November 2011

I didn’t realize until a friend pointed it out that Skyrim was a play on words. Take “Middle Earth” and flip it. Now, I’m only 40ish, maybe 50ish hours into Skyrim and I’ve come to the conclusion that that is pretty much the only thing they’ve flipped. Skyrim is a magnificent example of taking a genre, taking tropes, taking a well-established set of assumptions and playing them straight. This is the quintessential American RPG.

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, it seems to me that American RPGs have at least two of the following four basic traits:

1) High customizability of one’s own character. Instead of being a “level 1 fighter” who will go up a level and become a “level 2 fighter”, you start out with a certain set of inclinations given you by your race (which you can pick) and away we go. If you want to become an expert at using a bow and arrow, you can use a bow and arrow and if you instead feel like becoming an expert in two handed maces, you can do that instead. Your class doesn’t define what skills are available… every skill is available. Your skills go on to define what you are. Your class is the one that *YOU* create.

2) Variability when it comes to dealing with quests. A character comes up to you and says “hey, I’d like you to smuggle this ale out of here for me… there will be gold in it for you! But don’t talk to the foreman! He’s a jerk!”. You have two options on how to resolve this quest: You can smuggle that ale out of there and collect the gold *OR* you can talk to the foreman and ask him if he knows that he has smugglers on the floor. Of course, not *EVERY* quest need have two mutually exclusive ways to solve it (sometimes “go there, get item, come back with item” is good enough). It’s very good for the *BIG* quests have that, though.

3) Trade-offs when it comes to equipment. Light armor lets you move quickly but doesn’t defend you as well. Heavy armor can take a hit but you can’t sneak worth a dang. Maces do more damage but swing slower. Daggers swing quickly but require many more hits. Bows do very little damage, really… but can hit from yards and yards and yards away. And so on… there’s more going on than saying “an attack rating of 25 is better than an attack rating of 23″.

4) A “Great Man” theory of history. This is more than merely the feeling that the world (or the universe) is going to come up to a crossroads very, very quickly and without intervention there will be a certain outcome. It’s the very idea that there are multiple ways that things could go and which way will be decided by the character. This goes above and beyond the brewery quest mentioned in #2… that still gives the player the feeling that no matter what happens the brewery will still sell ale tomorrow, the week following, the year after that, and the decade after that and after that and business as usual whether or not you happened to show up. No, I’m talking about the sensation that there are factions that have a great deal of balance between them and it is up to you, the player, to drag the faction you choose across the finish line *FIRST*. It’s the sensation that you will have a footprint upon the world.

How does Skyrim do on these accounts? Well, without spoilers, I’ll just say that they are all there.

Are there downsides? Well, the early parts of melee combat are, as I’ve said, a little dull. There is also the issue of how much of a time investment this game will ask of you: this ain’t no “get it done in a weekend” kinda game the way that Portal 2 was. This is a game that has 80 hours in the first playthrough at least… and that’s only finding a handful of the sidequests. I could easily see hitting 120 with this. (Hey, there are folks for whom that last part is a downside.)

Those are easily waved away (and melee combat, once you actually get good at it, gets a *LOT* more interesting). This game is the culmination of a *LOT* of video game evolution. It is, in a word, a masterpiece.

So that’s my recommendation for you this week.

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On the main site, E.D. asks ”The question is, which is the better machine: Sony’s Playstation 3 or Microsoft’s Xbox 360?”

While my own personal preferences provide an answer to this question, the answer is not exactly clear-cut. For E.D. (or anybody, actually) I need the answers to the following questions before I can give my best advice.

How often do you play? How important is playing the new game, when it comes out, to you? How important is getting the newest, latest, and greatest DLC to you? How important is playing online multiplayer to you? Are there young kids in the house? Are there adolescents in the house? How important is owning a Kinect? How important are console-exclusive games?

First question is “How often do you play?”

If you play only once every two months for a *HUGE* session taking up Friday/Saturday/Sunday and then let the machine sit there for another few months, I might suggest the PS3. The PS3 has a blu-ray player. Until recently, the XBox didn’t have 1080p capability (the new slim black 360s do)… so if you want to use 1080p Netflix capability, you’re going to need a new 360 but you could get away with purchasing a used PS3. (I have both consoles… it’s likely to find that my 360 tray is holding a game and my PS3 is holding a DVD or Blu-Ray disc.)

The next questions are: “How important is playing the new game, when it comes out, to you? How important is getting the newest, latest, and greatest DLC to you?”

In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of games coming out with “Game of the Year Editions” (such as Fallout 3, Borderlands, and Red Dead Redemption) where the game is released a year or two after its initial release with all of the DLC bundled within (most of this DLC costs about 10 bucks each as it drip drip drips out during the aforementioned couple of years). If it is vitally important to you to play the new DLC the moment it comes out, I’d probably recommend the 360. I find the 360′s store much more pleasant to work with that the PS3′s store. If, however, you plan on never purchasing content from an online store, I’d say that you’ve probably got yourself a tie between the two systems (with the tiniest edge to the PS3 for reasons pertaining to interface customability… my PS3 interface, for example, looks like a pip-boy and that makes me happy).

