There is a very interesting (and at times heated) argument going on in the comments section of the Gaming revenue falls again article. Although mostly formed around the Console vs. PC argument, some points were raised that address the overall state of gaming. In particular, one of the explanations offered for the decline in sales is that the games of today are not particularly good. I was going to bring this up in the comments, but then decided that it is such an important topic that it should be explored outside of the current flame-war.

I’ll tell you straight out, I actually don’t think that games today are worse than they were 20 years ago. Or 10 years ago. Or 5. As Solo4114 pointed out, we are getting older. It means we have more money and less time, but it also means that we are more and more prone to fondly reminisce about “the good old days”.

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I was watching television just the other night and a videogame was being advertised. It was a first-person, war-themed shoot-em-up, something a la Call of Duty. My wife turned to me inquisitively and asked me if that was a game I would like to play, if it was up my alley, so to speak. I knew it was somewhat of a ploy; my wife loves videogames, but doesn’t really like games that involve killing. We don’t have kids yet, but we will someday, and I’m sure being the parents we’ll be, we will introduce them to gaming, but probably in a rather controlled manner. This particular game, which highlighted “realistic wartime action,” would most definitely not make it past mom’s censors. But her question intrigued me: what did I think of such games?

I quickly ran through the games that have a permanent place in my library. I have loads of them, but often I’ll play them a few times and then disperse them to true lovers of the genre. But of course, I have some keepers, titles that I’ll play over and over again. Some of those currently include Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and, naturally, all of the franchises from my youth (Mario, Zelda, etc). I realized that conspicuously absent were any games whose main objective was: as a human, realistically harm another human. I throw that modifier in there because Team Fortress 2 is all about murdering one another, but it’s so cartoony I never really thought about the characters as real people, which I think makes a difference.

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It’s time to face up to something. It’s been on my mind for some time, but I’ve been avoiding any discussion of it here or at my job, for fear of game-based reprisals and jeering. But I’m not afraid anymore. As some of my colleagues might point out, being in the closet about anything is a terrible place to be in one’s life. I might as well come out about it.

I’m a teacher. I enjoy what I do, and I take that part of my life into the games I play.

There, I said it. It wasn’t easy, but there you go. Sometimes, a man’s got to be honest with himself (and, as Dirty Harry would point out, know his limitations, but that’s a discussion for another time).

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Kameo was one of the launch titles for the 360 back when the machine was first finding its stride. It had the the more cartoony approach to its presentation and prided itself more on its ideas and gameplay than realistic graphics. Your protagonist had the ability to morph into different creatures that ranged from a boxing plant to a spiky ball that could leap across ledges, each suitable to different situations. Think Crash Bandicoot surrounded by lush, colourful surroundings with constant shape-shifting, and you get Kameo. It was a decent enough game that deserved a sequel, but unfortunately Microsoft did not greenlight one.

While Microsoft saw something different in the people at Rare, they decided to cut costs by letting a lot of regular staff go and brought in some temps to work on the avatars for the Marketplace, and later Kinect Sports. Sergey Rahmanov was one of those that fell victim to Microsoft’s heavy hand. He was part of Rare for a healthy part of a decade and was Kameo‘s graphic designer. He has now released some images of the character models for the sequel that you can see below. At first glance, it looks like the sequel would have taken a more realistic approach. The leap in graphics is notable, when compared to what the protagonist in the original game looked like.

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A few weeks ago I did something that I swore I’d never do.

I bought an iDevice.

This makes me a complete hypocrite. For years I’ve been telling everyone who would listen that Steve Jobs is the antichrist, and that his products are the spawn of Satan. This springs from my deep hatred towards the Mac. I’m not really sure why I hate the Mac, but I do. It’s one of those things that we do without any real provocation, such as disliking a perfect stranger without even meeting them (don’t lie; we all do it). But I’m sure that those odious Apple/PC TV commercials from a few years back have something to do with it. PC users everywhere wished that John Hodgman (PC) would grow a pair and clock Justin Long (Mac) just once, and I was no exception.

