only to be used when you’ve exhausted your ammo supply. But Katarn is still able to punch a Kell Dragon to death, if that’s what needs to be done. The point being that Katarn is just fine without a lightsaber and a Star Wars game is fine without a Jedi – up until some guy decides to mod the game swapping out a lightsaber for Katarn’s fists.

Suddenly, everyone on AOL was like, oh Dark Forces is so much better now that we have a laser sword! Nevermind that it was purely cosmetic, doing the same amount of damage as a punch making it the most underpowered lightsaber since Jedi Arena on the 2600. The budding franchise experienced a shift and people like me who always thought Han Solo was cooler than Luke died a little inside.

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II came out in 1997 (trading pixels for polygons) and Kyle Katarn learns that not only does he have secret force powers, he also has unconvincing facial hair. Sure Katarn can still blast stormtroopers, but using his newly found lightsaber is more fun because you can run around cutting arms off and deflecting blaster bolts.

By the time 2002’s Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast came out, it’s a full-on lightsaber fest complete with mopey force-powered ennui. Oh no, I’m tempted by the Dark Side :( *cries* And – hey! – Dark Forces has been dropped from the title? What kind of naming system is this?

Then a year later, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy comes out – shouldn’t that be Jedi Knight III? – and Katarn is now some serene Jedi Master basically opting to make a cameo appearance in the series he launched.

Which brings me back to The Force Unleashed, which people should realize is actually Dark Forces V: Jedi Knight IV: People who don’t want to play as stupid Jedi III. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with Jedi, but at this point every game has overpowered laser swords and magic powers. What the gaming world needs is a return to space opera themed first-person shooters – something we haven’t seen in 15 years.

This post was part of Blog Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

For other takes on this topic, check out:

Next Jen: X-COM
Silvercube: Looking For Ingenuity
Game Couch: Dark Forces

Deadly Premonition/Xbox 360/$19.99

One of the joys of PC gaming was that I could buy a game I’d never heard of for $20 and have a fun gaming experience. However, development costs for consoles make budget titles a rarity. When I heard a survival horror game was coming out for the Xbox 360 and it would only cost $19.99, I was sold. Deadly Premonition is a quirky, compelling and scary horror game, held back by PS2-era presentation and a few odd design choices.

Among the many things established by the opening cutscene is that Deadly Premonition isn’t Alan Wake. The graphics are substandard; the draw distance is short and there’s a glaring lack of detail. Combine this with low resolution textures and a limited palette and everything looks muddy. I put this upfront because graphics can be a deal-breaker, but I encourage you to get past this.

33% of Deadly Premonition is an adventure game – its strongest element. Greenvale is an open world, letting you explore the town, visiting suspects at work and home – and peaking in the occasional window. Citizens keep to a schedule, so you’ll learn when they go for a morning hike or head home from work. But there’re some nuances: Emily goes to the bar after work, except on rainy nights when she stays in to make dinner. While not Oblivion’s Radiant AI, this system creates a living world.

The core of the adventure element, and Deadly Premonition’s most compelling feature, is its wide cast of characters. There are at least 30 voiced characters and Agent York will have meaningful interactions with all of them – either in scripted events or during one of the optional side quests (which are essential to appreciating the game’s narrative). It’s a small town so everyone knows (or is related) to each other, but what really comes across is how these people are connected to each other – and how, what becomes a series of deaths, truly shocks them.

33% of the game is survival horror. Mirroring Silent Hill, Greenvale takes on a nightmarish façade with red vines suddenly overgrowing parts of the town. Monsters – somewhere between ghosts and zombies – rise up from inky pools, and Agent York can either gun them down (with a growing arsenal) or sneak past them while holding his breath. Greenvale’s undead are disturbing humans who grotesquely contort their body seeking to ram their arms down York’s throat while moaning, “I don’t want to die.” The survival horror sections are eerie, but their effectiveness is undercut by having the best scares take place during cutscenes instead of in-game.

Zombie Attack

To its credit, Deadly Premonition plays like you’re living in this town. With day/night cycles, weather effects and an in-game clock which often feels like it’s real-time, Greenvale has a living, breathing vibe. Speaking of living and breathing, the game throws food and sleep meters at you, so picking up food at the Milk Barn, eating at the A & G Diner, and calling it a night at the Great Deer Yard Hotel becomes part of your daily routine.

Deadly Premonition draws comparisons to Twin Peaks, but I found it Lynchean in a greater sense. The game nails quirk with Agent York, who reads his fortune in mugs of coffee, spouts movie trivia and carries on one-sided conversations with his imaginary friend Zach. But the quirkiness is offset by increasingly brutal crimes and nods to small town S&M. The game plays with dreamlike imagery and recurring symbolism, hinting at multiple meanings from something as simple as a red seed.

