The topic this week is: What is your worst gaming related injury?

Ian Y’s Take

Okay, I’ve never had a spectacular gaming injury but an interesting one does come to mind.

In my youth, there was a good couple of weeks when I was obsessed with Mechwarrior 3 for the PC and for some reason my favourite thing to do was fly around using the rocket boosters. So I designed my own mech using the lightest frame, no armour, the biggest rocket boosters and no weapons save a pitiful flamethrower. And so I spent what must have been at least six hours straight soaring through the sky with a tin can with legs. Unfortunately though the button layout was a little awkward. In order to fly, I had to mash the shift key with my pinky finger constantly. By the end of the day, the joints in my hand throbbed painfully and to this day my pinky finger clicks and lock when I move it. (For those oestelogically inclined out there that’s the joint connecting my left 5th metacarpus to my left 5th proximal phalanx)

Ian H’s Take

It was hard not to go for the obvious Mario Party stigmata that almost everyone seemed to have experience in the halcyon days of old. Thinking back on those days, though, there was a much more obvious injury that I sustained that left most of my friends and family puzzled. It wasn’t even self-inflicted.

You might guess the extent when I mention the cause. When I was young I was enamored with the Super Scope, a light gun peripheral for the Super Nintendo that was more like a sniper rifle or RPG. There was a limited selection of games, but it was something that I scrimped and saved for and managed to pick up along with a good catalog of games on the cheap. My favourites for the system were Battleclash and the sequel Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge.

After hours and hours of time poured into the latter, my cousin and I were very close to finally completing the process of eliminating all our robot oppressors. Of course, upon finishing off the final battle with a low-health last second shot, we were both elated. So much so my cousin lifted his hands into the air quickly and exclaimed “We did it!” What he didn’t notice was his hand came up right into the Super Scope that was still pressed tightly against my eye socket, causing me considerable pain and a good black ring to show off my accomplishment.

I don’t remember the end of that game very well.

Tim’s Take

Never has any video game caused me more debilitating pain than an innocent-looking arcade machine whose name I can’t remember, but shall henceforth be referred to as the Squatshooter from Hell.

Several years ago I was at my first day of a four-day festival at Darien Lake Theme Park in Western New York. Per tradition, my friends and I hit the arcade for a between-coasters break. The light gun games were the ones we tended to gravitate toward and this particular year, near House of the Dead 3 and Ninja Assault, was a new machine. A single-player game, it shared the same sort of cover mechanics as Time Crisis except instead of stomping a pedal, sensors recognized your very movements and translated them to your in-game character.

As a fan of light gun titles, I couldn’t pass up giving this game a try; and got into it I did. It wasn’t long before I was quickly weaving and bending down away from flurries of virtual bullets like a master. The fun of it all actually distracted me from the fact I was making what must have looked like demonic yoga poses and\ for just how long I was holding them — all within the dastardly schemes of the Squatshooter from Hell, I’m sure.

Still possessing an adrenaline rush from the experience, I didn’t begin feeling the pain in my legs until 30 minutes later. With the pain, came the stiffening of muscles. And
then the hobbling; oh Lord, the hobbling. The Squatshooter from Hell had aged me into an old man in need of a walker. For the rest of the festival, I couldn’t even navigate the two steps of our camper without yelping.

Next year, the Squatshooter from Hell had vanished from the arcade, obviously slipping through the trans-dimensional ether to find a new place to inflict its suffering.

Phoenix’s friendly(ish) rival, Miles Edgeworth, has proven a popular character with many fans — some in a slightly-to-very disturbing manner. It is no surprise, then, that when creators chose to mix up the playstyle of the series a bit, they gave players a chance to don the wine-colored suit of the pompously proper prosecutor. The result is a game that greatly improves certain aspects of the series while at times failing to live up to aspects of others.

The crux of the Ace Attorney series is to solve sets of crimes by gathering evidence at scenes and finding the flaws and contradictions in people’s testimonies in court. However, whereas the first four games (we’re including Apollo Justice, here) stuck largely to strictly separate investigation and courtroom phases, Ace Attorney Investigations ditches the standard courtroom procedure and blends the interrogations of characters into the fieldwork.

Some field work reveals a dead body. Not liking where that blood is coming from...

Investigating scenes is made extraordinarily more fun and accessible thanks to a change of environmental format. Whereas previous games had you tapping through what were basically static snapshots of rooms, overlooked objects at times keeping you from moving forward, scenes are now represented as small stages in which you can move a sprite of Edgeworth to approach pieces and other characters directly. There are still some static images to peruse, but the game subtly tells you when you’ve found all you’ve needed to. It feels much more natural — like you’re working with the world instead of fighting it to get back to the courtroom — and the sprites make for a charming, 16-bit Capcom-y impression.

Each main character in the series has a special talent that adds another level to the play and Edgeworth’s Logic Mode provides a rather simple yet satisfying new puzzle element. As you proceed, various facts and questions are stored in whatever part of Edgeworth’s brain is not filled with “Steel Samurai” fanboyisms (series inside joke). Eventually, you are required to link these elements together to unlock new lines of thought and move forward. It’s an effective way of keeping various questions in the back of your own mind without being heavy-handed about it.

Can I please see your badge, sir?

