Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? (Even the headline above is rather long, isn't it?) Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. For you, we offer the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts.

This entry comes from the September 17th-20th edition of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, wherein we discussed the games BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. During our email conversation, Totilo pointed out that the vast majority of videogames don't have memorable landmarks or locations, an observation that has already generated discussion among a couple of our fellow bloggers. We replied that most games also lack memorable openings, and suggested that perhaps the two problems were connected, which led to an interesting chat about the ways in which sequels manage the abilities and the gear that a player character had in the previous game.

To read our summary, click on the link below.

Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. So for you, we're launching the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts. Today's entry comes from our September 24th post, titled "Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for August 2007." In it, we (Game Head host Geoff Keighley, Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara and Level Up blogger N'Gai Croal) discussed which console games might underperform during this year's overstuffed holiday season. Here, we distill that exchange to its essence for a quicker read. And as a bonus, we're including the list of the five games each participant believes are being "sent to die."

To read our summary, click on the link below.

1. NOA...Why, Reggie, why?
2. WSJ...catches a brick from VH1
3. XXX...360 webcam hijinks lead to arrest
4. VR!...More developers making virtual worlds
5. Wii...Zack and Wiki producer speaks
6. WOW...Two wives: one virtual, one real
7. HP!...demos new handheld concept
8. RND...'Leftie girls are easy.' Really? 

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved

Level Up has just confirmed with an Activision representative that Bizarre Creations does in fact own the intellectual property rights to the Geometry Wars series of games. "Bizarre owns Geometry Wars, so that's the property that comes with the deal," the rep told us. This means that whille Sierra will continue to publish Geometry Wars: Galaxies this fall, as previously agreed to, any subsequent Geometry Wars games will be owned and published by Activision as part of its acquisition of Bizarre Creations, which was announced earlier today. As for the other franchises that Bizarre has been working on in recent years—Project Gotham Racing (for Microsoft), The Club (for Sega) and Boom Boom Rocket (for Electronic Arts)—Level Up has separately confirmed that the rights to those games are not held by Bizarre, but rather by their respective publishers.

1. MP3...Retro speaks about Metroid Dread
2. GRR...Halo 3 wins some, loses some
3. VSM...Silicon Knights vs. Epic Games--fight!
4. RND...Red Ring of Death for Amsterdam? 

Bizarre Creations and Microsoft Game Studios' Project Gotham Racing 4

You want to get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way. And that's how you get Capone. Now, do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?
--Jim Malone to Elliott Ness in "The Untouchables"

Having just gotten word that U.K. developer Bizarre Creations has been acquired by Activision, we immediately asked ourselves, who wins and who loses? For the two companies involved, it's obviously a good marriage. Like Katharine Hepburn's oft-cited quote about the mutually beneficial relationship of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers--"Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex"--Bizarre gives Activision instant credibility in racing games, a genre where the Santa Monica-based company has been more or less absent (class), and Bizarre gets access to Activision's deep pockets, rather than continue the hand to mouth existence that plagues many independent developers (sex.)

For Bizarre's current publishing partners--Microsoft (Project Gotham Racing 4), Sega (The Club), Sierra (Geometry Wars Galaxies) and Electronic Arts (Boom Boom Rocket)--the impact is less clear. Bizarre has stated that it will finish and support those projects that began under its previous deals, so no-one will be left holding the bag. We doubt that Microsoft will continue the Project Gotham Racing series without Bizarre, given how under-marketed PGR4 has been. It's also worth noting that the franchise was greenlit before the original Xbox launched, back when Microsoft couldn't be assured of widespread third-party support. With third party support no longer in question, Microsoft Game Studios may well choose to either double down on Forza or put its eggs in another basket. With regards to Sega and Sierra, we'll have to wait until the smoke clears to offer any informed speculation on that.

The case of Electronic Arts, however, is considerably more interesting.

1. EGO...trip: scold us, diss us, love us
2. MIT..pranks Harvard using Master Chief
3. UMM...This name is just asking for trouble
4. SAD...Anti-game gadfly shoots self in foot
5. FCC...outs the Rock Band wireless guitar
6. RND...Why Nintendo was right after all

To see a larger version of the image shown above, click here. 

Recently, I was fortunate enough to ride N'Gai's coattails and sneak into a preview night for Halo 3--a choice invite that would make my fellow twelve-year-olds-at-heart quietly curse my name. To be honest, it was a bittersweet experience.

