30-something gamer

Hacked Off

2012-01-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, my Xbox Live account was hacked. My Microsoft points balance of about 1600 was all but emptied and an attempted purchase of a further 6000 points only failed as the credit card linked to my account had expired. According to my purchase history 'I' had purchased three items of FIFA 12 'Ultimate Team' DLC (I hadn't). According to my Windows Live account, I'd added another email to my account (nope) and changed my security to one in Chinese (hmm, no).

I'd had a hard, tense day at work and really wanted to unwind by shooting some terrorists in the face (MW2) followed by an early night. As it was, my evening was completely free of face-shooting and I was up until gone midnight deleting stuff and wandering around the internet changing other passwords and generally upping my security levels. Not what I'd wanted to do at all.

I'd been aware of a hacking problem on Live, particularly in relation to FIFA DLC - one of my friends list had had an identical hack before Christmas and you don't have to search far on the internet to find similar stories. Indeed, the verb 'to be FIFA'd' has started being used ("I have been well and truly FIFA'd").

I'd never succumbed to a phish for my log in details and my password was judged 'strong' but a fat lot of good that did. The Internets say that there's a weak link in Microsoft's security software and that may be the case (I'm no expert). There's clearly something wrong given the number of incidences of hackage reported on the Internet.

I reported it to Microsoft, who said that my Live account would be locked and the details passed to its 'investigation team' and that this was likely to take up to 3 days. 12 hours later, I received an email from the investigations team, which said that they had verified that unauthorised access had taken place and then gave me a code for Microsoft points slightly in excess of those that I had lost. All I need now is for my account to be unlocked and I'll be back in the game (this hiatus may do something to remedy my FIFA addiction - 80+ hours to date).

Given how quickly my claim was agreed, coupled to the fact that early reports of this problem last autumn stated that accounts were being locked for up to a month, has led me to think that Microsoft know what's causing the issue and don't want to fix it. The 360 is coming to the end of its lifespan, with its successor expected to be announced, in some quarters, at this year's E3. Who knows what shape Live will take in the next generation of Xbox consoles? Do Microsoft consider it cheaper to pay off those unlucky games like me who've been hacked, compared with the cost of altering deep-grained issues within Live's code, when Live for the Xbox 720 (this almost definitely won't be its name) may be far different?

Game of the Year 2011

2011-12-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I blogged (again), as that pesky 'real life' thing has been interfering in my free time (and I like to use at least some of that which I have left to actually play games!). Hopefully, I'll get more time in the New Year. I had hoped that my family taking over the TV for X-Factor 2011 would allow me some time for gaming but, no - I laid into my DS and 3DS instead, the better to block out the tuneless wailing and, frankly, shouting (Kitty, I'm looking at you, through eyes squinting in pain) that was on my TV.

Anyway, as I did last year, I thought I'd post on my favourite games from those that I'd played during the year. I haven't played everything this year - there are some triple A releases (Gears of War 3, Skyrim) that just don't float my gaming boat - and I have a couple (most notably Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) that might have a claim to sneaking in my top 5 when I actually get around to playing them. However, there's not much point of a 'best of' list being posted in April the following year, so here it is, in reverse order for an illusion of tension -

5. Batman: Arkham City - the sequel to what was my game of the year 2009 (Batman: Arkham Asylum) and not as good as that superbly structured and balanced game. The story and look of Gotham City (aka Arkham City, a prison built in the fenced-off streets of parts of Gotham) were great, as was the respect shown towards the Batman mythos. There was too much unnecessary padding of side missions though and I hope that any subsequent Batman game from Rocksteady is more focussed. Admittedly, I didn't have to do any side missions (or I could have picked and chose those that I wanted) but there's a bit of OCD towards collecting in most gamers - I blame Mario - and, in getting sidetracked, I lost some of the focus of the central narrative. A special mention to the boss fights - far better than in the first game and one (Mr Freeze) was one of the best boss fights I've ever played.

4. Mario Kart 7 - an excellent entry into a series I've been playing for nearly twenty years. It followed the tried and tested template of 32 courses (16 new, 16 plucked form earlier iterations of the game) split into 8 cups, with various unlockables (characters, kart modifications) to pick up along the way. The addition of underwater and in the air paths through courses gave a sense of 'verticality' to the courses (and the shortcuts available in them). I was sceptical about this verticality at first but it really has an impact of gameplay and pathfinding. It also has the best use of 3D on the 3DS that I've yet seen.

My only gripe is that there's too many Mario Kart Wii courses on the retro cups - I've nothing against the courses picked (Maple Treeway, Coconut Mall, Mushroom Gorge and Koopa Cape), which are all very good (the former two are probably my favourite courses on MKW). It's just that I still regularly play MKW and one of the great things about playing retro courses in successive Mario Karts is that they take you back to courses that you've not played for a while - this time around, I still play a quarter of the retro courses on offer in another game.

3. LA Noire - a game that can be summed up as a James Ellroy's LA Quartet simulator - and just as good as that sounds. Spooky facial capture tech puts recognisable actors (including many of the cast of Mad Men and John Noble from Fringe) into the game. The facial expressions used by the actors are a key part of the gameplay, as you try to 'read' them in interview sequences, something that had never been done in a game before (and that worked very well). Excellent narrative (even if there are a few holes and too many 'borrowings' from Ellroy) and interview sequences.

Unfortunately, the developer went into administration shortly after the game was released but hopefully another developer has picked up the tech used in the game - it showed massive promise

2. Portal 2 - It's not often that I laugh out loud at a videogame (50 Cent: Blood on the Sand excepted) but I did, several times, in Portal 2. Intelligence, wit and humour are three attributes not always found in videogames but Valve's excellent first person puzzler had them in spades. As with the first game (that I did not even play until after this one), the gameplay revolves around the portal gun - a device that shoots two (at any given time) holes into reality that then create a portal between them that the player can pass through. The puzzles are essentially a series of passages from A to B but that brief description does not do them justice. You get a sense of real achievement (which is always far better than an Achievement) after working out a particularly tough puzzle without resorting to an internet guide. This was my game of the year until today (30/12), when I reached the end of -

1. Uncharted 3 - Uncharted is one of Sony's console exclusive crown jewels (along with Killzone and Resistance, neither of which I'm that keen on). Uncharted 2 was excellent in every area (still only my third favourite game on 2009 though, behind Batman and Assassin's Creed II) but this one surpasses it. The same treasure seeking template as before (think 'Indiana Jones' (but try not to think of the awful fourth film)) but this has been polished to perfection. The story was spot-on and didn't succumb to the narrative foolishness in the final reel as the previous two games. Some of the set pieces were breathtakingly good - straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster. The environment effects - fire, water - were superb, giving a true sense of danger to what you were doing onscreen and Nathan Drake is a genuinely engaging central character. All of the characters were excellently voice-acted, particularly Drake and the always in need of rescue Victor 'Sully' Sullivan (Princess Peach to Drake's Mario). Special mention goes to the music score, which was pitch perfect for the game.
Well, that brings to an end my games of the year. Honourable mentions must be given to those that just missed out - Little Big Planet 2 (in the top 3 until the autumn), Super Mario 3D Land, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and FIFA 12 (the best football game I've ever played). Same time again next year...

If it's in the game, it's in the game

2011-10-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

This year's iteration in the FIFA franchise came out a few weeks ago. I bought it on the day of release and have been playing it, if not solidly then consistently, since then. It is an excellent game, far better than last year's more defence-minded game and as good, if not better, than FIFA10 (up until now my favourite football videogame ever).

But I'm not blogging about my silky FIFA skills (with my win percentage bumping along at around 20%, that wouldn't take long). Last Saturday, I went to see real football, West Ham United v Blackpool and thoroughly enjoyed a 4-0 saunter for the Cockney Boys. My seat for the day was in one of the stands to the side of the ground, just below the TV gantry, almost in line with the centre circle. The view from my seat was very similar to the default camera option in this year's FIFA. Such is the realism of FIFA12 (graphically - at a distance, anyway - as well as in the gameplay), there were times during the West Ham game when I was watching the on-field action instinctively thinking 'finesse that shot' or 'pressing tackle!' and imagining the corresponding button press as I saw play develop. I'd then remember that this wasn't a virtual game of football, that it was an actual one.

These thoughts came like they do when playing the game - jumping into the 'twitch reflex' part of my brain, rather than the rational, thinking-monkey, bit (the rational bit then kicking in, rolling its eyes at 'twitch' and reminding Team Brain that its body wasn't holding a controller). I've had this feeling before - for example, when scanning the tops of flyovers for giant ants after a lengthy EDF 2017 session - but never from a sports game. I think this is testament to the immersive nature of this year's FIFA and it is difficult to predict how EA can improve upon this sense of immersion in the future (not that that will stop them bringing out FIFA13, of course).

RIP Funland

2011-09-18T03:14:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in the Piccadilly area of London on my lunch break. As is usual when I'm over that way, I popped into the Trocadero to have a wander around Funland, which is probably the largest arcade in Central London (if not England). Or rather 'was' the largest arcade in London, as it has recently closed down.

I'd gone to Funland for years - as much as anywhere, it was 'my' arcade when in my twenties. I was never a frequent visitor - although comparatively wealthy next to students nowadays, even back in the mid-90s students didn't have spare cash to feed, in £1 coin increments, to Namco, Sega, Konami et al. I was a regular visitor though - probably dropping in every couple of months or so.

As with every arcade - except Segaworld - that I have ever been to (and I'm a gamer who grew up on the English South Coast, so I've been to quite a few), Funland was, even at its late 90s height, slightly seedy and down at heel. That has always been part of an arcade's charm, I think - the juxtaposition of the advanced gaming technology, with the sticky carpets, cigarette smoke (pre-ban, that is) and dingy lighting.

It had one of the best range of arcade games around - this was where I first played Daytona, in a fantastic 8-cabinet array - and used to get the latest cabinets, probably before anywhere else in the country. I've read that, at its height, gaming journalists would often visit to see the latest games in action (and then, no doubt, stay on them for ages for £1 with their mad gaming skillz).

As well as a great range of arcade games, there were a few other money-spinning entertainments in Funland. Dodgems, a mini bowling allay and, for a time, a range of games that you could win paper tokens on, that could then be exchanged (after amassing a huge number of them) for a range of tacky prizes, as at a funfair. I don't think I ever went on any of those - it was always all about the videogames for me - but I remember that, at one point, the dodgem circuit was lined with classic arcade cabinets that were nearly always empty and so good for a quick, wait-free game.

For a time Funland was co-located in the Trocadero with Segaworld London - a misguided attempt to create an interactive theme park by Sega in the years when they seemed to lumber from one massive mistake to another (blow your marketing budget for your new console on sponsoring a football team?). However, Funland was there before Segaworld opened in 1996 and it was there after Segaworld closed down in 2002 and, indeed, took over some of Segaworld's floorspace. This multi-floor expansion made Funland somewhat of a maze and, as I'd only go over every 6 months or so after I stopped being a student and had to get on with 'real life', I would frequently get lost while wandering around, wondering where the exit was. Fortunately, there was never a fire...

I checked the internets when I returned to work - it seems the arcade closed in July 2011. The official website (www.funland.co.uk) cites a 'power failure' (that has also knocked out their phones) but that is unlikely as the rest of (what's left) of the businesses in the Trocadero had electricity to burn on my visit. And 2 months to fix a power failure? The power was back on in Baghdad quicker than that. There are reports on the internet that the real reason was somewhat different but, what is definitely true is that the upper levels of the 7-storey Trocadero complex are being redeveloped as a hotel and I wonder if the landlords were all that keen on what was, by the end, quite a seedy arcade occupying the levels of the building below their shiny new hotel. Whatever the real reason for the closure was, the arcade docent look like re-opening.

I think that my admission that I only went every 6 months in its latter years, is probably indicative of why arcades are thought to be a dying business. I would go on a weekday lunchtime in the heart of tourist London and it was never all that busy. Given the overheads attached to such a venture, in that high-rent location (the electricity bill alone must have been astronomical), it is difficult to see how it lasted as long as it did. With the massive advances in console entertainment in the near 20 years I'd been going to Funland, gamers simply do not need to shovel pound coins into arcade machines to get high quality gaming fixes. Put simply, you can't run a large-floorspace business in Central London based on hardcore dance gamers (Funland was something of a shrine for dancing games, apparently) and nostalgic twice-yearly gamers like me. I am slightly disappointed that I never got the opportunity to take my daughter (who loves arcades) along to Funland (my wife, on the other hand, is probably quite relieved).

Holiday Casualty

2011-08-15T01:17:00.000-07:00

I've just been on a great fortnight's holiday in Suffolk - very relaxing, reasonably clement weather and plenty to do. As is usual for me, I took my DS Lite, my PSP (which went untouched) and my iPad, in order to head off gaming withdrawal. Unfortunately, my DS bought the farm while I was away (coincidentally, on a farm) - one of the hinges snapped off as I opened it up for another game of imported zombie RTS Zombie Daisuki (to be reviewed soon).

Something missing?

I wasn't particularly rough with it but the housing for the power lights completely sheared off. I bought the DS Lite when it came out, upgrading from my DS Chunky, so I've had it for over four years (in which time I've played it a lot). Even so, a physical failure like this seems poor.

Fortunately, the DS still works OK, though some balancing (or changing grip, so that the left hand is supporting the top screen as well using the D-pad) is required to prevent the top screen from becoming wonky while playing. I think that this means it is no longer a portable console - playing it on the sofa at home is fine but I think bumpy train journeys are a thing of the past!

I will be replacing it shortly, probably with a DSi. I did consider a 3DS given the recent price drop but I'm not that interested in any of the current 3DS games and, if I got one, it would be for the DS backwards compatibility. However, there is very little difference in price between the two at the moment (which is faintly ridiculous), so I might end up taking the 3D plunge or (most likely) checking the condition/price of a second hand DSi

Official Wireless Xbox 360 controller (silver) - review

2011-07-24T04:38:00.000-07:00

Unless you're relentlessly anti-social (or fixated with online play only), you'll need to buy additional controllers to complement the one packaged with your console. You may have an annoying sibling to take on at FIFA, a guest who wants to 'see how much games have changed since my Atari ST', or a child to grind Lego collecathons with. However you arrive there, you will almost certainly be looking to buy a second controller at some point. I bought a second official MS Xbox controller when I bought my 360 in 2007. Recently one of them became faulty, continually becoming disconnected from the console despite fully juiced-up batteries or battery packs. As I often play 360 with my daughter, a second controller is essential and so I was in the market for a new one.

Third-party pads are nearly always awful (Power A Pro Elite on PS3 being a notable exception), so I looked to Microsoft for a replacement pad. As I've written on here before, I think that the 360 controller is the best controller that I have ever used over my thirty years of gaming. Other than the d-pad, which is a bit sucky, there is nothing that I would seek to improve about the pad that I wanted to replace.

Pretty

Never one to miss a trick, improving the d-pad is exactly what Microsoft has done in the latest version of the pad. The d-pad switches between a disc (as in the original pad) and, with a slight twist, a cross. The cross is undoubtedly better than the disc but most games that I play don't use the d-pad all that much - weapon selection, choice of tactics and similar functions. While it's a neat trick, I don't think it is that much of a killer feature to warrant a purchase on its own.

As an 'innie'

As an 'outie'

As the pictures show, my new controller is silver which, as the pictures don't quite show, is a matt effect (a shiny finish would not have done much for its gripability). I thought that this would run the risk of scuffing like a cheap plastic toy - of the metal effect rubbing off after repeated use to show the black plastic underneath. So far, however, that has not happened, even under the part of the controller under my wedding ring.

Another new 'feature' is a recolouring of the buttons, presumably to echo the silver colour of the pad itself. I think that this is a poor design choice as far as its primary purpose - as a game controller - is concerned. while it might make sense aesthetically, the 'normal' colours of the buttons are important when playing games. Screen prompts, particularly in tutorials, will flash up the colour, as well as the letters (which are unchanged in this pad). I instinctively know that 'green' means the 'A' button. There have been occasions playing with the new pad where I've seen a green, blue, red or yellow coloured screen prompt and had to think 'is that white, light grey, middle grey or dark grey?'. Many games rely on split-second timing and that fraction of a second additional thinking time may be the difference between success or failure.

The buttons in all their monochrome glory

The pad is slightly heavier than the normal pad. Without batteries it is 226gm (compared to the normal pad's 209gm) and with the standard rechargeable battery pack, it is 297gm (compared to a normal pad's 280gm). 17gm difference seems very little indeed but it does make a difference. I often have stiff wrists the day following a lengthy gaming session (30-years' gaming experience, ftw) and that was noticeably worse with the new pad. The day after a long session with this pad on high octane shooter Vanquish, my wrists were aching like those of a 14-year old boy with unmonitored internet access.

I paid £45 for the pad, which came packaged with a play and charge kit. As I needed a play and charge kit anyway, I thought that this was a good price. However, in my opinion this pad is not as good as the original pad. The chief 'good' point - the new D-pad - does not outweigh the 'bad' ones - the weight and the different coloured buttons. When/if I next need to pick up another new pad, I will be going for the original one.

Resident Evil 'Umbrella Corporation' Cuff Links

2011-06-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

I often wear cufflinks for work and have a reasonably large collection of them. I recently purchased a pair of 'Umbrella Corporation' cufflinks from UK-based etsy seller Deadly Pretty.

Y'know - evil

The Umbrella Corporation insignia is made from acrylic (possibly a little too thin for everyday use or I may just be used to weightier links) and exactly the right the surface area. Not too small as to barely cover the link hole but not too large that it looks like it's fallen from a Las Vegas-era Elvis jumpsuit.

The link-y bit is my preferred shape - a t-bar that snaps open/shut (much preferable to capstan-style cuff links).

My day job sometimes requires interaction with politicians and I find the possibility of meeting politicos wearing the symbol of a sinister, conspiracy-riddled organisation that is committed to developing hideous biological weapons, quite amusing...

Burnout M25

2011-06-27T02:06:00.001-07:00

Videogames are linked negatively with many aspects of today's society in the more knee-jerk areas of the media. The findings of small-scale research reports are often taken out of context by the tabloid press, whose underlying agenda boils down to 'new things that we don't understand, we don't like'. As you can probably guess, I don't think that the problems in society can be laid at the feet of Grand Theft Auto but I do wonder if games have had an effect on certain drivers' driving style.

Last night I drove around the M25 from Surrey to Hertfordshire having visited family. Even though it was late, the road was very busy and some of the driving tactics, erratic. I passed my driving test in 1989 (three years after the M25 was completed) and have noticed that questionable driving manoeuvres, particularly weaving in and out of traffic, have increased greatly over those 22 years. I wonder if a generation of drivers have been influenced by playing Burnout, PGR, Ridge Racer et al in how they tackle the roads. Obviously, it isn't all drivers (the roads would be strewn with wreckage and the hospitals full of crash victims if it were) but it only takes a small percentage to have a noticeable effect on other road users.

There are undoubtedly other influences on driving and this piece is just my own anecdotal experience (written the morning following a drive) and having no scientific basis. I also think the increased safety features and driving assistance devices in cars make drivers more prepared to take risks (I can't imagine what it would be like to drive the car I passed my test in - an Austin Metro mk1 - now). There are far more cars on the road now too.

I also haven't ruled out the possibility that, now I've turned 40, I've turned into a Grumpy Old Man!

Guiness World Records 2011 - Gamer's Edition

2011-06-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years, the Guinness World Record publishing imprint has brought out a videogame edition. The 2011 edition was released a couple of months ago and, thanks to a 50% discount in Waterstone's, I recently picked up a copy.

Guinness's main tome, originally published to settle pub arguments (instead of, say, fisticuffs) has been around since the fifties. Looking at a copy from those olden days (the one shown in these photos is a copy I have from 1961), there is a stark design contrast between it and those of today. Obviously methods of production, use of photos and colour have changed greatly over the years but the original Guinness Book of Records was a tweedy concern, written by (and, frankly, for) sensible, pedantic readers. And kids - kids love that stuff (the Record Breakers TV show ran for thirty years).

Facts and Booze - together at last

The olden days edition was about *facts* - cold, hard, facts - set out in column format, one under another. Just the type of ordered presentation that I imagine would have been beloved by founding editors - and right-wing nutcases - Norris and Ross McWhirter. Rows and rows of ordered facts.

Some facts, yesterday

The videogame edition is less ordered - the McWhirters' shades splutter into their ghostly gin & tonics - and facts jump about all over the page. The basic business of the new book is still, of course, records - in the Gamer's Edition, shots at geek immortality for high scores, speedruns and the like. Part of the appeal of this book - as with the main volume - lies in the fact that, while some rely on skill and are clearly out of the reach of normal people, there are plenty that you think "hmm, I could have a bash at that". Of course, most people don't do that - I mean, I like Red Dead Redemption but do I really want to play it for 50 hours in a row* - but some readers will do so and then be in following year's edition, starting the whole cycle again.

