After $60 and 20 hours of effort, I want to feel closure. I do not want a dark, to be continued screen. More games seem to end with an anti-climatic final battle only to find out the real big-bad was kept hidden until the next next, yet-to-be announced sequel. I enjoy my franchises, but waiting two to four years for a conclusion is just cruel. Video games take too much time to play and sometimes (not always) longer to make for half a story.

Halo 2 infamously left players floating (and only partially resolved in Halo 3). But several cliffhanger games have yet to get sequels like Shenmue II and Beyond Good and Evil, a cruel act since these are great games with amazing stories. And who knows if we’ll see real answers to God of War and Kingdom Hearts ever.

A recent trend has started announcing games as trilogies. Halo had that distinction as has the recently released Mass Effect and upcoming Too Human. This will only make things worse.
Too Human is a great example of the dangers in video game development. This yet-to-be-released action title first appeared back in 1999 as a Playstation title (Playstation 1 to be precise). Then it moved to Nintendo’s GameCube until recently showing up on the Xbox 360. Of course, now the developer is mixed up in a lawsuit with Epic, the makers of Unreal 3 engine powering Too Human. It’s unknown if this lawsuit will further delay the game.

And this is all for part one of three. At this rate of development, assuming the game even sells enough for a sequel, we won’t see the conclusion until almost 2020. No story is that good.

Movies have figured out how to make cliffhangers work - film movies at the same time. Lord of the Rings and the Matrix left short windows between releases to alleviate the cliffhanger sting. Video games don’t have that luxury. Compared to movies, video games don’t have the variety of revenue opportunities to make up money badly spent. A Hollywood blockbuster has theatrical release, DVD sales and rentals, enforcement deals, and cable and TV royalties to help pad the bottom line. This means Hollywood has more wiggle room when thinking about how much ticket sales alone bring in. Video games, however, have initial sales and rentals and that’s it. It makes taking a financial risk that much riskier.

On top of that, gamers require each part of a video game franchise to provide some kind of enhanced experience. This prevents simultaneous development of a game and its sequel. Though it’s unknown if gamers would accept less advancement if release windows were shortened.

Since simultaneous development like Lord of the Rings seems unreasonable at present, video game companies need to rethink how to develop game stories. Stop thinking about games as trilogies and more as series or franchises. We all know Halo won’t end as a trilogy. Aside from the cliffhanger ending in Halo 3 (which kinda defeats the trilogy idea), the game makes too much money to not make a fourth. So let’s model games more like an X-Men comic and less like an episode of Lost.

Basically, each game can be a self-contained story. With 10 to 40 hours of gameplay, there’s no excuse you can’t fit everything in one game (I’m looking at you Mass Effect). That’s called bad editing.

But self-contained doesn’t mean the story totally ends. Older comics had the major villain die after every issue with some hint that they might, just might come back (which they always did next month). Allusions to sequels are okay, but closure is required. Similarly, it’s okay to leave some questions unanswered. It only adds to our love of Master Chief not seeing his face or questioning why Marcus Fenix was in prison in Gears of War. Just make sure the game we play has a beginning, middle, and a real end. I don’t to beat the final boss only to find out they were just a pawn (much like - LIGHT SPOILER - Gears of Wars’ ending).

Basically, when I pay $60 for a game, I don’t expect half or a third of anything. I want the whole story. Just like wouldn’t accept half of the gameplay (like waiting a year for combos to be added to Street Fighter) I don’t want to wait forever for the story.

Microsoft’s onslaught into video games would have been more of a stumble had it not been for Master Chief and his aline adventures. Halo not only made the Xbox a success, but it instantly became a cultural phenomenon, redefining the console shooter in terms of AI, graphics, gameplay, and story. With amazing multiplayer still played years after release to the sub-culture of Red Vs. Blue, Halo spread its web of influence to be an icon, revolutionary, and bad-ass all at the same time. Halo sequels have broken sales records, with Halo 3 holding the record for biggest day of sales in U.S. history, more than $170 million (only to be trounced 7 months later by the multi-platform cheater GTA IV). Still, it’s impossible to play a first-person shooter these days without feeling the armored hand of Halo siphoning your gaming skillz as you ponder why you’re settling for anything but the best (selling).