The series is known for its mix of memorable and quirkily-named characters, and the fact this installment is no different is both to its benefit and detriment. Each story allots you a partner to tag along that you can talk to at any time, although they are mostly there to provide dialog. For fans, series regulars Detective Gumshoe and Franziska von Karma return, each providing effective foils to Edgeworth’s straightman routine in their own special ways, and new character Kay Faraday is a spunky young thief-in-training who fills the Maya role well without actually being Maya. Other recurring characters appear, but they tend to either feel a bit contrived — as if the developers just wanted an excuse to see these characters as sprites — or have been so overworked in previous games that they’re turning a bit dull. Brief cameos are one thing, but making these characters significant parts of the plot is getting old. I won’t say who these characters are, but anyone who knows the series will instantly know the kinds of things they will say and do and it can takes away from the suspense of the story once the novelty wears off. Thankfully, there are still plenty of fresh characters to interact with.

The confrontations made with characters maintain the same format as the courtroom scenes in earlier games, but the change of environment has a tangible effect on the mood of these mental war games. Previous games’ courtroom scenes often attain a quick back-and-forth nature between the main character, witness and prosecutor, which proves tense and entertaining. With the battles more “out in the open” now, there’s a certain drop in the drama. They feel slower and more drawn out, with surrounding characters frequently butting in to speak their own minds. This beefs up the story, but is it worth the drop in the high-stakes “action”? Honestly, I was a bit disappointed in this regard.

Ah, some familiar territory for the series

The plot, however, which runs solidly through five separate cases, is very good and well worth diving into. The exposure of contradictions also seems to make sense much more consistently than it does in previous titles — I didn’t find myself hung up as often trying to figure out what the designers were trying to go for. The localization is once again excellent, filled with in-jokes and a real sense of differentiation between characters simply through their text. Unfortunately, like the other titles, there is the rare typo that detracts from the flow of the game. Please give me your scripts, Capcom. I’ll proofread them for free!

So what I’m trying to say is…
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth serves as more of a remix compared to previous titles rather than a stark departure. The revamped investigation system breathes new life into the series, but it’s still a shame that the confrontation scenes, while solidly constructed, don’t quite reach the frenzied crescendos of a great courtroom battle. A new game that combines Ace Attorney Investigations’ free range sleuthing with older titles’ courtroom tugs-of-war would be phenomenal. Fans of the series should still find this a worthy purchase and it’s not a bad spot for newcomers to pick up and see what the general scope of the series is about —although they will certainly understand more from playing the first three games.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is developed and published by Capcom and available for the Nintendo DS for $29.99 (USD). Review based on completion of all five cases in about 15-18 hours. Soiled cravats: one.

There are bears outside.

Games discussed include Modern Warfare 2, White Knight Chronicles, Heavy Rain and the demo for Yakuza 3.

Questions, comments and concerns can be addressed to podcast@leftstickright.com.

After spending some more time with the game coming up with some positives about the game felt only fair, as there were times when even having people around watching they were intrigued and entertained. Parts of the game actually feel true to the poem as strange as that sounds, and there are some very human moments in the story that seem to be rather absent in most of the over-the-top action games. There are pieces of the game that are easy to like and things that other developers can take note of for the genre.

Chastity

Dante’s Inferno does a good job of resolving itself from the sins of the beginning. The game may have started poorly for me, as it progressed I felt more immersed in the environments, more aligned with the backgrounds and motivations of the characters and had a much better understanding of the morals that the game was attempting to communicate. This is especially present in the character Dante, as hidden behind all the violence is a semblance of self-discovery and absolution for the sins of the past. It was a surprising amount of poignant story telling that I did not expect and actually lifting my experience to a point where I wanted to see more.

One of the other elements that surprised me about the game, given the overtly sexual content in places, was that there was no interact sex scene or game element to that particular act. There was an element of taste in how it was handled in some of the animated cutscenes, so that was a welcome amount of restraint.

Even Death is no match for a pointy object to the head

Temperance

The pacing with the game is refreshing through most of the levels. There is a steady progression of difficulty as the descent into Hell becomes more intense and obviously moves well with the increase in powers that you will receive throughout the game. That and the gradual difficulty increase of the types of enemies and the amount you encounter down the line never feels like you are being pressed for the sake of pumping up the difficulty and feels like it continually offers a challenge where you can identify specific improvements. This is also enhanced by a constant wide vision of the environments that allow you to see more of the enemies you encounter and a lock-on system for ranged attacks (at least on Zealot mode) that will help you identify where your attacks must be directed outside of your view.

While Dante’s Inferno contains its fair share of quick-time events, it doesn’t intentionally throw you off with mixing up buttons for times when you miss one or cause you massive damage for enemies you failed to finish off. The button combination often make sense, and with some of the characters a finishing move is satisfying all the way up to the end of the game, utilizing quick shifts of the analog stick to dispatch demons. It never feels quite overwhelmed by moments where you must press a specific combination of buttons or die, either, and they ensure that a letterbox visual cue will let you know that you will likely need to have your fingers ready.

Charity

For those that may have missed an opportunity to hit a power by a small amount of souls, the developers have seen fit to provide a sampler of their downloadable content for the game with a taste of 500 souls. This can be a godsend for some of the later parts of the game where you would like just a few more to clear out an area of enemies more effectively, or for taking down a boss that you know a specific skill set would easily dispatch. You likely won’t need to worry too much about this, however, as most of the good attacks come in the middle of the road for each of the Holy and Unholy streams, and the game ensures that by the end your first play through you will have acquired more than enough to max out at least one of the sides.