Coming off of two Dragon Age playthroughs and one run through Mass Effect 2, I’m probably more sympathetic towards Schmoyer’s POV than a gaming blogger should be. I’ve basically minored in BioWare RPGs. However, I don’t think I could have made better use of that time so much as I would have made other use of that time — at the very least, I should have done more laundry.

Still, in between my tours of Ferelden and Masseffectium, I’ve managed to keep my approval rating high among my friends and family. Likewise, I continue to have a strong romance with my wife, which I attribute to the diversity of conversation options we have available. Finally, though my quest log is never empty, I remain a kickass Collection Development Librarian (it’s all about the graphic novels).

Customers choose plans based on the number of games they can have checked out; with plans ranging from one ($15.95/month) to four ($36.95/month) games.

The IPO registration reveals that as of September 2009, Gamefly had 334,000 subscribers and revenues of $84.7 million for the fiscal year ending March 2009.

Time to cancel those plans for a game of Halo 2 on Tax Day.  Microsoft has announced that it will discontinue Xbox Live service for the original Xbox starting April 15th, 2010.  The video game console that birthed some of the most successful multiplayer franchises will soon be permanently offline, roughly eight years after its launch.

It has long been thought that the service on the Xbox 360 was limited due to Microsoft’s continued support of the original Xbox; most notably the 100 friend restriction on Xbox Live.  The disconnection also includes Xbox Originals and Xbox games played through the 360.

Xbox Live’s general manager, Marc Whitten, released the following statement concerning the shutdown:

“To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games. We will contact the Xbox LIVE members directly impacted by this change and if this includes you, I encourage you to check your LIVE messages and associated e-mail account over the coming weeks for more details and opportunities. We view you as a partner in this process.”

It is relatively common to see servers shut down for games on the PC, but console-wide stoppages are rare.  The Xbox had a good run, but it’s time to remorsefully pull the plug.

With the January NPD numbers coming next week, I thought it was time to catch up with how the holidays treated the video game industry.  Or, in other words, how many good little boys and girls received Nintendo products.  Read below for the answer:

Wii: 3,810,000
DS: 3,310,000
PS3: 1,360,000
Xbox 360: 1,310,000
PSP: 655,000
PS2: 333,000

Over three years after the launch of the Nintendo Wii, it still managed to sell nearly four million units in one month; single-handedly outselling all systems without Nintendo branding.  The Nintendo DS  brought its number of units sold-to-date in the US to a staggering 44 million.  The PS3 and 360 both clocked in around 1.3 million.

On the software side,  Nintendo sold a lot of games (surprise!).

01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 2,820,000
02. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 2,410,000
03. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 1,790,000
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 1,630,000
05. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 1,120,000
06. Wii Play (Wii) – 1,010,000
07. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 936,1000
08. Assassin’s Creed II (Xbox 360) – 783,100
09. Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360) – 728,500
10. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) – 656,700

Nintendo dominated software sales with five Wii games and a DS game in the top ten, including three with Mario in the title.  Maybe Microsoft and Sony should try that out?

In its second month on shelves, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continued to perform well on the 360 and PS3.

As one of the remaining Grey Wardens, it falls on you to end the Blight. Doing so will require unifying a country on the brink of civil war and convincing the dwarves, elves and mages to honor ancient treaties. How did you get to be so lucky?

Answering that question is one of Dragon Age’s strengths. After character creation — matching an elf, human or dwarf with fighting, thieving or magic using abilities — you begin your adventure along one of six paths. Whether starting as an apprentice in the Circle of Magi or running errands for Orzammar’s shadier citizens as a casteless dwarf, you get to explore your background before moving on to the esteemed ranks of the Grey Wardens.

Showcasing your origin story sets the tone for your character, and the choices you make here have ramifications throughout the entire game. This also makes replaying the game more palatable by bypassing the early level repetition of most RPGs. Even if you tend not to replay games, it’s worth exploring some of the other origins — side characters in one storyline are major characters in another and something as simple as a skeleton in a prison can take on poignant meaning.

After go from rookie to last, best hope, the game loses its rails and opens the world map to you. Here you travel by clicking on a location and watching the meandering path your party takes – punctuated by random encounters and scripted events (combat!).

Dragon Age: Origins uses a real time battle system. While you can switch between the four party members to micromanage them in combat, it isn’t required. Each character has several default profiles (which balance aggression against self preservation), but you can tweak the profiles to get the responses you want.

It’s an amazing level of control ranging from simply telling characters to heal themselves to ordering one of your fighters to drop everything and stun the enemy attacking you. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s also the game’s best feature.

