Wow... this new Gamespot layout is VERY different.

I don't know why (because it's completely ridiculous) but I feel like there's nostalgia in the right-side profile bar. Having it on the left is weird and the site doesn't feel like Gamespot for me anymore. I'm sure I'll get used to it because I realise my feelings about the changes are totally insane and not based on lack of functionality at all but... that's how I feel.

I think my feelings on the redesign reflect how I generally feel about Gamespot these days: it's not for me anymore.

It's nothing against the newer members of the editorial team, I think they've carried on the Gamespot-style perfectly well. But in this era of blogs and podcasts and videos I've made my investment in certain people and I can't help but feel connected to the personalities that are no longer here, rather than the style of content Gamespot delivers.

And that's how I feel about the redesign. It's not about the fact that the site offers the same functionality. It's just not my Gamespot anymore.

Maybe the real reason I feel that way is because I simply haven't had the time to make the same kind of EXTREME time dedication I made "back in the day" thanks to University and work concerns. Who knows.

Anyway... no real point to this post. Just felt like making it.

I managed to secure the username "Chris" over at Giant Bomb. I can't say that I'll be frequenting that site more than this one or vice versa but if anyone wants to be my friend over there feel free to invite me.

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/Chris/

It feels kinda strange having a username like Chris. I've always bothered with alias's and, ofcourse, Chris is usually taken by some @sshole who doesn't use it. But HAH! Now I am that @sshole.

Ok so it's obviously Diablo 3.

If that wasn't clear before a search function for "Diablo III General Discussion" has recently been added to the battle.net forums. But that's not why I'm here.

I'm making this post because I wanted to comment on something I noticed during all the insane speculation, most of which you can view here.

First we had the block of ice, then we had the runes and now finally the eyes and visor/head knob thing. And all along it's been fairly easy to make cases that the art was confirming a new game from ANY of the existing Blizzard franchises, even Lost Vikings. And why is that? Because Blizzard's art is so generic and interchangable at this point that it COULD be any game. They're all the same and they're bleeding into one another in ways I DONT like.

I hope that's becoming increasingly clear to people.

The one part of this ridiculous specualation-fest that I have enjoyed was the numbers. People spent such a long time trying to decode what they could mean and ultimately they've been revealed as the numbers from LOST. This is surely a subtle comment from Blizzard on speculation. Everyone who tried to decode the numbers wasted their time because they were a complete red herring, something that existed because the Blizzard staff thought it was a cool reference and would confuse people, much as the numbers are used in LOST.

Anyway that's all I really wanted to say. I finally decided to make a comment when I noticed two seperate web-sites lining up both Diablo and Arthas to the eyes and triangular head shape and I was given another example of how stock-standard Blizzard's art has become. So standard that they have two characters from completely different franchises striking identical poses.

I've also been thinking about this because of Limbo of the Lost which could have been a cool comment on the interchangability of video game content due to lack of creativity but is instead going to go down in history as a joke. If the developers hadn't charged to buy the thing it might have been cool.

See you in six months.

Have to admit I've been kinda pissed at the games industry recently. Particularly when Call of Duty 4 won Game of the Year at the DICE Awards despite Bioshock cleaning up everything else. Since that awards show I've found out a few things that lessened my anger at the result (ie. it's voted on by a panel not by the industry, you have to pay to join (remember the RE4 debacle?)) but now the Game Developer's Choice Awards have been announced and they completely reverse any bad blood I might have had.

Here they are (copy/pasted from RPS);

Best Game Design:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Mass Effect
Portal
Super Mario Galaxy

Best Debut Game:
Crackdown
flOw
The Witcher
Everyday Shooter
Aquaria

Best Audio:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Everyday Shooter
God of War II
Mass Effect

Best Downloadable Game:
Everyday Shooter
flOw
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Peggle
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Best Technology:
Assassin's Creed
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Crysis
Halo 3
Portal

Innovation Award:
flOw
Mass Effect
Peggle
Portal
Rock Band

Best Visual Arts:
Assassin's Creed
Bioshock
Crysis
Team Fortress 2
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Best Handheld Game:
Contra 4
Peggle
Phase
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Best Writing:
Bioshock
God of War II
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Mass Effect
Portal

Game of the Year:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Portal
Rock Band
Super Mario Galaxy

Those are some fantastic choices! I have little disagreements here and there, for example I would have given the best downloadable award to Peggle rather than Flow, but most of the winners are totally deserving so it's hard to get angry. Even my beloved Crackdown got a nod!

