Brendan Doms

I'd rather be playing DDR.

This may be an unfair comparison, but the fact is that Guitar Hero uses a very unique input device, much like DDR, so the two are inevitably going to go head to head. And the gameplay is very similar - match the strums (or your steps) to the beat. Though, in this match up, I'd put my money on DDR.

Guitar Hero suffers first from a polarization of the experience of its user base. Most people have almost no real guitar playing experience. When I watch them try to play Guitar Hero on the medium difficulty they get frustrated and upset very quickly, even if they are familiar with the gameplay concept from something like DDR. I've seen it take hours to pass a single song. However, when experienced guitarists have a go, they have no issue, and fly through the game. When I spent my three hours sitting down and beating the game, I only had to try two of the thirty songs twice - the other 28 I passed on my first try. Could an experienced dancer say the same after their first time through DDR?

So, what did the developers do to give someone like me more to do? They added a vast array of unlockable guitars, songs, characters, paint jobs...that affect absolutely nothing. I used the money to upgrade my guitar, and get a more stylish paint job, figuring that it would make me more popular and help me get a higher score on the songs, but it didn't. Other than your own skill, nothing affects performance in the game. The "cool RPG like elements" that make games like GTA so replayable are merely illusions here. So, now I've spent three hours beating the game, discovered that the unlockables are only aesthetic, and I've spent $60 of real money. Was it worth it?

No. Games shouldn't be dependent on higher difficulties or meaningless unlockable items to keep me coming back. In fact, after beating this game, I really have no desire to play it again. Being a hardcore gamer, most of the time I want to explore every inch of a game and unlock everything and complete it until I have dominated it 100%. But I don't want to do that with Guitar Hero. Maybe there are some people out there that will find the gameplay fun, rather than repetitive, boring, or frustrating, but I'm not one of them. DDR keeps me coming back with good solid gameplay that has no endgame (and the potential for burning calories), rather than dangling a double-fretted Gibson in my face.

I went on a splurge of viewing game trailers the other night. It turns out that there are a bunch of games in development that were completely off my radar. Were they off yours?

I'll start with the least startling: Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra should be totally expected as being in development, considering the success of the first two in the epic five part space odyssey RPG. Xenosaga has become my RPG series de facto, after the downfall of Final Fantasy with FFX-2 (I still have a bad taste in my mouth). This is the game I am anticipating the most, but I'm willing to wait if that makes it as good as the first two.

BLACK is a totally new FPS for the XBox by EA. Now, I think EA is pretty much evil, and their more recent games have mostly been just awful, especially in the FPS genre (007: Nightfire, anyone?), but if you take a look at the BLACK trailers, it looks really promising. There are destructive environments, pretty lighting, and cool slow motion special effects. Now, like a lot of FPS's, all this one needs is a story. Nothing will be able to top the original Halo, but I still want to give this one a try when it comes out in February.

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams is really surprising to me because I was sure that the main line of Onimusha games was done with after Jean Reno crashed Onimusha 3. (Just like I was sure Metal Gear Solid was done after the second installment. Oh Hideo Kojima, how you love to play with my head, and how I love you for it. Check out the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots trailer if you haven't already.) However, this title is essentially Onimusha 4, and if Capcom can return to the roots of what made the series good in Onimusha 1 and 2, then I'll be very happy for another chance to enter feudal Japan as Jubei.

Finally, and I have no clue as to how I missed this one, Valve is making an expansion to Half-Life 2 called Aftermath. I'm sure forums somewhere are bounding with guesses as to where the story is going to go, but I'll content myself with my own ideas based on the trailer and available screenshots. I'm really excited for another chance to step into the shoes of Gordon Freeman and get my high dynamic range lighting on.

So, it's a new year with many new games to look forward to. Let's hope that there are some originals that end up shining (check out Rockstar's newest project, Bully), and a couple sequels that are better than their predecessors (Kingdom Hearts 2 comes to mind).

Everything you've heard, and then some.

