A Remedy Fan’s Speculation on How Quantum Break’s TV Series Should Be Presented (Part 1: Technical Issues) August 17, 2015

There is no game coming to the Xbox One that I’m looking forward to more than Quantum Break.  As you know, Quantum Break is going to have a live-action TV series included with the game, and we got to see a short preview of that series at this year’s Gamescom.  From the short preview we saw, the production values on this series looks incredible, perfect for viewing on the Xbox One.  The best part is its story is going to be fully incorporated into the game, and the choices you make while watching it will affect the game in lots of different ways.  The Xbox One can output video from a Blu-Ray Disc or streaming video service in native 1080p so it’s reasonable to assume that Quantum Break’s video content was theoretically produced at that resolution.  However, producing and delivering HD video content can still be a technical challenge due to a myriad of problems including disc storage capacities that I will elaborate on later.  Hypothetically, Remedy is going to need to deliver this HD video series to us in a package that is also going to include an entire Xbox One game. How are they going to pull this off, and what is the best way to present this series to the player?  Let’s talk about that shall we?

Now first off I want to preface this article with the fact that everything I’m going to be commenting on is sheer speculation.  With very few exceptions, we know very little about Quantum Break or its game length.  We only know for sure that the game is being developed by Remedy, who you may know from the hit games Alan Wake, Death Rally, and the first two Max Payne games.  They are one of the most driven and professional video game studios in the world, and I’m certain that their engineers have probably thought out all of the possibilities that I will be mentioning over the course of this article.  Most of what I’m going to be talking about here is heavily inspired by the work of other game developers who have already released titles on current consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4) and how they chose to present their titles given the rules and limitations of this new generation of hardware.  In a lot of cases, I think other studios have made the wrong decisions when designing their games for new hardware, and I will reference those titles and their bad decisions on a case by case basis.  My hope is that Remedy will learn from other’s mistakes and present the best possible game they can when Quantum Break launches in April.

Let me give a little background to explain what I mean when I say rules and limitations of the current consoles.  Xbox One and PS4 games require a game to be installed to your console’s Hard Drive before it played, even if you’re playing it off of a disc.  It’s really no different than what PC owners have had to go through over the past twenty years.  This installation requirement makes for improved load times and better overall game performance at a cost of your console’s total storage capacity and long wait times for the game’s initial installation and subsequent patches.  Since you can’t play a game on a modern console without installing it first, you can’t simply put in a game for the first time and start it without at least having to wait some time before you can play it.  Typically this installation time can range from a few minutes to an hour, and will eat up storage space on your console’s Hard Drive, something that you cannot upgrade on the Xbox One.

Without trying to rant too hard, I’ve noticed more recently that several games, especially ones on the PS4, will not perform a complete game installation when a game disc is first inserted.  Instead, the game installs a minimal amount of game content during the initial installation so it can get the player into the game as soon as possible.  The rest of the disc’s content would then install in the background during gameplay.  This might have been done as a response to a lot of people in the gaming media with either no patience or limited free time that complained they were unwilling to wait for their games to install, so in response some newer games have been designed to perform a small installation when the game disc is first inserted, and then perform the rest of the game’s installation during actual gameplay.  While this may sound like a great idea on paper it’s difficult for even the newest consoles, with all their processing power, to do a complete game installation and deliver a consistent game presentation at the same time.  What I’ve typically found is these forced background installations make for very poor gameplay performance, audio/video sync issues, and at worst, unforeseen errors and bugs.  Don’t believe me?  Try renting the disc version of The Order: 1886 and playing it on a PS4 that it has not been played on previously.  I remember hearing regular audio pops, seeing occasional lip-sync issues during cutscenes until finally I was hit with a pretty lengthy installation bar at the end of the first chapter.  It didn’t really make for a good initial impact on me.

If you really don’t want users to wait to play their games, you have a few options. I know the Xbox One’s OS allows a “Ready to Play” option, but at least it will continue to perform a game installation in the background of the operating system until the game is fully installed and patched to its latest version.  I thought the “Ready to Play” feature was used to an absolutely awesome level when I first used it on the game LocoCycle.   After the game downloaded a certain small percentage of the game’s total content, I was able to start the game and play the first levels while the rest of the game downloaded at a predictable pace.  At no point did I ever hit a wall where I had to stop playing because the game hadn’t finished downloading the rest of the next levels, and I thought that was really well planned out.  I was very happy with it because it allowed me to play this fun little title before it finished downloading from the Xbox Marketplace.

However, I’ve heard that “Ready to Play” isn’t used as well in other games. In Ryse, if you booted a game up when you were told it was “Ready to Play”, you were simply presented with a nice looking progress bar, nothing more.  Another downside was it would be nearly impossible to work well on a non-linear sandbox style game.  In Batman: Arkham Knight, a sandbox game, you cannot play certain missions until the mission’s content is installed off of the game’s disc.  Even if you want to play a specific mission you can’t until it is installed on your console, so you’ll just have to wait.  In the majority of titles that I’ve seen, even if you got the “Ready to Play” notification, at best you might be allowed to view the game’s menu, but all of the game’s options, including “Start Game”, would be grayed out.  You also don’t have the option to install the content you want in the order you want like you would in a PC game.  Games with lots of features would install exactly the way they were programmed to in the order the developers chose for them, so if you wanted to play a certain game mode first, you better hope that the specific mode you wanted to play was installed first, otherwise you would have to wait.

I guess I just want to say from all of this that I would rather wait however long it took to fully install Quantum Break on my Xbox One, than play a buggy game with poor performance for the duration it took for my Xbox One to install the rest of the game’s content. Even if it meant I could play my game sooner, I would rather wait until it would play perfectly. Trust me, I come from a PC background, I’m used to waiting to play my games.  Heck, it’s August 2015 when I’m writing this, I just installed Windows 10 on several PCs (which can take about 2-3 hours to download, install and tweak depending on your system’s hardware specifications) and I come from the age of dial-up, I have no issue popping my disc into the Xbox One and waiting. I can always just watch Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “We’ll Always Have Paris” and have a few sodas while I wait.

If you want a poster boy in the case of what not to do, look no further than one of Microsoft’s major releases from last year. For those of you who may have picked up Halo: The Master Chief Collection, once you get past the game’s bugs you’ll see many other poor decisions at work. Owners of the game were given exclusive access to a five-part Halo TV series, called Halo: Nightfall. However, for some reason which escapes all logic, the series was not included on the game’s disc.  If you wanted to watch it, you would need to download an app called the Halo Channel, redeem a download code included in your game’s package (assuming someone hadn’t already copied or used it first), and then wait for the episode to be released before you could watch it.  Microsoft may have chosen to do this to save space on their game’s disc, but there was nothing stopping them from including the series on a second disc, especially since they would eventually release the entire series on separate Blu-Ray Disc just a few weeks later.

If you owned only The Master Chief Collection and wanted to actually watch Halo: Nightfall you had to stream it off the web on the Halo Channel. Typically this isn’t much of an issue, but when the game was released the Halo Channel suffered from severe performance and buffering issues even on users with good connectivity so video quality would frequently degrade.  I hate when my streaming quality degrades while I’m watching a file because when you’re sitting on a 105Mbit/s downstream service there simply should not be any buffering.  I don’t have these issues with other paid streaming services.  If I’m paying for a digital video service or using a digital service to rent something I expect consistent quality for streamed files.  If that can’t be guaranteed, the series should have been included on the game disc or a seperate Blu-Ray.  The worst part was you could not even binge watch the series until at least five weeks after the game was released, even though owners were promised the whole series and should have gotten all of it at the time of the game’s launch.

