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23 Dec 05
Dear Gaming Friends,
It's hard believe another year has flown by. At first blush, it hardly seems like I got any gaming in this year. Looking a little deeper, I realize that I did all right. The problem was my limited gaming time. I usually was only able to play in short bursts. That meant that my gaming plate ended up a little light on the strategy, and I hardly completed any games this year.
I started the year playing some of my Christmas presents. Mainly it was Halo 2 and Battle for Middle Earth. Both were fun, but neither reached the levels of greatness I was hoping for. Fortunately, the year had a strong gaming start. Out of nowhere came Mercenaries from Lucasarts. It was a shockingly great blend of third person action in an open warfare, sandbox zone.
The Xbox continued to get love with the purchase of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. Who would think to get a good western game, you'd have to go to Oddworld and play as a half lion, half Clint Eastwood? Since I still haven't gotten around to picking up Resident Evil 4, the Gamecube came to life with Baten Kaitos. A strategy RPG with card based battles, you know I was there. After that, the cube gave me some spy time in James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing.
The PC is still my gaming home, but it was relegated to writing and Half Life 2 at the beginning of the year. Then all of a sudden we had Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, Darwinia and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Tactical RPG Superheroes, Virtual Life battles and tactical space combat were so much fun that it took me an extra couple of months to finish Kohan II. Still if I had to recommend one game out of those, it would be Kohan II.
Then it was time to get back to the Xbox. I was just starting Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (and being intimidated by the online pros) when out of the blue comes Phantom Dust. Sure it's an action game to an extent, but you enter battles with powers randomly selected from decks of power cards you select. It's strategy, action, fun and online wrapped into a budget priced package.
Around this time I strayed in my loyalty to my favorite genres. I put some quality time into Paper Mario: The Thousand Year door, a fun, Gamecube RPG. Then I played some God of War. Not only was it so good I had to finish it, but I even finished the challenge of the gods. That was an amazingly polished action game marred only slightly by a few poor platforming sections.
Redemption was close at hand as SWAT 4 arrived into my clutches. They had me at macing belligerent civilians. SWAT 4 is the new standard for tactical shooters.
After that, the summer wasn't bad. I was pleasantly surprised with Act of War: Direct Action in the modern military RTS genre. Battlefield 2 sucked my life away for a while throwing me first person into modern combat. Too bad I suck. Then I played a little catch up with Sid Meier's Pirates! I had virtual years of fun plundering on the high seas. I tried to play the Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 expansion and Evil Genius, but neither game could run stably on my system.
Then, on Bill's recommendation, I grabbed Space Rangers 2: Dominators. It's an amazing living universe with so many included types of gameplay, it's hard to keep track of them all. I didn't instantly name it my game of the year, but I did have fun.
I played a bunch of Burnout 3 in preparation for the launch of Burnout Revenge. There was much highway carnage, but before long my interest burned out. Still, both are great fun to pick up and play.
Then, talk about your different types of battles. Battalion Wars on the Gamecube thrust me into a cartoon world of global combat. The Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War expansion managed to up the gore and violence while keeping up the fast paced gameplay.
I started winding up the year with a little destruction. I smashed my way through cities and armies at the Hulk in Ultimate Destruction. Then I took to felling hulks as the mortal sized warrior in Shadow of the Colossus. Both games were chocked full of fun. Colossus clearly takes the prize as it evokes one memorable moment after another.
Finishing up the year, I indulged in some Star Wars Battlefront 2 on the PC. It's fun taking out some droids or troopers now and then. I also think I've mentioned my dips back into the scenic universe of Homeworld 2.
So despite having limited gaming time this year, I have to say I think things turned out pretty well. Here's hoping you had a good gaming time this year, an even better time next year, and that you enjoy the holiday season. Don't drink and drive. Cheers.
In case you weren't interested in that, I'm sure there are other things going on.
Jason
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22 Dec 05
All this talk about the 360 has got me thinking. Worried? Don't be. I was remembering the Microsoft Game Voice. Long before Live voice chat, Microsoft made hardware that wasn't a mouse or keyboard. One of the items with the greatest potential was the Game Voice. It seems like a simple and obvious idea now, but it wasn't back then. The crux of it was get gamers to help develop the voice chat features for Direct X by having them subsidize the cost through purchasing (and subsequently testing) the software.
