Video Games

One of the first games I played after getting my PS3 was Resistance: Fall of Man and it’s sequel, Resistance 2. These are Playstation exclusive games, and they are indeed shining examples of the FPS genre on the PS3.

First up is Resistance: Fall of Man. Since the dawn of the first person shooter genre, there have been two main settings: WWII and alien invasion. With Resistance, what you get is basically both! As trite as that may sound, it actually works really well. The setting is actually an alternate history, starting around the time of the Tunguska event, which in Resistance actually carried with it the seeds of an alien virus/race called the Chimera. By 1950, the Chimera had infected and overtaken most of Asia and continental Europe. The game starts in 1951, following an American soldier stationed in Britain. He is Sergeant Nathan Hale, and of course, he’s the only surviving American soldier. He hooks up with British forces and they seek to halt the advancing Chimeran invasion. Part of the reason he’s a survivor is that he is somewhat resistant to the Chimeran virus. Instead of dying and becoming a Chimeran, his eyes turn yellow and he gains strength and regenerative abilities.

Alright, enough of the story and the setting. As FPS games go, this is pretty good. Now that I think about it, it might be the first FPS game I’ve played all the way through on a console. While I still think the PC is ideal for FPS games, I had no problem adjusting to Resistance and the controls worked reasonably well. The only annoying thing is that the zoom is the R3 button, and I sometimes inadvertently triggered it in the middle of a particularly heated battle. Another aspect of FPS games that Resistance accels at are the weaponry. There are some interesting weapons here and most of them produce satisfying results, but the impressive thing is that many are optimized for certain situations or enemies. You don’t need to use a specific weapon to address a specific battle, but certain weapons are ideal for certain situations. There are some vehicle portions of the game which help break up the gameplay… and I have to admit that it is fun taking a spin in the Tank or even the Chimeran Stalker. So as FPS games go, this is a very solid example. (It’s available on the budget Greatest Hits line – if you get a PS3 and like FPS games, it’s well worth the effort).

Resistance 2 is the sequel to Resistance: Fall of Man and picks up right where the first game left off, then skips forward to a few years later, as the Chimeran plague spreads across the pond to America (I guess the victory at the end of the first game was only a temporary one). Sergeant Hale has been promoted to Lieutenant and is now a part of a military unit (called SRPA, pronounced “sirpa”) of similar Chimeran virus resistant soldiers (referred to as Sentinals).

The gameplay has evolved a bit in this game to resemble other popular shooters here, particularly the Halo and Call of Duty games. Gone are the health meters, and I actually really like that change. The game also only allows you to carry two weapons at a time, which is perhaps a less welcome change, but the game is pretty good about making sure ammo and other weapons are all over the place. Speaking of the weaponry, most of the weapons from the first game are still here, though there are a couple of new ones and even enhancements to the old ones (I particularly liked the changes to the Auger and the new sniper-rifle-like Marksman). The controls have changed a bit as well. For instance, they fixed the issue I mentioned about the R3 button… but the way they did that makes it difficult to use the sniper rifle’s alternate fire method… still, it’s an improvement. They’ve also done away with the vehicles… perhaps to make way for all the new boss fights. There were a few boss fights in the first game, but this game is filled with them. They usually take the form of some gigantic Chimeran monster and these are usually pretty fun battles. The scope and scale of the battles in this game are larger and impressive than the first game.

In terms of the story, you do start to get more information on what’s happening, including some info on the unseen but often referenced “Cloven” (who are not Chimeran, but not human either and, well, let’s just say they don’t like anyone). There’s also a specific villain in this game, a Chimeran creature named Daedalus, who is suitably creepy and seems to know more about Hale than you’d be comforable with. There are still plenty of unanswered questions in the story and I think the game suffers from the lack of a consistent narrator (the first game was narrated by a British Captain, and she provided a good perspective on what was happening and tied the various events together in a useful way), but the story progresses well enough, and the game ends with a rather gutsy event in the cutscene. Visually, both Resistance games are impressive, but Resistance 2‘s scope and scale give it a bit of an edge. There are also some levels that have a welcome change from the typical gunmetal gray color palette, sometimes even including things like sunlight and plants.

Also worthy of mention in this game is the online multiplayer functionality. The first game had multiplayer as well, but Resistance 2 seems to be trying for a comprehensive online experience, providing tons of options and two main modes. One is the traditional multiplayer that everyone should be familiar with (deathmatches, capture the flag, etc…). I am really bad at this kind of game, but I did find myself really enjoying the other main online multiplayer option, which was the Cooperative campaigns. These allow you and up to 7 other players to go through various missions, attacking the Chimera. There are multiple player classes, and you really have to cooperate with each other if you want to win the level. The three classes are pretty straightforward and easy to pickup. Like most multiplayer games, these missions can get somewhat repetitive, though it’s worth noting that there are tons of maps and variations of maps. Honestly, when it comes to the Deathmatch style games, it makes it somewhat difficult to play because there are so many levels that I still am not particularly familiar with any one level… The only other gripe here is that in order to get experience points, you have to use the matcmaker, which automatically chooses a game and a map for you… making it more difficult to get familiar with a given map.

Overall, I think Resistance 2 is a small improvement over the original, a solid shooter in its own right, and with the ending of the single player campaign, I’m actually somwhat excited to see where they take the third game.

