Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PS2)

In honor of the GTA IV teaser trailer being released today, I present the Liberty City Stories review.





Genre: Third Person Action
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar Leeds/Rockstar North
ESRB Rating: M for Mature
Price: 19.99 USD
US Release Date: June 6, 2006
Equipment: 21" Panasonic TV c. 2000, slim PS2, standard DualShock 2 controller
Completion: Approximately 7 hours to get halfway through the second island.


Welcome back to Liberty City. It's just like you remember, only worse.


Antonio "Toni" Cipriani is trying to get paid, laid, and made, in that order. He starts the game as just another earner in Don Salvatore Leone's organization. Liberty City Stories takes place chronologically before GTA3, which allows for some minor changes to the landscape, and characters from the series appearing at earlier points in their lives. The city itself is contested by three factions: the Italians, the Triads, and the Diablos. Toni needs to make his mother proud by rising in the ranks and taking down the other gangs.

LCS plays just like the other GTA games, or the million and one clones thereof. The city is (almost) wide-open, anyone's car is at Toni's disposal, and there are numerous side-missions in addition to the main storyline missions. Advancing the storyline opens the other two islands, and completing the side missions gives rewards like fire-resistance, unlimited running, extra health and armor, and weapon pickups back at the safe house.

Graphically, the engine is showing its age. It's not 2001 anymore, but Grand Theft Auto is stuck there. While using a six year old engine isn't necessarily a bad thing, its been five games now (including the recent Vice City Stories). Time for a change.

Voice acting in the GTA games has always been top-notch, and LCS doesn't disappoint on that front. The sound effects are most likely reused, but that's forgivable. What's not forgivable is the poor choice in music. The rock station is terrible, the flashback/80's station isn't any better, and the talk radio station isn't funny.

The controls are familiar to anyone who's played the GTA games on the PS2, and suit the game perfectly. Nothing unusual here, just the basic shooting, running, jumping, and driving, all in third person. The targeting mode, while supposedly much improved, still doesn't work right. Why anyone would want to target an old lady across the street when there's an asshole pumping AK-47 rounds into them from two feet away is something I'll never understand.

The police force in Liberty City is much more aggressive this time around. Wanted stars accumulate much faster for lesser crimes, and squad cars become relentless at only two stars. Plus, citizens are much more resistant to surrendering their vehicles. At least half the time, the driver who has just had his vehicle stolen will come running up and take it back.

By going back to the safe house, Toni can restock his weapons if he's unlocked the necessary pickups, store a car or three in the garage, change clothes, and save the game. Safe houses are available on each of the islands.

Liberty City, as one might expect, is laid out the same way as it is in GTA3. All the car models return as well, with the new addition (to LC, not to the GTA series) of motorcycles. Crashes are just as spectacular as they have always been. Even low speed collisions result in hoods denting and doors shearing off.

Like the other GTA games, certain missions can be extremely frustrating, while other missions are cakewalks. There isn't a linear, or even exponential progression of difficulty, but more of a scatter plot.

Violence, language, and adult content abounds in LCS. It's not particularly graphic, given the engine limitations, but heads can be popped with the sniper rifle, and people can be beaten to death with an aluminum bat. Characters routinely drop f-bombs, and of course, it's still possible to pay a hooker for sex, and then murder her in order to get the money back.

There is no multiplayer, online or off.

For fans of the GTA series, LCS is more of the same. Whether that's a positive or a negative is up to the individual.


Heath Says:

LCS sucks. I don't know if it's a symptom of being originally developed for and released on the PSP (although signs point to yes), or if I'm just spoiled by next gen games like Saint's Row (or even GTA: San Andreas), but LCS is poor quality. No swimming, crap radio stations, a terrible targeting system, over aggressive cops and civilians, and a sticking point in the middle of the game adds up to not much fun. Seriously, why the hell do 50-60% of the civilians try to take their cars back from a man armed to the teeth? This is Grand Theft Auto, stealing cars is literally the name of the game. When that becomes unnecessarily difficult, I get pissed off. Needless to say, when I became stuck on the second island because the only story missions available were a shooter on rails (nearly impossible with an analog stick), or a timed assassination mission with three targets on opposite ends of the city, I was done playing. The only saving grace is that LCS is 20 bucks. Even so, I think it's 20 bucks better spent elsewhere.


Final Verdict:

News For The Week of March 23rd

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this weekly news post thing.

