So Where's "Let's Make A Game?"

So you might be asking, "Where's the 'Let's Make a Game' feature? You gave up, didn't you? I knew it! I totally called it."

Slow down, partner. I didn't quit. A variety of factors led to-

"See! He's making excuses! I knew he would quit all along! He's just a-"

*GUNSHOT*

All right, now we can talk. Let's Make A Game didn't go away, but right now we're in the process of buying a home, which takes up a lot of time. My evenings are pretty much occupied with paperwork and buying supplies.

Plus, I don't like what I'm working on. I feel like I'm polishing a turd. I don't feel passionate about a dumb little shooting game. I want to make something that's more personal and, frankly, fun. I have a few ideas in mind, but nothing solid yet.

I also have to get out of the mindset that I need art assets and music RIGHT NOW or I can't program. Heck, I can make a game with rectangles and insert the art later if I want. I don't even have to insert art if I don't want to and just make it "Rectangle World."

Crap. I have to copyright that quick.

Tony La Russa Retires

I hate the Cardinals. I hate Tony La Russa. I hate how all of his teams have sticks up their collective bottoms. I hate how they think that the "right way to play" means you can't have fun.

However, Tony La Russa invented the modern bullpen, and his success is undeniable. So, happy retirement, TLR. Now get out of the NL Central and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

In Which I Pick A Hockey Team

It's time for me to pick a hockey team to follow.

I say this because usually I would start following basketball in passing around this time of year, even though I hate basketball. It just gives me someone to root for, while not necessarily caring about the sport. However, since the Bucks are frequently terrible with no hope to ever do anything worth paying attention to, it's time to focus my efforts elsewhere.

Plus, hockey has the best trophy in all of professional sports. The Lombardi Trophy is nice, but it doesn't come close to the Stanley Cup in terms of history. Hockey's also got the coolest game (pun not intended) in the Winter Classic and an awesomely rugged history.


I've always had a passing (hah!) interest in hockey, but it's difficult to follow here without any pro team in Wisconsin. Here's what baffles me:

Fact: Wisconsin is practically a solid sheet of ice for nine months out of the year.

Fact: The University of Wisconsin has one of the best hockey programs in the country.

Fact: People here actually like hockey.

Fact: There is no professional hockey team in Wisconsin (aside from the Milwaukee Admirals, who don't really count).

Fact: There are, however, hockey teams in Phoenix and San Jose, places where ice does not naturally exist unless it is in the form of a margarita, which naturally form in the Great Margarita Springs nearby Alamogordo, New Mexico. Alamogordo's slogan: "Our name means 'Fat Alamo!'"

So, yeah, Tampa Bay has a hockey team and they don't want it. Wisconsin has no hockey team and we could support it. Figure that out.

So I'd like to pick a hockey team to follow, but I have to set some ground rules first.

1. No warm-weather teams. If there is no time during the year that you can play hockey outdoors in your city, then you shouldn't have a team. That leaves out Phoenix, Anaheim, Tampa, Carolina, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Jose, Nashville, and "Florida," wherever that is.
2. Not the Blackhawks. I know it's the closest team to where I live, but I hate Chicago teams on principle. It's a Wisconsin thing.
3. I'm not going to follow a team that's currently great. I don't want to be a frontrunner or bandwagon fan. Picking a team just because they're good isn't what being a fan is about. You have to suffer through some losses before you can really call yourself a fan. That leaves out Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit and New Jersey (due to their run in the 90's).

With that in mind, here's what's left:

New York Islanders

New York Rangers

Philadelphia Flyers

Buffalo Sabres

Montreal Canadiens

Ottawa Senators

Toronto Maple Leafs

Washington Capitals

Winnipeg Jets

Columbus Blue Jackets

St. Louis Blues

Calgary Flames

Colorado Avalanche

Edmonton Oilers

Minnesota Wild

Vancouver Canucks

Let's narrow that down. First, I can't root for a New York team. As much as I like the city itself, rooting for a New York sports team when you don't live there is like rooting for the house at a casino. I don't want to root for the Capitals, since there's something about Ovechkin I don't like. I don't even know the guy and have never seen a picture of him, and yet he annoys me for some undetermined reason.

Ohio sucks, so no Blue Jackets. I don't like the St. Louis Cardinals, so I can't in good conscience root for the Blues. The Avalanche are out too because I hate the whole "Hey, our name is singular even though it should be plural" thing. That rules out the Minnesota Wild, too. Seriously, what is a "Wild?" Can an abstract concept even be a team name? I'm going to name any sports team I buy "The Existential Ennui." Make a logo for that.

That leaves us with:

Philadelphia Flyers

Buffalo Sabres

Montreal Canadiens

Ottawa Senators

Toronto Maple Leafs

Winnipeg Jets

Calgary Flames

Edmonton Oilers

Vancouver Canucks

Look at that, mostly Canadian teams. Since Wisconsin shares a border with Canada, we've always felt somewhat close to America's Hat. In many ways, due to our relative isolation, we share lots of similarities to Canada, like winter sports, lumberjacks, maple syrup and goofy accents.

Anyway, let's go further. We'll say no to the Flyers, because Philly fans suck. I'm cutting out the Canadiens and the Canucks because I'm not Canadian. It would be like a Canadian fan rooting for a team called "The Scooter-Riding Overeaters" or "The People Who Infest Walmart." It's same reason I'll eliminate the Leafs, besides its odd grammatical pluralization.

That leaves us with:

Buffalo Sabres

Ottawa Senators

Winnipeg Jets

Calgary Flames

Edmonton Oilers

All right, crunch time. We'll make some tough decisions here.

The Sabres have only been in the Finals twice, which certainly qualifies for the "don't pick a winner" stipulation. However, they've only been around since 1970. It would be like trying to pick a football team and ending up with the Seahawks. I'm looking for a little more tradition here. Sorry, Buffalo.

The Senators have an odd history. The original incarnation that lasted until the 30's had 11 Stanley Cup wins but folded due to financial problems. They were revived in the 1990's as an expansion team. We'll put a pin in this one, just because of the old-time history.

The Jets have a fractured history as well, but all of the team's history has stayed with the Phoenix Coyotes. It's kind of like the Frankenstein Cleveland Browns in the NFL, and I'm not sure I like that. Plus, their original incarnation (that recently moved from Atlanta) was only around starting in the 70's. I'll pass.

The Flames aren't consistent frontrunners. They've won only one Stanley Cup in their history. I even like the name "Calgary." However, the Oilers had Wayne Gretsky in the 80's. Dang. This is a tough call.

