Image by SobControllers via Flickr

By integrating choice and multiple user-controlled view-points into the game, Dead Space 2 provides a refreshing alternative to traditional video game cutscenes.

In the extraordinarily crowded field of video games, many seek attention through cut scenes of increasing complexity or realism. I found it somewhat ironic then that Dead Space’s particular unique treatment of cutscenes was mostly ignored.

Despite increasing complexity, user interactions with cut scenes have been pretty limited. You have two choices with a rare third. Choice 1: Skip. Choice 2: Watch. Then some games, oddly, allow you to fast-forward through them.

As a result, video game players and participants in video media in general tend to present two types of video. “You can skip this” or “you are not allowed to skip this.” Video games, television, web videos, heck, video advertising in general all subscribe to this binary choice.

The problem is perspective. For almost all video engagements, only one point of perspective is presented and one line of narrative: the whole of the screen and its single focus. Despite our allegiance to single viewpoint video the technology (starting with Picture-in-Picture TV) to support doing otherwise as a choice for the participant has existed for a while. Admittedly, it was much more difficult for video games to do until recently. However, this is not really an excuse for the sad state of video game cutscenes.

There are any number of problems that could be brought up with video game cutscenes, their ever-increasing length, their sometimes division from the actual content of the game, their complete nonsensicalness. My biggest problem with cutscenes is how designers like to dangle them as a reward for playing the game. I have a problem with the idea that the reward for fun interaction with a game is to have to sit still and listen to the game explain itself via gussied up old media. But if not this, than what?

I think that the Dead Space series provides an answer.

If you are not already familiar with it, in addition to standard cutscenes, Dead Space 1 and 2 provide character-focused videos by projecting them from the main character’s suit, producing a small in-game screen at a locked position and angle from the character, though not the camera. In the game’s universe these are usually produced by some sort of recording device built into the same arm that holds the projection device.

These cutscenes can be viewed at multiple angles by rotating the camera around the character. In addition, there are a few instances where you can also see the character who is projecting to you while watching a close up of their faces on the closer projection.

How Dead Space could revolutionize in-game video.

Notably, Dead Space offers you a half-way point between the standard binary cutscene choice for these events. While walking through the deadly space colony, if you extend your arm to aim your weapon, and choose to exhibit some extra caution while climbing through undead monster territory, the visual portion of the video disappears, leaving only the audio.  Presumably because you wouldn’t want to be distracted while shooting something by a talking head.

This is an alternative even to the in-game videos that are standard to RTS games or the slowing down of action for a video or audio briefing done in Gears of War or Vanquish. In an action game with a focus on building fear, forcing the players to make a choice allows them to build more of themselves into the character. It also creates an opportunity to show the inherent risk in the environment.

Giving participants an alternative to watch-or-skip cutscenes is a valuable contribution in and of itself. One that, alone, could have some applications outside of video games. Just as an example beyond the voice-over, short audio advertisements could play in scenes for a TV show. I’d prefer that to some of the more blatant product placement. Another possibility would allow you to choose audio only ads, since most of us are paying attention to another screen anyway.

Even more interesting are the sequences which allow you to view a character from a distance while speaking to them on their wrist-video-thing.  In the game, these are often used to build drama. There are situations where you are tantalizingly close to someone but for some reason unable to help.

In situations like these, there is more tension than even in a cutscene of the same situation, because there is increased player agency that can’t be used to alter events. If the game was slightly better written, you might even want to turn off the video, simply to not see what might happen next to a character. There is serious potential for tension. Even when the character on the other side of the screen isn’t right next door, there is a greater sense of wanting to reach into the screen and help. It’s the sort of juxtaposition thing that creates participant tension to begin with, and that tension is only increased by remaining in control of your character the whole time.

