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Archives for 2004

render – HL 2

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So I never experienced Half Life. It came out around the same time I was busy with Age of Empires I and II. I’ve always liked FPSs on the PC, but this one never tickled my fancy. I also skipped out on the whole Counterstrike thing. Again, I may have missed gaming nirvana but I’ll never know. So during this month of Video Gaming Mana from Heaven, another beauty in the form of Half Life 2 was dropped in the laps of rapid gamers everywhere. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff out there, praising HL2 as one of the best games, ever. Am I missing out on something? I don’t see myself picking up a copy anytime soon, but after I read this post on render gaming, I may have to rethink that:

“As I headed back to the hovercraft, I passed the bodies of the dead Combine soldiers I had fought. The overall feeling was one of loneliness and isolation, following a frantic battle. When I got to the hovercraft and continued, I felt that I was leaving the scene of a truly dramatic event.”

This is the kind of goodness I could get into. I really enjoyed reading his HL2 posts, but this passage caught my eye. This is what gaming (and game blogging, for me) is all about – taking an experience in a game and expressing it in not only words but also feelings. I felt the same things he describes here in Metroid Prime.

I’m still thinking about picking up a copy of Half Life 2, and if I do, it will be because of that little passage.

Celebrities First to ‘Touch’ Nintendo DS at Exclusive Premiere Party

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Celebrities First to ‘Touch’ Nintendo DS at Exclusive Premiere Party:

“‘Yo, this is the dopest thing I’ve seen in my life.’ — Donald Faison”

If Turk is down with the DS, count me in. Although, on second thought, I’d like to know what Ted thinks about it. What, he wasn’t invited to Nintendo’s party? That’s just not right.

Halo 2’s AI

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Stuffo: Movies. Games. Web. World Domination.:

“Are you tired of getting whipped by the Covenant? Learn how they think from the man who created the artificial intelligence for ‘Halo 2.’ In this exclusive Stuffo interview, Chris Butcher of Bungie Studios enlightens us.”

Interesting article but I’ll warn ya, there’s lots of ads and pop-up crap to try and ignore. Also, the article might seem to end abruptly but I think the end is the end.

Bungie.net : Halo 2 gets patched

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On EvilAvatar there’s a post from Bungie preparing everyone for a patch for Halo 2 – Bungie.net : Top Story:

“The Autoupdate should be available by the time you read this, and getting it is as simple as logging into your Xbox Live account. Xbox Live gamers are probably already familiar with the concept of an autoupdate and this one behaves exactly the same way.”

I think this is a shame. I know Halo 2 shipped with free Live, that’s how I’m enjoying it, but for the thousands who don’t have Live won’t get the progessive scan fix, ruining(?) the Halo 2 experience for them. I don’t have an HDTV widescreen, so I don’t know if this cheapens the experience or not, but it seems like it’s proof of a rushed product nonetheless. I can understand PC games shipping with problems, there are millions of hardware combinations out there and there’s no way everyone of them could be tested. But with the Xbox, I would imagine there’s no more than a few thousand televisions out there. With Bungie and Microsofts money, they could have easily tested Halo 2 on a good sample of those TVs and easily found this problem. At least it seems simple to me.

I do find it funny to see all the Xbox/Halo 2 fanboys in full-force defending Bungie, praising them with their rapidity in releasing this bug fix. Some say it’s great that it was taken care of so fast, others rationalize it off by saying it’s no big deal. However you look at it, it is setting an extremely bad precedent. I am all for new downloadable content, new maps, levels, etc. but this is not the path I want to go down.

On a side note, I’ve already updated and Quickmatch has certainly received a nice boost setting up games. Kudos for that.

GameSpy Holiday Guide – 2004

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GameSpy Holiday Guide – 2004: “This may go down as one of the best holiday seasons in gaming history.” – This is going to be a great holiday season. I’ve always like Gamespy’s Holiday Guides but mostly as solely as an affirmation to my astute previous judgements.

I do disagree that Fable is a good choice, it’s mediocre at best, there’s much better out there. Metroid Prime is at the top of my Christmas wishlist, along with Burnout 3 or Need For Speed Underground 2. I really liked NFSU 1 on the Gamecube, so I definitely want to pick up #2 although I’m not too keen on the whole Snoop Dogg thing. X-Men Legends looks solid, either Gamecube or Xbox style. Of course Viewtiful Joe 2 would be a no-brainer, even though I never finished the first one – got a little too hard there at the end. Paper Mario may just be a rental for me, but I may pick it up nonetheless. And Mario Tennis, too? Man this season looks great!

A College Guide to EA

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Slashdot | A College Guide to EA This white paper (I love saying that) was done by a professor at Carnegie Mellon based on his experience at EA. While it deals mostly with tailoring a “video game” curriculum at CM it also points out some interesting insights into the world of video game production. It’s an interesting read for gamers, as I’m sure we’ve all dreamed about working at a gaming company at one point. A couple things stuck out –

1. I’ve always wondered why games cost 49 bucks. According to the paper, the break down is as follows: 17$ goes to the retailers, 8$ to the console maker (licensing fees I assume), 4$ marketing and distribution, and 20$ to the publisher and developer (sometimes the same people). I know brick and mortars have high overheads that would justify the 17 dollars a game, but it seems online retailers could be leveraging their lower overhead to offer cheaper prices. Maybe it’s some type of unwritten rule.

