Hello! Here’s a quick rundown of writing of mine that appeared on other sites last week.

For PC Gamer:

• My weekly mod column covers Altis Life for Arma 3, a game mode where you assume the life of either a civilian or a police officer on the massive Altis map. As a cop, I ran around with other cops desperately trying to find crime to stop. As a civilian, I bought a car and ran myself over with it. Somehow. That’s me in the above picture, under my own car. I don’t even need enemies or other players in order to hurt myself in games, apparently.
• My Rust diary wraps up with a long, lonely jaunt around the entire map and a return home to find that my cozy neighborhood has undergone some major changes.

For Rock, Paper Shotgun:

• In my weekly early-access column, I took a look at Planet Explorers, an ambitious survival slash exploration slash crafting slash building slash multiplayer game. It’s trying to do a lot of different things, and doing most of them pretty well. Best of all are some of the interesting-looking alien dinosaurs.

I don’t think I added to my DayZ tumblr this week, as I didn’t have much time to play. I’m thinking about trying the new experimental branch to check out some of the upcoming changes, though.

Hello again! Just a wrap-up of my writing that appeared on other sites last week.

For PC Gamer:

• In my weekly mod column, I take a look at a Spelunky mod that replaces monsters, items, weapons, music, and other assets with elements from the Metroid series. It’s incredibly well-done. It doesn’t change the gameplay, but you have to relearn which monsters are which so you know which monsters do what. It’s fun!
• In the second part of my Rust diary, I experience the perils of home ownership, namely, that once you have a home, people know where you live. And they start stopping by. Often, in the middle of the night. Often, to kill you.

For Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

• My Lighthouse Customer column takes a look at Arcadecraft, a simulation game about managing a video arcade in 1980. I enjoyed it while being absolutely terrible at it.

Hey Are You Cool:

• I added a couple entries on my ongoing DayZ tumblr. I find it interesting that I can spend hours on a full server and never see another player, yet sometimes on a server with only three people on it, we all wind up in the same building at the same time.

Hello! So. I need to do a better job of posting here when I write stuff that appears places other than here. I’m going to try to do a weekly post linking the stuff I’ve written for other sites. This should catch you up to the present day.

For PC Gamer:

• I do a Mod of the Week column for PCG that usually runs on Sundays. This past week I did a write-up on a Star Trek Armada mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.You can also look at the Mod of the Week archive here. Recent mods include one that lets you use mouse controls with the old LucasArts adventure Grim Fandango, which is pretty neat and also almost twenty years overdue.

• Also for PC Gamer, I’m currently doing a multi-week diary about the survival crafting game Rust. You can read part one here, in which I vomit on a campfire until I die. Part two will be up this coming Wednesday! I don’t think it will contain vomiting because I learned how to cook.

For Rock, Paper Shotgun:

• I’ve started a new column on RPS in which I play a different early-access game each week, and write about my experiences. Not a review, just a diary. It’s called The Lighthouse Customer. I’ve written about my quest to hunt a chicken in indie crafting game Under the Ocean, and there’s also a column about trying to keep astronauts from dying horribly in Double Fine’s space station simulation Spacebase DF-9. New columns run on Monday evenings.

My DayZ Tumblr:

• Lately I’ve been keeping a tumblr describing my encounters with other players in the multiplayer survival game DayZ. The encounters can be weird, funny, disturbing, violent, or poignant, and frequently several of those at once. There’s no update schedule; I should probably have one. Right now, I write when I play, and I play when I have time.

Before I direct you to some truly fantastic and hilarious games writing about the Madden video game series, let me spoil today’s Super Bowl for you.

Kris and I played the Super Bowl with Madden for Xbox 360 the other night. Kris played the Broncos, I played the Seahawks. Final score: Broncos 27, Seahawks 21. I fully believe this will be the outcome of today’s Super Bowl.

If our game does correctly predict the real Super Bowl, here are some highlights today’s actual game will include:

• The game will go into overtime as the result of nobody being able to score in the 4th quarter
• Four out of five field goals will be missed
• The winning quarterback will be Tim Tebow (we were playing Madden 2012)
• The Seahawks will replace their quarterback with their punter for two full quarters before the coach realizes his mistake
• This mistake will be considerately pointed out by the Bronco’s coach
• The aforementioned Seahawk punter will throw seven interceptions

I’m pretty sure all of those things will come true.

