Hot Game 2009

Insomniac‘s sci-fi FPS Resistance: Fall of Man may have missed out on a couple of hard-fought nominations at last night’s BAFTA awards, but it can finally go to sleep at night with a clear conscience. The Church of England — after a long and tempestuous relationship — has at last deigned to publicly forgive Sony for turning the in-game representation of Manchester Cathedral into a digital

bloodbath.

The BBC reports the Very Reverend Rogers Govender, Dean of Manchester Cathedral, waited until Resistance had failed to clinch any BAFTA awards before issuing the benediction.

“I think some important lessons have been learnt,” spoke the Reverend. “So we do forgive Sony for what they have done, even though they still believe they have done nothing wrong. In an industry that is breaking new frontiers, it is important that long held traditions of film and television are maintained,” he said. “These traditions include having courtesy, respecting the dignity of your subject, and admitting when mistakes have been made. In so many ways Sony have failed to live up to these standards by disrespecting people of faith and the victims of gun crime here in Manchester.”

You might recall that Resistance (and Sony) drew harsh criticism from the Church of England after the company incorporated an extremely lifelike model of the real-world-and-currently-active cathedral into their level design. he Church, as it turns out, objects strongly to the irreverent use of holy ground as a staging place for virtual battles. Back in July, lawyers representing the Church actually went as far as sending a letter to Sony, demanding the company make a formal apology and pull the game from store shelves in the UK.

A few days later the Church upped the ante, requesting that Sony contribute a “substantial donation” to its coffers, to be used in furthering the church’s efforts at “resisting the culture of gun crime and other forms of violence in our society.”

For its part, Sony never openly acknowledged there is anything wrong with Machester Cathedral’s appearance in Resistence. The game remains on shelves in its original state, and the company never did get around to knuckling under to the Church’s legal threats or paying anybody for the privilege — though they have openly acknowledged the seriousness of the Church’s critique on multiple occasions.

Judging from the Reverend’s comments, it seems the Church may not have given up all hope on getting a formal apology out of Sony. Absolution, as the Reverend would no doubt remind us, requires both the act of confession and a sense of genuine repentance — neither of which seem forthcoming anytime soon.

Did you feel that the ending wasn’t satisfying? Did you find yourself becoming bored at higher levels? Here are your answers.

Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG, Fallout 3, is an amazing game to be sure, garnering near universal praise and game of the year honors from such outlets as Gamasutra and IGN. Just like every other game out there, however, it’s by no means perfect and for fans of the series, Bethesda has a lot of questions to answer. The most common of which being, “What was up with that ending?” MTV’s Patrick Klepek took three of these common grievances and laid them out to Fallout 3 executive producer Todd Howard.

Criticism the first is an odd one, being that when judged as a first-person shooter, Fallout 3 comes up short. Howard’s response is curt and to the point: “Agreed.” I hadn’t heard of this one myself, as comparing Fallout 3 to Halo would be like comparing Grand Theft Auto IV to Gran Turismo. Just because you get to race cars in the two games, it doesn’t mean that they should be held to the same standards.

The second criticism is one that a lot of players feel quite strongly about, which is that the ending isn’t very satisfying and, when compared to previous Fallout titles, it doesn’t quite stack up. “Based on the feedback I’ve seen, most people are pissed off that it ends, not the ‘ending’ itself,” levels Howard. “That’s another thing we’re changing in ["Broken Steel," the third piece of downloadable content due in March]. We really underestimated how many people would want to keep playing, so that’s probably the last time we’ll do something like that.”

For those unaware, completing Fallout 3 renders your current game essentially useless as you can no longer continuing playing with that character unless you made sure to hold on to a previous save. Reversing this decision via downloadable content opens up a whole other can of worms, specifically for PlayStation 3 owners. While Xbox 360 players have downloadable content to look forward to and PC users can easily modify their game to go around the ending, PlayStation 3 fans are essentially boned with neither option being made available to them. To be fair, its not as though these gamers weren’t given proper warning, as word came as early as July 2008 that Fallout 3 DLC would not be made available for the PlayStation 3 edition of the game.

The final criticism is that V.A.T.S, the auto-targeting system found within the game, is boring once your accuracy rating makes for easy head shots later in the game. Howard responds, “Depends on what you find entertaining. I like to blow people’s heads off, so, well, it never got old for me.”