Do you hear what I hear?  That's the sound of my Xbox 360 no longer hitting Boeing jet decibels when Fable II is spinning in the tray.

Thanks to the crispy fresh NXE (New Xbox Experience), I download Peter Molyneux's ear-bleedingly-loud-in-the-tray role-playing game from the disc and onto the hard drive.  It took a grand total of 12 minutes.  And, let me be frank for just a moment, there's absolutely nothing else I did for 12 minutes this week that gave me the warm-fuzzy feeling that I'm feeling right now with Fable II.  In Fable II, if you're still running it from the disc, you don't have to do anything more than stand around an uneventful town square and you'll have to engage your 5.1 speakers at 80% just to hear what the in-game town crier is shouting right next to you.  But now?  The gravel-churning sound from my 360 has ceased.  Calmed itself.  Found peace and understanding with itself.

And it has graciously granted me a slice of that same peace.

But then with Grace, my wife, nestling next to me on the couch -- though she doesn't know why I'm dragging her in front of the 360 -- I open up the Avatar Customization screen.  The bright NXE spectrum splashes against the backdrop and I gingerly hand the controller to Grace.  "Okay," I say, no hubris in my tone, "it's time to make me!"

With very little hesitation in her movement, Grace makes a slightly-below-medium height fellow with caramel-colored skin, hair black and slightly slicked back, then skillfully fits him into a pair of Timbalands, dark jeans, and a straight-lined jacket.  Not bad, I say.  Not bad at all. 

I grow distressed, however, when she keeps trying to adjust my avatar's chubby factor.  "Is that all the further it goes to the right?"  She looks at my stomach, looks at the avatar, looks at my stomach again.  "Hm," she says.  "Maybe you'll be that skinny again.  Someday." 

She then promptly puts a wedding ring on my avatar's finger and then heads for the Facial Features screen.  She flips around the options, chuckling at a few, and settles on dropping a scar over my avatar's right eye. 

"Hey?" I say. 

"Hey," she stops me.  "Do you want to be you, or do you actually want to be interesting?"

I used to love, love NVIDIA cards. Lately, AMD is kicking all kinds of major ass with their Radeon HD 4800 series of cards. Here's a nice little video to explain the current situation for everyone. Some of the terms and jokes might go over non-techy heads but it's still cute.

 

 

I have to admit that the rules (or at least the procedural flow) isn't being made explicit.  

Two new tanks are rolling out to the field of battle in Warhammer Online during a two-week long Heavy Metal event that began yesterday.  The Empire Knights of the Blazing Sun are the veritable poster children for WAR, while the Dark Elf Black Guards have enough spikes on their armor to serve shishkabab at a Chaos warhost high school reunion.  But to be fair, both look downright gaudy in their peacock-plumage of overlapping metal plates, curvy spikes, and thickened feathers.

But how you get your hands on one of these bad boys, exactly -- that's what's not being made explicit.  The press release simply instructs people to "successfully complete the quests associated with the Heavy Metal event" to be given week-early access to the two new classes.  Well, after logging in this evening, I found no further instructions on how to unlock this new class.  I'll admit, I'm still having too much fun setting the roof on fire with my Bright Wizard, Pitchfork, but that doesn't mean I don't want a peek at these two guys that are crashing the party in such a high-profile manner.

Trashing enemy players at the Reikland Factory -- a new realm vs. realm scenario opened up especially for this Heavy Metal event -- is the only breadcrumb I've stumbled across.  And after playing through Reikland Factory a few times with Pitchfork (scoring 3rd, 4th, and 7th in number of kills -- not bad for being 5th level when 10th level players are on the field, and doubly not bad when there's 36 -- 18 vs. 18 -- people duking it out), I'm still feeling no closer to completing the "quests associated with the Heavy Metal event." 

I'll keep eyes and ears (not to mention a few scalps) peeled. 

EDIT:  A-ha.  I guess when it comes to the Warhammer Online site, I'm not so much with the reading.  Here's what I've found to answer my own question:

"When the Heavy Metal live event begins on November 18th, players who log into WAR will see a new tab in the Tome of Knowledge. Clicking on this tab will open the Live Events page, where each day we'll place a new daily task. Completing these daily tasks earns influence, just like you'd earn in a public quest. There are rewards for Basic, Advanced and Elite influence, culminating in the ultimate prize: the chance to play WAR's new classes a full week before they're released to the public! This last reward won't be easy to earn, and players who want to get to the Elite level will need to log in each day and complete on the daily event."

Very well then.  Question answered.  Crisis averted.

War?  War is everywhere.

All this talk about Wrath of the Lich King made me pine for some good ol' massively-multiplayer online action.  So I picked up Warhammer Online.  I ain't got time to level to 70 in World of Warcraft in order to enjoy the new expansion, and I'm digging my fingernails into my skin -- itching for something fresh.  And all I can manage to disclose from my first infantile steps into the world WAR is that -- wow -- this bad boy is deep.