Anyway, I mainly wanted to point you to some outstanding video game writing about the Madden series. Jon Bois writes a column for SBNation.com, wherein he experiments with the settings of the Madden game with hilarious and interesting results. He’s also a fantastic writer, a skilled video editor, and a magnificent craftsman of animated GIFs. You should read/watch/enjoy this entire series and everything he ever writes from now on.

For instance, he simulates the Super Bowl using a team of seven-foot-tall, 400 pound Seahawks vs. a team of tiny, unskilled Broncos.

He plays a game with an entire offense comprised of Tom Brady clones.

He recreates the unstoppable Bo Jackson from Tecmo Bowl.

He tries to see if Colts punter Pat McAfee can win a game by himself.

Check out his stuff. Even if you don’t like football, you’ll like his columns.

I know it’s annoying when people want to tell you about their dreams, but this dream I had recently was very short and it caused me to abruptly wake up laughing.

In my dream, our veterinarian told me one of our cats was sick. In my dream, I also had the magic power from the book/movie The Green Mile, where a guy could suck the illness out of people, by sort of inhaling it from their lungs (the illness looked like a cloud of insects). So, I inhaled the sickness out of my cat’s mouth and into my own lungs.

Then I was walking around holding my breath, looking for somewhere to safely exhale the sickness. Actor DJ Qualls (pictured above) was standing nearby. I went over to him and exhaled my cat’s sickness into DJ Qualls’ mouth.

In my dream, we then JUMP CUT to DJ Qualls sitting in his doctor’s office.

The doctor says to DJ Qualls: “You have cat herpes.”

Fin.

Notes:

• The reason I dreamed our cat was sick was probably because I’ve had to take both our cats to the vet a couple times recently (they’re both fine).
• The reason DJ Qualls was in my dream, I think, is that I recently watched a couple old episodes of Breaking Bad, and he was in one.
• I don’t know why The Green Mile was in my dream: I have not thought about the book or movie in years.
• I do not know if jump cuts are common in my dreams. I can’t recall another instance of one. It was used to excellent comic effect, however.
• I do not know if “cat herpes” is a real thing.
• I can’t imagine how many tests poor DJ Qualls was subjected to before it was determined he had cat herpes. It’s probably not the first thing doctors look for in sick human patients.
• Kudos to the dream doctor’s delivery of his one line. It was completely deadpan.
• My deepest apologies to actor DJ Qualls for his unwitting involvement. I think he is a fine actor and I wish him only the best of success and continued good health.

Image credit: moviepins.com

I recently reviewed a horror game called Outlast for an upcoming issue of PC Gamer Magazine. While I’ve written for the magazine before, this is the first actual game review I’ve ever done.

Naturally, when reviews of Outlast started popping up online, I wanted to see what other reviewers thought of the game. While looking through the first handful of reviews, I noticed something that didn’t quite sit right. Many of the reviews — about two-thirds of them, in fact — used the same three or four screenshots. These were screenshots given to them by the developer (I got them as well, along with review code) as part of a PR media kit.

Using a developer’s screenshots for a PC game review seems… well, a bit misleading. The reviewer doesn’t know for a fact that these are genuine screenshots. They may have been embellished, or touched up, or Photoshopped, or specially rendered. Presumably, these developer screens have been carefully selected as part of the game’s promotion. Reviews, on the other hand, are not (or should not) serve as promotion. Reviews are an opportunity for a writer to describe his or her specific experience with the game. If a reviewer doesn’t use his or her own screenshots in the review, it seems (to me, at least) that they’re not accurately describing their own personal experience.

I can think of a few reasons why PC game reviewers might want to use a developer’s screenshots. First, it’s easier. Taking your own screenshots can sometimes be a hassle. For instance, in Outlast, there’s a rather large, gruesome, angry fellow who sometimes chases you around, and upon catching you, tears off a sizable chunk of your body. The first time it happened to me, naturally, I was busy trying to make sure it didn’t happen to me. But, once it had happened, I thought it might be worth taking a picture of. So, when the game reloaded, I deliberately let him catch me so I could take some pictures of it. I had to do this a few times to get a decent shot of the brute throttling me.