Personally I would have given Game of the Year to Bioshock (and I did in my own awards) but Portal would still my second choice, obviously it's a fantastic game. I think my impression of Portal is slightly lessened vs. most of the rest of the gaming public simply because it didn't really surprise me. There was alot of stuff about Portal that immediately appealed to me when the game was first revealed and I expected it to be good. Infact before I had decided to buy HL2:Ep2 or TF2 I already knew I was going to get Portal. So maybe some of what pushed it over the line was the fact that for most people it was a huge shock.

Ofcourse it did a whole bunch of other stuff extremely well so... as I've said, it's a deserving winner. I think what's most important about it is probably what it says about how you present a video game. It's short when compared to the majority of other games but it's also exactly how long it should be. Rather than stretching out it's ideas until the player is totally sick of them the game gets in and gets out quickly leaving you wanting more but feeling like you've had a totally cohesive, completely enjoyable experience.

Anyway, so I guess the moral here is that the whole $100 AUS twenty-hour game shouldn't be the standard anymore. We need to start tailoring game length and price to what the game calls for rather than trying to fit everything into an outdated model that strangles the life out of a lot of brilliant ideas.

Ok so it's not really Witcher 2 (I just wanted the title to rhyme) but it might as well be since in an almost unprecedented move CD Projekt, the game's developer, are re-working The Witcher. The list of stuff they're adding is fairly substantial. They're fixing (or atleast changing) everything that people complained about. Here's a short-list of the most important stuff;

• - Load times cut by up to 80% in some circumstances
• - Improved interactivity in battle
• - 50 new character models so you don't see the same dude as often
• - Significant re-working of the translated dialog (which was originally terrible) including 5000 re-recorded lines
• - A new lip-sync'ing system
• - 100 new dialog animations for making people look more natural when speaking
• - Free!

Some of these seem more like goals than statements, for example I don't know why they'd cap the models and animations at 50 and 100 respectively, that seems a bit too clean to me. But provided it's all true it poses an interesting question;

What does a web-site like Gamespot do with their review? Theoretically the game is substantially better so long as you have access to the patch. And the game is going to be re-released with the content in the box so does that mean "The Witcher: Special Edition" gets a review with an extra note that the content is actually free if you have the original game?

It really is unprecedented for a developer to bother substantially re-working a game based on the complaints of the public, but I wish more developers would do it. Not only will they probably sell more copies of the game now but they're probably going to strengthen people's love of the game which makes them more inclined to buy the next title in the "franchise".

Just the fact that they're keeping the game in the news probably helps it sell copies, yet they're doing extremely small amounts of work compared to the cost of developing a sequel. I wish other games (like Assassin's Creed) would do something similar and work some of the wrinkles out of there games before moving on to sequels.

How is it that with tesla coils, armoured bears, super-intelligent dolphins, war blimps and a brand new "Rising Sun" faction Red Alert 3 STILL can't look like anything but a generic RTS?

Why does this game look SOOOO much like C&C3?! If EA are developing it as an alternative to the "Tiberium" line of C&C games shouldn't they try and differentiate the two visually? For starters the colour grey should be taken off the table as a viable choice for the primary colour of buildings and units. But more importantly they should create the game with a different basic st(y)le. I understand that there were no jungles in C&C3 so the jungles of Red Alert 3 are technically new but they could easily be a part of C&C3 because the overall art st(y)le is identical.

EA first revealed the game with a piece of concept art, done up to look like Russian propaganda. I'd love to see a game embrace that kind of stylized contrast instead of relying so heavily on realism. And I think it would work better given that RTS games are generally some of the most abstract games in existence where a tank might be half the size of a tank producing facility and a man might be half the size of a tank. Games that rely on arcade gameplay like the C&C series also rely on the use of symbolism over realism to communicate information simply and quickly. I think they should be looking at games like Advance Wars to see just how far you can take the abstraction of war and still make an incredibly fun strategic game.