50 hours to win €1000, between 6

The book itself is 216 pages long and in full colour, with plenty of illustrations. The quality of the printing isn't that great - the finish of the pages is matt rather than glossy, which doesn't help the reproduction of screenshots (something we are only used to seeing 'glossy' be that on TV, monitor or in magazines). The layout is akin to that used in videogame magazines, with box-outs, lots of photos and text built around them.

Old school scores - pass the gin, Norris

In a nod to the fact-marshalled past, there are twenty pages of Twin Galaxies scoreboards at the back of the volume, listing high scores and speedruns across a variety of platforms, from the current gen to as far back as old school arcade games (see Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell's duel from King of Kong reduced to simple numbers).

It is a very geeky book but a great one to have lying around to be picked up if you feel like a quick fact blitz. OK, yes - in the bathroom....

* p103 of the book

Refreshing honesty from a GAME employee

2011-05-29T02:42:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was shopping in one of the two branches of GAME in my town and decided to purchase a discounted copy of Yakuza 4 on PS3. The cheapest I'd seen the game previously was £30 but GAME was selling it for £17 (new).

When I went to the counter, I asked about part exchanging a copy of Professor Layton and the Curious Village and was told I'd get £8 for it, which I accepted. I'd originally bought this copy from Oxfam for £4, an absolute bargain for what is an excellent game. One of the GAME staff members saw the Oxfam-stickered price still on the game's box and queried whether that was what I'd paid for it and I confirmed that it was. In response she said to her colleague (who was actually serving me) 'we really rip people off don't we - we're selling that for £20!'. The staff member actually serving me was a trifle embarrassed at this and pointed out that I'd doubled my money (true).

There are actually two rip-offs here - that GAME are selling a second-hand copy of a nearly two year old game for £20 and secondly that they are selling it for two and half times what they bought it off me for (a mark up of which Lord Sugar would be proud). I didn't mind the latter so much - I was getting twice what I'd paid for it after all and, although I could have got £12-13 in CeX, that store was only selling a used copy of Yakuza 4 for £28. So, I'm very happy with the deal and don't consider myself ripped off. I also don't think you can validly compare a charity store price, to a retail store price (GAME pays its employees, for a start) but I think £20 for this particular game is far too high (I would say a fair price, in a retail store, would be £12-15).

GAME does has a reputation among gamers of being a rip-off merchant though and I was amused that an employee of the store itself concurred with this opinion!

LA Noire M.I.A

2011-05-23T09:39:00.001-07:00

Rockstar's new game, LA Noire, was released last week. According to reports, it has sold more copies in the UK upon its release than any other new IP. I think this is partly due to its pervasive advertising campaign and partly due to Rockstar's reputation of developing, almost without exception, excellent games. Their most recent release, Red Dead Redemption, was my favourite game of last year and they are probably best known for the tabloid-baiting, mainstream-crossover series, GTA. Rockstar's name can, to borrow a movie term, 'open' a game, like a videogame Tom Cruise. Only taller.

And, unlike some of Mr Cruise's films, Rockstar has delivered - LA Noire has received excellent reviews in the gaming and mainstream press. Most of my twitter (I'm @30somethinggmr) timeline is playing or talking about the game, with all but one of those agreeing with the reviews.

It seems the only interested gamer not playing the 'James Ellroy 'em up' is me. My brother bought it for my birthday through play.com and, despite being despatched on 17 May has still not reached me by the 23rd. This is probably the only time I've ever wished games were download only, though with my broadband speed (2MB with a following wind) I'd probably still be waiting for that to finish downloading.

My/his pre-order bonus has, however, arrived - I have a, currently redundant, code for an extra mission and a code for a free download of the original soundtrack. As with last year's Red Dead Redemption, the soundtrack is excellent (Rockstar is probably the best user of music in games around), enabling me to at least imagine what playing the game is like. Here's hoping the postie delivers the game itself tomorrow.

UPDATE 24/5/11

Like Odysseus, my copy of the game finally found its way home! I think I probably could have walked it here quicker but the main thing is that it has arrived - I'll be playing it tonight after my daughter has gone to bed. 7pm seems a reasonable bed time for a 8-year old...

Left 4 Dead Boomer Plush!

2011-05-21T02:40:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I made the title of my blog into a lie and turned forty.

I may end up changing the blog's title (eventually - I'm still a bit in denial), unless the 40-something brand has already gone. Middle-aged gamer? [shudders].

Gaming-wise, I received LA Noire (still waiting for the postman to deliver that one) and this fantastic Boomer plush. A Boomer is a special infected from the two Left 4 Dead games, whose unique move involves puking bile over the survivors, bile that then attracts hordes of zombies to those players covered in it. Nice chap.

Elvis had really let himself go

It is an extremely well-made product (as can be expected from Valve, who made the product), topped with a hilariously smiley face and what are undeniably moobs.

Oxy 10's new 'before' photo went a bit too far

It also makes sounds, when a pad inside the hand is pressed. The sounds are those made by this zombie in the game (a succession of gut-churning groans and heaves).

Urp!

For a lot of the last week, my daughter has been using Boomer to puke on me, or for her to mime being sick while pressing the (hidden) Boomer's hand! Cool :)

Making the gamers of the future

2011-05-10T12:49:00.001-07:00

I'm the (proud, natch) father of an 8-year old daughter, who has spent those 8 (nearly 9) years surrounded by gaming paraphernalia. My wife and I have plenty of baby photos where the backdrop to the gurgling youngster is a stack of Dreamcast games, a PS1 mouse & mat, or assorted wired controllers (before she started crawling - and chewing - obviously). On occasion when she was very small, she would rest, sleeping, on my lap as I played on my Gameboy Advance over her head. And the less said about the time I put her in a bouncy chair and showed her the bullet insanity of Bangai-O on Dreamcast the better.

Her subsequent interest in gaming was unavoidable and, in any event, encouraged by me. Pretty much as soon as she was able to hold a controller and understand the basic concept of 'press button, something moves on TV' she has been gaming. A lot of console software for very young children looks simple in the extreme to an adult but to a 2 or 3-year old, who isn't familiar with gaming conventions such as an action button or collecting objects to further progress through a level, the games act as an introductory course for gaming. The first game my daughter completed, aged 3, was Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet, wherein Nick Jr's finest has to return some space-shipwrecked aliens (Inky, Blinky and Clyde, from memory - a nod to retro-gaming mums and dads. Maybe). It is a pretty game, with far better animation than in the TV show but, gaming-wise simplistic in the extreme, being a linear collectathon (training the Rare gamers of the future, perhaps). Between 3-5 my daughter probably completed this game 5 or 6 times, each time quicker (and with less assistance from me) than the last.

Fast forward a few years and my daughter is a gamer in her own right. When we play games now, particularly in co-op, we have the discussions that I would have with an adult co-op partner (with less swearing, admittedly). We are currently co-oping through the superb Dragon Quest IX* on DS and Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 on 360 and, particularly with the more complex former, we are discussing tactics as equals, rather than me walking her through something as an adult teaching a child. For example, we might discuss whether a particular sword is better than another on offer, whether a magical might attribute bonus from an item is better for a mage than one giving a magical defence bonus - geek central, basically. In fact, we find that we often discuss tactics outside of the game - in Waitrose, for example - if we're stuck on a boss or wondering where to go in the game world next. As a gaming dad, this is fantastic, though whether my wife thinks this is a good thing when I should be looking for tinned tomatoes is another thing entirely (to be fair, my wife is also a gamer and, if we had a third DS, I'm sure would also be a member of our DQIX party).

This progression, from watching me play, through playing pre-school games, to now being an active gamer in her own right, has been interesting to witness and I think (and hope) that gaming is an interest that will stay with her for many years to come.

*I appreciate that this game is a PEGI '12' but I don't consider that the content is any more mature or scary than in the 'magical girl' anime that my daughter likes to watch on children's TV. So there.

What I did on my holidays

2011-04-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

I've not been blogging much of late for a variety of reasons - work, illness, school holidays, actually playing games - but hopefully I can get back into the routine of (semi) regularly blogging again, as it has been something that I've enjoyed over the last 18 months. The interval has certainly not been caused by a lack of things to write about - I start drafting articles in my head once or twice a week and have even got as far as half-writing a few.

One of the things that I've done over the last few weeks is have a gaming weekend. One or two times a year over the past few years I've been meeting up with a friend, away from our wives and children, to play videogames and watch or talk about (and, recently, to sob over) the fortunes of West Ham United and he latest instalment of these manchild escapades was a couple of weeks ago. In all, in a two-day period, we played 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (in co-op, from start to finish), Dead Rising 2, FIFA10, FIFA11, Castle Crashers, Super Mario Kart, Ghost Squad, DefJam Rapstar, Beatles Rock Band and AC/DC Rock Band (and some single player on Halo Reach, Pure, Rockstar Table Tennis, Snoopy Flying Ace and Amped 3). On a similar theme, we watched the gaming documentary King of Kong while eating junk food. What we learnt, in no particular order, was -

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is funny in co-op
middle-aged, middle-class, men shouldn't rap
I cannot play drums, bass or guitar (even on easy)
FIFA 10 is better than FIFA 11
Billy Mitchell (not the one in EastEnders) is a complete tool
Super Mario Kart is the best version of the game for local co-op
should there ever be a zombie apocalypse, our skills are tight

There is some effort involved in meeting up these days (aeroplane flights for a start) and, with the advent of Xbox Live, this type of event is no longer necessary for either co-op or head-to-head gaming. Or slagging off Avram Grant, for that matter. We've been gaming together for nearly 18 years - the distance from today to the start of this period, is the same as from then (the start of our undergraduate studies) to starting pre-school. We are now at the onset of middle age - my friend is already in his forties and that particular tombstone is being erected over my life in a few weeks' time. On this occasion, we had both wondered independently whether we were now too old for this expense of effort, 'just' to play games and kvetch about West Ham and (possibly unsurprisingly) when we discussed the matter, reasoned that it was.

It might be an odd thing to say but gaming isn't just about the games, it can also be about (*pseud alert*) social interactions, both those that are based wholly online and those where the player knows his/her opponent/colleague in the 'real world' (of my XBL friends, I've only met 4 of those in person and one of those is the UPS driver who has twice picked up my RRoD'd 360). Age only becomes an issue in relation to gaming (and, probably, everything else) if the individual makes it one and as soon as you do that, I think, you are destined to 'act your age', with all that that entails. Consequently, I reckon my gaming weekends will continue for a while yet (until game-induced arthritis turns my hands into gamepad-shaped claws, anyway).

This has got a bit heavy for my first post back in the saddle - not to worry, my next post will be on the usual old bollocks :)

Nintendo 3DS Launch Day

2011-03-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Nintendo 3DS launched today and this lunchtime I went to Covent Garden in London's West End, where Nintendo had set up an installation where you could play all the launch games.

The Box of Delights

Covent Garden was something of a geek nexus today, as queues were beginning to form outside the large Apple Store on the other side of the piazza for the 5pm iPad 2 launch, when I got there at 12.30pm The Nintendo lounge room was surprisingly clear though - there were about 15 other people in there (not including the many Nintendo PR staff) but I didn't have to queue to get in, nor wait to play any of the games I was interested in. The room itself was quite small, as perhaps can be seen from the photo above, with a central area where the 3DSs were, with two 'corridors' on either side, through which you entered and left. The entry one had display cabinets of Nintendo handhelds throughout the years, which was a nice touch (the original Game Boy looks HUGE). In the central area, the lighting was subdued, no doubt in order to show the screens to their best effect. In the exit 'corridor' were PCs, with which visitors could blog (according to the PR people) about the experience (I passed on that, as I had to get back to work).

All the launch games were available and I played Ridge Racer, Pilotwings, Street Fighter IV, Nintendogs, Splinter Cell and Pro Evolution Soccer.

As I had thought would be the case, the 3D effect was much better playing on actual games than with the on-board software. I particularly liked the effect (if not the game itself) on Pilotwings, maybe because of my existing knowledge of Wuhu Island.

There is a 3D slider on the righthand side of the topscreen, which allows the player to reduce/remove the 3D-ness of the games. I actually preferred Street Fighter IV in full 2D than when the 3D effect was switched on, possibly betraying the 2D origins of the series.

The 3D sweetspot was larger than I thought it would be but, even so, in some the games (Pilotwings, Pro Evo) I found that I was subconsciously moving the console while playing, enough so that I some of the 3D-ness was lost the from the games (which was quite disorientating).

Pro Evolution Soccer was my favourite of the games I tried. The default mode (and I don't know if this can be changed), was a roaming camera centred on your player in (or chasing) possession (rather than the traditional 'Match of the Day' camera angle of most videogame football). That was a bit disorientating at first but showed the 3D to good effect. As usual, the real team names were absent, leaving me to play as 'East London' (in claret and blue, of course). The Scott Parker (hallowed be his name) player model looked more like the player than in FIFA 11 though.

Pilotwings looked like it could get dull quickly, flying around Wii Sports Resort's Wuhu Island (something I remember being one of many mini games in WSR itself), particularly as I am very familiar with Wuhu Island, having completed the flying mini game in WSR. It was fun to fly down the crater of the volcano and exit through a tunnel in 3D though.

Of the others that I played, Ridge Racer was, well, Ridge Racer - a solid enough racer but that isn't a genre I'm that interested in generally and even less so on a handheld (unless you can drive a kart and fire red shells at opponents, I give handheld racers a wide berth). Nintendogs seemed, in the short time that I had with it, the same as the DS game. The 3D looked smart but not enough for me to want to pay for a game that, essentially, I already have (and ceded to my daughter years ago). I played part of one level of Splinter Cell and recognised it from a SC game I played years ago (maybe Chaos Theory?) that involved infiltrating (eventually) a lighthouse. I'm not a fan of stealth in games (I'm more gung-ho in my approach) and playing a stealth game I played maybe as long as 7 years ago didn't appeal.

I don't think I suffered any major eyestrain's a result of my half an hour in the booth, though my eyes did seem a little sore. However, I think that there's been so much coverage of this particular issue, that any ill-effects I felt were probably psychosomatic.

Overall, the glasses-free 3D effect was good but nothing more than a gimmick (as with all 3D, in my opinion). Games consoles survive or fail on the strength of their software and the 3DS doesn't have great strength yet. In a marketplace of one, having a strong launch line-up isn't that important - there'll always be plenty of new adopters for a Nintendo console willing to hand over their pounds. On the evidence of what I saw though, Nintendo will have to up its game on the software side for when the Sony NGP handheld launches, to give casual consumers a compelling reason to choose the 3DS over its more powerful competitor.

Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together - Premium Edition

2011-03-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

I have liked strategy role-playing games (sometimes referred to as tactical role-playing games) for a number of years. Vandal Hearts on PS1 (which received an update last year) is one of my favourite games of all time and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on GBA is probably the single player game that I have played the most in all my time as a gamer.

The Tactics Ogre series isn't that well known in Europe. I have a copy of Tactics Ogre: Knights of Lodis on GBA but that is from the US. Square Enix has just brought the latest game on PSP (albeit a remake - though with important changes - of a SNES version), Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together to Europe and they've also brought out a collector's edition (termed a 'Premium Edition') that I picked up for £25 from shopto.net.

As befitting a portable console, I suppose, the premium edition hasn't got the same amount of extra content as in some of the other collector's editions that I have (though it is priced accordingly)

The package comes in a box about twice the depth of a standard PSP case.

Included in the package is a Mini soundtrack CD, on a disc about the same size as a GameCube game

There is a hardback 48-page artbook, showing concept art from the game and the world in which it is set.

The full deal

Nintendo 3DS hands-on

2011-03-12T08:48:00.001-08:00

I had a go on a demonstration model of the new Nintendo portable console, the 3DS, in my local Game store last weekend. Unfortunately - and rather stupidly, I thought - they didn't have any games in-store and had no plans to have any before the launch of the system on 25 March. All that there was to play with was the onboard software. I wasn't that interested in those but what I was interested in - and the reason for wanting to have a go anyway - was to test the 3D-ness of the console (and whether or not it would cause my brain to run out of my ears).

The 3D in the onboard software was kind of OK-ish. There was some depth on display but I now wonder if I had the unit in the right place in relation to my eyes. As the kit was tethered to the Game employee's wrist - for obvious reasons - I didn't feel as if I could jerk the 3DS (and therefore his arm) into a variety of viewing positions in order to ascertain the best one. Hopefully demo consoles will be displayed more helpfully once the machine is released and I also think that the best way to judge the 3D-ness will be in an actual game.

Another thing counting against the display was that it was quite bright in Game when I viewed it (the shop is in a corner location, with windows on two sides). In this bright light, the display seemed quite dim (something I have since read elsewhere to be the case). Presumably not having a bright display lengthens the battery life but, as it's a portable console, you would expect a lot of 3DS gaming to be in the outdoors, so a bit of a drawback Maybe something to be fixed in a follow up console, as with the GBA and the GBASP (the former of which could, conversely, only be adequately viewed with a strong light source overhead).

My brain is still very much inside my head and barely liquidised at all but I would be lying if I said that it was a nausea-free experience though. I think that might have been a combination of the bright light / dim display and not being being able to get the console into the optimum position without breaking the sales assistant's wrist though.

The machine itself seemed a bit plastic-y and toy-like (much like the original GBA) and lacking the sense of value that you'd expect from a c£220 investment (maybe I've been spoilt by shiny Apple products in recent years).

I had been wondering whether or not to buy a 3DS but I think my hands-on trial has persuaded me not to. I am sure Nintendo will bring out a better version within 18 months (as with the GBA and DS) and, unless a truly excellent game is released in the interim, I will wait until then to pick one up. This is quite unlike me, as I owned both the GBA and the DS Chunky (upgrading to the next iteration as soon as they were released) but Nintendo hasn't quite pushed my buttons (pressed my touchscreen?) with the 3DS.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand - review

2011-02-25T02:14:00.000-08:00

I think it is fair to say that I am not 50 Cent's number one fan. At the risk of sounding like an embarrassing Dad who says that they like music in an attempt to seem younger than they are (or should act), I quite like some rap music but Fiddy is, frankly, not my cup of tea. Or mother-fucking tea, as Mr Cent would have it.

Fiddy regrets offering to be a 'Phone a Friend'

When the second game to feature Mr Cent, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, came out a couple of years ago, it reviewed quite well, with a lot of 'guilty pleasure' reviews (the 360 version is showing 71% on Metacritic, a respectable score) and I picked it up about a year after its release. I only started playing it last month though and....

...it was actually quite good. The game is a third-person (though there are a couple of vehicle levels), cover-based, co-op (either with a human or CPU player) shooter and the basic mechanic is sound. When playing on your own, you have dubious pleasure of playing as Fiddy, with the CPU playing as one of three members of G-Unit. As well as offering back-up, they fawn over Fiddy, praising him for particularly tricky actions (read: shooting people), which can get irritating (guys, get a room).

Oh Fiddy, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind, hey Fiddy, hey Fiddy

Fiddy and friends swap profanities with gay abandon - it was the sweariest game I'd ever played, a title it only held for a short time as I started playing Mafia II (which REALLY has swearing) afterwards. Whereas the Mafia II swearing seems authentically gangster like, Fiddy's potty mouth is pretty ridiculous. For example, shouting 'fire in the hole' is a quick phrase, shouted out to let others know something is about to explode. Shouting 'Fire in the motherfucking hole, bitches' kind of defeats the object - you'd get your bling blown off.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around Fiddy having performed a concert in an unnamed hellhole in the Middle East, for which he was not paid his $10m fee (which seems a lot to me - maybe Fiddy is using the game as a way to jack up his asking price). In lieu of payment, he is given (as you are) a diamond-encrusted skull, originally inhabited by the favourite wife of an olden days king. This skull is subsequently stolen and Fiddy spends the rest of the game trying to track it down. I'm not sure why he is so attached to the skull - he'd barely owned 5 minutes before it was stolen and presumably there are other failed states willing to pay his gig asking price. You wonder why he didn't just give it up as a bad lot and jet back to LA and his solid gold (I assume) mansion.

One previous owner

Anyway, the rest of the, pretty short, game is spent looking for the skull while killing lots of people, with a few two-dimensional characters popping up in cut scenes explaining the plot (Omid Djalilli did you really need the money that badly?). There are 9 missions, most of which are broken down into several chapters and the game can be completed in 6-7 hours. You get a score for each chapter, so there is the prospect of replaying chapters to increase your score (not that I bothered with this).

Why do bosses attack with helicopters in the area where they store their RPG ammunition?

One of the things it most strongly reminded me of, was Elvis Presley's movie career (this may be the world's first comparison between these two artists). They don't get shown much on TV these days, but when I was growing up they'd often be shown during the daytime or in the early evening on BBC2. In all of them, Elvis would be Elvis - he might be a prison inmate, a nightclub singer, a GI, a roustabout, he night have different name but he would *be* Elvis. Fiddy is playing 'Fiddy' here but the character you're playing isn't really Curtis Jackson aka 50 Cent - it's the gangsta he wishes he could be. Fiddy (the real one) famously got shot 9 times in 2000 and this is used as an aspect of his gangsta credentials but surely it's not getting shot 9 times that makes you a successful gangsta? I do not think that the real Fiddy would stand much of a chance against the terrorists, private military contractors or soldiers in Blood on the Sand - one of the pleasures of the game is the innate absurdity of this pampered star taking on the persona of John Rambo and the genuine enjoyment you can hear in his voice from the deluded pleasure he takes from the 'role'.

