Buy, Borrow, or Bury: Metal Gear Solid 4

I completed Metal Gear Solid 4 last night so I figured I’d go ahead and do a post about it.  I usually would wait a while, let the game settle in my memory before reviewing it, but because MGS4 is such a story-oriented game (most of which I won’t be able to comment on for fear of spoiling it for someone) I figured I might as well just talk about it now.  Is Hideo Kojima’s first PS3 game the smashing success that Sony needs it to be?

It goes without saying that MGS4 has been highly anticipated.  Labeled a system-seller for a long time, this game has a lot riding on its shoulders.  Not only that, but it has been confirmed to be the last adventure of the story’s main character, Solid Snake.  That gives gamers all the more reason to want to play the game, which has years of history and intertwining (sometimes convoluted) storylines to back it up.  Me personally, I never played the classic Metal Gear games going as far back as the NES, and really only got into the franchise when Metal Gear Solid was released for the original PlayStation.  I then went on to play the ported version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, labeled Substance, for the Xbox.  Both games I enjoyed greatly, mostly for their theatrical storyline and unique gameplay.  Unfortunately, I missed out on what I’ve been told is the best game in the franchise, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, because it was a PS2 exclusive and I never owned a PS2.  So then – on to MGS4.

When you first pop in MGS4 just like with most other PS3 games you are greeted by an installer.  Not only that, but throughout the game you’ll have to install on 4 other occasions.  There was a lot of controversy over this, but honestly the initial is the longest weighing in at around 8 minutes, and each of the installs after that only take about 3 minutes.  The install process sort of ads a bit of charm to the game too because each is laden with quirky instructions like “You’ve been playing for over 1 hours, maybe you should take a break.”  You also get a pretty sweet animation of Old Snake smoking as many as 3 or 4 cigarettes, a classic theme throughout all of the Metal Gear Solid games.

That’s right, I said Old Snake.  The first thing you’ll notice when you play MGS4 (if you haven’t read a single shred of news about the game) is that Snake seems to be roughly 70 years old this time around.  His hair has grayed, his skin has wrinkled, and he needs a muscle suit to get around.  Not all is as it seems though, and I’ll leave it at that.  In fact most isn’t as it first seems in the Metal Gear universe, but that’s part of why it’s so entertaining and enthralling.  There’s a lot of discussion about MGS4 (as there was with the other Metal Gear Solid games when they came out) as to it’s a game or a movie.  Another trademark of the previous Metal Gear Solid games were long cutscenes.  What’s long?  Upwards of a half hour.  If you like that kind of thing let’s just say you won’t be disappointed with MGS4.

Me personally?  I love em’.  I’m not the kind of gamer that gets all worked up about the form the media takes.  There are those that hate to see cutscenes in games because games are supposed to be an interactive medium.  As long as the story is solid and engrossing that doesn’t matter to me, I’ll sit and watch an hours worth of cutscenes if I care about what’s going on in them.  On top of that the cutscenes in MGS4 are masterfully done.  When I wrote my GTA4 review I’m sure I hit on the stellar “acting” in its cutscenes, but honestly nothing in GTA4 compares to MGS4.  Everything is beautifully acted and the voice talent in all cases is solid as a rock.  The characters were so well played that it’s almost impossible to not find yourself feeling for them, even the bad guys.  There were characters that I had no idea about from the Metal Gear lexicon, but just based on how other characters in the game (Snake, Otacon) would speak about them I felt emotional when they showed up.

So then – gameplay.  The gameplay in MGS4 is varied, and you can play the game more than one way.  Traditionally Metal Gear Solid games are based around stealth, and if you want to go that route Old Snake has been outfitted with an awesome new adaptive sneaking suit that automatically blends into anything he is pressed up against.  Let’s say you’re walking down a road but a guard is patrolling and you have no cover to get behind.  Simply press yourself up against a wall and you’ll blend right in.  When I explain it you would think that it would make the game too easy or something, but trust me that’s not the case.  There’s still a ton of challenge offered.

On the other hand there are more weapons in this Metal Gear game than in any before it.  There’s even a very interesting character that sells you weapons, ammo and gear whenever you need them (if you need them).  So really, you can play this game almost like a first person shooter – running through guns blazing like you’re Master Chief.  The controls are setup perfectly for aiming as well.  If you’ve played Gears of War and understand how the “over-the-shoulder” camera angle works for aiming a weapon, you’ll be right at home.  Personally I played as stealthily as possible and chose to knock out most of my enemies rather than kill them.  On my second play through I might decide to go about things a little differently though since I felt I kind of deprived myself of using a lot of the really cool weapons in MGS4.  Just the “feel” of the weapons is great, their sound is spot-on and looking down the iron-sights is awesome.

The game took me 20 hours to finish though, and so even fun gameplay might get stale after that amount of time.  I’m happy to say (without spoiling anything, of course) that MGS4 does have some varying and surprising gameplay at different points of the game.  In nearly every section you’ll end up playing the game differently at one point or another than you did previously.  These segments are generally some of the most cinematic experiences you’ll have in any video game and I mean that literally.  I swore once or twice that I was playing a movie.  As always there are plenty of boss battles, many new enemies to fight as well as some older ones you might be familiar with.  The innovation makes its way into those as well, and I’m sure there will be a couple times when you’ll have to stop and think real hard about how to get past a boss (I know it happened to me).

