Yes, I’m afraid so. As I mentioned before, Adobe Acrobat and Custom Soundtrack support would be nice. But as I’ve been spending more time with the DS, here’s a few more that have come to mind:

• Remove the UMD drive. Sell games on flash memory and via download from the PSN store. That’ll help with battery life, load times, and hopefully make navigating and using the PSP a snappy, speedy experience. It will probably reduce the size and increase the durability of the handheld to make it more feasible as a portable device. And the added benefit of having flash memory carts instead of UMDs? Combined with a smaller footprint of the handheld itself, it means gamers can take more games with them wherever they go, easily. Sony has recently said they took the wrong approach with the PSP, trying to make it more of a portable PS2 rather than emphasize the simple 2D gaming of the DS. But I disagree. I think they had the right idea, just the wrong design for a handheld to support that. If they add the obvious second analog stick, increase the load times, make it more portable, and still deliver a higher quality, higher polish gaming experience, I think they have a goldmine on their hands.

• Better WiFi connectivity. It would be nice if the PSP could stream audio and video files from a PC. It would also be nice if it had 802.11g or even N, but I don’t know what the latter would do to battery life. I’d even like the ability to transfer files from my PC or PS3 via wireless, instead of hunting for a USB cable. And in terms of battery life, I’m fine with the current length of 4-6 hours. If I’ve been gaming for that long in one sitting I need a break anyway. But if the console provided a quicker startup/shutdown, then it would support those quick 10, 20, or 30 minute gaming sessions that should be native to portable gaming. Even if the game itself does not promote these quick gaming bursts, remember – sleep/standby mode is your friend.

Sony is almost there in terms of really breaking through with handheld gaming. The ideas and core concepts are in place, but the devil’s in the details, and what seems like small problems are the things that are really holding the system back. I hope to see a PSP2 in 2009, with all of these recommendations incorporated in the design. I really like my PSP, and I think it has a lot of great games and functionality, but I’d really like to be able to use it as it’s intended.

Until then, hello DS.

I had just returned from my parents’ house for Christmas with a goggle (is that a word?) of new N64 games but had made plans to visit my friend in Dayton, OH for New Years. The local news was threatening some imminent snowfall to hit the area in the days ahead, but the forecast at that time was still hit-or-miss, so I went anyway.

Well, that threatening snowfall was upon us, but the local Ohio news wasn’t making a big deal about it. Not as much as three hours away where I lived, anyway.

“I dunno, man, if this snow hits I’ll never get home,” I said to my friend.

“Aw, c’mon. They’re saying it’s nothing. Don’t be a wuss,” he said. Or something stupid like that.

But my better judgment got the best of me, so I decided to pack up and leave on the eve of the storm. And sure enough, once I hit Indianapolis the snow started to fall, and I-65 started to get a little slippery, and then I had to reduce my speed, which made me drive a little longer as the weather got worse. I arrived at my apartment late in the evening, snow falling as predicted, and I was safe and sound if not a little weary from the drive.

The next morning I awake to about a foot of snow, with another foot predicted. Sweetness, I thought, I have nowhere to go except stay home and crack open some of those Christmas presents, starting with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time…

The snow over New Years’ weekend feel to over two feet. Everything was closed including my work for two days. My car was snowplowed in, so I wasn’t getting anywhere. And I think I didn’t shower for two days while I played Zelda.

Strangely, I didn’t finish it. I got to “grown-up” Link and kinda got sick of it (I know, blasphemous!). Either that or got sick of me doing my best Jabba the Hutt imitation on the couch and decided to shovel myself out. And you know something? To this day, I’ve never returned to the world of Hyrule.

Why is this a memorable Christmas story? Because it reminds me of my two favorite things I had to give up as a responsible adult: snow days and bachelorhood. And it’s something I’ll always remember everytime the weather forecast predicts a big snowstorm.

Ah Sony. Remember a couple of years ago when I wrote how much I liked my PSP, only after loading it with custom firmware? Well, recently I purchased a PS3, and thought with all the cool things it can do with my PSP, I found a way to go legit with it and the Sony firmware path.

