Never Too Old To Play™

Saw came out of nowhere in October 2004 to take the movie industry by storm and become the most successful horror franchise in history. The refreshingly different thriller, directed by previously unknown filmmaker James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell who also played one of the supporting characters, was shot for about $1.2 million and went on to gross over $100 million worldwide, later spawning five sequels and now a video game.

Like the film sequels, the game focuses significantly less on the sense of thrill and mystery that made the original movie so great and more on the gore that seems to get more explicit as each year passes (and a new Saw film arrives in theaters) to the delight of today’s shock horror fans. The game isn’t nearly as gory as the more recent sequels – understandable, since Konami took over the project early on (Japanese game companies eschew overly graphic violence) in the hopes they had found a spiritual successor to their dying Silent Hill franchise and no country’s ratings board would approve a game of that nature – but includes enough blood and body parts to give the player a sense of its film origins.

Ultimately, the game is made for fans of the series. Konami hired Wan and Whannell to write a whole new story that ties into the overall Saw legend, and it works very well both as a piece of the overall puzzle and as a standalone arc that continues from the original movie’s plot (in case you didn’t stick with the franchise after the first film). The setting – a long abandoned psychiatric institution in which the staff conducted all sorts of vile experiments on their patients – is exactly the kind of place the Jigsaw Killer (played appropriately by the films’ Tobin Bell) might choose to test his captives. And references to the movies are abundant: newspaper clippings scattered about the hospital tell the backstory about the Jigsaw case, doctor’s notes hint at John Kramer’s psychological evolution into the Jigsaw Killer and various rooms showcase the aftermath of some of Kramer’s tests.

As former detective David Tapp, portrayed in the original film by veteran actor Danny Glover but voiced here by Earl Alexander (who played Louis in Left4Dead), you have to make your way through the dilapidated hospital avoiding instant death traps (doors and tripwires rigged with shotguns that pulverize your head), broken glass strewn on the floor (an ultimately annoying obstacle to deal with that doesn’t really advance or complement the gameplay in any way) and violent thugs who have been trapped here by the Jigsaw Killer and tasked with removing a key stitched into your body.

Following instructions left to you on mini cassette recorders and through the intercom (often accompanied by video footage played on strategically positioned television sets), you must solve a slew of “light” puzzles in order to gather the things you need in order to get to the victims you are meant to save, all of whom have some sort of past relationship with Tapp. For example, one victim is the wife of the late detective Steven Sing, Tapp’s former partner who was killed by a trap when the two of them broke into Jigsaw’s old hideout.

The traps holding each of these victims, and the puzzles you have to solve to beat them, are by far the most interesting part of the game. Whether you’re playing Jigsaw’s demented version of Concentration where each wrong turn results in a steel rod spearing a victim’s body part or his alternative take on Pengo where passing over too many designated spots causes an elaborate iron maiden to swing shut, you’ll rest at ease with some sense of satisfaction after having rescued each inevitably irritable and ungrateful captive.

Unfortunately, you won’t feel quite as good going through all the repetitive gameplay of the vast areas in between each of the major tests. Aside from having to avoid the obstacles listed above, you’ll find yourself at the mercy of sluggish controls and a monotonous combat system reminiscent of the Silent Hill games. Combat is never enjoyable but is thankfully pretty easy for the most part as you only face one real boss character who can be very easily taken out with certain features of the environment – during the rest of the games, you’ll just be facing peons who can’t hack any real pain.

Worse than the combat, though, are the basic puzzles thrown at you when you do things like pick locked doors or open weapon cases. These challenges, if you can call them that, involve fairly mundane and repetitive tasks that get old very quickly; in fact, many of them cycle through a small handful of choices so you start seeing the same puzzles very early on (there’s even one puzzle that is exactly the same every single time you see it). Unfortunately, you have to go through them so often during the game that by the end you’ll be able to solve most of them in your sleep.

On the graphics front, anyone hoping for outstanding visuals should look elsewhere. While the game looks far from horrible, it is definitely a game that could have been done on a previous generation console. It’s surprising the development team didn’t put a whole lot of effort into taking advantage of the powerful Unreal Engine 3 – there’s a painfully conspicuous gap between the quality of graphics in this game and those in Batman: Arkham Asylum, BioShock and Mass Effect. If you’re going to pay for that kind of technology, you might as well leverage its capabilities, especially when it comes to how the characters look: there are only four or five different enemy models, and Tapp and the other central victims don’t look remarkable at all.

The team did seem to put a decent amount of effort into the presentation and overall art style of the game, however. The design of the hospital is formidably creepy although there isn’t a lot of variation in the environment – other than the major testing chambers, you’re basically either in a tiled bathroom, a decrepit hallway, a dirty storage room, a bloody examination room, or a ruined patient’s quarters. The doors all look the same. The floors all look the same.

Like I said earlier, this is a game made specifically for fans, and this is quite obvious during every second of the game. However, only the parts of the game that are closest in spirit to the content of the movies, the puzzles, really work as far as gameplay is concerned with everything in between – the flaky combat in particular – coming off like arbitrary filler created without much thought as to why it should even be in the package.

The story, however, is decent and expands upon what fans already know about several characters in the series so if you’ve seen all of the movies I could certainly recommend this as a rental or a buy if you can find a store selling it at discount.

Final score: 3 out of 5 for fans; 2 out of 5 for non-fans

Parent to parent

This is a game based on the Saw film franchise. If you’ve never seen any of those movies, perhaps you should watch one to see firsthand what the series is all about. If you’re not inclined to do that, I can save you the time by saying, “Don’t buy this game for children.” It shouldn’t be a problem for older teens, though.

