Ever since these failed experiments, I wondered whether any of these methods really, truly could work.  I can report that under certain circumstances, you can fix a game by boiling it. I’m surprised and a bit baffled, but I tried it yesterday, and I can attest to the results.

The game in question Tekken 6 on the. I bought it (new and factory sealed) almost two years ago on clearance, but it turned out to be defective out of the box. I arranged to return it to Namco-Bandai for a replacement copy, but due to laziness I never sent it out. I completely forgot I still had it until yesterday, when I unearthed it during a spot of spring cleaning. Not wanting to throw it away, I decided I might as well try to see if something might get it to play. Since it had no scratches, I knew the toothpaste/Brasso approach would do me no good. The boiling trick, on the other hand, still had some promise. I still didn’t know what it was supposed to do to make a disc playable, and I suppose the sense of unknowingness convinced me it was worth a shot. I heated up a pot of water, dropped the disc in for a good three minutes, then let it dry in a hand towel. About an hour later, I placed it back in the console, and it started up immediately. No freezing, no hanging, no issues whatsoever. This was in stark contrast to its original state, in which the 360 couldn’t even recognize that there was a piece of media in its disc tray.

So tender you can cut it with a fork.

While happy to have a working product after all this time, I still wasn’t satisfied. I went online to find out once and for all whether there was any sort of science behind boiling an optical disc – and found the answer on the first page of Google results. Here’s what softpedia has to say about the method:

One of the reasons why a brand new disk can become unrecognizable for the drive is the exposure to condensation, a phenomenon that occurs within the plastic wrapped subscription, as water molecules trapped in the air turn liquid when the temperature drops, for example during shipping.

The thin layer of plastic covering all discs, meant to protect the readable surface, can expand and contract in the optical drives, where the temperature is much higher than in the room or on a store shelf. The simplest way to eliminate water from the disk is to boil it.

Makes sense I guess, though the explanation reveals that this fix is only applicable to discs that are dead on arrival, and only due to this particular phenomenon. If your game stops playing after you’ve played it for some time, boiling probably won’t do it any good. It also seems that, despite my results, it isn’t a good idea to stick your game directly into a hot pot on the stove – you can get the same results by heating up a shallow plate of water in the microwave, without risking having your disc melt.

Some will argue that buying Tekken 6 in the first place was a waste of money, but at least now it won’t be a complete waste.

It isn’t exactly lighting up the sales charts.  True, it isn’t technically out yet in the West, but if it is true that its Japanese numbers are still hovering around half a million units, then the 3DS almost matched Vita sales in its first week alone.  Unless fortunes reverse, and the Vita ends up doing gangbusters over here, I think we can agree that Sony has a problem on its hands.

What frustrates me is why this is happening.  For all appearances, the handheld is a marvel of hardware design, is relatively cheap, and has strong launch titles.  So why is it that no one is going nuts over it?  It seems to me that for all the Vita’s strengths, Sony messed up on the little things, and they’re adding up to a lot.  For instance, the Vita’s a pretty good deal considering how powerful the hardware is, but folks are harping on the cost of the 3g data plan (I’m actually not sure why this is happening, considering there’s a wifi model, but whatever).  They’re also complaining about pricey, proprietary memory cards that are essentially mandatory, even for boxed games.  They’re complaining about the back touchpad, and the fact that no matter how pretty Uncharted is, it forces you to perform gimmicky control maneuvers to show off the system’s abilities.

To put it another way, Sony made a fantastic piece of kit, but forgot to make it easy and enjoyable to use.  The Vita ecosystem is locked down and proprietary from every angle.  The UMD Passport program is maddeningly expensive, and isn’t even coming out here in the West.  And there’s nothing like the 3DS’ Find Mii/Streetpass Quest that tries to outdo iOS apps at their own game.  The Vita is powerful, but unwilling to address the current state of the industry in any way, shape or form.  I’m not saying Sony should have come out with a slab of glass and metal that ran 99 cent, glorified Flash games, but the details of the Passport system alone suggest that Sony still wants to treat their userbase with a sense of indifference bordering on hostility.  I don’t think the Vita looks nearly as bad as its sales suggest, but I do believe the philosophy behind the system is clearly a problem.  How many times does Sony have to be told that throwing the beefiest hardware at people is not the path to success?  It can’t merely be Japanese stubbornness – even Nintendo is learning to adapt.  I suppose that Sony just can’t help being cocky until they’re absolutely forced to hunker down and right the ship.

That might be a problem this time around – the massive success of the PSP meant everyone predicted that the future of the Japanese gaming market was in handhelds.  Whereas the PSP was the side project next to the “surefire” PS3, the roles were reversed this time around.  If Sony doesn’t get their act together with the Vita, I don’t know what it will mean.

