. . . Upgrading to the newest Apple Operating System - iOS 7

The plain-jane look and feel of iOS6 really stands out when it directly compared to the new OS

While other regions received the newest version of Apple's mobile device Operating System (iOS7) before we did, when the upgrade/update became available this past week I went ahead and applied it -- first to my iPhone (I use an iPhone 4S these days) and then, later, to the iPad that I have because of work requirements.

In both instances the upgrade process was smooth and trouble-free -- at least with respect to the OS and the Apple mobile devices.  I cannot say that there were not a few bumps in the road because there were, with the most notable being caused by changes to an app that I use daily for the Audible Book and Entertainment system (audio books basically).

It seems that Audible is now owned by Amazon -- I think I actually knew that before now, but it was one of those facts that is read, tucked away, and forgotten rather quickly in my case.

The process of upgrading the OS for my iPhone meant that I was logged out of ALL of the active apps on the device -- including the Audible client which is always running in the background because I really do use it on a regular basis thanks to a very large library of Audio Books that I own having been a member of that service since 1998...  

Well that and I am trying to learn Spanish on my own via a neat audio book series called Spanish in the Car.

When I went to log back into Audible after the update to the new OS my password did not work.  

It turns out that the Audible client (and website) has been switched over to use the accounts and login information for Amazon rather than its own account system, and I did now know the password for my Amazon account because I have not used it in years.

Long story short?  I ended up needing to ring up support and have them reset the password for me.

But really if you think about it, I upgraded the Operating System on both my mobile phone AND the tablet I use for work and the only problem that I faced was a password reset for an unrelated app...  

That is way beyond "pretty good" compared to previous experiences with the process way back in the day, I am just saying...

The visual changes to the OS are one of its more obvious -- and striking -- changes, and speaking for myself I found them to be a very pleasing and welcome feature for a new OS that includes a plethora of added features and is much easier to use.  If this actually cost money it would probably be worth the price of admission.

"I Don't Like Change"

Because one of my day jobs is being a columnist for the Business and Tech Section of the Cape Cod Times, I was not surprised to receive an invitation last month to download a pre-release version of the new OS early.

The email came from one of the public relations agencies that represents Apple, and basically it offered me the option of getting the OS installed on my devices early.  

If I had actually been assigned to review it or write about the OS, an early install would have been just the thing for me but, as that was not the case, I obtained my copy of the new OS just like everyone else did when it was released to our region

While the conversion to iOS7 was painless and quick for me, the same cannot be said for my kids, who -- while they did succeed in the transition -- both emerged from the experience feeling an intense dislike for iOS7.

"I don't like change," my daughter announced.  "Particularly when the changes make me have to learn how to use my phone all over again!  This is not good!"

That was how my daughter announced her take on iOS7, having marched into our living room to declare her personal experience in the upgrade process having been completed.

The changes that she was referring to -- the method by which the user ensures that the app or program on their device is no longer using resources or memory happens to be one of the changes that I viewed as an improvement.

The direct result of this is that I found myself more actively engaged in the conversation than might have otherwise been the case.  

It turned out that her reasoning was much more complex and covered other aspects of the new OS.  

It was not simply a gut-reaction in other words, and as it turned out she had well-thought-out and logical arguments that supported her opinion.  Good for Autumn!

Two of the users of iOS tech in our home: My daughter Autumn makes extensive use of both her iPhone and iPad, while her pet kittens Abaddon and Beelzebub are invariably the target of its built-in camera and audio recording capabilities as she likes to take snaps and short videos of the cuteness that they are and do in order to share them with her mates online.

Practical?  Yeah, Pretty Much

My kids are pretty smart even if it is their Dad saying so, and as we discussed the issues and as I made a mental note of that fact, I naturally began to tally up the various reasons behind my own more than favorable opinion of the new OS, because I could easily see myself writing this blog entry.

Where my daughter disliked iOS7 based upon subjective arguments and a noted dislike for change, the reasoning behind my son's condemnation of iOS7 came from an entirely different direction indded.

"It occurs to me that a lot of the superficial changes that were made to the OS were made just because they could.  Change for the sake of change," my son Peter says.

"On the positive side of the scales the implementation of the mini-control panel is pretty brilliant," Peter allowed.  Coming from him that is high praise indeed; Peter is not very free with praise and the concept of hyperbole is not something that he is either comfortable with nor likely to indulge in even if he were.

The new feature that he is referring to is the new control panel that has been built into the interface at the bottom, and which is accessible even while playing a game or using an app that has full control over the screen.

The New Instant Control Panel

When you run your finger along the bottom edge of the screen a tab appears, and when you swipe in a generally upward direction on that tab you open a new control panel with icons on either side for pretty much ALL of the basic elements for the device.

Depending upon the orientation when you activate the function (whether you are using your phone's screen in landscape or portrait orientation basically) the buttons / icons will be splashed top and bottom or along the left and right sides.

The Control Panel offers you one-tap On and Off control for the following:

• Airplane Mode
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• Do Not Disturb
• Portrait Orientation Lock

 on the left side or top edge of the panel.

• Flashlight
• Timer Controls (Opens the Timer Menu)
• Calculator (Opens the Calculator App)
• Camera Button (Opens the Camera View)

along the right-hand side or bottom edge of the panel.

