thedogbarks

The Big Guns Exclusive



E3 keynote presentations have become notorious for cringeworthy moments. The silence which greeted Kaz Hirai’s announcement of the Playstation 3’s price point was a memorable one. Anything Cammie Dunaway did at her E3 debut was another. But surely the most epic was at Microsoft’s 2006 press conference where Peter Moore showed us his guns that bore tattoos of Halo and GTA IV. 1% of twelve year old kids watching on live stream were desperate to know how they could get those sweet tattoos. Everyone else was too busy biting their bottom lip to stop themselves from crying with laughter. So what could cause a man to temporarily scar his body with a game logo? Had Microsoft spent the annual GDP of Luxembourg in order to acquire Rockstar’s most lucrative license? “This” said Peter, chomping on a cigar with his eyes bulging dramatically, “means we have a day one release of GTA IV on the 360!” Then he tore off his shirt, flung it into the audience and bellowed in triumph. This rampant display of machismo was in fact to celebrate the fact that the 360 version of Grand Theft Auto would launch on the same day as the Playstation 3.



The significance of this shouldn’t be understated as the franchise had until that point been intrinsically linked with the Playstation brand. Of more importance though were the two 360 exclusive DLC packs that cost Microsoft a cool 50 million. As a result of this, and a much larger user base, the 360 version sold far more its Playstation 3 counterpart. Will it remain exclusive? Observers remain divided on this subject but essentially it matters little now. With the release of The Ballad of Gay Tony the world has moved on from GTA IV. A 2010 release on the Playstation 3 wouldn’t have a great deal of impact. Still, when a man was willing to give us tickets to the gun show to relay the importance of an exclusive DLC pack, we realized that whilst huge 3rd party exclusives were becoming a thing of the past, DLC was the fanboy bragging rights of the future.

The Timed Exclusive

The one month exclusivity deal on Rockband 2 seems ludicrously petty in retrospect. Or even at the time. Whatever Microsoft paid Harmonix for their one month head start on the Playstation and Wii versions of the game was surely meaningless. It was just about the stupidest, crotch grabbing gesture in an industry which has become rather overwhelmed by them as of late. At least it would have been, if Sony and Atari hadn’t topped that feat.



“It doesn’t get and bigger and better than this blockbuster title.” What game could Sony’s European Product Marketing Director have possibly been referring to? Had Sony’s convinced Bungie to release Halo Reach on Playstation 3? Was Infinity Ward scrapping Modern Warfare 2 for 360? No. It was Ghostbusters. Sony secured Ghostbusters as a five month exclusive in Europe. Cue plenty of backslapping and self congratulation in Sony Europe, and bewilderment, confusion and pity from everyone else. The game had already been made; Sony had just thrown a bit of money at Atari in order to spite the few hardcore Ghostbusters fans in Europe who had been anticipating the game. In the pantheon of pointless dick moves, this one ranks pretty damn high. Glad to see those Sony Europe executives were earning their keep.

The 360 Exclusive.................................. that's also coming to PC



The PC is of course not dying, as 11 million World of Warcraft subscribers might be quick to remind you. So why should Microsoft, who has much to gain from the continued success of the platform, insist on treating it like an unwanted stepchild? If the PC market is mentioned it is done so briefly and with some distaste before they can then refocus the topic to its more beloved child, the 360. Take as an example Mass Effect.

"The thing we can tell you about the future of Mass Effect very simply is that there's going to be a trilogy; we've been on record in the past as saying we want that whole trilogy to be on the console", BioWare's Greg Zeschuk told GameDaily.
“Our focus is pure and simple; it's to deliver the best game possible for our fans with Mass Effect, and that's an Xbox 360 exclusive. Microsoft's a great partner...and they've really helped build the value of the product and we're proud to work with them."

After a long pause I imagine someone whispering in his ear before he turns back to the interviewer and blurts out, “Ohyeahandbythewayit’salsocomingoutonPC.”

The 'It's never coming to another conso... oh wait it just did' Exclusive



Bioshock was a 360 exclusive and there was no way in hell that it would ever see the light of day as a PS3 title. In fact as Ken Levine put it,

“I promise you, there is no secret plan about the PS3 that we’re keeping from people. There’s no PS3 development going on that we’re hiding. There’s lots of stuff that gets into game code, plans change over time and we got an exclusive deal with Microsoft … that’s not a Rosetta Stone discovery.”

He obviously had his fingers crossed at the time. One year later the game was released on the Playstation 3. I shouldn’t have been especially surprised about this, but I do feel a little deceived. I bought a 360 to sit alongside my PS3 in order to ensure that I could play this ground-breaking game. Whilst I don’t regret that purchase, there is still a lingering sense of bitterness over the concept of ‘exclusives' that stems from this game.

