The Gaming Career Quest: Where to begin? Game Testing?

The Gaming Career Quest: Where to begin? Game Testing?

It's a simple truth that pretty much all of us are here because we love games. We all have different jobs, those of us out in the workforce that is, where it may be a little different those much younger that are working in small little stores in retail and what not. But there is always that thought that burns in the back of many of our minds, if I love games so much, why not get a job in the gaming industry. Recently a blog by a fellow CAG member here LethalDose84 that really sparked me to write this blog. The question of whether or not is it really possible to break into the business fairly easy. The bottom line is that being in the video game industry is like any other job, its work, a lot of work. There are different approaches to trying to get a job in the video game industry though. What is important to acknowledge is that while there are many games out there, people do need to realize that getting in the video game business doesn't mean you'll be a rock star of the business. But let's get back to the directions one can approach....




Let me first start by saying that I am no expert in being in the video game industry. I am like many others right now, having ambitions and desires to work in the industry. About 8 years ago now, I did work for Acclaim Entertainment who released games like Turok, Burnout 1 & 2, and All Star Baseball, as a Full Time Game Tester/Analyst. It was the most fun job environment I've ever been in because while the games were garbage really except for those choice few like Burnout, everyone really cared about making games. When I mean, everyone, I really mean everyone. The producers, the testers, the programmers, the artists, all of us had such a passion for the games we were trying to make. From my perspective, it wasn't testing crappy games even though they were, as a tester its basically your job to make sure the game suffers as little garbage as possible. I was a hard-ass tester. I was very detail oriented and I nitpicked every damn bug I could find. I knew most of them would be passed over or disregarded, but they want that. They want to know these things because they want to see what possibly they can improve with the directions that the programmers and artists are approaching in other projects, perhaps a sequel. In essence, the in-house testers are the upper level focus group. Most studios have the PR department goes out and locates individuals that would fit the target audience of the game to be tested by the group. Then that group would be given a small amount of time to give their opinion of the game. But the in-house testers, while they look for the bugs that break the game, comments about the game in question are always welcome from the testers by the studio. Allow me to stop myself here and organize my thoughts on this, but I'll end this segment with just clarifying that what I say here, while may sound educated and informative, this in no way makes me an expert about the video game industry. With that out of the way, let me begin...




Where to begin to try to get into the business is something you always hear. What do I do, where do I apply, what do I need to know, these are all questions that really can be answered by just doing a little homework and research. Our humble hosts here CheapyD, Wombat, and Shipwreck, can attest that getting to this point has taken a lot of work to have this strong community and bring us all this news and information. This doesn't mean that it can't be done, it just takes work. Gaming Journalism is essentially easy to do because all you have to do is write, but grabbing an audience and fan base is the difficult part. As I sit here and write this blog, those you that will read it will probably see the view number and honestly I predict the views count wouldn't reach over 170 perhaps. If I was a well known blogger, doing this 15 years, posting on numerous sites, I would probably have a good number of followers and perhaps even my own site. But the truth is that, I don't. I can only hope that this blog will help others out there looking for the same dream of getting into the business. Gaming Journalism is fun for me, but its not where I want to ultimately end up. I believe I would have fun doing it on a regular basis, but its not my focus target of study.

Game Tester is the bottom of the barrel in terms of the industry but it is essential. As a young person, say the ages between 13 and 18, and you have desires to be in the game industry, being a game tester would be right up your alley. But there are problems with that age group, and the location of where such positions can be found. Another CAG member here Count, made a really good point in explaining that a good number of tester positions are contract positions lasting anywhere between 3 to 8 months at times. At the same time, because of that young age group, you'd be more likely in being a Focus Group Game Tester. In that position, you'd be seeing games mostly in their near released versions, preparing to go gold. In-House Game Testers see games at their raw level with debug code all over it, developer tools, essentially a cheat version of the game that lets you skip levels, enable invincibility, boost power ups, and so on. The essential requirements of a tester is simple:

- High School Diploma
- Great writing and communication skills
- A genuine passion for games

Some other unsaid requirements are:

- Tolerance of all types of games
- Tolerance of extremely repetitive actions
- Willingness to work overtime

