I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gamers are the most creative people on the planet. And in order to prove my point, we needn't look any further than Theater of the Arcade.

Theater of the Arcade is an Off-Off Broadway play which was being shown at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (okay, way-off Broadway) between July 13-25 during their Gameplay Festival. The play is broken up into five segments, each one being a stand-alone adaptation of a classic videogame.  As the show's run has since come to an end, I won't be skipping out any details just to avoid spoilers.  So sit back, relax, and read on for all the theater/gaming goodness.

The show begins with a lone figure under the spotlight.  His face overcome by sadness, he begins to discuss his limited movements of forward, backward, and sideways as he tries to make it to the green on the other side of the path before him.  Complete with videogame sound effects and an inspiring performance by Robert Pinnock, this Frogger adaptation was a remarkable way to set the tone for the show as its serious and often silly portrayal of a tortured character desperately trying to make it from one side of the road to another reminds us all of the genius that is Frogger's simplicity.

The next segment of the show is set in a dingy, broken down apartment in an Italian neighborhood.  A young woman dressed in ragged clothing hobbles across the stage and throws a quarter to an organ grinder and his monkey who is playing just outside of her window. It isn't long before her brutish husband comes home and reveals that he has been fired from his job at the barrel-making factory. It is at the exact moment when the couple is paid a visit by their superintendent, an Italian fellow a distinct accent who says he is there to fix a leaky pipe.  The husband flies into a fit of rage and grabs a wooden barrel he had been using as a makeshift nightstand and flings it out the door directly at their superintendent.  The woman then stares at her husband until the chaos subsides.  She tells him that he is her one true vestige of happiness in this crummy world they inhabit but would surely leave him if he ever again behaves the way he did.  The scene ends with the husband bringing his fists to his chest and falling, apologizing to his wife.  This adaptation of the arcade classic Donkey Kong was a startling portrayal of a low-income family just barely being able to survive.  The jabs and references of the arcade game were perfectly timed and never felt forced.  Shelley Ray and Kent Meister gave emotional performances that almost brought tears to my eyes.

Pac-Man was next on the videogame adaptation list and it was perhaps the most entertaining of the bunch. Set in Germany,  we open with a rotund business man feasting on a plate of giant sized fruits. As he continues to stuff his face, his assistant sees to his employees who have come to visit: a factory worker, a farmer, and even his sultry girlfriend.  The German tyrant swiftly relieves them of their duties, citing budget cuts for his greedy reasoning and unsurprisingly dumps his girlfriend for he has found someone younger and more attractive to entertain him.  After he has finished with them, he finally fires his assistant, blaming his interest in poetry as the reason.  The four eventually meet up on the street and device a logical plan of revenge: to dress up as ghosts and scare the crap out their former boss.  They lure him outside (wth a trail of fruit no less) and tell him how his actions has led to their inevitable demise.  But just as the their employer begins to see the error of his ways, the sun rises and the gang's plot is exposed for the farce it is.  The police shortly arrive to carry the four off to jail but not before they proclaim no matter how often they are locked up, they will always come back faster and stronger than before.  Stephen Heskett, Josh Mertz, Robert Pinnock, Hope Cartelli and the exceptional Fred Baukus (loved the German accent), all gave wonderful performances for this piece.

The next scene opens on a space station on Mars. Two pilots have been called in by their superior and are being informed that one of them is losing their job.  Given that the subject matter is the arcade title Asteroids, the story here relies a lot more on the pilots' personalities – how their 12 long years of employment have left them sexless and emotionally distraught. One the one hand you have Bill, a foul-mouthed straight shooter who isn't afraid to tell his superior off.  And on the other hand you have Murphy, a timid yet devoted pilot who is beginning to break down due to his years of service.  A one-on-one interview then takes place between the pilots and an evaluator (who happens to be a woman), where the two pilots describe their work and the hardships they face on a daily basis.  The writing here is exceptionally done as the cast is able to drop enough hints at the pilots' line of work without openly stating they are blowing up asteroids for living.  After a lot of profanity expertly delivered by the hilarious Fred Backus, the scene ends with Murphy losing his job and Bill insisting to his superior that he tell him that he is a champion.  Of all the adapted games, this was the only one I had I trouble identifying.  I had known by the actors' silver pilot wings pinned to their shirts that the game was either Space Invaders, Galaga or Asteroids.  But when the evaluator, played by the beautiful and talented Hope Cartelli, jokes about their performance and asks if they 'do more than just spin around in circles' when they are out on a job, I knew exactly which arcade game was being portrayed. Well done!