• I know I was poking fun at JT just a few days ago, but sweet mother of god, I've run out of being entertained by this. I want this to be funny, but Jackie is just... I think it was Einstein that said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting new results. How many times has he sued Take 2, and how many times has he come away the victor? There is information in this legal document (pdf link) that is false, and even items that are contradictory to other things in the suit. The longer this goes on, the more it looks like Take 2 is a big windmill and Jackie is pretty damn sure it's a giant. This is of course without mention of the Game Industry Cabal that T2 is the center of. Would someone in Florida Baker Act this guy? I'm to the point where I'm honestly worried that he's gonna end up hurting himself or others.

• Maybe something a little bit happier? Nintendo is pretty cool. It's not a donation (and you know they got a few nickels to rub together laying around... the DS and Wii both print money) but it is still cool to see this kind of thing. I know not everybody digs the Penny Arcade, but Child's Play is a good cause and it's still awesome to see that much hardware.

• PAL PS3 launch uneventful, some store gives away HDTV's and cab rides to people buying PS3's. MS pokes fun. Nobody dies, and Sony doesn't want the PS3 to sell out? Uh... wait-what? Anyway, the most important thing here is not how much you enjoy the console, or how many games you could buy by getting a different console... No, it's all about how much beer that £146 price difference could buy you. It's quite a bit actually.

• Venezuela is worried that the US will invade because... Mercenaries 2 is set there? Whisky tango foxtrot? And they expect Bono - Bono from U2 fer gosh sakes - to stop... A video game? Are they, collectively, riding the crazy train? I mean if it was on the Wii and came with a weighted controller (memo to self, patent Wiimote Weights), then I could totally see them being worried about a bunch of buff, scary bikers gamers rolling on down there to... Walk down their tank barrels and then blow some shit up. I don't see that happening so I bet they'll be OK.

Eternal Sonata

Yeah, a game about Chopin's death. While I honestly don't know how they're going to make the game have a happy ending (I mean... he dies), I'm pretty damn sure it'll look good. Tri-Crescendo has never done an entire game in-company, but this looks like it could really be a winner for them. I'm sure it'll move several hundred 360's in Japan, too. I'm enthralled by the idea of a turn-based real-time combat system too.

Ever Closer To The Edge

Hack Jon Stomp (I dare not use his true name, it may summon him) is once more... pitching a fit like a dementia riddled 90 year old man with kids on his lawn. Complete with biblical references that are used in manner that is questionable at best.

Curiously he did not CC us this missive, Kitsune Games being the powerhouse of gaming culture that it is. But that is no matter! He hath received the attention he desires from other, smaller sites like the one linked above, which could probably use the hits.

It's curious, the reference to a SLAPP suit; SLAPP being a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation which is usually used to keep individuals from getting things like zoning laws changed so development companies can't make a couple of million dollars turning wetlands into another McMansion development. Oversimplified, I know. Many states even have Anti-SLAPP laws to make sure individuals keep having a voice. I suppose it is true, the suit that Take Two filed against him could easily be construed as a SLAPP, but JT did promise to sue over GTA4 and Manhunt 2 as they are a 'public nuisance' like he did when Bully was released. Nevermind that particular suit got thrown out in court.

His letter of course refers to the coming reorganization of Take Two, with Paul Eibler and probably the rest of their board of directors getting the boot. Not surprising, but with 46% of the shareholders interested in the company actually making money, I suspect they'll have a pretty good team of people to install to maybe make some games. On the flip side of that, maybe JT's got dirt on those shareholders, and the next game they produce will be Jackie T Saves Christmas.

If it happens like that, you saw it here first.

To top it off... He quotes the Bible. That's usually the end of any discussion. Now, we know the Bible will make you aggresive like games will, so I'm thinking he just got really pumped from Leviticus and hashed that letter out because he was upset that a company he owns stock in was suing to get him to settle the fuck down.

All that aside, I would like to donate this "of" to him so that he can finish sentences and not look like he's actually becoming demented.

Wow. Just...Wow

These people seriously need to pull the sticks out of their asses.



Courtesy of Mega64.

The Penny Arcade Game Trailer

I'm not sure how to feel about these guys in 3-D. The beginning animations are awesome (I wonder if it would be better suited to [adult swim]).

As always, much like Michael Caine in Batman Begins, Fruit Fucker steals the show.

VG Charts

Have you ever wondered how the Next Gen Console War is going? Wonder no more. Enter: VG Charts.

