The purpose of a review is to evaluate a game by providing a critical statement that is indicative of the title’s merit or lack thereof. As much as some may try to provide an objective opinion, leaving personal feelings, interpretations and prejudices at the door, providing an unbiased opinion based merely on facts is nearly impossible. Even if it were done, it sure as hell would not be very interesting.

The preconceived opinions, attitudes or feelings that make up our prejudices influence how we think about what we perceive. It is because of this that two individuals can come to entirely different conclusions about the exact same experience. One person’s terrorist is another’s vision of a freedom fighter. Similarly, one person’s idea of a perfect game could leave another wanting.

Reviews not only contain bias in order to formulate a subjective opinion on a product, but also within the structure of a review itself. The majority of videogame reviews are rated on a scale of zero to ten. However, it seems the prejudices formulated by the academic background of reviewers and readers have influenced both the use and reception of this scale, giving rise to complications and creating grave inconsistencies in the process.

Our personal biases and life experiences certainly affect who we are and are a crucial part of formulating our opinions. The blending of the academic and critical mindset in ten point reviews does not make a lot of sense and is something that needs to change.

Academically, a student’s work is graded on a scale of failure to excellence, ranging from fifty to one hundred percent. While game reviews are typically scored on a scale of zero to ten where five is the average, years of academia have repercussions on reviewers and readers at an intrinsic level.

The academic rating scale suggests that anything graded in the southwards of seventy percent denotes a lack of quality. This way of thinking is something that is ingrained into children at a very young age, and is reinforced throughout their academic lives.

Due to differences amongst the systems, a score of seventy percent (or seven of ten) may denote an average score in an academic setting, whereas in a review it should signify a game of higher quality.

Unfortunately, the holdover from academics seems to affect how people perceive review scores. Psychologically, former students have a difficult time associating numbers below seven or eight, numbers linked with C and B grades, with quality or excellence.

This mindset leads to a variety of problems. When a game is reviewed with an academic mindset it becomes all too easy to ignore the lower half of the scoring scale. Doing so increases the range of failure, whilst compacting that of success.

While it may seem to go without saying, the average score a game can receive in a review on a scale of zero to ten is a five. So while that might seem odd considering how we associate five with failure, theoretically anything at or above a score of five should still be a decent game that is worth your time. Unfortunately, it seems all too typical for gamers to write off any title that receives a score below seven.

In a ten point scale, positive reviews theoretically would make up the upper half of the scale. This allows for reviews to rate games on an even distribution ranging from typical, average games to titles that are near perfection. Conversely, the lower half of this scale would range from titles that are merely mediocre to broken, awful games that are practically unplayable.

The more commonplace perception of review scores, the academic “anything above a C is acceptable” mindset, leaves only the upper quartile for the wide array of high quality experiences. Cramming everything that is “good” into such a small percentage is irrational when we have a larger scale to utilize than that of academics. Well received titles with similar scores have large differences in terms of quality, while poorly received titles of similar quality can have drastically different ratings. This issue has left the top quartile unbelievably crowded with virtually any and every game that is received in a positive light.

In occasions when reviewers utilize their full unbridled liberty of the ten point scale, particularly with anticipated or high profile releases, they catch a great deal of flak from their audiences. No-one really enjoys being criticized or harassed. Some individuals are actually so afraid of criticism that they will bend to the will of others in order to avoid it. After all, it is a lot easier to say something positive than it is to go against the grain and be critical.

Being critical not only means potentially disappointing an audience that has been looking forward to a game for months, perhaps years but also the title’s publisher and developer. Being brutally honest could risk straining that relationship. In the case of one Kane & Lynch reviewer it could even mean losing your job. Then there is always the rage of fanboys to worry about.

It is unfortunate that this cowardice exists in the first place, much less is supported by a system suffering from a battle between two schools of thought. Those that are afraid to give a game an honest score are camouflaged amongst a sea of individuals who review games as though they are grading papers.

It is understandable that thinking about two very similar things in incredibly different ways is difficult. Anyone that has tried to learn a foreign language can attest to that. However, if we as reviewers and readers begin to utilize the full ten point scale when thinking about games we are not only being more honest, but we are improving the quality of the system which we use to evaluate what we care about and further legitimizing it by differentiating games from other, previously established facets of our lives.

With so many recent rumors flying around the internet about Sony announcing the PS3 Slim at next week’s Cologne Gamescom, it’s hard not to sit up and pay attention.  According to a deluge of “industry insiders”, the new compact system will finally usher in the oh-so-important price cut that everyone has been screaming for.

The general consensus seems to be that a lower price point is exactly what Sony needs to reinvigorate the system and bring in more sales, but I think these people are missing the big picture.

This generation’s console war has been going on for almost three years and the behemoth that was the Playstation brand is still sitting in last place.   Sony’s fortune does not appear to be changing as everyone thought it would, and I believe they will need more than a cheaper and slimmer PS3 to turn the tide of this battle.  If they want to win the console war, Sony needs to completely reinvent the Playstation image.

Do you remember when the Playstation brand was the all-mighty hand of God in the video game industry?  Back during those “good old” days of the PS1 and PS2, if Sony told its developers to jump, they would say “how high?”.  When told to run, they would ask “how far?!”  Sony had so many developers eating out of their hands back then that they didn’t have anything to worry about from the competition.  I bet all the company executives would just sit back in their comfy leather chairs and laugh when Nintendo or Microsoft would try to make a move on them.  Sony simply couldn’t be touched back in the late 90’s and early part of this century.

