E for All: Games, Costumes and Disappointment
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Can Nintendo, Konami and cosplay counteract the tumbleweeds and save an otherwise lackluster convention? Get Game|Life's latest reports from the show floor of E for All in Los Angeles.
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Makers of online role-playing games aim to attract a diverse crowd--and break out of the fantasy-medieval mold.
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Looking at the steam coming off the mail in my inbox this week, I definitely need a place to lay low for a while. One reader kindly recommended Geek Cruises, where I could work on my tan and my Perl programming skills at the same time. He also thought it would help my love life but I'm not so sure. The brochures are full of guys with goatees and laptops -- not exactly my idea of The Love Boat.
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Tycho:  I really must stress to online PlayStation 3 partisans the extent to which they were not at E3.  Those of you playing "the home game" might have seen a trailer or two and come away with the idea that with grace and pride your grey altar stood high over conquered foes.  Ain't the case.
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We take a look back at how companies try to convince an incurious public to buy computers or videogames during times when TV audiences weren't as tech savvy as they are today, and find some comic results.
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Software transforms brainy games like chess and backgammon. Why not the brawny sport of the pigskin? By Sam Jaffe.
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Gabe: Well we had ourping pongmatch with Sucker Punch last Friday and I must say things did not go well for us. The Sucker Punch Rockets lived up to their studio's name and left us with a big old purple shiner. Already there is talk here in the office that our glorious victory march through the game industry is now looking more like a trail of tears.
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Gabe: I just have some random stuff to share here.Pokemon League night is next Tuesday at the Comic Stop. Matches start at six pm, but you can show up a little early if you'd like to trade cards. As always new players are welcome, just bring a starter deck. It's also a good idea to register at Go-Pokemon.com and bring your POP ID. A reader wrote in today to tell me that he was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle for January 30th and noticed this clue for 12 down:  "Tycho's pal in the webcomic 'Penny Arcade' (4 letters)." That's totally awesome. I'm sure the Force Unleashed will be fine. The time period around the original trilogy is just getting so crowded. Now Vader has a secret apprentice? I mean, it makes sense canonically to me. The Emperor had Mara Jade out there doing his dirty work. It's not unreasonable to think Vader had a similar arrangement. Also the very nature of Sith rule makes covering your ass a necessity. The hook for the game is fine and I don't mind the 3rd person action stuff. There are a few games I'd much rather see them make though. The fact that they have not made a sequel to Republic Commando is fucking criminal. That's not a joke either. I mean that someone over there should be put in jail for the rest of their life. RepCom was an incredible squad based shooter, and unlike most games in that genre it was packed with awesome characters. This games deserves a next gen sequel. The other game that needs a next gen installment is Tie Fighter. Seriously that game came out in 1994 and it's one of the best space shooters ever. And for fucks sake stop setting things during the movies. There's nearly sixty years worth of incredible content (minus the dark nest series) extending out past Return of the Jedi. You don't have to keep trying to cram stories into the same 20 year period. They're milking so much content out of that period that eventually we'll be playing a game as Luke where the goal is to repair vaporators on the south ridge. Hurry up you've only got 'till mid day!Rez is available on Xbox Live now. It's one of the best games ever made.   The most popular piece of clothing we've ever made, AKA The Black Mantle is back in stock. It's joined by its polar opposite, the Luminous Vestments. I have a feeling both will be sold out before I finish typing this.   -Gabe out
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Tycho:  With PAX coming up this weekend (!!!), we didn't really have time on Friday to invest in Virgil's Wikiscanner - that mystical oracle that takes a raw IP range and then excretes a list of that organization's Wikipedia edits.  This is the pulsing, possibly Martian device that dished up last week's awesome Electronic Arts edits.    I wasn't sure if we should feel sorry for them or not - now that EA is situated in the number two slot, does that make them the scrappy underdog? - but I quickly realized it probably doesn't matter.  They can come right out and say "Yes, we edit it all the time," mischaracterize the nature of the edits, and by the time it's on the second page the events in question never happened.  People don't remember anything these days that isn't on the first page of their feed aggregators. In any case, the entire affair is talking place  on Wikipedia.  Kudzu will grow over the propaganda soon enough.    Though time was indeed in short supply, we did fritter some portion of it pawing through ancient email headers, scraping for filth on old enemies.  Or enemies with whom we have resumed talks.  Or enemies who are now friends!  Even people I hope to make enemies in the future by my careless commentary must fall beneath the scanner's baleful eye.    Like a chugging trawler, we hauled up net after net of treasure onto the deck, sifting it on hands and knees.  I'd never expose it, of course - sparking a desperate arms race to find self-serving commentary is a conflict I'm likely to lose.  And with the deep catalogue of nemeses we've inspired worldwide (and even below the world, in the warrens of the pale Gambrya, where hate is eternal) it's not what I'd call a fabulous scenario.  For us, at least; no doubt, our foes have already begun their malevolent harvest.
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Restrictive hardware and convoluted rights management crimp consumer choices.
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Tycho:  I was in a guild with the guy who started FigurePrints, and when he extended coupons to the old crew I snapped them up and gave them as Christmas presents.  None of my characters ever reached the highest echelons of Azerothian Fashion, so it seemed like they were better invested in Gabriel and Keek, who poured night after night into Battlegrounds and Active Volcanoes fighting dragons and whatnot. The coupons I have described are difficult to secure, only available in random drawings at random intervals, or if by some twist of fate you happen to have been guildmates with a cunning entrepreneur.  It's really a way to ennoble the lost years you plowed into that game.  It's the sort of thing you'd think a person would appreciate.
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When men appear as buxom, scantily  clad females in video games like "World of Warcraft," it is  more about winning than finding an outlet for a real-world  affinity for gender bending.
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Tycho:  I'm aware of Spore, but it's not a game I look around for in an active mode.  Here is a preview of the game, for example, but I haven't read it so I don't know if it's good or not.  I'm especially disinclined to read previews in particular, because I think it's a game that is likely to preview well.  You aren't likely get past the novelty stage in am Official Press context - it's going to be pure discovery from beginning to end, wall to wall tendrils and eye stalks, ginning up hobbling quintapeds whose journey to the mailbox is difficult, if not impossible.  The incredible outpourings of support for the game are themselves incredible to me, but what they've done is try to create a product whose potential is as raw as possible.  We seem to value that ethereal quantity differently than most.
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Henry Jenkins  and his observations on social responsibility in Chinese video game culture.
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Movie tie-in games tend to suck. Hope springs eternal, though, and the allure of giant transforming robots is keeping me at least a little bit hopeful for the Transformers games.
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Not every amusement needs to blink, bloop or require a power source. These fine low-tech delights will provide hours of amusement for any game lover on your gift-giving list.
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?