An overview of Sly Cooper...

...from someone who just got around to playing it.

Despite numerous attempts to stop me, I played through all of Sony developer Sucker Punch's three Sly Cooper games from Memorial Day to the 4th of July. I only played through the main game, I didn't complete any of the Master Thief challenges. I'm sure I could have completed them sooner, but I played some Street Fighter 3:Third Strike and a few other Capcom fighting games inbetween sessions, just to break it up a little.

I have played all of the PS2 Ratchet and Clank games (that's not true - I didn't play any of the PSP ones that got ported to PS2), and had played the first Jak & Daxter, so I felt like I had missed out by not having played the Sly Cooper games at all. Given the opportunity to pick them up cheap, I got all three of them - although in retrospect I should have picked up new copies of all three. Sly 3 I picked up from Gamestop as a used copy, and since the only thing I got was the disk for $10, I missed out a little. ( More on that later.)

The first Sly Cooper game comes off like Nintendo's early Mario games. Levels have a beginning and an end, and you're supposed to 1) go quick, 2) don't get hurt at all, and 3) get all the stuff. Similar to Mario, some boards allow you to go at your own pace, and some boards put time pressure on you. There's at least one board in every group of levels that has non-platformer gameplay, like one where you pilot an undersea sub and shoot crabs trying to take treasure chests. The controls for that are identical to the old school Robotron 2084 but these days that's referred to as a "twin stick shooter" since it seems like most of the people that Microsoft and Sony market to these days weren't alive in 1982 when that game came out. Some of the other non-platforming boards include racing levels and turret gun levels. Unlike the Ratchet and Clank's turret levels, where the object is to shoot down a lot of enemies, the Sly Cooper turret levels involve providing cover fire for a teammate so that they can proceed through a level. The only thing that I found odd about the game was that there was one powerup that was inaccesible until you had completed the main game, and it made the powerup completely pointless because it can't effectively be used in completing the Master Theif missions.

The second Sly Cooper game, Band of Theives, takes place in a series of cities around the world. While many of the missions take you into building interiors that are otherwise inaccessible, a fair portion of each city's missions are in the city itself. I liked that the cities had some purpose instead of being a glorified level select screen. The game added a currency system, stealing treasures and returning them to the safe house in a limited amount of time, added pickpocketing as both a side way to make money and a feature of getting through some of the levels, and purchaseable powerups. Sly's teammates Bentley and Murray get more of their own missions now, where you're controlling them directly. The conceit of the driving missions in Sly 1 was that Murray was driving - when Murray actually gets out of the car, it's already a cutscene by then. Now you get to use the might of "The Murray" directly to pound foes too tough for Sly, and Bentley goes through small spaces that Sly can't get into so we can hack the enemies' computers. Bentley also has very effective sleep darts and bombs. The game is a lot more fun than the first one for me because the locations seem a little more "real" - I enjoy a game that has a sense of place. It's nice to get to know where you're going after a while. In the name of variety, this game also has some turret missions but they're more like the Ratchet and Clank ones this time, and Bentley's hacking games play a little like old-school Omega Race. Other non-traditional levels include attacking foes using an RC chopper or an RC car. The best thing was having a regular health bar instead of the 'one hit and you're out' system from the first game.

By the time the third game (Honor Among Theives) rolls around, Sucker Punch has figured a few things out. None of the loot that you find has any impact on the game other than how much money you have, so making you go through the extra step of cashing it in was unneccesary. Now, loot instantly adds to your currency total. All of the powerups become purchaseable. The missions are a little more streamlined, but not as much as Sly 1. The endless looking around for clue bottles has gone, though. (I kinda missed them.) On the other hand, some new things got thrown in for reasons I can't fathom. Four more playable characters, inclusion of 3D in some levels, and a rather involved pirate boat combat simulator. I did like the storyline of 3, but I didn't like switching to characters with rather different control schemes. At the risk of it being a little spoilerish, Carmelita's controls were the ones that really bugged me. The plane levels were fun - the demo disk for Sly 3 included a version of one of the aerial battles - although I had to pass on the 3D version of the last dogfight since it's harder to tell a red plane from a black plane with anaglyph glasses on. In general, I used the 3D glasses that I had laying around the house for the platforming levels, and passed on it for the boss battles. Had I purchased a new copy of Sly 3, perhaps I would have the exact 3D glasses that I needed, but the ones I had were close enough. I would have liked some sort of calibration screen for the 3D, or a displayable test pattern so I could check that the 3D was set up correctly without having to do it in the middle of a level while perched on a spire someplace. One new thing that they added that was somewhat fun was some cutscenes had a dialogue tree to do - I wouldn't want them to make a whole game of it, it was just fun when they threw it in a few times.

