I worked at EB during the rise and "fall" in sales of both GTA, and with Vice City there was definitely brand recognition, or more aptly franchise recognition. The interesting thing is that most of the gamers who shop at EB generally know the release date of something. Of course we receive calls all the time asking when something is coming out, but it was nowhere near the number of calls we received asking, "When is the next GTA coming out?" since most of the people were generally not game buyers.
You may have not played GTA because you could get a hooker, but trust me: a lot of people did. A lot. I can't tell you how many times some guy came in with his friend, picked up the GTA3 box from the shelf, looked around as if he were about to reveal the secret of the universe, look at his buddy, and then nudgingly explain how he picked up a hooker and drove into an alley and the car started moving. Then, how he'd conveniently get his cash back. Obviously, that wasn't what made GTA3, but it certainly didn't hurt.
I don't think that Rockstar has necessarily build up enough brand recognition for it to sell every game it makes. If they did, it was all but spent on the horribly medicore State of Emergency. As much as I'm sure they'd like to disagree, since they plaster their logo nearly everywhere, I think people are far more attached to the Grand Theft Auto tagline than they are necessarily Rockstar. Really, few game companies have outside of the niche hardcore gamer. The only brand that really brings in sales on a wide mainstream basis (sales near the level of GTA) based merely on brand is EA Sports. People buy Tony Hawk Whatever because it's Tony Hawk, not necessarily because it's Activision. While you or I might pick up something because Ion Storm or Irrational or Rockstar crafted it, I don't think Christmas shopping parents look for game studios when they're picking stuff up.
Maybe if they'd called it Grand Theft Auto Manhunt it would've sold better.
Keep in mind that immediately following 9-11, video game publishers changed the box art or software on dozens of games. Microsoft made software changes to Flight Sim 2003 and dozens of publishers changed box art (Westwood's C&C box at the time had two planes headed directly for the WTC, Project Gotham Racing's art was backdropped by the WTC, etc etc).
The Dreamcast was on its last legs anyway, and all that was trickling out were titles that had been in development and were close to completion (i.e. Alien Front). Propeller Arena was one of the very last titles Sega had developed for the DC, and so I doubt it made financial sense to anyone within Sega to even risk getting negative media exposure for what little profit they would have scrounged from the 131 point sales of Propeller Arena. "Get over it" may be applicable now, but it certainly wasn't two months after 9-11.
So we're not talking as if Sega just canceled this title last week. They canceled it years ago; why this is popping up on slashdot now is beyond me. I think it does represent how ahead of the online game Sega really was, but this is still pretty old news to be digging up. Moreover, Sega did, however, release it in arcades, where I understand it performed quite well.
P.S. A fairly complete version of the title is "available" through "non-orthodox" modes of distribution. "Quotes" are illicitly fun to use, "yes"?
Use your debit card at Wal-Mart or your local drug store, buy a stick of gum, and get $XX amount of cash back. And at the rate it's going, there'll be as many Wal-Marts as there are ATMs. Saves yourself a fee AND is much safer.
That is, until someone builds a false Wal-Mart to get your account information.
So I downloaded the demo and am playing this Liberty Island level with the statue of liberty destroyed. I've got an AMD k6-2 380 with a TNT2 card. This sucker runs horribily! It's like a freaking slide show! This is supposed to be the Unreal engine, but there's nothing here. I mean, the statue of liberty level looks cool and everything, but honestly. It takes a 600 with a Voodoo5 to get any kind of decent framerate. Who at Ion Storm thought they could get away with just supporting 3dfx cards? This should work just as well on my nvidia card as it does on my brother's 3dfx card. Just because nvidia is new to the game doesn't mean Ion Storm should drop it! Unreal Tournament runs no problem, so what gives?
And the gameplay design. What horrible AI! You can shoot Bad Guy A who's standing beside Bad Guy B, and Bad Guy B freaks out for a minute but if you hide, he's goes back to business as usual, even though his smoking buddy is laying knocked out cold on the ground. How realistic is that?!? Wouldn't the guy go get friends or something? Wouldn't he call up his supervisor on some kind of futuristic radio? Give me a break, this is completely non-real Ion Storm. All you have to do is kill the guys one at a time, hide, and then kill the next guy. Whoopie. And there's more! Like the bad guys would actually leave a vent hole with boxes at the side of the building that you can climb up into. Honestly. The AI sux Ion Storm! They don't even dodge behind buildings, and all you have to do to run away from guys is enter a vent. You can shoot a guy with a poison dart, walk away and come back 5 minutes later and the guy is still standing there like you never hit him. Wouldn't he be looking for the bastard that shot him with the poison dart? Whatever. Don't give me this "Guess it was the wind crap."
The skill system SEEMS neat, but it's so unrealistic. As if within a period of 5 minutes gametime and a helicopter ride to a different level you suddenly become a better swimmer. Riiiiiight.
And let's not even talk about the inventory system. Sure, I got used to it within an hour, but it's like a freaking jigsaw puzzle! Why can't they just use what 's worked FOR THE LAST 10 FREAKING YEARS since Wolf3d and just give me 10 weapons, 1-10. None of this number slot crap. It's like they completely ignored everything that has been done before. Why do I have to inventorize all this freaking ammo! I'm like a walking weapons depot or something. good grief.
This is definitely not as scary as System Shock 2 either. Which, I might add, runs completely FINE on my system. They should have just made it like System Shock 2 and stuck with what works, throw in some conspiracy theories and leave it at that.
Let's not even talk about the physics.
I hear that halfway through the game you can't even sneak around anymore because there are these near-invincible commandos! sup wit dat Spector!?
I don't understand why I have to upgrade my computer just to play this game. It's like Ion Storm was just ignoring their customer base from System Shock 1 and 2 and Thief, which all run fine on my PC. This demo will definitely stop me from buying Deus Ex!
Philip was kind enough to send me a copy of his DVD project a week and a half ago, and while I have yet to finish watching what is unarguably a massive project, everything I've watched so far is fantastic commentary. He exhibits extremely strong character analysis (essential for any discussion of Firefly) and is acutely aware of a plethora of layered subtleties in the show that I somehow completely missed, even having rewatched the episodes time and time again. Pay (if he's asking for money at all) whatever he's asking for material and/or S&H, because the project is well worth it. What I've watched of the DVD I've walked away from having an even greater appreciation for Firefly, and I didn't think that was possible.
Hopefully someone "up there" (that is to say, Whedon) will notice Philip's exemplary work and integrate it into the mythos somehow, because it deserves nothing less. Highly recommended.
Any time games start using new engines, there's bitching about framerates and hardware. As I recall, while I didn't have a state of the art machine, when I played Deus Ex the week it came out, it didn't run amazingly fast either (except on my brother's Voodoo5). Those I can dismiss.
