A Vision Compromised

Tycho: You should probably read the comic first.

Uncompromising Vision

Tycho: Its worst tendencies having gone dormant for months, Electronic Arts suddenly drew itself up to its full height and began a fresh round of decapitations. Over the years, we've had to hold interventions like this from time to time for the company. It is in that spirit that we open a dialogue.

A Preview

Cold Calling

Tycho: The news that Mass Effect would feature an uncompromising, high-res simulation of alien lesbian sex was sweet, and hot, like spun sugar. For Gabriel, at any rate. Some of the community reaction is dedicated to demands for gay parity for the male persuasion of this sexual equation, lengthy treatises by oiled men who crave starborne sodomy. The rest of the dialogue is just boring. Boring, terrestrial, and (quite frankly) myopic. Where are the bipedal crustaceans in this calculation? The swirling, aroused gasses? The lonely, sentient space station whose hermetic bulkheads hold secret clusters of erotic delights, provided your character has both the skills and equipment? Carpe astrum, you Goddamned backwater clowns. There's must be an entire universe of thrilling, dangerous, sometimes razor sharp genitalia that slavers beyond the Horsehead Nebula. You might have noticed that we're advertising an Everquest game, an act that I'm aware places us in significant rhetorical peril. If I had not found the game completely electrifying, I would have turned down the buy. Of course, what I find electrifying has somewhat strange parameters. I used to enjoy a deeply indie online CCG called Star Chamber, which was eventually purchased by an online CCG company called Worlds Apart (which did, among other things, the Lord of the Rings online CCG). As does happen from time to time, World Apart was eventually purchased by Sony Online Entertainment, becoming SOE Denver. Since then, they also delivered a Stargate CCG that we liked enough to advertise. Legends of Norrath: Oathbound is a game within a game, similar to Final Fantasy's Triple Triad, that you can play against other players directly in the client. It's tied into the loot systems for both EQ games, so that cards you get in packs are actually equipment and so forth - I find that interesting, but as a person with no investment in those systems it doesn't motivate me. What motivates me is a rock solid, deeply tactical card game, which Oathbound absolutely is. It plays in a stand-alone client which you can download, and comes with a fairly elaborate tutorial that is worth playing all the way through. I had no interest in it, I felt confident dismissing it out of hand, and it won me over. You may find yourself similarly surprised. I have a very high opinion of Eurogamer, but I don't know how a person could possibly have reviewed Team Fortress 2 already. We put time in both at work and at night, and I don't feel like I'm any smarter about the sometimes extraordinary interplay between the game's nine Goddamned classes, which mesh in real time to create some kind of shuddering Chaos Engine. I have a lot of fun playing it, though the Medic brings me the most joy, so I've focused on it almost to the exclusion of all others. A healing "gun" - like the repair module present in Tribes, almost a decade ago - is an immensely satisfying way to model that relationship. Anytime your medical gun is attached to a player, your "Overcharge" ability is building up. When unleashed, both you and your target become invulnerable to enemy attacks. It's an incredible siege breaking technique, and it's earned simply by embodying the virtues of your class. But where to use it, when to use it, I'm still learning this - and what's more, other players are still learning that I can do it. I always love the early period in these multiplayer offerings, before the hard limits are known, when players seem to be magicians and anything is possible.

In The Love Nest of Har'akki

Tycho: You might want to see this, or you might not: I know that Gabriel has sworn off all exposure to the game, which may also be your policy. Even so, this is the first time they've shown the distaff side of the character creator, so maybe you'll rescind your earlier mandate. A video with a similar theme popped up over at 1up as well, and it does things a little differently: I don't like its look at the character creator as well, but the cut they have of the intro is far superior. If you watched the other one, you're in for a penny, in for a pound: you should check it out. There's a lot of other content out today as well at GameTrailers - but the whole thing is a minefield of spoilers so I'll understand if you hold back. The intro itself (from the 1up cut) is perfectly executed. Understand that I am almost the optimal audience for this sort of game, but even so. I see a lot of game content, and you need to dig pretty deep to generate actual wonder. I was excited to learn that they got Jack Wall in to do the soundtrack - he's worked with BioWare before, but he also did the soundtrack for Myst IV: Revelations - one of my all-time favorites. (CW)TB

