Camping 2.0

I just got back a few days ago after a full week camping (at Point Farms Provincial Park, on Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada – great site if you are interested).

It was more fun than this, really!

For me, camping is all about a tent, the odd tarp, and having to scrub the smell of wood smoke off you when you eventually get home. I don’t buy into using trailers, small or otherwise, if you’re not at least somewhat exposed to the elements, why bother? The main appeal is that it’s just you and the family, no TV, internet, or other distractions. A good chair or hammock, and a good book is also recommended – I got through 2000 pages last week, loved it! I read “Order In Chaos” (book 3 of the Templar Trilogy from Jack Whyte), and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (by Stieg Larsson), and highly recommend them both. Cards and board games by lantern, sitting around the camp fire, and days on the beach (well, beach for the women folk in the family, I just burn, so avoid beaches!)

Did I mention the S'Mores? Or the Beautiful Lake Huron sunsets - free with each site!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Les Stroud (Survivorman), or Bear Grylls either, but I do like my camping reasonably authentic. That’s why I read with some consternation recently, that Ontario Provincial Parks are looking to introduce WiFi to the campsites. In fact they are trialling it at The Pinery, near Grand Bend, not far from where I was in fact.

My wife works remotely now, so has her laptop and Blackberry, and she is on both constantly. I’m also on my iPhone ALL THE TIME. This was a week where we could not worry about those devices and really get away, with no temptation to go online, since there was no signal – neither her Blackberry (on Telus) or my iPhone (Rogers) got even a single bar 🙂 I’m a Twitterholic, and a big gamer, but I didn’t miss my Wii, Xbox, or PS3 for the week. The kids are big online addicts too, especially my older daughter, yet I don’t recall seeing her laid in the fetal position, twitching, with withdrawal from Facebook… I don’t think she even mentioned it. If your kids are bored while you are camping, you are doing it wrong!

The Provincial Parks are citing a loss of customers to private camp sites that offer free wireless service, specifically mentioning the KOA ones. Every time I see a KOA site they look like a bed episode of Top gear, with trailers parked in some field somewhere right next to each other – waiting for Richard Hammond to set them on fire! The Provincial Parks on Lake Huron are great, with spacious lots, many of them quite private, and easy access to fantastic beaches. Why do people need wireless?

A few more camping pics

The Avatar Blues – Sex and the Single Alien

This blog brought to you by the letter ‘B’ and the colour ‘Blue’.

It’s been about a week since I picked up my copy of Avatar on Blu-ray, and a few related things have influenced this blog over the last week. I was not a huge fan of Avatar when it came out in the theater. It was a good movie, but way over-hyped in my opinion. It has to be said though, Avatar is stunning on Blu-ray. It looks and sounds amazing, and to top it off, the Blu-ray + DVD combo pack was only $20 at Best Buy! There are no special features though, and many people seem to be waiting for the special editions that will be coming out … and you know that there will be several of them, to cash in as much as possible.

Matriarch Benezia

One topic I have seen talked about at length is whether there will be any Na’vi sex scene in the special editions, or discussion of Na’vi sexuality. I don’t get the big deal. If you want some good blue alien sex, get Mass Effect! I just finished my 2nd play through of the game recently, and one thing I did finally figure out was getting the Paramour Achievement, which basically means you got to sleep with one of the female characters (or the male character if you play as a female). To make it more interesting, BioWare even created a little love triangle between the human characters and the Asari scientist, Liara, who is of course blue. Even Liara’s mother, Matriarch Benezia, gets the sexy blue treatment. She wears the dress shown above, revealing her true biotic, er, talents.

If you play the game right, you even get once scene where the two women confront you, forcing you to choose between them. Commander Shepard, with a glint in his eye, even asks about the chance of a threesome, but gets shot down by the human… the blue alien seemed up for it! Choose the Asari, disappointing Chief Ashley Williams in the process, and you will end up with a VERY steamy sex scene involving Shepard and Liara (well, steamy for a video game – see it below), complete with bare blue buttocks and a hint of much more!

