A little while ago I was going through the PS3 trophy lists for the games I have, trying to find out a challenge that might be interesting to do. I noticed that I had Uncharted: Drake's Fortune with about 2% completion. I haven't played the game much since I got it; I completed two or three chapters. And I thought, why not? So I put the disc in and started playing. The first thing that came to my mind was that I had forgotten how to play it because the last time I touched it was in January. It took me about a minute of experimentation to figure them out again and less than five minutes to start using the controls unconsciously. Though the graphics may have been a little out-dated and I had a hard time spotting the enemies (due to my poor eyesight) I still had loads of fun. The game was just easy to get into.

In my experience, few games manage to make you forget that you're playing on a controller. Almost all of them have at least one moment when you stop uncertainly, wondering which button does what in this situation. The best control schemes, however, feel natural to the player. You don't think about pressing the buttons. You just do it.

Some games which has extremely good controls, in my opinion, are the Call of Duty games. While heavily criticized in other aspects, their controls feel flawless. Aiming is easy, switching guns is easy, transition between walking and running is easy. There's hardly a moment where you stop trying to find the button which throws the grenades. It completely immerses you, control-wise.

Other games, like Bioshock and Dragon Age: Origins (both on the PS3), have controls that either require you to pause to select a specific move or spend some time cycling through different weapons and plasmids. Such delays can be forgiven, but they take away part of the immersion. But they can be irritating, detracting the player from the action, and in my opinion, the radial menus these two games use aren't very precise and you'll find yourself with an unwanted weapon in hand or using up precious mana on something useless.

I wouldn't mind if a game had bad voice-acting or simple graphics, or even a loosely held-together plot. But controls are an extension of the player's body in the game. It's how we interact with the game. Bad controls taint every good thing in the game and distort the player's experience of the game, in my opinion.

What do you guys think? What are the worst controls you've ever experienced?

Alright, I'm thinking of getting Little Big Planet (the first one, cheaper). However, there's something I wanna know. It's probably an odd question to ask for a game, but how good are the physics in it?

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Medal of Honor

Bulletstorm

Killzone 3

Crysis 2

Dead Space 2

Dragon Age 2

... I guess I'll have a huge internal conflict when picking an FPS...

Is it possible to experience two opposite feelings at the same time? I don't know, but my reactions to Bioshock Infinite can be summed up as both OMG!!! and WTF...

THE OMG REACTION

1) New Bioshock - that's a braingasm in its own right.

2) It seems to be related to the Rapture storyline, since the guy in the trailer was being drowned in a tank with a model of Rapture in it.

3) It seems to rely on 'plasmid' combinations between the player and Elizabeth. Possible co-op?

THE WTF REACTION

1) Another secluded city - in the sky - with specialized values? I can't decide if this is uncreative or creative.

2) And how will they get away with that? If there was a model of Rapture in this flying city, Andrew Ryan must have been there. There was never any reference to it in Bioshock 1 and 2. Also, what about the Big Daddy models? Nobody could have known that they were going to make Big Daddies since they hadn't discovered the sea slug that made ADAM. It seems like they're using the Bioshock name to sell this one and the trailer was merely symbolic...

3) Again, where do these plasmid come from?

There's more... but I'll wait till I see some gameplay.

Last year, Bioware's Dragon Age was a stunning, popular success. It is no surprise that most of us are waiting eagerly for the next installment. Gameinformer is releasing exclusive information every two days and there are also a few rumours running around on various gaming websites and magazines. So, here's what we know.

The story will be about a human called Hawke, who may be male or female and will be fully voiced either way. Hawke was in Lothering before it was destroyed by the darkspawn, and he fled north, out of Ferelden. The story will have a ten-year timeline and it will not be about ending Blights or some ancient evil. It is about Hawke and his choices and how be becomes the Champion of Kirkwall.

Graphics will also be improved and improvements to the combat system made. While the PC will retain its tactical elements, the consoles will get a new combat system that will take advantage of their controls. I have mixed feelings about the last bit. Will the console gameplay be turned into something similar to Oblivion? Or will the combat system be drastically changed to make console gameplay comfortable? Personally, I'd prefer something similar to the PC's that would work on the console. I liked the tactical element in Dragon Age on the PS3, even though it was frustatingly limited at times.