Experience this for yourself!

• SAW (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• SAW (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)

Halo 3: ODST is hands down the best Halo experience on the Xbox 360. After the massive disappointment that was Halo 3 - in case you haven’t read my take on that game, you can read it here – ODST feels like a breath of fresh air from the reeking stagnation of the Halo franchise, a chance for a development team that was creatively lobotomized by having to slog through a decade of focusing on the same character, the same gameplay style, the same scenario, and the same story under Microsoft’s stinging lash to actually do something new.

Gone is the neanderthal love child of the T-800 and Superman (with just about the emotional range of either) and the “run buck wild into enemy forces and shoot everything that moves” tactics afforded by his “unstoppable force” persona. Gone are the frequent flyer miles racked up from jumping from this planet to that ship to this giant ring to that Flood-infested station. For that matter, gone are the Flood themselves, those clichéd Borg-like (at least in purpose) creatures who long overstayed their welcome (psst – it wasn’t even scary anymore in the second game).

Instead, Halo 3: ODST focuses on one squad of very human soldiers who are dropped into the African city of New Mombasa during the events of Halo 2. The focal character of the game is a new soldier referred to only as “the Rookie” who is separated from the rest of his squad after a mishap during the drop. He awakens many hours later and must make his way through the Covenant-laden streets of the destroyed city, often severely outnumbered. In many instances, the smarter tactic is to try to sneak past patrols, which is a nice change of pace from the constant (and sometimes monotonous) barrage of gunfire experienced in other Halo games.

As the Rookie makes his way through the city following the homing beacons of his squad mates, he slowly begins to piece together what happened to the rest of his team, manifested in the game as levels in which you take control of the various ODST units (voiced by members of the Firefly cast as well as the actor who portrayed the modern day protagonist in Assassin’s Creed). This is a nice vehicle to deliver some notably different gameplay experiences – instead of getting away from the noir theme of the Rookie’s storyline by having him jump into a Scorpion tank, fly one of the Covenant’s Banshees or play sniper tag with enemy troopers, the developers allowed you to do all these things with the members of the team that specialize in those abilities through the sort-of flashbacks. And there’s a sense that you’re part of a team as opposed to a one man superhero show.

Another notable difference between ODST and the proper Halo games is the vastly superior design. While the game still uses the same antiquated engine as its predecessors, the designers had a much more colorful palette afforded them by the “city at night” setting in which most of the game takes place. Instead of strange, unbelievable alien landscapes with bright purples and oranges or drab, boring grey technologically advanced installations, the designers present the destroyed beauty (to steal a phrase from Epic Games) of New Mombasa – at least what’s left of it – at night. Neon lights, burning wreckages, street lamps, and the reflection of all that off the twisted but shiny metal buildings that used to contain bustling human life evokes a more viable immersion and a more personal hook for the player – this is your culture and your world that the Covenant have demolished, not some arbitrary metal ring floating in space. Add to that the incredible score which at times is as haunting and desolate as the scope of the destruction you witness, and you end up with an emotional experience that is far more real than anything Halo 3 delivered.

As a bonus, the game includes a disc dedicated to Halo 3′s multiplayer mode. All of the maps are there including a few new ones to entice online gamers. If you never plan on playing Halo 3′s campaign again and are just holding onto the game for the multiplayer modes, you can get rid of that old disc because everything you need to play online – plus a new mode called “Firefight” which I did not get into and so cannot talk about – is stored on this second disc.

If you’re like me and want to see what else is left for this franchise now that we’ve “finished the fight,” give Halo 3: ODST a try to find out what a more focused, more creative and more human Halo game looks like.

Final score: 4 out of 5

Parent to parent

I don’t think there’s any difference in the recommendation for appropriateness for children I would give to this game versus Halo 3. You don’t see quite as many humans biting the bullet in ODST but the violence aspect is still there. There’s one particular cutscene in which one of the characters you control gets a nice giant ax blade in his chest – probably not a great visual for Junior. Older teens should be able to handle this just fine, though.

Experience this for yourself!

• Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360) (Amazon)

It’s rare when a game comes out that is not only unique and refreshing in concept but also straight-to-the-pleasure-center-of-the-brain fun to the point of becoming a welcome addiction. It’s shocking when such a game is exclusive to the red-headed stepchild of the video game world, the PSP (a gaming system with more bad ports than the Somali coastline), which is why the industry was buzzing when Sony released Patapon in December 2007 in Japan and in February 2008 across the rest of the world.

Up to this point, the PSP’s software library was widely viewed as a graveyard full of lazy ports and hacked up follow-ups of PlayStation 2 games hampered by the PSP’s not-quite-PS2 technical specs and more importantly its lack of a second analog thumbstick which made playing games like Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories more difficult than they should have been. Developers were much more interested in getting games out quickly, regardless of incompatibilities with not just the design of the hardware but the spirit of portable gaming.

Pyramid, the development team responsible for Patapon, bucked the trend by focusing on the essence of the PSP right from the start. Instead of long levels on vast maps peppered with checkpoints, almost all of the missions in Patapon are short and easily digestible chunks of instant gratification and steady progression. Instead of resources-intensive graphics technology prone to framerate stutter and glitches, Patapon is visualized with simple yet memorable two dimensional artwork – no 3D polygons here. Most importantly, instead of complex controls and the more advanced gameplay one would expect from a console game, Patapon players only use the four face buttons to input one of less than a half dozen commands to their army – Patapon’s gameplay is about as simple as you can get while actually doing something.

