Game On

You ever see that movie called Powder?Power can make you blue. Consider Cole, the protagonist of inFamous. All he needs to do is walk up to a circuit box, flex his arms, and he's suddenly streaming with power. It crackles across his hands and curls around his thighs, covering him in an electric glow. One of the residents of Empire City described it as a "halo."

Of course, that was after Cole cleaned up the neighborhood. At first, almost every resident thought that Cole was a terrorist. A mysterious explosion had destroyed the city center. They blamed his powers for the blast. They associated him with the ensuing onslaught of psychotics known as "reapers." But now that Cole busies himself with zapping the reapers and healing civilians, everyone adores him.
He could have easily used his powers for evil. Every citizen has a small spark of organic electricity, and Cole can suck it out of them as easily as he pulls it from the city's power grid. But instead of a life of infamy, Cole elected the path of fame. Of course he can always change his mind. Customization is one of the joys of being a videogame hero, and in inFamous the path between good and evil conveniently forks during obvious, awkward "Karma Moments."

Puzzle games are oddballs. They're the only videogames that lack avatars.

An
avatar can be a virtual person (a Mii or Master Chief) or a set of
tools (such as a home in The Sims). In puzzle games, players don't
enter a gameworld, so they don't need avatars. The puzzles exist in the
real world. The falling blocks in Tetris and the colored gems in
Bejeweled are really falling blocks and colored gems (albeit pixelated
ones). Fiddling with them requires no digital intermediary.
This
makes the Nintendo DS the ideal puzzle game machine. With its
touch-sensitive screen, players are in direct contact with the
graphics. In Puchi Puchi Virus, those graphics take the form of
"viruses"-colored hexagons that gradually fill the screen. The player's
job is to touch three viruses of the same color, linking them into a
triangle. Once the viruses are triangulated, the player can pop the
triangle, causing the viruses to disappear.

Now that’s upward mobility.The United Nations recently hosted a discussion about the television
show Battlestar Galactica. The purpose was to examine how the show can
foster thinking among the international political community regarding
subjects such as terrorism, torture and the role of religion in
government. Yup. Deep, real world stuff inspired by a frakking TV show.

It
can only be a matter of time before the U.N. holds a videogame
conference. On the top of my list of things that governments should
learn from videogames is that a bionic arm is a useful thing to have.
Not only does its extendible/retractable hand make items on high
shelves accessible, but its seamless merging of cybernetics and neural
flesh also allow mental computer hacking.
The arm's
extend-o-reach makes it a convenient source of transportation. By
latching onto streetlamps and overhanging girders, one can swing Spider
Man-style through city streets. Nathan Spencer, the hero of Bionic
Commando-a reboot of the arcade oldie-can even swing using a single
bionic arm while using his standard-issue organic for shooting enemies.

Calling all introverts.Streaming video. Digital pictures. Audio files. Like the most active
types of media at the beginning of the 21st Century, videogames are
composed of electronic impulses. Any digital work of art is encoded in
countless electrical on/off signals the same way that a symphony is
encoded in sounds and silences. The electronic codes are the binary
beats of the digital age.

But videogames blur the line between
viewer/listener/creator/audience. They make us all players of the work
of art. Some part of every game's design is unbalanced unless a player
makes a decision-Up or down? Yes or no? Blue pill or red pill?-and
shifts the play in that direction. There is always a choice for the
gamer.
But since everything in a videogame is part of a code,
anything can ultimately be manipulated by the person who has access to
it. Normally it's only the creator of a videogame who gets to decide
how strong the monsters are, or what kind of weapons they'll have when
they appear. But Avalon Code is a role-playing game that lets players
determine-using a magical book called the Book of Prophecy-the
qualities of almost anything in the game.

MEETING TRANSCRIPT:
Head Corporate Communications D3Publisher of America Inc.; Head Tamsoft Marketing
Translate from Japanese original by global corporate communications (Intern G. Haku)
"See. Kind of skimpy cowboy showgirl Amazon outfit."

