There is no question that the God of War series of games has been a hallmark of action gaming since the arrival of the original title.  While only playing through pieces of the first game, I borrowed my good friend DLB10000′s PS2 (well into the 360′s life cycle mind you), corded controller and all, and played through the 480p-enabled copy of God of War II to a thoroughly satisfying and epic conclusion (I still reserve the right to bitch about the QTE ending, as it seemed disproportionately difficult with the rest of the game).

In keeping with my tradition of getting a loaner console to play high profile games, I borrowed a PS3 (not from DLB10000) to chew through the recently-released God of War III.

I’ll say it again: if you haven’t played it yet, you should.

I’m going to avoid giving a recap of the old games or a rundown of the current game from a plot perspective, but sufficed to say, this game wraps up the trilogy neatly and with the same level of epic flair that the series has been well-known for.  What surprised me was that, for a game that has (let’s be honest) usually gratuitous violence and sexual content, there are moments of well-delivered voice acting, and even a few thoughtful moments on the state of humanity, and the concepts of sacrifice and forgiveness.  Please don’t misread this as a comparison to Braid or even Bioshock, but it was perfectly appropriate for the proceedings and lent just the right amount of weight to the head-ripping, gut-spilling good times that Sony Santa Monica serves up here.

Let’s talk about the good:

- The graphics!  *gasp*  Whew.  This is a Herculean (yup, I said it) effort on the part of the developers.  Some of the moments actually equal pre-rendered offerings from other companies (that is no hyperbole).  The Kratos model in particular exhibits animation, texturing and layered special effects that never stop being incredible, from the title screen through the final sequence.  The other characters that are extremely impressive are the Titans (these are not the only “big” spectacle, but the only ones I will semi-spoil).  As you know from the ending of God of War 2, you and the Titans were scaling Mount Olympus to conquer Zeus.  In GOW3, the Titans are actual playable levels upon which you run around, and seeing these enormous beasts lumbering around you as you shift to keep your balance is just as awesome as it sounds.  There are very rare moments of weakness in the graphics (the handling of water/liquid is always a trick unfortunately, and never really feels like actual fluid), but as soon as you notice the tiniest of flaws, some jaw-dropping moment will whisk you away to Radville, and you’ll forget all about it.  The fact that a credible game can be built around such wondrous graphical prowess is a testament to great development.

- The sound is similarly well delivered; some highlights for me include the epic-but-never-too-epic delivery of voices from the Gods (I was particularly impressed with Hades and how they mixed his voice), as well as full use of the surround channels for special effects when appropriate (the souls falling to the underworld and screaming on the way down in the rear speakers never got old).  I wouldn’t call the soundscape “subtle” at any particular moment, but it’s always appropriate for the grand scale of this game.

- Gameplay-wise, God of War 3 is just as accessible as the previous games, with some added depth in the use of several weapons and items that can be switched to on-the-fly (and even mid-combo).  These are never put too far out of the way of the player, and all of them (when powered up) are viable options for combat.  My particular favorite was the Cestus; two enormous metal boxing gloves shaped like lion’s heads.  They hurt people in the matter you’d expect them to.

But what’s not really “working”?

- This is not a perfectly polished game; I ran into a couple of very strange bugs during my playthrough (connected to PSN and downloaded most updated patch), including falling through the scenery to my death and once I didn’t even appear when the game loaded up near the final moments of the game, also resulting in a “You Have Died” screen.  These were rare considering the overall size and scope of the game, but they bear mentioning, and in some ways it is a compliment to the rest of the game in that the vast majority of the experience was so flawlessly produced and delivered.

- The platforming sections (though they don’t really happen too often) are just not best-in-class.  The development team has made a conscious and deliberate choice to take camera control away from the player (as they have in previous God of War games).  For what it’s worth, I think this was the correct choice for this game, and it delivered moments of direction (and therefore storytelling) that you just wouldn’t get with a player-controlled camera.  What it means, however, is that sometimes you’ll have a fairly awkward perspective when jumping from one ledge to the next, and in some cases, it will result in your holistically unnecessary demise.  The moments are none-too-frequent as I mentioned, and the generous checkpoint system soothes the frustration.

All in all, I can’t say this enough: this is an amazing game for this generation, and one that deserves to be played.  If you’re not a PS3 owner, go cozy up with your favorite PS3-toting buddy and give this game a play-through; you will NOT be sorry.

Craptastic!