I guess you can see that tolerance is something that is stressed, but not said. A Full Time Game Tester can usually hope to make as low as $9.00 to $12.00 an hour, and that isn't bad just for playing games. Being good at games is definitely helpful because you have to manage through just about any game, but the tolerance level is what I stress in terms of being good at games. As I was a tester myself, I can tell you it wasn't always playing good games. Mary Kate and Ashley games really did suck to play, but it had to be done. If you test games at studios like Epic or Blizzard, you know you'll be testing games of a fairly narrow scope of games. But other game studios such as EA and THQ, these are not just developers but publishers that push out a lot product by many studios that spin away from some of the games you may like. EA publishes Madden, Medal of Honor, Mirror's Edge, and so on, but they also publish games like Harry Potter, G.I. Joe, and Facebreaker. Harry Potter isn't the greatest to play and with such games like Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Madden, Rock Band, Crysis 2, even The Sims, sitting at EA testing Harry Potter while sitting next to someone playing Crysis may seem discouraging, but you have to cast that thought aside because its not about being put on the good games. You're there to do a job, and unfortunately, if you are looking to be a tester, be prepared to play some garbage games. So how do you get to be put on the big titles? Do your job well. You can't just sit there playing games like you were in your living room having fun and cracking jokes with those around you. I mean, you can, but you have to keep your eye on the job while you do it.

The best way to know if you have what it takes to be a game tester, here's what you can do. Take any game you play, and find a place in the game where you may have found a graphical glitch, maybe just a flickering texture of some kind. Now that you have that, write down steps as to how you would find the graphical glitch in the game. Once you have, ask someone who never played the game before to follow your directions and see if they can find the glitch you are describing. If they can, then you got it. If you can't, you won't last long. The reason being is that studios are usually broken up. While you may be testing games in LA, the programmers might be in England, or Germany, or maybe Virginia or Minnesota. So more than likely, you will not be able to verbally describe to the programmer where your bug is to be found. The obvious bugs are not what they worry about like if you said in God of War 3, when Kratos grabs Helios head, and begins to turn it, Helio's eyes don't move with the turn of the head. That's an example of what an easy bug is because the programmers know that the player will eventually get to that point in the game. There's no dodging that scene because its one of the linear portions of the game. But if you think about a game like Borderlands or Grand Theft Auto 4 that are so large and massive, you have to think about landmarks and exact moments that cause the bug to occur. Say for example, you were passing through Time Square in Grand Theft Auto and you angled the camera at one point looking towards the huge TV at the Y intersection and there was a texture missing that allowed you to look through the whole building. While it could be just as simple as looking towards the TV one can see the missing texture, it could be possible that the position of the player may be the cause. It could be the position, the time of day, if you were in a vehicle, was there an explosion that occurred in that area, did you change your outfit, does it only happen in single player, does it only occur after a certain event, does it happen on the east side of the street and not the west side, all these questions are things you have to ask yourself about these bugs. But at the same time they want you to pay attention to detail, you have to look at this in a reasonable amount of time because of course they don't want you to analyze one missing texture for a half hour. Finding bugs while quickly isolating their cause is what they look for, and again, being able to give directions as to where to easily find it or how to get it to happen again, is what is key because you issues will go to the programmer to go and find it so they can fix it. I'd say if you're horrible at giving map directions, you wouldn't do well at game testing.




I'll close out this blog with some notes now. I myself don't have everything figured out about what it takes to get in the business but I do believe I have a good direction and a logical theory of what it will take to get there. Will I be successful? Who knows at this point, but I'm working at it, and I feel I will succeed. Currently I'm in school studying Game Art & Design to hopefully be a Game Writer, Concept Artist, 3D Animator, or perhaps even a Game Designer someday, and its a lot of work. I read a lot and I play around with a lot of software to learn what goes into games. I will close out this blog with some nice recommendations. My first recommendation is this book....




It's called Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams. This book will describe and show you an analytical side of all types of games from puzzle games to first person shooters, it lays down the ground work of what developers do to create the game experience of all sorts of games. It's a hefty book but its a great read and I finished it cover to cover, and believe me that doesn't happen often as I'm not the fastest reader. It's available on iBooks and Kindle if you can't find it in paperback, but I think it will give you a great perspective on why games are made the way they are. My second recommendation is following David Jaffe's blog and on twitter.