The final segment of the performance opens in the great outdoors with a pair of brothers who need no introduction. Estranged for roughly six years, brothers Marv and Lou have reunited to discuss Lou's recent divorce with his wife.  As their conversation becomes serious, Marv suggests that the two trip out on some mushrooms to lift their spirits.  After sharing a silly tale of a giant tortoise Marv once saw while under the influence, it isn't long before the mushrooms' effects kick in and dark truths are brought to the surface.  Lou sees a vision of his wife who says that she is in trouble. She also tells him that Marv and her were lovers before she was married but decided to keep it from Lou to spare his feelings.  When the vision disappears, Lou confronts Marv who admits that Lou's wife is the only woman he ever loved. After trading punches, the two share a vision of their deceased father who tells them to settle their differences and work together.  Marv and Lou make a promise to save the woman they love and to settle everything else once they know she is safe.  They rush out into the darkness and the scene ends.  Given the obvious adaptation, the writing was a lot more generous with the video game references (Marv's recount of chasing a shooting star in the distance which he says 'was unable to catch because it kept bouncing around' was a real treat). I especially adored Stephen Heskett's portrayal of Luigi as his speeches about spending his life in his brother's shadow were truly revealing.  He also makes some pretty wicked fireball sound effects.

One would think that adapting five classic arcade games as a play would be a bit of a challenge, but playwright Jeff Lewonczyk and his talented ensemble have managed to prove otherwise.  It was a delightful, entertaining, and thought provoking journey into the memories and themes of our most beloved and cherished arcade game characters.

For more information on the cast and crew be sure to check out the team's homepage.

Post contributed by Andreas Asimakis. Questions for the author? Send an email to andreas@gamesabyss.com. Follow him on Twitter: @pantsguy.

OK, that title is a stretch. FIFA 10 was by no means perfect. In fact, it definitely had its problems. But what it brought to the pitch on top of FIFA 09, the level of realism its play achieved, and the breadth of ways to play it both offline and online, made it feel like the complete soccer simulation. It was all but perfect.

So how can EA Canada build upon all but perfection? According to David Rutter, FIFA’s senior producer who I had the pleasure to meet at an open day a couple of weeks ago, the answer is to listen to feedback. Like I said, FIFA 10 had its problems, from the ridiculous easiness of chipping the keeper to the gracelessness of initiating a goal celebration.

EA Canada has this quite scarily huge list of feedback that it’s gained from reading forum posts, reviews, and probably little slips of paper nonchalantly left lying around. If there’s an opinion on FIFA 10 out there, be it a one-word write-off to a 40-page essay in all likelihood EA knows about it.

So the drive to achieve perfection in FIFA 11 is being fought on four fronts – well, at least the four fronts we presently know about. The first is fighting for possession, with players now able to tussle with each other for control of the ball in all 360 degrees of direction, and with more depth and realism too. They’ll shield before the ball comes to them, shove each other, etc. It looks fantastic, too.

The second is in the new Career Mode, which will include old Be a Pro and Manager Modes and pull them into a cohesive career for you to play through. Pretty self-explanatory, and frankly you wonder why it hasn’t happened sooner.

