Okay, first things first. As far as I know there is no plan for any multiplayer Oblivion in the works from either Bethesda or a third party (if some super modder wants to take this as a challenge be my guest). If you think the title of the blog was an underhanded attempt to convince you to come by and have a read, you may be right.

Oblivion is certainly a game that does not need any multiplayer, and probably benefited greatly from the developers focusing on providing a rich single player experience. There have been times when my roommate and I are hacking our way through the world of Oblivion at the same time that the thought has crossed my mind that even simple LAN-based multiplayer would be an amazing addition to the game. I like Oblivion for not being an MMO game. However, having played Diablo 2 for most of my sophomore year of college cooperatively with my roommates provided some of my most memorable gaming experiences.

I would like to know what it is like to battle another human player or be able to explore the cooperative possibilities of mixing two different types of characters. Imagine a magic user providing some spell support while a hack-and-slasher delivers the coup de gras to the crippled enemy. Of course there are any number of logistical nightmares associated with putting two humans in the world of Tamriel. But hey, it still sounds fun.....

Until last night when it hit me: Zombie Boxing. One of the many entertaining aspects of Oblivion is trying to level in an efficient manner so that your character can stay ahead of the difficulty curve. If you have not explored the details of Oblivion's levelling system, it is worth checking out. Matt Rorie's Game Guide is a good place to start. Anyway, there are times when you need to squeeze a few extra stat points from a secondary skill before levelling up. One of my favorite solutions is Zombie Boxing.

Zombie Boxing entails summoning a zombie and pummeling him with your fists to get stronger. Now zombies can take a punishing, but so long as you stay on your toes you can smack them around without much fear of getting hit. Stick and move, stick and move. My character is 45-1 with 22 knockouts in the semi-pro middleweight Zombie Boxing association. If you are wondering what the one loss is all about, try using hand dish soap in the dishwasher and you will understand the distraction that caused me to mar my otherwise flawless record. My appeal to the association is being considered as we speak.

Anyway, I realize how absurd this process probably looks and decided that maybe multiplayer is not really a good idea. I mean nobody wants to be caught boxing their own zombie.
"Son! You have been in that arena awhile, is everything okay?"
"Yeah, dad. I uhhh....I am just at a good part in this book I am reading."
"You aren't Zombie Boxing are you?"
"No, of course not!"
How embarrassing. I guess I will stick to single player for now. Box on friends, box on.

I finally got my hands on Shadow of the Colossus this weekend. The screen shots and videos I had seen made me have very high hopes for this game and its ambitious concept. For the most part, it delivered. Overall it is an amazing game that probably came out a year or so too early.
To begin with, the premise in this game is very simple. There is only a shell of a story that provides context at the outset, and then goes away during the game itself. The actual gameplay portion of the game reads like shampoo bottle instructions: find colossus, slay colossus, repeat. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. The colossi (though similar in style) have a good range of behaviors, abilities, and morphology that make them disparate enough to stay interesting. They all have a pretty rigid set of tasks needed to take them down, and discovering these tasks ranges from very easy and intuitive to pretty obscure.
Now to the technical details. The game features top-notch animation for both the colossi and the main character (and his horse). The animations are very organic, and deliver a look that you would expect from a creature of that size. Size is another thing that the game handles well. The terrain is expansive, and the colossi are huge. Both are rendered in such a way that makes the scale very believable.
Now the bad. The camera was a bit annoying at first. I realize the difficulties involved when trying to get a 5 foot person and a hundred-foot tall colossus on the screen at the same time, but much of the time the camera is subject to player control, and I ended up spending a good amount of time grappling with it. Conversely the camera worked very well when you were actually on the colossus. It was very smart about getting the angle that best captures the action.
The other glaring issue was the framerate. There are moments when it runs ok, but it seldom runs at full framerate and at times dips embarrassingly low. It is a game that that while impressive now, would be stunning on a next-gen system just by running smoothly and being able to make some of the terrain and textures more interesting.
Overall I recommend it to anybody that does not need a story or substantial gameplay variety. The game is not extremely long, so it is a perfect game to rent or gamefly for a bit. It is easy to break in and knock off a few colossi at a time. It is really an amazing achievement technically, and it is unfortunate that the aging PS2 can't keep up with the designers' vision.

I don't want the blog to dry up and die despite the demands of the show, so I have posted below my impressions of the big three press conferences.

