Review Round-Up: More MAG, More Tower Defense, But No More Heroes [List]

Some reviews we ran this week made people angry. Well, honestly, some of the reviews made us angry too. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Review: Repetitious Rebel In which, I guess I zigged when other people zagged. MAG Review: World of Shadow Warcraft In which Brian Crecente made a game pay for its poor instruction manual. It’s about time! Glory of Heracles Review: A Forgetful Adventure In which Michael McWhertor is pleased, but not pleased enough for a new game+. Blood Bowl Review: No Fun League In which Owen Good spills more red ink on one page than the college professor who graded my Japanese exams. KrissX Micro-Review: Fun With a Purpose In which Owen sees too many stars. Enough, developers, with the stars. Crush The Castle Micro-Review: Fun With Trebuchets In which Crecente uses the word “trebuchet” four times, not including the headline. Starship Defense Micro-Review: The Most HD DS Game In which I should maybe start worrying about my reputation, because I can’t stop writing nice things about Q-Games. Trenches Micro-Review: An Interesting Take on Tower Defense In which Crecente rejoices about fighting a different kind of German. Special preview of next week’s Review Round-Up: You’re going to think we were back in November. Brace yourself.

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Review Round-Up: More MAG, More Tower Defense, But No More Heroes [List]

Australia’s Anti-R18+ Game Rating Attorney-General Sees Fake People [Australia]

South Australia ’s opposition calls for the firing of Attorney-General Michael Atkinson , the primary reason the country can’t give games a R18+ mature rating, after he suggested that a West Croydon citizen was an imaginary plant for the Liberal Party. In December, Luke Plunkett clarified the R18+ video game ratings mess in Australia for us, explaining that while five of the six Attorneys-General of the country agree that video games should be allowed mature ratings, the required sixth, Michael Atkinson, did not, fearing that it would make it too easy for children to purchase mature video games. Now we’re given a better idea of what the games industry in Australia is dealing with. Earlier this week Atkinson made news after repealing controversial internet censorship laws, enacted to ensure that comments on the March 20th election could not be made anonymously or through the use of assumed names. The laws required such comments to include their real name and postcode in such comments, in order to verify their veracity. Non-compliance would result in fines of $1250 for individuals and $5,000 for businesses. As you can imagine, this didn’t go over well. So the law was repealed, which is good, but then Atkinson went on DMG Radio to explain why the laws were necessary. “I’ll give you an example; repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn’t exist,” he said. “That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary.” Aaron Fornarino, it turns out, is a real person, living only a couple hundred meters from Atkinson’s office. Paranoid much? So now South Australia’s Opposition is calling for his removal from office, asking that Premier Mike Rann terminate the Attorney-General for breach of the ministerial code of conduct. “It is unacceptable for a minister to diminish the reputation of a member of the public, indeed anyone, recklessly or deliberately,” Ms Chapman said. “It is not acceptable that the Premier do nothing about this.” Now the actual chances of Michael Atkinson being sacked over this are slim. It’s pretty much one of the functions of Australia’s Opposition, calling for the termination of elected officials at every turn, but it does give us a clearer picture of the sort of man standing in the way of Australia’s R18+ video game ratings, doesn’t it? Opposition calls for the sacking of Attorney-General Michael Atkinson [News.Com.Au - Thanks Alex!]

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Australia’s Anti-R18+ Game Rating Attorney-General Sees Fake People [Australia]

Australia’s Anti-R18+ Game Rating Attorney-General Sees Fake People [Australia]