I download the demo, but decided against playing it so as to try and just sit down and play through the game without repetition. It's interesting to see the press previews from Gamespot, IGN, and Gamespy, and how those seem to have directly polarized from public opinion about the demo. Maybe the game is better?
At any rate, has anyone seen or read any official responses in forums from Warren or the team?
I think of my absolute favorite examples of exactly that is the massive cover preview EGM did of Enter the Matrix the month before it came out, treating it as if it were God himself's very gift to gamingkind. Then - after waiting two printing months to review it because Dave didn't want anyone (snicker) "giving away the storyline," EGM completely trashed it, and has since had at least one Dave Perry joke per issue.
So what happened EGM (and kin)? What do these kind of generous previews do to your reputation? Magazines like to squirm their way out of this by making statements like, "If this game keeps on track, there's no reason why it why it won't be the hottest game of the season" and the like. The fact remains: they come as close to reviewing with these previews as possible, because they are obligated to the development studio for giving them a jump on the other magazines. This needs to end, if the magazines want to recover (?) some of the clought they've lost with gamers.
So, completely OT here: is it just me, or does the whole reinvention of Deus Ex 2 seem like it might be dumbed down for the masses? Maybe it's me just trying to lower my expectations from "Best. Thing. Ever," but it seems like in the recent previews of the final build I'm seeing more of a movement towards that mass market. I think in that video interview with Spector that's floating around, he said they tried to use less tri-syllabic words. Which worries me, because I sure do like hearing tri-syllabic words!
Sorry, but the gamerankings number doesn't mean jack-shit. It's not reflective of player opinions, just an amalgam of mags and newspapers. Not very scientific at all.
Well, I hoped that after saying how unscientific Gamerankings was, you'd follow that statement with a highly scientific statement proving that people dislike Halo. Instead, you said - and quite unscientifically - "Halo kind of sucks."
So, before releasing any number of the witty quips that popped in my head, I'll go ahead and wait for the immeniently more scientific method of proving Halo's acceptance (or lack thereof).
In the meantime, I'll go ahead and say that I agree that Halo is no Deus Ex. Deus Ex is fnatastic. But Halo is still really, really, really good. I've played (betatested even) the PC version, and no, it doesn't, for one reason or the other, capture magic that the Xbox version had. I can't say specifically why, maybe it was the chuggy framerate, or the fact that someone's IM crashed the program, or that my mouse would occasinally float to the second monitor of my multi-monitor setup. Whatever it was, it really didn't have the same "stuff" that the Xbox version had. So if we're talking as if the only Halo that ever existed was the one for the PC, sure, I can stretch and see your point. But not the Xbox version. The Xbox version really was magic, and while not necessarily in the same conference as Deus Ex, it was certainly in the same league.
Nevertheless, I think it's fairly narrow-minded to think that merely because you and or a few close friends think a game sucks, that a game overall sucks. I am no fan of GTA3. I've played it, didn't like, and have a difficult time seeing the attraction. But a lot of people like it, and so I can safely say that it must be good for a lot of people. Why PC gamers can't do the same for Halo? I don't know.
Oh right. Because they're l33t. I forgot. Anyway, I'll wait for that scientific evidence proving people don't like Halo.
What do you mean by the "originality that Halo had exhibited in the past?" If you're referring to the RTS feel, that element had been lost long before the buyout. I think that what we see in Halo on the Xbox is very much what Bungie would've released for Mac and or PC, save for the rushed repetition in the middle (negative) and the addition of the co-op mode (positive). Even if you disagree with that, you can't disagree that Halo for PC/Mac would've been THAT fundamentally different than what we see on the Xbox. If you didn't like it on the XBox, I doubt you would've liked it on the Mac. You provide no evidence in your post for otherwise.
Don't forget about Oni, Dutchmaan. It predates the MS buyout, and the only choice you have in explaining it is that it was the moment when Bungie "jumped the shark" and are on a downward trend (Oni-the "not all that great" Halo), or that MS actually helped Bungie instead of hurting it. Gasp! Microsoft HELPING a design studio! Linus Forbid! (Or, Jobs Forbid as the case may be).
I won't disagree that much "remains to be seen." Indeed, Halo 2 will be much more the vision Bungie originally had than Halo 1, thanks to the removal of pressuring time constraints. But I have yet to see any kind of evidence of creative pressure on behalf of Microsoft. Really, in any interview I've read, MS pretty much leaves their established 1st and 2nd party studios alone (Bungie, Bizarre Creations, Tim Schaffer, Rare, etc) and only recently has started taking a greater interest in the non-established studios, but only because those non-established studios were making games that were not profitable (Bloodwake, Kung Fu Chaos, etc). The first example of this non-laissez faire corporate "interference" is the excellent Crimson Skies...oh no, another once PC-only franchise! What's next? Age of Empires Xbox only? Say it ain't so Ed Fries!
As far as Mac gamers actually dropping in class in terms of game targeting; I'd say all they have now is Blizzard and ports of PC games 6 months late. I'm not sure that's in a "class" at all (as much as I myself love macs). Post Bungie, that makes one major game developer as opposed to, well, 2. Maybe - and just maybe - that has more to do with Macs than it does with game developers?
By the way, have you played Halo on the Xbox, and if so, all the way through?
As a momentary exercise in completely extraneous hypotheticals, and to drive the point home with much more force (given the audience), imagine for a moment that MS had decided to acquire Squaresoft instead of Bungie... *shuter*
Oh, you mean like Sony bailing Squaresoft out of the post-movie-blues and eventually becoming the second largest shareholder of Squaresoft? That kind of completely extraneous hypothetical?
At the risk of repetition, "Good grief." You act as if "this business of console makers buying large, successful developers/publishers outright" is a new thing. It's not. It's been happening since day one. You've suddenly noticed it because you're most likely (as I once was) solely a PC gamer, and this is the first notably large buyout of a PC game developer. If you're not, than you haven't been paying attention. My guess is that you haven't noticed this spirit of aquisition up to this point because the video game industry was largely dominated by Japanese companies who bought out - surprise - other Japanese companies. Microsoft, obviously coming from a much more PC-knowledgable position - *"bought out" Bungie. As far as being "locked out," welcome to the console world. Again: a day one behavior (biggest case in point in recent history: GTA3 - why is releasing that once exclusive PS2 game on PC not an insult, but Halo is, btw?).
I would specifically argue that developing for one console actually enhances creativity, not stifles it. It's easier to develop for a single platform than it is to target 2 or 3, or in the case of a PC technically an infinte number of hardware configurations That's a best case scenario, of which I think Bungie exemplifies. The worst case scenario is that the now-bought-out-company produces crap (say, that crappy Microsoft first party psuedo-RPG that started with an A). Basically, I think it would be fair to say that a creative company will create more creative games, and a non-creative company will inevitably create crappier games. Ooooo.
