World of Warcraft (WOW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004 from the Warcraft universe of real time strategy (rts) games. WOW puts players in a massive virtual land where they create characters and advance them by participating in quests and objectives. While adventuring through the WOW universe players earn armor, weapons and items that provide additional enhancements to characters.  The ability to communicate and join with others also enhances gameplay as some quests require more than one player to achieve them; though the gains from these adventures are generally greater and more rewarding.  The game was released in 2004 and has since spawned several expansions the first being: The Burning Crusade (2007), followed by Wrath of the Lich King (2008), then Cataclysm (2010) and finally Mists of Panderia (2012).  Each expansion offers a host of new features included character classes, quests, items, monsters and lands to discover.  World of Warcraft requires a subscription fee to play and has a player base of over 10 million users

A family of three monsters go on a hike. Suddenly they notice that they’re lost. They start fussing and only end up more confused. The family is left shattered by paranoia. In the woods the three monsters encounter many a strangeness. They enter the Land of the Fireflies; they meet the naively helpful Antler Ancestor; the friendly Rainbow Spirit of True Sorrow; and the ambivalent Bat King. The monsters try to overcome their negative craze and start making their way home. They gather up pink hearts to strengthen their family bond. Sometimes they can’t help but cast bitter green hearts of spite. Will the monsters survive as a family, or will they break up into a set of three lonely individuals?

League of Legends is a free to play team based Massive Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game that is heavily influenced by the War Craft 3 Mod Defense of the Ancients.  Teams of 5v5 or 3v3 battle each other while pushing towards specific objectives such as destroying turrets or capturing points of interest. 

An expansion on the rough-riding racing action of Dirt 3's gymkhana competition, Dirt Showdown offers three modes focused on the wilder aspects of off-road driving: Race, Showdown and Demolition!

Matter is an online Tangram game in which you must arrange the pieces to match a certain shape. This is easier said than done though. The shapes you must match contain just the outline and it is up to you to figure out how to create that shape given the pieces at hand.

Some of the shapes are easy to see while others take some time, and others will have you scratching your head. In moments like those you can turn cheats which let you click on the shape and see the corresponding piece that goes there.

Matter generates seven boards for you to play and scores you on each. Each board has a base score that you get from completing it, as well as a bonus score. For every second the spent putting the pieces together, the bonus score ticks down until it reaches zero.

This is the only timed aspect to the game, and the game is still playable without it. Most of the boards took me longer than the bonus score to complete them. For me, the game is not about a score, it’s about the challenge of figuring out the boards. When played in such a manner, the game is accessible to everyone. Matter is playable with the mouse. Simply drag the pieces into each other, and Matter has a lenient with the placement. Nothing has to be exact and Matter does not penalize you if a piece is slightly off. Matter is an enjoyable puzzle game that is accessible to all. 

The Machine Age has begun in the immersive and atmospheric squad-based shooter Binary Domain. Regain control of a futuristic Tokyo from an emerging robotic threat in the year 2080. The story starts when Dan Marshall and his squad are sent to bring the robotic community under control as they begin to infiltrate society and slowly take over undetected, leaving humans redundant in their wake. Fighting through the derelict lower levels of the city, players control an international peace-keeping squad that soon starts to question their surroundings and the choices they make. Are the robots becoming more human, or are humans becoming more like machines?

Hello friends, and enemies too I guess.  You’ve found your way to another dosage of Total Access, brought to you by your host, Travis Taft.

I may be the only person in a wheelchair in my house, but I’m not the only one who plays videogames.  My brother and sister both enjoy their own brands of gaming, and I have even gotten my parents to get in on an occasional round of Wii bowling.  Neither of my siblings plays quite as much as I do, and the games that they do play are not usually ones that I would be found playing myself, but they both have a relation to electronic entertainment appropriate for themselves. 

In particular, my brother plays his Halo and his Call of Duty, but most of his game time goes to the FIFA soccer series, which just won AbleGamers 2012 Mainstream Accessible Game of the Year.  My brother has played soccer for most of his life and he is quite talented at the sport.  Appropriately enough he is in the top division of FIFA 2012 as well.  Playing the sport is a great way to stay in shape and the game is a great way to relax, so he can always be working on his game at any time whether he is feeling more active or more passive, and improving his skill in one can simultaneously help him with the other.  On the field he can work on refining himself as a unit, and in FIFA he can work on how a team should coordinate as whole. 

This synergy between the games is great, and is only improving as the physics get refined with improved hardware and software.  But the part that really blows my mind in these latest installments isn’t even about the match being played – it’s everything else.  The fans chanting in the bleachers, the players waving as they walk on to the field, and above all, the continuous back-and-forth commentary that actually sounds like decent analysis (at least to my untrained ear - but I know next to nothing about deep soccer analysis).  The resulting effect is realistic enough for me to routinely hear people ask my brother who’s playing because they think it is an actual match. 

It shocks me just how well some of these games are imitating reality these days.  Sure, we have Batman: Arkham City and Skyrim working to bring as much reality as possible to a fantasy setting, but it is only when we can compare the digital reenactment to something we can actually experience that it becomes clear just how well we have become at creating reflections of reality from the ground up.  It is easy to sound crazy for talking about a future where our simulations are a very real part of our lives, but if we continue to erase the line between simulations and reality then I don’t see why we shouldn’t.  Imagine having an opportunity to experience things that a disability might have made impossible otherwise.  Sure it sounds like science fiction nonsense, but remember – space ships and submarines were just science fiction at one point too.

2012 turned out to be a very encouraging year for game accessibility. We saw big-name studios adopting the game accessibility guidelines of Includification -- and by doing so -- creating some of the most disability-friendly video games to date.

Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and Dishonored followed these guidelines as closely as they could. And although the natures of the genres they belong to are inherently riddled with accessibility problems, we hope they continue on their plight to become fully accessible.

We also saw a few games slipping backwards. Froza Horizons fell backwards in accessibility removing many of the most crucial accessibility features that won its predecessor the AbleGamers Accessible Game of the Year Award just two years ago.

This year we have a carefully chosen selection of six titles that was presented to the disabled gaming community and the expert staff of AbleGamers.com. After one of the closest races in the award history of AbleGamers, one game has stood out above and beyond the rest.

FIFA 13 from Electronic Arts has won the 2012 AbleGamers Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year.

FIFA 13 is the first high-end mainstream sports game to allow users to control the entire game with only a mouse. For disabled gamers with Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, and even one-handed gamers, the ability to play such a sophisticated sports game with simple controls that can be handled by a trackball or mouse mean gamers who may not have been able to enjoy iconic sporting activities like baseball, football, hockey or soccer can now take part in the fun.

Features including remappable keys, customizable color options, high contrast and intuitive menus, visual cues for all audio input and high socializing replayability tipped the scales in favor of the English football game.

But the number one reason FIFA 13 came out on top is the inclusion of perhaps the most powerful feature seen in any game to date. By manipulating the game’s AI and PC settings, disabled gamers can tailor the game to their needs. The entire game can be slowed down. The computer can be set to perform slower and with less efficiency. Player controlled avatars can utilize additional speed, accuracy and shot power.

For those with cognitive disorders and motor impairments, the ability to set the game to an acceptable rate of speed enables those with even the most severe of disabilities.

