Microsoft is slowly letting the cat out the bag about the upcoming Games on Demand service through Xbox Live. I try Microsoft’s press archive and nada. I guess the announcement came after the E3 all-press conference at a lunch for VIPs and the elite press corps. But I ran across an interview on Eurogamer with John Schappert, who is the exec in charge of Live, and he gives us a bit more detail as to what this whole on-demand service will be.

Shappert: “Right now the plan is to have classic titles. We’re talking about 30 titles at launch - I think we mentioned BioShock, Mass Effect, Sonic, Civilization Revolution. Some of these titles are great titles, but retail shelf space is at a premium, and not everything manages to stay at retail for as long as consumers would still like to buy it, and we generally think there’s a lot of legs left on the 360 - we think we’re only halfway through our cycle - so we want to pick up some of these older, great games you can’t buy at retail.” –Eurogamer

So, part of me is happy about this new service. It may be a nice way of picking up older titles (if you have yet to play them or don’t already own them). But my big question is how will the Xbox’s hard drive handle more than a few games? Maybe Microsoft could also offer some additional storage space, maybe on Xbox Live with some extra server space? I’m sure they will charge us for the off-site storage, but would it be cheaper than buying additional hard drive space? Maybe. I mean, I hope I don’t have to buy a new Xbox in order to accommodate full games on the darn thing.

And even though I am interested in the Games on Demand Xbox Live Service, I am really not sure how practical or useful it will be over time. Especially if I am strapped for memory, I may be inclined to delete a game or two, and if that were to be the case, perhaps I would be better off buying the disk for easy removal and easy “come back to later”.

Furthermore, this whole attitude that older games are not available to buy through retailers and thus that is the reason that the service will be offering only the older games is a little out of whack. There are plenty of copies of anything you would want out there, and I can guess those copies would be cheaper than a Microsoft product (call me crazy). But if you don’t like hunting down an older game, then perhaps the GOD (ha ha ha) service would be good for you. However, then there is the whole “how many older games and which ones would be offered” problem.

So, I guess, in conclusion (as if this were a coherent essay), the announced GOD for Xbox Live may be a good thing, or may be like the Netflix thing and rather redundant. We shall see…

Xbox, Microsoft, Xbox Live, Xbox 360, E3, games on demand, video games

Either way, Microsoft shill Steven Spielberg came out to show off the Project Natal prototype at this year’s E3. Don Mattrick, the SR VP in charge of this kind of thing at Microsoft, introduced Natal (which is only a code name, whew!) as not a motion-control controller but a “breakthrough sensor that tracks 3D movements, and recognizes voices, this is controller-free games and entertainment”. No controller needed at all. Take that, Wii!

The Natal is instead a camera that tracks your movements in 3 dimensions and uses your motions to control the game. The sensor also takes cues from voice commands, both for games and for the Xbox itself. At the press conference, Spielberg and Mattrick claimed that the reason that Natal was needed was to get more people into games, because thumb-based controllers are intimidating to people.

And jumping around a room isn’t intimidating?

As a lazy gamer with a low BMI, I tend to see video games as a way of relaxing on the sofa after playing real golf or hiking. So the Wii has little to no long-term interest for someone like me. But the Natal on the other hand is something that I like, so far. Project Natal’s camera is a peripheral, and therefore not required for many games (I’m sure that there will be plenty of games that will utilize the Natal’s capabilities, but there will still be regular games, too). I like the fact that I am not forced to play with a little wand, when all I want to do is use my thumbs.

By the way, at the E3 press conference, Spielberg described compared the birth of Natal as “a moment as significant as the transformation from the square shaped movie screen to Cinemascope…” Dork.

Microsoft, Project Natal, motion control, controller, gaming console, Xbox 360, Steven Spielberg, Wii, controller-free, peripheral, E3

I just have to wonder if the fights will last long enough to pull your opponents jersey over his head…

I'd rather this be Sidney Crosby...

