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• Your Kingdom Hearts Cosplay is Not Helping Your Cause

  Every single time I get into a conversation with friends and work peers about the never-ending debate over videogame censorship in the United States, I have to stand back and remember how much worse it is for gamers elsewhere. Sure, we have ill-informed nobodies like Kevin McCullough gaining national attention with their rants over Bioware’s corrupting lasciviousness, but that’s nothing compared to the strict ratings policies that plague our gaming brethren in places like Germany and Australia. It may be a crap game, but at least Manhunt 2 can actually get released in this country. Speaking of Australia, the strongest rating for videogames allowed by Australia’s Office of Film and Literature is “M” which, unlike the equivalent ESRB rating in America, defines games as appropriate for players age 15 and up. To clarify, this means that no game deemed inappropriate for a fifteen year-old can be released for a major console. Mighty young, don’t you think? It’s that definition that keeps games like Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV from releasing in Australia uncensored. Aussie retail chain Gametraders and their faithful community have had enough with their lack of access to all the gaming wares the world has to offer and organized a protest in favor of the R18+ rating. South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson is the literal last-man-standing in keeping Australia from an R18+ classification for games, and Gametraders are hosting their protest on the steps of the Adelaide Parliament House to sway his opinion. They are, however, not putting the best face on the gaming community by using cosplay to express their *ahem* adult passion for the medium. Read More... Posted Feb 20 2009, 09:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, final fantasy, fallout 3, kingdom hearts, Vincent valentine, pokeball, riku, sora

• John’s Games of 2008: Year of the Character

  Next time you start telling somebody about a game you were playing — not a puzzle game or anything equally abstract — pay attention to how you refer to what you were doing in the game. Are you saying, “Then I jumped on the goomba!” or are you saying, “Then my guy jumped on the goomba!” Is it you finding the boomerang or is it Link? Are you driving the car, making the basket, managing the farm? Or is it your proxy, that little character walking about when you push a button to the right, that window meant to be a human being’s field of vision? As much as I thought about open worlds in 2008, I spent just as much time wondering what role character plays in great game design. A great game character doesn’t need to be one specific thing. It can be you, a literal representation of how you see yourself physically and even spiritually. It can also be a suit for you to put on, a fiction that you can inhabit, a doorway into story that isn’t just different from your daily life, but quite literally impossible. There was no shortage of astounding games in 2008, but there were a handful that, for me, were wholly defined by how they let you inhabit their characters, and characters made both for and by the player. In my first look back at ’08, I mentioned how it was character that ultimately kept me from getting the most out of Grand Theft Auto IV. There was just too much dissonance in how Niko Bellic was represented. There were three Nikos. There was the Niko you see speaking in cutscenes, a haunted, practical man of honor, making a new life for himself in a new country by hunting down the demons of his past. There was the Niko you guided through the game’s structured missions, a ruthless, opportunistic murderer who would destroy anything and anyone for a buck. And, finally, the Niko that you played, the blank slate who could do anything in Liberty City, whether it was enjoying a nice walk on the beach or assaulting an international airport with nothing more than a motorcycle and a baseball bat. At no point in GTAIV did these three Nikos meld into a single character, and the constant contradictions between them made it impossible for me to enjoy the game after a certain point. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Yakuza 2 (my absolute favorite game of 2008) were two of last year’s greatest achievements precisely because they didn’t fall prey to GTAIV’s representational failures. Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 06:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, the world ends with you, grand theft auto iv, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, top ten, gta, playstation 2, mario, soul calibur, peter molyneux, yakuza, yakuza 2, best of 2008, soulcalibur iv, fable ii, kazuma kiriyu, old snake, goomba, solid snake

• John’s Games of 2008: Year of the Open World

  The strange thing about the way we delineate time is that repetition — twelve hours, seven days, twelve months, rinse, wash, repeat — tends to make everything feel cyclical. Come January, we stare forward, looking at the flow of hours to weeks like a one-way street full of fresh landmarks, memories, and conversations. But when we end up back at December, there’s a collective and pervasive sense of déjà vu, an overwhelming feeling that we’re suddenly back in the exact same shoes we were the last time it was December, and we take stock of everything we saw upon that fresh stretch of road as though we’ve come back to the start. We weigh the fruits of time’s passage and immediately compare them to what came before. Maybe that’s why those of us so obsessed with pop culture, who worship at the altar of creation and consumption, gravitate towards retrospective lists; we just can’t seem to help looking back right before we look forward again. I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out just how to quantify the videogames of 2008, wrestling back and forth with just what to say. There are games that, by the end of my time with them, I downright loathed, that I never wanted to play again, but that I couldn’t shake out of my brain thanks to one aspect of their design. I never managed to finish Grand Theft Auto IV because I was so repulsed by its schizophrenic depiction of character when it put so much emphasis on story (and more on that later.) GTAIV’s Liberty City, though, is something I still think about on an almost daily basis. It is one of the most beautiful and strange creations I’ve ever seen, something more than a photograph, sculpture or film thanks to the way you are allowed to inhabit it. The game’s goals are frustrating to achieve, its characters more personality than people, and its story is at odds with its interactivity. But its world is astounding, just real enough to be familiar, and just other enough to warrant exploring it when its real world inspiration is right outside your door. I hated Grand Theft Auto IV by the time I stopped playing it, but I have to bring it up here because 2008 was the year of the Open World for me. Read More... Posted Dec 16 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, no more heroes, burnout paradise, far cry 2, crackdown, top ten of 2008, mercenaries, elder scrolls, best of 2008

