Sunday Supplement – 23rd October

Updated on October 21, 2005 by Tom Orry

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Contents show

Comic courtesy of Fat Gamers.

Jack attack

We’ve tried to avoid giving Jack Thompson the press coverage that he craves, but we just can’t ignore the latest happenings in the continuing saga. If you haven’t been reading many gaming sites this week, I’ll quickly run down what’s been going on. It all started when Jack claimed he would give $10k to Take Two Chairman, Paul Eibeler’s favourite charity, the Entertainment Software Association Foundation, if a game he proposed was made. Of course, trying to make some incredible point, this game involved killing someone who had a name not too dissimilar to Mr Eibeler (Take Two are at the top of his hit list due to games such as GTA and Manhunt). Jack describes the game far better than I can, so I’ll let him explain some of its finer points.

“Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favoured ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced “only” to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.”

Lovely, I’m sure you’d agree.

“O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son’s killer trained. O.K. gets “justice” by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. “An eye for an eye,” says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.”

I’ll stop there, as I think you get the picture. It’s obviously a game that he never thought would see the light of day. But he was wrong.

It didn’t take too long for gaming communities to make games themselves. Jack didn’t specify that text adventures didn’t count, and I’ve even seen one game that is being sold (for a rather miniscule fee). It may not have matched his proposal word for word, but the pressure was then on Jack to stump up the cash. He obviously didn’t want to do this, making a statement that no one could really have been surprised at.

“The satirical piece entitled ‘A Modest Video Game Proposal’ was intended to highlight the patent hypocrisy and recklessness exhibited by the video game industry’s willingness to target cops, women, homosexuals, and other groups with some of their violent games,” commented Jack.

“To be fair, though, you can’t expect a bunch of gamers to understand the satire if they think that Jonathon [sic] Swift, the author of ‘A Modest Proposal,’ is the name of a new Nike running shoe…” Thompson reasoned.

Unimpressed by his actions, hugely popular videogame comic website Penny Arcade stepped in. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the two founders of the site, donated $10,000 to the Entertainment Software Association Foundation in Jack’s name.

Jack wasn’t too impressed, and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear sent a letter to Seattle’s Chief of Police asking for the arrest of Jerry and Mike. Jack may have bitten off more than he can chew, though, as Penny Arcade’s readers are a loyal bunch, and have rallied around the site to show Jack a thing or two.

They’ve faxed, emailed and phoned the Florida Bar, calling for an investigation into Jack Thompson’s practices, and it seems to have had the impact they were hoping for. If reports are to be believed, an emergency meeting has been called to sort out what has been going on. It was looking like Jack’s attack on videogames could be coming to an end.

Then, on Friday reports claimed that Thompson had sent a letter to the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) and the Interactive Merchants Association (IEMA) with the aim to settle their differences. He proposed that pro-family groups and videogame retailer representatives attend a summit in an attempt to fix the current videogame rating and enforcement system. He wants for there to be no government involvement, claiming “we can do it together.” Thompson, would himself be at the centre of these discussions, not wanting to step out of the media limelight.

How this long running saga is going to turn out is anyone’s guess, but we’ll do our best to keep you updated.

The game that keeps on taking

Over the last few days I’ve been playing a fair bit of F.E.A.R. This FPS from Monolith and Vivendi Universal Games is one of the most hyped PC titles of the year, and from some of the reviews that have been handed out, the average gamer could be forgiven for thinking it’s a game of the year contender. It’s not that good, but it is entertaining, with some of the most satisfying fire-fights in videogame history. I do have one major gripe, though: what percentage of buyers are going to be able to play it at anything like the way it was intended? Not many, I’d wager.

You see, F.E.A.R. is a game that eats high-end PCs for breakfast and then wants more. How anyone with a PC bought off the high-street last year is going to run this is beyond me. Take for example my current rig: Athlon 64 3200, Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT, 1 GB DDR memory and a whole load of less exciting stuff. Now, I’ll admit that this isn’t cutting edge anymore, but it’s still pretty damn good. The fact that F.E.A.R. runs like a lame dog on it isn’t good. In truth, it’s absolutely shocking.

As I said, the game is good fun, but when you have to contend with endless stuttering, pauses, and a general sluggishness, your enjoyment isn’t quite what it could be. I’m all for games pushing hardware to its limit, but I can’t really see much in F.E.A.R. that should make it such a performance hog. Generally ambling around drab environments is enough to stress my system, but actually getting into a fire-fight gives it kittens, with frames being dropped all over the place. Considering combat is the game’s big selling point, it’s just not good enough.

Sure, I can change some settings to get things running smoother, but I didn’t buy over a grand’s worth of kit to play games that look like they’re from two years ago. You’ve got to wonder if these people with systems that match the game’s minimum specs are actually playing the same game. Is F.E.A.R. on a 1.7 GHz P4 and a Geforce 4 really the ‘9/10 classic’ that reviews make it out to be? Considering it’s about an 8/10 on my system, I think not.

I won’t even get into the fact that the game won’t even run on some systems due to some copy protection, and that it doesn’t support one of the most common resolutions for TFT monitors… pfft.

This week on Pro-G

As usual, here’s a rundown of what we’ve covered on the site this week.

Reviews

This week’s new releases

Well, the silly season is well and truly upon us. A quick look at the list below will reveal more games than any sane person would want to be released in the same week. I can’t even pick out a single game that is more important than the rest; there’s just too many. If you fancy something a little different, Buzz!: The Music Quiz from Sony looks to be good fun, but if PC first-person shooters are more your thing, F.E.A.R. and Quake 4 should do nicely.

It’s a big week for football, too, with Pro Evo 5 on Xbox and PlayStation 2 (both online this year) and Football Manager 2006 on the PC. Those two in combination should keep most people occupied for a few months. If none of that tickles your fancy EA has released SSX on Tour and Rockstar are back with The Warriors – a game that is bound to annoy the chap talked about in much detail above.

Buzz!: The Music Quiz (PS2)
Cross Racing Championship 2005 (CRC) (PC)
Doom III: Resurrection Of Evil (Xbox)
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi (PS2)
F.E.A.R. (PC)
Football Manager 2006 (PC)
Genji (PS2)
Madden NFL 2006 (PSP)
Marvel Nemesis: Rise Of The Imperfects(PSP)
Ninja Gaiden Black (Classic) (Xbox)
Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (PS2, Xbox and PC)
Quake 4 (PC)
SSX on Tour (PS2, Xbox and Cube)
The Warriors (PS2 and Xbox)

Next week on Pro-G

Next week we’ll have reviews of F.E.A.R, Rome: Total War- Barbarian Invasion, Advance Wars Dual Strike, NBA Live 06, Marvel Nemesis and more.