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.

Let’s Start the Show.. er, Game

To start off video game blogging, I have to get the basics off my chest, because with so much stuff past and behind me, I won’t feel right about starting up a blog unless I cover the recent news and my thoughts on them to some degree. So here goes a lot of stuff which, if you read video game news and blogs often enough, will be old trade for you, as well as my general thoughts on the current console generation so you get an idea of who I am as a gamer:

Wii play PS3 but you can hold your 360:

So, in case that header doesn’t give it away, I am a Wii and PS3 gamer, but not so much for the 360. I had the opportunity/capital a few months ago for a 360, but decided an iPod touch was a more worthwhile investment (given the iTunes app store, I’d say that’s paying off pretty well actually).

I’ve had a Nintendo Wii since launch-ish and I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it. I had eight games for it at one point, but have since whittled my collection to three (Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Zelda: Twilight Princess). I’m a fan of Nintendo, but the fact that I skipped the Gamecube generation with nary a regret should show that I’m hardly a fanboy. I’m not quite in the middle of the “casual games vs hardcore games” debate, I prefer hardcore gaming to an extent and have not liked the “casual trend” on the Wii. The casual trend would be great if it weren’t pulling everything down with it. I’m fine with Nintendo making games like Wii Sports and Wii fit for the world and their grandparents, but when the whole casual trend starts to drag down even the historically “hardcore” games, like Zelda and Mario, that’s when I start to cringe a bit and my Wii, while still beloved, has not been turned on in months.

I liked Mario Galaxy and beat it 100%, but in playing it I felt nowhere near the kind of challenge or depth of gameplay that Mario 64, Mario World or Mario Bros. 3 offered. The gameplay was one huge series of safety nets positioned under a bunny hoppable gap. What I mean is, I never felt like any of the challenges were too difficult (not being a snob, but even the harder challenges never took more than three or four retries), but the sheer number of lives you could easily find yourself getting in the game only removed any semblance of challenge the old games had that made them so wonderful and immersive. Part of crafting a truly immersive experience as a game goes (nowadays anyway), is about making you feel the tension of trying to succeed and putting you on the edge of your seat like when you played Super Mario Bros and had to make that super long jump in level 8-2 with only one more life left. Modern gameplay has improved this ability of immersion through different approaches to character deaths (hospital visits for Niko? Snake crying out in gut wrenching agony?) and by making more human characters we can get to know and understand. In spite of these advances, Link and Mario are still mute. Maybe that’s a “style” but when you compare those two to Jak of Jak and Daxter who was mute for his first adventure, at least jak walked away with more of a genuine and identifiable personality at the end of his first adventure. It’s been more than twenty years now and all I know of Link and Mario are that they’re recognizable caricatures.

I love, love, love my PS3. I skipped the Gamecube, stopped messing with Sega halfway through the Genesis’ lifecycle, and have not yet bought a Microsoft console. Yes, I’ll admit, if I’m a fanboy, I’m a Playstation fanboy. I was offered a console as a gift back in sixth grade, and already owning an N64 (which I loved) I decided that new Sony console, with the cool “Bandicoot” game that had somehow stolen the Final Fantasy series might not be a bad idea. I bought it as a novelty, I was a major Sony basher in the PSone days, and then I got my PSX with Crash Bandicoot and FF7. The system worked the way I, back then, expected consoles of the future to work, and it worked that way in the present. After I got my PSone, I never bought another N64 game again (I’d already played Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Goldeneye and Turok, there’s not I missed anyway). My N64 collection stopped at eight games. My PSone collection easily surpassed thirty crossing all genres (the Playstation Greatest Hits line made jumping into the Playstation game a lot easier than Nintendo made catching up with their lines).

In spite of this, while I was excited by the prospect of a PS2, I didn’t jump the gun on it and lineup for one, I actually got one purely by accident because of a good report card. My mom happened to be at the Wiz (an old electronics chain that has since gone under) and a store clerk, out of the blue allegedly, told her a PS2 preorder had been cancelled and was up for grabs. Remembering my good grades and that I had one of the older playstations at home, my mom jumped on the opportunity (this was one week after release no less) and bought me a PS2. History repeated itself and I fell in love with the PS2 as a DVD player and a game console. a lot of the best games I’ve ever played (a list I hope to get around to laying out for my blog at some point) have been on the PS2, and I still play a lot of them to this day.

I played the waiting game on the PS3 though. Whereas DVD was a surefire next step for the format of movies, buying a PS2 for that added benefit made sense. I wasn’t sold by the Blu Ray player aspect of the console (and I didn’t really take as much offense by the “arrogance” of Sony in their early marketing cycle for the PS3, I’m not that sensitive as you’ll realize). What did keep me from jumping the gun was the price tag and the lack of games. I could have dealt with the price if the PS3 had more to offer in the games library. Heavenly Sword and Resistance: Fall of Man were not enough (by mere first impressions anyway) to surmount the price tag. More than a year later, when the 80 GB SKU finally appeared in Fall 2007 with a price drop, I finally made the move, and haven’t regretted it in the least. I love having the option to buy blu rays, and the library Sony now has available is incredible. In just eight months I’ve happily built my game library on the PS3 to some twenty games, and only one of them disappointed (Iron Man).