Don’t mistake simplicity for shallowness, though. Pyramid kept the design and gameplay simple so the player could focus on the actual strategy and skill. You see, Patapon is at its core a mash-up of the real-time tactics and musical rhythm genres with a little bit of Peter Molyneux- or Will Wright-esque God game flavor sprinkled on top. The basic point of each mission is to make it from one end of a horizontally scrolling stage to the other, battling enemy warriors or creatures and knocking down buildings along the way. You do this by issuing commands through the PSP face buttons, each of which represents one of four talking drums whose sounds combine together to instruct the Patapons to attack or defend amongst other things. For example, hitting the “square” button three times followed by the “circle” button one time tells the Patapons to advance forward.

Victims of Pataponic wrath drop all sorts of loot ranging from money (known as ka-ching in the game) to weapons to materials, all of which can be used to evolve or customize your units. This is where a little bit of strategy comes into play as you have to decide, for example, whether the special attributes of a particular special unit outweighs its inability to wear helmets (some of which are very beneficial), or whether it would be better to spend that one rare ore you earned to specialize one of your cavalry units or one of your archers. This is not to mention that before you start any given mission, you have to choose only three out of your six available squads – infantry, heavy infantry, ranged, heavy ranged, cavalry, and archers – based on what you know about the upcoming challenges.

In addition to the basic combat stages, there are also hunting missions where you can stalk various animals, unique boss battles against gigantic dinosaurs, sandworms and robots that make the Patapons look incredibly puny, and fun little mini-games where you can participate in such activities as metalsmithy or cooking in order to earn materials or bonus items to help gain victory.

Almost all of these actions involve pressing some combination of buttons to one of the game’s many catchy beats or tunes. Whether you’re slamming a hammer into an anvil with a clank, playing a trumpet for an itchy tree (don’t ask) or firing a volley of arrows at an enormous crab, you’re creating music with the Patapons who sing different verses depending on your most recent commands. I challenge anyone to play a few levels of Patapon and then try to get the phrase “pata-pata-pata-pon” out of their head.

As great a game as Patapon is, it’s not for everyone. If you’re the type of gamer who needs epic quests, complex stories or the staccato of gunfire in order to be satisfied, you’re not going to find much satisfaction in this game. However, if you’re up for a new and unique kind of tactical gaming experience realized with an aesthetically pleasing visual design and powered by one of the most endearing soundtracks of the portable gaming world, you won’t go wrong with Patapon.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

I have no qualms about recommending this game for children. The strategy and tactics aspect of the game may be a bit over most young children’s heads, but the controls are more than simple enough and the visual design is kind of like a cartoon with lots of solid colors and bold lines. While there is an aspect of violence in the game – after all, you’re sending an army of warriors to fight other warriors or hunt creatures – there is no blood or gore and the characters are as far from human as you can get: Patapons are basically eyeballs with arms and legs while their nemeses the Zigatons are square shaped eyeballs with arms and legs – both simply deflate when they are defeated. More importantly, the game teaches kids the value of both planning ahead and thinking on their toes to adapt to the situation, and promotes a love of music with a focus on rhythm and beat. Chances are that your kids will love this game.

Experience this for yourself!

• Patapon (PSP) (Amazon)

Jay Leno crossed the line on Wednesday’s edition of The Jay Leno Show.

While Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and especially David Letterman have been unrelenting, at times harsh and arguably unfair with the barbs they’ve volleyed over the whole NBC late night mess, they’ve always kept the focus on Leno and the business with jokes about the situation itself, NBC’s ineptitude, Leno’s perceived role in all of this, the controversial decision to install Leno over Letterman as host of The Tonight Show when the legendary Johnny Carson retired in 1992, and of course Leno’s chin.

Leno, however, took things to the next level with the following segment from his monologue:

“Letterman has been hammering me every night. Going after me. Hey Kev, you know the best way to get Letterman to ignore you? Marry him. He will not bother you. He won’t look you in the eye.”

Ironic coming from a guy who returned home early from the one trip to Europe he took with his wife, Mavis, because he would rather be working than vacationing with the missus.

And unnecessarily personal as he shifted the focus from Letterman himself to his wife. Compare it to this other riff from Monday night’s episode:

“Boy, remember the more innocent days of late night TV, when the only thing people cared about was what intern the host was nailing? What happened to those days?”

Did you catch the subtle difference in the angle Leno was coming from in each of the jokes?

While I understand that he has a right to defend himself against the barrage of attacks Letterman has been leveling at him over the past couple of weeks, he really should be fighting fire with fire and leaving veiled references to people who have absolutely nothing to do with the situation whatsoever out of it.

The bottom line is that Leno’s comment was entirely uncalled for and a pathetically cheap low blow, a highly uncharacteristic 180 degree about face of the jovial onscreen persona that he needed to desperately cling to until the whole scenario played itself out.

Unlinked source(s): TampaBay.com, New York Post

Aren’t you supposed to learn from others’ mistakes? Microsoft seems to be putting a lot of eggs into that shaky basket with the big “Project Natal” sign taped to it.

In case you missed the overly dramatic reveal during Microsoft’s press conference at last year’s E3, Natal is the codename for an upcoming device to be released this holiday season exclusively for the Xbox 360. The device includes a 3D camera and depth sensor that interprets an infrared map of the space in front of it 30 times per second with the ability to simultaneously track and analyze the motion of up to four people (and 48 skeletal points on each of those people) down to movements of individual fingers. In addition, there is a multi-array microphone running proprietary software that allows it to determine the source of any sound and distinguish between “real” noise and ambient sound (and appropriate suppress the latter); this software even includes voice recognition capabilities that can be used in tandem with the facial recognition aspect of the camera’s software for some impressive results.

