Five Things

1. Want to learn to taunt your enemies like a reclusive megalomaniac dictactor with bad hair? It’s the North Korea insult generator.

2. What kind of political system is suitable for colonists on an interstellar journey? Sci-fi author Charles Stross flags some interesting issues.

3. Think movie acting can be bad? Try the 50 Worst Video Game Voice Acting clips.

4.  ”Sometimes his loose-limbed shuffle and sibilant drawl suggest Jimmy Stewart as a crackhead.” That’s The New York Times reviewing Nicholas Cage in his new movie, “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”.

5. Crack that whip! Pearl Jam does Devo.

Five Things That Caught My Eye Today

1. Granite Falls, a small mining town near Seattle, has elected a Muslim mayor. It probably helps that he runs a popular bar in town.

2. CageWatch: Nicholas Cage stars in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”. Warner Herzog directed, so this has a shot at being decent, or at least fairly entertaining.

3. Remember the U.S. container ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates a few months ago, with a standoff that ended with SEAL snipers taking out the pirates? Well, pirates attacked it again. Only this time, the ship was ready, as a professional security crew repelled the assault with small arms and, awesomely, a sonic blaster.

4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 raked in $550 million in its first week, topping the previous record-holder, Grand Theft Auto IV, by $50 million.

5. Malcolm Gladwell responds, partially, to Steven Pinker’s recent criticism in the New York Times Book Review.

Why “DJ Hero” Isn’t Selling Well

DJ Hero was supposed to invigorate the flagging genre of music games. Yet in its launch month, the hip-hop game with the turntable controller only moved 123,000 units in the U.S. What happened?

It’s not the game. As with all forms of entertainment, people will reasonably disagree about what is fun or exciting, but DJ Hero was well-reviewed, with Metacritic scores ranging from 84 to 88 depending on platform.

And it’s not the marketing. Clearly, Activision is putting serious muscle behind the game with a TV spot that features Eminem, Jay-Z, and uh, some random white dude at the turntable. That spot, incidentally, seems to be a minor hit, with nearly half a million views on YouTube and an average user rating of 4-1/2 stars.

I don’t necessarily think Activision over-estimated the size of the market for the game, as Bill at Dubious Quality posits. It won’t ever outsell one of the flagship Guitar Hero releases, but it should do at least as well as, say, one of the band-specific offshoots of Guitar Hero, like GH: Metallica or GH: Aerosmith.

So what is it? Quite simply, it’s the price. At $120, DJ Hero costs twice as much as Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 combined. And it’s about a third more expensive than the early Guitar Hero games. On top of that, you have the $200 Renegade edition being heavily promoted in stores, where customers could overlook the fact that there’s a cheaper version.

The original Guitar Hero games succeeded because the extra $20 or $30 they cost seemed like a fair value for a fun and innovative guitar controller. The DJ Hero turntable is a fantastic piece of hardware, but it’s clear that consumers aren’t seeing it as worth another $60. Not in this economy.

My hunch is that DJ Hero needs to hit the $99 price point to really take off, but that it could see a decent Christmas regardless as it ends up being the “big gift” under the tree for many kids.

Five Things That Caught My Eye Today

1. Electronic Arts is rumored to be closing Pandemic Studios. Yes, this is the same Pandemic that, along with BioWare, EA paid more than $800 million for two years ago. Although Pandemic was behind Full Spectrum Warrior, one of my favorite games of all time, its recent efforts, like last year’s Mercenaries 2, were met with lukewarm critical reviews.

2. Stunning photograph of a crescent Earth shot by Rosetta, the European comet-chasing spacecraft. Oh yeah, and irregularities in Rosetta’s flight path may lead to a re-writing of the known laws of physics.

3. Fascinating profile of Jon Huntsman, Jr., Obama’s new (Republican) man in China. In an awesome historical twist, Huntsman as a child handed Henry Kissinger his briefcase as he departed with Nixon on the famous secret trip to China in 1971.

4. Intel’s Itanium chip finally turns a profit. After a decade. And billions of dollars of investment and promotion.

5. And from The Onion video files: Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks.

“DJ Hero”: A Worthy Addition to the “Hero” Lineage

This is a review I just submitted to Amazon as part of their Vine program:

When the Guitar Hero franchise burst onto the pop culture scene, flooding living rooms everywhere with fake plastic instruments, hip-hop fans could do nothing but look on enviously and ask if such a concept could ever apply to their favorite music. (Yes, Konami pioneered this concept with Beatmania, but it never really caught on with home console owners, and Activision’s marketing muscle means DJ Hero will be the first title to gain mass-market awareness.)

Activision has finally answered that call with — surprise! — DJ Hero, what is apparently a well-polished product that should boast the right combination of great music, addicting gameplay, and gorgeous presentation to earn it a spot in the ranks of great music games.

Now for some disclosures: I obtained a demo of the product through the Amazon Vine program. The bundle consisted of a wired turntable controller and a demo disc featuring five songs: one tutorial track, one multi-player track and three for the main game. While grateful for the chance to get my hands on the product early, the demo disc was far too limited to be able to truly write a well-informed review. Hence, the weasel words in this review, such as “apparently”, “should”, etc.

Another disclosure: I am not generally a fan of rap, hip-hop or dance music. Rock, be it of the classic, blues, southern, punk, alternative, or even country variety, is where my soul lies. So it’s a testament to DJ Hero that it managed to draw me in despite a near-total unfamiliarity with the genre. The game will grab many die-hard rockers right from the tutorial, which features a mix of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”. While I’m hard-pressed to name the other tracks from memory, I found them fun and enjoyable.

Other reviews have expounded on the gameplay in great detail, so I’ll just say here that if you enjoyed having your dexterity and sense of rhythm challenged by any of the Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, you’ll probably get a kick out of trying to master the tricks of the turntable. The three finger buttons on the turntable look like the fret buttons on a guitar controller, but the similarity ends there. In the course of a song, you’ll be asked not only to hit those buttons, but to “scratch” the turntable, quickly crossfade from one part of a mix to another, and add your own effects in a way similar to the whammy bar in the Guitar Hero games. It’s an intriguing mix of actions that add up to a good challenge.

In a stroke of genius by developer FreeStyleGames, a second person can join using a guitar controller to play the guitar bits of the mixes. This is a great way to get other people to jump in since there’s a good chance you or someone you know already has a guitar controller. It not only up the game to rock-oriented folks who aren’t interested in working a turntable, but it also allows people to play together without requiring another pricey turntable accessory.

A word about the turntable. Rarely does a new controller boast this level of sturdiness and attractiveness. It’s a handsome little unit that turns heads and feels solid and well-built. The on-screen visuals are also top-notch, featuring different house-party and club settings from around the globe. Again, since this review was limited to a demo disc, I was unable to check out the bulk of locales and playable characters. In another nice touch, the game also features an autoplay mode that will just play the music for a party or whatnot. That’s a great feature and one that needs to come to Guitar Hero. Hopefully it will also support tracks you add via download.

