We at GameBump have a policy about not mentioning the name of a certain troll/bully lawyer unless we absolutely have to. This not yet being one of those instances, I'd just like to say that -- whoever he is -- he faces trial today against the Florida Bar who seeks to disbar him for his legal antics as of the last few years.

His attempts to delay the trial this weekend failed, and as much as he decries the discrimination against him for his "Christian activism," because Christians are the most repressed minority in America, the trial will go on as schedule. The court has apparently even cleared out its whole schedule this week just for this.

Will MFA be disbarred? Without any legal leg to stand on, will he still try to poach grieving families and convince them to blame video games? Will he still be invited to appear on Fox News every time someone under the age of 25 commits any act of violence? Who knows. I can't see him going gently into that good night just because of a massive embarrassment like this.

Check out GamePolitics for full coverage.

Dear Mr. Gates:

On Monday, April 16, at 3:10 pm, I was a guest, as I often have been in the past, on the Fox News Channel. News anchor Bill Hemmer asked me to profile the Virginia Tech rampage killer. I did so, noting that until that day the worst school massacre in world history was at the hands of Robert Steinhaeuser, who literally trained on the Microsoft on-line, hyper-violent shooter game, Counterstrike. I mentioned your company’s game by name. I explained that the rehearsal for such a massacre is key to being able to pull it off, as efficiently as Cho, whose name we didn’t even know at the time. Cho and Steinhaeuser were able to do what they did the first time because it was not the first time. This is why the military uses this same virtual reality simulation to train soldiers to want to kill and how to kill calmly, as the witnesses of Cho said he did. The letter ends thusly:

Mr. Gates, pull the plug on Counterstrike today, or do we need more dead to convince you? "Virginia Tech" was the 9-11 of school shootings, and it appears Microsoft is in the middle of it, in more ways than one.

Regards, Jack Thompson

First of all, notice how the first thing he mentions is how he was on TV; if you think this guy gets off on attention, just wait. The interesting thing about Jack's letter is that its entire point is to blame Microsoft chairman Bill Gates for Counter-Strike and how much death it's caused. This is interesting because, of course, Microsoft has nothing to do with Counter-Strike! The game is developed by Valve and published by Vivendi. The Washington Post writer forgot to fact check before publishing, and Jack Thompson composed this entire ooh-look-at-me letter to Microsoft without first making sure that Microsoft actually has any kind of connection to the game in question.

Soon after this, Thompson sent another open letter to the Virginia Police Department Chief. You can read the whole letter here, but here are the important bits:

Dear Chief Flinchum:

I went on the Fox News Channel Monday and even identified the game, Counterstrike, obsessively played by Cho, which was also used by Robert Steinhaeuser to author what is now the second worst school shooting in world history in Erfurt, Germany, which he also concluded by killing himself. These are not coincidences; these are patterns.

Once again, he starts off by mentioning that he was on Fox News. He also says that Cho "obsessively played" Counter-Strike, which is completely unfounded.

Thompson also implores the Virginia Police Chief, "If your Department really wants to get to the bottom of this, you need to talk to me now."
While the Virginia Police Department tries to pick up the pieces of this tragedy, deal with potential copy-cat killers, and try to investigate Cho's threat and motives, Jack Thompson wants to waste their time with his God-like delusions of authority. He wants to show them the truth, that it all boils down to "murder simulators." Jack Thompson should be ashamed of himself.

Never mind that, according to a search warrant (pdf) filed by the Virginia State Police, Cho Seung-Hui had no video games in his school dorm. Never mind also that when MSNBC's Chris Matthews interviewed one of Cho's suite-mates, he said that he never once saw Cho playing any video games.

Jack Thompson doesn't mind, because he still maintains that Cho trained on Counter-Strike. He even went on Hardball with Chris Matthews and tried to spout his theories again. Matthews wasn't having any of it, as you can see in this video from Kotaku.

MATTHEWS: How does the game prepare or drill him in the execution of 32 people?

THOMPSON: It drills you and gives you scenarios on how to kill them. It gets you to kill with your heart rate lower…

MATTHEWS: I know it is a theory. And it is a theory in this case. When was the most recent testimony, and when is it applied to, that he was involved with “Counter-Strike,” the video game, that Cho was?

THOMPSON: Cho? His high school friends. And, typically, when…

MATTHEWS: OK. Well, he is a fourth-year student at Virginia Tech...

