Social Apocalypse

 Gamers, rejoice. Girls, beware. The new generation of games might be around the corner with Project Natal, and if it does, there's a mixed bag of potential that could be unleashed at any time.

 Let's shape the groundwork for a moment. 

 Project Natal is the name of Microsoft's upcoming expansion to the XBox 360, and there's a very good chance that this will become functional for PC's after XBox sales even out. Most likely, this is going to be a very expensive product, but as fully featured as a console. In fact, many media members and even Microsoft are likening its release to a console release. The idea behind the box is that there are many sensors that, individually, make up many devices that we take for granted and are not all that expensive to produce. All of these sensors, cameras, and imaging techniques, combined with the right architecture and innovation, come together as one all-seeing eye of your living room. The tech video to show it off was no joke. You should realistically be able to scan yourself and applicable object to serve as your controller. Want to play through Time Crisis just by making "bang" motions with your fingers and ducking behind your couch? Well, you can't, because Time Crisis is a Playstation thing. 

 Otherwise, you can. Of all the press out on Natal, the general idea is that this thing works and as long as its supported, the wet dream will become a reality.

 Certainly, there will be obstacles. This project won't be perfect, but there's a year of fine-tuning to go and developers will have their say. Within five years, this idea could become as fully functional as you could imagine. This is a great thing to be a part of, as a gamer. So many things will be possible. 

 You sit in your living room with a vision. The kids are at soccer practice. The wife is out shopping with her friends. The dog has been fed. You are completely alone, just you and your console. A giddy smile creeps along your face, and you run out to the shed to raid toys that haven't been touched in years. You finally find your prize, the old whiffle bat your children have since outgrown. Rushing back to the living room, you think about what might have been to have lived out your dream. Sure, your life is a gift, but what would it have been like if it happened another way? You turn the system on, and let the box above your TV do its magic. You hold up the bat like you've just been pronounced the king of England and prepare for your dreams. Your new, 62-inch HDTV displays a massive crowd; an entire stadium is filled with fans who have come to see you. Your old batting stance, the one you used when you were in batting practice dreaming of how great you would be, is shown on the screen. Your face, your swagger, and even the old throwback jersey your team wore back then is there for the crowd to behold.

 This is what you may be living within five years: fantasies turned to reality. You may not even care about the FPS glut at that point, because everything old will be new again. We have finally reached a point where we can see where our technology will take us, and it is good.

 There is a massive potential for good things to happen. Forget Wiimotes. Gabe would only need his cardboard tube to pwn the competition, and I'm quite sure he wouldn't mind. Hell, being a parent seems like so much fun, since you may be needing their Super Soakers for your next Halo match. 

 On that topic, imagine the potential of Natal as a children's learning tool. Forget Head Start. While you're making dinner, your child could be making objects out of virtual Lego's or learning Spanish with Milo (though, hopefully not). The lack of physical feedback may show the limits of what Natal can do, but there is a lot of learning that can be done through colors, recognition, and real feedback. There was a craze in learning CD-ROM's back in the early 90's, and they didn't work very well because they relied on needing the student to recognize the method of input. Not so with what Natal promises. Eliminating the need for an input device could open up an incredible learning experience while still keeping a child physically active. Speech and motion recognition is a huge step in justifying computer learning software. A child could walk through an episode of Dora the Explorer, pointing to animals, asking questions, and naming objects along the way. With content download systems already in place, this could make for an excellent and inexpensive system for parents who need to provide something more for their child's mind. 

 Social networks could also be reinvented. Being able to paint a virtual room instead of having the latest MySpace layout is a concept that has been touched on before, but could be realized in a much more practical and involved manner on Natal. Instead of a teenager sitting down, focusing on a phone or computer to handle a text or phone call, the conversation could be transferred to Natal's interface. While talking, minus any peripherals, in a room, the body and focus is free to do other things. You could be decorating your virtual room in the meantime, or even playing a basic sports game. From the demo, you should be able to share clothes to "try on" virtually, or even show off new toys like guitars or posters. Two best friends could be studying in their own rooms while online and be able to ask for help, or maybe there's a personal issue one is going through and text just doesn't convey the feelings. An old friend may live across the world, but all the mannerisms, looks, and speech would be right there to take the feelings of distance away. 