The front page tells you where the battle stands right now, worldwide. Sony has sold just over 2 million PS3s. Nintendo has almost tripled that mark with nearly 6 million Wiis sold. Microsoft is alone at the top with about 9.5 million 360s sold, although they had a year head start.

Can the Wii keep up its breakneck pace? Will the PS3 ever catch up? Is the 360 an unstoppable juggernaut? Just keep checking VG Charts for the cold, hard data.

News for the week of March 16th, early editon.

Yeah, it's going up early today, I have a lot more stuff to do tomorrow than I planned... well, this morning. It was unsurprisingly slower this week, what with the GDC not on. No one flipping out over the Wii, and I still don't really care about Spore.

• I'm sure someone is tired of this by now, but I'm not. A German site, Cynamite, got a hold of a pre-production Pal PS3 and did a little backwards compatibility testing. Very astute of them, since it's been a big deal that Sony said Europe will be getting the software BC but has assured everyone it'll be just as good as the hardware BC. Maybe not so much according to Cynamite, who put a dozen recent popular games through their PS3, and only one – Eragon – worked. No God of War, no Guitar Hero 2. A caveat: it was the 1.6 revision of their firmware, it could easily be updated by the ship date.
• Good for them with the whole folding thing, though. It would be nice to see other console manufacturers doing that, with their multi-core chips and all... maybe some SETI action.

• Epic lawyers gone wild, some more! Do you recall that little throwdown Epic's lawyers had with this guy? Sure you do! Mark Rein even came out of the woodwork to apologize, which is pretty cool even if his company can't hire lawyers that can read a website fully, which is weird because they apparently passed the bar exam and I understand that takes some reading skills. Well, those lawyers and their text disabled browsers have done it again, giving this gent the option to destroy his one-off piece of fan art. Nice. It's acrylics on canvas, for chrissake.

• 300 and video games in the same post? Awesome. Or is it? Variety, of all places, has a nice piece on movie critics comparing (in this instance) 300 to 'video games' in general. This is basically used as a thinly veiled insult, that a movie heavy on the visuals and lighter on plot is tantamount to a video game. I'm guessing these people have never played a Zelda game or waded through FF7. I recall being mildly incensed by Joe Morgenstern's article about games in the WSJ, where he admitted his gaming experienced started and ended at Nanosaur 2. Yeah, maybe just drop the 99 bucks for a ps2 and fire up anything that's sold well in the past three years before you run your mouth.

• NPD numbers for February are out, and... You know, I kind of want to actually not feel like I have to rag on Sony for the PS3, but it sucked out loud last month. Coming out on top? The Wii. I wonder if Nintendo execs have Scrooge McDuck style money bins that they dive into when they feel the need for a refreshing swim?
  
• - 335,000 Nintendo Wii's
• - 295,000 Sony PS2's
• - 228,000 MS Xbox360's
• - 127,000 Sony PS3's
• I understand they were intent on moving 200,000 PS3's, but consumers apparently had other ideas.
  

Metroid Prime: Hunters (Nintendo DS) Quickshot

Genre: First Person Shooter
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: NST
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Price: 31.95 USD
US Release Date: March 20, 2006
Equipment: Nintendo DS Lite
Completion: Intro level and Boss fight, approximately 1 hour.


Metroid Prime: Hunters? More like Metroid Prime: Terrible Game.


Metroid means Samus Aran, and it's hard not to like Samus. The overall storyline involves Samus on a planet-hopping quest to recover 8 artifacts, all the while dogged by the titular hunters who are seeking the same artifacts.

Hunters plays nearly identical to the Metroid Prime games on the Gamecube. The action is in first person, through Samus' visor. When Samus goes into Morph-ball mode, the camera pulls back to third person.

A first person shooter on a handheld is difficult to pull off. Hunters doesn't look bad, given the limitations of the hardware, but it doesn't look good, either. Anything past a foot in front of your visor is nearly unrecognizable. Background textures are dull and repetitive. The menu screens are clean and well-organized, however.

Sound quality and music is excellent. The classic Metroid theme is still here, and still great.

What kills Hunters before it even gets out of the blocks is the control scheme. There are three ways to do it: forgo the touch screen and play with the D-pad and A, B, X, Y buttons, use the D-pad and the thumbstrap stylus while holding the DS normally, or use the D-pad and the stylus while holding the right side of the DS with your pinky. The first option is far from ideal, and very imprecise. The second option is comfortable, but your thumb blocks your view. The third option is extremely uncomfortable. Some players might be able to get past the pain and frustration of learning and dealing with the controls, but the learning curve is very steep, and nearly a brick wall.