I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time playing the PS3 of late, and I’ve even started to get my feet wet with the various online features. One of the notable things about the PS3 online experience is that it’s free. Of course, playing games online is also free on the PC or the Wii, but Xbox Live is a pay service ($50 a year, though you can get coupons or something to lower that to $30 a year). By all accounts, the Xbox Live system seems to be far better than the Playstation Network, but I’d say that the PSN is good enough to get the job done. After all, I have no problem playing games online, and I don’t have to pay for that privilege. But there are seeminly simple things I’m surprised they’re not doing. For instance, Gamercards. This is something that Xbox Live does really well. Here’s the example gamercard for Xbox live from wikipedia:

The idea is that this card provides a bunch of information about a player, and they can post it on their blog or their favorite forums. The information includes the person’s gamertag (i.e. their name), their reputation, their score, a zone (i.e. are you a family gamer, a casual gamer, an “underground” player, etc…), and the last few games that you’ve played. It’s a community thing, and it fits into some of the other things Xbox Live does. I’m not that experienced with Xbox Live, but my understanding is that it uses your score and reputation to help find matchups for you. That way, if you’re a new player, you won’t get matched with the expert gamers who’ll just destroy you. Neato.

The PSN seems to have a patchwork of features, none of which are tied together very well. For instance, they implemented a “Trophy” system last year which parallels the Xbox Live Achievements functionality… except that this information doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose. This is exemplified by the PSN Portable ID, which is supposed to be their answer to the Xbox Gamercard. Here’s my PSN Portable ID:

Wow! Look at all that info! Just as good as Xbox Live, right? Ok, so the trophy system doesn’t get you any real tangible rewards in terms of matchmaking, but at the very least it could be used for bragging rights, and this is seemingly a big part of why people post their Xbox Gamercards all over the place. For reasons that are beyond me, I’ve spent some time playing games with the sole intention of getting this or that trophy. It can be fun (perhaps I just enjoy activating the reward circuitry of my brain), but it’s kinda pointless if I can’t share my accomplishments. The dumbest part about this is that I can login to the PSN and bring up an online gamercard that’s much cooler. I just took a picture of it:

(Apologies for the lack of a good screenshot, these were pictures taken of my TV) Ok, so even this might not be as good as the Xbox Live gamercard, but it’s a heck of a lot better than their portable ID thingy. It’s got a PSN level, the number of trophies you’ve earned, and it has pictures of the last several trophies you’ve achieved. You can then go to another page which breaks out what kinds of trophies you’ve won (and there’s a third page that has some biographical information). You can view your friend’s cards as well, and you can even compare your trophies with theirs. Of course, none of this is available in the official gamercard. What’s the point of using the official PS3 gamercard if the only information it contains is my name? If I want to tell people my name, I can do that pretty easily (hey, my PSN id is “mciocco”). The point of a gamertag is to populate it with at least some dynamic data that indicates what kind of player you are or what you’ve been up to lately. Shamus recently summarized the issue thusly:

I know they have the trophy system, but it doesn’t look to be tied to anything like an account or gamer profile which can be shared. Without a gamertag, you have to just tell people you beat Explodious 3 on super double-hard. The system tracks your accomplishments, but it doesn’t give you a way to share them, which is what makes the system social and perhaps even viral.

Am I making too big a deal of this sort of thing? Maybe. Even the Xbox Live Achievements system is arguably not that useful, but to Shamus’ point, it’s fun to share your accomplishments. And if you don’t think that PS3 owners care about that, then why are there a bunch of sites that allow you to create your own PS3 gamercard by populating the data manually?

I suppose the good news is that Sony is tracking that sort of data and they do seem to be making strides in the right direction. After all, they did only just recently implement these trophies… but still, part of the fun of earning trophies is that it’s supposed to be a community thing. The lack of a respectible gamercard seems rather silly to me – it should be a relatively easy thing for them to implement, right? (Come to think of it, it takes forever for the gamercard to populate with data in the PS3 interface, so maybe it is more difficult than it sounds… but I can’t see why it would be…) On the other hand, I’ve heard rumors that your Trophy points would contribute towards unlocked stuff in PS Home or possibly even some sort of monetary value. I suppose that would be nice.

Of course, the Wii is selling double what the Xbox and PS3 are combined, and the Wii has nothing like this at all, so I suppose this whole online experience should be taken with a grain of salt (then again, one of the manual gamercard sites linked above also provides a Wii gamercard option). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some Dead Space trophies to earn.

I’ve been making my way through Malstrom’s Articles lately (thanks to Shamus for pointing them out) and have found them to be perceptive and fascinating reading. Sean Malstrom wanted to learn about how companies succeed. In order to do so, he chose to examine a company that was “exploding in wealth.” Having missed the iPod explosion, he chose to examine Nintendo. In doing so, he has made several interesting observations about their business strategy. In particular, he has identified the two major driving forces behind Nintendo’s actions: Blue Ocean Strategy and Disruption. This is not something you read about in typical media accounts of the console wars, but ironically, Malstrom was able to discern Nintendo’s strategy by simply listening to Nintendo executives talk about their plans. In any case, Malstrom’s articles are long and detailed and his points are well made. In Drowning in the Blue Ocean, Malstrom speculates about what defines console generations and comes to the conclusion that the software (i.e. games) is more important than the hardware (i.e. consoles).

The real reason why the Playstation 1 and 2 succeeded was because Sony corrected (to a point) the licensing issues of Sega and Nintendo but more due to the fact that Sony flooded their console with software. The number of software available for the original Playstation was beyond any other system ever. It was this vast library that shot the Playstation up.