AbleGamers congratulates Electronic Arts on their fourth and most impressive win. On behalf of the more than 33 million disabled gamers, we thank EA for accepting the game accessibility guidelines of Includification with open arms and utilizing the disability community’s suggestions on how to improve game accessibility.

Honorable Mentions

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Although there can only be one winner of the AbleGamers Mainstream Accessible Game of the Year Award, we felt unequivocally compelled to mention two other titles that stood out among the rest.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown from 2K Games narrowly lost out on the title, and in fact beat FIFA 13’s score by 0.1 in our accessibility review database. Scoring an almost unheard of perfect 10, XCOM features fully remappable keys, the ability to play with the keyboard or only the mouse, impeccable subtitles and colorblind awareness.

AbleGamers would like to congratulate 2K Games on creating one of the most accessible games of the year. Had this year’s winner not included so many world firsts for game accessibility, XCOM: Enemy Unknown would have won.

We hope 2K Games continues to improve accessibility and heed the call of our practical game accessibility guidelines.

Colour Bind

Indie games have never even reached the final round of selection for the coveted AbleGamers award. Yet this year Colour Bind captivated the admiration of our expert review staff. Indie developer, Finn Morgan, went above and beyond to include game accessibility in a game specifically designed to make colors difficult. Finn spoke with AbleGamers, researched game accessibility and most importantly helped prove reaching out to young developers leads them towards good game accessibility practices and game design early on in their careers.

AbleGamers congratulates Mr. Morgan on a wonderfully well-designed game with simplistic controls built with thoughts towards disabled gamers. We look forward to seeing his work in the future, and just maybe winning an award of his own.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown will place you in control of a secret paramilitary organization called XCOM. As the XCOM commander, you will defend against a terrifying global alien invasion by managing resources, advancing technologies, and overseeing combat strategies and individual unit tactics.

The original X-COM is widely regarded as one of the best games ever made and has now been re-imagined by the strategy experts at Firaxis Games. XCOM: Enemy Unknown will expand on that legacy with an entirely new invasion story, enemies and technologies to fight aliens and defend Earth. You will control the fate of the human race through researching alien technologies, creating and managing a fully operational base, planning combat missions and controlling soldier movement in battle.

FIFA 2013 captures all the drama and unpredictability of real-world football. This year, the game creates a true battle for possession across the entire pitch, and delivers freedom and creativity in attack. Driven by five game-changing innovations that revolutionize artificial intelligence, dribbling, ball control and physical play, FIFA 2013 represents the largest and deepest feature set in the history of the franchise.

It’s that time of the year again. There is snow on the ground, happiness in our hearts and games on our brains. This year the AbleGamers Foundation is making the nomination process for the AbleGamers Mainstream Accessible Game of the Year Award public.

Our staff is hard at work debating the pros and cons of each game. While we continue the selection process, we wanted to give you a look at our list of this year's most accessible games.

The Nominees Are...

FIFA 13

Sports games are notoriously inaccessible. With numerous buttons, complicated controls and little PC support, sports titles are often left completely out of Accessible Game of the Year consideration. However, FIFA 13 changes all of that with PC support, zero hearing issues that affect the gameplay, colorblind considerations and the ability to play assistive technology, controllers, standard keyboards or with only the mouse.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

A turn-based strategy game with accessibility options galore. Gamers with disabilities that are precluded from normal means of controlling games can play XCOM: Enemy Unknown with the greatest of ease. Assistive technology works, no colorblind issues, mouse friendly and fully subtitled gameplay are just some of the points this game brings to the table.

Forza Horizons

Perhaps one of the more controversial choices, Forza Horizons took a few steps backwards in accessibility according to our reviewers from its counterpart that won Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year a while back. But field tests discovered by our founder demonstrated gamers using assistive technology such as the Adroit actually had an easier time playing the game due to the street racing style of inner-city tracks.

Colour Bind

Our first Indie game nomination in the history of our Accessible Game of the Year Award. Colour Bind has become the textbook example of an indie developer going out of his way to make a game accessible. By investigating colorblind options and seeking advice on accessibility, the developer proves the outreach of game accessibility is working. This is a simple yet fun game that tries to tackle the accessibility for all gamers, even the ones that might be left out due to the nature of the game itself.

Guild Wars 2

The biggest title to make our list this year, Guild wars 2 is fully accessible to the hearing-impaired, visually impaired and mostly accessible to the mobility impaired. Although we have received reports that Arena Net purposefully removed click-to-move and intentionally keeps the sensitivity of the camera low to add “dramatic flair,” we have not found conclusive evidence and the developers have declined to comment. We are giving them the benefit of the doubt and hoping that no game company would deny a segment of the disabled gaming community over “creative choices.”

Journey

One of the most breathtakingly beautiful games published in some time, Journey is an accessible title that keeps focus on remaining accessible and targeting an underserved adventure market. This game is for gamers that wish to enjoy the journey (no pun intended) as opposed to racing to the endgame as quick as possible.

Not So Accessible

For every game that is accessible, there is another game that had potential and fell short. The following are some of the most disappointing titles of the year.

Diablo 3

As one of the most disappointing games this year, in more ways than one, Diablo 3 has been critically panned for taking too much time to reproduce a Diablo 2 reboot. Despite all that, we actually gave D3 a pretty decent score, but it leaves out enough of the disabled community to disqualify this title as accessible game. If you can't use a mouse, you can't play D3 and for that alone it was an extreme disappointment. We hope when Diablo 4 is released in 2025 Blizzard enables keyboarding and assistive technology for those who need it. This game underscores the importance of reading an entire accessibility review and not just looking at the score.

Black Ops 2

As far as shooting games go, the newest Call of Duty iteration is actually quite accessible. With mouse sensitivity, joystick sensitivity, remapability on the PC and multiple configurations on the Xbox, BLOPs 2 did a lot of things right. Also including an actual setting labeled “colorblind.” But first person shooters still have a way to go before they can be considered accessible. Mandatory mouse and keyboard input, up to 9 different key combinations needed at any one time, fast reaction times needed and often very difficult visual areas make this game inaccessible to a large segment of the disabled gaming community.

Assassins Creed 3

Universally heralded the one most anticipated games of the year, AC3 has some of the most complex and difficult controls of any game this year. While games like Dishonored and Skyrim have proven that you can use simple controls in an open world environment, AC3 made things difficult when nearly impossible for those with motor impairments, visual disorders and cognitive concerns. Even some of our more able-bodied reviewers criticized Assassins Creed 3 for its complex and old-school controls.

Borderlands 2

Two of our reviewers saw this game as a demo on the road this year and personally looked over the game at PAX-E before we got a chance to do our official review. Either way, fast reaction times, complex scenarios and difficult controls excluded Borderlands 2 from this year's list. Although the different class combinations and skill sets will be a positive for some, for others this game is completely unplayable.

{socialbuttons}Ever wanted to fly to the moon? Into Space 2 gives you the option to pick your parts and shoot for the stars.

On your journey heavenward you can steer your ship and pick up upgrades along the way such as cash, gas, and repairs. Along the way, however, planes and helicopters fly across the screen, forcing you to dodge them or lose health. This steering encompasses the majority of the game, but not all of it.

With the cash awarded for reaching checkpoints in flight you can buy new parts for you makeshift spaceship. A healthy mix of parts gives plenty of opportunities to create a spaceship suited to your needs. This comes in handy during missions, in which you must accomplish a certain task, if you choose to take on the mission. You’ll want to take them on frequently though because they reward you with cash and new parts to buy.

