The Soul Caliber games have never really engendered the kind of fanaticism that you get with Tekken or Street FIghter, but I’ve been a fan of the series since it started out as Soul Edge on the Playstation.
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?
The XBox 360 Core Unit was always a poor alternative to the basic hard-drive enabled console. It was a kind of FU to the consumer that anyone with two minutes and the ability to type in a Google search could quickly realize was going to be a poor way to get into next generation gaming. Even if you wanted to save $100, it was going to cost you $50 just to buy a memory card that would actually let you save your games. What they got for their trouble was some bad press and a machine that many stores refused to stock.
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.
The sheer marketing force that surrounds a game like Halo 3 is almost beyond comparison. The effect created brings to mind things like hurricanes, firestorms, and quantum tunneling. It feeds off itself, creating something that is awe inspiring in its ability to toy with known laws of physics, and create a sheer destructive force that can remake the landscape. You may not like the fact that the internet is burning down around you, but it’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of it.
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.
When I started gaming it was PC all the way. The first real “gaming rig” I ever purchased was a 386/33 with a VGA card. I was looking for something that could play Wing Commander in all it’s 256 color glory,and it cost me $3K in actual 1989 dollars. Finding a joystick that wouldn’t break ended up being the hardest part, although I eventually got a hold of a CH Flightstick that managed to keep working for half a decade until it gave up the ghost during a particularly heated battle in Mechwarrior.
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.
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