Way back when the original NES hit the market, Nintendo imposed certain licensing limitations and content standards (i.e. censorship). They were the only game in town, and their limitations were imposed for a reason. However, competition appeared in the form of Sega (specifically, the Genesis), who competed along similar lines. Meanwhile, Sony sat along the sidelines (briefly flirting with Nintendo in a failed attempt to bring their CD technology to the SNES), observing that first console war, until they released the first Playstation (based on the same technology they were going to provide to Nintendo). Their licensing was more leniant than Nintendo or Sega, so the available games skyrocketed. This continued into the PS2, which wins the available game count by a massive margin. The idea is that the more games a console has available, the more popular that console becomes. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. The quality and variety of gaming experiences is also important and plays into this. However, looking at the number of available games tends to be a good approximation, perhaps because developers are seeking to make money, so they will favor the more popular systems. This positive feedback loop only serves to reinforce the winner. There are many other factors that help determine the value proposition for a given console, but I became interested in the available games (or size of library, as Malstrom calls it) metric because it seems to follow from the other factors (i.e. a cheap system with cheap development costs can lead to more games).

So if the number of games available is a reasonable proxy for which system is winning a console war, how do the current consoles stack up?

Despite the fancy chart, I have to admit that there are several caveats. But the data is also interesting in many ways, as it mostly correllates with my expectations (confirmation bias? Perhaps…).

• The data all comes from Wikipedia, particularly the pages that list games for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. I compiled all the data in a Google Spreadsheet here, if you want to take a look. Given that my main source admits that the lists of games are incomplete (and indeed, “may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness”), you should probably take it with a grain of salt. If anyone knows of a more rigorous dataset that is available, I’d be interested to get my hands on it.
• Given the rather high number of games on each list (even the PS3, which has the fewest games), I haven’t examined the lists very closely. This means that there is no indication of the quality or variety of available games. This is an important factor, because quantity alone is not everything. That said, I don’t know if it’s reasonable to assume that the number of games available is an indicator that the market has chosen a winner and is thus allocating resources accordingly…
• The game lists include games that are scheduled to be released in 2009. I don’t know how comprehensive that is, but I’m assuming that the margin of error is similar for all three consoles (again, considering that the source is Wikipedia, this might night be a wise assumption).
• It’s also worth noting that the number of games available does not tell us anything about the number of games actually sold for each system. It would hardly matter if Wii had command of the numbero of games offered if PS3 games had outsold Wii games by a factor of 10 to 1. Of course, that does not appear to be the case and I’d be really surprised if the PS3 even began to approach the Wii in terms of games sold (let alone surpass them) – the point is that I don’t have any data about this. Again, if anyone has a set of data for this, I’d be interested.
• I’ve compared the number of games along several vectors, but my main focus was on titles available in the U.S. Interestingly, while the Wii is far and away the winner among all categories, their percentage of games that are unavailable in the US (over 20% of Wii games listed are not available in the US) is much higher than either the PS3 or Xbox (which are more like 7-8%).
• I was curious about excusivity, so I included some stats about that as well. The Xbox and PS3 were much closer than I thought they’d be, especially considering the Xbox’s head start. I didn’t have a number for the Wii though because the Wii’s unique controller scheme presumably means that nearly every available Wii game is exclusive. I suppose there are some exceptions, such as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, which have the same interaction as the other consoles. There are other mitigating factors as well. The aforementioned Guitar Hero and Rock Band games have a wealth of downloadable bonus content on PS3 and Xbox, while the Wii does not have this yet (apparently it’s coming soon though). Also, while many games that are ported to the Wii take advantage of the unique controller system, they are also often missing content that is in other consoles. For instance, a game like Madden 2008 features some nifty Wiimote controls (I can throw a better touch pass than McNabb!), but it doesn’t feature some of the deeper general mangement or franchise features (not positive how drastic the difference is though). Similarly, the downgraded graphics and level design for games ported to the Wii turns away some people (The Force Unleashed is apparently an example of this). This makes it difficult to say – does it count if the Wii is exclusively worse than the other consoles? Even that is a subjective measure, though, so I just left the number off (plus the wikipedia list I used doesn’t have a column for exclusivity, while the Xbox and PS3 lists do). In the end, I’d say the number of completely exclusive Wii titles probably still far outweighs the other two consoles.
• I also included some data regarding downloadable content for each console. Again, the Wii is the clear winner. The amount of games offered by Wii’s Virtual Console (which feature many old but classic NES, SNES, Genesis, etc… games) and Wiiware are higher than the XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network offerings combined. When combined with the Wii’s advantage in regular games, you can see that the Wii has a commanding lead over the rest of the market. I’m not sure which metric is the best to use to compare the systems though…
• While there does appear to be a correllation between console sales and the amount of video games available for each system, it’s debateable how much of a factor it plays in the competition. If you look at the percentages in the data, you can see that in raw numbers for amount of games available, the Xbox 360 is offering about 74% as much as the Wii is offering (PS3 is at 52%). In terms of consoles, the Xbox has only sold about 62% as much as the Wii (PS3 is at 47%). If number of games was truly an indicator of the success of a given system, I would expect those numbers to have a closer correllation (though the PS3 numbers are pretty close). Perhaps the difference is due to the quality or variety of games, or perhaps the Wii has so thoroughly won this generation that it has pulled away in terms of console sales, no matter how many Xbox games are added (winning consoles have the benefit of positive feedback loops, etc…).
• If the Playstation and PS2 were so great about making sure they had a huge library of games, what the heck is going on with the PS3? There are a couple of potential answers. First, in comparison to the Xbox, PS3 isn’t that bad, especially when you consider that the Xbox had about a 1 year head start. Second, in comparison to the Wii, it’s obvious that the PS3’s advanced technology is getting in the way. Nintendo has actually said that their plan is to flood the market with games (I think they learned this from the PS and PS2 consoles). Wii games are standard definition, run on relatively old and established hardware, and are apparently much easier to develop than PS3 games, which are in HD and run on brand new, cutting edge hardware that no one understands yet. PS3 games take much longer to produce and are also much more expensive, which could explain why the Wii has so many more games. For that matter, the Xbox suffers from similar advanced technology problems. Furthermore, because the Wii’s games take less time and effort, they are also more profitable. This is something that will also lend positive reinforcement to the Wii’s already hefty lead…

Ultimately, I don’t think I have enough data to say for sure whether or not there is a really firm correllation between number of games available and the success of a given system. There does seem to be some evidence of this, but correlation does not imply causation and I think better data sets are needed. Funnily enough, Malstrom has some graphs in his article which have a value breakdown accross a number of features. He doesn’t list where he got his data though, and it’s clear that he’s simply attempting to make a broader point about how Nintendo is focusing on areas that the PS3 and Xbox are not (if you look at the various plots, Nintendo is almost the inverse of the PS3 and Xbox).