Well things aren’t how they used to be.  Nintendo isn’t the “little company that could” and Microsoft’s Xbox brand isn’t some pet project of Bill Gates anymore.  The competition has gotten serious. Nintendo is constantly leading the sales charts and Microsoft is revolutionizing the online console space.  While all of this happened, Sony has continued to sit back in their ignorance and proclaim they are the leader in the industry.  Unfortunately, the once great and powerful Sony isn’t the leader of anything anymore.

Developers aren’t eating out of the hands of Sony like they used to.  Square Enix has moved on and is now bringing Final Fantasy XIII to the XBOX360.  Konami will also be delivering the next big Metal Gear Solid game to the 360 and Electronic Arts has shifted a great deal of its focus from the PS3 to the Wii.  The days of the third party exclusive are gone and Sony can no longer rely on others to do their work. They need to change their game plan and they need to use the PS3 slim to do so.

Many people are excited that if the rumored system is real it would mean a price cut, which would surely boost sales and bring people back the Playstation brand.  What everyone is forgetting is that in the end, price really doesn’t matter.  It’s the perception of an item’s worth in comparison to its price that really makes the difference.

For example, I know plenty of people who complain that the $400 PS3 is too expensive. Those same people will go out and spend $500 on a brand new wake board, or $700 on a new mountain bike, both of which they will probably only use six to seven times a year.  It completely boggles my mind, yet this happens all the time, even to me.  People’s perception of what they think something is worth will completely affect how much money they spend on it.

The lesson to be learned from this is that people still perceive the PS3 as not worth $400.  If this is the case, and I will strongly argue that it is, are consumers really going to change their minds if the system drops to $300?  I don’t think they will. There is still just too much competition out there from companies that have a clear mindset about what their product is, and what value it brings to its customers.  Right now, Sony doesn’t know what the PS3 is, because it’s trying to be everything to everyone.

I mean seriously, what is the PS3?  Is it a cheap Blu-ray player?  Is it a photo viewer?  Is it an internet browser?  Sony says it’s all of those things “and” a video game console: an all-in-one entertainment device. This is exactly the image the company has used to market the system with for the past 3 years.  Well Blu-ray players are now under $200, so Sony can’t use the “cheap Blu-ray player” selling point anymore.  Most people do their internet browsing and photo viewing on their computers, so no one really cares about those features.  What Sony really has to sell here is the “video game system” part of their shiny black box.  Who would have ever imagined that?

I don’t want to linger too long on the “what is Sony doing wrong” argument, because I’m not here to talk about the PS3’s past.  I’m here to talk about its future, and its future is the PS3 Slim.  The problem is, Sony cannot simply release the PS3 Slim at a lower price point and hope its enough to sell more systems.  Industry data shows that a price drop is the best way to get a quick surge in sales, but it’s not enough to sustain that increase for the long term.  To do that, Sony needs to use the PS3 Slim to reinvent the image of the Playstation brand.

When the new system launches, assuming it does, Sony needs to treat it like the launch of a completely new device, with a whole new marketing campaign, and a whole new outlook on the future.  They need to essentially forget about the original PS3 and act like it never existed.  The PS3 Slim needs to be the new face of the Playstation “gaming brand”, with no mention of the Blu-ray player, the internet browser, or any of the other “non-video game related” features.  Sony needs to concentrate on what people have come to expect from them: a great gaming system.

Right now, the 2009/2010 first-party game lineup for the PS3 is absolutely incredible.  There are great titles like Uncharted 2, God of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, and The Last Guardian, which all bring something special and unique to the system that no other competitor can offer.  Sony needs to buckle down and concentrate on marketing the PS3 as the “only place” to get these exclusive games.  Sure the system has great games from 3^rd party publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision, just like their competitors. What those “other guys” don’t have is a 1^st party line up of games the likes of which the world has never seen.  Sony needs to push this selling point hard and make customers understand the great gaming value the PS3 has to offer.

Once Sony has changed their marketing campaign, they need to get the word out on the street in the loudest way possible.  They need to think big, and starting in September one of the biggest stages in the world will be the National Football League.  The company should buy exclusive rights to have the PS3 brand be one of the NFL sponsors.  Notice I did not say the Sony brand.  I specifically said the PS3 brand.  Imagine there being a commercial for a new and exciting PS3 game every 20 minutes during a 3 hour game.  Everyone who watches football would constantly get a chance to see how incredible the system is.

Of course the NFL is predominantly popular in only America, so Sony would need to branch out and sponsor other global sporting events as well.  They could sponsor football leagues in Europe and South America (soccer), and possibly even Formula F1.  The possibilities are endless, as long as the company is willing to get serious about marketing the system properly.

Besides a whole new marketing strategy, Sony also needs to completely overhaul their online gaming model as well.  While they might gloat that they have a “free” online service, it is not stopping millions of people from paying $50 a year for Xbox Live (XBL).  These people obviously think it’s worth the money to pay for the services Microsoft has to offer, or they would switch to the PS3 and it’s free online community.  There are just too many things missing from the Playstation Network that keeps driving customers to pay for XBL.