Now that I have, my PSP is…a little boring again. Sure, it has some good, if not great, games, but the loading times are just way too long for me to boot it up for a quick gaming session. I’ve been switching between Wipeout Pulse and Final Fantasy I, but both are pretty underwhelming for AAA PSP titles; the former teased me with the potential for downloadable content but provided none (in the US – EU got theirs, which boggles my mind why it couldn’t come out here), and with Final Fantasy I could really benefit from some custom soundtrack support from the XMB.

So how could it be better? Well, I can’t convert a video on it to save my life. And it would be cool if it had Adobe Acrobat support. Audible-ready support would be neato as well, so I could have a virtual library on the go. And again, custom soundtracks please. Please.

The PSP is what it is, and therefore it’s always going to be the second-fiddle, not-quite-handheld handheld. I use it mainly for remote play, so I don’t have to turn on my entire entertainment center to check the latest additions to the PSN marketplace. And while that PSN content is downloading I boot up my DS for some convenient portable gaming.

Source: Flame on: PS3 a ‘sinking ship’ (PSP, too)

It was Christmas Eve, 1991, and some high-school friends of mine all got together during Winter break for midnight mass. After church, one person in the group who worked as a manager at Little Caesars invited about 10 of us all back to his store at the local strip mall, cranked up the ovens and we all pigged out on pizzas and Crazy Bread while hiding in the back so the patrolling cops didn’t think it was a bunch of punks looting the place.

Normally, that would be the highlight of anyone’s Christmas story. But then my two closest friends, Tim and Jerome, came back to my parents house with me to loot my place, as we tore open the wrapped Sega Genesis games, obviously given away by those memorable clamshell plastic cases. One of those games was an arcade favorite of ours, Pit Fighter.

Now, I have a problem of falling asleep doing basically anything, at any hour of the day. So combining church, 2AM, and a stomach full of Caesars is certain doom. I think I survived a few bouts of the game before handing over the controller, and Tim and Jerome unabashedly mooched off of my gift, round after round, until I slowly drifted off for a long Winter’s nap…

I woke up in the morning on the living room floor, TV and Genesis powered off, and no Tim and Jerome to be found. They ended up playing to their hearts content while I succumbed to those visions of sugarplums. As good as friends could be, they considerately turned everything off and cleaned up before they left.

But the best part? Jerome in a particularly heated Pit Fighter match, said to me, “man, I don’t know how games can ever look better than this…”

These used to be free, by the way, but times are tough and I’m sure there’s enough demand for this that my supply is worth something. What’s that, you ask? Well…

I know how to save Sonic the Hedgehog.

No, it doesn’t involve BioWare. But it could involve another EA team.

The Challenge: How can a 3D Sonic game capture the excitement of its 2D brethren?

The Answer: You gotta have faith. Mirror’s Edge Faith, that is. People can’t stop talking about how invigorating it is to seamlessly run, jump, roll and slide through obstacle courses in the sky. It’s all about the connection between the player and the character’s movements, pulling off these tricks at a sprint. So then, why can’t Sonic be a parkour expert as well? What could be better than effortlessly navigating through the neon lights of Spring Yard zone, or jumping through the clouds in Green Hill zone? Of course, First Person Sonic probably isn’t a good idea, so it’d have to be third person, which makes it more like Prince of Persia sans combat and time rewind, but you get the picture.

Extra Credit: Sega is hell bent on keeping the Werehog, you say? I got that covered too. Thanks to a little game known as Silhouette Mirage for the Sega Saturn. The concept of Silhouette Mirage was later used in Ikaruga, which had the player switch character attributes to perform certain offensive and defensive abilities. So combining the two influences, you have a parkour-sim at breakneck speeds in the Sonic worlds, attacking and defending against enemies by switching between Hedgehog and Werehog polarities along the way.

How friggin’ cool would this be? C’mon, Sega, this will only cost you a dollar!

