Seriously... free video games. It seems a lot of people aren't aware that many public libraries now carry video games and lend them out just like books. This is a fairly new phenomenon but is gradually spreading. With the introduction of digital books, many libraries were worried about staying current and viable. Most libraries now carry downloadable digital and audio books and the process is easy... reserve the book, wait for the email saying it's available, download the book and then read the book. There's no need to return the book as it returns automatically once the time limit is up, or if you finish the book early, you can digitally "return" and delete the book from your reading device. It's wonderful, and it means I now read many more books than I used to, but it also means that there is no need to make a trip to the library. Additionally, students now tend to do their research on the internet from the comfort of their homes, so libraries were becoming a little dusty and vacant.

The answer to drawing people back to libraries was to expand their offerings. Many libraries now offer cafe type environments with food and drink, and they encourage community based activities. Toronto's library even has a bar! Increasingly they are also offering video games and DVD/blu ray movies. This draws people physically into the library and maintains the viability of a brick and mortar location as well as maintaining staff jobs. Some libraries even hold gaming events and friendly competitions or weekly "gaming days" at the library.



Today I picked up Infamous 2 at my local library, but I noticed that they had Skyrim and even Modern Warfare 3 available in their collection. The movie collections also seem fairly current with War Horse and The Iron Lady being on the list in addition to many other newer movies. Movies are in both Blu-ray and DVD format and have a 7 day lending period... plenty of time to watch a few movies! Video games are also on a 7 day loan period which is a little restrictive - but I did manage to play most of Assassin's Creed: Revelations within a week and provided no one else is on the waiting list, the game can be renewed. I noticed that other libraries seem to have a 3 week lending period for games... which I hope my own library might eventually consider - especially for games like Skyrim! I will certainly reserve and play the next Call of Duty game through the library rather than buying it though. I enjoy the single player campaigns, but don't as often play the multiplayer. The campaigns tend to be short - usually only around 8 hours or so - perfect for a library game!

The procedure for games was easy and painless. I looked through the catalog online, and used my library card to reserve Infamous 2 a few days ago. Today I got an email saying it was available for pickup so I simply walked down to my local library, looked on the "holds" shelf, found it, and checked it out. I looked on the shelves and saw many more games than they seem to have in the actual online catalog - though there was a heavy concentration on Wii games. I also checked out a DVD copy of "Due Date" - a movie I haven't seen as yet, but it was there on the shelves.

If you have games that you can't trade in or will only get a few dollars for them, consider donating them to your local library! My local library gratefully accepts donations and the pleasure of that game can then reach so many more people than it would for the few dollars you could get from a sale. If your local library doesn't have games available, then talk to them. Send an email and express an interest in the library if they carry games and point out that many other public libraries are starting to do so. Get involved in whatever way you can, even if it is adding gaming reviews or notes to the online database that most libraries now have for customer feedback about their content. Offer to help host a gaming event if you have the time. At the very least, check out your local libraries video game collection and borrow games, this helps to prove a need for this type of content in the public library system.

One of the problems with any lending library of games seems to be the range of consoles and the constant introduction of new consoles. A book purchase for a library lasts almost forever because people don't mind reading older books. My own local library still has an abundance of PS2 games in addition to Wii, PS3, PC and Xbox games. With the introduction of new consoles, many of these older games start to lose their value for a library. All the next generation consoles are coming out within the next couple of years, so game donations are doubly important in helping the library maintain a practical collection. With the increase of online passes, and the possibility that next gen consoles may not even allow for used games, the very idea of public libraries carrying video games is in danger. Do what you can to help support the concept.

Some may find it interesting that I support the public library lending video games for free, but don't support piracy. I should note that there is a huge difference. While both options allow gamers to play games for free, the library option only allows 1 person to play per copy of the game. The library pays for the game and successive people can play the game. With piracy, one person buys the game, but then hundreds or thousands of people can all play that one game simultaneously. The library has a time constraint and people have to give the game back to the library for the next patron to play the game. With piracy, everybody gets to keep their copy of the game and there are no time constraints. Borrowing a video game from the library is nothing even remotely close to piracy... and it's also entirely legal!

