Year in Review (Because it Always Looks Better in Retrospect)

I’m a bit obsessive compulsive and love 3’s and 7’s. In order to keep this relatively brief for your sakes, I’ll be keeping this to groups of three. 2008 was an awesome year in many ways for video games and I think a look back would be a wonderful way to go into the new year:

3 Biggest Bits of News

I – Final Fantasy XIII goes Multi-console

This is big news in a lot of ways. The first thing is the overall importance of this news and what it means for the video game industry. The FF series has, until now, been exclusive to its given console. The sharing of a console for an FF installment on its release is heretofore unheard of and the change shows Square-Enix’s appraisal of a new market and era for videogames. How? Because in the old days, figuring out which console was truly king was an easy matter, and a console being king in the SNES days was a simple matter of it having better out of the box appeal. Thanks to instantaneous dissemination of information and news (this crazy interweb thing), consumer opinion and responses are extremely organic. As such, even if the 360 has a lead on the PS3 in console sales right now, there’s no telling which console will get the better pull when FFXIII is released, or which one will hold onto the lead in the long run (whereas in previous console generations the winner was usually clear after the first full year on the market). Square responded to the new market and showed that multi-platform releases are the best way to do business, and that is what Square is first and foremost.

The other important part of this news was the collective brick shat by gamers around the globe in response to the news. Immediately arguments ensued and discussions about multi-disc format versus the single disc blu ray PS3 owners will have. Longtime Sony stalwarts can attest to multi-disc format not being a big deal (since it was standard in PSone days) and therefore doesn’t really matter. The major bit to emerge in the face of this news is what no one seemed to pay any attention to: the sister game, Versus XIII, remains PS3 exclusive. In all honesty, based on the story and trailers that have been released, I’m more excited for Versus, and can’t wait to see more.

II – PS3 Begins to Best 360 in monthly sales, 360 takes November though

The PS3 finally began overtaking the 360 from Spring onward, and this generated very little buzz beyond the usual numbers spinning that Microsoft PR is wont to do and generated little fanboy buzz by the way of anything more than the reality: the PS3 was finally hitting stride and catching up to the 360.

What was absurd about the year’s NPDs was the November numbers being spun out of proportion to the point where people were claiming the PS3 was a sinking ship and that even sparked rumors of Sony canceling the PS3. The PS3 sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 275,000 units in the US in November, which is not a bad number by any means, just a slip down from their prior month and a decrease from November 2007. These kinds of small facts get blown up until people extrapolate these kinds of absurd notions and it just goes to show that while the masses may have immediate access to all kinds of information thanks to the internet, the masses are still shityourpants dumb sometimes.

Oh, and in addition to this back and forth between the PS3 and the 360, the Wii jerked itself off month after month on both Sony and Microsoft. I hope every Nintendard waggles themselves to a Mii induced seizure.

III – PS Home Release

It may have been released, but damn was it boring. That’s the first issue. I will say that Home has all kinds of potential, but they’re not utilizing it properly enough. The key is to provide additional content (the Uncharted Rooms for example were a big draw) whether it’s a new way to peruse add ons, explore games and get help, or maybe even download cheat patches (I know I’m not alone in missing my Gameshark).

In spite of these evident potentialities to solidify Home, the big news following Home’s release is the removal of voice chat so people can’t go up to little girls and inform them of what fellatio is.

3 Best Games

I – Metal Gear Solid 4

Kojima-San did it again. Up to his usual tricks with plenty fo fourth wall busting, over the top philosophical and societal commentary, and a magnum opus of a sendoff for Solid/Old Snake, Kojima’s game plays like pure poetry. I may have only played through it once, but that’s honestly because I haven’t had time to do a second play through proper justice, that, and I like sleeping.

II – LittleBigPlanet

This one surprised the hell out of me. I went alternately from being psyched out of my mind seeing the level creation potential of it, to subsequently being intimidated and then put off by the depth of level creation online aspect (I’m not much into online communities, although I do take them into consideration and applaud them). I got a copy anyway though, and was blown away. The whole game is a warm, cuddly and welcoming as the posterchild sackboy is. The online aspect a welcoming environment, the add-ons encourage continuous involvement and experimentation, and the game’s story mode was actually as captivating as it was original. I haven’t even busted opne the level creation in full force yet but the story mode has not left me unsatisfied.