So in the end, does DJ Hero work? It does, and it will be interesting to see if the title can succeed in expanding music games to other genres, attracting new audiences and fans as people tire of the rock-based games. If you are a fan of hip-hop who couldn’t get into “Guitar Hero”, this is could be your game. If you’re a huge fan of music games in general and want a fresh challenge, this could be your game. And if you’re simply looking for something to liven up your next party, this could be your game.

Four Ways Amazon Can Have Fun with the Kindle Business Model

After the last price cut on Amazon’s Kindle, I was kicking around some ways that Amazon could make the Kindle even more attractive, besides cutting price, that is. I was finally spurred to write these up by Prof. Bogost’s interesting post on Kindle economics (key revelation for me: it’s actually dirt cheap to print a physical book).

Each of these addresses either a barrier in the adoption of e-books, or a way that e-books can improve upon the physical format, making them attractive despite other shortcomings. Some of the most interesting things e-books will do will come from what they enable that physical books never can, and digital distribution is part and parcel of that.

A favorite analogy among media and analysts around the Kindle is how it compares to iPod. And those comparisons are indeed instructive. But the ways in which the two devices are not similar are often more interesting than the ways they are. For instance, the main factor in the iPod’s success was convenience: someone can listen to a dozen CDs in a single day, and he doesn’t know in the morning what he will want to listen to at night. So the ability to carry hundreds of albums in your pocket represented an awesome leap in convenience. By contrast, a paperback book is alread pretty damn handy. Most of us don’t read a dozen books simultaneously, but instead spend days or weeks working on a single title. Yet how many times hav eyou reached for your bookshelf to look up that funny passage, check a factoid, or even just remember who that one author ways, anyway? So like the iPod, convenience is a factor with the Kindle, just not in the same way. 

So here are some ways that the Kindle business model can really stand out.  

1. Get past purchases on Kindle for a one-time fee. Imagine an iPod or MP3 player that doesn’t allow you to put any of your existing music on it but only new purchases that are formatted just for that device. MP3 players are so successful because nearly everyone has an existing collection of dozens or hundreds of CDs that can be nearly instantly ported over to the new device. But with Kindle, all those books on your shelf are destined to stay there, collecting dust and forever separated from digital nirvana. But what if Amazon made an offer to all Kindle owners that for a nominal charge, say, $2 a book, you will be provided with a Kindle copy of every book you’ve ever bought from Amazon. Heck, for power readers who have ordered a ton of books, call it Kindle Prime and charge a flat $99 to cover every past purchase. This is similar to what Apple did with its iTunes store when it started offering unprotected MP3 files at a premium. For an additional 30 cents per song, Apple would upgrade your library of tracks to the new, DRM-free format. By doing the same thing with books early on in the Kindle’s lifecycle, Amazon would basically bootstrap the device and makes it instantly more useful to users by an order of magnitude.  

2. Get the physical and electronic editions together at a discount. A lot of people are intrigued by Kindle but still want a physical copy for their bookshelf at home, or as insurance in case Kindle flops or Jeff Bezos really does turn into Big Brother. Amazon already offerings pairings of popular products and books, so it’d be a snap to say, “Add the print edition of this book to your Kindle order for just another $5.” A colleague of mine also suggested that Amazon could notify Kindle users when the physical form of a book they’ve bought digitally moves down into discount bin territory.

3. “Lend” your books to other Kindle owners. This is a huge one for me. My parents and I trade quite a few books. In fact, there’s sort of an arrangement where nearly any book we buy each other for Christmas, birthdays, etc, we will lend it back to the buyer after we’re done with it. I’m sure a lot of families are the same. We are all bibliophiles and also technophiles, which should make us ideal Kindle consumers. But the inability to swap books is a big limiting factor on our purchase intent. So why not enable that with a sort of digital lending license that would let me, say, lend two copies of the book to any other Kindle user for, say, 30 days? It could be like transfering a file via IM: “Scott has offered to lend you ‘Outliers’ by Malcom Gladwell. Do you accept? You will have 30 days to read this book from the moment you accept.” Amazon could reap a huge amount of goodwill with a move like this. 

4. Give book lovers a way to show off their bookshelves. Another gem from my aforementioned colleague. Admit it, there are books you like having on your coffee table or bookshelf to impress visitors. What about when you’re at the airport and you see someone reading a fantastic book you just read? You sometimes start a conversation with them to see what they think, right? But with Kindle, there’s no way for any of this signaling to take place. What Amazon needs is a sort of virtual bookshelf that will let anyone browse your library, perhaps even leave comments. Sort of a social network for booklovers. There’s already something like it on Facebook called LivingSocial, which lets you display and review books, games, albums, movies, etc for other users to see. However, it’s clunky and obnoxious to use, and Amazon could either build something better or buy it and make it better. To be sure, iPod suffered from the same shortcoming, which has only been somewhat rectified with the recent introduction of Cover Flow.

I’m sure there are tons of other cool things Amazon could do. Heck, it could even resurrect those old book clubs deals where you got five books for a penny if you promised to buy a book a month at regular price for the next year. Maybe you could get a Kindle for $99 if you could promise to buy a Kindle book a month ($9.99 minimum price) for the next two years. What other ways could Amazon innovate and use the Kindle’s digital infrastructure to light a fire under e-book sales?

Are Publishers Really Selling More on PS3 Than Xbox 360? No.

Last week, one of the biggest video-game publishers, Electronic Arts, reported quarterly results. In its reports, the company always gives a breakdown of revenue by gaming platform. Several enthusiast outlets, such as MCV, reported that EA’s revenue from PlayStation 3 games was bigger than that from Xbox 360 games. This would be unusual since the Xbox 360 installed base is substantially bigger than the PS3 installed base. In fact, Xbox 360 game sales continue to outpace those for PS3. Here’s why.

(Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft’s Xbox division and have no formal training in accounting or financial analysis. What follows is my understanding of the situation based on my 12 years as a business, technology and economics reporter for Reuters, and on recent informal conversations with financial analysts who cover the video game industry. This is also my personal opinion and does not reflect the view of my employer.)

Publishers report two sets of numbers in their quarterly reports: GAAP and non-GAAP. GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, the set of rules that U.S. companies must follow when reporting financial information. The intent is to give investors and regulators a set of consistent, objective data that is comparable across companies and industries. But due to the circumstances of each industry, GAAP numbers often obscure, rather than illuminate, what is happening with an underlying business.

First, let’s look at EA’s GAAP revenue numbers for each platform (A side point: these are revenue or sales figures, not profits. Some reports have confused the two terms. Profit is what is left after a business deducts operational, marketing, administrative and other costs from its sales).

Wii: $161 million
PS3: $121 million
Xbox 360: $73 million

Sure enough, it looks like PS3 games are outselling Xbox 360 games. But here’s the twist. Because so many games now include a substantial online component that is maintained for several years, GAAP rules require a portion of revenue from the initial sale be booked over the life of the online service. So, in a purely hypothetical example, let’s say a $60 game is deemed to have half of its value come from online play. The company will then book $30 over a period of, say, two years, or $3.75 per quarter.