I have been a fan of Resident Evil for many moons. I even attempted to make my own movie and failed fantastically (not because of the script or the lack of motivation- because of dumb, dumb, flaky people).

Wild wild west Alice with annoying Akimbo shotguns.

So the trailer for RE 4 is up and I am completely amazed. Why does Capcom let them do this? Is it just money? Is it really, really funny and I just don’t know? I seriously want to know how they could let something like this go.

I think the movie franchise would have been OK if they had just used a different title other than resident evil and used a different corporation name. Just take the resident evil and umbrella right out- problem pretty much solved.
Those are the only ties to the RE universe and it just drags the name through the mud.
The books are awesome (go read them) and the games were great- of course, but the movies have always left much to desire.

So what if they kept the name and the corporation and continued to let it live in its own universe but didn’t attach well known characters? That is Another way they could have gone about making it, the way they did with the first one. There were no well known characters to piss off the die hard fans but it was faithful to the look and feel of the mythology of the series-it actually added to it and the end was brilliant, that scene where the camera pulls back to the ruined city (sorry but if you have not seen it by now you probably won’t).
Even if they eventually made Alice into a kung fu expert it would not have really hurt the series if they had just stuck with original characters and built around the existing properties, Maybe went with the Evil Alice plan and killed her off (sigh). But they just had to have more well known characters. I think Cameos would have been okay, but having someone as notable as Jill or even Carlos in the second movie without staying true to their character was crap. And then the Nemesis knew kung fu- ubercrap. The nemesis just knew how to kill stars members or other targets- whatever was programmed (even his robot chip would have worked out)- he was a big advanced Frankenstein- not learned in the ways of the deadly arts! I doubt he spent time with Pai Mei, though he was missing one eye…

That is where they jumped the shark.

The first 30 minutes of the second movie were OK but after that mayday!
I really wanted to leave the theater when Alice started jumping around and all the Umbrella people gathered around like a schoolyard fight- But wait… Now the Nemesis has a heart and pushes poor super Alice out of the way of a rocket. I was even ok with the rubber Nemesis suit but Kung- Fu nemesis with manners is just too much.

Looks like the Executioner Majini- but why is it in this movie? Are they in Africa?

The third movie was not so bad if you could get over alice being super and the fact that Claire Redfield had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and was absolutely NOTHING like her character should have been. They almost Made Alice a Terminator-esque character- and that could have worked but fell flat with all the lame wire work. They managed to phone in what could have been a really interesting scene… When they released the “super zombies” (uuugh) they should have done it in the casino. Say the group went to the parking garage to get gas and then got cornered in a casino- that would have let up to the greatest zombie cameo of all time (only to be beaten by Zombieland years later)-

Zombie Wayne Newton.
Picture it… Chills.

The tyrant at the end was pretty lame as well- getting killed with the cube rip off umbrella booby trap- because the first time was not enough and of course we all had to see Milla Jo-Jo-Ba’s eraser nipples for the third time.
Nipples are great but there is a point when you have to leave them behind and work on the story.

Eventually, I actually got to a point where I could accept the three movies, overlooking a lot of the second one, and just hope that one day someone made a really good serious zombie movie (I’m looking at you world war Z, and Frank Darabant with “the walking dead” on AMC- look for it) but after reading a report from the set I am not entirely sure I even want to give this one a chance at all.

I just know they are going to turn Wesker into a vampire, watch…

Here is what it said…

“While we’re not exposed to any zombies on this particular day, we’re told that they are evolving too. In fact, there are completely new breeds of zombies, including “burrowing zombies”, which actually aren’t zombies at all, but infected humans. These are nasty bastards who have been living underground and attempting to burrow through concrete, causing their fingernails and lips to be torn to shreds long ago.” http://www.joblo.com/a-visit-to-the-set-of-resident-evil-afterlife

Really?
Mole-men zombies?
I give up.
And they are going with the, “these aren’t zombies they are infected…” If they aren’t zombies give them a name- like they did in resident evil, don’t say “well we have zombies- but not just ANY zombie…”
And don’t even start with the Trinity- er – Alice slow mo crap… Look-at-these-daggars-they-are-flying-right-at-you-oooooohhh-3D-bandwagon-oooohh.

