Magic: the Gathering has come to the Xbox 360… my life may be over.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Magic: the Gathering was a customizable card game that was introduced in 1993  The basic concept was that you and another wizard did battle with cards that represented creatures and spells.  Each player had 20 life points and the goal was to drain your opponent of all 20 points by various means.  This is a highly simplified explanation of the game, but you get the basic idea.

I started playing the game in early 1994, and I was instantly hooked.  The ability to customize the decks, to build theme with themes (speed… land destruction… defense… etc) was intoxicating.  You would tweak your deck and test it… tweak… test… tweak… test and then head off to a tournament to see how you stood up against others.  You could get national rankings even, and it became an all encompassing past time.

My retail store was one of the first in the country to get the idea to sell the cards individually, and that turned into a new insanity all in itself.  Cards could sell for anywhere from a few pennies up to a could hundred dollars depending on the rarity and power, but during the height of the craze we could barely keep the three ring binders stocked, and I was one of my own worst customers.

I quit playing in 1996 as Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the game, started giving in to the whiniest of players and changing numerous rules that just made the game maddening.  As soon as you got used to a new rule, it would get changed, and keeping up with the constant changes was driving me insane.  The worst change was that they changed tournament structure to where you couldn’t use the oldest cards any more because players had been priced out of the market.  The original concept, as told to me personally by the president of the company, was that they enisioned a day where someone would play with a 15-year-old card and people would be all amazed by it and not know what it was… that theory lasted 3 years before players whined the concept out of existance.

Well, even with a 13 year abscence, I still think back to the height of the game with fondness, and I do miss it at times.  Well, someone decided it might be a good idea to put the game on Xbox 360 as a downloadable game.  Priced at only $10, how could I not give it a try?

While the game captures some of the old… well… magic of the game, I am not thrilled with the decks being locked in their construction and limited to only one color (the magic is divided in to five colors – black, blue, green, red and white – with each color having a ‘theme’ to what it does), and I was a heavy, heavy two color player back in my day (red/green was my choice, speed plus powerful spells).  You can unlock more cards by winning games, but even that is limited to only 17 cards at this time.

Wizards of the Coast has said they have not yet decided if they will release more cards for the game, since there are over 10,000 cards in the physical game now they have no lack of cards to draw from, but no word yet on the Xbox version.  I am hoping they do expand it, because even though I am not 100% happy with it, it is one easy way for me to revisit an old addiction withough breaking the bank or dealing with rules changing every five seconds.

In short, is it perfect?  No.  Is it still worth the purchase?  Yes!

Who needs some silly remote controls you wave around to control a game when you can turn your entire body into that silly remote?

Microsoft has announced at the annual E3 gaming conference that they are working on a new addition to the Xbox 360 gaming system called "Project Natal".  While small details like pricing or a arelease date are missing at this time, what is known is that this could completely change how we play video games and interact with technology.

Imagine a camera system bar under your TV, and when you walk in to the room, it recognizes your face and automatically logs you into Xbox Live.  From there you can control your Xbox dashboard with flicks of your hand like the computers in the movie Minority Report.  Don’t feel like waving your hands around?  Talk to it.

Check out the video below for more of what this this will supposedly do.

I have a real hard time believing it will be able to do true full body motion capture, but if it does, then things will change in electronics forever.  Why would anyone ever need ot buy something like a Wii Fit again?  Why buy any seperate controller again when you can simply do the motions?

One of the demoed pieces of software at the show is Peter Molyneux’s ”Milo”.  From the description, it is a virtual friend that will interact with you and other members of yoru family.  He, or his female counterpart named Millie, will know each member of your family by facial recognition and will react to each person differently.  He will also hold conversations with you by relating things he or she discussed with you earlier.  (… anyone else think that could be hugely embarrassing?)  The other thing intriguing about this is the mini-review mentions Milo throws you a pair of goggles, which you catch with a motion, and then the system instructed the reviewer as to what motions to make to put the goggles on.

In short, this is about as close as we are going to get to virtual reality for a while, but there is doubt that lingers in the back of my head.  I have seen numerous game peripherals over the years that fall short of their promises, and this one is promising a heck of a lot.  I am hopeful that it will deliver on everything they are listing, heck, I really want it if it does deliver, but until I see it in person, I am going to have to remain somewhat doubtful that they can really pull off such huge leaps in technology.  If they do… Sony who?  Nintendo who?