Multiplayer is an option over Wi-Fi.

Hardcore Metroid fans and/or those players who don't mind struggling with the controls for a few hours could get into Hunters and have a great time. It is Metroid. Everyone else should probably rent first, if at all.


Heath Says:

I'm a big fan of Metroid and Samus Aran, but I simply don't have the patience anymore to screw around for hours on end with difficult controls. I play games to have fun, and if I'm not having fun after an hour, I move on to something that is fun. Buying this game sight unseen would have been one of the biggest purchasing mistakes I've ever made, so I'm real glad I decided to rent it first.


Final Verdict:

News For The Week of March 9th, GDC Edition

Well it was a big week for games, what with the Game Developers Conference and all. I am attempting to keep it short even though there was a fair bit of news.

• Sony makes PS3 owners happy by... giving them 3D spaces to hang out in? Damn, here I've been hanging out in 3D spaces since 1980 maybe, I never realized that I would need a PS3 to do it right. Color me 'eh' about it. It looks alright, if not sterile. Like if someone boiled Second Life in disinfectant and then slapped some Playstation stickers on it. But if you do happen to have a PS3, feel free to sign up for the beta.

• Peter Molyneux likes dogs, and he wants you to like dogs too. At least he wants you to like the dog in Fable 2, which is important. So you know you're actually still human, not some shambling wretch enslaved by your console, a husk of what you used to be. That aside, it seems like a neat feature... Hopefully this won't turn out to be Fable 2's tree.

• Spore developer Chris Hecker (Yeah I know, who?) flips out on the poor, defenseless Wii. Thankfully, there are no Wii's to be found anywhere in public, so no harm was done to their fragile psyche, even though he apologized. This also gives me a chance to flippantly dismiss Spore, which I will now do with aplomb, because I've never really cared about it and it's just another Will Wright game.
  

Go Play With Your Wii

If you can find one, that is. Although that Herculean task is a bit easier with the Wii Tracker. The site lists about a dozen internet retailers and their assorted Wii offerings (some bundled, some not). Subscribe to the RSS feed for automatic updates, or just keep checking back. Plus, it's got a handy history so you can find out you just missed the Wii by 10 minutes.

P.S. If you manage to get a Wii before I do, I shall kill you. Have a nice day!

Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo DS)

Genre: Action/Puzzle
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Price: 29.99 USD
US Release Date: September 25, 2006
Equipment: Nintendo DS Lite
Completion: 7.4 of 8 levels, approximately 5 hours.


Mario vs. Donkey Kong. A classic struggle, now on the small screen. Who will win? My money's on Mario.


You control Mario. Or rather, you control miniature toy versions of Mario, using the stylus and the touch screen. On any given stage, you'll have control over 1-4 toy Marios. You'll encounter some standard Mario series baddies: shyguys, pipe plants, bloopers, and of course, Donkey Kong himself, who shows up at the end of each level as the boss.

The object of each stage is to get the Mario toys to the Goal door, preferably one right after the other in a chain in order to rack up big points. It's kind of a puzzle game, and kind of an action game. The trick is figuring out the correct strategy to get all your Mario toys to the door quickly, in a chain, and without stopping them once they start. Each stage can be completed fairly quickly once you figure out the strategy, which can take a few tries. There are 9 stages per level, plus a bonus minigame (Whack-A-Shyguy), and the boss fight with DK. There are a total of 8 levels, one final boss fight, and an extra Basement level with two stages and two unlockable boss fights.

With any DS game, the touch-screen gameplay is make or break. It works here, for the most part. Tap a Mario toy to start it walking, slide across the toy to change direction, slide up to make it jump, slide down to enter pipes, or tap again to stop it walking. Everything else that can be manipulated, like switches and blocks, are controlled with the stylus. While simple, the controls get the job done.

However, the control scheme is not without its flaws. All the stages are too big to fit on a single screen, so there's always scrolling involved. One problem is that sometimes the screen will scroll to follow one Mario toy while you're trying to control another Mario toy, and your instructions are ignored. That might not sound like a big problem, but when it happens often enough that it causes you to restart the stage because a Mario toy saunters off a cliff, it's a big enough problem. The toys will also bump into each other and change direction, which is a massive pain if two are going left, and the other two going right. They'll rebound off each other multiple times and end up going the complete wrong direction you need them to. A quick swipe of the stylus will send them in the correct direction, but many of the levels have such small walkways that a toy will plummet to its doom while you're attempting to sort them all out.