There is a debate in videogames about whether they can be art. This is not the game that decides that argument. However, it is an enjoyable, solid game that doesn't outstay its welcome. Worth picking up if you see it for under a tenner. But don't take it too seriously.

Mafia II Collector's Edition

2011-02-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

As must be clear from my blog, I am quite partial to a collector's edition of a game, particularly those packed full of ephemera that I will likely never use (like the Guild Seal in the Fable III Limited Collector's Edition, for example). I'm particularly fond of packs of cards, despite not playing a card game more advanced than 'Snap' since about 1987 (in-game poker in Red Dead Redemption excepted).

My latest purchase is the Collector's Edition of Mafia II. This retails at £60, which is pretty steep (more than I would be prepared to pay, certainly) but I picked it up, new, for only £14.99 from an Amazon Marketplace seller.

The contents are contained within a plastic outer sleeve, containing a 'steel box' style game box, a map and a hardback book (of the same dimensions as the game box).

Fuhgeddaboutit!

The matt-effect steel box is covered, front and back, with artwork from the game and is embossed on both sides with 'Mafia II'. Contained within is the game disk and a CD containing the orchestral score from the game (the latter disk is mocked up to look like a vinyl LP, which is a nice touch). There's a leaflet giving the track listing of the score and also a code for the 'Made Man' DLC pack for the game. This contains two exclusive cars and two suits for Vito, the main character, to use in-game.

The hardback book is made to look like an old-fashioned photo album and all the material inside is printed to look as if it were stuck in to it. The contents relate to concept artwork from the game - the characters, the vehicles, the settings, advertisements and weapons. Each section is prefaced by a introduction in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

The final item in the set is a map of the game area, described as 'tear resistant' on the outer sleeve of the package (though I've not put that to the test, with either meaning of 'tear'). The back of the map is covered with 40s style advertisements, in keeping with the game's setting.

In game, the map can be accessed via the Back button

This is a decent package but I don't think it is worth the £60 asking (but certainly worth the £15 I paid for it).

The package in full

Monster Hunter Portable t-shirt

2011-02-12T06:33:00.000-08:00

I was in Uniqlo in London yesterday. They've currently got a range of Monster Hunter (and also Naruto) t-shirts at £12.99 each and I bought this one -

As, literally, worn by me (30 seconds before I took the photo)

Nerd detail in full

Uniqlo often has Japanese videogame-themed clothing (and manga and anime too), some subtle, some not so much. Well worth a look (through the website if you don't have a location near you).

The reasons why Enslaved: Journey to the West failed at retail

2011-02-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

I've just finished playing Enslaved Journey to the West on PS3 (with the Power A Pro Elite Wireless Controller). It's a great game, original in execution if not in design (it is essentially a reskinned Uncharted but with more emphasis on platforming), with beautiful graphics, an intelligent story and script, likeable characters and great voice acting. It wouldn't have broken into my Top 5 of 2010 had a played it in the year it was released but it would certainly have got in the Top 10 if I'd bothered to write about that many games.

But it was reported last week that, despite generally positive reviews (the PS3 version shows 80% on metacritic and the 360 version 82%) it sold under half a million copies worldwide (in comparison, Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Conviction, also released in 2010, sold 1.71m copies (source - VG Chartz) and sales behemoth Call of Duty Blacks Ops sold 7m worldwide on the day that it was released (source Wikipedia)). In the face of consumer apathy, Namco Bandai, the publisher, has been noncommittal about whether or not there will ever be a sequel commissioned.

Gamers often criticise publishers for only releasing sequels or yearly updates of games, with little or no original IP. Publishers, however, are answerable to their shareholders, not core gamers and are inclined to be risk averse - if Brothers of Duty: World Ops 2011 is going to recoup its costs and then make a profit, it is more likely to get a green-light than a game based on 16th Century Chinese literature.

Some original IP does make an impact though, such as Uncharted (3.51m sales worldwide (VG Chartz), on PS3 only), so why did Enslaved fail?

You've got a purty mouth

Enslaved is set in a post-apocalyptic world (though the cause of that apocalypse is only hinted at) but it is quite a lot more 'post' apocalypse than one normally finds in such games. Accordingly, Mother Nature, as anyone that has watched the History Channel's 'Life after People' show (as the developer of the game, Ninja Theory, certainly seems to have done) could have guessed, has been back with a vengeance. The opening levels of the game take place in a ruined New York, choked with lush vegetation and they look gorgeous. However, they don't look like what can normally be expected from a post apocalyptic setting in a videogame, the drab browns of games like Gears of War, Fallout, Resistance, or even Advance Wars Days of Ruin. I wonder if the different look and feel of the game deterred casual purchasers, more used to seeing wrecked buildings portrayed in a very muted palette.

A stalagmite of culture shock

Grand Central Station

Very pretty but can they fight?

The combat was one of the failings of Enslaved, being dull and monotonous and, when faced by multiple enemies, generally descended into button mashing. I kept playing the game until completion, as I was interested in the story but a friend (from whom I borrowed the game) gave up on it midway through, as she found the combat too dull.

Get your button-mashing fingers ready

It does what is says on the tin

I think that the box art for the game (and also the magazine ads that used the same artwork) is insipid and prevents the box from standing out on the shelf in a game store. To an uninitiated game shop browser, the case shows a funny looking bloke and a girl running away from a giant robot dog. Would this entice the average game buyer? Do you want to run from a giant robot dog or fight a giant robot dog (both of which happen in the game, incidentally)? I'm no designer but it also seems a bit 'busy' to me and the title gets a little lost in the background.

Hollywood

This one isn't a reason for why I think the game failed (critically speaking, it's entirely the opposite) but it might conceivably be a reason why Namco Bandai decide not to publish a sequel. The game was part-scripted by Alex Garland, author of The Beach and scriptwriter of 28 Days Later (and, apparently, a gamer) and the main character was voiced by Andy Serkis, who also directed the game's excellent voice acting. The story and script were noticeably better than most videogame writing, some of it genuinely poignant. I was particularly impressed by the interactions between Monkey and Trip, the two main characters, which were sensitively handled. That made for a better game experience for the purchasers but did it entice gamers in the first place? I doubt that it did - you need to get the punters through the doors before they can start admiring your carpets. But I think it might be an impediment to Namco Bandai commissioning a sequel - I doubt Messrs Garland and Serkis would have come cheap, pushing the game further into the red.

It's Christmasssssss!

The game was released in the first week of October, just at the cusp of the retail run up to Christmas. A lot of games are released (and bought, to be fair) at this time of year and to compete with the Calls of Duty and FIFAs (last year's iterations of which were released in the first week of November and 1 October, respectively) an original game has to stand out; unfortunately, few original games manage to do this (Beyond Good and Evil, another 'lost classic', was released in November 2003).

The punkiest monkey who ever popped

If you are of a certain age, you will recognise this heading as a line from the title song of the fantastic Monkey TV series (Japanese, dubbed into English) that played on British TV in the late 70s/early 80s. Enslaved has the same source material - 16th Century Chinese classic, Monkey: Journey to the West - but, clearly, updated and adapted. I read the book when I was about ten, having been a fan of the TV series (all I can remember now is Monkey weeing on Buddha's fingers at the end of the universe) but, it being nearly thirty years since that TV series aired, I doubt that many of the game's target audience were familiar with the source material. Did this matter? I'm not sure - the source material, to some extent, explains Enslaved's Monkey, Trip(itaka) and Pigsy but can the game be enjoyed without that knowledge? I think it probably can and I think Namco Bandai actively played down the source material during the promotion of the game, for fear of 'scaring away' potential purchasers with the intellectualism that is implied with basing a game on a 400-year old story. Of course, as it turned out, they were scared away anyway.

Sleepy Monkey

Sequel

I think that it is a combination of these issues, together with the fact that the game itself is not without its flaws, that led to the game's commercial failure. Will this stop a sequel being made though? If there was a sequel, gamers could expect that the things that didn't quite work in this game (the poor camera, the dull combat) would be fixed. Unfortunately, the poor sales would probably mean that some of the things that I think made it an interesting game - the main characters, the beautiful graphics, intelligent story - would also be changed, following focus testing.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was another (and better) game that received a great critical reception but whose initial sales in the run up to a busy Christmas in 2003, coupled with a pre-2004 PS2 exclusivity deal with Sony, were less than expected. Its post-Christmas sales were good and overall it was a commercial success but the developers made many knee-jerk changes to the feel of the game for the sequel, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within . Gamers who loved the first game, myself included, criticised Ubisoft for succumbing to focus-group-led development and turning the franchise into something that they thought that a 14-year old boy would like (including awful rawk music and an emo Prince) and jettisoned much of what made the first game so good.

So, the city is rotting but a cloth flag still flies?

I fear that this could happen with an Enslaved sequel, were one to be commissioned. That the parts of the game that I liked - the beautiful graphics, the colourful palette, the complicated relationship between the two main characters - would be lost in an emo nightmare, Warrior Within fashion. So, while I would love a sequel that remained true to the spirit of Enslaved, I'm concerned that the performance of the first game would mean that this wouldn't be the sequel that I would get. It may, then, be best to leave Enslaved as a sequel-free game and enjoy it for what it is, rather than have a misfiring sequel spoil its memory.

Power A Pro Elite Wireless Controller - review

2011-01-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

I own all the current-gen consoles and play platform-exclusive items on each of them. When it comes to multi-platform titles though, I invariably buy the 360 version, unless it is noticeably broken compared to its stablemates (Alone on the Dark, I'm looking at you).

I think one of the primary reasons for this is the comparative strengths of the controllers. I love the 360 controller and think it is the best that I have ever used. It's not perfect - the d-pad is poor - but it is streets ahead of PS3's Dual Shock 3, with its horribly spongy analogue sticks and its lack of proper triggers.

Fortunately for me Power A has brought out a PS3 controller that benefits from the same button/stick layout as the 360 pad - the Power A Pro Elite Wireless Controller. I don't normally like third-party console peripherals, as I find their build quality is not up to the standard of their first-party competition. I only tend to buy them if they have features that the official pad lacks - the last third-party pad I bought was a Logic 3 wireless pad on the original Xbox (at the time I was sharing my house with a baby that liked to chew everything).

Clearly this pad does offer something different. The first thing that you notice when placing it and the official pad side by side are the asymmetrical sticks. The Dual Shock's sticks are, essentially, in the same position as when first introduced onto Sony's system, with the short-lived but excellent Dual Analogue Controller for the original PlayStation in 1997, which was presumably influenced by the layout of the original, stick-free PlayStation pad.

As anyone that has spent a lot of time playing with a 360 pad knows, having the left stick in the upper left quadrant of the pad is a natural fit with how your hand rests when gripping the controller. On an official PS3 pad, this space is taken up with the little-used these days D-pad. The sticks themselves offer slightly more resistance than the official PS3 pad and are therefore less spongy but are still not as 'stiff' as with the 360 pad. The tips of the sticks are concave (as with the Dual Analogue of long-ago), rather than the convex of the Dual Shock, which I find more comfortable. All in all, I much prefer how the Pro Elite's sticks feel while gaming, when compared to the official PS3 pad.

Cosmetically, the Pro Elite is all black but the fascia buttons are lit by a red light when turned on. I think having coloured on buttons is preferable but it makes little difference in play. The pad is wireless, 'connecting' to a receiver plugged into one of the PS3's USB ports (much like the Wavebird does with a Gamecube). I have found no problems of responsiveness when using the pad, nor have I any complaints regarding the build quality - it seems sturdy enough, if not quite as heavy as the Dual Shock 3.

The handgrips of the Pro Elite are textured to maintain grip. I'm not a fan of this approach - I'm using it to play games while sat on my sofa, not jumping around the room, as with the Wii - and much prefer the smooth look/feel of both the 360 and PS3 pads. It isn't uncomfortable, just unnecessary.

Look at that hand - never done a proper day's work in its life

One area that Power A hasn't followed the 360 design on (fortunately), is with the Pro Elite's d-pad. Rather than the 360 pad's ill-defined 'wheel' deign, Power A has gone with an old-school, SNES-style cross, which is as good as the PS3's and far better than the 360's.

Another major failing with the official Dual Shock 3, is with its L2 and R2 shoulder buttons, which are regularly called upon in games to act as triggers, a task they are singularly unsuited for, particularly when compared to the actual triggers on the 360 pad. The problem is that the buttons are convex, making it easy for trigger fingers to slip off in play (or at rest). Game (and other retailers) sell small plastic veneers to place over the L2 and R2 buttons to make them feel more like triggers and these work well. The Pro Elite's L2 and R2 buttons have a concave design, making it easier to rest fingers on them in play, a big improvement on the official pad.

I always get concave and convex mixed up. These are concave, hopefully

I think what my appreciation of the Pro Elite shows is that Sony has missed a trick with redesigning the outward look of its pads in the move to this generation, as Microsoft did with the move to 360 and Nintendo always does when upgrading its hardware. While the tech on the inside the official PS3 pad has changed a lot since 1997, the outward design and fascia placement is essentially the same, which is disappointing and shows a lack of ambition.

I paid £30 for the Pro Elite , which I think is reasonable value. I did see it £10 cheaper in the Amazon January sale but procrastinated and by the time I'd made the decision to buy it had returned to its original price. If you're unsure about making a purchase, it might be worthwhile to await the next batch of sales and then go bargain hunting - £20 for this pad is exceptional value.

HMV Group to close 60 stores

2011-01-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I spent part of my lunchbreak in the flagship HMV store on London's Oxford St. Walking down aisle after aisle filled with products that I could buy more cheaply online - even in the post-Christmas sale - either as a download or as a physical product, I wondered how its business model could be successful in today's marketplace. When I got back to my office, I read that the HMV Group was to close 60 stores (40 HMV, 20 Waterstone's) and I was hardly surprised. Other than a few deeply discounted lines that it couldn't have made much (if any) profit on (DJ Hero, with decks, for £30 for example), I didn't see why anyone with access to the internet would need to purchase from there. This was particularly true in the videogame section, where some games were more than double the price asked by online competitors.

Last year Game, when announcing its poor half-yearly results, stated that it was going to close 85 of its stores (across the Game and Gamestation brands) by Christmas 2013, a move that will leave it with 550 stores. Game is a little different from HMV, in that it is a specialist retailer and also that it has a fair amount of overlap in its branches, as a result of the earlier acquisitions of the Electronics Boutique* and Gamestation brands. In my town (population 84,000 - thanks Wikipedia), there are two Game stores and a Gamestation in the town centre, a pattern that is repeated in many locations in the UK. In the same precinct, there is also a HMV, a Cex and a Tesco that sells videogames - this amount of competition in a falling marketplace is sure to result in closures.

Two years ago, zavvi went into administration and subsequently closed down. Shortly before, Woolworths, which sold videogames, DVDs and CDs as part of its lines, also went into administration (this was a contributing factor in zavvi's failure, as a Woolworths subsidiary supplied it with much of its stock). HMV has its differences to zavvi - its larger, its brand is better established, it sells preowned games, it also owns Waterstone's (itself under pressure from Amazon and the like) - but the core business is essentially the same. I don't think that HMV is on the brink - and it is clearly acting now to avert problems in the future - but fault lines can be seen in its business model.

The ultimate question in considering the entertainment media retail market is 'can it survive?'. I'm not sure, in the long-term that it can, other than in flagship locations such as central London, which can cater to the day-shopper market. I often pop into Game and HMV in my lunchbreak, or at weekends but a lot of the time I only browse and don't buy anything. This behaviour essentially turns the bricks and mortar retailers into showrooms for the online customer - not the basis for a successful business. I think that this is a shame (not least for the thousands of staff that work in these businesses) but, ultimately, this is part of the evolutionary effect of the internet and of digital distribution, which have been very beneficial in many other ways.

Many people in the UK were sorry when Woolworths failed but how much of that was down to nostalgia from shopping or working there in the past? How many of those decrying its closure had shopped in one its stores recently? As Woolworths' core market had been eroded by the large supermarkets selling similar lines more cheaply, online retailers have done the same to HMV and Game, a trend that seems irreversible. Will HMV and Game be here in 5 years' time? Probably. Will they be here in 30 years' time? I doubt it.

* it was actually Electronics Boutique that bought Game and then rebranded all the UK-based EBs as 'Game', presumably as 'Electronics Boutique' is such an awful name for a videogame retailer

Game of the Year 2010

2011-01-01T05:01:00.000-08:00

I feel a bit of a fraud detailing my games of the year. I'm not a games journalist, I can't spend all my life playing games and, most relevantly, I probably haven't played all of what others consider to be the best games of 2010. There are several games released this year that I intend to get when I have time - Enslaved, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Mafia II - that might muscle into this list and there are a few other games, much-liked by others and included in their end of year lists, that don't float my gaming boat - Mass Effect 2 being chief among those. I make no apologies for the latter - if I had played them, it is unlikely they'd have worried number 5 on the list but this is simply a personal view - my favourites of the games that I have played (and have been released) in 2010.

5. Limbo (XBLA)

The first game on my list is also the shortest - you can finish it on a first play through in 5-6 hours and quicker thereafter - but it is a touchingly unique 5-6 hours. I'll not go into further details here, as it is reviewed elsewhere on the blog, only to say if you are after something different, sadly beautiful, strangely alienating but at the same time oddly touching, then this is a must-play game.

4. Fable III

I'm a big fan of the Fable series and, for a time prior to release, this blog turned into something of a Fable III fan blog. Once the game finally arrived, I could see that it had its flaws - there were a few too many bugs than you would expect for a triple-A game and the last section of the game (no spoilers) was a great idea that didn't quite work in practice. Notwithstanding those issues, it was still an excellent game, with a great story, excellent (and genuinely funny) voice acting and Albion looking more beautiful than ever before and just as cohesive as in the past (you can easily believe from the natural and built environments that all areas are part of the same world). If Fable II hadn't been so good, I might have rated this higher but it didn't quite reach the heights of the previous game in the series (though still better than all but three of the other games released this year).

3. Super Mario Galaxy 2

It's-a him, Mario. An old school videogame, in that no attempts were made (nor should have been made) to inject realism into the Mushroom Kingdom, there were enough tweaks from the first game to make this a genuinely original addition to the Mario canon. I was continually surprised to find new worlds utilising new gameplay mechanisms (that were then discarded and not present on subsequent planets), which other, lesser, games would have eked out across several levels. If you are interested in videogames that make no apologies for being just that - games - then Mario's second visit to his galaxy (and best reason for having a Wii this year) is for you.

2. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

A late entry, my having only received the game on the 25th December (although I'm 20+ hours into at the time of writing) but one that very nearly grabbed the top spot. A follow-up of sorts to my game of the year 2009, Assassin's Creed II, Ubisoft has once again created a living, breathing (well, until Ezio gets to work), Renaissaince Italy. The story is the same schlocky Da Vinci Code-lite and there are still the annoying modern day interludes but Ubisoft continue to learn from the errors in the first game in the series and the present day sections are kept to a minimum.

I'm barely a third of the way through the main story but there are so many other, interesting and compelling things to do, that I don't even feel that there is a 'main story' and 'side missions' - there is just the world and how I choose to make my way in it.

1. Red Dead Redemption

I loved western films as a child growing up in the 1970s (a time when the TV schedules were full of them and of Sunday teatime western TV serials). That fed into my play - like many boys, I had a cowboy outfit and a holster and six-guns. Red Dead Redemption allowed me to play as a cowboy again but without the embarrassment of being a 39-year old man dressed in chaps and having to explain that I wasn't in a Village People tribute band.

The graphics, varied gameplay, longevity, story, score (that I still listen to now) and voice acting (as good as in the voice acting benchmark of Uncharted 2) were all of the highest level. I genuinely cared about John Marston by the end of the game and the world in which he lived (and there aren't that many games that you can say that about).

Honorable mentions must be given to Heavy Rain (pushed out of the top 5 by Assassin's Creed Brotherhood), ModNation Racers, Alan Wake, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. All great games that I considered for inclusion in my final five.

2010 was a pretty good year for gaming, if a little less stellar than the superlative 2009. There are some great games scheduled for release next year (I'm particularly looking forward to LA Noire) and I look forward to trying to compile another top 5 in 12 months' time.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-31T08:16:00.000-08:00

Ho ho ho - Merry Christmas. Not that merry for me this year, unfortunately, as I've had tonsillitis since Christmas Eve (I did, with the help of lots of painkillers, manage to eat my own weight in Christmas dinner though).

Game-wise, this year I received the excellent Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (nothing says 'Christmas' more to me than assassination*) on 360 from my wife and a book, 1001 Videogames you must play before you die from my daughter (a handy reminder of my own mortality from my first-born).

