Modern Warfare 2's "PSA" Funded By "FAGS" (Update)

I couldn't make this up if I tried, people.

As if I didn't just get done decrying Infinity Ward's poor content choices, now we have this fake PSA ad (pulled now).

The PSA portrays the Phillies' Cole Hamel warning against random grenade tossing. It's "sponsored" by the Fight Against Grenade Spam.

Get it? It's sponsored by FAGS. I'm not quite sure what the rationale from Infinity Ward's PR people to toss a homophobic slur so blatantly into what could have been a light hearted ad, but then I again I don't know the reasoning behind having American soldiers willingly partake in mass civilian slaughter is either.

Maybe I'm just not Modern Warfare's core demographic? True, the gay-bashers and the rage-players are two huge groups which make me dread playing with the random public - and since that seems to be what Infinity Ward is marketing towards, I guess I'll stick with other shooters.

Update - Ad has been pulled thanks it seems to some responses ... here and here.

I think the root of all this problem is this response from Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling:

@pkollar I think it was more of a social commentary joke of that stereotype than it was a fist-bump of acceptance to it.

[fourzerotwo twitter]

Word of advice to Infinity Ward: stop trying to make social commentaries. You seem to kinda suck at it. Whether it's commenting about gay-bashing players or sociopathic acts - it's striking derision ... not dialogue.

Modern Warfare 2's Airport Scene - A New Low?

When I first started to hear about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's airport scene, I thought - nice PR ploy. Look, we have this scene so violent that we'll make it optional. Cue forum chatter and lots of free advertising.

Yeah. Then I watched it (pulled now). And, um.

What the fsck was that?

I'm not even going to debate whether material like this should be allowed in a game. I don't condone censorship, if Activision and Infinity Ward want to make it ... let them make it. Trying to determine the finer lines of what should be legally distributed and not legally distributed when it comes to virtual violence is a futile, pointless debate.

That's not the same as me agreeing that Activision and Infinity Ward are in the right and there's nothing to discuss. This material is wrong. It's exploitation, it's grotesque sensationalism and has no place as a part of packaged entertainment. Let's get real specific here: this is not Modern Warfare this Modern Selling Games By Being Extreme.

According to Activision and Infinity Ward, I should be OK with this material partially because they make it optional. This is a total cop out. It places the obligation on the player to determine the morality of scene they haven't actually played out. This is them basically saying "We know this is over the top, but that's OK because we made it your choice."

If it's over the top, it shouldn't be part of the game. The player is not the producer here, Activision and Infinity Ward should take responsibility. If they feel so strongly that this material is acceptable - just keep it in the game, no if's and's or but's.

Worse, though, is narrative angle. This is Activision:

Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 features a deep and gripping storyline in which players face off against a terrorist threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse. The game includes a plot involving a mission carried out by a Russian villain who wants to trigger a global war. In order to defeat him, the player infiltrates his inner circle. The scene is designed to evoke the atrocities of terrorism.

And this is Infinity Ward:

The scene establishes the depth of evil and the cold bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain and his unit. By establishing that evil, it adds to the urgency of the player’s mission to stop them...

Infinity Ward: Modern Warfare 2 Airport Scene is Real, Optional[GamerRiot]

Well, it certainly evokes terrorism. And, it certainly establishes evil. What both companies so neatly sidestep, however, is that it plants the player into a character that is a complete sociopath. That the player is, if I'm reading the description of this scene correctly, shooting innocent unarmed civilians in the back as they run screaming from them, pulling others to safety, and destroying an elevator full of people all in the name of justice and The American Way - makes absolutely no sense whatever. It doesn't "add to the urgency to stop them", it makes the player a willing participant in the atrocity. No reasonable character would go through this experience and come out the other side a military hero - there's no good side to this scene, it's just evil carried out by evil people. By playing through this scene, the player is in the role of a a cold-blooded murderer ... the very kind they're likely supposed to be fighting. This isn't narration, it's exploitation.

And let's get realistic here - this is only going forward because this is an A-list franchise with a lot of weight. If it was say, a game mod or a military shooter about Fallujah - we wouldn't be having this conversation, because the material would already be shouted down.

Activision and Infinity Ward should be ashamed and players should move on to better games.

Thanks to goodgaming for multiple tweets on the subject.