Are You Embarrassed by Your Video Games?

I have a long and inglorious gaming history. My Twitter profile states I am an “Avid (but useless) gamer”, which is pretty accurate.

Online games are pretty easy places for an old fart like me to get embarrassed, but I was pretty bad back in the days of my first multiplayer experiences – Hexen on the corporate LAN after hours. I did better playing the original Worms multiplayer, which is still one of the most fun online games ever.

Fast-forward a few years and Battlefield 1942 was the next online lowlight for me. Perhaps using a tag of ‘fragbait_newboy’ was asking for it. I spawned so often in that game I considered changing my tag to frogboy!

I’d like to think my online inabilities are due to age and declining reactions, so perhaps Microsoft need to take pity on folks like myself. Forget “Live”, let’s petition them to create a service just for us old folk, so we don’t have to put up with all those young kids with lightning fast thumbs.

Walrus

Interactive gaming has perhaps the greatest potential for embarrassment, though. We have a Wii Fit Balance Board, which appraises your levels and makes your on-screen avatar, or Mii, look how it thinks you are. Wii Fit told me I was fat, and morphed my Wii into something resembling a Walrus.

Nintendo also has a vitality sensor now, designed to monitor you during physical activity. Some games can now use the sensor to detect your ‘fear’ level and back off on the scares. So not only does it insult you physically, the Wii is now capable of questioning your manhood!

We are now approaching a new era in embarrassing possibilities, though, with the advent of Project Natal from Microsoft. A recent demo of Natal was impressive mostly for the fact that the motion sensing system detected the gamer as female!!! How the hell does it do that? More importantly, will it detect my man-boobs and perform gender reassignment!

Batchelor Life – I Survived!

Okay, so as any of you who follow me on Twitter know, my wife (Twitter: @Fi_ca) and kids have been in England for the past 10 days attending a wedding – so I was doing the batchelor thing.

batchelor haute cuisine

There were some tense moments, such as tuna helper, Timbits, and Pinot Grigiot for dinner one night (see, really!) but on the whole I fared okay. Granted, there were lots of frozen items being defrosted, and eating 120% of your recommended salt intake in one meal may not be too smart, especially after my last physical, but I did learn a few valuable lessons.

One: It is entirely possible to use only one plate, one pan, one cup, one water glass, one wine glass, and one set of cutlery for an entire week … and yes, I do mean by washing them each day!

Two: Teenagers produce more garbage per week than you will see in an entire level of Katamari. I just put out the garbage for the week and it is so much less than when they are here.

Three: Cats may seem all aloof and solitary, but I have been mobbed all week by ours. This isn’t helping the paranoia I have developed regarding their intentions (see previous blog). Either they are about to unleash their evil plan, or they miss the wife and kids… if you don’t see another blog after this one, you know what happened.

menage a trois

It wasn’t all good eats and no garbage though. I invited a buddy over last Friday night to watch a movie – my new copy of Goodfellas, the fancy Blu-ray 20th anniversary edition. The wedding was actually last Friday, so it was also an excuse not to drink a bottle of wine alone. If I admit that it ended with Menage A Trois would you be shocked? I was, who the hell names a red wine Menage A Trois? I now understand that movie “Sideways” a lot more, and it still sucked.

skillet sensations

Anyway, I have survived, and I hope that all you old farts who can’t cook and get left alone for any length of time can take heart from my experience.

You can do it, and you can have fun while you do. Perhaps playing Mass Effect until 1am isn’t your thing – but then you probably wouldn’t be reading my blog if it wasn’t.

I did also complete my week in style, by actually having vegetables with my final meal alone. I can tell you are all proud of me. Okay, so it was out of a packet, one of those Skillet Sensation meals, but it was very nice.

My Version of Retro Gaming

While Scott Jones (@ScottCJones)  seems to have his own underground dealer for classic games, I’ve been doing my own version of retro gaming lately – which doesn’t involve ancient cartridges, but playing more recent games I missed the first time around.

