I started writing this post about the awesomeness that is Earth Defence Force 2017 a few weeks ago, but after my play session yesterday I’m compelled to finish it. Before, my thoughts were how EDF was the greatest Xbox Live Arcade game that never hit XBLA, and how its pick-up-and-play nature was just what I needed after driving countless laps in PGR3 and running through the vast Cyrodiil in Oblivion. The controls were simplistic, and the gameplay was addictive, and each of the 53 missions are just short enough for that adrenalin-infused diversion between serious gaming. And it’s one of those titles Xbox owners have been pining Playstation owners over for two generations – wacky, cheesy, and unabashedly Japanese.

So last night, around midnight, I’m playing mission 34, a particularly difficult one, when after countless tries I decided to give it a rest for the night. I did what I do with all my games – quit mission, return to title screen, hit guide button, Y, shut down. I get about halfway through that routine – quit, return – and then introduce a new step: the “oh, shit” exclamation.

You see, EDF rocks, but this is where it earns its asterisk. In a time of game development where interfaces and control schemes are using standards, only the Japanese would be proud to buck that trend time after time. Thank goodness the basic control scheme is as simple as it is, because I’d be complaining about its complete ignorance of third-person action titles which preceded it; instead, the developers decided to reinvent the controls for flying helicopters and piloting tanks and mechs into a counterintuitive mess. But no, that’s not even the biggest problem.

The biggest problem, that “oh, shit” step, is that moment I realized the developers decided not to build an autosave feature in their game. Here is a game, segmented into clearly defined missions each with a beginning and end, possessing the perfect opportunity to autosave upon completion of each. Yet like a good Japanese developer, they decided to make the obvious completely unexplainable. Sure, the argument can be made I was careless to exit without saving, but I didn’t even get a warning message. “All data will be lost. Do you still wish to exit?” Nothing. And it isn’t even the first game on the Xbox 360 I’ve encountered this, the first being Rumble Roses XX.

Now, I’ve ranted before about Japanese developers. Because it was the birthplace of Mario, people think Japan is the center of the videogame universe. But all I see lately are tentacle raping, waifish girls with destructive powers, ridiculous stories involving the La-li-lu-le-lo; and, for every step forward, one completely failed gameplay mechanic. The autosave has been around for two decades or more. People assume it is there, and in my two examples above, there is no excuse for it not to be. If one were to equate this to a sports team, the coach would be saying his players lack fundamentals. I would say Japanese developers are fundamentally flawed, because they fail to recognize the status quo.

Even for a simple budget title, the lack of an autosave is annoying and inexcusable. That and the vehicle controls do not ruin the overall experience, far from it, but it does emphasize a greater problem coming from Japan today of Godzilla-like proportions which could be inhibiting the maturity of the multi-billion dollar industry. But back to the point, EDF is great fun.

It just comes with an asterisk.

Rockstar isn’t giving videogames a bad name. Neither are Jack Thompson, Leland Yee, Hilary Clinton or Joe Lieberman.

It is Joss Whedon.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer signed off the air on May 20, 2003, after seven successful seasons. It garnered respectful ratings for airing on the WB and UPN, but its legacy has lived on, becoming a pop culture phenomenon and a major creative influence in television today. But, aside from the various trade paperbacks and side projects within the Buffyverse, it wasn’t enough – the people wanted to spend another season with the Scoobies.

Last month, Mr. Whedon granted them their wish. BtVS Season Eight premiered in comic book form, selling through its initial printing of over 100,000 copies and warranting a second printing to satisfy demand. Given the relative niche market for comic books, this is a hands-down, bonafide cross-over smash.

Comics and movies have been cross-pollinating for years with relative success. Major comic IPs have made for some big Hollywood blockbusters over the years, but it hasn’t been until recently when Hollywood has been churning out lesser-known franchises into box office gold. Sin City, Road to Perdition, V for Vendetta and recently 300 are all examples of more artistic works translated to the silver screen with success. And Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, and Alan Moore are now practically household names, at least with the Tinseltown crowd.

But as with every healthy relationship, it goes both ways. The comic industry has also had its fair share of borrowed talent. J. Michael Straczynski, Kevin Smith and the aforementioned Joss Whedon have all put their name to shake up some storied comic franchises like Spiderman, Daredevil and X-Men.

