Pumping Irony

Stay calm. Count to ten. It will be ok.

Against my better (oh, you in the peanut gallery just hush!) judgment I picked up Halo 3 today, primarily because it’s one of the few titles that support cooperative play. My good friend Daniel has been bugging me with XBL messages to get the game, so I did. Logged in, joined his game along with his soon-to-be brother-in-law (/kick hyphen spammer!) and his wife. Cool! Four player game, let’s see what’s up with Halo 3.

Then I watch in horror as the player list fills with 12 other random XBL “people.” I kid you not, the first ten seconds of the game contained every single negative aspect that is normally associated with XBL “people.” In under five minutes I was seriously considering getting back in the car and returning to Gamestop. I sucked it up and completed the match (don’t want to jeopardize my reputation by having those “people” spam negative comments onto my account), shut off the 360, and walked outside for some fresh air.

There are reasons I don’t play public XBL matches, and those reasons are pretty much embodied by the Halo crowd. Ghetto gaming at its worst.

To be fair, after a cool-down period and dinner, my friend called back and he and I did some co-op play which was better, although laggy as hell. Is that normal for Halo 3? I’ve been in multi-player and co-op matches in other games with full player rosters and they were perfectly smooth. I’ve hosted co-op before for some friends, also very smooth. Daniel and I each tried hosting, and while it was moderately better when I hosted, the bulk of the time it was what I would normally consider unacceptable. Do I need to shut off WPA for Halo 3 to get better latency? Jeez…

July turned out to be a slow month. Other than making sure I showed up for Van Hemlock’s Tuesday Noob Club each week, I really didn’t have any MMO commitments. I did some Guild Wars on and off, and spent time in the Wizard101 beta. All the drama over Flagship and Hellgate: London actually got me back into the game a bit. I’d left my marksman at a lowly level 12 last winter, and he’s now level 20! I still think it’s a fun game, and it’s great to see an RPG that plays so closely to the feel of an actual shooter. Keeping in mind of course, I’m only able to play the hunter classes, since they go into first-person view. Hellgate’s third-person camera and control is simply atrocious. Why console developers can nail third-person and PC developers can’t seem to pull it off if their lives depended on it is beyond me.

I just noticed that two of the three games I mentioned aren’t even MMO’s. Wizard101 is awesome but once it launches the players will most likely be the tween market it’s targeted towards, so I won’t be playing the live game simply because of that. I was also in the beta for Holic, which is one of the F2P games but for what it is, seems to be executed quite well. A surprising level of production quality (dare I say “polish?”) and the graphics are cartoony without going totally cel-shaded or anime. It’s more like a marriage of near-cel-shaded characters with Mythos-style terrain art. Holic is already live now. One thing with some F2P games is that while they don’t try to mask the shallow grind-heavy game play like our Western titles do, they do explore boundaries and push the envelope in areas our developers don’t touch. In Holic’s case, they’re embracing User Generated Content in the form of User-created Quests (UCQ) and User-created Dungeons (UCD) (their phrases) but I have not taken the opportunity to explore this aspect of the game yet. Usually when I see an F2P game that lets players set up those little merchant shops that lag the hell out of social areas (hmm… do “F2P” and “social” even belong in the same sentence?) I automatically presume the botters have already taken over. If that’s the case, I’m not seeing it yet in Holic, and for a change the in-game community has actually been friendly, helpful and… nice? It may not last long, F2P tends to attract the less-than-savory members of the internet but for now it is a refreshing change of pace from what I normally experience when I delve into the nether regions of F2P.

I’ve actually been spending more time on the 360 than the PC, especially the past week or so. I still have several titles I’d picked up last year that I haven’t completed, but I’m mostly having a blast getting through Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. For RPG’s I’m working through Mass Effect and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Mass Effect is cool but still hasn’t sucked me in. One way or another I will eventually complete it. I’ve never actually managed to stay interested long enough to complete a BioWare RPG so by gods this will be my first, come Hell or high water!