Forget summer! I want it to be November 10th, 2009!

As promised, this weekend brought about a full trailer for Call of Duty 6, also known as Modern Warfare 2.  While most of it appears to be cut scenes from the single player campaign mode, it still looks amazing.  The only problem is that the vast majority of people who play these games, it’s all about the online mode.  Sure, we all play the single player game once, we need to know what to expect from the multiplayer!

It does look like we’ll be globe trotting again this time around with at least Brazil and some unkwnon spot in Europe, it appears we’ll get the same flavor as we did last time around.  It is beginning to look more and more likely we may actually drive the snowmobiles, not sure how I feel about that as vehicle driving in these games doesn’t always work out the best, but we’ll have to wait and see.  And, hey, a castle blows up, so it can’t be all bad!

Is it November 10th yet?

November 10th, 2009 is still six months away, but it is never too early to start drooling over Modern Warfare 2 (AKA Call of Duty 6).

You know a video game is going to be huge when not only is there going to be a video footage premiere on May 24th on TNT during the NBA Eastern Conference finals, but when they release a teaser to the teaser.  I definitely count myself amongst the most excited people on the face of the planet waiting for this game, but even I think this is going a bit far in the early hyperbole.  For crying out loud, we already had the teaser for when they just announced it would only be called Modern Warfare 2!

With that being said, I’ve embedded the teaser footage below, and it strikes me to be made up of all cut-scene footage as opposed to in game play scenes.  Sure, go ahead and get excited about the underwater diving and snowmobiles, but that doesn’t mean we’re actually going to get to play through those.  There is one scene very reminsicent of one my favorite Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare levels, the AC-130 gunship, so I am hopeful we might see that return.  Not holding my breath quite yet, though.

November 10th can’t get here soon enough…

Mark your calendars boys and girls for November 10th, 2009!

I’ve blogged a few times about my love of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and I have to say my love for this game hasn’t diminished one bit in the 13+ months I’ve had it.  The only time it has left my Xbox 360 was to give Gears of War 2 a spin, and… well… I’ve sold that off and I’m back to good old CoD 4.  I did give Call of Duty: World at War (notice they dropped the numbering) a spin via its demo, and while it was cool to hear Keifer Sutherland barking orders at you, using World War II weapons just didn’t do it for me.

So, back in the world of CoD 4, I had heard rumors the next version of the game would be back to the modern age, but it was just the usual rumors that floated around.  Then this week the gaming community finally got the confirmation we wanted.

I have to admit this is about the oddest promo video I’ve ever seen as it reveals, well, pretty much nothing,but at least we know Modern Warfare 2 will be out on November 10th, 2009.  And, yes, they have completely dropped the Call of Duty name from the title, apparently they think “Modern Warfare” became enough of a brand on is own.

Hopefully I’m not getting my hopes up to high for this game.  The last time I fell in love with a game like this was SOCOM II: U.S. Navy Seals on the Playstation 2, and when SOCOM III came about it, well, to be blunt, it sucked.  They over complicated things by adding vehicles, making the maps too big, making things so the snipers were way over favored, etc.  I couldn’t stand the game.  I am hoping beyond all hope the same fate doesn’t befall Modern Warfare 2.

My fingers are crossed, and I will be waiting patiently on November 10th… okay, maybe not “patiently” for Modern Warfare 2 to rock my socks off… oh please rock my socks off!

Netflix added the ability to stream movies some time ago, and after taking the plunge to try it out, I have to say I’m sold on the concept.

At first I was hesitant to give it a try because you could only do it on your computer, and I didn’t feel like going through the trials and tribulations of watching Internet videos on my TV.  Eventually a company named Roku brought a Netflix set top box to market, but, I also didn’t feel like plopping down $99 for a dedicated device.

Then, in November, Microsoft updated the Xbox 360 dashboard and added the option to stream Netflix to your TV without any more equipment then I already owned.  With the temptation being too great, I finally gave in and reactivated my Netflix account and decided to give it a shot.

