Super Street Fighter IV

What should be the definitive version of Street Fighter IV is surprisingly lacking a lot of the polish and production that went into the original release.  This is apparent right from the box art.

When Capcom first unveiled the North American Street Fighter IV cover, that crappy, pasted-together clip art looked like it would be the one disappointing piece of a monumental game launch.  It was typical of Capcom USA, which had given us, among other things, the Okami box art sporting an IGN watermark.  I just thought that maybe an event as big as Street Fighter's long-awaited return warranted something better.  Miraculously, reason prevailed when the fan community actually managed to change Capcom's mind and convince it to simply stick with the Japanese artwork for all regions.  Alas, there was no eleventh-hour rescue this time, and although the North American Super Street Fighter IV cover is decent, for being a lazy Photoshop assemblage of clip art, it is markedly inferior to the original piece used for the Japanese box art.

While the quality of the North American box art may seem an insignificant element, which is counterbalanced by the thick full-color manual, the laziness unfortunately creeps into the in-game presentation.  On boot, a brand new opening cinematic follows the usual legal screens, and it is excellent, if not as comprehensive as SFIV's.  But what's missing is Exile's awesome "Indestructible" theme song, which is gone without a trace, and I can only guess that it was cut to save on licensing fees.  In its place is an instrumental medley that, while good, doesn't get me nearly as pumped as "Indestructible."  Again, small stuff in the grand scheme, but that's not the end of it.  Remember those slick in-game move lists that were modeled after the panel art on the old coin-op machines?  Well, they've been replaced with boring traditional scrolling screens of just move names and button inputs.  Is it a big deal? No, but it all factors into the presentation score, and it begins to remind me of the lack of effort or pride that, before Street Fighter's glorious relaunch, produced things like Capcom Fighting Evolution.

Capcom has inexplicably cut out even some gameplay modes and options.  I won't miss the Survival and Time Attack challenges, but where is the Gallery for viewing unlocked art and videos?  Perhaps Capcom realized that nobody would ever want to relive the game's wretched endings, especially considering that SSFIV's brand new anime cut scenes are just as awful and poorly animated as before, if not worse.  In fact, the opening cut scenes for individual characters are now nothing more than still figures on barely animated backgrounds set to voice-over narration.  On the bright side, Capcom did implement my most wanted feature, the option to set the music to character themes during versus play.

In the long run, of course none of this stuff matters one bit.  This is a fighting game, after all.  More specifically, this is Street Fighter IV, and if you've played it before, there is nothing that is going to surprise you in this new edition.  It is still the best fighting game on the market, and if SSFIV doesn't fundamentally alter the core game, it at least adds a lot more of what was already there.

A fighting game is its characters, and SSFIV adds ten, which is frankly a massive leap.  That brings the total number of characters to thirty-five, making for the largest cast of Street Fighters ever assembled (unless you count Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX for the PSP).  It's also the most comprehensive roster ever, bringing together the best from Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter III, on top of the complete Super Street Fighter II cast.  I would have liked to have seen Alex from SFIII, but I don't know that I would have traded any of the three SFIII representatives in this game for him.  Maybe I would have traded jailbird Cody, but I suppose, considering the guy's place in the Street Fighter/Final Fight canon, he deserved a second chance.  As for the brand new characters, Juri and Hakan are definitely a step up from the initial set of SFIV originals.  Juri represents a fighting style and nationality that many players have been asking for in SF.  I just wish she weren't so overtly evil and perverse, which seems more out of SNK's bag (e.g. Vice and Mature); Capcom has traditionally been all about the fight, with minimal or no focus on characters' alignments.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hakan feels more like a vintage design, albeit a freakish one in the vein of Blanka or Dhalsim.  Like all of the SFII classics, his character rests in his visual design and fighting style, instead of a tiresome personality.  Although I originally thought Abel and El Fuerte were the more normal SFIV characters, I ended up hating them both because of their obnoxious voices and dialogue.

So, yeah, in one respect, probably the most important one, SSFIV is a pretty huge update.  Personally, the only new character that I'll probably be using with any regularity is Dee Jay.  And although I am obviously no expert, the only other new character that I can see shaking things up at the competitive level is Dudley.  Meanwhile, there are no meaningful system-wide changes instituted in SSFIV, and it overall feels like an engine-refining middle installment, a la Street Fighter II' - Hyper Fighting or Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, as opposed to Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, or even Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, each of which was the last in its sequence and also the most experimental iteration.

A year later, my problems with SFIV's systems remain.  Giving players now a choice between two Ultra Combos for each character makes little difference, since it is pretty clear in most cases that one option is simply better.  Powering those Ultras, the Revenge meter, which seemed questionable to me a year ago, has since become my greatest frustration in the game.  It makes no sense to reward a player just for taking damage.  Capcom should have learned its lesson with Capcom vs. SNK 2's similarly criticized K-Groove (AKA the "Scrub Groove").  At least in CvS2, players didn't have to use K-Groove, and the other Grooves had advantages of their own that made them at least as effective.

The Focus Attack meanwhile remains mostly an expert's maneuver that is unlike anything else in Street Fighter.  I don't actually have much time to practice the game, so I still often forget that the Focus Attack exists, and I end up just playing as though this is SFII.  That leads to a lot of beatings because this is definitely not SFII, and the Focus Attack makes a huge difference.  If you don't know your character's specific Armor-Breaking attack, you'll end up taking a lot of Focus Attacks to the face.  On the offensive end, Focus Attack-canceling and Dash-canceling introduce crazy possibilities that experts can use to run rings around casual players who won't even comprehend why they are losing.

If these terms mean nothing to you, that's okay, because they don't mean much to me either.  These elements foreign to my SFII-informed experience are not necessarily worse than Parrying or Custom Combos, but SFII had none of those things and endures to this day as the cleanest, most fundamentally sound 2-D fighting game.  Frankly, things like Focus Attacks, Parrying, Custom Combos, etc. are gimmicks, albeit game-altering ones, which is precisely the problem.  A good game shouldn't be distinguished from its peers and predecessors by its unique gimmicks.  They don't evolve the game in any way, they just make it different and harder to understand.

You might wonder, if I had it my way, wouldn't we just be playing Street Fighter II over and over again for eternity?  Well, people do still play SFII for a reason, and it's the same reason that people still play chess, or tennis, or any competitive game that has been around for generations.  If the rules of the competition are sound, the fun comes in what an endless supply of competitors can bring to it.  That said, there are improvements that can and have been made to SFII, mostly in the areas of control and game speed.  And games have been able to add interesting things without taking away from the core of SFII.  Dashing and EX Specials, for example, do not alter the basic dynamic of a match, but they create a few extra possibilities here and there to make newer games fresher without breaking them.