A long-time friend of mine also got a 360 this week. His young daughter wanted one so he went in half with her to get it. He didn’t actually make her pay half, but in an attempt to try to get her accustomed to not being so stingy with her allowance (she’s apparently saved it all… over $1,000 in the bank and she’s not quite 9 years old yet!) she thinks she did. So, when he’s playing rather than her, he gets me back into Gears of War (amazing that I completed the entire single player game and barely any Achievement Points to show for it) for co-op mode. We’ll try scrimmaging a bit soon, I always sucked at GoW online. A little Crackdown, too. We’re interested in picking up games we can co-op in as well as play competitively.

Finally, this past week I decided the burnout from over-playing LOTRO in May was cooled down, and I’ve made my return. I doubt I’ll be doing much with my alts since they’re only 10 levels behind my main character, and repeating too much of the same content too quickly will just burn me out again. Besides, I’ve still got a few levels to go and a ton of content to get through (not to mention some raids!) before the Mines of Moria are opened to us. When I left in May, I had just gotten the three-piece Vestments of the Grove armor set for Arwellyn. The past couple days she completed her first Legendary Trait: Lore of the Blade, which is cool to be dual-wielding a staff and sword like Gandalf in the movies. I’d been saving a nice caster sword (nice +Fate stat bonus) but almost immediately after equipping the trait, some kin-mates and I headed to the Misty Mountains for Epic Book 5, Chapter 2 where we fight our way through a goblin camp, up the narrow trails to finally slay their leader Gurzmat. One of the rewards for completion is Doom of Gurzmat, an excellent caster sword with even more dps and more +Fate as well as +Agility. On top of that, it’s the first weapon Arwellyn has acquired with glowing, pulsating special effects! I also took her to Angmar where she has the first piece of the Vestments of Fém set, the slippers. Just looking at the stats, I’ll say it looks more like a set for soloing, very little +Fate but plenty of armor rating, Will, Vitality and Agility. The mobs have been hitting hard anyway at these levels when solo, so Arwellyn has put aside her Lynx dps pet in favor of the original Raven to use the popular “flank and spank” method of solo combat. The raven flanks more than the lynx or bear, and one of the flank skills provides a self-heal to keep Arw going while she and the raven whittle down the mob’s morale.

I also tried a little more PvMP, running my Reaver for a little bit then realizing I’m just horrible at faster-paced MMO melee PvP, I rolled a new Defiler, which is the creep’s new (as of Book 13) healer class. I’ll do a writeup on that later this week maybe. In any event, despite the fact LOTRO’s PvP currently has zero impact on the world, having that whole zone to play in rather than a smaller battleground, and multiple keeps to fight for control over just makes the whole experience so much more fun and rewarding than WoW’s ever did for me. Hell, PvMP alone gets me extremely curious to learn just what the hell RvR really means and how it fully impacts the world in WAR. Turbine’s developers have always been outspoken fans of DAOC, which shows in their keep/raid implementation in the Ettenmoors, and they’ve dropped hints that they want to expand PvMP and gradually start giving it more impact or meaning upon the world.

In a perfect example of just how casually I often play my console games, I just this morning completed Tomb Raider: Legend. (Completed as in the story, not 100% of the achievements.) I bought Legend along with my 360 but I’d heard the main complaint about the game was its length. So, true to form, I’ve managed to stretch the game out this long. However, I recalled last year hearing Legend was such a success that they wanted to re-launch the series, and what better way to do that than to remake the very first Tomb Raider in a 10 year anniversary edition. After Tomb Raider 2, the series began a downward spiral they never really recovered from until Legend, which returned to the stellar level design and diabolical puzzles of the original, though it was more concentrated on building up to boss fights. The decline in quality caused Lara and I to part ways after I’d completed TR2, though Legend was a great way to rekindle our relationship, both of us being a decade older and wiser.