Wikipedia has been a great tool for geeks to finally write down all the crap we used to have to remember.  And now we can share that knowledge with the world wide web.  Wikipedia allows anyone to not only edit articles, but to start their own speciality encyclopedias.  This list ranks the geekiest, most complete wikia dedicated to the topics geeks care most about.  It’s not simply which site has the most articles, but how deep into the subject did it take to find that many articles.  And how geeky those articles are.  That counts.

7. Transformers Wiki

Want to know how more than meets the eye the Transformers really were?  Check out the Transformers Wikia.  There are more than 5,500 articles to transform your thinking about giant robots, from the comics to the cartoons to the movies, in every generation of the series.

6. Doctor Who Wiki

The fan community of the longest running sci-fi series have written more than 7,600 articles about the ten different Doctors and all his enemies and friends.  It’s like time travel without the motion sickness.

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Aliens are awesome. Millions of aliens invading are awesomer. This week, I run down the greatest alien invasions across media. These are the biggest alien invasions. None of those one alien to conquer Earth. This is world versus world - where the fate of Earth hangs in the balance. So let’s see the different species desperate for a date with mankind.

7. Independence Day (1996)

You’ve got everything you could - huge alien ships destroying major world landmarks and Will Smith. Okay, maybe there’s something things you don’t want, but Independence Day certainly presents on of the best alien invasions summer blockbuster money can buy.

On July 2nd, several alien ships hover over the major cities of the world. The aliens wait until they are all into position before they unleash a massive energy blast, destroying whole cities. The President (played by Bill Pullman, obviously) uses the advice of scientist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) and hot-shot pilot Steven Hiller (Will Smith, who’s dating an exotic dancer, you know, for character development) to upload a virus into the alien ships, giving humans an opening to destroy the invasion force. Even though most every major city is wiped off the face of the Earth, everyone is happy about winning and still wondering when the sequel will happen.

6. Mars Attacks (1996)

Corny, creepy, and featuring Tom Jones. How can this at all be good? Well thankfully this is a list of the great alien invasions, not great movies. Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks, based on a series of, yes, trading cards, is spoof on all the classic alien invasions, from cliched flying saucers to toy-looking ray guns.

The skull-headed looking aliens arrive on Earth and are invited to speak at Congress where they kill the entire legislative body in a single blast: and on national television. And Mars Attacks, which was released shortly after Independence Day, spoofs the destruction of landmarks, dropping the Washington Monument on a troop of boy scouts, melted the Eiffel Tower, and used the Easter Island statues as bowling pins.

And for simplicity sake, the Martians were defeated by some truly painful yodeling music, “Indian Love Call” by Slim Whitman, which made the Martian’s heads explode. Yay for happy endings.

5. Ultimates #7-13 “Homeland Security” (2004)

So some shapeshifting aliens are planning to invade Earth? Who ya gonna call? Since the Avengers weren’t answering their interdimentional telephone, the alternate universe version, the Ultimates, came to the rescue. The second story arc for Marvel’s Avengers modern-age revamp sent Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, and an entire brigade of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers against a hidden Chitauri base. The shapeshifting Chitauri, it seems, had set a trap for the Ultimates. For all we knew, the Ultimates were killed in a massive explosion.

With no one to be drawn in their way, the Chitauri set a bomb to destroy the entire solar system. Of course, the Ultimates survived the explosion and launched a counter-assault, in the air and on the land in one massive, world-engulfing war. And when things still weren’t going so well, Captain America called in their secret weapon, the Hulk, who no qualms about killing or eating the aliens. After Thor teleports the bomb to another dimension, in ash and rubble of Washington D.C., the Ultimates proudly stand having saved the world from the greatest comic book alien invasion.