Shawn Elliott posted to his brand-spankin’ new blog a discussion with other members of the gaming press on the subject of reviews:

Prior to departing 1UP.com, I prepared two sections for a symposium that never got off the ground. Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal, WhatTheyPlay.com’s John Davison, and I agreed to generate questions for eight episodes.

I see what he’s doing here and at the same time praise and damn his (overcomplicated) study of the reviews process. Essentially what he’s doing here is not related to reviews at all, but analysis of the reasons why human beings are subjective by nature. See, that is why we have favorite reviewers for all types of media. That is why I trust a Roger Ebert film review more so than a Peter Travers one, or a Jim DeRogatis review more than, um, some other person at some other outlet…sorry, my music tastes have lapsed AC (after children). Hell, it’s why we had a friggin’ opinion about Ebert’s replacement on At the Movies (Michael Phillips was my choice, by the way). It’s because of the flavor each individual adds to their writing; otherwise it’s just a series of gramatically-correct, probably-way-too-advanced-for-my-understanding words on a page or website. There’s writing, there’s creative writing, and then there’s creative writing in the world according to [insert critic here].

“How much is on our minds before we begin playing any given game for review purposes? Will we imagine a range of probable scores that a heavily marketed, highly budgeted, and hugely anticipated game will get?” What do I do when I find a wallet on the sidewalk? Do I hold the door for the person behind me? Do these questions define what makes a better review or just a better person? And most important, are these answers even important?

I grew up in Chicago, and therefore on Siskel and Ebert. Ebert was always my favorite because, well, the Sun-Times is in tabloid format and easier to carry. Seriously, I always found Ebert to be a better writer. Although Ebert is the one with the Pulitzer, he always dismissed that argument by saying the Tribune’s format didn’t give Siskel’s abilities the room they deserved (Ebert’s reviews were always represented in essay format; Siskel’s in digest). But most importantly, I read Ebert because I felt he agreed with my sensibilities. From pre-teen to post-college, I rarely knew Ebert the Person, yet I still thought this. Why? Because of what I gathered from his writings and reviews. When he liked or disliked something, he said why. He gave examples. He gave anecdotes. From those, and over the course of 20+ years, I learned to trust Roger Ebert as much as I did my own parents. Maybe even more so.

Reviewers are so wrapped up in the formula they get lost in it, and I think that’s the real problem. Everything else is what it is, and as what it should be.

Source: Unrealized reviews symposium

Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland had a couple of choice nuggets to chew on:

When a title attempts to explore uncharted areas, it risks stumbling into areas that have been neglected for a good reason — because they don’t work as well. But when we fault them for trying, without recognizing that the game might have done a few new things well, or when we treat creativity or an attempt at inventiveness as a design flaw, we’re sending the industry some problematic mixed messages. We demand innovation and invention, and then we crucify any attempts in that direction.

The above comment was in response to Silent Hill: Homecoming, but rekindled from the spark Mirror’s Edge seems to have caused throughout the industry. So then, should Alone in the Dark for the Xbox 360 have warranted a 58 score on metacritic? Or the “improved” PS3 release, which received an average of 67? Maybe 1UP’s Nick Suttner was right, saying it was one of the overlooked gems of 2008? I’ll just say that’s why I bought it when it was released, although it’s still sealed on my shelf.

I tend to agree with this way of thinking. A game should be respected by trying something new and interesting. Now, let’s be clear, this is different than how Japanese developers like to reinvent things such as online play and controls for no good reason. There’s no way Dirge of Cerberus gets a recommendation in my book…

Leigh’s other point is one I’ve often thought of myself (“The Four Month Bell Curve”):

Here’s how it works — starting at about six months prior to release, the hype machine builds, reaching a fever pitch during the magical week. And in the week that follows, said highly-anticipated title is the greatest thing since sliced bread; reviewers use hyperbolic superlative adjectives, the top five Digg stories pertain to said game, it makes mainstream media headlines in spots like the New York Times or Slate (Newsweek doesn’t count, because we cheat by having N’Gai).

