Top 10 Video Game Heroes

Timeout.

Before we get down to the business of naming my favorite game ever, let's shower you with top tens. I've made up eight of them, and I'll be sharing them over the course of the next week. The number one game and moment will be posted on Saturday. Until then... LISTS. Because LISTS.

This one is surprisingly by the numbers. Not much in the way of obscurities. I wasn't going to include them for the sake of including them. They consist of my ten favorite video game heroes. Some have good writing, some are just enjoyable characters, some are just sort of iconic.

Without further ado... My top ten video game protagonists (leading roles only, supporting characters come later).

10. Master Chief
Halo Series

Not exactly the most talkative guy around, sure. It could be argued that he's fairly overrated (I wouldn't argue with that, I suppose, anyone who's met an overly enthusiastic Halo fan knows how they get). What gets me is the absolute assurance that he's going to succeed.

Launching through space toward an enemy ship while strapped to a bomb? Sure.
Shooting his way through about seven billion parasitic zombie-likes to reach his objective? He'll do it.
Wage a one man war on two huge fronts? No problem.

He says that he'll do it (often in an understated, yet badass way), and that's that. It gets done.


9. JC Denton
Deus Ex

The game's script reads like a conspiracy theorist's wet dream, but the augmented Mr. Denton does a good job of keeping it grounded. A lot of the dialog sounds kind of silly in retrospect, and he gets a little "author tract"ish in places, but the character of JC Denton is still pretty damned top notch.

8. Tidus
Final Fantasy X

It would've been so easy to make Tidus just another one of the "young disillusioned dude saves the world" archetype clones that Final Fantasy games seem to have in no short supply, but Tidus is different. When you first meet him, he's brash, impulsive, and rude... and immature to the nth degree. Whereas most of the series' protagonists would have made only small, vague steps toward maturity, by the end of Final Fantasy X, it's clear that Tidus is not the same character he was in the beginning. The bittersweet ending only cements the growth.

7. Sora
Kingdom Hearts series

The plotline of the series is nigh incomprehensible, and mostly only exists to tie in a bunch of fun gameplay in various different mythoses, but Sora remains steadfast through the whole thing. I don't even know why, but once his character comes back into focus in the second game, I knew: So help me, I like this character.

6. Cloud Strife
Final Fantasy VII

Ugh. I know. The whole amnesia thing, the massive angst-fest that follows him everywhere. The hair.

The dude is just so badass toward the end of the game game (after he gets his head put back on right). I can't help it.

5. Razputin
Psychonauts

I should really give this game another try, I think. Everything that this character says is golden. He takes everything in stride, while trying to provide order to people who wouldn't know the meaning of order. He's the straight man in a world where straight men practically cannot exist.

Rather than go on and on, I'll just provide an out of context quote from one of my favorite sequences in the game:

Den Mother: Enough! It's time for me to pluck out your eyes!

Razputin: HA! You can't. That is the purpose of the goggles!

4. Mario
Super Mario series

Eatin' shrooms, savin' princesses...

3. Naked Snake
Metal Gear Solid III

I originally had Solid Snake on here, and I guess it really doesn't matter which is on here (ya know... clones and all), but I like the character progression with Naked Snake more. The development he goes through from the naive beginning to the cynical and crushing ending it much more interesting than a series of treatises on nuclear war and the definition of a modern soldier. The ending leaves little doubt as to why this character is about to go off the deep end. I'd gladly follow him there. Also, it's easily David Hayter's best performance.

2. Commander Shepard
Mass Effect series

It's a little bit of a cheat, since you can essentially create Shepard to be anyone you want (male or female, pushover nice guy or stone faced jerkass), but no matter which path you choose, the voice acting is superb, and the guy (or gal, if you prefer) can give a hell of a rousing speech.

...plus there's that whole "take on an ancient race of killer machines and win multiple times" thing. That doesn't hurt.

