Never Too Old To Play™

Originally intended as an Xbox 360 launch title when it was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2005, Alan Wake finally arrived in May of this year to hordes of anxious fans. Okay… well… not hordes of fans, or even very many at all (less than 750,000 copies of the title have been sold worldwide in nearly 5 months on the market).

However, just because the general gaming public didn’t take to the game doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t… depending on the type of gamer you are. While Alan Wake employs a fair amount of combat, it’s not really an action game at its core. The game has a more psychological feel to it with a rather eerie atmosphere, much more reminiscent of Silent Hill (another game series that hasn’t done very well at retail) than the blockbuster Resident Evil series.

In Alan Wake, you take on the role of the titular character who is a former best selling novelist looking for some inspiration to get past his two year writer’s block in the quaint Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls, Washington. As expected, Alan’s life is turned upside down when his wife, Alice, disappears from the remote lake island cabin they rented and he is blamed. Strange, nightmarish things start happening, leading Alan to believe that there’s much more going on than a simple kidnapping, and he must work with his agent and the local sheriff to stop an evil from engulfing the whole town.

It’s an interesting premise that is superbly realized on the screen by a combination of clever writing and beautiful art direction as well as some engaging game play elements that fit perfectly with the game’s decidedly dark atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the more cerebral nature of the plot probably dooms the game to a lifetime of abstinence from the more trigger happy segment of the gaming market looking only for the next Call of Duty or Gears of War title to grace store shelves. It’s understandable that they would be turned off by the more slow paced game play and fantastical elements of the story when all they really want to do is frag their buddies in online deathmatches.

I’m sure the lengthy development process also turned off a lot of gamers who may have been truly excited for the game back when it was first announced or when it was “coming soon” for the first several years of the Xbox 360’s life. The game does look like it was developed earlier in the generation: the art direction is wonderful, but the graphics technology is obviously dated. Great graphics don’t inherently lead to a great game, but it’s entirely understandable that some people have trouble ignoring the visual wonders of titles like Uncharted 2 and Red Dead Redemption when looking at the preview stills from Alan Wake plastered all over gaming websites.

Nevertheless, gamers who decide to pass over this title in favor of the next frag fest or action extravaganza are most certainly doing themselves a disservice as Alan Wake offers a unique game play experience coupled with a disturbing yet enthralling story line all wrapped up in a chilling atmosphere that would make Stephen King proud. Indeed, playing Alan Wake is likely the closest thing to playing a good video game adaptation of a King novel, complete with the accompanying paranoia and week long aversion to walking down into the basement by yourself.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

This is not a game for children. There are some mature themes in play during the course of the game, and the gamer is required to engage in quite a lot of violence against enemies that are essentially representations of the townsfolk they meet early on.  The dark and supernatural aspects of the experience certainly don’t help. Enjoy the game yourself, but spare your kids the nightmares.

Experience this for yourself!

• Alan Wake (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Alan Wake: Limited Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)

It’s been a while since the shift of power in the console gaming industry from Japanese developers to their Western counterparts. Microsoft kick started this trend with the introduction of the Xbox, a video game console that was similar enough in architecture and design to a PC that formerly PC-centric developers had little problems porting their titles to the system. All of a sudden, Western developers like Bungie, Epic, id, and Valve who were marquee players in the world of Windows and Macintosh gaming but virtually unknown by gamers whose cash lined the coffers at Nintendo, Sega and Sony found themselves at the door of a whole new market of consumers.

However, while the console gaming population’s appetite for games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto III, and Splinter Cell grew, they still relied on Japanese developers like Square and Namco for their role-playing fix. Game series like Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest were among the many Japanese role-playing franchises available on the PlayStation 2, and the genre contributed to the console’s greatest strength: its “something for everyone” library of software. Some titles even reached blockbuster status with four in the top ten list of best selling PlayStation 2 games.

Then, the Xbox 360 arrived and everything changed. (Cue dramatic music.)

Actually, all Microsoft did was take the smart approach with regards to the design of their new console. (Cue PlayStation 3 fanboys ranting about RROD.) Microsoft knew the appeal the Western style of game development, up to that point mostly exclusive to the PC platform, would have with the growing video game market, and knew what those developers liked about working with the Xbox. Instead of trying to make radical changes for the sake of change (and under the guise of innovation), they simply expanded on what already worked and kept the architecture similar enough that the transition from Xbox to Xbox 360 would be fairly easy for developers. More importantly, they listened when the teams demanded more memory without which games like Gears of War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare would have been impossible.

