J-Cat's blog of 11-06...

...is indeed one with many things to consider when you take the next self-time in a comfy chair with a good smoke and a hot coffee. There are too many hooks and eyes in there to just read it and do it away as a regular musing, the blog perches on the thinnest pilar of personal existance; social interaction and the maybe cultural and regional convictions on how said existance should be colored in.

The Xbox-less kid, for instance, was in my opinion indeed bereft of his social life the way it was perfect for him. When you consider that the friends he had on his buddylist are real people he felt comfortable with and accepted by (thereby giving meaning to his existance), being cut off from those people took away his life-blood aswell. The 360 is more than just a machine that plays games without ever growing tired of it, or even of it's owner. The 360 is also a window that facilitates an intricate social network of people that are bound together by common interest. A common interest makes social interaction rewarding. Moreover, it facilitates people to be something they might not be outside XBL, a kid in a wheelchair becomes the savior of the world, complete with red bandana and the ability to run around freely carrying 15 different weapons while spouting tosterone driven one-liners. A kid who leaves no memory behind in others after a day at school, becomes a leader on XBL showing other kids the ropes in difficullt, high-action games. Those kids are real people and it must be understood that they maintain social networks that are larger than three past generations of your family ever could pool together on christmas eve. They even have to work much harder to maintain that network aswell. One day not logging on can cause irrepairable damage to one's status on-line.

Nothing is as fleething as people one knows online. If I were to suddenly stop posting here, some of you might notice this and wonder for a short moment where I went but in the end it doesn't matter. A week from there and I'm just someone who used to post here in the past and maybe, just maybe, some of you might even realise I'm still in your XBL buddy-list. Should I want to be remembered, or even more valued as a member to 2o2p, I should work much harder than this, or at least develop a taste for twitch-shooters and weasle myself in the ranks of HaloIII players on here. I respectfully decline. Snake-eyes being snake-eyes, I still rather have friends for who I am, than for what fancy title I play on a daily basis.

Never having been a parent myself I can't say if the parents of the kid in J-cat's blog did the right thing or not. I dare to venture down the road of pointing at the ignorance to the importance of XBL to the kid, however. It seems as if the parents failed to see beyond the fact that their kid was only playing games. On XBL, the game is merely facilitating a way to interact socially with real people. The only importance the game has is in the nature of the title of the game, as I hinted at a paragraph above. Low interest titles garner little friends online. Point in case, if I were to prune my buddy-list of people who are there solely on the basis that I added them to play a high-profile game in the past, but afterwards had no dealings with because I went on to play a different game than they did, I would be left only with my nephew, whether I'm 2o2p or not. My buddy-list is only packed with contacts because I'm too lazy to do anything about it, that's all.

The nature of having social contacts has changed, and the change is not going to go away. The notion that one has go outside to meet people in order to have friendships that are meaningful is in my opinion hopelessly old fashioned. The fact that people are not physically present to a person on line, doesn't make the relationship any less tangible. Consider, the fact that I'm posting here broadcasts my musings to an incredibly large audience. Not only do I reach my clannies here, but this post is also read (and hopefully understood), by lurkers not registered here and by people who are lead here by Google's "Gamble"-feature. That means that I'm bound by far stricter rules in what I say and how I choose to say it. Soren Kierkegaard said, "People demand the freedom of speech to compensate for the freedom of thought, which they already possess." In a physical meeting with a friend, I have a lot more privacy than on here, and a lot more room to express myself in a way that just won't do digitally.

In any case, the black side of maintaining a meaningful presence on XBL is a conumdrum. Does one have friends to play games, or does one play a game to have friends? It's by that conumdrum that digital relationships on XBL should be valued. Again, since the only point of reference I have is me, I joined 2o2p because I litterally fit the bill, I'm too old to play games. My mindset has always been that I'm here, I'm playing a game. Come and join me if you want and if not, cool runnings. For me, the ability to interact with you guys on here makes up for the apparent lack of worthy multiplayer titles in my library and my obviously faltering dedication to commit slavishly to the ones I do have. I belong purely on those merits alone, but I'll be damned before I start jumping through hoops to be affirmed so.

