Summer!

There's a hat trick of anticipated roleplaying games for the Sony PSP coming out this Spring and Summer.  When I initially bought my Sony PSP 1000, I was hoping for an awesome catalog of RPGs to play, considering the Playstation and Playstation 2.  That really hasn't been the case.  Armed with my Darth Vader emblazoned PSP3000, my PSP game library is a shadow of its former self.  Shin Megami Tensai: Persona was fun, but even that was a remake.  Beyond that, I can only remember having true PSP RPG fun with other remakes, like Final Fantasy Tactics and Star Ocean First Departure.

SMT: Persona 3

That being said, one of the titles I'm looking forward to this summer is a remake: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3.  It's shipping on July 6, 2010 for $39.99.  Originally released on the PS2, it gained a little bit of controversy because of the way its characters summon their powers: shooting themselves in the head.  If you can accept that bit of storytelling, it has a compelling storyline and a turn based combat system with some automated AI party member elements.  I own the limited edition for the PS2 but I never completed or got very far in it.  That has more to do with finding new shiny things to occupy my time than the game itself.  By the time I got around to wanting to play it again I had an LCD TV, which makes the poor PS2 look awful.  And then this version was announced.  So I shelved the PS2 version in anticipation of some awesome fun on the PSP.  There's supposedly some new content, including the option of a female main character.

Hexyz Force

Atlus is keeping themselves pretty busy.  In addition to SMT: Persona 3 Portable, they're also publishing Hexyz Force on May 25, 2010 for $29.99.  I haven't read too much about the game, but Atlus keeps pushing and marketing the aspect that it has two whole story lines to play through.  This doesn't seem too unique a concept, as off the top of my head I can think of the Front Mission series having multiple play throughs unlocking the entirety of the story.  Here's the marketing blurb:

Hexyz Force for PlayStation Portable is a traditional RPG taking place in the world of Berge. This world has two sides to it, one light and one dark. Accordingly, the player will be able to choose between two different protagonists at the game's beginning. In the light scenario, the protagonist is a shrine maiden by the name of Cecilia, whereas the dark part's hero is a knight called Leevan. Depending on this choice, the setting, story and characters will change fundamentally.

Japanese Cover

The title I'm most excited for is Valkyria Chronicles 2.  This is probably because I don't own a PS3 and never got to play the first Valkyria Chronicles game.  Being a strategy RPG (SRPG) junky, the lack of VC has been torture.  The game is set in a historical fiction WW2 setting, with extra emphasis on fiction.  The setting is complimented by a graphics treatment that makes the game appear to be drawn on canvas.  It all goes together in a way that reminds me of the anime Pumpkin Scissors.  I can't wait until the game is released by Sega on August 31, 2010 for $39.99.  The SRPG gameplay combined with action/shooter elements should fill a gaping hole in the current PSP lineup.  I can only play Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea so many times.

Yvonne/Miranda

The uncanny valley is a robotics term coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori.  If the familiarity of a robot was graphed over the realism, the valley expresses the area between an unrealistic looking robot and a real life person.  There's a large dip in how comfortable people feel when viewing or dealing with something that is so very close to being realistic but not quite there.

As computer generated animation has improved in fidelity, animators have crept closer to the valley.  Normally it's not too bad but many point out SquareEnix's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as an example.  I don't feel that it's too bad there.  There are however some factors in Bioware's Mass Effect 2 that definitely creep me out.  The prime culprit is picture to the left.  The character of Miranda Lawson is both voice acted by and modeled after actress Yvonne Strahovski most famous for her role on Chuck.  Seeing the not quite lifelike animations on the not quite lifelike computer model of her was definitely strange.  It was only magnified by her voice coming out of the speakers.  This wasn't just because her voice is coming out of an eerily close representation but also because of her voice quality: she used her natural accent.  In the role of Sara in Chuck she forces an American accent, but in Mass Effect 2 it's her normal speaking voice.  I really can't say if any changes would have been for the better.  EA/Bioware definitely used her being in the game as a marketing bullet point though.

