The Dark Darkness of Alien Vs. Predator’s Perpetual Night [Clips]

Aliens Vs. Predators is a dark game. I’m not just talking about the ability to rip off someone’s head, spine still attached. The game’s settings are all inside buildings with few lights, at night, in the jungle. So, you know, dark. That’s great for setting the mood, but not so great for seeing just what the hell is going on. In this video I give you a quick tour of the game’s overwhelming night. Keep in mind that while the Predator has those spiffy visor views (many of which don’t show up until a good chunk into play), and Aliens have pheromone tracking, your marine is left stumbling through levels with a cereal-box flashlight.

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The Dark Darkness of Alien Vs. Predator’s Perpetual Night [Clips]

Married By Master Chief, One Year Later [Halo]

A year ago, I attended a Halo wedding. It was in Orlando. The bride entered the a live rendition of the Halo 3 menu music. A man dressed as Master Chief married bride and groom. Here’s what happened next. A year past their wedding, Desirai Labrada and John Henry have become an inspiration to the surprising number of other couples who have met playing Halo. They have had their experience playing their favorite game online changed in ways they didn’t expect. And they managed to squeeze into their honeymoon a visit to the house that built Halo, Bungie Studios. “I never get tired of telling the story,” Desirai Labrada told me as I spoke to her and her husband John Henry by phone yesterday to see how the couple was doing. “The story” is how Labrada and Henry fell in love playing Halo 2 over Xbox Live and were married on January 17, 2009 in a ceremony that was so Halo that every guest received a purple wedding candle in the shape of, you know, a Halo plasma grenade. The wedding I witnessed last year had gone off with nary a hitch. Back then, I was working for MTV and managed to feature the nuptials in a segment that aired on the channel . It was a semi-public event held as part of Otronicon, an annual technology festival run by Full Sail University at the Orlando Science Center. Desirai had hatched the idea to hold it there as part of the couple’s savvy efforts to get their wedding financed by donations from local companies interested in gaining some publicity. Before the wedding, Desirai and John had briefed most of the family and friends who would be attending as to what a Halo wedding was going to be like. Afterward, Desirai said, “you would have expected more ‘What the hell just happened?’” But people were universally excited the couple now says. Even mom and grandma were cool with it. MTV was the biggest outlet to feature John and Desirai, but the couple also showed up in some radio interviews and magazine articles. They had been running a website called A Match Made In Halo and began hearing from couples — many couples — who were inspired by the ceremony because they too had met while playing Halo. John and Desirai estimate that they’ve heard from about 50 couples who met while playing Bungie’s game. Laughed Desirai: “I don’t think Bungie realizes how good at matchmaking they really are.” Having a Halo wedding doesn’t exactly make you world famous but you do become more popular. You get e-mails at two in the morning from people who saw you on TV. You get spotted by a person or two at a gaming expos. The forum where you come closest to feeling like a celebrity is Xbox Live. After the wedding, Xbox Live friend requests started flowing in. “In the beginning we were accepting a lot of friend requests,” John said. “But then it got weird.” John recalled receiving an Xbox friend request from a stranger and a swift follow-up slamming him for not accepting it. “He sent me the most vulgar and insulting [message] I’d ever heard,” John remembered. The guy then apologized. John declined the friend request. It wasn’t just the Halo wedding that made John and Desirai