Nintendo is the clear winner in terms of sales right now, and it appears that the amount of games available correllates with that. I’m really curious to see how Nintendo leverages their position to attract gamers away from the Xbox and PS3, or if that’s even possible. As I mentioned in my recent overview of the consoles, I’m not sure how well they’ll be able to make that transition. So far, they’ve experienced great success just by making gaming different and interesting again. Since “fighting disinterest” seems to be their goal, I’m interested to see how they’ll apply it to more advanced games and concepts (I’m no expert and haven’t played that many Wii games, but so far, I don’t think they’ve managed to transcend their original goal – Malstrom seems to think they will, but I am not so sure).

Update: According to this page, there are just over 200 exclusive Wii titles. This is approximately twice what the PS3 or Xbox offer… Also, added another bullet about the challenges of developing new PS3 games versus Wii games…

As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve spent most of my free time these past few weeks playing PS3 games. The first game I got for the PS3 was Assassin’s Creed. It’s on the PS3’s “Greatest Hits” budget line, so it was a relatively cheap purchase, and it wound up being a great introduction to the PS3. It seems that the reviews for this game are generally mixed. Some people hate it and some people like it. They all mention pretty much the same complaints, so I guess it’s just a matter of how much they grate on you. As I’ve mentioned previously, I think Yahtzee’s review perfectly summarizes the game. In fact, I’m not sure why I’ve pointed this out, as his review is probably a lot more entertaining than anything I’m about to say, but onwards and upwards. Maybe I’ll say something worthwhile, but if you just want the 5 minute version, watch Yahtzee’s video.

Again, I should point out that I’m something of a casual gamer and am usually behind the curve of these sorts of games. The last game I played that could be reasonably compared to Assassin’s Creed is probably No More Heroes, a game for the Wii I didn’t particularly love (but didn’t hate either). Interestingly, there are a number of parallels between those two games, but Assassin’s Creed is by far the superior game. Here are some thoughts on various aspects of the game:

• Story: The game starts in a near future scenario, with some random bartender being kidnapped by a huge corporation. It turns out that the bartender is the descendant of a Third-Crusade-era assassin, and the corporation wands to force the bartender to relive his ancestor’s memories, which are stored in his DNA. So for the majority of the game, your character is strapped into a machine called the Animus, which is a quasi-VR machine that lets him live out his ancestor’s memories. Most of the gameplay is centered around the ancestor, a cocky assassin by the name of Altaïr, who is ordered to assassinate a bunch of people in order to counter the assassin organization’s enemies, the Templars. There are these stones called “Pieces of Eden” that apparently hold a lot of power. The Templars want them to help in the Crusade (or something like that) and the Assassins have their own plans. Back in the future, the corporation I mentioned earlier is hoping that the memories they’re uncovering will lead them to a “Piece of Eden.” The story is actually pretty decent, though it ends on a question mark that will presumably be expanded upon in an upcoming sequel (and I mean that literally – it ends with this line of dialogue “What does it mean?”). There are some “twists” in the story that are somewhat obvious, and most of the exposition is essentially repeating various plot points, but it’s a serviceable story. The framing device of having a near future person experience memories of an ancestor is interesting, but ultimately, most of the scenes you play in the future are pointless (they allow you to walk around and there are a few actions you can do, but otherwise, you’re severely limited).
• Gameplay: For a game about assassins, there are surprisingly few assassinations in the game. Most of your time is spent doing various information gathering tasks leading up to each assassination. The world of the game consists of several cities, and for the most part you are free to wander about and do whatever you want (like climbing atop one of the many spires in a given city, then jumping off… and then repeating that about 10 times because it’s so cool). It’s not exactly an open-ended sandbox game like the Grand Theft Auto series, but it does work really well. I’ll go into more detail in the following sections, but for the most part, the gameplay is a lot of fun. Even just faffing about in the city, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing preposterously high towers and jumping off them, etc… is a lot of fun. The only real complaint is that the game gets rather repetitive. For each assassination, you face pretty much the same exact set of challenges. There are about 9 assassinations (not counting the various “informant” missions along the way), and by the time you get to the third one, you start wondering if anything new will appear. The ending of the game does alleviate this a bit, but for the most part, you’re repeating the same tasks over and over again. This didn’t bother me all that much. Perhaps it was because this was the first game I played in a while that really pulled me in, and the gameplay itself is fun enough that the repetition didn’t get too annoying.
• Combat: This is actually a weak point in the game. It’s not the worst ever, and it gets the job done, but it could use some serious improvement. At the start of the game, you only have a sword and you only really know one technique for attacking enemies (a somewhat awkward button mashing combo), but as you complete missions, your superior grants you new weapons and abilities. The problem is that after I learned the first couple of skills (the combo, the counter attack, etc…) I pretty much stopped paying attention, because those first couple of sills were getting the job done for me. For instance, I don’t think I ever used the throwing knives. This seems to be a relatively common thing with this game. There are lots of subtle maneuvers that you can do if you want, but you don’t need to do so to win the game (for instance, to get more throwing knives, you can pickpocket various citizens during the game – something I never did once because I never used the throwing knives in the first place). There is also apparently a combo move you can do with your hidden blade that becomes very important during the last two sections of the game, but which I was never able to get the hang of… The one thing I will say about the combat is that when you do actually get a combo move or counter shot, the resulting animation is actually pretty satisfying. So it can be fun, and I suppose with more practice, I could perhaps have had more fun with the combat system, but I do believe it could use an overhaul in the sequel.
• Missions and Tasks: As previously mentioned, before each assassination, you need to perform a series of information gathering tasks. There are essentially four different types of tasks: eavesdropping, pickpocketing, interrogations, and informants. Eavesdropping is the easiest, and thus it appears early in the game and then disappears later on. Pickpocketing is reasonably interesting. I was never sure if I was doing the interrogations in the best way (I gather you’re supposed to wait for the subject to be alone, then beat him for the info), but I suppose I did a good enough job with it. The informant tasks can be the most fun, but also the most frustrating. Basically, an informant is another assassin that’s in the city who is failing miserably at their own tasks. If you help them out, they’ll give you info. This always amounts to sorta mini-assassination missions. These can be really fun, but a couple of them get really frustrating because there’s a time limit and some of the guards get extra suspicious after a few failed attempts. It would have been nice if there was more variety to these missions. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them, but they do get rather repetitive. The assassinations themselves are pretty fun, though I found myself basically relying on a brute force strategy of just killing everyone in my way, rather than relying on stealth. I’m not sure if this was the intention or not, but I didn’t see anything like the Hitman series of games where you can do all manner of things to make the kill seem like an accident, etc… Of course, the Hitman games are mildly frustrating becaues how the heck are you supposed to know that if you ask the bartender for some aphrodisiac, then spike your target’s drink, he’ll take a girl to his bedroom, then walk out to the balcony where you will be waiting to push him off? But once you know the tricks, it can be a lot of fun devising other ways around the issue. There don’t seem to be a lot of tricks or alternate methodologies in Assassin’s Creed, thus the replay value isn’t really there for me…
• Stealth: Quite frankly, there’s not much of it. They’ve pretty much relegated stealth to a button you can hold down if you don’t want to attract attention (and there are times when alert guards around around, so this is necessary). One of the things that the Hitman games did really well was to make it seem like everyone is watching you. As you walk past, some people will follow you with their heads, others will scratch their chin as if recognizing that something is awry. The first time I played those games, these behaviors really did get to me and would contribute significantly to the tension of a given level (in a good way too). None of that subtlety is in Assassin’s Creed, and consequently, neither is a lot of that tension. That said, it can be kinda neat when you do get caught and you have to find a way to lose your pursuers (which amounts to hiding in stacks of hay or rooftop, uh, hiding place thingies). Later in the game, perhaps because of the repetition, this starts to get rather annoying. As previously mentioned, there are some times during the assassination attempts where you need to use stealth to approach the target, but for the most part, once you get to the target, you have to take the brute force approach.
• Visuals and Audio: This is quite possibly the prettiest game I’ve ever played. The environment and visuals are breathtaking, and this is the game I whip out when I want to show someone how cool an HD game can be (climbing to the top of a spire and doing a leap of faith is a lot of fun, and visually impressive too). The audio is pretty good too – not very showy, but effective and not annoying (which is generally what you ask for in a soundtrack).
• Usability: The menus and options on the PC version are infamously difficult to use (check out this video of someone trying to quit the game – amazingly poor usability), but the PS3 is rather better. One other annoyance is the lack of PS3 trophies. I understand that the game was developed before they existed, but it’s obvious that the game was designed with XBox achievements in mind, so it should be relatively trivial to port them to PS3 trophies, right? Well, probably not, and I’m sure they won’t ever do it because spending more time and money on a game that’s been out for a year already is probably not a profitable decision, but still. There are all these things in the game that are obviously meant for such a system, and I even spent some time picking up all the flags in one of the cities (only 20 flags), but it’s meaningless and there’s no real reason to pursue such things. Of course, PS3 Trophies are pretty meaningless in themselves and I’m surprised at how much I like getting a trophy, but that’s another discussion entirely. Otherwise, the game does a reasonable job with this sort of thing. The only real complaints are the ones already mentioned – repetitive gameplay, poor combat system and repetitive gameplay.

Overall, it’s a good, solid game, and it made a good first experience on the PS3 for me. It’s gorgeous, entertaining, and fun. The game takes about 10-15 hours, depending on how much faffing about you want to do during the course of the game. I don’t see a ton of replay value here, unless you have the XBox version and want to get some more achievements.

In comparison to other similar games, I’d say it’s better than No More Heroes, but perhaps not as good as Hitman: Blood Money. They’ve all got similar structures – an assassin takes on various jobs. No More Heroes is even more repetitive than Assassin’s Creed, and its lame attempt at a sandbox and its stupid pre-assassination missions are much worse than anything in Creed. The only thing worthwhile was the boss fights, which were on par with Creed. On the other hand, Hitman had a much more varied list of missions with all sorts of alternative methods for completing a level and a good amount of tension generated in the process. The variations actually make it tough the first time through – I have no idea how people figure out some of these things – but replaying levels a few times can still be fun. Assassin’s Creed still stacks up favorably and I liked it a lot, but it’s not a classic. I look forward to the sequel though, and if they can improve on some of these issues, it could be a great game.