Those of you that have still missed out on these games and have a PS3 can take advantage of the The Sly Collection coming out. I'm sure that it will be easy to render at higher resolution, but I wonder if they're going to keep the 3D the same.

And, for the record, I liked the voice actress for Carmelita Fox in the second game (Alesia Glidewell) the best. And that was without realizing that she plays the protagonist Chell in Valve's Portal!

Marvel Vs Capcom 3

I would have posted this sooner, but between playing the Sly Cooper games and my older son's discovery of websites like ninjakiwi.com, I haven't been on the computer as much. I will talk about my impressions of the Sly games pretty soon.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 has been announced, and they've been showing some gameplay footage already.

Overall, I seem to like it. I'm glad that they listened to the fans and included Dante from 'Devil May Cry', Capcom's stylish action series. I'm glad that they managed to keep the 3-on-3 format from 'Marvel vs Capcom 2'. I was surprised to see Marvel's 'Merc with a Mouth' Deadpool included at first, but I was reminded by the guys at the comic book store that everything seems to get Deadpool added to it these days.

There are a few camps of haters -

"OMG BlazBlue is so much better why don't they make it 2D" I do realize that other companies are still making sprite-based fighters, and my hat is off to companies that are still making that work. Capcom has a variety of series going on now besides the Street Fighter games, most (all?) of which are done with 3D modeled characters because the game environments are 3D. The skill set of their employees and the design of their development tools probably totally slanted towards 3D. We've already heard this complaint directed towards Street Fighter IV, and I have to say that Street Fighter IV's use of a moving camera during special attacks has added a measure of excitement to matches that you can't get from a 2D fighter. And when I say that you can't get it from a 2D fighter, I mean that if you do move the camera around in a 2D fighter, it's like you're watching cardboard cutouts fight. I realize that it's not substantive and doesn't affect the actual fighting mechanics, but I like it. Capcom's old tendency to re-use sprites between games had gotten them in a bad place with Street Fighter fans, especially by the time 'Capcom vs SNK 2' made it to consoles in 2001. There were brand-new SNK characters right next to sprites of Darkstalkers' Morrigan that they hadn't updated since 1994, and it looked terrible. I hope that their use of 3D character models helps them keep up graphically without looking dated.

"I hate this cartoony looking junk." I can think of at least two significant reasons to do a cartoony art style. Marvel characters are from the comics after all, but that's not why. With characters from both comics and a multitude of games, each with its own art style, it's probably more visually consistent to make everybody look more like they just stepped out of a comic book. That way, the game has a unifying visual style that people will associate with the game. Also, if you're going to have six characters on the screen, I presume that the simpler rendering style helps keep the framerate consistently high.

"Why did they simplify the controls? Street Fighter is supposed to be six buttons." I hate to tell you that MvC2 had somewhat simplified controls. While it was still six buttons, the MvC2 layout has two buttons specifically assigned to tagging out to your two partners. The punch buttons and kick buttons were reduced to two each. Not being able to simply have three different speeds of projectile attacks seemed to be the most annoying feature of this change to me. According to the preliminary information, the buttons are three attacks and one exchange button, similar to Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Having played TvC, and being satisfied with how the controls work, I have to say that I like this better than MvC2's controls in this regard. The other major reason to simplify the controls is to help maintain a broader audience.

For years, fighting games had relatively simple controls until Street Fighter. While people were largely unaware of the original Street Fighter, these special moves carried over to the very popular Street Fighter II. These, in turn, influenced Mortal Kombat and other some games in the genre, but not all of them. For whatever reason, the Street Fighter Alpha series started more and different controller techniques, taking its lead from the last Street Fighter II game, Super Street Fighter II Turbo. The Street Fighter Alpha included Alpha counters and multi-level Super moves, and Street Fighter Alpha 2 included the Variable Combo attack. As more and different kinds of special attacks were added to the game, it became more of a barrier to entry for new players. By the time Capcom finally made Street Fighter 3 (1997) and added the Parry system, it was no longer enough to know all of your character's moves. To be proficient at Street Fighter 3, you had to know the precise hit timing of all of your opponent's moves. This was made worse by Street Fighter 3 only having a home version on the Dreamcast for the first few years and was not released to the more widely popular home systems (PS2, Xbox) until 2004. Another setback was removal of a lot of fan favorites from Street Fighter II and too many new characters. This narrowing of focus made Street Fighter 3:Third Strike a technically great game, but not played by a wide audience, and not easy to get into for new players. Capcom had explicitly stated during development of Street Fighter 4 that they wanted to bring their fighting games back to a wider audience, and they have done a great job with that – and it's even more important in a game like Marvel vs Capcom 3, because they need to bring in new Marvel fans into the fold and make it easy to get into the game.

