The recent history of Need For Speed is an object lesson in what you get when marketing people and accountants make decisions about the content of a game rather than the passionate lead designers and artists.

Need For Speed's gameography can be effectively divided into two Eras: the old era (everything up to and including Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2,) and the new era (from Need For Speed Underground onwards.) With the "old era" Need For Speed games, you could tell that the designers and artists were in charge, and that they really had a passion for the game and the material they were creating. In those games, the cars were the stars; the tracks and locations were designed specifically to showcase the exotic cars that very few of us could afford.

Their magnum opus was Porsche Unleashed. That was the ultimate Porsche love affair, a game that celebrated Porsche in every way, and lovingly crafted every Porsche vehicle in painstaking detail. And it was an amazing game to boot, allowing players to get as close to feeling what it's like to drive a Porsche as possible without scheduling a trip to the dealership.

And then the bean-counters and marketing folks got involved, putting BlackBox on an annual release schedule, bringing in all the crap stories and trying to capitalize on the street-racing, "Fast and Furious" crowd. The car was no longer the star, the passion was gone. Despite that, the games still actually managed to be good. Underground and Underground 2 were decent efforts.

And when they brought the cops back in Most Wanted, they did not **** around. Most Wanted was a really fun game; it perfectly captured the intensity of being chased by the cops, far better than Hot Pursuit or Hot Pursuit 2. MWs story was campy, but in a playfully-written, fun way that kept the player engaged.

After Most Wanted, though, NFS took an utter nosedive. Carbon was phoned in. ProStreet showed a promising change of direction, but was ultimately hamstrung by a driving engine that didn't know whether it wanted to be hardcore-sim or walk the middle ground between sim and arcade. I stayed away from those games after playing their respective demos.

Which leads us to Undercover. Never have I felt so utterly, utterly disappointed in a game. This game is all flash, no substance in almost every way. It does have a few sparks of brilliance here and there--the Highway Battle mode is a fun replacement for Drag mode in previous games, the driving engine does make for some fun racing action, and there are a handful of story missions that are well-designed and fun to play. But everything else is completely lifeless, soulless and ultimately a waste of time.

The story is completely terrible, with the worst writing yet and horrible acting, editing and cinematography. The cityscape is a hodgepodge of random roadways that you could race on a hundred times and you wouldn't remember anything. The progression system is an indecipherable mishmash of bar graphs, event and location unlocks and a "wheelman level" that just seems completely superfluous. And the police chases are either completely dull and formulaic at the early levels, or brutally, unfairly hard at the later levels. Picture yourself in a McLaren F1 LM doing 230+mph, and the cop cars in SUVs not only keeping up with you, but also maneuverable enough to box you in. That's a reality in Undercover's universe.

No wonder they never released a demo for this turd.

Having said all that (and if you're still reading this far, you have my gratitude,) it would be a shame to see the NFS franchise go. I think with a little care, and a development schedule that allows the designers and artists room to breathe, NFS still has the potential to return to greatness. Corporate culture being what it is though, the only possible outcome is for the bean counters and marketeers to cancel the franchise, thereby vindicating themselves.

What a shame. NFS, a once proud franchise brought low by the whims of EA middle management.

Everyone likes to speculate about the future; when the next generation of consoles will be out, what the games will look like, and so on. Everyone looks at Sony and sees how their consoles have outlasted all of their competition in the marketplace. And everyone thinks the Xbox 360 will be phased out in the next year or two, just like Microsoft did with the original Xbox. Well, whatever you think about the "next generation" of consoles, understand one thing: it is going to be nothing like any generational shift the industry has seen before. And Microsoft is largely to thank (or to blame) for that.

Previously, console transitions meant massive changes. We had to make do with a launch library consisting of one standout first-party title and a handful of rushed-to-launch third party filler titles. We had to go out and buy new controllers, new games, new memory cards, new everything. Developers had to juggle their resources, figuring out who to target their titles for. In many cases we had to choose between the next-gen or previous-gen versions of a hit title... buy the previous-gen version to play on your previous-gen console knowing that it would be useless as soon as you bought the next-gen console, or buy the next-gen title and risk not being able to play online with your friends who hadn't upgraded yet.