Tycho: Having played collectible card games since the original printing of Magic - taking my dishwasher's tips across the street to Dragon Tails to secure boosters for the coveted Arabian Nights - seeing Gabriel take up the pastime has warmed (but not thawed) my black heart. It's always a portion of myself I've bridled in his presence, kept hidden, suppressed may be the word. To have him take it up so freely makes me wonder which perversion of mine he'll take up next. When he started talking about his "Firestarter" deck, whose dancing fires were stoked by a mysterious device known as "The Holon Engine," I began to worry. The dangers of Netdecking are fairly substantial when it comes to friendly play, a corrosive force that turns friendly pick-up games into ostentatious displays of wealth on par with rap videos. If you're playing in a competitive venue, building on prior art and making loads of precision purchases is probably your only recourse. But if you're just playing at lunch, let me be clear: you are consorting with devils. I took time over the weekend to hit the level cap in Call of Duty 4, and then just to be sure that I understood what was going on I played for several more hours. I'm not the most skilled player you will encounter, with a roughly equal number of kills and deaths, but I prefer to think of my work in an assassinative context - the removal of key players at key moments. Please let me have this. In the absence of the game's deeply integrated progression scheme, Infinity Ward would merely have created one of the best shooters available today. It would have staunch proponents, and they would be right to praise it. Is there a substance within cream that can rise to the top of itself? This substance has been discovered. As a distillation of the Infantry FPS, this is right down to it. This is brutal, unrepentant, bathtub fucking hooch. It is tight and smooth, it is lethal. Unrelenting in its intensity, your first rounds - indeed, your first few levels - will be spent without the succor of CoD4's rich rewards for continued play. But you'll see them on the killcam, every time you go down: this one has increased health, of course that would help. This one does more damage. This one, after he's killed, pulls his sidearm and takes a few final shots. This one's shots retain more of their damage after they pass through a wall. You earn these for leveling up, with the experience you gain for every kill, for every round. You also earn experience for Challenges, which are (collectively) "awesome things that you did." I completed X-Ray challenges last night for killing people behind walls, which dished up bonus XP - this is displayed with exultant audio and video cues at the very moment of success. Killing while crouched, killing while prone, taking down an enemy helicopter, this is all gravy. There are challenges specific to your weapon, as well: for kills and headshots with that firearm, you travel down an upgrade path for unique to that weapon that reveals sights, camouflage patterns, and other tools to customize your equipment. Watching videos of multiplayer play online, you'll get the impression that it looks better than it does. It looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not completely photorealistic. What it does have is an extremely reliable framerate and excellent level design, so that during the experience of play these fantastic visuals are transmuted into something sublime. Here's what I mean: if a friend is over, and they are watching you play, they'll be able to detect flaws here and there. Level geometry isn't especially fanciful, and blown paper or leaves look a little strange. But for the player, movement is just right, player models are just right, and the environments are right so that moment to moment everything gels. As I said on Friday, to bring this thing into the house of Halo is pretty ballsy - but it'll carve out it's proper due. On the Playstation 3, what force could stand against it? I have a high opinion of Haze, but I've never played it - that's based mostly on my gut. Call of Duty 4 will fall hard on that system, like shrieking artillery.

That Ravenous Fire

Gabe: Many of you are probably already familiar with Gamer Dad. He's becomea fixture at PAX and we've linked to him on a number of occasions. Ifyou don't know about him you should check out his blog. He's out therefighting the jack Thompsons of the world and trying to prove thatbeing a gamer doesn't mean you're a psychopath. He has also beentirelessly preaching the importance of gaming with your children.basically he's one of the good guys and right now he needs some help.

Gabe: I'm home sick today thanks to Tychoid Mary (Typhoid Jerry?) whichsucks because I feel like shit but is also awesome because I have achance to play a bunch of Jeanne D' Arc.I picked up the PSP slim last week and I'd say overall it's animprovement. The thing that really stands out about it is just howlight it is. My guess is Sony was pretty pissed they couldn't call itthe PSP Light, because honestly that's what it is. Other than thedramatic weight loss it sports a much nicer directional pad and andthe ability to push video out to a TV. It lost the spring loaded disktray which is a shame. The new UMD drive feels cheap and seems likeit's just waiting to break. The video out capabilities are nice butyou don't have the option to run the game full screen. You actuallydon't have any options at all unlike the old GBA player for the Cube.It looks good enough but the real bummer is that you are forced to usethe PSP as your controller.Am I the only one who remembers how awesome the Nomad was? Essentiallyis was a portable Genesis. You plugged regular Genesis carts into itand you could play them on what at the time was a very nice littlescreen. It also had video out so it functioned as a regular console aswell. The best part was that it had a regular controller port in thebottom so it really was just like having a console you could pick upand take with you. I'm really curious how hard it would have been tolet people sync a PS3 controller up to the PSP. See I actuallyupgraded to the slim because of the video out. the remake of FinalFantasy Tactics drops next month and I never actually played theoriginal. I got into the series on the GBA and actually played it onmy Gamecube via the GBA player. Sitting back on my couch with mywavebird I must have logged well over a hundred hours in that game. Ihad fantasies of a similar experience with FF Tactics: The War of theLions.The bad news is that the PSP video cables won't reach to my couch. Iimagine this will be that case for most people with large televisions.I guess I could get extensions but that's hardly ideal and I'd stillbe using the PSP as my controller. The good news however is that thenew PSP is much easier on the hands. I've been playing a ton of JeanneD' Arc today and I have not experienced any "PSP Claw" as I used tocall it. Seeing as FF Tactics and Disgaea are both coming out nextmonth a new more comfortable PSP is exactly what the doctor ordered.-Gabe out

