Overtly, for me anyway, 2011 is the year of the Fighting Game. With Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, it's definitely the best year for the genre in a long time. But if you sift through the fisticuffs, there's also an abundance of a genre fast becoming one of my favourites: The Western RPG. Coming to a crescendo with the mighty (we all know it's going to be amazing, why even speculate?) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim later in the year, we've got lesser beasts such as Two Worlds II, Arcania: Gothic IV and Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga to tide us over. But, while they might be met by the eyes of the masses as mediocre shadows of the upcoming social-life-destroyer, one game still stands strong.
That game, for those still paying attention, is the sequel to Bioware's epic, official 24HG Game of the Year 2009, Dragon Age: Origins; Dragon Age... er... II.
Set almost immediately after the first game, DAII sees you in the shoes of a Blight refugee known as Hawke (who can be male or female and have any first name you choose, but must be human. The Dragon Age Commander Shepard if you will), trying to rebuild his/her life in a foreign city after his/her former home was destroyed by the pesky Darkspawn, bumping into lusty Pirates, surly warrior-giants and the most pleasant blood-mage (an art in the DA canon where a mage bonds with a demon to boost their own powers, basically the classic view of satanism) you'll ever meet along the way.
But the thing is, that's it. The story never really goes anywhere, you just waltz into a city, pick up the compulsory rag-tag band of misfits and generally doss around doing stuff for people, and then shit suddenly hits the fan and it's over. And while we're focusing on the negative points, DAII is one of the laziest games I've played in a while. There's only one (admittedly expansive) city and a small handful of wilderness areas, as opposed to the wide variety of settings in the original. The city is littered with warehouses to explore, and each is identical to the last, the same goes for the wilderness and caves, and it makes for some incredibly repetitive gameplay. They've also not bothered with the finishing moves in combat this time, just opting to have your enemies fall apart when you kill them, and while this looked alright in Fallout 3 where the limbs would sever in the middle of a thigh or below the shoulder, leaving a jagged rip in the flesh, DAII's enemies fall into smooth segments, like when you shoot somebody with the grenade launcher in Tomb Raider II. And that looked shit 14 years ago.
But aside from that, the game really excels. The visuals have improved no end over the washed out, low res textures of Origins, to the point that they could even be considered impressive. The combat system has been refined, sped up and simplified in the right areas, and crucially been made real-time in the console releases, and your party members, much like in Mass Effect 2, have been given much more individuality in their appearance (be it Pirate lady of ill repute Isabella's swashbuckling gear or emo elf Fenris' lyrium tattoos). They also have a lot more unique abilities, in Origins your two mages, Wynn and Morrigan, could end up playing exactly the same, or even have their roles reversed should you choose to do so. In DAII, Anders is a designated healer, Merril is a damage dealer and Bethany is an all-rounder.
Mentioning Anders and Merril brings me to my next point, there's a lot here for the nostalgic. Anders himself is now possessed by the spirit Justice, both of which were party members in Dragon Age: Awakening (they were actually my two favourite characters in the game, but now they are one person they, or rather he, seems to have become a self righteous prick), and Merril was a temporary party member in Origins if the player followed the Dalish Elf storyline. Anyone who played the demo will have come face to face with the Dragon-morphing witch of the wilds Flemeth too, sporting a sassy new look, and a bunch of other familiar faces also show up, but I won't ruin things for you there.
I don't like ending things on a low point (once again, as with last week's Dead Space 2 review, I seem to have unwillingly slated the game), DAII does have the 'can't put down' factor and is the closest thing to a Game of the Year for me so far in 2011, but it throws a big middle finger skywards when it comes to consistency in it's continuity. A lot of the races have altered, take the elves for example. In the last game they were just people with pointy ears, and spoke unanimously with an American accent. They are now much smaller and are painfully thin, and their facial structures have changed to resemble the blue guys from Avatar, and while the city elves still retain the Yankee lilt, the wild dalish elves have adopted an Irish tongue (apart from Merril, who is voiced by the unquestionably Welsh Eve Myles, star of BBC's Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood). The Qunari have also metamorphosed beyond recognition, from basically being black guys with white hair in Origins to their new look, resembling Kain from Soul Reaver. It's natural progression as a higher budget is available, I fully understand that (look at the Klingon in Star Trek after all), but for someone like me with borderline OCD over details like this, it kinda twists my melon.
Overall though, it's a great game, more suited to a console gamer than it's elder. But, under the mocking eye of the behemoth that is the upcoming Skyrim, Bioware really shouldn't have cut quite so many corners.
Showing posts with label Mass Effect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mass Effect. Show all posts
Monday, 11 April 2011
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Nobody touches Oghren's junk and lives!