South Australia ’s opposition calls for the firing of Attorney-General Michael Atkinson , the primary reason the country can’t give games a R18+ mature rating, after he suggested that a West Croydon citizen was an imaginary plant for the Liberal Party. In December, Luke Plunkett clarified the R18+ video game ratings mess in Australia for us, explaining that while five of the six Attorneys-General of the country agree that video games should be allowed mature ratings, the required sixth, Michael Atkinson, did not, fearing that it would make it too easy for children to purchase mature video games. Now we’re given a better idea of what the games industry in Australia is dealing with. Earlier this week Atkinson made news after repealing controversial internet censorship laws, enacted to ensure that comments on the March 20th election could not be made anonymously or through the use of assumed names. The laws required such comments to include their real name and postcode in such comments, in order to verify their veracity. Non-compliance would result in fines of $1250 for individuals and $5,000 for businesses. As you can imagine, this didn’t go over well. So the law was repealed, which is good, but then Atkinson went on DMG Radio to explain why the laws were necessary. “I’ll give you an example; repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn’t exist,” he said. “That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary.” Aaron Fornarino, it turns out, is a real person, living only a couple hundred meters from Atkinson’s office. Paranoid much? So now South Australia’s Opposition is calling for his removal from office, asking that Premier Mike Rann terminate the Attorney-General for breach of the ministerial code of conduct. “It is unacceptable for a minister to diminish the reputation of a member of the public, indeed anyone, recklessly or deliberately,” Ms Chapman said. “It is not acceptable that the Premier do nothing about this.” Now the actual chances of Michael Atkinson being sacked over this are slim. It’s pretty much one of the functions of Australia’s Opposition, calling for the termination of elected officials at every turn, but it does give us a clearer picture of the sort of man standing in the way of Australia’s R18+ video game ratings, doesn’t it? Opposition calls for the sacking of Attorney-General Michael Atkinson [News.Com.Au - Thanks Alex!]

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Australia’s Anti-R18+ Game Rating Attorney-General Sees Fake People [Australia]

Reviewing A Game On Their Terms: The Increasingly Prominent "Review Event" [Feature]

