Should you be able to play as the Taliban in Medal of Honor?
The fact that you can play as the Taliban in the upcoming Medal of Honor isn't sitting well with some military families.
Over the weekend, Fox and Friends aired a segment about that game with Gold Star mother Karen Meridith, who lost her son in the war. Obviously, she's less than thrilled with the war being used as entertainment.
Obviously, this is territory that's been covered before, such as when Atomic Games' Six Days in Fallujah made headlines for the very same reason.
Posted by Alexander Bevier at 12:00 PM Aug 13, 2010
The fireball that started it all.
Fighting games like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat were everywhere in the 1990s. After their release, many other fighting games came out in order to capitalize on the hot genre. Most of these games are insignificant and unmemorable due to miscellaneous reasons (usually involving overall quality and failure to differentiate themselves from the fighting game pack). Others achieved their status in the annals of gaming history like Samurai Shodown and Killer Instinct (because one had swords and the other was crazy). Despite the variations in quality, almost every one of these games contained the following core elements.
These are the five elements in every fighting game.
The PS3 Netflix discs are soon to be a thing of the past.
"Before our next call in October, we expect to be launching a major new version of our Sony PS3 user interface which doesn't require a disc, and is dynamically updated continuously with the latest Netflix UI improvements."
That's the word from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, delivering the news that watching Netflix on your PS3 will get simpler and better in the next few months. Sure, the fact that Netflix currently requires a streaming disc on the PS3 (and Wii) isn't a huge deal, but we Americans hate minor inconveniences, so I'm sure no one will be sad to see the PS3 streaming discs go.
That's really all there is to this story, but we don't want this post to be a waste of your time, so we've embedded a video of a pug singing the 1960s Batman TV show theme song below. Enjoy!
I don't see eye-to-eye with my buddy Mike when it comes to videogames. Sure, we like a lot of the same games, but we take different things from them. Mike is a gameplay guy. He admits to skipping story bits when he can. He loves to get wrapped up in the mechanics of games, especially RPGs, and really tinker with the way they work.
I'm fine with those kind activities, but story is what keeps me involved. I turn up the volume when its time for characters to speak -- even when their lines are hackneyed and poorly acted. I get off on exploring new worlds, meeting new people, slipping into a different skin.
And because games can deliver two, seemingly disparate experiences, I'm coming to believe that gamers, too, usually identify with one of two camps.
If you're into games, you're either an overlord or an astronaut.
Not long ago I found myself stranded with family -- hanging out with my cousin's kids in Phoenix. I was reminded that day that kids love games. They don't care what kind of game. They're not snobs about developers or genres. They'll play anything because even a boring game is better than homework, getting chewed out by your parents or eating vegetables. Games are, in many cases, better than real life.
I sat down with the kids, twins (a boy and a girl aged 13), put my computer in front of them and let them guide the conversation and show me why.
When
Joystick Divisioner Gus Mastrapa talks about gamers who believe they can "see
the Matrix" - i.e., see past all the shiny graphics and 5.1 surround sound, all
the cutscenes and contrivances to behold only pure gameplay in its naked form -
I know he's talking about me. Maybe not me specifically, or even with me in
mind; only that I'd count myself among that type of gamer. I
was first conscious of it a few years ago, first articulated it more recently, and today it's a deliberate critical approach I take with games (especially ones I'm
reviewing): trying to not just look past all the non-gameplay bullshit that's swirling
around, but tune it out. It's like going on a first date and - while she's ordering dinner or
talking about her job or fidgeting with her napkin - trying to see her without
the makeup, the hair products, the Wonderbra and the mood lighting.
Last week I reviewedDante's Inferno for Wired.com and pointed out the fairly obvious fact that the game cribs more than a little from the God of War playbook. In a response to my review called "Slamming Games For Being Derivative is Like So Totally Derivative" writer and colleague Jason Killingsworth from Paste called my assertion that Dante's Inferno was derivative a "flimsy premise."
So let me take this opportunity to live up to this column's name and quote French new wave director Jean-Luc Godard. "It's not where you take things from," the filmmaker once said. "It's where you take them to."
More than a few gamers believe they can see the Matrix. They'll tell you that gameplay is king and that that the other parts of games, such as plot, character, music and visual design, take a back seat to the mechanics of play. Strip away all this stuff and you'll find the pure game beneath -- one unfettered by art and plot.
And there a million games, everything from Nethack to Tetris, that seem to support this notion. Even bare-bones games can compel.
But I think the notion of gameplay is mirage, or at the very least it is being chased like one.
Other people might say that just sitting around and playing video games all day might be unproductive, but psychiatrist Stuart Brown thinks differently. In this fascinating TED talk, Dr. Brown says that all kinds of play are necessary for intelligence and problem solving.
Beware parents! You think your child is just a lonely computer nerd who spends his spare time playing MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. But in reality they are apart of an organized, armed, fearless group of killers in the virtual world. They fight for territory and respect, having no mercy on the weak. Your child -- is a member of WoW guild.
And according to a paper published by a bunch of super smart people, their guild can be compared to a modern LA street gang. It's 11:00 PM parents, do you know where your children are raiding?
In all seriousness, they really did spend time to come up with this theory. I wonder if when this group was in school and were studying really hard for degrees, did they see themselves one day pointing out the obvious? I'll let you guys be the judge.