At the moment I’m playing Mass Effect, Brutal Legend, Red Faction Guerrilla, Battlefield Bad Company, and Metal Gear Solid 4. With all the sequel games out recently, heading back and playing originals is a great way to get in the mood! I’m sure many have already played these, but for anyone who hasn’t you really should. Trading your newer games for old classics is a great way to expand your game play experience.

Mass Effect 2 is one of the most anticipated games of 2010, and for once what you did in the original makes real differences in how the sequel plays out for you – so don’t trash your original game saves. I am loving Mass Effect, but after 18 hours of gameplay I feel like I have spent about half of that in elevators. For a game that features faster than light travel, it has the slowest elevators in history … but the (hopefully) intentionally cheesy elevator music almost makes up for it. The elevators are also a source of side-missions, through news reports on the radio station playing.

Brutal Legend is not that old, but is a game that I totally ignored first time around. This is a game you have to play, it is riotously funny in places, and I guess that is to be expected with Jack Black as the lead character. How can you go wrong in an open world game with Jack Black, head bangers, tons of collectibles, great music, and numerous homages to heavy metal greats – the game even features Ozzy as the Guardian of Metal, among other cameos. I was a bit worried going into this, as I am not a real fan of heavy metal, but you will get a new appreciation for it from this game, and I am now routinely listening to Ozzy , Black Sabbath and other real metal. I say ‘real’, as the whole game revolves around the true metal proponents fighting the evil ‘hair metal’ bad guys. This game is a must play, especially if you experienced the 80’s 😀

Red Faction Guerrilla and Battlefield Bad Company are more run of the mill console fare, but are both very good. Red Faction has some great missions, lots of replay value, and features a rich online experience. Bad Company is a great addition to the Battlefield franchise, with a more tongue-in-cheek approach, but still offering a great shooter experience. Either will satisfy hard-core shooter fans.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is a PS3 classic, and a big departure from Red Faction and Bad Company. Snake utilizes stealth more than gunplay, and it offers a really different gameplay experience, and a very deep storyline. Don’t skip this one just because it isn’t a classic style shooter, put some time into it and you won’t be disappointed.

Now, I need to figure out what gems I can unearth when I trade Modern Warfare 2 and Assassins Creed 2. Any suggestions?

iPhone App Review – Puzzle Games

I have had my iPhone for quite a while now, several weeks anyway, and while I am somewhat addicted to Twitter apps, I probably have more puzzle games than anything else. These are my favourites, I’d love to hear what you recommend!

Peggle and Bejeweled are PC royalty, and both have excellent iPhone versions. The two can be purchased for a combined $5 CAD – which on a scale of value relative to price, is as close to infinity as you can get! You simply can’t go wrong purchasing these games, and you will devote hours to them. Bookworm, another PC great, is only $3 at the app store, and may be my next purchase.

Boxed In, and the sequel, are $1 games, but the developer recently had a special deal where the games were offered free, all they asked was for you to take that purchase price and donate it to Haiti. Great gesture, and great puzzle games. Another great, and cheap, puzzle game is Cassiopeia. It’s sort of a reverse Minesweeper, and for $1 is a great logic puzzle. My final $1 value game is Relix, another well executed logic puzzle that will give back far more than the $1 it costs.

You don’t always get what you pay for, and these free games are proof of that. You would have to be under a rock not to know about Sudoku puzzles, and the version from publisher Mighty Mighty Good Games is a good one. The free version of Word Warp is a very good Text Twister clone, and you can’t argue for the price. The full version of Word Warp is only a $1, if you like the free one.

The big omission is likely Tetris, but I’m cheap, and it’s $5 – I can’t justify that when I look at the value you can get for same $5 elsewhere. I also just found Alchemize, which is free right now (normally $3), which is a very neat take on a Tetris style game – definitely worth it for free.

I have only included games I have downloaded and paid for myself, or that were free, so If you have any suggestions for great puzzlers I haven’t tried, please leave me a comment.

The (Video Game) Worlds Worst Vacation Spots

With crappy weather dominating this January, the mind starts wandering to getting away from it all – but be careful where you decide to vacation. Hopefully this guide will help you to avoid those spots that will ruin your trip, assuming time and space are no impediment. You won’t find many of these locations on SellOffVacations, but what the hey!

