My most recent delivery from Game Fly is Far Cry 2.  Been playing it for a few nights and so far my opinion of it is rather mixed.  The gist of it is that it's a sand box FPS.  Most FPS games tend to be very linear, but this one allows you to wander over a fairly large map and do different missions.  So how does that work out?  Pretty poorly actually.

Open World: Fail

To get a mission you have to drive to a location where a mission is available.  Then once the mission is assigned, you'll see it appear on your map, generally speaking, on the other side of the map.  So then you have to drive to the mission.  Driving generally takes a long time and all along the roads there are check points where people will start shooting at you for no reason.  Apparently the cab driver who drops you off at the beginning of the game is the only person in the entire area who's not a gun toting psychotic ready to shoot any passerby at random.

To make it even more annoying, sometimes driving in the absolute middle of nowhere you'll have some random gun toting psychotic drive up and start shooting at you.  So inevitably most of the time in the game is spent killing random people who are just getting in the way between you and where you want to be.  So by the time you get to where you actually want to be you have to go get more ammo and heal yourself up which is a further distraction.

To make matters even more annoying the game has specific save points.  You can't just be in the middle of nowhere and decide you want to quit for the night, save your game and move on.  No, you have to drive to a safe house, or an arms dealer and save there.  You'll also get save points after completing missions, which is a little bit merciful.  But the result of this is that sometimes you'll drive all the way across the map, then manage to get yourself killed but a random gun toting psychotic, and then have to start waaaaay back where you came from.  It's just annoying.

Buddies

Now, along the way you can meet "buddies" who will help you out with alternate ways to complete missions.  You can also meet buddies who will come rescue you if you get yourself dead.  However, there's a couple catches on these buddies:

1. They will only rescue you once until you get to a safe house to reset them.  So you drive past gun toting psychotics, then die and get rescued but if you get killed again, you're out of buddies and have to go back to your last save point, likely on the other side of the map.
2. Your buddy can get killed too.  If they get shot you can go save them if you have a styrette (the magical heal all injector you use to heal yourself).  If you don't happen have a styrette your choices are leave them to die or put them out of their misery.  Furthermore, if the buddy rescues you, and you manage to escape unscathed, the same may not be true of him and he just shows up as dead and you don't even notice until he doesn't come save you the next time.  

Artificial (Un)intelligence

The AI in the game is pretty wonky honestly.  Sometimes I come up to an area and somebody's immediately shooting at me.  Other times I can sit back and snipe for days and nobody seems to understand what's happening.  They just run around a lot.  Sometimes the AI will cleverly get in a jeep and try to run me over.  Sometimes they'll get in the same jeep and try to run me down when I'm standing at my jeep's machine gun, mercilessly mowing them down as they come at me. 

I think though that really it comes down to my assessment that they are all gun toting psychotics.  They clearly have no sense of self preservation and so they will happily run into your gun fire without a care in the world and sometimes they'll just happen to sneak up on your and start shooting you in the ass.  They'll be rewarded in the after life I guess?  Perhaps I'd have more mercy for this had I not played Killzone 2 where the AI is phenomenally smart, acting like it actually wants to remain alive.

Action

The gun play in the game is actually pretty decent for the most part.  However, there is one very frustrating bit.  The sniper rifle you first get is a bolt action rifle.  When you shoot, you do not automatically cycle out the spent cartridge.  Instead, you have to release the aim button, then it will ready the gun, and then you press down the aim button again.  Once you get used to this quirk it's not too bad, but it has gotten me killed more than once as I try to shoot twice forgetting I have to make it load.

Graphics

I figured being Far Cry the graphics would be gorgeous.  Nah, not really.  It's clearly blown away by games like COD4 and of course Killzone 2, one of the best looking FPS games I've seen.  Granted, the game will actually play on something less than a mainframe, so that's a big accomplishment for Crytek.

The other thing is that it's kind of glitchy.  You can see the physics engine vomit every so often as a character gets stuck somewhere and magically pops out.  It's not problematic I suppose but it does kill the overall sense of it being a polished game. 

Conclusion

I think the big flaw in this game is that it's clear that there was some attempt to make things "realistic".  I say "realistic" in quotes because there's so many things that are decidedly not realistic that it's rather difficult to claim it without quotes.  Generally though where I meet frustration is where they are trying to make things more real than they'd otherwise be.  Like making me drive all over the map, or making me manually cock the sniper rifle.  It's also not clear to me how realistic an entire country populated by nothing but gun toting psychotics really is.

Overall I find myself wanting to enjoy the game, but I find it terribly frustrating.  I'm sure it has many many hours of game play, but that's only because it takes so much effort to get from one place to another.  I suppose if I just wanted to mercilessly kill people all day I could have fun with it but I'd like to have a little bit of plot and maybe some strategy. 