popular people to bother while playing Halo. It was the friends the wedding helped them make. They started networking with people in the Halo fan community and participating in charities. As a wedding gift, Bungie had sent them the then-rare Recon armor to use in Halo multiplayer. And then the thing happened that really drew the requests: John and Desirai added a Bungie employee to their friends list. The friend requests flowed on. Desirai said she never got tired of telling that Halo wedding story, but there is something she grew weary of. “I got tired of not being able to play Halo in peace,” she said. “It was like every time we signed on we got 10 requests to jump in a different room. I’d say, ‘Hey, I’m playing with friends.’ But they don’t listen.” John and Desirai started playing Halo with their profiles hidden to compensate. They started hiding their friends list from other people. The attention wasn’t all annoying. John’s Gamertag would get recognized while he was in a matchmaking setup room. Suddenly people would attach their mics, he recalled. “People would say ‘Oh my god, it’s that guy,” he recalled.” Folks would notice John and Desirai’s Recon armor and want to know how they got it. Desirai would sometimes have fun explaining that. “I used to get a kick out of saying, ‘I was married by Master Chief,” she said, chuckling. “Every now and then that would totally piss the people off and they would say, ‘If you’re not going to really say…” In late summer they finally decided to go on a honeymoon. They went to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. They met Major Nelson and folks working at Microsoft’s internal Halo company, 343 Industries. They also got to visit Bungie Studios’ lobby where they ran into me, right after the cops came . They got Halo 3: ODST but they lost a little bit of their enthusiasm for playing online. By the release of ODST, everyone they ran into online seemed to have that once-rare Recon armor and John and Desirai believe that changed the mood of play. “Now that everyone can have it, it almost feels like everyone thinks they’re amazing,” Desirai said. “It almost seems like everyone has an attitude.” Desirai dropped her play time a lot. John still goes at it but said that he too feels like the tone among the people playing the game feels more negative. Regardless, they are both extremely excited for the next game in the series, Halo Reach. “I can’t wait for it,” John said. Desirai now works at Full Sail University, hoping to put together a graphic design company as well. John is taking classes there, learning web development and intending to work with Desirai on her business. They play Halo together on their home TV, split-screen, Desirai always on the top half. They say marriage hasn’t really changed the way they play Halo. His Halo 3 skill level is 43; she’s in the 30s. They still have a knack for avenging each other’s Spartan deaths. If John is on another team in the game and gets Desirai with a good move she will sometimes chide him: “Seriously did you just do that to your wife?” But she’s being playful. They recently had a chance for a special moment when Desirai was out of town and they were back in that mode they were in when they met playing Halo 2 online, tethered by their headsets and Xbox Live. She was in New York, visiting friends. He was home in Florida. “Just hearing John’s voice over the Xbox just mad me gaga all over again,” Desirai said. Where does a Halo couple go from here? Desirai hopes that she and John will be able to figure out cool Halo-themed anniversary gifts going forward. For their first, last month, they had this Halo-style cake, with the initials for their gamertags. And in the next two months, for old time’s sake, they’ll get back on Halo 2. Microsoft is shutting down Xbox Live for that game by April. A couple that met through Xbox Live, playing Halo 2, has got to commemorate that. And beyond? Well, need any Halo wedding tips?