While your party is doing what you’ve programmed to do, your own actions depend on your character type. On my first playthrough, I was a rogue who lured enemies into traps before picking them off one by one. The second time around I was a mage who launched fireballs into crowds and summoned blizzards to freeze my enemies. Customization extends beyond the three main classes with specializations you can learn. Fighters, for instance, can range from noble Templars to demonic Reavers.

Overall, I was impressed with Origins’ controls. Most of your character’s abilities can be mapped to the face buttons and lesser used abilities and inventory are easily accessed from a radial menu which — thankfully — pauses the action. Although the combat is real time, I found it often required a level of strategy reserved for turn-based games. And it helps to maintain that tactical level of thinking, even when an ogre lifts your character off the ground and starts pummeling him.

Unlike Bethesda’s RPGs which are exploration-driven, BioWare’s are quest-driven. I prefer the immersive feeling of Cyrodiil, with its day/night cycles and Radiant AI-powered NPCs, but none of Dragon Age’s 60-hour play time is consumed by simply walking from one town to another or stopping to enjoy a sunset over a lake. Every area in Dragon Age is packed with content and filled with dialogue.

I was amazed at how quickly events could turn, based on my conversations. While recruiting the Circle of Magi, I reloaded an earlier save after a poor choice of words led my party to go Order 66 on them. Yes, Alistair, even the younglings.

Gathering elves, dwarves and men to face the forces of darkness may sound a bit Lord of the Rings to you, but Dragon Age earns points for its focus on Fellowship. As you progress through the game, you gain followers. Each character has a different motivation for joining with you and not all of them are there willingly.

Instead of opting for the traditional good/evil meter, Dragon Age tracks how much your party members like you. On the surface, good actions make them like you more, evil actions less – but Dragon Age throws significant moral quandaries your way and you’ll find that you can’t keep everyone happy. I’ve had party members abandon me, challenge me in combat and betray me.

Of course there’s also love. Taking an interest in someone’s life, giving them gifts and fulfilling their wishes (side-quests) may lead to romantic opportunities. I’m talking about sex – or what passes for sex. It’s really a short montage of partially clothed erotic (or homoerotic) poses. A minute later and you’re ready to hit the road again.

Dragon Age: Origins has amazing music (composed by legendary Inon Zur) and ambient audio brings life to environments which are visually stagnant. If you find yourself emotionally affected by the game’s events, it’s due to the superb voice acting. The cast is literally a who’s who of notable voice actors and almost feels like a Star Trek: Voyager reunion. The amount of dialogue in the game is stunning, both in terms of writing and delivery.

Graphically, the game is a disappointment. Textures are muddy. Environments are lifeless. Faces are unexpressive. And there is no convincing facial hair anywhere in the game. Now I’m not usually a graphics whore, but since BioWare elevated digital acting with Mass Effect, I came to Dragon Age with high expectations. Main characters have their beards sink into their chests. Armor digs into characters’ heads during conversations. Characters will be spattered in blood for no reason and will appear in several different outfits during a single cutscene. Most egregious is a major cinematic at game’s end which is so poorly compressed it’s like watching something on YouTube. It comes down to a lack of polish.

This lack of polish carries over to an overly complicated menu system which keeps poor track of quests and an ever expanding codex. You shouldn’t have to hit three different tabs to find all the information you need on a quest. With the level of content in the game, bugged quests are expected but I was happy with the overall stability in the game and the fact that game breaking bugs were rarely encountered.

Swap Grey Wardens for Spectres, darkspawn for the geth, and the Dalish longbow for the HMWA VII Assault Rifle and you might wonder what BioWare is doing here that they didn’t do in Mass Effect.

What they’ve done is reworked the party dynamic so your fellow adventurers are more than mindless followers. They’ve given gamers a compelling reason to visit and revisit the game by offering multiple starting points and a wealth of paths to explore in-game. And they’ve taken what could be a generic fantasy setting and infused it with hundreds of years of its own history. Dragon Age: Origins is another impressive example of BioWare’s world-building even if the world feels unfinished. Let’s call it a Large Flawed Ice Crystal.

Xbox 360 version reviewed. Also available for the PS3, PC, and Mac.

EA hopes this Sharp Dressed Man will demand you to Gimme All Your Lovin’ (definitely shoe-horned those in, but look at him; I just couldn’t resist) when they reboot the Medal of Honor franchise in 2010.

The 10-year-old series has been in decline for some time now, and the need for a revitalized brand has certainly been fueled by the continued, enormous success Activision has had with Call of Duty.