Apologies for the quiet spell, my Laptop's gone the way of Old Yeller, and while I'm waiting for the good people of Curry's to repair it for me under warranty (postponed by a week thanks to the efforts of the workshy courier who was supposed to pick it up last week and claims I wasn't home and that he left a card, despite not seeming to have noticed that I live in a flat and not a house), I'm left without the benefit of the Internet. So I'm just checking in using the missuss' Vaio again, mainly to explain why I've already broken my weekly post promise, but also so I haven't got too much to write about when I do get my machine back in a couple of weeks.
Firstly, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening. Thanks to the lack of the Internet's temptations to while away hours staring at Memebase or YouTube, I was able to polish this off in under two days. It's a hell of a lot more fast-paced and a damn-sight easier than the base game, and if anything the story is a lot more gripping, and the characters (of which only the Dwarf Oghren returns) are definitely more interesting and charismatic, from the dry wit of an apostate Mage on the run from Templar oppressors to a benevolent spirit trapped in the body of a fallen Grey Warden (for those out of the loop, the Grey Wardens are an elite band of warriors, like Spectres are to Mass Effect, or the Blades to Oblivion). Every party member you recruit becomes a Grey Warden this time around, but that only makes me ask myself why nobody took the oath in the base game, when Wardens were at their most needed and in very short supply?
My main problem with it is that the story is a little too similar to the Legion/Geth side-story in Mass Effect 2, just as the Origins story is very reminiscent of the main story in the first Mass Effect. I hope Dragon Age 2 shows a bit more originality and individuality. Speaking of which, I've played the demo on the PS3, and am glad to report that the combat system, as well as being a lot more fast-paced, is completely real-time in the console versions, which is excellent. The graphics have also seen a major improvement, so that's both of my least-favourite aspects of the original addressed. By the time I next post, I'll have had some time with the full game, so I'll hold my tongue until then.
Split/Second has reached the inevitable point in all racing games (apart from R4, which I was genuinely good at) where it becomes too difficult for me (other racers were using Burnout tactics and ramming me off the road, as well as blowing me up at every opportunity), so I returned to Divinity II, and came to the conclusion that the game is complete, undiluted shite. The gameplay, graphics, voice-acting and everything, top notch. But about 8 hours in, three quarters of the map become covered in toxic gas, rendering them off-limits for the duration of the rest of the game, which in an open-world RPG is absolute bollocks. Not even Two Worlds pulled that one on me, so I'm back onto trying to 1000gp Bully: Scholarship Edition on the 360.
Finally, this setback has kinda dashed my chances of doing a video review for MVC3, so I'll give a very brief account of how I feel about it. Well, it's a Capcom fighter, so it's obviously technically sound, it is what Capcom does best after all. But the simplified controls, the poor character roster and the ruinous cell-shaded graphics (of which I have never been a fan, they can be used to good effect, like in The Wind Waker, but a lot of the time, as seen here in No More Heroes, they only serve to dilute genuinely great visuals) just push it down in my esteem, and as a result I still see Super Street Fighter IV as it's superior in virtually every way. I also got a feeling that the controls were quite unresponsive, I was failing to pull off moves that I could perform every time in SSFIV or Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, but I don't know if anyone else has noticed this. I do like how some characters interact with each other though, such as Chris Redfield and Wesker, or Magneto and Wolverine.
And to sign off, I've been very quiet about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim so far. I think this video sums up my feelings on the matter. See you in a couple of weeks.
Firstly, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening. Thanks to the lack of the Internet's temptations to while away hours staring at Memebase or YouTube, I was able to polish this off in under two days. It's a hell of a lot more fast-paced and a damn-sight easier than the base game, and if anything the story is a lot more gripping, and the characters (of which only the Dwarf Oghren returns) are definitely more interesting and charismatic, from the dry wit of an apostate Mage on the run from Templar oppressors to a benevolent spirit trapped in the body of a fallen Grey Warden (for those out of the loop, the Grey Wardens are an elite band of warriors, like Spectres are to Mass Effect, or the Blades to Oblivion). Every party member you recruit becomes a Grey Warden this time around, but that only makes me ask myself why nobody took the oath in the base game, when Wardens were at their most needed and in very short supply?
My main problem with it is that the story is a little too similar to the Legion/Geth side-story in Mass Effect 2, just as the Origins story is very reminiscent of the main story in the first Mass Effect. I hope Dragon Age 2 shows a bit more originality and individuality. Speaking of which, I've played the demo on the PS3, and am glad to report that the combat system, as well as being a lot more fast-paced, is completely real-time in the console versions, which is excellent. The graphics have also seen a major improvement, so that's both of my least-favourite aspects of the original addressed. By the time I next post, I'll have had some time with the full game, so I'll hold my tongue until then.