Compare these magazine cover images advertising the game to the final product. Which look is more interesting?

I think it's going to be very interesting to see if they can pull this off. Personally I'm excited about it because if I have one problem with Tiberium Wars it's how DEADLY SERIOUS it all is. Well serious might not be the right word… perhaps "legitimate" is a better word. EA took a series which was always quite ridiculous, with its GI Joe-esque armies and arch-villain Kane, and tried to turn it into a legitimate sci-fi story, which is a crap idea, I think.

Hopefully they'll resist doing that with Red Alert 3 and leave the game at full-tilt crazy; the way it should be. The reason I say I'm interested to see if they can pull it off is because this is obviously a high budget game yet the story and cutscenes of the original game were made on a low budget. There was an "indie spirit" to the original games that might not flourish in the money-soaked corporate structure of EA.

Who knows what they're planning to do for the cutscenes. I don't know how they're going to get actors if the story is about intelligent dolphins and armoured bears, but the game obviously calls for crappy b-grade acting anyway so what they should do is hire whoever is willing to work, regardless of acting skill. I'm worried they'll do what they did for C&C3 and pick up a whole bunch of relatively well known TV actors who will probably give the story much more legitimacy than it should have. What we need is Need for Speed level acting. Actually more likely they'll try and get actors who have some kind of credibility to genre fans, much like Michael Ironside in Tiberium Wars.

Anyway, the fact that the game features so many crazy elements has me much more interested than C&C3 did, now I just want to see them push the other elements of the game (beside the units) into crazier territory.

I've decided I'm going to try and change the tone of this blog. A subtle change, but a change all the same. There's probably no reason for me to make this post (because no one will notice) but I'm posting this for myself as much as for everyone else. Hopefully this post will help force the change.

So what's the change to do with? Actually it's something I've been thinking about for a long long time but recently I read an interview with Warren Spector (who created one of my favourite games, Deus Ex) and followed that directly with Cliffy B's comments about PC and those two combined made me realise I want to represent something a bit different from now on.

Anyway, who knows if I'll go through with any of the stuff I have in my brain. I haven't quite figured out how to do what I want to do, so maybe I wont do it. Maybe my current state is just a result of eating too much ice cream and tomorrow I'll regret this. But that's the glory of the internet, I can embarass myself with relative anonymity.

Anyway, as some impossibly cryptic indication of what I'm talking about here is a screen of a game I dearly love.

It's a matter of time. Or atleast indicative of the psychology of GS staff members.

http://fiddlecub.com/

http://mechberg.com/

http://www.thedudehasgotnomercy.com/

In other news;

I've been playing alot of Poker Smash, I recommend it. The guy on the top of the leaderboards has something like an 84X multiplier... I can manage 3. But I don't think I'm THAT bad a player, I'm currently like number 200 and something on the leaderboards which I think is pretty good for under a day's play. I watched a video of him doing it and it's seemingly impossible, I just can't parse the board that quickly.

The game is essentially Tetris Attack/Puzzle League with the added twist of making poker hands to score more points and a few other gameplay and control tweaks that make it more interesting and easier to play.

Also, Burnout Paradise continues to be awesome. I've found all the gates that take you through shortcuts except for ONE. I've spent atleast two hours searching for that final gate and I simply can't find it. I wish the game didn't force you to replay SOOOO many missions to complete the game. There are already 120 independant missions, why not have that be the limit? The fact that I have to replay some of them 2 or 3 times to get the best license is silly.

Hollywood is out of ideas. We all get that right? Halo: The Movie... Gears of War: The Movie... Hollywood is clearly chasing US, not the opposite way around.

Which is fine, infact it's the way it should be. What pisses me off more is the fact that ALOT of people who like games seem to call for and get excited over the prospect of these movies. Which is totally backwards I think. If you play Gears of War you've already played THE BEST VERSION of Gears of War. All the movie will ever be is a shorter version of the game sans interactivity that (while entertaining) will probably betray the game. So why bother?