Maybe people don’t like the Playstation Network because it doesn’t have the same type of party system Xbox Live subscribers love to use, or maybe it’s the fact that people have been complaining for years for the company to add cross-game voice chat and still their cries have gone unanswered.  It could possibly be because Sony still does not package a headset in all of their systems like Microsoft does.  No matter what it is, something keeps people from accepting that the PS3 is on the same level as the Xbox 360 when it comes to online services.  Sony needs to change that, and the best time to do it is with the launch of a whole new system.

This all brings me back to my original point, that if Sony wants to once again reclaim its position as the industry leader, it needs to completely reinvent its image with the launch of the PS3 Slim.  Forget about all of the other features the system has to offer, and concentrate on marketing it as a video game machine.  Use the new slick look of the system to show that this is a “whole new Sony” who is serious about gaming.  Then amaze people with all the new exclusive 1^st party titles coming out for it.  Finally, put the nail in the coffin with the new $300 price tag, to drive the point home that this is the system for the “every man”.  Let’s face it, it’s time for Sony to get back in the game, and the PS3 Slim is their ticket to do just that.

IGN put up a respectable article the other day regarding things they’d like to see in SquareEnix’s Kingdom Hearts 3. The article was detailed about the things they would like to see, however I honestly felt that there were more points that could have been touched on.

After a little bit of reminiscing about my past experiences with the Kingdom Hearts franchise my fingers instantly went to my keyboard and I started assembling my thoughts on what would be essential for making Kingdom Hearts 3 an epic threequel, once they finally stop putting far too many resources into Final Fantasy XIII.

Allow me to quickly state my views of the first two Kingdom Hearts titles, so that you guys can grasp my view of things a little bit before continuing on. Most people consider the first Kingdom Hearts game to be the better of the two console titles, while I, however, found Kingdom Hearts 2 to be more fun, but it is a noticeably easier game. The story in the sequel seemed to flow much better than the predecessor, and everything had a slightly more epic feel to it.

In my personal opinion, I think that there were may have been a few less Disney executives breathing down the necks of SquareEnix since Disney knew Kingdom Hearts could be a very profitable franchise, allowing for a little more breathing room to integrate newer characters and not lean heavily on  pre-manufactured Disney villains. However, both Kingdom Hearts games still leave room for improvement, which need to be addressed by the third game to avoid the risk of becoming stale.

No More Roxas

While I said I found Kingdom Hearts 2 to be the more fun game of the two, the prologue featuring Roxas and his friends made me nearly quit the game. Roxas’ segments in KH2 were all far too long, and the characters revolving around him, for the most part, were simply annoying; I literally begged to have Donald and Goofy back. If Roxas or his pals return in any sense for a third game, it needs to be strictly a cameo appearance and nothing more then that, please just keep the player in Sora’s shoes.

Fully Integrate Final Fantasy

Squall, Cloud, and the others have been cameo characters in pretty much anything related to Kingdom Hearts since its birth (yes, I called him Squall by the way). While the Final Fantasy cast was utilized a whole lot more in the sequel, I think the half-assing needs to stop with them, and I think it’s about time that Sora gets to explore some actual Final Fantasy worlds. Let’s see, Sora, Donald, and Goofy fight Heartless in the slums of Midgar, and some of FF8’s gardens are taken over by Nobodies. In short, if you’re going to have these characters in your game, then do it right.

They lightly hint at some of the Final Fantasy storylines in the games, (Cloud versus Sephiroth, little tidbits of stuff during the first games, end credits, etc) so why not flesh everything out a little, shine some light on the classic stories, and reinvigorate a little interest in some of the older Final Fantasy worlds at the same time. I’m sick of amalgamation worlds that simply exist as a fan-service melting pot for some rather legendary characters.

More Depth with Combat

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 weren’t exactly challenging games, combat was pretty much simply “hit X to win and use a spell here and there”. Both games only became challenging when you went out of your way to look for a challenge, like with the two Sephiroth battles and other optional encounters. Running through the game’s storyline is a rather easy experience that makes even Twilight Princess seem like a challenge.

The combat system in the series needs an extra level or two of depth, and enemies that force you to use said combative tactics. Instead of hitting X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X and X to do a combo, how about something like X-Square-Circle-X-Triangle-Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right, or something that actually brings in a risk of punishment for making an error?

Add some variant physical attacks to the mix that require the use of more than one face button, and actually let the user build some of their own combos? I think that would be kind of fun; I like not watching the same combo over and over for a full game.

When you strip away the graphical differences of Kingdom Hearts and Devil May Cry the guts of their respective combat systems aren’t all that different. They both require you to upgrade things in order to improve your abilities (spells/abilities in KH and styles in DMC), you have melee, ranged attacks, (spells-KH / guns-DMC) potions, and other miscellaneous items to assist you along the way.

The only differences being that Devil May Cry’s combat is noticeably faster and has a deeper-than-expected combo system. While I’m not saying Sora suddenly needs to become Dante, I’m saying that the combat in the game needs to be cranked up a little, and Kingdom Hearts needs to make the next evolution in its fighting engine in order to keep fans of the series challenged instead of bored, because in all honesty, if I wanted to hit one button for a good portion of the game, then I’d load up Heaven or Hell mode in Devil May Cry 3 and simply mash the gun button.

Why Just Final Fantasy?

As kind of a continuation of the earlier Final Fantasy section, why not integrate further SquareEnix properties into the Kingdom Hearts Universe? Since this universe seems to be one giant amalgamation universe, it would seem to be the next logical step to include more properties. How about the Gummi Ship segments instead become more EinhanderDragon Quest fans might like to see cameos by their favorite characters and see them fight alongside Sora. like?

