Get out of my blog

First off:   

The other evening I find myself entreated to join in a two player game of Super Puzzle Fighter 2 on me flatmate’s new 360 Elite.  Shiny.

Unfortunately I have never played Super Puzzle Fighter 2 before. I know what you’re thinking.  It’s one of two things: 

1. You’re thinking, “What the fuck is Super Puzzle Fighter 2?”
2. You’re thinking, “n00b!!  This game has been around since the SEGA Saturn, or earlier!  You’re supposed to be an industry professional , you have the balls to actually pretend you know enough about games to write about them!  What the fuck have you been doing??  Masturbating over Wing Commander manuals for the last ten years??? Jesus!!”

Luckily for me, the core concepts behind this game are speedily graspable.  Like Go, it’s not complicated to learn, but is rather definitely deep enough to warrant further study.  It also has a superdeformed Chun Li who kicks ass, and explains that she is “The strongest puzzle fighter in the world!”  For all these reasons, I entreat you to check out Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix on XBLA or PSN.  

Second off: 

I decide to celebrate my uncompromising victory by heading downstairs to the living room, cranking up my own inferior non-Elite 360, and checking out the Need for Speed: ProStreet Demo. I have a soft spot for NFS titles.  I have, in the past, genuinely enjoyed them.  I liked the canyon races in Carbon. I spent hours thrashing a Golf GTi around in Underground.  I even fondly reminisced about Wing Commander while watching Josie Maran mince about in the delightfully hammy cutscenes from Most Wanted.  Historically (and with the possible exception of the inaugural NFS, and Porsche Unleashed) they’ve not been games that devoted a great deal of time to accurately modelling the driving experience.  Instead, they’ve concentrated on stylised, arcadey fun.

Like a n00b, I expected great things from ProStreet. I basked in the glowing EA polish that gleamed forth from the trailers.  I listened to the blandishments of video interviews conducted with producers, their promises of distinct racing modes, an extensive career structure – the multifarious possibilities for customising, then trashing your ride.   I pictured myself rocketing to victory sideways through the final corner, columns of blue nitrous flame issuing forth from my exhausts, a ghost howling past at ten thousand rpm, shrouded in grey tyresmoke, bumpers striking sparks from the ground, leaving a blizzard of airborne wreckage and smashed opponents in my wake.  Sadly the reality is, NFS:PS is shit.  On reflection, I should have expected nothing more. 

Eschewing the fictionalised b-spline-Scalextric antics of Ridge Racer, or the sim vs. arcade carefree precision of PGR, the driving model is just… annoying.  Clunky.  Unsatisfying.    Hyperstylised, to the point where the honest fun has seemingly been leached out of it.

Anyone got a cheap 3DO they want to sell me?

Third off:  

I was going to rant about how unamusing the couple of hours I spent playing Halo 3 on heroic co-op were.  I was going to wax lyrical about the thoroughly uninspiring level design, awful voice acting, terrible writing, shockingly “Halo 2.5” graphics and basically whine about it being shit, and a good deal less actual fun to play than say, Gears of War.  I cannot however, be bothered.  My advice to 360 FPS fiends is: ignore Halo 3, and get Call of Duty 4 instead.  It more better. 

Finally: I was all excited about DeadSpace for a bit.  Now I give it a ladleful of meh.  

Maybe Dementium: The Ward will be more amusing?

Note to devs / marketing / PR:

Don’t release game trailers before your game engine is up to it. Or, if you are unable to resist attempting to show off your bland, featureless textures and tedious me-too space machinery crap, then at least ensure the trailer is a confused mass of increasing-tempo crash zooms and jump cuts.  This should prevent anyone from being able to tell how shoddy your game actually looks. 

Oh, and NEVER show the fucking monster in the trailer.

PGR4. Saved. Anyone want a race?

Sometimes there’s just too much choice. Like a munchied-up bevvie-merchant in a Glasgow chippie who can’t decide between aforementioned pizza, haggis, sausage or maybe even fush. Like a starving gambler who steps away from a 12 hour session at the low-stakes poker tables, and finds himself lost amongst the pointless vastness of a Vegas buffet, it’s sometimes hard to know where to begin.

You pop open your copy of Bioshock, but find your enthusiasm waning even as you drop the DVD into the drive tray. You hit the Steam icon in your system tray for some TF2, but can’t muster the energy to login. In desperation you turn to a perennial favourite like Project Gotham Racing 3 and then switch it off in frustration after haemorrhaging Kudos for a lap or two, disillusioned by your faded skillz, unable to focus. You give Space Giraffe or Geometry Wars a whirl, and teeth now clenched, give up as your sluggish brain and unruly thumbs lead you unswervingly to your doom.