My room had a private balcony, a calming view of the Pacific, and beaches a few hundred feet away. Like dozens of guests who stayed at a Santa Barbara resort in October, I was there to play a video game. Over the course of two days, I gazed upon California’s beaches from a distance. I walked by the swimming pool and hot tub a dozen times. I ate at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort’s finest restaurant. But unlike the resort’s guests there for a getaway, I never left the hotel grounds, never set foot on the beach or hit the tennis court. Instead, I spent every waking hour playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, eyes glued to a television screen. This was Modern Warfare 2’s “review event,” a three-day affair at which members of the media played through the game’s single-player campaign and multiplayer components. I’d driven a hundred miles to get there, to play Infinity Ward and Activision’s blockbuster shooter for a review. It was my second time sequestering myself in a hotel room to evaluate a video game. I reviewed Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV under similar conditions at a hotel in San Francisco over the course of four days. Other members of Kotaku have attended invite-only review events for titles such as Halo 3 ODST. Typically, those review event conditions range from comfortable to exceedingly comfortable. In the case of Modern Warfare 2, rooms were outfitted with large screen televisions, thundering surround sound systems, optional professional quality headphones and robes and slippers embroidered with the game’s logo. While uncommon, the prevalence of these types of events is increasing. Bungie and Microsoft held similar review events for their most recent Halo releases. Events have been held for BioShock, Gears of War 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4. And publisher Electronic Arts recently invited the media to play cooperative military shooter Army of Two: The 40th Day, at which reviewers could get early access to a build of the game, but only after playing an organized co-op session in New York City. Review events are not the norm. Typically, publishers and PR firms mail reviewers a copy of the game—some copies only work on special “debug” game consoles—and a letter that entrusts us to hold off on running the review until a certain date. The practice of making the reviewer go to the game, at a review event, rather than send that game to the reviewer, has raised ethical concerns that such events influence the opinions of the reviewers who take part. Some say the events make it difficult to form an impartial critical opinion of a game under such circumstances. Whether through direct interference or as a byproduct of being catered to with travel, accommodation and the free gifts commonly given at such events, allegations that reviews are “bought and sold” at events paid for by publishers can tarnish the credibility of a review at best, mar the reputation of a publication or video game at worst. So why do publishers and developers hold these sometimes contentious review events? Halo developer Bungie, which held review events for Halo 3 ODST in advance of the game’s retail release, cites multiple reasons for hosting such things. “Looking back at Halo 2, my first Bungie review title, we built these events around a desire to deliver the best possible experience to players,” says Brian Jarrard, community lead at Bungie. “We had nice HD televisions, 5.1 surround sound and a comfortable environment. It was a way to help make sure reviewers experienced the game the way Bungie intended.” (Rockstar Games and Infinity Ward did not respond to requests for comment about their respective review events. Activision reps declined comment when asked.) A comfortable, high-fidelity experience may be important to game creators. But so is control. “Usually, the cited reason for a review event is disc security,” says Jeff Gerstmann, co-founder of Giant Bomb and former editorial director at Gamespot. He’s participated in and approved coverage of numerous publisher-held review events over his course of his game review career. “I understand the desire to keep control of all copies of a game, as pre-release piracy is certainly a real issue,” Gerstmann says. “But considering that games get leaked out ahead of time even when these events happen, I think it’s safe to say that the media isn’t out there leaking copies to pirate groups, especially in cases where we’re receiving discs that only run on debug consoles.” Bungie’s concerns go beyond illegal distribution of its games. Jarrard says that content leaks and story spoilers are something developers work hard to protect. “I’m not sure we would have been able to keep [the surprise of] playing as the Arbiter a secret if we mailed out hundreds of discs weeks before the game shipped,” he theorizes, referring to a key Halo 2 plot point. “The same could be said for plot twists found in Halo 3 and ODST. We spend up to three years crafting these stories and experiences, and it’s very important to the team that fans can enjoy the game and story the way we intended.” In the case of Modern Warfare 2, some of the game’s content had already been leaked onto the internet via YouTube by the time we’d showed up to review it. When I reached the game’s infamous “No Russian” chapter, I’d known about the content—but not the context—of that mission for the past 24 hours. The game wouldn’t ship to stores for another two weeks. But that didn’t stop Infinity Ward and Activision from taking security precautions to prevent further leaks. The review version of Modern Warfare 2 I played was hand-delivered to reviewer’s rooms with four employees in tow, the hard drive installed and physically locked to the console. My Grand Theft Auto IV experience saw similar protections, with an executable running from the hard drive that required a special memory unit to play. Rockstar Games reps asked us to carry the memory unit with us whenever we left the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 unattended. Jarrard said that he finds the “vast majority” of game reviewers to be trustworthy, honoring agreements designed to prevent leaks and piracy, “but it’s still easier to control embargoes and protect story elements when everyone is there in person with discs that are all accounted for.” Having dozens of video game reviewers in the same room brings with it benefits to games with multiplayer components. Jarrard points to the difficulty in organizing multiplayer game sessions in advance of widespread releases, sessions that sometimes require dozens of players. “That would become very challenging to do in a