When provided with multiple perspectives on the same action, it gives both the event and characters more depth. It allows you to get a close up of the character’s reaction to battle while allowing you to still see the whole of the action. It’s a great tool for humanizing Dead Space 2′s characters, particularly Ellie and Stross who move with the virtual camera and while they talk in a way to give them a certain veracity.

Other applications.

Giving the participant more control over these types of actions is always a good thing. Especially in video games, where cutscenes are a splinter in the paw of many intelligent gamers.  It doesn’t have to be a holocomm, (even to do multiple viewpoints) it could be a video phone, video integrated into the background or similar applications.

Beyond that, multiple user-selectable camera angles accessed simultaneously could be the opiate for the increasingly disengaged TV-viewing masses. Getting the film would be easy, even live, most directors film more than one angle simultaneously anyway. It might be especially applicable in reality shows in closed environments, where viewers long for greater and closer contact with the subjects. In a world of DVD extras and online broadcasting, this could be a great incentive for watching live TV.

As for method, the picture-in-picture option still holds serious possibilities, imagine if you had whole channels of related narratives for each TV show you watched and you could view them at the same time as the main narrative on the screen. If you wanted to go a little crazy, you could even try it 24-style, with users selecting multiple viewpoints to watch important events from and able to switch through a larger set.

It’s the sort of universe depth that audiences go crazy for.

Web users could play with YouTube videos, stacking them next to each other and allowing users to select multiple videos to view together.

Indeed, depth is the name of the game here. As a general rule, giving your participants multiple windows into the universe’s action increases engagement.

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2. First Episode of Patriot Games!
3. Drawn by Pain [Cool Stories]

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There are few games I’m more excited for than Dragon Age 2, but I’m struggling with whether or not to purchase it. The prospect of zero-day DLC just feels wrong to support.

In four days we will have passed the deadline to get a whole bunch of free DLC with a Dragon Age 2 pre-order. I didn’t order it back when there was even more free stuff with the pre-order (in early January) and I don’t think I’ll pre-order it now. The thought of purchasing a game with hooks built into the launch product for pay-to-play DLCs is distasteful.

The video game industry is not the only one having trouble letting go of their content, but they are one of the few to settle on the concept of releasing incomplete products and then forcing you to pay large sums of money to fill in the blanks they’ve left in the game. The nearest equivalent I can think of would be paying for a newspaper and then being forced to pay again for access to their website.

I really liked the first Dragon Age and playing the game is a sort of communal event in our household, complete with discussions of characters, equipment and decision points. We all purchased the Ultimate edition when it was cheap on Steam over the winter holidays and played again. Complete with all the DLCs the game was pretty different, all sorts of new options for play and character-building unfolded and it was a whole new discussion.

Dragon Age is a game of many tellable moments but when the game first came out and people discovered that the game they purchased had holes left in it, that it was not the entire game they had spent $50-$60 on, the first and biggest tellable moment was the player’s encounter with the salesman NPC.

As time has gone on, it has become clear that EA and BioWare are the masters of this technique, selling you a game like swiss cheese and forcing you to pay half-again to fill them in. The infamous Warden’s Keep DLC cost $7 or 14% of the retail cost of the game. If you bought the game used, possibly at close to full price, The Stone Prisoner DLC cost $15. If you had connection problems the game might not authenticate saves made after playing through the DLC.

While building add-ons after the game’s release seems like a fine way to extend gameplay and increase profits, something just seems wrong about building hooks into your launch product to ask players to spend more money from inside the game. For this reason, I’m having trouble purchasing the game.

What about you? Has zero-day DLC stopped you from purchasing a game before? Will it prevent you from buying Dragon Age 2?

Related articles

• Dragon Age II DLC… Already? This Is Silly (rockpapershotgun.com)
• Another Dragon Age 2 Unlockable Goes Up For Grabs (escapistmagazine.com)
• Dragon Age 2 bonus DLC opens the Black Emporium for business (joystiq.com)
• Dragon Age 2 first DLC named ‘The Exiled Prince,’ teased in video (joystiq.com)
• Dragon Age 2 to get launch day DLC, Exiled Prince (news.bigdownload.com)

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So I finished Red Dead Redemption last month. It was a pretty fun game and, despite excessive horse riding, I enjoyed myself. Then I got to the end and I never wanted anything to do with the game again. This is why.

