Since Counter-Strike, the so called “Leet” gamers are getting more and more common, but are they really worth their title? Is this elitist attitude towards games good? With the increase of online multiplayer games, it is fairly common that someone would get addicted to a game, and wouldn’t stop playing it until they’ve mastered it.

Some of these gamers are going to think they are superior to others just because they have a higher Gamerscore or PSN level, these guys can only play with another “Elite”. A lot of “Elite” gamers are that way because they place way too much importance and status on unimportant things. Getting 1000 achievement points or a platinum trophy can be quite an accomplishment, but it doesn’t grant you a special status or something noteworthy.
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The rise of technology with the industrial revolution came about the assembly line, often used in factories to quickly make, build, and send off the factory’s product; be it cars, electronics, weapons, and even video games. The same and formulaic games often do seem like they just came hot off the assembly line that they get their very own genre beneath what they suppose to be – The WWII shooter, The Hack n Slash, Shovelware, etc. Of course with the Wii being the new fangled device that everyone must have and Nintendo being at the zenith of profits came about the truckload of shovelware. That is, the current trend, and trends come and go so the factories need to replace their rubber stamps to fit the new trend of games they must shovel out.
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The shoulder button: one often assumes this is but a trivial part of the gaming experience. After all, the majority of your operations are controlled via the face buttons! This has changed in recent years though. With the rising popularity of the first person shooter, the shoulder buttons have received more and more use. What was once an important button for throwing up your shield in smash brothers or reversing a strike in a wrestling game has taken on a whole new undertaking: shooting stuff. This would be fine and dandy except for one thing: due to the gamers’ love of shooters, the controllers themselves have undergone a radical shift.

Let’s take a look at the Dual-shock 3, shall we? While the dual-shock two had four shoulder buttons that were very operational and easy to command, the dual shock three has two that are operational and two that are complete wastes of space. If you happen to own a Playstation 3, you know exactly which two buttons I am speaking of. The R2 and L2 buttons on the Dualshock 3 are perhaps the worst buttons in the world. No, I’m not using hyperbole, I’m not making stuff up. I literally think you could scavenge the world three times over and not come up with buttons as miserable as the Playstation 3’s R2 and L2 buttons.

What exactly makes these buttons so bad? Well, first, they are triggers. The trigger button trend on consoles started primarily with the N64. The trigger on that system was fine and dandy. It was placed on the very back of your controller and if you needed to shoot something, you knew where it was. It didn’t get in the way, it was just there and ready to help! The Gamecube controller did away with said trigger button, but another system decided to dance with it. The X-Box. As we all know, the X-Box cast aside traditional console controls and decided that they would not have shoulders, but triggers. The popularity of console shooters such as Golden Eye and Perfect Dark helped usher this idea in.
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I am sure everyone has at least played one online multiplayer game, ranging from First Person Shooters to Real-Time Strategy. This is the new form of competition that has arisen within the past decade and a half due to video games and the internet. This new form of competition has come up so strong that there is a whole entire country dedicated to it, though it maybe only one game, it still applies. Then there is of course the tournaments, LAN parties, even conventions that celebrate these competitive games; things like QuakeCON or the World Cyber Games. It has come to the point that this new form of competition should get their own ESPN or something but let’s take it to a smaller scale, that simple internet lobby where some gather to play competitively, lobbies like Battle dot net, Steam, Playstation Network, and even Xbox Live. But I’m not here to talk about the new age of online sports, but rather online sportsmanship – what the hell happened to it?
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I would like…if I may, to take you on a strange journey.

A journey to a land called Xbox Live.

I’ve had my Xbox 360 for nearly four years now, and of those four, three have been spent online through Xbox Live. Those three years were kind of like being on safari, and I know that may seem like a weird analogy, but stick with me. Actually, you know what? Don’t. That was a shitty analogy. Xbox Live is more like an insane asylum. An insane asylum where a few of the inmates are actually rather intelligent, but you can’t hear them over the sound of crazy Joe Bastard yelling like an animal and smashing his lunch tray over his head.

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You know what I miss more than anything else?  Ash trays attached to arcade cabinets.  You never see that anymore.  Ebeneezer’s had several:  Pac Man, Galaga, Space Invaders;  they all had ash trays attached.  I was reminded of this when I went into a cabinet store in Manassas recently, where there was a stand-up Gradius cabinet for sale.  On the front were four screw-holes where an ash tray had once sat, proudly holding the butts of many-a-cigarette.  There were still ugly black stains where someone hadn’t finished putting out their smoke.

Nowadays, arcades are clean almost to a fault.  The carpets are pristine and vacuumed, the screens are wiped down several times a day, and there’s a ‘no food or drink sign’ visible at every turn.  For some reason, this frustrates me to no end.