I'm sure that some of you can come up with more objections, and feel free to comment away – I'm going to get on with the roster analysis, though.

The characters that have already been announced are: (Game Series in parenthesis)

• Chris Redfield (Resident Evil)
  


• Dante (Devil May Cry)
  


• Felicia (Darkstalkers)
  


• Morrigan (Darkstalkers)
  


• Ryu (Street Fighter)
  

And on the Marvel side:

• Captain America
  


• Deadpool
  


• Dormammu (villan from Dr. Strange)
  


• Hulk
  


• Iron Man
  


• Wolverine
  

Based on the rosters of past games, there are some reasonable assumptions, and some not-so-reasonable assumptions.

Looking at "Marvel vs Capcom" and "Marvel vs Capcom 2" only, a presumption might be that anyone that was in both of the other games would be in this one. If that turns out to be true, then we could expect to see Gambit, Spiderman, War Machine, and Venom on the Marvel side - although Gambit's somewhat of a longshot (and personally I'd rather see Longshot although I have no idea how you could implement his powers in a fighting game). On the Capcom side, that would put Captain Commando, Chun-Li, Jin, Mega Man, Roll, Strider Hiryu, and Zangief in the lineup. Even though he was sort of the Capcom mascot, since Captain Commando has a bunch of other teammates to model, I'm going to say unlikely to him. Chun-Li and Zangief are already modeled in SF4 (and Chun-Li has also been modeled in TvC) so they would be easy enough to do. Mega Man seems likely, but I'm going to say maybe not Roll since I'm hoping they have enough sense to keep super-short characters out this time. Jin and Strider Hiryu have not been featured in any modern games, so they may be out too.

Looking deeper into the previous Capcom superhero fighting games (X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, and Marvel vs Street Fighter), a few more characters may get considered. Blackheart has been in three previous games , although perhaps he's not relevant as a bad guy any more. The same thing could be said for Omega Red. Juggernaut has been in a few times before, is a fun character to use, and still manages to be relevant in the comic books. I would say that he's got a good chance to make the cut unless there's some storyline related reason for him not to be there. Shuma-Gorath has made some previous appearances but is another Dr. Strange villan. (He looks like an octopus with a giant eyeball as a head.) Unless they're willing to put Dr. Strange in, I think Dormammu's appearance will keep Shuma-Gorath out. If they go for more X-Men involvement, Cyclops, Magneto, and Storm, could end up in the game. On the Capcom side, Akuma, Cammy, Charlie, Dhalsim, Ken, and M. Bison have all been in their fair share of the crossover games. Should they go in again, or is it time to let some more new characters in? Blanka hasn't made it into any of the crossover games yet and I would like to see him make it in one. Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2 and 4? Maybe he's redundant with Chris Redfield already there. Samanosuke Akechi from Onimusha? It's not like he'd be the only one with a sword. Zack & Wiki? The little devil dude from Bombastic? The white wolf Ameratsu from Okami? No, no, and probably not. It's not like Capcom has a shortage of characters, but a lot of them are too short. I realize that the Vs series games has had more of an emphasis on having fun and wacky characters than having a well balanced roster, but I tire of playing against short opponents. Based on my past experience with the Vs games, I'd rather fight against the Hulk than Servbot.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see some appearances by newer characters from Lost Planet or Monster Hunter, or perhaps some more Darkstalkers characters to try and stir up interest for a new Darkstalkers game using the new game engine.

At this point, I would encourage anybody interested in Marvel vs Capcom 3 to keep checking Capcom's website at www.marvelvscapcom3.com for new characters as they're announced. And, after all this typing, I may post an abbreviations guide for Capcom fighting game titles so that I'm not retyping them constantly.

Sly Cooper and a theory about gamepads.

