Video Game Pulse

Is a video game considered art? When you think Pac-Man, does Michelangelo or Picasso even spring to mind? Can Spyro the dragon be considered part of the same category as a musical masterpiece by Mozart? For most people, they would say no. Most would not appreciate a video game as art. Make no mistake though; video games are as much an art form as music, movies, or paintings.

Video games come and go, from basic 8-bit to 128-bit and beyond. Games now allow a person to create what ever they want, wherever they want, and how ever they want. Earlier games limited what an artist could do, just as limited colors or brushes could limit and painter. Games must be considered by their potential, not what is in the current selection of games. Games like Katamari Damacy, Zelda: Wind Waker, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus Killer 7, and Psychonauts use a visual dynamic to bring their games alive. Some of the games listed above use cell-shading as a visual aspect, and some others use small details to accent the entire experience.

There are many other forms of art used in games beyond a visual aspect, a game its self is art. Most times art is meant to evoke an emotion through the fantasy your mind creates, something that is limited by traditional art forms. A video game programmer must create the conditions and tools for which the gamer will use to create an individual experience. Gaming is thus an interactive art, something that grabs the attention better then a painting or statue in a museum. Games like Call of Cthulhu not only have the player on the edge of their seat scared, they have the in-game character scared. Call of Cthulhu takes away the Heads Up Display, and any form of a life bar. The only way you know how hurt you are is by how blurry it is, how dark it is, and how scarred you character is. You must take in emotional aspects of the game in order to play it. There are few games that have caused this kind of reaction, games like Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube caused quite a stir, but there was still a heads up display. I’m not really sure if there are any more games like this, Call of Cthulhu is really a pioneer of its kind.

Until recently games have been in the hands of programmers, not artists, to make a game is simple enough, to make something that drives emotions, and creates a realm of possibilities is something that only a true artist can bring to a game. People like Hideo Kojima, Keita Takahashi or David Jaffe are not well known names for no reason at all, they are forerunners of an artist in a programmers position. They are the ones who define what games can be, Games that make you feel what your characters feels, make you care about the person you are playing as emotionally.

Recently the video game industry has been expanding with the creation of the Indian Games Industry and Trade Association (iGITA). This very same organization is requesting 10,000 animation and 1,200 gaming professionals for immediate hire. There isn’t that many people actually available for hire, especially people with an artistic flare for video games. “Art should be seen as art. The focus should be on evolving the latent creativity. It should not be treated as a software training module that can be rushed through,’’ said Manu Ittina; director of Ittina Animation Studios. Mr. Ittina continued by stating that lack of talent is a major issue, and that companies should give ample time for the creation of a product, thus helping tackle the issue of creative restraint to a degree.

Hopefully with the creation of iGITA, the Indian gaming industry can thrive and succeed in its goal of hiring great talent and creating thought provoking games, this really is the an important step in realizing the art potential in games. This will become one of the building blocks in the history of games. Newer consoles such as the XBOX 360 and the PS3 will only further the ability to create art. The console is only the canvas.

The rumor being tossed up over at Kotaku is so scary it has me in shivers. Even the slight mention, either true or not, makes me want to vomit! The kind of sick you get only when you think of pure pain, the kind you get when you watch the “Many Faces of Death” videos. When you watch those crashes on Gorilla Mask.

Uwe Boll has taken games that I don’t really play that much and turned them into horrible movies. Until now I never put to much stock into what he made and how it affected the fans of the games he made movie counterparts to. I never thought of how it could affect the video game series its self. Most all of you that actually are reading this site have realized that I take Sunday and Monday off, but this report is so extremely important that I have decided to break the cycle.

Uwe Boll, reaper of video game souls and destroyer of gaming’s Hollywood hopes, has cast his jaundiced eye on none other than Metal Gear Solid. The Boll said in a recent interview that he knows Konami paid someone to write a script from the game and the he “absolutely” want to make it into the movie. Somewhere in Konami, people are crying.

