Looks like I may get a chance to play Bioshock after all, that is if I can overcome my aversion to playing FPS games on a console, as 2K Games has announced the title will land on the PS3 this October.

New York, NY – May 28, 2008 – 2K Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), announced today that BioShock®, the “genetically enhanced” story-driven action game, is in development for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system at 2K Marin. The PLAYSTATION 3 system title will be released in October 2008 with new features and content that heighten the award-winning experience.

BioShock for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Games for Windows® was released in 2007 and received numerous Game of the Year honors from prestigious organizations including Associated Press, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), Game Informer, Spike TV’s VGAs and Paste Magazine. BioShock’s extension to the PLAYSTATION 3 system will bring exciting new content to this amazing title and reach many new players, while giving the title the opportunity to once again be named Game of the Year.

“Since BioShock for Xbox 360 and Games for Windows won countless 2007 Game of the Year awards, we are excited to see the impact of this stellar title for the PLAYSTATION 3 system when it debuts this fall,“ said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “Over the coming months we look forward to revealing the new features and content that will make this a must-have game for its new audience, as well as for those who enjoyed it on the other platforms.“

New content and features, eh? That could sweeten the pot enough to tempt me. Especially if one of the new features is multiplayer, but that’s probably asking for a lot. It’ll be coming out around the time I stop buying titles for fear of stepping on someone’s Christmas gift plans, though, so the earliest I’m likely to see it will be late December.

This is a very interesting and entertaining video presentation by Daniel Floyd, a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design, in which he argues that the problem with sex in video games is that there isn’t enough of it. More specifically he argues that before games will be perceived as a respectable art form they’re going to have to find a way to address sexuality in a realistic and meaningful fashion to tell their stories. Check it out:

I’ve never been too worried about games being taken seriously as an art form, but that’s largely because I stopped giving a shit of people thought less of me for being a gamer a long time ago. Still I’d love to see games being taken seriously as an art form before I die. There’s already been more than a few games that managed to provide a story telling experience on par with any movie or book I’ve read and the number of such games will likely increase as time goes by. Considering the media whipped panic attack over the small and far from explicit sex scene in Mass Effect, however, I suspect it’ll be awhile before any developer will try to approach the subject in a serious manner.

This was too funny not to share:

Found via WoW Insider.

Now this should be an interesting news report on tonight’s BBC Newsnight:

An investigation into why children’s IQs are rising despite complaints from parents that their kids spend too much time playing video games and surfing the internet. This special report reveals that there’s some evidence to suggest that gaming is part of the reason why 21st century school children are apparently getting smarter.

That’s just a teaser as the show hasn’t aired yet, but it should be interesting to see what they have to say. If nothing else it’s a welcome bit of positive gaming news as opposed to the video-games-will-make-us-all-into-rabid-killers story we usually get.

Alas we don’t get BBC America so if any of you guys get a chance to check it out leave a comment and fill us in on some of the details.

That’s what one LucasArts rep is telling the folks at Total Video Games during a recent Q&A. That’s not necessarily surprising as some titles will lose multiplayer before release due to time constraints on the developers, but the reasoning provided was, to put it in a single word, stupid:

TVG: As you mentioned earlier, there’s no multiplayer in the game. Was there any specific reason for this?

To be specific, there’s no multiplayer in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, because there is on the Wii, PSP, and DS. As far as specific reasons are concerned, we don’t really like to get into the reasons why we don’t do things because I don’t think there’s really a satisfactory answer that people would really be happy with. So, there isn’t multiplayer and that’s kind of how it is…

Because the Wii, PSP, and DS versions of the game will have multiplayer they’re not going to put it into the Xbox 360 or PS3? WTF? Admittedly I can see how with the advanced physics engine being utilized on the higher end hardware it might make it difficult to implement multiplayer in a balanced way considering the ridiculously powerful force powers everyone would have. If that’s the case then just say so, but the above answer makes it sound like they expect us to buy the game twice if we want to do any kind of multiplayer. To say the least this makes me a bit less enthusiastic about buying the game at all.

You just know I had to share this one…

To say that the scope of Grand Theft Auto IV is ambitious is an understatement. It attempts to simulate a fully fledged living city with an active population and realistic physics and for the most part it does this very well. It’s not perfect, however, so there’s bound to be a few places where the simulation… breaks down… falls flat… just plain goes nuts. For one class of gamer out there hunting those glitches down is half the fun:

Found over at Kotaku.com.

Steve over at the Gaming Steve blog caught up with the folks at Maxis about the shit storm that’s been ongoing since word came out that Spore would be using SecuROM DRM.  From the sounds of it Maxis plans to try and make the SecuROM as unobtrusive as possible:

Hey Spore Fans -

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been hearing your concerns about the online authentication mentioned earlier this week. I didn’t want to head into the weekend without getting back to you with some information about how Spore is planning on using this new system.

A few things we wanted you to know:

• We authenticate your game online when you install and launch it the first time.
• We’ll re-authenticate when a player uses online features, downloads new content or a patch for their game.
• The new system means you don’t have to play with the disc in your computer. And if you are like me, always losing discs, this will be a huge benefit.
• You’ll still be able to install and play on multiple computers.
• You can play offline. 

