Review: Halo 3
T-shirts, hoodies, patches, buttons, keychains, refrigerator magnets, a special ugly edition Xbox 360 console with a wireless headset to match, incredibly tacky controller designs from Todd McFarlane, tiny replica guns that don't seem to serve any real purpose whatsoever,, and a special edition Mountain Dew flavor. Halo 3 is easily the most hyped game, since, well, Halo 2, and it pretty much lives up to the hype, as well as including a whole load of features no one asked for or even thought of putting on consoles and in FPS games before now.
The long-awaited campaign is definitely the most polished in the series to date, though it isn't without flaws. Bungie's level designers are firing on all cylinders here, with only one real dud in the entire lineup. (The eighth level. You know the one.)
The Halo series has always shined in large-scale open-area combat, and Halo 3 is no exception – it ups the ante significantly in both enemy numbers and arena size. Graphically, the game might not be quite as stunning as games like Gears of War or Bioshock, but you see where all that power went when you arrive at some of the title's larger setpieces. There can be dozens of units and vehicles in a single battle, and it's glorious. The battles can happen dozens of different ways, and they really showcase the unscripted nature of Bungie's AI programming and level design, especially when you get stuck at a particularly hard checkpoint. After one death, you might see a few marines decide to take off after a wraith in a warthog, and in another they will decide to go after a fortified turret defended by infantry. It does wonders to keep the game fresh as you play through it, though some ability to control the computer-controlled marines would be welcome.
The game's smaller infantry-based encounters are a little more complicated. On lower difficulties they are a cakewalk; the computer-controlled marines can take care of things alone in many encounters. Walk through; shoot Brutes; carry on. To a player on normal or easy, they are either filler just some fun mindless shooting. On heroic or legendary, they become almost a tactical grind, requiring careful management of ammunition, equipment, marines and enemy attention to survive.
Equipment is one of Bungie's new additions to its formula, and it's a great way to throw a little more flavor into battles. The items integrate smoothly into battles, which is no small feat considering how fine-tuned Halo's combat is. Bubble shields, which form a protective sphere around the player, can be exactly what you need to move back on the offensive, and power drains, which can both remove enemy shields and disable vehicles from movement, and be incredibly damaging at the right moment. The AI uses these items incessantly, but the player generally has to cast a more careful eye on his supplies.
Halo 3 also introduces an impressive array of new weapons and vehicles. Many of these have an art style reminiscent of the brutes, the game's replacement for the elites of the first two games. One is a gun that shoots razor sharp spikes, and a new kind of sticky grenade that functions similarly. Unfortunately, these don't work like Half-Life 2's crossbow: You can't pin an enemy corpse to the wall with a well-placed kill shot burst. A welcome addition is the ability to rip a turret off its stand and fire it while walking around. The game's new vehicles are generally rather unremarkable. A new human air vehicle, the Hornet, functions as sort of an airborne Ghost, as players can strafe side-to-side, and the new Brute Chopper is a motorcycle-esque ground vehicle that can ram stuff to great effect and explosion. All the new weapons and vehicles fit so well into the previous arsenal that you can scarcely imagine the game without them.
The campaign's narrative is unfortunately quite scatterbrained. It seems at times it is trying to evoke this feeling of danger and the idea that the story may end with Master Chief's death, but for most of the game it forgets this and is completely focused on the larger happenings with the Prophets and the Flood.
A gripe of mine is that the character of the Arbiter seemingly has no overt motivation other than "don't die and Brutes suck." Despite the fact that Master Chief meets the Arbiter in the opening cut scene, the two don't really exchange dialogue until the beginning of the next level, and they never exchange anything of substance. Some additional lines might have alleviated this particular narrative problem, but Cortana's story arc in the game builds up to, well, nothing, and it's highly disappointing.
It also fails to cash in any of the emotional potential that setting the game on Earth could bring. One might have walked through a hospital with civilians in it and overheard them talking, or simply flown over a devastated city, but most of the game's Earth time is spent on the African savannah. Only once are civilians involved in fighting: A group of construction workers armed with pistols rush a Covenant battle line. They die. It's underwhelming, to say the least.
I would contend that even Halo 3's prerelease ad campaign, "Believe," offered better look at the sort of human cost of war, and it was far surpassed by Halo 2's landmark "I Love Bees" campaign, which really made you feel like Earth was worth defending. However, humanity has never been the focus of Halo's actual storyline, though, just its ancillary properties, and this is either an odd choice of Bungie's or a failure of their storytelling ability. The story of the Forerunners, the Flood and the Covenant comes to a relatively satisfying conclusion, but what has happened to humanity over the course of the war?
Of note is Bungie's throwback to its old Marathon style of storytelling by including a series of terminals once the player reaches a new location midway through the game. They are reminiscent of Bioshock's audio diaries and are a welcome addition to the game's storytelling repertoire. A casual player can ignore them, unlike extended cut scenes, but they are there for anyone who seeks more.
Halo 3's campaign is designed to have replay value beyond one playthrough. (Most of the game's Achievements are focused around the single player.) It is the first in the series to offer four player cooperative play over Xbox Live, and, like its predecessors, it offers support up to two players on one console. This experience works very well, and can produce many great moments like one player dropping the other on the back of a scarab to blow it up, then scooping the player back off the top, where the two fly away from the explosion dramatically. Having any number of players also opens up great tactical abilities, but the game can be rather hard on the default settings. Players can turn on skulls, which can be found hidden throughout the campaign, to ratchet up the difficulty and make the experience a challenge for four players.
Bungie's other addition to the campaign is scoring, like the arcade games of yesteryear. You get a set number of points for killing an each enemy, which can be multiplied by a headshot or a series of kills in short succession. Additionally, the aforementioned skulls can be activated to make the game harder, but lend additional multipliers to the final score. This is a fun feature to turn on for coop, where players can compete for the most kills, and it would be just as fun alone were it not for the lack of leaderboards, an incredibly huge oversight for a title that online play is woven so very deeply into.
Of course, the rest of the online functionality is really second to none. Halo 2's excellent party system is back and improved, with the ability to switch between the game's various modes as well as party up with strangers you meet online. It remains the single best way to play with friends online, and Halo 3 is a great game to tie it to.
Halo 3 sports a greater variety of matchmaking playlists than Halo 2, and its multiplayer in general is a refinement of its direct predecessor. It has better balance, generally more interesting maps, and another layer of added gameplay thanks to equipment. In short, matchmaking behaves exactly as you would expect it to.
The multiplayer in general is great fun, but not a huge change from Halo 2, despite what some might have you believe. It's mainly balance changes and gametype
The real shining jewels of Halo 3's featureset are the theater system and Forge. The game automatically saves complete replays of every game you play, campaign or multiplayer, and allows you to comb back through them from any angle or speed to capture screenshots or, in the case of multiplayer, short clips of choice moments where you died spectacularly, or made others die even more spectacularly. You can then send these to your Xbox Live friends, or save high-resolution anti-aliased 1080p (in layman's terms, incredibly good-looking) screenshots on your PC from Bungie.net. Saved films can also be flagged using a Bungie.net account linked to your Xbox Live Gamertag, so that the next time you log in to Halo 3 on your Xbox they will automatically download in the background.
These features are incredible. Ease of use pervades the entire system, so that a friend can e-mail you a link to his triple kill from the previous evening and you can click "download" and then watch a full replay of the action from any angle or perspective. Reiterating, this feature is a sight to behold and unmatched in any other game on the market.
Theater mode isn't quite perfect, however. The interface makes it difficult to rewind precisely, and rewinding is completely impossible in campaign mode replays. One also can't fast forward large chunks of time at once, which is quite annoying if you want to capture a screenshot from the end of a two hour campaign session. Still, these features are an incredible technical achievement that is just as incredible for the player. The general polish
The other shining jewel is Forge. In short, Forge is Garry's Mod lite. For those unfamiliar with Garry's Mod, Forge allows players to rearrange nearly everything about a level and then save custom layouts and game modes to share with their friends or on Bungie.net alongside their films and screenshots. Though this may not be as complicated as modding tools for various PC games, this is a huge advance in features for consoles and will extend the the life of the title immeasurably. It, like theatre mode, is a revelation in the world of consoles, and compared to any PC solution it is still a revelation in ease of use.
Halo 3 is a great game. It might not be deserving of all the hype, the barrage of 10/10 perfect scores, and 3.3 million in sales in a mere seven days, but it's an experience few Xbox 360 owners shouldn't miss, and its featureset is a new high watermark in the industry and redefines the term "complete package."