-Kotaku

God save us all if this is true. No one wants this! The games themselves tell better stories then any video game movie ever could. I am a huge fan of the series, and I can say that I don’t want ANYONE making this movie, even Hideo Kojima himself. I may watch an animation by Hideo Kojima, but live-action is out of the question.

While browsing the internet for some interesting news to report on, I happened to stumble upon a very interesting article, one that really defines what is currently going on within the gaming industry. The article was found on Wired News. It starts out with a simple blow to the Sega Saturn launch, referencing how they releasing it to only a few select stores, and then months later releasing it to everyone to sell. Afterwards it wraps that statement up with the chaos that was the Xbox 360 launch.

Wired doesn’t stop there, they go as far as to talk about how Nintendo’s next system won’t even need a controller to play, and fanboys will still defend that no controller on the Nintendo system is better then a controller on any other system. Man I hate fanboys. They don’t let anyone off the hook in the wonderful satire on the gaming industry.

One thing that stood out the most for me was how they referenced the shock towards the violence in the newest Grand Theft Auto game, West Bloodbath. The reaction is something you may not be expecting. Wired actually compares Mario to GTA, stating that both are wimpy compared to other games. This of course is a direct jab against Jack Thompson ignoring more violent games like Man Hunt, and going after more mainstream games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

“As for the current generation of video games, the big news was the long-awaited release of Grand Theft Auto: West Bloodbath. Gamers were appalled by the violence, specifically the wussiness of it. ‘Wait,’ they said. ‘I’m still limited to shooting, beating or running over hookers? Kill Death Die Hurt Maim let me chop off their fingers one by one while they begged for mercy, their cheap eyeliner merging with their tears and darkening the pools of blood at their feet. Are you sure Mario isn’t in this wimpfest?’”

Wired also goes on to talk about breakaway hits such as Katamari Damacy, and the forced sequel. When Capcom released Katamari Damacy, it was a hugely popular unique game, which spurred Capcom into forcing its creator to making sequel against his will. We (Heart) Katamari was never meant to be, the creator him self stating that he hates rehashed games, and wants to bring unique ideas to the table every time. Wired doesn’t skip a beat when they go on to talk about Adhesive Death Star, and other parody’s of the game.

The end of the article goes on to talk about Microsoft’s revolutionary “Verified Gender technology”, making sure that you are actually playing with a 13/f/ny and not a 35/m/next door. The entire article is a good read, there is more then what I have posted here, so I encourage you to read the full article.

America used to be the place to go to get a job, to make it in the industry of computers, but that is all now becoming a pipe dream. Jobs are outsourced by companies to every country with a low pay rate, and knowlegable employees. I am of course refering to Tech jobs right now, not customer service jobs. Jobs get outsourced to places all around the world, India is one of the key countries of choice for this type of a business practice performed by american companies.

India recently started their very own Indian Games Industry and Trade Association (iGITA), The founding members of this association include Dhruva Interactive, Electronic Arts, Hungama, Indiagames, Mauj, Microsoft India (Entertainment & Devices Division), Mobile2Win, Paradox Studios, Small Device and Tinfo Mobile.

A media statement claimed that the organization is intended to be an important source for industry information, while also playing a vital role in encouraging investments in the Indian gaming market and in making vital recommendations that impact policy initiatives to stimulate growth in this arena.

Maybe this will end up boosting the game industry in India and cause it not to be worth outsourcing jobs. currently the gaming industry is the largest industry in America, and hopefull it will become so for India also.

Recently I was creating my expanded links section and while doing so I noticed something peculiar about 1up.com. When I couldn’t find a quick synopsis of the site to put in my expanded links section I settled on taking the tag line from their title.

1UP.com – Your home for PC video games PS2 Xbox 360 PSP DS GBA PS3 cheats previews reviews boards blogs

I of course modified it a bit so it would flow better in a sentence format, but I did notice one thing missing. Something that not a lot of us think about that often, but should still be included. That’s right, you guessed it, the Nintendo GameCube!!

