EA’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter is a game that’s gotten more attention for its attempts to get attention than for the game itself. Which is hardly surprising. The game itself is an absolute by-the-numbers snoozefest of epically common proportions. But EA’s marketing missteps have been far more memorable than any attempt to shoot down an enemy helicopter with a conveniently placed rocket launcher.
Two months ago, seven active duty Navy SEALs were formally reprimanded and docked two months’ pay for divulging classified information when they were hired as consultants by Electronic Arts. Four former SEALs were under investigation for the same charges. EA uses “written by actual U.S. Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas” as a bullet point in selling the game (“Tier 1 Operators” basically means any of the US special forces such as Delta Force or SEAL Team Six). The Navy reprimands aren’t EA’s fault, of course. Navy SEALs violating their NDAs has been the otherwise secretive group’s main claim to fame these days. But it got Medal of Honor: Warfighter far more attention than the game’s Metacritic score of 53.
Among [EA’s] marketing partners on the Web site were the McMillan Group, the maker of a high-powered sniper’s rifle, and Magpul, which sells high-capacity magazines and other accessories for assault-style weapons.
Links on the Medal of Honor site allowed visitors to click through on the Web sites of the game’s partners and peruse their catalogs.
How did EA react to criticism of the direct links? They pulled the HTML links from the site. Not the logos. Not the partnership. Not the explicit relationship between the videogame and the real-world companies. Not the header that “EA is proud to partner with the following brands”. In other words, not the actual link. Just the HTML link. Now, instead of one click, it will require a Google search for someone to follow-up on Electronic Arts’ explicit connection to real-world hardware.
I don’t mean to get into a debate over gun control — suffice to say I believe precious few people have any business carrying a device whose sole purpose is to kill another person — but it’s disturbing that Electronic Arts goes beyond the fantasy of gunplay and into the realm of actual real-world gun ownership. I love firing pretend guns and I can dig on some hardcore virtual gun porn as much as the next guy. But I have as much interest in real world guns as I have in real world level-3 fireball spells, and it’s irresponsible for a videogame company to explicitly promote a firearm manufacturer. Videogames are fantasies and verisimilitude is no excuse to throw your lot in with the real-world gun industry. Electronic Arts should do the responsible thing and take their relationship with firearms manufacturers no further than whatever licensing deal it takes to keep their shooters from being legally actionable. Leave the business of selling guns to the companies who make guns.
Asylum Blackout was originally called The Incident. That title could apply to literally any movie. Now it’s called Asylum Blackout. You kind of have to admire that it’s so upfront, because it’s a story about a power outage in an asylum. Imagine One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest gone horribly wrong. Well, more horribly wrong.
I wouldn’t recommend this in-your-face disturbing movie to anyone who isn’t hip to the French new wave of beyond-gore horror. Inside, Martyrs, and Irreversible don’t just stop at physical violence. You’re going to be subjected to psychological violence as well. This will not end well. Maybe you should watch something a little less unsettling.
But these movies aren’t just raw shock value. They are refined shock value. Asylum Blackout has a great John Carpenter feel to it, but with a grim modern sensibility. It’s a tightly made movie with style, characters, and seriously enduring ick factor. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I should also warn you that although it strives mightily at Washington State grunge rockers — it’s a French production, but it’s an English language movie — the main actors can only hit the accent about 85% of the time. It’s kind of endearing. This must be what us Americans sound like when we assay English accents.
Asylum Blackout is available on DVD. You probably shouldn’t watch it.
Chris Hornbostel joins us to close out the year by helping us answer questions such as how is it that Battle of the Bulge on the iPad has better multiplayer support than Hot Shots Golf on the Vita? How could any self-respecting fan of League of Legends and all things hobbit hate Guardians of Middle Earth? How do you pronounce the “Eador” in Eador: Genesis and why would you play it instead of a game with a much more pronouncable name like Heroes of Might & Magic? What do Spec Ops: The Line and Sonic Transformation Stars All Racing have in common? What will War Z be called when it can no longer be called War Z? And when you get back into Skyrim, should you play on the PC or the 360?
Zero Dark Thirty isn’t just a sharply observed procedural about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It’s a chronicle of one of this country’s most important decades. Kathryn Bigelow has achieved one of those rare movies that is instead an experience. If you haven’t seen it yet, skip forward to this week’s 3×3 for lighter fare. At the 59-minute mark, we consider our favorite stammers in movies.
I’m not one to make universal pronouncements, especially when it comes to matters of personal preference. For instance, I don’t generally say things like “turn-based is better than real-time”, “mouse and keyboard is better than gamepads for shooters”, “MMOs are a waste of time”, or even “QTEs suck”. Or at least when I do say those things, I use enough words to confuse the issue and leave myself some wiggle room.
However, after trying for far too long to get past the third event in Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, a very very good kart racing game that I feel should have at least two colons in its name, I want to go on record with the following comment:
There has never been — nor will there ever be — a drift racing challenge, event, or mode in any kind of racing game — arcade, sim, realistic, sci-fi, serious, comical, or anywhere in between — that isn’t godawful and that shouldn’t be cut from the game.
Controlled drift is something that simply doesn’t translate well into videogame driving. I understand it’s an important mechanic, particularly in a kart racing game that ties drifting and boosting. But it’s always going to be a seat-of-my-pants thing where I’m just as likely to plow into a wall as I am to take off down a straightaway. I’m okay with that, just as I’m okay with rolling dice in a strategy game. So racing game developers, please stop trying to make me get good at drifting by putting mandatory challenges in my way, because it’s simply not going to happen. I will no more be able to drift like Ken Block than I’ll be able to dance like Mikhail Barishnikov.