The most important thing about the game is that it totally plays to the audience.  What I mean by that is you’ll find all of the characters in the story that you would ever want to see.  Characters from previous games, new characters, and maybe characters you had heard about in the previous games without ever actually getting to meet them.  They all have interesting stories to them and at the end of the game each story is wrapped up very well.

In the end it’s impossible for me to give this game anything other than a Buy.  There were way too many instances, especially late in the game, that just made me straight geek-out on all of the Metal Gear Solid goodness.  I know I uttered the phrase “this is the best game I’ve ever played” to myself more than once throughout.  My jaw dropped multiple times, I yelled at the screen multiple times, and overall there’s very little to nothing I can say bad about this game (except for I wish there was more!).  The game was so good that I’m now trying to think as hard as I can about how to hunt down a PS2 just so I can play MGS3 (I have the 40GB “no backwards-compatibility” PS3).  Chances are very likely that if you have a PS3, you have Metal Gear Solid 4.  For that reason the Buy recommendation may not mean much.  Here’s another question though – is Metal Gear Solid 4 good enough to go buy a PS3 for?  If you’ve ever had any interest in owning a PS3 I’d say absolutely.  There was even a console bundle for MGS4 which included the game and a gunmetal PS3 that I probably would have purchased if I didn’t already own one.

MGS4 made me excited about my PS3 again, and I don’t think there’s much higher praise than that.  Solid Snake’s swan song should not be missed.

World at War

The Call of Duty franchise is easily one of my favorites in the video game industry, going as far back as the original Call of Duty which was a PC-exclusive that revolutionized World War 2 shooters on the platform.  Though traditionally a World War 2 franchise the game’s developer, Infinity Ward, decided to branch out into the 21st century with the latest game in the series titled Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.  CoD4 was hugely successful in part because of its move to the modern-day Middle East, but also because of the ridiculous amount of polish applied to the gameplay, graphics, and sound for both the single player campaign and the multiplayer portion of the game.

For all those reasons and more I have been eagerly anticipating the announcement of the fifth game in the series, and in the past couple weeks I’m pleased to announced that we finally saw the trailer for Call of Duty: World at War.  The franchise is moving back to the classic World War 2 setting.  A lot of people are bent out of shape about that but honestly I love everything about WW2 so I think it’s great.  It seems like the most common complaint about World War 2 games is that there have already been a million of them, but haven’t there already been a million modern warfare games as well?  What makes World at War a genuinely unique experience is that this time the game will play out in the Pacific theater of the war.  There has yet to be, to my mind anyways, a truly great game based on the Pacific theater so I’m very excited about this, and if anyone can get it right it’s the guys that have been working with the franchise for years.

Who are those guys, you ask?  Not Infinity Ward, makers of Call of Duty 1, Call of Duty 2, and Call of Duty 4.  Instead the honor gets passed to a different developer – Treyarch.  Treyarch put out the sequel to the original Call of Duty game called Call of Duty: United Offensive which, to my mind, is still one of the best CoD games ever.  They were also behind the less heralded Call of Duty 3 as well as some console off-shoots of the series (Big Red One, for example).  There’s been a lot of fuss made over the fact that Treyarch will be working on Call of Duty 5 and not Infinity Ward, but I think that’s very unwarranted.  First off, they know Call of Duty.  Secondly they know World War 2 games.  Thirdly they always capitalize on the multiplayer portion of the game (Call of Duty 3’s multiplayer trumped 2’s easily, and World At War is set to bring co-op action to the series for the first time).  I kind of look at Treyarch like the little engine that could, people get down on them a lot and tend to sleep on their games which invariably end up great.  Besides, this also allows Infinity Ward to start prepping for Call of Duty 6, and the more time they put into that game the better it’ll be.  I don’t think there was ever a game developer who said "we just had too much time to put this game together."

After viewing the Call of Duty: World at War reveal trailer my anticipation grew immensely.  The action this time seems much more gritty, and portrays the darker side of the war better from what I can tell.  There also seems to be a bit of a play to both sides of the war, not just the Allied Forces.  During the beginning of the trailer you hear a Japanese soldier speaking (as well as an American) about the horrors of war and it’s very chilling.  If you have seen the movie "Flags of Our Fathers" and especially its counterpart "Letters from Iwo Jima" you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.  A reader was gracious enough to provide an embed of the worldwide reveal trailer, so please take a look for yourself:

Now Playing:
Shane MacGowan – The Snake With Eyes of Garnet
Metal Gear Solid 4

Pandora: tailor-made tunes

Pandora isn’t exactly new.  That being said, I finally started using it this past week and I have to say I’m very impressed.  For the uninitiated Pandora is basically an adaptive internet radio station which is marketed as radio which plays only the music you like.  That’s true enough, but Pandora becomes very valuable in helping you find new music as well.  So what exactly sets Pandora apart when compared to other radio stations either online or off?

When you first start listening to Pandora you’ll be asked to submit an artist or song that you like.  Then, based on certain characteristics your song or artist has, Pandora will start pulling in music that is similar to it from various artists.  From there you can either give the song a thumbs up if you like it or a thumbs down if you don’t.  This helps Pandora to further understand your musical interests so that future songs will be better tailored to your taste.  So far this has worked remarkably well.  Though at the beginning maybe 6/10 songs Pandora played were ones I liked, now it’s at least 9/10.  Very rarely do I give a thumbs down to a song after only a few days of use.

