I almost had a lot of fun with Shadowrun tonight.  When the game was working properly, it was pretty compelling -- a mix of crazy powers, rapid rounds, and shooter-y goodness.  Unfortunately server & connection problems made those working games a definite minority.  I'm sure they'll get the issues worked out but it's unfortunate to see a multiplayer-only game be plagued by issues like this on launch night.

Like the Halo 3 beta, I find that Shadowrun's use of blue and red is a bit inconsistent and confusing.  In the context of teams, you are either blue or red, and thus you need to remember which is the enemy and which is your own color.  However if you use the cool Enhanced Vision mod, it labels friendlies as blue and enemies as red.  So when you're the red team, you need to shoot the blue team, but the red labels.  I'm afraid this confusion cost me a few friendly fire kills my first several rounds...

My older son, Xavier, is immensely excited about the upcoming release of Mario Party 8 for the Wii.  He's old enough to understand time more, so he went with me to the game store and we reserved it -- the past week has been a daily countdown to when it would be out.  Much to my surprise, my wife is interested in us getting the game so we have something that all 4 of us can play.  Mario Party 8, if it is like the others in the series, is probably going to be some good simple fun (if nothing all too deep), and hey, it provided a great excuse to explain the concept of "Wednesday".

I guess Memorial Day kicking around in the back of my mind reminded me of how many great hardcore hex-based wargames I've never really gotten too deeply into.  I love them, but they require a certain amount of dedication to get back the generally atrocious interfaces and poor documentation.  So over the weekend I sat down with three of them, determined to make some headway: The Operational Art of War 3, WinSP WW2 (Steel Panthers for Windows, basically), and Battlefront.

WINSPWW2 is a fantastic game.  You can get it for free from Shrapnel & Camo Workshop, but I highly recommend paying for it.  It's a great reminder of why low level hex-based tactical wargaming is so satisfying, and it takes me right back to my Squad Leader days.  Of course, I wish someone would still do a real conversion of Squad Leader.  Don't get me wrong, it has it's warts -- poor resolution support, a fairly crappy UI (par for the course), and most frustratingly its very difficult to follow combat results since they proceed at a fixed pace with no log.  But these are minor compared to the joy of squad combat you get, and there is an insane number of scenarios, units, and campaigns included.

Battlefront, I'm afraid, I cannot be so kind to.  While I loved some of the older games in the "Decisive Battles" series (that this engine is based on), Battlefront is a bit of a mess.  Only 4 scenarios, no real explanatory text, and an even more obtuse interface than it's predecessors.  Which is a shame since the production quality is otherwise pretty high for Battlefront, and it does more "traditional application" things right than the others.  Of course, that's a relative comparison... basic things like file navigation and widescreen support are completely absent.

TOAW3 is more like what I want Battlefront to be from a core game mechanics and documentation standpoint.  It has a zillion scenarios and seems fairly well documented.  More importantly the mechanics seem pretty transparent if you want to dig it, but it's playable if you stay abstract.  The focus for the TOAW series is on building a wargaming engine, and that holds up pretty well for it here. 

People claim hex-based, turn-based games like these are a dying breed, and that may be true if you only look at the Top 10 on NPD.  But they are definitely alive and well in the direct-distribution market, and I look forward to some of the ones on the horizon (like the granddaddy of the cardboard-counter hex genre, World in Flames).

The first significant batch of online screenshots for GTA IV were released today.  You can find them lots of places, but I generally frequent GTA4.net.  Rockstar does a pretty masterful job of slowly releasing new information on the game, but these screenshots were really what I was waiting to sink my teeth into.  So much of what I love about the GTA series is just the alternate sense of place they generate, of really being immersed in the cityscapes of Liberty City or Los Santos.

I'm particularly pleased to hear that one of the main areas of improvement in GTA IV is going to be in that sense of city life.  The jump to next-gen is going to be very interesting for my favorite series...

We're starting up another Dominions III game around the office.  The last one ended in my ignominous defeat after being betrayed by one of our game designers (who then went on to lose to the player no one fought all game).  I'm comfortable admitting that I basically stink at Dom 3 -- while it's not quite Stars level of badness, its a game that requires a level of analysis and stat mongering that I'm just not willing to spend the time on.  But it sure is fun to just play.  Dom 3 just has so much STUFF its almost impossible to not have a good time, even if that stuff is often poorly balanced and in actuality little more than an entry in a spreadsheet.

This time around my Pretender God is of the foul swamp lizard-priests of C'tis... I look forward to spreading my disease-filled marshes and lots of good natured trash talk over the course of the month or so it will take to play out. 

Looking at the Achievement breakdown of Command & Conquer 3 on the Xbox 360, it seems pretty decent.  Sure, they could give a few more intermediate rewards, but usual gripes -- too many impossible Achievements or too many multiplayer Achivements -- both seemed pretty reasonable.  So I set out to play it through on the hardest setting, doing all the optional objectives.