One of the results of this approach was the release of highly evolved fourth entry in the Elder Scrolls role-playing game series on video game consoles. Oblivion arrived to much fanfare due to the high degree of character customization, the vast and fully realized world, the sheer number of characters with whom to interact, the epic story, and the beautiful graphics which all but guaranteed that gamers who weren’t interested in role-playing games before took notice. Critics raved about the game to the tune of a mid-90s average review score and many year end awards. The game went on to sell 2.93 million units on the Xbox 360 platform and 1.15 million units on the PlayStation 3 platform.

Bethesda followed up this masterpiece two and a half years later with the even better Fallout 3, a more action-oriented role-playing game set in the post apocalyptic world of the Fallout series of computer role-playing games. Fallout 3 was almost the exact opposite of Oblivion as far as concept – instead of a high fantasy world of wizards and warriors, elves and monsters, and good and evil, you had a depressing glimpse at a realistically possible future set on the desolate backdrop of a ravaged Washington D.C. where the denizens didn’t have the luxury of worrying much about the morality of their choices.

Similarly, BioWare’s space opera Mass Effect, released a year before Fallout 3 in 2007, challenged the player’s own perception of what was right and wrong. Although the setting was completely different – Mass Effect took place in a distant future where humans are galaxy-trotting with aliens on board advanced starships – the developers had the same approach with regards to the choices you made: almost nothing was clear cut good and evil, and it was commonplace for someone to find themselves conflicted about which path was the right one to take.

What these three games did was introduce console gamers to actual role-playing games where the gamer actually plays a role by deciding what their character says and does, and how they say and do it. Until this point, most gamers only knew Japanese RPGs, which were games that merely paid lip service to the term “role-playing game” – the stat-building aspect of traditional tabletop role-playing games was there but the spirit of the genre was missing.

Oblivion, Mass Effect and Fallout 3 opened gamers’ eyes to the reality of JRPGs. The wool over their eyes had been lifted and many realized just how shallow and simple these games were: it’s kind of hard to go back to the linear progression, restrictive turn-based combat, static stories, and canned dialogue that simply served as sound for pre-rendered cutscenes when you’ve experienced open worlds, thousands of dialogue options, real-time action, and the ability to make choices that have an actual impact on the game.

The old style of “role-playing” was no longer acceptable, and both sales and critical reviews reflected this new attitude. Of all the JRPGs released this generation, only one – Final Fantasy XIII - broke a million units sold with 1.88 million as of early February. Mind you, this is after seven weeks on sale in Japan where Final Fantasy XII sold 1.82 million units in Japan in the first week alone and ended up with a total 5.69 million units worldwide when all was said and done.

Games without the benefit of a mega franchise fared significantly worse at retail: Infinite Undiscovery from Square moved only 0.57 million units; Blue Dragon moved less than that at 0.53 million worldwide; and the well-reviewed Demon’s Souls (GameSpot’s 2009 Game of the Year) has only managed 0.63 million in sales. And none of the JRPGs released this generation have achieved aggregate scores in the 90’s at MetaCritic whereas just one – Demon’s Souls - barely made it at GameRankings (Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect 2 all scored in the 90’s on both sites).

And if the game with one of the biggest brand names in console gaming history can’t put Japanese role-playing games back in the spotlight, what game can? Dragon Quest X? Highly unlikely despite the history of that series because the game will be a Wii exclusive. A third Kingdom Hearts game? The Final Fantasy series has historically sold better and received better reviews so the likelihood of that currently theoretical game surpassing Final Fantasy XIII is probably low. Plus, the real diehard Disney gamers are actually likely to spend the money on a Wii (if they don’t already have one for all those Disney licensed games) just to play Epic Mickey, a Disney game where you actually play Mickey Mouse instead of just drag his buddies Donald Duck and Goofy along for the ride, instead.

No, sadly (for JRPG fans, anyway) this seems like the permanent trend as Western developers for all genres take the reins of the video game industry from Japanese developers mired in their old ways, unwilling to adapt with the times and create products that appeal to more than just the often quirky tastes of the Japanese consumers.

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.

The IGN family of gaming websites is my general “go to” source for game reviews and game-related news, information and editorials. I’ve been an avid fan since the early 2000’s and visit their various websites on an almost daily basis.

