PS3 Slim Unboxing/Initial Impressions

I've been wanting to get a PS3 for some time now, and the PS3 Slim's announcement was the perfect opportunity to do so. I've owned the Xbox 360 since Halo 3's release, but could never justify a $500 purchase for a handful of games. That's not to say I was dying to try MGS4, Little Big Planet, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted, and Killzone 2.

I picked my console up from GameStop a few days ago and thought I would deliver my initial reaction to the system.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed. The form factor is nice, though I wish that there was a way to stack it with my 360 without blocking the 360's vents. (This is probably MSFT's fault, not Sony's). I really appreciate the drop in power consumption, (though I hear rumors that the processing power is a little lower), and also like the buttons on the front of the machine as opposed to the original PS3.

There was also a bit that I didn't like. While I appreciated the included wireless networking (Xbox 360's wireless card costs an unreal $100), I did not appreciate the fact that the unit shipped without any form of HD video output. The first night I owned the system, I had to play Valkyria Chronicles at 480p, which was terrible, and in my opinion, unacceptable.

OS-wise, the PS3 is far inferior to the 360, in my opinion. While the OS menu is clean, crisp, and easy to navigate, the icons generally lack any color and many of the themes and backgrounds available make it very difficult to read most of the native fonts. I also found the PS3's store a little hard to navigate. What I did like about the PS3 was the Home system, which, when completely implemented, should be awesome.

Software-wise, the PS3 delivers incredible values on its games. Most games that are more than a few months old can be had for $40, as compared to the 360 where most games remain at $60 for a year. Nearly all of the games that I previously mentioned (excepting Killzone 2), are at this smaller price point or lower. On top of that, multiplayer on the PS3 is free, as compared to Microsoft's $5/month Xbox Live Gold. Exclusive-wise, the 360 seems a slight advantage (I'm a big Halo fan, loved Mass Effect, enjoyed Fable II, and liked Gears of War).

Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase. While I love my 360 a little too much to give up my XBL Gold subscription, I will definitely be checking from this point on to see if a title plays better on the 360 or the PC. Although I believe that the 360 is still a better system overall, the Slim is a huge step in the right direction for Sony. At the very least, I would expect to see as many PS3s as 360s under the Christmas tree this year.

-Jon

Realtime Worlds: Please License Your Music To Us!

One of the trends I've been most excited about in the past few years has been that of crowdsourcing. It's no secret that fans of a particular game will develop outstanding mods (Counter-Strike, TFC, DotA) for it, if given the opportunity, but when gaming companies give people direct access to add content to the game itself, it can be a very rewarding experience.

Enter Realtime Worlds, developers of the Xbox 360's well-regarded Crackdown franchise, and their new MMO entitled All Points Bulletin (APB). APB is a crime-based MMO, with a criminal faction and a police faction. Players can style their characters, pimp their rides, and, to put it succinctly, do as they please with APB's massive city. But, unlike other MMOs, players can also license music that they create to Realtime Worlds, who have offered to put players' music into the game. APB will also feature an in-game music editor, meaning that players may actually be able to make music for the game inside the game. Or at least that's my theory.

I love this idea and would love to see more of it in the future. It is a value add for developers, who can now spend more time creating different content for players and a value add for players, who can potentially listen to their own music in game. Moreover, things like this really put the community front and center in the game, and generate a great deal of positive buzz for the game.

If you haven't checked out All Points Bulletin yet, you just might want to.

Especially if you have your own band.

-Jon

Civilization Revolution Comes to the iPhone

When it launched last year, I was quick to download and play Civilization Revolution on the Xbox 360. Civilization has always been a favorite series of mine, and it was no surprise that Civilization Revolution quickly became one of my favorite games to play. A simplified and stripped-down version of the Civilization franchise, Civilization Revolution is best described as a gorgeous, easy-to-understand distillation of the best elements of the Civ franchise.

Naturally, then, when I saw that Civilization Revolution, or CivRev, was launched for the iPhone I was ecstatic. I suppose that I'm a bit late to the party, but an August 7th interview on Gamasutra is worth reading if you are at all interested in the game. It appears to be quite the value, as the application is priced at $10 (until the end of the day, you can snag it for $5), but contains all of the game code from the PS3, DS, and Xbox 360 versions of the game.

