http://games.thedave.net/ News for games. en-us Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:28:37 e Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:28:37 e 30 http://games.thedave.net/news/4342/Review___Left_4_Dead__Delivers_Definitive_Team_Zombie_War games It's you and your buddies against a massive onslaught of the undead' Which of your comrades in arms will you turn your back on, coward? Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:58:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/4342/Review___Left_4_Dead__Delivers_Definitive_Team_Zombie_War http://games.thedave.net/news/4343/Alt_Text_Video__Top_5_Most_Guilt_Inducing_Videogames games Playing any game is, by definition, a waste of valuable time that otherwise could be spent saving the world (or cleaning the kitchen)' But some games waste time a little bit better than others' Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:52:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/4343/Alt_Text_Video__Top_5_Most_Guilt_Inducing_Videogames http://games.thedave.net/news/2442/4_Things_to_Keep_in_Mind_While_Killing_Zombies_in__Left_4_Dead_ games This isn't your typical survivor horror videogame' These tips will keep you the blood bath going just a little bit longer' Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:13:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2442/4_Things_to_Keep_in_Mind_While_Killing_Zombies_in__Left_4_Dead_ http://games.thedave.net/news/2443/Review___Wrath_of_the_Lich_King__Adds_Finest__Warcraft__Content_Yet games Solid out of the box, the latest World of Warcraft expansion adds hours of glitch-free new content to the expansive fantasy world' Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:18:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2443/Review___Wrath_of_the_Lich_King__Adds_Finest__Warcraft__Content_Yet http://games.thedave.net/news/2444/Bloody_PETA_Parody_Skewers__Cooking_Mama__Game games A gory browser game takes aim at the popular series on the eve of the release of Cooking Mama: World Kitchen for Wii' Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:00:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2444/Bloody_PETA_Parody_Skewers__Cooking_Mama__Game http://games.thedave.net/news/2445/Games_Without_Frontiers__Victory_in_Vomit__mdash__The_Sickening_Secret_of__Mirror_s_Edge_ games Mirror's Edge Screenshot courtesy Electronic Arts By now you have probably heard the warning: Playing Mirror's Edge will make you vomit' The hot new videogame is a sort of 'first-person runner': You're a courier who travels across the rooftops of a locked-down, police-state city, delivering black-market messages by using acrobatic feats of parkour' You're constantly leaping over gaps 40 stories in the air, tightrope-walking along suspended pipes and vaulting up walls like a ninja' It doesn't do justice to call the action in Mirror's Edge 'intense': It quivers, like a hummingbird, and your first-person view is constantly whipsawing like a paranoid cameraman hunting for the best shot' Only 15 minutes into the game, my mouth began overproducing saliva, and I had to pause the action for a few seconds to avoid carsickness' I would feel like a total lamer, but apparently even the Penny Arcade guys wrestled with nausea' Still, it made me wonder: What makes Mirror's Edge so different? Sure, the action is swoopy and vertiginous, just as it is in many other games' But I've played plenty of first-person shooters that required me to navigate ridiculous, zero-G boss lairs that were suspended over improbable heights, and none of those ever made me feel nauseated' Why does this game get its hooks into my brain so effectively? Why does it feel so much more visceral? I think it's because Mirror's Edge is the first game to hack your proprioception' That's a fancy word for your body's sense of its own physicality ? its 'map' of itself' Proprioception is how you know where your various body parts are ? and what they're doing ? even when you're not looking at them' It's why you can pass a baseball from one hand to another behind your back; it's how you can climb stairs without looking down at your feet' Most first-person shooters do not create any sense of proprioception' You may be looking out the eyes of your character, but you don't have a good sense of the dimensions of the rest of your virtual body ? the size and stride of your legs, the radius of your arms' At most, you can see your arms carrying your rifle out in front of you' But otherwise, the designers treat your body as if it were just a big, refrigerator-size box' Worse, in most games your virtual body cannot do even the most simple things that it ought to be able to do' Every time I'm playing a first-person shooter, I'll inevitably try to jump or walk up onto an object ? a ledge, a curb, a railing along a wall ? and discover that I can't' The designers decided they didn't need to worry about those subtle physics, and the resulting limitation completely breaks the illusion that I'm in that virtual body' Mirror's Edge, in contrast, does something very subtle, but very radical' It lets you see other parts of your body in motion' When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you' When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot ? precisely as they do when you're vaulting over a hurdle in real life' And when you tuck down into a somersault, you're