To give some context, I have no bias towards or against any of the three. I am going to determine which of the next-gen systems I am going to get based on how well they convince me in the next few months. So, from the perspective of a potential buyer here are my thoughts:

Sony
The Sony conference was pretty boring off the bat. SingStar and the card game were a bit interesting, but only from an intellectual standpoint. I would probably use neither if I got a PS3. The demos looked decent. Heavenly Blade definitely caught my eye, but I wonder how much fun the game is going to be once you get over the cool animations. I am not a HUGE Metal Gear Solid fan, but the trailers have all looked really good for MGS4. I suppose the gyroscopic controller could be nice in some games, but I fear that some developers might try to force in the functionality at the expense of gameplay. The price is high, as expected. I am not convinced that the graphics on the PS3 will be substantially better than X360 when it launches. Remember the developers will have had access to the X360 for an extra year, and graphics improve over the life of a system. My TV does 1080i, but is is really a 720p rig, so the extra resolution is not really a selling point. PSP integration is cool but I don't have one so again, no selling point there. Too much pre-rendered stuff. Is it really going to be able to match X360 head-to-head in just a few months? I have a lot of questions about how well their online suite will work compared to Xbox which has been doing a unified service for years already.
Summary: I have not seen anything that blew me off my feet. Unlikely that I would be an early adopter. Probably wait for developers to really nail the PS3's capabilities and for the price to drop. I think Sony failed to make a great case for not getting an X360 now.

Microsoft
Microsoft had probably the hardest seat as their console has already been on the market for awhile. Demos looked good. The integration with Windows Vista and mobiles was neat, but I don't know how much I would actually take advantage of it. HD-DVD player was not a selling point for me as the technology is not prevalent enough yet. Overall, I think the Microsoft did a pretty good job of turning the tables on it's disadvantage going in. They showed that they they have been doing a good job with the Xbox Live and showed the promise of more titles to come.
Conclusion: I think they did what they could to show that the next generation is here and there is a lot to look forward to. It looked even better against the sketchy details that Sony could provide. Overall, I think I am a price drop away from getting a X360. If they knock $100 off of it around Sony's launch it would be hard to find a reason no go for the PS3 instead (at least until Resident Evil 5 or Fallout 3 were announced as a PS3 exclusive).

Nintendo
Nothing too surprising here. They have convinced me that the controller can be a legitimate input device. The graphics are not as pretty as the other consoles, but could be good enough for most types of games. I could definitely see using the console being a lot of fun. I don't know that it would be able to satisfy my needs as a primary gaming system. Certainly some games light Twilight princess could provide many hours of entertainment, but others like the tennis game I see not holding my attention for a long time. I think they could have a much stronger showing by talking more about the back catalog stuff. I am not as worried about games holding my attention is I can download classics off the internet without leaving the house at a reasonable price. If he showed the menu where he went online, bought River City Ransom for $1.99 and started playing it ten seconds later, that would have had a powerful effect on me. Yes, I can download the ROM, but I am willing to pay some money for well-polished controller integration and any sort of extra features that come along with it.
Conclusion: Certainly is sacrificing a lot when compared to the other next-gen systems. Looks fun, but at the same time gimmicky (doh! I thought the same about the DS at first!) The big thing that it has going for it is the price. It is not mutually exclusive with getting one of the other systems (I am not getting a 360 AND PS3 anytime soon). If the back catalog is well-implemented and set at a reasonable price point I definitely see the Wii as a Friday afternoon impulse buy.

Episode One in my chronicles of riding a bike around San Francisco:

The train began to decelerate and sound its arrhythmic, metallic chime. They were getting close. Though a few minutes remained before he would be free from the train, in his mind the Rogue Biker was already gone. Bagman sat at his feet. Only being half full, Bagman was unable to sit straight up and instead modeled an apathetic slouch. Helmet was slung to Bagman's side by a black fabric chinstrap. They waited.

Finally the train's doors opened.
"It's about time." Bagman chimed, clearly unhappy with his temporary job as a foot warmer. People poured out of the train like so many baby spiders breaking free from a cocoon. Five minutes later Rogue Biker was on the street. His companions were clearly ebullient to be serving a purpose again, and had launched into what should, in the interest of accuracy, be referred to as a catch song. High marks for enthusiasm. Then Rogue Biker saw something that caught his eye...

By now he recognized most of his fellow 8 a.m. bike patriots. This biker was different though. He was not sporting the expensive, skin-tight bike gear that many choose to wear. These brightly colored getups always reminded Rogue Biker of a superhero costume designed by a two-year-old. No, this biker was different.

"He's riding a girl’s bike."
"Thanks, Helmet." Rogue replied, only halfway serious. Regardless of the truth of this statement, it was easily disregarded given Helmet's penchant for misogyny. As it turns out though, he was probably right. Giveaway one: the crossbar was a diagonal number, not the manly crossbar that runs parallel to the ground. Why cross bars would be positioned like this for men, who have so much to lose by falling on them remains a mystery. Giveaway two: The seat was one of the wide, easy-cruising, plushy affairs. Protruding from below the seat was a pair of conical springs looked like the electrified gonads of a doomsday automaton. That combined with the slacks that were fully tucked into his argyle socks painted an all-to-clear picture; a greenhorn.

If you could see a printout of what was going through Rogue's head in the first instant that he laid eyes on this biker, it would look something like this:

Logic nugget one: This man has a cruiser seat. The more comfortable the seat, the more you are on it. The more you are on the seat, the less you are pedaling. The less you are pedaling...well you figure it out.