If you crave something more substantial than buying new parts, you can upgrade your rocket’s overall performance by upgrading fuel, boosters, or a host of other goodies. These improvements sport numerous levels and are present in each flight, despite the equipment you use.

The game can be played one handed using only the keyboard during flight sessions and the mouse to navigate the menus. During flight a good level of precision is required to navigate through the booster gates, as well as avoiding obstacles. The game is playable without sound and uses symbols along with colors to denote things.

The speed gauge has two bars, one green and one red, although they are both different sizes making it easy to distinguish between them. Additionally, the game uses red and green to denote increased stats or decreased stats when purchasing different parts, although there are symbols as well including plus and minus signs. Additionally, Into Space 2 might be a little too fast paced for some gamers as well.

So what are you waiting for? Build your spaceship, but remember; to reach the moon, aim for the stars.

An independently-produced title, Unfinished Swan is a surreal maze game set in an entirely blank world. You find yourself chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space, and you can throw paint to splatter the surroundings and reveal the world around you. Discover the land through further innovative new game mechanics to uncover your surroundings. Each level will bring new twists, challenges, and puzzles until you eventually come face-to-face with the eccentric King that built this realm.

{socialbuttons}Hello friends and welcome back for another weekly dose of Total Access. I’m Travis Taft, and I’m here to offer access to my ponderings to anyone who may be inclined to read them. Life has been pleasantly busy as per usual over here on this end of the keyboard. Time restrictions can be an issue for any hobby, but with gaming it can present a particular issue that not all hobbies run into.

When a movie buff or musician takes time out to enjoy their pastime of choice, there are some rather obvious dosages available, such as one movie or album or concert. Games are something of a different beast though. Many games do have distinct beginnings, middles, and ends, at which point the game can be considered “beaten”. Yes, there may be some extra bonus content to explore and it is always possible to play the game again, but in general you know when the game is over. Often these games are designed to require multiple sittings to finish, and are somewhat like novels in that regard, except you don’t have to worry about getting stuck and not knowing where to go next in a novel.

Things get particularly interesting when you consider games like Super Smash Brothers or Call of Duty. These types of games are most well known for their multiplayer modes, and usually aren’t meant to be “beaten”. Instead, these games are meant to be perfected – refined over countless sessions but always leaving room to improve. These games are more like sports in that regard. Rather than tell a story they provide an experience, and people can be better or worse at them. Someone might beat a Final Fantasy game faster or with more bonus content completed, but you wouldn’t necessarily say that they are better at the game like you would for Halo.

In my experience, this makes gaming one of the harder pastimes to try to keep up with. Personally, I like having a one or two session games to fall back on but I always make time for the new Metroid or Legend of Zelda title. The former are fun because you come to know all of the elements very well and coming to understand the subtle interplay between them, but I love the latter for the grand sense of adventure as you explore the vast digital universe as the game’s hero. In my eyes, nothing tops off great gameplay like a captivating story. Engaging gameplay is obviously the key to any game, but a sincere motivation adds flavor in a way that raw mechanics will never match.

As a result, whatever spare gaming time I have tends to get focused into whatever major single player game I’m currently working on with a few rounds of whatever multiplayer game I’m into at the moment mixed in when I can. That will be the way of things until I beat that single player game and move on to a new one.
This is another place where things get odd. Normally, a game with a lot of content available is something to be valued. If I’m paying (at least) $50 for a game then I should go for the one I can play for 100 hours over the one I can beat in 20, right? But is it possible for a game to be too long?

I bought my copy of Skyrim months ago. I have two characters, with something around 70 hours clocked between them. I have also yet to reach level 40 on either one. I know that I have at least half of the content still completely untouched – quite possibly closer to three quarters of it. I love the game. It is beautiful, deep, and supports a huge diversity of play styles. But what good is all that if I never have time to see but a fraction of it? Yes, it will allow for multiple play-throughs for those people who DO have the ability to devote more time to the game, which I fully support. But should I even invest in the full game when I still have a dozen other games left similarly unfinished? If Skyrim was the only game I was playing then it would be great to only ever hit the tip of the proverbial iceberg. And there are indeed games that fully intend to be the only game you have time for – such as the infamous World of Warcraft with regular updates and occasional expansion packs to add even more diversity to the available gameplay. And WoW is one of the most successful titles in gaming, so clearly the strategy has at least some merit.

I don’t have a specific moral to leave you with this week. The time-consuming nature of the medium can certainly be unfortunate when several different titles are all competing for your attention, but I would rather be given the tough choice than no choice at all. But be mindful of how you spend your time, because you will always wish you had more.

Load your guns, start your engines...THE CLASSIC IS BACK! Brought to you from Remedy, renowned developers of Max Payne and Alan Wake, Remedy's Death Rally classic top down racer is back, stronger and more vicious than ever. This is no Sunday Drive. This is Death Rally, so be prepared to be blown away, literally

The Destroy All Color HD features hi-res art for iPad and iPad Retina. This is a universal version of the game that will also work on your iPhone and iPod Touch.

Only you can help K'Roma the Alien get home! 

She's had a rough day, getting hit with an asteroid, crashing to a weird planet and hitting a rainbow on the way down. Now her ship is clogged with color and only you can help her destroy it all. 

The flagship title of Golden Ruby Games, Destroy All Color lets you use your environment to play the game. Use your camera to capture colors in your environment and use them to destroy colored blocks in 100 unique and challenging levels. 

--------------- 

- Use your camera to capture unique colors in your environment.

- Test your skill in 5 different worlds with 100 challenging levels. 

- Aim for crazy power ups like the Laser or Bomb to help you out. 

- Avoid Poison blocks like the Mirror or Hyper Block that will try and trip you up. 

- See how far you can make it in Endless Mode, where the blocks only stop when you can't keep up. 

{socialbuttons}Hello friends!  Unless you stumbled in here by accident, you know what time it is – time for this week’s Total Access.  The one place in that cosmic Venn-diagram where the circles of video games, disability, and philosophy all line up.  I personally consider that to be unfortunate, as I believe that the three complement each other quite well.  On the one hand we have gaming, mankind’s most advanced and limit-free form of expression.  On the other hand we have countless individuals, each carrying a unique burden that can impede any or every part of their lives.  The heights of humanity’s creative potential and the depths of the cruel reality of the human experience.  What better topics for philosophy than these?

Before I go any further, I want to make a distinct clarification in the preceding paragraph.  I know that using terminology like “cruel” and “burden” can make it sound like I’m being pessimistic about life with a disability.  But consider the burden of a heavy backpack on a week-long camping trip through the mountains, or the cruelty of fate on any bad roll of the dice whether it costs a person $20 in Monopoly money or $2,000 in Vegas.  The question of evil and suffering is a deep and complex one that virtually every philosopher runs into in some form or another very quickly after delving in to the metaphysical depths, and this is not the place for me to just blurt out my thoughts on Life, The Universe, and Everything.  This is a gaming site, after all.   Most of us play these games to actively avoid these kinds of thoughts. 