 Games, which the entire idea is based on, could be a lot easier to pull off. Often, you'll hear "I was going to nade him!" in a deathmatch, so being able to just reach back and lob one off while still blasting away would be more of a reflex action than ever before. The control scheme even has enough potential to unseat the mouse and keyboard way of playing games, or at least provide a fun alternative. Having a bunch of good friends getting into a paintball match and actually getting in the workout sounds plain fun, and it would be far more intense than any controller driven FPS. Driving games would be a no brainer, and it would also be a lot easier to convince that drunk guy to get in on a party game that doesn't involve a controller. Also, remember that virtual avatar? What if Natal brought about avatar standardization? As in, what if you scanned yourself once and it was compatible with several games. Instead of creating a character for each game you play, what if you just drew from a pool of yourself and your friends, as well as different outfits? 

 That, of course, leads straight into machinima. Instead of animating or finding the right motion and remotely timing it right, it would be incredibly easy to act on a virtual stage that you may have even built yourself from the ground up. LittleBigPlanet would seem ancient in scope. Your own obstacle course, your own game show, and your own television shows could be extremely easy to produce. Better yet, you could be one actor playing several parts. Play as yourself in one outfit, change outfits for the next scene, then maybe assume a different body scan and act out the five supporting characters. All this without leaving the room or needing another person. I bet you anything the guys at Rooster Teeth would have a field day with this. 

 The perils, however, are many. This is an amazing piece of technology, but technology is also incredible to other types of people. 

 Just for starters, check out the concepts behind Unwrap Mosaics. Microsoft Research has a lot of projects going on for it right now, and many of their research projects find their way into bigger applications later on in the life-cycle. It's true for Google, Apple, Adobe, and many other companies as well. Natal is supposedly borrowing from existing research, and it is very likely that several minor research projects could be incorporated into Natal by the time it's released. Unwrap Mosaics represents a wonderful step forward in video manipulation, but it also represents the dark side of good research. What if you saw a video of your girlfriend making out with another guy on YouTube? Well, with this technology, one picture could make the person doing the kissing look a lot less like a psychotic stalker and a lot more like your girlfriend. Suddenly, you begin to wonder what Natal could provide that you don't want that type of person knowing about. 

 Let's start with the body scanning. Maybe there's a chance that this technology will remain a little cartoonish, but not from what I'm seeing. The ultimate focus in some of the "scan" ideas is that there is a lot of detail that can be taken from an object, and that includes you. Granted, you're only going to give Natal what you want, but think twice before stepping into the house of a horny-Natal owner. At first, you'll think it's cool that you can be in the game, but that person then has a virtual doll of you. I admit, it would be very awesome to be able to beat the living crap out of someone you don't like very much in a game, but girls...beware. With this technology eventually making its way to computers, it won't matter if an application isn't released on the XBox. While this is great for virtual actors and the like, computer models generally take a lot of time and knowledge to make. Get rid of that skill, and the doors are open for anyone with Natal to have you dancing on a virtual stripper pole without your consent. That doesn't even begin to spell danger. 

 Already, adult games are out there that use virtual models as the actors. Natal promises to be detailed, so it is only a matter of accessing that model and plugging it into a different kind of environment. This is the reason that this technology could be very dangerous when it becomes available to computers, since all of the data that can be obtained from Natal can be outputted into a program that Natal wasn't meant for. 

 Webcams and digital cameras were infamous for being immediate capture devices, much like camcorders were back in the days before. It may sound like voyeurism, and it is, but what if Natal was left on in a room and set to scan anything and everything that walked in? What if you had an unprotected wireless network that happened to have Natal involved? The attacker doesn't just have a capture of you for a set period of time. They have a personal copy of you.

 This may sound pale in comparison, but censorship will once again become a key issue in gaming. Censoring text and pre-sets in games is one thing, and you can even mute a voice, but the first time your child walks into a game where someone flips him off, you're going to realize that there are certain things that won't be easily censored. Microsoft will have a huge no-tolerance policy of this, I'm sure, but that isn't going to stop anything. Games aren't pre-recorded, so proving that a player game your kid the bird is going to be near impossible. What about imagery, as well? The second that someone presents their junk as a pair of pants, you're going to realize what people can and will do for a laugh. 