Video games in the public library system allow many more people to enjoy games that they might not otherwise be able to afford. Games do often have stories, they do have lessons to learn. Many video games also have books based in those gaming worlds, which might encourage more people to read. There are books available for the Halo universe, for Assassin's Creed, Dead Space, Gears of War, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, The Legend of Zelda and many, many others. We live in a digital age and it's nice to see that some libraries are trying to stay current... and now that I've found out my local library carries games, I'll certainly be a more regular customer.

Free books and audio books... downloaded to your device. Free Video games. Free DVD and blu-ray movies. Free music CD's. Yeah, it all might be at your local library too!

... and now I'm gonna go play Infamous 2!

So I finally picked up my copy of Assassin's Creed: Revelations... and my, that old Ezio is pretty hot!! I think he finally usurped Old Snake's place in my heart as the sexiest video game star. It's interesting that we are recently seeing many of our video game stars age. Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell aged nicely with some gray hair and wrinkles in Conviction and Max Payne too has aged. Our video game men are getting older, and being a 50 year old woman, I have to admit that I like this current trend!

There is however, always a danger in aging our video game characters. It often tends to signal the end of a series. I'm glad that Ezio and Altair got old, and that we got to see their stories. It makes them more complete as characters... getting to see young Altair learn life's lessons, getting to see him fall in love - get married, lose a child and his wife... seeing him with his older son.. It all adds to the story and the character. He wasn't stagnant. He grew and changed over the course of the games where we saw him. I think that the Assassin's Creed concept is brilliant in that they can create new games in the series without being reliant on the boredom of having the same protagonist over and over and over again. I like old Ezio. He's still rakish and charming, but the love story between Ezio and Sofia is touched with an assurance and quiet depth that is often missing from the love stories of the young. Ezio's evolution from young to old let us enjoy different stories, through 3 different games and ages in his life, but with a sense of continuity. Ezio's death likely marks an end to his appearance in the series, but I like that. I would rather see a complete story... instead of a continual recirculation of the same character over and over again with no aging and little of the character growth that comes from age.


Ezio through three games.

Timeless, ageless characters have their place in video games, but as the gaming population and demographics gradually age, it will be nice for people to see the game through the eyes of a character that is closer to their own life experience level. I don't think all games need to have older characters, but it's nice that they are occasionally taking center stage instead of being peripheral characters - usually the older, wiser adviser. Sometimes the story of that secondary character seems like it might be more interesting than the character you're playing... like Captain Price - the only character I really remember well from the Modern Warfare series. We only got to play his character a few short times, but they were memorable, largely because there seemed like there was so much more to his story due to his age.



I don't mind playing young characters, though I find it really difficult to play as a young child or tween.... where the stories include puppy love and where the characters don't have the self-assurance that comes from knowing oneself. When seen through the eyes of an older, more mature person... the angst of these years all seems so inconsequential. Chances are strong that the girl you madly love when you are 14 years old is not going to be the mother of your children or the person beside you in that rocking chair in the final years of your life. I think this is one of the reasons that I tend to prefer western games rather than Japanese games where almost all the characters are young.

So we're seeing some older men... but where are the older women? What about Bayonetta or Juliette Starling... would they ever age... and frankly, would it be a good thing? I get the impression that Juliette probably wouldn't age well - unless she starts wearing a decent support bra. For me, the character I would most like to see age a bit would be Lara Croft. I've been Lara many times and I've always been young. In the pictures for the upcoming game Tomb Raider 9, we see a more realistically aged 21 year old Lara, but why are all the games so bent on her staying in her 20's or going back to her teen years? One of the best parts of her character is that Lara doesn't need a man, but I can certainly see her as a single mother. Having a child would add a new element to the Tomb Raider series... a reason for Lara to want to live. It would be nice to see some growth or change in her character... even if they didn't do her fans the disservice of aging her into her late 50's with saggy boobs - but just getting past the 20's would be an adventure for Lara all on it's own! Lara in her 30's or early 40's might even be a good excuse to return to more puzzle based gameplay and add in more stealth.