The big talk of E3 has been the revealing of motion control systems by both Sony and Microsoft.  They both take similar but yet different approaches to solving the problem of capturing human motion as a controller in games.  Microsoft favors a scheme where it's only using body movement.  Sony favors a scheme where it is tracking two controllers.  Both approaches use some kind of camera rig to do the tracking which suggests that there might be inherent limitations in Nintendo's way of doing things, using accelerometers in the controller.

It seems like most of the buzz coming out of E3 favors the Microsoft approach because it looks cooler.  You go up and stand in front of the system and then you find the characters on the screen following your movements with amazing precision.  As a demo of a technology, I can definitely see the advantage, but what's important in the long run is how this technology translates into fun games.

To illustrate my point, riddle me this, Batman: if you wanted to create a shooter game controlled in this fashion, how would you do it?  On the PS3, you'd track the controller motion and then set up a button for shooting, another for reloading, etc.  On the 360 though, are you going to need to track some kind of shooting gesture?  I mean yeah you can point your finger at the screen, but how do you say, "shoot now?"  Ultimately there may be ways to work around this and, presumably, the 360 could add in some kind of button wand or what have you to give that capability.  But my point is that the fun of playing games is going to be what determines the best option here.

Having said that, what I find myself wondering is: why does it matter?  That is, are people going to buy a 360 or a PS3 because of their motion controller systems?  Are people going to choose one console over the other because of how they implemented motion control?  If one console had it and the other didn't, then it'd be an obvious difference (see also the Wii).  But with all three consoles having some means of controlling games with body movement, I don't see this new add-on selling consoles.

The real test will not be how whizz bang the technology is, but rather who comes up with the best games for their systems.  On this point, because the control schemes for each console are different, we can expect to see a lot of exclusive titles in this space.  So we'll see who really comes out ahead, but my guess is that it's mostly a push with either implementation having advantages and disadvantages.

I have yet to figure out why computer manufacturers continue to think tablet PC's are a good idea.  They generally combine the very worst features of a laptop, and the very worst features of a phone or PDA to make a device that's largely worthless.  For a brief time I worked for a company that was backed by a maker of tablet PC's, and my experience with them was very painful.  They were bulky, slow, and difficult to use.  The only tablet PC's I've seen that seem vaguely useful are the ones that are actually full blown laptops with a touch screen. 

So having said that, rumor has it that Apple is working on a tablet PC.  My initial reaction was, that Apple's collective ego was finally getting the better of them.  That they figured they could enter a space that was historically populated with nothing but failures, and somehow wave their magic wands and make a success.  But as I've thought about this more, I have a feeling they might be onto something.

So here's what we're probably going to see:

• Screen size between iPhone and MacBook
• Wireless (3G and WiFi)
• High quality display (ideally suitable for long periods of reading)
• HD video playback

So you end up with some kind of large iPhone that's well suited to reading and watching movies that's reasonably portable.  Still, other than having the nice iPhone interface, it's not really that innovative.  It would be somewhat risky for Apple because, as is the bain of all tablet devices, it doesn't do any particularly task better than anything else.  If you want to watch a movie it's better to use your Apple TV and your big screen.  If you want to surf the web it's better to use your laptop.  If you want something portable an iPhone fits better in your pocket.  So what's Apple's gambit here?

I believe the critical clue here is that they've been hiring people with game and game system development experience.  The Internet rumor mill was suggesting that they might be putting together a game console to compete with the Wii, 360, and PS3.  I think they may be doing that, in a sense, but that this is a level way beyond that.  Instead they are working on this tablet device as portable video game platform.

The iPhone has already become a pretty hot gaming platform and that's with no good control scheme for it.  Tilting and tapping on the screen do allow for some games, but by and large, it's not ideal.  Many games have compensated by adding a kind of soft control stick.  But if you took that basica iPhone gaming concept and scaled it up a bit with a decent controller built in, you could have something really interesting.  But then make it even more powerful by giving it a docking station with an HDMI output so you can plug it into your TV.  Provide an option to add on a couple wireless controllers and now it's competing against the Wii but has the advantage that you can take this console with you. 

The device would be less powerful than the 360 or the PS3, but it could likely rival the Wii and be portable at the same time.  It'd be more expensive than the Wii, but with all of those capabilities, plus being portable, it would really bring something new to the table.  It could be a rival in the netbook space while really being it's own beast.  So I think maybe Apple might be onto something.

If you follow video game news, you may have heard about the game Konami was working on called Six Days in Fallujah.  It was going to be a first person shooter based on an actual battle that took place in Iraq in 2004.  Due to controversy over this, Konami has killed it. 

I'm rather disappointed with this move because I think it would be really interesting to take a video game and use it as a way to present rather recent history.  The impression I got was that they were handling it very intelligently, interviewing people who were in the battle on both sides, etc.  I understand the obvious risk here of making a real war with real people dying seem like a game, but I think there's a real potential in this concept for telling an important story.

