"Sony Didn't Reveal the PS4 Console!"

It seems that the gaming press has their knives out for Sony after the PS4 announcement. One of the big complaints is, "Sony didn't show us the PS4 console! Sure, they showed us what it can do, but we still don't know what the system itself looks like! Therefore, Sony didn't reveal the PS4, Microsoft is going to win the next generation automatically, and Sarah Palin is automatically the president." I'm really annoyed by this complaint for several reasons.

First of all, the part that you will be interacting with the most frequently is the controller. You're going to be handling it almost exclusively. That's the most important piece of equipment that you need to worry about. They showed that.

Next, you're going to want to know what the system can do in terms of power and graphics, as well as social aspects. They showed that.

If you want to know how the PS4 console itself is going to look, I have a world-exclusive description. Hold on to your butts, it's about to get real in here:

• It will be black.
• It will be a box that's about the same size as the PS3.
• It will have a slot to put in a disc.
• It will have a power plug.
• It will have USB ports.
• It will have an HDMI port.
• It will have a clear plastic panel through which you can be mezmerized by a still-beating unicorn heart that beats faster the harder the system is working(unconfirmed).

There you go! Hope I didn't blow your minds too hard.

I understand that there's a little bit of annoyance. "They said they were going to reveal the PS4, and all they showed was the controller." I get that, I do. I'm curious to see how the console proper is going to look myself. That doesn't mean that it was a bad presentation, though, since they showed off all of the important stuff.

Why The Relative Power of the Wii U Isn't A Big Deal

A quick look at the differences between the Wii U's specs and the PS4's specs shows something that's been hinted at for a while: The Wii U is going to be way behind the next generation of hardware. Even just the processor and RAM tells the story:

Wii U's CPU: Three cores
PS4's CPU: Eight cores

Wii U's RAM: 2 GB (1 GB usable for games)
PS4's RAM: 8 GB (almost all of it usable by games)

So this means the Wii U is doomed, right? Well, slow your roll. It certainly means that the Wii U isn't going to get the hot third-party releases as the console's life span rolls on, but that doesn't necessarily mean a gloom-and-doom outlook for the system in general.

In the past, we've talked about how Nintendo doesn't need the third parties as much as, say, Microsoft does. That only tells part of the story, though.

Sony has some great franchises. Let's list their most popular ones as well as what genre they belong to.

• God of War: Action/Adventure
• Gran Turismo: Racing Sim
• InFamous: Action/Adventure
• Jak and Daxter: Action/Adventure/Platformer
• KillZone: Action/Shooter
• Little Big Planet: Platformer/Builder
• PlayStation All-Stars: Fighting
• Ratchet and Clank: Action/Adventure/Platformer
• Resistance: Action/Shooter
• Sly Cooper: Action/Adventure/Stealth/Platformer
• Twisted Metal: Battle Racing
• Uncharted: Action/Adventure
• WipEout: Speed Racing

I'm sure you see a bit of a pattern. They have a lot of action/adventure franchises and a few racing franchises under their belt. There's not a lot of diversity.

Before I get angry commenters, I want to stress: Sony makes games other than these. They have other minor franchises. And yes, these are almost all really good franchises. I personally like almost all of them. The point has nothing to do with the quality, but rather that their main draws aren't very diverse.

Compare this to Nintendo's main franchises:

• Animal Crossing: Social Sim
• Brain Age: Brain Training
• Fire Emblem: Tactical RPG
• FZero: Speed Racing
• Kirby: Platformer
• Mario: Platformer
• Mario Kart: Cartoon Racing
• Mario Party: Party Game
• Metroid: Action/Adventure
• Pikmin: Strategy
• Pokemon: RPG-Lite
• Punch-Out: Boxing
• Smash Bros: Fighting
• Zelda: Action/Adventure

Not only does Nintendo make all of their own games in-house, they have a diverse roster. You personally may hate Mario and Zelda games, but there's bound to be one or two of those franchises that you love.

That's where Nintendo gets you. Somewhere along the way, they'll rope you in to one of those crazy franchises despite your better judgment. You'll be like, "I know Animal Crossing is silly and that Tom Nook is a slavedriver, and yet..." Next thing you know, you're down a K-hole of catching fish, digging up fossils and rearranging your house from which is there is no escape.

That's why the power of Nintendo's system isn't as huge of a deal as it should be. Nintendo's systems only need to be powerful enough to handle their own franchises. If a Nintendo system can't play the latest Duty Honor: Hero's Call of Medal, it's not that big of a deal, since other systems have a bigger problem: They can't play Mario.

NES Replay: Alien3

Developer: Probe Entertainment
Publisher: LJN
Released: 1992
Can Anyone Hear You Scream?: Yes, because
you're not in space so please stop screaming

In NES Replay, we play every Nintendo game from A-Z and see if they're any good. This week: Alien3.

Alien3 could have been so much better. That goes for both the movie and the game.

Quick history lesson: Alien3's original teaser trailer made it look like it was going to be about an alien invasion of Earth. The script went through various rewrites and studio retooling, and then after the movie was finished they recut it without the director's permission, making the movie a giant mishmash of garbage.

What relevance does this have with the game? None, really. In Alien3, you're infiltrating various installations and rescuing crew members while gunning down xenomorphs. There are a few things that conspire to make the game kind of dull. They're all things that developers have mostly figured out by now, but at the time this was about the best they could have done.
We've talked before about how gaming began in the arcades, and a lot of games made for consoles still kept the same principles that were laid down by the arcades. For example, restraint wasn't a key of arcade games. There were no arcade game makers saying, "Let's amp up the tension by reducing the amount of enemies but increasing their deadliness" or "Let's remove a time limit in order to give the player more time to explore." Arcades were all about getting your money by any means necessary.