So what are the other options if streaming is a bad idea? Well, the series could be included on the game disc in its entirety. Quality would be GREAT and performance would remain consistent while you were watching it.  In fact, the experience watching it would be no different than if you were watching it off a pristine Blu-Ray Disc.   The downside is this option is that HD video files can take up a lot of space on both the game disc and Xbox One.  For those of you with first generation Xbox One consoles, you only have 500GB of storage for all of your content unless you plan to buy a USB 3.0 compatible external Hard Drive.  A large memory footprint could also increase the game’s initial installation times, making you wait a while before you could start playing it.

In the last generation, I remember a lot of people telling me that many Japanese game developers were adamant about using Blu-Ray Discs for their video games because the extra storage offered by the BD format allowed them to include high-quality uncompressed video files in their games.  DVD just didn’t have anywhere near the amount of storage capacity that a BD disc does, and that’s why several multiplatform games would ship on multiple discs for its Xbox 360 version, and only one disc for its PS3 version.  However, compression has gotten a lot better in the past decade.  Video files encoded in the MPEG4 format, the typical compression used by Blu-Ray Discs, take up much less space than DVD’s MPEG2 format did.  In this generation, it is fully possible for developers to compress their video files at the cost of some possible quality loss with the finished product, and this could be a good option for Remedy to cut down on Quantum Break’s overall storage requirements, but it might offend some video purists.  Of course this would all depend on which compression method Remedy chooses to use, but this might be a necessity.  As far as I’m concerned, as long as the game’s installation footprint can fit under 50GB and the live-action segments are visually on par with a Blu-Ray movie, I can live with it, but I know a lot of others might not be that generous.  As for installation times, I said earlier I can always watch some old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation while I wait, so that isn’t as big a deal to me either.  Just to be safe, I would still recommend that anyone who hasn’t already picked up the Xbox One console yet and wants to play Quantum Break when it gets released next year take a serious look at the new Halo 5: Guardians version of the console, because at least that version of the console will come with a 1TB Hard Drive pre-installed inside it.

Okay we got some of the technicals out of the way when it comes to getting the series on your console, so in the next part of this featured article we’re going to speculate some possible options for the game to present its live-action series.  This is some really exciting stuff, and you would be surprised just how many options we may have to watch Shawn Ashmore kick some butt.  Stay tuned for that tomorrow, right here.  Thanks for reading and feel free to post a comment below on what your thoughts are about the current generation of consoles.

Quantum Break is coming April 2016 exclusively to the Xbox One.

The Top Ten Most Heartbreaking Moments in Gaming History May 8, 2015

10. The Slow, Downward Spiral of Interplay

Anyone remember Interplay?  Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, I remember this company made some decent games with the Star Trek license, including titles like Starfleet Academy, which brought back George Takei, Walter Koening and The Shatner.  However, Interplay did a lot more than just make Star Trek games. I’m sure many of you will remember them for their contribution to the gaming zeitgeist in the form of the Fallout series, the first two of which are still considered some of the best early PC-RPGs.  As time went on, these guys continued to make a lot of games which stood out to me.  Messiah tried to add a new spin on the third person shooter genre.  Giants: Citizen Kabuto brought humor to what would have otherwise been a run of the mill shooter, and introduced the world to Planet Moon Studios.  Run like Hell had Bawls.  Well, the good times were not to last for Interplay and funding started to dwindle for them while working on their next Fallout title, forcing them to eventually sell the Fallout IP to Bethesda.  Bethesda would go on to make Fallout 3, a game which turned them into an overnight sensation.  This really did not help Interplay’s bottom line, as the rights to Fallout would eventually become completely absorbed by Bethesda.

I know that at one point Interplay was working on an MMO based on the Fallout license, but Bethesda Studios claimed ownership of Fallout and put a stop to that.  I don’t know what Interplay is currently working on, but you can thankfully still buy their games through services like GOG.com, and they are still being supported.  They’re still around, and if you’re interested, they might be willing to let you make some games using one of the franchises they still own for the right price, but that’s about it.  I would love to see a new Run Like Hell game made, but it needs to keep its Bawls.

9. The Incomplete, Buggy Game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was considered one of the greatest titles on the original Xbox and one of the best games of 2003. It showed critics that the Star Wars license could still deliver incredible entertainment experiences even after the utter critical failure of the prequel trilogy, and became a ray of light for Star Wars fans everywhere. The game’s developer, Bioware, had become too busy with other projects to make a sequel for the game, so the game’s publisher, Lucasarts, shifted development of its sequel to the lesser known RPG developer Obsidian and planned to release it within a year.  When Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was released the hopes for the Star Wars franchise were utterly dashed.  Players bought KOTOR II on the Xbox day one with the hope that the game would explain what happened to the original game’s characters in the time since the original game completed, but sadly no answers would ever come.  Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords shipped with an almost entirely new cast of characters (with the exception of a few secondary characters from the previous game including one fan favorite), and players hoping for a continuation to the original game’s story never really find out what happened to Revan.  I personally remember playing the thirty hour game over the course of four days, and I could not have been more disappointed with the game’s ending.  It just seemed like the game resolved nothing, and that wasn’t good enough for fans who had paid $50 US for it.

When the PC version launched a few months later it was discovered to be a buggy, rushed mess and fans were furious.  The game was never fully fixed by its developers or publisher, but fans have been trying to fix it on their own for years, trying to resurrect whatever incomplete content they can that was cut during the game’s rushed development period.  Years later, Bioware created an MMO based on The Old Republic, essentially dashing my hopes for a third game.

8. The Cancellation of Star Wars 1313

I’ve got another Star Wars related disappointment for you.  Star Wars 1313 was shown privately at E3 in 2012, and it quickly became one of the most anticipated titles of the show.  When it was shown running on next-generation PC hardware, Star Wars 1313’s graphics made even the jaded gaming press drop their jaws.  You would play as a bounty hunter dealing in the seedy underworld of Courisant, an aspect of the Star Wars universe viewers only glimpsed at for brief moments during the prequel trilogy.  The game developers were also holding back a huge secret, the game was going to star one of the fans’ favorite characters, Boba Fett.  After having been burned by overhyped Star Wars games like The Force Unleashed in the years prior, and still stinging from the critical failure of the Prequel Trilogy, the gaming media had high hopes that Star Wars 1313 would restore the Star Wars license to its former glory.  The game was shown one year before the Xbox One and Playstation 4 were even announced, so Lucasarts could not say what their target platforms for the game would be, but gamers everywhere, regardless of platform, were heavily anticipating it.  However, when George Lucas sold his empire to Disney, Lucasarts became unnecessary in the eyes of their new corporate masters, and development ceased.  While many hope that EA could revive the game in the future, it is unlikely this game will ever see the light of day.

7. Panzer Dragoon Saga’s Limited Release

The Sega Saturn was failing and Sega was just about ready to jump ship.  The console was costing Sega too much to keep manufacturing, and plans were already underway to develop a new, more cost efficient gaming console which could launch before Sony could start manufacturing their successor to the Playstation, the Playstation 2.  The problem was developers were still making games for the Sega Saturn, and one game was on track for release just as Sega was going to pull the plug on the Saturn, Panzer Dragoon Saga.  This game was getting incredible reviews and it was on track to become a major system seller, but it could not have been released at a worse time.  Sega pulled the plug on the Saturn, and only manufactured a small initial run for copies of the game with no intention to do another run. Most of the game’s copies were sold to anyone who preordered it, and the game was never re-manufactured despite its praise from critics and players alike.  In the intervening years, the game’s development could be considered a bit of a business conundrum.  If it launched sooner it could have been a huge system seller for Sega, however, would it have been as good if development on it had rushed?  Could any one game really have saved the Saturn?  We really don’t know the answer to that question, but before Sega pulled the plug, there was a nearly perfect storm of bad news coming from the Saturn department.  Consumer confidence in the platform was at an all time low, and retailers didn’t want to stock it given its high price.  I think that after the failure of Sonic Xtreme’s development, Sega felt that the Saturn was too much of a money pit to keep financing it, and one huge game would not be enough to make it profitable again.  A shame really, Panzer Dragoon Saga’s now considered a cult classic, and its popularity alone should merit new ports on the current consoles.