Here's an excerpt from the paper: (viewable after the jump)
This will be my last blurb on Street Fighter IV before my full-fledged review, which I'll try to get done by this weekend or early next week. "Why so long?" I hear some people saying. "Gamespot has had their review up for like 3 years!" A fair enough question... there are two reasons:
1) Unlike the Gamespots of the world, I got Street Fighter IV at retail on launch day like everyone else, and
2) I want to get as much time online and against friends as possible, because let's be real: that's where the meat of the game is.
Click through for thoughts on The Ken Problem (i.e., the fact every scrub, noob, chump and asshole online picks Ken and spends the entire match spamming fireballs and dragon punches), and my newly-budding romance with Blanka!
Assuming I have a say, I never agree to the house rule of winning a pot of money if you land on "Free Parking" in Monopoly. For one: I'm a rule stickler, and a cash prize for Free Parking - though widely practiced - is in fact not part of the rules. But more importantly it adversely affects the gameplay. Aside from the fact it makes a long game even longer (in lieu of the basic principle that Monopoly ends when other players' cash is drained, so any house rule that introduces more cash into the game's economy only drags it out), randomly awarding cash bonuses to players irrespective of their skill can only do one of two things:
1) Extend a losing player's "lifespan" past when he or she would normally have dropped out, or
2) Give a winning player an even greater, perhaps insurmountable advantage than his or her play deserves.
Either way: it's unfair in the truest sense. In an ideal contest between two players, winning and losing should reflect relative skill levels as closely as possible, so I oppose any gesture that unnecessarily affects that logarithm by adding some sort of luck modifier.
Aspects of Street Fighter IV - particularly its ultra combos - bother me on precisely the same grounds.
As your character is injured by your opponent, an "Ultra Combo" bar slowly fills, and once it reaches a certain point you can perform the most powerful moves in the game, some depleting half an opponent's life bar if they connect. They're spectacular, satisfying outbursts and often total game-changers - if they don't end a match on the spot.
Maybe years of watching Final Fantasy games jingle their shiny keys in front of my face has trained me to instinctively question the merit of such theatrics, if not suspect misdirection. It's not that I don't smile when I see Dan unleash an endless flurry of punches, kicks, and winks as he smashes his opponents to bits - it's good cinema. But is it good gameplay?
How could it be?
The problem starts fundamentally, in the conceit that the losing player is growing more powerful as the match wears on - effectively rewarding the less skillful player and, more annoyingly, penalizing the more skillful player. If we were talking about Monopoly again: it's like for every $1000 you lost, the bank awarded you a new property. Sure it keeps things exciting, allows for wild comebacks and makes the game "casual-friendly" - but fundamentally it's a variation of the "rubberband AI" gamers are savvy enough to recognize and despise in racing games: the game's rules stepping in to make sure nobody wins too easily or loses too badly, even if they deserve to.
It could be argued super combos - powerful moves enabled by inflicting damage - are problematic as well: you're giving advantages to a player who already has a skill advantage, thus adding inertia where it's not needed. But at least in that system, advantages and disadvantages are assigned in a way that feels fair (albeit hostile): skillful players get chances to win bigger than their naked skill would allow, and less-skilled players incur a penalty beyond a simple loss. Every previous Street Fighter (III's controversial parries especially) favored this "hostile" game theory: that skilled players would have extraordinary advantages over the less-skilled.
On a perfectly level Street Fighter playing field, there'd be no place for either ultra combos or super combos: like Free Parking, they only monkey with the game's clockwork innards, drawing the gameplay away from being a perfect reflection of respective skill levels. People love their pyrotechnics, though, so I understand cutting them altogether wouldn't be many players' first choice. So I'm hoping when an unconfirmed but universally expected Street Fighter IV Championship Editon (or Turbo or Super Street Fighter IV or whatever it is) appears, Capcom will recognize how out of step SFIV is from every prior game in the series and drop the Ultra gauge - saving the flash and spectacle for supers, and for winners.
Hit the jump to see how the actual encounter went down, just before I called my video game skills to action and turned a Homless RPG into an actual Homeless LARP!
And If you guessed "this somehow involves the Indiana Jones Whopper," you are correct, and are probably part of Stalin's psychic army.
I know we're right about at the point where a significant critical mass is brewing against Grand Theft Auto IV, and not just the usual Moral Guardian bullshit: there's the requisite anti-hype backlash traversing the internet, one that is likely to fall in terms of sheer irrepressible "I am Rowdy Roddy Piper and I just put on the Ray-Bans" defiance somewhere between the great Strokes fiasco of 2001 and the loathing any baseball fan outside the New England area is developing towards the post-World Champion Red Sox. So I'll try not to play up how big of a geek I am for GTA IV, since that might mean I'm on the take, part of some corrupt video game review cabal that hands out 10s like candy to undeserving subjects and conspires against the success of cult classics like God Hand. Or something. In all fairness, I tend to have a soft spot for big sprawling ambitious kinda-flawed pop-cult-crazy epic games like this, which is why my two candidates for Game of the Year so far are GTA IV and No More Heroes. (Though it remains to be seen how Fallout 3, this year's potential king of big sprawling ambition, pans out.)
Things happen for a reason. In most traditional narrative media, whether dramatic or comedic, certain constructs are in place that play on an audience's pre-conceived expectations, and are there to build tension and release, create empathy with or antipathy towards a character, and generally denote what sort of genre the work belongs to. These are known as "tropes," the basic building blocks of storytelling, and once video games started advancing past paddle-vs.-ball conflicts and into the realm of real characters with motivations (even if said motivation is "make a delicious hamburger"), they developed a whole set of their own.