OH NO A XENOMORPH I GUESS I WILL
JUST SHOOT IT I GUESS IT WAS NOT
"GAME OVER, MAN"

Alien3 would have benefited from less of an arcade mindset. In Alien3, the xenomorphs are everywhere. They're running around, hiding in ceilings, holding bar mitzvahs, playing poker, starting impromptu dance parties and taking family photos. You would think that having so many around waiting to eat your throat would be scary, but even if they attack you and knock you over, they take away just a tiny sliver from your large life bar. They've turned one of the scarier enemies around into cannon fodder.

Next, you have a time limit on each of the levels. Time limits aren't bad in and of themselves, but for this particular game, it's the wrong choice. Alien3 would have been better served by having the player move slowly and carefully through the installations, but with the time limit on the levels that's not a possibility.

The time limit combined with your enormous health bar leads to some hilarious moments. For example, there are some times where you have to go down long shafts while landing on platforms in the shaft. Your character takes fall damage, but not much. Why carefully jump down the platforms and waste all that time when you can just fall from the top, land face-first, lose a tiny bit off of your health bar and keep going? Every time I made my grizzled space marine belly-flop on the floor, I giggled. That's probably not the mood that the developers were aiming for.

Now, I know that lighting effects and other mood-enhancing effects were unavailable to developers on the NES. I get that. However, Metroid created a mood of isolation and fear several years before Alien3, and that was with lesser technology. If the developers would have really applied themselves, they could maybe have made a game worthy of the brand. As we know, though, licensed games were never really made with a high level of quality in mind.

Alien3 plays decent, though, assuming you're looking for a run-and-gun shooter and not a game that feels like, you know, "Alien." It's just sad to play, because you wonder what might have been with an application of a few more modern design techniques.

Final Rating:

Next Week: All-Pro Basketball

Sony's PS4 Announcement

The PS4 was announced last night. Here's what we know so far.

The PS4 will not block used games. This is very welcome news, and a wise move by Sony.

After the security problems and early price problems with the PS3, Sony couldn't afford another PR debacle. It wouldn't surprise me if locking out used games was on the table in the early planning stages of the PS4 but got scrapped at some point.

Sony has a distinct advantage over Microsoft, which may have led to this decision: Sony has a rather robust stable of franchises to draw from. Like Nintendo, Sony can control a lot more revenue streams. They still have to rely heavily on third parties, but even if the third parties abandon them, they'll still have franchises like God of War and Uncharted to draw in players.

As we've said before, Microsoft doesn't have this advantage, so they're more beholden to the third parties. Honestly, what franchises does Microsoft have? Halo, Forza Motorsport, and... Kinect Sports? Viva Pinata? Crackdown? Is Crackdown still a thing?

Here's something that wouldn't surprise me in the least: What if Sony started this furor over used games to trick Microsoft into coming up with their own used games "solution?" Microsoft implements their solution, Sony backs out, now Microsoft has to either forge ahead with it or hastily scrap it. Since Microsoft leans on the third parties to prop up their library, they may not be able to back out.

If that was Sony's plan all along, that's positively delicious.

It appears that the PS4 will be x86-based. For the uninitiated, that means that the PS4 will be, more or less, like any other computer out there, like the 360 and the Wii U. I mean, not exactly, because there's a lot of technical stuff behind the scenes that I don't understand, but closer in architecture to a typical PC.

This is absolutely huge for developers. The backstory: The PS2 had kind of a weird architecture that offloaded instructions to the PS1 chip, but people still developed for it because it was popular. The PS3 used the Cell architecture which was a gigantic mess. For example, Bethesda refused to put out their Skyrim DLC on the PS3 for the longest time because it was so hard to develop for the PS3. Valve avoided patching up The Orange Box because they hated the PS3.

By switching to the x86 architecture, that means that the PS4 is going to be easier to make games for, leading to better ports and better utilization of the raw power of the system itself. We never got to see how powerful the PS3 really was because of the screwed-up architecture, so this is really exciting.

The controller has a touchscreen. Meh. It seems like it'll get used more like a cosmetic thing than anything else. Either Sony needed to go big, like Nintendo did with the GamePad, or ignore the touchscreen entirely.

The PS4 will support Remote Play with the Vita.

The PS4 will not have downwards compatibility, but will instead stream PS1, PS2 and PS3 games using Gaikai.

That's a tough one to judge. On the one hand, kudos to Sony for hopefully coming up with a solution for a tough problem. This should help keep the price of the system low, since they don't have to implement the PS3's messed-up Cell architecture on the PS4 or try and hack in a software fix for PS2 and PS1 games.

One the other several hands, here are some questions that need to be answered:

1. If I have the disc of a PS2 game, does that mean I have to buy the game again using Gaikai?
2. Do I have to pay a subscription fee for this service?
3. Will every game in their library be represented? That sounds almost impossible.
4. How well will Gaikai work in a real-world situation?

Finally, we don't know how the PS4 will look yet. They didn't show us that, weirdly enough. They also didn't tell us any prices, which wasn't unexpected but still annoying. Rumors place the system at about $429, but that's very unconfirmed.

However, based on this little information that we have, we're raising the ceiling of the PS4. The ceiling is now at Wii/PS2 levels and the basement is at PS3 levels, which were mighty respectable.

Wii U and Vita Have Poor Sales

The Wii U had an abysmal January, only selling 50,000 units in the US. The Vita did even worse, possibly only selling around 35,000 units in the US. One of these systems will survive. One of them won't.

