The untouched product.  Can’t you just smell the anticipation?

The inner case and the outer sleeve.  I really like the way the box looks, what with all the tiny handprints and such.

The sleeve for the LP (of the soundtrack from the first game) along with the art book and the CD soundtrack to the second game.

The game case was nestled in the bottom of the box.  It is shiny.  Over to the left there are the posters, which came rolled, as you see them here.

Another shot of the LP case, along with the rolled posters.

The LP out of its case.

The whole deal together.  This is what a collector’s edition should look like.

The posters wouldn’t stay flat for long enough that I could take a shot, so I had to weight them down with other bits of the package.  Spoils the effect somewhat, but you get the general idea.

The same shot backed out a bit… I guess it actually did look kind of neat that way.

One last close-up of the box.

Pure Awesome

No, not even Halo can claim such a position. Hop on any video game message board in existence and say “What do you guys think about Halo?” and you’ll be met with three very distinct barrages of opinions – love, hate, and a middling indifference. This is as sure-fire a bet as the Internet can offer outside of Rule 34. In fact, very, very few games are those sacred cows. One of them is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I’m not going to slam the game. Put simply, I think it’s a fine game; but I don’t like it much at all. The reasons why this is the case are utterly irrelevant. I’d be willing to bet that every single person reading this article has a game, especially a highly-rated one from the last couple of years, that they could say this about. Not a game to be hated, to be claimed was overrated, or any other implication that anyone else’s opinion is flat-out wrong; just something they didn’t like for whatever reason that other people do. And I’d also be willing to bet that it’s a game you could say this about in front of your nerdiest peers, and they wouldn’t care that you thought that way.

A couple of days ago I opined on Twitter that I didn’t care a jot about the forthcoming Modern Warfare 2, because I hadn’t liked CoD4, its predecessor, either as a single-player or multiplayer game. (That I’m also somewhat sick of the forthcoming game’s infernal hype train is another irrelevance.) This led to several people on Twitter – including folks I consider friends, not just followers and followees – seeming shocked, surprised, and even a little saddened that I could possibly say such a thing. How could I dislike this game? This sacred cow that is held in such high esteem? How was that even possible? I had to be wrong. Broken, even. The very opinion itself was greeted with waves of disbelief and incredulity.

This is not to belittle any of those commenters in any way. They were – are – all people whose opinions I value, as it happens. I’m not calling them out or looking to pick a fight. I’m more perplexed at what the tone of the responses represent.

CoD4's not even my favorite game to feature the fascinating abandoned city of Pripyat.

Let me reiterate: I don’t think CoD4 is a bad game. Far from it. It just doesn’t float my boat, and it’s not because I have any dislike for the first-person shooter genre. There are many aspects to the game which ultimately combine to form what is, to me, a dealbreaker. That’s my purely subjective opinion and that’s all it is; and we all know what the ephemeral “they” say about opinions. The thing is, though, with practically any other game, I wouldn’t have to qualify it like that. It would be accepted, and moved past. Not CoD4. I don’t know if the game could be deified more if it had a Nintendo logo on it.

I listen to a lot of gaming podcasts. My day job allows me a lot of listening time and that’s one way I fill it. Most of these podcasts are helmed by hosts who know their co-hosts well; who in many cases also work together at websites or publications covering the same subject. Many don’t; some even do their shows with literal oceans or continents between hosts, conversing through Skype or some other means. But one thing they almost all seem to have in common is respect for their co-hosts’ tastes. If one of them doesn’t like The Hot Game of the Moment, it’s not a big deal. Is it familiarity with each other that breeds this respect? Is it implicit on its own merits? Or is it simply that, well in excess of 99% of the time, the subject under discussion isn’t a sacred cow?

Why is it that it can be so well-accepted that someone, be they a little minnow like me or a big fish in the pond of the gaming press, may not give a damn about Final Fantasy XIII, or Forza Motorsport 3, or Halo 3 ODST, or Uncharted 2, or even Brütal Legend – the latter the perfect example of a game that should be a sacred cow – but the moment I say I don’t care about a hugely-hyped FPS because I didn’t care for its prequel (a game that to date has sold more copies than World of Warcraft has subscribers), the immediate reaction – and one I’d more than likely get from practically any corner of the internet with any interest in video games whatsoever – is spluttering denial and disbelief from the faithful while anyone who shared my opinion kept their heads down? (Therein lies the great disparity by comparison to the earlier example of Halo.) It’s not because CoD4 is objectively better than every other game I’ve namechecked so far. It’s barely even comparable to most of those by virtue of its genre; those old apples and oranges, and all that. It’s almost like a cult of personality, only – if you’ll excuse more fruit references – this isn’t some banana republic’s dictator; it’s a video game. Nothing more, nothing less.

