Did you see that stack of papers on the edge of your desk? What the hell are those still doing there? And those books next to your monitor – yeah, you haven’t touched those in weeks. That blob in the bottom of your coffee mug is larger than it was last time you peeked inside. You should give it a name.

Not in an office? Fine. Look at the guy next to you on the bus/train/plane. He looks a little unkempt, no? His appearance might be indicative of stress, sickness, or possibly sleep deprivation. Don’t be alarmed when he nods off and falls asleep on your shoulder.

You might be walking down the street. Maybe you’re shopping or working out or waiting for that man behind the counter to hand over your sandwich. It doesn’t really matter. Unless you’re currently performing surgery – in which case, you’re a horrible doctor – your environment isn’t sterile. Why is this?

Because people are dirty, fallible creatures. We get emotional, we make messes, and the woes of life can and do take tolls on us, both visible and otherwise.

“Awesome – I suck. Good to know. Why isn’t this guy talking about videogames?”

Okay, I’ll get right out with it, then: I want to talk about Mass Effect 2 (minor spoilers ahead). And before I do, please note that I absolutely adore this game. In my humble opinion, no other developer has come close to what BioWare achieved in Shepard’s latest adventure. It’s got characters with convincing motives and interesting histories, choices with real consequences, sleek RPG elements, smooth combat, beautiful graphics and sound design – the list could go on.

But the game could be better. It could be alive.

Shepard and his crew could be dirty, fallible creatures who show emotion, make messes, and display the woes of life. Just like all humans – and Asari, and Krogan, and Quarians, and Drell, and Turians, and Salarians – do in the real world. Notice that I left out Geth. Those guys are fucking clean.

Instead, the Normandy is so sterile that Shepard could pursue a relationship with a toilet and he’d be okay. Stop imagining how that love scene would play out. (Spoilers: there’s a lot of flushing involved.)

When you visit your squad members, what do you see? Well, Miranda is always sitting at her table. Same for Thane. Legion is always standing next to EDI’s main processing core. Grunt is always standing next to his growth pod. Zaeed is always standing around, being as unlikable as ever. Samara is sitting. Garrus is standing. Kasumi is sitting. Jacob is standing.

Your friends are remarkably static. They’ll open up some in conversation, yes, but, externally, they’ll never change. They are plastic.

Imagine this scenario I’ve crafted: after letting Vido Santiago escape during Zaeed’s loyalty mission, you approach his quarters to have a chat. As you get near the door, you hear him stomping about, cursing Shepard’s name in that crazy accent of his. You walk in to find the room in ruins. His gun collection is strewn about. Papers are scattered. It’s a mess. Then Zaeed broodingly walks out from the back room, weapon gripped tightly in his shaking hands. You honestly think he might try to shoot you.

But in the game, you walk in to find him just standing there. He tries to impress you by talking about how many men he’s shot and how many gallons of chocolate syrup he can drink (or something like that).

Grunt’s turn. Remember when he goes through the Krogan equivalent of puberty, and he just wants to kill everything and resents being pent up inside a ship? How neat would it be if, during his conversation with the player, Shepard could say something to royally piss off Grunt? In response, the Krogan slams his fist down on a nearby table, leaving a massive dent on the surface. From then on, whenever you enter his room and see that dent, you remember why it’s there. A small detail, sure, but in a game where you’re building relationships and earning loyalty, the small things count.

Maybe as you walk by Mordin’s lab you could hear him singing or cheerfully whistling to himself. Then, after a stressful event occurs, you walk in and find him slouched over his uncharacteristically disorderly equipment. He’s growing a space beard and drinking space coffee. Instead of him greeting you in his usual, ecstatic manner, he wearily looks up at you, rubs his elongated neck, and drearily utters, “Hello, Shepard.” He then looks down and returns to work with admirable Salarian determination.

Maybe Garrus is pacing back and forth, unsure about the team’s chances of success against the Collectors. He had a similar conversation with Shepard in the first game about potentially not stopping Saren, so displaying that anxiety again would show a different side of one of the calmest and most respected individuals aboard the Normandy.

Maybe Miranda is standing at her window and looking out at the blackness of space. She’s wearing her Batman pajamas, which ironically could be loose-fitting and actually suitable for combat. Her bed is unmade, and you conclude that she was having trouble sleeping. As you approach her, she turns to you with tears in her eyes. She asks you how long it will be until you can check up on her sister.

See what I mean?

The best characters in fiction aren’t one-sided. They aren’t purely evil or purely good. They aren’t always elated or always angry. People (and aliens) are complex creatures with a wide variety of emotions and attitudes. Even the bravest of the brave will have moments of doubt and fear. They get sloppy and lose determination.

BioWare, let me live these moments with your characters. You have the cast in place. The plot has reached a boiling point.

Now bring Mass Effect to life.

Andy Curtiss
Staff Writer
Our victim… er… topic of conversation? This year’s GDC. It’s come and gone in the blink of an eye. And I know, based on comments I’ve heard, that some of you were more disappointed than others. So let loose – how disappointed are you? Was there anything at all for PlayStation fans to enjoy? Or was it all developer mumbo-jumbo?

Discuss!

Sam Bishop
Editor-in-chief
I actually thought it was a really good show. Obviously, it’s never going to be E3 (or, at least, I hope that’s the case), but there were a few neat reveals that I’m churning through right now and there should be plenty for our readers to digest by the time they hear about our little conversation here. The reveal of The Darkness II took both JD and I by surprise; Digital Extremes is really embracing the comics side of things, and they’ve done a hell of a job with capturing a kind of semi-cartoony, exaggerated feel to the animation and cutscenes. It really does look like a comic brought to life, and any worries I had about Starbreeze not being on the project anymore were allayed by the short little demo they showed us.

Some of the other reveals, like Infamous 2’s Mission Creator, Resistance 3’s multiplayer stuff, just getting the chance to go hands-on with some of the single-player bits of both those games – plus final MotorStorm Apocalypse – seeing what Snowblind has been up to with their Lord of the Rings game, and seeing some indie stuff that we may or may not be actually getting on the PSN was really neat. Personally, I would have liked to have been able to jump into more sessions and just listen to devs talking about their stuff, but, overall, the show was surprisingly packed with updates and new information on a lot of games we knew were coming. E3’s the time for big reveals, but this was at least a nice way to catch up on a bunch of stuff.

Oh, and I need dat NGP action. It looks so very nice up-close.

Ryan Green
Managing Editor
I don’t know. As exciting as new details about Infamous 2 and other properties is, GDC doesn’t excite me. Ever. Ultimately, I care about the games, not what goes into them. I’m not a developer, so extensive talks about how to optimize lighting in a vacuum setting, featuring real-life numbers, means crap to me. Optimize all of the netcode you want; all I care about is the end result. And that is what a lot of people, from the shareholders to the eight-year-old getting his mom to buy him the Halos, care about.

That said, I totally give a crap about mention of Shenmue III. It was just a passing mention, but as a guy that enjoyed the original Shenmue (and narrowly escaped playing the sequel), the idea of bringing the franchise back is cool with me. Bring me HD ports (or even better, remakes) of the bat-crap crazy original entries, or just the conclusion, or something! Don’t just bring Ryo back for another Sonic cart racer – drop his name at GDC, and then produce nothing.