Creator of the God of War series and Twisted Metal, he is one of the most outspoken, named #1 Outspoken Game Designer by Game Informer, but he is very opinionated about games and what makes games great. I have followed and spoken with Mr. Jaffe briefly on Twitter and he has provided me with some awesome advice and insight about the game industry. You may not always get a response from him, but his blog is really informative about his production process, and he really does care about the opinions of people that are fans and play his games. I do warn you though, if you blast at him, he will blast right back. You can follow Mr. Jaffe at twitter name @davidscottjaffe.

And that's my blog. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading.



- Game On! Blog also posted to www.cheapassgamer.com in their blog section. Always full of good stuff.

Testing Out: Dead Space Extraction PS3 with Move & Nintendo 3DS SSFIV 3D

Well I tried 4 things, 2 at a time this week. First thing....







So I recently finished Dead Space 2 on my Xbox 360 and completely loved it. But I wanted to give Dead Space Extraction a try, but more so as its basically a rail gun shooter, I thought it would be best done using the PlayStation Move. On top of that, I tried it with the PS Sharp Shooter device released not too long ago. So far as far as the game is concerned, I like the look of the game and the story, but the rail its on is like its all over the place. There are boxes and other pick ups all over the place like in the game to smash and get extra stuff like ammo, text files, and audio files, but the game barely gives you enough time to even try to pick them up. It's like being in the hands of a drunk walking around. It's on rails obviously so controlling where the camera points to is out of my hands but it just doesn't give you enough time. And the delay on the PlayStation Move just doesn't catch up quick enough to capitalize on those fragment moments to get them. Leading into the function of Move, its probably just my setup, but the calibration keeps getting throw off. The game gives you the nice option of doing a recalibrate right in game quickly but it just happens way too often, I find myself calibrating every small break I can get from between Necros rushing me. It would probably be better playing it with the handgun adapter as you have to turn the gun on its side to get the alternate fire since the sharp shooter is rather large.




I'm going to playthrough it because I really like the story of Dead Space, but these little mishaps definitely make it difficult to enjoy it. At $14.99 for the game download, I'm having a difficult time enjoying it as well, but I will finish the game and don't have much doubt that the story will be good. I have been wrong before though.


The second thing I tried out is the Nintendo 3DS and Super Street Fighter IV 3D.....




I've tried Pilotwings Resort and I was actually impressed with it and I've never been a fan of the game in its previous installments but this was a nice change with the 3D element. I know a lot of people have had their own difficulties playing the game with eyestrain and headaches, but I had more headaches playing Dead Space Extraction than the 3DS. Actually, I've had no headaches playing the 3DS honestly, but again, that's just me. As for Super Street Fighter IV 3D, its Street Fighter, we've all played it before, we know what its like so there isn't a lot to say. But I will say I am impressed with the 3D visuals. The depth perception created by the 3D doesn't make you feel like you're playing a new game, but it does make it presentable in a nice fashion. What is nice to note is the 3D persective battles and place you in more of an over the shoulder camera view than just your standard side view. The depth of is nicely done and even as I played someone from Japan, the connection was very smooth over my WIFI here in New York. I have always had a problem with handhelds and I never believe that are ever designed with the vision of comfort in one's hands so holding it kind of problem with a lot the moves from my left controlling the character. The touch screen buttons don't seem as responsive as the normal buttons do as I have the Focus and throw on the left side, and the all punches and all kicks on the right side close to my thumb on my right hand. The touch buttons I have setup to the left are easily compensated by the equivalent button actions of the low buttons for throw and the mids for the focus attack, but the all punches and all kicks don't seem to work so well unless you're spot on with your button timing. Is it a must buy, for any fight fan, I say yes. It looks great, but its not a must buy for you 3DS library.

I hope to try Ridge Racer 3DS soon as I hear that's quite good and I'll bring you my impressions of that later on. Thanks for reading.



- Game On!

Sucker Punch: Decent, not great

Sucker Punch: Decent, not great




Love it or hate it, the general idea you may get from people that have reviewed this movie, you'll see most reviewers hated this movie. Now I'll say this, it wasn't a great movie, but it wasn't a bad movie. To just jump right into it, I think most people will enjoy this movie. Being a fan of video games I think helps though as you can see where the movie could be split up to make for a video game. Now I reveal a bit of the premise of the plot in the spoiler but its not really the meat of the story or why this all happens in the scope of how it goes about it, so if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read this part.