Stargate Universe, We Really Need To Talk

So I thought "Darkness" was a slow but at least moderately interesting thanks largely to watching a couple of characters breakdown, especially Rush. The Eli Factor was less annoying, because at least Eli was as surprised as I was that everyone expects him to know everything or solve anything.

But "Light"? Painful. Just painful.

Spoilers abound, this is critique and not review ... so if you haven't watched it, well, you're warned.

A few of the finer points:

Don't expect a sensible viewer to really buy into "everyone is going to die" scenarios five episodes into a new show.

Especially when that scenario includes flying to a massive energy source, and everyone was originally going to die because the ship had no energy and your resident smarty smart keeps talking about how the ship came here "for a reason".

Also five episodes in - the whole "stranded on a hideously boring planet" scenario isn't really going to sell easily. The whole "this planet is full of sand" scenario was kinda dull enough.

So instead of plot or conflict, we're bombarded by video confessionals, in the form of one liners spoken into an alien handycam, a sex scene, a lot of moping around, some background music, and some really fairly nice views of the impending sun.

What we lack is any emotional connection to these characters. Eli gets the most airtime, and he's just annoying as hell. Rush is the most developed, but tuned to be unlikable. Our fearless commander is probably the closest thing to a character I might care about and we know he's destined for martyrdom.

Did any of the characters freak out and try to mutiny? Not really, not in any real way. I half expected Eli and Cute Chick to hook up in their supposed last few minutes - which might have made for some interesting dialogue later ... but no such luck. Maybe the shuttle could have gotten stranded? Oh no, we get an incredibly implausible landing instead.

Right now the show is centered around putting everyone into a horribly doomed scenario that everyone survives. Well, OK, Cute Chick's dad bit it - which is sadly the show's best moment to date, even though Cute Chick seems to have rebounded pretty well. The frame of the show is like a disaster movie, which is awesome, except that if you watched a disaster movie and five hours into the movie you only had one real tragedy - you would want your money back.

Finally, the ending of "Light" was just bizarre. Hey, I'm trying to give you a compliment here - but then I'm going to accuse you of being an evil son of a bitch with pretty much nothing to show for it. Felt to me like someone ran the tape and realized there was 40 minutes of essentially a slow ballad music video and decided to toss a bit of infighting for good measure.

Hopefully in the next couple of episodes, it will be less of the Rush and Eli show and we can finally get some real depth into the secondary characters other than lame quips that would barely pass on an actual reality show. Hopefully the conflict will get more complicated than the "big thing we can't solve, oh my we are all dead, oh wait there's the thing we need" style of arc. Because I'm not buying this show has the chops to kill any character off at the moment.

But if the next five episodes follow the same vein as the last five episodes, I'm going to wish the ship had flown into the sun ... and stayed there.

How Hulu Is Kinda Stupid

It recently hit the street that Hulu is considering charging for their content. I suppose I can appreciate that, Hulu offers a lot of material which is quite valuable - recent shows, especially, for this age of time shifting. There's a decent amount there I'd access to catch up on some TV.

Which is why, if ad revenue is down and the powers that control Hulu need more cash, I have a recommendation other than forcing people to pay.

Stop being so damned stupid.

See, back in July, Hulu blocked the PlayStation 3 browser from accessing content. At first this was just done without much explanation, but then a very corporate non-answer arrived which takes a bit of brain pulling to translate (they use "windowing" as a term if it explains everything) - but in between the lines it comes down to "our partners pay for specific rights concerning television viewing, and threatened to pull out."

Specifically:

Distribution availability across platforms — theaters vs. TV vs. recorded media like DVDs vs. online streaming vs. mobile phones — was always implicitly or explicitly controlled in that world. But a few factors have made the barriers between those platforms more permeable: the rise of the web, increased broadband availability, the ease of digitizing video, and the increase in the computing
power of devices like gaming consoles, set-top boxes, and mobile phones.

However, in the near-term, the windowing strategy is still dominant in the business. Billions of dollars flow in across these different windows, and entire companies are organized around them. Nothing productive comes from flouting that reality (except to law firms who work on the occasional lawsuit).

Yeah. So this is why that is kinda stupid. Television industry types, listen up - because I'm only going to rant about this once.

Technology has converged your precious windows. Sorry about that, but it is really time to move on. Thanks.