GDC is, at best, a place for developers to tease the on-looking internet trolls like us with the promise of something much greater to come. At worst, it is all about colleagues, friends, and students getting together and sharing great ideas with each other. But that is sort of backwards, isn’t it? “At best” should be the learning, and “at worst” should be the PR nonsense, teases, and everything else that is otherwise meaningless to the people that work on games. Of course, that is sort of a greater problem in today’s conference setting.

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
GDC bored me this year. This, however, is not a bad thing in the slightest, for, as Ryan mentioned, the conference should be focused upon game development and should ignore publisher-induced media frenzies as much as possible.

Given that, however, I’m continued to be impressed by the 3DS. Although not major revelations, the announcements of Netflix support, the inclusion of Game Gear and TurboGrafx-16 games for the system’s version of the Virtual Console, and, of course, a new Super Mario game make a very happy handheld gamer, indeed. And I only have a little while left to wait for all the new services…

And Shenmue, one of the biggest – but certainly not the last – disappointments unleashed by the walking accident that is Sega, can remain dead, thank you very much.

Nathan Tsui
Staff Writer
I honestly don’t have too much to say about this topic, because, for whatever combination of reasons this year, I didn’t end up following GDC too closely. It really felt like it was over before I’d even noticed it had started. And reflecting back on it now, I can’t remember a single thing that was announced during the conference specifically, but that just might be my terrible memory.

I actually got to try out the 3DS at the SXSW Interactive thing, and I wasn’t terribly impressed. I played SSF4 3D, but mainly I was testing out the technology. It’s more like looking into a box than having stuff pop out of the screen towards you. The effect is kind of interesting, but it’s somewhat blurry (at least, to me), and I could see it being a nuisance more than anything after an extended amount of play time. In fact, I was able to get my hands on the demo unit so easily because a kid with glasses handed it over to me, saying that it was giving him a headache. I played around with it by looking at it from all different angles and messing with the slider, and my ultimate conclusion was that $250 is way too much for this thing.

And Marc, I oughtta castrate you for those comments on Sega and Shenmue! Damn yoooouuuuuuu!

Ryan Green
Managing Editor
Marc is just upset that he searched for years in Japan and never found Ryo’s home. He wanted to ransack it for the mint condition Sega Saturn inside of it.

There are some really neat ideas that will come out of developers talking about and working on 3D technology. This year, the only thing I remember even close to that was Crytek’s passive 3D engine. Companies are either working on glasses-less 3D or wear-your-own-prescription glasses 3D, but I have yet to find one that didn’t make people sick. Crytek seems like they are on to something, but they still have some work to do there. The 3DS might prove, on a larger scale, that “3D works but who cares?” Like Nathan said, it made him a little sick, and that has been a consistent response from people when using 3D devices. If it, at all, has the potential to make people ill, it might not be worth investing in.

Perhaps GDC this year was a good test to see if developers, save for their publishers, care about the technology.

Aram Lecis
Señor Editor
To be honest, if I had my druthers, I’d probably go to GDC over any other “expo”-type event, simply because it is something a bit different. Sure, not a lot of info came out that was particularly titillating for the average gamer (save for the aforementioned Infamous 2 info), but the idea of developers getting together to share their ideas seems like it would have much better far-reaching effects for gamers in the long run. It’s also a much better opportunity for journalists to interact with the people who create the games we love, since they are not inundated with appointments and exhausted from the show floor.

That being said, I can’t deny the dearth of interesting info that came out of this year’s GDC. I think Sam put up a dozen previews here at the site, and while they were informative and interesting, I don’t think any of us got a lot of new info out of them. Even looking beyond the bounds of Sony, there still wasn’t a whole lot out there unless you were totally shocked that Nintendo is making more Zelda games or you
somehow hadn’t absorbed the barge full of information out there about the 3DS.

If there had been information about Shenmue III or even some sort of Shenmue MMO, that would have been pretty thrilling to me, despite
Marc’s stick-in-the-mud opinion.

Sure, GDC will never be the goldmine of new game announcements that E3 is, but, in the long run, I maintain that without GDC to plant the seeds of new innovations and ideas, E3 would never see those announcements, either.

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
I think Ryo’s house was washed away in the tsunami. Too soon?

Given the more-or-less consistent sentiment regarding GDC, does anyone think that the conference would be best served by having it be closed completely to the public? Wouldn’t the most conducive environment to collaboration and development be one completely devoid of self-consciousness?

And, just for the record, I do miss my Dreamcast. Samba de Amigo is some of the most fun my wife and I have had with gaming – it’s kinda odd to think that Sega had Harmonix beat by some six years – and Chu Chu Rocket should definitely be a 3DS launch game (space cats in 3D? Oh, yeah, baby).

But one does have to admit that Sega is kind of the leper of the videogame industry – everything it touches tends to implode or otherwise decompose into a stinking heap of flesh. Or something.

Aram Lecis
Señor Editor
Yakuza seems to be doing all right for them… it’s pretty much Shenmue for (slightly) less niche gamers.

I like GDC being semi-open. I think that giving a little transparency to the inner working of the industry is nice, and I shouldn’t have to be an “insider” to enjoy a talk form Will Wright about the Br0derbund days…

Parjanya Holtz
Senior Editor
Aren’t E3 and the likes more like GPC in that sense – the Game Publishers’ Conference?

Sam Bishop
Editor-in-chief
GDC is still very much about devs and people trying to break in. It’s “open” to the public in the sense that if someone has a couple hundred bucks, they can get into the sessions and the Career Pavilion, but it’s not like E3 where you have to be a part of the industry to get in. GDC as it is now is fantastic; the press stuff happens outside the conference itself in hotels and such around the area. So it’s actually a pretty decent trade-off right now. The industry can chat about making games with other people that make games, and the press folks can get updated impressions of stuff and maybe take away something from the odd keynote. Win-win.

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
Winning!

Times have changed pretty radically, however, and now most people have high-speed internet connections that make the 14.4 modems of the past absolutely archaic, and new consoles come packed with enough storage space to hold dozens of full games. But expansion packs still haven’t made their way to consoles with any sort of regularity, and with the new focus on high development costs and yearly iterations of franchises, I’d say we won’t likely ever see them again. Instead, the flavor of the day is the ubiquitous downloadable content (or DLC, as it has become colloquially known).

I’m not sure any innovation in gaming has distressed me as much as the advent of DLC. I fully understand the need to bump the standard price for a retail game from $50 to $60, given that after 15-plus years at the former price point, we were due for an increase, especially since development costs have risen exponentially (and haven’t been offset by the rise in sales and popularity for videogames). I don’t even mind the extra $10-$30 that gets tacked on for “special editions” as long as they offer something tangible, like a collectable lunch box or other knick-knacks. What kills me is the DLC that you are almost forced to buy to get the full game experience, which often ends up pushing the final cost of the game to $100 or more. It’s a very transparent cash grab by greedy publishers, and it is slowly pushing me away from console gaming.

In the interest of fairness, not all DLC is evil. There are a number of different types of downloadable content, and some developers/publishers use this new medium in the proper way. Let’s take a look at the various types:

1. DLC that adds sizable content that takes place outside the vanilla game, yet integrates well into the existing world. The prime example here is the Fallout series, which has received numerous, excellent add-ons that are purely optional but very well-crafted.

2. DLC that provides trinkets and items that are purely cosmetic additions and are not necessary for the full game experience. See the Ace Combat series for an over-the-top example of this type of content.