For as little as $8.99 a month (we’ll ignore the $4.99 option as that only gives you 2 hours of video streaming a month), you get one DVD rented at a time, but you get unlimited video streaming to your Xbox.  Quite a bargain if you ask me since they have over 12,000 selections for you to choose from.  True, the movie selection is mainly older films, but for a film buff like myself, I’m thrilled.  They also offer help a very healthy selection of older TV shows, all which are available on DVD, but for three months of streaming, you can save your self buying a DVD set you may not even like, and you will save room in your house.  I finally can try out an older British comedy I have been dying to try for years called Yes, Minister without rolling the dice on an expensive boxed set and risking not even liking the show.

The only drawback to the system is you have to go to the Netflix site to add more videos to your queue.  You can only have 6 active selections show up in your Xbox dashboard at any time, but that is plenty for a night of video watching.

My biggest fear was that you were going to end up with heavily pixalated veiwing since it was streaming over the Internet and being blown up to the size of a TV screen, but I am pleased to say I was totally wrong about that.  Last night my father wanted to watch a movie since he is laid out on the couch recovering from knee surgery, and he chose The Illusionist from 2006.  What little I watched of the movie since I had work to do was just stunning in its quality.  It might not be true high def, but coming over an HDMI cable to our 42″ Toshiba Regza LCD, I noticed little to no “image noise”, no buffering except before the film started, and an overall better experience than a standard definition DVD played on a standard DVD player.

I would still like to see a broader slection of films to watch, and also the ability to add new things to your queue on the fly, but overall, if you have an Xbox 360 already, or feel up to getting a Roku device, this is well worth $8.99 a month.  Also, keep an eye out, but some Blu-ray DVD players are starting to add the ability to stream the videos also.

With another year under their belt, why does Blu-ray still seem to be another “also ran” in the home media market?

It was one year ago today that I announced that I had decided to go with HD-DVD, and I knew full well that probably meant I had picked the wrong format in the high def war.  I was proven right in February of this year when HD-DVD threw in the towel, and it looked like a lock that Blu-ray would become the dominant format.

So, why hasn’t it happened?  Blu-ray is still languishing with only a single digit percentage of the home media market, and it doesn’t look to be gainging more traction with the economy in its current uncertain state.  As I see it, Blu-ray is fighting a multi pronged fight that it didn’t even ponder it was going to have to.

• As people have said everywhere, DVDs still look too good on a high def television to warrant people running out and buying yet another format.  With upconverting DVD players pushing standard definition discs to near HD quality, and those players still selling for less than a Blu-ray player, it’s hard for people to make the justification for going with Blu-ray.
• Even when people do go with Blu-ray, they are not buying films in the numbers they were with regular DVDs.
• Streaming media is becoming more common, and on numerous devices people already own.  For instance, the fact that you can stream Netflix films via the XBox 360 now.  Why purchase what you can stream, and be out more money and space in your home?
• The prices for Blu-ray players and their accompanying discs are still just too high compared to their standard definition counterparts.

You add up all of these problems, and it doesn’t look too promising for the high def format.  Yes, I fully admit that this may sound like sour grapes over me goign HD-DVD, but it isn’t, because I have been very close to throwing in the towel and buying a Blu-ray player several times since February.  At this point I don’t think buying into an HD format is a wise choice for any one.  Streaming is becoming more and more prevalent, and I don’t see standard def DVDs going anywhere, so I’m thinking it may be wise to just sit out this home media iteration and see where the chips land.

In short, don’t be me and put all your money on what could be a losing horse.

In what seems to be becoming an annual event, it’s time for a new entry in the Call of Duty franchise of video games.

This year’s entry is going back to the roots of the series by moving the setting back to the days of World War II, with a heavy focus on the Pacific Rim theater.  There is also a change up in that last year’s mega-popular Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) was by the design house at Infinity Ward, and this year’s version (Call fo Duty: World at War is the full title) is by a group named Treyarch.

Everyone on XBox Live has been able to download a demo for a few days now which allows you to play on three of the multiplayer maps.  As long time readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of online first person shooting games, so I downloaded and gave the game a try.  To be honest, Call of Duty 4 has literally not left my XBox since the day I inserted it, which has been about 8 months now, so me playing anything else is a novel concept.

First impressions tell me… I’m not going to be nearly as addicted to this game, and that is if I even buy it.