Obviously, food, drink and cigarettes can damage the cabinets; it only makes sense to be cautious.  On top of that, not everyone smokes, so keeping the air clean is only polite, but in banning these things, something seems to have been lost, and I can’t quite place my finger on it.

We still have noise, flashing lights, fat dudes with sweaty pits (even more so since the advent of DDR), but we don’t have snack counters to chill at, the lights don’t reflect off the smoke, and that particular stink I find so comforting is missing. (continue reading…)

It is no secret that both gamers and companies like remakes. While gamers like them because of the nostalgia, companies like remakes because of one thing: THEY PRINT MONEY! Cheap to develop, easy to sell, makes gamers happy, and it seems like a perfect plan, right? Wrong.

Pick a game that you want a remake, got it? Now think, you’ve already completed the game at least twice, you defeated the bosses, saved the world, the princess, etc., so why would you want to do it again? There are new games out there waiting for you, new tales, new battles, you see? A remake is never going to be as good as the original, mostly because that it’s not a full remake. (continue reading…)

If you’ve got a Sony Playstation 3, then chances are you’ve snapped up Naughty Dog’s platformer-slash-cover shooter, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. While it didn’t exactly wow over critics with its gameplay mechanics that had obviously been inspired from quite a number of other IPs, it definitely made waves with its stellar presentation, poloygon-crunching graphics and superb voice acting ( which made Nate and his associates quite the memorable crew). Now, we get wind of its sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, via the cover of GameInformer’s upcoming issue.

In their website, GameInformer teases the reveal-all article by letting slip a few details about the sequel: the game will revolve around the exploits of Marco Polo this time around. The game will also feature a new free-climbing mechanic to set itself apart from its predecessor, as well as stealth sections that will probably have Drake sneaking around to avoid enemy encounters.

Stealth gameplay? Free CLIMBING? I’m sorry, Naughty Dog, but since when was blatant imitation and thoughtless copying part of the deal? And in this day and age of dry humor, witty one-liners and shooters that utilize cover effectively? You had a market with Crash Bandicoot, hell, you had a HUGE following, and that series of PlayStation One games have gone on to have legendary gameplay that rivals that of Mario and Sonic. The videogame world considered HIM as a viable rival for those two icons. You’ve got a market for people who want something different, and yet you churn out more of the same. Not just more of the same, but literally regurgitated and recycled material. We don’t blame you for trying something new, but if you just thought for a second about how Free Climbing was done already effectively by Assassin’s Creed and stealth gameplay is but one of gaming’s most tired (and most annoying) cliches, then you’d have thought twice about putting them in as key draws for your game. Your game of mishmash gameplay mechanics from other games that do them better and had done them BEFORE.

I’ve played the first Uncharted and I had fun with it, but even with graphics whore glasses on I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve done it all before. Sure, you’ll say that other games do mimic other games’ key features but at the very least they tried damn well to be original.

Bring back Crash, you immensely unoriginal pollocks.

Or more accurately, he said that today’s DRM strategies are “just dumb.”

Yes, in today’s world where draconian measures are being taken to make sure that the local consumer is dissuaded from getting an illegal copy of this or that latest game, Valve’s own Gabe Newell has given his opinion. It’s not the ICE BURN he’s been famous for (his cracks about the Sony PS3 probably still makes Kaz Hirai wince every now and then) but it’s the truth. His complete statement:

Left 4 Dead is developed entirely by Valve. Steam revenue for our games is not shared with third parties. Around the world we have a number of distribution partners to handle retail distribution of our games (i.e. make discs and boxes). EA is one of those partners.

As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I’ll be able to play my game and maybe I won’t).

We really really discourage other developers and publishes from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches.

One can remember the furor raised with the PC version of Bioshock installing Securom stealthily onto the rigs it was being played on. And then there’s the Mass Effect PC version debacle, where users had to get their licenses re-verified online for them to keep playing. Oh, and who can forget SPORE?

Yes, we know that piracy is a problem and that it cuts into your profits. But never assume that everyone is going to pirate your game – there are people willing to pay good money for it, and Valve’s electronic distribution system (namelyl Steam) is a step in the right direction. You know what else is good, developers? Making sure that our money is worth it. Don’t give us a broken game, give us a good solid game for starters. Then give us extras (an artbook, an exclusive freebie, doesn’t have to be something expensive but something nice and awesome would do). If people see that the retail version of the game has lots of security bullshit then naturally they’ll opt to get the illegal copy. That’s how people are. Don’t think about changing them, instead think about how to deal with it instead.

Hopefully this sends a message out to all developers. Gamers won’t pirate your game if you don’t give them reason to, or you give them enough incentives to purchase the retail version.