Do the hot chicks help? Hell yes they do!! Do the explosions and giant samurais help? Damn straight they do!! Who cares if they are prostitutes and why they are fighting. The premise of the movie is that they are fighting for freedom. The metaphor of why they are fighting I think is cool which in its basic form, "Dancing is a battle". They never say that in the movie, but if you keep that in the back of your mind while you watch this movie, I think you'll enjoy it. They could of put any struggling group in this movie to make the metaphoric link as to why these outrageous magical battles are taking place. Who cares if they are hookers? Seriously, who cares? Certainly I didn't, but it didn't make it a bad movie just because they use the obvious tactics to get people in the seats.


I saw the movie in IMAX, and while IMAX is cool, it really doesn't need to be seen in IMAX. I know there is a 3D version, but I couldn't see many places that it would be used effectively except maybe the train car scene. As a side note, the scene during the credits isn't worth staying for either, so don't feel like you're missing something if you don't stay for the credits. It's a just a dance video basically, nothing referring to the plot. But back to the movie, the movie is about freedom, that's all with a lot of fun parts. If you don't think Grinder from Gears of War when you see the Samurai/Gatling Gun scene and not think its a fun moment, then I don't know what to tell you. The setup of the movie was odd at first because I sat there watching the beginning and just thinking to myself, what the hell does this have to do with cool samurai fighting battles? But once you put that the main point of the metaphor of the movie in your mind as they engage these scenes, it will make you enjoy the movie more.

The bottom line, is it a must see? Not really. I could see people walking out of the theater saying to themselves that they could of waited until it was on DVD or Netflix. Is it worth the $16.00 I paid for to see it in IMAX? No its not really either. But did I enjoy it? Yes I did. I enjoyed The Adjustment Bureau a lot more and that was 28 minutes shorter than this movie, but again, it was a fun movie. Out of the other movies out there, is top of the list? No, its not. The only thing I say to avoid if you go see it, don't bother with the IMAX and you could probably do without the 3D. I think most people will have fun with it.

As for myself, I liked it. It was fun movie.



- Game On!

Crysis 2 3D: First really awesome 3D game I've played

Crysis 2 3D: First really awesome 3D game I've played




There isn't a large library of 3D video games out right now, and I while I do have Killzone 3 in my backlog of games, I have not played it yet because I'm going to finish Killzone 2 before I get into it. So while I have not played Killzone 3 and it could very well be the best 3D game, but until I get to play that, right now I'll have to say that Crysis 2 is the best 3D game I've played so far. I can understand that many people don't have a 3D television yet and it well with reason as 3D is still rather new and somewhat expensive, but if you do have one and have a PS3, its definitely one worth investing in to enjoy your 3D television. I've only played the first segment of the game in essentially the first chapter but its pretty amazing looking in 3D. The HUD is nicely done, and meshes well with the background of the game much better than Call of Duty: Black Ops did when I tried it in 3D. With Black Ops, the 3D element wasn't that strong and probably didn't get noticed much as so many points were shaken up with explosions and flying debris. Crysis 2 might be the same way later on in the game but the tighten up graphics probably won me over in comparison. The only thing I would love more which is not an 3D element problem is that I wish the map was a little bigger on the HUD as I often miss things, but that's just a game function again.

I haven't gotten much into the story, but this isn't a review of the story, its about the 3D. I haven't seen any "coming at me" moments as of yet, but the depth perception of the game is really nice in 3D making me feel like I'm seeing this through a window then just on a television. Going through the park and buildings as I did in the beginning of the game it really works well and the shadow drops are cool. Even going as far as when you look down and see your own knee that you don't see any other games do really is awesome in 3D just to look at. I mainly play games on my Xbox 360, but Crysis is one I had to get to not just enjoy but see if this 3D television I have is all its cracked up to be. So again, to many people, this may not be a great game, just a good game, but as far as 3D is concerned, its definitely one worth giving a look at through your 3D glasses. This isn't a pitch to make people by 3D televisions, just a good recommendation if you happen to have one.


- Game On!

