Apr 25, 2012

Midweek Moneysaver: You Didn't Ask for This (at Full Price)

Kotaku

Midweek Moneysaver: You Didn't Ask for This (at Full Price) This Wednesday edition of Kotaku's The Moneysaver catches all the offers, promotions and bargains that can't wait until the weekend. The Midweek Moneysaver is brought to you by Dealzon.

Software

• Yesterday's release Prototype 2 (360, PS3) with Limited Radnet Edition access code is $49.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $55. [Dealzon]

• April 27 release Risen 2: Dark Waters (PC Download) is $44.99 from Amazon. Next best is $50. [Dealzon]

• May 1 release Sniper Elite 2 (360, PS3) is $47.99, free ship from Buy.com. Elsewhere $49 and up. [Dealzon]

• Guild Wars 2 Digital Edition (PC download) is $53.95 from Green Man Gaming. Next best is $60. Comes with pre-order bonus item and 3-day early access. [Dealzon]

• Toys ‘R' Us offers a Buy One, Get Another 50% Off sale for games $19.99 and under (600 titles). [Dealzon]

• Amazon has a Buy 1, Get 1 Free sale on $5 PC download games. Includes 73 titles published by 1C, including: Kings Bounty, the Men of War series, and Space Rangers 2. [Dealzon]

• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13: The Masters Collector's Edition (360) is $49.99, free ship from Best Buy. Next best is $69. [Dealzon]

• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 (360, PS3) is $39.99, free ship from Best Buy. Amazon is price-matching at $40, elsewhere $60. [Dealzon]

• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (360, PS3) is $39.99, free ship from Best Buy. Next best is $53. [Dealzon]

• Binary Domain (360, PS3) is $37.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $47. [Dealzon]

• Silent Hill HD Collection (360, PS3) is $29.99, free ship from Buy.com. Next best is $38. [Dealzon]

• Tron: Evolution Collectors Edition (360, PS3) is $29.99, free ship from Toys 'R' Us. List price is $130 [Dealzon]

• F1 2011 (360, PS3) is $24.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $40. [Dealzon]

• Silent Hill: Downpour (PS3) is $49.99, free ship from Best Buy. Next best is $58. [Dealzon]

• Madden NFL 12 Hall of Fame Edition (PS3) is $39.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $59. [Dealzon]

• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3) is $29.99 + $2.98 shipping from Target. Next best is $37. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 Games Triple Pack: Limbo, Trials HD, and Splosion Man is $12.99, free ship from eBay Deals. Next best is $20. [Dealzon]

• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (360) is $34.99 + $5.61 shipping from Toys 'R' Us. Next best is $56. [Dealzon]

• Operation Flashpoint: Red River (360) is $13.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $26. [Dealzon]

• Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Wii, Vita, 3DS) is $29.99, free ship from Toys 'R' Us. Next best is $50. [Dealzon]

• Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC) is $39.99, free ship from Best Buy. Next best is $45. [Dealzon]

• Dead Space 2 (PC download) is $4.99 from Amazon. Elsewhere $15 and up. [Dealzon]

Hardware

• Atari Flashback 3 Classic Game Console with 60 games included is $44.50, free ship from Buy.com. Next best is $55. [Dealzon]

• Tritton Primer Xbox 360 Gaming Headset is $79.99, free ship from Amazon. Normally $100. [Dealzon]

• Tritton Detonator Xbox 360 Headset is $59.99 with $5 credit for Xbox LIVE, free ship from Amazon. List price is $80. [Dealzon]

• Creative Fatal1ty Pro HS-980 MKII Gaming Headset is $39.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $67. [Dealzon]

• Datel Wireless Turbo Rapid Fire 2 Xbox 360 Controller is $16.99, free ship from eBay Deals. Next best is $39. [Dealzon]

• Intel 120GB 520 Series SSD is $159.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $180. [Dealzon]

• SanDisk 120GB Ultra SSD is $99.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $130. [Dealzon]

• Alienware X51 desktop with Quad Core i7-2600, GeForce GTX 555 is $949, free ship from Dell Home. That's cheapest ever by $50 and $150 last week's price of $1,099. [Dealzon]

As always, smart gamers can find values any day of the week, so if you've run across a deal, share it with us in the comments.