To be completely honest, this game is so similar to CoD4 that it feels more like an expansion pack than an entirely new game.  I almost wonder if that is why this game doesn’t have the number “5″ in its title, it almost feels more like a “4.5″ than a wholly new game.  Sure, there are some new aspects such as the addition of vehicles in at least one level of the three they let the public sample, and at some point in the game there is the inclusion of flame throwers, but otherwise the basic mechanics of the game just feel far to close to the last game.

I will say they did add far more details to what weapons damage could do to you, which I am not sure is such a wonderful idea.  I noticed after shooting a guy with a shotgun at fairly close range that I could see his rib cage clearly where the blast hit.  At another point I got hit with a grenade and as my character fell backwards I could see his left leg was missing.  Not to mention the amount of blood that gets splattered on the “camera” when you kill people at close range.  While I understand thay are going for a realisitc approach, I’m not sure I need that much gore in a game I play to relax after a long day of work.

One of the largest annoyances, and I know this is minor, is the inclusion of the attack dogs.  In CoD4, after you would get 7 kills in a row, you could call in an attack chopper.  Well, seeing as this is WW II, they couldn’t have coptors, obiously, so they replaced them with attack dogs.  As an animal lover, I’m not thrilled with haing to shoot dogs to save myself, and my 3 real life dogs are not thrilled with the barking coming from the TV whenever they show up.  Again, minor, but annoying.

True, I am judging this game by only a small slice of it, but the basic mechanics are there, and the actual character movement even feels a bit clunkier.  I mean the way the character itself moves, I expect the weapons to be clunky and harder to manage, but the actual physics of the figure you control just doesn’t feel smooth for some reason.

Will I end up buying it?  I don’t know, I’m tempted, but I may just wait for Infinity Ward to come back to being the designers with the next installment before I once again answer… the Call of Duty.  (Stop groaning!)

Hollywood has tried turning numerous video games into movies, and most of them… well… lets be honest, most of them have sucked. Now the savior may be on its way, and its name is…

Guitar Hero: The Movie!

-commences to slamming his head against a wall-

Mind you this is in no way official yet, but according to an interview with MTV, Brett Ratner is keen to do it.  Luckily for the masses of the world, Activision, the makers of the game, don’t seem so keen on the idea.

For those of you unfamiliar with the popular gaming franchise, you play a plastic guitar and hit the corresponding colored buttons on the instrument to what you see on the screen.  The game is enermously popular, but it doesn’t exactly scream “movie plot” to me.  Ratner has an idea in mind, though:

“It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.”

Didn’t I already see this movie?  Ah, yes, the 1989 “classic”, The Wizard, starring Fred Savage.  Not EXACTLY the same, but close enough.

Anyway, no, this is not a good idea, and thankfully Activision doesn’t want the franchise messed with.  Apparently they think a lackluster movie could possibly damage the name of the game.  Brett Ratner is a big time director though, so I’m not sure how they think the man behind the Rush Hour series and X-Men: The Last Stand could possibly make a bad movie…

Aw crap.  RUN, ACTIVISION!  RUN!

In a move that is sure to leave me scratching my head for days, Microsoft has partnered up the Xbox 360 gaming platform with Rock the Vote.

In a press release put out today, Microsoft revealed that as of today, users of Xbox Live will be able to take polls about the upcoming presidential election, participate in forums and… oh, how this scares me… register to vote.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for people registering to vote, and I actually went and did it the day of my 18th birthday I was so anxious to have the right.  What scares me is, and I know I will catch flames for this, is the goofballs on Xbox Live messing this up.

I’ve written a couple times this year about the intellectual titans I run into playing some of the games online, and it worries me that some of these folks, for laughs, may try to register fake people or some other way gum up the works.  I have not looked at the process yet, but I am hopeful there are multiple safeguards in place.  I asked my mother for her feelings on this since she used to be the president of the local League of Women Voters chapter, responsible for many people being registered to vote, and her reply was simply, “this troubles me.”

Hopefully this will lead to legitimate sign-ups, and hopefully it will also lead to people actually going to the polls come election day, but it still makes me a bit nervous to see it done in this fashion.  Going to the gamers is a great idea, but why not set it up around the release of a major game?  Madden ‘09 just came out with a huge push for midnight releases, wouldn’t it have made sense to set up at some stores and do it there?  Yes, there is a certain convenience factor to doing it at home, but I worry about faked names, hacked accounts and any other number of potential problems.