So we're down to three teams: The Senators, the Flames and the Oilers. I'm going to have to go with my gut on this one.

Calgary Flames? You have a new fan. Congratulations, I'm sure you're very proud.

Kirby and Battlefield 3: A Study In Contrasts

Kotaku does their Gut Check series and asks whether or not you should buy a certain game based on their gut instinct. The placed a big, fat "NO" on Kirby Return to Dreamland. Their explanation?

"The game is an ordinary platformer, a one to four-player game of running, jumping, inhaling enemies, appropriating their powers and occasionally wielding timed hyper-powers like a sword or hammer that are almost as big as your TV screen. In a five-minute session that's charming. At length, it's numbing and asks its players to make no interesting decisions. Kirby has an amazing amount of moves in this game, but few that make a difference... The problem is that this new game is simple without excelling at anything."

"It looks like the sort of game that will be just as entertaining a year from now as it is today, and that's why I'm giving it a pass for the time being... If my only gaming platform were the Nintendo Wii I'd be rather depressed. As it stands I am a well-adjusted multiplatform gamer, and Kirby will still be there when I'm ready for him."

Compare this to Battlefield 3's Gut Check, which received a Yes from all three writers:

"This is the new bar for online first-person shooters, when it works... [on single-player] Worse still, the Xbox 360 version of the game shows significant slow down during key firefights. I'm not sure why the game stutters and slows, but I suspect it has to do with the destructible environment, something that's a nice touch but isn't worth the cost if that's what is causing this problem."

"I'm giving it a conditional yes. A half-assed response, maybe, but this seems a half-assed game."

OK, so let's review:

Kirby is a side-scrolling platformer which provides exactly what it advertises. Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter which provides exactly what it advertises. The multiplayer in Kirby is boring according to some. The multiplayer in Battlefield 3 is great according to some. The single-player in Kirby is entertaining. The single-player in Battlefield 3 is boring. Kirby is polished.  The 360 version of Battlefield 3 has some slight technical issues with slowdown and early server problems.

Yet, one is worth your time and one is not. Gotcha.

This sort of thing bugs me. I'm not the kind of person who looks for bias and screams about it when it's not there, but come on. It's so obvious that the writers were predisposed to like Battlefield 3, so therefore they gloss over its issues. They were not predisposed to like Kirby Return to Dreamland, so therefore the minor issues they find are magnified.

I've harped on this before but I'll say it again: Game reviews need to change. You can't look at them through the lens of what you want the game to be, but what it offers itself up as. Kirby offers itself up as a Kirby game updated for the Wii. At this, it excels. Battlefield 3 offers itself up as a competitive first-person shooter. At this, it excels. It's not a binary function of "this game good, this game bad," nor should it be.

One Final Reason Why Standalone Handheld Devices Are Here To Stay

There's one final reason that standalone handheld gaming devices are here to stay.

5) A different market. My wife loves her iPod Touch, and my sister-in-law loves her's too. They use it all the time and have a great time getting apps and trying out different functions on them.

My sister-in-law plays a lot of games on it, but if you would ask her if she was a gamer, she would probably respond that videogames are dumb and she doesn't waste her time with them right before she goes back to play Cut The Rope for two hours. My wife would also say the same thing before she spends hours playing Bookworm.

If I ask them to play a game on the DS or even the Wii, they'll scoff because "those are too hard." If they really try one of them, they find that it's not too hard at all, but there's still that perception that it's too difficult and they can't do it.

To be sure, the iOS and Android market is eating into Nintendo and Sony's handheld market share to some extent, but it may not be as widespread as you think. Sometimes, we end up seeing some rather misleading graphs that could make us think one thing instead of the other.

For instance, take a look at these two hypothetical pie charts. They're both in percentages. Which chart shows the fewest amount of DS and PSP users?

It's obvious, right? It's the second graph! However, percentages don't tell the whole story. In the first graph, we've worked the figures so that there are 1,000 people in our sample size. In the second graph, there are 2,000 people. Here's how that breaks down in a bar chart:

Data used for the first pie chart

Data used for the second pie chart

The percentages work out exactly the same, but the amount of gamers has changed. We're not seeing a decrease in one market, but an increase in another which skews the percentages. "Percentage of decrease" isn't always a good indicator of how healthy the system is doing. We need more data to see whether or not the market for the DS, PSP and 3DS is shrinking. Fortunately, we have this:

"Android was listed as the best-selling smartphone platform worldwide in Q4 2010 by Canalys with over 190 million Android devices in use by October 2011." - Source

"Recorded sales have been growing steadily thereafter, and by the end of fiscal year 2010, a total of 73.5 million iPhones were sold... Approximately 6.4 million iPhones are active in the U.S. alone. ... Over 1 million 4S models were sold in the first 24 hours after its release in October 2011." - Source

Now, consider this: Even with the staggering amount of Android and iOS devices being sold and currently in use, most people STILL prefer to do their gaming on a standalone gaming device. Now, tell me that doesn't count for something.

Why Standalone Handheld Gaming Devices Won't Die

To some degree, we are seeing the end of the dominance of standalone handheld gaming systems.

We will never see another run like Nintendo had between 1989 through 2010, where every handheld device they offered was a bestseller, no matter how underpowered it was. I mean, the Game Boy sold countless units with a green, blurry screen. The original Game Boy Advance had no backlight in the screen. The original DS was bulky and weird and went up against the technically superior PSP. Yet, whatever they did found success.
That's not going to happen again, ever. Handheld gaming devices are starting to tail off, and some people are already shoveling dirt on them before the body is even cold. It's not completely over for handheld gaming devices. How come?

1) Quality. The gaming library for iOS is enormous, and Android is catching up fast. Yet, of all these games, how many are actually good?

See, a game that's released through a major company like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, or others has to go through a vetting process. You make your prototype, determine if it plays well and will sell, and then you release it. If the game doesn't pass the early steps it's not going to make it out the door, since there are quality controls in place to make sure what's being released is halfway decent.

Does that mean that crap gets out the door anyway? Oh, absolutely. However, the ratio of chaff to quality is much higher when there's more money at stake for a developer and publisher.

If you, as a developer, have nothing to lose, there's less incentive to make sure you're releasing a solid product. That's why reviewers go wild over something like Infinity Blade or Jetpack Joyride: Because someone actually took the time to make a decent game in an environment where no one does that.

2) Complexity. Look at the controls for some of the more major games. Angry Birds is just sliding and tapping on the screen. Cut The Rope is sliding your finger. Plants Vs. Zombies is tapping the screen. Infinity Blade is sliding your finger.