III – Fallout 3

Just read my review in the previous posts. What a game, grandiose, visionary, and just so immersive you run the danger of forcing your friends to call an intervention and hide your console power cable so they can get you to shower and eat.

3 Biggest Disappointments

I – Delays, Delays, Delays

Prototype and InFamous were both delayed until next year. I was excited for both of these games, and it seems (based on the timing) that GTA IV’s release scared both developers into putting their noses to the grindstones for creating their open world settings for the games. While Prototype has been flying under the radar (although confirmed for an April release), inFamous was recently previewed with a hands on by ign.com and Greg Miller (a personal hero of mine), gave it nothing short of superb appraisals.

In the realm of delays, I’ll throw FFXIII in that bunch because we’re supposed to already be on our second and third playthroughs of it and since Square isn’t nailing down a date for it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it means very late 2009 or 2010 even. What we know for certain is that there’s a demo coming out (Ironically, the demo is PS3 exclusive) with FF VII: Advent Children Complete in March. If the demo is coming out in March, that means it’s at least 2 quarters until we can reasonably expect Square to finish it’s polish and sheen on the game, hence my prediction of late 2009 or early 2010. The upside that may allow me to err in the favor of earlier than later: The demo is already promised to have roughly five hours of gameplay, which can only mean that the full game will be near completion, and/or the game itself will be even more massive than previous titles. Square has, historically, revolutionized the RPG genre generation to generation, so hopefully FF’s tardiness this generation is not from lack of innovation but rather from surplus.

II – Spider-Man Web of Shadows

Yeah, I’m calling out specific games here. SMWoS, where did you go wrong? The gameplay was fun, the story utilized some unique mechanics peop
le had to love (the power of choice between classic Red n Blue or the Black suit) evil or good path choices in the game, and the most impressive array of Spider-Man canon characters to ever grace a spidey game. The game, unfortunately, suffered terribly repetitive missions and aggravating structure. There were also some clunky cutscenes that made even the vaguest of Spider-Man fans raise eyebrows (why, for example, was MJ constantly calling Spider-Man Peter in public?). While swinging and employing the new battle system was exhilirating, I couldn’t get over the fact that Luke Cage forced me to do a mission killing four thugs in sequence using a specific move on each one that was near impossible to time on its own, but far more difficult to execute on the four moving and shooting thugs. Spider-Man’s Brand New Day in the video game world should have slept in.

III – Resistance 2

What the hell did they do to Nathan Hale? The original game found its footing and appeal in the unique style of setting that it lodged in post would be WWII era that you believed. While the chimaera hideouts took you somewhere farout and truly “Resistance”-y, you never felt as if you had left the 1940’s alternate history Naughty Dog had crafted. This game, however, abandoned that and left you feeling as if you’d been jettisoned to whatever godawful year in the future Halo 3 takes place.

Fallout or Get Out: Fallout 3 Review

Bethesda studios can call this one their masterpiece, Fallout 3 has been surpassing gamers’ wildest expectations of what open world gaming can truly be and mean in this generation of console technology. Forget GTA IV if you haven’t already, this one is the true king.

Fallout 3 is set in a not-so-distant future in Washington D.C. where nuclear war has ravaged the land and country itself. You begin the game as a member of an underground Vault community until your father disappears from the vault and you escape in his pursuit. You then emerge to the outside world, a ravaged landscape filled with all sorts of dangers and detail of an obliterated wasteland.

Detail is what defines this game: from the moment you emerge from the vault, your camera slowly comes into focus (since it’s the first time you’re seeing sunlight) and the arid landscape slowly takes form. The land is vast and rife with all sorts of secrets that make exploration worthwhile for both aesthetic and pragmatic gameplay reasons. The landscape is littered and filled with not just scenery, but life also: mutant wildlife roams ready to attack you, super mutants, ghouls, raiders and scavengers can be found all around. On occasion you may even pass on the periphery of them encountering and reacting to one another in a display of how truly realistic this world is.