Perhaps a better approach to this would have been to create a game that was generally an Iraq war themed game.  Make it a standard FPS style game that was heavily fictionalized in most respects.  But then provide a downloadable add on for it that would provide a single player historical reenactment of a battle like that.  Mix in some documentary elements, and focus on giving the person playing the game a sense of what it might have really been like.  If you could make this historically accurate and emotionally engaging I think it would be ground breaking and valuable.

Basically how I see it is that this could be a transition moment for war video games.  Back around World War 2 and pretty much until the post vietnam era, most war movies were very pro war.  The good guys defeating the bad guys and very morally simple concepts.  It wasn't until Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, etc, where we really got a sense of how war is hell in film.  I'd like to see somebody pull that off in a video game, giving people a sense of how horrific and tragic war actually is. 

It's debateable though whether such a project could meet with much commercial success because it probably wouldn't be "fun".  I mean let's face it, designing a game like that and then having a "deathmatch" mode would be a complete non-sequitr.  But who knows, maybe that would leave room for innovation.  Having a "save your buddy" mode, etc.  Though, admittedly, even suggesting that concept already seems pretty tacky.

Maybe a game where you're a field medic?  Hmmmm....

Last night I started playing the single player campaign in Killzone 2 and so far I'm totally impressed.  I've heard a lot of people talk about what a gorgeous game it is and, except for their excessive use of lens flare, I agree with that.  But what's really striking is the quality of the AI. 

So on the first level I decided to play on veteran mode for a bit of a challenge.  I ran through the first section, no problem, then get to the second section where you're essentially establishing a beach head.  I quickly duck behind cover and start popping up to shoot enemies.  So far so good as my comrades are doing a good job of keeping the focus off of me. 

But then it gets hairy really quickly.  A couple of my comrades go down and the enemy gets more focused on me.  Then I run up to a wall and start popping out to shoot some more.  All the enemies are in front of me at this point and I'm safe.  So I pop out, shoot, recover, pop out again, etc.  Then I start getting shot from the side.  Yes.  I've been flanked by the enemy.  I die.  Crap.

Do this again.  Roughly the same scenario.  But this time a guy charges my position and starts trying to just beat the crap out of me.  I die.  Crap.

I repeat this several times, before finally giving up and turning the difficulty down.  This is the first time I've seen AI in a game that's actually smart.  If you shoot at their position they duck.  When they pop back up they usually don't pop up at the same place.  They'll stop to shoot, but then they move again making sniping rather challenging.  They will charge your position.  They will flank you.  It's hard to get kills with a grenade because they are smart enough to run away from it.  Invariably grenades just end up flushing them out of a bunkered position so you can shoot at them. 

I'm totally impressed.  I have to say I prefer a bit more tactical style shooter where when you shoot bad guys, they drop, but I will say it's terribly cool to shoot an enemy soldier's helmet off of their head and have them keep coming.  Oh, and that's another thing, if you shoot a guy, you'd better be sure he's actually dead.  I've had enemies get wounded, and then get up off the ground and keep coming at me. 

It's wonderful to have a genuinely challenging single player experience where you don't feel like the computer wins only because it cheats. 

So I've decided to conduct a little experiment.  I have a copy of Killzone 2 on the way and i've heard numerous good reviews of it.  The general gist is that it doesn't really innovate as a game, but does a lot of the key elements of an FPS game really well.  However, there was one review that shall go unnamed that gave the game a rather paltry score compared to what I'd been hearing elsewhere.

So I'm going to compare three games to get a sense of what makes a good FPS game and what doesn't.  Specifically I'm going to compare and contrast three games:

• Call of Duty 4 - hailed as one of the best FPS games in recent memory and rated very highly
• Killzone 2 - a new release that's raising the bar in a few respects, but does it compare favorably to COD4?
• Haze - the universally reviled PS3 exclusive

I've been playing COD4 and I'll be getting Haze from GameFly shortly to see what it's like.  Then I'll write up a comparison between the three about what they get right and wrong. 

There's a new study out suggesting that violent video games cause people to be less inclined to helping people in need.  The general gist of the study was they had some people play violent video games or non-violent video games and then had them fill out surveys about the experience.  But the real meat of the study was that they also staged a violent scene outside of the room, faking a fight with actors shouting about a stolen girlfriend, and banging on the door.  They were attempting to figure out if people would be more or less responsive to helping out based on the games they played.