We’ll start with the kids. If you’re in the deep south, be sure to avoid Whispering Oaks Amusement Park. Although the ride lines will be short, there are health risks – above and beyond those generally posed by deep fried food and collateral damage from civil war re-enactments. You might find the odd garden gnome, but don’t assume that means this place is Travelocity recommended!

Pandora might look like a beautiful vacation spot, but there are reports of unrest from the indigenous inhabitants. Reports also suggest that James Cameron is considering buying the whole planet as a second home – and I don’t know anyone who could stand a full week of Cameron talking incessantly about his latest project.

If adventure holidays are more your style, you could be considering a Himalayan odyssey… Don’t. A Mr. Sullivan from Uncharted 2-ers was recently arrested for fraud after bilking several groups of tourists out of monies paid in advance for guided mountain tours. His associates are still at large.

If urban decay is okay with you, you may be considering City 17, Jacinto, or Karachi. Even google maps won’t help you if you book your trip to Karachi with Infinity Ward Travel. The locals won’t be much help either, since all the street signs are in Arabic, and they speak English or Urdu. City 17 is no better, and Jacinto – well, unless you’re into bugs & worms, or want to try out the seismograph app on your iPhone, give it a miss.

With renewed interest in Renaissance Italy of late, package tours to Florence & Venice are very popular. Beware though, pickpockets are rife, and an increased crime rate means you will be lucky not too see the odd dead body. The chances are that someone in your party will also be hurt by falling archers!

The best idea is to just stay at home and play more games!

Suggestions for additional locations are welcome, just leave a comment. Also, any places you WOULD like to go on vacation from the video game world?

Achievement Whoreing

I freely admit I am a nerd, never denied it. I also answer to geek, and a few other names I’d rather not share on a public forum … an achievement whore, however, I’ve never been called.

I just “finished” Assassins Creed 2 (yes, I was bloody confused as well, even after seeing the whole Truth video), yet my PS3 Trophy list shows I am at 90% complete. As usual, there are a few achievements/trophies I don’t have yet. I don’t mind missing ones like having to kick a guard while in the flying machine, I have enough issues just getting through the missions, never mind doing it with flair! It’s those damn collectible ones I hate. I currently hate feathers. It’s not that I don’t have the patience, well, not if someone has kindly provided a detailed map of the locations (yes, that’s how I got all the shards in inFamous). Actually, I guess I don’t have the patience, at least not to do it myself. If it’s not part of the game per se, I simply don’t have the motivation. It got me wondering, who does?

A while back, I saw this story on Kotaku.com, and I kid you not, I was genuinely saddened. I wasn’t jealous, I wasn’t mad, I felt genuine pity for that girl and her comrades in the “boosting” club. She freely admits that she doesn’t even enjoy 65% of the games she plays. So what’s the point? Why would you subject yourself to horrible games, and spend a TON of money, just to get a ridiculously high gamerscore? Prestige? Are you impressed, or, like me, just find it somewhat repulsive, or unfathomable?

In a former life, I studied psychology, so I started wondering why people do this. Now, granted, this is more the realm of sociology, sociobiology, or anthropology – but hey, I may as well use that 9 years of university for something. Now, try and stay awake, who knows, we might learn something. It strikes me that this finding feathers lark is somewhat similar to the same mentality that drives people to collect those God-awful porcelain plates, or stamps – the “hunter-gatherer” mentality. We, as humans, probably lived as hunter gatherers for more than 2 million years, so is it any surprise that some of that behaviour still lurks in our DNA somewhere, I think the term is vestigial … game designers figured this out a while back, although I’m sure they described it in a far more interesting way!

Now, some collectibles do offer something, like the shards in inFamous that helped you level up, or Cog Tags that expanded the back-story. They offer something more than just the achievements you get for finding them. The Glyphys in Assassins Creed 2 are a great example of this. You can play through the game without ever finding a glyph and do just fine, but finding them all gives you a great insight into the background of the game world, and the puzzles, while frustrating at times, can be fun too. The Assassin Tombs are also good. You can finish the game quite easily without finding one, but getting Altair’s Armor is pretty cool, even if it does make the game a bit too easy at times.