Gameinformer has also released some interesting background information to spice up the the background of the Dragon Age world. There's a timeline with the major events and an interactive map with at least ten clickable locations and which will show you the whole continent and how small Ferelden really is.

A German game magazine called Gamestar also has got its hand on exclusive Dragon Age II information. They mentioned all of the above and some more. Mages, apparently, will be getting the slow-motion finishing moves that rogues and warriors had in Dragon Age: Origins.

They also released some information about Hawke's possible allies. Those mentioned were Bethany, Cassandy, Varric and Flemeth. Yes, that old shapeshifting dragon is still kicking.

Bethany is Hawke's sister, a mage, who according to the magazines, will support him with "fire magic". This might be a possible picture of her: http://www.gamestar.de/_misc/images/original.cfm?pk=2119686

Cassandra is an Inquisitor and has a great interest in Hawke. I have no idea what an Inquisitor is nor was there anything to indicate why she was interested in the hero - or heroine.

Varric is a dwarf, who is also the narrator in the story. I've seen this posted next to his name on a forum post, so I'm just going to put it here just in case: http://images.idgentertainment.de/images/idgwpgsgp/bdb/2119687/300x.jpg

And finally, there's Flemeth. You all know who she is. Her presence raises so many questions. How is she still alive? What the hell is she? And more importantly, is she going to do something about Morrigan?

I'll keep an eye for more information and post it here. Until then, so long.

"Video games can never be art" says Roger Ebert, esteemed movie critic. Eventually, admitting that never is a long, long time, he says, "Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art." I'm not going to be pretend my opinion is not biased here, but I think Roger Ebert's argument denouncing the potential of games as art is either close-minded or completely ignorant. I will not pretend I am an authority an art, either, but I have read novels, seen quite a number of movies and certainly played a hell lot more video games than Roger Ebert.

He, however, made a response to a video by Kellee Santiago, who argues her case by using three games as examples: Waco: Resurrection, Braid and Flower. Various definitions of art are thrown about as Santiago attempts to explain how these individual games are art, comparisions to great works to offset the differences, points made, so on and so forth. I was not impressed by Santiago's presentation, even as a gamer with a probably biased opinion, so it's no surprise that a critic like Roger Ebert would not be impressed either.

In response to this presentation, however, Roger Ebert argues, "One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome."

This is not a difference. Is there any similarity at all between Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice? Does the Mona Lisa have an ending? What would Pride and Prejudice be without an ending? Does the Mona Lisa have any form of psychological reality, like the characters in Jane Austen? Of course not, yet both are considered art, despite their nature being utterly different. Whatever definition of art is, the important thing is that someone, somewhere, is impressed by it. It appeals to something in the human being. A novel has its own way of doing this, a painting another. A movie has its own way, a blend of the two, but somewhat different, its own unique method. Seeing the massive difference within art itself, how does the fact that "you can win a game" disqualify it? I think Roger Ebert is missing the point here. (A point that, I think, Santiago failed to indicate).

The difference is that games are interactive. Trying to fit existing definitions of art to them is not a good idea, since the freedom possible in games introduces something different. Games are relatively new compared to all the other things and art has had a lot of time to grow old and become conservative and dependent on what it already knows.

Already, games have shown that they have potential. If you value aesthetics, I ask, what difference is there between an image drawn with a brush or shaped by a chisel? Is not one drawn by computer technology equally viable in these fields, and can it not challenge them? At the moment, Shadow of the Colossus leaps to mind. The environment crafted by the developers was bleak, vast, mysterious. True, the point was to find the colossi and devise a way to kill them, but if you are unmoved by the setting, you must be made of stone. Someone would argue that such aesthetic value is visual, wholly unrelated to the game. But it is part of the game, it effects the overall experience. A game allows you to explore it, to come face to face with it.

If you value storytelling, do you suspect that games cannot tell a story just as well as a movie can? That they cannot convey suspense or horror, joy and happiness? Is there any moment more terrible than in Bioshock, when the player character comes face to face with Andrew Ryan and the player realizes that all the freedom he possessed before was an illusion and that he has no choice but to kill him, because he is being made to kill him by a simple phrase? The whole event is a cutscene, control is taken away from the player. But games have other ways to tell stories, so it cannot be argued that they depend on something the movie does to tell a story. Again, I look towards Bioshock. The player pieces the story together from audio diaries, from writings on the walls, from adverstisements. This is made possible through interactivity. I doubt that a movie could tell a story in this particular way and still be entertaining. Games, being interactive, have their own style.