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Your phone is now a potential therapist. You sit on a couch, you talk to it, it listens, it charges you money, you feel better. Ok, ok, that’s a tad cynical of me. Let me begin again.

Dr. Nader Amir, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, suggests that the days of software-based psychological help are upon us. Dr. Amir has conducted a study into the potential of Blackberry software to help people with social anxiety. In one exercise, a human face with a neutral expression flashes on the screen at the same time as a face with a disgusted mien. A millisecond later, the software prompts the patient to identify a letter that materializes on the same part of the screen where the neutral face appeared. With repetition, the patient begins to ignore the negative image and look to the neutral zone for answers, which eases anxiety.

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What’s going on you sexy video game? Yeah you! I see you sitting all alone at the kiosk, flashing your $60 price tag and showing a little too much insert. You’re promising to be my game of the year and excite me in all the right places. For a little more than a tank of gas, you’ll make me forget about all the heartache and loss in my gaming past. You’ll be the game in the genre that sets the bar for every other game I’ll bring home. But game, I know something you don’t know: you’re not my first $60 game. I’ve been around the gaming block and learned a thing or two.

We’re entering the age of the Indie Game. You might not think so, with titles like CoD: Black Ops and Homefront setting sales records for the industry and for their publishers, but the $60 game is dying. Homefront set records for THQ, but when the reviews were lackluster at best, the company’s stocks took a sizeable hit and gamers were left confused, lonely, and heartbroken. How could Homefront, with its over-the-top marketing, completely fail to at least mirror its FPS contemporaries? Gamers were presented with Bulletstorm, Fallout: New Vegas, Fable 3, and Crysis 2 (to name a few) and while these titles sold fairly well, I’ve noticed a few trends.

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While I’m not ready to plunk down the amount of cash needed for a next-generation console just yet, I do think about them from time to time. New console generations bring new features—some good, and some considerably less good.

After spending some time brainstorming what I want in my next console, I came up with this list:

Interface customization I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could change the order of things on either the 360 dashboard or the PS3’s XMB. There are some features I use more than others, and some I never use at all. When the next-gen consoles roll out, I want to be able to move sections around to maximize efficiency when I’m not playing a game. I would also like to be able to hide or deactivate features I don’t use.

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When I want to escape from reality, I like to drop down one dimension. See, I live in a very real 3D world, where every object within my grasp can be reached, grabbed or poked. Hell, even that slap that I usually get in return comes at me in all its three-dimensional glory. Four if you count the stinging sensation it leaves behind.

Despite this, the gaming industry is determined to follow Hollywood’s lead and try to get consumers to cough up more coin for yet more hardware. We’ve already seen a number of games given updates to allow them to run on the new 3D TVs, and Nintendo has recently launched its latest handheld unit, the 3DS, which provides the effect without the need for those gangly goggles.

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March 30 marks my birthday. This year I’ll be an age that’s relatively unimportant, but the milestone is 12 straight years of playing MMOs. I get asked by blokes in some circles what my utter fascination is with the genre, whether it be some of the horrid F2P games down to the more epic P2P ones, and the answer is pretty simple. Much like Brisco County Jr., I’ve been searching for the next big thing. I’ve been seeking this game for the past couple of years, but it has eluded me. Don’t get me wrong, World of Warcraft is a pretty amazing game. It did what a lot of previous MMOs failed to do. It augmented the genre as we know it, making it something more than massive. Every game that has followed has pretty much gone down the same road, some with their own spins and some complete copy cats.

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I just love it when my biases are validated by empirical evidence. Do you guys remember Ubisoft? It’s a French company that publishes games. I don’t know about you, but I’m currently boycotting them for their asinine antics. In particular they are in the habit of horribly mistreating their customers. Most people probably imagine Ubi to be one of those tightly run, military-style corporations that don’t tolerate any kind of inaccuracy or lack of discipline. This must be why they are so hell bent on using intrusive and damaging DRM schemes, and making ridiculous statements about piracy.

