Halolz

I was talking to one of my subordinates over at The Order of Cynical Gentlemen about the nature of cynicism, and naturally the conversation came around to the subject of the Halo franchise. Apparently, this so called cynic didn't detest the game and what its rampant success implied about the game industry, and in fact seemed to actually have a positive opinion of the games. Obviously I set to correct this, but found I was unable to eloquently state my problems with the series. Now, I certainly wasn't actually doubting my (far superior) ideas, they were simply too complex to easily translate into words. I have since collected my thoughts and will now do my best to relay my correct and unquestionable viewpoint on the matter.

First of all, I don't think the Halo games are bad, only drastically overrated. I will admit to occasionally giving the games some undeserved grief, but only because, like Avatar, everyone else is giving the game a lot of undeserved praise. The game's only real crime was being mediocre and selling like the Cure for Cancer. Halo represents everything that's wrong with the game industry, from demonstrating how a games commercial success is directly proportional to its advertising budget, to making on addon any freeware modder could create in a month (better) and selling it like it was a real game. But to be fair, I'm going to attempt to set all that aside and review the games proper.

Halo: Combat Evolved

I have always found this game quite lacking in the "astounding" department. Aside from its finale, there are few "Wow"-worthy moments in the game. The characters have the personality of a slab of granite. The color pallet looks like it was dropped in the mud during development. In terms of story, the game kept the player at arms length, and it always seems like everyone knows some crucial plot point you don't. As for the gameplay, this game is the definition of repetitive. The weapons aren't very satisfying to fire, and the majority of the game takes place in corridors of various shapes and sizes. I don't have much to say about this game, the only thing that matters now is that it left absolutely no lasting impressions with me and added nothing to gaming as a whole, except maybe an unhealthy focus on multiplayer.

Halo 2: Electric Boogaloo

This game does things better. The environments are more open this time around, as well as a bit less monochrome and samey. One character, the Arbiter, is actually developed, for a couple of minutes at least, after that he's another cardboard cut-out. There are even moments in the game that could be described as "pretty awesome". The story is still fairly impenetrable, but theres at least enough spectacle to keep the game interesting, even though the player is rarely allowed to participate in the cool stuff. However, while it's better than its predecessor and many shooters that came out in the surrounding years, it can't hold a candle to a certain shooter that came out four years earlier.

Halo 3: Shoot Harder

Once again, Bungie corrects some of its own past mistakes. This time the player is allowed to do some epic things themselves, like actually fight the alien's large walking death-machines directly (which is kind of funny, because some other shooter pulled the same trick a year earlier.) The environment could now be described as colorful. The characters are still static and one-dimensional (with the exception of Cortana); The characters who I know as "the girl" and "the black guy" are both killed, which combined generated in me an emotional response equivalent to when I accidentally tear into a piece of paper when removing the perforated edges. Oh, and of all the antagonists, the developers decided that the final boss fight would be against a floating light-bulb. There were some very memorable moments in this game, but all-in-all its still a very safe game that doesn't push the envelope or take any chances. Some call it traditional, I call it a re-tread. Also, whoever comes up with the level names for these people deserves an award.

Halo: Old Dumb Stupid Thing

I have already said just about everything I want to say about this game. The only thing I'd like to add is for everyone moaning about how I never brought up the fact that the cast of Firefly voices the characters, for $60 dollars you can buy four copies of the entire Firefly series and two copies of Serenity.

Halo: Reach (Can't think of anything witty)

I rented this game, and I don't think I can force myself to play it anymore. This is strange, as it is clearly the best game in the series. The characters are actually, you know, characterized. The combat is more satisfying than ever. It is now physically possible to follow the story, which has been elevated to the rank of average. The only problem is that I feel like I've been playing it for years now. Bungie finally made a game I would consider an acceptable addition to my game library, but it's too late. I have become completely burnt out with this series. I don't think I could fire a sling-shot at a Covenant Grunt without vomiting. For all of it's improvements, it's merely good, and that's not enough for me at this point. In the scope of shooters, it's no better than anything Valve has made, and in the scope of gaming in general, it's very mediocre.

That's all I have to say about Halo for now, but there is still more to come! In the near future I intend to compare Halo 2 with Half-Life 2 and see how they hold-up to each other (hint: Half-Life 2 is better on all counts.) Don't forget to leave a constructive and productive comment below!

An Open Letter To IO Interactive

Dear IO Interactive

          While I appreciate your devotion to making unique games that tend to stand out from the mainstream crowd...

If you make one more game that isn't Hitman 5...

...I. Will. Find. You. All.

I mean seriously, you have made two Kane and Lynch games since Blood money. Are you secretly owned by Valve or something?