Logic nugget two: His pants were tucked into his socks. This meant that he was worried that he might snag his pants on the outer gear. This means the outer gear is not occupied by the chain very often. This means he stayed in the lower gears. Rogue's lower gears still shined bright as the day they came off the show floor, totally unmarred by chain grease.

Logic nugget three: He was riding a girl's bike. Though this alone was not sufficient to discount his biking abilities, it did mean he was riding a bike that was about eight inches too small. Not allowing your legs to reach full extension while pedaling was like playing cornerback in the NFL without arm bones.

Conclusion: This dude has got to be smoked...

RBI Baseball for NES holds a special place in my heart. I played it with my brother for an ungodly number of hours back in the day. It is probably the game that I would play if I had to beat my opponent or face a painful, exhibitionist death. To be honest, I spent most of my time on RBI Baseball 2. I had the goofy black unlicenced cartridge with the diagonal edge an dual thumb tabs (in case it REALLY got stuck in there?). Luckily the two games play almost identically except for their lineups and the appearance of the players. In the first game, the players look like some combination of Santa Clause and a babushka doll. When number two rolled around all the players made a Barry Bonds-esque transformation to the svelte frame of a olympic decathalete.

Anyway, a guy named Conor Lastowka decided to replay the entire bottom of the tenth inning of the famous 1986 World Series between the Mets and the Red Sox using the game. It was obviously a labour of love to get this just right. Plus it is accompanied by the commentary of the venerable Vin Scully. Props to unemployment, RBI Baseball and cool first names!

Catch the video here

I have one thing to say:



REVOLUTION GOES WIIIIIII WIIIIIIIII!

I finally convinced Carrie to let me borrow Rez from her extensive collection of video game stuff.  I had heard it mentioned in darkened alleys and in hushed tones.  What I DID hear about it made it sound like it would be right up my alley.  I spent most of the time that I was studying abroad working on experimental electronic music, interactive musical inputs, etc.  A lot of it involved mixing visuals and sound and trying to break the cognitive barrier between the two.  All this nerdiness made me have to play Rez.  It is also the reason that I am "that guy" who bought Electroplankton.

To catch up anybody who has not heard of it, Rez is basically the result of a 3D rail shooter and a rhythm game having a baby. Anyway, when I got into the first level I was in awe.  Basically everything that happens in that game happens in time to the beat.  However, this managed to not distract from the gameplay somehow.  It is quite an experience. However, it still lives too much in the realm of experiment to be a great "game". There are only four songs, and they all sound similar, and the differences in the appearance of the levels is minor.  That being said, the design of the bosses is great.  The third boss (the cylinder of rotating laser tiles) is terrific.  The bosses are what the StarFox bosses never really flushed out.

Those that are looking for a the typical "game experience" would probably find it a little crude.  It is definitely not in the same league as an Ikaruga.  However, my musical background had me wanting a bit more flexibility in terms of the musical aspect of it.  You are pretty constrained in the sounds that you can contribute to the music, and it is a little difficult to get things to sound like what you want them to.  It adds some excitement because you never know what is going to come out, but it makes me want to play it a little less over time.  That being said, the game does strike a decent balance of the game and the music and will likely not turn off someone more interested in one than the other.

The final word is that it was an enjoyable (though short)experience.  It seems to me like the difficult part (getting all the rhythm working, etc.) was done well but they skimped on the easy part (more levels, or a diversity of music). I recommend it to anybody with an interest in games with a different slant.  It works wonders on an open mind (at least for a few hours).

Wooooo! -> http://uk.gamespot.com

We launched the UK version of Gamespot yesterday. It went very smoothly thanks to the hard work of a handful of developers here.

The response has been really good. It was definitely past due to get gamers a version of the site that provides information that is more relevant to someone living in the UK.

Waar Gamespot daarna zal gaan?

I keep hearing people talk about "Eath Ree". Now have no idea exactly what this "Eath Ree" is, but after overhearing my coworkers talk about it I have started to piece together what it entails. As far as I can tell it is some sort of religious pilgrimage where people go to drink Redbull and not sleep until they hallucinate. Like ancient shamans they travel down to the desert in search of fulfillment and return wiser for the journey.

Some of these desultory ramblings have included mention of volcanoes, hotdogs, and the mysterious "Boot Babe". I can't for the life of me figure out what these "Boot Babes" are or what is the origin of their name. The tales that I hear liken them to the Sirens of Greek mythology who exist merely to distract travelers and lure them from their path.

I have also heard talk about some kind of revolution. I am not sure when this revolution will begin or who is being revolted against, but is sounds like more information about this revolution will be revealed at the gathering. Much of this talk is directed towards "The Controller" which I can only assume is the name of the movement's leader. There does seem to be some debate about whether or not "The Controller" is going to to be a good or bad controller and whether or not the revolution will be successful. All I know is that when this revolution does come, I will be there swinging my sword with my fellow workers to strike down their oppressors.

I will keep you informed as I learn more.