L.A. Noire Hits the Streets

In the tradition of Sierra's Police Quest series or the Tex Murphy FMV games from Access comes the latest from the-studio-that-can-do-no-wrong, Rockstar. Acting as distributors, they have obviously given developer Team Bondi the proper lessons in how to make a completely compelling video game product.

L.A. Noire is a startlingly polished game experience, ostensibly considered an open-world TPS along the lines of Red Dead Redemption or the perennial GTA series, only this time set in 1940's Los Angeles. But players aren't really free to run roughshod over a meticulously re-created LA, mowing down pedestrians and shooting shopkeepers in the face. Instead, there is just enough range for the player to avoid feeling like they're on a Tunnel-Of-Love ride, but reigned in enough so that they can't break the storyline that Rockstar has created.

And what a storyline. As Cole Phelps, a newly-minted beat cop who works his way up through the LAPD to detective, gamers delve into a fascinating story with many facets, twists and turns, all the while hewing to police procedure and proper investigative and interrogation tactics.

The whole thing comes off wonderfully well, including the vaunted MotionScan technology, which captures a complete likeness of the various actors' faces as they read their lines. Put into practice in the game, the results are startling, and more than just eye candy; it allows players to read the faces of interviewees for tell-tale signs of fibbing.

Really, if you have any kind of interest in video games, you should sashay over to your nearest game store and pick this up. Rockstar and Team Bondi just raised the bar for video game excellence.

24hr Gaming Event for Charity

I belong to a gaming organization named The Beautiful Peoples Club.  It's a Family Guy reference, don't ask me I didn't choose the name.

We are one day away from our second annual 24 hour gaming marathon.  This year, we are staying up for www.stupidcancer.com, a great organization that provides an online support network for young people who are burdened with a cancer diagnosis.

If you want to help, you can swing by our charity event page for more information, press the chipin button there to donate what you can, and also join our live chat channel and video feeds we'll be streaming as we geezers try to stay up all night playing games.

Hope to see you there.

Thief 4 Steals the Limelight

Now that Eidos Montreal practically has Deus Ex: Human Revolution put to bed, the studio is ramping up the continuation of another vaunted PC game franchise, with Thief 4.

It's apropos that Eidos should follow-up a new Deux Ex game with a new Thief.  Both series were dealt a death-blow at nearly the same time in the early-to-mid 2000's with mediocre third entires.  Thief: Deadly Shadows was slightly more redeeming that the disastrous Deus Ex: Invisible War, but still seemed dumbed down from the soaring heights of  previous efforts.

At any rate, a lot of the Thief series' thunder has been stolen by UbiSoft's towering Assassin's Creed games, especially Assassin's Creed II.  It's hard to see how Eidos can possibly top that classic, but who knows?  They might just be able to swipe the crown.

Video Games Come Out On Top in Enforcement Rankings

Well, this really goes against the alarmist cry about how violent video games are corrupting our innocent youth.

The Federal Trade Commission in the States conducted an undercover shopper survey, where 13 to 19 year-olds were recruited to enter various outlets unaccompanied, and attempt to purchase entertainment items like movie tickets, video games, and DVDs which were all rated for adults only.

The big takeaway was that the lowest rate of sales of restricted materials to minors occured with video games.  Only 13% of the shoppers successfully purchased the forbidden products.  This, compared to the 64% of kids that were sold a music CD labelled with a Parent's Advisory sticker, warning of explicit lyrics.

Also interesting is the break-down by retail outlets.  When it comes to selling M-Rated games to minors, Walmart was the worst offender.  So, when it comes to grandstanding about the morality of violent videogames today, Wally World is the best.  When it comes to actually investing money into proper training so salespeople don't let kids get their hands on adults-only products, they're the very worst.

Portal Re-Opens

A little game called Portal 2 released yesterday, by some company called Valve. I guess it's big news to people.

