We've Got Star Power?

Games have always had the stigma of being for nerds and losers. If you had a gaming console in 70's and 80's, you weren't exactly the alpha male of your school (unless you could both manage playing games and being on the varsity football team, in which case you were a better person than I), and well, you didn't really care. As much as TV shows of that era made it seems like nerds hated being nerds, and that we were pent up in our basements playing games because we were shunned by society and had no other choice, we know different, and we enjoyed our games, and our outcast status, and sometimes we also brought people over, defying all stereotypes brought forth!

Look around you (and by that I mean the internet, television, etc.), and you'll see that that stigma is much less prevalent. It's still not gone, but I like to believe that the notion is still only held today by baby-boomers and my parents (who were born in Mexico, and therefore do not qualify as "baby-boomers). Games now are one of if not the biggest part of the entertainment industry, in both terms of income and influence. And when something becomes as big as games are, people usually start to take notice. Whether it's because they stand to make a lot of money from it, or they just want to be in on the latest trend (I'd argue that to mainstream consumers now, "the video games" look like a fad), people want in, and famous people are no different.

Sure, celebrities have been a part of gaming as early as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and maybe even earlier, and there are a few famous examples, but I think we can all assume that these early examples didn't really mean much to the celebrities who were providing their likeness; they were no different than putting your face on the front of a cereal box. They weren't trying to make the best game out there featuring them (even though it turned out that way for Tyson, and not so much for Shaq), they were trying to sell these things to kids.

And even when the stars did start taking interest in games, they weren't too excited about sitting down with a team and maybe getting one together that would or would have their likeness in it. We've seen lots of videos where celebrities profess their love of Halo, but they always seem to do it with an inflection that says that they're ashamed to do so. As if a person as highly regarded in society as themselves shouldn't be caught dead playing anything other than a Wii. Either that, or they're to the type of person so expertly portrayed in Mountain Dew commercials and sometimes in movies.

But, recent years have seen some exceptions. If you don't count movie tie-in games (which do feature celebrities, but are different from celebrity tie-in in that they're usually bound creatively to a licence), both the amount and status of actors and stars partaking in games has gotten better. Just last year we had Liam Neeson in Fallout 3, and Keifer Sutherland in Call of Duty: World at War (having trouble catching his voice? He's the guy yelling at you when you play as the Americans. And almost constantly cursing), and while these appearances are well-known, they're not exactly promoted as huge selling points. Neither appearance is promoted on the box, so most people who aren't up on these sorts of things probably won't realize until later, when they'll most likely think it's cool as something that was thrown in instead saying it was a shameless marketing ploy...

And then we have Vin Diesel. Research shows that he's played his way around a D&D board quite a lot, which is more than I can claim. He doesn't think it's embarrasing, either; and people who know better don't think he's a loser. Better yet, when he's not making blockbuster films, he's actually helping out making games, using his company, Taigon Studios, to develop games using his likeness. Sure, funding a company with the purpose of creating as many games with your likeness as possible sounds a little egotistical, but it's hard to argue with the results so far, and let's face it, Vin's not exactly a bad choice for a lead role in game.

What I'm hoping to see is actors and other celebrities taking games more seriously, and I don't mean the same way we do. I mean using video games as another outlet to expand their horizons, the same way they would use film. Not every game using someone famous has to bear their likeness, but just voice acting in a game might not only let people know they're more open to new ideas, but might also continue chipping away at both their stereotypes and ours.

The Wheelman...can?

Browsing through the Xbox Marketplace, looking for content, blah blah blah I downloaded the demos for The Wheelman and Assault on Dark Athena. I had also downloaded the Watchmen demo, and I played them in the order that I thought I would like them, and ascending order: Wheelman, Athena, and Watchmen. Turns out, I like them in the opposite order.

I went in to The Wheelman with a sense of ironic interest. I was supposed to like it because it was awesomely bad, but after playing for a while it I actually came to like it, and that is not meant as a condescending comment along the lines of "I say, good chap, what was once rubbish is now glorious in my eyes!" I seriously like them game. Mapping the ability to crash into other cars to the flick of the right analog stick was certifiably brilliant. The fact that it's so easy to just crash into another car is something that's missing from other driving games, and just feels good. Which is a good thing, because you have do it a lot in the demo.

Aside from all the car-smashing you'll be doing, there's other stuff to do as well. You have what is essentially a special meter, and when it's full to certain point you preform special move, such as slowing down time to shoot at cars and spinning your vehicle (sometimes both at the same time!). There's also the obligatory boosting (with fire!), but when you're smashing into other cars and shooting dudes in slow-mo, boosting seems somewhat tame by comparison.

I like what The Wheelman had to offer the driving genre (a mix between Burnout and PGR), and with that and the Dark Athena on the horizon, are we at the point where celebrities care about games enough to make good ones consistently? Or is Vin Diesel simply a super-muscular version of Wil Wheaton? Time will tell.