It was around that time that my Xbox 360 froze, during a cut scene. I figured it was a fluke. My 360 is getting up there in years, and Dragon Age is a fairly meaty game.

I restarted the game from a save point 3 minute prior, and everything was fine. It then froze again, slightly later in the cut scene. Again, this was worrisome, but the system restarted fine.

This morning, I went to take Dragon Age from the system, and I was greeted by those three dreaded red lights, indicating total system failure.

Well, shit.

My Xbox has crapped the bed before. Two years ago, almost exactly. It was three weeks prior to the release of Rock Band, and the thought of not having my system for the launch of that game was somewhat devastating. Fortunately, I sent it off immediately, and got it back just in the nick of time.

This time, I’m not so lucky. As an early adopter (read: beta tester for faulty hardware), I purchased my 360 at launch. That was just about four years ago… Again, almost to the day.

For comparison, let me tell you the story of my Playstation 2. I scrimped and saved to buy it in the summer of 2000, the same year that Onimusha came out. Since then, it’s served me without complaint through three Final Fantasy games, four Silent Hill games, and countless other masterpieces. That’s 9 years without failure, remarkable for a system that was also plagued by astronomical failure rates.

Microsoft, in response to pending lawsuits, extended their warranty coverage for the Red Ring issue. For the first failure, I was safely under that umbrella. This time? Not so much.

What annoys me isn’t that the system failed. Yes, it was a preventable manufacturing flaw that left millions of faithful consumers in the lurch. BUT, Microsoft went above and beyond to make things right with those whose systems bricked.

No, what annoys me is that the system is so damned good, despite its frailty. If I hadn’t enjoyed playing it, I wouldn’t have purchased several games and made it the center of my multimedia setup.

As it stands, those games are being held hostage.

So, I’ll have to buy a new one. That’s disappointing, because every dollar I spend replacing this failed Xbox is a dollar I can’t spend on another system, or more games to review on the show.

I don’t know why I’m writing up an entry about this. At the top, you noticed that I linked to Amazon a couple of times. This is an effort to make some scratch off of their associate program. This money will go toward maintaining the site and covering hardware failures such as this one. Maybe this is my way of sneaking in more ads. If the presence of Amazon affiliate links bothers you, let me know in the comments. It seemed like a more noble alternative to putting up a beggar’s Paypal link.

I’ll have a new Xbox 360, complete with the seemingly infallible Jasper chipset, soon enough. In the meantime, I have to start digging through my PS2 and Wii backlog again.

On the plus side, I actually have games to talk about next week!

Title Screen.

I’m an unashamed fan of point and click adventure games. Although their heydey took place well before I learned to read (at age 11. Thanks public schools), I came upon them early in my game career. They’ve shaped the way I appreciate writing in games. Nobody did humor in games better than LucasArts. Personalities like Ron Gilbert, Steve Purcell, and Dave Grossman helped define games as a writing-driven medium.

The personality from this bygone era who remains the most prolific today is Tim Schafer. During his tenure at LucasArts, he helmed classics like Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. He continued being a critical darling with 2005′s Psychonauts. His games have always undersold, relative to their merits, but he’s an example of how you can’t keep a good man down.

Nice rug.

Shafer will be hosting the Game Developer’s Choice Awards at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference, and to commemorate this event, his studio Double Fine has released a flash game. And not just any flash game, it’s a throwback to the point and click adventure games Schafer cut his teeth on.

It’s got the blocky VGA graphics, the verb panel, and inventory screen of the old SCUMM titles, and it makes full use of them. The goal is to help an underprepared Tim Schafer find jokes to use at the ceremony. Throughout the course of the 20 or so minutes it will take you to beat the game, you’ll discover the hidden depths of Schafer’s dressing room, unusual uses for tablecloths, and just how much the game’s old formula still shines.

"Thus, in one jokeless evening, the entire games industry was wiped from the planet." GAME OVER

Playing the game made me kind of sad that the genre had to die off. There were a few laugh-out-loud moments, and the rest of it was a loving homage to the excesses and warped logic of the adventure games that preceded it.

If you have an appreciation for old adventure games, I can’t recommend this enough. The only thing you have to lose is a few minutes of your time. If you’re not hip to the adventure game scene, you may find this obtuse and get stuck immediately.