But where would our games be without them?  Why bother practicing a game if success is not only easy, but inevitable?  What kind of game gives zero incentive to prefer one outcome over another?  It isn’t enjoyable to play if there is no sense of success and that success only feels valuable if we feel we have earned it.  Games are fun because they give us challenges that we can complete at our discretion with no serious repercussions for failure.  The harder the challenge the greater the enjoyment of overcoming it, but sometimes there are challenges that you simply aren’t ready to handle.  If I were thrown into a 1v1 Starcraft arena with LiquidTLO/TheLittleOne/whateverhandleheisonatthetime, I’d be destroyed thoroughly. 

Even that could be fun, though.  It would be awesome to meet him if it were some sort of LAN based event, and it’d still be pretty cool just to somehow have the ladder’s matchmaking algorithm glitch and pair the Grand Master player with my Diamond self.  Yes I’d be steamrolled, but it would be an honor to be flattened by such a finely constructed steamroller.  That rare anomaly aside, though, if most of my play experience isn’t set to a difficulty I can handle I’ll probably leave it to play something else.

But imagine if there were a game you couldn’t win and you weren’t able to stop playing.  Getting beaten by TLO may be fun once, but it will have lost some of the charm by the 10^th loss in a row.  Let alone the 500^th.  Or the 10,000^th.  But once again he gets a concave on your army while also making drops on all your expansions and you call good game, and the screen just faded in on a new map with your one main and six workers.  You may pull off some cool maneuvers at times, but it is a game designed to be unwinnable.  What then?

Some might simply stop playing.  You can’t win, but you are the only one who can make yourself fight to survive.  So there’s nothing to stop you from sitting back and watching TLO swarm your base and workers that haven’t mined a single mineral over and over again.  And why not?  I’m not here to pass judgments on how people would react in my bizarre thought experiments.  But I know that I wouldn’t be one of those people.  I might not be able to beat the guy who does this for a living (especially with my hands being what they are), but I do love the game and appreciate the well-crafted game play.  Even if I’m destined to lose, I can still make each game a unique and interesting event.

Then there are folks who would be determined to play each round as perfectly as possible, no matter how many times they lost.  They would strive to eliminate any inefficient or un-optimized click, as if they might somehow cheat fate and do the impossible.  Again, I’m in no more of a position to call this method wrong than I am with the group that would do nothing.  But once more I can say that I wouldn’t be one of that type.  Those people tend to forget that it is meant to be a game, and end up working to exploit the game mechanics rather than work with them, which makes them no fun at all to play with. 

So I guess I’d find myself floating somewhere in the middle – actively engaged with my game play but making sure to enjoy each match for its own sake regardless of the outcome.  In fact I’d venture we are all shades of grey on this matter, even if some of us are inclined more toward one end than another.  But I find the mental images of those extremes useful when considering my own course of action in this game of life.

For some closing thoughts, I’m going to share something from an engineer friend of mine – an alternate translation of the three laws of thermodynamics, along with a bonus zero^th law:

0^th: You must play the game.
1^st: You can't win.
2^nd: You can't break even.
3^rd: You can't quit the game.

{socialbuttons}Nintendo has launched the Wii U in North America and the UK with added HD gameplay, improved online network, functionality to play when no TV is around, and a neat social network called Mii-verse. With all the improvements and steps forward in the Wii U’s technology there are opportunities to have one of the most accessible consoles yet.

The Wii U can sync with the original Wii Remote, Nunchuk, Classic Controller, Wii Fit Board, as well as the new Pro Controller and GamePad controller. The GamePad controller is a very universal controller that features a camera, motion sensors, TV remote function and a built in microphone. 

All of the built in features of the GamePad could add extra accessibility to The Wii U on top of the controls already available from the original Wii.  Console games like Skyrim, Odama, Seaman and Hey You Pikachu have used voice commands over the past 10 years, but also require extra peripherals not included with a console. And since the Wii GamePad has a built in microphone it would be possible to have a game made only of voice commands game without requiring extra peripherals.

With the original Wii there were some complaints of forcing the user to use motion controls, which is problematic for gamers with mobility issues.

In fact, an injury kept me from playing Donkey Kong Country Returns -- a game that simply could have had an option to play with the motion controls or just by using the classic controller.

But the Wii U launch line up has brought a variety of games and ways to use the controls other than motion. Most system launches normally have a few great titles, some shovel-ware, and some games based on gimmicks the Wii U is no different.

Unfortunately, I have noticed a lack of controller options in quite a few games. I believe a lot of this is from game devs rushing to get a product out in the launch window before the holidays.

Popular Games

Nintendo Land is the most played Wii U game as it came with the deluxe Wii U console. The game features 12 mini-games based off of Nintendo brands that have made Nintendo what it is today.

One downfall of this game is the fact that most games must be played with more than 2 players. Of the games that can be played single player, all of them require some sort of spinning the game pad, physical movement to look around, or swiping the screen with the stylus or a combination of the above, plus blowing on the controllers built in mic.

Nintendo Land is a great experience, however, with most mini games forcing players to use one remote over another it can be severely limiting without options. From a disability standpoint and from an “I just bought a Pro Controller yet I can’t use it for any of the games even though some just require 2 buttons” kind of way, forcing controls on gamers equals fail.

In Nintendo Land there are no color blind or captioning options, but I have noticed games such as Mario Chase -- a game where Minis dressed as Toad run around a map trying to tackle a player dressed as Mario -- did a good job at having audio queues as well as visual and marking the zones also by a recognizable symbol.

When Mario Chase is played in 2 player mode Monita will yell out where Mario is by saying what colored zone (blue, green, yellow, red). Each Zone also has a matching symbol that will be displayed on screen to give clues where Mario is located. If you are Deaf or colorblind you will still be able to get the clue.

Nintendo Land is a great game to play with friends, but the majority of the game requires movement that could cause some problems for those with mobility issues.

Other Games

New Super Mario Brothers U is my favorite game from the launch line up with new modes, 4 player co-op and FINALLY seeing Mario in HD, it makes me enjoy it just as much as I did when I got my first NES as a child.

While New Super Mario U may be my favorite game series and launch title, but again there are a few issues that could impact those with mobility issues. New Super Mario Bros U allows the player to play without shaking the remotes ONLY if you use the GamePad, however, you will still be required to turn the remote to balance out platforms.

The controller option that allows for less motion-control is limited to only one player as New Super Mario U does not allow compatibility with the Pro Controller. New Super Mario Bros U won’t let you play co-op with the GamePad and Remotes as it forces you to play with the Wii remotes with less buttons and more shaking. Some levels require balancing the GamePad certain ways to move platforms, which could be impossible to beat with mobility issues.

Fallback

Nintendo has added a feature that if a player has died too many times a Super Guide Block will appear allowing Luigi to pop out and beat the level for you, which great for some tough levels that are tough to beat, but AWFUL as a fallback as the only way to beat a level.

There are more than enough buttons on the GamePad and Pro Controller to enable a simple “motion off”  option that maps the movement to buttons, which would have allowed zero shaking and turning of the controller.

For now, it seems Nintendo is still fascinated with this gimmick.

Nintendo has added a few new modes to New Super Mario U such as the challenge mode that allows players to perfect their speed runs, collect coins, and show off their skills. The other new option in this game is Boost Mode -- an option that allows a player (or friends) to place blocks on screen by tapping the GamePad with the stylus. These blocks help players by being able to jump on them to reach secrets and coins that would normally be difficult to do. While Boost Mode may not be the ideal co-op, fans of New Super Mario U will remember it as a good change of pace for the series, a lot of fun and perfect role for some disabled gamers.