Even with all its flaws, however, Super Street Fighter IV is the biggest Street Fighter ever and, I say again, the best.  Even with its Focus Attacks, it is less complicated than Alpha 3.  Even with its Ultra Combos, it is less backward than 3rd Strike.  And even with all that crap, it simply feels better than Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which I now find way too fast and jerky.  The online options are also vastly improved, although I still don't find much satisfaction in playing against passing strangers.

Oh, the bonus stages?  Totally lame.  They are something that you miss after they are taken away, but then, once you have them, you never want to play them, because they are and have always been stupid and pointless.

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka

Pluto is the greatest robot story in history.

Okay, that's debatable, but I would say it is up there. It is also probably the greatest comic book I have ever encountered.

Pluto is the bold reinterpretation of manga legend Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (AKA Tetsuwan Atom) by one of today's greatest authors of graphic literature, Naoki Urasawa (Yawara!, Monster, 20th Century Boys). Pluto specifically revisits Astro Boy's most famous story arc, "The Greatest Robot on Earth," originally about a robot programmed to prove itself history's greatest by destroying Astro Boy (AKA Atom) and all of the world's other most powerful robots.

Osamu Tezuka is justifiably regarded as the godfather of both manga and anime. He shaped Japan's post-World War II comics with his 150,000+ pages of material, transitioning the industry from a juvenile pastime to a booming creative and economic golden age with his works covering every genre and demographic. His impact on Japan's animation industry was no less significant; the animated Astro Boy (1963) was one of the country's first domestic animated TV series, certainly the first popular one. Although Astro Boy was his most famous creation, he also appealed to adults with such works as Ode to Kirihito and MW, both of which explored the dark and violent depths of mankind. He wrote for girls, sowing the seeds of shojo with his Princess Knight (AKA Ribon no Kishi), which begot The Rose of Versailles, which begot Revolutionary Girl Utena. Truly, it would be hard to find any work today that cannot be traced back to Tezuka. Even over twenty years after his death, his "big eyes" aesthetic remains synonymous with the "manga style" of art. An extraordinarily prolific and visionary artist and industry pioneer, although he was himself inspired by Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, Tezuka really never had an English-language equivalent to match his thorough combination of universal appeal and philosophical profundity that allowed him to speak to children in their own terms while challenging them with questions to be returned to continually as they grew up. I would credit that for the difference today between Japan and America in the perception and appreciation of comics and animation.

Among the many children who grew up following the adventures of Astro Boy was a young Naoki Urasawa, now one of Japan's most respected manga authors. In 2003, Urasawa approached Tezuka's son with the idea of remaking "The Greatest Robot on Earth" in celebration of the fictional birth year of Astro Boy. In the English-speaking world, Urasawa is best known for Monster, his adult-oriented psychological thriller about a surgeon's pursuit of the sociopath who framed him for murder. He might not have seemed an obvious choice to take on a crazy robot story originally aimed at young boys, but that's part of what makes Pluto so fresh and exciting, even--maybe especially so--for fans of Tezuka's original work.

Scaling things back from Tezuka's typically grand narratives, Urasawa and co-plotter Takashi Nagasaki reinterpret the story as first a suspenseful murder mystery that only gradually escalates into superheroic battles. Displacing Astro Boy as the protagonist in Urasawa's version is Gesicht, the robot detective, who is put in charge of the investigation of the attacks on the world's greatest robots by a terrifyingly powerful mechanical assailant. This robot serial killer's motive and identity are as elusive as any means to stop him, and there is yet an additional chilling element to his crimes because some of his victims are human, which, in accordance with Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics, should be impossible.

As readers follow the case from Gesicht's perspective, the detective exemplifies the advanced state of artificial life in the world of Pluto. We see the very human-like weariness felt by this cop who has seen too much over his many years devoted to his job, as well as the stress on both him and his robot wife, because Gesicht himself is one of the world's greatest robots and thus a target. Through Gesicht's interactions with both robots and humans, Urasawa additionally tackles Tezuka's theme of robot rights, the ever-present question of whether these artificial lifeforms should be recognized as truly "alive" in the same way that humans are. Even as robots seem to exist alongside humans in the society of Pluto, there are still many humans who cannot accept robots as equals. The soulfulness that Gesicht exhibits makes them seem like bigots, but perhaps their resentment is understandable; Pluto does not shy away from discussing the negative implications of introducing super-efficient robots into the workforce. At the same time, there are things humans can do that robots cannot, such as killing other humans. Law is supposed to prohibit humans from committing murder, but some of Pluto's most intelligent characters argue that programming these restrictions into robots stunts their development toward full humanity. Some robots even wonder whether it is advisable for them to become any more human, considering that some of these programmed limitations, such as the inability to feel hate, are ostensibly good things that make them more humane than humans. Meanwhile, with the introduction of advanced prosthetics to replace lost limbs and even vital organs, humans themselves seem to become more like robots.

Pluto is still not hard science fiction. The non-uniform powers and abilities of the world's greatest robots veer toward the fantastic, and in tackling the theoretical issue of robot rights, Urasawa seems to cheat in leapfrogging by generations the limitations that identify AI today, instead depicting robots that are already so advanced as to be indistinguishable from humans in their exhibited depth of emotion and complexity of behavior. But therein lies the fundamental question: with technology progressing at a rapid clip, when eventually there exists a robot sophisticated enough to fool you into believing it is human, should the revelation of its artificial origins alter your perception of it? Are humans themselves anything more than extremely advanced machines designed by nature? Would an equally complex robot qualify as alive and intelligent, or would its human-like behavior be merely soulless mimicry? Is Gesicht's weariness real, or is he just going through the motions? How many humans can just as easily be accused of the latter? Of course probably nobody today will live to see such advanced robots (assuming robotics even goes in that direction), rendering the argument moot, but the greater point may be to make us consider over and again what it means to be human. Tezuka certainly had some ideas, Urasawa has his own, and the characters within Pluto have varying opinions as well, both hopeful and unsettling.