As I said before, in the wake of a tragedy like this we are all looking for answers. We want to know how a person could do something so horrendous, we want to have some kind of rationalization for an irrational act. This is a natural reaction and is part of coping. I doubt we'll ever know what exactly was going on inside Cho's mind in the time before the shootings, and honestly I don't think we ever should.

But what Jack Thompson is doing isn't helping anybody. He doesn't want to explain Cho's motivations, he just wants to rationalize his own personal vendetta against the gaming industry. Thirty-two people have died senselessly, and instead of helping the afflicted or promoting counseling for depressed teenagers, Thompson just wants to spew his hatred.

Any time anybody under the age of thirty does anything violent, Thompson is on TV ready to blame the games. What has he ever accomplished, though? In my tenure as a games journalist I've seen Thompson call all gamers pot-heads, threaten to sue Wikipedia, sue the Florida bar, prey upon the families of countless family members of violence victims to increase his exposure, offer $10,000 to charity and then refuse to pay, and claim that the Beltway Sniper trained on Halo just for starters, but this is by far the worst.

If there was any evidence to support the fact that the Virginia Tech shooter played Counter-Strike, or even played any video game, I could accept Thompson's crusading as a mis-interpretation of facts. But, for the lack of such evidence, Thompson just pretends that there is evidence. Just to clarify, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that Cho Seung-Hai has played any video games in the last 5 years, but Jack Thompson maintains that that Counter-Strike is the cause.

Jack Thompson is delusional. He is an immature, hallow, self-centered little man who will leave no corpse unexploited to further his cause. America has experienced the worst shooting in history. This is a time for encouragement, for empowerment, and for reflection. This is definitely not a time for hatred, but hatred is all Thompson is capable of. He has an unrelenting, unmitigated hatred for video games and all people who play them and he is willing to exploit even a national tragedy to spread his hateful message.

There is no way to argue that video games had anything to do with this shooting. But, just for the sake of prosperity, could they?

To be perfectly honest, in my lifetime of playing video games I have probably killed over a billion imaginary people, robots, monsters, vampires, and zombies. I can recognize most widely-produced pistols, rifles, assault rifles, and machine guns by sight now, thanks primarily to their use in video games. I know military and counter-terrorism movement strategies, techniques, and equipment; again, mostly because of video games. As far as I know, however, I haven't killed any real people. I've never committed a felony, I've never threatened anybody with violence, and in the few situations when I've been around real weapons I've behaved as responsibly as I could imagine would be possible. Most of my friends are in the same situation.

The connecting fibers between school shooters is not that they play video games, it's that they play video games and shoot people. A person who plays video games and then goes on a shooting rampage can no more blame the games for the rampage than he could the brand of toothpaste he used that morning.

If video games did not exist, those who crave violence would simply find it elsewhere. It's important to remember that violence is not a recent phenomenon, while video games are. People have been killing each other since the dawn of man, not because they learned how to in books or cave paintings, but because there is something wrong with them.

I too would love to find a single thing to blame the violence at Virginia Tech on. If there was a single thing we could point out as the cause and lock up, ban, or outlaw, I'd love it. If somebody could suitably convince me that banning video games on a global scale would prevent any more violence of the scale of what we saw on Monday, I would gladly throw all my games into the trash. Anybody can see that it would be impossible to come to such a conclusion, however. There will always be crazy people in this world. There will also always be old people who don't understand the media of the young. Cho Seung-Hui was no more driven to murder by video games than he was by rap music, rock and roll, or baggy pants.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow has been shipped to retailers today,  courtesy of Bethesda Softworks.

Legend will bring players into the role of Jack sparrow himself, as they begin to embark on his now-famous career leading up to the events of the first film. With voice talent provided by Johnny Depp himself, this immersive, atmospheric adventure game will use swordplay, puzzle-solving and environmental challenges to let players live the story of the planet's favorite scabrous dog.

Look for it on a store shelf near you!]]> Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:50:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_peter_jacksons_king_kong_ps2 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_peter_jacksons_king_kong_ps2 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_peter_jacksons_king_kong_ps2# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by John Godfrey.

Video games based on movie franchises. Yeah, I know, nobody really wants to hear about them because unfortunately, the majority of games based on movies are cheap cash-ins designed to pocket even more money for the movie studio based on whatever blockbuster is getting a lot of buzz from the gaming demographic. However, things are changing, as movie directors are realizing more and more that the interactive medium can be used to further the experience from the films and be more involving, immersive and expressive as technology continues to evolve. They’re just beginning to realize that this is no longer the Pac-Man, Pong and Space Invader era. Peter Jackson had a big hand in the Peter Jackson’s King Kong game, making sure that his vision was adhered to the entire way, but does it make for a good game?