So sure, it's all cool and hipster to have indie game houses, but let's be frank. It's all about the benjamins. These indie guys would like nothing more than to do what they're doing, but to have driven to work in a Dodge Viper rather than a 1985 Ford Escort that's 3rd gear works only half the time.
Two more things. First of all, who died and made you Ms. Cleo of Bungie? How do you know that Bungie's "glory days" are behind them (Oni-cough-cough)? Halo was fantastic. If Halo 2 completely bombs, I might agree with you. But since neither of us has played that, I doubt you can justifiably say that. Bungie and MS have both said that they leave each other alone, so Bungie is doing what they would've done, except that a) it's for the Xbox, and b) they drive to work in Dodge Vipers. Why is that bad?
Secondly, if you're so adverse to playing good games merely because they might be on a certain console, consider yourself a shameful PC fanboy. You might be slightly more articulate than the forum fanboy trolls (that is to say, using multi-syllabic words and not using wtf once), but the spirit is the same. Shame on you. Good games are good games, whether they have Microsoft on the front or GarageGames. Get over your indie-fetish and have some fun.
* Isn't it odd that it's always MS doing the buying, not Bungie doing the selling? Maybe - and stick with me here - maybe Bungie wanted to be bought out and have lots of cash for doing something they love. Just a thought.
If by "sucks" you mean an overall 85% rating, then I guess you're right. I'll concede that the PC version needed some work, but I think sucks is too strong a word. Add in whatever you mean by "improvements" and the co-op to Halo PC logistically means re-writing the entire code for the single player campaign. Essentially, you're looking at at least another year in development, which is to say another year of PC fanboys whining. And I would venture to say that nearly every single one of those reviewers would completely disagree with your assertion that Unreal 2 kicks Halo's ass. My guess is that you just haven't played Halo. And I also guess that means that by Unreal 2 kicking Halo's ass, you mean getting a %78 percent at gamerankings. Whatevs.
A note. I beta tested Halo for the PC and had somewhat of an inside look at the process, and it was a bitch to port. People have been whining about how their PC is soooo much better than Xboxes since before the Xbox even came out, but the fact of the matter is that the GPU within the Xbox is so well tailored to pixel shaders that it made porting the game from the Xbox to PC extremely difficult. Bungie did a great job with Halo, but they did do it rather quickly, so unraveling all the Xbox code for PC was a monumentous task for gearbox that they pulled off brilliantly. I wish you could see how far they came from the original alphas.
Please. Lest us forget that $ony and, um, $intendo aren't exactly laissez faire either. They've done their share of buying out (and not just console devs), and while certainly not as noticably large as either Bungie or Rare, they are guilty as charged. I guess what you're saying is that Microsoft should stick to PC applications, right? Well, Sony should stick to walkmen, and Nintendo to playing cards. Welcome to the video game industry jube. Maybe if you'd bought more dreamcasts, we wouldn't have lost the only pure video game hardware maker. Oh wait, you're a PC l33t gamer. Just know that Dreamcasts were cool, and that you should've bought more.
And so M_S_ bought out Bungie. Whoopie. I'd think Bungie far more qualified to decide what's best for Bungie than, say, you, and Bungie doesn't seem too upset about the whole deal. In fact, they've said in every interview I've read with them regarding MS that MS leaves them well enough alone, save for random visits by Ed Fries and Ken Lobb who just walk around with their jaws on the floor and then leave. Which seems to work out fairly well, since Take 2/GODgames bugged the hell out of Bungie and the result of that was the abysmal pre-MS Oni.
Microsoft saw an opportunity to snag a great game franchise, and they took it. Why is that inherently evil? Wouldn't anyone else have done the same thing? Don't think for a minute that someone at Sony wasn't kicking themselves in their proverbial business casual slacks for not having bought Bungie first.
What's the difference between super-kick-ass indy (sic) games, and super-kick-ass non-indie games? If both are super-kick-ass, what's your problem? Shouldn't good game developers like Bungie be rewarded with the big bucks only the big dogs can cough up? I'm all for indie gaming (hey, I bought Mutant Storm and Starscape), but I'm more for indie gaming developers making it good than indie game developers making $1000 a game. So should you. Return to your comraderie of anti-M$ fanboys at main.slashdot.org, and save the karma for gamers who care about the games. And thanks in advance.
Will there ever be room in the market for an "independent production company" like CEG?
Geez, I hope not.
The website isn't a testament to games. It's a testament to the guys in the company. Give me a break. I visited the CEG page the moment Blackley left MS and thought the same thing I do now: these guys aren't about the games, they're about themselves. Every interview I've read with these guys is about themselves. CEG, at least to me, looks like nothing but a four man ego circle. Blackley should've taken the funds and handed them instead of guys like Warren Spector and Will Wright, so as to create an "independent production company" completely unlike CEG.
Delaney's absolutely right, but he didn't seem to offer any solutions. Here's one:
First of all, there needs to be a sort of academic overhead to video game analysis. I think our great hope in this is the imminent rise of Ludology and video game theory. By and large, video games are still generally regarded within the academic community as, well, non-academic. This notion needs to be challenged, by academics and professional review writers alike. When this "aura" of justification occurs, it will result not only in better writing within game reviews, but also a focus on critique, or true critical analysis, and less focus on screenshots or graphics. At a recent video game developer's conference, the head of Naughty Dog stated that the industry had reached a point of diminishing returns in respect to graphics, and that the focus now ought to be on storyline and character development. Likewise, so too should reviewers begin to shift focus away from the technical aspects of the game, despite Kasavin's insistence that these are "indelible qualities of gaming." He's technically right, but he's also wrong. They're indelible, true, but only because the entire focus of the game media (Gamespot very much included) is on these same indelible qualities of gaming. Don't believe? Open up your favorite gaming magazine or website, and see how much of a focus there is on screenshots. That kind of visual attention doesn't even happen in film media, which is at least as visual as gaming. When it does occur, it is done so with focus and intent by the studios, not the sprawling bi-daily update of screenshots that is so emerged within the game industry.
Secondly, we need a new word. Moving pictures found the word "film" to escape the pure entertainment association, video games need something akin to "film" but still connotative of the properties of video games. I know there are some, including John Carmack, who think that video games cannot and should not attain to anything higher than entertainment. And indeed, entertaining games is no less noble than games "with purpose." Nevertheless, saying that video games' sole purpose is to entertain is like saying that all paintings should be pretty and nice to look at, or that all books should be "fun" to read. Video games are a method, a medium, a means unto an end, and not the end itself. Can they communicate "entertainment"? Obviously, but the realization among game developers should also be that they can communicate or impart other abstract ideas as well, apart or alongside entertainment.