The game looks gorgeous, and you’ll find yourself marveling at the scenery and character models and designs of the various monsters and other inhabitants of the wasteland in your adventure. While the PS3 version does have some texture lag problems, they’re usually the sort of thing you’ll barely notice out of the corner of your eye before the game catches up and corrects the issue. In short, the game is gorgeous, and may just be too pretty for its own good.

More than just the aesthetics, the gameplay itself is what pushes this game beyond all common bounds. It begins with your character; your first act in the game is design your character (choose a gender, name and design their face to the most minute detail). After that the real customization of your character (and subsequently the game you’ll play) begins. Your character, like any person, has a number of personal attributes (Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, Charisma, Perception, etc) and these inform natural affinity towards specialized skills (Repair, Medicine, Guns, Speech, Lockpicking, Sneaking and about twenty others).

By choosing to distribute your skills towards a given characteristic or skill, you’re leaning your character towards a certain style of gameplay, and thus changing the entire game you’ll be playing and the experience you’ll have. Devoting attention to Strength and Guns, for example, makes you a bit more prone to simply plodding along and getting into fights to solve problems. If you’re a loquacious Odyssean like I made my character (devoting points to Charisma and Speech primarily) you gain special options and ability to convince people of certain courses of action and are led to a completely different experience. Each time you level up you’re given access to numerous skill perks to choose from (one per level) that allows you to increase your skill and truly develop an affinity for a particular style of play.

That leads to the other great part of this game: the true depth. In every conversation you have with Non-Playable Characters (NPC’s) you are given a series of options of how to respond and lead conversation to a unique end. Charisma can lead to options that might not be available to a more Strength inclined player, and Intelligence can offer its own unique options, as can Perception.

This depth goes from the conversation to the game world itself. My friends and I have each logged about the same amount of time on our respective games at this point, but the missions we have discovered by talking to people and traveling around have us facing completely different challenges, areas and experiences. In short, you’re a truly free man(or woman) in this world and you control your actions in this world almost as much as you do in this one. It’s a classically annoying moment when playing games like Grand Theft Auto IV I’d tell my non-gamer friends that it’s an open world game, only to show them a mission briefing cutscene and have them ask me: “Why can’t you kill that bitch?” and having no real answer other than the game needs you not to for the sake of the story. Not so with Fallout 3, at any moment you are free to be polite and negotiate and be the good errand boy, and you are just as free to pull out a gun and cap the person who was trying to use you in the face. Just be aware that you’ll face consequences for your actions. In short, this isn’t just open world, it’s damn near real world gameplay, if the real world were a post-nuclear holocaust wasteland, but hey, stranger things could happen.

While this depth and gameplay seems to push this game to the level of godhood, it is humanized with some flaws and hiccups. First, do not come into this game expecting a First Person Shooter just because of the presentation, it’s primarily an RPG and thus allows for automated fighting and aiming if you so elect. Although this can be circumvented and you can play it as a traditional FPS, the controls are a bit slow and clunky for it to really encourage this and you’ll be challenging yourself more than you probably should.

Besides, the auto-aiming system in the game (V.A.T.S.) is limited by regenerative AP, so you can’t rely on the system. The V.A.T.S. system does make for some cool slow motion kills (I defy anyone reading this not to blow a super mutant’s head into four pieces in slow motion and not be astounded). The game can be a lot to take in at first, and the average gamer will need to be ready to absorb a lot very fast when they’re dropped into the Wasteland, but a challenge is always a good thing and this challenge is worth it. I played the Playstation 3 version of the game and found the presentation gorgeous, but not without its stumbles: textures were occasionally a little slow to catch up and render (especially in the Wasteland) and there are some framerate stumbles and stutters that may raise an eyebrow, but nothing damning of the experience by any means.

Fallout 3 is by no means perfect, but what it gets right is what any game should get right to construct a memorable and immersive experience for its players. Its wrinkles are more than endurable for the sake of such an experience. Beyond the base qualities of core gameplay that Fallout 3 gets right though, is its superlative creation of a world for you to explore and the sheer freedom and depth of possible experience you can have with this game, and this is one experience that any gamer who owns a console or capable PC should be sure to get a hold of.

Score: 9.5/10