by Shawn Sanders

The other day I checked out the most recent movie for Halo, Bungie's upcoming third-person guerilla-warfare action game due out sometime late next year. As I sat there awe-struck like a deer caught in a pair of oncoming headlights, the cold, bitter taste of reality hit me harder than Mike Tyson would after making fun of his highly laughable boxing career.

I will not be able to play this game until after another E3. That sucks.

Then I began to think of all the games that suffer from the excessive hype phenomenon. Which brings me to the question: "Why, in the name of all that is unholy and perverse, do I know about these infernal games literally years before they'll come out?" There is such a thing as too much foreplay.

Let me see a show of hands from all the gamers who are tired of hearing about games that they will not see, much less play, for at least a year. Wow! That many, eh? Good, then this is a rant for you. Grab your torches and join me on a little cyber witch-hunt.

Currently, there are more games requiring gamers to pack their bags and set out for that long road of waiting than I would care to mention. Games like Remedy's Max Payne, for instance. Oh boy, is this a beauty.

The people over at Remedy are packing Max Payne with some of the most revolutionary, cinematic features and technology ever seen in a computer game. The movies and shreds of gameplay that I witnessed at this year's E3 almost made me wet my pants, which I haven't done since Flashback. But despite the prodigious bells and whistles, I was still left wondering how the game as a whole is actually going to play.

I know that a good game takes years to complete. Building proprietary engines and implementing new features can take the better part of a decade. But that doesn't mean I need to know about the blasted thing in year one of five. I feel that there should be some self-imposed set of limitations on the part of developers, such as, "We won't show anything until this game is six months from shipping or 75% complete."

Will you still need me, when I'm sixty-four?

Please spare me the "it's done when it's done" crap. More and more developers are using this lame ass excuse, and all it tells me is that someone can't meet a deadline. If you don't know when it's going to be done, what makes you think I want to know about the game at all? For all I know, the game won't even be released (ex: Thrill Kill). I'm supposed to spend years trying to come up with new ways to say the same glorious things, singing your praises as a gamer and an editor all because you want your main character to move like Keanu did in The Matrix?

News flash: The Matrix was not that great a movie. I'd bet my kung-fu grip that Jet Li's morning exercise routine is more impressive than Keanu doing the limbo in slow motion.

Not only is excessive hype annoying, but it brings the quality of games down. How many mediocre games will come out that implement the Matrix-ish slow-motion feature? Cryo's Devil Inside is trying to do something with this feature. I know Square's new Playstation 2 title Bouncer (due out later this year) will utilize the freeze & pan feature seen in many new movies as well as the Keanu slow-motion trick. With more small potatoes using the features that those larger titles are priding themselves on, gamers are left wanting to see something really incredible by the time the larger titles come out. Anything short of mind-blowing becomes unacceptable.

If you tell me that your five-year project is going to revolutionize the way games are made, I'll believe you, because now you have played your hand. Other developers snag your features, make a bunch of C or B grade games and thereby dilute the gamer's idea of what is revolutionary. Remember that we live in a technology driven age, where revolutionary today is not so five years from now.

In perhaps the single greatest affront to the hype business, take John Romero's Daikatana (I still can't believe his name was part of the title). This was the trajectory of that game, at least according to the top-secret tapes and videos I obtained on E-bay:

Die, Katana! Why won't you Die?!

1. "Daikatana will revolutionize the FPS genre."
2. (1 year later) "Ok, we're pressed for time. Let's just focus on a really fun gaming experience."
3. (year 2) "Ok, Eidos is really hounding us to get this thing out. Let's determine what we can scrap and what we can put patches out for once the game is released."
4. (year 3) "Crap, everyone is making fun of this thing. Do we HAVE to release it?"
5. "Crap. We released it."
6. Crap.

The Playstation 2 is another good example of revolutionary then, but not now. The PS2 will be sporting a little under a 300MHz CPU with 32MB memory and 4 MB of video memory. This sounded amazing when initially announced. However, now the hardware is like that of a 2 year old PC.

I shouldn't know the details of the hardware, anyway. Ultimately, it's the software that makes the system, or at least it really should be. Keep in mind, the Sega Saturn sported similar hardware specs as the original Playstation...but when was the last time you played with your Saturn?

And is it a coincidence that before Sony made such a big deal about their DVD capability, no one was talking about DVD support on their system? Now the Dolphin (StarCube?), X-Box, Indrema and an add-on for the Dreamcast will be able to play DVD movies. Not only that, but if you were to look at the specs for both the PS2 and the X-Box, you might think that Microsoft is just making the Playstation 3. The X-Box specs are just enhanced PS2 specs, nothing original, really. The funny thing is that when the X-Box is released late next year, all those hardware specifications will be old and outdated.

My point is not that these games and systems aren't going to make seismic impressions once they become available, but that often these games and systems have their thunder stolen and the impact is softened due to several years of media hype leading up to the release.

Ignorance is bliss.

It seems to be all about what information you give out and how much. Microsoft's Freelancer is another title that we have been waiting quite some time for. Yet thankfully, we have not been bombarded by hype. Sure, Freelancer has demanded some press. We know what kind of game it is and we have seen some screenshots for it, as well as a few movies and some developer driven gameplay. But more important is the fact that no one knows exactly how big it is (including the developers), and all the features that will make or break the game are virtually unknown. What's been revealed is just enough to instill a little curiosity. There isn't this constant stream of unnecessary and unwanted information. Microsoft has not played their hand and yet people are still interested. That's good press.

Another game that didn't succumb to over-hype is The Sims, currently the biggest selling game of the year. Very little was released or made available to the public, and although the game was in development for nearly a decade, it was first shown at E3 1999 and released before the next one.

I could go on and on about this, but I won't. I will leave you with your moment of Tao (or Zen - one was derived from the other so take your pick). In the meantime, click here to check out the Gallery page of the official Max Payne website, where you will find links to the movies that were shown at E3 '98, E3 '99 and E3 2000. Why did they make a point to mention that these were shown at 3 E3s? That's nothing to brag about. Maybe at E3 2001 we'll actually get to play the damn thing, though I've given up on the game ever actually coming out.

My point is (do you need to make a point in a rant?) that there should be a statute of limitations on these things. It's better for all considered if little is said about a game until it is within six months of shipping, or at least until we can all get a good idea of how the game is going to play. We don't see movie trailers for movies until they're completed...why do we have to wade through a sea of information that will likely change 40 times before a game comes out? Click here for some pre-concept concept sketches?

Oooooh. Can't wait.

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