Tycho: I purchased twenty fluid ounces of Halo 3 "Limited Edition Mountain Dew Game Fuel" in the hopes that it would taste so horrible that we'd get a strip out of it. ?Before I read the ingredients in preparation for this post, I often found myself desirous of this strange liquid - a liquid the precise color of tubercular sputum. I would trip over to Seven Eleven to obtain it, tipping a small portion onto the concrete for the Spartans we lost at Reach. Once I discovered that the soda contained a compound called "Brominated Vegetable Oil," my ardor was diminished for some reason. The flavor of the beverage is not unpleasant, especially if you like bromide. The almost oppressive campaign that surrounds the product is, perhaps, more bitter. It's one slice (or, perhaps, sip) of a ten hojillion dollar marketing campaign designed to project one of gaming's biggest brands to people who already know about it. There is no way to escape the Goddamn thing. Over ninety percent of the surveyed crustaceans were "aware of the launch" and held a "strong desire to purchase," even though their massive claws and aquatic habitat make using the product impossible. Lemurs are less bullish, but then lemurs are a notoriously tough demo. It took a third night of playing the Call of Duty 4 Beta for everything to sink in, but it's pretty much official: they know what the fuck they're doing. A shooter can't merely be great to come out this holiday, and even amazing might be insufficient. To go against the previously described fucking unstoppable media phalanx - to say nothing of Halo 3 itself, whose multiplayer offering is so broad on every axis that it must be called round - you need to drop something that be off the cheazy. There are shooters that play with progression to varying degrees. Battlefield 2142 does, but the infantry experience is one part of a whole. Rainbow Six: Vegas does, but it's reward scheme is largely cosmetic in nature, and takes place outside of the game proper - between rounds, in austere menus. CoD4's leveling has the sharp inhalation of a WoW ding. It takes place right there at the moment you earn the XP from a kill, with an onscreen celebration of the fact. The reward structure earns you new playmodes, new weapons, new slottable abilities, the right to build custom classes, the right to wear a clan tag. You don't need to wait long to earn them, the schedule is not cruel, but you need to put in your dues. It's not an onerous process: in order to level up, you must simply play Call of Duty 4. Trust me when I say this is something you will want to do. I feel as though my knowledge of the game should be richer, so let me crack a few more levels and get back to you. Hopefully a beta code will have dripped out to you by then, and you will know what I mean with visceral certainty. Oh, and also: ?if you want to tumble down some fissure in the earth and wake up in the Japanese Madness Caverns, take a look at this video for Puzzle de Harvest Moon. I watched it hours ago, and I am still haunted.

Alien Genocide Is Thirsty Work

At Least It's Over Soon

Tycho: Heavenly Sword is, as you will soon discover, the very definition of a rental title. Clocking in at somewhere between five and six hours (depending on your appetite for overwrought cinemas) it's a decent game saddled by impossible expectations. It has silly ideas and grandeur in close proximity to one another. It tries hard. And it's not bad, by any means. But it's not excellent, and perhaps unfairly it had this onus placed upon it. I've said that Lair is not the Playstation 3, and nor is Heavenly Sword, but taken together one must come to the unmistakable conclusion that the Playstation 3 is a game console and not the supernatural artifact they have presented it as. That however many processors and however many gigs of space are not especially relevant when put in the service of middling entertainment. It has a decent combat system, and using this combat system you will progress from locked room to cramped, locked room until you come face to face with some jeering asshole. You might kill them either because of the jeering or because you think that death might cull their interminable monologues. There's a mean snake bitch and a pervert and an oaf. Oh! And en evil king. The only thing running through my head during the lavish and no doubt expensive mo-capped cutscenes was that these kings and bitches and so forth should form a band. It never seems to know if it wants to be a hilarious comic circus or a stark medieval saga. Play it, and you'll know what I mean. There are successes, though: Kai, the mostly deranged sidekick, charms from the outset. Her feral animations and nuanced delivery really make her stand out against this batch of also-rans. Any object that can be thrown can also be thrown and then guided in slow motion, including corpses, which is something you must see to believe. We didn't even have a target; we would just throw bodies so that they flew like Superman head-first into gongs. This is something you can do for a half an hour - or more - without tiring of it. This guided firing is called "Aftertouch," and it's about fifty percent of the game. One wonders what the game's length would actually be if you didn't play half of it in slow-motion. Some measure of your enjoyment will be bound up in whether or not you "buy" the story that they are telling. I've heard it described as epic, when it's pretty rudimentary fantasy-by-numbers bullshit, so who knows. It's all a matter of perspective: are we judging it against only PS3 games? If so, things are shaping up! If you own more than one console - or a personal computer - your standards for grand storytelling were recently adjusted upward.