So, while I am nowhere near having all the available Legend achievements, I have put some time in over the past week and this morning completed the story line (très cool, by the way). In a moment of near-perfect timing, no sooner had the cinematic ended, the “Complete the adventure” 125 point achievement recorded, and the credits began rolling than UPS knocked on my door with Tomb Raider: Anniversary in-hand, which I’d ordered from Amazon a few days ago. Anniversary uses an enhanced version of the awesome Legend engine, and indeed is available as two DLC packs purchasable over the Xbox Live Marketplace and playable from the Legend DVD. I opted for the DVD version since I still have the stock 20GB hard drive and between DLC, XBLA games, demos and movie rentals, I’m already forced to be very active with my file management.

I did some very light reading on Anniversary as I placed the order the other night. Turns out, it’s not merely a remake but a full re-imagining of the original game. The core plot to the original story is intact, as are the locations the game takes place in. Certain elements of the story are altered to match developments we discover in Legend, however, as well as developing the back story further and filling in details we missed 12 years ago. Now Lara has real motivation for her actions, as opposed to the “shoot first, think later” attitude of the original version. Lara also has all the moves and gear from Legend, including the grappling hook, which again fits in with the re-imagining since the levels had to be slightly redesigned to accommodate and encourage use of abilities Lara didn’t have back then.

The original Tomb Raider is one of the only console games I’ve ever replayed in my entire life. First on the game’s original platform, the Sega Saturn (NiGHTS into Dreams, yeah baby!), then on the Sony PlayStation. It’s been a decade, at least, since I last played Tomb Raider (I no longer own either of those consoles) and loading up Anniversary has not only provided an amazing sense of nostalgia remembering bits and pieces of levels or puzzles, while also doling out a hefty dose of freshness with the obvious graphical enhancements the 360 and the Legend engine provides, but also from the clever alterations in level and puzzle design to encourage use of Lara’s new abilities.

I do plan on taking my time and enjoying the game again, though I don’t know if I’ll drag out the Anniversary experience as long as I did with Legend since the game is significantly longer. Between MMO and PC games, which take up the majority of the time I allot for gaming, and the other 360 titles I’m involved in (most recently GRAW2, R6: Vegas 2, Mass Effect and Marvel Ultimate Alliance) I’ll cycle Anniversary in there somewhere, but I’m really looking forward to not only reliving the great Tomb Raider adventure but also seeing it in a new light because of the enhancements to the game and story.

Today puts me halfway through Week #7 on medical leave, and I’m beginning to find I’ve just about MMO’d myself out. And I’ve barely touched MMO’s, actually. So I’ve spent time on my 360, picking up on games I’ve had awhile and never finished. Common theme with me, unfortunately. Up til now, I’ve only ever completed (as in, the single player campaign on normal mode, not completing every achievement the game offers) Gears of War and Rainbow 6: Vegas on the 360 platform. As of this week, I can add Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) to that list, which is great, now I can start playing GRAW2, which I’ve had for quite some time. Being the completionist that I am, and GRAW2’s story picks up right where GRAW ends, I wanted to see all of GRAW. I also managed to find time for a little bit of Mass Effect (got my first ME achievement, yay!) and even some Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 E3 panel had some very exciting announcements this week. First was the bombshell of the upcoming radical makeover of the 360’s Dashboard. This is major! It does look sweet, in a very Apple sort of way, though count me among the many who are somewhat unconvinced of navigating it quickly enough like I can now with the simpler Dashboard. The whole Avatar thing seems like it is competing with Sony’s Home and to a lesser degree, Nintendo’s Mii’s, though Avatars are less kiddie-fied than Mii’s. All Microsoft’s videos are also available on the 360 from the “Inside Xbox” selection on the Dashboard’s main blade.