You cannot even bring yourself to pick up your half-wrecked Guitar Hero Gibson, much loved despite (perhaps even because of) the knackered tiltswitch and iffy whammy bar.

Ennui sets in. Nothing interests you. Unplayed and uncompleted titles pile up on your shelves. Untouched demos and impulse-purchased XBLA games clog the hard drive of your 360. Unanswered missives from Steam and MSN lurk in the corners of your desktop.

Everyone else is gaming - where the hell are you?

When your flatmates come home to find you vegetating, passive - reading a terrible novel, while a terrible movie plays in the background, something clearly needs to be done. A short, sharp, shock. The gaming equivalent of a Chartreuse shot; a 110-degree-proof, hyssop-laced, brain-rebooting slap to the nervous system.

But what?

I have no idea.

It’s not all bad. I mean, at the moment, I spend my daily commute unashamedly clutching my plasticky, dull grey and laughably outsized DS. Mostly, I am immersed in the excellent Anno 1701, with an occasional burst of Starfox Command. (Which I should mention here is actually plenty fun, if you can get past the somewhat bizarre stylus-based flight controls. I like them. Many don’t. Do try them before passing judgement, won’t you?)

When I get off the train though? When my commute is done, and my evening begins? My enthusiasm collapses like a cheese soufflé in the hands of a slothful waiter.

At this rate it won’t be long before I end up back on the World of Warcrack, start playing Pokémon Yellow, or resurrect my old EVE Online account.

Or perhaps, succumb to something much, much worse…

There will be no queueing overnight, Westminster Council put the kibosh on such events in London anyhow.

There will also be no joining thousands of n00bs online to yell abuse, and I will also sadly not get to watch Rockstar attempting to subvert the Bungie-worshipping masses with free GTA:IV lewts either, as they apparently/allegedly did at the NYC Halo 3 launch - bribing the milling gamer hordes in an attempt to dilute the current Halo hysteria.

My forty quid (every penny already earmarked for far lesss savoury purposes!) will not be going to increase the pointlessly vast total of 1.5 million preorders that M$$$ have received for Halo 3 - now the most preordered game in history.

Previous most preordered game? Halo 2.

I will instead be savouring the tangy fruits of my “Orange Box” preorder, and getting my TeamFortress 2 on.

I will be practicing my doublejump technique (Scout), working on tactical turret placement (Engineer), learning how not to instantly die like a n00b (Spy) and cackling with glee as I trigger my Übercharge, and the Heavy Weapons Guy I’ve been healing goes through the blue team defensive line like, well, a massive invulnerable bastard with a chaingun. (Medic - my favourite class so far).

This, you understand, is only scratching the surface. It may be some time before I can bring myself to go back and play CounterStrike: Source again - next to TF2 my former first love of FPS now seems… lamentably shallow and insubstantial.
Also: BioShock continues to terrify and amaze - I find myself having to play it in reasonably short 30-40 minute bursts, as my poor fucking heart cannot take the strain. I find myself itching to rant about the level of detail, the atmosphere generated by the little audiobook vignettes you come across, the sense of ominous creeping watery doom hanging over your head. It’s immersive, darkly beautiful, intensely frightening and just generally fantastic.

Random other news:

EA appear willing to stop subsisting solely on the sour milk gleaned from their franchise cash cows, and actually make good on their promises to generate some new IP. They’re not giving away much about DeadSpace so far, but the aesthetic does look quite promising, in a sort of Event Horizon style..

Yes, I liked that movie. Yes, it is possible to find Sam Neill scary. Stop laughing at the back ¬¬

Final thing:

Apparently we are (soon) to be blessed with a multiplayer demo of Ace Combat 6 in the near future. This is of course deeply wonderful and I demand your presence, gentle reader, in the unfriendly skies of Live! so that I may yell things like “Fox Two!” into my headset and blast you repeatedly with missiles. Unless of course you get too close for a missile shot, in which case I’m switching to guns…

I’m off to play the Call of Duty 4 beta now. It’s quite frankly slicker than a greased eel - and while it lacks in the depth and sophistication of TF2, it makes up with instant accessibility, graphical lushness, solid netcode (lag? where?!) and, at heart, an intoxicating combination of guns ‘n’ XP.

Halo fanboys and PC FPS purists will howl in dismay but man, believe me, it’s goooood.

The highlight of TGS07 so far (other than watching Sony further pwn their own selves): 

Pink 360 controllers! OMG! <3

Enough of that ¬¬

In other news: Roflopolis.  Thankyou so-called “Marvellous Entertainment”, you’ve just made my afternoon.