There's a brief window at the beginning of a console's life cycle, after the launch, that the purchasers end their initial honeymoon with the console, look around and ask, "OK, so now what?" If the console has a steady stream of games on the way, the purchasers continue onwards happily. If there isn't, a bit of a rebellion starts to form.

Let's look back at the 3DS. The 3DS launched with a crappy original lineup, and afterwards the cupboard was bare for months. The best game from the original launch was Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, and it remained the best game on the system for months afterwards. Nintendo had to respond by dropping the price on the unit and offering early adopters free games to mollify them.

With time the games came in, and the 3DS now has a surprisingly robust lineup, with plenty on the way. Of course, now the 3DS sells well and the early hand-wringing over whether or not a system with glasses-free 3D would work is mostly gone.

The PS2 experienced something similar back in the day. If you'll remember, the launch lineup for the PS2 wasn't very good,. There were just a few games: Tekken Tag Tournament, Fantavision, and a few other middling games. However, two things propped up the system: 1) Downwards compatibility and 2) The ability to play DVDs, since DVD players were pretty expensive at the time. That led to people buying the system because it was a cheap DVD player and they could still play their PS1 games on it. After that, the games started coming in and the PS2 sold like wildfire, becoming arguably the best system of that generation.

All right, so the Wii U has underwhelming sales right now. That's because so far there are only about two or three really good games for it. There's no hype about anything new coming out. After some initial excitement, everything appears quiet.

However, if there's one thing Nintendo knows how to do, it's make games that sell systems. They just need two or three exciting titles to turn this around. In a year or so, we might be talking about the Wii U's robust library of great games in the same way that we talk about the 3DS. It's still early in the Wii U's lifespan, so there's plenty of time to turn it around, build excitement, and continue onward.

The Vita doesn't have that luxury, though. The initial excitement over the spectacular quality of the hardware has died down. (And make no mistake, the Vita is a great machine.) They just dropped the price in Japan, usually a hotbed of portable gaming.

Most importantly, though, the release schedule for the Vita is empty. What's on the horizon for Vita purchasers? Best case scenario, a few games tossed in its direction that will be middling-to-good with a couple of great ones. Worst case scenario, lazy ports of Madden.

The ceiling for both of these systems has been lowered somewhat. The Wii U isn't going to trounce the competition like the Wii did, but it can hope for performance like the 360 and PS3 this generation: Solid systems that did good business and turned a profit. The basement is still the same: Something comparable to the Nintendo 64, a good system that tried some new things and wasn't as good as you remember it.

With the Vita, the ceiling has been lowered drastically. The best that it can hope for is something akin to half the sales as the PSP. The basement? Not as bad as the Nokia N-Gage, which sold only three million units worldwide. Still, with only about five million units for the Vita, it's not far behind.

NES Replay: Alien Syndrome

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Tengen
Released: 1989
What's the alien's syndrome?: It's SARS.

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: Alien Syndrome.

When I was playing Alien Syndome, I couldn't help but think, "This seems like it would have been fun to play when it was originally released in arcades." I also thought, "Boy, this game is glitchy."

Thus far, I've really only run into one game that struggled mightily with the emulators I'm using, and that was the execrable Action 52. Alien Syndrome is now another one. With two of the emulators I used, the game got horribly glitchy after the start screen. With the other emulator, I was able to play the first level, but it became glitchy in the second level. Still playable, but glitchy.

That puts us at a bit of an impasse. Was the game glitchy even on the NES proper, or is it just not properly emulated? You could make a case for or against.

I mean, Alien Syndrome is an unlicensed cartridge made by Tengen. That could mean that it maybe wasn't made right in the first place. However, if they used a different programming method that isn't supported by most emulators, it could show up glitchy in emulators but not on the NES itself.

Boy, I wish this space station had some
challenge in it...

There's the rub with emulation. Most of the time it works fine, but when it doesn't work, it's very hard to figure out if the emulator is at fault or the game itself. It could be so many things: A bad ROM dump, an unsupported mapper, emulator quirks, and on and on.

I could sit and dwell on this problem, but Alien Syndrome isn't so good that it'll keep me up at night. You can tell that Alien Syndrome is supposed to be a frantic run-and-gun shooter, where you're working against the clock to rescue your squadmates while aliens slowly overwhelm you unless you're quick with your trigger finger. That's apparently how it was in the arcades, as I understand.

On the NES, it's instead a slow-paced walk through a space station to find your squadmates who happen to be waiting around, totally safe. You can outrun any hostile alien without even trying or kill them with one shot. One wonders why your squadmates didn't just walk out on their own. The timer is incredibly forgiving, as you have ample time to find everyone and get to the exit.

...GAH! And his name is "Hugger"? Is it an
inter-galactic child molester?

That's what makes the end-of-level boss so frustrating. At least on the first level, he (she? it?) is incredibly difficult. It fires two projectiles that can be shot down, then two more that have to be avoided. One hit will kill you. You can't shoot in one direction while walking in another direction, so you're forced to have to stop moving long enough to quickly fire off shots in the bosses' general direction.

Oh, and by the way, the boss has a very small place where you can actually damage it. It's not the head, which would have made sense. There's no glowing or differently-colored area that shows where its weak point is, and there's no sonic clues that you haven't hit it, like a plink or higher pitched noise that would indicate that you've missed. Have fun!

There's a two-player mode in Alien Syndrome. I'm not sure how much fun it would be, since there's nothing for two players to really do. Besides, since it doesn't play nicely on an emulator, that means that you've have to track down an NES Control Deck and a copy of Alien Syndrome in order to try it out, and any friend that would go to such lengths just so you can play Alien Syndrome is no friend of yours.

Final Rating:

Next Week: Alien3

More Next-Gen Worries: Always-On Kinect! No Downwards Compatibility!