Review: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Thanks to the end of semester rush combined with wanting to go to Festival, I haven't quite gotten through the end of the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. However, I've still played through what I'd estimate is about 80 percent of it, and I can tell you: It's awesome.
First, though, I need to plug what sounds like it'll be a cool exhibition relating to video games, iDiDx (International Digital In-Development Expo). It'll apparently allow students to showcase any kind of game (and other digital media) they are currently working on. Also, there's a Halo 2 tourney at CyborLAN that will coincide with the expo; feel free to show up and beat me. More info at www.ididx.com.
Anyway, Twilight Princess. This is one of the more complete single-player experiences to come out of the industry in some time. Not many games can really get the epic feel right and still be as long as this title. I've played for about 40 hours, and am nearly finished (I think) but haven't really dabbled in any of the side quests.
However, it should be noted that Twilight Princess is rather derivative of older Zelda titles, but also isn't merely a shiny-graphics version of Ocarina of Time. There are a lot more new items, as well as significant changes in tone and plot and additions like horseback combat. However, if older Zelda titles weren't your thing (heresy!), this one isn't going to change your mind.
This is the part where I talk about Wii controls. The rest of the column applies to the Gamecube version as well. Swinging the remote swings the sword, pointing aims things like the bow and hookshot. Directions on the D-pad serve as shortcuts to items. It all works really fluidly.
The controls do have small problems, though. The sword swinging is far from direct motion mapping. Pretty much any motion becomes a sword swing, and directions don't even come through on-screen. This is particularly annoying in the otherwise-amazing horse combat sequences.
The Wii controls, though not completely perfect, are definitely proof that the Wii remote and nunchuck are up to snuff for more than silly party games; it can be perfectly suitable for big, epic single player games. (A side note: The separate nature of the two sides of the controller really lends Wii games like this to an extremely lazy game-playing position, as you can have both of your hands lazily at your side, raising an arm occasionally to aim an arrow. It's sublime and I wouldn't be surprised if game controllers in future generations can be separated in this fashion, motion controls or not.)
The game itself is a much more plot-heavy Zelda game than titles past. The world is also massive. Fortunately, this massive world does not contain Tingle in a realistic art style. I don't have the space to go into it heavily, nor would I want to spoil it, but I have about three gripes. One: It starts off rather slow, and it takes a while to get into some real action. Two: There's no voice acting. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Three: I can't really think of anything to go here. One good thing of note is that the game doesn't coddle you like many recent titles developed by Nintendo. Hints are not forcibly dispatched.
If, for some reason, you have avoided buying the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess in the months between its release and this column, go now. The only reason I wasn't able to give it a look here in the past is that I haven't finished it, in part because of its impressive length, but also because I just don't want it to end. That is the sign of a good game.
Review: Elite Beat Agents
One DS game I've been kicking around for a while, in one form or another, is Elite Beat Agents, an Americanized sequel to Japanese developer iNiS's (Guitaroo Man) rhythm game hit, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. I had actually originally played an imported copy of the original game, but I wasn't going to review an obscure Japanese title and say "Hey guys this is awesome too bad it'd be really expensive to buy it and also you can't really understand it." Because I had played the Japanese game, I took my time getting around to playing the American version, released last fall, and, well, it's still really awesome.
Elite Beat Agents is a rhythm game where players have to poke and drag various points on the DS's touch screen in time with music. The core gameplay works fantastically, but what really pushes the game over the edge from good to great is the presentation. Each song has a comic panel-based story to go along with it, and the player's performance in the song affects the outcome of the story. Most of them are extremely silly and surreal, and they're very fun to watch, and the art itself is fantastic.
The best thing about them, however, is introducing story into rhythm games, and the consequence that goes with it. The idea behind Elite Beat Agents is stupid, but really fun: You are a part of a secret government agency (the titular agents) that is deployed whenever someone really needs help. You arrive on the scene, generally in a dramatic fashion alongside your two backup dancers, and dance to some rockin' music until the target's problems are solved. The consequences of losing are much higher than, say, Guitar Hero. Losing a song there means the lead singer shaking his head at you AGAIN, losing a song here means that adorable puppy never makes it home to his owner, or any number of other scenarios.
One thing I must say about this game is that it is hard. This is the hardest (good) rhythm game I have ever played. "Free Bird" on expert has nothing on the insane precision required to best some of the songs on the hardest difficulty here. The main difference is that Elite Beat Agents, like DDR and Samba de Amigo before it, measures exactly how close you were to the beat. A perfect hit will net a 300, while one pretty close but off-beat will give you 100 or 50. On the highest difficulty, you pretty much have to be perfect at it. This is a stark contrast to Guitar Hero, which is mainly concerned at making you feel like a rocker rather than the exact precision of your strumming.
A few items of note. One: It is hard to play Elite Beat Agents with just the DS's speakers. I find I perform much better with my DS on a pair of good headphones or plugged into a set of computer speakers or the line in jack on my stereo. Of course, it is both impossible and pointless to attempt to play this game with the volume down. In-class DS players, be warned. Two: Elite Beat Agents is a fast paced game that rewards extreme precision with the stylus. It is at the very least impractical to play in the car or on the bus. Paradoxically, it is almost a handheld game in name only, and is best experienced with the volume on your stereo up while on the couch.
However, the game is good enough to overcome these restrictions. I have no issue with the gameplay itself, however unforgiving it may be. Play it.
Editorial: Authoritarianism in government
Recently, in reading a bit about some of the 2008 presidential candidates, I came upon a disturbing couple of quotes. Reports the National Review: "Crane says he was disappointed with Romney's answer to his question the other night. Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind. Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently."
This is in line with actions of the current administration since the Sept. 11 attacks. The Imperial Presidency, to put it nicely. Another adjective might be dictatorial.
You see, when you are in power, you are infallible. It is impossible for you to be wrong about anything. You see, you can arrest anyone, for no reason, and hold them indefinitely, since, you know, you can't be wrong.
Wait, no, I think I have things backwards. These ideas are repugnant and insane. Not even King George had this kind of power when the colonists rebelled against them, and it seems to be one the U.S.'s mainstream political stances today.
Specifically, this stance nullifies the writ of habeus corpus, often called The Great Writ, on the pretenses of national security. This writ allows the accused to face their accusers in a public setting.
Americans should be appalled that anyone in power holds these beliefs. The idea that the executive can hold anyone it wishes for no explainable reason or charge, and can do so indefinitely, and even in secret, goes against fundamental aspects of our theory of government.
One of the main arguments levied by Republicans against things like universal health care is that governments are inefficient and bloated, and cannot efficiently execute things like a private corporation at the whims of the market can. Governments, they say, are bloated, inefficient, and often wrong.
Yet, these same people hold up the idea that the government should be given a monopoly on power over its people, like the same idea doesn't apply. I agree with the idea that governments, when left alone to accomplish a task, will probably accomplish it in the least efficient manner possible. This can be combated, however, with transparency and oversight by the press and the people.
There is no transparency in habeus cases. Detainees are, mostly, complete secrets. The press is occasionally allowed into Guantanamo hearings, but evidence is classified, even for the detainees themselves. Stories about detainees released have trickled out. One is a satirist who jokingly called for Bill Clinton's head because of the Lewinsky affair. Another has nothing to do with al-Qaida. His file, filled with CIA reports, even says so, but he is still unreleased, since he and his lawyer can't even see it.
These are the reasons the writ of habeus corpus was created--so that the wrongfully accused can get reviewed and get out, and, if you're guilty, then we will find you so. You know, through the justice system, and not the whims of the executive.
Skipping back to the top, the idea that "smart lawyers" are required for Mitt Romney to know if he should favor or oppose this idea is ludicrous, and Giuliani? Well, he's just going to use it a little bit, how nice of him.
And transparency? If there was real transparency here, we would all accept the horrible allegations of torture thrown out by released as fact, or know that they are lies. We would know if our government is actually attaching electrodes to people, and pouring menstrual blood on prisoners, and wrapping muslims in the Israeli flag, and putting out cigarettes on prisoners. If these things aren't true, why can't we look and see? Why all the secrecy?
This terrible tear of authoritarianism present in our government has got to stop. Sept. 11, 2001 was a tragic day, but if we throw out all the things that make our country great, then we've given the perpetrators of those attacks exactly what they wanted.
How to: Wii Controls
Here are two Wii games, both by Activision, who get Wii controls perfectly right and perfectly wrong. This can even occur in the same game. It's fascinating to look at this in what is the Wii's formative period, as developers that are not Nintendo, and even Nintendo itself, figure out how to wring the best performance out of the little console's scary new controls. (The same thing happened with the DS.)
The two games, "Marvel: Ultimate Alliance" and "Call of Duty 3" are both essentially their Gamecube versions with Wii controls strapped to the top, like many Wii games today.
