In the midst of Microsoft’s customer “service,” we find a heroine.

Happy new year, everyone. This is not the first post I intended to open 2012 with, but this a very interesting development:

Back in late September, I had written a piece about my friend whose Xbox Live account saw unauthorized access and unauthorized charges to her credit card. What followed was an aggravating attempt to communicate with Microsoft, who claimed to have suspended her account in order to investigate the matter even though she was still able to access her account. They came up short. Furthermore, they flat out refused service on the basis that she used an alternate, shortened form of her name which violated their terms of service.

Yet according to Xbox Live Director of Policy Stephen Toulouse, no such policy exists. So, what’s up?

No solid answer has yet to surface. Some are claiming it is a Windows Live ID issue, according to at least one testimony in this article from Joystiq. Microsoft has denied otherwise. Their response is akin to running around like headless chickens or perhaps like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

I mean, Christ, there’s yet another NeoGAF thread about it made on January 6 of this year. In this entire mess, though, someone has gone the extra mile.

Her name is Susan, who was victimized and had her Xbox Live account stolen and sold overseas. She went above and beyond and tracked down where her account ended up and eventually made contact with the person who bought the account. She got all the information Microsoft failed to do.

You can read her story and the plight of other frustrated customers on her page: Hacked on Xbox

So thank you, Susan, for all of your efforts. I wish I could have helped out my friend more on the matter but hopefully Microsoft sees that this is not a problem to be swept under the rug.

To a productive year!

Xbox Live users hacked, victims in the name of EA’s FIFA DLC.

Late this past August, my friend noticed she had a large number of unauthorized charges on her credit card. Someone, somewhere, had gained access to her Xbox Live account and charged an enormous amount of Microsoft Points. Immediately, she phoned Microsoft’s customer support service, who claimed to have put the account on hold and will take up to 21 days for the investigation to find results. Despite this claim of account suspension, the unauthorized user was still able to purchase additional points and she was able to watch these points diminish slowly but surely on the official Xbox site, seeing them spent on downloadable content for EA Sports’ FIFA 2011 soccer game. We took to Google immediately and found a related post on the site Giant Bomb. It wasn’t much help, but we at least saw a degree of comfort that she was not the first.

My friend naturally disputed these charges with her bank, barely. They needed information from Microsoft, which Microsoft does not give out but that an investigation was underway. Microsoft also claimed several times they would actually give her a call and update her the investigation. They did not. Ever. Unfortunately, because of some strange technicalities in their terms of service, Microsoft customer support claimed they saw no problem, that they could not help her in any way and that communications between the customer representatives and the agents of the fraud department are limited to the point where the reps don’t know some of the things the customer is even talking about. After successfully contesting the issues with the bank, Microsoft actually tried to dispute the claim filed and say that these charges are legitimate. My friend is no fan of soccer, so naturally she would never touch a FIFA game in her life, but now FIFA 2011 sits in her game history like a stain on a nice carpet. Not only that, but regardless of how many Microsoft Points you may have had prior to this breach, Microsoft is inclined to perform a points adjustment and you may be left with less than the amount you originally had, if any at all.

I took the search to perhaps the largest game forum on the internet, NeoGAF. I discovered that this was bigger than I had anticipated. Several of the forum’s users have been attacked by these thieves in the same fashion: charge points, purchase FIFA content, get away scot-free. Success with disputing these charges has been rather up and down, it would seem:

Thread 1 – Started May 24
Thread 2 – June 13
Thread 3 – August 30

One issue seems to stem from Xbox Live’s recent Family Account option, that allows a user to create additional accounts for family members and “gift” them Microsoft Points and edit their user options. Unauthorized users may access your email associated with the account, or the account itself, purchase this family pack and a points pack for resale across a number of sites like eBay.

Taken from my friend’s letter to Microsoft reps:

From what I can tell, hackers can gain access to the victim’s accounts in a couple of different ways.  One way is by calling Xbox Support and pretending to be the victim.  They speak to a representative long enough to get a bit of information on the account, and then hang up and call back and use that new little tidbit to get a little further with the next rep.  They do this until they have enough information about the victim’s account to gain complete access.

Another way that I have read about seemed specific to FIFA ’11, where a hacker can e-mail EA support with some jargon that confuses the EA server into sending the hacker the victim’s Xbox and EA account information.  I’m not sure of the legitimacy of this claim but during my search I found videos about it on YouTube, as well as websites explaining how to do it. 

I’ve also seen reports of phishing sites offering free points for the victim to click and stupidly enter their account information.  