3. DLC that provides trinkets and items that drastically alter the balance of the game by providing overpowered weapons or armor to the user. In a single-player environment, these are optional and probably nice for those that struggle with completing the game, but in a multiplayer scenario, they can destroy the competitive balance. The Dead Space series is a good example of this. Often this type of content is offered as a pre-order bonus from various distributors.

4. Map packs in first-person shooters. Occasionally these are provided for free, but more often than not, they cost $15 to add four or five new maps into the rotation for online games, and they are pretty much a requirement for anyone that plans on playing the game regularly. Popular titles can see the release of three or four of these packs, pushing the price of the game into triple digits if you want to keep playing. Check out any Call of Duty or Halo installment to see this.

5. Increasingly popular is the “online pass” that comes with every new copy of the game, but requires a $10 fee to get online with a used copy. Electronics Arts has championed this particular type of DLC, with everything from Madden to the recent Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Blame GameStop for this one.

6. DLC that was once part of the final product but was then stripped out at the last minute (but left on the disc) so it could then be sold later at a premium price, often day-and-date with the release. Many times, the story will feel incomplete and have notable gaps if you haven’t bit the bullet and bought into the “extra” downloadable content. Mafia 2 and Dragon Age 2 are prime examples of this practice.

I certainly have no issue with the first type. Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2 were given additional life by the steady release of fully-fleshed-out and interesting content that came out over the course of a year after the release of the main titles. One could easily spend dozens of hours with just the stock game and never feel like he was missing out on a thing; the extra content was there for those who loved the universe and felt like they wanted to explore it more. I absolutely support any developer who wants to go this route.

I find I have varying levels of distaste for the rest of these scenarios, though. If someone wants to spend good money on horse armor or on having all the cars in Burnout: Paradise unlocked for her so she doesn’t have to play the actual game, well, I might not be into it, but I ‘m not going to get all up in arms over something that doesn’t affect me. Map packs are something that does bother me; oftentimes, these packs are just rehashes of maps from earlier entries in the series and, thus, don’t require much effort on the part of developers – and even the ones that are entirely new seem like they should be priced a tad bit more reasonably. They also serve to fracture the online community, since you can’t play with those that don’t have the new content, and once a game gets older and the online presence starts to die out, such a schism can essentially break the experience for folks who don’t want to invest another $45 in a title they already plopped down $60 for.

The “online pass” is something I understand the need for, but, at the same time, I can’t help but feel like I am being punished for the greed of GameStop (and, now, Best Buy). I fully understand developers’ frustration at used game sales sucking up all of their profits – they obviously don’t get a dime for GameStop’s second-hand wares – and I also understand why stores push so hard for consumers to purchase the used version, given that their profit margin is so much larger. But punishing the end user for this seems a little disingenuous. I pity the poor fool who is convinced he should get a game used at GameStop for $5 off the retail price, only to get home and find out he needs to pay another $10 to play the game online, something the employee likely didn’t mention during the sale. Poor Joe SixPack now has shelled out $5 more than a new game would have cost to get a dinged-up version (often in a generic case) through no real fault of his own, other than ignorance.

But the scourge of all gaming is the now-almost-standard practice of yanking content from a full game and forcing people to pay extra to get the remainder of the experience. I find this to be shady, insulting, and even a bit unethical. This is almost always a publisher choice; I am willing to bet most developers don’t want their games hacked up, especially knowing that many players, since they will never purchase the DLC, will be left with an incomplete experience and vaguely resentful feelings. The latest Prince of Persia offering was sold without a real ending, which was there when the game was developed but which was pulled after someone decided that they could get another $10-$15 out of innocent consumers by selling it a month later. The truth of the matter, sadly, is that most people finished the game, got disgusted with the lack of resolution, and never picked up the DLC – and, thus, were turned off of the series. Any time DLC is included on the disc itself, it’s an extra slap in the face. There is no reason other than pure greed to lock out that content, especially when it is already in the player’s hand. I personally will never pay one red cent for any of that content, and I refuse to support any publisher who wants to go that route. Unfortunately, with the major companies, this approach seems to be turning into the standard rather than the exception, and I honestly feel it is ruining gaming.

I don’t expect any of you to join me in my boycott, but just remember – if you support the wrong sort of DLC, it will only become more prevalent, so much so that, one day, our $60 will just buy us a game engine. If you actually want something to do in that world, be prepared to turn over your bank account details to EA and Activision.

The highly anticipated – and highly advertised – sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, was released on March 8th, 2011…much to the dismay of some of its “fans.” Apparently, a sect of the more vocal constituents of the preceding game have cried out to the Maker in agony, struck by despair at their sense of betrayal for receiving a game so horrible, it cannot be played. At least, if Metacritic.com’s own user-created reviews are to be regarded as a fair and balanced response to the sequel. Yes, the internet is always an excellent source for objective criticism.

But what’s strange is the vast difference in response from the critics’ reviews and the user reviews on Metacritic. Surely, the occasional fan will take umbrage at a game in a way that differs from the popular critical response, or even the majority view of other users, but Dragon Age 2 plays an unusual role here. The critical Metascore for the game is an 80/82/83 (360/PS3/PC), while the user scores are 4.3/3.8/4.3; it would be enough if only a handful of people reviewed the game, but there are a total of over 5,000 user reviews for this title alone! This kind of response for videogames is actually more common on Metacritic than you might think – for example, Call of Duty: Black Ops has an equivalent critic-to-user difference of an average of 30 points (using Metacritic’s critic-based scoring). But for a title like DA2 to receive this kind of blog-flogging from its prior supporters seems strange considering developer BioWare’s commitment to producing games with its fans in mind.

So, why all the hate? Is this game so terrible? Apparently, in this case, it does depend on who you ask. The venom that has been spewed forth – especially on BioWare’s own messageboards – about feelings of the title being “garbage,” “a failure,” and even the “death of the series” are extreme, to say the least. But this seems to be more the case of those vocal few who view the internet as an outlet for extreme opinions, rather than those who have assessed the game on its own merit. Considering the majority of these opinions surfaced in short time after the launch of the game, one wonders just how much critical attention the outspoken “fans” truly devoted to this title.

Perhaps some (if not most) of this is due to the antagonistic relationship outspoken gamers have with sequels. Some resent publishers for producing sequels, claiming that they are produced simply to capitalize on the success of their predecessors. While this is true (after all, why make a game you intend to make no money on?), these same individuals fail to recognize that many games now have the capacity to tell an interactive story far beyond the scope of games of yore. And these same games – and their corresponding stories – develop and grow with time. Sequels (and DLC, to an extent) are the extension of that philosophy.

To be fair, the game is not without its share of shortcomings. I wonder who the architect of Kirkwall was, and his obsessive compulsion to design each cave, warehouse, or Hightown mansion in a uniform way, much less the interior decorators, who furnish each home with frighteningly similar paintings, chairs, et cetera. Or, perhaps, the unusual amount of dropped equipment that the player will likely never use, especially with regards to armor. And I still chuckle when I visit the Viscount’s manor and hear the canned background speech from one poor soul who apparently has been forced to wait to see the ruler of the city for over three years, if the game’s chronology is to be believed.

But for all its idiosyncrasies, the game is a triumph of episodic gameplay, in its own way. The massive collection of quests gives the player a variety of different residents of Kirkwall to interact with – and sometimes kill and loot. Moral choices and lasting consequences are still as ubiquitous in Dragon Age 2 as they are in many BioWare games, but now the end results of your actions are more clearly defined in many cases, giving the player the freedom to direct the story better than its predecessor did. The combat system is fast and dynamic, the tactics portion of combat is more accessible and meaningful (with the addition of cross-class combos), and attributes and abilities are more balanced and multi-functional than before. And not once did I have to backtrack to a shop before completing a quest to sell loot, simply because I was “too encumbered” (take that, Fallout 3!).