The third, and perhaps the most interesting, is the Pro Passing feature. The first facet of it is to make tough passes harder for footballers with poor passing skills to pull off. Sounds simple enough, but watching donkey defenders spray the ball with the quality of a Beckham was definitely a problem in FIFA 10. On top of that, passes will also now depend a bit more on player skill too. Passes will have a power bar in FIFA 11, in essence meaning you can under-hit and over-hit them. The idea behind it is to stop the ping-pong first-touch passing that has been a fixture of the series for many years.

The last of these four fronts is Personality Plus, which is designed to add extra uniqueness to each footballer. Players will have their own visual and playing traits, and their abilities on the pitch will be better reflected in the game. So expect to see lots of Cristiano Ronaldo trickery in FIFA 11, but not much defending from the little winker, for example.

Whether or not FIFA 11 will prove as dramatic and important an addition to the series’ long history as recent outings have been is something we’ll only know when the game arrives in our hands on September 28 – well your hands – it arrives in my European hands a few days later on October 1. What we do know is that EA Canada is not going to play it safe with its franchise, and seeks only to steal further ahead of its rivals. And that much is encouraging.

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.

In my last post I talked about GoldenEye, the upcoming Wii remake of the N64 classic. I was lucky enough to get hands-on with it at an Activision event just over a week ago. There was another Bond game on show that day, though, and it was no remake, boys and girls. I am of course talking about Blood Stone.

Considering how Bond games have hardly set the world alight – aside from one obvious exception – Blood Stone is a lot more intriguing than it should be. Activision’s hold on the Bond license is coming to an end next year. With Bond’s 23^rd appearance on the big screen in serious jeopardy in the wake of MGM’s financial troubles, a film to make a tie-in game to (like Quantum of Solace) before the license moved on was obviously deemed improbable.  The result: the first non-adapted Bond game since 2004’s Everything or Nothing, as well as the first non-adapted appearance of Daniel Craig as 007.

On top of that, rather than sticking with a traditional third-person shooter Activision has enlisted the services of Bizarre Creations, the British studio who developed Blur. Bizarre is renowned in particular for its work on the Project Gotham Racing series. In contrast, its shooter experience in  recent years has been limited to The Club. The studio has a great history of success and is well respected, but you wouldn’t exactly sign them up to develop the next Call of Duty game.

Blood Stone is not just a shooter, though. After being taken through its opening level, I exactly understood why Bizarre had been brought in; Blood Stone is a shooter/driving game hybrid.

For all the time Bond spent on foot, running and gunning down henchmen on the Athenian coast, he spent equal time chasing them down behind the wheel, at first on a speedboat and later on the road. Interestingly, the driving sequences’ action was closer to something like Split Second rather than Bizarre’s own Blur. Bond had no weapons beyond his pistol to hand, instead having to use the environment, like an explosive tanker, as his means to taking out the bad guys.

It’s of course hard to gauge how successful a game is going to be from watching 5 minutes of footage, but Bizarre’s attempt to do something a little bit different with Blood Stone, something that should bring it closer to the all-encompassing action of the films, definitely intrigues more than a standard shooter would. The challenge Bizarre faces is making both the driving and shooting parts of the game be at least almost as exciting and engaging as any other top grade driving or shooting game, otherwise Blood Stone could end up being stale and generic. For now, though, consider my interest piqued. Watch this space.

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.

I was lucky enough to attend Activision’s Bond event here in Central London, Aston Martins, Joss Stone, and the rest. I thought I’d write a few words on the two games that were shown off, the first of which was the GoldenEye remake.

When I heard about Activision resurrecting the now 17-years-old N64 classic, at first I was excited. In a very natural way – ooh, I like GoldenEye; more GoldenEye is great, let’s do this.

Then after a moment of registration, it didn’t seem like such a good idea. Is there really need for such an outdated game – I know it was great back in the way back when but come on… – to be brought back to life in a time when we are swamped by visually stunning and technically multifaceted shooters on far beastlier systems than the humble Wii?

