geek Word of Mouth

Sony is leaking PS Vitae

2012-01-30T14:58:00.003Z

I feel really bad for Sony. And, no, that's not meant to be facetious condescension, but genuine sentiment. Like many video game enthusiasts, I'm fairly platform agnostic, and own more platforms than any sane non-game-journo should. During the last mobile gaming war, before the coming of the iOS/Android storm, I unwittingly sided with the ultimate victor, the Nintendo DS.

The first model of DS was a laughably unattractive piece of kit. It was aimed at an entirely different demographic (or so I thought) and looked bulky and clunky as all hell. It seemed like slapping a second screen onto it was a last ditch effort on the part of Nintendo to innovate, but little did we know of the touchscreen revolution that was about to take place. I didn't really get on board until their first redesign-- the DS Lite was an attractive, clearly Apple-inspired device. Thinner, lighter, much more pocketable. And there were some great games that came out for it over the years, not the least of which is 2010's Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.

The PSP to me was too expensive, the spinning media looked clunky and the games showed that they weren't sure how to handle the mobile experience. I didn't want to play SOCOM with crappy 3D, I wanted quirky 2D games that I had grown up with on the Gameboy Advance, etc. Eventually, some interesting games came out for it, but there weren't enough and the experiences weren't compelling enough for me to warrant buying one. About the most compelling thing on the PSP for me was to be able to play Final Fantasy VII in its entirety, that and some of the great homebrew stuff available for it. It flopped fantastically, but for me the PSP Go was kind of the perfect fit. I wanted downloadable titles only, plus something slim and sleek. The only major downside was the price. Well, that and there weren't dual analog controllers, just that same stupid nub thing.

So, having already decided upon purchasing a 3DS, I was shocked to see how great the PS Vita looked. All around, it just looks like a great piece of hardware. But, much like the 3DS, at launch there's a dearth of compelling titles. In this depressed economy, people are savvy (more so than myself, it seems), so when Japanese consumers see that there aren't any compelling games out for a system, do they just rush in and purchase it anyway? Hell no! Which is why I think the Sony PS Vita isn't flying off shelves. The first few truly "must have" Vita-only games that come out for it will see sales start to pick up, that much we all know.

The thing that makes me really feel bad, though, is that they're not first to market with this. Once again, Nintendo has beat them to the punch with (potentially inferior) hardware. I mean, come on, the 3D on the 3DS is a gimmick. It's kind of novel, but nothing that this "hardcore" gamer really needs to have a good gaming experience on the go. Sony have really tried to pull out all the stops and seemed to have made some effort at evolving gameplay with dual touchscreens, etc. But I think fellow gamers (and gadget fiends) like me have already felt the pinch and sting from early adopting the 3DS, and will be hard-pressed to do the same with the Vita. Basically... "you fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me!" Basically, if you feel like I do, I feel like I've learned a hard lesson with the 3DS, something that I should have known better about, but was duped because of past Nintendo hype (Exhibit B: the Nintendo Wii shortage craze). That, and of course, with iOS and other platforms doing really well financially, throwing an extra wrinkle into the whole decision.

At the moment, I can't think of any "killer apps" that may really boost the platform in the near future. I suppose Uncharted: Golden Abyss may be a potential biggie, but a lot of people have said that they'd rather have that particular experience on a TV-based console, and the touch controls are a gimmick at best. I just can't think of anything that is the equivalent of a Zelda or a Mario that might really move systems, and on top of everything else, it makes me think that the PS Vita will have a very hard road ahead of it, although for the sake of eventually playing with one of my own, I hope I'm wrong.

Salivator Source, Savior of My Insanity

2012-01-26T08:43:00.001Z

Does anybody really KNOW what time it is?

So, whether due to extreme jet lag, the remnants of flu, or that caffeinated drink I had hours before, I found myself laying awake in bed at 4am. Eventually, I roused myself up, went out to my computer and loaded up Elevator Source.

I had watched the 44 minute multiplayer play-through which should be embedded above, which, I am sad to say, my two-year-old son caught just the wrong glimpse of earlier this evening (perhaps then owing to his similar bout of sleeplessness). In any case, I found myself with a couple of hours to kill before I had to get ready for work and thought I'd just delve into the myriad ways the guys over at PixelTailGames had to enthral us with their little concept. You stand in an elevator (or "danglebox", as the clever chaps over at RPS had to say, when they introduced the mod to your's truly).

Speaking of my two-year-old's habits, a familiar tune came snaking to me over the tinny speakers of the virtual elevator my Garry's Mod avatar was being subjected to. Was that? Could that be? Yes, it was, the Thomas the Tank Engine theme music... somehow eminently appropriate given the creepy nature of some of the "floors" that you stop on (but can't venture out into) along the way to the penthouse at the top.

The game feels like a weird pop culture nod through a random bunch of references, completed with a nearly nonsensical design doc plastered to the wall of the "game room" at the top floor, which you can thankfully exit into. Once there, the mod feels even more like a "check out what kind of wacky stuff we were able to figure out with Garry's Mod and the Source engine" with a TV that displays synced YouTube vids, "Playstation Home"-style, pool tables and slot machines that actually work, and a blender that, well, blends.

So, I can heartily recommend this mod, particularly if it's 4am, you're tired and feel like spending a few minutes of your time checking your watch, coughing into your hand, or pressing "R" to slap someone once in a while.

Tales of a videogaming Rock Star

2011-12-16T16:26:00.001Z

"It's not heavy enough. Put more 'feelies' in."

I recently got tipped off by the folks at TheAverageGamer.com about an event here in London; Richard Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott :P) was speaking at a local university, on the Tales of Fantasy and the Final Frontier. An honorary Dr., the self-styled "Lord British", while not an everyday name bandied about around the office watercooler (how many game developers can say that, though? And anyway, people chat from their desks via IM these days), he's gone from strength to strength building brands and moving onward and upward.

Actually, that's quite prophetic, as I learned during Garriot de Cayeux's speech that he comes from a pretty eclectic family. His father was an astronaut and mother an artist. It is prophetic because NASA, Richard tells us, is the family doctor. And cavalierly, the NASA doctor tells a young Richard that he cannot go to space because of his vision; Richard will require glasses. In a neighborhood where he is surrounded by friends and family who are either astronauts or engineers putting people into space, he has just found out that he "won't be a part of that club", and so leaves the meeting crestfallen.

It may have been that the now mature Garriott has achieved his early goals (including going to space), and seems largely to have moved past the exploration of virtual worlds, but it seemed to me all of his successes in business may have had an underlying motive: to boldly go where few have gone before.

*BZZT!* I'm sorry, could you please repeat the destination?

The first part of his talk revolved around gaming and he started off with a picture of a teletype machine, as in the early 1970s, it was as close to his school had to a computer. The school had to invent a class for him, and for four years, he had a class of his own, programming in BASIC (using punch strips) and making games, which qualified as his foreign language. He showed a picture of the printout of one of the machines, which essentially looked like an ASCII game, with asterisks for walls, dollar signs for treasure, and a capital A, which represented a giant ant. Garriott described how each "move" of the game required the teletype to print another topdown "map", each time taking up to 30 seconds.

Garriott then moved onto a discussion of the Ultima series, for which he is probably most well known, starting with Akalabeth. For those of you that are curious, I won't bore the rest of you with the particulars, so I welcome you to check out a great piece up at HardcoreGaming101.net which goes into the background of the series in great detail. So please excuse me for seeming to gloss over the tidbits, but honestly the creator of Britannia didn't go into too much detail, just described the evolution of each entrant in the series. It was clear to me that (retrospectively, at least), a lot of the aim even at the early stage, was to make buckets of money in order to form his own space agency.

There were some particular realities of space travel, shall we say, that were disheartening to me. I mean, anyone with a modicum of understanding of physics knows that there are some harsh realities associated with leaving this blue-green planet and venturing out into the void, but having those brought into excruciating focus can be discouraging in a way. Namely, Mr. Garriott described (and there was a disclaimer before, but us being Brits, could handle a little scatological reference)... in fairly "polite" detail the intricacies of the Russian toilet. Apparently, it's the best design, which is yet to be improved upon, although NASA and other agencies have tried. I won't deign to offend anyone with particular details, but suffice to say that gravity plays more of a role in digestion than one would think, so a backlog of sorts can result... in essence, it sounds like until we have artificial gravity, I won't be rushing to go into space.

That being said, Garriott was very positive (to an audience mostly of recent or soon-to-be-recent graduates) about private space agencies, and encouraged people to go for it. His suggestions included using NASA and other government agencies as "Explorers" and then once valuable resources or locations are identified, private space agencies would depart for those destinations to fully investigate.

I'll wrap this up by saying it was a terrific talk, and although I have recorded the audio, I am loathe to post it willy nilly for fear of transgressing any rules and morays where public talks like this are concerned. In closing, I would say he's an excellent and fascinating speaker, but this particular gamer was hoping to hear the story behind the story. I am still quite fond of Ultima's Britannia, and was hoping for more insight.

Shall I compare thee to a (virtual) summer's day?

2011-12-11T17:43:00.001Z

http://fav.me/d46ljuj

So theAverageGamer.com posted my review of Rage on PS3, please check the link if you haven't yet read it.

I've been meditating (yes, meditating) over the latest Bioshock Infinite reveal from Spike TV's Video Game Awards. GTTV have kindly done one of their signature pop-blocks for the vid and it got me thinking.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, BioShock Infinite - VGA 2011: GT Pop-Block: Debut Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

It seems obvious that Ken Levine, lead developer on Infinite, wanted to create a character so compelling that the player would feel something strongly, something akin to love... if not romantic, then platonic at least. I notice that the designs for the young damsel with universe-tearing powers, Elizabeth, have changed over time and they have made her slightly more sympathetic than in earlier incarnations. I've mentioned this before. They've also made her more physically attractive and at the same time curiously innocent... and therefore vulnerable. Much like a Disney character, she has high cheekbones, large eyes, very expressive features. This is reinforced by her dialogue and expressions, as powerfully emoted by actress Courtnee Draper and the team at Irrational who have modelled, textured and animated her; she is obviously a character written to not be helpless, but perhaps more than a bit naive... due to her "sheltered" existence. As a player, we're meant to feel protective towards her.

http://ormeli.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d47gg6u

But not only that, they're staking the whole plot of the game around this person... and she just happens to be the pretty love interest (presumably) for your character, Booker.

I guess the point I'm dancing around is from everything I've seen so far, I think they've succeeded on all counts. I can only say that from a male perspective, of course. It's probably a bit ludicrous to say all of this and I definitely should feel silly posting it on the blog, but when all is said and done, she's a really attractive and compelling character. Sure, she doesn't really look human, but they've exaggerated and accentuated what makes her beautiful and vulnerable and that makes her visually interesting. And apart from the provocative bustier which I've probably mentioned far too many times on this blog already, she's not overtly sexualized (nor should she be, for a variety of reasons). But that voice. Courtnee's voice singing the early 20th Century anthem, it's, well, it's powerful. So to the folks at Irrational, awesome job. You've succeeded in making a virtual person captivate me. And the damn game isn't even out yet.

The problem with Sequels

2011-12-09T22:45:00.001Z

I've moaned about sequelitis before. But, as I was listening to a recent episode of the Bonus Round and they were talking about Portal 2 as a game of the year contender. In a general sense, they were talking about yet another iteration of a franchise. Okay, so it was only the second iteration, but it was quite clear that Portal was such a wonderfully innovative game, that when it came time to turn out a sequel, Valve felt that they had to innovate yet again. Of course there's no way they could equal what had been done (in terms of sheer impact) on its prototype Narbacular Drop and the first Portal. But they certainly tried, and in the interest of providing new gameplay and not retreading the old game, they had to add gels and other new gameplay features. As superbly (?) as they were implemented, they added an extra level of complexity that really wasn't needed and flummoxed some players.

What I am getting at is, as I've pointed out before, was story a consideration, at all? I mean, if the reason that Portal 2 existed was that they had more of GlaDOS and Chell's story to tell, I think it might have been a very different game. Don't get me wrong, Portal 2 was a great game and experience. And that game series is definitely focused on gameplay, not so much its story. But if there were no story, there probably wouldn't be a GlaDOS, one of the most recognizable (and entertaining) foes in gaming today.

http://fav.me/d2l7xyw

What if that great gameplay wrapper was there to serve a story, though? A story about a protagonist that we actually cared about. I suppose we do sort of care for her as she serves as our avatar in the game, although we know nothing about her. It's self-preservation, in other words. She's not an important character as such. Gordon Freeman from Half-Life has taken on a life of his own, but Valve had more or less the same approach to this particular agent of the player. They managed to tell the story via other methods, namely by introducing characters that we could care about, to deliver dialogue Freeman seems incapable of voicing himself.

These are still games, after all, and we're not playing them to experience a movie. Well, let's say, the ultimate experience for many is probably to be inside a movie-- but you'd like to make decisions which affect the outcome and not be a passive observer. But I don't think having gameplay and focusing on story have to be mutually exclusive. In the most ideal situations, they will complement each other, as the original Portal largely does.

How the Thing Prequel could have been saved

2011-12-04T10:19:00.001Z

Like many of you, I still feel a distinct fondness for John Carpenter's remake of The Thing from Another World, 1982. "Fondness" is probably the wrong word when describing tentacular shapeshifting aliens, but still... It's one of the greatest horror movies so far, in terms of the building of suspense, the paranoia, the sheer terror at an intelligent Lovecraftian organism attacking a remote Antarctic outpost.

The new remake, while a wonderful homage to John Carpenter's vision of the novella "Who Goes There?", unfortunately falls down on several levels. So what could have made this mediocre film really great?

I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and she's a good choice for the plucky heroine. If you've read some of my other posts, you know that I like strong heroines (and think more should play the lead in films and games), so I didn't immediately dismiss the prequel on that fact. It's hard to follow up a character like Kurt Russell's MacReady, and it made sense to me to cast a very different kind of character in the role of protagonist. What bothers me though, is the inclusion of Americans at all. They're just not included in a very plausible fashion. The Norwegians discover a major scientific find. There's no indication why they'd turn to Columbia University (a nice nod to Ghostbusters?) for a paleontologist. For a real world explanation, I'm sure there were constraints over how the picture would get funded, and what kind of audience it would ultimately play to, which may have lead them to make it a primarily English language flick with American stars, but this was the first misstep, as far as I'm concerned.

What I would have loved to have seen was (a consequently relatively low budget) all Norwegian cast film. Seriously, think about it, it could have been a brilliant film if it stuck to just this one precept. Of course that would make it a "foreign film" and thusly, having to read subtitles does take away a lot of the potential audience of a film (sadly). But if you think of the audience of this film, who are primarily people who were fans of the original... Just think for a moment how authentic it could have been, with an all Norwegian cast, all speaking mostly Norwegian? The films credibility would have gone up inestimably in my eyes. And if the film's credibility is way up simply for adhering to this one idea, it would only increase the film's audience appeal. Okay, so even if they had been speaking in accented English, and we presumed that they were all speaking in Norwegian, that could have worked on some level.

But, at the end of the day, this is a conceit I can kind of understand. They obviously wanted to make the film for an English speaking, primarily North American audience. And a lot of the film's funding probably depended upon this, along with having recognizable stars to helm it. So, it's unfortunate, but I understand why they've compromised on this fact. I just don't agree with it. I would much rather have seen a lower budget, where much less of the creature is seen (thereby requiring fewer special effects), but at the same time something that captures the spirit and authenticity of the setup in the Norwegian camp. So... point one: no Americans. Point two: All (or very nearly all) Norwegian dialogue.

If they simply had to include Americans and a mixed cast (which admittedly gives some great opportunities for language barriers, something I don't think is explored fully in the existing film), they should have made them at a base nearby, perhaps closer than Outpost 31, or due to weather conditions, contactable via radio. It could have been that Kate Lloyd was the only member of this other camp that actually spoke some Norwegian, and her pilot Carter did not, etc. They contacted this base knowing they could be understood, not bothering to contact the surly Americans at the other outpost. What I'm trying to say is, there are better, more plausible ways of handling this, I just don't think it was properly thought through. It could have even been a military outpost, with her being the only civilian (who spoke Norwegian-- or even better a related Scandinavian accent, so she or one of the other Americans along with her might understand some words but not all), with a mission to find out what the Norwegians were up to in such a remote and relatively uninteresting part of Antarctica. There are a whole host of other alternatives.

I also get the sense that the filmmakers were all too concerned with being "prop-perfect," rather than sticking with some of the more important details. For example, in the scene in the posts's picture (top), Joel Edgerton's pilot Carter is holding an axe (a shotgun would have been much more fun, but I'll get to that later). I think simply because there's a scene in the 1982 film where MacReady and Dr. Copper, and they find a bloodied axe embedded in a door. Really? Do you think the fan faithful are really worried about specifically where that axe came from? I don't really remember it being a pivotal moment in the film. As a small plot device, the axe is simply there to make the characters wonder what the hell happened, what went wrong in the camp. The fact that it's an axe hanging there is largely irrelevant.

There are other details that have been, in my opinion, overwrought for the purpose of meshing up to the original, and one in particular in a way that kind of damages our impression of the creature itself.

*Spoiler alert*

In the 1982 Carpenter film, the specimen of the creature that MacReady and Copper remove from the Norwegian camp, to take back to be analyzed by Blair (Wilford Brimley), is quite memorable in terms of a sculpted rubbery prop. It appears to be a man with a split face, the two faces racked in a grimace of absolute torture. When I saw this in the original, I presumed that the alien was caught midway between transforming or assimilating a human. But in the 2011 prequel, they decided to try to make a slightly different reason for this hideous thing to exist. Up until this point, the alien has been outright attacking (sometimes incredibly violently) the remaining humans. But inexplicably, while it is out in the open in plain sight of the other humans (though they are at a distinct disadvantage), it decides to sidle up to one of the injured men, and then meld its face next to his. To put it plainly, it doesn't make any kind of sense, especially in light of how the creature has behaved up until that point. The scene is obviously there purely to say, "This is where Norwegian 'Split Face' came from, in case you were wondering." I just don't think that's what John Carpenter and FX artist Rob Bottin had in mind with this creature. It was meant to give us a glimpse of what horrors this thing was composed of, of how it could twist and transform a human beyond recognition until the imitation process was complete.

It's frustrating that they payed attention to these kinds of relatively small details, but missed some of the overall big picture of what made the original great. MacReady and Copper find a VCR and some tapes that the Norwegians had used to document the find. At one point, there is a scene on the tapes where thermite is being detonated, and then later they seem to be standing around the site's rim, looking down on the ship. This has more or less been edited out of the prequel, for some odd reason. Perhaps I'm just paying attention to the wrong details, but I found those tapes really important to the sensation of building dread in the original film. The fact that they're treading a similar territory as the Norwegians, as evidenced by flickering, fuzzy video and the half-seen, half-comprehended documentary of the alien ship find, is foreshadowing what is about to befall Outpost 31. So the tapes are pretty important and memorable, more so than an axe slammed into a door.

Early in the film, there's a moment where they begin to explore some interesting ideas. The graduate student Adam starts to try and understand the reasoning for the Thing's escaping from the craft in the first place. "If it wasn't immune to the cold, why would it try to leave the craft?" Questions have been raised and still exist as to the nature and motivations of the being. As a friend recently pointed out, was the being even one of the pilots of the ship that crashed? Or perhaps it was the reason for the crash in the first place? It seems to me, one of the the reasons for having a prequel, would be to shed some light on some of these questions.

Unfortunately, they don't explore these intriguing questions any further. Even worse, the prequel raises some contradictory problems in relation to the creature's goals. Toward the end of the film, the Thing escapes back to the craft and begins to power it on. Its engines ignite, presumably melting the ice cave within which it is entombed, and therefore its intentions appear to be for it to leave, or at least take off. If the ship had crashed and was inoperable, how could this be possible? Unless of course if the ship had been repairing itself through some advanced technology, but this doesn't appear to be hinted at whatsoever. With a film this heavy-handed, its unusual (if this were the intention) and they certainly don't make this clear. As another friend of mine pointed out, if the goddamned thing wanted to leave, why didn't they just let the Thing go, for pity's sake? Perhaps it just wanted to steal our shape and genetic information and therefore they had to stop it from leaving, or keep it from flying straight to civilization, but again, this is not made clear.

Although they do stick to it fairly well, if they were going to take some liberties with the plot of the 1982 original, I think they should have done something clever. Like retconning the reason for a scientific base having grenades and flamethrowers handy. As action/horror movie fans, we kind of accept these things as just kind of laying around a scientific research base (probably because if we were all in that same situation, we would want to have that kind of hardware lying around-- but I mean hell, Ellen Ripley was hanging with a bunch of space marines, at least...). Although they do call them "torches" in the film, they're hardly acetylene welding equipment and I don't think you can or would use a military flamethrower to warm up frozen equipment. They're there to burn thick foliage and any inconvenient people that happen to be in the way. Why they'd have one at a base in the antarctic is a mystery at best, but they had at least two working, and not improvised, military grade 'throwers. And the Norwegians had two as well, along with a stash of grenades! Not thermite, military-issue grenades. I mean, a rifle or two, maybe even a shotgun might be something that could be found on a government base. But even a subtle nod toward where this hardware came from would have been great. And speaking of which, if they were going to make a straight up, kick ass action movie, there could have been ways of going about it. It's clear from MacReady and Copper's visit to the station that a huge battle took place. The place is full of holes and lets not forget that even though it had the element of surprise, those canny chaps from Norway were able to fend the Thing off, and send it running toward the next camp.

Why not establish the situation, and then turn it into a bug hunt, at least for a little while? Any gamer worth his or her salt would have done for a scene where they get tooled up, and kitted out for battle. Perhaps at that stage, the Thing didn't yet want to hide, but thought it could take the humans on in a stand up fight? And when it discovered that it was wrong, it had to change tactics. I don't know, again, that's perverting what the 1982 film was all about, but seeing as how they did this anyway, why not go for the gusto (as Cameron's Aliens did years before).

Overall, I found the film tense, but ultimately dissatisfying, which is what I had been half expecting based on the reviews. It's great that they seem to have a reverence for the 1982 source material, but rather than really thinking about what made the premise great and staging events around that, they seemed to have concentrated on all of the most superficial elements. I didn't really get the sense that the tension between the Americans and the Norwegians was all that palpable. The characters were shallow and one dimensional and ultimately the movie serves only one purpose: to make you want to go back and watch (and appreciate so much more) the 1982 John Carpenter film.

Thinking about the Story first...

2011-12-02T14:40:00.001Z

As a species, we have been telling stories for millennia. To my mind, it's at the core of our entertainment and our experiences with life. Generally, we tend to look for the "story" in nearly every situation, even ones which appear to have none (and depending on what you believe, for instance: the Universe).

I've been thinking about gaming and how it relates to storytelling lately and it occurs to me that the way we think about games often diverges from this behavior, for good for for ill. I'm not saying that games should be passive experiences, or that gameplay for fun factor shouldn't be considered, but when talking about games, we tend to want to quantify their "length", which quite often has little to do with the content itself.

Now, of course we do this in films, but it doesn't seem to inform the creative process in the same kind of way. Anything between 5 and 40 minutes is generally considered a "short" and most "features" are 90 minutes or longer. We don't really have this kind of terminology for games, although in practice the "value" is often attributed to be similar. Consumers simply don't want to pay the same amount for one as compared to the other, no matter how great the story or experience therein.

I think what I'm getting at is that I think, if we're not doing this already, we need to think of "story" first in the games that it applies to (which obviously excludes purely multiplayer or complete sandbox experiences). I just don't get the sense that developers, at least at the moment, have the luxury. But I think doing so will improve the medium in myriad ways and drive up the potential for hits, which in turn drives up profits for investors (an unfortunately key player in making many of these dreams a reality).