Even though Microsoft is good at selling software, they knew it would be hard to reach the price point they wanted for a game compatible voice chat program. Their solution was simple and elegant, create a USB hardware device that can directly access the chat software.
The device, referred to as a puck, had inputs for headphones and a microphone. It had buttons for four members or groups, a team button, an all button, a mute button and a command button. Command button? Yes, it also had voice recognition software that could run macros for you. Voice commands weren't perfect, but they could be helpful in micro heavy RTS games.
Basically, it was a very nice set up for online multiplayer. To get full use you needed to use a voice server, but that's still true today. The original idea was to have small teams. Let's say you were playing a game like SWAT (3 or 4). You could assign a number button to each person. You could press that button to talk to them privately or any combination to speak to those people. The team button would talk to everyone on your team without having to press all the number buttons individually. Since the current selections lit up, it was easy to check to see who you were talking to.
Obviously the team and all buttons played a more significant role in adversarial online play. You could keep your team channel open to keep up on each other and talk strategy without informing the other team. Once you had sprung your trap it was easy to press the all button for a little taunting time.
There were some problems. The original software only had decent voice quality, but the 1.5 patch significantly improved it. The full client required the puck purchase. There was free version available as well, but it was severely limited. Both the client and the server were resource hogs (whoa Tron 2.0 flashback). That could be a problem in gaming.
Game Voice support died with the rest of the sidewinder line. I imagine some of what they learned was recycled into the Xbox Live voice chat features. It's also worth noting that since Teamspeak 2 was released, it supports using the puck during gameplay. I suppose the voice command software still works, but I haven't tried it in ages. I might have to bust it out some time.
Jason
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21 Dec 05
You knew I couldn't resist it. One more word about the Xbox 360. I have to admit the scarcity has really multiplied instances of my nemesis, bundles. With the exorbitant prices of bundles, it certainly makes the $400 premium edition price tag much more palatable.
Nothing says Christmas like free games. Stormregion (think Codename: Panzers series) has come through and released the full version of their 2001 game S.W.I.N.E. It's a 3D RTS depicting the epic battle between Rabbits and Pigs. You can grab it Here from 3DGamers or your favorite of the Usual Suspects.
I have a couple more links for you today. There a Christmas edition of Grow out right now. It's a little easier than some of them, but still fun. Check it out Here. Next, Eurogamer has an article up looking at the candidates for awards for the upcoming Independent Games Festival.
Finally, a couple of news links for you. EA and Take Two are fighting over the NHL license. It seems the players want EA exclusivity while the owners want multiple licenses. Didn't the players and owners just recover from the last disastrous argument? Speaking of EA, they're predicting a weak start to the Xbox 360, and Sony not launching the PS3 until after summer stateside.
Jason
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20 Dec 05
Normally, I like to argue with Bill Harris of Dubious Quality over email. Sometime we just have to take it to the net. Seriously, sometimes we actually talk about the same things. I was going to write how the Xbox 360 launch hasn't exactly redeemed them after stumbling since May. Then I read DQ about how brilliant the launch is going.
Delusional I may be, but I'm going to disagree. I still think the 360 is a solid piece of gaming hardware and will soon be bringing true next generation games to living rooms. This launch is garbage. Microsoft has under delivered units across the board. They've lost control of the media message. And they're giving Sony more options rather than fewer.
I can't blame Microsoft too much for poor chip yields, but their response hasn't been good. It seems their initial release date was too late because it didn't give them enough flexibility to respond to the production problems. Ideally, they could have pushed back launch a few weeks then increasingly staggered the other regional launches. Starting so late that would have pushed Europe at or beyond Christmas.
Beyond raw numbers, the distribution is hard to understand. Gamestop and EB still have lots of preorders sitting out there. Units seem to be going into Best Buy and Walmart at a greater rate. In essence, it seems that Microsoft is choosing the more casual customer over their hardcore base. It could be a purely business decision, but the effect is the same.
I think the biggest problem is the demand bubble created by Christmas. There's huge demand out there for a hot product. That demand combined with time restraints of the holiday pump up the value of the secondary market (such as Ebay). The increased secondary market value increases demand by people looking to turn a quick profit off it. The bubble bursts this weekend. After the holidays, there's much less 'get it now' pressure. That will quickly drop the price on secondary market. That, in turn, will eliminate the profit hunter demand. Continued supply will also drop pricing pressure. After the holidays, it's easy for gamers to wait for the release of a game they're interested in or just when the console is easy to find at retail.