If it weren’t for true in-game achievements, however, my gamerscore and trophy collection would be even weaker than they already are. By this, I mean those achievements that you get for simply playing through the game in single player and finishing the main story line. Each DNA strand complete, each chapter, each mission, depending on the game, gets you achievements, and at least rewards you in some way for continuing. The problem with these is that you should want to play through for the fun of it, not simply to get rewarded. It almost cheapens the experience. Giving you a reward for doing something you planned to do anyway actually makes it seem less rewarding, if you follow me. Getting additional achievements for completing the game on harder difficulty levels seems fair to me, for some reason. Perhaps it’s my guilt at the fact I always play on normal 🙂

Activity achievements are the ones I have a real love-hate relationship with. You know the ones, kill 50 people with weapon X, or kill 3 people at once using a particular move. They can be fun, rewarding, frustrating, and downright annoying – all in equal measure it seems. I played through Uncharted 2 a second time just to pick up some of those trophies, although that game was so good, it really didn’t seem like a chore. Some of these also seem really arbitrary though, and really forced. Killing 20 people with grenades WHILE hanging from a wall? Er, okay. These seem to reward the especially skilled and patient, so I’m SOL, and it explains why I only completed 87% of inFamous.

The achievements that the boosters really cheat on are the online and co-op ones. I don’t play a lot online, I had so many bad experiences that I just can’t be bothered anymore. I will never come close to “completing” a game like Left 4 Dead 1/2 or Gears of War 1/2, as they feature so many online achievements, and that’s fine. I got my moneys-worth out of each of those games, and still enjoy playing them. The GOW single player campaigns were epic and wonderful.

With 20M users on Xbox Live, developers would be silly to ignore online only achievements and trophies. Let’s not beat around the bush either, Microsoft manipulates developers to include those online achievements to keep Xbox Live ticking over, as if it needed the help! Cheating to get achievements by allowing your opponent to kill you, beat you, or whatever, seems to be the way of the boosters, and is what I really don’t understand. If your life is so empty that you can only gain self-esteem by having a higher gamerscore than someone else, I think you have far bigger problems than being an achievement whore.

My bottom line is that games are meant to be enjoyed, they are, after all, games! If you enjoy hunting down those last 2 treasures in your Villa (hint: check out the well), that’s fine. Personally, I won’t be looking for the last 20+ feathers in Venice, though, it’s simply not fun for me.

The Most Dangerous Jobs for Video Game NPC’s

I’ve been playing a lot of Assassins Creed 2 lately, and it got me thinking that being a Venetian Archer has to be one of the most hazardous jobs for any video game NPC in history. You have a pretty short life expectancy, then you end up sliding off a roof into the street after getting a throwing knife in the back, or an assassins blade in the lungs or heart. To add insult to injury, you then get your body looted and are dumped in a pile of hay. At least the people of Venice are appalled by the looting of your body – although I notice none come to your aid.

Things have never been great for NPCs though. You can pretty much guarantee that, as an NPC, if you are dressed the same as a bunch of your mates, you are not long for the game. You might re-spawn eventually, but, much like the Cylons, I’m sure it’s not pleasant. Think of all the poor henchmen in Batman: Arkham Asylum. They stand there in their identi-kit clothes, while Harley and all the important side-kicks and other villains have great outfits, but at least Batman never actually seems to kill anyone. Wearing a Nazi uniform is also pretty much immediate death in video games!

