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CONTENTS

INSIDE GAMEWORLD THIS ISSUE...

JANUARY 2011

FAN-BOY-ISM 12 THE NEW FRONTIER BOND IS BACK 16 GOLDEN EYE 007 CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 20 REALISM IN COVERT OPS KINECT FOR XBOX 360 30 BANISHES THE CONTROLLER AT EXPENSE OF PRECISION

REGULARS

RED FACTION: 34 ARMAGEDDON EDITOR’S LETTER 07 ARE GAMES GETTING ANY BETTER? NEWS 08 LOTS OF NUMBERS, SOME GOOD, SOME BAD LOCHAL ARCHADE 26 KNOW YOUR GAMING: FIRST PERSON ROLEPLAYING GAMES LAST WORD 46 DOES LENGTH MATTER?

4 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

Feature ALICE: 40 THE MADNESS RETURNS

A HISTORY OF ALICE 44 IN POPULAR CULTURE

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10/5/10 5:30 PM

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Publisher Dominic De Sousa COO Nadeem Hood Commercial Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9126 Editorial Director Dave Reeder dave@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9100 Senior Editor Magnus Nystedt magnus@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 55 883 2009 ADVERTISING Sales Manager Crystal Nystedt crystal@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 55 2020 227 CIRCULATION Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9147 PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9146 DIGITAL www.cpilive.net www.cpidubai.com Webmaster Tristan Troy Maagma troy@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9141 Web Designer Jerus King Bation jerus@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9143 Web Developer Elizabeth Reyes eliz@cpidubai.com

Published by 1013 Centre Road, New Castle County, Wilmington, Delaware, USA Head Office PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 (0) 4 440 9100 Fax: +971 (0) 4 447 2409 Printed by Printwell Printing Press LLC © Copyrigth 2010 CPI All rights reserved While the publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

Are Games Getting Any Better?

Let me show my age: I started gaming on Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64. For those of you who don’t even know what those are, check them out on Wikipedia.

Gaming was obviously very different in those days in many ways. On Commodore 64, at least in the beginning, we loaded games from cassettes. You had to forward or rewind the tape to a particular place and enter the command to load a game. Memory was measured in bytes, not megabytes; displays showed less colours than you have fingers on one hand, not millions; online gaming was unheard of as was MMORPG (other than the noise a gamer made when he died again for the hundredth time in a game); processors ran at speeds of “hertz” without any “mega” before it; and so on.

But one thing wasn’t different and that was the gaming experience and how excited we were about the games we played. I’d actually say that in many ways we were more dedicated gamers back then compared to today. And I don’t mean me in particular but gamers in general.

I can remember spending hours, if not days, with my friends yanking away on a joystick trying to steer a small grouping of pixels in some direction, frantically mashing the button in an attempt at shooting down my opponent.

For example, I’ve played one of the latest blockbuster games, Call of Duty: Black Ops, quite a bit lately, and in many ways it’s an amazing game.

Check out our review further on in this issue. I’m not sure, however, that I’ll come back and play it again and again like I used to do with games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Marathon, etc.

Those were the games that I played during my college days so, granted, that was a period of my life where gaming featured much more prominently than it does now so the comparison may be unfair.

So, perhaps it was just our excitement over getting computer games in the first place that drove us to spend hours in front of the monitors. Or, possibly the sight of strange aliens from space that actually resembled aliens from space and not just a collection of pixels tickled our imagination enough to keep us glued to our joysticks.

Would you, however, agree that there are less truly innovative games created today? Beyond better graphics and sound, there’s little innovation in Call of Duty: Black Ops, for example, even though it’s already a record-selling game. Or, at least this is true on desktops and consoles, where I guess the form factor and way of playing has been firmly set for a long time.

Mobile gaming, like on iPhone, is where the innovation is today. What will be interesting to see in the coming years is what, if any, of the innovation going on in the mobile space will spill over into consoles and computers.

Magnus Nystedt Group Editor January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 7

NEWS Call of Duty: Black Ops Midnight Release in Dubai

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

A

t a midnight launch event at Emax in Oasis Centre in Dubai, gathered gamers could enjoy a sort of re-enactment of characters and situations from the game. This included a Jeep 4x4 car, absailers, security guards, etc. According to the organisers, pre-registrations exceeded 650 and the game was “flying off the shelves” just after the 12:01am launch.

The game retails at Emax for Dhs 269 for the standard Xbox and PS3 versions, and Dhs 219 for the PC version.

Black Ops broke video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell through in dollars. The game has even broken the

record five-day worldwide sales of $550 million set by last year’s release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. According to internal Activision estimates, Black Ops made $650 million for the company in its first five days of release.

In addition to beating previous sell-through records, Call of Duty: Black Ops set new records on Xbox Live. According to data gathered by Microsoft, more than 5.9 million multiplayer hours of Call of Duty: Black Ops were logged by the end of launch day (November 9). In addition, more than 2.6 million unique gamers played Call of Duty: Black Ops in one day on launch day.

8 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

How EA Kicked the License Habit AND WHERE’S YOUR NEXT JAMES BOND GAME?

BY AJ GLASSER

F

or a long time, EA made a lot of its money on licensed intellectual property games like The Godfather and James Bond. Here’s how the publisher kicked its addiction.

It’s started with Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge. Back around 2004, the EA Games Label had just those two original IPs in development at internal studios. Dead Space was mostly just a concept and Mirror’s Edge didn’t even have Faith nailed down as the main character yet.

Also at the studio around that time were The Godfather and The Simpsons Game -- two huge licensed IPs. According to a talk Dead Space Art Director Ian

NEWS

Milham gave at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, those two IPs nearly killed off Dead Space because the company was so focused on them, many employees didn’t even know Dead Space existed. Very hard to secure funding or justify delays with a fragile new IP like that. So, Milham said, the Dead Space team launched an internal marketing campaign to get their own employees interested in the IP, like setting up nifty posters in common areas that depicted some of the cool in-game science “ads” players can see on the USG Ishimura.

Meanwhile, at EA Digital Illusions CE, the developers decided to push as many boundaries as they could by settling on Faith, parkour, and the first-person perspective.

Here’s the thing -- neither new IP sold incredibly well. Mirror’s Edge in particular disappointed because it lacked polish. Dead Space lacked multiplayer so its success on shelves was short-lived. But EA still learned a valuable lesson from both games -- with a little extra love in the development cycle, new IP that the studio owns is totally worth the risk. Sure, working with a license like James Bond carries a certain amount of security, but movie game profit margins are shrinking these days, and it’s increasingly difficult to make sequels to an IP that the studio doesn’t own. Also, movie games kind of suck.

“A new idea obviously has a lot of risk attached to it, but if you get it all right it can be huge,” EA Games president Frank Gibeau told Develop in an interview. In that same interview, he explained the death of the Bond franchise at EA: “We dumped that license because we felt like we needed to own more intellectual property, and we don’t like where James Bond is going with all the creative limitations on it,” he said. “And look where we are now; what would you rather publish, retail and play -- the latest James Bond or Dead Space 2?”

Zynga Announces CityVille URBAN GAME JOINS ZYNGA’S FACEBOOKBASED POWERHOUSES FARMVILLE, MAFIA WARS AND ZYNGA POKER

BY SHARON GAUDIN

T

he world of social gaming just got a bit more urban.

Online gaming firm Zynga has made a name for itself by enabling Facebook users to grow crops, build criminal empires and clear frontierland. Now, the gaming company is expanding its portfolio with CityVille, where users can run restaurants, manage businesses and build an entire city online.

“CityVille is where Monopoly meets Main Street,” said Sean Kelly, a Zynga general manager, in a statement. “We are thrilled to bring the world our most social game to date. Instead of harvesting crops, you’re harvesting your neighbourhood. Instead of clearing your friend’s frontier, you’re working on a friend’s franchise. We hope players from around the world have as much fun playing CityVille as we had building it.”

Zynga announced that the new Facebook game, which will be released for beta testing, will include English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish on Facebook versions.

The online gaming company, founded in early 2007, is rising to prominence in Silicon Valley, claiming more than 225 million active users of its games, which include FarmVille , FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker and YoVille.

In an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said social networks are changing the online gaming landscape.

“The games platform has been really interesting. Some really good gaming companies have been built on top of Facebook,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s a different modality of thinking. If you build an app and expect that people will be there with their friends, that’s a great thing. Now you can design something and assume the vast majority of your users will be socially enabled.”

Zynga has been sewing a lot of success off the social online gaming sphere.

Earlier this week, Yahoo announced that Zynga aficionados will be able to play the Mafia Wars and FishVille games on the on the Yahoo Games, Pulse, Messenger, MyYahoo and Toolbar sites.

And earlier this month, Zynga executives inked one of the biggest office lease deals that San Francisco has seen in the past five years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The deal includes 270,000 square feet of office space, which will help house the 863 people the company hired this year.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 9

COMMENT

Kinect sells 2.5 million, Move ships 4.1 million

BY GAMEWORLD MIDDLE EAST STAFF

M

icrosoft’s Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360 is selling faster in the first month of its release than both the Sony Move controller and the Apple iPad.

up this 2.5 million/month pace once the holidays die down–the iPad, after all, is its only class of consumer product, and has kept up a pace of 4.5 million units per quarter.

Microsoft’s Kinect has sold over 2.5 million units in less than a month, Microsoft said in a press release.

That’s more than twice as fast as the Kinect’s rival gaming controller, the Sony Move, which sold just 1 million sales in its first month. It’s also twice as fast as the initial sales of Apple’s iPad, which sold 2 million units in the first two months.