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Married By Master Chief, One Year Later [Halo]

Married By Master Chief, One Year Later [Halo]

A year ago, I attended a Halo wedding. It was in Orlando. The bride entered the a live rendition of the Halo 3 menu music. A man dressed as Master Chief married bride and groom. Here’s what happened next. A year past their wedding, Desirai Labrada and John Henry have become an inspiration to the surprising number of other couples who have met playing Halo. They have had their experience playing their favorite game online changed in ways they didn’t expect. And they managed to squeeze into their honeymoon a visit to the house that built Halo, Bungie Studios. “I never get tired of telling the story,” Desirai Labrada told me as I spoke to her and her husband John Henry by phone yesterday to see how the couple was doing. “The story” is how Labrada and Henry fell in love playing Halo 2 over Xbox Live and were married on January 17, 2009 in a ceremony that was so Halo that every guest received a purple wedding candle in the shape of, you know, a Halo plasma grenade. The wedding I witnessed last year had gone off with nary a hitch. Back then, I was working for MTV and managed to feature the nuptials in a segment that aired on the channel . It was a semi-public event held as part of Otronicon, an annual technology festival run by Full Sail University at the Orlando Science Center. Desirai had hatched the idea to hold it there as part of the couple’s savvy efforts to get their wedding financed by donations from local companies interested in gaining some publicity. Before the wedding, Desirai and John had briefed most of the family and friends who would be attending as to what a Halo wedding was going to be like. Afterward, Desirai said, “you would have expected more ‘What the hell just happened?’” But people were universally excited the couple now says. Even mom and grandma were cool with it. MTV was the biggest outlet to feature John and Desirai, but the couple also showed up in some radio interviews and magazine articles. They had been running a website called A Match Made In Halo and began hearing from couples — many couples — who were inspired by the ceremony because they too had met while playing Halo. John and Desirai estimate that they’ve heard from about 50 couples who met while playing Bungie’s game. Laughed Desirai: “I don’t think Bungie realizes how good at matchmaking they really are.” Having a Halo wedding doesn’t exactly make you world famous but you do become more popular. You get e-mails at two in the morning from people who saw you on TV. You get spotted by a person or two at a gaming expos. The forum where you come closest to feeling like a celebrity is Xbox Live. After the wedding, Xbox Live friend requests started flowing in. “In the beginning we were accepting a lot of friend requests,” John said. “But then it got weird.” John recalled receiving an Xbox friend request from a stranger and a swift follow-up slamming him for not accepting it. “He sent me the most vulgar and insulting [message] I’d ever heard,” John remembered. The guy then apologized. John declined the friend request. It wasn’t just the Halo wedding that made John and Desirai popular people to bother while playing Halo. It was the friends the wedding helped them make. They started networking with people in the Halo fan community and participating in charities. As a wedding gift, Bungie had sent them the then-rare Recon armor to use in Halo multiplayer. And then the thing happened that really drew the requests: John and Desirai added a Bungie employee to their friends list. The friend requests flowed on. Desirai said she never got tired of telling that Halo wedding story, but there is something she grew weary of. “I got tired of not being able to play Halo in peace,” she said. “It was like every time we signed on we got 10 requests to jump in a different room. I’d say, ‘Hey, I’m playing with friends.’ But they don’t listen.” John and Desirai started playing Halo with their profiles hidden to compensate. They started hiding their friends list from other people. The attention wasn’t all annoying. John’s Gamertag would get recognized while he was in a matchmaking setup room. Suddenly people would attach their mics, he recalled. “People would say ‘Oh my god, it’s that guy,” he recalled.” Folks would notice John and Desirai’s Recon armor and want to know how they got it. Desirai would sometimes have fun explaining that. “I used to get a kick out of saying, ‘I was married by Master Chief,” she said, chuckling. “Every now and then that would totally piss the people off and they would say, ‘If you’re not going to really say…” In late summer they finally decided to go on a honeymoon. They went to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. They met Major Nelson and folks working at Microsoft’s internal Halo company, 343 Industries. They also got to visit Bungie Studios’ lobby where they ran into me, right after the cops came . They got Halo 3: ODST but they lost a little bit of their enthusiasm for playing online. By the release of ODST, everyone they ran into online seemed to have that once-rare Recon armor and John and Desirai believe that changed the mood of play. “Now that everyone can have it, it almost feels like everyone thinks they’re amazing,” Desirai said. “It almost seems like everyone has an attitude.” Desirai dropped her play time a lot. John still goes at it but said that he too feels like the tone among the people playing the game feels more negative. Regardless, they are both extremely excited for the next game in the series, Halo Reach. “I can’t wait for it,” John said. Desirai now works at Full Sail University, hoping to put together a graphic design company as well. John is taking classes there, learning web development and intending to work with Desirai on her business. They play Halo together on their home TV, split-screen, Desirai always on the top half. They say marriage hasn’t really changed the way they play Halo. His Halo 3 skill level is 43; she’s in the 30s. They still have a knack for avenging each other’s Spartan deaths. If John is on another team in the game and gets Desirai with a good move she will sometimes chide him: “Seriously did you just do that to your wife?” But she’s being playful. They recently had a chance for a special moment when Desirai was out of town and they were back in that mode they were in when they met playing Halo 2 online, tethered by their headsets and Xbox Live. She was in New York, visiting friends. He was home in Florida. “Just hearing John’s voice over the Xbox just mad me gaga all over again,” Desirai said. Where does a Halo couple go from here? Desirai hopes that she and John will be able to figure out cool Halo-themed anniversary gifts going forward. For their first, last month, they had this Halo-style cake, with the initials for their gamertags. And in the next two months, for old time’s sake, they’ll get back on Halo 2. Microsoft is shutting down Xbox Live for that game by April. A couple that met through Xbox Live, playing Halo 2, has got to commemorate that. And beyond? Well, need any Halo wedding tips?

