Crazy Kids

Last Tuesday my boys got a veritable cornucopia of new gaming to dive into. Over the last two days, I woke up to find them playing Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 on the Gamecube. /me shakes head.

I asked what was up and it turns out that they just happened to have all the tools to play them, where we didn’t quite have everything needed for all the Wii titles. I’d been slowly adding the nunchuk controllers to the Wii remotes to add up to four remotes and four nunchuks, but the nunchuk purchasing fell behind and we only had two of them. Three boys… two nunchuks… hence they decided not to play Mario vs. Sonic, Mario Strikers Charged or even Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 until they could all play together.

Remotes + Nunchuks definitely makes the Wii a pricey proposition. It’s probably the single biggest expense beyond the console if you have a full family that plays. We’ve got to invest $240 in controllers to go with the $250 system. It’s somewhat justified by the technology inside, and actually one of the more ingenious parts of Nintendo’s marketing of the system. The controllers are the high tech part of the Wii, and one way they reduced the initial cost of the system is by transferring that larger expense out of the Wii console and into something you can add on in the quantity that you need. It certainly puts Wii pricing into the “Next Generation” level of systems. (By comparison, it’s only $50 per controller for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. That’s still pricey in my opinion.)

After discovering this little issue today, my wife asked the boys if they wanted to combine some of their saved money from allowance to get a nunchuk. There was a short period of deliberation and then it was off to Target for one more nunchuk. Dad’s going to have to buy the fourth one sometime soon I think. Fortunately, we’re using rechargeable batteries to save on that expense.

On a totally unrelated note, it’s the end of 2007! I doubt I’ll be updating tomorrow, but I do plan to update every day starting January 1, 2008. I don’t think I’ll be contributing to any end of year magazine lists anywhere this year. So right here at The Long Shot starting on Tuesday I’ll be posting a game a day counting down from ten to one in my top ten games of 2007.

Christmas Shoot Fest

If you follow the industry at all, it’s no secret that this has been the year of the first-person shooter. The list is long and features some great entries into both off and online play, but fans of multiplayer have been the biggest winners.

As noted in my Christmas loot post, I received Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as one of my gifts and I’ve dumped a whole lot of time into it already. It’s actually right next to Team Fortress 2 among the best games I’ve played this year. The game is so much deeper than any other multiplayer online game I’ve played other than the original Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. As Tom Chick sometimes notes about real-time strategy games that appeal to the hardest of the hardcore in their particular genre, Quake Wars is the genre wonk’s first-person shooter.

In the span of one map you’ll shift from defense roles to attack roles and everything in between. Sometimes you’re playing a variation of capture the flag while at others you’re in what amounts to deathmatch on a massive scale. It’s an impressive conglomeration of play styles that requires you to always be on your toes and paying attention to the current objective.

I think it does help to have a soft spot for Quake 2 or 4’s Strogg. When you play their side, a little bit of Quake history goes a long way. I was in heaven when I was able to equip myself with a hyperblaster, but everyone might not be as excited about that as me. Still, if you have any interest in the Quake universe, this is a superb game that I think any fan of the teamplay online first-person shooter needs to play. It takes a game or two to grasp all that’s going on, but once you do, you’ll find your mind racing with tactical possibilities while still enjoying some of the best point and shoot gameplay around.

Oh yeah, the vehicles are a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Merry Christmas!

For those of you who look for the sleigh and reindeer every year, I hope you had a Merry Christmas day.

There was much excitement here at the Long residence as the kids tore through about ten packages each. Top gifts were an electric guitar for my youngest son, Super Mario Galaxy and an MP3 player for my oldest, and Mars Mission Legos and the Flytech Dragonfly for the middle boy.

I have to admit that the Dragonfly is a pretty amazing bit of inexpensive technology. We took it outside and were pretty much stunned at how well it worked. My wife was even a little creeped out by how closely it replicated a real bug! Hopefully we can keep it intact long enough to get some good use out of it. It seems a little bit fragile.

I wasn’t able to pilot Mario in Galaxy yet, but the game sure did look fantastic while watching my son play. I’m so glad that we waited until Christmas as it made the game that much more of an event. I kind of wish more gamers would have children so it would let them see just how much excitement one game can be when you wait for it like that. I’ll definitely be playing myself as time allows over the next month.