world where a few hundred people were sitting in their own offices all over the world trying to coordinate a game when outward facing Xbox LIVE support isn’t even turned on yet,” he says. In Modern Warfare 2’s case, Activision and Infinity Ward assumed control of one of the resort’s ballrooms, offering reviewers a public space at which to play the game’s multiplayer and Spec-Ops cooperative modes during day two of the event. My experience with GTA IV’s multiplayer was more private, playing solo against Rockstar quality assurance team at a remote location at the review event and later against game journalists during Rockstar-scheduled sessions from home. Gerstmann believes—and I agree—that multiplayer sessions held at remote review events often provide a more accurate, more efficient early look at a game’s online component than the alternative. “Sometimes these sessions work out great,” Gerstmann says, “Sometimes they’re sparsely attended or not entirely representative of the average user experience. I played Call of Duty: World at War online with a couple of journalists and a handful of QA guys who were instructed to take it easy on us. That didn’t feel terribly ‘real’ to me.” But there’s a catch. “The downside of testing multiplayer in a controlled environment (like a review event) is that you have no idea how the game will react in an actual real world situation, where ping times and the quality of the average player’s broadband connection are a major factor.” Fortunately, many publishers distribute retail copies of games experienced at review events before the retail release. In the case of Modern Warfare 2, which wasn’t sent to reviewers in advance, early distribution and broken street dates offered Kotaku and other outlets a chance to play substantial portions of the game at home. Gerstmann stressed the importance of “never letting the event be my final time with a game before running a review.” “The events I’ve attended—Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Gears of War 2, and Modern Warfare 2—gave me plenty of time to see everything,” he says. “But in all of those cases, I replayed the single-player again, start to finish, at home before writing a review. In all cases I was also able to get in substantial multiplayer time thanks to the street dates being broken and average consumers getting their hands on the game ahead of schedule.” MTV Multiplayer ’s Russ Frushtick, who participated in one of Bungie’s Halo 3 ODST review events, feels the practice is ultimately damaging to a reviewer’s opinion of a game. “While reviewing games can be enjoyable at times, nothing makes it feel more like work than having to plow through a game over the course of 24 or 48 hours,” Frushtick says. “And, on top of that, you’re forced out of the comfort of your home and office, at times traveling across the country, to slog through an experience that most people will play over the course of a few weeks.” “Unfortunately the importance of having a review as close to a game’s release often trumps a reviewer’s desire for comfort, but it’s the sort of decision that needn’t be made,” he says. Bungie’s Brian Jarrard sees another potential negative aspect to hosting such events. “Reality is that these events are often only reserved for ‘top tier’ media due to space and cost which means a lot of the little guys are left out,” Jarrard says. “I’d wager that these fansites, bloggers and more community-oriented outlets probably don’t like being last to review a big title because they can’t get an invite to the event or get an early copy of the game. Perhaps that leaves a bad taste in their mouth.” Dan “Shoe” Hsu, former editor in chief of EGM and Bitmob.com co-founder—who has since returned to the revived Electronic Gaming Monthly print magazine —has his own concerns about the nature of review events. He’s personally participated in review events “under a ‘controlled environment’” for 2K Games’ BioShock and Bungie’s Halo 2. “I have very mixed feelings about this,” Hsu says. “At EGM, we would never, ever want to taint the reviews process in any way. Our readers don’t play games under these conditions — in nice hotel suites with developers, producers, and PR nearby. Why would we as professional critics? Can we fairly review something if we’re playing under different circumstances than our audience?” “At the same time, who would we be hurting if we banned such events? Those same readers,” Hsu says. “Now we can’t get a review out to them in time for it to be relevant.” The perception that review events are score-inflating wine and dine affairs isn’t difficult to understand. Activision and Infinity Ward shouldered the cost of hotel rooms—including ours—and travel expenses for some of the other attendees of the Modern Warfare 2 review event. It also paid for the meal we enjoyed at the aforementioned fancy restaurant. The robe and slippers, too, but those we gave away for charitable purposes. In the case of our extended Grand Theft Auto IV review event, our parent company paid for our flight, hotel room and meals. But Rockstar reps joined us for a dinner. Did those so-called perks influence my opinion of either game? I’d like to think they didn’t, confident that I can separate external factors from the core experience. I personally find the practice of video game review events an inconvenience. They provide an opportunity to remain focused on the task and title at hand, but traveling to play a game for days on end is not my preferred method of review. Veteran game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann has similar thoughts about the “misconception” that these assignments are “cushy” or “lavish.” “There’s nothing lavish about being cooped up in a dark hotel room for two days. It’s annoying,” Gerstmann says. “And unless you have direct questions about a game, the company reps at the event usually just stay out of your way. Most of the time they don’t even ask us what we thought of the game. They just sort of hang back and, I guess, hope for the best.” “I sort of get the impression that no one involved on either side really enjoys these events,” Gerstmann adds. “But between us wanting timely coverage and publishers feeling protective of their biggest releases, I don’t see these events going away anytime soon, either.” Bitmob’s Dan Hsu may say it best. “As long as the game reviewers can treat the product fairly and objectively, the same as if he were playing at home or in his own office, I don’t see a big problem with this,” Hsu says of the conditions. “It’s either that, or if you want a truly untainted review, stop listening to the professionals and get your feedback from the community instead.”