See, I can watch your little television programs on my television using a computer any time I want. Heck, with the right cables - I can probably watch it with my iPhone. With some mad Linux skills, I could still do it on my PS3. This concept that my television is somehow under your control is so archaic that you make my old TiVo laugh. As if VCR's and DVR's shouldn't have been enough of lesson - the fact that my television is essentially a massive computer monitor at this point is just not that difficult of a concept to grasp.

See I have this Mac Mini. And it hooks right into my television. And it has a web browser. Which can play Hulu. So that kinda fscks your stupid windows concept right up.

But I don't watch Hulu on the Mini, because it is an older PPC model and the performance sucks. It worked pretty good on my PS3 - but now that's blocked. So now I don't watch Hulu.

And someone at Hulu is wondering why ad revenues aren't what they'd like them to be - but instead of the networks realizing this is nearly the year 2010, the whole thing is considering going to a pay-to-view model ... which is quite possibly they only way the thinking around the whole thing could travel any more backwards in time.

Sigh.

So yeah, go ahead and charge for Hulu. Let's see how that works for you. Or wake up to the modern world and just increase your current viewership.

Couple Notes on Uncharted 2 Multiplayer

I made a massive push on the Uncharted 2 single player experience, but don't really have my head around a full post for it yet. I did, however, want to expand my earlier review from the multiplayer demo.

The full version of the game has more maps and many more gametypes, including some fairly successful objective based ones. The mandatory Capture The Flag variant has players hauling around a large idol, which adds the not nearly used enough mechanic of hobbling the flag carrier, and also adds some of the fun of Epic's Bombing Run - namely tossing stuff around.

There are also a variety of domination/territory based games - which work remarkably well considering they are designed around the same maps as deathmatch (same, actually, goes for CTF).

The short summary is that Uncharted 2 adds an amazing online experience for the PlayStation 3. Highly recommend it.

Sadly, though, I still have to complain about the matchmaking. My assumption is that some players are teamed up at the beginning of the night, which makes breaking players up evenly difficult - but the problem remains the same. Numerous times the session will have all the high level players on one side, which often causes the highest level player on the losing side (and it always seems to be the highest level player) leaving early - which just cripples the losing team completely. Some of this gets pretty brutal.

The gameplay is good enough where it can be fun even if you're losing, which is an indication of a great game ... but when I can pretty accurately predict the outcome of a game just by the team makeup before the game starts, it sucks some of the fun out of an otherwise excellent experience.

Update: Last night I played a couple of hours and only had one match which was somewhat unbalanced, but not the wild sort I've seen repeatedly nights before. Don't know if this is just random behavior swinging to the other side or if there was a server-side fix. I'll keep an eye out.

Update to the update: Last night was bad - lots of very mismatched games. At one point, I just started leaving as the game started. Oddly, this is what finally caught Naughty Dog's eye, that I was jumping games. Which, don't get me wrong - not proud of ... but I can restart a game much faster than finishing it, and maybe the next one won't be such a one way battle.

Some digging seems to indicate that yeah, specific teams are the cause (that's in response to this, and I have lots of similar pics). This is age old problem of online play - boiling down to clan players getting repeatedly paired against casual players.

I'll probably roll this into a longer post, or the more complete Uncharted discussion. It's a huge detriment, though, and may just push me to coop way more- which I think is a shame (not that coop sucks, just that I'd be avoiding my preference. I just like fighting human intelligence...)

Update to the update to the update (guess I should just start numbering these). Naughty Dog is releasing a patch this weekend. It will "deter players from leaving voluntarily" and adjust goals for teams with fewer players. I'll try it out this weekend, but it seems like the wrong solution to the wrong problem to me. Address why people are leaving voluntarily first, simply deterring them seems pointless. I'll leave if I want to leave.

Movie Watch: Paranormal Activity

Not sure where to start with this movie - so let's start with marketing. I first heard of Paranormal Activity from Twitter of all things, and TweetYourScream is still a great way to catch quick reviews and special deals for the movie.

In this way, the comparisons between this film and Blair Witch aren't slight. People like to slag The Blair Witch Project has overhyped handycam nonsense - but I still remember when it was a highly successful marketing effort pushing the film as real footage, a truly impressive guerrilla hoax just as much as it was guerrilla film-making. The problem is that in that day and age, hype will outdo your hoax and eventually everyone wonders why anyone called this the greatest horror movie they've ever seen.