As it turns out, that's somewhat do-able.  Unfortunately, there is an unforgivably poor implementation of save games in C&C3 on the 360.  I have no idea how it even passed TCR.  But failing a mission, and reloading, takes OVER TWO MINUTES of real time.  So when you get to a mission (of which there are several) that involves 30 seconds of gameplay and a mission failed, spending 2+ minutes for 30 seconds of gameplay proves to be a recipe for pure frustration.

The only upside is that it has forced me to question my commitment to getting these Achivements.  On the one hand, the game looks and controls a lot better on the PC, and doesn't have the annoying load times.  But on the other hand, I really love Achivements.  Also I feel kind of compelled to play on the 360 just to have a more detailed view of the competition for Halo Wars in the console RTS domain.  So I think I'm headed towards a compromise, of not sweating the perfect playthrough and just living with a less than optimal set of points. 

The saddest thing is that the challenges presented by playing on hard and going after the optional objectives were quite fun -- but the inexcusably bad save / load code just shoots the whole thing in the back.  And really, there is NO excuse.  Reloading the same map on the console should be taking 10 seconds tops, start to finish.  Sad.

From the ever-fascinating folks over at NeoGAF, April NPD numbers are out.

Another brutal month for the PS3... 82k in April according to NPD.  It's definitely going to take some major shift in the dynamic for Sony to turn things around.  I don't think it will be enough, but the Sony Gamer's Day footage they released today will help -- Ratchet & Clank Future and Uncharted both looks amazing.  Insomniac and Naughty Dog rarely disappoint, so it's not much of a surprise. 

Of course the Wii was still the big winner again, with 360,000 units compared to 174,000 for the Xbox 360.  A 2:1 sales advantage for the Wii could be disruptive in the long term, but I remain skeptical that it will last.  On a weekly basis the 360 was up from March (though the Wii was up more).  Given how light the release schedule has been for the 360, to still see even any uptick is a strong indicator for how well it will perform when the really heavy hitters arrive in the fall: Halo 3, GTA IV, Mass Effect, Bioshock.  Even the cross-platform blockbusters like Mercenaries 2 and Assassin's Creed will help the 360 more than the PS3 in my opinion.  Heck, in the short term I wouldn't be surprised if Forza 2 and possibly Shadowrun help move some numbers in June.

Even if the Wii continues unabated, it will take some considerable time for it to catch up to the 360's numbers.  The software charts indicate that even if the 360 is running in the middle of the field on hardware sales, it is in a very strong position for software.  The fact that it comes in #1 on the multi-platform releases indicates how active that consumer base is, which is a strong determining factor for publishing support -- and in the end the only thing that can truly kill a console is losing that 3rd party publishing support.

Finally!  I beat Free Bird in Guitar Hero 2 on Hard tonight.  I just beat on the practice sections over and over -- what a great improvement in GH2 over GH1.  Guitar solo I / J and then Q really kicked my butt (52%) but I managed to just barely squeak by with judicious Star Power.

Now I'm left with mostly hunting achievements, since I know there is no way I'll ever beat Expert -- though I'll give it a try.  I'll have to writeoff all the co-op achievements unless I haul my Xbox into work, but that might be do-able... 5-starring all the songs on Medium could be fun.  Probably impossible to 5-star everything on Hard for me.  But so much of Guitar Hero is just pure fun of playing, I really don't mind trying!

FREE BIRD!!!!

Folks at work today were organizing a "draft" format tournament for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.  The WoW TCG is a pretty decent game, probably second only to Magic in my experience and it has definitely taken the office by storm.  I couldn't make it tonight -- Tuesdays are my nights with the boys while Elise gets some time off.  But I wish I could.  I've never tried drafting in WoW TCG, but in Magic it is definitely my favorite format, almost exclusively what I play online.  It's a great way of offsetting the huge collection sizes that can divide a group.  Unfortunately it's a little time intensive.

They do a good job capturing the flavor of World of Warcraft in the card-game as well.  Here's to hoping they come out with an electronic version...

Wow, this is really taking product placement to a whole new level: Sims 2 H&M Stuff.  I'm a fan of the various Sims expansion packs (and ultra-modular game designs in general), but it's a bit astounding to me that a) there is a purely clothing based Sims expansion and b) that people are willing to pay $19.99 to be advertised to.  Now, if it were a free thing you could pick up from an H&M store, that would be cool...

Advertising is clearly coming to gaming, one way or another, whether it's good for the games or not.  At least here it is remotely in-genre, as opposed to the infamous BF2142 ads.  Inevitable, I suppose -- it's certainly not like product placement is only in video games.