Astro Boy, known even in the English edition of Pluto by his original Japanese name of Atom, still has a major role as one of those greatest robots targeted by the robot serial killer. But Urasawa matches Pluto's more serious tone with art in his own style, which is markedly different from Tezuka's. The big eyes survive, as they have in everyone's work, Urasawa's included, but gone are the plastic hairdo and metallic shorts. Urasawa's Atom is drawn as a startlingly realistic young boy, and other formerly cartoonish Tezuka characters, such as the giant-nosed Ochanomizu (AKA Elefun, AKA Dr. O'Shay), are likewise re-imagined with entirely sensible proportions. In short, this is Astro Boy as though it were real. But that assessment alone does not do justice to Urasawa's art, which is more mature and understated than a lot of what is available in manga. The cinematic paneling that Tezuka spread is here perfected by Urasawa, who, without using dialogue as a crutch, can convey a ton of emotion just through narrative framing, as when he draws a female robot receiving the news of her husband's death. An older Johnny 5-esque model, she has no facial expression, yet the gravity of the scene is communicated through angled glances and shots alternating between her unmoving face and the officer's eyes that subtly shift from pain to guilt. Considering that Pluto sells at a premium rate as part of Viz's "Signature" line, it is only a shame that some pages have clearly been grayscaled from their original color forms. But Viz preserves the absolutely essential ones, perhaps spending a little more than usual to deliver the special treatment that Pluto not only deserves but requires. There is one particularly beautiful page that feels like the payoff to all the thousands of black-and-white pages of manga I've read over the years.

Pluto is an accomplished work on its own that requires no previous knowledge of Osamu Tezuka or Astro Boy to enjoy. That said, my appreciation for what Urasawa accomplished was greatly enhanced after I went back and read Tezuka's original story. Before getting into Pluto, I knew Astro Boy mainly from the bowdlerized English version of the 2003 anime and from watching somebody else play through Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Sega and Treasure's 2003 Game Boy Advance video game that compiled and jumbled together Tezuka's entire canon. From these more recent adaptations, both of which include "The Greatest Robot on Earth" to varying degrees of faithfulness, I appreciated the brazenness of Tezuka's world that seemed able to venture repeatedly into the awesome fringes of the imagination without ever stuttering. Yet I was reluctant to explore Tezuka's original work without the aid of nostalgia, for fear that it had aged too badly, much as the early DC and even Marvel comics, for all the ground they broke, are now overly simplistic and largely unreadable.

Watching the Terminator mythology crumble into nonsensical convolutions as McG's Terminator Salvation played on the screen, I wondered if the James Cameron classics that I so loved as a child were equally stupid. I did not go back to verify whether they were really the prescient meditations on both time travel and killer machines that I remembered, but I did watch Cameron's Avatar, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, this is pretty good. And stupid. I guess stupid is what I liked as a kid. Right?" Although I still have not gone back to re-watch the Terminator films, I'm actually pretty confident that they do hold up. I was less certain about Astro Boy, a work I did not originally encounter as a child, and which Tezuka himself in his later years regarded with frustration as juvenilia.

But Urasawa, like many manga authors of his generation, was motivated along his career path by that very juvenilia, whose depths inspired him even as he produced work all his own. As one of the supplemental interviews in Viz's release reveals, he prepared for writing Pluto by going back and rereading "The Greatest Robot on Earth," and he was surprised to find that many of the images so clear in his memory were not even in the original material. Therein lies the genius of both Osamu Tezuka and Naoki Urasawa.

One could perhaps pitch Pluto succinctly as "Astro Boy for adults." That will do for marketing, but Pluto is not a shocking or subversive new twist on the story you know. Urasawa and Nagasaki expand and newly contextualize the original material, but the themes definitely have their roots in Tezuka's story, as do nearly all key plot points. What Pluto really does is allow adults to appreciate the story in the same way that a child might have experienced the original Astro Boy some fifty years ago, for it is nothing less than the story that Urasawa remembers reading as a child who, presented with a seemingly simple cartoon full of slapstick characters speeding through illogical episodes, dug into its carefully hidden messages and, with that wondrous imagination that Tezuka depended upon in his young readers, unfolded them into a loaded and deadly serious opus.

Reading Pluto, then Astro Boy, followed by Pluto again, I found myself stunned into the realization that true art is never passively consumed. You don't just lay eyes on a painting, record some universal truth, and walk on, having brought no interpretation to the table. There is always a dialogue between the work and its audience, and what of that experience survives into consciousness and culture is reflective of the souls of both the author and the readers.

I now wait for the day when I will be able to hand Pluto to a robot, and he will throw it back in my face, calling it ridiculous and offensive.

Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver

I was fifteen when Pokemon Red/Blue arrived in the States in 1998. Too old to enjoy the cute monsters and perhaps too young to look past them, I sampled Red for about an hour before giving up. I denounced the concept as too reminiscent of dog fighting, but I was really more put off by the battle system that struck me as archaic. Some years later, I gained an appreciation for the finely tuned mechanics, thanks to the pure battling experience offered in Pokemon Stadium. Thus, as a nineteen-year-old college student, I decided to give the series another try when Ruby/Sapphire came out in 2003. Well, that endeavor ended prematurely much like my first attempt; as it turned out, having beaten Stadium with a team of "rental" Pokemon, I still had no patience for the main game routine of wandering around in tall grass and tossing out dozens of Poke Balls before a rare Pokemon agreed to go inside one.

It was not until 2006, when Nintendo partnered with Toys "R" Us to give out the legendary Mew for the Game Boy Advance editions, that I finally "got it." I was mostly familiar with the original 151 Pokemon (i.e. the ones in Stadium), so I still believed Mew the rarest of them all. Even though I had never been able to get more than an hour into any of the main games, the chance to acquire this Pokemon, impossible to catch within the game itself, ignited something within me. (Maybe it helped that I was now out of school and bored at work.) I dug out my copy of Ruby and waited three hours in line at Toys "R" Us to get that Mew. With that hardest one down, "catch 'em all" actually sounded feasible for once, and so I set myself to the game once more and this time promised myself that I would stick with it. Some forty hours later, I was not close to being a master, but I discovered that I actually did enjoy Pokemon after all, and I immediately followed up my playthrough of Ruby by taking on FireRed, Emerald, Colosseum, and the just-released Pearl, beating them all in turn in about a six-month span.

By the time Platinum came out last year, I considered myself quite the Pokemon adept, despite having gotten into it late. Perhaps the only gap in my experience was my not having played the second generation of Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, which many enthusiasts considered the series's high point. I was certainly not going to go back to play a Game Boy Color game that offered no cross-compatibility with my GBA and DS games, especially as I did not believe in the noteworthiness of being the best entry in a series of practically identical games. As they did with the GBA remakes of first generation, however, Nintendo and Game Freak have given late-comers like me a second chance to experience Gold/Silver. I don't know how exactly Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver for the DS compares to the vaunted GBC originals, but I will say that it is the best Pokemon game that I have played.