Fighting is an essential component for anyone trying to truly replicate the heart and soul of hockey. Not only the fight itself, but that which leads up to the fight, and EA is definitely trying to bring it to the newest addition to the NHL franchise. Late checks, sneaky hooks, shoves to the back…everything we love about hockey and NHL 10 will have it, coming September 2009.

EA has added some new physics to NHL 10, including a board physics engine that will allow players to play the boards a bit more. You can trap the puck against the boards, shielding it from your opponent, and then kick-pass it out to one of your players. There are more additions to the franchise.

From the EA press release:

NHL 10 features more than 200 gameplay refinements that replicate the skill and finesse of hockey and deliver the most responsive and authentic action ever for the series. Players can one-time loose pucks, score from their knees, knock pucks out of the air and lift a leg to fake a shot on goal. A new 360° precision passing mechanic delivers control over the speed and direction of passes so players can bank passes off the boards or play the puck into space for teammates to skate on to it. Plus, all-new interactive crowds bring the emotion of playoff hockey to life with towel-waving fans, glass bangers and crowds that react to the action on the ice.

Furthermore, NHL 10 is going for realism in the chase for the Stanley Cup. I’m not sure exactly what that means in the sense of the game, but as I am sitting here writing this between periods of the Wings-Ducks game 7, I can tell you it’s harrowing. Go Wings!

NHL, NHL 10, EA, EA sports, sports, video game, Xbox 360, screenshots, Electronic Arts, new features, hockey

The story is simple enough, and I covered it in my first impressions review. Four players (you can either have three friends play with you or you can let the AI be your friends) have to work together to get the hell out of Dodge and take out as many of the “infected” as they can. There are four scenarios through which to play: No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air and Blood Harvest. No Mercy culminates in a roof-top rescue from the local hospital. Death Toll has the “survivors” finding their way to a rescue boat. Dead Air has a rescue military cargo plane, and Blood Harvest involved a military rescue at a farmhouse.

Do you see what they all have in common? That’s right. Every scenario is the exact same…maybe different settings are involved, but by the time you are playing through whichever scenario you choose to play last, you really start wishing that there were a larger plot. Personally, I would have liked it better if either the rescue scenario were longer and more harrowing in terms of length and efforts, and if the rescues were somehow interconnected. For example, after being rescued from the hospital, the next scenario could be what happens next. Instead Left 4 Dead just gives you your stats.

What I liked was the intuitive game controls. There is no button-mashing in this game. It’s more point and shoot. Your left stick controls your movement, the right stick controls your “head” vis a vis the camera view. Right trigger shoots, left trigger shoves the zombies away so you can shoot them more easily. Even if you are not “all-thumbs”, this game is easy to play. Even my boyfriend, who sucks as First Person Shooter games got the hang of this game fairly quickly.

There is not a whole lot of running around looking for stuff in Left 4 Dead, which is nice, but also a little frustrating. I mean, there are all of these little rooms everywhere with nothing in them, so what’s the point of me spending my valuable time looking in them. The only stuff to pick up are ammo, med packs, pain pills, and weapons. Although I did figure out that you can pick up the random gasoline and propane tanks that are here and there. At first, I couldn’t figure out what to do with them, but if you have it in you hand, you can throw the tanks. Once on the ground, you can then shoot them to either explode or create a fire wall (which eventually burns out).

The game is generous to the casual gamer. The “easy” level is just that. Easy. The BF had to play on that level, but he never plays these games, as he is happy to keep playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour or Madden over and over. I played the other levels, to see if there were big differences. “Normal” is the next step up from easy, and it’s not much harder. However, on “normal” and above, you can shoot your teammates, whereas the easy level warns you about hurting your cohorts rather than making them suffer. Once you hit the Advanced and Expert levels, you really do need to know your shit in FPS games. I made it through on Advanced (major diff: the zombies take more bullets to kill), but got a little frustrated (and bored) on Expert. Expert may be totally do-able with live friends, as you can plan out your attacks better. When you play with the AI teammates, you cannot coordinate their movements, which means that you are always on point, taking the most damage and dying, and then having to start the chapter over, and over.