We do hope that players will play online - sharing creatures, buildings and vehicles with other players is something that is unique to Spore and one of the coolest features of the game. Every day, when I play the Creature Stage, I get to see wacky and awesome new creatures from my Buddies on the team coming over the hill at me and I can’t wait to see what happens when our creative, passionate community starts sharing their creations.

I’d love to write more - but I need to get back to work. We’ve got a game to finish.

-caryl

I’m still not happy about it, but if they limit the authentications to when the player is getting downloadable content/patches and it doesn’t stop legitimate applications (read: Process Explorer) from running then I may be able to live with it. Mass Effect is still out of the question though.

This one is a classic. I had to share:

Apparently the folks at Electronic Arts want me to become a software pirate. You may recall that I refused to purchase the PC release of Bioshock because the SecuROM DRM it contained would actually disable some perfectly legitimate troubleshooting software on my PC out of fear that I might use it to crack the game. It also limited you to 10 installs before you had to “reactivate” the game over the Internet and, as someone who restages his PC often, that was too much of an intrusion.

Now word comes down that the critically acclaimed RPG Mass Effect will also make use of SecuROM with a limit of 3 installs and a requirement that it phone home every 10 days to reactivate itself. Apparently the same will also be true of Spore:

BioWare technical producer Derek French lit up the Mass Effect forums this past week announcing that both their game and (on page 2) fellow Electronic Arts title Spore come with SecuROM, a DRM system that requires activation the first time you play the game and then a re-check every ten days, with the first check on the fifth day.

French explained that there is no external program installed and the check will be run through MassEffect.exe (or Spore.exe, presumably), the data transfered will be the CD key and a “unique machine identifier of some type” and that he has been told, “there will be clear labeling on the package.“

This is very disappointing news as it guarantees that I won’t even consider purchasing Mass Effect now and it makes my purchase of Spore debatable as well. If I do end up being weak willed enough to buy Spore I can guarantee you that I will be hunting down the crack for it. There’s been a fair amount of talk among developers that piracy is killing the market for games on the PC, but these draconian DRM schemes aren’t helping the situation at all as it pretty much ensures that legitimate customers will either end up turning to pirated copies to get away from the restrictive DRM or just refuse to purchase the game. Given the fact that Spore will contacting servers on a regular basis to download user created content there’s even less of a need for SecuROM as opposed to just using the game’s CD Key.

What’s going to end up killing the PC game market in the long run is treating your customers like criminals, but it appears that’s a trend that isn’t going away anytime soon.

The folks at Eurogamer are reporting that a patch for the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV should be hitting the net today:

Speaking to Eurogamer, a Sony source explained that the patch would help by “reducing the loads on the servers at GameSpy and hopefully the completely random hangs that some users have seen”.

I’ve not had the chance to play the game for the past couple of days anyway so this is perfect timing for me. With any luck the patch will be available by the time I get home and I can check to see if it clears up the issue. No word yet on a patch for the Xbox 360 version.

On a related note: GTA IV is, as expected, earning Rockstar a shit load of money taking in some $500 million in its first week on store shelves.

Update: According to the guys at PS3 Fanboy the patch is out and working as advertised.  It clocks in at 18MB and bumps the version number to 1.01.

Those of you who are drooling for a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV and debating over which console to buy because all you have is a PC may take some heart in this Softpedia news item:

... [W]e have a German website presenting the Grand Theft Auto IV PC version DVD case, together with a price and, what matters most for all of us: the release date. According to the website, the PC version of Rockstar’s title will be made available starting the 30th of November this year. What should normally be a further proof that the date is correct (or, at least, that a PC version is in the works) is the fact that pre-order is available. It remains to see how and if Rockstar responds to this… let’s call it “leak”. They probably won’t be too happy, since the official announcement still has to be made.

So, assuming this date is correct or at least in the general ballpark, if you can hold out ‘till November then you may not need to purchase a console to get your fix after all. Maybe by then they’ll have smushed the rather annoying freezing bugs as well.

So about six hours of game time in I had just finished the mission where you deal with the problem of Vlad (if you’ve played it then you know where I was) when the game suddenly locked up during the cut scene at the end of the mission. Oh, I thought to myself, this must be the much-discussed lockup bug. So I rebooted the console and tried to launch the game. It went through the load up screens and then tried to load the last save point at which point it just sat there strobing the loading text at me for far longer than usual. When the music ended and it sat there in silence still strobing the text I figured it wasn’t going to load and rebooted the console again. Since then I’ve deleted all the save files I had, the profile, and the installation files and yet it does the same thing every time. Goes through the load screens and sits there strobing the text STARTING A NEW GAME at me endlessly. Considering that I never saw the “starting” text the first time I loaded the game the fact that I was seeing it at all wasn’t a good sign.