I don’t care if they used the same camera as James Cameron- I might use the same toilet paper but I don’t dream of a world with blue Thundercats re-enacting Dances with wolves with a hint of Pocahontas.
Maybe soon Hollywood will ensure that we will see a REAL 3D turd- then we will get smell-o-vision again and the electric shocks they used in the 50s for “the tingler” to make us all literally shit ourselves in the theater. I guess we will have to wait for Harold and Kumar 3D for that (yes it is coming).

Meh.

But with Paul (if only I could be Wes) Anderson directing expect another ripoff “homage” to the move cubed, again, and again, and again, and again…
Maybe Alice will wake up on a spaceship haunted by ghosts filled with zombies and aliens stalking her and predators stalking the aliens and just when you think she is a goner Jason Statham will show up and they will escape- or will they? Then she almost dies and has a flashback and we see the bazillianth shot of her eyes and she overcomes her impediment, kills the bad guy/monster and blows up the ship only to land at another location where there are now millions upon millions of mole people trying to take her eyes from her. She draws her sword (yes she has one) and Statham draws a gun and just as they are about to chop up some mole men.

Smash cut to the credits and some lame ass slipknot or other generic new age metal band’s music.

And my eyes roll back.

One of my favorite games of LAST generation has unequivocally got to be God of War 2.  I have not owned a single Sony console in my life, but I did borrow a PS2 from The DLB and worked my way through the entire game, a full two years after the launch of the Xbox 360.  While the God of War series isn’t really a poster child for subtlety and restraint, the execution of the action, the breathtaking boss battles, and the ever-changing-but-always-well-delivered set pieces made me feel like we had actually moved the ball forward to the endzone known as True Cinematic Gaming™.

You can imagine, then, that I had (perhaps unreasonably) high hopes for Dante’s Inferno.  A combination of God of War-style gameplay and a studio that created one of this generation’s coolest games?  Instant win, yes?I regret to inform you that this isn’t the perfect game.  I also regret to inform you that it’s not even close to that.  A few of the high points first:

- If you’ve played God of War, you’ll be very at home here.  The combat system, the power-up system, even how you acquire health, experience and mana, are painfully and shamelessly ripped from Kratos’ world.  God of War IS genius, though, so if you’re going to copy something, make it the best.  (I am reminded of Uncharted’s “homage” to the Gears of War-style stop and pop style of gameplay, a system that they recognized as genius for the type of game they were creating and ran with it to wonderful effect).

- The presentation elements surrounding the game are pretty wonderful.  The cutscenes are a mix of pre-rendered CG movies and in-game interchanges, but they take advantage of the extra fidelity during the CG portions by blending high-quality renderings and a disturbingly effective hand-drawn animation style (this is sold to you through the era-appropriate tapestry artwork that starts moving from time-to-time).  None of it ever felt forced, and it was usually quite chilling, which a game of this subject matter should achieve.

As for the other shoe:

- It’s wonderful that the game is running at 60fps at all times (especially during the more stunning moments such as the church falling apart around you), but I can’t help feeling like we could’ve used just a bit more in the lighting/texture work/animation department and trade that in for something closer to 30fps. (while inconclusive, DigitalFoundry is banking on God of War 3 being 720p/30fps, and everything we’ve seen so far is nothing short of stunning in comparison to Dante’s Inferno).  There are definitely “seams” in the presentation that feel a bit like a step backward in terms of the generational leap we’ve been experiencing in game engines over the past few years.  Levels feel very “geometric”, animations of enemies are synchronized like a robotic dance squad, and the lack of some now fairly common special effects (depth of field in particular comes to mind), all scream last-gen.  There are some AMAZING moments of high-quality texture work, though: the fire effect used for your “you can’t move forward until you beat up these guys” wall, the lightning storm outside the church, and a few other moments of note all pop off the screen.

- The voice acting is a little bit on the suspect side.  For such a narrative-heavy game, I really do wish they landed this part.

- Shock value is great, but sometimes the showing of breasts without any real meaningful context feels more juvenile then perhaps originally intended (of course, it’s looking like we won’t be stopping at naked boobs…).  The violence portion of the game isn’t really a huge deal for me in a game where you FIGHT through hell, but the nudity just didn’t come off as serving any purpose outside of getting people to talk about the game.  Congratulations guys, you win.

If the demo is the sole basis one should use in considering this game, I currently am going to classify it as a rental.  As is typical for most demos, there is a sizzle reel of upcoming moments in the full game (which I had already seen once before), and after playing through the demo and peeling back the mask of the quick cuts and explosive musical score, I found myself a little less excited for Dante’s trip through Hell.

