Three years and numerous delays later we finally have the next-generation sequel: Mercenaries 2. And the game is big mess. Buggy, unpolished, and a little threadbare, the game has all the elements of a colossal failure, and yet somehow, when it works, it works beautifully. You can see the game’s ass hanging out in the breeze, and yet it’s impossible not to find yourself noticing that, for all that, it’s a pretty gorgeous ass.

There’s nothing in this game that’s truly polished: Objects often float in the air, and characters get stuck in the walls. The AI is bone stupid, weapons don’t work quite the way they should, and the interface is a disaster of non-standard choices, combined with pure moments of frustration. But here’s the thing: It bends like a hot rubber band, but it almost never breaks. Do whatever you want within its world, take advantage of the glitches, cheat your way to victory, but the engine doesn’t ever totally collapse. It feels like the whole world is tilting over into an inevitable crash or dead end, bit somehow the game rights itself and keep on chugging along. And for a game where 99% of all the objects in the world can be blown up, that’s no mean feat.

If GTAIV is a Ferrari, clean, smooth, and fast, then Mercenaries 2 is the old Dodge truck, complete with cheap Earl Sheib paint job. It’s dependable and tough, even if you can still see the rust underneath.

And the game does feel old in places. Despite the glossy textures, it has a decidedly last gen feel. Characters slide around the world, rag dolls go ridiculously limp, and things that should be fully animated just aren’t.

So why does it work? It’s clear that at some point the developers decided they’d make as much cool stuff as they could, then fix it just enough to make sure the game never breaks too badly. And while that sounds like a recipe for disaster I can’t help but wonder if it might be better if we didn’t have more games with this can-do aesthetic.

Don’t get me wrong, polish is important. And it’s probably true that for most developers failure on this scale would probably mean the game would never get released. But compare it to a failed AAA wannabe like Too-Human. It’s clear that at some point the developer of that game decided the best course of action was to simply remove what didn’t work, and the resulting game ended up being an obviously good idea that’s simply too full of holes to be fun.

In the end, there’s something almost magically old-school about Mercenaries 2. A kind of digital brashness that we see less far less of on the consoles than we used to on the PC. I can’t help but wish for more of it.

The series really reached its pinnacle with first Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast, and was as close as it ever came to being a phenomenon, and there are still people who will gather around to play if you launch the game in public.

After two mostly unforgettable sequels Namco has decided on a kitchen sink approach, adding in some of the virtual sex-appeal (boobies) that they’ve crafted over the years with the Dead Or Alive series, along with some Star Wars characters.  But if these games aren’t about hitting something over the head, then what are they about?

Probably too little too late, but it’s something for the holidays.

With the Arcade 360 Microsoft seems to have actually realized that it pays to treat their audience with a little respect.  Packing in a memory card and five decent games, they’ve managed to set it at a price point that won’t make you feel deep regret if you decide to go out and buy a hard drive upgrade later on.

It also means there is a viable next-gen console available for under $300.  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

There may be no other title that hits the gaming world with the same impact that a new Halo does.  I suppose the closest cultural event are the Star Wars films back in the day, or the release of the fifth Harry Potter novel.

But video games are different.  The shared cultural intimacy of actually experiencing a game is unique.  It isn’t just a few hours in a movie theater, or being curled up with a book.  Once released the audience will actually be able to share the game together in a way that goes beyond what traditional media can can offer. Both through multiplayer, and \the ability to cooperatively play through the story mode, it’s possible to play the game, generate a totally unique moment, and then discuss that experience, every time.  And looking at the kind of new features that are being offered with this game, it’s pretty clear that the potential that offers wasn’t lost on the game developers.

Every “AAA” game title is ultimately about the polish.  The time spent making the good better, and the better perfect.  It also demands that the developers have a deep understanding of what it is that they’re going to be making great.  That’s what Blizzard does so well for instance, and why they’ve been able to take over both the RTS and the MMO genres.  They make it so much smoother than what has come before that you can’t help but be a little seduced by it.

And Halo seems to be following that trajectory.  Like a firestorm it both feeds and expands the audience by not just polishing the quality of the interactive experience, but also letting the player know that they understand what a multiplayer experience is in a way that lets them move the bar.   

With this much hype it’s the game itself that can get a little lost in the shuffle. But I’ll argue that the ability for a game experience to transcend the expectations that you bring to it is an advantage interactive experiences have over traditional media.  Here’s hoping Halo 3 lives up to the hype.

But somewhere around the turn of the century I lost interest in the PC as my primary platform. And it wasn’t just the fact that console games had gotten easier. When I finished Metal Gear Solid I had a new feeling: I could have just as much fun playing a game on my console, but with a lot less hassle.

So over the next few years I stopped trying to keep my machine “up to speed” and upgraded to my next gen-console when I could afford one. Meanwhile When I did have a RTS of RPG itch to scratch I just played older games.

But from the number of developers and players who have made the jump with me, I’m guessing I’m not alone dropping the cutting-edge PC as a gaming platform. Sure, I was paying a price in graphics for the first few years. But things have changed a lot since the PS1. The kinds of differences in display we’re talking about these days are vanishingly small; nothing an average consumer can recognize without having them pointed to them. And yet AAA PC titles still try to eek out that obscure bit of power that you can only get with the newest graphics card and a liquid cooled processor. I’m just not sure who they’re doing it for.

I’m guessing a big part of that is that the video card manufacturers still wish it was seven years ago, when they could engage in soft collusion with the developers to make sure that new games demanded a $500 card to “get the full experience”. Anything less and you would watch your virtual world chop by at 15 frames a second. But once you hop off that merry-go-round you can’t go back without facing a herd of obscurely named cards at different price points by different manufacturers. I wouldn’t know what to buy even if I wanted to.