The next question comes: “How important is playing online multiplayer to you?”

Well, the most important question that needs to be asked is “what system do your friends that you want to play with use?” If your three IRL best buds all have System X, you’re going to want System X and it’s just that simple. You can’t play with 360 people from the PS3 and you can’t play with PS3 people from the 360. If, however, you take the attitude that online strangers are just friends you haven’t made yet, there is a particular dynamic that you need to address:

The 360 requires an annual subscription to XBox Live Gold to play multiplayer and the PS3 does not. The list price for Gold is $60, but you should be able to easily find a sale or a discount card that will bring that price down by 10 bucks (Costco, for example, sells cards with a code on them that will give you a year’s worth of Gold for $47.99). The PS3 is free, free, free. The PS3 also just this year had an outage that lasted more than a month. (I also understand that PS3 has dedicated servers for games while the 360 has a cloud thing going on but I don’t play multiplayer and so cannot speak to how much of an impact that has upon games.)

The last questions are: “Are there young kids in the house? Are there adolescents in the house? How important is owning a Kinect?”

The most kid-friendly peripheral I’ve ever seen is the Kinect. Games like Kinectimals and Dance Central (and for the littler little ones, Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster) are not only kid-friendly but it’ll have them doing something approaching exercising while they play (and if they want to five-star a hard song, they’ll be sweating). The PS3 has, sigh, the PS3 Move. While the hardware has some really, really interesting potential there has not been a single game that meets this potential. Dance Central has sold 360 Kinect bundles (and there are a number of games that are sweeteners… games that wouldn’t make you buy a Kinect but glad you already have one). I don’t know of a single Move game that has sold a single console. I don’t know of a single Move game that has made folks glad they already had a Move. If you find these kind of games intruiging, the 360 wins hands down.

(Puts on grown-up hat. There is also the issue of the PS3 having an internet browser that can go anywhere, yes, anywhere. The 360 does not have such a browser. The internet can be a wild and wooly place and having access to a browser that mom/dad might easily forget about monitoring would have been THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME when I was that age. I could see how a parent might feel differently, however.)

The last question comes: “How important are console-exclusive games?”

We’ve already discussed the 360′s console-exclusive games that use the Kinect, but there are a number of games for the PS3 only that are very, very good. LittleBigPlanet is one of the most charming platformers I’ve ever seen. The UNCHARTED games have stories and special effects that make them better than many big-budget action movies I’ve seen. (I played Uncharted 2 for an hour and was blown away… I asked Maribou to come into the room and just watch the first five minutes… she found reasons to stick around for a few hours and, over the next week or so, found excuses to read or pay the electricity bill while sitting on the couch in the basement rather than elsewhere and, even if she was using the computer in the next room, had me call her in for the cut scenes and the platforming scenes). Heavy Rain will get in your head and mess with it. It’s one of the best thriller titles out there and it’s spectacularly intense (I had to turn one gameplay video off because it had a dad walking through a mall calling the name of his son… man, that’s messed up). AND ON TOP OF THAT, there are new collections coming out like for God of War or The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus… and these were games that sold consoles in their own right.

There’s also an issue of how games that come out on both consoles look and feel… I, personally, think that games look better on the PS3 but handle better on the 360 (but that may be little more than a matter of taste). I’d say that this one comes out to a wash.

Clear as mud? Let me sum up:

If you are going to play games every day, play DLC as soon as it comes out, and ignore such things as Game of the Year games, you’re going to want a 360. If you’re going to play with your kids and occasionally tell them to get off their butts and exercise, you’re going to want a 360 and a Kinect.

If you are going to play games once in a blue moon but watch movies and/or Netflix quite regularly, you’re going to want a PS3. If you care about games that are only released on one console rather than another (that isn’t a Kinect game, of course), you’re going to want a PS3.

All that to say: you need *BOTH*.

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So… what are you reading and/or watching?

I’ve (FINALLY) finished Fringe: The First Season and have started on Fringe: The Second Season (seriously, revelations in the last couple of shows totally blew me away even as I should have totally seen them coming). This is one heck of a show, I tell you what.

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As part of the post-feast festivities, I may actually break out Hulk Hogan’s Main Event this weekend for just long enough to remind me that I seriously want to get back to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

So… what are you playing?

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Is it just me or is beaujolais nouveau just a way to get you to spend 10 bucks on a 6 dollar bottle of wine?

Anyway, we’ll be picking up a bottle of Georges for our company tonight. We’ll probably spend more time on the habanero cheddar we picked up from the hippie store. The cheddar is certainly older.

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Some people are born with family, some achieve family, and some have family thrust upon them.

We spent Thursday at our family that we were born with. Friday we will be spending time with the family that we have achieved. Saturday will be the gaming session that happened to not happen last week. Sunday will be, one hopes, a day of rest and laundry.

So… what’s on your docket?

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While it’s certainly true that I am the second luckiest person on the planet*, I try not to focus on such things because it strikes me as somewhat unseemly. Let me just say that I am thankful for Maribou, all of the cats who somehow ended up in the house, and all y’all.

In starting and abandoning a list about all of the things I am thankful for, just know that many of the things that happen to show up in this next video featured prominently under those three things listed above.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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