So, while it’s a bit to early to tell if Microsoft’s Kinect is going to break records the way the iPad has (and, okay, a bit of a stretch to say that it’s really selling better than the iPad or the Move, when it got to cheat with Black Friday sales), the Kinect is still likely to be a hot gift this season.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we can go so far as to predict that the Kinect will be the fastest-selling electronic device ever–or even the most anticipated gift under the tree this year. After all, Microsoft’s first month sales were boosted by Black Friday sales–neither Sony nor Apple managed to release their products right before the biggest shopping weekend of the year.

That doesn’t stop them from forecasting that 5 million Kinect units will be sold this holiday season.

The real question, of course, is whether or not Microsoft can keep

Although Kinect may have sold more in its first month, Sony says its PlayStation Move can now lay claim to 4.1 million units sold worldwide during its initial two months on sale.

Like Microsoft, Sony stresses the numbers are for units sold worldwide (as opposed to shipped) since Move launched in midSeptember. The 4.1 million figure accounts for sales in European territories, Asian countries, North America, and Japan. Sony say the number doesn’t include standalone sales of its PlayStation Eye controller (necessary to read the Move wands) or the optional PlayStation Move navigation controller.

10 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

Calling it a “milestone,” Sony said in a press statement that “the number not only shows clear success of the launch of the new motion sensing controller but also indicates positive momentum going in to the holiday season and to the year 2011.”

The press release is intriguing for other reasons. Its language emphasizes the Move’s accuracy angle, using terms like “precise movement” and “absolute position in 3D space” to describe how the camera interacts with users holding the motion control wands.

There’s also a subtle swipe at Kinect. Sony says the Move “not only captures the user’s motion but also the player’s image itself to offer new augmented reality experiences in select games.” Kinect technically has the edge over Move with its dualcamera 3D capability. Nevertheless, Sony wants potential buyers to view Move as something like “Kinectplus,” capable of comparable (if not analogous) body-augmentation experiences with more precise motion-tracking.

FAN-BOY-ISM WE INVESTIGATE THE BEHAVIOURS BEHIND VIDEO-GAME FANATICISM WITH THE HELP OF PSYCHOLOGISTS, AUTHORS, AND EXPERTS ON THE SUBJECT OF FANDOM.

BY ANDREW GROEN, ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW YANG

A

ll gamers eventually encounter one. The fanboy and fangirl, who you can find lurking on message boards or can hear shrieking over headsets on Xbox Live, are by no means a recent phenomenon—the first recorded use of the term “fanboy” dates back nearly a century to 1919. First used to describe passionate boxing fans—and later comic-book readers who prided themselves on knowing their cherished fictional universes inside and out— the word has since devolved as a description of immature and often obnoxious behaviour in the world of video games.

But what makes fanboys tick? Why do so many take such a militant stance over their video-game console of choice, especially when the differences between consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 are minute when it comes to the average gamer’s concerns? The vast majority of major game releases are multiplatform titles, and they 12 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

offer essentially the same experience regardless of your console of choice. So why do so many fanboys develop a strong attachment to one game platform while rejecting the other with equal passion?

With the help of psychologists and authorities on the subject, we seek to learn what motivates fanboy behaviour and why it has become a pejorative term.

WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE Video games did not spawn this type of zealous behaviour; they’re merely the latest, most visible host for this often-vicious intellectual virus. Fanboy flame wars raged years before video-gaming

ultranationalists took up arms in the Nintendo Entertainment System vs. Sega Genesis days— or even when the Intellivision stoked the fires of Atari 2600 loyalists. Of course, before video games, fanaticism of this kind often took the form of religious or sports debates.

Patrick Hanlon, author of the award-winning advertising psychology book Primal Branding: Create Zealots for Your Company, Your Brand, and Your Future, suggests that this kind of behaviour has been a part of humanity since cavemen argued over which type of spearhead was best suited for taking down mammoths. Furthermore, he says the closer the community around a debate like this gets, the harder it becomes to quit.

“Whenever you bundle a

Electronics engage you emotionally. They start the dopamine drip.

—Dr. Nando Pelusi, psychologist and expert on cognitive behavioural therapy

FEATURE

group of people with similar beliefs and ideals together, it becomes harder for them to leave individually,” says Hanlon, who has worked with Bungie on Halo’s advertising campaigns. “If they stop, they lose the respect of the other members of the community.

They feel like a member of a community there and nowhere else, and this exaggerated sense of belonging is the same as the communities that battle over Democrats vs.

Republicans or Mac vs. PC.” He adds that this perceived loss of camaraderie can cause people to remain part of a community against their best interests. “It’s the same case with any kind of zealotry.”

It’s easy to see why people get up in arms about religion— few things are more important to a person’s sense of identity than their faith. It gets fuzzier, though, when linking that behaviour to a person’s allegiance to something like a video-game console.

How can a 10-pound hunk of plastic and soldered silicon affect us in the same way as one’s creed or political party?

Perhaps even more important, why do we see this kind of January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 13

fervour in the debate over video game consoles and not other types of products?

After all, you’re not likely to find flame wars between consumers of Count Chocula and Cocoa Puffs.

“Some types of products are ‘low involvement.’ They don’t define one as an individual,” says Laurence Minsky, a professor of advertising at Columbia College Chicago, a private arts and media institution. “They tend not to cost much, so the impact of purchasing is small. In other words: If the purchase is a mistake, no big deal.

Other products, where the implications of purchase are greater due to price, need for research, and [their] ability to broadcast one’s personality and beliefs, tend to be ‘high involvement’.”

“High involvement” is where video-game consoles fit in.

Not only do they constitute a highly emotional purchasing decision, but their very nature expands their role in the lives of players.

“Consoles are so responsive and interactive, the technology blurs the line between animate and inanimate objects,” says Dr. Nando Pelusi, a psychologist and expert in cognitive behavioural therapy.

The beginning of fanboy habits seems to stem directly from the very joy of gaming itself. “Electronics engage you emotionally,” Hanlon says.

“They start the dopamine drip.”

THE SEVEN CHIEF VIRTUES While the high-involvement theory explains some of the strong emotions exhibited by fanboys, it doesn’t account for how gamers go about selecting which console is worthy of their loyalties. It’s unlikely that something as simple as the $50 annual fee to access Xbox Live Gold membership—which 14 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

is often brought up in “PS3 vs.

Xbox 360” debates since Sony does not currently charge consumers for their PlayStation Network—would be enough to indoctrinate gamers so thoroughly that we have things like the Sony Defense Force, a website that claims it’s on “a mission to give honest news about all things PlayStation” but often mercilessly rips anything to do with Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii to shreds.

“Console fanboyism stems from gamers wanting their system of preference to be popular so it gets the most developer support,” says Rob Foor, who runs Sony Defense Force. He singles out Sony when explaining the various reasons why gamers can become fanboys. “What factors make a console fanboy get behind a specific console?

Games, price, loyalty, nostalgia, functionality, and friends. For example, a gamer could own a Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 but still favour a PS3. Maybe they are used to the controller layout; maybe they love Sony’s exclusive games; maybe their friends own a PS3 and they want to play online together; maybe they grew up with the original PlayStation and are comfortable with Sony branded systems; or maybe they just ‘trust’ Sony more than Microsoft or Nintendo.”

When it comes to the argument that fanboyism derives from the fact that video-game consoles are expensive, making them “highinvolvement” purchases, Foor believes the theory is too simplistic. “While I believe the high cost of entry into the console game space is a factor that leads to fanboyism, it is not the only factor nor does it tell the whole story.”

In Primal Branding, Hanlon describes his theory on why consumers become so attached to certain brands

FEATURE while remaining apathetic to others, even if they’re similar.

He describes them as the creation of a belief system and gives seven characteristics of these strong brands: origin story, creed, icons, rituals, pagans (or “nonbelievers”), sacred words, and a leader. In essence, it’s the formula for making people feel as though they are part of a team when they purchase a product, and it’s not hard to see this lists’ relation to the most popular gaming corporations.

Many hardcore gamers wear their allegiance on their sleeve, too. Most know the leaders of the three console manufacturers by face and name; Blizzard fans gather together ritually for BlizzCon as part of the company’s massively successful means of binding together their community with games like World of Warcraft; and Nintendo has maintained a fervently loyal following that appears to get stronger with each new generation of gamers.

Out of all of the console manufacturers, Nintendo also seems to have the most virtues Hanlon describes in his book.

Nintendo’s huge fan base embodies this; its devotees hold a commanding lead over Sony and Microsoft fans in illadvised tattoos.

Most of the major videogame companies today, however, have strong communities, so these virtues don’t fully explain why a gamer chooses one console over another for their undying loyalty. Instead, Pelusi suggests that in the face of multiple enticing choices, “chance and peers are the main ways we get imprinted with the one that feels right.”

“There is a significant effect of word-of-mouth,” agrees Lars Perner, Ph.D., a professor of consumer psychology at

the University of Southern California. “If a brand gains a loyal following, reviews and mentions by others will tend to be more credible than paid advertising.”

OUT-OF-CONTROL EMOTIONS It may seem like a large divide exists between being “imprinted” with an attachment to a particular game console and spewing hate speech on message boards. But the reality is that we often see instances where a deep personal connection to a video-game platform can lead to odious behaviour.

One explanation as to why some gamers react to attacks or criticisms directed toward their favourite console—in a manner that suggests they are personally offended—is the idea that they view the

ideology comes under attack.

“Commitment and passion often lead to irrationality,” notes Pelusi. “Commitment also leads to defending your homestead with zeal.”

Aside from a commitment to a sense of personal identity, it’s also a commitment to a hefty price tag. “There’s more thought given to the purchase decision,” says Minsky, “more opportunity for buyer’s remorse after the purchase, and therefore, a greater need for the purchaser to be reassured he or she made the right choice; in other words, these purchases matter financially and emotionally.”