XBLA managers, please take note. Achievements were a great idea, and I like them. But please don't make developers require them. And I mean developers at every level, not just the big players that reportedly "don't have to play by the rules" (can't find the reference, but I think it's related to Indie Game: the Movie). And leaderboards. Okay, so that's a feature of old arcade machines, but just because a game is on the XBLA ticket does that mean it has to have a leaderboard? Why not have an "attract" mode, too?

Whatever the case, I'm just thinking that length is rarely a consideration when talking about a story. It's like asking how long is a piece of string. It's as long as it needs to be. I think games should follow suit. We just need to find new ways of describing and marketing them that doesn't involve arbitrary "hours".

Why I'm waiting on some of the best games of the season...

2011-10-25T12:39:00.001+01:00

As every gamer knows, this time of year a veritable cornucopia of games vomits forth from the mystical gaming Asgard, and we struggle (along with our wallets) struggle to keep up with the deluge.

Normally, there are certain top-tier releases that I simply cannot pass up and end up succumbing to the pre-order discount madness on Steam. But this year, I simply cannot buy every major release, and I've come to realize that there are more than a few good reasons not to.

http://aimo.deviantart.com/art/HAD-01-Nathan-Drake-107056501

I consider Nathan Drake's third outing an unmissable experience. The first game is one of the PS3's must-have titles, and the series as a whole is the only interactive cinematic experience, and to me that's fine praise. The multiplayer modes in Uncharted 2 didn't hold my interest enough for me to keep the game once I had finished the main storyline, but it was still a very memorable and enjoyable game. It's a shame none of my friends seem to want to play online, otherwise the co-op play in the new game might convince me to buy it at release, but since I already have a huge stack of games (most from past Christmases), Drake's Deception will have to wait. The single-player experience will lose nothing in the months between now and whenever I pick it up, and there's a chance I might be able to save a little cash buying it used.

http://themis711.deviantart.com/art/Skyrim-Wallpaper-206521488

I never played all the way through Oblivion, but it's a great open world and I enjoyed existing in it for a while. I also have fond memories of Daggerfall and Morrowind, and despite the bugs, Bethesda have a great pedigree of games in their menagerie. But it's those same bugs that keep me from wanting to buy Skyrim at release. Like Uncharted, it's a great single-player experience that's not burnished by time. In fact, in a way it can only be improved... some might say given the time to actually finish the game properly, by ironing out all the bugs post-release. In some ways, the buggy releases developers like Bethesda put out there feel like an open Beta test of sorts. I feel like if I wait around, eventually it will be a more robust and stable experience, particularly on my First Person platform of choice, the PC (which is also not the "lead" platform and therefore does not have as much attention when it comes to fixing bugs). Of course, this philosophy doesn't work if everyone adopts it, but sooner or later, until the industry figures out how better to make games with these production values that aren't quite so "broken" at release, others will start to follow this logic as well. Of course, all sorts of other things could be designed to combat this behavior, but as an avid gamer, I hope that devs and publishers realize that the easiest thing to fix is their own process, not what their collective audience is doing.

I went to the Eurogamer Expo 2011...

2011-09-25T22:28:00.002+01:00

...and all I got was this lousy Xbox Avatar T-Shirt!

The show this year was much bigger, and seemed to be weirdly more like E3 and at the same time more like San Diego Comic Con. Or perhaps I just miss attending those two shows. Now that I live in London, the Eurogamer Expo is probably the next best thing.

There was a clarion call for Cosplayers, with a Masquerade Contest for such, and my friend and I did see a few (a couple of Mass Effect peeps, some creepy nurses from Silent Hill, as well as various Zelda personages), as well as an awesome remote controlled R2-D2. When we arrived, the queue stretched around the block, out of sight, so we went for a quite couple of drinks instead. I think if I go again next year, I'll just turn up later so I can just walk right in.

On to the games! Tops on both of our lists were The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as well as Mass Effect 3, and Batman: Arkham City.

The first game I got to play properly was Bethesda and id Software's Rage. As I've said before, I kind of feel sorry for the boys and girls at id for being somewhat usurped by Fallout and Borderlands. This is their first fully fledged game since 2004's Doom 3, and they've likely been working on it since around the time that game finished. Although they are loathe to admit it, the game seems to be treading on territory covered by and large by those two games.

I got to spend a few minutes with the 360 version of the game. The graphics looked great, and intricate, but I didn't see anything in my brief time with the game that set it apart from the aforementioned games. It looks well polished and like a lot of people have been working long and hard upon it, but... like many top tier games, it's been done before.

We waited in the queue for Skyrim, but I think they must have been having trouble with the demo stations or something because even though it was relatively late in the day, most of the consoles were empty and not being used despite the queue stretching around the booth. After a little while, though we got to see some live gameplay, but we didn't end up waiting to actually play it. Allotted play times are short (particularly for an RPG like Skyrim), and both my friend and I just wanted to see a little of the game in action. It looks great. I'm looking forward to dual-wielding magic spells and exploring the frozen nation of the Nords.

One quick aside: the funny thing about seeing games on the show floor is they're rarely transcendental experiences. As compared to E3, the show floor is less chaotic (although no less crowded)-- probably because of the absence of loud stage shows and nearly every booth has the sound being pumped through headphones instead of out into the cacophony of a huge hall. Batman Arkham Asylum has to be one of my favorite games of the last few years, and I have no doubt that Rocksteady Studios will deliver a worthy sequel. That being said, as I saw Batman maneuvering through the appropriated Gotham, it really wasn't anything I hadn't already seen before, covered in online sites like GameTrailers.com. It looked great, and I would have loved the chance to play it, but the queue was too long for me to want to wait around for so long. I was eager to see what other games were on display.

While the series hasn't had as lasting an impact upon me, Mass Effect 3 looked great. From what little I saw, they've evolved the shooting mechanics further, and the game looked spectacular on the aging platform that is the 360. Since I haven't yet finished ME2, I wasn't dying to leap into the next one for whatever reason.

A couple of games that impressed my friend on the show floor, but that I'm still dubious about are Binary Domain and Inversion. Again, it's a very different environment at a show like the Eurogamer Expo-- you don't have the time to get familiar with the controls because there's usually another eager gamer behind you champing at the bit to get their turn. They try to mitigate this by having handlers and or developers patrolling the kiosks, giving people hints, or full-on tutorials. But they're not available at every station, so you're left to your own devices. If Inversion has some interesting gravity-bending mechanics, they weren't really on display in the levels I played. You could float objects, which was a showy and nice effect (little bits of rubble floating and spinning as if they were suddenly placed in microgravity), but we both got stuck at one spot at the level because it wasn't obvious that you had to press the 360's "X" button to vault down to the next section.

Binary Domain has Japanese fingerprints all over it, and unfortunately I mean that in the bad way. Sure, there were wonderful games being shown at TGS this year, like Ni No Kuni or Professor Layton's London Life, which demonstrate that Japanese developers haven't completely lost the plot... but, something about the clunky way the faux-Western world is presented, with YAGR (Yet Another Giant Robot), just is lost on me. Again, my friend seemed to be impressed with the visuals, but neither Binary Domain nor Inversion looked very interesting to me (and I don't think I was alone, both booths were very sparsely populated).

Uncharted 3 just seemed to be a multiplayer demo of some kind. I think there was a queue to get into the presentation to show off the single-player demonstration, but there were no signs and neither of us were in the mood to wait in any lines.

I briefly saw Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and it was de_dust in all its glory. The graphics looked new and shiny, but with that same classic CS gameplay.

Modern Warfare 3 looked about as one would expect, and was a popular area of the show, but didn't seem to be quite as busy as Battlefield 3 was. The queue was massive. I watched a bit of gameplay. Yep, what you've already seen and know, guys shooting at other guys in uniform. I didn't get a sense of the amazing graphics in the Frostbite 2 engine, but I didn't linger for all that long.

I played Dark Souls for a little. I can see the appeal, but I found the controls clunky-- there's some nice polish there, and although I reject the idea that controls should be intentionally crappy to emulate "hard to wield" weaponry, again the environment isn't really conducive to learning.

Shadow of the Colussus HD looks great, as I imagine Ico did as well (I didn't bother walking around to the other side of the booth-- I've played both of those games already). If I hadn't already played the originals, I would probably be keen. HD remakes of the Metal Gear Solid franchise were also on show-- I never played Snake Eater, so I will probably pick that one up in some form, assuming they can be had separately.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North looked really awesome, actually, better than I was expecting. I didn't get a chance to play it so I shouldn't really be mentioning it, but just for completeness' sake I have to say this one moved up my radar a tad.

OnLive had a big presence at the show, and people seemed to be milling about their booth. I think they're ahead of their time, I hope they can survive until the technology rises to meet what they're offering, but for now, latency of any kind is difficult for me to take, when the alternative (playing games on your own console or hardware rather than just streaming them) still works fine for me.

I love games with a very smart art style, which obviously is important in their design, but Rayman Origins just looked like another platformer, albeit a pretty one.

I spent a little bit of time with Zelda Skyward Sword. The game looks pretty great on that old Wii hardware, but I don't think it's convinced me to keep my Wii until the damn game is released in this region. I'm sure it's fun, and it's Zelda, but after spending a few moments with the controls it seemed a little bit meh. I think I'm just getting old and having to pick and choose my interactive experiences. Thank goodness I am able to make those choices, however.

I saw bits and pieces of other games (Saints Row the Third, Mario 3D Land), but nothing really worth mentioning.

All in all, it was a good show, and I think I'll be signing up for next year's (which I assume will be even bigger).

War never changes: Space Marine PC Demo

2011-08-24T15:49:00.003+01:00

Woohoo! Being a part of the Emperor's "Honour Guard" deffo comes along with some perks... The Space Marine demo dropped the other day and I wanted to quickly reflect on all I have learned.
There is very little preamble to the demo, which consists of two levels, one called Inquisitor and the other that may as well have been called "the Jump Pack showoffy level".

I mention preamble, because the fiction or "fluff" for the Warhammer 40,000 universe (that's "40K" to you and me), is pretty darn deep. I am continually surprised by how thoroughly thought-out everything is, for what started as a minis wargame. It makes me almost sad, as I wind my tabletop game of Rogue Trader to a close, but that's a story for another day...

Relic's Space Marine, for the uninitiated, is the story of one of the titular heroes of the 40K universe: a 7 foot tall genetically and surgically augmented incarnation of the might of the God-Emperor, clad in blessed ancient Powered Armour and wielding both Chainsword and Bolter gun. Basically, they are the martial demi-gods of the fiction, and in the game you are meant to feel like a badass. And, by-and-large, there is rampant badassery.

I think Relic has so far done right by Games Workshop's fiction, and it's always a thrill to see the game world realised in such detail. Although I largely enjoyed Ultramarines the movie, it unfortunately wasn't the most graphically resplendent vision of the universe, and I've always felt that Relic's efforts on this front were much more compelling, visually at least. The game oozes 40K atmosphere, from something as trivial as a servo skull, to the noticeable (but not annoying) clunk-clunk-clunk of Captain Titus striding forward in his heavy armor. The game mechanics work as you would expect, with aiming performed with the left trigger (I used an Xbox 360 controller, naturally), and shootiness on the right, plus face buttons to mash when there is hacking and chopping to be done. The game plays well, and the controls are decent and palpable. Each bolt round and chainsword swing looks and feels great. The enemies amass for your killing pleasure, but there's enough variety and a pleasurable mixture of shooting and melee.

I didn't really cotton on to what all the HUD meters meant exactly, but there seems to be only one health meter in the middle, refuelled by summarily executing Orks or gretchin with a satisfying chainsword cleave or stomp. There's also a huge Ultramarines meter in the lower left-hand corner, that gradually refills as you dispatch foes. Once filled, you may unleash a fatal flurry of blows and your attacks are exaggerated in their deadliness. The game reminds me a little of Batman Arkham Asylum in the melee combat-- the chained attacks are simpler and Titus perhaps lacks the finesse of the masked vigilante, but it manages to capture a little of the magic that made Batman great. Actually I was having so much fun, I forgot that the D-Pad allows switching of weapons, so I haven't even tried them yet, but stuck mainly with the chainsword and bolt pistol combo, and only remembered to switch to the two-handed boltgun during the second demo level (which didn't have the other two weapons). And shooting was also satisfying, with Orks exploding in a shower of gibs after each final shot or killing blow. Much like Dragon Age (but looking thankfully less ridiculous), this game is bloody. I'm not one of those people that gets off on gore, but it seems appropriate for a game featuring a 2-meter tall vehicle of wanton destruction, and to me it never seemed gratuitous. And anyway, these are xenos "greenskins" you're killing, not humans, so conscience absolved!

I caught a glimpse of the "cinematic" factor that Relic seem to want to capture with this game. At one point (featured in the latest trailers), you drop a bloody great Titan weapon down on a field of Ork combatants, and there's a whoosh from the faraway explosion-- a great visual touch.

I've recently discovered, via a Kotaku puff piece, that Mark Strong is voicing Captain Titus. Despite looking a lot like the British version of Andy Garcia, I really like him as an actor and although I wouldn't have guessed it from playing the demo (and my wife will tell you I'm pretty good at identifying celebrity voices), but it's great to see them getting some real talent for the voices in the game.

The jump pack level, the name of which escapes me at the moment, was a great showcase for the aerial gameplay. There didn't seem to be a meter anywhere, but holding down the button longer seemed to career Captain, Oh My Captain Titus ever higher. Your squadmates have to muddle through on their own, trudging through the dank lower passages, but they still manage to keep up with you. I never felt they were in any danger, though, I did try to do my duty and take out the Ork snipers who were nestled on high. I did notice a fair amount of destructible cover when taking out those lofty fungoid lifeforms, however. I was bam-smashing one with a thunderous ground pound, when the little refuse he was hiding behind went all to pieces. Great stuff.

The game is out in a few weeks, so we won't have to wait much longer. As RPS points out, it's a great slice, but will it get tiring if it's a whole game's worth of shooty-stompiness? Hopefully not, and based on what I've seen in their cinematic trailers, I think not, at least for this fanboy.

Stuck in a genre rut

2011-08-19T08:52:00.001+01:00

The trailer for NCSoft's Wildstar is pretty cute. It doesn't out-Pixar (although that's not really that hard these days) what we've seen from Insomniac Games, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it seem less like a mashup of Torchlight, Beyond Good & Evil and "World of Starcraft" (as quoted from Kotaku's love letter), and more like its own thing.

RPS's preview, does little to allay my fears. The whole "path" thing is an interesting layer to put on the experience, but there's really little new here, as they appear to be pandering to an audience that has been weaned on World of Warcraft. For me, WoW is the MMO that got things so right commercially but so wrong in so many other ways.

People seem to like MMOs for a variety of reasons. One, for the gameyness they can provide, which seems almost unlimited at first. There are things to unlock, stats to build, packs of wolves to kill. A feedback loop, present in nearly all games, has largely been perfected in WoW, and it keeps people shackled to their accounts for "just... one... more... quest." The next reason is the sense of community. I say "sense" because to my eyes its about as tangible as any other social networking. Sure, people meet up IRL, get married, cut one another, or use it as a cover story to execute helpless civilians, what-have-you. But it's in realtime, yadda yadda yadda. Other reasons include exploration, loot hoarding, auction-whores, the list goes on. But to me, it's a far cry from a truly immersive, engaging experience.

At every turn, MMOs break that suspension of disbelief that's important to nearly all fiction. For example, people have to queue up to kill the mob that satisfies the next quest requirement. Guys run around with names like "BaggaDoughnuts" and "Alsatian Lover12". People have metagame or out-of-game conversations about the latest celebrity to embarass herself on live TV, or the dispute over a Game of Thrones casting decision. And beyond all that, the world is incredibly static, with very few dynamic changes, and ultimately as a character living within it, you feel like you can have very very little impact on the world itself, which for me draws attention to the unreality of it all.

In most other non-MMO games, I can overlook the biggest immersion-breaking elements, but they're so strongly in an MMO's DNA that I just can't ignore them. I know there are so-called "RP" servers where people approach it like traditional tabletop roleplaying, but even they still can't maintain the illusion that the world exists independently of our own.

Text. I thought we had left a lot of that behind. I don't mind text when I'm reading a book or a web page, but for a videogame it feels awkward somehow. I would much rather get a feel for the world's backstory in other ways (as in the fingerprints it has left indelibly upon the world). And if we're meant to read some hoary old tomes, why not put something interesting in them, instead of disconnected stories that have no sensible purpose, divested from the game's main narrative context.

Bioware are moving a step forward by adding vocals to all of the NPCs in the game, but their own WoW-esque take on the genre does little else to allay my fears that this will be "just another MMO" experience in the same vein. I know other companies have probably tried and failed to make something truly distinct from WoW, but how many have succeeded by copying the same formula?

The problem, as I see it, is that all of these companies are essentially translating a single-player experience to the massively multiplayer arena. I'm reminded of some of the first MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, from back in the era of Bulletin Boards. They laid the groundwork for what eventually became Ultima Online and all of the other MMOs that spawned from that game's success. And by and large, they are going in the wrong direction.

Granted, they've learned a few things, but they're still making MMOs as if each person is the hero in their own story. Each person is the center of their own universe, around which everything else revolves. Final Fantasy XI and Guild Wars tried to change up the formula by making things appear to change for that player, but all of the other elements are still unable to be overcome.

I think these games have yet to fully accept the idea that a server population is just that, a population of individuals, and each one is NOT the hero of their own singleplayer story (that is often forced into concert with other single-player heroes). I think that's why they have to focus on level caps and "endgame" content, etc. The idea is to spin out and prolong each person's experience for as long as possible (in order to maximise $$), but inevitably once they reached whatever arbitrary limits they've had to specify, there's one last "endgame" experience and that's it.

I know there's auctions, crafting, etcetera, but I think these worlds have yet to embrace the idea that each player is just an individual in a larger population. Eve Online seems to have learned that the real, lasting drama will come from the players themselves and the community at large. They still have to police it for punks that may ruin the experience for everyone, but as the technology matures it will be interesting to see how they evolve, or if they'll just stay stuck in the same genre rut as WoW.

Despite all my...

2011-08-03T11:21:00.003+01:00

Ah, what a wonderful sensation... I'm taken back to the days of my youth, when I would sit outside and eat Doritos with a cannister of Bean Dip, or while away the hours reading game magazines at Bookstar. Yep, that long ago. I just read the intriguing account of Kotaku's first three hours with id Software's latest pre-Christmas blockbuster, Rage.

I'm reminded of a time, when I would read wistful tales in Electronic Gaming Monthly or PC Gamer of previews of games to come, and I would dream. I would dream of all of the towns and villages inside that virtual universe, and believe that yes, I too, could walk up to an NPC and shout nearly anything at them, and they would behave in a relatively realistic fashion. Someday, I too, would be able to realistically take cover behind a crate, while the enemy coordinated and flanked me, using advanced pathfinding AI over 3D terrain, etc. etc. The point is, like most promises that Peter Molyneux makes, most of those things failed to come true. Time and again I had my hopes dashed to pieces, until eventually, I finally caved into the realization that it was all just hype.

So now that I've become a jaded member of the general gaming public, my bullshit detector goes into overdrive when I start reading things that sound like boundless hyperbole, or thinly veiled sales rhetoric.

The linearity of the introduction doesn't bother me. Old school story tropes aren't that annoying, to be honest. Even the consolification doesn't necessarily bother an old "PC game" hand like me. But I've seen some of the "simian-like" movements of the Ghost Clan in gameplay videos and felt it was hardly something to really crow about. Perhaps it has moved on since then, but what I saw didn't warrant two paragraphs. And "nanonites" (shouldn't that be "nanites"?) are an acceptible contrivance, perhaps, but a game mechanic to revive yourself reminds me of shades of the original Prey. So far what I've seen of the racing fell completely flat for me. After the cartoonishness of Borderlands and to a large extent, Fallout 3, I would have expected a developer like id to go for something ultra-realistic in style and tone. But the "races" looked like a farcical arcade-style romp, not a desperate battle against the dregs of civilization, as it was in the movie the Road Warrior. I guess making it "fun" is all important, but based on the videos I've seen, I would still crave for a sense of realism, not just in graphical fidelity. The visuals are just the first step in my opinion, and to make a game truly immersive, certain things have to be taken into consideration. And "id Software paintjobs" is not one of them.

Let me stop being a negative Nancy for a moment, I want to believe in Rage. I love the post-apocalyptic genre, and how the world they've created differs from the usual (with an asteroid as the great extinction event instead of a man-made bomb). It's too bad that recent games like Fallout and Borderlands have stolen Rage's thunder a bit, but bravo to id for soldiering on with the premise that, no doubt, has been in the works since around the time Doom 3 was finished. Despite the fact that I think sticking with those one word, one syllable titles for this game is a mistake, I'm sure they'll craft a beautiful and engaging game.

And technology has moved on, and graphics are ostensibly where id is still able to pioneer. Many of the aspects of the article showcase the fact that id Software is proving they're still relevant. And I generally trust Brian Crecente and Kotaku to give me their genuine feelings, largely untainted by relationships with publishers and designers.

I think one has to take Crecente's account with a few caveats in mind, though. The first three hours sounds like a tutorial section, and it gave Kotaku and the rest of us a brief but tantalizing glance at what Rage, the game, is. I'm just not sure what Rage the experience is, or if it will be able to stand out from the two mostly excellent experiences that have come before, Fallout 3 and Borderlands.

If you read between the lines a bit, it's easy to see what Brian's perceived faults are with the game:

"Finally, I'm knocked into, attacked and laid out by the bandits."

Or, I read it as: and then the game wrested the controls away from me. Okay, so it was a tutorial to introduce the nanonites, but it shows that the game, as Crecente points out, "shows a troubling propensity to lean on the tropes of old gameplay."

"I play with the game's gunplay, testing the game's gentle auto-aim. I also discover that few things in this world are destructible."

With the exception of a few games (Red Faction Guerilla, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and perhaps Battlefield 3), this is something that we've become used to in level design. But the fact that he goes out of his way to mention it is troubling.

"Next I head over to the town's sheriff. He wants me to go on a mission for him. But before I do I need a better ride, he says. I need a Cuprino. The only way to win a Cuprino, I discover, is to enter a sponsored race. The only way to enter the race is to get sponsorship and the only one offering is Mutant Bash TV."

I thought this game was about player choice? I'm probably nitpicking, and of course this is more or less a tutorial section, not to mention that designers have to "railroad" the player once in a while, or else there will probably be no coherent plot, but still, regardless of which "suit" you choose to replace your arc suit, you'll be going down this path.

One other aside-- I know it's appropriate from a categorization standpoint, but it's becoming rather silly to refer to these games as "Role-playing Games" at this point. Back in the day, there were elements in computer games that emulated some of the popular tabletop RPGs of the time, like Dungeons & Dragons and the like. But RPGs have largely moved on from there (although there is still a place for "hack and slash"-- though that's a different discussion), something that video games are trying to do as well (but are still lacking in the interactivity). What Rage and other FPS games like it is about player choice (the developers have said this themselves), but not the kind of choices that immediately leap to mind when you think of actual "role" playing. They're about letting you make binary choices (shoot this person, or not shoot this person... and then die), or about choosing the kind of ammunition to fire.

I'm not sure what to make of his closing paragraph:

"But what I love most about Rage is that despite three hours of play, I still feel like I haven't gotten a handle on the game.Most games hit a point when you're on level ground, when you know the score, what you're expected to do and how you'll do it. I'm sure that Rage has that moment too..."