Now this is disturbing because my issue doesn’t sound like what other folks have been having. They all report that they get to the first cut scene and then it locks up. I’m not even making it that far. When I check the files on the hard drive I can see that the game has managed to make a profile, but not a save file so I know it’s locking up pretty early in the process. The consensus seems to be that the problem is related to the Internet connectivity and that’s one thing I haven’t tried turning off yet so we’ll see if that fixes it. I’ve not gotten a chance to try it yet today as we got up and took Melvin, the official SEB cat, to the vets then went out for lunch and an early showing of Iron Man (Super Short Review: Go see it. It’s good.) and when we got home the TV was occupied.

It’s a little bizarre to have the game work fine for two days straight and then lock up and refuse to run after that. Still I’ll try disabling the internet connectivity next and see what happens. Either way I’m not too worried about it as they’ll eventually get a patch together for it at some point. It is rather annoying though.

Update: Turning off the Internet connection got the game working again just fine. I’m back to where I was before it locked up on me the first time. So it appears it’s related to the networking in some fashion. I expect they’ll have a patch for it in short order.

... and so far I’m really enjoying it. I’ve not done a whole lot yet, a handful of the missions, two dates with Michelle where we bowled (once) and played billiards (twice), gone to the titty bar with my cousin twice, watched a whole episode of Republican Space Rangers on TV (which was easily worth the price of admission alone), and died three times. I spent a good hour last night just driving around checking out the sights and then I decided to see how big of a car pileup I could cause in one of the traffic circles. Just cause, you know, I could and all.

What I’m most impressed with is the level of detail on what you can do. Things like being able to sit down and watch episodes of shows on TV (albeit very short episodes) is very cool. I’ve not seen it yet, but there’s apparently some cabaret shows and stand up comedians you can go watch perform as well. Or the fact that you can pick up small objects, such as a brick, which you can then throw, such as through a window, for smaller scale mayhem. I’ve not gotten a gun yet, but that hasn’t stopped me from knocking a guy through a window to his death. I’ve already had one moral choice to make (whether or not to kill someone I was sent to kill) which will probably come back to play a role later in the game and offer a bit of replay in the form of making the opposite choice next time. I’ve spent a fair amount of time just walking the streets and taking in the details. It really is impressive.

One thing I’m disappointed with so far is finding the stunt jumps. Because the city is so realistic it’s hard to pick out what would have obviously been a stunt jump in the other games. I think I’ve found one so far, but when I hit it I didn’t get the usual cinematic and my car didn’t land upright so I didn’t successfully complete it. That is, if it was an actual stunt jump. Launching my car off the stunt jumps is what I enjoy the most about this series of games and it seems like the ramps have gotten increasingly harder to find with each release. Hopefully they’ll become easier to spot once I find a couple and have an idea of what they look like.

Overall I’d have to say the game lives up pretty well to the reviews it’s been getting. I don’t know that I’d go as far as to say it’s revolutionary, but it’s definitely a big step up in the evolution of the series. Well worth the price so far.

... is the fact that you rarely get to play it on launch day. The copy of Grand Theft Auto IV Collector’s Edition Anne bought me for our anniversary shipped on Monday. Which means it’ll probably arrive either about the time I leave for work today or sometime tomorrow at the earliest. You’d think Amazon would recognize how big a title this is and set up something along the lines of what they do for Harry Potter books to ensure that the title arrives on the day of release, but it’s only a video game so they don’t go through the extra trouble.

Anne had told me about the present ahead of time in part because she thought I might want her to cancel the order so I could pick up the game at one of the midnight launches, but I told her it wasn’t that big of a deal. Surprisingly I’m actually handling things pretty well without the usual can’t-wait-to-play-the-game cravings of times past. Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m older and more mature, but I suppose the fact that I’m immersed in a new job where I’m trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible also plays a role. Though there are the occasional moments, like this one, where I get a little bit antsy.

It also helps that Anne and I have been watching the first season of Burn Notice after hearing about how good it was from Nate, the coworker from my previous job. If you like spy shows that have a little humor in them then this may be right up your alley. It doesn’t hurt the appeal that Bruce Campbell has a recurring role in the series. The story centers on Michael Westen who works as a spy of some sort—we’re never really told what agency, if any, he’s a part of—who has had a burn notice put out on him. It’s the spy equivalent of being fired it seems and usually they just kill you, but in this case they dump him back in Miami and make it clear that should he try to leave the city the FBI would be all over him like white on rice. All his accounts and resources have been frozen so he has to take on odd jobs helping people to get the scratch together to find out who put the burn notice out and why.

Essentially it’s your typical reluctant-hero-helps-some-deserving-person every week show with an overarching background plot that deals with the problem that has disrupted his life. Like the Incredible Hulk but with spies instead of big green semi-deaf former body builders. Instead of just endless making the background story arch an endless procession of dead ends except for the occasional special episode, however, this show actually advances the background story arch with every episode. Things change over time and our hero gets a little closer to finding out the truth as the season progresses. This makes it very watchable and a refreshing change from the typical show of this sort. It has plenty of humor and action and is definitely worth catching in reruns if you’re not the sort to just bittorrent the shows like I did. When it comes out on DVD I’ll probably pick it up it’s that good. It looks like the second season starts on July 10th and I’m looking forward to it. Check it out if you haven’t already.