The XBox 720 and Playstation 4 keep looking worse and worse.

EA is reporting that it's highly unlikely that the next Microsoft and Sony consoles will be downwards compatible. This goes along with another report that the 720 will require Kinect to be on all the time and games to be installed to the hard drive.

Here's why all three are Bad Ideas.

1) Downwards compatibility is sometimes viewed as an unecessary expense. After all, getting the original XBox games working on the 360 cost a lot of money, and for what? How many people played XBox games on the 360? Downwards compatibility was eventually dropped from the PS3 (along, of course, with a host of other features) too. So why should we care?

Downwards compatibility has become the norm on consoles since Sony started doing it back in 2001 with the PS2. It works as a quick selling point for people reluctant to part with their old consoles, especially at the beginning of a generation.

"Don't want to ditch your old console yet? New games coming out you still want to play?" says downwards compatibility. "Here, buy the new console. Then you're still getting the best new hardware while still being able to play new games coming out for the current one. It's a win-win!"

So, Grand Theft Auto V was announced a few months ago. It appears to be on its way for the PS3 and 360. So, if you want to play GTA5, you have a choice: Buy new hardware that cannot play GTA5 yet, or keep your old hardware that can.

That's the problem when you take out downwards compatibility. You've just cut new purchasers off at the knees.

2) One of the ideas behind having Kinect on all the time is a good one: If everyone has Kinect on, then there's no fragmentation of the market. You can integrate Kinect controls into every game without fear that someone won't have Kinect.

However, Kinect works best in larger rooms. Does everyone have their consoles in large rooms? Some do, some don't.

If I'm using a game without Kinect controls, why does Kinect have to be on? Doesn't that use processing power and memory that could be better spent on other processes?

Finally, is Kinect sending any information about the people in the room to anyone else? This sounds like a stupid thing to ask, but think about it: The 720 will need an always-on internet connection. The Kinect must always be on as well.

Still don't get what the problem is? All right, let's say that I offer to hook up a camera to your brand-new TV. Whenever the TV is on, the camera must be on. I promise that I won't record anything or watch what you're doing. Would you feel comfortable with that? I wouldn't, and I doubt you would be either.

It's not that you would expect me to be peeping in on your house, necessarily. It's just the idea that there's something that could potentially be watching you that's disconcerting. Good luck explaining that to the average user without sounding creepy, Microsoft.

3) The 720 might ship with a hard drive in the neighborhood of 500 GB or higher. That sounds like a big jump. The PS3 launched with a 60 GB HDD, and they're now offering sizes in the 320 GB range. 500 should be more than enough, right?

Not so fast. From all accounts, the new 720/PS4 systems are going to have graphics significantly better than the current generation. With better graphics come more art assets, more in-depth programming, and more space needed.

So, let's say that right now a current game takes up 10 GB. That seems like we're lowballing it, but that number is slightly bigger than a DVD right now. If you have a 320 GB hard drive, you can hold about 32 games. Seems fair.

So, if all games are on higher-capacity Blu-Ray discs with more art assets, how much bigger will the discs be? Let's estimate that they'll start out at 20 GB. That's 25 games on a 500 GB hard drive. As time goes by, those games will get larger. Now your 500 GB hard drive is completely full. That's going to turn into a quick headache.

How do you get a bigger hard drive, then? Why, buy a new system, of course! You could crack open the system yourself and install a new hard drive, but that voids your warranty, don't you know. You could hook up an external hard drive, too, I suppose, but now you have an extra piece of equipment hanging around.

One might say, "Well, expanding game sizes were a thing in the last generation as well. The original 360 launched with a 20GB hard drive, for crying out loud." Yes, that's true. However, those games ran off the disc with small installs to the hard drive. They did not require that all the necessary content needed to be installed to the hard drive.

________

So, combined with the whole "no more used games" thing, how will this next generation of consoles fare? Unless Sony and Microsoft have something that's really going to knock consumers out, I can't see it doing well.

Review: New Super Mario Bros. U

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

I've been staring at this empty document for a while, trying to figure out what to say about New Super Mario Bros. U. What can I say that I haven't already said, either in my reviews of New Super Mario Bros. Wii or New Super Mario Bros. 2? Can I just say, "Just read those reviews and come back here?" What about, "It's OK, I guess." Can I say that?

I suppose I can't, but that's the problem that Nintendo's starting to bump in to with the New Super Mario Bros. series. It's bringing in diminishing returns, even as the sales continue to pile up.

So let's just do this: Let's point at what's new in New Super Mario Bros. U and grade each part individually. That should give us a good idea of whether this new one is worth playing.
The most obvious change is the Wii U GamePad. I'll be honest: Playing this on the GamePad has been fantastic. I love being able to play the game with no latency on the pad itself while having headphones plugged into it. Grade: A+.

Multiplayer on the Wii game was really frustrating. With the addition of the GamePad, multiplayer has been expanded greatly now. One person can either help out by adding blocks or troll everyone by creating obstacles. Most everyone will create obstacles instead, which leads to beautiful anarchy. Grade: A.

The difficulty is cranked up. I'm ashamed to admit that I let the computer take me through one of the later levels. Am I getting bad at platformers in my old age? I don't think so, since I don't have a problem with other platformers, just this one. I'll blame the game, not the player. Grade: B

Miiverse integration is really cool the first time you see it. It's cool to see what other people have posted in-game, and there are some very creative people out there. After a while, though, it gets a little tedious. Grade: B

The extra challenges are a cool addition, though I'm not sure what purpose they serve other than showing off how awesome you are to yourself. Grade: B+

The world map is a definite improvement over the boring and stale New Super Mario Bros. 2 map, and harkens back the days of Super Mario World. However, is having a cool world map necessarily "new?" I don't think so. Grade: Did not qualify.