When you last heard from me, I described how my love for my Xbox 360 was sliding down from unconditional by Microsoft essentially admitting that something wasn't right with the design. It is remarkable that a leading DIY solution to fixing a 360 stricken with the red ring of death is to swaddle it in towels: swaddling is how you make a baby fall asleep, not how you should have to revive home electronics. Now that I had shot my mouth off here on the permalinks of Level Up, I feared my prediction of my Xbox shuffling off its digital coil would come to pass. It flat-lined, of course. At first I was resigned, mildly annoyed that I would have to wait to play the new Ayn-Rand-with-guns-and-creepy-little-vampire-girls epic BioShock--but looking at a calendar and seeing September 25th only weeks away was no-scope shot to the head: I was going to miss Halo 3.

1. EGO...trip: Level Up's play, posts attract attention
2. GBU...Halo 3: the good, the bad and the ugly
3. MTV...helps you correctly pronounce "Kratos"
4. NOA...drops the h.a.m.m.e.r. on NSFW blogger
5. BOL...locks! Sex Pistols in Guitar Hero III
6. RND...Voyeuristic J-pix, revisited 

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means.Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. Our returning opponent is the prolific journalist and TV host Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. But this month, we not only have a special guest who joins us as a color comentator--who could it be?--we're also introducing a new concept, sparked by an offhand comment of Keighley's: the Dead Pool. Some excerpts:

Special Guest: Xbox 360 should be killing out there, but it isn't. Nintendo is making money for Nintendo like always, and Sony is still figuring out how to start the engine. Thankfully, this holiday season is going to bring lots of fantastic games to the market, but unless Sony does something quick, Microsoft and Nintendo will reap all the rewards. Which puts Sony in a bit of a pickle, because its games already feel slightly rushed to market (see: Lair and Heavenly Sword), and it has put itself in a position to hurry titles out this holiday season to try and stay competitive (which is never the right answer in my book; make the game great, then figure out which quarter it goes in, not the other way around).

Geoff Keighley: Actually we should talk about that phrase for a second--"sent to die." I read it on a forum a few months ago when gamers were discussing which games won't be getting a fair shake because of the overcrowded market. Let me ask you: which games do you think we might need to add to our death pool for the holidays? I'm particularly worried about EA's Army of Two and Midway's BlackSite: Area 51--two games that should be fun to play, but may get lost.  And what about Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed? Is it really going to post huge sales numbers? Given the awards and number of times the trailers have been downloaded there's huge interest in the game. But will that translate into a BioShock-sized month one for the game in November? Or will Assassin's suffer the same fate as many other Ubi games that are critical grand slams but only end up delivering solid doubles in terms of sales. I thought this would be a huge year for Ubisoft, but with Splinter Cell slipping to 2008 (and the quality of Haze an open question mark), a lot is resting on Assassin's.

N'Gai Croal: You're playing it safe with such obvious choices. I'm going to go out on a limb and nominate the console versions of Half-Life 2: The Orange Box. You might think I'm crazy, but hear me out. HL2:TOB might be the most value ever packed into a single case: Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I bet if Valve could have figured out a way to toss in a gravity gun and a crowbar, they'd have done so. But by throwing so much into the package, HL2:TOB comes across as completely unfocused, especially compared to its chief competitors like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, so positioning this product becomes a major challenge. Especially for a franchise that's still primarily identified as a PC game. I find myself wondering if Valve might have been better off removing Team Fortress 2 from the Orange Box and releasing it in January or February as a separate game, with a short "Dirty Dozen"-style campaign mode that would leverage the phenomenal character work that they've been doing in their Pixar-esque promotional trailers.

Click on the link below to uncover the identity of our first guest QB, and to read our exchange in its entirety.

 

Beyond3D: Nintendo released no information about the Wii beyond codenames for the chips (Broadway for the CPU and Hollywood for the GPU) and the process node that the chips were built on (90 nanometer, the same as their contemporaries). Through some lengthy investigations, we can now say for certain that there was no major leap in either performance or functionality compared to the GameCube. Instead, Nintendo decided to define the Wii entirely by the new controller....To summarize, while the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both at least an order of magnitude faster than their predecessors, the Wii has the processing power of one-and-a-half GameCubes with no noteworthy increases in functionality. This was done for two reasons: backwards compatibility with the GameCube and, more importantly, the very low cost. Developers have even told us that the transition guide (for GameCube developers moving to the Wii) is ten pages long and contains only very minor changes.