Split/Second has reached the inevitable point in all racing games (apart from R4, which I was genuinely good at) where it becomes too difficult for me (other racers were using Burnout tactics and ramming me off the road, as well as blowing me up at every opportunity), so I returned to Divinity II, and came to the conclusion that the game is complete, undiluted shite. The gameplay, graphics, voice-acting and everything, top notch. But about 8 hours in, three quarters of the map become covered in toxic gas, rendering them off-limits for the duration of the rest of the game, which in an open-world RPG is absolute bollocks. Not even Two Worlds pulled that one on me, so I'm back onto trying to 1000gp Bully: Scholarship Edition on the 360.
Finally, this setback has kinda dashed my chances of doing a video review for MVC3, so I'll give a very brief account of how I feel about it. Well, it's a Capcom fighter, so it's obviously technically sound, it is what Capcom does best after all. But the simplified controls, the poor character roster and the ruinous cell-shaded graphics (of which I have never been a fan, they can be used to good effect, like in The Wind Waker, but a lot of the time, as seen here in No More Heroes, they only serve to dilute genuinely great visuals) just push it down in my esteem, and as a result I still see Super Street Fighter IV as it's superior in virtually every way. I also got a feeling that the controls were quite unresponsive, I was failing to pull off moves that I could perform every time in SSFIV or Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, but I don't know if anyone else has noticed this. I do like how some characters interact with each other though, such as Chris Redfield and Wesker, or Magneto and Wolverine.
And to sign off, I've been very quiet about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim so far. I think this video sums up my feelings on the matter. See you in a couple of weeks.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Demo-lition - Plowing through the Dragon Age 2 demo!
Downloaded the Dragon Age 2 demo last night on PC and what can I say, it's Dragon Age but shiny and new!
Started off as a Mage, and this game is A LOT faster let me tell you, within the first 5 minutes I had notched up around 30 Darkspawn kills at least! You can still pause the battle though, so you don't really get overwhelmed, I found it more manageable than DA:O, it just felt smoother giving commands to your party members saying that I didn't have a look at the tactics interface so maybe there will be no need to micromanage your team what so ever if that has been updated too.
Graphics are (Like I said at the start) shiny and new! Effects are more spectacular now, and characters now seem to have emotion on their faces too, plus the main character has............found a voice! I find you get more connected to a main character if they are more animated and involving, instead of just silence when you pick options from a list, in fact you can look at it more like Mass Effect now conversation wise, things aren't so grey anymore as in the first game, you can choose Nice - Funny/Sarcastic - Evil/Aggressive and investigate through conversation trees.........JUST LIKE MASS EFFECT. So you have a main character who has personality, and a beard.
So to sum up, I played the PC version, loved it, no slowdown or glitches that I found, played as a mage and it was very enjoyable. The ONLY problem I had is that everything I killed with my magic just exploded, which is great at first, but when EVERYTHING is exploding, you lose the novelty. Saying that it was the first 5 minutes of the game, and if you play the demo you will understand too that it won't be like that for the whole game.
I have recorded some footage from the demo for your viewing pleasure below, I was going to make it into a video commentary (I am thinking of creating a feature called DEMO-LITION where it is a commentary through a demo, just have to see how it would work) but alas my computer crashed when writing a summary of the review on notepad last night, then this morning when I actually recorded some audio the best describing words I used were "Good" and "Better than the first one" so I scrapped it, I was mucho tired!
Started off as a Mage, and this game is A LOT faster let me tell you, within the first 5 minutes I had notched up around 30 Darkspawn kills at least! You can still pause the battle though, so you don't really get overwhelmed, I found it more manageable than DA:O, it just felt smoother giving commands to your party members saying that I didn't have a look at the tactics interface so maybe there will be no need to micromanage your team what so ever if that has been updated too.
Graphics are (Like I said at the start) shiny and new! Effects are more spectacular now, and characters now seem to have emotion on their faces too, plus the main character has............found a voice! I find you get more connected to a main character if they are more animated and involving, instead of just silence when you pick options from a list, in fact you can look at it more like Mass Effect now conversation wise, things aren't so grey anymore as in the first game, you can choose Nice - Funny/Sarcastic - Evil/Aggressive and investigate through conversation trees.........JUST LIKE MASS EFFECT. So you have a main character who has personality, and a beard.
So to sum up, I played the PC version, loved it, no slowdown or glitches that I found, played as a mage and it was very enjoyable. The ONLY problem I had is that everything I killed with my magic just exploded, which is great at first, but when EVERYTHING is exploding, you lose the novelty. Saying that it was the first 5 minutes of the game, and if you play the demo you will understand too that it won't be like that for the whole game.
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
No trust, all I got is lies, boring, alright...
Once more, such is the peril of playing RPGs, I haven't had time to play anything new and interesting. In fact, I only finished Fable last night, and I'm still knee-deep in Dragon Age, my newly acquired Angry Birds addiction has further hampered my productivity.