Moral of the story? Hoaxes are fun for horror. Hype isn't. Look over just the shoulder of Paranormal Activity to The Fourth Kind which is in the middle of just such a dynamic. Paranormal, however, makes such good use of Twitter and Facebook that the hype is very streamlined, and not anywhere near as out of hand as Blair Witch saw.

So how is the movie itself? Once again we have "found footage" from some people - this time a young couple who discovers things in their suburban home isn't as calm as they thought. There is some opinion that the plot starts too slow, but I was rather impressed that we get a nearly complete frame of the premise in the very early scenes.

Right here I want to call a break and give a quick recommendation. Just go see this movie. Unless what you've read so far is really turning you off - just go see it. It may not be the scariest movie ever. Might not even be the scariest this year - but it is one of the most unique and is really well done. It's an excellent spookhouse, especially for the ears. I was scared. The Girl even enjoyed it and she hated Blair Witch.

Thing is - don't go looking for info. Don't go to YouTube. Don't go to Wikipedia. It's not that there is a surprise ending or anything, but the more of a blank slate you have, the better. In fact, from what I hear some of the YouTube videos and online trailers would really spoil the movie (as bad as the cover of Quarantine). Don't think about it, just go see it.

Then come back here when you're done.

I'll wait.

OK, back? Highlight the rest of this post to read it.

For me, what was really effective about the movie is the slow progression of the demon's activities - but especially the use of audio cues and sound effects. That heavy bass was a presence which acted as a layer on top of the invisible force at work.

Another comparison between this and Blair Witch is the that part of tension is the breakdown between the characters. This is traditionally true for any good "cabin story" and a must for low budget thrillers like this one - and really well played here. Apparently like Witch, the actors worked with minimal direction and suggestions rather than a distinct script.

My only real complaint is what The Girl likes to call "going back for the cat". She hates the movie Alien because she thinks Ripley risking being eaten alive by an alien for the cat broke all plausibility. This is common in horror films, of course, the "stupid horror victim" has been parodied and even noted in recent horror films. Here, Micah goes from being bold to brainded before the third act begins. If I have a tape of something starting a spontaneous fire on my coffee table - I'm finding an expert.

That the movie got to this point is rather remarkable, and it seems like we have a lot of thanks to Spielberg and his posse for that. Not only did they pick up the film, they realized it should remain in the current format (there was the idea to remake it "Hollywood" style and just include the current film as a DVD extra) and help improve the overall structure and ending (there are two alternate endings floating around the net - neither sounds as good as their aired version).

But that's just a subcomponent of an others wise well tailored experience. I hope movies like The Last Broadcast, Blair Witch, and Paranormal Activity gets a chance to branch out into their sub-genre. Hopefully we can see this formula expanded and evolved, and perhaps now that we've seen that a studio can help the production and not hurt it ... they'll get even more sophisticated.

Obviously, highly recommended.

I Heart Freebies

If you haven't heard, the FTC recently enacted a rule that amatuer netizens must disclose products they receive for free or face up to $11,000 in fines.

For the sake of this argument, let me disclose - I've gotten a handful of free games from a few companies. My favorites so far being Bad Company, Godfather II and to an extent Pure as they weren't entirely on my radar before emailing back and forth with PR people and quite enjoyed playing them. It should also be noted that I've gotten several games which, for one reason or another, I've gone ahead and bought anyway and allowed someone else to play the free version (which generally gets added as feedback for review). This includes Dead Space and Spore.

The biggest impact, I think, is that I've written a few paragraphs on games I normally would not have written about. Games don't get a free ride here. The attention the game gets is in merit with the game itself - I found Dead Space an interesting game from many angles, and it got a lot of attention (and I didn't technically get it for free). Pure is a fun racing game with a couple twists - and it got a few paragraphs.

The FTC's logic is that consumers have a different relationship of trust between small amateur blogs like this one than "traditional media". I'm that guy on the street, and G4 is apparently Ted Koppel. The summary from the FTC themselves goes:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

-- FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials [FTC.gov]

Course, the problem the FTC is delineating between "word-of-mouth" marketing and traditional marketing. What's the distinction between here and Joystiq? Or here and a PR guy like Major Nelson? Or the official Sony blog? Let's ignore the fact the anachronistic concept that any of this is actually "word of mouth" at this point (if Cathode has ever increased any sales, trust me - it is "by way of Google" not by "word of mouth") - my biggest problem is that the leap form "material connection" to "paid endorsement".

