Half Life 2 is just such a good game.  I've been replaying on the 360 -- now that I finished Ep2 on the PC I don't feel like I'm ruining the experience going through to focus on Achievements.  I've long felt that Achievements, when used right, are a genuinely new innovation in gaming, a channel for communication between developer and gamer that never existed before.

Ravenholm in HL2 in the Orange Box is a perfect example of that.  I'd never have seriously entertained the notion of playing through that zombie-infested nightmare with just a gravity gun on my own, but I just did that the other night to get the associated Achievement.  It was scary, tense, and fun (and nettled me a few more points).  Great stuff.  Not quite sure I will be as enthused about the sand-crossing one though...

Overall I am continually reminded by all parts of the Orange Box how important execution is over technology.  Things like the sparse yet effective soundtrack in HL2, or the sheer beauty of their bleak wintry exterior settings are not things that require technology.  There's no good excuse in our industry why we don't see more games rise up this kind of bar (my own games included).

The local Gamestop (which I guess is the main one in the DFW area) was doing a midnight release party for Guitar Hero 3, complete with GH2 tournament, etc.  Kind of cool to see the franchise take off like this, given that it wasn't too long ago it would have been considered a high-risk, ultra-niche game.

I love the new guitar controller.  Wireless is such a win.  As for the game itself, well, it's more Guitar Hero.  Despite my worries, even without Harmonix it is still pretty fun to play.  More polished in some ways, but a little less coherent overall -- it just feels a bit more forced than the previous two GH games.  Comparing it directly to Rock Band will certainly be interestinng to see.  Judging by the midnight crowds at Gamestop, Guitar Hero as a franchise still has plenty of mojo...

Ok, normally I find the practice of needing to pre-order at places like Gamestop to get a day-one copy of a game pretty annoying.  The phone call the night before from their automated system, doubly so.

But for the new Ratchet & Clank game, they had Captain Quark doing the preorder phone calls, and it is actually pretty well done.  Certainly was a pleasant surprise and brought a smile to my face... now I'm just counting the hours until I can get it tomorrow...

I've really enjoyed all the Fire Emblem games that have been released in the US (and hope that one day some of the untranslated ones will come over via the Wii Virtual Console).  They can be quite frustrating though, and one of the decisions that I both love and hate with the game is the way that characters permanently die if they fall in battle.  The game is balanced for you to play "iron man" style and keep going even with a few deaths but I find it hard to leave behind the characters I've grown attached to.  Consequently I rarely actually finish a Fire Emblem game.

So it was with mixed emotions that I read this snippet from Stephen Totilo in MTV's "Multiplayer" column:

At the Nintendo summit two weeks ago I was told that the new Wii game, set for release in the first week of November, will be tweaked from its Japanese original. Nintendo is adding the ability for players to manually save their game in the middle of battle, which will allow them to re-load a turn if it goes awry. I’m sure I groaned when a Nintendo representative told me this. He told me that he initially felt the way I did, but said that he had been reasoned with. This addition would make the game more accessible, he had been told and was now telling me. And, by the way, you didn’t have to use it.  

Hm.  Now note that the previous Fire Emblems did have the ability to save the game in the middle of the battle as well, it was just a "temporary" save that was removed on load (exactly the kind of feature I wish more games that used saving as a balance tool, like Dead Rising, would implement). 

So on the one hand, given how few Fire Emblem games I've actually finished, maybe this will give me the motivation.  On the other hand, that particular design decision defined Fire Emblem to me more than just about anything else.  I also find it galling that this is a change from the Japanese version -- more than my particularly opinion on this feature I want to experience the game as its creators intended.  If there is a deep cultural reason to make changes, fine, but in my opinion this is a pretty major change to make if it wasn't in the game's original vision.

I'll certainly attempt to play without using it.  If it were a 360 game there's a great natural balance for this -- offer an Achievement for beating it "correctly". 

Man, I love Puzzle Quest.  The 360 version is definitely the definitive version to play.  But after 15 levels or so as a Druid, I just wasn't feeling it, compared to the power of the Wizard from the DS version.  So I rolled up a new Warrior, and next thing I know it was way, way past my bedtime and I wanted to do just one more fight.  What a great game -- and certainly the last thing in the world I would have imagined for the franchise when I got hooked on the original Warlords so many many years ago.

September NPD:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=200486

3.3 million copies of Halo 3.  That's like a 50% attach rate to Xbox 360s in the US.  I had high expectations for it, but that certainly blows right past them.  Phantom Hourglass at 224k, the next game in the list, is like an *order of magnitude* less.

I certainly have my quibbles with Halo 3.  But it is a fine product overall and it clearly has a grassroots community and marketing presence that dwarfs almost anything else in the industry.  I'm far happier to see a game like this move millions than Madden, that's for sure.

If Halo 3 can move these kinds of numbers, I wonder what we're going to see for GTA 4...

More Orange Box ramblings... minor early-ish spoilers for Half Life 2: Episode 2.  I'm a huge fan of the Half-Life games, but they've IMO been on a downward trend since the beginning.  You can fall a long way from such lofty heights and still be a pretty kickass game, however, and Episode 2 still delivers the goods.  But seriously, having the opening levels be underground and filled with icky worms that are constantly squeaking in your ear?  Maybe not quite as bad as the penultimate level of Halo 3, but close.

Still though, nobody delivers the kind of physics and set-piece encounters the way Valve can.  I adore the way they do the semi-3D matte paintings like at the very beginning of Ep2 -- gorgeous stuff.  Pretty much any time Half Life 2 (or the episodes) is in an urban environment I'm just floored.  Such mastery of the their craft... it's so much not about technology, but about artistry.

If you haven't played Portal yet, YOU MUST DO SO.  It went straight from "huh, there's some other random minigame on the Orange Box collection?" to serious Game of the Year contender for me.  In fact, the only reason it doesn't have a lock on that is because it is admittedly a pretty short game.  This doesn't detract from the experience, on the contrary it makes it much more focused and accessible.  But it feels like it is in it's own category -- if it were of the written word it would be best Short Story, not a full-on novel. 

Seriously, play this game.  It is only a few hours, beatable easily in one good session or a couple of smaller ones.  I don't want to say anything because it is best experienced with no preconceptions.

Come back in a few days and I'll give a more spoiler-laden assessment of just why I think it is so awesome.

Hm, could EA's acquisition of Bioware / Pandemic be part of a cosmic balance for Bungie striking out on their own from MGS?  Some sort of universal conservation of independant software developers?  I'm not going to rule it out...

So I have Half Life 2, Episode 2 (aka part of "The Orange Box") sitting there in my Steam application, all preloaded, just awaiting final authentication.  If I'd actually gone to a store and bought the PC version, it would be just as locked, something which is a total travesty of consumer's rights.  Had I bought the 360 version I could be playing.

So in what way is this "street date" of unlocking it at midnight Pacific Time in any way helpful to, well, anyone?  Does it serve any purpose other than pissing off customers that are trying to give Valve directly more money?  It makes my blood boil.

This link went around the office today:

http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=127

It is an incredibly well written description by one of the guys involved with Yahoo! Music about why they aren't going to go with DRM music anymore and in general why the entire philosophy of spending your energy to make life more painful for your customers is just plain counter-productive.  A great read.