There are some mature secondary female characters in our games... I liked Wynne in Dragon Age and it was nice to see a mature EVA (or Big Mama) in MGS4, but these are rare instances. We're also seeing some older women on the big screen... like Helen Mirren in Reds - an action movie... but will we ever see a menopausal kickass female protagonist in our games? Well, I guess the answer is yes. In most every WRPG game where there is the opportunity to create our own characters, I tend to create an older, wiser female... with graying hair and a few wrinkles. Yes, it can be a bit odd to be involved in a romance with a boytoy like Alistair... but hopefully at some point our romance options in WRPG games might include someone hot .... like the older Ezio! :)

Are there any game characters that you would like to see age? Are there any that should never age?

Yeah apparently I have a well worn ass pillow from all the buttkicking my posterior region takes when playing many online games. Its interesting though that when given a choice between being on a winning team, or being on a losing team... I'll almost always choose the losing team. It started back with Warhawk where if the teams were unbalanced in any way, it used to result in what was often termed a base rape. The losing team was usually pushed back to their home base and would spawn with a pistol and a knife, only to be greeted by the winning team parked there with tanks, mines, flamethrowers, warhawks and the dreaded tow missile. I found that it was incredibly boring and felt very unsporting to be killing the other team as they spawned and before they could even make a run for a better weapon. I used to switch teams and try and sneak out of the home base to take another base as a spawn point. It was simply more exciting to be on the losing team - to have that sense of desperation against overwhelming enemy odds.

I was in the first phase of the MAG beta and like most others, I quickly figured out that the SVER faction was going to be overpowered. They had wonderful spray and pray guns that more easily got headshots, their maps were the best for defence and they got to attack weak maps held by Raven and Valor. This resulted in most of the better players going to SVER quite early in the game - so I chose Raven as my faction (and later switched to Valor when Raven stopped playing the Domination mode). I like being on a team where a win is rare and when there is a win, it feels earned. I also don't like spawn camping the opposing team... and again, this is something that pretty much has to be done on SVER as everyone else does it and otherwise you're simply sitting at your bunker picking your nose with nothing to do.

Game balance is difficult and some games do it better than others. In Modern Warfare 3, I've noticed that the servers seems to pretty automatically balance the teams based on how you did in the previous game... unless you are just joining the game, or are in a group (it keeps groups together). There are even modes that don't allow groups, so the balancing is even better in those modes. Games like Killzone 3 on the other hand, don't seem to get it at all. Often when joining a game I'll be put on a team of 5 other people... versus a team of 2. Why the hell didn't the game automatically put me on that 2 person team? I haven't yet figured out how to switch teams, though the option was there in Killzone 2, but it certainly is NOT an obvious option in the most recent iteration of the game. Then again, they also switched from a server browser to the dreaded matchmaking system and I've let my complaints about matchmaking be known already... it generally sucks.

The most fun I ever had in an online game was during the Warhawk tournament. Our team came up against a MUCH stronger team that quickly decimated us. We were spawning on a home base on a cliff and pretty much being killed by mines, grenades and tanks as we spawned. We eventually came up with what we called the "lemming" strategy. Rather than try and fight (which was impossible), or rage quit (which is unsporting)... we had a contest as to who could make the run to the cliff face and actually manage to suicide themselves - it at least deprived the enemy of an easy kill. Suicide wasn't a guarantee as sometimes we survived the fall... but we only counted our suicides. We actually started to laugh and have some fun amidst the brutal slaughter. We learned from that game too. Later in the tournament when we came up against a much weaker team, we pulled back after gaining a numerical win. Once there was no way the other team could win the game, we pulled back from their base. If we did go into their base, we went in with knives only. We let them take another base and have a bit of a comeback. They knew what we had done, and as the team leader, I received a note from their team leader after the game thanking us. What we learned from that first game was dignity in defeat and grace in winning.