Follow Dealzon on Twitter.

Apr 25, 2012

Valve's Gabe Newell Prefers Fans To Make Half-Life Movies, Not Hollywood

Half-Life

Jamie Russel's "Generation Xbox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood" revealed why the Halo movie failed. But Microsoft isn't the only company interested in crossmedia platforms for one of their most beloved franchises.

Valve seems like an easy choice for a Hollywood spotlight. The fictional universe and its characters are intriguing, and the fanbase is already established. We love soaking up new information, pictures, comics, rumors, animated shorts, cosplay...basically anything related to the Half-Life franchise.

So why hasn't Valve taken the opportunity yet? It's not as easy as picking up the phone and saying, "Hey, Hollywood person. Make my movie. *click*" Obviously Valve doesn't want someone to trample over their property. Speaking with Russel, Valve's mastermind Gabe Newell explains what the company's history with Hollywood has been so far:

Mostly people were just trying to vampire off of the success and popularity of the property, without any real understanding of what made it an interesting or successful property in the first place. The sense that we had was that if we went down the traditional route of licensing a property to a Hollywood studio, we would be losing control at that point. The fans were going to be ill-served 90% of the time. (Russel, 288)

"[Our customers] are telling us we don't have the luxury of just being a games company anymore."

And then sometimes the software developers get pitched with ideas so far off the map of actual Half-Life lore that it baffles them:

"This writer was trying to convince us that it'd be cool to have this new modern cavalry with these Kevlar-armoured horses charging across this field. It had absolutely nothing to do with what made Half-Life and interesting entertainment experience for our customers. It was just bizarre." (Russel, 288-289)

So why not just avoid the realm of film altogether? It seems Valve has their hands already full with development on future iterations (hopefully with 3s in their titles). Newell says they don't have that choice anymore.

"It's pretty clear that our customers are cross-media consumers. If they like a game, they want to see a movie; if they like a movie they want to be able to run around and shoot rockets off in those spaces. They are telling us we don't have the luxury of just being a games company anymore." (Russel, 289)

Then what's the solution? Newell thinks it's to reach out to the fans. Fans who understand their games, and appreciate the context enough to not take creative liberties by adding wacky things like Kevlar-clad horses. Valve has always been open to their community playing with mods and inventing new features for their games. So why not for a movie?

Valve's dedication is to their gamers, says Newell. Building these pieces of entertainment isn't about creating huge blockbuster openings (like Hollywood's method seems to be), but rather to service their customers. He even brings up the infamous Star Wars films helmed by George Lucas as an example:

If Lucasfilm had taken all the assets they had created for Star Wars: Episodes 1, 2 and 3 and released them to the fan community and said ‘you guys go and make three 90-minute movies', in aggregate the community would have built better movies than George Lucas did. I'm not being hyperbolic at all. I mean literally they would have made better, higher quality entertainment than he did. The key is to connect the dots for the community in terms of giving them the tools that they need. If you can mod a game like Half-Life 2, there's no reason why you can't mod a movie like The Phantom Menace. (Russel, 290)

"The key is to connect the dots for the community in terms of giving them the tools that they need."

Eventually, enlisting in fans is going to be the norm in the future. Eventually Hollywood will come around to it. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But Newell is firm in his belief that it's at least the right way.

