Never Too Old To Play™

Resident Evil fans can be generally split into two groups: players who enjoy and embrace the action-oriented third-person game play style of Resident Evil 4 and 5 and those who prefer the old school puzzle solving with a more moderate dose of zombie killing action.

Desperate Escape, the second piece of downloadable content for Resident Evil 5, is clearly geared more towards the action fans in contrast to Lost In Nightmares which, while offering a lot of cleverly crafted nostalgia to gamers who grew up with the earlier entries in the series in the 90’s, feels like a completely separate entity instead of an expansion on the main game.

In Desperate Escape, the player takes control of recently saved Jill Valentine (or can use Sheva Alomar’s comrade Josh Stone after beating the episode once) on a side journey that details just how Jill and Josh ended up in the helicopter during the final cut scene of Resident Evil 5.

Whereas gamers who have no history with the Resident Evil franchise may get thrown by the drastically different game play style of Lost In Nightmares, they’ll easily transition to Desperate Escape which uses characters, enemies and environments from the main game. The episode fits perfectly into the world, and the very basic story complements the campaign proper which makes for a better, more seamless experience.

Desperate Escape is basically more of everything players loved (or hated) about Resident Evil 5 so the gamer knows exactly what they’re getting when they plunk down the $5 for the download (the content is also available as part of the Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition package for those players who were late to the game).

I think both pieces of downloadable content are worth playing for long time fans of the Resident Evil series, but if I had to choose one to recommend I would suggest Desperate Escape in a heartbeat since it’s a much more exciting experience that is truer to Resident Evil 5’s heartbeat.

Final score: 4 out of 5

Parent to parent

Like I said in my review, Desperate Escape is more of everything that was great in Resident Evil 5 which includes the gore and the violence. I wouldn’t recommend the main game to young children, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend this expansion.

Experience this for yourself!

• Resident Evil 5: Desperate Escape (Xbox Live Marketplace)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)

I know I’m not alone in wishing for a remake of the first (and second for that matter) Resident Evil games using the new perspective and game play style employed by Resident Evil 5. That may be a pipe dream, but for now players wishing to take a stroll down memory lane can do so by playing Lost In Nightmares, a downloadable episode available on Xbox Live (or as part of the Resident Evil: Gold Edition available for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3).

Lost In Nightmares is the playable version of the flashback in Resident Evil 5 where series protagonist Chris Redfield recounts his mission with ex-partner Jill Valentine searching the European mansion of Umbrella Corporation chairman Ozwell E. Spencer.

The setting is deliberately reminiscent of the Arklay Mountains mansion in which the first Resident Evil game takes place. In fact, the entire chapter is essentially a throwback to that first game with tons of tiny little homages to the one that started it all. For instance, when you open doors in Lost In Nightmares, the view switches to a head-on perspective of the slowly opening door just like in the original game. There are also little winks and nods involving shattering windows, ceiling traps and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

The only problem is that for the most part the episode is really quite boring. While it’s nice to see puzzles that are very similar to the ones gamers enjoyed back in the 90’s when the first game came out, the near utter lack of action sequences is quite jarring after having played the action heavy Resident Evil 5 main campaign. It’s true that Resident Evil didn’t boast non-stop gun fights, but Capcom seems to have swung to the completely opposite end of the spectrum with this DLC.

This isn’t to say that there’s no action anywhere in the entire mission, but what little there is seems somewhat mundane. Gamers meet a brand new enemy about halfway through the episode, but aside from the final boss fight that new enemy is the only type you encounter.

There are no zombies, no infected dogs, no Majini, etc. so there’s really no traditional combat sequences because the new enemy is one of those “very dangerous but very slow” types that you can almost always avoid fighting altogether.

Just about the only part of Lost In Nightmares that feels like it’s part of Resident Evil 5 at all is the final boss battle in which you face an enemy you battled in the full game by using the same strategies and techniques. It’s very frustrating for me personally that this is the tie-in since the game play style for this particular boss was my least favorite in Resident Evil 5.