Your Devoted Fan,

-Reach

P.S. Also you should release a sequel for Freedom Fighters. The world is ready now.

The Most Important Lesson I Learned at Stanford

By: Reach for the Sky

First of all, no, I am not a Stanford graduate, I was there for a summer program. At this summer program our group was given the opportunity to attend a tour of EA as well as a lecture from one of their programmers. I learned much about the process a game goes through from conception to release, the marketing of games, etc. The most important lesson I received began with a question for the man who lectured us. "Have you ever been asked, by someone who didn't understand your field of work, to do something that simply wasn't realistically possible," His answer?

"All the time"

Apparently, it is quite common for designers, marketers, anybody who doesn't know anything about programming to make requests that are absurd or impossible, and it's up to the programmer to talk them down to something more realistic. I noticed this later at class, when we had opportunities to see what other students in other classes had been working on, as well as show off our own creation. I was often asked things like "why didn't you just do X" or "how come Y doesn't do Z" in the context of extremely complicated problems. Imagine someone asking Al Gore, "Why don't we just make more ice to make the planet cooler?" While I initially felt insulted and disgusted with the display of ignorance, I later found this to be irrational. These people had no reason to have any knowledge of computer science, and it's not exactly a subject you can skim the textbooks on and get a general idea. Even so, I found the frustration between the craftsmen and the ignorant quite widespread, and it didn't only apply to programming.

The answer, I learned from an instructor, is not for the worker to expect the client to be an expert in a field that is not his own, nor should an ignorant peer be content to wallow in his lack of knowledge. It is important to attain a basic understanding of all fields you will be working with directly. There is no quicker way to earn respect among peers than to express interest and knowledge of their chosen discipline. Never assume a job to be easy, especially when you don't know anything about it. Ask if a goal is realistically attainable, and if the employee says it isn't, try to understand what is so difficult about it so you don't make the same mistake in the future. It also helps to familiarize yourself with the limitations of a given occupation, so you don't appear foolish when make a request of a peer. And when an employee tells you something is impossible, it's helpful to know whether they are being honest or incompetent.

Long story short, if you work with people whose jobs you don't understand, or work with people who don't understand your job, or both, be prepared to meet them halfway. Displays of ignorance are annoying, but so are displays of snobbery and elitism. Don't presume that someone else's job is easy, and don't expect everyone to have a flawless understanding of what you do for a living.

Why "The Old Republic" Can Not Be a Good Game

By: Reach for the Sky

Well see, we're already off to a bad start with the title of the article. What I should have called it was Why "The Old Republic" Can Not Satisfy My Standards. Oh well. You may think it bad form, judging a game before it comes out, but the fact is the situation is stacked against it, at least in my opinion. Let's take a look, shall we. (writing this part after the fact, the following can get nerdariffic at times, be warned)

The first problem is that it's an MMORPG. My personal feelings about MMOs aside, this just doesn't fit with the Knights of the Old Republic feel, and quite frankly a Star Wars MMO is just a bad idea in general. An MMO world is static, there's no plot progression, the world never changes*. Oh, what's that? Cataclysm? Funny you should bring that up, because I have a few things to say about it. Once it's turned on, World of Warcraft will be altered, and then go unchanged again. Congratulations, for the first time in ten years, the Warcraft storyline has advanced. the Star Wars universe tends to move a little faster in general. Planets are destroyed, major characters are killed, various political and military factions rise to power. In single player games this can be easily reproduced, the story can move as the player advances. But when millions of players are in the same world, the plot can't follow any one person. Villains you've just spent an hour or so trying to kill are brought back to life in two minutes for the next guy who comes along. A population of monsters will never be eliminated, or else who would the next hero get his five Wampa Pelts from? Planets can't be conquered by different factions, etc. KOTOR has always been about an epic story that revolves around a main character, and even if some kind of story progression is achieved, it will seem disingenuous when millions of others are experiencing the same things right next to you.

There's also the problem of balance. If a trained Jedi like Luke or Anakin fought a scrappy smuggler like Han Solo, the winner would be obvious. In a single player game, the solution is simple. If the main character is a Jedi, they will win, like they should, maybe even against multiple smugglers to preserve difficulty. If the main character is a smuggler, they won't be pit against a jedi, or maybe they'll just have to escape to survive, or maybe you'll have friends to help you. Either way, you get both difficulty and immersion. But when you have multiple players, a problem arises. One player wants to be Darth Vader, another wants to be Han Solo. Both are understandable, they are both cool characters, but if they met in combat, the outcome would be fairly predictable. In an MMO, however, things have to be balanced. You will inevitably have light saber-toting Jedi fighting bounty-hunters wielding blasters, and either could win. In fact, the bounty-hunter will probably end up taking several light saber strikes with little more than a grunt in response, which would look ridiculous to someone who has seen any Star Wars movie ever.