One of the best moments you can appreciate how much detail has gone into the “streamlined” art direction of the game comes when you compare the detail between the different races and characters in both games. Elves and dwarves especially look more distinct from their predecessors’ counterparts, giving them a visual personality. But no other race has undergone such drastic alteration as the Qunari. Now endowed with horns, and a stone-like fleshtone, they remind me of what design choices went into the Klingons of Star Trek after their first appearances on the television series. But to truly see the difference, you will have to encounter one of your former companions. After I met up with one from the first game (no spoilers), I was amazed how much more animation and detail went into his (okay, little spoiler) appearance this go around.

Where DA2 shines the most is in its intricate story. According to lead designer Mike Laidlaw in the foreword for the strategy guide (beautifully designed by Piggyback Interactive), the development team “jokingly used to pitch [Dragon Age 2] as ‘two archdemons stapled together to lead a super Blight!’ Perhaps you can see why [they] wanted something different.” While this is apparently lost on some so-called “fans” of Dragon Age: Origins, the story is the beginning of an exciting epic, much as the Assassin’s Creed series has bravely adopted.

This game explores a rare place in the fiction of any game, one where politics and intrigue play out around the Champion of Kirkwall’s heroics. Quests and interactions with the major players in Kirkwall are some of the most fascinating moments in any role-playing game. Between the ruling Viscount Dumar, the Fereldan refugees (of which Hawke, the protagonist, is a member), Knight-Commander Meredith, and the Arishok – a figure who leads his people through the harsh tenets of the Qun – DA2 is stuffed full with moments of tension and believable characters with identifiable motives. The underlying parallels between conflicts of religion, race, and government in the game are almost painfully recognizable in our own modern world, only previously hinted at in Origins, now explosively relevant in the context of its sequel. To see these comparisons made in the fantasy world of Thedas makes for some intelligent storytelling that requires its audience to draw their own conclusions.

In the end, Dragon Age 2 is, in many ways, much like the entertaining supporting characters that ally themselves with Hawke. Like the saucy pirate vixen Isabella, it is a tarnished beauty; already in its short life, it has endured wildly varied support and extreme – and unfair – condemnation. Like Fenris, former Tevinter Imperium slave and fugitive, it has fought against the trappings of its former life, and been attacked for daring to live in a way different than the unfair expectations posited upon it by its users. And, maybe like Anders (imagine Malcolm X as a mage), I, too, rally to defend this enjoyable title from unfair persecution, and enjoy DA2 for what it is – a fun game.

In 2005, a child was born to the videogame world. Its father? The music industry. The little bundle of joy would go on to be christened Guitar Hero. The inspiration of this would-be giant came from peripheral maker RedOctane, who had recently developed a guitar-shaped controller for Konami’s arcade game Guitar Freaks. It would go on to have an unbelievably large effect upon both of its parent industries.

The release of Guitar Hero is one of those events in videogame history that everyone remembers to some degree or another. “Cultural phenomenon” became the phrase to describe it; some journalists even went a step further to call it “one of the most influential products of the first decade of the 21st century.” Sound like a little much? It did to me at first, too – until I took a step back and realized what it had accomplished. Not only had GH single-handedly spawned an entire genre that raked in, literally, billions of dollars worldwide, it had also boosted sales of music globally – and not just new artists, but old ones, as well. As if that weren’t enough, here’s a piece of trivia that may surprise you: researchers at Johns Hopkins University have used Guitar Hero as treatment for amputee patients and those needing new prosthetic limbs. Additionally, the music and dexterity-based controllers are credited for helping stroke patients regain coordination.

And then there’s the franchise’s offspring. RedOctane had teamed with Harmonix Music Systems to make the first GH (which was then distributed by Activision), but RedOctane would go on to be purchased by Activision, and Harmonix – which was acquired by Viacom through its MTV Networks division – would strike out on their own to create Rock Band, a game which took the Guitar Hero concept by the hand and guided it a step further, adding more instruments, such as drums, vocals, and even (later on) keyboard. In this way, the two games are cousins… or step-brothers… or something like that.

The next six years would see Guitar Hero become an incredible success – such a success, in fact, that, by 2008, the market for the newly-dubbed rhythm genre was worth $1.4 billion. Activision would go on to pump out more then 15 different versions, expansions, and spin-offs (such as Band Hero and DJ Hero). All the while, its relative, Rock Band, was doing the same to a lesser degree. Some of the expansions were specific to certain bands, such as The Beatles and Metallica. Other sequels offered new graphics, modes, and other goodies. But things weren’t destined to stay so bright and sunny. In 2009, a new word was being used to describe the games that everyone had clamored to buy four years earlier: over-saturation.

So what did it? Was it Activision in the lounge with the lead pipe? Or perhaps it was recession in the library with the revolver? It’s no secret that Activision had received some criticism for making all the GH games virtually the same; several prominent journalists and analysts in the videogame community pointed out that it would have behooved the publisher to continue to innovate and find new ways to mix gaming and music. Instead, they flooded the market with the same game over and over again. Like any good fad, people continued to purchase the living daylights out of GH – until they caught on to what was happening, and then many turned their focus to Rock Band, which had at least innovated in the form of new instruments. Despite all the indications of impending doom, Activation continued with its blind strategy of pumping out more of the same.

But perhaps the company isn’t all to blame. They had a great concept with Guitar Hero. There’s the old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – and the series wasn’t broken, per se. And goodness knows that the recession that hit our country in the latter half of the 2000s did its fair share of damage; there were virtually no industries anywhere in the United States that weren’t affected in some way by the sudden tightening of purse strings. There is, in fact, the going theory that, perhaps, if the recession hadn’t happened, Activision would have had more cash to pour into making something more out of GH then just the same old, same old. This is all speculation, of course, but well worth pondering.

Finally – and most sadly of all – maybe people were just over rhythm games. It’s a fact that Rock Band’s sales have also been down, so much so that 15% of Harmonix’s 250-person workforce has been laid off and MTV Games has been completely shut down for good. Not enough bad indicators? Then how about this: Viacom, who was so quick to buy Harmonix at the peak of their popularity for millions of dollars, just recently turned around and sold the company – back to their shareholders, which was the best deal they could find. (On the plus side, though, this transaction effectively makes Harmonix an independent developer again. And since they still hold the intellectual rights to both Rock Band and newly-released Dance Central, there just may be a silver lining in this gloomy cloud.)

With the fad of rhythm games coming to an end, we are left with those few, but faithful, fans that actually loved the genre for what it was, not just for the moment of glory that it had. The only problem here is that these fans aren’t enough to keep the genre going at the pace it was – but, to some of these diehards, that’s actually a good thing. Many people were upset by the previously mentioned lack of innovation, and more then one fan has commented to me, since starting this editorial, that they hope the demise of Guitar Hero would allow Harmonix to step back, reevaluate the situation, and come up with the Next Big Thing. It’s just sad to this writer that the catalyst of this possible change is the death of the entire original series, as well as that of RedOctane, the original brainchild, who was axed one year ago by parent company Activision (yes, they bought the peripheral manufacturer hand-in-hand with GH) when the market started to sour. They were 12-years-old.

