Science Check: Heavy Rain October 19, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials, Science Check.1 comment so far
Sometimes, you’re forced to make some severe leaps of logic as to just how plausible a video game’s grounded reality can be. Some things we’re willing to take for granted, like enemies will simply just carry health and ammunition supplies with them at all times, and you will be immediately able to make use of them.
But then sometimes there will be moments in gaming which skirt the bounds of reality and you are forced to ask yourself…COULD THAT REALLY HAPPEN? Fortunately for me, I happen to have a bunch of friends on speed dial with science backgrounds and when I ask them questions, they have no problem filling me in on just what reality would do in these situations.
So this is Science Check, where I take a look at the leaps and bounds of scientific logic that games have made over the years and check if it would indeed work, or if you tried doing it in the real world, you’d be totally screwed.
I was going through my shelves eyeballing various games I have in my collection this time around, looking for something that grounded itself in reality enough for me to talk about it for this article, and low and behold I came across Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream. I picked up this game on day one based upon my enormous love of the previous game Quantic Dream had made, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit for you Europeans and American Director’s Cut owners). A Playstation 3 exclusive, the game has you control four different characters as you try to determine the identity of a serial killer to stop him before he kills his next victim. The game had a gripping story and intuitive controls, either on the Dual Shock 3 or Playstation Move.
One of the characters you play as in the game is Detective Norman Jayden, with the FBI. He’s assigned to the NYPD as a Profiler in order to help them out with this case. Jayden’s unique ability is his use of the ARI system, which was given to him by the FBI to use for the case. What is ARI? Take a look at this and fast forward to about three and a half minutes in.
The ARI system that Norman uses in the game comprises of a pair of VR Goggles (made up to look like stylish sunglasses) and an interface glove. They provide the player with Night Vision, as well as a full uplink to an identification and analysis database, probably the FBI crime lab. In short, they’re a forensic scientist’s dream, able to immediately identify clues in a crime scene with a few waves of Norman’s gloved hand. He can examine trace evidence from a multitude of clues including blood, tire tracks, and identify objects. It stores all this information so it can be investigated further at the user’s convenience. Finally, ARI even comes with a few minigames the user can select from when killing time off duty. That sure is a great device! Can we get a pair of our own someday? Well, I’m going to tell you. Since ARI has multiple functions in one device, I’m going to have to break down the device into its basic functions and determine if it is indeed a plausible device as shown in the game, and if it is, tell you how they could be made in reality.
First off I want to talk about the Night Vision, or if you prefer, Light Amplification, feature. Night Vision as we know it can amplify light with usually a green and black or black and white color spectrum. There are other options for seeing in the dark as well, such as infrared which reads only heat, usually responding well to body heat or starlight vision, which can also be used to film at night. ARI’s Night Vision appears to be light amplification, which is very common and is also used by the military for night missions. Heck, you could probably buy yourself your own pair of goggles that can do light amplification for around $100. However, I would be negligent if I didn’t mention night vision goggles are usually big and bulky and trade light enhancement at the cost of depth perception, at least for civilian models, but I must remind anyone reading this that ARI’s tech is not civilian, it is government, which is usually a few years ahead of whatever civilians can get a hold on, and remind you that we never actually see what ARI’s interface looks like from behind Jayden’s eyes, only in third person, so it is possible that Norman could have depth perception problems while wearing them that the player isn’t aware of. This gets a pass.
While investigating, Jayden can just take his gloved hand and do a down motion with it, which ARI recognises as a command to sweep the immediate area for clues. Once the area has been swept, any clues will be highlighted, allowing for Jayden to investigate them further. This interface is almost exactly like what the Microsoft Kinect can do. The way the Kinect works is by shining an infrared light over a whole area. The light is invisible to the naked eye but the effect would read VERY similar to how the player sees it when investigating. The Kinect then reads the infrared spectrum with a 3D camera which can only read in infrared. The 360’s software compares the motions read by the camera and compares them to the motions it is programmed to recognize, and if it recognizes the move from the user, it registers it on the TV. If there was some kind of IR transmitter inside of the ARI goggles, and a sensor that picked up the infrared light, it would be able to take real-time 3D images of a crime scene almost instantly. It could also be programmed to only recognise the interface glove, and specifically take commands only while the user is giving them with it on.
It looked like the ARI had a direct uplink to some sort of FBI crime database since Jayden could instantly pull information, rap sheets, and other data in real-time that only the FBI or other local Police would have access to. There must be some sort of wireless antenna inside the ARI that allows for the fast transfer of data. Since ARI operates in areas that do not have WiFi hotspots the immediate assumption is that ARI must have some sort of cellular modem which can transmit data directly to the FBI and receive responses back. Of course, the downside would be what would happen if ARI operated in a cellular dead zone (which are quite common where I’m from, even though tons of people live here)?
The thing that the game fudges with is that ARI would not be able to take samples of what it sees like it does in the game. It may be able to identify two-dimensional images and identify what they were if the crime database already had it on file, such as fingerprints of ex-convicts or even tire-tracks of previously cataloged tires. It would NOT be able to identify DNA evidence and attribute who it belonged to just by closely examining it. Norman would need to collect a sample of the evidence, by putting it into some kind of sample container for processing. It is not enough for Norman to simply touch a DNA sample, even with the ARI’s interface glove, because in order for DNA to be processed, it must be done in a sterile environment free of ALL contaminants. Doing a DNA test in a live outdoor crime scene would be a bad idea.
ARI also has the ability to identify trace objects, even if they are invisible to the naked eye, like plant pollen. In reality, ARI would need an EXTREMELY high-resolution camera in order to identify objects that small, since even the smallest blur around the edge of a microscopic object could alter its identification. Since there are a nearly infinite amount of variations of objects, ARI or the crime database would need to have an extremely lengthy three-dimensional database of all kinds of objects for ARI to have to compare to. They would all need to be pre-scanned into the ARI database in 3D or else the ARI system will not be able to recognise what the object was. I would hate to be the FBI intern who would have to spend every day digitally scanning new coffee mugs with the hopes that some FBI field agent would run into one while on assignment.
