Category: Gaming

Last Tango in Los Santos.

“The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder.” It’s Dem Mods v. dem mods as Senators Hillary Clinton and (surprise, surprise) Joe Lieberman decide to sic the FTC on Rockstar Games for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, namely for the “Hot Coffee” PC mod which may or may not have been included in the original source code. (FYI, you can see the controversial game-clip here — It’s not safe for work, but it’s basically two pixellated characters having explicit sex in various positions, a la the puppets in Team America.)

As with most PMRC, V-Chip, and/or anti-Hollywood-style scapegoating for easy moderate bonus points, I don’t particularly think this type of sophomoric tomfoolery in an M-rated (17 and over) game is the central reason for the Decline and Fall of America’s Wayward Children. (And several wry Slashdotters have already pointed out the ridiculousness of the argument being made about GTA here: “I don’t care if my child carjacks a senior…[or] if he takes a golf club and starts clubbing to death pedestrians. But he may never, over my dead body, have adult on adult, consensual sex!“) But Sen. Clinton’s proposed remedy — adding teeth to the ratings system by potentially fining stores who sell M or AO-games to minors — doesn’t sound like the end of the world either. Update: Rockstar fesses up. Update 2: “Maybe she’d be wiser to focus on issues that matter to these people — say, the fighting and dying in Iraq — than on the fighting and the dying in the fake, fun world of ‘Grand Theft Auto.’” Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo calls out Clinton.

In the Game.

“‘I like Kobe, O.K.?,’ Albert Arce said, referring to Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers star. ‘But I like to play him because I can make him pass to the other guys. When I see him on TV, it’s like he doesn’t know how to pass.‘” The NYT wonders if sports video games are eclipsing the real product. (As someone who enjoys both, I wouldn’t really think so.)

Aloe, Elea, Ernes, Elian.

“I like the act of writing on a newspaper. There’s something transgressive about scrawling on the page — right beneath Michiko Kakutani’s turf. Also, I solve in pen (because I’m a badass), and the blue ink really pops from the dull gray newsprint. I find calming beauty in the look of a finished grid.” In an article on the burgeoning sudoku phenomenon among gamers, Seth Stevenson comes clean about his crossword addiction. I’m with you, brother.

Abe Lincoln of Minas Tirith.

Uh oh…At E3, Firaxis starts talking up Civilization 4, offering both screenshots and a preview to the IGN gang. The game’s a complete redesign from the ground up, including new culture, religion, tech-tree, government, and battling systems (and you don’t have to sit through the AI’s unit moves anymore.) If this game is even half the gamer-crack that any of the previous Civs are, my productivity around here is going to be in deep, deep trouble come 4Q 2005.

360 / 3.

Behold the future: At E3, Microsoft unveils the XBox 360, and Sony shows off the Playstation 3. On one hand, the 360 will “automatically connect and stream digital media — including video and digital pictures — stored on any PC running Windows XP.” On the other, “the PlayStation 3 boasts an engine 35 times more powerful than the PlayStation 2.” Either way, the next GTA should be something else…

Mahjong of the Dead.

By way of Quiddity, it’s everyone’s favorite parlor game, PeggJongg! I’m with the folks who think Simon Pegg (of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead) might make for a decent Rorschach in The Watchmen, but, after trying to beat this a few times, I gotta say, it might be awhile before I feel like seeing his face again. Update: Speak of the devil, Pegg talks Rorschach. Update 2: Even more Peggness — the man of the hour will team up with Brendan Fraser and Woody Harrelson for Three Bad Men.

Grand Theft No-No.

In a nod to her husband’s V-Chip triangulation strategy of 1996, Senator Hillary Clinton joins perennial bluenoses Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) in calling for a new ratings system for television, video games, and the like. Ok, fine, if this helps Sen. Clinton gain cred with Bush-leaning soccer moms, so be it…a uniform ratings system isn’t the end of the world. But I’d be more heartened if Hillary spent less time trying on the moralistic protective camouflage of the GOP and more time articulating the differences between the Democratic and GOP conceptions of “moral values.”

For example, Republicans love to throw the Bible around. Well, last I checked, the New Testament has more to say about compassion, tolerance, the hypocrisy of self-appointed moral arbiters, and the excesses of the wealthy than it does to recommend the small-minded bigotry and pro-corporate, devil-take-the-hindmost avarice of today’s Republican party. The Dems would do well in 2006 and beyond to draw attention to these huge shortfalls in GOP “values,” rather than rush to appropriate their shallow, scapegoating dramaturgy. (In fact, perhaps they should take a page from groups like the surging evangelical-environmental movement.)

Only a Pawn in their Games.

Well, thankfully the expected post-Christmas gaming binge only lasted one month instead of two — I can now look upon the promise of February with nary a high-end gaming product to keep me from my academic business, pleasure reading, blogging, and/or other pursuits. (Well, that is until Day of Defeat Source or, God forbid, Civilization IV rear their heads. I also hear good things about World of Warcraft, but am too fearful of the egregious time-suck that would undoubtedly occur if I started getting into a well-done MMORPG.) A quick roundup:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: As clever and immersive as GTA III and Vice City, but I thought San Andreas suffered in some ways from slight overkill (particularly in the food/clothing/weight-room character maintenance and the drawn-out travel times between cities.) That being said, having recently replayed the first two forays on XBox, I think my San Andreas experience was hindered by the graphics capability of the PS2, which made the scenery look muddy or devoid of color at certain times of day. (The fact that puppy Berkeley had long ago chewed my PS2 controller joysticks into jagged, thumb-wounding sculpture probably didn’t help either.) San Andreas is undoubtedly amazing, but I’d probably recommend Vice City first to GTA newbies, at least until the XBox port comes out.

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: I spent the first week of 2004 doing very little but playing KotOR I, and the first week of 2005 followed the pattern. The game play hadn’t changed much — ok, the game play hadn’t changed at all — but both KotORs traverse the divide between puzzle-based RPG and action-game nicely, so I actually quite enjoyed this second installment. Obviously, I’m also a sucker for the Star Wars bent to these games — At the very least, they’re more fun (and often better-written) than the prequels. Now if only LucasArts would bring back Sam and Max…

Halo 2: As noted everywhere, the multiplayer is really something else — even if I have yet to figure out how not to get endlessly slaughtered by trigger-happy 12-year-olds. Yet, I actually found the single-player campaign both somewhat dull and hard-to-follow. As this Slate article suggested, the Covenant storyline seemed pretty intricate, but damned if I could figure out what was going on half the time. To be honest, I think I prefer my FPS’s on the PC anyway, since, unlike in games like Call of Duty or Day of Defeat, I rarely feel I have any sense of the hitbox on Halo 2…I’m just blasting away and hoping I’m doing damage. Which leads me to…

Halflife 2: Now this is a first-person shooter. HL2 benefited from being the first game I played after procuring a mid-level Radeon graphics card, but still…while I never got around to the recent Doom 3, I can’t remember being this amazed by game graphics in a very long time. (I may have to go back to the original Prince of Persia from 1989.) With HL2, it really seems that game-makers are starting to find their way through the Uncanny Valley. And, while the single-player is on the short side, the 1984 meets Pink Floyd The Wall storyline is great fun, and the physics of the gravity gun really expand the boundaries for environment interaction in these sorts of games. In short, Halflife 2 was worth the wait.