The EA Los Angeles and DICE co-developed Medal of Honor ditches World War II and moves to a modern-day Afghanistan where the bearded man from above (apparently based on an actual US Army Special Forces soldier codenamed “Cowboy” http://www.life.com/image/1373470) is a “Tier 1 Operator”.

I’m hoping EA aims for a more realistic story as opposed to the absurdity that was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, i.e. fighting Russian paratroopers in a bombed-out Oval Office.

I propose the term be permanently removed from the American vernacular or, at the very least, in reference to video games.  The Post could even run a contest to find a replacement term.  The winner would be famous and adored.

Until then we have no immediately identifiable way to explain news such as the Viva Group’s redesign of Xbox 360 video game packaging that uses 20% less plastic while maintaining the same quality and performance.

Commence the contest.

Charter boat captain Jack Carver (Til Schweiger) takes journalist Valerie Cardinal (Emmanuelle Vaugier) to an assignment on a remote island. Of course the island hides a secret lab where an evil scientist is creating an unstoppable army (X-Men comics warned us about Canada’s scientific villainy). Valerie is captured and Jack’s boat is blown up so Jack enters reluctant hero mode.

In a series of set pieces, Jack dodges explosions and kills mercenaries, while escaping capture and rescuing the girl. If you’ve seen Inglourious Basterds, you’ll remember Schweiger as the badass Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz. Schweiger is a credible action hero making Far Cry a credible action movie. Uwe Boll seems to be aiming for a 1980s action movie vibe – elevating Valerie to love interest and pairing Jack with a comedy relief providing sidekick (Boll regular Chris Coppola as the tagalong “Food-guy”).

While Boll is usually reviled for his directorial choices, most of Far Cry’s flaws stem from what looks like a Syfy level budget. The game was lauded for its stunning visuals; the movie, not so much. Jack Carver’s trademark Hawaiian shirt looks sorely out of place in Vancouver and it’s hard to be menaced by a villain that whose secret lair is a sawmill.

Far Cry
Directed by Uwe Boll
Starring Til Schweiger, Emmanuelle Vaugier, and Michael Paré
DVD released: Nov 24, 2009

The AbleGamers Foundation targets another overlooked issue in game accessibility for the disabled.   “There are countless sites out there that review games for their graphics and sound, but no one is looking at the game from the standpoint of accessibility,” states Mark C. Barlet, president of the foundation.

Ablegamers.com highlights how specific games accommodate the 63 million Americans with disabilities.  Games are rated on the assistance they provide the disabled such as one-handed controls, subtitles, and color-blind sensitivity.

Increased attention will lead to new advancements in accessibility; as game publishers do not like to leave out large audiences and, most importantly, their cash.

Taking the reins from Raven Software, Vicarious Visions structures the plot against Marvel’s epic Civil War event. A series of disastrous choices by the superheroes has led to the Superhuman Registration Act – a law which puts metahumans under government control and threatens the security afforded by their secret identities.

It’s a move which pits hero against hero and forces the player to side with Ironman’s pro-registration forces or Captain America’s underground anti-registration movement. Now three years out, the Marvel Universe is still dealing with fallout from Civil War so in terms of dramatic pull, it’s excellent source material. But Alliance 2 pulls its punches, leading to a final boss who appears from left field and an ending which rings hollow.

Setting the plot aside, Alliance 2 delivers a great co-op multiplayer experience (two to four-player online or off). Not counting the DLC, the game offers a 24 character roster to form your four-member team – of course, depending on who you side with, not everyone will be available. Playable characters include recent Marvel movie stars Spider-man, Ironman, Hulk, Wolverine and Deadpool, as well as ones off the radar like Luke Cage, Penance and Songbird.

When you’re talking superheroes, you’re talking superpowers and this is where Alliance 2’s RPG system comes into play. Each character has four key powers (either buffs or attacks) which are mapped to the controller’s face buttons. As you gain experience, you can level these powers up along with some passive abilities which improve your combat performance. The majority of the characters do what you’d expect them to do: Hulk smashes, Spidey webslings, Mr. Fantastic stretches. Standouts include a formidable Susan Storm and Songbird, who has interesting variety to her powers.

Alliance 2 ups the superheroics with Fusion powers. Two characters can use their powers in concert to clear rooms, devastate multiple enemies or deliver massive damage to a single foe. Thor and Human Torch create a fiery tornado. Hulk throws Wolverine for the fan favorite Fastball Special. The Thing hurls a massive boulder which Iceman freezes for extra damage. Each pairing creates a unique Fusion resulting in over 270 specialized attacks.