Despite all of the issues I had with Lost In Nightmares, I still recommend it to die hard fans of the series (or at least the first game) since there are a lot of little Easter egg type details that fans should enjoy. I’m torn on this download myself because while I enjoyed the nostalgic aspects, I found myself incredibly bored with a good portion of the episode. Perhaps I need to recognize that my tastes have changed and to stop wishing for what Resident Evil was so I can focus 100% on my enjoyment of what Resident Evil has become.

Final score: 3 out of 5

Parent to parent

While this is an expansion for a game that I would not recommend for children, the significant lack of combat almost allows me to offer an opinion that the episode is child-safe. However, what the new enemy does to your character if it manages to get a hold of them is easily as gory as anything you’ll find in Resident Evil 5. Further, you would need to purchase the main game in order to play this expansion so there really isn’t any reason a child should ever be playing Lost In Nightmares.

Experience this for yourself!

• Resident Evil 5: Lost In Nightmares (Xbox Live Marketplace)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)

The highly anticipated Halo: Reach raked in $200 million in sales after just one day on retail shelves, outshining Halo 3’s first day take of $170 million on September 25, 2007. That impressive total generated on Tuesday’s launch is far short of the current single day record of $310 million posted by Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which debuted on November 10, 2009 on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

It’s a rather auspicious start for the new first-person shooter game that chronicles the actions of the doomed Noble Team, a squadron of Spartan super soldiers stationed on human colony Reach during the massacre Halo fans know as “The Fall of Reach.”

I’m personally happy that Halo: Reach has done so well in just this short window of time as it proves that gamers can embrace a Halo game that isn’t just more repetitive schlock involving Master Chief. After the massive disappointment of Halo 3, Halo: Reach seems to be another breath of fresh air (Halo 3: ODST was a nice appetizer) that can put Halo back on my personal list of great gaming franchises.

Zombies have always frightened me. The idea of an easily communicable disease or pathogen that forcibly removes all sense of self and converts a person into an essentially mindless husk of what was once there disturbs me. The idea of a merciless, focused enemy horde that grows by virtue of whittling away the opposition, and the sense that as each day passes there are less of “you” and that many more of “them” is eerie. The thought that it’s really not a matter of if but when you become a snack for the masses, screaming in agony as a dozen reeking, rotting living corpses tear into your flesh while you’re still alive, while your blood is still pumping through your body (and now squirting out of your severed veins), is enough to make me shudder.

Yes, zombies have always frightened me. I am, and always have been, a huge fan of horror, especially films of the zombie sub-genre like George Romero’s classic Dead series so it really did not surprise me that it was love at first sight when I first experienced Resident Evil on the Sony PlayStation.

Capcom’s classic survival horror masterpiece was the first video game to make me feel pure, unadulterated fear. It arrived at a time when video games were only just starting to take on more mature themes with many people still entrenched in Nintendo’s rainbow parade of happiness. Mario and Donkey Kong made me happy and kept me smiling; I virtually peed my pants five minutes into Resident Evil when that first zombie dog crashed through the hallway window.

Even better, it kept up that level of tension throughout the whole experience. At no point in Resident Evil did you really feel safe because there could be a zombie hiding behind any door or a dog waiting to jump through any window, and since you didn’t enjoy the benefit of the bottomless backpack that so many video games of the time employed you couldn’t rely on the safety blanket of adequate ammo and medical supplies to ensure your survival through the next area.

Resident Evil 5 is quite a different game from its great, great, great grandfather. It’s not so much a survivor horror game as it is a survivor action game. The enemies aren’t reanimated corpses but they still act a bit like zombies as they stalk you; now, though, they’re hapless victims of creepy parasites that jam their way down your throat and turn you into bloodthirsty savages – they don’t want to eat you, but they hope to make you dead.

There are a lot more of them, too. In Resident Evil, you’d meet a zombie every few rooms or hallways – the anxiety of bumping into one around the next corner or behind the next door, especially when you were low on ammunition, was what kept the heart pounding. In Resident Evil 5, however, the tension comes from having to stave off a slowly advancing horde without being able to run and gun your way through like a super soldier.