It’s a sad day for us owners of Brian Reynolds’ Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. The complete version, not the incomplete basic version without the notoriously hard-to-find Alien Crossfire add-on. You could easily get a copy of the base Alpha Centauri, one of the last century’s classic strategy games, from a variety of places. But that meant you were playing without several of the cool new factions. No Data Angels, Cult of Planet, or Pirates for you. Your version of Planet was missing the fabled Borehole Clusters and Manifold Nexus. You would never stumble across the wreckage of the Unity. You would never launch Geosynchronous Survey Pods over your cities. You would never find a Battle Ogre. Is there any occasion so joyous as an early Battle Ogre on the field? Perhaps most importantly, the Planet you were trying to tame was never the stage for a war between powerful alien factions that gave Alpha Centauri unique shape as a strategy game. And, of course, you could never take control of one of the warring alien factions.
The Alien Crossfire add-on has been difficult to find and/or expensive to buy. So guys like me with our own copies, complete with the vast fold-out tech tree poster, were sitting on a potential gold mine. Today, Good Old Games ruined all that. Today, Brian Reynolds’ Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri includes the Alien Crossfire add-on when you buy it from Good Old Games. Today, Alpha Centauri, one of the finest sci-fi experiences you can have in any medium, is finally available in its complete form. Today, I’m a little poorer, and strategy gamers everywhere are considerably richer.
Super Smash Bros. Melee and specifically Brawl are such generous, enthusiastic, and ongoing donnybrooking arenas that you’d think imitating them would be a great way to make a game. Who wouldn’t want more of that?
So Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale starts the comparison early. As soon as you boot it up, an announcer enthusiastically bellows the name of the game in the exact same voice that introduces a Super Smash Bros. The only difference is that he’s saying different words. That sense of familiarity, the forced imitation, the shamelessness of the homage, never lets up. Neither does the sense that you aren’t playing a Super Smash Bros.
The hot topic this week is Steam in McMaster’s living room. And zombies on Steam. And then not on Steam. Also, we open our Christmas gifts early in case of the end of the world.
I need money. More money. I’ve got some money, but not enough for the really nice weapons. For instance, the dual pistols would be nice for the aesthetic appeal of flintlocks akimbo. The three-round magazine on the pepper pistol would be really sweet for setting up chainkills. Of course the most practical firearm would be the cute little pocket pistol, because Aveline can use it when she’s disguised as a slave or out on the town as a proper lady. I would love to be able to whip out that pistol when Aveline, dressed like a lady, starts getting grief from those thugs at the docks, or in the slums to the northeast. They don’t care about Aveline when she’s dressed as a slave, and they know better than to mess with her when she’s decked out in her assassin’s gear. But when I show up in a dress, they’re downright impertinent. A pocket pistol would be just the right response.
Otherwise, Aveline can only pack heat when she’s in her assassin outfit, and that attracts far too much attention for just getting around town. I suppose I could lower the assassin’s wanted level by paying off New Orleans magistrates, but that gets expensive. Once Aveline has knifed a few soldiers, the going rate for hush money is a few thousand dollars. I’m never going to get better weaponry if I keep paying corrupt politicians.
But what I really need the money for is a hook axe. It hits hard, it’s fast, and it can set up dramatic chain kills on up to four enemies. Chain kills are cinematic freedbies without any counterpart in the other Assassin’s Creed games. Once I’ve built up charges, I can pause the game, pick as many targets as Aveline’s weapon allows, and dispatch them in a flurry of dramatically presented automatic kills. With a hook axe, I’ll be a melee powerhouse. And this is important, because the melee in Liberation isn’t quite the gimme that it is in Assassin’s Creed 3.
A hook axe costs 24,000 from the weapons shop. By the way, don’t buy anything expensive from the wandering smugglers. They may talk a good game, but they’re only good when you need to buy something cheap in a hurry. They’re selling hook axes for 31,000. Fools. Do they know that I’ve made thousands of dollars dealing drugs in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars? Do they think I have no business sense when it comes to open-world games played on handheld systems?
It’s the first third of Peter Jackson’s prequel to The Lord of the Rings! Then it’s a 3×3 of scenes in tents, which makes for a much better 3×3 than you might think.
Two years ago, the Assad regime in Syria assumed they could just clamp down on this Arab Spring nonsense until it went away. It didn’t go away. Instead, a long civil war happened. The death toll has been staggering, thanks to the Assad regime’s unfettered use of the military power it has cultivated over the years in Lebanon and against Israel. One of the most common criticisms leveled at the international community (well, Barack Obama) is the failure to impose a no-fly zone over the county, as it did during the Libyan civil war. Sometimes it’s convenient to ignore the difference between Libya and Syria to score political points.
But as the opposition hangs on and pushes back, sometimes city block by city block, they get closer to winning. Well, “winning”. If Egypt can’t even be an Egypt, what are Syria’s chances? But with every defection, with every sanction, with every captured tank, with every demonstration, Syria’s various rebels get closer to taking control of their country. And we mostly just watch through a Google News page.
I’m not sure that any of these games would have made my top ten, but I never got around to trying the Walking Dead series, Mark of the Ninja, Hitman: Absolution, Guardians of Middle Earth, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Natural Selection 2, Last Story, Tokyo Jungle, Yakuza: Dead Souls, or Spec Ops: The Line. So, mea culpa maxima.
But of the games I did play, here are my favorites for the year.
You’ve read enough of Tom Chick burbling on about the games of 2012. On this week’s podcast, it’s time for Jason McMaster to burble on about the games of 2012!