Lately, IGN has been giving me a different reason to love them, though. Earlier this week, Rus McLaughlin told us readers why he doesn’t think Halo 3: ODST is Game of the Year material, citing issues he apparently doesn’t believe apply to the equally unimpressive but far less hyped Halo 3, which prompted me to point out how Halo 3 fails in the same ways. I’m thankful for this as there are only so many reviews one can write in a week.

A couple of days ago, Ryan Geddes opined that Epic Games needs to rip certain pages from Bungie’s Halo playbook in order for their blockbuster Gears of War franchise to thrive in the future. In addition to the rather unbelievable supposition that there’s any chance that future Gears of War games won’t be even more successful than the first two, Mr. Geddes both suggests things that are simply smart game development choices attributable to any number of studios and games and criticizes what he sees as faults with Gears of War that are every bit as applicable to Halo.

One of the most critical issues with both Gears of War and its sequel is the rather lackluster multiplayer experience that is at best a tepid, toned down version of classic PC multiplayer deathmatches with the exception of the second game’s compelling Horde mode (in which up to five players must work together to face increasingly difficult waves of Locust forces with the goal of surviving as long as possible).

One compelling multiplayer mode is not good enough, though. Multiplayer is a very important aspect of games, especially shooters, these days, and gamers need more than just standard deathmatches if a game is to have any longevity. However, improving the flaws in the multiplayer experience is not emulating Halo 3 - there are plenty of action games with great multiplayer components such as the Call of Duty and Left4Dead series – but just following common sense.

In fact, I hope that Epic doesn’t try to make Gears of War’s multiplayer mode a mirror image of Halo 3’s (and, yes, I recognize that Mr. Geddes also stated they shouldn’t) because with Halo 3, the Halo franchise’s multiplayer experience has degenerated into a bunch of ten-year-old kids running out of the gate for the most powerful weapon and then jumping up and down all over the map while spewing vulgarities that would make Eminem cringe. And, yes, I’m hyperbolizing.

It really just seems as if Epic Games has lost some of its identity with its transition to the console world. They really redefined the PC multiplayer gaming experience with their Unreal Tournament series of competitive multiplayer games whose single player campaigns were just the multiplayer mode with bots yet chose to focus on the single-player experience with Gears of War.

They, along with other PC-centric developers like Valve Corporation, also made extraordinary efforts to work with the fan communities for their games with design director Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski often interacting with gamers on the company’s online forums and the company including hardcore fans in public beta tests of upcoming games and modes. Mr. Geddes seems to have forgotten this (or maybe never knew it in the first place) in speaking about Bungie’s multiplayer beta of Halo 3 as if they were the only company that did this.

On the other hand, I don’t think “community building” is really all that central to the success of mainstream blockbuster games these days. The hardcore fans might spend their time posting comments in Bungie, Epic and Valve’s forums, but the more mainstream gamers don’t visit gaming websites or post on message boards.

I assure you those mainstream gamers didn’t contribute to Halo 3’s eight million+ in sales because of what Bungie was doing at some gaming convention or because of cryptic websites, both of which really only matter to the devoted hardcore Halo loyalists. Everyone else? They were just brainwashed by the insane marketing machine Microsoft pushed out there, with images of the Master Chief everywhere from movie screens to bus stops to soda cans.

If Epic can really take anything away from this, it’s that you need to spend over $40 million if you want to sell eight million units of your game. I imagine, though, that they were happy with selling five million based on the strength of the previous game alone.

Mr. Geddes goes on to talk about how deep and expansive the Halo universe, how much more complex and provoking Bungie’s games are, when in reality the Halo and Gears of War worlds really aren’t that different when compared at face value. He states that Bungie is obsessed with expanding the universe “because they love it,” a sentiment that is contradicted by the rather lazy job they did with Halo 3. The rehashed story, recycled set pieces and stagnant gameplay tells the story of a development house that was sick of doing the same thing for a decade and rushed the game out so they could finally announce their split from Microsoft a week or two later. Hardly the behavior of a loving parent, is it?

Especially hilarious, though, are the criticisms Mr. Geddes levels towards Gears of War’s world without realizing that they apply as much, or even more so, to the Halo games. For example, he states that Halo is “about people struggling to survive against overwhelming odds” when a rather prosperous human race living on safe and sound Earth have a genetically engineered super soldier in tank armor who can skydive from one starship to another in orbit around a freakin’ planet to lay waste to the Covenant for them. That’s not to mention the entire army of soldiers with a fleet of spaceships and a seemingly endless amount of combat vehicles backing him up. But I guess the fear that the isolated pockets of emaciated stragglers exhibit anytime a pothole opens up in the ground or the lights go out at night on the planet that they had to bomb with nuclear warheads just to have a chance is all just an act.

