Culture Surfing

Year-end top ten lists are a waste of time, especially with video games. Games aren’t about the past; they’re harbingers of the future, primarily a future in which we will hopefully never have to physically interact with another human being. The various music games and add-ons of 2009 deserve a closer look, though, as there are too many gators in that creek to navigate without a knowledgeable guide. And I certainly do know some stuff. I play games. I play music. I’m not just a qualified customer, I’m a damn double-threat. Hell, I write about both games and music, too. I once DJ’ed a karaoke party at work. That’s like three more threats right there. You are now at severe risk of being pelted with my highly informed opinions.

Here’s a quick refresher on how Guitar Hero and Rock Band operate. It’s just like Call of Duty, only instead of mashing buttons on a controller to kill digital foreigners, you’re mashing buttons on fake guitars and drums to play digitized Foreigner. There’s screaming in both, but it’s called singing in one and bloodcurdling death howls in the other. These games are to music-making what Fox News is to journalism, but at least they’re ridiculously fun, especially if you and your friends take your drinking seriously.

First up: Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Smash Hits.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: A Thorough Examination of the Music Games of 2009 (Part One of Many)” »

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This is not a Magritte/Foucault reference

Let’s be blunt. Georgia Tech isn’t exactly known for its art history department. (Actually, I just checked. They don’t have one.) Still, I can’t image a school more qualified to organize a symposium on the Art History of Games. Working together with SCAD, the three-day event will draw speakers from a variety of disciplines within academia, the fine art world and the gaming industry. Topics to be explored include “A Short History of Video Game Aesthetics,” “Games as fine art,” “Players are Artists, too,” and so forth. If any of it is at all as clever as that Wii image above, it should be worth your time.

The High Museum of Art will play host on Feb. 4-6 at the Rich Auditorium on the campus of the Woodruff Arts Center. You can register and check out all the details at the symposium website.

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FREESIDE ATLANTA: Members busily work inside the group's Metropolitan Warehouses space

At a regular Tuesday night meeting of Freeside Atlanta, there’s talk of building a RepRap machine. A RepRap, treasurer Raiford Storey explains, is a prototyping device that can make its own parts. Once one’s built, it can be used to create another and another and so on. Thousands of machines could be made, replicating one another like a hive of robotic insects gestating inside Freeside’s Metropolitan Warehouses space. A 2006 Guardian article suggested the RepRap might “bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment.” But no one here is talking about post-capitalist apocalyptic visions. The collective members of Atlanta’s recently opened hackerspace are simply brainstorming another project, something new to make.

The term hacker calls to mind a time when the Internet still trafficked through dial-up modems – or a mid-’90s Hollywood movie starring Matthew Lillard and Angelina Jolie. In a way, the folks at Freeside Atlanta are the direct descendents of that time and culture. Almost everyone in the hacker collective has some sort of technological background, whether as a Georgia Tech alumnus, Linux administrator, or an information security researcher. But the focus here isn’t only on programming or circuitry. “You don’t just have to hack computers,” says interim President James Sheheane. “You can hack metal, you can hack wood.”

Fostered by Make magazine and Boingboing.net, members of the current generation of hackers are as likely to call themselves “makers” and cite a background in woodworking or welding as tantamount to their skills with computers. The common principle of making, rather than buying, things guides this technologically bent, do-it-yourself culture, which has blown up in the form of community spaces across the U.S. and Europe over the past two years. Noisebridge in San Francisco, Pumping Station: One in Chicago, and c-base in Berlin are among the leading hacker groups that inspired the founding of Freeside Atlanta.

Three friends from Columbus, Sheheane, Storey and Ken Wehr, initiated the project earlier this year after moving to Atlanta. Instead of securing a space and then seeking out members, the trio first tried to find people who wanted to collaborate. “We said, ‘Let’s get a bunch of people and let them pick the space,’” Storey says. “Once the word got out around Georgia Tech and places like that, it really exploded.” Weekly meetings at Manuel’s Tavern regularly attracted about 30 or 40 people. The group moved into its warehouse space in late June and currently counts 55 official members.