Director Carl Denham has happened across a secret map, to a place never believed to be in existence - a place that time has forgotten. What better place to shoot a movie, right? The game kicks off with a few explanatory scenes - actual footage from the 2005 Peter Jackson movie - of Carl discussing this; finding the leading lady; boarding the ship; and then crashing at Skull Island. The story is established in mere minutes and then you take the reigns controlling Jack Driscoll, the writer behind Denham’s film. You trek across Skull Island with a team comprised of Denham, the leading lady Ann Darrow, and Hayes and Jimmy, at first finding shooting locales and filming footage, until it’s discovered that a variety of dinosaurs, huge creepy-crawlies like bats, millipedes, crabs and scorpions also inhabit the island. There’s also an ancient tribe that’s not too happy about your surprise visit and a giant gorilla named... Kong. The game then becomes about gathering any crew you’ve become seperated from and leaving the island alive.

It’s only a matter of minutes into the game when you’re thrown into a situation of having to protect yourself from creatures and making sure the rest of your team is also alright, a gameplay mechanic that you’ll see carried across for the rest of the game. When the action starts you’re introduced to the games superbly simplistic control scheme. It takes a second to learn and it’s easy to use. A quick run-down is: L2 aims weapon, R3 zooms weapon, R2 does a double act of the action button and firing the weapon, R1 reloads your weapon and X lets you talk to other characters and take their weapon. It’s that simple, and it works like a charm. You can only carry one weapon at a time (after all, this is Skull Island, not San Andreas where you can find a gun shop and liquor store on every corner), ammo is rare on the island and whatever you find is courtesy of care packages dropped by the pilot in your team circling the island. You can carry a spear, which there are plenty of on the island thanks to the native tribe that inhabits it, or a bone which can also be thrown like a spear, at the same time as you carry a firearm, though the spear must be dropped before you can use the firearm again.

If this was just your traditional first-person shooter, the way the weapons system works in King Kong probably wouldn’t fly in it, but because of the scenarios created in the game, the weapon system is incredibly successful. You have to always think about conserving your ammo because you don’t know when you’ll find another weapon crate; when fighting a handful of millipedes you may instinctively use the spears surrounding you against them because you don’t know if there may be a raptor or T-Rex around the corner that you’d need a firearm for more than a giant bug. Of course, when the fast moving dinosaurs enter the scene you usually run out of ammo quick and the game becomes purely about survival and using the environment to your advantage, weaving around stone columns that the dinosaurs can’t fit through or hiding in an ancient stone building while you think of a way to distract the dinosaurs. This could mean killing another nearby creature to get the attention of the predators, so that they’ll be too busy eating it while you leave, or in a situation where a gate needs to be opened, you could divert attention to yourself by shooting at the dinosaurs and running through columns so that their attention is on you while your team opens the gate.

Besides the shooting element, the game also relies on the use of physical puzzles. The puzzles all focus on the fact that you need to go through gates at certain parts of the game to progress. To open the gate you usually need two people to crank the gate open. Sometimes a peg is missing and you must search the area for it. Sometimes when you find the peg it’s behind brush which you cannot pass through and must set a fire, but the nearest fire may have been a little ways back, behind obstacles like spiders and water. It then becomes your initiative to somehow get that peg into the post and open the gate to proceed. It sounds like an extremely simple premise, which it is, but every time it happens there’s a new spin on it and new variables which always make it interesting. 

Of course, the other component to the game besides the first-person shooting segments with Jack is the third-person element featuring King Kong himself. Kong’s segments find you swinging across the jungle on tree limbs, running on vine-covered walls, and fighting whatever beast wants to take Ann away from you. It plays part like a platformer and part like a wrestling game once you start fighting the other creatures on the island hand to hand. The fights can be particularly exciting to watch, especially when Kong enters rage mode by pounding his chest - the colors become desaturated and the lighting blown out as Kong delivers lethal slow-mo blow after slow-mo blow. 