"In heels."
"Yes,
in heels. And in 3D! But options. See… silvery single-thread thong.
Also schoolgirl outfit. All options. And then the zombies arrive and
then 'Point Get'!"
"She's a panting schoolgirl getting chased by zombies?"
"But
she has the sword of blood for killing the zombies. See the zombie legs
totter towards her! And yet she will slay them mercilessly!"
"So sort of a Castlevania meets, I don't know, Showgirls?"
"Yes,
showgirls! And show girls taking the strong and interesting route to
power. Young girl power. They demonstrate joyous power."
"She's pretty joyous. She's jiggling a lot."
"She fights the hulk of quivering blood."

TOKYO: SOON
Just like on the mountain, without the liftlines and cold toes.The city is a jewelbox spilled across the night. An
alleyway winds across the sprawl. Within its darkness, a young girl
lies curled up in a corner of rubbish. Coughing.

A narrow little
figure in the suit of a salaryman detaches himself from the passing
stream of citizens. Sweat blisters on his brow. A tipsy hitch in his
step-or slipshod animation? it's getting tough to tell-he stumbles
towards the girl and opens his mouth. Almost instantly he's infected.
He
speaks Japanese in English subtitles as she coughs some more and
shudders-subtitles on his part, mutation on hers. Muscles stretch
through her skin. Her body grows, changes. A purple tentacle erupts
from her, a spatter of blood from him. He is left shuddering, coughing
on the pavement in the alley in the city in the night.

I started out with no respect for The Godfather II. In The Godfather: The Game, classic scenes from one of the world's greatest movies were fumblingly recreated with a videogame engine, and the gameplay never coalesced into a coherent experience. With things tending in that direction, I thought that a videogame sequel named after an even better film could only get worse.

But after the first few minutes, I realized that The Godfather II was leaving the movies far behind. Sure, there were a few characters that made the awkward transition into the game world. And the basic scenario takes its cues from The Godfather Part II. But for the most part, the videogame sequel concentrates on tweaking the core gameplay that the first game established.
The Godfather II is, at heart, a game of mobster Monopoly. Even though it affects a Grand Theft Auto III style, most of the game is about building and operating a mafia empire. There are occasional car chases and plenty of shootouts, but The Godfather II wisely limits the number of "drive around" missions, and concentrates on team-building and business operations. It's all about managing the turf and making money from whores, junk and dope.

Kill, Kill, Kill. Hunter or hunted? I can never tell.

Crawling through tight steel
airducts, hesitating every time I hear a guard's voice, I feel like I
did when I was escaping prison-hunted, fearful and sneaking in order to
stay alive. But when I'm in a dark room with the mercenaries piloting
this ship, who stand unaware as I creep up behind them with my knives
poised to open their throats, I remember that I'm a hunter-one of the
galaxy's greatest monsters.
Like the Metal Gear Solid games, The
Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a hybrid game of
action and stealth. Killing and hiding alternate seamlessly as I guide
Riddick, the shaved-headed hero voiced by Vin Diesel, as he attempts to
elude-and eliminate-the mercenaries who captured him after he escaped
his last adventure.

"I'm dead."

"Just a minute, I'll be right there. I have to kill these… things."
The
things in question are cute, furry orange creatures with fox-like
tails. Called mu, they aren't very dangerous. They mainly hop around,
pouncing on me at inopportune moments. But a gang of them murdered my
friend, and I don't want to resurrect him until the threat is gone.
Mu,
like most monsters, can be vanquished in a variety of ways. There's the
standard beatdown, which is accomplished while standing next to them
(and thereby allowing them to beat me back). I can also jump on top of
them, whacking at them beneath me. And (perhaps most entertainingly)
there's the grab-and-bash, which involves picking up a monster and
whacking them against a nearby wall.

The last Mccain supporters are caught on tape.When the man shuffled around the corner, I knew he was infected. It was
his eyes-flooded with black as though they were bleeding ink. And like
most infected, he was slow. Before he could swing his axe, I braced
myself and trained the laser sight of my pistol in the center of his
forehead-a third, red eye opening in the middle of his black-shot stare.

After
I pulled the trigger, his head exploded in a spurt of gore. A fleshy
tentacle rose from his torso, twisting towards me before splitting open
like a spindly, fleshy flower. Later, I would see even more grotesque
things. Small, winged leathery imps climbing from men's backs,
sloughing off their carcasses like costumes. Giant centipedes
slithering out of men's destroyed heads. Dogs peeled apart like figs,
the strands of their bodies groping towards me.