Continue Reading “Freeside Atlanta makes space for local hackers”

(Photo b Joeff Davis)

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And thank God we’re through. Yesterday was pretty much the end of the annual video game holiday season logjam. Sure, a few titles will trickle out between now and Christmas, but few of them are all that noteworthy. Unlike this week, which sees the release of Left 4 Dead 2 (which is partially set in Savannah), Assassin’s Creed II, LittleBigPlanet’s handheld debut, the second LEGO Indiana Jones, and the Wii-exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. There’s also the latest in the never-ending series of Tony Hawk games. Instead of working out your fingers, though, Tony Hawk: Ride comes with a skateboard peripheral; because the best way to reverse the rapid deterioration of a long-running franchise’s fanbase is to make the latest iteration cost twice as much as usual.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Nov. 16″ »

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I mean no disrespect to Buck Fever or the inimitable Style Lab series, but two games stand astride this week’s list of releases like the bronze colossus Helios overlooking the mouth of Rhodes. If you believe the internet (and Lord knows you should) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the greatest and best selling game of all time. It will also teach you Spanish, give you a makeover, and help you realize you’ve always been a strong, beautiful, confident person deep down inside. It’ll also probably lap the field in Fox News opprobrium. Many are wondering if the GTA “hot coffee” controversy of 2005 was just foreplay for the likely eruption of media outrage over Modern Warfare 2 and its cavalier attitude towards civilians. Either way it’s guaranteed to be the most popular game among “hardcore” gamers, both the poorly parented 12-year-old racist homophobes who self-identify as such, and everybody else who likes video games but find the “hardcore” tag as appetizing as a Monster Thickburger after reading Fast Food Nation.

If you don’t feel like slaughtering innocents in an airport, then maybe you should pick up New Super Mario Brothers Wii. This sequel to the 2006 DS game New Super Mario Brothers adds four-player simultaneous co-op to the classic side-scrolling gameplay of the original Super Mario Brothers. You can help your friends out or pick them up by their heads and throw them into a bottomless pit. And if the game gets too hard, you can let it play itself; NSMBWii is the first title to ship with Nintendo’s new “Super Guide” feature, where novice gamers can send the game into auto-pilot during especially difficult moments.

Full list after the fold.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Nov. 9″ »

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This week’s new video games are a good mix of the old and new. Oh, wait, no they’re not. It’s another round of sequels and licensed games. Not that game sequels are inherently problematic (technology tends to keep getting better, y’see), but it’s hard to get excited over the sixth Tekken if you’re not a huge fan of fighting games. Even if you like racing games, Forza Motorsports 3 will only be interesting if you really liked the first two.

There is one new and original title launching this week, and that’s DJ Hero. Activision might deck it out in Guitar Hero dress, but DJ Hero’s gameplay bears little resemblance to its big cousin or Rock Band. Sure, you still hit colored buttons at the right time, but scratching, crossfading, and rewinding have no analogue in either of the two big music games. DJ Hero isn’t just fresh and exciting, though; it’s also shockingly fun.

Find the full list of new releases after the jump.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Oct. 26″ »

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After years of bashfully batting its eyes at irrelevence, the video game industry has finally quit playing hard to get and gone all the way with obsolescence. Almost every single new release this week is either an adaptation of a movie, cartoon, or TV series, or a shameless rip-off of the Imagine series’ already shameless pandering to young girls. Only a few titles stand out amid the junk. Borderlands, a stylish, cel-shaded role-playing game / first-person shooter mash-up from Gearbox, and EA Sports’ annual FIFA soccer game are the only retail titles that look all that intriguing. One of the year’s best games, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, makes the jump from the DS to the PSP. At least it’s a good week for downloadable titles. LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias is the sequel to the excellent WiiWare launch title, whereas the buzz has been growing around physics-based action-puzzle game Trine since its release in Europe earlier this summer.