"What's going to happen is that the Hollywood guys will start to realise that the creation of entertainment isn't a one-way experience where they have all the professional tools and giant budgets and everything flows downhill from there to the consumers. If they're collaborating and co-operating with their fanbases to create these entertainment experiences, you will see the same kinds of things occurring - most of it will be terrible but some of it will be brilliant." (Russel, 290-291)

Apr 25, 2012

Hello Friends, Madden has a New Commentary Team

Kotaku

Though it began so promisingly, the Gus Johnson era of calling the play-by-play in Madden NFL is over after two years. The game's analyst, Cris Collinsworth, is likewise out. The reason? Neither of them got in the booth together. For Madden, or for any other purpose.

They'll be replaced by a duo who did, because it's what they have done in real life for nine years: Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, the premier broadcast team of CBS Sports.

Madden NFL 13 will still retain its own presentation scheme—the game is not mimicking CBS nor any other broadcast package. But if handing the mike to Nantz (pictured above at right), also the voice of EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour sets Madden on a more blue-ribbon, living-room football foundation in its commentary, it also admits that the game didn't know how to use someone as voluble as Johnson, and couldn't smooth out the obvious distance between him and Collinsworth.

Last year's edition of Madden took a puzzling step back in its commentary engine, with Johnson giving the same generic opening for nearly every game played, whether in a season mode or online multiplayer. Cam Weber, the head of American football products for EA Sports, admitted at a media event that Madden NFL 12's broadcast shortcomings—repetition, dead air, and tone-deaf excitement on mundane plays—were largely attributable to implementing a new commentary engine brought over from NHL and FIFA. Thus, we were sold pre-game team runouts, a visual, to cover for the jarring lack of audio that would have introduced a proper broadcast.

"It was a painful cycle for commentary," Weber admitted.

This year, we've been told to expect something that looks and sounds a lot more like televised football. Not only do the presentation designers on Madden NFL 13 have a better handle on the commentary engine, they benefit from a duo that did work together in recording a lot of their audio. "No dead air," was a mantra the Madden production team repeated, and the banter between Nantz and Simms that EA Sports showed appears to sereve that purpose.

They give a variety of introductions, not just for the time of the season, or of the round of the postseason, but in capturing that game's particular story. The same team could be introduced as a divisional rival in one game, the franchise for a hot new quarterback in another, or a contender battling for a playoff spot in a third.

Bringing in CBS' A-list broadcast duo concludes a 'painful' cycle for Madden's commentary.

Moreover, you will see Nantz and Simms on screen in Madden NFL 13. Not only that, their background will be specific to the broadcast booth location in each NFL stadium. (Candlestick Park's long grandstand and the deep, shadowed angle behind it, was behind them in one shot.) While not motion-captured per se, the two were filmed in a variety of pre-game studio discussions that were then rendered into Madden—so it is not a straight cinematic, either. We saw only a single brief clip but I got the feeling that their on-screen dialog is necessarily generic, before transitioning to off-camera specifics about the two teams on the field.

The two will banter mid-game, too—we saw a clip where Nantz teased Simms, the former New York Giants quarterback, about the position, playing to the stereotype of it as a self-centered role. Simms later playfully attacked Nantz's golf swing; he played the sport at the University of Texas. The clips shown were for a reason: to show that the two have a personal rapport that has been absent from the booth team since Al Michaels and John Madden himself supplied the commentary.

That's not the only way in which presentation will be upgraded. Madden's developers touted the consultancy of NFL Films in working with the game this year, supplying virtual camera angles—more than 650, they said—that are commonly seen in the iconic highlight reels. These will all meld with 200 new cutscenes, and new interstitial montages more authentic to television.

Lighting also has been fine-tuned, and it will reflect seasonal changes. Instead of stark differences in the sun's position and shading as soon as each quarter begins, the atmosphere will change more gradually. A later-season game will darken more quickly than one in September, for example.

A new broadcast team is probably the most stark upgrade Madden is revealing at this point. There are gameplay improvements to Madden, including many yet to be revealed. For now, the best description of the gameplay tuning can be found in what I wrote about NCAA Football—because the same core gameplay team serves both franchises. Last year, Weber was said to have doubled the size of that gameplay unit; the personnel increase ended up being nearly three times its original size.