My only gripe about the process of rating songs so far is that I get a decent amount of music I’ve already heard and I’m always compelled to immediately give them a good rating.  At the same time my favorite part about Pandora is listening to artists I haven’t heard of before and broadening my horizons a bit.  Really what it comes down to is I prefer hearing music I’ve never heard before over hearing some songs I’ve heard a bunch but that’s a minor complaint.  Not only that but it’s easily solvable – next to the rating for each song you can also tell Pandora that you’re tired of a song so it won’t be played for the next 30 days.  I’m starting to do that a little more often since there’s a lot of songs that I like but have heard a lot and get a little tired of.

So for example, with my first station I decided to use the artist Flogging Molly.  Pandora went ahead and pulled in a bunch of similar music, some of which I’d heard and a lot of which I haven’t.  I’m also a fan of The Dropkick Murphys and The Pogues, two bands that are pretty similar to Flogging Molly.  As a result music from all three of those bands comes up pretty regularly, and I tend to give them all the thumbs up.  So really I have every song from Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys and The Pogues set as positives.  That’s great but I was thinking about it and, although all of their music is similar, there are a bunch of different themes found in all of it.  For example Flogging Molly tends to vary their instruments from more traditional (tin whistle, bag pipes, violin) to contemporary (electric guitar in particular).  So then, because I’m giving all of their songs a positive rating does Pandora think I like all music that has guitars in it?  Or all music just because it uses traditional instruments?  That’s a little logistical but so far it hasn’t seemed to have been a problem.

Another nice thing about Pandora is that you can create more than one station.  My Flogging Molly station is tailored quite well to Irish folk music of various styles, but what happens if I’m in the mood for some rap?  I could create a new station and put Nas in as the artist.  Or maybe I want to listen to something a little heavier?  I could create a Deftones station.  All of my stations are saved so whenever I get the urge to listen to one type of music or another I can just choose my station and go.  In order to have your stations saved and to get the full benefit of the service you have to sign up, but it’s all free so there’s no worries there.  In fact if you don’t sign up I think you only get a certain number of songs as a trial, and then if you want to continue you have to sign up.

Pandora also has an Adobe Air client so you don’t have to always have a dedicated Pandora tab in your favorite web browser.  The Air application isn’t the prettiest thing I’ve seen, it seems almost like a windowed version of their website, but you get some easy access to functions associated with the service by right-clicking the application’s icon which is nice.  It’s so nice that I haven’t really even used Pandora from the site yet, so I guess that says something.  Go ahead and give Pandora a look if you’re a fan of music, and really, who isn’t? =P

Now Playing:
The Dropkick Murphys – The Wild Rover
Metal Gear Solid 4

Windows Live Mesh tech preview

When Microsoft first unveiled the Live Mesh project I was immediately intrigued.  Promising to "put me at the center of my digital world," the website for Mesh had a bunch of pretty graphics explaining a myriad of interesting (albeit sometimes vague) features.  From Devices to Live Desktop and shareable folders everything sounded pretty great…that is until some tech pundits started weighing in.  One of the first times I remember hearing anyone say anything about Live Mesh was when Kevin Rose, on an episode of TWiT, went through each of the features listed at Mesh.com and wrote them off.  For some strange reason that lessened my interest.

Then, this week, I decided to go ahead and finally give Live Mesh a shot.  I had originally signed up for the tech preview before everyone started bashing, but after I was notified that I had finally received my invitation to come try the service out my interest had waned significantly.  I was concerned that everything would take too long to setup and manage, that the feature set would be limited because this was technically a beta, and that the application might be difficult to use at such an early stage.  I have to say on all three fronts I was wrong.

Interacting with Live Mesh doesn’t start with an application installer as you might expect.  Instead, it starts with you logging into your Windows Live account at Mesh.com.  Here you’ll see all of the devices currently on your mesh as well as your Live Desktop.  You can access each of the devices in a nice rotating circle sort of UI, and it’s easy to tell which devices are online and offline (offline devices are grayed out).  As you select each device a window comes up with some of its information including whether or not the device is up-to-date with file synchronization, an options menu removing or renaming the device, and most importantly an orange button that says Connect.  If you click the connect button and the device is online you can access the device via a remote desktop application.  There is, however, one other button on the Mesh.com interface that I forgot to mention – a big orange Add Device button.

When you click Add Device you are at long last prompted to install some software on your computer.  You get a sleek blue Mesh application which, among other things, enables the device to be connected to remotely via the connect feature.  From the application you can also see which devices are online and connect to them, plus you can access your Live Desktop and the folders it holds.  This can be done from any of your Mesh devices of course.  So for instance, say you receive a file from someone at work but you really want to look at it later when you’re at home.  As long as both devices are setup on your Mesh you can just create a new folder from your Live Desktop, drop your files into it, and it’ll be waiting for you at home when you get there.  The Mesh application on your desktop will also give you a news feed of all of the files that have been added recently, providing direct download links for each, which is nice.

Right now you can only add devices to your Mesh that are either Windows XP or Vista PCs, but in the future they’re promising support for Macs as well as mobile devices.  Being able to share files as well as connect to any of my devices instantly over the cloud is very appealing to me, and it’s all very easy and intuitive to manage and setup.  Just install the application on a device and you can start sharing and connecting immediately.  So far the tech preview is free and I’m hoping that’s price point won’t change in the future.  As a free service Mesh absolutely rocks, and if you’re using more than one (Windows, for now) computer you should sign up as soon as possible.