You see, Resident Evil 5 isn’t a traditional shooter game despite kind of looking like one – Capcom decided in the previous game to change things up from the trademark fixed perspective of the series and make the experience a little more personal by putting the camera behind the player character just above the shoulder – because you have to set yourself and aim before you can actually shoot anything. It’s understandably a little disconcerting to gamers heavily invested in the typical first- or third-person shooter style of play, but it adds a little excitement and challenge to what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill shooting game.

Adding to the tension is the new real-time inventory management system that doesn’t include a “pause” function. If you’re down to your last sliver of life and being chased by a chainsaw-wielding psychopath, it’s more than a little harrowing not to be able to freeze the game and take your sweet time deciding between one medicine or another. Thankfully, Capcom gives you a little bit of leeway by allowing you to set certain items to one of the four points on the directional pad so you can quickly equip that item if you need it in the heat of battle; good luck if you didn’t prepare beforehand, though.

The game opens with an introductory cinematic that gives you a little preview of things to come before dropping you in a dilapidated Kijuju shanty town filled with people who are no longer the welcoming type. You play Chris Redfield, the hero from the very first Resident Evil game, who is now a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) on a mission to apprehend one Ricardo Irving, a black market arms dealer attempting to sell a bio weapon of an undisclosed nature (fans of the series should easily be able to figure out what the weapon is).

Your partner on this mission is Sheva Alomar, a top agent in the BSAA’s African branch, who you can play as in subsequent playthroughs after you beat the game. She is quite a contrast to Chris from a design perspective: while Chris is enormous – he must have injected a ton of steroids because he makes WWE’s John Cena look like a skinny little nerd – Sheva is lean and svelte; while Chris is dressed like an operative, Sheva looks like someone about to go on a hike; while Chris pummels his opponents with brutal hooks and uppercuts, Sheva uses graceful kicks to incapacitate her foes.

Sheva is probably one of the best AI partners I’ve ever worked with in a video game. She rarely gets in the way, is quick to heal you when enemies have dealt the pain, keeps up with you quite well, and is quite competent in combat situations (she has saved my butt on more than one occasion).

The common enemy types early in the game are not nearly as competent. While you’re taking out their buddies alongside them, they’ll just keep advancing on your position. The challenge comes in their sheer numbers and ability to absorb damage. You don’t get more powerful weapons until later in the game so it’s not very difficult to get into a sticky situation where you’re being overwhelmed by a horde of infected rabble despite how slow they move when they get near you and how much more open the environments are than earlier games in the series. I’ve heard people vent in frustration about the nuances of the control scheme which prevent you from “running and gunning;” I’m of the opinion that the game is most exciting in these circumstances thanks in no small part to the particular gameplay style.

An especially enjoyable aspect of Resident Evil 5 is the high level of quality in the graphics. From both a technical and creative perspective, the game’s visuals are top notch to the point of being one of the best looking games of the generation. There’s an incredible amount of detail in every part of the game from the different textures of your characters’ outfits to the glossy sheen of the exposed musculature of a classic Resident Evil monster you meet later in the game.

As impressive is just how good each of the number of varied environments you visit in the game look. You’ll find yourself speeding across dusty savannah in a Humvee, wading through crocodile-infested swampland, exploring ancient, subterranean tribal ruins, and pushing through abandoned research facilities. Each environment is gorgeous to behold because of the amount of attention paid to the little details that make it look like a living, breathing place. As you race by the unkempt, decrepit structures in that first shanty town, you can imagine that the people hunting you down were stuck in a living Hell long before the parasites got to them.

The story builds upon events from previous Resident Evil games and even earlier as certain flashback scenes and many of the documents you discover touch upon the lengthy history and back story behind the entire franchise. Most notable is the clear revelation of the relationship between series villain Albert Wesker and the founder of Umbrella Corporation, Ozwell E. Spencer; fans are finally told exactly what Wesker’s motivation has been throughout the six proper games. I saw the story really only failing during one particularly cheesy cutscene just prior to a boss battle where one of your adversaries starts spouting grimace-inducing pop culture references before injecting himself with a mutagen.