This blog has always covered a mixture of topics that interest me, but in the past year it’s definitely become somewhat dominated by movies, with the occassional Anime post, culture/technology post or link dump thrown in for good measure. I spend a significant amount of time watching movies and indeed even reading or listening about them. So when you consider my tendency to arrange interests in parallel, it makes sense that I’d spend most of my blogging capital on movies. But with my recent purchase of a PS3, the whole enterprise has been upended. Most of my free time since its arrival has been spent playing games or watching Blu-Rays. As such, you can expect to see more video game related posts in the coming weeks and months. I might even get around to doing another round or two of my Video Game Retrospective that I pretty much abandoned about a year and a half ago (So far, I’ve only covered the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 eras, so I’m still a few decades behind here). But today, I’m going to talk about the current generation of video game consoles.

Before I start, I should mention that I’m not what’s referred to as a “hardcore” gamer these days. In the past, I’ve described myself as something of a “casual” gamer, but my experience with the PS3 has shown me that I’m probably somewhere inbetween those two poles of what is actually the false dichotomy of gaming (that I will nevertheless continue to use). My perspective on gaming really comes down to time, in that I don’t like to waste any of it. It’s valuable to me. On the other hand, I don’t consider being entertained to be a waste of time. If a game really grabs hold of me (i.e. it’s entertaining or at least compelling in some way), I don’t mind spending a lot of time playing video games, even ones that don’t seem to have any real “benefit.”

A lot of complex games lose me because they start off and nothing meaningful happens. Perhaps I die a lot. Perhaps the story sucks (and there’s no shortage of that). Games that have really steep learning curves puzzle me. In general, the way this type of game goes is that it kills me for about an hour straight, and I think “This is stupid, why am I playing this stupid game?” and then go off and do something interesting with my time. Good games usually give you some sort of introduction, building confidence and button-mashing muscle memory before thrusting you into the really advanced gameplay. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for games with steep learning curves, just that I think such games have to earn their bullshit. If you want me to spend hours upon hours learning combo movies so that I can defeat such and such boss, that’s fine, but you have to make the learning process worthwhile too. And learning should bring some sort of tangible reward (and I’m not talking about unlockables here either). One other thing that bothers me is a lack of clarity, especially when I know I’m being railroaded, but I’m not really sure where to go (I’m looking at you, Metroid Prime III). Now, these complaints and others used to make me think that I was a casual gamer, but since picking up the PS3 and playing a few supposedly non-casual games, I’m not sure what to make of it.

Apparently, we’re in the 7th generation of consoles (drastically simplifying with the main consoles of each generation: the first being Pong and its ilk, the second being Atari 2600, the third being the NES, the fourth being the Genesis/SNES, the fifth being N64/Playstation, and the sixth being the PS2). In this generation, three main consoles have emerged. I own two of them and have played the third enough to comment on it. Let’s start with the most interesting system:

• Nintendo Wii: Not content with competing along the same graphics/power trajectory of its main competitores, Nintendo went off in a wholly different direction. They did some minor upgrades to their previous generation console and then completely changed their entire controller scheme, focusing on creating new and interesting interactions rather than cutting edge graphics and technology. Instead of the typical button-laden video game controller, Nintendo created a remote-control-like device with motion-sensing abilities and relatively few buttons. At first, this seemed rather silly, and Nintendo really was taking a lot of chances with their strategy here. It wasn’t uncommon for Nintendo executives to say things like “We really don’t know how well the Wii will sell, but we think the market is ready for a change.” I’m paraphrasing here, but it turns out that Nintendo has really been focusing on a few key business strategies called The Blue Ocean and Disruption. In short, their goal was to undershoot the market, pick up some non-traditional casual gamers, and build on that base to achieve dominance in the “hardcore” market. Will this gambit work? The Wii certainly does seem to be the winner of this generation, outselling its competitors by a significant margin (especially when you consider that the Xbox 360 came out a year earlier). Furthermore, their reliance on established technology and their focus on innovative interactions seems to be a lot cheaper than their competitors, leading to a much higher profit margin for Nintendo. It certainly seems like their strategic maneuverings have paid off.

  From my perspective, the real question is whether or not Nintendo can really sustain what it has built. As near as I can tell, their strategy is to corner the casual market, then move up the ladder to more complex games and interactions in an effort to pry the hardcore gamers away from the competition whilst retaining and perhaps growing their casual base. The only problem here is that I don’t see how they’re going to do that. So far, their Wiimote has done well, but in my experience, attempts to move up the ladder to more advanced games have been a bit rough. The closest they seem to have come to this is Super Mario Galaxy, which, while a very good game, also suffers from many of the things that more advanced gamers demand. Other attempts at this sort of thing have been an abject failure (at least to a gamer like me – and I’m again looking at you Metroid Prime III, as well as games like Zelda and No More Heroes, which were perhaps not total failures, but not great either.) I think part of the issue is the Wiimote itself. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Wiimote, but a lot of what is done with the Wiimote seems gimmicky and sometimes unneccessary. Take Super Mario Galaxy as an example – there’s nothing in that game that really pushes the boundries of the Wiimote or controller schemes in general. It would have been just as good with a traditional controller system. In his console rundown, Yahtzee makes a good point about this (emphasis mine):

  Nintendo is the oldest contestant still in the console race and it seems they’ve gotten bored with the usual brick-with-button-pads-attached-with-string model and is trying to mix things up with a fancy motion-sensitive system of controls, a bold effort perhaps to do away with the grind of random button mashing, but in practice it’s only really replacing it with random stick waggling.

  Games that really do take advantage of the stick waggling features also tend to screw up your arm too, which leads game developers back to the grind of random button mashing until some sort of quicktime event pops up indicating that you shake your controller one way or another.