These are all very simple games at their core. You could say, "Well, yes, and simple games have been proven to be effective. Take a look at the DS: The DS enabled simple controls in a game, and it was successful. The Wii and Kinect both allow for simple controls, and those have been successful. You yourself have championed simplicity in games. Now you're saying that simple controls aren't effective? Make up your mind!"

All right, then, how would you port a game like Uncharted on the iPhone? You would have to simplify movement and dumb down lots of functions of the game, while removing lots of other features. You would end up with a very neutered version of Uncharted at the end that wouldn't please fans of the original and wouldn't win any converts.

A game like Super Mario Bros. would also be problematic. Can you put the buttons on the screen? Yes, but now you're covering up screen real estate. Can you make the movement be handled by tilting and tapping the screen? Maybe, but now you're losing precision. You would have to make the game far easier and more forgiving of missteps.

Heck, even Pac-Man would be rough. You would also have to take up screen real estate to fit a joystick or controls. Conversely, you could have the player touch the playing field itself for control, but that obscures the position of the ghosts and pellets and isn't that accurate.

The point of all this is that touchscreen and smartphone gaming doesn't have universal appeal. There are certain games that they do well, and certain games that they do not do well.

Now, take a look again at the DS and Wii. Originally, the DS did indeed show that simple touch-based controls were effective. After a few short years, the games grew more complex and were no longer quite so simple.

The Wii's controls were also very simple, but the market for the Wii quickly died out. The audience grew beyond the Wii, while those who made games for it just kept rehashing the same simply controlled games that they always did. (By the way, who's up for some Just Dance 3? Anyone up for Game Party 2? No?)

The point is this: There will be some people who absolutely love those very simple games. Heck, I've fallen in love with Jetpack Joyride and Angry Birds. But just because I like to eat popcorn every once in a while doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good steak, and there will always be people who want a deeper experience than smartphone gaming can provide.

3) Battery life. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Battery life is what makes portable gaming work. Looking at the example of Infinity Blade: Yes, it looks beautiful, but that beauty comes at a price. I'm not going to be able to play Infinity Blade on a plane or extended trip. My battery will run out before too long.

That's part of why graphics on portable systems aren't that amazing. While graphics technology has improved dramatically over the last twenty years, batteries are still pretty much batteries. That means that you have to work within those limits unless you want to drain it.

That was one of the major reasons why Nintendo's handhelds were so successful. The Game Boy could run for ten hours on four AA batteries. The Game Boy Pocket ran for the same amount on two AAAs. The Game Boy Color ran for twenty hours on two AAs. The Game Boy Advance ran for ten hours on two AAs, and the GBA SP ran for ten hours on a single battery charge, as did the DS.

Did all of these systems have the best graphics possible at the time? God no. The Game Boy's screen was blurry and green, when the Game Gear clearly demonstrated you could have full color. The Game Boy Advance couldn't do any 3D, and the DS paled in comparison to the technically superior PSP. And yet, with handhelds, graphics are never the most important thing.

It's no coincidence that all of Nintendo's most successful handhelds had insane battery lives, and their least successful ones don't (although the 3DS isn't entirely unreasonable, at about seven hours in 2D mode, which most people are using anyway).

Do iPods, iPhones and Android devices have good battery life? Yes, when they're playing games that aren't that demanding to the system or sitting idle. When they're playing a game that competes head-to-head with the DS or PSP, it's horrible. Therefore, the graphical advantage that these devices present is negated by the lack of battery power.

4) The purpose. If you buy a DS, PSP, 3DS or Vita, you know why you're buying it. You know that you're purchasing this device to play games, and anything else it can do is secondary. It's great if your system can take pictures or play music, but its primary function is for gaming.

You also know that you're going to be paying $30 and above to play games on this device, and that's OK for you. You recognize that if you want quality gaming on a device that can handle it, you have to pay for it.

If you're buying an iOS or Android device, you're buying it for other reasons. Maybe it's your phone, or your tablet PC, or you just plan on using it as a PDA. Gaming is probably not the first thing you plan on doing with it, although it may have influenced your decision strongly.

The point is this: Over four million 3DS users are all willingly buying games at $29.99 and up. They're also buying several of them, since you can't just buy one game and be satisfied. Since there's only one function of the system, people are spending money to make sure that function continues being useful.

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There's one more thing that's not getting discussed when we're talking about the expanding role of smartphones in gaming, and it has to do with misleading graphs. We'll cover that tomorrow.

Arkham City Out November 15th For PCs!

Batman: Arkham Asylum was one of my favorite games of all time. Early reviews of Arkham City say it's even better than the first. It's out November 15th. In the immortal words of noted thespian and wordsmith Bart Scott:

Vita Price And Release Date Announced... Too Much?

The Sony PS Vita finally has a price and release date: The Wi-Fi model is $249, the 3G model is $299, and it's coming out on February 22nd. The hardware looks great, the launch library seems good, everything about it looks nice. The touchscreen on the back of it means that your hand is off of the screen when you're trying to control the system with it.


We need to back up a bit, though. Let's talk about the perception of this news among commenters and the perception of the 3DS' launch price. Some comments from the comment thread at ArsTechnica:

"I got a chance to play around with it at E3, and it is a REALLY solid piece of hardware. The games were quality too, and the $250 price point is impressive. Keep in mind though, that there is no onboard memory unless you buy some (a big mistake imo). I had one pre-ordered for X-mas, but I cancelled it after the delay. Might pick one up as a birthday present to myself in March, but so much depends on the economy and if I can find stable employment haha. Seriously though, it's a portable worth checking out."

"It's going to cost more than $300 when you factor in the (proprietary) memory stick that it uses. The higher capacity ones can run up to an extra $100. On the plus side, this machine is such a little beast, that it has backwards compatibility with PSP games purely through software emulation."

Compare this to some initial comments from the 3DS launch:

"Isn't that a lot of dough for a handheld? What was the MSRP at release for the other DS versions? Didn't the Wii retail for $250 when it came out?"

"$250?! Ouch. I doubt enough games will take good advantage of 3D to justify buying another DS (and I think just about anyone who would possibly want one has one already)"

"Seems to me this will end up even worse then the Play Station 3. Too much money for what it does. 3D is hardly going to spur much interests especially on such a small form. How many games will actually take advantage of 3D? Wait a few months for discounts! I think they will come."

So let's recap. The PS Vita could cost you $249 for the Wi-Fi version, plus $50 (at a conservative estimate) for internal memory, plus $40 for one game. That means that in order to get started with the PS Vita, you have to shell out $339 at launch for a system that has beautiful graphics and intriguing ideas but sharply limited battery life.

