Somebody has been working hard to make Geon: Emotions sound more enigmatic than it really is. Not content with letting the game’s specifics hide within the vagaries of the abstract futuristic sports genre, the developer/ publisher/ PR agency has sought to further befuddle consumers with talk of gameplay based around ‘playing to emotional strengths’, ‘using feelings to your advantage’ and other such imprecise spin.

But spend ten minutes with the game and the shroud of mystery quickly slips off to reveal something quite conventional underneath. Indeed, the core mechanics are almost pedestrian, though the exciting, bright and good-looking visuals desperately attempt to communicate otherwise.

Contrary to first impressions, Geon is not a puzzle game but, principally, a racing game. You control a cube that must be rolled around a simple grid-like environment while gobbling up Pac-Man-esque pellets. Once you’ve collected a set amount of pellets you hurry towards a goal where you deposit them and score a token. You then head back out into the level to collect more of the remaining pellets until you have enough to buy another token, and so on. It’s a two-player game and the race is to see who can score five tokens first.

To make matters more interesting, the designers pull a number of tricks – the primary conceit being that your rival is playing on the opposite side of the grid you play on. As such, you can see their pellets through the semi-transparent floor while also being able to track their movements and progression. Additionally, the goal where you must deposit your pellets is situated at the centre of the opposite side of the board, deep within your opponent’s territory. So, once you have collected the required number of pellets you race to the edge of the grid, flip it over with the X button, and roll across their side of the board to reach the goal and collect the token.

This set-up establishes an interesting rhythm of play where players are separate from one another one moment, and then invasively together the next – a good idea that elevates what is otherwise an acutely simple one.

You can read the rest over at Eurogamer here.

In Halo 3 there is a map. Not a cartographic layout of one of the videogame’s many levels nor a treasure chart revealing where hidden items are tucked; rather, this is a map to show where in the world – our world – all of the people currently playing the game are located.

Pinpricks of light hover over New York, Tokyo and London, graphically representing the IP addresses of the game’s users, rooting the fantasy of the experience in the reality of the locality in which its users exist.

Over the past week it has been fascinating to watch the map – which appears when you’re waiting to play your next match in the multiplayer lobby – fill up with bright new constellations as the number of users has increased. At the start of the week just a few dots punctuated a handful of first-world cities. These markers represented a surplus of journalists racing to formulate their opinions in a few days on a game that, in all honesty, will take a few weeks to fully reveal its intricacies and the success and failures of its map designs and weapon-balancing.

Then, a trickle of consumers found their way onto the map as pilfered copies of the game were taken from the shelves of unscrupulous stores breaking the release date (either by accident or by design).

Finally, upon the game’s US launch on Tuesday and worldwide launch yesterday, bright swatches of blue light descended upon wealthy western locales as anybody with a copy of the game and a connection to Xbox Live took to the virtual universe.

However, more than being just a neat, cute idea to add interest to the otherwise functional and dry lobbies, the map demonstrates loudly and clearly the successes and failures of Microsoft’s Xbox across the world, as well as, more sadly, the great economic inequalities between nations.

Last night a solitary pinprick of light hovered somewhere over Tokyo, the only instance of a Japanese playing Halo 3 – a damning indictment of the console’s unpopularity in that nation. Bright clusters of stars instead congregated over the East coast of America and the Westernmost nations of Europe – inescapable and clear evidence that the 360 has little impact outside of these obvious and tight hubs of affluence. Of course, many nations do not yet have Xbox Live and so their countries – Russia, India, Africa – sit as huge black masses in the graphic, stoically untouched by what excitable teenagers and hungry suits have billed as the ‘cultural event of the year’.

Indeed, Microsoft, with near hysterical repetition, have been emphasizing to any mainstream outlet with an ear to hear that Halo 3 is the entertainment release of the decade. The game will, inevitably, become the highest grossing entertainment release ever – a feat less impressive when you factor in that a copy of the game costs £50 compared to a cinema ticket’s £5-asking price.

But what Halo 3’s world map demonstrates is that, for the vast majority of planet earth it’s a non-event: an ostentatious display of rich westerners’ obsession with leisure pursuits while much of humanity grapples, not with the covenant or the last clip of a carbine, but with real survival.

I’ve been challenged by Halo 3’s world map because it conveys, in an instant, real-time way using current and applicable language something of the great economic divide on this planet. My world, in so many ways, is not the world and, while wanting to avoid the trap of espousing primary colour morals, simplistic ideals and broad brush stroke, bleeding-heart ethics, the innocent within me wishes it was.

Regular readers might recall that, as well as being employed by various publications as a freelance videogame journalist (these days principally for Edge, Eurogamer, Official PlayStation Magazine and, increasingly, Yahoo.com – if you’re interested in reading some of the things I write), I’ve recently been working with animation company Littleloud as a producer for their interactive content.