Okay, so this is probably a good thing. I think he's trying to say that he really enjoyed the experience, and he doesn't know what category to class this game as. In other words, it's not "just another FPS." But then he says, no wait, I'm sure I'll figure it out and it will be just like every other game I've played... I don't know, perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but unfortunately Brian seems to be slightly vague about some of these points, and I'm not certain exactly why.

Before I'm branded as an absolute id-hater, I have to say, I wouldn't be going on about this, blogging about it and over-analyzing Crecente's post if I didn't care. I, like many fanboy gamers out there, perhaps care too much about the latest in a line of shooters. I don't think it's wrong to be critical about games, however, and voice our opinions if we want more (that's technically acheivable). Rage will probably be a great game, as id Software seem to be laboring away on something that looks visually top notch, but let's just say I'm trying to be wary of the hype.

Does every new IP have to be a franchise?

2011-07-25T15:14:00.000+01:00


Or, medically, that would be: "Inflammation of the Sequel"

Hollywood, as many people have probably pointed out, generally tries to go with safe bets. When you're talking about multi-million dollar budgets, protracted development cycles and gambling with people's livelihoods, you can sort of understand why this is so. But every so often, market pressures, or just pure serendipity, forces people to innovate.

Before E3, I found myself replaying and connecting with a few old titles that I had either never started, or (more frequently) had never finished. As I wrote in 2009, I often find the greatest motivation for me to finish a game is an impending sequel. That was certainly true of Uncharted back in the day, and with Dragon Age: Origins and Crysis languishing on the shelf, I leapt in and tore into those games. But then the sequels came and went, and because of various reasons those two are fading back into mental obscurity.

In Dragon Age's case, reviews of the sequel seem to paint it as a competent, but somewhat cookie-cutter follow up. Given my experience with the demo, I decided I'm not going to bother and now I find my zeal for finishing Dragon Age: Origins to be distinctly waning. I've since gone back to it and then stalled again. It's a great game, but somehow the sourness of the sequel has been invisibly transferred back to the original game, akin to my recent lack of fervor for the Star Wars universe.

As for Crysis, the sequel is suffering much the same fate as Dragon Age II, although I did enjoy it (having reviewed it on TheAverageGamer)-- the sequel has been made specifically with the console experience in mind. In Crysis 2's case, this isn't a deal-breaker, but now that I know the follow up story is paper thin, it has pretty much killed any chance of me going back and finishing the original.

Mass Effect 2, given all of the Game of the Year awards and applause lauded on it, should buck this trend. At least, I thought it would, but after buying it at release, ignoring it for a while and then trying to get back into it a few weeks ago, I didn't find my interest was enough to keep things rolling. And this was back when we still thought Mass Effect 3 might be out in 2011.

Thinking about all of these sequels flooding the market, which we as gamers often complain about, but look forward to nonetheless, got me thinking about some discussions I've heard post-E3 about new Intellectual Properties shown off at the show. Most of the time, we tend to assume that every new I.P. is being targeted at being a franchise in its own right. This is, of course, for the very same reason sequels exist for every other successful title, but somehow I couldn't help but question whether this is a good idea in every case.

Movies are largely treading on some similar pathways and although the two forms of entertainment are different, I believe there are lessons to be learned from their example. Let's take Star Wars, for example. While Lucas was making A New Hope, I don't think anyone could have predicted at the time that it was going to be a rousing success. Fresh off the success of American Graffiti, and with a two-picture deal from Fox backing his passion project, Star Wars may have been intended as a trilogy from the outset, but it was far from a certainty. As described in many of the behind the scenes documentaries, it was a weird film with wizards, shaggy humanoids and other strange characters, and lots of Errol Flynn style derring-do... in space. Of course now the film has gone on to become one of the defining films of a generation. The film has a clear ending, which is one of the qualities which makes it so wonderful. Granted, the Empire Strikes Back doesn't continue this trend of compartmentalized serials, but thematically and tonally it's a wholly different film, and is fairly unique among pieces with cliffhanger endings. I can't think of many recent examples where this type of thing has worked even half as well. The second and last X-men film helmed by Bryan Singer wasn't a terrible film, but it was clear from the "ending" that it was an intermediary and a narrative bridge between it and the next film, which unfortunately was even more of a letdown. The Harry Potter series is a great example of what works for a compartmentalized serial, and what doesn't. The first six films each possess a beginning, a middle and an end. Obviously they are part of a larger connected narrative, but each has a proper story arc. I don't disagree with the decision to split The Deathly Hallows into two films, but it has to be said that seeing The Deathly Hallows part one, leaves one with that sinking disappointment upon leaving the theater, that an intervening six months before the story continues. This will of course be mitigated somewhat by its release on Blu-Ray, but as an experience if all of the stories worked in this fashion, I'm not sure it would work at all.

I don't expect designers and publishers to think differently about their products or their work, but it's something that I think bears mentioning, where critical discussion of games and their attendant stories are concerned. Most direct sequels in games don't necessarily have the cliffhanger problem as their film counterparts may, but I've noticed that all of the films that have followed this "we're starting a new franchise" model have largely been failures. Of course they don't have the same set of boundaries or equipment that game developers have-- with "assets" being held over to be used again and again, but the differences aren't that dissimilar. Peter Jackson and WETA's original Hobbiton set was dismantled at the end of shooting of Return of the King, and before shooting on The Hobbit began, it had to be rebuilt from scratch. Principal photography for Return of the King must have wrapped by November 2002, and filming on the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey began earlier this year. I don't know if many game development houses regularly use 9 year old assets, but I imagine it would be seen as "really old data."

A better comparison is probably TV. Our favorite shows tend to come and go, but while they're on and we're enjoying them, we kind of want them to go on forever. This usually is not a good idea where the actual story is concerned. I never really liked the visual aesthetic, but a friend recently introduced me to Babylon 5. It really is a brilliant show, and it seems pretty clear that at the outset a definitive story arc was planned, spanning five seasons. Unfortunately the show got gimped slightly because of looming cancellation after the fourth season aired (which turned out not to be the case) and they had to scramble to extend the story that had already been hastily ended. I have a feeling a similar occurrence has happened with Fringe. Still, Babylon 5 is fairly unique among American shows for its (presumably) meticulously planned narrative and beginning-middle-end arc. As I have mentioned in other posts, my experience with most British shows is they rarely run for more than a handful of seasons, ensuring the plots, characters (and most importantly the writers) aren't bored and everything feels relatively fresh and inventive.

My point is this: it might make for a refreshing change if every new game idea wasn't planned as something that was just the first in a long line of sequels. It would be nice to have something be created that was designed to stand on its own. I have no way of knowing if all games actually are planned as new franchises, but in the gaming media (and we as consumers), generally tend to think of them that way.

Paranormality: Debunking, well, everything!

2011-07-21T12:25:00.003+01:00

Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing Ghost Stories, a play by Jeremy Dyson (League of Gentlemen) and Andy Nyman (a colleague of Derren Brown, an "illusionist" well known throughout Britain). Although the story is outwardly about ghosts, it is also a keen exploration into the psychology behind fear, and why we as humans all seem to enjoy this particular sensation.

During the performance, which begins as if a psychology professor were conducting a class on the subject, a web site is referenced, the ScienceofGhosts.wordpress.com. At the time, I assumed the site was either entirely fictional, or part of some kind of viral marketing for Ghost Stories. The site, as far as I can tell is genuine, with author Richard Wiseman asking people to upload their own photos of the unexplained. Since the show has finished its run, hopefully I am not spoiling anything by referencing this, but the site contains one of the spookiest photographs I have seen in recent memory, which is also highlighted during the performance.

Check out http://scienceofghosts.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/wedding-ghost-2/ for the full text on the photo.

The photo above looks fairly innocuous enough, for the 70s, at least. You have a woman that appears to have walked off the set of Dr. Zhivago (seriously, it looks like something Cate Archer from No One Lives Forever would wear), along with some other blokes, one of whom looks like British racing driver Nigel Mansell. The "ghost" appears just behind him, actually, and uncannily, whatever is going on here, it looks like a dimunitive man, peering out behind Nigel's right sleeve.

The illusion, once pointed out, is quite compelling. The shawl or scarf the man must be holding behind his back becomes a trouser leg and shoes (sandals?), and whatever is being reflected, either a "watch strap" as some commenters have surmised, or perhaps some part of the shawl or scarf being held at an odd angle, creates just enough for our brains to see a face that probably isn't there. I say probably because despite what the text says, it could very well be a child, or a little person of some description.

Even though we know the proportions are all wrong for a person to be standing there, our brains put the hidden pieces together and give us the sense that a little man is peering, perhaps maliciously, from behind the man's leg. Yeah, go ahead, look at it again. Freaky, I know. But it's most likely the product of imagination. Looking at an old photo like this however, one of the first things most people probably think is "it's a ghost!", which is what fascinates me about Professor Wiseman's latest book. It's about the pyschology behind our built-in human reactions, and how startlingly similar they are from person to person. If you are at all curious, I strongly urge you to check out his blog, there are some pretty amusing things on there, including some fun exercises to try out every Friday. Wiseman started out as a magician, and became fascinated by how we as humans behave and react, particularly when presented with something regarded as supernatural or paranormal. In fact, if you liked Penn & Teller's show Bullshit, you may enjoy Paranormality. It had never occurred to me before, but I suppose as stage magicians, hoodwinking people night after night tends to give you a certain insight into how similar our thought processes work as a whole.

Anyway, I won't spoil anything, because I think the book is worth picking up, but Wiseman tries to get inside the mechanics of our minds and why we're drawn to things such as Psychics, Out-of-Body Experiences, Spoon-bending, Spirit Mediums, Cults, Prophetic dreams and of course Ghosts. The book is well and humorously told, and although it may shatter some of your preconceived notions about any of the above, it's still an eye-opening investigation on some of the innerworkings of the human brain.

Like many people, I want to believe, but being a Biologist I have a naturally sceptical scientific background. On the subject of Fortune-Telling, the main example I point to, once remarked by LA Radio station KROQ's Kevin Ryder and Bean Baxter, is 9/11. With all of the soothsayers and what-have-you, in and around New York City, you'd think as something as momentous as the attacks on the World Trade Center might have appeared on at least some of their collective radar. But, there was nothing. I know they would be dismissed as crackpots before the event, but so far I have yet to hear a single account of anyone voicing their precognitive concerns about the massacre. Honestly, for a tragedy that large and far-reaching in America, you'd have thought at least a few prognosticators would have picked up the scent.

On the subject of Out-of-Body Experiences, I had a good friend named Matt that claimed he had experienced this himself. Someone had given him a book on the subject, and one evening he decided to follow the instructions and try it himself. He said it was one of the most terrifying experiences he had ever had and would never do it again. Honestly, beyond him having some kind of dream, I don't have an explanation for the story that Matt related to me. In Penn & Teller's Showtime program Bullshit!, they describe a study whereby a picture is placed on a high shelf, kept out of view of the subject. The subjects are instructed, once achieving the OBE, to try and float above the shelf and describe anything they see. Most of the subjects saw nothing, or else had a hazy or blurry image of what was on the card (if they knew something was supposed to be there). The study concluded that the experience was nothing more than an elaborate, perhaps lucid dream.

As for my own experiences, there is one memory that stands out as quite unusual. For a long time I regarded it as something genuinely supernatural and although it didn't shake the very foundations of my skepticism, it forced me to admit that there are some things that are beyond explanation. Or so I thought at the time.

When I was a kid, approaching my teenage years, my parents used to have a getaway place in the mountains, near Big Bear Lake in California. It was a simple A-frame three-storey house that we lovingly fixed up to some degree. The house was on a slanted hillside overlooking the encircling mountain arms and the county of San Bernadino down below. Waking up to a sea of clouds is still one of my best memories of the place. Often I would play on the lowest level, which was fashioned to be some kind of a bar or lounging space of some sort. The boiler was behind a locked door which lead to the shadowed "cellar" under the house. During the bright light of day the place seemed safe and serene, but when night creeped in, I remember kind of an uneasy feeling, particularly as the boiler would make a startling "thump" at irregular intervals.

Being at high altitudes, I often would have very vivid dreams in the place, although they weren't often sinister. One night, however, I had a particularly vivid experience, bordering on lucid dreaming. My bed was in a small loft which overlooked the main living space below, and because of the steeply sloping roof, I remember the angle next to my bed was quite extreme. My parents weren't that far away, which somehow increased the emotion I felt at the time, which I can only describe as utter, abject dread. I realise now that what I probably experienced was akin to some kind of sleep paralysis, but the experience was harrowing and terrifying. I lay in my bed, and some part of my mind knew that I was asleep, motionless, vulnerable. I seem to recall, looking at my sleeping, blanketed form, and floating out and over the railing of the loft. I remember looking at the large lamp suspended over the main living room via chains and thinking how precarious it was. Then, the emotion took me, I felt a sudden and all-encompassing fear, like nothing that I had ever experienced in my life at that point. It was like my conscious mind was awake, but my body was sleeping so that I was completely and totally helpless. And something, I knew, was coming... and I felt I knew that there was nothing I could do to stop it. The rest of the details are somewhat hazy for me now. All I really remember is being helpless, and a ball of light or something came through the wall, and I was powerless to stop it. All I wanted to do was please, God, wake up!

But I must have awoken at some point, terrified and absolutely convinced that I had experienced something irrational, something that can only be described as supernatural.... until it happened again. Years later (in my twenties), I was back at my parent's house in the suburbs, safe and sound in the room that I had lived in for years, and suddenly, that awe-inspiring dread overtook me again. It was like a mirror image of the experience, and partway through it, I woke up. Perhaps I was just re-living the experience in a very vivid dream, but many of the elements were identical. After my first experience with what I know believe to be sleep paralysis, I was convinced that it was the place that was haunted. But after the second, nearly identical experience, I could only conclude (to some relief) that it was just a product of my own worries and fears, and a strange mechanism by which it sometimes occurs.

I shall leave my commentary there, but suffice it to say, I found the book a great read, and I think might be of interest to anyone, whatever their beliefs may be.

the Geek's most anticipated games of E3 2011

2011-07-08T13:47:00.000+01:00

E3 is over. Half the year is over. Before I get too depressed contemplating that, let's look at the games!

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite rose like a beacon to become the darling of the show; a fitting tribute to the fictional floating city of Columbia, where most of the action in this single-player FPS is set. Although the entire gameplay demonstration has only just hit the web, it was much talked about prior to the reveal and showcased your companion Elizabeth’s powers, namely to reach into “tears” in space-time to effect certain advantages. The demo is brimming with information, including giving some insight into Elizabeth’s (dysfunctional) relationship with her jailer, the Big Daddy-esque Songbird. Ken Levine, the series’ creator, emphasizes player choice, along with the fact that Columbia is a very different place as compared to the original’s Rapture, specifically in that it is still a living, breathing place. A place with distinct problems, sure, with the Vox Populi (Voice of the People?) and the Founders squaring off, jeopardising even a lowly Postman’s life, but still the key idea is to be witnessing the fall of a proposed Utopia as opposed to arriving after. He also seemed to highlight the fact that Elizabeth is not just another health meter to monitor, or simply a Yorda (from Ico) to handhold across ravines-- she can take care of herself, but she needs your character, Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkterton agent, to help her. I think giving Booker his own voice is an important step toward immersion, and storytelling in general. This is an intriguing theme of many of the emerging top tier titles at the show; trying to establish a meaningful connection between the player and the characters in the story. Now that the video has gone live, and juding from the Geoff Keighley's interview, I feel a bit validated that the Infinite might refer to "infinite dimensions" as opposed to just "boring old time travel." Bioshock Infinite seemed to appear on many people’s Best of Show lists, and it definitely rates highly on my own.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

I didn't see much coverage about the game, but I'm a fan of the series and have no doubt that Naughty Dog will turn out another hit for the trilogy. It's one of the few remaining "exclusives" on any platform, and luckily for Sony it's been a series worth keeping so. GTTV seemed thoroughly impressed with the title, with it sweeping many awards and only really overshadowed by the aforementioned Bioshock Infinite. Multiplayer has been kicked up a notch, and while it's not why I keep coming back to the series, the inclusion of co-op seems like a logical addition. The brief snippet showing the waterlogged ship tossing and turning was an impressive physics demo in itself. The series has looked great, but I've never thought of it as a graphics showcase, but evidently it was impressive enough to win GTTV's "Best Graphics" award. For me, there's something indelibly cinematic about Naughty Dog's presentation in Uncharted, and making it almost a passive watchable experience is a great testament to the game's ability to tell a decent story. Sure, they've cribbed from Tomb Raider and by extension, Indiana Jones, but the game has taken on a life of its own and its characters are compellingly human and identifiable. Though they make great games, I would watch a film that Naughty Dog produced any day, as they clearly understand pacing, character arcs, and making a connection with their audience.

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 is the third, "third sequel" game on this list. I'm sure that must mean we're due for some heavenly convocation of sorts. I wasn't the biggest Battlefield 1942 fan when the game came out, but I could see the merits of what they were trying to do. And even though the controls were a bit floaty and the vehicles, including armored tanks, were about as durable as a paper bag filled with hydrochloric acid, my friends and I had tons of fun with it and it's successors at LAN parties. Battlefield Bad Company 2 had a superb multiplayer experience, one that ranked higher than Call of Duty for me personally. The new Frostbite engine was the most impressive engine graphically as far as I'm concerned, with lots of little details that amp up the immersion. I can't put my finger on which elements of the engine that make it look so realistic, but the graphical fidelity was truly incredible. A lot of hyperbole is thrown around when it comes to new games, but this one is well-deserved. I think it's partially to do with body awareness, but this was the game that looked least like a game and most like real life of all the footage shown from the show. The tank demonstration was incredible and for me was one of those "blow your military-issue socks off" moments that a gamer hopes to see coming out of E3.

Batman: Arkham City
Bam! Biff! Pow! Okay, so the game probably doesn't use those monikers when you're trashing thugs, but it might as well given how fun the combat is, and how powerful it makes you feel. Actually, I'm surprised no one's modded the PC version of Arkham Asylum to add the campy element inspired by the 60s TV show. But no, that's not the Batman that Rocksteady Studios is out to capture. They came out of nowhere in 2009 with a jaw-crackingly awesome release. To their credit, they mostly ignored influences from the films, even the recently successful reboots, and went back to the source comic material, even drafting in voice actors from the dark (for a kid’s show) Batman: The Animated Series. The whole package was satisfying and fun from start to finish and was pulled off with aplomb. I never really mastered the combat at the time of its original release, but the game is so good, that footage of Arkham City has inspired me to ignore my "pile of shame" and go back and play the original, just to figure out how to get my combo multiplier up a few notches (I always thought the slow-mo was to help you make timed button-presses as each fist connects to a baddie's face). The studio could do worse than by simply giving us “more of the same” but Rocksteady are clearly a team that knows how to follow a standout hit. The new environ of the annexed Gotham is more open and traversal looks incredibly rewarding-- flying around in Batman’s wingsuit sounds like a perfect marriage of what worked in Just Cause 2 and Prototype/inFAMOUS. The plot sounds like the best parts of the classic 80s flick Escape from New York, with added Batman. Purely from that simple fact, it cannot go wrong. Specifically, at E3 we learned that Catwoman will be a playable character for roughly 10% of the game, and that villain Two-Face would be joining the cast of characters from the first game. I'm not a Robin-hater, and think that the character could be handled in a more mature and compelling way (he is an orphan, after all). I have high hopes for Arkham City and feel confident that Rocksteady are one of the few studios that can deliver on a sequel that is as satisfying in its innovation as the original.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
There are RPGs and there are RPGs. Bethesda have ascended to become one of the premiere deliverers of decent hack-and-slashdom. At E3 we learned a little more about the backstory of the main character you are playing, specifically thatyou have the soul of a Dragon, and in defeating your non-humanoid cousins, can absorb some of their power. Bethesda have developed a rough language that can be used to create powerful effects in the dragons’ shouts, such as fire or frost breathing, summoning other dragons for aid, and of course others not yet revealed. Bethesda have hopefully learned much from the slight missteps from the Fallout series, and have created a new quest-generation engine. It will also differ from Oblivion and to a certain extent from the Fallout games by scaling less artificially to one’s ability. The game’s new “Radiant AI” system will also purportedly send the player off on quests based on what remains unexplored. Similar to Bioshock Infinite, the idea of player choice was emphasised by lead designer Todd Howard, indicating that a multitude of options were available to a player in terms of wielding weapons or hurling magic. Since the stirring first teaser trailer, I have been wholeheartedly signed on for whatever ride that Skyrim promises to take us upon.

Tomb Raider

E3 was the first time that this, to use a cliche term, “reboot” really had some light shone upon it. The series has endured, but over the years (plus two accurate but also sickly Hollywood adaptations) has lost some of its relevance, especially in a post-Uncharted world. Crystal Dynamics appear to be trying to get back to what made Lara compelling in the first place, namely the connection between her and the player. This time around, the connection is more than superficial, the key element is we are meant to care about this woman that we’re seeing on screen. By Lara's innate expressiveness in the game engine, we can see her basic wants and agonizing injuries strewn across the screen. She’s not the experienced, confident Lara we all know and have grown to love, but young, fresh-faced, and in need of our help.

A strange debate

2011-06-29T12:08:00.000+01:00

HBO has always done right by the shows they produce, and the trend definitely continues with their adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. Much like the jointly produced BBC/HBO series Rome, I was enraptured from the first scene.

I have not read any of the novels and although I was tempted to begin, I felt a strange compulsion not to, for fear of sullying my enjoyment of the adaptation. It seems a little backwards to do things that way and my imagination probably isn't getting the work out that it should, but at least it needn't necessarily impede my enjoyment of either format.

As with Rome, the casting is fantastic. Sean Bean is the most logical choice for Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, being the biggest Hollywood star that is also from the north of England, but he and the rest of the players are well-suited to their roles. Peter Dinklage may have an unfortunate name, but he is a superb and likable actor. I get the sense that Tyrian Lannister is more of a rogue than he has so far been portrayed in the show, but Dinklage has an immediately likable persona, something that seems befitting of the Lannister "imp." I only wish that his accent coach was able to assist him a bit further with emulating a more British-sounding cadence.

I was intrigued to know what Martin's source material was. That he was drawing from some kind of English heritage, I was certain. Although I am kind of an outsider to Britain, having grown up in America, I can see that Martin has a keen eye to the makeup of the country, and it's natural delineation between North and South. Of course, we have a similar division in America, and our history echoes many of the trials and travails that have befallen our mother empire: civil wars, border disputes, political power struggles, bloody massacres, tyrannical dynasties and despots. Apparently, according to the wiki, it's largely influenced by the Wars of the Roses, a 15th Century conflict between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. Martin has said that he has not simply cribbed from history, but one can tell that even just the names share a rough similarity to the houses that they theoretically represent. And I love that there is kind of an American flavor, which adds something otherworldly (or perhaps parallel universe-y) to it somehow. "Ned" is a thoroughly American sounding name, but as a nickname for Eddard it's an interesting twist. Perhaps it's because I often have trouble swallowing the names of fantasy characters. Mostly they feel like a crude parody of Tolkien, and usually are laden with apostrophes and unusual spellings, to no great creative end. Martin largely avoids this trap and I applaud him for it.

Being inspired by history is a great thing, I think, and to lay over the trappings of a fantasy world in which dragons, dire wolves, zombies and other nasty things might actually exist is a great melding of ideas. Much like in Warhammer Fantasy, or in the Agone RPG, the template of the real existing behind serves to increase the depth and verisimilitude of the concept. And speaking of depth, what continues to impress me about Game of Thrones is the depth of the characterization and the interactions between them. I don't know how much of it is Martin and how much of it might be the adaptation, but it is an enchanting cocktail of near-palpable emotions, desires, aspirations, schemes, connivances and their inevitable grim outcomes. Now that's a word I have heard more often in Britain; "It's grim up North," is a common and well-known saying here and it can certainly be said of the nation of Westeros.

