Hard to believe there is no mention of Wet, and more importantly - Tekken 6 is an afterthought. Bad GR, bad! Where's Cartman and his stick.

NHL series (Multi) Be it on Dreamcast or EA's latest bug-filled ice shaver - it's always hockey. Shame that the NHL 2k series has become disappointing.
A buddy and I still play Halo:CE (best of series) split-screen, but we skip the boring levels: Pillar of Autumn, 343 Guilty Spark, The Library, Keys, The Maw - Halo had a great, albeit shallow, story. Then the flood show up and I'm expected to believe that zombie-aliens are going to eradicate all life in the galaxy... how? How the hell would the get off the halo, if no one went there in the first place. Dumb. But some one did go there... I'd have rather seen an alien form from "The Thing", but that wouldn't fit the Halo FPS.

Hockey is great, Halo:CE is great. Flood, eh - not so much.

I've never played Wii music, but I find it hard to believe that Metallica is better. I'm sure there are people out there that still enjoy Metallica for what ever reason, but after sitting through Some Kind of Monster, it's hard to have respect for these guys. They cry and whine, fight over stupid things, play dull riffs, and write some of the most idiotic lyrics known to man. Note on the lyrics, Metallica means for their lyrics to be serious and meaningful, while the creators of the 'Badger song' and 'Schfifty Five' (respectively) intended for their lyrics to be pointless and idiotic. When comparing the two, it's easy to place them on the same 105IQ level. Am I saying you need an IQ of 105 or less to enjoy Metallica, of course not - but it wouldn't hurt... unless being dumb is painful, it might be, I wouldn't know.

Here's a list of bands that would have made much more sense in place of James Hetfield's 19yr annoyance, and why:

Jimi Hendrix (Actual guitar talent)
The Kinks (You Really Got Me, amazing)
Tom Waits (covered by 100s of bands)
Eric Clapton (cocaine, Layla, many others)
Spinal Tap (haha, still better than Metallica)
Greenday (more 'Hits' than Metallica)
Tom Rollins Band (Tom could kill James)
Ramstein (more fire than Metallica, don't whine)
Deep Purple (hard not to love DP)
The Eagles (really, do you need me to explain?)
Finch (bigger balls than Metallica)
Foo Fighters (David Grohl can out-play any Metallica member)

and finally... Dick Dale (God of the surf song)

Yes, there are many, many more... but that should do for now. If you like Metallica, great, good for you, gold star. I'm sure they helped you coup with the loss of your virginity to a play-doh canister, and having to drink whiskey from a jar-o... whatever the hell that is.

Funny Note: Has anyone seen the MS press conference where they announced Guitar Hero Metallica, and the guy was all excited, he pumped his devil-horn-hand in the air and said 'Guitar Hero Metallica'... Dead Silent. Nothing, not even a cough. The guy stood there, thinking maybe it was an awed silence... but the silence was deafening, it screamed "WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT METALLICA?!" --- so the guy, a little disillusioned continued on with another topic, another game, but never really recovered. He wanted that applause, he wanted some cheers for GH:Metallica, he wanted them to care. But they didn't. Now sales are slowing for the upcoming title, I'm sure they will pick up again as advertising starts (golly, I can't wait for those commercials...) and the Nations' IQ will collectively drop a few points - and damn it, we just got those points after electing Obama.

A few years ago they wanted to fine and jail you for downloading their (and others') songs, but now that you can play those songs with a plastic guitar everything is cool? Pah. 105 sounds about right in that case.

Another thing that makes me irate... How the fuck could anyone support Bush, after the EIGHT years of SHIT he has put us through? What you did coke too then drove your car into a school building and got away with it - Amazing! So did GWB! Look here you un-educated repubs... George Dubya was the worst pick, not once but TWICE. Two f'n times you voted for a man that was worse spoken than my 3yr old niece.(that's not a joke, I am serious)

Thank you, to all the republicans that finally realized that a democrat was what this country needed. Even if they have an alternate agenda... bastards.

