The Gaming Grid

I’m a fan of first person shooters.  I’m not to sure what draws me to some and pushes me from others, perhaps quality of the game, maybe an engaging story line or two.

When the original Halo game came out for the Xbox, I was left out due to my owning of the far superior PS2.  Some may disagree with this sentiment, but those are obviously people that play Halo on a regular basis and continue to tell themselves that it’s a good game to be taken serious.  I played over at a friend’s house on occasion while I was either stoned or drunk enough to imagine I was having a good time killing annoying little dudes with annoying little voices and annoying little catch phrases.

That last paragraph means it should come as no surprise to you that I don’t like Halo 3.  I played for about an hour or so and realized I owned Fallout 3, which, when it comes to the third part of a game series, far out strips the Halo franchise.  There are a few reasons for this:

Fallout 3 had good games in the past.  The first two, while not in my preferred style of gaming, were brilliant and immersive.  There were choices to be made, people to befriend and enemies to destroy.  The third installment went a step further, turning it into an FPS and injecting a high dose of awesome into it.

The Halo franchise does nothing like this.  There is no interaction you have with others beyond putting bullets into them.  There aren’t any side quests and it takes absolutely no creative abilities necessary to make the plot line.  Go here, shoot some shit because of a thing, repeat.  You would think that the biggest gaming franchise Microsoft has among the 18-35 year old male douchebags of the would merit some sort of upgrade as the games went along, but there aren’t any.  You still shoot with the same guns and act in the same way.  Master Chief continues to be the same guy fighting the same war over and over without an end in sight, mostly because if there were and end, Microsoft would collapse in on it’s self and their design department of drunk frat boys would reabsorb into the collective douche.

The only thing Halo has ever had going for it was an extensive online player database, but wading into those waters will get you called all manner of horrific things if you’re bad at it, and eve worse if you are good.  Online multiplayer games have always suffered from this problem, and the way of solving it, playing with friends only, is hampered by the fact that I don’t have any friends that are retarded enough to play this crapfest.

Perhaps I was a little too judgmental on this game, but it had it coming. The release of this game was heralded on G4 as if it were the second coming of Christ as they held tournaments, countdowns and all manner of parties for a second rate game that wouldn’t have been given the time of day if it wasn’t championed by the idiot gamers of the world. It’s a travesty that these guys have been giving Halo 3 all of the laurels, yet Psychonauts hardly registers on their radar. If I hadn’t borrowed this game, I would have traded it in and then firebombed the store by now.

Your 360 can do better. You can do better. Pick up something with a bit of depth to it, a bit of story and a bit of fun. Pick up Fallout 3 or Mass Effect and play a real game that has replay value, and if you really feel a need to get yelled at online, you can always play End War.

One of my favorite game series is command and conquer.  I love that series with a passion. When the series was young I was always telling my friend how it would be cool if they would do a first person shooter of the game. Now at that time, 3D graphics were not that great. While still very playable quake style graphics for command and conquer would not do it justice.

Dave would always tell me how enemies would just look like blobs running around. After 3D graphics evovled a little more, and so did the series. EA produced Command and Conquer: Renegade. This little gem was a lot of fun. This took place durning the first command and conquer game. You played the commando Nick ‘Havok’ Parker. He was the son to the general that gave you missions information in the game.

Running around in the C&C univers, blowing up tanks, bad guys, and buildings was very fun and rewarding. You always wonderd when sending in the commando to blow up a building what he had to do, to get it to blow. Now you know, and since then, you kind of wander why they did not release another FPS similar to the first. “There was another” This game was Tiberium. Now this did have a full spread last year in a gaming mag.

It turns out that they did finally scrap the game, but only because they report that it is not meeting quality standards for that franchise. While that doesnt say much, it is possible that they could decide to pick that project back up. In the trailer, you see walkers and solders similar to was was in command and conquer 2. Now that C&C 3, and RA3 has come out, and did well for themselves they might want to try a FPS again. Lord knows ill play it.

