MTV Multiplayer › Totilo Game Diary

I went to Philadelphia last night, a six-hour round trip that brought me home to Brooklyn, New York. Can you guess why I went?

Hint: When I got off the Philly subway at my destination, a man walking off behind me was wearing a crimson sweat suit, matching bandanna and sunglasses. His shirt read: Hulkamania.

On the train ride out I finally played "Chrono Trigger." I had missed it when I was a Super Nintendo owner. I'm playing the port on the DS. I feel pressure when playing the "classics." When am I allowed to have my opinion of it? When can I agree with history or defy it?

Other business on the train kept me from playing more than 45 minutes of the game so far. It was nine minutes past midnight when I wrote this and I had just under three hours until I reached home. I would play more, but, mostly on this ride, I slept.

How far in until "Chrono Trigger" can hook me? And what's with the Star Wars joke in the first minutes of the game?

Next: I may not play many games on Tuesday, but I will see a musical about one. How odd!

I had a Ubisoft Montreal weekend, investing several hours in that studio's "Prince of Persia" and "Far Cry 2" games.

I approached "Prince of Persia" apprehensively. At E3 in July, I had been impressed with the game's graphics and acrobatic gameplay, but I had heard little of the game since. I suspected that the title's December release and lack of media exposure was a warning of a flawed production.

What I played this weekend, however, is an impressive and satisfying remix of a recent favorite. Read More...

I bought the new "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" add-on mission last night. I feel like I've stepped into a new era of my time as a gamer.

For a moment last night I thought I had just bought my first piece of game-extending DLC. That's not the case. Earlier this year, I bought the add-on pack to the PlayStation Network game "Super Stardust HD."

I hadn't been a fan of "Oblivion," so I never bought that game's DLC. I never got around to buying the bonus mission pack for "Mass Effect." I didn't buy new "Halo" or "Call of Duty" maps. I have downloaded add-on content for "Burnout: Paradise," but that was all free. (In case you're wondering, even though as a reporter I get my disc games for free, I pay for most of the content I download, which primarily consists of XBLA/PSN/WiiWare games)

I see where this is going. I could only say "no" to game-extending so often. The idea of getting more for a game I played and enjoyed is a tough offer to resist. In short order I'll have to decide whether to download new speed trials in "Mirror's Edge," new adventures in "Grand Theft Auto IV" and "Tomb Raider: Underworld," and a series of expansions to "Fallout 3."

While we at Multiplayer report on this add-on content in terms of how it will affect the business of games and the creative opportunities it affords developers, it's dawning on me now that the way I play games may soon change forever. I haven't gone back to games I've finished for a long time. I play a game through and shelve it.

I've kept my favorite games. But I've seldom gone back to them. I chase the novelty of new games, rather than re-exploring old favorites. This is not how I treat favorite movies or music. And now I see that I will be returning to old games that themselves will have something new for me. Old favorites will return to my Xbox and PS3 disc drive. That's an exciting vision of my gaming future. Let's hope this new content is worth it and doesn't feel tacked on, less the director's cut extras that bloat a fine project but instead the return of an old friend with something new to share.

Next: This weekend I will play that "Star Wars" mission. And more "Banjo," which is testing my patience with physics systems in games.

A few months back at a press event for "Resistance 2" I asked Sony and Insomniac producers why their new first-person shooter existed.

I wasn't asking a business question or a philosophical one. I was asking from a gamer's perspective.

I argued that important FPS games need to satisfy, well, a need in gamers' appetites. I suggested that "Call of Duty" serves an appetite for gamers to experience a first-person thrill ride. "Halo" fulfills the need for great competition, both against sophisticated artificial intelligence in its campaign mode and against millions of competitors online.

You could go down the list of great first-person series and find a reason each one might be essential for a gamer. But, I told the "Resistance" guys, I struggled to identify what the essential "something" of "Resistance" is. Without that "something," I figured, the series wouldn't be seen as a leader in its genre, but instead just another solid game that happens to be a PlayStation exclusive.