Control issues aside, the game looks nice. The art is clean and simple, just like any other Mario game. The intro cutscene is fancy full-motion CG, and there are similar CG still-shot bumpers for the boss fights. The in-game graphics are on par with a typical side-scroller from the PSX era.

Music and sound is typical Mario fare. I don't remember when Mario started talking (perhaps it was with Super Mario 64?), but his voice is the same. "It'sa me, Mario!" Fun fact: if you close the DS to put the game in sleep mode, Mario will say, "I love-a this game!" with an echo as if he's in a tunnel.

Each level has a theme, like a tropical island, magnetic walls and floors, or lava and fire. The game autosaves after you complete any given stage. There's a score tally at the end of each stage that includes the coins you collected in that stage, as well as bonuses for time, chains, and continuous movement. Based on the final score, a bronze, silver, or gold star is awarded. Stars are awarded for the DK fights, as well. After completing the entire game, a bonus is given for getting all bronze, silver, or gold stars.

As the game progresses, the difficulty increases at an even pace, while never getting too hard. If a stage is challenging, studying it for a while before trying again is usually all that's needed to pass it. Each level brings new enemies, and new obstacles that must be overcome, which helps keep the action fresh.

Besides the single player campaign mode, there is an editor mode where players can build their own stages to play. The main game unlocks toolsets to use in the editor. You can choose a premade template, or start from scratch, but you can go nuts in the editor building a devious stage that can then be sent to friends over Wi-Fi.

Mario and puzzle fans alike can find something to like in Mario vs Donkey Kong 2. It's probably most closely compared to Lemmings, although it involves a bit less strategy and a bit more action. While it may not be a game to sit and play for hours on end, it's fun to pick up and play a stage or three here and there.


Heath Says:

Mario vs DK 2 is a fine rental, but I wouldn't want to spend 30 bucks on it. It's too short, and I still got bored before I was finished. Certain stages were challenging, but I feel like I breezed through them without much trouble. I can't get over the control issues I encountered, either. It was usually the controls that prevented me from completing a stage on the first try. I knew what I needed to do, but couldn't do it without Mario toys bouncing off each other, or not doing what I told them to. I don't regret playing it, and I think most people would enjoy it, but it just wasn't for me.


Final Verdict:

Sudeki (Xbox)

This is an older game, but I think it's worth a review for those who missed it (or, at least, a reprisal for those that may have forgotten about it).



Genre: RPG
Publisher: Climax
Developer: Microsoft
ESRB Rating: M for Mature
Price: 9.99USD at Fry’s
US Release Date: July 07, 2004
Equipment: First Gen Xbox, 25” Goldstar CRT, Microsoft Type S controller
Completion: Around 20-30 hours depending on exploring and side quests and character leveling.


As Seen In Illumina Daily Times*:
The land of light has been overcome by darkness of sky and soul. Please help.

You start out as Tal, son of General Arlo. He’s an excellent swordsman, but a little absent-minded. His attacks are melee and third person when in battle. Some are weak, but some gib opponents very nicely. His offensive casts can be devastating and his ability to shield all party members comes in handy as well. He has an increasing collection of swords as the game progresses, some very interesting, some basic. The chainsaw sword that can be purchased at Kamo’s is particularly fun and well worth the buy. His special ability is brute force. He pushes and pulls around large, heavy objects (and never once complains).

The next character you are able to play is Princess Ailish. She’s fairly down to earth with her friends despite her status, but retains a slight arrogance towards those she doesn’t really care for. Her attacks are ranged and first person when in battle. She is also the group’s healer. As long as you keep her alive and her SP replenished, your group should stay alive as well. (Setting all in the group to Defense helps too.) Her weapons are somewhat mediocre at first, but later on she acquires one that, at the very least, hits hard enough to knock opponents off their feet (very handy with spell-casting Arconites). Her special ability is dispelling. Anything hidden by magic, she can uncover.