Fast forward a month later, and the backlash begins with a strongly worded post from the blog community, perhaps one single acerbic writer who doesn’t get what the fuss is all about. This, too, draws massive internet traffic, as seas of enamored fans flock to the dispute. And then, well, wait, wait, says someone else, Dissenter Zero might have a point — and then before you know it, we’re not talking “most breathtaking open-world experience EVER,” but we’re talking more like “ludonarrative dissonance,” and things like that (these are not actual quotes about GTA IV, as far as I’m aware, but might as well be — “ludonarrative dissonance” refers to BioShock, actually).

This has been going on for years. I placed it back to the first Prince of Persia: Sands of Time game. What was a game of the year contender when it was first released, it was singled out for it’s many flaws by the time the sequel was being previewed. Same with Jade Empire. Same with Halo 2. Same with BioShock.

Game reviews fall into this trap because they are packaged as buyers guides rather than genuine criticism. They are meant to hit the web by the time the game is on store shelves. Since most games sell the majority of their total sales during the first few weeks in stores, that means there are droves of potential buyers swarming the review sites to see if it is worth their hard-earned $60. See where this is a problem? Reviewers are forced to plow through a game within a set timeframe, write down their opinions in haste and paste it on the front page of a website to grab valuable traffic. They aren’t allowed to let their experience age, to reflect upon it for days or even weeks afterward.

Now, one can argue that film and music could also fall in this trap, since they are day-and-date driven by retail sales. The difference here is that those types of media benefit from manageable time commitments and lend themselves to repeat viewings or listenings, to help flesh out that initial love-or-hate fest. I used to review music for my university’s newspaper, and I’d listen to a CD over and over again throughout a weekend before I put my first word on paper.  I was able to dig deeper into a song, discover its true meaning, or at least what it meant to me. I could hear the conflict between the upbeat melody and the underlying melancholy lyrics that might get a pass if I only heard it once. That in turn resulted in some pretty good personal insight in my reviews, some that I’d be damned proud to reprint here if I still had my scrapbook of writings…

So why do videogames suffer from a short honeymoon? It’s because a 10+ hour game isn’t easy to playthrough a second or third time before a review deadline is met. What we’re ever seeing is the reviewer’s initial impressions based on a single playthrough. And the nature of game criticism is, that’s pretty much gospel.

Turns out all these holiday releases do more than give us all sore thumbs, they’ve inspired a slew of bloggers to critique the people who are critiquing all those AAA titles, especially when so many are falling in the love-it-or-hate-it bin. I’ve been on this bandwagon before, and I’m also at it again, but let’s see what some other folks have to say on the subject:

From The Guardian UK’s Games Blog, Keith Stuart wrote:

I found the IGN review particularly depressing. Not only does the writer suggest that the combat system could have done with an extra button (wha? Why?! Why add extra layers of complexity? Since when was that an artful response to anything?), but he ends with:

The ideas are there for a very cool experience, and I truly hope that a sequel is spawned, but this first attempt falls just a bit short.

Can you imagine, for a second, critics emerging from the press screening of Apocalypse Now, or The Magnificent Ambersons, or Bladerunner and proclaiming, ‘yeah, it had some good ideas, but it wasn’t perfect – I’ll look forward to the sequel’. I suppose there’s an argument that, as films are only ninety minutes long, we’ll accept a more flawed experience, but are notions of quality really so tightly governed by longevity? I hope not.

I think most critics have the right idea but wrong execution for this argument. I’m in software development, and we thrive on iterative development and design. There’s iteration on a project level, but also iteration on a portfolio level as well (with portfolio, think franchises for gaming). A perfect case study would be the Crash Bandicoot franchise. The first one was Sony’s entry into the mascot race on the original Playstation. I think everyone at the time thought it was pretty mediocre with some underlying potential. Naughty Dog was able to iterate on that original game with the feedback they received from the community, and good golly miss molly if Crash 2 wasn’t an improvement if not defining moment in the 32-bit sweeps.

Taking the argument to film, as did Keith, look at The Transporter or Austin Powers. Both weren’t huge successes at the box office, but they found enough of an audience in the secondary market to convince the studios to fund two sequels each. So in this case, yes, people do actually say, “I like what I see, now give me more of it and better!”