"Marvel" is a top-down Gauntlet-esque game that continues the "X-men Legends" line of games, only now with all kinds of Marvel characters. The standard controls are nothing special, but they get the job done and don't get in the way. Let me make this clear – this game is all about pushing buttons. Pushing buttons a lot. This is, spiritually, Diablo with superheroes and on a console. It's great fun with a couple friends – a spiritual successor to old school co-op arcade beat-'em-ups.
On the Wii, though, the controls are all motion-based. So, every time you need to do a basic punch, you have to move your wrist. Anything. This game is far too combat-intensive for this. Your arm is tired in five minutes. Additionally, ridiculously precise motions are required to do special moves.
This is an example of why Wii controls cannot be adapted to certain game designs created with standard controllers in mind. Developers and publishers of certain titles will need to realize that they pretty much cannot be adapted to motion control. The Gamecube controller and the classic controller exist, and developers will need to learn to require them, or at the least, allow their use so Wii owners who encounter terrible motion controls can at least run back to what they know works.
Not all games have terrible controls, however. Activision's own Call of Duty 3 is slightly flawed due to its relatively uninspired single player and lack of multiplayer. It's a decent game, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing special, aside from the controls, which adapt extremely well.
Obviously, the Wii's remote is used to aim by pointing at the screen. Various other motions are mapped to the remote and the nunchuck. My favorite would have to be tilting the remote to lean around corners. It feels so right.
I have a few issues with the controls. One is the silly motion scripted fights that have me pumping the remote and nunchuck asynchronously to fight off a Nazi. They're just tiring and don't really work. Essentially, the motion control equivalent of button mashing. The driving controls also leave a bit to be desired, but they're a rather tiny portion of the whole game.
Overall, though, these are two examples that should caution developers. You don't have to make everything in the game motion based, and if the motion controls you develop suck, don't be afraid to ditch them. We'll all thank you in the end.
Review: Rainbow Six Vegas
I don't understand why terrorists are attempting to take Las Vegas in "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas," Ubisoft's franchise redesign with a long name. In it, you play as Generic Military Dude Logan, and, with your teammates Generic Asian Dude and Generic Black Dude, you fight terrorists throughout the streets and casinos of near-future Las Vegas.
"Rainbow Six: Vegas" represents a distinct attempt to bring the Rainbow Six games back onto Ubisoft's A-list, after they began languishing in semi-bargain territory with almost yearly releases since 2002 for one console or another. The name went from one of the more well-respected PC shooter series to sort of high-profile shovelware.
One recent game in the series, Lockdown, was referred to as a "door opening simulator," and an online video demonstrated that if you were standing with your head poking out slightly you would take damage, but standing in open sight in the doorway was perfectly safe. In short, they sucked.
"Vegas" changes all this, as well as reinventing the series' basic conventions. It's still a tactical team-based shooter, but now there's a cover system similar to the one in Gears of War. (The two games, oddly, were released within two weeks of one another.) Pulling the left trigger causes the player to stick to nearby surfaces, and you can pop out at any angle with the stick. It's slightly less fluid than Gears' cover system, but allows for more precise and varied shooting abilities. The controls are fairly well designed overall, allowing for just about all your abilities in an uncomplicated fashion, though switching between this game and Gears of War is disorienting, to say the least.
The series also rips a few ideas from the Splinter Cell games, including a fiber optic camera for looking under doors and a combo pair of thermal and night vision goggles. It also features a lot of cool context options, like being able to "fast rope" down walls in places and rappel slowly as well. Additionally, when rappelling, you can shoot your pistol and even rappel onto a window and then break through dramatically.
Your two AI squadmates generally take care of themselves pretty well, and ordering them around is pretty easy, even if you can only order them through line of sight. It's very easy, however, to order them to be stealthy and return fire only, or to break through a door and then flash-bang the interior.
The missions, while featuring the totally unexplained terrorists-attack-Las Vegas premise, are pretty well designed and refreshingly difficult. You'll need to learn good squad tactics and use of your equipment, including flashbangs and smoke grenades, to make it through the campaign. Stupidly, though, your enemies tend to yell out what they are about to do in English, despite the fact that they have accents and could easily speak whatever language they speak natively. Like I said, the plot is "24"-level stupid and just an excuse to shoot terrorists in shiny casinos.
The game itself is gorgeous, with Unreal Engine 3 powered casinos glistening in the darkness. Of special note are the effects when you are hit by either bullets or a flashbang; your character's vision becomes messed up when you are hit, adding another incentive to keep under cover. (Oddly enough, and completely illogically, your health regenerates like in Halo.)
The multiplayer, unfortunately, is a giant pain in the ass to use. The quick match function rarely works, and when it does, you might be waiting a good six minutes to begin play if the match just started. Developers: Rip off Halo 2. Once you're in, you're golden, though, and it's a good extension of the single player. Notably, you can play through the entire campaign in co-op over Xbox Live or split screen with up to four players, though I haven't tried it myself.
One neat feature is face mapping. If you have an Xbox Live Vision camera, you can use it to make the game create a creepy avatar of your head. It works okay, though it really doesn't work if you have longer hair. (This is the military, I guess.) I saw one guy online who had clearly taken a picture of his baby's head, which was hilarious.
Overall, this is an excellent game. Though there are a few issues, it's one of the best shooters on the 360, and is definitely worth considering for purchase.
2007 Vermilion April Fools
TRAVELING STUDENTS REGRET LUNCH DECISION
MANSFIELD, Ark. - Four journalism students returning to Lafayette from a convention in Fayetteville, Ark. regretted their decision to dine at a Sonic drive-in.
The students said they only faced the overwhelming greasiness of the cuisine because they were traveling through what they described as "hick country" and were afraid they wouldn't be able to find another restaurant for another several hours of driving.
Upon leaving the Sonic, the students found a Subway restaurant 30 seconds later.
"Well, everyone, just puke it up, and we can eat again," suggested Chad West, who ate a chili-cheese coney.
Reportedly, no one took him up on the suggestion.
PAPER PLACED UNDER DESK TO PREVENT WOBBLE
This week during a calculus class at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a desk in the university's Maxim-Doucet Hall was hastily repaired by an inventive student by placing a folded-up piece of paper under the offending desk's leg. The desk was reportedly suffering from a slight wobbling affliction that had plagued the seat for several weeks, a mildly irritating quirk to occupants of its curvaceous, buttocks-comforting expanse.
"I was annoyed by the rocking when I shifted positions," said Jesse Landreaux, a mechanical engineering student at UL Lafayette, "so I took repairs into my own hands."
Using skills of logic and construction gleaned from his classes as a student of engineering, Landreaux said he noticed the rocking phenomenon, and began to survey his materials at hand. Deciding that a cylindrical object like a pen was impractical, it suddenly dawned on him to make a standard sheet of loose leaf paper much thicker through a series of vigorous folding actions.
"It's much easier to pay attention in class now," he said.
Ernest Aquayitz, Landreaux's adviser in the mechanical engineering department at UL Lafayette, said he was proud of his student's accomplishment and critical thinking skills.
"That right there is resume material," he said, grinning widely.
"It's not unusual to see unusual feats of invention in the face of slight irritation," said Susan Q. Crosby, Ph.D., a behavioural scientist at the University of Toronto who specializes in sudden bursts of brain activity in college students. "It's not entirely unsurprising that a student was able to solve such a dilemma instead of paying attention in math class."
Antoine Lacrimose, the UL Lafayette physical plant's specialist dealing with student seating repairs, said a permanent mend for the desk may be in the works.
"We've written out a grant for the monetary resources, and are currently working on correspondence and approval with President Authement, the Board of Regents, the College of Mathematics, and the International Board of Standards for Collegiate Posterior Accommodations," he said. "Hopefully a more permanent fix can be implemented by the end of the fiscal year."
DROOL SPOT WIPED FROM DESK
A University of Louisiana at Lafayette student, who has requested to remain anonymous, reportedly wiped a voluminous drool spot from the northwest region of his desk in room 527 of Griffin Hall.
The student said he fell asleep during a particularly boring history lecture following a large lunch at local eatery/copy shop Campus Copies.
"I just couldn't keep my eyes open," said the deep-voiced student, sitting with a dark shadow draped over her head and shoulders during the anonymous interview. "The next thing I knew, there was a puddle of my own saliva working its way down toward my note
"I saw the spot," said Mary-Meredith Davies, a history major present in the classroom. "It was really big and gross, and also the spit was thick and mucus-like."