Next up was the announcement of a new partnership with Netflix! Netflix will have their own presence on the Dashboard and users can stream their Netflix movies directly to the console, much like we can rent movies from the Video Marketplace currently. I’ve rented several movies and it’s a great experience being able to have full-quality (sometimes even HD!) movies directly to your TV without going to Blockbuster or waiting for delivery through the mail. The Video Marketplace’s selection continues to grow but the addition of Netflix will be huge, and may be enough to finally get me to sign up for their service.

Games. Yes, of course, the games. There’s no doubt that Gears of War 2 will be the heavy-hitter of the bunch. GoW was a massive title and remains one of the most-played games on Live. The sequel does everything a sequel should: take the best parts of its predecessor and kick it up a notch. I thought the addition of bots to the multiplayer game was ingenious, and about damn time too. I was able to add bots to my multiplayer games with Unreal Tournament back in 1999, for cryin’ out loud. UT is also an Epic game, so go figure they’d be the first (I think?) to bring the concept to the console platform. It should allow a player to setup a multiplayer game and fully populate it with bots, then when a real player connects, a bot drops out for him and will respawn if a player leaves. At least I’m hoping that’s how it will work.

Resident Evil 5. Wow, I haven’t played a RE game since… RE2? Been awhile and from the looks of it, the series has come a long way. I likely would have skipped this entirely if it hadn’t been for one attractive aspect: cooperative play! Single player is fine in short bursts, and multiplayer competitive PvP is also good but much like my MMORPG’s I prefer to group and play the content cooperatively, so if my friends happen to pick this up, I’ll be blowing heads off zombies in style right along with them!

Fable 2. I actually never played Fable, not sure that it’s quite my style of RPG. But Fable 2 does boast one feature that is very ingenious! It keeps track of your friend’s progress through the game, and if you and a friend happen to be adventuring in the same area at the same time, you’ll see a little glowing orb in your game. You can interact with the orb and *poof* you and your friend are now playing cooperatively! Many console games have completely separate single- and multi-player aspects of themselves, and even those that don’t require you to go into multiplayer menus, etc. to play over Xbox Live so it’s fantastic to see a (largely single-player?) game integrate the multiplayer directly into the game experience.

Primetime. A new channel called Xbox Live Primetime is a collection of virtual game shows. One in particular, 1v100 sounds intriguing. It’s very cool to see some innovation and taking the console (and online gaming in general) to new and unexplored areas, especially like this where we’ll always have fresh, live, relevant content to jump into with others.

April 30, it was (unofficially) announced via GamesIndustry.biz (who in turn referred to Private Equity Hub, who charges to read their content, so screw them) that Turbine has raised $40 million in venture capital funding. I say “unofficially” because if Turbine ever released this information themselves, I’m not finding it and am inclined to be skeptical of its validity. According to GamesIndustry.biz, however, that was Turbine’s third round of fund-raising and this alleged $40 million brings them to a total of $88 million in funding.

Yesterday, however, Turbine did officially announce that they have raised $40 million in equity financing. Time Warner, parent company of Warner Bros., was one of the heavy investors.

In a quote from a Time Warner representative:

“Our investment in Turbine is an important addition to Time Warner’s entertainment initiatives,” said Rachel Lam, Senior Vice President and Group Managing Director of Time Warner Investments. “Online interactive entertainment is a huge growth market and we are very excited about Turbine, its unique capabilities and the obvious opportunities that exist with our own broad portfolio of IP.”

The emphasis is mine. Now, just to speculate… yesterday rumors flare, sparked by a Warner Bros. quote, about a possible Harry Potter MMOG. Yesterday, Turbine receives financing from Time Warner, which as aforementioned, is the parent company of Warner Bros. I’ll also submit Turbine is keeping a single original IP alive, Asheron’s Call, while their later two titles involved licensed IP’s…

Consider this as creating the rumor “Is Turbine making a Harry Potter MMO?”