 Natal has the potential to change everything. From how you play your games to living out fantasies, Natal should be able to provide that to you. You will be in awe the first time you step into the stadium, and never doubt the online community. That box may become a valuable part of your everyday life, capable of doing loads more than just playing games online. Yet, as with all technology, it depends on how it is used. It may not even be used to its full potential, and that's a shame. Hopefully, support drums up and this project takes off to be as revolutionary as it claims to be. Just pray that the right people are giving it support, and always realize what new technology could mean. Games are meant to be fun, not something to ruin your life, so be careful to understand what is possible when Natal is released. As with any new technology, the rules change, and you have to know what is possible or you'll just be a victim of it. 

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TGS: News more meaningful than the UN summit.

 While not completely true, if you're a gamer, you may have only noticed one story and a couple of "Obama said..." headlines. You've since forgotten about those and are still dwelling on the TGS. Normally, I would be as well, but this year didn't provide much in the way of badass announcements. It was a show of how each company is adapting to the direction their companies are going on, and Microsoft's major involvement in trying to breach Japan was definitely on display.

 First off, the price drop gave Sony the biggest boost in the console game. Around one million consoles just flew off shelves the second it was implemented, going around twice as fast as 360's were. As I said, this is a major jolt of energy to get back into the game, and with the holiday season on the way and a slew of A+ titles that appease the vast majority of gamers (CoD: MW2, Batman, Demon's Souls, Uncharted, and FFXIII, to name a few), you're going to see that number jump. Granted, Microsoft shares or will be sharing several of those titles, but when the price drop came out it was clear that if possible, gamers would prefer the PS3.

 The PSP is a completely different beast. The PSP Go is not being received all that well, mainly because they are taking a chance on a UMD-less device. The step is bold, and I commend Sony for taking it, but there are many things wrong with this. First, there is no UMD-to-memory transfer, so gamers who have a PSP with a good variety of games can't exactly trade-up.

 Second, the price is outrageous. At $250, I don't care what specs Sony is carrying in that thing This is a huge mistake. They are contending in the handheld market, I will give them that. 2 DS's for every PSP might sound like a right ass-kicking, and it is, but that number was never supposed to be close. They got it close, and I understand that the Go is a premiere product that is supposed to meet a certain image, but a PSP is a PSP. a redesign is nice, some extras would be nice, and the feeling of a steal of a product would have been nicer. That is $50 away from a PS3, $50 more than a PSP+game+movie+memory card bundle, and $50 more than an iPhone. This is after they got slammed for the PS3's price tag for years, and added to their middle finger to companies like GameStop that sell their products (granted, they do have it coming, but still), this isn't adding up well. Sony actually gets a following on their handheld, and they release the Go. It's like wetting the bed after trying to convince your girlfriend that you're a mature man.

 Then there's Project Natal. Oh Project Natal, do you have problems. Not in the way that it works, because everyone seems to agree that it is the real deal. It's the buzz. The buzz is bad. Peter Molyneux is propping up the project more and more everyday, which is a VERY bad sign. Second, this little tidbit from IGN about the No More Heroes franchise tells me that there are companies out there completely unconvinced that the motion control phase will become a legitimate scheme fr anyone but Nintendo. Sony's own "magic wand" is getting more into the game, but its release list is lacking in punch, and the majority of good titles are remakes with waggle, which is a mixed blessing. It worked for Nintendo, but it was also a blatant gimmick. Overall, Project Natal is still poised to make a splash, but there's a distinct lack of real announced support for the concept. If the guy who just said that the Wii is reaching its limit for his franchise isn't at least considering Natal during interviews, then either Nintendo is lining more pockets than we'd like to admit, or Microsoft isn't getting the third parties on-board in the right way.

 My personal belief is that despite what the signs point to as far as third party support, the project is legit and that despite Natal-patching for older games being unfeasible, the year-plus that developers will have to get games going will get shown off next year at E3, Blizzcon, and TGS.

 More on the potential of Project Natal later, both the good and the scary.

 Next up is the Gears of War 3 announcement, or lack of, and it doesn't bother me. You should be thankful, too. The graphics heavy shooter made a big splash, jumping right in with the FPS big-shots, but I like the decision to wait a bit for something a little better to come along. What, you actually wanted the series to get overexposed, under-upgraded, and repetitive in the span of a few years?

 Finally, the lack of anything except for a Wii price drop lately is just scary for Nintendo fans.

 Overall, the good games were put on a shiny pedestal and everything else was sort of blurry. Everything that was supposed to be good in the first place stepped up and flaunted it well, but except for the PSP offerings, the TGS didn't offer up anything new.