Which brings me to a gripe about the game. You have to play through the whole 5 chapter scenario or you start over. I couldn’t figure out how to save the game during a scenario, so if you don’t have at least an hour and half to sit down and play, then you may want to play something else.

Also, I noticed that my dismemberment skills gleaned from Dead Space came in handy in taking out the zombies. Shooting them in the legs was an easy way to hobble them. Or you could just shoot them in the head, which is very gratifying in the way the heads explode. “Head shots” are one of the statistics at the end of the chapters that are ranked and given, so it is nice to see how many head shots you can get.

I just wish that the game gave you “crotch shot” stats…I rock in that category.

All in all, Left 4 Dead is fun, frivolous, and fast. But it does get old after you play through two scenarios…because you know exactly what the next two scenarios are going to throw at you. That said, if you are into playing it on Xbox Live, Left 4 Dead would be a great game to have around when you have your friends over, either in person or virtually. The co-op action on this game makes a big difference. And if you play online, you can play as the “infected” against the “survivors.”

Left 4 Dead, review, game, video game review, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, online gaming, co-op games, zombies game, 4 player games

So I was watching the telly last night, when this ad comes on. I didn’t really take notice for a few seconds, until after the cage is broken. I thought to myself, cool. But then, I suspiciously thought to myself, “I bet it’s an ad for the Army.” I may have been wrong twice.

As the ad reveals at the end, it’s a 60-spot for the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine game. If the game looks half as good as this ad, I am very excited to play this. Even if it were an ad for the Army, I’d still be excited to play this.

But then I go to the website, and I see that there is a video about making this “tv campaign.” It is a film crew, wire work and real people. Is this how they made the game? I don’t think so. Which leads me to ask, if they were filming this ad with live actors, then shall I assume that no, the game is not going to look this good?

That is a damn shame. Still, I have to admit Wolverine the game looks pretty good. Even for a film-to-video-game transfer.

I am not really into X-Men. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movies enough, and I read a comic or two, but the whole mutant thing just never really captured my imagination. I have yet to see the third X-Men film, and I am rather ambivalent towards …Wolverine, the latest film in the franchise. However, as the writer for this site, I am trying to keep an open mind as it pertains to the game.

I am not usually big into games based on movies, and vice versa, but if the ad says anything about the game’s plot, that being an escape leading to ultimate revenge, then I guess I might try to sit down and play it. The ad has me excited for this game being all POV, but if you look at the screenshots below, I don’t think it will be POV-style. Too bad. That would have been killer…to see the fear in the face of your enemy as you slice through their soft fleshy body. Mmm, fleshy.

Not bad...

...lame.

Ok, I take it all back. The ad makes this game look good. I just wish the game itself did that.

Wolverine, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wolverine the video game, new Wolverine ad, POV Wolverine ad, Uncaged ad, video game commercials, comic book

Depending on your age, you may or may not remember when the home computer was something that your nerdy cousin built in his parents garage or basement. My first computer was the TI something or other, and I remember writing code into that damn thing, trying to get a little man made of little cubes or “pixels” to dance. Well, long before my first foray into coding, a young man in Florida wrote a little game for his brother’s newly-built 16 bit home computer.

Scott Adams (not the guy who draws Dilbert) is something of a legend in video game history, as he started Adventure International, one of the first companies that published games for those early home computers. The games were far from sophisticated, but hey, what do you expect for the late 1970’s and early 1980’s?

Here’s a picture from that first game that Adams wrote, called Space War according to the red folder that holds the loose-leaf lined notebook pages in which the game’s code is written. Don’t laugh. A collector paid almost $200,000 for that folder.

Exciting, isn’t it?

Anyway, the game is based on Star Trek, of course. The E is the Enterprise and the C is a Klingon war ship. A C looks better than a K, according to something I read. The plus signs are photon torpedoes (fired from the wessel). The asterisks and the circles with horns or whatever are meteors and planets, respectively.

You can read about Adams, his brother Richard (who built the computer), and Adventure International on suspect wiki pages, if you really care about whether Adams wrote the first 16-bit game. There is always some debate over these kinds of things, and some people may take offense that I am calling Space War the first 16 bit game for the early 16 bit home computer. I don’t really care about that here, nor do I want to be involved in this debate. I am simply amazed at the game in the first place.