1. John Marston
Red Dead Redemption

'Layered' doesn't begin to describe it. Without heading too far down the unmarked spoilers path, Marston is the most interesting character I've seen in a video game. He's a loyal helper, but he's got scars on his psyche as deep as the ones on his face. He's a devoted family man and a cold blooded killer on the same token. Every time he speaks, people pay attention. The scenes toward the end of the game, once the goals have been achieved are absolutely wonderful. Props to everyone involved in making this character come alive. I hope to see more like him in the future.

Not Dead

Just vacationing. I wrote some stuff about the Twins that I may or may not share, but that’s not the point here. I’m here to talk about pointless list making.

The long-hinted-at upcoming ‘list of 50’ is going to be a two-parter. Both parts will be posted simultaneously.

First Part: My fifty favorite video games.

Second Part: My fifty favorite moments in video games.

I’m writing everything up now. I’m figuring on posting one entry from each list every Monday and Friday. The “Top 50 Moments” list will be full of spoilers, so I’ll be sure to make it so that any spoilers can’t be accidentally discovered (I hate accidental spoilers as much, if not more than any of you, so no worries there).

I’ll be making another post pretty quick here that will serve as a running table on both lists.

So yeah, the first post will be up either on this next Monday or next Monday, depending on how much scribbling I’ve done to that point. Assuming I don’t dawdle or engage in any of the slacking off that I tend to do, these lists will be completed in mid-November. Everyone will almost certainly be long past caring by then, but seeing as how I’ve written quite a bit of this already, I will be posting it anyway. Suck it, list-haters.

Bioshock 2?

More like Bioshock: Big Daddy Edition

I'm about halfway through the game, and I sort of wish I would've rented it. It's fun getting back into Rapture and all, but this game really feels more like an expansion pack than a full sequel. Also, Lamb isn't as charismatic or interesting a villain as Andrew Ryan or Frank Fontaine were.

Oh well.

Also, this is truth. I haven't been able to unsee this since I first gazed upon its visage.

Indie Game Review: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1

About a year ago, Xbox live introduced the "Community Games" feature along with its new interface. For about 10 months, users were 'treated' to every manner of hackneyed user-made games including (but certainly not limited to) Super Mario ripoffs, classic arcade ripoffs, and a truly frightening number of apps that simply vibrated your xbox controller. There's a few games worth noting amongst the mess (I hope to shed some light on those in the near future), but finding one of those precious few bright spots is often times very difficult.

This game could change all of that. The amusingly-titled I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 is a true gem. Its controls are incredibly easy (it's a twin stick shooter in the vein of Smash TV), the interface is clean, and the game itself is smooth and beautiful. Waves of zombies rise from the grave and shamble towards you, and you gun them down. Powerups are available, ranging from speed boosts, to shields, to (of course) kickass weaponry.

If this doesn't sound particularly new or inventive, it's because it's really not. The aforementioned Smash TV did all of this almost 20 years ago, and a host of imitators have done it since then. So what makes IMAGWZII! so fresh and awesome?

It's actually sort of hard to say, but I think a large part of it is that this game simply wants you to enjoy yourself. Smash TV was created with the obvious intent of being a quarter eater. It starts out brutal and gets unfair from there (and that's the element most of its successors have keyed in on). ZOMBIES is different in that it's not out to punish you, it has no intention of becoming an endurance test (a fact underlined by the fact that the game ends at 13 minutes and 37 seconds no matter what the player does). This isn't to say the game doesn't carry any difficulty or challenge (it certainly does), it's just that the challenge doesn't get in the way of the entertainment.

All of that, and I haven't even mentioned the two main reasons that this game is such a hit - the music and the price (hint: it's a dollar, a fact which the song states). Playing along the duration of the game is a rock song made by the game's creator. In it, he welcomes you to his game, noting that you'd better move quickly and shoot the zombies before bursting out in an anthemic chorus of "I MADE a GAAAAAME WITh ZOMBIES IN IT!!". The game matches pace with the song, picking up the action when there's a particularly rocking portion, or letting the player catch their breath when there's a lull in the song. When the song reaches its end, the game is over.