Well, guess what, this perception is wrong. There was this one episode when they patched one of their games (Rainbow Six Vegas 2) with an illegal third-party No-CD crack. It didn’t get much publicity, but it happened. Now they’ve outdone themselves yet again. Their game Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood happens to have a Digital Deluxe version. And that version happens to have music in the form of MP3s. And those MP3s happen to originate from some pirate who put them up as a torrent. Make no mistake, this is still Ubi’s own music. They just included a pirated version of it with their game. This is the company which claims huge damages from piracy, and “leads” the fight against it. Do what you will, but I’m continuing my boycott.

Finding the right members for a party in an MMORPG is a lot like figuring who you want to go to the bar with you. You have plenty of choices from your contacts, if you’re lucky enough, and these people are from different walks of life, a lot like the people you’re grouping up with in the game. Each member you find yourself inviting to the group has a special function you’ll need for an instance of pub crawling. This is my usual line-up:

The tank, as you might imagine, is someone who is the loudest, but not necessarily the largest, member of your group. They’ll be six pints in before you’re done with your second. They are machines with no equal when it comes to laughing loudly, spending most of their skill points on aggroing the bartender for more drinks for you and your party. The healer of your group is the one carrying aspirin in their pocket or purse, telling the tank they’ve had one too many and can’t keep up with the speed of the tank. They are a crucial member to help keep your party alive through a pub instance; they’re bossy but will always call a cab when they know the instance is over, making sure everyone gets out alright.

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True confession time.

I applauded loudly the day Nintendo made a million Zelda fans bawl with their cel-shaded Wind Waker announcement.

When I discovered that Solid Snake’s mission in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was merely prologue to Raiden’s revelation, I tipped my cap to Kojima.

And in Halo 2, when Master Chief was kicked to the curb as we followed the Arbiter down some tricky, twisty paths, I saw the series in a whole new light.

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I was a really weird child, and I’ve found the definitive proof. My parents are moving out of state this month, so I made a few trips back home to sort through the cardboard-entombed relics of my youth. I’m weird now, but I had forgotten what sort of child I was until I found an unopened letter from my past. Tucked neatly into a manila folder, somewhere between the pirate ship I drew in second grade and my middle-school poetry journal, was a sealed envelope. Scrawled in my practically unchanged handwriting was an address for one Mrs. Brown, who apparently lived at the same address I did. I sat there crossed-legged, with a beaded Native American headband tied around my head and surrounded by the toys of my youth, and unfolded the letter, which read:

“Dear Mrs. Brown, my leg has been acting up so I will need you to send me more apples. The last lot was bad, they were too sour. And please send me another cherry cake. Two cherries were missing from the last one.”

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You’re midway through an awesome RPG, and you’re working your way through that quest where you find the thing, and kill the dude that will give you the perks to take on the big bad. You know the one I’m talking about. And suddenly, out of nowhere, you fall through a staircase, or get trapped behind a table, or actually find yourself below the map. You try to exit and reload, but something’s gone horribly wrong. Depending on how diligent you are at saving, and how the game is designed, you may have only lost a few minutes, a few hours, or weeks of work! And sometimes, when you go back and retry, the glitch occurs again, and again, and again!

We’ve all been there! Usually it’s just an irritating annoyance, but sometimes it’s catastrophic and prevents a GREAT game from achieving what it was designed to. Depending on the severity, sometimes I’ll just walk away from a particular title completely. It’s just not fun if I can’t complete Quest X, so I move on to the next big RPG. I’m not talking about floating heads, Donkey Women, or paint brushes that just hover in midair. The bugs I refer to are the ones that have the potential to completely destroy the experience until patched.

While working on my review this week (for a game you’ll get to read about Friday), I sadly had just such an experience. This time I found a work around and was able to continue, but while I frantically sought a solution, I was reminded of a similar experience I had long ago in Oblivion, and felt like commiserating. Please share your worst “bug” experiences below, and what you think about large games that get shipped with these time bombs lurking within.