My ass is sore from all the buttkicking... but mostly it's my own fault. I could use my SVER alt account and play for the stronger team, but frankly I feel much more satisfaction and a greater sense of victory by killing that one guy who has killed me 10 times in a row, rather than killing some other guy 10 times in a row. I wish developers understood this concept though. Too often in games they give team advantages to the winning team. In MAG, the winning team gets a shorter cool down period between strikes... which ensures that the losing team can barely make it out of their spawn before dying from constant air strikes. In Warhawk, the winning team that owned all the bases (yes, all your base are belong to us) got all the assets those bases spawned... including tanks, mines, jeeps and planes. Starhawk looks to be somewhat the same with the use of rift energy giving the ability to spawn assets - and the winning team members will have MUCH more rift energy than any losing team. I have to wonder what these devs are thinking. Were they taking steroids and having manly dreams of crushing and obliterating the opposition in a hail of overpowered explosions? Apparently they never gave consideration to how boring this is. They never considered that maybe they'd be the frustrated obliteratee, barely able to spawn before dying. Games are fun when they're challenging. Any team advantages should automatically go to the losing team. It creates that word so often missing in games - balance. Balanced games offer an actual challenge which gamers thrive on, and there is a more real sense of winning or losing. Homefront had the right idea. If you were on a killstreak, you became marked with a "wanted" status. Opposing team members could see you marked on the minimap and an XP bonus was given for taking you out. I think players were initially nervous about this concept, but they quickly realized that having a 3 star wanted status was much more of a rush than getting the kills. THIS is the concept that needs to be in newer games. It's a real shame that Homefront used the dreaded matchmaking system for getting into games... because their matchmaking didn't work and apparently I was the ugly girl that nobody wanted to dance with... as I sat for 20 minutes or more waiting for a game to launch, and it wouldn't let me launch with my friends.

Sportsmanship is dying, and many kids are being raised to think that a win is more important than a challenge, but developers can do a lot to keep the concept of sportsmanship alive by integrating it directly into the game rather than relying on human nature. Sportsmanship is "fairness" or "equity". There is no fairness in giving advantages to a winning team. I find it interesting that some games even integrate poor sportsmanship into their games with things like taunts. In Uncharted's online multiplayer mode there is a "pump taunt" where the other player thrusts their hips at the person they killed. It might be funny the first time it's seen, but the reality is that it's just poor sportsmanship. It's a shame that devs don't give out an XP bonus to players who switch teams mid-game to a losing team with fewer players. It's a shame that minor team enhancements like better protection of spawning areas aren't automatically given to a losing team. Personal performance in games is recognized and rewarded and that's fine, but any team based rewards should seek to encourage sportsmanship by making the game more equitable. A "good game" isn't a game that you won... it's a game where either team could have won - where you actually had to fight for your victory.



In the meantime though, I guess I'll just keep playing for the underdog... and I'll keep my ass pillow fluffed. Having my ass kicked is just far more fun than losing my personal sense of sportsmanship by spawn camping an opposing team. It's frustrating being on a losing team... but at least it's not boring!

That's right, it's my Birthday on Monday, April 02 and I will be turning 50 years old. In honor of this prestigious occasion I'm going to host my own Warhawk party. If you have the game, drag it out. If you don't have the game, there is a free 60 minute full game demo for anyone with Playstation Plus. The game is on sale on PSN for $29.99, but frankly you should be able to find old copies at most any used game store for around $9.99 (and people still play the game online). You might also be able to borrow the game from a friend if you look around.

Game time will be 6:30 pm pacific (8:30 pm central, 9:30 pm eastern) on Monday, April 2nd
Game name will be Elsa50
Game password will be "dtd"

I'll stick with core maps for the majority of games, though may throw in some expansion pack maps near the end.
Split screen will be enabled, so if you have 3 extra controllers, bring some friends.
You don't have to know how to play the game... we'll mostly just be goofing around, so if you just want to run over people with the jeep or tank, that's fine!