Share some long deserved love for Secret of Mana. Or why not integrate the Chrono Trigger world into the mix since SquareEnix is so intent on stopping fans from doing anything with the property… not to mention imagine the possible coolness of time-traveling with Crono into the past to recreate epic moments from the first two Kingdom Hearts games. While I absolutely love seeing more of my Final Fantasy VII characters as much as possible, I won’t deny that more love needs to be given out overall.

Allow More Diverse Parties

This one always made me scratch my head in the first two games. If you’re going to allow the player to put a different party member in place for Goofy or Donald, why restrict it to one world? And if you know that you’re going to lose Simba after you’re done with the Pride Rock world, is there even a point to leveling him up? The various characters who can join your party should be able to move with you from world to world on your quest and not be chained to their respective levels. If Aladdin knows the whole universe is at stake, would he really stay behind to take care of Agrabah?

Yes, I’m aware that one of the key story elements revolves around Mickey assigning Donald and Goofy to watch over Sora and the keyblade, but that doesn’t mean others can’t join in on the fun! I think I speak for everyone when I say I’d like to have the option of making my party consist of Sora, Cloud, and The Beast. I again fall back on saying that more variety will keep the franchise fresh. If I have to hear “Gawrsh Sora!” one more time, I swear The Heartless will be the least of Disney’s problems.

Release Final Mix in America or don’t do it at all!

The ultimate thing that pisses me off about the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and SquareEnix and the Japanese game developers in general, is that North America tends to constantly get screwed when it comes to content of Japanese origin, whether it be special edition consoles, like the Final Fantasy 7 PS3, or the substationally deeper amount of classic titles on Japanese PSN Store (although this is thankfully changing).

I’m not sure if it’s because they think post-release special editions won’t sell well overseas, but we just never seem to get many director’s cuts or anything that would be aimed at hardcore fans of the franchise, and don’t think I’m excluding you too Euro pals because I know you guys are getting screwed too.  You guys seem to be missing out on a lot of the stuff I mentioned before as well.

Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix were Japan only releases of the games that are viewed as the ‘complete’ versions of each title. There was extra content, keyblades, and all sorts of other little goodies that make me ache when I know I can’t get them in my version of the game.

Hell, the Final Mix of the first game even foreshadows the arrival of Organization XIII and introduces a side boss who is actually the final boss of Kingdom Hearts 2, and even fights in the same style in both games with the near exact same musical score. SquareEnix, if you’re going to pull another one of these special edition re-releases then do it right and let everyone enjoy it or don’t do it at all. And if you’re not going to do it at all, go and finally remake Final Fantasy VII for the love of God.

If there is one constant in the video game universe, it’s that red will always battle blue.  This war of attrition has been fought from the rings of Halo to the fields of Azeroth.  No one is quite sure how this epic struggle for dominance first started, but everyone does agree that the only way it will end is in blood shed.

Recently the fine makers of Mountain Dew have decided to add to this ongoing struggle with their new Red and Blue Game Fuel.  Which side will win this battle to quench your thirst? Hit the break!

In case you don’t know, this new Mountain Dew “World of Warcraft” Game Fuel is a yearly attempt by the company to make money from all the gamers in the world who thrive off their caffeine filled beverages.  If you watch any sort of testosterone filled television, you should have seen the new Game Fuel commercials by now.  In true Red vs. Blue fashion, these commercials show two World of Warcraft characters fighting to the death in a super market.  Why are they fighting you might ask; because one of them is purchasing blue game fuel while the other is purchasing red game fuel.  What other reason is there to fight in a super market?

I must admit that I was very intrigued when I first saw these commercials.  First of all, I am a huge World of Warcraft fan, so the inclusion of these characters from the game piqued my interest pretty quickly.  Yes I know that the drink really has nothing to do with the game, but I’m a typical consumer, so I’m supposed to be easily susceptible to these kinds of marketing tricks.  I am also a big fan of Mountain Dew, and a fan of trying new things, so a chance to drink a new caffeine filled beverage from the company had my taste buds going crazy.

With my mind made up, I made my way to the local convenience store and picked up both types of “World of Warcraft” Game Fuel.  I have just recently finished both bottles of the colorful drinks and I’m ready to not only share my thoughts on them, but to hopefully prepare you for what to expect.  After all, in the ongoing struggle between red and blue, knowing is half the battle.

A Fight to the Death over Game Fuel!

Red Game Fuel

Upon quick inspection of the bottles you’ll notice the red game fuel is adorned with the image of an “evil” Orc.  Now any misinformed person would take this to mean that the red drink represents the evil side of the battle, but this is just not the case.  The Orcish Horde are not all a bunch of blood thirsty savages.  They used to be a peaceful race.  Unfortunately that all changed thanks to an extremely long and drawn out story arc, and now they just enjoy killing and pillaging.  That being said, you should not approach the red drink as the evil of the two drinks.  It is simply one side of the war.

The description of the drink on the front of the bottle says “DEW with a Blast of Citrus Cherry Flavor.”  You would think that with a description like that, your taste buds would be overwhelmed by all of the citrus flavor included in a gulp of this drink.  Unfortunately you would be wrong.  When you first take a sip of Red Game Fuel, you tongue is immediately hit with the citrus flavor, but that sensation is followed up with an extreme blast of overwhelming sweetness.  This sweetness completely over powers the citrus flavor and leaves a horrible taste in your mouth.