It is nice though, that reading what little they do have on it, that EA does have some quality standards now. We all know that in the past, EA would just pump out anything that they though had a heart beat. I liked Need for speed underground, but do we need 4 billion of them. Lately with these games, they have been putting out better stuff. I think that’s where this game landed, and they wanted to make sure that it would keep up with the others.

I say, don’t throw it completely away yet EA, keep it on the back burner.
I mean this doesn’t look that bad at all, but flashy renders does not mean the game play is good.

I was feeling a little nostalgic this morning for some reason. Not sure why, but I was thinking of the very first Insert Coin Live. Not the one that Dave and I put up on the old feed, but the one Adam, Paul, and I did.
We had a lot of fun, and a lot of laughs at my expense for not being able to talk at 2am in the morning.

We recorded that discussion at Gencon in 2007. That year, we saw what was to be in the upcoming year for some really cool games. I got to play Crysis, and watch starcraft II and Age of Conan. There were a few interviews with game developers that did not get released, because they really don’t say anything half the time.

But later we were sitting around talking about Starcraft II. This got me to thinking about what has blizzard be doing. Sometimes you wonder if they know what they are doing. Thankfully they put out good games, but it seems that their marking department and development team are not in the same solar system. Your probably thinking, Phil what are you talking about?

Well since I dont have any D list celebrities or funny people, I cant do it in the VH1 we love the 80’s fashion. What I can do is just spit the skinny. YO!

First lets take a look at a little game that was supposed to be the next line in the Warcraft series. This runt of the little had X’s covering its eyes before development. This bugger is Warcraft Adventures. where you were to play the young war chief Thrall. That is odd, wasn’t Thrall a major character in Warcraft III. I also recall that he is the big cheese in Ogramar. So why would a game about him becoming what his is now, not make the shelf.

Well the first cures is the game was made to be a point and click adventure game. The art style is very similar to what Kings quest 5 was. Now personally I really like PnC adventure games, but possibly doing this would have been the death knell of the Warcraft series. Then the world would not have been blessed/cursed with World of Warcraft.

I have recently seen a few point and click adventure games resurface, but that genre is really just limping along. looking back at when this was to come out, that genre was DoA, and would not have been the game to release. I wasnt the biggest fan of Warcraft III but it probably was the better game. I think its odd that that blizzard had Magazine adds, and the game pretty much ready to go, but then didn’t release.

Now, it would have been understandable if they were only at concept phase and then decided to release or maybe just in the infancy stage of development. This lame duck was ready to go out to the world. but this would not be the last time blizzard would do this. Oh no there is more. but first enjoy the trailer for Warcraft Adventures.

Now that we have just seen the first ghost of blizzards past. Lets take a look at another Ghost. You see what I did there? I spent all night thinking of that one. This would be StarCraft Ghost. Now more people are probably familiar with this little gem that was never unearthed, but one of the questions is would the game genre change have also killed the series?

Looking further into this, it was supposed to be out in 2003. It was pushed off the again and again in until 2005. This is when it seemed to get the final axe to the neck. Now looking at other things, they had a full trailer with game play ready and had aired it. looking further, I found that they also had a full intro cinematic. I’m pretty sure with the quality and time that they had put into it, the they spent a pretty penny.

Also looking at the other, advertisements and media spending, this was not a cheap death. One does wonder if they might have it currently on the back burner. Could Ghost get a graphics upgrade and mechanic over haul? Could they just tease us even more? Yes, Yes they will. If you look at pictures from Blizcon. You will see the model dressed up as her for the con. They haven’t forgotten about it, but they will taunt you with it.

Now with that being said, not much is know how far in the development Ghost was. Knowing the marketing people in the game industry though, it was probably ramped up, and said they could have it out early. But I know that the local gamestops were selling pre-orders for the game. That also isnt saying much, cause they would sell you pre-orders to the second coming if they could. Here is a little taste of what could have been.

Here is a the commercial with game play footage, it seems this might have been an early stages, but its have the voice of Optimus Prime on here, so it can’t be half bad.