It’s ironic that I’m en route to preview a multiplayer game called Plain Sight, and for the life of me I cannot find where I’m supposed to be going. I’m late, though, and irony doesn’t help matters. One embarrassing phone call later, I’m taken up to the fourth floor of a building I passed ten minutes ago.
There are scenes, achievements, and spectacles that all gamers should experience in their lives. With technology digging back through gaming’s history to ensure titles once lost are resurrected on modern platforms, there are scant excuses left to not go back and appreciate all of the best moments in video games. After all, at some point you’re going to run out of extra lives and continues. Here’s our video game bucket list: 101 things you absolutely should do in gaming before you die.
I sneak through the side entrance of the Soho Hotel’s restaurant, guests distracted as I stumble between tables. They’re staring at my scruffy backpack, faded brown sneakers and recently shaven head. The receptionist surveys me as I take my surroundings. There’s a 10-foot porcelain sculpture overlooking an immaculately laid out driftwood lobby, and I feel utterly out of place in it.
Who doesn’t love word games? OK, some people don’t. Maybe most, actually. But I do, so for me, XBLA’s KrissX (pronounced “Kriss Kross”) offers a welcome diversion from the platform’s sea of twin-stick shooters.
The faint trickling of water. Blue neon flickers in the shadows. To your right, a garden of large coral glows crimson, overwhelming a decaying stairway. To your left, a silhouette standing tall with chest out, arms aloft, and judging all caught in its stony gaze. Above you, the decorative bronze that once flaunted freedom with pride is now overrun with a scrawling of Revelation 18:2 that shrieks out: “Fallen. Fallen is Babylon.” In the darkness of a vent, a pair of small yellow eyes shine out, watching every one of your slow, uneasy steps into the horrors beyond. Welcome back to Rapture, son.
Were Portal and Half-Life 2 to have a baby – is that incest? – the end result would not be Twin Sector. Primarily because the parents are already expecting, although it’s been a bit of a protracted pregnancy… Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will eventually plop out, deafening all with its newborn screams – keep the faith.
Saying The Agency is an outside bet to be one of 2010’s best games is pretty far-fetched, and that’s before you start talking about what’s actually in it. Will it even come out this year? It’s now ten months since GDC 09 and the declaration of an 2010 release, a declaration that’s looking increasingly fuzzy. Actually – will it come out at all? Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has twice had to deny cancellation rumours, the second time after several senior SOE members disconcertingly jumped ship, including the influential Matt Wilson. I doubt the cancellation rumours surprised the many cynics . After all, here’s a game attempting to blend the style and stealth of James Bond with the intimate, squad-based shooting of Counter-Strike, all in the MMO sphere, and on both PlayStation 3 and PC, no less. Certainly a tall order, but it’s that ambition that gives The Agency the potential to be spectacular.