Tokyo Jungle — true survival horror.

I fell in love with Sony Japan Studio’s Tokyo Jungle somewhere between breeding a pack of golden retrievers and watching a rabbit attempt to take down a Deinonychus with hilarious, disastrous, and quite frankly vicious results. The game was originally available only in Japan over the summer and recently found its way westward as a $15 downloadable game on the PlayStation Network. When I had seen images of chicks confronting dinosaurs and a Pomeranian, the game’s sort-of mascot, about to go head to head with much bigger animals, I really didn’t know what kind of game I would be in store for but I was sold. The pleasantness comes from just what a fun, simple, and yet quite challenging game it is.

The setting takes place in the near future, a post apocalyptic Tokyo where humans have vanished, with pets, strays, and zoo animals left to fend for themselves. The entire game feels like an arcade game, where the objective is to see just how many years you can last in this dangerous world before the clock runs out. There is a large number of species that can be unlocked, a mixture of carnivorous predators and herbivorous grazers. While the predators are more focused on direct attacks and kills to feed off their prey, the grazers’ moves are tuned defensively, which means avoiding the big guys in tall grass a la Metal Gear until it’s okay to proceed to any available plants for nourishment.

This will not end well.

Feeding is essential, as the game calculates the amount of calories ingested, which affects the ranking of the animals, as well as keeping the constantly diminishing Hunger meter full. Rookies are somewhat slow at first, but reaching the highest rank Boss can mean animals run away from your character, and said character has his choice of mate: “desperate,” “average,” and “prime,” which determine how many newborns are bred, and allow for pack traveling which helps keep the lineage going. Larger packs are crucial in taking down boss animals (yes, bosses!), which are then unlocked in the next game should your current one end.

Survival then becomes key as the game throws even more challenges at you: larger animals, a possible scarcity of flora and fauna, aging with abilities diminishing, and perhaps the most dangerous one being toxicity in the air. Toxicity is probably the most damning of the obstacles, as the higher toxicity levels (ranging from 0 to 100) can have an effect on your health as well as contaminate fresh kills and plants. Polluted areas can be hard to escape as it spreads from area to area, and Tokyo Jungle‘s areas are plenty large in relation to the animal’s speed and size, so escaping an area might feel like it’s taking forever. Nightfall and bad weather can hamper your senses, so you won’t know whether there are animals or not on your radar.

Death in the game requires a restart, which any earned attributes carrying over to the newest generation of animal (think Dead Rising), as well as Survival Points that unlock clothing items and new animals. The game has been compared to the likes of ‘roguelike’ games, featuring level randomization and permanent death. I’ve seen comparisons to Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls as well although not quite there in difficulty.

Sometimes the game can feel a bit repetitive and, depending on your mood, cheap. Toxicity is both a challenge and a burden. Avoiding fights and staying full is already itself a continual task, but I can count so many times trying to find food in a toxic area as I watch the toxicity meter rise and my hunger meter fall and all I have to go on is a bottle of water (one of many consumable items that ease things just a tad). As your animal gets older in years, the game will do everything in its power to keep you from going past 100 years. Breeding is also an important process as one animal lives every 15 years.

The thing about Tokyo Jungle is that there is always an objective. It provides sets of challenges, such as consuming X amount of calories, head to this area, mate twice, etc., which earn the player attributes and new items and bonus survival points. There is never time to rest, well, unless you’ve marked territories and then find a mate. Its controls are incredibly easy to learn and respond well to input. Its “clean kill” combat system, which allows the animal a one-hit kill with a well-timed button press, is fun to watch and key to master. Its premise alone, animals running around an abandoned metropolis, has been seen as an acclamation to the kind of games Japanese studios produce, that Tokyo Jungle is not something a western studio might even attempt barring possibly independent developers. Even the Story mode, separate from the main Survival mode, reaches amusing and absurd levels. It’s refreshing, and the potential of downloadable content, new animals or even new areas, help to extend the fun. I’ve already put in countless hours, hardly ever the same experience twice. If SCE Japan took this game back to the drawing board, figure out what could be improved or expanded upon, a sequel could be incredible.