I finished the "Resistance 2" campaign a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed it. I didn't think it was amazing, but it was fun and ended in a very interesting way. Yet I still didn't think I'd found that "something." The Insomniac guys had argued to me that the series' alternate world history might be the series' distinguishing mark. I considered that the games' unusual weapons might be the thing. But neither idea is really helping "Resistance 2" move to the forefront of the FPS pack, not in my mind and, I suspect, not in some other gamers' minds.

Yesterday, however, I finally played a round of the game's mission-based co-op with friends. I had only played it at that aforementioned press event, briefly. Last night I played it for an hour. And in that hour, in playing eight-man mission-based, character-class-defined, team co-op, I think I found "Resistance"'s "something." Eight gamers against an army. A balance of skills and responsibilities. Teamwork. A defense of Earth.

It works. It's the "something," I think.

And now I have something to look forward to in the inevitable sequel.

Next: Do I go to the Wired store tonight to watch Media Molecule's Alex Evans speak? Or do I go home and play "Banjo" and "Prince of Persia"?

Yesterday was a Tuesday, which means I didn't play any games. Unless logging onto "Resistance 2" co-op for 10 seconds in the morning counts. I felt bad immediately bailing on the game. I was just testing my home Internet connection for that game since my WiFi can be somewhat intolerant of multiplayer console gaming.

So I have no timely gaming diary thoughts to share. But I did remember something from last week that I wanted to share:

I got on the subway on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week and I saw a woman sitting on one of the seats with her laptop on her lap. That's odd enough. On the crowded New York City subways people tend to use their iPhones, Blackberrys, PSPs and DSes, but seldom unfold a full-sized laptop. When I see that -- about once a month -- it usually involved the person working on a document or spreadsheet. I've only done it once in my many years of subway riding, when I urgently needed to check out a Word file.

This woman I saw wasn't doing any of that. She had her laptop cracked open so she could play chess.

That's one of the stranger displays of gaming in public that I've ever seen. Do they not have chess for cell phones?

Next: Tonight I may start "Prince of Persia" and then get some "R2" co-op in with some friends or enemies.

Did I promise I'd share my thoughts on "Tomb Raider: Underworld" in today's diary? I did. Sorry. I'll get to that in a post later today.

This morning, I need to vent about a minor aggravation.

Why can't Nintendo and Sony learn from Microsoft? Why can't their firmware and channels and dashboard circuitry and upgrading rules and regulations be as elegant as the Xbox 360's?

Last night I wanted to play "Resistance 2." But my game needed a patch. I learned this by trying to load it from its disc. An alert appeared. I needed to give permission for the PS3 to download a patch to the game. Fair enough. But every patch for a PS3 game -- I downloaded yet another one to "LittleBigPlanet" over the weekend -- requires a wait that's long enough for me to get up and do something else. Like check the mail or wash a few dishes. Xbox 360 title upgrades, on the other hand, happen in an eye blink. I could hold my breath for them.

This is not ideal.

After upgrading "Resistance 2," I then discovered that I couldn't get online. My PS3 firmware was out of date. Again. How slow is this process? Slow enough that Sony gives you the option to have your system automatically shut down after its done. That's a clear acknowledgment that the process takes enough minutes that people will do it when they're leaving for work, school or sleep.

All that would have seemed ridiculous if not for what I had to deal with regarding the Wii. Read More...

Back from the break, I can now say that I've played and beaten a "Tomb Raider."

More importantly, I've gathered more intelligence about how Nintendo's "expanded audience" -- i.e. my parents -- play Wii games.