You know its funny, this feature went from funny to sour Really quick, based on user comments. GWB is and will always be an idiot. He appealed to the masses because his IQ was under 125. Tell me one reason you voted for GWB and I'll give you 5 reasons you were wrong. Obama has a lot cut out for him, no shit... given the past 8 years we've dealt with, I'd say Obama is playing 'clean up crew' to Bush's "I love to shit on everyone" plan.

People expect Obama to fail, and he may - but it's not his fault, George W. Bush has been fucking with our nation since he first took office. In his last few weeks as Pres. what has he been doing??? He's been looking after his friends - Not you the tax payers, his Multi-millionaire friends.

Some of you think that GWB did a great thing by declaring war on Iraq... Those that do, obviously slept though history. Further more, you've never really listened to the news. We are part of the UN, the fact that they never supported the USA should have gave you a clue... Yet here we are, facing a 'recession' --- Really? Yeah, a lot of corporations are losing money - but the blue collar workers are fairing well (mostly). Circuit City is bankrupt. Best Buy will gain the monopoly, unless WalMart, Target, or Kmart step up.

Honestly, here's the deal. You've basically kissed your own gravestone. By not shopping at certain stores, you have given up your freedom. BestBuy will be your only choice for appliances. Walmart will offer better prices on inferior products... The ESRB will be controlled by Vanity Fair - you'll never see pixelatted blood again.

-Codzprc

I resolve to finish all of the 7 games I bought during Q4 '08, and the 5 purchases for Q1 '09, by April - while making time for the gym.

Going well so far, jogging 2mi/day and just opened Fallout 3, having finished Fable 2(third time).

at Wh1t30ut --- THQ is the publisher, Volition Inc. is the developer. Same as it's been since the original.

Looking forward to the new edition of GeoMod. Destroying buildings with a well placed remote charge will be gratifying, goodbye load bearing walls and columns. Hello, pile a rubble.

Awesome guide, I found it the other night when I was drunkenly trying to traverse Southern Mexico. I got lost somehow so I decided to have a little fun whippin' shitties with the bike and running Lara into walls at high speeds. After finding the guide I realized I had taken the wrong path about 15 times in a row. Drinking and driving is never the answer, even in video games.

Stacked zombie mother feeding child. Then feeds on child.

I went to look for my original copy of Duke Nukem. Well, I found it - slight problem. It's on floppy... luckily it's on xboxlive, death to pig cops!

Crazy Bump's has to be the best translation in gaming history. Smuggler's Run was pretty fun back in the day (if I remember correctly) - I'll let the name "Crazy Bumps" go - but gotta ask why there's an apostrophe in "Bumps"?

Dead space is like no other zombie-killer you have ever played. And yes, it is a zombie-killer because the recently deceased have come back to life. Dispute the category as you might, the dead are back and want to kill you--- Zombie.

Most know by now, that instead of headshots - dismemberment is key, a welcomed feature in my view. What most seem to miss is the religious aspect of the game. Many view it as a rip on Scientology, seeing that Unitology is the religion in the game/movie/comic. However, replace "Unitology" with any other religious view (Christianity, Judaism, Catholicism, ect.) and you have a 'through the looking glass' effect. The things that are happening on the USG Ishimura are the same things that happened thousands of years ago, and continue through present day.

In Dead Space, as in today's life, a lot is dictated by the churches' decision. The relic held importance over human life - the arch of the covenant destroys it's guardians who are the only people allowed to see it(each guardian has suffered the same ailments for decades.)

The stab that Dead Space takes at religion in general is refreshing. Putting ones' faith in any object, seeking guidance through it, and prioritizing above life above all else - paints a perfect picture of how religion has controlled the masses for centuries - and apparently centuries to come.

**Read this before complaining**
I am merely commenting on what I took from the Dead Space mediums.

I don't despise any religion, but I think taking ANY text verbatim is ignorant - you were not there. (Huckleberry Finn could have been real, but wasn't)

My favorite point to make in any religious discussion: How many of you worship Jesus?? A lot? - Ok, Lets look at the commandments - thou shall not worship any idol before me. Jesus was not god. Some text say he embodied god - but most agree he was merely a son. Therefore, for centuries people have been worshiping a false idol - so they went to hell.