• Heading Home: Revisiting the Curious Case of Playstation Home

  Sony said it was coming before 2008 breathed its last and, hey, here it is. Playstation Home will finally be open to the public as of tomorrow, close to two years after it was announced and a full year after its original release window. But even though PS3 owners across the world will finally be able to download Home 1.0, it still isn’t abundantly clear what they’re going to be able to do in Home once they get there. Here are the things I am one-hundred percent certain you will be able to do in Home on Thursday. Read More... Posted Dec 10 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, playstation 3, home, sony, far cry 2, Playstation home, the watchmen, red bull

• Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy

  Your dear mother has undoubtedly told you at some point, "You need to have a wife. It's good to have a wife." Maybe you agree or maybe you disagree, but either way, singles feel pressured to hunt down a mate even while insisting to themselves that the single life is totally rad. Sony's adopted your mother's stance on companionship, but instead of spouses it's talking about mascots. "Every system needs a mascot. It's good to have a mascot. Here, Sackboy now represents Sony." "Gee Sony, Sackboy is awfully cute, but is it a good idea to make him the spokes...doll for the company? We don't actually know how LittleBigPlanet will sell. And honestly, I'm okay with Sony's lack of a mascot--" "It's good to have a mascot. Now start making babies." If you feel wary, it's okay. Sony's previous attempts to match us up with digital companions resulted in lukewarm relationships before sputtering out: Crash Bandicoot, Lara Croft, Kratos. Even Microsoft fared far better by branding itself with Master Chief. Read More... Posted Aug 15 2008, 05:45 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: grand theft auto iv, little big planet, playstation 3, microsoft, sony, psn, playstation network, xbox, legend of zelda: twilight princess, identity, master chief, sackboy, mascots

• Yahtzee Rolls With the Big Dogs, Takes the Piss Out of GTA4

  It’s Wednesday and that can only mean one thing: Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is going to talk very fast and be very funny while doing it. The latest Zero Punctuation up over at The Escapist tackles the hottest gaming subject around this fine spring, Grand Theft Auto 4. Yahtzee does indeed enjoy the game quite a bit but takes issue with the one aspect of the game that I’ve taken the most joy out of so far. He calls the friendship/dating sim mechanics in the game “an irritating, mindless chore” but, as I’ve said a number of times, I’ve found it to be the most immersive and engaging aspect of Rockstar’s magnum opus. Than again, I’M VERY LONELY! Read More... Posted May 14 2008, 02:06 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, rockstar, escapist, yahtzee, zero punctuation

• The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 1

  We’re going to do things a little differently here at 61FPS when it comes to reviewing games. For starters, all reviews are going to be brought to you in three digestible installments. Games are simply too long – not to mention that many can’t be completed at all – to offer you the most thorough critical examination we can offer in a single helping. The just released Grand Theft Auto IV is the perfect candidate for this formula because while there are a set number of tasks to perform in its world that will allow a player to see its narrative through to a traditional conclusion (in addition to a number of tracked statistics that will result in a 100% marker,) the game’s non-linear nature means that it can go on forever. Want to turn on the game and see just how many Hummers you can pile onto a Coney Island pier? Have at it. I’ve spent approximately fourteen hours in Liberty City at this point and while that’s no small amount of time, it’s clear that Rockstar’s world still has plenty to offer. Read More... Posted May 12 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, rockstar, Grand theft auto 4, liberty city, gta, 61fps review

• Whatcha Playing: With a Little Help From My Friends

  On the surface, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV and Square-Enix’s The World Ends With You don’t have much in common. Even beyond their base aesthetic differences, one steeped in realism and the other in hyper-cartoon exaggeration, their bustling urban landscapes are as different as the cultures that produced them. But as I’ve been working through both in the past week, I’ve found myself focusing on the same thing in both: building interpersonal relationships.     Read More... Posted May 09 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, the world ends with you, whatcha playing, grand theft auto iv