2. This was disconcerting. Quoting the article –

“Making an outstanding game, but delivering it late, is not as profitable as making an acceptable quality game on time.”

I understand the mighty dollar rules the day at EA ($3 billion in revenues a year can’t be wrong) but it’s still disappointing to hear promising games never make it and games are dumbed down (I call it the Lowest Common Denominator Effect) to make ship dates.

I thought it was a great read, I encourage anyone interested in the gaming industry to read it. And if you think you can be a game tester to “break in” to the industry and land a job as a designer, I’ll leave you with this sobering quote from the article:

Testing used to be a path by which a highly motivated individual could eventually gain access to a production job; while not officially impossible, it is now difficult to move from testing to production.

(Link from Slashdot)

Week in Review (Part 2)

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Outside of Halo 2, the biggest story in the gaming-blogosphere was definitely the emerging details of problems bubbling over at Electronic Arts. After the anonymous post of an EA employee’s spouse came a message from an employee who decided to speak out against the bad conditions at EA. After all this was news of a lawsuit brought against EA by current employees. Craziness, indeed. I’ll be interested to see how this turns out.

But of course this week has been dominated by Halo 2 goodness. Me, I waited in the cold waiting for the game and I’ve been playing the heck out of it. What have I learned from this? Number one, I will never, ever wait outside a store at midnight to get my copy of an anticipated game again. The only thing I got was the shivers and an early alrm the next morning. Not worth it. I’ve also learned that Xbox Live is for real. I’m reserving my judgement on Halo 2 until I’ve finished the single player campaign and I’ve logged a few more hours on Live.

November is so chocked full of good releases, I fear I’ll miss some of the better games coming out. I would like to get my hands on Mario Tennis, Paper Mario, a Nintendo DS and a smattering of other games. I definitely plan on picking up Metroid Prime 2, but I’m hoping Santa brings me a copy of that.

There’s much more going out there in our gaming world, but I haven’t been feeling well and I just ran out of time to post everything I wanted to. This is a work in progress, of course.

Halo 2 multiplayer experience

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I’ve now had the opportunity to run the gamut of all the multiplayer options in Halo 2.

Co-op – Playing co-op can be great. Like the motto goes, it is fun to play together. Co-op is even better. The first Halo did co-op well and many people wanted Halo 2 to be co-opable (is that a word?) over Xbox Live, but it never came to pass. I didn’t really care if they did or not. It seems that four-person co-op was at least considered, as it lets you set up a four player co-op game but will prevent you from actually playing it. But I played with a buddy of mine and we played through the first couple of levels. I had only seen most of them once and they were all new to him, so it was pretty sweet to discover stuff at the same time. The team dynamic can be as good or as bad as you want it. I love sneaking around, clearing out a hall and the securing the other side so my teammate can make it through. Running over grunts with the Warthog while my teammate guns other baddies down is a riot. Nicely done.

Xbox Live – I’ve talked about this one before, it’s easy to say that Halo 2’s biggest draw for me will definitely be playing on Live. Its implementation is pretty slick and the EE geek in me really appreciates the time spent to ensure it runs so silky smooth over the internet. I tip my hat to them for that. Nevertheless, waiting for games is still a pain.

Xbox Live with guests – Playing with guests is both fun and a tad frustrating. Games take somewhat longer to find since you can only join practice (non-ranked) games, which is necessary for obvious reasons, but it’d be nice to set up your own game and have people join it until it fills. Right now you can make private games but you’ve got to invite people to them. And since I know no one yet on Live, that’s out of the question.

System Link – We had our first Halo 2 party with twelve people last night, and it is still my favorite way to enjoy Halo. I don’t play with a headset on Live, so I don’t know how the team dynamic works out there, but it sure is easier to lean over to your buddy and tell him where you are and what the strategy is. And of course there’s the up-close-and-personal trash talking. Nothing is better than shouting across the room talking that smack after your shotgun made spaghetti of their entrails. Good stuff!

game girl advance

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game girl advance:

“1. Willingness to take measured risks – gamers learn this innately long before they get to business school.

2. Different way of interacting with others. For example, less respect for hierarchy and seniority. In game world, anyone can be beaten by a 12-year-old. Gamers tend to respect ability, not seniority.

3. Seriousness about expertise, and being rewarded for that expertise. No matter how many times you fail in a game, if you REALLY want it, you CAN beat it. No doubt a helpful attitude in business.”

Just a quick blurb from game girl advance, commenting on a book called Got Game talking about how video games are training a new generation of business people. I like the three points made, especially the first one. Anyone who played the original Prince of Persia know all about taking measured risks.

Maybe these new business people can have some influence over at Electronic Arts.