 Now, onto Natal, and you better read, because this is a huge culture changer. Digg It Stumble it ! Reddit

Laying the...something...down....holy crap, it's the 90's again...

Not really a title. I cede that point.

It's been another rental spree for me, and I decided to go with the education route this time. That and Ninja Gaiden Sigma, but that's a different kind of education. Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 marked the first time I've played a wrestling game in years, and I had a reason for taking that break. First, ever since WCW was acquired, the idea department took a nosedive. I was never a fan for much more than the humor and in-jokes me and my drunk college friends would make over it. In reality, it was much like an MST3K riff, only the characters were actually entertaining. It got bad, the jokes weren't funny anymore, and as far as the games went, nothing was going to improve anytime soon as far as what could be done in a wrestling game.

Give them credit, it took years to get the wrestling control scheme down, but THQ broke the dial-a-combo norm and made its 3D offerings accessible, and it went in that direction with a slick presentation to give basement dwellers more of a show-like experience. It was almost like an actual wrestling event when you would force your opponent to sit through your wrestler's introduction for no reason other than to piss them off.

I got turned off when the sequels were scrapped and were replaced with the sports system of yearly updates. This didn't bother me in itself, but it was a kick in the head to me. There was no point in wasting my time over any of these games until you could actually do what you wanted to do. Sure, steps were being taken, but there was no way to create your own pyrotechnics, entrance music, pose, finishers, or realistic characters. They tried hard, but with sports games in particular, ANY rigidity, flatness of motion, or lack of photorealism get noticed in a hurry. I just couldn't bother to waste my time until it all came together.

Hence, 2009. I look, occasionally, at the used game bin to guage my interest in trying a wrestling game out, but today I couldn't pass. I picked it up, and before long I was in a diva-vs-diva match with a friend, which is the norm for us when testing out games with a roster. We want to know several things, and the diva battle tells a lot.

First, boob physics. This implies that there are physics in the game, or boobs would not fly. We noticed no attention getting bouncing, but I honestly can't remember so I'll have to check again. Either way, the test is always to find out just how badass the females are created in a rostered game and how good the graphics are. I couldn't help feel as if they were only mildly improved from the versions I played easily seven games ago. Sure, it's flashier. Sure, it has a better resolution. That didn't translate into a better flow. Contact was still sketchy most of the time, some moves looked plain stupid, and some animations made the characters look like they were made of wood.

Which got me right from the start: This hasn't improved much. In the age of 1080p graphics, full body scans, and dedicated world-physics, this game still played the same way it did on the PSX. Sidestep the main problems all you want by making everything else look good, but the absolute basics are still troubling to watch. At times, if everything was times perfect so that moves flowed as good as they could, and force the camera to cut to a different view at the right moment, and you could convince yourself that the game might be looking close to a broadcast, but that's as close as you'll get. The crowds look terrible and some characters look like they are deformed in glaring ways, and no character has as much personality outside of the actual moves. Even when moves get pulled off, there's clipping issues everywhere and there's no sense of weight. I've often read the interviews to see what they try to improve each year, and weight keeps coming up but is never taken care of. Of course only a couple of people can actually pick up Mark Henry. That's obvious. But when Mark Henry slams into you like a freight train, I expect to feel the impact instead of see canned animations.

This is a series that desperately needs a physics engine before it can be legitimately awesome. I know developers (especially in the sports genre) cash it in each year for monetary reasons, but this is too obvious. Yes, I can do almost everything I wanted to, but I thought that things like graphics and physics were a given. I expected way more progress, and that is why after I return this game, I won't try the series again for a very long time. I want that realism there, because I know it's possible. If they are setting a pace for ten years down the line, then I'll wait, but any time spent in between is just a huge waste of time if this is what we can expect.

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Buzzkill

I hate buzzwords. Sometimes, it's appropriate to have one so that people can relate to what's going on, but a recent advertisement for IBM made me think that the entire buzzword gimmick is going down the tubes in a hurry.

Checking ESPN.com as I always do at least every other day, I stumbled across an IBM ad regarding cloud computing. Knowing what "the cloud" is and what it does, I stared blankly at the ad trying to figure out who the hell made this advertisement. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones who gets the word and would rather see it in a plausible sentence, but I found the ad to be a whole lot of wasted air.