But once ARI has all that information recorded, what do you do with it? In one of my favorite scenes from the game, Norman appropriates a decrepit abandoned office he’s given by the NYPD to make it compatible with ARI’s specifications. He moves his desk up against the wall and pushes all the clutter on top of it to the floor so he can use the desk’s surface to help him interface with ARI. When he puts his glasses back on, he’s almost magically transported to a virtual world of his choosing, rendered by the ARI glasses. He could be underwater, on top of a cliff side, or on the surface of Mars, all to go through his clues. Imagining that the lenses of his glasses would be able to display a 3D VR environment to him, as well as use the same interface system in the crime scene to respond to his commands, ARI would need a high-end central processing unit and graphics card to render that kind of environment in real time, and they would need to be small enough to fit in a pair of sunglasses, making them have to be smaller than even they would be inside the tiniest of cell phones. It would also need to have all these environments in memory as well, or else ARI would not be able to work at all in areas with no wireless coverage, and I honestly don’t think that’s a limitation the FBI would be willing to have in such an important device they would be giving to field agents.
But the ARI is more than just for work, just like your iPhone or Android, ARI includes minigames that Norman likes to play around with. While we don’t actually get to play with more than one minigame, the interface showed it had a few games in its memory. Devices like the Playstation Vita and iPhone already have the capability to augment reality. With the use of the device’s cameras, an image can be displayed over them in 3D which the user can manipulate using the device’s controls. Gyroscopes and GPS systems allow the rendered image to stay in place even if the camera is moved or the user’s perspective changes. The Kinect also was designed to play games, and using the assumption it would have similar hardware to the Kinect, that interface could be used for gaming. ARI’s games were pretty simple, like throwing a virtual baseball against a virtual brick wall, and that should be doable even with low processing power.
The problem is that basically ARI would be a device with high-definition cameras, night vision, a high end CPU and GPU, a cellular modem, an infrared transmitter, and all have to function on a battery no larger than one that could fit in a pair of sunglasses. I don’t think batteries that small with that much power (even rechargeable ones) exist quite yet. The other thing is that these things were implied to be cheap, almost throwaway technology. In one possible ending of the game, Jayden quits the FBI. When he offers to turn in his ARI along with his badge and gun, his superior tells him not to worry, that they were expecting the shipment of an updated model and were planning on throwing away the current models anyway. Even if you could build one of these devices yourself, it would not be as cheap as the game implies, at least not with technology made today. Maybe someday some of the advances in technology we would need to make ARI a possibility will come, like the smaller high-capacity battery, but for now the goggles, it seems, do nothing.
Science Check: Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater October 11, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials, Science Check.2 comments
Sometimes, you’re forced to make some severe leaps of logic as to just how plausible a video game’s grounded reality can be. Some things we’re willing to take for granted, like enemies will simply just carry health and ammunition supplies with them at all times, and you will be immediately able to make use of them.
But then sometimes there will be moments in gaming which skirt the bounds of reality and you are forced to ask yourself…COULD THAT REALLY HAPPEN? Fortunately for me, I happen to have a bunch of friends on speed dial with science backgrounds and when I ask them questions, they have no problem filling me in on just what reality would do in these situations.
So this is Science Check, where I take a look at the leaps and bounds of scientific logic that games have made over the years and check if it would indeed work, or if you tried doing it in the real world, you’d be totally screwed.
This time, I’m talking about Metal Gear Solid 3, and if you’ve played the game you know if I’m talking about Metal Gear Solid 3, I’m probably going to be asking about the Shagohod. You are correct.
For those of you who haven’t played Metal Gear Solid 3 and don’t know what the Shagohod is, please enjoy this scene from the game which goes into explicit detail about what it is, what it does, and how it works.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be talking about a Rocket Tank.
Inter-Contentental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are enormous rockets which carry a nuclear payload. They are so massive that they have to be housed in missile silos, where they are buried deep underground on military owned unmarked land. The locations of these silos are pretty well-known by the opposition, and they are supposedly monitored by spy satellites constantly. During the Cold War, if one side was to launch their nuclear payloads, the deterrence was that the other side would know pretty quickly and launch their own missiles in retaliation, simultaneously destroying each other (and probably taking the rest of the planet with it).
Neither side liked this stalemate very much and each tried to do the best they could to gain an advantage over the other. The most famous of which was when the Russians tried to install WMDs into Cuba, causing the Cuban Missile Crisis. Other attempts to gain an advantage included when each side built nuclear equipped submarines, which were equipped with nuclear missiles of their own, capable of firing against their opponent, but these subs could be detected by sonar systems or the opposing country’s own submarines and turned away.
The Shagohod represents the extreme case of these conditions. Obviously during nuclear war, you want to be able to launch anything against your enemy in secret . To gain an advantage over the Americans, in Metal Gear Solid 3, the decision was made to build a nuclear equipped tank capable of firing from any point in Russia to hit anywhere in the mainland United States. Since any ICBM capable of traveling that distance would require two stages (it needed to be big enough to contain all the fuel it would need for making that distance) a standard ICBM would be too big to fit on any tank.
The brilliance of the design of the Shagohod is that in order to make up for the lack of a second stage on the projectile it was equipped with two rocket engines that could bring it up to speeds of 300 MPH, which fired a payload while at top speed with the intention that by firing the rocket while at speed, the total possible distance of the launched missile would increase by three times, eliminating the need for a second stage on the missile thus allowing it to be small enough to fit on the tank.
The idea of firing a weapon in motion is an interesting concept that goes back as early as weapons themselves. In fact, earlier cultures would train to use a bow and arrow while on horseback. The idea was that firing the bow while the horse was galloping at full speed would transfer some of that speed to the arrow while it was fired, giving the arrow the chance to penetrate the target further and increase the chance of a lethal hit. Penetration, when it comes to a nuclear weapon, is completely useless. A nuclear weapon does not explode on impact, it detonates in the atmosphere because its more effective that way. The game specifically says this method was designed to increase the total distance of the missile and that is what we’re going to judge it by.