It's not likely to change anybody's mind about the series; it is still very much the same experience as you'll find in any of the other main installments since the original (which is why a straight-up "remake" for this series may sound like a silly idea). The pursuit of the complete Pokedex is still as sickeningly addictive as ever. Tossing Poke Balls at uncooperative wild Pokemon can be tedious and frustrating, but it can also be as habit-forming as any real-world collecting hobby. The other appeal for me remains the deceptively deep combat. I've always appreciated that the AI foes in these games all play by the same rules as the player, so that you feel like you have to tactically outmaneuver an actual person, instead of an unfairly overpowered behemoth with just a ton of HP to be whittled down by tapping A over and over again. Of course, Pokemon may be the only RPG with an active competitive scene, so the fighting engine has to be balanced for player-versus-player.

That said, after beating Pearl, I was ready for a hiatus from the formula. I thought it was burnout from having played too many games in too short a span without any break, but, playing Platinum alongside HeartGold, I now realize that Diamond/Pearl/Platinum specifically is just not that enjoyable. They tried to make that game a bigger, more expansive experience by making towns larger and dungeons much longer, to no one's benefit. With the typically repetitive mechanics and absent plot, it could become a real drag to get stuck spending too much time in any one area. HeartGold/SoulSilver is much breezier by comparison, and the journey moves along at about the perfect pace to continually introduce the player to new Pokemon and Pokemon trainers.

Even the story is vastly more interesting. In practice, the plot is not at all engaging, but, then again, neither is Beowulf anymore a stimulating read outside an academic environment, in my opinion. There is a certain poetry to HeartGold/SoulSilver's narrative construction in conjunction with FireRed/LeafGreen.

SPOILERS (Seriously?)

FireRed/LeafGreen (or Red/Blue) begins with just a boy setting out from home to explore the land of Kanto. Journeying from town to town with the Pokemon he catches along the way as his only companions, he makes friends and rivals and challenges himself by taking on gym leaders. He tangles with Team Rocket, ultimately defeating its leader and saving Kanto from the criminal organization's nefarious schemes. The boy and his Pokemon gain experience from these battles, eventually earning their way into the Pokemon League to challenge the champion. The silent protagonist proves himself the strongest trainer in Kanto, but, instead of taking on the mantle of champion, he continues on his journey. With his Pokemon ever at his side, he rides off on his bicycle and into legend.

HeartGold/SoulSilver (or Gold/Silver) picks up the story three years later in another land, where another young boy (or girl) sets out on a similar journey. He collects Pokemon, earns badges by defeating gym leaders, and contends with a bitter rival that may have some connection to Team Rocket, whose remnants have now relocated to the Johto region in a desperate bid to reach out to their missing leader. After this new protagonist becomes the strongest trainer in Johto, the story comes full circle as he makes his way to Kanto. There, the player gets to walk familiar routes and reunite with the Kanto gym leaders, who have grown stronger and more mature. You get to revisit all the old towns and see how they have developed free of Team Rocket's corrupting influences. Finally, you find the legendary Red himself standing at the summit, still very much the same boy that the player set out with on that first journey. In a silent duel of wandering champions, Red finally meets his match, only proving that the quest is truly never-ending. And thus the two boys part to continue along on their journeys.

Tsunekazu Ishiharu, producer of Pokemon Red/Blue and currently president of The Pokemon Company, recently revealed that Pokemon Gold and Silver were originally intended to be the "finish line" for the series (keep in mind that, while Gold/Silver was only the second generation, there had already been four first generation games released over the course of three years in Japan). Indeed, not only were they probably the best games in the series (maybe until their own remakes), but they were also the only legitimate sequels. Later games essentially retold the original's story, only changing the names and outfits, but Gold/Silver actually completed what Red/Blue began.

As in every subsequent release, the original game's world consisted of eight gyms, each championing one of the fifteen different Pokemon types. Gold/Silver then added two types and gave players another eight gyms to conquer, with no repeats from the first game, so that, between the two, every one of the seventeen Pokemon types was represented by a gym, with the exception of Dark, which happened to be the type favored by Team Rocket's interim leader in Gold/Silver, as well as the last and strongest member of the Johto League's Elite Four. Later games did not add any more Pokemon types and had to cut off access to the old regions and gyms, so that they could instead recycle old types in new gyms without it seeming redundant. That's a shame, because getting that ticket to ride to the original game world is the most exciting and rewarding moment in HeartGold/SoulSilver.

For players of Red/Blue (or FireRed/LeafGreen), returning to Kanto and battling the original gym leaders again can be a haunting experience in much the same way as revisiting Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, or exploring the mansion in Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition's "Lost in Nightmares" scenario. I imagine there would be yet another nostalgic dimension for players who actually traveled through Johto the first time around. Even if you've never played any version of Red/Blue or Gold/Silver before, the inclusion of almost the entire Kanto region makes for one of the best post-endgame "second quests" in gaming. It nearly doubles the length of the game, which effectively offers players twice as many meaningful battles as even the games that came after Gold/Silver. The remakes even go a little further toward making HeartGold/SoulSilver the definitive Pokemon experience by tossing in many rare Pokemon not originally found in Johto (some not even native to Kanto) and including cameos by some Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl characters. And of course that battle with Red still makes for the perfect ending, such that I'm doubly disappointed that Black/White looks like it will be more of the same, because HeartGold/SoulSilver would have been the perfect sendoff to the classic formula.

As for the few brand new features in Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, the Pokeathlon is a cool concept--who wouldn't love to see their little Pokemon sprites racing around a track?--but, even with multiplayer, the touchscreen-based mini-games are too clumsily executed to be anything but frustrating. The Pokewalker, on the other hand, I see as a fairly significant and positive advancement for the series. It is, in essence, just a more primitive version of a Tamagotchi crossed with a pedometer. In conjunction with the main game, however, it is much more attractive than that idea should be. It's embarrassing to say so, but being able to take your Pokemon around with you outside of the game makes your bond with them seem so much more real, while sending them into battle back on the DS is a lot more gratifying than raising a Tamagotchi ever could be. And the ability to level up a Pokemon just by taking it out for a walk has even encouraged me to get back on the treadmill, so I have to thank it for that.

If you have any interest in getting into (or back into) Pokemon, this is the game to play. It is the biggest, best, and most complete Pokemon experience yet. Even without trading, there are only about sixty Pokemon out of the current 493 that cannot be gotten through playing just either HeartGold or SoulSilver (I played HeartGold but recommend SoulSilver for Skarmory). I even kind of consider the lack of a compelling story as a point in the game's favor; since it doesn't require much attention, I can play the game while watching TV, and I have consequently sunk more hours into this than any other game (or other diversion, period) in the last two months. And I'm not even done yet.