The Ultimate Alliance games can trace their ancestry back to 2004’s X-Men Legends and Vicarious Visions shrugs off a lot of the franchise’s baggage in this entry, simplifying not only how powers work, but also improving inventory management and letting players swap out characters on the fly. I see most of these changes as improvements, shortening the time players need to spend navigating menus, but I’m not happy that there’s now only one alternate costume per character and that the difference is purely cosmetic.

Instead of dropping loot, bosses now drop medals which add buffs to your team. There are still simulator discs to be collected which unlock challenge missions, but these excursions no longer recall famous comic book battles. Players can level their characters in-game, while the credible AI takes control of their character. Lastly, the trivia minigame returns albeit revamped for a multiplayer experience – which is curiously co-op instead of competitive.

The in-game graphics are an improvement, but level design falls short. As mentioned above, Alliance 2 isn’t as far reaching as the first game, but the linearity was surprising especially with promising locales like Wakanda. Graphics have taken a step back in the rendered cinematics. I fanboyed out my way through Alliance 1, which had one of the greatest opening cinematics of all time. However, more is accomplished in-game, especially during the numerous conversation options available back at bases. (Tip, characters with a shared history should always talk to each other.) And I loved the flashy intros for the boss characters.

There really aren’t enough four-player brawlers; especially ones which allow for in-person co-op play as well as online. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is a big fish in this small pond – and there’s enough polish here to please even those who aren’t members of the Merry Marvel Marching Society – but compared to Ultimate Alliance’s first outing, this entry is less than marvelous.

Of course, a law firm suing a major corporation is not news; however, their reasoning in the suit is unique.  Abington IP is suggesting that Microsoft timed the bannings after the releases of two major online games, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: ODST; games likely to generate increased revenue in Xbox Live subscriptions.  Apparently, users are still able to connect to Xbox Live using their subscription, just not with the banned consoles.

The reality is that anyone modifying their console for illegal uses knows the associated risks (read: getting banned).  Hopefully the lawsuit fizzles out.

The shuttering is even more shocking considering that EA purchased Pandemic along with Bioware for $860 million back in 2007.  EA has said that “Pandemic’s brand and franchises will live on”.  It will be interesting to see how the closing affects next month’s release of The Saboteur which will be Pandemic’s last developed title.

Following last month’s head-exploding news that the Nintendo Wii was outsold by the Playstation 3, console buyers put an end to the madness and took home the Wii en masse.  The (recently $199) Wii cracked over 500,000 units sold during the NPD’s October reporting period which ran from 10/4 to 10/31.

Nintendo marches toward its goal of ensuring every human being in the United States owns the DS, with a very respectable 457,600 units sold.  The Playstation 3 maintained a lead over the 360, although I wonder how long that will hold up considering the huge impact Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 should have for the 360.

The full breakdown for hardware sales according to the NPD Group follows:

Wii – 506,900
Nintendo DS – 457,600
PlayStation 3 – 320,600
Xbox 360 – 249,700
PSP – 174,600
PlayStation 2 – 117,800

On the software side, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves more than doubles its predecessors first month sales (206,000) and rings in an impressive 537,000 units sold.  Nintendo’s pseudo-exercise offerings, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort, sell a combined 755,000 units.  Borderlands has a better-than-expected debut at 418,000 which was good for 3rd place overall.

Some notable (but not really surprising) absences from the top 10 were the Jack Black-led Brutal Legend and Activision’s DJ Hero.

01. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) – 537,000
02. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 441,000
03. Borderlands (Xbox 360) – 418,000
04. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 314,000
05. NBA 2K10 (Xbox 360) – 311,000
06. Halo 3 ODST (Xbox 360) – 271,000
07. NBA 2K10 (PS3) – 213,000
08. Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360) – 175,000
09. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS) – 169,000
10. FIFA Soccer 10 (Xbox 360) – 156,000

Need for Speed: SHIFT is designed for scalability. On one end of its spectrum is a realistic racer where die hard drivers can tweak their cars to get the performance and handling they desire. My end of the spectrum is more like a glorified Pole Position.

And that isn’t an exaggeration. My preferred perspective was an HUD-less third person one, not the realistic in-the-cockpit view where you can see the game’s physics engine punishing the driver.

After a test run found that I shouldn’t be subjected to realistic damage, challenging AI, or anything else which might hurt my racing self esteem (even down to shifting – so there goes the game’s subtitle), I started my racing career.

My first race out got to a bumpy start — which works since ramming other cars is a legitimate strategy. SHIFT has a leveling system where you earn points for precision or aggressive driving. So you can force opponents off the track or cleanly pass them while staying along a glowing guideline showing the optimum placement for your car.