In the center of the new Control Panel is perhaps the most useful and best controls - being from top to bottom the following:

(1) Screen Birghtness Slider

(2) Rewind / Play or Stop / Fast Forward Controls

(3) Volume Control Slider

Seriously, these all may appear on their face to be intuitive and, well, the word "Obvious" springs to mind -- but there you have it!  

Here is a control panel for the most common features of the device, and you wonder why they only just now got around to adding it into the device?!

Observers of what is still widely considered to be the "new" and "struggling" sans-Jobs-Apple consider the process of revealing the features of the new OS to be a critical element in how the company will present itself not just to the public but to investors.  There is no argument that Jobs was the creative spark that revived Apple and transformed it back into the force to be reckoned with that it had previously been.  But where it will go now is anybody's guess...

The Improved Topside Menu and Interface

While we are used to seeing that same effect when it comes to swiping the top edge of the screen on our iPhones -- with iOS7 when you swipe down from the top edge of the screen you now get an improved menu within which you will find time and date based information, with the very top consisting of a set of tabs reading "Today" "All" and "Missed" that serves to organize the events they contain.

Under the "Today" tab you have the date, weather conditions and high temperature as the default, along with the display of whatever the scheduled activities are for today and right now.

A list of "Events" for the day appears in the bottom section, and when you swipe to the right you get the display for the second tab which is labeled "ALL" and which contains a summary of the recent events that you have undertaken on your phone or which your phone is keeping track of...

The final tab -- labeled "MISSED" -- contains a detailed listing of the things you failed to do, from answering a phone call to attending a meeting, and I am sure that there are other things it tracks and tells you about, I just somehow managed to not do things that would cause the phone to get uspet.  

Go me!

What it all means?

We could probably spend the rest of the day discussing all of the different things that iOS7 can do and how it makes your mobile device so much better, trotting out all of the good things that have changed on it.  Seriously.

I actually sat down and made lists of the changes, lists of the improvements, and eventually, lists of the lists I was making!

But in the end I realized that what iOS7 is (and this may shock you) is the results of some engineer somewhere at Apple sitting down and making their own list of all of the suggestions that users of Apple's mobile product lines have sent in over the course of the past three decades, and then maybe making a list of all of the common and utility type aspects that THEY wish were present...

And then implementing it all.

I have decided to rename the iOS7 update.  Heretoforward it shall now be known as:

iOS7 - The Common Sense Update

That is all.  You can go back to your games and work now.

. . . Agent 47

Regular readers of the gaming side of my writing will be aware that I recently completed the Unofficial Walkthrough / Guide for game play in the title Hitman: Absolution, which is the much anticipated and long overdue next game in the Hitman video game series, but is also oh so much more than just that.

I say "oh so much more" for very good reason, because when you read between the lines and if you are even just a little familiar with that game series you will be aware that Absolution is not only the 5th game in the main series, but also presents the wrapping up of basically all of the plot, story, and sub-plot elements for the previous four titles in the series, being intended to provide a measure of closure for series fans as well as serve a more practical function: providing the tabula rasa that is required when a studio is about to embark upon a new and previously un-hinted-at massive change of focus.

In a nutshell, the Hitman series began with a pair of games that revealed in violent detail the origins of the character after which the series is named -- The Hitman who is a legend in both the underground organized crime community and the world-wide law enforcement communities, being widely considered to be if not an outright myth, then very likely a catch-all character who has been given false credit for the perfectly executed actions, contracts, and hits of a dozen or more different men, with the end result being what most experts in both communities consider to be a fraudulent and undeserved reputation for a man who probably does not exist at best, or the outright theft of many of the most spectacular hits of the past decade being wrapped like a mantle of reputation by a third-rate mechanic with no right to that glory at worse.

The truth of the matter is not the middle-ground rationalization that is often the case in such creations, because the truth is that every one of the legitimate stories is just that -- and most of the widely embellished stories based upon unsubstantiated rumor are also true and factually laid at the feet of the man who was responsible: the ghost figure known far and wide as The Hitman, and more intimately by the shadowy entity that serves as the broker for his special talents, The International Contract Agency (ICA) as Agent 47, the true identity for that ghost.

The Tragedy of Agent 47

With all good stories there is often a bit of tragedy and poetic origins behind the story, that foundation often being lost in the noise of the events or, more likely, never being known or shared precisely because the man who it is about chooses not to share it.  Such is the case with Agent 47, who has no real name; the product of genetic engineering in a secret lab in eastern Europe, 47 lacks even the comfort of some certainty that somewhere, somewhen, there was a man and a woman whose love or relationship spawned him.  Obviously not, since the only thing that 47 can legitimately write on a Mother's day card is "My Mother was a Test Tube" and on a Father's Day card, "My Father was a scalpel."

Starting with that lack of biological bonding, the legend that is Agent 47 cannot even lay claim to the origins of many a fictional and historical hero, since he was not born in a dark corner of the world and then raised in an orphanage, but rather was born in a well-lit lab having been created by the selective culling of organic material from a single female who provided an egg that was initially stripped of all of its genetic details, intended to serve exclusively as the foundation of organics that is required to create a human being, but as a neutral foundation, offering that human no traits or other biological links with the donor.