Thirdly, the industry itself needs to allow padding for games that are not purely entertainment driven. I think that the Japanese have this idea, hence games like REZ or Pikmin; games that I'm sure the publishers knew won't sell GTA3 numbers but they publish and develop as an expression rather than an attempt to make sales. The Japanese, and European to some degree, do this with intent, whereas American gaming companies do it completely unintentionally. This needs to change.
Basically, the entirety of the industry needs a swivel towards an overall awareness of "abstract gaming." Reviewers, whether they are aware of this or not, lead the vanguard in this respect. Why is there a need of, for lack of a better term (and the complete aversion to using the word "artistic"), purpose-oriented or abstract gaming? Because the gaming industry is at a crossroads now. The comic book industry found itself at very much this same point in its journey and it took the wrong path. Instead of creating what was considered "niche" titles, as a whole the industry instead moved towards a purely sales-driven strategy. The end result is that it quickly quarantined itself within a subculture that it has never really moved out of, requiring nearly 20-30 years and Frank Miller and Alan Moore to deconstruct the genre so it could be reinvented. The movie industry was also at the same point, much earlier than comic books of cour
I was going to reply to one post, but I see a lot of posts generally saying the same thing: -in dainty Royal British accent - "Ah yes. Good for them. We have five gaziollion times those numbers, and have since 1981. I play nethack. Good day sir!"
My response, to all of you, is this. Before you ride off into your cs_dust sunset your high PC Nightwind horse, keep in mind first and foremost that higher numbers for console online games only means that the competition will increase for online PC games. We're on slashdot. Competition is good around here, right? Secondly, the overall online experience for consoles is significantly more streamlined than that of a PC. Everyone has voice chat. Everyone's on broadband. Cheaters are vastly undernumbered compared to the PC. Heck, I get in game alerts on XBL. Sure, I get IMs while I'm playing BF1942, but at worst everything crashes or chugs, and at best it completely interupts my game.
High numbers of console online players is *good* news, for everyone. Oh, and I can see all the way up your large nostriled PC l33t nose. And, um, your piss is going down your leg, not on everyone else's parade.
I forgot to mention Play magazine. I don't particularly always agree with their reviews; I think that Gunvalkyrie is difficult not because of content but because of poor control design, and so on and so forth. I feel that at times Play tries too hard to be "hardcore." But Play magazine provides a niche, instead of trying to be *THE* magazine for gamers as [insert game magazine name here] is so fond of doing. You have to admire that.
Likewise, I thought the reviews in the defunct NextGen were absolutely brilliant writing. I need to be careful in saying this, because they were notorious for their doublepaged screenshots, but they really did see games as an integral part of society. However, that's what we need in the gaming review industry: great, creative writing. It needs to be an art unto itself.
I see a long but straight line between the rock music reviewing of the late sixties, early seventies, and the gaming industry reviewing of today. Rock music was coming of age as the game industry is very much doing today; it's growing beyond the size of its own knickers, so to speak. Likewise, both industries are highly release driven, and every new release in either rock or in gaming was the "next big thing." There's a general feeling that reviewers are "cool" now.
That said, every game reviewer, print or otherwise, should have to watch Almost Famous, and they should walk away with the words, "Be honest, and be ruthless" etched in their minds coupled with the insistence that "We are not cool. We are the uncool." If game reviewing wants to grow up, the reviewers themselves need to realize that the game designers and publishers need to hate reviewers. The reviewers need to be the enemy. That passion, combined with the belief that one's own writing and reviewing can be artistic in nature, is enough to revolutionize the gaming media. Will it happen? That's up to them.
Curmudgeon Gamer's examination is certainly an interesting one, but what it complete neglected was the trend of increasing stupidity in gaming reviews.
Perhaps the slow but steady rise of ludology means that we may yet see a rise in the quality of game reviews, but by and large the current level of intelligence in most game reviews is as low as the number of female companions most of the game reviewers have (and I mean that collectively). Reviews inevitably follow the "Background, Cool Trivia About Game, Graphics, Controls, Bad, Good" template. The size of the font of the scores at the of end review keeps getting bigger, as does the size of the screenshots. Basically, we're left with an industry wide standard of two paragraph GamePro-esque reviews that generally boil down to, "It rocks!" or "It sucks!" EGM's recent redesign is a fine example of this. There is little in the way of anaylsis, or the game's relation to the industry at large, or (heaven forbid) society itself.
I think there are sites on the net that are the exception, such as GameCritics.com, and ironically, Penny-Arcade. Likewise, I think either Computer Games or CGW (I always get them mixed up) is making a conscious move in the other direction. Kudos to them, and shame on the rest of the reviewers. I suppose that online is, strangely enough, more "textual" than the magazines due to the lack of space confinement. But the actual content is about as low.
What I'd like to see is a complete abolishment of scores all together in a magazine or website. It would mean, yes, you'd actually have to read the review. That's not to say there's no place for the blurb-y Gamepro-style of reviews with a big thumbs up or thumbs down at the end of the review. There obviously is, as it's quite handy for a quick reassurance when you're in the line at EB almost ready to buy the game.
But there needs to be more peer reviewing, more intelligent discoursing, and more analysis ala ludology in the gaming industry. Not everything is the next best thing since, well, the last game the person reviewed. But some things most definitely are, and it's these that need extra attention. Not, contrary to popular belief, more screenshots.
You might be right, it's been about two or three years since I played through it. Perhaps it was the force represented by Gunther that was always the best of me.
Yeah, I thought about that when I was writing the post. Nevertheless, everything in the Deus Ex subway level- including the notable phone booth with the hanging receiver - is in exactly the same place as in the movie. Well, except for Gunther firing off EMP rockets at you.
And I ought to know. If nothing else, that level is a prime example of why forced failure sucks in game design. I must have spent at least 4 or 5 hours on that level trying to defeat Gunther, all the while having grown too used to the relative non-linearity of the game and thinking that it was very possible, but difficult, to defeat the bastard. I seem to remember reading a review with Warren Spector essentially apologizing for that part in the game.
Ah ha. I happened to snag the hintbook free from a game store some time ago who was tossing the prima guide and it reads in the easter egg section, "The subway station in Hell's Kitchen is based on a subway set from the movie The Matrix. Of course, it is a strategy guide saying that and not Spector, Blessed Be His Name. As an interesting sidenote, the templar cathedral is based on Thief, and the ocean lab on System Shock. According to the strategy guide anyway.
