The Style is in the Details

HIGH Finally glimpsing the lost city of Shambhala.

LOW Quickly dying ten times during a chase sequence before getting a hint as to what I should be doing.

WTF "Don't you love how the water makes your jeans all squidgy?"

Playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 with the wife right now, doing co-op throughout the entire campaign. I didn't expect much more than a complete rehash of the first game, but I have to admit I'm a little surprised at how lackluster it feels. It's basically there, but needs more polish to really make it pop. We've stumbled across more than a handful of bugs and glitches which always detracts from the experience, and parts of the game just don't feel very well-thought-out. The boss fight with Yellowjacket was a complete mess, and it really drives me up the wall the way the game is so capricious with the team you’ve selected.

In this case, the length is a good thing

HIGH It's a real JRPG, except it doesn't waste your time.

LOW The Knight 30 mode could have used a little more work.

WTF Why is nobody talking about this game?

The Brainy Gamer blog featured a terrific post today directed at Infinity Ward's questionable "FAGS" advertising campaign, in which Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels decries grenade spam.  It's covert advertising for Modern Warfare 2, of course, although the acronym with which said message is provided is obviously the source of the most worry.

Modern Warfare 2: So the word is basically out, and the level that has been causing all the commotion has been revealed to be used as a scene-setting device—basically establishing some context for the player's actions in the rest of the game. That was pretty much what I expected, BUT… it was also relayed that wherever this scene appears in the final retail version, it will be preceded by a warning about "graphic content" and the option to simply skip it and jump right into the part where the player goes back to being a "good guy".

Sometimes even an umlaut isn't enough

HIGH The world is metal.

LOW Almost everything else isn't.

WTF "Everybody thinks I'll betray them someday. Now gasp as I betray you!"

MadWorld comes closer to the kind of inherently "ethical" gameplay that Miguel Sicart (The Ethics of Computer Games) associates with the voyeuristic gorefest Manhunt. Sicart calls Manhunt an exemplary ethical title in the sense that it offers a "closed, mirroring" ethical system of gameplay that compels the player-subject to adhere to rules that become increasingly ghastly and, if fully utilized, so depraved that it causes the "virtuous" player to be self-reflective. This realization, though tied to unethical gameplay, is itself an ethical end-product of the design and the experience of the player.

My favorite game to play on travel recently has been Chessmaster: The Art of Learning for the PlayStation Portable. It's not a great chess game by any means, but it was a digital download for my favorite portable system, and it's good for playing quick sessions just about anywhere.

The odd thing is, I've been playing chess almost rabidly as of late, and not just on the go or in the bathroom. I've enjoyed playing Chessmaster again so much—just sitting around on the couch or playing at my desk for hours on end—that I've encouraged my girlfriend to take part in a few real games of chess now and then, and it's quickly become one of the little joys of our living together.