Unfortunately, in reality it doesn’t look like something like the Shagohod would ever be able to get off the ground. The physics experts I’ve talked to have informed me that you can only transfer motion in that way if whatever is launching it has a much larger motion than the projectile its firing. In this case you have a very large tank going at 300 miles per hour firing a projectile which has a much smaller mass but travels at a much faster velocity. The problem is that the mass of whatever’s firing the projectile is meaningless, only the mass of the projectile and its velocity are what matters.
As you can see in the theoretical video, the Shagohod is firing its nuclear missile at an angle, which means it is not launching at the same exact direction that the tank is at. After any projectile leaves its launcher, it will immediately start decreasing horizontal velocity and things like gravity will start to kick in and work against it. Any initial speed it would have gotten from the launch boost would be lost in a matter of seconds.
The final nail in this coffin is the fact that rockets are designed to be fired from a standstill. You don’t want high acceleration in a rocket as it would make things harder to change. A high mass object going at high acceleration is difficult to control, and an uncontrollable weapon is not useful to a major government power.
It makes sense that something like the Shagohod was never actually made, because in reality it wouldn’t work. On paper the concept is terrifying (and makes for a great video game threat) but in reality, the physics in place would not work as the game said it would. I appreciate that the game did give specific numbers in order to make the threat the Shagohod possessed seem more immediate, but the laws of inertia are not on the Shagohod’s side.
Playstation: Advertising That Gets Me October 10, 2011
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Right now the video game media has been drooling all over this new Playstation advertisement, called the “Michael” ad, which they claim is probably the greatest video game advertisement in history. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say all that, I did like it.
But you have to remember something, that Sony had just gotten back into the groove of continuing with their highly successful advertisements starring Sony VP Kevin Butler, and the launch of the Long Live Play (LLP) campaign, all started with the return of Kevin. Kevin of course said that LLP was his idea in the first place.
Kevin of course, has understood me in the past quite a bit. I still remember the Sony E3 2010 press conference. I don’t know if I was proud or sad that I recognised the face of Jack Tretton in that advertisement, I was laughing too much that Kevin would keep a picture of Jack in his desk at all times. That was my favorite moment in the ad.
The thing is, people who have been following the gaming industry for the past ten years should be in the know that Sony has been making ground-breaking advertising since the days of the original Playstation. While no one would argue there were be plenty of ads they’ve done in the past ten years that completely missed the mark (the 1995 commercials looked pretty stupid and anyone remember that PS10 series back when the PS2 launched?) the recent wave of successful ad campaigns Sony has been riding reminded of one of their very early commercials, which hold up even to this day.
Two years ago I attended a gaming discussion hosted by Yale University which was moderated by N’Gai Croal and featured speakers like Kellee Santiago. Before the discussion began, N’Gai showed us this Playstation ad to get us into the mood.
The ad talked about the double lives we have as gamers, and that’s what facinated N’Gai about it. That we as gamers do live a double life. In the one life we have the mundane jobs and scurry about with everything in black and white, and in our gaming lives we have reached for the stars to accomplish the impossible tasks we could never achieve like command armies. Those words looked at the surface of something much deeper. Its almost as if these shared experiences almost make gamers everywhere like brothers, and whoever wrote the ad understood that. This was years before Kevin Butler was “named” Sony VP.
So, bravo Sony Marketing Department, you still get me, you still get us.
Science Check: Alone in the Dark October 9, 2011
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Sometimes, you’re forced to make some severe leaps of logic as to just how plausible a video game’s grounded reality can be. Some things we’re willing to take for granted, like enemies will simply just carry health and ammunition supplies with them at all times, and you will be immediately able to make use of them.
But then sometimes there will be moments in gaming which skirt the bounds of reality and you are forced to ask yourself…COULD THAT REALLY HAPPEN? Fortunately for me, I happen to have a bunch of friends on speed dial with science backgrounds and when I ask them questions, they have no problem filling me in on just what reality would do in these situations.
So this is Science Check, where I take a look at the leaps and bounds of scientific logic that games have made over the years and check if it would indeed work, or if you tried doing it in the real world, you’d be totally screwed.
The first game I want to talk about is 2008’s Alone in the Dark, which released for the PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Wii and Playstation 3. This game has universally been considered a major disappointment by critics and gamers alike. It has a fantastic graphic, fire and physics engine, and I happened to like its story and atmosphere quite a bit. The gameplay, however, was totally garbage, ranging from the bad controls, tedious gameplay mechanics, and frustrating puzzles. Even the Playstation 3 port, dubbed Alone in the Dark: Inferno, which released six months after the other versions were released and was considered the superior version with its tweaks could not save what was just a badly designed game.
Eden Games was going for something interesting with this game during development. They designed a real-time inventory system that could make use of anything you found along the way, including plastic or glass bottles, tape, or glow sticks.
For those of you who would like a better idea of how this system worked, here’s the official videos Eden released showing just how the inventory system worked.
Anyone else calling bullshit on all this?
Well, first off, that sticky tape is probably some stuff that 3M would be pretty envious to have. That stuff can stick to ANYTHING, even in the final version of the game. However, adhesive, even the almighty duct tape, almost completely loses its stick when wet. Most of the creatures you encounter in the game have what appears to be a wet or slimy sheen to them. The idea that tape would stick to their skin is pretty implausible, but this kind of logic is required to get through some of the game’s many puzzles.
Over the course of the game you can find discarded bottles in the trash. Some of these bottles will contain anything from leftover alcohol (like wine) to lighter fluid. You can use various flammable fluids, either left over in the bottles you found, or if you absolutely needed to, you could punch a hole in a car’s gas tank and fill up empty bottles with gasoline and use that. Plausibility of finding those items in Central Park’s trash cans aside (I don’t think you can even bring alcohol in Central Park unless there’s some kind of event going on you can buy it) this game treats all flammable liquids the same, and in reality none of these flammable liquids would be all that useful as the game pegs them out to be.