Speaking of grim outcomes, that brings me to my main point. Recently, I have read some things which lead me to believe that a large part of the audience was dismayed and perhaps outraged at the death of a certain character. At least it can be said that they care enough about the characters to want to quit the show, even perhaps the entire channel. I don't think it's necessary to say who dies, but suffice it to say it's a major character. And, to add insult to injury, a sinister character who has dogged the Stark's heels since their first move, survives and remains in power. To me, these developments were somewhat shocking (although for anyone who has any sense of Machiavellian intrigues, at least the possibility is foreshadowed quite early on). I suppose it shouldn't surprise me, that a large part of the mainstream audience was dismayed and felt duped somehow by a show that can kill of its main characters, but for some reason it made me despair at the state of the audience for shows like Game of Thrones.

I am immediately comforted by the fact that the show exists at all, more by the fact that its home is HBO, one of the few big budget production houses that deigns to take risks and pushes the envelope(And who could have predicted that? Back in the day, they just used to showcase other people's movies). Further, the series has been renewed for a second season, and though perhaps we can thank the success of other "fantasy" adaptations for paving the way, HBO's Game of Thrones' accomplishments stand on their own. The fact that a character dying only lends credence to the world that they have created on screen, and makes us even more invested is a compelling ideal.

Bioshock's Infinite Universes?

2011-06-17T16:36:00.002+01:00

Okay, so I have a theory about Bioshock Infinite, one that perhaps I thought was so obvious that it wasn't worth blogging about. But after reading some discussion of the factions video on RPS, I'm inclined to voice my theories.

I haven't actually seen the footage so until that Non-Disclosure interval is up, I'm going to have to wait to confirm this first hand, but I'm not sure it's only time travel that we're talking about here. Ken Levine has been talking about the lovely and perhaps not so very demure Elizabeth's powers of enchantment. And no, I'm not talking about her amazing (for a virtual person, at least) décolletage, I'm talking about her powers of "time travel." Levine has been describing them in terms of "tears" in reality (as in rips, and not as in "tears of a clown").

The scene, according to several sources, plays out like this:

You (as Booker DeWitt) and Elizabeth are traveling through Columbia when she spies a dead horse and calls out to you, imploring you to let her "save" the horse. Suddenly, you find yourselves on a street in a nondescript city, Tears for Fears is playing somehwere nearby and on the movie marquee overhead (or perhaps there's a movie poster, I'm not sure which), it says "Revenge of the Jedi". This immediately got my attention and is largely the basis for my assumption of alternate universes. Of course, it's possible that in the real world, the film was shown to advance audiences during preview screenings with that title. However I had thought the lore was that Lucas changed it at the last minute, ostensibly to combat the rampant t-shirt and toy "piracy" that was going on at the time.

I was of course alive at the time and remember having bubblegum trading cards and a baseball cap that had the Revenge logo on it. But when I went to see it at the theater, it had already been renamed Return of the Jedi. So I can't really coorborate from personal experience, as I was only ten years old.

In any case, the news jumped Bioshock Infinite up to the top of many people's most anticipated lists. It was already looking like a great prospect, but the new mechanics and interplay between Booker, Elizabeth and Songbird sound fantastic, time/dimensional travel or not. It was already receiving quite a lot of buzz for the move away from Rapture, plus the last gameplay trailer showed that Irrational had a good handle on improving what worked in the original Bioshock. Back to the sultry and vulnerable Elizabeth, she looks to have been redesigned to be more innocent and looks a little younger, or perhaps it's just a look that might appeal more to modern audiences-- her face seems a bit more anime and Disneyfied). Previous character designs made her look more period, more like Silhouette from the Watchmen film. Although she still has the same, ahem, physique, she certainly has a more appealing face, without losing some of the distinction she had before... maybe it's just her expressions that have changed. In many of the newer screenshots, she looks more like the character they've been describing. Young, unsure of herself and although she supposedly can handle herself against some of the game's baddies (they were careful not to make her a Yorda), she still has a reason for needing Booker, and given what we know about her powers, a clear reason why Booker needs her.

Assassin's Creed: Reveal-ations

2011-06-17T10:08:00.000+01:00

I'm a little behind on the Assassin's Creed story arc (I'm still working my way through the second game), but checking out the footage of the next in the series, Revelations, made me think of what's to come. Okay, so Ezio has gotten a substantial bit older, but is he... channelling Altaïr? It got me thinking about the inevitable Assassin's Creed III; are we going to have Desmond running around, utilizing all the memories he's experienced through the animus?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like they've been telegraphing that "twist" all along. I still don't really understand how the story relates to Templars and the Hashashiyyin or whatever they are, and what all those deciphered Glyph videos are all about (so far I've avoided any potential spoilers-- if there are any), but it's a great excuse to parkour through history.

E3 2011 Show Floor "No Shows"

2011-06-10T17:40:00.002+01:00

Just like in photography or art, I seem to be focusing on not what IS at E3, but what isn't there. Maybe that's because, at times like these so much information comes pouring out that it's easier to process.

I noted the absence of four titles in all of the voluminous coverage so far and though this could be that many of the titles are still under wraps and therefore are only being shown behind closed doors-- presumably because they may be released sometime after next year...

Ni no kuni or "The Another World" (how's that for some fun translational grammar? I like the literal "Second Country" better somehow)

The book says we're fucked! What does that mean, little chum?

Ni no kuni, the Level-5/Studio Ghibli joint that is out on DS (in Japan) and due for a Hi-Res PS3 version sometime this year (also in Japan) looks, on the surface at least, fantastic. Steven Speilberg often seems to re-visit his formative years when it comes to his Directorial and Productorial (yes, that is a word now, I have officially made it so) ambitions, and I see this "genre" as my own personal version of this. As a child, I would often be given to flights of fancy, where I dreamt I could escape the bonds of the quotidian and often banal world we exist in, to explore a place filled with wonder and mystery.

Ni no kuni is the story of a young boy, transported by a magical book to a parallel universe, whilst grieving for a loved one. I know being a Japanese developer they don't always look to the show in Los Angeles to herald their products, but still, I had hoped there may be some news of an English translation of one of the versions. So far, nothing.

I am Alive (but maybe the project isn't?)

Throw me the idol and I'll throw you the whip!

Ahhh, producer Jade Raymond. Can any other model-come-producer melt your heart with a smile like her's? Well, maybe (I've met some producers with really nice smiles), but still, she helmed the first two Assassin's Creed games so she knows a thing or two about games. All that being said, Jade's not involved with this game, probably because her sparkling smile just kept distracting the team and they had to move all development to Ubisoft Shanghai. I'm seeing a lot of Chinese studios these days; Spicey Horse (who are making Alice Madness Returns) comes to mind. There was something intriguing about the amount of mystery surrounding this project, but I think the lack of details has abated the anticipation somewhat. Could it be this generation of games' L.A. Noire? Let's hope so and hope not. Anything over five years of development does not normally a game make... just ask Duke Nukem Forever! OH! Yeah! Can you feel it? Yeah, DNF, I'm talkin' about you! But seriously, I hope to finally play Duke Nukem Forever tonight. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

I Am Alive is about a man named Adam experiencing the collapse of civilization, starting with a devastating earthquake in Chicago along with the ensuing chaos as the city gets absorbed by Lake Michigan.

MGS Rising and our collective enthusiasm may be falling...

Does anyone have a dribble bib handy?

Metal Gear Solid, from the halcyon days of 1 & 2, to, well, this. Granted, they've managed to reinvent a character that was almost universally hated (for me, it was largely his voice-- even Sephiroth is a bit bishounen and that's not really annoying so much as improbable). Actually, some of the trailers released during E3 2010 were kind of interesting showed some interesting "slices" of gameplay, har har. The mechanic to cut things up using a motion sensor seemed novel, if a bit gimmicky, but an entire game featuring Raiden felt like they had well and truly jumped the cybershark. I don't know much about Rising beyond those two points, but it actually looks to be a decent game, aquatic cyber-animals or not.

Half-Life 2(Episode 3)/3 or, Valve is being suuuuuuuper quiet... we all know what that means.

I hate f@$%#ing gardening!

Oh Gordon Freeman, we hardly knew ye. Well, that's probably because like most traditional FPS protagonists, you haven't said a word. We only know that you can hold a gun and bob up and down. Oh and that your eyes seem to be inside your chest, if multiplayer is any indication. Okay, so the engine might be getting long in the tooth. And we all know that, apart from the Steam sales, the Half-Life series has made Valve a very strong company financially. There has been no mention of the supposed third episode for the second game, and now we've only to assume that Valve has summarily abandoned the episodic idea entirely. And there were hints in the last episode that a Portal crossover might be imminent. I'm sure our favorite anomalous materials scientist will be back someday, but given the extremely long development cycle Half-Life 3 is probably caught up in, it's anyone's guess when.

UPDATE:
I realized later that I missed a few titles off the list.

The Last Guardian - It was at E3 2010 and TGS, what happened? I'm sure they're holding it back for a really big reveal, hopefully with only a short wait until its actual release.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 - This one has well and truly gone into hiding. I don't know how well the original did, but it's garnered a large cult following. You'd have thought that with an HD remake of the original we would have some news, but no one has reported on it so far.

Agent - Rockstar's espionage MMO(?) has disappeared, although it hasn't been officially removed from their release schedule.

I don't see the point of including GTA officially, because though undoubtedly it's being worked on, I suspect that it will not be hitting our consoles for quite a while.

Nintendo E3 2011 Press Conference Reflections

2011-06-08T16:10:00.003+01:00

Update: I may be thousands of miles away, ensconced in my Fortress of Solitude (with my family) in sunny London, but my friend Mehrdad is actually at the conference this week, so please go and check out his blog on the subject.

Unfortunately because of the timing, I missed most of Nintendo's Press Conference. So Zelda is celebrating a 25 year anniversary, or something. I wouldn't say I'm a die hard Zelda fan, but like many gamers I have enjoyed the series. That being said, the first part of the conference kind of bored me. It's great that it has endured for 25 years, which certainly deserves some fanfare, but it would have been nice to see what they had in store right out of the gate. At least they didn't just show a bunch of boring graphs about how great they are doing, etc.

So after I had a chance to catch up on all of the news last night, I sat down to think about what was shown.

It's easy to expect too much, and when a company genuinely wows you, that's a significant hazard, from the commercial sense. My intuition tells me that this is Nintendo listening to their fans, and trying to cater to the more traditional gaming audience (ie. not the casual, "bring out the 'Wii Sports machine,' it's time to party" crowd). I hesitate to use the word hardcore, but chances are if you're reading this blog, you know what I mean. Nintendo finally decided it was time to move things forward graphically, and at the same time offer more of their trademark "out of left field" innovation.

On the surface, they appear to have done that. I say "on the surface" because there is much that needs to be proven, naturally, but mostly those sentiments come from the interview that Geoff Keighley did with Nintendo of America's president Reggie Fils-Aime.

Tags: GameTrailers.com, Nintendo - E3 2011: Reggie Interview (Stream) Part I, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Okay, so none of the third-party games that will be purportedly be on the console are actually being shown running on the thing, because it hasn't even been manufactured yet. Fair enough, there's probably time for that, given the console isn't going to be out until next year sometime (or thereabouts). What they did have on show was the new controller, much ballyhooed about and debated as the leaks came trickling through in the weeks before the conference.

Update:
Apparently, the thing does exist. People have been trying out the "experiences" running on the console on the show floor. I think they're probably prototypes, and they're so new from the factory that the dev teams at Nintendo haven't had time to really put together a full working demo yet. But still, it's a bit more encouraging given the thing will launch a year or so from now.

Tags: GameTrailers.com, Wii U - E3 2011: Zelda Tech Demo (Cam), PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

The controller is an interesting idea, and while its inspiration didn't amaze me, still I found myself thinking that it could work. Looking at the trends of our favorite industry, along with the pressure and influence from companies like Apple, it makes sense. There's a touchscreen (no multi-touch, however, which will keep cost and weight down, but is a bit of a misstep, if you ask me), a front-facing camera, a gyro, accelerometer, and has all the sticks and buttons you'd expect from a modern console control pad. The Wii U will be backwards compatible with all the old Wii accessories, apparently so motion controls are still here, but the big draw is the 6 inch screen.

I'm sure Nintendo had to think carefully about all of this, no doubt anyone would with the sequel to a money spinner like the Wii, but they also have their hands in other pies as well of course. With the 3DS they had an interesting dilemma. They had a portable console that's made for a specific purpose-- taking it on the road, and it's something expensive enough that I could just see the hue and cry if Nintendo had said that you needed one to take full advantage of the properties of the Wii U. So, they needed to make something that would give you some of the 3DS's benefits but not make it a handheld that you could take with you out into the world.

It's an interesting change for them, and one that begs the question: what the hell kind of games are we going to play on it? Of course we already have an inkling of this with the DS and now the 3DS, obviously an inspiration for this new play at interactivity. While it may not be wholly original, I think it's a brilliant move, and it goes to show that they're not completely stagnating at Nintendo.

E3 2011 Press Conferences (minus Sony), show notes

2011-06-06T23:54:00.000+01:00

I have to say, the coverage from all fronts has been excellent. I know GameTrailers is MTV (which is Viacom), but I love the emphasis and professionalism they're lending to the coverage. It's pretty complete and feels like anything you'd see on old media, like E's coverage of an award show like the Oscars or Emmys. Except it doesn't suck. I feel slightly bad for Justine Ezarik (iJustine)'s segments-- it's important to have the live comments, but sadly it's less interesting to me and feels like necessary filler.

Kotaku's liveblogs have been incredibly helpful in reminding me what I've just seen (or in some cases overlooked in favor of actually writing).

The geek coverage continues tomorrow, dear readers!

Ubisoft E3 2011 Press Conference

2011-06-06T23:48:00.001+01:00

Ubisoft. Wow, they certain seem more genuine than all of the stuffy corporate suit-initiated conferences so far (Microsoft and EA). The emcee Aaron Priceman (?) is very natural and though some of the jokes fell flat, they were pretty genuine and I liked their image. If that matters at all really, but from my perspective, they certainly seemed the most hip of the conferences so far. Of course, I'm an old guy now, and the Kotaku guys don't seem overly impressed with his standup routine. Oh well, onto the actual games.

UPDATE: Okay, so maybe I was so very wrong about "Mr. Caffeine," Ubisoft's Aaron Priceman. He's just won Gametrailers dubious award for "Most Embarrassing Moment" of E3 2011. Maybe I wasn't paying full attention or something, that's all I can say in my defense. He didn't really bother me, of what I saw, but I do remember thinking that the "doodle-lee-doodle-lee-doo" thing was getting old by the six hundredth time he carted it out. Whatever... I still enjoyed the press conference, better than I had expected.

Rayman Origins
I loved the look of this game. I'm a sucker for a 2D animated art style, and Rayman Origins looked superb. Not only that, the game looked fun. It's got some of the panache (and difficulty) of the old school platformers from back in the day, but in Rayman's case this is very much a good thing. Lots of fun co-op, could be my replacement for the tired and aging Lego series. Very excited for this one.

Driver San Francisco-- I missed some of this, it didn't grab my attention, really. I liked the original Driver on Playstation alright, and I know the series has been trying to come back from the dead, but I was ready for the next section.

The next game was set on a tropical island. I couldn't make out what it was, was it Dead Island? No, that game's being published by Deep Silver and plus this game is First Person. A wonderful intro was playing that depicted the protagonist, in first person, overlooking some kind of armed camp with hostages. Is this a Far Cry game, I thought? Hmm, doesn't exactly seem like it. You are captured and then treated to a wonderful monologue by your sinister captor (about how the definition of insanity is not learning anything and expecting the same outcome). Brilliant. Periodically the camera would pan down to show that your hands were tied, to a large block. The segment reminded me of a First Person Uncharted. Eventually you are dunked, and then escape, eventually escaping, with a running gun-battle, then the reveal. Far Cry 3. I wasn't a fan of the first one, and if the second hadn't felt so wooden and console-y, I think I would have been become a convert. Far Cry 3 looks great.

Brothers in Arms: Furious 4. Okay, what the hell? I'm a fan of Randy Pitchford and Gearbox, but this one struck a dischordant note with me. But I wanted to like it. It seemed heavily influenced by Inglourious Basterds, and like they had a four game deal for the Brothers in Arms series and just have run out of (or gotten bored with) the vanilla source material for World War II. Still, it could be interesting, if a bit silly.

Tin Tin game-- okay, well, it looks okay for a movie tie-in, I guess.

Okay, the whole retro, "doodley doodley do thing" is getting old by now. They've been showing retro versions (for a 25 year anniversary message) before each reveal. The 80s mockup looks like Syndicate, and almost looks like something I'd play. Ghost Recon Future Soldier-- I'm glad they've taken the wraps off this one. I was a little worried that it had been put back into the obscurity corner. The game looks great, and fun-- not much I can really say, but I'm still looking forward to this one. So maybe it didn't wow me the way that EA's Battlefield 3 did, but it looks pretty fun, with some squad-based teamplay potential.

Rabbids-- what's this for, the Wii? Oh, of course not, Nintendo's console is about to be put out to pasture. It's for Kinect. Ugh.

Just Dance 3. Oh, there's Katy Perry with a massive 80s wig on. Okay. Next.

Rocksmith. Dave Navarro looking decidedly feminine. Or is that feline? Weird. Anyway, I like the idea of this, teaching you to actually play guitar. Unfortunately enough time hasn't elapsed for the music/rhythm genre to reboot and reinvent itself. Still, I like the idea of this.

Your Shape Fitness Evolved. I'm glad that at least one of these games is going to uplift my genome. All the collective dust on our Wiis and Wii Fit balance boards tells me that this series will not be the commercial success that the Nintendo platform was. But I guess there's a market for it, just not a huge one.

Assassin's Creed Revelations. I've fallen behind on this series, I think I'm about half-way through Assassin's Creed 2. It's a fun game, just it fell by the wayside on my continual gaming sojourn. The series has a staunch following and from what I can tell they've improved each time, even with a short development cycle than other top tier releases. Okay, I'm watching the live demo now. Nothing super revolutionary so far-- as other people are saying Ezio is really old by this game's timeline. Weird ghostly fighting, with eagle vision? All I'm wondering is, can you still poison people and make them flail about wildly? People still wait in line to engage you-- in melee. I can hear those same American-Italian accents from the second game. I'm not even remotely Italian and they sound horrible to me. Oh wait, are those guys supposed to be Middle-Eastern? Okay, so it's key story-wise to the whole arc. Fair enough, a good reason to buy the game if you've bought into the fiction.

So that's it for Ubisoft. I won't be staying up for Sony's conference (starts 1am my time), so I'll have to recap after reviewing the news in the morning.

EA's E3 2011 Press Conference

2011-06-06T22:51:00.001+01:00

Next up was EA's conference.

Mass Effect 3, I'm glad they lead with this one. I still haven't finished ME2, but it looks like I've got some time before the third game, now that it has a release date of March 2012. Oh, Wrex is still around? Now I feel even worse about killing him off, but it made sense in the storyline!

Battlefield 3 was looking stunning, and now we have a date for that, too: this October. Although I'm a bit tired of the everyone trying to one-up the Call of Duty franchise (which you all know ironically reached critical mass and imploded with West and Zampella leaving Infinity Ward last year), I loved what they did with Bad Company 2 and coming from the graphics angle, Battlefield 3 is looking top notch.

The tank gameplay was really impressive, with lots of little touches. I love games that have "body awareness," it gives a sense of realism that's been missing from FPS games since the early days.

Need for Speed: The Run seems an interesting idea in concept, but my jaded horrible self just couldn't get excited about it, particularly with the largely boring static trailer. I think it was all rendered, no live gameplay. The in car gameplay I saw kind of bored me. I'm a sucker for Codemasters' take on the driving game, I think they have a style that NFS hasn't been able to capture since the first Need for Speed Underground. The Run just looked like the back of a car. Okay, so the on foot stuff sounds interesting, but until we hear from someone who's seen it in practice, I'm doubtful.

The Old Republic, I really want this to be good, but I'm not an MMO fan in the slightest (I prefer immersion), and although Blur studios' rendered trailers are the only thing Star Wars that has been good lately (despite them also having a case of the prequel influences)-- there's no gameplay. We all know it's going to be very WoW-like in practice, with people standing around, shooting, swinging lighstsabers in an undynamic, canned fashion.

Next up came an overlong (in my opinion) EA Sports section. All it said to me, a non-sports gamer, was that Madden made EA so much money that it still holds major caché in their offices. I could not have been less bored.

God, I sound cynical.

The Sims Social. What. The. Fuck. Okay, so they're recognizing Zynga's success and why not make a cool social game. How not to market a title, although I'm probably slightly outside of the demographic (I use Facebook as much as anyone else my age and level of tech-savviness, but I've never been roped into playing any of the damn games). Watching the video of the girl trying to get the guy who on there (a gender role reversal if I've ever heard one) was just downright laughable and spoke volumes of the corporate types who somehow thought this would speak to the press and other luminaries covering the show. What. The. Fuck. It reminded me of the morality videos I saw in gradeschool. You know the ones: "Jimmy washes his hands after eating 'cause he's cool."

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a market for this type of game, but what a way to portray it. Well, I guess it was memorable in some way.

Kingdoms of Aamlur: The Reckoning. Actually this one sounds pretty good. On the surface, it looks like a "We wanted to make another Dragon Age type of game that's not called Dragon Age," but it's got some good cred, with Ken Rolston (Morrowind), Todd McFarlane doing the character designs, author RA Salvatore. Okay, so I don't like the name, but I think I'm on board, especially after Kotaku's Brian Crecente's feelings on the subject.

Insomniac Games' Overstrike. I actually really liked the trailer. They didn't show any live gameplay, but I liked the style of this trailer. In concept, this squad-based/team-based third shooter(?).

As I said above, Battlefield 3 looks like a standout hit from what they've shown. I think the praise is well deserved. I was really blown away by what they showed of this game and I can't wait to see more.

Ubisoft is up next.

Microsoft's E3 2011 Press Conference

2011-06-06T22:17:00.001+01:00

I rushed home, put the conference on. One eye and web page was keeping an eye on Apple's big Developer conference coverage, but the lion's share of my attention (no pun intended) was toward the E3 coverage, where all the steaming, live, raw coverage was flowing. Streaming, not steaming.

Let's steam through what I saw of the conference.

Kinect. That's all I saw. Stuff for Kinect. Okay, so there was a lot of other cool stuff that I missed, like some kind of voice control stuff. But bleah, that was for Kinect, too. And that's not going to magically change the size of my living room to anything larger than your average London flat. A lot of the non-Kinect stuff we kind of already knew about, if not from the Microsoft web page slip, then from the official press releases the week before. Like Tomb Raider, etc. But I won't bore you with that stuff, you already know it.

Minecraft for Kinect. Okay that's nice they're embracing a money-making indie title, but still a Kinect thing. I missed Ryse and Ghost Recon. I hear there are some kind of voice commands for Mass Effect 3, a series I respect and have a fondness for. Being able to speak the dialog sounds pretty immersive, actually. It will be interesting to see if that's the case when the game comes out next year.

Fable for Kinect. I feel pretty lukewarm about both of those things, if that's not already obvious. The same goes for Kinect Star Wars, at least in the post-prequel era. I'm getting very close to saying that series is dead to me. And I am not alone.