At one point, I got a good screenshot of another psychopath, who had captured me, as he rubbed it in by showing me just how close I was to escaping:

I realized I could get a better one, however, as lightning was flashing intermittently outside. During a lightning strike, the passageway was fully illuminated, casting shadows on the floor, and you could see the pouring rain outside. So, I went back, replayed the sequence, and sat there hammering the screenshot key until I captured a lightning strike, and submitted that image along with my review. In what turned out to be about a five or six hour game, I probably spent an additional half-hour or so just trying to take good pictures.

Now, I realize staffers at sites and magazines don’t always have the time freelancers do (I am freelance). Playing and reviewing Outlast was one of only three writing commissions I had that week (unfortunately). A staffer might have multiple articles to write and games to play and interviews to conduct in a single day, and finding extra time to monkey around in a single game might not be the easiest thing to achieve. I totally get that, and I don’t have any kind of solution for a reviewer in a time crunch, except… I still think you should use your own screenshots, even if you don’t have extra time to go back, replay, and capture every image you’d like to snag.

Another possible reason for using PR screenshots: they can make your review look pretty damn spectacular, especially on websites with a lot of real estate for images. There’s one popular game site that features huge, gorgeous, edge-to-edge splash images as a major part of their eye-catching format. That’s cool. Those developer images look (gruesomely) lovely on that site. The thing is, is that what the game really looked like for the reviewer? I don’t know. I don’t know what their reviewer saw. I only know what the developer wanted us to see: the images they selected.

I should point out that the screenshots I personally took may not represent the game faithfully, either. I don’t have a top-of-the-line graphics card, and I don’t have a massively high-res monitor. For all I know, the average gamer’s experience with the game may look more like the PR screenshots than my own. The developers may be aghast when they see my screenshots in the magazine, and think, “This is terrible! Our game looks WAY better than that!” And, I can definitely understand them not being thrilled at the idea of someone reviewing their game in a magazine and not showing off the absolute best graphics the game can provide. BUT. Like I said, a review is a description of one reviewer’s experience. I can’t predict what another player’s time with the game will be like. I can’t speak for anyone but myself. My review will describe my experience: what I played, what I did, what I heard, and what I saw.

I hope I’m not coming off as holier-than-thou, or some kind of purist snob, especially considering, like I said, this was my first real review. I’m really not trying to shame anyone who uses PR screenshots, because I understand the reasons for it, or at least I think I do. I don’t think it’s a huge deal, and it certainly seems to be a commonly accepted practice (of the 25 reviews of Outlast I’ve seen, only about ten of them appear to be using original screenshots). I’d just like other reviewers of PC games to think about the practice of using PR material in their reviews, and maybe reconsider it.

I’ll refrain from calling anyone out specifically, but here’s a link to metacritic’s list of Outlast reviews, and if you start looking through them, you’ll start seeing the same handful of images in many of the reviews. Keep in mind, I’m only talking about PC game reviews. Previews are a different story (I assume, as I’ve never written one) as are console game reviews (Outlast, at the moment, is a PC-only title).

Well, the summer movie season is over and it’s time to tally our final scores in the Third Annual Summer Movie Fantasy League.

Long story short: Kris destroyed me.

It was pretty anti-climactic, really: even after my early lead, Kris didn’t even wind up needing her final three movies to beat me in the domestic opening box-office department. Almost every single movie I picked, with the exception of Still Very Fast And Quite Furious, underperformed. After Earth was a financial and critical dud. White House Down didn’t deliver. None of the kid’s movies I picked came close to Monsters University and Despicable Me 2. And, while The Wolverine did pretty well, it fell far short of the predictions for its opening weekend. Kris outplayed me to the tune of almost $70 million, even though she picked a few duds herself.