While many of the instances of video-game fanboyism we see today begin as something harmless, it can rapidly deteriorate into behaviour that’s malicious. While these experts have shown us a better understanding of the

There is a phenomenon where by an object becomes part of a person’s ‘extended self.’

If an individual is really into gaming, for example, his or her console may become an important part of his or her identity.

—Dr. Lars Perner, professor of consumer psychology at the University of Southern California console as an extension of themselves.

“There is a phenomenon whereby an object becomes part of a person’s ‘extended self’,” says Perner. “If an individual is really into gaming, for example, his or her console may become an important part of his or her identity.”

The belief structure of the brand essentially becomes part of their identity. As with religion and political affiliation, it’s this sense of identity that causes fanboys to lash out defensively when they feel the

root of this particular form of fanaticism, we also know that since this phenomenon is nearly as old as humankind itself, it’s doubtful that we’ll ever be free from the wrath of fanboys. This fanaticism is ingrained in human behaviour.

The best we can do to counter the most negative examples of this mentality is to try to understand and discourage it, because unfortunately, it’s something we’ll most likely have to put up with as long as video games exist.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 15

Bond is Back: GoldenEye 007 GoldenEye 007 returns in 2010 with a revamped story and a new Bond.

BY ANDREW HAYWARD

J Flipping The Bird ames Bond has undergone a radical transformation since both the GoldenEye film and the Nintendo 64 game caught the public’s attention over 10 years ago. To simply create an “updated” version of the original would ignore the firsttransformation goal [at of Bond over the Prope] years—as is to well as the evolution of amase the first-person players,” shooter.

Naka Activision’s tells GameWorld. taking a more “Creating calculated something route going that into 2010’s all the GoldenEye kids in 007 the reboot, world can drawing enjoy is onanother.

Daniel Craig’s Bond, a firmer In grasp recent on the years original games film,with and, of acourse, lot ofmany violence nodshave to thedone original well, game.and I don’t shun them, but we’d like to take a different Great video approach games ontend to developing engender strong games.” emotional connections, and the original GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 is certainly one of them.

Like most 13-year-olds still fixated on the N64 when GoldenEye released in 1997, I was completely enamoured

ur

16 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

with the game, and my fondest memory of it revolves around the hours spent playing splitscreen battles with my much older brother-in-law, which helped us build a relationship.

Others’ memories of the game might involve endless four-player paintball shootouts with friends or finally toppling the campaign on 007 difficulty after months of frustration, but considering the immense success of that game and the myriad personal connections that followed, the new GoldenEye 007 for Wii faces an obvious uphill battle. It doesn’t help that it’s neither a straight remake of the classic game nor a fresh adaptation of the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film, but rather a little of both, bumped up to modern times and with Daniel Craig in the lead role. You’ll recognize familiar aspects of levels, core

story elements and the muchloved split-screen modifiers, but GoldenEye 007 feels like a new experience, albeit one built in a world and industry informed by the original’s innovations and success.

Despite the considerable technical limitations of the Wii and the ever-building resistance to “core” games on the platform, GoldenEye 007 is a well-built shooter that features a solid campaign and as well as a considerable online multiplayer suite.

GoldenEye’s campaign hits most of the key plot points of the original film -- your former colleague leads a scheme to use the titular satellite’s EMP blast for personal gain -- but doesn’t dwell on them. If you know the narrative cadence from the previous works, great; if not, GoldenEye just lets you

THE WII HARDWARE ITSELF HAS A VERY UNIQUE CONTROL SCHEME, SO WE’RE ALWAYS THINKING OF AN INNOVATIVE NEW GAME FOR THE SYSTEM.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 17

PREVIEW

focus on the action without losing much of the appeal.

At its core, GoldenEye feels like a pretty typical shooter, albeit with some stealth elements. You can crouch to sneak around and try to roam undetected, but otherwise, it’s traditional on-foot, stop-andpop fare, albeit with a single tank mission sandwiched within the six-hour campaign.

GoldenEye struggles at times to create an immersive and realistic atmosphere, no thanks to the lack of hardware punch provided by the Wii, and the game suffers from an inconsistent frame rate, occasional brief pauses, and a generally grainy look.

But having trudged through several bland and forgettable shooter campaigns in recent months, I can honestly say that GoldenEye at least kept me interested much of the time. It doesn’t have the lasting impact of the original, but with wily and challenging A.I., worthwhile quick-time events during key battles, and one particularly memorable 18 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

fiery escape sequence, the campaign displays more care and craftsmanship than any Bond game in some time.

But it’s the little, unexpected details that make the difference: things like environmental damage that can significantly change your tactics, or the use of licensed dance hit “I Remember” (by Deadmau5 and Kaskade) in a club sequence instead of some generic looping beat. But the campaign does come with one caveat: when playing on the normal difficulty setting or higher, not completing one of the peripheral, non-narrative objectives means you have to restart the mission or drop to the easiest level to continue.

It feels like an inconsiderate design decision that punishes those who want a challenge, but don’t want to be burdened with what should be optional bonus tasks.

Luckily, the online multiplayer comes without major caveats -- it’s surprisingly fun and well-

designed, working within the online limitations of the Wii to present an entertaining and long-lasting experience.

Common deathmatch and team DM options are flanked by more Bond-ish modes like a Golden Gun mode where the glowing pistol awards 5x points per kill, plus a satellitebased Domination variant simply dubbed GoldenEye. All nine modes support up to eight players online, and a Call of Duty-esque ranking system lets you unlock weapons, attachments, and perks along the way, with numerous accolades (like stopping someone else’s streak or playing a map for the first time) earning you additional XP along the way.

Despite the well-designed maps, the team-based modes fall a little flat, as simply finding just a handful of opponents on large, mazelike maps can lead to lulls in the action; also, the team DM mode lacks an on-screen kill count indicator, robbing the mode of some of its natural tension. But the Conflict (deathmatch) mode and its variants are especially entertaining, and even with team concerns, all of the online modes are solid fun; plus the servers are stable and well stocked with opponents.

It’s unlikely to pull anyone away from top shooters on other platforms, but if you’re

looking to a Wii shooter for your online fix, chances are you aren’t playing much Call of Duty or Halo online anyway.

Offline multiplayer also shines thanks to a fourplayer split-screen that’s very reminiscent of the original, but online multiplayer does steal some of its thunder, making it an amusing blast from the past rather than an essential offering; however, it is the only way to experience the amusing match modifiers, like transforming your firearms into paintball guns or exploding upon contact with any other player.

The odds were stacked against GoldenEye 007 from the outset -- and it’s unlikely to ever bear the same level of importance as the original -- but Eurocom and Activision have emerged with a Bond shooter that is not only a great Wii game, but one that does both the franchise and genre as a whole justice. It’s a worthwhile title both for the existing fanbase who have fond memories of the N64 version and the new breed of Wii fans looking for a solid FPS experience.

GAMEWORLD RECKONS PROS: Great online multiplayer suite for Wii gamers; solid and wellcrafted campaign; plays well with Classic Controller Pro or Wii Remote/Nunchuk duo.

CONS: Hardware limitations lead to some visual concerns and lack of immersion; campaign sub-objectives can cause headaches; online team modes would’ve been better with higher player cap.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 19

CALL DUTY Black Ops OF

BY TAE K. KIM

A

s a reviewer, I try hard to avoid hyperbole, but it’s difficult not to call Black Ops the ‘best Call of Duty ever’ simply because it’s the ultimate refinement of the franchise formula. With an interesting single-player narrative and a multiplayer component brimming over with content, it’s an easy recommendation for a fanbase looking for the next big thing.

The Ojai Valley Inn and Spa sits in the tiny town of Ojai about two hours north of downtown Los Angeles. Built in 1923, it features a full 18-hole golf course, a luxury spa, and 308 deluxe suites situated on a 200 acre plot with picaresque views of the surrounding forest and mountains. It’s hard to top in terms of amenities and creature comforts, and it 20 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

seemingly offers everything you could ever want in a vacation spot. It’s utterly fitting, then, that this is where Activision chose to hold its review event for Call of Duty: Black Ops; the lavish surroundings were no doubt meant to lend a measure of sex appeal and ‘wow factor’ to the proceedings, but it was also a good metaphor for Black Ops: The game is a veritable playground that, like the plush resort where I and a handful of game journos from various outlets were sequestered for three days, seems to offer everything you could ever want in a console first-person shooter.

For most gamers, any discussion about CoD starts and ends with multiplayer, but Black Ops features a surprisingly competent

single-player campaign that features the most cohesive CoD narrative yet. The core plot isn’t nearly as original or as inventive as it could have been, relying as it does on several well-worn twists “borrowed” from various movies, and it suffers from a few issues. Certain plot points are clumsily handled; there are still moments where you have to brute force your way to a checkpoint to trigger the next area; and they beat you over the head with the final reveal, as if they didn’t trust the average gamer to understand what was going on. Still, it’s a solid effort overall whose tone and spirit adequately captures the culture of paranoia that resulted from the tense 60’s era cold war between the United States and Russia, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Vietnam War. Its

REVIEW

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 21

cast of characters isn’t nearly as likable as Price and Soap et al, but the superior voice acting and motion capture work make it easy to enjoy the seven to eight hour story as it unfolds. It’s especially worth playing because it unlocks a neat little surprise that’s a nice bit of fan service.