To read Beyond3D's analysis in its entirety, please click on the link below.

 

Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo originally ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up and MTV's Multiplayer blog, in four separate installments, from September 17th-20th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

1. EGO...trip: Will our heresy ever be forgiven?
2. OUT...Halo 3 reviews are streaming in
3. JAM...Fret Nice, the guitar-based platformer
4. HMM...Do games need landmarks?
5. BOO...Anti-game activist targets Halo 3
6. HAH...How to punish gold farming
7. RND...Free at last, free at last

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

In Round 3 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, Totilo sang the praises of Metroid Prime 3's new risk-and-reward Hyper Mode ability, and gave BioShock mixed marks for its handling of boss battles (thumbs up on the Big Daddies, thumbs down on the game's final boss.) We offered up some suggestions on how BioShock's excellent "moral choice" mechanic could been woven more fully into the fabric of the game. But towards the end of our reply, we decided to set up us the bomb, as the kids say, with our assertion that "The mechanics that are at the heart of Metroid, most notably backtracking and scouring the environment for hidden passages, don't translate well to first-person gaming." Surely that would get a rise out of the normally even-tempered Totilo.

Alas, Totilo is not only a scholar, but also a gentleman, and far too gracious to take our crude bait. In today's Final Round, he uses our statement as a jumping-off point ro reflect on what's been lost and what's been gained in the transition from 2-D gaming to 3-D gaming. But rest assured, Metroid Prime 3 lovers, he also takes the time to forcefully defend the game from our scurrilous charges--and get in a few digs at the end. We extend our thoughts on what's problematic about Metroid Prime as a 3-D first-person adventure; reveal our favorite boss battle of all time; and explain why BioShock's decision to handle the Rescuing and Harvesting of the Little Sisters in a menu screen rather through the game's more interactive mechanics was not only the wiser choice, but also the more artistic decision. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: The backtracking [in Metroid Prime 3] has been fine. I just finished the game at 100% completion. I backtracked plenty. In fact, I chose to backtrack near the end when I didn't have to and am now made that I overwrote my save file and can't go back and re-visit parts of the game some more. To help me backtrack and find hidden passages I used the plentiful cues programmed into the game, including: strong art design that made most rooms uniquely memorable, a 3-D map that worked well enough for me to never get lost the way I did in Halo two weekends ago, a scan visor that marked all but one of the vulnerable areas I ever needed to bomb to find hidden stuff, a humming sound effect that played in any room where a power-up still lingered, and--BIG SPOILER WARNING!--a satellite station I activated late in the game that clearly marked any remaining items on my map as well as an x-ray visor that let me see through the architecture of any given room in order to spot power-ups and enemy weak points.

N'Gai Croal: The other challenge the Metroid Prime titles face is that first-person shooters have largely defined the first-person gaming experience, and they've done so in a way that's detrimental to the gameplay that Retro was translating from 2-D to 3-D. In a first-person shooter, much of the action takes place on the same plane as the player character, so my attention is primarily focused straight ahead. Enemies are rarely below me, unless I've taken the high ground; if I haven't, the high ground is where I'll find enemies armed with snipers rifles, rocket launchers and other ranged weapons. So in an FPS, whenever I'm looking up and off in the distance, I'm usually looking for enemy armed with one of those pieces of lethal hardware. In Metroid Prime, secret passageways and power-ups could be hidden anywhere. I might have to look high, low or in a corner. I might have to go to a room, realize I don't have something I need, complete a fetch quest, then go back to that room, aided only by a map that is as much foe as it is friend.

To read this Final Round in its entirety, click on the link below.

BioShock, from 2K Boston/Australia and 2K Games

In Round 2 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, Totilo explained why he finds Metroid more thrilling than BioShock: its well-paced approach to gradually empowering his character. For our part, we pouted over BioShock's almost-but-not-quite-subtle favoring of Little Sister Rescuers like Totilo over Little Sister Harvesters like ourselves (oh, the inhumanity!) and questioned why the game, despite its stated theme of servitude vs. free will, failed to give us a meaningful choice following the game's, uh, shocking revelation.