What did you think?

1. Meteor Blitz

This is probably the most traditional of the dual stick shooters I’ve played on the Ipod.  In it, you tasked with defending several planets from incoming meteors, aliens, and assorted baddies.  The board loops around rather than giving you a walled level, so if you’re in trouble, you can fly off in one direction and come back at the bottom of the action, you know, like orbiting around a planet.  (Think SuperStardust HD).

The game features refined graphics (not mind blowing, but pleasant, and smooth), and with the amount of stuff going on on screen at times, there is never a hiccup.

There’s a persistent power up system for your three guns (cannon, fire, ice – which each excel at a different type of meteor), speed, grav gun (a tractor beam which lets you pull in a chunk of meteor or unhappy alien and then throw it out causing mass destruction), and boost, which you will use to bust out of ugly situations.

The game features a number of levels for each of the 6 worlds, and each level ends with a boss fight (always the same swirly boss who throws steel balls at you).

The game absolutely nails the pick up and play concept of ipod gaming.  If you take your thumbs off the sticks, the game automatically pauses.  This is incredibly smart and totally necessary, as having to reach for a pause game would undoubtedly end in your certain doom.  Likewise, dropping out of the game will automatically save the game exactly where you are to return whenever.

Essentially, this is the Iphone’s geometry wars.  A must have shooter that can entertain you for a few minutes or a few hours.

Highly Recommended.

2. Minigore

Minigore riffs on the dual stick shooter as a survival game.  Basically, you play on one level, with adorable and evil fuzzy things constantly coming at you.  Your goal is simply to not die for as long as you can.  You’re assisted in this task by occasionally getting a shotgun or grenade launcher, but most of the time, it’s just you and your trust machine gun, mowing down fuzzy dudes.  You can also occasionally collect enough powerups to become an angry fuzzy dude of your own, ripping the little critters apart just by touching them.

What makes minigore fun, and memorable is it’s unique art style, unlockable characters, and fun tempo.  It’s also priced well, at .99.

The developer seems to put a lot into the game in terms of updates, and it’s easy to recommend if you want something a little different. different feel.

Recommended.

3. Project Phoenix

I picked this up for free as part of the appventcalendar.com promotion, and was pleasantly surprised.  This takes the dual shooter genre in the direction of Assault Heroes, except, instead of a progressing level, you’re dropped onto a map, RPG style with a mission (generally to blow up a lot of stuff).  You have a tank to help with this, and as you explore the map you uncover more of it.  The game can get very frantic, and there are a ton of items to buy for your tank with the loot you get for killing baddies.  The game is relatively short (under an hour of play if you’re really working it), but by the end you definitely get the sense of being an unstoppable dual stick killing machine.  If you’re at all good at dual stick shooters, this probably isn’t going to be extremely challenging, but the graphics are great, the maps are big enough to be fun to explore, and there’s enough weapon variety to keep it interesting throughout the missions.

This is one that I’m comfortable recommending, although if the developers came up with a way to have a randomly generated level system, that would greatly add to the replayability, and make this a highly recommended game.  In that vein, I note this game was just released (12/02/09) and per the developer:

“We are already working on an update that will add more levels and some major features to the game in the future, including something really special.”

It’s still easy to recommend with the amount of game already there.  It’s fun, frenetic, and has just the right touch of “something different” to stand out in a sea of shooters.

Recommended.

So, not really for the kiddies…keep THAT in mind when you think about downloading/playing it.

There is a basic tutorial mode in the beginning that demonstrates what a badass bitch you are in the game.  After that, they dump you into the most intensely confusing and difficult 3 minutes of gameplay you’ll ever play.  I played it twice and nearly turned the demo off because I was SURE this was not a game for me.

It is totally worth it to play through, though.  The game then pulls that, “Well wasn’t that trippy?!  Now let’s start back at the beginning of our story” sort of bit (albeit with a different narrative trick), and then the actual demo starts.  The demo material that follows is MUCH easier on you, and actually lets you figure out how to apply those tricks from the tutorial in the beginning.  Without spoiling the moments, I actually didn’t want the demo to end, and considering how I almost deleted it from the first “mission”, that’s a pretty amazing feat.

The game is exceptionally weird, with the full Japanese womanizing erotica and absolutely strange mashups of different genre pieces (angels, fairies, and torture devices?  Ooooo…K?), but it was dealt with so confidently (especially when you are introduced to new enemies…weird but clever “journal entries” are presented referencing them) that somehow it all “works”, at least as well as this sort of quirky Japanese actioner can work.