Buki is your third character and your first big boss fight. Half human, half tiger, she’s very spiritual and an excellent fighter with her claws. Her attacks are melee and third person when in battle. While not a healer, she can cast regeneration for the entire party and she can call a wolf spirit into battle that causes damage and distraction to the opponents. Some of her weapons are very upgradeable, making them quite formidable. Her special ability is climbing. She just digs her claws in and away she goes.

The last character you become fully acquainted with is Elco. He is very scientific and his ion fluxinator is a very good weapon to upgrade and use throughout most of the game. Elco is also the oldest member of the group and the only one who is married. His attacks are ranged and first person when in battle. He has a cast called Nano Enhancement which improves the entire party’s attack quite a bit while it lasts. His offensive casts are lackluster and often not needed as long as his strongest gun is equipped. His special ability is his jet pack. As long as there’s a fuel supply, he can “platform jump” from place to place.

As these four characters, you travel through Haskilia searching for crystals to power a large force-field machine Elco has invented to protect Illumina Castle from Aklorian invaders. Each town you encounter is completely different from the last in design and presentation. There’s also chances to trade, rest, and upgrade your armor in each town. (Stick with the traders on the outskirts of towns for selling your bounty and learn what they like best. Kamo’s is the easiest place with the most supply to replenish your healing aids.) All of the people are interactive, each having a different nugget of information (or quest) for you. Like any town, some people are entertaining to speak with, some you want to smack. The voice acting of the random townsfolk seems a bit tongue-in-cheek (no pun—well, maybe a little) but those that are more integral to the plot or quests stepped up to the plate a bit better. Main character voice acting is pretty good, too (the only two that really bother me are Alexine and Kazel who you meet in Akloria). I fear some of the characters don’t realize they’re English anime, but they seem all right with that. The soundtrack to each town fits quite well and the ambience is decent. Graphically, you can sort of see the game’s initial Dreamcast hopes, but generally it’s not too bad if you like your animes in 3D.

Battle is fairly entertaining. It’s real time and you can switch between characters fairly easily, allowing you to cast a heal here, an enhancement there, or just blow enemies to bits. There’s no turn based play here. You hit while the hitting’s good and be aware that the enemy is going to do exactly the same. If you’re overwhelmed, you can make them back off with a sweep attack. If you need something from your menu, the fighting simply slows down so you’d better know what you want and where it is or you might end up dead searching for something. There’s also a quickshot menu that allows you to set up four items to be easily accessed with your D-pad so you can give Ailish a quick hit of SP or HP before having her heal the rest of the party (or Tal some HP before having him obliterate the enemy). When you kill your enemies, they can explode in bloody, chunky bits. Some of Tal’s casts executed on multiple enemies fills your screen with a lovely ocean of red.

The enemies are the only parts that are really recycled (and other things in Akloria, but I can't say much on that without giving a huge spoiler so you'll have to see and understand for yourself when you play the game). You notice a lot of similar frames with different bodies attached. Much as it works for Ford/Mercury/Mazda, Toyota/Lexus, and all of GM, it works well enough here. The experience is different and the tactics are different when fighting them. The AI isn’t too bad, either. Enemies have little trouble trying to kill you hard and your group follows you along like good little lambs.

The game controls feel fairly natural. There’s not a lot of confusion when learning them and you become comfortable with them quickly. Save points are scattered fairly liberally around so you don’t have to worry about five hours of play going down the drain because you have yet to be able to save and your cat just turned off your surge protector.

As the game progresses, the level of difficulty seems to grow accurately with your characters (pending you’ve stopped to do the side quests and get the XP from those quests and from all the fighting you end up having to do for those quests). You’re given points to buff attributes and you’re also given orbs along the way that do the same thing. (Tip: feed most of the orbs to Tal. Don’t ask. Just do it. You’ll thank me later.) There’s also a level cap. No level 99 for these guys. Level 30, that’s it. Every fifth level gets you an extra point to work with. (Something else to keep in mind.)

All in all, it’s an RPG. You’ve got your group with your hard hitters and your spell casters. There’s your inns and your traders and townsfolk. (“Fish! Fresh fish!” will always be something I’ll remember from this game.) You’ve got your quests and puzzles that you can actually decipher without banging your head against a wall. The characters have some character to them and the surrounding countryside has some too.