So I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide for yourself who killed this once-dominating giant. For one to climb so high and to fall so far is a sad thing to behold, but, more than anything, it should serve as an important lesson to the entire industry that innovation and change are key. One would like to think that Activision will, indeed, take this to heart, but, then again, I’ve often been accused of giving people too much credit. Or perhaps the morale of the story is that fads come and go with the tides. Or maybe – just maybe – the fault lies with the conservatives for causing the Great Recession. Just kidding! (Or am I?)

Whichever school of thought you subscribe to, however, I hope that you’ll give a moment of silence to our fallen comrade, Guitar Hero.

Then came a change in leadership at Electronic Arts: in February 2007, then-CEO Larry Probst stepped down, and his handpicked successor, John Riccitiello, took the reins. The games published by EA had been “under fire” for some time, many citing that they simply didn’t meet expected quality standards. The brand was in danger. Although it was in 2006 when EA announced it intended to produce more intellectual properties (IPs), the actualization of the promise would take time. One game – originally in development for the Xbox – would soon find itself at that mythic convergence of critical and commercial success… a game that would “make EA whole” in the eyes of action-horror enthusiasts.

In September 2007, Dead Space was announced. Shockingly dark and viciously bloody, the game hinted at a twisted future – one of terrors ripped from the annals of sci-fi horror classics such as Alien and Event Horizon. The game grew a following, and EA Redwood Shores fed their fans with a sophisticated pre-release multimedia marketing campaign, including six issues of a comic book mini-series and a website with supplemental content called “No Known Survivors.” However, in September 2008, Dead Space community manager Andrew Green claimed that the title had been completely banned in Germany, Japan, and China. This was a lie. Shortly after the announcement, it was revealed that this was merely a marketing ploy, intended to insinuate that the game was so truly horrifying, that it was simply “too much horror” for the aforementioned countries. This was to be the beginning of a darker legacy for EA Redwood Shores, one of artificially generated hype in the guise of an “attack” on their own product.

Dead Space was a success. With a Metascore of 89/88/86 (360/PS3/PC) and two million copies sold as of August 2010, it has thrived in the difficult gamescape of IPs, where balancing creativity and clever design with profitability can mean the difference between having a job tomorrow or not, especially at the time of the 2008 economic crisis. Like a modern-day David and Goliath story, DS had found itself a fervent following, and its team of hard-working developers must have been truly satisfied at their victory. One could almost hear “The Eye of the Tiger” playing somewhere distant…

This calls for a celebration – or a change in name, at least. The lengthy name of EA Redwood Shores would henceforth don the new mantle of “Visceral Games,” and, with it, a commitment to “action, intensity, [and] excellence.” Furthermore, they did not simply rest on their laurels; Visceral Games would continue to produce games in 2009, namely The Godfather II and Dead Space: Extraction. (Godfather II still managed to ruffle some feathers by its inclusion of brass knuckles sent to several members of the gaming press – an illegal item in some states.) While these games did not amount to the same caliber of success as DS, Visceral was about to unleash the floodgates of unparalleled graphic content and questionable taste with their “loose” adaptation of Dante’s Inferno in early 2010.

And yet, a significant amount of time prior to the launch of Inferno, a strange thing happened: around 20 protesters appeared at the Entertainment Electronic Expo event. Claiming to be from “a church” in Ventura County, these “protestors” decried the game as sacrilegious, even condemning EA as the anti-Christ. Unsurprisingly, many saw through this thinly-veiled hoax, perhaps because the game was still fairly unknown, making the protests more confusing than anything; shortly afterward, Electronic Arts spokeswoman Tammy Schachter confirmed the incident was a hoax. But Dante’s Inferno – and the extensive pre-release viral campaign that was to follow – was only getting warmed up…

Inferno seemed to positively revel in its own self-generated controversy – it was an example of a game determined to push buttons outside of its own context-sensitive environment. Electronic Arts partnered with GameStop for an event held on September 9th, 2009, offering customers who pre-ordered Dante’s Inferno a $6.66 discount. They even sent unsolicited checks to videogame reviewers of $200, with a note describing the nature of “greed”; should they redeem the check, their sin would have “consequences.” The International Nanny Association even attempted to (genuinely) boycott the game, due to the inclusion of an achievement earned for slaying numerous “child-like” demons, an achievement called “Bad Nanny.” Between these stunts, the websites featuring fake games and ads that would result in accusing the participant of various sins, and a quirky Super Bowl commercial featuring Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine,” the marketing campaign surrounding Dante’s Inferno was reminiscent of a spoiled child “acting up,” and that old adage that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” was becoming a new mantra for Visceral.

Inferno would score moderately amongst fans and critics both. Whether the games boundary-ravaging content was a factor to its benefit or detriment is difficult to pinpoint; it certainly faired well enough with regards to sales in its first month, though its legacy is a mixed one. Had Visceral gone too far? Was it trying to be the game whispered amongst parents, as they warned one another of its potential for corrupting their children? Was it coveting that role Grand Theft Auto (still) has in this capacity? It’s all conjecture, sure, but Visceral Games had made a bold decision that seemed to scoff in the face of anti-videogame legislative fear-mongers like Senator Leland Yee… or, regrettably, endow them with additional ammunition.

Shortly after Dante’s Inferno launched, Dead Space 2 was announced. It was heralded as one of the most highly anticipated titles at E3 2010. The technical prowess and design had truly evolved, with stylish zero-g combat, exciting new monsters, and highly polished environments and characters. The IP that had put Visceral Games on every core gamers’ radar was back. Visceral even created a downloadable game to flesh out “The Sprawl,” the location featured in DS2, called Dead Space: Ignition. Dead Space 2 was a game that was well-known to its fans months before launch, and would almost assuredly be a success. But that wasn’t enough.

“Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2.” Just when you thought it was safe to release a game without negative phantom-hype…

Possessed of questionable verisimilitude, “Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2” was a series of web and television advertisements for DS2, portraying a selection of roughly 200 women selected for their “conservative values and lack of familiarity with videogames”. They were exposed to some of the most graphic scenes in the game – without context, presumably – and their reactions were recorded. Expectedly, the “moms” reacted with disgust and shock. But the intention of the campaign – to drum up excitement over a product so horrifying that it must be cool, because mom hates it – backfired. The campaign was decried as sexist, ageist, and simply missing its mark. By suggesting that “moms” hate this game, it implies that the game’s audience must be of an age where mom’s approval matters; as a Mature-rated game (ages 17+), this seems wildly inappropriate, as the only people who should be playing this game should have little concern whether Mom hates the game or not. The portrayal of moms (read: older women) as being ignorant and/or judgmental of the content of the game as a whole based on limited exposure is also confusing. Mary Elizabeth Williams puts it succinctly: “The videogame’s campaign hinges on a unique premise – one that ignores how much the culture of gaming has changed.”

So what legend is it that Visceral Games is attempting to found? Surely their work speaks for itself. Dead Space is one of the premier IPs in the modern gamescape, and even Dante’s Inferno is a startling adventure game that forces its player to experience the horrors of Hell with its uncomfortable subject matter. And yet, their continued attempt to draw attention to their work through bizarre – and somewhat irresponsible – fabricated hype only seems to detract from their impressive catalog of games since they began to twinkle as a bright star in the world of game development with DS. Can Visceral learn to simply accept that their body of work is strong enough to stand on its own, or will they continue to degrade themselves by exploiting the popular animosity held that violent videogames are a “threat to our children”? To do this, they will have to be truly confident and assured in their amazing abilities as developers, and not fall prey to the sin of just being “cocky.”

