During the mid-90's, first person shooters were the primary form of entertainment for tormented and sheltered teenagers. This boon pushed the PC industry quickly through several phases of graphical and processing hardware. Early on, a small sect of nerdy bands roamed this unexplored land seemingly ruled by the company id Software. These bands often promoted themselves solely through imitation and borne from that bequeathed a slew of gun-happy games.



Although this genre has far from vanished, the FPS is now often considered mindless and even 'casual' to the ever-expanding base of video game players. The abundancy of genres that now make up the video game market abase the FPS to a minority. Many developers even try to hide the fact that their game is, at its core, an FPS in hopes of reaching a larger audience. However, because of the apparent ease of FPS creation and the pace at which a player can pick up and play them, I doubt we will ever see full demise of the first person shooter.



Recently, I downloaded a demo of Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars and although the game was rather plain, I thought the concept had value. For a few dollars, a gamer could download a complete FPS, cause some mayhem, and not end up feeling like they invested a wad of cash for a few hours of fun. Sometimes I think that developers tack on a single-player campaign to an FPS just to fulfiill some kind of contractual requirement. Properly marketed and maintained (keeping the scenery fresh of course), I personally believe that a developer could create simple FPS games and sell them at a fair prices entirely through console stores. PopCap Games has made a killing selling only casual games online. Although the rest of us gamers are getting older and our casual time is getting shorter, we all don't like spending our time playing with balls and jewels.

Just an idea .

By the way, I just preordered Painkiller: Resurrection off of Steam. For $26 it came with Painkiller: Black Edition and Painkiller Overdose. Pretty good deal I think.

Venezuela to outlaw violent video games, toys

"Venezuela would be one of few countries to impose an all-out ban on the "manufacture, importation, distribution, sales and use of violent video games and bellicose toys." The proposed law would give Venezuela's consumer protection agency the discretion to define what products should be prohibited and impose fines as high as $128,000.

Similar concerns have prompted many countries, including Brazil, Germany and China, to prohibit the sale of specific video games. Most, including the United States, have opted for ratings systems to warn parents and users of violent or sexual content."

Video games: political and parental scapegoat. Proper guidance begins at the foundations. Increased piracy, as witnessed in China, will be a natural reaction to this ban.

Yes, first blog in half a year and it will be only a few lines. Since Silent Hill: HC was fairly disappointing for us long-time series fans, I thought a header change was in order. So here's another golden opportunity for a developer to screw it all up. However, I doubt in Team Ico's case they'll perform any less than stellar. It's not like they're handing it off to a US company, right? Nope, they understand what a precious commodity a good idea is. So here we go, the theme of the blog: Another 'Games as Art' topic .... noooo, don't zone off into space on me because this one's going to be easy. What games would you personally classify as art? You don't have to rationalize your decision unless you really want to of course. Here's mine: Bioshock 2, Silent Hill 2, and Shadow of the Colossus. These games understood what atmosphere and emotion can do for a game.

In searching out some news on recent projects from Yoko Kanno (read: genius) I stumbled across some recently breaking news. It appears that a live-action anime Cowboy Bebop movie is in the works at Fox. In my humbled opinion, animation of this caliber should never be turned into "reality". There are nuances and personalities in the series that can never be captured correctly with actors. They've already announced that Keanu Reeves will be playing the role of Spike.




"All we are is dust in the wind," dude.


Albeit Reeves 'looks' like Spike, I personally doubt he can pull off Spike's deep, resounding internalized intelligence based upon his recent dull portrayal of Klaatu in "The Day the Earth Stood Still". I'm also curious who they're going to find to play the excitable Ed and Ein without resorting to Scooby-Doo-like computer scorcery. So far music maestro Yoko Kanno has yet to say whether she's on board with this project and, without her, it's highly questionable that the movie will have as much of a cultural impact as the original series. Kanno's music is what put the Bebop in Cowboy Bebop, transcending the anime to a timeless piece of artwork.

On a totally unrelated note, I've recently tried out both TVersity and PlayOn. TVersity is a great media server for streaming content (videos, pictures, music) from your PC to your game system, although it's rather devoid of any real internet video streaming. Relying solely on your game system to pull music through your media center enabled PC can be rather limiting (the PS3 plays mostly DivX), but TVersity can play anything that your PC can without any help from Windows.





PlayOn, however, is in a whole different category. It perfectly streams, in quite high resolution mind you, videocasting from such sources as Hulu, YouTube, and CBS. It can't play the content currently on your PC, but the amount of media out on the web easily makes up for that. Hulu is definitely the best source of entertainment currently and I have a feeling that online media is still only in its infant stage. Be prepared for more partners to join in the video streaming revolution.

It took no effort to get both of these programs running simultaneously on my PS3 through a hard-wired router. The folder system on the PS3 also makes it easy to find recent episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy and old episodes of MacGyver and the A-Team. TVersity if a totally free software right now but PlayOn is only free for 15 days before you're required to purchase it. For the "low" price, however, this is a great alternative to buying an extra cable box.

NPR reports that despite a faltering economy, games sales are still up tremendously (Original Article: In Tough Economic Times, Video Games Console). Not only are games 'economical' in their value, but they're also often just as good the second or third play through. There are only a handful of movies that I truly enjoy sitting through repetitively. The only part I don't agree on in this article is the statement on 'diversity'. I think games can be more diverse than some movies. No longer does market weakness affect solely one country and no where else would I ever find equal ground to discuss a hobby with people from around the world.