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood uses the same characters and setting (albeit mainly set in Rome this time) as Assassin's Creed II - sort of an Assassin's Creed 2.5. There is enough new content and new activities (mainly related to killing people, admittedly) in the new game to make it an essential purchase for fans of the previous game (my Game of the Year in 2009).

1001 videogames... is a slab-like (960 pages) trawl through seminal (and some less so) videogames from the 1970s up to Heavy Rain in early 2010. With any book like this (whether it be videogames, films, footballers etc), I usually try to catch it out with games that I think *should* have been included (the answer to which would be, of course, 'write your own bloody book then') but so far I've only thought of 3D Ant Attack on Spectrum (first isometric-perspective adventure game) and Vandal Hearts on PS1 (niche strategy RPG from Konami), both of which are quite obscure. It is a great read and I highly recommend it to everyone with an interest in the history and progression of videogames.

* this is literally, if oddly, true - I received both Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II as Christmas presents over the last few years.

Saboteur (ZX Spectrum) iPhone review

2010-12-19T08:52:00.001-08:00

8-bit gaming house Elite Systems was a big hitter back in the mid-late eighties, bringing out a number of great titles. I particularly remember its arcade conversion of Capcom classic, Commando and its flick-screen licensed 'Airwolf' game, both of which were favourites of mine. Surprisingly, given most of those old companies having gone bust or been acquired by other, bigger, companies over the years (Infogrames - now Atari - taking over Gremlin Graphics and Ocean in the nineties, for example) the company is still around and has brought a number of classic (and, to be fair, some filler) ZX Spectrum titles to iPhone.

Initially, ZX Spectrum Elite Collection Volume 1 brought 6 titles to the Apple platform but there has since been an update (the originally-titled Volume 2) doubling the total. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a further release (as in-App 59p purchases) of four new volumes, two of Gremlin Graphics games (including the Monty Mole games) and one each for Software Projects (including Manic Miner) and Vortex (including one of my top 5 favourite Spectrum games, Highway Encounter).

Just like a shelf in WH Smiths in 1985

Despite the name, not all the games in the two initial volumes were originally Elite titles - a few, including the one I'm going to concentrate on, Saboteur, were originally published by Durell. Durell is still in business too but it pulled out of the games market in the late eighties, to concentrate on writing software for insurance companies, presumably on the basis that loss adjustment spreadsheet titles aren't going to be copied on C90 tapes and passed around school playgrounds. Elite bought the rights to its back catalogue at that time, a purchase that continues to bear dividends now that technology and nostalgia have combined in the form of emulators.

You'd think they'd station a guard on this jetty

Saboteur is a flick-screen proto-stealth game, with the protagonist an early version of a Sam Fisher type agentWithin a time limit, you have to infiltrate a base, collect a floppy disk (well, it was programmed in the eighties) - at which point the timer thankfully stops - and then escape in a handily-placed helicopter (optionally, you can also blow up the base if you find a carelessly-placed bomb). The base is populated with guards, guard dogs and automatic gun emplacements, of varying degrees of intelligence. There are 9 difficulty levels, adding some longevity to a game that can be completed reasonably quickly (on the lower difficulty levels anyway). And that's pretty much it.

Unlike many 8-bit games, the basic theme of Saboteur is similar to that of modern games - it could be Solid Snake infiltrating this base (though, thankfully, Saboteur doesn't feature a 15-minute cut scene after you successfully do so). The game was considered a technical achievement at the time, with intelligent use of the Spectrum's limited palette and featuring a large, detailed (for the time) central character. When it came out, it was the first game that I had played where the main character had a regenerating health bar, that allowed you to cower in a corner after being savaged by a particularly persistent dog (as the time limit ticked mercilessly down).

The strange 'Man at C&A' stance, is the default standing posture

The muted use of colour (well, it is night-time) is another reason why Saboteur doesn't seem hopelessly ancient today. Some of the games in the collections - Kokotoni Wilf, say - look like garish explosions in a paint factory (albeit a factory that only makes 8 different colours of paint). Saboteur's extensive use of black, together with only two or three colours at a time, means the on-screen action is subdued and consequently less jarring to eyes spoilt by thirty years of progression in graphical techniques.

The game can either be played in portrait mode, with the action shown in the top half and control 'keys' on the bottom, or landscape, with the whole screen used for play and controls superimposed over that. I played the game on iPad, as I do most iPhone games and went with the divided screen option, which worked fine. The conversion is a faithful and well-realised one and either control method works well (or as well as the original at any rate).

With any emulated game, I think it is difficult to divorce the playing experience from the nostalgia buzz and Saboteur is no different. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it again but would that have been the case if I'd been twenty (thirty!) years younger and playing it for the first time? Would some of the gameplay now be too grating (only being able to carry one item at a time for example) if I'd been brought up on Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell? Probably I think it would but if you have fond memories of Saboteur and the other games available, the best of them - a category within which I would include Saboteur - can certainly still provide enjoyment.

Legend of Zelda inspired make-up!

2010-11-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

My wife writes a beauty blog, www.londonmakeupgirl.com and it is very seldom that there's any overlap between the content of our respective blogs. Not since the dismal failure of the Donkey Kong Hair Removal range, anyway.

The 'Legends' make-up collection from Etsy seller Shiro Cosmetics remedies that, however. This collection consists of loose pigments for use as eyeshadows (or so I'm told) and the names of all the individual shades are Zelda-themed -'Link', 'Zora', 'Hearts', 'Ganondorf', 'Kokiri Forest' 'Majora's Mask' and more.

I'm not going to review them here - that would be way beyond my descriptive powers. I'm not even sure videogames and make-up share a vocabulary. Iridescent, maybe. London make-up girl makes a far better go of it, reviewing those shown here (from top left Ganondorf, Temple of Time, Deku, Bottom: Epona, Master Sword).

If you're not a fan of Zelda, there's also a Pokemon-inspired range ('Super Effective'). Squirtle eyeshadow, anyone?

Knitted Sackboy!

2010-11-21T04:18:00.000-08:00

As many of these posts attest to, I like cool videogame ephemera and the latest addition, thanks to my wife, is this knitted Sackboy, bought from an Etsy seller. It's nicely done, with articulated arms and legs (far better quality than those available commercially).

Currently on a shelf in my study, checking that I don't spend time checking Twitter when I'm supposed to be working (as if).

Game Dev Story - iPhone review

2010-11-14T12:37:00.001-08:00

It's strange that App Store games above the 59p price point (or even £1.19) are often the subject of internet criticism that they are 'too expensive', despite being less than a shop-bought sandwich or magazine. Game Dev Story, on iPhone, comes in at a 'weighty' £2.39 and has been subject to such criticism. I used to pay £1.99 for Mastertronic games on the Spectrum back in the 80s - this is only 40p more (and considerably less in real terms) and is a finely-crafted gem of addictiveness.

At its simplest, it is a business simulation, where you attempt to guide your start-up company to success, fame and fortune. The USP here is that the company in question is a videogame developer and the graphics are isometric 16-bit style.

After first hiring a team of coders, you put them to work on either a game or contract work. A number of consoles are available (all of which have a sizeable licence fee that must be paid up front) but you'll most likely start on churning out PC games, where both costs and profits are lower, before being able to afford to move onto consoles.

Games come in a number of types and genres, more of which are unlocked as you play and your team's skills progress (training them helps here). If the genre and type of game are well-suited - samurai RPG, for example - your game is more likely to succeed. Probably best to avoid Ninja Dating games though.

The development work has four attributes - fun, creativity, graphics and sound - and it's up to your team to maximise these categories. Each can be increased by power-ups bought from a travelling salesman who periodically appears and, at least once during development, one of your staff will come to you asking for permission to attempt to boost an aspect of the game.

At the end of a game's development, the bugs that have worked their way into your game can be programmed out, or you can release a game full of bugs (not that that would ever happen in real life).

After the game is finished, it is reviewed by hard-nosed games journalists, who can be stingy with their scores. Fortunately for my games company, games will still sell even if they review poorly, as in real life (as Wii shovelware Carnival Games's 1.5m copies sold shows).

The game works within an annual cycle, with some events taking place every year. There is a sense of progression throughout the game, with new consoles being brought to the market and old ones being discontinued as the years pass.

A proud moment

The game is extremely addictive - I have played it for lengthy periods when I could have instead been playing on one of my 'proper' game consoles. The urge to develop 'one more game' (which leads to another and another....) is very strong. Business in the real world is not an interesting subject but pseudo-business with cute 16-bit graphics is.

And for less than the cost of pint of beer.

Fable 3 Limited Collector's Edition unboxing

2010-10-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

My blog has turned into a bit of a Fable III fan site over the last few weeks, with news of the game slowly being released, together with the launch of the Fable III Kingmaker smartphone app. That trend continues with this post, as I received - a day before the European launch - the Limited Collector's Edition of the game in the post today (thanks shopto.net).

It's a lovely package, similar to the Alan Wake Limited Edition of a few months ago, in that the box is fashioned like a hardback book, with an outer slipcase.

Internet purchasers - it doesn't fit through a letterbox

It really is very 'bookie'

Inside the 'book' is the game box itself, sitting on a shelf that divides the inside in two. Extra content is included in a hidden drawer that is pulled out from underneath this shelf.

et voila

The drawer reveals a pack of Fable III cards and a large, heavy, metal, coin that has a 'good' and an 'evil' side, ideal for assisting with all of those tricky questions in life.

The obverse

The side that isn't the obverse

The playing cards have Fable characters portrayed on the court cards, the aces and the jokers.

The illustrations are lovingly-reproduced

And there's a game as well! As is usual with these packages, there is some exclusive content available for download - a new region (Hunter's Lodge), which contains a unique outfit from the land of Aurora, a new breed of dog (the Boxer) and an exclusive quest (in which the player can earn the legendary sword, Wolfsbane).

The package in full

And now I'm off to play the game (having booked tomorrow off work)!

Fable III: Kingmaker. Seen in Gorblimey, yesterday

2010-10-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

I was in London/Gorblimey yesterday (for non-UK readers, 'gorblimey' was a common (in at least two meanings of the word) exclamation of surprise in 19th Century London, derived from 'God blind me') and, while strolling through Bloomsbury, walked past the McCann Erickson building.

The advertising agency always displays its wares in a large picture window by the entrance and the current one is Kingmaker-themed (it has the Microsoft account) -

There's treasure worth 2000 gold here. Win!

The main display has two inset monitors, with each displaying flag-planting auto-tweets from the two factions. I planted a couple of flags while I was there but I didn't see mine pop up - even though the onscreen tweets were coming in thick and fast, there must be plenty backing up.

Microsoft gave a press release a couple of days ago that said there were 60,000 users who between them had planted over a million flags. I think this is pretty good going, particularly given that, for the first week or so of release, it didn't really work.

Rebel scum are everywhere

I've currently 'earned' over 30,000 gold, to be put to good use once the game is released in the UK on 29 October.

Fable III: Kingmaker - iPhone review

2010-10-14T12:36:00.001-07:00

Just when I was beginning to think that it was itself a fable, the Fable III Kingmaker app was released on the iPhone yesterday.

As I've written before, the app is part of the Fable III marketing campaign. The app credits state that it has been developed by McCann London, the uber advertising agency that holds the Microsoft account (and whose beautiful art deco offices I walk past on the way to work).

Players register and are then allocated to one of two teams, the Rebels and the Royals (representing factions in the game). I'm a Royal, which would not have been my natural inclination - what with rebels being cooler - but I figure if players were allowed to choose, we'd all be rebels.

The aim of the game is to have your faction control the most 'territories' (compartments of real-world locations). Each player can aid their team by 'planting' flags on their phone, with that flag equating to their location at that time. The faction with greater number of flags in a territory controls it. Each day, players are given 10 flags to plant in the 'real world'. I commute between 'Middlinglande' (Herts & Beds) and 'Gorblimey' (London - all regions have comedy names bestowed upon them) for work and spread my flags around them both.

As well as aiding your faction, each flag you plant gains you gold, which you can upload to the game once it's released (and once you've linked Kingmaker to your Live ID). The flags are worth 50 gold each but that increases by multiples of 50 gold if the player links their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. The app does then tend to spam your accounts, so you may prefer to link them to dummy accounts.

There are additional treasure sites, which the player can visit to claim the booty (first 100 players only at each location though). All of these are in GAME stores, possibly the first example of treasure being found in those locations. The app tells you where your nearest treasure site is - mine is 45 km away!

The app has been a little bit buggy for me at times, kicking me out while logged in and occasionally not calculating my gold properly (my last two flags today were only awarded 50 gold, rather than 150).

The app allows you to monitor how many flags you've placed and how many are remaining, together with an update on who controls the most territories.

There's further detailed analysis available from the Kingmaker website , (I'm currently rated 2435 for gold collected, apparently).

There isn't really much else to it but, for a free download that will provide an in-game benefit, I think it's a nice little app - kudos to Lionhead for coming up with it.

EDIT 17 October

I've had a few days to play around with the app now and think that it has serious problems with its functionality. My app is linked to my Twitter and Facebook accounts - so, each flag should deliver 150 gold - but, after doing this for a couple of days, it has returned to only giving out 50 gold for each one. The 'treasure' tab to the app - showing pots of gold near to the player, where a planted flag will deliver 2000 gold - no longer works (nothing appears when it is selected).

I still think that the app is a good idea but it would have benefited from far more testing prior to release. That begin said, I would sooner Lionhead concentrated on getting Fable III itself bug-free, than on using finite resources in polishing an app that only European smartphone owners can use.

EDIT 19/10/10

I've noticed that the 'Treasure' tab works fine in Gorblimey (London) and I used it to rinse 11,000 gold during my lunchbreak. It seems the streets of London are paved with gold, after all. On returning to Middlinglande (Herts) it stopped working again.

FINAL EDIT (hopefully) - 20/10/10

The app updated this morning and now everything works - the extra gold for Facebook/Twitter linking; the Treasure tab in all regions; locations of all treasure shows up in the Treasure tab and the log-in/log-out process is streamlined.

Eurogamer Expo 2010

2010-10-13T01:15:00.000-07:00

Between 1-3 October, London's Earl's Court played host to the third annual Eurogamer Expo, organised by the eponymous gaming website. I'd been to the previous two and thought that this one was probably the largest so far, certainly in terms of the size of the venue. I was not sure that it was the best, though.

I booked my ticket months ago, before many games had been announced (all three days eventually sold out, as they had done in previous years, so it paid to think ahead). Up until about a month ago, there still weren't that many games that I was interested in - some great titles, no doubt but nothing that really grabbed me. However, over the three weeks prior to the show that changed - Fable III was announced, as were Kirby's Epic Yarn and Little Big Planet 2 and all three were on my 'wanted' list, particularly the first.

Fable III was the game that I most wanted to see and it was as good as I had expected, though it did look, graphically, VERY similar to Fable II (no bad thing in my book but I wonder if that is indicative of the fact that the 360 has been taken as far as it can in terms of graphics), although the Albion being depicted is now that of an industrial era. I'd already pre-ordered the game and booked a day off work for the day of its release (as it's released during half-term, all that remains to be done is line up the grandparents for child-minding duties) so I'm not the most subjective reviewers. One criticism though - I completely failed to get one of the Fable III t-shirts that were being given away by Lionhead staff.

PlayStation Move and Xbox 360 Kinect were demonstrated but I find it very difficult to care about motion tracking devices/games. I own a Wii, so I consider that that particularly itch has been well and truly scratched and nothing I saw at the Expo changed my mind. I'm sure the technology in both new pieces of kit is better than that housed in the Wii but not so much as to make me care. More importantly for Sony and Microsoft, I don't think that their target market of casual gamers will care enough to about upgrade from their Wiis either. With rumours of a 'Wii2' around the corner (though I think Nintendo will have a job itself in convincing Wii owners to upgrade, even as market leader) the Sony and MS offerings look a little desperate.

There were several games exhibited that were sequels in series that I don't really care about - Gran Turismo 5, Gears of War 3, Killzone 3, Medal of Honor, Motorstorm Apocalypse - and a couple where the previous games are still uncompleted in my Pile of Shame - Fallout: New Vegas and DragonAge II. I've no interest in playing the former and I don't want to 'skip' a game to play the latter, so these, undoubtedly well-executed, polished products, didn't interest me that much.

There were some surprises at the Expo - games that I hadn't really thought about but have now moved onto my wanted list. inFamous 2 and Castlevania Lords of Shadow both fell into that category. I enjoyed the first inFamous game, although it wasn't without its flaws but the sequel, despite seeming to have a default camera point closer to the main protagonist (a revamped Cole), looked more polished than its predecessor. Cole still has his cool electrical powers but not to the extent of using them to 'encourage' the developers - its about a year until this is released.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow looked absolutely gorgeous. I've never been a Castlevania fan - I had Symphony of the Night special edition on PS1 but never really liked it and sold it to fund my 360 purchase. Lords of Shadow isn't really that much like a Castlevania game, to its credit (with me, anyway). It's a third person action adventure, heavy on the (whip-based, naturally) combat and - from the excerpt at the show anway - huge bosses. Win!

Most hilarious stand was that for DefJam Rapstar - watching geeks karaoke rapping was as fantastic as it sounds. Also the noisiest - the MC didn't seem to shut up the whole show and certainly earned his money.

Not legal tender. Cooler than the Ben Franklin, though

The most intriguing stand was that for Nintendo - part of the stand was cordoned off and shrouded in blackout curtains, with a snaking line of gamers queued up outside. I reckon you could show anything in such a way at a show like this and get a queue outside of it but this one was probably merited a queue. The game that was being previewed inside was Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, latest in the long-running series. I didn't queue up - I hate queueing for anything - but I now wish I had, as I found the level of secrecy intriguing (and I'm a fan of the Zelda games).

There were undoubtedly some stellar triple-A titles being shown at the Expo - unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, those triple-A titles weren't the ones that I was interested in. I also found that, while slicker, the move to the larger venue left it a bit 'colder' than in previous years - last year's venue, at Old Billingsgate Market, with its labyrinthine layout was more enjoyable. That being said, I reckon I'll be back next year...

For what it's worth, the 30-something gamer Eurogamer Expo awards!

Game of the Show - Fable III (please see note on lack of subjectivity above)
Meh of Show - Move, Kinect
Mystery of Show - Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Yuck of the Show - Saw II
Disappointment of the show - not getting asked for ID by the bouncers on the 18+ zone
Headache of Show - watching monitors showing 3D gaming without 3D glasses
Surprise of Show - Castlevania Lords of Shadow

FIFA 11 Scramble

2010-10-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

The new FIFA came out last week and, as is usual with 'big' games where large retailers are expected to undercut specialist retailers at launch, there was considerable speculation on the Internet as to what supermarket would have the best deal. Obviously, the shops themselves weren't giving that information out to the public (and so to their competitors) but, slowly, rumours (some true, some false) filtered out, ahead of their 'official' advertisements in Thursday's papers, ahead of Friday's release of the game. The deals available weren't as good as some of those from last year but I ended up going for the Sainsbury's one (£24.97 when you spend £30 on ~~booze~~ groceries).

I've written about this phenomenon before and I'm sure it will continue for a while yet (there's a new Call of Duty out in a few weeks, after all). But I think that its end is in sight and that speculating on how much Tesco's will be selling FIFA 2020 just will not happen. A digital download only future will kill this type of undercutting (I wonder if the supermarkets even made a profit on some of the deals available) and scanning newspapers adverts in the days before a big release will go the way of tape-loading, dial-up internet and, well, newspapers themselves.

Fable III Kingmaker

2010-09-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

This morning I received a Fable III flyer from Game. As well as drawing the Fable III-branded 360 controller to my attention (can't really see the point of that, though it looks pretty and if I needed an extra controller, I'd consider it), it also revealed an app-based game, Fable III Kingmaker -

If anything, I'm now more excited about Fable III

I'd not heard anything about this before in any of the magazine previews for Fable III but it seems a really good idea. Available from either 2nd October (according to the flyer) or 1st October (according to the website), it is a way for the player to accumulate 'treasure'/gold (and for Microsoft to increase gamers' expectations) before the game's release at the end of October (as with Pub Games before the release of Fable II). The flyer only refers to the UK but the website shows French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian flags (go 'O' Level Geography!), so presumably localised versions will be available in those countries. There were no details on similar products for other territories.

Roll on Friday (or Saturday).

EDIT 2 October 2010 The Kingmaker website has been updated and the App will now be available from 'October'. Elsewhere on the internet, it suggests that the App will be available for Android phones on 4 October and iPhones a few days after that (no release date given). There's a trailer here .

And it has also been confirmed that the App will not launch in North America.

Alan Wake - review

2010-09-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

Alan Wake is a third-person psychological thriller from Max Payne developer, Remedy. Prior to release, it had, famously, 'enjoyed' a lengthy development period - up to 6 years, depending on which source you believe. Accordingly, there was a lot of anticipation, tempered with a jigger of hype and seasoned with a dash of fanboyism (as an Xbox 360-exclusive) ahead of its release.