So with all of this cool technology rolled up into one little black bar of plastic, why do I have such little faith in Natal? The answer is simple: Natal is little more than a glorified Wii.

The primary feature of the technology is the advanced motion sensing functionality that essentially turns the entire gaming space into a controller. Think of it as a Wiimote on crack – instead of just sensing where the controller is like the Wii does, Natal actually sense where every part of the player’s body is and tracks how that body moves. That’s very impressive in concept but unfortunately less interesting in practical application.

Think of all the games you like to play and then try to come up with a way those experiences could be improved through the console’s knowledge of how your entire body is moving. There are a few games where this would be a benefit – Wii Fit would be able to let you know if you’re doing a particular yoga pose incorrectly and a game like Just Dance would be able to evaluate your entire body instead of just an estimation of what your arms are doing based on the motion of the Wiimote – but they’re pretty much all Wii games.

How would “core” games benefit from this technology? What motion sensing functionality could you add to a game like Modern Warfare 2 that would actually improve the gaming experience to a substantial degree? Some have suggested that you could hold a model gun like a real soldier but I can’t see how that would be a more fun gaming experience (think back to all the derision aimed at the commercials for the first Call of Duty Wii game that showed a teenager ducking for cover behind his sofa) and more importantly how developers would handle movement (running in place doesn’t strike me as a particular fun or immersive activity). Others have suggested that you could still play with a standard controller (which is in direct conflict with the marketing slogan that you wouldn’t need a controller to play Natal games) and just use hand signals to command your squad and hand motions to throw grenades – do either of these ideas improve the gaming experience, and would you really want to take your “button hand” off you controller in the heat of battle? Still others offer the idea of using the microphone to dictate commands to your AI teammates – isn’t that something you can technically already do with the Xbox Live headset, and more importantly have any past games that utilize voice command systems actually succeeded with them?

I can anticipate people thinking that it’s unfair I focus only on one genre of games so let me look to others. What about racing games? What bold, new functionality could developers add to a Forza Motorsport or Project Gotham Racing sequel that would make the racing experience more authentic or more realistic? One suggestion I heard was that gamers wouldn’t need to spend money on a specialized wheel controller and could just use something round as a stand-in. That’s a real winner of an idea when gamers are already complaining that the use of the Wiimote, with or without a wheel attachment, in Mario Kart Wii is too light and loose. Let’s not forget the absence of any rumble-based feedback, a problem cited by PlayStation 3 gamers who played Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

Action games? Again, it wouldn’t be practical to keep removing your hand from the controller in order to flail your arm in a hilarious attempt to instruct your onscreen avatar to attack your foes although I suppose that you could just hold the controller in one hand with your thumb on the analog stick and just swing a pretend sword around in your epic battle against monsters that aren’t there. Fighting games? I would love to see people film themselves playing a fighting game with Natal and post those videos up on YouTube: we’d have a whole new generation of Star Wars Kids! Ditto with platformers – can you imagine how hilarious footage of people hopping around their living room would be?

When you really start to look at things, it becomes obvious that Microsoft is trying to do just a bit too much with Natal. Whereas the Nintendo Wii was the gaming technology that nobody knew they actually wanted, Natal will be the gaming technology that nobody actually wants (or they would have already bought into the Wii).

Hardcore gamers have hammered the Wii again and again for being little more than a gimmick that many developers tried to jam into their game concept just so they could say “we have a Wii game” and try to cash in on the Wii craze. There are countless complaints from people who lament the dearth of “core” games on the Wii while countless shovelware titles crowd retail shelves. Does anyone really expect things to be any different with Natal? It’s pretty clear that there’s no viable application of the functionality to the most popular game genres so most Xbox 360 releases will ignore the technology altogether (and those that don’t will surely include a way to play the game using “normal” controls which means the Natal features will just be tacked on gimmicks). The only Natal titles that will come out are the ones that were made specifically to take advantage of the device’s features (in other words, niche games that are only going to sell to the relatively small percentage of gamers who actually go out and buy in).

Of course, there will be a handful of diamonds in the rough like possibly the Milo concept shown in the “impressive” demo I referenced above, but they’ll be radically different gaming experiences that won’t help foster wide mainstream support of the technology like the marquee Wii titles (Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, etc.) did for the Wii.

It seems that Microsoft is simply making the same mistake many companies did in thinking that they could copy Nintendo’s efforts and make tons of money doing it. They’re banking on a scenario in which Natal is a runaway success that will make gamers forget that we’re already over four years into this console generation, a point in time at which the manufacturer traditionally started to drop hints at what the next generation of hardware will be like, or at least make them happy enough to ignore that tradition and give Microsoft some breathing room.

Aaron Greenberg, Director of Product Management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, said at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show that “we don’t think we’re halfway through this generation.” Think about when you first turned on your Xbox 360 and tried out Call of Duty 2 (yes, 2). How long has it been since you’ve played Perfect Dark Zero or Kameo? Could you wait that long for the next Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo console? Would something as niche and gimmicky as Natal really tide you over for the next four to six years?

The core gamer in me finds that possibility almost terrifying.

Just about two weeks ago, IGN editor Ryan Geddes wrote a piece for the site’s PlayStation 3 channel titled “Editorial: Why I Bought a PS3 – How Sony (and Microsoft) finally pushed an Xbox gamer back into the PlayStation fold.” The title of the article should have been “Editorial: Why My Inner Sony Fanboy Finally Resurfaced.”