Civilization Revolution features 16 different civilizations, a number of different starting scenarios, and a whole lot of replayability. While I don't know that they will carry over the "scenario of the week" to the iPhone, I tend to play a game or two of CivRev a week (usually I will at least find time for the scenario of the week).

In my opinion, CivRev is, in a word, elegant. Among other things, the economy is wonderfully simple, the unit tree is quick to grasp, the graphics are great, and the gameplay is fast, making this perhaps the best entry in the Civilization franchise. While there is something to be said for the soup to nuts designs of previous Civilization entries, I really enjoyed this game's emphasis on the different countries (the starting techs, unique units, and special attributes are much more relevant than in previous games), and fast paced play of CivRev. If you've been holding off purchasing the game for some time, or don't have a current-gen console, the iPhone/iPod Touch version of Civilization Revolution is definitely something worth checking out.

If for some reason I find out I'm going to be travelling a lot during the next few months, I'll probably buy the game for the iTouch, but if you end up buying the game, definitely leave your thoughts in this post's comments thread.

Champions Online Pricing

One of the biggest news items that I've come across over the past few days is Cryptic Studios' announcement of the Champions Online pricing model. Players will be able to subscribe to Champions online for $15/month, or, this month only, may purchase a six-month subscription for $59.99, or a lifetime subscription for $129.99.

The value proposition of MMOs is very different than traditional games. MMOGs tend to deliver vast amounts of content to each player for the cost of a game plus a monthly fee.

Lifetime subscriptions are very interesting to me from a value standpoint-after all, this lifetime subscription pays for itself after about 13 months. If this was World of Warcraft, I would definitely have gotten my money's worth already. At the same time, if you've never played the game, or have limited beta experience, its quite a leap of faith to take.

There are many things that can go wrong in even a well-designed MMORPG. The game could have a tough time attracting players, could release expansions that make the game less fun, or could suffer from a lack of entertaining end-game content, among other things.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Cryptic has sweetened the deal with guaranteed access to the Star Trek MMO, an extra 8 character slots, additional costume sets, and even an action figure.

Personally, I really like the lifetime subscription model, but I'll need to try the game before I buy it. For every MMO that I've really enjoyed and gotten into, I can name three more that I hated or didn't enjoy. Fortunately, Champions Online looks really well designed, so I'm seriously tempted by the offer.

Hopefully I'll get into the beta before the end of September.

-Jon

Cutthroat Capitalism: The Game

Earlier this week, I found a neat little game called Cutthroat Capitalism in an article on Wired. The article was about high-piracy in the modern day, and focused on recent piracy off of the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden.

Many games are designed with the intent of informing players on a certain subject. I remember a few years ago I spent a weekend at a friend's house and we found this "game" on the Internet called Real Lives (the website which hosts the game has since been taken down) which simulates the life of a random person in the world.

In the game, you are born as a random person of a random gender in a random family based on real-world population distribution figures and live the life of a person in your country of birth.

We found this game highly entertaining and somewhat comical, although we were certainly making light of some serious third-world problems. In the game, your character (is that the right word?) will come into contact with diseases like malaria or polio, which have been all but eradicated from life as we know it. You'll also have to stay away from political protests, as you can be jailed or executed for participation in some at-risk activities. Smoking is also something that comes up frequently, and is highly addictive in-game (it's almost impossible to stop once you start).

It's tough to classify Real Lives as a typical game, and Cutthroat Capitalism falls into the same category, although it is a much simpler simulation based on a more narrow topic of interest. As a game, I didn't find it all that entertaining, but it is much simpler to understand than the article you can find the game in. It deals with most or all of the challenges that pirates face in the article: costs of doing business, the difficulty of commandeering a ship once you've found it, negotiating with the owners of the ship and cargo, etc. But it is still an interesting way of delivering content to the reader, and is much more gripping than the words on the page.

While I'm sure you won't feel obligated to kill a day playing it, Cutthroat Capitalism is an interesting look at the way games can be and are often used to draw an audience into the world of a story or article.