The 3DS ran $249 plus $40 for a game at launch. That means you needed to shell out $289 to get up and playing for a system that has decent graphics and intriguing ideas, but mediocre battery life.

Yet, the 3DS is viewed as overpriced but the Vita isn't? Why is that?

We're dealing with two different markets here. The Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and DS were always marketed to families and children. The Vita is sold as an upmarket solution, aimed at teenagers and young males with disposable income.

Since the Vita is aimed at that group, they have games and features that will specifically appeal to that group. Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, and Call of Duty et al don't appeal to families. 3G connectivity doesn't appeal to families, nor do all the other amazing things the Vita can do.

Nintendo, on the other hand, knows where their bread is buttered. They know that families care about family things, so they focus on Mario, Zelda, systems with pretty colors and the like. That's why an online presence for them is on the back burner, for better or worse. Families, especially mothers and fathers, are typically viewed as being afraid of what their children could get in to online.

So when Nintendo sold the 3DS at $249, they overreached their audience. When Sony prices the Vita at $249, they nailed their audience on the head.

Now, which one is going to be more successful? That's a trickier question to ask.

Why Will Handheld Gaming Devices Succeed?

The other day, I complained about Infinity Blade. It's a fine game and it looks beautiful. Many are holding up games of its ilk as demonstrating that the days of standalone handheld gaming devices are over. We also see lots of articles like this one, which show that the DS and PSP are losing ground to iPhones and Android devices. Combined with the lackluster launch of the 3DS, all signs would seem to point to a downturn in the fortunes of handheld gaming devices.

Or do they?

To be sure, Android and iOS devices have a few advantages off the bat. We're going to go through a few of those, but then we'll also explain why handheld gaming isn't going to migrate away from Nintendo or Sony anytime soon.

First of all, what advantages do iOS and Android devices have?

1) Convenience. You have to have your phone with you anyway and we're used to seeing games on them. Cell phone makers have been indoctrinating us with games on cell phones by giving us Tetris and Pac-Man clones since the very beginning, so having games on our phones isn't out of the ordinary.

Everyone liked having games on their phone, but the old system was annoying. You were usually using a crappy, low-res screen to play on, which meant that action games were right out. Games wouldn't transfer to new phones, and most phones weren't powerful enough to run anything more than basic apps. Since every phone was slightly different, developers had to choose carefully which phone they would make a game for or risk being frozen out down the line.

Now, though, if you have a smartphone, you either have iOS or Android (although some poor suckers ended up with a Palm phone) (I'm a poor sucker) with a decent, high-res screen. Since your phone is in your pocket already, it's not horribly difficult to whip out your phone and fire up a game. It's a far cry from taking out your DS, PSP or 3DS, turning it on, then selecting which game you want to play.

2) Cost. Most apps are less than five dollars. That's less than people spend at McDonalds. Buying a game isn't that big of a commitment, so people are willing to spend 99 cents just to try something out.

This works doubly well with digital distribution. Since there's no overhead, a large chunk of how much you charge goes in your pocket. That means it's easier to make money on a mobile device, which means that more developers come running to iOS and Android devices, which means that there's more variety.

3) The stigma of portable gaming devices. If I take out my phone in a crowded airport, I look like a businessman. If I take out my DS, I look like a five-year-old. It doesn't matter what exactly I'm doing on either device; one looks "grown-up" and the other looks childish.

It also doesn't matter if it's a DS, GBA, PSP, or WonderSwan Color. If I pull out a PSP, then instead of looking like a five-year-old, I look like a fourteen-year-old. No big difference.

The stigma started when the Game Boy came out. With the "Boy" name and the focus on a younger market, portable gaming quickly became synonymous with youth and kids. Now, if an adult whips out a portable gaming system, they end up just looking silly more than anything else.

Geez, it looks hopeless for handheld gaming devices. With those kind of advantages, there's nothing holding back mobile devices from taking over handheld gaming, right?

Not so fast. Standalone handheld gaming devices have some advantages. We'll get to those on Friday.

So The Brewers Lost

It's taken me a day or two to digest the Brewers' loss in the NLCS, but here's what it comes down to: The problems are fixable.

First of all, if you would have told me at the beginning of the year that the Crew would win 96 games and the division and end up in the NLCS, I would have been happy with that.


That being said, there are a few gaping holes that the Cardinals exposed in the Brewers: 1) A weak bottom half of the lineup and 2) Poor defense. Things won't get any easier next year. They'll more than likely be without Prince Fielder, leaving a 300-pound hole in the top half of the lineup. They'll probably lose LaTroy Hawkins and K-Rod in free agency, which means they'll have to rebuild their bullpen.

That's a lot of holes to fill, but there is some good news in all of this. Scanning over the list of the free agent class of 2012, there are a few options. Here are some hypotheticals:

1) Keep everything in-house. Move McGeehee over to 1st base to minimize the impact of his defense. Re-sign Hairston for another year, then run Taylor Green out there starting in about May. Pick up Yuniesky Betancourt's option.

Advantage: Cheap and easy.

Disadvantage: You're not upgrading your defense up the middle. Rickie Weeks isn't a defensive mastermind, and Yuni's troubles are well-known. They were close to benching him before he started getting hits. Taylor Green, while a hot prospect, is an unknown commodity defensively.

2) Replace Yuni with someone else. ANYONE else will do. His UZR rating is third from the bottom of every day shortstops on Fangraphs. His bat goes hot and cold, and since it was mostly hot this year it'll probably run cold next year. All told, he takes more runs off the board than he adds.

You can still shuffle the infield if you do this. Casey goes to first, Taylor Green to third, but then your unknown commodity goes to short. He wouldn't be relied upon to hit home runs, but rather just provide a solid defensive front up the middle.

I like this plan a lot. Consider your new batting lineup if you do this:

Hart
Morgan/Gomez
Braun
McGeehee
Weeks
Hairston/Green
Unknown Shortstop
Lucroy
Pitcher

"So why are you batting McGeehee fourth? He sucks!" Well, he won't have to concentrate so much on his defense, and his general slowness will fit in perfectly over at first. He'll also see more pitches with Braun in front of him and Weeks behind him, and a guy with a .250 batting average and big bat is about prototypical for a cleanup man. Plus, with this, I'm keeping Rickie in a position where he's comfortable and leaving the lineup mostly untouched.

Advantage: An instant bump to defense.