The study showed that people who played the violent video games were slower to respond to the fight going on outside.  Okay, great.  But what does this prove?  I see a couple glaring flaws:

1. This does not show anything about long term effects of playing video games, only the temporary effects.  If playing a game made you more or less prone to a certain behavior, but only within a few minutes of playing, who cares?  If it cause a long term change in behavior, that might be cause for alarm.
2. The study says it's comparing violent vs. non-violent, but it seems to me that they are also comparing competitive vs. non-competitive games.  I mean Duke Nukem is more violent than Pinball (two of the games used in the study), but it's also a more competitive game.  I'd be very curious to see how such a study worked in a say a zombie survival game where you had to work together.  Yes it would be violent, but would working with a teammate change the dynamic?
3. The study makes no comparison between this and other similar activities.  Would playing a competitive sport or similar activities result in a similar outcome.  Is there something peculiar to video games here or is it the mind set of competitive activity that causes these outcomes?

I suspect, overall the conclusions aren't unreasonable, but invariably this is just going to add more fuel to the fire to say that violence in video games is destroying society.  This study makes no long term conclusions and therefore is pretty worthless.  

To illustrate my point, imagine there was a study about the effects of drinking on driving.  They do the study and conclude that if you drink it becomes difficult and dangerous to drive.  They show overwhelming statistical data proving this point.  But then the study doesn't do any long term investigation of whether these effects linger or not.  Are people still having trouble driving a car weeks later?  Who knows, that's beyond the scope of the study, but maybe we should ban alcohol just in case...

Apparently there's some legislation coming down the road that would require that any game with a rating of T for teen, or higher would have the following warning label:

1. Studies of the subject have been, at best, inconclusive.  There's certainly evidence to suggest that children that are more aggressive and prone to violence like violent video games, but I've seen nothing to suggest that violent video games cause children to be violent.  We've proven correlation, not causation.
2. A video game that's rated T for teen or above is not necessarily violent.  There are games that get these ratings for a variety of reasons, not always violence.
3. He's proposing this warning be added to violent video games, but note he doesn't worry about other violent media.  Why don't they have that warning put on DVD's for sale or books for that matter?  If it's violent media in general, then let's label all media, right?

So far as it goes, if it really gets off this congress person to label these games, I could care less.  I think there's better things for congress to waste it's time on, but in the end this seems mostly harmless.  He's not looking to ban games or regulate their sale in some fashion.  He's just adding a warning label.  *shrug*

Basically what it boils down to is that a bunch of older people who never played anything more complicated than Pac Man are all spooked out about what somebody else's child might be playing on their PS3.  The reality is that if a parent doesn't know what their child is playing and can't identify evidence of violent behavior, the video games are the least of the problem. 

If my kid wanted to get a video game, I'd research it first to see what it's about.  The truth is, for a little bit older kid I'd have no problem with them playing a game like Fallout 3, provided I didn't think the zombies would traumatize them.  It's rated M, and there is violence, but the violence is all integrated into an overall system of ethics.  Sure, you can kill people, but with that comes consequences.  It's pointless egergious violence that's more of a problem in my mind,

Sony recently came out with a chart that attempts to illustrate that, in spite of its apparent higher price tag, the PS3 is a better value than the 360 or the Wii.  Their comparison to the Wii is a bit weak, but they have a very good point on the 360.  One of the most glaring issues with the 360 is that WiFi is an add on and it costs $100. 

Now, first of all, $100 for what's really just a WiFi adapter is insane.  I can get a WiFi adapter for an older laptop that doesn't have it integrated for under $20.  But even in making that statement notice that I said, "older".  The reality is that modern laptops have WiFi built in because people use it all the time and because it's dirt cheap to have WiFi integrated onto a motherboard.  

So it's worth making the point that Microsoft made a deliberate choice to not include WiFi.  Arguably, by making it an add on, they probably made the main system hardware more expensive because it had to provide a way to modularly plug that feature in.  Where as including WiFi integrated onto the board would have cost them nearly nothing.  By making it an add on that almost everybody was going to end up buying for $100 though, they were able to raise the effective price of the console while still keeping the advertised price point lower. 

It seems to me that, in the long run Microsoft went with a plan that's better for their bottom line and Sony went with a plan that's better for the average consumer.  Granted, you can get a 360 and play games without getting a hard drive or WiFi, but odds are you aren't.  You'll either get the higher priced all inclusive model, or you'll end up buying the add ons eventually.  Then, on top of that, you'll pay $50/year for the privilege of playing games on a network using your $100 WiFi card. 

So I just managed to beat Fallout 3.  Generally in playing games like this I tend to take a pretty direct path, trying to get to the end pretty quickly.  Even so, I did find myself sucked into little side trips pretty routinely.  It's a really rich world to play in.  Enough so that I'm actually about to start over from scratch.

Something that's very key to the game is the concept of karma.  Basically if you do good things then you get karma and if you do bad things you lose it.  Invariably your karma level has consequences for you throughout the game.  Now, what's interesting about this is that I realized, as I went through the game that I was ending up playing a good guy for the most part.  I suppose partly this is my natural default, but I realized there's a deeper issue here.