Resident Evil 5 is certainly not for everyone. Fans of the series as a whole will most likely enjoy this final entry in the main series – producer Jun Takeuchi said that the sixth game would probably be a reboot, and Capcom estimated that the next game could take as long as eight years to make – and even gamers who were not enamored with the story of the earlier games might enjoy this one due to the changes in gameplay direction and a departure from the zombie premise. The people most likely to have an issue with this game are those accustomed to the more freeform first- and third-person shooter style of gameplay who might feel too restricted by this departure. Nonetheless, this is a game interesting enough to at least give a shot before making a final decision one way or another – give the demo a go: it’s a pretty accurate representation of what you’ll be doing through the rest of the game.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

If you’re shopping for a younger player, just leave this game on the shelf. There is a lot of violence and gore in this game with the player taking part in the killing of people who are essentially just victims of an evil corporation’s gruesome bio weapons experiments. The actual infection and transformation processes are depicted quite early in the game, but there is equally disturbing imagery further on as various people undergo hideous mutations into vicious beasts. This is definitely a “Rated R” type of game so act accordingly.

Experience this for yourself!

• Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 (PC) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 Collector’s Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 Collector’s Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Xbox 360 Elite Limited Edition Red Resident Evil 5 Console (Amazon)

Anyone who has played Baldur’s Gate (or its sequel), Neverwinter Nights or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic knows that BioWare is one of the top video game development studios in the industry. As far as the role-playing game genre is concerned, the strength of the BioWare brand is second only to that of Square Enix (although that could change soon if the reception of the two companies’ recent releases are any indication).

Almost every BioWare game is both a financial success and a critical darling:

• Baldur’s Gate sold over 2 million copies worldwide during a time when the computer role-playing game genre was struggling and won numerous Game of the Year awards from various industry publications. 
• Baldur’s Gate II and Neverwinter Nights also sold over 2 million copies worldwide and won various year-end awards.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide, won numerous Game of the Year awards and is considered by many not only to be one of the best and most influential Star Wars works but one of the best games of all time.

BioWare continued this trend with their first next-generation release, Mass Effect, and surpassed their past achievements by creating a game that is without a doubt superior to all those that came before it. Mass Effect is quite frankly an evolution of the role-playing game genre, building on concepts first introduced in Knights of the Old Republic to reach a point where the player is deeply and directly involved in playing a role instead of just assigning stat points.

Don’t get me wrong – the game involves character customization (a ton of it, to be honest) for all the stat geeks out there. The ability to decide whether your character will be mighty brute of a warrior or a powerful wizard, a front line trooper or a stealthy sniper is important to role-playing games.

However, most RPGs (especially Japanese RPGs) are content to limit the effects of the player’s choices to just the combat. The rest of the time, the player is just watching as their character goes through predetermined, unchanging cutscenes where the exact progression of the script was set in stone long before the game even hit the shelves. No matter what kind of player you are, no matter how you’ve chosen to build your character, the details of the story and the dialogue – and how your character fits into it all – is exactly the same as it is for any other player.

This is not the case with Mass Effect where almost every conversation in the game includes dialogue choices that can elicit notably different responses from the other characters. Depending on how you interact with a given character, you may be able to learn useful information, avoid (or initiate) a combat situation or even set up an eventual romantic encounter. Better yet, many of the choices you make in this game have some effect on aspects of future games in the series.

While the game of course follows a general story structure – no matter what choices you make, you’re going to end up facing the final enemy in the game – the details of how you get there are going to be different for each player because each player is going to decide when their character will stand up for what’s right, when their character will take the low road and when their character simply doesn’t give a damn, and those decisions will determine how much of the story the player gets to experience.

And trust me – you’ll want to experience as much of the story as possible. The writing is far better than what you’ll find in most video games and even most movies, and the story has a truly epic feel to it. Playing through the game is almost like watching a cinematic masterpiece unfold before you, like discovering the love child of Star Wars and The Godfather. But you get to participate in exactly how it all plays out: you get to decide whether Luke Skywalker is a momma’s boy or a gangsta from the mean streets of Mos Eisley. There’s so much story that you can’t even experience it all the first time through – to truly see and hear everything the game has to offer, you have to play through multiple times and make different choices to see how it all plays out.

