I spent part of the evening chatting with a fellow classmate about tonight’s launch of Modern Warfare 2. His wife is the GM of a local GameStop, so he had his pulse on all things MW2. She’d arranged a pre-launch tournament complete with big screens and a local band in the parking lot. I’m getting too old to stay out all night waiting for a video game (much as I’d love to!) so I came home and hit up Google instead.

I came across an Ars article outlining a few… changes in the Modern Warfare universe, most of which don’t seem to be making the fan base very happy. The article specifically focuses on the PC version of MW2, but outlines a few doosies:

• Total number of players = 18 (weak sauce)
• No tweakability
• No booting the bad guys out of the room
• Game-selected hosting with a five second delay should the Chosen One drop out

I’m not sure what I think about this. Superficially it sounds like a lot of people griping for no good reason. The more I think about it though, the more I can relate. Even though I’ve been primarily a console player for the last decade, part of the appeal in PC gaming is the ability to do pretty much whatever the hell you want to with a game.

Ars pointed out that it’s only a matter of time before the hacker community comes up with some workarounds, but should they have to? I’m sure the game will be great but does the studio really need to take away features that their customers and fans want?

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Goodness gracious, where does the time go? I was catching up on my Joystiq reading when I came across this little gem: A new MechWarrior game is on the way. I hope beyond hope that whatever is in the development pipeline is better than the half-baked MechAssault attempt on the original Xbox platform. MechAssault = Weak Sauce. I hearken to the days of FASA Studio and the stellar PC based MechWarrior games they produced. In ultimate geek mode, I even participated in a MechWarrior LARP for as long as our meager group was banded together. New MechWarrior teaser video embedded after the break.

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We wouldn’t be Nimrods if a week went by without one of us breaking something. D Eye used his regularly scheduled Nimroidic Effort to break his Playstation 3 (PS3?) and ship it off to Texas. Little did he know that the planet-swallowing, fear mongering, galactically evil UPS would curtail his receiving experience.

As the story goes, UPS tried to deliver the package to D Eye’s house while he was at work. Before you ask, yes, D Eye has a job and yes, his income primarily pays for after hours “services rendered”. That, and fixing Playstations. Anyway, D Eye wasn’t there to sign for his ordinary brown box so UPS left behind their humongous business card which they so tactlessly adhere to one’s front door.

He called UPS to request a hold at his local UPS depot so he could run by there on his way home from work. UPS obliged, and the local customer center called him at 5:45 in the evening to inform him that his driver had returned for the day and that he could stop by before 7:00 to pick up his box.

He arrived at the depot precisely at 6:00, just in time to wait in a long ass line! When it’s finally his turn the person behind the counter informs him that his package isn’t there. D Eye calmly (calmly!) explained that this depot had called him, telling him to come get the box. The lady person reiterated that his package was not available because his driver hadn’t yet returned.

He and I spent the next forty-five minutes in the car talking all kinds of dirty smack and mumbo jumbo about everything we dislike in the world, pressing time right up to UPS’ 7:00 closing time. Again, D Eye was informed that his box wasn’t available, but that he’d be allowed to wait a little longer despite expired office hours.

Around 7:15 a young lady from the back office moseyed to the front to enquire of this box that was sitting right behind the office door leading out into the unloading docks. Lo and be-effing hold, it was D Eye’s magical Sony shipment! The witch person behind the counter was quick to reassure the both of us that she “knows her job” and that it must’ve just been dropped off.

Apparently this UPS Customer Center has some interoffice politicking going on because the lady from the back office was swift to slap down the counter person’s claims. She whooped out a piece of paper saying “No, see? The driver was in at 5:45. Says so right here. This box came off his truck at 5:46.”

So the lessons learned this day are:

1) Never trust a UPS person to ask for help from another office that’s less than 10 feet away.

2) Sony uses superior grade cardboard coffins to that of their competitors.

3) Take a picnic lunch when visiting UPS.

4) Never trust D Eye to pick up stuff. It was his bad karma that almost set the place on fire.

Skeptics and fans agree that Sony has whiffed more than a few times with the PS3.  This 2008, however, closed with a significant boost to the console’s profitability.  A small part of this has been a very successful model of micro-transactions.  Another has been a resurgence of interest in franchises that were mostly overlooked the first go around, when the user base was significantly smaller.   Games like ‘Drake’s Fortune’ might have faded into obscurity, if not for the release of a trophy system on the PS3.

A larger part is the latest little(big?) sensation, featuring a burlap sack as a character.  LittleBigPlanet is officially taking Pole position for Sony, and proving itself to be a system seller.  Reports that retailers were running out of copies before Christmas, echoed across the globe, and ‘the net’. Sony Computer Entertainment president Kai Hirai boasted LBP sales of 1.3 million units since the game’s false start in late October.  Over 300,000 user-created LBP levels lend credibility to the new platformer, and the launch of MediaMolecule’s take on Episodic Content, The “Metal Gear” Level Pack has players and critics salivating for more.

Designed from the ground up to reinitialized the fan base and rethink what is possible using LBP’s ‘Create ‘engine.  Inspired by, and liscensed from, Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Saga, the MGS pack is the first of three such packs confirmed for release within the next year.  MediaMolecule’s Alex Evans has confirmed that they have plenty of franchises lining up to go ‘versus’ LittleBigPlanet.  So, for the forseeable future, it seems that the PS3 finally has something going for it besides ‘that blue-ray thing’.

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My, how I’d love to own a PSP. Castlevania Chronicles is a collection of three fantastic old-style Castlevania games, available now: Rondo of Blood, a 3D remake of Rondo of Blood, and Symphony of the Night. This title was previously released in 2001 for the original Playstation. At that time, Rondo had never been released in the United States despite being the prequel Symphony. To anyone reading who owns a PSP: buy this game trio. It’s $10 on Playstation Store. For those reading who don’t do the “Sony” thing or who never experienced the older Castlevania titles, keep your eyes peeled. If these games (particularly Symphony) cross your path, pick them up. They’re well worth your time. Now where did I put that PS1 disk..?

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Just before the new year Sony decided it high time to roll out a “public beta” version of their long-in-wait service, Playstation Home. Having not played with Home for any extensive amount of time I’m hardly qualified to speak of its virtues, much less its purpose. However, Rastafunk Abe and I caught an article on arstechnica recently detailing just how popular “add-on” items are despite limited assortment and bugs common with any beta software.

Sony is driving the micro-transaction to new levels and their program (game?) hasn’t even officially started. Take for instance the creation of “groups”… I can best liken this to a clanship of sorts, though limited to 31 users. In beta form, groups cost $5.00. In their final stage (I was warned upon trying to create a group…) they will incur monthly service fees to maintain. I dared to believe that anyone would pay for a half-hearted “Friend’s List” so I ran a search. All groups… I can’t tell you how many popped up, but it was at least several hundred.

Another pricing matter which took me by surprise was the total disparity between the various goods for sale. Fancy, designer coffee tables selling for $1 while a t-shirt sells for $2.50. I can only surmise the reason being that a coffee table is there for one’s personal enjoyment while a t-shirt is a walking advertisement visible to the masses.

The last thing that caught my attention was a comment posted in regards to the original ars story. One commenter asked the question “Who cares? What does it matter if people buy into this? Let them waste their money…” Which brings me to this post. I care because Sony is taking the lead in setting a precedent that’s quite dangerous to the consumer. I perceive the problem to be larger than a company simply charging real-world cash for petty online crap; rather, I believe that Sony, and other game studios, will dumb down their initial offerings without lowering the price of entry.

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