See, the thing is, there's a definite self-interest to being a good guy.  If you treat people with respect, they are generally more helpful to you.  Sure you can go around and mercilessly kill every person who goes near you.  You can lie, cheat, and steal.  But the problem with that is that invariably it turns people against you.  If you go into a place treating everybody kindly, they can help you out.  If you kill them or make them want to kill you, it's a lot harder to get people to help you.

So now I'm going to start from scratch in the game.  I will play under these rules:

1. I will kill anybody who gives me the slightest reason to do so
2. I will steal as much as I reasonably can - not going to just steal every cup in a kitchen because I can, I'm not that bored
3. I will always treat people like crap when I talk to them
4. I will always demand money or other compensation for any services I render
5. I will lie routinely when given the opportunity

My suspicion is that the game will be much harder to play like this. 

So I've been playing more End War and I'm enjoying it, but I will mention a couple niggling issues:

1. The battlefield seems to be pretty stagnant right now.  I keep having to fight the same battles every time I log in.  The Russians are pretty much dominating, but we're stuck at about 24 territories so there's not really anywhere else to go.
2. I find that I sometimes have to wait a rather long time to get an opponent.  It depends on which battlefield I want to fight on.  Usually I can get a fight on the US, but not on Europe.

I seem to be better than average amongst the people I've been fighting.  Over the weekend I got some stiff competition from some folks playing on the American team, but usually I do pretty well.  So I figured I'd throw together a couple strategy tips for anybody out there who might be playing the game. 

General Strategy:

• The game strongly favors defensive play, therefore, you want to make sure to secure uplinks as quickly as possible.  If you get behind it can't be difficult to catch back up.  Your best bet is to use infantry and transports to grab the uplinks.
• Engineers are the most powerful unit on the field.  A couple engineers can wipe out all kinds of vehicles.  The only thing that they're particularly vulnerable to is artillery and that can be offset by making sure to keep enemy scouts (choppers, UAV's) away from your engineers so that artillery can't be called in on them
• Make sure to keep situational awareness.  I've noticed a lot of people tend to stack their forces to try to take a fortified position.  This usually ends up leaving them wide open for a strike behind them.  You can either use a deep strike, or use infantry with transports to sneak behind them. 

WMD's:

• If you're losing, avoid the temptation to use the WMD's right away.  Once you use the WMD, the enemy gets to use one on you, so generally it doesn't buy you a lot.  Wait a bit and you'll get the ability to crash a link which they won't be able to retailiate with.
• Avoid the temptation to use your WMD's on enemy uplinks.  Your better bet is to use the WMD's to wipe out enemy troop concentrations.  It can take a while to rebuild forces, so this does more to slow an enemy down than just wiping out an uplink.

UPDATE: It appears that the stagnant battlefield was a bug.  With the most recent update, I had half a dozen options, so it is much better now.

I've been eagerly awaiting End War for a long time now.  When I heard it described to me by a coworker I thought it was the most perfect sounding game.  I've long been a fan of RTS games and this has a few elements that really intrigued me:

• No "god" view - rather than doing the fog of war concept, you see the battle from the perspective of your units on the field.  Granted, you can get a command vehicle that gives you more of that god perspective with the ability to launch UAV's, etc, but overall the concept gives you the kind of perspective a real commander in the field would have
• Voice commands - the entire system can be driven using the controller, but you can also issue commands by speaking them.  So if you want unit 2 to attack hostile 4, you just say, "unit 2 attack hostile 4". 
• Massive elements - while you're never playing more than a couple people in any one battle, all of the battles are part of a larger war.  So the battlefield changes as the overall war shifts back and forth,

So far I'm pretty pleased with the game.  It's a little buggy in some parts, but I'm sure that will get corrected in the first patch or two.  The voice command interface works pretty well and is probably 90-95% accurate.  Occasionally I've found my units straying off in weird directions because it misunderstood me.  Overall though it's effective and it makes controlling a number of units on the field a lot easier.

The massive elements of the game are... okay.  I mean the only flaw with it is that your actions doing have any immediate tangible impact on the game.  So, I can go to a battle, win a lot, and after the round is over, we'll gain that territory if we had more victories.  But at any given time there's only three territories to fight in.  The problem with this is that if I log in and I'm not particularly enamored with the battlefields available at the time, I can't do anything about it. 

The mechanics of combat are pretty simple, and this leads to a pretty fast pace of battle.  It's mostly a rock/paper/scissors style where, for example, helicopters beat tanks but get beat by transports.  Then transports get beat by tanks.  You get the idea.  You also have artillery, infantry, engineers, and command vehicles.

The only thing I find to be a glaring flaw in the game is that it's way too easy to destroy uplinks.  The way the game plays in conquest mode is that you can either wipe out the enemy or take the majority of control points.  But the problem is, you have to keep the majority.  As soon as you take the majority, the enemy is given the ability to call in a WMD strike, which permits them to destroy an uplink.  But you can also destroy the uplinks with direct fire by your units and artillery as well.  So invariably all the uplinks end up getting wiped out in short order.