We know there's a successor to the Xbox 360 floating around at Microsoft, but it's still too early to show. When Microsoft is sure the platform is getting stale and stands to lose them money, then they'll announce the imminent ditching. They're not Sony, they don't keep the old platform alive, really, it's dumped in favor of the new hotness.

So we'll have to wait for a bit before anything surfaces beyond the Xbox 360.

Back the shizzle.

I misssed the Halo 4 reveal, so I'll have to review it later. For my part, I've never been a fan of the Halo series. If it had come out on the Mac as it was originally teased, it might have been something. But it is the series that made the Xbox and helped solidify Microsoft as a contender in the space.

Dance Central 2, okay so we all assumed it was coming. Blah blah blah, more Kinect stuff. Take my kids to Disneyland? I hated this part of the show, it was such a forced, over-rehearsed presentation. Okay, so we don't want them to have to suffer through presentation blunders, god knows they've had enough, but come on... was there anything more false than a kid murmuring a canned response that he's having "so much fun" with little to no real enthusiasm. You just can't get the staff these days.

Although, Kinect Fun Labs seemed like a pretty good idea, along with an (update?) for Kinect sports. Fun Labs seemed like a way to show off the power of Kinect and let the average Kinect owner feel like they have something to play around with to show off the tech. Scanning stuff in was pretty cool, although of course there must be limitations to the technology. It reminded me of seeing kids play around with Photo Booth on an iMac. They look like just some fun little "apps" to play around with. The pseudo-3D effect along with the "finger tracking" held promise, but I still doubt it will make much of an impact game-wise.

I missed all the voice command stuff for TV, but in theory it sounded like pretty futuristic, cool ways to use Kinect. Next up, EA.

The Geek's E3 2011 "Live Blog"

2011-06-06T21:42:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I'm not there, but it's the next best thing. I'm sitting in front of my gaming setup and watching the live streams and coverage from the pros.

Ahem.

So, as some of my readers know I live in London, which unfortunately due to the timing meant that I missed some of Microsoft's coverage, but... I've seen enough. Everything was about Kinect! Well, everything I saw, at least.

Fair enough, most of you Kinect owners are probably wondering when something's going to come out to make that purchase worthwhile. Well, at least Microsoft is thinking about it. Whether that makes it a worthy purchase for the "hardcore" gamer dude... well, as far as I'm concerned the jury's still out on that one.

Keep refreshing, I'll have my thoughts appearing as I get them down. I've just watched the EA conference, the thoughts and feelings are already starting to bubble up from that one. Just watching David Jaffe show off the new Twisted Metal... hmm, I'm not sold but at least it's got more style and substance than all the early stuff that was shown before. More thoughts to come.

Upcoming games 2011 continued

2011-05-03T14:55:00.000+01:00

The kind chaps at TheAverageGamer have posted the full article on my most anticipated games for 2011. Check it out here.

Upcoming games May 2011

2011-04-28T22:07:00.000+01:00

Video Games | GT Release Calendar | Games of May

Xbox 360 | PlayStation 3 | Nintendo Wii | PC Games

My "Upcoming Games 2011" piece will hopefully be appearing soon on TheAverageGamer.com but in the meantime, I wanted to comment a bit on the games coming next month. Hooray! I've just realized we're still in the part of the year that's looking forward instead of looking back!

Thor (5/3) Ick. Another half-assed movie cash-in. Or at least, that's what I assume for what little I've seen of it. Go ahead, Odin, prove me wrong.
Brink (5/10) Aha, now here we have a release people, and if it wasn't for Portal 2 just a short few days ago, it would be the first major release of the year. Splash Damage have made some missteps, but I have a good feeling about Brink and I also get the sense it will be hard to classify and quantify, at least at first. Like the leadup to the movie Sucker Punch, it will either be a spectacular success or a spectacular failure. Here's hoping it doesn't follow the fate of Snyder's flick.
Lego Pirates (5/10) I'm sure it will sell, but my soul sings a song of "meh," sadly. They're really beating that lego horse beyond recognition, aren't they? Traveller's Tales have made some great gender-boundary crossing games, but ultimately they're still crappy platformers with new skins on.
The Witcher 2 (5/17) I haven't finished the original game, and so far it hasn't really won me over, but I love what CD Projekt are trying to do. There seems to be a passing resemblance to another fantasy character-- oh, right, it's right there in the wiki, although to be fair that "complaint" might be leveled upon the author of the book series the game is based upon. There's a lot of buzz around this one, it will be interesting to see if it is indeed warranted.
L.A. Noire (5/17) I am almost tempted to stop here. Call me a Rockstar fanboy, but of all the titles anticipated this year, this definitely in the top three. While the interrogation system isn't what it could be (No hunches? No bluffing? No Good Cop/Bad Cop? What kind of detective story is this, exactly?)... I still have high hopes. Rockstar know how to tell a story with compelling and genuinely likable characters (or ones you love to hate), and I can probably speak for many gamers that we all want to see the facial animation tech at work in front of our eyes. This is almost an assured success.
F.E.A.R. 3 (5/24) I find myself wondering, who stacked this one up a week after L.A. Noire? Take a mediocre franchise, which is quite definitely waning (especially after that horrible live action announcement trailer) and pit it up against a standout release. Maybe they figure people will have finished with Rockstar's game by the time the next week rolls around, I don't know. Okay, so maybe I have a grudge against the franchise, and perhaps I should give it a second look but based on sheer bad timing it's almost not worth mentioning.
DiRT3 (5/24) Codemasters makes the best racing games, at least for my tastes. I am not a racing enthusiast, mind you, but the total package that both GRID and MacRae's series have sold to me are on the exact wavelength of appeal. I still watch the original GRID intro once in a while to remind me how uber cool that game was, and although other racing games have come and gone, the Codemasters games are the ones that stayed with me. It's in kind of a different niche from L.A. Noire, which I think sets it apart from F.E.A.R.3's bag (although admittedly those are worlds apart as well, but I think they're competing for the same gaming dollar, whereas DiRT3 is not).
Dead or Alive Dimensions (5/24) Fighting game. On the 3DS. I can only shrug.
Red Faction Armageddon (5/31) I predict that people will be saying, "I like what they tried to do, but unfortunately Red Faction Guerilla was 'better'." And more fun. The reconstructive nanites mechanic is interesting, but ultimately this is another franchise that should probably be buried by now. I like Volition, but my surface impression is: Yawn.
Hunted:Demon's Forge (5/31) This is the only title on this list that I actually got a chance to try. inXile are the ex-Black Isle Studios (Interplay) guys, aren't they? So far, they have yet to have a really stand out hit, and I think Hunted is as close as they've come. I feel a bit bad about saying this, given that I probably met some of the guys in passing that went on to inXile (I was in QA, and you had to be particularly charismatic to mix with the Developers, and I was not). My limited time with the very early demo didn't impress me. It's probably more the generic High Fantasy setting that put me off, more than the gameplay. I'm hoping this one will be a co-op hit as at least it's been designed from the ground up to be a great co-op experience. But I'm predicting that it may not have enough sheen to stand out amongst some of the other releases peppered around it.

Where've you been?

2011-04-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

For those of you that might follow this blog regularly, you might have been wondering what it is I've been up to...

Well, the folks over at TheAverageGamer have kindly asked me for a few posts, and being an "average gamer" myself, I of course obliged.

Don't worry, loyal readers, I will still be updating this blog, and more frequently in the near future. I'm currently evaluating my shiny new Nintendo 3DS, am hoping to get an iPad 2 at some point in the near future, and have been playing through (and thoroughly enjoying) Superbrother's Sword & Sworcery.

You can catch up with some of my recent posts on my page at TheAverageGamer.com, but I will try and link to them through the blog as well each time one of my reviews goes up.

Dear "the Internet": please stop teasing iOS games so far in advance

2011-03-08T09:44:00.000Z

I was browsing around today and noticed that Destructoid had another cute and fluffy iOS title that I would like to purchase. Bumpy Road seems like a 2D version of that demo software for the rear-touchpad-sporting Sony NGP, whereby you touch the screen and it makes things on the screen rise up. *ahem*

This always happens lately. I see a game on Gametrailers or another site and think, okay, cool, you've sold me already, now I just need to internet waddle over to the iTunes store and hey-- it's not out! The site says "sometime this Spring". Are they hoping for venture capital or someone to start a kickstarter page or something? Because honestly, by the time the game actually releases, I'm not sure I will care.

What I'm playing: Mid-Feb 2011 Edition

2011-02-15T09:50:00.000Z

While the whole world seems to be playing the sequel to Combat Miner, I've been catching up on some old titles. I managed to reinvigorate my PC, and even though I'm forced to play at a lower resolution (the iMac only allows 720p input from the displayport-- I will be very happy if Apple updates this, at least to 1080p).

I'm supposed to be working on a review of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective for theAverageGamer, but I've found it unusually difficult to come up with the right words to describe Capcom's latest DS Opus. Perhaps I'll get myself in gear tonight.

As with nearly all games these days, the imminent arrival of a sequel is urging me forward with the series' predecessor and so I've decided to start over with Dragon Age: Origins, mostly because I can't be bothered to go back and find my old saves. But, I'm at least 30% into the main storyline and I've suddenly remembered people saying that, at least on the PC, the game seems to be geared toward the main character being a mage. There are lots of options for mages in combat and they can grow to become quite powerful, not to mention they are different options for dialogue and quests, etc. This time around, I'm playing a Dalish elf and it's an intriguingly different perspective, especially with Bioware's take on the old Tolkien concept of Elves. I am finding myself playing as a paragon of compassion (perhaps it's my fondness for Ultima) in most of my dialogue choices. I'm really trying to concentrate on one game at a time until I've finished it, but I got distracted by a few other titles over the weekend as well. I spent a few minutes reacquainting myself with Mass Effect 2. All the end of the year awards lauded it, so it's in the same headspace as Oscar Winning movie for me, so I'm hoping to get to it next (although that's perhaps Bioware overload...).

I feel I've gotten my money's worth out of Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam so I've deleted it to save myself further frustration and annoyance at being old and slow.

I got a chance to play a smidgen of Dark Siders as it was on special on the XBL deals of the week over the weekend. I love the art design and the game feels very playable, a level or two into it-- plus I know there are all sorts of gameplay devices yet to unlock. I once heard it compared to Zelda and God of War, both good games to compare oneself to. I also spent a few minutes with DoubleFine's Stacking and was nearly immediately charmed by it. What a great concept, full of really fresh ideas and the presentation and production values are superb for what was essentially an company contest similar to what happens in the Indie games community. After a few minutes of playing, I didn't hesitate to buy the full game to hopefully play it sometime soon.

One might get the mistaken impression that I've suddenly neglected my family and am divorced and living alone, but now with my 1-year-old sleeping soundly at about 8 o'clock in the evening, I find I do have time now and then for a little gaming.

What I think: Super Bowl Movie Trailers 2011

2011-02-15T08:55:00.000Z

In the grand tradition of RPS's "Wot I think" columns, and after looking at the smattering of new trailers from the last Super Bowl, I thought I might take a crack at something similar... this time, with movies.

Pirates IV: Gore Verbinski is not attached, but I am intrigued by the premise (a fountain of youth adventure, inspired by a novel that's the same as the movie's subtitle, "On stranger tides"). They have the key ingredient, Johnny Depp, and Ian McShane as Blackbeard will definitely add something worthwhile, but I still suspect this one might have people wondering why they even bothered.
Super 8: The trailer shows us more than just a train boxcar being shredded open this time. I'm afraid bombasticity has been achieved in a particularly Spielbergian-J.J.Abramsian fashion this time around (sorry, is that too many made up words?). Is this a massive tentpole release or just a throwaway nostalgia film?
The Adjustment Bureau: Normally I would be into a movie like, this as it's obviously science fiction, but for some reason, even though I generally like the cast, it just doesn't hit the right notes for me. Perhaps because I think it's being marketed in large part as a "date" movie.
Captain America: The First Avenger: This is the only (new) trailer that I got really excited about. From the digitally de-hanced and skinnified (sorry, more fraudulent words again) Chris Evans, to the Red Skull reveal, I loved every moment of the 32 second trailer.
Thor: What are we going to draw from, once we've completely tapped out the world of comics? Honestly, I wonder. As with the rest of the movies on this list, it's far too difficult to prognosticate the ultimate result based upon 30 seconds of rapid cuts, but I'm sure Thor will tick all the right boxes. Natalie looks great as ever, Chris Hemsworth is probably poised to become the new leading action dude obsession, but didn't I hear a while back that Kenneth Branagh, as in, the Royal Shakespeare Company, was Directing?
Transformers: Dark of the Moon: I'm genuinely surprised they're making another one after the last big disappointment that was Transformers 2. The first film was surprisingly entertaining-- I went into it expecting it to be as bad as the second movie. The series kicked off with a great sense of humor and didn't take itself too seriously, which unwittingly charmed me. The second was a shameless cash in. I must admit, the original teaser for this third film reminded me slightly of the plot from the late 90s Battlezone PC Game remake (the 1960s space race was really about advanced alien technology). I'm sure films like this are keeping all of the CGI firms happily employed, but without a compelling story or characters to care about, it's a pretty boring thing.
Fast Five: Again, I caught myself thinking, "My god, they had enough funding for another one?!" But to be fair, they've got all the original cast, plus Dwayne Johnson. Let's face it, they're all eminently watchable, and even though it's not high art or perhaps deserved of any literary class awards, the films are for a specific demographic (which I do not fit into) and can be good for an afternoon's entertainment.
Battle: Los Angeles: Ahh, my old home town-- being invaded and blown to smithereens by marauding aliens. What's not to love (and no, I'm honestly not an LA-hater). I'm starting to realize that this is a major blockbuster release, instead of just a Cloverfield bump in the summer night. I hate that stupid quote that's overlaid over all of the trailers so far, "When you invade a place for its resources...". For some reason it cheapens the whole rest of the trailer and turns it into a straight up action film. Perhaps that's what this film is, but given the grittiness they've shown in some of the details I started to believe this was more on the level of District 9, in terms of the realism and human interest aspects of an alien invasion. I think a better voice over would be, "It's all out, Global Interplanetary War, and we're losing." Bah, I suppose it's because I think as humans, we still have a very hard time of not thinking like humans... and any hostile alien species we would meet would follow that logic.
Priest: I should really be getting the whole idea with these commercials by now. So far I haven't been taking the potential audience into consideration. This is mainstream America and you have a very expensive 30 seconds to make sure your movie sticks in their collective minds. I'll admit it, I love what Priest is selling here-- strange pseudo post-apocalyptic world. I'm not sure the reuse of the 80s Depeche Mode tune works all that well, but hey, the film looks fun and exciting, just what a popcorn-munching summer blockbuster should be. Is that Paul Bettany? Yes, just fresh from Legion; let's hope that the plot is better received and, ah wait, this is another one based on a comic (this time a Korean comic, hence the very Asian-inspired combat and visuals). It will probably be terrible, but for 30 seconds, it looks pretty interesting.
Cowboys & Aliens: Longtime readers will know that I have a soft spot for genre mashups, and this looks like one of the better ones. It's shades of Outlander but with a bit more credence and higher production values. For an old geek, there's some interesting potential... an older Harrison Ford going back to the Western tropes, Olivia Wilde as a strange, possibly otherworldly beauty, and Daniel Craig looking suitably gaunt with an uncertain, potentially non-human past. This time around, we actually see some of the alien technology beyond the wrist launcher. I'm sure it may have a strong dose of "silly" as all mashups seem to invariably possess, but it's a brand of medicine that might sit well with me.
Rango: I'm glad the render farms are getting so much work, but please, for the love of all that is holy, can we not have quite so many of these CGI films aimed vaguely at children and possibly sad adults? They're starting to get kind of generic and interchangeable. Perhaps, though, Rango is one of the few that stands out visually and thematically, but from as little as I can tell from a 30 second spot, it's not standing out by much. Well, at least we've got Gore Verbinski teaming up with his old pal Depp for a run in the desert.
Limitless: At first glance, Limitless doesn't seem to be one that would play to an audience for which the Super Bowl is known, but then again, it's about an average joe becoming a supra-genius (and consequently, ridiculously wealthy-- by my estimation, he's just as likely to self-destruct at the frustration of dealing with "stupid people" all the time...), anyway, he accomplishes all of this by taking a pill. The "new" American dream, if I ever heard one. I think we know what kind of morality or lesson this film aims to teach us, but I'm intrigued nonetheless. I'm just hoping it will be at least slightly cerebral, instead of the Fast and the Furious mashed up with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Kung Fu Panda 2: Clever readers will recognize that I've skipped some of the films listed on www.traileraddict.com. There's just no point in speaking about some of them, like Rio. Kung Fu Panda 2, on the other hand deserves final mention (unfortunately last might be closer to least in this case), mostly because I enjoyed the original film for what it was. A beautifully drawn and cute tale that was not Jack Blackulated (or should that be Blacksploitated?) to death.

Well, that does it for my rambling opinion. Oh, great, even though it's not on this list, I've got that damn "Take Me Home Tonight" 80s song stuck in my head, because the Redband trailer was just adjacent. Don't watch it. Trust me, it's not worth your time. Well, I don't think the trailer is, at least. It reads like a mix up of Superbad and The Wedding Singer (or perhaps the Hot Tub Time Machine if you're under 18), which, come to think of it, is not altogether a bad thing.

Nintendo 3DS Event

2011-02-06T23:16:00.000Z

So I'm outside waiting to get my first look at the 3DS.

I'm not sure what kind of presentation they're going for with this one. It's one of those affairs where they try to entertain you by hiring loads of out of work actors in silly costumes beforehand. As a gamer, I just wanted to get in and play with the hardware.

The place was intentionally strewn with "Booth Babes" as well-- I couldn't stifle the feeling that they were making all this hullabaloo to distract from the fact that they simply did not have a lot to show. I had the palpable sensation that a marketing department so wanted to make sure that some amateur journos wouldn't stand around saying, "Four games and a few other bits,.. Is this it?!".

Well what I DID see after getting past a very beautiful pair of resident evil characters still did impress me, but I am left wondering how, in the first year of the 3DS, it may stack up against its competition based upon the software. These are all launch titles, which every gamer knows aren't the definitive demonstration for any system. But nevertheless, there aren't that many releases that I know of for the first year...

I will say that the 3D effect was pretty well implemented. I was pleased to find that it did not hurt my eyes to look at and there was something compelling about being able to see "depth" going into the screen. I couldn't discern much difference with the slider mid way but there was a definite "pop" when it switched from 3D to 2D and vice versa but in all the screen and graphics looked just as nice in 2D as 3D. As for head positioning, I had to keep my head directly in the middle or else the effect was spoiled and much of the screen looked blurry and flickery. But when I was in the right position it was pretty compelling-- I wasn't blown away but I wasn't about to cancel my pre-order or anything.

The first game I played was Kid Icarus, a rail shooter of sorts whereby I could control the titular character via the analog nub (which felt fine by the way), and aim with the stylus. It took me a moment to realize you could fire with the shoulder buttons instead of having to juggle the extending stylus. Kid Icarus wasn't a particularly fun game but it looked nice and wasn't boring by any stretch of the imagination... It just felt like a launch title.
Next I tried Steel Diver, and of the two that game felt like a glorified tech demo (although I only had time to play the tutorial and the first mission). The controls weren't very well thought out, with two onscreen sliders for speed and depth, but graphically it did look nice and the 3D was well implemented if not important to the gameplay.

After a few minutes we were ushered out of the room and into a room where we could check out some of the built-in software and capabilities.

There was a Mii creator along with a couple of AR (Augmented Reality) games along with the camera app. The ARGs were amusing and surprisingly fun. It also gave me an opportunity to play with the menus, etc., as well as evaluate the hardware. I'll not delve into them here as they've been extensively covered elsewhere.

It's pretty thin and light, more so than I expected and it felt and looked nice. I took some pictures with the 3D camera and though the light was a bit low, the quality of the images was shockingly low. It looked like webcam snaps, particularly when looking at the image in 2D. I got a taste of the "multitasking" flipping through the different menus and options-- it only lets you keep one main "app" in suspension at one time. As I was going through the menus, it kept warning me that the previous app would be closed to open the next one. It seemed pretty seamless in game, however, a click of the semi-soft (it looked like it was part of the screen but was actually clickable like a proper button) "Home" button brought up the menu, much like the Xbox Live Guide or Sony XMB. The whole fit and finish was pretty solid, and even with the demo cables attached, didn't feel any heavier than a DS Lite.

Well, my preliminary impressions were pretty good overall. I'm looking forward to next month's release, but I have a feeling that Nintendo might have the win if this were a two-horse race. $250 is pretty expensive, but we all know the price will go down eventually, and the 3D effect is probably good enough to persuade consumers to buy it. I'm still skeptical of the value of 3D as a whole, but Nintendo's implementation is decent. Unfortunately for the Big N, Apple has really skewed the market, especially when it comes to software. I'm not sure what the "killer app" might be for the 3DS but I am pretty sure that if any company can, Nintendo will figure it out in the next 6 to 12 months.

Mainstream public, please get bored of Vampires so geeks can have them back.

2011-01-31T14:06:00.000Z

And while we're at it, that goes for Zombies, too.

thanks to Regency and Road Rebel for the pic

I watched an episode of the British TV series Being Human last night and was immediately dismayed and put off when I discovered that the two vampire characters were running around during the daytime. My wife very insightfully pointed out that it's likely the overall legends of vampires will change, given that what most of the mainstream public knows about them: angst-ridden effeminate teenagers with a penchant for brooding and standing about during the daytime.

I think I'm unusual, though, in that I'm very particular about my vampire fiction. My first "modern" vampire story was Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. I actually think I started the series with, as most seemed to at the time, the Vampire Lestat. As I recall, however, Interview is more of a compelling narrative, and when I read it, it had yet to be associated with Messrs. Pitt and Cruise. Around the same time, I was introduced to the original version of Mark Reign·Hagen's magnum opus, Vampire: the Masquerade. Okay, so the vamps are similarly angsty and there's lots of brooding, but they didn't venture out during the day (well, at least, the "younger" ones wouldn't dare... and even the eldest that tried ended up scarred for the rest of their unlives).

I really have no idea whether Being Human is a good show or not, but it did make me a bit sad to see a genre and type of fiction for which I feel some affection become watered down and shoe-horned into the TV space. People have made shows about vampires that couldn't walk in sunlight and made it work. Sure, Forever Knight wasn't Haute Couture literature (and for the record, neither is Anne Rice), but it was one of the few vampire shows that drew me in and gave me a taste of what White Wolf's original and rich World of Darkness offered on the RPG front.

Perhaps that coupled with the fact that Zombieland, for all it's great geek moments, just felt like another cash in film, made me feel a bit more jaded and old. Though I've never been a real zombie movie freak, I'll admit coming around to the fervor more recently, and a number of friends seemed to highly recommend Zombieland for its wit and ingenuity-- but to me it was a cheap "let's churn this mutha out" kind of film, at least in so far as compared to Wright, Pegg and Frost's Shaun of the Dead. You could clearly see the love of the genre written on every frame of that film, and although I think they've not been able to recapture the magic since they've gone hollywood, Zombieland just felt like a hollow imitation of Shaun.

I shouldn't complain, however, as AMC's Walking Dead adaptation has been mostly excellent, nearly on par with some of the best films in the genre.

I think there's hope, however, as with all things being cyclical, plus it's a given that they'll continue to spew these things out until people are utterly bored with it all and then move on to something else, leaving it to fallow and get good again.

What's next: The Augmented Internet?

2011-01-24T16:13:00.000Z

After listening to all of the end of year podcasts with all their predictions for the next decade, I started to wonder what the years to come might hold.