[Double-Fine's "Host Master and the Conquest of Humor!"]

Despite this, core gamers (and oh, how I hate the core/casual dichotomy) sneer at the idea of iPhone games. Their attitude is similar to how I think film buffs view the idea of watching films on their phones (for an elegant summary of this sentiment, just watch this video of David Lynch expressing his feelings on mobile video). The experience differs fundamentally from playing a game on a home console. For people whose entire concept of gaming is tied to a television screen, I could see why it would be easy to dismiss iPhone games. They’re probably doing it out of fear. If developing an iPhone game and getting it into the top 100 is so profitable, who in their right mind would dedicate resources to making triple-A titles?

Speaking personally, I myself am a “core” gamer, if that’s even an applicable term anymore. Despite my affinity for deep, complex games on Xbox 360, I’ve come to appreciate iPhone games. I purchased my iPod Touch as a productivity tool. The idea of having Remember the Milk and Mint in the palm of my hand was too tempting to pass up.

When I received my Touch on Christmas day, the first game I bought was Rolando, published by ngMoco. ngMoco’s founder, Neil Young (not the musician) recently evangelized for the iPhone at GDC, hailing it as a revolution for the games industry. Rolando sold me on this idea before he even said the words.

Rolando is ridiculously underpriced for the quality and quantity of content you’re getting. It’s a game I could see going for $30 on the DS, or $50 on the PSP. Why, instead, develop it for iPhone and sell it for a third of its value? First, it’s a game that utilizes the functionality of its platform to such a degree, I can honestly say that it couldn’t be done anywhere else. Second, it could have been a grand experiment for the company. The overriding philosophy of iPhone marketing is “profit by a thousand cuts.” And it worked.

The fact that all iPhone games fall below the $10 mark is pure genius. I’m one of those people who has a price threshold for hesitating about purchases. That threshold usually hovers around 20 to 30 dollars. My rule beyond that point is to allow myself one day for every $10 a product will cost, then make my decision. If a product falls below that price point, I could buy it all day. Just clicking and clicking with no regard for the fact that the sum total is WAY above what I’m comfortable spending.

Case in point would be a game like Bejeweled 2. At $3, it’s the steal of the century. I have no need to justify that purchase, beyond thinking to myself “well, I’ll just not buy that second beer at the bar later.”

The amount of time I’ll spend with these games works similarly to how much I’ll spend on them. For as much as I loved Fallout 3, I recognized that I would need at least two hours to even start getting into the meat of a playing session. As such, there were days I simply couldn’t justify putting it into the system. I had better things to do.

However, with games like Bejewled, Rolando, or Word Fu, the time investment is so far below my threshold that I don’t think twice about whipping out my iPod and playing a 5 minute game… Then another… Then another.

This raises the idea that iPhone games are like the fast food of gaming. Cheap enough to purchase without thinking about it, and insubstantial enough to warrant repeat indulgence. It’s easy to view this as a derisive comparison until you realize that fast food, like iPhone gaming, is a lucrative industry. Also, unlike fast food, playing Bejeweled on the iPhone won’t lead to an early death.

What’s great about iPhone games is that the successful ones are designed in such inventive ways. It took a while for developers to fully grasp the platform, but these growing pains didn’t last nearly as long as they did for developers making games for the DS. If you’ll remember, we had to suffer through nearly two years of ports with dubious and half-assed touch screen support before we got to the truly unique stuff. If Rolando can be seen as the herald for the iPhone coming of age, then its adolescence only lasted about six months.

There’s a beauty in the economy necessary to develop a game suited to the mobile platform. Concessions need to be made, and what results is an experience that’s distilled to its purest form. Few games have gotten away with straight-across adaptation to the platform. Sim City is an example of a game that works very well on the iPhone, despite the fact that it’s so cluttered with information that it should never have been successful.

“Core Gamers” who profess to love the craft of game design should take notice of this economy, and realize how stripping away the bloated trappings of cinematic experiences has caused renaissance in how games are played. There’s no excuse for such a young art like video games to stagnate, and sadly that’s happened. It’s a joy to witness new ideas and mechanics being born, and to see their designers getting compensated for it.

