Cheap PS3 Rumors

On Glinkster Latest Links:

According to Sky News, a manufacturing source has revealed that Taiwanese
FoxConn (which also produces PS2s) will make the rumored $399 PS3. An
announcement could come sometime this week in an effort to "spoil" the high
profile launch of Halo 3 for ...

Read Full Article, Sony unveiling cheaper 40GB PS3 this week

Firstly, I wouldn't necessarily fret too much until Sony says something official on this, but these things do often pan out in the long run ... but sometimes that's a pretty long run.

Secondly - I don't think much will be spoiling Halo 3. Microsoft even seems to be covering the whole scratched disc fiasco with some ease.

2D Remake Of GoldenEye

On TIGSource:

Here's something pretty cool. You know how big game companies are always
taking classic games and remaking them to next-gen spec (with sometimes
dubious results)? Well - what if, instead, they took a time ...

Read Full Article, Goldeneye 2D

As half the gaming world drools over Halo 3, here's a little 2D homage to that classic of classics, GoldenEye.

Operation Troy Footage

Insert Credit bring TGS love with this found footage of Operation Troy which looks to be some kind of Gundam meets Tank Wars kind of affair.

Zodiac's Blue Screen Work

Solace In Cinema points outs just how much blue screen work actually worked its way into the film with the following video. Amazing. Granted I saw the movie at like 1AM while waiting for a car to take us to O'Hare - but I certainly had no idea.

More On Vista's Exclusivity / Stranglehold on XP

I've recently gotten a flood of traffic (like twice my normal rate alone) to this article on Vista's exclusive hold on DirectX 10 because gamers are wondering if John Woo's Stanglehold is being, well, held hostage on Vista.

PC Gamers should not fret, if you peruse this blog post you'll see XP gamers have apparently dove into the demo with nothing more than a hail of virtual bullets to worry about. It sounds intriguing and I'll probably download it myself when I get a chance - being a huge Chow Yuan fan and all. Midway is using the Unreal 3 engine for the game and both developer and technology has a good track record on being fairly broad, requirement wise.

In short - expect a similar threshold as to the on BioShock had (if that helps).

I gotta say, though, this is more evidence that Microsoft is simply being a detriment to PC gaming. By causing this divide in technology, every gamer starts to think twice about whether a game will run on XP or if some developer decided to go the lazy route and make it DX10 only. PC gaming doesn't, to put too fine a point on it, need this crap. It's a marketing blunder and one squarely in Microsoft's hands to fix. The way they've dealt with Vista has killed any good "Games For Windows" ever intended to have.

And give us Halo 2, you twerps.

Scary Flat World

On Boing Boing:

The View co-host Sherri Shephard told her other co-hosts that she does not
believe in the theory of evolution. Whoopi Goldberg then asked her if she
thought the world was flat. Here's the transcript of the conversation that
followed. WHOOPI GOLDBERG: ...

Read Full Article, Co-host of The View doesn't know if Earth is round or flat (video)

Seriously, that's creepy than the crazy hobos who follow me to work.

Happy Birthday Smiley

On New Urban Legends:

About the anniversary of the smiley and the origins of emoticons.

Read Full Article, Glyph Notes

Great article. To think the Reader's Digest was ahead of the emoticon curve.

Real Virtual Trees

On MAKE Magazine:

Some video documentation of German artist Aram Bartholl's custom built
physical versions of the "virtual" trees you usually see in 3D games.
[Read this article] [Comment on this article]

Read Full Article, Aram Bartholl's 3D Trees

If anyone has ever level mapped, this is extra funny.

404 Bumper Sticker

On Newlaunches.com:

A really neat 404 error bumper sticker. Seems this guy is a web admin or a
web developer....

Read Full Article, Nerdy Bumper sticker

Google Life

On Techmeme:

*Google Prepping A Second Life Competitor?* � Rumors of a Google powered
virtual world based on Google Earth surfaced in January; today there is word
that Google may be testing their virtual world at Arizona State University
(ASU). � According ...

Read Full Article, Google Prepping A Second Life Competitor? (Duncan Riley/TechCrunch)

Wasn't that a April Fool's joke someyear?

The woot heard around the world (so bite me)

On Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog:

Halo 3? The Second Coming or just a highly polished sci-fi shooter for the
Xbox 360? Well, the reviews are in and things aren't looking good for the
skeptics.

Read Full Article, Halo 3 reviews in

According to nearly every review - Halo 3 arrived as expected, lived up to the hype and delivered.

Not to rain on this parade, though, but I still think the fact that, as an XP user, I can't play Halo 2 is a rotten, low-down, self-serving decision by Microsoft which represents at least a kick in the knees to loyal PC gamers - if not an outright groin punch.

So, on this eve of success with a shooter which apparently could probably easily and gracefully run on even the CheapBox++ ... I say bite me Microsoft.

Bite me.