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I worked at EB during the rise and "fall" in sales of both GTA, and with Vice City there was definitely brand recognition, or more aptly franchise recognition. The interesting thing is that most of the gamers who shop at EB generally know the release date of something. Of course we receive calls all the time asking when something is coming out, but it was nowhere near the number of calls we received asking, "When is the next GTA coming out?" since most of the people were generally not game buyers.
You may have not played GTA because you could get a hooker, but trust me: a lot of people did. A lot. I can't tell you how many times some guy came in with his friend, picked up the GTA3 box from the shelf, looked around as if he were about to reveal the secret of the universe, look at his buddy, and then nudgingly explain how he picked up a hooker and drove into an alley and the car started moving. Then, how he'd conveniently get his cash back. Obviously, that wasn't what made GTA3, but it certainly didn't hurt.
I don't think that Rockstar has necessarily build up enough brand recognition for it to sell every game it makes. If they did, it was all but spent on the horribly medicore State of Emergency. As much as I'm sure they'd like to disagree, since they plaster their logo nearly everywhere, I think people are far more attached to the Grand Theft Auto tagline than they are necessarily Rockstar. Really, few game companies have outside of the niche hardcore gamer. The only brand that really brings in sales on a wide mainstream basis (sales near the level of GTA) based merely on brand is EA Sports. People buy Tony Hawk Whatever because it's Tony Hawk, not necessarily because it's Activision. While you or I might pick up something because Ion Storm or Irrational or Rockstar crafted it, I don't think Christmas shopping parents look for game studios when they're picking stuff up.
Maybe if they'd called it Grand Theft Auto Manhunt it would've sold better.
Keep in mind that immediately following 9-11, video game publishers changed the box art or software on dozens of games. Microsoft made software changes to Flight Sim 2003 and dozens of publishers changed box art (Westwood's C&C box at the time had two planes headed directly for the WTC, Project Gotham Racing's art was backdropped by the WTC, etc etc).
The Dreamcast was on its last legs anyway, and all that was trickling out were titles that had been in development and were close to completion (i.e. Alien Front). Propeller Arena was one of the very last titles Sega had developed for the DC, and so I doubt it made financial sense to anyone within Sega to even risk getting negative media exposure for what little profit they would have scrounged from the 131 point sales of Propeller Arena. "Get over it" may be applicable now, but it certainly wasn't two months after 9-11.
So we're not talking as if Sega just canceled this title last week. They canceled it years ago; why this is popping up on slashdot now is beyond me. I think it does represent how ahead of the online game Sega really was, but this is still pretty old news to be digging up. Moreover, Sega did, however, release it in arcades, where I understand it performed quite well.
P.S. A fairly complete version of the title is "available" through "non-orthodox" modes of distribution. "Quotes" are illicitly fun to use, "yes"?
Use your debit card at Wal-Mart or your local drug store, buy a stick of gum, and get $XX amount of cash back. And at the rate it's going, there'll be as many Wal-Marts as there are ATMs. Saves yourself a fee AND is much safer.
That is, until someone builds a false Wal-Mart to get your account information.
Why do you have to pay for bus fare or gas money to pick up the $30 expansion pack for Warcraft III at EB?
So I downloaded the demo and am playing this Liberty Island level with the statue of liberty destroyed. I've got an AMD k6-2 380 with a TNT2 card. This sucker runs horribily! It's like a freaking slide show! This is supposed to be the Unreal engine, but there's nothing here. I mean, the statue of liberty level looks cool and everything, but honestly. It takes a 600 with a Voodoo5 to get any kind of decent framerate. Who at Ion Storm thought they could get away with just supporting 3dfx cards? This should work just as well on my nvidia card as it does on my brother's 3dfx card. Just because nvidia is new to the game doesn't mean Ion Storm should drop it! Unreal Tournament runs no problem, so what gives?
And the gameplay design. What horrible AI! You can shoot Bad Guy A who's standing beside Bad Guy B, and Bad Guy B freaks out for a minute but if you hide, he's goes back to business as usual, even though his smoking buddy is laying knocked out cold on the ground. How realistic is that?!? Wouldn't the guy go get friends or something? Wouldn't he call up his supervisor on some kind of futuristic radio? Give me a break, this is completely non-real Ion Storm. All you have to do is kill the guys one at a time, hide, and then kill the next guy. Whoopie. And there's more! Like the bad guys would actually leave a vent hole with boxes at the side of the building that you can climb up into. Honestly. The AI sux Ion Storm! They don't even dodge behind buildings, and all you have to do to run away from guys is enter a vent. You can shoot a guy with a poison dart, walk away and come back 5 minutes later and the guy is still standing there like you never hit him. Wouldn't he be looking for the bastard that shot him with the poison dart? Whatever. Don't give me this "Guess it was the wind crap."
The skill system SEEMS neat, but it's so unrealistic. As if within a period of 5 minutes gametime and a helicopter ride to a different level you suddenly become a better swimmer. Riiiiiight.
And let's not even talk about the inventory system. Sure, I got used to it within an hour, but it's like a freaking jigsaw puzzle! Why can't they just use what 's worked FOR THE LAST 10 FREAKING YEARS since Wolf3d and just give me 10 weapons, 1-10. None of this number slot crap. It's like they completely ignored everything that has been done before. Why do I have to inventorize all this freaking ammo! I'm like a walking weapons depot or something. good grief.
This is definitely not as scary as System Shock 2 either. Which, I might add, runs completely FINE on my system. They should have just made it like System Shock 2 and stuck with what works, throw in some conspiracy theories and leave it at that.
Let's not even talk about the physics.
I hear that halfway through the game you can't even sneak around anymore because there are these near-invincible commandos! sup wit dat Spector!?
I don't understand why I have to upgrade my computer just to play this game. It's like Ion Storm was just ignoring their customer base from System Shock 1 and 2 and Thief, which all run fine on my PC. This demo will definitely stop me from buying Deus Ex!
Philip was kind enough to send me a copy of his DVD project a week and a half ago, and while I have yet to finish watching what is unarguably a massive project, everything I've watched so far is fantastic commentary. He exhibits extremely strong character analysis (essential for any discussion of Firefly) and is acutely aware of a plethora of layered subtleties in the show that I somehow completely missed, even having rewatched the episodes time and time again. Pay (if he's asking for money at all) whatever he's asking for material and/or S&H, because the project is well worth it. What I've watched of the DVD I've walked away from having an even greater appreciation for Firefly, and I didn't think that was possible.
Hopefully someone "up there" (that is to say, Whedon) will notice Philip's exemplary work and integrate it into the mythos somehow, because it deserves nothing less. Highly recommended.
Any time games start using new engines, there's bitching about framerates and hardware. As I recall, while I didn't have a state of the art machine, when I played Deus Ex the week it came out, it didn't run amazingly fast either (except on my brother's Voodoo5). Those I can dismiss.