4. Halo series (2001)

After spending one whole game trying to lead the evil alien Covenant away from Earth, you gotta feel like a failure. Cause once Halo 2 comes around, well, it’s on. Playing as Xbox mascot Master Chief, you must defend Earth’s interstellar civilization from the religious and technically superior Covenant. The Covenant believe humanity is an affront to their gods, the Forerunners, and so Earth must be destroyed. The invasion goes all-out with next-gen technology in Halo 3 as you finish the fight to save Earth and galaxy (because Earth is very important to the galaxy always). The game takes you all over Earth, with the Chief and his Marines blasting their way through alien scum on every continent.

One of the most successful and addictive video game franchises, Halo not only provides such an over-the-top storyline that only video games can provide, but also lets players imagine the rest of the unseen battles through extensive and unmatched multiplayer matches. Did Independence Day let you do that? No? I didn’t think so.

3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

If aliens take over the world, and no one knows, is it still an invasion? Well, I say it not only is, but it’s amazing. The classic film Invasion of the Body Snatchers shows the citizens of a small California town being replaced by Pod People - emotionless alien replacements who help spread more pods around the world. But the warnings are too late. By the time the authorities are warned, the pods have spread and the world is doomed.

This B-grade horror movie evolved into a classic tale of an alternative to the alien invasion, taking over not with weapons but by taking over humans. And nothing’s scarier than humans who don’t respect your boundaries. It’s why I avoid my neighbor at all costs.

2. Cylons invade the Twelve Colonies (2004)

Most of the time, humans lose the battle but win the war. Well, in Battlestar Galactica, there aren’t enough humans left to win. Within minutes of the first episode, the robotic Cylons wipe out the entire human population across twelve planets. Only 40,000 humans are left, nomads in space searching for the lost thirteenth colony, Earth.

And this is the invasion that never ends. The Cylons continue hunting the remaining humans across the galaxy. And in addition to occupying the original colonies, the Cylons followed the humans to their settlement on a new planet, New Caprica. It’s two invasions in one!

1. War of the Worlds (1898)

A classic book, several movies, radio show, video game, musical, and even some comic book adaptations make War of the Worlds the standard all alien invasions are measured against. Written by H.G. Wells in 1898, War of the Worlds told of an army of Martians invading Earth with giant, tripod walking machines with powerful heat-rays. The Martians destroyed all of Earth’s defenses, sending everyone, including Tom Cruise, running for the hills. And in one of the most unique ending of all, the Martians were eventually defeated not by man, but by our viruses - microbes the aliens had no immunity to.

War of the Worlds would have earned a top stop on timelessness and influence alone, but for extra credit, many people believed Martians were actually attacking. In 1938, Orson Welles performed a radio show based on the novel as a news reel causing an approximate one million listens to believe the broadcast to be real.

And if Orson Welles likes it, it must be good.

Every Monday, I force my opinion on you, my fearless readers, ranking the seven of something geeky.

Halo 3 easily defeats aliens and girlfriends, but apparently, it also defeats Ben Stiller. Halo 3’s record-breaking opening clashed with the opening weekend for Ben Stiller’s new movie The Heartbreak Kid, reuniting him with Something About Mary directors, the Farrelly Brothers. The film, which cost $60 million to make, brought in a disappointing $14 million over three days, paling in comparison to Halo 3’s $170 million opening day.

According to Advertising Age, movie executives are blaming Halo 3 for The Heartbreak Kid’s poor weekend gross. How else can analysts explain why Heartbreak Kid didn’t gross the predicted $20-$25 million. Doesn’t anyone think maybe no one wanted to see this movie?

I will preface, I didn’t see Heartbreak Kid. I don’t want to see Heartbreak Kid. I enjoyed Heartbreak Kid when it was called Something About Mary more than 10 years ago. Farrelly Brothers - please, come up with a new gimmick.