(Note: You can click the images in this post to see larger versions of the Mesh interface)

Now Playing:
Dropkick Murphys – Boys on the Docks
Metal Gear Solid 4

Gently down the stream

Roz Savage is a bit of an adventurer.  Okay, I’m kind of understating things – she’s an adventurer straight out of a movie or video game.  She was the first woman to row alone across the Atlantic ocean, and when she finished that up she said to herself "what the heck, might as well do the Pacific while I’m at it."  She left from San Francisco about a month ago and has been rowing all alone, through good weather and bad, ever since.  The reason I’m writing about this is because she’s doing a podcast with Leo Laporte over satellite phone from her boat in the pacific.  It’s called "Roz Rows the Pacific" and I think you should stop reading this and go give the first episode or two a listen immediately.  It’s not your normal tech-related podcast from the TWiT network but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Roz wasn’t content in just doing a podcast though, she also actively maintains her blog, putting up new posts quite regularly.  The posts contain updates on her journey, any progress (forward or backward) she may have made, and most are usually accompanied by a photo or video from that day’s row.  It’s amazing how much courage she has, honestly.  One of the hardest parts of the trip so far was just getting far enough away from land so that she wouldn’t be pulled back in by currents.  It took her 8 tries to get past the Golden Gate Bridge, but she made her way through.

Did I mention that this is Roz’s second attempt at rowing across the Pacific?  She already tried once and, unfortunately, was unable to obtain success.  Her vessel was capsized 3 separate times in a 24-hour period and, despite her persistence, she was forced to give up by the coast guard.  Several changes have been made to her boat since then, including the addition of quite a bit of ballast weights for stability, and so far she hasn’t had any trouble surviving some pretty harsh weather.  Let’s hope she continues to make progress!

If you’d like to follow Roz on her trip she has partnered with MarineTrack so you can see exactly where she is in the Pacific, the speed at which she’s moving, and even what her weather’s like.  I’m looking at the MarineTrack console right now and it’s great to see how far she’s gone in such a short amount of time.  All the best of luck to Roz and I just have to say I look forward to listening to each podcast as they come out.  They’re generally fairly short which is understandable, usually around a 30 minute maximum, so it’s perfect for listening during a commute.  Who knows, you might just be inspired to go off and do some adventuring of your own!  If nothing else it makes you appreciate dry land.  If you find yourself getting down about work, chores, or anything else – just remember, Roz is alone in the middle of the Pacific with a big smile on her face.

Now Playing:
Dropkick Murphys – Far Away Coast
Metal Gear Solid 4

Buy, Borrow, or Bury: Grand Theft Auto 4

This review has been a long time coming and I expect it to be a long one.  As a result I’m going to delve straight in instead of giving a whole lot of history like I would with other game reviews.  So, here goes.  In Grand Theft Auto 4 you play Niko Bellic, an immigrant from the Balkans who has been lured to Liberty City (Rockstar Games’ take on New York City) by delusions of grandeur from your cousin Roman Bellic.  After being picked up literally fresh off the boat, you quickly realize that all is not as was promised – Roman lives in a rundown apartment, works for an angry boss at a taxi company, and doesn’t spend all of his time chilling with beautiful women.  So, you’ve come to America to start a new life and hunt down some ghosts from your past but you quickly realize you’ll have a difficult time adjusting, what with your cousin’s run-in with a nasty gambling addiction and all sorts of undesirable people that are typically associated with that type of lifestyle.  And…action!

Grand Theft Auto 4 is the first game in the Grand Theft Auto series since the original top-down version that I’ve played on a console.  With that said, one of the first things I noticed about GTA4 were the controls.  GTA4 (like all of the GTA games) is based heavily on driving around town, and in fact the first thing you do in Liberty City, after getting off of the ship that brought you there, is drive your drunk cousin home.  The controls for driving are actually pretty good.  Each car has its own feel, and as long as you pretty much disregard the handbrake completely you shouldn’t have any problems.  Of course don’t plan on jumping right in and being able to navigate the streets without accidentally making your way onto a sidewalk or flipping your car from time to time.  It happens to the best of us.

After the controls the next thing I noticed were the graphics.  There was a lot of buzz about how amazing GTA4 looked and I have to be honest, in the trailers and screenshots there’s no doubt the game was beautiful.  Once I got it home though, even though it’s a huge step up from previous games, I was kind of unimpressed.  It might be because my TV is kind of lacking but mostly what I noticed was a ton of aliasing (jaggies) on basically everything in the game.  Not only that but the game has a fairly short draw distance.  I don’t know, maybe I’m just crazy, but the game to me isn’t at "Oh my God!" status as far as visuals go.  Then again, the GTA games have never been about amazing graphics.  Still, I did adjust to the graphics and get used to the aliasing after a while much like the controls, and pretty soon I found myself appreciating the game visually.  Flying over Liberty City in a chopper is actually pretty breathtaking.

