New posts over at RRQ

New posts uploaded to Restore, Restart, Quit, while the 2nd episode (with Hyper and PC Powerplay founding member Ben Mansill) is prepared:

• Preservation vs Profit – can copyright laws be more sympathetic to those preserving games, whilst still enabling creators reasonable opportunity to profit from their work?

• Green bars in Call of Duty? – Remembering a Call of Duty game that was actually playable online; and
• Short Memory – gaming discussion is not being preserved, either. Metacritic’s sad list of dead links.

That’s where I’m posting now. Please update your links.

Now podcasting and posting at Restore Restart Quit

Rohan Harris and I have started a new podcast called Restore, Restart, Quit, about videogaming in all its glorious forms.

The first episode, with special guest Joab Gilroy from GameArena, is here.

I’ve written a new post on the subject of preserving older games from the ravages of extreme copyright laws, as well.

I’ll be posting on gaming subjects there for the foreseeable future. Please update your links.

Working together

You know those DS/Wii “Trauma Center” games, where you pretend to be a doctor and perform operations on pretend patients by applying antibiotic gel, cutting them open with a scalpel, using an ultrasound to find a tumour, make an incision, take it out with the tweezers, seal it up with an artificial membrane, secure it with antibiotic gel, drain some blood from the incision, suture it up, apply more antibioticgelandsecurethebandagequicklybeforetimerunsout?

Aaagh! The pressure!

You wouldn’t think they’d work all that well as a co-operative game.

But they do. Very well indeed.

Picture it – you and your significant other, desperately fighting against the clock and having to work together to keep the patient alive during the operation. While one of you drains the area and tries to piece the bones back together, the other is removing shards and injecting a stabilising drug. One of you drains, the other steps in quickly and sutures before it ruptures. Quick! We’re running out of time! I’ll apply the gel and you bandage! …We made it! With .56 of a second to spare!

And if you like gore in your videogames, IT DELIVERS.

You work together and it feels really good.

Trauma Center: New Blood – my new favourite couple videogame.

Do Americans just suck at COD:MW2?

Quick question: does Infinity Ward make the matchmaking system in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 dodgy and unfair for non-Americans because American players are so bad they need all the help they can get? Has the company concluded that US players have no pride, that they don’t mind that every one of their kills against an overseas adversary is cheapened when the game does everything it can to hand them a ridiculous advantage?

Do Americans really need the free lag-kills against Australians and others shoved by the faulty IW game into US-hosted matches because they can’t compete on a level playing-field? Do Americans require the US company that makes the game to give them the extra assistance of precious extra seconds in every encounter, because if they didn’t then then those US customers would abandon them for a company willing to pander to their inadequacies? Are US players really so embarrassingly shit-house that they desperately need online game developers to cripple the game for their overseas competitors?

Or are US players equally as good as players around the world, and it’s just that Infinity Ward is an incompetent developer that doesn’t give a damn about its international customers?

Hit ‘em where it hurts: DLC

Those publishers with established franchises often feel entirely comfortable treating their customers’ complaints with contempt because the allegedly flawed product sells brilliantly anyway. Prince of Persia and Force Unleashed had extremely dodgy gameplay, but we’d already bought them by the time we realised what the reviewers had glossed over. COD:MW2 might have been a steaming pile of garbage in the single-player, and the multiplayer might have been unplayable for anyone not in the US, but we bought it anyway. GTA IV was an enormous disappointment, but we only found that out after it we got home. Left 4 Dead has appallingly bad matchmaking facilities for non-Americans, but we bought the sequel.

But you know where it does hurt them? DLC. I haven’t bought DLC for any of the above – and it was a happy confluence of principle and what I was going to do anyway. If you don’t enjoy a game that you thought you were going to enjoy, you still might consider the sequel, on the off-chance that they fix the things that made it a disappointment. But DLC, the most profitable form of game development – well, that’s more of the same game. And why would you pay for that if you ultimately didn’t enjoy the main title?

So I have no idea what happens in the PoP “Epilogue”. I didn’t care to find out what happened with “The Lost and the Damned” or Gay Tony. I’m never going to see whatever the extra Star Wars levels were for Force Unleashed. And if they don’t fix matchmaking on MW2 I might well not buy the inevitable new multiplayer maps – I certainly won’t be buying any single-player extensions.

And I’m glad. There should be a cost for developers not properly playtesting their games. And if it isn’t at retail, because we’re not being properly warned by reviewers before purchase, then at least DLC gives us an opportunity to be heard. And where they’re most likely to listen.

Sony PlayTV impressions

Reader LGWS wants to share his experiences with the PlayTV/PS3 bundle:

Let me start by saying that Sony’s new ‘PlayTV’ device is a bargain.

Converting a next gen console into a full-blown High-Definition DVR for ~$150? Brilliant.

1. Scheduled recording is SPECTACULARLY easy. Find the program you want, select, choose record and it’s done. Even better, you can start the recording early, or finish it late, if you don’t trust the TV networks.

2. Free EPG over the air… no subscription fees.
3. Very easy to set up and use, download a system update and you’re away!
4. Sony even gives you a sticker to overlay over your Sony remote, so buttons are easily found.