The graphics are pretty nice, ranging from “meh” to “wow, that is actually an enormous hair monster eating a mini-boss”.  Nothing that is advancing the state of the art, but very confidently delivered and it runs smooth as butter even when craziness is at its peak.

It’s definitely something that sticks with you, and not necessarily in a bad way.  In a sea of gaming experiences, that’s saying something.

Who it’s not for: Anyone looking for a deep RPG in the style of Diablo.

Dungeon Hunter is a game that I really wanted to love.  It has a few things really going for it.  Better than average graphics, tons of items with varying properties to wear and/or wield, and a fairly responsive “left analog stick” control.

I downloaded the game because it is billed as a “3D epic quest set in a dark fantasy world, in the tradition of the most successful action RPGs.” The ITunes Store description goes on to describe an enormous world where you will complete different types of quests and missions.

There’s nothing technically wrong with the description, but it’s hard to really classify this game as an action RPG.  There are definitely elements that are RPG-like (you can choose one of three characters to play through the game, utilizing brute strength, stealth, or magic; you can allocate how you utilize your experience points as you level up), but the game is far too linear, both in map design and mission choice, to really be considered an RPG with an “enormous world” to explore.

The game has other problems too.  The combat system itself is simplified to a point of taking vital control out of the player’s hands.  Targeting is accomplished by tapping on the enemy you’d like to attack.  When this is done, your character immediately heads for, and starts attacking that character.  When there are several enemies on the screen attacking you at once, your character will divvy his attacks up amongst the enemies rather than sticking to your targeted enemy.  This is a major problem as it makes it difficult to pick off enemies one at a time, thinning out the group.

With the exception of that combat annoyance, which was responsible for almost all of my deaths, the game wasn’t particularly hard.  Loot flows like water from every dead enemy, discovered chest, or broken barrel.  There’s so much loot that the game includes a “transmute” feature, letting you turn any item in your inventory into gold right on the spot.  In fact, you end up using this feature so much to manage your limited inventory, that the options include the ability to “auto-transmute” all items under a pre-determined level.

Because there are so many items, the game also includes an “auto-equip” option to automatically deck your character out in the best items you own.  With few exceptions, this took all of the effort out of managing your character’s load-out (a staple of RPG strategy), and at the same time, made me care a lot less about the loot.  One other note on items, with the exception of one or two items I came across, there are no “special” items in the game, further limiting the intrigue in hunting for goodies.  There are shops, but they almost never have items as powerful as what you picked off your targets.

As for the quests, I said before, the game is highly linear.  There is a map, but by the time you’ve unlocked most of it, it’s a line with a few branches for individual quests in specific areas.  This linearity doesn’t stop at the world map either.  The levels themselves are extremely linear.  For the most part, while there are sometimes a few paths to venture down, the paths that don’t lead you to the end of the level will dead-end quickly, typically with a treasure chest for your trouble.  Because there’s no level map whatsoever, I can’t really be too offended, as making the levels any more complicated would have simply resulted in getting hopelessly lost.  Still, I would have enjoyed a dungeon map system, letting me track my exploration, and more detailed levels to explore.

I understand why Gameloft made the decisions they made.  The result is an RPG “style” game that is very easy for someone to pick up and play without putting too much thought into it.  I can easily summarize my frustration with this game.  It has a great graphics engine for this type of game; it has a detailed stats system governing hits, dodges, magic, strength, critical chances, etc… and a deep enough item system allowing for items to be randomly generated with properties that will impact that system, and a big enough world that could have had a lot to explore. None of that was put to good use.  If Gameloft took this engine, added a basic dungeon mapping system, built some complicated dungeon maps with lots of nooks and crannies to explore, and made loot matter (fewer, but more unique items), this could have been a great game.  As it stands, it’s a simple hack’n’slash, with passable controls and a 2-dimensional story that exactly lives up to its generic name.

A lot of people like this game.  It’s gotten some terrific reviews, but it just seems like so much wasted potential.

Not Recommended.

In Soosiz you play as a little guy with spiky hair trying to rescue his spiky-haired companions who have been scattered around the world as a result of some evil bad guys who have caused all manner of havoc to break out in spiky hair land. 

The on screen controls are as basic as they come:  left, right, and jump. 

Using these most basic of all tools, you explore the various levels looking for your friends, collecting coins, and either head-stomping or avoiding various bad guys. 