6.  The Failure of the Dreamcast

I just told you a story about a Sega failure to…tell you another story about a Sega failure, the Dreamcast.  Most Sega fans would probably put this event at the top of their list for most disappointing moments in gaming but for me it deserved a place right in the middle of the list.  By all intents and purposes, the Dreamcast should have been a success.  Sega took careful note of all the failures they made during the Saturn era, and they fixed every single problem they had.  They also looked somewhat to the future, knowing that online play was taking off like crazy on the PC, and they included a modem with every Dreamcast with the option for players to upgrade their modem to a network card if they needed that instead.  The Dreamcast had so much going for it, great hardware, wonderful development tools, and one of the best launch lineups of games in video game history.  The advertising campaign behind it was epic, which you can tell because everyone to this day still remembers 09/09/99.  The Dreamcast’s first day sales alone rivaled any product’s launch of its day.  The system sold like crazy at launch, completely selling out on its first day at sale, and Sega just wasn’t prepared for it.

So why is the Dreamcast considered a failure?  The games were great, many of them are considered cult classics to this day.  The hardware was great to work with, and many developers liked making games for it.  It improved on the Saturn in every way but it still failed, and here’s why.  If Sega had made one mistake with the Dreamcast it was in betting on the wrong horse, or in this case, the wrong storage medium.  In the year 2000, the DVD format hit the wide consumer market hard and everyone needed to have it.  It made other formats like VHS completely obsolete (and rightfully so, VHS’s quality was horrible), and with tons of great films being released on the format, consumers were buying up anything and everything that could play DVDs.  Sony’s Playstation 2, which would release a year after the Dreamcast, would not only have an incredible list of highly anticipated exclusive titles for it, it would have the capability to play DVD movies…and launch at the same price point as the standalone DVD players of the time did.  When the PS2 launched the Dreamcast simply could not compete, and sales for the platform tumbled and never recovered.  If there’s any lesson that could be learned from this it is probably that you have to keep a close eye on your competition, and if you have anyone on staff that could faithfully predict the consumer market’s tastes well, listen to them.

5.  The Discontinuation of Xbox Live for the original Xbox

Microsoft released the original Xbox console in 2001 alongside one of the greatest games ever made, Halo: Combat Evolved.  The Xbox came out a year after the PS2 completely dominated the gaming market, but that extra year gave Microsoft the chance to make a lot of improvements so their console could compete against Sony.  Not only could the Xbox play DVD movies (as long as you bought a seperate remote), every Xbox shipped with a network card, making it capable of playing games through a LAN.  This capability turned what would otherwise have been a simple single player console FPS into one of the greatest multiplayer phenomena of all time.  However, the Xbox could not play games online, and home users would have to network multiple systems in their homes to take full advantage of the Xbox’s Network Play feature, dubbed “System Link”.  A year later, Microsoft remedied this problem and launched the Xbox Live service, which allowed Xbox owners to play specific Xbox multiplayer titles online for a fee of $50 US a year.  It was broadband only, but this would guarantee decent game speeds, options for downloadable content, and even offered players the chance to voice chat with their friends.  It took off.  Many could consider the launch of the Xbox Live service in 2002 one of the greatest moments in the history of gaming.  By the time Halo 2 launched in 2004, a game which took full advantage of all of Xbox Live’s capabilities, Xbox owners everywhere had a huge reason to sign up for the service and start paying.

When the Xbox 360 launched in 2005, Xbox Live was the centerpiece of the console, and now all 360 games would take advantage of it, enabling all Xbox 360 games the chance to be patched, and gave players the option for cross-game voice chat with their friends.  It was a great time to be a gamer, the 360 could play a lot of original Xbox games, including titles which used Xbox Live, and as long as the player continued to pay for the service, they could play online on both consoles.  In 2010, Microsoft decided that they just weren’t interested in their original Xbox owner’s money for some reason, and discontinued Xbox Live support for the original Xbox, essentially cutting off Xbox players from the multiplayer gaming service, and preventing players from patching original Xbox titles or redownloading any of the DLC they purchased.  To this day, five years later, I cannot think of a single benefit Microsoft has brought to their consumers that would have necessitated this decision.

4.  The Confusing Legal Status to No One Lives Forever

In the year 2000, 20th Century Fox actually had their own game publishing company, called Fox Interactive.  They initially published games which used their own internal franchises, releasing games like Aliens Vs Predator and The X-Files Game, but later moved on to releasing games made from entirely new IPs.  In 2000, Fox Interactive partnered with game developer Monolith to make some games Fox Interactive would publish which did not use any of their 20th Century Fox properties.  In that year, Fox Interactive released two games developed by Monolith, Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact and No One Lives Forever.  While nobody remembers Sanity, despite the fact it starred Ice-T, EVERYONE seems to fondly remember No One Lives Forever, and rightfully so.  The game put a new spin on the 60s spy genre, instead of creating a gritty world like a James Bond film, No One Lives Forever was a humorous game which had more in common with the Austin Powers movies.  By 2003, Fox Interactive sold out their company to Sierra, who was in the process of being absorbed by a conglomerate, Vivendi Universal.  Monolith went on to create a sequel to NOLF, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M’s Way, under the Sierra banner in the early 2000s.  The sequel was a game which was, in my opinion, an improvement over the original in almost every way.  A standalone expansion called Contract J.A.C.K. was released shortly after, but it was more of a spin off.  While the game bridged the story between the first two NOLF titles, it was more of an action oriented FPS, with less of the gadgets or humor the franchise was known for and it would sadly end up becoming the final game to be released in the franchise.

After that this story starts to look like a bad series of notations.  Vivendi Universal would go on to be acquired by Activision, who would later merge with World of Warcraft developer Blizzard.  Somewhere along the way, after numerous buyouts, merges, and corporate takeovers, the rights to No One Lives Forever became lost.  Now when I say lost, I don’t mean the studios actually lost the rights, I mean they lost the piece of paper that said they legally had the rights!  WB Interactive, who now owns Monolith, the studio who created the franchise, has been feverishly sending their lawyers against anyone who has been interested in reviving it, even though they themselves do not even know if they have the legal standing to do so.  If any lesson could be learned by this jumbled mess it would be this:  Developers, don’t sell the rights to your IP to publishers, they cannot be trusted with them.  And whatever you do, don’t sell your company.

3.  The Closing of Troika Games

This was a studio who had a reputation for biting off more than they could chew, and it would be their downfall.  Troika Games was responsible for some of the most imaginative and yet grounded RPGs on the PC, but they had a poor habit of releasing these titles in a buggy or unstable state.  In 2004, the same year that Half-Life 2 was released on the PC, Troika released one of my favorite games of all time, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which used the same graphics engine.  In the game, the player, a newly sired vampire, would have to survive in modern day Los Angeles.  Everything you thought bumped in the night was real, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies, magic and lots more, but above all else you had to keep this a secret from normal people.  The game was quite imaginative, taking the rules from White Wolf’s World of Darkness pen and paper games.  However, developing an ambitious PC RPG on an incomplete graphics engine not originally designed for RPGs was a daunting task, and while Valve was able to eventually stabilize the Source Engine, Troika had to develop their game while that was going on.  Furthermore, delays in the release of Half-Life 2 put a delay on the game’s release, eventually forcing it to launch day and date with one of the greatest PC titles ever made.  Because of that, sales were not good and when the time came for Troika to start their next project, none of the publishers were interested and the studio unfortunately had to close, leaving Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines in a buggy, unfinished state.  Quite a shame, I really wanted to see another game from them.