Playstation Vita – Will the West embrace it as tepidly as they did the PSP?  And will it perform as well in Japan as everyone thinks (and hopes) it will?  Already the analysts of the world are framing this as Sony’s fight for survival, and if their words really do have an impact on the business world, then should we be afraid that they seem to have their minds already made up about the Vita’s chances?

Personally, I think the Vita is a fantastic piece of hardware for the price, and it should have legs for years.  But what I think doesn’t matter one bit.  The only thing I’d dare to suggest is that Sony will be in trouble if all they focus on is portable versions of PS3 games.

3DS- The 3DS is doing better than the DS did at this point in its life, so all the proclamations of failure are kind of silly.  I wonder, though, if the market has changed so much that the measure of success has shifted as well.  People still expect Nintendo to prove themselves, and I’m no longer sure what the hell they have to do anymore to accomplish this.  Wait, I do know – smartphone versions of Nintendo franchises.  Since that won’t be happening any time soon, let’s move onto the next topic…

Smartphones – The market is there, and growing.  There’s no more debate as to whether they are legitimate, or whether they are a threat.  The only thing left to ponder is whether their influence will be better or worse for gaming as a whole.  The “traditional” industry, as it were, was already on the path towards monetization of its products.  But I feel that the app store gurus have accelerated the speed at which bad practices take root in the industry.  We now have publishers who are ready and willing to use the same tactics as Vegas in order to con people into parting with their money (and keep them coming back).  What else might we see?  And will the trend toward cheap, quick, brainless games lead to another crash?  The consumers being targeted by App makers are the most fickle of them all…

Wii U – The details are still sparse, and the hardware looks like it might be out of date upon arrival.  In a world which relies more and more on devices featuring ARM processors and low power consumption, the latter fact might not actually be a problem.  There seems to be two versions of Nintendo, one which focuses on pleasing fickle/hyporcritical/conservative/confused fans, and another which ignores everyone and shows us what we want.  I don’t think we can say anything about the Wii U until we see which face of the company shows up for this next console generation.

Microsoft – Microsoft is not afraid to throw things away and force people to move on.  They did it with the Xbox 1, and the most recent 360 dashboard update essentially has no patience for anyone without a Kinect.  And yet thanks to the success of the Kinect, the 360 could theoretically survive for a couple more years.  Microsoft could go down one of two paths by year’s end.  I have a guess as to which it will take, but I’m not quite certain enough to say it with confidence.

Indie gaming – I love the idea of indie games, and the options it grants to players and developers alike.  I can’t stand the types of navel gazing, vague, occasionally hostile products which indie game design so often churns out.  The word “indie” has taken on a meaning wholly separate from “independent”.  Where will the “scene” decide to go next?

Consumers – What is it we want from games?  What kinds of experiences do we like, for how many hours, and at what price? And can we accept the fact that we might not be able to have it all exactly the way we want?

Last time I did a year end retrospective, it posted two months after the end of the year.  I won’t make the same mistake twice in a row.  Here now are the highs and lows from my 2011 in games.  Note, as always, that this is not a “best games of 2011″ list, nor did all of the games actually come out this year.  These are simply the best (and “worst”) titles I played within the last twelve months.

The Tops

Async Corp

I actually posted my review of Async Corp. months after the initial draft was first written. and in the intervening months, I hadn’t actually played the game that much.  When I sat down to clean up the review and prepare it for posting, I insisted on sitting down with the game again, to see if it held up to the lofty words put forth in the first draft.  Suffice to say it passed the litmus test.  Async is the very definition of “pick up and play”.  You can return to it at any time without missing a beat, and the experience feels fresh no matter how long you are away from it.  Most importantly, it is not a game that you can play for “just a couple of minutes”.  It demands more attention from you, in a way that a good portable game should.  If every iOS game behaved like Async Corp., my iPod would be attached to my hip.

Portal 2

Portal 2 was easily the most pleasant surprise of the year. Valve addressed every single issue I had with the original Portal, and finally created an excellent, full fledged gaming experience out of the original concept.  The memes are gone, the puzzles are solid, the length is perfect, and most importantly, GLaDOS no longer annoys me.  Valve hit it out of the park, and my faith in them is restored three times over.  I will still debate against Portal 1, but will also go to bat for its sequel any day of the week.  Some people felt that Portal 2 still felt short of justifying itself as a full priced game, but if not for Gamefly, I would have bought it for $60 without blinking.  There aren’t many games I can say that about these days.

Fallout: New Vegas

Back when I played Fallout 3, I technically finished the game, but it felt more like I was calling it quits.  When I hit the level cap, I became unstoppable, and I still had about a quarter of the map left unexplored.   There was no challenge, and thus nothing felt interesting. Rather than be a completionist, I decided to go straight to the ending, leaving the remainder of the content for a second playthrough. I never got to that second playthrough, and that’s when I realized that Fallout 3 didn’t quite hit the mark.