My final concern is with the gameplay. MMO combat at it's fastest is generally pretty slow compared to most games. It also tends to be repetitive, and detached from player action, reducing your input to a right click and maybe a few keystrokes to cast spells or force powers or whatever. This does not fit well with Star Wars' fast-paced, visceral, action-packed universe. With Star Wars game, we tend to expect something like The Force Unleashed and MMOs tend to deliver Bejeweled. You also have the aforementioned problem with taking multiple light saber/blaster attacks and living. This is actually a problem with the KOTOR series in general, and unlike the others is not totally inescapable. It all depends on how much the developers are willing to stray from the MMO formula.

To be honest, I don't actually think it will be a bad game. In fact, since it's being made by BioWare, it will probably be well-made and fun. I just don't think it will be a good addition to the KOTOR series, and it definitely won't fit well with the Star Wars universe.

Whoaaaa, what?

Whoaaaa, What?

By: Blue Rose

Hello there Internet, oh how I've missed you.

For those of you who don't know, I've been in the midst of a move for the past few weeks, and thus have not been able to post for far too long.

But, because I love you all so much, I have snuck on to a remote terminal about 30 minutes before work just to update for our faithful readers out there.

Wanna know something insanely creepy?

The average Myspace user is 31 years old.

That's right, when you were 14 and posting pictures of yourself in a bikini on your Myspace because "it was cute", you know who was looking at it? Greasy 31-year-old men.

Now, before you use this to justify why Facebook has pretty much eaten-up Myspace like Kirstie Alley has pretty much eaten-up...well....everything, the average Facebook user is 38.

Shocking right? It seems increasingly more these days that social networking sites (for the most part) are heavily aimed at the young, teenage audience.

From FarmVille, to MafiaWars, Facebook shoves a proverbial smear of stupid time-killing applications down your throat until you are forced to succumb (unless you have an IQ higher than 60). At first glance it seems like all these bells and whistles would be reason for the majority of subscribers to be teens and young adults, but that just isn't the case.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article entitled "Zombie Networking", about the current state of social networking online. This article put forth a call to the webmasters of the world to create a social networking site for the adults of the business world. And, with LinkedIn nipping at the heels of Facebook (place your bets now), I don't think the stage has ever been more set for a company like Microsoft, Apple, or Google* to thrust some high-budget social networking site onto the scene.

Please bear with us for the next couple of weeks, as I currently don't have internet at my house to be able to post articles. We'll likely be running off a pretty, let's say "Free-flowing" update schedule for the next few weeks.

Reminding you to always find your voice,

-Blue Rose

Reach's note: The best part about this is that in order to maintain that 38 year average, there was at least one greasy 52-year-old for you and every one of your scantily-clad 14-year-old friends.

M-M-M-Mega Post

By: Reach for the Sky

I haven't posted in quite awhile due to end-of-the-year scrambling. For this I apologize. Now that I can no longer rest on that excuse, I feel I must rectify the situation. Here's four game reviews.

Red Dead Redemption is Grand Theft Auto set in the wild west. YOU are John Marston, ex-outlaw who has been torn out of his now idyllic life with his family to track down and kill one of his old outlaw friends, who he presumably met in outlaw kindergarten during outlaw finger-painting. He attempts to confront his friend while he is in the open outside his rivals fortress filled with goons and is hilariously and predictably shot before he gets his revolver out of its holster. The game truly starts after this, with everything you would expect from a western game and more. There are tons of mini-games to distract you from the slow-moving and extremely dull plot. The more action oriented parts of the game tend to get a tad repetitive, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was padded. One of the things that bothered me was how inappropriately high and mighty the protagonist was. He constantly throws out these faux-wise remark about ethics and morality, whether or not the player decides to actually be a good person. It's entirely possible for Marston to be criticizing a snake-oil salesman one minute and dragging an innocent through a cactus patch with his lasso the next. The multiplayer is very innovative, but public games are so bogged down with griefers I wouldn't bother with it unless you can form a private game with friends. It also makes use of the new Euforia engine, which makes for some realistic looking lasso-related encounters. If you were going to buy a western game I would point to this one instead of Call of Juarez, and I could definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the open world capabilities of Grand Theft Auto 4, although I should warn you Red Dead Redemption doesn't fully embrace random criminal acts the way GTA does. In short, it's fun but doesn't offer much in terms of intellectual stimulation.