  In the end, I have to give the Wii credit for trying something new, and they’ve certainly done a decent job capturing the market they were looking for. The console is an absolute blast at parties and social gatherings… unfortunately, it’s not so great at the single player experience. For instance, Wii Sports is a brilliant until you’ve played it alone for 10 minutes, at which point it becomes mildly boring. None of which is to say that Nintendo can’t overcome the deficits of their system so far – they’re certainly in a good financial place to address those issues and we’re still relatively early in their run. Perhaps once they establish their base and truly attempt to expand, we’ll see some really great games. But so far, I’m not so sure. It’s a strange situation for me personally. I love the Wii, I love what it’s trying to do, but I realized in December that I hadn’t even turned it on since August, and before that it was relatively sporadic. The only game that really grabbed a hold of me during the summer was Guitar Hero III, but that had nothing to do with the Wii and indeed, I found myself frustrated when I learned that PS3 and 360 owners could download additional free songs to play. Since then, I’ve played some Mario Cart, which is fun, but otherwise basically the same as any other Mario Cart game (to me, it never got any better than the original for the SNES). I haven’t played Wii Fit, but am only mildly interested in it anyway (at this point, I’d much rather spend my money on PS3 games/Blu-Rays). There were a few times when I decided to buy one of them when I was at a store, but of course, they weren’t in stock and are generally difficult to find. Just like the Wii itself, now that I think about it (not a good way to start an experience with casual gamers who value their time). In short, it’s a fun system, great at social gatherings, and it shows a lot of promise and potential. But in my mind, it still needs to deliver. Fortunately for Nintendo, I don’t think they’ve really been trying to deliver that experience yet. Like I said, their strategy is to build a big base of casual gamers and then use that to target the more advanced gamers… and I think they’re still targeting the base right now. By all measures, they’re succeeding at that…

• Sony Playstation 3: On the other end of the spectrum, you have the PS3: the expensive, overpowered, and cutting edge console for videophile nerds and people who can afford to take out a second mortgage on their house. After their dominance of the market with the first Playstation and then with the PS2 (Sony is the first company to “win” two successive console generations in a row), Sony simply continued to increase complexity and power along the same vectors that made it a successful brand. They’ve added some nice features along the way, including an included wifi adapter and free access to the PSN for multiplayer (both of which cost extra in the Xbox 360), but these are ultimately nothing new or unique. The PS3 also plays Blu-Ray discs, but for various reasons, that hasn’t caught on quite as much as Sony had wanted, perhaps because of the costly HD-DVD format war, followed by general apathy regarding the difference between BR and upscaled DVD. I think that the general story with the PS3 is that they overshot their market. It’s a very impressive system, but everything about it is cutting edge and expensive. Plus, to take advantage of its best features, you need to have an HD TV. For me, this wasn’t that big of a deal, and HD is making inroads all over the place these days, but back in 2006, it was perhaps a bit too ambitious. The Xbox 360 also focused on HD, but Wii didn’t, and I think that might be another part of the puzzle. The biggest initial issue for the PS3 was the astronomical price, which was twice as much as the Wii. Since then, prices have come down a bit, but it’s still the most expensive console on the market. The only reason I finally broke down and got one was becaues of a whopping $150 credit if I got a Sony credit card, which put it on par with the Wii and the Xbox 360.

  I have to say, in the short time I’ve had the PS3, I’m impressed with the system. It has its flaws, sure, but by my estimation, I’ve already played my PS3 about as much as I’ve played my Wii. What’s more is that I actually look forward to playing on the PS3. Even good games like Super Mario Galaxy became a chore towards the end on the Wii… I’ve already played through 4 games on the PS3, and have had more fun with them than I have with anything on the Wii. What’s more, there are about 5 other games I still want to get for the PS3, and lots of stuff is coming too. The PS3 library of games could probably use some expansion (too many shooters and not enough new and interesting games right now), but there are plenty of games to keep me busy for now. And while BR discs aren’t that much better than upscaled DVD, they are pretty impressive and there really is a noticeable difference. The online experience could use some work, but being free helps in that respect. Similarly, the relatively new Trophies system needs some work (are gamertags too much to ask for?), but it serves its purpose well enough. PSN and Trophies have a long way to go before they catch up with Xbox Live and Achievements, but they’re serviceable at this point.

  Alas, the PS3’s prospects don’t look all that good. It’s not going away, to be sure, but it also doesn’t look like it has any chance of dominating either. Perhaps it could, but Sony seems rather hellbent on running it into the ground and I can’t see them doing anything to propel this system past one of its competitors (despite having bought the system, I really don’t like Sony very much – they suck). I suppose the one promising thing about the console is that it’s advanced technology could mean that it will have a longer life than its competitors, but that’s not much and it leads to Sony making baffling statements about how the PS3 is still for early adopters (2 years after it’s release). Sony’s behavior really is baffling. Consider their holiday strategy, which seemed to be to create a bundle for the PS3 that cost $100 more than their standard overpriced system. Because raising prices during rough economic times is generally a strategy for success, right? I understand that Sony is still losing money on the consoles, but their behavior is hard to defend. Still, I’m happy with my purchase and my enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be fading. The general story here is that it’s a great system that has to suffer through Sony’s mismanagement and annoying tendencies. It shows some potential as well, though perhaps not as much as the Wii, especially given the Wii’s long term strategy.

• Microsoft Xbox 360: Of the three consoles covered in this post, I am the least familiar with the Xbox 360. From what I’ve seen, it seems to be a somewhat toned down version of the PS3 with better online community features. The Xbox was the first to market and thus it got a head start on everyone else… This didn’t stop the Wii from steamrolling over the Xbox, but I do believe that’s a significant part of why the PS3 still trails. By the time the PS3 came out, a portion of its target audience already had an Xbox. Some of them may have bought the PS3 anyway, but a common story is the one where people buy a PS3 and let it collect dust because the Xbox does what they need. The Xbox certainly seems to have the best library of games at present, including some pretty good exclusives. Like the PS3 library, there’s not much that’s really new or innovative here, but they’ve got plenty of solid games with traditional fun gameplay.