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Reviewing A Game On Their Terms: The Increasingly Prominent "Review Event" [Feature]

ESA: Today Is A "Very, Very Good Day" For The Gaming Industry [News]

Video game developers can be the new astronauts, a beacon that inspires schoolchildren to love learning science and math, the head advocate for the gaming industry in the U.S., told Kotaku today, as he described President Obama’s breakthrough education announcement. “LittleBigPlanet” being mentioned in the same sentence as “Barack Obama” — and of video games being included in the President’s push for new ways to inspire kids to learn science, technology, engineering and math — sat well with Entertainment Software Association chief Michael Gallagher today. “This is a very, very good day for the gaming industry,” he told Kotaku. “This is a significant leap into maturity and toward acceptance.” Earlier in the day, Gallagher literally sat one row behind former astronaut Sally Ride and right near the former chairman of Intel and the current head of Sesame Street at a Washington, D.C. press conference where Obama announced plans for “Educate To Innovate,” a series of mostly privately-funded initiatives to improve kids’ knowledge of and enthusiasm for math and science. The new programs could be the gaming industry’s reach for the stars, to build on an astronomical analogy Gallagher said he used with White House officials as the new programs were taking shape. “Much as the space program inspired a generation of children to go into engineering,” he said. “Today’s learners are inspired by video games.” Those who make games, in other words, have the capacity to influence America’s youth toward scientific and technological greatness. The gaming aspect of the Obama program involves two contests, both geared toward making games that will help children learn science, technology, engineering or math, so-called STEM topics. One contest involves the design of LittleBigPlanet levels. The other challenges developers to make browser games for children of different ages. Both embody what Gallagher says are the two defining characteristics of the gaming industry: Innovation and Competition. But today was unusual. The video game industry doesn’t often get a call from the White House, as the ESA did three months ago, to launch the programs announced today. Rare is the Administration that refers to games at all in a positive way. Perhaps equally rare is an Administration that even understands games. Gallagher, who worked in the George W. Bush White House said that the “communication gap was a lot smaller” dealing with Obama officials. Some of the current President’s speech writers, after all, recently stopped by an ESA reception to play The Beatles Rock Band, he said. The ESA has also worked to promote the reputation of games and has enjoyed the findings of groups such as the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, which announced earlier this year that it saw games playing a key role in the future of education. All of this may have helped produce a climate that led the White House to think positively about games. “There is a preponderance of belief that we’re a force for good and quality, as opposed to being stigmatized,” Gallagher said. So it wasn’t a complete shock to the ESA that, three months ago, the White House contacted the group to invite the gaming industry to get involved in the President’s education initiative. From that request emerged the STEM National Video Game Competition , the browser game challenge, which will involve not just the ESA and the Information Technology Industry Council (an advocacy group for tech companies), but also Microsoft and Games4Change, a group dedicated to supporting games that serve a social good. Anyone will be able to make games for the contest, vying for a portion of the total prize of $300,000. Even more alluring may be Gallagher’s belief that the winning entries, which will be announced in June at E3, could become part of school curricula as soon as next school year. “We could be reaching and saving today’s learners,” he said, not waiting for a future generation and giving up already on today’s kids. “The objective is learning, not teaching,” Gallagher said of the games he hopes people will make. He explained that a popular belief among educators is that teaching — the dispensing of information — is over-emphasized in school programs and that more attention needs to be paid toward learning — what goes on in a child’s mind. It’s learning where games have such strong potential, Gallagher argued, because the medium already has proven it has the ability to captivate a child’s imagination and tap his or her curiosity. The other program announced today involves Sony providing 1,000 PlayStation 3s and copies of LittleBigPlanet as part of an effort backed by the MacArthur Foundation to encourage learning through digital means. Despite what Gallagher referred to as commendable efforts by Sony and Microsoft to get involved, they are just two gaming-related companies, the only two that were part of today’s news. Gallagher says that is merely a function of how quickly the new programs came together and is confident that other gaming companies will get involved in similar efforts. “We should be proud of this moment because it shows a maturity of our industry,” Gallagher told Kotaku today. “It shows an acceptance of our industry as vital to our country’s ability to meeting significant challenges.” If video games can help America get better at science, technology, engineering and math, Gallagher would consider that a job well done. [ PIC ]

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ESA: Today Is A "Very, Very Good Day" For The Gaming Industry [News]

WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 Review: A Game For Smart People [Review]