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Married By Master Chief, One Year Later [Halo]

Delays Aren’t Necessarily Bad, Yo [Note]

To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: Recovering From CES… AVN Busy night! Gran Turismo 5 is delayed. I know delays suck, but honestly, I’d rather have a game delayed that it released half-baked. Not everything can be fixed with a patch. If a game is not out, I can’t play it. The excitement remains. But if it’s out and totally broken, then the mood is lost forever. What you missed last night Gran Turismo 5 Delayed, New Release Date: TBA Netflix Officially Coming To The Nintendo Wii EA Sports Second Guessing Tiger Woods? Interview: There Is Enough Discarded Final Fantasy XIII To Make Another Game Nintendo Trademarks Wii Relax In The U.S. Too

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Delays Aren’t Necessarily Bad, Yo [Note]

BioShock 2 Preview: Something Bad Is About To Happen [Preview]

Two levels deeper into BioShock 2 and unwilling to spoil any of the major events in the game, I will instead share a feeling I’ve gotten from a preview of next month’s sequel from 2K Games : Bad things are coming. Previews hitting the Internet today, including this one, are being published based on the final two of levels of what is likely the final preview version of BioShock 2 to be released to the press. The game, a return to the failed undersea Utopia of Rapture is set, in its single-player mode, a decade after its 2007 hit predecessor. The game was delayed from its fall release and is now set to come out for early February. As of today, publisher 2K Games, which supplied the preview disc is allowing me to write about the Pauper’s Drop and Siren Alley. Unwilling as I am to spoil events in the game I’m left to describe technology, gameplay features and mood of this new BioShock that puts you in the drill-hand diving suit of a mysterious early-prototype Big Daddy with mysteries abounding as to who you are, how a woman named Sofia Lamb rose to power in the wake of the fall of Rapture and what the fate of this place at the bottom of the Atlantic will be. Of the first, technology, my December write-up of the preview build’s first three levels should suffice. The game looks quite good, runs smoothly, and only suffers, in its incomplete preview form, from the delayed loading of some textures, which can make detailed areas of the game world — a sign on a wall, for example — look a little blurry before they fully load in. Of the gameplay features, the main one not addressed in my December piece is the introduction, in Pauper’s Drop, of an upgraded research camera system. The first game allowed players to snap still images of enemies and rewarded well-framed shots with points that accrued and unlocked new player powers or enhanced abilities against the type of enemy photographed. BioShock 2’s camera shoots video, sort of. If the player selects the camera option, points at an enemy and pulls the trigger to activate it, the enemy glows gold and a ticker on the bottom left corner of the screen begins to roll up a count of numbers. Those numbers roll faster if you engage the enemy in combat and kill it well. After the kill, the tally is graded (Did you get a C? An A?) and the numbers are added to the research total, advancing progress toward the next of four unlockables for each enemy. Those unlocked features, as with the first game, are anything from new powers to new player potency against the filmed enemy. The video system is like the new game’s system for protecting a Little Sister while she’s harvesting Adam life energy (I wrote that in the last single-player preview). These are well-designed additions and alterations to playing a BioShock game. They incentivize players to do the things the first game made possible: Fighting0 strategically without fear of being aggressive in the process. What was largely an optional style in the first games isn’t quite required but certainly more amply rewarded in this sequel. Technology, further plot details and gameplay aside, what struck me most about the new levels I played was the mood. An early signal, seen in one of the game’s first levels, is that this game does not allow backtracking to previous levels. The player takes a train through Rapture to each new level and is warned each time, without much elegance or narrative justification, that a return visit will not be an option. The elimination of the option to backtrack seeds foreboding. Forging ahead offers many of the comforts of a BioShock: The reassurance of radio chatter from supposedly allied characters and even the orderliness of radio contact from one’s nemesis. There are more moral choices to be made. Pauper’s Drop offers one decision of life or death that would seemingly be without controversy. Little Sisters found throughout the game’s levels, always accompanied by increasingly powerful Big Daddys, can, at any moment after their Daddy’s been defeated, be harvested or saved, offering more choice, more sense of player agency and control. Yet that inability to backtrack is coupled with something else that makes the mind wander to life beyond (after?) Rapture: The sights of the sea. The clouded green waters outside the Rapture of the first BioShock have been replaced with the unnaturally bright light blue aquatic jungle outside the windows of Rapture in BioShock 2. Sharks and squid swim out there amid sea plants on this Atlantic Ocean floor that are colorful enough to be inviting. And out into this beautiful landscape you will go, more than once and not by choice. The sea is inviting. It makes Rapture feel like a relic of the past. The sense I get is that I am not long for Rapture or Rapture is not long for me. If Rapture is the star character of BioShock, I wonder with this new game, as I did not with the first, if it can die. Misdirection is possible. If the first BioShock is any indication, misdirection might even be mandatory. The dread is there anyway, mixed with the joy that two more levels down, the new BioShock 2 plays very well, keeps doling out powers and weapons and new enemy types. It is a game that’s coming together well even if there’s something — in terms of its fiction and the future of its famous city — that seems like it could be on the verge of blowing apart.

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BioShock 2 Preview: Something Bad Is About To Happen [Preview]

Alien Breed Evolution – Review

There are few times when an Xbox Live Arcade Game has been genuinely able to make me jump when a twinge of fear hits me, however Alien Breed Evolution did it repeatedly. Surrounded by human corpses and under siege as multiple alien creatures burst from walls or burning holes in the floor with all the intent in the world of tearing off you face, the game wastes no time in setting the mood. Full review is after the break:

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Alien Breed Evolution – Review

BioShock 2 Preview: Maybe It Was Needed After All [Preview]