Then I decided I was excited again – well, cautiously excited. The reason? Because they’re just aren’t enough split-screen shooters – actually make that split-screen games out there. And GoldenEye was the split-screen daddy.

After seeing it in action, though, I’ve changed my step again. Now I’m quite excited about the single-player, oddly enough. It’s easy to forget how fun GoldenEye’s single-player campaign was because the multiplayer was so lauded, but it made for a very enjoyable adaptation of one of the very best Bond films. It had drama, strategy, a range of great weapons and some brilliant levels – and of course that opening moment when you descend upon poor Johnny on the loo.

What’s interesting about the GoldenEye remake is that they’re not just keeping it as is. For example, in the opening level, instead of making your way through the Arkhangelsk tunnel on foot, you’ll catch a ride on a military truck with Trevelyan and get involved in an explosive ride of pure chaos as you shoot down one on-rusher after another in balls of glorious flame. Eurocom, the developer, isn’t afraid to really ring the changes in this new game. After all, you can still go and play the old GoldenEye if you want to, right?

On a purely curious level, I’m quite interested to see what stays and what changes in GoldenEye. I know the idea of retreading and renovating over that of great nostalgic value is an abhorrent one to most, but I like the idea of seeing what stays, what goes, and how Eurocom tries to update this grand old shooter. Especially since the developer is keen to bring in some of the film's most notable scenes, things like the epic dam jump and the tank chase in St. Petersburg. Maybe it will disappoint – many critics seem to think it will – but I cannot deny that the intrigue has a hold on me.

The game is set to for release on November 2 for Wii. There's also a separate DS version being developed by n-Space.

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.

Did you read about everyone’s favourite Activision CEO, Mr Bobby Kotick, talking about possibly introducing online subscription charges for future Call of Duty games? After reading his statements, no doubt made whilst lighting up his cigar with a fifty before driving away in his gold-encrusted hovermobile, I couldn’t fathom why they’re aren’t throngs of angry gamers gathering outside the Kotick mansion, raising their pitchforks and flaming copies of Modern Warfare 2.

What he said bordered on ludicrous. In Kotick Land, otherwise seemingly satisfied Call of Duty players are apparently clamouring for a service that, in all likelihood, will charge them yearly more than the actual game cost just so they can play it online. For sure, Bobby. They’re practically foaming at the mouth to stuff more dollars into your already overflowing pockets.

That’s my impulse reaction, but then I force myself to take a step back and assess exactly where the gaming industry is, and it all clicks into place. Even if we don’t quite realize it, we’re already in Kotick Land. I know, it’s a horrible thought. But it’s true; we’re heading slowly into a future where most online gaming services are going to become subscription-based, and we’re doing so quite willingly.

Consider how readily we’ve accepted Xbox Live, how we’ve convinced ourselves that we get so much money for our buck to play our games online, simply because when it launched there was no strong alternative home for playing our games online with each other. Consider how Sony, despite surely leading with the stronger card of a free online service, has felt pressured into producing its own rival subscription service. Regards the latter, I’ve been so shocked by how many of those on my friends list have so readily signed up for PlayStation Plus. Should we really be rewarding Sony for introducing a service that should’ve really framed their free system if not at launch then shortly after it? I suppose it’s this no-questions-asked attitude that we as gamers seem to have. We just begrudgingly pay up.

I count myself amongst the blind and ever-trusting too. I’ve just recently re-subscribed to World of Warcraft after three years out. Sure, World of Warcraft is a more acceptable model since you do get constant updates and maintenance for what you’re playing. But what about the expansion packs like The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King? Surely they ought to come under the $150 or so we pay each year to play the damn thing? Of course, wrenching yourself away from WoW because of principles is no mean feat. Which makes me all the fool for returning to the damn thing.

As you were, Kotick et al. We're all fools. Please take our money.

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.

Console and handheld-based game manufacturers have been nervously looking over their shoulders at Zynga, the creator of the ridiculously popular Farmville and Mafia Wars games, and the boom it’s enjoyed on social network Facebook.