While I mainly focus on their games and various animations for Paramount Pictures, the company also works closely with the BBC and Channel 4 as the TV companies seek to extend and improve their interactive content/ game releases.

One interesting project currently underway at Littleloud is an interactive online game to coincide with a new Channel 4 series based on vice in and around Georgian London’s Covent Garden. Last week Littleloud asked if I’d help out with some gameplay suggestions and writing up a GDD for the project and, as a result I tagged along to Channel 4′s offices for a meeting this week.

It turns out Alice Taylor from the excellent Wonderland blog is C4′s overseer on the project. It’s great to have somebody so sensitive to gameplay mechanics involved on the client side and, hopefully, the game will turn out really well for it.

Littleloud have worked on point and click adventures before, having won an award for their Shakespearean adventure ’7NK’ at the prestigious Flash Forward awards in Seattle last year. These factors make this project one to watch.

In the meantime, if you’ve not read Alice’s blog then head over there and subscribe to the RSS feed – it’s kind of like Boing Boing for videogames and turns up a lot of interesting content. I’ll keep you posted of the Georgian Vice project as and when.

“And what of Tokyo Game Show? As I’ve been telling everyone who will listen, this year’s TGS really seemed to me to be like one of Microsoft’s X0n events, where they bring journalists out to foreign countries to distract them with an international vacation and a screwed-up biological clock, then show them the same games they could see in America just as easily.

“I don’t want TGS to become some kind of dog-and-pony show for the press where we stay in the New Otani hotel and talk to people who live in Seattle about Halo 3. I want to cover Japanese games. If said games are never going to be released in America, so much the better.”

Chris Koholer over at Wired gives this year’s Tokyo Game Show a final and dismal once over. The current lacklustre state of the Japanese games industry is really very sad, speaking as someone who grew up at a time when Japanese videogames were often the brightest, best and most inventive ones going.

There’s an essay that needs writing on why the balance of power and creativity in the videogame software industry has shifted away from Japan over the last decade (Nintendo DS notwithstanding).

Is it down to Japan’s economic fatigue in recent years? Innovation suffocated through Japanese corporate creative process? Microsoft’s successful entry into the console hardware war taking power away from Tokyo? The death of the amusement arcade? Or simply an industry sick with complacency; an illness that has allowed western developers chance to overtake and shine.

Either way, walking through Akihabara (Tokyo’s electronics district that bristles with endless multi-tiered videogame stores) earlier this year was a very different and more subdued experience to walking the same streets just four years ago.

Still, the show wasn’t completely devoid of interesting exhibits as the above image on Gizmodo Japan of a prototype arcade machine which players control by riding a witch’s broomstick happily demonstrates.

“This is not the question,” he said.

“If he’s like a cat or a spider or a f***ing wolverine, if he’s huge, if he’s tiny, if he can shoot flames or ice or death rays or Vat 69, if he turns into fire or water or stone or India rubber. He could be a Martian, he could be a ghost, he could be a god or a demon or a wizard or a monster. Okay?

“It doesn’t matter; because right now, see, at this very moment, we have a bandwagon rolling. I’m telling you. Every little skinny guy like me in New York who believes there’s life on Alpha Centuri and got the shit kicked out of him in school and can smell a dollar is out there right this minute trying to jump onto it, walking around with a pencil in his shirt pocket, saying, ‘He’s like a falcon, no, he’s like a tornado, no, he’s like a goddamned wiener dog.’ Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And no matter what we come up with, and how we dress him, some other character with the same schtick, with the same style of boots and the same little doodad on his chest, is already out there, or is coming out tomorrow, or is going to be knocked off from our guy inside a week and a half.”

Joe listened patiently, awaiting the point of this peroration, but Sammy seemed to have lost the thread. Joe followed his cousin’s gaze along the sidewalk but saw only what looked to be British sailors lighting their cigarettes off a single shielded match.

“So…” Sammy said. “So…”

“So that’s not the question,” Joe prompted.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Continue.”

They kept walking.

“‘How?’ is not the question. ‘What?’ is not the question,” Sammy said. “The question is: ‘Why?’.”

“The question is why?”

“Why,” Joe repeated. “Why is he doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“Dressing up like a monkey, or an ice-cube or a can of f***ing corn.”

“To fight crime isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, to fight crime. But that’s all any of these guys are doing. That’s as far as they ever go. They just…you know, it’s the right thing to do, so they do it. How interesting is that?”

“I see.”

“Only Batman, you know…see, yeah, that’s good. That’s what makes Batman good, and not dull at all, even though he’s just a guy who dresses up like a bat and beats people up.”

“What is the reason for Batman? The why?”

“His parents were killed, see? In cold blood. Right in front of his eyes, when he was a kid. By a robber.”