In relation to storytelling, excellent characters have also appeared in games. Look towards Dragon Age: Origins. Look at Morrigan, spiteful and mocking, reading into people's true intentions. Look at Alistair, plagued by insecurities, yet well-meaning and hilarious. To truly see how well these characters have been made, one must experience the game itself. You discover them through conversing with them. The conversation paths are limited, certainly. There are things they cannot talk about, things that you cannot understand about them, because the game does not address all the possibilities. But neither does a movie, nor a novel. Yet the characters, through interactivity, are excellent and clear as the characters we see in a movie or a novel. As computer technology continues to advance, the possibilities will grow. Imagine characters powered by artificial intelligence within a virtual environment which you can interact with just as you would be able to in real life.

A game can also have excellent music that could be considered art. Certainly, music is a type of art on its own, but in a game, just as in a movie, it is contributing to something bigger, in the same way images and metaphors bring a poem to life or different colours and strokes create a masterpiece?

How can one claim that games cannot be art when the individual components that make them up are already art? The games Roger Ebert seem to be limited to Pong or chess, which is not even a video game at all. Games today thrive on deeper levels of interaction. They put you in an environment and allow you to make choices, to see, to touch, to explore at your leisure. It is something new, something different. Even the level of interaction itself is a variable.

Ebert also adds, "Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?" Why is that anyone cares about it anything? Why does Ebert care about movies? The answer to his question - even if he intended it to be rhetorical - is something that is blatantly obvious. It is what we love, the same way anyone can love a good book or a good movie.

To people, who like Roger Ebert, believe that games can never be art, I say, let the flower bloom before chopping off its head. Art has formed in every thing where creativity, emotion and people are put together. If you would open your eyes, you would see the the potential games have to eventually have their own masterpieces, and the time is not that as far as Roger Ebert seems to think: "Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form." That ought to be rephrased to, "No gamer now living will survive long enough to see the medium considered an art form", and I'll stop that train of thought before I digress into ineffectual sarcasm.

Despite this, I have to admit that there are very few games, less than 1%, probably, that are truly good enough to be considered as "art".

PS: This is entirely the opinion of someone who loves and plays games. Please bear in mind that this is not a rant villifying Roger Ebert's opinion. It's simply my take on why games can be considered art if they're good enough

Thanks to dark_orb for finding this video: http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-35-A-Response-to-Roger-Ebert

I've been playing COD4 and COD:MW2 for ages now, and I've had enough. It's time to let go of these games, whose extremely limited single-player content and their frustrating, immature multiplayer act as vast impediments to what could otherwise have been extremely good games. They are both brilliant visually and technically, but, unfortunately, there is simply no sense at all in the multiplayer, which is the selling point of the game.

Before anyone argues with me on that, I consider a good multiplayer one that is fun. I played some Cagematch on CoD4 and realized how how much it stops short of being fun. A cagematch is a one on one fight. It's not hard to find a match that doesn't lag, and even if you're not hosting, you're not at much of a disadvantage. The problem is that the game is exploitable in so many ways. Low health and killstreaks encourage camping, and there's nothing you can do if the camper keeps switching locations. You can't even see the camper until it's too late, or not all if they're sniping from a distance. Not only that, but cheap tactics like throwing grenades at one's feet to kill oneself when under fire continue to make the match frustrating and pointless. The final exploitable thing is the spawn system. Experienced players simply know where their opponent is going to spawn and so cover that area from a distance where it is almost impossible to see them. It takes a few deaths to finally dislodge them, but a few deaths is probably a win for them. A spawn system should spawn you as far away from the opponent as possible, not give you up neatly wrapped to your opponent. It would be stupid to be optimistic and hope that the game's flaws won't be exploited, because the internet community very rarely behave in a sportsmanlike way.

I don't use these tactics because they're neither fair nor fun for me, therefore I will ditch the fiasco of a franchise that is Call of Duty, until it occurs to some developer to make the game fun.