The numbers – 80 million players for Farmville alone and this week a rumored $100-200m invested in Zynga alone by Google – have left the big players in the console market worried that they’re missing an ever burgeoning fresh piece of the pie. Companies like Sony and EA have invested heavily in similar social gaming ventures, the latter in particular through the acquiring of social game maker Playfish for a staggering $275.

Regardless of the impressive amounts of money involved, the console market may be rubbing its hands with glee – albeit at a cautiously low decibel level – at the news that Google has apparently invest so heavily in Zynga.

The company behind Farmville is arguably the leading social game maker in the market, and if not it’s certainly the most exciting in terms of recent growth and success. If the speculation proves true, then Zynga has all but thrown itself at Google to finally end its troubled relationship with Facebook. And if the numbers are true, they suggest that Google will obtain some level of exclusivity. So this is Zynga, then, placing all its eggs in Google’s basket. The problem there is that we don’t even know as yet what that basket is going to be.

Even if you do place some faith in the quality of Google’s to-be-announced social gaming venture, there are questions to be raised of Google as a home for games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. As Dan Porter aptly points out over at SFGate, low maintenance, casual games make sense as an extension of what Facebook is about. People log into Facebook for a social distraction, and easy-to-get games like Farmville simply prolong the experience – at least initially. They may and do dig their hooks in to players with time. Google, as Porter says, is all about functionality. We log into Google to find something, or to send mail, or to update our calendars. It’s get in and get out. Does that sit well alongside gaming?

ESuccess or failure, a move like this is likely to slow down the boom of Zynga, Farmville, and social gaming by extension simply through transition – at least in the short term. Inevitably, Zynga will lose some of its player base if it moves away from Facebook. Inevitably, it will take time for new players to come in through Google.

Finally, it will inevitably pave the way for a successor to take over the social gaming mantle at Facebook. The social networking site isn’t suddenly going to go away whatever one may believe or however much one might want it to. Will companies like Sony, Activision, and Microsoft take advantage of the opportunity?  We’ve seen Sony use Facebook as a marketing platform through its Agency game, and we've seen EA throw its weight into other areas of social gaming growth, most notably the iPhone. Social gaming is still at a critical points of its growth, and maybe it's time for companies like Activision, Sony, and so on to take advantage before vague worries about a rival platform for gaming become grave concerns.

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.

Has this year had its groundbreaking, definitive game yet?

Has there been anything like Uncharted 2, which silenced any doubters of the Hollywood approach to game direction with its swashbuckling cinematic presentation? Or something like Demon’s Souls, which redefined what a massively multiplayer game could be with its innovative message-based interplay?

Of course, we’re barely past 2010’s halfway point. However, back in 2009 when I was looking ahead to this year, many of the potentially standout games were ones that now have already come out. And already underwhelmed. I should note that I’m speaking for me here and not the whole of Games Abyss. For example, Andreas loved Alan Wake. I did not. Having said that, neither Jeff nor I got on with Heavy Rain. Those are just two of the big games that, for me, failed to realize their huge potential.

The recently released Crackdown 2 could’ve redefined the open world genre like its predecessor, but it proved to be as stale as a game can get. Meanwhile, the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII spent too long getting out of its shell. It wasn’t an awful game, but by no means up to the usual Final Fantasy standards, the kind that have led the way for the Japanese role-playing game genre.

It’s not just about quality, but about failing to have that special something that hasn’t been seen before. Bayonetta, Mass Effect 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, BioShock 2, Super Street Fighter IV and Red Dead Redemption are just some of the examples of strong 2010 games, but not one of those has truly innovated for me. For example, Bayonetta is essentially an amplified Devil May Cry. Mass Effect 2 is a streamlined improvement on the first game, but not all that different. And while the other three ‘2s’ there all provided a lot of fun, they all played it pretty safe as far as a sequel goes.