I download the demo, but decided against playing it so as to try and just sit down and play through the game without repetition. It's interesting to see the press previews from Gamespot, IGN, and Gamespy, and how those seem to have directly polarized from public opinion about the demo. Maybe the game is better?
At any rate, has anyone seen or read any official responses in forums from Warren or the team?
Everyone knows partnering with Microsoft is suicide.
Yeah, like that whole stupid DirectX thing! Talk about Microsoft Bob! Sheesh!
I think of my absolute favorite examples of exactly that is the massive cover preview EGM did of Enter the Matrix the month before it came out, treating it as if it were God himself's very gift to gamingkind. Then - after waiting two printing months to review it because Dave didn't want anyone (snicker) "giving away the storyline," EGM completely trashed it, and has since had at least one Dave Perry joke per issue.
So what happened EGM (and kin)? What do these kind of generous previews do to your reputation? Magazines like to squirm their way out of this by making statements like, "If this game keeps on track, there's no reason why it why it won't be the hottest game of the season" and the like. The fact remains: they come as close to reviewing with these previews as possible, because they are obligated to the development studio for giving them a jump on the other magazines. This needs to end, if the magazines want to recover (?) some of the clought they've lost with gamers.
Well said response.
So, completely OT here: is it just me, or does the whole reinvention of Deus Ex 2 seem like it might be dumbed down for the masses? Maybe it's me just trying to lower my expectations from "Best. Thing. Ever," but it seems like in the recent previews of the final build I'm seeing more of a movement towards that mass market. I think in that video interview with Spector that's floating around, he said they tried to use less tri-syllabic words. Which worries me, because I sure do like hearing tri-syllabic words!
Is it just me CrazyLegs, fellow Deus Ex Lover?
Yeah, real objective.
Sorry, but the gamerankings number doesn't mean jack-shit. It's not reflective of player opinions, just an amalgam of mags and newspapers. Not very scientific at all.
Well, I hoped that after saying how unscientific Gamerankings was, you'd follow that statement with a highly scientific statement proving that people dislike Halo. Instead, you said - and quite unscientifically - "Halo kind of sucks."
So, before releasing any number of the witty quips that popped in my head, I'll go ahead and wait for the immeniently more scientific method of proving Halo's acceptance (or lack thereof).
In the meantime, I'll go ahead and say that I agree that Halo is no Deus Ex. Deus Ex is fnatastic. But Halo is still really, really, really good. I've played (betatested even) the PC version, and no, it doesn't, for one reason or the other, capture magic that the Xbox version had. I can't say specifically why, maybe it was the chuggy framerate, or the fact that someone's IM crashed the program, or that my mouse would occasinally float to the second monitor of my multi-monitor setup. Whatever it was, it really didn't have the same "stuff" that the Xbox version had. So if we're talking as if the only Halo that ever existed was the one for the PC, sure, I can stretch and see your point. But not the Xbox version. The Xbox version really was magic, and while not necessarily in the same conference as Deus Ex, it was certainly in the same league.
Nevertheless, I think it's fairly narrow-minded to think that merely because you and or a few close friends think a game sucks, that a game overall sucks. I am no fan of GTA3. I've played it, didn't like, and have a difficult time seeing the attraction. But a lot of people like it, and so I can safely say that it must be good for a lot of people. Why PC gamers can't do the same for Halo? I don't know.
Oh right. Because they're l33t. I forgot. Anyway, I'll wait for that scientific evidence proving people don't like Halo.
What do you mean by the "originality that Halo had exhibited in the past?" If you're referring to the RTS feel, that element had been lost long before the buyout. I think that what we see in Halo on the Xbox is very much what Bungie would've released for Mac and or PC, save for the rushed repetition in the middle (negative) and the addition of the co-op mode (positive). Even if you disagree with that, you can't disagree that Halo for PC/Mac would've been THAT fundamentally different than what we see on the Xbox. If you didn't like it on the XBox, I doubt you would've liked it on the Mac. You provide no evidence in your post for otherwise.
Don't forget about Oni, Dutchmaan. It predates the MS buyout, and the only choice you have in explaining it is that it was the moment when Bungie "jumped the shark" and are on a downward trend (Oni-the "not all that great" Halo), or that MS actually helped Bungie instead of hurting it. Gasp! Microsoft HELPING a design studio! Linus Forbid! (Or, Jobs Forbid as the case may be).
I won't disagree that much "remains to be seen." Indeed, Halo 2 will be much more the vision Bungie originally had than Halo 1, thanks to the removal of pressuring time constraints. But I have yet to see any kind of evidence of creative pressure on behalf of Microsoft. Really, in any interview I've read, MS pretty much leaves their established 1st and 2nd party studios alone (Bungie, Bizarre Creations, Tim Schaffer, Rare, etc) and only recently has started taking a greater interest in the non-established studios, but only because those non-established studios were making games that were not profitable (Bloodwake, Kung Fu Chaos, etc). The first example of this non-laissez faire corporate "interference" is the excellent Crimson Skies...oh no, another once PC-only franchise! What's next? Age of Empires Xbox only? Say it ain't so Ed Fries!
As far as Mac gamers actually dropping in class in terms of game targeting; I'd say all they have now is Blizzard and ports of PC games 6 months late. I'm not sure that's in a "class" at all (as much as I myself love macs). Post Bungie, that makes one major game developer as opposed to, well, 2. Maybe - and just maybe - that has more to do with Macs than it does with game developers?
By the way, have you played Halo on the Xbox, and if so, all the way through?
As a momentary exercise in completely extraneous hypotheticals, and to drive the point home with much more force (given the audience), imagine for a moment that MS had decided to acquire Squaresoft instead of Bungie ... *shuter*
Oh, you mean like Sony bailing Squaresoft out of the post-movie-blues and eventually becoming the second largest shareholder of Squaresoft? That kind of completely extraneous hypothetical?
At the risk of repetition, "Good grief." You act as if "this business of console makers buying large, successful developers/publishers outright" is a new thing. It's not. It's been happening since day one. You've suddenly noticed it because you're most likely (as I once was) solely a PC gamer, and this is the first notably large buyout of a PC game developer. If you're not, than you haven't been paying attention. My guess is that you haven't noticed this spirit of aquisition up to this point because the video game industry was largely dominated by Japanese companies who bought out - surprise - other Japanese companies. Microsoft, obviously coming from a much more PC-knowledgable position - *"bought out" Bungie. As far as being "locked out," welcome to the console world. Again: a day one behavior (biggest case in point in recent history: GTA3 - why is releasing that once exclusive PS2 game on PC not an insult, but Halo is, btw?).