Note torch. You'll be shining it a lot

The titular Wake is a Stephen King-esque author suffering from writer's block, who goes on holiday to the small northwestern US town of Bright Falls with his wife, Alice (a ruse on her part to get him to write again). Early on in the game Alice is abducted by dark, supernatural, forces and the rest of the game revolves around Wake's attempts to find her.

The 'dark supernatural forces' really are dark - their physical manifestations can be harmed by light, mainly that emitted by Wake's Energizer-eating torch (as well as ammo for his weapons, batteries for Wake's torch must continually be found). Those inhabitants of Bright Falls that become possessed by the dark must first be stunned by light before becoming vulnerable to gunfire. Light itself (from street lights, for instance) becomes a haven from the dark, where Wake can rest undisturbed (and trigger checkpoints).

There are driving sections. They're not that good.

The game owes a debt to a wide-range of popular culture influences. Bright Falls echoes the town of Twin Peaks and also Blue Velvet's Lumberton, as do many of its inhabitants (Cynthia Weaver *is* the Log Lady from Twin Peaks); the quest for a lost relative was seen in seminal survival horror game, Silent Hill; the dark presence reminded me of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos and some of the set pieces towards the end of the game were extremely similar (though presumably completely coincidental, given their respective development cycles) to those in Left 4 Dead 2.

The game is extremely linear, as can be seen from the map below (I can predict confidently that this will be the only map ever published on my blog).

It is very much a case of 'got to A, then go to B, via C' and the characters that you meet dictate a lot of the story - and where you are to go next - to Wake, via cutscenes (the lack of story-breaking side missions seems quite a dated gameplay mechanic).

While the graphics are excellent, the voice acting is, at best, hit-and-miss - Wake is OK, Barry, Wake's literary agent is annoying (but not badly-acted annoying) but some of the voicing of the supporting case is very variable in its quality. I quite like that, reminding me of the (far worse) voice acting in Silent Hill, which led you to wonder if the characters were 'baddies' or just 'badly acted'.

At the sheriff's. Like in Twin Peaks.

I throughly enjoyed playing the game despite its flaws but, unfortunately, it's had a poor time at retail, selling (I read in 360 magazine a couple of weeks ago) only 500,000 copies. It was discounted quite heavily within a couple of months of its release (as I said here I picked up the Collector's Edition for only £20 in July) in the face of gamer apathy.

While it received some decent reviews (it got an 8/10 and 7/10, respectively, in gamesTM and Edge, the UK's finest multi-format magazines and a 7/10 on www.eurogamer.net), it didn't receive the unanimous 9s and 10s that maybe some had thought that its pedigree long gestation and would have warranted. A large factor in its lack of activity at retail was its release, in the EU, on 14 May 2010 (coincidentally, my birthday) - just 7 days before the sublime Red Dead Redemption (which did, deservedly, receive stellar reviews). RDR sucked all of the oxygen out of the games market in one giant copy-selling behemoth and another story-led game (though RDR's 'modular' story structure was far more innovative than that used in Alan Wake) didn't stand much chance. The multi-format RDR has sold approaching 7m copies to date. Even if that figure is split evenly between the 360 and PS3 versions, it has still outsold Alan Wake 7-1 in a similar timeframe. I would be very surprised if Microsoft thought that it would compete in a meaningful way with Rockstar's game but even so, half a million copies must be a disappointment.

Stuck on a boat and now some guy's doing his Eric Morecambe impression. Worst. Holiday. Ever.

It is unfortunate that the game has not been more successful. As I said, it is very linear but it is difficult to make something as tightly story-driven as this without having a degree of linearity (for the same reason you don't start turn to the middle of a book after the first chapter, outside of a Fighting Fantasy book anyway), as Heavy Rain found earlier this year. If such games aren't successful, simple economics dictates that similar games won't be green-lighted in future - boxed console games cost millions to develop and consequently need to sell millions to recoup the investment. If the moneymen think that Medal of Duty 4: Tactical Warfare is a better option than original IP, then that's what they'll fund (and that isn't necessarily a criticism of them - once upon a time, I qualified as an accountant).

Although it acts as a veritable magpie towards other fiction, the work of synthesis that Remedy has created is original in its own right and should be welcomed for that in an increasingly risk averse market.

Epic Citadel - iPad

2010-09-04T00:37:00.000-07:00

Last week, Apple released a tech demo called Epic Citadel created by Epic Games (developer of Gears of War) using their 'Unreal Engine 3' software. It is not a game as such (or at all) but rather seeks to show what can be done with the engine on iOS, the operating system used by the iPad and iPhone.

The demo, all shown in first-person viewpoint, showcases a medieval-themed hill-top citadel, complete with soaring towers, buttresses and a town nestling against the castle walls (though devoid of people). Movement is controlled by either tapping a destination on screen, with your viewpoint then 'walking' towards it, or, more directly via two virtual thumbsticks (one for movement, the other for 'looking around').

I'm not normally a big fan of virtual thumbsticks (though I find they work far better on the iPad than the iPhone, due to the size of the screen) but an interesting development here is that they are movable around the screen. Wherever you touch down on the left or right of the screen becomes the thumbstick, thus potentially (in 'proper' games) avoiding the need for these items to block crucial onscreen action - if you found this was the case, you could simply move the stick to an empty area and continue.

Other than wander around, there isn't anything that you can do - it does not pretend to be a game, it is simply a tech demo. Only one building (that I could find) can be entered and there are no objects to interact with but that is not the point - it is simply showing what can be achieved on the platform.

It is absolutely gorgeous to look at, as these screens show. All the photos were taken by my 8-year old daughter - I'd asked her to take photos of 'something pretty' and 10 minutes later she'd taken all of those shown. According to Epic's website, the demo only took the team 8 weeks to create - it will be very interesting what full games can be developed using these tools, in a full development cycle.

I've written before that I thought that the iPad had massive potential as a gaming device and, with tools like this available for developers, I'm hoping that this potential will be fulfilled before too long.

One careful Disney Princess owner

Jousting or circus tents. Hope it's the former

Interior shot, where the virtual thumbsticks can be seen

In medieval world, it's always clothes drying weather

Reminds me a bit of Bowerstone, from Fable

Videogames on TV

2010-08-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

Last week, a new, 24/7, gaming-only, cable/satellite channel was announced for the UK, to be called for reasons beyond me, Ginx. Possibly HD at launch, possibly 3D at some point, definitely chockfull of repeats (fair enough if they are going to broadcast 24 hours a day), it will launch in November 2010. The channel is chaired, according to its website, by a former president of MTV Europe, Peter Epstein and MTV's success is what the CEO Michiel Bakker said is Ginx's aim, when announcing its launch at the Edinburgh Interactive conference 2010.

The range of programming will be, Ginx says, more casual in the daytime hours and then get "edgier" (I dread to think) after 10pm. Its website states it will be aiming at the 8-35-year old market (so, not me!). Ginx already provides game programming on Bravo, with GameFace. I've seen GameFace before and it is very (very) poor. A whole channel behind the makers of that? Hmm, I'm not sure.

Gamers have, historically, been poorly served by mainstream TV. I know that many people extol the virtues of Gamesmaster but that was years ago and I truly do not believe that that style of programme would work in the Internet age. As humorous as seeing a digitally-enhanced Sir Patrick Moore giving out game advice was, the simple fact is that if you're stuck on a game these days, you'll look on the 'Net, not write to a stargazing knight of the realm. Similarly, watching gamers play games is a pretty dull spectacle - any viewers of Sky One's Gamesville from a few years ago can vouch for that - and that's something else that wouldn't work (to give credit to Bakker, he did say that if that didn't work, Ginx wouldn't do it).

What would work, I think, is talking about games in a sensible adult fashion and I hope that Ginx could find half an hour in its schedule for that (I'm not sure it will though). Review programmes on mainstream TV cover books, films and the theatre - why not a games version? The superb Games Night (like The Late Show/Late Review but for games) on little-lamented satellite channel (and Ginx precursor) x-league.tv, was just that - four industry professionals, seated on a static set, talking about games, with one (vaguely professional) host in the Mark Lawson role leading the discussion. I'm surprised that no other channel has picked up on this concept as it would be cheap and sure to be supported by games companies. I doubt it would want for guests either - I'm sure gaming professionals would love to break out of only being on internet-only video, as that would then prove to their collective mothers that they do, in fact, have a 'proper' job!

Although instinctively wary of Ginx (I'm not a fan of MTV), I am quietly looking forward to it and will definitely be tuning in (and then blogging about it) when it starts broadcasting in a couple of months.

We've all been on a, summer holiday

2010-08-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

The blog has been quiet over the last couple of weeks as I've been on a family holiday to rural Suffolk, where, by my calculations, it is about 1987. There was no internet connection and precious little mobile phone coverage, making it a holiday from my blog, as well as my job.

Although there were no home consoles around, as a true geek family we brought along a couple of DSs, a PSP and an iPad. My daughter worked hard trying to pay off her mortgage to the usurious Tom Nook in Animal Crossing: Wild World on DS, my wife exhibited a hitherto only suspected desire for world domination in Civilisation Revolution on the iPad (the iPhone version, but expanded to full-screen) and I, as I always do when going away, took a bunch of unplayed DS and PSP games from my Pile of Shame.

On holiday, I usually try a few different games to get a feel for ones that I want to spend more time with (which is how I whittle down my home console Pile of Shame) but, other than a few games of Lego Battles on DS and a few hours with Professor Layton and Pandora's Box, I concentrated on one game only, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. I love Fire Emblem games and, even though I returned home from my holiday yesterday, I still played the DS game in preference to my home consoles last night. I'm about 16 hours into the game so far, which I think is about halfway and it is fantastic, as good as (indeed, not much different from) the GBA games. I'll be reviewing it on here when I've completed it, so I won't go into too much detail now.

I had a great holiday and aim to carry my post-holiday buzz as far into my first week back at work as I can (roll on the bank holiday next week). Wish me luck :)

Alan Wake Collector's Limited Edition unboxing

2010-08-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Pretty much since I started this site, I've been using 'Statcounter' to monitor its traffic. One of the tools that this application offers is the ability to see which of a site's pages are more popular than others. I've noticed that popular pages seem to be those that show an unboxing of a limited edition of game, presumably something that is interesting to those who, probably sensibly, opt for the vanilla version of a game (thereby saving them £5, £10 or more).

I've recently picked up the Alan Wake limited edition online, for a bargain price of £20 (new and delivered). The RRP of this version of the game was £50, so presumably it sold as badly as the main edition, hence the deep discount.

As it's been put for a few months now, I hadn't intended to blog about it but in the interests of giving people what they want, this is what is included in the package.

Inside a cardboard slip file is a large box, fashioned to look like a doorstep-like hardback novel, tying in with the eponymous protagonist's in-game career as a Stephen King-esque novelist.

You can just about make out the 'Alan Wake' signature on the box

The 'book' is hinged and opening it reveals that it is a DVD boxset-style slip case, containing three items.

There's a slim hardback book ("The Alan Wake Files"), the DVD game case and a two-disc case containing the soundtrack CD and the 'bonus disk'. The soundtrack to the game hasn't really grabbed me while playing (unlike, say, the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack, that I also own having been given the limited edition to that game for my birthday). Still, it is a nice addition to the package.

The soundtrack/bonus disk case.

The bonus disk includes a few videos about the game and its developer, Remedy and some slideshows of artwork (I haven't looked at these too closely as I don't want any spoilers). It also unlocks some in-game content - a commentary for the game (like a director's commentary on a DVD), that can be switched on when you next play the game itself. Switching this commentary on (in the 'Options' on the main game menu) unlocks an avatar award for your Xbox 360 avatar.

Two Xbox 360 dashboard themes can also be unlocked through the bonus disk too, allowing you to turn your dashboard into Bright Falls or Elderwood (basically, the same place at daytime and nighttime. This is the first theme I've ever had, so I don't know if it is a particularly good one but it looked nice enough to me.

The photo below shows Bright Falls and also shows my avatar modelling the game's sole award (jacket & scarf combo).

Cowboy hat model's own

The book is a collection of 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' (though all, of course, fiction) and compliments the characters and action of the game. The 'author' of the book is a character in the game and the whole authentic-looking (down to review quotes on the dust-jacket) package treats the game as 'real'.

Alan Wake's first published work, apparently

The final item in the package is a code to download the game's first DLC, only released a week or so ago. This is included in the game case, along with the instruction manual.

Alan Wake is one of the most impressive limited editions I've seen, even at the full RRP. For £20 it was an absolute bargain. As for the game, I've played a couple of episodes (the action is divided into a number of 'episodes', like a TV series) and I'm enjoying it so far. It reminds me a bit of PS1 game Silent Hill and TV programme Twin Peaks (and, continuing the David Lynch theme, the film Blue Velvet). There's also a 'HP Lovecraft' feel to it, underlined by one of the trees in a forest being signposted 'Great Old One'!

The complete package

EDIT 13/9/10: I've now played through the game and my review is here.

Fable III

2010-08-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

As I've said elsewhere on here, I love the two Fable games and am looking forward to the third later on this year. Many games with a fantasy setting can be po-faced and up themselves but Fable can rarely be accused of that, being a far more bawdy experience - like a videogame version of The Canterbury Tales (compared to, say, Dragon Age being like Beowulf ). I like both types of game and I'm glad that there's room for both in the market (though I wish there were a few more that went for humour like Fable does).

Yesterday, Lionhead, the Fable developer, released a cinematic trailer for Fable III to further stoke up my excitement levels (though that might not have been their main reason) and it can be viewed, in all its loveliness, here.

Earlier this week, Lionhead released a 'Villager Maker' wherein you could, by answering a series of on-screen multiple choice questions, create a Fable III character. If you pre-order the game, you will receive a code to unlock this character in the game. I'll probably do this - I'm certainly going to buy the game as soon as it comes out, so I might as well pre-order - and I'll probably go for the rather lovely Collector's Edition.

Chris Redfield's toughest challenge yet

2010-08-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

Chris Redfield has had some bad experiences in his time. Fighting zombies, fighting things that aren't zombies but, really, *are* zombies and, going by his appearance in Resident Evil 5, some serious steroid abuse.

What he hadn't done - until now - was jump out of a first (second, if you're American) floor window, with only a parachute made from a child's t-shirt and 8 strands of wool.

Yesterday, I bought this book -

An alternative title could have been 'Excuses for Dad to act like a kid'

One of which's chapters explains how to make a parachute from some cloth, thread and some sort of action figure. A challenge that my daughter and I picked up yesterday afternoon (after first having made a 'cloud' in a plastic bottle, with just hot water and a lit match - this book rocks).

I was given a 4" figurine (not, as my daughter would have it, a 'doll') of Chris Redfield when I bought Resident Evil 5 (I'm not sure why - I hadn't pre-ordered, or bought a limited edition but I did buy the game on the day of its release). It is in an ideal pose, unluckily for him, for being tied to a parachute, as its arms are raised up and holding a pistol. Unlike when Chris is in this pose in-game, however, this Chris would not be immobile...

Little does he know what is to come

We then cut out a circle (well, it's roundish) from a promo t-shirt for Monkey Bizness (motto - I kid you not - "Where kids can be kidz". No, I don't know what it means either) given to my daughter a while ago. Together with some evenly-cut lengths of wool, we now had the makings of a parachute.

This must be what it's like to be a Blue Peter presenter

We then poked the thread through the cloth and tied the ends to Chris.

With MoD cuts, this may well be how the Parachute Regiment equips itself in future

A short trip upstairs to scope out the dropzone later....

Please ignore the dirty windowsill

Jill !!!!!!!!!!!

One small step for man, one giant leap for a hand-painted action figure later...

The parachute worked quite well but Chris was probably a bit too heavy for complete success (an action figure of Chris based on his appearance in the first Resident Evil would have been fine). Unfortunately, Chris did not survive the experience unscathed - he lost part of his foot (see photo above). Fortunately, I had a green herb (aka polystyrene cement) to hand and, as you can see, he is now fully recovered (and presumably wanting to get back to the zombie hordes for an easy life).

Limbo - review

2010-07-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up in the eighties, UK TV's Channel 4 would frequently show, late at night, animation shorts produced from behind the Iron Curtain. Not exactly Mickey Mouse, they were often dark, grainy and disturbing. Maybe they were in some way a veiled critique of communism, or maybe that's what forty years of communism does to you (though Stalin was a big fan of Disney, apparently). To a 13-year old awaiting a 'red triangle' programme, they were a nuisance but, looking back, the films were actually very good.

It was these shorts that were brought to my mind when I first played Limbo, a new XBLA game. The visuals also reminded me of David Lynch's Eraserhead and of German expressionist silent cinema, as Limbo is completely monochromatic - a unique look for a videogame (well, since ZX81 days, anyway).

Limbo is a puzzle-platformer, like last year's media darling, Braid. In the game, you play as a small boy, shown only in silhouette with two blinking dots for eyes (poignantly, these wink out when he dies). The boy has to proceed from left to right in a scrolling expressionist landscape of dark forests, factories and towns, avoiding a variety of ways in which the landscape (and the odd giant spider) can dismember him. And I really do mean 'a variety of ways' - I was chopped to pieces by buzz-saws and fixed machine guns, electrocuted, squashed by pile-drivers, fell from great heights, drowned, impaled by arrows (launched by other small boys), squashed by boulders and more. Even though the boy is only shown in silhouette, these deaths are often graphically depicted (the 'gore' can be muted in the options screen).

This is probably the jolliest scene in the game

The objects and structures in the game behave rigidly to their own rules and it is by understanding these rules - reversing gravity for example - that the player can work their way through the spatial puzzles set by the developers. As with Braid, the player gets a great sense of achievement in working out a puzzle that had previously seemed impenetrable, though I thought the difficulty level was significantly lower than with Braid (not that I wasn't stuck a few times).

There is a story attached to the game, that the boy is trying to rescue the soul of his sister, trapped in Limbo but this has very little connection to what you're actually playing. Back in the olden days when I started gaming, programmers would often, I have since read, make a game and then add the 'story' (essentially just for the text on the cassette insert) at the end - space empire, aliens, lost kingdom, curse, blah blah blah. Limbo's 'story' reminded me of that - it seemed to have very little intersect with what I was doing, other than in the name. I think, like the best art, players can bestow their own meaning on what they see in the game, rather than having the artist tell them explicitly what the work is about.

Yes, that is a dead body in the right-hand box

I wondered as I was playing, enraptured by the art style, would I have been so keen on it if it was a Wario game (instinctively, I feel it is more of a Wario game than a Mario one) and had more conventional visuals. Rather shallowly, I think I probably would not - the art style is so bound up with game, I think it would be a far lesser game if it had conventional 'videogame' graphics. That probably says more about me than Limbo though.

Fantastic

I don't think I could write about Limbo without mentioning its price and length. The full game is 1200 MS points, which is in the top bracket of XBLA prices but it can be completed on the first play through in only 4 hours (and far more quickly in successive play throughs, when the you know how to solve the puzzles). There is a trial game that you can download for free, so at least you can see if it is the type of thing that you'd like before paying the money over but, even if it is, the '£/gameplay hour' ratio is quite steep.

Personally, I think it is worth it. After playing the trial and liking it, I rationalized that I'd pay a similar price for a blu-ray disc for a film with a shorter running time and not feel cheated and, if the game was of similar quality, the player should not feel cheated either.

Metropolis, anyone?

I thoroughly enjoyed Limbo from start to all-to-quick finish. It might not be to everyone's taste - my wife said to me while playing it 'Are you still playing that horrible, depressing, game?' - but if you want to play something totally different from anything else released this year, give Limbo a try.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Achievements (again)

2010-07-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

When I first bought my Xbox 360 in the summer of 2007, I wasn't all that interested in the Achievements that could be unlocked from playing games and 'achieving' a certain preset target. It hadn't been something that I'd paid much attention to prior to my purchase and, as I was unable to hook up to Xbox Live until early 2009 (*waves fist at BT's inadequate broadband provision*), comparisons with XBLA friends was not an issue either. Consequently, the achievement 'hauls' of the first few games that I played through to completion - Crackdown 2, Bioshock, Battle for Middle Earth 2 - were quite paltry in comparison to games that I played later on. I did not bother to check what Achievements those games had and paid little attention to those that I had achieved.

This attitude continued until at least my first 360 bought the farm, around Easter 2008. After Microsoft replaced my 360, crafted, like the last, with a heat sink carved from the purest Belgian chocolate (destined to last for nearly two years - way to go MS), I began to pay more attention to the Achievements (or 'cheevos') available in games. This slow process picked up after BT finally deigned to provide barely-adequate broadband to my street ('customers, welcome to the late 20th Century with our 'up to 2MB' broadband', I think their sales literature went) at the beginning of 2009. Although, I didn't - and still don't - play much online, I became more aware that there was a large community, with each member having a gamerscore totalling their Achievements and, with a certain school-playground-competitiveness, took to consciously trying to build my gamerscore (as I believe I've mentioned in earlier posts).