Anyway, the latest "movie buzz" is Bioshock for some ridiculous reason. Anyone who thinks Bioshock would make a good movie has CLEARLY spent about 10 seconds thinking about the idea. The entire point of Bioshock is to explore the world YOURSELF and unravel the mystery of Rapture as you go. Part of what makes it a scary game is how deeply entrenched in the world you are. Why would you want to watch some crappy Hollywood actor trapsing around instead? And the story plays out through audio logs, how can that story be successfully told in an hour and a half? It's probably possible but the point is you've already played the best version of Bioshock, a movie is redundant at this point.

What makes the prospect of a Bioshock movie even more... disgusting to me is that Bioshock is part of a long lineage of titles including System Shock 1 + 2, Thief, Deus Ex and Ultima Underworld that are something very few games can claim to be. Stories which are told using devices NATIVE to video games. Bioshock is a REAL GAME, not a game pretending to be a movie. To make a movie out of a game as "GAME" as Bioshock is would betray everything it stands for, which is the fact that we're BETTER AND MORE than film and we have no need to lower ourselves to their standard any more.

Anyway, if there's anything I want people to take away it's simply to stop getting excited for/paying to see these crappy cash-in attempts. You know what would be better than a Bioshock movie? A Bioshock 2. We shouldn't be seeking film adaptations as a way to validate good games. We don't NEED their validation.

Call of Duty 4?! Are you serious? I would have given the award to ANY of the nominees over COD4.

That's the reality of the games industry though... a 2 hour show about the growing "artistry" of games followed directly by a remission into the base pleasures and weaknesses of YET ANOTHER Call of Duty. It's the same game as it's always been except prettier!

For all the talk developers still just want to run around and shoot things mindlessly. Pay attention games industry, you're being HAD.

And why didn't anyone condemn that disgusting Frag Dolls display? Someone needs to take a stand against that kind of ridiculous pandering. Against better judgement I decided not to click mute when they stepped on stage, and what the first thing they say? "Hey boys..." #?!* off. And then one of the girls starts talking about how "hot" Masterchief is... that's how well she's been trained and how utterly clueless her trainers REALLY are. You think guys are impressed that you think some 7 ft. tall cyborg in green plastic armour is "yummy"? NO.

No. The Frag Dolls are a disgrace. I'm all for acknowledging that women play video games but that's not what the Frag Dolls are about. They're about promoting Ubisoft and selling calendars to shut-ins. Feminism side rant for today: Feminism isn't about proving you're better than boys, it's about asserting yourselves as EQUAL HUMAN BEINGS. Someone should tell the Frag Dolls.

In happier news I thought Ken Kutaragi was fairly... lovely. It's nice to see the guy with some of the corporate edge taken off. I also appreciated a few of the little mistakes he made in his interview with Tim Surette... my favourite was him proclaiming "I am exciting!" rather than excited.

I was just casually checking my blog this afternoon and I noticed Ryan Davis had made a rare blog post with the title "The Future".

Ofcourse that could only mean one thing. Ryan Davis is next. I called his resignation back on January 11th shortly after Alex confirmed he was leaving. Admittedly it didn't take much intelligence to make the prediction, there's no conspiracy here, but it's still a disappointing situation.

I guess the next question is whether the Suburban Allstars will be re-united under a new banner? Perhaps one founded by Jeff Gerstmann and former GS dude-in-charge Vince Broady? Again, we'll see. For now all I know is that I'm running out of reasons to care about GS content like the Hotspot and On The Spot. And I feel kindof like a traitor for it.

I actually feel sorry for everyone who's left in the editorial team. Back when Kevin VanOrd was known as Fiddlecub he was one of the first people to ever track my updates on this blog and I've always felt a connection to him (however tenuous) for that. I've enjoyed seeing him rapidly rise through the ranks, he's a good writer and it's all deserved, but now that he's finally made it to a fairly prominent position the whole thing seems to be collapsing around him. Large chunks of what made Gamespot the site it is are no longer associated with the site and may soon be associated with OTHER sites in spite of it.

Which sucks.

This is mostly a completely unfinished thought so forgive me if it makes no sense but it struck me recently that maybe the Nintendo Wii is similar to arcades in their reliance on peripherals.