While all this action is taking place you may be surprised that there is absolutely NO HUD. That’s correct, no heads up display, no little meter that tells you whether you’re almost dead or out of ammo; instead there are visual and audio cues that more than do the trick. As for ammo, every time Jack reloads he’ll say something along the lines of "It’s okay, I’ve got enough magazines,” “One magazine after this,” or “I’m dry,” so you always know what your weapon status is just by hitting reload. I would say this method works even better than an HUD, because with a HUD, even if it’s for a mere half a second you have to look elsewhere on-screen than the action to see what your status is during the heat of the moment, the moment where it matters for you to know how much ammo you have is the moment in the game that it’s hardest for you to check it. As for health status, when you’re critical you’ll hear your heart beat faster and see the screen go red, and that’s when you know you have to get out of danger or die in one more hit. If you manage to get away, and take a few moments to collect yourself so the screen is no longer red, you’ll be recovered from the incident and ready to move on.

Video and audio effects are used well throughout the game. First off, the game is letterboxed on 4:3 televisions and that adds so much to the movie feeling, the way the picture is composed in a widescreen format is instantly more compelling than one with a simple 4:3 ratio (if you don’t like letterbox you can turn this off in the options, as well as be able to get a weapons HUD). Whenever Jack is scared you can hear his breathing become faster and more erratic, this in turn makes you feel a bit more scared about what may be just ahead of you. Whenever a huge beast like a T-Rex roars in front of you, the camera will shake and the screen will blur to further enhance the frightful experience. The graphics in the game in general are simply gorgeous, the first few levels especially. I was wondering how the team managed to get all of these textures to work with the PS2’s limited memory, as well as great character and environmental models, with random rock formations and foliage everywhere. The lighting is also fantastic - both the fire effects and natural lighting are very realistic. The music in the game is very cinematic and fitting with such a game, and the sound effects are top notch; the sounds of all the creatures are harrowing and can give you a jump now and then. The cast comes back to voice their characters, so that movie authenticity is added there as well. 

Though King Kong is a great game, it is notoriously short, maybe clocking in around six hours. The shortness is probably due to the game’s other problem in that it is very linear. Though this is not instantly recognizable through playing some parts, because it is a dense jungle in most of the game and you’re simply following whatever path is clear for you, you realize later on you’ve pretty much been on a straight path the whole time. What’s even worse is that the Kong segments might as well have been on rails. When Kong goes through the jungle, swinging on trees and running on walls covered with vines, you simply hold forward as the direction to run or swing and press square to jump or speed up. Apparently, it’s impossible to jump too early or late during these sequences, so you don’t even need to worry about timing or accuracy. I just found myself holding forward and continuously tapping the square button like a Track and Field game through all of Kong’s “jungle chase” sequences. When it comes to fighting, the Kong segment becomes more interesting, as you have to fight off many small creatures at once or face off against big foes like the T-Rex; this portion plays a lot like a simplified wrestling game and can be quite dramatic to watch but repetitive to play, consisting of only button-mashing.

I really wasn’t expecting this much from a movie license, but King Kong obviously had a lot of work go into it to make it something more than just a movie cash-in. Though it is very linear and very short, it is excellent at creating a rich visual, audio and emotional experience in an extremely cinematic manner. Fans of the upcoming movie should definitely pick this one up as it does both the movie and the video game format justice, but casual gamers ought to give it a rental first, because you’ll probably be able to beat it before you have to return it and make your decision based on that.

Simplistic controls and premise, but the situations make the game tense and fun.

Really beautiful textures, models and lighting effects, has a cinematic flare.

Excellent cinematic score, edge of your seat sound effects, star voice talent.

You always want to see what lies ahead on the Island, but your voyage ends up short.

Like a movie once is enough for a few months. You can go back and unlock things.

]]> Mon, 05 Dec 2005 11:23:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/ubisoft_announces_ds_titles http://www.gamebump.com/go/ubisoft_announces_ds_titles http://www.gamebump.com/go/ubisoft_announces_ds_titles# Ubisoft has announced more titles they will be bringing to the Nintendo DS, they include Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, King Kong, Bomberman and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.

Star Wars and Splinter Cell are expected to release this spring followed by Bomberman this summer and King Kong around Christmas 2005. Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft said, "We are proud to offer one of the most diverse line-ups of any major editor. Racing, platform, stealth, or action - there is truly something for all tastes."

This follows Ubisoft's previous release of Rayman DS, Sprung and Asphault: Urban GT.

Stay tuned for more as we get closer to these Ubisoft releases.