Which is not to say, of course, that I have ignored the PS3’s software – Uncharted is easily one of the best games to arrive this generation, as are the ingenious LittleBigPlanet and the masterpiece Heavy Rain – or ever failed to rave about the big black box’s absolutely stellar downloadable library, which includes the likes of Echochrome, Pain, and Everyday Shooter (if Halo Wars is the game that I literally have not been able to put down this generation, then ES would easily be my wife’s. We have an affliction, I know). I have always, since my youngest days as a gamer, deliberately collected every (major) console to have access to its roster of exclusives, even going so far as to beg, plead, and torture my parents to purchase the Sega CD for the (now-dubious) likes of Sewer Shark and Night Trap; it’s strictly in the confines of multi-system titles that I’ve favored, usually irrevocably so, one of my babies over the other(s), not unlike Jehovah with Cain and Able.

But something strange has been happening over the past year-and-a-half or so, starting slowly at first but now quickening at an almost exponential rate: I am buying the PS3 version of games, when and where applicable, over the 360. For Batman: Arkham Asylum (August 2009), it was the exclusive downloadable content; for Assassin’s Creed II (November ‘09) and Brotherhood (November ‘10), it was the ability to connect to the PSP game and previous console entry, respectively; for Dead Space 2 (January ‘11), it was the inclusion of a better-looking and -playing version of Extraction (September ‘09), a game I already own on the Wii; and for the upcoming Portal 2 (April ’11), it’s unquestionably the Steam support, something that Microsoft could never allow with its current configuration of Xbox Live. At this rate, I have little doubt that at this year’s E3 presser, Sony will provide me with another two or three games I’ll have to scratch off of the Xbox list and hastily scribble in under the PlayStation column.

Despite my parents having always told me, at every available opportunity, that I was a special boy growing up (the last time, in fact, was just last week), I have to imagine that there are scores of gamers out there that are just like me, that, though it would be near-impossible to make them flip their default settings, they can certainly be motivated to deviate from it, and deviate from it quite often. Though it’s still unlikely that the PS3 will be able to out-sell the 360’s install base by generation’s end next year, there is certainly the very real possibility that Sony will be able to steadily and diligently chip away at Microsoft’s lead, eroding its foundation and doing much to level the playing field at the start of the 512-bit cycle of consoles. Then again, maybe not – I am that sick gamer, after all, who just has to buy the collector’s edition of a title whenever it’s available, whether it may contain a statuette of in-game characters or a deluxe art book or just some fancy packaging. (I’m doubly afflicted, I know.)

There’s also the small problem of MS seeing both revenue and gamer chic slipping through their fingers, one digital drop at a time. Announcing that all Call of Duty DLC would be timed-exclusive to the 360 was a significant step in the right direction – of getting the exclusives pendulum that Sony openly mocked at the beginning of this generation and now has fully embraced to swing back in its direction. Although Sony will shortly have the entirely new venue of NGP-PS3/PS4 connectivity available to it, building upon Ubisoft’s AC example (and, of course, Nintendo’s – with the Game Boy and numerous home consoles – before that), it should be battening down the hatches in anticipation of Microsoft’s inevitable counterstrike.

Although this current generation may be (finally) starting to cool down, the larger battle is just warming up.

Yes, contrary to popular belief, the TotalPlayStation staff does own systems other than the PS2, PS3, and PSP (well, in the interests of full disclosure, Marc doesn’t have a PlayStation Portable, but he thinks that’s an eminently understandable decision) – and, what’s more, they actively play and even enjoy quite a few games on them, as well (except for Ryan, that is; he suffers from quite a bad bout of acute Fanboyitis. Yes, our prayers are also with him).

Sharp-eyed readers will notice some fancy new titles for some of us editors. No, they’re not typos; this is all part of refining our editorial structure, which is part of refining TPS, which is part of – ultimately – the grand site redesign that has been in the works for the past several months.

Consider it a little sampling of 2011 while we digest the best of 2010…

Shaun Mason
TPS Mascot
Now that we’re at the end of January, it’s definitely time to take a look back at 2010 and see which games held our attention, kept us up late at night, and constantly amazed us with their awesomeness. However, instead of the traditional formula, let’s not focus on the sweetness of the PlayStation from last year (blasphemy, you say?!). Instead, what non-PlayStation games were at the top of your list? Was Epic Mickey full of awesomesauce? Did Fable III romance and entertain you? Did you max out your vocabulary with Super Scribblenauts?

I’ll kick it off with a game that was so excellent, that PS users will be able to experience it in the first weeks of 2011. Mass Effect 2 was a great game, which took much of the original and improved on many of the gameplay mechanics and storyline to create an engaging adventure in the cold recesses of space. Thankfully, the horrible driving on planets was jettisoned in favor of planet scanning (which again is a questionable feature, but more controllable). But the commander and his ragtag group of soldiers, scientists, and misfits still manage to get the job done in the end, and the option to have many decisions that were made from the first game impact the sequel was fantastic. I’m looking forward to taking on the third chapter this holiday season eagerly.

So, how about it – what games fired you up from last year?

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first, shall we? I really enjoyed Halo: Reach (as did Dave Clayman, whom I interviewed on the subject), even though I felt some of its narrative components were a bit on the flaccid end of the spectrum.

On the flip side, I thought Alan Wake was a blast in terms of story but predictable in the gameplay department.

Super Meat Boy and Limbo were terrific in fundamentally different ways, GoldenEye – or what little I played of it – was all right, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn was like my first girlfriend: cute and fun but shallow.

Oh – and I can’t seem to put Halo: Wars down no matter what I do…

Aram Lecis
Managing Editor
There was a pair of games on the Xbox 360 that resonated with me this year. Both Deadly Premonition and, as Marc already mentioned, Alan Wake paid homage to one of my favorite television programs of all time, Twin Peaks (especially DP). Both games contained myriad gameplay “quirks,” for lack of a more graceful word (especially DP), but also deep, rich, and – yes – quirky stories (especially DP, naturally). I loved the atmosphere and emotion in the two towns that are central to each game, and if it wasn’t for this pair of offbeat adventures (and Limbo, of course), I might not have turned my Xbox on this year. I know Deadly Premonition had its share of detractors out there, but I can overlook the tepid-at-best combat system for Swery’s smart, witty, and borderline-actionable David Lynch tribute.

Andy Curtiss
Staff Writer
I have to say that my loyalty to PlayStation is pretty solid – so much so, that I don’t always get a chance to play other games for other systems. The consequences of this are that I don’t often “discover” games for other systems until they’ve already been out for a disturbing period of time. That being said, and I know Aram already mentioned it, but Limbo really got my attention. The atmosphere in that game was amazing, which is funny to say because of its understated graphics and simplicity. But despite being black-and-white and 2D, Limbo managed to create enough atmosphere that, at certain points, you really didn’t want to move forward anymore – there was a genuine pang of fear there.

On a more whimsical note, I personally discovered Pokemon at the beginning of last year. Yes… I already hear most of you groaning. But it’s addictive. And that’s, perhaps, the most fascinating part. Think about it: the premise behind the game is flimsy at best, but you can’t help yourself from wanting to catch, train, and breed these cute little monsters. And with the new Pokemon game on its way out (both the Black and White versions), I can’t help but be excited despite my fanboy-esque devotion to PlayStation.