A large element of what killed arcades was the dependance on complex contraptions to differentiate Daytona or Virtua Cop or whatever from the other arcade machines that used standard arcade set-ups. The early success of games like Daytona made arcade owners buy up on whatever the latest crazy device was yet most of the audience for these types of games quickly got bored of playing them (once the novelty wore off) and arcade owners were left with expensive machines no one wanted to play.

The fact that these kinds of devices were prone to break down and were costly to repair added to the problem and so arcade owners started raising the price of playing these games to try and re-coup costs and ultimately the whole thing collapsed in on itself.

What if that happens to the Wii? Or the games industry in general for that matter? Just look at Rock Band. We have a game that relies heavily on peripherals. Early success will probably cause alot of stores to buy up on Rock Band and other similar peripheral devices in the future. However the peripherals are prone to break down and are costly to repair and that's coming back to bite alot of people. And is the public going to be interested in whatever the new crazy peripheral is?

How many people who are buying Rock Band or Wii will soon grow bored of the novelty of banging a pretend drum or waving their arms around? Wii Fit comes with a peripheral, Mario Kart comes with a peripheral. At a certain point the Wii is going to be completely dependant on these peripheral devices with each new game requiring a different investment and people are going to stop paying.

I haven't quite figured out what any of this means if anything but I do think a comparison can be drawn. If not in the assurance of a collapse then in the simple fact that the "industry" (like the arcade owners) is beginning to mistake people being curious about the next crazy peripheral for legitimate success that will sustain over a long period of time. Maybe video games are just the latest fad.

Next week it'll be hoola hoops.

I've been playing an awful lot of the Burnout Paradise demo recently and I really love it. Originally I didn't download the demo because I was 99% sure I'd buy the game anyway, but I recently found out it doesn't come out till a week or two into Feb here so that was the excuse I needed to download it. At this point I'm 110% sure. That's right, the game would have to come packed with a deadly flu-like disease or some such to convince me not to buy it.

Like I said, I really love it. Anyone who says it's not going to be a good game or isn't a good demo is just plain wrong. The one complaint I can understand is the lack of a retry feature to let players reset to the starting line if they mess up their run but I can understand why the developers chose not to include that. Firstly there's probably some technical reason but more importantly it goes against the tone of the game.

When I first started playing the game I was getting slightly frustrated by how easy it was to crash, the city seemed confusing and the sheer speed made it difficult to see a corner and then turn without smashing into something (even with the indicator at the top of the screen). But all that changed the longer I played it. Slowly but surely I learnt the layout of the map. I learnt every little secret pathway and how to avoid crashing while using them. I learnt the tactics of avoiding destroying your car when the inevitable confrontation between you and a wall occurs. And it's great at that point. I can "clear out" the demo by smashing every sign and finding every secret path and jump in about a half an hour and in that time I might crash two or three times. Mostly after long periods of driving much too fast or attempting something with a very small chance of success.

The bottom line for me is that driving around finding paths and watching the carnage ensue when I make a mistake is far more enjoyable than painstakingly completing a game mission by mission. So I don't miss the ability to retry missions. Infact all I really want from the game is more city to explore, which the full game provides. The added bonus being more mission types and cars.

The one thing that does annoy me however is DJ Atomica. I guess I can get over his voice after a while, it's the fact that he's constantly interrupting the game that really annoys me. But I think that's simply a symptom of the fact that the demo makes you replay the start of the game over and over. I have a feeling he only interrupts so often because it's the game's version of a tutorial.

It kind of worries me that the developers have spent so much time worrying about people who are complaining that the game isn't similar enough to older Burnout titles. There's no need to go back to the old mission structure. I hope the game ends up selling really well and that convinces them that they're headed in the right direction. If they could just add the car customization features (atleast the cosmetic ones) of Forza 2 to this game they'd have the perfect driving game, as far as I'm concerned. Going back to the old mission structure would be a terrible idea.

This is what I'm imagining right now with the discovery of YET ANOTHER GS editor's brand new blog outside of Gamespot.