What does all of this have to do with Dead Space? Maybe you will play it differently - see the cutscenes in a new light. Watch the video and see new meaning.

I don't know - nor do I care. Similar feelings should have popped up while playing Assassin's Creed - but apparently, you missed those...

(I give this 6hrs till it is deleted)

...apologizeze... brilliant.

eeerr.. wanted to apologizeze for the typos in my past comments -- proof positive that writers need editors and proof readers.

all right, the continuation from above.....

....it's because of this that Devs take such liberties with what you do versus what they say happens in the story.

It is because of video games and their stories that(and this would make a great gamesradar list):

Darth Vadar has an apprentice

Yoda, Darth, and the apprentice appear in Soul caliber IV

Heihachi, Spawn, and Link appear in Soul Caliber II

Fable 2 has Master Chief amror and energy sword(LimEdi)

Gamorrean guards "rock out" in Lego Star Wars

Actually the whole Lego game series is a spoof on favored epics that if would hardly be tolerated if they were a book, or movie - but because we are allowed to take part, we accept it. Imagine the makers of "Superhero Movie" did an entire movie spoofing (the original) Star Wars or Indy... that's basically what the lego series is, but because it's fun and familiar we accept it.

The makers of "superhero movie" would go overboard anyway - seriously who watches those?

I got side tracked again, lack of sleep and massive amounts of beer...

The Matrix - I was ready to be Neo. I got Jada Pinkett Smith. I wanted to hack the matrix - I got an overly convoluted cheat screen. Which got me Neo but still...

Damn, I went from rambling to ranting pretty quick.

Wait, one last rant - the flood. Really? Did Halo need the "zombie" add on. Yeah yeah, people will say "They aren't 'zombies', they are a virus or bacterial organism that feed from and reanimates dead flesh!" Then I will pause, slap them and say "ZOMBIE!" -- Villain archetype are few, and fall into specific categories - Zombie covers a lot, even if it tacks 'alien' in front of it.

Sure, you could call them 'monsters' but they are not. Dead Space calls them monsters, but their 'monsters' are reanimated HUMAN corpses that have been mutated due to some 'relic' thingy... like in "THE DIG" kinda-ish. So the are 'mutant zombies'... yay! I bought the game, by the way - it's amazing and I love it -- at least until Fable 2, Far Cry 2, and Fallout 3 come out.

Let's see - I did the ramble, the rant... ah yes, time for the rave. If you are not excited for any of the three games I listed above - you obviously have plans to tour China, Japan, Australia, Fiji, and hotspots over the winter months. Because the next few months are going to be amazingly gam-gasmic.

Here's why(US dates release dates)

dead space Already out

fable 2 Tuesday, October 21, 2008

far cry 2 Tuesday, October 21, 2008

fallout 3 Tuesday, October 28, 2008

gears of war 2 Friday, November 7, 2008

C&C: RA3 Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Left 4 dead Monday, November 17, 2008

Tomb Raider Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Underworld

Project Origin Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Prince of Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Persia

Ghost Busters Q4 2008

Honestly, I don't care about Prince of Persia - since Warrior Within gave into popular trends - but the newest iteration doesn't look bad. Every other game is something to be excited about - with a special head nod to Ghost Busters. Watching the gameplay vids, which captured and expanded upon great film moments was promising - but I want to cross the streams on Zule!! Plus original cast voice acting and script writing guarantees my money.


***last note - lava_lamp: how ironic that you comment on a post in which I mention your name sake for an adventure game puzzle.

Good luck and good night.

fleshcrawl - I'm not sure if you are talking about me or the author of the article -- but either way, we are not saying that the stories aren't great, just that depending on who is playing the character and how they are playing (based on the character's back story) is somewhat a betrayal of the story in general.

Take GTA IV for example. Just because Niko reacted aggressively toward one of the "to kill or not kill" characters, didn't necessarily dictate your actions. Therefore you actively changed the story -- in a sense, it didn't matter because it only added or removed some missions, and Niko was portrayed as a conflicted yet reluctant character anyway.