For Xbox 360 gamers, the next console transition is going to be so much smoother than that; it will be completely hassle-free. None of the tough decisions, a full library of games, no new controllers or other peripherals to buy, and no need to sign up for a different XBL membership. Xbox gamers will just walk into the store, purchase the new hardware, bring it home and resume playing their games, with many of their old games seeing vastly upgraded graphics, but everything else unchanged. Don't want to upgrade? Want to wait a few months before shelling out for the upgraded hardware? That's no problem either, because the new games will also be backwards compatible with the old hardware. In face, any game released around the time of that transition will fully support both the old and new hardware on the exact same game disc, but will utilize enhanced graphics and sound on the new hardware, or maybe they'll have features that can only be unlocked with the new hardware (they'll want you to buy the new hardware, after all.)

This is possible because of the fundamental nature of the Xbox ecosystem, and how it differs from those of its competitors. Previous videogame console ecosystems were built around the hardware platform; everything about them – the games, the controllers, the accessories – was designed and built as to be inextricably tied to the console hardware. Playstation 2 controllers and accessories only work on PS2. Wii-motes only work on the Wii. Original Xbox controllers and accessories only work on the Original Xbox. On the other hand, Xbox 360 is built around a software platform—XNA—of which the 360 itself is a mere part. Every Xbox 360 game, accessory and controller is built to support XNA, and the Xbox 360 itself is simply a hardware device to run XNA software. XNA itself was designed from the ground up to support several different hardware devices with different capabilities, from Zune and mobile phones on the low end, to all sorts of PCs running Windows, to Xbox 360 and beyond.

For Microsoft, this means their next console doesn't have to have the same hardware platform as the 360. Instead of using PowerPC and ATI, they could switch to x64 and nVidia. Instead of sporting just a DVD drive, they could switch to Blu-ray, or simply provide a massive hard drive and rely on digital distribution. As long as the console fully supports the XNA standard, it will be 100% backwards and forwards compatible with Xbox 360 and other XNA titles. They can sell both Xbox 360 and the next Xbox alongside each other, and cross market the accessories and games.

For developers, this means any projects they have in development will seamlessly transition over to the next XNA hardware device with virtually zero additional work from them. They won't have to ship two versions of the same game. They won't even have to develop or build two versions of the same game. They'll merely have to include a hardware sniffer to determine the capabilities of the hardware running their game, and adjust the graphics based on that. They already do this for PC games. They'll be able to ship a game today that runs well on 360, then when the next console comes out, they'll be able to ship a downloadable "enhancement pack" that will update the graphics in their game to next-generation levels.

For gamers, this removes the uncertainty that the games and accessories they buy now will be obsolete when the new console appears. They can know that the games they buy today will work with the new hardware, no matter what it may be. They won't have to rush out and buy the new hardware on day one, simply buy the new games and play them with reduced graphics until they are ready to upgrade. When they buy the new console, the old one won't suddenly become obsolete; they can put it in the kids' room or something, and it will still be able to play all the new games.

XNA is a platform that will far outlast Sony's vaunted "10-year lifecycle." We'll still be playing XNA games two decades (or more) from now. In 2030, you'll be able to pull out that old copy of Halo 3, and jump into a quick Slayer match with your buddies on your new Xbox consoles, just for old time's sake. And it will work with 100% compatibility. That's the power of XNA.

Wow. There is only one word for this game: Stunning.

This is Microsoft's answer to Zelda, and Nintendo had better start taking notes, because Fable II is every bit as good as any Zelda game yet. In many ways, it's even better.

I didn't like Fable. I thought it was boring, repetitive and a little morose. I didn't have the patience to finish it. So you'll understand why I never paid much attention to Fable 2.

Of course, that changed today after the game received a rash of stellar reviews. Call me a sucker for reviews, but if a game gets this much universal acclaim, that tends to get me excited for it. That's what reviews are supposed to do, i guess.

Such as it is, i'm currently preparing to purchase the game at midnight. Who knows, maybe I'll surprise myself and actually finish this game.