Downloadable content is good. You don't have to out to the store to buy it, nor does it take up more space in that box bursting with games, controllers and other paraphernalia involved in gaming. But these days, you see additional downloadable content for almost every game that comes out. If the game is likely to sell, the downloadable content will be announced before it actually comes out. Game companies are dangling the sweet, alluring hook of "free downloadable content" in front of our faces, but only if we preorder, buy it on the first day or buy a more expensive, limited edition.

What boggles me here is this: if the downloadable content is ready to roll before the game comes out, why isn't it in the game already? It's probably easier for everyone that way, as a lot of people experience problems with some DLC. It's a marketing tactic, I know. It's meant to maximize profits and make numbers bigger. But it's a blatant and rather low one. It's like they're telling you, "We have this much to sell, but only if you buy it now, at our leisure, right now. Tomorrow you're going to have to pay more." It's not advertising. It's pressuring the buyer into thinking that his or her money will lose value if spent tomorrow. To a point, this is true. But some gamers, like myself, like to hang back, check out a few reviews, try the game at a friend's and wait for the atrocious price to drop down a little. This is understandable, because where I am, new games are worth about 80 US dollars, with the more popular ones reaching as much as 100.

So, why on earth all this pressure, all this rush to buy games because of free DLC on the first day? What guarantee do these companies have that their games are actually worth it, and that their free DLC is something hurriedly thrown together to unload money into bank accounts?

I, for one, will continue to hang back and pick my games at my leisure. A good game will not need additional free content to make it worth it's money, so I will not be bothered I miss it.

(Some spoilers about Killzone 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock (only the first one) and Dragon Age: Origins. I tried to limit the examples to only these four.)

Let's face it, there are tons of games out that leave you with the impression that their story was written in about five minutes. Sometimes, you get the feeling that the developers would have dispensed with the story and just let you walk around and blow stuff up in new, interesting ways, all the time, if they could get away with it. I'm not going to point fingers here (yes, I might, a little bit), but I'm going to tell you about one aspect that sets these hurriedly patched together stories apart from the ones that stick out in our mind, and we play in awe of the world and the story we see unveiling in front of us.

One of the things (it's not everything, mind, just one thing) that carries a story is characterization. In other words, the people in the story.

In games, they have just as much potential as they do in novels or movies, perhaps more, since you can interact with them. We admire them, we hate them, we laugh at them, but only if they are really characters and not just pixels running around on the screen and doing things. And what marks the difference between the great characters and the wannabe pieces of cardboard?

They have a personality, a life, motives and drives.

Seems obvious, right? But stop, think carefully. How many characters in games you played havereally had personalities? Compare two good guys, our heroes, the people we kick ass with. Let's take Ezio, from Assassin's Creed 2 and Sev, from Killzone 2.

What comes to mind when you think of Ezio? He's a ladies' man, charming, funny, yet deadly serious in his mission. He's a born troublemaker, and despite being an assassin, you know that he is a good guy. You feel sorry for him when bad things happen to him, you laugh at his antics, you admire his courage and his daring, his dependability and his determination. You know where he comes from, and why he does what he does.

Now think of Sev, if you played have played Killzone 2. Don't worry, if you haven't, you'll probably be having the same exact as those who have played it. It's the guy in the mohawk right there. That's exactly what I'm thinking. I have not played the first Killzone, so there might have been a bit of backstory there, but if there was, there are absolutely no references to it Killzone 2. I came out of the game knowing almost nothing about the characters. I can count the things I remember on one hand: their names, the fact that Sev was friends with one of them because he was pissed when he died, and that Rico is a dumbass. That's it.

Let's take another pair, bad guys, this time. How about General Shepherd, from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Frank Fontaine, from Bioshock? You don't really hang around much with Fontaine. Communication takes place with radio, and information you get about him comes from audiodiares scattered among the levels. But through those alone, you know he's a slick bastard who would do anything, anything, for money and power. He's opportunistic, he's a liar, a man who has no problem with putting you in a bag and dropping you into a pond. He's also a coward when he needs to be. He's willing to negotiate because it's easier. He has no honour, no semblance of a morality. And you know why. Because the only person he cares about in the whole world is himself. Everyone else fall into the category of 'people to be exploited for personal gain'. And you know how he made it happen, starting from a little fishing company who found a diamond in the through, called ADAM.