In today's installment, Totilo pokes fun at our temper tantrum before pointing out how BioShock's morality system could have gone much further, then swerves into an insightful discussion of how both games handle bosses. We similarly took a page from Totilo's book and seized the opportunity to play backseat game designer for a day, offering wholly unsolicited suggestions about how BioShock's moral choices could have been more firmly embedded in the game's DNA. And last but not least, we finally confessed our love-hate relationship with the entire concept of the Metroid Prime series as a 3-D first-person game. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Speaking of empowerment, one of the key abilities you gain early in Metroid Prime 3 is Hyper Mode. With the easily reachable press of the plus button, this allows the player to switch into a super-charged mode that displays the game world in black and white and multiplies the power of their weapon. The Hyper Mode boost is temporary. It is either exhausted after the player fires a few well-placed shots or it turns toxic, forcing the player to rapidly fire in any direction to expel the Hyper energy, lest the toxicity kill game's heroine Samus. This mechanic may well be a first for Nintendo games, which traditionally have allowed players to get a boost without worrying that such boost--a Fire Flower, a Donkey Kong hammer, a Master Sword--has a drawback. The Hyper Mode power comes with a price: potentially fatal overdose. (So maybe that's why Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto had a cool reaction to the FPS overdose game Haze at this year's E3.) I like the system. It adds a new strategic twist to Metroid Prime combat. Given how much we've been discussing game morality, I think you could also view it as a very light addition of moral gravity to the Metroid universe. It's a mild maturation of the common video game idea that every new pick-up is an instrument for good and that every new trick should be played without fear of consequence. It makes me think of my second-least favorite aspect of BioShock: the scene in the beginning of the game when the player-hero comes upon his first Plasmid updgrade. He spots a syringe sparkling with power and unquestioningly stabs it into his arm... and then gets a great power. Only in video games, people.

N'Gai Croal: Retro Studios deserves every bit of praise for its yeoman's work in transforming the Metroid experience into 3-D first-person. But for me--and I fully realize this is something of a minority opinion--I've always believed that there was something fundamentally misguided about the decision to rebirth Metroid in this manner. The mechanics that are at the heart of Metroid, most notably backtracking and scouring the environment for hidden passages, don't translate well to first-person gaming. I'm generally not a fan of backtracking in 3-D games, but that goes double for first-person shooters. (Yes, I know that the Metroid Prime series has been described as first-person adventures.) When I play an FPS, there are two cues I use to determine whether I'm headed in the right direction: if I see enemies ahead, or if I see a new area. It's all about forward movement, so having to backtrack throws me off completely. With the 2-D Metroids, I could much more easily maintain a mental map of where I'd been, so backtracking wasn't a problem. And if I ever got lost, there was a simple one-to-one visual correspondence with the games map. The 3-D Metroid Prime, unfortunately, compounds my backtracking difficulties with its 3-D map, which you yourself acknowledge is confusing in our first Vs. Mode Gaiden. And since Metroid is about steadily developing one's mastery over an environment that is not completely navigable at the start, Retro couldn't simply eliminate backtracking and design the game around a simple proceed from point A to point B. The end result is two great tastes that don't quite taste great together.

To read Round 3 in its entirety, click on the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In our second and final installment of VMG, Totilo's question about the reflection of Samus Aran's face in Metroid Prime 3 spawned a back-and-forth meditation on how developers handle expressing the hero or heroine's personality in first-person games.

Totilo: Snap judgment: do you like the permanent reflection of her face when you're in scan mode?

Croal: I don't have a strong reaction to it one way or another. If I had to think about it, I'd say that I liked the more infrequent reflection of her face in previous Metroid Primes.

Totilo: Would have been funny if you could see her rolling her eyes during boring briefings. Or winking at some of the soldiers or something

Croal: It would. But like 2K Bostralia, they seem intent on Samus being transparent rather than clearly defined, more avatar than character. They might get away with it once or twice, but the idea is they want us to feel like we are she. Your idea is better suited to Duke Nukem Forever--if it ever ships--or Serious Sam.