It astounds me how into this game I would be, certainly so that it has definitely made whatever top ten games of 2012 I may put together as the year closes. What I had originally assumed to be a title worth experiencing ironically is a genuinely great game.

E3 2012: Am I already too old for this?

Last week, the big game studios showed up for the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, better simply known as E3, to give us a taste of what’s to come in the next few months to a year. I didn’t go, because I am not press or a developer. I can only write as someone whose relationship with these companies extends to me handing them money for their product. Spike TV and its associated web site Game Trailers were nice enough to broadcast all sorts of game demos as well as the major press conferences themselves.

I honestly wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach this piece. Even after the official first day of E3, I had talked about the conferences to death on Twitter and message boards. With the exception of Ubisoft, who showed some great-looking content, none of the conferences did anything that ‘surprised’ me or grabbed my attention. After Halo 4 footage that does its best Metroid: Prime impersonation, Microsoft began to sell the idea of the Xbox as an entertainment brand, beyond playing a game and paying for extra content. Watch television shows and movies on Netflix and Hulu Plus. Catch up on Game of Thrones and Veep on HBO Go (which requires paying for a cable subscription, HBO, and then an Xbox Live Gold membership). Their big moment came when they introduced Internet Explorer and their Smart Glass app, which serves as a sort of PDA for entertainment. Get cast biographies for the movie or show you’re watching. Turn your tablet (iPad) into an interactive map for an adventure game. While this may sound convenient or fun, the way it was demonstrated indicated that Smart Glass seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. I’m not sure I need an interactive Westeros map while I’m already trying to remember names on Game of Thrones. I’m already using GameFAQs to get help with games, and also I’m not using my tablet with my entertainment as frequently as Microsoft wants me to.

The real stars of the show were South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone who took the stage to quickly talk about the upcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, but delivered the conference’s only major highlight with this quote:

“How many times have you been watching an episode of South Park and thought, ‘I’d like to be able to watch this on my television, while hooked into my mobile device, which is controlled by my tablet device, which is hooked into my oven,’ all while sitting in the refrigerator?”

Somewhere in the conference was an Usher performance and a Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 demo where people shot things and were shot at. It was everything I was already expecting from Microsoft after their terrible conference last year and it delivered for all the wrong reasons.

Last year, Ubisoft delivered upon the world Mr. Caffeine, a manic gentleman who informed us of upcoming “Tom Ca-lancy” games and used Wayne’s World references to do it. Survivors of the conference refuse to talk about it to this day. This year, Aisha Tyler took the stage for Ubisoft, and I’m not sure if ever a huge upgrade took place than having her host, because she was great and very enthusiastic. Her only crime honestly was having to share the stage with a Tobuscus, a YouTube ‘personality’ who went by Toby where silly, scripted back and forth banter ensued, and then we saw games.

Ubisoft had probably the most solid line-up with Far Cry 3, whose demo was one of the strangest, drug-fueled demos I had ever seen. Rayman Legends, which is exclusive to Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U system, is looking like a solid follow-up to the fantastic Rayman Origins, which I talked about earlier this year. I’m hoping Rayman Legends will feature as great a soundtrack as its predecessor. Ubisoft also showed new footage of Assassin’s Creed III, which I have ordered from Amazon despite its October release date. Perhaps the biggest and most talked-about surprise is the new game coming titled Watch_Dogs. The demo showed a man walking around a huge virtual recreation of Chicago and proceeding to gather information about its residents with a device that allows hacking of mobile devices and also jamming communication signals and even manipulate traffic lights as he sees fit. The demo concluded with this man in a shoot-out with his antagonists, which honestly presents a slight concern over how much taking cover and shooting I will actually do in Watch_Dogs. Regardless of this, although I’ve never visited Chicago, the world was stunning and was also impressed by the number of NPCs walking around the town without a hint of frame rate dropping. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it.