Once the hacker has access to the victim’s account and purchases the points, they can create a family account and restore your gamer tag to their console to make it part of the family account.  This way they are able to use your points even when your account is locked.  

They also seem to be selling accounts with the stolen points on sites like tradetang to customers who unwittingly buy them, thinking they are getting a great deal.  The auctions for these accounts make claims such as “Dear friends: Since the points might expire, please use up the points within the warranty time” and “The accounts are not gold.  And it is better not to buy gold membership for the account because it won’t last too long.”  How that doesn’t send red flags is beyond me.

Besides the unauthorized charges themselves, the unfortunate thing is how unreliable Microsoft’s Xbox site as well as their Windows Live site can be. Many users experience error pages that prevent them from successfully editing their account passwords and other details in order to increase security. Microsoft has also notoriously made removing credit card information and disabling auto-renewal payments for Xbox Live a hassle. Customers can either phone customer support and ask for the options to be removed, or remove it from the Xbox Live Dashboard but needing to add another credit card, which possibly negates the entire reason for removing your information in the first place. I recommend at least purchasing a prepaid Xbox Live card from a local retailer, as well as Microsoft Points cards. It’s unfortunate that we cannot depend on security like this from a major corporation, let alone two, right, Sony? We have to do our part as well, and although this sounds like common sense, this could happen to even the most experienced users: make sure to have a strong password, never give out credit information if you can help it, and don’t click on shady, suspicious links that claim to have amazing prizes and what have you.

I think sites need to make this issue aware, and Microsoft and all corporations that ask us for credit information for utilization of a service, to please work on updating your security measures and not just casually pat the customer on the shoulder and say “We’ll see.”

Microsoft Xbox Support
@XboxSupport 

 

 

 

Catherine, Part II — Dialogue, dilemmas, and dreams.

When we stopped at the sixth floor of the giant tower Vincent finds himself climbing in his nightmares, my friend and I were pleased with our progress and decided we didn’t have much more to go before the conclusion of Catherine. I don’t remember the last time I was so wrong. It goes on for far longer after the “final” floor.

The disembodied voice that haunts Vincent’s nightmares exclaims that there are eight floors to ascend until the path to true freedom is opened. The puzzles get harder as new obstacles are introduced. Once you progress through the new puzzles you are back in the real world, in Stray Sheep, looking at provocative images on Vincent’s mobile phone in a bathroom stall. It wasn’t until the story slightly picked up the pace that we had started to become kind of annoyed with these characters. This is mostly because of the way the dialogue was translated and interpreted into English. Nearly every line skirts around the point it’s trying to make. You know when you know someone has something to say, but they stammer, mutter, stutter, and they just don’t spit out what they want to say, so they just choose about ten different words and mix them into a so-called sentence? That is the majority of the dialogue in Catherine. Maybe it’s because we were rather pressed for time, but watching Vincent and Katherine struggle to make their points and move the plot forward was painful.

In my last post I mentioned that I was enjoying the game up until the point I stopped and decided to write my impressions. By the end of it, I still enjoyed myself. The plot itself progresses rather clumsily. It tries to teach us of the complexities of relationships, but it uses characters who seem to believe in absolutes and black-and-white life choices. It pulls back too often. In fact, it would seem a lot of the conflicts that occur in Catherine could easily have been averted with a few lines of dialogue, but it would subvert the journey this man makes in his mind for personal growth. Catherine wants us to decide Vincent’s fate, as evidenced by its multiple endings. It asks us how much we’d be willing to pay for temptation. An oft-repeated line in the game is “There is no right choice.” So it would seem.

I wish more games like Catherine would find their way to this continent. Any game that at least attempts to strike a conversation about how we function as people is worth a look.

Vanquish: Ballet of Bullets

I do apologize for not having written anything in almost two months. Although I have been playing my fair share of games, I don’t necessarily feel 2011 is starting off as hot as I would have liked.

One of those games I’ve been playing (and playing over) is Vanquish, Sega’s attempt at a Western-style third-person shooter a la Gears of War. It was developed by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta (played by millions) and Madworld (played by three people). I only played Bayonetta as a demo and while I did get a kick out of it, at the time I didn’t feel it was for me. It’s pretty cheap now, so maybe I’ll give it a go.

 

Seriously. It's like Iron Man versus Mega-Michael Bay-tron.

Vanquish is the story of a group of Russian ultranationalists (videogames’ new Third Reich apparently) who annihilate San Francisco and seize an American space colony, demanding the surrender of the United States government and oh really who cares? Let’s kill robots!

