Daily News Spin — July 31, 2001 (Tuesday)

Max Payne reviewed

We don't normally link to reviews on other sites, but this Eurogamer review is quite entertaining. It's written in the tough-guy voice that the game employs.

But just when you thought you had reached the deepest depths of horror it suddenly got worse. A maze of rusty containers, a factory where molten metal boiled and bubbled, a secret underground lab full of dead scientists and trigger happy marines, the laser trip mines. The feeling hit me like a point-blank shot in the face. I've seen this before. I've seen it all before. The game was a patchwork of other people's ideas, tied together with yellow tape.

My options soon decreased to a singular course, a linear progresssion through twenty levels of hell. I walked straight in, playing it Bogart, like I'd done a hundred times before. I died. I hit the quick load key. A grenade trickled down the stairs, blew me to pieces before I could even move. This is the way the world works. It isn't about how smart or how good you are. It's chaos and luck, and anyone who thinks different is a fool. Death was cheap today.

Kudos to Eurogamer.

Can't get enough bad writing in Max Payne?

If you've finished the game and need more bad writing, head on over to the official site for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Some funny stuff:

The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending her life.

These contest winners have nothing on Max Payne. Think we're kidding? Here are some samples, collected from the beginning of the game.

The sun went down with practiced bravado. Twilight crawled across the sky, laden with foreboding.

Outside, the city was a cruel monster.

It was colder than the devil's' heart, raining icy pitchforks as if the heavens were ready to fall.

Fun game, horrible writing. (Here's the main page for the contest site.)

"Washington still wonders how to save the damn children"

Reason Online takes a look at the latest Congressional hearings about violence in the media, including videogames. Sam MacDonald finds little to be concerned about.

To illustrate just how hard it is to know what the kids are buying these days, the concerned committee trotted out a real-life mom, one Laura Smit from Columbia, Maryland. Smit complained that her busy schedule made it impossible to filter all the media her two kids demand. She said she wavered between being a �good mom� who takes the time to check it all out (Impossible! She helps out with the neighborhood swim team!) and a �cool mom� who lets them wallow in the filth to help them �fit in� with the other mass killers in training.

To prove her point, Smit brought an 11-year-old to demonstrate a popular video game called Time Crisis. Namco, the makers of the game, had cleverly tricked unsuspecting parents like Smit by giving the game a clearly marked "TEEN" rating and by providing a realistic-looking handgun players have to point at the screen. In this case, however, there was a happy ending, sort of: The little guy couldn�t get the game to work on the committee�s television system.

Good article. Thanks Bruce!

Emerging from the ghetto?

It's a sign of the game industry's growth, perhaps. International Creative Management, which manages the careers of stars like Catherine Zeta Jones, is now opening a division aimed at game designers, according to the Financial Times.

Its founders claim the launch of ICM-Interactive, is the first time a powerful general entertainment agency has sought to target games developers, who have traditionally suffered from an image problem.

Duncan Heath, chairman of ICM, said: "It is high time the creative talent working within the games industry was recognised in the same way as its counterparts in the film and TV business. The new agency is a natural progression for ICM and we will seek to expand and strengthen the synergies between the film and TV and the games industries."

Hmmm...playing up developers as star personalities really worked well for Ion Storm.

How to reduce online cheating

Brad Wardell takes a look at how to combat online cheating in his latest Airspeed column.

I've thought about this a long while and the answer lies in the online communities themselves. Take the burden away from the game developer and put it into the hands of the people who play the game itself.

3am

New Line Cinema and EA have made the official announcement about EA getting the rights to make games based on the Lord of the Rings movies. Also, EA announced that Majestic has gone live. The first episode's free, but others will be $9.95, with a new episode each month.

There's a Mechcommander 2 demo now available, weighing in at 95 megs. Here's the official site.

The Las Vegas Sun has a nice overview of boardgames, touching upon ancient ones like Nine Men Morris and the new dominance of the market by the Germans.

You've heard of cyber cafes, but what about comic book cafes? They're the latest thing in Japan.

The Planet of the Apes remake was a 900 pound gorilla at the box office, taking in $69 million. Zounds! No one ever went broke underestimating the American public's love of monkeys.

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