For all the time I spend writing about how party games are destroying games as an art form, but for all my nay-saying and gloomy predictions, I have found Rock Band to be one of the best games I have ever played. It excels at the three elements, making it possibly the best multiplayer game I've played since Super Smash Bros. The combination of a forgiving learning curve with deep challenge, combined with excellent cooperative play makes Rock Band the perfect example of how a party game can be great in its own respect.

A low barrier to entry is one of the most important aspects of a good party game. Rock Band has built a learning curve such that anyone can pick up a controller and make it through a song on their first try. Even my mother who is not a shining example of gaming skill managed to enjoy herself playing the guitar in Rock Band. A low barrier to entry is important to a party game because you have to assume that some people playing it will have never touched a rhythm game before and will need an incredibly easy start. A low barrier to entry doesn't make a great learning curve. It's the challenges that Rock Band has that makes it a truly great party game.

A parabolic learning curve is a must have for just about any great game, but it's essential for a great party game. A low barrier of entry makes a game fun for your friends, but not for you, since there's no depth in a game with a flat learning curve. A parabolic learning curve is necessary for a party game to have depth and consequently greatness. Rock Band has mastered the parabolic learning curve with scalable levels of difficulty ensuring that even hardcore rhythm gamers will have to play the game more than a fair bit in order to master all of the tracks. A casual player can pick up the guitar or drums and play a few tracks on easy or medium, but even an experienced guitar player like myself stumbles on expert tracks and even some hard tracks. The experienced player can turn the difficulty up to expert and have a challenging game while his or her friend is playing on easy and having the same challenge. Because Rock Band can be so difficult on expert and so simple on easy, it's a great game for any group because everyone can tailor the game to their own abilities rather than having some players feel under-challenged, while others are overwhelmed.

Cooperative play is something that has been attempted, but never quite perfected. Games like Army of Two depend on it, while games like Halo just tack it on. Rock Band is the best example of a cooperative game play experience because players are forced to work together, but aren't misbalanced or confused in the process. How many times have you asked your friend, "Hey, where did you go?", when playing Halo's cooperative mode? That question never comes up in Rock Band since you are kept on a rail called a song, which would be unacceptable in some genres, but this is a rhythm game so that is to be expected. Rock Band might look unorganized in multiplayer games, but there is actually little bits of strategy that make multiplayer games have a learning curve of their own. Since players can choose their own difficulty levels, the question becomes whether to try the song on a harder level or to try to go for a more perfect session on a lower level. Gamers can choose whether they want to challenge themselves or be a safety net to the group. In Rock Band, cooperative play has been perfected so that it accessible for everyone in the group, but challenging for anyone who wants it to be. Gamers can choose what sort of gaming experience they want while all play together and enjoying the camaraderie of the group.

Rock Band's perfect learning curve and cooperative play have helped to change my mind about what a party game can be. Rock Band presents a deep challenge to a hardcore gamer like me and gives my friends and I hours of enjoyment, rocking late into the night. While the Rock Band bundle has a steep asking price, it more than pays for itself with the countless hours of fun that it provides, both as a singleplayer and cooperative game.

For many years gamers have moaned and groaned when a game was "too short." Throughout the evolution of the video gaming medium, there has always been a stigma attached to shorter games; that these games were rushed or that they aren't as good. Similar to the movie industry in its beginning, the expectation is now that every film will be an epic. While an epic might please some, video games now appeal to a wider audience. An audience that might not have time to play through the newest Final Fantasy game, but instead wants a quick fix or weekend-long experience.

Several reviewers gave Call of Duty 4 demerits for having a story that was "too short," even sites that are known for their reviews like Gamespot and IGN took off points for the game's length. While the game received universal praise for the great gameplay and story, some reviewers said that the singleplayer experience just wasn't long enough. Never mind the fact that Call of Duty 4 had excellent multiplayer that would last a gamer for months, the singleplayer took less than ten hours to beat.

When I was younger, I used to look at a game as a value proposition. If I pay $50 for a game, how long will I play it? Because if I play it for 50 hours, I'll be paying $1 for each hour of the experience. Looking back, I realize that that attitude was childish, the value of a game, or any piece of media for that matter, is about the experience not the amount of time it lasts.

Now that I am older and don't have as much time to play games, I no longer look at buying games by calculating dollars/hour, instead I look at how good a game is and how much it costs. Games like Call of Duty 4 are awesome to me because I can play the whole thing through in a weekend. There's a lot more content to explore in the game past the additional run through, so it's not like I'm done with the game in a weekend, but I could call it quits after that. I have gotten the basic experience and story out of the game, without investing a whole month into it.