Ryan Green
Reviews/Previews Editor
The only non-Sony game I even got this year that was any good was Halo: Reach. It probably stands out so much because it is the only good Halo game that came out since the original. A Halo game with an (overall) good story? Containing (something close to) character development? Show Spartans as vulnerable people and not super apes? The game runs well and is the best game Bungie has ever released. It is a shame it is wasted on the Xbox community.

But, really, what else came out that was good? Everything else mentioned so far didn’t do it for me, especially Limbo (not to call you out, Andy; I mean to call you out, Marc). Of all of the non-Sony-exclusives, the really good ones were third-party titles, so I can’t really count them. That and I didn’t play too many games on the other platforms.

I guess if I had to pick it, it would be StarCraft II. It turns out I really don’t like StarCraft games anymore, but it was all right. It took too long to get into the story, and the multiplayer is at a level where you have to care to enjoy it (so that is out). Did the iPhone version of CivRev come out in 2010? That game rules all y’all fools.

Sir Gordon Wheelmeier
Gaming Guru
I think that what we’re seeing this year is a bunch of great stuff that didn’t release in 2010 because MS and Sony were so involved in getting the Move and Kinect to market. If that’s true – that is, great non-motion-centric games were scheduled for 2011 early on from a marketing standpoint to leave room for the motion titles, thereby giving them extra development time – then we’d actually owe a bit of 2011‘s awesomeness to last year’s (boring) motion control battles.

Or it could simply be because Sony tends to give its development houses the time they need to make great games rather than rush them to market, and they just all happened to be ready this year.

I’m actually inclined to believe it’s a little bit of both columns…

Dan Hemsath
Features Freelancer
I could go on about the awesome multi-console releases I enjoyed (*cough, cough* Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow *cough, cough*), but in the spirit of non-PS fare, here goes.

Top of my list: Mass Effect 2. This game has the best narrative structure I’ve played in any videogame I can recall (though I look back fondly on MGS3’s). Aside from the game’s many amazing features (near-perfect fusion of quality gameplay/graphics, interactive character development/customization, and rich and multi-faceted story), it is constructed in highly-manageable mission chunks with consistent rising action-climax-descending action – a formula often used for character missions, I noticed – making each sit-down with the game memorable, fun, and exciting. Scanning planets got old, to be fair, but hearing Mordin sing Gilbert and Sullivan ranks among my “best moments of 2010″ – worth the price of admission.

Alan Wake surprised me; it somehow managed to captivate my attention above that of Red Dead Redemption at launch, primarily because of its success at embracing its subject matter in an earnest, multimedia-oriented fashion, which – for lack of a better reference – reminded me of Enter the Matrix. I remember watching the “Bright Falls” viral videos – painfully released only one at a time – hoping, like Twin Peaks, to gain some insight into the mystery of Alan Wake, even before the game came out. And the collector’s edition; frankly, if you didn’t get this, you missed out, for no better reason than the amazing Alan Wake Files work of fiction-within-fiction. This rare work of love is a hardcover book (roughly 144 pages) written in the voice of a fictional author, documenting the last known whereabouts of the titular character, one of his pursuers, and the mystery behind the town of Bright Falls itself. All of these elements merge into one overarching saga that expands beyond the sum of its parts, and – like every great mystery – leaves you desperate for answers you’ll never get.

I would certainly acknowledge Limbo and Super Meat Boy as achievements (no pun intended) for the well-structured gaming service that Xbox Live Arcade is. The games ooze nostalgia but wear it with pride. Limbo brought back to mind that silent protagonists – I think of Gordon Freeman here – can be effective at allowing the player to project his/her emotions into the scene, rather than being JRPG-born, ellipsis-churning mannequins; for a game primarily concerned with creeping you out, it is eerily effective in this capacity. And Super Meat Boy has become my addiction these cold winter nights, its manic levels haunting me, evoking a mantra of “I know I can beat this level!” as it hones my reflexes bit by barely noticeable bit.

Lastly, I would be remiss to neglect a sweet little B-lister that captivated my heart with its unabashedly Japanese sensibilities: Deathsmiles. Aksys games – whom I would consider the second coming of Working Designs, for their love of sweet “omake” – even released the game with its fantastic soundtrack and a (now-defunct) Xbox 360 faceplate, featuring the darling gothic lolis. But even with all the sweet swag packed in, the game is an excellent and challenging shmup, reminiscent of those quarter-gobbling arcade games that made pizza places have to stock up on extra change back in the ‘90s. It’s cute, packed with great music and level design, and just good-natured fun.

Kyle Heimbigner
News Editor
The first big game of 2010 for me was Mass Effect 2. It was a big improvement in every way over the first game, and I am really looking forward to Mass Effect 3. All of the DLC that BioWare created for it was also amazing and added a lot of extra hours to an already long and rich game. I liked the way the character interaction worked, and the more streamlined RPG and combat systems were very well-done; it felt like an improvement over the original while not dumbing it down, which is what a lot of sequels end up doing.

Red Dead Redemption was the second big game of the year for me. The huge, wide-open game world was beautiful – easily one of the best-looking console games to date. And although I had a lot of complaints about the reliability of the multiplayer component, the single player was top notch; it had a very long storyline that covered most of the game world and offered plenty to do in-between, as well. It didn’t at all feel like Grand Theft Auto in the Wild West, which I really appreciated.

StarCraft II was the biggest out of everything this year. This game is absolutely perfect, and Blizzard again proves that they are grandmasters at their craft: stunning graphics, amazing single-player campaign, and multiplayer that doesn’t get any more perfect. It’s a very well-balanced and competitive game. I almost enjoy watching StarCraft II more then I enjoy playing it; the tournaments that take place worldwide are something else to watch. The professionals that have made a living out of playing StarCraft have proven that this is the best real-time strategy game, and nothing else can even come close to matching its complexity and depth.

If I can be different for a minute, I would also like to talk about a game that caused a lot of disappointment, too. I had been waiting over four years for Final Fantasy XIII, and while I put over 90 hours into the game, I still left it feeling very unsatisfied. The incoherent storyline; awful dialogue; simplified, dumbed-down combat system; lackluster upgrade system; pointless grinding; and a terrible balance left this game feeling like it was an experiment gone horribly wrong. It was also the start of a bigger problem, what I feel is the downfall of Square Enix in terms of quality control. They used to release some fantastic games, but, in the last two years or so, they have just continually dropped the ball. FFXIII really failed to please a lot of fans – and let’s not even get into Final Fantasy XIV.

Shaun Mason
TPS Mascot
There were two games that have already been mentioned that also stood out to me – while StarCraft II seemed to take forever to come out, I found it to be worth the wait. Like Kyle, I liked the single-player story a lot, and, like Ryan, I found the multiplayer to be where the majority of my time was spent once the single-player experience was long gone. I also found Super Meat Boy to be lots of fun in a fast-twitch, perfect-timing sort of way.

But that kind of highlights much of my focus this past year – I dove back into PC gaming wholeheartedly. It wasn’t hard to see why, given this past year, either, but I’ll mention a few fun highlights: the release of a new Sid Meier’s Civilization game is practically a holiday for my wife and me, and Civ V was no exception. I probably played it for two weeks straight, creating every strategy that I could imagine to dominate the world.