Put all these elements together and you have a game that  is easily head and shoulders above anything else that the indie games feature of Xbox Live has to offer. If indie games are going to survive on the Xbox console, more people are going to have to take a page out of this playbook. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 isn't just a good independently-made game, it's a good game period - easily worthy of your time and money.

 
After all, It's only a dollar...

Downloadables: Highway Hunter Soundtrack

A strangely fond memory from back in my younger days was purchasing shareware computer games at our local grocery store. I say "strangely" because all of the games were clones of other, more famous games, and also because you were only ever able to play through half the game before a screen would come up and tell you that you were done, at that if you wanted to play through the entire game, you would have to pay. Since I had no credit card at age 12, and since my parents were wary of buying online (a restriction they've since gotten over with a vengeance), I never completed a single one of them - I simply beat the playable portion dozens and dozens of times. Of all the shareware games I purchased, the two that stick out the most in my memory were Wacky Wheels (a cutesy Mario Kart clone that actually holds up pretty well), and Highway Hunter.

Highway Hunter was, for all intents and purposes, a Spy Hunter clone with way more weapons. The story made zero sense (you were supposedly "saving the world", but in the end, a short cutscene shows you driving toward the open road - seemingly leaving humanity to be destroyed... good times), and the enemies fit about three basic templates (run into you, shoot lasers at you, or shoot what looked to be rocks at you), but the game itself was kind of fun. It's a nostalgic game, of course, meaning that if you haven't already played it, there's next to no point in hunting it down now, but the music was classic old school MIDI game music. As far as I know, Serge Shishkin hasn't done any other game soundtracks - which isn't surprising, the company that developed the game (Omega Integral Systems) only made Highway Hunter.

I've downloaded Highway Hunter and ripped all the music from it into MP3 form. The bitrate is intentionally low (it's MIDI, after all - nothing is lost at 128KBPS). As far as I know, this is the only copy of the actual soundtrack online, so have at it. It's your soundtrack to killing strange alien bosses while they chuck little red blobs at you, all the while wondering why exactly the ridiculously inferior M-Laser is the final weapon upgrade, and why the almighty P-Laser ends up with no ammo as a result.

Download the full soundtrack here.

Please note: it may look like some of the tracks are missing (i.e. The Lost Roads 2), but for some reason a couple of the levels borrow tracks from previous levels. It's all here.

Boo!

Went over to the In-Laws' to carve pumpkins tonight. I carved 'Boo' from the Super Mario Brothers series. I'm pretty pleased with the way he turned out - you be the judge (click to enlarge).

I think it turned out nicely. Before anyone asks, yes, it's based off a stencil - but one that I modded a bit. I like the way the tongue turned out.

As a special bonus, Linds made a spider... Linds obviously knows the full meaning of the word 'irony', as she HATES spiders.

The Coming DRM Storm

When EA announced 'Spore' a few years ago, video game enthusiasts everywhere were pumped. Here was a game that promised what video games had only hinted at throughout their existence - a fully immersive and interactive world were the user literally created their own race and evolved them into whatever they wanted.

The game itself has failed to live up to it's massive hype, which isn't a large surprise. What's (unfortunately) even less surprising is EA's decision to use this particular title as the spearhead of its DRM campaign. EA is hardly the first to try to ensure that pirates don't siphon off any potential profits, but they (along with 2K and their infamous Bioshock DRM) are at the forefront of a disturbing new trend in removing any sense of ownership from the end user's hands.

First and foremost, the problem with DRM is that it doesn't have its intended effect. Those who are absolutely set on stealing any form of digital media will find a way to do so. There's no way to stop them, and in trying this hard to dissuade them, you punish legitimate customers.