All of the traits, and in particular what was considered to be the important traits, such as physical capabilities, mental acuity, a lack of moral compass, and a willingness to use violence as a tool to attain the ends that he is programed to attain -- the entire exercise in leveraging the bleeding edge of genetic science was oriented towards a single goal: create the perfect killing machine in the form of a chameleon of a man whose entire focus was the art of the hit.

All of this was accomplished by a defrocked physician and scientist named Ort-Meyer, who it should be noted, used his own genetic materials as the underlying focus for the mental portions of the design for Agent 47.  In the end, while there were literally hundreds of failed efforts, the success with Agent 47 -- who is if you have missed the point that I have been hammering home all along a clone -- was not simply a lucky stroke, nor was his ending up in the employ of the ICA, but all of it, including the rather bloody exit by which he parted company with Ort-Meyer, was the results of carefully engineered and executed plans created by Ort-Meyer.  

Oh, there were a few bumps in the road, and it is pretty clear that Ort-Meyer was not expecting his creation to systematically assassinate every one of the men who contributed to his genetics -- including Ort-Meyer -- but that is material for another article, for another time.

You now have a pretty clear grasp of who Agent 47 was at the start of his career as the ICA's star hitman and special field operator.  It goes without saying that the first almost 30 years of his life were spent in a densely packed series of special training, and his perfect record of contract assassinations for the ICA speak to the success of those efforts, but there is on additional factoid that you need to know about Agent 47: much of the underlying cause for his success as a hitman is thought to be the result of the fact that he was intentionally created with an extra (47th) chromosome.

The 47th Chromosome

If it seems that I am writing about Agent 47 as if he were an old friend, the reason for that is really because in a way that is precisely what he is.  Well, if not an old friend than by all means a lengthy acquaintance with whom a great many adventures have been shared.  In fact that is the point of this piece, because I have just embarked upon the replaying of many of those early adventures in the form of the just-released new game compilation that has been called the Hitman HD Collection (a trilogy consisting of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, and Hitman: Blood Money).

I will very soon be reviewing each game in the collection over at The Cape Cod Time's Game On review section, where I recently reviewed both Hitman: Absolution, and the new and related mini-game called Hitman: Sniper Challenge that was created as partly a promotional vehicle for Absolution, and those reviews have fomented the to-be-expected sense of nostalgia that one tends to reserve for events of a personal nature that while not really shared with others, still tend to have had a rather formative impact on you.

In the case of Agent 47 that impact was to instill in the gamer in me a decided respect for the stealth approach that can be used when playing shooter titles (whether they are intended to be stealth-based or not) and the result has been an interesting effect on my game play style.  It would be fair to say that the experience of playing as Agent 47 has had a lasting and interesting impact upon my general outlook and attitude when it comes to combat shooters in general, and the civilian mob/OC shooter in particular.

When a medical type speaks of the 47th Chromosome (normally humans have just 46) there is a very good chance that the conversation is about the disease known as Down's Syndrome -- largely due to the fact that the existence of that extra chromosome is thought to be the cause.  What you may not hear -- it is pretty unlikely -- is that the presence of a 47th chromosome does not necessarily always result in retardation or Down's Syndrome.  In fact there have been a very few isolated cases in which the extra chromosome actually served to enhance the human who possessed it rather than damage them.  Sadly that enhancement tended to be accompanied by some other undesirable side-effect, like the person lacking any moral sense or being inclined towards a career as a serial killer...

Of course those negatives did not prevent certain countries with strong military feelings to underwrite experimentation in the area of genetic science, with an eye towards creating super-soldiers by installing that extra chromosome.  The idea was, obviously, that they would experiment with it until they caught a breakthrough that allowed for a better understanding of how it does what it does, and how to get it to do desirable things.

Forget for the moment that to do this it was necessary to experiment on human beings, and forget for the moment that there are international treaties whose basic function is to prevent that sort of thing....  It happened anyway.  Hell, so does cloning, but nobody talks about that, do they?

It is rumored that the US has completed a long series of cloning experiments, and may be the second most knowledgeable nation when it comes to understanding how the process of cloning works.  You did note that I said "second" right?  The first would be Russia, or more accurately the former Soviet Union, who it is reliably reported had tremendous successes with developing a reliable system for cloning to the point that they could not only clone desirable organs with an eye towards transplants to extend life for individuals who were judged worthy of the great expenses involved, but the former Red State could also just as easily clone entire humans.  

It is even rumored that the ex-Soviet cloning programs uncovered interesting data about genetic memory, a subject that previously was spoken of in only the most basic and speculative of terms.  Today it seems that there is a wider acceptance that in addition to passing on trait-based data that is used as part of the blueprint for making a new human during the normal reproductive process, the mother also passes on a large amount of what is called foundation memory -- why hot is dangerous, the large collection of instinctual reactions to biological and animal threats, and a bunch of other low-level emotion-based reactionary types of information.

Basically the memory that is being passed on is not really memory as such, but skills, or perhaps more accurately reaction-based data, but also -- and this is where it gets interesting -- muscle memory.