Below are spoilers, so if you intend to play through Red Dead yourself do so and come back.

Rockstar has a tendency to write reluctant protagonists. Niko Bellic, from GTA4, wouldn’t stop whining about how he wanted to live the American dream in peace, even while he was shooting people. Red Dead is no exception. The main character, John Marston, is so eager to be done with his mission he practically gets killed in the first 30 minutes of the game.

Thankfully, Marston has a good reason for his reluctance while on an armed rampage. Our player character is an ex-outlaw and the FBI is holding his family hostage to get him to kill off his old running buddies. For once, I’ve found an open world game with a plot that actually makes a great deal of sense. In fact, overall, the game is well written; the characters seem fairly three-dimensional; the narrative thread is coherent and enjoyable; and overall the game mechanics make it just fun to play.

If you played through the first 95% of the game, you might very well be justified if you thought it was one of the best games you’ve played.

Then came the end.

Red Dead contains a great deal of homage to the old Wild West films and stories of its genre, but it is rarely predictable. However, about 35 hours into the 38 hours I spent playing the game, I had beaten everyone. All the bosses were dead, I’d cleaned up most of my little corner of the west and completed many of the side quests.  Marston’s family was and I went through a series of farming quests. I had to go hunting, pick up supplies, hang with Marston’s son and round-up cattle. I got a taste of the idyllic life of the Marston family farm. Of course, I knew what was coming. They were fattening me for the slaughter.

In this case the ‘they’ is the FBI, who have decided that, despite you having followed their orders and saved their lives throughout the game, you are clearly too much of an outlaw to live.

Now, you can play the game as a good or bad Marston but, no matter what you do, Marston is perpetually talking about his desire to just go home and settle down. The last few missions before the end are boring farm tasks. You just mosey around and build up a non-outlaw life for yourself. Despite this, the FBI send what is apparently an entire regiment of the American army to wipe out your farm. After killing what has to be a good 40 or 50 people, you and your family retreat to a barn. You make your wife and son go out through the back while you, in dramatic slow motion, push open the barn doors and confront about 12 enemies. You’re given the opportunity to kill some of them, but in the end they shoot you down.

This is not a bad concept. It’s easy to see that Rockstar was trying to emulate the old Westerns. In the typical western style it wasn’t entirely uncommon for the hero, running from a past he couldn’t escape, to die to protect the ones he loves. If that had been the case, the death scene and corresponding interactivity would have made a lot of sense. However, the scene, and indeed the whole final mission, did not fit in the existing narrative or character.

You spend the game fighting hard, even taking down governments, to gain back your family and farm. You’ve proved your potential usefulness and willingness to obey the FBI. You even spend the last few missions seeing just how much Marston loves his family and non-outlaw life.

There is just no real reason for the FBI to wait a week or two after letting Marston have everything back before hitting him. It’s just foolish to try to do so while he’s staying in a highly defensible position which he values. They could have just shot him in the back. Honestly. There are sniper rifles in the game, someone could have just taken a head shot. The agents could have just walked in the front door.

But ignoring that stupidity, there was no reason for the FBI to come after him to begin with. Marston had settled down. He’d spent all game talking about how much he wanted to become a farmer. If he had wanted to be an outlaw he could have gone off and never came back. He had just finished discrediting himself to the entire outlaw community by hunting down his brothers-in-crime, he was not a threat.

Then there is Marston’s behavior. They shot his uncle, they shot up his farm, they tried to shoot his family. While you play John Marston, you kill a fort filled with armed men, ride west, and start a Mexican revolution. You have friends and back-up all over. If the game hadn’t stopped me, I could have easily taken out all of those enemies. Marston, as a character, could fall back and gather friendly forces. He could even retreat to Mexico, where he’d be free from the FBI and probably able to put together a decent life.