I would specifically argue that developing for one console actually enhances creativity, not stifles it. It's easier to develop for a single platform than it is to target 2 or 3, or in the case of a PC technically an infinte number of hardware configurations That's a best case scenario, of which I think Bungie exemplifies. The worst case scenario is that the now-bought-out-company produces crap (say, that crappy Microsoft first party psuedo-RPG that started with an A). Basically, I think it would be fair to say that a creative company will create more creative games, and a non-creative company will inevitably create crappier games. Ooooo.
So sure, it's all cool and hipster to have indie game houses, but let's be frank. It's all about the benjamins. These indie guys would like nothing more than to do what they're doing, but to have driven to work in a Dodge Viper rather than a 1985 Ford Escort that's 3rd gear works only half the time.
Two more things. First of all, who died and made you Ms. Cleo of Bungie? How do you know that Bungie's "glory days" are behind them (Oni-cough-cough)? Halo was fantastic. If Halo 2 completely bombs, I might agree with you. But since neither of us has played that, I doubt you can justifiably say that. Bungie and MS have both said that they leave each other alone, so Bungie is doing what they would've done, except that a) it's for the Xbox, and b) they drive to work in Dodge Vipers. Why is that bad?
Secondly, if you're so adverse to playing good games merely because they might be on a certain console, consider yourself a shameful PC fanboy. You might be slightly more articulate than the forum fanboy trolls (that is to say, using multi-syllabic words and not using wtf once), but the spirit is the same. Shame on you. Good games are good games, whether they have Microsoft on the front or GarageGames. Get over your indie-fetish and have some fun.
* Isn't it odd that it's always MS doing the buying, not Bungie doing the selling? Maybe - and stick with me here - maybe Bungie wanted to be bought out and have lots of cash for doing something they love. Just a thought.
If by "sucks" you mean an overall 85% rating, then I guess you're right. I'll concede that the PC version needed some work, but I think sucks is too strong a word. Add in whatever you mean by "improvements" and the co-op to Halo PC logistically means re-writing the entire code for the single player campaign. Essentially, you're looking at at least another year in development, which is to say another year of PC fanboys whining. And I would venture to say that nearly every single one of those reviewers would completely disagree with your assertion that Unreal 2 kicks Halo's ass. My guess is that you just haven't played Halo. And I also guess that means that by Unreal 2 kicking Halo's ass, you mean getting a %78 percent at gamerankings. Whatevs.
A note. I beta tested Halo for the PC and had somewhat of an inside look at the process, and it was a bitch to port. People have been whining about how their PC is soooo much better than Xboxes since before the Xbox even came out, but the fact of the matter is that the GPU within the Xbox is so well tailored to pixel shaders that it made porting the game from the Xbox to PC extremely difficult. Bungie did a great job with Halo, but they did do it rather quickly, so unraveling all the Xbox code for PC was a monumentous task for gearbox that they pulled off brilliantly. I wish you could see how far they came from the original alphas.
Please. Lest us forget that $ony and, um, $intendo aren't exactly laissez faire either. They've done their share of buying out (and not just console devs), and while certainly not as noticably large as either Bungie or Rare, they are guilty as charged. I guess what you're saying is that Microsoft should stick to PC applications, right? Well, Sony should stick to walkmen, and Nintendo to playing cards. Welcome to the video game industry jube. Maybe if you'd bought more dreamcasts, we wouldn't have lost the only pure video game hardware maker. Oh wait, you're a PC l33t gamer. Just know that Dreamcasts were cool, and that you should've bought more.
And so M_S_ bought out Bungie. Whoopie. I'd think Bungie far more qualified to decide what's best for Bungie than, say, you, and Bungie doesn't seem too upset about the whole deal. In fact, they've said in every interview I've read with them regarding MS that MS leaves them well enough alone, save for random visits by Ed Fries and Ken Lobb who just walk around with their jaws on the floor and then leave. Which seems to work out fairly well, since Take 2/GODgames bugged the hell out of Bungie and the result of that was the abysmal pre-MS Oni.
Microsoft saw an opportunity to snag a great game franchise, and they took it. Why is that inherently evil? Wouldn't anyone else have done the same thing? Don't think for a minute that someone at Sony wasn't kicking themselves in their proverbial business casual slacks for not having bought Bungie first.
What's the difference between super-kick-ass indy (sic) games, and super-kick-ass non-indie games? If both are super-kick-ass, what's your problem? Shouldn't good game developers like Bungie be rewarded with the big bucks only the big dogs can cough up? I'm all for indie gaming (hey, I bought Mutant Storm and Starscape), but I'm more for indie gaming developers making it good than indie game developers making $1000 a game. So should you. Return to your comraderie of anti-M$ fanboys at main.slashdot.org, and save the karma for gamers who care about the games. And thanks in advance.
Will there ever be room in the market for an "independent production company" like CEG?
Geez, I hope not.
The website isn't a testament to games. It's a testament to the guys in the company. Give me a break. I visited the CEG page the moment Blackley left MS and thought the same thing I do now: these guys aren't about the games, they're about themselves. Every interview I've read with these guys is about themselves. CEG, at least to me, looks like nothing but a four man ego circle. Blackley should've taken the funds and handed them instead of guys like Warren Spector and Will Wright, so as to create an "independent production company" completely unlike CEG.
Delaney's absolutely right, but he didn't seem to offer any solutions. Here's one:
First of all, there needs to be a sort of academic overhead to video game analysis. I think our great hope in this is the imminent rise of Ludology and video game theory. By and large, video games are still generally regarded within the academic community as, well, non-academic. This notion needs to be challenged, by academics and professional review writers alike. When this "aura" of justification occurs, it will result not only in better writing within game reviews, but also a focus on critique, or true critical analysis, and less focus on screenshots or graphics. At a recent video game developer's conference, the head of Naughty Dog stated that the industry had reached a point of diminishing returns in respect to graphics, and that the focus now ought to be on storyline and character development. Likewise, so too should reviewers begin to shift focus away from the technical aspects of the game, despite Kasavin's insistence that these are "indelible qualities of gaming." He's technically right, but he's also wrong. They're indelible, true, but only because the entire focus of the game media (Gamespot very much included) is on these same indelible qualities of gaming. Don't believe? Open up your favorite gaming magazine or website, and see how much of a focus there is on screenshots. That kind of visual attention doesn't even happen in film media, which is at least as visual as gaming. When it does occur, it is done so with focus and intent by the studios, not the sprawling bi-daily update of screenshots that is so emerged within the game industry.
Secondly, we need a new word. Moving pictures found the word "film" to escape the pure entertainment association, video games need something akin to "film" but still connotative of the properties of video games. I know there are some, including John Carmack, who think that video games cannot and should not attain to anything higher than entertainment. And indeed, entertaining games is no less noble than games "with purpose." Nevertheless, saying that video games' sole purpose is to entertain is like saying that all paintings should be pretty and nice to look at, or that all books should be "fun" to read. Video games are a method, a medium, a means unto an end, and not the end itself. Can they communicate "entertainment"? Obviously, but the realization among game developers should also be that they can communicate or impart other abstract ideas as well, apart or alongside entertainment.