Hint.  Giving your dev shop an excessively self-congratulatory name is probably a bad idea, especially when your current effort is some kind of lame looking action/adventure/horror thing, which blatantly rips off Twin Peaks.  And Saw.  And has the least convincing character models I have seen since the last time I was running away from a wolf made of ellipsoids. 

Alan Wake?  It’s not even fucking Illbleed…

Less lolworthy and more droolworthy are a few of the other trailers coming out of TGS: witness!

Ninja Gaiden 2 looks to be splattered with bucketloads of utterly gratuitous gore and topped with a liberal sprinkling of decapitated heads and amputated limbs.  This is carnage on a scale I have not seen since scaring my Mum with Moonstone on the Amiga (Thrill Kill might perhaps come close).. 

Either way, it’s clearly carved from a solid block of Win.

The NG2 presentation trailer also bears watching, not only for the awesome looking gameplay footage, but also for a sight of Team Ninja boozehound and mammary-obsessive: Tomonobu Itagaki, rocking his usual black leather jacket, shades and “Yes, I really do rule!” smug expression.

Meanwhile, Devil May Cry 4 seems set to raise the bar for brashness, volume, general stupidity and balletic violence yet again, whilst (hopefully) still retaining the solid gameplay that made the first and third titles in the series such fun.  Worth buying a PS3 for?  Umm, let me think… no.

There was something interesting-sounding about Metal Gear Solid Online as well, but hey, I’m only one guy here…

Final thought:

What with the abovementioned titles, Project Gotham Racing 4 and Ace Combat 6 on the horizon, plus (ssshh..) Need For Speed: ProStreet  - which is about the eleventh title in the NFS series - is whining about sequelitis now redundant?  Is it even worth bothering any more?  Do we think any of the twenty-six lucky beggars clutching their prerelease copies of Halo 3 care?

Answers on a postcard…

O SEGA Rally. O beauteous thing. O awesomeness unbounded.

Listen:

You can keep your Forza 2s with their hardcore physics and their elegant driver progression, your DiRT s and their stunningly atmospheric cockpit view.

Hold onto your photorealistic Gran Turismos and tempt me not with Project Gotham 4 and its… motorbikes and.. weather…

Give me pure arcadeyness. Give me Ridge Racer, Daytona, Outrun, Motorstorm - Need For Speed even!! Give me friction-defying powerslides, gravity-defying jumps, bangin’ soundtracks, h4wt chicks with placards and courses that have ferris wheels, rollercoasters and low flying planes.

Give me SEGA Rally, baby.

The driving model is poised, balanced and tuned to perfection. The courses are challenging and forgiving at the same time, shying away from frustrating the player with unrelenting demands for perfection, but at the same time daring them to strive for it. The speed is there, the challenge is there, the whole damn thing is full of sunshine, steaming jungles, crisp sand, blue sea, blue sky…

The track deformation actually works for fuck’s sake, in a manner wonderfully different from Motorstorm’s token nod in this direction. In SEGA Rally you throw your Impreza sideways through the apex of a corner - and feel the controller vibrate, see the car shake and the steering waver as you cross the ruts carved into the track on previous laps. It actually affects your driving. It’s a challenge. It’s something new to think about. It’s awesome.

It’s also all so very very SEGA that you might have to sniff back a nostalgic sob or two. It’s the best arcade driving game I’ve played since Outrun2.

If you have an Xbox 360 and any love for driving games at all, you owe it to yourself to grab the demo that’s up there on Live! now, and check it out. That is all.

[Actually… that’s not all!  Next-gen Daytona now plx.  Sonic Corner omg.  Gief!]

…Give a guy a gun and he thinks he’s Superman! Give him two and he thinks he’s God!!

So I’ve got the Jose Cuervo in, grabbed a bottle of lemonade, procured a small tumbler and a pack of Chinese cigarettes, and curled up on the sofa to enjoy Hard Boiled and get my Woo on.

Anyway:

I lose count of the number of fatalities in the final hospital shootout (again), the movie ends, and I decide to replay the Stranglehold demo on me 360. And I’m struck by a contrast. Look left. Now look right.

One is an example of an attempt to recreate a person you already know, and another is an attempt to create someone entirely new - in this case, a sort of squarejawed soldierly chap from Mass Effect.

What I’m saying is, some days it feels like we’re so close to climbing over the lip of the Uncanny Valley and escaping into the aesthetic wonderland that lies beyond…

And some days it feels like just trying to get up the slope will get you seized by mutant flying bugs, chopped into living hamburger and then mercy-clipped by your own Sergeant.

…”I’d expect any man here to do the same for me!”

<sigh>

Anyway. The Stranglehold demo is a bunch of laughs, and the game itself looks like a whole bunch of brain-in-neutral, hyperkinetic, pyrotechnic win.

It’s next on my list after Bioshock. And maybe Sega Rally (anyone else played the demo yet?).