Out of the titles I have gotten to play, the one game stood that out as providing the most options was Call of Duty Black Ops 2, which allows players to use the GamePad, Pro Controller, Classic Controller (with Wiimote), or Wii Remote and Nunchuck. Not only does this game have all the modes and multiplayer the other consoles do, it also offers customization to allow one player on the TV to play with the standard colors and an option to allow the second player to have colorblind assist on the GamePad.

Accessibility

The Wii U COULD be a HUGE step forward in accessibility or a SAD step backwards, depending on what developers are going to put into making the games. I hope in this generation we see less gimmick and more playing options. I hope developers keep in mind that some people cannot easily switch back and forth using the GamePad and the Television, as well as to come up with a way to play games using motion or buttons.

Time will tell what developers do with this console, but with the plethora of options we will either see some stand out titles in accessibility and others be forced into using motion controls.

Hopefully this time around game makers take note; the more ways you can play the game, the more players can play your game.

How You Can Help

If you are developing a game for the Wii U and would like some guidelines check out www.Includification.com. If you’re a gamer, send developers the link on Twitter, Facebook, email and if need be, call them.

We have a lot of big dreams at the AbleGamers Foundation. Lots of things that can help others and make a big impact on the world. But there's one particular idea that continually resurfaces as a vision of how we can help even more people than we do now. And not random people, but the ones who need it the most.

Mark and I have been discussing the idea of a roaming arcade for quite some time (years).

You see, the Accessibility Arcades ™ are always a big success. With partners like Microsoft and Indie Gala, we have been able to put on more arcades around the country in 2012 than any previous years. Yet, we still aren't reaching the very core of our audience.

Able-bodied gamers, those without severe disabilities, and those who are very determined despite their disability can attend the various conferences and Expos we visit every year.

But what about those people who can't leave their homes? What about those people who are in care facilities? How about our veterans returning from war who may be stuck in a VA hospital?

They can't come to us. So we need to go to THEM.

We want to take the Accessibility Arcade ™ on the road to hospitals and care facilities all around the country reaching the children, teens and adults who need us the most.

AbleGamers ToGo ™ will be the premier roaming laboratory outfitted to the nines with assistive technology and equipment from the top vendors found anywhere in the world.

We have the partners to put the technology in the accessible van and the support of the greatest community found anywhere to get the project going, but the one thing we're missing is the van itself.

Today, we launch the most massive campaign AbleGamers has ever seen.

But we need your help.

We will be tweeting the following message to @MBUSA (Mercedes-Benz):

Dear @MBUSA I would like you to support this @AbleGamers project to help disable gamers! http://goo.gl/57FBM PLZ RT!

Please go to our open letter request to Mercedes-Benz from the President and Founder of the AbleGamers Foundation.

Then click the button on the right and add your voice with a tweet.

We are asking everyone to use twitter, Facebook and every other social media outlet to get as many people tweeting that message so often that Mercedes-Benz simply can't ignore it. Ask your friends, family, relatives, fellow gamers, strangers on the street, and even your dog to take 5 seconds and click this link or copy/paste the message directly to Twitter.

Blog about Mark's letter. Write about it for your publication. Pass it around the office. Do whatever you can to spread the message and get this Twitter storm going.

If you want to do just a little bit more than a tweet, check out our million pixel virtual accessibility mural. For only $12, you can have your Twitter profile embedded and linked in a one-of-a-kind picture.

Together, we can make this dream come true.

Thank you and please keep tweeting,

Steve

The gaming community Fantastic Neighborhood has launched a raffle fundraiser to support the AbleGamers Foundation. Each $5 donation earns one raffle ticket entry. With over a dozen gaming prizes, everyone has a chance to win.

If the donation pot reaches $1,000 the grand prize becomes a Nintendo 3DS.

In addition to the regular donations, one Fantastic Neighborhood member has anonymously offered to match up to $1,000.

Help the AbleGamers Foundation by chipping in and winning some cool prizes.

Prizes (so far):

• One (1) Nintendo 3DS, if we reach our $1000 goal.
• Gears of War 3
• Saints Row The Third for XBOX 360
• Saints Row The Third for PC
• Double Fine “Adventure” Poster from Kickstarter Event
• Call of Duty Black Ops
• Spec Ops: The Line
• Risk 2210 AD (Board Game)
• 6 Copies of Fluxx (card game)
• Munchkin (card game)
• 20 or so Sonic the Hedgehog 4 codes for iOS
• Limited Edition Jet Set Radio Pin Set

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Hello friends.  I’m Travis Taft, back with some more Total Access action.  Black Friday has come and gone once again, and just like most years I didn’t even leave my house.  I did end up indulging in a Steam sale, but I personally don’t consider a few bucks off to be worth the risk of getting trampled. 

I do have to use the qualifier “most years” rather than “never” though, because last year I did indeed buy something on Black Friday, my only Black Friday purchase to date, and that something was my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  I have long been a fan of the Zelda series, since I consider the games to be a well-refined distillation of the raw elements of gaming.  The Hero fighting the Villain to save the Love Interest is about as quintessential as stories get, (as I discuss in more depth in the 5^th issue of Total Access: The Mindset), and The Legend of Zelda explores subtle depths of that dynamic quite thoroughly.

So after I braved the storm that was Black Friday ’11 for my copy of Skyward Sword I was most eager to return to my beloved Hyrule (even if it wasn’t known as such in this prequel installment).  I don’t want to get into the gameplay too much – there are plenty of reviews for the game already, we aim for something a bit different here at Total Access – but I will say that I was delighted by the whole experience.  Besides just being another worthy installment in the legendary series (legendary – haha, get it?), the game was also meant to be a tribute to the franchise and its 25 year anniversary. 

Some homages were simple, such as the return of some items that haven’t been seen for many games or the recurrence of side characters from previous installments.  There were ones meant to be obvious and some that only the most diehard fans would pick up on.  And there were references that were unavoidable during a play-through and there were some that could only be found through extensive exploration. 

In my humble opinion, the way that the game really celebrated the legacy of the series was not through call backs or inside jokes.  The thing about Skyward Sword that best captured the spirit of the series was the blend between established traditions and new innovations.  Beyond the individual references to older games, Skyward Sword also made excellent use of the things that unite the games by doing things like establishing the need to save Zelda or giving a reason for the iconic green tunic.  But while it clearly had deep roots in its Zelda heritage, it also did many things that had never been done in the series like upgradeable items and true motion controls.

But things can’t always just be split into two categories like that either.  It’s true that comments like “It’s a secret to everyone” were little more than call-backs to old games and the flying beetle item was totally new.  But my favorite parts of this game are the bits that blend the classic traditional elements with new styles.  A great example comes from the birds that are a central element to the story, known as “Loftwings”.  Obviously these giant avian steeds have never been featured in any of the previous games.  But there is a theory that Link’s Loftwing (which is unique for its crimson plumage) is the retroactive inspiration for the red bird symbol on Link’s traditional shield and the royal family’s crest.  (I say retroactive inspiration because as a prequel game any elements that they pull from older games can be said to have originated in this game.  Having the chronological order of real life and the game be different can cause for some interesting grammatical puzzles.)

