The Gamers’ Temple Oracle

So Grand Theft Auto IV was finally released this week among all of the hype and controversy that usually surrounds a new release in the series. Adding to both the hype and controversy this time around is the fact that IGN released their exclusive first review of the game and scored it a rare 10 out of 10. Now there are plenty of things wrong with that picture and plenty of people have cried foul over the way the whole affair has a foul odor about it, so I don’t simply want to repeat what you can already read all over the internet. Instead, I’d like to point out that there is an issue with this controversy that no one seems to be willing to touch upon, and that is that GTA IV is simply not that great a game. IGN may claim that their review was completely unbiased, but I really have to question whether or not they actually played the game or simply posted the score based on the series’ history and hype. How can a game achieve a perfect score when it features terrible driving, fighting, and shooting controls? Seriously, the cars handle about as well as bumper cars on an ice rink. Sure, the story in the game is good, but why does it have to be wrapped in so many repetitive and boring missions. Several hours into the game I was still driving people back and forth across the city. And what about all of the innovations of the previous games that simply dropped out of sight? You can’t own property, visit other cities, make yourself stronger by working out, … the list of features that have vanished from the game is extensive.

GTA IV is a better than average game, but that’s it. Recent games such as BioShock and Call of Duty 4 have been able to suck me in right from the moment I started playing. I’m hours into GTA IV and there are times I feel like I am forcing myself to play so that I can write a review of the game. This is hardly the hallmark of a “perfect” game.

How come every time there is a crisis in a fantasy kingdom the people turn to some kid wearing a loincloth and carrying a butter knife? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? And yet that’s the way just about every RPG ever made begins. Does anyone out there fantasize about being a knight so they can experience the glory of killing rats and spiders? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to begin a game as an uber character with the chance to develop that character to even greater heights of uberness? Next time the kingdom’s most precious relic is stolen by an evil wizard, please, please send in the dragonslayer … and leave the rat killing to the farm boys…

Spike TV recently announced the winners of its 2007 Video Game Awards. Spike’s Video Game Awards have always been a little suspect as it’s never been made quite clear as to how the winners are selected and who actually is doing the selecting. In the past games have won awards before they were even released. Not to be outdone by prior years, this year’s awards also have a few suspect selections among the award winners. Rock Band took home three awards this year - not to take anything away from Rock Band which is a great game, but it’s a bit suspect when the top award winner is published by MTV which also happens to own Spike TV. However, this is not nearly as egregious as this year’s winner of the Most Addictive Video Game Fueled by Dew award (yes, that was one of the categories). The winner was, of course, Halo 3. What other game could possibly win an award sponsored by Mountain Dew than the game that the soda already sponsors? There’s even a “Halo 3″ flavor of Mountain Dew available. With blatant instances like these, it makes you wonder what’s the real story behind the other awards as well.

While many gamers may be dreaming of unwrapping a new copy of Guitar Hero III or Call of Duty 4 this holiday season, the corporate guys at Vivendi inadvertently revealed that Guitar Hero IV and Call of Duty 5 are in the works. In the flurry of activity surrounding this weekend’s surprise revelation that Vivendi and Activision are merging to form a new company called Activision Blizzard, a corporate bulletin was posted on the Vivendi site outlining the rationale behind the merger. Make your way about a quarter of the way down the first page and you’ll find a mention of the games in Activision’s development pipeline that lists Guitar Hero IV and Call of Duty 5 as games in development. Also mentioned are a new James Bond title, a new Tony Hawk game, and Marvel and Dreamworks games.

Read the full bulletin here

Apparently this reviewer of NBA Live 08 for the PSP has an advanced PSP prototype:

“In its place are go-to moves that have been individualized for certain players and that are performed with the right stick. ”

Our site recently received a notification from YouTube that 20th Century Fox had demanded that the trailer we had posted for the game Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer be removed because it was in violation of copyright laws. YouTube immediately complied, served us with a warning, and left us to prove our innocence. Prove our innocence? Isn’t this America, where you’re innocent until proved guilty? Adding further insult to this injury is the fact that apparently no one at Fox or YouTube even bothered to watch the video. If they had, they would have seen that it was a videogame trailer and did not contain any movie footage whatsoever. Had they bothered to ask, I would have been happy to inform them that the video was provided to us by 2K Games with full permission for public display. Instead some corporate lawyer from Fox screamed guilty and YouTube immediately cowered.