Next up is combat – and boy is there a lot of it.  If you’ve never played a GTA game, basically you get in a lot of gunfights with various scoundrels throughout the game.  Let me pause on that though, and start from the beginning.  When you get off of the boat in the beginning of the game you don’t have a single weapon aside from your fists.  There really hasn’t been much to hand-to-hand combat in the GTA series up until now, but I have to give Rockstar some props for working in a passable fighting system for GTA4.  Not only can you throw combos, but you can block and counter your foe’s attacks as well.  After you’ve gone a few rounds in fisticuffs you’ll acquire a melee weapon (knife) from one of your many victims.  You’ll eventually get a handgun, then sub-machine gun, and so on and so forth.  The aiming system for the gunplay in GTA4 is awesome at times and extremely annoying at others.  First off let me say that you can finally take cover behind objects in the environment in this game, which rocks.  Being able to effectively hide yourself and choose when to attack and when to hold back makes the gunfights much easier and much more enjoyable.  Still, when it comes time to actually fire the gun you’ll find yourself struggling with the auto-aim feature.  In theory you should be able to look at whichever enemy you want to take down and pull out your gun – once you’ve gotten that far the target locks onto that enemy and you can start shooting at them.  It works most of the time but I also found myself accidentally targeting the wrong enemy or even a civilian off in the distance at times.  Obviously that’s pretty annoying.

There’s a whole lot to do in Liberty City which is cool.  I’m going to give a rundown of some of the "side-missions" in the game (I put that in quotes because a lot of the additional gameplay features aren’t missions at all) that stick out in my mind.  First off, and this is kind of wandering into the story a bit, Niko has a lot of friends.  Niko also has a cellphone which is used to start missions, keep track of appointments in the organizer, and, of course, call people.  Therefore it makes sense that you can call one of the many folks you meet throughout the game to hang out.  You can partake in a ton of different activities with your friends, including games and sports, going to see a show at at comedy or cabaret club, or just going to grab something to eat at a restaurant.  Based on how often you take a friend out and how the activity goes your friends will gain respect and fondness for you, and many of them will eventually give you a bonus of some kind.  For example, one of the first characters you meet in the story will eventually sell discount guns to you out of his car if he gets to like you enough.  There are also a bunch of women you can hook up with if you so choose, and yes, you can get some hot warm coffee with them after a date.  I have to say this part of the game also ranges from fun to annoying.  There are certain characters in the game (anyone from the McReary family, Little Jacob) who I love to chill with.  There are other people who annoy the crap out of me.  Unfortunately you kind of get guilt-tripped into hanging out with these people because if you turn them down too many times they’ll start to dislike you.  It’s a very interesting gameplay mechanic.

There are some true side missions too, such as competing in races or boosting cars for one of your friends.  As seems to be the trend, these missions are either really fun or really not.  For example, the first time you get missions to steal cars your radar is marked with the location of the car that you have to steal.  Easy enough, right?  Just go to that spot on the map (the radar gives you "turn-by-turn" directions), steal the car, and you’re done.  Later though you’re only given a rough estimation of where the car might be as well as a picture message on your phone of what the car looks like.  This is much more difficult because the cars can sort of blend in with the environment so chances are you’ll spend a lot of time looking for them (there are 30 you have to steal in all the second time around).    On the other hand there are some really cool missions where you can do vigilante police work by stealing a cop car and using its computer to hunt down criminals.  Those are actually pretty fun.  Remember, the side missions are completely optional but they’re a good way to make money in the game.  One of the things that annoys me a lot in some games (the best example I can give is Mass Effect) are side missions that are all exactly the same and are obviously only added to the game to give it more play time.  GTA4 isn’t like that.  The side missions switch it up often enough to keep things interesting despite there being a ton of gameplay there.

There’s so much gameplay there that I literally spent 3 or 4 days completing just the car boosting missions.  This is where I talk about the story.  The reason that’s relevant is because, during the middle of the game, it felt like there was almost a week where I went around doing side missions but didn’t mess with a single story-based mission.  As a result I found the story sort of disconnected.  Sure, you can blame that on how I played the game, but I think that the game’s story starts out strong and towards the end picks back up but there’s a lot of stuff in between that doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with Niko’s original reason for coming to America (I won’t spoil anything).  Suffice it to say that by the very end of the game Niko’s main nemesis randomly switches from one person to another who you thought was kind of a side-character.  To spend so much time building up one character and then all of the sudden take all of the emphasis off of that person (as well as the story behind them) and move it to someone else was just a weird way to end the game.  I guess the story is told in chunks.  You get to know a certain person you’re working for and then you get through their missions.  Then you go on to the next person, learn their story and get familiar with them.  So on and so forth.  My favorite of the bunch (as I said above) were the McReary missions.  The McRearys are a dysfunctional Irish-American family and I thought each sibling was unique and interesting.  You do missions for almost all of them, and overall I’d say their missions were the most fun.  Again, I don’t like spoiling anything so I won’t, but some epic stuff goes down.

The story was solid even if it falls apart at certain times.  It’s not just the content of the story I don’t think, it’s how everything is delivered.  Most of the story is given to you in cutscenes before or after missions, and they’re so well acted and staged (sounds like a movie, right?) that you really become fond of the characters.  There’s also plenty of twists and even user-interaction to keep things interesting.  For example there are several points in the game at which you’ll have to make a choice to either do one thing or another, and based on your decision the rest of the game will play out differently.  Should you kill this person, or that person?  Let someone live or take them out?  It’s a nice feature and I’m already looking forward to playing through the game again, this time making different decisions to see how the game changes.