So let me be clear - I'm completely willing to admit to having "material connections", despite them being rare, small and frequently in the wrong format. I am most certainly not saying anything on this site has ever, ever, even approached "paid endorsement" and I think the FTC is tossing a lot darts to hit a very narrow point on the board.

I agree with the FTC here in spirit, and think that doing something like seeding community sites to gather support is a fairly vile use of the 'net. I'm just not sure including bloggers who get a review copy merit being tossed into that bunch. I know I don't really appreciate it.

In summary? I love freebies. Mostly because I love the fact that there are PR people out there pushing games. It means I get a chance to engage people (and it has been more than PR peeps - like this interview with a SWAT 4 dev ... remember PR is the gateway) about games before they come out. I don't really care if it's a big label, indie title or some guy's homebrew ... if the project looks interesting, I like to have the conversation.

And if you want send me a version of your game to review - I'm likely to review it. If the fact that I got it free actually factors into my opinion of the game, I'm thinking that can't be a very good game. I'm thinking it would fall under "this would have been a waste of my time, were it not for the price" category.

Which avid readers would know I make note of when reviewing anyway.

For Sunday: Assault Girls

I'm with Topless Robot here, I can't tell if this will be awful or awesome.

Comforting to know I'll probably watch it either way, however.

Fallout 3 DLC ... Bethesda, WTF?

In the beginning, there was Fallout. And it was good.

Then there was Fallout 2, and heralded it was as awesome.

Then a bunch of stuff happened, some of it pretty great and some of it Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.

Then we got Fallout 3. And we could forget that whole F:BOS nonsense.

And then we got downloadable content. And it was a buggy demon from hell.

Look, I really love the fact that the PlayStation 3 finally got the DLC. What I don't get is that after months of waiting and even more months of delay - the DLC still just doesn't work right.

Your mileage might vary - but my mileage is stuck on the side of the road waiting for VATS to get unstuck. Or that load screen to, well, stop loading. Which, by the way, many times it simply won't and I need to reboot the PS3. I haven't had an experience this buggy since I ditched playing games on the PC.

Which - for the record? Is why I ditched playing games on the PC. I can understand the graphical glitch here or there, or oddities with quest objects, or the occasional slowdown in framerate ... but there are multiple times while playing that the game simply stops running.

How does that pass quality control? Did someone forget to document "game should keep running" as a requirement? Are all the test scenarios less than ten minutes? Did they test a completely different game? Any explanation?

So far I've played through the main quests of Broken Steel, Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt and Point Lookout. All of the DLC has been plagued with slowdowns and lockups to varying degrees - with seemingly little predictability. Mothership Zeta remains, and honestly my excitement for it has waned considerably in anticipation for multiple reboots.

Sure, Fallout 3 is a great game - but this level of quality is just shameful. Hopefully New Vegas aims a little higher.

Sci Fi Review: Dollhouse and Stargate: Universe

Science fiction on television seems to go through waves ... you'll have a show which takes off, acts a bit like a tentpole for more sci fi - and then everything winds down and some of the actors from one show start shuffling around. Take the Battlestar reunion taking place on Dollhouse - if Tricia Helfer shows up, I'll be convinced that Echo is actually a Cylon.

Dollhouse peaked somewhat with last season's unaired Epitaph One (unaired, but watched by probably every Dollhouse fan by now), which was easily the best episode of the show so far and serves as guidepost for the direction of the plot. Season two starts not only a little flat, but even somewhat confusing as we jump right in with Ballard now on the side of the 'house and his strategy for bringing it down feeling about as muddled as an active's CAT scan. The third episode, "Belle Chose", actually felt more like a better start for the season as we see Ballard trying to fit into his new role as well as some wonderfully creepy foreshadowing into the events of Epitaph One. The show has an odd game to play now - making the original premise and plotline around Echo work while also building to a potentially dark future. If it has any problem, it's that the latter is proving a lot more interesting than the former. However, if "Belle Chose" is an indication, this season could prove that the show can finally perform to its potential.

The other "networks show sci fi on Fridays because they assume the demographic never goes out and then complains about the numbers" offering right now is Stargate: Universe. Apparently the demise of Atlantis called for something of a reboot on the frachise, which after a long running core show and relatively long running spin off isn't worst idea. Universe has a different cinematic feel and the overall concept is more serious - it's like someone got some Battlestar in my Atlantis.