If you believe real life and Hollywood, social communication is our latest internet revolution. What I've been wondering is, how will that evolve over the next few years? We have all these forms of communication via the internet, but the're all disparate, disconnected. What we need is some kind of overlay, a nice layer to put on top that lets us get at things but also communicate and comment on it at the same time. Sort of like an "augmented reality" but for the Internet.

I'm not sure what form this would take, but presumably you can start simply, with something that is essentially a full-featured browser, but with a nice graphical sheen on top that can be transparent when necessary, or fits in somehow. We have so many ways of being communicative across different sites (comment systems and what have you), but nothing has come along to tie it all together (although Facebook is certainly making a concerted effort at doing so). And that disconnect is what's hindering much of the actual communication, if you ask me. Also, although we have to be careful of security and privacy of course, what we don't need is one more password to remember. I can see all of these web services trying to tie themselves together and work on standards (like OpenID, Facebook Connect, etc.) but what we need is an attractive and compelling implementation that people can understand easily.

What I've been playing: Ghost Trick, Super Paper Mario

2011-01-18T12:35:00.000Z

I've been playing the heck out of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on my commute. I know the DS is purportedly about to be replaced, but I'm glad I still own a DS as this is one of the best games I've played in recent memory (it ranks up there with Red Dead Redemption, believe it or not). Although I love my bite-sized entertainment on the iOS platform, I've yet to find a game that really grabs me for more than a day. There is something to be said for full-price games on a portable platform. They are like a really expensive meal that you can savor and enjoy as opposed to a disposable snack.
I haven't finished the game yet, but suffice it to say, I love this game's oeuvre, the animation style, and it's hooked me with a great mystery and simple yet intriguing gameplay.

I've also been trying to finish off some of my old titles on the shelf. After an annoying (although admittedly very pretty) turn with Super Mario Galaxy, I've finally gone back to try and finish Super Paper Mario. I know, I should love Galaxy like the rest of the universe (no pun intended), but I guess I'm getting too old for whatever it is that Galaxy is selling. 3D platforming just isn't any fun for me-- I just about tolerate it in the Lego games, but mostly that's because it has decent co-op. Galaxy just felt like an exercise in frustration after a while and I didn't have the patience for it. But Super Paper Mario is a whole other animal-- it's just such a great mashup of RPGs and old school platforming gameplay, plus the 3D platforming feels inventive in an unconventional way. It may not have the variety of Galaxy or Galaxy 2, but for what it lacks there it makes up in style. Okay, so it may be a bit of a gimmick, but I still find the whole (turn the world on its side) shtick clever and nearing the end of World 3-3, I'm still loving it.

Inception DREAMS infographic

2011-01-06T22:34:00.003Z

A friend of mine recently pointed this out to me. Amazing.

Please resurrect Commandos, with Co-op and a new perspective

2010-12-16T13:26:00.001Z

I was never very adept at the Commandos series, but I did love the little Nazi-infested worlds they tromped around in. It was like all of my childhood days playing with Army men, super spies and requisite bad guys.

Pyro Studios is still around and I think Eidos still owns the brand... I think it's time Commandos came back, but this time as a first- (or third-) person stealth-based shooter, with that same focus on co-operative objective-based gameplay. It could be class-based, like the Team Fortress series, or sport upgrades and unlocks like Modern Warfare. Guards would have similar roving patrols that use a line-of-sight system (preferably tweaked to give the players an advantage, along the lines of Batman Arkham City), but if the alarm does sound, it's not necessarily game over for the whole team (perhaps some get bound or thrown in the brig to be sprung by other players). The Hidden and Dangerous series trod a similar genre, but not to the degree I'm hoping for.

Whoops-- I forgot the World War 2 genre is dead. But here's a great way to use some of those assets in a compelling way. Moving the setting to a more modern conflict could yield interesting gameplay opportunities, however. Imagine having a commander that could launch UAVs, high altitude spyplanes, or an eye-in-the-sky on a AC130. I think Co-op titles like this are the way forward for shooters and they seem to be heading this way. Objective-based missions give the players a direction and fighting against overwhelming numbers of enemy AI are just the right recipe for a great game for me right now.

Games to get excited about

2010-12-13T12:51:00.000Z

I don't live in the USA any longer, but I did watch some of GTTV's coverage of Spike's Video Game Awards. Honestly, I feel this pre-Christmas season has been decidedly weak for games (at least of the ones that appeal to me) and the beginning half of the year was much stronger. In a way, this is a good thing, with companies releasing some of their best material at times other than August-November. So I couldn't help but get excited by the prospect of some interesting (although iterative) titles on the horizon.

The first is Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.

Video Games | Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception | VGA 10: Exclusive Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

This first trailer gave me chills; the best ones do. But I am an unabashed fan of the series. It starts with a quote, which according to the Internets, can be attributed to T.E. Lawrence:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

T. E. Lawrence, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
British soldier (1888 - 1935)

I'm afraid I didn't know who "T. E. Lawrence" was, either, but apparently he was a British Army Officer and the real life inspiration for Lawrence of Arabia.

The next teaser was for Mass Effect 3:

Video Games | Mass Effect 3 | VGA 10: Exclusive Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

The trailer is not obviously Mass Effect from the beginning: a gruff British voice declaring some grim statements of a conflict. The reveal is very Michael Bay-inspired, with the gruff sniper sighting from a broken tower of Big Ben in Westminster. I still haven't played through Mass Effect 2, and now that I've given up my Windows gaming rig, I'm slightly lamenting the fact. Maybe I'll just have to play it on the 360, or save up for a cheap gaming laptop (got my eye on an Alienware M11x... yes, I know they're Dells, but the price is just about right). Anyway, the trailer makes me want to go back and actually finish the second game, even though I feel like I've made some slightly bad choices imported over from the first game (Wrex is dead, *sniff*).

Batman: Arkham City

Video Games | Batman: Arkham City | VGA 10: Exclusive Hugo Strange Reveal Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I'm going to be cliché here and use the two words "hotly" and "anticipated". From the first moments of playing the demo of the original game, I was sold, and there was nary a dull moment playing through to the end of the full game. Hugo Strange, upon reflection, seems a logical inclusion given the plot of the original and although no gameplay is shown, there can be no doubt that Rocksteady Studios are going to paint an even darker and more intricate canvas this time around. Boom! Batman's back!

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Video Games | Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | VGA 10: Exclusive Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

The science of creating trailers has evolved and has adopted many of the best (well, let's say most effective) methods of movie trailers. From the get-go: Max Von Sydow! Or should that be "Max von SydWOW"? All kidding aside, this trailer succeeded in getting me ready to hit that "Pre-Order!" button. I never got as into Oblivion as I would have liked-- but what blew me away was coming from playing Daggerfall and Morrowind, Oblivion was leaps forward in terms of presentation. Okay, so there were a few bugs and it may have been a bit too open world for some (probably myself included), I think Bethesda has learned much from their forays into the Fallout universe. I love the stone tableaux that begins to transform, and once that music gets pumping, I couldn't help but get swept away by the promise. I know it won't be perfect, but I know that these games, like Vampires, generally get better as they go on. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was Origin Systems that created whole worlds to play in. These days, it's Bethesda and Rockstar that are fulfilling that role. I am eager to see more of Skyrim...

Dude should be a lady

2010-11-25T17:01:00.000Z

Please don't get the wrong idea from the "clever" title... I am lamenting the fact that there aren't enough strong female roles in the media that I consume. By nature's hand I am male and, like many men I'll admit that I sometimes struggle to not objectify women at times. And I'm not trying to sound like a misguided feminist. I've been known to make unintentionally sexist comments about Quantum Leap (I once claimed, much to my friend's annoyance, that it was written by a woman because of its emphasis on emotional content instead of lasers and swords). I suppose, like a child, I tend to generalize. But all that being said, I would like to see some stronger (if not at least meaningful) roles for women in movies and games. I was listening to the latest This Week in Tech, and Leo and the crew were discussing the lack of any positive female roles in the recent Sorkin/Fincher hit The Social Network. For entertainment purposes (allegedly), the script eliminates the simple fact that the creator of Facebook has had the same girlfriend since before he started the site and that most of the women that do appear in the film are there apparently purely for set dressing.

I am not saying we should take every role and re-purpose it for a different gender, randomly. For all of Hollywood's foibles, I couldn't help but be excited about a big screen rendition of The Tempest, at least for the pure spectacle... but when I heard the role was being transformed for Dame Helen, I couldn't help but feel they were twisting it beyond my expectations. Gender swapping isn't unusual in Shakespeare works, however, so perhaps ultimately this isn't too incongruous.

I'm not talking about shoehorning in a female avatar or actress for every role, either. We all know it: Lara Croft, for all intents and purposes, is a very curvy and posh Indiana Jones. She and Nathan Drake are pretty much riding in the same narrative vehicle, even though she is supposed to be a highly educated woman of leisure, descended from landed nobles and a penchant for getting into trouble. But Barbara (played by Babylon 5's Patricia Tallman) from the 1990 remake of the Night of the Living Dead, was the first time I saw and was surprised by a woman in such a role. Granted, there isn't a long story arc or deep character development. Flame-haired Barbara, upon seeing her companion viciously attacked and killed inadvertently by a zombie, begins screaming her head off and therefore I expected the same weak-willed individual that many films portray. She starts off reacting much as any sane human would, honestly, to a horrific and incomprehensible situation. Like a war veteran, however, she realizes what she needs to do to survive, and eventually takes upon herself the task with steely resolve. You can just see and the filmmakers make a point to show us that a part of her humanity has dissolved and she becomes hardened to the violence which follows, but she still retains at least a shadow of her former human compassion. By the end of the film, she can see (and spells out for the audience) the lesson, which has since become a bit cliché and predictable in the zombie genre: that the real monsters are staring back at us from the mirror.

I know we already have Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor and perhaps you could even include Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher version; sorry Natalie, but they wrote your role into ineffectual pieces), and all of these characters demonstrate a little of their femininity beneath their hard exterior. But most don't go through the same emotional journey that show the depth of experience as Barbara. And only the first two amongst no doubt the many I have overlooked, could be considered truly "lead" roles. I am sure there must be others that I'm forgetting, but I can think of very few games recently that have at least attempted this, if nothing else but to make things interesting.

Rejigging game ideas FTW

2010-11-24T13:56:00.000Z

I think I get all of my best game "ideas" when I'm listening to podcasts. So far I've yet to come up with a truly original idea, but I would argue that true inspiration is rarely if ever completely original. Anyway, as I was strolling back from work, I suddenly thought, why is it that no one has made a competitive Desktop Tower Defense game, or have they and I've just not heard of it? It's an extremely popular casual game, which has spawned loads of Flash, console and iOS versions, but so far it's just stuck to the original idea. Loads of "creeps" come in along a predetermined (or open) path and your job is to stop them. I think it's a natural evolution of the design to have one person directing the creeps' paths (maybe with "fog of war" thrown in to make things interesting?), and the further the creeps progress, the more unlocks or currency the attacking player gets to spend on special or bigger creeps.

The alternative is to have it be a two-way mirror battle, one phase is a building phase, the second phase is the creep attack phase. Just extrapolating from this, it would make a superb FPS/Tower Defense conversion for something like Team Fortress 2, with the paths set by the commander of each side, clearly marked (but not necessarily on rails for the individual players-as-creeps).

I think I'm going a bit too far with my riff here, but you get the idea. Since my code fu is decidedly weak (I'm still struggling to learn the syntax for Classes in C++), I'm hoping some enterprising designer will read this, get inspired and make a truly standout iOS game...

Can't stands no more...

2010-11-20T12:23:00.000Z

Okay, I think I've had enough. But I only have myself to blame. I've struggled for the last few years to stick with one platform or another-- if it weren't for my PC gaming habit I probably would have switched a while ago.

But, whilst trying to copy some files from a large NAS device, it froze. And then froze again. Now, I really have only myself to blame because I built the computer, but there's really no guarantee if I had paid the extra cash to have someone else build the machine (like Dell) that it would be any different.

I just had a moment where I realized... I'm sick to death of this. I know OS X is not a perfect platform, it has its foibles too, but it rarely if ever happens that my Mac Mini completely locks up with the only recourse but to hard boot. So, I have decided to save up some cash, ditch this whole two computer setup and go with an iMac. I still need some Windows programs now and then (who doesn't?), so I may have to invest in Parallels or VMWare Fusion along with another copy of 7... but somehow I think I would feel better. There would be less clutter for my infant son to get tangled up in as well.

Gaming has a ways to go on the Mac, even with Steam's presence... so I will miss using a Mouse & Keyboard for all of my favorite PC-centric games, but with a child, time has become more of a commodity than ever. And I just don't have time for another reboot.

M.R. James

2010-11-10T15:15:00.046Z

A friend of mine recently loaned me copy of The Ghost Stories of M. R. James and as I finished devouring the last story in the book, I found myself wondering why I hadn't ever heard of the author before. According to the wiki, Montague Rhodes James was a huge influence on Howard Philips Lovecraft (I would almost venture to say he inspired his writing name abbreviation, but it was probably something common to the era), and through nearly every step of each of his excellent stories you can see the pedigree.

Mind you, Lovecraft is in no way tarnished for me now, but I can't help feel that James, the son of a Minister in Southeast England, is a superior writer in many ways. I always assumed that the protagonists' knack for refusing to make that last leap of logic (to the supernatural explanation) was more a function of the times rather than a literary style, but after reading James I'm not so certain. The stories, although they have the trappings of an age gone by, are still largely relevant and just capture that sense of dread that I miss from the first time I discovered Lovecraft. Perhaps that's it, though, in my longing for new Lovecraftian tales this next best thing seems fresher, more alive and all the more tantalizing.

It's a shame, then, that he only published what to me is a handful of stories (the book I borrowed had twelve or so). I suppose he wrote about what he knew, given that according to his biography online he was an antiquarian scholar at Cambridge, and published many books on the subject of apocryphal works stricken from the canon.

For those fans of H.P. Lovecraft who have exhausted the expanded universe of Robert E. Howard, August Derlith and more modern writers might find M. R. James worth a look.

Making technology approachable to all ages

2010-10-18T11:46:00.000+01:00

I'll be honest: when I say "all ages," I'm really talking about those people at the further end of the spectrum (i.e. the elderly), rather than at the beginning. Being relatively young myself, and having grown up with different forms of technology, I would consider myself relatively well-versed and facile with electronics in general. And I am blessed with two parents that are fairly tech-savvy and comfortable with new ways of doing things. But whatever your age or technical capabilities, sometimes there are devices that are so complicated and poorly implemented from a user interface perspective that it frustrates everyone, including even those in the technological elite, not to mention their ageing parents, relatives and friends.

The way I see it, there is an enormous market out there for devices aimed at people who desire something that is made simpler and easier to use, rather than more complex. I partially blame the culture of where most of these products are manufactured and designed. I get the sense that companies like Sony, Samsung, etc. seem to prefer quantity of features over simple human usability. It seems like the general belief is that technology by its very nature is complicated, and that those who employ it should at least have a modicum of intelligence to do so. The problem lies with the fact that sometimes it's not always an intelligence issue per se, but one of poor design.

Everyday use considerations aside, those that struggle with technology find it doubly difficult impenetrable when something is poorly designed. Not to mention those that also have "accessibility" considerations, like failing vision, etc.

As our population's quality and overall length of life improves, I believe companies who tap into these ideas stand to make quite a considerable amount of money, not only from those that require something simpler, but for people that prefer an alternative to the "creeping featurism" method of design.

Microsoft "Signature Image"... is Microsoft finally getting it?

2010-10-12T12:24:00.000+01:00

I was reading on Engadget about Samsung's new laptop and the most interesting thing to me was the mention of something called "Microsoft Signature Image," meaning that Microsoft may have finally realized that allowing retailers and manufacturers to load all kinds of "bloatware and crapware" is ultimately bad for business.

One of the first things I do on a new laptop or desktop (if I haven't built it myself, which I generally prefer to do), is remove all of the extraneous garbage that the manufacturer or retailer has installed on it. Most of that stuff is just ads or trial versions anyway, but including it generally slows down the PC and makes the experience more annoying than it needs to be.

Bravo to Microsoft for (hopefully) recognizing this (finally!).

Rumor mill: new Microsoft console to coincide with Gears of War 3

2010-10-11T12:12:00.000+01:00

NOT the new Microsoft console

So this is pretty unlikely, given that Microsoft is putting a fair amount behind Kinect, but please keep in mind that Kinect could still be supported (and bundled with) whatever console Microsoft may be releasing next.

I'm not a huge fan of the Gears series, but next to Halo, I think it's been one of the biggest "exclusives" (not counting the PC) for their console. I had a chance to play some of the "Beast" mode at the recent Eurogamer Expo and wasn't blown away, so at first it didn't come as a big surprise that the series has been pushed back yet again.

And then I started to think-- what if they're working on something new and they're timing the release to coincide with a Kinect-focused, slightly upgraded console next year? It's not completely out of the realm of possibility. I know Microsoft has openly said that the 360 will still be with us for longer than the usual "cycle" (and really, there's still no urgent need to move things forward on the hardware front), but we all know it will happen sometime... I'm predicting it may be possibly earlier than later. Although every company wants to prevent anticipation of the next generation from cannibalizing their current sales (and they've only just released the 360 S), but I think Microsoft has learned from Apple's attempts at secrecy and how powerful that can be in the marketplace. And Sony's PS2 Slim sold buckets while the PS3 was still floundering at higher price points.

I wouldn't be surprised if Cliff Bleszinski, realizing that Gears of War 3 needed some finer tweaking, was further convinced to push the release back a whole year to accommodate the new hardware and be a launch title for the new box.

The question remains, if it's 2011 or even later, what the heck are they going to call it?

Eurogamer Expo 2010

2010-10-06T12:44:00.002+01:00

I have attended a handful of video and computer games conventions over the years, and when I got the call to attend this year’s Eurogamer Expo at Earl’s Court in London, I jumped at the chance. Thanks to Stolen Golem's Al Astair and Best Buy for my press entry. Without it, I wouldn't have gotten in to any of the Developer Sessions as the lines were insane. Unlike E3, the Eurogamer Expo is open to the public so it was very busy.

Crysis 2 (PC):

Rushing through the show floor, the first station that was open was Crysis 2. I think Crytek does incredible work with their engines, but as far as storytelling goes their efforts have left me a bit cold. The playable demo was running at Nvidia’s booth on PC hardware. My nanotech-suited hero was rushing around on a city level, while heavily augmented humanoid aliens with squid-like heads sprinted around, taking pot shots at me. The level seemed incredibly detailed and the effects were obviously dialled up to the max, with particles flying around and I can’t put my finger on it, but everything looked really crisp and smooth. It felt like there was a fine level of detail everywhere. The HUD and all of the effects were extremely slick and I find myself, despite having gotten bored with the singleplayer storyline of the original (I never even got to the flying squid aliens bit), I found myself reasonably engaged. I did notice some stuttering when swinging my view around quickly (perhaps it was having trouble rendering the motion blur post processing on top of all the other effects), but the game is still actively in development. The HUD lead me to a set piece where I was flung through a window, a building was detonated in a very showy and impressive cut scene, and then a bus collided with the alien soldier who was about to pulverise me, opening up a new part of the level. Other than that, it’s a standard shooter with nice graphics-- something to slot into a niche, as far as I’m concerned. There will always be a place for games that are simply fun, or fill a niche, but I think the days of just cranking out soulless but pretty shooters and expecting them to rise to the top is nearly over.

Hunted: the Demon’s Forge (360):

I spent some time playing this co-op third person action game from inXile Entertainment, the company founded by Interplay founder Brian Fargo. The bald warrior type my companion was playing looked like fairly standard high fantasy faire, but I did like the character design of the hot elf lady type I was in control of. We faced off against various evildoers, most of which were skeletons. My hot lady elf seemed to wield the bow expertly (with a solid cover-based mechanic we’ve come to expect), presumably so expertly that her wooden arrows easily dispatched many of the skeleton enemies-- something that makes very little physical sense. Both characters could switch from three attack modes: melee, missile weapons and magic. My elf was flinging bolts of electricity and the dev pointed out that by holding down a button at the appropriate time, I could “charge up” my companion, thereby making him stronger and do more damage. We fought our way to some kind of idol which when we both touched it, caused us to switch bodies. The controls didn’t seem completely smooth, and I couldn’t figure out if there was a way to sprint, but in general I spent more time than I expected to. I thought the HUD needed work, however, it was difficult to tell how much “mana” I had left to cast spells, and some of the bars on the screen seemed arcane.

Peter Molyneux Developer Session

Next up was Peter Molyneux’s talk, which served as a retrospective of the Fable series. It’s understandable that he seemed to want to give a ceremonious air to his talk, given that it would probably be the last conference before the game is actually released. Mr. Molyneux felt it was important to show the series’ roots and after a slightly embarrassing bit of swordplay by two (presumably local) actors, he kicked it off by saying that it was important that Albion be a place that could exist and was more believable than other RPGs of the time. A clip of Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow appeared on the screen. Molyneux said that the look of the film was something they very much wanted to emulate in the Fable series. He also said that he loved the idea of a fantasy world that was not too far away from reality. He wanted Albion to be the kind of place where the dark fantasy tales of Old English legend could grow and thrive. Speaking of ancient legends, Molyneux listed King Arthur amongst one of his most influential stories when creating Fable. The idea of Excalibur resonated with him and he wanted the hero (or archvillain) of Albion to carry a magical weapon and have a great destiny bestowed upon him. The next clip, from the Albert Lewin directed version of the film The Picture of Dorian Gray, helped to illustrate where Lionhead got the idea of a character who morphs to reflect the evil (or purity) within. This genuinely novel idea, to represent alignment and the choices the player has made by visually changing the appearance of the avatar, had been used previously in Black & White.
He then moved on to Fable 2, which he began by showing concept art of the young boy hero; Molyneux felt that the coming of age story dovetailed nicely with the increase in ability and agency within an RPG. The story takes place 500 years after the events of the first game, and Molyneux mentioned that they strived to lessen the prevalence of magic to make it more unique and something that only the player would be able to use. The next film to flash upon the the screen was Mad Max 2, and Molyneux described that the scrappy dog companion was the inspiration for the dog in Fable 2. He felt that it was important to make it as “dog-like” as possible (initially the design started to change into more of an anthropomorphic canine, with human-like facial expressions), and that the player would be more invested in a character who was indistinguishable as possible from man’s best friend. A scene in which Uma Thurman from Tarantino’s Kill Bill appeared next. Molyneux explained that the battle with the Crazy 88 and later Lucy Liu as O-Ren, was a big influence on the kind of combat they were trying to achieve. He said they wanted to empower the player and let them pull off all sorts of acrobatic feats in melee, but at the same time make the controls for performing such manoeuvres be no more complicated than a single button press. He finished while showing a clip from Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, demonstrating the inspiration for the look they were trying to emulate for Fable 2.
The story of Robin Hood also syncretised nicely with the concepts underlying Fable 3: a story of a revolutionary who in this instance would eventually become king himself. Continuing the “low Fantasy” world established in Fable 2, the third game in the series takes place 50 years later. Molyneux teased that, like in Fable 2, a tough, momentous moral choice would be needed to be decided, this time much earlier in the story. Footage from Team Ico’s titular release which showed the young protagonist Ico, were an inspiration for Lionhead, according to Molyneux. He said that they felt that the mechanics presented in the game, particularly leading the helpless character of Yorda by hand, were highly original and defied genre conventions, a refreshing change for players. A clip of Perfume: Story of a Murderer came next, and Molyneux says it’s this visual style, of Paris in the 18th Century, which greatly excited the team’s imagination when styling Albion in Fable 3. This, combined with the classic Dickens story Oliver Twist completed the look and feel they were aspiring to when crafting Albion. Molyneux ended by teasing that a major plot twist will rear its head once the player becomes a monarch in Albion.