Sometimes by looking behind us, we gain new eyes to see the glory of the present.

Can you imagine playing this Space War game for hours, all jacked up on soda and Skittles, talking smack with to your Klingon opponent over Xbox Live?

16 bit, home computer, early computers, early video games, Adventure International, Star Trek, Scott Adams

But I remember the early days of Netflix, and in 2004, the turnaround was not nearly as quick as it is now that everyone and their brother’s ex-girlfriend subscribe to Netflix. So maybe if Gamefly can grow a bit more, the games at the top of my Q will be sent out from a more local distribution center rather than Pittsburgh (I’m in Oregon).

Anyway, that is not the point of today’s post. You really should let me know when I start to stray from my missions, much like I wish Left 4 Dead would…oh, wait, there is really no way you can not figure out where to go in this game, a First Person Shooter in a 4 man (well, there is one chick, Zoey) team that must make their way out of a zombie apocalypse. Sure, there may be a lot of utility closets with nothing in them, but you won’t lose your way. And that’s good, because Left 4 Dead leaves you without a map.

What I like…killing zombies and lots of them. There are several kinds of zombies, from the relatively benign regular zombie to the Tank zombie, that will seriously mess you up if you let it get close to you.

There is a cinematic in the beginning that kind of explains what happened and why you are where you are, facing a city full of the crazed to catatonic. I didn’t really watch it through from the beginning as I didn’t have the television switched over to the ol’ Xbox 360, but when I did make the switch over, there were a lot of explosions. I like explosions.

I didn’t read anything about the game before playing it, in terms of game controls and such. And it was really easy to figure things out. The controls are pretty intuitive, although I must admit it did take me a sec to figure out how to take advantage of my health pack. You have to “arm” the health pack and then pull the trigger. Sorry, I guess I’m used to hitting an X or a Y, not pulling a trigger for the entire time it takes to recharge your health.

The game plays as a co-op A-Team of sorts. There’s the big biker dude, appropriately named Francis. There’s the white collar black guy, Louis. There’s the token chick that is a zombie movie fan coincidentally enough, Zoey. And of course, there is the crusty old vet named Bill.

The set-up is mission-based rather than following an single plotline, or so it seems. I sat down for two hours and played through the first mission, which is broken down into 5 segments or chapters. This first mission entailed making our way through the city, the sewers, and up to the roof of the local hospital in order to jump aboard a rescue chopper.

My only complaint so far is that when playing the game with only AI team mates is that my character (I played Zoey, duh, I’m a girl that wants to play girl characters — are you listening video game developers?) has to do all the work. The AI guys are total wusses. I gotta run in the room, I gotta kill the horde, I gotta take all the damage and thus all the pain pills. But then that damn Francis keeps snaking the pain pills before I can restock.

I’m going to try and talk my boyfriend into playing co-op mode with me later on, to see how the game plays with another human involved. Otherwise, I will get down to business checking out the other play modes, including playing the game as one of the infected zombies.

Neat.

Left 4 Dead, Gamefly, zombie, video game, review

Unapologetically a zombie-lover, I was so excited to start smashing zombies and instead I got this boring game where I got points for taking pictures and every time I died I had to start all over again in some basement janitorial services office. I may have spent about four hour total playing the damn game, and perhaps that just wasn’t long enough for me to become infected with Dead Rising fever. I never did, and the stupid game sits on my shelf, waiting for me to even bother trying to to get into it in the future.

So far, no progress in that department. I guess maybe now I am just waiting for Dead Rising 2…

Gotta love that trailer.

Some screenshots from Dead Rising 2 are making the rounds on the web, and as this site is no exception to first-look-fever, let’s take a first look.