NPCs are carrying on a great tradition of ‘extras’. I’ll bet the first extra that put on a black hat in a cowboy movie figured that someday he would be a lead actor – how wrong he was. Yes, just stand on that roof… and be sure to stick your head out, cover is only for the good guys. The same was true of any red-shirted Star Trek crew member picked for an ‘away mission’. I don’t recall anyone ever surviving a hostile planet in Star Trek if they were wearing a red shirt, at least NPCs in today’s video games usually get camouflage outfits. Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell) in the great Star Trek spoof “Galaxy Quest” knew this – “… I thought I was the crewman that stays on the ship and something is up there and it kills me. But now I’m thinking I’m the guy that gets killed by some monster five minutes after we land on the planet.” – and it made for a great running joke. Ricky Gervais aside, has anyone ever stood up for the lowly ‘extra’ ?

Very few NPCs get recognition, they are, like their movie counterparts, the nameless rabble in the background. You can be memorable if you are the ‘love interest’, like Chloe or Elena in Uncharted 2 (the lovely Claudia Black and Emily Rose respectively) … but does anyone really remember who even the main bad guys were?** If a character-driven blockbuster game like Uncharted 2 doesn’t even make being an NPC a great gig, what hope do lesser NPCs have! Most games just assign their NPCs as expendable, run-of-the-mill military types, aliens, horde, or cutesy characters … how many ghosts did Pac-Man kill in the 80’s, and where are PETA while Mario is still killing Turtles by the shell-full?

If you’re a regular reader (which pretty much narrows it down to ONE of my children – you know who you are!) you know Zombies feature big for me. As an NPC, if you spawn and you realize you are, in fact, a Zombie, you may as well just start writing a will. There is the odd chance you could be a “special infected”, but only the elite zombies are playable – so it’s still not looking good for you. If you find yourself in a bathroom, standing in the corner of a hotel room (facing the wall), wallowing in mud, or wandering around the food court of a mall, get your affairs in order… and for God’s sake, if you hear a clown, don’t follow him!

As Josey Wales said, “Dyin’ ain’t much of a living”.

** As an aside, Harry Flynn (Steve Valentine) and Zoran Lazarevic (Graham McTavish) were the ones I had in mind.

‘Noughty’ & Newsworthy – Part 4: Video Gaming

The past decade has really been a great one for video games.

PC Gaming

Over the decade I have gone from a staunch PC gamer to a totally cross-platform lunatic. I finally got my dream rig this year – an Alienware PC – just in time to finally accept that gaming has moved to the consoles. So I now have a 360, PS3, and a Wii. Most big cross-platform titles are still available on PC as well, but you have to wonder for how long. World of Warcraft (WOW) still keeps over 10M subscribers glued to their PCs every month, but role playing titles, often only found on PC, have been showing up on the consoles too. Even a game like Civilization came to the consoles – with a very solid port, and garnering many positive reviews.

I’m not sure if PCs can compete on the big titles anymore, but as long as games like WOW keep updating and providing new DLC, gaming rigs will still survive. I’m afraid I have turned to the dark side though, I just can’t justify the constant upgrading to keep up with the latest games when I know they will all run flawlessly on my consoles.

The Xbox 360

A console is only as good as the games available for it, and that simply makes the 360 the best around. It still boasts the biggest library of titles available, many top exclusive titles (none bigger than the Halo and Gears of War franchises), and a great library of DLC from Xbox Live Marketplace. Couple all that with fast load times, quick updates, and the addition of social networking, and it’s a tough act to follow. 2 Million users logged into Facebook through Xbox live in the first week of its introduction alone.

Microsoft also had a VERY strong E3 this year, with a couple of Beatles, some great game announcements, and, of course, Project Natal details. Things look good for the console for the foreseeable future. Online is still where the Xbox kicks some serious ass, and the Xbox Live community is staggeringly big. Halo 2 kicked it off in 2004, passing 7M users in 2007, 10M users in 2008, and now standing at somewhere in the region of 20M users! Now, you have to balance those numbers with the recent banning of up to 1M users from Live for using modded consoles – but that still leaves on hell of a lot of people looking to kick your ass online!