Gabe: I've gotten some mail about the Sony Defense Force site we mentioned in the strip today. Most people seem to want to know if it's a joke or not. I am of the opinion that it is. I'm not sure about Tycho but I think it's 100% fake. Stuff like the Lair review and their spin on the video of Halo 3 running on a PS3 demo station just can't be real. I think the guy running the site and making the articles is a genius. He's pulling in all kinds of traffic with an incredible parody and best of all, he even has people in his forums who think the whole thing is real. My guess is, in a couple weeks or maybe a month he'll drop the charade and reveal the whole thing was a gag. Maybe he can keep it going longer than that but I doubt it. I hope he can though because honestly it's fucking hilarious. 128016001920 Also Kiko made you this cool wallpaper based on one of his PAX photos. He has also posted two more sets including the final round of the Omegathon and general PAX culture. -Gabe out

Gabe: We had this shirt at PAX and next to the actual PAX 2007 design I think it was our best seller. Like the majority of our stuff this probably won't make any sense to some of you. I'll just say it's Pokemon related and leave it at that. For you trainers out there who couldn't make it to PAX the shirt is now available in our store. The Target by our office had the new PSP slim with Daxter pack today so I went and picked one up. They unfortunately did not have the AV cables so I can't test the video out stuff yet. In fact all I've done so far is open it up and plug it in to charge. I don't know how "slim" it is but it's crazy light. I thought I was holding some kind of fake display PSP and the real one was still in the box somewhere.-Gabe out

An Embarrassment Of Kittens

Tycho: Going deeper into the Console War than ever before we discovered hidden camps, and were inexorably drawn to their strange rhythms and makeshift jungle podiums hot with rhetoric. It grieves me to announce that we may have lost Gabriel to their potent lure.

Tycho: To fully communicate Lair, you really to need a video component - and the review over at Gametrailers really sets things straight. The abrupt storytelling, technical stumbles, and strange behavior are all much better delivered by the game itself than by my hyperbole. (CW)TB

The Dawn of A Glorious New Age

Tycho: Sony hasn't been entirely clear regarding what their 1.92 update for the Playstation 3 actually does, suggesting that it "focuses on some PS3 compatibility and playability issues for select titles," but our own experience with the update has been conclusive. In the Internet's dark places, aggrieved Lair fans are suggesting that this update improves the game's motion controls, and that each media outlet must rescind their previous scores. I'm fairly certain this is magical thinking - neither Sony or Factor 5 will say with any specificity, and now that both our PS3s are updated it would be impossible to test. Typically we don't take the traditional holidays off, nor do we take off non-traditional holidays, such at the Feast of St. Motherfucker - a holy day that I've only just now invented. Gabe's father was around, though, and golf seemed like a good time investment. Reading greens and choosing clubs for other people is about as far as I get, so for me the social aspects of the game are paramount. Standing under the awning at the driving range, it's hard not to see where EA's Tiger series could improve. This year's lobby system is much improved over last year's, but I'm not sure why the lobby itself couldn't be a driving range. This is how virtually any actual round of golf starts, with every person hitting the bucket they bought and lamenting their performance. A few of their minigames would work just fine in this context - don't create a custom game to play them, build all of the basic play into a casual, central experience. From here, modes, courses, and wagers are established. When new people pull in, carts can be heard. Links for the 360 wasn't as complete as Tiger, but it had four player modes first - and it had a means to play Speed Golf that Tiger should loot from its fallen enemy. Essentially, you play the round as normal. Everyone else plays the round as normal simultaneously, and shots are keyed to a certain color so that the arc of each person's shot is visible to all other players. They need to steal this - throw the name of each player on there, use the face, whatever. This needs to be how it works. You can play an entire course in a quarter of the time. The RPG metaphor really worked the first few times I bought the product, but it's really lost its currency with me. There's a point - and it may be with the '08 version of the product - where the number of courses are such that I don't actually want to pay sixty dollars again just to lose all of my character progression every year. Gabriel's suggestion is to approach it more like a fighting game, which is to say like Mario Golf - with discrete golfer archetypes that have a suite of skills. I'm wondering if Guild Wars doesn't have the answer - full priced expansions every year, with a perpetually tracked online experience where your prior purchase actually increases the value of the next. Let all play - online and off - be a part of the core experience, let all play hone your ability. Don't wall off online play into some purgatory as it is now, untracked, outside of the normal scheme of advancement. With these thoughts in my head, excited by the sun-dappled future we had envisioned. we sat down to play a round online the next night. After determining that one of us couldn't play at all or it would crash the game for everyone - a weird kind of crash where you can't play, but you're able to talk to one another about the crash - we were able to play eight holes, at which point it crashed before a victor could be determined. They've only just made online Photo Game Face available for Tiger, for the first time since launch, but they had to deactivate online features for two other titles to do it. So, no. I don't have high hopes.