Now before I give video games like Halo credit where credit is due, let’s look at The Heartbreak Kid’s responsibility. Heartbreak Kid had very little going for it to justify a healthy opening weekend. It had a boring marketing campaign with an unknown woman causing hell for Ben Stiller, a reliable movie-seat filler. No Jennifer Aniston this time around. And if the Farrelly Brothers wanted to illicit memories of Something About Mary, then maybe they should have put that in the advertisement. Then, the movie opens in October, a reliably crappy month for movies. And then, of course, there’s the terrible reviews. Now understandably, movies of this ilk can be immune to reviews. The film had an embarrassing 29 percent of good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

But as I said, video games, in particular Halo 3, might deserve some of the blame. Movie receipts for October are the lowest since 1999. The fall season is six percent behind last year. But we shouldn’t blame Halo 3. Halo 3 is an awesome video game. So people wanted to play it. Just like movies. When people want to see a movie, they usually go to see it. That’s the key. People have to watch to see/play/read/listen to the movie/game/book/song. Video games siphon viewers from movies who siphon viewers from television (or vice versa) who siphon viewers from books. Then of course a Harry Potter or Star Wars or Halo comes out and draws from people all over the media spectrum.

The lesson to learn is people aren’t loyal to a medium. They’re loyal to media. If the Halo movie came out against the Halo 3 video game, I would bet both would do extremely well. Maybe not as well if staggered, but money would be made. Like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The movie came out this summer just as kids were curling up with the new and last Harry Potter book. The book likely hurt the movie’s grossing. But the movie still grossed almost $300 million. Not too shabby.

Make movies people want to see and they will come. Make games people want to play and they will come. Make freakin’ books people want to read and even they will come. It’s that simple. The hard part is coming up with what people want.

So you’re halfway through BioShock but Halo 3 just came out. And then Call of Duty 4 hits store shelves. You set aside your allowance/paycheck all year to be able to afford all the games you want this holiday season. But if you keep buying these new games, will you have time to play all the games you buy.

I’m terrible about finishing my games. I’ve maybe beaten 20 of my more than 100 games. And, of course, I keep buying more and more. And with no end in new games in sight, I have to ask, is shelling out the $60 for new games worth the money.

I estimate that if my 100 unbeaten games take an average of 20 hours to beat (I like RPGs), it will take around 2,000 hours to finish all my games, not counting new ones I buy. That’s more than 83 days with no sleep or rest. Giving myself six hours of sleep and some time to eat, it’ll take 125 days. So it’s humanly possible, but who can play for 16 hours every single day. And what if I want to do a sidequest? Or play some multiplayer? Or, the horror, replay a game? I sometimes get so hung up worrying about finishing the game that I forget to enjoy the experience.

The conflict comes from the demand for long games with fleshed-out stories filled with twists and turns. But it’s these games that frustrate me the most. A game with no story has no demand for completion. I can play Street Fighter II or Sim City 2000 as much as I want and I’ll never really beat them. And with sandbox and exploration games like Grand Theft Auto III and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the game might have ending, but you’ll only get there after 200 hours of sidequests and just, plain, fun.

Games are just made too long to beat. No longer can you rush through a Mario game in a single sitting. The reason games no longer have limited lives is because games just last too long on such limited resources. Imagine trying to beat Ninja Gaiden only being allowed to die three times.

But if the developers of the game spent years creating this massive world with so much story and visual splendor, he or she must want me to see everything. So should I take the 10-40 hours minimum to beat all my games, possibly waiting to buy new ones until I beat my current games. Frankly, I just think video games take too long. I look at games as experiences. Sometimes I enjoy some subdued stealth in Metal Gear Solid and sometimes I want to hack-and-slash my way through God of War. Because I own so many games or because of my own ADD, I let my mood decide what game I play. So Dragon Quest VIII gets sidelined in place of dozens of newer games because it just never fancies my mood. I love the game and have put in several hours already, but there are just so many other games I want to play more…at that point in time.

For me, I look at video games as the modern book collection. How many books are on your or your parent’s shelves that you or they never read? I think video games giving us long campaigns with rich stories provides valuable experiences, but do they all have to be this way. As I’ve written about before, critics and gamers demand these long games to make the large price worth paying. But all games don’t have to be 40 hours and all games don’t have to be $60. But that’s a whole other blog post.

For now, I keep buying games because I enjoy new games. Do I owe something to the developers to see the full story they made? Or do I owe it to myself to get my entire money’s worth by playing every minute I can. Of course it’s an individual’s choice. But I think doing anything for several hours, even something really pleasurable, can get bland after a while. I use the movie rate of value to measure the value of a video game. One movie ticket for $10 provides two hours of entertainment. So for a $60 video game, I need at least 12 hours to make it worth buying (you can use the DVD rate of value; I don’t because I don’t like watching movies repeatedly).