The term ‘fan service’ is also a good way to describe the approach Treyarch took with Black Ops’ multiplayer modes: it’s obvious that they set out to make this instalment the definitive online CoD experience, and it helps that such a solid framework had been laid by the previous titles. All the expected mutliplayer modes are here--Team Deathmatch, Domination, Search and Destroy, Headquarters, etc.-and for the most part, they play exactly as you’d expect, with the new map layouts, weapons, and perks having a strong effect on strategy and game flow.

please gamers who enjoyed it in World at War. I was dismayed, however, that they chose to remove the highly underrated Spec-Ops mode, and I sincerely hope it’s offered down the line as a DLC add-on.

But the biggest tweak to the multiplayer is, of course, the currency system, which replaces XP in terms of unlocking weapons and attachments. Everything in the game, from perks to equipment, has to be purchased, and while the periodic feeling of hitting a jackpot found in previous CoD games is gone--DING DING DING, here’s another trinket!-the currency system makes it easier for established fans to customise their gear to their liking. You still have to achieve levelling milestones to unlock specific items, but you don’t

For instance, the new Nova 6 grenade saturates an area with a nerve gas that disorients players and slowly saps health, rendering it a useful item to have in modes involving set capture-points. Perks have also been reordered-Marathon, for example, is now tiered with Ninja, meaning you have to pick one or the other, putting an end to one of my favourite, albeit it abused, perk

combinations.

Treyarch also brings back is popular Zombie mode, which will no doubt

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INTERVIEW

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 23

have to grind levels just to get a silencer or a scope--you just dip into your bank account and purchase it outright. It’s a sensible evolution because most gamers have logged enough online hours to know what their preferences are, so empowering them to customize their loadout makes a lot of sense.

The new Wager Matches are an interesting twist as well, letting you bet credits against your own performance; rank in the top three and you earn credits, rank anywhere else and you lose credits. These matches will no doubt be dominated by high level players the way poker games are usually dominated by card sharks, but even amateur gamblers can have fun thanks to the three tiers of betting. The lowest tier, Ante Up, only requires a 10 credit buy in, which is a modest enough entry fee to entice anyone to give it a try; the modes themselves are fun, with One in the Chamber and Gun Game topping my own personal list, and even though I never felt particularly thrilled by the gambling aspect, ending a round ‘in the money’ does lend a nice element of accomplishment to the experience.

Treyarch also included a lot of extras that round out the overall experience and helps bring CoD up to date with contemporary franchises like Halo. Theatre mode, for example, isn’t anything new, but it is smartly implemented, with each kill and death mapped as bookmarks

on the timeline, letting you easily warp to a moment of triumph or defeat. Combat Training is also a worthwhile addition, especially for anyone who’s been afraid to jump into the snarky, chaotic online environment; it’s a closed environment where you can set up matches with your friends and bots to familiarize yourself with competitive play. I was disappointed that Team Deathmatch and Free-forAll were the only modes available, but the bots do a decent job of replicating some of the behaviour you often see online—sniper camping, for instance. I also have to mention the character customization features like emblems and clan tags as well as the ability to set up private matches with custom settings that the hardcore online community will no doubt appreciate.

Then there are the unlockable extras that Treyarch hid throughout the game; I won’t discuss them in detail here because I don’t want to ruin the surprise [other sites have already reported on some of the extras, so Google around if you want--Ed.], but let’s just say that there are clever little extras that add a genuine sense of value. That, by the way, is Black Ops’ true strength: it offers up so many things to do that you can’t help feel as if you’re getting your money’s worth.

But as was the case when I reviewed Modern Warfare 2, I played the game under ideal circumstances, so it’ll be interesting to not only see how the community reacts to the game, but how I’ll feel about it after investing multiple hours into the multiplayer. There are valid questions I just can’t answer at this point, such as will gamers embrace the currency system or reject it, and what sorts of idiotic and game breaking behaviour will the community come up with--snipers camping Domination maps to get nukes in MW2 ruined many a match for me, for example.

And yet, despite those misgivings, I also can’t deny the level of polish and value inherent in Black Ops. It’s

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an all-encompassing package that is easy to recommend to fans of the series. Besides, console shooter fans will no doubt flock to it in droves as it’s already breaking pre-order records, so you almost have to buy it if you regularly play online because it’s the game most of your friends will no doubt be playing. The good news is that the game is absolutely worth the investment, and even if you find yourself disagreeing with some of the changes Treyarch instituted or you run into a bunch of morons who are hell bent on ruining a particular mode for you, you have plenty of other options to keep you engaged for a good long time.

GAMEWORLD RECKONS PROS: A polished refinement of the Call of Duty formula; offers a bevy of content that covers almost every expected base. Single-player campaign is satisfying, and the multiplayer has enough depth to keep fans engaged for a long time.

CONS: The single-player plot can be clumsy at times and they still haven’t completely eliminated those taxing moments where you have to throw lives away just to reach a specific checkpoint (they are relatively rare this time around though).

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 25

KNOW WHAT YOU P LAY:

n First Perso es m a G g n i y Role-Pla

BY KHALID

K

ALHURAIZ

now what you play is a monthly feature of niche sub-genres that are lesser known. You may or may not have heard of them. Either way, you’ll definitely learn something here. This week, I’ll be talking about a rather under-appreciated subgenre of role-playing games, first person role-playing games, something I learned to appreciate only a few years ago.

There is emphasis on exploring and mastering the dungeon’s depths, and its difficulty commonly ranges from relatively to absurdly hard.

Some brought new things to the table such as real time battles (as opposed to turn based), and having much more to explore than just a single dungeon.

Some lump rogue-likes, another sub-genre, and first person role-playing games into one category due to similar elements, but they’re essentially two very different styles of games.

First person role-playing games, also known as “3D dungeon RPG” in Japan, are pretty much what the name implies. The games play out in a first person view, usually in some type of labyrinth or dungeon.

Notable first person role-playing games include the Wizardry series, the Etrian Odyssey series, and the Might and Magic series.

Eventually, the popularity of such games started to take a dive after the early 90’s with other simpler games appearing on the market such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

These games appealed more to the mainstream gamer than the die-hard role-player.

It all started with Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the Apple II in the year 1981. Its success prompted many sequels. Of course, when some games become popular, other developers copy them. Eventually, we ended up with many first person role-playing games.

Interestingly, first person role-playing games were a wild success in Japan, spawning countless games including Megami Tensei, Phantasy Star, Shining in the Darkness, and a ton of Wizardry spinoffs that never left Japan.

Several years after the Wizardry series died off in the English-speaking world after the eighth entry (despite the fact that the Japanese were still spawning spin-offs), a company called Gamepot bought the Wizardry franchise and are now getting other developers to do games under the “Wizardry Renaissance” name.

Lochal Archade is a Dubai-based video game community, concentrating on underrated or underappreciated games. Instead of just covering the latest and greatest, they go out and find good games that may not have been in the headlines. On the Web site www. lochalarchade.com you can find their podcast, discussion forum, blogs and more.

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Thankfully, we do have Atlus, which is quite active in publishing these games to the world outside the Land of the Rising Sun. It has a number of games under their belt, and I think it’s trying to get a monopoly on this genre.

As long as I get the games I want in the end, I’m definitely not complaining.

Though I do wish that we’d have more games from western developers to keep the balance.

On a side note, I’ve noticed that most of the newer games of this genre end up on Nintendo’s DS rather than other platforms. It might be quite rare to find a game on other platforms.

RECOMMENDED GAMES: - Etrian Odyssey series (DS) - The Dark Spire (DS) - Fighting Fantasy (DS) - Might and Magic series (PC) - Orcs & Elves (Mobile phones, DS) - Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS)

LOCHAL ARCHADE

REMINISCING OLD SQUARESOFT GAMES

BY ALUCARD

Alucard is one of the many members in our community who has fond memories of games of old. He wrote a blog post about Squaresoft in the SNES days before they became Square-Enix. Here’s a list of Squaresoft games that never made it outside of Japan.

Romancing Saga Series: The Romancing Saga games on SNES are part of Square’s “Saga” series, which originated on the original Game Boy with 3 titles as Makai Toshi Sa·Ga, Sa·Ga 2 and Sa·Ga 3 (All released in the US under the “Final Fantasy Legends” title, although they have no ties with the FF series). The series places emphasis on the multiplescenarios story telling, which allows you to choose from several characters at the beginning, each with his own story.

Hanjuku Hero: Aa, Sekaiyo Hanjukunare: This is a weird game about a kingdom that’s been attacked by some wicked army, and it’s your role as the king to defend it with monster eggs or whatever. It’s comical with lots of FF4 parodies and it’s also a Japan exclusive.

Final Fantasy 5: The game was developed shortly after FF4, and despite selling very well; the US release fell down late on schedule due to the company being busy with other projects. Eventually it had to be cancelled in favour of releasing FF6 in the US on time. The game remained Japan-only until it was released on PS1 as part of the FF Collection in the US in 1999, and later it also became available on GBA. Seiken Densetsu 3: This is the follow up to Secret of Mana, and it’s Japan exclusive. I heard mixed opinions on this game and since I’ve not played it, I can’t comment on how good it is. It features day/ night transitions and weekdays based on the in-game time, which in turn, increase the gameplay depth.

Rudra no Hihou: Also known as Treasure of Rudra, the story’s concept is based on an Indian religion, in which it’s believed that the earth is destroyed and recreated every few thousands years by the gods. The game story takes place on the last 15 days of these spans, before which the earth is about to be destroyed by the god of destruction, Rudra.

Treasure Hunter G: Squaresoft’s last title on SNES, and last title on a Nintendo system until Chocobo Land came out on GBA in 2002, plays mostly like a Strategic RPG, but you also had to move around in villages and such. Interestingly, the main characters in the game; Red, Blue, Rain and Ponga appear later on in Saga Frontier on PS1.