Observation: The Wii Motion-Plus controller add-on/enhancement can't be released soon enough. People like my parents don't play games every day and certainly shouldn't have to rearrange their living room couches so that they are sitting at angles that allow the Wii sensor bar to read the movements of their Wii remotes. Too much of our time playing a game of Sorry in EA's "Hasbro Family Game Night" was spent trying to get our cursors back on the screen because someone wasn't pointing squarely at the TV. Motion-Plus, make our Wii remotes better. Save us!

Observation: The expanded audience has some tricks up their sleeve. Either the game of Battleship -- also included in the aforementioned "Hasbro Family Game Night" -- is a game of luck. Or… she who was taught to play Battleship by her father, who learned it while serving on an actual battleship, simply had some hidden skills she never taught to her son. Mom sunk my fleet with glee. For revenge, I beat her in a Wii-powered bout of Connect Four.

Observation: Two years ago at Thanksgiving, I played my first video game against my dad ever: "Wii Sports." A year later, he and I and my wife played "Rock Band," creating an instantly cherished memory. This Thanksgiving, after years of occasionally getting mutually fixated on "Tetris" for my NES or, more recently, swapping stories about playing our DS systems, my mom and I finally played a game against one another. Who cares if she sunk my battleship? We played a video game together! Three years ago, I never would have bet on that happening.

Thanks, EA. Thanks, Nintendo. Thanks, mom.

Next: I'm down to my final four of must-play 2008 games. It's "Banjo" time.

I got my parents a Wii about a month ago. I'm not sure if they use it much or at all when I'm not around, but we've had fun when I last brought my own system home. So I'm bringing a few Wii games to see what they think of them:

-Wii Music: Because they've seen commercials. Maybe they'll like it?

-Hasbro Family Game Night: Because it's for ... families!

-Monopoly: Because how could I go wrong with Monopoly?

Anybody else out there packing a bunch of games in their holiday suitcase to try out with/on their families this Thanksgiving?

Next: And then, this weekend, when I get home, I'm playing "Tomb Raider," "Banjo" and "Fallout." That's a good weekend!

I didn't play a thing yesterday. I did tell someone that I'd never played "Tomb Raider" before this current one, "Underworld." I'm sure I've mentioned that here before. That's not that weird, is it?

Next: And I thought Monday was bad. I rarely get to play any games on any Tuesday. What a drought! This reminds me of four years ago when I was in rural Tanzania for three weeks during November. I wasn't playing games there and then either.

By Friday, "Spider-Man" had become too repetitious. I'm taking a break from it.

I spent a large portion of Saturday playing through "Call of Duty: World at War." It is rivaled only by "Grand Theft Auto IV," "Metal Gear Solid 4," and its series predecessor, "Modern Warfare," as the best-looking game I have seen rendered in a realistic style. The game is far from the off-year disappointment many fans were expecting from even-year "CoD" developer Treyarch.

The game was thrilling. It was also dark.

I wonder if anyone else who played it also noticed that there are moments in the campaign designed to leave the impression that the Germans, the Japanese and even the playable Soviets were treacherous and dishonorable in war -- while no such view is ever glimpsed in-game actions of the ever-valorous Americans. That matches my broad-stroke understanding of the actions on the ground in World War II, but it still feels a bit simple to see in a game that has clearly been made to shake the player up.

Fighting zombies via my 360 after the "Word at War" campaign cleared those thoughts from my head.

Come Sunday I was playing my first "Tomb Raider," the new one. It's a pretty game, but I already miss one of "Mirror's Edge"'s less heralded innovations: automatic checkpoint restarts following key but non-fatal platforming falls. It is aggravating to not just miss a major Lara Croft leap but to have Lara safely plummet to the water two stories below, forcing me to re-jump and re-climb several obstacles before reaching the key jump I just failed. Why couldn't she land on something fatal so I could get a quick restart? Or, couldn't that kind of accidental but safe deep dive grant Lara an immediate re-do. It would for Faith.

Next: Thanksgiving prep and travel is going to make this a gaming-light week until Friday. But shockingly my must-play stack is getting small anyway.