Game Journal: 01/18/2010

Well, this past weekend wasn't terribly much on gaming. After a fun night of poker on Saturday, I was encased in my home working all day which sucked, but least I was getting paid to do it. And with that time besides watching the Vikings pound the Cowboys and the Jets stun the Chargers, I did get a decent amount of video game time playing Darksiders.

For those of you that haven't purchased or tried the game yet, its a pretty damn good game. Based of the classic tale of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you play as one of them in particular by the name of War. The premise of the story being that the battle between Heaven and Hell had now begun on Earth on the plane of Man where one of the 3 sides will inherit the Earth based on its outcome. And that's where the Horsemen come in, to help restore the balance to the battle. No one side is to have the clear advantage, and the Horsemen come to restore, but the Horsemen only come when they hear the call to do so in which all 4 are summoned to the Earth to balance the battle. War hears the call but is misguided as the call was somehow staged, and when War came to balance the battle, he had done so outside of the perspective of his purpose. He had brought unbalance with his presence, and for that he was banished from the plane and essentially killed. Now before the council, he faces his judgment where he pleads to them to allow to return to Earth and find those responsible to throwing the balance out of order, for without the Horsemen, the balance will not be restored. It's story conceived through another story, but that's just how it seems most stories are created these days and this game does it very well not just with its script, but its art style. Controls are easy, action is fairly consistent, graphics are rather amazing, the scripting and scenes work very well, and its fun. Though it is violent, so you may not want the kiddies playing this game, but for you mature gamers like myself, its right up our alley.

Besides that, I didn't play much else. Uncharted 2 and Wet have been eyeballing me on my shelf lately to play them and I think I probably will once I'm done with Darksiders. But I'm also urged to place my focus back on Assassin's Creed 2. I loved the first one, but playing this one after quite some time after of playing other games, I found it a bit difficult to get back into the swing of things. But I'm sure if I put enough focus on it, it will be like riding a bike.

I have also have had quite the urge to find another co-operative game to play. One can only play the Gears of War games co-op so much, but I'm eager to find another one to play along side some friends. My friend and I are probably going to play Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, as he's never played much of it. I myself have already completed the game, but I wouldn't mind at all playing it again with a friend as the story itself was just so good, it would be like watching a movie I really liked that I hadn't seen in a while. Shame it didn't get the attention it deserved, but there were enough problems with it to warrant as well. Such as not being able to switch the split screen to horizontal mode. For those with smaller televisions, it can make the experience quite uncomfortable. More so that the co-op was only local play instead of placing it online. But if you like surprise endings, this would be a game to play. You can find it used for probably under 15 bucks now.

Someone asked me now that the holidays are over, what's good that's coming out? Well, if you haven't already got some of the games that have come out over the holidays such as Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and such, here are some titles that have already caught my eye. Darksiders is one if you haven't gotten it already, but as a its a single player experience, you can probably wait on it to go down in price and pick up later and enjoy it just the same. Army of Two: The 40th Day returns Salem and Rios pairing up again in over the top battles with interesting new tactics that you and a friend can pair up with. Probably play this one with my best friend. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will return soon as well with more guns, more explosions, more devastation, and more comedy from the B-Company squad. If you haven't played the first one, its another I recommend on a cheap deal if you are looking for a good shooter. Mass Affect 2 on Xbox 360 will release its second installment of its trilogy, a much awaited title with plot twists and turns, as well as a decent fighting and control scheme. I still have to finish the first one myself so this one can wait on my list. Dante's Inferno lights it up later this month and is definitely one I am looking forward to as I am a fan of the book. I will be purchasing this one on PS3 as it promises to include a digital copy of the book included with it.

The long awaited White Knight Chronicles for PS3 comes forth in the early weeks of February. Most of us saw videos for this one at the release of the PS3 itself nearly 3 years ago. This interesting take on an MMORPG looks very interesting but it may have lost a bit of its fire for me as its delays have disappointed many. MAG for PS3 also lands next month to bring us the largest scale virtual war on a console yet. 256 players all in one battle. Sheer madness will ensue with this title, but I don't think it will take a lot away from the Modern Warfare 2 crowd. The ever popular Final Fantasy series returns with Final Fantasy XIII coming in the first week of March, if its not delayed that is. The series has always sold well, and this one should be no different.