The game's voice acting had some other odd choices.  The quarian's are full of strong character actors.  One of my favorites: Adam Baldwin, seems to have used his speech patterns from Firefly's Jayne Cobb.  So out from this suited alien comes an odd western drawl while standing next to a very similar character who is voiced by the French accented smoky voice lady from Flashforward.

Look at that dip!

Overall, I definitely would have preferred a cast of experienced voice actors instead of Hollywood actors.  The cast does include one voice actor who should be instantly recognizeable to any anime fan: Steve Blum.  After checking IMDB, I find it amazing that he acted several characters that I did not initially identify him in while playing the game.  And that's the way it should be.  I shouldn't be going "Oh, the ship's computer is Tricia Helfer" while I'm trying to play.  It removes part of the immersion factor.  And after so many people have worked so hard in bringing a game and it's world to life, it seems a shame to mar it with that kind of breaking of the fourth wall.

The amazingly star studded cast for reference:

• Shohreh Aghdashloo
• Maggie Baird
• Adam Baldwin
• Michael Beattie
• Claudia Black
• Steve Blum
• Keith David
• D.C. Douglas
• Keythe Farley
• Seth Green
• Jennifer Hale
• Tricia Helfer
• Michael Hogan
• Brandon Keene
• Adam Lazzarre-White
• Mark Meer
• Carrie-Anne Moss
• Martin Sheen
• Liz Sroka
• Yvonne Strahovski
• Courtenay Taylor
• Simon Templeman
• Jocelyn Ahlf
• plus too many more, haha.  Look it up on IMDB if you want more names

Pokéwalker Included!

So Nintendo revised Pokémon Gold/Silver with HeartGold/SoulSilver for the DS.  And in what I can only imagine is an attempt to thwart software piracy, released a pack-in hardware accessory with the version of the game: the Pokéwalker.  What is this ingenious device?  It's a pedometer that you beam your Pokémon to to level up by walking.

Genius.

Not only can you beam over via infrared a single Pokémon from your PC Box, but an item as well.  You can then beam this item to another Pokéwalker.

There are also a couple mini-games you can play on your Pokéwalker.  You can sift through tufts of grass looking for a wild Pokémon to fight and capture.  You can also look for treasure in the form of items.  Both of these activities use up Watts which are generated by walking.  You've got to work for you fun!

You can also check the last 7 days of steps and your lifetime number of steps taken.  There's no off button so it stays on all the time though it goes to sleep after a while.  You can adjust the contrast of the LCD as well as adjust the volume between loud, soft, and silent.

I Choose You Little LCD Screen!

Overall, the Pokéwalker adds a new dimension to your Pokémon play.  In a single day of work as a computer programmer, I generated about 1800 steps.  Pretty sad.  Maybe now that spring is here and I'm going to start running/walking again I can generate some more.

It's important to note that your Pokémon will only level up once per walk after it goes back in to your DS cart.  Also your Pokémon never really leaves the cart and there are instructions on how to force it to come back from its walk should you lose your Pokéwalker.

Targeted at Small Children and Forgetful Adults?

In Achron you can time travel and fix that mistake.  Go back in time and build some anti-air to accompany those tanks.  Maybe instead you reroute them to avoid the enemy aircraft.  All while you're doing this, your opponent can see you meddling with the timeline and perhaps work some interference of their own.

The developer says that they've taken measures to balance the time travel so that players will have to weigh the benefits with cost.  In an interview they directly address my initial concern about games devolving in to giant battles at the start of the game's timeline.

Achron definitely has the potential to be Super Awesome!

A recent discussion amongst a few of my followed on Twitter brought this question to mind: how did the piracy of copyrighted works evolve to how it is today?  Thanks to digital reproductions of digital products, there is rarely any difference between an original licensed work and a pirated copy.  When copyright law was envisioned these circumstances can't have been imagined.