Imagine if you took a sip of regular cherry Kool-Aid, and then immediately followed it up by a gulp of Kool-Aid with 10 times the amount of recommended sugar.  That is what it’s like to drink the Red Game Fuel.  It was so horrible it took me almost 2-3 days to finish the bottle.  To put it in terms us gamers can understand, drinking the Red Mtn Dew Game Fuel is like playing some of the worst games ever created.  It’s the Daikatana of the soft drink world.   Other games that come to mind when I think of this drink are Too Human, Big Mutha Truckers, Enter the Matrix, Haze, and every 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game every created.

Notice the regular Mtn Dews are almost empty, but not the new Game Fuel ones.

Blue Game Fuel

The Blue Game Fuel bottle is covered with the image of beautiful female Night Elf.  This shouldn’t be a shock, because every female Night Elf in World of Warcraft is hot.  I mean video games can’t have unattractive women in them, right?  Who would want to play those types of games?  That being said, I am pretty sure the blue game fuel is supposed to represent the “good” side of the red vs. blue battle.  I can totally agree with this, seeing as this is the only one of the two drinks that actually tastes good.

The blue game fuel is supposed to be infused with “a Punch of Wild Fruit Flavor”.  I’m not sure what wild fruit that’s referring to, but whatever it is, it’s good stuff.  Unlike the red game fuel, the blue variation does not hit you with a blast of overwhelming sweetness after the first second.  The drink is still incredibly sweet, but not in an overwhelming way that ruins the experience.  This is very important, because it actually makes this beverage tolerable to drink.  I might even go as far as saying I enjoyed drinking it, and I might even buy this version of game fuel again.

To put this in terms a gamer could best understand, drinking Blue Game Fuel is like playing a mediocre game like Assassin’s Creed.  It has everything it needs to be great, but it just falls a little short.  Other games that come to mind when I think of this drink are 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand, Bionic Commando, The Conduit, and The Force Unleashed.

Blue wins this battle, but not the war

So as you can see, I clearly enjoyed the Blue Mountain Dew Game Fuel much more than the Red.  I just can’t stand drinking anything that has been overly sweetened to the point you make funny faces when you drink it.  I don’t even really understand why these drinks are being marketed to gamers.  Are we supposed to enjoy really sweet beverages?  Did I miss that memo?  The only benefit I can see is the high levels of caffeine.  Is a little taste with my caffeine too much to ask?

You probably have completely different taste preferences then myself, so if you really want to try them out I would recommend getting both.  In the end though, you should probably just stick to regular Mountain Dew, because neither one comes close to the original.  The original Mountain Dew is the Half-Life 2 and the Metal Gear Solid of the high caffeinated beverage world.  It just can’t be topped.

So have any of you tried these new Mountain Dew drinks yet?  If so what did you think?

When I first clapped eyes on the initial images of PSP Go, I was considerably unmoved. And now it seems that retailers are becoming equally pessimistic about the launch, having forecast a retail disaster earlier this week. Things are not boding well for PSP Go.

As reported on Gamer Limit, these independent retailers are becoming concerned by an apparent lack of interest towards the console, after it failed to attract any pre-orders whatsoever. And it’s not hard to see why.

My initial gripe with the PSP Go was the simple fact that it is yet another redesign, and not the official successor to the PSP that I was initially inclined to believe, i.e. PSP 2. Because let’s face it, the PSP has been something of a dead horse recently, so a brand new console, especially after the PSP’s now lengthy 4 year reign, would have been ideal, particularly after its lasting defeat against the DS. Instead, we were presented with that same haggard horse but now scaled down with a beefier 16GB stomach. It’s missing a vital organ too, as Sony is still oddly reluctant about performing a much needed transplant for an extra analogue stick.

The single most controversial feature however has been Sony’s somewhat questionable move over to the digital download format. For the consumer, this drastic change will not be suitable for many unless Sony devise a way to port over your UMD collection, but it is the retailer that could be the potential victim here. As retailer Chips stated, there is very little reason to even stock the system, due to the PSP Go’s sloppy business model as a result of shifting to the downloadable medium. And I’m inclined to agree with them, as unless Sony adopts a voucher based distribution system, the retailer obviously won’t get any other primary benefits without selling their own stock of games, and the fact still remains that limiting the games to download only restricts your collection to the amount of games that will fit on the hard drive. The lack of UMD could indeed prove to be more convenient for some however, but at what cost?

Upon launch, PSP Go will set you back $249, although Amazon UK is currently listing the PSP Go at a speculative price of £229.99, which, all things considered, is extortionate and unfounded when you consider that the current PSP is struggling to sell at around £130. As I mentioned before, this is still the same console but with an added bulk of memory and it doesn’t even have a UMD drive anymore, so it seems difficult to justify the price tag. Of course, the pricing for the UK model has not been officially announced as of yet, but you can guarantee that we will receive the shortest straw as per usual.

And then there’s the design. In hindsight, I will admit that the original embodiment of the PSP was a tad overweight, so the diet that was fed to the 2000 and 3000 models was very welcome, but the PSP Go is said to be a further 50% smaller, which of course means that the screen will consequently be affected. Granted, the more compact size will no doubt do well in making the console live up to its name by being more portable (and, heaven forbid, may now actually fit comfortably in your pocket), but the size of the original PSP’s screen was one of its most acclaimed attributes. Along with the lack of an extra analogue stick, the positioning of the new stick is also cause for concern – presumably Sony are marketing the console for baboons, but I will reserve judgement until I have grasped the console for myself.