2. The Closing of Ion Storm Dallas

I know there are going to be a lot of people online who do not consider Ion Storm’s closing to be a bad thing, but after playing the epic game Anachronox, released just before the studio was shut down, I have nothing but sympathy for its developers.  Ion Storm, founded by industry veterans John Romero, Tom Hall and Warren Specter, were a Texas based game studio with the philosophy that good game design was the most important thing about a game.  However, simply being able to design great games is just not enough of a skill to help you manage a multimillion dollar business.  The studio’s flagship title, Daikatana, underwent numerous delays, restarts, and controversies before it would finally get a critically disappointing release in mid-2000, three years after it was initially expected to get released.  The game was critically panned across the gaming media, and sales were poor.  Had Ion Storm Austin not released Deus Ex some time later, a game considered by many to be one of the best PC titles ever made, who knows if publisher Eidos would have even allowed Ion Storm to finish Tom Hall’s epic space PC-RPG, Anachronox? Ion Storm Dallas was forced to close by publisher Eidos after releasing Anachronox in 2002, leaving the game without post-release support and shuttering any chance for a sequel, even though Tom Hall planned for the game to get further titles released, and plenty of work on the game’s sequel was already completed.  Warren Spector’s Austin branch was allowed to continue making titles under Eidos’s watchful eye.

Ion Storm could have been considered a reality check for game publishers, as they discovered pouring unchecked amounts of money into studios helmed by famous developers would not guarantee a decent end product or even good sales.  Now that the suits at the top knew it, it signaled the end of a great time for game development, and studios would find themselves bowing to publisher pressure a lot more often.

1.  The Discontinuation of the Sin Episodes

This is the one that hurt me the most. In 2006, game developers were tired of being completely dependent on game publishers for financing, and they thought for sure they figured out an entirely new business model where they could release a game in sections, called Episodes.  Each episode would represent a small portion of a finished game and would not require a large investment of time to develop.  Once the first episode was released, developer Ritual wanted to use the profits from the sale of earlier episodes to fund new episodes, completely cutting out the need for publisher money.  Since 1998, Ritual had been planning to make a sequel to the cult classic PC game SiN for years, but publishers were not interested in funding the title unless Ritual was willing to give them the rights to the SiN IP.  Ritual had developed several missions for Counter Strike: Condition Zero, one of the first new games released on the STEAM platform, for Valve in 2003 and had just finished work on Star Trek: Elite Force 2 for Activision.  Previously former rivals, by 2004 Valve’s relationship with Ritual was good, and the businessmen at Ritual thought STEAM could be the perfect platform to release a new SiN title, especially since Valve was not interested in the SiN IP.  In fact, Valve was planning to develop expansion packs for Half-Life 2 after its release, and Ritual inspired them to release the Half-Life 2 expansions episodically.  Sin Episode 1 was released in 2006, and Half-Life 2 Episode 1 released shortly afterwards.

The episodes were good, but the pricing model just wasn’t.  Both Ritual and Valve sold their games at a price point of $19 US each, putting it at the price of value software.  Retailers who carried it immediately stuffed copies in the bargain bin, not treating either title as major releases.  The SiN Episodes sold enough to compensate the episode’s development, but didn’t sell enough to fund new episodes.  Ritual, sadly, would not survive and their studio was sold to Mumbojumbo, who had no interest in continuing support for the episodes in any way.  If it wasn’t for the incredible success of the episodic titles coming from developer Telltale Games, the only company able to make the episodic game model work at that time, developers would have written the episodic game model off entirely.  Why did Telltale survive when no one else did?  Because Telltale had the foresight to offer their customers the chance to preorder future episodes of a game at a heavily reduced price, an early version of what we now call a game’s Season Pass.  Neither Valve nor Ritual offered that option, and even though Valve would eventually release Half-Life 2 Episode 2, they released it at retail in a completion of new and previously released games called The Orange Box.  Quite sad, I really wanted to know what was going to happen.  What was the most upsetting thing about this failure?  Not only did it prove that a fantastic developer could not make it big simply delivering a heavily polished budget priced title, it nearly killed all hope in the episodic gaming formula and reminded triple-A developers they would have to continue pandering to the major publishers for the time being if they wanted any hope of continuing to make games.

Things to Do While Waiting for Pokémon Shuffle Hearts to Recharge February 26, 2015

Pokémon Shuffle released on the Nintendo eShop earlier this week and it can be downloaded right now on any model 3DS or 2DS free of charge.

While a full review of the game is in the works, we don’t plan to publish it before we finish it and because of how the game is designed, that’s been taking a while. While we’re enjoying the game a lot, every puzzle in the game requires a single heart to play (win or lose) and unless extra hearts are purchased it only keeps a maximum of five hearts in memory. Since Pokémon Shuffle requires its players to wait a half hour in real-time to recharge a single heart without having to pay for it, players could find themselves with a lot of downtime as they try to complete the game.

So here are a couple of fun things you can do in between sessions of Pokémon Shuffle as you wait for your hearts to recharge.

• Check out the YouTube channel of TamashiiHiroka.  She has some of the best Pokémon review and analysis videos I’ve seen on the internet.
• Download the Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Demo from the Nintendo eShop and play through some missions. Even if you have the full version of either game, you can earn some goodies in the demo that you can bring to the full versions.
• If you have a Netflix account you can stream the first two seasons of Pokémon the Animated Series as well as a few of the Pokémon Animated Movies on the service.  Set it to Season 1, Episode 1 and just keep the episodes going.
• If you don’t have Netflix but have your own personal Android or iOS device you can still watch the Pokémon Animated series through the Pokémon TV app.  While not all of the episodes from each season are available, it does offer a smattering of episodes from each region and new episodes are added every week.   If you have an Apple TV, there is no native Pokémon TV app for it yet but if you have an iDevice with the app installed you can stream the episodes to your Apple TV using AirPlay.  You can also stream Pokémon TV episodes from your PC here.
• Read some Pokémon fanfiction on Fanfiction.net.  It is by far the most written about game franchise on the entire site.  If you don’t like any of the stories, you can always just write your own.
• Watch my Pokémon Memories video.
• Try to fill up your daily allotment of steps for the 3DS’s internal step counter and the Pokéwalker.
• Make plans to attend this year’s Pokémon World Championships. They’re taking place August 21-23, 2015 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA.
• Play a Pokémon Generation title like Pokémon Diamond, Pokémon Black, or Pokémon X. The 3DS and 2DS can not only play all 3DS titles, it can also play any DS game which does not require use of a GBA slot. Play as much as you want, save your game and then boot up Pokémon Shuffle.  Once you run out of hearts you can go boot your generational title back up and resume your Pokémon journey.  Don’t worry if you plan to play a fourth or fifth generation title on your 3DS while also playing Pokémon Shuffle. Even though active DS games played on a 3DS will disable most of the 3DS’s background features while the DS game is running, this doesn’t seem to affect the Pokémon Shuffle’s heart recharge timer.

Pokémon Shuffle is out now on the Nintendo 3DS and 2DS through the Nintendo eShop.

I Miss the Nintendo Zone Viewer February 24, 2015

Nintendo has just released an entirely new 3DS model, called the New Nintendo 3DS XL, and it has been selling like crazy to both new and current 3DS owners. Since I got an original Nintendo 3DS XL over two years ago, my first Nintendo handheld device in twenty years, I have not only enjoyed the catalog of DS, DSiware and 3DS games I can play on it tremendously, I’m still using its included features, like StreetPass Plaza, on a daily basis.