Coming from a company like IBM, you would expect that there would be something concrete, but I'm starting to wonder if any of their ads have made much sense except for the Thinkpads, which I'll admit sounded pretty cool back then. The language of the ad I saw today was complete business bullshit. It made very little sense to someone with little knowledge about what cloud computing is, and it made me realize how certain companies are doomed to failure when they start to overestimate their clientèle.

IBM is a massive company, don't get me wrong; it's one of the biggest entities in the world. Yet, I'm starting to understand why McDonalds, Coke, and Google can remain strong and even grow in this economy. They cater to...well, everyone. It either looks tasty or looks like it makes sense. The entire idea behind cloud computing is comparable to the Internet. Things exist away from your computer in a "cloud" of information that anyone with access to the "cloud" can get to and modify. Basically, glorified remote access of files and applications. Big whoop. Google explained their "internet OS" so much better than this advertisement catered to, and I'll have to quote Drew Clark of IBM on this, "startups".

Of course, maybe he's talking about people with millions of dollars to fling around when starting a company, but I'd imagine that a "startup" would be the regular shrimps with the drive and idea, but with a lack of knowledge about this whole "cloud" business. I saw squiggly lines in the ads that was supposed to represent the "cloud", but that's the closest to an explanation as I got. Are they trying to keep this info a secret?

Well, good news for IBM is that a lot of their older technobabble loving clients will fling their millions in the company's direction, but billions will be thrown at Google and similar services when the younger generation of "startups" comes around. That's just the way things go. Remember how the internet started? It started with web browsers and IRC chats. People began to integrate ideas into those basic programs, and you had companies like AOL come around to make it into a nice, neat, marketable package. The older crowd loved it because it made complicated things readily available and simple to use without understanding the how. The younger generation...well, they developed the rest of the internet, killing off AOL by recreating everything into portable and free applications.

I'm not saying that IBM is going to fail, but I am saying that while their idea is timely, this ad is just not marketed correctly. It was one of those buzzword ads that seemed to be created solely to confuse and obfuscate something that's plain and simple. When you start making something simple sound complicated to impress businessmen, and when you sound obvious about doing it, you're really not putting a good reputation out there to the "startups".

This makes me wonder where our language of business is headed. Sure, you should sound proper when you go about things, but technology is a pretty complicated beast. I often have to dumb down complicated technology ideas when talking to other people, not because I'm trying to dumb it down because I think they are idiots, but technology is easier to talk about when you can simplify it. No one wants to talk IP addresses when getting a concept across to someone else, unless it's a direct colleague. People want to hear what things do first. Some people say, "cool", and leave it at that. Other people ask how, and then you go from there. This creates a different language in the workplace, and with computers officially being ingrained in everyday life, the language of business changes as well. People often comment about how the English language will one day be butchered by text shortcuts, and while that may be a leap, it is true that language is changing.

When it comes down to it, the ad I saw felt shiny, but old fashioned. Google has proven that a successful company can come with a laidback approach. Several companies are shifting their nature towards something less...bullshit. Job hunt advisors are already denouncing the resume banter that used to be the only way you could impress an employer. They literally tell you not to sound like a pompous wordy asshole and to go with straightforward "what it IS" talk. They aren't saying to go slang, but clearly the language of business has shifted to a more relaxed and sensible approach.

Buzzwords are people's way of reinventing bullshit. Plain and simple. Just like "waste disposal engineer" translates into garbageman, buzzwords are equally poisonous.

"I was involved with Web 2.0 development in my last company. While assisting with the switch to high-definition content, I implemented social-network features to our site as well as analyzing market configurations to meet our revenue projections."

Translation:

I re-uploaded a video to YouTube, enabled comments, and signed up for AdSense.

See where this is going? Replace three big important sounding words that would have worked in the 90's with an equally useless modern buzzword, and we've come full circle.

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Smithers! License that song!

Rock Band: Beatles and Guitar Hero 5 are two games I will just never play. I tried the first Guitar Hero for one round and decided that I was above it. There's nothing interesting or fun about it for me, and while that's not a sentiment millions of other gamers will share, you'll still never hear me talk about them much. There is the occasion when a really good song slips into these games, and when Trogdor was included in Guitar Hero 2, I almost pissed myself in glee. Yet, the tracks keep coming in sequels, expansions, and DLC's, and it's hard to see the genre of rhythm games dying out in the immediate future.