Once completed, you are also welcome to play through a second time to grab any missed items and fill up your magic on the opposite side of your first play. They also unlock a bonus mode called The Gates of Hell that allow you to run through room after room of enemies, the challenge continually increasing and your time constantly ticking down. It’s a great bonus mode that I was not expecting and had a lot of fun playing through to really test the strength and endurance of my attacks and acquired skills.

Diligence

Throughout my experience with the game, even through my second time through, I felt that I was being encouraged to carefully practice the techniques that I had learned. There is a lot to be said about the fundamentals of the game, and while it is not laden with a combo system for you to memorize, it does ensure that the basics of blocking and knowing when to work a ranged attack versus a close attack is valuable. Even in rooms with enemies you can easily handle, it is not difficult to be overwhelmed by specific enemy types that have special attacks meant to stop you from simply throwing around a single move. This means that knowing when to block and the timing of special enemies is critical even when the situation may not be dire. Without a steady stream of fonts in some areas to restore health, it is important to keep that in mind.

This is coupled with a surprising emphasis on hints rather than automatically suggesting an easier mode for difficult sections. Only once during the game was I prompted to try it at a lessened difficulty, and I chose to ignore that suggestion and rely on the tips I was getting upon each restart to help me progress. While these tutorials could have often come sooner, it is a relief to learn some of the tactics when they matter most.

Whoever that guy is behind Beatrice, he does not look happy

Patience

Despite having a limitation on the amount of enemies that are on screen at any time due to the diligence of keeping it at 60 frames per second, I was still made to feel challenged and surrounded through many parts of the game. There are even some large scale bosses that handle just as smoothly, even while battles are commencing in the foreground. The game takes its time with the escalation of the battles, as well, as most encounters are broken into stages of enemies depending on how many you’ve already destroyed.

The concept of redemption is pretty heavy throughout the game and it is certainly a welcome addition. With a game that is set in Hell, it seems that it manages to push through a theme of forgiveness by enabling you to absolve the sins of the set-piece characters through each circle. It is mostly symbolic, but each time feels like a breath of air when you are smothered by so much angst, blood and gore. It is also the struggle of the protagonist in the game that emphasizes that theme, even if you chose to go the unholy route of punishment over redemption.

Kindness

While this may not seem like a benefit to those more prone to a steep difficulty curve or significant amount of mastery required in a hack-and-slash style game, Dante’s Inferno does an excellent job of establishing the Zealot (or Normal) setting as one that is palatable throughout. Many games in this genre have a tendency to promote a certain difficulty level which can throw off even some of the most seasoned veterans and then suggest the lower levels. There are parts in the game that may seem tempting to subvert by dropping down to easy, but Normal feels like a standard experience and the higher levels offer a significantly greater challenge that can be easily offset by a single playthrough to get more familiar with the controls and gather more powers.

The control scheme also favours the player, keeping it simple throughout and offering a wide variety of attacks through simple button presses as modifiers. Light attack, heavy attack and ranged attack are all utilized individually for various powers and enhancements, and it doesn’t feel like a significant amount of memorization is required to find the right combo. Most of the work is done for you in that each attack has its own set of abilities associated to it and you can build upon whichever suits you most.

Humility

The character of Dante in the game initially feels a bit hollow and makes for a terrible first impression. While the demeanor of the character does not falter throughout most of the experience, he does demonstrate hubris and even elements of selflessness in his interactions with some of the folks he encounters in Hell. Devotion to Beatrice and disdain for the sins of others eventually lead to moments of clarity in which the character owns up to faults and actually seems a bit more human as a result. It’s at these times which the game feels like it is an adaptation of the poem rather than a game simply utilizing the name and setting.

I know English majors would like lose their lunch throughout the course of the game and maybe by the end of this sentence, but there are a lot of elements that feel very true to the poem by Dante Alighieri. The depictions of the various circles of Hell can actually be rather disturbing, and not in the traditional gross-out sense but rather the environments themselves, which often feel like a good visual realization of the descriptions in the various Cantos. There is even an accompanying Virgil, who spouts lines from the poem to describe the encounters throughout the circles and are a great enhancement to set the tone of what is to come each time. My favourite moments in the game were often just entering one of the circles and getting an eerie feeling knowing what was to come based on having read the poem. There is a lot of Inferno in this game, and they make sure that you know it quite regularly.

Dante’s Inferno was developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. It is available for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 (version played). Game completed in roughly 8 hours with the Holy path maxed out.

This week we welcome Justin Amirkhani of General Games for a special guest appearance.

The topic this week is: What is the biggest limitation on the future of downloadable games? What will halt an online only future?

Justin’s Take

I think a lot of the time it’s easy for us to forget that a majority of people still buy all their games at traditional brick and mortar stores. Those of us who choose to immerse ourselves in gaming have these blinders up that keep us from seeing what’s really going on with the average person. Just because we, as early adopters and alpha users, have all agreed that digital distribution is the way of the future doesn’t mean that the rest of the world has.

Talking to any casual game player you’ll find that there’s an inherent lack of trust in the intangible. There’s a mistrust in the concept of paying for a theoretical item with real money. At the center of this mistrust are two key issues, people don’t like the idea of not owning their collections and the lack of value added to digital versions.