Game companies aren’t the only ones who do this. Apple does it with the iPhone because it delivers ongoing updates and services to the device. So of the $200 you pay for an iPhone, Apple records $25 of that each quarter for two years.

The thing is, this all happens purely on paper. In reality, EA gets that entire $60 all at once, and your $200 for an iPhone goes straight into Apple’s cash pile. Analysts pretty much ignore these GAAP numbers because they want to know what total unit sales were and what total revenue was. Indeed, here’s a line from The LA Times’ coverage: “Most Wall Street analysts say they pay attention to EA’s non-GAAP accounting as a measure of its financial performance.”

So let’s revisit EA’s numbers and look at the non-GAAP statement, which takes out the effects of the deferred online revenue.

Wii:  $184 million
PS3: $99 million
Xbox 360: $136 million

So non-GAAP, the number Wall Street actually cares about, shows Xbox 360 sales still leading PS3 sales. I’m guessing, speculating really, that given that Xbox 360 has the more robust and active online network, that EA is forced to record a larger chunk of deferred revenue, revenue that will be recorded over the next couple quarters.

Interestingly, Activision’s numbers are somewhat different. Here are the GAAP numbers:

Wii: $118 million
PS3: $152 million
Xbox 360: $231 million

And the non-GAAP, excluding the effect of deferred revenue:

Wii: $74 million
PS3: $105 million
Xbox 360: $140 million

Again, purely speculating here, I wonder if the GAAP is so much higher because Guitar Hero sales have been so high for a couple years, and now we are seeing a huge surge in deferred revenue from those past sales.

Anyone have any insights here?

Why I Hate Critics

Two of my favorite albums I’ve discovered this year are Ray LaMontagne’s Till the Sun Turns Black and Ben Harper and Relentless 7’s White Lies for Dark Times. Both albums are 5-star efforts in my book, though for different reasons. LaMontagne for his evocative lyrics and velvety melodies, and Harper for a jammin’ collection of pure summer rock riffage. As I often do when I get absorbed into an album, I check out what the critics had to say. And often I am startled and disappointed that not everyone shares my impeccable musical taste.

Here is Rolling Stone on the LaMontagne album, which it rates 2.5 out of 4 stars:

“Neither his hushed murmur nor his raspy vocal swoops pack much charm or originality, and the same goes for his songs. He gets Van Morrison comparisons, but LaMontagne doesn’t approach the Gaelic soul or deep undertow of Morrison’s good stuff. Soundwise, LaMontagne is more like Nick Drake without the drama and emotion, or even a Windham Hill artist — all airy beauty and not much backbone.”

And here is The Onion AV Club on Ben Harper:

“White Lies For Dark Times … is another jumbled grab bag of uninspired blues-folk … the compelling moments are drowned in a sea of bland jams, a churning mix of pointless repetition and noisy, tired riffing.”

They graded the album a C.

I suppose I should know better. I just let my trial subscription to RS lapse after they put the Jonas Brothers on their cover, proving beyond doubt that the magazine no longer packs much charm or originality. And as for The Onion AV Club, home to the snobbiest bunch of critics in the industry, their reviews have always tended to be jumbled grab bags of uninspired derision. Any compelling points are drowned in a sea of bland superiority, a churning mix of pointless repetitio and noisy, tired complaining. 

 

Is Motion Control a Failure?

Stephen Totilo over at Kotaku makes the case that, yes, it has failed. At least if you judge by the number of blockbuster titles that rely primarily on motion control.

As right as Nintendo was about so many things, maybe it was wrong about this. Or, as is so often the case with Nintendo’s Wii project, the failure here may be one of critical imagination. That happens. Forty years ago on Monday, a human being first stepped on the moon, and what people assumed would happen in the next four decades — trips to Mars, cities in space — have not been built. The guessers often guess wrong.

Great stuff. Of course, motion control was wildly successful when measured by one, easily quantiable metric: Nintendo’s profits. Maybe motion control didn’t transform every single game experience. But it changed the rules for the industry. Wii Sports was so compelling that millions of people, people who would never in a million years call themselves gamers — rushed out and bought a Wii.

And while maybe there haven’t been dozens of epic motion-control games on the market selling millions of copies, that didn’t really matter to Nintendo’s bottom line. They made money on every Wii. And most of those new Wii owners also went out and bought Wii Play. OK, probably many of them did it just to get the extra controller, but they liked Wii Sports enough that a Wii Play pack-in was attractive. And then what did they do after that? They bought Wii Fit in droves.

So even if motion control hasn’t been as broadly successful as Nintendo envisioned, it succeeded wildly in bringing more people into the industry. And now that that trail has been blazed, there’s no going back. The motion-control genie will not go quietly back into his bottle. Microsoft is going big with Natal and “controller-free games and entertainment”. Sony is bringing out its wand.

Only time will tell if these new technologies will have the far-reaching impact that, in Totilo’s analysis, Wii games have fallen short in achieving. But it’s a pretty safe bet that all forms of motion control will be a part of the gaming landscape for a long time to come.

Are Games Approaching Virtual Murder?

Gamasutra is one of the more interesting and professional video-game sites out there. Their writers consistently produce thoughtful, analytical pieces about the industry. So when one of them pens a column saying he is genuinely worried that games are evolving towards true murder simulators, you know you’re going to get a well-written, even-handed take on the issue.

However, the article ultimately shares something with every hysterical op-ed decrying video games as an amoral medium helping to twist a generation of kids into super-predators. And that is simply that the author stumbled across a game that disturbed him. For many parents and anti-game crusaders, that game was one of the Grand Theft Auto series. Or Manhunt. Or Counter-Strike. I don’t know why Bioshock did it for this particular author. Many of us who played the game all the way through didn’t find the enemies disturbingly realistic, though the game itself is disturbing (and excellent) due to its overall atmosphere and story rather than the realism of its character. In fact, the most disturbing part of the game for many players lies precisely in the moral choice you make, about whether to harm the innocent for personal profit (and pay the consequences later), or do the right thing now at the expense of short-term difficulty.

Personally, I have found scenes in the recent entries in the Call of Duty series more disturbing. Sometimes when you shoot an enemy soldier, he starts dragging himself across the ground, trying to get away. You have to walk up and finish him off. Otherwise, he will pull out a pistol or grenade and try to do you. Call of Duty 4 also had a segment, titled “Death from Above”, where you’re in an AC-130 gunship and you use that greyscale thermal targeting system to just grind up guerrilla fighters. The gunship’s crew talks to you in this matter-of-fact tone, like you’re taking out the trash instead of killing actual humans.

But to the article’s point, he got the willies and fears that we’re reaching a point where we all start sliding down a slippery slope towards callousness and inhumanity. Yet, there’s no evidence that the huge advances in realism we’ve seen so far have led to increased violence or disregard for human life. In fact, despite the hand-wringing of politicians and moralizers everywhere, youth violence has hit its lowest level in 40 years, even as “murder simulator” games like Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, and Call of Duty sell tens of millions of copies.