Maybe that's the destinction the kid above failed to notice. It could very well be that he enjoyed being affirmed, but overlooked the fact that he was being affirmed for the wrong reasons, namely, he was not getting affirmed for who he was, but for what he was. And being able to make that distinction is something one only learns correctly from being well parented.

Last minute edit: for the sake of asking questions, in relation to the above and being 2o2p. Do you use your buddy-list to justify the fact that you 'still' enjoy videogames for others? Do you feel obligated to the people on your buddy-list as in; playing a game you don't really want to play, but still play because you want remain 'friends'? Do you find yourself limiting your scores on friends-leaderboards to allow  people staying ahead of you to maintain fragile friendships? Do you sometimes or oftenly realise that your opinion on games is based on how your XBL-buddies feel about them, while in fact you feel quite different about those games personally? Do you speak out against your XBL-buddies, or do you rather remain silent out of fear you might be left with no-one to game with?

I don't ask those questions expecting an answer. Just sit back and think about it. If you're like me, the answer should be obvious. But there are those who are subject to one or even all of those questions and don't fool yourself thinking it doesn't apply to 2o2p. The kid in J-cat's blog isn't an anomaly, and his pitfall is equally a clear danger to adults aswell.

360 Games History 101 -- KAMEO

Kameo: Elements of Power. (2005)

360 games history classes.

I have been going through my extensive library of games for my 360, realizing that at least 90% of those games I hardly touch anymore. New and better replaces the blast from the past till they themselves succumb to the harsh faith of gathering dust with no other purpose but to give visiting gamers an jealousy filled eye-bleed. I'm rather vain when it comes to my library, so yeah.

It's rather unbelievable that the 360 already has a games history to it, though it will take another year or two for it to have conversations about the true greats that appeared on it. For instance, Shenmue on the Dreamcast. It's influence is still found in games today. Dare I say it? Parasite Eve 2 on the PS1. Those who have played it will instantly draw the parallels to Fallout 3's VATS. Golden-Eye on the Ninbox64, Leisure Suit Larry on the Amiga500... Games that went down in history with high praise. And if you're an older gamer like us lot, the retro-kudos for being to able to say that you've played those games on their original systems in their hay-day.

Anyway, I was thinking it would be fun to play the oldies in my library again and see how they hold up now. Some of those games will be considered ancient by now, some will be remembered with a gleam of a tear, to be swiftly wiped away while everybody agrees it was just a little dust in the eye, others will be laughed away from the anals of history. Still, it'll be good to look at them one more time and, seeing as ample time has passed, to come to an honest appraisal of their true worth at this point in time. Was bad really that bad? And was good really all that? What game deserves it's faith?

I'll kick my reviews off with maybe a rather unlogical choice, but those of you on my FL will have spotted the title I've been playing the last few days... Test Drive Unlimited!

Test Drive Unlimited. Created by Eden Software, published by Atari. 60Hz only game, uses Bink and Havok. Released in 2006, it came with a black&white manual and a full color fold-out map of Oahu. The DVD is quite standard 360-fare, with the note that the case rates it for ages 3 and up, but the disk itself says Parental Guidance, which in the Netherlands goes for ages six and up. TD:U received high praise and the case sports a 9/10 from X360-Magazine. It's also a Xbox-classic.

DLC for this game is large, with car-packs, free cars and a Hard-core mode designed for use with the wireless wheel.

When the game starts, you get a FMV of several persons at an airport, waiting to board a plane. A stewardess informs the waiting people that boarding is now possible and asks them to present their tickets and passports. It's there you select your in-game persona from six different people, three guys and three girls. None of them look particularly interesting to represent you for hours of gameplay, but later on in the game you have the possiblity to change your chosen persona to your liking. The persona you settled for boards the plane and you're treated to a FMV of a dreamsequence where your persona with maybe a bit of Eden's foresight, drives a Saleen S7 in a race.

Upon landing at Honolulu Airport, the player is then subjected to a mandatory tutorial that teaches the player how to rent a car, get used to the GPS, buy a first home, a first car and to enter a few easy races. After that, the player is free to take the game into any direction the player sees fit. After the initial stern hand holding, the games turns catatonic, if the player does nothing, the game does nothing too.