The game also finds a good balance between old and new with the music and visual choices.  Skyward Sword’s soundtrack is highly praised (and for good reason), made up of classic tunes as well as new ones all presented in a beautifully orchestrated score (which Nintendo was kind enough to include on a separate CD).  The visuals were what really struck me though.  The Legend of Zelda series has spanned a considerable range of graphical styles.  The oldest games were pretty much just whatever could be managed.  A Link to the Past was a great example of the power of the Super Nintendo with a somewhat fantastical edge.  By contrast, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask both seemed to go for a look that was as realistic as the Nintendo 64 would allow.  The biggest jumps came in the two major installments between Majora’s Mask and Skyward Sword.  The former – The Wind Waker – abandoned any pretense of photorealism and embraced a stunning cell-shaded style that made the game look like an interactive cartoon.  The latter – Twilight Princess – was quite possibly the most realistic presentation of Link to date. 

Then came Skyward Sword.  This game has all the bright fluid colors of Wink Waker while simultaneously showing all the detail of Twilight Princess.  A big part of what allows the two different styles to coexist is the way the game transitions between the two.  Things that are farther away in the background gain more of an impressionist-painting look, while things that are more up close become clearer and sharper. 

Of course the game has plenty of people hating on it.  Every game will, no matter how high quality it is.  No, the game isn’t perfect, but it has a lot of strong points going for it, and I firmly believe that many of the people who dislike the game decided that they were displeased with it before they had played a full hour of it – just like I’m willing to admit that I decided I loved the game before completing an hour of it.  And frankly that’s how I see people dealing with a lot of life, whether they realize it or not.  Both sides may have legitimate points to make on their issues, but personally I’ll take being the type to look for something’s merits over scouring for its flaws any day.  It seems to make for a much happier life on the whole.

Set in 2069, Syndicate takes players into a dark, Machiavellian world run without government oversight with many syndicates vying for total dominance of their local market place. With no one to question their intentions or actions, three mega corporations – Eurocorp, Cayman Global, and Aspari – are at the forefront of this brutal war for control of the pivotal American market.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is an action title with a story based around the flood depicted in the Book of Enoch. You take control of Enoch, an ordinary man who was chosen by God to serve as a clerk in heaven. Enoch must now save humanity by journeying through the world in pursuit of fallen angels. As the story goes, the angels were tasked by God long ago to watch over the world below. Some grew to admire mankind and chose to commit the high crime of descending down to the surface. Angered by this, God considered covering the ground in a great flood. Enoch stepped in and convinced God to hold off on his punishment if he manages to track down the angels. Enoch will be supported on his journey by the angels, who were tasked by God to support him. One angel in particular, Lucifer, appears to have taken a liking to Enoch.

{socialbuttons}Earlier today, Mark Barlet had a chance to interview Paul Pivec creator of the Digital Me App project. With the help of Paul’s Apps, the AbleGamers Foundation will be able to help even more individuals with disabilities at Expos around the country (and even the world) next year.

Mark Barlet: Paul, you have been a longtime friend to the AbleGamers Foundation, why is the cause of how people with disabilities interact with technology important to you?

Paul Pivec: I was doing a research project about 10 years ago, which involved designing games for students with Cerebral Palsy. I spent quite some time with these kids, some of them communicated with me through the use of a head-wand and voice machine, and I found the interaction and just getting to know them extremely moving and very emotional. I never did design any games for them. The results of my research highlighted that they just wanted to play the same games as everyone else. They needed the accessibility features, which back then, none of the games had. They wanted mainstream games to be accessible to them as well as everyone else. The same goals that your organization has today. 

MB: I hear you have a new project in the works, what are you up to?

PP: I am still very passionate about using technology to help people, and being a software developer for many years, it was only natural that I still wanted to design games for something other than just entertainment. As you guys were addressing the issues of games for the physically disabled, my research moved in the direction of cognitive issues and how digital games fit in this area. For my master’s degree, I used Counter-Strike, a First Person Shooter, to demonstrate how immersive multiplayer games can accelerate cognitive learning. Then for my PhD thesis, I created a framework called recursive learning theory with enhanced game design. In simple terms, using a game-based framework, I can accelerate the improvement of your cognitive abilities 2.5 times over that of traditional methods. All based on scientific research and extensive trials. Hence, it follows that now I am done with all the academic stuff, I want to use this discovery where it will do the most good. That’s where the Digital Me project comes in.

MB: What is the end game with the project, what do you hope to accomplish?

PP: This technology could be used in several areas; to help kids with Autism, kids with ADHD, or even senior citizens with the onset of age, basically any area where people struggle with learning. However, because of the way it works, the design needs to be targeted to a specific audience. For the initial development, I have chosen children and teenagers with Cancer. Radiation and chemo therapy causes something known as late effects, and basically, the treatment that combats cancer also causes cognitive decline. These kids will struggle with cognitive abilities such as executive functioning and working memory skills. But with the Digital Me application and associated game framework, I can turn this around for them. These young people can use technology to boost their learning and do it in a fun way, and with no drugs.

MB: Is there a way that readers of AbleGamers.com can support this project, spread the word?

PP: As a society, we spend money in all the wrong areas. And as I am sure you know with your funding campaigns, it is not easy to change this trend. I have exhausted my own funds getting this far, but I need to finish what I started 10 years ago. We have created a crowd funding campaign in an attempt to make sure we get these apps developed and help kids now, not in the distant future. Many people believe and support what we are trying to accomplish, but getting the funds is always difficult. Crowd funding campaigns only work when they are promoted to a wide audience. We have a project website where people can donate (http://digitalme.piveclabs.com) and a Facebook page where you can spread the word, "Like" the project (http://www.facebook.com/DigitalMeProject), and help in whatever way you can. The project site details where the money will be spent, the timeline for development, the project supporters, and lots more. You can follow our progress from the development blog on the website, and follow us on Twitter (@DigitalMeApp). This is a worthwhile cause and I sincerely hope that others will believe in it too.

MB: What is next for you Paul?

PP: I am very passionate about making this succeed. If we don't get the funds, I will keep developing, but it will take a lot longer. Perhaps I can also get funding in other ways, I don't give up that easy and I will keep pushing.  Ideally, this project will happen as planned, and then I can create new designs for kids with Autism and the other learning disabilities I mention earlier.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?

{socialbuttons}Dope Wars originally released in 1984 as Drugwars. In the years since an open source version was released and the game has subsequently made its way online and onto all the major devices from Palm OS to iOS.

What is it about Dope Wars that’s so appealing? People have praised it for allowing them to live life as a drug dealer and for its economic simulation. Dope Wars tasks you with buying and selling drugs to make back money on a loan. In the Kongregate version you start off with a $5,500 debt, and must pay it off by the end of the month. Over the course of the month you travel from borough to borough in New York City buying low and selling high, or at least try to. The basic rules of economics come into play. Prices fluctuate each day, and are influenced by in game events that either increase or decrease the supply or demand.

This economic model is easy to learn and creates a hard game to play. Prices don’t fluctuate predictably that much unless there is an in game event, in which case the game is easy to win. The difficulty scale is a little off, and you either win with flying colors or fail miserably. Fights liven up the game, although they are too easy to win or flee from and do not occur as often as they should. Dope Wars is a fun economic simulation which is also accessible to everyone.

Dope Wars is playable only with the mouse and is played in menus. The game does not require any sound and does not denote anything with color, and if you find the text to small, just zoom in with the browser.