You can read here a wrestling game review, written by a lapsed wrestling fan (me!). But first, I challenge Flower fans and Ico lovers to find a better gaming subject for their college thesis than Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010. It was my reputation among team Kotaku that got me assigned to reviewing what has proven to be the best wrestling game I’ve played in a decade — Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010, which is also the only wrestling game I’ve played in a decade. I guess everyone thought I’d be perfect for it. Maybe they know that the only website that I pay to read daily is a pro-wrestling site, a site that allows me to read about the often-mediocre happenings on modern wrestling shows without having to watch them. Perhaps they know I imported Bret Hart’s autobiography from Canada and Ohio Valley Wrestling DVDs (when Paul Heyman was booking OVW shows) from Ohio. Or perhaps it’s that Hulk Hogan thing I did. Regardless, you’d think that someone who has loved video games and, I guess, loved pro wrestling, for much of his life, would love the melding of the two. But I started this new game, the latest in the annual releases of THQ-published, Yukes-developed modern wrestling games, with almost complete alienation from the genre. (I have some professional embarrassment about this, since I’ve been to Yukes’ studio in Yokohama and met the wrestling-obsessed people there. I even got a great tour that included a look at the back rooms that reek of body odor every summer as the team sleeps in the office while cramming to finish their game by fall). This new game brings to the series a revised Royal Rumble, an enhanced Create a Finisher option, a new training arena, revised rosters, new storylines and — the big feature — the ability for fans to create and share their own storylines. But it was all new to me. And, wouldn’t you know it, the game is fun and… intellectually stimulating? Yes. Loved The Basic Flow: WWE pro wrestling games, as fans would know, are 3D fighting games played from a quasi-overhead perspective and battled on the surfaces of wrestling ring and floor, with the walls of a steel cage or the top of a destructible announcers’ table sometimes also in play. You win not by eliminating an opponents’ health bar but by executing enough minor and major strikes, throws, dives, taunts and more, all of which either damage to the opponents’ body or build the momentum of your own wrestlers’ adrenaline, which enables a successful pinning (or submission or count-out) victory. In other words, the game treats wrestling as if it’s a hybrid of combat and performance, with the player driven by more competitive intent to maim than in the real thing. It’s a good system that demands the player learn how to smoothly chain their moves to build momentum. And it is a a rewarding one, as Yukes has managed to capture and animate hundreds of moves that transition from one to the next with, of all the rare qualities in games, grace. Winning a match in this game is a performing pleasure. The WWE Recreated: Even a lapsed fan of WWE such as myself stumbles across Smackdown on Friday nights or remembers older episodes of Raw well enough to see that Edge’s shoulder-twitch during his ring entrance is true to life, that Shawn Michaels’ super-kick should look as perfect as it does and that selecting Shelton Benjamin will grant the player access to a cool set of moves. The game’s venues, from the pay-per-view-specific entrance ramps to the backstage announce areas, look perfect. The tone of violence and sex — an endless parade of T&A and at least one storyline involving a female wrestler sleeping her way to the top — matches squarely with even today’s toned-down WWE. The announcing sounds right, issued by (mostly) the right people. This game is very WWE. The Thesis-Worthy Story-Editor: Of all the new features this year, conveniently marked “NEW” in the game’s menu for people like me, the best and most interesting is the storyline editor. In the past, wrestling game fans could create their own wrestlers, customize move-sets and even, more recently, chain pieces of animation to create new match-ending finishing moves. In the new game, players can craft a storyline, mixing matches that include player-defined outcomes with story-advancing sequences. The latter scenes are comprised of WWE-related locales (rings, locker rooms, offices) with wrestlers, a variety of conversational and confrontational emotions, adjustable camera angles, selectable music and crowd-noise background sounds and, most importantly, player-written dialogue. The system’s interface has some rough edges that players can work around but is nonetheless fascinating. This is what you’d write your thesis about: Pro wrestling is already an odd blend of fake sport and acted drama, something fans appreciate as real and unreal at the same time (We know that John Cena is a man really named John Cena, but we also know that the Undertaker is not really a man who has risen from the dead. We buy into the idea that the Stone Cold Stunner hurts, because it looks like it does; we laugh with The Rock that the People’s Elbow does not hurt, because we know that he knows that we know that his big elbow move is a love tap at worst). In a wrestling game, that reality/unreality gets twisted some more, as the action in the ring is made to seem both more real than it is in real life (The depicted action in a WWE game involves hurting an opponent thoroughly enough to win, not simply entertaining the crowd through fake-fighting) and less real (The moves in the game, animated without fear of causing bodily harm, are made to look more impactful, thereby exposing how deadly and illegal they ought to really be). The new game’s story editor knots these strands of truth and untruth even more. Maybe gamers have been able to re-arrange games through mods for years. Maybe they’ve been able to puppeteer fake lives through The Sims for over a decade. But now we can mangle and morph the pseudo-reality of real celebrities through the WWE. We could craft a storyline in which CM Punk demands to know John Cena’s favorite color and then wrestles the answer out of him (I did this. Search for it on Xbox Live using the keyword phrase “Favorite Color”). We could make a storyline in which WWE Diva “A” falls in love with WWE Wrestler “Z” but is seduced away by the Create-A-Wrestler character who you designed to look