Last weekend, I used the Memorial Day holiday to take my two kids and a musician friend of mine on a routine shopping expedition. I was hoping to get another swing for the yard, and the one I wanted was a likely candidate at the big regional ToysRUs. Success! Swing obtained! The down side was, they also had Sly Cooper 1 and 2. I really wanted to pick up a Wii classic controller, but for the same money I could get two more games! A few minutes later, we were down the street having lunch at the local mall food court. After we ate, I figured that we should locate the Gamestop in the mall because I'm always hoping that I'll accidentally find the Gamecube version of Killer 7 or some other treasure like that. But, since my older son has that tendency towards completion, he spotted Sly 3 and was pretty much adamant that we get it. After all, the easiest way to annoy some people is to take something that there are n of and have or obtain n-1 of them.

My reasoning behind the classic controller (which I still did not get) mostly has to do with Samurai Shodown Anthology for Wii. While Tatsunoko vs Capcom allows for a Gamecube controller, and controls OK that way, SSC does not. While it's adequate for Samurai Shodown 1-5 to use a Wiimote plus Nunchuck, it's less than ideal. As a lefty who has always played fighting games with a gamepad, I've gotten quite used to character control with my left hand. My stupid right hand doesn't always get combo timing perfect, but I can usually pull off the controller motions on a regular basis, even on an unfamiliar controller. On the Wii, I am used to Wiimote in my left hand and Nunchuck in my right - perhaps I should switch but it feels creepy. (I even get mad about some of the Wii Fit games that use the Nunchuck not letting you swap the controls.) Of course, right handed people have had to put up with having the D-pad on their non-dominant had for years, but maybe this is why the fight stick is so popular. So, my theory is this. If you're a lefty that didn't play fighting games much in the arcade but a lot at home, you're more likely to prefer a gamepad. If you're a righty in the same boat, you're OK with a gamepad but you would rather have a fight stick.

Of course, the other reason I want a Classic Controller for Samurai Shodown is that Samurai Shodown 6 needs more buttons, and the easiest way to annoy me is to take a fighting game that needs 5 buttons and make it so I can only reach 4 of them - or put six games on a disc and make it so I can only play 5 of them.

I am willing to be wrong...

...as long as it doesn't matter and I can keep going.

I realize that people sometimes get the wrong idea about me because I can get in a mode where I have to do something my way. It's not because I think that there's only one way to do it. Usually I get to a point where I come up with a solution that I know will work even if something were to go wrong while I'm trying to do it, and I can adjust and keep going. This is probably more important in real life than in any sort of game space - in a game situation I'm OK with trying something a bunch of different ways because the consequences are usually pretty minimal. I only get locked into a specific method later after I have had time to refine a technique.

If there are any consequences, I get spooked - especially if I've never had to face the specific consequences in question. My best example of this in real life is the express lane at the store. If the express cashier tells me to come to their lane having seen the contents of my cart, I will. But if the person behind me in line suggests that I should go over to express and I know I have more than the requisite number of items, I won't.

"You could go to express... You don't look like you have that much."

They're all small items, and I know I have at least 16 items. I don't even turn to look at my antagonist - all I know from her voice is that she is female and older than me. My younger child is crying on the store floor because I won't let him tackle his older brother while we're in line.

"I'm not going over there. The last thing I want is some blue-hair complaining to me that I have more than ten items. You can break the rules if you want to, but I'm not going to."

Clearly, my motivation is to not be hassled by strangers (yet ironically, it has happened anyway).


So the other part besides the consequences, is the ability to keep going. I was typing a response to a youtube comment that the studious among you can find yourselves, but when I hit the 'enter' key, it said "Error - please try again." Since there's no accounting for dropped packets and network topology I restarted my browser and went directly to youtube instead of replying from the notification. Since I had remembered to hit Control-C before I restarted the browser, I didn't have to retype my comment. "Error" again. No helpful message, like

"Don't use a special character in a filename, knucklehead"

or a blue screen with

"Windows is totally sick of your crap and will be restarting in 5 seconds if it can close all of the spyware processes you started by clicking on that Megan Fox link."

As it turns out, my well-researched comment was failed by youtube because I included a web address in it. Would it have been so hard for it to tell me why it didn't want my comment? The error was so generic so as to make me wonder if my internet connection was even working, so it resulted in me doing the same thing over and over again, expecting something different to happen.

I don't know what art is...