Clash of the Titans

A few years ago, while we were idling away the second shift, a co-worker asked the room for ideas of "the perfect day." The question was not asked in earnest and neither were the answers to be taken seriously. One person imagined, for example, having three meals of bacon, then bacon for dessert. Another drew from his memories of going to Round Table Pizza after school and playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game with his best friend. Er, come to think of it, maybe that one was not a joke. As for me, I had plenty of time to think while listening to others answer before me. Even so, this was what I came up with:

"I wake up early, but it's not a workday. I don't even have a job. Birds are chirping outside. I walk to the kitchen, pour out a glass of orange juice, sit down and take in the acres of meadow outside my glass house. THEN THE DAY GOES ON FOREVER AND SO DO I."

The response was tepid, maybe because they weren't taking that last bit literally, or maybe because they were but thought I was serious. Maybe it was my delivery. Or maybe it just wasn't very funny.

I didn't think much further about the question after that, until recently, when the release of the Liam Neeson Clash of the Titans called to mind a day that, in retrospect, may have been my perfect day.

I was in elementary school in the fourth grade. It was a Tuesday, meaning it was a minimum day, meaning school let out before lunch. The day began with some fun math activities, followed by social studies and spelling. During the short recess in between, I took a lap around the grass field, afterward feeling quite satisfied with myself. To end the school day, our teacher turned the lights down and read to us from Roald Dahl's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Then my mother drove me home and prepared my lunch, a bowl of rice porridge and some canned dace. While I ate, she worked outside on the yard. My older brother was still in his junior high class and my father was at work. For all intents and purposes, I had the next two hours all to myself.

I turned on the TV. TBS was playing the Harryhausen Clash of the Titans. It was not my first time seeing it; the battle with the stop-motion Medusa had shaped my childhood understanding of Greek mythology.

As it so happened, the TBS airing was about at that scene as I tuned in. It wasn't the most exciting development in the world, but I was content to let myself become absorbed in it once more. Finishing my meal quickly, I made my way to the couch to continue watching it through to the end with rapt attention. Following the movie, TBS ran an episode of The Flintstones. It was the one where Gazoo created mindless doubles of Fred and Barney, so that the boys could go bowling while their doubles took the unsuspecting wives out. Naturally I stayed tuned to the channel.

And that was my perfect day.

Kind of.

For one thing, while all of those memories are real and taken from the same period of my life, I highly doubt they could have all landed on the same day. Surely this perfect day is actually a composite of perfect moments from different days. Nevertheless, these memories are generally characteristic of my daily life then.

Second, those paying close attention probably noticed that my perfect day seemingly ends at about 2:30 PM. Honestly, I haven't a clue how I spent the rest of that day (any of them). Of course, not one of my co-workers actually detailed the whole of their perfect day. I think this just goes to show that the 24-hour day is somewhat an arbitrary unit for this discussion. A lifetime made up of such perfect days as mine would be pretty empty. But if I could have only one day, that is how I would spend it.

Finally, and most importantly, what's weird is that rice porridge and canned dace are not at all my favorite foods. I haven't seen Clash of the Titans again since then, and I'm not sure I could make it through a full viewing today. I haven't even seen any episodes of The Flintstones in over a decade, and I have no great desire to watch any now. And while I suppose I did enjoy school back then, I might have hoped that my ultimate day would have consisted of something more exciting and adventurous.

Looking back at the workplace discussion, I think the key is that everyone, even the guy who joked about eating bacon, described wholly stress-free episodes isolated from any context. In the same vein, my own case takes me back to my childhood free of distractions or complications, to a time when I could spend my day accomplishing nothing yet feeling at liberty to do anything. The attraction is obvious once I consider how, in my present life, I am routinely wondering where my day went for entirely different reasons. Whatever I am doing at any given time, I cannot help thinking about the things I am not doing with that time ticking by. When I watch TV, I think I should be playing video games. When I play video games, I think I should be exercising. When I exercise, I think I should be writing. I wish the day could be longer for me to do more stuff, but maybe I just need to have less stuff to do.

No, I haven't seen the new Clash of the Titans with Liam Neeson. It does look like the sort of fare that would be at home at a daytime TBS slot, if such things still exist.

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition

I played through Resident Evil 5 four times, which is the most time I've spent on any single Resident Evil. This surprises even me, because I very rarely play through games more than once. I don't think I've ever encountered a game that is so deliberately user-unfriendly in its controls and basic mechanics while also being so addictive and replayable by its mission design. I know it's not to everyone's taste, but I do love that game. And yes, I did play through it in both co-op and single-player (the latter on Veteran difficulty, in fact). That was all months ago, of course, but I was able to enjoy one last hurrah with the game recently in the form of the new Gold Edition content.

The first piece of new content, "Lost in Nightmares," is a prequel scenario starring Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Set in a mansion environment that is completely new to and unlike anything else in RE5, it is a lovingly packaged homage to the classic pre-RE4 survival horror games. You spend most of it reading documents, solving simple puzzles, collecting limited supplies, and fetching keys and turning cranks, before confronting a boss enemy that cannot be defeated through direct means. "Lost in Nightmares" also included the one moment in all of RE5 that genuinely scared me (although I wonder how scary it would have been if I had remembered to turn on the RE5 mini-map). There is even a nifty trick to switch the perspective to the classic fixed camera mode, so you can remind yourself where the series came from and see just how far it has come. Alas, it does not restore auto-aiming, rendering the perspective highly impractical (well, more so than usual) once the shooting starts.

With tons more nods and references, "Lost in Nightmares" is wonderful fanservice for veterans, but its brevity makes it more of a nostalgia-driven novelty than an independently rewarding experience. Lasting one short sitting (you cannot save your game in the extra missions), as opposed to several nightly sessions scheduled before bedtime, it's missing the rewarding narrative arc, from hopeless nightmare gradually to hopeful dawn, that was so essential to old-school Resident Evil. It also makes apparent just how poorly suited cooperative multiplayer is to the old survival horror design. I've discussed this before, but the more intimate adventure style of Resident Evil is not something that gets better with more players. When it is just you and your player character journeying through that mansion, it is easy to become immersed in the exploration and bond with the game itself. When you add another live human being to the mix, you become anchored in the real world, unable to drift into the fiction. Without that immersion, all this scanning of objects and flipping through pages in lengthy files becomes just a tiresome exercise.