What sets Soosiz apart from other Platformers is the gravity mechanic.  Essentially, each surface has its own gravity, so you can easily walk around and under the various pieces, and can jump from one surface to another getting pulled by the individual gravity bits. 

This mechanic is by no means as gimmicky as it sounds, and makes for some great level design and play style.  For example, if you’re having trouble reaching a distant platform above you, you might be able to walk to the underside of the platform you’re on, and jump off, simply falling to the seemingly out-of-reach ledge “above.” 

The graphics are simple but very artistically drawn, and the levels ratchet up the challenge in one of the better measured paces I’ve seen in recent memory.  I never felt like I was getting sandbagged by a level I was simply not ready for, but definitely hit a few levels that required an amount of finesse I wouldn’t have had without mastering the basics. 

All in all, the game is a masterful presentation of what Iphone/Ipod Touch gaming can be.  It is currently $2.99, provides several hours of gameplay, silky smooth and responsive controls that feel natural on a touch screen device, and a unique concept that is almost perfectly executed.  It’s hard to find anything negative to say about the game. 

Definitely Recommended.

Can’t a guy just get to bed at a decent hour?  After a somewhat ho-hum episode of FlashForward last night, I stopped my Windows Media Center Extender DVR session on my Xbox 360 and booted back to the dashboard, ready to do a quick check for new content before SleepyTime.  Alas, I was kicked from Xbox Live and prompted for an update!  Almost 2 hours later, here’s what I stumbled across.

As a sidenote, I have NOT tested the Facebook app, Halo Waypoint, or the MSNBC.com news feed.  (In short, I am not a Facebook member, and the other two options are not available as of yet).  Moving on…

Last.FM: For those of you not familiar with the service, Last.FM is a music discovery service in the vein of Pandora and Slacker.  It allows you to create customized streaming “radio stations” based on artist or keyword (if such a keyword has already been populated on the service, of course).  Last.FM also offers a service called “scrobbling”, which is essentially Last.FM’s term for “listen to what you like and sculpt your listening habits”.  The implementation for the Xbox 360 delivers these features quite effectively.  When I added my Last.FM login info, it had my custom radio stations and preferences downloaded in under 60 seconds.  Choosing one of those stations almost instantly begins to stream that station, complete with photos of the artist playing.  A tap of the “X” button fades the radio station bar into the background, allowing you to navigate through the various options, create new stations, etc.  It is surprisingly fast and smooth.  The major gripe against this feature is that you are stuck in the Last.FM app for your listening experience.  As incredible as the in-app experience is implemented, you don’t get to go cruising about the dashboard, in games, or really anywhere outside of the app and its nifty artist slideshow.  As disappointing as this is, it also relegates this to a far different purpose from  replacing in-game music streaming from your personal music collections.  I can actually see this being a great option for gatherings or really any occasion where you might want to jam out to some tunes while NOT sitting at the 360.  It doesn’t really soothe the wounds inflicted by not having ubiquitous Last.FM support, but more is still more, and I’ll take it over not having any streaming radio.

Twitter: Not too much to say here.  I posted two tweets from my Xbox 360, and it works just how you might think it would.  The inability to surf to links or see pictures makes the experience pretty limited, but what is here is nice.  I sincerely hope they at least add the ability to see Twicpics, otherwise I can’t imagine being here very often (as it is I open/update twitter about once every 2 months anymore).

Zune Video: From a technological perspective, this is probably the most exciting of the updates.  This update to the Video Marketplace (launched three years ago this Thanksgiving) allows all video content to be streamed rather than downloaded.  The streaming is also adaptive, meaning that your video stream (if you meet the minimum bandwidth requirements, of course) will start at a lower video quality and ramp up.  I tested the trailer for Caprica, and I had been ramped up from a rough, low-res Youtube-esque quality up to what was called (via a small prompt in the top righthand corner of the info pane) 1080p HD, all within about 28 seconds.  Not bad considering most feature length content has title cards during this period anyway.  The quality was quite good when we achieved 1080p, so I have high hopes that this technology will quickly be adopted by those deterred by the need to download releases before now.  (I was one of those people, in fact; as much as I prefer digital media to physical, I could not recommend the Video Marketplace before now, since it defeated the one major advantage that streaming video could always claim: instant grat).  Keep an eye on this one, folks; I think this is going to be bigger than most folks are giving it credit for.