I even have reservations with the name. PSP Go – say it. It sounds like it was moulded out of cheddar cheese and just doesn’t seem right somehow; despite the attempt to form a consistency with Sony’s other line of Go branded products. Afterall, approaching, and subsequently pointing at, random bystanders exclaiming “YOU THERE! Buy a PSP…Go” isn’t likely to have the same effect as it did for me in the past.

All in all, apart from the added convenience factor, I am really struggling to find a fathomable reason for existing PSP owners to upgrade to Sony’s “new” handheld, and I fear that newcomers alike will be put off by the pricing when it is launched come this October.

With all of the build up to E3, Sony did try to sneak the downfall of The Matrix Online past us. As an avid fan of The Matrix Trilogy and a long time player of MxO myself, the news that MxO was going to be unplugged definitely served as a downer for me.

I was made aware of the sad news when the following email appeared in my Inbox.

RE: IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE MATRIX ONLINE – THE MATRIX ONLINE SERVICE WILL END ON JULY 31, 2009

Dear MxO Subscriber,

We want to inform you that on June 1, 2009, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will suspend commercial services of THE MATRIX ONLINE (MxO). However, SOE will continue to operate the game service and players will still be able to play MxO through July 31, 2009. As of June 1, 2009, SOE will no longer offer customer support or provide updates for MxO, and active subscribers with accounts in good standing will not be billed after that date. MxO subscribers who have prepaid subscription time that extends their subscription period past June 1, 2009 will receive a pro-rated refund for any such pre-paid excess subscription payments*.

Such refunds are expected to be issued by October 1, 2009. We welcome those active MxO subscribers in good standing to play one or all of the following SOE massively-multiplayer online PC games at full paid subscriber status at no cost between June 1, 2009 and July 31, 2009 (subject to the terms and conditions described below) using the same Station Account you use to subscribe to MxO**: Free Realms™, EverQuest®, EverQuest® II, and Star Wars Galaxies™.

To access and download the game software for EverQuest, EverQuest II, or Star Wars Galaxies, begin by downloading Station Launcher here for free: http://launcher.station.sony.com/. To initiate the download of Station Launcher simply click on the “DOWNLOAD BETA” button. Once the download is complete, Station Launcher will serve as your one stop shop for access to all the identified online games except Free Realms, which can be found at www.freerealms.com.

We value having you in our player community and hope that you will find a new home in one of these other SOE games during this trial period. During the last two weeks that MxO will be available, we intend to initiate a world-ending event and invite our active MxO subscribers with accounts in good standing to participate in bringing Mega City down together.

We will go out with the same level of dramatic in-game event that has kept this game exciting over the years. Get ready to jack in and become part of the final chapter of the story!

We appreciate your loyalty and commitment and look forward to seeing you in another SOE game.

Sincerely,
Sony Online Entertainment

The email was sent the week of Thursday, May 28^th (the day I received my notification). I personally was a little ticked at SOE for giving such little notice about this, a whole 3 days, but I was at least relieved to see that people would have until July 31^st to truly say goodbye to The Matrix. This would probably be a bigger gaming news story if SOE didn’t sneak it out knowing the shadow of E3 would loom over this sad information and go mostly unnoticed.

Along with the two months of final gameplay it appears that there will also be a goodbye event put together by the remaining staff, according to Daniel “Walrus” Myers quote from the Gamer Limit’s news article on the same topic.

The team will also be whipping up an end-of-the-world event. It won’t be quite the same as having over 100 developers in the game as Agents like when we ended beta, but we have 4 years of tricks up our sleeve. It’ll be a chance to revisit all the things that make MxO the memorable experience it is. And how could we pull the plug without crushing everyone’s RSI just one more time?”

That quote, and subsequent comparison to the MxO Beta finale, got me on a big train of thought about the path MxO took that more than likely lead to its ultimate downfall. Now while MxO lived a pretty healthy 4-year life – longer than I honestly thought it would last – it should have lived a lot longer and a lot healthier, rather than limping through its final year and a half like a poor old dog.

MxO was, and in my opinion still is, the best MMO alternative for people who didn’t want the fantasy style of World of Warcraft / Guild Wars or the space ship filled EVE Online. MxO’s entire world was set in the “present day” with all of the fun gun-fu that the movies had and was the best game instalment of the Matrix universe (MxO never had a “real world” plain of existence outside of some loading screens so everything was set in the Matrix, which was built to resemble the present day). However, key mistakes along the way pretty much doomed MxO from ever realising the full potential it could have had.

– Warner Bros. And Monolith gave up on the title far too fast.

MxO was released March 22, 2005 in North America and Sony acquired rights to the title from Monolith June 17, 2005. After just 4 months of retail sales the founding team apparently gave up on the title. In my opinion, this is way too early to give up on any MMORPG title since these kinds of games usually take a bit to get going, WoW didn’t start off as the juggernaut it is today either. The early switch in ownership I believe was the overall biggest blow to the growth of MxO. The change forced everything else into a slowdown and pretty much had a ripple effect that caused most of the other issues that developed in MxO.

– Removing the main characters of the movies.