He asks why Sera, that devastated planet on which Gears of War takes place, is worth saving. Why is Earth worth saving? It seems pretty obvious that Sera is the equivalent of Earth in the Gears universe considering the game notes at several points that the events unfolding before them are humanity’s last stand. Do we really need to know which specific people built the “towering buildings of lattice and spire,” which I might add look a helluva lot better than anything in Halo 3? Much like the barren wastelands of Fallout 3, the “destroyed beauty” of what remains of those magnificent structures tells a much more powerful story than some recited history lesson soliloquy from a floating metal sphere or blue holographic supermodel.

And while he’s right that we don’t know much about the Locust even after two games, how much did we really know about the Convenant and the Flood at the end of Halo 2? We don’t know where the Covenant or Flood came from whereas we know that the Locust call the subterranean bowels of Sera their home. We don’t really learn much more about the Covenant society than we do about the Locust society: both are actually collections of various species with the same “religious beliefs” – the Covenant believe in the “oracles” (the artificial intelligence maintaining the halo installations) and the Locust worship the riftworms.

We have no idea why the Covenant hate humanity so much whereas we learn through the course of the two Gears games that humanity’s ever-growing need for energy sources led them to dig into the Locusts’ territory, an intrusion the Locust chose to take as an act of war. The ensuing conflict even served a dual purpose for the Locust, who were in the midst of a civil war with Locusts who had been powerfully mutated by overexposure to the same energy source humans tried to harvest.

And the Flood? They don’t even have any real motivation we can gather aside from the – say it with me – cliché desire to assimilate all living creatures in the galaxy. They’re really nothing more than a virus – how many times have we witnessed that metaphor in science fiction works?

Ultimately, though, the real difference between the Gears of War and Halo franchises is the humanity of the former. Despite everything Mr. Geddes claims, Gears is a far more personal, far more emotional experience from the heart-racing, visceral, in-your-face nature of the combat with its focus on teamwork and strategy to the more believable and accessible purpose all the way to the actual characters themselves.

He describes Marcus and Dom as meat puppets which I suppose would make Master Chief a meat puppet in a can since he has virtually no personality and is one of the most underdeveloped characters in gaming history. Master Chief displays nary an emotion through the course of three games – the fate of the galaxy rests in his hands and friends and comrades fall left and right, yet you’d never know it with his calm demeanor and monotone murmurs. He fears no one and nothing, is never relieved at having just made it through a treacherous fight, has no sense of humor, and is never elated or even just happy for his victories.

Marcus Fenix, on the other hand, actually has a personality (even if it’s tough to make out through his gravelly voice). He’s sarcastic; he gets pumped up; he mourns the dead; he fears for his friend Dominic’s stability. Dominic himself is probably the most “real” character in either franchise: he pines for his missing wife, is quick with a witty comment or wry jab at a comrade and understands far more than most people about the cruelty of the world and the necessity for military strength.

And let’s not forget about one of the most colorful characters in video games in a while: Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, who makes even the most grueling combat situations enjoyable with his enthusiastic banter and overconfident trash talk towards the enemy. He loves the thrill and the adrenaline, which is probably the reason why he was a star defensive lineman for the national “thrashball” league before all hell broke loose on Sera, a celebrity status that is reflected in non-player character reaction to and interaction with him (even your squad mates gush when first meeting him in the first game).

All these little details and nuances help make Gears of War feel so much more alive than the rather disconnected and neutered experience of Halo 3. This isn’t to say, however, that Gears of War did everything perfectly. The reason anyone can even claim that the franchise needs some degree of “saving” is because the single-player campaign mode of the second game simply fell flat, ironically because they listened too much to the fans.

To appease gamers who didn’t like the single-minded focus on generally close quarters squad-based tactical ground combat, the team diluted Gears of War 2 with new scenarios that felt tacked on – freeform vehicular sections where the player pilots an armored vehicle with clunky controls through icy caverns and fights giant spiders, tedious battles on top of giant armored transports, a Panzer Dragoon-inspired aerial on-rails level, and an excruciatingly boring and contrived end game where the player rides on the back of a plodding Brumak (a several-stories-tall monstrosity covered in armor and armed with missile launchers and guns).