Whereas initially I'd played games as and how I wanted, taking the Achievements as and when they appeared, over time this shifted to encompass looking through the list of Achievements and changing the way I played solely in order to unlock them.

My attitude began to shift with the brilliant Assassin's Creed II, which I received for Christmas last year. It is quite free and easy with its Achievements and, in the latter stages of the 43 hours that Raptr says I'd spent on the game, I began to realise that I could, for the first time, 'max' out a game - get all of the 1000 points available (I had around 900). I had a look at the 'missing' Achievements and one that stuck out for me was for collecting every feather found in the game (Renaissance Italy was, apparently, strewn with white feathers left in inaccessible places). Collecting all of the feathers would have been an extremely boring and repetitive process. I play games for fun; I go to work for 'extremely boring'. I saw no reason why I should 'work' for Microsoft, Ubisoft or my gamerscore in my free time.

This attitudinal change continued over the subsequent months and reached a head with the sublime Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar games are very frugal with their distribution of Achievements - I was a third of the way through GTAIV before I gave up in frustration at the lack of checkpoints, yet had under 100 gamerpoints - which I don't have a problem with (they really are Achievements). RDR was no different and, having put over 20 hours into the game, I still had under 200 points-worth of Achievements from it. I had a look at those that I didn't have and considered actively seeking them out, or in changing the way I was playing the game - favouring a certain weapon, or only aiming for headshots for example - and I checked myself. I was really enjoying the game - one of the best this year and easily my favourite Rockstar game - and I didn't want to deliberately play it in a less enjoyable way, simply to boost a featureless number attached to my gamercard. At the time of writing I have 415 gamerpoints from RDR (in 39 hours of gameplay), all of which were obtained 'enjoyably'. I'd like to think (and this is certainly my intention) that I will try to avoid 'working' (rather than 'playing') to build my gamerscore in future games too.

The only exceptions to this new policy are Avatar Awards - items for your Xbox Live avatar, won in game. I think I will still actively seek these out, probably as they provide a tangible (albeit virtual) reward for in-game success, rather than simply adding to an impersonal score - I feel I actually am being rewarded for achieving something.

I've by no means become anti Achievements over the last few months - when one pops up, I always check to see what I got it for and I still compare those that I've received to those that friends have received on the Raptr site. Last night (technically early this morning) I unlocked 5 Achievements at once (a record for me) on Red Dead Redemption multiplayer and that was enjoyable (but I was only expecting one, or possibly two, as I hadn't checked the list beforehand). I'm still attracted to the idea of Achievements generally - I'd sooner that they were there than not - but I will no longer undertake laborious in-game task for the sole purpose of unlocking an Achievement.

Unless it unlocks a funny hat for my Avatar...

I've won a Rockstar 'Red Dead Redemption' competition!

2010-07-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, it seems, I entered a very easy competition on UK gaming site, www.nowgamer.com , to win what was described as a Red Dead Redemption 'goodie bag'. Last week, out of the blue, my postie delivered a bulging jiffy bag full of RDR promotional material. In keeping with the Western theme of the game, it was very much a case of The Good, the Bad and Ugly (I'll leave you to decide which is which).

Firstly, there was a candle in the shape of a bundle of sticks of TNT (every home should have one). As with my The Conduit MP3 speakers shaped like a hand grenade, probably not something to be taken through airport security any time soon.

Imagine how delighted my wife was at this

Then there's the bizarre but themically-accurate (it is advertised in-game) 'Western' soap, which, as you can see, is 'tough on blood and manure. I'm sure it will come in very useful.

The colouring is from iron oxide, according to the 21st Century labelling. Nice.

No bagful of videogame promotional material is complete without a t-shirt and the RDR haul was no exception.

It's not super XL - that's a child-sized bench

Gambling sub-games - poker and blackjack in this case - are a well-developed theme in Western popular culture and they are present in RDR. The final item that I was sent was a lovely reproduction of the pack of cards used in the game, complete with Mexican 'Day of the Dead' style art and 'authentic' stains.

They also come with an embossed carrying case

Beautifully macabre

The Joker, El Diablo

30-minute gamer, more like

2010-07-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

One of the disadvantages of having two obsessions - football and videogames - is that, on occasion, the two clash and something has to give. Ordinarily, that is not much of a problem - switching between the latest triple-A videogame for an hour and half of 'Match of the Day', for example.

During this World Cup, however, playing videogames has taken a bit of a hammering, particularly with matches being played in what would otherwise be peak gaming hours. Consequently, where usually I can expect to spend 10-15 hours per week gaming, I've been lucky to get five hours under my belt over the last month.

There's still plenty I want to play though - I've been inching my way through Red Dead Redemption, I've bought Demon's Souls, I'm playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and I've broken the ground on Dragon Age: Origins - just no time to do it. Hence the quieter-than-usual blogging.

As I type this, it's half-time in the 3rd place play-off game, Uruguay v Germany and the Holland v Spain final is tomorrow. The premier league season doesn't start for another month, so I should be able to get some gaming in again after tomorrow!

Demon's Souls (PS3) Black Phantom Edition, unboxing

2010-07-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

Hardcore (and, apparently, just plain hard) RPG Demon's Souls has recently received a PAL release. As well as the straightforward vanilla edition, Namco Bandai has put together a bells-and-whistles special edition, known as the 'Black Phantom Edition'.

I picked this edition up earlier this week (£45, in-store). I've yet to give it a gametest, so can't comment on the gameplay or its growing reputation as a diamond-hard old-skool test of gaming prowess (which, if true, might limit how far I get through it) but I have unpacked it to see what paying the extra cover price got me.

Everything comes in a shiny box. [please ignore unmown lawn in the background]

Inside the box, along with the game, you get a 46-page (A5) hard-cover artbook, a 158-page (A5) strategy guide and the soundtrack.

Mmm, lovely...

The strategy guide seems quite comprehensive, giving descriptions of NPCs, enemies, character classes, weapons, spells, armour, upgrades and a 50-page walkthrough. This last element is described as a guide to assist the first-time player of the game to get through to the end, rather than the 'best' way of doing so (a business opportunity therefore remains for Prima, Brady et al).

Pages from the walkthrough, showing character classes

The artbook is filled with the standard concept art that you'd expect from such things (artbook from Castlevania: SotN excepted) . Very pretty/grotesque but, until I play the game, I have no point of reference. Looks nice, though.

A fixer-upper

The soundtrack is on CD, a nice change after some recent limited editions (such Red Dead Redemption) just including a download code for this, rather than physical media). It is held in place on the inside back cover of the artbook.

And that's it. I think Namco Bandai has put together a great special edition with this package, well worth the extra money (and you can probably pick it up for a fiver cheaper than I paid, online). All I need now is some time to play it (maybe after the World Cup has finished).

Tax breaks for the gaming industry, part 2

2010-06-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

Breaking news (this must be what it is like to work for the BBC).

The Chancellor (UK Finance Minister) today (22 June 2010) announced that the planned tax break (I'd blogged about this before) for the video games industry in the UK has been axed with immediate effect.

I think that this is a short-sighted move that could hasten the loss of skilled gaming industry personnel overseas (hello Canada). As a high-tech industry, gaming is a growth area, exactly the type of knowledge-based industry that the incoming Government had said they wanted to support. I haven't seen any industry comment as yet (the announcement was only an hour ago) but it is unlikely that they will be thrilled, given how long they have lobbied Governments of varying hues for such breaks over the years.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Nintendo's help for casual gamers

2010-06-21T02:14:00.000-07:00

I purchased Super Mario Galaxy 2 on 11 June, the day that it was released in the UK, from Game (having been suckered in by the tin moneybox they were offering for pre-orders - my love for gaming tat knows no bounds). It is absolutely fantastic, the best game I have played all year (a list that includes God of War III and Red Dead Redemption, both themselves candidates for game of the year). This isn't a review, though - that may (or, frankly, may not - there is a World Cup on, you know) arrive in the coming weeks. Rather, I'd like to highlight what Nintendo has done in the game to 'train' the new gamers that the Wii has brought to gaming in how to play a 'proper' videogame.

And that's what SMG2 is (even though it has some motion control) - a proper videogame. There's a hero, a heroine and a boss. One of those gets kidnapped by one of the others, who has to be rescued by the third (no prizes for guessing which role is played by which character). There are bad guys who can be killed by jumping on them and there are stars. Always stars. Long-standing gamers will recognise the template - essentially unchanged for over twenty years - and will jump (or should that be double-jump?) in without even a second thought. The wider audience that the Wii has brought to gaming, who have been used to 'Just Dance Out Megamix Petz - Samba Edition', don't have this prior knowledge. They don't know, unsurprisingly when you think about it, that jumping on a turtle will kill the turtle and then allow you to use the shell as an underwater propulsion device - and all the other myriad gameplay devices present in a Mario platform game.

Nintendo know this and, possibly driven by lower-than-expected sales of the first game (it sold a lot - nearly 9m - but not as a percentage of higher-than-expected sales of the system itself - 71m and counting), have packaged the game with a 'How to Play' DVD. Most casual Wii games are literally 'pick up and play' - you don't need instructions when using a Wiimote as a tennis racquet, you just use it as you would a tennis racquet (I imagine - I've not lifted a tennis racquet this century). That is not the case with a traditional video game like SMG2.

Any Mario platform game's gameplay is the distillation of over twenty years of development. Expecting my mother-in-law, to choose a casual Wii user at random, to just pick up and play it is unrealistic. While at first glance the DVD is a bit patronising, I think it is a sensible approach from Nintendo and, at the very least, it is heartening that they are still producing core games, while at the same time trying to bring the new audience along with it. Even the choice of physical media is aimed at these new users, who would, I would argue, be less likely to use an online manual.

It doesn't stop there either. Throughout the game (and I'm 40 Stars in, so two thirds of the way to rescuing the Princess or one third to 'full' completion), there are signposts (literally) giving short, written instructions to the player, or larger signposts that launch a video clip showing exactly how a manoeuvre should be completed. This player-assistance reaches its zenith with the 'Cosmic Guide' (a kind of shadow version of 'Rosalina', from the first game), who appears after a few failed attempts at a particular sequence, stating that she can offer some help. If you take her up on this, control of Mario is handed over and the player watches as the level is completed on autopilot (you can jump out of this at any time and regain control). To prevent this making the game too easy, any star that you collect in a level where you have used the Cosmic Guide at any point, will be bronze, rather than gold (I tried it once - just for research, you understand).

Nintendo has received a lot of flak from core gamers this generation over its pursuit of non-core gamers but it tried to compete with Sony in the last two generations on a purely gaming basis and was soundly trounced on units sold. Microsoft, a huge money-bucket of investment, joining in last generation (and fighting out with Nintendo for the title of first loser) also cast doubts on Nintendo's future viability as a gaming hardware developer. The Wii marked a change in emphasis for Nintendo, in trying to make gaming attractive to non-gamers (as there are significantly more of them than gamers) and it has been wildly successful. However, I think that the attachment rate (units sold by games sold) for these new gamers, shows that they aren't a sturdy platform for future profitability. Nintendo need to school them in the ways of traditional games and the 'gaming stabiliser wheels' in SMG2 are, hopefully (for those that wish, like me, that there will still be games of this type in the future) a way of doing this. How successful this approach is, coupled with how many units this game sells, will have an influence on how many more of these types of traditional games Nintendo will develop in the future.

And if you have a Wii and don't yet have this game - buy it now!

iPad - a game changer?

2010-06-07T06:46:00.001-07:00

I bought an iPad last weekend (please insert your own 'more money than sense' joke here). I think it is a fantastic piece of kit and it is now my primary device for surfing the net, reviewing my RSS feeds and reading/sending email. Or accessing IMDB while on the sofa, having had a 'what's he been in before?' moment while watching TV (who'd have thought that someone from Sky 1's 'Dream Team' would next turn up as the big villain in 'Flash Forward'?). A better of way of putting it would be to say that it is my leisure' device', with my laptop being my 'business device', used for drafting documents (though Pages is available as an App) or anything that needs printing out. Drafting with the touchscreen keyboard is fine in short bursts - this blog post has been wholly drafted on my iPad, with the Blogpress App - but if I was drafting anything more weighty, I'd still be reaching my my MacBook.

The iPad isn't perfect but it has proved even better than I thought it would be. Magazines and comics look great on the screen and, if enough publishers chose this as a distribution medium, I think it would become my primary method for consuming them (take note 'Future Publishing').

But this is a videogame blog, so I suppose I should talk about its gaming performance. I've had an iPhone for a year and, while I have some games on it, as a gaming platform it is hampered by the small screen and lack of buttons. Some games that don't require constant contact between the player and the screen - Angry Birds, for example - work very well but many, more action-oriented, games - such as iDracula - have virtual 'buttons' (used to control the on-screen action), on the touchscreen itself, a technique I do not think works very well. I'm a pen-pusher and, as such, have never done a proper day's work in my life, giving me the dainty hands of a Jane Austen heroine. When manipulating virtual buttons during iPhone games, however, it seems as if I have the crushing fists of a cage fighter, obscuring a third of the screen as I go about my my ham-fisted quest to die as quickly as possible.

That is not the case with the iPad, as the large screen can easily accommodate a few virtual buttons without risk of the player obscuring the touchscreen. I've returned to the afore-mentioned iDracula and found it far more enjoyable than on the iPhone, even with some pixellation, as the buttons (and my hands) don't clutter the on-screen action.

All the games I have on iPhone have been uploaded onto my iPad and, for the most part, they work well. You can either run them at their original resolution, with the game then appearing as an iPhone-sized rectangle in the middle of the iPad screen, or you can increase its size, which is enough to fill the iPad screen. The latter option does result in some pixellation, which does no favours to text-heavy games but is passable for games such as Angry Birds that have minimal text. A special mention should given to Metal Gear Solid Touch, a game I bought for the iPhone ages ago but didn't get very far with, due to 'big hands' hands syndrome - it was automatically maximised for iPad, with no pixellation. Still not a great game but it was a nice to see.

Angry Birds actually has an HD version, optimised for iPad but, if you have the original, I don't think it is worth the extra expense (£2.99, as opposed to the iPhone version's 59p), as it works perfectly ably when upscaled on the iPad. It is worth noting that your progress on iPhone games won't always be transferred when you sync the game to the iPad - some do (Beneath a Steel Sky) and some don't (Angry Birds). For those that don't, you will have to start from the beginning again, which isn't really a problem for something as immediate (and short-burst) as Angry Birds.

The one native iPad game that I have bought so far is Real Racing HD, a spruced up version of an iPhone game that relies on the device's accelerometer for the steering, with the iPhone (and now iPad) effectively becoming the steering wheel. It was £5.99 and I'm a little disappointed with it, though appreciate its technical prowess. Apart from anything else, holding the heavier-than-you-think iPad like a steering wheel is a feat of endurance itself for long periods. The game looks like a higher resolution version of an early PS2 game and it plays reasonably well within that limited purview but isn't, control method notwithstanding, a particularly revolutionary game.

And revolutionary games are what I want from the iPad. I believe that it is a truly viable mobile gaming platform (something that I don't think that the iPhone is, for me anyway) and I hope that developers can harness the unique qualities of the iPad to deliver some great games. I'm particularly hoping for a truly accessible RTS title but I hope that the development community will deliver far more innovative games than just that. I won't be selling my 360, PS3 or Wii anytime soon (well, I've not sold any console I've ever owned, so that's a misleading claim) but I think that the iPad has the potential to be my mobile platform of choice. Mobile-ish anyway - the size of it would tax the BFG's pockets...

Mario Power-Up energy drink & Animal Crossing toys

2010-06-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will know that I love gaming ephemera - stick a gaming theme on any old rubbish and I will be working my way to the front of an orderly queue to buy it.

Imagine my excitement of seeing this in my favourite quirky tat shop, Artbox (www.artbox.co.uk)

It's-a me - reskinned Red Bull...

I'm hoping that I'll become invincible when I drink it, or possibly twice my usual size (it isn't a diet version).

It's my daughter's birthday at the end of the month. She's a fan of Animal Crossing on DS and she'll be getting the Wii version for her birthday. She'll also be getting these, that I got from Forbidden Planet (a short walk from Artbox in London's West End) -

No Tom Nook, unfortunately - too busy counting his money

Lips - 360 review

2010-05-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

I can't sing - my voice is so heroically bad, I would fail an audition for Jedward. Small children run, screaming, from the sound of my singing voice. Cats actually cry in my singing presence. You would think, then, that I'd try to avoid a karaoke game if at all possible. You'd be wrong, I have no problem in making others suffer and I find the 360-exclusive sing-a-long-a-game Lips fantastic family-based fun.

The game entails singing along, at the right time and pitch, to onscreen lyrics, thereby building your score (and/or receiving medals, the collection of which upgrades the overall rank conferred upon the player). Combos (continually hitting the right notes) build your score further (or not, in my case), as do motion-sensing actions with the mics (and 360 controller). At the end of each song, you are awarded a grade (from 'biscuit' to 'infinity' - quite a span) and can then view online scoreboards to show how you're doing against the world - I have somehow managed the 151st best version in the world of Mirror in the Bathroom by The Beat (maybe only 151 people had sung it).

You can sing solo, against another player, or in duet and there are a few singing minigames (stopping a bomb exploding; kissing; vocal duelling) available, which I'm not a fan of, certainly compared to the main singing game (yes, I'm not that good at them).

Strictly speaking, it is my daughter's game rather than mine, bought for her for Christmas 2008, at the end of a lengthy carpet-bombing advertising campaign for it on children's TV. The initial 40 songs with the first Lips weren't that great, I think as a result of having to cover too many genres in order to appeal to the widest market possible (as a new franchise). I don't think there is much crossover between fans of The Cure and Lupe Fiasco, for example (I didn't even know what a Lupe Fiasco was when I got the game). That being said, there were some gems on that first disk - I certainly brought tears to my family's eyes with my rendition (almost in the CIA sense) of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus and I'm sure Robert Smith was spinning in his woolly pully at my version of Just Like Heaven.

Songs have been available for download from Xbox Live since the game was released, in order to boost the game's longevity (and Microsoft's bulging coffers). Just like the evil Nick O'Teen (readers under the age of 35 - google it), the first hit was free (Take on Me by a-Ha) but additional songs have been 160 MS points each, with new songs added to Xbox Live every week. It seems to me that the types of songs released, unsurprisingly, have an American slant - there have often been acts I've never heard of. And that's not just because I'm old (probably). There have been some decent ones among the dross, though - I've probably downloaded about ten songs since my daughter was given the game. You can also add songs from external sources.

Late last year, a first 'proper' expansion pack was issued, Lips Number Ones, which I steered clear of as there was little on there that I was interested in among the Lips-standard 40 tracks. Two further disks have been released this year, both of which I have, Party Classics and I Love the 80s. As you can tell from the titles, both games are nostalgia-fests for 30-somethings (result!) and there are plenty of both disks that my family and I am more than happy to sing/wail along to.

Essentially, that is what Lips comes down to - having a good time singing along with family and friends. This is not a hardcore game, nor is it a game that lends itself to solo play - wanting to pretend to be Tony Hadley, in a front of a TV, on your own, would be quite an interesting character trait, to say the least. However, if you're after a fun, party game and aren't too bothered about making yourself look daft, Lips is a worthy choice.

How old is too old?

2010-05-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'm 30-something. It says so there, at the top of the page. 30-something. 39 to be precise - it was my birthday last week (quite possibly the last that I will publicly own up to).

So, aren't I a little too old to be playing games? To paraphrase top Disney Channel TV show Phineas & Ferb, 'no - no I'm not'.

I've always scoffed at this question and stated that gaming is not something bound by age. I've often quoted statistics about the average age of gamers being higher than the uninformed observer (i.e. non-gamer) would expect (though now I think that I am pulling that average upwards). When I've felt pompous, I've said 'you don't stop playing games because you get old, you get old because you stop playing games'.

However, last year this belief was shaken when my brother came to stay at my house for a weekend, for his 50th birthday. Twelve-thirteen years ago - i.e. when he was about the age I am now - I lived with my brother for a couple of years, when I first started working in London and didn't earn enough to afford a place of my own. At that time, he was an avid gamer - PC FPSs mainly but he also had a PlayStation and played the big games of the time (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider and the like).

I had planned, on his 50th weekend, to get some co-op gaming in with him but he said hadn't really played games since his mid-forties. We started playing Left 4 Dead on split-screen co-op - an FPS, so nothing he would have been unfamiliar with, gameplay-wise - and he was hopeless, barely able to aim. Or walk in a straight line. Or pathfind at all, actually. Dying though, he was an expert at. We gave it up as a bad lot before even reaching the first safe house.

That led me to think that if he could turn from being a keen gamer to being completely out of the gaming loop, could that happen to me? I'd like to think not, that gaming has been a large part of my life for nearly thirty years (with a brief gap in the late eighties/early nineties, when I was priced out of the market by the Amiga and the ST) and that I wouldn't just stop. Apart from anything else, I'd need to find something else to spend my money on.