I went into the character creation screen blindfolded.  I haven't read a novel, haven't watched a trailer, and haven't rolled a single die in the name of Games Workshop's tabletop-to-online role-playing game.  But the introductory video had me at "Hello! Who's that crazy Johnny Blaze dude breathing fire on everyone?!"  So it was love (and immolation) at first sight.  They're called Bright Wizards, eh?  I like the play on words, because I bet they're really smart, too.

I prepare to step for the first time into the Age of Reckoning.  I reckon that I've already got the torches, so I name him "Pitchfork" and get ready to riot.  And even though Pitchfork the Incredibly Smart and Bright Wizard is on the side of Order (vs. Chaos), I bet there's some disorderly conduct I can throw at an enemy that's just dying for some crispy critter time. 

Now everything looks all jim dandy from a high-fantasy perspective, but I hear explosions slamming into the hillsides the second I appear in the gameworld.  The Chaos warhost has arrived pretty much just now and the small hamlet I spawned into is getting pummelled with zipping cannonfire.  I'm pretty sure I can hear the debris raining down where I stand as well.

So while I'm much more naturally an explorer and one who takes their time jaunting through the countryside at a leisurely Hobbit's pace, I'm suddenly feeling like, y'know, I might be in the middle of a serious conflict here.  The starting missions aren't neccessarily any more complex in nature than any other MMO, but they feel unmistakably relevant to the war effort.  I'm saving people from burning cottages.  I'm rallying farmers that have long since turned their swords into plowshares.  I'm stiffening the weak spines of militia members that are suddenly taking on tougher baddies than the town drunk.

I've shown up on a front line that doesn't even fully realize the breadth and depth of the enemy forces on its doorstep.  My actions feel like they are making a difference in the war effort; and making a difference is typically a farce that MMO players are used to swallowing.  But I'll be darned if WAR didn't take the battlefield mentality of Tabula Rasa and make it even more integral to the gameplay from the get-go.  No time to admire that vista of the windmill, or the lakeside, or the pine-scented trees, laddy.  Because war?  Apparently it's everywhere.

Media Molecule and Sony, you’ve lost a customer. The game, as we all know, is LittleBigPlanet. It’s a game that Chuck really loves in his review and one that I was going to pick up after spending some time with it over at his house. I’m not a big fan of side scrolling jumping games but LittleBigPlanet has potential and I love games with potential. It lets you let loose with your creativity and design levels for all to play with its ease of sharing capabilities. Well, so I thought.

As reported earlier, some levels were being moderated or removed without having the ability to get it back. While I can understand some things being removed such as for offensive content and infringing on other people’s intellectual properties, there are many instances where the user’s levels were removed without any indication why. Sony has issued a statement saying they are looking to improve communication and also give a reason as to why they are moderating the level. So far their efforts have been just as before with another group of levels being moderated without cause. I’ve seen some of the videos of some of the levels being removed and I really can’t see any reason as to why they would be in line to be moderated.

Worse yet, there hasn’t been any communication as to why the level’s being moderated. There’s a system you guys developed Sony whereby you can leave messages in the person’s inbox on your PlayStation 3. You know that little envelope where messages appear from friends and so forth? You might consider using that online feature to let the person know that 1) the level in question is being reviewed for a specific reason and 2) your level was moderated because it contains the following items.

As good as LittleBigPlanet is, I can’t find myself spending my hard earned money on a game where there’s creativity being stifled and no communication between the creators and users on issues that the company might have with the content generated. I’m not going to spend many hours trying to create a fun level for others to enjoy only to have a chance for it to be moderated without any warning. It would be a very frustrating experience and I feel for the folks that this has happened to. Sony, you guys have perhaps started a new trend with user generated content on your system to increase the value and replay ability of a console game. It’s too bad your handling these issues in such a poor manner and with that you’re losing at least one sale from me and I wouldn’t be surprised if many more were lost from those reading about your actions.

As someone who is half German it was interesting to read this post on Joystiq by James Ransom-Wiley about how he couldn't get past the first five minutes of Call of Duty:World at War because of how the Japanese are depicted in the game.  That's certainly fine as we all have different tolerances for violence and the issue certainly seemed to hit home with him given his ancestry.  What really got my goat was that the fact that he then paints the Nazi's (and transitively all Germans) with the brush of pure evil but the Japanese (who committed nearly as horrible acts) get a free pass.

While no one in my family has direct ties to either World War (my great grandfather came to America before the start of WWI) I still feel some ties to my ancestry.  My family lived in Germany for a number of years and I've stood in the showers at Dachau and seen the horrors of a concentration first hand.  I've seen the monuments in Russia where the Nazi's wiped out entire villages and it's something that leaves an indelible mark on your soul.  It's something that we can't ever forget or allow to happen again.  For most Germans this is our cross to bear as there's not getting around it.