So I finally played the 2005 PlayStation 2 game "Shadow of the Colossus", Fumito Ueda's second game as director. I completed the main game on the normal difficulty setting, so I have seen all of the story elements. There is still a harder difficulty level available, and extra challenges I could do to gain some extra weapons if I wanted them, but I am not compelled to do more at the moment. It is one of the most satisfying game experiences that I have ever had - I would put it up there with "Devil May Cry 3", "Katamari Damacy", "No More Heroes", or any of the Mario games. "Shadow of the Colossus" is much better at emotionally involving you in the game than most of those other games. The only other game that has ever gotten me that emotionally involved was Fumito Ueda's first game "Ico".

I played "Ico" over the course of two weekends in 2002. I didn't own it, I played a friend's copy because he was insistent that we play it. For something that I played years ago, the game's visuals and design stick in my head. "Ico" has no on-screen status indicators of any kind and very simple controls. Parts of the game that are in bright sunlight get washed-out for a moment, especially when you are moving from a dark area to a light area. The visuals are similar to things that happen when shooting movies on film and other things similar to the human eye's reaction to light, but also have some of their own touches that make it unique. The only thing that takes you out of the game environment at all is that there are stone benches strewn about the game that if you sit on, take you to a 'Save Game' screen. Most of the game is very simple. You have a guy with a stick, and you have to lead someone to safety that can't jump, climb, or wield a stick. You have to ward off enemies, pull your companion onto ledges that they can't climb but you can, and solve environmental puzzles that allow you to proceed forward. Other than the occasional groups of enemies, the landscape is otherwise empty. There are old, crumbling buildings, trees, grass in a few places, but no animals to speak of. There is very little dialogue between the characters, and nearly all of the storytelling in the game is done visually. What dialogue you do hear is done in a language made up just for the game which results in you hearing the emotional tone of the dialogue mixed with the body language without really needing to know exactly what is said.

"Shadow of the Colossus" has some of the same elements as "Ico" - similar landscape although populated with a small number of animals, dialogue in the same made-up language, film-inspired visuals, one companion with you most of the time (but this time it's a horse), a standard visual landmark as a save point, and a simple goal. You must defeat 16 gigantic opponents with a sword and a bow. Where "Ico" is a deconstruction of a platform game into simple elements, "Shadow of the Colossus" is a deconstruction of an action game into simple elements. Instead of giving you hordes of intermediate enemies and new weapons to collect that allow you to proceed to the next area like "Metroid" or "God of War" might do, "Shadow" is only about the boss characters. What is so masterful about these games is that they are short, intense experiences that deliver most of what we like about gaming. By stripping away a lot of the ancillary elements, it gives the game designers comfortable room to insert a story worth telling. Amazingly enough, most of the elements of the stories are pared down to a minimum and improve it as well. Since not everything is explicitly told to you as the player, it gets you to interpret the experiences based on your own ability to interpret the characters presented, and you tend to see the story how you want to. This is key to these games' ability to tap into the emotional response of the player.

On a technical note, the visuals of "Shadow of the Colossus" hold up well by current standards, if only for a PS2 game. It has support for both progressive scan and 16:9 widescreen. Playing the game in progressive scan seemed to reduce the amount of noticeable texture pop-in. The game increases the level of detail of textures as you approach them, and it seems more overstated in the standard-def presentation.

I finished "Shadow" two weekends ago, and dove straight into the 2004 Capcom samurai-vs-demons-plus-time-travel-and-Paris action game "Onimusha 3". "Onimusha 3" feels like a popcorn flick by comparison to "Shadow" feeling like an art film. Sure, "Onimusha 3" has Jean Reno in it (who only does his own French dialogue but not his own English dialogue...disappointing) and lots of dialogue, and brighter colors, but it feels canned and corny. (A can of corn?) The action is good, the puzzles are interesting, but after playing "Shadow" it's both good and bad because it's exactly what we expect from games, instead of trying to be more. The only thing that made me laugh so far is a gag involving a panda costume (not that that sort of game is supposed to be funny).