General Shepherd does something similar to what Fontaine does. He pretends to be an ally of the player for a certain period of the game, and then finally shows his true colours. But, do you know anything about General Shepherd? Not really. Do you know why he betrayed the good guys? Do you even care? I guarantee that if you skip through the cutscenes in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, you'd probably end up with the same amount of information as someone who hasn't.

Real characters make you care about them. Even if they're villains, you still want to know what happened them, where they came from and where they're going. You become interested in their fictional lives.

How many people haven't crawled through the levels of Bioshock and Bioshock 2, eyes peeled, trying to find one more snippet of information about Andrew Ryan? Who doesn't feel saddened by the good ending of Bioshock, when Jack finally dies?

The question is, why do you feel these things for certain characters and not for others? The answer is simple.

They have qualities that hook you. Andrew Ryan, against all odds, has built a city underwater so that people could live freely. You stand in awe of such a man. How could he have done such a thing? Why has he done it? Even though he became tyrannical, you still admire him for his sheer willpower. You actually feel sorry that the city has spiralled out of his control, because it is impossible not to sympathize with him, despite his mistakes, because we too make mistakes, and know what's it like to suffer their consequences.

Villains, the antagonists, like Fontaine, make us care a different way. They are mesmerizing in their power, in their ruthlessness. We can't help but follow them, wondering what they will do next, and why they're doing it. Again, we'll take Genera Shepherd as an example, since I've already mentioned him several times. He's not a villain. He's a prop for a story. He just shoots some of the good-guys and continues being the cardboard character he is.

But that is not all. Good characters have quirks, attitudes and other small things that either endear them or alienate them to the player. Andrew Ryan has a knack for quothe-worthy speeches. It's grand, we like it. Remember Morrigan, from Dragon Age: Origins? She hates your dog, and this creates a few comic scenes that endear her to the player. We laugh at her frustration and disgust and like her more.

And finally, they have relationships. They have friends (or not, depending on their personality). They have enemies. Think of Dragon Age: Origins. All the party members had opinions of each others, different ways of talking to each other. Morrigan was mean to Alistair, annoyed by Sten, hated your dog. Alistair, on the other hand, was annoyed by Morrigan and kept trying to get a one-up on on her during their banter. You get the impresson that he's confident, but when he confides in you, you realize that he really doesn't believe in himself very much.

Having relationships that don't depend at all on the player's role in the game makes characters far more realistic. And yet, some developers still screw that up by not actually giving these characters reasons why they're friends or why they hate each other. They just make cardboard characters have cardboard sex with each other.

That just doesn't happen.

Real characters have a history, a personality, relationships, different attitudes for different people, opinions about everything. They should act, in other words, like real people. Like you and me. I hope that after reading this, you'll feel a little more enlightened the next time you're playing a game, asking, "Who the hell is that guy?"

Don't get me wrong, I still think that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a great game, but over the past few months I realized that its multiplayer is not as great as it could have been. Many of the problems arise from the community itself, who will do anything to win, even if it wrecks a match.

So, here are the reasons:

1: Boosters

50% of Free for all matches I enter, and a good number of Domination matches all have a couple of boosters in them. I'm surprised that Infinity Ward has done nothing to solve this problem, and though some players have taken measures and keep a special watch out for them, it is not possible to stop them all, and in Domination, there's no point in trying, especially if one of them happens to be on your team.

2: Commando

This perk is probably the most ridicilous thing I have ever seen in a game of the first person shooter genre. People will literally teleport forward several metres and kill you instantly. Alone, it's not so bad, but add lightweight or a tactical knife with it, and the one using it can destroy a whole team. Why? Because it doesn't matter if people try and shoot the knifer, since he magically teleports forward and kill them. The majority of players also do not have perfect internet connections (I personally cannot enter matches with less than 140 ping) and that makes things even worse. If it were up to me, I would take knifing out of the game entirely, just to give those with lag a tiny chance when walking around corners.

3: Grenade Launchers

I admit, these have their uses, but seriously, it's almost impossible to kill someone using them if he sees you. They offer too much of an advantage over people not using them, and it's just ridiculous when someone kills a whole team in one shot.

4: Last Stand

This basically gives you more life, and also makes you temporarily invincible when the falling animation is taking place. Now, this is no problem when using an assault rifle or something, but it proves detrimental to anyone using a sniper, since they can't fire that fast.

What do you guys think?