I’ll try to put out updated impressions of the remaining features as I’m able to test them.  Overall, great stuff coming this November!

For those of you that might be familiar with a recent post of mine, take heed: Microsoft isn’t a big fan of such things any longer.

Major Nelson just posted on his blog that as of the new system update being sent out (first to Preview Program participants but then to all by the end of November) to all Xbox 360 consoles, your “unauthorized memory unit” will no longer be accessible through your console.

A quick check of Amazon.com shows that the 120GB to be $135 shipped.  I guess all that cross-mojination of the Zune Video Marketplace has Big Content scared (as in perhaps Microsoft can’t allow purchased movies until they lock up the DRM hardware-wise)?  This obviously also protects Microsoft’s hardware ecosystem, so it would be natural to assume this is Microsoft protecting their peripheral price points, but if anyone has read what is involved in the DIY hard drive upgrade for your 360, I doubt they’ve lost too much money except to the occasional 133t haxx0rz who want to stick it to M$.  In any case, paying more for something that doesn’t actually cost that much without the fancy Microsoft packaging/software just sucks, plain and simple.  Here’s hoping for a swift price drop of the 120GB drives if they want to continue to sell them.  Me, I’ll be slogging along with my 20GB until we’re sub-$100.

The holiday gaming season of 2009 is upon us,  and as always, I continue to scour the Interwebz for review scores of fellow journalists and game reviewers to see if my hard-earned gaming dollar should be allocated to this title or that.  In addition to some of my favorite mainstays (Ars, IGN, and Joystiq being the heavy hitters), I always mosey on over to Metacritic to see what the greater populace is saying before making the final decision.

Today I stumbled across the Top 20 list for the Xbox 360 to see how many of these titles are newer titles that I should be paying attention to; here is the most recent list as of 10/15/2009:

Seeing these numbers, it got me thinkin’ about how many multi-platform titles there are on the list.  (For the purposes of this discussion, I am not considering the PC as a platform.  Please don’t be upset).  This led me to review the PS3 Top 20 list to see about similarities:

I thought I’d share a few observations first (of varying degrees of salience to the topic):

• 60% of the Top 20 games in both lists (12 out of the 20) are multi-platform titles.
• Some multi-platform titles have actually received different scores on the different platforms: 4 of the titles scored better on Xbox 360, 2 of them scored better on the PS3, and the remaining received the exact same scores.
• Only one title in each Top 20 list is a downloadable-only title (or started life that way, to be more precise).
• Only one title in both lists is a DLC title that requires the original game to run.

As I reviewed this data, I also started to think about why multiplatform games receive different scores at all.  The first reason is that there is a slight disparity of the amount of reviews from different outlets.  Picking on Bioshock for a moment, it released on the Xbox 360 months before it appeared on PS3, so many folks that rated Bioshock on the Xbox would naturally not go back for a second review of what is essentially the same game.  This, coupled with places like “Planet Xbox 360″ probably not being interested in reviewing a PS3 game, would lead to a slightly different weight of the scoring for the remaining review outlets (at the time of this writing, the Xbox 360 rating is based on 88 reviews vs. 51 reviews for the PS3 release).  Knowing this, it certainly keeps the admittedly small variance in the scores between releases.  While it has been generally accepted that the 360 versions of multi-platform releases run smoother, it doesn’t really seem to ruin the experience enough to reflect in the scores (at least, not in the sampling we are looking at here).

I’ve always communicated to most folks that a large majority of the titles published are released on both systems, so what is important will be 1. – any particular exclusives you have your heart set on, and 2. – what features a particular platform offers.  In large measure, the latter of these two points have been the most important in my mind (I’ve often stated that a vast majority of the titles worth playing are available on both consoles), but as I review the lists above, 40% of the “best” games (I want to slap someone for not having Dead Space up there) for a console are indeed exclusive.  In large measure, this makes sense: exclusives typically get the most money, for both development and (more importantly) marketing, as well as early access to new/advanced features of the console that will trickle down to other dev kits eventually.  This definitely has revised my view of how important exclusives are when discussing the benefits of one console or another.  I still retain the stance that the features of your console is probably the most important thing to consider, but with many folks barely having the time in a given year to complete 20 titles, the ones on these lists are a viable criteria to bring to the table.

One thing is for certain, if you have a busy life like yours truly, whatever console you enjoy will have at least 20 titles sitting in the wings ready to satiate your gaming addiction.