However, in games where the character's personality is well defined (devil may cry, mgs, Ninja gaiden) - if you as a player are not living up to the game character's already set standards of excellence, then you as a player have failed.

That's what the article was trying to get at and (I think) I was alluding to. The fact that these impossible standards are set for players to live up to (through the story line) and some, if not most barely scrape by through luck and many deaths to learn by.

Also, the article talks about how your actions really don't effect the story in most games. Meaning that if you die - the game doesn't end and send you back to the beginning or just end and never let you play again. Gaming wouldn't be as popular as it is today if that were the case.

You make it to a checkpoint, battle on, hit another checkpoint - maybe die, reload the last checkpoint. No other form of media, except the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, have such a system. Which creates a double edged sword for game developers. They want to give you as many options as possible, but at the same time give you a great story. The result is, you play through from plot point to plot point, and they fill in the blanks.

Personally, I loved kotor, mass effect, and Uncharted - MGS' story was deep but ultimately never held my interest, though I have played all of them since the 3d debut on Ps2. Silent Hill never caught on either with me - but that's not to say they were bad stories - just not my thing.

Anyway, I see it as a possibility over the next few decades that develops will create a way to have a 100-if-not-90-ish% story telling capable game - but it will be very ambiguous - definitely ambitious and ultimately costly, both financially for the developer and time-wise for the player.

Since I am rambling, I'll cover some of the points I thought of the other day...

For a story to be effective in today's games, they either have to immerse the player so deeply into the character life - through ambiguity (like Halo:CE, and Gears of War) - or offer multiple paths and outcomes (ie. Mass Effect, Fable 2, Far Cry 2) -- anything in between is hit or miss depending on the gamer.

Another factor that is rarely taken into the matter of "Good vs. Great" games, is who you know and what they think. Most gamers know what they like, and what they may like - but outside influences (friends, media), may cause a gamer to try something new - Halo Wars is seeking to bridge a gap, and likely will if the game can stand up to longtime RTS players. I was sold when it was first announced, being a long time AoE and C&C player, and a Halo:CE fan.
*note
2 & 3 were decent but never lived up to the original for me - the story went places that I thought were rushed and miss placed - they also froze my screen for a voice over... not cool.
/note*

Going back to the point, gamers know that hype is a marketing tool. Developers show you the best screens and videos they can. Devs tell you the best parts of the game play you'll experience. What they never mention is how often you will do or experience these parts - ofttimes they will become stale, irritating, and frustrating.

There is no set formula for a game. You could play for 2 minutes or 2 hours before being met with a FMV or in-game cinematic - it's because of this that Devs take such liberties with what you do versus what they say happens in the story.

I'm running out of characters again for my post, but I will end with this and a pre-written note: --- actually, I'm getting low so I'll do another one, sorry.


Darth Vader Has a secrete apprentice
*By the way, all game examples for references are they only ones I could think of - seriously it's 4am on a Tuesday, and I need to go and get Dead Space soon..*

damn, I should have read more of jimsondanet's comments - he covered a lot of what I said -- oh well.

The point is, which out structure, there would be no story worth telling... The game would get lost in itself and become enigmatic. Never really knowing what to be, what to do or how to respond to an action. A new type of AI would need to be present to calculate every possible outcome, and the result may be worse than the offspring of a Metal Gear game and the puzzles from any adventure game (fish+toaster+string=lava lamp.)

Strangely, there are promising "story driven" games that are coming out very soon - and all begin with the letter "F":

Fable 2
Fallout 3
Far Cry 2

I just thought of some more points to make, but I'll wait till gameradar offers me a freelance position... so I guess you'll never read them.

An amazingly insightful article. Not so much on a "ground-breaking" level but more in a "pointing out the obvious, that everyone seemed to miss" sense. It is true that games, for the most part, would receive a resounding 'F' when it comes to story-telling. Some do offer up great stories overall.