BUT, like with all things Sony, there are a couple of flaws:

1. It plugs in to a USB cable, so you have to permanently have a USB cable coming out the front of your shiny new console, and

2. When you finish viewing something recorded on the DVR, it just freezes on the last frame, until you press stop. (and when you go to view the same program again, you have to reset it to the start manually) {Jeremy: the PS3 does this with all videos, not just PlayTV ones}

This second issue is a HUGE deal if you have a plasma, and put on an episode of ‘Thomas & Friends’ for your 2 year old, who doesn’t know how to manipulate Sony’s remote controller, leaving an image on screen to “burn in”.

Anyway, I highly recommend this product if you don’t have a DVR already, or only have a Standard-Defintion DVR, or have children (ABC has 3 channels showing children’s TV during the day!) or just want to get rid of your current set-top box.

Censorship in other media

Do you have a PS3? Fire up VidZone, and select the Eminem song “Stan”. The Sony-approved version is amazing. After censoring every swear word earlier, by the second-last verse they’ve just given up and are cutting almost everything. It’s bizarre.

Keep telling yourself that

Take Two thinks it knows why the GTA IV downloadable episodes didn’t sell well:

“Episodes From Liberty City seems to have been most appealing to those who have finished GTA IV and wanted more story and gameplay,” Feder said. “Which is a smaller market than initially expected.

Feder’s explanation for that is that the DLC came too long after GTA-IV and therefore wasn’t marketed as well. So, you know, nothing else to learn from the experience

I have my own reasons (basically stemming from a lack of QA before the original game shipped) why I think many gamers might have been less than interested in more GTA IV. Well, those and the other factor Feder skips merrily over – the DLC’s almost unprecedented price-point.

The thing with DLC is that because the distribution costs are negligible, you’re much better selling MORE copies at a lower price, because while it doesn’t cost you any more, it promotes the game and the brand. Sure, you can greedily push for a high price if you think you can get away with it – but don’t expect anyone’s sympathy when that falls flat.

It’s good to see that greed has a cost.

My games of 2009

Everyone else is doing it. These are the ones I reckon it would be a shame not to experience.

DO NOT MISS

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) – sublime action adventure; you genuinely get to feel like you ARE the batman as you swoop down on psychotic criminals from the shadows.

Shadow Complex (360) – surprisingly polished and addictive platform/2D combat/exploration fest. (And it’s going to be 800 MS confuso-dollars instead of 1200 in the next week or so.)

Flower (PS3) – Beautiful, serene, and satisfying… simply an amazing experience. Unique among games.

Assassin’s Creed 2 (360) – spectacular setting (renaissance Florence and Venice? Yes please!), beautiful to look at, fun to traverse, engaging story… sure, it could’ve lost the timed sections, fixed up Ezio’s habit of leaping off into space and implemented a better quick travel system, but it’s a first-class experience despite those faults.

‘Splosion Man (360) - silly but polished and satisfying platforming with an engagingly demented main character and ludicrous trial-and-error gameplay that remains fun no matter how many times you rocket across the screen and plunge to a splodey death.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) – Spectacular and the closest thing we’ve seen to an interactive movie since Half Life 2. (It’s not a patch on HL2, of course, but at least it pays attention to characterisation and knows how to make a linear experience feel epic.)

NOT QUITE THERE (BECAUSE THEY TOOK A GOOD THING AND STUFFED IT UP)

Modern Warfare 2 (360). Close, guys, but next time try
- a story that makes some sense (remember COD4?)
- multiplayer that’s not utterly broken for anyone not in the US (try a local filter).

Left 4 Dead 2 (360). Also close, but next time
- don’t COMPLETELY wuss out just because A Certain Country has an idiotic rating system. Release it in shops without the offending material if you must, but don’t prevent the people in that country from downloading the censored content and enjoying your game as it was intended.
- multiplayer that’s not utterly broken for anyone not in the US (try a local filter).

OKAY BUT YOU’RE NOT MISSING ALL THAT MUCH

Prototype (good/bad), Borderlands, Tom Clancy’s HAWX, Katamari Forever, Beatles Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5, Red Faction Guerilla (and its invisible walls).

What’re your picks? Have I left anything out I shouldn’t have?

Mod chips have a lawful purpose and should not be banned

Excellent news from France:

Earlier this week, a French court dismissed Nintendo’s case against Divineo, a manufacturer of DS flash cartridges, on the grounds that Nintendo shouldn’t be locking people out of development on the handheld.

Instead, the presiding judge advised Nintendo that it should adopt a more accessible development platform, like that you’d find on a PC.

Of course, Nintendo is chucking the sads and appealing. As far as it’s concerned, its customers are its serfs and will do what it wants.

Let’s hope that if a similar case comes up in Australia again, it would be decided similarly – even after our adoption of US-like rules following the FTA.

Mod chips are particularly important for us here because the threat they represent is the best way of ensuring we don’t get locked behind the region-coded ripoff wall again.

Talking of which – the demo for Dante’s Inferno is out on the PSN Store… the American one, not ours. Fortunately, you can just create a US account and get it that way – but it’s a fairly ridiculous hoop you have to jump through.

God I hate Australian videogame distributors.