The Head Decapitation Exclusive



The jewel in the crown of the ‘exclusive’ multiplatform could never really be in doubt. I refer of course to the Gamecube classic, Resident Evil 4. The director Shinji Mikami was so certain that the game would remain a Gamecube exclusive that he said he would cut-off his own head if it were ever released on the Playstation 2. Just over nine months later the game was released on the Playstation 2, yet to this day Shinji Mikami’s head remains firmly upon his shoulders. At least the man has a sense of humor. In God Hand, another game he directed, one of the racing dogs was called ‘Shinji Mikami’s head’

The airport scene in Modern Warfare 2 has been described by many as a harrowing or affecting experience. Before I discuss that scene, I would like to bring up a far more uncomfortable moment that I experienced in Treyarch’s game Call of Duty World at War. I had an English friend and some Japanese friends over at my house playing some games when my English friend saw World at War and was interested to see the game in action. Being pretty thoughtless at times, I popped it in and started a new story mode. For those who haven’t played the game, the opening sequence involves your American character as a prisoner of war witnessing the brutal torture and execution of one of your comrades by your Japanese captors. We played the game for less than five minutes then, feeling painfully embarrassed, quit the game and moved on to something else.

Obviously this was a rather large cultural faux pas, but I never discussed how my friends felt about the situation. As close as we are it still seemed like to difficult a subject to broach. But I was surprised to learn afterwards that although World at War was never released in Japan, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun was. There were rumors (later proven to be unfounded) that Russian game stores had removed Modern Warfare 2 from their shelves. Some people feel that, if it were true, it would be an overreaction. So we come to the rather sticky dilemma; should we see the release of historically and culturally sensitive games as tasteless? Or as a triumph of freedom of expression and allowing adults the ability to make their own decisions on the content they are exposed to? Most people would probably agree with the second statement, but perhaps the reality is more unpalatable if the shoe were to be on the other foot.



Imagine instead, ignoring how radically different the plot would be, that the airport scene was set in America as opposed to Russia. Would you be more affected witnessing, or even participating in, the murder of innocent civilians? Of course there shouldn’t be a difference between nationalities of civilians but it is difficult to claim that the scene wouldn’t carry more impact if the people were of the same nationality as the player. Although the airport scene in particular has incited some controversy within the media I would expect the furore to be far greater if the scene in question was in JFK airport.

This leads to inevitable but misleading comparisons to games such as Grand Theft Auto. Why should the airport scene be so traumatic when, as the media has often pointed out, you can also kill innocent people in GTA? It depends on the person as to their response, but certainly the fact that the airport scene is a scripted event in which you have no ability to alter the eventual course of the mission makes a difference. Because the event is scripted and the outcome cannot be altered, the emotional response of the player to the situation is the most interesting aspect. In my case I sadly knew roughly what occurred at that point in the game before I played it, and as such I never really tried to prevent it by attacking any of the terrorists. I did however restrict myself to shooting at corpses and purposefully missed the innocents, but in a sense I don’t really know why. Whether you kill as many as you can or don’t fire a single shot the result doesn’t change. I also would be interested to know what other people did in this situation and why.



Essentially the ‘What if’ scenario that I’m postulating is whether you would play a game in which you played as an army in direct opposition to your own country. If instead of being an America soldier being tortured in a Japanese prisoner of war camp you could play as a Taliban freedom fighter being waterboarded in Guantanamo bay. If Six days in Fallujah had you play as an Iraqi. If were a Nazi soldier during the Second World War.

That is a lot of questions and I can provide few answers. I don’t imagine that there will be many high profile games that do approach first person perspective war games from the other side of the fence so we may never know. I only know that playing World at War in front of Japanese people is an experience that I am not keen on repeating in the future.

The highest rated game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. What do you think the second highest rated game of all time (according to metacritic) could possibly be? The shocking answer is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Released back in 2000 to universal acclaim, this game consumed countless hours of my life and led to a near death experience. But more on that later.



The Tony Hawk license has become so tainted in recent years that it’s hard to remember the time when each new installment was awaited with breathless anticipation. The game reinvigorated the flagging popularity of skateboarding and increased interest in the lifestyle and accoutrements surrounding it. So for better or for worse it briefly led to an increase in the percentage of kids wearing baggy ripped jeans that hung around their knees, hoodies bearing references to chemical consumption and hair so unkempt and bedraggled that hobos would shake their heads disapprovingly. Tony Hawk’s Ride, due to be released next week, comes with a skateboard peripheral which leaves us wondering why at this point we don’t just go outside and actually start skateboarding. The series, once shiny and new, has been hit hard by the brutal double team of Father Time and Mother Nature. It is being tipped by some journalists as the potentially biggest flop of the year. Enough about its rocky present, let’s go back to its glorious past.