So where does that leave us? This all averages out to about a B+. That seems fair to me. A quick ranking of the "New" series:

1. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
2. New Super Mario Bros. U
3. New Super Mario Bros. 2
4. New Super Mario Bros.

All right, now that Nintendo has pumped out game after game of side-scrolling Mario action, can they please stop? I beg of Nintendo to stop with the New series for now. Wait until the next Nintendo system. We're all worn out on side-scrolling Mario games for the time being. Too much of a good thing is still too much.

Final Grade: B+

Read This: XKCD's Take On Steroids

Thanks to XKCD.

NES Replay: Alfred Chicken

Developer: Twilight
Publisher: Mindscape
Released: 1994
Number of times I use the word "chicken"
in this review: 12

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: Alfred Chicken.

There's no reason that Sonic needs to be a hedgehog. It's kind of strange: We're so used to Sonic being a hedgehog that we never think about what a weird choice it really is for the character.

Let's think about it. I can't say I'm an expert on hedgehogs, but I've never personally seen a blue hedgehog that's obsessed with gold rings. I'm also not so sure that they can run fast either. The "Hedgehog" in "Sonic the Hedgehog" could have been replaced with any number of rodents: Muskrat, vole, ferret. It doesn't really matter. His "hedgehog-ness" isn't really an integral part of his character.

That brings us to Alfred Chicken. I expected something similar, another hop-and-bop platformer with a character that's a chicken but for no real reason. Imagine my surprise when Alfred's "chicken-ness" (chickanity?) actually is a part of gameplay.

God, not the typical "blocks, spikes and
wooden soldier" level. What a cliche.

Alfred Chicken is a platform game where you navigate large levels in search of balloons. When you've released all the balloons, the level is over. While that may not be a very chicken-like idea, the way he goes through the levels is more chicken-y. Alfred collects the balloons by pecking the buttons, he can't really fly, and he can only kill enemies by dive-bombing beak-first. It's odd that making a character reflect his animal background is a rarity, but that's how things are with game mascots.

There are a few other notable things about Alfred Chicken. The graphics are good, although I would expect nothing less of a game released as the NES neared the end of its lifespan. For example, there are a few locations where you'll see a bunch of stars spinning around in patterns, and it looks really cool. It's an effect that I didn't think the NES could pull off, but it manages to do so without flickering or tearing, so that was neat.

The levels are also pretty cool. Instead of having the typical Mario-esque "grass world, desert world, water world" progression, the levels don't necessarily have a set theme. It seems like that freed up the developers to try new things without worrying, "Hey, does this make sense in a desert?" There are also multiple stages to each of the levels, so they're fairly in-depth.

So what's the problem with Alfred Chicken? Well, while Alfred Chicken controls well and the levels are well-made, there are only five levels total in the game, from start to finish. Five! Each of the levels is rather long, but still, five levels? That's absolutely pathetic. I can't imagine buying this game back in the day, just starting to get into it, and then having it end. Oh, wait, that happened to me with a different game, and I harbored a grudge for years afterwards.

While Alfred Chicken is fun, I can't in good conscience recommend it. I understand that Super Alfred Chicken for the Super Nintendo has more levels, so if playing a videogame as a chicken really excites you, maybe you should seek that one out instead. That is, of course, unless you're chicken.

Final Rating:

Next Week: Alien Syndrome

Review: Antichamber

Developer: Alexander Bruce

The other night, my wife and I were stuck watching some hacky sitcoms in a waiting room. The jokes were stale, the plots predictable, and we didn't laugh once. Once they were over, we were furious. Why? Because I could have written a better TV show than the shows we watched, and I don't even write for TV.

Another show that we're fans of is How I Met Your Mother. On a good episode of HIMYM, the plots flow together so ably and easily that you can't help but be impressed with the talent and skill of the writers and showrunners. When you're finished with a really good episode, you just sit back in awe, thinking, "How did they come up with that idea?"

What does any of this have to do with Antichamber?

Well, there are some games that you play that make you say, "I could have done this myself." Once you're done playing Gun Shooterface 8: Shoot Harder, you roll your eyes, set the game aside, and move on. There are many games like it, and another one will roll down the pike as soon as you turn around.

On the other hand, Antichamber is one of those games that I could never have made in a million years. I remain in awe of it. I don't even know how someone would even start making a game like Antichamber. It's forces your brain into such odd configurations that I shudder to think of the condition of the brain that Antichamber came from.

If I were to sum up Antichamber in a few words, it would be "Portal plus Metroid plus M. C. Escher." The first and most obvious comparison is Portal and at first glance, there are some similarities between the two games. You're in a strange place, Antichamber is in first-person, there are puzzles, and you get a gun with which to solve the puzzles. That's where the similarities end, though. Unlike Portal, there are no discrete "test rooms," there is no narrative, and Antichamber has puzzles far more extreme than Portal had in its wildest moments.

Here's an example of a fairly early puzzle in Antichamber: You are standing in front of two corridors. The one on the left is tinted red and the one on the right is tinted blue. You walk through the red corridor and end up back looking at the same corridors. You walk through the blue corridor and end up back at the same place once again. How do you progress?

Another mind-bender: You look through a strangely patterned window and see a different shaped corridor on the other side. When you walk away from the window, you are now in that corridor. Go to the other side of the window and look through again, and you'll see the first corridor. Now stop looking through the window and you're in the new corridor. So, Antichamber plops you in a room with eight windows. Find the exit.