There is another completely illogical element. That Marston would take a chance on a threat to his family continuing to exist. Marston is so in love with his wife that he refuses to have sex with the many prostitutes littered throughout the area (a serious act of self-control in a Rockstar game). He’s been all about his family this whole time. The game makes it abundantly clear that the West is still not a kind place to women who don’t have men. The strongest female character in the game still gets kidnapped and raped before you can save her, even with her having a father. Why, in god’s name, would Marston want to leave his family alone instead of going on the run with them? Isn’t that the opposite of what he’s been fighting for?

John Marston’s actions are essentially suicide without reason. It goes completely contrary to his character. Rockstar just wanted to shock you by killing off your character at the end of the game. But it’s a cheap shock, one existing outside of everything already established in the game and because of that it cheapens the whole game.

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If you read my blog back in its RWV days, you may recall my post about the need for player characters to speak and how a failure to do so, as in BioShock, was detrimental to the game.

It seems that I am not the only person to think so. I just stumbled upon a great story through Kotaku on the same subject.

I consider it audacious and unreasonable to think that video game story telling is so different that suddenly players will be unwilling to empathize with their character unless that character takes on their personality. I appreciate the potential of this new medium, but my experience has been that for now, the more we stick with good old fashioned story telling the better off everyone will be.

It is, overall, an excellent article on the topic. I recommend you read it.

Identification, Please.

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I have to admit, when I was initially thinking about writing this post, I was split. I wasn’t sure whether the post should be “Spymaster – Twitter’s version of an annoying Facebook app” or “Spymaster – Cool Game.” Then I had my mind made up for me. As of approximately 0200 hours on Mon. Jun 01 I’ve completed my first Spymaster war.  As a result, I’ve been thinking about what I would change or add, if I was heading up The Directorate.

Previously… on Twitter:

• iList’s Eston Bond, Chris Abad, Albert Choi and Ben Myles launched their Twitter-based game Spymaster on May 28. The game allowed you to execute spy-like activities and assassinate your Twitter friends. Attack and Defensive power was a numeral determined by a combination of your number of followers and the equipment you purchased thanks to your illicit activities. Friends you converted into spymaster by getting them to join the game gave extra power.
• The game, previously in beta, wracked up hundreds, probably thousands, of users and gained the top trending spot in Twitter Search, staying on the list for at least a day more.
• Backlash ensued, Twitter spymasters using the game would automatically tweet their spy activities through the game, using the #spymaster hashtag. While some didn’t seem to care, a few big bloggers went very public about considering the game’s communiqués spam. 
• Most Spymasters quieted down, the game falling out of the trending slot.
• And yet… the game continued…

The following events occurred between 1 and 2 a.m.:

The day before I had noticed that Spymaster @luxuryluke had attacked me. I returned fire with a few attempted assassinations myself. After he had taken me for over 84,000 pounds in game money (I had joined the MI6 team), I fired back. The game scales wins to risk, which meant that as a much lower level player, he had won big. Though I was able to beat him a few times (and lost a few others), my wins were not as large.

LuxuryLuke was sitting at my door, and attempted a number of assassinations. Then, I retaliated. Suddenly, there was another spy in play. Spymaster @mediapeople began his own campaign of small cuts. As my health got chipped away I found myself almost entirely unable to strike back, so I called in the cavalry via direct messages.

Through both public and private messages I called on fellow members of my spy-ring to target and assassinate the two players who had come after me.

Just like any war, it didn’t take long for things to escalate.

@Mediapeople was a lower level player but had a huge advantage in terms of the number of his followers, which meant that he was able to strike with impunity. With a little help from his friends, @Mediapeople was able to finally fully assassinate me, stealing away a savings of over £200,000 by the end of the night, and leaving me in Spymaster purgatory, unable to act until I had been resuscitated by the game. (Which took about ten minutes.)