It has long been thought that when one or both parents are gifted with expert skill in something like playing a musical instrument, any children that they have might also enjoy an easier process for the acquisition of similar skills.  While the Russians have not fully mapped out the genetic areas that are involved in this process, this exchange of mother-memory if you will, they were able to succeed in isolating and passing on the music part of it.  There is a rumor that they also have successfully mapped out some of the physical skills areas, including the sorts that are of interest to athletes who desire to compete at the Olympic level...

Can you imagine a generation of clones of Alexander Popov,  Anna Kournikova, or even Evgeny Plushenko?  I bet the Russians can...

While I am not sure that the folks over at IO were completely unaware of those programs, it does make for interesting speculation and an amusing notion that they were more than just a little aware of them.

Either way, when I get to the point of writing the game reviews for the new HD Trilogy you should consider yourself invited and encouraged not only to read them, but to play the games.  While they are not fully remastered (that is to say they have not been redone, but rather have been converted to run on the new platforms and in HD quality) they do offer you a chance to step back in time and experience these games in much the same way that we did a decade ago, and that is certainly worth the cost of admission...

I have to go now, there are contracts to be completed...

. . . Constructive Criticism

Flying through Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor in an Army Air Corps P-40N Warhawk

All newspapers are not created equal.  

What I mean by that is that some are better than others, and not just because they have better writers (though that really does help a lot) but because they have a strong editorial staff with a clear vision of the community that they serve, and as a result of that vision have established a sound editorial policy, employing a firm but fair hand, offer their writers the support of oversight while demanding at least a minimum level of both quality and competency from them (whether that be Staff Writers or Freelance Writers), and they have embraced a philosophy of ethical journalism that precludes the use of tactics like hacking voicemail boxes and, well, you get the idea.

The paper that I write for is a good paper in my opinion.  It fulfills all of the above requirements and more, the editorial staff are seasoned veterans and while it may not really like the idea, it is cheerfully heading into this second decade of the new century having embraced the idea that newspapers have to have an online digital element to them, and as a result the paper is adding more and more features to its award-winning website.  How cool is that?

The reason that I began this post with that subject is that I want to now segue into expressing my opinion that The Guardian is also a very fine newspaper -- in fact if we reduce the pool for purposes of comparison to just newspapers in the United Kingdom, well then The Guardian is an amazingly fine newspaper with sterling character, very high quality editing, and an editorial policy that is spot-on amazing.  It is not that I don't think much of newspapers in the UK, more that I don't think much of newspapers in the UK, but when I do think about newspapers in the UK, I think about The Guardian. 

I read newspapers online -- I have been doing so for about as long as newspapers have been publishing online versions of their print version, and I do this to supplement my offline newspaper reading -- which consists of The Cape Cod Times every day (naturally) and The Boston Globe every few days.  Add to that diet online newspaper reading that includes The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), The Guardian (UK), and Noordhollands Dagblad (Netherlands).  

The story behind those choices is actually pretty simple: I read the Cape Cod Times because in addition to writing for it I also happen to live on Cape Cod, and it is the best source for news in my region, well, period.  I read the Boston Globe mostly to keep tabs on what bands are appearing where, what the upcoming events are, and because I have friends who write for it and I like to keep an eye on what they are writing about because that's how I roll.  Literally.  Roll I mean..  If you knew me you would be laughing right now.

I read the SMH because I like to keep track of happenings in Oz, and although I did not grow up in or anywhere near Sydney, I was at Uni there, and besides it is better than the papers from Byron Bay, which is where I grew up (I should probably admit that I sometimes read the Byron Shire News online as well since we are shooting for complete transparency here).  

Team Alkmaar (j/k)

I read Noordhollands Dagblad because we have family there (in addition to serving as the regional newspaper for North Holland it is also the local paper for Alkmaar, which is the OTHER cheese city of Holland) and in addition to being happy to read about important events in Alkmaar the paper also gives me the scores for football -- I am not a fan of Manchester United which is what most expat Aussies will say they are when the subject is European football, in fact I freely admit that when I cheer on a team it is usually AZ (Alkmaar Zaanstreek) and Ajax (Amsterdamsche Football Club Ajax) specifically in that order.  I don't have a favorite Aussie football team.

I read The Guardian to keep track of what is happening in the UK as it has pretty decent coverage of the two areas of news that I am interested in: Technology and Culture.  The Tech Section there has really good coverage for one thing, and it is also a pretty accurate measuring stick as to what tech (and video games) people in the UK are interested in.  The Culture section also have great coverage and offers insight into important social movements like Dr. Who, and what books and movies are rising in popularity.  Really.

The Guardian is one of the older newspapers in the UK -- it was originally founded in 1821 as the Manchester Guardian -- and it is generally considered to be a British National Newspaper of the same caliber as the modern day London Times (while The Times was founded in 1785 its sister paper, The London Sunday Times, was also founded in 1821).  I could probably get the same level of coverage information-wise from The Times but as I know a few people who write for The Guardian, like The Globe I am slaying two dragons with one newspaper in multi-tasking; getting the news and keeping tabs on what my mates are writing...

Howitt found the graphics to be substandard - I thought they were just fine...

And Now We Get to the Point...