So, as far as that stodgy film critic that says that games can't be art goes, I would say that most games are not art. As long as he's willing to admit that the film version of say, "Wild, Wild, West" is not art, and we can agree that "Marvel vs
Capcom 2" is not art, maybe he should consider the possibility that Fumito Ueda does, in fact, create art. MvC2 isn't really art in the way checkers isn't really art. It is a game, in the strictest sense, built for competition with a concrete set of rules, and only really meaningful with two human opponents. That's not to say that watching experts play it won't yield some transcendent moments where their mastery of the game evokes some emotional response, but that has more to do with the player than the game. "Wild, Wild, West" conveys a story, but its execution is so distracting from the progress of the story that the only thing that the movie seems to do is to try and make you keep watching it until it's over. If there was any moral or issue embedded in the plot, or any emotional response that occurred, it would be more likely an artifact of the viewer than an intended feature placed there by the director. But in "Ico" and "Shadow of the Colossus", the game has a narrative, and in completing the game the narrative is revealed. Neither game is so much of an open sandbox situation that multiple paths to victory are possible - the story goes exactly as the game director intends, and the games are simple enough that achieving this goal isn't daunting or too frustrating. They're just difficult enough to make you feel like you accomplished something.

#2 son pushes the buttons

Although he doesn't game, #2 son had a bit of a meltdown in the R-Zone this morning. I had already driven all over without purpose to his mind, because I headed south a little early and the two places I wanted to go weren't open yet. Once the Asian grocery store I go to opened up, the way was clear to get some sushi supplies and some Pocky-like confection that Meiji makes. We got Strawberry and Cappuccino Creme. Next order of business, seeing if we could find a DC Friends Superman at Toys 'R' Us. No dice on that, so we sifted through the R-Zone. All the cheap games were buy one, get one half off. I was looking at "The Force Unleashed", "Sonic Unleashed", Capcom's "Spyborgs", and a couple of other things. They had several copies of "Mushroom Men", so perhaps I'll have to encourage more people to pick that up. No "Ghost Squad" or the House of the Dead game for Wii with more swearing in it than anything except that David Mamet film about real estate.

#2 son saw "Namco Museum Remix" and "The Force Unleashed" and brought them to me. I tried to put them down when he was looking at something else but I was denied. He's only three, but he knows what Pac-Man is.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Really? They haven't done this yet?

I was somewhat amused by this assertion when I read it the other day:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38108/No-Twilight-game-has-lost-millions

If you don't follow the link, it's a tirade about how some industry analyst thinks that the video game industry is missing out on millions of dollars because there isn't a 'Twilight' video game.

This theory is either brilliant, or know to be untrue by the author and just put forth to drive comments to his website. I'm probably making it worse by using his link here.

His logic: It's a movie, it's making a ton of money right now, there needs to be a game of it so those people plus part of the video game industry can make more money.

My logic: If Avatar, the #4 most expensive move of all time (as of this writing) can't even get a game with 70 out of 100 on Metacritic what hope does Twilight have? Wouldn't a mediocre - to - crappy game do what it always does, dilute the brand and create the feeling that it's a quick and dirty cash-in instead of lovingly crafted fan service?

Looking back at the more successful movie-to-game conversions, it would seem that the movie has to have some sort of plot line that works well with an established game genre. Goldeneye (The Nintendo 64 one, Metacritic score of 96) lent itself easily to the first person shooter genre, and Peter Jackson's King Kong (Metacritic score of 77-82 on consoles, worse on handhelds) was easily crafted into an action/adventure game. It would be great to create a new game genre that works with the film's plot, but it's difficult enough to make a game that draws outside the lines of convention without the additional pressure of trying to release it at the same time as the film.

So now it comes down to - what sort of movies are the 'Twilight' films and where does that place a game to go with it? Twilight is essentially a teenage romance with supernatural content. Romance games don't seem to sell here - Japanese developers do make 'dating sims' but for some reason or another they're not in the American market. The "Twilight" audience skews heavily female, but the only games with market-tested sell through to girls and young women in America that I'm aware of are "The Sims" games. Also, many good games have a substantial number of female players. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, Nintendo's "Zelda" and "Mario" games, the better role-playing games including "World of Warcraft" and "Everquest", and even some first person shooters have substantial contingents of female players. On the flip side, most games marketed specifically to girls are not much better than the crop of shovelware movie license games - made just because someone feels the have a niche to fill, and not so concerned with just making a good game that people want to play. The pessimistic side of me thinks that what would really end up being made out of "Twilight" would be some sort of plot-driven fetch quest game like the game they made for Spiderwick (Metacritic scores of 59-64).

If someone does make a Twilight game, I hope they have the courage to make something that gives people the same sense of place that the books and the movies do. I hope that they have enough sense to build to a budget, but not to a deadline. What I really hope is that they not do it unless they have an actual, workable idea at the core of it.