The electric guitar was a huge hit with my youngest, who doesn’t know how to play but sure does want to hammer on it. Hopefully Santa has turned him onto a lifelong interest in playing music.

As for me, it was a good year, as it almost always is. I’m pretty lucky in that I have family who like to get me the stuff I enjoy most. While I’ve complained a bit this year that I’ve already got too many games to play and didn’t need any more, receiving a bunch of them today certainly didn’t bother me a bit. I can finally get caught up on the late year PC releases. Under the tree I found Enemy Territory: Quake Wars along with a Razer Tarantula and Diamondback 3G. I think the keyboard allows me to macro an entire World of Warcraft raid into the push of a single button.

At my in-laws, I received Star Wars: Best of PC which is one of the best collections of PC games you can buy for one low price. It includes Knights of the Old Republic, Empire at War, Republic Commando, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and Battlefront all in one box. It’s also got a Galaxies 15-day trial. All of these games are new to me on the PC, though I’ve dabbled in a couple on the consoles. They happened to come out when I was deep in reviews for the magazine so just never had time to play them. At $35-$40, this is one of the best values in PC gaming right now, and even better as a Christmas gift. That wasn’t all, though. I have Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and The Witcher from the in-laws too. I’m really looking forward to both of them.

The boys got some other games… Pokémon Emerald for middle boy Isaac because it’s the only way to get Rayquaza while Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Mario Strikers Charged, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 (DS), Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS), and Mario vs. Sonic at the Olympic Games rounded out the videogaming from Santa between all three of them. Needless to say, we’ve got a lot to entertain us here for the foreseeable future. I don’t plan on buying much in January, though I’ll probably take advantage of the sale on Steam this week to get the id Super Pack. That’s just way too much cool stuff for a very reasonable price.

I hope everyone else was as lucky as me, and if you’ve got Quake Wars or Call of Duty 4, I’ll certainly look for you online. I’ll play as often I can between building Lego kits, helping a little boy strum the guitar, and flying a dragonfly around the neighborhood. I’ll also update here a few times, too. All of these games will figure into my own little end of year roundup of the best games I played in 2007. That might take a little while to get to though. Wouldn’t want to be too hasty in making up that list!

What do people do with the PSP?

They continue to sell a very large number of these things, but there are never any games that sell anywhere near what you’d expect from what seems to be a successful system.

I am truly baffled by this phenomenon. Never has a video game system sold so well while never landing games in the top ten regularly. So the question remains, what in the world do people do with their PSP?

Are people using it to watch movies? - Certainly not legitimately purchased ones. Sales of those stink.

Are people using it to listen to music? - Maybe… it would certainly be a good explanation since you’d never really see the purchases involved in doing so (if they even happen in the first place).

Are people using it to play games? - Some must be doing that, but what they’re buying is mostly unknown.

Are people using it to play “homebrew” and emulation? - This seems like the most logical explanation, but if they are that means people are way more tech savvy than we think they are. They’ve got to be messing with firmware, downloading the emulators, the ROMs, setting it all up and then finally using it to play games, old ones.

Even if the users are split amont all of the above, the sheer number of units sold seems to indicate a userbase large enough to create some hit game titles. They just never appear. So we have to conclude that a large segment of the ownership doesn’t spend any money on software for the system, ever.

Folks may not remember it now, but Hideo Kojima warned about this when creating the first Metal Gear products for PSP. He said Sony themselves didn’t really know what the device is, and that it didn’t seem to be focused on games. I made that same argument before it shipped, noting that a device that seems so broadly positioned isn’t going to be a good place for game developers. Sony marginalized games on the device to pump up all the other features. People disagreed with that, very forcefully, and yet here we are today looking at a PSP market that defines games as a marginalized market for that machine.

More Defensive Gaming

“Casual” games makers never seem to hesitate to create clones of popular game types. Stephen Totilo of MTV loves Desktop Tower Defense, and now your mom can take on a challenge remarkably similar to that game of the year.

I came home tonight to find my wife playing Garden Defense on Real Arcade.

The idea of garden gnomes blasting bugs out of my backyard is pretty appealing. Those guys have to get up and walk around when I’m not looking. They’re creepy.

 The design of Garden Defense hews closer to the original with set paths for the creeps to follow and a more focused design. I’m still not convinced the game is worth of being on anyone’s end of year list, but clearly its influence continues to spread.