I agree with Mr. Geddes when he says that Epic needs to bring the Gears of War franchise “back to basics.” It was a mistake to try to “go big” and expand the scale to be a little more like Halo 3. Gears shouldn’t be about Michael Bay-esque set pieces but about dark and gritty combat where the already wasted landscape is left a lot bloodier. It should be about saving the species and the planet, a more realistic, attainable goal that people can better wrap their heads around, rather than trying to stop some intergalactic force from destroying the galaxy with just an assault rifle and a couple of energy grenades – Gears works best as Saving Private Ryan, not the latest James Bond flick, and is a better game for it.

In fact, the Halo series could do well to emulate some aspects of Gears, and actually has already started to do so. Even after the disappointment of Halo 3, I was excited about Halo 3: ODST and later Halo: Reach. The scale of both games is cut back quite a bit.

In ODST, you’re just another soldier in the military rather than John McClane on steroids. You can’t go all gung ho on the Convenant and expect to last long – some degree of rudimentary stealth is inherent in the game.

In Reach, you even know right off the bat, if you paid any attention at all during the three proper Halo games, that you’re not going to save anything: Reach falls no matter what you do. There’s a more prevalent sense of danger in that even though you’re still playing a Spartan like Master Chief, the forces must be threatening indeed as they were able to wipe out an entire platoon of Master Chiefs. No more laughing in the face of danger, hopefully.

However, the thing that needs to change the most is the technology. Halo 3’s game engine, which is a moderately enhanced version of the Halo 2 game engine, itself a moderately enhanced version of the Halo game engine created way back at the turn of the millennium, is showing its age with subpar modeling lacking in intricate detail. Put side-by-side with Gears of War or Sony’s Uncharted, Halo 3 looks like a decidedly last generation effort.

I had hoped when Bungie announced their split from Microsoft that this would open up the possibility of another developer such as Epic to step in and create a truly innovative new game engine that could help usher the franchise into the top echelon of current-generation video games.

It remains to be seen whether Microsoft and Bungie will do the right thing and take a page out of everyone else’s playbook this time.

Experience this for yourself!

• Halo 3 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Gears of War Platinum Hits Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Gears of War 2 Game of the Year Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)

About a week ago, a fellow poster to the alt.games.video.xbox Usenet group referenced an Engadget article about gadgets they considered to have defined the decade in which the Engadget staff chose Microsoft’s Xbox 360 for the gaming world. Despite being an avid fan of the Xbox 360, I had to laugh at Engadget’s choice considering the two systems they listed as “runners up” had much more impact on the gaming world than my current favorite console.

First of all, the Xbox 360 was only around for half of the decade and didn’t really pick up steam until about a year or so after launch due to the widespread “red ring of death” hardware failures that I suppose do make a case for the Xbox 360 defining the decade in some way. Engadget editor Paul Miller states that “You don’t remember a console for the chips inside or the case design, but the games you played.” I counter that what gamers most remembered about the Xbox 360 from 2005-2007 were four letters: RROD.

Miller goes on to list Gears of War and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as the two games that made the Xbox 360 so very special to him mainly due to the Xbox Live online gaming experiences he had with them. I agree with him that those are two of the top games people can play on the system. I just have a slight issue with him ignoring that Call of Duty is, and has always been, available on the PlayStation 3 with online play made possible by Sony’s PlayStation Network, which is free in contrast to Microsoft’s $50 per year charge for Xbox Live play.

Now, before PlayStation fanboys get all tingly, I’ll point out that I’m not bashing Xbox Live or being critical of the charge – I in fact believe that you get what you pay for with these two services and that Xbox Live is a much more robust network that offers a better experience with that monthly or annual fee gamers pay to use it – but highlighting the folly of basing a claim that the Xbox 360 is the defining gaming system of the decade on its online gaming service (as indicate by “We went with the Xbox 360 for its innovation in online play”).

In choosing the gaming device of the decade, you have to look at a much bigger picture. The PlayStation 2 debuted in 2000, the beginning of the decade, and is still on sale today. Sure, its sales are straggling now and it may very well be on its last legs this year, but it’s been strong for the better part of the decade. In fact, it took the Xbox 360 a year and ten months to outsell the PlayStation 2 at the global level and even longer to really solidify a sales advantage over the then 7-year-old previous generation console.

The PlayStation 2 managed to survive this long on the strength of its games, the most important aspect of any video gaming platform. Like Mr. Miller said, you remember a console for the games you played – the PlayStation 2 has 1,800 of them. Many top franchises got their start on the system. Many of the best entries in beloved franchises called the PlayStation 2 their home. While Sony’s arrogance regarding this generation has cost them exclusivity on third-party video game series like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry, those franchises were available only to console gamers who owned PlayStation 2’s from 2000 to 2009.