Therefore, I agree with IGN’s statement in concept. Just to add, John Waters once said there should be more remakes of bad movies than good ones; the “sequelitis” to which Keith referred is really just this opportunity for developers to iterate on a good concept which might have been buried in bad execution. And hey, he should be happy videogames have this opportunity; the film industry is still busy remaking classics like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Psycho”.

Here’s another hypothetical review:

Bill: I’ve really been looking forward to Mass Effect 2 for a long time, and now that it’s finally here I feel a little bit underwhelmed. The first game had its share of problems with the dialog options, despite trying something different from the typical branching conversations found in other RPGs. That said, there’s not much more they could do to improve on here and it shows. The combat was another big issue I had with the original, and here they’ve dumbed it down a tad to make it more KOTOR-like and manageable; that said, I was really looking forward to something along the lines of GRAW, but that just didn’t happen.

Jonas: I couldn’t agree more. Through my thirty hours of playtime my experience with the game was not substantially different than the first, and that is a letdown. Sure, the beautiful graphics have improved with better film filters, less texture pop-in and more realistic facial animations, and I loved the additional character customization options. But the real problem was the story, or lack thereof. The first game set up such a huge and wondrous universe full of potential, but here it feels like the developers cut costs by retreading familiar worlds and environments from the first game.

Ninja-Z: Guys, what game were you playing? I loved the addition of the fourth party member for combat, and the ability to play with the first game’s twitchy mechanic. The story is pretty grand, although we are only seeing a sliver of it here. The backstory can be filled in with codex entries (and I suggest reading the three novels to get the full experience) and there’s the prospect of a third game based on the game’s shocking ending (SPOILER!).  Sure, some of it might feel familiar, but here familiar is so good. There isn’t a better RPG available on any system this year.

Okay, how would a developer who spent tens of millions of dollars and years of work to craft such a product feel when their game is relegated to 500 words? The point I’m trying to make here is how can anyone find such a reflection on a playthrough that took thirty hours anything less than insulting?

Game reviews are frequently compared to film reviews. Although they are different media, they are both products in the same vein, offering both a sensory and emotional experience. So why then do game reviewers rarely relay that type of individual experience felt by critics in a typical film review?

A few good examples of game criticism do exist. Game discussion at length is a good exercise. 1UP FM’s recent backlog playthrough of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. provided some excellent group insight and personal experience that seldom makes it to the written word. The Giant Bomb guys, in talking about Street Fighter, showed that such intelligent conversation can occur about the technical aspects of a game as well. And of course, the GFW guys’ frequent tangents always proved more engaging than anything put to print (sans Greenspeak, of course).

Could it be the journalists who review games are well qualified to critique them, yet lack the requisite skill necessary to communicate their thoughts effectively through their writings? Shawn Elliott was accepted as the industry champion for better journalism, and his frequent rants on the subject indicated he was qualified as such. For some reason, however, that same passion never made it to print. Does that mean he was merely a better student, or were the confines of 1UP to blame for his aspirations never taking flight? And why is talking about good game journalism more celebrated than actually doing it? I guess we’ll never know – after moving on to 2K Boston, he has become to journalism as Bam Margera is to television, with his Internet Wall of Shame daily updates on Twitter.

On a recent Player One Podcast, former game journalist and current Sega producer Ethan Einhorn suggested writing is all about the personalities, and that someone like Elliott should have been “thrown a couple hundred thousand dollars” to keep him. Ah, $200k for what amounts to stories of juvenile disobedience and ongoing episodes of online griefing? No thanks, I’d rather spend that money for a real journalist.

What if all movie reviews were like this?

After nearly 20 years of anticipation, George Lucas finally whets the appetite of millions of fanboys worldwide with the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace to theaters everywhere. Although this latest installment has it’s share of issues, it proves absence makes the heart grows fonder and is not D.O.A. at the cineplex.