The larger problem with this can be found in comments from EA's CEO:

"There is a longer-term transition from a disk-based model for retail sales to an “average revenue per user” model. Five to seven years from now, investors will look at EA as how we have 100 million customers where we have an ARPU relationship that amounts to so many dollars a month. It’s different from selling so many disks a month at wholesale prices. It’s a gradual evolution. But we need the tools to be able to do that. The ARPU model is a better margin business for us. It’s less cyclical. It’s a better business. Some of our businesses have characteristics like that: EA Mobile, Pogo.com, and The Sims. We want to move in that direction. People predicted the demise of the DVD rental model for Blockbuster a long time ago. I don’t want to be the guy with a retail store renting DVDs in a world that has moved to Netflix and pay-per-view. We want to innovate and drive along that front, whether it’s with FIFA Online or Pogo or The Sims. Nucleus is a positive step in that direction. Spore has a download model. We could wait for someone else to eat our lunch or we could do it ourselves."

http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/21/e3-perspective-an-interview-with-john-riccitiello-ceo-of-electronic-arts/

This would seem a sound business proposal, except for the fact that his examples are totally skewed. Netflix succeeds because there is a large contingent (myself included) who don't want to buy every single movie that we want to see. Quite often, one viewing is enough. Certainly there are games like this, but there are already services out there for this sort of thing (Gamefly, etc). He's not talking about game rental, he's talking about game leasing. It's akin to the idea of buying a DVD, and then having to pay x amount of dollars a month to continue to buy back the right to view something you already purchased. World of Warcraft gets brought up in these discussions, and I suppose that's fair, but they're charging for the right to connect to their servers. EA is hoping to charge you for the right to sit down and use your purchased product at your own computer (and, if they had their way, your console as well).

Reaction to this has been mixed. There are plenty of people who trot out the old "it don't apply to me since I'm not doing anything wrong" line. That, in my view, is a mistake. Most of us have already not been doing anything wrong, and we're being punished for it. The pirates are one thing, but they are simply being turned into an excuse to add this self-crippling software (which will require you to re-activate it if you do something so simple as change your video card). In effect, they hold your product - the one you spent your money on and purchased - hostage. Who's to say they won't start making you pay to activate it? Who's to say that this trend will stay limited to video games?

Meanwhile, there are a large number of people who have had understandable problems with this. Enough of them have flooded Amazon.com to the point where Spore's current customer rating is 1.5 stars (an unheard of low rating for a major release), and EA's forums are buzzing with questions as to why software - which not only cripples their product, but often causes sizable issues with the user's computer - is being installed on their system without warning. EA, of course, been deleting these questions as fast as they can. This is a not a matter they wish to discuss, and while they have relaxed their activation policy (from 3-4 activations to unlimited), they would very much prefer you to buy their game and shut up about it.

Sorry, I'll pass.

For more information, check out the following links:

"Wired" discusses the Amazon rating attack
Amazon deletes all customer reviews (predominantly negative) - Oops.
The Register talks about EA (sort of) easing up the restrictions
The Kicker: Talk about DRM, have EA threaten to deactivate your product

Son of a...

Oh, that's fantastic...

Prepare for Good News?

The above links to Interplay's website, which for a LONG time has lay in a near-death state. It's got a 'coming soon' image now. Generally, that would do nothing but annoy me, but if you'll notice something in the upper left hand corner...

That really appears to be a shield orb...

Now, judging by the fact that they have other classic Interplay icons on there, it's a little naive to think that they'll be making sequels to all the games shown. This is, however, the closest thing to good news about a Descent 4 since... well... longer than I care to keep track of.

Here's hoping.

Finish the Fight...

Being a video game nerd, I decided to join in the fun of a 'pre-order and wait in line' grand unveiling of Halo3 at the local video game store. Sitting down and reading the credits in the manual, I've found that Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Alan Tudyk (from Serenity) are among the voice cast, as are the entire cast of Red vs Blue.

This makes me very happy inside.

I have a feeling I won't be getting all that much sleep tonight.....