The announcement also included vague language which could be interpreted that Turbine will be getting into the console MMOG market, so that’s an additional possibility. I can easily connect a few imaginary dots and point out the conception that console gamers are younger, and Harry Potter is a youth-oriented series…

I’m just sayin’…

Update: (6/8/2008) Thought I’d add a few more thoughts to the rumor mill. In episode #118 of Virgin Worlds, Brent mentioned SOE’s John Smedley bring up researching ways to effectively include the younger crowd in their marketing demographics, specifically targeting young girls (and boys) for Free Realms. I made a semi-joking reference how console players are often associated as being the “younger crowd.” Thanks to Jerry at DDOcast for pointing out that Turbine is looking to hire a Senior Console Engineer (Xbox 360 or PS3)…

I recently picked up Grand Theft Auto IV, which is a great game in its own right. I never did Vice City or San Andreas, so IV is the first time I’ve been back into the GTA scene since GTA3. IV immediately felt familiar; there was no mistaking this is a GTA game, despite leaving the cartoonish-yet-not-cell-shaded graphics of the GTA3 series in favor of a grittier, more realistic look. I’m still not very far along in GTA4, but interestingly enough, playing it made me want to play Crackdown again, which I’d never completed last fall before my 360 came down with a fatal case of RROD. Crackdown always seemed… incomplete, for lack of a better term. It’s absolutely great but needs a little something extra. Probably the sandbox elements found in GTA. But the super-heroics in Crackdown are unlike anything else, and they’re a huge draw to continue playing and boosting my abilities.

Aside from some mods (hacks?) on the PC versions of GTA3, the GTA franchise has always been a single-player affair. Crackdown gave us two-player cooperative play, which is a blast. GTA4 upped the ante quite a bit with 16 player online, although I keep reading it’s a bit weak and has that “tacked on” feel. Hopefully I’ll get to give it a shot soon to see. Anyway, playing both Crackdown and GTA4 made me remember that the Crackdown developers, Realtime Worlds, are working on their next game, APB (All Points Bulletin) which will be an MMOG for PC and 360 (very possibly the PS3 too). So I did a little more research on APB.

[This preview on 1Up has everything you'd need linked, including awesome video footage -- check out the character creation! Vehicle creation is just as flexible. Think Forza 2 applied to both characters and vehicles.]

First, notice I specifically called it a MMOG not a MMORPG. APB is not an RPG; there won’t be any leveling nor grinding AI mobs. From the videos there will be AI citizens though, likely to provide an additional “living city” feel, and the reactionary AI in both Crackdown and the GTA games really helps for both fun and immersion. [Side-note: MMO devs, that is a good example of what we mean when we ask for better AI, not "vicious killer AI" like you seem to mistakenly think we mean. Make those NPC's react when Bad Things happen near them!]

Realtime Worlds has stated rather than relying on AI mobs to provide content, they’re using the “players as content” model. At its core, when you get past all the other stuff players can do in the game, APB is a PvP game. Cops and Robbers! Former (or current?) Bounty Hunters in Star Wars Galaxies may remember picking up bounties for Jedi players from Mission Terminals. APB is taking this concept a step further with simple brilliance: when a group of Robbers commits a crime, a call is sent to a group of Cops nearby to apprehend the Robbers. The matchmaking system looks at the size of the Robber group and will choose a similarly-sized group of Cops. No running to terminals anymore, you’ll get matched up on-the-fly.

APB sounds great and all, but I also can’t help but wonder if it’s enough to keep people interested? Sure, Counter-Strike (original and Source) have been going strong for a decade now, but CS doesn’t involve a monthly fee. Other than the ridiculously detailed character and vehicle creation system, will players flock to a whole new type of game that isn’t an RPG? Is PvP enough? Could APB’s PvP and drop-in game play succeed where Planetside failed?