All of that stuff above, though intended to be pleasant, brings us to the reason I was reading The Guardian and happened upon a review of the freshman video game title from Mad Catz Interactive (yes, the PC peripheral and gaming controller company) -- Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII -- which was released on the 28th of August for Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC. 

The review in question is simply called "Damage Inc Pacific Squadron WWII -- review" and it was written on Friday, 31 August 2012, for The Guardian by freelance writer Grant Howitt and published in the online edition of The Guardian in the News > Technology > Games section -- and for all I know it was also published in the meatspace version of the paper as well.  Howitt defines himself in his official writer's profile on the site as being passionate for writing about games, declares that he is "on a quest to discover the perfect sandwich" and confesses that he drinks too much coffee.  I am not being snarky when I add that I am unsure why that information would be helpful for the reader in the process of assessing the potential value of the words that any writer creates, but there you have it.

There are several reasons that Howitt's review of the game caught my attention: (1) it was one of the games that I previewed and attended the press briefing on at this year's E3; (2) it is one of the games I am presently playing -- the other is Risen 2: Dark Waters; (3) it is my current game review candidate; and (4) the blurb for the game review starts out with "An otherwise disappointing aerial shooter..."

It was number four that caused me to click on the review, and as I read through it I confess to being first irritated, then disappointed, and finally irritated again.  The reasons? 

I could easily say "too numerous to list" but that would be a lie and the only reason to tell that lie would be to save the feelings of the freelance writer who wrote that review.  If they were someone I know (he is not) I might actually have simply chalked it off to the vagaries of opinion and let it go.  In fact I might have done that anyway, except that as I finished reading that game review I realized that the person who wrote it had not actually played the game.  That really irritated me.

Grant Howitt

The Guardian is not a bush-league community weekly; being hired to write a game review for it is actually something that any freelance writer should feel proud of, because it is not simply recognition of their talent as a writer, but it is an opportunity to speak directly to the readers of that newspaper; an opportunity to begin building your own following.  

All that a writer would need to do -- once they managed to get past that first massive brick wall of access (being asked to write the review in other words) -- is a good job.  A proper and sincere job.  The job that they were commissioned to do, and to do the best they could do and then polish that.

Even if the reviewer is sticking to minimal efforts, well then at a minimum they would need to play the game from the start to the finish; they would need to explore its nooks and crannies, look for the ways that it shines, and look for the elements that need improving.  They would accurately identify any bugs that existed and write about them, because that is information that is not only useful to the reader, but a major reason why they read game reviews in the first place!  Even if the writer was only making the minimal effort they would still want to find a hook to hang the review upon; and after they put that entire package together, they would want to treat the readers with the respect that they deserve.

It may help you in understanding my reaction if you understand the sense of the duty and obligation that I believe the reviewer owes to their audience before we continue...  

A game review is not just an article in which you tell the readers whether or not you liked a game, it is an examination of the game in which the writer explores what the game has to offer the players -- both as entertainment and from the point of view of value -- because the vast majority of that audience routinely uses game reviews as part of the process of deciding what games they will buy and play.  It is a formal expression of the experiences that the writer had in playing the game as preparation for the review process, and when it is done correctly can be an amazing demonstration of the abilities and the gift that the writer has for the craft.

I mention above the debt that we, as writers, owe to our readers.  I was not kidding, I genuinely believe that such a debt exists.  And not simply because without the demand that the readers create for this sort of content, editors would not hire us to write it, but also because they are the audience!  

The readers are the true source and the force responsible for a large part of the job that we do -- and being paid to play video games really is work -- because it is the need to serve that audience that is the source of the demand that causes editors to assign game reviews in the first place, and because of that natural relationship we owe them, at the bare minimum, an honest and ethical truthful review. 

Just after I returned home from E3 I wrote another blog entry that touches upon the subject of game reviews and games journalism (Speaking of . . . When Writers Attack), and in that blog entry I observed:

"The games beat is a great beat, full of interesting stories and dedicated people, but more important than that, it is a beat that serves an audience who wants to read what we have to say -- something that is not true about every beat in journalism -- and that relies upon us to tell them the truth; to keep them informed about subjects that are important to them. 

"They trust us to refrain from allowing our personal feelings (or lack of them) for a title to shade or influence what we say about it, and to speak to them (not at them) every time.  The trust that they place in us is an earned thing, not to be taken lightly, and never sacrificed for petty reasons.  It is a trust that extends beyond the by-line, and often invests itself in the publication that we write for -- and vice-versa.

"When you are writing on this beat is important not to get it wrong; it is critical that when we write about a game we write from a position of informed knowledge and personal experience because we were there, and we put into it the proper effort.  It is critical that we employ an ethical approach to the stories we write, and that we meet the standards set for us not just by our publications, but by the community we serve -- and that we never forget, not even for a moment, that the privilege that we enjoy as members of the games journalism community is drawn from the gaming community.  Our readers.

"There are different levels of betrayal that we can commit -- and at the very top of the list there is one form of betrayal that the readers will not tolerate, and that is the act of faking it."