While I haven’t beaten the majority of my games, I have put in at least ten hours into about ninety percent of them. So in the end, I am getting my money’s worth. Of course, it may take me almost a year to log the time, but I get there eventually. And that’s worth something, right?

After weeks of rumors across the interweb, Microsoft’s golden child, the makers of the Halo franchise Bungie will be moving out. Microsoft acquired Bungie Studios in 2000, launching Halo, the juggernaut killer-app for the Xbox. And in case you hadn’t heard, on this past September 25th, Bungie and Microsoft release Halo 3 for the Xbox 360, selling almost $300 million in a single week.

Speculation has been brewing all week that Bungie was going independent - that the studio was getting tired of churning out Halos and wanted to do something different. Now, Bungie will “branch off” as Bungie, LLC, effective since October 1st. Microsoft retains the rights to Halo and gets first crack at any new Bungie properties.

In today’s press release, Microsoft spun the break-up as an “evolution of [their] relationship.” Now that’s spin. All the details of Bungie’s separation have yet to be fished out, but I can’t believe Microsoft is happy. Part of the reason they waited five days to announce the separation was probably to avoid bad press so close to the Halo 3 launch (not that Halo wasn’t without its own controversy).

This summer, Microsoft bragged about how Halo 3 would help make its video game division profitable. Not only would they sell more 360s, but since Microsoft owned Bungie, the game was all profit. Now, not so much. Halo will remain mostly profit for Microsoft, but Bungie’s on its own now. Microsoft may get first crack at games, but any cut Bungie gets is not part of Microsoft’s bottom line. Anything Microsoft gives to Bungie is an outright expense. And with this deal, who knows what happens to Halo 4 and any other spin-offs. What if Bungie just doesn’t want to make these games right now. Will Microsoft outsource Halo to another developer? Oh the horror.

Microsoft doesn’t have many console selling franchises. While its doing a good job stealing exclusives away from the PS3, Microsoft would be helped by in-house development. But now their best resources has…evolved. I hope nothing goes extinct.

In between marathon Halo 3 bouts, some nit-picky pixel counters discovered Halo 3 only runs in 640p natively, upscaling to 720p. Only two other Xbox 360 games have lowered their resolution below 720p, Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham Racing 3, in order to maintain acceptable frame rates. Halo 3 is a true disappointment since the marquee name on the Xbox 360 can’t even maintain the base standards for the 360. And Halo 3 doesn’t even have the best graphics. Bungie, the makers of Halo 3, confirmed the lower resolution claiming this was required to support the HDR lighting effects and a high frame rate.

To me, this is embarrassing for the Xbox 360. 640p versus 720p is almost impossible to discern, but forecasts problems in the 360’s future. Here only in the console’s second year, a game with far from the best graphics for the system is taxing the system. The Playstation 3 has dealt with frame rate controversy blamed on development time, not system limitations.

Bungie’s response to the pixel controversy isn’t without rebuttal.

We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet’s propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.

Not the nicest way of saying 80p doesn’t matter. But I’m sure this won’t stop anyone from buying Halo 4.

For someone who couldn’t care less about playing Halo 3, I certainly do love writing about it. Well Microsoft has announced Halo 3 smashed all media records pulling in $170 million in only 24 hours. This beats the $150 million opening weekend for Spider-Man 3 and the massive sales of Harry Potter books.

Of course, with video games costing $60 each, Halo 3 sold far less units than than these movies and books, but who’s counting. Still, Halo 3 sold an amazing 2.5 million copies in 24 hours and made September 25th the most active day on Xbox Live history. Don’t forget to eat people. And if anyone’s interested, I’ll be playing Viva Pinata.

Okay, so I wasn’t going to write about Halo (again), but this was too hilarious to ignore: geeks pranking geeks. Students from MIT upgraded the statue of John P. Harvard at Harvard Yard with a Master Chief helmet and assault rifle. I can’t wait for the spin-off.