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G4TV has compiled a list of the top 100 video games.  Really, it was far from right of them to do that without consulting me.  I would have put KotOR II in the top spot, just for starters.  And frankly, I thought the list generally placed too much value on historically significant games.  Yes, Pong was indeed a major milestone for gaming, but I refuse to believe that it has anything to offer players that any tennis sim made in the last three console generations cannot.

Lists and rankings like this are fun, aren’t they?  Me and a friend of mine were chatting the other day about the top 5 NFL quarterbacks.  It took some hashing out, but we ultimately agreed that Roethlisberger was #3 and Brees #4.  The post-season records speak for themselves.

I am not sure why rankings matter so much, and indeed oftentimes comparisons are simply inane.  Roethlisberger and Brees have no control over most of the factors which determine their success in the play-offs.  (Both of them played very well in defeats last postseason, after all.)  Likewise, how can you really compare Angry Birds and Metal Gear Solid?   They are in different genres, in different styles, on different platforms–comparison is pretty much impossible if you think about it rationally.  But that doesn’t deter me or lots of other people from doing it. (My personal opinion: Angry Birds has no business being in the top 1,000.)

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My prediction of the demise of real-world sports might have one adverse impact on virtual counterparts: there is no longer the possibility for the thrill of changing the fortunes of a player or team. My Bills may not have enjoyed much real world success, but in video games, I can make them into a 19-0 juggernaut if I want. It’s kind of neat to see your favorite team win it all, especially if they’ve never actually done it. This trailer for MLB 12: The Show “makes its pitch” based on this feeling*:

If there were no more actual sports, this would be less exciting. People would eventually forget who the Chicago Cubs were.

The solution, I think, would be to let people choose backstories for their teams, much as they choose them for their characters in certain RPGs. You could have “reigning champs”, “fading band of superstars”, “up-and-coming”, “rebuilding” or “plucky underdogs”, just for a few examples.

*Hat Tip to Thingy for the video. She’s taken her blog down, so no link, unfortunately. (Come back!)

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I can’t say I’m terribly excited about it. From the description, it sounds like “Gears of Star Wars”. Actually, more than anything, it sounds like Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. I think it even included a level that was set in the underbelly of Coruscant.

More than anything, though, it makes me uneasy how everyone is going “oooh, it’s Star Wars but with ‘darkness’. This has never been done!” Yes, it has. I know KotOR II was rated “T”, but the underlying story, as well as some of the stuff that’s hinted with characters like Visas Marr, is more mature than anything I’ve seen in a lot of “M” games. And while we’re at it, it’s not like Dark Forces and Shadows of the Empire were brimming with sunshine and joy.

Maybe it will be good. But so far, the reports don’t make me hopeful.

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Well, it’s kind of neat that Doom 3 is going to be re-released. It was one of my favorite FPS games on the Xbox. The article says there will be “enhanced graphics” too, which I’m hoping means everything won’t look quite so ugly and blocky. There are even new levels. That’s cool.

But what is so great about the inclusion of Doom and Doom II? My “limited collector’s edition” of Doom 3 comes with those also. As does the add-on Resurrection of Evil. And to be honest, they’re not much fun. They give me a headache if I play them very long, actually. I understand they are classics of the genre and all, but I think it actually cheapens them as “nostalgia” items when every Doom game comes with them.

But if they must include classic Doom games, why can’t they put Doom 64 on these things? It was a much better, more frightening game than than the first two were, and I can’t imagine it was so much more complex as to prevent it being put on disk easily enough. Is there some kind of rights issue with Midway?

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If the Defenders of High Culture didn’t have enough to worry about with the Harry Potter conference, there now comes an announcement that a new Harry Potter game will be coming out this fall. Perhaps the 2013 conference will feature an in-depth examination of Harry Potter for Kinect and what it means to our society.

If it’s anything like Star Wars Kinect, it might not be such a great thing, although I think Potter fans might be more receptive to that sort of thing than Star Wars fans. As long-time readers probably know, I think that J.K. Rowling’s series is fun, but deeply flawed. (Someday maybe I’ll write about that at length.) I’ve never played any of the games based on it, as they all seem to have about them the feel of something done just to cash in on the popularity of the name.

As far as I can tell, all Potter games have been based to a large degree on the books and movies. As a Star Wars fan, I know from experience that this usually means trouble. Star Wars games are either excellent or really bad. And the bad ones are often the ones that try to follow the movies, and have you playing as Luke or Anakin or someone. (The LEGO ones don’t count; they follow the movies, but with an original twist.)

The great Star Wars game series everyone thinks of are original stories like Rogue Squadron, Jedi Knight and Knights of the Old Republic. These take place in the Star Wars universe, and though in some cases they overlap with events or characters from the movies, for the most part they are their own stories. They don’t let the established stories dictate their course too much.

Are there any Harry Potter games that take place in the Potter universe, but don’t more or less follow the established story and timeframe? That would have the potential to be good, and to keep the franchise going. Now, for all I know, Rowling has forbidden this. Which she, as the creator of the series, is totally within her rights to do. But it would be the best thing for it as a franchise.

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“Reck·on·ing: an itemized bill or statement of a sum due.”

That is the second definition at The Free Dictionary for the word “reckoning”. A dark bit of irony, given the fate of the game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning 

I’d been seeing ads for it on game sites and in stores for awhile, but I never paid any attention to them, because the whole fantasy/medieval setting has never done much for me. I’m still recovering from forcing myself through Neverwinter Nights 2.