Leveling your driver up opens up new car and race opportunities, but winning is all that matters since you want to earn stars to move to the next racing tier. The goal is to advance to the prestigious NFS Live World Tour. Along the way, you compete on a combination of real world tracks and ones created for the game across three continents. Doing well leads to special invitational events and you can always elect to do a quick race from the main menu or jump online.

The core racing experience is what I expect from an established franchise’s entry on a modern system. Tight controls, photorealistic graphics and accurate sound. With over 60 cars available and over 15 real-world locations, Need for Speed: SHIFT offers a complete experience.

And it’s an experience which doesn’t get repetitious. The invitational races often give drivers access to cars outside their tiers – and there’s more than just simple races available. Time trials, elimination races and duels against rivals offer great variety.

If there’s anything I didn’t like about the game, beyond slightly buggy replays which would occasionally cycle into an endless loop, it’s that impatient players can shell out real world dollars (via Microsoft Points) to purchase the cars they want instead of saving up in-game currency.

Xbox 360 version reviewed. Also available for the PS3 and PC.

The game The Great Flu, available online at www.thegreatflu.com.

This week we take a look at the online game The Great Flu, which is available at www.thegreatflu.com.

Developed not by game designers but by a team of Dutch virologists, it’s an interesting pastime, though I have found a better group of games out there.

More of my take in a minute. First, a guest opinion — that of Palm Beach Post researcher Niels Heimerinks, who let us know about the game in the first place, after the jump.

You’re the head of the Global Pandemic Control Center. A pandemic is imminent and you are in charge of managing this threat. Fight the outbreak of an infectious bug. Prevent the spread and eventually find a cure for this virus that has the potential to infect and kill millions.

Ab Osterhaus, Holland’s main virologist and head of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam says “The game is based on the need to increase public awareness to the threat posed by a pandemic and the measures in place to contain it,” according to BBC News.

At the start you’re being asked to select a virus, which will determine the difficulty of the game. There’s big world map that you can move around with your mouse. The map is divided into 20 regions.

Click the map and an information box will appear giving you the vital stats for that region. You can subsequently apply actions or assign research teams to these regions.

Your action options are represented by icons displayed in a bar on the left side of the screen. Simply drag the action and drop it into the region of your choice. A progress bar will indicate the impact of the action on the region. When events take place or there’s important news, they’ll be listed in the right side of the screen. Click the headline in order to read the full message.

A counter keeps track of the time that’s passed, the number of people infected and the number of fatalities. Your initial budget is 2 billion Euros. Money you can spend on actions such as distributing face masks, improving healthcare, closing down schools, stockpile vaccines, etc.

It’s not an easy game to play but it’s the most fun I’ve had fighting a computer virus.

For me, if there’s anything wrong with The Great Flu is that it feels more like edu- and less like -tainment. I feel more informed (read: terrified) after playing it, but I managed the Kai Virus with a mere 1.5 billion Euros spent (although the Kai Virus is the easiest of the five viruses The Great Flu throws at you).

Not that The Great Flu isn’t an interesting game, but it feels like something assembled by Dutch virologists — the controls are a bit clunky and the it’s tough to know where and when to click. A bit more to my liking are the Pandemic games released by DarkRealmStudios on Kongregate.com.

Pandemic: American Swine allows you to take more drastic measures than The Great Flu.

Pandemic: American Swine starts in June 11, 2010 with an outbreak of Swine Flu (sorry, H1N1) somewhere in the United States. It’s up to the player to manage panic by spinning the news, using the military to enforce curfews and handing out masks and promoting research.

Unlike The Great Flu, Pandemic: American Swine lets the player take extreme measures like censoring the news, deporting infected individuals and even dropping nukes on cities too infected to save.
This might sound dark, but the first two games had you play as a virus with the goal of decimating the whole human race making this entry refreshingly optimistic.

Let me start with a disclaimer: I’ve made it through less than 30% of Sacred 2’s main quest and I’ve seen less than 20% of Sacred 2’s world. After over 30 hours of play, though, I feel justified in posting a review.

Sacred 2 is an action-RPG loaded with hundreds of quests, thousands of items and a menagerie of monsters. Gameplay is combat-driven so don’t expect to sneak around like a thief and you pick the good or evil path before launching the game so there are no moral quandaries to get in your way. If you need to feel immersed in a fantasy world, then Sacred 2 isn’t for you – but if you’re looking for a game that offers Diablo-style action and WoW-level of addiction, I highly recommend Sacred 2.