Disadvantage: Who exactly do the Brewers get? Nick Punto? The best defensive players are pretty well locked up, and they usually come with good bats to boot. One option might be Marco Scutaro of the Red Sox, but he was the one bright spot in their season and has a 2012 option. I doubt they'll want to let him go. Rafael Furcal is also on the table, but his defense isn't what it used to, and his bat was limp almost all year.

Plus, there are two players that are near the top of Fangraph's 2011 UZR rankings: J.J. Hardy and Alcides Escobar. That may show you the Brewers' commitment to defense right there.

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So what will probably happen? Option Number One is more likely. From recent history, we can see that when Doug Melvin doesn't see a player he covets, he doesn't run out and get a random guy but instead stands pat with what he has. Unless he can get a substantial upgrade at a position that includes a bat and a glove, he's not likely to make the deal.

At this point I trust Doug Melvin, but if we're losing such a major part of the offense like Prince it's imperative that they make up for it. Since hitters who bat .300 and hit 35 HRs don't fall out of the sky every day, defense is the way to do it.

Big h/t to Cot's Baseball Contracts.

Infinity Blade & The Death Of Handhelds

I hear people gushing about games on iOS systems, and I've heard good things specifically about Infinity Blade. Screenshots of this game have to be seen to believed, and the gameplay is being heralded as incredible.

Mainstream reviewers even herald the game, saying things like:

"The result is a beautiful, addictive, and surprisingly deep game easily among the best available on iOS4 devices." - IGN

"It's the kind of deep, well-thought-out combat system that puts most console sword fighting to shame."  - Joystiq

With mainstream success, beautiful graphics, solid gameplay and tons of depth, Infinity Blade seems to hit every bullet point on what makes a solid handheld game. Put it all together, and it spells doom for dedicated gaming handhelds like the 3DS and the PS Vita, right? I mean, seriously, compare the screenshots from Infinity Blade:

With the screenshots from the upcoming Super Mario 3D Land:

Jesus, handhelds are done for.

I picked up Infinity Blade the other day for my wife's iPod, wanting to see what the handheld market's death rattle looked like. Here's a retroactive running diary of my play experience:

Beginning: Holy crap! This HAS to be a cutscene! No, it's not! It's for real! This screen is so crisp and clear, and movement of the characters is so impressive! How are they pulling this off?

Handhelds are done.

Five minutes in: The battles in this game are AMAZING! I mean, fighting enemies with swipes and then leaping up and jabbing your sword into your opponent's head as a finisher? This is awesome!

Twenty minutes in: SO INGENIOUS! The game's story keeps on running after you've been defeated by the God King. It's such a great way to deal with the whole "extra lives" question while at the same time making sense in the game world.

Forty minutes in: So, this is it? These are the battles then? This is what the game is about? Don't get me wrong, I like these battles, but where have I played them before?

OH CRAP. I'm playing a prettied up version of Punch-Out, aren't I? Except with experience points and bonuses. Well that's pretty cool.

WAIT. So this is an Unreal-engine Rage of the Gladiator for the iPhone? Well, honestly, that's still pretty cool. I mean, how many of those are there?

An hour in: There is not a single thing that Infinity Blade does that couldn't be done with a less-robust engine. I mean, don't get me wrong, the great graphics are what got me in the door to begin with, but geez. All I'm doing is swiping the screen at appropriate moments, dodging attacks and returning with attacks of my own.

You could make this game on a DS with 2-D graphics and wouldn't lose any of the gameplay.

An hour and ten minutes in: I'm quitting to play something else. And, oh look, my battery has been almost drained. It started at 100% and now is down to 35%. I'll have to remember that for future reference.

________

So what did we learn? Infinity Blade is very, very cool. The developers have come up with something great: A gritty Punch-Out clone with a story of sorts and role-playing elements. That's not a combination you see very often.

Even still, this is not the death knell of dedicated gaming handhelds. Why will dedicated gaming handhelds keep on surviving even with so many challengers? We'll examine that in a different article.

Gregg Easterbrook and "Glory Boys"

I've been reading Tuesday Morning Quarterback for years now, Gregg Easterbrook's weekly analysis of football and whatever else catches his fancy. Some people don't like him.

Drew Magary of Kissing Suzy Kolber and Deadspin can't stand him and eviscerates him to hilarious effect every week. Others are of the opinion that when he talks about science he doesn't always have all the facts or misrepresents them.
I'm not here to defend his science acumen. He's not a scientist, just a passive observer who sounds like he knows what he's talking about, even if he doesn't. I'm also not going to defend his reuse of certain cliches, because they can get annoying. When he sticks to football strategy, though, he's usually pretty solid, except for one major thing that bothers me.

One of Drew Magary's main complaints (aside from Easterbrook having far too many "g"s in his first name) is Easterbrook's glorification of "hard-working" players as opposed to "glory boys" who are generally drafted high. Easterbrook believes that if a team has lots of undrafted players, those teams generally play harder. Teams that have lots of highly-paid high draft picks don't. When a team bows to one player, whether that player is Michael Crabtree, T.O. or Chad Ochocinco, the whole team suffers.

For example, here's a quote from today's column:

In other football news, TMQ loves all-unwanted players -- those who were undrafted, or waived, or both. Sunday, the cost-no-object Philadelphia Heat, with their profusion of high draft choices and big bonuses, faced off against the low-rent Buffalo Bills. The host team started 12 players who were undrafted, or waived, or both. Undrafted George Wilson had 11 tackles and an interception: the Bills' defense appeared to be fielding several players wearing Wilson's number. When undrafted wide receiver Donald Jones left injured, undrafted wide receiver Naaman Roosevelt came in to relieve him and had five catches. The Bills start two offensive linemen who were undrafted or waived or both, and have allowed the fewest sacks in the league. The best player on the field for either team was undrafted Fred Jackson out of Division III Coe College, who gained 196 yards rushing and receiving.

The undrafted Jackson is just shy of a pace to break Chris Johnson's NFL record for yards from scrimmage. The undrafted Wes Welker of the New England Patriots is on a pace to break Jerry Rice's single-season receiving yards record. The undrafted Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys is on a pace to break Dan Marino's record for passing yards in a season. The defending champion Green Bay Packers start four undrafted players. On Sunday night, Julio Jones of the Atlanta Falcons -- one of the most expensive players in NFL annals, obtained by the Falcons for two first-round choices, a second-rounder and two fourth-round selections -- went deep and saw the pass broken up by the undrafted Sam Shields.

Across the league, undrafted players are outperforming megabucks high draft choices. Perhaps the undrafted players excel because they are undrafted -- spending their time and energy on performing, rather than on me-first whining.