Of course, it’s possible that we just haven’t reached the “tipping point” for this phenomenon. Perhaps there will come a time when games are so real and the act of playing them so visceral that it fires the right set of neural pathways that will turn our youth into cold-blooded killers. Based on the evidence so far, however, I’d say that’s unlikely. The simplest reason is that the vast majority of people, believe it or not, are actually capable of distinguishing fantasy from reality. People know when they are playing a game, and they know that bludgeoning someone with a wrench or lighting them up with a molotov is not socially acceptable behavior, and that they will suffer extremely unpleasant consequences for doing so.

For all their realism, video games really pale in comparison to the ultra-realistic violence portrayed in films. I remember being appalled and sickened by the brutality in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Now, of course, I love those movies as classics. Look at The Departed or the Saw series. Those are 10 times more graphic than anything you’ll see in a video game. Part of this is that the industry self-polices (or self censorships, depending on how you look at it) pretty well. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board has pretty exacting standards for the kind of violence that can be depicted and still get an M rating (equivalent to an R). Moreover, the console makers — Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo — won’t let unrated or AO (Adults Only) games get published on their systems.

Finally, video-game developers are actually pretty thoughtful about using realism judiciously. You get the few teams that push the edge, like Rockstar with the Manhunt series, but there aren’t many games that actually set out to disturb you with their realism or that make you torture characters or revel in the pain you cause. And here’s my prognostication: when the day comes when games are basically indistinguishable from film, virtually no one will make games that actually simulate murder and death in all its bloody, painful mess. The reason? That shit isn’t fun. It’s the reason Transformers makes hundreds of millions of dollars while Saw makes tens of millions.

Furthermore, I’d argue that the key to making things disturbing isn’t the photorealism. After all, the author of the Gamasutra piece admits to being disturbed by the original Wolfenstein, hardly what we would call a realistic experience today. Clearly, graphical fidelity isn’t everything. Things like the writing, dialogue, voice acting, and AI are much more essential to creating a desired emtional reaction. Having a victim crawl away from you, crying, and then beg for his life in a realistic manner will be much more effective at recreating a life-like scenario than having a photo-realistic victim who stands there passively while you hack him to bits.

And the upside is that as technology improves, so does the scope for making games into a more impactful art form. Think about a military game that actually puts you in the moral dilemma of having to decide whether the guy on his knees begging for his life is really an innocent civilian or an insurgent desperately trying to get out of a jam so he can continue planting roadside bombs. Think about having an AI partner, girlfriend or pet that responds to your choices and actions. I get excited thinking about this stuff, and think it’s much more likely than Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation suddenly turning generations of kids into killers, something that would completely defy the last 40 years of video-game evolution.

Apple’s New Shuffle Is Ass

I bought Apple’s 3G iPod shuffle a few days after it came out. It’s a marvel of modern minimalist design, featuring only a single button for powering the device on and off. Too bad, then, that it completely sucks ass.

Technically, it’s the headphones that suck, but the catch is that since the new shuffle is operated entirely by a tiny remote bud on the headphones, the fact of the matter is that if the headphones break, the device is rendered useless.

The problem is that Apple apparently designed this thing without any regard for how people will actually use it. What is the most common use for a small form-factor MP3 player, one that clips on to your shirt or waist, that uses flash memory so it won’t skip, and has no buttons to accidentally press? Right, working out or exercising.

It turns out the the placement of the control pod on the headphone cord is such that it is subjected to a constant showering of sweat and spittle during a workout. My first set of headphones malfunctioned after about five or six outings. Replacement headphones were $30 from Apple. Remember, you need the special ones with the built-in remote, otherwise you have no way of using the player, and right now Apple is the only ones making them. My second pair failed on the third use.

Also, this isn’t a failure of the speaker portion of the headphones. It’s clearly in the remote itself. The failures manifest in many ways: the volume shoots up to maximum or fades to silence; advancing through menus won’t work; songs won’t play or pause.

Oh, and Apple also apparently took all the negative feedback over the sharp edges on the Mac Book laptops, and completely ignored it. The edge on the new shuffle makes it extremely uncomfortable to clip on your waistband. Again, not the best design decision for a device intended to be a workout companion.

It’s really a shame, because the new shuffle’s form factor, buttonless controls, voice-over playlist navigation should have added up to a winning combination. To bad it didn’t.

A test

So Chinese naval vessels surrounded and harassed a U.S. sub-hunting vessel operating near China but in international waters.

Funny how this sort of thing always happens shortly after a new president takes office.

The funniest thing I read all week

Was this piece from Cracked.com. I was literally in tears during lunch today.

It’s funny how when I was growing up, Cracked was the lame, wanna-be Mad Magazine. But now it’s successfully reinvented itself as an irreverent online humor site on par with The Onion.

Missing the point

Here’s another piece by someone slamming the Kindle because it turns out that a cheap netbook computer can act as an e-reader, too!

Happily, the assertion is fully refuted by the accompanying photo. Why, yes! Tilting a laptop sideways to read a book is a perfectly natural and attractive thing to do!

Hey, know what? I can listen to my music collection on my laptop, too. But you don’t see me wandering around town with headphones on and my laptop tucked under my arm.

The Kindle is useful because it does for books what the iPod did for music. It creates a stylish (well, the Kindle 2 does, anyway) and convenient way to read your books or listen to your music.

Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

Kindle math

I am sorely tempted to get the new Kindle. I really liked all the features of the first version but, truth be told, it was just too damn fugly. Thankfully, Amazon not only gave the second iterationof its ground-breaking e-book a badly-need facelift, it seems they also fixed several shortcomings while improving the features that did work.

As part of my ongoing internal deliberations, I decided to run the math on my book purchases and see where the Kindle would net out.

James Martin at PC Worlddid this a couple days ago, but I have some issues with his calcuations. First, he says this:

For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m an avid reader who buys two paperbacks per month from Amazon. The average price of a book on Amazon’s top 10 nonfiction paperback bestseller list is $16.19 (based on my calculations). If I bought 24 paperbacks a year, that’s $32.38 per month or $388.56 a year.

I’m not sure where he’s getting those prices. I couldn’t find a “Amazon’s non-fiction paperback bestseller list”, though I did find a New York Times non-fiction paperback bestseller list. The prices on those books ranged from about $9 to $12, not the $16 Martin found.

Martin’s bottom line?

Still, my number crunching reveals that even a loyal reader of paperbacks would only have saved $58.82 by the end of the second year of Kindle 2 ownership.

My instincts told me that while the Kindle wouldn’t realize massive savings for typical readers, it would offer a bit more than $59 a year. So I looked at some real-world numbers, namely, my own actual purchasing history from the past year.

In the last 12 months, I bought 24 books from Amazon costing a total of $311.03 before tax. Sixteen of those are available in Kindle editions that would have cost a total of $150.61. Those 16 books cost $200.45, so switching to the Kindle would have saved $50. If all 24 of my purchases were available in Kindle editions, they would have cost $233, saving me about $78.

