The Best Hangover Cure

As should be obvious from the date of my last post, my blog has been on a bit of a break while I finish up my Ph.D. degree. However, I hit a major milestone this past weekend when I turned in a nearly final draft of my thesis to my committee. After doing a bit too much celebrating on Sunday night, I nursed a brutal hangover on Monday using an old family remedy: fluids, aspirin, and the Gears of War 3 beta.

My initial reactions are pretty positive. As one might expect, not much of the game is fundamentally different from its predecessors. I was able to jump in and play as though I’d never left, like these months of pretending to love Black Ops were just a bad dream. It seems like they refined the button overloading a little bit; for example, you now have to hold buttons down to do certain things, which reduces the chances of your character absently rifling through an ammo crate when you want him to be assisting a dying teammate instead.

Also, there appear to be two new default weapons. The first was a “Retro Lancer” which has a bayonet instead of a chainsaw. I think the balance here is a faster instant-kill melee, at the cost of a lower shooting accuracy. Instead of your standard Gnasher, there is now the alternative of a sawed-off shotgun, which can instantly turn anything into a pile of bloody chum, but can only do so one shell at a time.

You must get a tax break if you include a mall as one of your multiplayer maps, because it seems to be all the rage these days.

A few other new weapons I found scattered about were an incendiary grenade and a “Digger Launcher”. The latter adds a nice twist to the cover-based combat, as it can burrow under walls to explode an enemy hiding on the other side.  If you have a terrible sense of direction like me, then you’ll be pleased to see that the loading screen includes a map of the current multiplayer level, complete with locations of where to find these precious toys. Just don’t expect to be the only one making a beeline for the nearest Mulcher.

Although not much has changed on the surface, that doesn’t mean that a lot of new work hasn’t gone into the game. I get the impression that designing a good multiplayer experience is kind of a thankless job, as people only notice when something is unbalanced, such as when a map is poorly designed or a particular weapon is too powerful. Though things look good right now, it will take some time to see whether Gears of War 3 gets it just right.  Of course, that’s why they have these beta tests… and if it means I don’t have to wait until the fall to get my Gears on, then I’m certainly happy to help.

Review: Bulletstorm

In the supper of video gaming, first-person shooters are the red meat: bloody, delicious, and unlikely to be dethroned as our dominant form of sustenance, no matter how many heart attacks they cause. Our latest helping of hamburger is Bulletstorm, an FPS from People Can Fly (makers of Painkiller) and Epic Games (of Gears of War fame). Following the adventures of Grayson Hunt—a former military assassin turned space pirate and part-time Christian Slater impersonator—Bulletstorm invites you the abandoned resort city of Elysium, where you get to carve a brutal, limb-strewn swath through waves of mutants as you “kill with skill”.

Review: Stacking

Stacking is the latest adventure from the developers at Double Fine, makers of Psychonauts and Brütal Legend. Available as a XBLA and PSN downloadable title, Stacking is a puzzle adventure set in a quirky Industrial-Age world inhabited entirely by Russian nesting dolls. As Charlie Blackmore—a child laborer and apparently the smallest denizen of this bizarre universe—the player solves puzzles by possessing larger dolls and using their abilities. In the interest of dispensing with any obvious off-color jokes as quickly as possible, let me add that this is a great game concept for anyone who enjoys being inside several people at once.

Review: Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption is the most recent adventure from Rockstar Games, veterans of open-world game design. Set in 1911 in a fictitious land near the U.S. border with Mexico, Red Dead Redemption takes place during a unique time in American history: the decline of the Old West as technology, society, and the federal government work to “civilize” the last of the Western territories. It follows the story of John Marston, a reformed outlaw whose wife and son are kidnapped by government agents. In exchange for their return, Marston must hunt and execute members of his former gang... men he once considered family.

No Child Left Behind

My son is only a bit over two years old, but already my wife and I have discussed (i.e. argued) about one of the most important aspects of raising a child. I’m talking about the one thing that will most completely affect the quality of my son’s childhood experience: how much and what kind of video games he gets to play.

To give you an idea of how seriously I take this issue... when my wife was pregnant, like a lot of expectant parents I went through a “nesting” phase, where I was compelled to make sure that everything in my home would be perfect for my new son. However, in my deranged mind, “nesting” meant compulsively downloading ROMs and buying old games off eBay, to make sure that my child would be able to play any classic game he desired.

I’m convinced that raising a child in a house with video games is—like most aspects of parenting—a delicate balance. If I don’t allow enough gaming, I run the risk that we might lose a great common interest. Some day I’ll ask him to join dear old dad in a quick Deathmatch, and he’ll say he’d rather watch tennis, or some other thing I find equally offensive. If I allow too much, then I run the risk of my slacker son still living in my house at age 35.

I want to make sure my son reads the classics.

So, I realize my best bet is to have a plan. Actually... what I really need is a curriculum, a way to give my son the essentials of a classic gaming education, without ruining the experience for him. I thought I would propose a few strategies, and see what people thought:

1. Make sure that he has a variety of games available to him, but let him play whatever he wants. This seems like a bad idea, if only because I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of raising a son who never played the original Metroid and doesn’t know why “the princess is in another castle”. Besides, we’re not running a Montessori school here, so we’ll laugh this one off and speak no more about it.
2. Let him play through the games by generation. I could choose a “required reading” list of 10-20 games for each major console. He wouldn’t be able to graduate to the next console (e.g. NES to SNES) until he’d completed (or at least played a bit) each game on the list.
3. Alternatively, he could play through the games by franchise. For example, if he wanted the newest Zelda game, I could ask him to start at the first one and work his way up to the present.
4. A more laid-back approach might be to just have “retro gaming sessions” where once a week or so we make sure that we go back and play some old favorites.
5. Do any of the above, but make sure I avoid raising a sociopath by saving the most violent video games (like most FPS’s) until he’s old enough. As a bonus to not raising a serial killer, I also get to wait as long as possible before my son is able to kick my ass at Call of Duty.

Like I said, I need a plan... any comments/suggestions?

PS - If you’re from DSS, I have no son and this is just satire.