Screenplay

After the movie opens with its signature Star Wars crawl, it follows the exploits of a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Trainspotting‘s Ewan McGregor) and his Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn played by venerable actor Liam Neeson, approximately 40 years before the events of Episode IV (you know, the original Star Wars). Sent by the Jedi Council to investigate some political goings-on that just don’t seem right to the Republic, they encounter resistance with the Trade Federation and a new species of aliens called the Nemoidians; from which they are gassed, chased by cool roly-poly transforming Battle Droids, and subsequently escape as stowaways on a Trade Federation ship headed to the planet of Naboo.

Naboo and, for all intents and purposes, Coruscant, are beautiful new worlds to the Star Wars universe. The movie does a lot of backtracking to familiar surroundings, such as Tatooine, but through the magic of special effects these worlds seem new again. Especially one sequence which involves young Anakin racing for his life in a futuristic motorsport known as “pod racing”. Another memorable aspect of the movie involves basically every scene staring the franchise’s new bad guy, Darth Maul.

As the movie progresses, Obi-Wan’s party grows with the addition of Naboo’s queen, an amphibious alien known as Jar-Jar, the aforementioned young Anakin. The movie’s mechanic does a great job of growing the central characters Obi-Wan and Anakin with each encounter, with the other characters providing ample support and comic relief through quality dialog options. Of the 130 minutes it took to complete this film, it is well-paced and avoids any substantial lulls.

Graphics

Stunning, absolutely stunning. As mentioned above, the familiar Tatooine looks brand-new thanks to a facelift of galactic proportions. Alien races are all modeled particularly well and varied, and every world visited looks much different from the last. The framerate, especially during the pod racing sequence and the final boss battle, is consistent. Depth in scenery is far and shows off the environments as they were intended.

One thing of note is the sometimes awkward animations of the supporting character, Jar-Jar. Most of the time they are convincingly integrated with the live-action counterparts, but there are times where the animations look out of place. This does not deter from the overall experience and is but a blemish in an otherwise gorgeous movie.

Sound

Lucas does it again, and this is where his movies really shine. A Star Wars movie is instantaneously identifiable by its sound effects, and TPM is no different. From the lightsaber sounds to the spaceship engines, every sound is unique to the Star Wars world. Again, the pod racing sequence is especially gratifying and sounds just like a Formula One race from “A galaxy far far away…” should.

John Williams’ music is pretty much par for the course here. He’s had such a great career with other movies and raised the bar so high, this one has a hard time of beating anything else he’s done. Still, the music sounds great regardless of whether it is coming from a 5.1 surround system or a set of headphones.

Multiplayer

There is no multiplayer options to speak of with TPM, but the journey is so much fun it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of friends watch it with you!

Overall

TPM is not a perfect movie. Still, its issues are minor and it still delivers a qualiity and substantial experience that stands among the best of the year.

Score: 9.7 (not an average)

Okay, so does that not sound ridiculous to you? Why then does game “journalism” settle with such modest aspirations? And how is it that an industry with yearly revenue in the tens of billions of dollars depend on coverage by twenty-something English majors fresh out of college who got their first jobs at a game magazine by using a personal blog as a portfolio? I’m generalizing, and I apologize to the handful of truly worthwhile game journalists who can call themselves as such. But still, it’s a problem when investigative journalism takes a distant seat to what is dominated by product reviews. If that were pertinent to other industries like music, film and television, then why isn’t Consumer Reports the de facto source of information on these media?

I’ve always wondered why the games industry has never been covered like Silicon Valley during the dot com era. There are so many crazy stories to be told, but most outlets are afraid of breaking a story in fear they’ll be cut off from their future review copies. Instead they keep what they hear during industry pub crawls to themselves and go back to their offices to write crap that doesn’t do justice to the craft of making video games.

I’ve been inspired by recent gaming podcasts and magazines. Why is it that in 2008, what may very well be the best year for video games, coverage is relegated to amateurs? Why when a year releases like Mirror’s Edge, Too Human, and Little Big Planet have such a polarizing effect on their players, that this doesn’t inspire individuals to manifest such emotion into their writings?

This only has to be insulting to the people involved in making a game – from the developers to the publishers to the marketers to the PR groups. It’s all just a game.

And it shouldn’t be that way.