Like with all modern electronic devices, the 3DS is designed to use wireless internet for not just web browsing, but also online distribution for games, applications and other downloadable content. Setting up wireless internet for a personal electornic device intended to just be used in one or two places is not much of a big deal, but it can be really inconvenient if you plan to use a device that’s always on the go. It’s an even bigger issue when you take into account that Nintendo makes handhelds for all ages, and not all of their customers are technically inclined. For example, I cannot tell you how many Nintendo Wii owners I’ve met which had no idea the Wii even had online capabilities, and as such were still using the firmware the system came installed with.  However, unless you plan to play your Wii games online or buy digital games like Virtual Console or Wiiware titles, you don’t have to worry about bringing your Wii online.  However, unlike the Wii, you want to be able to bring your 3DS online. The 3DS has some great online games and some fun digital exclusives, but having to set it up every time you visit a new access point can be quite irritating, especially since the handheld can only hold a few WiFi profiles in memory.

To remedy this, Nintendo set up a Nintendo Zone network across the world and installed them in many popular businesses like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Barnes & Noble. The beauty of a Nintendo Zone is that the 3DS will automatically connect to it as long as your WiFi is enabled without any need to set anything up, or take up any of the limited WiFi profiles in the 3DS. Some cell phone providers also offer a similar WiFi service for anyone who uses their phones but unlike 3DS owners who use the service, cell phone customers have to pay for their devices’ service every month and I’m sure the companies only do it to offset the stress on their cellular networks caused by heavy web surfing. The Nintendo Zone service on the other hand…is completely free. Heck I can use my 3DS almost anywhere when I’m on the go at no charge and I can use it to download game demos, browse miiverse, and play online multiplayer titles.

I tend not to do any web browsing in public, but I will use the Zones for doing 3DS specific tasks. When connected to a Nintendo Zone, the player could boot an app called the Nintendo Zone Viewer.  While the Nintendo Zone viewer worked in a lot of ways like a one stop shop for Wii U and 3DS game trailers, something that most players can already do through the Nintendo eShop, it had a lot of exclusive features that you could not do from home.  You could complete surveys, take part in a trivia contest, stream newer episodes of the Pokémon animated series, and more.  The app would only work at designated Nintendo Zone locations, and while I’m sure a lot of people would say most of those features should have been offered through any open online connection, I personally thought that giving 3DS owners an incentive to pilgrimage to designated Nintendo Zone locations strengthened the local community of 3DS players in my area by giving us a place to go to share of love of Nintendo products.  Nintendo upped the usefulness of the Nintendo Zone service even further by integrating a StreetPass relay into it, allowing users to collect the StreetPass data of the last six 3DS users who used the Nintendo Zone so they could be used in StreetPass compatible games.

Sadly, the last major system update for the 3DS discontinued access to the Nintendo Zone Viewer.  The 3DS can still seamlessly log into Nintendo Zone hotspots and use them for internet access and StreetPass relay, but the Nintendo Zone Viewer app no longer functions and that means that 3DS owners can no longer access its exclusive content.  Quite a shame really, as I liked answering trivia questions with my friends while having coffee, but the content hadn’t been updated in a while and was getting pretty outdated.

I really would like to see what Nintendo plans to do next with this service.  If they want, I would be happy to give them some ideas.

Is There a Point to Digital Preorders Anymore? February 20, 2015

In 2004, Valve Software capitalized on the success of a digital distribution system that they created called Steam.  At the same time Valve was perfecting the Steam service, Valve was also working on Half-Life 2, a sequel to one of the greatest PC games of all time. When the time came to release the game, Valve decided to give their service the best chance of success, and offered all of its users the chance to preload Half-Life 2 before it was officially released. By choosing to download a game after you preordered it, anyone who purchased the game through Steam would be able to play it the second it was released. For PC users who had become accustomed to lengthy installations and day one patches, having a game ready to play the second it came out was too much of a good idea to pass on, and many people chose to purchase Half-Life 2 online instead of at retail. The Steam service took off.

Ten years later, game consoles like the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are now offering online preloading for retail titles that have been digitally purchased. The capabilities of both consoles’ online marketplaces are really going to give traditional retail channels a run for their money.  Or, at least, it sounds like they will on paper. In reality there are three major problems with digitally preordering games and I’m going to talk about each one. Half-Life 2 went on to be considered one of the best games ever made, but there’s no guarantee the next game you’re going to buy is even going to be good, and a lot of games get released before reviews are allowed to be published. The second is that these online services are still in their infancy, and there are still serious technical problems that they need to work out before game publishers widely adopt them. Finally, the biggest issue, is unlike retail preorders, you have to pay them in full up front and can’t cancel them.

Now it seems like digital publishers, especially the ones on the consoles, are using the concept of the preorder to get potential players to buy unreleased games far longer in advance than I would have thought imaginable, and this may turn out to be terrible for consumers.  I don’t think I need to remind anyone of the absolute buggy travesties that were the Triple-A game lineup leading up to Christmas of last year.  Halo: The Master Chief Collection was basically unplayable online for at least a month after it was released, and some people are still having issues getting it to work four months later.  Assassin’s Creed: Unity had major problems, which were mentioned in several reviews of the game, however embargos prevented those reviews from helping anyone who happened to preorder it.  Now, I admit the risk of buying a buggy, rushed title can be a problem with retail preorders just as much as it can be a problem with digital ones, however, depending on the digital service you used to purchase your game, it is a lot more difficult to sell, refund or trade a digital game purchase than if you had purchased a retail game.

So the real incentive to preorder digital content is so you can preload your content before its release and have your game ready to unlock the second it goes on sale. Sony alone has made it clear that they simply cannot do this well. I can think of at least two games on the PlayStation 4 which were only released on the PlayStation Store, Grim Fandango Remastered and inFAMOUS: First Light and in both cases the preorder process was extremely painful. While gamers were able to successfully preload inFAMOUS: First Light and play it at launch without much issue, getting Grim Fandango Remastered to download properly on a PS4 was a nightmare for anyone who had preordered it. Apparently the preloaded version of that game was so broken it would not work even after it unlocked. While you might assume it was a simple case of having to delete and redownload the game to fix the issue, the PS4’s PlayStation Store is so badly designed it could not tell that a purchased game that had been preloaded and deleted from a PS4’s hard drive was in fact deleted and this bad design prevented users who purchased the game from downloading a working version of it. Thankfully many users online found that by they could trick their PS4s into redownloading the game by forcing it to download through the iPhone’s PlayStation App, which was absolutely rediculous. It was without a doubt the most incompetent digital launch I have ever seen in my life.  If you had not preordered Grim Fandango Remastered, you would have been able to play it sooner. To postscript that story, the exclusive digital goodies that were promised to anyone who preordered either game also corrupted and had to be redownloaded or re-verified to run properly.  Given the fact that consoles are targeted hardware and the companies who made them are the ones hosting the online marketplaces that are selling these games, there is no excuse for these kinds of issues to happen. I mean, file corruption on a console is nearly unheard of. I’d have expected these kinds of technical issues on the PC.  On a side note, I don’t want people to assume this article was just a whipping boy for the PS4. There have been plenty of recent games have been released digitally through the PlayStation Store without incident, like the multiplatform adventure game Life is Strange.  It seems like Sony just can’t get their act together for games they are offering for prepurchase.  However, instead of giving these policies a second look, many digital publishers are doubling down on them, even though their services are clearly not ready.

