From the wonderful and ecclectic world of Japan comes news of a new MMO.  For you english-speaking types, the story is that developer Headlock is making ai-sp@ce, a SL-style world set in Akihabara and combining the visual novel canons of Da Capo II, Clannad, and Shuffle!  The title is set to launch over the summer.

As the closest thing to an animé expert we have, I find this interesting.  There will definitely be buyers, as visual novels tend to be hot properties and tend to become popular anime series, too.  Admittedly, I've never seen the three titles being used for ai-sp@ce (Clannad is on my to-do list, though).  I can only hope that negotiations are or will be in the works for other visual novel titles, or heaven forbid, use popular light novels.  Of course, I'm still waiting on the Tenchi Muyo! MMO, but I'm weird (read: old-school) like that.

      

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I am a beta-tester for Warrior Epic.  Scary thought, huh?  Well, the servers were up last week and diagnostic tests were being run, but the closed beta still isn't open.  Instead of flooding the forums as to why this is so, here's my two cents.

1) The player cap hasn't been matched
As of 1:27 AM Eastern Time on April 6, 2008, there are only 407 approved beta testers (as per the forum).  The cap is 500, so I'm betting there's still ways to go before that is satisfied.

2) All clear never happens on the first try
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Never let it be said that I am not one for trying new things, be it in the realm of foodstuffs, music, or games.  However, with that in mind, I will admit that I do not often enjoy a lot of the new things I try.  And such was the case this past week when my roommates, knowing my casual disinterest for trading card games, and my reluctance to play strategy-based property-management board games, decided to leave me to my devices in reviewing a game that combines the two ...<< MORE >>

Eve Online, developed by Crowd Control Productions (CCP), is a space combat/social MMORPG that puts you in the pod of a pilot in the future of humanity.

Shortly after gaining the ability to use jumpgates to minimize space travel, Humanity came across a glorious natural phenomenon - a warphole that was dubbed "Eve".  Eve took humanity to a universe never before explored - if that is just another part of our own universe or a completely new one we don't know - but humanity took up the opportunity for exploration with a very distinct fervor.  Colonization ships were quickly dispatched through ...

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With the rise in awkward and unsatisfying free to play MMORPGs, it's not really looking that good overall.  Some of these games are just horrible retail games that are trying to stay alive via a micropayment system.  Others are just really old MMORPGs that were good, back in the 90s.  And some are just... awkward.

But, in every dark, nasty, smell hole, there's a ray of light somewhere.  Enter Warrior Epic, a new MMORPG being developed by the group over at Possibility Space.  What makes Warrior Epic different from your standard MMORPG?  Well, let's take a look at a few things, shall we?

First of all, Warrior Epic is going off of the Guild Wars mindset in downloading... they want to promote ease of play and quick installation times, and their client knows how to do it.  A 440k installer gets the game going, and the rest of the assets download as you play.  So, there's a small installation at the beginning, a small download time, and then you're good to go.  The rest of the game keeps downloading while you're slaughtering things.  Not bad, if I do say so myself.

The second thing is the very odd emphasis on using multiple characters.  You really don't see this that often... but Warrior Epic lets you use all 8 classes and encourages you to do so.  One of the really innovative uses of this is the resurrection/summon option.

Upon death, you have two choices - resurrect yourself and keep going or stay dead and grab one of your other warriors.  Choosing the latter brings one of your other characters into play, but with a twist.  Your dead character's spirit is attached to the one you're playing now, and you have the option of summoning the dead character's ghost as an attack spell.  The attack is based upon the class and level of the dead character, but either way it's a really neat system.  Only thing I'm worried about is using it in PvP at later levels... because you probably won't be effective unless you're using your best character and have a "dead" summon character that's a high level as well.

When you're off adventuring, your other warriors take a break in your Warrior Hall, which you get to update and customize to your liking.  Apparently those customizations also let you choose from more customization for your characters and more items to be held in storage.  Nice.

There's also a focus on casual play, much like Guild Wars in that respect.  Possibility Space says that each mission can be finished in 15 minutes or less, letting you feel like you got somewhere even if you don't have the time to really sit down and play.  With the added focus on solo gameplay, this seems like a good trend and direction for the game.

Finally, the thing that will excite Chris over there is the game is being tailored to run great on high end systems AND low end systems.  So for those of you who are stuck with a smaller version of the ENIAC, then this game will be a great choice for you.

