So I finally earned enough money in Assassin’s Creed Liberation to buy the pocket pistol for Aveline to carry when she’s wearing her lady’s outfit. Now she can use it to defend herself from the thugs who accost her in the rougher parts of New Orleans. I earned the money by running an East Indiaman cargo ship full of ice from England to the New World, and then returning with Haitian spices.
And where does Aveline carry her new pocket pistol? See if you can spot it in the screenshot up there.
Sweetie, no, everyone can see that. For a lady who has a blowgun hidden inside her parasol, that’s awfully indiscreet. You should sew yourself a nice holster or something.
Last year we got two bits of bad news about a possible movie adaptation of Shadow of the Colossus. The first bit of bad news was that it was attached to the director of Chronicle, Josh Trank. That was bad news if you saw Chronicle. The second bit of bad news — which maybe wasn’t bad news given the first bit of bad news — was that Trank would do the Fantastic Four reboot for an early 2015 release. I can think of more than 600 million reasons that 20th Century Fox is keen to get a Fantastic Four reboot underway.
Of course, attaching a hot new talent to a relatively unknown videogaming franchise is no guarantee anything is ever going to come of it, particularly if it has to happen quickly. But today, The Hollywood Reporter notes Sony hired Seth Lochhead to write a new Shadow of the Colossus script, replacing the previous script from the guy who did the Chun Li Street Fighter movie. Did you even know there was a Chun Li movie? Because there was. Give that a look and now imagine the same foundation for a Shadow of the Colossus adaptation.
Lochhead, on the other hand, wrote the script for Hanna, a smart and richly textured fairy tale about children coming to terms with their parents and vice versa, but packaged inside a thriller about a teenage assassin. I’m delighted at the idea of a Seth Lochhead Shadow of the Colossus adaptation.
It’s still entirely likely a Shadow of the Colossus movie will get swept under the rug. It’s not an ongoing franchise for Sony, and cult hit videogames don’t tend to pack the theaters, even when they are part of an ongoing franchise. For the time being, your Shadow of the Colossus silver-screen fix will have to come from its godawful appearance in Mike Binder’s sappy post-9/11 drama, Reign over Me.
Two horror movies due out in early 2013 are Evil Dead and Mama. Each movie is from a first-time director whose short film got a lot of attention on the internet. In the case of Evil Dead director Fede Alvarez, the short film is Panic Attack!, in which a bunch of CG robots CG through the capital of Uruguay. In the case of Mama director Andres Muschietti, the short film is Mama, in which a couple of little girls run from a freaky zombie. I couldn’t care less about an Evil Dead remake from a guy who stuck giant robots in footage of his home town. But I have high hopes for Mama, which was shepherded to the big screen by Guillermo del Toro (currently doing his own thing with giant robots in Pacific Rim).
Unfortunately, the creators of a PC benchmarking short called Catzilla (you can get it here to test your own PC) probably won’t get to make a feature length film, which is a bit of a shame. Catzilla is a great short, with a playful sense of humor, no shortage of spectacle, and a gratifying payoff. Alas for my poor copy of War of the Monsters that won’t run on the latest Playstation 3!
Oh, and I should warn you to mind the dubstep. I think I’ve had quite enough of that now. How much longer is that stuff going to be around?
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.
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.
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?
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.
It took Zen long enough to get my beloved Paranormal table from the Playstation 3 into my Xbox Live collection where it belonged. I was grateful. I was content. I was then willing to let go of the four core tables for Zen Pinball on the Playstation, which must have been the casualties of some sort of platform-specific deal. Tesla, Shaman, Eldorado, and V12 were the exclusive properties of Sony (and eventually the Nintendo 3DS). I could visit them, but I would never be able to embrace them.
But like hostage victims released many years later, those four tables will be available tomorrow on Xbox Live. You’ll find them listed as “Zen Classics”, available for ten bucks. I can finally take the yellow ribbons off my 360 controller cords.