“It’s revenge.”

That’s interesting.” Sammy said. “See?”

“And he was driven mad.”

“Well…”

“And that’s why he puts on bat’s clothes.”

“Actually, they don’t go so far as to say that.,” Sammy said. “But I guess it’s there between the lines.”

“So we need to figure out what is the why.”

“‘What is the why,’” Sammy agreed.

………………………………………………………………….

A 1939 exchange between a young Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier, protagonists in Michael Chabon’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Here the cousins seek to find something to mark their superhero out from the crowd.

Between these lines the Watchmen gestate.

Earlier today Argos employees broke the Halo 3 street date by selling copies of the hotly anticipated videogame a full week before it’s due to go on sale.

What’s the big deal with that? Well, here are the issues broken down into a neat QA format for your insta-editorial delight.

So, what’s actually happened again?

Just before lunchtime today this photograph appeared on the internet. It shows a copy of Halo 3 and a till receipt of purchase from Argos dated today, visual proof that the first UK retailer had broken the release date.

Why on earth is that a problem? It’s just a stupid videogame right?

Right, but it’s a big, stupid videogame.

The previous game in the series, Halo 2, sold 2.4 million copies and earned US$125 million in its first 24 hours on store shelves, overtaking the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as the highest grossing entertainment release in history.

Halo 3 will likely beat this record so it is, in a very tangible and fiscal sense, A Big Deal.

Argos selling the game early to consumers isn’t a problem for consumers — they’re actually pretty pleased about it all told — but it’s extremely annoying for the company’s PR departments (who have been meticulously media planning for over a year), for those involved in preparing the launch event at the London iMax next Tuesday, as well as for rival retailers.

Across the street from Argos in Brighton is a Game store who have a Halo 3 midnight launch planned for next Tuesday. It kind of takes the wind out of their sails (and ‘sales’, lol) when it’s possible to buy the game across the street a week early.

As soon as one retailer breaks the release date (thus hoovering up many sales) all of the rival retailers both on the street and online are forced to do so too in order to keep up. The whole system breaks down and it becomes an uncontrolled free-for-all, neutering the news impact of a big launch and drowning out the global big-bang that the company has been working so hard towards.

What the hell are Argos thinking?

At lunchtime it looked like perhaps the decision had come from an Argos executive – one who hypothetically thought that the extra profits earned from selling what will be the 360′s biggest game in its lifetime would more than offset whatever fallout MS could muster. That rumour has now been dispelled with an announcement that it’s simply the till girls’ fault. Eurogamer reports:

It all started when various stores on the Argos website told those of you reserving a copy that you could collect it today, or between “Wed 19th September – Thu 20th September”.

Oblivious till tenders then dished out the game to unbelieving shoppers brandishing reservation codes, allowing them to enjoy the fruits of Halo 3 a week early.

Won’t Microsoft go batshit crazy on them?

You’d think so, right. But, apparently website Pro-g.co.uk called Microsoft and spoke to an unnamed ‘rep’ who said that:

Gamers who play Halo 3 early will have their LIVE accounts banned. Simply not connecting to the internet doesn’t appear to be a solution either. The rep also confirmed that Microsoft is able to ban accounts based on information collected by the console which shows when the game was played.

Ignoring the questionable legality of the threat this is absolutely the worst possible response Microsoft could come up with to the situation. Punishing consumers for a retailer’s error is not the way to garner favourable column/ forum/ blog inches.

The problems with the heavy-handed response can be summarised like so:

- There is no warning to consumers on the box that playing the game before the official release date will see them banned from Xbox Live

- It’s entirely reasonable to presume that some people bought the game without realising that Argos were breaking the release date

- Some purchasers will have played the game before the banning ‘announcement’ (such that it is) was made

- This has never happened with a 360 game before – many titles have been sent out by online retailers a few days before the street release and consumers have not been banned.

- Journalists awaiting their retail review copies of the game towards the end of the week will be indistinguishable from Argos buyers. Can we all expect to be banned too?

Hmm, that all sounds a little shaky then…

Well indeed. So either the decision was made by someone higher up the chain at Microsoft who overreacted with a threat that hasn’t been thought through properly. Or, perhaps more likely, Pro-G has simply lied about the conversation in an effort to drive huge amounts of traffic to their site.

So can I get a copy to sell on ebay if I hurry down to Argos today?

Too late. Argos is now adhering to the original release date.

It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses over the next day or two. The situation is a little reminiscent of when Sony came down hard on games blog Kotaku for reporting Sony’s impending announcement of the PlayStation 3′s forthcoming social networking environment Home.

Executives at Sony had a violent kneejerk reaction, e-mailing the blog’s writers to say Sony would no longer be dealing with them. Kotaku printed the e-mail and the huge and angry internet response backfired terribly for Sony (who later rescinded the threat).