In the fraction of the game I’ve seen, I’ve learned that there’s some problem with elves and I’m guessing a Fallen Angel comes into play at some point, but I really don’t care. Not that I’m not interested in being the hero who brings salvation to Ancaria, but I’m having enough fun investigating crop circles, attending rock concerts, and collecting troll hearts. Sure there’s a plot to follow, but the flavor of the game comes from the multitude of side quests available. I eagerly scour cities looking for people with ? floating above their heads, never knowing if I’m going to be asked to wipe out a skeleton army or merely tell guests that the wedding’s off.

Just one more quest, I tell myself and then I get sucked into a mini-campaign or find a class-specific quest I’m compelled to do because I’m a good little Dryad. Yes, I am your typical wood nymph who longs to pepper enemies with arrows and cast her voodoo. She’s one of six preset characters available. Avoiding Gauntlet-style archetypes, Sacred 2 opts for classes like an angelic warrior (Seraphim), a resurrected soldier (Shadow Warrior) and an automaton resembling the Egyptian god Anubis (Temple Guardian).

Each character has different combat skills and magic available to them (called Combat Arts and grouped under three Aspects). Using my voodoo, I can envelop enemies in thorns and use shrunken heads to summon ghosts. With 15 Combat Arts to choose from, in addition to Offensive, Defensive and General Skills to hone, Sacred 2 has a pretty deep RPG system. Combine this with the variety of armor and weapons available and, even though I can’t change my character’s gender or make her ears pointier, I still feel like I’ve shaped her creation.

There’s always a concern that porting from the PC to a console involves a dumbing down of the interface, but the controller works great and allows for intuitive button mapping. You can assign potions to the D-pad and attacks to the face buttons and you can even use the trigger buttons as “shift” buttons letting you easily access up to twelve different attacks, spells, or combinations — in no way is the absence of a keyboard limiting. I have noticed that the controls could be tighter — the game doesn’t always recognize that I want to shift from my longbow to sword. Also, targeting isn’t precise — many times I’ve launched a flurry of poisoned bolts at a rat instead of the horrible monster next to it.

Sacred 2 favors open-world exploration over traditional dungeon crawling. This isn’t to say that you won’t spend a fair amount of time in cellars, caves and sewers fighting subterranean fauna, but Ascaron has built a huge fantasy world and – by Lumen! – they want you to see it. Grassland, desert, mountain, jungle – name an ecosystem and you’ll find it somewhere in the world of Ancaria. This is an incredibly detailed world. There are remnants of battlefields, strange machines, ancient graveyards and other wonders which you just happen upon if you stray from Ancaria’s network of roads.

Sadly, much of Ancaria’s beauty is lost to me because I’m either running like mad or hightailing it on horseback. Sacred 2 doesn’t have random encounters — it just has encounters. There’s no patch of wilderness which isn’t crawling with monsters who have the sense to travel in packs. It’s cool happening upon goblins fighting spiders, but it doesn’t take long for them to join forces against you. Once I barely stayed ahead of a pack of skeletons, bears, minotaurs, goblins, boars, and goblins riding boars.

However, Sacred 2′s deadliest feature is that you can’t pause the game. While the single-player setup is perfectly fine for misanthropes like myself, Ascaron really wants you to enjoy the multiplayer experience (2 player offline or 4 players online) and has created a pseudo-perpetual world MMO type experience. The end result is that if you stop to look at a map, level up, or muck about with your equipment, it won’t take long before something comes up and starts chewing on you. It’s much safer to do any charactery thing in cities, where you’re mostly safe. Luckily, the world of Ancaria is filled with transporters and respawny stones, so you can warp around to cities you’ve already visited and run to the blacksmith to have a magic necklace dropped by a diseased sheep welded to your quarterstaff to make it fiery.

I think Ascaron has a low opinion of my social life, because should I ever complete this massive game, I’ll need to replay it to see where the evil path leads me. And then there’s the other characters for me to try out and they each have their own quests. And I heard there’s an expansion on the way, which is like hearing that Slartibartfast is adding a new continent when I haven’t even seen Paris yet.

The NESbuckle, made from a working Nintendo controller. (Courtesy nesbuckle.com)

See all of the video-game fashion

The classic Nintendo controller is one of the most recognizable video game peripherals, but how well does it translate into a fashion accessory? The folks behind the NES Buckle are hoping you’ll pay $30 for this piece of nostalgia (crafted from a real working controller) and they aren’t the only ones seeking to cash-in on video game fashion.

Would you pay $35 for a Space Invaders tie? $29.99 for a Pac-Man hat? $42.99 for a Mario Bros. themed hoodie?

Let us know, is this geek chic I Love the 80s or What Not to Wear?