It's interesting, but looking back, life is very much like playing a game. I'll put hundreds of hours into an RPG, or in the case of a game like MAG - thousands of hours. People will look at you and think what did you get out of it? Why did you waste all your time just sitting playing that game. Well, life is like that. At 50 I look back and much of my life is passing time. I have no legacy - no children, no lasting mark upon the universe, no invention that changed lives. What I do have is happiness. I have people that I love in my life, and through gaming I've enjoyed an active social life where I've formed friendships and met lots of different people. These online friendships are no less valuable than the friendships people form with co-workers, church members or other tertiary groups in life. These people bring me happiness and allow me to chat and converse, or to write about a passion for gaming that we share - which in some very small, minor way does leave a tiny footprint as a legacy in the interconnected internet world that we now live in. It's not much, but when all is said and done, even leaving some minor thoughts in cyberspace is at least a bit of a legacy that will survive past my time on this earth. There's a tiny bit of me out there that will live on.... and I'm happy with that.


(and no pictures other than the header, or further thoughts because I rushed this blog due to the fact that the site apparently might be down for awhile tomorrow with the launch of the new comments system, but I wanted people to know about the Monday night game! Hope to see some people there!)

... and I get the tank! :)

Elsa's adventures in gaming... Or how I accidentally killed an entire town.



So I'm on a typical quest... find the lost person in the temple. The temple is filled with some pretty high level Serpent type bad guys, but with some smart play style (it's called "run away, buff stats, refill health, go back") I manage to work my way slowly through the temple. I get to the end and there's this altar with a thing on it. Nothing says what it is and the only option is to take the thing or not take it. I do what most anyone would do, I take it... and promptly see that I have failed about 4 quests I was currently working on. WTF?? I leave the temple and the town is now overrun with orcs and well... everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY is dead. Crap... apparently I took that thing they were all babbling on about that protected the town from the orc hordes. Ah well, let me slay all these orcs and then figure out what to do. Hmmm.... all those dead bodies still have crap on them to loot. I can also lockpick and enter all their houses and steal all their shit... and there are no guards to bother me about it. Ok, no re-loading a save I made an hour ago... I'm just gonna kill some orcs and loot this entire town.

So yeah, I accidentally killed an entire town... but the loot! I made more money than I'll likely need and I also now have some pretty baddass awesome armour and weapons. I can no longer get the quests in this town, but I don't really care because the game is so awful, that the extra quests won't be missed. Half the time I can't actually figure out what quest I'm on anyway because the game is set up so badly. It shows a marker for where I got the quest - but not for where I'm supposed to go to do the quest. In fact, I don't think I've even started the main quest yet. I just take all the quests I can, then simply wander around killing stuff and getting all the lovely loot. With this entire town to pillage now, I've even set up a home base next to the town's teleport. I've taken over the Mayor's house and am storing some armour sets I might want or some weapons I'm not leveled enough to use yet. I'm also storing all my alchemy ingredients, which opens up more room in my knapsack for ... yes, you guessed it... more loot! Forsooth, I verily be a loot-whore!

The game is the original Two Worlds (those that played the game likely guessed it by the preceding line and the cheesy ancient English the game uses). I loved skyrim, and previous to that I've enjoyed many other WRPG's , including two worlds 2 on the ps3. When I saw the original Xbox game on sale for $9.99 I quickly bought it and brought it home. The game is awful though... more than bad... but there is a certain addiction in just trying to figure the game out. The quest structure is laid out so badly that I missed an early quest to get the teleporters operating, and if I hadn't finally turned to the internet about some type of fast travel system, I would well and truly have been stuck. My character is a guy who says the most inane and stupid things that he's unintentionally funny. Forsooth, I verily chuckled aloud at my guy's droll "I am alive" line every time he respawns... though the "well met" greetings do get old after a short while. The inventory system is a total mess, the mage abilities restrict to only 3 active spells, the game is glitchy and often has a frame rate that rivals hand drawn flip cards. My horse won't go down hills... hills that I can walk down or that other animals have no problems chasing me down, so I keep losing my horses.