This is what the backside of a duo of chainsaws on a stick looks like…

Batter up…

I felt the same way when I was in Vegas…

I’m curious as to whether DR2 will be as boringly-maze-like as the first, or if it can be a little more FPS-style. I think I would prefer the latter, but then again, as I have yet to get through the original DR, I probably shouldn’t offer an opinion. Maybe I’ll wait until I’m stuck in the house, with my two-week supply of rice and pasta, water and jelly bellies to wait out the Swine Flu, er, I mean the H1N1, and then as the world falls apart around me, then it will be the perfect time to expose the conspiracy in that Colorado mall.

Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, video games, screenshots

Part of me (the formerly passionate film student) starts to envision my own version of BioShock, but it keeps coming out looking a lot like the video game, as it was so pretty in the first place. I fondly remember that first time I watched the opening introduction-to-Rapture sequence. Lovely, just lovely. Visually arresting, in fact.

Yet, then I start thinking plot, and I then remember how tedious the plot of the game became after the initial headiness of the visuals dissipated. Screenwriter John Logan is working the game into a worthwhile feature film, no doubt with an attached love interest. Sure, Logan wrote Gladiator, but he is also responsible for the so-long-and-boring The Aviator (ok, the plane crash was cool, but every scene with the usually deft Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn made my skin crawl and the end was — what was that?).

The jaded useless-film-degree-holding critic in me thinks that no matter what the film will be a disappointment. The director is Gore Verbinski, who did a family-fun-job of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Before POTC, however, he is responsible for The Ring (pointless) and The Mexican (didn’t see, didn’t want to), and come on, can you really have faith that this man will do BioShock justice?

Anyway, Universal is halting further pre-production on the film version of BioShock. Costs are spiraling out of control, I guess. Unlike Pirates, there is not a built-in audience for BioShock that can make $160 million a tenable cost for such a film. True, there is an audience, but not quite a Disney-sized audience (maybe as fanatical).

My biggest question is how will BioShock the Movie deal with harvesting the Little Sisters? Not sure too many child welfare groups will be too keen on ripping the hearts out of young girls…Adoption-option only.

BioShock, Universal, Gore Verbinski, John Logan, Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean, film, video games as movies

That said, I need to get a couple of things off my chest in regards to the mag. First, let me point out what I like about GI.

Good things about Game Informer

1. I like reading about video games and GI does a great job of staying abreast of the latest news and new releases.

2. I like the calendar of new releases.

Now, let me start bitching about what I don’t like about GI.

Bad Things about Game Informer

1. It is way too much of a sausage fest. If you actually take time to read through the editors page, it’s nothing but dudes. As a female reader, would it kill you to add a female perspective to the magazine? Chicks might like to read what other girl-gamers have to say, and let’s face it — the male readership would love to read what those girl-gamers are into, so that they may figure out something to say to that cute girl in their chem lab.

Now, I get it that the majority of gamers are guys. I live with that everyday, when I kick their asses at Tiger Woods or Madden. But really, to flat out ignore a potential female audience is a detriment to your circulation numbers. I doubt anyone is beating down the door to start up a girl-gamer mag as the numbers wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense economically speaking (not yet anyway), but there are girls and women that really like to play video games. They also would appreciate reading a magazine that maybe includes a female point of view in terms of what’s hot and what to look for. You have an online female editor, but the print edition has not one. Huh?

2. There are never any by-lines. Maybe a female writer is responsible for some features, but we’d never know, would we?

3. Not everyone spent their teens in their parents’ basements applying oxyclean and playing video games on every system known to man. To continually refer to and compare new games with games from 20 years ago is a bit of a turn-off. Sorry, but when you boys were playing with your joystcks, I had better things to do, and even then I was only a flirt with games. So everytime you refer to some arcane game from the Sega Game Cube, I just tune out.

You must understand that today’s gamers are not all hardcore nerds and geeks. Many are normals or quasi-geeks and just want to read fun and informative articles on what games they may want to check out in the future. Have a little diversity in your coverage of said games, and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that if you added a couple of or at least one female (or a normal, but that’s a whole other gripe) to your editorial staff, Game Informer would be more accessible to a whole new demographic.

And sorry, I am not available. There is no way I’m moving to Minneapolis. Thanks anyway.

Game Informer, video games, female gamers, readership