The evening of “Day Zero” closed out with Sony’s press conference which, aside from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls, and footage of the Vita game Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, did very little to catch my interest. We got a demo for God of War: Ascension, the next title in the seven-year PlayStation series, where Kratos kills more things in the same way he has for the last seven years. I’m sure the fans have already eaten it up, especially when Kratos killed an elephant minotaur by cutting it in half. One thing I was looking forward to was Sony’s plans for the Vita. It’s almost common knowledge at this point that the PlayStation Vita isn’t off to a particularly strong start across the globe, with its predecessor the PlayStation Portable outselling it in Japan. I’ve seen more doom and gloom comments than positive ones despite the device being four months into its launch in the United States. Sony unveiled… a Call of Duty logo and an Assassin’s Creed spinoff game. In fairness, I do think the Assassin’s Creed title has plenty of potential to get major use of the device’s hardware, but E3 is the center stage to show people what you’re up to and what to look forward to and to get the folks excited for it (a point I will reiterate with Nintendo). Instead, we got Wonderbook. Wonderbook, from what I understand, is an augmented reality software that utilizes the PlayStation Eye Toy device where you have interactive experiences with storybooks. It might sound fun for the kids, but it didn’t look “explain this product for 15 to 20 minutes” fun. While I think SCEA President Jack Tretton did a decent job onstage and successfully got the crowd excited for God of War and The Last of Us. Quantic Dream showed footage of their newest game, Beyond: Two Souls, which stars actress Ellen Page. I’m not sure what kind of game it will be. Will it be another “interactive experience” (i.e. quick-timer event) game like 2010′s Heavy Rain?

A few nice details here and there about games, mostly lackluster, and then there’s Nintendo, which I will talk about tomorrow because there’s a lot to address.

Metal Gear Solid HD, Part 2: “Commencing Operation Snake Eater.”

In Part 1, I talked about Metal Gear Solid 2.

Although players had infiltrated several enemy fortresses as Solid Snake since Metal Gear in 1987, Big Boss seems to be the center of its universe. Nearly every game uses Snake to drive its plot, but Big Boss is the focus of it, which became more prominent by Metal Gear Solid in 1998 when the PlayStation hardware successfully allowed for a more theatrical perspective in games. I revisit my favorite entry in this series in glorious high definition and an impressive 60 frames per second.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is the debut of Big Boss as a highly-trained CIA operative code-named Naked Snake, whose assignment is to rescue a defecting Russian scientist in 1964 Russia, which means the Cold War serves as a backdrop. When the game is booted up for the very first time, you see the menu feature Snake using a technique to bring an enemy soldier down, the screen surrounded in a color and camouflage pattern. What’s great is that the menu tells you just about everything you need to know about the game. The opening scene of Snake performing a HALO jump plays, describing the events that lead us to where we are in the present: the scientist Dr. Sokolov wants to defect, Washington, D.C. wants his talents, and altered Cold War history to fit the plot of the game with references to Yuri Gagarin, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and John Kennedy’s assassination. The first chapter of the game is known as the “Virtuous Mission,” which not only sets up the story but helps the player become familiar with the features of Snake Eater.

There are features in Snake Eater not seen in then previous installments of Metal Gear Solid, all of which are part of what helps the player stay drawn in to the mission. The first is camouflage. Most of the game takes place outdoors, and so Snake is given a set of patterns to help blend into the flora of the jungle and helps to sneak past patrolling enemies, depending on how well he blends in as marked by a percentage index of 0 to 100%. Second is close-quarters combat, or simply CQC, which allows the player to take down enemies in a variation of judo and stun them, or implement a chokehold and demand information that could aid the player, or simply slit the enemy’s throat with the knife. This is a bit more evolved from the previous games’ punch, punch, kick combination in order to deal with enemies.

The two features that help drive the theme of survival are the concepts of healing and stamina fulfillment. In Metal Gear Solid 2, if a character had taken enough hits, the player might see an orange bar in the health bar that indicated severe wounds that would prevent a full recovery (by consuming a ration). Applying a bandage “stopped” the bleeding and healing could resume as necessary. Snake Eater requires removing bullets with a knife, applying disinfectant, bandaging cuts and using splints on a broken bone if the player even found themselves in that situation. If stamina is lost as a result, Snake could eat a number of animals or mushrooms in the environment, where Snake’s tastes determine how much stamina is recovered, which allows for improved health.