The stakes are low, the teams are small, and there’s no corporate structure interfering with the designer’s ideas. It’s great, and there’s no reason to think that casual mobile gaming can’t coexist with core experiences on the consoles. If anything, triple-A developers can learn from their iPhone counterparts, and deliver a greater volume of compelling content at lower costs.

The rules are being rewritten by ngmoco, PopCap, and the new Nintendo. I dread the day that Peggle comes out for the iPhone. When that game drops, so will my will to do anything else. However, before I drop into (further) obscurity, I’ll manage to write one more sentence: “Give it a try, and don’t be mad when I say ‘I told you so.’”

Until The Sims came along and dethroned it late in the year 2000.

I don’t need to introduce The Sims to you. If you can work a computer, you’ve played this game. What I feel I do need to justify is my complete adoration for the series.

I admit, it got off to a rocky start, especially if you’re trying to justify it as a game. It had many complex facets, but nothing like the interrelated systems of something like Sim City (which, if you own an iPhone and don’t have Sim City for it, you should be flogged in the street by a Residential zone). As a game that utilized my new (at the time) computer’s hardware, it was an entertaining enough distraction until I re-discovered Team Fortress Classic. There just wasn’t an awful lot of meat, you created a family and hoped some disaster would come along so you could clean up the mess.

The Sims 2 is where things got very interesting for me. I arrived late to the party, getting the game on discount after upgrading my PC in late 2004. That upgrade was worth it, though, because the new game saw a great technical and aesthetic overhaul from the previous entry. The Aspiration system gave the game some replay value as I sought to dabble in all of the different personalities I could create, from the loveable lech to the scheming mad scientist. There were goals to work toward, and plenty to see, and in general the game was worth my time and money.

As per usual, EA released a deluge of expansions for their cash cow franchise, many of which I saw fit to invest in. Up until Pets, a purchase I thoroughly regret, each expansion added many new activities to pursue. University took the sims to college, Night Life took them clubbing, and Open For Business (my favorite) let me create a small business assembling helper bots.

All said, I’ve invested a good amount of time in the series, which makes it logical that I would be anticipating The Sims 3 with bated breath. In fact, I was crestfallen when the game was delayed.

After reading a preview, the threequel seems to be getting several things right, like making the Sims more autonomous with their needs. No more pissing your pants in front of your boss, which for some people (NOT ME) might hit a little too close to home. It also makes the entire neighborhood seamless, eliminating the prohibitive loading screens which made the town centers feel about a million miles away. Most of all, it takes the Aspiration system from 2 and completely goes nuts with it, allowing you to assign lofty life goals to your avatars and gain tangible rewards for pursuing them.

What excites me about all of this is the possibility for (cliche ahoy) emergent situations. The game will let me follow a ladder directly into the depths of human depravity as I create cleptomaniac sims who mooch off of their neighbors and engage in illicit acts with their spouses or pets. Or I can go to great lengths to recreate the town of Twin Peaks and re-enact the entire series note-for-note. The series helped make mainstream the idea of customizing your game experience, and I can foresee myself getting lost in it all over again come June 2.

So, you know my dirty little secret. I like the Sims, and could be called “part of the problem” for continuing to feed my money to the beast. But, I’ve got no regrets about it because it feels like time well-spent.

As a postscript to this gargantuan writeup, I have to mention that the alternate title for this post could be “The Only Thing a 21 Year Old Male Has In Common With a 14-Year-Old-Girl.”

Preview: Sims 3 [Via Destructoid]

I’ve waited this long to speak about it, because emotions are running high. It’s absurd to say or think, but EGM has been a big part of my development as a critical thinker when it comes to video games. I’m young, so I missed some of the glory days of the publication. I wasn’t old enough to read when they were reviewing Super Mario Bros. 3 and whatnot. But I’ve had my subscription since grade school, and I can honestly say that their staff of writers has greatly influenced both my love of games and my decision to write about them.

More recently, I stumbled across the 1UP podcasts. What I realized when the podcast staff was laid off was how personal the medium can be. Again, we’re getting into absurd histrionics, but I felt like I knew a great deal of the podcast crews. Especially at 1UP FM, Nick Suttner and Phil Kollar were great to listen to, and the network’s consistently high quality product made my long days at the office less soul crushing.