On the other hand, when I collected a key item that I had no idea how to utilize, it occurred to me that maybe I was never very good at these games. As I read aloud the clue, however, my partner was able to recall an important detail that led us in the right direction. Had I been on my own, I'm sure I would have just wasted several minutes rechecking every object in the environment. Unfortunately, the presence of another player could not help me to make sense of the cryptic documents, some of which seem barely relevant to either RE5 or past games. Perhaps they are the first clues to the story of the next game.

The other new chapter is "Desperate Escape," which is set during the events of RE5. The name evokes "Last Escape," the Japanese subtitle for Biohazard 3, which was the last game chronologically to feature Jill Valentine as the main player character. Jill is back as the player one character here, but "Desperate Escape" is more of a distillation of the action elements of RE4 and 5. It is probably the most intense chapter in all of RE5, constantly tossing overwhelming numbers at you and forcing you to keep on the move. Of course, you still can't move while shooting, so the resulting action is maybe the finest example in RE5 of the series's trademark engineered panic. For reference, the hairiest chapters in the main game require taking out as many as 60 enemies to earn an S rank for the stage. At the end of "Desperate Escape," my partner and I finished with over 150 enemies routed. Each.

The highlight for me was a sequence that, more than anything else in the game, truly reminded me of Black Hawk Down. Armed with a sniper rifle, I was forced to take shelter in a crumbling shed. With three walls and only one window, it was the most fortified position available. I quickly found myself against the back wall and essentially prone as I covered the two entry points. As packs of enemies stormed both sides, I was pretty much locked in scope mode any time I wasn't frantically reloading. Occasionally my partner, packing a puny automatic, would charge out to collect ammo. Certain that I would not survive long out in the open with a sniper rifle, I had to remain behind and watch him shrink in the distance and wander off screen, perhaps never to return.

Both chapters are well worth experiencing if you are a fan of the game or series. "Lost in Nightmares" is a very novel experience that shows how the old survival horror formula could still work with the newer camera. "Desperate Escape" is an action-packed scenario that serves as a short encore for the experience of RE5 as a whole. They are not entirely satisfying, but I don't see how post-game downloadable content of this sort can be. Although both chapters are comparable in length to those found in RE5's campaign, as standalone chapters they don't carry the feelings of consequence that come with progressing through a full game. "Lost in Nightmares" feels especially insubstantial and "Desperate Escape," even as hectic as it is, feels a tad anticlimactic. Like the Wizards Jordan, it lasts just long enough to remind you of the great times you had before, but it's over all too soon and the payoff isn't quite there this time. Even so, I'm glad to have had this one last dance.

The final piece of Gold Edition is Mercenaries Reunion, which is a huge disappointment. It is just the regular Mercenaries mode with barely reworked stages and eight new characters to play as. Unfortunately, instead of simply plugging the new characters into the existing mode, Capcom decided to include Mercenaries Reunion as a completely separate mode, despite the fact that it is obviously 99% the same code. Thus, none of the original Mercenaries characters are playable in Mercenaries Reunion, nor are any of the new characters playable in plain Mercenaries. This only really matters when playing co-op, but it means that you cannot, for example, team up Wesker with Barry Burton. Less significant but still annoying, your old scores and progress also do not carry over to the "new" mode. I can speculate as to the reasons, but there really can be no good excuse for this.

Ride the Lion

Have you heard of the Lujan Zoo in Buenos Aires? I was just made aware of it today.

Apparently, for fifty American dollars, this zoo will allow you shockingly hands-on interaction with the animals, including petting bears, feeding tigers, and riding lions. The zoo insists that the engagements with these legendary predators are entirely safe, but the extent of the precautions seems to be the accompanying presence of some human trainer who stands off to the side as you straddle a deadly man-eater. But the lawless operation has drawn greatest protest from animal rights activists, who have condemned the subjection of these majestic beasts to such decidedly unnatural activity.

It is easy for adrift bleeding heart liberals spoiling for a cause to condemn Lujan's unorthodox handling of its animals as cruel and immoral. But then I imagine that starry-eyed child, for whom the incomparable experience of riding a lion will forever be among the most cherished moments in a long life. And I say, what gives anyone the right to taint that memory by suggesting that it was animal abuse?!

If a man can ride a horse, why not a lion? If you can domesticate a dog, pet it, hug it, dress it up in people clothes, and ride it in your backyard, I ask you, why is the lion off limits? Better yet, allow me to quote renowned German philosopher Neinhalt Sieger, master of the fist and author of the existentialist manifesto Ich Habe:

"Let whoever would preserve the lion's pride above a man's renounce his own in accordance with his principles and take the lion's place between my legs."

A Larger Perspective

Of course I wouldn't leave it simply at that. Seriously, the Call of Duty implosion has been one of the more exciting stories in the industry, even for someone like me, who has never played a Call of Duty game. If you haven't been keeping abreast of the latest developments, however, I've gone ahead and drafted this rough chronology of events pertaining to the case and the history of the parties involved:

1979
Frustrated by Atari's policy not to credit the actual developers of the games it publishes, four programmers leave the company to form Activision, the world's first third-party publisher for game consoles.

Activision's determination to release games for the Atari 2600 without the console manufacturer's blessing leads to litigation between the two companies that will not be settled until 1982, when Atari agrees to allow third party publishing in exchange for royalties. The decision leads to a massive boom in the number of software publishers and consequently the number of titles on the market, ultimately leading to the video game crash of 1983 due to oversaturation.

1990
After years of continuous decline for Activision, since renamed Mediagenic, the company is finally acquired by BHK Corporation, an investor group led by Bobby Kotick. Under new CEO Kotick, the company is completely restructured, the Activision name also restored to mark a vigorous reentry into the games market.

1999
Activision acquires Neversoft Entertainment, developer of Apocalypse (AKA "that Bruce Willis Robotron game"). The studio's next project is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the PS1. The game is an immediate sensation and is quickly followed by a sequel the next year.

2000
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 ranks as the best-selling PlayStation game of 2000 in the U.S. Released to universal praise, the PS1 version remains also one of the highest-rated games of all-time.

Through 2007, Activision continues to release one Tony Hawk title per year (plus spin-offs), to progressively lower scores and sales.

2001
Activision acquires Treyarch, developer of, among other things, a couple of entries in EA's struggling Triple Play baseball series.

2002
EA releases Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for PC. Developed by 2015, this third entry in gaming's premier World War II first-person shooter series receives near-universal acclaim.

Twenty-two employees of 2015, including Medal of Honor: Allied Assault project leads Vince Zampella and Jason West, leave to found Infinity Ward.