This is when the friendly competition between gaming and movies swings violently towards the former. Games have a built in solution to every licensing problem known to man. I don't know the explicit details, but basically for every game/expansion/DLC sold, the artists involved get their cut. It's a nice (and expensive for enthusiasts) a la carte system that only exists on one platform, rather than movies and TV. Those are released with a song licensed for use in that medium, then for a companion soundtrack, and then a third time for home video release, and maybe even a fourth if it is a movie being aired on TV.

The idea of licensing has become more complicated recently, especially when you add in the switch to digital media. If you take a look at certain DVD or Blu-Ray TV box sets, you can sometimes see a disclaimer on the back of the box saying that "Music in differs from broadcast version." Games have generally been able to dodge this issue for the most part, because the music in-game usually stays there and doesn't go anywhere else. Down the line, this could be a problem. Take Burnout 3, for example. If the business model hadn't changed to fit the digital age, then if this game were re-released in, say, 2020, then the license for the music would have to be renewed. Newer, cheaper music from unknown bands might be available, changing the purity of the original game experience. This is what happens on home movie releases routinely.

However, I thought about the movie Highlander today. I can only imagine that there was a lot less BS involved to get Queen on board for the soundtrack back then, and these days I often wonder if we'll ever see such an experiment happen again, at least in the movies.

Games, however, are an entirely different beast. We've seen a few collaborations so far; take Halo 2's contribution from Incubus, for example. Yet, there hasn't been a band except in those rhythm games that have had a soundtrack entirely by one artist. Games are evolving, no doubt, and I think that we will see the Queen/Highlander experiment get at least one shot on a console. Take Muse, for example. Listen to enough of their tracks, and the comparison to Queen is just sitting there waiting to be realized. Not that they are equals. They could be someday, but for now, the music has that sound of influence. With their already eclectic range that translates well into a game that must constantly shift music intensity with the pace changes in a plot, a band like Muse translates perfectly. Get a Highlander game into development that promises to be good, and the inspired addition of a group like Muse could really push the game over the top in the originality department.

That would be on my wish list for games I'd like to see made, but something similar is bound to happen one of these days. Band + game is about as simple an equation as you can get, and with the foundations already laid out for digital releases of games, the gaming industry is pre-built to avoid the problems the movie industry has with music licensing. You're seeing it in the current rhythm games now, and it's only going to take a band and a development house to hook up with an idea for you to see a single-band soundtrack soon.

Also, my bias is on Highlander because I'd much rather see Highlander become a good game than to have another bad movie in its vault. Seriously, the guy who directed the last two Fast and the Furious movies is going to be directing the reboot, most likely ruining any chances that Highlander will return to glory...ever.

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Blockbuster movies, now on your console

Being a PS3 owner, I should have played the original Uncharted by now. I didn't until yesterday. To me, it didn't look incredibly....different. A few people threw their opinions at me when it first came out, and watching 5-10 minutes of gameplay footage didn't leave me impressed. At the time, it was just another Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones knockoff, albeit a very pretty one.

What spurred on this investigation was the trailer for Uncharted 2. I wasn't interested in the least, but heap enough praise on a game that isn't released yet and you start to bark up Halo territory. When you get near that, it deserved a look to make sure it's worth the hype. Bash me now, but Halo never has been worth the hype. In a nutshell, Halo is the Goldeneye everybody and their mother owns, making it as accessible as possible to the multiplayer crowd. There's nothing particularly wrong with it as an engine, but I happen to find it bland, repetitive, monotonous, and the opposite of compelling. Even the "epic" story seemed watered down and lost somewhere. It's my personal taste, sure, but the whole idea of recharging health and a deathmatch that just isn't very intense to me makes it something I stay away from.

The trailer wowed me, and I was sold on Uncharted 2 being a very impressive piece of eye candy, and it spurned me to plop down some cash for the pre-order. Of course, that included a multiplayer demo, so I finally got some hands-on experience with the engine rather than just looking at it. The demo is a lot of fun, and the modes available are definitely worth wasting some time on. Trouble is, everybody else knew their way around the first game, so I picked that up for some practice.

As far as entertaining, Uncharted definitely ranks up there as a game that's fun to play and the production values are very high. As you've probably heard, this is the equivalent of a good Hollywood blockbuster and one of the few games out there that really convinces you that movies are going to have to directly compete with games someday soon. When I saw StarFox 64 for the first time, I knew that it was entirely possible that with a good engine, it would be far cheaper and maybe even more impressive to just slap a movie module into a game. While we're just dealing with machinima right now, eventually somebody is going to take their scripting/voice skills into an actual game where you do nothing but watch things play out. Instead of building a movie set, the battlefields will play out within your game. It will happen, trust me.