Yeah, right. Fat chance of that happening.

Yes, I'm blogging at GameSpot again. So sue me.

Following the lapse of my Gamespot subscription, I have decided to move this blog to another site.

Click here to read on, and thanks for sticking with me.

OK, so I beat the first couple of levels, fought the first Big Daddy, rescued two Little Sisters.

The Big Daddy fight was amazing. There is no way on God's Green Earth you are going to be able to go toe-to-toe with a Big Daddy and win. Don't even think about circle-strafing, you'll just get pwned. The only realistic way to beat them is to use the environment.

Spoiler text below; copy and paste into Notepad to read it.

I won by distracting it with a couple of hacked turrets while I whaled away on it with a Shotgun through a hole in the wall. It took out my turrets in seconds, and the only reason I survived was because it couldn't figure out how to get to me for a few seconds, and by the time it did, I only needed one more Shotgun blast to take it out.

Thankfully though, you don't actually have to fight the Big Daddies until it's convenient for you. The game won't stop you from moving forward if you don't fight one. But if you want ADAM, which is the game's character development currency, you have to get at the Little Sisters, and to get to them, you have to beat the Big Daddies.

There are a few flaws though. Hacking plays a big part of the game, almost too big. Nearly every electronic device or machine can be hacked; turrets, vending machines, safes, security cameras or bots, etc. The problem is each and every hack requires you to play this 20-30 second minigame. After the 6th or 7th time hacking something, I just wished it was some sort of delayed progress bar or something. Also, they do stoop to playing some cheap psychological gags on you; the fairly standard "turn out all the lights and send a bunch of monsters after you" stuff. Thankfully the cheap gags are few and far between. Most of the gameplay is sufficiently unnerving without turning to cheap scares.

I'd have to say it's better than Half-Life, but not quite as good as Half-Life 2. If it had minimal loading times and seamless level switches like HL2, and found a way to lessen the annoyance of the hacking game (for example, by only making it necessary to hack more difficult targets), I think it would be far and away the best single player FPS, well, ever.

Preliminary rating: 9/10.

The Dreamcast still lives!

In my mind, the Dreamcast and the SNES are the only two contenders for the title of Greatest Console of All Time.

The day Sega re-releases the Dreamcast--perhaps in a new form-factor with integrated broadband and a hard drive--will be a glorious day indeed.

For now, I must manage with my Xbox 360 which, though it is in many ways the spiritual descendant of the Dreamcast, is but a shadow of the DC's greatness.

You guys have fun over there with your Metal Gear Solid 2s, Tekkens, Gran Turismos, etc. I'll be over here playing Shenmue, MvC2, PowerStone, SF Rush 2049, Phantasy Star Online, 24-hour Le Mans and the definitive console version of Quake 3 Arena.

Alas, poor Dreamcast, you did not deserve your fate.

Like everyone else with a pulse and an Xbox 360, I played the Bioshock demo, and here are my thoughts.

The only thing I didn't really like about the demo was the hacking gameplay. It fit with the whole 50s art-deco style, I guess, but I thought it was too cumbersome and jolted the player away from the action.

I also didn't like that you can't equip both your weapon and your plasmid simultaneously, it's either one or the other. It made sense with the machine gun since it's two handed, but not with the pistol or wrench.

I love the way they implemented the save system with the Vita-chambers. Your bog standard Checkpoint system, except a)there's no idiotic "Checkpoint Reached" notification every 2 minutes, b)you know exactly where you're going to reappear when you die, and c)the game doesn't "reset" itself to your last checkpoint; everything you did before you died stays done when you respawn. You don't have to watch the same tired cutscenes over and over again.

It makes Rapture feel like a real place, because of the consistency. You aren't going to be caught in some sort of Groundhog-day situation, the world resetting itself so you can repeat the same scenes over and over until you get it right. I think that is perhaps the most ingenious thing about the game.

On the whole, I think it's a much-needed breath of fresh air for the scripted singleplayer FPS, and I plan to pick up a copy of the full game on release. This is the kind of game that will live or die on its marketing and buzz, despite its awesomeness. It's a new IP set in an unfamiliar world that asks the player to do things he or she has never done before in a way that is different from other FPS games.