just like a muscular Bill O’Reilly. (I did not do this.) You’re playing with sort-of real lives. You’re creating officially-sanctioned slash-fiction. You’re kind of writing the next Indiana Jones adventure at the same time that you’re kind of writing the next thing for Harrison Ford to do. The layers of reality and unreality are dense. The Unintended Consequences: Maybe a simpler way to praise the interesting aspects of the Create A Storyline editor is to mention that I downloaded a storyline called something like “One Night After Raw,” and after meeting a condition to have Shawn Michaels win a match, and after sitting through a series of backstage vignette’s written with not the best user-generated spelling, my Shawn Michaels was then ambushed in the ring by three definitely-not-licensed wrestlers from rival company TNA. For years wrestling fans have wanted to book Raw themselves. Now they can do it virtually, for me to play through. Too bad the game’s canned announcers were still plugging the WWE website instead of reacting to what this one user created. The Royal Rumble: The game has a revised button-mashing mini-game for eliminating people in its Royal Rumble. The 30-man elimination match is often the most fun pro wrestling match of the year, so any improvements that more authentically let me, as Vince McMahon, team up with The Great Khali to flip some-user’s Street Fighter Sagat over the top rope is ok by me. The Sense Of Pain: WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 is one of those eye-catching games that other people in the room, who may be tired of the Bret Hart and Mankind books on the bookshelf, can’t help but be drawn into. Why? I believe it’s because the animations are so good that they look like they connect and that the moves hurt, which, given the combat that is supposed to be depicted here, is a victory. Hated Poor Counter-Attack Training: The game’s menu-screen training arena allows players to swiftly try and learn many of the basic single or double-input commands needed to execute the extraordinary variety of maneuvers available in the game. Consider, for example, that you may want to make your wrester who is standing next to the ropes in the ring either jump over the ropes, crawl under them, wind up on the apron of the ring or on the floor or not do any of that and climb the turnbuckle… or take the padding off the turnbuckle. And there’s a button combo for each of those. Offense is easily learned and joyfully executed. But the trick to mastering the game seems to be the execution of a single-input counter-move. The same button counters anything. Animated prompts appear during training and in the game’s matches to alert the player that a window to counter has opened. But those windows close so quickly that that game does a poor job teaching the player how to execute this key move well. The Online Limitations: The WWE game’s online competitive wrestling worked fine and minus the lag I saw some complaining about on message boards. But I found the skill-level-matching inadequate. I can breeze through normal difficulty but can’t find a player online who I can beat? I also can’t easily re-find my uploaded wrestling storyline to find out how people have rated it, nor can I select which ones to download with any filters other than most recent and most-highly-rated. Overall, the options for the game’s online modes are just not specific enough for the needs a player might have. The content and gameplay available through online, though, is solid. Immediately Outdated: I played a developer-scripted storyline that involved a rivalry between Edge and Mr. Kennedy. But Mr. Kennedy doesn’t work for WWE anymore. Many of our matches were announced by Jim Ross and Tazz. But Tazz doesn’t work for WWE anymore, either. Both men left the company in 2009, and I understand the challenges of adapting to such changes. But this is one of those things that, as a potential consumer, I just want to have work right. This is an online-connected game. So let’s see it adapt to the present. Buried Info: What are my character’s finishing moves and what position does his opponent have to be in so I can execute them? How am I doing in career mode in terms of raising my wrestlers’ ability to connect with the crowd and raise his charisma stat? There are many pieces of information that are relevant to the gameplay of Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 that seem to have been omitted from menu screens and the instruction manual, possibly being reserved for the official game guide. That leaves the player to stumble across or guess many important details. This is not a bad thing for those who don’t like a lot of tutorials and explanations, but gamer beware that you’ll have to figure a lot of this game out for yourself. I used to avoid pro wrestling games because of my disinterest in fighting games and my belief that the games treated pro wrestling as something different than what I enjoyed. I liked the acrobatics and the melodrama of real WWE. The games, I guessed, treated the whole affair as if it was straight-up sport. WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 still does treat pro wrestling a little more as sport than I’d want. Things like winning streaks are almost required in the game, even though they are rare in the real wrestling leagues. But the addition of configurable storylines provides that element of unpredictable, scripted entertainment that has made WWE programming, in some years, among the best and most enjoyably wild material on TV. Finally, I’m interested. The fact that the configurable narratives — the post-Sims, post-mods playing we can do with sort-of real lives — is a spectacular and mind-bending bonus. (WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 was developed by Yukes and published by THQ for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Wii on October 20. Retails for $59.99 USD on the home consoles. An copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played the 360 version. Won the Royal Rumble as Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Made it on the Road To Wrestlemania as Edge. Progressed Shelton Benjamin up a career ladder to ECW and Intercontinental title glory. Created, uploaded and downloaded storylines. Invented a new top-rope finishing move. Got pinned a lot online, including by a female version of MVP.) Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