But one not so much heard of title I'm rather interested is Blood Bowl. What is it you ask? Why its football that's what!!! For those of you that were thrill by the days of Mutant League Football, this game is trying to return those warm and fuzzy feelings of detonating football passes, weapons on the field, and killing the referee, this game looks to try to bring it all back. Though the mechanics don't seem to be the same, the premise looks the same. It's slated for a $49.99 release which seems like a lot for a title like this, but I'll keep my eye on it for a price drop and see if I can pick it up.

Well its time for me to get some game time in, but be sure to return for journal updates. Thanks for reading.

What have I been playing recently? 01/14/2010

I know I have been gone for some time for those of you so kind of enough to return and periodically check up and see if I've written anything new, but I have returned. As certain events have crossed into my life in the past few months, it has done more than enough to delay my entries here. As I have more time now, I decided I would change up my format a bit to just give a little more of perspective what is going on in my mind as to my world of gaming. A journal is you will. So I'll start this entry off and give you a little idea of what I am playing as of recent and why.

As any avid gamer does, I own all current gen systems. Normally I'm a Xbox 360 player as I've built quite a strong group of friends that I play games normally with. Also I think just about the majority of people can agree that the creation of Xbox 360 Achievements, while not rewarding really at all, have created a strong addiction and I myself have fallen victim to them. But that time has now been introduced in the world of PS3 with their Trophy collection. I am still waiting for the day I can see these trophies in my home space as was promised nearly a year an a half ago, but hey, trophies, achievements, same difference. So I begun to slowly begin my PS3 trophy collecting as well. But more so than that, I realized that I have been neglecting my PS3 for time now and I've really just had the urge to beat some PS3 titles that I have been stocking up in my collection.

Silly as it may sound, the game I have been playing most recently is Buzz! Mainly because I've just been rather tired from working and going to the gym that when I've gotten home, just pressing one button and not yell as some 12 year-old that has nothing better to do than play games all day trash talking me is something I kind of want to avoid after a long day at work, its been fitting. Plus I love trivia games. Not because I'm a know it all, but pretty just learning new things, and finding just exactly how much stuff I don't know. I decided to make a few quizzes of of my own and have found that to be rather addicting as well. If you see any quizzes made by FXH_Mantis, that's me. Feel free to tell me what you think or just let your rating do the talking.

I would classify myself as a bouncing gamer. Meaning I can never really stay concentrated on one game at a time. I'm usually bouncing around from anywhere between 3 to 5 games at once. Besides Buzz!, I find myself playing Tekken 6 on PS3, Darksiders, Assassin's Creed 2, Rock Band 2, and Modern Warfare 2 on my 360, and I have revitalized my PC interest thanks to Steam finding myself playing Team Fortress 2 again. Team Fortress 2 is probably the one that surprises me the most as its a game that been long since forgotten on consoles, but thrives so much still on PC. It's really a shame to me how consoles didn't grasp this game as I have, and I own the Orange Box on my 360. When Orange Box first landed on the 360, I was thrilled in hopes that people would be playing it solidly to this day, but it was left for dead as many other multi-player games suffer on consoles. I guess that's where the difference is in multi-player games between console and PC. Console is always looking for the next big kill. PC keeps it alive. Even to this day people still playing Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, even Quake. Koreans for long time still destroy each other end over end in Starcraft. And even though they have not received a sequel in over a decade, they eagerly await its arrival.

Well those are main games I'm playing. I still have so many sitting on my shelf I need to get to. My best friend has been on my case for years to finish Advent Rising, which I'm sure in its day was awesome in its own right but with my old Xbox still acting up every now and then, it makes it a bit rough to play, but I plan to finish it, someday. Hopefully before I completely forget about it. Even another friend of mine has me on the fence about returning to Final Fantasy XI. What great fun I had there. Pity it didn't do as strongly as I had hoped. I will say this, if there is anyone out there has at least 4 of the Xbox 360 Achievements on that game, I applaud you. Hell I'll applaud if you have one. Well, its getting late and I feel like making some more Buzz! quizzes. I'll report in again soon about what else I've been playing and what's in my mind. Thanks for reading.

