Read the rest of this entry »

This is *possibly* a trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2. It’s pure speculation on the Internet’s part, but it certainly looks the role. It also looks absolutely amazing.

But the “trailer” left me asking: When do we reach a saturation point? When will the shiny and new grow tarnished and old? At what point will we ruin an awesome thing?

From all appearances, this proxy Beyond Good & Evil sequel is built in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed engine. The quick scrambling up piping and across rooftops is a dead give away. It is potentially a really polished and fresh take on the whole “no boundaries” fad sweeping the games industry. It’s like a third-person Mirror’s Edge.

The problem is Ubisoft has potentially turned three of its franchises into shades of each other. Although seperated at birth, Assassin’s Creed, Beyond Good & Evil, and Prince of Persia are slowly growing more alike. Eventually–from a play perspective–they will become indistinguishable, even though they live within drastically different trappings.

Honestly, I don’t want its novelty to fade so quickly. But Ubisoft seems to be doing all in its power to accelerate its decomposition.

At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see wall running inserted into Rainbow Six.

A modern-day plague upon videogames, achievements have infected everything from consoles and casual Web portals to iPhones and social networks. It is nigh impossible to escape them. Soon we’ll receive light rounds of applause for, say, successfully remembering the password to our bank accounts.

That’s not to say they should be eradicated. But like any toolset, they must be used deftly. So I polled a group of game makers to learn how and why they use achievements–their successes and failures–and hopefully have amassed some useful notes on achievement design.

At least I hope it’s more useful than the scenario Magical Wasteland dreamed up.

The National Cathedral. Washington, D.C.

Somewhere on the Lower East Side, New York City

All good things must die. That’s what I tell myself. It’s the only way to justify my fickle nature. I’ve had thechronliar.v.2.0 running for well over a year. I’m still proud of the design, which I hand coded in its entirety, but it is growing stale. Also, it is a complete pain to update. That’s part of the reason I’m scattered across so many publishing platforms.

The relaunch of thechronliar dot com signifies a number of things:

• I am back on the freelance market.
• It is 2009.
• A need to get visual.
• I am sick of Tumblr’s half-arsed attempt to support tags.
• Dreamweaver is way expensive.

Here you will find links to my freelance works past and present. The stories I’m particularly proud of will be highlighted on the home page. The best musings from my poorly updated blog will also wind up here. So will really awesome photos and other creative stuff I am compelled to show off. Think of it as the best of MJI.

Everything else will find be thrown onto other properties in the Chronological family. Enjoy.

Not all mature gamers are rooting for “a guy who can carry a saw around and hack somebody in half.” (That’s a reference to MadWorld if you’re wondering). At least that’s the hope of Jenova Chen, creative director at thatgamecompany. He is not opposed to blood and gore, but he does believe that games can embed a lot more meaning into their code. You may say that he and his studio are on a crusade to redefine videogames–to flesh out the industry’s narrow offerings with games that stimulate your emotions and your brain. Games that paint with a broader palette.

That’s what he told me during a lengthy interview session the day Flower, his latest opus, arrived on the PlayStation Network. About half of our hour and a half conversation found its way to GamesIndustry.biz. You can read it here: The Beautiful Game.

Boom Blox was an unexpected Christmas miracle. It brought the whole family together—as its members fought for control of one of the household’s two remotes.

As seen on TV, guided demos and on paper, Boom Blox is a stupid idea. You could be cruising around Liberty City shacking up with ladies of the night or slinking past giant mechs as a geriatric soldier of fortune. Why would a game player waste her precious hours smashing up virtual Jenga towers?

Most would choose not to. The game sold a mere 60,000 copies at its debut (although anecdotally it performed well in the long tail). Blox was a victim of marketing: How do you convey this game to the masses via cheesy video? You can’t. Because you have to play Boom Blox to grasp its appeal, the game is easily dismissed.

I dismissed it. I only gave it a second glance because Steven Spielberg was attached to the project.

And because my parents got a Wii for Christmas.