Right now, it appears that they're going to be going with a subscription system much similar to Hellgate: London.  Simply either play for free and get access to basic content, or pay a small monthly fee and get access to more character classes and more "subscriber content".  PS hasn't gone into definitives with this stuff yet, but I really like that approach.  To me, the micropayment system breaks when you can buy items like " Double EXP for 10 bucks!" because the people who pay are now obviously breaking the game just because they had money in their pocket.  I get left out because I'm a poor college kid.

But keeping content to a subscriber basis means you still have to earn your style and still have to play the game to get what you want.  I approve of that, because things aren't being broken and handed to you on a silver platter.

What's my personal judgement of this game right now?  It looks interesting, but I'll wait to give you a more hands on view of the game at a later date.  I really want to play the Illusionist, as seen above. (I LOVE HER DRESS.) In the mean time, go check out the website at www.warriorepic.com and enjoy the movies, screenshots, and apply for the closed beta test of the game.

      

With support for HD-DVD dropping like the President's approval rating, it seems like Blu-Ray is going to end up winning the DVD wars.  In general, that's good.  Combine this news with the impending switch to digital-only broadcasting, the choices for the consumer become a lot simpler.  That may sound bad, but too much choice is not good for the market.  (Trust me on this.)  To the people at SCEA and Sony, this news couldn't have been made better if Gabriel had come down from Heaven with his horn to say it.

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So, apparently, from what Sony is saying over on their PlayStation Blog, the format war is over and Blu-Ray has won.

Mmmm... Blu-Ray... wait a minute.  So now I can watch all of my high definition movies on one format and not have to worry about picking between HD-DVD and the "superior brand". *end sarcasm*

Honestly, I don't mind Blu-Ray winning the DVD wars.  What I do mind, however, is Blu-Ray now being touted as the future of gaming and the PlayStation 3 now coming of age.  Now, I could fanboy myself all over the place, but I want to be logical and give you a reasoned argument as to why this line of thinking is a fallacy.

Technology never makes or breaks a system - it only aids in the production of the games.  We have heard it time and time again, and people still forget this very simple rule.  Games make the system.  Blu-Ray being Blu-Ray is one thing, but Blu-Ray to save the PlayStation 3's library is something completely different.

These new HD formats allow the developers to put much more data onto the disk, which in theory allows them to make longer and more complex games with better graphical quality.  Yet, at the same time, this puts more of a strain on the company to make higher quality games.  Higher quality games mean longer production times, and longer production times mean the publisher shells out more money to the developer.

What did that long line of text just mean?  Simply put, you pay more for the game or the publisher quickly forces the developer to release a half-finished product to simply turn a profit.

Right now, developers are not pushing the PlayStation 3 to its limits, and I'm tired of hearing "the developers don't know how to fully utilize the system yet" arguement.  It's been two years, and I think all the developers know how to handle the PS3 SDK.  What they're lacking is the time to make a professional game that CAN push the PS3 to the limits.

And superior technology never means that the games will be great.  We can turn back time and look at systems like the Saturn, 3DO, and Jaguar, which all sported superior technology for the time and yet ultimately flopped.  This was because the companies that developed games for these systems lacked vision.  They couldn't put their foot down and make a quality game that could catch everyone's interest... they just wanted to make very poor B grade games with powerful technology.

It doesn't matter how fast the system is or how pretty the graphics look.  It comes down to if the game is fun or not.

The PlayStation 3 library isn't strong, and everyone's saying it's a late bloomer in the console wars.  All of this time, PS3s are sitting on shelves and games aren't being moved, which leads to developers and publishers sucking down poor profits or actual deficits.  That's why you see so many PS3 exclusive titles jumping and becoming multi-platform... publishers need that money to support the development of the game.

Can Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 break that mold?  Personally, I would never place buying a system on two games - I need to know that the rest of the library is solid.  That's why I followed up with the Xbox 360.

The library for the 360 is strong.  Bioshock, Mass Effect, Halo 3 (less so Halo 3), Condemned, Gears of War, Oblivion, Forza Motorsport 2, Project Gotham Racing 4, and the upcoming releases of Huxley, Too Human, and Champions Online make the system look amazingly stable, not to mention the constant releases on the Xbox Live Arcade like RezHD and N+.

To support my final opinions... think back to GoldenEye.  You, like most people, probably remember GoldenEye as an amazing game.  I played GoldenEye a little bit ago... and it's still as fun.  Even with horrible graphics, frame rate issues, and aiming controls that are laughable... the game is still amazing.  Now tell me that data and graphics are everything.

I don't care how pretty your game is... I don't care how much you can fit on the disk... do you have the vision to make a great game?