Yes, in what seems to be a subversion of sorts from other action games that wage virtual human against virtual human, Vanquish launches its own Judgment Day and decides humans should be fighting robots. The Russians have robots, lots and lots of robots. The US has DARPA, the Marines, and Sam Gideon, who the player will be controlling for the duration of this war. Sam is testing DARPA’s new fancy Augmented Reaction Suit that they dreamed up after watching the Iron Man movies far too many times. This suit is so advanced and cutting-edge that throwing a punch overheats the suit, taking too many hits overheats the suit, it allows Sam to fly skate around with boosters on his feet (ROCKET SKATES!), and did I mention throwing a punch overheats the suit? To be fair, he’s using the suit’s boosters to really drive the point home.

More or less the moment you take control of Sam, you’re in what is typically referred to as “bullet hell.” The robots are everywhere firing at you and your squadmates. Sam is armed with a number of weapons, although to be frank I pretty much ran through Vanquish twice with mostly the assault rifle and heavy machine gun. Along the way, you’ll find green cubes that allow you to upgrade the weapon, allowing for more ammo and greater firepower. In a nice addition, if your weapon is fully loaded, picking up the same weapon also upgrades it one rank.

Vanquish features that oh-so-familar cover system that you probably won’t be using that much if at all. Sam’s rocket skates allow him to glide all over the area and fire at enemies. When he does this, he enters into the Augmented Reaction mode, which is the nerdy way of saying “bullet time.” Everything slows down, allowing you, and thus Sam, to get better aiming at his foes without them ever getting a chance to turn their guns to you. Of course, do this for too long and the suit overheats. When the suit overheats, you better take cover immediately because those bullets WILL find you and the game does that annoying thing games do when you take damage, the screen turns red and starts having a seizure. Why do games do this? Hey, your screen is turning redder and redder and pulsing like the human body does! Although it’s now harder for you to see the screen and make out the situation to devise a quick strategic retreat, it’s just going to keep doing this until — ahh, there we go. Dead. Enjoy making up the last twenty minutes!

Speaking of those twenty minutes, it wouldn’t be a Japanese game without ridiculously cheap boss battles! I originally ran through Vanquish on Normal mode, and even then it was pretty damned tough. When I fought the first sub-boss, I was doing pretty well. The bosses have glowing parts that scream “PLEASE SHOOT HERE!” so that their core opens up for the smacking. I had almost taken him out, and then he shot what would be Iron Man’s chest beam times a thousand and boom, I am dead. Despite having destroyed the giant robot’s legs, I had to do it all over. 20 to 25 minutes gone. It wasn’t like the boss was difficult, either. The bosses are bullet sponges for the most part. Hell, it happened AGAIN when I had to fight two of them AT ONCE. Japanese developers love to do that, because they’re sadists. The strange thing is that you will fight some tough bosses, but the final boss is actually a piece of cake.

Vanquish is a pretty fun game for the most part, especially if you don’t think too much about it. I mean, you’re shooting robots in third-person with a regular assault rifle (or a rocket launcher, the “LFE Gun” that shoots like an energy bubble at enemies). It’s not new. In fact, it should be pretty stale, but I loved what a mess the battlefield was and how crazy the fights got. Marines get shot down, and if they’re hurting Sam can revive them for bonus ammo and new weapons. I ended up saving like 10 of 80 or so wounded. I wish the robots had been programmed not to shoot at people being treated like in World War II.

It can have some serious frustration at hand, but Vanquish both drove me crazy and entertained the heck out of me.

Do I have to start scoring things now? I guess if that’s how this goes now. 4 out of 5!

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Post of Spike Strips and Helicopters.

The last racing game I had gotten involved with was Grid in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. I had read some positive impressions and just picked up a copy during my vacation in San Diego. I’m not particularly genre-saavy when it comes to the racing games. I don’t care much for Gran Turismo, or NASCAR, or just racing in general, but occasionally something will put me in the mood to cruise. This time, it’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit from EA Games, developed by Criterion Software, makers of the Burnout games.

The game does a really good job helping newcomers to adjust to its design, teaching the basics and allowing you to become comfortable with its controls, the tracks, and its vehicles. One thing I admired was the selection from the beginning. Most racing games require you to claw your way to the top in your Volkswagen before you hop into the driver’s seat of that Ferrari you bought the game to drive in the first place. Here you already have a selection of nice sports cars and unlocking the faster, superior vehicles is rewarded through the game’s bounty system: race well, earn bounty points, level up, get new vehicles and equipment. The downside is that certain missions have circumstances where the vehicle you want may not always be available for that specific event. Nevertheless, the game’s track designs and the environments in general make the racing worth it. The blazing speeds you will go might send you back in time, just be careful you don’t collide with an oncoming family sedan.