I'm not going to rehash the whole media problem. I'll just sum up. I've seen articles describing how you shouldn't even try to get a 360 this Christmas since they're so rare. There have been articles on overheating, disk scratches, how weird the ads are and lawsuits over the 360. There was even an article telling people not to buy the Xbox 360. Do I even need to mention the robberies? Outside the gaming press, there's been too little talk about the 'HD era' and the gaming possibilities.
So what about Sony? Sony has all the options open now. They can press for an early launch to try to quickly wound the 360. Or they can take their time to ensure a great launch line up. They can include a hard drive or not. They can meet the 360's $399 price point or go under it (personally, I think going over $399 would be the biggest mistake Sony could make). Sony has all their options open. Since gamers are already waiting for a 360, it's not a huge leap for Sony to ask them to wait a little longer for the PS3.
If Microsoft was doing great, they'd be riding the crest of the demand wave. The preorders would have been long filled. The stores would all be getting units in and selling out in days instead of minutes. Hard to keep on the shelf is good, impossible to find isn't. It's too bad. I really wanted a strong Xbox 360 launch to put the pressure on Sony. I'll try to be good and not bring this up again until the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Jason
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19 Dec 05
Rough weekend. Limited gaming time and various other problems. It turns out the patch for Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked didn't completely solve the lock up problems I was having. So I went through the whole update all drivers and try again. Many reboots later, still no solutions. I guess that game will just have to wait until the next rig.
I was thinking of waiting until Windows Vista is released. That way each time Microsoft delays it, I can put off the purchase. I think I'm going to buy the next rig instead of building it. The pricing edge is shrinking again. More than that, I miss having someone else to blame for my troubles.
I did install and play around with Albatross 18 this weekend, but I seemed to have some corrupted text problems with the game. I ran out of time to troubleshoot that.
Speaking of troubleshooting, I've been getting progressively worse connections with my wireless bridge that connection my consoles to the net. The WET11 Bridge keeps loosing it's connection with the wireless router. They aren't even that far away, but I've been adjusting positions to no avail. I think there's a new firmware for the WET I can try. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
The gaming magazines had some interesting tactical and strategy articles on the covers. CGW had Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The article definitely got my attention, but I was a bit bummed about the developers complete lack of interest in single player. Computer Games Magazine has an article on Heroes of Might and Magic V. It was so good, I almost ran to the computer to fire up HOMM III. Hopes are high for another great gaming year in 2006.
This week's game is surprisingly obscure given its title. It's Battles of Prince of Persia (official site) from Ubisoft Studios for the Nintendo DS. Amazingly it's at turn based war game combined with a card battle system. You choose one of three generals from one of three armies and fight your way through the story driven campaign. Your general has a zone of support that can aid his units, but he's also a powerful force on the battlefield in combat and through spell effects of cards. All of your moves are dependent on cards as well, so balancing your deck is as important as terrain, facing, and zones of influence. It's not the prettiest game around, but it has a deep, intriguing battle system. Battles is available now.
Jason
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16 Dec 05
Just as a reminder, if there's something you'd like discussed here, a game you'd like more information on, my take on something in the gaming industry or even would just like to see your name here, post comments, post in the forum or drop me an email. Sometimes I hit a topic dry spell. I don't want you to suffer. Let me know what you want.
I wanted to mention Video Game Media Watch. It's an ambitious idea to cover all the coverage of video games in the press. There have been some really thoughtful pieces there. Check it out if you're interested. More importantly, we all have come across ignorant reporting on gaming at time. You've probably wondered where you could report articles like that. Well, now you know.
I'm always interested in new economic models for gaming as you've probably noted with the coverage of Totalgaming.net and Steam. Well, someone pointed out another one to me. It's Albatross 18, a golf game. It's visually reminiscent of the Hot Shots Golf series. It's online and multiplayer with chat and tournament functions. The interesting thing is that it's free to download and play. As you play well, you earn experience that lets you equip better items and currency that lets you buy those items. But if you want the best items, you have to pay for them with real cash. It's a very interesting idea. I'll try to check it out and report back.
Jason
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