Healing wounds, changing camouflage patterns, and recovering stamina all require pausing the game and navigating to their respective menus. This should absolutely sound like a chore and a turn-off, but it isn’t. I suppose it’s the idea of the player having an opportunity to change the situation as they see fit and still giving input to the circumstances of the mission. It is rather akin to customizing equipment, items, and spells in role-playing games, like managing inventory. The player can customize Snake as they see fit. We also tend to learn what exactly Snake is willing to consume (ramen noodles and most snakes) and what will make him puke (Russian MREs and any type of frog).

"Do you guys think The Boss will like this outfit?"

The Virtuous Mission does a fantastic job of serving as a tutorial and to understand overall what players are in for and also serves as an effective prologue that helps demonstrate what is at stake in the game. Here we meet its antagonists, the rather legendary Cobra Unit, a group of soldiers with superhuman abilities (at this point a Metal Gear staple) who have a plan in mind with a secret weapon, which requires kidnapping Dr. Sokolov, yet the bigger point at hand is the betrayal of Snake’s mentor, a ridiculously skilled soldier simply known as The Boss, who finds herself in collusion with these warriors-turned-terrorists. The wrench in these gears, we soon see, is the second-in-command Colonel Volgin firing an American made nuclear weapon over into Russian territory. This sparks an international incident between the U.S. and the Soviet Union… and then we get a theme song and opening credits as if a James Bond film had just begun.

Snake Eater is a game filled with conspiracy, Cold War tensions, and a number of great moments. Whether I have missed this discussion in 2004 or not, one reason it stands out as a noteworthy and great game is the character of The Boss. It is true that games have seen their share of women who exist with a far more crucial role than as something to ogle at for a few hours, but my instincts will tell me the ratio of, for example, Lara Crofts to The Bosses is rather high. The Boss has a somewhat plain design, not particularly exaggerated in terms of looks. More importantly, The Boss is one of three primary women that appear in Snake Eater, yet she undoubtedly demonstrates the largest presence of authority, dignity, and rationale even with a character as power-hungry, sociopathic and authoritative as Colonel Volgin, who fears and respects her. Everything that is The Boss is not particularly political, either. Although actual history may say otherwise, the world of Snake Eater treats a female highly-skilled warrior of the 1960s as something that just is, especially since she was a World War II veteran. The Boss is given perhaps the most characterization because of her relationship with Naked Snake, who she refers to as “Jack,” as a term of endearment. Her story has been seen as rather emotional in the face of typical Kojima style of plotting, and I agree.

Colonel Volgin himself features slightly progressive characterization. Much like The Boss’ gender not serving a political purpose, we come to discover at some point that Volgin is bisexual, with a fondness for a young major named Raikov. This relationship doesn’t seem to exist to send a message, and treats it as something that just is in 1964, however likely it was in our 1964 (minus Volgin’s ability to summon lightning and electricity). It does, interestingly enough, serve as a plot point to meet an objective. Treating this sexual identity as a normal thing in its setting perhaps sends a very strong and needed message, even if Volgin is portrayed as a psychopath.

Lethal, deadly, The Boss is legendary.

The game tends to feature humorous call-backs (or call-forwards?) to previous games, including one of the bigger roles of the game, a young and hotheaded major code-named Ocelot, who is eager to prove himself and impress the heck out of Snake. One of my favorite jokes involves the idea of Godzilla movies still in production 50 years after the events of MGS3, with 2004 having been Godzilla’s 50th anniversary. Major Zero, Snake’s primary handler, goes from being a rather stoic military man to an overexcited fanboy when Snake talks down on the “authenticity” of James Bond movies. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they made 20 more of those films!” The balance between humor and drama is well-done, particularly if the player decides to explore the humor by contacting several handlers during the mission.

Side trivia: In 1964, three James Bond films released: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), and Goldfinger (1964). As of this writing, there are 22 James Bond films with the 23rd, Skyfall, currently filming.

The game also boasts some memorable characters. It wouldn’t be a Metal Gear Solid game without The Pain, for example. The Pain has the ability to manipulate hornets and use them as bullets and grenades. He is the second major battle of Snake Eater, and the one that tests your willingness to take this game’s style at face value. The Fear moves superhuman-like, able to manipulate his joints and jump around from tree to tree at high speeds. The Fury is a rather angry full-time pyromaniac and part-time cosmonaut that provides one of the game’s biggest WTF moments.