First off, alcohol and gasoline are not explosive. If you threw a container of alcohol or gasoline and fired upon it, nothing would happen except it would disperse everywhere. If you threw a container with a lit wick attached to it (to say nothing of the fact that you’d have to be an expert marksman to make a shot like that), the liquid might have a chance to ignite in air, but it would not send out a shockwave. In the game, if you fire upon an improvised bottle filled with flammable liquid at close range, you risk the chance of severely injuring yourself from the blast wave. I’ve talked to several people knowledgable about chemicals and they agreed a shockwave could not occur from such an event, and the fluid would only have a chance of ignition if a flame had been already attached to it.
That having been said, a molotov cocktail has been a widely used improvised device for a reason, it does actually work as a flammable weapon. Alcohol is a low temperature burn fluid and very good at sustaining fire as long as there’s plenty of oxygen. Since many of the enemies of Alone in the Dark can only be destroyed by fire, simply throwing a molotov cocktail at them would indeed be harmful if not fatal if they were in the range of the flame.
Another slight plausibility can go to the ability to leave flammable trails of liquids. The Mythbusters proved that various flammable liquids like gasoline can have trails ignited, and as long as there were no gaps in the liquid trail. This is unlikely to happen if you threw the leaking container, but likely if it slowly emptied out while being carried at a steady pace. While testing this, the Mythbusters discovered that once ignited, a flame trail would take a while to hit its destination, but even with a time delay it would be good enough for its use in the game’s puzzles. It would get a pass, but I don’t recommend anyone try it in the heat of a battle with the undead.
Oh and the Unknown Camerman would like to point out what the logic would be of demons from Hell being harmed by fire in the first place? You’d think things born of the stuff would just shrug it off. I do however comprehend that the game’s logic is the body needs to be destroyed or else something that’s not alive in the first place would not be able to be killed and would just continue to get back up unless completely destroyed, and that makes…some sense…until you start to think about the next gameplay mechanic.
I want to mention something that is not shown in the demos and that is another important gameplay mechanic that is required to beat some of the larger enemies quickly, and that is fire bullets. In the game, the fire bullets can only harm the vulnerable points (depicted as body scars that can show through clothing) of the enemies, and you must target and destroy each scar to completely destroy your enemy, even though the rest of the body does not need to be set on fire. To make fire bullets, you can pour flammable liquid on your gun’s barrel while its loaded, and when the bullets fire, they will leave a fire trail in the air, setting whatever the bullet impacts with on fire. Well, I asked a gun expert about the likelihood of this working, and he said a resounding, “no.” He said any flammable liquid on the bullet would be all surface related, and would burn off instantly when the gun was first fired. It sounded to me like doing this would have a better chance of harming whoever fired the weapon opposed to whoever it was aimed at. In short, DON’T try that.
Clearly, Alone in the Dark is a broken game which used broken leaps of logic to design its broken gameplay around. If, based upon this article, you find yourself really interested in trying this game out, I must plead with you to choose the PS3 version, which trust me, while it isn’t much of an improvement, is an improvement never the less.
A Metal Gear Solid 2 HD Wish List September 19, 2011
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In December, both Metal Gear Solid games that released on the PS2 as well as Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, which was a Playstation Portable exclusive, will be bundled together and remastered for High Definition TVs in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
The initial previews of the game have come back from the trade shows they have been demoed at. The previews have been partially negative, because Konami did not touch any of the graphics in the games, opting instead to increase resolution and performance. I think the people who have been previewing these games are idiots. Honestly, I don’t have a problem with that at all. I’m glad that they’re keeping the game’s aesthetic completely intact, and only updating what they have to in order for it to run on modern systems (and modern HDTVs).
However, there are some problems I do have with the versions of the games that Hideo Kojima has announced they are releasing in December, and that is if they release everything as intact as they said they will. Now, I have no problem with the fact that they’re releasing the versions they are of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is the Subsistance Version of the game, or of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, which should have the ability to exchange save files between the PS3 and PSP versions of the game. Those game versions are perfect, and I’m glad they’re including those versions.
No, I have a problem that they’re including the version of Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance which came to the United States, when there’s so much more they could have included with that version of the game, including things fans like me have been requesting for the past ten years.
I don’t know if a lot of people know this but Metal Gear Solid 2 released in November of 2001. That was two months after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. As someone who’s played the end sequence in the released version of the game, you can easily tell something is missing before the final Solidus fight. In what was probably intended to be a spectacular finale sequence, all you see is Arsenal Gear go under a bridge and then all of a sudden Raiden and Solidus are knocked on top of Federal Hall with rubble all around them. The first time I saw that sequence I asked myself, “What did I miss here? Did I hit the X button and something jumped?”
Ryan Payton confirmed (while he was still working for Kojima Team) in the official Kojima podcast that there were more scenes that were supposed to be in the game which they did not have time to redo before ship, so instead they just had to chop them out of the game. GameTrailers.com, when they did their retrospective on the game, mentioned some glaring omissions that we never got to see. The first was an all out attack on New York City by Arsenal Gear just before it crashed into Manhattan! It was obvious we saw the first part of this sequence when Arsenal Gear was cruising up the Hudson something terrible was about to happen. This attack would have caused the displacement of the Statue of Liberty, which has been done already in action movies. We’ve seen things like it happen in Batman Forever or Judge Dredd, heck, even Ghostbusters II. Finally the American Flags all over Wall Street were removed. Anyone who’s ever been to Wall Street (I have) knows that there are American Flags hanging from poles every ten feet across the building entrances. You can clearly see the flagpoles in the final version of the game, but no flags on any of them, including the one that should be on the pole on top of Federal Hall. The reason why Raiden raises up his sword after defeating Solidus was because he was chopping the flag down on top of the building, and this flag would have fallen to cover Solidus’s dead body. The action wasn’t to look cool, Raiden gave a final honor for the game’s former President of the United States.