Thirdly, the industry itself needs to allow padding for games that are not purely entertainment driven. I think that the Japanese have this idea, hence games like REZ or Pikmin; games that I'm sure the publishers knew won't sell GTA3 numbers but they publish and develop as an expression rather than an attempt to make sales. The Japanese, and European to some degree, do this with intent, whereas American gaming companies do it completely unintentionally. This needs to change.
Basically, the entirety of the industry needs a swivel towards an overall awareness of "abstract gaming." Reviewers, whether they are aware of this or not, lead the vanguard in this respect. Why is there a need of, for lack of a better term (and the complete aversion to using the word "artistic"), purpose-oriented or abstract gaming? Because the gaming industry is at a crossroads now. The comic book industry found itself at very much this same point in its journey and it took the wrong path. Instead of creating what was considered "niche" titles, as a whole the industry instead moved towards a purely sales-driven strategy. The end result is that it quickly quarantined itself within a subculture that it has never really moved out of, requiring nearly 20-30 years and Frank Miller and Alan Moore to deconstruct the genre so it could be reinvented. The movie industry was also at the same point, much earlier than comic books of cour
I was going to reply to one post, but I see a lot of posts generally saying the same thing: -in dainty Royal British accent - "Ah yes. Good for them. We have five gaziollion times those numbers, and have since 1981. I play nethack. Good day sir!"
My response, to all of you, is this. Before you ride off into your cs_dust sunset your high PC Nightwind horse, keep in mind first and foremost that higher numbers for console online games only means that the competition will increase for online PC games. We're on slashdot. Competition is good around here, right? Secondly, the overall online experience for consoles is significantly more streamlined than that of a PC. Everyone has voice chat. Everyone's on broadband. Cheaters are vastly undernumbered compared to the PC. Heck, I get in game alerts on XBL. Sure, I get IMs while I'm playing BF1942, but at worst everything crashes or chugs, and at best it completely interupts my game.
High numbers of console online players is *good* news, for everyone. Oh, and I can see all the way up your large nostriled PC l33t nose. And, um, your piss is going down your leg, not on everyone else's parade.
I forgot to mention Play magazine. I don't particularly always agree with their reviews; I think that Gunvalkyrie is difficult not because of content but because of poor control design, and so on and so forth. I feel that at times Play tries too hard to be "hardcore." But Play magazine provides a niche, instead of trying to be *THE* magazine for gamers as [insert game magazine name here] is so fond of doing. You have to admire that.
Likewise, I thought the reviews in the defunct NextGen were absolutely brilliant writing. I need to be careful in saying this, because they were notorious for their doublepaged screenshots, but they really did see games as an integral part of society. However, that's what we need in the gaming review industry: great, creative writing. It needs to be an art unto itself. I see a long but straight line between the rock music reviewing of the late sixties, early seventies, and the gaming industry reviewing of today. Rock music was coming of age as the game industry is very much doing today; it's growing beyond the size of its own knickers, so to speak. Likewise, both industries are highly release driven, and every new release in either rock or in gaming was the "next big thing." There's a general feeling that reviewers are "cool" now.
That said, every game reviewer, print or otherwise, should have to watch Almost Famous, and they should walk away with the words, "Be honest, and be ruthless" etched in their minds coupled with the insistence that "We are not cool. We are the uncool." If game reviewing wants to grow up, the reviewers themselves need to realize that the game designers and publishers need to hate reviewers. The reviewers need to be the enemy. That passion, combined with the belief that one's own writing and reviewing can be artistic in nature, is enough to revolutionize the gaming media. Will it happen? That's up to them.
Curmudgeon Gamer's examination is certainly an interesting one, but what it complete neglected was the trend of increasing stupidity in gaming reviews.
Perhaps the slow but steady rise of ludology means that we may yet see a rise in the quality of game reviews, but by and large the current level of intelligence in most game reviews is as low as the number of female companions most of the game reviewers have (and I mean that collectively). Reviews inevitably follow the "Background, Cool Trivia About Game, Graphics, Controls, Bad, Good" template. The size of the font of the scores at the of end review keeps getting bigger, as does the size of the screenshots. Basically, we're left with an industry wide standard of two paragraph GamePro-esque reviews that generally boil down to, "It rocks!" or "It sucks!" EGM's recent redesign is a fine example of this. There is little in the way of anaylsis, or the game's relation to the industry at large, or (heaven forbid) society itself. I think there are sites on the net that are the exception, such as GameCritics.com, and ironically, Penny-Arcade. Likewise, I think either Computer Games or CGW (I always get them mixed up) is making a conscious move in the other direction. Kudos to them, and shame on the rest of the reviewers. I suppose that online is, strangely enough, more "textual" than the magazines due to the lack of space confinement. But the actual content is about as low.
What I'd like to see is a complete abolishment of scores all together in a magazine or website. It would mean, yes, you'd actually have to read the review. That's not to say there's no place for the blurb-y Gamepro-style of reviews with a big thumbs up or thumbs down at the end of the review. There obviously is, as it's quite handy for a quick reassurance when you're in the line at EB almost ready to buy the game.
But there needs to be more peer reviewing, more intelligent discoursing, and more analysis ala ludology in the gaming industry. Not everything is the next best thing since, well, the last game the person reviewed. But some things most definitely are, and it's these that need extra attention. Not, contrary to popular belief, more screenshots.
You might be right, it's been about two or three years since I played through it. Perhaps it was the force represented by Gunther that was always the best of me.
Yeah, I thought about that when I was writing the post. Nevertheless, everything in the Deus Ex subway level- including the notable phone booth with the hanging receiver - is in exactly the same place as in the movie. Well, except for Gunther firing off EMP rockets at you.
And I ought to know. If nothing else, that level is a prime example of why forced failure sucks in game design. I must have spent at least 4 or 5 hours on that level trying to defeat Gunther, all the while having grown too used to the relative non-linearity of the game and thinking that it was very possible, but difficult, to defeat the bastard. I seem to remember reading a review with Warren Spector essentially apologizing for that part in the game.
Ah ha. I happened to snag the hintbook free from a game store some time ago who was tossing the prima guide and it reads in the easter egg section, "The subway station in Hell's Kitchen is based on a subway set from the movie The Matrix . Of course, it is a strategy guide saying that and not Spector, Blessed Be His Name. As an interesting sidenote, the templar cathedral is based on Thief, and the ocean lab on System Shock. According to the strategy guide anyway.