Tycho: Welcome to the show notes for Downloadable Content 09/05/2007, "Getting Down." The episode is available for direct download at this link, or feel free to subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here. There is no guide for this one, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the mountains of madness. (CW)TB

Tycho: One of the questions during a a panel at PAX had to do with the italicised line at the end of each day's post. They're almost always song lyrics, and back before we were paying for bandwidth (and before RIAA rape gangs were prowling the web) these lines used to link directly to the MP3. I maintained the practice afterward because it's sort of like a song of the day, and I like the idea that someone might be struck by a strange turn of phrase and seek out a piece of music. It also serves as a gauge of my mental state at the moment. Today's song, for example, is Stan Rodgers' incredible live version of the sea shanty "Rolling Down To Old Maui," which Pandora kicked out after about a week of tuning the station. I've listened to it about thirty times today. The person who asked the question at the con complimented my musical tastes, and I accepted the compliment, but I'm almost always late to the scene. I just bought Interpol's "Turn On The Bright Lights," for chrissakes. I'm mostly lucky to know people who do have unique library. I told him I would mention a few of my favorite bands on the site, but then I forgot. Essentially, it's music that cool people were listening to a decade ago (where applicable). I am a musical carrion bird. He wanted me to list off a few bands, and I said I would last week, but then I forgot. These are the first ten albums I could think of. "Starless" by Shiner