In addition to racing, you can pursue a career as a police officer, driving equally slick vehicles equipped with some fun gadgets like the spike strip, which will stop a racer dead in his tracks temporarily. It’s best used when the car’s “health” meter is in the red zone, and would make for a nice bust. As an officer, with more experience, you can call in support in the form of roadblocks and helicopters. Helicopters will try to stop racers with the spike strips, although unfortunately there can and probably will be instances where you’ll end up with tires blown out in a form of friendly fire. I tend to notice as you further in your career as an officer, the gadgets will be upgraded, but racers will seem more attuned of your next move and are almost ready to execute their own counterattack with almost perfect execution, as racers are also able to have gadgets equipped, like frequency jammers that prevent the police from using any equipment on hand. Nothing is more annoying than meeting a spike strip as you near the rear bumper of that Porsche 911 by slipstream.

I don’t dip into the more social aspects of games as often as I would like, but the Autolog feature, which crosses racing with a Facebook-like atmosphere, is pretty interesting. Your best times, cars used, and even attempts at specific events are recorded for your friends to see. I enjoy the challenge of trying to take the number one spot of my Speedwall, or at least trying to top the time of the friend the game recommends I challenge. I felt good about myself after a friend sent me a text message saying “I don’t know how you got some of those times. You’re a beast.” You can also share photos of events that go down during your races or pursuits: a crash, a great drift turn, finishing by a nose. I think a lot of games could benefit from a feature like this.

When I insert that game disc into the Xbox 360 tray, I am lost for hours racing (there is even a free-roam mode to test cars out and practice), trying to beat my own times as well as those of my friends, but I can’t help but call this game out for some lackluster choices. EVERY hit you deal to an opponent will be met with a short animation of the car taking damage that will kind of put your race to a halt and take you out of the control of your vehicle. This might occur during a dangerously sharp corner or even on a straight path with an oncoming vehicle you weren’t prepared to dodge. It’s equally annoying during the pursuit races, when your vehicle’s scanner picks up an upcoming police car, cut to the animation, back to the race and an obstacle you might not be completely ready to take on, or you’re still holding on to the gas pedal when you probably should be braking for that next drift. The game is guilty of something notorious in a lot of racing games: Rubberbanding AI. Get too far ahead of the competition in your 201 MPH Maserati, and that 180 MPH Audi is breaking the sound barrier and it’s right behind you. It never devolves into flat out cheating, but certain cases make it a very annoying thing to deal with. The game also likes to mess with you and put civilian vehicles smack dab in the middle of very sharp turns so you have to be extra careful not to sideswipe it and let the other racers (even the one in last place) catch up, because they – absolutely – will.

Fallout: New Vegas ‘Dead Money’ DLC Now Available

Now available exclusively on the Xbox 360, the first expansion pack for Fallout: New Vegas, titled Dead Money, is now available to download from the Xbox Live Marketplace at a cost of 800 Microsoft Points.

From the Bethesda web site:

“As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.”

I have not seen a trailer (which you can view here), although I probably won’t be able to download Dead Money until after the holidays. Heck, I need to get started on Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare expansion!

Bond, James Bond Post of My Hands, Your Throat, Activision

First of all, happy holidays, everyone.

I technically have two games to write about at the moment: the town remodeling at the expense of dead soldiers I’ve been attending to in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and exploring ONE cave so far as a racist elf in Dragon Age: Origins, a game I am finally getting to play.

There is one thing I’ve made clear everywhere but here. I’m a pretty big James Bond fan. I’m no superfan. I haven’t read every book, I can’t recall every gadget used in every scene of every movie, and although I’ll say Connery is the number one Bond, I put Daniel Craig under a hairline second in spite of his two-film-three-game resume. I like the character. Even if you may not like WHAT he does (kill, but you know, he’s licensed to), but you have to respect HOW he gets it done. I like many interpretations of the character even if I don’t always agree on them. I have an eerie fascination with the style of the 1960s as seen in films like Goldfinger, Thunderball, and From Russia with Love. Overall, James Bond is awesome.