Does this mean he's next to go? If not all these blogs are obviously indicative of the GS staff wanting somewhere to write about stuff outside the jurisdiction of C|Net. Which bodes poorly in the long run if not right now.

Matt Rorie

Well I suck. I was supposed to post this list (and I had it mostly written) 2 days ago but I got sidetracked... mostly by Call of Duty 4 and the sci-fi TV show Farscape. I recommend one of them, use your sleuthing powers to figure out which.

Here's the remaining four titles, scroll down past the post where I complain about COD4 to find the other four.

Starcraft 2

I have a love-hate relationship with Blizzard. I've played every one of their titles since Blackthorne and bought every title relatively close to (if not on) their release date, but they've changed over the years. The Blizzard who made Starcraft are not the Blizzard who are making Starcraft 2 today and that worries me alot, given that Starcraft is one of my very favourite games ever.

I'm hyper-aware of every little change they make to the art or the tone of the fiction or the unit balance or the level design or whatever, but I guess I just need to trust that they'll pull it off in the end. Whatever happens I'll be there on day one to buy the game and I'll probably try and get a copy of whatever insane collectors edition they package as well. I might even upgrade my computer to play it better. That's just how it is for me and Starcraft.

I wish Blizzard had gone in a direction that was more different to the original SC in terms of "races" (I don't think the current set-up reflects the fiction well enough) but then there's also a large part of me that says "why fix what ain't broke?" Do you improve Chess? The same could be said of Bionic Commando Re-armed which was just announced.

Anyway, to summarise, if there's anything to watch for as more information on this game is revealed throughout the year, it's for the influence of WOW. Starcraft has always been a more "realistic" title as opposed to the cartooniness of Warcraft but in about half the art they've revealed so far I see way too much "epic fantasy" and not enough Ridley Scott-esque grit. When I can't tell if Protoss concept art is for the Protoss for the Undead in WOW that's bad news. The in-game graphics themselves are also skating this cartoon edge, so I think that's something to watch for. Can Blizzard shake the WOW tone? If not it's going to vastly undermine what was cool about Starcraft in the first place.

Fallout 3

I'm not a particularly big fan of Bethesda, but I am a particularly big fan of Fallout and so far Bethesda have said and done just about everything right to assure me that they're making a great addition to the two cl@ssic Fallout games. Is it going to be exactly the same as Fallout 1? No, but that doesn't matter.

I have to say I'm getting really sick of hearing about the "hardcore fans" condemning this sequel, as though their lack of support for the title spells financial doom. The reality is that Fallout fans are perhaps the single-most cranky people on the internet, but luckily there's not that many of them. Maybe a few hundred.

There are a lot more people, like me, who are moderate and just happy to see new games in a setting as cool as Fallouts'. And even more people who will probably get into the game simply because it looks cool or comes from the developer of Oblivion, rather than because they have some backwards mentality about everything having to be JUST LIKE FALLOUT 1.

Even if Fallout 3 turns out to be a horrible game, which I doubt based on Oblivion and more importantly based on how they're changing Oblivion to suit Fallout's tone, it doesn't "ruin" the first two titles. They will always stand as cl@ssics regardless of how later sequels treat the franchise. Personally I think Bethesda is doing a great job forging a slightly new but very cool direction for the series and I think it's going to be great fun to play if only for the cool post-apocalpytic sight seeing.

Half-Life 2: Episode 3

If there's one element of shame in the insane success of Portal it's that it caused Half-Life 2: Episode 2 to be slightly over looked. That game was absolutely fantastic, but not only that, it offered fairly large plot revelations that got me totally excited for the conclusion in Episode 3.

On top of this there's a fairly big chance that the Portal gun will show up at some point in Episode 3 (my money says it's while you're on-board the Borealis) and portal gun plus enemies plus weapons surely equals the best action game ever.

Valve have only improved as designers with each successive Half-Life entry and I can only see them continuing to improve into the finale, taking everything that they've learnt over the years and producing a game which is not only extremely fun and perfectly paced but gives players the answers they've wanted ever since reaching the end of Half-Life 1.

If that prospect doesn't excite you then..... it just should.