Gabe: PAX is over now and we've all had some time to recover. I think Tycho and I were both nervous going into this year's show. We were moving into a new convention center that I wasn't familiar with and we were expecting almost double the attendance of the previous year. Looking back on the show now I can see that I really had nothing to worry about. As anyone who attended will tell you the new venue was incredible. We had 37,400 attendees but it didn't "feel" crowded at all really. Also being right smack in the heart of down town Seattle was incredible. Leaving the show at night you could go two or three blocks in any direction and see restaurants packed with gamers. The other great thing was that even with the increased attendance the "vibe" at PAX didn't change at all. I know it sounds like a silly thing but people who go to the show will tell you it has a feeling of a bunch of friends getting together. It doesn't feel like a convention it feels like a party.During one of our interviews someone asked me how we were able to maintain that atmosphere and if I was afraid we'd lose it if we grew anymore. I didn't really have an answer at the time but I spent Monday night talking with some Enforcers about it and I think I may have an idea. The Enforcers were telling stories about the other shows that came to PAX to take notes and pass out fliers. They told me about people taking pictures of every room at the show and mapping out how things were arranged. To them it's almost like a math problem. If they are able to construct a show with the same features they assume they will get the same results. In there head PAX must look like this: exhibition room+musical component+free play areas+panels and tournaments=$ucce$$!! In reality they are missing the most critical element of the show. community. Other events are trying to create a show that will draw a crowd and hopefully create a community around it. Penny Arcade has a community already. PAX is a show designed for that community to attend. We don't actually advertise our show except on PA. Obviously it's big enough now that other sites cover it but we have no advertising budget. We have no street teams or promotions designed to spread the word about the show. From the very first year we've built the show for our audience and we've made no effort to cater to or attract anyone else. PAX feels like a group of friends because if you're there, the chances are very good that you heard about it through a friend or though PA. Our plan for PAX (if you want to call it that) has been the same plan we had with the comic. I guess you can call it the field of dreams theory. If you make something good, people will find it and they will tell their friends. I think it's that concept that results in the atmosphere at PAX and I think it's also the reason that we're able to maintain it as the show grows because the showing isn't just "growing". We aren't just filling the space with more bodies. We aren't just pulling people in off the streets to play games. PAX is growing because more people bringing their friends and more people are bringing their families. That's how PAX grows and that's why it doesn't feel like any other convention. After I got home from the show I tried to read through as much of the coverage as I could. The good stuff is nice to hear but honestly I read it allbecause, like any good host I'm worried someone didn't have a good time. If you read some of the coverage you can see what I'm talking about above.Gamers with Jobs started their article with this:The Penny Arcade Expo, now in its fourth year, is unlike any other gaming convention. There's a different vibe, less glamour than E3 but more swagger than GenCon. It's a three-day party, and this year it took over the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle.Slashdot had a nice write up that ended with this:I've been to many conventions, but PAX felt different from all the others in a number of ways. There was a definite sense of community among the attendees; a reluctance to be an out-and-out jerk. The volunteer security detail (The Enforcers) may have had quite a bit to do with that; instead of underpaid wanna-be cops the folks keeping the peace were black t-shirt wearing nerds. In other words, they were just like the attendees. This focus on community, and the fact that the event flowed from the whims of Jerry and Mike instead of a corporation's pocketbook, made the 'tone' of the event substantially different than your GenCon, your E3, or even Comic-Con. There were jerks, of course, and problems were had. 40,000 people packed into a few blocks will have that result every time. On the whole, it was amazing to see firsthand what can happen when a couple of guys say "why not?", and invite a few thousand of their closest friends over.I think the best quote I found though came from GamerDad. Andrew brought his "gaming with children" lecture to PAX and when he got home he wrote an open letter to PAX 07 attendees. My favorite part of the entire thing is a bit at the end. Addressing all the PAX 2007 attendees he said:You guys are great. I"ve spent the past two days telling my contacts at the ESA, telling the ESRB, and telling Hal Halpin that THIS is the show that represents gamers. This is the show they CANNOT IGNORE. And you are the audience that these monolithic organizations NEED to reach. PAX is gaming, the future, and I want to thank you personally for a terrific show.So I guess that's a long way of answering the question. Essentially PAX is the way it is because of you guys. In our third book Tycho ended his introduction by saying "Every good thing that has ever happened to me has been the result of your enthusiasm, your kindness and your support." I honestly can't think of a better way to say it. I had a lot of people thank me for PAX during the show and I certainly appreciate it. Now it's my turn on behalf of everyone here at Penny Arcade to thank you all for PAX.-Gabe outPAX PicturesKiko's FlickrDarkPhibre's FlickrGSpeezy's Flickr

Getting Down

Tycho: Gabriel and I both are deeply invested in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I've taken the last couple nights to try to close out the brutal Stuntman: Ignition, because I won't be able to relax until I've sealed it in ultimate victory. But Metroid is always there, whispering, the Wii remote tucked there in the couch like a hatchet in a stump. It is ready for work. Playing Lair is horrifying, like having a talking cyst erupt out of your genitals. Now that the rhetoric phase is over, we can discuss the relationship between Metroid: Corruption and Lair with the necessary gravity. Both games are meant to be emblematic of their respective hardware, delivering something that isn't possible elsewhere. Corruption delivers on the best shooting this side of a mouse and keyboard, utilizing a combination of precision pointing and visceral, endlessly iterated motion controls - this is its entire purpose. Lair's task is similar, but it's serving two masters. Well, three masters: it's trying to be a graphical powerhouse, and showcase for motion controls, and do the bidding of Bal-Shurub, King of Liars. Feel free to excise the last one, but those first two taken together constitute a "rock" situated in close proximity to a "hard place." No person familiar with the medium is going to mistake the new Metroid for a Next Generation Title, at least graphically. It has strong design chops, and it's executed well, but its first task is to deliver an immaculate framerate. Smooth performance and immersive motion controls have a relationship to one another. I said in a previous post that when these novel input methods fail, it's infuriating - but that's not really complete. It's breaking the simulation, so that the experience is less real, deprecated with each failure of interpretation. Running at sixty frames cements the world and your place in it, so that even when simply looking around the environment, these things are credible. Movement is controlled with the analog nubbin poking out of the nunchuck, and generously interpreted gestures augment and elevate traditional gameplay. It's certainly a lot of fun to tease Lair, and it's a service for which there is a great appetite in the community. During our own play, game performance was not such that our input was dependable - And beyond those controls, there was almost no game to speak of. As I say above, I don't know that this is even their fault. But it's ridiculous the extent to which Retro has done more, with less.