The real genius of Tony Hawk 2 is that despite appearing to be a video game about skateboarding, it is really a video game about video games. It is gaming at its purest, in which the aim is to accumulate as high a score as possible within a time limit. Though it may tell you through an onscreen prompt that you are doing an ollie or a kickflip, in fact you are simply triggering a multiplier in a mathematical equation which is calculating the combination of your dexterity, decision making skills and technical ability. Repetition of tricks leads to smaller rewards, thus encouraging experimentation of combinations and even within the restricted levels, exploration was key to achieving the highest scores through triggering certain environmental bonuses. In fact one of the reasons the game became less appealing to me in later iterations was their focus on expanding the playing field; in the limited space greater ingenuity and guile were needed and it related more closely to a classic score attack game.

Well, having made the game sound as dull as an algebra lecture being given by Ben Affleck I think its time to move on to the game’s style. The wrapping of this hardcore score attack game was something which both drew gamers to it and repelled others from it. For those who were intrigued by the skating lifestyle there was much to appreciate. It had a cool and appropriate soundtrack including Rage Against the Machine, Millencolin, Public Enemy and Bad Religion at a time when licensed music was a rarity in video games, featured a lot of professional skateboarders and clips of their videos (and bails), and best of all it had Spiderman in it, still perhaps the most fun secret character in any game I have played. For those not interested in the skateboarding lifestyle it had a terrible soundtrack including a bunch of talentless kids screaming about the pain of life and featured douchebags you had never heard of getting paid far too much money to fall over and act like immature teenagers. But at least it had Spiderman. For those who were conceptually against it, they missed out on one of the most finely honed games of the console generation.



Owning it on the Dreamcast was in hindsight a poor choice. The Dreamcast had perhaps the worst D-pad in the history of gaming, and with Tony Hawk requiring rapid and constant D-pad movement (the analogue control was less responsive), my thumb was cut to shreds on a regular basis and required me to take alternate days off from the game. Unfortunately it was during one of these thumb resting alternate days that, having been inspired by my love of the game and my newfound appreciation of skateboarding culture, I decided to try it for real. I borrowed my brother’s skateboard and set off outside, with no prior experience, for a skate around my village. My village happens to have a lot of steep tarmaced hills and blind corners around it, but emboldened by my ability at the game I felt sure that a baptism of fire would be the best way to instantly develop the skill of skating. At this point I should probably mention that whilst I like playing sports, I never even learned how to ride a bicycle due to my poor balance. The adventure that followed was a mixture of frustration, embarrassment, and numerous face-to-tarmac introductions. I finally decided to call it quits when I gained enough momentum to head downhill at a decent pace only to have a car pull round the corner in front of me. Seeing as I had not yet mastered the 180 nosegrab, my only way to prevent myself from slamming into the car was by leaping sideways off the board and into a bush. It was at that point I decided that skateboarding was not for me.

Ah the foolishness of youth… except that I was actually 16 or 17 at the time…

Have you ever watched Samurai Pizza Cats? That classic anime was as much a part of my childhood as Transformers or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yet even when I watched it I never really paid much attention as to what was actually going on. Vague memories of a building that morphed into a gun, power suits and a cute female cat that made me feel funny inside were all I could recall. Recently I decided to watch some episodes again, partially out of curiosity and partly to confront my deepest fear that I have a furry fetish, and discovered to my surprise that the show was actually really funny. It was a revelation, somewhat similar I guess to people re-watching Simpson’s episodes from their youth and realizing that a lot of the jokes are targeted at an adult audience. Much of the humor comes from the fact that whilst the show originally aired in Japan, it was being broadcast in America. The cultural reference points being very different, the show is often self-referential and is fully aware of the ridiculous nature of the situation.

Upon doing a little research, a rather grandiose term for Wikipedia, I learned that whilst the translation team had been provided with tapes of the show, they weren’t given transcripts. This combined with the fact that much of the original dialogue made numerous references to Japanese culture led to them writing new scripts which bore few similarities to the Japanese version. The result was comic genius in which the characters voice their frustration at not being able to read the Japanese writing in the background and in one case the Narrator reading the wrong script.

Enough of your ramble down memory lane I hear you cry, what does this have to do with games? Well the same point is applicable to video games. We have come a long way from the early days of localizing Japanese games in which the companies janitor armed with a Japanese to English dictionary would attempt to retell a 50 hour RPG. Instead we have come to the point where for major releases dual language tracks are recorded in tandem and translation teams have finally realized that a having a sense of humor related to Western points of reference is as important as being bilingual. PS2 game God Hand features many references to American pop culture including Clerks, Star Wars, 50 Cent, Christopher Walken and even the Dukes of Hazard.