In my heart, I hope it is successful because I think our freedom to vote is one of the greatest things in this country, it is just the method of registration that is worrisome to me.

According to The NPD Group, Grand Theft Auto IV from Rockstar Games, sold 6 million copies in its first week of release.  At a retail price of $59.99, that puts the gross sales of $359,000,000 in one week.

I decided it would be interesting to take a look at the top grossing domestic films to see where this would be on the list if it was a movie.  According to the list on Box Office Mojo, this would place it just $2 million ahead of 12th place, Jurassic Park.  For all of 2007, the movie industry grossed $9.6 billion, and so far this year, the video game industry has grossed $6.6 billion, on track to top somewhere between $21 and $23 billion.

So, are we looking at the gaming industry doing nothing but growing?  The film industry has been suffering from diminishing ticket sales, and as readers of this blog know, I feel it’s from a severe lack of fresh material.  True, video games do get the bonus of being virtual, so they can create the most fantastical settings they want with no extra cost in “building”, but their stories are also fresher.  I’m not a fan of the GTA series, but from what I know of them, people do enjoy the storylines of building your way to being a top criminal.

You also have to look at a value for money when it comes to what is going on with films.  According to the National Association of Theater Owners, the average price for a movie ticket in the USA in 2007 was $6.88.  A movie averages 90-minutes in length, meaning you spend approximately $.08 a minute for the movie.  GTA IV costs $59.99 for a reported 40-hours of game play, which works out to around $.02 a minute.  I know this is a highly simplistic way to look at it, but you also add in the cost of gas to go to the theater, snacks, wasted time in a theater, popping in a video game starts to look a lot more appealing.

Several years ago I went to a conference of video retailers, and I heard something that stuck with me like nothing else I had ever heard at a conference: “We aren’t in just a battle for their entertainment dollar, we’re in a battle for their disposable time.”  If someone is spending 40 hours playing GTA IV, that is 40 hours not watching TV or going to movies.  If anyone in the entertainment field starts to wonder about diminishing funds, I think we’ve found your culprit.

Just the other day I spoke about how a social network, Faceparty, had decided it was best to delete people over 36-years-old because they may be sex offenders.  Well, this made me think of another situation I have been running into a lot more lately: ageism in video games.

I have spoken before about some of the… “stimulating”… conversations I have while playing games like Call of Duty 4 online, but now it is becoming a regular occurrence for me to be slammed on for being 36.  In the past it has been insults of everyone being “gay”, or “you suck” or just general stupidity, but as gamers are trending to be older (the average age of video game players is now 34), the teens are getting more insulting about people in my age range being “losers” for still playing video games.  As I so kindly tell them, if it wasn’t for people like me having played video games since they came around in the 1980’s, they wouldn’t have their games today, so… stuff it.  (I have no patience for these kids… I’m sure you all are shocked since I’m normally Mr. Cuddly)  This is usually all followed up with I have no life… I must be on welfare (… how did I afford the game…)… aendlessly with the same insults over-and-over.

I have to wonder where this animosity is coming from.  What possible difference does it make to some kid if I’m 16 or 36, so long as I’m doing my “job” in the game, what does it really matter?  It doesn’t, but I think it speaks to a common distrust of “older” people I see creeping back into the social consciousness.  Ever heard the saying from the 1960’s of “Don’t trust anyone over 30″?  Well, from what I see, it’s happening again, but this time I think it’s for very different reasons… just plain snottiness.

At least when this saying popped up originally, we were engaged in a highly questionable war, with a country still reeling from an assassination that no one understood.  True, we are engaged in another questionable war, but somehow, I don’t think these kids are even remotely aware of it.  These are “the mellinials” and their only concern is themselves.  You thought Generation X, my generation, was bad?  We have nothing on this group.

Honestly, their actual words don’t phase me in the least, but the general attitude is disturbing.  I’m not sure where it came from, what causes it or if there is even any way to stop it.  Hopefully it will disappear with time, and for now it is just generally annoying, lets just hope it doesn’t get any worse.

Somehow I doubt this will be the last time I touch on the “old people suck” attitude I’m encountering more and more.