What People Are Saying

Tycho: You couldn't pay us to play Lair any more than we have already. The game has given me a new respect for the professional reviewer, because when a game like Lair hits their desk, they have no recourse. They must tread, as Dante did, down that scarred staircase and into the greasy throat of hell.

Gabe: Kiko has finished processing the first batch of photos he took at PAX this year. You can see them over at his Flickr site. Kiko spent the entire weekend on photo duty and he assures me this is just the first wave. He says he should have another batch ready to go on Tuesday.-Gabe out

Tycho: Gamespot is saying there's a reproducible crash in the new Tiger Woods for the 360, and that the Gamernet functionality doesn't work there either. PS3 version sounds clean. Next year, can you guys make sure you put your crash bugs into the demo, too? It would really help the consumer make an educated decision. It's so weird; we had problems with the last one, but it never occurred to us that the next one could be worse. That is to say, I expect inertia. I don't expect it to break before I even get the Goddamned thing home. (CW)TB

Tycho: Last year's iteration of Tiger Woods had a fairly serious glitch in multiplayer, in that the game could not be played in multiplayer mode. Or, it worked sometimes, but there was no way to know how or when - what combination of dances and burning herbs would right this aloof mechanism. It was most likely the rush of new owners securing tee-times on simulated links, but after a week of trying to use the product without success I decided that I had better things to do than try and contextualize EA's grave miscalculations. The few times we were able to jump on and actually get in there were the kind of epic, unadulterated "guy fun" one sees lionized in hilarious summer comedies. Golf as a sport (and as a videogame) has the strong undercurrent of shared misery that one usually finds only in dive bars. The recently released demo for this year's product - on both PSN and XBL, now - recalled those moments to us, independent of the rage that bookended each round of powerfully communal spirit lodge golf. This year's product has a huge focus on Gamernet, a kind of user created content initiative that will hopefully see them approach the performance of their online infrastructure with more conviction. GameFace, their face making thing, has seen a significant jump this year as well - it can take pictures from your console's camera and create actual face geometry, and I understand that photos can even be uploaded online and then brought down on the console for processing. We were able to get some pretty good results with the earlier versions of the tool, but this is very much appreciated. Of course, in the wrong hands, every tool is a weapon. Ubisoft is now saying that Haze is an exclusive exclusive for the PS3, and not one of them timed or partial exclusives one might see in the lesser houses. Truly monogamous games are rare these days, and this is certainly a surprise, but this thing has been hopping back and forth for months. There was even a leaked document that showed this "exclusive" being released a week later for PC and 360, though all traces of the document were soon obliterated. Assassin's Creed was (as you'll recall) a PS3 exclusive as well. For a week, at any rate. I'm really excited for Haze, but I'm not sure if that's a universally held belief. The writer made a good impression on me at E3 several years ago, and Free Radical makes a good impression on me whenever they make a videogame. It's also a four player co-op experience with a unique, asymmetrical multiplayer proposition that you've probably read about. But, as with Bioshock, I'm really in it for the story - and, also like Bioshock, I think anything that limits its potential audience is a serious mistake.