It's important to keep in mind why copyright law exists.  Wikipedia starts to define copyright as "... the set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work."  Why does an author need exclusive rights in the first place?  The same Wikipedia article quotes the World Intellectual Property Organization, saying that copyright law is there "To encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public."  Artists need to get paid!  If anyone could just copy their stuff and have it for themselves without paying for a license then the original artist in this case would not get paid.

When it comes to physical art, reproductions are usually obvious.  There's also less intrinsic value: an original painting is vastly superior to a print or reproduction.  Original works of this nature stay naturally expensive because of their limited supply.  Creating unlicensed copies of paintings, sculptures, books, etc. are not free and this limits the market.  Things change drastically when it comes to the digital medium.  Computer software, music, and film are all distributed in digital formats.  Being digital, they can be reproduced with zero loss of data which makes them perfect copies of the original.  Now where's the motivation for purchasing a license for the material from the creator?  A consumer can have a perfect copy at virtually no cost to themselves.  That's certainly hard to turn down.

Here's the crux of the issue.  A common justification for piracy is that the pirate is not stealing anything.  Nothing is being taken from the creator in to the possession of the pirate.  Based on the justification and origin of copyright law, we can take this argument as a Straw man.  It's not the act of the pirating or downloading.  That's an outdated comparison to traditional theft.  The problem here is the lack of action.  As a pirate, an unlicensed user of copyrighted material, a person has not compensated the creator.  An answer to that argument is that the pirate would not have purchased it anyway.  That just seems disingenuous.  Why are you consuming it at all?  If it's good enough to watch, read, listen to, or play, it's good enough for you to compensate the author.

It seems like piracy should be self defeating.  If an author does not receive payment for their work, they would cease making it.  However the world is not black and white.  There will always be people conscientious enough to pay for their entertainment instead of obtaining it unlicensed.  In essence these pirates leach off the efforts of both authors and paying customers.

Copyright law exists to enforce common human decency.  This becomes more important with the anonymity of the Internet.  I imagine most people who pirate software would not walk in to the office of a software developer, copy a product on to a portable hard drive and walk out.  Being able to do so anonymously and with little effort makes it a different story.

Sometimes material isn't available as a licensed property.  This happens often in the international film industry.  Surely it can't be a problem to obtain a copy of a film that isn't available for licensing in your home country.  I'd say as long as you properly license that material if it becomes available then any possible wrongs there have been righted.

Chime in down below with your thoughts on copyright and piracy!

Star Trek Online

The Open Beta for Star Trek Online is finished.  Here are a few collections of screen shots I've taken while playing.  To end the Open Beta, Cryptic invaded Federation Space with a bunch of Borg!  Lot's of fun.

I'm very excited for the upcoming Head Start that begins at 1PM EST on Friday, January 29, 2010.

I'm thinking about going Tactical Officer for my captain in an escort class ship.  Full DPS at first.  I did Science Officer in an escort in Open Beta and it was a lot of fun.  Having the extra DPS in away missions when I'm in a full team of players might be good though!

The End of Open Beta Event

screenshot_2010-01-26-18-22-43

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This is the second day of the promotion and they've started out strong.  The first day was Rope'n'Fly which was pretty popular for a while and today Zombie Pizza.  Both are games I've wanted to try in the past but that didn't rank high up enough in my interest to warrant a purchase.

Go take a look at freeappaday.com every day to see what gift is waiting for you!

The New Years Blowout

Another batch of iPhone Appsters has gotten together for a combined iPhone App Store promotion. Unlike the Appvent Calendar, most of these are discounted instead of free. Let's take a quick look at the games that have been discounted for this New Year's sale:

Dragon Eye

Dragon Eye

This is another version of Simon.  There are 4 colored buttons.  The game plays back a sequence of lighting them up and you need to tap them in the same sequence.  There are three difficulty levels and achievements.  I've come to the conclusion that Simon was a lot of fun 25 years ago when it came in a physical box with tangible buttons but not so much now on the iPhone.  Please stop making Simon clones developers!  The graphics are nice and there's a decent amount of polish here.