PlayStation 4 games like Uncharted 4 and Until Dawn don’t even have a solid release date and yet you can preorder them right now on the Playstation Store at a full retail price of $59.99 US each. Why? Is there any concern Sony might run out of stock of either of those titles months before they even have a release date? Some of these games have been offered for preorder on the PlayStation Store since last year’s E3. That means anyone who purchased them when they were first offered for preorder may find themselves waiting over a year before their games finally unlock. And on top of that, Sony clearly states on their store that they are not going to issue refunds for digitally preordered content unless they are required to by law. That doesn’t sound very consumer friendly to me. Had you preordered your content at retail you would be eligible for a refund if you don’t pick up your game, or at the very least you would be able to transfer your preorder to buy a different game.

One last postscript to this story. As I was writing this editorial the highly anticipated PS4 title The Order: 1886 was released. Sony delayed the digital release of the game by three hours on the East Coast to launch the game at the same time across the US, 12 Midnight PST. However, retail copies of the game went on sale at 12 Midnight EST (three hours earlier), and they worked just fine. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the first time I can think of in gaming history that a simultaneous digital and retail launch actually ensured that retail customers would play their games first.  I appreciate companies giving consumers a choice in preordering their games digitally, but it has more often then not turned out to be a bad choice.  Hopefully these issues will be worked out over time.  Consumers, myself included, are already wary of the digital marketplace that has kept screwing up.  In the near future I plan to keep spending my money at retail.

The Next Generation of Sports is Electronic January 7, 2015

When I was growing up I had several opportunities during my schooling to participate in extra curricular sports. Basketball, Football, and Baseball were just some of the sport programs the schools I attended offered their students to participate in. Like many students, I participated in these activities when I was in High School. No joke, I was on my High School’s Golf team my freshmen year. I played for a year, discovered I sucked at the game and was not getting any better at it despite how long I had been playing, and decided to pursue other interests in subsequent years.  I ended up doing something that wasn’t offered by the school, I played video games.  I have no regrets about that decision, as my experiences playing video games inspired me to peruse a career in discovering new media, as well as write countless fictional works I hope to publish one day.  Sadly, my schooling did little to encourage any of those accomplishments.  In fact, I don’t remember any experiences I had when I was in public school which assisted me in my electronic interests.  When the time came for me to decide what I wanted to do with my life I chose to forge my own path.  It turns out I was not alone.

Two major things have been happening over the past generation that few have taken a serious notice of.  Parents are not allowing their children to participate in physical activities due to the risk of injury, and because of that their children are preferring to spend their time indoors playing video games against each other instead.  For the most part, parents are afraid as hell about their children playing sports, especially sports which involve physical contact.  Let’s face it, the sports we play are dangerous.  Our bodies alone are not built to play them the way they need to be played.  We have to wear helmets and heavy padding just to practice football.  Baseball players constantly run the risk of being hit in the head with a projectile that can exceed speeds of 100 miles per hour.  Tennis players run the risk of elbow injuries due to their elbows bearing the brunt of a tennis ball’s impact hundreds of times in just a single match.  It just doesn’t make sense to play these barbaric games, for all we know they’re only still taught to young people out of some sense of tradition.  Let’s be honest, they were created at a time where there were few resources available for leisure activities and little to no alternatives, meanwhile studies have shown that video games improve hand-eye coordination, and have no discriminatory physical requirements.  Since the wide adoption of Personal Computers and the World Wide Web in the late 90s, our options have exponentially increased, and many, especially the younger generation that grew up being spurned by physical sports, are choosing to do other things with their time.  What this has meant is that the interest in traditional sports is dying, and an interest in electronic competitions (eSports) is growing.  Websites like Twitch.TV, which allows gamers to broadcast all kinds of video games, saw so much popularity they ended up getting bought by the enormous online retailer Amazon.com.  Meanwhile, Golf courses are shutting down all over due to a lack of interest by younger people just as golf’s regular players are literally dying of old age.  Interest in the Olympics is also dying out, as few countries are willing to foot the bill for a short-term event that has costs quickly spiraling out of control in exchange for very little payoff and heavy upkeep.

So it has come to a head that colleges would begin to offer scholarships for some of the best video game players in the world.  College students competing in online games is nothing new, I can remember during my freshman year at college that all my dorm mates wanted to play were games of StarCraft and Counter Strike, and I was pretty good at playing a newer title, Unreal Tournament 2003. The same computer network that college students use to look up information or type papers is perfectly designed to play multiplayer video games.  One of the first video games that offered the chance to connect to other players on other computers was Doom.  In the early 90s, Doom‘s shareware version was released and had a higher installation rate than Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.  College students living together in the same dorms discovered that they shared a Local Access Network (LAN) amongst their computers. While this is great if they need to share documents or other files amongst themselves, it has the side effect of offering amazing connection speeds if they wanted to play video games against each other, and they used their networks to play Doom, bringing a lot of college networks to their knees. Some people have also theorized this factor contributed to the success of Halo: Combat Evolved‘s multiplayer.  While not a PC title, the Xbox shipped with LAN capabilities (which Microsoft called System Link) and many college dorms were equipped with LANs that worked perfectly with Halo‘s System Link based multiplayer. With that, the floodgates opened and college students all over the world found themselves with tons of options for playing video games that they could not have at home.  A year later, Microsoft launched the Xbox Live service, and by the time Halo 2 was released, the players who had so much fun playing against their friends were now ready to bring their games online to play against the whole world.  The Xbox became a must-own item for college students, and Halo grew to be one of the biggest franchises in the history of gaming.  Now, the same generation that played Doom in college are parents, and they’re sharing their love of video games with their children, and now their children are playing.  Games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 have seen huge popularity in modern times.  They’re free to download by anyone with a computer, are fun to play, test strategy, and require skill you can only earn through experience to win.

Is it a sport?  This is something I’ve heard brought up by the older generation who grew up watching traditional contact sports, and pundits like Bryant Gumbel have made their opinions clear.  Their argument is they simply cannot fathom a competition without physical risk being considered a sport.  To that I ask what would they call chess competitions?  Chess is played in almost every country in the world and requires no physical exertion beyond the stamina needed to sustain yourself through a particularly long game.  Video games are very much like chess competitions as they require skill, strategy, and experience to win.  Also like chess, video games are developed and played all over the world.  In many cases it can take years to become fully familiar with just a single game, just as chess requires time and practice to master.  I’m sure Mr. Kazparov would be quite upset to hear that because Deep Blue was not hitting him repeatedly as he was playing chess against it, his contribution to chess in the form of his match against IBM’s computer Deep Blue is not to be championed.  Nearly twenty years since that event, Electronic Sports (eSports) have become a multimillion dollar industry.  The people who enjoy playing Golf, Football, Hockey, Baseball, or Basketball can watch the NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA where they can witness the best in the world compete in a sport they enjoy. The people who are playing video games want to see the best among us compete as well, the only difference is these gamers have no interest in traditional contact sports, they want to see the games they enjoy have the spotlight and because of that they have flocked to eSports events in droves.   Huge events have been held with enormous attendance for many popular game titles ranging from StarCraft 2 to Pokémon.  I’m not kidding, a major Pokémon tournament, featuring players from across the entire world, was held in my nation’s capital last year.

More colleges are planning to offer scholarships to gamers as they plan to form their own video game teams.  We may be seeing the beginning of our entire industry being accepted by the mainstream.  I only have one thing to say about that.  What took you so long?