But this isn't something that anyone can be sure of. I'm certainly enjoying my gaming now as much as I ever have - as I've said before, I think we are now in what will be looked back at in years to come as a golden age for gaming. I'd like to think that I will keep plugging on with gaming, as long as it is enjoyable to me (something that I hope will continue for many years to come). If game developers maintain the level of quality and innovation as they have in recent years, my worries should be foundless. Hopefully. But what of my blog and, more pertinently, its title?

When I used to read the 2000AD comic in the eighties and nineties, the subject of what would the comic be called when the millenium passed was raised sporadically in the letters page. When the year 2000 came, the publishers kept the name - at the end of the day, you don't shoot your brand. 2000AD launched in 1977, when the year 2000 was a long way off (certainly longer than the expected life-span of a sci-fi comic). I started this blog when I only had 18 months left of being a 30-something anything, let alone gamer. Maybe that was because, subconsciously (or pretentiously - you choose), I was fearing not being a 30-something any more and wanted to plant my flag in that decade, rather than move on into my forties (though I haven't completely ruled out being hunted down in a Logan's Run -esque fashion - the Tories are back in now, after all). Or maybe I just didn't think that far ahead - I'm not one for forethought (just ask my wife).

I think, when I'm forty, I'll just go the way of 2000AD and keep with the same name - just don't tell your local trading standards officer. Maybe I'll stick a disclaimer banner at the top of the site...

Split/Second Velocity Demo

2010-05-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Split/Second Velocity is a Burnout-style racer, wherein the player can destroy the track-side scenery, thereby taking out fellow racers and remodelling the race circuit while it's being raced on. Imagine Lewis Hamilton being able to explode the Fairmont Hotel during the Monaco Grand Prix, while Sebastian Vettel was driving through the tunnel underneath and you have a fair idea of what the game is about.

A one-track demo has recently been released on Xbox Live and (even more recently) on PSN and I've spent quite a bit of time on it. I'm not a great fan of 'proper' racing titles, like the Forza series, as they require more gaming time for the player to get to a decent level than I have at my disposal. I prefer arcade racers, such as Burnout, where there is more emphasis on fun than simulation. Split/Second Velocity is very much in the latter camp - there aren't many simulations where you can bring about the crash landing of an airplane onto the racetrack (fair enough, it is set in an airport) while the race is still going on.

I've played the single race available (three laps) and each time the race was different, due to the destruction of the track. Although these can only be actioned at certain pre-defined points on the track (having first powered up a drift & draft powered gauge), I was still seeing fresh changes on my eighth or ninth play through of the same track. I do wonder if this level of invention can be kept up for the whole game - it is one thing to be bowled over by half an hour on a free demo and another thing entirely to be content with hours of what has become repetitious gameplay having spent £30 on a new game. However, I saw enough in the demo to make it very likely that I will buy the game when released. Unfortunately for the publisher, it is out (in the UK) on 21 May - the same day as my most anticipated game of the year, Red Dead Redemption, so Split/Second Velocity will have to wait until my Wild West adventures are over.

Left 4 Dead 2 DLC - The Passing - campaign mode review

2010-04-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

As I've written elsewhere, I love Left 4 Dead and its sequel - balls-out co-op zombie carnage. L4D2's first chunk of DLC, The Passing (subtitled "Nobody survives forever"), has just been released for download (560 Microsoft points), a package I'd been looking forward to since it was originally announced. The USP of this release is that it unites the survivors of the first game with those of the second. Except for one. Yes, the 'passing' of the title refers to the death of one of the original band of survivors. At least I think it does - I suppose it could refer to the two groups passing, or the passing of the L4D flame between the two groups. Hell, I don't know - it's just an interpretation! I'll not give a spoiler to who the dead survivor is, other than to say that I guessed right at which one it was going to be...

Ellis, Rochelle, Coach & Nick look apprehensive, wondering who will be sacrificed as a ploy to flog DLC for L4D3

However, it is not the death of a L4D survivor that is the story that plays out in the campaign - that will happen in a future L4D slice of DLC (and, possibly, a digital comic). Rather, this is a 3-chapter vignette that covers what happened to Coach, Nick, Ellis and Rochelle between the end of the Dead Center campaign from L4D2 (where they flee a shopping mall in a NASCAR) and the start of Dark Carnival (where they kill zombie clowns - the worst type of clowns). During this period they meet up - or pass, if you will - the original survivors, now reduced to a trio, who then provide cover for you in the evac chapter.

I've blogged about L4D2 before and enjoy the campaign mode a lot. What the player gets with The Passing is more of the same, other than the difficulty. As I'd said even before my L4D2 review, is a very hard game and that is part of what makes it so enjoyably satisfying upon completing a chapter. Many's the occasion where I've limped towards the evac vehicle, health dangerously low, with infected snapping at my stumbling heels. The feeling of exhilaration on finally getting into the car/boat/copter or whatever and the credits starting to roll, particularly after a series of failures, is one of the best feelings in gaming this generation. That feeling is missing from The Passing, as it is not very challenging at all.

In previous campaigns - The Parish, I'm looking at you - I've sometimes spent as long on the evac chapter as I have on the rest of the campaign put together. On The Passing, we completed the evac level on the first attempt with no-one even getting incapped, let alone killed, even though we made a few mistakes along the way (it is a petrol can collecting level and there was lone wolfing at times) . In previous campaigns, that standard of play would have taken the team out early on - this time we weren't punished. I was disappointed with this lack of challenge because without that challenge, it's just not L4D to me. I was also surprised - I don't think it could have been intentional dumbing down (like, to skip to another series, Super Paper Mario on the Wii), as this DLC package is only of interest to those that liked the, bloody hard, parent game. Weird.

There are a few minor gameplay tweaks in the package - an extra melee weapon (a golf club), a new gun (M60), the obvious extra achievements and, probably the most major tweak as far as the campaign is concerned, an extra uncommon infected, the 'fallen survivor'. This latter addition, as the name suggests, is a survivor that has succumbed to the zombie plague and, unlike all other infected, when they see you they run in the opposite direction. They also drop items - health packs, molotovs etc - if you manage to catch up and kill them. Again.

I'm not a big fan of the other game modes in L4D2. Playing as a special infected (spawn, get killed quickly, wait, spawn, get killed quickly, wait) isn't my idea of fun. I did try the new mode included in the DLC, 'Mutation', which, as I understand it, is intended to be a regularly updated mash-up of other L4D2 game modes. When I played it was a mixture of 'Realism' and 'Versus'. I didn't find it much fun but if you like either it may be for you.

All in all I found this quite a disappointing slice of DLC, certainly when compared to the DLC from the first game, which I really enjoyed. It also didn't compare favourably to the recently released 'Desperate Escape' DLC for Resident Evil 5, which I thought was excellent (and will blog about soon).

Retro corner - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Gamecube)

2010-04-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

I received Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door as a Christmas present shortly after it was first released some years ago. I completed it at the time and thought it was one of the best games I'd played in years. Engaging characters and locations, excellent graphics and spot-on gameplay, coupled with a genuinely funny script.

Such is the speed of the progression of games technology, games that were thought ground-breaking when released, or of having eye-popping graphics, a few years later can play like the Burnley back four and look like Shane MacGowan after a night on the town. I think videogames' speed of change is unique in popular culture - it took years before people realised the Charlie Chaplin's films were dreadful, for example - and there's always the risk, when returning to an old favourite, that it's not actually that good. I loved Gran Turismo on PS1 when it was released (an engagement present from my wife!) and the graphics blew me away; going back to it today is like someone has thrown grit into your eyes.

I've recently played through Paper Mario TTYD again, this time in tandem with my daughter, and there was no such problem as it had stood the test of time very well, both with the graphics (which look better, to me, than those in the Wii update, Super Paper Mario) and in gameplay (similarly, better than the update).

Paper Mario TTYD is an RPG with turn-based battles, itself a follow up to the N64 game Paper Mario (and kind-of a progression from Super Mario RPG on SNES). It also shares a lot in common with the 3 Mario & Luigi games on GBA and DS. RPG staples such as amassing experience/levelling up, equipping status-altering items (known as 'badges' in the game), wandering monsters and accumulating party members are all present but with none of the po-facedness often present in RPGs.

Mario finds out the hard way that Peach is a Twilight fan

The 'Paper' of the title refers to Mario's (and everyone else in the gameworld) status as, well, 2D paper characters in a 3D world (appropriate, given Mario's 2D origins, I suppose). As the game progresses, Mario gains powers (or 'curses', as they are referred to), to utilise his 2D shape to turn into, among other things, a paper dart, a tube and a boat. Each curse allows Mario to reach previously inaccessible areas. Additionally, as the game goes on, Mario collects a motley band of characters to join his party, each with unique powers (only one fights alongside Mario at any one time though) that need to be used to solve puzzles and also to access new areas.

It probably won't come as a surprise to read that the story revolves around Princess Peach being kidnapped. Not by Bowser though - the big bad this time around is called Lord Crump, who has an army of X-Nauts but, to be honest, if you read that as 'Bowser' and 'army of Koopas', you would have a good idea of their role in the story. Bowser does appear, sometimes as a (giant) playable character, as a kind of comic relief. And 'comic' is the right word to use - as I said above, Paper Mario TTYD is genuinely, laugh out loud, funny. Whoever did the translation from the Japanese original did an excellent job.

Rogueport - you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. No, wait a second - that's somewhere else

The game is a bit of a slow starter - there's far more 'Press 'A' to continue' than active gameplay in the first hour or so - as the storyline is laid before the player. This revolves around the Thousand-Year Door of the title and how it imprisons a demon who, a thousand years ago, despoiled Rogueport, the town that acts as the game's hub. Lord Crump wants to open it and Mario, aided by his band, wants to keep the demon locked up. This being a Mario game, this involves collecting stars, with both sides trying to get the seven available.

Both my playthroughs took around 48 hours - this is a long game - but is well worth the effort. As I said in my introduction, this time around I played it with my daughter (following up our play through of the N64 Paper Mario on Wii Virtual Console) and she thoroughly enjoyed it, often badgering me to play it with her (on occasion, waking me up to do so). After initially being upset - there were tears - that Paper Mario TTYD had different party members than its predecessor, she quickly became engrossed in the story and in the new characters. Like any Mario game though, don't be put off by the cartoon visuals - it is not an easy game - and a young child would have difficulty in playing it solo (I did all the battling).

It didn't sell many copies back in the day - an RPG on a not particularly successful console isn't going to set any sales records in Europe - but it is reasonably simple to pick up a copy on eBay, usually for around £20. As with all Gamecube games, it can be played on the Wii and is easily better than 95% of all games released on that console to date (and I'm being charitable to the Wii with that proportion). After all, what would you rather spend £20 on - Paper Mario TTYD or Just Dance?

No, Iceland - we said send us your CASH

2010-04-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've always quite liked Lava levels in games - Mario's had a few, in platformers and karts, as has Crash and Ratchet & Clank. They can have lovely, intricate lighting effects and an attention-focussing 'imminent death-ness' about them.

Lava and, particularly, ash, in the real world, however, royally suck. This weekend I was due to fly to Belfast for a Gaming Weekend with a friend. I think I've said before that, as good as Xbox Live multiplayer is, it is no substitute for trash-talking, junkfood-eating local multiplayer. In the olden days, local multiplayer (aka playing with your mates after school) was the only way to play videogames with friends. These days (the 'new-den days', as my daughter calls them) Xbox Live multiplayer is undoubtedly more convenient and my opportunities for the local variety, other than with my daughter (and smack-talking a 7-year old would probably be considered bad form) are few and far between.

So, this weekend, after weeks of planning, we were all set up -

The best laid plans........

Only problem - an Icelandic volcano that hadn't erupted for two hundred years. All flights grounded in UK airspace and my bags resolutely left standing in my hall. I blame Bowser - he was always a fan of lava. Arrgh.

A packed bag, never to be used. Can you feel the pathos?

So, we had to resort to Xbox Live and the Splinter Cell Conviction co-op missions, where we learnt that I truly suck at stealth games.

Back from the Dead

2010-04-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

Yes! My Xbox 360 has been returned by Microsoft.

It took under three weeks - not bad considering the Easter weekend fell in the middle of that period. The console has the same serial number as before but the whole thing smells of 'new', is pretty much dust-free (not the condition that it was in beforehand) and I've had to reintroduce my controllers to it, so I wonder if Microsoft have had a rummage around its innards and replaced some of them. Last time it failed, I was given a different console (new to me, if not necessarily new). As long as it works now (and for a long time to come) I don't really mind.

And I exchanged gamer tags with the UPS delivery driver - given the number of 360s he must collect, his Friend List must be full of his parcel pick-ups!

ZX Spectrum travel card holder!

2010-04-07T03:08:00.000-07:00

My Oyster (touch-in - touch-out London Transport payment system) card holder fell apart a couple of weeks ago and I found the ideal replacement, pictured below, in the adverts at the back of Retro Gamer magazine. Transport for the 21st Century (though that is a bit of a stretch for parts of the Tube network), delivered by technology from the 1980s!

Available through www.retrogt.com.

Feel the power of its 3.5Mhz processor

For all your small plastic card holding needs

Red Ring of Disaster

2010-04-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

My Xbox has bought the Red Ring of Death farm. Again.

I purchased an Elite on the day of release in August 2007, to go with my new HDTV delivered two days before (at the time, the Elite was the only model with an HDMI port). It first RRoD-ed in April 2008, having choked on Call of Duty Modern Warfare (I had a similar feeling - I'm not a fan of the series). Just before I bought my 360, Microsoft extended the 360's warranty to 3 years for a 3 red light failure (still only 1 year on anything else that drops off the clown car that is the 360). Had MS not made that move, I would be well outside my warranty period.

Off to Frankfurt in a cunningly disguised Amazon box - my 360

Back when it failed last time, the repair process, from pick up to return, took about 4 weeks to complete but Microsoft said 2-3 weeks this time (and the UPS driver that picked it up - and he should know - reckons they generally take only a week). One bright side of that first failure was that I turned to Resident Evil 4 on GameCube, one of the best games I've ever played. This time around, I've started playing God of War III on PS3, a reply of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on GC (via Wii) and the SNES classic Super Mario Kart on Wii Virtual Console - great games, all.

I don't want to turn this in to a whine against Microsoft (though I fear it will head off down that path), as the internet is full of those and slagging off the 360's build quality in particular. I love my 360 - I think it is the best console I've ever owned, with some of the best games I've ever played and certainly the best controller I've ever used - and I think we are currently in what will be looked back on as a golden age of gaming (I also have love for my PS3, Wii and DS too; PSP, not so much).

The sad, empty, space where my 360 used to be. I dusted specially.

However, the failure rate of the 360 is abysmal - I know of people that are on their fifth console - and what is worse is that it is still an issue nearly five years after it was released. You could possibly excuse Microsoft for the initial failures (if you were being very charitable - it was launched in 2005, not 1975 and QA is reasonably good these days) but Microsoft's own failure to eliminate this problem is lamentable. The failure rate has undoubtedly declined a lot from the launch models but I don't think that, after this time, any failure rate over a low single figure percent is acceptable for mature hardware. Even Sir Clive Sinclair (hallowed be his name) managed a lower failure rate on his Sinclair computers. In some years, anyway. Possibly.....

When I was growing up in the seventies, televisions were famously unreliable - my family had several that malfunctioned in interesting ways (shrinking the picture down to the size of a postage stamp being my favourite). Over time (and, frankly, thanks to increased Japanese imports), televisions became more reliable and I can't now remember the last time one died on me. Televisions are complicated machines but their failure rate is acceptable. I see no reason for consoles, which have been around in one form or another since the seventies, should be any different. One thing's for sure - whenever Microsoft prepares the successor to the 360, it needs to zero in on getting build quality right from day one.

Super Mario Kart on the Virtual Console

2010-03-31T16:20:00.000-07:00

As I wrote last year, I have big love for Super Mario Kart on the SNES, what with it being one of the greatest games ever made. If you missed out on the game or, understandably, haven't got room in your house for a near 20-year old console (I still have mine but then I'm a hoarder at heart), 2nd April 2010 is big day for you.

If you have a Wii, that is.

Nintendo are bringing SMK to the Wii Virtual Console for only 800 Wii points. I say 'only' - I have no idea what that is in real money. I have over a 1000 points on my account, all from trading in the Star Points (or whatever they were called) from DS, GBA and Gamecube games, so I've never had to buy any. Anyway, 800 of them have now been earmarked for SMK.

As I mentioned in my SMK review, I have no problem with Mario Kart Wii - in fact, I was playing it earlier today - but there are a few aspects of it and other, later, versions of the game that can grate. Chief among those is the Blue Shell, which batters whoever is leading, destroying your lead (particularly if directly followed by another one). I found it amusing that the promo video had "before the Blue Shell was invented" as a subtitle, as if Nintendo (or, rather, its European marketing department) were tacitly admitting that, actually, the Blue Shell sucks. It also shows the Ghost Valley 1 feather-aided shortcut, the best shortcut of the entire series.

I'm not looking at this through rose-tinted retro spectacles. SMK is still a great game that holds up today - if you have 800 Wii points going spare, you could do a whole lot worse than downloading SMK.

What I did on my day off

2010-03-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Last week I took a day off work just to play videogames, as I'd been working on a big project that was coming to an end and felt I deserved it. I'd taken days off to play certain games on the day of their release recently but I hadn't had an indulgent day just to play random games for ages. It was great!

The night before, I'd gathered together a smorgasbord of games to choose from. I wanted to concentrate on games that I'd picked up cheaply and then not played, or not played much, rather than triple A titles that I knew to be good - basically, I was looking for hidden gems. There was also a pile of PS1 games I'd recently picked up cheaply from Gamestation. Frankly, I'd need a month off.

Some of them were half completed, some fully completed but with unplayed DLC, some were unstarted, some were even in their shrinkwrap! Obviously I couldn't play them all but between taking my daughter to school and picking her up, I had a fair bash at it.

I started off with Flatout: Ultimate Carnage on 360. A fairly interesting racing game that I've gone back to a couple of times since. Its USP is the destructible scenery that surrounds the track and that 'works' quite well - debris is strewn across the track, explosions explode attractively. I, however, royally sucked at it - good fun but not successful fun.

I then moved on to The Simpsons Game, on 360. This game got slated when it was released 18 months or so ago (genuinely funny but lacking in gameplay, is what I remember from the reviews) but I quite enjoyed it. It made me laugh out loud (and I can't say that about many games) at times and the gameplay, although essentially a formulaic collect-a-thon, was engaging in a low impact type of way. I've also played this one a few times since but my most recent save, about 5 hours in, was corrupted (my 360 has been misbehaving of late). I don't think I can face starting again any time soon, so that might be that for videogame Springfield.

The next game from the Pile of Shame was Half Life 2, Episode 2, from the Orange Box on 360. I didn't really give this a chance. I've never played any Half Life game before and I felt out of touch with the story, jumping in when I did. I also accepted that it wasn't a 'random game day' game - the reviews suggest it is too good for that and, as I was on a schedule, I couldn't devote sufficient time to it. Out of the disc tray it went and in came...

Fable 2. I love Fable 2, it is one of my favourite games of this generation. I've played it through to completion once and have bought and played through all of the DLC but only with a 'good' character. I've often wondered how Albion would different if I was evil, so I decided to give that a bash. The answer was....a bit different, certainly in Bowerstone Old Town after I didn't give the arrest warrants to the guard when a child. And I finally got the shoot-a-sweet-innocent-bunny achievement, 'The Hunter' (5 blood-stained GP for that). The story seems to be progressing as it did in my 'good' play through but I haven't played it enough yet to know how different it will be after 10 or 20 hours of play.

I then moved on to Brutal Legend, that I'd picked up the week before. As with The Simpsons, it was genuinely funny and engaging enough to be interesting even though I have little interest in the heavy metal music that the game is based around. And Jack Black proves once again (as with Kung Fu Panda), that he is far more bearable (Be Kind, Rewind excepted) in animated form that in real time.

No time to get too settled though. Out with Jack Black and in with videogame artiste extraordinary, Nolan North, this time in Prince of Persia. This was a present for Christmas 2008 and I'd played it through at the time (and enjoyed it). A DLC epilogue was released, which I downloaded but I never got around to playing it. Unfortunately, the year away from the game had made me forget the key configuration - control was a big problem for me, jumping in, as the DLC does, at the end of the game (i.e. the game anticipates a fair degree of competence on the part of the player, a competence that I no longer had). I'll probably go back to PoP another day, though.

Next on the list was an old PS2 game, ObsCure. It is a survival horror game set in a US high school - archetypal slasher movie fare. Although last gen, graphically the game stood up quite well, I thought and I enjoyed the 'feel' of the game, which was like early (seasons 1-3) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies were still at high school. I didn't want to get too far into the story mode of the game (and I'd inadvertently let a major character get killed too) but I will definitely be returning to it, particularly as I understand (http://24hourgamer.blogspot.com/2010/02/oh-my-god-they-killed-kenny.html) that it doesn't take too long to finish.

