Columns

1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

7 Best Games of the 7th Generation: Rock Band

rock-band-headerWhen people think up games for lists such as out 7 best games of the 7th generation (or 7 For 7 for short), they think of game of the year winners or critically acclaimed blockbusters. But how many of these lists include games that were just wildly popular and genre redefining?

Rock Band was probably never really in contention for a major game of the year award but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a big game for the current console generation. The mark of a game being among the best isn’t just what the critics think but what the gamers think. I’m hard pressed to think of anyone who didn’t love playing Rock Band.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

7 Best Games of the 7th Generation: Uncharted 2: Among Theives

uncharted-2-headerAs the current console generation went on, games increasingly tried to be like interactive movies. The goal seemed to be to recreate the Hollywood experience but with you playing the starring role using a controller. While one could argue that Heavy Rain may have gotten the closest, no game captured the fun of the summer blockbuster while releasing a solid game quite like Naughty Dog.

Since today marks both the launch of the PlayStation 4 and our 7 For 7 series, I thought that it was only appropriate to kick off with the epic PlayStation 3 exclusive Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

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Video Game Violence, Ratings and Your Children

spec-ops-the-line-violence-headerIt’s just one of those things that we gamers have come to expect. Any time that video games are even tangentially related to a violent crime, the mainstream media will jump on that as a reason for the commission of that crime, regardless of the numerous studies that show no causative relationship between video game violence and real violence.

The latest case of the persecution of video games and gamers comes from Louisiana where an 8-year-old boy shot his grandmother in the head. The East Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Department have strongly implied that the boy playing Grand Theft Auto IV led to the shooting.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Entertainment

Best and Worst of Fan Expo 2013

fan-expo-canada-headerI promised a recap of my first ever convention / Fan Expo experience and here it is. I spent the blog’s downtime in downtown Toronto attending the 2013 edition of Fan Expo in downtown Toronto along with over 100,000 of my closest friends. I was just completely overwhelmed by the number of people there and I’ve been to a NASCAR race with 110,000 people and thought this place was packed.

So let’s look back at Fan Expo with a little bit of Best and Worst.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Games Criticism, Censorship and Artistic Integrity

hotline-miami-headerDid I miss the memo? I’m convinced that there is a missive sent out to video games writers with talking points that we’re all supposed to stick to for a year.

Last year, it was that the vision of a developer should never be questioned. Look at the uproar over Mass Effect 3’s ending. Despite the plot holes and inconsistencies in the ending sequence, many members of the media defended BioWare by saying that this was BioWare’s vision and it shouldn’t be compromised because we shouldn’t compromise the developer’s “artistic integrity.”

This year, artistic integrity is no longer an applicable concept when talking about the contents of a game. Now, if a writer feels that the majority of people should be offended by something, it should be changed. In twelve months, we’ve gone from a developer having unassailable artistic integrity to a press corps getting dangerously close to censorship.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Entertainment

The Newsroom: The Medium vs. The Message

the-newsroom-season-2-promoCanadian media theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” The premise of the phrase is that medium influences the message of a piece of media.

Sometimes, this influence works to enhance the message. Just look at video games like Spec Ops: The Line and Hotline Miami that break the fourth wall to make you question violence of video games.

However, the medium and the traditional expectations of the medium can have the opposite effect and hold back what can be a great message. If there’s a key reason why The Newsroom is hated and hate watched by so many, it’s because of the requirements of the medium of dramatic TV.

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Phil Fish vs. Marcus Beer Says More About Games Journalism than Either Man

phil-fishThe weekend’s big gaming news story wasn’t about a new game or another major announcement but a feud between two gaming personalities.

On one side was Marcus Beer, GameTrailer’s Annoyed Gamer, who criticized prominent indie developers Phil Fish and Jonathan Blow for not commenting on Microsoft allowing indie game self-publishing on the Xbox One. On the other side was the aforementioned Phil Fish who didn’t take kindly to Beer lobbing personal insults at him on video.

However, I don’t think that the takeaway from this feud should be anything about either Beer or Fish. I think how this feud started says more about how this gaming journalism works and why it might be irreparably broken.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Entertainment

Sorkin, The Newsroom and the Price of Perfection

the-newsroom-season-2-promoWhen you talk about great modern TV series, the conversation will always include a mention of Aaron Sorkin. The man was the driving force behind not one but two modern classics, Sports Night and The West Wing.

However, Sorkin’s current series, The Newsroom, isn’t considered a classic by most TV critics. It’s not because it’s a bad show. Anyone that has watched network TV over the last few years will know that most series on TV now are pretty poor. Critics don’t like The Newsroom because it doesn’t live up to Sports Night and The West Wing.

That’s the problem when you set the standard too high.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Unreal Engine Could Be Next-Gen’s Big Loser

unreal-engine-4-headerWhat do BioShock Infinite, the Mass Effect trilogy, the XCOM series, the Batman: Arkham series, Dishonored and Spec Ops: The Line all have in common? If you read the title of this column, you probably guessed that these are all games made in the Unreal Engine.

Many of this generation’s most popular and most critically acclaimed games were made on Unreal Engine 3. While the next generation of console gaming doesn’t start for another four months, early plans don’t seem to involve Unreal Engine 4 which was the first next-gen engine that was previewed.

While we might give Nintendo a hard time over poor Wii U sales and criticize Microsoft’s former DRM policies, they might not be the big losers of the next generation. When the industry moves on to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Unreal 4 could be the one who’s left behind.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Xbox One vs. PS4: Who’s Really Over-Delivering Value?

playstation-4-vs-xbox-one-banner

In an interview on Bloomberg TV last week, Microsoft President of Interactive Entertainment, Don Mattrick, said that the Xbox One was over-delivering on value. In fact, the Xbox boss went so far as to say, “We’re delivering thousands of dollars of value to people.”

The problem is that no one apart from Mattrick, Microsoft employees and the staunchest of Xbox loyalists believe this to be the case. When you look at the dollars and cents of the next generation of consoles, it’s pretty obvious that the Xbox isn’t actually over-delivering and definitely not thousands of dollars worth of over-delivery.

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