Collect 10 skulls for the throne of Khorne!

A trailer has been released with gameplay footage from Vigil Games' forthcoming Warhammer 40,000 MMORPG, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online. (Or Warhammer 40K, for you godless metric system users.) I'm not much of an MMO guy, but what they're showing so far is interesting:



The trailer's pretty impressive, but I've long thought that Warhammer 40,000 was ill-suited to the MMORPG genre. The 40K universe mostly revolves around very large-scale military conflicts, and the Imperium of Man- the good guys, sort of, albeit by the standards of a universe where a genocidal amalgam of the Spanish Inquisition and Stalinist Russia is the last, best hope for mankind- is a rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian society. It's a context where the usual paradigm for MMOs, where players and their characters have a great deal of autonomy, doesn't really make much sense for the setting's most important faction.

That's fine for a strategy game like Dawn of War, but a setting that is less “lone hero or small band of adventurers running around on their own initiative and doing various quests” and more “enormous hordes of nameless, faceless canon fodder being ground into mulch” is less promising for an MMORPG. (Unless the game's main buffer class is the Commissar, who strengthens the stats of the party by periodically executing other party members, in which case I will buy at least three copies the day it comes out.)

That said, the look and style of what they've shown so far suggests that Vigil has a good feel for Warhammer, so that's cause for optimism. Time will tell.

I do have a minor nitpick about the video's opening narration: Saying “It is a time of war” in this context is sort of superfluous, given the Warhammer 40,000 universe's lack of times of things other than war. It's like specifying that World War I was a time of humans who breathed oxygen, or that the Roman Empire fell during a time of a time of things that were made of atoms, or that August 3rd, 1998 was a time when Pauly Shore should have been repeatedly kicked in the balls for being Pauly Shore. Aside from that, though, top notch.

I never thought I'd long for the quiet dignity of the U-Force

Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360's motion control system, heretofore called Project Natal, will instead be released under the name "Kinect." At this point I'm starting to wonder if Federal Trade Commission regulations require all video game motion control devices to have really, really stupid names. There's clearly some malign force at work when changing the name of a product to something as cringe-inducing as "Kinect" is at least arguably an improvement.

First Nintendo replaced the perfectly serviceable name "Nintendo Revolution" with "Wii." Then Microsoft, witnessing the Wii's explosive success and apparently reaching the conclusion that pre-Wii motion controls systems had failed to catch on because their names weren't stupid enough, dubbed their own motion controls system "Project Natal," which makes it sound like either some sort of obstetric equipment or (if you pronounce it "Na-TAHL") some war-torn Third World capital city of the sort that Christiane Amanpour does solemn voiceovers from for CNN. Now Natal is replaced by Kinect, which sounds like the sort of name you'd give to a cheap knock-off of Legos or Tinkertoys. The name does have the advantage of sort of resembling the word "kinetic" and so has something approaching actual relevance to the product, though if Microsoft is trying to imitate Nintendo's success in appealing to a broader audience I'm not sure a name vaguely evoking a term most people probably haven't used since fifth grade science class is really the way to go.
Meanwhile, there's Sony's entry in the field, PlayStation Move, which is arguably the most generic name ever given to a consumer product. It makes the branding of the cheap store-brand soda that my mom used to buy, with the brown label that just said "Cola" on it, seem like a riot of creativity by comparison. It's like making a candy bar called Eat, or marketing a clothing line called Wear, or re-releasing Daikatana with the title Uninstall. On the plus side, Move isn't obnoxiously "clever" like Wii or Kinect, and sadly that's enough to make it my favorite of the the three. It's troubling to realize that the best-named motion controller ever made was probably the Sega Activator, AKA this monstrosity:




There's just no marketing like 90s Sega marketing.

In which I scrape the bottom of the Rockstar Games-related controversy barrel

Red Dead Redemption has drawn a bit of criticism in Ireland for the character of “Irish,” a drunk, which the Irish news site Herald has criticized for invoking “the stereotype of the drunken Paddy.” Sadly, negative portrayals of the Irish have a long and unfortunate history in the world of gaming, dating back to the release of Hibernian Blaster for the ColecoVision in 1983 and arguably reaching their apex in 2007 with the release of Activision's Call of Duty: Black and Tan and the ill-received God of War clone To Hell or Connacht: The Adventures of Oliver Cromwell.