Sounds great on paper, but the execution so far is a bit lacking. One issue is that the wide array of characters feel largely similar and the ensemble feels somewhat shallow due to it. The military crew feels almost like a band of dwarves - you have stern, youthful, angry, etc. Two of the characters stand out for me ... one being Doctor Rush, in part because Robert Carlyle's portrayal is particularly awesome and secondly he's such a great throwback to a near villain like Doctor Smith (Lost in Space) than another "brilliant scientist with a gun" cutout that the series could so easily offer up.

Sadly the other character is Eli, who is such a horribly transparent viewer advocate that I fear the array of geek apparel and references to arrive. If his "Last Starfighter" premise of even being in the show wasn't bad enough, the fact that every other character willingly accepts his presence so blindly is even worse. Eli's character is a blow to the kneecaps to the show. Take the second episode, for instance, where one has to continually ask - why are they insisting on keeping the slacker civilian in the desert??

The show's pacing seems slow at the moment, so the jury is still out while we see if that's part of a method or just plodding along.

Demo Play: Brutal Legend (PS3)

I'll probably keep this short, as Legend is deserving of a full review when possible, but the demo that dropped last week is highly recommended. Schafer? Black? It's quite a team. The demo feels tightly written and funny and Jack Black is in true form here (all of that voice acting with Kung Fu Panda I guess). I remember outings like XIII where it seemed like a cell shaded shooter and David Duchovny voicing seemed an excellent match, and then Duchovny comes across with all the emotion one gets from reading a cereal box.

Not here. But as much as it works as a story, the gameplay feels just as solid. It's more or less a button masher, feeling a lot like a good variant of the God of War model with potentially more variety to the core and I think they've tossed out the QTE scenes, at least from the demo, for action which is more tightly integrated into the normal controls. Which if that holds out for the whole game, is something other designers should ponder.

Oh, and of course it rocks - as in an awesome homage to all things metal. Stop reading, go download, wait the release with baited breath.

Demon's Souls and singing online

This sounds so awesome:

The most direct way of helping other players, however, is to join them on their quest. Demon's Souls' ingenious implementation of co-op play is hardly straightforward, though it is incredibly imaginative. Players exist in one of two forms: body form and soul form. If you are in body form, you have full hit points, while in soul form, your hit points are generally halved (though a terrific ring you can find early on will give you a boost). You start your adventure in body form, and when you die, you are resurrected in soul form. Because you are only restored to body form when you defeat a boss or use a relatively rare stone, you'll spend most of your time as a soul. When in soul form, you can drop a soul marker; a player in body form can then activate that marker to summon you to his or her world. At that point, you join the player in his or her realm and tackle the challenges at hand together. If you are in body form, you can summon either one or two players, for a maximum party of three. There is no way to invite a friend, and no voice chat to communicate strategies or warnings. Yet while that sounds limiting, this imaginative system works in the context of Demon's Souls' harsh world and backstory. You feel as if you occupy a single node on a vast web of interconnected realms that mesh and overlap in mysterious ways.

--
Demon's Souls Review [GameSpot]

First - seriously? Another incredible title hits the streets already? I'm already swamped with Uncharted 2 and it isn't even out yet. I've got Fallout DLC installed but untouched. I've got katamaris to roll, people.

Fine, the game sounds like a must have - but not sure when at this point. But more to the point, there's something deeply attractive about coop designed where nobody can talk to each other. I blabbed about this on twitter a bit ago ... I honestly have to say that I think online voice in games is about the most useless invention in the history of gaming.

OK, more specifically - to the large number of non-clan gamers. Sure, if you play the same game with the same group all the time - I get it. But that's not the majority of players.

Most of the time, it is idiotic laughter, rampant complaining and for some odd reason ... singing. Or playing guitar. Yes, I've had to listen to some jackass playing his guitar online. One night I had to listen to some guy who used "epic" and "fail" every other word. I remember when Counter-Strike was going to implement it and it was going to revolutionize gaming completely - but all I'm hearing is some guy's wife in the background and bunch of people screaming at each other.

So to Demon's Souls: thank you. I embrace your silent online world, no matter how vicious the demons may be...