Movies don't last for twenty hours for a good reason. The story just won't stay fresh that long. As video game stories get better, developers are going to find that it's hard to make a good story stretch over an epic length of time. Games like Call of Duty 4 keep the story moving better than games that take weeks to play because the whole story becomes important instead of a few simple checkpoints in the story. For example, the entire story of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time could be summed up by (Spoiler):

Link is told to go to the Deku tree. He fights monsters inside the tree and the tree gives him a stone, but then dies. He is told to find other stones, which he does, but first he meets a princess who tells him that an evil man is manipulating the king. Link takes all three of the stones to the Temple of Time, where he is sealed for seven years. When he emerges from the temple the world is horrible. He then frees the six sages, who are in different dungeons of Hyrule. Then he fights Ganondorf, who turns into Ganon. He kills him with the Master Sword and goes back in time.

That game took quite a bit of time to beat, but in order to understand the story, you need only read a short paragraph. None of the temples mattered at all to the story. I summarized the entire second half of the game in a few sentences. This isn't to say that Ocarina of Time wasn't a blast to play, it's just that the story wasn't concise and the action didn't progress because of the story.

Call of Duty 4 on the other hand would need about the same amount of space to describe with the same conciseness, yet the game was half as long. The action in the game progressed the story making for a deeper and more meaningful experience. With the exception of a couple out of place levels (like the Spectre Gunship level), the game felt like an action movie. The story wasn't an excuse to have the gameplay, the gameplay was part of the story.

For people who want a more complete experience and don't have time for an epic, short games make a lot of sense. Short singleplayer isn't necessarily a cause for demerits or malevolence, but often necessary for a well paced game. It's not that short games are more fun and shortness doesn't make a game's story better, but it's easier to write an exciting story that will last for five hours than fifty hours. The future of games is to play the game for the story, not to listen to the story to get to the gameplay.

Nintendo Power

I'm sure that many of you are familiar with Nintendo Power. It is the monthly magazine that is published and owned by Nintendo. I am ashamed to admit it, but I subscribed to Nintendo Power for two years. I paid $40 to have propaganda and advertising delivered to my mailbox. I realize that all three of the console companies have a propaganda magazine, but I find Nintendo Power to be the most read and the most egrigious.

Reviews

Every issue of Nintendo Power reviews games coming out on Nintendo systems. As someone who had only Nintendo consoles, I thought that these reviews were really good and objective. I actually based some purchasing decisions on the reviews in Nintendo Power. If you thought that the Gamespot scandal a few weeks ago was bad, then you'd be astonished to see Nintendo Power. In the 24 issues of Nintendo Power at my house, there has never been a game, developed by Nintendo, that has received lower than 4.5/5. Exclusives also get good ratings, since Nintendo wants to make their exclusives sound better.

When I was a little kid I didn't know any better so I took Nintendo Power reviews for face value, but the truth is that they are really bad reviews. If you look at the way they're done you'll notice that every reviewer reviews about a dozen games each month. Compare that to somewhere like GT or Gamespot where each reviewer will do at most a game a week. How can someone really get a good, accurate picture of a game after playing it for a day or two? The answer is that they can't, so they just don't try. Nintendo Power Reviews for most games are little tiny paragraphs about the games.

Hyping

Part of the goal that Nintendo has with Nintendo Power is to build hype for games. I remember that Nintendo Power would make a list of the most wanted games along with the sales charts and it turned out that it was decided by Nintendo Power staff. Sites like Gamespot have their most wanted/popular section decided by what users are actually looking at. Nintendo Power used that section to hype exclusives. I couldn't find a single non-exclusive in it.

Breeds Ignorance

Having a magazine that talks only about one viewpoint breeds ignorance. If you only read Nintendo Power then you are very unlikely to play any of the good games on other systems, which would be a shame since most of the top rated games this year were not on a Nintendo system.

I subscribed to Nintendo Power during the Gamecube days, which was arguably the lowest point in Nintendo's history. Nintendo really didn't have the best hardware and they really didn't have many good third party exclusives. The truth was that Nintendo didn't have anything to show that they were better than the other two consoles, so they just ignored them. In fact, it wasn't until about a year and a half into my Nintendo Power readings that they even mentioned the Xbox and PS2.

Yesterday's News

With gaming news being published on the Internet these days, it's hard to explain buying a periodical for gaming news. Most of the news about a game comes in the form of video, which magazines are bad at showing. Also, by the time you get your next issue of Nintendo Power, what you are reading will have been online for about a month. Furthermore, Nintendo doesn't really save anything special for Nintendo Power. There are a lot of things that are new information when they are written, but by the time it actually reaches your doorstep the news is quite stale.

Price

So if you're getting yesterday's news in the form of a propaganda page, why should you have to pay $20 a year for it? The answer is, and will be for most of this series, because Nintendo can charge people for it. There are enough Nintendo fans out there, who will blindly subscribe, to make it profitable to charge $20 a year for the magazine.