Uncharted has this going for it, which is nice, and thankfully the guys at Naughty Dog created a good cast of characters to go with the story. Yet, my impressions still remain as true as when I first saw the game. True, the game is damned pretty and the engine/controls are amazing, but I felt like something was missing. There just wasn't enough of a game there for me. I do love this game, I really do, and the game isn't necessarily a movie with real-time events scattered throughout. It just feels like it's getting too close to that territory, which is a real shame because they have a very good game system on their hands.

With Uncharted 2, I'm hearing that the game will approach 10 hours of gameplay and contain a good multiplayer inspired a bit by the leveling system Call of Duty uses. I can't really complain about the playtime, because stretching a good narrative out can be suicidal for a developer looking for credit in the story department. I still feel like something is missing, though.

Sitting on that thought, my decision was that Uncharted brought nothing new to the table, and instead brought many good game elements together in a slick package. That's excellent, and I can't argue with the praise. Yet, I've played Tomb Raider before. I've played Indiana Jones. I've played Prince of Persia. Bringing them all together is wonderful, but the impression I got from many of the gamers around me was that the game was not to be missed because it was so unique. It is, and it isn't. It's your standard "go in this direction, look for hidden things to pick up for your collection, watch this scene, and kill the 20 guys trying to jump you when you reach a checkpoint" game. There is nothing new to that formula. It may be one of the best available, but I'm hoping that Naughty Dog figures out what they have on their hands one day. It may not be the movie-like game you're used to, but here's for hoping for an Uncharted game that will allow you to spend more time exploring and traversing some immense locations.

That said, don't think twice about picking it up. It's the same thing you've always done before in your treasure-hunting games, but it's arguably the most entertaining series of the genre out there.

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The mentally handicapped in action.

I've learned to keep MTV turned off for pretty much the whole of the last decade. Not that it was good before that, but I really didn't know any better. The second I did, out it went. Yet, I couldn't help but notice that Kanye West was making an ass out of himself again, so I figured that I would hotlink a wonderful Cracked post entitled "What if Kanye West Is Retarded?"

So, on the gaming side of things, more of the same behavior took place.

As you may well be aware, Sega announced their new 2-D, HD, revitalized Sonic game due out in the near future. Without anything to go on, we can only presume that this will be the massive success that Sega has wholly ignored over the past decade and beyond, or the utter failure that they have come to personify when it comes to ruining prized IPs.

This interview lets me believe that the latter is more likely. In essence, the guy's job is PR, and I say "the guy" because he's a no-name that will remain so if he continues to spout off this nonsense during interviews. Read it. It honestly sounds as if he finds nothing glaringly wrong with any of the recent Sonic games. Gamespot, not known for gripping journalism, was basically bashing the guy and letting him wade through his own shit. Look, it's one thing to come out and say that you really screwed up the last decade of Sonic games. That, we could understand, provided there was a good game following that statement up.

What we, the community, are getting instead is a colorful explanation about why we should love the culture of Sonic and his fifty useless, not nearly as cute as Sega would imagine, sidekicks. No employee seems to want to admit their screw ups, and that's bad news. The closest admittion of guilt was when one of their designers said that in order to make the 3-D Sonic title that everybody wants, they would have to code excessive miles of real estate into the game. It was at that point I realized that Sega should have the Sonic IP taken away from them like a child would be taken from a terrible parent, and instead given to Criterion games.

It only makes sense. They code miles of detailed tracks into their games. They built freakin' Paradise City. All the Sonic franchise has ever needed was colorful blocks to run on, so I'm calling bullshit on that "designer" for his inability to do, well, work.

We'll see how this turns out. Personally, I'm hoping for more real estate on the screen with the upgrade to HD, but somehow I'm guessing that the common sense gene isn't so common in Sega. I just don't have faith anymore.

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Too many ways to swing.

This is quite possibly the most disturbing piece of news I've heard all month.

Yes, this goes way beyond the console war heating up, though if you want my opinion, it's going to be an "I told you so."

Screw it, I'll go there anyway.

Since Blogger.com has been down for a bit and never really reliable when I feel compelled to post, I've missed a few key events going on in the world of gaming that I should've been around to comment about.