Compare prices for a digital download and a retail copy of any game and you’ll find that a majority of the time they’re the same price, which makes no sense. If players are forced to hand over the security and reliability of a real-world product for bits and bytes they shouldn’t pay the same for less. This is a fundamental flaw in the current digital distribution model and one that won’t be remedied as long as publishers can sell the less of a product at a wider margin.

Similarly when you buy a physical copy of a game you own it and it’s on that disc and every time you put it in your console it will play. When you buy a digital game your ownership and ability to use that game is entirely dependent on whether or not the company is still operating, if they’re still supporting the game and whether or not you have enough licenses left for a re-install. For the average consumer there’s no way you can trade in the reliability of a retail copy at the same price.

Tim’s Take

You had to get me started, didn’t you. The biggest obstacle to downloadable games at this point in time is the fact that a significant amount of the market still does not own the capability to download the games!

Broadband access runs rampant in urban and suburban areas, but there are still people who have chosen not to purchase it, and many rural places have not been granted the cable or lines necessary to even consider it. Data released February from a U.S. Commerce Department survey states that around 35 percent of homes and 40 percent of people in the country do not have broadband. This includes people who simply don’t want it, people who find it too expensive and those for whom it’s not a possibility at all.

Numbers do look viable for downloadable games as a whole: 66 percent of urban homes and 54 percent of rural homes were subscribed to broadband in October 2009, according to the survey, and in the key market of people ages 18-24 a whopping 81 percent had access. Even so, for the future of downloadable games not to stagnate, broadband must be made available to more homes through lower prices and wider access; because even though it’s possible for 60 percent of people to download your game, 100 percent can still get their hands on a hard copy. Further complicating matters is that if people are given access to broadband, it has to be the right kind for downloadable games if they are to also be played online. A lot of rural people have satellite internet because it’s the only available option. It will let them download a game, but has such inferior upload speeds that anything played over the connection would be a lagfest.

Unfortunately, broadband access is largely a political and financial issue, and I haven’t seen game companies lobbying for it. I did, however, call up the local DSL provider in my area, Verizon, and asked them when they would ever bring DSL to my area. The representative on the other end of the line cheerfully stated that it is the mission of the company to grant high-speed internet access to everyone under their coverage area. And you know what? I believe her!

…Oh, wait. That was 4 years ago.

Ian Y’s Take

The biggest limitations to downloadable games are that they are completely digital. Compared to the status quo, purchasing games without any physical media has its disadvantages.

Firstly, downloads lack don’t elicit the same kind of emotions that tangible products do. Having something to hold in your hand provides a certain sense of reassurance that you didn’t just drop 50 bucks on something totally ephemeral. Plus, there is the entire aspect of games asa collectible that is otherwise circumvented.

Secondly and more importantly, digital only games distribution creates several practical issues that primarily hurt the consumer. For example, it makes selling second-hand/renting and lending games virtually impossible. Without the physical media, there’s really no practical way to distribute games to others past the point of purchase unless you plan on carrying around your console’s hard-drive around with you to a friend’s house.

And then there’s the problem of storage. I don’t know about you, but my game library far outstretches the available space on any of my consoles. Even with upgrades, I have more games thancan be practically stored digitally. At the moment the industry wide solution to this is to track your purchases on servers so that you can delete games and re-download them later. But even this fix has major pitfalls associated with it, most notably publishers’ propensity to cut-off digital service whenever they feel the need to. That massive digital only game library you’ve spent so much money on will disappear the minute your console manufacturer decides to shut-down it’s servers, vaporizing any games not saved on your HD.

Ian H’s Take

Back when I was using the Royal We (even though it was mostly just Royal Me) I wrote about the limitations of the next-generation of consoles and a few of the points I mentioned in there still stand to me as elements that can bring digital distribution to a screeching halt. The big one for me is the limitations of service in many areas, but not just in the actual availability of broadband. While I think that in itself is an issue, it will eventually come to a head. The most startling development in the world of the internet is the lack of malleability on the part of the service providers and the amount of content they are prepared to provide.

Take for example a good ol’ Canadian example of Rogers Communications. They were on display at this year’s Fan Expo in Toronto talking up their 50 Mbps service geared specifically towards gamers so that you can game harder, play faster and shout louder. Yet, this service was hampered by packet shaping and bandwidth caps that maxed out at a number that would easily clear you a few game downloads every week or so, not including the bandwidth of your normal internet use. 175 GB was the official number and while that can seem like a boatload of gigs, considering a Blu-Ray disc now can run up to 40 GB it doesn’t seem like a lot if you are picturing a nearly minted online exclusive distribution system.

The other trend I’m noticing now that I did not mention is the splintering of the online markets. While Steam, a distribution and DRM software championed by the creators of the Half Life series, is oft-considered the de facto standard of the digital marketplace, there are quite a lot of other services around and even many publishers that will not utilize that particular system in order to better control their user-base.