With all of that said I do have some remaining issues with the game.  First off, when will Rockstar figure out how to make the cars spawn more randomly?  There’s a lot of traffic in the game and it always seems like I’ll get in a car and then immediately there will be a thousand of that same car either being driven by citizens or just parked along the roads.  It’s so bad that there’s one mission in particular where you’re given a really sweet car upon completion, but as I was driving back to my safehouse I saw literally 15 of those same cars only a couple of blocks away.  Imagine you hit the lottery and buy a lamborghini, but as you’re driving it home you see that everyone else all of the sudden also has a lambo.  What happened?  Did everyone hit the lottery?  What’s going on here?  Now imagine you can steal almost any car without much repercussion, and you see someone else driving a lamborghini in a color you like more than the one you’re driving.  That happened to me all the time in GTA4.  I’d be like "Sweet, a Banshee!" then I’d go around a corner and see someone driving a green Banshee so I’d jump out of mine and steal it from them (green’s my favorite color).  Now, I realize that rendering a bunch of the same car model is more efficient on the hardware but come on, there has to be some way to make the cars show up a bit more randomly!

My next complaint is the inconsistency of the police in GTA4.  There were times when I’d be flying down a road and I’d slam into a pedestrian in a crosswalk killing them right in front of a cop.  The cop does nothing.  Now say I’m driving down the road and I barely even tap their car with mine, all of the sudden I get one star and cops are chasing me down because I nicked the cop car’s fender.  That doesn’t really make sense to me.  It seems that with GTA4 Rockstar did their best to try to add a touch of realism to the game, but it completely falls part at times.  It’s a tough line to tread, making things realistic without it being too realistic to the point that the game isn’t fun anymore.

To sum it all up I think GTA4 was a really great game.  Overall it’s kind of step back for the series (you’re limited to a much smaller world than in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there aren’t nearly as many side missions and the variety just isn’t there) but a little bit of Grand Theft Auto is better than none at all.  Still, if I had to give GTA4 a rating (I won’t, that’s not what my reviews here are about) I’d rate it a lot lower than many of the official rating sites out there.  I think that even professionals get caught up in hype and end up scoring a game higher than it really deserves.  With that being said I have to recommend that you Buy Grand Theft Auto 4.  It’s a great game and it shouldn’t be missed.

I salute you if you some how made it to the end of this post! =)

***Limited Edition*** post

First off let me say that today Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out.  MGS4 is a huge system seller for the PS3 and I’m hoping it does gangbusters.  Me personally, I haven’t played a Metal Gear game since the Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance port for Xbox.  I’ve been told that I missed the best game in the series so far (MGS3: Snake Eater for PS2) but because my PS3 is the 40 gigabyte version I’m without backwards compatibility so I won’t be playing that anytime soon.  Needless to say, I’m ready to dive back into some MGS goodness.

Like any diligent gamer I tend to preorder the big games that I want (Grand Theft Auto 4, Metal Gear Solid 4, etc.) well in advance so that I’m guaranteed a copy come the release date.  I did the same for MGS4, but for the first time in a long time I denied myself its limited edition.  If you don’t know what limited editions are, basically every game these days comes in both the normal boxed form and also a more expensive form that has some additional goodies, be it swag or making-of documentaries, even soundtracks at times.  When the limited edition phenomena started the price was usually $10 over whatever was normal, so $70 instead of $60 in most cases.  Then, over time, the price has slowly crept up and up until now, where it hovers right around the $90 mark.  Sure they’re becoming more and more extravagant for that extra price bump, but still there comes a time when you have to draw the line.

The last limited edition game I purchased was Grand Theft Auto 4.  I still remember hearing about what would be contained in the box way back when – a lockbox with duffel bag??  No way!  That’s so cool!  It’s cool until you get it and you realize you have no use for a lockbox or a duffel bag, and then you have to find a place to put the massive box the game came in.  Not only that but you paid almost double for the game just for the extra goods.  The extra media is usually pretty nice to have (soundtracks, documentaries and so on) but let’s face it, if you really want it chances are it’ll be up on YouTube the next day for free.  That’s when I decided I was going to start kicking it old-school by only dropping $60 on my games from here on in.  When I go to pick Metal Gear today I’ll be getting the boring beige edition of Metal Gear Solid 4 but at least I know I’ll be saving some space as well as $25 (enough for a new DS game).

So that’s it really, I didn’t have much to say about it, I’m just wondering if anyone else is starting to get a little tired of all of the limited editions of games these days?  Another added bonus is that now all of my games will be able to fit in my DVD stand, I can’t say the same for the massive box that GTA4 came in…

Now Playing:
Jay-Z – Lost Ones
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

WWDC wrap-up

There once was a time before everyone had the internet when you might go to an Apple event and be completely surprised by what was announced.  These days, with several websites devoted to breaking Apple news first, that seems to happen less and less frequently.  Whether it’s an iPhone-unlocker examining every line of code in the latest firmware or a fanatic studying every domain purchase made, chances are news will be leaked on the internet long before it is made official.  Of course the same can be said of yesterday’s WWDC keynote.

The first hour or so of the keynote was devoted to, of all things, development (it’s the worldwide developer’s conference after all).  With the hotly anticipated iPhone 2.0 update just around the corner which will include the application store, the development was all focused on iPhone applications.  We saw Monkey Ball again, some other games, an Ebay application, medical application, so on and so forth.  The thing you need to take away from this is that people are working on applications that you’ll be able to get your hands on next month.  Nothing new in the development portion of the keynote except the 2.0 update has finally been given a date – July 11th.  I was kind of bummed by this, I was really hoping if nothing else we’d see something tangible from today’s keynote, and I thought the update would be perfect for that.  Still, at least we know for sure now when iPhone and iPod Touch users can start tricking out their portables with all sorts of touch applications.