Even worse: it looked like I had the lowest RT score portion of the summer locked up, but this morning I went back to check all the scores again, as they tend to fluctuate throughout the summer. My best-worst pick was Hammer of the Gods, which had scored a zero! Unfortunately, a couple late reviews were added, and two of them were positive, meaning the film now scores at a 30%. Not good, but still enough to bump my total up over Kris’s, meaning she has the lowest combined RT score, meaning she wins that contest too. DAMN.

Here’s a look at the final tallies:

That’s it until next summer… when I will have my revenge.

Doing a test here too.

Hi! Kris and I are deep into our 3rd annual Summer Movie Fantasy League, so I thought it might be time for an update.

With each of us having had seven of ten movies released and tallied for their opening weekend domestic earnings, here’s how the picture looks:

I came out of the gate strong, with Fast & Furious 6 nabbing almost $100K, but it was all downhill from there. World War Z did pretty well, but my poor choices of After Earth, Epic, White House Down, and Turbo did me no favors. Meanwhile, Kris picked the single biggest film, Man of Steel, plus got the two biggest kiddie flicks, Monsters U and Despicable Me 2. With three movies left for each of us, things are looking grim for the former champion (me).

However! All is not lost. With a string of crap and duds hitting the theaters over the past few weeks, and The Wolverine basically opening without any competition, I could cut a hefty chunk out of Kris’ $96 million lead this weekend. Unfortunately, I doubt it’ll be enough to win. She still has Elysium, which 1) has been advertised like crazy, 2) looks like it might be good, and 3) MATT DAMON. I’m not sure how 2 Guns will do, but it’s got Denzel Washington and Marky Mark, so I assume it’ll have a healthy opening. I think I’m still gonna get beat, but maybe it’ll be close.

Meanwhile, our three film picks for lowest Rotten Tomato score was close for a while! The Purge and The Internship were both basically the same degree of stinky. Kris looked like she might have run away with it by picking Syrup, which had zero positive reviews for WEEKS, but suddenly a positive one appeared, knocking it up to 17%. I managed a 0% pick too, with Hammer of the Gods, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it in case some tool decides to like it enough to give it a decent review. R.I.P.D. was much-hated, but not as much-hated as the most-hated Grown Ups 2. As with Syrup, these scores tend to fluctuate a bit as late reviews come in throughout the summer, but right now, I think I’ve got this portion of the summer league won.

This week I watched a few E3 presentations and tweeted annoyingly about them (sorry). For the most part, I saw a lot of vague information about new consoles I have no interest in buying and fancy, glossy, pre-rendered CG trailers for games I have no interest in playing. However, one game trailer caught my eye: Ubisoft’s multi-player third-person action RPG called The Division.

There were actually two trailers for The Division. The first contained the backstory for this Tom Clancy game: apparently, terrorists put some sort of super germs on all our money and on Black Friday, when everyone goes out to buy Christmas presents at two in the morning, they get sick from the terror-germs, which completely destroys the United States. It’s sort of a weird message– don’t go shopping on Black Friday or you’ll die from moneygerms– for a game made for two new game consoles that will probably be sold during Black Friday. Also, people still use cash to buy things? And people still go to stores? If you want to infect us, terrorist, put some germs on Amazon.com’s one-click button.

Anyway. The “everyone is infected” angle led me to initially think: zombie game. Another damn zombie game. Then Ubisoft aired about eight minutes of (what appeared to be) actual gameplay footage, and I found it entirely engrossing. The footage involves the exploits of four co-op human players: Bronson, Megan, Chris, and Nick (whose perspective we are watching from.) You can watch it right here, and I’d suggest doing it on the biggest screen you have, because there’s a lot of detail. Once you’ve seen it, check out my notes below!

The gameplay trailer begins a typical post-apocalyptic video game cutscene fakeout. A jolly Christmas song playing, a scene of a wintery New York City, and a slow reveal, as the song fades, that this is not actually a jolly Christmas, everyone! (Reminds me of teasers for Fallout 3 and the Bioshock games.) As the camera cranes down from the roof to the street, we get a glimpse of someone stumbling noisily in a trash-filled apartment, but don’t see his face. I took this as another sign that the game would be about crazy infected zombies the first time I saw it. But I was (apparently) wrong!