It’s hard not to start playing BioShock 2 without thinking about it as one of the most unnecessary sequels in gaming. It is easy, however, once playing has begun to recognize it as a very promising game. Lop the boss battle off of the original BioShock and the 2007 game would seem to be just about perfect. It was a novel dive into a failed Objectivist utopia called Rapture. It was a philosophical exploration of free will played as a first-person shooter designed to accommodate a player’s tactical ingenuity. It introduced one of the great and weird new relationships in video games, the life-force/Adam-draining Little Sisters and their monstrously powerful protectors, the Big Daddys. And aside from that final boss battle, BioShock ended well enough that nothing could improve it, not the addition of a 2 at the end of the title, not the tacking on of multiplayer and certainly not the opening title screen that credits twice as many studios for the sequel (four, none of which are the series’ founding studio, 2K Boston). I have, however, returned to Rapture, with the help of 2K Marin, 2K Australia, 2K China and Digital Extremes. I have played BioShock 2’s single player campaign through its prologue and first full level, and I am both impressed and pleased. Dare I write this, but the new game has improved elements of the first. BioShock 2, in its preview form, does not start with the elegance and magic of the first game. There is no scene-setting plane crash, swim through sinking, blazing wreckage nor an elevator ride down to an Art Deco paradise gone wrong on the sea floor. There is instead an abrupt awakening, a look into a reflecting pool that confirms, that, yes, I will be playing this game as a Big Daddy. And then, swiftly, there’s combat. It is less artful, and it continued my worry, though that worry would soon end. Jarring though the beginning of BioShock 2 may be, it is more with the gradual awakened clearing of the eyes that Rapture is revealed as a better-looking place this time. Outside the windows, the sea is now blue instead of green, its waters more clear and the sea-life around it more abundant and vivid. Graphical improvements are, I remembered as I began playing, a reasonable expectation even in the successor to something that was so good. I’ll stay light on story spoilers, and instead reveal the mood. Rapture is still a wreck, still one with wrecked lives in it. The city feels changed. Sofia Lamb, a psychiatrist brought in by BioShock’s Andrew Ryan, is now a worshipped leader and apparently our nemesis within radio contact. On the attack, she sends splicers and the well-publicized Big Sister, a stalking seemingly invincible foe that leaps and springs through levels, only to be beaten back temporarily as was so many times the dark Samus in the sequel to Metroid Prime. There are friends within radio contact, but most of the character that emerges in the new game appears to do so in the same successful manner as it did in the first: From, literally, the writing on the walls of Rapture, from discarded radio logs, from the posture of corpses that reveal failed dreams and failed struggles. Rapture as a place of wonder and as a trigger of player curiosity is back, successfully. In the early going, being a Big Daddy feels different only in armament. On our right arm is a drill, a better melee weapon than a wrench. Soon, we earn well-animated guns, like a rivet gun and a 50-cal. Machine gun. On the left hand we earn plasmids, some of the same early ones as in the first game: Electric shocks and fire. New is the ability to dual-wield, which leads to the discovery of the shock/stun-and-shoot left-right combo. Even more useful is a hacking tool which can even, with the help of a rare type of dart, hack from afar. I played many fights from a distance, shooting a hacking needle into a turret and then hacking it so it would kill the enemies for me. Hacking, by the way, is no longer a puzzle game of pipes but a reflex test of well-timed button presses, like a gaming golf swing. What’s so winning in BioShock 2 is that, as it refrains early on from re-writing the rules of the first game, it instead amplifies that original’s best aspects. It doesn’t just look better or explore more of Rapture’s interesting world, but it recognizes what played best in the first and does more of it. There were two things that had played so well in the first BioShock. The first, was the original game’s linear sequences, passageways through Rapture’s sights and sounds that allowed the player to absorb the history of the place and its people. This is best executed early in the sequel in an area called Ryan’s Amusements, which is a theme park and museum that reintroduces and elaborates on Rapture’s history, Ryan’s philosophy and, as much of the place is defaced, on the views of those who rebelled against Ryan shortly before the first game began. Walking through this place makes evident the genius and madness of Rapture. The second gameplay achievement in the first game was the dynamism of its combat, the offering to the player of numerous direct and indirect ways to fight. This was a key element, utilized when attempting to take down a Big Daddy. Players could fill a room with explosive traps, plan to electrify water when a Big Daddy might rush through it, and then begin shooting. The new game makes these tactics all the more available, thanks to the ability to hack from afar and with projectile-based trap ammo. The game requires this kind of play when a player prepares to take down a Big Daddy. It also requires it of them when the alert sounds that Big Sister is coming in for an attack. And, in a twist, it forces this kind of planned combat when a player has taken their own Little Sister to a corpse full of Adam energy. Placing her next to the body is prelude to setting the room up to defend against Splicer attack. Give her the signal to begin and they swarm. You have to keep her safe until she drains the energy. Then you can decide whether she is rescued or harvested. These types of planned offensive and defensive combat work so well, the designers of the new game clearly relishing the opportunity to let the player strategize and orchestrate organized chaos. Earlier demos and hype for BioShock 2 showed off the ability to walk outside on the sea floor, and much has been made of the game’s placement 10 years later in the timeline from the first. I did indeed walk on the sea floor in the new game, and while it was a beautiful sight, the sequence lasted too briefly for me to recognize any significant gameplay change it introduces. The plot is mostly still a mystery to me now, as it is intentionally unclear just why and how the player’s Big Daddy, one of the original line, has been revived nor how some of the supporting characters who appear really relate to each other. I started playing BioShock 2 worried that the inspired execution of the first BioShock would consign a sequel to being a pale imitation. It seems, though, that I had underestimated the room for technical improvement and gameplay refinement. I see little sign of re-invention and a lot of signs of love and polish. That love could smother, that fealty to the past could still render this game as superfluous. But in the early going, I am happily immersed in Rapture again, joyfully mystified as to what its inhabitants are up to, pleased with the way it plays and wanting to play more.

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BioShock 2 Preview: Maybe It Was Needed After All [Preview]

Interviews With Ex-Hardcore Gamers … And New Casual Ones [Books]

