Everyone is working for the weekend

Well, my working has encompassed the following:

- Getting my Aunt's stereo hooked up: She's got her house wired for sound, but is a complete neophyte when it comes to technology, so I spent the morning getting all of the various channels hooked up. Small price to pay since she is letting me stay with her, rent free, until Gina and I can find a house up here in Tulsa. Long story short, the stereo is hooked up, sounds great, and over Christmas, Christmas tunes can be blared throughout the house. Ho Ho Ho.

- Laundry: Not much to say about that; its laundry, if you're interested in how I do my chores, well, you need to get away from the computer a bit, constant reader.

- Ace Combat 6: I know this is from the "About frakin' time" pile, but I wanted a new game to kill time over the weekends for my 360 and didn't want to drop a hundred bucks on the new Guitar Hero World Tour Guitar-only kit. The game is gorgeous. The dialog is unbelievably funny. Not just a little funny with wonky translations, its as if someone just took the Japanese dialog and literally translated it into English. Why don't these Japanese companies hire English writers to clean up (or, rather, nuance up) their literal translations into a more fluid text.

Right now, I tune out of the in-game dialog and skip the cut scenes. The narration and dialog irritates me as a writer.

So, to summarize: the game is fun to play, gorgeous to look at, but skip the cut scenes, you'll thank me later.

I'm heading home for Christmas on the 23rd. I'll try to post from home, and maybe get a picture or two from the family posted as well.

If I don't post before then: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Left 4 Dead

I was absolutely not surprised when Left 4 Dead released and it wound up being an absolute gorgeous marriage of technology and design.

For those that say games aren't art, I would gladly offer up Left 4 Dead to refute those claims, particularly if playing online with a group of friends. The claustrophobia of some of the levels, with their sparse lighting and narrow confines makes the sound of the shuffling undead and the dreaded super zombies that much more terrifying. The game provides emotional moments, both funny and terrifying, so if that doesn't qualify as art, then I don't know what does.

Which leads me to a little commentary: I've worked at three studios thus far. Two of them thought very highly of themselves, trying to make something greater than themselves. One succeeded on their first attempt, and has never been able to recapture their former glory. One has consistently put out product on time, under budget, creating one of the bigger sex symbols of the PS2/Xbox generation of games.

After admiring L4D, I now understand why both companies have never reached those heights again: neither of them had the strength of design (or testicular fortitude) to pick one or two really solid game concepts, polish them to a diamond sheen and base the entirety of the game around it. But take the concept of zombie horror movies as a central theme, and in terms of game design, build the entire game around required multiplayer support (both cooperative and adversarial) and a dynamically scaling AI that you have this game. No fancy physics mechanics. No flashy quick-press sequences (looking at you God Of War) . Combat is surprisingly simple, but incredibly addictive; nothing beats blasting brainless zombie hordes and dealing with crafty super zombies.

This has really been the year of creative games - and unfortunately, sales have just not been that strong (perhaps, due to the economy). Some excellent new IPs came out this year: Dead Space, GRID, Bloom Blox, Sins of a Solar Empire. And what I've noticed between the really good games (new IP or no) and the medicore games is that the medicore games either try to do too much (too many good ideas, not enough time to polish them all).

Hardcore players appreciate a polished experience and are willing to forgive depth if the game is fun. L4D is definitely NOT deep, but it is a lot of fun.

...and the Vault Dweller lives on now, but only in memory...

So, I played through Bethesda's Magnum Opus Fallout 3 (with props out to Josh, Phil and Nate). I was a huge fan of the original Fallout series, and had long hoped that the pixelated violence and quirky sense of humor would be accurately replicated in this latest entry in this series.

The more I played it, the more I realized that the game is exquisitely written, but there was something missing in terms of the campaign. It wasn't that the game was too short, quite the contrary, the campaign was satisfyingly long with plenty of content and colorful characters. The problem I had was that the speed at which I gained XP far outpaced my participation in quests. I barely got into the main quest, focusing instead on side quests that took me throughout the capital wasteland. By the time I got around to getting on with the main quest, I was nearly level 20.

And in looking at my achievement listings, it looks like I completed about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the side quests.

Why is the level cap so low at level 20? Or, more importantly, why is the XP curve so gracious as to let a player max the level cap without completing more of the side quests?

So, in that regard, I was disappointed. By the time I started into the campaign, I had nearly maxed out my XP, and so combat at the end in what was supposed to be the most difficult combat turned into a laugh.

Began with such great promise, and ended with a bit of a whimper.