I just want to get this out there, I really did enjoy LostWinds quite a bit.
While I don't pay that much attention to my Wii, one thing I do like to keep track of is the virtual console releases. I am young enough to have missed quite a bit of gaming's history and virtual console is one of the easier ways to play games that I have missed out on. I hadn't really been tracking the progress of WiiWare, but the fact that it had replaced my retro releases got my attention.
Booting up my Wii none of the titles got my attention. The crystal chronicles thing was from square, but I had no idea how it played. So I looked to the internet for guidance, as I do with most mysteries in my life. I found two articles that did anything beyond describing the basic gameplay. One was from destructiod and described the game in glowing terms. The other was on Wii Fanboy and described the game as "diamond-encrusted Hummer". And apparently as a compliment.
So I downloaded the thing and got two playing. Then I was done. The game lasted me a little over two hours. I was a little bummed out. As for the actual gameplay it was solid, the same goes for the audio/visual department. The whole wind as jump gameplay was good, but it never really brought anything significant to the table. Towards the end the level design started to hit it's stride and I thought I was getting to the good stuff I had read about. And then it ended. I guess what I am trying to say is that it's a little short.
For ten dollars I expected a little more bang for my buck. I got all but one of the little totems, explored all of the environments more than I liked to. The worst part was that it felt a little shallow in comparison to a few 2D sidescrollers that you can download for free. The stuff that Nifflas has put out, and continues to put out, is better. For Free. I am excited for what they do in the sequel. I am just saying, not diamond encrusted greatness.

Recently for some reason my windows installation decided to fail. I tired to find the source of the problem for about half an before just deciding to reinstall windows, my preferences weren't that big of a deal anyways. So after booting to the disc and going through that little song and dance, the installation failed. I have never been a windows fan, and have deep down inside always wanted to try out a little Linux.So I downloaded the install disc for the newest Ubuntu on my laptop and installed away. I didn't have any problems with the installation and all the files from windows seemed to have survived the transition.
I was raised on macs and the only reason I even bothered to own a windows box was because of my deep and terrible addiction to videogames. My addiction knows no boundaries and the very thought of a world of videogames unavailable, just an operating system away, drove me nuts.
Installing Linux I was a little wary as to whether my games would run. I knew there was a way to run things, but was it going to be more trouble than it was worth? I can say for sure that, for most people, it has been quite a bit of trouble. Getting games to works involves using a program called "Wine" and getting everything set up involves at least a little use of the terminal, which I know for a lot of people is a no go. However this was part of the appeal for me, and the process for getting things running never turned frustrating.

I am pretty pleased with how things have turned out. Is there anybody else out there running linux?

First off, I just want to say that this is something I have been thinking about for a while, but I have done no research on it. It is merely my thoughts, and I may say things that aren't exactly correct, facts may be off, whatever. Also this is only one step above incoherent rambling, be advised.

I feel that the Medium, as a whole, is essentially in it's adolescence. This is both in actual time it has existed, and its sophistication. I am going to be comparing it largely with books and movies, as they are the other two mediums that can really tell a story. Stories can also be told vocally, but I am going to ignore this.

My personal idea of how mature a medium is, is how well it can convey an idea. Books for instance can convey any idea that can be conveyed with words. Movies and videogames should in theory be one step ahead of books because in addition to being able to use words for expression, they have pictures, and motion. This however doesn't seem to be the case more often than not. They both tend to tell simpler stories and convey less ideas overall than books. For movies the biggest limitation is clear: length. While a book can span thousands of pages and millions of words, if it needed to, a movie tends to be limited to a few hours at most. Videogames seem to get the best of both worlds with the visual aspects of a movie, and the length and the ability to start and stop of a book. Still most videogames have simpler concepts and plots than most movies.

When I think back to the oldest movies that spoke to me on a level beyond that of an average movie, that conveyed complex ideas, that made me think about something I had never thought about before, I think of movies from the 1970's. With this in mind, lets look at videogames. The creation of a videogame is in general more complex than the creation of a movie. It took movies 70 years to get to the point where they were more than just entertainment (in my opinion of course, perhaps you feel that "Citizen Kane" is still the peak of cinema, each to his own). If videogames mature at the same rate as movies, than we still have a while until we start seeing videogames on a level above mindless entertainment.

One of the reasons that videogames have yet to deal with all the ideas and stories that can be told beyond what is now being said is the player base. It's simply too small. If a game was released today that dealt with death, the nature of love, and maybe the purpose of life, who would play it? How could the publishers try and sell it. It would seem natural that much of the gameplay would be conversations, and who wants a game where you just talk? Even if the game were so advanced that you were able to literally talk to it, question it, would you want to play it? I'm guessing the majority of gamers would answer no. This is because most people who play videogames play them to escape such things, not explore them.

The goal first and foremost of games made today is to be fun. A game could be interesting, engrossing, moving, and totally notfun, and it would do terribly. Not only would it sell terribly, but the current system and industry of reviews would be unable to give it anything other than bad reviews. This is one of the many flaws in the current reviewing system available to us.

Before you tell me that I am wrong, that games have dealt with issues and ideas, that the medium is capable of conveying any idea in it's current state, let me explain something. There have been a few games created that manage to do some of these things, but they all have done it by placing on top of a game that has already existed. Until a game is allowed to explore ideas without having to placate players with unrelated gameplay, I don't feel the medium is particularly mature. And with "game" the first thing associated with the medium, we have a long way to go.

If you read the Bargain Bin Laden articles, or even the headlines, then you've heard of Freedom Fighters. I rented the game when it first came out for two reasons, first it was made by Io interactive, and second because it had come out for the gamecube back when I only owned a gamecube. I proceeded to beat it totally. The squad gameplay actually was fun and made sense. It was like playing a movie or a comic book. "Red Dawn" comes to mind, but it was way better than that movie.

Fast forward to about 10 minutes ago. I'm reading the 1up preview of Kane and Lynch and they mention it plays a lot like Freedom Fighters. I was exciting even before reading this (Io interactive can do no wrong in my mind) and I start getting really excited. Then I see the picture. This picture.



Is it just me, or does that image scream "Heat"? If you've never seen it, "Heat" is a movie, that is super awesome in every way. Stop what you're doing and go watch it. At the very least put it on your Netflix queue or your to-do list or something. So, am I alone in thinking that his might be the best game ever?