That's not to say that novels should be written about them, for instance, the Halo novels muddied waters that weren't clear to begin with (see gameradars'Halo: the story so far'). There is hope though, future titles and systems will only increase developers abilities to create and invent seemingly endless ways of telling a story via actual gameplay.

Most games will retain a rigid, scripted structure. Without it, you could potentially be playing the same game over and over - and that's just not fun. That's one reason why games do follow a set structure, there's a specific story someone wants to tell - even if it was an afterthought to the gameplay.

While watching the Fallout 3 walkthrough vids on gametrailers.com - the player had agreed to blow up a town, but was given the honor of 'throwing the switch' - in the video, they went ahead and did it, but I wondered "What if I changed my mind and decided to kill the NPCs that gave me the mission right before flipping the switch, and leave this bomb active so I could blow it later in the game?" Hopefully, that choice will be mine to make.

The outcome of that may merely make my game a bit shorter/longer depending on how the NPC/town missions are scripted. And that is really what it all comes down to - the script. Developers spend countless hours making the game functional (running, jumping, shooting groins) - some developers, the likes of Lionhead, Valve and now Bethesda, spend even more hours linking in-game actions to end game results.

A true sandbox game would end-up like your GI Joes and Lego men in a real sandbox when you were playing as kid. You start the game, maybe build a castle/fort, then place your troops -- but OH NO! A giant flood hits(your little brother and a garden hose) and traps some soldiers under the rubble/sand. Now there are only a few troops left and you must make your way out of the swamp/desert alive. All of these events would have to be completely random, just a roll of the dice.

Sound like fun? Hell no! You just built a sweet-ass castle, that was destroyed for no reason. On the plus side, your game has completely changed, you were playing a RTS and now maybe a FPS/RPG, so that's cool. However, in a truly open world, one where anything is possible at anytime - how would it end?
*side track*
Storage media capacities are becoming larger by the day - and thankfully cheaper! There is, or will be, a limit to how much information can be stored on a disc. Companies get around this by offering downloadable content now -- here's an idea - and you heard it from ME first (probably), put your game on a fucking flash drive and sell it that way - USB2 is fast enough to stream a game, hell I loaded 3Gb of music to my blackberry in under a minute. Seriously I should patent that. 360's scratched disks? Not a problem!
*end ST*
What the hell was I talking about? Right, Story telling. Because a specific story needs to be told, certain events need to be followed. Though those events can be altered by in-game actions with some games - the events still unfold, one way or another, as scripted. You are inevitably limited by a developers time constraints, financial situation, and foresight. Do we really want the 'butterfly effect' to happen in our games? Because we decide to try out a new weapon on hapless-stander-by-X should our love interest be killed 40 game hours later? Is it really worth using an entire tree to print each game guide that would go with this game? Maybe.

Besides probably having a downloadable guide, the other accomplishments in creating a truly sandbox and butterfly game would be Noble Prize material. 'Hours' of gameplay would not be a factor, 'Years' would be a fitting term. imagine a world in which you could do anything but had no control over what the bible belt would call 'acts of god' - a game that could seamlessly switch from RTS to RPG to FPS to Sport and so on -- and the cast of 'villains' was forever changing. One day aliens attack - then the next zombies. But before you kill all the zombies, the aliens return with more numbers, and in the midst of all this a feminine looking dude decides to try to take over the world. Then a flash of light comes from the sky, you are rendered unconscious, and when you wake up you have lightening powers! And the outcome, should you ever get to it, depends on every choice you've made over the past 500 hours - but because you stepped on the golden flower 5mins ago, you die and need to reload -- when did you save last? yesterday?

Now take all that and add multiplayer and co-op, and you have yourself a game.
The point is, which out structure, there would be no story worth telling. Continued Below.......

My quotes got weird... stupid quotes... [Cartman voice, like he's talking to his mom] "Hey, um.. gamesradar moderator guy. Could, could you please fix my quotes for me, pleeeease?"

GR Mod: [Stabbing to fingers into my neck] "TSST!"

.... what you guys didn't see that episode?