X-Com

So this is probably the most ephemeral entry in this list. There's a fair chance it will never exist or won't be announced or whatever, but there's just been too many rumours and too much sustained talk that Ken Levine is working on a new X-Com game for it not to be true on some level.

X-Com is a series which enjoys almost mythic status among PC gamers of the older school and with good reason; it's addictive like heroin. Over the years many developers have tried to update the formula for a new generation with varying levels of success but no one has ever quite gotten it right. Each game has always had some horrible gaping flaw that left you wondering why the developers didn't recognise where they'd gone wrong.

However the combination of Ken Levine's experience with games like Freedom Force and SWAT 4 and the success of Bioshock might just create a situation that allows X-Com the attention, time and money it needs to be really great and that prospect is just about more exciting than anything else in this list.

I've been playing COD4 the last two nights and after 4 or 5 hours of play time I've decided to stop. I don't like it. It's frustrating and confusing and ultimately I don't want to waste my time with it anymore.

I keep getting shot. I keep getting blown up by grenades. I keep trying to get out of fire or move away from grenades and one of my dispensable team mates blocks me in so I get killed. When that's not happening I keep failing missions coz I went the wrong way or did some other subtle thing wrong. When that's not happening I keep getting herded down artificial paths because invisible walls are blocking me in. And meanwhile the area is constantly flooding with identical enemy soldiers. It's just no fun.

That said there are some cool cinematic moments in it but I just can't be bothered struggling through the gameplay to get to them. And I wont be told that I just suck either because I've played a zillion first person shooters including the other 3 COD's and I did fine in them. This game is just balanced poorly or atleast balanced so precisely for a certain kind of play that it blocks other styles. It's completely relying on the player charging forward at all times like a fool and taking fire constantly while the miraculous health system heals him perfectly again and again, which just isn't the way I play. It's completely artificial.

Anyway, it's possible I'll come back to it later (which is the same feeling I had about Assassin's Creed) but... not now. For now I have 50 better things to do.

My other 4 games for 08 are coming very soon by the way...

Yesterday I posted my favourite games of 2007 using the "clever" hook of picking seven games for 07. Today it's time to look to the future with eight for 08. Note that this is my personal list of most anticipated titles, not a list of games I think will be the biggest of the year or anything like that. Also, I've decided to divide the post into two seperate posts, if only because it was getting a tad too long. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow morning.

I think this list shows that 2008 is going to be just as big a year as 2007 was. There are several high profile titles that aren't even included here, I actually had to choose between a few titles and even then there are more that will probably be great that weren't in my personal list. Interestingly enough, this list seems to imply PC is in for a great year with all eight titles sure to play best on PC (in terms of gameplay, not performance) if not be PC-exclusive. Good for PC I say.

So here's the first four;

Dragon Age

Traditionally I'm not the biggest fan of Bioware. Their games were always totally eclipsed by Black Isle's work, I felt. They were always creating the technology but Black Isle were the ones who created interesting stories and used their tech to the best effect.

However over the years Bioware have evolved along a very singular path that's lead to each successive game improving greatly upon the last. It's been a long slow process moving towards "the ultimate cinematic experience" but Mass Effect turned out great and it's my hope that their next game, Dragon Age, will continue to take everything they've learnt before and package it in a higher quality, better way.

The original concept of Dragon Age was to pick up where Bioware left off with Baldur's Gate 2 and deliver PC players the cl@ssic fantasy sequel they'd always wanted but never received when Bioware shifted into console land. Ofcourse this spiritual successor to BG2 is being created with modern technology, which completely boggles my mind from a technical standpoint. How do you make a world as big as Baldur's Gate 2's in full 3D yet with the nuanced character performance of Mass Effect? The answer ofcourse is "well you spend an extremely long time developing", which is definitely true of Dragon Age.

If Bioware can pull off Dragon Age as a game that blends the epic fantasy scope of Baldurs Gate 2 with the fine detail of Mass Effect then it's going to be an extremely remarkable game.