This is just my opinion of course, and even more significantly there are plenty of games I haven’t yet played – being a human incapable of distorting the space time continuum, yet. I can’t, for example, comment on Bad Company 2 or God of War 3. Nonetheless, nearly every year there’s a game that just stand outs from the rest, shines far brighter, sets the standard for other games to follow. So far in 2010, I’ve not seen anything like an Uncharted 2, a Fallout 3, a Half-Life 2 – the list could go on. It just seems to me like a lot of the big hitters just haven't hit all that big. And like I said, I look ahead to the rest of the year and it doesn’t fill me with confidence. Although this time last year who’d have thought that we’d be so blown away by Arkham Asylum, so never say never.

That’s where you come in, devilishly handsome or strikingly beautiful reader. Tell me if I’m wrong or right, if there’s a 2010 game that’s hit that G spot for you or if there’s one round the corner that I shouldn’t overlook. Or maybe like me you’ve just been a little underwhelmed by 2010 so far. Either way, do share your thoughts. What’s the 2010 vintage been like for you?

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.

As a fan of Crackdown, after liking what I’d been hearing, seeing, and playing of its sequel up until release, color me shocked and disappointed at how underwhelmed I was by Ruffian’s Crackdown 2. It’s no more than the first game with a little gloss and extra bulk, totally bereft of imagination and progression.

So what went wrong with Ruffian's latest open world bonanza? Here are my five suggestions for how the game could’ve provided the true growth and excitement it was expected to bring.

1. Variety is the spice of an agent’s life

There’s no point putting a ton of different campaigns into your open world game if you don’t mix things up even just a little between individual missions. Each of Crackdown 2’s three main campaigns fails to evolve from start to finish. They are repetitive, lazily designed, and fail to explore the variety of weapons and powers at the player’s disposal. No wonder the demo was time-limited. Once you’ve played one mission from each campaign, you’ve played them all.

2. Been there, done that, got the Pacific City t-shirt

If you’re not going to evolve the formula of your game – collect orbs, jump & kill bad guys, collect some more orbs – then you need to evolve your location. No-one is fooled by the cosmetic deconstruction and reconstruction of buildings in Crackdown 2 – it was for all intents and purposes the same map. And if you spend enough time in a familiar place, nostalgia will evolve into tedium. Crackdown 2 would’ve benefitted immensely from a new city with new buildings to scale.

3. Here I am, stuck with my lock-on on you

The industry has seen auto-targeting evolve since the first Crackdown. Even the sometimes lumbering dinosaur that is Grand Theft Auto has made necessary changes to its lock-on shooting. So why Crackdown 2 suffers its predecessor’s awkward mechanics, a system which makes it near impossible to switch from one target to another, is truly confounding. It’s either stubbornness or ignorance.

4. By our powers combined

One of Crackdown 2’s greatest strengths is its seamless co-op. Orbs can be carried over, you can help with players’ missions, and lag is never an issue. So why not make any co-op specific missions? Making certain orbs specific to co-op is a start, but surely there are stronger ways to capitalize on a game that, outside of missions, offers a variety of ways for players to combine their powers for chaotic fun. The novelty of that experimentation quickly wears off, sadly, and you’re left with campaigns that just become easier in co-op but nothing more.

5. No girls allowed in the Agency

Arguably not as strong a criticism as the other four, but I still find it hard to believe that it would’ve all but broken Crackdown 2 to support female agents as well as male ones, as Ruffian would have us believe. Other games seemed to have done just fine supporting a whole host of avatar types in their open worlds. I’d say it has more to do with keeping Crackdown 2’s macho exterior intact. Either way, the limited ways to customize an avatar (beyond its sex) are unimpressive.

So, 500 agility orbs later, I’m done with Crackdown 2.

And personally it was one of the biggest disappointments of the year so far.

Post contributed by Sinan Kubba. Questions for the author? Send an email to shoinan@googlemail.com. Visit his site at http://shoinan.com or follow him on Twitter: @shoinan.