So there you are, most likely sitting in an Audi TT and wondering what to do next. There are many options open to the player. One can go cruising, take on a hitchhiker, help out supermodels, enter races or go and check out the instanced online races. All this is accomplished by driving to markers on the map, and activating a marker when the player is in the vincinity.

Supermodels are rather lazy women who want to be taken to somewhere rather close by, usually an area within three miles. The challenge is however to get them to their destination in a set time without damaging your car. Some models are rather picky too, like only accepting your offer to help them out when you're driving a very bright red sportscar...

Hitchikers are guys with sore thumbs standing by the side of the road. The same deal applies as with the supermodels, take them to their destination in a set time without damaging your ride. The one different thing is that they need to be taken considerably further, 15 miles is no exception, and they're usually found near the more difficult stretches of road.

Off line races have different categories for different cars and car-classes. It's a misture that's hardly eclectic nowadays.., circuit, point to point and time trial. After each race you get the option to check the leaderboard for that particular race and find out how you stack up to the rest of the world. You can try the race again, or return to cruising.

On-line races can be found littered allover the map, but right from the start, only a handful were really used and even then no-one took them really seriously. Players only went there to win-trade. Nowadays, the online races are abandoned.

There are some nice challenges that fall outside the perimeter of a racing-game like TD:U, like the car-delivery and the courier missions. These missions can only be played once if you would complete them successfully. Which is a shame, since especially the car-delivery missions were fun to do and gave the game some extra depth to the career-feel of it. The courier missions involved the player to deliver a box with mysterious contents for a huge pay-out, but failing the missions resulted in the player having to pay for damages!

Originally, the most flaunted pull of TD:U was it's MOOR-system, Massively Open Online Racing, which in the height of the hype back then, was blown up to racing in a world loaded with other races doing their thing. Traffic would be other players! All that fell apart a few days after the game hit the streets. MOOR turned out to be nothing more than eight people in very fast cars in instanced regions, when a player would leave a region, the player would be handed over to another instanced region with anywhere up to seven other players. Another big thing turned out to be disappointing was the ability to cruise Oahu with a friend. This was established with an anchor-system, where the player could anchor a buddy to him so they both would stay in the same instance. However, anchoring was needlessly complicated, and if one of the players opened the map to set a GPS-point, the anchor would be broken, afterwhich many fustrating minutes were spend trying to end up in the same instance your buddy was in again.

The original list of cars to be had is still massive, ranging from vintage rides like the Mercedes-Benz Gullwing to ultra modern rides like the Koenigsegg. Later on, DLC added more vintage cars and the much anticipated RUF-line up. (RUF is a Tuner-garage like Nismo, Shelby and Saleen, they focus on Porsche). Buying cars is rather straightforward, the player visited a dealership and bought the car he/she fancied. Buying vintage was a bit more involved, some cars would be out of stock, while others would be cheaper or more expensive depending on how the wind blew. Many people believed it tied with how many people bought certain vintage cars, but later it became clear that the game decided availability and pricing on it's own.

Another thing that became painfully clear was the vested interest of Lexus in Test Drive: Unlimited. The full line-up of Lexus is present in the game, and Lexus even opened their own special dealership in-game, which had to be downloaded later on as DLC. Also, Lexus cars in TD:U handle better than other cars in their respective classes.

Another much flaunted aspect of TD:U was player-created content, which could be shared through diners. Players could create their own races, and other players could try their challenges. However, the purse for such a race had to be fronted by the player who created the race, and the only way to recoup the purse was by royalties gained, based on how many people would take the challenge. Sadly, the diners were bugged from the start. Eden tried to remedy it, and has taken the challeneges offline several times, but to my knowledge, they never succeeded. Many of the challenges were Saleen S7 sprints anyway, often no longer than a mile. I have not checked the diners out in this revisit, for the reasons just explained.

Another thing was the Auction House, where players could sell off the rides they didn't want anymore. The Auction House was bugged aswell, and has been off-line many times, sometimes for several days on end. It works now, but buying something from there is quite foolish, since pricing for cars in the AH mostly does not drop below one million dollars.