InFamous: Quite an experience

Well, its been sometime now. Been busy with a number of things so I haven't been able to jump back to my blog as of recently. But I did say I would have an InFamous review for those you that are continuing to read my blog, and so here we are again. I soon hope to follow up with a Prototype review, but for some strange reason I've grown quite addicted to Tiger Woods Golf 10 for my 360. Perhaps I blast aboard with a review of that as well. So here we are......InFamous.

Now for some reason, whenever I hear the word infamous, I always think back to the classic comedy “Three Amigos” with Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short, but let's just get that comparison out of the way because this is no little amigos game. To sum up the game for you in its feel, its like Crackdown meets Assassin's Creed, high impact action with a great story and at the same time, you choose to follow a moral code that affects what you can do and how you are as a person. You play Cole, an unsuspecting bike messenger carrying a bomb that levels nearly 20% of the city sent it into utter turmoil, but behold, you live. How convenient? But how, why? And what seems to be a cheesy plot to just kind of send you on this what the hell is wrong with me character life, the story is much more in-depth than just a few explosions and a guy that doesn't realize what's going on. Armed with the power of lightning, you run off into the city to regain something of your life that you seemed to have made miserable so many. And would a game like this be if you didn't have a pissed off ex-girlfriend to boot? Well look no further. But once again, it kind of starts out on this cookie cutter anti-hero story, but its so much more.

Visually, the game is stunning with lots of attention to detail. If there's one game to play on an HDTV this year, its this one. The colors are rich with little next to no clipping or draw in at all when leaping over tall buildings or jumping down from them. There are a few moments when going into a small scene starting a mission where you may bump the character you are speaking to, and it throws them to the ground with their legs flailing about meanwhile their head and eyes continue to stay focused on you as if to say, “Oh don't mind my crazy legs. They do that from time to time.” But that doesn't happen often. Other times, I would notice car driving right through each other as I would blow up a bus or truck, but not a lot at all to think it would be call rampant. This is all cosmetic, and should not shy you away from playing this game just because of a few minor graphical glitches. And though I could probably be very picky and state a bunch of other little things here and there, they are in no way significant to even mention in my opinion.

Now the game isn't without its repetition mind you. It's not all one great ride, though the story itself can carry the game, but the side missions do get repetitive. Blow up these guys. Save my clinic from those hooligans. Run through these lights as fast as you can. Much like Assassin's Creed, the side missions are very similar to one another, but they are fun to do. Even though these missions seem to recreate themselves with slight variations, it does help offset your mind while blasting away at a mass of gang members in a bunch of different ways. Thinking about this now, when you break the game down, there isn't that much to it. But with the side missions being as repetitive as they are, there aren't that many of them to drill you between phases of the story, and the story is what drives you. Kind of like my days of counter-strike of saying to myself, “just one more map”, you really do want to see what happens next, and comfortably the adrenaline that gets you going dies down in just the right moments it seems to give you that break to get away from the game. But another item that probably needs attention is the collecting. Open world games, or the more recent term being use, sandbox titles, cannot be without some element of collecting some sort of item, trinket, packet, box, or in shards as we see here in InFamous. But once again, the game handles the situation well by giving you a nice way to find them along the way. Same goes with these little satellite dishes you can run into from time to time that you can find to reveal a little more about the story of the game. Numbering over 320 shards, I found myself collecting just over 300 shards and found all dishes with little next to no problem with my along the way gameplay style. So once again, it can seem annoying telling yourself, man collecting more crap? Once you get rolling though, its not so bad.

Now there are a few more characteristics of the game I can get into, but they aren't as lively others that its not of a great focus. The focus of the game is the story all the way. Just like the presentation of the game, its like having a great comic book read and played out in front of you with the choose your own adventure feel thrown in. The graphics once again are spectacular, the sound and slowdown aspects of the game work really great, and the action comes and goes in just the right spurts. These days, games all seem to get their strength from some sort of multiplayer mode, so the single player based games get lost in the mix, and often end up in your bargain bin at your local game store because, well, they get beaten and traded back to the game stores fairly quickly. Where as people are still playing their Halo or their Gears of Wars, even though as disappointing the story of those games can seem to some. So we often pick and choose our solo games very carefully. But allow me to same that InFamous is definitely a must play title and should definitely be in the library of any PS3 owner.