      

As my compatriots will probably tell you, Katsucon wasn't so hot in the video game department, so here's a solution to one point of contention: a viable Battle of the Bands using Rock Band.

1) BE IN FOR THE LONG HAUL

You have to realize that this is going to be slow-moving.  Unlike most multi-player games, versus battle isn't the way to go.  You need to go one band at a time for as many bands as you have.  If you have plans for a multi-level tournament, get rid of them.  Unless you don't have a lot of participants, there won't be time.

2) SHOW NO MERCY

Failure means failure.  Equipment snafus are one thing—those demand restarts—but being in over your head is another, at least to a point.  If there's a failure in, say, the first quarter of the song, you can give them a mulligan, but if they don't have the chops to rein it in 16 bars from the end, that's their own damn fault.

3) IT'S AN ART AND A SCIENCE

Judging should be a two-step process.  Yes, you need to judge the technical stuff—difficulty, percentage, stars—but this is a Battle of the Bands.  Encourage the participants to be rocking out hardcore and factor that into the final result.  This way, all aspects of the performance (and yes it is a performance) are critiqued and an overall winner is selected.

4) DOWN IN FRONT

One of the most important rules of theater is "Never upstage the audience."  I'd be the first to admit that Rock Band is worthy of being a projector-and-screen game.  However, the point of this tournament is not for the band to look at the big screen, it's to play to the audience.  If you're fortunate enough to have or purchase an A/V splitter, you can still put the game on the screen, but you can also send it to a smaller monitor.  Position the monitor so that the band looks at it while facing the audience and everybody wins.

5) NO STAIRWAY

This goes double for large numbers of participants.  If the song's too long, ban it from the tournament.  I don't care how many people heart The Outlaws or The Who.  Grow the heck up and let the event finish before next week.

Finally,

6) THE NEEDS OF THE MANY OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW.

If you're going to have rules, then have everyone abide to them, including yourself.  Bend them if you have to, but don't break.  This tournament is subjective enough as it is.  You shouldn't make different rules for different people so everyone can question the validity of the whole thing.

So that's it.  Throw in some prizes and you have a radical Rock Band tourney so everyone can live their innermost rock 'n' roll fantasies without the drugs.  (Not so sure about the sex)

      

For those of you who actually play something other than WoW, (namely Holic), try at catch me during the evening on Channel 5.  I'm either Demlar the Monk/Preist  or a lady mage whose name I don't remember right now.  Yes, it's a Korean game through and through (including bad translations), but it's not bad for a free game.  I'll give a review later.  (Thank God for having a friend with a good computer)

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Okay, I know that new tech is created every microsecond of every day, but do we always have to build up for it?  My 1.6 GHz laptop with just as many gigs of RAM attempted to play two MMO's in its lifetime: Dungeon Runners and Hellgate: London.  Both attempts were epic fail.
  My friend has been easily able to play WoW on her laptop, so it's not like games and laptops don't mix.

Perhaps it's because my laptop is born in August 2004.

I have this general problem with the way things are built nowadays.  We as a society are advancing so fast and companies are so money-hungry that what we buy is built to fail at a certain time.  Of course, it doesn't mean there's a major conspiracy—everything wears out eventually.  However, there are those few devices that defy statistical analysis and live long and healthy lives, but they eventually are rendered obsolete by society's next wave of tech.  Even software is aimed for the bigger and brighter, even though it could be surpassed by the time I finish this sentence.

Need an example of what I mean?  Okay.  Name everyone you know who can play Crysis on their PC.



Time's up.  If you named more than 2 people, I'm impressed.  Games are designed to take up so much space and so much power of your computer that those who decided that they didn't want to schill big bucks on a new system and even those who bought new, but lesser-powered systems are being left behind to drown in Bejeweled and Peggle instead of enjoying WoW and Unreal (not that there's anything wrong with Bejeweled or Peggle).  The same could be said in the console wars.  Admit it, when the PS3 finally gets its games, the system's going to be incredibly badass, but in order to get it, you pay out the nose.

Naturally, we'll get the argument from hardcore gamers that commoners shouldn't be in their games.  After all, 9 million WoW users* gets to be a bit much after awhile, but then you lose the point of multiplayer games in the first place, and that is to play together.  Besides, non-hardcore gamers could be the untapped market a landmark game thrives on.  Just give us something immersive and not seem like it's supposed to be a time-waster that doesn't eat up every processor within a 10-meter radius, and you may have something.

One last thing: Make sure it runs on Windows 2000, k?

*((Editor's Note: World of Warcraft just released that they have hit 10 million users.  Now it's even more crowded than when this article was published. -Colin))