You can’t really bring back Trinity, Agent Smith, and Neo into the storyline since all three of them died in the Matrix Revolutions (although the end of Revolutions and the opening storyline cutscene of MxO strongly hinted that Neo survived) but there was a great remaining cast of characters in the Matrix Universe that progressively, and with seemingly little fanfare, got phased out of the storyline in favor of new characters that players weren’t familiar with and couldn’t relate to.

• Morpheus, a normal human who’s fought Agents hand to hand and lived to tell about it, was gunned down in a back alley and put up seemingly no resistance. Although Morpheus’ apparently survived the attack, his ability to enter the Matrix was crippled so for all real purposes he was eliminated (and a few years later replaced with a program that was a clone of Morpheus).

• Niobe, Morpheus’ on-and-off woman, was injured while hunting down Morpheus’ killer and never really recovered from the physical and emotional losses – so she’s out of the picture.

• Ghost is relegated to being Niobe’s silent sidekick who pretty much “retires” for some bullshit spiritual reason.

• The Kid (yes, the annoying “Neo, I believe” character from the sequels) becomes the leader of an entire Zion sub faction called “E Pluribus Neo” before vanishing for no true reason and proceeds to do jack squat.

• The Merovingian and The Architect really did little during the overall arc of MxO. They only seemed to show up to simply move storylines along and provide some lip service for the game. They don’t even really seem to be in control of their respective factions (Exiles and Machines) but rather figurehead leaders, since players don’t directly report to either of these characters and those direct reports always seemed to have their own agendas and not that of these two big wigs.

• Morpheus’ operator, Link, fulfills the role of tutorial guide and then disappears and is never heard from again.

• Seti, the “I made a rainbow for Neo!” girl from Revolutions gets abducted by some rebel programs and not much happens to her beyond that.

• Seraph takes a similar role as Ghost, becoming the sidekick bodyguard to The Oracle (although it could be argued that’s all his role was in the films anyway). After Seti is captured by some rebel Machine programs, Seraph goes to save her and ends up falling in some sort of corrupted pool of Matrix code. When he reemerges from it he’s acting all wonky and different, and when he comes to he just kind of vanishes.

• The Oracle just kind of sits around letting everything go by, pushing along other characters storylines as necessary, until she was ultimately killed off not long ago in the game’s storyline. That’s right… The Oracle, the character who pretty much created ‘The One’ anomaly and pushed some of the biggest chunks of storyline, was killed off.

I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something, because they constantly seemed to go out of their way to phase out existing characters in favor of newer ones. The cast overall basically made me, as a player, feel distant from the main storyline and made the entire game feel like a Matrix side story instead of the continuation it was meant to be.

– General lack of effort and loss of Live Event/LESIG teams.

When MxO first launched there was an entire team dedicated to playing the game as Agents and other key characters as a means to further in-game events and directly interact with players, giving players the feeling that they truly were making a difference. After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers.

Along with the LESIG changes that took place, the use of full-motion-video cutscenes at the start of every new chapter and sub-chapter of the game was cut off shortly there after. FMVs were replaced with storyboard like black and white cutscenes, like the ones in Max Payne 2 or inFAMOUS except not as good. SOE’s explanation was that the Matrix movies were all drawn up using a nearly identical method before their actual filming. Sony… its called storyboarding and lots of movies use it, and all movies actually film things instead of just releasing the storyboard.

– Too much politics and not enough cyberpunk.

The first movie was pretty cut and dry; Man versus Machines in a virtual world that had a modern and cyberpunk feel to it. Basically if you could make the movie Hackers anything better than the shitfest it was, you’d get The Matrix. Okay so the sequels added a 3^rd faction to the deal in the form of the Merovingian’s exiles, big whoop it made sense. All three of these groups pretty much hated the others and wanted control, and there was the whole Man versus Machine war still going on.

The storyline in MxO pretty much turned everything into a pseudo political debate. Take the Merovingian’s speech about causality and over think it way too much and that’s what the game’s story kind of delved into. Humans can’t do ‘Thing A’ because ‘Thing A’ will cause the machines to do ‘Things B and C’ which would break The Truce and cause a giant shitstorm resulting in the exiles doing ‘Thing D’ and having ‘Things E-Q’ basically ruin everything.

All of this leads me to ask, what happened to “They got Morpheus so lets get all of the guns, shoot all the dudes, blow up their place, and go back to the ship for lunch”? I guess before Neo’s Truce and Matrix Revolutions the Matrix Universe was pretty much the wild west, and the post Truce universe turned everything into C-Span.

– You could never be an equal to a storyline character.

I remember one of the big things about MxO’s add campaign being the ability to interact and fight alongside, or against, characters from the movie trilogy. Well, this would have been all fine and dandy if it wasn’t for the fact that the main story characters were allowed to exceed the maximum level cap of the game.

Really, how am I supposed to stand toe to toe with Morpheus when I can only be a level 50 and he can be up into the mid 60′s with his level? The only people I think should have been allowed to exceed this cap were Agents and Neo.

– Stupid. And I mean stupid. Storyline decisions.

This is kind of an amalgamation of the political mumbo and character jumbo, but the storyline writers for MxO quite honestly thought up of some stupid shit. One instance was when an operative found some weird chemical compound in the Matrix that gave people crazy green eyes and new powers. Ultimately this storyline resulted in one character having laser eyes – yes, fucking laser eyes, I’m talking full out Cyclops optic blast stuff or Superman’s heat vision.