Why no XBOX 360?

Okay, get ready for it:

Owning a PS3, I really see absolutely no point to paying ANYthing to play online games, and even though achievements never mattered to me, I now have trophies (again, for free). Also, the PSN as far as online games go tend to experience less lag than what i’ve seen of XBOX Live, and the people I meet via the PSN are not, generally, the kind of bottom feeding mouth breeding assholes you run into in a game of Halo. What’s that though? I just mentioned the game that you think is a reason for me to buy a 360? After all, I did like Resistance Fall of Man (It’s also among my favorite games ever). So why wouldn’t I like Halo?

Because I hate it. I hate everything about it on the disc, and everything attached to it around and outside of the disc as a byproduct of its existence. I hate the gameplay (it plays like a cadillac missing a wheel trying to cross an ice bank at 80 mph), I hate the story (let’s just make Super Mario Bros a FPS, it could work if we just make the goombas purple ankle biters), I hate the character (people hate one dimensional cliches on film, how did Master Chief sneak by with such widespread approval?) and the kind of people it attracts (douchebag frat boys and racist foul mouthed eight year olds). No, I don’t hate Halo because I’m “bad” at it, I hate it because I think it’s entirely overrated. I rock shit in Resistance and Call of Duty 4, and when I play online in those, I don’t have to deal with the kind of people you encounter on XBOX Live.

On top of things, a prudent consumer would notice that the cheapest Xbox SKU is $150-200 cheaper than the PS3, but this is for the junk Arcade SKU with no H
D capacity. So, with the 20 GB model, which is a skimpy HD, you’re only saving a hundred dollars. After paying for a year online, you’ve only saved fifty, and missed out on the extra capacity to boot, not to mention that you bought a machine that has the same likelihood to brick as the odds that Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton will make a tabloid headline on any given day. The biggest seller: the game selection. The games I would want the 360 for are either multiplatform to begin with (Devil ma Cry 4, GTA 4, Burnout Paradise, Call of Duty 4) or coming over to the PS3 eventually (Bioshock and Eternal Sonata). On the flipside, right about the time that I bought a PS3 was the time that PS3 finally busted out the exclusives I could get behind ecstatically: Ratchet and Clank, Folklore, Uncharted, Resistance, and Metal Gear Solid 4. So the PS3 sits proudly under my TV being used regularly for video playback and gaming (doubly so since my SKU has the oft neglected backwards compatibility). As for all the glitz and features of XBOX Live, none of them are particularly attractive to me, I dig the idea of trophies, but XBOX Live just seems too prepackaged and capitalistic, like the fact that almost everything on the live marketplace costs money whereas lots of stuff on the PS Store is free.

Anyway, that out of the way, here’s my rundown of some of the latest “bombs.”

Final Fantasy XIII on the 360:

This is the big one. I don’t really care. I feel like most of the people who would really be affected by this one way or another would have already bought their consoles. The people who don’t care are probably just going to push the sale in favor of the 360 a bit more. Sony still has a lot going for it exclusive wise, and it didn’t lose FF XIII, it just has to share it. The biggest thing people seem not to be noticing is that the same thing happened with GTA IV and nothing noticeable occurred as fare as hardware sales were concerned, even if the 460 version did sell better. The difference here is that Microsoft doesn’t have exclusive DLC this time to wave as its banner to rally people to it, and the online service doesn’t matter much in this case since it’s not an online game. Achievements, once the last foothold of argument, are now being viewed as being equal, if not inferior to trophies by many.

The main thing I think will sell FFXIII on PS3 more, potentially: FF XIII Versus. I’m mildly Obsessive Compulsive and I think that a lot of gamers would buy both iterations of this FF generation on the same console ideally. I personally think, based on the trailers, that Versus is the more intriguing looking of the two. If Sony marketed Versus effectively, when the crowd that own both consoles has to decide which version to buy, they’ll support Sony for the sake of symmetry, let’s face it, we’re simple people. The biggest stroke would be if Sony could pull a GTA IV in this issue and secure some kind of content interaction or link between FF XIII and FFXIII Versus. Even something small like item or level bonuses based on your save data from the other game would sway enough gamers to pick the PS3 edition, or console if they were waiting still to buy it when FFXIII comes out in 2019 (not a typo) or whenever after it’s finally done playing the delay game.