What about my spy skills?

I discovered a big flaw here. Simply that being an upper level character is in fact a disadvantage. You have more to loose and an inability to get money back stolen from you by lower level spys. Without the ability to properly retaliate and recapture some of my funds, low level spies could take me down with impunity, especially if they have a higher follower count than I.

The way this should work is that if I’m attacked, I can declare all out war against my assassin and get my money back. The other big issue here is balance. A high level should act as a balance against high follower low level characters. Right now, having a low level character is in fact a huge advantage. See the problem?

Ok, ignoring that problem and others that have come up and sometimes dealt with since my first Spymaster war, the game has a lot of potential if we can apply some serious game theory.

So, for the duration of this article, let’s see if Spymaster got game.

A Tactical Triangle of spies.

The tactical triangle is what gamers say when they don’t want to call their method of game balance what it is, Rocks, Paper, Scissors, at least initially. So, does Spymaster have a Rocks, Paper, and Scissors? Assuming you are not cheating, here’s the breakdown that I see, you may notice they map pretty closely to the various directorate (CIA, MI6 and FSB) specialties. I’m also going to propose what roles they should be taking, especially if Spymaster decides to initiate a greater focus on teams in the future.

Spy Classes:

Base Commandant (Defensive Class, aka Tank)

• Has an especially high defensive rating.
• Very public status poster, daring people to attack him and loose their money.
• Invested in serious defensive equipment.
• Role: Provide protection to others in the ring.

Saboteur (Earning Class aka Healer)

• Has a continual high level of capital, allowing money “laundering” through Swiss Bank accounts.
• Has a lower defensive and attack rating because she doesn’t waste money on anything but the bare minimum of equipment.
• A higher level character.
• Serious experience in tasks.
• Owns many safe houses.
• Role: Generate and manipulate capital to “heal” offensive and defensive team members by allowing them constant access to equipment and protection for their funds through Swiss Bank transfers.

Assassin (Offensive class aka Damage)

• Has an especially high attack rating and relatively normal defensive rating.
• Owns a significant cache of equipment
• Stays fairly undercover until he comes out and kills you.
• Role: Assassinate enemy spies.

While this is what I’ve seen, the three roles tend to blend together out of necessity, you have to keep your defense high to prevent people from stealing your stuff and upper level tasks require expensive equipment, necessitating an investment in more defensive equipment over safe houses to keep it from being stolen. Further, the lack of support for real team play means that playing a support role leaves you in the unwise position of ‘depending on the kindness of strangers.’

How to resolve this?

Put yourself somewhere safe.

Image by inju via Flickr

Right now the whole point of safe houses is that, in some nebulous way, they provide a regular stream of money, even when not performing tasks. However, to really create and effective and long lasting game, we need to give purpose to the name and make Safe Houses usable objects.

Let’s say that you can actually go into a safe house, what advantage would it give?

When in a safe house you cannot do anything other than wait. You must stay in a safe house for at least 10 minutes and you cannot retreat to a safe house without two subsequent turns not under attack. While in a safe house you pay money to the owner of the safe house, if you own your own safe house it stops earning money for you while you hide in it. Safe house attributes are multiplied by those of their owners. While in a safe house, no one can use that safe house and no one can use any of your safe houses. Safe house attributes are added to the defense attribute for the person in it.

The values each safe house adds to those hiding out in it should be calculated by compounding a base and owner value. Each safe house should have a defensive value on it’s own. Then a percentage of the owner’s defense is added to that base value. That final number is added to the defensive value of anyone hiding in the safe house. I know this sounds like it may create an invulnerability situation, but we’ll get to resolving that in a bit.