Lastly, visibility is a matter of stark importance that rarely seems to be addressed when it comes to online games. Microsoft’s dashboard can lead you to a world of independently created and published games, some of which are absolute gems, but actually navigating to them in a sea of content is extremely difficult. While opening up the marketplace with digital services, it also causes the virtual shelf space to look a bit crowded at times and navigating through that crowd is not always easy. Retailers have a system in place to manage such things currently, and this is something that is improving as time goes on, but the difference with retail shops and digital shops is that retail eventually dispatches with their copies with little argument. Removing digital content seems to create much more a stir, so online shops end up acting as some sort of Smithsonian as well as a platform for the hottest new things. It’s not easy to pick apart as a layman and I imagine as the amount of content grows that may continue.

Games discussed include Dante’s Inferno, Heavy Rain and White Knight Chronicles.

Comments, questions and complaints can be sent to podcast@leftstickright.com

The topic this week is: With video game sales dropping early this year, have they reached reached their apex already in terms of hitting the mass market? Have game sales reached their peak?

Ian Y’s Take

Sure, video game sales have been less than stellar as of late. But, as is the hip thing to do nowadays, I blame the economy. Sales haven’t peaked, in theory there’s a lot of room for growth. We in the gaming community sometimes forget just how small the game industry is compared to other media/entertainment outlets. It’s easy to find people who never play video games but I can guarantee that those same people watch TV at home, see movies in the theater or listen to music on the radio or a MP3 player.

Games simply haven’t yet reached the level of ubiquity that other forms of entertainment have and there’s no reason to expect them to. Consider this: games are competing against forms of media, like TV, that have at least a half a century head start. And, if anthropologists are correct, music has been around for as long as human culture itself.

But if industry intentions and demographic trends are any indication, video games are slowly but surely marching towards consumer critical mass. So long as developers keep making games to appeal to larger audiences, the marketing get larger and the community is able to shed its geek/shut-in stereotypes, in the long term, sales have no where to go but up.

Tim’s Take

With the holdover of many games past last holiday season, I thought the beginning of the year would be a pretty ripe time for sales. Now that they’ve shown to have dropped off (with the potential exception of Mass Effect 2), it does seem difficult that sales through the rest of the year will crest again — with Holiday 2010 the only reasonable contender unless a Modern Warfare 3 causes many companies to soil themselves again.

Don’t make it a sure bet just yet, though. Being the Nintendo-centric guy, I have to speak of the company’s propensity for dropping massive titles whenever they very well please. Mario Galaxy 2 seems likely to come out this year and has the potential to be pretty big, and if that’s combined with a Zelda release in 2010, you’ll have numbers out the wazoo. Also – and yes, I’m serious – don’t count out what the potential Wii Vitality Sensor release might do among the casual market.

And let’s not count out any Halos and surprises companies may have up their sleeves. With the proper timing, a big Nintendo drop surrounded by some AAA titles could create a period just as good or better than we’ve seen so far.

Ian H’s Take

I do not believe that video game sales have reached their highest numbers, but I am wondering if they are finally reaching market saturation in certain areas. At least with this generation, there is a downward trend for the previously number one console and an upward trend for the worst. December 2009 turned out to be the best month ever, but January 2010 saw weak sales even compared to an already weak 2009 showing. I’m not sure anyone believes that everyone in the world will become a consumer for games, and I do imagine there are still people that can be reached given the right product, but eventually the people who are accustomed to the standard retail game thoroughfare will be reached to a point where the increments will be based on market sizes increasing and not better penetration of existing markets.

Basically, I think that the store shelves will still see a steady increase, as the entertainment medium still continues to mature, but I think the big leap this generation into the homes of a wider install base will not necessarily be repeated any time soon. Nintendo is reeling from lower sales (still the best in the industry) and it doesn’t seem like there is any move to start reaching the system out to any wider of an audience. I think the big growth will continue to be in the mobile sector, as well as the free-to-play online sector which is still growing exponentially across the worlds and makes significant income for companies in Asian markets. Those markets have yet to experience their full potential, and if there is anywhere in the gaming industry that is going to blossom the most over the next year or so it will be there. Micro-transactions have just begun in North America and do not expect them to stop any time soon.

It’s a common phenomenon in exercise: people feel motivated to purchase some big new contraption with goals of slimming down and living healthier, enjoy it for a while and then turn it into a clothes hangar after boredom or a sense of futility sets in. It’s not something you should feel too badly about, but if you feel like you may be one of those people, do you really want to plunk down $90 for something that will start collecting dust in a month or two?

Thankfully, there are a glut of other fitness-centric games available for the Wii at cheaper prices, many that take advantage of the Balance Board but do not require it. If you want to try a console-based fitness regime but are not very confident in your willpower, why not consider one of these alternatives. That way, if you find you want more and pick up Wii Fit, you can apply the Balance Board into your original game or games, too.

For a potential starting point, I’ve taken a look at some Wii fitness titles currently on the market. EA has its Sports Active series with the original Personal Trainer ($59.99) and add-on More Workouts ($29.99), Ubisoft has the boxing-centric Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout ($19.99) and Konami has the, er… walk-centric Walk It Out ($29.99). I’ve placed my experiences with each title in a side-by-side-by-side comparison to aid any potential decisions of these or similar games. Keep in mind these are not opinions from a fitness expert, but your average Joe pudgy gamer.

Some mini-games included, but anything that gets you moving is good!

The Game Plays Like…

EA Sports Active

A magic, all-around workout video whose routines can be switched up every time you use it. Routines focus largely on squatting, lunging and work with a resistance band in the form of direct repetitions or sports-like activities.