After Licence to Kill in 1989, the world didn’t see another film in the franchise for six years until Pierce Brosnan debuted as the famous spy in GoldenEye. Two years after the film, Nintendo and Rareware released GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64 console. A strange wind swept over us all as nearly every single N64 owner fell absolutely in love with everything about the game. It’s a first-person shooter we could play on a console and not with a keyboard and mouse. For 1997, the details, miniscule ones like bullet holes in the walls, were amazing. Hit detection, textures, they were all worth applauding. It gave the player tasks to accomplish that were beyond shooting your way from Point A to Point B, something I wish would return to modern shooters. In addition to an already fantastic single-player, there was a multiplayer mode included with dozens of characters to choose from and many modes and special options to configure, and this is before the explosion of the online deathmatches we all know and love today. In short, GoldenEye was gold.

Many attempts to recreate the game’s success had been met with decent to lackluster to awful reception. The videogame adaptation of 1999′s The World Is Not Enough was a decent entry, but forgettable. It was developed by Eurocom, as after GoldenEye, I believe MGM Interactive had the license and put out the games for Tomorrow Never Dies (an apparently terrible third-person action game) and 007 Racing (…). EA Games had it for the 21st century, releasing Agent Under Fire, which I’ve never played and never will and apparently I’m not missing much. Nightfire was a rather good game for 2002, although when I tried to play it last year good lord was I terrible at it because of the mechanics. 2004 gave us Everything or Nothing, which boasted some good production values. It featured R&B singer Mya in a role as well as the artist for the game’s theme song. It casted Pierce Brosnan, who had filmed his last Bond movie, the mediocre Die Another Day, two years prior, as well as Judi Dench as M and Willem Dafoe as the game’s villain. I actually managed to buy the Gamecube game for $5 and intend to finish it soon. In the decent attempts to make magic happen, it seems we all hoped to see another great game like GoldenEye.

Then EA released GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. I never played it and I never will. It received pretty mediocre to scathing reviews, and a lot of comments touched upon its use of the “GoldenEye” name to try and attract buyers. Studios, in whatever efforts they could exercise to bring in the cash, seemed to think we wanted another GoldenEye in name. We loved GoldenEye on the N64 because it’s a GREAT game. I’ve personally never had conversations with folks about how much they loved the movie as much, or the movie in context to the game. It’s a great adaptation of a James Bond movie, sure, but at its core it is a fantastic game that was incredibly well-realized and designed. We’re not in love with the name; we’re in love with the game. Certain evidence might point against me, as Rare did release a spiritual successor in Perfect Dark in 2000, which didn’t sell as well I believe but received equally acclaimed remarks. I personally argue that Perfect Dark could have seen more success if it hadn’t been released towards the end of the N64′s life span, as we were gearing up at that point for Project Dolphin (the Gamecube), and anticipating the next Legend of Zelda installment in Majora’s Mask. Plus, we needed the expansion pack to actually play the solo mode, otherwise we were reduced to shooting it up against bots (made for a disappointing summer rental at that time). Perfect Dark is a great game and worth revisiting on Xbox Live, but I digress!

Apparently Activision didn’t completely realize or correctly interpret our love for GoldenEye, since they thought their best attempts and best use of the license was to remake the golden goose with Eurocom. It’s seeing good reviews, but it personally leaves a bad taste in my mouth that we clamor for the name itself. Activision released their first 007 game: Quantum of Solace, in 2008 the same week or month the film saw its theatrical release. It was developed by Treyarch, the beta team for the Call of Duty games and remember when they did awesome ports of Tony Hawk games for the Dreamcast? It was a toddler’s version of Call of Duty, reflecting mostly on the Casino Royale film and story (my favorite Bond movie now) and just feeling like a shameless attempt for cash. I scored every achievement in that game. It required zero effect, and did not feel like much of an achievement at all. If you can snag it at a flea market for $5, I recommend it.

