I have an insane theory about the airline industry — I think they genuinely want me to stop flying on their airplanes.

I think that when major air-carriers tuck into their silk sheets at night, they dream of a hyper-efficient fleet filled with steely-eyed business class flyers with practiced methods of travel and corporate expense accounts. Never again would they be burdened with a bunch of pesky amateur flyers with screaming kids and an over-inflated sense of entitlement just because the family managed to scrounge up a few hundred dollars to fly to Omaha.

Were I to write to Delta airlines and tell them of how I chose to spend three days driving across the country with my two boys rather than endure ten hours under their thumb, would the response be a curt but genuine, “Thank you?”

Sometimes it very much seems like certain companies are entirely comfortable with the idea of just annoying a certain segment of consumers away. You know, companies like Ubisoft.

Being told that you will love something makes it exponentially harder to actually love that thing. This is a fact, as unimpeachable and immutable as the fact that cake is better than pie. Again, these are facts, and they are not up for debate.

It is for this reason that I have to this point held fast on not playing Heavy Rain. It's not willful stubbornness, or at least not any kind of bullheadedness that I have the faculties to control. It's just that as each person, a long line in seemingly endless succession, informed me of how very much I would love the game, I felt the barriers go up like watching the opening credits of Get Smart in reverse. No, I wanted to say, I will not, and it's your damn fault!

Maybe it's that the bar becomes so high as accolades become an avalanche of expectation, and that feeling of uncertainty which so deliciously fosters a sense of surprise is lost under the overwhelming perceptions of those who advocate for the game. Maybe it's just that I'm kind of a contrarian dink. Either way, as I wandered toward the checkout counter yesterday with Heavy Rain in hand, I had a sinking feeling of money poorly spent.

It's not fair. Not in the least. But, as I plugged the game disc into the long dormant drive, waited the predictable eternity for the PS3 to update using what I assume is a dial-up connection and an abacus, and plunged into the exciting world of getting dressed, I had to actively fight not to pick out any tiny flaw as though I were collecting evidence for a grand jury indictment.

"Is this really the voice acting I'm going to be subjected to the whole game?" I thought. "At least if something bad happens to these kids I won't have to listen to them talk." Had there been a QTE that allows you to shrug in apathy, I would have Generation X'd that whole intro.

I stress: This is a terrible way to approach a game, and I have no one but myself to blame.

I bring this all up so I can get to this paragraph, however, and it is hopefully my one opportunity for redemption. Following the first big emotional gut-punch of the game, a moment I watched with a kind of detached fascination but little investment, I finally hit the first action moment of the game, and for a second there I got it. It made sense what the game was capable of, and why everyone's been going on about it.

That was a good moment. I will try to build from that.

EverQuest 2 may seem like an odd game to be playing right now amid such a mass of late winter releases, but it is perhaps not a game to be so easily dismissed. With the release of the latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, EQ2 continues quietly chugging along with a dedicated fan base and a mature game that has benefited from five years of improvements.

As a long-time player and even advocate of EQ2’s most prominent competition, I may not seem like the most unbiased analyst of Sony’s venerable game, and of course this is entirely correct. I’m not. Particularly as someone approaching the game virtually for the first time, mine is not the opinion for or of the long-time player, but don’t be too quick to assume that I’ve come here to bury EQ2.

In fact, I walk away from my first twenty or so levels rather pleasantly surprised. While I've gotten nowhere near content like you're looking at in that fancy picture on the left, there may be some meat on the bones even for a long estranged player such as myself.

I look good in a suit.

Now, there are a lot of points on which I am willing to cede ground, but this is not one of them, so it was with more than a little joy that I went all Barney Stinson for an off-site client meeting this week and appropriately suited up.

My day job is in Corporate America, so you wouldn’t think it particularly noteworthy that an individual in a professional organization would actually get snazzed up for a day, but down in the land of personal cube space and shared fluorescent lighting I might as well have been an invader from the Planet of the MBAs. Apparently the only reasons to wear a suit are if you are attending a funeral or a job interview.

It is a little disheartening to realize that in most cases dressing up has become as simple as wearing a pair of wrinkled Dockers and a golf shirt with faded pizza sauce stains.

I can not stress enough, if you have not finished Mass Effect 2 and intend to, then go no further. This article is not for you -- at least not yet -- because I intend to spend time exploring its most tender and uncensored secrets, probing with a total disregard for the sanctity of any of the game’s normally unmentionable parts. In terms of spoilers, this article is "gone wild" like an illicit spring break video or a David Duchovny diary entry.

As usual, reviews be damned. You want my review of Mass Effect 2? Here it is – the game is really good, just like everyone else on the planet has already confirmed. The specifics that make such a statement true – or at least objectively defensible – are, frankly, pretty boring and certainly a lot less interesting than the game itself. The time for reviews is over. The time for analysis is at hand.

Beware, I’m giving the end of the game away in 3.
2.
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I harbor and foster numerous healthy personal relationships beyond these networked silicon landscapes, but as a gamer I am best imagined as an ill-kempt hermit whose wild-eyed fear of strangers is the stony gaze of looming madness. From my mountain crag I glower down upon lesser beings who interface and communicate in odd tongues while scoring endless headshots, flag captures and raid loot. And, as a crazy, disconnected old man stewing in a bitter elixir of pessimism that is my own special recipe, I have, for the better part of a generation, feared that the games I prize were being corrupted by this malignant multiplayer revolution.

It is with equal parts surprise and jubilation that I sally forth from my far less cool fortress of solitude and herald from on high what I see as the return of the single player, story driven experience, only to discover that playing with yourself had never, in fact, gone out of style after all.