Re-reading the above paragraph, I realize that I’ve described a compelling story. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t present in this game. Sure there is an introductory voiceover which introduces us to the pathos of the Terminator universe and there are scattered cutscenes which extol humanity, but this doesn’t come across in the gameplay. Compared with Terminator Salvation, Gears of War seems like a meditation on violence, which is too bad since the beginning of Salvation promises a Gears of War-like experience.

After all, Terminator Salvation is a third-person shooter set in urban decay. John Connor is accompanied by Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), the Dom to his Marcus, and together they fight against an enemy which overwhelms. Combat is largely cover-based and you even press Y to focus in on points of interest.

Armed with an assault rifle, Connor is immediately up against swarms of flying Aerostats and, soon after, Spiders — heavily shielded crab-like machines. You won’t survive out in the open, but the game has a deep cover system. Almost every structure on the battlefield offers some form of protection from which Connor can pop up and take out enemies or lay down some blind fire. Once you’ve clung to a wall or overturned car, you can use the thumbstick to open a radial menu and dive to another location. Using this method to move around the battlefield, you can flank enemies and fire on their unshielded areas.

Countering the cover system is a strong enemy AI. Spiders won’t let you fire on their backs for too long before swiveling and counter-attacking. Later, the menacing T600 endoskeletons will be unleashed and they seem designed for the sole purpose of hunting you down. Fortunately Connor’s weapon choices grow to include shotguns, grenade launchers and devastating pipe bombs.

Get a few chapters into the game and you’ll realize that Salvation has a typical war movie setup — our men are trapped behind enemy lines and it would be suicidal to rescue them, but isn’t this what makes us better than the enemy?

Connor assembles a group of like-minded troops who have heeded his “come with me if you want to die” call, and plunges in. It would make sense for them to occasionally do some flanking of their own, but they are engaged in battle theater — shooting without aiming and dying dramatically.

If there’s anything you want in a movie tie-in, it’s the feeling that you’re the star of an action movie. There are no wow moments in Terminator Salvation. No great set pieces. No thrills or chills. Just a steady march through post-apocalyptic L.A.

Terminator Salvation is actually a good looking game, but level design is linear and repetitious. Skynet keeps throwing the same three models against you, no matter how deep into enemy territory you creep. Any half hour of Salvation resembles any other half hour – save for a few rail shooter sequences which break up the monotony if nothing else.

Looking at everything I said above, I would still probably recommend this game if it didn’t clock in at under four hours. It is utterly reprehensible that shovelware like this is being presented as a triple-A title. While Salvation does have offline two-player co-op, there is no online multiplayer component. There are no secret areas, easter eggs, collectibles, or unlocks. In short, Terminator Salvation has no replay value whatsoever.

It’s a solid D.

A daemon, a hidden computer program, is part of Sobol’s postmortem plot not to hack computers, but to hack society. Recruiting disaffected individuals and channeling billions of dollars, Sobol’s Daemon organizes a global cabal capable of bringing down corporations and threatening governments.

Lending equal weight to online and offline action, Suarez has some scenes set in CyberStorm’s computer games, which the Daemon is using for recruitment. Beating a mod for the WWII-themed, Over the Rhine, wins the approval of the game’s baddie SS Obesrtleutnant Heinrich Boerner. Later The Gate (CyberStorm’s fantasy MMO), is the setting for a stakeout.

More than a techno-thriller, Daniel Suarez has created a plausible scenario about what a determined individual can accomplish in a wired world.

PS3 Motion Controller
Nintendo has the Wiimote. Microsoft has Project Natal. Sony has a prototype. Looking like a small baton with a ping pong ball attached to the end, PS3′s motion controller works in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye to track the movement of the controller which could be a stand-in for a tennis racket, pistol or flashlight. A motion controller in each hand lets the user dual-wield. Imagine a Zelda game where you’re Link, blocking attacks with a shield while striking with your sword. Still at the tech demo stage, this has a lot of promise and I’m hoping Sony can stick to their Spring 2010 launch date.

PSP Go
Showing that Nintendo isn’t the only company that can make their portable device more portable, Sony showed off the PSP Go. Half the size of the PSP, this sleek and sexy handheld slides open like a cell phone. With built-in wifi and Bluetooth capabilities, the PSP Go goes beyond games allowing for better access to and storage of videos, music and pictures. Full PSP games can even be downloaded to the Go, bypassing physical media. The only question is will the $249 entry price be too high, especially since Nintendo’s DSi is only $169.

The Last Guardian
When the “games as art” argument rears its head, two games come to the forefront: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s no wonder that the company behind them, Team Ico, would have created the beautiful and mysterious The Last Guardian revealed today. The trailer shows a young boy hunted by knights in an eerie ruin who is befriended by a giant griffin. Haunting and poignant, this game is set for a 2010 release.