"It's not unusual for students to fall asleep during my lectures," said Chet Rzadkiewicz, Ph.D., a history professor at UL Lafayette. "What was unusual was the size of the drool puddle. I was astonished at its elephantine size."
"The size reported is quite interesting," said Phyllis Albert, a biology professor specializing in sleep habits. "Generally, one would only see that amount of salival discharge in a comfortable, deep sleep."
Albert hypothesized that the student must have been dreaming about something really appealing to produce the spot.
AUTHEMENT HYPOTHESIZED TO BE CYBORG CONSTRUCT
Top University of Louisiana at Lafayette administration officials, speaking on the condition of pseudonym usage, have relayed their suspicions that University President Ray P. Authement is actually some sort of advanced cyborg construct.
"I've seen him occasionally have very jerky movements near the end of a workday," said one official.
"I once saw him down an entire package of double-A batteries while sitting in traffic," said a second official.
An anonymous maintenance official said he had a standing monthly appointment to deliver three gallons of oil and a dozen car batteries to the basement of the President's mansion.
The maintenance official said that each month, the basement is empty, and he has never been given a reason for their delivery.
Authement and his wife drive two cars which do not utilize the same kind of battery delivered to the basement.
SGA PRESIDENT SURVIVES NINJA ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
Student Government Association President Claire Pettit has reportedly fended off a ninja assassination attempt thanks to two dudes she characterized as "bad."
Pettit said she was walking from SGA offices in Coronna Hall to her vehicle at the Student Union when a cadre of ninjas, reportedly clad in black and wielding katanas, appeared in front of Pettit.
They walked up to her, she said, and demanded she come with them.
"I was so afraid," she said. "I tried to run away, and they pinned me to the ground and began to tie up my hands with rope."
According to Pettit, at this point, two men in what she described as matching red and blue "wife beaters" appeared and began to engage the ninjas in fist-fights.
Pettit said the men bested the ninjas easily, despite their lack of weapons or armor.
The University Police Department said it has no information on where the ninjas came from, or what they might have wanted with Pettit.
Review: Wii Play
Wii Sports was, at least for me, unexpectedly great. I was expecting a cool tech demo, and that's what some of it was (boxing), but tennis and bowling are really great, and golf is good, but needs more holes.
Nintendo has followed Wii Sports with another Wii remote-focused anthology, this time under the moniker Wii Play. It is a collection of 12 minigames. I'll review them individually. Many of them suck. All of them are utterly simplistic, but on a better note, all of them are two-player enabled. It is worth noting that Wii Play comes with a Wii remote for its $50 price. This is important, because the game could not stand alone. It hardly even stands for $10.
Ping Pong. Wii Sports Tennis, only somehow more simplistic. It's like Pong– essentially pointing your remote to move a paddle in the way of an incoming ball. No swinging motion required. Verdict: Crap.
Billiards. This is probably the highlight of the package for me. Though it is restricted to only a game of nine ball, it uses the Wii remote well and is pretty deep. Unfortunately, the scoring system is not the standard nine ball, but one where you get points based on the number of the ball you sink. You still have to sink them in order. Sinking the nine ball through a combination off of another ball does not end the game, so a lot of the strategy of nine ball is lost. Still, pretty fun. Verdict: Nice, but I want a real pool game.
Tanks! A clone of the Atari game Combat with the Wii remote. It's simplistic, but any game where I get to attempt to blow up my friends is okay by me. Verdict: Fun.
Charge! Inexplicably pilot a cow using the Wii remote. Simple, stupid, but hilarious. Verdict: Amusing.
Fishing. An overgrown Mario Party minigame. Use the Wii remote in three dimensional space to catch fish for points. Verdict: Bleh.
Shooting Range. A gun based minigame that is sadly not Duck Hunt. Shoot at targets, ducks and UFOs for a high score. Fun reflex-based game that works well with the Wii remote, but not as much fun as the Wario Ware equivalent, which gets points for insanity. Verdict: Awesome, but not as awesome as Duck Hunt on the Virtual Console will be.
Laser Hockey. Another game kinda like Pong, but it's drawn like psychedelic air hockey and the paddles twist with the remote as you point it. Better than ping pong. Verdict: Passably fun.
Find Mii. A game of differentiation. You have to find the odd Mii out in various ways. A nice diversion. It's nice to see my Mii in more games, though. Verdict: Okay.
Pose Mii. Pose a Mii by pressing buttons and twisting and turning the remote. It's amusing, but there's no strategy at all. Verdict: Okay.
Overall, Wii Play is merely okay. It seems like these minigames could have been included in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves to strengthen that package, as has happened in past Wario Ware games. It's alone, though, but bundled with a Wii remote, it becomes palatable.
Wii Play seems like a cheap attempt to fill in the game drought that follows every console launch. The Wii's isn't as bad as the PS3's currently is or the DS's was, but there's not much to buy, just lots of pretty fun games you just want to rent. You might as well get Wii Play if you're going to buy another remote anyway, but don't expect anything deep.
Computer science department demonstrates new motion capture equipment
Computer science and computer animation students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have access to even higher technology now that the new computer science building is open: A full motion capture laboratory.
The lab, located on the first floor of the new facility, is unique in the state of Louisiana. It will allow students to dress up in a special black body suit, covered in strategically located white spheres, and capture animation for use in video game development and computer animation production.
"It's about $100,000 worth of eight-megapixel cameras from Vicon," said Jared Chambliss, a computer science graduate student. "Most of their products are used not in the game development area, but [...] for bioinformatics companies to analyze movement."
The red light-emitting motion capture cameras follow the movement of the white spheres against the black backdrop.
"Basically, all those little sensor dots," said David Ducrest, a computer science major who is using the lab for one of his projects. "The camera will track them in 3D space."
The orbs are placed on strategic locations corresponding with bones and joints all over the body, allowing for computers to interpret bodily movements.
"We can associate these dots with different bones in the body," said Ducrest.
The files generated at then mapped to computer models. The result is eerily accurate animation superimposed on students' digital creations.
"You can say, 'I want this bone to affect these polygons,'" said Ducrest. "So when this bone moves, those polygons are going to move."
Tim Roden, Ph.D., the professor in charge of the equipment, said that because the equipment is new, students and faculty in the department are still learning the nuances of its operation. He demonstrated a figure dancing which was captured in the lab, noting a few minute problems in the animation he was working on.
"In the game class I'm teaching now, most people have a terrain with some trees and rocks, and a sky and a waterfall, and stuff like that," said Roden, who is teaching CMPS 427, a class that will use the lab, "but there's no people walking around. The next step in the class, now that we have this equipment, one of the assignments is going to be to get a character or a monster walking around. They'll go in the motion capture lab and record their own data."
Chambliss said that if the department needed to capture larger scenes, the tripod-based setup of the lab allowed them to move the system anywhere they needed to.
Roden said the computer science department would be open to allow any group on campus to use the lab once the department had the lab fully operational.
"Using a motion capture system is part of the education for animation," said Yeon Choi, an art professor who teaches computer animation. "For the senior students, when they do the senior project, I'm sure a lot of students are going to find it very useful."
She said that the system would not take work away from her students.
"After we use the motion system, we still need to fix a lot of things," she said. "To be able to get natural movements, a lot of times we have to work for 80 hours. With the motion capture system, it can be done quickly, although there's some cleanup jobs. It's very exciting news."
Roden said that a graduate-level course, entertainment computing, would be using the equipment this fall.
"Normal, average art and computer students will be able to use this to do animation," said Chambliss. "They can come in and put on a fun little suit with reflective markers on it, and instead of having to sit there and hand-animate a foot moving, they can just move their foot or dance around, and be able to export that data into a 3D model to get a more fluid range of motion."
Arts students transform trash into shelters for homeless
Students in the College of the Arts, with the help of Scott Shall, an architecture professor, have created the streetURCHIN, an unholy marriage of plastic bags, bottles and rubber bands that come together to form a cheaply constructed dome-shaped shelter for the homeless. Their work is currently on display at the A+D Gallery in Chicago.
"We challenged the students to design an urban tent for Chicago's homeless that was dryer, stronger and safer than the ones they currently use," said Shall. He said students could only construct the tents out of materials from the dumpster, and the instructions had to be simple and able to be conveyed without words.
The result was the streetURCHIN.
"It's a new way to approach materials," said Kevin Dumatrait, an architecture student who worked on the streetURCHIN. "Kind of look at refuse, and trash, and realize how they have some kind of potential."
Shall said the exhibit was in place in the front window of the gallery, and that the response has been "great."
The structure itself is one of plastic bags and bottles held together by rubber bands. It forms a large dome that a homeless person could take shelter under. The streetURCHIN is designed to protect from both the wind and the rain. The entire thing can be constructed from what is essentially garbage
Shall said that the entire project took students only five weeks to complete it.