God of War takes my pick for best overall game of 2005. It's got the right mix of presentation, gameplay, and story so that any gamer will want to jump on for the ride. It also has great replay value with its unlockables and higher difficulty - God Mode - so that I'm going to keep coming back to it, trying to be all the god I can be.

The game basically never stopped getting played in the lounges of my college dorm in the Spring '05 semester. I seriously think the PS2 went at least a week straight without ever getting turned off when the first copy arrived on campus. Seeing things like Kratos wailing on a mythological beast just became commonplace (screenshot from the official game info site):

I was reluctant to participate in the frenzy though. I didn't really have much faith in action platformers nowadays. I considered it a dying genre. Prince of Persia might've been keeping it alive, but that was one hand clutching a cliff a mile up. The good things just didn't stop though. I kept hearing and seeing in passing how the game looked, and eventually, when I had the chance to grab it for free, I did. That was a good choice.

Upon finally playing it, the game ended up reminding me of the best parts of Onimusha and Devil May Cry: it's that engaging story and addictive gameplay combination. It also contains that cinematic quality that makes it really easy for hordes of people to get sucked in to just watching the world of ancient Greece unfold before them. End of the day, it's still no Ninja Gaiden, but it comes closer than anything else on the PS2 has.

Upgrades complete.

Whew.

And now I have a bazillion ideas to blog about. I'll start regular posting next week, and hopefully stay pretty consistent. I'm also working on other websites simultaneously and playing my usual slew of games. Sean recently posted on the internet game Not Pron, which I decided to give a try. Most of the time I despise internet games - typical too easy flash games that mock classics - but this one is entirely different. The best part of it is that it's a blast to play collaboratively. Put some heads together and the game becomes a lot more fun by letting you share frustrations and epiphines. Go on, try it out while I prepare one of my bazillion posts for next time.

In anticipation of the Always Beta launch and the new year, I'm upgrading to Wordpress 2.0 (check), switching my theme base from the default to K2 (check), and then redesigning to make this theme feel like my own (check - new design by Sean McBride up now). Simultaneously, I will be taking the old location of this blog offline, and trying to work on my personal portfolio at BrendanDoms.com. There are also, as always, some other web-based side projects that I hope to make some progress on. Specifically, I'm thinking about the ones I'm working on with Dan Kunitz.

A random note: if you're thinking about making your own game (as I always seem to be), then check out the Crystal Space. It's an OpenGL engine in C++ that can import from Blender.

My next posts will probably only happen after the redesign is done, but you can expect reviews of my two most recently completed games: God of War and Guitar Hero.

A lot of bug for your buck.

The new PC FPS takes a lot from the movie - well, too much, if you were expecting an original story or cutscenes. But, there's still something appealing about the game: it has a pretty engine (on the higher end, of course) and some challenging gameplay. It is just really satisfying to obliterate tons of bugs with a small nuke. Really satisfying. The game is sufficiently difficult, with a few frustrating spots, but once you get the hang of things there are some really epic moments and times when you're proud that you managed to stick it to that Royal Warrior. At the same time, it's just gross how many bugs you have to kill sometimes. I would've liked to have seen stats on how many I put down. Thousands.

And then there's the saving and loading system. It's the worst I've ever seen implemented in any game and detracts immensely from the experience. Just awful. I feel that saving and loading should be made as simple and unobtrusive as possible, as it's not actually a part of the game play, but there, Empire Interactive failed. Of course, this had to come immediately after I finished with Quake 4, which as I said, had a wonderful save system.

So, down to the details. Quicksaving will take roughly a minute. Loading a level will take 2 or 3. In addition to those bad times, here's the biggest problem: quickloading (or just loading a quicksave) will take you no less than 2 or 3 minutes, and often upwards of 6 or 7. Now, my machine is pretty fast. There is no need to have a quickload that takes more than 5 minutes. For that matter, a quick load should be quick, as in, measured in seconds. I have no clue how playtesting this game was even possible, because by far the most frustrating moments were those when I was just waiting - with the bar at 99% done - for the load to finish. It was incredibly aggravating, and made going through one particular tough spot that was about 5 minutes in game time took 90 in real time. On top of that, quicksaves never overwrote each other, and you can not select more than one at a time, so I had to delete each one individually in order to keep my saved games organized. I don't like spending my time being uber micro with my saved games.