I do wonder how this will play out in the long run though.  See, as you fight battles you get money to spend on abilities for your units.  My concern is that eventually you end up with an imbalance between dedicated players and more casual players.  For example, I recently got the deep strike upgrade for my infantry.  This allows me to deploy infantry literally anywhere on the battlefield.  It's expensive, costing me 4CP for the unit itself, then another 6CP to initiate the deep strike.  So I can be a total dick and steal an uplink from the other team by dropping my infantry into their back line.  That's a huge advantage over somebody who doesn't have those abilities.

I think overall it's not all I'd hoped it'd be but it is a fun game and it definitely breaks a lot of new ground.  It will be very interesting to see what they do with it going forward.  They are talking about having downloadable add ons for it and that it's all part of a networked game with a larger battle concept, there's all kinds of variables that might be thrown into the game as it goes on.

Alright, so I've had the Wii Fit for a few weeks and so I wanted to give my impressions.  Overall the concept is good, and I enjoy doing the exercises.  Having the balance board is really handy because it helps clue you into whether you're doing something right or not.  I've mostly focused on the strength training and yoga because I run and don't really need the aerobics as much.

A few things I don't like about it though:

1. It would be really handy if I could set up a routine.  Like have it automatically walk me through a set of exercises each time I use it.  As it is I have to click around a lot between exercises.  
2. It's awfully damn judgemental.  You weigh in and it's like, "oh you're heavier today, why do you think that is?"  Then it gives you a list of reasons why you're too damn fat today.  You have to select one and then it admonishes you.  Plus if you're overweight like I am, it makes your Mii look fat.  This is not helping :)
3. You have to use the Fit in order to unlock certain exercises.  This is annoying to say the least.  What makes matters worse is that you can't pick what you unlock.  So if I do a bunch of yoga, it might unlock a new aerobic activity I'm not going to use.  If they are going to have unlocks, I'd like to at least be able to pick what I'm unlocking.

Overall though it works well enough and I'm trying to make a routine of doing this most evenings to get my core muscles in better shape.  My legs are like rocks, but everything else is puddin soft.

So last night I'm playing Battlefield: Bad Company, which I highly recommend.  I'll get into a review of it later, but being as it's just been released, it does have a minor bug or two.  Last night it managed to lock up on me.  Oh well, no big deal.  So reboot my PS3, go to play again and I'm told I need to download the latest PS3 firmware to play.  Ugh.  This takes me an HOUR to do because my wireless connection to the PS3 isn't the greatest.  There's no way to get around it either because it refuses to let you connect to Sony's network without the very latest firmware.

I really wish Sony did this better.  First of all, when doing a system upgrade, you have to wait for it to download and can do nothing else at all with your PS3 while it downloads.  So if you want to watch an episode of The Wire, you better use your laptop because the PS3 is busy downloading.  Second of all, I appreciate that they want to keep the environment consistent, but it would be nice if they had a grace period so I didn't HAVE to upgrade right then and there.

Finally, what would really be nice is if I could just tell the PS3 to check for updates in the background at odd hours like I can do on every single other computer I have.  So most of the time, I'd just flip over to my PS3 and discover that I have an update waiting for me rather than having to sit there and watch it download.

I grant, if I had a better wireless connection, it would be a lot less hassles.  I could download it in probably 10 minutes and get on with my existence.  Still, it is a might bit frustrating.   

So I've played pretty far into Metal Gear Solid 4 and figured I'd give a brief review.  I will preface this with the fact that I do not much like cut scenes generally.  Nothing kills the flow of a game better than to suddenly be dropped into a B-grade movie that, theoretically has something to do with the plot of the game I'm playing.  There are a few exceptions to this, but by and large cut scenes are a waste.

Initially as I started playing MSG, I was really impressed with the cut scenes.  Many of them were actually quite interesting to watch.  It felt like watching a rather decent anime movie.  I have, in fact, replayed a section of the game because I wanted to see the cut scene again that I had partially missed the first time. 

The overall game play is wonderful and I really enjoy trying to sneak around, sniping people, evading, etc.  The controls took a little getting used to, but once I got into it I've really enjoyed it.  The graphics are really good and I do like the overall story. 

Do you see the but coming?  Yeah, here it is.

BUT, the big problem with the game is that the further I get into the game, the more I find it to be turning into one giant cut scene.  I'm not sure they can rightfully be called "cut" scenes seeing as they aren't cutting from the action, the action seems to be cutting from the scenes.  To make matters worse, the content of the cut scenes is becoming far more arcane.  See, I've never played any of the previous MGS games, so I don't know the background at all.  So when they start going on about Big Boss and Big Mama, etc, I have minimal idea what they are talking about.  It wouldn't be so bad if it was a minute here, or a minute there, but it just goes on and on.