But today, I saw that 38 Studios, the company that made it, is folding. It’s getting a lot of publicity because it was founded by Curt Schilling, a baseball player so famous that even I have heard of him. I’ll have more on the business aspects of this in a minute, but first a little more about the game itself.

Also of note to me was that the game’s lore was created by R.A. Salvatore. I’ve only read one book by him, the novelization of Attack of the Clones. I thought it was pretty bad, to be honest, but I know he’s a very widely-acclaimed fantasy author.

The plot of Kingdoms of Amalur sounded…. Well, let me show, not tell. From the Wikipedia page for Kingdoms:

“Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning” follows the story of a mortal known as the “Fateless One”, who having died before the game’s outset, is revived in the experimental Well of Souls by the gnomish scientist Fomorous Hugues. The first and only success of the experiment, the Fateless One must escape the facility when it comes under attack… Having escaped the facility, the Fateless One – having no memory of his life before his death – learns of the intriacies [sic] of the world he has returned to by the Fateweaver Agarth…

For comparison, here’s a bit of the plot summary for Planescape: Torment a famous and almost universally beloved RPG from 1999:

“Planescape: Torment”‘s protagonist is “The Nameless One,” an immortal being who, if killed, will wake up later, sometimes with complete amnesia…

The game’s story begins when The Nameless One wakes up in a mortuary. He is immediately approached by a floating skull, Morte, who offers advice on how to escape…

Well, I guess it’s a nice tip of the hat to Torment… that’s good, I suppose. Not breaking a lot of new ground, though. Regardless, the general reception of the game was good, but not great.

Apparently, though, it needed to be great, because 38 Studios ran out of money and laid off all their employees. That’s sad. It’s always a shame when people lose their jobs.

And this is where the story gets really bad. Back in 2010, Rhode Island loaned the company $75 million dollars to move there, on the idea that it would generate “jobs” and “tax revenues”. The Governor of Rhode island is not at all happy about the situation, and Schilling has apparently run out of money to put into the company.

Another aspect to the whole thing is that Schilling is known for his support of Republican politicians. It seems, as Brian McGrory notes, rather hypocritical that a Republican should be taking money from the government to support his business. Doesn’t quite square with the whole “free market” thing, and all that. But then, I don’t know what kind of Republican Schilling is. Perhaps he has no deep philosophical or ideological ties to them; he merely recognizes–correctly–that as a wealthy person it is to his financial advantage for them to win.

What concerns me more is the black eye it gives to video gaming companies as business ventures–people will think twice before investing in a game company with the specter of it being “the next 38 Studios” hanging over it. I mean, if one that is backed by a wealthy celebrity and produces a reasonably well-liked game can’t succeed; that’s going to give everyone pause.

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You know, I remember a more innocent time when cheating at video games meant putting in a code to make your character immortal, or exploiting a bug in the AI that let you win every time. But now it seems that exploiting little glitches in a game has gotten more serious. Because there were a million real-world dollars at stake.

I don’t follow baseball or baseball video games, and I know so little about it that I can barely even follow what exactly people were allegedly doing that was shady here, but still, it’s a helluva thing. The good news is, it apparently didn’t affect the contest in the end. But my “favorite” part of the rather depressing article has less to do with baseball video games than with human nature and social media:

Young says Haff told him to stay quiet about the exploit. Young didn’t, though, telling another person over Xbox Live about it but demanding that he stay silent. That person didn’t, and then the conflict boiled over to Facebook and other social media.

I love it: “Here’s this big secret! I’m telling you, but for God’s sake don’t tell anyone else!” You go through a couple iterations of that, and soon everyone knows.

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I don’t think my computer will run Diablo III, and even if it could, I wouldn’t buy it. It doesn’t sound like my type of game. But even apart from that, it’s a great example of why I don’t like PC gaming.

I would think, after yet another Digital Rights Management Controversy, some PC gamers would start to re-think things. As this Forbes article says, consoles are more “consumer friendly”. (Though heaven knows they’re doing what they can to fix that.)

I have a couple PC games, but I completely prefer consoles. The reason is half for less DRM hassle and half for the fact that I don’t have to deal with compatibility issues. If it says it plays on an Xbox 360, then I know it does; I don’t have to worry about whether I have the right graphics card.

Yes, yes, I know you have more options for fixing stuff and getting mods with PCs, but it’s just not worth it to me to deal with nonsense like this for those things. I prefer the more stable, predictable world of consoles.

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Via BuzzFeed, this video, entitled “Go Right”, will either inspire you or make your eyes hurt. It probably helps if you know at least some of the games in it:

I admit, I’m a sucker for clever synchronizations of image and music. It might have been better if it were a little less close-up on the characters. I still liked it, though.

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How did I not hear about this sooner?

Curses! They knew my one weakness! Now I’ll have no choice but to vote for Ron Paul. Even if he’s not actually running as an independent come November, I’ll still have to write his name in.

Okay, I’m just kidding. Don’t worry. But really, this is bizarre. It figures to easily surpass Deus Ex as the best video game for Ron Paul fans, I’ll say that much. I don’t know if it’s a joke or not, but in my opinion, it doesn’t really do wonders for the Paul’s image as a “serious” candidate.

Read more about it here.