When I wrote those words above they were all true.  They still are.  Writing on this beat -- being paid to write on this beat -- for many writers is the mountaintop.  It not only provides an opportunity -- and if you are very lucky a regular opportunity -- to share your opinions with your audience, it allows you to get paid to do the two activities that we love the most in this world: writing, and playing video games.  In that order.

When you write on this beat the obligation to tell the truth is not simply one you owe to the publication that has trusted you with speaking for it -- and it is not simply an obligation that you owe to your readers and yourself -- it is a moral imperative, because like a butterfly that moves from flower to flower, and tree to tree, the words that you write often have consequences far distant and often devastating.  

Your words and ideas will have an impact beyond the review that you write, because once that review is published and your audience reads it, they will share the opinion they have formed -- the opinion that you assisted them in forming --  with others.  And like the proverbial stone dropped into a glassy-smooth pond, the ripples will spread and spread the further away from your review they go.  Further down in the blog post I quoted above I cautioned the reader:

Understand something -- offering an opinion about a game is not the same thing as judging it and finding it wanting -- and when as a games journalist you do harshly judge a game, you had damn well better be right.  And able to explain the reasons and reasoning behind that opinion.  Because when you pass judgement on a title and that judgement is negative, there is an assumption that you know what you are talking about.  Especially if you are the only one saying the bad things you are saying.

The wide selection of historically accurate planes were a blast to fly, and the game earned high marks for delivering just what it promised to deliver -- an addictive romp through history in a combat flight sim.

When It Isn't What It Is

I knew that this was going to be bad from the first paragraph of the review, because Howitt starts out comparing the real-world event of the Japanese attack on the US Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with the imaginary character in the game, upon whom Howitt lays the blame for all of America's failures in the war.   While we should not take that sort of thing too seriously -- literary license and all -- it is Howitt's willingness to offend by marginalizing the deaths of  2008 sailors, 218 soldiers, 109 Marines, and 68 civilians in order to score a zinger in contrasting the images that will easily offend. 

After making that baseless comparison Howitt goes on to state that the protagonist of the game, a Naval Aviator named Bobby, cannot fly, and "crashed explosively into nearby buildings at every opportunity."  Howitt explains that Bobby has a "propensity for crashing into the ground whenever he tries to shoot at anything below his level and his inability to take off without wobbling the plane around like a trolley with a broken wheel."  

Howitt then proceeds to criticize the games controls, singling out the Reflex Mode (which has the effect of slowing time down and zooming the player's POV in) implying that the bulk of the game will likely be played using the Reflex Mode since it made combat easier for him, summing it up by allowing that "dogfights are often nothing more than a race to the enemy planes before hitting the magical slow-motion button and calmly blowing them away."

Howitt then takes a cheap shot at actor Ben Affleck,  complains that the amount of planes that the player can shoot down completely violates "Damage Inc's (SIC) promises of realism" and then complains that the game looks to him "of being made on a shoestring in an attempt to flog joysticks" and takes it to task for cheesy dialogue that he complains is both under-acted and over-acted. 

After several more paragraphs of words that had nothing of substance to offer the reader about the game other than how much Howitt was disappointed with it or did not like it, how he couldn't get the Flight Stick to work properly, and how he was bothered by the decals that came with the game that depicted "either sharks or flames or busty pin-up ladies" -- and that following his use of an allusion to a penis as the section header for his reflections on the flight stick, which save for the dedicated throttle control was evidently a major disappointment for him.

After whinging about the flight stick Howitt sums up his review with his conclusions, which are that its name -- Damage Inc. -- in his opinion promises more than it can possibly deliver, he finally concludes that gamers should go out and purchase a much better combat flight simulator for their PC -- but Howitt cannot be bothered to actually suggest a title.  Gah.

What is Wrong?

Familiarization with the controls in Damage Inc. takes an average of around 20 minutes for the traditional console Gamepad, and about the same amount of time for the AV8R Flight Stick that comes with the CE version of the game.  Far from making the game harder to control, the Flight Stick actually adds a much higher level of finesse to the flying experience, but it seems that Howitt never discovered that -- and I suspect that the reason for his failing to discover it stems from his not actually playing the game beyond the first few minutes before he reviewed it.  I have reasons for believing that...

Before we get to those though, I want to address Howitt's slam against the game and the controls.  He opens his review with the observation that the protagonist lacks basic flying and combat skills.  What he fails to mention is that it was not the character or the game at fault, it was Howitt himself.  The game does not fly the plane for you, it does not shoot the guns for you, and it does not take off (or land) for you.  The player does all of that.  So when Howitt complains about all of that what he is actually doing is illustrating for us that (A) he does not know how to play combat flight simulator games, (B) he did not continue to play the game long enough to acclimate to the controls and LEARN how to play, and (C) he is demonstrably unaware of the genre and sub-genre that this game was created for and what that naturally implies it will contain.

Howitt accuses the folks at Mad Catz of simply making a game in order to promote the sale of their AV8R Flight Stick controller.  The problem with that accusation is that Mad Catz admitted that from the start and never pretended -- or said -- that it was doing anything other than that.  

"Damage Inc. is part of our strategy of publishing key software titles which complement our hardware business," said Darren Richardson, President and CEO of Mad Catz. "We believe that when partnered with the AV8R FlightStick, Damage Inc., presents a unique gaming experience that will resonate with passionate gamers."