The same features I described in my hands-on time with NCAA Football 13 are also to be implemented in Madden NFL 13. These include new passing trajectories and velocities, truer line-of-sight behavior in defensive personnel, and receivers who must be at a point in the route where they expect the ball if they're to catch it. Seriously, it's the same structure, so go back and read my NCAA 13 preview if you haven't.

Apr 25, 2012

Prototype 2: The Kotaku Review

Prototype™

In very few games have I truly inhabited the persona of a goddam-right-I-am badass, whose demonstrations of power were as personal as Prototype 2's. And it's not because I've imagined any of the superpowers you wield in this game, or how I'd perform with them. It's because of the very normal, very pissed-off man in charge of them.

He's a husband and a father and a black man. I'm an unmarried white dude with no kids. He can make physics-defying leaps from rooftops, transform his right arm into an enormous blade, or shapeshift into the image of his adversaries. I can drive a riding lawnmower and scoop the cat box. But James Heller's frustration in managing what has been imposed upon him—the mind-boggling destruction of a city, the death of loved ones, and even the bestowing of weird superpowers—is probably how I'd react to it, too.

Like Heller, I wouldn't give a damn who concocted what or why or spread it how—I'd want to put a stop to it all as simply as possible. And if the story of Prototype 2 is as frustrating to me as it is to Heller, then its all-out action is also just as satisfying. If you take the time to think about your foes, and especially your defenses, you can put together some truly eye-popping action sequences. There are far weaker selling points for a video game, of course.

WHY: More than just demonstrating some truly spectacular superpowers in an open world, you're doing them with a great character, James Heller, even if the game's story doesn't take any risks.

PROTOTYPE 2

Developer: Radical Entertainment
Platforms: Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (Version played)
Released: April 24.

Type of game: Open-world third-person action-adventure science-fiction. That enough hyphens?

What I played: Completed the main story and several side missions; gave the "Radnet" DLC challenges a whirl on the day of release.

Two Things I Loved

Some of the most visually—and physically—satisfying action a video game could offer.
A sincere and strong acting performance behind the main character means spending 12 hours with James Heller is a delight, despite a tendentious plot.

Two Things I Hated

An overall lack of difficulty walks the line of handholding as much as some fighting sequences walk the line of Quicktime-event direction.
The muddy story really requires you to pay attention, but even then, the character motivations and plot threads are head scratchers

Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes

"As bad-assed as you could be in a video game."—Owen Good, Kotaku.com
"Delivers on the promise of an insane world gone straight to Heller." -Owen Good Kotaku.com

The problem, though, is that Prototype 2 isn't that hard. Perfect example is the "bio-bomb," in which you inject some helpless stooge with time-bomb virus and then hurl him at whatever's bothering you. It's very entertaining but a little too powerful. Some long engagements and boss battles may not transition completely to rigid quicktime events—others will, no doubt—but they do carry a here-do-this-now style of direction that some may find off-putting. Especially in the mayhem of the Red Zone, shoved up against tall buildings and under their awnings, you will need the onscreen hints to keep track of what to do in this biological battle royale, as the camera always feels poorly positioned and a step behind the breakneck pacing.

Prototype 2 is a single-player only, open-world third-person action game, same as its predecessor. There isn't as much to do in its environment as I would prefer for the open-world genre, but what you do in it is comprehensively destructive. It's befitting of the work of a studio that used to make games about The Incredible Hulk (and whose history in so doing forms some of the intrigue behind Prototype's making, as well as the characters' abilities within it.) Sure, you can pick up a rocket launcher and bazooka a nettlesome gun emplacement, but it's a lot more fun to pick up a car and do that. The first game encouraged the creative use of power and the second extends the same invitation.