Personally I don't have a problem killing Nazi's in games like Call of Duty because I've abstracted them enough to realize it's just a game and that these are soldiers of an evil philosophy.  Not all Germans at the time were bad people and some fought actively against the Nazi party when and where they could (something that gets lost in all the WWII move and game plotlines).  If we really look at the mirror of history though it's not like we as American's were completely innocent (the fire bombing of Dresden comes to mind) of everything at the time.

Getting back to the point of this post it's a bit disturbing when you can paint one group as "evil" while another group is forgiven.  Especially based on comments like:

"I draw a disconnect between Nazis and Germans as large as the divide between "alien" and human. The Nazis have been transformed into monsters, which does not need to be justified in my gaming. But the Japanese Empire that bombed Pearl Harbor and the Japanese today, even Japanese-Americans, are very much intertwined in my perception. Those people are connected for me -- a part of me -- and I see them in World at War."

You have to wonder how much popular culture impacts a perception like this, if Saving Private Ryan was based in Iwo Jima would we still have the same perception of the Japanese?  They were just as ruthless as the Germans and Western culture is fairly ignorant of what the Japanese did to the Chinese during this period in time.  I'm not advocating that the Japanese were worse than the Germans at the time but we need to realize that there's a lot of history out there that hasn't made it's way into pop culture and that it's sometimes too easy to look the other way when it comes to personal history or things we are connected to.

 

Three full run-throughs of the Mirror’s Edge demo and I’m finally making a positive contribution to Faith’s “flow” across the urban environment.  It will take a seriously dialed-in player to make the most of developer Dice’s action-oriented non-shooter.  Faith’s movements require a mental remapping of what you’ve come to know and expect of your controller/character movements – even more so than the stellar parkour introduced in Assassin’s Creed.  But nobody ever said this would be like anything I’ve ever played before.

As the protagonist’s name implies, I took many, many leaps of faith across a cityscape that looked starved for de Blob to come along and enliven the pallet with his bouncy, paint-filled body.  The city is physically and culturally drained by the closed-circuit television of big government keeping the street level militantly supervised.  But, through the eyes of the “runners” – couriers like Faith – the city is seen differently.  Instead of pollution and traffic and overpopulation, it’s gleaming towers and sterile geometry and lonely jumps.  Though these runners keep a seemingly regrettable but peaceful existence with the rooftops, their feet never touch ground level.

The whitewashed city is a metaphorical portrayal of what “runner vision” is to couriers like Faith.  Runners don’t necessarily focus on non-essential details.  They focus on ramps, pipes, walkways, railing, billboards, doorways, and crates that get them from A to B.  And the world is painted in varying threat levels.  Safe but accurate routes are blue.  Riskier but typically non-fatal undertakings are swathed in yellow.  Evel Knieval antics are a brilliant red, whose risk and reward are equally yoked.

In the brutally-paced tutorial, Faith has to quickly regain her legs after recovering from an unseen fall during an unmentioned prologue.  On the Xbox 360, taking the high road versus taking the low road when it comes to obstacles is mapped to the left shoulder button and left trigger, respectively.  If the nervous system is to be believed, the left hand’s actions are dictated by the right brain.  And if brain mapping is to be believed, the right brain is able to register random and intuitive movements with relative acuity.  This indelibly taps into the “flow” that the tutorial pings on.  This flow coerces you to not over-think your movements:  To take a holistic approach to the environment, quickly assert fast-moving and otherwise random objects in your path, and intuitively pick a clean racing line up, over, around, and across the rooftops.

The right trigger is an attack.  Based on Faith’s posture it could be a high or low punch, a sliding-into-second-base kick, or a flying kick.  Following brain-mapping logic, the right finger naturally talks to the left brain.  The left brain, giving the instruction to attack, excels at logical, sequential, and analytical thinking.  The left brain is better at looking at parts, as opposed to the whole picture.  So you’ve decided that it‘s a logically stronger move to punch through this law enforcement officer rather than get riddled with bullets.  Your left brain – via your right hand – decides during the approach whether to attack low, high, or from the air, all three options converging onto a singular target.  Or you could hit the X button (with your right thumb), slowing time (giving your left brain the split second it needs to analyze the situation fully), before you hit the Y button (again, with your right thumb) in order to turn the tables on your antagonist with an exactingly-timed disarm maneuver.  He can’t shoot you if he doesn’t have a gun, and he probably – at this early stage anyway – doesn’t have the free-running skills that Faith has.  Threat neutralized.  Good thinking.

Or, perhaps your right brain took over at the last second, scanned the entire rooftop, and synthesized an escape route that would avoid the “blues” (the authorities) altogether.

For a game that requires some strenuous retraining of your hand-eye coordination regarding a videogame controller, it looks – and feels – like Dice has taken the right (and left) approach under full consideration.