0:43 — As the camera moves down and away from the building, we get to take in some deep detail, and it’s great. Rats scurry across a distant rooftop, dogs bark and scavenge a full block away. You can see into the windows of many apartments. There’s also snow falling and birds flapping around.

Another detail, a welcome though slightly confusing one: the power is still on. Buildings are still lit up, even across the bridge in Manhattan. If everyone is dead or infected and there are no other services, how is the power still on? On the other hand, who cares? I’m glad I won’t spend the entire game trying to find gas for a generator to power an elevator.

0:53 — In the upper left, a shadowy figure in a hoodie is visible through the window, and he or she mysteriously ducks out of view a moment later. Just behind the truck, on the sidewalk, we see two more people on the sidewalk. One is hunched over, maybe infected or perhaps just rummaging for something. Also, there’s graffiti on the pharmacy sign. “KEEP AWAY, *something* ONLY,” it reads. I can’t make out the something. The point is, in video games, people can’t wait for the world to end so they can write all over everything. Terrorists, if you want to wipe out the survivors of your first germ attack, put more terrorgerms on spray-paint cans.

1:04 — At street level, we meet Nick, specifically, Nick’s back, which we’ll be staring at for most of this demo. The streets are filled with slush puddles, uncollected garbage, disabled vehicles, but happily, no piles of corpses. So, I’m pretty sure this game is zombie-free. I hope. I’m just really tired of shooting zombies.

Nick’s got a fairly unobtrustive HUD that sort of floats next to him. We can see a health bar, his ammo count (in-clip and total remaining), and his currently selected skills. We can also see info on his co-op partners, Bronson and Megan, and their skills, health level, and status (Chris is AFK). As Nick walks through an intersection, the names of the streets also appear on his ghostly HUD.

1:36 – Nick is joined by Bronson, who has been searching through a store for supplies. They’ve both heard distant gunfire (Nick could even see some muzzle-flashes reflecting off buildings a block away) so Nick checks his map, which creates a holographic display on the ground around him. Cool and lovely: I enjoy maps that you can look at in real-time without leaving the game for a separate screen (like in Far Cry 2). Also, he can listen to radio feed from the various map locations as he cycles through them. It appears that Bronson can also see Nick’s map being projected on the ground, because he says: “That police station is going critical” as Nick selects that location. Also shown on the map is another co-op player, Megan, who is a few blocks away.

The area they’re in appears to be called the Dark Zone, which is odd because, like I said, the power is still on. The map also shows the locations of several vendors, and blue squares noted as “Events.” The map is also tracking the path of a helicopter flying near the Manhattan Bridge, but there’s no indication if it’s something you can call in as support or otherwise contact. I’m assuming it’s friendly.

1:54 – As Bronson and Nick walk toward the police station, two civilians walk by on the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Nick scans them: the woman is infected and contagious. Bronson says: “She’s gone red. I’m low on packs, though. We have to leave it.” Sounds like, maybe, rather than the typical video game practice of shooting infected people in the face, you may actually get to cure them with some sort of meds. That’s a nice change! I want to heal people who got sick from dollargerms. That is a thing I want to do.

There’s ton’s of detail in the street scene. A pack of scavenging dogs, steam rising from manholes (more signs the power is on), tattered flags flapping in the breeze, and gosh, this game is quite lovely looking. By far, the most next-gen looking game I’ve seen (next-gen means it could only be played on upcoming consoles. Or current PCs. Burn.)

2:25 — After walking down the street (more graffiti on a truck reads FIGHT IMPURITY), they come across a construction site. A giant tunnel leads to “The Underground,” which appears to be an instance level (the display reads “Group Mission” and has a difficulty level of 3 attached to it. Very MMO-like.)

Shots ring out from the police station. A few citizens on the street immediately start running the hell away, as they no doubt would. It’s annoying when NPCs are slow to react to danger in games (or sometimes don’t react at all), but these dudes just haul ass in the other direction. Smart. Meanwhile, Bronson, Nick, and Megan, who has joined them, run toward the police station.