Graphically, TD:U doesn't look all that dated today. There are many recurring buildings, trees and what have you for roadside clutter. In a racing-game, road-side clutter is not that important. The cars themselves are beautifully done, and the cock-pit view is still something other devs should take pointers from. In TD:U, the cock-pit view is actually usable under racing-conditions. In most other racers I find myself selecting the bumper-cam.

AI wise, TD:U should be cast aside with a scowl of disdain. The AI is dumb as a rock and relies heavily on random events. In cruise, the AI is not aware of the player, let alone other AI-drones. While at first glance it all looks pretty believable, up close and personal the AI leaves a lot to be desired. Under racing conditions against the AI, again the overuse of random events is an eye-sore. There's a huge rubber-band aspect aswell, which negates the immersion. The AI will happily catch up with you while riding an inferior car to the player's, and will suddenly become able to round tight corners flat-out while driving a Dodge Challenger R/T for instance. The Havok engine isn't helping either, the limitations of Havok can cause the player to wipe out only because the player went over a little rise in the road. But the Havok engine in TD:U is over 2 years old now... so yeah...

A nice addition was the inclusion of bikes, something a modern racer can't overlook these days lest it be laughed away. The selection of bikes is adequate, but on the road they're horrible. It's very obvious TD:U's focus is on cars.

On the whole, TD:U didn't stand the test of time. Too much of it's selling points were bugged or turned out to be quite different from the hype. The AI just isn't good enough to put up with now, and the outdated Havok is a nice showcase on how far modern tweaked Havok has come since then. Any hopes of the game being a nice addition to the player's wireless wheel titles are also a no go. The wheel is totally useless with the game. Not only does it detach the player from the feel of car that translates better to the controller, the fact that corners aren't rounded, but kind of flick into view makes using the wheel fustrating. The later addition of the Hard-core mode didn't help matters too.

To date, the gameworld is almost devoid of players, and online races are abandoned. Buying the game now is not recommended, because it is obviously at the end of it's life-cycle. The DLC is still premium-priced aswell, and at this point a sure waste of MSP that can be put to something else.

That said, if you're a fan of vintage rides, and fancy driving some true classics leisurely around Oahu with your favorite music coming from the radio, TD:U has still something to offer. I still enjoy driving around in my own Eleanor listening to my Doors playlist. (For those of you who were never able to get the in-game radio to work with custom playlists, the trick is to name your playlist Testdrive (note the capital T!). That will create a radiostation called "U", which will play all the songs you put in that playlist.)

Other than that, the off-line races have no replayability, the fun missions are sadly one-shot affairs and most players will be damned before they try and redo a hitchhiker mission. The online is dead, and the MOOR aspect is today nothing more than a gimmick, failing to pool the dwindling public together in what hubs there are left. If you don't own a copy of TD:U, think twice about picking it up on re-release. The sellingpoints of TD:U are either dead or dying and what's left is quite a mediocre racer.

If I were to rate TD:U today, I would not go further than 3/10. Bad AI, screwed up physics and a community that has moved on. The only redeeming quality TD:U has today is the stellar line up of vintage rides you won't find in other racers. Was it deserving of the Xbox-Classic accolade? In hindsight, no. The accolade was obviously given based on the hype, and not on the actual product.

Alright, that's the first game down! I hope you enjoyed this first history-class and leave me some comments with your thoughts on TD:U. And, I'm more than willing to cruise with you if you're looking for a buddy to accompany you on your vintage-ride cruises.

Next history-class == Kameo!

She who's called Lara

Lara Croft and me... What can I say? We're buddies, I guess. Ever since we first met and I saw her in full Voodoo-glory on a PC that struggled to keep up with her, the verdict has been cast... Ever since then I have been a willing slave to the Brittish lass with twin-guns (two sets of them, even), and body that defies the laws of female boundaries in the athletic field.

Lara and I, we have been allover the world, unearthing artifacts and doing away with bears, wolves, cheetah's, the odd human and we've solved puzzles that sometimes were too easy to be called a puzzle and sometimes needed a crisp understanding of the laws of nature.

Pretty soon, Lara will return to me and what am I supposed to do? Should I for the first time in over ten years betray her and leave her to fend for herself, or should rush to her defense and once more stand by her for better or for worse?

Oh Lara... can't you see what you're doing to me?