Excerpts from A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games And Their Players by Jesper Juul Reprinted with permission of the author [Note from Kotaku: The following excerpts are from a series of interviews published in A Casual Revolution , a new book that chronicles and studies modern styles of gaming, challenging the notions of "casual" and "hardcore," and examining how and why gamers play what they play] Type 2: These are the stories of players who used to intensely play video games and now have switched to more casual video games. Survey response from a 40-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: I used to only play RPGs like Guild Wars but you can start and stop casual games easier during the day. Survey response from a 42-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: Started with text-only adventure games, moved toward RPG video-games & simulations, most recently I stick with time management-type casual games. Survey response from a 29-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: I no longer play shoot ‘em ups or beat ‘em ups or two-player games with my sister on the Amiga. I’ve less patience with poor games and am less inclined to persevere. My shelf’s full of games I’ve bought then never even bothered to play, or those I’ve only played for an hour then given up. At least with casual games the free trial makes that less likely. I’ve always played casual games, even before they were called that though (Tetris, pinball, card games, Nuclear War, Rockstar Ate My Hamster, they were all casual) and I’ve always played traditional games too. Survey response from a 38-year-old male player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: As I grew up and had more obligations my time and patience became limited towards investing in epic games. Though I still love the idea of playing epics like Civilization or Warlords or SimCity, the time required is just more than I can provide. Every so often I try to get a game going only to be pulled off it by various obligations and [I find] it difficult to return. Survey response from a 30-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: Having a baby really changed my game playing habits. When she needs my attention the game must stop. This is why World of Warcraft has been hard to play as of late. Survey response from a 43-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: I’ve been an active computer gamer since 1989. I’ve always loved the adventure games. But as I’ve grown older, got married, had kids, I find it hard to concentrate too long and get too involved in an adventure game, since the time that I spend on the computer is so inconsistent. A casual game is now perfect for me … it helps me to relax and ‘‘stimulate the gray matter.” I love them! Players Discovering Casual Games Type 3: These are stories of players who have discovered video games through casual games. Phone interview with the father in a Wii-playing family, the parents in their early thirties with two twin girls aged three and a half. Q: You compared the Wii to Parcheesi? A: We don’t play Parcheesi [Sorry!/Ludo] with the kids, because it is too complicated for them-they are only three and a half years old. With the Wii, on the other hand, the way that you do something and see a reaction on the screen, the way you tilt the controller and see something on the screen-that is something different. You cannot give them PlayStation controllers; those are a little too advanced with too many buttons. With the Wii, we can see on the kids that it just works for them, they can use that immediately. We play the Wii with friends, at social events. We have also played it with the in-laws who are both around sixty. They play it eagerly, and they ask if we shouldn’t play the game one more time. Q: Do you personally play other computer or video games? A: Ah yes. I have started playing Call of Duty, and I used to play Counter-Strike a lot. I am into first-person shooters, we have a clan, and so on. But nothing related to the Wii. Q: You haven’t tried converting your wife or family to computer/videogames? A: Not to traditional computer games. I know they don’t like those, so it hasn’t come up. We play the Settlers board game with the in-laws. The computer is not so good for something like that where it becomes strategic and you play for several hours. When I was a child, we played Parcheesi and chess, or perhaps Pong. That could be played with the family. Q: What Wii games do you play? A: Mostly Wii Sports and Wii Fit. We have bought some others, but we don’t play them. We just held a summer barbecue with eighteen guests. Everybody was playing the hula hoop on Wii Fit. We bring out the Wii at social gatherings and when friends come over. Phone interview with a player of downloadable casual games in her fifties. Q: Have you played board games or card games? A: Lots. Checkers, Nine Men’s Morris, and lots of card games. Q: And Solitaire games? A: Yes. Playing casual games actually feels similar to playing Solitaire. You are totally relaxed, you cannot concentrate on anything else, but at the same time you can be thinking about other things in the back of your mind. I often play when I face a difficult problem. In my company I face various tasks that are hard to get started with. I already have the knowledge I need, so I play a game rather than go read a lot of books. Then the solutions come. It is like the game brings out a lot of tacit knowledge, as if the problem solving in the game maintains that skill, and that is a skill I need. Q: How were you introduced to casual games? A: My 75-year-old friend introduced me to Zuma and Collapse, the predecessor to Zuma. It was after I had handed in my PhD thesis, so my brain was completely offline. Then she invited me over for dinner and told me she had something interesting to show me. She also had a computer Mahjong game that was very beautiful and exciting, I really liked that. Later I have begun to buy them myself, because they are not that expensive. Q: How do you feel about difficult games? Is it a problem to be stuck on a level? A: Level twelve of Zuma is really fast. I think I gave up after fifty attempts. Zuma has a game mode called Gauntlet where you can practice different levels, so I switched to that and practiced becoming faster. That helped, but I was still too slow. It was important for me to finish the game-I believe that is important in life, to finish things, no matter what. I like competing with myself, to see development and progress. ‘‘No matter what,” is really the point for me. I googled for solutions and found a site with a cheat code to make Zuma slower. It worked!!! For me, that was even more satisfying that beating the game on its own terms: to modify the game to fit my own limitations and capacities. Survey response from a 52-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: Until I discovered casual games on the computer I used to spend a lot of time with traditional crossword puzzle books and other puzzle-based paper-based activities. Survey response from a 49-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: I play more now that they have made games to suit women. Not the fighting, killing, kicking … etc. games. Survey response from a 29-year-old female player. Q: Have your game-playing habits changed over the years? A: I only discovered ‘casual games’ about a year and a half ago. Of all things, my Mom had bought Insaniquarium and a puzzle type one (I want to say Penguin Puzzle, but I don’t remember the name for sure) for my son for Christmas. Regardless, after the entire family got hooked on Insaniquarium, I ended up checking out the website of the company that put it out, and things went from there. Before ‘casual games’ entered the house, I’d gotten to the point where I mostly played MMORPGs-EverQuest, at the time, though I usually ended up giving new ones a try as they came out. That, and Sims 2. But like I said above, ‘normal’ computer games don’t come out all that often. At least, not ones I was interested in. With the whole new world of casual games that can be downloaded and tried in just a few minutes, it let me have a much wider variety of games to play, so that I now have something to play no matter what my mood is and what I want to do. For more on A Casual Revolution , go to the book’s official site or purchase it here .