I stopped getting Nintendo Power when I realized that all the gaming news I needed was online. The bias only became clear to me after I had stopped reading it for a while. Nintendo should give the magazine away because it is in fact a propaganda magazine. People who read it are more likely to buy Nintendo games, so why doesn't Nintendo just give it to everyone to increase readership?

Conclusions

There are more first party magazines than Nintendo Power, but Nintendo Power is by far the worst. Their propaganda is so blatant and their reviews so horrible that it makes me ashamed to admit that I subscribed to it for two years. I wish that I hadn't, but I can't take it back now. If you subscribe to Nintendo Power, I'd encourage you not to renew because you are being both brainwashed and ripped off at the same time.

Sometimes a game comes out and it seems like you need a college degree to play it. I'm thinking of those really hardcore RPGs and RTSs. Those who play them keep telling you that they're great, but it looks
kind of boring to you and you don't want to put in the time to get past the learning curve.

Complex games appeal to a niche audience so developers often want to make a game as simple as they can for new players. Sometimes, in the case of Super Smash Brothers, a developer can make a game that is simple for new players, but has enough depth and learning curve to keep you occupied for years. Other times, such as Kirby's Air Ride, games are just too simple.

Recently though, companies have begun to take simplicity far too seriously, especially with RTSs. With the Wii flying off shelves companies see this new demographic of gamers to tap into, but they need something that is easy to play in order to tap into it. Developers that make hardcore games like Civilization and Empire Earth are also looking to get new fans by making it simpler.

But simpler isn't always better. Look what happened with Empire Earth 3. Empire Earth was one of the most complex RTS games ever made and many reviewers penalized it for being too difficult. Mad Doc software then released Empire Earth 2, which was a little simpler, but most reviewers still said, the learning curve was just too high. Then Mad Doc went all out with Empire Earth 3. They dumbed the game down so much it wasn't even fun. I played the demo for a few minutes, then turned it off and played Empire Earth 2. Empire Earth 3 got a 47 on Metacritc, Mad Doc fell into the trap of making a game too simple and lost its hardcore following.

Most developers are sitting around thinking about how to make a game easier for a new player, but they should also think about how to make a game deeper for a veteran player. If they forgot the veteran then they will have a flop on their hands.

Have you ever played a game/sequel that was just too dumbed down to play? If you have post a comment about it. I read/rate/comment on all comments.

If there's one game that you can count on everyone under the age of thirty to know about it's Halo. The game redefined what a shooting game should be and established Microsoft as a competitor in the world of console gaming. But the real question is why did this game become so popular? The answer has to do with the character of the Master Chief.

The Master Chief resonates with Americans because he is essentially an individualist. He is the kind of guy that everyone looks up to and depends on, but he himself depends on no one. This is the quintessential American hero. The tough guy who always saves the day. If you look at American cinema and folklore you can see that Americans have always liked an individualist. It comes from our colonial and frontier days, but is still important today. And whether or not you realize it, you like Master Chief because he speaks so strongly to the American individualistic ideal.

Sure the graphics, multiplayer helped sell the game, but Halo's story is what the original was famous for. If you watch the new videos for the "Believe" campaign you'll see that Microsoft is really pushing the idea of the Master Chief as the hero of Earth. He is fighting for freedom and for his people and he is a hero in the eyes of Americans. So whether you're from America or not, you can still recognize that the Master Chief is fighting for freedom and he's doing it outnumbered, outgunned, and just like any good ol' American hero.

I recently bought BFME 2.  EA games decided that they would stick it to those pirates by including a feature that would only activate on illegal copies.  This feature is one that would torment these ne'er-do-wells by killing all of their units after two minutes or so of play.

This is something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but would probably not have made it past quality control at a company that cares about its customers.  I say this because I was recently the target of a false positive.  While I was yelling at my computer and thinking that that EA ripped me off by selling me a glitchy game, I had no idea that this destruction of my game was actually a feature created by EA to torture me.  The thing is that I paid them $40 for the BFME collector's pack and they took out their sadistic wishes on me.  


I can understand their desire to stop piracy, but this is outrageous.  I have a friend who downloaded this game illegally and never had this problem.  This is just another example of a dumb company that doesn't understand that excessive copyright protection only hurts those who legally purchase their product.  


At least EA could have given me a message saying that my software was pirated that way I could've contacted them and clarified that I had in fact purchased it at Best Buy not from bittorrent.  I have still yet to contact EA tech support, but my past experiences with them have shown me that they don't care about you as long as you have already bought their product.  I have reinstalled the game and am enjoying it now, but am unable to patch destroying the game's replay value, but not allowing online play.  


I was excited about Crysis and I've always been a fan of the BattleField franchise, but if EA is going to continue with a business model that treats their own legitimate customers as pirates, then I will not continue to purchase any EA games at all.  It's too bad that a company that helped to take video games mainstream is committing suicide, but I don't run EA and I don't plan on helping them out after this experience.