Yet there’s another wrinkle. I pay $70 a year for Amazon Prime, which gives me default 2-day shipping on all my stuff. Of course I ordered everything from CDs to a GPS device on Amazon last year, but books probably made up half of my orders. CDs probably made up another 1/4 to 1/3. But I’ve recently switched largely to ordering MP3s straight from Amazon’s digital store, obviating the need for CDs. If I bought a Kindle, I’d probably have justification to drop out of the Prime program. There would probably still be some things I’d have to pay shipping on, so let’s conservatively say I’d save half of the cost of Prime — $35.

That brings my annual savings up to $113. That’s about double Martin’s estimated savings. Of course, the Kindle costs close to $400 with tax, so it would still take nearly four years to recoup the cost.

The catch is that a device like the Kindle isn’t just about straight savings is it? It’s about . It’s about new functionality, like searching your library for that great quote or factoid. It’s about having an entire library at your fingertips. Financial savings is part of the equation, and helps justify the purchase, but it’s not necessarily the most important factor.

Fonts

Sorry about the varying font sizes here. This appears to be the default font for this template. Some past entries appear larger because I composed them in Word first and pasted them over.

To get everything looking the same, I think I’d have to go into each post individually and reformat the text. Frankly, that’s too much hassle. I would, however, like to settle on a standard font and text size. Anybody have any preferences?

Finally! Best games of 2008 (Part 5)

Biggest Gaping Hole in My Library: LittleBigPlanet

It was hard for the hype to be any bigger for Media Molecule’s impossibly cute platformer. Although the adventures of the game’s knitted hero, Sackboy, didn’t get Sony back in the console race, LittleBigPlanet was unquestionably one of the most original — did I mention cute? — titles in 2008.

LittleBigPlanet’s hyper-realistic environments differed from other A-list titles in one dramatic fashion: instead of lush forests or gritty urban landscapes, the game is set among structures built from every day materials such as cardboard, cloth and paper. Resembling nothing so much as a grade-school art project, the game nonetheless sported sophisticated level design that challenges and rewards.

I almost can’t believe I haven’t picked this one up yet. It’s simply because I still (still!) haven’t finished games like Fallout 3 or Dead Space, so how can I justify dropping another $60 on this? I did see, however, that Amazon had LBP on sale for about $46. A great bargain for consumers, but probably a blow to Sony’s expectations that they could maintain premium pricing for longer.

Best Game That I Will Almost Certainly Never Finish: Grand Theft Auto IV

I have a problem finishing games. Most games I will top out at about 20 hours before moving on to other diversions. Games like Halo 3, Gears of War, Fable 2, Call of Duty 4 and Mirror’s Edge all fall comfortably within that range. I prefer quality over quantity. Give me 10 amazing hours and I will consider my money better spent than if you give me 30 or 40 good hours. The biggest exception to this rule was Oblivion, which I played for more than 40 hours and still didn’t finish.

So right away, the sheer size of Grand Theft Auto IV, which is said to take about 40 hours to complete the main storyline, stacks the odds against me ever completing the game. But apart from that, GTA IV has one flaw that is crippling for modestly talented gamers like me. That flaw is the lack of a mid-mission save system.

You see, some of the missions in GTA IV are quite long, requiring significant set up and travel before you get to the action parts. If you’re not completely prepared, pretty skilled, and a bit lucky, you will die. And when you die, you start that mission all over again. I’ve recently picked up the game again and completed a couple missions that had vexed me months ago, but if I was bent on completing it, I wouldn’t play anything else for months.

Best Game of 2008

And here it is. The moment you’ve been waiting two months for. What was the best game of 2008? Was it Fallout 3, with its deep character-building system infused with a Road Warrior vibe? Was it Fable 2, with its open-armed world that combined an expansive fantasy world with the charming social nuances of The Sims? Was it LittleBigPlanet, with all its cuteness and inventiveness and creative tools for users? All of these are worthy titles, to be sure. But one game stood above everything else, wowing everyone with its breathtaking detail, sparkling writing and sheer variety. That game, of course, was Grand Theft Auto IV.

Despite its flaws, and there are several, Grand Theft Auto IV represented the best of gaming. The stunning visuals took the soul of New York and reincarnated it in the body of Liberty City. Even now, almost a year later, one of my favorite things to do in the game is stop and watch the sun set. In keeping with its noir inspiration, the character of Niko Bellic at once fascinates and repulses. We revel in his aptitude for violence while sympathizing with his desire to find more in life. You see this in a hundred little moments and contrasts throughout the game. One moment you’ll be making shy chit-chat with a potential girlfriend or e-mailing mom back in the old country, the next you’ll be pushing some poor guy off a ledge or helping a junkie score her next hit.

Here was what I wrote about the game when it launched last April:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Video gamers geared up on Monday for the midnight launch of “Grand Theft Auto 4,” as early reviews hailed the criminal action title as a brutal and satirical “masterpiece” equal to films like “The Godfather.”

For a time, Grand Theft Auto IV was the only game to score a perfect 100 on Metacritic. Even today, it boasts an incredible 98, the highest-rated game since The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time came out in 1998 and received a 99.

The GTA series has of course been the target of serious controversy. But audiences have longed lived the criminal life vicariously through movies like novels like The Godfather, movies like The Killing, and now games like GTA. As I read somewhere recently, books let us imagine the impossible, movies let us see the impossible, games let us do the impossible. Few of can imagine doing the dirty deeds committed by Niko and his associates. The success of the GTA series has hinged on letting people break the rules. You can’t believe this game is letting you get away with this stuff! GTA IV took that simple idea and slathered on a rich layer of storytelling, wit, and social commentary. It’s an artistic achievement that was unrivaled in the industry last year, and it’s why Grand Theft Auto IV was game of the year.  

Best games of 2008 (Part 4)

Favorite Xbox Exclusive: Fable 2

Although Gears of War 2was a strong contender in this space, ultimately it was Peter Molyneux’s redemptive masterpiece that offered a fresh, unique experience on Microsoft’s machine.

No, Fable 2 doesn’t have the best graphics or the best story, but it does offer an incredibly fun experience that genuinely gets richer and more rewarding the more you invest in it.

Fable 2 is a game that really does give you the leeway to play however you want, and doesn’t punish you for making “bad” choices. Want to play the morally upright hero? Go ahead, that’s what I did. But terrorizing the population with wanton killing and banditry is an equally valid way to play, though you can expect the world to have a markedly different feel should you turn to the dark side.

Fable 2 also offers a wealth of secondary activities. Buy a fish stall and get a steady income that lets you buy more properties, all the way up to a massive castle. Hammer away as a blacksmith, pull drinks at the local pub, or chop wood in the countryside to earn a few extra coins. Woo a local woman (or two, or three), or go nuts with prostitutes in the seedier hamlets. Buy a home and upgrade the furnishings. Win the town’s adulation with displays of heroism, or turn them off with fart jokes.

Fable 2 is an approachable, deep, and quite funny twist on the fantasy role-playing game. Its numerous innovations make it my favorite Xbox 360 exclusive ahead of more graphically rich and intense fare like Gears of War 2.