If you decide to do this, your eyes certainly won’t be worse for wear as the game is absolutely beautiful. The level of detail in the graphics is simply stunning although perhaps a bit ambitious for a team working with both the Xbox 360 hardware and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 for the first time. Especially impressive is the modeling and animation of the faces during all the conversation scenes – although some of the characters fall deep into the uncanny valley, these are nevertheless the best faces of any video game by far.

The game does suffer from a very inconsistent frame rate, some noticeable texture pop-in when you enter new areas and a strange symptom where sometimes during cutscenes parts of a character’s face look like they’re missing, almost like they’re in front of a green screen and someone speckled green paint on their heads. Fortunately, most of the visual bugs go away when you install the game to the hard drive – I highly recommend you do this if your 360 has a hard drive.

Perhaps the most incredible feat BioWare pulled off during the development of this game was their creation of one of the most believable universes in video game history. As you progress through the game, you’ll encounter about a dozen different intelligent alien species that you’ll be able to interact with. In some cases, you’ll be able to recruit a representative to your squad.

The various races look quite distinct from one another despite most being of humanoid form. For example, the volus are short, squat beings who are shaped somewhat like bipedal rodents – BioWare probably named them after the vole – although one can’t say for sure what exactly they look like since they have to wear pressurized environment suits due to their ammonia-based biochemistry while the hanar resemble giant walking jellyfish and the asari, an entirely female species that is somehow attractive to all races, look very much like blue-skinned human women.

BioWare didn’t stop with just visual differences, though. As you interact with members of the different species, you’ll notice distinctive vocal qualities as well as varied adaptations to the English language. The aforementioned hanar, who speak in a melodic tone, always refer to themselves as “this one” or “it” when conversing with individuals they do not consider close friends or family as the usage of the first person with strangers or mere acquaintances is considered egotistical in their culture. The giant elcor, who hail from a high gravity planet, speak in monotone with a deep, hollow vocal quality; thus, they have to explicitly communicate the tone of their statement (i.e. anger, sarcasm, happiness) in order to avoid misunderstandings with other races.

Further, BioWare developed for each race a relatively detailed culture and history which often times comes into play when you converse with members of that species. For example, you won’t find a shortage of complaints from volus individuals about how unfair it is that their species does not have a seat on the Citadel Council, the ruling body that presides over the galaxy, despite their contributions.

Mass Effect is one of the only games where you are cognizant of a world outside of the area in which you’re playing. You and your comrades are just one piece of the whole puzzle – a big freakin’ piece but still just one piece. Regardless of whether you are successful in your mission to defeat the enemy, the universe will keep moving on: the Council races will still look down on humans; Krogans will still hate Salarians for the sterilization they instilled upon them; Quarians will continue their nomadic existence.

BioWare included all these little details that fill out the world they created to make it vibrant and real such that it almost becomes an organic entity unto itself instead of just a backdrop for the action like in most games. Theirs is one of the most fully realized game universes ever put to disc (or cartridge for that matter).

As great as the game is, it’s not all that surprising that it wasn’t a runaway success. BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic was well received but its spiritual successor Jade Empire, its first foray into inventing their own intellectual property instead of licensing an already successful on such as Star Wars or Dungeons & Dragons, didn’t fare quite as well at retail. However, good word of mouth (and some price drops) helped it accrue more than two million in sales since November 2007.

Now that you can purchase Mass Effect as a Platinum Hit for the more than reasonable price of $19.99, there really is no reason for you to not give it a try. It’s easily one of the best games of the generation and a masterful experience that you’d find hard not to enjoy.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

I probably would not recommend Mass Effect for younger gamers. It’s hard for me to say that because I think the title has some of the best storytelling in gaming history with a lot of thought provoking material, but that material is often based on rather mature themes that are likely too heavy for most children. The game also involves a lot of violence as well as an optional romantic side story which can culminate in a love scene – a fairly ambiguous and tasteful one but a love scene nonetheless.

Experience this for yourself!

• Mass Effect (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect (PC) (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)

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.