Deus Ex 3

Deus Ex 3 is unlikely to have much resemblance to either Deus Ex or its sequel Invisible War but... that's ok. Deus Ex is a game I love dearly but I've made peace with the fact that there's not going to be another game LIKE Deus Ex. That game was created under very special circumstances where a group of developers as talented as Warren Spector's team were left to their own devices, nestled beneath a mountain of money, and only ever disturbed after years and years of development. In the case of the original Deus Ex the game benefited from John Romero's clout (and enormous stacks of cash) and the result was a game with a huge scope and length yet a game that remained detailed to a very low level.

When the sequel was finally released it suffered from an increased pressure to release quickly and was ultimately bought down by technical limitations of the game's engine that adversely affected many areas of the gameplay. The point being that the economic reality is that the kind of development required to build a Deus Ex probably isn't possible anymore. Especially if you're making a game with modern graphics. Ofcourse this doesn't mean a good Deus Ex story told in that universe and using those characters isn't possible.

Personally I'd love to see a more linear, story-focused adventure in the cyberpunk future of Deus Ex. I'd even be happy to see a series of much shorter adventures released using the same engine as some kind of episodic series. Maybe release one every six months or so with a 6 hour playing time for each. It could work. Whatever the case it looks like Deus Ex 3 will be a shorter game than the other two entries in the series and looks to take place before the time of the original Deus Ex, which is a very interesting time period for the Deus Ex lore.

As worried as I am that the game will never live up to the enormous legacy of the original I simultaneously can't ignore it, because it's an entry in a series that's incredibly important to me and there's no technical reason for it to be a bad game. Ofcourse it's possible this game wont actually come out in 2008 but for now I'm hoping it will make it for Christmas.

Alan Wake

I really don't know why this game is getting a reputation as vaporware. I guess it makes sense in that the game has been delayed several times but it also comes from a team who were notorious delayers/re-builders of their previous two games Max Payne and Max Payne 2 and both of those games turned out brilliantly, perhaps defining their genres in many ways.

If the game is being delayed, it's only because the kind of care and polish exhibited in those games is being taken with Alan Wake too, not because the game is floundering and about to die. Remedy are a team that should be trusted to work magic, not constantly doubted.

What's not to be excited for in this game, that we know of? I know very little about it other than assumptions I've made by connecting very disparate dots from gameplay demonstrations and screenshots but what HAS been shown really appeals to me. I love Twin Peaks and this has been acknowledged as a big influence several times, I love the setting, I love the kind of horror the game puts forward and I love the free "sandbox" nature of the title. I'm very interested in the light-centric gameplay and the role weather and environmental effects will play. So it's all great so far.

The game is obviously very ambitious, give the developers time and understanding and I'm sure they'll deliver the goods EVENTUALLY. Whether or not the game turns out to be a 60 hour epic or something is doubtful but Max Payne 1 & 2 were short games too yet I replayed them many times because of how fundamentally enjoyable they were. However short, it's sure to be sweet.

Dreamfall: Episodes

I love the Longest Journey series. It's a topic I seem to return to regularly on this blog, but with good reason. I think The Longest Journey series represents a good chunk of what this industry will become as it matures. Maybe some people view that as a bad thing but I'm not really talking about gameplay, I'm talking about content. The Longest Journey series has always talked about topics that other games simply don't and it's also concentrated on subtly and character where a lot of other games seem content with offering basic-level Hollywood action movie ripoffs.

One day games like Dreamfall will be a dime a dozen because why tell a mystery or a love story or a tragedy without some kind of interactive element? That's what the TLJ series is; interactive stories. Unfortunately for everyone who loves The Longest Journey series it isn't particularly popular and given the time and money it costs to develop games like it the concept is no longer economically viable. Enter Dreamfall: Episodes, an attempt by the games creator Ragnar Tornquist to finish telling the story of The Longest Journey in a world where the traditional game development process no longer supports it's completion.

Dreamfall was actually the sequel to The Longest Journey, but it left the story incredibly wide open and incomplete, meanwhile dropping a ton of subtle clues about what might transpire in the next game. Personally I can't wait to see the story completed, whatever the format it's delivered in, and if it takes regular episodic releases using the Dreamfall engine to finish the thing then that's how it should be. What's important is that the story will be completed.

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Part 2 in less than 24 hours, yay!