So overall, I like the game, but the endless cut scenes are beginning to wear on me.

I've been discussing this with some friends of mine for a while and I thought I'd summarize my thoughts briefly on why, for me, PC gaming is dying.  Before I get into this though I think I should clarify that PC gaming isn't dying, nor will it ever die, but it is dying for me.  I would also argue that it is dying for many, and for a lot of the same reasons. 

The thing is, everybody has PC's and therefore, people will play games on those PC's.  They will play World of Warcraft and they'll play more casual games.  If you play Scrabulous on a PC, technically speaking that's PC gaming isn't it?  So in that sense there will always be something out there for people to play.  For me though I find that less and less of my time is spent playing games on my PC.  Why?  A few reasons.

Pain in the assness

Invariably whenever I play games on my PC I have some degree of glitches.  I have to go through, upgrade video drivers, tweak a few settings and then finally I get the game playing like I want it to.  If I'm lucky it will play for more than an hour before crashing.  So the experience is often hit or miss.  Some games play flawlessly while others don't.  Some of this can be blamed on developers, but most of it can be blamed on the crazy variety of PC hardware.  It is impossible to QA a game for every single hardware and software combination.

I currently have a Mac Pro and it does give me a slight advantage here in that I never use my Windows environment for anything but gaming.  So it's actually a pretty clean install with little to interfere with my games.  So it is a better environment than many I've used in the past, but it still has issues from time to time. 

Windows

I hate Windows.  With a clean, fresh install, it's fine, but it is terribly prone to developing cruft.  Windows is the only operating system I run that still requires me to defrag my hard drive.  Inevitably if you want a good gaming experience, you end up having to reinstall the whole damn thing periodically.  As I said above, I only use my Windows install for gaming, so it avoids this problem to an extent, but it's made up for by the fact that I have to reboot my system every time I want to play a game.  Also, inevitably, Windows is abusive about upgrading routinely, and it will iterrupt you in the middle of playing a game to say, "NO RESTART NOWWWWW!!!"   I eventually figured out how to turn that off, but it's damned annoying.

Price

I own a Mac Pro.  Why?  Because I wanted to have a Mac but I wanted a gaming system and I knew that Apple's more conventional desktops were not up to the task.  So I ended up spending an obscene amount of money and getting a firebreather of a computer.  Then I later added more memory and upgraded the video card to boot.  So it's a very nice computer, don't get me wrong, but I had to put all that extra money into it strictly because I wanted to play games. 

Even if I wasn't going with a Mac, the reality is, if I buy a PC intended for gaming, I have to drop a lot more money on it.  Far more than I would on  a console, and over the course of the computer's life span I probably have to upgrade it once or twice for, once again, as much as I'd pay for a console. 

PC's are no longer that much better

Up until this generation of consoles, I felt that PC's were a far superior gaming platform, primarily because of the networking capabilities.  But with the current generation of consoles, the graphics hardware is really good and I can play on-line with them.  Having said that, having a keyboard and the flexibility it offers is a wonderful thing.  Though I will say, having the more limited controls of a console does tend to focus the mind of a developer and make the controls easier to work with. 

Conclusion

So while I'll invariably still play the occasional PC game, it's going to become something I do far less frequently.  Also, I'm no longer going to be buying high-end PC's to run it on.  I'll probably have my Mac Pro for a good long time since, for every day tasks, it's probably overpowered.  But next time I do upgrade, it won't be anything quite so ridiculous.  Instead I'll just keep up with the latest consoles and end up saving myself a lot of money and a lot of hassle.

So yesterday I picked up Metal Gear Solid 4.  So far I like the game, though having a bit of a walk through on how the controls work might have been nice.  I'm figuring it out though and enjoying it so far.  But holy crap, I've never seen a game with more cut scenes in my life.  Having said that, I find that the cut scenes are actually pretty well done, so it doesn't bother as much as it might otherwise.  Also, the transition back to being in-game from the cut-scenes is really fluid, like much of the time it takes me a second to realize I have the controls again.

I'm not sure if I've ever played metal gear in the past.  I might have played it back on the NES, but that's a long long time ago.  So I get the sense that I'm missing a lot of the background story.  I mean everything that's going on is clear and makes sense and the developing plot is rather interesting, but I do sense I'd probably get more out of it if I knew the background.

I saw a couple articles recently that were talking about what a video game actor gets paid.  The lead actor from GTA4 got paid something like $100K for the work he did.  This, for a game that grossed over half a billion dollars on the first day of it's release. 

When you compare this to the salaries that big name actors get for a film, it sounds like highway robbery. But the reality here is that a video game doesn't need to have the visibility that big name actors bring to films.  Like people will go see a movie because it has Denzel Washington in it, but nobody buys a video game because it has Denzel Washington in it.  People buy games for game play elements, storyline, and all around fun.  The actors are part of all of that, but not enough to demand a big pay check for it.