I’m very excited about APB, it’s a big shift in MMOG paradigm, yet I’m also skeptical of its long-term potential. For non-persistent crime and driving games we already have Crackdown and the GTA series. Rockstar themselves have intimated that the thought of a true GTA MMO is “compelling.” When it comes to drop-in PvP there are literally hundreds of shooters out there that are free to play online. Consoles have some great driving/racing games — which is also PvP, just to be clear — though driving seems to be a dead genre on the PC. I’m just not totally convinced that non-RPG, non-persistent, drop-in PvP is enough to keep me entertained when I can do all that for free. I don’t “live” in shooters anymore because, while they’re intense and immersive and tons of fun, I can rarely do a single activity for very long. Even in MMORPG’s I flit around from place to place, activity to activity constantly. So here’s hoping Realtime Worlds gives us plenty of extra “stuff” to do other than just PvP.

MMORPG.com put up a quick video discussing the upcoming Xbox 360 edition of Age of Conan with Funcom’s Jorgen Tharaldsen.

Nothing new was really mentioned. The 360 edition will not be a port; the PC and 360 games are being developed by two different teams, etc. The MMORPG GUI needs a total re-thinking when brought to a console, etc. Console gamers prefer more direct interaction than PC gamers… huh? Here I thought we simply preferred good games, regardless of platform and level of interaction. Plenty of card games, turn-based games, etc. being played on consoles, they’re not exclusively shooters. I mentioned previously that AoC’s combat is button-mashing of a variety I haven’t seen since back when fighting games were popular. Seriously, I feel like I’ve pressed 1,2,3 more in the past month in AoC than in every other game I’ve played in the past 3 months combined. And I’m still in Tortage with only 3-step combos so far…

I still haven’t put my finger exactly on the reason why this is, but I still get the feeling from the movement (when I’m not getting stuck on terrain for no apparent reason) in AoC that it would make a good console RPG. My initial comparison to Two Worlds stays, though more from the perspective of camera placement in relation to the character. One good thing about a 360 version is that it will “just work” because it’s designed specifically for the 360’s hardware. I’m still seeing performance boosts here and there in Live Test but it’s been no secret that AoC has been bringing many computers coughing and sputtering to their knees.

Communication will likely be an issue. Many people still avoid VOIP so forcing all 360 players to use it won’t work. If PC and 360 players are on the same servers (did Funcom ever officially say how this would be dealt with?) we can’t expect a text-to-voice-to-text solution. We need text chat on all platforms. We’re so accustomed to typing in chat with our keyboards. Can you imagine having a lengthy conversation using a GUI ‘keyboard’ with the default 360 controller? The good thing is that the 360 has USB ports and will accept any USB keyboard (including wireless) which will take care of that issue, although now we have a keyboard sitting in the living room floor or on the coffee table, in the way. Microsoft has their Messenger Kit with its “chat pad” accessory that snaps directly into the 360’s controller. Typing will need to be addressed in an easy and logical manner in the console edition. For that matter, chatting needs to be addressed in the PC edition, but that’s another story…

Finally, I’ve said this before that the availability of MMO’s on the 360 may finally call into question Microsoft’s membership and pricing schemes. Ok, Final Fantasy XI has a 360 version but… it’s FFXI, did anyone ever care about this? Here’s how it works: Xbox Live has two membership levels, Gold and Silver. Silver is the basic membership allowing players to have a friend list, chat with friends (text and voice), access the Marketplace for XBL Arcade games, demos, video rentals etc. and the ability to play MMOGs. Gold membership has increased friend list capabilities and the most important draw for players: the XBL multi-player match-making system. Gold members have to pay for the additional services; Silver members can’t play over XBL. MMO’s, obviously, are hosted on their respective servers which is how Silver (free) players are able to play MMO’s; the game directs them to the MMO servers, never touching XBL itself. I’d venture to say most XBL players are Gold members, though, since the multi-player match-making is the #1 feature of XBL. Players, perhaps parents especially (although AoC is rated M right? Uh huh…) may balk at spending even more money to play console games online. I’m hoping AoC is popular enough and has enough demand to maybe get Microsoft to drop or eliminate the fees for Gold membership. After all, it’s nothing more than peer-to-peer match-making, and MS has been doing that since their old Zone.com days for free on the PC. If Microsoft was actually hosting dedicated servers, etc. I could see them charging what they currently do for Gold membership. Here’s hoping, but I’m not willing to hold my breath that Microsoft will change, or even bat an eyelash.