It's odd that I'm enjoying this crappy game, yet I'm half way through L.A. Noire and just can't stand this much more highly rated game. While both are repetitious, I think the difference is that in Two Worlds, the devs aren't holding my hand. I can wander around, I can try and figure out where the hell I'm supposed to go on a quest, I can kill entire towns by accident - and while I"m often frustrated by the lack of an auto save system when I have an Xbox freeze or when I get stuck on my horse who is stuck on a campfire and neither of us can move - I'm not bored. In L.A. Noire the devs held my hand way too much. There was some limited freedom, but the game was very much "go here, do this". If you didn't "do this" appropriately, the game made you go back and if you failed an action sequence because you were screwing around, the game actually gave you the option to skip the entire action sequence. The game babysat me. It's at the point where I want to mess with the game just out of spite. I leave my partner behind when I drive off, I crash into every light pole I can find, I'm even trying to run over civilians... but dammit, the game just won't let me kill the entire town!



Reviews are an interesting guideline that seem to take into account who the developer was (Rockstar seems to get automatic bonus points if their name is on the cover). Reviewers also seem to like it when a game tries something different (like LA Noire's facial animations) and they account for general game quality (graphics/sound/framerate, etc). What is missing is the gamer's sense of adventure... which is a personal thing. I'm sure that I may later find out that killing this town in Two Worlds was actually part of the game, but for now it's one of those WTF moments that I enjoy in a bad game. The thing is... with a bad, glitchy game, we all have our stories to tell, but with something like LA Noire - the stories we'll tell are all pretty much the same. For me the biggest sin of a game is boredom... so I guess for the next while I'll be trying to get my horse unstuck from that rock it's glitched into, rather than taking on more vice desk stories from L.A. Noire.



Ride on Sparky! (yeah, my horse is named Sparky after the "getting stuck in the campfire" incident!).

Yes, yes I do. I want to be your leader... Commander... the ultimate Armchair General sending you all to your doom from that big ship up there in the sky in that screenshot. I want to play Dust 514! While Byronic Man (or Tsukanda on PSN) might have that soft, dulcet Irish voice (and good tactics), with me you'll get the originality of someone who apparently sounds like a gay 13 year old boy with Tourettes - who will swear at you for not doing what I want you to do, all from the comfort of my flying Mobile Command Center.

The more I hear about Dust 514, the more excited I get. I hate that. I'm so often disappointed by a game that I am anticipating. Still, I like what I'm hearing about Dust 514, in particular the FREE part. The game will be a FREE PSN download. Any expansions, maps, DLC... all of it is expected to be FREE as well. The game will be supported by ingame transactions. The transactions are primarily vanity items or items that can be earned through playing time. Per the developers:
"It's very important as we take steps into this topic to unambiguously state that it is not a pay to win game. There is no micro-transaction that you can do that gives you an unfair advantage over someone who hasn't paid anything....It's the classic micro-transaction dynamic of, 'I can pay and get this item,' or, 'I can invest my time and get this item.' But neither of those options will give me an unfair advantage over the other."

It's been awhile for me. I think that the last games I truly anticipated were Battlefield and Starhawk and in all honesty, I've been somewhat disappointed with the Starhawk beta because it seems much more RTS oriented than shooter oriented, and most of us know how Battlefield on the PS3 turned out (I understand that they finally did fix the voice chat issues... several months after release!). Still, even with all the previous disappointments, I'm starting to get pretty excited about the upcoming game Dust 514. It seems to combine many of the better ideas from games like MAG and even Starhawk into a game that may well move the standard FPS game into something new. I like the idea that it has a leadership structure - this was one of the best aspects of MAG for me and I think that it greatly changes the dynamics of an online shooter game. It not only encourages team work, but it often seems to give players a more vested interest in the overall team strategies rather than just accruing individual points. When you have a squad leader either begging you or yelling at you to help take the left bunker (or whatever their current strategic goal is) I have to admit that I give in to the guilt and often actually try to help out... rather than just laying back and sniping from the spawn which I tend to find very relaxing. Dust 514 will apparently feature a leadership structure similar to MAG and will also have an overall Commander... a person who is selected to oversee the entire battle. They won't be actually playing the game as a foot soldier, but rather will locked away in a Mobile Command Center and will be playing more of an RTS (real time strategy) game of deploying various assets and coordinating the overall battle... moving the OIC position of MAG into a much more relevant, important and interesting role and utilizing elements of Starhawk's deployable asset system. Part of the game objective is not to teamkill your Commander because you disagree with their tactics (something often done in MAG), but rather to protect them, because the loss of the Mobile Command Center (with the comfortably protected Commander), means an instant loss. I think I might like this cozy position of telling everyone on my team what to do.. and not having them teamkill me! (though of course, I'll still be available for those lovely PSN harassment notes about what an idiot I am!).