The quote above is from the press release the company issued to announce the release of the game on August 28th, but it is not new information -- variations of that information were presented in many of the releases that were issued about the game.

With respect to Howitt's contention that the game promised to be realistic and the fact that you can shoot down many more planes than is realistic set aside, what the company promised -- and delivered -- was a historically realistic game.   The selection of airplanes (both US and Japanese) that the players are treated to and are able to fly represent spot-on historically correct representations of the planes, which was what Mad Catz promised to deliver -- and as far the name "Damage Inc." containing unspoken, unwritten, and apparently save for Howitt, undecipherable promises?

What irritated me was that Howitt's review was not a game review, it was an article on why Howitt was disappointed with a game he did not actually play.   He got assigned to review a game for a newspaper that deserved to get a proper review, which intended to present a proper review to its readers, and what they got was advice to buy a combat flight sim for their PC.

Frankly I was shocked that the editor at The Guardian published that "review" -- but I am not blaming them. 

Howitt examined the game and found it wholly wanting.  I have played it now for a little over 30 hours and found it to be a fun romp through history with some hidden gems that make up the optional side-quests that are not part of the briefings -- like my protecting JFK's PT Boat during one of the missions.   In another undocumented gem, during an airfield attack mission in which the P-38 Lightning was the plane being used, a transport tried to escape by flying over the hills after the field was attacked and the game took only slight notice of it, announcing that it was trying to escape and must be carrying someone important...  After shooting down the plane the circumstances clicked and I realized in a small epiphany that I had just shot down the transport carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto!  Damage Inc. not a historic play?  Pshaw!

Violating my own rule about not replying to things I see online that I don't like for a full 24-hours delay -- a policy that for the most part keeps me from replying at all because a day later the disgust, disappointment, or whatever emotional reaction that I had experienced the day before had mostly worn off, allowing me to conclude that there was nothing to be accomplished in writing a post on the subject -- I wrote a comment below the review on The Guardian's site.

Based upon Howitt's reply in his comment to my comment you cannot tell what his actual reaction was (other than sarcasm), but read his reaction via his Twitter account and it becomes much clearer.   

When you offer unsolicited and free advice to people -- especially writers -- you have to be prepared for the idea that they either do not want your advice, do not value your advice, or will react badly to being provided constructive criticism.  Howitt thoughtfully explained to me that based upon his impressions of my website I have nothing to teach him -- which is fine with me as I did not have the heart to tell him that he misunderstood the whole point of my comment to his review, which was not intended to teach him anything at all, it was intended to function as a voice in which I could express my disappointment and disgust -- if he learned something from that, well hey, that is a bonus for him as I got what I wanted from the experience; and all things being equal I feel like Howitt got more than what he paid for my pearls of wisdom, but I am not going to let it go at that :)

I was stuck for the theme for the chapter of the book I am writing on how to break into the games beat, and now I have found it.  Silver linings, they pop up everywhere.

. . . Judging Video Games

Considering that part of what I do for a living is judge the relative merits and the "goodness" of video games, you would think that being asked exactly how I tell whether a game is any good or not would be a question that I should be able to instantly snap off a brief answer that is to the point and easy to understand, right? Well... Not so much, really.

This morning among the two-dozen new email messages that I usually get on a Saturday was one that asked me simply how I can tell when a game is any good? I should explain that I have a fairly complex set of filters and scripts on my email program so that the messages are sorted before I ever see them, with games related mail going in one folder, email from friends and relatives (and flagged as such) into another, with a cascading list of other folders sorted by the information in the subject line.

That filter system is why I always instruct the readers of my game guides to include the name of the game in the subject, since otherwise my email program is very likely to put their email into the "general > unsorted" folder, which is also where a lot of the span and unsolicited mail goes and which is the last folder I read each day, if I read it at all...

Back on the subject, the email was from a regular reader of my newspaper column, but they also read my game reviews and my articles on Gaming Update, and they mentioned that they liked my guides on SuperCheats and GameFaqs, so I either have a stalker or they really are simply following my writing...

As I sat and re-read the question I felt the urge to giggle in a very unmanly way. How do I tell if a game is good? How do I tell if a game is good?? To be fair that is an interesting question. It is also a difficult one to answer as I soon discovered.

If email was like writing on real paper, what you would have seen if you had come into my office this afternoon was me sitting at my desk surrounded by crumpled up balls of paper that represent the dozens of attempts that I made at trying to answer the question. Of course it is not like real paper, so there were no balled up torn-off sheets of paper surrounding me, but you get the idea.

How do I tell when a game is Good?

The easy answer to that question -- and a total cop-out -- would be to paraphrase United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his answer to the question of how to describe his threshold test for obscenity, which he wrote in his summary of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964): "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

That explanation has become one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of the Supreme Court, and even distilled down to a bare quote of "I know it when I see it" leaves it easily identified as Justice Stewart's infamous words.

It would be so easy to say I know a good game when I see one and leave it at that, but doing so would not only be disingenuous but it would also be avoiding answering the question at all.