I’ve been dreading the horror stories of the Red Ring of Death (RROD) about the Xbox 360’s for nearly a year now. I think I got mine right around the cusp of when Microsoft started making the newer models but I always had the suspicion mine was the older, vulnerable model. Last night, that suspicion was made a reality as I planned to watch a movie. I popped in the DVD, clicked ‘Play Movie’ and was presented with a blank screen. M’kay… Reboot the 360. This time I never got an acknowledgement (green light) that a controller was active. I have the DVD remote, but a controller was plugged into the USB port for charging also, so I should have gotten a green light. No response from the remote either. Reboot again, after all, third time’s a charm right? Right… Third time was the dreaded RROD!

Unfortunately I start a trip today so I won’t be able to pack up the 360 and send it to Microsoft for replacement. I haven’t kept up with RROD news — will they reinstate all my DLC and game saves to the new machine?

Ok, I’ll bite. All the Halo, etc. fanboy sites have been repeating the rumor mill that the December issue of EGM is saying Microsoft and Bungie are working on a Halo MMO. Everyone seems to like using the GamingTarget.com article as a reference, so I’ll do the same.

What we do know for a fact is that last month Microsoft started talking about the MMOFPS technology they’re working on, code-named DonnyBrook, over at Channel 10 last month.  Currently, DonnyBrook is in early development and is aimed at being used in upcoming FPS titles, and eventually a stand-alone kit will be released that will work for any FPS.

Now, does any of this actually imply that a Halo MMOFPS is in the making? Not really. The genre itself hasn’t proven itself yet, although Halo certainly has the name recognition to get more players — in the short term. But just as Brandon fears Tabula Rasa will crash and burn early, does an FPS have what it takes to make it as an MMO? There are literally tons of FPS titles that you can play for free. Battlefield 2 and 2142 introduced RPG-ish persistent soldiers and unlocking items even though you’re still on maps that end then cycle to the next, the world itself is not persistent. But when the gameplay consists of nothing but run and gun, die and respawn, even if you have more players than ever before in a single battle, is that alone enough to warrant paying the subscription? I suppose the flip side of that argument is that all the MMORPG’s we know and love are nothing more than whack-a-mole, die, resurrect, corpse run, repeat. Same thing, just happening at a snail’s pace compared to the twitchy shooter game play.

SOE’s PlanetSide is the only true MMOFPS on the market, and while I’ve heard some people say it was actually quite fun back in the day, it never took off and at this point only Station Access is providing life support. Huxley looks to be taking a more Guild Wars approach, having a “massively multiplayer” city masquerading as a matchmaking lobby while the battles themselves are instanced, which in most players eyes is not a true MMOFPS.

Courtesy of Achievement Junkie’s feed in my Google Reader, I see Bioware have announced the contents of the Collector’s Edition of their upcoming RPG for the Xbox 360, Mass Effect.

• Fiction Book: Galactic Codex: Essentials
• Mass Effect Art Book: A Future Imagined
• 2nd DVD with exclusive videos about Mass Effect (Art of Mass Effect, Interactive Storytelling of Mass Effect)

I’m all for behind-the-scenes DVD’s, after all I loved the LOTRO and Halo 2 ones. I’m guessing Halo 3 has them too, but it might be awhile before I get around to that. I would have liked a soundtrack though, but I’ll still likely pick up the CE anyway, it’s only $10 more than the normal game.

I have an unfortunate sneaking suspicion that the “fiction book” mentioned will simply be a pamphlet or booklet containing most of the content already found at the Mass Effect: Galactic Codex section of the game’s website. Not that I expected anyone to have time to write another full novel like Mass Effect: Revelation but still…