The reviews for the game were decent (a generous adjective) to critical (again, generous). They also did the inevitable comparison to GoldenEye, and it was at that point I had come to the realization that I wish everyone else would: WE’RE NEVER GOING TO SEE ANOTHER GOLDENEYE AGAIN AND IT’S SOMETHING WE WILL ALL HAVE TO COPE WITH IMMEDIATELY. Even Rare, who’s been sitting around twiddling their thumbs as a Microsoft property, doesn’t seem to have the incentive to make great games like they used to. Activision, with their reputation for being another money-and-power-hungry megalomaniacal corporation (to whose surprise?), acquired this potentially fun and great license just so no one else could have it, and squander it with mediocrity like Quantum of Solace. That sounds harsh for just one game from one company, until they released Blood Stone last month. I enjoyed what I played of Blood Stone, developed by Bizarre Creations (the folks behind Project Gotham Racing and the Geometry Wars series), when I tested it out at the New York Comic-Con months back. The game gets released to negative reviews, citing an apparently short campaign (four hours, I hear) and I guess not much in the way of multiplayer. Activision dumps this license on a talented team they couldn’t care less for as they count the profits from their latest Tony Hawk’s Call of Duty Shredding Hero game. It saddens me. Because this is the internet, it will all be met with indifference, and I will say to those people that they are part of the problem.  I understand that a mediocre game isn’t worth marketing, and that’s where it should start. Activision should at least pretend to care and put out ONE good game in this franchise that’s not a remake that misses the point even if it is decent. GoldenEye has actually seen a lot of marketing, way more than Blood Stone. My bias lies in my decision not to embrace the GoldenEye remake. I will play it eventually, but the whole philosophy behind it makes me feel a little dirty.

So today, Activision is taking another stab at Bond, with Raven Software. They are the fine folks behind Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Wolfenstein (which you probably didn’t play or enjoy), and the recent Singularity (heard of it?), which is apparently decent, but Activision won’t tell you much about it since it doesn’t have the name “Call of Duty” on it. I can already predict that the next Bond game will be met with a constant stream of average to decent reviews, marked with scores between 4 and 7, and will sell two copies because there will be absolutely no marketing for it, and people will just wonder why they bothered in the first place.

I would personally attempt to trust EA with this license again and, of all developers, hand the license off to BioWare. Yes, THAT BioWare. Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic BioWare.

One of the things about James Bond games is that they’re straight-up shameless action games. You’re pretty much in the action setpieces of these attempts to recreate the mood and feel of James Bond movies. Between cut scenes of awkwardly rendered and animated Bonds spitting out some quip about women’s genitalia, we’re shooting at the same turtlenecked henchmen over and over until we see “MISSION COMPLETE” on the screen. M doesn’t really tell Bond to go to Exotic Location A and shoot up guys who give you the slightest dirty look (oh, and take this MP5N with you). Believe it or not, Bond movies TRY to have a story behind it. Heck, even the GoldenEye game had dossiers and case files that set up the context of the who, what, where, when, and why of how many Walther PPK bullets you put into those Commie Nazis. Bond, before he’s the killer, is actually quite the investigator. The train scene in Casino Royale will demonstrate that he’s one hell of a detective and great at surmise, and can read ANYONE like a book. It’s the whole incentive for his playing poker in the film. Incidentally, said scene, a battle of wits and words between smooth Daniel Craig and the luscious Eva Green, is a mission in the Quantum of Solace game: a literal battle with guns as Bond chases some drug czar on his way to the poker game. That’s what’s so great about these ridiculous and mediocre movie-games: every scene is a quest of survival! Anyway, Bond talks to folks, finds clues, gets leads, which will mean doing some talking. Since developers are obsessed now with trying to flesh out characters and have cutscenes interrupting my dynamics with their games, why not have the one developer who’s mastered the art of dialogue? Bond can play just like Mass Effect. If you want to keep the idea that Bond is already skilled in combat, then it doesn’t have to be a role-playing game. It would admittedly be strange for Bond to JUST learn how to be a sniper 10 hours into his mission. Bond can find clues, talk to people on the Citadel–I mean, well, wherever in the Bahamas he’s sent. The dialogue trees can even let the player play as the Bond they prefer: be the smooth yet aggressive Connery, the cold, no-nonsense Dalton, focused but reckless Brosnan, or stoic and overall badass Craig. Hell, most, if not all BioWare games let you create your protagonists anyway. It could be one hell of a licensed game. Why am I the only one who’s thought of this? Or am I?

Please, do something worthwhile with this license or let someone who might give a damn take a shot. Don’t be greedy, Activision*.

*Yeah, futile, I know.

Fallout: New Vegas post of Everything Wants to Kill You.

In a decision I rarely exercise in role-playing games, my character in Fallout: New Vegas is female. She has the hair the likes of Veronica Lake or Jessica Rabbit with a darker shade of red. When the game begins, she is bound, waking up from a state of unconsciousness and is watching the thugs who attacked her for her package dig a grave no doubt for her. The leader of the group gives a villainous monologue and shoots her, leaving her for dead. It’s a bleak and suspenseful event, although not as emotionally connecting as the introduction of Fallout 3, where the wife of a scientist dies giving birth to the protagonist, setting the game’s events in motion.