On the third and final day of E3, Gaming Horizon finally got a chance to check out a much anticipated title from Ubisoft: Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and we were very impressed with it, to say the least.

After waiting in line for about twenty minutes outside a giant compound made to look like something straight out of the upcoming film, we were ushered into a small theatre inside. The presentation began with a behind-the-scenes look at the game featuring interviews with Peter Jackson, the director of the new Kong film, and Michel Ansel, producer for the King Kong game, as well as the critically acclaimed title Beyond Good and Evil.

After the short behind-the-scenes featurette, representatives from Ubisoft treated the audience to a look at the gameplay elements of King Kong by playing through a few parts of some levels from the PS2 version of the title.

The game looked simply amazing. Despite the fact that the game is still a “work in progress”, the visuals were astounding. The jungle environment was modeled beautifully and the character animations were smooth and believable. Small details, like the fog rolling throughout parts of the game, looked great and added an ambience to the jungle. Even in an incomplete version, the graphics were some of the best we have ever seen on a current-generation systems.

Reminiscent of the ability to play as both Alan Grant and a Velociraptor in Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis, one of the more interesting gameplay features in King Kong is the ability to play as both Jack Driscoll, the hero in the film, as well as Kong himself. The game differs from Jurassic Park however in the fact that it appeared from the demo as though you couldn’t play the whole game through as just one of the characters. It seemed as though at various points in the game, the narrative would change from Jack’s story to Kong’s, and you would play as the other character for that part of the game, much like the way you play as both Master Chief and the covenant Arbitor in Halo 2. As well, your camera perspective changes, and with it your gameplay, depending on which character you are in the game, as Jack Driscoll’s character has a first-person view and Kong has a third-person camera.

The demo began in first-person, with Jack awaking tied up as a sacrifice to Kong, looking out at Ann Darrow tied up as well. There was no FMV sequence as Kong approached from the jungle; the player was able to control Jack as he watched Kong carry Ann back into the jungle with him.

Following this sequence, two of Jack’s comrades (one convincingly modeled after actor Jack Black) untied Driscoll, and three went off running into the jungle after Ann. As Jack and his comrades started running, flaming spears began to land in front of him, thrown by an unseen source. The fire on the spears looked excellent, and an interesting addition to the gameplay was the player’s ability to pick up the spears that had landed in the ground, and launch them back from where they had come.

This interactivity with the environment extended to the next part of the demo, in which Jack and his friends battled a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a giant centipede looking creature. Random branches and pieces of brush lying across the area could be picked up and used by Jack to defend himself against the creatures.

The giant T-Rex chasing Jack was wonderfully modeled and animated, and when he roared, a motion blur filled the screen, reminiscent of the look of GTA San Andreas when you are speeding in a car, and gave a visual representation of the power of his cry.

The next part of the demo featured Jack and pals on a raft going down a river in the middle of the jungle. This time Jack was equipped with a gun, however two T-Rexes and a Pterodactyl were now chasing him.

As the T-Rexes chased Jack, they knocked over everything in their way, sometimes causing large branches and parts of trees to come crashing into the water right in front of Jack’s eyes. When something fell into the water, it would splash onto the raft and give the feeling that the environment was really interacting with the player. As well, as you passed by a waterfall, a mist would arise in front of the raft, drawing you in to the environment.

The final part of the demo began with what looked like a cut-scene, as Kong jumped out from the jungle to fight the two T-Rexes that had been pursuing him in the previous scene. It was only after a moment or two that it became obvious that the perspective of the game had changed and that now the player was controlling Kong. Whether this had been the case the entire time or there had indeed been a small cut-scene to segway between Jack and Kong’s narratives was unclear from the demo, but either way, the action never slowed down, and the switch between perspectives was seamless.

Playing as Kong, the interactivity between the player and environment was increased ten-fold, as Kong was able to interact with and destroy any object in the environment that was standing in his way in his search for Ann Darrow, who had escaped from him in the previous scene. The graphics still looked amazing in the new perspective as the camera pulled back a bit to be able to fit Kong on screen, and the gameplay still looked to play just as smoothly in the third-person perspective.

With an extensive demonstration of the gameplay and graphics of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Ubisoft gave us more than enough to be thoroughly excited for this title. The gameplay looked smooth and exciting, and the graphics were nothing short of astounding, especially for a game that is a “work in progress”. We are expecting that this is going to be a solid game when it ships this Holiday Season 2005 for PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Xbox 360, PSP, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance.

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