Alan Wake is a survival-horror game that borrows from other horror stories the way John Dillinger borrowed from banks. That isn't an exaggeration the game rips core elements of Shutter Island, Birds, Poltergeist, and about half of the works of Stephen King. That's not to say it's a bad game, it just doesn't take itself seriously enough. Quite often the game would demonstrate the capacity to create a chilling atmosphere before thoroughly destroying it. The bulk of the enemy force consist of "taken" who you kill by playing the worlds most violent game of flashlight tag. These would be frightening if their presence wasn't pointed out by a slow-motion camera shift nearly every time they showed up, in fact the few times they did jump out from a closet or a bush without warning I almost always let out an audible yelp. The other foes are possessed furniture and vehicles, evil birds, and occasionally a big black tornado. I felt like the vague antagonist could have definitely used a few more tricks up its sleeve, because as it stands the game was just too repetitive. I applaud the game for having a variety of light based attacks, and the selection of guns was both varied and believable for the setting. The main problem is rather glaring, the game just isn't that scary. Killing evil things becomes little more than a chore about half-way through the game, and there is almost no blood or gore (The game doesn't even have an 18+ rating, which is ridiculous for a horror game). I would rent it and give it a try, as it is a unique experience if anything, but there isn't anything past the average-length campaign and it doesn't warrant a purchase.

Backbreakers is a football game that makes serious use of the aforementioned Euphoria engine. Every tackle is animated and scripted on the fly, making the repetitive pre-scripted tackles of the Madden series a thing of the past. The controls are also quite a departure from any other football game, using a system similar to the Skate series for passes and maneuvering. The game lacks the polish of Madden, but I'm ecstatic that there is now an EA-free alternative to the dominating franchise of football games. The game does have its bugs and problems, and it sometimes doesn't behave as true to actual football as some would like, but for an otherwise mediocre developer's first try, it does a good job. I would recommend it over Madden, as it packs more innovation in one game than the last five iterations of Madden. 

Alpha Protocol is an espionage RPG, or at least it tries to be. A more appropriate title would be something along the lines of "huge disappointment" The story is fairly generic, this terrorist did a bad thing, go investigate him. You paly as a secret agent who is constantly hailed as exemplary despite the fact that he is at first proficient in only one weapon and has relatively few skills. The actual gameplay is very clumsy. Stealth, which you would think they would take the time to perfect since the player is a spy, is completely broken. The shooting mechanics are poorly executed, and god help you if you end up fighting an enemy outside the range of your preferred weapon. The interface is unintuitive, forcing you to open an inventory screen to switch between two weapons. There's the much touted dialogue system, where you select one of three responses by choosing a "type" of response. Instead of the dialogue being written out line by line, the game gives you a one word summary of the options to give the player an idea of what he'll say, although this idea is occasionally incorrect. I fail to see the point of this system, it limits the options to a strict four and often misleads the player, but offers nothing in return except less reading, which is the exact opposite of what gamers need. Can't recommend this game to anyone who dislikes searing rage.

I haven't given up on politics, I promise.

3 Craziest Solutions to Solving The Oil Spill

3 Craziest Solutions to Solving The Oil Spill
By: Blue Rose

Our nation has been struck with a rather...interesting crisis recently.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably have heard about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

We here at s-words like to offer-up our recommendations so that the government can make the most informed decision, so, without further ado, here are the solutions ¹ we would recommend.



1. A Giant Bag of Hair



Now, if I haven't proven it already, I do know what you're thinking. And, no, this was not our idea. Matter of Trust has created a program where you can donate hair, both animal and human, to be used to soak up oil from oil spills.

If Americans could just embrace generosity, and shave their heads to help save the gulf, we could put this all behind us. (We like to call this our "Natalie Portman/Britney Spears" Solution).

2. Hay



Since there are only 4 farmers left in the United States, we have an over abundance of hay that we might as well just dump in the ocean. Much like hair, hay will stick to the oil, making it easier to collect.

Utilizing this resource would have multiple positive effects. For one, we could finally get rid of that stupid "nail in a hay-stack" saying. It would also decrease allergens.

This makes hay a fairly viable solution, but it pales in comparison to my personal favorite solution....

3. Just Freaking Nuke It



The Russians have come up with an absolutely beautiful way to deal with these kinds of things. They, in the course of their nation's gorgeous streak of destruction, have found an excuse 5 TIMES to implement underwater nukes to clean-up similar oil related problems.

Now, I could spout some scientific mumbo-jumbo about how the nuke only burns-up the oil while leaving the hydrogen based water perfectly fine, but come on. IT'S A NUKE. Definitely the most B.A. way to take care of a problem, and, more than that, a perfect solution to quelling the accusations that O'bama is a "weak" president.

Reminding you to always find your voice,

- Blue Rose.

¹ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/24/tech/main6514382.shtml