Modern Warfare 2 is developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision, and is scheduled for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on November 10th 2009. The author will not be purchasing it but wishes many hours of entertainment to the plethora of readers who will.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released in November 2007 and has sold over 13 million copies to date across all platforms. It remains one of the most-played online console games in the world.

The Lynx’s gestation began at Epyx, a company better known for software, especially on the Commodore 64 in the mid-’80s. The machine eventually came to to market in 1989, after Atari had picked up the project – originally codenamed Handy – and renamed it. Funnily enough, it would remain a bone of contention that the development environment for the Lynx was based on the 16-bit Commodore Amiga computer – the direct competitor to Atari’s own comparable ST line of computers in the still-multiplatform home computer marketplace of the late ’80s and early ’90s before the PC’s performance and price levels caught up to became the de facto standard.

The Lynx was the first of what would become a succession of Game Boy competitors. Sega would eventually release the Game Gear and later the Nomad, and NEC the TurboExpress, a portable TurboGrafx-16, but these machines suffered similar flaws to those that plagued the Lynx as well as coming out far too late, years after the Game Boy had already established its dominance.

The redesigned Lynx II

The Lynx represented a completely different approach to handheld consoles than Nintendo’s all-conquering little machine. For a start, it was portable only in a technical sense, relatively speaking. Close to twice the size of the Game Boy, it also drained batteries far faster (making the AC adapter less of an optional extra and more of a necessity), and its backlit screen, while great in a dark environment, was near-useless in daylight. An optional sun-shield accessory was a less-than-ideal solution. Also, the system’s reliability and build quality was fairly poor. A redesigned Lynx that was often referred to unofficially as the Lynx II wasn’t too far behind the original, correcting several physical design flaws – for example, replacing the original’s bizarre side-opening cartridge hatch with a traditional cart slot, and finally offering stereo output through the headphone socket – as well as offering significantly better build quality and also slightly improving the atrocious battery life.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Both variants of the Lynx offered a symmetrical horizontal layout with the option to flip over for left-handed use, connectivity between up to eight consoles (if you were lucky enough to know any other Lynx owners), a vibrant color display and – for the time – hugely powerful hardware. While the screen hasn’t aged well in the intervening two decades, the hardware has – it wasn’t until the Game Boy Advance launched in 2001, twelve years after the Lynx’s debut, that a more powerful handheld console was available. While its capability to do truly polygonal 3D visuals was limited, it could fudge 3D effects remarkably well due to its incredible sprite-handling abilities. Scaling and rotation of hundreds of sprites at once were its specialties, matched even in home consoles only by the advent of the SNES and Sega CD years later. Some games even used both sprite-scaling and polygonal 3D at the same time, often to great effect.

The result of this weirdly powerful but esoterically-designed hardware was a plethora of remarkably unique games, mostly by Atari and Epyx themselves – as is so often the case with ultimately failed consoles, third-party publisher and developer support was severely lacking, and by the time the plug was finally pulled, the Lynx had a relatively small library of available games. However, the flipside of this trait is that the system has a very small amount of shovelware in that library, and indeed it has a reasonable number of fantastic titles – including some great conversions of arcade titles of the era – that remain well worth playing even now.

Here’s just a few of my favorites:

Chip’s Challenge – One of the Lynx’s best games didn’t really take advantage of the system’s crazy hardware abilities much at all. Chip’s Challenge was a stage-based puzzle game, where you guide nerdy Chip through some of the most devious, evil and brain-melting traps you’ve ever come across. Yes, it’s a puzzler that will challenge (ho ho) your smarts as well as reaction times. It doesn’t look like much, but appearances can be deceptive.

S.T.U.N. Runner – Atari’s 1989 arcade tunnel-racer-cum-shoot-’em-up game was converted (I hesitate to use the rather inaccurate term ‘port’ in this bygone era of gaming) for virtually every noteworthy computer system under the sun, but every one was a dismal failure except the Lynx version. Even by the Lynx’s standards, the game’s re-working of the arcade classic’s blistering 3D visuals using sprite-scaling was a technical tour de force.

Xybots – One of the earliest examples of a co-operative shooter in a 3D environment, Xybots originally appeared in arcades in 1987. The Lynx version dispensed with the other versions’ split-screen layout in favor of utilizing the link cable, but was otherwise identical. Before 3D visuals evolved to the point where games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom became feasible, Xybots gave us a glimpse of where we were headed, and was a damn fine game in its own right. Bonus: the main characters have two of the best names in gaming history: Major Rock Hardy and Captain Ace Gunn.