Flash Apps On iPhone

From EverythingFlex:

So today at Adobe MAX a huge announcement came out. We now have special tooling that allows you to use the Flash Platform to build applications for the iPhone. Flash developers will be empowered to use their existing skills to construct applications for iPhone that can be distributed through Apple’s App Store. No promises but the betas of this (CS5) should be available by the end of this year.

Exciting stuff. It sounds like plan won't necessarily allow for Mobile Safari to have a plug in, but that developers will be able to develop with Flash/Flex and then go through the App Store routine to get distribution. So this might not be the golden ring everyone wanted (to use their favorite flash-enabled sites), it is quite interesting for experienced Flash developers.

See some examples and a few FAQs over at Adobe.

Demo Play: Uncharted 2 Multiplayer (PS3 Review)

I've spent an almost disturbing amount of time with the now publically open Uncharted 2 multiplayer demo - especially considering the breadth of decent gaming options open right now.

If you haven't played the original single-player only Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, it's well worth the purchase. Highly overlooked amongst early titles for the PS3, the game is still one of the better ones on the platform. Having had a taste for the sequel's online component, I'm definitely excited to see the full package.

The demo provides a couple of game modes, Deathmatch and Elimination, as well as a handful of maps and weapon sets. While "rocket launcher only" type affairs are usually gimmicky and appealing to a subset of gamers, all of the weapon setups feel correctly balanced and entertaining. The maps are splendid, well designed and packed with appealing visuals as well as multiple routes for players to run, jump, climb and roll around. Uncharted's movement gameplay allows for both running/gunning as well as stealthy cover-based action, and it's nice that these mechanics are available to the user without feeling too mandatory.

In short, as third person online shooters go - Uncharted 2 may be the best of the breed at the moment. I have a few nitpicky complaints - the grenades feel weak, the "party up" aspect feels like a miss (at least for the demo), and while the weapon balance is generally excellent - the gatling gun is a bit over the top (main complaint? way to effective at long ranges I think). But most of that just slides off the glossy greatness of the game.

Sadly - I do have one major complaint. The matchmaking can be completely brain dead at times, and while it does a good job of at least finding and creating games in general ... to wait several minutes to get into play and realize that the teams are wildly off balance can get frustrating and disappointing.

Uncharted 2 tracks player experience with a level system, so you can measure the players pretty well. Last night I (a level 27) was matched against a level 50, 43, 36, 33 and 28. So every player was more experienced than I was. My mates to help me out? A 5, 5, 4 and a 1.

Needless to say - it was a quick and bloody affair. If I recall, we managed something like 8 points before the other team hit the goal of 50. This is sadly not too uncommon either and often the lopsided matches have players jumping off the game, which just makes it that much more lopsided.

I'd be less critical of this considering it is a problem plaguing online games since their inception - if it weren't for the vast amount of statistics that get tracked. I'll concede that level alone is a poor indicator (though still a generally accurate one), but Naughty Dog tracks a wide array of facts - which you can view off their site.

Possibly this is due to high level "parties" that the server can't split up - but hopefully that means that the only defense isn't to do the same. It would at least be nice to allow players to, in some situations, swap teams during a match. I know that can be problematic and would require strict rules ... but there's been a couple of times I wouldn't mind jumping to the losing team just to make it a better match.

Regardless - it's a great demo (and, of course, hence not the final product) and proof of a top notch game. Highly, highly recommended.

Game Play: Dungeon Hunter (iPhone)

When Diablo came out, it was quasi-revolutionary. It took a known and loved format, the rogue-like, and made it highly accessible and graphically appealing. It's spawned so many clones that it has essentially redefined the genre, and so many of them are direct copies of each other that I'm half surprised there isn't a wizard in Visual Studio to churn them out.

I saw a preview of Dungeon Hunter for the iPhone a bit ago and wondered how it would fare. The iPhone market would be easy to plunder with a simple and brainless roguelike, but thankfully Dungeon Hunter manages to carve a space for itself. There's three classes to choose from (all male, although some of that may be to fit the backstory) and a narrative that frames your resurrection quite well. The graphics are very good and diverse array of environments, although most of them do boil down to a similar "walk path, kill things, turn left" kind of affair. Controls are solid for the touchscreen and there is a decent set of options to boot.

I haven't gotten a real feel for length yet - but the quests seem to be providing the chance for some real depth to the game. For $6.99, Dungeon Hunter seems a solid win for Gameloft and an easy recommend for any fan of the genre.