Red Dead Redemption developer Rockstar Games is no stranger to controversy over its portrayals of various ethnic groups, of course, having previously come under fire for it's portrayal of Haitians in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and for alleged white supremacist themes in the controversial 2008 PlayStation Portable release Grand Theft Auto: Aryan Brotherhood Prison Assassination Stories. Rockstar has not made any public comment specifically referencing the issue, but is reportedly unfazed by the criticism from Ireland and has announced that it's forthcoming entry into the city-building/strategy genre, SimGreedy Land-Owning English Bastard, will be coming out as in early 2011.

(I'm somewhat troubled to realize that this is the second time in less than a year that both Oliver Cromwell and the Aryan Brotherhood have somehow come up in the same post. What the hell am I doing with my life?)

Ben Kingsley in video game-related role that DOESN'T inspire profound dismay

Some rather neat news about another well-known actor whose voice will be appearing in a video game: Ben Kingsley will be providing the voice of the King of Mist Peak in Peter Moleyneux's forthcoming Fable III. It's Fable, so based on past precedent there's a good chance that by the time the game actually comes out “Oscar winner Ben Kingsley as the King of Mist Peak” will have been scaled back to “Guy who watches the Oscar awards ceremony on TV every year as the Viceroy of Mist Peak,” but let's stay positive.

I hope this goes well for Kingsley, a talented man whose career has followed a Hindenbergesque trajectory that somehow took him from winning the 1983 Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Gandhi to a recent supporting role in Uwe Boll's BloodRayne. Though not, sadly, Bloodrayne II: Deliverance. He's not listed in the cast for the forthcoming BloodRayne: The Third Reich, either. I can only hope he'll return for the inevitable BloodRayne IV: Bleed Harder so that his fans will finally get to see him reprise his role as whoever the hell he played in the first movie.

Ten years of PlayStation 2

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love came out for the Playstation 2 on the US on March 30th.That's not a big deal in itself (unless you're a die-hard fan of the strategy/RPG/dating sim/mecha genre), but last month marked the ten-year anniversary of the Japanese release of the PlayStation 2. The American anniversary will be this fall. A decade after its birth and three years after the release of PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 just keeps lumbering along.

It's been quite a 10 years, too. So many memories: The first PS2 game I ever played, Summoner. Still an underrated game, in my opinion.

The time a friend and I played through Metal Gear Solid 2 in a single marathon session, lasting late into the night. If you're familiar with both the late-game events of MGS2 and the psychological effects of sleep deprivation, you know that's not a good idea. Never before or since has a game caused me to repeatedly ask my friend “OK, have I fallen asleep in my chair and started dreaming, or did he actually just say that?”

Spending more time on the Disgaea games than I have ever spent on any other life activity, including (but not limited to) family gatherings, personal hygiene, schoolwork, and social engagements, EVER.

Becoming violently ill when I failed to anticipate the results of combining a rental copy of the PS2 port of Half-Life, my life-long vulnerability to motion sickness, the lingering effects of an indeterminate quantity of Guinness consumed earlier in the evening, and what later turned out to be the early symptoms of a strain of flu that was going around.

Loving Xenosaga. Then grudgingly tolerating Xenosaga II. Then loving Xenosaga III which, aside from its inexcusable failure to bring back Shion's glasses, was a fantastic comeback for the series.

Seizing control of the train in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and accelerating to such high speeds that it derailed as I approached a bridge, went flying over the side of the chasm the bridge spanned... and just started floating in mid-air, presumably because the programmers at Rockstar didn't anticipate my train fetish.

Being the only adult male in the Western hemisphere who actually liked Tidus in Final Fantasy X.

Joining every other adult male in the Western hemisphere in wondering why the hell Vaan was even in Final Fantasy XII.

Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5, and Ace Combat Zero. I let out an anguished Revenge of the Sith-style “NNNNOOOOO” when I found out that Ace Combat 6 was an Xbox 360 exclusive.

The RPG/horror series Shadow Hearts, or at any rate the first two. (The third one was just sort of meh.) Aside from the great gameplay, it broke the usual JRPG mold in all sorts of ways: Instead of the usual fantasy settings, it was set in the early 20th century in our own world. (Aside from some minor liberties taken with history. For instance, the real Grigori Rasputin died after being beaten, shot, and thrown into a river by a cabal of noblemen and reactionary politicians, rather then when his aerial fortress was destroyed by a Russo-Japanese shapeshifter in the sky over Petrograd.) The battles were turn-based but relied heavily on reflexes as well as strategy. Protagonist Yuri Hyuga was actually old enough to buy tickets to an R-rated movie without being accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Plus, it had what is probably the filthiest joke ever to appear in an American localization of a Japanese RPG. (Early on, the heroine is being held prisoner in a village where the people have turned to cannibalism. Yuri is having none of that, so he breaks in to demand her release and... well, from there it practically writes itself.)

Persona 3 unexpectedly becoming one of my favorite games of all time. Which I then sold online in mint condition for over $100 when its unexpected success caused a crippling shortage. Then finding a complete used copy in very good condition at my local Game Crazy for $40, buying it, and then selling that for over $100 as well. (Hey, arbitrage is an essential part of any market economy.) Then, shortly afterwords, cackling like some evil top-hatted Gilded Age plutocrat when Atlus announced that they were localizing Persona 3: FES and the once-lucrative Persona 3 used copy market collapsed. Then getting Persona 4, which managed to be even better.

Yes, it's been ten truly magical years of action, adventure, drama, obsessive behavior, profitable speculative bubbles, drunken first-person shooter-induced projectile vomiting, assorted angst-ridden bishonen both likable and unlikable, and Russo-Japanese shapeshifters making appalling puns about cunnilingus. A true golden age.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker to feature 40-minute Revolver Ocelot monologue about the Pepsi Challenge

The upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a prequel set in the 1970's starring Naked Snake/Big Boss, will will contain some rather garish product placement for real-world products including Axe Body Spray, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, and Doritos. (See here and here.) This has led to some pretty severe criticism from some fans, because apparently the verisimilitude of Metal Gear Solid's heretofore grittily realistic world of military action, international intrigue, evil sentient amputated limbs, casual fourth wall-breaking, men made out of bees, and postmodern hyperreality will be shattered by the presence of anachronistic soda logos.

Admittedly, a lot of the placement's look pretty tacky, but I think the products chosen are actually a good thematic fit. With the possible exception of the Kingdom Hearts series, I can't think of any other franchise that screams "stuff someone thought up sitting in a huge cloud of marijuana smoke at 2 AM" more than Metal Gear Solid. So, really, having part of the gameplay revolve around searching for Doritos seems entirely appropriate.

41m@ \/\/i11 pwnzor j00, p01ntm@n LOL!!1!!1, (Or, existence of F.E.A.R. 3 revealed)

The good news just keeps rolling in for me. A promotional image for the third game in the F.E.A.R. first-person shooter series has appeared in a Spanish gaming magazine, featuring recurring series antagonist/spooky psychic chick Alma, some creepy undead-looking guy, and what appears to be an enraged rifle-wielding Jesus all surmounted by the title "F.3.A.R." Should be good times.

About that title, though. I love the F.E.A.R,. series, and it's out of that very love that I say this: Using numbers as substitutes for letters is the most obnoxious form of communication ever conceived by human beings. Unless you're a time-traveling hacker who needs to send a coded message to your past self in 1989 and/or The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, just don't. When people hear that a new F.E.A.R sequel is coming out, they should be thinking "dramatic shootouts, creepy horror, and pissed-off brunettes who kill people with psychokinetic powers," not "subliterate 14-year-old on the Xbox Live support forums demanding to know why he's not allowed to use ''B1tchslapRaH0Wa420' as his gamertag."