Full list after the jump.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Oct. 19″ »

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This week belongs to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. At least it does if you own a PlayStation 3. The PS3-exclusive third-person shooter deserves its deafening hype; it’s a fantastic combination of great storytelling, top-notch game design, and superb multiplayer options. The Jack Black-starring, Tim Schafer-designed Brutal Legend shouldn’t be overlooked, though, especially if you love heavy metal, hacking and slashing, or light Pikmin-style strategy. If you’re looking for a Wii game the whole family can enjoy, there’s always Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games or the beautifully animated remake of the NES classic A Boy and His Blob.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Oct. 12″ »

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You should never underestimate any Nintendo game with the word Wii in the title (well, except for that one time…) Wii Fit Plus is the biggest release of the week, but the cross-section of people who’ll buy that and, say, the punishingly difficult Japanese dungeon-crawler Demon’s Souls is probably microscopic, if not downright non-existent. Which is a shame, as Demon’s Souls deserves Wii Fit’s justified success, and also because people who love punishingly difficult Japanese dungeon-crawlers could probably stand to exercise a little bit more.

Demon’s Souls highlights a strong week for PlayStation 3 exclusives. Afrika, a gorgeous camera safari in the vein of cult classic Pokemon Snap, finally gets a U.S. release over a year after coming out in Japan. Also coming out this week for the PS3 is the adorable puzzle game Critter Crunch, which will be downloadable exclusively through the PlayStation Network.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Oct. 5″ »

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Not every game is a big-budget AAA masterpiece. Full, in-depth reviews just aren’t feasible or even justified for every game, especially during the ridiculously busy fall games season. These capsule review columns won’t be too common, but will pop up every once in a while. Don’t worry, variety’s good for you.

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection
Rated E10+ for Everyone Ten and Up
Released Sept. 22
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Published by Crave Entertainment

Pinball’s basically dead as a going concern, and video pinball has never been all that popular to begin with, so this is definitely a niche product. That’s a shame, because Pinball Hall of Fame is a great collection. Unless you’re the dad from Silver Spoons, how else are you going to get thirteen classic pinball tables, including Black Knight, Space Shuttle, and Arabian Nights, in your house? It’s fascinating to see how thoroughly pinball changed from the ’70s through the late ’90s, from the rudimentary human speech of 1979’s Gorgar (the industry’s first) through the over-the-top multimedia onslaught of 1997’s Medieval Madness. Madness also features a bit of voice-over work from a pre-SNL Tina Fey.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: A fistful of reviews” »

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Remakes, ports and sequels abound this week. I keep that sentence on my computer’s clipboard, ready to be pasted in every single week. It’s more notable with this week’s lineup of new games, though. The most intriguing titles here — Dead Space Extraction, MySims Agents, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days — are extensions or new installments of established franchises. These aren’t Halo-sized blockbuster properties, but never underestimate the value of familiarity and name recognition. We’re living in a world with a Land Before Time XIII, after all. My crippling Turbo-Grafx 16 nostalgia impels me to highlight the new Military Madness: Nectaris remake arriving this week on Xbox Live. It’s been far too long since I last waged war on the surface of the Moon.

NINTENDO WII
September 28 Arkanoid Plus! (WiiWare)
September 28 Drift Mania (WiiWare
September 29 Baseball Blast!
September 29 Bass Pro Shops: The Strike
September 29 Crazy Chicken Tales
September 29 Dead Space Extraction
September 29 Deca Sports 2
September 29 Doctor Fizzwhizzle’s Animal Rescue
September 29 Family Feud: 2010 Edition
Continue reading “Player’s Club: Video game releases for the week of Sept. 28″ »

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Halo 3: ODST
Rated M for Mature
Released Sept. 22
Xbox 360
Published by Microsoft