After going last gen, I then decided to go last-last gen and started playing Incredible Crisis, a PS1 game of indeterminate genre. The game is a difficult one to describe. Ostensibly, it is about a Japanese family's day, after discovering that it was Grandma's (forgotten) birthday over breakfast. But that doesn't do the game justice. In the small portion I played (not from time constraints, just because it was bloody hard), I played as the Sararīman father doing a dance routine at his office that was then broken up by a rogue wrecking ball crashing through the wall of his office building and chasing him down the corridor. All the time to a soundtrack of Japanese ska music (which was just as fantastic as the idea sounds). One other point to note, I played it both on my PS3 (connected to my HDTV via HDMI) and my PS2 (connected to the same via a s-video cable) and it looked better on the PS2.

The afternoon school run was fast approaching and I only had a time left for a quick blast of Pinball FX on 360 (a great pinball sim, which I recommend to anyone with an interest them).

What a fantastic day!

Tax Breaks for Games

2010-03-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

The UK Chancellor announced today that videogame developers could look forward to receiving tax breaks, similar to those given in the film industry in the UK, in the coming years. The industry have been banging on about getting something like this for years, in the face of other countries - Canada for example - offering incentives for games companies to set up or relocate with their borders. Blame Canada.

State aid of this type is a tricky business in the UK. Very broadly speaking, European Union law prohibits the government of a Member State giving assistance to a company based in its jurisdiction that would not be enjoyed by a competitor company based in another Member State, as all companies operating in the EU should be operating on a level playing field. As with a lot of European law there are some exceptions - if your last indigenous car manufacturer goes tits up a few months before an election and its employees live in marginal constituencies, for example. Or if half of your banking industry had got heavily involved in financial instruments based on mortgages granted to the two little pigs who didn't build with bricks.

But even so there are many restrictions on what the government can do and for how long it can do it. There are platoons of State Aid (that's how big an issue it is - it gets turned into a proper noun) lawyers in government, working to make sure that the UK doesn't infringe any of those restrictions. Great guys at parties.

One of the exclusions, I believe, is where the aid is given for cultural (to the country giving the aid) reasons. Tax breaks for companies making 'culturally British' games was mentioned in the Digital Britain report published last summer and I figure that's where the £40m, then £50m, tax breaks in the next couple of years will be directed at.

I'm not sure what, in 2010, a culturally British game is - Grand Theft Crumpet? Sim Walford? Army of Tea? I think the Fable games are undeniably British but I don't think Microsoft needs any tax breaks. Maybe Rebellion could put their hand in the pot, in order to develop games based on their 2000AD properties? 2000AD is a British institution after all.

Over the last twenty years, the gaming industry has increasingly globalised and, as part of that process, the 'rough edges' of national identity have been knocked off so as to appeal to the wider market. 20-25 years ago, it would have been easy to identify games as British. The coders were often working alone, in their bedrooms and coming up with their own ideas based, subconsciously (at the very least) on their own experiences and they only had half an eye, if that, on the end market for the completed game. My big hope for the Government's initiative is that it will help fund games of the type that just aren't made anymore - idiosyncratic titles that are unconcerned if the US or European markets will 'get' them.

New Super Mario Bros band-aids

2010-03-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

My Mum used to tell a story about one time, when I was a small boy, she bought some 'Mr Men' sticking plasters. Apparently I would then, until said plasters were used up, demand one to be stuck on any scrape, no matter how microscopic (or, to be honest, imaginary), on the basis that I wanted 'Mr Bump' stuck to my grievous injury.

To prove that more than 30 years of so-called 'growing up' have had no noticeable impact, I recently saw (and immediately bought) New Super Mario Bros 'Know your Enemies' plasters -

That's my daughter's hand on the left. I think she wants a plaster

They are packed into a handy metal tin and come in three different types, each showing one of Mario's mortal enemies - Bullet Bills, Piranha Plants and Goombas.

While typing this post, my daughter came up to me complaining of a near-invisible cut to one of her toes. A little bit sheepishly, she asked for a Mario plaster (Bullet Bills). Given my own history, I could hardly refuse.....

Heavy Rain, with a chance of spoilers

2010-03-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Right. Here's the warning. There are spoilers in this post. If you haven't finished, or have yet to play, Heavy Rain, stop reading here. There are plenty of other spoiler-free articles on this blog - move along and try one of those.

Really - leave now.

I'm not going to say who did it - that would be pointless. Anyone for whom this would be a spoiler should have stopped reading after the first paragraph. For those of you left, you know who did it, I know who did it, I know that you know and so on - adding the killer's name here isn't news for anyone.

Rather, this is an 'narrative-theme spoiler' - there is a large twist towards the end of the game, relating to the identity of the killer. I didn't read any reviews before playing the game, as I didn't want anything to spoil the experience. I knew that a review wouldn't reveal 'X' as the killer but even knowing something about the narrative path, like that there was a big twist in the story, would have been enough of a spoiler for me. I find that when I know that there is a notable twist in a story, I find myself subconsciously looking out for it as I progress through the narrative, rather than letting the narrative play out, be that in films, books or TV.

That being said, I was clearing out some games magaziness at the weekend and had a look through the 'origami cover' issue of gamesTM, which came out in the autumn and contained a large preview of the game. As I'd already finished the game, I had a flick through the article. There was a massive spoiler contained within it, that, had I read it nearer the release would have spoilt the suspense for me (it is, unwittingly I think, a clue to the identity of the killer, rather than a blatant spoiler). It was only a throwaway line in the article and I doubt, at the stage of development the game was in, that the journalist would have played enough of the game to even know that this piece of his or her article was a clue (you would need to know more of the story to know that this line was a spoiler). It was such a throwaway line (in fact, it was a caption to a screenshot showing the killer) that I'd forgotten about reading it months before, when I played the game.

Having forgotten this article, I did not see the plot twist coming in the slightest - I had no inkling as to the identity of the killer until the big reveal, maybe 20-30 minutes (if that) before the end of the game. I think I was more surprised by this than I would have been if it were a film, as with a film you accept that 'something' (or a succession of 'somethings') is going to happen and be played out in front of you, the passive viewer. This happens far less often with games.

Films, good ones anyway, are rarely a simple journey from A to B, whereas games, even good ones, often are. Gamers are more accepting of this than a film-goer would be, as games, unlike films, are a non-passive medium. A game's narrative may go from A to B but we are given alternatives - formal side-quests or just taking up the option to wander around the game world, tinkering with what the designers have given us - to depart from that path. Without wanting to sound like an English David Cage, we often create our own story. Filmgoers don't have that luxury - they are a passive audience, there to be entertained. A simple traipse from A to B wouldn't work well within that medium.

What Heavy Rain showed me is that, admittedly with sacrifice of some of what makes a game a game, developers can create cinematic storylines that combine the ethos of a videogame with the narrative structures of a film. Whether I will get the same feeling of surprise the next time I play a Quantic Dream game, I doubt. To use a videogame metaphor, after the zombie dog has jumped through breaking glass at you once, you get wary the next time that you walk past a window.

NowGamer Podcast Competition Prize Unboxing

2010-03-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

I regularly read articles on the NowGamer.com website and visit its forum daily (I post under the name sorenlorensen). It's is a videogame website, owned by Imagine Publishing (the publisher of gamesTM, Play and 360, among others). Informative previews and authoritative reviews of forthcoming games (together with an intelligent, informed forum. Ahem), it also has its own, fortnightly(ish) podcast, which is the best videogame podcast that I've listened to (imagine a videogame version of Football Ramble). The podcast includes a competition, where listeners have to recognise a electro-synth cover version of a piece of classic videogame music. Last time out, I guessed (and it was a guess) correctly - Final Fantasy VII - and was the lucky recipient of a prize that money simply could not buy.

The literal, if not the metaphorical truth...

Much like Blankety Blank, the podcast revels in the crapness of its prizes, the truth of which the host, Dan Howdle, cleverly does not reveal until announcing the winner. I think that gives the prizes an additional cachet - any entrant, based on previous experience, knows the prizes will be, mainly, a load of rubbish but still enters.

My prizes arrived today and, in best Bullseye fashion (two 80s game shows in successive paragraphs!), let's have a look at what you could have won.

Mr Postman, that is no standard parcel!

And what a cornucopia of, of, of, stuff it was -

Heart of Faerie tarot cards. Coming soon to an Oxfam near me

Assassin's Creed II on PC. Not bad. I've put over 40 hours into the 360 version, so this'll be off to to my local second-hand games shop tomorrow. Ninja Blade is in there as well, another game I've completed on 360 - Game Focus, in Goodge St, if you're interested ;)

Yes, there are two copies of Africa 1943: Theatre of War. Once just wasn't enough

There were a whole load of PC games, as you can see, including UK Truck Simulator, wherein you can experience the life of a haulage contractor (according to the blurb anyway, though no mention of roadside fry-ups, unfortunately) in all (yes, all) major cities of the UK. And Grimsby.

Bioshock 2 flask. For plasmids. Probably

Some of the stuff was actually quite good, if you like games-related tat (and who doesn't?). Among those was a Bioshock 2 flask (above), The Conduit portable MP3 speakers shaped like a hand grenade (one for my next trip on an aeroplane), Crash Bandicoot fridge magnets, the Dead Space animated movie, Finnish developer Top Trumps (RedLynx rock!), Fall Guy DVD and the Solomon Kane movie novel by Ramsey Campbell (I like Ramsey Campbell - Cold Moon was excellent - but I wonder if he took that gig to pay the rent).

The full haul, featuring huge gloves. If a chilly gorilla comes to stay, he'll be laughing

One of the 'nearly best' items was the Bioshock 2 Special Edition on Playstation 3. Except it didn't have a copy of the game, or the soundtrack CD!

That's an actual LP! My daughter didn't know what it was. Tsk, kids today

The Special Edition extras (that I do have) are impressive. As well as the soundtrack LP (not that I've had a record player for about 15 years), there are some art prints (in 50s-style Rapture designs) and a high-quality 'Art of Bioshock 2' book, all in a sturdy box. All I need now is the game! And the CD...

Download the latest NowGamer podcast at iTunes now and you too could be the happy owner of such treasures in future! I've already entered for the latest one - I have no shame...

Dead Space - My Sims Agents crossover!

2010-03-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

My daughter was playing 'My Sims Agents' this afternoon and she called out to me 'Daddy, I've found the 'Strange Ski Costume'. Away from the main storyline of the game (as in the previous games in the series), players can find (or are awarded) costumes with which to clothe their onscreen character and I figured that she was referring to one of those (as, indeed, she was).

Anyway, I had a look and found this -

Sorry about the wonky photo - I was laughing

- the great Dead Space/My Sims (both published by EA) crossover! I look forward to her finding a 'necromorph' costume later on in the game......

Heavy Rain - some thoughts

2010-03-05T00:16:00.001-08:00

I've been playing, apocalyps3 excepted, Heavy Rain over the last few evenings. It's a compelling game and, such is its reliance on narrative, I'll not go into any plot details. I've avoided all reviews of the game in order not to spoil the experience and it would be churlish of me to then spoil it here. I figure that it must be a very difficult game for a journalist to review - to convey the writer's thoughts on the game, without giving anything away on the plot.

I'm not going to attempt anything so arduous as that. Instead I'm going to talk about the emotions that I felt during those parts of the game that I have played so far. I'm about 5-6 hours in and I would be lying if I said that it had been a fun experience, in the normal sense of the word. The feel of the game is very similar to the film Se7en, another intelligent, claustrophic, uncomfortable but at the same time very enjoyable experience.

Rather, playing the game has been compelling to the point of discomfort - in several places I've felt my heart beat faster as a result of the on-screen action and, like with a good horror movie, I've wanted it to end, while at the same time enjoying the experience.

I wonder if this cinematic feel is partly due to a slight disconnection between the player and the onscreen avatar. Much of the time the player is in full control of the action onscreen, but at the key, most action-filled points - an assault, for example - the play goes 'on rails' and control is maintained via a series of prompted button presses, which have to be executed within an exacting time limit. Much the same thing happened in Quantic Dream's previous game, the interesting, if flawed, Fahrenheit (aka, for reasons beyond me, Indigo Prophecy).

Although the phrase 'interactive movie' sounds a death knell for gameplay, the game is movie-like at these points. I feel, as with a movie, that I'm a viewer - with some interaction admittedly, - rather than a player during these phases.

I think this is part of the reason why I'm not as far into the game as I would expect for a recently-purchased AAA game. I tend to game at nightime, after my daughter has gone to bed (not including playing kid-friendly titles, which Heavy Rain certainly isn't) having, at the other end of the day, got up at 530am for work. While the passive activity of watching TV can make me feel drowsy (I never understood, as a kid, how my parents could fall asleep in front of the telly - I do now), gaming generally keeps me alert. I'm no scientist ('O' level biology doesn't really count, does it?) but I figure that brain activity is far higher when you are gaming, concentrating intently on the screen with your eyes, while working the controller with your hands) as opposed to zombied out in front of UK daytime TV hell 'Loose Women'.

However, Heavy Rain doesn't keep my drowsiness at bay - I've been feeling 'TV tired' while playing it. This has meant that I haven't been having long sessions on it 'til stupid o'clock in the morning, as would normally be the case with a new game.

That's not to say it is in any way boring - far from it. The shortish bursts I've been playing, I've thoroughly enjoyed. Graphically, It is as good as anything I've ever played and storywise it is as strong as Bioshock (currently - hopefully it won't go silly in the last third like Fahrenheit did). The voice acting is of variable quality - some very good, some decidedly average - but that may just be in comparison with the last game that I played, Uncharted 2 (for which the voice acting was near perfect).

Overall, it is an experience that I'd recommend to anyone that is interested in a game that tries to do something different within the gaming medium, but don't expect it to deliver on normal videogame conventions.

Alviiiin!

2010-02-28T04:18:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went to see Alvin & the Chipmunks, the squeakquel (do you see what they did there?), as one of the joys of parenthood is going to see kids' movies (though for every 'Alvin' there's an 'Up', I suppose). Not much of a subject for a videogame blog, you might think (if there's a spin-off game, I don't want to know of its existence), but one of the main human characters, Toby, is a gamer and the film uses his gaming habits as lazy, short-hand characterisation for 'loser'.

Once upon a time, I took a few classes in Communications Studies at university. I know what you're thinking and you're right - it was a load of old wank, taught by narcissitic arseholes. However, some of it rang true, particularly regarding cultural hegemony. Now, it's been a while since my studies (and I dumped communications studies and graduated in politics in any case) but cultural hegemony basically means (I think) that the beliefs of the ruling classes in society becoming thought of (by all of society) to be the 'norm'.

I doubt very much if Gramsci, whose theory it was, ever considered the possibility of gamers or gaming - he died in the thirties and I'm sure he'd have thought by 2010 workers would have seized the means of production and we'd be living in a socialist utopia by now - but his theory is relevant in considering Toby.

Toby first appears in the film playing on a black DS (with headphones) and mono-syllabically interacts with the three chipmunks and his grandmother, who is also present. He's not a kid or a teenager, he is an adult male and the subtext of his using a gaming device in his first scene, is that the viewer is being told that he is somehow 'other', that behaving in this way is not what an adult make should be doing. In the same scene, his grandmother says that he is staying with her while he works out what to do with his life, which, she posits (disapprovingly), seems to resolve around playing videogames.

Throughout the film, Toby plays games - Xbox 360, Wii, DS - and they are shown as having a negative effect on his life (he falls asleep in his bed with his 360 headset still attached and he is late in getting the chipmunks up for school, for example). He is a shy, anti-social, klutz and, the viewer is being shown, that is inextricably linked to his gaming - one leads to the other.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't identify (loser status aside) with Toby (albeit I'm older). I play all of the systems he does (and more), I wear 'geek-chic' t-shirts and hoodies (as he does), I have scruffy hair (though, admittedly, I have less than he does). But I have a wife and family and a reasonably successful career, which Toby most certainly does not.

You could argue that this type of portrayal of gamers has been going on since the 80s and this is only a cheaply-produced, half term cash-in movie but I don't think that that argument is sound. It is exactly in this type of throwaway mass market movie that cultural hegemony would show itself - if you want to influence the masses, aim at the mainstream, not the arthouse. What seems odd now is that the target audience of the movie would have been immersed in gaming their whole lives and so, possibly, would their parents. Gaming is as much a factor of their lives as TV or music, which is why the subtext in the movie was so jarring for me - gaming no longer equates to geeks in their bedrooms, it is just another part of life, certainly for the target audience.

Oh, and marxist cobblers aside, the film was crap.

Resident Evil 5 Lost in Nightmares DLC

2010-02-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

Almost a year after its release, Capcom has released a DLC mission featuring series-veterans Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, called 'Lost in Nightmares'. It tells the story behind the Resi 5 cutscene of Chris and Jill fighting seemingly indestructible Resi bad guy Albert Wesker, which ended with Wesker being defenestrated by Jill. Lost in Nightmares provides the back-story to that scene, explaining what Jill, Chris and Wesker were doing at the mansion.

As I'd thought when I saw the trailer, this is very much a throwback to the early games in the series, particularly the genre-defining original game. Although it is not the same mansion as in the original game, it is owned by the Spencers and was clearly designed by the same architect - many of the locations (and even puzzles) are near-identical to the Spencer Mansion/Arklay Research Facility from the first Resi. I'm not necessarily against introspective fan-service like this if well-executed but I'd sooner developers worked on new ideas for their existing franchises. As well as the location being a throwback, the same can be said of the gameplay. There's a lot of traipsing around the mansion, looking for 'item A' to place in 'slot B' and I think gameplay conventions have moved on from this in the 14 years since the first game was released.

My main issue with Lost in Nightmares's style of gameplay is that it doesn't really suit Resi 5 co-op. The last two Resi games have moved away from the constraints of traditional survival horror and are, rather, action adventure games with a horror theme. Suspense was built in the early games by having only intermittent monster attacks in between the puzzling but leading the player to always think that an attack was imminent as they crept through the corridors. Over the years Resi has given me some great swear-out-loud frights by using this mechanic.

However, the more action-oriented later games don't lend themselves to this style of gaming, in particular the central co-op dynamic of Resi 5. I played Lost in Nightmares, as I'd played Resi 5, with my usual online co-op buddy. It is difficult to build the old-school Resi suspense when you are having an outside-the-game conversation, joking about the location, the not-as-bad-as-it-used-to-be-but-still-not-great voice acting and reading the (many) documents scattered about the mansion using funny accents. That dynamic works fine when you're being bombarded with the undead (witness Left 4 Dead); less so when you're spending 5 minutes between enemy encounters.

In all, it took a couple of hours for us to play through the scenario (but that was more due to our dicking around - it shouldn't take that long), which I think is reasonable value for money (it works out at about £4 in MS money), even if the gameplay is fundamentally flawed.

In addition to the extra slice of cheesy Resi 5 story, the Mercenaries score-attack mode is boosted by the return of Resi comedy relief (well, I think he's funny) beardy Barry Burton and Resi 5's Excelle Gionne (in 'practical' evening dress and heels). Those two are available from the start and an 'A' ranking (apparently) unlocks a few others, including, if that floats your boat, Chris in a 'Tom of Finland' style costume (now that IS scary).

The Climb

2010-02-15T12:22:00.000-08:00

I started playing Uncharted 2 over the weekend. I'd received it, along with Assassin's Creed II, for Christmas but I'd not had a chance to open it before now, as I was playing through ACII. I'm about a quarter of the way through the game and I'm really enjoying it. As with the first game, the story and the voice acting (does Nolan North ever say no?) are spot on and it is probably the best looking game that I've ever played.

However, after 30 hours of ACII, I found the lack of freedom in my climbing quite jarring. I'd been used to having Ezio climb all over the buildings of Renaissance Italy with impunity but found that Nathan Drake was very picky about which bits of scenery he was prepared to shimmy up. A few times over the weekend I couldn't work out which way to go and I used the 'hint' button, to hear Nate say stuff along the lines of "I reckon I can climb up that signpost". To which my reply was "well, what's so wrong with that nearby wall that you'd want to climb a rickety, free-standing lamppost?".

I think, to a certain extent, this difference is explained by the environment being somewhere that the gameplay takes place in ACII, whereas in Uncharted 2 the environment is part of the gameplay. In ACII there were a couple of areas where planning your route was challenging but, on the whole, Ezio's free-running was quite straightforward (though never a chore). In Uncharted 2, pathfinding is a big part of the game and there are 'right' paths that you have to follow. Sometimes this 'corridor' effect is well-hidden - the opening 'train wreck' level did this excellently - but sometimes less so, as in the jungle levels. Logically a jungle should be a playground of climbing opportunities but that wasn't what I felt when playing them.

This isn't a criticism of Uncharted 2 - it is a great game and the combat is particularly enjoyable - but it does seem a backward step for games that Drake can't leap up to what seem perfectly good handholds on ruined buildings.