What Makes Good Atmosphere in a Video Game Part 3: Console Placement January 5, 2015

For this article series, I’m going to continue going against expectations and continue talking about what I think makes for good atmosphere in a video game.  Now, when I say atmosphere I want to make it clear that I’m not going to be talking about the “atmosphere” in a game as created by having high quality graphics or surround sound effects, In my opinion, a game creates “atmosphere” by adding little details here and there. Previously I’ve brought up the fact that fake radio shows and fake advertising have contributed to my immersion in some games, today I’m going to bring up something new.

Nothing can immerse me more than seeing something from our world, in this case, the very console I’m playing the game on, in the game’s environment.  Typically you will see this kind of thing happen in console exclusive games or first-party titles. It is done either as an inside joke to make the player laugh at the irony of seeing the console they’re using to play a game in the very game they’re playing, or if you are less optimistic you can consider it blatant product placement. I happen to think that this adds a bit of charm to the game and further immersed me into the game’s atmosphere, but I’ll let you be the judge of how you feel about it.

So I got to thinking, just how many games are there that feature the game consoles that the player may be using to play the game in the game itself?  Here’s a short list of games I could find where that happened.

Throughout the entire history of the Pokémon franchise, Nintendo has put a lot of product placement into their Pokémon games.  In Pokémon, the trainer you control will typically have a Nintendo console in their bedroom, making it one of the first easter eggs you’ll find in the game.  In the third generation Pokémon games, like Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, your trainer have a GameCube with a Game Boy Advance as a controller in their bedroom.  Nintendo had been promoting GameCube/Game Boy Advance interconnection at the time, and this was a big for promotion for it, as Pokémon titles had a habit of being the biggest selling games on the handheld platforms.   Several games took advantage of this interconnectivity, including the Pokémon titles for games like Pokémon Box and Pokémon XD/Gale of Darkness.  In the first generation remakes, FireRed and LeafGreen, the trainer has a NES in their bedroom instead, heavily implying that this game was supposed to take place in the past, prior to the third generation titles.  This tradition of putting Nintendo consoles in the Pokémon games continued even to the sixth generation, as the opening scene of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, shows that your character keeps both a 3DS and a Wii U in their bedroom.  Although the Wii U is currently lagging behind in this console generation, its placement in the game could be the free advertising the Wii U needs to promote sales.

Anyone who played the incredible Xbox 360/PC title Alan Wake might have noticed the Xbox 360 in Hartman’s lodge.  One of the residents at the clinic is a game designer and if you go through his room you’ll find lots of gaming equipment, including the Xbox 360 console on a desk.  Alan Wake was exclusively on the Xbox 360 at its launch and I’m sure the game’s developer didn’t see any harm in having the console on display in the game’s world.   Next to the console is a single game, which at first sight might look like the Alan Wake game box, but is actually labeled Night Springs, a reference to a fictional TV series in the game.  While the game is a fake, the game’s case is the exact shade of green to normal Xbox 360 game cases, clearly signifying that the game is for the Xbox 360.  This isn’t the last time we will see this game and case in Alan Wake, Night Springs Xbox 360 game boxes were also a collectible item in one of the downloadable episodes.  I don’t know why Alan would have them strewn all over his mind’s environment, but Barry mentioned in the game that Alan did write at least one episode of Night Springs, so the series has a strong significance in his life.

My favorite title on the original Wii was the cult title No More Heroes.  In it, you play as Travis Touchdown, an Otaku who wins a beam saber in an online auction and tries to become the best assassin in the world.  Players who played the Wii version of the game might have noticed a Nintendo 64 in Travis Touchdown’s living room. You’ll probably notice it is sitting on one of his shelves when navigating the game menus while in his apartment.  This is a perfect addition to the set dressing as I can’t think of any real-world Otaku I’ve met who doesn’t own a Nintendo 64.

I can’t talk about any product placement in Halo Reach without addressing possible spoilers, so anyone who doesn’t want to get that game spoiled should probably skip this paragraph.  Towards the end of the game there is a cinematic where Noble Team is talking to Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the SPARTAN-II program, in her secret lab, located deep below the surface of the planet.  While the scene takes place in a non interactive form, the location of the lab is actually fully modeled and accessible in the game’s environment. Because of that, players can get in and check it out for themselves if they know how to get in.  This is an easter egg, I admit, but if you happen to be able to get into Dr. Catherine Halsey’s lab, you’ll find her entire lab is actually run on an array of Xbox 360s networked together. While this is an awesome easter egg it isn’t an unreasonable or unheard of occurrence to find in the real world. My own country’s military will frequently reappropriate civilian technology for their own purposes to save money. In fact, there is a large array of networked Playstation 3 systems doing military applications as I speak, although if you ask me it should be used to host a kick ass LAN party. I guess Microsoft was able to persuade the Office of Naval Intelligence to go with their hardware instead of Sony’s.

Finally I want to take you on a big blast from the past and talk about one of the earliest 3D console games I can remember playing. The Metal Gear Solid franchise has a long standing history on the Playstation platform and some various easter eggs in the games reflect that.  In the first Metal Gear Solid, you’ll find Otacon has a Playstation 1 in his lab, although if you play the GameCube version, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, this was changed to a GameCube with a WaveBird controller.  In Metal Gear Solid 4, there are a ton of references to the Playstation brand throughout the entire game, the most blatant of which is a codec call between Snake and Otacon during Act 4.  As for actual console placement in that game, you can find a PS3 somewhere on Otacon’s transport plane, and Sunny can occasionally be seen playing on a PSP.

These small details give me a deeper connection to the game I’m playing, and succeed in further immersing me in the game’s environment. By bringing in elements from the real world, these games give the player a sense of reality and makes the atmosphere that much more powerful.

Top Six Christmas Video Games December 5, 2014

With Christmas just around the corner and the season’s spirit out in the air, I strongly believe that this time of year is so ubiquitous that it can find itself in almost every single medium.  I’m sure that many of you could spend hours reading out all the books, films, and television shows that featured this holiday front and center, but how many of you can name the video games that show off the spirit of the season in a way that only video games can?

Well, I’ve been following video games for plenty of Christmases and I’m sure going to try.  The important criteria for this list has entirely to do with the game’s use of Christmas, either in the game’s story, visuals, or gameplay.  However, a game can still make this list even if it doesn’t specifically reference Christmas itself, as long as it includes images or story elements generally associated with Christmas, like snow.  So without further ado, let’s count down the Top Six Christmas Video Games!

6. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire – You can’t get more iconic than the Star Wars franchise.  I know we’ve got the start of an entirely new trilogy coming next year, but back in the mid 90s all Star Wars fans had in canon were three beloved films, some novels, and an expanding comic universe.  Before the prequel trilogy was even spoken of in hushed tomes by fans hanging on George Lucas’s every word, gamers got the biggest canonical expansion to the Star Wars universe in the mid-90s in the form of the game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.  Set during the events between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the game puts you in control of Dash Rendar and his ship the Outrider as we got to explore the Star Wars universe in glorious 3D.  While the game itself has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, or as its known as in Star Wars, Life Day, what better way for a Star Wars fan to spend Christmas than fighting in the Battle of Hoth?  I’m sure that many early N64 adopters fondly remember receiving this game alongside their brand new Nintendo 64 on Christmas morning, making it a great addition to this list.

5. Faherenheit (Indigo Prophecy) – This is probably one of my last favorite PC titles, even though it is available on the PS2 and Xbox.  Taking us back to NYC, or as the game calls it, the Capital of the Universe, you play as several characters investigating the strange, almost ritualistic killings happening as the city gets blanketed in one of the coldest winters it has seen in years.   It had been years since I played an adventure game on the PC, but after reading the guys at Penny Arcade had recommended it I decided to check out the game’s demo and I immediately was hooked.  The story is fantastic, the motion captured animation was fluid, the soundtrack rocked, and the quick time events, while difficult for some, was a lot of fun for me. This game laid the groundwork for games like Heavy Rain and BEYOND: Two Souls.  Do you want the heroes to overcome evil, or do you want evil to win out and for humanity to be blanketed in never ending winter?  The choice is yours. What happens is left to you.  If you don’t have an original Xbox don’t worry, the game will play just fine on the Xbox 360.