Live a Live: This game contains seven short stories, each with its own setting (Fedual Japan, Western village, modern city, etc.) and gameplay system, some of which uses non-traditional RPG style.

BARGAIN TRACKER

Pikmin Wii, PAL, Dhs 79 Sharaf DG, Ibn Battuta

Though a GameCube game, Pikmin plays very well on the Wii with the new motion controls. It’s among Nintendo’s latest franchises and like many other of its games, the fun is here too.

Mass Effect PC, Dhs 19 Carrefour, Century Mall

A science fiction epic that should not be missed in any way, with an interesting storyline and characters to boot.

Beyond Good & Evil

Bionic Commando

Heavenly Sword

PS2, PAL, Dhs 59 Geekay, Mall of the Emirates

PS3, PAL, Dhs 89 Geekay, Mall of the Emirates

PS3, PAL, Dhs 69 Geekay, Mall of the Emirates

It was severely hammered by the press despite offering pure mindless fun and excellent swinging mechanics; highly recommended.

Before God of War 3 came along on the PS3 (which is banned), Ninja Theory released Heavenly Sword. It offers excellent fighting scenes, with a cast of interesting characters backed with high quality animations.

It had gained a strong cult following for its Zelda-like qualities and interesting characters. If you’re looking for a game very close to Zelda in terms of gameplay, pick this underrated gem.

bargain tracker is an ongoing service provided by lochal archade. you can find more bargains and talk about gaming at www.lochalarchade.com or by following @lochalarchadebt on twitter. the details above are correct at time of going to press.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 27

Anatomy of an Interesting Gaming Novel Dead Space: Martyr author B.K. Evenson explores one of the darkest scenes of his prequel novel.

P

eople often deride novels based on video games as poor extensions of franchises, substituting overwrought descriptions of familiar scenes for interactivity. Dead Space: Martyr seeks to be the exception to the rule, as it focuses more on mood than mutations. “I became much more interested in the madness of the characters and the way the Marker was affecting them,” author B.K. Evenson says.

“That was much more interesting to me than the nature of the fact that you have to shoot off enemy limbs.”

Evenson is certainly up to the task of tackling the fear and religious turmoil within Dead Space, as the award-winning writer is not only an avid game player but also the creator of some of the most wellreceived horror novels of the last two decades.

His first full-length work, Altmann’s Tongue, caused

his excommunication from the Mormon Church due to its violent content. His experience playing the first game and his knowledge of events of the second are also key, as Evenson is able to bridge the two games by presenting a different perspective of the world.

“The way in which Dead Space 2 is set up makes you have to reinterpret what you knew in [the original] Dead Space,” Evenson says.

“My book really supports what’s central to the Dead Space canon in both those games.” We asked Evenson to pick one of the most intense and gore-filled pages from Martyr, remove any spoiler-heavy material, and make note of how the events of this scene fall in line with the themes of the book and the franchise in general. Dead Space: Martyr is at http://us.macmillan. com/deadspacemartyr.

INSIDE THE INSANITY

TAKING NOTES “This shows what happens when a mind has collapsed, shows how a human will respond when it starts being fed signals that it doesn’t quite understand. There’s a mania for recording and writing things down, which is both an attempt to record the information being given us and a form of psychosis. That’s something you see in the game and movie versions of Dead Space as well.”—B.K. Evenson,

DECIPHERING THE DEAD “There’s one Easter Egg on this page: in the first bit of writing that he’s described as doing, the weird characters he’s writing are slightly distorted handdrawn versions of the Dead Space alphabet and serve as a sort of code that can be correlated to the alphabet charts found in the Dead Space game.”—B.K. Evenson

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“In the game you occasionally find people banging their heads against walls or suddenly committing suicide for no explicable reason— it’s a great part of the atmosphere. But in a book you have the added benefit of being able to see inside these people’s heads, being able to understand how they’re being changed, transformed. I tried to write something that was very dark and grim but still a great read.”—B.K. Evenson

REPLAY VALUE “You don’t have to have played Dead Space to read the novel, but if you’ve played it in a serious way you’ll find a few unexpected parallels (including very specific descriptions of killings) and inside jokes—little things you’ll notice that other people won’t catch.”

—B.K. Evenson

Kinect for Xbox 360

Banishes the Controller at Expense of Precision “You are the controller.” It sounds so simple, so friendly, so patently cool. Take an Xbox 360, plug in the new Dhs 799 Kinect motion-sensing unit, devote a few minutes to waving your arms around like a traffic controller, and you’re gaming without a gamepad. It’s a little disorienting at first, like stepping onto a balance beam for the first time, and Kinect’s imprecise, casual approach won’t be for everyone nor for every game, least of all Wii and PlayStation Move fans used to tactile wands and accurate controls. But as a second shot at bringing full body interactivity to the masses (the first was Sony’s EyeToy, unless we’re counting The Clapper) Kinect gets more right than wrong and the future potential is mindboggling.

SALUTE, DUCK, JUMP Even if you’ve fiddled with Nintendo’s Wii or Sony’s PlayStation Move, Kinect tends to throw you. Instead of wielding gamepads and remotes or wands and gun props you use your entire body

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as a kind of semaphore, a limb-and-torso command centre scanned and translated courtesy Kinect’s high-resolution cameras. Extend your arms one way to conjure the pause menu. Hold your hand out as if giving a

Roman salute then move it around to manipulate an onscreen pointer.

Actually duck to duck, turn around to turn around, and jump to jump. Speak a couple words to bring up a navigational hub and access games and Kinectenhanced applications. Act naturally, in other words,

REVIEW and for the most part, Kinect can tell what you’re up to.

The trouble is, sometimes it can’t. Kinect tends to process slow or exaggerated gestures without a problem, but often gets confused about fast or subtle ones. Whether the problem’s caused by lag, an algorithmic limitation, or insufficient processing power, it translates as moments where Kinect seems to misread or outright ignore you in ways Nintendo and Sony’s systems don’t. Sometimes you’ll pull off a move in a game when it’s clear you goofed, or fail when you should have succeeded, and the sensor often overplays a small gesture or underplays an exaggerated one. Perhaps because of these problems, Kinect’s games tend to be forgiving by design, which has its demographic flip side: Gaming with Kinect is pretty much “casual” or bust. Of course we should add that this is the first generation of Kinect so it’s safe to assume that precision as well as “intelligence” in the Kinect will improve with time.

OUT OF THE BOX Setting up Kinect couldn’t be simpler. The cameras reside in a tube of glossy black plastic about the size of a paper towel tube, attached to a motorised stand that you position facing you above or below your TV screen. Kinect draws power directly from newer slimline Xbox 360s by plugging into a special orange-coloured USB port. If you have an older model, you’ll plug the sensor into one of the Xbox 360’s standard USB ports and power it using a wall adapter included in the box.

From here, you’ll run through a few exercises to fine tune sensor placement, speech recognition, and determine

your play space’s dimensions.

Speaking of, prepare to move tables, couches, and chairs around, because Kinect’s a room hog, requiring more space than either the Wii or PlayStation Move. You’ll need to stand at least 2 metres from the sensor for solo play or 2.5 for two-player, and that’s not counting side-to-side space.

Player height matters as well, and you have to be at least a meter tall for the sensor to function properly.

But once that’s done, you’re in business, and your Xbox 360 starts to make a groovy Wiilike sound.

TALK TO THE HAND At this point you’re still using the gamepad to navigate the Xbox 360’s standard menus, but you’ll notice a black and white picture-in-picture window in the screen’s lowerright corner. That’s the sensor’s depiction of your play-space along with a shimmering, avatar-like version of you.

When Kinect “sees” you, your avatar’s hands glow, as if preparing to cast a spell.

Waving one hand back and forth in front of the sensor and you’ll bring up Kinect Hub, the interface control centre for the sensor. Once you do, the Hub slides into view and assumes command. You can

alternatively bring up the Hub with a voice command by saying “XBOX,” which slips a black bar up from the screen bottom and presents a list of command options. Say “KINECT” from here and the hub springs to life.

From here, your hand operates like the tip of wand, and moving it over a selectable button, panel, or icon causes a ring to appear and slowly fill like a clock. Hold your hand still and once the timer ring completes, your selection launches. Move it away and the timer ring stops. Arrow buttons at either side of the screen let you navigate left or right, and as the pointer nears one, the interface performs a magnetic “snap-to” trick facilitating faster selection.

Once selected, you simply flick your hand in the desired direction to flip the screen left or right. You’ll sometimes snag on these “snap-to” buttons, however, and unintentionally flip the screen when you jerk your hand away.

Another problem with the interface involves using your hand to summon and keep the pointer in Kinect’s “zone of recognition,” which only extends invisibly some 60cm by 60cm high. Sit down, or move out of the sensor’s detection zone and the pointer

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 31

disappears, requiring you stand and wave to bring it back. Once the pointer appears, it takes several seconds more hunting for the “zone” to calibrate to your hand. In other words, it takes more practice than you’d expect to get good at waking Kinect up quickly and moving

almost perfectly, and only fails if you speak too softly. If there’s a downside, it’s that the recognition algorithms can’t be trained to your voice, allowing anyone in the room to sound off and interrupt what you’re doing. It’s a shame there’s no “XBOX OFF” command,

the pointer around confidently.

but for now, it’s probably a blessing.

OWNER OF A LONELY HUB

But if you’re wondering what else you’ll do with Kinect aside from gaming, you’ll have to wait for whatever else is coming up, or for obvious third parties to come around.