In the end, I don’t think it matters, props to the 360 owners who get to play it, so long as it doesn’t disappear from PS3 completely, I can respect Square Enix having some business savvy since they are a business.

Rip Offs?

Microsoft is totally stealing the Mii’s from the Wii and calling them avatars in an attempt to make them sound cooler than they really are. They’re not, they’re a cartoony version of the kind of Sims PS3 owners will (eventually) get with Home, but Microsoft is going to charge you for their clothes and not let you do anything with them but… well, have them apparently. At least the Mii’s actually appear in a lot of your games on the Wii and Playstation Home will bring a vast arena with lots of things for your virtual person to do.

Oh wait, and Microsoft unveiled Lips… Yeah, Sony’s getting ripped off here. Good job actually stealing something COOL this time Microsoft, but way to screw it up and make it fuck ugly and promise features that will probably not work the way you’re leading people to hope.

I’ll just let this section go into my opinions of what i know/care about that was announced at…

E3

Fat princess: Looks AWESOME, it isn’t “fat-bashing” just because the character is too big to walk. Your objective is to save her, and people actually do get too obese to walk. Having a fat character in a video game is no more fat-hating than it is racist to have black people in video games. Since no one’s bashing Halo for having that dumbass general in it, I don’t think anyone should be bashing Fat princess. Why are all the opponents feminists, or at the least, women?

It’s kind of a shame God of War 3 didn’t have gameplay footage, but oh well. We got a tasty helping of Resistance 2 footage and Sony’s lineup is no less sweet. Wii’s offerings: Wii Sports Resort and Wii Music: really? If Wii Fit is really being used in NYC gyms, then I see no reason why schools won’t actually try to expense classroom wii’s to teach music instead of actual instruments or, say, textbooks. Speaking of the Wii, why are people still clamoring for a hardcore game? Aren’t most of these “hardcore gamers” the ones that complain about “waggle” and own other consoles where they can get hardcore games anyway? Just turn around from the Wii games rack and look over the PS3 rack, or the 360 rack is you’re really that desperate.

Wii motion plus! Yay, we’ve gotten what we were promised two years ago, and we only have to pay an extra forty of fifty bucks for it with Wii Sports Resort when it debuts. Not only am I pissed that Nintendo screwed over its own opportunity (and ours as gamers) with not keeping Lucasarts in the loop on WMP, because we could have had Force Unleashed with 1:1 light saber play (which was our dream from the get go), but we’re also being forced to buy it with a shitty game. Basically, we’re paying extra for what the Wii should have been in the first place, which would make your Wii cost just as much as a 360 when you really do the math, to hell with the “free game” you got. Wii sports wasn’t THAT good. Rock Band definitely makes a better party game.

LittleBigPlanet

Is it a hype machine that needs to be deflated, or is it world changing? Kind of both in my opinion. Here’s why:

There’s good hype and bad hype. An example of the latter would roughly be say, a movie by Warner Bros. that looked all right, but the WB started doing a media blitz on. Commercials aired every network commercial break, ads were up on every available surface in public, MTV specials aired, product tie ins and sweepstakes announced like wildfire but no one in the public of the disinterested sort who doesn’t stand to profit fiscally from the success of the product really gets on board (except those mindless cretins who jump onto any media blitz bandwagon). Good Hype is when the hype, like with the Watchmen trailer, is not coming from the studio or those who stand to profit. It’s coming from people who are only interested in the product as a performative piece. It just means excitement among the masses is high without the corporation forcing the idea into us as much as it can.

Media Molecule is definitely getting the latter of those hypes. Lots of people are murmuring about it, but Sony hasn’t done much to throw it our faces (yet), and while Media Molecule has its newspage, it only really started making announcements recently (the Kratos Sackboy looks awesome), and most of the hype has been from those on the outside trying to peer over the fence. While this game may not change the way we play
video games (after all, it’s about designing levels in the style of which we’ve been playing for decades now), it’s certainly bringing something big and new to that formula. If you can raise your heads for a Halo game as a major event, then you should definitely be able to for this then. If you can’t, then go recover from your frontal lobotomy or live out your days of idiocy somewhere grassy and away from society before you hurt yourself.

It’s one thing to have everyone connected and be able to join other people in a game of Call of Duty. It’s a bigger thing to be able to meet your friends in a game of CoD4 as well. However, being able to join other people and your friends as you play through a platformer with unique style and look is big too. Even bigger is being able to meet and join your friends playing through those levels that you, they or other people have created. LBP isn’t akin to proving the world isn’t flat, it’s more akin to the discovery of a new land (maybe even one so grand as the Americas): we have a lot more before us to do with this age of gaming and the technology we have.

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. I’ll be working on my top ten favorite games ever list, and hopefully figure out how to embed links into my articles so whoever winds up here or actually reading this thing can see what I’m referencing. Stay cool, Keep gaming.