2003
Activision acquires Infinity Ward. The studio's first title is Call of Duty for PC. The well-reviewed World War II first-person shooter receives multiple "game of the year" awards.

Meanwhile, through 2007, EA releases nine more titles in the increasingly irrelevant--only one of them is for HD consoles--Medal of Honor series.

2005
RedOctane releases Guitar Hero, developed by Harmonix. The surprise hit demonstrates the market potential for both rhythm games and peripheral-based games.

Activision releases Call of Duty 2, developed by Infinity Ward. Another WWII FPS, it is the best-reviewed and best-selling Xbox 360 launch title. Speaking for Infinity Ward, Vince Zampella later reveals that "With Call of Duty 2, we were dead set against it being World War II, but Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we'd get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War II game."

(Among its fans is a co-worker of mine at my game testing job. In his first week on the job, this eighteen-year-old son of a soldier declares the FPS the only worthwhile game genre and Call of Duty the best FPS, bar none. He announces that, on the day Call of Duty 3 comes out, he will skip work to pick it up and spend all day playing.)

While PC and 360 players enjoy Call of Duty 2 proper, PS2/Xbox/GameCube owners get Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, a slightly less lustrous offering from developer Treyarch.

2006
Activision releases Call of Duty 3 for PS3/360. The console-exclusive WWII FPS is developed by Treyarch instead of Infinity Ward. The game receives markedly lower scores than Infinity Ward's titles, fueling the perception of Treyarch as a B-team, brought in so that Activision can keep pumping out Call of Duty on an annual basis while still allowing Infinity Ward a two-year development cycle for each of its projects.

(My young co-worker does not end up skipping work to play Call of Duty 3, but he does pick it up. I ask him how it is. His former exuberance for life since tempered by the game test environment, he offers only a defeated laugh at himself.)

Activision acquires RedOctane and, along with it, Guitar Hero. Later in the year, MTV purchases Harmonix.

2007
Activision releases Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for Wii, 360, PS3, and PS2. The title is developed by Neversoft. Meanwhile, MTV releases Rock Band, developed by Harmonix and distributed by EA. Rock Band receives higher scores as a more significant step forward for the genre, but Guitar Hero III is nevertheless the more successful game at market. It is Activision's biggest release yet, eventually becoming the first billion-dollar game and the second best-selling game since NPD began tracking unit sales.

2007 also sees the release of Activision and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. To much applause, CoD4 finally moves the series away from WWII. Despite coming out weeks later to much less hype than Halo 3, it finishes the year with more units sold (across all platforms) and even overtakes the Xbox's signature game as the most popular game on Xbox Live. It also earns several "game of the year" awards, even up against the likes of Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, BioShock, Mass Effect, and Portal.

Looking back, Vince Zampella says, "Activision also did not want Modern Warfare. They thought working on a modern game was risky and 'Oh my God you can't do that, it's crazy!' They were doing market research to show us we were wrong the whole time."

Adds Jason West: "We had to fight for everything."

In its biggest year ever, Activision merges with Vivendi Games, which additionally owns Blizzard and Sierra. The new Activision Blizzard surpasses EA to become the world's largest video game publisher.

EA releases Skate for the PS3/360. This more realistic skateboarding game receives positive reviews and outsells Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. EA will release two more Skate games, plus one spin-off, over the next three years.

2008
For the first year since it debuted, there is no new installment in the Tony Hawk main series.

Tim Schafer's Brütal Legend, originally to be published by the now defunct Sierra, is among the in-development titles dropped by Activision after the merger with Vivendi. When EA later announces its intention to publish the game, Activision attempts to block its release. The parties eventually reach a settlement, and EA releases Brütal Legend the following year.

EA releases Dead Space to wide critical acclaim. Along with Mirror's Edge and the EA Partners program, the release paints a new and improved image of the monster publisher as committed to pushing new IP and non-sports titles.

Infinity Ward's heads renew their contracts with Activision. The new agreement reportedly includes the possibility of Infinity Ward developing a new IP that it will control.

In the meantime, Call of Duty returns to WWII and Treyarch with Call of Duty: World at War, built off Infinity Ward's CoD4 engine.

November 6, 2008
Noah Heller, senior producer at Activision, promoting World at War as something that builds on CoD4: "In the previous Call of Dutys it might take three or four shots from a bolt action rifle. We made sure that a single shot center mass would kill that opponent because that's the expectation of the player."

November 7, 2008
Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward's community manager, taking issue with "Senior Super Douche" Noah Heller's comments, posts the following on his personal blog:

"Bolt Action rifles are one hit kills in every Call of Duty we (Infinity Ward) made!!

"I won't compare it to World at War's Bolt Actions, I can't speak to that because I don't work there. Just like you don't work here, so please stop talking about our games."

November 11, 2008
Activision releases Call of Duty: World at War days after and with considerably less hype than Gears of War 2. Despite some perception of World at War as the B-team Call of Duty game, the 360 version by itself finishes the year with more units sold than Microsoft's biggest exclusive.

(It is actually with this development that Call of Duty first grabs my attention as a heavy hitter in the stratum of Halo and Grand Theft Auto, if not beyond. Expectations are obviously high for the next "real" Call of Duty.)

March 26, 2009
Activision debuts the teaser trailer for Infinity Ward's "Modern Warfare 2." The Call of Duty name is not attached. With Activision apparently committed to this schedule of alternating year-to-year between Infinity Ward and Treyarch-developed titles, some speculate that Infinity Ward wanted to avoid any possibility of their work being confused with Treyarch's.

July 9, 2009
The latest artwork reveals that the Call of Duty name has been restored for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This is most likely Activision reacting to surveys that showed lowered consumer awareness after the Call of Duty brand was dropped.

Robert Bowling insists, "We still call the game 'Modern Warfare 2.'"

The final retail packaging features the Call of Duty name on the standard edition, but not the enthusiast-oriented premium editions.

August 5, 2009
Bobby Kotick from the Activision Blizzard earnings call, on the high pricing on peripheral games: ". . . if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."

September 14, 2009
Bobby Kotick at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference: "I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision ten years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. I think we definitely have been able to instill in the culture the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

Kotick also envisions a future "untethered Guitar Hero" that will bypass consoles and hook up directly to televisions.

September 15, 2009
At a Modern Warfare 2 press event, Infinity Ward seems to poke fun at Kotick's "skepticism, pessimism, fear" speech.

October 30, 2009
Infinity Ward slips in a homophobic slur in a YouTube video using Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels to promote Modern Warfare 2. The poorly received video is pulled the next day.

November 10, 2009
Activision releases Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Selling nearly five million copies on the first day, it is the biggest launch in entertainment history.