This stuff will be perfectly fine once DC Universe Online ships, but not in the goddamn Matrix. Or another story where apparently the core of the Zion organization somehow managed to build an entire second city of Zion deep inside the earth without the Machines ever knowing, oh and the city was rigged with enough EMP charges to hold off a machine offensive… um, why didn’t they just rig said charges around their original city and just correct a few of the design flaws with the original Zion?

– SOE’s takeover and other not really relevant changes.

I said it earlier, Sony’s takeover of the game slowed down things in general for MxO. But around the same time as the SOE takeover of the game, a lot of people were discovering that the then current combat system was rather flawed and needed tweaking. Instead of just fixing what was broken and adding to that, Sony’s team felt it was necessary to implement a completely friggin new combat system in the game (which looked oddly reminiscent of the Star Wars Galaxies system) which took time away from game and live event maintenance – again bringing MxO to a crawl. In short, they spent way too much time on the Combat Revision 2.0 when they should have just been fixing the original system. Instead of fixing a chair with one broken leg, they pretty much said “fuck it” and bought a brand new chair.

I will provide a eulogy for the end of the games run. The Matrix Online, my personal favorite MMORPG, I bid you adieu and hope that you rest in peace. You were a great investment and you had grand ideas. It’s a shame that luck and intelligent leadership simply could never bounce your way, for if they did you would have been facing a much different destiny than you ultimately have before you now.

MxO, you saw a great path ahead of you and at moments saw glimpses of what you could have become but as Morpheus himself once said, ”You will find out, just as I did, that there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” I will fire up MxO again for those final days, as a fan of the franchise since day one I owe it to myself and to you. I’ve seen how deep the rabbit hole went, and I’m disappointed to know that I must eventually leave Wonderland.

I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me. -Morpheus

Those of you following the Team Fortress 2 update blog will have no doubt read all about the new unlock system, which is supposed to provide a more level playing field to all players by changing the weapon unlock system from being achievement based to being random. “Random” insofar as you are randomly given an unlockable weapon, irrespective of whether or not it is usable by your current class, and irrespective of what you are actually doing in the game.

The theory is, this will enable all players to have an equal chance of gaining the unlockable weapons, without having to play a class you may not like, and without having to do silly things like perform 1,000 double-jumps.

Of course, while Valve’s intentions seem to be good, I can’t help but think that this new system is irrevocably broken. For starters, the core of the system, the random aspect, is completely at-odds with the previous unlocks-based system. Now, instead of being able to explicitly target a particular path of achievements in order to unlock the extra weapons, you have no control over what you receive. There is now no element of player interaction what-so-ever in the granting of unlocked weapons. Players no longer earn the unlocks. Control over this has been taken away.

There are some good aspects; for example, now you can be granted weapon unlocks for any class, not just the one you would have to play often in order to earn that class’ specific achievements. This is good for newcomers and unskilled players who might not be proficient at any particular class, but still like to play the game. This does in a way make the game more accessible to people who aren’t die-hard fans of the game or even the genre.

Another aspect of this approach is that it supposedly will reduce the amount of farming done to gain the achievements and be granted the unlocks. Previously, there existed a server or two by many of the hosting providers that ran simple maps designed to make it easy for each class to earn their respective achievements by providing areas for the repetitive or difficult tasks required for achievements to be easily completed.

Someone could join these “unlock servers”, spend an hour or two grinding their achievements, and come away with all their weapon unlocks without actually having played against other players. What’s more alarming is there do exist third-party tools that trick your Steam client into thinking you have earned the achievements without anything more than a click of a button. You can load up the application, select the game you want, tell it what achievements you want, and hey presto! Steam now thinks you’ve earned them, and you are granted the unlocks in game.

The new system was supposed to prevent this kind of behavior: it’s actually worse. You see, the unlocks are granted for “play time” – not for doing anything in particular during that play time. You don’t have to kill a single enemy or complete a single objective to rack up playtime. So, some devious souls quickly knocked up a map with a spawn point for each team, where the environment does damage to players. The spawn points are walled off from each other to prevent players from actually killing each other, and there are no objectives.

It’s literally two rooms with an indestructible glass wall between them where players spawn and are slowly killed by environment damage. The neat feature? You join the server, minimize your game, and you come back some time later with many unlocks. That’s right: all people have to do is join a server, go idle, and they get unlocks. I’m actually glad that dedicated servers have been set up for this express purpose, as many people were joining proper servers and just idling in spectator mode, filling up valuable player slots. I’m idling in a server running the achievement_idle map right now, as many others are, in protest of this new and horrendously broken system.

There are many different ways Valve can go about fixing this problem: the first step is to apologize to the Team Fortress 2 community and admit they were wrong, that they made a mistake. This new unlock system is terrible. The second step is to revert the weapon unlock system back to the previous version until a better solution can be worked and implemented. The third step is to actually think through and implement a workable, fair and rewarding unlock system, and have it ready for the next update patch.

If Valve need any ideas on how they can do this, they need only take a look at a little old game called Battlefield 2, which in my opinion made this kind of thing work perfectly well three years ago: grant weapon unlocks based on player skill. For example, killing enemies and completing map objectives are both measures of how good a player is. The player that kills the most enemies or completes the most objectives is typically the better player. It’s that simple.

For further reading on the topic, feel free to hit up the Steam Community Team Fortress 2 forums and have a read of some of the great, sad and downright stupid threads.

In closing, this.