They don’t really play games. In fact, they did their best to run a videogame-free household. Beyond one parental unit’s obsession with Goldeneye and Civilization, and the other’s obsession with electronic Bridge, they abstain. So I raided my library for games that might get them hooked on their new system:

Mario Galaxy: No
Wii Sports: Yes
Raving Rabbids TV Party: No
Tiger Woods All-Play: No
Boom Blox: A resounding yes

It was amazing. My brother, bored, tossed Boom Blox in the Wii. Within minutes, my father was practically leaping from his seat to snatch the controller away. My mom was content to observe—at first. Soon she was offering unsolicited advice—commanding he pluck a particular block from the tower or blow up a certain bomb. Soon she too could no longer stand couch-side quarterbacking.

The kids relinquished the controls and sat back to watch the pair bicker as they attempted to solve the game’s puzzles.

When they found out they could play against each other, it was practically all they did for two days. Then they discovered they could instead work together—they’d be awake long past the hour the kids had retreated to their rooms, laughter and cursing ringing throughout the home.

Word is they still play it. You might even call it love.

So why isn’t there more software aimed at older players? Much of the drivel rolled out onto the Wii may be age agnostic, but that makes it neither accessible nor appealing to my parents. They both golf, but Tiger Woods is too complicated—despite the All-Play moniker. They don’t understand Raving Rabbids. And a games like Wii Music and Zelda hold no appeal.

I don’t know what Boom Blox’s secret is, but I’m glad that it has some legs. I do not the rents to give up gaming, but right now there’s nothing else to give.

It is true. I figure someone had to step up and be controversial.

Hurtling full-tilt over and under obstacles, dodging enemy gunfire and leaping off rooftops in Mirror’s Edge was my most exhilarating game experience this year. Once skeptical of its first-person approach to running and jumping, I was surprised by its vantage point. I felt viscerally a part of the game world. Each blind leap cued real fear. Pride surged with each soft landing. I was present in a way few games have managed. I felt the weight of Faith’s virtual body as she staggered away from an ill-timed fall, the rush of locomotion as she sprinted through the world and the game’s gentle coaxing that convinced me to play by its rules. Never before have I so gleefully abandoned weapons — which hamper Faith’s sprightliness — in favor of environmental problem solving.

Would my experience have improved with a deeper storyline and better acting? Yes. Could a few bouts of frustration be avoided with cleaner level design ? Certainly. Do I wish there was more to the experience? Of course. But despite Mirror’s Edge’s weaknesses, no other game this year evoked such a sense of accomplishment upon completion—or such a desire to dive straight back into its world.

In other news: It was great to be included in Kombo’s Game of the Year round table. It brought me back to the year 2002. I was in school and was spending all my free time working for a little site called GameCube Advanced. It is awesome to see the site evolve from those dark days.

Grand Theft Auto IV is actually a tragedy, said John Davison, president of parental unit videogame guide What They Like and (more famously known as) a veteran of Ziff Davis. Niko Bellic, the protagonist, is a really tragic figure full of self-loathing for the acts he commits, he explained.

Last night he was filling in the gaping gaps in my GTA history. See, I’ve never actually played a Grand Theft Auto game — I blame the series for appearing to go out of its way to alienate women. Although I haven’t logged any time behind the wheel, I’ve certainly been exposed to the game and, frankly, have never been able to wrap my head around the cathartic joy of wanton destruction. I’m the one who spent hours playing Crackdown literally just jumping around.

As we discussed the series (well, as John told me about his GTA IV play time), it struck us: In GTA IV, the monster is you. You never have to engage in deprave acts outside of assassinating folks, which puts all the hooker beating squarely on your shoulders.

The series has always been about freedom to do anything, but its new-found gravitas highlights the fact that you’re running around steamrolling cops and innocent civilians because, well, you’re expected to, right?

Thinking about the franchise in this manner, I keep drawing the same conclusion: The Houser brothers have created the videogame equivalent of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. Sure it’s a tongue-in-cheek satire of America’s obsession with violence, but GTA IV’s more subtle “big stick” is the message: We should all be disgusted with ourselves.

Of course, I still haven’t played the game, so I can’t vouch that this comparison is, you know, actually true.