Spy Cells

First, an increased support for Spy Cells, organized groups or guilds of spies. Allow spies in cells to call in support, retaliation strikes and request private handoffs of money outside of the Swiss Banking system, this would allow a greater level of discrimination, pushing more towards character “classes.” Rewarding different play styles is essential for keeping people playing. Further, by creating formalized allegiances, it allows people to further specialize, creating the opportunity for expansion of the tactical triangle.

Further, joining a cell should boost a players statistics through allegiance.  

Additional Classes

Infiltrator (Research class aka Artillery)

• Relatively low levels of Attack and Defense
• Medium size weapons cache
• Medium number of safe houses.
• Experience with “Analysis” tasks (initial rating determined by retweets perhaps?)
• Role: Discover intelligence and lay groundwork for assassinations by performing tasks that uncover information about targets. 

Freedom Fighter (Bunker Buster class aka Anti-Tank)

• Extremely high attack class at the expense of an especially low defensive class.
• Experience with bomb making tasks.
• Must spend money on explosive (one-time use) materials.
• Role: Eliminating enemy safe houses.

These are the resulting specialty tasks that spies could accomplish in order to train up the new skills and look at future tasks. Each of these specialty tasks increases the specialty Bomb and Analysis skills.

Bomb tasks

• Rig car bomb

  • Never let them drive away.

• Disrupt communications

  • Loose lips sink ships.

• Disrupt power flow

  • Who turned out the lights?

• Destroy supply lines.

  • Enemies can’t act when they can’t eat.

• Incite panic

  • Sometimes you’ve just got to go for the big boom.

Analysis tasks

• Encode communiqué

• Keep it secret.

• Hack civilian system.

• They don’t know what they’re dealing with.

• Hack bank system.

• At least they’re not Swiss.

• Hack military system.

• How many tanks does it take do get to the center of a rouge nation?

• Uncover information

• Some secrets are meant to be known.

To accomplish some of these new specialty tasks, you are going to need specialty items.

Bomb items (one time use)

• Grenade
• C-4 Explosive
• Timed detonator
• Remote detonator

Analysis items

• Cipher
• One time key (one time use)
• Decoding system
• Specialized laptop

With the expansion of classes and safe houses, this creates some additional tasks that can be associated with assassinations.

• Steal target dossier.
• Uncovers player info
• Requires a low to medium analysis rating depending on target(much like attack and defense ratings).
• If failed player is notified that someone is looking into him and can retreat to a safe house.

• Infiltrate enemy cell
• Uncover the last allies the player interacted with or find out some of the cell’s members.
• Requires a high analysis rating.
• If failed entire cell is notified of attempt.

• Uncover recruiter
• Discover who sent the spy invites.
• Requires a low analysis rating.
• If failed, both the spy and his recruiter is notified.

• Uncover recruited.
• Discover who the spy sent invites to.
• Requires a medium to high analysis rating.
• If failed, the spy and all the people who he sent invites to are notified.

• Uncover safe houses owned by spy.
• Find out where the spy owns safe houses, this task allows you to uncover one at a time.
• High analysis rating required.
• If failed, the spy is notified of your attempt.

• Destroy identified safe house.
• Once a friend uncovers a safe house, bomb it off the face of the planet
• Requires a high bomb rating.
• If failed, the spy is notified of your attempt.

• Destroy spy’s refuge safe house.
• Someone lost an attack to a spy in a safe house, now they know he’s hiding out. Let’s flush him out.
• Requires a very high bomb rating.
• If failed the safe house’s owner and the spy taking refuge in it are notified.

In order to really throw in more team play, spies should be able to post tasks for others to accomplish on their behalf, this could increase the team play. There would be a global board, which people would have to spend money to post tasks on and then spend again to pay off whoever accomplishes the task. Formal cells would have private boards (perhaps they could build them using forum systems themselves), that members would not have to pay to post on.