Cardio Workout

Guitar Hero with fists. Routines demand throwing different punches and dodge maneuvers in rhythm to ultimately build combinations. As the name implies, focus is also on constant leg motion and maintaining an elevated heart rate.

Walk It Out

Dance Dance Revolution for Dummies, requiring you to march to the rhythm of songs to move about a virtual world in paces ranging from a leisurely stroll to a light jog. Left foot, right foot — it never becomes any harder.

You Will Need…

EA Sports Active

A resistance band and a leg strap to hold the nunchuck for certain workouts. Both come packaged with Personal Trainer or separately as an “Accessory Pack.” More Workouts does not come with these items, but includes a sample of pages from one of fitness guru Bob Greene’s books; the perfect size for setting a bowl of ice cream upon. The Balance Board is optional.

Cardio Workout

Either a remote with nunchuck or a remote for each hand. I don’t have to tell you which setup is better and less likely to cause you to strangle yourself, do I? The Balance Board is optional.

Walk It Out

A remote and nunchuck, although the game will also accept use of the Balance Board or a Wii DDR dance mat.

A list of the stats that Walk It Out tracks. Looking good!

It Looks…

EA Sports Active

Clean and relatively well detailed, with workouts set in open, pleasant outdoor scenes — ones you likely don’t have if you bought these games to begin with. The characters look more realistic, as well.

Cardio Workout

Gold’s Gym in name only. It’s pretty clear that the license was tacked on after the game was made, unless I missed something that says chibi-ish characters and the ability to have green hair are trademark demands of Gold’s Gym’s clientele.

Walk It Out

Geared more toward families and kids, as evidenced by the opening video featuring an agonizingly happy and whitebread real-life token family and disturbingly cheerful, real-life Stepford fitness expert. Survive that and you enter a relatively safe and attractive chibi-ish world.

The Controls…

EA Sports Active

Tend to work well but are not perfect. There will be times the games do not recognize your motion, sometimes leaving you in a somewhat painful and compromised position until they catch up with you or ask you to try again. My gym-addict friend told me that holding such positions are still really good for me, so I hope he appreciates it the next time I meet him and hold my knee against his solar plexus.

Cardio Workout

Will feel unresponsive now and then, leading to missed punches or moves when you don’t think you deserved them. There’s never really any penalty or holdup for missing anything, though, so it doesn’t feel as frustrating.

Walk It Out

Seem to depend on your pockets if you are using the remote and nunchuck. You are asked to pocket the nunchuck to register your steps, but I’ve found it doesn’t tend to read as well if it’s flopping around in a deep pocket. Wearing pants with shallow pockets or — even better — the EA Sports Active leg strap is the way to go, but even then not every step will register. It still doesn’t seem too much of a problem, though, if you still have good rhythm.

A bit more cartoon than you may expect for a Gold's Gym experience

The Music…

EA Sports Active

Has a large, varied blend of generic rock, pop, urban and world instrumental tracks that I found quite upbeat and fitting. You can skip tracks from within the middle of a workout and set up your own playlists, although I’ve never found a track I disliked enough to bother.

Cardio Workout

Is a MIDIland and feels relatively cheap. Most of the tracks work well enough to get into rhythm, with one large exception being one of the most pitiful
renditions of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, the game loves to use this track during mini-games, but you can choose what you want to hear elsewhere.

Walk It Out

Will likely make or break the game for you. It’s a pop-heavy lineup of well-known and not-so-well-known tracks that you would expect from any DDR game. There are tons of tracks to pick up and play as you see fit, but you will still likely either love, tolerate or hate.

The Trainers…

EA Sports Active

Tend to be responsive and offer good advice, but are so encouraging sometimes in Personal Trainer they almost feel patronizing. This seems to be dialed down in More Workouts.

Cardio Workout

Are all basically similar: not unpleasant but can sound a little robotic telling you what to do in the routines. Bob scares me, though.

Walk It Out

Are like night and day. Warren is cool. Nancy is the airheaded princess of the harpies.

I don't know about you, but this song definitely makes me want to walk

The Incentives…

EA Sports Active

Try to coax you into overall healthy choices by asking you every day how motivated you feel, how much water you’ve had and what kinds of foods you’ve eaten. It’s helpful if you’re truly motivated that way; otherwise it’s too easy to ignore or even cheat.

Cardio Workout

Are the basic “earn gold, buy new clothes” and unlockable-with-time mini-games.

Walk It Out

Are surprisingly motivating. As you walk through the initially barren world, you can click on capsules littering the landscape to build the environment around you, earn additional music tracks and open up alternate routes. Each capsule costs a certain amount of points acquired through steps and up to three can be “banked” at a time at the top of the screen. That means as long as you keep clicking on capsules, there’s always something asking you for just a 100 or so steps more. It’s amazing how far this can take you.

An Average Workout Takes…

EA Sports Active

20-30 minutes

Cardio Workout

About 20 minutes

Walk It Out

However long you want to keep moving

While the perfectly white furniture and rug is not including, the resistance bands and leg strap can certainly help

After the First Day…

EA Sports Active

You may feel ready to die. That means it’s working. Seriously, though, it will start to feel easier.

Cardio Workout

Your arms and legs may be a little sore.

Walk It Out

You’ll be surprised how far you actually walked.

