The Sandbox

The other day, I got my copy of the new game BioShock. It was bad timing. My wife was going out for the night, leaving me home with plenty of time to play. And I played. What a game! I'd seen it a few weeks before at E3, but several hours of hands-on action gave me a new perspective/feel. This is one of the most original shooters ever, and raises the bar for the genre. Halo 3 take note.

So much for the usual bombed-out cityscapes and narrow corridors. The game takes place in an underwater utopia-turned-dystopia that's Citizen Kane meets Atlantis .(with a twisted dose of Alice in Wonderland thrown in). A wealthy mogul tried to build a submerged paradise that, of course, went horribly awry. Now biologically-enhanced mutants rule the domain. Yeah, you've got the guns and health packs, but you also can slam a hypodermic needle into your palm and launch plasma bolts from your fingertips. Cool. All-in-all, a completely original spin on the splattercore titles we're used to. The best games don't just work your adrenal glands, they transport you into a world you've never seen. BioShock transports.

Someone told me that Halo 3 has hit the stores. I've been too busy playing Team Fortress 2 to notice...

Halo 3 has such hype, and such an economic swirl around it, that one would be forgiven if one thought that it represents the apex of action gaming. But I'm one of those folks that can't get past the fact that handheld-controller FPS gamers are dilettantes compared to mouse-and-keyboard FPS gamers. Maybe I'm an uninformed fogey, but from the brouhaha I heard about the ethical ramifications of the XCM XFPS adapter on the XBox online FPS community, I'm guessing that the FPS community at large thinks the same thing.

TF2 is my new game for the next little while.

It's a nice idea, episodic games: developers love the notion of low-investment, fast-turnaround, high-upside games. Crank something small and polished out every 3-4 months, and it will eventually be an unstoppable juggernaut of cash that keeps building, as you keep churning out small highly-polished little gems, without killing yourselves with crunch-schedules and Mountain Dew.

Why doesn't it work out that way?

Now's the season for "best of" lists, so here's my top ten list:

I bow before our new End of Year Best-of list overlords. Here's my short list of my favorites of 2007:

1. Lord of the Rings Online. Because I worked on it for four and a half years to ship it, and have worked on it since then, and it's clearly the best MMO of 2007. No personal prejudice here, no sir. But I'm playing it, which says a lot about a game that I've worked on (which I seldom play post-launch).

2. Rock Band. My childhood dreams of drumming, stifled by my parents who desired peace and quiet in their house, are now finding outlet, and obliterating my wife's goodwill towards me.

3. Portal. Great little game. Suffers from the "giant thick client to play a teeny-tiny game" problem, but who cares when it's this fun? You want thin client, play Flash Portal.

4. Super Mario Galaxy. I used to disdain Nintendo, early in my gaming career, as nothing but Cute. Jeebus, was I an idiot.

5. God of War 2 / Heavenly Sword. They're the same game, with different avatars of destruction. But they're both onslaughts of epic annihilation that appeals to the little kid in me that still writhes with excitement when I see shiny things.

6. Bioshock. Great art direction. Gameplay and story were sort of meh, but they tried.

7. Team Fortress 2. TF is back, and it's still fun. I miss EMPs, though.

8. Phase. Addictive little iPod game. Five bucks well spent.

Not on the list, but still decent: Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect. They're really good, but I was not inspired to finish any of them, so I can't feel good about giving them a final score.

Didn't play: Call of Duty 4, Crysis, lots of other things. I only have so much time.

It was a good year for games. 2008 will have some work cut out for it: Metal Gear Solid 4 doesn't look so "ZOMG" these days, now that we've seen other games that look just as good.

This news.com article is calling 2008 the Year of Gaming. Usually I write these sorts of things off, but gaming has inched ever forward in consumer consciousness, and 2008 may be the year where it really explodes.

Word has it that next week's release of Grand Theft Auto IV will be not only the best-selling debut of a videogame, but possibly the highest-grossing entertainment product splash of all time.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case. GTA has been off the market long enough to build interest, and I think gamers are itching to get a new blockbuster in their paws. At this point, it'd be hard for Rockstar NOT to sell a gajillion copies.

Yes, as Harry notes, this is the week of GTA IV. Yes, it has breakthrough design. Yes, it has controversial content. But here's the funny thing: this franchise that has become so synonymous with American culture is, in no small part, a product of Scotland.

While the publishers at Rockstar Games are located in New York City, the bulk of the front line development team is in Edinburgh. They're called Rockstar North. We don't hear much from them. Most of the press is handled by the NYC crew. But several years ago in 2002, just before the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, I was given the opportunity to actually interview a key developer in the North team. Here's what he had to say at the time (much of which, I think, holds true for today):

Now this is what I'm talking about: a skiing game coming for the Wii Fit, the balance board peripheral coming this month from Nintendo. Look for a whole new genre of sports titles that will take advantage of this unique "controller." I'd love to see skateboarding, running, maybe an update on the old Track and Field arcade title - but instead of smacking buttons, you run and sweat. Question: how durable will the Wii Fit be to repeated pounding?

Reader Ray Shingler emailed me yesterday about an interesting new educational game his company created. I'd like to share the news with you:

"I read your blog in IEEE Spectrum and thought you might like to hear about our video game that teaches engineering, math, and science to kids in grades 6-9. The game is entitled "Time Engineers." We designed the game in the hopes of getting more students interested in a possible career in the civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering fields at an earlier age."

Shingler says his company is now working on a sequel for the game too.

It's a Soulcalibur kind of month, it is. Soulcalibur is, for my money, the best fighting game series ever, and Soulcalibur IV is coming out at the end of this month. They're prepping us with a cute little manga about how to play, and they've brought the retro with a release of the Dreamcast Soulcalibur on XBLA.