Shall said that the streetURCHIN would be on display in the Dean's Gallery on the second floor of Fletcher Hall from April 13 to April 20, and that all students are invited to come view it.
He said that rather than shipping the original streetURCHIN to the exhibit in Chicago, students came up with a set of instructions that challenged museum patrons to take one of the instruction sheets and work with a homeless person to construct a shelter.
"We asked them to hang the instruction manuals in this kind of grid, so that you could see as people took them away so it's kind of a performance piece in that regard," said Shall. "You can see how people think about it. They're looking at these things; they're not sure whether to take them or not."
Shall said that some students were currently working on what he called "version 2.0" of the project, which was making a suitable floor from the same materials that could be used in conjunction with the urchin to protect from the cold ground.
Shall said the gallery's administrators contacted him about displaying work from his International Design Clinic after seeing student work displayed in Romania. The IDC, which describes itself as "guerilla architecture and humanitarian design," is an organization that aspires to help students enhance the lives of the less fortunate around the world.
IDC was also involved in Project Playhouse, a benefit for the Healing House of Lafayette which constructed three playhouses that were auctioned off for charity.
Shall said students were currently involved in another project to help the Healing House, and will eventually take a summer trip to India in 2008 to build portable schoolhouses.
Review: SSX Blur
This game – EA's SSX Blur – confounds me. It's not just the controls. I'll freely admit right now that I don't feel like I've mastered the controls. I've almost completed every event on the first section of the game, but I continue to improve in my handling of them. They are really complicated, but, for the most part, feel more and more natural the more you use them. However, I just feel like I personally suck at them.
SSX Blur uses a nunchuck attachment. To steer, you use the analog stick, and to make sharp turns you tilt the nunchuck while using the stick. This is called "carving" and it feels very nice once you get the hang of it. Jumping is accomplished by moving the nunchuck up quickly, and spins and grabs are then accomplished by spinning and tilting either the nunchuck or main remote. There's also ubertricks, but I'll do that later.
Here lies one of the primary advantages in control in comparison to the traditional older games. It is also one of the more confounding parts, at least for me. You see, all this motion, well, it just confuses me. I don't have the coordination to spin two different things in different directions while still using buttons. This is probably bad for a Wii owner. I can just randomly spin and grab, but doing anything specific is now impossible, at least for me.
I don't really feel like I can rate these controls, though. Some people I've had play the game seem to pick up on them naturally, and do pretty well on their first few races. Some people are just utterly confused like myself and put down the controller after a few minutes. The opinion on the Internet is a wider range than this. All I can tell you is rent it and reiterate that Nintendo needs to put up demos on the Wii Shop Channel.
But, back to the controls themselves. Ubertricks are accomplished by drawing a shape on the screen. This is so cumbersome there is actually a training mode so you can practice it, and I cannot do it regularly even in the training screen. This strikes me as an order of magnitude worse than the regular controls, which really feel like they should work if I wasn't such an uncoordinated clumsy geek.
This still leaves us with the actual game, which unfortunately, is merely good at best. SSX3's wonderful artwork, course design, characters, and advancement system add up so that it remains the pinnacle of the series. SSX On Tour threw most of that out the window, and SSX Blur, which is actually a sort of mash-up of those two titles, comes out appropriately between them.
Unlike SSX On Tour's generic dudes, you get to play as a classic SSX cast member. Unfortunately, there is zero customizability, unlike SSX3. Also, there characters really end up being flat skins with no personality, as there is no voice acting. No insane British accent screams from Moby or quickly dispensed Japanese from Kaori. They're just kinda there. In the end, they might as well be Miis or other user-created characters, as they really have no personality at all.
The courses are a mix of retooled SSX3 and On Tour courses. Unfortunately, they lack the solid art direction of the courses in 3, which had a certain je ne sais quoi in their design that isn't replicated here. (Yes, I just used a French phrase to describe a racing game.) They look OK, but not as good as 3. This is a common theme in the game.
I don't know if I can recommend SSX Blur. Maybe you will get the controls. Maybe you will not be a pretentious and picky gamer like myself. Maybe you won't. I do know that you should rent it if you're a fan of the series; otherwise, it's not the next great Wii game we're all waiting for, but it still might be worth a try.
Mandy Trahan: University student, landman
Mandy Trahan's walls are lime green and adorned with artwork. An iPod serenades her from a set of speakers with a "morning playlist." Little here would clue observers in to Trahan's occupation: She's a landman.
"The profession--if you're in it, you're called a landman," she said, from a Jefferson Street office accented with an over-sized beanbag chair. "People always make a joke, and say, 'Well, aren't you a landlady? Aren't you a landwoman?' That's not proper terminology. If you're male or female, you're still a landman, and I hope that it never changes."
Trahan, a student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, owns her own petroleum land brokerage company, Mantra Land Services. Here she works as a landman, where she works with oil and gas companies to research and negotiate for the use of land in on-shore drilling projects.
Though she has been working a full-time job, Trahan, 31, has also been at least a part-time student. After high school, she said she spent a few semesters in college and decided it wasn't for her--at least at the time.
"I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to do at the young age of 18 or 19," said Trahan. "I wasn't really focused on my grades. They were really in the toilet."
Trahan said after she left school and became a landman, she still didn't return to school because "the money was so great," and she didn't need to return.
"[Being a landman] was a job I stumbled into," she said. "It didn't really hold any particular meaning to me, and I felt like not finishing school was just unfinished business."
Trahan said she felt like a college degree was just "something she needed to have," so she went back to school, eventually ending up as an English literature major after trying her hand at general studies, political science and journalism.
"I really just picked it based on what classes were available and what didn't require a lot of math," she said, laughing. "I guess I gravitated toward English classes because I always loved reading and I always loved literature, and I always came away from those courses with a deeper understanding of, I guess, life in general."
"I think some people probably wonder," she said, "'What's an oil field girl doing in a class like this?'"
Trahan said she had been encouraged by some of her professors to continue writing and pursue further education, but she planned to continue her career as a landman for at least the immediate future. She said the company she founded, Mantra, was less than a year old, and it is "really building up steam." Eventually, she said, would return to the university and pursue a master's degree, but for now she and collegiate life would go their separate ways.
Trahan said that her life as a landman in the "real world" was worlds apart from the life and perspective of the average English major she shared classes with.
"It's a totally different universe," she said. "I would probably have skipped lunch that day, because I was under pressure to finish a certain tract of land, get the contract prepared, get the check cut, drive out to the country, get the thing signed, rush back in, barely make it to class, and I'd gone through this really stressful, pragmatic intensified real-world day, where we were really trying to accomplish something, we were trying to build this rig, and we were trying to find the petroleum and market it.
"It was this heavy-handed, industrial sort of process that we were working as a part of, and I'd get to class, and they would be talking about all these sort of really out-there, nebulous topics, like transcendentalism. [...] It was just really strange, and I thought just as much as I couldn't comprehend some of what they were talking about, because I didn't have the vocabulary and history, they would have had no idea what it would be like to be in the real world, working really hard to accomplish a pragmatic task. It was fun, though."
She said she had to drop many of her classes because she ended up working on high-profile high-pressure projects, and couldn't handle the workload, but she persevered.
"Because my job was so demanding," she said, "sometimes I could take one class per semester, sometimes as many as three, but that was about max."
Trahan is currently in her last semester at UL Lafayette, and enrolled in her final class: English 327, or script writing. She said her college career has taken her 21 semesters over 14 years, including her post-high school semesters.
Trahan said she would miss her classes, as they really "add another dimension" to her life, and she enjoyed having them as a "hobby."
"If I can do it, anybody can do it," she said.
Review: Worms XBLA
In the past few weeks, Xbox Live Arcade has had a flood to make up for the relative drought of recent months. Two of the most complete and, well, retail-like game experiences hit, in the form of Worms and Alien Hominid HD. Today is all about Worms, since Alien Hominid is way too hard. (Translation: I am a pansy.)
Worms is a sort of "reboot" of the long-running annelid strategic combat simulation series. Recent games had taken place in three dimensions, and were not as well-received as the older, 2D ones. Even the recent 2D iterations were a little too crazy and random to really be called strategy games. The weapons were just a little too insane; when you have multiple weapons in your inventory that can tear apart a huge chunk of the playing field, a lot of the strategy is removed.