And the Xbox 360’s current success is really all due to Sony’s past efforts. Had it not been for Sony’s foresight with the PlayStation 2 – and the PlayStation before it – we’d all still be playing Mario and Kirby games (not that I have any problem with this – I love Nintendo’s games – but I know a lot of “hardcore” gamers who would give up gaming if their only choices were between one cute and cuddly mascot or another). Sony is responsible for making video games cool again, and the bulk of that transformation took place shortly after the launch of the PlayStation 2 with the release of games like Grand Theft Auto III, Final Fantasy X and SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs.

Now, I can kind of understand where people might have an easy time forgetting about a previous generation system that debuted almost a decade ago – I myself sometimes feel as if this generation of consoles has been around forever and pine for what amazement the next series of hardware and games will offer. However, that’s still no excuse for choosing the Xbox 360 as the defining gaming device of the decade when one of its contemporaries, the Nintendo Wii, has had a far greater impact on our favorite past time and the industry behind it.

The Wii landed on retail shelves about a year after the Xbox 360 did, but unlike Microsoft’s big white box Nintendo’s little one made an immediate splash, outselling its competitors on a weekly basis right out of the gate and surpassing the Xbox 360’s total sales in less than nine months (at which point the Xbox 360 had been on the market for 21). Even though the Wii’s software library was severely lacking in the traditional “core” games that long-time gamers favored, the console thrived on the strength of its innovative style of user interaction which was much more appealing to casual and non-gamers who had no interest in learning what the eight buttons, two sticks and one directional pad on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3’s controllers did.

The Wii has been a complete game changer for the video game industry. Thanks to Nintendo, the console gamer market expanded by several degrees, a result of their decision to stop engaging in the traditional “red ocean” strategy of beating competitors for existing market space and instead employ a “blue ocean” strategy of using innovation in key areas to create new market space. Millions of people who would never have thought to buy a video game console, whose gaming experience was limited to marathon sessions of Minesweeper, Bejeweled or Diner Dash on their PCs or who abandoned video games after the Nintendo Entertainment System simply because games got too complex to be a recreational vehicle quickly became part of that new market space, and Nintendo hasn’t looked back.

And while we’re talking about the Big N, let’s not forget the current king of the portable gaming space, the Nintendo DS, which also happens to be the king of all video gaming with more systems sold than any other handheld or console this generation. The DS debuted in November 2004, and in the half-decade since then it has become something of a portable gaming phenomenon, consistently outselling all other gaming systems worldwide on a monthly basis. Nintendo is basically printing their own money with this platform, which is so popular that millions of people have actually paid for what amounts to a marginally improved version of the hardware, the Nintendo DSi.

Nintendo’s foray into the blue ocean style of thinking truly started with the DS, which offered features that were innovations in the video gaming space, namely the touch screen interface, the second screen and the wireless connectivity for quick and easy multiplayer gaming, and games that took advantage of the functionality.

Nintendo even expanded the breadth of their library beyond traditional games with titles like Brain Age in which the player engages in brief activities designed to stimulate the mind, Nintendogs in which the player interacts with a virtual pet using the touch screen and microphone, and the Personal Trainer series of titles in which the player trains in various activities like cooking, mathematics and walking (this title comes with pedometers that are wirelessly connected to the DS system).

With the incredible impact the PlayStation 2, Wii and DS have had on the gaming space in the past 10 years, each essentially redefining what gaming was – and is – it’s a little shocking that people who are for all intents and purposes objective journalists could possibly cite the Xbox 360 has having been more important to this decade of video gaming. Of course, I realize that ultimately this is just a matter of opinion, but I believe that when you make such a bold statement you need to back it up with more than Xbox Live and, literally, a couple of games.

Experience this for yourself!

• Nintendo Wii Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Arcade Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Limited Edition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Bundle (Amazon)
• Sony PlayStation 2 Console (Amazon)
• Nintendo DS Lite System (Amazon)
• Nintendo DSi System (Amazon)
• Nintendogs Dalmatian & Friends (DS) (Amazon)
• Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS) (Amazon)
• Personal Trainer: Cooking (DS) (Amazon)
• Personal Trainer: Math (DS) (Amazon)
• Personal Trainer: Walking (DS) (Amazon)
• Gears of War (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) (Amazon)