After the end credits, a news report would have revealed the Statue of Liberty had been fully restored and was given a new home, Ellis Island. I smiled when I found out they would have restored the statue, and I think the fact that they put things right at the end gives them the creative liberty to restore all this in the game without fear of any lingering repercussion.
I liked this original ending so much when I wrote the story “That Day at Federal Hall”, which told the story of two normal people caught in the middle of that event, I included that nod to the deleted scene in the story’s coda. I can moderately understand why they would feel the need to cut all this content out at the time, but that was ten years ago. When Steven Spielberg refused to cut the Twin Towers out of A.I. for its DVD release, the insanity of censoring anything happening to New York in any fictional medium started to calm down. Watchmen depicted New York City exactly as it was in the original book, with it’s unaltered 1985 skyline, with no media repercussion.
Also, Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance did not ship with two important things that other countries got. It did not have a complete demo theatre feature that is in Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 3. Metal Gear Solid 2’s story is my favorite of the three games, and I wanted to be able to watch the cutscenes from start to finish with a tub of popcorn just like I could do with the other games (or even games like Metroid: Other M). From what I heard, the European Version and Japanese Version of the original game, since they released after the American Version, did ship with this feature, although I could have been misinformed about this. It would be nice to see it included in the American release of the HD collection, or at the very least have the demo theatre that was included with the US version of MGS2 Substance have all the game’s cutscenes included, instead of just the few that were.
My other desire is for a re-release of the Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 disc. This was a budget title released for the PS2 shortly before the Substance re-release of Metal Gear Solid 2, and included a very in depth DVD-style documentary about the making of the game and included a playable preview of the VR missions that shipped with Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance. This is a heavily sought after collector’s item I am not fortunate enough to own, as it shipped at an awkward time before I owned a PS2 and did not have the ability to get one. When Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance was released in Japan, the Document was included as a bonus disc, but the US never got a re-release of it. For a game that was $20US at launch new, prices on Ebay for it go for over $30, even for one that’s been badly scratched. This has been considered one of the best game documentary discs of all time. It would be nice to see this re-released, even if it’s the original PS2 version of the disc, I would leap at the chance to buy it if they released it again.
With the release of the HD Collection in November, Konami has the chance to bring back everything they were not politically allowed to do, and provide much requested fanservice to those who have wanted them to rectify these decisions for the past ten years. No mention has been made specifically about any of these features of the game, but they are three months from releasing it. If you’re going to do it, Konami, do it right, and give us a great reason to rebuy it.
Ed- Thank you to the Unknown Cameraperson for the correct nautical term for describing what a boat does on water.
What Happened to Bawls? September 16, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials.9 comments
Since shortly after its release, Bawls has been known as a soda exclusively drank by gamers, BMX riders and paintballers. It was designed to be a high-caffeinated soda in a world where high caffeinated beverages like Red Bull are extremely popular, but they all reportedly taste like crap. Bawls was different. It is a high caffinated soda that tasted great. A great tasting high caffinated product didn’t take long for this product to find itself a market, and it did, with the gamers.
How much of a gamer’s drink was it? I first became aware of the product because it was being sold by the case in computer stores like CompUSA. That just shows you how hardcore it was. To advertise their product, Bawls would sponsor LAN parties, where gamers would get their computers together in a common venue and challenge each other at the latest games. They even sponsored LAN parties as big as Quakecon or as small as the local ones here that took place in a converted bar.
You’ve seen me drink it with friends in some of the past videos I’ve done. The reason why I did it was because recently it is popular to shoot a video of yourself trying some weird or obscure food or beverage online and post it up for people to see. While the practice of trying new food and beverages on camera and posting it online has been popular for quite a while, I have not seen a single internet personality try Bawls, so I took it upon myself to do it.
But why did Bawls become so obscure and get so hard to find?
In 2007 I started to notice it was getting easier to find Bawls in stores. While CompUSA, originally the only store I could buy the soda, was shutting down for good, 7-11s and various gas stations in my area started to sell the stuff by the bottle. Trust me, I would buy out their stock as much as I could! Then I started to see it was being sold in four-packs of cans by Target. The packaging style was just like Red Bull was being sold. With Target selling it across the country I was elated I could get Bawls so easily, but I preferred the taste of the soda in the glass bottles opposed to how it tasted in aluminum cans.
Then around 2009 something awful happened. For some reason Target stopped selling the four packs of the can version in their stores. I no longer could find bottles or cans of the soda in 7-11s or smaller grocery stores. I couldn’t even find Bawls in Publix, and they were one of the very few major grocery stores that sold Bawls early on. The official Bawls webpage stopped being updated with content. The company stopped sponsoring major events like Quakecon.
Heck, even some LAN centers were having trouble stocking the stuff. What was going on?
For over a year, the only place I could find the stuff would be online through sites like Thinkgeek or Amazon, and you’d be paying upwards of fifty dollars a case for it! It was a very dark, expensive time, but you could tell that the demand was still there. Thinkgeek said on numerous occasions it was one of their biggest selling products, and it would have to be restocked constantly.
So what happened? I did some research and it turns out that the company nearly went bankrupt around 2009. The owners of the company were forced to step down and were replaced by the current owners of the product, BAWLS Acquisition (yes that same organization I listed as the owners in my videos).
According to the research I did, it turns out the product had extended itself tremendously to tons of different retail channels in 2008, and by 2009 it couldn’t be sustained. In my opinion, this happened because you had a niche product being sold to a mass market. This is not a major problem for most similar products. Red Bull and Monster have thrived in the past few years as a mass market product and they supposedly taste awful, but Red Bull and Monster had massive marketing campaigns on TV and in print to get awareness of the product out, and what their gimmick was. Aside from appearing as background in The Hangover, Bawls did not step up its marketing campaign to match their product expansion. It was still a product only known by its base but it was being widely distributed through more channels than could be sustained by the company. The distribution network for the product crashed, which is why the only place we could get it was online for a year.