Now I’m sure 1up.com covers the GameCube, it wouldn’t make any sense otherwise. Some may point to when Gamespot took forever to actually list the Nintendo Revolution. I suspect the decision not to include it for such a long period was fueled by the lack of any solid information about the system, which is something we still lack a lot of. There is however, a slight difference between Gamespot and 1up.com’s very similar titles, Gamespot lists the GameCube in their title bar.

GameSpot:Video Games PC PlayStation 2 GameCube PSP DS GBA PS2 PS3 Xbox 360 PlayStation 3

While this isn’t the end of the world by any means, it sure is interesting to see the lacking care for Nintendo’s neglected system. Most people have been let down by Nintendo’s mistakes and choices in the past few years, and generations, starting back from the N64. Bad decisions and all, the system does sport quite a few great games and the ever popular Mario, Donkey Kong, and other such Big N classic series. Not listing the system is just rude and unprofessional, this oversight should be seen to as soon as possiable.

Everyone reading this probably can guess my thoughts towards G4. It is the one greatest thing done for video games in a television format. At least that is what we all thought going in. They took Tech shows like Screensavers and slaughtered them, they took potentially good game shows and sucked the life out of them. If you tune in to G4 right now, I can almost guaranty that you will be looking at a show about cars, and not in video games.

G4 once a year decides to disgrace the gaming industry by showing off their “G-Phoria” Awards Show. The main problem I have with this is that the games are chosen in the style of American Idol. People can vote multiple times, and its just random people (not a select panel), it shouldn’t even be considered an awards show, let alone a poll. The academy Awards are a panel made of select individuals who know movies and can properly pick the winner in each category. If we left it up to a bunch of kids to call in and vote, Halo 2 would win everytime.

Halo 2, a fun packed game as it may be, is full of flaws. The matchmaking isn’t all that great, the story mode absolutely sucks, and the weapons are completely unbalanced. The only thing that makes Halo 2 any good is the online play which is fun and can keep you entertained for hours on end, but that does not make an award winning game. No one really takes the Spike TV awards and G4 awards to seriously anyhow. If they really were something to care about Phantom Dust would win in at least one category. The fact of the matter is that G4 has become nothing more then MTV3.

Some of you may know what DICE is (hopefully more then not). DICE is the Academy awards of Video Games. But this year they have rammed up the format; they have decided that they want to get this thing aired, and to do so they must make it like an MTV broadcast. They have actors, music artists and much more at this years awards show. The main concern of many is if this will deter from the focus and importance of these awards. We don’t want to mistake the actual awards for the fake pre-recorded awards that are shown on G4 and Spike. I’m not the only one with these concerns; David Jaffe shares the same thoughts on his blog.

But for DICE? Fucking hell man. This is the ACADEMY OF INTERACTIVE ARTS AND SCIENCES…not MTV! For DICE to be even dipping a big toe into this arena is just lame…I’m sorry, but it just is. DICE and the ACADEMY should be loftier than that, they should be more important than that…they should really strive to push the games above all else…hell, they should strive to ONLY push the games…why do we need all that other shit?!?

-Jaffe Game Design

There are some things that David Jaffe says on his blog that I don’t agree with, but this is dead on with my thoughts about the entire situation. While I certainly do understand the aspect of having to make the show interesting for television, I don’t want to see them gearing this towards teenagers and people with a short attention span and a low IQ. The academy awards are fun to watch when you can comprehend what is going on, and have a little respect for what went into the movies, the same should be true for video games. As I said before, I may not agree all the time with David, but I respect him wholeheartedly as a game designer of great games like Twisted Metal and God of War.

As for G-Phoria, there are some more things I would like to get off my chest. First off, what a stupid name. Now that that is off my chest, I can rant about other things that piss me off about this awards show. These awards have no retrospect into gaming, they have a guy hosting that seems to be living off the fumes of That 70’s Show and his most recent girlfriend Lindsey Lohan, and they can’t seem to focus on one thing longer then 60 seconds. Heck, they were actually taped a couple of weeks before they actually aired, so anyone who cared could actually check who won at anytime. Heck, on another blog I read, Cyril Lachel says the following.