4. Max Payne – This game is without a doubt one of the greatest third person shooters in gaming history, and not only featured some of the best graphics of its time, but entirely new gameplay that is still being replicated to this day.  While the game does not officially take place during Christmas (we never find out exactly what days of the year the first Max Payne game took place), the majority of the game takes place during one of New York City’s worst blizzards.  As we can see immediately following the game’s prologue, NYC is a winter wonderland covered in snow, and if your PC is powerful enough, that snow will fall non stop.   As you look at the images of the snow covered city during the game’s graphic novel segments, you can see that the snow itself is almost like another character in the game.  In this game, Max isn’t going to be checking out the city’s great landmarks, we’re going to be fighting our way through some pretty seedy areas that even the game’s developer admits probably don’t exist anymore.  You will find yourself traveling to some pretty dangerous places in the Big Apple, like Subways infested with gangs of mercenaries, or gothic nightclubs serving as the headquarters for some of the most dangerous drug lords in the city.

3.  Batman: Arkham Origins – Batman had long standing issues in the video game space, but that all changed when Rocksteady released Batman: Arkham Asylum a few years ago.  Last year WB Games Montreal released this prequel title to show the…*ahem* origins of the Arkham franchise.  It is Christmas Eve and Batman has just started his war against crime.  The city’s villains aren’t very happy they have to deal with a giant flying bat and someone places a bounty on the head of Gotham City’s vigilante.  This brings out some of most dangerous super criminals in Batman’s rogues gallery including Bane, Deathstroke, Killer Croc, and Copperhead.  With almost all of Gotham now gunning for Batman, The Dark Knight must defeat his new foes and make it back to Wayne Manor in time for Christmas ham.  I really don’t want to say anything more as it might spoil the game’s story, but needless to say it is a great way to ring in the Holiday season.  Just make sure to save Mr. Freeze’s DLC, Cold, Cold Night, for New Year’s!

2. Parasite Eve – Having grown up on the East Coast of the US, I have to admit I have a romantic fondness for New York City.  While the city can be quite cold during the Holidays, it can also be so charming seeing it covered in snow when all the lights go on, and that feeling is captured quite nicely in Square’s PS1 classic, Parasite Eve.  As the game opens we see snow fall all around the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center’s ice rink is covered in a white blanket of snow, and our game’s hero, Aya, is having a date to the opera on Christmas Eve.  Immediately the city becomes an important staple of the game, and the signs of Christmas are around you.  Sadly, your date goes badly.  So badly in fact that almost everyone at the opera who didn’t flee immediately is presumed dead when one of the stars of the show unleashes an incredible power upon seeing you.  The game takes place over the course of the next six days as you try to determine just what the heck happened at the Opera, and what was so special about you that your life was spared.  If you want to check the game out for yourselves and don’t have an original copy of the game on PlayStation, you can always buy it digitally off the PlayStation Store.

1. Infected – As far as I’m concerned, this game is the definitive Christmas title, and I do my best to try and spend some time playing it every holiday season. One of the most prominent early titles in the PSP’s back catalog, Infected sadly never got the attention I believed it deserved.  The game starts during the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center just as a zombie pandemic hits New York City.  Okay, seriously, at this point even I’m shocked by how many Christmas games on this list happen to also take place in New York City.  In fact, you could say it’s sadly comical, as developer Planet Moon Studios did a lot to inject their humor into what would otherwise have been a depressing, generic title.  You are one of the few officers found to be immune to the zombie virus, and you have to spend the days leading up to Christmas eradicating the city of all traces of the outbreak.  As the credits roll, the player is treated to an all new version of “They Don’t Even Know its Christmas” but this one is written on behalf of the zombies.  Sadly, this game has not gotten a digital release on the PlayStation Store, so you’ll have to track down a physical UMD copy if you want to play it, but trust me, it is my favorite game on the PSP system.

Things to Know Before Holiday Shopping for Electronics and Video Games November 25, 2014

With Thanksgiving upon us, the Holiday shopping season is at hand.  Undoubtedly video games and other electronic items are going to be at the top of most people’s wish lists, as three new gaming consoles have been gaining a lot of ground and releasing some amazing new games over the past year.

If you plan to pick up any of these new gaming consoles there are a few things you might need to know before purchasing them.  At the simplest, this information will inform you in advance of some minor inconveniences you may have with your new equipment, but there are some major issues that can prevent you from using your new purchases if you’re not aware of them.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

• You must own an HDMI equipped HDTV to use the PS4 or Xbox One.  Neither console will work on SDTVs or HDTVs without HDMI ports.
• The Wii U will work on older SD and EDTVs, but you will need to use a custom cable that isn’t included with the Wii U to connect it to legacy TVs.  You can get analog cables from Nintendo’s Parts and Supplies website, or use your Wii’s video cables instead if you already own one.
• You must have a home with high speed internet to activate the Xbox One and install the latest system software.  The Xbox One will not function unless activated.
• The Xbox One and PS4 can only play any games designed specifically for them to play, and there are no plans to bring legacy support for retail titles to either console.
• The Wii U can play Wii games, and if you already have a Wii, you can transfer all of the save files and downloaded content from your Nintendo Wii to a brand new Wii U.  However, you will need a home network with a high-speed internet connection and a digital camera’s SD card with at least 512MB of storage to do a transfer.
• All the modern gaming consoles come with HDMI cables, you will not need to buy extra cables if you just plan to plug your HDTV.  In fact, I recommend using the included cables as they are guaranteed to work well with the console.  Some third party cables can bring audible pops or temporary blank screens during gameplay.
• You must pay for a PlayStation Plus membership to play online PS4 multiplayer titles. The price is $50US for one year.
• You must pay for an Xbox Live Gold membership to play online Xbox One and Xbox 360 multiplayer games. The price is $60US for one year.
• Destiny requires an online connection to play.
• If you want to buy a PlayStation TV and don’t have a PlayStation Vita, there are a lot of PlayStation Vita games, including several killer apps for the system, which are still incompatible with the PlayStation TV.  Do not pick up a PlayStation TV if you plan to play a game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss or Silent Hill: Book of Memories on it.  Right now only the PlayStation Vita handheld can play those games.  Here’s a link to the official list of compatible games.
• If you plan to play Blu-Ray Discs or CDs on an Xbox One, you need to download the apps that allow you to do so from the Xbox Store.  Don’t worry, they don’t cost anything to download, but they will need to be downloaded.
• You must update the PS4’s Firmware to play Blu-Ray Discs, but a high speed internet connection is not required.  You can download the firmware to a USB drive and update the PS4 that way.  You can download the latest firmware update here.
• If you have an older legacy surround sound amplifier (like a 5.1 system that does not have HDMI inputs), you still can use the PS4, Apple TV, and Xbox One on it to get full surround sound, but you must buy an optical cable and use your amp’s optical port.
• A lot of new consoles, in particular the Xbox One and Wii U will actually come bundled with full versions of new games.  However, in some cases, these free bundled games will need to be downloaded from the internet, which will require a high-speed internet connection to redeem your game.
• If you plan to pick up a Wii U or any Nintendo product, check out Club Nintendo to earn awesome rewards for your purchases.
• Wii U consoles typically do not come with Nintendo Wiimotes or Nunchucks unless otherwise marked that they do.  You will need those controllers if you plan to play legacy Wii titles on your Wii U.