Worms for the Arcade scales things back a bit. Like the PSP and DS versions, this one goes back to basics. Most of the unbalanced weapons are gone, leaving behind many that require more skill to use. Here you'll need to learn to toss a grenade accurately or how to use the bazooka in relation to the wind. Some of the easy weapons still remain, such as dynamite or the sheep and the banana bomb remains a crazy weapon you'll only find as a pickup. The most missed weapons are the Holy Hand Grenade and the baseball bat, but perhaps they'll appear in a downloadable content update. (Just don't make them part of the normal inventory.)
The weapon selection really brings out how strategic Worms can be. I, being raised on Armageddon and World Party, never thought of Worms as anything more than a fun diversion. The insanity of the 3D games reinforced this. The new version is a sort of revelation to me. I've learned the subtle art of the ninja rope. I've learned how to place grenades so that the worm bounces into that cluster of mines after being hit with an explosion. It's an awesome refocusing of the series, but be warned if you're expecting Super Sheep, Holy Hand Grenades, and old ladies. (Again, the banana bomb remains as a pickup in most game schemes.) One annoying omission is the lack of fire erupting from the barrels when they explode. A cunning Worms World Party player could blow up a barrel and send a cascading fire flow of death down onto a worm in a valley, but not so in the Live Arcade edition. Bummer.
There are problems, however. The single player game is just a series of progressively more unfair challenges against computer players. It would be totally worthless if there wasn't an achievement attached. Additionally, in true Worms tradition, the AI opponents can make utterly insane shots. They can bounce grenades off four things so they land perfectly next to one of your worms. They can make perfect use of the wind for bazooka shots. It's frustrating. However, they usually aren't all that smart. They leave themselves in large clusters or ignore nearby item pickups. They are also programmed to occasionally completely screw up and blow themselves up. You can beat them, but only through cunning exploitation of their weaknesses.
Multiplayer, like all Worms titles, is the real star here. Online or offline for four players, it's a riot. Xbox Live play generally works pretty well. I had some trouble connecting to a game on occasion, but it usually worked OK. Gameplay is lag-free, I guess. (Not that it really matters.) Oddly, voice communications come through before you actually see what happened on a particular player's turn. You'll often hear someone exasperatedly exclaim "dammit," and see their worm's grenade land right next to them and send them into the sea. One annoying feature omission is the lack of guest play in Xbox Live games. I can't have two people play on my console against others online.
A few random annoyances I haven't woven into the proper text: The in-game font can be hard to read on non-HD televisions. It's not as bad as Dead Rising, but it's worth noting. For some reason, the number of custom teams you can create is capped at four. Really, guys, I have enough space on my hard drive. I swear. Control is not true analog. You can't aim just a little bit or move the reticle slowly with the analog stick. It reaches a threshold and it suddenly begins moving full speed. Seriously, Team 17, it's 2007. Come on.
Overall, though, I have to recommend Worms. It's a sweet title, online multiplayer or offline, and it only costs 800 points, or $10. Avoid it if your friends won't play it with you, or you can't play online.
Review: Viva Pinata
Unlike most games on the Xbox 360, this one is not one that 14-year-olds might consider "mature." In fact, they would probably call it "gay." But that doesn't matter, because Viva Piñata is, in fact, totally awesome.
Viva Piñata is the latest game from venerable British studio Rare, and really, their first truly great game since the N64's Conker's Bad Fur day, though Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo were both fairly decent from what I've played.
In the extraordinarily brightly colored world of Viva Piñata, you play a disembodied gardener who has to build a nice place to attract piñatas. The game works in a similar fashion to the older Dungeon Keeper games for PC, or the more recent Evil Genius. You build it, and they come.
Assuming, of course, that you build it correctly. You choose from a variety of landscaping options and various accents and plants and such, and those determine the kind of piñatas you can attract. For example, getting a bunch of water and aquatic plants attracts newts, and putting down bread attracts ducks, and flowers for bees and so on.
Of course, if you want your piñatas to mate and make wee baby piñatas, you have to also meet the requirements for that. You'll need piñata houses, and various other niceties. Of note is the games total lack of penalization for piñata incest. It doesn't even matter if the mommy piñata and her son have babies! They produce perfectly normal children.
Not many games give the sense of satisfaction from construction that this one does. Back in the day, the first real-time strategy game I played was Age of Empires. I had never experienced anything like it before, and simply building my base in the tutorial was accompanied this amazing feeling of pride at my creation. Of course, the feeling has been lost over years of construction in Starcraft and The Sims, but Viva Piñata is the first game that has almost perfectly recreated that feeling for me.
The game is deceptively deep. I have played it for around 12 hours, and I still don't really feel like I've given it quite enough time for a review. I've seen crazy awesome piñatas off in the distance I haven't been able to attract! (Like that cool deer, and an elephant!)
The game is also deceptively difficult. Obviously, since this is a super-colorful cartoon game with an animated TV show tie-in, you would expect it to be pretty easy. The final product doesn't really resemble "easy" in any way. There are a great many dangers your piñatas can face, assuming you can even attract them competently. Evil "sour" piñatas will come out of the wilds to attack your own, and your piñatas will get into fights with each other.
Also of note is the fact that your piñatas have no trouble at all eating all of the delicious candy that pours out of one of their recently deceased brethren. I can see how this wanton display of cannibalism could be quite traumatizing to young children. I was quite upset when a treasured hedgehog piñata by the name of Mudbutt was tragically murdered by an evil fox piñata and then devoured.
Games in the vein of Viva Piñata usually appear on the PC, where a mouse and keyboard provide ample interface options. This is one of the game's weaker points: The interface is quite clunky to use most of the time, with way too many menus, submenus, and load times to get to these menus. Needs to be much simpler.
The interface is worth negotiating if you're a fan of games like this. Unfortunately, there's no demo for this on the marketplace, but it's definitely worth playing. Sadly, the game's sales are what one might call "abysmal." The average 360 owner – one who has paid $400 for the privilege – probably wants nothing to do with a game this colorful. It definitely deserves attention, though, and it might just herald the return of Rare as a consistently awesome game developer.
In conclusion, Viva Piñata is an awesome game about incest and cannibalism.
Review: Crackdown
Crackdown is a game that screams with potential. Its content seems somehow unfinished. It is also sometimes quite buggy. It is obviously setting up for a sequel. It is a game that draws attention away from its obvious deficiencies through the sheer coolness of the idea behind it. Despite all this, it is extraordinarily fun to play.
For those who have not investigated that game on the disc with the Halo 3 beta invitation, Crackdown is an open-world sandbox game designed by the creator of the original 2D top-down Grand Theft Auto. In it, you play a genetically modified super cop setting out on a quest to kill a whole bunch of organized crime leader stereotypes. You start out weak, able to jump a few feet into the air, and pick up and throw small objects, like car doors or benches. As the game progresses, you become stronger and more agile, enabling you to jump ridiculous amounts and throw cars and buses and stuff. You can also level up your explosives, driving and firearms skills.
Crackdown is very light on storyline. You are dropped into the world and told to go after gang members and their leaders, as you work your way up to taking on the gang's kingpin. Rounding out our three sets of enemies are the Latino stereotype called Los Muertos, the eastern European/Russian stereotypes called Volk, and the Asian stereotypes called Shai Gen. A disembodied narrator voice that sounds kinda like the host from Smash TV accompanies you throughout the game, but, disappointingly, is not the secret final boss.
Crackdown's most interesting quality is that it is a sandbox game all the way through. How you complete the series of objectives you are given is up to you, there are no mission structures. You have to find them, and figure out the best way to kill them. I'd love to see this idea explored further. I'd love to see my guy locate an enemy, use a sniper rifle on a fire alarm or something so that the kingpin has to come outside, and then I fire a heat-seeking rocket at him. Or maybe, on this same boss, I could set off a timed explosive on one end of the compound, drawing attention away so I could sneak into the other side and then kill the guy that way.
Unfortunately, the game isn't really like this. There's a bit of strategy to be formulated in, essentially, getting to these gang bosses. You die a few times, and figure out, "Okay, so if I swim around back of the rock outcropping, jump across onto the second story, blow that door with a mine while I kill the dudes up there, and then run in as the alarm sounds, and jump up and unload my rocket launcher on the boss right away, then I can avoid getting my ass handed to me by angry Asian stereotypes with heavy machine guns and heat-seeking missiles." This kind of strategy is pretty cool and evokes some of the memories I have of beating really hard missions in GTA3 with a bit of ingenuity and taking advantage of a bug or two.
The skill advancement system is pretty neat, as well, but also flawed. It works mostly by the mantra "skills for kills," a phrase which the omniscient narrator dude will repeat over and over again. Shoot a dude, get experience for leveling firearms. Grenade kills for explosives. You get the idea. Unfortunately, by the time you get to the end of the game, your skills are not necessarily at their highest, and once you're done, there's little motivation to get them any higher, aside from messing around and, if you have Live Gold, cooperative play.