It’s Tuesday August 9th, that could only mean one thing: G4’s Awards Show is FINALLY being aired. G-Phoria 2005 was actually taped a couple of weeks ago so there’s no real mystery left in who won and who lost. But that’s not going to stop G4 from attempting to make it seem like the most important thing on TV.

-Defunct Thoughts

Well, it seems like it is about time to get some sleep, so see you next time I get pissed off about the injustice in the gaming world and feel like ranting about it.

BloodRayne reviews have hit the shelves and its time for a reality check. That’s right, yet another movie from the one and only Uwe Boll; videogame-to-movie entrepreneur. Rather then bask in all the bad reviews of the movie I have decided to take the positive slant on this so called “astronomically awful movie”.

If you were to interpret these review one way they would make this sound like one of the worst movies of the year, but you would be wrong. That’s right, there is only one way to interpret these reviews and I’m here to make sure you fully comprehend this in the right way. Just take a look at a few hand picked reviews we have chosen for you to read.

“It’s … not … bad … BloodRayne is just an … sword-and-sorcery … movie with one hot sex scene.”

-Chuck O’Leary, FANTASTICA DAILY

“An … movie you might say … wins …”

-Frank Swietek, ONE GUY’S OPINION

“… Loken is there to provide something to stare at …”

-John Anderson, LOS ANGELES TIMES

“… indisputably the best … video-game-into-film adaptations …”

-Maitland McDonagh, TV GUIDE’S MOVIE GUIDE

With reviews like that how can you go wrong, Rotten Tomatoes may have given it a 2/10 on their meter, but who cares when you have all these people standing behind the film… there are tons more of positive reviews. All you have to do is interpret them correctly, just focus on the key words like we did above. Just remember when you read these reviews that there is only one way to comprehend them, and that is my way!

Party On Uwe Boll!!

“The Revolution will not be televised. On March 24, the foundation of handheld gaming was forever changed with the arrival of the PSP-not only Sony’s first piece of portable gaming hardware, but also the first serious assault on Nintendo’s dominance. It was be [sic] a three-pronged attack, with games leading the charge.”

-Pocket Games, Issue #17 – Page 11

That was Pocket Games response to the PSP launch; in fact it was almost everyone’s reaction to the launch of the PSP. Everyone seems to forget a time when other big companies tried to stand up against Nintendo and lost, The Sega Nomad, and Game Gear tried once to vie for the Portable handheld market, as did SNK with their Wonderswan and Atari with the Lynx.

It is becoming more and more difficult to try to hold onto the belief that the PSP will continue on and lead up to the PSP2. Sony didn’t have that strong of a line-up for 2005, and barley made it with one game into the top 10 selling games. Nintendo on the other hand isn’t having a problem placing close to 8 games in the top ten each month. It is even harder to stand up for Sony and give them support considering that they don’t even have a line-up for 2006. To make matters worse, third party companies are starting to pull support for the system, and putting more financial backing behind the Nintendo DS.

Games like Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories failed to hit projected sales, and while there have been some hit games; a lot of them are misses. If Sony were John Edward the misses would be considered hits and everything would be fine. Unfortunately the world doesn’t work that way, Sony has to get up off its lazy ass and actually give the PSP the first party support it deserves. Bring us a Harmonics’ game, bring us anything… just support your own damn system Sony.

Most people probably don’t link Take-two and GTA; they most likely associate it with Rockstar which is owned by Take-two. One thing most people do realize is that Rockstar only comes out with a few games a year, games that end up being imitated for years to come.

Rockstar is by no means a huge company like EA, they come out with a few great hits every few years and they keep on going, but now it seems like they may be ramping up product development, now we are to expect a PS2 version of Liberty City Stories, and an all new PSP Grand Theft Auto. We saw The Warriors last year which proved to be a wonderful game, and this year we expect more great things to come such as Bully. It seems like Rockstar just can’t do wrong, but taking GTA and turning it into an almost annual franchise may not be the best direction.