After that, Phil Schiller took the stage to talk a little bit about a subject near and dear to my heart – MobileMe.  You might recall that I put up a post talking about MobileMe last week and, aside from the price point issues, Apple did a lot of what I expected.  They’ve branded MobileMe as "Microsoft Exchange for the rest of us," and its goal is to synchronize calendars, contacts and email across several devices including Windows PCs and the iPhone or iPod Touch.  Pretty straightforward there and of course you get your usual web interface to access everything through – all of this will be located at the Me.com website in time.  You can preorder MobileMe right now if you want, but the full package won’t be out until July 11th.  As I said the price right now remains the same $99 a year.  I was hoping for a price drop but if you’re getting a new mac you can get a $30 discount.  Another nice thing is that the iDisk storage has been bumped from 10 gigabytes to 20, a significant increase.  I still don’t think it quite rivals the Windows Live suite of services if only because of the price point, but it’s a definite step up.

Of course the darling of the show was the rumored 3G iPhone.  It seemed like everyone was absolutely positive we’d see one, the only question was what sort of new functionality would be included to take advantage of the faster data transfers?  Would there be new applications?  Two cameras for video conferencing?  GPS?  Well as it turns out the answers to those questions would be No, No, and a surprising Yes.  I never thought that Apple would be able to work GPS into the iPhone because the battery life would suffer quite a bit to have it.  My assumption was reaffirmed when Steve Jobs said that the new 3G iPhone would boast 10 hours of talk-time over the previous generation’s 8.  Surely there’s no way Apple could boost battery life and have GPS, right?  Wrong.  Almost right after discussing battery life Mr. Jobs went on to say that another of the most requested iPhone features, GPS, has been built into the 3G iPhone.  The only question left is whether their battery estimates are with or without GPS enabled, I’m going to go ahead and assume without.  Regardless, I was surprised and I expect to see some really cool location-based applications down the road for the iPhone.

There is, however, one more thing that most of the sites never guessed would happen.  The new 3G iPhone received a pretty hefty price cut.  The 8GB model went from $399 all the way down to $199.  That’s huge!  I don’t think anyone expected this.  At first I was a little envious since I have my eyes out on an iPod Touch, so to see the brand-spanking new iPhone get a $200 price cut while I’m still looking at spending $399 for a 16GB iPod was kind of rough.  Then I remembered that I won’t be paying for monthly data plans and my nerves were calmed.  Not only that but the fine print has been reviewed meticulously and it turns out you can’t get this deal if you’re an existing iPhone user, the iPhone 3G is only available at $199 with a new 2-year contract.  Sorry early adopters, it looks like you have been bitten yet again.

It should be noted that I watched a lot of the announcements via Leo Laporte’s coverage at TWiT Live and it totally brought me back to the TechTV days.  He brought in a couple of guests and basically just did what everyone else was doing: watching news feeds from Engadget and MacRumors.  He was also able to hook up some live audio streams from the conference and of course all along he and his guests were giving their commentary on the news.  There was a lot of difficulty in trying to find a decent stream from the keynote as Apple doesn’t provide live video themselves.  Therefore the only things available were Ustream and Yahoo! Live streams of amateur-shot video that ended up being garbled most of the time and struggled to stay live as each of the respective services tumbled under the weight of a few thousand users.  Even Leo’s Stickam feed went down for a short period of time.  Looks like these video streaming services aren’t quite there yet, are they?  Or maybe Apple should just do the right thing and provide some live streaming video of future events.  =P

If you’d like to watch the keynote address now you can see the quicktime version on Apple’s site: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0806wdt546x/event/index.html

Now Playing:
Nas Feat. Chrisette Michele – Can’t Forget About You
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Veronica Belmont brings Qore to PSN

Earlier this week I saw one of Veronica Belmont’s twitter updates in which she referenced her "new project" that had to do with the Playstation Network.  I own a PS3 so I was immediately intrigued, so I hit the link she provided to her blog containing further information.  The project as it turns out, is called Qore.  Qore is an interactive video service that you download from the Playstation Store for $2.99 an episode ($24.99 for an annual subscription), and you get a bunch of information about upcoming releases for both the Playstation 3 as well as the PSP.  Along with game previews you also get some downloadable content such as themes for the Playstation’s XMB interface and access to betas for certain games.

In this first episode you’ll be able to get in on the SOCOM: Confrontation beta, which is one of (if not the) most anticipated multiplayer games coming to the PS3.  Unfortunately, as of right now the beta isn’t available so…you get a SOCOM theme for $2.99 which is alright I guess.  I’m assuming that down the road they’ll unlock the access to the beta officially so you’re not missing anything if you wait a while to take a look at Qore.  This episode of Qore also features a few other games – Secret Agent Clank for the PSP, Soul Calibur 4 and Afro Samurai for PS3, as well as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  You’ll notice that three of the five games they preview aren’t Sony platform exclusives, which is kind of a bummer.  Sony really needs to get proactive about hunting down exclusive franchises…that’s a discussion for a different post though.

Veronica’s involvement in this project is kind of puzzling to me.  She’s only seen in a total of 3 video features for two of the games plus a preview telling you what Qore is all about, and it only ends up being five minutes of video in all.  It seems to me like the people at Sony wanted to get a well-known internet celebrity to do the video and pull in some viewers who might have otherwise ignored Qore (it worked on me).  Regardless, what I was hoping to get out of Qore was some insight to future PS3 games I might want to pick up and the ones they showed that I was interested in, for the most part, are games that I’ll probably check out but I’ll get for the 360.  After seeing the "making-of" videos for SOCOM I’m definitely excited to try out the beta for it (coming to a Preview post near you soon, I’d imagine) but other than that there wasn’t much for me to look forward to that I didn’t already know about.