Surely, we all have our favorite canceled TV shows we’d like to see continue on in some form or another; I know I have mine. And then I started thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we could have a Millennium Season 4 comic? Or an X-Files season with Fox Mulder back with Scully, and Chris Carter penning the script? I could go on and on.

Then it hit me – why not use videogames as a way to continue favorite-but-canceled franchises?

Videogames have long suffered because of poor storytelling, and as the videogame industry approaches Hollywood-like status this point is becoming increasingly more difficult to hide. Hideo Kojima is viewed as a pioneer of videogame storytelling, but taken on their own the stories are laughable at best. Epic’s Gears of War seems to hit random bullet points of a greater story outline, leaving the rest for the inevitable sequel. With any given game, tech comes first and foremost; narrative, on the other hand, is almost always neglected. Even with established, and undoubtedly expensive, licenses; the story is tasked to some staff writer who writes the equivalent of children’s movie storybook, and its delivery inevitably lags behind the technology used to tell it.

Blue sky time: wouldn’t it be great the day a game production has A-list Hollywood actors, lead by real Hollywood directors, reading scripts written by Hollywood screenplay writers, with music composed by Hollywood composers, from a story by and overseen from a high-profile Hollywood producer? Not that Hollywood is the answer, but for anyone who has played Gears of War, it could have used a little help from a professional.

It’s a give-and-take relationship – franchises could expand their visibility and extend their universe via a new medium, while videogames would benefit from having someone at the helm experienced with creating the franchise and skilled at crafting narratives. Stories would no longer be born of technology, but rather games would be born out of stories. That’s how it should be. And in borrowing a page from comics, having “names” behind these titles would not only add much-needed maturity to the gaming industry, but bringing it closer to the film industry of which it closely follows.

So why not have Joss Whedon write dialog and story for a Buffy Season, told episodically, by a videogame? Chris Carter last wrote the story for the X-Files game Resist or Serve in 2004, but why not have him oversee production on a faithful continuation of the X-Files series? If Buffy Season Eight can have such cross-over success with a comic book, just think of the success it might have with a larger, more mainstream market, given the same attention? The last time a big Hollywood celeb put his muscle in a game production, that person was Vin Diesel with his Tigon Studios, and the end result was the Game of the Year nominee The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. As we all know, that didn’t turn out so bad. John Singleton’s Fear & Respect was canceled early in the project; and the next big Hollywood collaboration comes by way of China, in John Woo’s Stranglehold, a sequel to the 1992 foreign film Hard Boiled, both staring Chow Yun-Fat.

The videogame industry continues to give high profile work to lightweights like Susan O’Connor, while Whedon effortlessly writes circles around anything its best has ever churned out – and I’m only talking about his work in comics, for cryin’ out loud. Until he’s given the chance to show everyone how a game should be, let’s all load up Gears to remind us how bad we really have it.

I just don’t get what Microsoft is trying to do with the Xbox 360 Elite. Sure, it has a bigger hard drive, and HDMI, and it’s black; but what does it really deliver to warrant an $80 premium over the, well, Premium pack?

HDMI

First, I want to make mention of the HDMI capabilities. It’s been confirmed by Microsoft it only supports HDMI 1.2. The PS3 supports HDMI 1.3, so the argument will continue between the two camps into, “who’s HDMI is better,” and right now it’s obvious that it’s Sony’s. What does this mean to the layman? Here’s a direct quote from Microsoft’s HD-DVD evangelist Amir Majidimehr:

Xbox 360 Elite supports HDMI 1.2 profile. For audio, you can select DD, DTS (at 1.5 Mbps), and WMA-Pro (Microsoft high fidelity multi-channel codec supported in some AVRs such as Pioneer). Since it is not based on 1.3, it will not support output of DD+ or TrueHD (even if it did, mixing would have been turned off).

And then there’s the honest answer – this probably won’t effect 99% of current and potential console owners in the next two to three years. Most people do not have the audio components necessary to support TrueHD, DD+ or any 5.1 PCM (uncompressed) audio streams.