The first would be Dissidia's release, and that's a review that can be gulped down pretty quickly, though I imagine fanboys will find it hard to swallow. The system is fundamentally perfect, and when sitting side by side with Soul Calibur IV's idea of a fighting-RPG, we may yet see the convergence of these two styles in instant-classic manner. This game isn't it, however. While I'm led to believe that the givings get better later on (I haven't finished it yet), there's something lacking in the whole mesh of things. It's a terrific fanboy title if you're a fanboy of the poster child of each series, but quite honestly, each installment left me with a fighter I much rather would have taken into a fight. Trouble is that Cloud, Squall, Tidus, Warrior of Light, yata yata are simply evolutions of the same character, and even the completely excellent characters Terra and Cecil were hampered by the fact that they were the lone representative of their games. Call me strange, but I would have been entertained much more by a Red Mage, Sabin, that pirate lady from the fifth game that I never remember, Tifa, Auron, and....well, OK, Squall can stay.

On the whole, Dissidia offers a lot to cover up what winds up being an "alternate between square and circle until it's dead" experience. Inspired, yes. Fun, for the most part. Perfect, hell no. Not a waste of money, though, but if you hate the art-direction Square has taken these days, you will absolutely despise this game.

As for the price drop, Sony may have just saved this gen for themselves. While there are constant rumors suggesting that the next generation of consoles are already out, I can pretty much say that with the way things are going, you will do well to ignore these rumors. The next gen is going to be a revision of the current gen and nothing more, so what Sony does now will remain important for another 5 years.

What Sony has done, as much as we all hate it, is to succeed in flaunting a technelogical behemoth in front of gamers for years now. No, there are no games, but even your Fourth Reich Microsoft neighbor will eventually let it out that he/she would get one if they could afford it without giving up an organ to the black market. Letting the price drop go before fall officially got in gear reeks of desperation, as most companies reserve those rights until it's "business acceptable" during the holiday season.

Yes, this is desperation. Yes, Sony knows it is failing despite having the superior console. Yet, releasing this before the holiday season even gets considered puts them in a seriously good position. Consoles are now flying off the shelves, comparatively, though I would suggest that you ignore the PS3 Slim and get yourself a monolith while you still can. The first gen is infinitely more moddable than the later ones end up being, and Sony has even removed Linux support for the Slim. This means that a large number of people can get the console, simmer on the 2-3 games they already wanted, spread the good word, and reap in the holiday deals. What Sony has to be counting on at this point is for Final Fantasy XIII to be damn good, because without that, this great strategy may go south in a hurry. It's sad, but it's the truth. Sony won't lose the gen, but their odds of "winning" rests solely on the success of the next Final Fantasy. Without it, it is business as usual with steady game sales and nothing special. With it comes a million new PS3 owners in an instant, and the third parties will finally take risks with the new install base.

Ah, such is the bane of ranting. I'm already several paragraphs from the point.

This SLI thing is getting out of hand. SLI seemed like a good idea at first. Take a good video card and pair it up with another to get better results. This is a great idea for enthusiasts, but even better for the average gamer. Buying a card that's adaquate, but not too expensive, for the must-have game of the season happens all the time. A year later, or even a few months down the line, that card might be massively discounted and the gamer can spend fractionally less to keep themselves in the game for the next series of games they may want.

3-way SLI was dumb, but I could see "hot-rodders" doing it. 4-way has gone beyond my common sense boundary. It is time to say that enough is enough. This isn't even viable unless you have way too much money or are supercomputing in some way, and even then, there are more attractive options. Buying 4 GeForce 8800's, even now, could still net you a top of the line card with more features and just as much power. Buying 4 brand new cards gets you...nothing. Unless you're playing games in the future, this isn't even a logical option. What good will 4 cards get you unless you're playing Crysis, a game universally renowned for being the most unpractical game to run in the history of gaming?

If you have a million dollars to flush down the toilet on a whim, this may be the idea for you, but it is literally a flush. There is no reason to have this option. You not only have to buy the motherboard that can run this option, but then you have to get the cards. Most people, even enthusiasts, are still going to need a case big enough to house all of this, not to mention the matching power supply. The plus-side is something I simply cannot see.

While I can appreciate humanity for trying to do something with technology just because it can, this "+1" business is getting a little on the loony side. Video cards may still not be extinct just yet, but they will be soon enough. That is where technology will advance in computing, not this useless compensating.

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