My character survives thanks to the efforts of a doctor in the nearby town of Goodsprings. After a brief tutorial on how to control my character, I leave the man’s house and step out into the Mojave Wasteland. Wow. The first thing I learned upon my first view of the wasteland is that everything in a post-apocalyptic world will look the same whether on the east coast (Fallout 3 took place in a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C./Baltimore area, Pittsburgh if you purchased ‘The Pitt’ expansion) or the west.

Ah, so we aren’t even in New Vegas in the beginning of Fallout: New Vegas. From what I understand, New Vegas is the protagonist’s prime destination. The goal is to find the people that left her for dead, so far. I have put in close to 11 hours into the game, developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Fallout 3 was developed by Bethesda Game Studios, a division of Bethesda Softworks, which published both games. Part of me is comfortable with the game, after investing well over 100 hours and more into Fallout 3 and every single one of its expansion packs. It makes me feel like I know my way around. Part of me is nostalgic for the gray skies of the Capital Wasteland, because it seems like the Mojave has much, much more vast, open stretches of desert (as it should), and I actually enjoyed the urban environments and settlements of Fallout 3. Most of the communities I have come across in the Mojave are shanty towns and military (AKA the New California Republic) forts, all of whom complain about their posts in one way or another. Part of me is also immensely frustrated at how relentless the game is when you’re a level 1 scrub armed with a “Varmint Rifle.” I’ve been viciously attacked by just about anything out in the wild. The human enemies aren’t even my biggest beef, but with the mutated insects like scorpions and hornets and lunge and pounce at you. When you fire at them, most of the time the enemies have a shield icon next to their health bar which means I will be wasting more ammo taking them down. Ammo is easy to come by, but the supplies to trade and get a good deal for the ammo are not so plentiful. Part of the problem, however, is that I always try never to spend a bottle cap. I always trade enough goods so that anything I need, healing items, bullets, armor, is either free or at least very low in price. It’s worked so far, but to my surprise, or perhaps because I am not looking hard enough, guns are hard to come by. At least, they are hard enough to come by so I can use them to repair other guns for more power and reliability. So the more I use weapons, the more worn-out they become, and deteriorate, and then I lose ammunition, all because every enemy has some invisible barrier.

I’ve tried my hand at a number of side quests, attempting not to dive into the main plot too soon. Unfortunately, a lot of the side quests are put to a halt because I need a higher skill level at any particular talent. I spent two hours infiltrating an NCR base to activate a satellite, nearly getting killed by the heavily armored robots, only to discover I need a higher Repair and Science skill to complete the objective. In frustration, I dart out of the case and proceed elsewhere. Like the world of Pandora, everything is out to get me, and with their stunning accuracy, they usually do. Thank goodness I’m not searching for Unobtanium!

E3 2010: Sony and Nintendo: ‘Hey! This isn’t Harry Potter…’

Time passes rather quickly. Already my writing an entry on E3 may already come off as ancient history, but while the event was taking place, two major events captured my attention: the madness of pre-ordering an iPhone 4, and the madness of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the vuvuzelas that come with it.

I say this time, let’s cut to the chase so we can get back to our soccer/football/futbol, shall we?

Nintendo’s approach to appease its ‘hardcore’ fan base, the folks who enjoy jumping on Koopa Troopas and launching fireballs as the company’s mascot plumber Mario over a shooting gallery at a virtual carnival starring their Mii characters, used to offend me. Their only answer to this ‘problem’ was to just throw another Mario game at them, but folks ate them up. Games developed by third-party developers that aim to a less casual audience tend to flop and appear dead on arrival (Sega’s The Conduit and MadWorld, and EA’s Dead Space: Extraction are two examples). This year, Nintendo brought in the big guns, and while I won’t be playing some of their future titles right away, it brings me a sense of relief that they will be there. We have a new Legend of Zelda game, titled Skyward Sword, for the Wii. I have yet to play Twilight Princess, released in 2006, and during that period I had considered myself “retired” from the franchise. In 2007, I had attempted to play the Phantom Hourglass game on the DS, but gave up on it for a number of reasons. Skyward Sword boasts a visual mixture of Twilight Princess, and the love-it-or-hate-it Wind Waker (Gamecube, 2003). It has an extra flavor of an oil painting/illustrated storybook look that drew me in despite series creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s awkward demonstration of the game at the Nintendo presentation last week.

Nintendo spent a lot of the presentation discussing the capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS, and with games like a new Golden Sun (the first since The Lost Age, the second episode, released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003). I had to actually look up the title of the second Golden Sun game. I hadn’t played it since 2004. In addition to the first-party games (a potential new Star Fox and a Kid Icarus game after all these years), there is a lot of third-party support from the big names, including a Resident Evil game from Capcom, a Splinter Cell game from Ubisoft, and a Metal Gear Solid title from Konami. Color me sold.

