Mars: War Logs is a confusing game on many levels. It's set on another planet far in the future, but most of the fighting involves whacking dudes with a glorified stick. The player never sees the game's only real "war," and instead deals mainly with an internecine conflict concerning the main character Roy's guild. Yet, in the end, even the internal power struggles turn out not to have been the driving force for the game's violence.
The discussion around BioShock Infinite's combat doesn't just involve the question of whether its quantity of violence is essential to the story (yes), or whether telling a story where its quantity of violence is essential is interesting or worthwhile (no). Some of the discussion has centered around the question of whether the combat mechanics are any good. Eric Schwarz has written a fantastic post that describes most of the combat mechanics, and I want to expand on it a little. Even though I think violence helps to express the kind of character Booker is, I don't think the combat systems of BioShock Infinite do much to help characterize him, and in some ways actively oppose that characterization.
I've heard a few developers lately talking about why they are in favor of DRM and getting rid of used games. I know this is a huge discussion and I don't really want to get into every aspect of it right here, but there are few things I need to get off my chest.
What a shame.
That's about all I can say about Microsoft's game-changing decisions regarding the Xbox One. It could have been worse, but the damage is pretty severe as it stands.
The term "Space Marine" has always been something of a misnomer. For all the "space" implied in the name, the vast majority of space marines do their fighting on good old terra firma. And while that same basic contradiction is true for Dust 514, there's no denying that its success, in this case, could connect gamers to the stars in one of the most ambitious ways imaginable.
When I was growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money. We didn’t own a family console until my mom bought a Colecovision from a tag sale in 1987. Before that, my maternal grandmother’s Atari VCS was sometimes available in 1979 onward when we visited or even lived there due to money troubles. I did get a VIC-20 for my birthday in 1984 and then a Commodore 64 for my middle school graduation in 1986 from my paternal grandmother, but those weren’t so much game consoles as they were hybrid devices. I did own a few games for both systems, but not a significant amount.
If you listen to the social mediasphere, the Xbox One is dead already. If you listen to common sense, however, you'll realize that the battle is just beginning.
BioShock Infinite is a violent game, and it has to be. That's a contrast to BioShock, an equally violent game where combat conveyed nothing about its main character and had little to do with the game's themes other than spurring the player to engage in its various economies. Any stimulus—using plasmids to solve environmental puzzles, for instance—would have sufficed. That's not so in Columbia. Violence is essential to who Booker DeWitt is, and what Columbia is. Their story cannot be told without it.
It's understandable to want to jump to conclusions based on Mr. Kato's statement above. Does this mean that Sony would dare to repeat its $600 miscalculation from 2006? Could this mean higher costs than expected at retail and potentially put off consumers? Does this open the door for Microsoft to undercut Sony out of the gate?
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