I want to drive one of these too!

The game seems fairly complex - with a lot of strategic customization of the vehicles, as well as of personal weapons and armour. There is even a racial class system that may also confer certain racial bonuses. The game seems to have a lot of depth for those that want to play a more strategic game, but also seems to have the option of simplicity for those that simply want to jump into a game and shoot stuff. Like Battlefield (and to a lesser extent, MAG) vehicles appear to play a very significant role in Dust 514. Unlike Battlefield and MAG, the vehicles are just as customizable as the player's character. Again, this adds a bit of a real time strategy element to the game... selecting a vehicle best suited to rapid deployment of troops or a heavier vehicle for breaking through an enemies defenses, and additionally choosing from various customizations/skills for the vehicle. Dust 514 is an interesting direction for shooter games to go in. As a shooter, the game isn't all about shooting. It may be a good game for people that have never played a shooter game before because it will be more of a thinking person's game, where strategy and choosing the right options suited to the moment of the game can have more of an impact than years of drop-shotting and quick-scoping and FPS gameplay experience. The game also seems to have a strong emphasis on clans or group play. It seems that it might be fairly easy for Dtoid to have a decent clan in Dust 514 as there is mention of ingame messaging, group and personal game calendars and other aspects that encourage group game play. Half the fun of playing an online shooter game isn't the game... it's chatting with a group of friends, and all anyone needs to become part of this group is a mic (and an ability to express an opinion on everything from recent games, anime, movies or how silly the opposing teams helmets look).



Some quick details on Dust 514:

* The game will be FREE to play. There is no purchase price and no monthly fee.
* There are no plans for paid DLC, any new maps or updates will also be FREE and there seem to be developer plans for regular updates.
* It's currently a PS3 exclusive with a PS Vita app that will allow access to loadouts, strategic information, etc.
* online only (it's an MMOFPS game)
* currently 64 player matches (though there has been hints that this player limit may increase)
* 30 - 40 minute matches (similar to MAG)
* The game will interact with the PC based Eve universe, what happens in Eve, may well have a real time impact on a Dust game (and there is apparently cross game chat between EVE and Dust players)
* PS3 gamers play as mercenaries, so this may avoid the issue MAG had with most of the players going to one faction creating imbalance and gameplay issues.
*"Eve gate" will be in Dust 514 and will add a social element with an ingame friend's list, ingame mail, a personal game calendar, battle heatmaps (no idea what those are) and forums.
* Parties and groups will be supported and will be a central feature for the game (and both text and voice chat will be supported). "Corporations" seem to be the clan function.
* There are reports of a "horde mode" where gamers can play against A.I. enemies to hone their skills.


FPS games aren't just point and shoot anymore. They are becoming much more than that. While some may still point to the inherent violent themes of war and killing, the reality is that games like Dust 514 are more about choice, strategy, and mostly they're about teamwork. MAG showed how different an FPS game could be. I often came in first on my platoon in a MAG game simply by pulling out my repair tool and repairing assets like gates and bunkers or playing medic and reviving teammates. Dust 514 seems to have taken this even further by weaving in a stronger emphasis on strategy and on the social fabric of the game - offering an incredible amount of depth for those that want it, while hopefully still retaining the "jump in an play" aspects for the more casual gamer.

The game may turn out to be crap, but I can't help being excited by the potential of the game. At least with the game being free, I'll have nothing to lose by looking forward to it and trying it out! So join me... let me be your Commander... and feel free to send me messages like this:



... rather than this:


... and please, much fewer of these:


See you all on the battlefield!