Pendulous And Vile

Gabe: We had our annual Enforcer wrap party on Monday night over at Gameworks. It's a chance for all the Enforcers to get together and relax after the show. It's also a chance for Tycho and I to thank them for all their help. We played a lot of games and heard a ton of great stories. There's so much of the show that Tycho and I miss but the Enforcers see it all and this year they saw some crazy shit. For example I had no idea that e for all had hired gorilla marketers to wander the streets in front of PAX with T.V's in their shirts. They were passing out glow sticks and postcards with the e for all logo on them. PAX Enforcers and attendees started a game that involved masking tape and replacing the "for all" with other things the e might stand for. That's certainly funny but it's not the best story about other exhibitions invading PAX. At one point during the evening a table full of Enforcers told me a tale that was so awesome I just had to pass it along.Late Friday night Amber was called down to the lobby of the convention center to deal with a drunk and belligerent member of the media who was apparently yelling at a couple of our Enforcers. Amber arrived to find the man obviously hammered and harassing our security. She approached him and explained that the show was over (which it wasn't) and that he should just go home and sleep. Upon seeing Amber his behavior changed quite drastically. He stopped arguing with the Enforcers and instead stared hitting on her. He bragged that he'd been out all night drinking with Incubus. Then he suggested the two of them go see a movie, get some drinks and "see where it goes." I think we all know where it goes. Sloppy drunks twice her age really aren't Amber's type so she politely declined the offer while still trying to move him towards the door. He leaned in at this point and said "this Penny Arcade shit is weak!" and then asked her if she wanted to know a secret. He said it would "impress her" and with that he produced his business card. He pointed at it and slurred "this is where it's at baby."Now we'd seen this guy all weekend taking photos of our game rooms and exhibition hall. Since he was pretending to be media he also interviewed all our Enforcers about how the show was organized and managed. A few of our Exhibitors even complained that he was in the exhibition hall trying to sell them on his convention. Amber took the card and asked him to find her the next day after he had sobered up. She had every right to pull his badge right then but was a little worried about how he might react. The next morning she happened to meet up with him on the escalators in the main hall. "Hey I remember you" he said, "but I don't remember your name." "I'm Amber the event coordinator for PAX and I need you to give me your badge." she replied.He looked around at the group of colleagues around him and laughed. I guess he thought she was joking. Security arrived and she pressed him again for his badge. He tried to apologize for hitting on her but she informed him that while that was certainly inappropriate it was the drunken tirade that we didn't appreciate at PAX. He reluctantly handed over his badge and was escorted out by a group of Enforcers. I was told this story by a dozen or so other Enforcers who witnessed or took part in the event. When they gave me Ed's business card as physical proof of their encounter I couldn't believe it. I was already laughing when I turned the card over and noticed the back. -Gabe out

Tycho: We never sit down with the firm intention of making another Bioshock comic - indeed, we intend the opposite - but somehow Bioshock comics continue to be written. One day, science will pierce these mysteries. Until then, you'll simply have to endure more strips regarding interactive storytelling's electronic opus. My recovery from this weekend's rigors would be quite accelerated if I were not up until two or more every night, which is to say morning, hacking and slashing my way through the new releases like some malarial jungle guide. I put Bioshock to bed last night, and theoretically this should be cause for joy, but I suppose it's like finishing a pie. There is a whiff of accomplishment, semisweet - but the pie is gone. Without pause, I slapped the input stud on the video switcher before the final cinema faded to black. Hurling the gamepad into a knitting basket, I dug deep into the faultlines of the couch, producing a wiimote/nunchuk pair. I've now played enough of Metroid Prime 3 to know that they've washed the filth of Red Steel completely from the system. For awhile, I was doing that thing we sometimes do, playing until "the next savepoint," which so frequently becomes "until the savepoint after that," only to meld seamlessly into "until I can no longer see." They've been spinning the tumbler at Retro for awhile on this one, trying to define first person on Nintendo's weird little chimera, and they've drilled down with enough diligence to find it. No doubt some measure of the enthusiasm directed toward the game is due to the fact that people are actually using their Wii again, but that shouldn't diminish what they've done. People have seen Corruption for a couple years, now, builds that bubbled up at different press events, and it's been slightly different each time. I think they've moved some of the interactions since I last played it - things that were mapped to the nunchuck's gyro before are now handled by the wiimote's pointing device, and I understand why. Gestures are a very immersive, intuitive means of interaction, but when they fail (or when they fail to express us correctly) they are Goddamned infuriating. In a case when your hand is actually "present" in the simulation - such as when your left hand is pulling, then twisting, then pushing forward - those motions need to be as authentic as possible. They must have chosen the perfect translation of the pointing device over the more "correct" left hand interaction. It creates situations where you are using a different hand than your character, but because the motion is really one to one it still feels pretty good. That's the long way of saying what you could learn in five minutes, sitting in front of it. This entire exercise has only stoked my ardor. It is my intention to begin playing this game at ten, and continue doing so until light begins to creep under the curtains.

To Catch A Predator: Rapture

Gabe: I found a couple more really nice videos of the intro to the final round of the Omegathon. In case you missed it here's a couple different looks at it. This was easily the most elaborate thing we've ever tried to pull off at the show.

Gabe: Wired has a pretty big article about Penny Arcade in it's latest issue. We've done a lot of interviews but Wired actually sent a writer named Chris Baker out to spend a few days in our office. Sort of like a geek version of Jane Goodall, He hung out with us all day and took notes while we played games and made the comic. Chris interviewed everyone here and even found time to question our wives and friends. Living with us the way he did I think he managed to get some pretty candid stuff out of Tycho and I. Things we might never have divulged during a standard interview. By the end of the week I think we all considered Chris a friend and a valuable addition to any Halo 3 team. The resulting article is a pretty complete look at our little company here as well as the most honest interview I think anyone's ever managed to get out of us. If you're interested you can read it online right here. -Gabe out