Read more:
Interviews With Ex-Hardcore Gamers … And New Casual Ones [Books]

Frankenreview: The Saboteur [Round Up]

The Saboteur is the story of an Irishman living in the back of a burlesque house helping liberate World War II Paris from the Nazis. Nothing could possible go wrong with this scenario. Pandemic Studios set about making a different sort of World War II game with The Saboteur, and it is decidedly different. Whether than being a small part of a bigger war, you are a force for change, bringing color back into the cheeks of Paris. How could mixing together elements of Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, and THQ’s De Blob with bare breasts not result in a runaway hit? Let’s ask the assembled video game critics of the internets. Total Video Games Just when you thought comedy Nazis had left videogames forever, EA pulls them back in. We’re talking about the sort of Nazis who run around with a flamethrower shouting, “There iz die Saboteur! Ve must get him!” while wearing an unlikely combination of a trench coat and gas mask. Although this archetype is getting a little old now (in fact, pretty much the only time it’s been entertaining is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blackadder, and ‘Allo ‘Allo!), life would be fairly depressing if you couldn’t mock the most evil people in history once in a while, and what better way to do this than with a Celtic protagonist called Sean Devlin? Giant Bomb Though set in World War II—more specifically, the Nazi occupation of Paris—The Saboteur is notable for, if nothing else, foregoing the reverent tone most WWII games assume. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan; this is more like The Great Escape by way of Inglorious Basterds. This is a two-fisted tale of revenge about an Irish mechanic-turned-race-car-driver named Sean Devlin whose vendetta against a diabolical Nazi officer—the same man that both cheated him out of his first race victory and murdered his best friend right before his eyes—puts him in league with the Parisian underworld, comely cabaret girls, and the French Resistance. It’s got an odd tone to it, and the game sometimes has a hard time juggling the tough-talkin’ Devlin’s personal angst, his multiple femme fatale love interests, his role within the Resistance, and all of the war-time business that actually propels the story forward. The story doesn’t pack as much of a punch as it could have, but it sets an appropriate mood for the improbable craziness Sean gets up to. GameSpot The story may not be able to decide if it wants to be goofy or serious, but the intriguing atmosphere definitely adds to the experience. The depression and fear cast on the city by the occupying forces are expressed visually through striking black and white backdrops. The buildings and roads in the Nazi-controlled sections of the city have a bleak, suffocating feel, making your actions to free these areas carry more weight. The most interesting aspect of this art design is the way in which color is carefully placed. During cutscenes, a scarf on the person Sean is speaking to may be drenched in shocking blue, standing out brilliantly against the dire background. Action scenes are even more impressive, using the orange flash of a gunshot or the glowing red of spilled Nazi blood to create a dazzling look. When you finally kick those evil Nazis out of parts of the city, the color comes flooding back, giving you a visual reward for your hard-fought progress. Ironically, the colored sections don’t look nearly as impressive as the black and white areas, although the pristine countryside is a pleasure to take a leisurely drive through. Just make sure you don’t hit any cows. They explode as if filled with dynamite, which could ruin your mood. Game Informer The Saboteur isn’t afraid to borrow concepts from its contemporaries. An amalgamation of the open world sandbox of Grand Theft Auto, the chaotic freeplay of Crackdown, the climbing of Assassin’s Creed, and the zipline and rooftop traversal of Infamous, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. While these game mechanics work, like the French resistance they seem to have been done on the cheap. The sluggish car controls seemingly turn on an axis in the middle of the vehicle, which takes practice to master. Climbing frustratingly requires you to jam on the A button for each movement up the building. The gunplay has a sketchy auto cover system and the weaponry lacks the punch of more visceral shooters. Gaming Nexus The one thing that made The Saboteur feel less smooth than it could have been was the controls. Especially when climbing or hitting an action button, the response wasn’t where I would have liked it to be. Part of my problem with the controls might also be due to how cluttered they are. For instance, to activate your various modes of fighting (brawl, sneaking) you have to hit either the left trigger or left button (PS3 controls). Then a combination of the d-pad buttons while still hitting the button/trigger will perform a specific action within that mode. To fire a weapon, you’ll have to equip your gun of choice and then use the left button to aim and the right button to fire. Perhaps it’s my hastiness when there’s a showdown with the Nazis, but mixing up the buttons always blew my cover and had me outrunning the dreadful red zone on my map. Kotaku This may be the most un-polished major-label game I’ve reviewed this year, which is too bad. Because when The Saboteur is being The Saboteur and not being Assassin’s Creed or choking on a bug, it’s got the spirit and spark of a game that should be played. That is, if you ever wanted to blow up a Zeppelin with a rocket launcher, kiss someone to hide from the people chasing you or knock over a Nazi gas station without them ever knowing you were there. Steady as she goes