Judging a Games "Goodness"

While it is by no means an official road map to the determining if a game is good, the right place to start is always with evaluating the story, plots, and the sub-plots that make up the story portion of the game. A good, well-constructed main story line is always a plus, even for games whose story is not its strongest point. Characters and their development is next -- obviously we are not very likely to end up immersed in a game when there is nothing for us to care about in it, and liking the character that you play (the protagonist) is a great place to start.

The next obvious point is the challenge level of play. It should be interesting, it should be original, and it must not simply recycle the same basic play over and over because that is the fastest path to boredom that I can imagine.

Every game is not going to have the depth of Final Fantasy XIII or the immersion of Fallout: New Vegas, but that does not mean that it cannot find its own way towards those two goals. It is interesting to note that sometimes when a developer is making a game that they know will not be able to hold up any story or plot using the foundation of its characters, the most obvious alternative is to find a gimmick to rely upon.

Take Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball as an example (AKA DOAX) and you have a game that relies almost completely upon a gimmick (near-nudity) as its primary vehicle. That it is a complete and total departure from the games in the DoA series that proceeded it to the point that it is largely viewed with rampant speculation by gamers the world over as something of a scam, and who not surprisingly, are convinced that its release as part of the DoA series was really a bald attempt at capitalizing upon the previous successes of the series to take what would otherwise be a lackluster beach volleyball game whose only attraction when it is judged purely on its own is the very well-drawn umm... Scenery?Well, you see the point?

It should be noted that the DoA series is a game series solidly embedded in the Fighting genre, and its following was largely teenagers into fighting games. Viewed that way, it makes complete sense for Tecmo to take this sexually-focused beach volleyball and present it to the traditional audience for the Dead or Alive games! The fact that DOAX is the first game in the series to obtain a Mature rating from the ESRB pretty much tells the rest of that story.

For the record what little actual nudity there was in the game occurs very early in the opening scene and is not an interactive part of the game. The ability of the player to zoom in and out, and position the center focus of the screen where they like when combined with the characters of the game who, save for a few exceptions, all pretty much sport uniforms that consist of the skimpiest of bikini’s pretty much illustrates the prurient focus of the game.

So here we have a game that uses a gimmick -- sex and scantily clad young girls -- and whose focus is not what the previous games in the series focused upon. It has a story -- the player selects a character and plays them through the two weeks of the fake tournament that the focal character Zack has organized in order to surround himself with scantily clad women athletes, and whose plot largely comes in two parts -- the awkwardness of the situation that Zack engineered followed by surviving the eruption of the volcano on 'Zack Island' immediately following the end of the fake tournament.

Is this a good game?

Well, reviewers and players overwhelmingly thought that it was! I never had the opportunity to review it because our reviews are reader-driven, and the readers evidently did not see the need for it to be reviewed and so never requested it, but games journo Aaron Boulding writing for the website IGN gave it a rating of 9.2 out of 10 with the note "Amazing" while Gamespot gave it a less enamored 6.0 out of 10 with the comment that it was "Fair."

A quick and dirty review of the reviews that the game received that contributed to its Meta ranking as well as its cumulative ranking on the website GameRankings.com reveals that the title was one of those games that tended to get favorable reviews, with most of the reviewers agreeing that it was a pretty good beach volleyball game. Add in the nearly nude girls and the guns, and it is pretty obvious that the International Amateur Athletics Union that oversees the criteria used to judge the standards for games in the Olympics has clearly missed a sure thing. Yeah, that was rather sarcastic humor...

Still this is a good game to use to illustrate the question -- because it was a game that gamers (and critics) either really liked a lot, or despised. When you read the negative reviews that it received very few of them actually addressed the game play, simply because they could not get past the near-nudity and obvious objectification of women to see the game play.

The critics that were able to see past the obvious and offensive nature of the presentation of the characters agree that it is a pretty good beach volleyball game -- though of course this was in 2003. I played it recently and I can say without reservations that the stilted and very simplistic game engine would instantly get this game slammed by players and critics alike, and thanks to modern video games like the last few games in the Grand Theft Auto series, the last Duke Nukem game, and even the last few Tomb Raider games, the near-nudity of DOAX would simply not be enough even as a gimmick to save the game rating today.

. . . I Judge . . .

Since the end of the Summer Doldrums there have been some really good games hitting store shelves and gamer consoles, not the least of which are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Driver: San Francisco, and Gears of War 3, and some notable DLC expansions like The Lonesome Road (for the established dashingly successful Fallout: New Vegas) and a few interesting expansions in the form of additional cases for the cult classic L.A. Noir.

With respect to the DLC, these were good game expansions laid on top of good games, though just because a base game is classified as a AAA title does not necessarily mean it is a good game or is going to be one.

One interesting system for determining whether a game is good or not is the system that is used by one of my good friends Jeremy Clark -- a veteran games journo who has been writing about and reviewing games for nearly 30 years. His personal system is very simple:

"If I have a hard time saving and quitting the game, then it is a good game. If I cannot bring myself to stop playing no matter how exhausted I am, it is a great game!""

Sadly that system and most of the one I use largely brings us full circle to the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: I know it when I see it.

And there you have it. Now if you will excuse me I am going to get back to finishing up The Lonesome Road so I can write the review for this very good DLC Expansion to a Very Good Game!