Mr. Geddes starts out by cleverly painting himself as some sort of diehard Xbox 360 gamer so that his “conversion” to the PlayStation 3 has much more impact, as if his buying a PlayStation 3 for himself – a gaming journalist who no doubt has near unlimited access to more than one of them at his workplace – was testament to some sort of dramatic victory for Sony: If even a hardcore Xbox 360 gamer like me jumps ship, the PlayStation 3 must really be the superior console!

Of course, he drops subtle hints at his past life as a PlayStation 2 owner but spends far more time explicitly bashing the Xbox 360 than actually delivering solid arguments as to why the PlayStation 3 is a good system. The best he can do is offer the vague opinion that “it’s cool and Japanese” – with no elaboration on why the console is cool and what being of Japanese design has to do with that – and recycle the tired hardware diatribe while ignoring how much better Microsoft was – and still is – than Sony at dealing with those problems: Microsoft replaced my launch Xbox 360, which lasted just shy of three years of generally heavy gaming usage, for free whereas Sony asked for (but didn’t receive) $150 to repair my 40GB PlayStation 3, whose touted Blu-ray drive died after about sixteen months of infrequent gaming (with the rest of the console following suit a week later).

“It recalls a time when Japan was the center of the hardcore gaming universe, before it ceded that mantle to the West.” Is that like at all like how the Xbox 360 and its predecessor recalled a time when the West was the center of the gaming universe with systems like the Atari 2600, the Intellivision and the ColecoVision before the video game market crash and the emergence of the Nintendo Entertainment System as the new go-to home entertainment device for video games?

Sony’s PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems ruled their respective generations because the games, and not the systems themselves, were cooler than what was available for the competition, and games are inherently platform-neutral pieces of intellectual property: technically there wasn’t any reason why Super Mario Bros. couldn’t appear on the Sega Master System, Final Fantasy VII couldn’t appear on the Saturn, God of War couldn’t appear on the Xbox, and Halo 3 couldn’t appear on the PlayStation 3. Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360 is going to be no “less Final Fantasy” than Final Fantasy XIII on the PlayStation 3 unless you’re one of the few who think that watching hours upon hours of drawn out, self-congratulatory and pretentious pre-rendered cutscenes is an admirable trait of the series.

The Xbox 360 succeeded – and continues to succeed – this generation for the same reason. Microsoft recognized the potential appeal of previously PC-only genres like FPS and “western” (i.e. computer) RPG to console gamers and built the right system for developers to most easily bring games of such genres to the modern console gaming market. If you build it, they will come: Microsoft built it, and gamers came by the millions.

Engrossed in his fanboy-fueled “epiphany,” Mr. Geddes seems to instead think that Microsoft forced the Xbox 360 on gamers by “hijack(ing) the game industry… (and) beat(ing) Sony at its own game” – Microsoft did in 2005 what Sony did a decade earlier so why all the bitterness? What he doesn’t realize is that gamers didn’t buy the Xbox 360 because they had to but because they wanted to. The excitement and fervor surrounding the Xbox 360 was far greater than any shown for the PlayStation 3 a year later for a variety of reasons, including a significant shift in the types of games the majority of the market wanted and a conspicuous ambivalence by most gamers towards the overhyped new technologies Sony wanted them to pay an extra $200 for.

With last year’s PlayStation 3 price cuts, the playing field is more level now yet the consumers still want the Xbox 360 because that’s where the best overall gaming experience is. “Cool” isn’t defined by a glossy black exterior (and all the lovely fingerprints that go with it), high-definition movies (which most people don’t actually care much about) or a Cell processor that nobody cares to work with (unless they’re owned by Sony).

At the same time, “cool” isn’t eroded by a likely niche new technology (anyone who thinks Project Natal has a seriously deluded perception of market reality) or a middle-aged Xbox Live spokesperson whose “insecure awkwardness” only graces the eyes of the few who actually watch Major’s Minute instead of playing Modern Warfare 2.

I wonder if Mr. Geddes sees the irony in attacking the legitimacy of Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb as a viable console cheerleader when it’s because of the demands of gamers the same age as he was when the PlayStation brand first arrived that gave Sony an opportunity in the first place. As far as solid console spokespersons are concerned, I’m interested in hearing who Mr. Geddes thinks is even fit for that role on the PlayStation 3 side. Last I checked, Sony wasn’t even concerned enough about their community to have someone other than aged corporate executives like Jack Tretton, Ken Kutaragi and Kazuo Hirai toot their system’s horn.

And Jessica Chobot, host of IGN Strategize which is front and center on Xbox Live, isn’t too shabby a mouthpiece – just ask the PSP. Sure, she’s not actually an official Xbox 360 or Xbox Live spokesperson, but the average gamer, who doesn’t browse gaming websites or read gaming magazines wouldn’t know that – they just see her plastered on one frame of Xbox Live almost every day. Perception is everything as Sony found out when suddenly the Xbox 360 was the talk of the industry.

Well, everyone except closeted PlayStation 3 fanboys with press passes.

Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, apparently inhabits a different reality from the rest of us.

In response to Conan O’Brien and David Letterman’s on-air attacks against Jay Leno, Mr. Ebersol chimed in with his two cents on the late night disaster by citing that Letterman “couldn’t beat (Leno) in the ratings” and blaming the debacle on “an astounding failure by Conan.”

This claim is in direct contradiction of the well-established facts of the situation, the most important of which is that this so-called late night shuffle is NBC’s clumsy attempt to appease their local affiliates who have long lamented the loss of lucrative ad revenue from their local news programs due to The Jay Leno Show’s weak performance relative to the scripted programming that used to occupy the 10-11pm time slot.