Reality check: Oddly, for a game that asks, “Who do you want to be?”, Fable 2 doesn’t give you much leeway with character creation. You can choose to be a boy or a girl at the start, and that’s about it. To be sure, your choice of diet influences your physique, and you can pay for hair styles, clothes and tattoos throughout. I also recommend reading up on how to use your repertoire of facial expressions and gestures, and, just as importantly, how to quickly gain new ones. These are essential to enjoying the in-game socializing and I only gained proficiency as I neared the end of the main quest.

 

Best Game I’m Most Eager to Play Once I Finish What I’m Currently Playing: Dead Space

EA’s creative resurgence continues with this critically acclaimedtake on the survival horror genre, with sci-fi spin. You play a mechanic sent to an orbital mining station that has lost communications, only to find that something has wiped out the thousand-strong crew.

Several things make Dead Space noteworthy. The exquisite pacing keeps you on the edge of the couch waiting for the next horrific moment to spring. Your character is just an engineer trying to defend himself with tools and objects, not some buff space marine bristling with high-tech weaponry. There’s also a great implementation of the HUD-less display. There’s no health bar, weapon icon showing how much ammo you have left, and no map screen that pauses the action. All the information you need as a player is visible right there as part of the environment.

I also look forward to what I hear is brilliantly implemented zero-G combat and a clever way to convey sound in the hard vacuum of space.

Dead Space reminds me of nothing more than Doom 3, and I say that as someone who loved Doom 3 and its creepily lit hallways, disturbingly twisted monsters, and captivating storyline that you uncovered through recordings and e-mails as you explored.

Reality check: One colleague complained to me that his biggest issue with Dead Space was that “You’re always just the engineer.” Meaning, I guess, that you don’t evolve much or grow more capable as the game progresses. I’m also half-expecting that the horror aspect of the game will translate into slow progress as I play it in easily digested chunks.

Best Unfinished Game: Fallout 3

Considered a Game of the Year contender by many outlets, Fallout 3 is in many ways “Oblivionwith guns”, a reskinning of Bethesda’s excellent fantasy-themed role-playing game from 2005. Oblivionis still one of my favorite Xbox 360 games and still ranks as one of the most evocative gaming experiences I’ve enjoyed.

Indeed, the basic Fallout 3 mechanics will be instantly familiar to Oblivion fans: the sense of movement, the placement of objects in the world, the basics of the inventory system have all essentially been carried over.

Fallout 3 makes two huge strides forward.

The first is the area of gameplay with the introduction of the VATS targeting system that lets you single out specific parts of an enemy’s body when attacking. It’s an immensely satisfying feature that never grows old.

The second improvement is in narrative. Oblivion, for all its considerable charm and intriguing side-quests, suffered mightily from a main story that forced players to go on cookie-cutter missions that quickly lost their appeal. That is the reason I never finished Oblivion despite falling in love with the broader world it took place in.

So far, and I would guess I am halfway through the main storyline, the Fallout 3 narrative has suffered no such missteps. Every quest is unique and there appear to be multiple ways to complete them. For instance, it is possible to obliterate the first town you come across with an atomic blast. I opted to save the town, figuring correctly it would be an important home base for resting, healing and restocking of supplies. But the choice was mine to destroy it, and I can only imagine the impact it would have made on the story arc.

Reality check: Fallout 3 offers up more of the grey and brown color palate that has so imbued recent games. It requires constant inventory management — repair of gear, making sure you’re not over your weight limit, switching weapons, and taking medicine to ensure you survive your next fight and the radioactive environment itself.

Tomorrow: Favorite Xbox Exclusive, Best Game I’m Most Eager to Play Once I Finish What I’m Currently Playing, and Best Unfinished Game!)

Ugh

So much for my plan to post something every day in 2009. Two weeks ago, Harlan came down with something nasty that caused him to miss nearly a full week of school. Relieving Tala from sick parent duty became rather more pressing than refreshing the blog. Of course, once Harlan got better, I came down with the same thing. The bug has been gestating in my chest all week. I worked from home on Wednesday and would have taken a sick day on Thursday, but I figured yesterday wasn’t a good day to not show up at the office. And today my bug blew up into something pretty nasty. Hopefully regular programming will return soon.

Probably not the last of Steve Jobs health issues

Bad news for Apple investors today. For what it’s worth, I think there’s better-than-even chance that Jobs is out of Apple or even dead by mid-year. Let’s review the course of events here:

• Jobs is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003
• Luckily, he is one of 1% of people for whom the cancer is operable, but Jobs reportedly refuses to undergo the surgery that will save him because he thinks he can cure the cancer through homeopathic and nutritional methods
• Jobs gets the surgery only after his doctors tell him he will die without it
• By the way, none of this is disclosed to Apple investors until after the surgery, months after the diagnosis
• At an Apple event in June 2008, Jobs appears looking gaunt as a scarecrow, sparking speculation that the cancer has returnd
• After letting the rumors swirl for a couple days, Apple says Jobs is taking antibiotics for a “common bug”
• When the speculation doesn’t go away, Jobs tells a NYT reporter on background what the issue is. The NYT reporter can’t report details but says it’s not as serious as cancer but is considerably more serious than a “common bug”
• In late December, Jobs pulls out of the upcoming Macworld keynote — an address he has given for years — and Apple says this will be its last year attending the event. The announcement triggers fresh rumors that Jobs is ill or even near death.
• As the health speculation hits a fever pitch, Jobs issues a statement saying he has a “hormonal imbalance” that will require several months of treatment to recover from
• Today, he announces a six-month medical leave of absence

I’m sorry to sound such a gruesome note, but this is a guy who has been in fantasy denial about his own health problems, and he and his company have a track record of misleading investors and the public about the situation.

 

It’s a morbid prediction, but I don’t think Jobs/Apple have yet come entirely clean about what is going on here. Each revelation is more serious than the last, and all the while Jobs is proclaiming this is the final word on the matter.

 

The last story I ever wrote for Reuters ran on June 20, 2008, my last day at the news service. It was about how Apple was well-placed to thrive in a post-Jobs world. After the news broke today, Reuters dusted off that story and ran it on their main page. Here is an updated view on the matter by the new Apple beat reporter there.

Conversations with Harlan

We watched Jurassic Park the other night. If you remember, they thought the dinosaurs were all female but because they had used frog DNA to fill in the gaps in the dino DNA, the dinos developed the ability to switch sex and reproduce.

Harlan: “Dad, if I had a dinosaur I would name him Bob. But if he suddenly started laying eggs, I would call it Alissa.”

Harlan’s friend Matthew came over the other day.

Harlan: “Let’s pretend we’re half man, half wolf!”

Matthew: “Yeah! And half monkey!”

Delay

I’m sorry that there’s been a delay in getting the last couple installments of my “Best games of 2008″ series up. I’m hoping to post them in the next day or two.