If all of this sounds confusing, that's because it's supposed to be. Antichamber disorients you, forcing you to learn the rules of this strange new place, then forces you to work within them. It doesn't take long until your brain is completely on board with the fact that you have to stare at the giant unblinking eyes on the wall until the eyes close, or that you have to make a pulsating blob of light start rocketing around the chamber you're in to destroy a platform in order that a new platform will automatically be created, and there goes your brain. I think I smell smoke.

You get a gun that gets different abilities along the way. This is where the Metroid comparisons are apt, since every new upgrade to your gun opens up areas that were once closed to you. It requires some backtracking at times in order to proceed onward. If you're not a fan of backtracking in games, this might not work for you. I like backtracking, so it worked out well for me.

There are two minor flaws with Antichamber. One, there are a few instances where you need to know how to use certain skills in order to progress. Antichamber doesn't always adequately explain them, though, so you could end up wandering around for a little too long before the answer strikes you in the face accidentally.

Next, since there's no narrative, the end of the game is a little limp. I'll put the obligatory SPOILER ALERT tag here, but there really isn't much to spoil. In the ending, you just fire a... thing at another... thing, and then some stuff happens, and you can't be certain what you just witnessed or how it has any relevance to what you just went through. Since there's no semblance of anything approaching a narrative, Antichamber doesn't really stick the landing as well as I would like. It keeps you at arm's distance, in a sense.  END SPOILER ALERT. For that reason, it's probably not going to ignite the sort of feverish devotion that Portal did, but unless you were a huge fan of falsified pastries, I don't foresee that being a huge issue.

What does it all come down to? Well, I have seen things in Antichamber that I have never seen before in a game, and I'm doubtful that I'll ever see again. Antichamber looks like nothing else, plays like nothing else, and bent my brain like nothing else I've ever played. If you like first-person puzzle games at all, you need to try this.

Final Rating: A-

Sony and Microsoft Don't Want Used Games

Begun, the used game war has.

According to the article above, Microsoft is apparently going to force systems to use a persistent Internet connection in order to block used game sales. Sony is apparently planning on using RFID chips on the discs for the same reason. That leaves the Wii U as the only next-gen console that will allow used game sales.

So why do Sony and Microsoft want to do this? What's the driving force, and will it be a successful strategy? Let's examine it.

"Why are they doing this?"

First, take a look at this. These are the top selling games for the XBox 360 and their publishers.

1. Kinect Adventures - Microsoft
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops - Activision
3. Halo 3 11 million - Microsoft
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Activision
5. Skyrim - Bethesda
6. Gears of War- Microsoft
7. Gears of War 2 - Microsoft
8. Halo: Reach - Microsoft
9. Grand Theft Auto IV - Rockstar Games
10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Activision

Now, here are the best selling games for the Playstation 3 and their publishers.

1. Gran Turismo 5 - Sony
2. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue - Sony
3. God of War III - Sony
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Activision
5. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception -  Sony
6. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Sony
7. MotorStorm - Sony
8. Call of Duty: Black Ops - Activision
9. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - Konami
10. LittleBigPlanet - Sony

Compare this to the best selling games for the Wii and their publishers.

1. Wii Sports - Nintendo
2. Mario Kart Wii - Nintendo
3. Wii Sports Resor - Nintendo
4. Wii Play - Nintendo
5. New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Nintendo
6. Wii Fit - Nintendo
7. Wii Fit Plus - Nintendo
8. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Nintendo
9. Super Mario Galaxy - Nintendo
10. Wii Party - Nintendo

All right, so what's the point? Well, Nintendo isn't pushing for this as hard as Sony and Microsoft are. Nintendo makes all of their best-selling games in-house. Five of the top-ten best-selling games on the 360 aren't made by Microsoft, and four of the top-ten best-selling games on the PS3 aren't made by Sony.

The point? Third parties exert a huge influence on Microsoft and Sony. A system is only as good as the games that are on it, and third parties make up a large part of the quality games on both systems.

"So what?"

Sony and Microsoft make money off of the sales of their console, from any in-house games created and sold, and also from the licensing fees generated by developers looking to make games for their console. They also have their own online services (Live for Microsoft, Playstation Plus for Sony) that generate revenue as well.

So why are Sony and Microsoft so hell-bent on stopping used games? Of course, every time a used game is sold, the only one who gets any money from the transaction is the seller, whether that's Gamestop or a private seller. There's also the idea that fewer used games might mean the purchase of more new games. But with the different revenue streams coming in, why would Sony and Microsoft care?

Now let's look at a typical third party, like EA or Activision. How many revenue streams do they have? Well, they make money whenever someone buys one of their games new. They make money from microtransactions within those games, and subscription fees for those games. Everything revolves around their games and getting them in the hands of the users.

You can't always count on users to purchase DLC. Some people won't play a game if there's a subscription fee. And, finally, if someone purchases a game used, the company who made it doesn't get one red cent.

So, let's say that little Johnny Gamer decides to buy the Call of Duty games a few years after they come out. He goes to Gamestop, buys a used copy of Modern Warfare 2 and doesn't buy any DLC. He may play the game for a year or more, and he hasn't paid Activision a thing for the privilege. This is precisely what has companies like Activision and EA so worked up.

"So you're saying this blocking used games is a good solution then?"

Oh, God no. This is like applying makeup with a shotgun: It's overkill for a very small problem that's going to leave someone with their face red.

"Why are you saying this is a small problem? You just laid out the reasons why Activision and EA don't make any money from used games."

In the short term, used games are indeed an issue for them. After all, if someone is buying your game used, that's a game that they're not buying new. However, that logic only works if you're subscribing to the theory that the customer would have bought the game whether or not it was new or used.