You Will Feel Like a Complete Dork When…

EA Sports Active

You realize that the best way to keep your leg strap from slipping off is to don tightly-fitting lower-wear. I won’t tell you what I use, but it’s not pretty.

Cardio Workout

Someone catches you performing one of your combos in the mirror of your workplace restroom.

Walk It Out

Someone walks in on you marching in your room to The Black-eyed Peas. But, as Fergie says, you’ll be too “three thousand and eight” to care. …No, I don’t
know what that means, either.

For Added Challenge…

EA Sports Active

Buy a stronger resistance band.

Cardio Workout

Buy some wrist weights

Walk It Out

Chew gum at the same time?

Nothing like a good scenic workout to get you pumped

Overall, if you’re looking for an all-around fitness program, it’s hard not to recommend EA Sports Active. Of the three games analyzed here, it offers the best agenda for extensive fitness, including more core and strength-related activities whereas the other two games focus mainly on cardio and endurance. EA Sports Active will require more commitment of will than the other titles, however, and if you don’t think you can realistically do that, it may be more reasonable to invest in one of the other cheaper titles. Movement of any type is still a good thing.

And if you know you’re not in great health, please talk to your doctor. They can help you decide what kind of activity would be of greatest benefit to you.

As for games, we take some time to talk about White Knight Chronicles as Ian readies his review and Dante’s Inferno in the wake of my two-part series on the good and bad parts of the game.

Comments, questions or concerns can be sent along to podcast@leftstickright.com.

To break it down as simply as I can, Dante’s Inferno is a third-person, combo-driven action game where your objective is to walk into a room filled with bad guys and beat them all senseless until they stop appearing and you can progress. You assume the role of Dante, a crusader who fights of Death himself to return to his loved one only to find her brutally murdered and her soul stolen away by Lucifer himself. You must throw yourself into the depths of Hell in order to free her and preserve her innocence. Enemies relinquish souls when vanquished and those souls act as currency for the game with which you may purchase new attacks and defensive powers. The game throws in a moral choice element, allowing you to punish or absolve your enemies and gain experience in either holy or unholy powers, which vary slightly and allow you to purchase different types of upgrades depending on how much experience you gain on either side.

My final moments in the game lead me to a particular revelation about the good and bad elements of the game, of which I found in about equal measure, and how they ironically aligned with seven of the sins that would lead to an eternity spent in this forsaken place.

Your entrance-way into the bowels of Hell. Quaint.

Lust

With the sin that shares the name with the section of the game that I did not enjoy, Lust is a demonstration of what is wrong with the concept of the game as a whole. Dante’s Inferno does itself no favours as to the level of maturity in the title by taking the most basest elements of each circle of Hell and pushing the envelope in terms of the content therein. Each circle introduces a new type of enemy, and Lust proceeds to introduce you to belly-dancer inspired enemies that moan not unlike the soundtrack to a cheap pornography and proceed to attack you with tentacles they shoot out of their lower lady-parts. That and they are topless, which I guess is a standard thing for the nether regions of the Earth. It escalates from there all the way to the boss, who takes up a large portion of the screen with her upper lady-parts and subsequently can summon demon children a la Limbo from her mammary glands. It was weird and almost embarrassing to play.

One of the more eye-rolling components of the game for me was seeing these enemies pop up continuously throughout the rest of the game, as well. It felt like there was only a small amount of enemies, and seeing these ones pop up in circles where they clearly did not belong did not help the continuity of the experience.

Gluttony

One of the elements a game takes in over abundance is consistency in the visuals. This isn’t always a bad thing, but in this particular case it feels like the game has suffered for the sake of making everything happen very smoothly. If there is a gluttonous aspect to this game it is certainly in the framerate, which runs steady at the detriment of the amount of enemies that you can face at any given time, the amount of things that can happen on the screen and both feel like the pull away from the epic overtones of the entire experience. Where its peers are mired in over-sized boss fights that play out like battles against titans (sometimes literally), the game feels hampered by its desire to soak in as much frames as it can. This also results in a lack of good, up close and personal framed shots of take downs as the detail feels startlingly not there. You are in a Hell devoid of much at all, besides the flailing of arms, the same lifeless looking corpses and the moaning of the damned.

Another element the game takes too much of is being controversial for the sake of it, diverting from the faithfulness to the poem down to the lowest common denominator of breasts, vaginas and penises for the sake of it. While I understand that Lust is supposed to represent a life of longing and directionless wandering due to the constant pull of sexual pleasure, it certainly does not mean that the entirety of the circle should be spent watching topless women dance about and shove demonic lady-parts at you. That combined with the fact that unbaptized babies, who occupy Limbo along with virtuous pagans, are bulbous-headed monsters with scythes for hands that cry violently as they attack you. Limbo is supposed to be the most pleasant part of Hell, if one can think of such a thing, and seeing humans reduced to mindless, violent lackeys based on what sins they have committed above (of which the least interesting is Violence, apparently) feels cheap.

Greed

The first experience I had with the game was the PlayStation Network getting a work out as the game signed me on to the EA Servers and checked the Store for any available downloadable content. The game has and is going to have more things for you to buy, and it makes sure you know it quickly. It was fairly distracting and a bit odd being able to sign in to the Store and buy in game currency for actual money. Also utilizing developer videos included in the game and large visual cues on the main screen to promote downloadable content for later in the year comes off as a bit distracting.