I regret that I don’t have a whole lot to express about Sony’s time on the stage because, as I remember it, I was physically tired having been awake for a lot of the previous night. Sony discussed their premium service, of which I have no interest in. They managed to show up the Kinect with Move, their take on motion control, by showing a demonstration of a wizard-ing game called Harry Pott– I mean Sorcery. It can be generically described as “interesting,” and absolutely nothing to get excited over. I will stick with my Wii, that I have even decided to touch for the first time in over a year (thanks, Super Mario Galaxy 2!). One of the stronger highlights was the appearance by Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, and his promotion of the much anticipated Portal 2. That wasn’t the big deal. We all knew that. The extra added punch came in the announcement of Steamworks, which allows Mac and Windows users to play multiplayer games on the same servers with one another, and its compatibility on the PlayStation 3. That about topped off the sundae, chock full of Kevin Butler and his motivational “We’re gamers!” speech that provided some genuine humor, with the cherry on top that was the development of a Twisted Metal game, the first since Twisted Metal: Black (PlayStation 2, 2001).

That about does it for this year’s E3, among other things. I need to dock points here, though, or maybe throw a yellow flag on the field.

Microsoft — 5-yard penalty for that creepy Kinectimals segment.

Nintendo — 5-yard penalty for the awkward Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword demonstration. An addition 10-yard penalty for the GoldenEye remake and failure to understand why it was the monster that it was in 1997. They announce the 3DS and its lineup. The penalty is declined. First down.

Sony — 10-yard penalty for an uninteresting presentation. Kevin Butler speech and PS3 Steamworks. That penalty is declined. There is an additional 5-yard penalty for the inability to sell me on a PSP after five years, as well as the failure to sell Move.

Next time: I talk about the iPhone 4.

E3 2010: Microsoft, I prefer to play my games sitting down.

E3 was a week ago, and at this time, I would be getting ready to watch the Microsoft conference. I didn’t have an idea, then, as to what exactly was going to be the focus point of the presentation. It opens up with a demonstration of the next entry in the Call of Duty series: Black Ops. Maybe ten minutes into the presentation, I’m bored. With a strange anticipation, I purchased Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at my local GameStop the Tuesday of its release, waiting about forty-five minutes in line to pick up my copy that I had pre-ordered earlier in the summer. I enjoyed the solo mode, despite an absolutely dreadful “plot,” but the real sale came from the cooperative mode, dubbed the Spec Ops mode. This time, I’m watching men in a jungle shoot other men, and then the characters hop into a helicopter and fly away as the area goes up in flames, or something. Please note that I am typing this from memory, as I have no desire to revisit some of these moments beyond this entry.

At some point, Microsoft decided to showcase games we were well aware were already being released: Halo: Reach (a potential purchase), Fable 3 ($20 purchase), Gears of War 3 (day one, absolutely). Following that, out comes Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear universe. He demonstrates the Metal Gear Solid that’s coming to the Xbox 360 in the name of Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Apparently, we’re going to play as Raiden, and slash soldiers with a big sword. It seems to be a fun action game, but what sold me on it is the precision cutting mechanic they seem to be implementing into the game. The player will somehow determine the angle in which Raiden cuts, and where he cuts is how whatever he cuts will slice off. The ending of the trailer has a humorous and educational moment of Raiden slicing watermelon into certain pieces and shapes.

Then… Then came Kinect.

Formerly “Project Natal,” Kinect is Microsoft’s answer to the motion control “craze” that apparently we’re all so nuts about. They demonstrate an awkward video chat session, ESPN without any NFL content (due to regional business, understandably, save for perhaps Monday Night Football games), and a bunch of games where you river-raft, drive, exercise, that exist only so you can say you got something out of your Kinect. The idea of voice-command menus sounds nice, though. They did showcase a dancing game from Harmonix, Dance Central, that does look fun. Looking at the Wikipedia entry, it will feature the ever popular “Poker Face” as performed by Lady Gaga. SOLD!

A dull conference, not terrible, but underwhelming. Every attendant at the conference went home with Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 redesign, with a 250 GB hard disk drive, built-in wi-fi (Wireless N!), and is “Kinect Ready.” As nice as some of these features are, I am alone when I say that is one ugly redesign. Maybe it’s because I find my Resident Evil 5-edition red Xbox console to be so gorgeous.