I had complained that Metal Gear Solid 2 failed to hold my interests in terms of grand boss battles, and Snake Eater made up for that by simply giving us The End. The End is a 100-year-old sniper who, according to one character, can be described as “photosynthetic.” You enter into a sniper duel with him across three different areas, where you must stalk and blend in and try and beat him at his own game. While The End is an expert sniper, he also has his vices to take advantage of. This is a fight that tests the player’s familiarity with the game, as well as patience and skill. This is a boss fight that challenges. Over the past few years, it has been praised as one of the greatest battles in games, because it’s not meant to be a difficult battle, but it creates a mood and creates tension you might only find in films. There is no actual bitterness in the battle. Just as The End wants to test Snake, he is also looking to test us. The fight can last 20 minutes or three hours. In a sort of black comedy, The End is able to be killed long before the actual battle is supposed to take place.

Then there is The Sorrow. Explaining The Sorrow spoils part of the story (and emotion), but fighting him is not so much a fight but a strange perspective in how the player has handled the game’s enemies. If you’ve killed enemies during your play, you’ll meet them again and watch their suffering as you dispensed it. A strange out-of-body experience if there ever was one.

The one character who probably should have made an impact for me but failed to do so was EVA, which is a bit disappointing. She is a double agent, and goes into what it is that causes a person to defect (her reasons are not very convincing), but it’s overshadowed by her role as Miss Fanservice. She is still somewhat interesting as EVA, if only because EVA is her actual competent if not aggressive personality versus her role as a damsel-in-distress type serving as Colonel Volgin’s mistress.

Metal Gear Solid 3 as a game has a lot to offer in terms of storytelling, hidden extras, inside jokes, different ways to meet an objective. It’s the emotion that makes it such a fan favorite, I think, as it features one of the most popular endings (and meme images) of the last generation into this one. Having played through it again, I find it to still be a fantastic experience. It combines wackiness with tension and emotion and does it well.

You thought I was going to paste the “salute” image, weren’t you?

Metal Gear Solid HD, Part 1: “And we will become the Sons of Liberty!”

One of the most popular franchises gets remastered.

Last Christmas, I was pleasantly surprised with a copy of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for PlayStation 3, a series I’d wanted to revisit for some time. It is both unfortunate and brilliant to not be able to play your PlayStation 2 games on the PS3, since it becomes incentive to purchase these packs and play your favorite games in high definition. Having owned Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection HD, I personally think these have value. Hopefully I feel the same way when I revisit two more favorite games of mine, Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, in HD next month. I also just realized Sony is releasing PS2 titles on the PlayStation Store for a $10 price, although not remastered, it means you can now play the 2006 cult hit God Hand without tracking a copy down!

The Metal Gear Solid package includes two PS2 games, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, first released in 2001 and 2004 respectively, and then updated (respectively) as Substance (2003) and Subsistence (2005), which are the versions appearing in this HD set. Also included is the 2010 PlayStation Portable game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, which continues the Snake Eater story, but I have not spent much time with it. Side note: the HD collection is also available on the Xbox 360.

Metal Gear Solid 2 HD is the first time I have completely played the game from start to finish since November 2001. As a teenager then, never had a game disappointed me more. What I wanted was the further adventures of the anti-hero Solid Snake. Snake has his ability and curse to be a soldier going for him. His military prowess, his stamina, his determination, and his cold, arguably pragmatic approach to life were noticed by players, which says a lot because the point of Metal Gear is to avoid the enemies, rather than fight them, on the screen and reach the objective. It was through creator Hideo Kojima’s not so secret love of storytelling and film did we watch the characters of Metal Gear Solid gab away about ideals and their roles on the world stage and almost start picking sides as to who might have a point and who is dreaming. The thought of experiencing this a second time, on a more powerful system no less, was too good to be true.

Instead, the sequel divided players as we excitedly snuck around in a tanker operated by the U.S. Marine Corps and then watched as Revolver Ocelot (and his grafted arm played by the deceased Liquid Snake…) destroyed it, leaving Snake as a scapegoat close to drowning in the Hudson River.

Do I shoot him in the leg? Or go for the headshot?

It was realized then that Snake aboard this tanker was the prologue. Then, we met him.