looking at your thighs as the world spins around you' What's more, the Mirror's Edge world feels tactile and graspable' Because the game is designed around the concept of parkour, or moving through obstacles, most times when you see something that looks like you could jump on it, you can' The gameplay requires it' The upshot is that these small, subtle visual cues have one big and potent side effect: They trigger your sense of proprioception' It's why you feel so much more 'inside' the avatar here than in any other first-person game' And it explains, I think, why Mirror's Edge is so curiously likely to produce motion sickness' The game is not merely graphically realistic; it's neurologically realistic' Indeed, the sense of physicality is so vivid that, for me anyway, the most exhilarating part of the game wasn't the obvious stuff, like leaping from rooftop to rooftop' No, I mostly got a blast from the mere act of running around' I've never played a game that conveyed so beautifully the athletically kinetic joys of sprinting ? of jetting down alleyways, racing along rooftops and taking corners like an Olympian' It's an interesting lesson of game physics: When you feel like you're truly inside your character, speed suddenly means something' The opposite is also true' Without a sense of physicality, speed feels lifeless' In Halo, you're playing as the cyborgically enhanced Master Chief, so your top speed at an open run is ? according to Halo nerd canon ? 30 mph or something' But it doesn't feel very fast at all, because your avatar doesn't appear to be actually exerting himself' When you run, your body bobs along not much differently from how it moves when you're walking, except the scenery goes by more quickly' The combat in Mirror's Edge felt more believable than doing battle in Halo, too' When the cops were shooting bullets at me and I was frantically racing to escape, I kept thinking: 'Damn, I'm going so fast I might just escape!' In most first-person games, I usually wonder the opposite: How are these guys not hitting me? So the brilliant physicality of Mirror's Edge isn't just a boon to the game's physics' It also makes the narrative and drama more plausible' So yes, by all means, I'll keep on playing Mirror's Edge, even though it occasionally makes me want to vomit' In the past, I've often wanted to retch because a game is so bad ? but I've never felt sick because it was so good' - - - Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines' Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection' Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:00:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2445/Games_Without_Frontiers__Victory_in_Vomit__mdash__The_Sickening_Secret_of__Mirror_s_Edge_ http://games.thedave.net/news/2446/Top_4_Reasons_You_Need__World_of_Warcraft__Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_ games From a wicked new player class to massive new landmasses, World of Warcraft just got dramatically bigger ? and better' Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:34:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2446/Top_4_Reasons_You_Need__World_of_Warcraft__Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_ http://games.thedave.net/news/2447/_Warcraft__Fans_Line_Up_for__Lich_King__Launch games GameStop's Lunar Street Festival in San Francisco draws 3,500 gamers for the midnight launch of the highly anticipated MMO expansion pack' Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:30:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2447/_Warcraft__Fans_Line_Up_for__Lich_King__Launch http://games.thedave.net/news/2448/How_to_Fix_a_Broken__em_Rock_Band__em__Pedal games You're ruling the drum kit, your bros are belting out five-star performances and you've got the virtual crowd on its feet' But in that moment of passion, you pound the kick pedal a little too hard, breaking it in half' Our $5 fix will keep the party going' Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:15:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2448/How_to_Fix_a_Broken__em_Rock_Band__em__Pedal http://games.thedave.net/news/2449/Review___Mirror_s_Edge___the_First_Person_Parkour_Game_You_Must_Play games Fresh, energetic and only occasionally nausea-inducing, EA's new obstacle-jumping title puts you squarely in the action like no previous videogame' Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:00:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2449/Review___Mirror_s_Edge___the_First_Person_Parkour_Game_You_Must_Play http://games.thedave.net/news/2450/Creative__cite_Banjo_Kazooie__cite__Is_Pretty__But_Boring games Review of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for Xbox 360, a game in which you can create an infinite variety of wacky vehicles, then use them to play a game that isn't that much fun' Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:45:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2450/Creative__cite_Banjo_Kazooie__cite__Is_Pretty__But_Boring http://games.thedave.net/news/2451/Trogdor_Will_Burninate_in_Final__Strong_Bad__Game games The internet's favorite one-armed dragon is set to star in the climactic installment of the episodic videogame series based on Homestar Runner' Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:29:00 e http://games.thedave.net/news/2451/Trogdor_Will_Burninate_in_Final__Strong_Bad__Game