And it should be. It is the sequel to Portal, released for the PC in 2007, and a scant 3 years later on the Mac. It was added, as what some might have assumed as an afterthought at the time, to the Orange Box bundle. This box contained Half-Life 2, the HL2 add-on packs Episodes One and Two, and the perennial team-based shooter Team Fortress 2. It's safe to say that the Orange Box will be entered into the pantheon of gaming history as one of the greatest bundles ever sold.

Portal came from humble beginnings.  It all started with Narbacular Drop, a senior thesis project by a team of students at DigiPen, the most august of video game design schools.  ND stars Princess "No-Knees", cursed with the inability to jump and kidnapped and held prisoner by a demon in his dungeon.  Turns out, however, that the dungeon is a sentient entity called Wally, and will allow the princess to form two holes, of differing colours, on any natural surface, which are then linked, allowing the princess to enter one and exit the other.

The DigiPen team operated under the moniker Nuclear Monkey Software, and at one career day at DigiPen some Valve people saw Narbacular Drop and requested a demonstration back at their headquarters.  The team eventually was hired by Valve to professionalize the game, and the result was Portal, one of the most beloved video games of all time.

Here is a video of game play from Narbacular Drop, followed by a clip of what the concept has become with Portal 2.

Jerry Lawson, of Channel F Fame, Dies at 71

Word is coming out that Jerry Lawson has died. He is known as the inventor of the Channel F home video game console for Fairchild Instrument, and with it introduced the concept of the "programmable" console, or one that takes game cartridges. Before the Channel F, users had to be resigned to playing the games that were built into their video game units. With the console Lawson designed, they could have, at least theoretically, an endless number of games to play.

For more information on the Channel F, consult your local The Dot Eaters article here.

Have You Played Atari On iOS Today?

Atari and Vancouver developer Code Mystics have dropped a metric tonne of retro joy onto the Apple App Store with Atari's Greatest Hits, for iOS devices. The app allows you to play up to 100 classic Atari games; a few of their most famous arcade entries, but the majority of games come from the catalog of games released for the VCS/2600 home console. Only a small sampling of games are available for free, with 4-pack game downloads available for .99 cents, or you can get the whole 100 game enchilada for 15 bucks.

The app is universal, and I'd recommend playing it on the iPad, as the arcade games feature a representation of the original screen bezel, which shrinks down the playfield a bit too much on the iPhone. The games offer both landscape and profile mode, but not every one has that option to switch. The control methods on offer vary as well, and some work decidedly better than others. On the whole, however, I find the sliding controls that invariably represent dials or trackballs to be too sluggish, and their speed is not configurable. This definitely needs to be addressed by a patch to make these games workable. As for joysticks, the small virtual button that stands in for the stick is small, and I find my thumb constantly sliding off of it, or worse: pressing a different direction or multiple directions as once, deadly for games like Asteroids that put different, drastic actions like thrust or hyperspace on the up and down joystick positions.  Classic video game emulation is often slagged for missing that intrinsic satisfaction that comes from holding a joystick in your hand while playing. Since precise control is sometimes the only thing going for these games, in particular those for the VCS/2600, the sluggishness on offer here is pretty close to a deal-breaker.

Sometimes the controls work, however, as evidenced by the sliders that control the paddles in PONG.  But if you really want to capture that arcade feeling, the iCADE, set for release in June, will scratch that itch.  Originally a clever 2010 April Fool's joke perpetrated by Think Geek, intense user demand has actually made the crazy idea reality.  Greatest Hits has support for the iCADE built right in, and makers ION will be releasing an API that will allow other games to support the mini-cabinet.

Even without the iCADE, however, Greatest Hits is a wonderful app for classic video game aficionados.  They will also be jazzed about the extras that come with some games, such as game artwork, scanned colour manuals, and more.  Some, however, are concerned that the package is infringing on iTune rules about apps downloading and running external code, represented by the ROM code downloaded in the game packs in order to play these classic gems.  A double-standard does seem to have been set with the acceptance of Atari's Greatest Hits into the app store.  So perhaps games looking for a little nostalgia had better grab this baby fast.