Nikoda Says:

Generally, I liked the game. I’ve played it through about a five times now because it’s just fun to play. You can get into it, but you can stop playing should something suddenly come up and you’re no worse for wear. I do wish a little more happened at the end, but the big question gets answered, so I guess I’m left to wonder if Tilly divorces Elco because he’s never home. Although, it would be nice to get a chance to run around and kill things with your shiny final upgrades. It’s a fun map to explore and a fun world to run around killing things in. The game isn’t ridiculously easy or insanely hard. Plus, you get to trade with a cantankerous duck from the Bronx and the narrator at the start and end sounds suspiciously like Dr. Who.

Final Verdict:


*not actually in game--I made it up to be "cute" or "funny" ;o)

News For The Week of March 2nd

Well, news just snuck up on me this week. Didn't even see it coming.

• Bioshock is coming out August 21. Nice long days in August. Yes sir, if it's the spiritual successor to System Shock like they claim it is, I will be liking those long, light filled days.
  

• Ten's of PS3 owners are to become 'very happy' next week at Game Developers Conference, so says the director of the GDC. I don't want to know how Sony intends to make them happy, but I'm sure they will do their best.

• Speaking of Sony... They're going to have fixed the PS3 shortages by May. It's not like you can't find them in stores now anyway, perhaps they will spill out into the streets, begging to be taken home like a lost puppy. But it'll have a blu-ray drive, which puppies do not come with.

• Insider secrets... well, secrets from a guy that used to sell you video games anyway. Just nine of them, and they should very well be things you already knew... But if you don't know some of them, it's worth the read.
  

The Bible Pumps You Up – To Kill!

I saw this study over on Game Politics. The run down on the study is basically that, given varying amounts of violent materials, people will become more aggressive as they are exposed to more violence. I have but one thing to say to that: Duh.

It is curious to note the circumstance of this study, though, and the parallels it has to video game violence studies.

This study compared two groups of people. One group had been given a verse from the old testament that was violent and told that it was a passage from an ancient scroll. The other group was given the same passage and a second passage where God had sanctioned violent retribution and told that both passages were from the Bible. This struck me as not being that... well, scientific. There is no proper control group, one that was either not given any passages, or given a non-violent passage from the Bible.

A moment about the test subjects themselves. Just over half of the subjects came from Brigham Young University in Utah (a Church of Christ and the Latter Day Saints joint). The remainder came from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Of the subjects from BYU, 99% said they believed in God and the Bible, while only 50% from VU said they believed in God and 27% said they believed in the Bible. Did they find any correlation between high levels of belief in God and the Bible and aggression levels? In a word, yes. It was apparently not a large increase, but it was there.

That being beside the point, I am fascinated by the aggression testing methodology. I would have expected that there would be some kind of intense psychological evaluation going on here, interviews and written tests taken before and after. I would be very wrong. Precisely, test subjects were put into groups of two and each was given a 'weapon'. Nothing fun, just a button to press in a reflex test. Yes, a reflex test in which the "winner" gives the "loser" a blast of sound via headphones at a volume of their own choosing, the loudest being somewhere near a fire alarm.

I guess I can see how that could measure aggression. I can also see how that could measure someone just being a dick, too. Could we be seeing a Milgram experiment kind of action going on here? How did the person giving the experiment act? Can the subjects playing this 'game' see each other? Do they realize that they are causing the other discomfort?

The people doing the study of course say that these passages are taken completely out of context which is why something from the Bible – which is otherwise chock-a-block of peaceful, loving messages and nothing else – could ever cause someone to become aggressive. Only when taken out of context of the rest of the Bible could passages denoting murder, rape, beatings and God giving the green light for some violent retribution make anyone more aggressive.

Sure, sure. I believe that. Which is why the people at BYU, 99% of whom say that they believe in God and the Bible, would be more aggressive when they are given passages out of a book that they should be familiar with. I will be the first to admit that I do not go to church, I do not follow any western religions. From what I have seen about how churches handle the bible, I would be very concerned about these findings. How often does a sermon cover the entire Bible in one sitting? Just the entire Old Testament? Never perhaps?

Why did it not click in these kid's heads? They would go 'Oh! That passage is Genesis 4:8!' and then context would, conceivably, flood into their minds and they would be filled with love and peace.

That being said, it is the same for video games. One might say that it is the context of the game, that everyone else is trying to kill you via violent means, there is no other choice for the character that you control, but many games do not fall into that category. In Grand Theft Auto, you can kill whoever you want, and you suffer consequences for it. Just like in the Bible!The important thing is that these things are taken in context of reality. The understanding that committing acts of violence against real people for whatever reason is not OK has to be present. Not even if God gives you the go-ahead.