But there is a silver lining to all this. Bawls is coming back. Under this new management, Bawls has started getting back the distribution network it had before it imploded. According to a press release I read from earlier in the year, Bawls has regained about 65% of the distribution network they previously had before their near bankruptcy. They even were a part of this year’s Quakecon.
If you’re a gamer or not, Bawls needed to realize that they had a really good product that could have mass appeal if marketed correctly. Forget about being a drink exclusive to gamers! The cool looking blue bottles alone are a very good sell when put next to other products in a refrigerator case. It’s very distinctive if properly put in an advertising campaign. It’s also one of the few high caffeinated beverages that tastes good! With some people forced to drink in excess of five of these a day just to stay alert while working, this is an extremely important selling point.
A store down the street from my house has started selling it again, and I’ve been told other people across my state have noticed it in various stores as well. Heck, I’ve talked to some other gas stations in my area that didn’t stock it and they seemed interested in stocking it based on my recommendation. If you like it, spread the word. You just might see it in a store near you.
My Educational Resistance September 13, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials.add a comment
With the release of Resistance 3 for the Playstation 3, I decided to reflect on my best memory that the series provided me over the years. A little background on me, I have a BA in English and a few years ago after I got out of college my parents were on a power trip which insisted I set my life goals to do everything but what I was good at. They wanted me wasting my time applying to graduate schools even though I had spent my entire life in school by that point and was completely sick of it. After twenty-five years of schooling all I wanted to do was to work and earn money. I didn’t need to have a good paying job, I just wanted something that I could do and would enjoy doing it.
Two years ago I was working as a permanent substitute teacher for a high school English class. The class’s permanent teacher had quit after just a month working there. When something like that happened I would get a call to fill the teacher spot until an accredited teacher could be hired. I would be allowed to create an acceptable lesson plan and give it to the students so they’d have something that could be graded while a teacher was being hired. One fond memory I have of the experience around the time I was working there was the day Resistance 2 was released. In my educational experiences I knew I had very little room to do things that excited me so any chance I got I would usually submit a college paper about video games or talk about them in a class discussion if they were on topic with what we were going over. I really enjoyed the Resistance series and that day I decided to mess with my students a little bit.
That day on the blackboard I wrote this. I took a picture of it before class started with the intention to post it up on Insomniac’s official message boards, so here it is so you can have a chance to look at it for yourselves.
This quote was taken from the opening cinematic for Resistance: Fall of Man, a launch title for the PS3 and a killer app for the system. I am a huge fan of documentaries on the History Channel and Discovery Channel I thought the writing in the first game matched that style very well, which is exactly what they were going for. I asked the students if they knew where the quote could have come from.
I was pretty certain the students would not be able to identify where the quote came from, but I wasn’t expecting them to. The method behind my madness was I wanted the students to tell me the quote was a fake, and could not possibly have happened. Instead for the whole day the students were telling me that the quote had to come from a historical documentary. They recognized the name Nathan Hale as the namesake of another high school in the district, but they had no idea that the Nathan Hale the school was named after has been dead for about two-hundred years.
I was disappointed to see these students couldn’t tell the quote was a fake. The Americans had never launched an assault on England. The dates were all wrong for any kind of war they could have confused the battle with. They really had no idea who the real Nathan Hale was or what he had done for the United States of America.
Nowadays I like to tell people I probably learned more from watching the History and Discovery Channels and playing video games than I ever learned in my schooling, but where does that leave the people in the school systems not fortunate enough to have a person who knows what they’re doing as a teacher when they aren’t privy to further educational outlets like that? There are still some students who probably don’t even have general access to a computer, to say nothing of having Internet access, which is considered by the UN a basic human right nowadays.
These students would eventually get a full-time teacher and I was reassigned. I got out of substituting around a year ago when I discovered I could make a lot of money fixing computers after years of my parents doing their best to prevent me from learning that. Every once in a while I have a positive memory of my experiences like this one, but I don’t think I’ll be going back to it. it just wasn’t right for me.
LA Noire, the Game That Could’ve Benefitted from Remedy’s Decisions September 2, 2011
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I played through LA Noire last month on the Playstation 3 and am pretty close to 100% completion. What have I done in the game? I five stared all the case files in the game, completed all the side missions, solved all the cases (sans the majority of the DLC missions), rode in every car, found every landmark, and got every trophy (except for the $40,000+ damage case). I enjoyed the game, and did not feel bad about shelling out $40 for it at Best Buy, but I can’t help but feel that some of the problems that me and other critics had with the game could have spared Team Bondi for just what would befall them after its release.
With Team Bondi closing permanently today, not because they failed to make a well received, decent selling game, but because no publisher wanted to work with them on any other project, I wanted to talk about something I’ve noticed in every review I’ve read or watched of the game. In short, Team Bondi and through that, LA Noire, would have benefitted greatly from making the same decisions Remedy Entertainment made during the development of Alan Wake.
The first problem I have with the game is that the open world environment, while enormous, does not provide anything fun to do in it. The enormous environment only serves as a facade for every single case. Driving around in it only provides an opportunity to cause accidents, which will negatively impact your final case ranking. If you want the best possible rank in each case, you’re best off having your partner drive you automatically to each destination, cutting you out of the chance to explore this ENORMOUS wasted enviroment.
There is just nothing to do in downtown LA. This is unlike games like Grand Theft Auto, where you can easily pick up things to do in the world. You can be a taxi driver and take fares, catch theatre or entertainment, you can collect side bounties, watch TV or listen to the fully scripted radio stations.
The only thing you can do are side missions, but they’re dependant on getting the call for one while driving. If your partner drives you won’t be able to do them unless you free roam after completing the case desk. Side missions themselves are short and can be easier completed during these open world driving aspects once all cases are complete. There is an incetive to find and drive every car in the game since these count towards your game completion percentage and unlock you the cars in the vehicle showroom. The problem is only police cars are equipped with radios and sirens, which are essential to getting a perfect rank in some cases. Finally, in LA Noire there’s only one radio channel, and you have no control over what’s on it or what you’re listening to, and there’s nothing really that good on it on the level of Lazlo’s Chatterbox, Pat Maine, or the Deb of Night.