In this case, Easterbrook is right and wrong. Yes, it certainly appears that teams with lots of highly-paid high draft picks don't play as hard, while undrafted and low-round players do. However, he's looking at the symptom and ignoring the cause.

If you have a lot of top-ten draft picks on your team, what is that a sign of? How do you get top-ten draft picks? By having a bad year. It's one thing for a team to have one bad season and get a high draft pick. It's another entirely for a team to have several bad seasons in a row, and that's when you see several top-ten draft picks on the roster.

Alex Smith: What might have been?

If a team has several bad seasons in a row, what does that mean? They're poorly run teams. Either ownership isn't very good, they have a bad general manager or poor coaching. Take a look at the Bengals, Dolphins, 49ers, Raiders, the Millen-run Lions, and others and you'll usually see some sort of chaotic situation. Either they're swapping out coaches like some players change their spikes or they're making bad personnel decisions.

Now, let's go another step. If you're a badly run team, you're more likely to make a poor choice with a high draft pick than a good choice, correct? You're more likely to spend a top-ten choice on a guy like JaMarcus Russell, and once you have that bad player you can't cover up his badness with good coaching, being as how there's too much organizational chaos for a coach to make his mark.

Plus, even if you select a good player, organizational dysfunction may stunt the player's growth. Worse yet, the player may be surrounded with 52 tackling dummies every game, making the good player look much worse and destroying his psyche.

Consider the case of Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers. It's easy to say that Aaron Rodgers is the better quarterback now. He's a Super Bowl MVP, and a surefire MVP candidate this year. But what if the two players' situations were switched? What if Rodgers would have went 1st overall to the 49ers and Smith would have plummeted to 25th?

This could have actually happened. Rodgers was almost the first overall pick before the Niners talked themselves out of it. Remember, there was a major knock on Rodgers before the draft. He was a Jeff Tedford-coached quarterback from Cal. Tedford QBs (such as Trent Dilfer, Akili Smith, David Carr, Joey Harrington, and Kyle Boller) don't have a very high success rate in the NFL. Alex Smith had a major knock on him too: He came from a shotgun spread offense, so he wasn't used to taking snaps under center and reading defenses pre-snap.

So what if we switch places? Let's send Rodgers to San Francisco, where he has two different head coaches in his first three years and three different offensive coordinators, including Mike Martz. Then, let's put Alex Smith in Green Bay, where he sits on the bench, learns for three years behind Brett Favre in one of the most stable franchises in the NFL, and then finally gets his chance with a great supporting cast and a supportive fan environment.

Geez, they even kind of LOOK similar.

Now let's see who's more successful. Could Rodgers still have flourished in San Fran? Maybe. Would Alex Smith have flopped in Green Bay? Maybe. But you can't deny that the organizational stability and unique situations helped push it one way or the other.

Therefore, a team full of "highly paid glory boys" might not be a bad team because of said glory boys. They may be a bad team because they're poorly coached and trained on how to do their jobs. If you take a low draft pick or undrafted player and put them on the good team, they won't magically be any better than the high draft picks.

However, you could also make the argument that players change teams. A team with several first-round draft pick players and high bonuses may not necessarily be a team that earned those players through bad play, but rather paid for them through free agency.

That may be true, but let's look at that reasoning. Do players who were high draft picks generally change teams if they're really good players? No. Peyton Manning hasn't changed teams. Andre Johnson hasn't changed teams. Larry Fitzgerald hasn't changed teams. Mario Williams hasn't changed teams. Calvin Johnson hasn't changed teams. Joe Thomas hasn't changed teams.

What type of players switch teams? Players who were either drafted too high, like Ted Ginn Jr., or who weren't as good as advertised, like Reggie Bush. So essentially, a team that's stacked with first-round players is a team that's paying for players that aren't as good as that "first-round" designation would imply, and quite possibly overpaying to get them. Of course, overpaying for a bad player means that you have less money and resources to get a good player, and the cycle continues.

Now, in some cases, game-changing players like Nnamdi Asomugha do indeed change teams. But generally, these cases are the exception rather than the norm. They get so much ink precisely because it's very rare for an impact player to be on the market in general, and they usually don't end up on the market unless their skills are declining (Donovan McNabb) or there's some major personality issue (Randy Moss circa 2005).

Going back to the above examples of Ted Ginn and Reggie Bush, you'll notice something: Ginn was drafted by Miami and left. Bush was drafted by New Orleans and went to... Miami. Miami had a 1-15 season a few years ago and has hovered around incompetence for years, ever since Don Shula retired. Since then, the organization as a whole has been in flux.

That's what we're talking about: Teams that have lots of "glory boys" aren't losers on the basis of those players, but are losers because they're bad teams, which allows them to pick up the "glory boy" type of player. Since the team is bad, they'll either overreach to get a player that isn't that good, or they'll ruin that player's career through mismanagement.

What about undrafted players? Is it just that they work harder to earn their place on the team, as opposed to players who don't have to try?

Look, undrafted players are usually undrafted for a reason. There's usually a fundamental flaw in their game. Maybe they're too small. Maybe they didn't stack up against good competition so it's hard to say how good they actually are. Maybe they're not that strong, or have had injuries that raise major question marks.

So what kind of teams end up with really good undrafted players? This may come as a bit of a shock, but they're usually teams with good coaches. Take New England. They have Danny Woodhead, who's was undrafted because he's very undersized. He's not used very much (in fact, this year barely at all) but he plays hard. Since the Patriots have good coaching, they're able to hide this notable deficiency or minimize it, using him only situationally.

Take the Packers of last year. They ended up trotting out undrafted player after undrafted player and continued to win. Yet the players were picked by Ted Thompson, one of the most even-keeled (some would say comatose) GMs around. They were coached on offense by Mike McCarthy, who has proved his worth in that department, and on defense by Dom Capers, one of the best defensive coordinators ever.

Remember: There are a lot of players throughout the league who are low draft picks or undrafted players. Almost every player in the NFL is a professional who wants to play hard and realizes that working hard is the only way to stay on a roster. There are very few players who just decide to coast on "natural ability," and if they do, they're out of the league in a few short years. Everyone in the NFL has natural ability. If they didn't, they wouldn't have gotten this far.

A good team, however, will identify players that will be able to fill a role inside their system whether or not they were drafted. A team that succeeds with lots of undrafted players doesn't succeed because of them, but rather in spite of them. They succeed because they're a well-run organization with good coaching that knows how to hide their players' weaknesses and play to their strengths. They know how to balance the "highly paid glory boys" and the low-round-draft-pick players.