Player post-able tasks

• Any type of special assassination task
• Kill order
• Alliance proposal
• Request to document player’s cell.
• Vendetta

Finally, we get to one of the biggest and coolest possibilities to think about. We are half-way to an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with Spymaster already, why not take it all the way? The last game to try this was pretty cool but didn’t succeed for a number of reasons, the biggest being that right after they launched, 9/11 happened and no one wanted to receive fake calls about terrorists and spies after that.

Provide a running story, encase secrets in random websites, recruit spies to help set up real-life clue hunting events and more. Here’s some ideas on tasks to drive the story forward.

Story Tasks

• Retrieve task information.
• Enter encoded information
• When you find information in a site or IRL location, enter it into the game.
• Decode information
• Take found codes and run an in-game decryption.
• Retrieve database key.
• Find out clues where to go for more information.
• Read database file.
• Find out more secrets.
• Hack Fourth Directorate.
• The enemy is out there, find out a few big secrets.

I know, I know, we’re getting into a pipe dream area here, but a guy can hope right? You got to dream big. Obviously this increased activity means increased cost. What can the Directorate do to make some money?

Micropayments may be a big possibility, allowing people to pay in for extra content, or infusions of cash without experience could be a way to make some money. A subscription cost to access higher level content would be a possibility, as much as I hate the idea. However, is this really the audience that would pay such a thing?

Obviously, when it comes to making money beyond display ads, the topic requires some though. Who knows what possibilities are to come for the game? I just like being a Twitter spy and it would be great if I could keep on playing, instead of getting bored.

This is one spy, signing out.

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Welcome to the Patriot Games podcast! George Mason University students Keith Wick and Aram Zucker-Scharff take a look at video games, game culture, and what it means to be a gamer in college.

Welcome to the first Patriot Games podcast. In this podcast, Keith and Aram talk about the brand new Street Fighter and slightly dated Dead Space.

Download Podcast

Cross-posted from Connect2Mason

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For my fellow Guitar Hero fans, Kotaku has gotten it’s hands on the latest GH game, Aerosmith. Check out the partial setlist below. An important note, the game does not introduce any new game play elements. The Kotaku post also has a whole mess of pretty screenshots to check out.

Nipmuc High School
Mott the Hoople – All the Young Dudes *Cover
Cheap Trick – Dream Police
Aerosmith – Make It
Aerosmith – Uncle Salty
Aerosmith – Draw the Line

Max’s Kansas City
Joan Jett – I hate myself for loving you
The Kinks – All day and all of the night *Cover
Aerosmith – Movin’ Out
Aerosmith – No Surprize
Aerosmith – Sweet Emotion

The Orpheum Theater
The Clash – Complete Control
New York Dolls – Personality Crisis *Cover
Aerosmith – Livin’ on the Edge
Aersomith – Ragdoll
Aerosmith – Love in an Elevator

Half Time Show
Lenny Kravitz – Always on the Run
Black Crowes – Hard to Handle *Cover
Aerosmith – Back in the Saddle
Aerosmith – Beyond Beautiful
Aerosmith – Dream On

Moscow
The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary
Run DMC – King of Rock
Aerosmith – Bright Light Fright
Aerosmith – Nobody’s Fault
Run DMC featuring Aerosmith – Walk This Way

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If for some god-awful reason you have yet to play one of the greatest games of all time, now is your opportunity.

Gametap has the game for you to play for free, if you download their launcher.

Of course, you could skip the ads and just buy the game too, which is probably under 10 dollars if you look hard enough.

Anyway, I can’t recommend this game enough, despite its age, it is still one of the most amazing games you’ll ever play and is one of the direct inspirations for me to get into game writing to begin with. Pick it up and play it.

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1. 101 Free Games 2008
2. I would buy a Wii if I could play Fahrenheit on it… [Notes]
3. Grimm Just Can’t Make Me Care [Reasoned Reviews]

Check out this article on game design and how to create happiness in games.

Related posts:

1. Work It – Links on Games and Working in the Industry