Cooperative play, though, might be reason enough to. The entire game can be played online with one other person. You can jump in and out of another person's single player game if they so desire. Think of the amount of fun you can have just messing around the game world in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and then add a friend and superpowers. If this game has any longevity aside from downloadable content, it'll be here. Unfortunately, there's no split-screen co-op at all.
Let's talk about bugs. There are lots, but none of them are really game-breaking. They're mostly just funny. If you shoot at a dude while standing next to a railing, your character will pistol whip the railing. Take that, concrete. Occasionally, disembodied announcer guy will say something like, "What a breathtaking view, agent. Finest in the city." Putting aside the fact that he declares this more than once and at different places, sometimes the places are an alley with a dead guy next to a dumpster.
The entire game really feels a bit like a tech demo for the engine technology, which is fantastic. It has amazing amounts of objects on the screen, as well as incredible draw distance and nice physics and it is co-op enabled. I just can't help but think about the great games that could follow this one. For a sequel, they could take the superhero angle further and make it so you design a character and choose ability sets to develop. Think City of Heroes, but not an RPG or online. I could design my crazy psychic warrior guy and get online after leveling his powers to play with my friend's flying ice spraying flying dude. Then we would fight crime! It would be awesome.
Sadly, though, Crackdown is not this game. It is a really fun game, though, just too short and too buggy for me to wholeheartedly recommend. I've had a lot of fun with it. There's a really cool game in this concept, and it's almost shining through with Crackdown. Maybe we'll see it for Crackdown 2, guys.
Editorial: The Boston Mooninite Scare of 2007
Ignignokt is a mooninite. You may recognize him from the Cartoon Network series "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." You may also recognize him as a character flipping you off on a series of Lite Brite-esque boards left around 10 major cities around the U.S. If you do, you also know that Boston was the only city that overreacted and assumed the lightboards were, in fact, improvised explosive devices.
This entire incident, which unfolded last Tuesday, on Jan. 31, encompasses several levels of stupid. The first and least dumb are the guys at Turner Broadcasting, and the marketing company involved, Interference, Inc. It wasn't exactly the most brilliant marketing plan, a bunch of pseudo-Lite Brites, but they're fun and look cool at night.
To the people who thought the lightboards looked suspicious: I understand. They were off during the day, after all. Not everyone knows what the compositions of various electronics are, and because one of them was hanging on a bridge, I can understand calling the police out of concern.
The police are where the story gets truly ludicrous. Once they got a close look at even one of these, they should've realized exactly what this was: An advertisement. The only thing that makes it different from a neon sign advertising Bud Light is that no one knows what a mooninite is. The similarities with an explosive device found by the Boston police are batteries, wires and electrical tape. Discounting the electrical tape, these are items found in nearly every electronic device ever sold.
The media also displayed a huge amount of irresponsibility in characterizing this story. They constantly referred to the lightboards as "packages" or "devices" or other ominous words, as well as continuing to refer to the events as a "bomb hoax" well after Turner had issued their apology. The 24 hours news networks, running low on 2008 presidential candidates to interview and casualties to report in Iraq, latched onto the story and gave it nonstop coverage. Even after it had been discovered that this was at best an amusing anecdote involving an advertising campaign, they continued to talk about it like there was an actual threat to society.
Of course, the authorities in Boston were equally asinine in handling the egg on their faces after they discovered they had closed down a waterway and countless major roads over a cartoon advertisement. They arrested a pair hired to put up the advertisements, charging the pair with "placing a hoax device to incite panic," and claiming the two were trying to "get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location."
This is, of course, absurd. Anyone with half a brain and any knowledge of electronics could tell that these things were completely harmless, Turner is saying they're harmless, and well, if I was a terrorist, would I be placing flashing cartoon characters flipping people off on my bombs? Well, according to Massachusetts Attorney General, the boards "had a very sinister appearance. It had a battery behind it, and wires." I feel so safe that Boston's finest are on the case here. After all, the lightboards had only been in place for around two weeks.
There is a more serious side to this, though. Boston Mayor Tom Menino applauded the actions of the law enforcement agencies in his town, and denouncing the advertisements, saying that "it is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme." Mr. Mayor, I would charge that if we are so scared that we are running away from neon signs of cartoon characters, and condemning any sort of freeform public expression, the terrorists have indeed won.
I feel like this incident, no matter how asinine and hilarious it is on the outside, illustrates precisely the kind of damage that was truly caused to this country on Sept. 11, 2001. Days after the attack, the Congress gave up countless freedoms and civil liberties in the name of keeping us "safe." After a purported plot to blow up airplanes with liquid bombs, we lost the ability to carry our own beverages onto airplanes. That plot has since been revealed to be a bomb scare without bombs, or even the intent to bomb, but the rules still stand. On Oct. 17, 2006, we gave up the most essential liberty granted to us, in the form of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which denies U.S. citizens the right to habeus corpus if the president or secretary of defense wish it to be so.
And for what? To protect our freedoms from terrorists.
It's sad that Turner Broadcasting is paying a reported $2 million in fines for breaking no laws at all. It sets a terrible precedent that apparently a cool two million is the only way to have free speech, however silly your message is. However, I would guess that $2 million is cheap for advertising of this magnitude.
However ridiculous and reactionary it was, the arrest of the pair produced the best thing to come out of this debacle. The two emerged from their arraignment into a press conference, but refused to answer any reporters questions that did not deal with haircuts from the 1970s, perfectly punctuating how ridiculous everyone in a position of power was acting in relation to the situation. It's too bad I wasn't there, or I would've asked them how David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" mullet went from being an androgynous glam-rock icon to the manly redneck icon it is today.
Review: Excite Truck
Excite Truck is a racing game that very loosely draws inspiration from Nintendo's own NES classic, Excitebike and its criminally underplayed N64 sequel. I say "loosely," because, well, these are trucks, not motorcycles, and the scoring system is, shall we say, unique.
Excite Truck's control scheme deserves mention, as it probably will end up as the blueprint for every racing game in the Wii's future. Control of your most exciting of an array of generic trucks is accomplished through tiling the Wii remote, which is held horizontally like an NES controller. The 2 button is the gas, 1 is the brake, and any direction on the D-pad is the boost.
Ideally, for future racing games, we'd see an attachment similar to the gimmicky plastic steering wheel Ubi Soft released, only this one would actually plug into the Wii remote and feature analog triggers similar to the Xbox controller's triggers. Brakes and gas with exactly two settings - on and off - is jarring after years of playing racing games with analog controls on the Xbox and Gamecube.
The tilting control, though bizarre at first, works well once you adjust to it. It's extremely sensitive – most people tilt the controller way, way too much for the game, and thus drift all over the road. Excite Truck takes tilting to another degree and allows you to control exactly how your truck is positioned in the air. This controls how fast you fall, among other things, and I'd like to see a sequel to fully explore the idea – it's very cool.
The scoring system, as I mentioned, is not the conventional ranking system that is pretty much omnipresent in racing games, even ones with trick systems like Excite Truck. Taking a page from Burnout and SSX, you have to do stunts to win, but in this case, rather than boost, you earn stars.
Stunts include tree runs, or not hitting a tree but coming close a lot, smashing opponents, big jumps, spins, and perfect landings. The truck with the most stars wins. Getting first is not an entirely pointless endeavor, though, as the rank comes with a substantial star bonus. It's a weird system, but it works pretty well.
Excite Truck's Achilles heel is the mutliplayer – it's almost non-existent. You get a basic versus mode, with no options. Worse, it's only two players. If this game had four player support, it might be a must-have. As it is, it's merely pretty good. Buy it for less than $30, or rent it and enjoy it for a bit.
Impressions: Saints Row
I should start this by saying I haven't really played this game to a point where I would feel comfortable reviewing it properly, so consider these opening impressions. However, as all I have been playing lately is endless games of Lumines Live!, and Gears of War co-op on insane, this is what I have for you.
Saints Row has the luxury of being the first Grand Theft Auto knockoff out on the next generation. The game places your create-a-character in a generic-ish American city called Stilwater and charges your multiracial gang with the task of subverting various other gangs that are made of various ethnic stereotypes.
The game is frighteningly derivative of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. There have been Grand Theft Auto clones for a while now, such as True Crime: Streets of LA, but they all generally had their own angle on the formula, even if they sucked. This game literally rips the feature list of the 2004 title right down to buying clothes at stores and changing your haircut, though the game does only feature one city. It does add or change a few things, like being able to aim 360 degrees when shooting out of a vehicle, and removing the auto-targeting system in favor of a first-person shooter style right analog aiming system.