So "glory boys" aren't the death of teams. Undrafted or "unwanted" players aren't their salvation. A lot of high draft picks are the sign of a poorly-run team, not the other way around. A lot of "unwanted" players who succeed are the sign of a well-run team and nothing more.

Let's Make A Game Episode 23: Falling Away

So here's what we've decided to do. First, we're going to take control of the player away after they've died. That's easy enough to do:

player.Update(gameTime);

// Player only has control if he's still alive

if (player.Active == true)
{
// All our stuff

Next, though, is the tricky section. What happens to a ship if it gets hit in mid-air? It slows down and falls to the ground, correct? Ergo, we should decelerate the ship and drop it by lowering its X and Y values like so:

player.Position.X -= playerMoveSpeed;
player.Position.Y += playerMoveSpeed;

It's not working quite right, though.  I've placed it a place that doesn't checked often, the UpdateCollision area. It actually only updates this once, which means that after the ship gets hit, it twitches on in that direction instead of continually falling.

It's better to put this in the UpdatePlayer area, where this will run along with the rest of the loop. We'll do two things in this area:

1. We'll only have MathHelper.Clamp run when the player is active, first of all. Otherwise, it looks silly to have the ship hit the bottom of the viewable area and then stop moving, right?
2. We'll create this:

    if (player.Active == false)
            {
                player.Position.X -= playerMoveSpeed;
                player.Position.Y += playerMoveSpeed;
            }

So now we're actually making the ship fall off the screen when it blows up. We still have to work out some kind of counter to start the game over, though, or else the ship will continually falling in perpetuity.

AAAAHHHHHHH

AAAAHHHHHH

AAAAAHHHHH

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

GOTTA GO

Too Many Games On the Horizon

There are times where gaming is a very, very expensive hobby. These next few months are that kind of time. Within the span of 48 days, there are five games coming out that I want to play at a cost of approximately $210 in total:

Professor Layton 10/17
Kirby's Return to Dream Land 10/24
Super Mario 3D Land 11/13
Zelda: Skyward Sword 11/20
Mario Kart 7 12/4

Now, I could go crazy and try and get all of them at once. That's just what the developers would like me to do. However, in order to get them, I'd have to start getting rid of other games, and I don't really want to do that.

This is the downside of gaming. It's the eternal struggle between what we want to play, how much time we have, and how much money we have to spend. It's a very odd, materialistic culture that grows. If you don't have the new game, what's wrong with you? Why haven't you played this new game?

If you decide to wait and pick up the game in a year, you're old news! You don't have an opportunity to join in the discussion, because you're late to the party and no one will discuss it with you. It's kind of a weird culture and one that I'm not entirely comfortable with.

So what I'm doing in these next couple of months is just picking out which games I want to play, and picking out which ones can wait. The only two that are must-have first-day purchases will be Kirby's Return to Dream Land and Super Mario 3D Land. As intrigued as I am by the London Life RPG in Professor Layton, that can wait. As much as the new Zelda makes me excited, I can wait. And Mario Kart 7 can sit for a bit.

This means, though, that my Games of the Year for 2011 will be incomplete. I can live with this. I've never pretended to be an exhaustive cataloger of all games that exist, just the ones that personally interest me. I'm sure I'm forgetting about games that are coming out, but that's OK. If I don't remember them, they won't exist for now.

Steve Jobs Dead

I was never a huge Apple fan, but you can't deny the influence Steve Jobs has had on technology. Best wishes to his friends and family, and here's hoping that Apple can keep making him proud.

Review: Kirby Mass Attack

Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo

Kirby fans got a great surprise at E3 this year. All of a sudden, Nintendo drops the bomb that they have not one, but two Kirby games in development, and ohbytheway, they're both dropping this year. One is coming up for the Wii, and the other, Kirby Mass Attack just launched for the DS.

I'm an absolute whore for Kirby games. Any Kirby game, anytime, anywhere and I am there. There are only a few of them that I wasn't completely in love with: Kirby's Dream Land 3, which I still played through to completion, and Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, which was just a weird game all around. I also wasn't crazy about Canvas Curse at first but I got over it and harbor some love for it.

So you would expect me to be jumping up and down about having Mass Attack to play, right? You wouldn't expect anything approaching ambivalence, but rather insane delight at my good fortune. And yet, there's something about Mass Attack that holds me back from a ringing endorsement. It's good, but with some slight issues.

First of all, the story with Mass Attack is simple: Kirby has been split into ten pieces, and you have to use all your Kirbies to defeat enemies and put yourself back together. It's a cute setup, and it enabled the designers to make a few twists to the Kirby formula.

The first twist? Kirby does not take any powers from any of the enemies. Frankly, I didn't even notice this was gone until I wrote this review, so take that as you will.

The next twist is that Kirby Mass Attack plays like a platformer/real-time-strategy game, if you can believe that. You don't have direct control over your army of Kirbies, but instead you direct them using the stylus. You can either have them walk/run to where you need them to be or fling them with the against enemies, breakable blocks or switches.

Attacks also aren't done by Kirby's typical inhale/exhale methodology, but with a hilarious swarming method. By tapping an enemy, you'll get all of your Kirbies to pile on and start pounding on it. It reminds me of nature videos where helpless animals get swarmed by ants, and it's almost always funny.

There are also no "lives", per se. The amount of lives you have is equal to the amount of Kirbies you have on screen. If you have seven Kirbies and two die, you're down to five Kirbies. You get extra Kirbies by eating fruit, and once you hit 100 pieces eaten you get another Kirby, with a maximum of ten Kirbies. If a Kirby gets hit, it'll turn blue. If the Kirby gets hit while it's blue, then it starts floating away like an angel unless you're able to rescue it by flinging another Kirby at your fallen friend to grab it and pull it back to Earth.

In other words, they've changed quite a bit about Kirby games with Mass Attack. That's good and bad. On the one hand, you can't accuse Nintendo of treading water. On the other hand, if you're going to change the game so drastically, why keep the Kirby name? Why not just create a new character to do this kind of game? It seems counterproductive. Either way, the mechanics are fairly solid, the levels are diverse and there's lots of fun to be had. So why is that I feel a little flat about Kirby: Mass Attack?

I think what's bugging me is the lack of control you have over your characters. You can direct your group to huddle up in a ball, but when walking or moving, they'll usually spread out over a fairly large area. This can create problems when you're trying to avoid obstacles or enemy attacks, since you have to keep telling your guys to bunch up in to groups.