A rather effeminate man in a tight sneaking suit with a teenager’s voice is swimming to the docking area of a facility called Big Shell. A familiar voice, belonging to Colonel Roy Campbell, the Codec handler of MGS, referred to this person as “Snake,” but no way did this “Snake” sound like voice actor David Hayter. This was apparently his first time on the field, and so his codename would have to change. We came to know him as “Raiden.” You may suspect that this is where I trash the character and argue that he is a stain to this series, yet time itself and I would tell you that this is not necessarily the case.

This will make a bit more sense later... maybe.

As I played through MGS2 in 2012, some of why I wasn’t too pleased with the game had begun to familiarize itself. It is lazy in design, for starters. The Big Shell plant does not stand out in any way and is representative of the common “corridor” complaint often seen in first-person shooters. Each Strut was a rearranged version of the last one and is not particularly interesting to explore. Despite its bland look, the areas fit the then new mechanics of Metal Gear well enough. The second is the dialogue and the cutscenes. It is rather tiring by now to make any sort of comment on the length of every scene in these games, but it isn’t how long they go on as much as how well they’re paced, which is not very well. The smallest action by the player leads to a long cutscene where nothing particularly exciting is happening and does not advance its plot while we listen to a speech about the ideals of life and death in the name of being a warrior. This leads into the biggest offender of Metal Gear Solid 2 for me: Its cast of characters aren’t at all interesting, compelling, or engaging.

Raiden works because he serves as a surrogate for the player, who is constantly fed ideals and schemes to interpret and what it means to play a role in this modern world. Its villains spew them out, each with a personal stake in the overall objective, which is then given up in the name of a shadowy organization called the Patriots. As far as I realize, the Patriots act as puppeteers for American events and history, all of which sound nutty but plays a crucial role in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Raiden communicates with Colonel Campbell, and Raiden’s girlfriend Rosemary who pesters him about April 30th and its significance and why Raiden is the way that he is. The “Sons of Liberty” themselves provide no memorable fights at all, except perhaps for Vamp, who incorporates flamenco as part of his combat training. Fatman is a man who enjoys explosives, cocktails and roller-skates and his only interesting attribute is being named after the bomb detonated over Nagasaki. Fortune, daughter of the commander who drowned on the tanker Snake infiltrated, seeks to take revenge on Snake. She lives a life wondering why she can’t die, delivering hammed up speeches about wanting to be relieved from this world. Her voice actor’s performance is monotonous and empty, which makes it incredibly hard to feel for Fortune’s misfortune. Worse off is that you never even get to fight her, instead forced to survive her blasts from her giant energy rifle.

The most interesting plot comes from Revolver Ocelot, who is cursed with the spirit of Liquid Snake (which expands in MGS4) by living in his new arm. He serves as the wrench in the gears to this Patriots plot, turning the Sons of Liberty on its head and. Ocelot (and Liquid Snake) is the twist in this soap opera players expect in this series, successfully leaving us desiring more explanation (again, covered in MGS4). His cohort Solidus Snake is also fleshed out well as the game’s primary antagonist. He represents the series at its most political, an ex-President of the United States looking to set Manhattan free in perhaps the same way Tyler Durden intended to set people free at the end of Fight Club. The unfortunate part of this is I had to research these stories again, which is a testament to how complex these twists get for better or worse.

The third act of the game is the most memorable, above all. Campbell and Rosemary grow insane (“I need scissors! 61!”), Raiden runs around in the nude, we fight dozens of Metal Gear Ray robots, and have a one-on-one duel with the main antagonist Solidus Snake, and we learn the lesson that we must believe and think freely and combat censorship (I think). This is why the ending that did not completely work for me in 2001 worked for me in 2012 in an age of combating internet censorship and the change in societal norms with the advent of social media and linking. Raiden throwing away his dog tags communicates this well. It’s not that they all have a direct relationship with Metal Gear, it just impressively feels more relevant ten years later.

I am glad to have played Metal Gear Solid 2 this time.

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.

PlayStation Notwork

Pardon the incredibly lame pun.