Todd’s Adventures in Slime World – An almost Metroid-esque, side-scrolling shooty explore-’em-up, Slime World mixed up beautifully gooey graphics (it’s amazing what the Lynx’s graphics hardware can do with oozing, dripping snot) tons of secrets, solid action, a bunch of different modes and support for up to eight players both co-operatively and competitively to become one of the system’s classics. It even includes a zit-popping mini-game! Just what you’ve always wanted, I know.

Gates of Zendocon – This side-scrolling shoot-’em-up (we didn’t call them ’shmups’ back then) was less remarkable for its action as it was for its exploration. Its 51 levels could be explored in a non-linear fashion through the titular gates at the end – and sometimes in the middle – of whichever level you happened to be in at the time, and the visual diversity was so imaginitive that you’d always want to see where you’d end up next. Explosions that would literally fill the screen without a hint of slowdown were the icing on the cake.

I didn’t quite know how to tell you this so I figured I would just come out with it.  I’m pregnant.  I’m pretty sure it’s yours.  I’m gonna go ahead and blame this on tequila because it seems like a reasonable thing to blame in this situation.  Your mom is going to be so pumped.  She’ll probably start knitting baby clothes.  If she does I want that Link outfit on the internets.

Love, your friend,

Elaine

I have never been to a gathering that made me happier than PAX.  I had no idea how much I needed something like this until I was actually there.  This past weekend wasn’t about me seeing games so I could talk about them on a podcast and it wasn’t about me talking to developers.  What it was about is being around 60,000 people who share the same interests and who all have something to talk to one another about.  I made a ton of friends just waiting in line for panels and playing games on the show floor.  I have never been so happy to talk to strangers in my entire life (the stranger danger campaign scared me as a child).

I have a slew of pictures that will get posted over the next week once I recover from this evil plague I have.  For now just know that if you are on the fence about attending a PAX of any kind you should just do it.  Do it now.  Book your flight, train, hitching route, or family friend to drive you around.  Wil Wheaton probably summed this all up beset during his panel when he discussed how he really did feel at home at PAX.  This is what many of us want every day to be like but at least we can have our one or two weekends every year.

I’ll post more in the next few days about the games that I saw but know that little games like Shank and Deathspank should be on your radar.  You should also know that ODST and Left 4 Dead 2 are exactly what you are expecting them to be and if you aren’t playing Beatles Rock Band in between paragraphs of this post you are out of your damn mind.  Also, if you didn’t already know about it check out the card game Munchkins.  It was introduced to me at PAX and it’s awesome.   I can say with certainty though that these games are not the reason I came home from PAX so incredibly happy, it was instead all of the people I met and talked to over the course of the weekend.

I’m going to try and get my good friend Dan back on a short show this week to talk a bit about what we saw at the show (he was my man date for the weekend…..DIVORCE!).  Your regularly scheduled podcast will absolutely return next week and with it the reading and answering of all your wonderful listener mail.  Keep an eye on my twitter as well as the SOC twitter account for a way to win a PAX T-shirt or a Beatles T-shirt for your Xbox Live Avatar too!

I love getting new awesome stuff in the mail. This is an especially awesome experience when you had preordered something months ago and had kind of forgotten about it and then it just kind of shows up. In the May and June months of this year Fan Gamer started takign preorders on some new merch of theirs that would center around a new game series for them, Metal Gear Solid. This merch includes a really phenomenal t-shirt, a messenger bag and a set of pins inspiried by MGS. I ordered myself a t-shirt and a bag a few months back and just a week ago I got my shiny new stuff. As you can see my cat helped me unpack the box, by putting her butt in it.

The messenger back is pretty fantastic. It’s made of some nice thick material and has a ton of pockets for all of the miscellaneous electronic crap I carry with me on a daily basis. The embroidered Special Forces logo on the top flap is fantastic and makes me smile every morning when I pick the bag up to head to work. If you are not partial to the olive green that I chose you can also get this fine product in black. I’m so over black bags, military green makes me look much more badass.

The t-shirt is among the most comfortable t-shirts I own. I believe the company Fan Gamer uses for all of it’s shirts is American Apparel (be warned the site for them is a bit NSFW. They went all Abercrombie on that shit). The shirts are cut in a bit more of an athletic vein so the typical men’s small fits me pretty well, if not a little long. It’s got such a great logo on the front and comes in a variety of spiffy colors. Each of these items also came with a dog tag which is a pretty nifty inclusion in the package.

I honestly can’t say enough nice things about Fan Gamer. Their merch, while unoffical, is fantastic. They mostly stock Earthbound branded merch but you can also find these neat MGS items and there is a Chrono Trigger inspired t-shirt hidden away on their site as well. If you love any of these franchises boogie over to the Fan Gamer site and order yourself something awesome. In the words of Arnold, “Do it now!!!”.