Mr. Ebersol’s comments appear as little more than a transparent attempt to back peddle on NBC’s misinterpretation of the success of Saturday Night Live’s Thursday night edition of Weekend Update during the Presidential election as the television audience’s growing “appetite for live, topical programming,” if you even subscribe to the honesty of that statement which many recognized as a smokescreen for their true motivation of drastically cutting the costs of their primetime programming (the production budget for an episode of, say, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit dwarfs that of a talk show episode).

This misstep by NBC cost their affiliates, who keep all of the profits from ad revenue for local nightly news programming, a lot of money, but NBC has only now decided to answer their complaints because of their potential to scuttle government approval of NBC’s sale to Comcast. The affiliates have been complaining almost since day one yet NBC was previously willing to continue to do the right thing by supporting O’Brien as their investment in the future of late night.

Now, O’Brien has reportedly signed an exit deal that unpleasantly severs his ties with NBC after having had little more than seven months to build an audience at his new time slot. When Leno took over hosting duties of The Tonight Show for Johnny Carson, who was a far more popular host than he ever was with ratings much higher than he ever had (Carson’s final show was viewed by an estimated 50 million people), NBC stuck with him through the first 15 months during which his ratings were far lower than Carson’s and through the next twenty-two months in direct competition with Late Show with David Letterman during which he lost in the ratings. In fact, it wasn’t until just over three years after the debut of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that the show finally beat Letterman’s not because Leno was funnier or more likable but because of the Hugh Grant interview in which the actor spoke rather candidly about the scandal surrounding his prostitution-related arrest.

I know Mr. Ebersol is just another corporate lackey spouting the company line, but it would have been nice to hear him stick with the facts rather than twist the truth into some ridiculous, self-serving claim to try to divert the blame that falls squarely – and deservedly – on his fellows’ shoulders.

That would have been far more revolutionary than a late night talk show airing during primetime.

When I came into work this morning, I certainly wasn’t expecting a Hollywood bombshell in my Inbox, but there it was: Tobey Maguire, Sam Raimi out of ‘Spider-Man.’

This is about as big a news story as there is in the Hollywood industry, what with the Spider-Man trilogy being one of the biggest film franchises in movie history and Sony Pictures’ top cash cow and that success being due mostly to the directorial efforts of Sam Raimi and the performance by Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, a.k.a. the eponymous web-slinger.

Raimi managed to take a license that had been languishing in development hell for the better part of 20 years and not only make it work but make it tremendously successful. The first film, released in May 2002 nearly two decades after the Spider-Man comic book property was optioned to B-movie legend Roger Corman, was an immediate blockbuster smash with over $820 million in worldwide box office revenues. The second film earned even more critical acclaim and raked in more than $780 million globally. Spider-Man 3 was less loved by critics and diehard Spider-Man fans alike but managed to outperform its predecessors by earning over $890 million in theaters.

Unfortunately, the current problems with the economy, to which Sony was far from immune having announced an operating loss of ¥227.8 billion in their 2009 annual report, forced the company’s movie studio to adopt a cost cutting policy that tightened the planned fourth film’s budget to $230 million, less than Spider-Man 3′s $258 million price tag and far less than what Raimi felt he needed to make a bigger and better Spider-Man movie.

Furthermore, Raimi was uncomfortable with the time frame he had to work with. Sony wanted to release the film in May 2011 which would not give him enough time to work with Gary Ross, the most recent writer to take on the story, to rewrite the script to his standards. Add to that some tension between the director and the studio over who the villain would be – Raimi was in talks with John Malkovich to play the Vulture who, like the villains before him, would represent some metaphorical challenge to the evolution of Peter’s character, while Sony wanted to go with Anne Hathaway as the Black Cat for more of a “complex love triangle” theme to perhaps bank on the popularity of the Twilight movies – and you can see how the project was starting to become a bit of a mess.

As it became more and more obvious that the two sides would not be able to reach a common ground as to how to proceed with the film, Raimi and stars Maguire and Kirsten Dunst walked away, not interested in another fiasco with less than stellar results a la Spider-Man 3, prompting Sony to release their official plans for a franchise “reboot” which would take Peter back to his formative high school years when he first acquired his super powers.

This, of course, begs the question of why the company felt the need for such a drastic change. Some may feel that it would be difficult for audiences to continue with the series without Raimi behind the camera and Maguire and Dunst center stage, and they would be right. Specifically Raimi and Maguire have become so synonymous with the franchise that most moviegoers, for whom the films are the only glimpse into the world of Spider-Man, can’t imagine anybody but Maguire wearing the red and blue spandex or anybody but Raimi presenting the latest chapter in the development of everyone’s favorite superhero as a character as only he can.

However, if you’re Sony and you’ve already resigned yourself to continue making Spider-Man movies without the director and stars that brought you to the dance, why add on top of the confusion a whole new version of the story millions upon millions of people the world over already saw almost eight years ago?

A better strategy would have been to do something akin to The Incredible Hulk where the studio went in a different direction with a new director, new actors and a new backstory without rewinding the clock to redo the origin story. The movie wasn’t a major success, but that was mainly because it had issues stemming from heavy edits, which Hulk fan and lead actor Edward Norton took exceptional issue with, forced by the studio in an attempt to change the tone of the film.

And those people, including Sony’s studio executives, pointing at success of the Batman film franchise reboot should keep in mind that the series that started with Batman in 1989 and ended with Batman & Robin in 1997 was such a mess with two drastically different directors, three different lead actors, eight different villains (three just in the fourth film), two sidekicks, and a partridge in a pear tree that by the end fans and critics alike viciously derided the movies and moviegoers let their feelings be known with their wallets (Batman & Robin was a domestic flop with $107,325,195 in U.S. box office receipts against a $125 million production budget).