Whether we see a similar backlash against Sony’s rival this week depends very much upon the official response that is being heatedly debated in their boardrooms this very minute…

UPDATE: Official Xbox Magazine reports this morning that Microsoft, of course, has decided not to ban the accounts of consumers who have managed to play Halo 3 early. However, employees of the corporation who decide to join in won’t be so fortunate…

Japanese RPG mega-developer Square-Enix has just announced a new DS title for Japan titled ‘Beginners Wine DS’.

The game will feature step-by-step instructions on choosing a suitable bottle to go with particular foods as well as how to correctly swirl a glass before breathing in the bouquet.

With a database of 120 selected bottles, a glossary, a quiz, and a guide to bluffing knowledge about wine, the game is the latest in an enduring line of bizarre Square-Enix homeland titles that are never picked up for foreign release.

In the early nineties the company even formed an offshoot to handle this kind of atypical output (called Aques, an awkward anagram identifiable as belonging to the parent holder only because it was written in the Square font).

Anyhow, I only mention it because last week I stumbled across this bizarre Japanese point and click adventure that was made by various employees of Square-Enix who have created a flash-game project called GotMail.

The Shochu Bar, as this particular release from the team is called, is set in a sumptuous bar rather like the ones you can visit at the top of Shinjuku’s high-rise hotels and, as far as I can tell, your mission is to find clues left buy a barman as to how to make the perfect cocktail. Hmm.

There’s an English language option so it is playable but, being a point and click adventure it’s super tough. Then again I’ve never been that good at these types of game so I might not be the best judge of that.

Anyhow, I thought it might be interesting to join the dots between the two projects for you. Perhaps Square-Enix employees are driven to drink when they discover the Final Fantasy they’ve spent the last five years of their life on wasn’t the last one after all.

Is that a dad joke? I think might have been a dad joke. Sheesh. Anyhow, Beginners Wine DS hits stores on Nov. 15 to coincide with this year’s release of Beaujolais Nouveau, a globally popular seasonal French wine. You can see some of the GotMail team;’s other projects here.

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”

Abraham Lincoln reminds Florida attorney Jack Thompson of a higher calling than that of his current obsession with Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two.

Over at PC Gamer freelancer hive-blog, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Alec Meer performs some excellent videogame name research.

It stems from the story of how developer Monolith, having created popular first person shooter F.E.A.R has decided to make a follow-up. However, in moving over to a new publisher, the studio lost the rights to use the name again.

To raise awareness of their plight (and presumably to make clear to the public that, if and when Vivendi release F.E.A.R. 2, Monolith had nothing to do with it) the developer created nameyourfear.com, a site where visitors were invited to suggest a new name for the sequel. The competition has just finished and the new name is decided: Project Origin.

Meer, deciding that there’s no name so overtly videogamey as a name with ‘Project’ in the title searched indispensable videogame journalist resource gamespress.co.uk to see how many other games have boasted the word in their title since 2000.

His findings are, at once, revealing and depressing…

Valve’s super generous new Half-Life+ package, The Orange Box, is due for release soon (19th October if all goes according to plan I think).

Included is Half-Life 2, HL2 Episodes 1 and 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2, making for an astonishingly well-endowed release. However, Microsoft has apparently only allowed the company the stock 1000 achievement points to spread across for the whole set (rather than, for example, allocating 1000 points for each individual title).

The full list of how these achievements are divided up has appeared on Achieve360points.com here.

What’s interesting is how inventive a lot of these goals are. I find that, in particular, a lot of the Japanese developers are extremely middle of the road in the way they create these challenges (see Earth Defense Force 2017 or Warriors Orochi for example).

While western developers put a little more thought into their achievements (I like some of those featured in Guitar Hero 2 for example, a game where you’d think it would be hard to mine any leftfield challenges out of the strict Simon-says template) there’s still a lot more room for creativity.

Many of The Orange Box’s challenges encourage players to play the game(s) in different ways to how you might normally approach them which is when the achievements system is working at its best I think.

The only shame is that, as the 1000 points had to be divvied up across five titles, the actual score for some of the tougher achievements seems a little stingy. Still, hopefully we’ll see more of this approach as the 360 matures and as Sony soon pitch in with their own achievement system for the PlayStation 3.

Anyhow, these stand out in particular:

22. Targeted Advertising
Pin a soldier to the billboard in chapter Highway 17..

24. Keep Off the Sand!
Cross the antlion beach in chapter Sandtraps without touching the sand.

43. The One Free Bullet
Beat Episode One firing exactly one bullet. Grenade, crowbar, rocket, and Gravgun kills are okay!.

71. Master of Disguise
Trick an opposing medic into healing you.

Excellent.