My other complaint is that a good amount of the cases in the game (especially the vice cases) are downloadable content, and not included on the disc. The game also shipped on the PS3 with an exclusive case (the Consul’s Car), but one you still had to download (with a free code). If you wanted the whole story you would have to spend an extra eleven or so dollars for a Rockstar Pass, which would enable you to download all the DLC for the game (including some you may have already gotten free with the disc). Easily there were three or four extra cases that could only be investigated by purchasing them online. Instead of making them feel like an extra benefit that expanded the story after its conclusion, it felt like there were large chunks of the game missing from the retail release. This was glaringly clear when there were only three vice cases in the retail game, whereas other desks had many more!
There was another company and another game that faced these similar problems, and they made the hard decision to cut these features from the game during development. It cost them wasted development time, but in the end they released a tighter product which didn’t suffer from these problems. Remedy Entertainment had originally designed 2010’s Alan Wake as an open world environment. It was also planned to be followed up with multiple downloadable episodes to continue the story of the game. But when they started to realize that having an open world environment in the story that they were telling just wasn’t working out for them, they cut the game’s open world ability and locked levels to a single path with enviroment bridged between cutscenes.
Some people were upset about this, but a lot of what was cut was featured in the Alan Wake: Illuminated book, and I don’t think anyone thinks the lack of an abandoned dirt track for time trials or an interactive ball puzzle in a museum is that sad a loss or further enhanced the game’s story.
Their intentions with DLC was also rightfully scaled back. They intended the first Alan Wake game to be analogous to a season for a television show, and further DLC would be considered special side stories, or as they put it, “interludes.” If they planned anything further, such as a new major storyline that would seem more fitting of a second season of a show, they said they would just make Alan Wake 2 instead. This scaled back what could have been a long DLC series to just a two episode epilogue. They even gave out codes for the first DLC for free with purchase of a new copy of the game. By ending it after just two downloadable episodes, Remedy could now (in theory) focus Alan Wake efforts on a whole new game. And since these downloadable levels took place after the main game and were just a side story, anyone who didn’t play them weren’t missing out on large chunks of the story in the middle of the game.
With just one product release, I am sad to announce that as of today, Team Bondi is no more. LA Noire received high reviews from critics and fans alike, but to me, my feelings about the game were far more complex than loved it or hated it. If they had made the tough decisions early on during development that they needed to (after the game’s release stories leaked to the press on a daily basis on just how bad the game’s management was) they could have had a shot at releasing a tighter game on a shorter development timetable, and that could have looked better to publishers who they needed for their next project.
Still, their efforts were commendable, and they do have a good product to show for all their hard work. I wish we could have parted on better terms.
Happy 25th Birthday, Metroid August 21, 2011
Posted by Maniac in Editorials.1 comment so far
This month marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Metroid in Japan. It was a game that has inspired such a cult following from its fan base it has been made a staple of Nintendo’s portfolio of properties, putting it on par with the likes of Mario and Zelda.
To celebrate the anniversary of the game series that brought what was probably the first major female action video game protagonist, Samus Aran, I have decided to scour the internet to bring back some of the best and most nostalgic memories I have of this beloved series of games.
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I recommend starting off like I did, with watching a very good retrospective series produced by GameTrailers.com a few years ago, right around the time Metroid Prime 3 was releasing on the Nintendo Wii. They go into pretty explicit detail about the release of the games, the platforms they were released on, and along the way you can get a feel for just what has made this series so beloved for the past twenty-five years.
Metroid was the brainchild of one of the major Nintendo head honchos, Gunpei Yokoi. Due to his pedigree during the early Nintendo years some people put him on par with his pupil, Miyamoto (considered by many Nintendo fans to be the father of us all) and one of the reasons the company was so succesful with games and game systems. Yokoi is also considered to be the father of the Nintendo Game Boy, which was a highly successful handheld device that kept Nintendo on top of the handheld market for several generations. Like a match made in heaven, Metroid 2 would release exclusive to this handheld platform, continuing the story of Samus Aran, and expanding the Metroid universe even further.
I have to admit personally that while I did own an original NES (as well as an original Game Boy) I was severely limited by funds and only could have so many games for the system and sadly Metroid was not one of them. I also was never fortunate enough to own a Super NES during its lifespan, and while I had seen games demoed on it when visiting various friends, I never got to experience any of them myself during the 16-bit era. This is why I’m so grateful that the Nintendo Wii had the Virtual Console store, and it actually was a huge selling point for me when buying the system. I wanted to be able to play all these classic games I missed out on and the Metroid series was a big part of that.
For those of you who would prefer an abridged retrospective of what those years were like, enjoy this brief retrospective that Nintendo did just prior to the release of Metroid: Other M. For a short, it’s actually extremely well done, narrated by Samus Aran herself, showing the story of the first three Metroid games cut to remastered CGI footage which retold the ending of Super Metroid (Metroid 3).
Following Super Metroid, the glory days of Metroid would hit a dark period following the end of the 16-bit era. In the aftermath of the massive failure of the Virtual Boy, Yokoi was forced to leave Nintendo and tragically died two years later in a car accident. Many have considered his death a conspiracy, or assume had he not been fired from Nintendo he would still be alive today, but no one can really predict that sort of thing. Regardless, There was no Metroid game released for the N64 generation.
But it wasn’t going to be the end of Metroid forever. Nintendo now had a new console, the GameCube, which was in last place in the console war behind Microsoft and Sony. While it was last, It had some graphical power behind it if you knew how to develop for it well enough. They also had the direct access of a very talented second party developer named Retro Studios, and they were going to release a new kind of Metroid game for a whole new generation. What follows is considered to be one of the most nostalgic game commercials of all time.