Thankfully, it didn’t matter, because Fallout: New Vegas saved the day.  This right here is the true successor to Fallout 2.  It shows us what has happened to the American west in the years after Fallout 2, wherein the NCR is expanding its influence, and new factions are rising to fill in the voids left by the Enclave and the (alive, but struggling) Brotherhood of Steel.  It feels like home, and not just because of the setting.  The dialogue, characters, art direction, and all the new features make it feel like New Vegas really is a 3d representation of the same place that Fallout 1 and 2 occupied.

In addition, the story takes on a tone that is decidedly different than any previous entry. Your protagonist is not a Chosen One, but a nameless courier who gets screwed by The Man.  Your main quest is to get answers (and maybe some revenge), but the overall effect of the story and setting is to make you realize that you’re just a working stiff, and that the Mojave Wasteland is not a safe place for a lone person.  Technically, you can make a beeline to the main quest, but the game all but forces you to take a long, indirect path to the city of New Vegas.  This causes you to meet all the people and factions which make up the Wasteland, and you get a sense of the state of the area as a whole.  For the vast majority of the time, the story focuses on the lives and histories of everyone but the courier. As this review from Kill.Screen suggests, Fallout: New Vegas is the story is really the story of the Mojave; the courier, like everyone else, is just one of its many people.

The impact of this narrative focus is huge.  I have played New Vegas for months now.  I’m close to the level cap, but I don’t want to stop.  I enjoy being in this world, and I want to see all of it.  It finds ways to surprise me no matter how many hours I pour into it.  I never want it to end.

New Vegas suffers from many of the problems which plague all open world games, but I assert that it is one of the most interesting and fully realized open worlds of this console generation.  Every single game of this ilk needs to pay attention to how well New Vegas moves the focus from the protagonist to the world itself, because I believe it is the future of open world design.

The Disappointments

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I don’t want to invoke The King’s Camelopard with El Shaddai.  Unlike the famous incident from Huck Finn, El Shaddai is exactly what its sensational concept claimed it would be.  The execution is simply atrocious.  And yet there is something in the way in which it is atrocious that makes it almost (but not quite) feel like the creators were trying to pull a fast one on us. Furthermore, the game does all it can from the very start to fuck with the player in ways that felt more hostile than playful.  The Camelopard comparison does not fit, but I do think that a hearty chunk of the praise thrown at this game is from people who are either dying to appear artsy, or are trying to save face after the final product didn’t match up with all the gushing they did during the preview phase.

I’m trying to write a longer piece on how El Shaddai fails, but here’s the synopsis.  It takes  Devil May Cry  1′s combat system and ruins it by modifying enemy behaviors and damage scaling in a way which is unnatural for an action game.  Visually, only the 2d environments are truly gorgeous.  The 3d levels are mostly abstract voids filled with basic shapes and (sometimes) lots of color.  The story  - already based on an obscure religious tome – deliberately withholds all sorts of information from the player in an effort to become even more sparse and confusing.

Also, there’s a 2d mission which serves no purpose other than to let four archangels comment on how nice they look in a giant stained glass painting.

I wish El Shaddai had turned out better, and I do think we need more risky, experimental games, but there’s a difference between an earnest failure and a failure caused by people fucking around.  In the case of the former, I always find something in the game to admire, and ultimately I’ll go to bat for it.  In the case of the latter, I’d rather see it fail, as a warning to anyone who would think of passing off their self-indulgent vanity project as something worth our serious consideration. You don’t get to use experimental art as a cover for your circle jerks.

Shadows of the Dammed

Let’s pretend that Suda51 has his own subgenre of “Suda51 games”, roughly analogous to a subculture like, say, steampunk.  Just like Steampunk, Suda51 games might have had some meaning behind them at one point.  But just like modern Steampunk has devolved into anything with goggles and corsets, modern Suda51 games are becoming known for nothing more than guitars, fashion and schlongs.  Shadows of the Dammed is filled with all of Suda’s trademark visual cues – it may have a different tone and subject matter than No More Heroes, but they both contain protagonists with styled hair, a stylized jacket, a craving for sex and a weapon which acts as an instant dick joke.  The game also spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the inner workings of its setting (the underworld) without ever showing you all that much of it.  Of course, this is entirely due to the fact that the exposition exists solely as a vehicle for more crude jokes.

Worst of all, the game is a bore to play, even though it plays exactly like Resident Evil 4.  That’s right folks; Shadows of the Dammed screws up the design of the greatest action game in a generation, mostly due to the nature of its enemies.  There aren’t often that many on screen at a time, and the standard ghoul has a serious physical handicap which prevents it from every hurting you.  They have this preferred move in which they run up and jump kick you, only it never connects.  Ever.  I lost count of how many times I left a fight with minor damage because enemy attacks whiffed as I stood completely still. If collaborator Shinji Mikami was any more involved than being an executive producer for this game, then I’m not sure how he dropped the ball like this.