Something to note: Bronson is wearing a gas mask, and Megan and Nick are not. I don’t know if the gas mask is just an aesthetic choice or if it serves as actual protection or not, but in a game about a deadly infection, it might have an actual use.

Nick runs a scan, showing the heat signatures from several people inside the police station (he also scans a dead police officer lying outside the station, whose cause of death reads “Head Trauma.” Bronson runs inside to try to lure out the enemies.

Megan has a group heal spell, er, I mean, skill, ready to use, and we get to see Nick flick through some of his abilities, which include Pulse (which he just used to scan for enemies), a Distraction Device, which draws enemies to its location (maybe it’s a device you plant or throw), Indomitable, which is a buff that prevents the player from dropping below 1 health point for three seconds, and Adrenaline Boost, which can be used to recover a friend’s health and stamina. He finally selects a Seeker Mine, which we’ll get to see during the upcoming fight: it’s a rolling grenade that chases its target for ten seconds.

We also get a glimpse of a few other purchasable skills. Just guessing at their attributes based on how their icons look: one might let you fire bullets through solid walls, one might be some sort of cluster grenade, one looks like it might allow you call in support (the icon is someone shouting), perhaps that helicopter that was shown on the map.

These all look like purchasable items, bought with points that may be earned by gaining XP. However, there’s another tab called Talents that look more like RPG elements. The icons shown hint at weapon proficiencies and health boosts. One shows a set of lungs next to an icon showing crosshairs, which probably signifies the ability to hold your breath while sniping to give you a more stable shot. Another shows a heart and a running icon, which has something to do with extended sprinting, I’d guess. Another shows a brain, a stack of something, and a machine gun — possibly due to added perception, you find more ammo in stashes, or find more stashes overall? Dunno! But probably something like that.

3:15 — The fight begins, using pretty standard cover mechanics. Bronson is using a shotgun, Megan is apparently sniping from further away (she calls out a headshot), Nick has a machine gun thingie (I don’t know from guns). Bronson also uses one of his skill toys: a turret, which he places on the hood of a car and which auto-fires at enemies. The enemies are AI-controlled bandits, and four or five of them pour out of the police station. Two throw Molotovs, the others use automatic weapons. The enemies are pretty mobile: after taking out Bronson’s turret, they flank both left and right, moving behind cover and never staying still for long. Their health bars are shown, however, at all times, making it easy to see where they are even if they’re behind cover.

The animated gif above displays my favorite bit of the entire trailer, and I can’t say exactly why. During the gunfight, Nick is crouching behind a police car. The rear door of the car is ajar. He scoots toward the rear, encountering the open door on the way, which he closes as he shuffles past. Lovely bit of detail and animation. I love it! It’s what you would do without thinking in real life, and Nick does it without thinking in the game. I’ve watched this tiny moment a million times and now you can too!

Another player, Chris, joins the game, controlling a small drone. Nick’s UI indicates that Chris is connecting through the game via a tablet, which I guess the thing that we are all supposed to do now. Play on your Xbox! Play on your tablet! Play on your smart phone! Play anything, from everywhere, all the time! If you’re in line at the post office, you can still drop into a game and then ditch everyone three minutes later when you have to get our your germ-covered cash to buy stamps! I don’t know. I’d rather play with people who are going to carve out some time to actually focus on the game for a while than someone who is stopped at a red light and has sixteen seconds to pop into the game, but maybe that’s just me.

Chris, via drone, contributes a group buff of some sort, though I can’t see any change in Nick’s stats so I’m not sure what kind of buff he’s providing. [In the comments, mAk points out that everyone gets a +20 damage buff.] Nick also uses his seeker mine to chase down a bandit who has flanked him and is hiding behind a car. The mine rolls after the guy and detonates. I look forward to having such a grenade, as I am crap at throwing them.

Chris The Helpful Drone also “paints” a target for everyone, highlighting an enemy who is on the roof hiding behind a police station sign (Megan notes that the enemy is an “elite,” so apparently there are “boss” enemies, or at least specialized, harder to kill baddies). The battle over, the three humans walk into the police station and Chris buzzes away in his drone because his microwave popcorn is finally ready or he’s done pooping or whatever it was he was waiting for that allowed him to join the game for only thirty seconds.