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WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 Review: A Game For Smart People [Review]

Rock Band Micro Review: iPhone Joins the Band. [Review]

EA, MTV Games and Harmonix bring their addictive brand of music-making to the small stage on Apple’s iPhone. This feature-heavy entry boasts 20 licensed tracks, retains most of the modes and intuitive play from the console versions, and loses little of the magic that makes the series such a head-banging blast. Loved Band in Your Hand: Four instruments-guitar, bass, drums, vocals, 20 tracks, world tour, quick play, multiplayer, and even a music store make the jump to Apple’s slick portable. Despite the absence of plastic peripherals and avatars , Rock Band on iPhone, well…rocks! On-the-go stars can climb the solo career path with all four instruments, or just jump into a single jam in quick play mode. A great track list, featuring such artists as Foo Fighters, Joan Jett, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Pixies, is unlocked as you tackle the solo tour on any of three difficulty settings. And, if you can round up some iPhone-owning band mates (who’ve also downloaded the game), you can rock out over Bluetooth. One of the cooler features, though, is the music store, which already has 14 new tracks-they’re purchased in pairs for a wallet-friendly 99 cents. If the series’ support on consoles is any indication, iPhones will soon become veritable jukeboxes of Rock Band-supported tunes. Tactile Tuneage: As good as the PSP version of Rock Band was, it sacrificed some of the fun by losing the fake instruments. While the iPhone port doesn’t exactly put a plastic axe in your hands, it does make great use of the device’s touch screen. Coupled with the familiar fret and drum lines, the four touch bars and pads running along the bottom of the screen allow for an amazing amount of satisfying interaction. Holding your iPhone vertically, both your thumbs get one hell of a workout as they frantically keep up with the music racing towards them. Amping the immersion even further is point-boosting overdrive mode, which requires a little shake of the device for activation. Hated Voiceless Vocals: Shredding and drumming offer more than enough room-rattling thrills, but the vocal gameplay falls flatter than an inebriated stage-diver. Without any type of microphone support, you’re subjected to a lame tapping game that’s little more than a tweaked version of the other instruments’ play modes. While similar mechanics work great for drums, guitar, and bass, they just don’t cut it for vocals, where intricacies such as pitch actually affect your performance on the console versions. If you’re not going to let us hone our singing chops, why even bother with vocal play?. Despite falling slightly short of the console versions, and sporting an expensive-for-an-App $9.99 price tag, Rock Band is an easy recommendation. I played through the world tour mode in the middle of the night, in an abandoned NYC Pennsylvania Station. At 2:30AM, working on little sleep, and dreading the long train trip ahead, I fired it up and soon caught myself bouncing to Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation in my uncomfortable waiting-area chair. Trust me-that’s quite an endorsement. Rock Band was developed by Harmonix and published by EA and MTV Games for iPhone in October. Retails for $9.99. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed World Tour mode on easy, normal and hard difficulty settings with all four instruments. Also participated in several multiplayer games Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

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Rock Band Micro Review: iPhone Joins the Band. [Review]