It was clear to see that Peter Molyneux is greatly influenced by cinema and many of his choices resonated strongly with me. Unfortunately I didn’t find time to actually play the game on the show floor, but what little I saw watching over someone’s shoulder had me intrigued, particularly in light of the thoughts and many sources of inspiration he had layed bare.

Spending some time in the “Indie games arcade”, I got a chance to try out several titles in the up-and-coming game designers arena.
Joshua Nuernberger’s Gemini Rue first caught my attention. Blade Runner is one of my all-time favourite films (if not the favourite), and the retro style graphics depicting a rain-soaked futuristic city drew my gaze immediately. It seemed like a point-and-click adventure in the most classic (and best) sense, and the presentation and intentionally pixelly graphics reminded me of my recent play through of the iPhone version of Beneath a Steel Sky. Although I hadn’t started the game from the title screen, the game did a superb job of outlining the situation and what goal I would need to proceed toward next. I was particularly intrigued by the references to the fact that despite looking more near future than far future, I appeared not to be on Earth and there were references to space travel and being an investigator from “Off-World”.
I had a quick play of Tiny and Big from Black Pants Studios. The game was a polygonal (we would have said “3D” in years past) and although it had an interesting monochromatic, pseudo cel-shaded style, I couldn’t help but feel it had the look of a source engine mod. The gameplay was where it was at, however, with the player having several tools to navigate the physics-based gameplay, the impetus of which is that you are trying to retrieve your stolen pants. Right-clicking would cause dotted lines to be drawn on objects in the environment, upon releasing the button, the little guy would start cutting the stone blocks with his raygun. He also had access to a rocket which could be fired into the architecture, then ignited to knock sections over, etc. The gameplay seemed inventive and fairly original.
Fractal was a nice looking puzzler, whereby the player aims to make “blooms” by using a set number of moves called pushes. Each push causes the hexagonal piece to expand in the direction of the push, with a push in the centre creating five new pieces or tokens. Pushes along the edge of the puzzle were useless, so obviously some strategy was necessary.
Next up was B.U.T.T.O.N., or Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Okay Now, or something along those lines. I liked the wacky character stylings (they reminded me of the weird cartoon mascots from the Cranium board game), the gameplay in the chaos of the show floor was completely incomprehensible to me. There were four xbox 360 controllers hooked up to the demo station, and my friend and I couldn’t exactly how to work out how to just add two players to the game. At one point it said to put down the controllers, step back seven paces and then a strange instruction would appear on the screen, like “do twenty press-ups”, or ”hold hands with the person to your left” and then followed by another instruction to interact (or not) with the game… such as “Any player whose button is pressed loses” or “press the button exactly 14 times to win”. As I said, it was extremely weird, but it was clear that it was meant as a goofy party game (and one that perhaps would benefit from being intoxicated).

Moving around to the other side of the arcade, we both had a brief play of Scoregasm, which appeared to be a twin-stick shooter in the vein of Geometry Wars.
The graphics of Piece of Pie Studios’ Swimming Under Clouds caught my eye, and definitely had that “painterly” style that we all know and (sometimes) love. It was a platformer, where the player controls a little fish inside a bubble of water, jumping and sliding through hazardous but beautiful environments.
I spent some time with Mark Essen’s Karateka-esque Nidhogg, a side scrolling fencing game. I couldn’t really get a handle on the controls myself, but some of the other players seemed to be having enormous fun executing one another with outlandish sliding and jumping attacks.
Next I played Haunted Temple Studios’ Skulls of the Shogun, which was explained to me as a turn-based strategy title, where you manoeuvre your armies of undead samurai against one another; haunting rice paddies for resources. I loved the art style of the units, which were cavalry, archers, and the like, pleasantly cartoony ghosts and skeletons floating about.
I probably spent the most time with Puppygames’ Revenge of the Titans. The retro 8-bit but somehow modern style (gradients deployed!) appealed to me immediately. And although it was a tower defence game (which many in the industry understandably seem to be turning their noses up toward of late), I loved the visuals and the unlockables. Challenge is fairly high, mostly because the game by default does nothing automatically. Resources, once harvested, must be collected by manually clicking on the harvester, and towers, once exhausted, must be reloaded with ammunition in a similar way. Also, the fact that money gained from missions must also be used to build as well as researching new tech in between means that if you don’t spend efficiently, you can cripple yourself in later missions. Still, I had a great time with it and am looking forward to the full release.
There were a few other titles that I was vaguely aware of but didn’t get to play, like Mode 7’s Frozen Synapse. The “blueprint” style reminds me of Darwinia developer Introversion’s Subversion, mixed with an old Macintosh game that I think was called Robot Wars, where each player takes turns planning a course through an arena, then the results of both sides are “played back” and depending on how and when they encounter one another, combat may ensue.
Honeyslug’s Hohokum looked really pretty, although I couldn’t work out the gameplay from the small slice that I saw, and visually it had a lot in common with Rolando creator Handcircus’ game Okabu, which was also on display at the show.

Jonathan Jacques Jacques-Belletete Deus Ex: Human Revolution Developer Session

Sitting through an Nvidia 3D presentation, which did little to impress me, I was quite excited by the Deux Ex presentation. Let me first say that although I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a die hard fan of the series (I never did finish the first game in the saga), I have become a recent convert since the release of the trailers for Human Revolution. Despite the fact that the genre has largely fallen by the wayside, I’m still a fanboy of the noir-ish near future milieu and I think the art design of the latest Deus Ex has really captured all the great aspects of Ghost in the Shell, Neuromancer, System Shock, Cyberpunk 2020, etc. Even though the series creator Warren Spector has moved on to become a Disney shill, I can’t help but feel that the developers are really building upon what was created in the original game while still making it palatable to a modern audience. The playable demo (which was labelled E3 2010) started out with some beautiful and stunning visuals, all rendered in-engine. A futuristic VTOL vehicle that Jacques-Belletete described as a helicopter drops the character off on a two-tiered island city near Shanghai in Deus Ex’s year of 2027. The city was every bit as impressive as Neo Tokyo from Akira, or Ghost in the Shell’s New Port City. It also seemed to share some factors in common with Midgar from Final Fantasy VII, in that the city exists on two parallel levels, one a massive construct above the other.
Stepping from the “flier” you get a brief glimpse of your pilot as she warns you about the area, before wishing you luck, the door folding inward on her compartment like an anime mecha. The whole thing was extremely slick and looked like something straight out of Ghost in the Shell. The demonstrator then moved your character, Adam Jensen, down from the helipad and I was immediately struck by how populous the place was. The level design really gave me a sense that it was a real place in China and Jacques-Belletete mentioned that all of the NPCs wandering around could be conversed or interacted with. The demonstrator walked up to a man loitering on the stairway and pointed his gun at him—the man reacted by throwing his hands up and pleading in chinese. Walking through the populated areas, I was struck once again by the visuals—the looming “upper level” of the city above, the futuristic signs and buildings ripped right out of a set from Blade Runner. Eventually, he made his way to the club called The Hive your character was tasked with finding. In search of a hacker who has “gone to ground” and with only a name to go by, the demonstrator managed to blag his way into the club. Jacques-Belletete mentioned at this point that it being a Deus Ex game, there were many avenues by which the player could gain entrance to the club, some involving out-and-out force, others stealth, etc. He further elaborated by listing the four-pillars which the game has been founded upon, Stealth, Combat, Hacking and Social. Once inside, the character moved through the very detailed environment, and I was reminded somewhat of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (well, the good parts). Jacques-Belletete had the demonstrator show off some stealth elements, and it was then that we got a glimpse of Adam Jensen in his urban gear, as they showed off the cover mechanic, which moves the view from 1st to 3rd person. He showed one of the signature “take downs”, which has been glimpsed in some of the trailers, as Jensen took out a patrolling guard. Eventually they moved on to the Social interaction, which again felt like what Troika was trying to achieve in Bloodlines. The game moved seamlessly into conversation mode when the character, who was obviously someone of import with a birthmark that looked like a bad rash and a prominent cybernetic arm. The conversation system was reminiscent of Mass Effect or Bloodlines, where by you have three different demeanours of dialogue, and the player needs to gauge which is most appropriate by the visual reactions of the NPC.
The gameplay demo eventually moved on to the “commando” section of the demonstration, as Jacques-Belletete called it, where we got to see Jensen in his assault/infiltration gear. More third person cover-based gameplay was shown as he navigated the dock warehouse, at one point using his strength enhancement to move a large crate aside, then later to move a crate next to a window so he could slip in to a security office quietly. Jacques-Belletete touched on the various upgrades that were available, one that enabled Jensen to do a vicious double takedown later on in the demo. He also mentioned that hacking was important, although they didn’t show it as Jensen was accessing a terminal which had already been “unlocked” by a security guard who had been silently dispatched a moment before. Then they moved from being stealthy to all out assault, the demonstrator switching Jensen from the silenced pistol to, as Jacques-Belletete described it, the combat rifle. The reports from the weapon were loud and satisfyingly lethal-sounding as he took security guards. We have seen it before in the trailer, the demonstrator executed a multi-man takedown manoeuvre which saw Adam shooting out tiny mines or grenades of some kind in a spiral all around him.
They were definitely riffing on Ghost in the Shell during the combat which followed, whereupon a “box” is dropped by a flier through the covered glass ceiling of the warehouse. The ”box” then goes through a radical transformation to become a missile firing vehicular robot. I heard myself openly gasping during this firefight, as Adam Jensen leapt coolly over and behind cover to avoid the missile and autogun fire from the mechanical monstrosity. The sense of empowerment and agency, even though someone else was controlling the game, was fantastic and I was truly blown away.
Once dispatching the thing with a conveniently-located rocket launcher, Jensen eventually finds himself face to face with some kind of biotech augmented nemesis who towers over him. I was once again encouraged by the fact that this signature character seemed to bridge the gap of the dreaded “Uncanny Valley” of characters, at least more than many of the more robotic denizens of other games.
The demo concluded with a look at the extended version of the trailer they have been showing since the game’s announcement. I left the hall excited by the promise of this game, which should be with us by early next year.

Sucker Punch inFamous 2 Developer Session

The developers from Sucker Punch started off by showing off the final design of Cole, the hero from the first inFamous game, a return to the original style after fan outcry when Cole was changed into a “pretty boy”. They touched on the fact that Cole’s “athleticism” has been emphasized and he has adopted more of a “boxer pose”: shooting quickly with one hand (as jabs) and throwing powerful attacks like the “kinetic pulse” with the off hand. I was a little disappointed that most of what they showed were canned, pre-recorded videos, but they did have a brief live gameplay demonstration toward the end. They showed off the two different types of enemies: the Militia-- militant religious types who looked and acted like the Reapers from the first game, and the Corrupted-- strange beastly mutants with Tyranid-like deformities. The new locale of New Marais looked like a southern “bayou” town , along the lines of New Orleans. Empire City, the setting of the original game, confined the player by using island drop offs; in the sequel, the layout of the city will be punctuated by shallow lakes and watercourses, which the electrified Cole will obviously not be able to traverse. The developers indicated that it gave them some more variety in where enemies could be spawned and changed the formula somewhat, making it less of a walled garden of the original. They also tried to improve the traversal overall-- the grind wires were such good fun that they put them everwhere-- even horizontally across and vertically up buildings. The biggest and most impressive change, however, was the destructible environment-- the demo driver picked up a car and threw it at a lookout tower, which exploded into hundreds of pieces-- very satisfying. The demonstration finished with Cole facing off against a boss (or “Elite”, in inFamous’ parlance) that I think was called “the beast” which burrowed back and forth. I enjoyed the original, but honestly I’m not sure I was completely blown away by what they showed of the sequel. During the Q&A session that followed, the developers confirmed that the Karma system would be back in some form, but it was not showed during the gameplay. They also said that the city of New Marais would be about the same size as Empire City, and that side missions are back and would be more engaging and relevant. When asked, they would not confirm if there would be branching storylines or Ice powers (as they had leaked before), but they did say that electricity is Cole’s thing so that’s still the focus.

Tim Willits, id Software Rage Developer Session

I should start by saying that when I sat down to see the much-lauded Rage, id Software’s next flagship release and main benefactor from their new “id Tech 5” Engine, I was expecting quite a lot. I remember hearing that what was shown behind closed doors at E3 seemed to wow everyone, and GameTrailers gave it “best game of show” of their E3 2010 awards.
id CEO Tim Willits started off by saying that they wanted to do something post-apocalyptic, but didn’t want to use any of the hackneyed premises that have gone before. So they decided upon a interstellar collision—an asteroid has destroyed society as we know it and your character plays the sole survivor, emerging from a facility called the Ark. The Arks were created by an initiative known as the Eden Project, humanity’s last effort to survive in the face of the oncoming disaster. By some fluke, everyone else in your “ark” has died and you are the only one to emerge to the remnants of society still on the surface.
Okay so by now, if you’re a gamer of any stripe, much of this is probably sounding a tad familiar. Two games that were released last year were very similar in premise, in particular Fallout 3, and Borderlands. This is probably an unfortunate coincidence for id, as it has stolen their thunder somewhat, but I have to say even though it seems a bit cliché, I still like the premise, even though on the surface it doesn’t seem to have diverged much from the idea presented in the original release of Interplay’s Fallout many years ago.
Mr. Willits then spoke about “the Authority”, what goes for an overarching militaristic and governing presence in Rage. The town of Wellspring was beautifully constructed and looked and felt like top notch level design-- elements of it felt like a real place. They moved on to a waterworks where they showed off some of the different weapons, including the electrobolt-- an electrified ammunition upgrade for the crossbow. The demo driver preceded to electrocute the enemies which were loitering about in pools of water-- honestly it’s not anything we haven’t seen in other games like Bioshock so I was far from impressed. The one fun moment, which conjured up shades of Doom 3, was when the demonstrator whipped out the spider bot-- reminiscent of the drone from id’s last major title. As far as I can recall, there were a couple of different versions of the bot, but all were lethal and looked fun to use. Another idea “stolen” by a soon-to-be-released game was the RC Car bomb-- something that that Treyarch has already put in Call of Duty: Black Ops. Most of the enemies encountered in the demo were from the “ghost clan” of survivors, a subterranean tribal faction that flipped, jumped and scaled objects to get to the player. If they were working together as a coordinated team, I couldn’t tell, as most of the enemies seemed to be outclassed by the player, armed as they were with melee weapons. Some of their animations were fluid and weren’t obviously canned, but on the whole their movements did little to impress me and I came away from the whole thing slightly disappointed. The demo wrapped up with the player facing off against a really big mutant type creature, presumably another enemy from the ghost clan, in a “canyon” of fallen skyscrapers. After handily despatching it, however, the ground started to shake, and an impressively huge humanoid, on the scale of a building or more, came stomping around the corner to roar at the player before the screen faded to black. It was impressive and almost made up for the rest of the somewhat ho-hum demo. To be fair, my expectations were probably a bit high, and I feel bad that id has had the good luck to be trumped by other games which have already been released, but at the same time, they’re not really doing anything revolutionary here in terms of gameplay. The company seems to focus on graphics and that they certainly have in spades with Rage. After the session, I had a chance to ask Mr. Willits where the title of the game came from, and his answer was similarly disappointing. I’m paraphrasing here, but he basically said, “because it sounds good, and it’s a one-syllable title like all our other games”. A sad trombone echoed in my mind.

Dead Space 2

I spent some time watching this played by some other players-- I really enjoyed the original game for what it was; monster-closet fest or not, they had some great atmosphere in the game. The sequel seems to be doing exactly what they should be, continuing the story from where they left off. In one part of the demo, there was a huge, menacing gyro spinning in the middle of a chamber. It looked like something right out of Event Horizon, a film which no doubt has inspired Visceral in the creation of the series.

Dead Nation

I also got to spend a few minutes with Dead Nation, a PSN title due out later this year. It was a top down zombiefest shooter in the style of Left4Dead. One thing I noticed about the controls were that once the zombies were right next to you, it was hard to shoot-- you had to elbow them away or, as someone over my shoulder suggested, throw flares or grenades to lure the zombies away from you en masse. I’m a big fan of DLC titles these days so despite the fact that the gore was a little goofy looking, I’m still keeping this one on my radar.

Gears of War 3

For the fans of the series, my report comes on the heels of the sad news of the game’s further delay, to possibly more than a year from now. The demo stations they had on the show floor had the “Beast” mode running-- oddly, though, most of the stations were only single player. I must admit I felt extremely outmatched, having not played GoW since the first game, so it took me a while to remember how to sprint and use cover. I didn’t expect to be blown away by what I saw, but it kept my interest for a few minutes before I got tired of getting smoked by the AI and I moved on to something else.

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

I spent a few minutes playing the multiplayer in Brotherhood and came away intrigued and hankering for more. The game assigns you another target (and perhaps oddly, if you’ve been following the storyline, they called the other assassins “Templars”), in a “Circle of Death” style scenario, much like in “Killer” games of less politically correct and the relatively safer times of my childhood. Player A is assigned to take out Player B, Player B to take out Player C and Player C to take out Player A, completing the circle. There were tons of AI characters walking around the level, some running, climbing rooftops, etc. though hidden in the crowd were my fellow players. The idea was to follow a little radial dial at the bottom of the screen which showed a rough direction and proximity to your target. You couldn’t see your target’s identity until they were within physical sight of your avatar, but once they did come into range, the game would warn you not to run or otherwise give yourself away to your target. While queuing to play, the guy before me didn’t seem to understand what was going on and was continually getting murdered by the competition. When I finally sat down to play, I got to test out some of the special abilities; each character receives two of them, and I chose hidden gun and disguise. There were also throwing knives, smoke bombs and some kind of “morph” option, among a handful of others. I managed to dispatch a couple of targets without revealing myself, but someone else had already climbed to the top of the leaderboard by the time I had to leave the demo station. In all it was a fun and largely unique experience.

Wrap up

There were loads more games at the show that I would have liked to have tried, but the queues were too long and truthfully I spent most of my time at the Developer Sessions. Brink seemed extremely popular, and I kicked myself for not trying it first when the queues were still relatively light. Both Playstation Move and Microsoft Kinect games were there, along with Rock Band 3, Dance Central and a good showing of Wii games, but I didn’t notice very many handheld demo stations. Nintendo is obviously ramping up for the 3DS release, and the PSP is dying a slow death. There was absolutely nothing in the way of iOS or other mobile games, most likely due to space and cost considerations. Speaking of 3D, it seemed to be a fairly big facet for some games, particularly the prominent Killzone 3 which was playable on the show floor. By the day’s close, I was exhausted and although there does’t look to be many tentpole releases slated for this year (at least none that are really of interest to me), it was worth the effort for the look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution at least.

To the Infinite and Beyond

2010-09-22T11:16:00.001+01:00

The 10-minute demo looks a bit contrived in a stage demo kind of way (it almost seems like a proof of concept), but it does indeed seem like real gameplay.

Video Games | BioShock Infinite | Ten-Minute Demo Gameplay

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I bought Bioshock 2 but never played it... well, beyond loading it up and looking at the menu screen. Don't get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for Ken Levine's brainchild, but really I think I would rather be playing System Shock 3. The original Bioshock was a great game, and I found Rapture genuinely inventive, plus, the homage to literary works truly is a testament to how far games have come in connecting with their audience. But the sequel seemed like a cash in and as I've said before, I wish they could have just left Rapture behind. The buzz coming out of E3 has been great for Infinite, though, and it's this 10 minute demo that has convinced me they seem to be doing what has worked so well for the Final Fantasy series up until now. Start over each time, but keep the same vibe, with similar motifs and themes which have resonated before. Give something new, but also have it be oddly familiar. It's a formula that works, at least in Infinite's case. Plus, they've chosen a great voice actor in Stephen Russell. He brought the Thief Garrett to life in Looking Glass' venerable series. I know people say that disembodied voices make people unnerved, but I think it's a great narrative technique, and I think it helps the player connect with the character and feel immersed in an interactive story and not the reverse.Then again, I do love that noirish feel to voice over narration (I still love the theatrical release of Blade Runner for that reason).

Minecraft-ception

2010-09-21T11:07:00.001+01:00

I've been hearing quite a bit about Minecraft lately, and I'm hoping it won't be a there-and-gone part of the indie and dev community like Sleep is Death seems to be.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but even though I seem to be finding the Doom-era graphics a fair bit more charming than I once did, I'm still not sure if it's for me. Crafting seems to be the domain of a certain segment of MMO addict. Nevertheless, the Inception-inspired trailer does raise some questions as to what might be "out there" in the wilds of Minecraft...

Here's the Destructoid post.

Death Angel Card Game Review

2010-09-20T14:08:00.000+01:00

You are armoured by the Emperor himself. Righteousness is your shield, Faith your armour and Hatred your weapon. So fear not and be proud, for we are the sons of the Sanguinius, the Protectors of Mankind. Aye, we are indeed the Angels of Death...

With the help of three of my fellow "Battle Brothers", I had a chance to test out FFG's newest Silver Line card game, Death Angel. From the description, I expected it to be Space Hulk in mini (ironically without the minis). Despite one misunderstanding of the rules-- and we came to a consensus that rulebook's explanation was overly complicated and more than a bit perplexing, we had a fun time with it. The 45 minute to 1 hour game ended up taking almost twice the time, but we still had a reasonably good time with it once we got a handle on the rules. Unfortunately I misinterpreted the composition of the location deck and we ended up having to fight through many more locations than the game normally intends.

Death Angel boils down to each player choosing a combat team of two Terminator Space Marines, arranging them in a line, with half facing left and the other facing right. Location cards tell what "features" are in the room, such as doors, ventilation ducts, etc., which each have a varying threat level for the likelihood that nasty Genestealer aliens will appear. Event cards are turned over to determine how many of the xenos appear from each blip pile, and once a blip pile is exhausted, the marines move on to the next location.

The marines interact by using one of three action cards, either attacking, supporting or moving/facing/button-pressing. The key is that no action card can be used twice consecutively, which forces you to strategize with your fellow space marines, to deal with the mounting alien threat. One stipulation says that although you can share as much information with each other, you cannot show your card before it is played, and all players flip their chosen action card simultaneously. I think this is to make certain the game doesn't devolve too much into a "so what does your card do again?" situation, as well as giving a certain finality to each of your choices.

There really isn't much more to the game than that, apart from the support tokens, which are gained primarily from using the support action card mentioned above, most of which can be used to reroll failed rolls. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, to be honest, but it ended up being fairly engaging for all of us, and despite some poor rolls, ended up being a satisfying (if not unusually long, due to my error reading the rules) experience. And writing about it here makes me want to have another crack at it.

Battlefield BC2 Vietnam DLC

2010-09-17T10:14:00.001+01:00

I love how cinematic this trailer is.

I'm still not sure if I'm totally sold on buying the DLC, but I do love the trailer.

Top Favorite Table-top RPG settings

2010-09-15T11:42:00.001+01:00

Alternate universes, parallel dimensions, other worlds... one of the reasons I think a lot of gamers first gravitate toward roleplaying is a chance to escape the mundane, the banal. Most of us started with the venerable Dungeons and Dragons line, but as a setting (unless you started with one of the pre-published setting books like Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Eberron or Pathfinder), it's fairly generic High Fantasy. I'm a sucker for a really interesting RPG setting and over the years I have collected my fair share of concepts. I figure it's time for me to list my top X faves of all time, with an eye toward the most unique, inventive or imaginative setting. This is not an exhaustive list, mind you, just a listing of my favorites culled during my travels as a GM and player. I'm mostly talking about setting here (pure "fluff" and very little "crunch," for those in the know), I'll leave the system discussion for more people more versed in the vagaries of mathematics and mechanics.