Visually the game has a tendency to approach bright lights and grandeur with too much vigour. Everything must be lit up and fiery, and while many of the circles of Hell seem to carry along a terrifying familiarity with the themes and approach of the original poem, others simply are grandiose at a detriment. Greed is especially this way, as the more modest description in Alighieri’s poem of men thrusting bags of gold at one another is replaced by another fiery pit where molten gold takes the place of fire or pitch. Where many elements of the level design can feel inspired, it makes the entire package almost seem cheapened in its basest interpretation of what greed embodies.

The power of Christ compels you...to DIE!

Sloth

While the polish on the game is fairly evident from the amount of detail in the world design, there are portions of the game that feel like they could have used a few more eyes and a bit more work. This is evident for me in the checkpoints, which are often misplaced and infrequent to a point where a simple misstep can see you performing a laundry list of menial tasks in order to return to the point at which you faltered. There is no autosaving of skills once you have purchased them, meaning if you happen to assign a skill based on acquiring a certain number of souls and then return to the game only to fall down a pit you must not only traverse that environment again but reassign all the skills. It feels sloppy, and meant that I would often forget that I didn’t have abilities assigned until I was already in the heat of battle. This is exacerbated by the seemingly random decision of what cliffs you can jump off and what you can not, as some environments will allow you to simply walk off and die instantly, while others coddle you and ensure this doesn’t happen. It feels disjointed, and there is never really an identifiable visual cue as to when you may end up falling to your doom.

There is a point in the game where you can be attacked by enemies for an infinite amount of time. This can be exploited, as well, providing you a large cache of holy or unholy powers, and based on the point of the game it occurs in the enemies are fairly easy and it feels like a tacked on element of play. This is outside the Malebolge challenges, which also provide a similar opportunity, but it is moments like this in the game that break the continuity and the standards that the rest of the experience has laid out that when you defeat X number of enemies they stop coming. It feels untested and almost rushed in in some places.

Wrath

Without trying to stretch the metaphor I have going here too far, it does feel like the game had some sort of anamosity towards me. It spent very little time teaching me things, and to be fair it didn’t feel like I needed a lot of strategy to make it to the end of the game on Zealot save for a few minor stumbles. The points where the game really digs in its heels and refuses to let you coast is the Boss Fights, which feel unnecessarily difficult and reliant on your ability to simply spam a specific attack and dodge incessantly. My first experience with this was Lust and I was worried that all bosses would be plagued with the game “unmovable object” syndrome followed by unblock-able attacks. My worries were well founded, as this trend continues right to the end when you face off against you-know-who and his dangling man-parts who effectively deals a shed load of horrific attacks that you can not avoid without considerable difficulty, and who never wavers even if you are throwing just about everything you have at him.

The translation of the poem as to the depiction of the Devil aside, it’s this torturous break of difficulty that makes the game less fun. Not that I do not enjoy a challenge, it just felt like less of a challenge than a chore, and combined with the fact that most of the main enemies have similarly unblock-able attacks it makes the game a bit of a crap shoot as to whether or not you can keep your combos going. And, on that note, there are challenges shaped around the game mechanics at each of the Malebolges of the eighth circle that range from dead easy to evil. One of note is keeping up a combo through your assault on a small group, where two of the enemies you face have the ability to begin an attack that you can not stop and they are not susceptible to damage during that time. Meaning any combo you had going is now shot and you have to complete the challenge over again. This is not optional. You can not skip this. You die. You die and then you start over until you die again and start over and die again.

Envy

One of the greatest sins of the game is the desire it seems to have to borrow from what every other game with a similar play style has. Most of them come off as rather cosmetic, but the way in which you interact with objects seems heavily borrowed and turned up a notch unnecessarily. The health/mana/soul fountains that are relatively prevalent in the game require you to go up to them and hit a button repeatedly, similar to how most other games in the genre handle the mechanic minus the repetition. That combined with the moral choices, leveling up, upgrade system and hidden collectibles, it feels like a mish-mash of ideas that almost come as a detriment to the combat in the game.

Press square to make die. I've seen this before.

Pride

Evident from the developer videos and the fact that every scene removed from the gameplay oozes with machismo, it seems as if the story of the game takes itself far too seriously for what it initially seems to be. The concept of “pushing the envelop” seems to have taken a precedence over subtlety when it comes to how the characters, levels, enemies and story is portrayed and it feels sometimes like it simply the developer is demonstrating that they can do it. While it is not uncommon for a creator to take pride in what they’ve done, and for that to show through, there are a lot of missteps taken because of it which are somewhat corrected through a series of well designed aspects within the game itself. It does feel as if it ended up getting the better of them, though, with even the aforementioned Devil’s privates being so prominently on display (something they discussed at length during one of the videos included on the disc) unnecessarily to show of the edgy-style of the game.

There are a lot of great elements that can be shown off in the game, and oddly enough it comes through in the middle of the game where most games lose their steam only to try and reclaim it at the end. Dante’s personal struggles with his sins are a poignant interpretation of the elements of the poem, but when the game loses its subtlety and gives the characters so much gusto that it takes away all empathy, it diminishes the work that was put into to those smaller pieces.

Dante’s Inferno was developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. It is available for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 (version played). Game completed in roughly 8 hours with the Holy path maxed out. Countless babies with scythes for hands witnessed with a terrible cringe.