One of the most overlooked pluses of the Xbox is gamer points. I’m not one that desperately hunts achievements, usually preferring to get them as they come. but it’s hard to pass up going after that achievement when it comes close. I’ve been playing lots of Left 4 Dead 2 recently (see my Raptr.com profile for proof!) and I found myself seeking out clowns, swampy mudmen, incendiary ammo, and I swore to beat that damn Moustachio! It’s hard not to get caught up in getting those in-game achievements … and that means more gametime, and more attraction for the console. PS3 trophies just don’t have the same appeal yet, and I’m not sure if they ever will.

The PS3

We got a great deal on our PS3 – my wife works for Dell, and it was open box. Without that deal I would not have owned one – and I would have missed out BIG time. I am now officially a Sony fan-boy. What a great piece of hardware the PS3 is… and there’s the problem. It’s a great bit of kit, but until recently it was only being used for Blu-ray movies and as a media server, streaming content from my PC to the TV. The PS3 kicks the 360’s ass in terms of a media server by the way. the TVersity software and the (built in) wireless capability of the PS3 is a great media server combination.

For me, though, I still played most games on my PC, or the 360. Then Uncharted came into my life, and Little Big Planet. I started paying more attention to the PS3 for games. This year alone Killzone 2, InFamous, and my game of the year, Uncharted 2 all made being a PS3 owner a wonderful experience. Add the (rather useless IMO) exclusive content for Batman:Arkham Asylum, and it was a big year for PS3 exclusives.

Sony also had a good E3, and then to finish the year, Sony finally tore down the last barrier to PS3 ownership, dropping the console price with the introduction of the new slimmer (and cheaper looking/feeling) console. There is now no reason not to get a PS3. So go get one!

The Wii

Nintendo really did something amazing in the ‘noughties’, bringing a whole new generation of people to gaming – your grandparents! Okay, so the Wii isn’t just for kids and grandparents, but Nintendo really made a fantastic family-friendly product, and there is nothing funnier than seeing your grandma kick someones butt at Wii bowling! The Wii made gaming accessible to everyone, bringing casual gamers to the console more, and making millions of others into casual gamers. Anything that gets your butt off the couch can’t be all bad.

The Wii also heralded a new direction in the console wars with its innovative control system. This year at E3 it was notable that a lot of time was devoted to showing off the Sony motion control and Microsoft’s Project Natal. The Wii balance board also took things in a new direction, with Wii Fit trying to not just get you active, but coaching you toward fitness goals. I got one, it pretty much just sits there now, mocking me … which is a lot nicer than when it rudely told me I was fat.

Portable Gaming

Games on the go have become big business, with the DSi and PSP Go being the most recent hardware to allow you to play great games virtually anywhere. The evolution of portable hardware is too complicated to go into in detail here, but new hardware now offers great graphics and gameplay, and game publishers are making sure that top titles find their way onto these smaller screens, in one form or another.

Apple’s iPhone also deserves special mention here. The iPhone has now come of age as a true gaming platform, but more than that, the App Store has allowed small developers to get some great games into our hands. The future is bright for the little guy with a big idea if he is willing to go the iPhone route.

Gaming Comes of Age

On the back of the success of consoles, gaming has gone from the realm of nerds and geeks to being seriously mainstream. Video game revenue now surpasses movies (and has since 2007), and gaming was one of the sectors to see the least shrinkage during the recent economic meltdown. The line where gaming and mainstream media meet is becoming seriously blurred. Uncharted 2 plays like a blockbuster move, which was the intention, and Left 4 Dead was conceived along similar lines. Movie stars now routinely voice game characters, and story is seen as just as important as game play. Games are becoming a media experience, not just a diversion.

The only problem I see is that since games have become such big business, it is virtually impossible for a small software house to invest the time and money required to produce a top game. You NEED to be aligned with a big publisher, and small shops have been absorbed into bigger ones, or disappeared altogether. The iPhone may become the last bastion of truly innovative, wacky games – as big software houses can’t take the risk on something that may not go big. It almost sounds like the way movie industry went.

I won’t bore you with my list of ‘games of the decade’, as there are already hundreds of lists out there – suffice to say that as a gamer this has been a wonderful decade, and I eagerly await the next one. Who knows, perhaps Project Natal won’t be lame, and Alan Wake will really get released this time.