Yes.  I should be finishing off my final thoughts on Global Conflicts: Palestine - but I have been sidetracked. 

As you might guess from the handsome fellow adorning this post I have been playing the Quake Wars: Enemy Territory demo: basically a stripped-down, speeded-up, Quake-ified Battlefield - it’s accessible, plenty fun and at least for the moment it’s easy to find a crowded server with a decent ping. 

My copy of BF:2142 has sat sadly unregarded on my shelf for a long time, so whether or not I’ll actually buy QW: ET is a matter of debate.  For now though, you can find me flying about on a wee Strogg jetpack, toting a railgun, looking to shoot you through the face.  Woo!

It might just be subconscious masochism, but I have always looked forward to videogame -> movie adaptations, albeit with trepidation.  After all, for every barely watchable Resident Evil there’s a not-even-shit Alone in the Dark, or, God help us, Streetfighter: The Movie.

Unquestionably the best adaptation done to date though, has to be the ominous and oppressively claustrophobic Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans and penned by one Mr Roger Avary.  Capturing the aesthetic of the videogame, namechecking the iconic Big Bads of the series (Fuck! Pyramid Head!  RUUUUUUN!) and even including a couple of sequences effectively lifted in toto from the game - it’s scary even if you’re not a fan, and downright terrifying if you are.

So, when I hear that the selfsame Mr Avary is not only writing, but directing a movie based on Wolfenstein 3D, grandaddy of all FPS, laden with mad Nazi occult shit and featuring Hitler dual-wielding chainguns… Well!  I gets proper excited.

Interview courtesy of Ain’t It Cool news over here, until nearer the 2010 release date I guess we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for something a little more Killing Zoe than The Rules of Attraction.

So I’ve been playing the Global Conflicts: Palestine demo, by Serious Games. In case you read the start of this post and think “He hates it, oh well, I will bow to Bob’s wisdom and not bother with this piece of shit! Back to Bioshock!” consider this: my impressions are based on the demo. I’ve replayed the demo about five times. I like it, and I’m about to spend twenty euros buying the full game.

That said:

As a game GC:P is.. decidedly on the thin side. There’s pretty much no gameplay in there whatsoever, other than jogging back and forth between contacts in order to run errands, and working your way through dialogue trees in order to assemble quotes good enough to stick together into front-page story material. Both of these core game elements are more complicated and frustrating than they need to be.

Example the First: neither the static map, nor the ingame HUD feature a compass - finding your way around can be a pain in the ass.

Example the Second: when assembling quotes, the criteria for constructing a good, headline story are not clearly explained. Admittedly first time out, I opted for probably the most difficult option; choosing to attempt a balanced piece of journalism for a European newspaper. On seeing my scratchings relegated to the nether regions of said paper, I then went ahead and attempted to construct a torrent of pro-Israel invective for an Israeli paper. No joy. Maybe the game is just obtuse. Maybe it’s actually random and cruel. Maybe (dons cynical hat for a moment) the trial-and-error element of this game mechanic is deliberately stuck on there in an attempt to inject some of the ever-elusive “replayability”?

On the subject of replayability, you’ll spend most of your time redoing key dialogues in search of more newsworthy quotes. Problem: your notebook holds five quotes at once. FIVE. This is annoying as hell for a number of reasons, but more than anything because it smacks of crappy game design. Why only five? Why not let you copy down everything you think might be quote-worthy and then sort through them at the end of the level? Gah.

To continue, albeit with increasingly schadenfreude-laden uneasiness: Sloppy production values. Text errors. Total absence of voice acting. Graphics that fell through a timewarp from 1994. While I’m fairly sure the Unity middleware engine used here doesn’t have to look like ass, I’m afraid in this case it pretty much does. The entire gameworld feels like the town in a cheap Western, all fibreboard storefronts, shored up saloons and wobbly balsawood hitching posts.

By now I’m guessing you’re ready to write Global Conflict: Palestine off as, at best, another failed experiment. While GC:P certainly has its flaws, this is emphatically not the case. This is indeed a “serious” game. A game that sets out to give the player a view of perhaps the most volatile and tangled political/religious/moral/ethnic ball of string on the planet. A game that attempts to challenge the player’s notion of what a “game” is, does and can do.

The writing is good. The research is thorough. The world is involving, somehow, despite the shoddy graphics, lack of voiceovers and laughable animation.

It has promise, and compared to the exploitative horrors of something like Kumawar, or the shallow and disposable efforts of newsgaming.com, GC:P has both depth and noble purpose, worthy of salute. For once I’m going to play a game with the sincere objective of learning something new.

If it’s not actually fun though, I’m going back to Bioshock like everyone else…