  A couple of catches though. First, while their online system is fantastic, it’s also not free. There’s also that whole red ring of death thing that will periodically brick your system. Obviously, every system has issues, but the Xbox issues seem to be more persistent and common.

  So what I can see here is a pretty straightforward console. It gets the job done, and that appears to be good enough for most gamers. On the other hand, it doesn’t do anything truly innovative or particularly interesting (then again, I guess their online community might fit that bill), and like the PS3, they may have overshot the market (perhaps not as much as the PS3), thus making themselves vulnerable to the Wii’s long term strategy.

The thing that strikes me about this generation is just how well balanced it is right now. Each console is targetting different markets, though they all overlap in some spots. The Wii is targeting casual gamers, former gamers, and non-traditional gamers, and it’s great fun at social gatherings. It’s also the only console to be doing something truly new and unique. The PS3 is going for a more traditional gamer audience who wants cutting edge graphics and advanced gameplay, but they’re also the only console that is really going for the videophile audience. The Xbox makes a happy medium, targeting the standard gamer without pushing any real boundries. There’s a place for all three of these consoles in the current market, which isn’t something that was common in earlier generations. Of course, there’s a lot of overlap in the indended audiences, especially between the PS3 and the Xbox. It’s also worth noting that owning multiple current generation consoles (as I do) is becoming more and more common (I think that is a part of why the Wii is pulling ahead).

Each of these companies will try to gain ground at the expense of the other, and Wii’s long term strategy seems like it could really cut into the Xbox and PS business, but in the near future, I see all three consoles flourishing. The Wii may win, but the Xbox and PS3 won’t necessarily fail. What does the eigth generation hold in store? That might be where the Wii’s dominance really asserts itself on the market, as I can’t imagine that it won’t be the primary influence on what the next generation will look like. It’ll be a while before we know for sure, but I’m betting that Nintendo will be ideally positioned to retain the thone… but then, so was Sony during this generation, so who really knows?

With my purchase of a PS3, I’ve been looking around for good games to check out, and lucky for me, Shamus just posted a video he made about the most innovative game of 2008. To do so, he backs up a bit and covers a bit of video gaming history, explaining why current generation consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 appeal mostly to people who grew up gaming. As usual, Shamus’ points are well reasoned and argued, and I generally agree with his points. Check it out:

It turns out that this was slashdotted today, and the comment thread for that post is worth reading too (also, the comments on Shamus’ original post are pretty good).

I’ve watched the video a couple of times now, and I really like it. Regardless of whether you agree with Shamus or not, it’s not the type of video you see very often. Recent video game documentaries like The King of Kong and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade are great, but they tend to focus on the human aspects of video games… Shamus’ video delves into actual mechanics of gameplay and examines why video games are fun or not fun. In the comments he says he has ideas for ten more videos… and I can’t wait to watch them. Maybe he’ll even get director status on YouTube so he doesn’t have to limit his videos to ten minutes…

Clive Thompson’s latest video game article is about how players of online video games collaborate, analyze and develop strategies for beating difficult bosses. One example he gives is a game called Lineage, where groups of 150 players stage assaults on fiendishly difficult enemies. Constance Steinkuehler, a game academic at the University of Wisconsin, was fascinated with the game and how the players were able to quickly identify and exploit weanesses in the bosses. She eventually figured out how her teenage compatriots were accomplishing the feat:

A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they’d dump all the information they’d gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they’d develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked — and to predict how to beat it.

Often, the first model wouldn’t work very well, so the group would argue about how to strengthen it. Some would offer up new data they’d collected, and suggest tweaks to the model.

Sound familiar? I’ve often mentioned Steven Berlin Johnson’s book, Everything Bad is Good For You on this blog, with particular focus on the concepts of probing, telescoping and decision-making. The process of probing a game (or in this case, an enemy), developing a hypothesis, reprobing, and then rethinking the hypothesis is essentially the same thing as the scientific method or the hermenutic circle.

Steinkuehler also studied a popular World of Warcraft message board to see what the folks there were talking about. It turns out that people there are mostly doing science!

Only a minority of the postings were “banter” or idle chat. In contrast, a majority — 86 percent — were aimed specifically at analyzing the hidden ruleset of games.

More than half the gamers used “systems-based reasoning” — analyzing the game as a complex, dynamic system. And one-tenth actually constructed specific models to explain the behavior of a monster or situation; they would often use their model to generate predictions. Meanwhile, one-quarter of the commentors would build on someone else’s previous argument, and another quarter would issue rebuttals of previous arguments and models.

I’ve never actually played WoW, but I find this behavior fascinating. Towards the end of the article, Thompson talks about education:

And here’s the thing: The (mostly) young people engaging in these sciencelike conversations are precisely the same ones who are, more and more, tuning out of science in the classroom. Every study shows science literacy in school is plummeting, with barely one-fifth of students graduating with any sort of sense of how the scientific method works. The situation is far worse for boys than girls.

Steinkuehler thinks videogames are the way to reverse this sorry trend. She argues that schools ought to be embracing games as places to show kids the value of scientific scrutiny — the way it helps us make sense of the world.

That would certainly make for an interesting class. As I’ve noted before, it should be interesting to see if video games ever really catch on as learning tools. There have been a lot of attempts at this sort of thing, but they’re often stifled by the reputation of video games being a “colossal waste of time” (in recent years, the benefits of gaming are being acknowledged more and more, though not usually as dramatically as Johnson does in his book).