The game is also frighteningly generic in all aspects. The characters in the game look like they were made out of Poser models. (Poser is an easy to use 3D model posing program with famously bad stock artwork.) The game's city and buildings are generally the same way. There's just no sense of art direction or style present at all. San Andreas might not have had a gung-ho, omnipresent art style that jumps out at you, but it generally has a feeling of consistency that differentiates the three cities and the countryside, while still having an overall unified feel to it.
The game's story, though I did not get very far, seemed to be similar to the Los Santos section of San Andreas. You have to take over the city with your gang buddies. The characters I saw were generic and bland, though the game sports an impressive array of voice actors vocalizing this bland story-line. Should've dropped the name actors and hired some artists.
Despite this laundry list of complaints, Saints Row is actually a pretty fun game, in a bad movie sort of a way. It's derivative, but it looks nice, has no frame rate issues, and is fun to play for an afternoon if you're ready to make fun of it. The best thing about it, at least in my brief experience, was the hilariously awful ragdoll physics on the pedestrian models. It's hilarious when you can hit an old woman with your stolen VW Bug and she cartwheels 10 feet into the air and bounces off a streetlight.
Saints Row is a rental at best, or one of those games you pick up on clearance for $10 or so. Of note is the game's omnipresent bugs, none of which are really gamebreaking, but still hilarious in that same bad movie way. Google "Buggy Saints Row" and watch the video.
A quick word about the Xbox 360 game Dead Rising. The idea of taking on a mall full of zombies with whatever I can find there is appealing. Having 800 zombies on-screen at once is fantastic. The game essentially being unplayable on a regular standard definition television because the text is to small to read on anything lower than 720p. Not cool, Capcom, not cool. In fact, I feel pretty damn ripped off. Maybe one day, when I'm cool enough to have an HDTV, I can actually play this game for more than just messing around with zombies and ignoring the missions until I die.
Review: Wario Ware Smooth Moves
The Wii's next big game has arrived, in the form of "Wario Ware: Smooth Moves," a new entry in the recently born but prolific series marked by players completing a series of minigames afflicted with attention deficit disorder – they're usually about three seconds long.
"Wario Ware: Touched!" for the Nintendo DS was one of the first AAA titles to come out for the fledgling handheld after its less-than-spectacular launch. The DS iteration was really the first game to show us what's possible with the system's touch screen interface. Does the Wii version to the same?
First off, the Wii is different – it had excellent titles like "Wii Sports" and "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" at its launch, as well as a wide array of pretty good third party titles, like "Rayman's Raving Rabbids," "Trauma Center: Second Opinion," and an excellent port of "Call of Duty 3."
Still, "Wario Ware" showcases the Wii remote's capabilities like nothing else before it. The game introduces the player to various "stances" throughout the single player, like "The Umbrella," wherein the player holds the Wii remote straight up "channeling the quiet dignity of a circus clown in a thunderstorm." These just tell you how to hold the Wii remote during the crazy array of minigames that I won't spoil here. It's inspired, manic insanity - while it lasts.
This is the only problem with Wario Ware games. They really don't have much in the way of replay value. You can go for high scores, or try to unlock every last minigame, but this is tedious, because the only way is to hope they randomly come up while playing. To be fair, there are about 200 of them in each title, and they’re all pretty awesome.
The problem is exacerbated by what I can only refer to as half-assedness of the multiplayer game here. The Gamecube port of Wario Ware had some of the most interesting multiplayer modes on the system. One mode had players completing a minigame while obeying the orders of a scary paper doctor. The hilarity resulting from, say, playing while making a duck face, or looking at another player, or any number of insane diagnoses, is immesurable and only made the minigames that much more fun. There were about 10 modes, and they ranged from “damn fun” to “fantastic.”
The Wii version is really disappointing here. Its multiplayer modes lack the creativity and variety present in the Gamecube version. You can’t even play simultaneously on all the ones based on the main minigames! You basically get survival and a few variants on it. None of the crazy ones from the Gamecube one make it over. Admittedly, it is cool you can play up to 12 people in the pass-the-remote survival mode, but come on! Make me regret that I can’t afford to drop $80 on two more Wii remotes. It really reeks of “better version with more minigames and multiplayer modes coming out in a year but we also wanted your money now.” (The preceding sentence was entirely cynical speculation.)
Another problem I had with the title was with a few of the stances. They tell you to hold the Wii remote in a crazy way, but it is not readily apparent that you need to keep it pointed at the television. This results in confusion when trying to pretend you’re an elephant and move apples around.
Overall, though, “Wario Ware: Smooth Moves” is the Wii’s third truly AAA title. Despite the lack of multiplayer options and expected short length, it’s a great deal of fun, even when you can only pass the remote around and can’t play together. Just be sure to rent it first.
Review: Xbox Live Arcade
Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade download service has been one of my favorite things about the Xbox 360 thus far. For between $5 and $15, you can download any number of classic arcade titles or even newly developed games created specifically for Xbox Live Arcade. Most of the games fall for $5 or $10, and you can demo any of them before buying. Despite this, I’m still going to review all the ones I’ve bought so far.
“Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved” is the quintessential Arcade title, from what I understand, since it was the standout title at the system’s launch, and has maintained its popularity. I’ve written about it once before, in a way, talking about the freeware PC/Mac clone “GridWars.” The guy who wrote “GridWars” has since received a cease and desist notice, and for good reason – it’s pretty much the exact same thing! The thing in question--an exceedingly frantic arcade shooter that takes advantage of the new-ish technology that is dual analog sticks--is definitely worth the $5 they’re charging. Verdict: Buy.
“Lumines Live!” is an enhanced port of the PlayStation Portable puzzle game/launch title. The player must make 2 x 2 blocks of one color out of 2 x 2 mixed color blocks that fall. It’s really, really fun. Unfortunately, the pricing structure is, shall we say, lacking. It costs $15. I can understand this. There’s a lot more content here than your average Arcade title. Unfortunately, it’s going to cost you more to get to the entire game: Another $7.50 for the advanced pack, consisting of another mode and a bunch of skins, and another $1.25 each for the full allotment of levels for mission mode and puzzle mode. Verdict: Try before dropping what is already a large amount of points on a game and then being prodded to spend more on it around every corner.
“UNO” would be a port of the card game you played on family vacations and when the electricity went out as a child. Live Arcade needs more stuff like this (I’d kill for Live “Scrabble”). You can just chill out and play UNO with people online--it’s a very polished adaptation. Also, some people have Xbox Live cameras so you can make fun of the people with and laugh at their reaction after you play that skip card. Verdict: Buy, assuming you have an Xbox Live Gold account and can play online multiplayer.
“Assault Heroes” is some kind of unholy combination of “Smash TV” and “Geometry Wars,” with a dash of “Contra.” For $10, you get a top down shooter with dual analog controls and getting in and out of vehicles. It controls like pie, and not just any pie, but the most awesome pie you have ever tasted. Unfortunately, the game is a bit short, but the achievements give it a bit of longevity. Verdict: Buy.
“Zuma” is a Popcap game, which means you can get it on PCs, Macs, iPods, cell phones and probably abacuses. It’s just as fun here, and controls well using the 360’s analog stick. Side note: The entire concept is a blatant ripoff of a 1998 Japanese arcade game called “Puzz Loop.” $10. Verdict: Try, you make the call. It’s also on the DS as “Magnetica.”
I would say one major downside to the Arcade is the glut of, well, arcade games. The service is cluttered with them. This in itself is not terrible, though more original content is always preferable to a reheated arcade port. The problem is the Xbox 360’s D-pad. It’s just not any good for old-school stuff that requires precision like Pac-Man. For the lack of a better term, it’s mushy. It makes playing games like Pac-Man an exercise in frustration.
“Gauntlet” and “Smash TV” are online-capable ports of the classic cooperative arcade games that control well, unlike many. Nothing exciting to report, but they’re only $5 each and awesome for chilling out and playing coop, same screen or online. Verdict: Buy.
“Street Fighter II” is self-explanatory. Unfortunately, the Internet play is laggy if you can even find anyone playing, and it’s less-than-suited to the 360’s controller layout. Verdict: Try, and don’t buy for the Live play.
It’s worth noting for the broadband impaired that a fair few Live Arcade titles are on store shelves in a compilation called “Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged Vol. 1” or some such wordage. However you have to do it, I definitely recommend checking out some of the games tucked away in that Xbox Live Arcade button in your Games blade. There are some real gems, and unlike Nintendo’s Virtual Console games, the ports on here get enhancements like leaderboards, achievements and online play. New game every Wednesday, guys.