Review Criteria Adjustment

After looking across several games and beginning reviews on them, I realized that certain elements overlapped between the categories I laid out previously. After much deliberation, I've changed them thusly.

• Presentation - visuals and audio


• Mechanics - gameplay and controls


• Plot - storyline and scripting


• Depth - multiplayer, replay value and length


• Character - innovation, refinement and the intangibles

Thank you for bearing with me, reviews shall be forthcoming.

Review Primer

I suppose before I post a review, I'd like all of you to know how and why I'm reviewing games I do. First things first, until companies send me hardware and software, the games I review will be predicated on those I (and my friends) chose to buy and rent, so the list won't be as expansive as most magazines / websites / TV networks. If people start to give me stuff for free, you'll all be the first to know.



Here are the categories I'll be using:

• Presentation - how does the game look and sound


• Mechanics - how does the game control and how does well the game flow


• Depth - how long can you play this game before you want something else


• Character - how does the game distinguish itself from similar games


• Multiplayer - how does it plays against other people

These are a bit different than you may be used to, and I'm sure some of you might even think that Depth and Multiplayer run together. Character may seem similar as well. Let me make these even clearer.

• Presentation - colors and sounds


• Mechanics - controls and plot


• Depth - replay value and length


• Character - innovation and refinement


• Multiplayer - coop, split screen and online

Now, I've gone back and forth about how to rate this, and I've decided that I'm going to treat these games like school kids. After all, this is a rating system that we've all used for at least a decade of our lives, and we all understand it.

Games will be graded on a 0 to 100 point scale, with each category worth 20 points. A is 100 to 95, A- is 94 to 90. The B+, B and B- range is 89 to 80, C+, C and C- is 79 to 70. D+, D and D- is 69 to 60. Below 60 is a failing grade. But I cannot express this enough, there will be extra credit. Each category has the potential for an additional 5 extra credit points, and from time to time, extra curricular achievements may be rewarded handsomely. I can guarantee that I will be rewarding at least one A+

So, be prepared readers; there will be reviews of whatever games I can get my hands on, and the good news for you is that I just doubled my "new/next-gen" console ownership.

Happy gaming.

Manifesto II

We the people of the Four Player Split Screen Nation, in order to form a more cooperative union, establish justice, insure domestic, international, and interstellar tranquility, provide for the commonly experienced defense of space stations, nuclear facilities, real and fictional cities, and presidents, prime ministers and damsels in distress, promote the general gaming welfare, and secure the blessings of co-operative play to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Four Player Split Screen Nation.

~~~

Last post, we declared out independence, and demanded the full and equal treatment of Four Player Split Screen as multiplayer canon. When co-operative play is left out of a game, or when the options for said mode are lacking, multiplayer can suffer just as much as if it were missing FPSS. Co-op and FPSS go hand in hand, as both are design choices that allow us, the gamers, get the most out of the games we buy.

Last time I mentioned GoldenEye 007 as the first great FPSS, and as a gaming touchstone. You all already know what game I'm giving kudos to for Co-op. It's the game that sold a thousand systems (probably a million or two, actually), Halo: Combat Evolved. There are faults to be sure: repetitive level design, the uselessness of the assault rifle (no wonder humanity is getting it's ass kicked, with a gun like that as standard issue) and the occasional punishing segment on Legendary. But Halo: CE still shines, and I still play through the co-op to this day. I'd never play the campaign on my own, but it's still a blast to flank an Elite while he's busy shooting at your friend, stick him, and laugh maniacally when he explodes in a blue flash. Or when your friend gets position on a Hunter who is charging at you and drops him with a sniper rifle. Or running over grunts in the Warthog while your partner guns down a Banshee.

Clearly, I could go on for quite some time.

Boosting for co-op is going to be the second part of the FPSS agenda. The union of Four Player Split Screen and Fully Supported Co-op is the sweet spot for gamers. FPSS is going to give you hard, punishing reviews of multiplayer support in games. Online play, control, graphics, game design and balance; these will all be rated too, in order to give you the fullest sense of how this game works -- in your living room surrounded with friends, with just one buddy ready to help you save the world, and when you want to take on the best that the 'tubes' have to offer. FPSS will feature bouts of nostalgia as well, rating the best multiplayer games of the past and recent present.

Until we talk next, keep on fragging.

Four Player Split Screen Mainfesto I

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for four people to dissolve, chainsaw, or rocket one another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the Over Shield and the Quad Damage powerup, and the separate and equal four quadrants of a screen to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the decapitation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of ending each other's supply of lives. — That to secure these rights, games were created for Men (and Women), deriving their just powers from the consent of the gamers, — That whenever any Form of Display becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Games, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Carnage and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Gaming Customs long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Developers and games, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Gamers; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Development. The history of the present State of Multiplayer is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Gamers. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

~~~

Games are at a crossroads. Next-gen and New-gen, PS3 and Xbox 360, Epic hardcore masterpieces and ten hour digests. But of all the things that disturb me in the industry and in the products, the one that bothers me most is that studios view four player split screen in the same light they view Jack Thompson. Developers are doing everything they can to bury it alive.

We all remember the thrill of GoldenEye 007, and it's sales records demonstrate the necessity of kick-ass multiplayer gameplay. This game released on the N64, a vastly inferior console to the PS1, and it sold 8 million copies, just short of the 8.6 of FF VII.

With the growth of online gaming, consoles are trying to take a page from the PC book and limit the number of players on a system to one. There's no excuse for this. Consoles are in the living room, and have been a gathering point for gamers for (hardware) generations. There is no excuse for just allowing one, or even just two people to play on a system at a time.

The primary objective of this blog is to act as a check and balance of multiplayer politics. I'm going to shine the harsh light of justice on those that are lacking, and let you know what sort of game you're really getting for your money.

The Four Player Declaration has been signed.