Dope Wars is the perfect game for a work break, as I have tested far too many times, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the life you never had.

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Hey y’all.  It’s me again, Travis Taft, back with this week’s Total Access.  It’s been a hell of a week for me on this side of the keyboard.  I’m sure this article will be pieced together one sentence at a time between matches of Starcraft II as I hone in on those last 10 wins to get my Queen of Blades icon and I can finally let myself play the beta for Heart of the Swarm in earnest.  Sure, I’ve played a few dozen matches since I got it, but with the ultimate 1v1 Zerg badge so close I’ve been focusing my time on Wings of Liberty to get the prestigious award before HotS comes out (which we finally know will be on March 12^th of next year). 

Sometimes I feel silly, rerunning old turf when I could be playing the exclusive beta of the new game.  Especially since I got in early when there was a smaller pool of players, which increased my odds of being matched with a celebrity player or caster.  Is it really so vital to have a four digit win count and a different icon in my little two inch square next to my user name?  When the beta came out, I had a bit over 100 wins left to go.  Obviously I made sure my name was in Blizzard’s lottery pool right away, but part of me wasn’t quite ready to get the new game.  As long as I didn’t have the option, going for my 1000th Zerg win was the only Starcraft goal available, so the decision was made for me. 

It was a bittersweet moment when I got my beta key.  I was thrilled to be part of a select club with limited access to a highly sought-after commodity.  But after I installed and started playing, a little voice bit away at me.  I was only about 75 wins away from freedom at that point, and each game I lost while learning the new units was a game I could have played well with units I was familiar with and getting closer to 1000.  Even when I did finally win in HotS I knew that the points were only temporary – one of the costs of playing a beta over a final game. 

Of course, I couldn’t just sit there and pound out 75 wins in Wings of Liberty either.  I’m not a progamer, getting paid to play the game.  I have more pressing matters to worry about.  Some days I can play as many as 15 matches, but others I don’t touch the game.  And I’m probably a touch shy of a 50% win rate.  So that leaves me at 20-25 wins per week as a generous estimate, or three weeks of my Starcraft sessions to meet my goal.  And that’s if I don’t decide to play another game for a week instead (lord knows how many other achievements I’m 90% of the way to in a half dozen different games).  But I knew that if I didn’t get that icon before HotS came out I never would, and if I didn’t work to finish as quickly as possible I may never finish at all. 

So I put in my play time here and there, and here I am two months later with just five games left  to win (five less than when I started this article) and running a 12 game losing streak.  And I’m playing more frequently now than I have in weeks.  For this is the power of the Achievement system.  Because it really is more than just the 1000 wins and an extra 30 points to my achievement total.  The list of my completed achievements says something about me as a player. 

I personally have the majority of the campaign achievements as well as the one for beating every level on Hard mode plus the award for beating five levels on Brutal.  This in combination with my hodgepodge of multiplayer awards (25 wins for solo Protoss here, 50 for team random there – and soon my coveted 1000 solo Zerg wins) gives a pretty decent snapshot of my experience with the game.  I played the campaign as best I could, then focused fully on the ladder once I hit my cap.  By contrast, some of my friends have everything on campaign but very little in multiplayer, some have lots in multiplayer but little in campaign, and some have very few achievements at all despite considerable hours clocked in the game because they mainly play the unawarded custom modes. 

These cues exist in real life too, they are just not as explicit as a list with a little explanation pop-up window and an icon next to each one.  You can’t see someone’s gamer score for life as they pass by on the street.  But things like the clothes you wear, what accessories you have if any, what you are doing and how you do it – they all give hints as to who you are.  Of course, sometimes the cues can be misleading – if you’re wearing uncharacteristically goofy clothes because it is laundry day or you have the icon for beating every level on brutal because you had a friend who is great at the game staying for a few weeks and she powered through it for you.  That is why these cues can only ever be general suggestions and not perfect indicators. 

As people on this site may be particularly aware of, though, sometimes these badges can carry negative implications instead of just positive ones.  People may see a wheelchair or crutches as a sign of weakness.  To this, I just reaffirm what I just said a moment ago – the badges are hints, not the whole story.  Am I weaker since my disability?  Well, under certain definitions of strength it’s hard not to say that I am.  And on a passing glance that might be what people notice first and they might make judgments from there.  But it’s only when you take in the whole picture of cues that you get a fuller picture.  The strong arms achieved through an active life in a chair.  There are scratches and stickers on the chair earned from adventures in it all over the country.  And the greatest achievement of all – good company with my friends and family.  When I see everything I have achieved life both before and since my injury, I most certainly consider my chair to be something to be proud of.  Because instead of seeing it as a sign of the weakness I have to deal with every hour of every day, I see it as a badge to commend me for having the strength to achieve despite any setback.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I only have three wins left…

Rock your core and dance your way to toned, sexy abs with Zumba Fitness Core, featuring 40 new songs and routines, more than 30 international dance styles from around the world and hot new choreography that's designed to sculpt stronger abs through an exhilarating full body workout.

Hitman: Absolution follows Agent 47, a cold-blooded assassin, who takes on his most dangerous contract to date. Betrayed by those he once trusted -- and now hunted by the police -- he suddenly finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy and must embark on a personal journey through a corrupt and twisted world. Boasting a cinematic story, distinctive art direction and highly original game design, Hitman: Absolution combines much-loved classic gameplay with features never seen before in the Hitman franchise.

{socialbuttons}Welcome back to Total Access. This is Travis Taft, your host, here to discuss my life as a gamer with a disability.

While thinking about what to write about this week, I happened to drop in at a comic book store to kill some time. I’m sure I’m not the only geek here whose dorkhood bleeds over from gaming into comics. As I browsed the selection of books, I noticed a number of empty tables arranged more or less in rows, but mostly just placed wherever there was room (and sometimes even where there wasn’t). At first I had no idea what they were there for – they weren’t being used for displays or anything like that. Then, slowly but surely, the tables filled up with four people each, two on each side, paired off against the person opposite them. They each pulled out a deck of cards, sometimes with dice or other tokens as well. Apparently I had been lucky enough to stumble in on game night.

As fans of this blog may remember, I am modestly familiar with Magic: The Gathering. But I was seeing cards from Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and others that I didn’t even recognize. I didn’t stay and watch any particular game as I did my business about the shop, but I was delighted by the energy of it all. Well over a dozen people all gathered together and socializing, united by their various games. While it is true that there were prizes available for the winners, I got a strong sense that the people were there for the sake of being there much more than they were there for a chance at a free tee-shirt.

It reminded me of another geek phenomenon that I had tangential experience with many years ago, when groups of gamers would lug their computer consoles and screens all to one place so that they could all play together. This phenomenon was known as a LAN party, in reference to the way they would connect their computers together, which is known in the computer world as a Local Area Network. One of the games that first inspired the notion was Doom back in 1993, though the few LAN parties I have attended did not feature that particular game. By the time I was old enough to have any reason to be at a LAN party people were much more interested in Team Fortress and Counter Strike. It was always a crazy atmosphere, crackling with the raw energy of people normally considered outcasts now thriving in their natural element. Music, caffeine, and video games; all turned up to maximum. It was quite an experience, and one I wish I had attended more.