I am rather annoyed at the whole situation, annoyed at both sides of this ridiculous battle and the consumers who just wanted to enjoy their copies of some big titles that saw release. I bought Portal 2 after a rather hefty price slash across several retailers across the board, including Amazon; the same with the new Mortal Kombat (I ordered the Xbox 360 version). Hell, this should have been the time for SOCOM 4 to bring down the PlayStation Network servers, not a bunch of hackers who have it in their heads that they’re doing something right in the name of one of their own. When that affects consumers who wanted nothing to do with this argument, and can’t get the full service that they paid for with their console, all that goes out the window.

Of course, Sony has fumbled around, running like chickens with their heads cut off and not keeping anybody updated right away. I’m addressing this now as there is now rumor of yet another attack. Honestly, as an Xbox 360 owner the Sony issue didn’t affect me too much. I am in the camp that extensively purchases the Xbox 360 version of games with a co-op or competitive mode, but the whole Steam connect is what drew me to the PS3 copy of Portal 2. Now that I am technically now affected by this outage, the attacks, the nonsense on both sides, I just want to yell for everyone to get their act together. I have little sympathy for Sony, to be honest, but the hackers acted as if their actions weren’t going to have consequences in the end and negates their cries of “We never meant to hurt the users.” Yeah. Great ball-handling there and astuteness of seeing the big picture, you idiots.

Ridiculous. All of it.

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!

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 Everyone’s Kind of a Jerk

As of this writing, I have reached the maximum level of 30 in Fallout: New Vegas. Constant questing and constant murder helped to maximize my endurance as well as my use of traditional weapons in the Mojave Wasteland. However, I am not quite finished with the game’s main storyline quest. Most of my time in the Wasteland is spent discovering new areas, not only as a means of exploration and satisfying my curiosity, but in terms of practicality it will allow me to ‘fast travel’ to locations if I have to be at a specific location for a quest. It beats having to deal with the creatures of the Mojave. Speaking of the fauna of Fallout: New Vegas…

I want to shove whoever designed the Cazadors down a flight of stairs.

 

 

Cazadors are giant mutated butterflies that will attack you on sight and constantly pounce on you with a hard thud. These harbingers of death can inflict an insane amount of damage, especially if you are at a low level and have mediocre armor. The worst thing about this is that Cazadors travel in swarms. Apparently it just isn’t enough for one to attack. Cazadors are the new Deathclaws, and that is saying something considering the Deathclaws make a return in New Vegas.

One new feature in New Vegas is the ability to find and travel with companions. I’ve discovered and helped up to five people and convinced them (mostly with a high Speech skill) to join my cause and head for the gambling paradise of New Vegas. One character, Veronica, is pretty damned useful in her ability to punch something with a hurricane-level amount of force although she is prone to falling unconscious a few times if enemies overwhelm your party. Companions make the game a more pleasant experience and ease the journey and the number of fights you will get into, provided you give them the right items. Of course eventually they’ll need a favor from you that involves exploring an aspect of their past.

For a game about surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, there is a much more social aspect to the story design. In addition to having traveling companions in your wandering journey, New Vegas and the Mojave seem way more rife with settled communities and flourishing businesses. The developers boasted a much larger game than Fallout 3, which nearly double the locations and double the quests. The random NPCs of New Vegas are marginally more diverse than its predecessor. This time not every old man has the same “old country guy/general store owner/sweet grandpa” voice. One of the more entertaining aspects of New Vegas is its humor, much of it based on pure cynicism from the locals most likely brewed from the troubling war between the ambiguously heroic New California Republic and the brutal, insane yet somehow civilized Caesar’s Legion. A new feature allows your character to make connections with certain factions, and your actions determine whether they like you, sort of like you, think you’re a threat, or solely unpredictable and can’t decide on your character’s motives either way. You could very well be your own Ben Linus in the wasteland!

Fallout: New Vegas didn’t give me a warm reception, and I certainly returned the favor. I was displeased with the game originally, because I found it so frustrating. Even at higher levels, enemies can be cruel. Make sure you have armor in strong condition. After a while, I felt pretty at home in the Mojave, much like the Capital Wasteland. I understood how everything works and how people and creatures work. The game succeeds in making you feel a part of the wasteland. Having a high Repair skill helps along the way. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have business in The Strip.