At least, in one interpretation of the phrase.

One of the thorny theoretical game-design quandaries that developers seem to wrestle with in this day and age is whether or not the interactive nature of gaming changes the rules on defining identities. In other words, because the player’s will can be imparted on a flexible world, does that mean that the player also takes ownership of the identity of the hero, and does the author lose license to force personality onto the player?

This is, of course, pseudo-psychological, self indulgent, post-modern, mumbo jumbo and should be avoided as though each word were burning acid from alien blood on the tender flesh of your most sensitive bits. It is a cul-de-sac of circular thinking that more often than not gets well-intentioned developers into trouble and leaves gaping narrative holes and obtuse story elements in its destructive wake.

I consider it audacious and unreasonable to think that video game story telling is so different that suddenly players will be unwilling to empathize with their character unless that character takes on their personality. I appreciate the potential of this new medium, but my experience has been that for now, the more we stick with good old fashioned story telling the better off everyone will be.

In the years that I was a Gamestop manager — dark days in which the sun was blotted from the sky and malevolence slouched through the halls of dingy shopping malls in the guise of poison-tongued high schoolers – I took quiet exception with countless official policies and products. Eventually I purged myself of these demons in a number of articles back around 2005, a very public exorcism which discussed at length how the company conducted its business and more importantly how talking about it made me feel a hell of a lot better, or at least cleaner.

In all that time, however, the one widely lodged complaint for which I could never really generate enthusiastic ire was on the matter of used games. To my addled mind, used games continue to seem like a pretty nice idea; a prime example of how the rare capitalistic initiative can benefit both retailer and consumer.

If you are a developer or publisher, I get it. I sympathize; really, I do. There’s a big damn hole in the bucket, dear Liza, and Gamestop chairman Dick Fontaine is standing there unapologetically holding a drill. But as a consumer I have to say that in the first, second and third place I’m watching out for numero uno, and I like not spending money. Or more precisely spending a little less money, so I continue to be baffled when well-meaning game buyers rise in a single voice against the anathema of used game sales.

My six-year-old is wheeled back into pre-op wiping fresh tears from his eyes with hands noticeably shaking. I was not expecting to see him nearly so soon. In fact I didn’t expect to see him again for several hours yet. To the best of my knowledge, getting your tonsils out takes substantially longer than three or four minutes. Something has definitely gone wrong.

“We had a melt down,” my wife says with forced calm that tells its own story. “When they tried to put the mask on, he just …” she doesn’t say “lost it” and she doesn’t have to. I know what that panic looks like. I’ve seen it during enough blood draws by now to recognize that it’s an electric thing that takes on a life of its own. The anesthesiologist smiles from behind the elaborate gurney, frustration buried deep behind a practiced expression.

“We’re going to give him a sedative. It might help his nerves. Also, the medicine we’ll use will probably let him forget what goes on once it takes effect.” There’s a hidden message there that every adult in the room understands. If we have to hold him down next time we take him in for surgery, the message says, at least he won’t remember it.

“I just couldn’t do it, Daddy.” Fresh tears threaten to spill onto his cheek. I nod in what I think is a fatherly way, but I don’t understand and I’m terrified that he will see the horrible hint of disappointment that I am working so hard to hide.

Mine should be considered an uninformed opinion, but not necessarily an uneducated one. I come to the Star Trek: Online beta with virtually no preconceived notions, no passionate devouring of every blog post and news tid bit and no big expectations except that the game might provide a nice diversion. Having played the beta for a few days, I suspect that's a good thing.

While my time in the game to date has been substantially limited -- this first entry of which there may be others is limited to the first few hours of gameplay -- the game already strikes me in much the same way that other MMOs do in their earliest stages. Precisely, this is a game that is not ready for primetime, but one which offers the promise of better things to come.

That may not be a terrible thing. Early adopters who have a passion for the game will probably get their money's worth and provide the vital experience from which Cryptic can distill a more broadly appealing game. That said, if you're on the fence, this game seems ripe for waiting a month or two for issues to stabilize. Yes, things may change in the next few weeks of beta, but I've been round the block before and I know warning signs when I see them.

That said, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic here. ST:O does a good job of evoking a Star Trek atmosphere, though it will be far more compatible to Next Generation, DS:9 or even Voyager (before it completely stunk) sensibilities than old school Trek. Certainly sound and visual design gives the foundation of that Trek feel, but even the opening encounters, revolving around a strange Borg incursion, evoke that sense that you are a cog in a nice big mythology episode. Whether that can be maintained once you get into the grind of patrol and away missions remains to be seen, but first impressions are vital.

One of the things I had feared early on is that I would not comfortably identify with both a character and a ship in equal measure, and when I was on an away mission I would wish instead I was flying into hostile Klingon territory to duke it out with a Bird of Prey, or vice versa. So far, I'm pretty happy with the way the two major combat dynamics are evened out. Away missions tend to be comfortable MMO mechanics, and once you get the keyboard layout sorted to your desire you can engage comfortably.

Space combat, on the other hand, turns out to have some nice challenge to it. While the combat is in three dimensions, it is very much rooted into a clear X axis and Z axis. While you can move up and down, it is always clear what is up and what is down, which is very different than a more sophisticated space model. While this does limit your maneuverability, it also keeps you from getting distracted and disoriented. It strikes me as a fair compromise for realism versus playability.

All that said, this is still clearly a beta product, and while I'll avoid passing judgment my experience playing a lot of betas suggests that the initial launch is almost certain to be plagued with unforseen challenges. Look for more impressions as I get in more time and we get closer to launch.