With the Japanese gaming industry aiming to appeal more to a Western audience recently, it is refreshing to still see some games that previously would have been deemed ‘too Japanese’ being localized for a Western release. Game Center CX is one such example, and although the name may be familiar to fans of Shinya Arino’s cult TV show, most people would have no idea that it is based on a Japanese show which documents a comedian trying to beat incredibly difficult retro games in a limited period of time. Instead with the localization they enlisted the aid of real video game journalists (with pseudonyms) and put their images into the in-game magazines that your character can peruse. 1UP’s former Editorial Director Dan Hsu features as Dan Sock for example. Despite the low sales of the game, it was nonetheless a bold attempt to give, what is considered a niche title even in Japan, some relevance to a Western audience.



We have to also salute the fan translators who worked tireless with no financial reward. Before Japan cared about selling their games overseas, their passion led to investing vast amounts of their own time in talking games that seemed unlikely to see a Western release, Final Fantasy III for the NES being the most famous example. Released in 1990, it was only officially released overseas in a 2006 DS remake. An ambition fan translation project meant that those without an excellent knowledge of Japanese could understand the game a mere nine years after its release in Japan.

Although we should rightly celebrate the ready availability of Japanese games translated coherently into English, we should also celebrate the early efforts that will remain timeless due to their unintentional hilarity. We salute you.

Worse than telling a lover you used to be another gender. Worse than telling your girlfriend you have a highly contagious STD. Worse than telling your conservative Mormon family that you are gay. Worse than all of these things, is telling a serious Street Fighter fan that your favorite character is Ken Masters. Yet that is what I am doing today. I come not on my hands and knees begging for forgiveness, but with an outstretched hand looking for understanding. I am here to humanize the faceless, reprehensible masses that always choose Ken. As you scream abuse at your online opponent for picking the ‘same bastard as every other punk noob’, and prepare to face off against your fifth Ken in a row, bear in mind that behind every Ken Masters is a real person. And one who probably isn’t that good at the game.

The odd thing is that in a sense I never really had a choice about which character I was going to be due to my relationship with my older brother. I idolized him, copied everything he did and liked everything he liked, but as a result I always got second pick. He chose the Decepticons so I was the Autobots; he was Cobra so I was G.I. Joe; he was Ryu so I was Ken. Besides showing that my brother had an inherent fascination with evil, it showed how natural it was that my choice of character was a mirror image of his. Ryu was quiet and brooding whilst Ken was brash and arrogant, but essentially they were two sides of the same coin. But since that was about eighteen years ago perhaps I should look to justify my love of Ken Masters a little more eloquently.



I have been faithful to Ken for all of the eighteen years we have known each other. I can’t claim to be a perfect monogamist. I have strayed from the true path in the past, experimenting with the sultry pout of Cammy, the rippling thighs of Chun-Li, the rock hard abs of Fei-Long and even the Jack-booted eroticism of Bison, but I can’t help but come back to Ken. It just feels so comfortable and familiar, like putting on a pair of warm gloves. Every time a new iteration in the Street Fighter is released it is like a reunion with an old friend and the ebb and flow of his moves and the roll of the arcade stick is almost instinctive. I know exactly what his capabilities are and thus in a competitive match, victory feels not like a mindless spamming of special moves but the sense of tactically outmaneuvering an opponent using an extension of the body. My awkward high school studentesque fumbling whilst playing with Cammy means that victory is largely down to playing an inferior foe, or fluking a win. I have tried to leave him before, but in the end I am at my happiest playing Street Fighter when it is with Ken. It sounds ridiculous I know, and I too have often questioned my sanity when I notice that I’m using one character 95% of the time. With another twenty or so characters left to watch despondently from the sidelines it makes me wonder why I am really that excited about Super Street Fighter IV.

Back story isn’t especially important in the fighting genre but Ken is certainly one of the more fleshed out characters in the Street Fighter universe. His fraternal bond with Ryu is central to the game, and their relationship based on a fierce rivalry makes for one of the more relatable aspects of the narrative. It isn’t complex, but their continual desire to test their abilities against each other provides a link throughout the various additions to the franchise. His flashy personality and cocky thumbs up victory pose are as iconic for me as his ludicrous flaming Dragon Punch which symbolizes much of his personality.



It’s a shame that choosing Ken is like seen as similarly evil to voting for the communist party. Street Fighter II was the first console game I ever owned and still one of the best. I’m no expert at the game by any means, or even that good, but playing as Ken provides a link to the start of my love affair with video games, and as such I won’t cast him aside in order to placate an angry mob. If you have a beef with people who choose Ken then don’t worry, there are still quite a few people online who also seem to have a fondness for him.

Evil Ranking Chart

5 – Watching American Idol
4 – Breaking wind in an elevator
3 – Stealing from blind orphans
2 - Picking Ken in an online game of Street Fighter IV
1 - Throwing puppies off cliffs