Let’s also not forget that Christopher Nolan’s reboot of the film franchise marked an important shift in direction for the Batman character from the colorful and comical material of the Joel Schumacher films to the more appropriate dark themes explored in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both of which were much more in line with the original comic book origins of the Batman character.

When you consider the direction Sony wanted to take with the Black Cat as the main villain of the fourth Raimi movie alongside the implications of the reboot, it becomes quite clear that this is little more than a shameless attempt to cash in on the current popularity of entertainment properties that appeal to the tween and teen audiences, which is disappointing and insulting enough to moviegoers the world over that Sony risks alienating most of the people that made the Spider-man film series a blockbuster success in the first place.

Unlinked sources: The Vancouver Sun, The Independent, Box Office Mojo

When I first heard about last week’s rumors involving Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, my immediate reaction was that it had to be bull since NBC would never be stupid enough to mess around with an iconic program like The Tonight Show. NBC’s official announcement on Sunday that The Jay Leno Show would move from its 10:00-11:00PM ET time to a half-hour slot starting at 11:35PM ET, currently occupied by Conan O’Brien’s incarnation of The Tonight Show, proved that I gave “the peacock” way too much credit.

NBC officials already proved themselves ignorant of the common sense principles of network programming when they decided to cut the five hours of scripted television shows that aired in the 10:00-11:00PM slot in favor of a significantly cheaper Leno-hosted talk show under the guise of building on a renewed “appetite for live, topical programming.”

Whether you choose to believe that malarky, which paints NBC as not having the mental faculties to realize that the surge in ratings for their Saturday Night Live program was simply due to the fervor surrounding the Presidential election (specifically, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin), or the suspected cost cutting motivation for a company suffering from a consistent fourth place ratings spot since 2004 (ironically right around the time they announced that O’Brien would be taking over The Tonight Show from Leno in 2009) thanks to an inability to develop compelling new programs, the network comes out looking like a big, fat imbecile with no hope for salvation.

At least NBC is willing to acknowledge its mistakes and learn from them – the studio has ordered a veritable cornucopia of new drama concepts from entertainment luminaries such as producer Jerry Bruckheimer whose earlier television collaborations include the hit series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as well as Without a Trace and The Amazing Race, The Practice and Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley, and NYPD Blue writer and House creator David Shore as well as a new Law & Order spin-off that will take place in Los Angeles and hopefully be better than the excruciatingly boring Law & Order: Trial by Jury.

The problem is that this should have been what they did at the end of 2008 instead of developing a primetime version of Leno’s Tonight Show that, while handily beating CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman and even O’Brien’s Tonight Show in the ratings, had a next to zero chance of even remotely competing with the other networks’ scripted programming.

NBC really should have just parted ways with Leno despite the risk of him starting a new show at a competitor network. Instead of showing that they’re willing to make the effort to invest in the future with an edgier, smarter brand of comedy that is more in line with the changing tastes of American audiences who embraced films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Hangover in favor of movies like Old Dogs and Land of the Lost which are family comedies more akin to Leno’s safer, more traditional brand of comedy, the studio has sent a clear message that they’re mired in the past and have come off looking like desperate, reactionary fools by not giving either Leno or O’Brien’s programs even a year to build and grow.

In all their bumbling haste, NBC has buried their future in late night television, now that O’Brien has finally quit, in exchange for a quick band-aid for their current financial problems. Leno and Letterman’s shows, like the hosts themselves, are getting rather long in the tooth. Neither comedian is going to do this for that much longer – either because they themselves decide to hang up their gloves or audiences will have smartened up enough to demand better entertainment – and when the time comes for NBC to find a new host for The Tonight Show, who will be able to step up to the plate? Certainly not Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel. Definitely not Craig Ferguson. Carson Daly? Yeah, right.

But will The Tonight Show with Jay Leno even last that long? NBC has no doubt done some serious damage to Leno’s brand through this whole debacle with many people on the Internet – and even a fellow late night host – wrongfully laying the blame on him and undoubtedly ready to boycott his show… if it even gets that far (rumors are circulating that Leno may try to wash his hands of the situation by following O’Brien out of NBC).

About the only good thing coming out of this train wreck is that O’Brien comes out looking even better than he did before. His pride may have taken a little bit of a hit, but there is a tremendous amount of sympathy and support for O’Brien from the new generation of viewers who watch him not at 11:35 or 12:05 or 12:35 but anytime they want on sites like YouTube and are changing the landscape of the television industry by doing so. More importantly, he now has the opportunity to reinvent his brand free of the shackles and restrictions imposed on by NBC and perhaps should look to cable programming or even a less traditional format like a web show to accomplish it.

Whether Conan O’Brien chooses to reinvent the wheel like the pioneer he always was or simply improve it, it’s nice that his future is for once truly in his own hands.

Assassin’s Creed is almost a great game.

Ubisoft started with some innovative concepts such as the fluid motions of Parkour and the idea that the player would be able to reach almost any point they could see and combined them with an interesting story and some “almost there” gameplay mechanics to create a refreshing game that unfortunately is marred by issues like repetitive missions and sometimes frustrating combat. In this sense, Assassin’s Creed is somewhat of a disappointment because there is so much potential for a rock solid new franchise.

Assassin’s Creed was billed as an action adventure game set in the Middle East towards the end of the Third Crusade. The player takes on the role of a member of the Order of the Hashshashin, a specific branch of the Islamic faith from which the term “assassin” is believed to have been derived, named Altair who was recently disgraced and is working towards regaining his honor. However, it is quickly revealed that this is all just part of a virtual reality simulation using technology that is supposed to be able to read the “genetic memory” of the player character’s ancestors from his DNA sequence. The player character is actually a bartender who was kidnapped by a pharmaceutical company in order to learn information known only to his ancestors.