It's simply a supply and demand issue here.  Video games need actors, but there are a ton of good actors who aren't big name actors, and since having big name actors makes little difference in video games, they are largely ignored.  When big name actors do appear, they aren't paid substantially more because they are competing in a very different marketplace for talent.  They end up competing with folks like Mark Hamil who is actually a pretty good actor, but has never been able to live down being Luke Skywalker when it comes to being an actual on screen presence.  So he's done a lot of voice work in games and cartoons, most notably as the joker in the batman animated series. 

So does it suck that actors get only a middling profit from a game that makes half a billion?  Maybe.  But that's the way capitalism works.  Get over it.  $100K isn't a bad pay check, and probably on par with a lot of the staff who put the game together who worked just as hard, if not more so. 

Grand Theft Auto has a long history of glorifying violence, and having played all of the games in the series to one degree or another since GTA3, I'm a fan of that element.  I'll go on random killing sprees, seeing how long I can last before the cops finally get to me.  I'll deliberately run somebody over, then back my car up over them to finish them off.  Then there's the fun of a molotov cocktail in a crowd of people. 

Does GTA4 have all that?  Absolutely.  I can even go for head shots now.  But GTA4 also brings a more complex morality to the game.  Sure, you're a pretty cold blooded murderous criminal, but they've added a rather fascinating element to the game.  At various points through out the game, you are given a choice whether to kill or let go some character.  Each of these characters is a purely virtual construct, and should be as fun to blow away as any other random collection of pixels in the game.  Yet, it's more complicated than that.

There are two levels to this.  The first is a simple matter of what's in it for me.  If I kill this person, will they it anger somebody else?  If I don't kill them, will they back stab me later down the line?  This comes down to a judgment of their character.  Do you kill the coked up boss who seems to be flying off the handle, or do you kill his calm calculating assistant?  Do you kill the depressive guy who just got out of prison that you seem to have a kinship with, or the friend who once helped him, but has now written him off. 

Then there's a deeper level of justice, for lack of a better word, once you get past figuring out what's in it for you.  Does the petty thug who lied to you deserve to die for that lie?  Does a cheating girlfriend deserve to pay the ultimate price?  It's just you, a gun, and that assortment of colorful pixels, so what do you do?  Sometimes the consequences of your actions are totally unexpected. 

In playing GTA4, I'm reminded a bit of the Bourne movies.  As you may or may not know, Matt Damon is very much against portraying violent characters.  However, he makes an exception for the Bourne movies because, in them, there are clear consequences for living that life.  Forever on the run.  Loved ones dying.  There are always consequences for his actions.  In GTA4, there are always consequences.  Maybe it's just the cops chasing you down, or maybe it's the plot line heading an unexpected direction, but your choices do actually matter.

In the end, it's not portraying violence in our media that's bad, it's portraying violence without consequences that's bad.  The GTA series has always had a deeper complexity in it's story than is belied by the ability to go bash people's heads in with a golf club.  Having said that, I think GTA4 has taken that complexity to a new level and is the better for it. 

While I am becoming convinced that console gaming has come of age and that PC gaming is on it's way out, I see one major problem.  On the PC, through playing PlanetSide, I met a good group of people to game with.  We'd use TeamSpeak and coordinate our attacks and such, but also just shoot the shit, and have fun.  I played PlanetSide as long as I did, primarily because it was hanging out with my friends.  The addiction wasn't in the game, but rather in the waiting to find out how drunk ArmorDeth was on a random Thursday night. 

As I've been moving to playing console games, I realize that there's a couple problems.  First of all, there's no good way to meet players on the console that I'm aware of.  I mean yeah I log onto a random server and I can see who was playing on there when I log off, but in the midst  of a game, it's rather hard to keep track of who would be good to play with going forward. 

If you've got an established network of people who are playing a certain game, it's easy enough to hook up with them in most games.  But if you want to actually meet some new good gamers to play with, it's not so easy.  I join random servers only to hear some stoned/drunk jackass mumbling and making weird noises to try to annoy other people.  For whatever reason, I find that there's a lot more of that on console games than PC. 

The other problem is that each console has it's own isolated network.  So if my friends play on XBOX, then I have to play on XBOX.  I own a PS3, so unless other people I know get a PS3, then there's little I can do in terms of networking.  Btw, I'm "sterno_inferno" on PS3's network, if you're out there and want to add me to your list. 

Anyhow, I look back over my game playing history and, broadly speaking, a game has rarely held my attention for more than a couple weeks unless there was some social element to it.  If I found a good server and people to play with, I would keep coming back time and time again.  It's been a long time since PlanetSide was any good, and I've yet to find anybody on the consoles to play with routinely.