It is also important to mention HDMI is a negligible improvement in video quality over component and VGA. For most consumers it offers the convenience of audio and video over a single cable. Now here’s where I think this point isn’t as important as we are lead to believe. Most people don’t have HDMI-ready receivers, so it’s likely people are running two cables anyway – one HDMI to the television, and an optical cable to a receiver for audio. If one was to truly use HDMI as a single-cable solution, they would be getting a two-channel audio experience in simulated surround sound, and then advanced audio codes wouldn’t mean anything to them anyway.

120GB Hard Drive

The current 20GB hard drive retails for $100, while the 120GB hard drive will go for $180. So, if one were to compare the two prices they could pinpoint the reason for the $80 price hike over the current Xbox 360 SKU. Consumers thought the hard drive was overpriced before, and now it’s in the realm of ridiculous. 20GB and 60GB models aside, the PS3 will never have a problem meeting consumer’s demand for storage space because Sony allows them to replace the hard drive with off-the-shelf PC parts. A quick search online finds most 2.5 inch notebook drives go for about $1 per gigabyte, so the premium for the larger drive capacity is the equivalent of flushing $80 down the toilet.

What Else Do I Get?

Simply, no smaller, cooler CPUs; no integrated wireless, and no built-in HD-DVD drive. The cooler chips are coming, but not in the Elites, so that tells me these will probably see the same failure rate as with the current hardware. And integrated wireless means nothing to me, because I need specialized wireless equipment to handle the range between my device and router, but it might be important to some.

But Microsoft’s decision to not include HD-DVD with the Elite is the biggest mistake they could make. Look at the comparison between the 20GB PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite:

20GB PS3
- 20 GB HDD (upgradeable)
- HDMI 1.3
- Blu-ray Player
- No Integrated WiFi
- Wireless Bluetooth Controller
- Free Online Multiplayer/PS3 Network
- $499

Xbox 360 Elite
- 120GB Hard Drive (not upgradeable)
- HDMI 1.2
- DVD Drive, no integrated HD-DVD
- No Integrated WiFi
- Wireless Controller
- Xbox Live $60 for One-Year Subscription
- $479

If Microsoft would have included HD-DVD with the Elite, and they could have charged up to $499 for the package, the comparison to the PS3 would have been more favorable, not forgetting giving HD-DVD a nice bump in consumer base. But looking at the breakdown above, the only specification worth mentioning above the PS3 is the larger hard drive, which is overpriced to begin with. Looking at the two, I’d say the PS3 is the better deal. And that’s a strange thing to hear, since Sony has really taken a beating over the PS3 pricing during the past year.

The other point worth mentioning is the comparison between the Playstation Network and Xbox Live. When Sony was trumpeting their free online service for multiplayer gaming, Microsoft said, “hey look, you can buy our console and a year of Xbox Live, and it would still be cheaper than a PS3.” Now that argument is null and void, thanks to Microsoft’s pricing.

The Verdict

The Xbox 360 doesn’t need a third SKU. It should have introduced the Elite at $400, and dropped the Premium bundle to replace the Core. Overpriced and under”tech”ed, it isn’t for new or existing consumers. The best value for them is, ironically, the PS3.

How impressive has Sony been in the past month? Settling the dispute with Immersion makes the SIXAXIS Dual Shock a short-term possibility. Replacing the Emotion chip in PS3s is not only a cost cutting move, but also one which may allow Sony to do some nifty tricks with backwards compatibility functionality. And although Sony is forcing Blu-ray upon us, it sounds like the PS3 will let us take our collection of standard DVDs into the HD generation with some promised upscaling functionality.

Oh Sony, how I do love thee.

Unfortunately for Sony, only 127,000 others did during the short, cold month of February. Or, most likely about 15,000 real consumers and over 100,000 sold to Jack Tretton for $1,200 a pop. Either way it’s a poor showing for the Colossus at a time when it shows its vulnerability, humility, and forgiveness to an increasingly unapologetic marketplace.

But I have faith – once those new Dual Shock-equipped, Emotion-stripped models hit store shelves, along with some much-needed firmware patching, I’ll most likely be in line to get myself a shiny new glorified PS2/upconverting DVD player, formerly known as the PS3. And yes, until Sony gives me an excuse to buy one for the PS3 games, I’m being totally serious.

Oh yeah, and it’s a Blu-ray player too. But that’s what Sony wanted me to say.