“Well if they were so awesome, why not just go to another one now?” you ask. If I were more vested in it, I probably could find one. But it wouldn't just be harder because I'm no longer in touch with those particular friends, it would also be hindered by the sad fact that the nature of the industry today just doesn't support the spirit of a LAN party like it used to.

Back in the day during the awkward teenage years of PC gaming's life - when it had begun the transition from adolescent sprite based gameplay into more mature 3D polygons, but was still suffering from a few unpleasant graphical growing pains - gaming still hadn't quite hit the mainstream like it has today. In particular, games that allowed for multiple players weren't as common. Obviously every game has at least one player, and many allowed for two. The Nintendo 64 helped popularize gaming with up to four players. Gaming with more than four players, though, was hidden deep in the realm of geekdom. Yes, you had Neverwinter Nights and Ultima Online, and a number of nongamers of the time might have even heard those names. But few would have been able to identify them on sight like a nongamer can identify World of Warcraft today. And somewhere between the relatively mainstream N64 and those mystical online worlds lay the realm of the LAN gamers.

So why have LAN parties been on the decline, if games are all the more popular and commonplace today? At the risk of oversimplification - because of piracy. It should not come as any major shock that the people on that computing fringe where these games lay we're also the type to figure out ways to share the games in ways they considered more convenient. Without going into unnecessary detail, it is suffice to say that a programming arms race took off. Publishers would come up with new ways to secure their product, and the community would find ways around those safeguards.

I'm not here to make judgment calls on the ethics of Digital Rights Management, but I will say that one tool that is becoming more common is a requirement for games to be online and in communication with the developer's server in order to run. While this does help deter game piracy, it has some unfortunate effects on legitimate gamers too. For example, even if someone has a legitimate copy of the game, if they don't have an Internet connection they can't play. And while normally LAN parties allow for great connection speeds, playing a game with your friends in the same room actually becomes SLOWER, since everyone has to connect to the main server through the same Internet connection, just to have the signal sent right back along the same connection again back to the person just a few feet away. So why bother gong over in person when connecting from your own house is both easier and has better performance?

I've written multiple times on the benefits of the Internet on disabled life today and the options it has made available that simply didn't exist ten to twenty years ago. When it is hard to function in an environment that isn't set up with your needs in mind the ability to do so much from home does immeasurable good. But I cannot stress enough the importance of gong out and doing things out in the world too, especially social functions. And it saddens me to see this example of technology taking a step back in terms of promoting social interaction around games. Unfortunately, the need to defend their intellectual property backed them into a tough corner.

That is why seeing the gathering of card players at the comic book store made me so happy. Clearly they weren't there because it was the cool thing to do. And it was far from the easiest way to get a gaming fix. They were there because that was who they were. They were gamers and this was where they came to do what they love with people who understood them.

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Remember Ride? That goofy skateboard-like peripheral Tony Hawk and Activision tried schilling over the course of a few games when another Activision title (Guitar Hero) was hitting its stride? That outdated peripheral might be better for those with moderate to severe mobile impairments than the recently released Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD.

In my review of the game, I mentioned that cheat codes might be able to make the game not so bad for certain types of individuals? In my overzealous state I overlooked one really important thing – THE CHEAT CODES IN THPSHD ARE A SLAP IN THE FACE TO THE DISABLED GAMING COMMUNITY. Yes, that did need to be emphasized beyond italics alone.

I scored THPSHD a 1 out of 10 for mobile disability only because Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD has no quicktime events. BUT, with the aid of one of the cheats included in THPSHD, it could have scored 7 out of 10.
What is this cheat and why is it that important and why is it so important that it was once important but now isn’t? Good questions! I’m talking about Slomo Mode; which can be unlocked either by completing 40 tasks throughout the career of each skater you’d like to skate with - or – players are able to unlock cheat mode by inputting the most boring cheat code in all of the game – the code to unlock everything.

This is the point in this article where I was going to offer the code to anyone who might want it, but I decided that it wasn’t worth sharing because it isn’t worth sharing with those who could use it, but never really be able to get anywhere with it.

We recently adopted a scoring system for games beyond just give it what you feel like – I alluded to it above just as I did with the possibility of scoring higher than it did if it had allowed Slomo Mode from the beginning.

It’s really tough to argue that THPSHD has a remap-able control scheme or difficulty levels, but an argument could have been made for button mashing as with more time to perform tricks the player has more time to react and access the buttons with a plan in place as opposed to having to act less we have no idea what we’re doing when we actually do. That could have been 1 point.

Precision also could have benefitted from Slomo Mode’s inclusion not as a cheat or something to be unlocked but from being an option. Would Slomo Mode have been made something like a “Game Assist” and THPSHD could have recouped about 2 points.

Actually, it can all be taken care of by the same basic thought as mentioned two paragraphs back – by slowing down the passage of time is so accommodating to so many disabilities if allowed to exist in a game from the first second things like Button Mashing, Precision, Camera/Movement Sensitivity, Timing of Movement/Button Pressing matter less than they would otherwise. As for my own personal interpretation of Game Assists; if there’s something in a game to help someone out, that game includes Game Assists. That’s an easy 6 points they had in their pocket that they lost for a fairly stupid reason.

What this means is that had Slomo Mode been included, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD would have gotten a 7 for mobility compared to the 1 it received. I scored the game as getting an overall score of 5 out of 10. The score with Slomo Mode from the start would have been 7 out of 10.
That takes care of part of the “what if?” of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, now for the other half; if you so choose to enter any cheat code where you go to enter cheat codes, upon “successful” entry, you’ll be met with the following message:

Cheat Activated.

Saving, earning Achievements, using the Share feature and the ability to post scores to leaderboards are disabled. To re-enable these features, return to the title Screen by pressing the B button on the Main Menu.

The same also goes for cheats that can be unlocked; I unlocked Perfect Rail Balance pretty early on in the game, but I’m not quite sure how I did it. I made it through a couple areas before I shut off my Xbox without realizing it wasn’t saving. I turned my console back on and started to play again. All the progress I made was gone because the game wouldn’t let me play the game using a reward it gave to me.
The basic deal with cheat codes is that you can use them and you can complete tasks, but what you can’t do is save the game, earn achievements, post to leaderboards, or do any of that sharing stuff. It’s nice when toys toy with people isn’t it?

I understand the whole evening the playing field thing. I, personally could even do without the achievements, but taking away leaderboards and sharing? That’s a little on the bogus side; shouldn’t anyone have the ability to share anything they do be it in slow-motion or otherwise?

How about leaderboards? It’s really not all that difficult to get a really high score while using Slomo Mode and I can easily understand why you’d want to keep Slomo Mode scores separate from regular scores, but really, how hard is it to find space for another leaderboard for those using a specific cheat? For some reason I don’t see it being all that hard to do. I actually think it’s kind of a dumb thing not to do,
There aren’t many games out there that can be played successfully in a slowed-down state, provide a type of multiplayer arena, and also exist on a console. It’s a short list – if there’s a list at all. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to say “there’s a list because of us?” I bet it would.

Over the course of this article, I kept running into the same question that I’d really like to get an answer to; what’s the point? If it’s too hard to part with a couple MB of space to include remap-able controls, and it’s too hard to allow a player to use something included with the game to allow them to successfully play the game, why are these cheats like Slomo Mode, Perfect Rail Balance, Perfect Manual Balance, or Perfect Lip Balance even there?