Annual sequels are a normal occurrence from games such as Madden, or Tony Hawk who seem to pull it off most of the time; excluding the newest of the Hawk series. We have come to expect a new Tiger Woods PGA Tour each year, along with many other sports line ups, but it seem like this trend may be expanding to even more genres. The hottest plat-former on the PS2 is about to get his 4th game in a row, Jak X. Prince of Persia is also getting its next game already; The Two Thrones, which follows shortly after The Sands of Time.

I know people love these games and I would love to play a new Metal Gear each year, but the fact is that a game that takes some time is generally going to be better then something that can be popped out in a matter of months. Game series like Mortal Kombat have proven that spending 3 months in development is not a good thing.

So here is to hoping that Rockstar/Take-two don’t screw up on the GTA series by releasing too many games, and also hoping that this year they have a more open booth at E3.

The magazines over the past few days have been praising Call of Duty 2 for the XBOX 360, saying it is one of the best WWII games to be made. I’m not here to argue that point; it is a wonderful and highly detailed game. The missions are exciting and diverse and lengthy at that. But one aspect that ALL the magazines and websites seem to get wrong is the online feature.

Some go as far as to describe it as “smooth”, or that you don’t even notice the transition between offline and online play. To be fair to the game, a 4-player room doesn’t cause the horrendous lag, but it also doesn’t cause that much action or excitement either. I began to think that maybe these game critics were just playing some 4-player rooms and calling it a day. Then I read some more reviews and quickly saw that that wasn’t the case here.

Gamespot notes that it is unfortunate that the online play is only 8 players compared to the PC version of 32 players, but then they go ahead and say, “the network code is smooth”. Gamepro seems to be under the same impression and goes ahead to mentioned the following.

“Multiplayer wise, Call of Duty 2 supports eight-player online play via Xbox Live, standard four-player split-screen, and the option to system link up to 16 players. The general FPS game types, including deathmatch, team deathmatch, and CTF, are all included, and it runs wonderfully smooth on Live.”

-Gamepro

One other aspect that these critics seem to get wrong a lot of the time is how many players the 360 and the PC version of this game are. Electronic Gaming Monthly says the game is playable up to 16 people online for the XBOX 360 version. 1up.com also previously mentioned that the XBOX 360 version was 16 players; they have since noted this error. Various other sites and magazines have mixed up the numbers of 8, 16 and 32 between the PC and XBOX 360 version of this game.

Some of you may think that It is my sucky dial-up connection that is making it so hard for me to play this game online, but I assure you that even a T3 connection can’t stand up to this lag filled online experience. Sites like Gaming Nexus and IGN are the only ones that I could find that would acknowledge this issue as something wrong on Infinity Ward’s end.

“I played about 50 games yesterday and today and several more over the last week. About 90% of my games suffered from lag. In most cases, it wasn’t a little lag either. It was major crunching, uncontrollable, skipping all-over-the-place curse-your-mother-in-horribly-unspeakable-ways lag. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that happen before even on a regular Xbox game. In at least 15% of my games I had to manually drop out of them because it was impossible to play, and in another 15% of them I was the last person standing in a capture the flag game because everyone else had dropped out — because of lag. And you bet I won those cheap games too, despite how lame that sounds. In about three games, the whole thing just crashed. And in uncountable games I experienced multiple disconnection issues. This is me playing from the IGN Offices mostly, where the connection is a giant fat pipe, not my home connection.”

-IGN: The Live Chronicles, Chpt. 4

Oddly enough IGN contradicts themselves with the actual review of the game stating “The action continues without a skipping a beat from the single-player campaign straight into the multiplayer levels.”

Now I don’t like to accuse people of heinous acts with not a lot of supporting evidence, but it certainly seems like these game critics were being paid off to say nothing but praise in their reviews, which would go to explain why IGN vented in “The Live Chronicles” and not in the review. Then again, it could just be that the attach rate for this game is close to 75% and that it was a shock to the server backbone.