Metroid Prime was a major hit for the Nintendo GameCube and became a killer app for the console in a time when it was desperately needing one. This was around the time I started to get into Metroid. After seeing all the positive reviews of the game, I just had to play it for myself. Once Metroid Prime released for the Player’s Choice line, I bought a GameCube off a friend of mine just so I could play the game!
When Nintendo announced they planned to bundle the game with new GameCubes I sold my GameCube back to my friend (for exactly what I paid for it) and bought a new silver one, because the bundled copy of Metroid Prime had a behind the scenes preview disc for Metroid Prime 2. That preview disc was gearing up to be a major collector’s item. What made it so special was it could only be obtained by either buying a new GameCube bundled with Metroid Prime or buying five listed Nintendo games and registering their unique codes on Nintendo’s website. This early game registration site would be a precursor to Club Nintendo. Ironically enough, to this day I’ve never opened the game’s package.
Metroid Prime 2 released just before Christmas 2004. It would be the last Metroid game to release for the GameCube and the first to include multiplayer. Even with its few deeply loved games, the GameCube still finished last in the previous console generation war, unable to meet the minimum amount of sales Nintendo desired.
But a new generation of consoles were on the horizon, and Nintendo knew for it to be a success not only would it need to have something to set it apart from its peers, but the full backing of all their beloved properties, and Metroid Prime 3 would need to release for it, taking full advantage of the new Wiimote controller. When Nintendo was ready to release it, they were sure to make it a major staple of the Wii’s marketing blitz.
The Nintendo Wii was selling out everywhere for well over a year after release thanks to its proper marketing, great games, and unique control system. Nintendo released a limited edition of the three Metroid Prime games, called the Metroid Prime Trilogy, to take full advantage of the Wii’s control scheme, and released it in limited quantities for the same price of Metroid Prime 3.
With the Metroid Prime Trilogy complete, Metroid went dark at Nintendo. Retro Studios was now working on other projects, but Metroid would not be gone forever, and during an E3 press conference, the head honchos at Nintendo of America announced that a new Metroid game was coming, and it would be developed by Team Ninja, the company responsible for Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden.
Metroid: Other M was a different kind of game that people were not expecting. This was not another Metroid Prime game. It went back to the original game story of the original Metroid games, but also touched upon the expanded Metroid Universe only previously seen in print. A lot of people criticized how Samus Aran was depicted in it, but I had an appreciation for the game that other critics didn’t. It wasn’t as overwhelming as the Metroid Prime games had been, (with the overwhelming desire to scan anything and everything) and the linear nature of some of the levels actually helped with exploration. I had a lot of fun playing this game, I enjoyed the CGI cutscenes a lot, and I thought the ending was very satisfying.
Now that the Nintendo Wii is on its way out, what is next for Metroid and its hero Samus Aran? The Wii U is going to be Nintendo’s first strike at the next generation of the console war, which is currently unanswered by Sony and Microsoft. Currently, there has not been a Metroid game announced for the platform, but Nintendo knows they have one of the most recognizable property catalogs of any game studio in the world, it would be a shame if they were to let it go to waste.
Could the Release of the Playstation Vita Kill Sony’s Memory Stick? August 11, 2011
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With the advent of digital photography, having a memory card you can store all your camera’s data to has become a very common practice. However, there isn’t a definitive standard for memory card designs, and the type of card you will need is usually dictated by what memory card type your camera requires. Because of this, there have been all kinds of different memory card types ranging in different sizes, speeds and capacities, and they are not universally compatible with each other. To deal with this, photo devices and memory card adapters have to include multiple different slots for the different memory card types.
Right now the major three memory card types are CompactFlash (CF), Memory Stick (MS) and SD. If you buy any kind of photo printer you’ll likely find a socket for each of these cards. Stores that allow you to print out your digital photos also will have individual sockets for each memory type. Even the launch version of the Playstation 3 had sockets for each of these cards so you could view your digital photos and videos on your HDTV.
If you have a Sony camera bought within the last few years, chances are definite that you use Memory Stick Pro Duo to take your pictures. By having their own proprietary media type for their devices, Sony has been able to keep the Memory Stick business thriving for them and their third-party manufacturers like SanDisk.
But probably the biggest device that uses the Sony Memory Stick is the Playstation Portable handheld. With the launch version of the device having no internal memory of its own, savegames, downloadable games, demos, music, and videos have to be downloaded to a Memory Stick. With the ability to easily swap these things out, gamers have been able to continuously upgrade the PSP’s storage capacity as more downloadable content is made available to them.
Recently, Sony cameras have been shipping with dual sockets which will take either a Memory Stick or SD memory card. Because SD is used in most cameras, many users have chosen to use SD cards to ensure compatibility with a wider range of devices like Blu-Ray players and the Nintendo Wii. However, since the Playstation Portable still has only one socket that will only accept a Memory Stick, the Playstation Portable has become the major Memory Stick selling device.
However, the Memory Stick may be going the way of the dodo and the MiniDisc. With the Playstation Portable on its way out, the Playstation Vita will be Sony’s major portable games system. When I demoed the Playstation Vita at E3 this year, I was able to get a few technical questions about the device answered. Game saves are going to be stored on the internal flash memory portions of a new proprietary game stick format, and the Vita developers have assured me that the device will have its own internal memory capacity, although they have declined to tell me just how much internal space a Vita will have at launch.
However, what the Vita does not have is a Memory Stick slot. This was a really bad decision. Without Sony’s cameras or handheld devices encouraging sales of new sticks, Sony is basically handing the entire market to the SD card, which is used in a wider array of devices. With Sony’s digital cameras now all coming with dual sockets, and the launch of the Vita likely bringing the retirement of the Sony PSP, there is no killer devices that will encourage the purchase of Memory Sticks.
Likely there will still be a market for a while for legacy devices (the PSP and Sony cameras without dual sockets) but once the PSP gets phased out for the Vita the sales for the Memory Stick is going to just dry up.
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