While the concept behind the technology is cool and its inclusion in the game allows for some novel ways to represent certain elements of the game’s design such as the revival of the player’s character after death and the direction of important cutscenes, this inclusion also feels somewhat tacked on, even intrusive to the gaming experience. It’s more than a little jarring to go from the medieval Middle East to a simple metallic room in today’s world with with computers, sliding doors and showers.

The “story within the story” of the Muslim assassins targeting certain ruling figures within the three key cities of Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem could have stood alone as an intriguing mystery – as you assassinate each target you learn a little bit more about what connects the people you’re sent to kill and their plans for the future – and a parable about the dangers of blind faith. You should never take for granted that your leaders automatically have society’s best interests at heart and the story writers deliberately made it vague whether it was your character or your enemies who were on the wrong side of the battle.

Nevertheless, even as Altair questions his orders, he continues to follow them, taking out target after target on the road to discovering just what he’s really fighting for. Unfortunately, the game gets rather repetitive when it comes to accomplishing the tasks that earn you the right to go after the target. After entering each city, you first have to find the local bureau leader who will inform you of the parts of the city where valuable information about your target can be acquired. This information is always retrieved in the same manner – you partake in at least three of six available missions in which you might coerce a lackey to reveal your target’s crimes or find clues through pickpocketing or eavesdropping. Occassionally, you’ll be solicited by fellow members of the Hashshashin to assassinate guards or collect flags within a certain time period in exchange for bonus clues that could help in your primary mission.

Once you have enough information to satisfy the bureau leader, you are given leave to take out your target, off to yet another chase through the streets or across the rooftops of the city until your victim-to-be decides to stand and face you (usually once about a dozen guards have caught up). Although you can technically try a more stealthy approach to assassinating your target, there really is no point since the stealth aspects of the game are quite mundane (basically hold the “A” button while walking around to pretend your a monk or scholar) and it’s way too easy to fail, turning the mission into nothing more than a glorified sword fight, which would be okay if the combat system weren’t so tedious.

When fighting opponents, you really only have one of two options: keep hacking away until they stop blocking with their weapons or wait for them to attack so you can counter. The latter is generally the more fun approach as there are some pretty cool cinematics played anytime you counter an attack into a deathblow but unfortunately you more often than not just knock them back with a punch in the face that doesn’t even damage them. Going on the offensive is usually more risky as it exposes your back to the other half dozen enemies involved in the fight, but at least you feel like you’re taking action instead of just waiting for something to happen.

As good as the enemies are at blocking and countering your attacks, maneuvering into better positions and actually attacking you more than one at a time, the guards tend to be quite dumb the rest of the time. You can pickpocket citizens right in front of them, leap around like a member of Cirque du Soleil without drawing much attention from anyone except the passers by and sometimes even trespass right in front of them without much danger. At times, they’ll recognize when you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be, in which case you can just toss a knife at them or leap forward to plunge your retractable blade into their necks, but at other times you can be running on top of the parapet they’re guarding and they won’t even notice. And if you happen to catch their attention, you can usually just drop below a ledge or walk behind a column to appease them – out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.

Where Assassin’s Creed does shine is in the world Ubisoft created and the tools they give you to explore every inch of it. The developers poured hundreds of hours into researching the three ancient cities in which the game takes place and the results certainly show the value of such dedication and attention to detail. All of the buildings, from the lowly abodes in the poor shanty town neighborhoods to the magnificent palaces, immense fortresses and towering churches that define each city’s skyline, are full of personality and beautifully rendered with every door, window and displaced brick a possible hand hold for Altair to latch onto. The cities also feel very much alive with plenty of citizens roaming the streets, hawking their wares in busy market stalls, begging for money, and even wondering aloud what mental disease afflicts the white robed man trying to climb the side of a house.

The hard work of the design staff really hits home when you scale some of the taller structures, such as the Citadel of the Holy Cross in Acre, and are treated to breathtaking panoramic sweeps of the city below you. The massive scale of each city is incredible, and it’s amazing how you can travel from one end to another without any noticeable load times. The creation of these cities is one of the most impressive accomplishments of this generation of video games.

It’s just too bad that such a feat is wasted on what boils down to a rather rudimentary action game. While playing Assassin’s Creed, I often wondered why Ubisoft didn’t develop a “next generation” Prince of Persia game around this concept, which is much more aligned with the exploratory nature of those games than with the generally more realistic scenario used in this game. Ubisoft should have instead taken cues from the Hitman and Thief series whose dynamic stealth gameplay is much more appropriate for an assassination game.

All in all, Assassin’s Creed is a good game with an interesting premise and stunning graphics that put most of its peers to shame. Unfortunately, numerous problems with gameplay mechanics and some poor game design decisions keep the game from reaching its potential. Thankfully, reports are that the development team took all of the criticism to heart and created a sequel that may do what its predecessor couldn’t and become one of the best gaming experiences of the generation.

Final score: 3 out of 5

Parent to parent

The game is called Assassin’s Creed. That should raise a red flag before you even turn the box over. The whole point of the game is to stalk and assassinate people either with the swords you wear on your belt or the hidden blade that pops out where your left ring finger used to be. I’d say that’s cause enough to keep little Timmy moving on down the Xbox 360 aisle to other games.

Experience this for yourself!

• Assassin’s Creed Platinum Hits (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Assassin’s Creed Greatest Hits (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)