As much as I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t do it, I also found myself diving into Puzzle Quest 2 once again and getting stuck in the Bejeweled-style gameplay. Then again, I could say the same thing when Bejeweled 3 came out – yeah, yeah, I know, they’ve got casual gameplay that isn’t necessarily as involved as a shooter or strategy game, but considering that one of the RTS games that I had been waiting for was a huge disappointment (C&C4 and EA, I’m talking to you – that was a horrible ending to a great franchise), I’d rather spend the time with a casual game than get let down again.

…

Aside from a “miserable, little pile of secrets” (c’mon, tell me you didn’t chime in there). It’s a legitimate question, even if it does come from a vampire waxing philosophical. Certainly, there are a gamut of answers for this, but I’m going to limit it to the arena of videogames, and how portrayals of men in our favorite hobby contributes to – or is derived from – the zeitgeist, and how this has changed, even over the last few years, from bald space marines to dudes with beards.

So, why is it that when you put in whatever FPS/action game/etc. in your gaming console (or PC), you can expect a majority of the time to find that your “character” is – frequently by default – a male, aged 18-35? The short answer: money. Gaming is, at least these days, a financially fueled entertainment medium, with little room for slack. Publishers spend millions on finding out who’s playing what they’re selling – and, hey, why not cater toward the audience by making that ability to identify with the main character all that easier?

But we all know that’s not universally true. After all, many games have broken the mold, or at least made a decent effort to do so. While the Prince of Persia games feature a male protagonist (kind of goes with the whole “prince” thing), Beyond Good & Evil proved Jade could make it in a man’s world. Nathan Drake of Uncharted fame owes much to the nature of his game to Lara Croft of Tomb Raider — so much so that Uncharted was sometimes referred to as “Man Raider” before it broke onto the gaming scene to critical acclaim of its own merit. Games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have had tremendous success splitting the difference, allowing for players to choose and customize their genders as they wish.

And yet, who is featured most prominently on the Mass Effect covers? Hint: it’s not “Femshep.” The reality of it is that demographics, market research, and all that other horrible corporate buzz talk we hate when we talk about our favorite games still lurks under the surface of it all, subtly influencing our purchases with depictions of – you guessed it – our projections of ourselves, or at least some facet therein.

Unlike movies, videogames depend on us actively controlling a character in order to proceed. Like Pavlov’s dogs, our achievements and progress in the game are rewarded with more entertainment. How, then, can developers make that connection stronger, yielding – even at the subconscious level – increased entertainment value? Make that character, that situation or scenario, one we can project ourselves into. Virtual reality is an easier pill to swallow when we still have free will. “Everything begins with choice.” (Thanks to Morpheus of The Matrix for the maxim.) Even if that choice is an illusion, it’s frightfully convincing.

So why does the default Commander Shepard of Mass Effect look the way he does? His cover image certainly does fit the bill of the quintessential “bald space marine,” albeit with a slight resemblance to Matthew Fox (from the early episodes of Lost), plus power armor. And why has that archetype become as ubiquitous as to be imitated in numerous other games? I think of Fracture first, with its hilariously named protagonist, Jet Brody (contrary to his name, there are no extreme snowboarding levels in the game). If you squint – and know nothing about games – it would be forgivable to mistake one game’s hero for the other.

Call of Duty occupies a unique place in this dynamic, primarily because starting with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the figure on the cover is more-or-less an obscured silhouette, with the action in the background. Humorously, this “cover philosophy” would go on to “respawn” not only in each consecutive iteration of Activision’s flagship title, but in its competition, such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and, to some extent, Medal of Honor.

Medal of Honor has the additional distinction of being one of many recent additions to the portrayal of masculinity in videogaming: that of a game featuring “dudes with beards.” (So much so, that it is a bonus for leveling up in the game.) Between Dragon Age 2’s default protagonist “Hawke,” and the early screenshots of Dominic Santiago in Gears of War 3, our heroes in 2011 may be more hirsute than before. (Guess they didn’t get that Schick Quattro for Christmas.) Even John Marston sports some healthy trail stubble.

In the end, bald or bearded – or both, if Max Payne 3 is any indication – publishers count on their core audience wanting to play the games they make. If they have to model their “cover boys” after the grooming habits of their focus groups, so be it; it puts food on their tables and lets them keep making games. And it may be cynical to say so, but people are naturally inclined to judge a book by its cover. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but a first impression shouldn’t be the last one.

Mass Effect, for one, was first recommended to me by a young lady who didn’t express any sense of alienation by its portrayal of an 18-35-year-old bald space marine on the cover. Rather, she encouraged me to try the game because of what exciting choices awaited within the game itself. We discussed other games that we enjoyed, such as Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell, both series prominently featuring different portrayals of masculinity on the surface, but rich with rewarding gameplay and thrilling stories bursting from within. Our mutual enthusiasm was that of the content of these games, rather than the image the publishers evoked to hedge their bets in favor of an easy sell.

So as time goes on, how will the covers of our videogames look? Will they be more reminiscent of a GQ magazine, with direct call-outs to its target audience? Or will publishers push the other way, maybe with something impossible to identify with, like abstract Color Field painting – a blue line intersecting a red block for Call of Duty 26? Maybe all of the covers will digitally capture the facial features of whoever is holding the game and render it into the image on the case. (Okay, that would be cool, if a bit creepy.) The future has always been difficult to predict, and as the videogame industry emerges from its “awkward teens,” how it chooses to portray its audience will define how it is perceived at large.

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But enough talk – have at you!

Except… what does “dominate” mean? Yes, the quantity of Sony’s exclusives roster will more than likely dwarf its rivals’ even after they have been announced (most likely at E3 this summer), and the same undoubtedly goes for its quality, too, but that leaves behind a distinction that holds just as much significance as, say, your buddy’s Gamerscore – pretty impressive within the magical ether that is Xbox Live, but a feat (or is that an achievement?) that dissipates in the wind outside your mom’s basement.

The reality of the situation is that the PS3 is still in dead-last place in America (globally, it fares much better; with a worldwide total of 42 million units, it trails just behind the 360’s 50 million install base – but this is due more to Microsoft’s fundamental inability to penetrate the gaijin-unfriendly waters of the Japanese market than any particular amount of success Sony may have in the other territories), and it’s going to take a lot for the company to crawl out from its perpetual third-place spot. The system has only been the best-selling console for some five months out of its total of 50 on the market; its best-performing titles are routinely outsold by their 360 counterparts. And while Sony has done much in the past few years to close the gap with Microsoft, it is still several million units away just in America – and then it has the juggernaut that is Nintendo to compete with. It’s not an easy road, with or without Uncharted 3 riding shotgun.

Yes, there are a great many expectations for 2011’s undeniably stellar software library to sell some systems and overtake the house that Master Chief built, and some units certainly will be moved, but only up to a very finite point; there were similarly lofty hopes for an explosion in sales surrounding the PS3’s first price drop, from $599 to $499, in July 2007, and following the introduction of the slim model in September 2009. Indeed, in the really real world, outside the influence of Xbox Live or the confines of fanboy forums, having, say, 10 exclusive games rather than four means very little.

The marketing of consoles is avowedly an iterative process – not unlike the art and craft of game development itself, taking one painstaking step after the other ad infinitum – and Sony is, by all indications, just ramping up with the PlayStation 3. But the company will very quickly find itself running out of time well before its strategy pays huge dividends against its competitors: the PS3 has, at best, one-and-a-half years before the next generation of consoles arrives, a launch window that may very well include the arrival of the PlayStation 4… and the starting anew of the battle over sales.