Originally posted here:
Frankenreview: The Saboteur [Round Up]

Frankenreview: The Saboteur [Round Up]

The Saboteur is the story of an Irishman living in the back of a burlesque house helping liberate World War II Paris from the Nazis. Nothing could possible go wrong with this scenario. Pandemic Studios set about making a different sort of World War II game with The Saboteur, and it is decidedly different. Whether than being a small part of a bigger war, you are a force for change, bringing color back into the cheeks of Paris. How could mixing together elements of Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, and THQ’s De Blob with bare breasts not result in a runaway hit? Let’s ask the assembled video game critics of the internets. Total Video Games Just when you thought comedy Nazis had left videogames forever, EA pulls them back in. We’re talking about the sort of Nazis who run around with a flamethrower shouting, “There iz die Saboteur! Ve must get him!” while wearing an unlikely combination of a trench coat and gas mask. Although this archetype is getting a little old now (in fact, pretty much the only time it’s been entertaining is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blackadder, and ‘Allo ‘Allo!), life would be fairly depressing if you couldn’t mock the most evil people in history once in a while, and what better way to do this than with a Celtic protagonist called Sean Devlin? Giant Bomb Though set in World War II—more specifically, the Nazi occupation of Paris—The Saboteur is notable for, if nothing else, foregoing the reverent tone most WWII games assume. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan; this is more like The Great Escape by way of Inglorious Basterds. This is a two-fisted tale of revenge about an Irish mechanic-turned-race-car-driver named Sean Devlin whose vendetta against a diabolical Nazi officer—the same man that both cheated him out of his first race victory and murdered his best friend right before his eyes—puts him in league with the Parisian underworld, comely cabaret girls, and the French Resistance. It’s got an odd tone to it, and the game sometimes has a hard time juggling the tough-talkin’ Devlin’s personal angst, his multiple femme fatale love interests, his role within the Resistance, and all of the war-time business that actually propels the story forward. The story doesn’t pack as much of a punch as it could have, but it sets an appropriate mood for the improbable craziness Sean gets up to. GameSpot The story may not be able to decide if it wants to be goofy or serious, but the intriguing atmosphere definitely adds to the experience. The depression and fear cast on the city by the occupying forces are expressed visually through striking black and white backdrops. The buildings and roads in the Nazi-controlled sections of the city have a bleak, suffocating feel, making your actions to free these areas carry more weight. The most interesting aspect of this art design is the way in which color is carefully placed. During cutscenes, a scarf on the person Sean is speaking to may be drenched in shocking blue, standing out brilliantly against the dire background. Action scenes are even more impressive, using the orange flash of a gunshot or the glowing red of spilled Nazi blood to create a dazzling look. When you finally kick those evil Nazis out of parts of the city, the color comes flooding back, giving you a visual reward for your hard-fought progress. Ironically, the colored sections don’t look nearly as impressive as the black and white areas, although the pristine countryside is a pleasure to take a leisurely drive through. Just make sure you don’t hit any cows. They explode as if filled with dynamite, which could ruin your mood. Game Informer The Saboteur isn’t afraid to borrow concepts from its contemporaries. An amalgamation of the open world sandbox of Grand Theft Auto, the chaotic freeplay of Crackdown, the climbing of Assassin’s Creed, and the zipline and rooftop traversal of Infamous, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. While these game mechanics work, like the French resistance they seem to have been done on the cheap. The sluggish car controls seemingly turn on an axis in the middle of the vehicle, which takes practice to master. Climbing frustratingly requires you to jam on the A button for each movement up the building. The gunplay has a sketchy auto cover system and the weaponry lacks the punch of more visceral shooters. Gaming Nexus The one thing that made The Saboteur feel less smooth than it could have been was the controls. Especially when climbing or hitting an action button, the response wasn’t where I would have liked it to be. Part of my problem with the controls might also be due to how cluttered they are. For instance, to activate your various modes of fighting (brawl, sneaking) you have to hit either the left trigger or left button (PS3 controls). Then a combination of the d-pad buttons while still hitting the button/trigger will perform a specific action within that mode. To fire a weapon, you’ll have to equip your gun of choice and then use the left button to aim and the right button to fire. Perhaps it’s my hastiness when there’s a showdown with the Nazis, but mixing up the buttons always blew my cover and had me outrunning the dreadful red zone on my map. Kotaku This may be the most un-polished major-label game I’ve reviewed this year, which is too bad. Because when The Saboteur is being The Saboteur and not being Assassin’s Creed or choking on a bug, it’s got the spirit and spark of a game that should be played. That is, if you ever wanted to blow up a Zeppelin with a rocket launcher, kiss someone to hide from the people chasing you or knock over a Nazi gas station without them ever knowing you were there. Steady as she goes

The rest is here:
Frankenreview: The Saboteur [Round Up]

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