Even a few existing Hub apps come half-baked, kicking you out of the Hub altogether when selected and requiring you pick back up your gamepad and tap along. There’s still considerable disparity between which parts of the Xbox 360’s interface belong to Kinect and which ones don’t, in other words.

As you do, you’ll notice there’s not much to see in the Hub. You can fiddle with your Kinect ID, view friends, check game achievements, and dress your avatar--all stuff you can already do with a gamepad quicker and more accurately. You can also launch Kinect games, sign into or out of Xbox Live, view video trailers, or bring up a few Kinectenabled apps. For now, there’s not a lot to choose from but Microsoft is saying that they’re working hard at providing more apps and content.

Better still, you can do any of the above using simple voice commands.

Say “XBOX” and “PLAY MUSIC” to launch a song, or “XBOX” and “PAUSE” to halt a video. Kinect’s voice recognition works

EVERYBODY WAS PARTY GAMING Play through Kinect’s launch games line-up and it’s clear Microsoft’s less after serious gamers than families and groups of friends who’ll probably

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break out the system during parties or holidays.

Imagine players laughing, joking, and generally caring less about perfecting a score than the experience of playing (or spectating) unencumbered by wires or controllers.

That’s the sort of experience you’ll have if you play the sensor’s packin game Kinect Adventures, for instance, which offers over a dozen clever mini-game riffs on the standard “sports activities” theme but suffers from systemic motion-tracking vagueness. Or take Kinect Sports, which includes classics like boxing and bowling but shares Kinect Adventures’ fuzzy tracking, making serious competition clumsy at best. Joy Ride, a stuntangled racing game that reads torso shifts and arm thrusts to trigger flips and speed boosts probably fares best in terms of matching body input to gameplay output, but still feels like a step or two backwards contrasted with the precision of a gamepad or steering wheel controller.

The most promising application isn’t even a game, technically speaking. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved scans in your body, dishes out activities ranging from yoga to martial arts and

tai chi, then keeps an eye on everything from your fitness regimen to form.

That, and Kinectimals--a ridiculously charming children’s game in which you befriend behaviorally sophisticated lions, cheetahs, bengal tigers, panthers, and leopards-herald the real future of the technology.

FLAWED EXECUTION, UNTAPPED POTENTIAL Of course the question all this raises is why anyone would want to wave their hands around and take twice as long to do what they already can--with greater accuracy and speed--using a gamepad or remote control. The answer is they wouldn’t Microsoft should receive a lot of credit for truly having gone out of the box with Kinect, and tried something that’s not really been done before.

There’s tremendous potential in Kinect and we’re very excited to see what the future will bring.

We suspect that at some point in the future, we’ll look back at the release of Kinect as a seminal moment in not just gaming history but computer history in general.

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Red Faction: Armageddon THE SEQUEL TO 2009’S RED FACTION: GUERRILLA PROMISES A STRONGER NARRATIVE AND EVEN CRAZIER WAYS TO WREAK HAVOC ON THE PLANET MARS.

By Andy Burt

L

et’s face it, Red Faction: Guerrilla’s biggest fault was a decidedly flimsy, and although the novelty of its highly entertaining and well-executed destruction-based gameplay makes it great, the thin premise isn’t enough to hold up its end of the bargain.

So this is the challenge facing Red Faction: Armageddon: It must not only recapture the first title’s sense of childish glee but also provide a strong context to ensure that the many acts of wanton destruction that players commit are both meaningful and satisfying.

The first thing the developers are doing to address this is changing the game’s setting and backdrop: Armageddon’s still set on Mars, but rather than explore the dusty surface of the red planet, they force you deep underground. Jim Boone, senior producer for Red Faction: Armageddon, explains. “In the 70 years since the end of Guerrilla, the marauders and colonists continued terraforming Mars, living in an uneasy peace. But during the prologue of the game, we learn that the surface has become unliveable— essentially, there’s a perpetual hurricane ravaging the surface. The colonists moved down beneath the surface once the storms began and started a society down there. The only people left up above are the crazy bastards.”

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REVIEW

with one of the projectiles.”

Vehicles are also a mainstay of the series, and though it’s a bit early for the team to reveal much, they remain mindful of what the fans want. Additionally, they’re well aware of the potential of the near-future setting. “We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what types of vehicles we could do, since so much time has passed since the events of Guerrilla, but also the types of gameplay we want to feature in Armageddon,” Boone says.

“There will definitely be a variety of vehicles that represent that advancement in technology.”

aspects like the story.

The change of scenery from the open vastness of the surface to an underground society may appear limiting, but the development team actually considers it as an advantage.

“We’re able to craft environments that have multiple buildings very close to one another, and we can do a lot of cascading destruction that way. We always joke around internally that there are only so many ways you can differentiate the look of Mars. It’s red,” Boone says.

Beneath the surface of Mars, players take control of Darius, the grandson of Alec and Samanya from Guerrilla. The passing of 70 years leads to the emergence of new technology; these advancements give players fresh ways to interact with the environment as well as new opportunities to exploit the Geo-Mod engine. “Since Darius is the grandson of Alec and Samanya from Guerrilla, they’ve continued to pass the Nanoforge technology down from one generation to the next,” Design Director David Azbug says.

As crucial as setting is to a game, the actual narrative arc carries equal importance. With Guerrilla, the team at Volition poured a substantial amount of time into creating the Geo-Mod 2.0 engine; this provides the Armageddon team with a preexisting foundation to work with.

They could now focus more on

“We’re coming out with a sequel using the same engine, and I’ve yet to see a game that’s even matched what Guerrilla did a year and a half ago,” Abzug states.

Boone concurs. “That engine was a beast to get finished, and it took a lot of talented people here a gargantuan amount of time to get it working. But now we have all that extra time to put into other aspects of the game. The theme of Armageddon is a bit different than the previous three games. Those mainly dealt with fighting against an oppressive group, but with this one we’re going with a different approach to the overall story, though you’ll still see the element of ‘helping out the underdogs.’”

The game is still a ways off, but Boone and Abzug have already ratcheted up my hopes for the sequel to one of my favourite games of 2009. The team makes its fondness for the series quite clear as we chat, and they’re continually working to flesh it out. A statement from Boone sums up Volition’s feelings toward the series: “I always think of Red Faction as a vehicle for us to do the kind of game we want to do. What I mean by that is in Volition’s history, we’ve had the opportunity to work in many genres, but with Red Faction I think it’s become the embodiment of what Volition is really all about. We can still do new things from one game to the next, and I think that’s a hallmark of the series for us.”

Throughout missions players toy with a number of weapons and vehicles, and as with all Red Faction games, the sense of variety sounds promising. The first new weapon the team has whipped up is the versatile magnet gun. “The magnet gun fires two projectiles,” Abzug says. “You fire the first one into something, and then the second one into something else, and whatever you launched the first one into goes flying into the second one. You could rip the wall off a building with this sucker—imagine an entire wall flying in 12 different pieces at a group of enemies because you targeted them

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 35

PixelJunk

2 r e t o o Sh

Q-Games’ PixelJunk series has been a major success on the PlayStation Network, and has benefited greatly from the burgeoning digital distribution model. Q-Games President Dylan Cuthbert discusses the company’s history, their first real sequel, PixelJunk Shooter 2, and why “shooting” is humanity’s most popular fantasy.

T

he PixelJunk series is well known for its quirky, stylistic take on more familiar genre tropes. Shooter, the fourth title in the PixelJunk series, takes common elements of multi-directional shooters of the past and melds it with Q-Games’ unique approach to game development. President of Q-Games Dylan Cuthbert talks to us about how PixelJunk came to be, and how the series’ title was really a way for Q-Games to unite their games under one banner.

“When PSN started, we were doing technology work for Sony Japan on the PS3, and Kawanishi, the guy running the hardware and network platform side of things at the time, suggested that Q was in just the right position to maybe knock a few titles up for it,” Cuthbert says. “I took

BY ANDY BURT

the idea home with me, and imagined what the market on PSN would be like in a few years and feared that if we were making individual smaller titles there would be nothing to link them together, and no way to really build any kind of rapport with the players themselves. So I invented a ‘series’ of games, with a common banner, where even the games themselves could be referred to by number if necessary. Racers is Series 1, Game 1 [PixelJunk 1-1], Eden is Series 1, Game 3 [PixelJunk 1-3]. Another side-effect of this is that we could get away with just registering PixelJunk worldwide and not have to worry about registering each game’s title—doing world-wide registration is very expensive for such small titles so this was strategically pretty clever in retrospect.

REVIEW “The name ‘PixelJunk’ comes from the username I used in our Japanese gaming blog, fumufumu.q-games.com. I quite liked the name and wanted to extend its use—one of our artists knocked up a pretty cool logo with the RGBcoloured crown in the middle and so we ran with it,” he adds.

PixelJunk Shooter is the first game in the series to receive a direct sequel. Though it retains many elements of the previous title, such as the ability to manipulate environments and various elemental liquids, Cuthbert explains that it was the “shooting” element of the game that was the primary reason for creating PixelJunk Shooter 2.

“We found out very quickly that shooting games take time to create,” Cuthbert explains.

“The problem with shooting games historically is that they tend to be very short or very hard (so you don’t notice that they are actually quite short).

With the original Shooter we wanted to give people a shooting game that wasn’t

too hard but still gave you quite a few hours of play, and this meant creating a hell of a lot of content, with lots of originality and new elements as you play through, so you wouldn’t get bored. Because it took so much effort to make the first Shooter we had to leave stuff on the drawing board, and it felt like a waste of all those good ideas. So I decided we should just go ahead and make a sequel to use all those ideas. It’s not something we will do in the future and Shooter was a special case because of the nature of the genre. One of the worlds is our answer to those who said the original game didn’t have enough shooting in it—we have littered it with bullet-hell-type enemies and it is incredibly good fun to play.”