But the explosion in casual gaming has proven that a PC game doesn’t have to be a slave to the hardware to find an audience. Exploiting the untapped power that’s in any machine five years or younger seems like the best path to success. Otherwise the message continues to be that PC gaming is about graphics and not gameplay. Ultimately that’s going to drive more and more hardcore gamers on a one way trip to console land. And with the budgets and technology that’s being thrown at these games it’s not a bad place to go.

There’s also no doubt the game is violent as hell, and as you’re driving around accidentally mowing down civilians the game is telling you “no no no”, but what it really means is “yes yes yes”. Even if you do go over the limit and kill enough civilians that the security forces get mad at you they don’t stay mad for long. After all who can stay mad at an armored killing machine who can leap tall buildings in a single bound?

Ultimately it’s hard not feel like a nihilist when you’re ignoring the copious amounts of killing that you’re responsible for while trying to “free the city from the criminal gangs”, which is this game’s particularly thin layer of metaphorical good that covers an almost infinite number of sins committed while trying to reach your goal.

But death itself is almost comical in the world of this game, and the instant the anima leaves the body, so too does the animator. Rag doll physics take over and the dead flops around ridiculously. In the end they looking like nothing so much as a puppet with its strings cut.

It definitely lightens up the proceedings, revealing that whole thing is just a joke, as does the semi flat-shaded art style. And you have to wonder if making the dead more realistic wouldn’t have made this game much harder to take. Either way it’s a good thing.

On thing it does show clearly is that with the current generation of software we have two competing dynamics: One is making characters more realistic and dynamic. They’re starting to respond in interesting and engaging ways. On the other hand is the ability to render these realistic characters by the dozen and mow them down with abandon. It’s a dichotomy that smart people are using well, and Dead Rising takes full advantage of it. After all, what’s the problem with killing zombies by the hundreds? In fact, they give you a meter and keep track of the body count.

Like the victims of far-away wars we can understand the death of the characters in these games in the abstract, but also recognize that the act has little or no bearing on our own lives. We can easily separate the entertainment from the consequences because their aren’t any.

One of the ironies of the recent dust-up around Manhunt 2 is that it’s the visceral nature of the Wii controller and not the sheen of the graphics, that have gotten it into trouble. People can argue all day long whether or not Nintendo’s success story is truly next gen, but it’s obvious that for some people the fact that you’re the one making the stabbing motion is a huge leap forward from execution by button press. One that may force us to begin to reconsider that wanton disregard for human life that has been a hallmark of games ever since Death Race touched off the first round of hand-wringing over thirty years ago.

But having played with my new toy for all of 24 hours now I thought it might be beneficial to write down my first impressions before my absorption into the Microsoft behemoth is complete and I am unable to report honestly from behind the lines, so here’s a few notes:

I’d be tempted to say that the machine is a metaphor for something, but that isn’t true. It is the thing. A perfect corporate prison combining advertising, DRM, and specialized technology to create an artifact of the modern age that gives a glimpse into the world that our benevolent masters (of business) would lock us into permanently if only we would give up our pretentious “computers” and let them swallow us up entirely.

That’s not to say that the box doesn’t deliver as a game system. You can certainly play games on it, and they look fantastic. The skin textures and eye movements are amazing if a little wooden. It provides what amounts to the most amazing display of Supermarionation that the world has ever seen.

But even in these games the relentless grip of the machines true power is never far away. Rather than being contextualized into the game, the awards and save game structures are set entirely out of the game world. Instead these elements are part of the ever-so-strict “operating system”. So when the game asks you which device you want to save to it does so by slicing into the screen with a “blade” that has a look and feel that matches the Xbox dashboard and not the world of the game you’re playing. You also get little bits of the master interface peeking through at odd moments. For instance when it hands you an achievement (one of the unlockable badges that are given to you when you jump through the right hoop while playing a game) it does so using a graphical “bug” that has nothing to do with the game you’re playing. It also uses the same font and styling to tell you that it’s connected your profile to the internet.

And boy does this thing love the internet. Especially since that seems to be such an efficient way to start parting you from your money. And in the world of a benevolent corporate master there’s no doubt that the machine is second only to a slot machine in its desperation to try and get you to pony up cash at every turn.

One thing that brought home this mix of commerce and entertainment is a good old dose of crass commercialism in the form of a McDonald’s ad that appears on one of the dashboard’s blades. There’s no way to turn off the advertising banner in the middle of the machine’s interface. Hell, you just paid for the privilege.

As happy as I’ve been about the platform I’ve watched the Wii become a smash hit success over the last eight months with a sense of disbelief.

Over the last few generations I’ve always been a fan of the underdog, giving my love to the Saturn, the Dreamcast, and then the GameCube.  In every case the market turned their back on these plucky go-getters and instead went with the flashy systems with the reputation for “putting out”.

With this generation I thought I had learned my lesson, and I tried not to get to excited about the casual friendly upstart with the visionary control system. But the sense of anticipation was palpable, and something just seemed off about Sony’s bravado.

Even as the numbers roll in folks on the gaming forums are very wary on calling this one for Nintendo, but I think they’re just afraid that the future may no longer be driven by technology and sci-fi and fantasy themes.

The truth is that when something goes mainstream it can be very scary for the previous generation as they watch “their” hobby get taken over by the masses, and it may take a while to get over the denial phase, and into some good old fashioned bargaining and anger.  I’m sure we’ll get there soon enough.