$0.02 on Macworld

Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller delivered the company’s final keynote at Macworld yesterday:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday it was dropping copy protection from songs sold on the Internet and debuted its slimmest 17-inch laptop yet, but with no dramatic products or master pitchman Steve Jobs, the company’s final Macworld performance disappointed Wall Street.

Guess the pressure from Amazon’s MP3 store – where many are turning as an alternative to iTunes — finally caused Jobs to cave on the variable pricing issue, which labels have long clamored for.

Tuesday’s event produced few surprises. Apple announced a $2,799 17-inch laptop that is the company’s lightest and slimmest ever, as well as tweaks to software for home movies and photographs.

We’re heading into what is possibly the biggest recession since the Great Depression and Apple rolls out a $2,800 laptop?

Good luck with that.

Best games of 2008 (Part 3)

Biggest Game That Failed to Capture My Imagination: Metal Gear Solid 4

Perhaps the last of the great third-party exclusives, this PlayStation 3 epic was a serious contender at many outlets for game of the year. I’d never played a Metal Gear game prior to this, so I tried to prepare by reading up on the back-story. It was a lot to digest, but when I played the game what really turned me off was just the weird control scheme.

For Xbox fans, the Splinter Cell series has really defined stealth-action, and the controls in that series were generally so well thought-out that Metal Gear Solid 4’s scheme is just clunky and odd in comparison. The game also does a horrible job of bringing you up to speed on the mechanics. Normally, tutorial levels step you through increasingly intricate moves until they’ve covered the basics you need to strike out on your own. But MGS4 gave you incredibly brief sequences where, say, you move around a vehicle, and then you get thrown in another lengthy cut scene until the next short sequence, which, in terms of teaching you how to play the game, bears little relation to the previous sequences.

Reality check: Given the accolades heaped on this game, creator Hideo Kojima obviously did something right. Just today, a coworker said MGS4 had some absolutely epic moments in it that are worth suffering through the crummy bits. This may be one to revisit later in 2009 during the midyear lull.

Favorite Downloadable Game: Braid

An evocatively melancholy story about lost love, Braid was one of the most critically acclaimed and innovative games of the year. Mechanically, it’s an homage to Super Mario Bros., but with the added element of time manipulation. Braid’s unique visuals are rendered as gorgeous Impressionist-style paintings, and the slow, cello-heavy soundtrack heightens the doleful mood. Each level is a polished gem of design, and your time-bending abilities get more intricate as the game progresses.

Reality check: Braid can be wickedly hard. In fact, it’s probably the hardest game I played last year. Of course you can go online if you need help, but the satori-like revelation that comes with cracking the puzzles unaided is its own reward.

 

 

 

Favorite Unsung Masterpiece: Mirror’s Edge

This was hands down one of the most original games of the year. Essentially a first-person 3D platformer, Mirror’s Edge is set in an authoritarian city-state of the near future that blends atmospheric and architectural elements of Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, LA and London. You play as a “runner”, or underground courier of illicit information, who eludes police by running, leaping and sliding through urban landscapes.

The first thing you’ll notice about Mirror’s Edge is the vibrant aesthetic. Absent are the grays and browns of (excellent) games like Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and Call of Duty. From the sparkling blue sky to the bold primaries of many of the buildings you run on and through, Mirror’s Edge presents a world blossoming with color.

Of course you’ll also notice the unique perspective as a player. There’s nothing new about first-person games, but here, you’re not brandishing a gun and you frequently see your hands and feet. Mirror’s Edge is basically a parkour simulator, and the first-person viewpoint allows for some truly vertiginous moments, especially if you ignore your mother’s old advice and sit (or stand, which is even more immersive) too close to your television. One thing I loved is that you are encouraged to finish the game without firing a single shot at a human being. You can certainly obtain guns by disarming police that stand in your way, but I found it more believable and interesting to eschew weapons entirely and rely on speed and smarts to get me out of trouble.

The story in Mirror’s Edge deserves special mention as well. It’s not perfect, but this marked one of the few games that made me care about the main character. Electronic Arts’ DICE studio crafted a believable and sympathetic person in the character of Faith, and I found myself eager to see how the next chapter played out. There are some decent if clichéd twists, and although the ending is somewhat unsatisfactory in the sense that it doesn’t tie off all the loose ends, there is enough of a payoff emotionally and game-play-wise to deliver a sense of closure.

Reality check: There are a few really nasty difficulty spikes in the game that require you to pull off a series of complex moves with little or no margin for error. Expect a four to five places where you will die 20 to 40 times trying to execute one of these intricate sequences. I normally hate games that are so demanding, but in this case was so intrigued by the story and visuals that I kept plugging at it.

(Tomorrow: Favorite Xbox Exclusive, Best Game I’m Most Eager to Play Once I Finish What I’m Currently Playing, and Best Unfinished Game!)

Passing of a hero

From the Seattle P-I today:

The great raider has died.

Robert Prince, a Seattle native and Army Ranger who was the assault force commander of the daring World War II mission to liberate Allied prisoners that was portrayed in the 2005 movie “The Great Raid,” passed away New Year’s Day in Port Townsend, his family confirmed.

Prince was a genuine American hero. His bravery in war was exceeded only by his humility and graciousness in peace.

“The Great Raid” was a good movie, but not a great one. For an absolutely fantastic telling of that story, read the book the movie is based on, Ghost Soldiers, by Hampton Sides. It is probably one of the five best books I have ever read. Not only was the rescue mission of absolutely epic proportions, but Sides’ prose is top-notch. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Best games of 2008 (Part 2)

Favorite Driving Game: Burnout Paradise

Why it’s a winner: Open world. Dozens of sweet cars. Spectacular crashes. Hundreds of challenges. Seamlessly integrated online play. Sure, Burnout Paradise isn’t the most realistic racer around, but when you’re smashing through a billboard 50 feet up in the air at 120 mph, who cares?

This is also a game I could pick up and play for just 15 minutes, or for hours on end. It’s also one I could share with Harlan. A benefit of the open-world, menu-less design is that it encourages exploration and lets you just cruise around checking stuff out. Perfect for a 7-year-old who doesn’t have the fine motor skills required to thread a speeding muscle car down a narrow alley or nudge an opponent just enough to send them careening into a concrete pillar without dooming yourself to the same fate.

Not only is there an incredibly variety of stuff to do in this game, but impressively, Electronic Arts and Criterion are keeping things fresh with new downloadable content such as new cars, new game modes, and even plans for an entire island that will be one giant playground for pulling outrageous stunts.

Reality check: If you like more authenticity and the chance to try out real-world cars and tracks, then driving simulators like Forza 2 and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue are probably more up your alley.

Favorite Online Game: Left 4 Dead

Less a shooter than your own personalized zombie survival movie, Left 4 Dead attains its fullest brilliance when you play online with three other people. Sure, there are only four levels, but each time it feels fresh due to the different strategies you and your cohorts come up with. In the weeks after Left 4 Dead came out, the halls at work each morning were filled with conversation about the previous night’s exploits. It’s one of those games that will have you asking in disbelief: “Did you see that?”