Totilo: My idea was a joke, too

Croal: It's an interesting idea, though, having characters who are that devoid of personality as expressed through voice or facial expressions. I was thinking about it on the train to work, and debating whether it was a good idea or not. Even Master Chief has a voice, if not a face, but BioShock and Metroid Prime 3 have opted for the Half-Life 2 route, in which all you are is what you do and how you're animated. I personally don't find that makes a game more immersive, but the flip side is developers being encouraged to create stronger characterizations through dialogue and facial expressions, something that many developers--particularly those making FPS games--haven't shown themselves to be good at doing.

To read the rest of our dialogue, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: BioTroid Vs. Mode gets noticed 
2. MMO...Make your own online world, here
3. Wii...Super Smash Bros online, criticized
4. SUB...liminal messages in Mario box art?
5. PSN...PixelJunk Racers creator speaks
6. SDF...Sony Defense Force actually anti-Sony?
7. HMM...Mass Effect's bisextraterrestrial romance
8. WTF...Master Chief's ballet dance
9. PSP...this game will be ours, we swear
10. RND...Trying to avoid the sophomore slump

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption screenshot from Retro Studios and Nintendo

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, both Totilo and the Level Up staff praised Bioshock's central moral dilemma: whether to rescue or harvest the Little Sisters. In our second installment, Totilo disputes our claim that many videogames don't have memorable openings, then goes on to examine why sequels often rob players of the abilities and/or weapons they had in the prior game, forcing them to start levelling up all over again. For our part, we defend our assertion about game introductions and nitpick Totilo's reflections on game empowerment by pitting him against one of his game developer heroes before taking issue--at length--with the manner in which the makers of BioShock chose to privilege Rescuers over Harvesters. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Empowerment is not the top of every song or movie or book. But I'd wager that the majority of long-form single player video games are. Halo, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Pokemon, Call of Duty...all these games present the empowerment fantasy. They advance the player through an experience that leaves the player-character more powerful and more capable than they began. Sometimes the improvement the player achieves comes from repeated action and gained skill. Sometimes the improvement comes from how the games are programmed: the more you do in the game, the more powerful the designers make you. For better or worse, and as shallow as it can be, I love this. In fact, despite my gut instinct that BioShock is the better game (it's more original, more thought-provoking, more heavily populated with awesome Big Daddies), I've been more thrilled playing Metroid Prime 3.

N'Gai Croal: Speaking of missed opportunities, another criticism I'd make of is BioShock that while it gave me a great deal of moment to moment choice and freedom, the only high level choice it offered me was whether to harvest or rescue the Little Sisters. That's understandable, because for a developer to create a proliferating series of choices that truly pay off is often prohibitive. But there was a perfect place in the game for a terrific choice or set of choices to happen: after the player kills Ryan. "A man chooses, a slave obeys," the game has just told us through Andrew Ryan's mid-martyrdom mantra₂. Yet from that moment forward, BioShock still gives us just one path to follow: hunt down and kill Fontaine. We don't have a choice. We're given no alternatives. How can we become men when the game continues to enslave us? In other words, BioShock's structure betrays its theme at a critical juncture, and while there are still high points to come, it never quite recovers sufficiently to properly fulfill the promise of its late-game revelation.

To read Round 2 in its entirety, follow the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In today's installment, the Level Up staff's slow progress through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption prompts a discussion of the challenge of navigating Metroid Prime 3's 3-D environments--and its 3-D map.

Totilo: Full disclosure: backtracking is back!!!!!!!!

Croal: But will I ever track my way to the backtracking?

Totilo: I doubt it. I'm skeptical that you're going to get very far. When you get a chance, let me know where you're stuck

Croal: I'm stuck on the morph ball path on that same planet. Time keeps expiring before I can get to the end.

Croal: http://www.destructoid.com/big-daddy-day-care-provides-nothing-but-tlc-for-your-little-girls-40745.phtml

Croal: I've been playing lots of Jeanne d'Arc!

Totilo: At least you have your priorities in order

Croal: 2-D design > 3-D design

Totilo: Survey says: wrong!

Totilo: Or are Ken Levine and Retro both just bad at designing levels?

To read the rest of our exchange, click on the link below.

 

Having weighed in on the subject of whether or not videogames should be considered art on several occasions, we at Level Up are loath to do so again. But when we read the following story from the Washington Post--our sister publication, for those who like full disclosure--we felt compelled to return to the scene of the crime. In the article, Post tech columnist Mike Musgrove discusses the experience that his colleague, Pulitzer prize