It's also hard to select an individual Kirby to fling. I found myself, more often than not, just sticking my stylus in the middle of the group and hoping against hope that I would pick one out to fling. This leads to you sometimes trying over and over to fling someone and getting one of your characters accidentally hurt.

The first levels are also pretty easy, but in the later going you can find yourself losing everything far too quickly. For example, in one level, I was cruising along until I got to an area where there were falling blocks reminiscent of Thwomps in the the Mario series. My Kirbies ended up accidentally underneath one of them when it fell, and the enemy managed to crush ALL of them.

It was a fluky shot, but I lost every Kirby in one second with no chance of getting them back. Then, once I lost all of my Kirbies, that was it for the level. My game was over and I had to restart the level from the beginning. That meant that ten minutes of my progress was erased.

Another example: There's a late level with a tower that rocks back and forth depending on where your Kirbies are standing. There are enemies that try and push you off by blowing air at your group, and if they blow off one of your Kirbies, the Kirby flies off the tower to its death, with no chance of getting it back.

OK, so I sound kind of whiny. When I was younger, I used to play games all the time in which I would lose considerable progress after a death and it never bothered me. But the problem is this: This is Kirby. Kirby games are generally pretty easy. Most of Mass Attack is pretty simple as well, and to be blindsided in later levels by higher difficulty is a little disconcerting.

Still, there is a lot to recommend. The control issues don't entirely kill your fun, and you're constantly being handed a new task to attempt, whether it's some switches you have to hit in order, a new enemy that attacks you in a way you weren't expecting, or a puzzle that pleasantly surprises you.

There are also a ton of unlockables, including a faux-RPG of sorts, a shoot-em-up, a pinball game and more. It even has an achievement system of sorts, a sure sign that Nintendo is getting the idea that people like achievements. Here's hoping that they integrate that into future systems like the Wii U.

So Kirby Mass Attack is pretty good, with a few caveats. If you can look past its flaws, you'll see it's a solid title that shows that Nintendo is still full of ideas for the little pink puffball, even after after all these years.

Final Grade: B

Let's Make A Game Episode 22: Blow'd Up

Where we left off last time, we wanted to make the game end somehow. As it is, once you lose all your health, the score resets. That's all. There's not even an indicator that you lost, no "A LOSER IS YOU" words on the screen or anything.
One of the ways we can resolve this is by having a visual indicator. I would like there to be multiple explosions over your character to let you know that you just got BLOWED UP GOOD. The most simple method would be a simple for/next loop:

For (1,3)
{
    AddExplosion(Player.Position);
}

Except this method sucks. Since the game loop is so fast, the three explosions sound like one. There's no delay. If we trim it back to one explosion, once again, it happens so fast that the player may not even realize that they lost.

Another option would be to create the explosion and then toss in an Initialize() call to restart everything, but that doesn't seem to work very well either. Once again, the loop is so fast that you can't even tell that the explosion happened. There has to be a better way.

Criminally Overlooked Games: Lords of the Realm 2

The long path of gaming is littered with games that were once considered monumental testaments to the craft and have since been forgotten. A lot of things can diminish these games in people's eyes: Outdated graphics, lackluster sequels, or the ravages of time itself.

Lords of the Realm II has a lot of these issues. First of all, the graphics pale in comparison to even Command & Conquer Red Alert, released exactly the same day. While Red Alert has great animation and detail in the units, LotR2's units look fake and weird in comparison. Most items only have about four frames of animation. For God's sake, when you start up the game in any mode other than 640 by 480, you get a warning about your screen resolution.

Next up, the Lords of the Realm name means nothing to gamers anymore. If the Lords of the Realm name still meant something to gamers, then Lords of the Realm II would still remain a well-remembered high watermark, much like Civilization II still conjures up fond memories. However, since the third game in the series was so poor, no one remembers the series name with a great fondness anymore.

On top of that, many, many strategy games have come and gone since Lords of the Realm II graced our screens. Fourteen years is a long time in gaming terms, and our memories are short. It's been a long time since Lords of the Realm II was installed on the majority of hard drives, let alone on store shelves. In fact, when I bought it in early 1998, it was already $10. It's been a budget game for longer than Starcraft has been released.

Lords of the Realm II deserves better. Here's the story: The king died without an heir, and five rivals have stepped up to claim the throne: The noble Baron, the calculating Countess, the headstrong Knight, the duplicitous Bishop, and you. You have to subjugate your enemies through a variety of battle and good management on the way to claiming the throne for your own.

Years before the Total War series was a glimmer in Creative Assembly's eye, Lords of the Realm II combined turn-based and real-time strategy exceptionally well. All county management is handled in turn-based mode. Battles are handled in real-time, including castle sieges. In order to truly succeed, you have to master all facets of the game to win.

What made Lords of the Realm II stand out, though, were the characters. Each character fights you in a specific way, and it's awesome. For example, the Bishop is a back-stabber of the highest order. If you form an alliance with him, he'll still wander into your lands with a large army and siege your castles. His claim is that he's seizing your lands on behalf of the church. He'll get mad if you tried to attack back or defend yourself. If he did gain control of a county, he'd put the largest castle possible in it, making him exceedingly dangerous.

The Baron, on the other hand, excelled in field combat and infrastructure, was incredibly loyal, and also had crappy castles littered around his counties. He was a great ally to have, because he'd always have your back. However, at some point you have to wipe him out in order to claim the throne, which was made easier due to his penchant for the aforementioned crappy castles.

You'll notice I'm describing these characters as if they're real people. They're all so clearly defined in-game that I can explain how each of them will behave in a certain situation. If you'll allow me a "get off my lawn" moment, this is something a lot of games are missing nowadays. We have better technology than we've ever had, and yet all the technology in the world can't make great characters. That comes down to writing, and writing in most games is woefully insufficient.

Getting down from my soapbox, the only major flaw in Lords of the Realm II is the multiplayer code. It appears that the network code was made by partially trained wolves who programmed by urinating on the keyboard. The only time I ever got it to work online was using dialup, and any attempt at running it on anything fast would cause it to crap out after a minute. But when we got it to work online, it was GLORIOUS.

Look, I don't know what else to tell you. If you like strategy games at all, Lords of the Realm II is a phenomenal game that deserves a shot. I hope some day someone gets the license and remakes it the way that it deserves. In the meantime, you can pick it up cheap from GOG.com.

Looking for more Criminally Overlooked Games? Click here!

Some Ambassador Games Rated?

So it appears that the ESRB rated two GBA Ambassador games this past week: WarioWare and Mario Kart. Are we close to getting them? Let's hope.