WHAT IT IS: Master Chief returns yet again with… oh wait, that’s right, he doesn’t. Like this spring’s Halo Wars, the newest Halo first-person shooter is entirely without the series’ iconic lead character. It’s like those Queen reunion shows without Freddie Mercury, although ODST’s Nathan Filion isn’t nearly as acceptable a stand-in as Paul Rodgers. Originally announced as a value-priced expansion of Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST arrives with two discs of content and the standard price tag for a new release. The second disc is entirely recycled, consisting of Halo 3’s multi-player mode and all the various map packs that have been subsequently released through Xbox Live. So ODST rests on the first disc, which offers up an original Master Chief-less solo campaign that should take you less than eight hours to play through and the new Firefight multi-player survival mode. There’s a lot happening with Halo 3: ODST, then, but is it enough to justify the price?

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Halo 3 ODST review” »

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The annual summer gaming drought is over and the fall’s weekly flood of new video games has begun again. It’s dangerous to stroll through the video game aisle or (shudder) any of your 50 local neighborhood GameStops without knowledge and a plan. So please, let us educate you.

Mountain Dew sales will skyrocket with the release of Halo 3: ODST, this week’s most anticipated new game. Despite the name, the first-person shooter is less an expansion pack than a brand new game set alongside the events of 2007’s Halo 3. The inscrutable Katamari Damacy franchise debuts on the PlayStation 3 with Katamari Forever. The Wii gets two new youth-skewing co-op beat ‘em-ups. The first, Spyborgs, is a side-scrolling action game for two. The other, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up, is basically Super Smash Brothers with the Turtles replacing Nintendo characters. PSP players can waste the next 100 hours or so with Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, a remake of the first installment of the infamously lengthy role-playing series. Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection finally comes to the 360 and PS3, with three more classic pinball tables than last year’s Wii and PS2 release. Maybe I’m crippled with nostalgia, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending more time battling that asshole demon Gorgar with pinballs than I will rolling stuff up in Katamari or yahdoodin’ it up with ODST.

Follow the link for the full list of this week’s new releases.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: New video game releases for the week of Sept. 21″ »

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There’s this thing called The Beatles: Rock Band. You’ve probably heard of it, assuming you’ve turned on a television or picked up a newspaper or magazine at any point in the last two weeks. The hype is deafening, but justified. Still, some misconceptions about the game have taken root, and it’s about time we weeded them out. Weeding out is definitely something the Beatles are familiar with.

1. It’s just another Rock Band game.

Although the gameplay is fundamentally the same, The Beatles: Rock Band looks and feels like no other music game. Instead of tossing out Beatles songs with the same generic character designs and performance animations found in Rock Band, Beatles: Rock Band was built from the ground up to offer an all-encompassing Beatles experience. A breath-taking opening sequence sets the visual tone, and every cut-scene and background animation is both elegant and unmistakably Beatles-esque. You also unlock various pieces of Beatles memorabilia, like photographs, old promotional films, and even the band’s 1963 fanclub-exclusive Christmas 45. The experience is so consistently engrossing that I’m not even bothered by another major distinction between this and other Rock Band games: it’s completely self-contained. You can’t mix-and-match songs between Rock Band and Beatles: Rock Band.

2. It’s not just another Rock Band game.

Other than the presentation, there are no surprises here. The Beatles: Rock Band plays almost exactly like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. You’ve got a little plastic guitar with five buttons and a strum bar, a kit with four drums and a kick pedal, and a microphone for the vocals. With these controllers you play along with classic Beatles songs, hitting the drumpads or the guitar’s buttons based on a stream of color-coded notes that act as a simplified music chart. There are a few minor differences; the tone switch and whammy bar no longer affect the music, and up to two other vocalists can harmonize with the lead singer. Otherwise Beatles: Rock Band plays exactly like you’d expect.

Continue reading “Player’s Club: Five Fallacies About The Beatles: Rock Band” »

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