One cool thing is that if you decide to pay the $24.99 for an annual subscription of Qore you also get to download the arcade game Calling All Cars for free.  It’s one of the PSN games with the highest amount of acclaim so it’s definitely a nice bonus.  In fact, the prospect of me getting free arcade games down the road was almost enough to persuade me to pony up for the subscription.  Still, the rest of the service (so far) is a little too thin for me to invest in at this point.  Another thing about Qore that bugged me was that they show you ads in between the different videos and slideshows.  Sure, you can skip them in many cases and they’re game or blu-ray related most of the time but still I found myself wondering "Didn’t I just pay for this?  Why are you showing me ads right now?"  Also I’m surprised that, aside from one advertisement, it was completely devoid of information about the hottest PS3 game coming out – Metal Gear Solid 4.  MGS4 drops on the 12th and I really think they could have generated a lot of buzz if they would have devoted the debut episode to it.

All in all the first episode of Qore was solid.  If the SOCOM beta opens up anytime soon I’ll feel like my money was much more wisely spent I think, but it shows promise for the future.  If you own a PS3 and you’re looking for a way to get excited about playing games on it again and not just using it as a blu-ray player, I’d recommend giving Qore a look.  If nothing else you get to pay to beta test a piece of software, and that’s pretty neat right?  Right???

P.S. - I finally beat Grand Theft Auto 4 today.  I want it to marinade in my head for a little while before I throw up a review though, which is why I focused on Qore this weekend.  Expect the review next Saturday!

Now Playing:
Flogging Molly – If I Ever Leave This World Alive (live)

A new Twitter clone: Plurk!

In the on-going quest to meet a need that’s probably already been fulfilled, this past week I was introduced to a new Twitter-esque service called ‘Plurk!,’ which, surprisingly enough, actually brings something new to the game.  We’re all familiar with the standard micro-blogging client whether through Twitter, Pownce, or Jaiku but Plurk takes a different approach.  It kind of reminds me of mad-libs (remember those?) where, instead of filling in the verb or noun, you fill in everything else around the verb.  So for instance, a minute ago I plurked that I was writing a blog post.  The interface is as follows:  (username) [list of verbs] textbox.  My username is dmkemick, I chose [is] from the list of verbs, and filled in ‘writing a blog post’ for the rest of the message.  That’s right, “dmkemick is writing a blog post.”  Now that I explain it, it kind of sounds needlessly complicated.

One thing Plurk has going for it is that it has a pretty cool interface.  Instead of your standard list of messages from you and your friends, everything is displayed as a timeline so you can see the times of all of the messages that are put up, and compare them relatively easily.  You can also scroll through the timeline by clicking and dragging your cursor which is cool.  Basically, everything shines with a fresh coat of AJAX so you shouldn’t have much trouble getting around the site.  Much like the other clients you can customize the way your page looks, giving yourself a custom theme, custom avatar, and even a custom logo in the top right.  This is where Plurk really brings the new hotness.

Plurk almost makes a game out of microblogging.  For putting up messages you get points throughout the day, and at the end of the day these points are rolled up to give you a karma rating.  Based on this rating you get some further customization options.  So, for instance, if your karma gets above 25 points you unlock a new group of icons to display on your page.  They’ve broken the karma levels up into three different tiers: karma above 0 gives you the standard icon set, karma above 25 unlocks 4 new icons, and karma above 50 unlocks the last set.  This kind of reminds me of an MMORPG for microblogging, and because I’m a gamer that sort of thing is right up my alley.  You can also get special indicators beside your avatar for inviting new people which is kind of cool.

The real question, as with all of these services is “Will It Scale?!”  Remember those “Will It Blend” videos?  It’s kind of like that except where as with Will It Blend the answer is almost always yes, with Will It Scale the answer is almost always no.  Twitter is the biggest culprit in this avenue.  It seems like everyday I’m hearing about how Twitter has gone down again, or you can’t reply to messages, or inviting friends is broken.  These services were usually rushed to success, and so the transition from staging to production and then sustainable production has been, for the most part, a rough one.  Of course contests in which tech luminaries are encouraged to get as many followers as possible probably don’t help matters much (and they wonder why the service goes down?).

Anyways, I received my invite to Plurk from Leo Laporte, who basically spammed everyone with his Plurk invites with the hope of testing its scalability.  At the time when this was going on (last weekend) Plurk was really new to the game, and was still running off of staging servers.  After Leo launched his assault the service went from a hundred testers to over 2000 users in a few hours.  Compared to the amount of users twittering all day that number is pretty paltry, but for a brand new service such a surge could be crippling.  Still, despite being out-numbered and ill-prepared Plurk kept plucking along.  That’s not to say that it will continue to scale if they ever reach Twitter status, but at least you would assume that Leo’s experiment would have taught them the importance of consistency.

Will I stick with Plurk?  Who knows.  I like the concepts but right now the community is still pretty small and I’m enjoying Pownce more than any of the alternatives.  If you came to this blog from Twitter you know that I use my Twitter account almost exclusively to pimp new blog posts.  I’d like to say the same won’t happen with Plurk but at the very least it can be used to reach a few more readers.

Now Playing:
Jay-Z – Party Life