Graffiti on the exterior wall of the police station: “I’ll huff & I’ll puff.” And inside “And I’ll blow your house in” is painted on some open doors. Yeah, not the scariest graffiti from a gang member who is fond of nursery rhymes. But at least he had a theme. Good for him.

Megan frees some trapped AI policemen by shooting the lock off the door (we’ll have to see if you can shoot open locked doors in general, or just special ones). Nick and Bronson gather supplies: a Med Kit and some bottled water. There is also food. So, eating and drinking is involved in the game, but it’s not clear if it’s something related to healing injuries, or if there’s actual food/water meters that need to be filled to remain generally healthy.

5:24 — Nick walks to a map on a wall, which is covered with notations. By scanning it, it updates his own map (and presumably the maps of his friends). The items that are updated are Evac Alpha and Bravo (missions shown as completed), a CDC quarantine (a safe area, perhaps?), and what looks like an optional bounty hunting mission named “Wanted: Oskar,” which I imagine are similar to Red Dead Redemption & Far Cry 3 bounty missions: hunt down a boss thug and his thugettes for a reward.

As Nick follows Broson and Megan down the corridor to the armory, he turns and spots something down another hallway. It looks like a dog, but this being a video game about a world-destroying infection, I initially thought OH MY GOD GIANT INFECTED WARG-DOG-WOLF-MONSTER! But upon closer inspection, I think it’s just a dog. If I were Nick, I’d have gone back, gotten the food, and tried to give it to the dog, because making a dog happy in a video game is relevant to my interests. There’s also some sort of tremor that shakes the building and dislodges some overhead lights, but it’s not explained. Nearby artillery, maybe?

6:08 — In the armory, Nick opens a box and there’s a big gun and I guess we’re all supposed to get a boner over it. Look, it’s a Tom Clancy game, there’s gonna be gunporn. Scanning the Mk17 SR, which Wikipedia tells me is a heavy SCAR, whatever the hell that is (again, I don’t know from guns) we see how much damage it does, its range, and that it has three mod slots: one looks like it can be fitted with a scope, another possibly an extended magazine, and one more points to the stock, but I don’t know what you can add to a stock. Unicorn stickers?

One thing we don’t see is how easily Nick could compare it to a gun he already has, which is sometimes a problem in these games where you’re constantly finding new weapons and having to choose which to keep and which to ditch. I didn’t play much of Borderlands, but at least 98% of my time was squinting at a bunch of numbers relating to which gun was marginally better than which. That’s not one of my favorite things about MMO-style games.

6:40 — Back outside, after Bronson closes the armory door (considerate of him), they get a look at Manhattan, timed nicely with the bridge lights turning off along the Brooklyn Bridge. The lights aren’t going off because it’s the morning (the bridge is West of them, and the sun is behind it, so it’s early evening) so maybe power outages are a thing that happens in the game from time to time. Anyway, Megan shoots off a flare for extraction, which I assume spirits you back to a safe-zone or group base or something.

Then, a bunch of other players attack them. Not AI enemies, but human controlled players. Hey! Other people in this game! It’s not just co-op RPG PVE, it’s multi-MMO-RPG-co-op-PVP! Does that mean Megan could just turn around and shoot Bronson for being too bossy? I dunno. But she should consider it. We can see the names of the new players, their health bars, and the weapon they’re currently wielding.

06:53 – The trailer ends the way many game trailers ended at E3: with a big pullback up to heaven to show a massive, sprawling map the size of the entire country and thousands of human players all playing at once! Actually, in this case, it shows maybe a couple dozen players, and frankly, the map isn’t even that big. Still, pretty neat!

Also, both bridges now are labeled “Blackout”, another hint that the city’s power going on and off intermittently is a feature of the game. (I don’t know why I’m so fixated on the power situation in post-moneygerm New York, but I am.)

No idea if I’ll ever get to play this game. I have no plan or even much interest in buying a new console (also, no money, and also, money will germ you to death), and this game hasn’t yet been announced for PC. I hope it is eventually, though, because it looks pretty neat.