Left 4 Dead has delivered the most polished co-op experience to date. If you do not work with your teammates, you will die, and they will die, and the story will end. Yet you don’t have to rely on the goodwill of your friends, incentives to help out are built right into the game. Tight and taut, with the perfect mix of jump-out-of-your skin horror and campy humor, Left 4 Dead is a fresh and compelling online experience.

Reality check: Left 4 Dead might prove to be too limited, given that there are only four missions, only five firearms, and the same four characters to choose from. It remains to be seen how much staying power it has, but there are certainly hours of zombie-blasting fun to be had here nonetheless.

Biggest Time-Suck: Rock Band 2/Guitar Hero World Tour

It was clear more than a year ago that these competing franchises aimed to evolve into platforms offering a whole new way to enjoy your favorite music.While most people seem to gravitate to one or the other, I find my playing time split pretty evenly between them. Between Rock Band and Guitar Hero series, I’ve logged hundreds of hours of playing time, saving me the hassle and expense of constructing a real life or learning an actual instrument.

Rock Band 2 has so far shaped up as the critics’ choice as Harmonix and MTV fixed almost everything that was wrong with the already excellent first installment. The game does a great job of paying homage to rock music while not taking itself too seriously. Rock Band also offers the best selection of downloadable songs, with literally hundreds of tracks spanning classic rock, punk, country and metal.

Yet the wildly popular Guitar Hero has proven to be the sales king, and World Tour cuts into Rock Band’s turf in a big way by offering a new drum set and redesigned guitar that are best-in-class. Developer Neversoft also came up with a character creation tool that is superior to Rock Band’s. While their downloadable content isn’t as robust as their rival’s, they have some key acts like Jimi Hendrix, and they are doing cool things with bands like Aerosmith and Metallica.

Either way, whether it’s picking up an axe to relax by jamming through a few songs at the end of a long day, or breaking out the whole band kit for social fun when company is over, these music games deliver massive amounts of playing time and more than justify their expense.

Reality check: Selling at nearly $200 for the full band kits, these games cost almost as much as the console you play them on. While you’re sure to find many songs that please you, there will be quite a few that you hate but still have to slog through to proceed in career mode (yeah, I’m looking at you, PDA by Interpol). Getting four people up and playing is also still a bit of a chore.

(Tomorrow: Favorite Downloadable Game, Best Game That Failed to Capture My Imagination, Favorite Unsung Work of Art)

Better late than never: The best games of 2008 (Part 1)

I’ve been meaning to crank out a “Best of 2008″ for a couple weeks now but a few things kept getting in the way. For one thing, I hadn’t played enough of a few key titles to make judgements about them.

I also had trouble carving out time over the holidays to sit down and write a meaty post. I took my first vacation days in more than eight months, and pretty much avoided coming near a keyboard for most of that time.

Also, I kept getting intimidated as various news outlets and blogs rolled out their “best of” lists, either pre-empting what I wanted to say, or making me revisit my own picks.

By the time I really started getting my thoughts down, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to do a typical top 10 list or break down by genre. So I looked at the games I liked and then made up categories to accomodate them. I’ll run three each day all week.

Favorite Handheld Game: Patapon

Why it’s a winner: I admit, handheld gaming has never grabbed me, apart from about a six-month infatuation with the DS when it first came out. I just don’t have a niche in my life that can accomodate portable gaming. If I’m at home, I have a stack of console games I want to get through. If I’m commuting or travelling, I prefer to read books or magazines.

But Patapon, published by Sony for its PSP device, was so wildly different, so cute, so enthralling that it proved to be one of the rare titles to overcome my resistance to handheld gaming.

Patapon is so weird it’s almost impossible to describe. In the language of games, it’s a side-scrolling, rhythm-based, role-playing real-time strategy game. In English, that means you raise and equip armies of little round creatures called patapons, and lead them into battle against large beasties that are terrorizing the tribe. You issue orders by tapping different buttons in time with the rhythm of the tribe’s war drums: pata-pata-pata-pon, pon-pon-pata-pon, etc. Different rhythms result in different actions, such as advance, attack and retreat. It’s incredibly creative and charming.

Reality check: Patapon has a moderately steep learning curve, and you can expect to lose quite a few battles as you learn the ropes of the command and combat system. You also need to be pretty accurate in timing your button presses to the rhythms. A Guitar Hero-style difficulty selector would have been welcome.

Favorite Wii Game: Wii Fit

Why it’s a winner: A lot of people won’t even classify Wii Fit as a game, but in my book it qualifies as such thanks to one crucial quality: it’s simply fun to play. It also marks the first credible effort to bring health and fitness content to the medium of video games.

There is a wide array of strength, yoga and balance exercises available, and they can be surprisingly demanding. The balance board peripheral is really a fancy digital scale, allowing Wii Fit to track your weight and progress. Certainly the product has resonated with U.S. consumers, who have snapped up more than 3.5 million of the $90 game since in launched here in May.

Ultimately, Wii Fit’s significance will be similar to that of Wii Sports – a simplified and fun proof of concept that should open the door to more engaging products.

Reality check: Despite Nintendo’s early claims, Wii Fit just isn’t going to be something that you stick with every day and genuinely make a part of a serious fitness regimen. If you’re serious about exercising at home, there are a lot more productive things you can be doing.

An aside: A lot of hardcore gamers named No More Heroes as the Wii game of the year. I, too, loved the Kill Bill aesthetic of gushing blood but found the game-play far too repetitive: run until an enemy approaches. Wiggle the remote to decapitate/eviscerate/impale said enemy. Repeat 100 times. Reach boss, fight boss in same way.

Favorite Shooter: Battlefield: Bad Company

Why it’s a winner: This was a remarkable game and although it was largely eclipsed by Call of Duty 4, which came out more than half a year previously, Electronic Art’s latest attempt at transfering its groundbreaking PC franchise to consoles was superior in several ways.

If CoD4 is the Black Hawk Down of war video games, Battlefield: Bad Company is the Three Kings. CoD4 is about the deadly seriousness of war, but Bad Company focuses on its absurdity. The dialogue is snappy, and your squadmates are the most engaging since Brothers in Arms.

The game is no slouch in the looks department, either. The graphics and sound are excellent and smoke billows in a spectacularly realistic fashion, which is good since you’ll be generating quite a bit of it and you rampage across Eastern Europe.

And it wouldn’t be a Battlefield game without giving you a selection of vehicles to try out. Perhaps there’s no single moment that matches the A-10 gunship level of CoD4 but you’ll get a multitude of lesser yet still very impressive opportunities to take control of mobile death dealers from tanks to helicopters.

Reality check: The control scheme, especially swapping weapons, is plain weird and takes time to get used to. If you die, you respawn at the last checkpoint, which aren’t all that frequent. Weirdly, anything you killed or blown up remains dead and destroyed, so if you die near the end of a level, you will trek back through all the territory you laid waste to, a pain if you had a vehicle that got destroyed as well.

Tomorrow: Favorite Driving Game, Favorite Online Game, and Biggest Time-Suck!