Though PixelJunk Shooter 2 could never be compared side by side with games like Call of Duty or Halo, Cuthbert feels that the core element of shooting in video games grows from a fantasy that develops in early childhood, and evolves

into a competitive itch as we grow older.

“Shooting is a fantasy. As kids one of the first things we pick up and play with are toy guns, or we imagine we are firing laser pistols using our fingers,” Cuthbert explains.

“It’s one of the things we can’t do in real life without serious consequences, and is another reason why flight simulators were as popular as they were for a long time.

Humans love to aim and fire and it has nothing to do with killing things but it is about competition and being better than others. It is the same basic lust that drives us to play ball-based sports—the thrill of skilled precision and exerting power, and being better than someone else. That basic human emotion of triumph, when you shoot at something with pinpoint accuracy and actually hit it is simply a basic male tenet that isn’t going to go away.”

NUMBERS The original PixelJunk Shooter holds the highest Metacritic rating out of all the titles in Q-Games’ PixelJunk series. 87% Despite its name, PixelJunk Shooter features more saving tiny scientists trapped underground and manipulating various forms of liquid than traditional “shooting.”

The franchise’s name “PixelJunk” originated from Dylan Cuthbert’s username on Q-Games’ Japanese gaming blog.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 37

REVIEW

SPLIT/SECOND (PSP)

BY ANDREW MACNIDER

S

werving to avoid Apache missiles, triggering giant steel girders to collapse on multiple opponents, whipping 200-metre drifts around hairpin turns; racing fans have become familiar with Split/ Second’s draws since its May release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But can a game that relies so heavily on its eye-candy explosions and cinematic Power Plays successfully shrink its way to the PlayStation Portable?

Split/Second for the PSP is a direct attempt at placing the explosive console racer into player’s pockets. I had high hopes that the awesome feeling that came with nailing a perfect demolition run would trigger the same “summer blockbuster” set-piece that the console version created so perfectly. But as is always

the case with handheld ports of console titles, some notable sacrifices have been made in the transition to a smaller screen.

Playing through the first few episodes of Split/ Second’s downscaled seasons was a pretty disappointing affair. Sure, it was still fun placing first in challenges, unlocking bonus events, and destroying other racers by outrageous, explosive gimmicks, but after a while the challenges began to seem more like necessary chores to earn the ticket to the next event. Where the console iteration of Split/Second’s challenges were in-the-moment, adrenaline-filled sprints, the PSP port just never achieves that same sense of excitement, largely because of the handheld’s gap in power when compared to current-gen consoles.

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The PSP’s reduced graphical prowess also creates cheap gamechangers that make the retries stack up. A small problem like lessened draw distance makes many of the game’s token Power Plays a shot in the dark. Races taking place at sunset find their courses blanketed with a fiery orange hue; everything blurs together creating visual chaos.

Forget plotting a safe path during these races, even when trucks and buildings aren’t being blasted into smithereens. It’s also worth noting the instawreck shoulders on the courses: Hug the wrong wall and, boom! -- you’re a goner.

If you can cope with these annoyances, there are plenty of worthwhile challenges waiting in Split/Second PSP. Sure,

you’ll have to replay some tedious races for unlocks and that will frustrate at times, but unlocking new cars and challenges is still an inherently rewarding experience. While grabbing gold medals and triggering outrageously explosive Power Plays still feels satisfying on the PSP, this portable iteration of one of 2010’s most enjoyable racers never quite stacks up to the high bar set by its console cousin.

GAMEWORLD RECKONS PROS: Plenty of cars and challenges to unlock; unleashing triple wreck Power Plays CONS: Graphical frustrations that lead to more wrecks; loss of in-the-moment urgency from console to portable

For more information please visit: Me.kaspersky.com

Alice: The Madness Returns Visionary game designer American McGee guides us through the trajectory of his career and how it has all led up to his new macabre take on Lewis Carroll’s fairy tale, Alice: Madness Returns.

BY WILL HERRING

A

defining theme in Lewis Carroll’s timeless fairy tale, the premise of introducing the ordinary to the extraordinary, remained something of an ever-present idea during my overseas trek to developer Spicy Horse’s Shanghai-based doorstep. And while my 13-hour plane ride initially proved somewhat less whimsical than Alice’s tumble

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down the rabbit hole, prepackaged airline food standing in for shrinking potions and a repeat viewing of Did You Hear About the Morgans? subbing for nonsensical Jabberwocky prose, the description of “extraordinary” became substantially more justified upon arrival at the lively Chinese metropolis.

FEATURE

In the midst of celebration as the “next great world city,” Shanghai itself has transformed into something of a Wonderland. Excitement and innovation are tangible in the air, from the bustling waterfront of the Bund up to the historic Zhabei district, where video-game developer Spicy Horse laid its stillsettling roots a scant three years ago.

“If you’re not being influenced by Shanghai right now, then you’re not experiencing it correctly,” notes American McGee, the prolific game designer and senior creative director on Alice: Madness Returns, as he’s perched on the edge of his desk. One of the founders of Spicy Horse, McGee cites the young studio as a “developer’s paradise,” a haven for talented designers, programmers, and artists that actively celebrates its varied roots, fusing Western video-game development practices with an Eastern soul.

THE RABBIT HOLE Long before his name became a recognisable retailbox brand, and even longer before the life-altering trek to China, a 17-year-old American McGee came home from work every day covered head-to-toe in grease. “I was working on cars at the time,” he recalls, “and I happened to have a neighbour who would come home driving a Ferrari. We hit it off, and we spent some time playing games like Zelda and Mario together after work.”

This neighbour was John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, and one of the forefathers of the modern first-person shooter. Carmack soon hired McGee to id’s testing department, and, noticing his knack for creating content, quickly promoted McGee to level designer. In 1998, the ambitious young designer was invited to work with Maxis and Electronic Arts on a then-unannounced project.

Soon enough, McGee was invited to work at EA’s distinguished Redwood Shores campus in California, where, as the publisher figured out what exactly to do with their recent acquisition, he was occasionally thrust into the regrettable role of hatchet man. “I was sent around the world to look at other projects that were in development,” he recalls. Eventually, the powers that be realised that McGee’s talents might be better used for something creative. “They realised that maybe I should be building something, and they asked me to come up with a concept for a game.”

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 41

The concept in question was American McGee’s Alice—a macabre companion to Lewis Carroll’s beloved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, sans “happily ever after.”

The title went into production immediately at Rogue Entertainment with McGee serving as the project’s lead designer and game writer R.J. Berg scripting and executive producing.

McGee’s Alice soon evolved into a full-blown franchise, with toys, music, and even a movie bearing the brand. The Alice film switched hands, studios, directors, writers, and stars numerous times until it eventually settled at Universal, stagnating in an unconfirmed circle of development hell. “I’d just had enough,” he says.

“That was around the same time I said, ‘I’m done. I’m moving to Hong Kong.’”

NEW BEGINNINGS “So, I’d made friends with someone in San Francisco,” McGee recalls, “and she moved to Hong Kong. I started to go and speak at universities and made friends with some of the people in the videogame industry out there. That eventually led to an invitation to go work on a game in Hong Kong.”

McGee would quickly discover the inherent challenges in bringing a Western mentality to an Eastern development team. “I came into it a fairly naïve way,” he says, “thinking that I could apply what I knew about game production in the West—which is not to say I knew a lot about it by that point—but with some basic tenants of how you manage a team, how you communicate with the team, and how you get the team to communicate with itself. I found that those things just weren’t working.

Now aware of the immediate challenges intrinsic to developing in China, McGee looked to apply the lessons he’d learned to his own properties, calling on a mixed array of industry veterans, including former Rockstar North writer and designer Paul Kurowski, Ubisoft animator Tang Ye Pang, past collaborators such as Ken Wong and R.J. Berg, and a plethora of talented newcomers for his next, and most ambitious endeavour: Spicy Horse— an independent game studio built with the intention of creating “eccentric game content for the PC and console market.”

Spicy Horse was tasked with its first big project when broadband gaming network GameTap approached McGee with the proposal of an episodic gaming series based on the vast Brothers Grimm library of fairy tales.

American McGee’s Grimm, a selfexplained Katamari Damacy-inspired riff of the rampant bowdlerization of classic fairy tales, released exclusively on the GameTap service from late 2008 to early 2009, featured weekly instalments in the vein of a regular television “season,” and culminated in 23 total episodes at the conclusion of its third season.

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW “So, I sent an e-mail to a friend at EA,” McGee says, “and I said, ‘Hey, we’re finishing up production on this Grimm project. We’re feeling really proud of the production processes that we put in place and think this is a really world-class thing we’ve done here. We really can’t think of anything better to do with this team, having proven what they can do, than apply them to making a sequel to Alice.’”

McGee leads us back through the studio to a presentation room dotted with oversized bean bagchairs. Other members of the Spicy Horse team, including art director and frequent McGee collaborator Ken Wong, start to filter in as McGee boots up an Xbox 360 test unit for our initial glimpse at Alice’s highly anticipated return.

“When we came back to Alice,” notes McGee, “I went through all of my old notebooks, and we played through the first game again. We started picking up on all of these little details, the threads that we’d left out there.”

“We’re trying to tell a powerful story,” he adds. “That was the key to the first game: telling a serious story about a serious character and very real, very emotional events... This time around, it’s a murder mystery,” he explains. “In exploring the pieces that make up Wonderland, Alice is actually trying to retrieve memories related to the fire that killed her family. At the same time, she’s also aware of the fact that Wonderland itself is under attack. The memories that she’s trying to recover are themselves being destroyed as Wonderland is being destroyed.”