Let's go back to little Johnny Gamer. He's not sure if he's going to enjoy playing Modern Warfare 3, although he's interested. Instead of buying Modern Warfare 3, he has purchased a used copy of MW2 instead. If he finds that he likes it, he;s far more likely to buy a new copy of a different game in the series. If he doesn't like it, he hasn't wasted $60.

As the above example shows, Activision made no money from the used copy of Modern Warfare 2, but they are now far closer to making money from a new sale of Modern Warfare 3 or any future games in the series that Johnny Gamer has purchased. Yes, in the short term, they didn't make money directly, but in the long term they have possibly gained a customer.

"Yes, but only possibly."

Correct. But, here's the question: Is the average consumer going to drop $60 on something that is not a known commodity?

If I've never played an Elder Scrolls game, but people are telling me that Skyrim is great, am I going to rush out and buy Skyrim for $60? Maybe. Maybe not. More than likely I won't, because I don't know what I'm buying. Will I drop $40 on it? Maybe. I'm more likely to, anyway, because I know more about what I'm buying.

It's the same reason that game companies make demos of their games. It's a little more work, but it enables the player to find out what the game is like first, then decide if they want it.

"What about services like Steam? There are no used games on Steam, and yet it's thriving."

Correct. Steam also offers deep discounts and free weekends. They'll sell $60 games for $30, give away copies of Portal, and have massive sales that make wallets weep because the deals are just that good.

Do you foresee Sony or Microsoft doing that? Remember, they're locking out used games solely to increase profit. Would they offer their games for cheap if that's their goal? It's unlikely.

"Well, what about-"

And imagine when little Johnny Gamer buys a PS4, buys a game he doesn't like and tries to trade it in. "Sorry, kid, no trade-ins on PS4 games." How is that going to play out?

"Well, maybe-"

And let's say that Microsoft or Sony charge an activation fee for used games. How is that going to work? You're going to pay $30 for a used game, then pay another $5 just for the privilege of being able to play it on your system? Good luck explaining that to the average consumer without having them slam the game down on the counter and storm off.

"OK, then how would you fix this problem?"

You have two options. One would be to offer this sort of system while offering the deep, deep discounts that Steam offers. It's worked really well for Valve.

So, do you think Microsoft and Sony are going to be willing to offer those discounts? Sony might. Microsoft still sells their Office program for $150, at least. Granted, it’s a different division of the company that set that pricing, but the corporate culture is tough to break.

The other option is what Nintendo is doing with their Club Nintendo program. When you buy a new game from Nintendo, you can get points on your Club Nintendo account, which you can redeem for special gifts or even free games. It’s not the most robust system, but it works. Whenever I buy a Nintendo game, I buy new instead of used precisely so I can get points on Club Nintendo. Square Enix does a similar system, and it seems to have worked out for them so far too. With that system, you’re rewarding people for buying new games, while not punishing people for buying used.

Yet, that requires having some trust and faith in your audience. By blocking used games entirely, Sony and Microsoft are demonstrating that they have none.

“What could happen if Sony and Microsoft do this?”

Used games make more money than new games for companies like Gamestop and Best Buy. It's simple economics.

Gamestop is already angry over this development. Millions of gamers go to Gamestop and listen to the advice of the people behind the counter, even though they don’t always know what they’re talking about. The reps mostly get their directives from corporate, which determines what the Gamestop reps say and do.

Used games are a large, large piece of their revenue. Their shelf space is mostly devoted to it. If Nintendo is the only company that allows used games, how much shelf space will Sony and Microsoft get? How much will Nintendo get?

Best Buy is dipping their toes into the used game arena. Already, they have lots of shelf space reserved specifically for used games, so what are they going to put there instead? How about the used games from a company that’s not blocking off used games?

If all goes the way it appears to be going, Sony and Microsoft will be handing this generation over to Nintendo easily. They won’t have shelf space in the most prime locations, they won’t have gamers on their side and they won’t succeed.

Sounds like a plan to me!

_______

There are times when gaming companies will do things that are not in the consumer’s best interest. Think of systems like the PSPGo, or releasing a competing online store just to get that sweet, sweet gaming cash that Steam rakes in, or nickel-and-diming customers with immersion-breaking DLC. When they do these things, they usually get swatted down by the consumers who see right through it.

Here’s hoping that consumers rebel against this arrangement by Sony and Microsoft. If they don’t, we could be on the cusp of another devastating industry-wide crash. Fingers crossed.

Review: Proteus

Developer: Ed Key and David Kanaga

Whenever a game like Proteus or Dear Esther comes out, the question on everyone's lips is, "Is this really a game?" It's such a fake question, but since it's going to be asked of anyone reading this review, let's get it out of the way. A game needs three things to be called a game: Controls, Goals and Anticipation. Here's what we mean:

• Controls: Can you control your avatar's movement through the game world?
• Goals: Is there a definitive goal that you are steering that character toward?
• Anticipation: Are you expecting something when you get to that goal?

With Dear Esther, you can control your character's movement. You have a goal. You're anticipating what will happen when you reach that goal. Therefore, it's a game.

With Proteus, you control your character's movement. You set your own goals, much like Minecraft allows the player to do. You anticipate what will happen when you reach that goal. Therefore, it's a game.

Now that we have that philosophical wankery out the way, can we talk about Proteus itself? Thanks.

You really have to see this motion to get the full effect.

At the outset of Proteus, you awake floating in the water. Before you, you see the faint outline of an island. You move toward it, and music slowly comes alive around you. Your movements, what you see onscreen and what you're standing near affect the music, adding instruments or tones to it. There are no enemies to kill, no princesses to rescue, just you and a magically musical island. The seasons change from spring to summer, then to fall, then winter, and your time on the island is over.