1. Agone - When someone asks me about my favorite obscure role-playing game, this is my go-to answer, but despite the obscurity I think it's my favorite setting of all time. It is based upon a series of French novels written by author Mathieu Gaborit, about a man named Agone of Roundrock and the "Twilight Kingdoms" he eventually comes to dominate. What I love about the RPG was the sense of history-- the book starts off with a superb creation myth and details the fallen empires which have died out and given birth to the Twilight Kingdoms. The game is a weird mash-up of Greek mythology, cthulhu-esque horror and high level political intrigue (each character holds an Office of high station, not to mention carries a flame of genuine Inspiration). I've barely scratched the surface here, but suffice it to say I thought it was a genuinely unique take on the fantasy genre and until recently, role-playing in general. It's a shame that the English language version didn't take off, as well as it seems the original French publisher has had troubles and gone belly up as well.

2. Skyrealms of Jorune - This is still one of my most favorite "science fantasy" types of settings, wherein the humans have colonized a remote planet, then suddenly lost all contact with Earth, causing the collapse of the colony's society and regression to a pre-industrialized era. The classical impressionist style of the illustration did much to evoke the setting of a human culture suddenly in a new pseudo-feudal bronze age, and thrown in amongst a hodgepodge of other humanoid aliens. I loved that there were three types of "humans" one could play, each of which had evolved to nearly become a separate species, as well as races resulting from the genetic engineering of animals brought with the original colonists. There was also the potential of finding lost technology from the original colony, and that which still exists is jealously guarded. Again, this is just scratching the surface, as I feel there's a whole entire universe (as well as a separate language, to the chagrin of some) lurking within. For me it, gave it a really unique feel, filled with wonder but yet grounded in some kind of scientific reality.

3. Deadlands: Hell on Earth - I kind of missed the bandwagon on the whole Deadlands phenomenon, but I'm glad to see the persistence of the original Wild West inspired game today. Hell on Earth is what resulted from extrapolating the future of Deadlands' "Weird West", one in which an apocalypse has happened quite literally, with four horsemen and everything... and it has become the blasted place known as the "Wasted West." For me, it's the perfect mash-up of Deadlands and Mad Max, before Bethesda's Fallout3 appeared on the videogame scene, that is. Even though the days of the Cold War are over and the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction are (hopefully) far behind us, I still love a good post-apocalyptic setting and at the moment Hell on Earth is the only one I can think of.

4. Dark Sun - I still think this is one of the best things TSR ever had the pleasure of killing off, as they often did with their alternate settings (but it has finally been resurrected by Wizards of the Coast). I see the inspiration as hypothesizing what a "post-apocalyptic" fantasy setting would be and honestly what they have created works on so many levels. The world, once a bright and teeming place, has had the life literally sucked out of it by nasty "Defiler" magic. Couple that with the fact that metals are scarce and you have a unique vision for an alternate fantasy setting.

5. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - My first proper role-playing experience as a young adult was with the original edition of WFRP and it still is a favorite fantasy setting of mine. I hesitate to classify it as either wholly "low" or "high" fantasy, but the germanic "Holy Roman Empire"-esque feel lends a lot of credence to the believability of the world for me, plus it makes it feel distinct (or it did at the time) from other more generic fantasy settings like the original D&D.

6. Warhammer 40,000 - For years people have yearned for a 40K roleplaying game, and although I never got sucked into the miniatures wargame myself, what I did learn of the expansive universe had me hoping for a counterpart to the excellent WFRP. There have been some that have come before and have since vanished (Fading Suns, Mutant Chronicles, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium), but it wasn't until the release of the first edition of Dark Heresy that an official 40K roleplaying game was on the scene. Although the emphasis was away from the much-vaunted Space Marines which have been the sole focus of the game until now, there now exists two other superb choices for adventuring in the "grim darkness of the 41st Millennium": Rogue Trader and Deathwatch. When I first encountered 40K, I hated the art style and to paraphrase a friend of mine, the world seemed to be conceived to play out adolescent war fantasies, and despite the fact that the genesis for the setting may have been just that, the more I investigate, the deeper the fiction seems to have gone. At least so far as I can tell, there has been an incredible amount of thought and attention to detail which is not missed in this future where there is "only war."

7. World of Darkness - My first "mature" roleplaying game experience was Vampire: The Masquerade and honestly, given the depth of the world and its inherent politics, I think it would draw just about anyone in. I tend to be particular about what kinds of vampire fiction I consume, and since the WoD, just about everything that deviates from their concept of these creatures of the night tends to wrankle me. The original incarnation was a master stroke and truly changed RPGs from the outset. Prior to the WoD, the only opportunity I had to play Vampires, Werewolves, et al., was in an expansion for Chill. I think the series has diverged a bit from its roots, but the essence is still there, and there's still lots of potential for great storytelling. It took me a while to fully grasp it, but I think for many the attraction is the ability to explore horror of a more personal nature. Meaning, this is the culture shock and personal struggle that results from realizing that one is no longer human. I think this was the core idea behind Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, and it is encapsulated so well and translated to other "races" in White Wolf's World of Darkness-- it's sort of like supernatural Transhumanism.

8. Call of Cthulhu - Fear, an extremely primal emotion... H.P. Lovecraft's enduring vision of terrible alien intelligences to whom humanity is less significant than the lowliest insect still haunts and terrifies today. While the spirit of the game may at its core be a bit too bleak to be carried to its inevitable end, there are times in the Autumn where this promise of fear seems just right. Although we have left the era of Conspiracy X and the X-Files well behind us (especially that catastrophically awful second film), Delta Green is probably my favorite of all of the subgenres of Call of Cthulhu. What better to investigate horrors of the unknown than government or local authorities, who have stumbled across something truly frightening, something truly insane. The original CoC still seems to be on many people's play lists, if nothing else than as an antithesis to the empowering "hero" games they may have grown up on. Myself, I like the simple horror aspect rather than the desperation that can sometimes set in when set against a foe you have no hope of defeating, much less understanding. I also think the Hellboy/BPRD RPG is a great fit for Cthulhu. Mike Mignola doesn't really disguise the fact that these are pretty much the same eldritch horrors that Lovecraft came up with, and what better villains to "bump back" than the tentacled freaks of New England? PEG's Tour of Darkness and their other Weird Wars settings are a good second to running Cthulhu outside of the standard setting of Classic 1920s or Modern day.

9. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs - I'm still a huge fan of the pulp genre and have yet to play in a game or campaign that uses this setting. Hollow Earth Expeditions and The Day After Ragnarok play with some similar ideas to great effect, but Cadillacs and Dinosaurs still has a special place in my heart. Based upon a comic book series called Xenozoic Tales, about a revisionist 50s era vision of the future where Earth has reverted to a pre-historic state following a catastrophe which drove humans underground (to live in Fallout style "Vaults") for hundreds of years. They emerge to find they have been significantly demoted on the food chain.

10. Tribe 8 - This one is a little difficult to quantify for me, but I still hope to explore the world of Tribe 8, at least in passing. It's another post-apocalyptic setting, but it seemed to be a wholly unique approach to the genre, with the players being a tribe of outcasts themselves, left over from the remnants of society. Although I don't think the fiction expresly says so, it is set in what's left of Montreal after an unnamed apocalypse and an invasion by grotesque and cruel beings from beyond called the Z'bri. I loved the fact that although a supernatural force (the Fatimas, aspects of the "One Goddess") who gifted the surviving humans with Synthesis, the dream-magic, they were somewhat alien themselves and now have set up an unjust society.

11. Godlike - I always hated the fact that the Torch of Liberty was removed from the Hellboy movie. Somehow, I liked the idea of a Watchmen-like World War II that had a superhero on the side of the Allies. Perhaps that's what appealed to me so much about Godlike when it was announced. But I also liked the fact that though these people might have extraordinary powers, they were not immortals. The book talks about Feuerzauber, a so-called Talent with "parahuman" powers which enabled him to convert kinetic energy (i.e. bullets) into fire. He was completely immune to the flames that would spew forth, however, he still needed a source of oxygen, which of course the flames greedily consumed. During a particularly violent conflict at Stalingrad, Feuerzauber suffocated from a lack of air.

12. Gear Krieg - This is my other favorite WWII alternate history RPG. I would love to combine it with Godlike and perhaps throw in Day After Ragnarok and Hollow Earth somehow. Aw, heck, we might as well add zombies, werewolves and vampires from Weird Wars into the mix while we're at it. But taking it on its own, there's just something fitting about having all of the mecha and superscience in WW2 to begin with. Like many kids, I grew up on big robot shows, and I've since tired of them intellectually-- but I do love them in a seemingly incongruous setting like Gear Krieg.

13. Amber - I first read Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber when I was a teenager, but the concepts and characters from the entire series still sticks with me today. If you haven't guessed already, I love a good genre mash-up and at the time, Amber was kind of the ultimate setting for this kind of thing to take place. The roleplaying game places you as one of the members of a royal family of immortals who exist in the "true" reality, of which our Earth is only but one among countless other shadows or mirror realities of Amber.

14. Sundered Skies/the Shards/Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies - I have an interesting relationship with this setting, which ironically seems to have fragmented into many different products, but all with the same germ of an idea. Basically it's a fantasy setting in which there are massive islands floating in the air, and age of sail ships that can flit in between them. Although Skyrealms of Jorune has these, too, despite being part of the title, they aren't necessarily the focus of the entire game. The Shards was a setting presented to me by a friend, which he and his co-author posted online. Sundered Skies, the most commercially visible version of the setting, more or less takes the same germ of the idea, but changes things up a bit by adding a light that shines down from above which essentially drives people mad. Ever since watching Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa, I have a fondness for this kind of thing, and frankly it meshes well with the fantasy setting.

15. Summerland - This one evokes shades of Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, and envisions a world where nature has taken over after some unspecified "event" and reduced human society to a shadow of its former dominance. There are elements of horror-- the Sea of Leaves has absorbed most of humanity into its green embrace with some kind of supernatural siren song: "The Call" (okay, okay, go ahead and make your "heeding the Call of Nature" jokes now). I'm not sure how much further the setting is developed beyond this, but it is intriguing nonetheless at least to make my list. Now on to honorable mentions!

Honorable Mentions:

Hellfrost - I'll be honest, Kurt Wiegel of Game Geeks fame has introduced me to more than a few of my favorite settings on this list. Although it was a flawed game, I really enjoyed the setting presented in the computer game Arx Fatalis and Hellfrost reminds me of what may have happened to the world above when all the humans went underground for warmth when their star started dying.
Slipstream - This is another Kurt Wiegel pick that I really like. Basically it sounds like Flash Gordon the RPG for modern times. It's pulp scifi at its best.
Necessary Evil - Turning the supers game on its head, you play a group of super villains who are all that's left to defend (?) humanity after an alien invasion wipes out all of the good guys.
Don't Rest Your Head - With sources of inspiration like Dark City and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, I was destined to love this one. I think I've tapped it out completely with my current group, but for whatever reason it seems to have struck a chord with gamers lately.
Star Wars RPG (D6, WEG) - A classic that bears mentioning. What kid wouldn't want to adventure in the universe with Jedi, lightsabers and helmeted villains in black armor? The series has been tarnished somewhat for me by the terrible prequel trilogy, but I still have a special place in my heart for "classic" Star Wars.
Mutant Chronicles - Before there was a Warhammer 40K RPG, there was Mutant Chronicles. The game captured my imagination in the late 90s, a strange hybridization of 40K and Cyberpunk, and evolved its own flavor separate from its inspiration.
Cyberpunk - the Cyberpunk genre is dead, long live cyberpunk! I think many of the concepts presented have become present day realities (like the ubiquity of cell phones, despite what the wiki says I believe it was suggested in the original edition of Cyberpunk), but I think this genre has largely been replaced by transhumanism in games like GURPS Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase.
Fading Suns - Kind of a mix of Dune, 40K, and Space Cthulhu, it was the "other" 40K RPG before Dark Heresy. Like Mutant Chronicles, it has evolved a style all its own, with some elements of Babylon 5 (to my mind), but it has lost some of its lustre now that we have some bona fide 40K RPGs to replace it.
Unknown Armies - What a strange world they have conceived for this one. Clockwork baddies, weird esoteric archetypes (like the ultimate porn star), and guys that can do magic just by being drunk. I think the world is mostly brought to life by the excellent writing of John Tynes and Greg Stolze (of Delta Green fame), but there are some deep, deep concepts here and overall the entire feel of the game is off-beat and weird in a good kind of way.
TMNT (Transdimensional) - The whole TMNT phenomenon has died a horrible, horrible death as far as I'm concerned, but I can't help it being a significant part of my childhood and comic book reading growing up. My favorite setting book was Transdimensional TMNT, that described time travel in an interesting and inventive way (from a meta game perspective, at least).
the Whispering Vault - Another truly weird setting, whereupon (in a very White Wolf way), the players are a set of beings from outside space and time, each embodying an avatar which is tasked with hunting down entities which have escaped from the world of dream into the realm of flesh.
Judge Dredd - Although it is aging, I still love this world from the 2000AD comics: of mega-cities, destroyed "Cursed Earth" deserts and the Judges that are the embodiment of ultimate Law upon the land. Though I know it was presented mainly as satire for the political and cultural norms of the time, much of it is still relevant today, if not more so.

Next up: settings from Movies, TV, Comics, videogames that also deserve their own RPG...

Thoughts on the Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta

2010-09-14T11:10:00.001+01:00

I either missed or ignored the announcement for the Closed Beta test, so when the Open Beta went live, I decided there was nothing to lose (but bandwidth and time) so I signed up, downloaded the Final Fantasy XIV client and gave it a whirl last night.

Okay, let me get this out of the way: I am not an MMO fan. I love the idea of them on the surface, but due to limitations in technology, I just don't think they are the kind of immersive experience I am looking for at the moment. And the last MMO I've truly played was Final Fantasy XI (I have since tried others, but none have ever interested me enough to pay for them).

So after the lengthy download process, I got into the game and started to create a character. The character creation seemed very streamlined; I'm not altogether certain it was final. I have to admit, I'm still a loyal follower of the series... although I've barely had the time or the inclination to play the offline FF XIII, with its "12 hour tutorial" not withstanding, it's still sitting on my shelf! I don't mind the emo style of the characters, which has become more than a little goofy by this point if you ask me.

Speaking of goofy, I couldn't help but feel the overall "Japanesey-ness" of the game coming through from the outset. Now, don't get me wrong, I grew up with anime and I am still largely fond of the design ethos for their games. But each time I made a change to my character's appearance, he would do this sort of weird laugh which I found very disconcerting. It was sort of an open-mouthed, wide-eyed laugh, one that a crazy person on the street might give to you, just to startle you into dropping your coffee. Anyway, looking past this, I quickly created a Hyur Marauder, kind of a human piratey type, and launched into the initial non-instanced area.

As I recall from FF XI, there was a lengthy "story" tutorial portion, which helped to ground your character in the world and more or less gave him or her a mission and introduction to your chosen starting city. This new game follows suit, but I seem to recall XI launching straight into the opening cinematic. In the FFXIV Open Beta, my character began on the hold of a ship with a bunch of AI characters sitting around. When spoken to, they would give a few lines of canned text and generally seemed to be the usual droll characters sprinkled throughout JPRGs since time immemorial. I quickly became bored with reading their responses. One of the characters urged me to go above decks, where there was sure to be some kind of tutorial control and combat session waiting.

I should mention that I started out using the mouse and keyboard, but for most 3rd person games, the gamepad looks a bit more pleasing to my eyes, so I quit the beta, went out to the config utility and set up my 360 controller. Unfortunately the setup tool doesn't automatically map the buttons, but it lets you do this easily enough-- aside from not knowing what some of the buttons actually mean and simply not having enough buttons to map everything listed, it was fairly painless. Launching back into the game, I felt more comfortable with the gamepad, if for no other reason than the movement of my character on screen looked more natural and it was easier to swing the camera around at will. Because of my choice of key mapping, however, it wasn't completely ideal actually walking around and talking to people, but I didn't feel like going back out to the config tool to fix it so I just left it.

The first section had me fighting a few little jellyfish things by my lonesome. Although the fully voiced and subtitled cutscene showed me accompanied by some other "heroes," the actual combat had no urgency and the other people just sort of wandered around. It's a good no-stress way to figure out which buttons to press (because if the game was telling me what to do, it wasn't obvious), and the combat finished with an interesting cinematic that tried to capture the wonder of this virtual world I was meant to be exploring, but on the whole, I was expecting more of a directed experience.

So then my character, who I named Rhondo Dahlia-- I was happy to see that some of the other live players chose sensible sounding names, and not "Bagga Donuts" or "Live22241 Sixty9," materialized in an "instance," spawning on top of someone else who appeared to be either lagged or otherwise afk. Normally the first thing I would have done would be try to talk to people, but neither did I have any inclination of how to chat or emote, nor did I care to. I wandered around a little, with no real idea of what to do or where to go next. It was about this point that I reflected on the graphics-- the game looks great, and is certainly in keeping with the advances in technology. It didn't blow me away graphically, but I wouldn't expect an MMO to do so. It was getting late so I logged out and resigned to check it out on another night.

Before going into the beta, I had almost resolved to buy the game outright, ending my temporary moratorium on MMOs to check it out, at least for a month or two... but now, I'm not so sure. I'll need to spend some more time with the beta before deciding.

Retro Sexual

2010-09-10T14:00:00.001+01:00

A friend of mine said at this year's E3 that Retro was the next big thing in games, judging from the demo stations on the show floor.

I just watched the PAX floor demo of Super Giant's Bastion, one of the games at this year's show in Seattle that was garnering some merry talk, and I couldn't help but echo my friend's sentiments. The game, demoed to Kotaku by the extremely articulate Greg Kasavin (formerly of Gamespot), might not only have that strong narration element mentioned in the Kotaku article, but I love the design ethos as well. It's a solid 2-D game that has much in common with the golden age of NES, but extrapolating further in terms of graphics and friendly UI that we have become accustomed to along the way.

It reminds me of my favorite Monkey Island game, the Curse of Monkey Island (yes, the "animated" one) and I'm hopeful that if Bastion and other games like it are commercially successful we will see more of this kind of art-focused 2D based old school retro design. Don't get me wrong, as I've said before, I love pixels and I find the pixelly graphics charming and quite nostalgic-- particularly in the wonderfully random mash-up that is Retro City Rampage, but I love the idea of extrapolating what Zelda would look like if we hadn't moved to "3D" Polygons in the interim.

Also one would think that all of these types of games (whether painterly or not) are cheaper to produce, with a generally higher quality result than many of their polygonal bretheren. Shadow Complex, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and others have proven the commercial and critical success of a simpler, yet more attractive old school design.

Video Games | Retro City Rampage | PAX 10: Nostalgia Walkthrough Part I (Cam)

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Video Games | Retro City Rampage | PAX 10: Nostalgia Walkthrough Part II (Cam)

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Honestly, there's a place in the multi-Billion dollar gaming industry for both, it just remains to be seen whether there's a spot for loads of stuff in the middle...

Scott Pilgrim vs. My World

2010-09-02T16:24:00.000+01:00

I can't explain it. I totally enjoyed watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but after I left the theater, I couldn't help but feel that something of the experience was missing. Nevertheless, the movie has stuck with me, and I find myself thinking about it and wanting it to have been a more perfect experience.

I think I am waaaaay outside of the normal demographic of the film, although as my wife pointed out, the director is roughly the same age as I am. The story has a definite pang of teen angst and it reminded me just a little bit of my own early dating experiences. Minus the over the top fighting and videogame references, that is.

Some of its allusions to videogames, while cute and more than mildly amusing in the trailer, fell a bit flat for me within the context of the finished film. Still, it's a cute idea, and struck me as a better implementation than the in-your-face style of 2008's Speed Racer. The movie rarely takes itself seriously, and if it weren't for some of the subject matter this would be entirely a good thing. I just want the aspect of fitting videogames in a movie like this to work, if you know what I mean. Perhaps never shall the twain shall meet, but down deep in my geeky soul, I believe there must be a formula that works and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World comes as close as any have dared so far.

Let me take a step back for a second. I love Edgar Wright's work. I think I can speak for a lot of geeks in that he is a living saint for producing Shaun of the Dead and Spaced. And although he has been typecast as a "Michael Cera," I'm still a fan of Michael Cera these days. As far as I'm concerned the entire cast and producers of Arrested Development can do no wrong, but Cera was particularly good in that show (and plus, it was the first time we saw him doing that awkward teen role, delivered with complete and total deadpan grace). And as for the rest of the cast in Scott Pilgrim, they are perfect, including one terrific cameo.

As written, the character of Scott Pilgrim is not particularly likable in the film, a fact that is probably made up for in the comics simply by the cute line style and the way he is drawn. In the film, you just see Michael Cera doing his "Michael Cera" thing and two-timing a sweet, innocent girl and just generally being miserable. Again, this is how the character is written for the film. I can't really speak to the comics as I've only cracked the first volume so far, but suffice it to say, the movie has at least given me a thirst to read the rest. Protagonists like this usually have some compelling aspect that we can identify with, but unfortunately we don't see Scott as this harmless kid who suddenly gets propelled into a situation he can't handle or who falls hopelessly in love and isn't wholly responsible for his actions. We hat we see is someone who starts acting like a bit of a dick and although we're supposed to know why, we don't completely feel it. Anyway, Edgar Wright has said in a lot of interviews that the film is basically Scott's fantasy and so perhaps when I see it again I should try to watch it with that insight in mind. I love the idea of an "unreliable narrator," someone who is showing you things, but they are not the reality, and the real meat of the film is when you notice the seams in between the fantasies they have constructed. But I suspect Scott Pilgrim is not this kind of film, it's a fun romp between set-pieces with some amusing characters and witty dialog along the way.

Back to the characters-- I simply adore Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but truthfully she didn't have a lot to work with in the character of Ramona Flowers. I got the sense that the character was supposed to be a little bit like Clementine from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind (perhaps that is vice-versa, I'm not sure which may have come first). She's that ideal of the quirky free-spirited person, who has left a string of broken relationships behind. You'd think she be this really complex person, basically a living double-edged sword, forged in emotional baggage and sexual insecurities. The story ultimately is about her as she becomes the solitary focus of the protagonist Scott, but the story eschews this for a lighter, less serious tone. Generally in a film about over the top manga-inspired fights this is a good thing, but it would have been interesting for it to have some more grounding in the reality of young adult relationships. I'm sure the story is extremely personal to creator Brian Lee O'Malley, but I was hoping for a bit more honesty or more gravity, along the lines of Zach Braff's Garden State. It kind of almost has that feel, with all the otherworldly goings on, well except for all of the fighting game fantasies, that is.

Ultimately, however, I don't think that Cera and Winstead had very much on-screen chemistry... and given that it was a cornerstone of the film, it was hard to go along with the story without ignoring that glaring flaw. So there, I think I have explained it. Great movie, slick visuals (and that's not a knock from me as it usually is), and it gets a resounding thumbs up. Unfortunately for me, it was a taster for something that could have been truly wonderful and it fell just short. Incidentally, I felt the same about Hot Fuzz... I could see what Wright was going for with his "buddy cop" comedy, but for whatever reason it didn't totally resonate with me (and I've actually been to small villages in England!).

Still, as I mentioned previously, it has stuck in my mind and grabbed my attention enough for me to pick up the comics and the PSN/XBL videogame tie-in and still want more.