The Activision logo, while on the box, is curiously missing from the game's boot and intro sequences. Furthermore, the Activision section in the end credits is sped through in thirty seconds following five minutes of Infinity Ward credits.

Activision also releases Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex, a Treyarch-developed Wii port of the first Modern Warfare.

EA cuts 1,500 jobs and announces that it will refocus on iterating upon established franchises.

November 17, 2009
Activision releases Tony Hawk: Ride, an attempt to reinvigorate the franchise by tying it to a motion-sensing skateboard peripheral in a $119.99 package. The game and its use of the peripheral are widely panned.

Activision poaches Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, executive producer and senior development director of Dead Space, to form wholly owned developer Sledgehammer Games.

December 2, 2009
EA announces the return of Medal of Honor in the form of a reboot set in modern times. The first trailer elicits more than a few comparisons to Modern Warfare.

December 22, 2009
Activision releases Guitar Hero: Van Halen for PS2, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. This follows Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, and DJ Hero for the aforementioned platforms, all in 2009. Meanwhile, Harmonix and MTV remain staunch in their support of Rock Band 2 as a platform, powered by new downloadable tracks released on a weekly basis. Having said that, they then release two new Rock Band titles in 2009 (The Beatles: Rock Band and Lego Rock Band), plus three retail track packs.

Revenues for both Guitar Hero and Rock Band are down compared to last year, and the $373 million drop accounts for approximately half of the $720 million dollar decline the industry faces as a whole.

February 11, 2010
Activision shuts down Neversoft and RedOctane, attributing the closures to market conditions that see the publisher more than halving the number of music games it will be shipping compared to last year.

February 18, 2010
Bobby Kotick at the DICE Summit: "I don't know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I'm on board the Death Star."

Kotick admits to having made some mistakes in the past. Looking back at Activision's acquisition of RedOctane for the Guitar Hero brand, he recalls that he knew of Harmonix as "somewhat a failed developer of music games." He regrets that he did not meet to do business with the eventual developer of Guitar Hero's direct competitor.

Summarizing, he says, "If you have a company and you want to protect your creative freedom and the integrity of the creative process, if you want to retain your identity and culture, if you want the support of the mothership and the resources of the mothership, we're a really great mothership. But if you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies to talk to."

March 1, 2010
Less than two weeks after Kotick shows that he might actually be human, Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella are terminated on charges of insubordination.

March 2, 2010
Activision announces its plans to expand the Call of Duty brand, scheduling three games by three studios over the next two years, including an "action-adventure" take by Sledgehammer Games.

March 3, 2010
West and Zampella file suit against Activision. Contending that the publisher terminated them only to avoid having to pay royalties due from Modern Warfare 2, the pair furthermore allege that their original arrangement with Activision granted them control of the Modern Warfare brand.

April 9, 2010
Activision files counter-suit, calling West and Zampella "self-serving schemers," who had secret meetings with Activision's unnamed Northern California competitor.

Activision provides evidence in the form of this uncovered correspondence:

Dunno how to scan secretely 13 [sic]. . . . [IW Employee's] computer down. . . . [IW Employee] did it for me last time. .. .Really. No paranoia about it being in [IW employee] user folder? Her comp down anyway now. . . She had a secret area it scanned into. . . . Probably better to just photocopy and fedex. .. .Can scan or photo - your call. . . . Boom boom pow. Away.

(Censoring hides almost anything incriminating, but that "Boom boom pow. Away." bit seems evidence of douchebaggery.)

Asked for comment, the Northern California-based EA says, "We don't have the time to comment on the many lawsuits Activision files against its employees and creative partners."

Other members of the Modern Warfare 2 team, including all of the design leads, depart Infinity Ward and Activision over the next several days, extending into the present.

April 12, 2010
West and Zampella form Respawn Entertainment. The independent studio is funded by EA, who has partnered with Respawn for exclusive distribution rights.

April 22, 2010
Seven other Modern Warfare 2 team members confirm that they have joined Respawn.

Activision says that the hefty bonuses now forfeited by West and Zampella will be redistributed among employees who remain with Infinity Ward.

And on it goes . . .

UPDATE - April 29, 2010
Amid all the bad news and lawsuits, Activision announces its exclusive ten-year publishing deal with Bungie Studios.

(So much for Inifinity Ward . . .)

_______________

Conclusions:

1. Activision knows how to run a hot property into the ground.

2. So does EA, but it may be changing its ways.

3. Certain people at Infinity Ward may have had a problem with authority.

4. Bobby Kotick is a douchebag.


My expanded take:

It's easy to paint Activision as the monster in this story (because it is and has been), but there's another way to look at things.

Less than two months after they were fired, West and Zampella now find themselves backed by another powerhouse publisher while still remaining supposedly independent as a studio staffed by employees that they have effectively stolen away from Infinity Ward. Why, isn't this the very scheme that Activision accused them of plotting? Having also won the public's sympathy over "the man's" mistreatment of them, West and Zampella really seem to have gotten everything they wanted. And while litigation is far from over, Activision was basically unable to do anything to stop them.

I suppose Activision could have made them a better offer--not just more money than EA is giving them, but also the freedom afforded an independent studio (which is maybe what the fans want also)--but wouldn't that have amounted to bending over for your own subordinates at what was supposed to be a negotiation? Some say that, after delivering Modern Warfare 2, West and Zampella should have been treated like kings by Activision. I'm guessing maybe they were acting like kings anyway, able to get away with anything, which essentially they have. Even if they were your greatest asset, how intolerable a situation would it be to constantly have your own employees disrespecting you? Would you really want to give them even more power and autonomy? Up against that kind of attitude, maybe all Activision could do was remain firm to the unavoidable end.

No, I would never be on Activision's side. But why on earth would anyone feel sorry for Jason West and Vince Zampella? I might feel bad for the remnants of Infinity Ward. Hell, I even wonder where this leaves the Medal of Honor team, given that they are essentially developing a Modern Warfare clone for EA, who is now wining and dining the creators of the real Modern Warfare. Or what about DICE, who in the midst of all this put out EA's Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which some players said was better than Modern Warfare 2? If Respawn is going to carry on 2015/Infinity Ward's military first-person shooter legacy, does that mean EA is going to be publishing three such similar games simultaneously? I think its own history should have taught EA better.

Of course I hope that everybody does well and puts out quality games. This story will probably be just lawsuits and LinkedIn profile updates from here on, so I guess all that's left to look forward to are the actual games that will be coming out of these companies. On that note, I suppose maybe I should finally play some of those Call of Duty games and see for myself what all this was over.