Proteus brings you along with subtle nudges. "Hey, there's a snow-capped mountain. I wonder what the music sounds like there. Look, a flock of birds. I wonder what music they make? There's a gathering storm. I wonder what sound that will make?" The game itself doesn't have to set goals in front of the player, just let the player choose what they would like to see.

Every time you start the game anew, a new island is randomly generated. The islands have the same basic features on every one, but since the mix and match of colors and shapes is different on each, the music will be slightly different. If you specifically want to save the island you're on, you can take a "snapshot," which saves the state of the game and acts as a Save/Load system.

It's hard to tell you much about Proteus without spoiling it, but I will pinpoint two moments that blew me away: One, when a flock of birds ran away from me, chirping all the way, adding an extra bit of harmony to the background music, and two, when the season changed to winter. I believe I audibly gasped when that happened.

There are a few flaws. Once you've played through Proteus once, you can go back, start a new island and give it another go. There are a few subtle differences between islands, different creatures to find, new land formations and the like, but it doesn't appear that you're not going to find anything major, like new biomes or anything wildly out of the ordinary, which is a little disappointing.

There are also times where you find cool structures and would like to go back and visit them at a different time or season, but you can't remember where they are. There's no minimap, so you just have to remember where it was. This can be frustrating, especially in the winter season where visibility is reduced.

Also, while spring, summer, and the early part of autumn are neat, the transition from autumn to winter and winter itself are not quite as impressive. While winter looks really cool when you first see it, it quickly becomes frustrating as you try to figure out where you're going because of low visibility, and after a while, the game begins the ending process without so much as a warning. I also wish that the game would let you go back to spring once winter is through and keep on playing, but the developers may have had their reasons.

Proteus could maybe benefit from a few more game-like touches, like achievements (so you know the breadth of what you haven't seen yet) and a minimap (so you could see how much of the island you haven't found yet and find things on the island that you had previously found), but adding those in might destroy the delicate balance of solitude and exploration that Proteus has. I'm sure as more player feedback is added, the makers of Proteus will expand and deepen the world even more.

That being said, Proteus is a really incredible experience, although it's not for everyone. If you want a game where you can run around and shoot things, Proteus will bore you to tears. However, if you want a game where you can investigate and enjoy a strange new world, gasp at the sound of a flying owl, watch shooting stars light up the night sky, or just walk through an orchard of cherry blossoms as the falling blooms make gentle tinkling sounds, Proteus is magnificent.

Final Grade: B

NES Replay: Aladdin

Developer: NMS Software
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Released: 1994
Cave of Wonders?: More like a cave of
BLUNDERS, amirite?

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: Aladdin.

When will publishers learn not to keep releasing games for systems that are dead?

Listen: If I still own and am regularly playing a PS2, it's not because I want a watered-down version of Modern Warfare 3 that's going to run at 10 frames per second. It's because I'm playing older games and would like to get games for cheap. Trying to bring current-generation games to systems that can't handle them pleases no one and wastes valuable resources that could be allocated to better games.

Let's take the example of DJ Hero. True, DJ Hero didn't sell very well on any system, but Activision made the boneheaded decision to also release a version for the PS2. It ended up selling a paltry 3,300 units in its entire first month. That's not a typo. I had more hits on this site the last month than units of DJ Hero for the PS2. All the money spent porting and tweaking DJ Hero and developing the turntable for the PS2 would have been better used by hauling the money in bales out to parking lot, dousing it in kerosene and lighting it on fire.

Gaze ye and despair.

That brings us to Aladdin for the NES. Aladdin looked awesome on the Sega Genesis (and pretty good on the Super NES too) because they put a ton of effort into it. The developers worked closely with Disney animators to make sure that everything moved incredibly fluidly, and the result was that every single thing in Aladdin looks stunning to this day. It's really the only reason to play it, since the level design is all right but a little bland.

So how would you port a game known primarily for its graphical fidelity to the NES?

The answer: Poorly.

Aladdin looks putrid. Because of system limitations, they couldn't include the great animation that was the hallmark of Aladdin. Not only that, but all the sprites are teeny-weeny, so they have no detail. There are some laughable animations too, like when Aladdin will need to hang from wires, and his hands aren't anywhere close to the wire itself. Let's look at a comparison from an early level on the Sega Genesis version and the NES version.

Genesis version. Notice the large, detailed sprites,
beautiful backgrounds and neat foreground effects.

NES version. Notice the, well, crappy everything.
I couldn't get the sword guy to walk into the screenshot, by the way.

Now, I'm not here to pick on the NES for having bad graphics compared to a 16-bit console. That's not the point. The point is that the NES couldn't handle Aladdin, and they had no business trying to cram it onto the NES. All it ended up doing was making the NES look horrible, making some kids very upset that their game didn't look as good as their friends' games, and probably selling some Genesis systems. Maybe that was the point, who knows.

Because of the poor graphics, that means that Aladdin has to sink or swim based on its level design and controls alone, and it simply can't. The levels were never the main draw of Aladdin, as the graphics in the Genesis/SNES versions made the levels come alive, not the other way around. The controls in the NES version are also really floaty and inexact, so it's just not very fun to play.

This game was released in 1994 in Europe. In 1994, the Super Nintendo was entering its murderer's row of Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and other classics. The Sega Genesis was at the tail end of a great run as well, with more good games on the horizon. The Playstation was a year away, for God's sake. To release Aladdin on the NES in 1994 was just a complete and total miscalculation. It was bad, and Virgin Interactive should feel bad.

Final Rating:

Next Week: Alfred Chicken