Quite frankly, I urge people to give this game a serious look. If Bioshock doesn't sell, it's going to be yet another case of a publisher taking a bona fide risk and it not paying off, and it'll take us just a little further down the path of homogeny in gaming.

Check out the MGS4 Demonstration Video here.

It left me nonplussed. The guy says "we're going to sneak through this battlefield situation" and then he starts taking fools out with rocket launchers! It's billed as "tactical espionage action" not "kneel in the middle of the street shooting rockets at everyone".

Basically, what I'm seeing is Splinter Cell with more moves, cooler gimmicks but less fricken sense.

Why is Otacon communicating with you through a stupid fricken robot that you don't know about? Why didn't he tell you he was sending the robot beforehand? Better yet, if the robot is so useful, why didn't you have it from the jumpoff?

What laws of physics allow a metal barrel to materialize and dematerialize around you?

Why are enemy patrols searching a bunch of blown-up buildings with no sign of anything worth protecting or searching for?

I don't care what kind of fancy camo suit he has on, if a 6-foot muscular dude is lying on the floor 3 feet away in my direct line of vision in broad daylight, I'm going to see the dude. Especially if the guy stands up and starts walking towards me.

Who on Earth brings a lads mag into a battlefield during a mission? It made sense when the pinup girls were inside lockers, but in an active battlefield? What are you going to do, drop your pants while being shot at?

Speaking of which, why does Snake seem obsessed with humping things? When he was strangling that first dude, it looked like he was about to rip the dude's pants off and go in the back door, IYKWIM. And don't get me started on the "moving while prone" animation.

Oh here, I'm going to kneel next to this van right out in the open, snipers and soldiers in buildings all around me while I'm stunning dudes with this stupid robot (using my handy Sixaxis :roll: ) and not get shot at. Very realistic. :roll:

I'm sure it's going to be a decent game, but damn, it's like a movie written by a two-year-old, and it's exactly the reason why I stopped liking Metal Gear Solid halfway through the first one.

It almost seems like fate. Three of PC gaming's premier codeshops hosting simultaneous conventions in their honor. Quakecon, SOE Fan Faire and Blizzcon. A potent triple-threat to remind you that PC gaming is not dead, lest ye think otherwise. You can hit GameSpot News to see all the announcements.

The big news for me was at Quakecon. I'm a FPS gamer from way back, and id and its games were and are a big part of my teenage life. From the day I first saw Wolfenstein 3D played in the school library, through the years entering iddqd in Doom, learning what +mlook meant in Quake, figuring out how to rocket-jump and Railgun fools in Quake 2, playing Rocket Arena 3 with my friends, all the way spotting monster closets in Doom 3, I've been playing id games. I even played Commander Keen.

All those games: Just $70. Reliving my childhood: priceless.

But there was more to announce at John Carmack's Quakecon Keynote speech. Their new game, Rage, powered by their new engine, id Tech 5. To be honest, I don't know what to think about this game, which is probably intentional on id's part. On the one hand, I'm really excited for it, since it combines driving and FPS, two of my favorite game types. On the other hand, well let's just say id has never been good at delivering a highly polished experience. The poor voicework in the trailer and the fact that they only show a single environment are already giving me pause.

I guess we will see what happens next year. Or When it's Done.

Of course, Blizzard and SOE also had their fan events this weekend. Blizzard announced a new expansion to their World of Warcraft franchise called Wrath of the Lich King. They also showed more of StarCraft 2. Meanwhile, their archrivals at Sony Online Entertainment revealed an online Collectible Card game based on and playable within Everquest 1 and 2, called Legends of Norrath: Oathbound.

I may not be a huge fan of Blizzard or SOE's output, but even I realize the import of those two announcements. WoW now has over 9 million players who will be salivating over this new expansion, and EverQuest has a similar, if smaller, rabid fanbase.

Today is indeed a good day to be a PC gamer. Might be time for me to finally look into upgrading my rig.