Overheard In Chicago

The Girl and I have a long standing debate about which is a better form of public transit - the El (that's elevated train for you non-Chicago folk) or the the bus lines.

My problem, as of late at least, with the bus lines isn't so much that they are slow and crowded but simply non-existent. The line we are supposed to take downtown is the 148 Express. You can stand on Irving Park and watch no less than ten nearly vacant 135's go by before getting a 148 packed so tight that it possibly violates several health code regulations.

Today we were commiserating with another distressed traveler. She remarked how annoying it was to see people running after 135's when, as The Girl chimed in, the bus right behind it is another 135. I noted that if you really wanted to catch a 135 you just need to step into traffic as chances were the vehicle that would hit would in fact be a 135. The woman then noted in an exasperated tone that she would complain formally but she felt she'd been blacklisted by the CTA.

At that point one of our resident hobos appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to state that he had once been blacklisted - even though, as he frantically and angrily pointed out - he was white. Nothing like an insane racist homeless person to cap off a discussion on the faults of the Chicago Transit Authority.

The Girl noted that they must have been color blind. Perhaps not oddly enough, this seem to agree with him and he left.

AvP: Requiem Trailer

Winkyboy sent along this link to the new Aliens V Predator: Requiem trailer as he was impressed by it. I'm glad he did because the first AvP ended in disappointment and so I probably wouldn't have given the new one a first glance, much less a second.

Game Play: BioShock Narrative

There are times when I see Ebert's point.

But first, this post is for people who have finished BioShock. If you haven't - there be spoilers.

So, back to our old friend Ebert - who threw down the gauntlet some time ago that games are, at best, a troublesome form of art. While I don't agree with him, and still don't, games like BioShock exist as a kind of sample of the trouble games have as narrative.

Firstly let's dispel one of the most common misconceptions people have with game narratives. A backstory is not the same as a storyline. In Doom, you start the game as a marine trapped on a Martian base with everyone else killed by a horrible experiment gone wrong. That is not the story, that is the backstory. Doom actually has a better backstory than most - in fact it had a much better backstory than most games of the time - but the actual story persists as "lone marine travels from room to room blowing crap up."

My problem with modern shooters is that most haven't progressed much more than that. Now the main mechanic is to add a goal to provide some excuse for the player to travel from point A to point B. These reasons are usually pretty artificial and once the player reaches point B - largely forgotten. Usually the most substantial character development is getting a new gun.

So while we have all these fancy graphics for rendering characters - we just don't do much of anything with them. Many writing classes will tell you that a story is essentially characters in conflict - but most game narratives never have characters complicated or rich enough to have any conflict other than pointing weapons at each other.

Which can make for a fine game, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't make for a fine story. A fine story is when you can remove all the shooting and still have something worth watching.

And backstory is important ... mystery novels for instance are mostly backstory - but there's always a tangled plot to get to that backstory. It's never as simple as breaking down a door.

BioShock tries - and in some places succeeds - to break this mold. A little bit, at least. I think the most brilliant moment in the game is when you kill Ryan because you're programmed to kill Ryan. It's almost postmodern in nature ... why do you kill him? Because you have no other choice. You have to in order to progress. And calling out the fact that Atlas has been whispering instructions in your ear and then you having little choice but to follow them ... it is a moment which excels merely in framing the typical shooter scenario into a clever frame. You just experienced a dash of character development, free of charge.

The ending though? The ending? What the hell was that?

Instead of framing anything within the game - you're submitted to a cinematic which barely makes any sense. You have no control over your actions - you simply betray the Little Sisters without any warning and then inexplicably escape into a hundred bathyspheres and ... nukes? What? Someone sent a rescue sub with nukes?

BioShock has a pretty lovely backstory - but honestly that is all for naught if it can't even arrive to a sensible conclusion. Can't even allow the player to achieve their original goal - to escape - by themselves. In the end, the player is robbed of both the experience and the narrative.

I still liked BioShock. Quite a lot. It ranks up there as one of the better shooters. Just don't try and tell me how great the story was, if you please.

Devin Moore Files "GTA" Appeal

I've been getting clicks in from this Game Politics post all week, so I suppose I should comment.

Many of you probably remember Devin Moore. He's that kid from a broken home who shot three cops in Alabama. Or, if you believe a guy like Jack Thompson, he's a trained assassin.

The traffic is headed towards this 2005 post where I collected early reports of Devin Moore's trial and pointed out how it had nothing to do with video games until pretty late in the process. Most of the quotes are more like, I tried to warn everyone he was dangerous. And that's his dad.

Thing is - its hard to get worked up about it. The guy is on death row. The appeal is ridiculous and the courts have never, ever had a taste for BatJack's patented videogame defense (not that any court ever really have ... it's a media construct, not a legal one). Justice is done. I'll keep my ear to the ground on it, but I'm guessing Devin needs to get comfortable in the chair he's got.