Moreover, it was their podcasts that caused massive overhauls in the way that my own podcast and radio show were presented. To me, it seems like they wrote the book about making games podcasting entertaining. I couldn’t hope for my show to be as good as what they did, but the fun is in the trying.

I’ll still read 1UP.com, because there are plenty of talented people there. What’s nice about the site is that it’s an Institution (capital “I”). Good people will gravitate toward it, and any void left by those who were laid off will be filled with other talented writers. They won’t be able to replace those who were lost, but they don’t need to, because those people are off pursuing their own new projects.

The 1UP FM crew are currently helming the Rebel FM podcast, and their premiere episode was amazing enough to put them at #1 on the iTunes charts. Those same folks are also writing for Eat-Sleep-Game, and the 1UP Show crew is now working on a project at TalkingOrange.com.

I don’t know what else there is to say about the “incident.” Personally, it broke my heart for the aforementioned reasons, and because I am left uncertain about my own future. It’s a sad time for someone who is looking at writing for or about games as a carreer. If EGM can fall, then who can stand?

I wish everyone who got laid off the best of luck. You’ve influenced more people than you know, and I’m certain you’ve got great things ahead of you.

I’m in a Video Game Design and Development class at UC, a fresh new offering from the Electronic Media department. While I’ve got a bit of experience with flash and coding, I don’t know actionscript that well. The end result of my first project for the class is this number.

I’m posting this here more to see if the flash file will load on this page, allowing you to play it. Instructions are simple: Make Sure I Get Eaten By the Shark.

The project was to take an existing game engine and a few given art assets, and modify them in order to make a basic game with a basic objective and a simple story.

Take pity on me, and moreover, comment away.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE GAME.

It’s safe to say that the game is consuming my life. That much, I expected. It’s a phenomenal title, and worthy of anyone’s time and attention during this crowded holiday season. Since release, I’ve sunk nearly 40 hours into the game, something that’s unheard of for me. Not since the days of Final Fantasy Tactics have I put that much time into ANY game. It’s just that compelling of a game, I seek out time in my schedule to convince myself that I can be playing it.

Here’s what I wouldn’t advise, though: Listening to NPR’s “Planet Money” while you play it.

I do this with lots of games. Sometimes there’s a long stretch of time where nothing really happens, nothing needs to be heard, etc. So I turn down the in-game music, and listen to a podcast.

Why is this a bad thing? Fallout 3 is depressing enough. The first time you set foot into a completely devastated Washington DC, your heart will skip a beat. The sense of loneliness, desperation, and ruin pervades the entire experience.

And it’s all entirely feasible.

Well, not so much the Super Mutants or the robots, but you know what I mean.

The threat of nuclear annihilation is very, very real. Our generation doesn’t fixate on it as much as the Cold War era did, but it’s still there. And Fallout 3 harnesses that fear, and presents a very convincing alternate reality.

Listening to anything related to the state of the world today is not advisable when you’re playing this game. With the economy the way it is, it isn’t hard for the mind to wander. It isn’t hard to imagine that an impoverished world will turn to war for resources, which will destroy us all.

The plummeting Dow Jones, the rapid deflation of the world’s currency, the utter fallability of our global financial system… That doesn’t really gel with playing a game this stark and depressing.

If playing games is about escapism, then this runs counter to that fact. This is immersing yourself in a paranoid state, and exhausting yourself in the process.

My advice? Don’t listen to economic podcasts while playing this game.

Oh, and save up those bottlecaps.

I love to play them, I love to talk about them, I love to write about them, and one day I hope to make them my living.

As such, I plan to write about them some more.

Expect to see notes about what I’m playing right now, thoughts on current events in the industry, and reflections on games from the past.

Don’t expect to see anything bleeding edge or current. By the time any game gets into my hands, it will probably have been out (and written about extensively) for a few weeks. Since I’m not a major publication, I can’t get preview builds or anything.

Also, I’ve got an extensive backlog of games to play, so as I revisit older games, expect to see some titles that have passed their expiration date on the blog.

That is all, good day.