McGee notes that Wonderland— while still serving as its own unique world, as well as a representation of Alice’s psychological landscape— will be intertwined with real-world London throughout the game. This is done partly in service of the overarching narrative, but also to contrast the two very different domains and how they affect Alice’s plight.

“Wonderland, as a function of Alice’s reality in relation to London,” he explains, “is the place where she’s solving the problems that are presenting themselves to her. In London, her abilities are fairly limited. She’s very human, susceptible, and frail. Once she steps into Wonderland, the gloves come off. We try to make a contrast

between the vibrancy and the wonder of Wonderland, and the great horror of real-world London at the time.”

McGee sees this concept of “Wonderfying” Alice’s innate abilities as painting the character as her own type of superhero. She’s a hero whose superpowers are, at their core, interacting with and manipulating Wonderland.

FULL CIRCLE The transition in tone is tremendous; the serene landscape gives way to a despotic swirl of black and brown. The floating islands are now decaying chunks of meat, constricted by tentacles of decaying tissue. The Queen’s once-daunting castle decomposes in the distance, a reminder of just how long it’s been since Alice’s last voyage to Wonderland.

“This environment was originally conceived as gothic architecture mixed with a lot of flesh,” says art director Ken Wong. “The art department has gone to great lengths to recreate the sense and

feel of what we saw in the first game,” McGee adds, as Alice begins a slow, steady trek across a decaying stone walkway. “With the falling apart of the meat, the age, and the decay, one of the big goals here is to link up the story with the first game, so people who played the first Alice feel at home in the new product.”

Even at its halfway point, Alice: Madness Returns is so polished that it shines, a fact McGee is quick to attribute to the talent and dedication of the studio. “For me, it’s come full circle,” he explains.

“When I first got into the industry at id Software, there was sort of this desire to prove something now that I had a real job. By the time I got to EA, it shifted a little bit to become more about wanting to prove something in terms of telling a story and being creative.

“But now that I’m out here, it’s all come around to where the money isn’t important—the storytelling, I still love, but it’s really about these people.” A newly formed studio, barely three years old, developing a triple-A sequel to a decade-old platinum seller on the other side of the world. You have to admit—it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

“Whenever we come across something that doesn’t make sense,” Wong explains, “or we need to cheat to get something to work, there’s something we keep saying around here—‘It’s Wonderland.’ Wonderland is so open and full of possibilities, you can get away with almost anything.”

A History of Alice in Popular Culture

O

ver the years, Wonderland and its inhabitants have been the subject of numerous multimedia adaptations, retellings, and artistic interpretations. We’ve chosen just a few of the most prolific, imaginative, and in some cases, bizarre highlights in Alice’s expansive cross-platform career.

BY WILL HERRING

1865 Under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson writes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a children’s tale that, in its original form, was told with the intentions of entertaining the Liddell sisters (Alice, Edith, and Lorina, respectively) during a boat ride near Oxford.

1871 Carroll’s official followup, Through the LookingGlass and What Alice Found There, is released, and serves to shift Wonderland’s focus from an elaborate card game to an equally elaborate chess game. The shift introduces a new character, the Red Queen, who, in later adaptations, is often confused for and sometimes combined with the first book’s Queen of Hearts.

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1898 Sick with pneumonia, Lewis Carroll, aged 65, passes away at his sister’s home in Guildford.

1934 Having grown, married, and had children, Alice Liddell, aged 82, passes away.

1886 Playwright H. Saville Clark and composer Walter Slaughter stage a musical play around Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, shortened to the title Alice in Wonderland. The play debuts at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, and sees numerous subsequent revivals in the following years.

1951 One of the most recognisable adaptations to date, Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland sees its initial theatrical run met with modest boxoffice results and the ire of critics, who accuse the feature of streamlining and “Americanizing” Carroll’s original text.

1903 British directors Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow create the first recorded silver-screen adaptation of Alice in Wonderland: an eight-minute silent film that, even with limited technology, is noted for its imaginative use of special effects and a positively creepy fullbody rabbit suit.

1966 A collaborative effort between Hannah-Barbara’s biggest stars, the animated television movie Alice in Wonderland (or, What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?) airs on ABC with cameos by Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, and features the voices of Sammy Davis Jr. as the Cheshire Cat and Zsa Zsa Gabor as the Queen of Hearts.

1981 Alicja, a low-budget modern re-telling of Alice in Wonderland from Polish directors Jacek Bromski and Jerzy Gruza, features an excitable young Alice who falls in love with a jogger named Rabbit. And it’s a musical.

1988 Czech animator and artist Jan Švankmajer releases Něco z Alenk, a surreal stop-motion adaptation of Carroll’s first book. The film, simply dubbed Alice in America, goes on to become a cult classic.

1983 A co-production between Nippon Animation and Germany’s Apollo Films, Fushigi no Kuni no Alice, an anime adaptation of Carroll’s books, airs on Japan’s NHK network from March 26, 1983 to October 10, 1984 with a total of 52 episodes. Only 26 of said episodes ever see the light of day on American shores.

1991 The Disney Channel debuts Adventures in Wonderland, a live-action television show featuring a spunky pre-teen Alice, based very loosely on the Walt Disney adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

One hundred episodes are aired from 1991 to 1995, and very important lessons are learned.

1985 Alice sees one of her first video-game incarnations in Alice in Wonderland for the Commodore 64; an action/puzzle game with platforming elements, developed by programmer Dale Disharoon, and published by Windham Classics.

1999 NBC debuts a big-budget Alice in Wonderland TV movie, spanning both the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

Performances are varied: the all-star cast ranges from hammy, but dignified (Sir Ben Kingsley as Major Caterpillar) to just creepy (Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat).

2000 The acclaimed macabre videogame retelling of Carroll’s classic, American McGee’s Alice is released for the PC and Mac. 2002 SquareSoft’s epic Final Fantasy/Walt Disney mash-up, Kingdom Hearts, releases on the PlayStation 2. It features a lush recreation of a Heartlessinfested Wonderland, and casting Alice as one of the seven sacred Princesses of Heart.

2009 The newly renamed SyFy Channel debuts a new TV mini-series: Alice, a futuristic re-imagining of the original books starring Caterina Scorsone, Kathy Bates, and Tim Curry.

2010 Edward Scissorhands director Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anne Hathaway, sees a worldwide theatrical release and subsequent videogame adaptation to the great acclaim of Hot Topics everywhere.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 45

LAST WORD

Mohammad Alhuraiz has the last word every month.

This time he talks about whether the length of a game, how long it takes to play, matters.

DOES LENGTH MATTER? WE ALL KNOW THAT GAMES come in many shapes and sizes, one these aspects is a game’s length. By length, I mean how long the game goes on for, how long does the game’s story stretch out, how many levels are in the game and so on. The popular belief is that if a game is long, it is better value for money, which isn’t always the case.

At one point not so long ago, we thought it was value for money to have a game that took a long time to play through because we weren’t allowed to own so many games. So a lengthy game would obviously mean endless hours of game play.

This arguably tickled the part of my brain that used to find role playing games interesting and intriguing. A lot of people do feel the same way, if not, they would probably have played a Super Mario or a Mega Man game and beaten it countless times. But the problem is that this kind of game-play behaviour doesn’t transition very well with a lot of games. Many times you find yourself playing a game that is 20 hours long but felt like it finished somewhere 12 hours ago.

While 20 hours isn’t exactly a lengthy game, sometimes some games drag out far too long. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of The Moon, for example, could have been 8-10 hours if it wasn’t for the unnecessary and excessive back track and long empty corridors that spanned probably 80% of that game; my guess that was put into place to

hide the mediocre game play and story full of clichés.

There have been games however that worked the opposite of that.

Take Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, for example. While the main story line was a mere 20 hours, you would easily clock over 100 hours straying away from the main quests doing optional errands and quest. No, the game did not do this unnecessarily.

The lower your attention span in that game, the more you spend time just discovering the vast world within Oblivion. I personally clocked around +400 hours excluding the main line quest since you can keep on playing even after you are done with the main quest.

Other games, like first person shooters (Halo, Battlefield, Call of Duty, etc.), tend to keep the longevity in the multi player while leaving the single player mode short, sweet, and straight to the point.

Some gamers even consider the single player a lengthy tutorial that teaches you how to get used to the basics of the game.

Longevity doesn’t have to be boring. It’s not all level-grinding in RPGs or back tracking some levels in order to unlock a stupid door that needs a gem. But recently the market seems to encourage developers to resort to elongating the game. Both developers and publishers are worried about consumers selling back their games.

Now we know that this does no

46 | www.gameworldme.net | January 2011

apply to our part of the world, but elsewhere, a lot of gamers do sell their games to make a bit of money, and that has been hurting the industry a lot. Developers seem to think that gamers will keep their games longer, if they add a multiplayer mechanic or make the game intentionally long.

Many times this has driven me from some games because I just couldn’t handle it, rather than paying more attention to the game. I decided to stop playing the game and just go to something else without giving it a fair chance.

Sometimes I even avoid the multiplayer mode because I know it was forced into the game. That’s why length matters. Developers need to think more carefully about how they treat the number of playable hours a gamer will get out of a game. Don’t pad it unnecessarily and don’t rely on online or multiplayer to sell the game.

Mohammad Alhuraiz wishes he could give up his day job to just focus on gaming and other forms of tech.

He likes finding and playing under appreciated games, which didn’t necessarily capture the big headlines.

If he’s not hanging out at www. lochalarchade.com you can catch up with Mohammad on Twitter as @ asatiir.

January 2011 | www.gameworldme.net | 47

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