Aqua Wars

Aqua Wars

Another ancient game design, though this time it's taken from older video games at least.  There submarines moving across the screen at various speeds and depths.  You have a boat on the surface that can drop depth charges.  You can move your boat let and right using tilt controls.  There is a little added depth thanks to upgrades you can purchase between levels using coins that you collect during them.  These coins float up from the submarines you destroy.  The graphics are another attempt at "kiddy" or "childlike" drawings that falls a little flat.

Volcano Planet

Volcano Planet

Here's the only game of this bunch that I found entertaining.  Another very simple concept with added dimension.  Volcano Planet is wack-a-mole on a sphere.  You can spin it around and tap on volcanoes to put them out.  They make musical tones when you do.  Why?  Who knows.  It's fun in short stretches but I found it definitely a little easy.  The planet has momentum so I found my self just spinning the thing around and tapping at any volcanoes that gas geysered out of.  The geysers have nice particle effects but the screen is a little busy with numbers and scores for such a simple game.  I'm keeping this one for now but it might wear out its welcome quickly.

Outnumbered

Outnumbered

Outnumbered is a multiplayer 3rd person shooter.  You have 4 options in weapons which autofire at your current target.  You use an on screen directional pad for movement.  There's no way to manually point your camera so you have to rely on movement and tapping on targets to get the job done.  I'm not a fan of 3D graphics just to be 3D.  The third dimension doesn't add anything to these flat environments.  This game would be much more fun if it was just a top down 2D shooter.  I'm pretty sure Outnumbered won't be staying around on my iPhone.

Hi, How Are You and Sword of Fargoal are both on sale.  I already own them both and am mostly happy with them.  They're priced at $0.99 and $2.99 respectively.  Battle for Wesnoth is on sale as well for $1.99 and I'm going to have to bite on that one.  I played that game a bit on the computer and it was great turn based strategy fun in single and multi-player.

In total, there are 30 apps taking part in the promotion.  Head on over to The Second Annual New Year's App Blowout for the complete list and pricing.

• Zombie Driver $4.99
• Lucasarts Adventure Pack $2.49
• Time Gentlemen Please! and Ben There, Dan That! Double Pack $2.49
• Evil Genius $1.99
• AI War: Fleet Command $9.99
• Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II $19.99
• Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned $6.69
• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! $7.49
• Bookworm Adventures Volume 2 $7.49
• Trine $7.99
• Killing Floor $4.99

Killing Floor is one of today's specials so I'll have to pick that up today if I want it.  The others I'll wait until the 3rd to see if they become daily specials.

Below are some of the games that I deleted today to help clear up some screen space. They were all free to me but probably cost $0.99 now that their sales are over.

Dark Raider 3GS - It's a double stick shooter with some light puzzle elements. It's 3GS because it takes advantage of some graphics tech. The graphics aren't any better for it.

Project Phoenix - Another bad double stick shooter. The variation here is that you're some sort of tank. wooo.

Equilibrio - It's a poorly implemented semi-physics puzzler. You tilt the phone to make the ball roll through a side view of platforms. The ball has one roll animation which is set to fast. The tutorial levels are too boring to get through to any game that might be there.

Moon Drop - Stuff falls. You have to tap to have the stuff apply thrust. They'll thrust basically towards your finger. With multiple stuff falling you need to place your finger appropriately so that all the stuff lands in the target.

Balcassa - It's a sliding puzzle but instead of sliding tiles, you roll cubes. Each side of the cubes has a different face. So they have puzzles that say white in upper right and red in lower left. It boils down to iterations of rolling cubes around. Not run, just rote.

Spheric - Shoot marble at other marbles to match 3 game. The variation here is that the marbles hug the inside of a circle. You launch the new marble from the center towards the outside. You can tile the phone to make the marbles roll around the outside, make gaps, etc. and then launch the new marble in the direction you're pointing. I don't really like twitch games that depend on tilt controls on my phone.

bitFLIP - Match 3 game. Adds a layer of complexity by having the 'bits' be double sided. More annoying than additive gameplay element.

Elf - silly game where you make your elf fly up the screen. See my quick review in my Appvent Calendar post.