I ended up feeling like I was wasting my time with the game and actually loaded up my PS2 to play Star Ocean: Till the End of Time while I was waiting for the loads to finish. When I have time to make progress in a game during another's quickload times, you know something is terribly wrong.

If you like pretty standard, but challenging FPS fare and are willing to put up with attrocious load times, then I'd recommend Starship Troopers. But, it falls short in the most disappointing way just like Quake 4 - the ending is terribly un-epic considering what you've gone through to get there. I think I need to play through FEAR again just so I review it here - that game managed to have a good solid ending that left questions unanswered but still made my trials seem worth it.

This game was grossly underrated...except for the ending.

Quake 4 is probably the best FPS I've played in 2005. This is the game that I feel Project Snowblind, Republic Commando, and Pariah were trying to be. It got so many things right, and yet critical reviewers seemed to gloss over those in favor of complaining about linearity or lack of true squad based combat. Let me be among those who declare that linearity and squad based combat can both go to hell in a flaming ball of discarded goo where my traditional FPS is concerned. This is the game that Project Snowblind, Republic Commando, and Pariah were trying to be.

So what did the game get right? For starters, just gameplay in general. The weapons and the enemies provide a great, challenging variety that'll keep you fragging those ugly Strogg. The graphics and dynamic lighting are both top notch, using the Doom 3 engine in a great way. Here's a screenshot to demonstrate:

Notice the X on the floor in the center. It's caused by a light source behind one of the many rotating fans in the game and it looks just great. This contributes to the great sense of environment, especially when you include the NPCs talking, working, or warring around you. The story is quite epic, with a great beginning and many well designed levels. There's even pseudo squad based combat of the best kind: your squadmates will draw fire, heal you, and even shoot back if they feel like it. However, there usually isn't a mandate to keep them alive, so let them take that flaming barrel if you don't feel like quickloading, which, by the way, is particularly fast. There are even multiple quicksaves at a time, so if you want to backtrack a little, it's not hard. This game nailed the implementation of the quicksave/quickload idea.The one huge drawback to Quake 4 is its ending. After fighting through so many levels and fighting two huge end bosses you'd expect a massively epic finale. Well, no spoilers here, but suffice it to say that the ending to the game is noticeably un-epic, and left me wanting to play The Maw on Halo. A better finish would have made the game truly stand out, but as it is, it'll end up being just another FPS that the reviewers complain about.

God of War just got delivered to me. And I'm proud to say that the game is and was free. It is free as in free speech because of a juicy tidbit I found in the ruling on the law I discussed in my previous post:

During the game, there are several scenes depicting women whose breasts are visible. In one scene, the main character is shown near a bed where two bare-chested women are lying. It appears that the main character may have had sexual relations with the women. Because of this one scene, a game such as God of War, which essentially parallels a classic book like The Odyssey, likely would be prohibited for minors under the SEVGL [Sexually Explicit Video Games Law], because the statute allows a game to be regulated based on one scene without regard to the value of the game as a whole. Such a sweeping regulation on speech - even sexually explicit speech - is unconstitutional even if aimed at protecting minors.

What's even better is that the game was free as in free beer because I didn't pay a cent for it. (Don't jump to any conclusions - I did this entirely legally.) So how'd I do it? Well, remember that Monopoly game that happens at McDonald's every once in a while? One of the prizes on the pull off stickers is a coupon to Best Buy. They come in either the $1 or $3 variety. I had a friend who thought that collecting them, scanning them in, and sending me the picture would be a good idea for a birthday present. It was - he didn't spend any money and I still got a game for free. BestBuy.com lets you enter in up to 40 of these coupons. I had 33, which totaled $1 more than I needed to pay for the game and shipping. As proof of this wondrous feat, here's a snapshot of the pricetag on the game I received:

It may be a little fuzzy, but note those elegant zeros and the way they scream, "Although this game is a $50 title, you got it for nothing!" Oh, life is good. That's $50 I can spend on Thai food...or another video game ::strokes chin::.