It seems strange to me that Fox would be so protective of what it mistakenly thought was a movie trailer. Trailers are essentially free publicity for movies, and you’d think it would occur to them that this is a good thing for their business. However, it is within their right to be boneheaded about this and jealously protect distribution of their trailers. Yet in this case it’s not even their trailer. They are scouring the Internet for copyright violations and the people that are doing so on their behalf aren’t even that good at it. My guess is that some keyword search popped up our posting of the trailer and immediately triggered a threatening letter to YouTube. However, in under a minute of searching I was able to find this same trailer all over the internet, including YouTube itself (www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjNnjKMCv8g). How did their internet goon squad miss all of these other copies of the trailer? (Hey Fox, those little numbers on the bottom page of the search results mean that there’s more than one page. ) If copyright protection is so important to Fox, why are they so bad at it?

So thanks to Fox, I had to waste my time and send a formal letter to YouTube contesting the allegation. I hope that YouTube bothers to watch the trailer this time and has the integrity to inform the Fox corporate giant that it was mistaken, but we shall see. I’ll follow-up on this blog entry with the results. I may now be guilty until proven innocent, but at least I still have my right of free speech.

Here’s another classic line from a review found on a major videogame site. Apparently the author didn’t pay enough attention in English class to know that adverbs end in “ly” or in math class when the commutative property of addition was covered…

“TR: Legend is primary 70 percent adventure and 30 percent action, in that order.”

Hmm, come to think of it, if the game is primarily 70% adventure and 30% action, that leaves 0% for its secondary characteristics…

Manhunt 2 was in the news again last week. Rockstar resubmitted the game to the ESRB and was successful in getting the game’s rating changed from AO (Adults Only) to M (Recommended for ages 17 and older). There was of course some controversy over this new ruling, particularly since the ESRB does not make its findings public. The press and the anti-videogame forces demanded to know just what was changed to make the game deserving of a gentler rating. I’m curious too, but for a different reason. I think what everyone has missed here is that the real difference between an AO and an M rating is whether or not the content is suitable for 17 year olds. What exactly was removed from the game that would have warped the minds of 17 year olds everywhere? Is the entire purpose of the AO rating simply to protect 17 year olds? I sincerely doubt it. The AO rating exists merely as a PR tool of the ESRB so that they can point to it and say that they are sincere about protecting youth from disturbing videogames. It is almost never actually used and the fact that it was applied to Manhunt 2 was probably more of a PR stunt by the ESRB that backfired than a genuine attempt to protect 17 year old innocents. The Grand Theft Auto Hot Coffee incident was a serious black eye for the ESRB and they thought that they could use the AO rating of Manhunt 2 to kill two birds with one stone. First, it was a bit of payback to Rockstar for embarrassing them in the first place. Second, it was an attempt to show the public that they are not asleep at the wheel and that they have a vigilant eye trained on the industry and on Rockstar in particular. Too bad all they succeeded in doing was punching themselves in the face and blackening their other eye.

If you’re familiar with the large corporate game sites you’ll know that all of their writers have the word “Editor” in their titles. This is ironic because these sites are also notorious for their lack of editorial oversight. Articles regularly contain misspellings, grammatical mistakes, and even repeated paragraphs or sentences that are missing their endings. I find it amazing that professional writers can’t be bothered to even spellcheck their work before displaying it to the public. Perhaps its just laziness, but I sometimes fear that in a text message crazed society grammar and spelling are being left by the wayside. There are, however, some people that still care and as such I will from time to time bring to your attention the more egregious mistakes posted on the corporate websites.

Let’s kick things off with a particularly mistake-filled review of Jeanne D’Arc posted on a certain large game site. This review is filled with such poorly constructed sentences as:

“Unified guard kicks when your characters are adjacent to each other drastically increases their defense against physical attacks. ”

Obviously this article was never read by its writer or anyone else before it was posted to the web. One sentence in this review struck me as particularly amusing. I think it pretty much speaks for itself:

“The sound is up tot he same quality standards. ”

Here’s an interesting bit of news that was released today - Bret Michaels, the lead singer from Poison, will appear in Guitar Hero III. When you play the Poison song “Talk Dirty to Me”, Michaels will appear in your band as the lead singer. However if you look carefully at the news release you’ll notice this tidbit:

“Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will feature the song “Talk Dirty to Me,” as made famous by Poison…”

“Made famous by” is Guitar Hero lingo that means that the version of a song appearing in the game is actually a cover and not a recording by the original artist. This means that Bret Michaels’ character in the game will effectively be lipsynching to music sung by an anonymous singer trying to emulate Michaels’ voice!