Last year, Rift stuck Christmas decorations all over the place, including presents and Christmas trees out in the open world. It was cute if you’re into the whole “let’s drizzle holiday themes over everything” approach. I don’t recall if there was some sort of Rift fiction about these Christmas trees and presents. I don’t recall much about Rift’s fiction at any rate. And I haven’t played World of Warcraft enough to know whether the winter snowball fights and presents and whatnot have some sort of unique place in Azeroth other than “just because”. I imagine DC Universe will have Christmas in Gotham and Metropolis because Christmas actually exists in the real Gotham and Metropolis.
But I like how ArenaNet’s fictional holidays — which I believe have been carried over from the original Guild Wars — feel like they’ve bubbled up from inside the world of Guild Wars rather than being imposed from the outside simply because of the real world. First there was the Mad King for Halloween, and now there’s the asura Tixx in a massive golem-shaped zeppelin, which will visit various cities before coming to rest at Lion’s Arch. Wintersday — not Christmas, mind you! — starts this weekend. Check out the schedule here, with dates and places for the zeppelin’s tour.
Bruce Geryk and I appeared on the most recent Three Moves Ahead podcast to discuss solitaire boardgaming, which is something I mostly know from my iPad. But I was glad to get to talk about a really cool boardgame called Nemo’s War, published by Victory Point Games. It’s a real eyesore, but it’s one of my favorite examples of solitaire boardgaming, above and beyond anything on the iPad. Actually, why isn’t Nemo’s War on the iPad, where it could get a little production value?
By the way, that image up there was posted by Blake Phillips on Board Game Geek. It’s how he spent his time during a power outage that lasted several days. If that’s not a case for making sure you have a solitaire boardgame in the house along with candles, extra batteries, and bottled water, I don’t know what is.
Borderlands 2 is way better written than it needs to be. It’s one of the last places I expected to find some of this year’s best videogame writing. Anthony Burch (pictured, figure it out) deserves much of the credit.
So what stuff did he write that didn’t make it into the game? In one of those Reddit “Ask Me Anything” verbal moshpits, Burch, who claims to have never been stoned or drunk in his life, explains that you missed out on a Scottish granny with a machinegun and Ellie with the body of Brick and the legs of Moxie. And then there’s this bit:
There is one thing that got cut from BL2 that I really really miss. After a certain character dies, you get a quest to go tell all of that character’s friends that the person is dead. Originally, you were going to go tell Tiny Tina and she — for the first and only time in the game — would lose her insane manic tone and actually get really solemn. She’d thank you for telling her and ask you to leave, before disappearing into her workshop. And then, if you moved really close to the workshop, you could hear her quietly sobbing.
One of the marks of a good writer is that he cares about his characters enough to make them actual people instead of just joke delivery systems.
I’m about to have an awesome gunfight. I’m in a jeep, racing up to some bad guys on my right. I pass them and yank the wheel to the right so the car slides at such an angle that it will be between me and the bad guys when I get out, providing convenient cover from their gunfire. To add a little extra slide, which will look totally sweet, I hit the powerbrake. Well, what would have been the powerbrake in Need for Speed: Most Wanted. It’s not easy to shake twenty hours of recent muscle memory.
The powerbrake in Most Wanted is the X button. In Far Cry 3, it’s the B button. In Far Cry 3, the X button is what you press to get out of the car. So I basically throw myself out the right side of a car that is quickly and violently scudding to the right. What was supposed to be a sweet powerslide ending in a heavily armed man leaping out and firing as a big-ass machinegun is instead a guy tumbling out of a car that skids over him to death.
Last weekend, Guild Wars 2 tried something new with a one-time event that was variously spectacular, clever, and disastrous.
I have the utmost respect for how ArenaNet puts drama, action, and storytelling into its open worlds. But [last weekend’s] battles against the karka on Southsun Shoals were a misbegotten spectacle of epic misproportion. I was there for four hours on Sunday afternoon, and it was four of the worst hours I’ve spent in Guild Wars 2 thus far, because I knew what ArenaNet was trying to do. I could tell how it was supposed to go, and so I was keenly aware of how it wasn’t going.