While I found Heller to be an interesting character, I'm not dwelling much on the game's continuity, probably because I came to it late. I didn't play the first Prototype when it released in 2009 and made myself acquainted with it only in preparation for this review. Suffice to say, the protagonist of the original, Alex Mercer, does quite a heel turn, though he was never a truly noble guy. A splendid indoctrination video available in the game's main menu, followed by the tutorial level, helps set the game's paranoid tone. Ultimately, though, the only thing you're really sure of is who you can't trust: and that would be the brainless mutants of New York Zero. Several impersonation missions and a few sequences before the game's climax left me wondering why Blackwatch, the corporation ostensibly responsible for this bioweapons disaster, was my adversary. The answer is basically that they're stupid, which is par for the villain course, I suppose.

Prototype was received as good-but-not-great, though it did provide some visceral thrills, and it becomes apparent about half a dozen missions in that Radical Entertainment is sticking to that formula. The open-ended action—the mayhem you create in the open world, not the set pieces—just feels like it was tuned to accommodate button spammers, of which I am one, admittedly. The fact a power upgrade will automatically equip was a little off-putting, and speaks to an optimization for more casual players. I solidified my impression of Prototype 2's difficulty when I picked a fight with a Blackwatch base in open-world play, slaughtered all of the ground personnel and they sent the attack helos after me. I just waited it out on a rooftop, redirecting the missiles back into the choppers with my shields trait. I took a few hits, but I was never seriously threatened in it, or in any alert situation, really. There are some difficulty spikes once you get to the red zone of Manhattan, but nothing fatal to your efforts.

Loads of gamers will want to jump into that kind of action, and it is fun, if not entirely challenging. I suppose the insane difficulty level you unlock after the first playthrough will deliver a more complete experience. But Prototype 2's real artistic asset is a remarkably well acted Heller. His lines could have easily been twisted into the kind of macho nihilism that makes antiheroic roles so cliché. Here, Cornell Womack—in a superb voice-acting job—communicates genuine unhappiness with the entire situation. Heller is pissed off that he has been forced to take responsibility for something he cannot understand, and that the only people he can truly trust are really powerless to change any of it.

Some may find Heller's swearing gratuitous. Thanks to Womack, who seems to care why Heller is spewing invective, I find it evocative of an interesting character. "Did I say I was a fuckin' hero, you piece of shit?" he snarls, convincingly. Because Heller doesn't want any of this. In a balletic boss fight atop Madison Square Garden against the real evil behind New York's devastation—not the Blackwatch goons, nor the mutant infected, but a combination—Heller dismisses his enemies with "Fuckin' pieces of shit." I've said exactly that many times at the end of a big video game battle. Either I understood his anger or he understood mine, but either way, the connection was made.

Acting is just one component of a narrative, though. Heller's digust will mirror your own as you try to drain the swampy tale of Prototype 2. Stories in the science-fiction conspiracy sub-genre all run the near-fatal risk of making everything a reversible lie. There is too much of that going on too early in Prototype 2 to make the game understandable, especially when juxtaposed with the game's relentless—and much more satisfying—action.

Yes, as everyone is well aware, there is a showdown with Mercer in this game. And if the runup to it and Heller's motivation comes straight from the instruction manual for a summer popcorn sequel, there is one sequence where another adversary's character change is well timed and enlightening. It told me something about both him and Heller. Prototype 2 may be a typical story, but it is not a mindless one.

The bottom line question for me in considering a video game is whether it is fun. Prototype 2 is, enough that I want to give the entire story another go around playing a little more expansively—picking up collectibles, grinding and ranking up Heller so I can see everything he has to offer, and competing in and completing the challenges and side missions offered by Radnet and Blacknet. It is fun being a badass, and I want to inhale that a little more deeply.

But outside of giving you a more admirable character, Prototype 2 doesn't do much that is different from its predecessor. It does a decent job of disguising a typical plot but, when everything is fully revealed, what you're left with is pure action. In the end, that's what makes it recommendable.