Throughout the years, I have never been entirely sold on Suda51, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy Killer 7 and Flower, Sun and Rain.  Shadows of the Dammed trades their sloppy but fascinating experiences for surface level flair and polish atop an empty shell of an action game.  Without a doubt, the biggest WTF of the year.

In Async Corp, players are given two wells filled with squares of three different colors. Players select one square on each side to swap with each other in order to form a packet.  Packets are generated whenever some number of same-colored squares are arranged in the shape of a rectangle (squares being rectangles too, of course).  The rules of the game state that a swap can only occur if it will create at least one packet, and packets themselves can be cleared off the screen by touching them (clearing packets becomes, ultimately, the point of the game).

The most important similarity between Async Corp and other good puzzle games (and some traditional board games, too) is that it embraces the rule of “easy to learn, challenging to master”.  You can pick up the rules in an instant, and once you know how to form packets, you can make genuine progress in any of the three available modes.  There are still strategies and advanced moves to uncover, for instance the titular Async, in which a move creates two packets, one in each well of blocks.  But what makes Async so effective is that cranking out basic, 2×2 packets can get you surprisingly far at first, and even as you improve, this technique doesn’t go away.  It understands that exposure can be as important as innate skill or intelligence in regards to improving at a game. The longer you play, the more likely you are to pick up on new patterns and strategies.  And the only way you’re going to play that long is if you continue to find the mechanics interesting. Async Corp’s base design is simple in that way that generates a primal, powerful feeling of fun.  It keeps you going for hours, then days and even months.

It also helps that Async Corp’s design doesn’t try and obfuscate the secrets to better play.  For example, one of the first things newbies can do to improve their chances is to start with a small packet and make it bigger, by gradually surrounding it with like colors until it starts to grow.  Since packets don’t leave the screen until the player taps them, the “building block” to this technique is quite literal, sitting there staring at you (again, literally) as you play.  As for getting an Async, the nature of the move is such that most players will probably create one randomly within their first thirty minutes. Players won’t go too long without seeing something which will turn out to be very important later on (Miyamoto would be proud).  We have enough puzzle games in which pieces vanish instantly, where chain reactions occur without understanding why, and walls of text bombard you with information on combos you may never have planned.  I appreciate Async’s willingness to allow players to focus on real, genuine strategy, rather than forcing them to comprehend every item on a checklist of features.

Async Corp. offers three main modes of play, each one having a different focus.  Async mode asks you to create a giant, well-sized packet for each colored block.  You have a limited (though generous) amount of moves, but otherwise you can take as much time as you want to plan things out and think through bad situations.  Quota mode has a growing meter, which will result in a game over if it reaches the top of the screen.  Players can decrease its size by shipping packets; the larger the packet, the more you push the meter back.  Here, quick thinking is of the essence, as the meter itself will grow at an ever increasing speed.

The third mode, Zoning, is in a way a combination of the previous two.  In a reverse of Quota, shipping packets increases the size of a meter, and getting it to the top advances you to the next level.  However, every second spent not shipping a packet will cause the meter to wane.  You have to plan out your initial moves, execute them with precision, and then think on your feet to come up with enough moves to finish the job.  It is the most exciting mode of the three, though it is also the one I’m always most afraid to attempt.  I admit this is a bit silly, considering the mode has no failure state. If the meter resets to zero, you simply try again, as much as you want.

Aesthetically, Async Corp. is simple and colorful.  Lumines is a clear influence, as evidenced by the shape of the playing field, and the various colored “skins” you unlock as you play. The theme song is catchy and calm, and is a good example of how to compose a game jingle that doesn’t lose its catchiness after extended exposure.  Ironically, one of the game’s “defects” turned out to be one of my favorite features.  Due to time constraints, Async Corp. was unable to ship with Game Center integration and other social networking features.  I think this ends up being a benefit in the long run.  Over time, the game has received strong reviews and plenty of praise over Twitter.  Without achievements and the like, we can be sure that people were driven to play by Async’s sheer entertainment value, rather than because it dangled a carrot on a stick in front of them.  Furthermore, the lack of bells and whistles means the game boots up quick and keeps from distracting you.  It feels like a game, plain and simple.

Async Corp. is, without a doubt, my favorite game on iOS, and an absolute gem of a puzzler.  It is also the rare example of a modern puzzle game that takes inspiration from Tetris and the other greats, rather than trying to beat them.  By implementing a small, simple set of rules, and allowing them to build naturally into more complex situations, it winds up becoming a addictive, user-friendly, genuine puzzle game.  Not a game with an arbitrary learning curve to try and get over.  And not an IQ test either.

In other words, by learning from, not trying to outdo the greats, Async Corp. knocks on their door.  Will it be let in?  That all depends on how many people give it a chance.