I was happy to see from various news outlets over the past couple days that a federal court smacked down an Illinois law forbidding the sale of violent video games to minors for being unconstitutional.

This latest craze of violent-video-games-are-bad-for-our-kids has especially irked me. It's hammered home the fact that most of the people making laws out there have no clue about the technology that those laws are for. This reaches as far as the DMCA, but it also strikes closer to my hobby of choice - including even the ridiculous and laughable bill that Schwarzenegger signed for California this past October (it's a law that will help ban sales of games that he added his likeness and/or voice talents to).

At my workplace this summer there were many fathers who complained about the San Andreas Hot Coffee mod, and they screamed that something like that should not be in a video game that their kids could potentially get their hands on. Except that the ERSB works, because the horrendous Hot Coffee mod (which in my opinion should have been allowed in a game intended for adults) was just that - a mod - which is illegal and not actually a part of the game. For some reason the smart intelligent men I worked with didn't see the distinction, and neither did a lot of state legislators.

Since then, a lot of bills have been shuffling around state offices, threatening to impose laws on the sales of video games. Now, Best Buy and Target can limit who they sell their merchandise to all they want (though I think it's incredibly stupid, and not worth their time, especially when I went to Target at the age of 17 to buy an M rated game that said "17+" on the box and one of their employees refused to sell me the game because 17+ "obviously means you have to be 18 to buy it"), but the ESRB exists so that no law will hamper the sale of video games. And like I said above, it works. The industry has become self-regulating, the way it should be. Rockstar did not include anything like the Hot Coffee mod because they knew it would hurt sales getting an A rating from the ESRB, not because there was any moral reason not to.

If lawmakers are going to ignore the ESRB they might as well dissolve it. However, I feel that this would be the worst possible thing that could happen. The ESRB has kept video games in check, and is much more cost effective than Washington. Besides, we should want lawmakers to be giving us rights, rather than be taking them away. And, that being said, if they're going to ban anything, they should start with books. Books by far have the least censored, most explicit, and most violent depictions of sex of any pop medium out there. Movies and games and music are far tamer than books when it comes to sex. Don't get me wrong, I don't want any form of expression censored or banned, I'm just saying that if our statesmen actually cared about the moral issue instead of the media buzz then they should have started banning books long ago.

As for repealing dumb laws that ignore the ESRB and try to unconstitutionally hamper our first amendment rights, all of the affected states - here's lookin' at you Cali - should be jumping on the bandwagon.

Immersive, but lacking.

Call of Duty 2 got several things right while losing that magic touch that made its prequel and the expansion so much fun. The large battles are amazing: squads of troops and tanks rushing of hills will leave you breathless. This is the first game to ever come out that takes place in a war where I've really been able to say to myself, "Wow, it feels like I'm playing a game that takes place in a war." Think about it; Halo 2 takes place during an intergalactic war, and that game is totally lacking in moments where there are more than a dozen or so enemies on screen at a time (they come in waves...ooo, isn't that nice?). Call of Duty 2 gives a great sense of presence and placement squarely in World War II.

However, it is this immersiveness that is also responsible for the game's biggest downfall. I was left feeling totally impersonal to the events around me upon completing the game. Sure, there were some challenging spots that my squad couldn't have done without me, but it's more than that. Call of Duty and United Offensive had a lot of moments with great dialogue and where I felt my men really depended on me. I felt like each campaign had more of a story. In Call of Duty 2 there are still occasional moments like that, but they don't flow in the natural way the predecessor's do. This certainly isn't aided by the ability to jump around from campaign to campaign on a whim. Despite what critics might be saying about too much linearity in modern games, I'd rather have more of it forced on me if it makes for a more cohesive and compelling story. Call of Duty 2 is still a fun FPS worth the $50 - despite my misgivings about its impersonalness - it just won't be on my top 22 games list next year.