To avoid abandoning my weekly schedule and slipping again, like I did last year, I began planning this week's post almost immediately after uploading the last one. I had thought of possibly doing a 'what if?' post, detailing games I would like to see, however unlikely (my favourite of which being Batman: Shattered Dimensions), But scrapped that as the list became dominated with crossover fighting games. Then I had the idea of a look into the upcoming games that excite me, which initially seemed like a great choice, until I realised that between Mortal Kombat, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim, I could write and speculate for about a week without even considering the other impending releases.
I've been thinking about what I would consider Game of the Year for the years before I started this blog, so I decided to try my hand at Game of the Decade, taking the single best games from each year and ranking them against each other, only to abandon the idea when some of the games I wanted to include were far outshone by better but more obvious and boring games released in the same year, case in point: Animal Crossing and The Sims 2 were both released in 2004, unfortunately the same year as GTA: San Andreas. Piss. It was going to go to Oblivion anyway.
All is not lost though, I finally got around to downloading the Kane and Lynch and Legacy of Kain character packs for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which were simultaneously better and worse than I thought they'd be, if such a thing is possible.
They failed to live up to my expectations in regards to how they operate. You can't just use the character to your content, pairing up Lara with Raziel, or, amusingly, Kain and Lynch. Kain and Raziel have to be together, Kane and Lynch have to be together, Lara and Totec have to be together. I was also hoping the characters might play differently, like the Vampires having their respective Reaver swords and being able to use Telekinesis, but to be honest I expected reskins of Lara and Totec and wasn't too underwhelmed when that's all I got.
But the great thing about the character packs is that they aren't just reskins. They have their own stories, which is why they can't be paired off with other characters. Starting a new game plays the ending from the main campaign, cleverly spoiler-free, as Lara bids farewell to Totec after a job well done and comments that the ruins she's leaving behind will likely never be found again. Famous last words, as the fantasy realm of Nosgoth shares an identical temple, and a meddling duo of Vampires once again releases the villainous Xolotl, who drags them to Earth with him, meaning that they must work together to return to their homeland. Or, if you like, Death Row's favourite miscreants Kane and Lynch will stumble on the temple a meager two days after Lara's departure, once again unleashing the demon unto the world, and adopting the heroic role to save the day.
The characters are fully voiced, bringing back the iconic double-act of Simon Templeman and Micheal Bell as Kain and Raziel, and Brian Bloom and Jarion Monroe are back as Kane and Lynch. There's also an air of humour to the game too, as every sentence that spews from the mouth of Kane or Lynch is littered with bleeped-out expletives for comedy effect, and Kain and Raziel's introduction is instigated with the Star Wars style line: 'Meanwhile, in another world... And kind of in the past...'. Made me chuckle anyway.
I personally can't wait to play through the LoK story, it's the closest I'm going to get to a new Legacy of Kain game for a while anyway. I'm a bit disappointed that they just re-used the character models from Legacy of Kain: Defiance, I was hoping to see how a proper, current generation Kain might look. Oh well, when it comes to being a Legacy of Kain fanboy, you get what you're given.
Last off, a glance to the right will show you our new Facebook page. Be sure to 'like' us on there. See you guys soon.
To avoid abandoning my weekly schedule and slipping again, like I did last year, I began planning this week's post almost immediately after uploading the last one. I had thought of possibly doing a 'what if?' post, detailing games I would like to see, however unlikely (my favourite of which being Batman: Shattered Dimensions), But scrapped that as the list became dominated with crossover fighting games. Then I had the idea of a look into the upcoming games that excite me, which initially seemed like a great choice, until I realised that between Mortal Kombat, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim, I could write and speculate for about a week without even considering the other impending releases.
I've been thinking about what I would consider Game of the Year for the years before I started this blog, so I decided to try my hand at Game of the Decade, taking the single best games from each year and ranking them against each other, only to abandon the idea when some of the games I wanted to include were far outshone by better but more obvious and boring games released in the same year, case in point: Animal Crossing and The Sims 2 were both released in 2004, unfortunately the same year as GTA: San Andreas. Piss. It was going to go to Oblivion anyway.
All is not lost though, I finally got around to downloading the Kane and Lynch and Legacy of Kain character packs for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which were simultaneously better and worse than I thought they'd be, if such a thing is possible.
They failed to live up to my expectations in regards to how they operate. You can't just use the character to your content, pairing up Lara with Raziel, or, amusingly, Kain and Lynch. Kain and Raziel have to be together, Kane and Lynch have to be together, Lara and Totec have to be together. I was also hoping the characters might play differently, like the Vampires having their respective Reaver swords and being able to use Telekinesis, but to be honest I expected reskins of Lara and Totec and wasn't too underwhelmed when that's all I got.
But the great thing about the character packs is that they aren't just reskins. They have their own stories, which is why they can't be paired off with other characters. Starting a new game plays the ending from the main campaign, cleverly spoiler-free, as Lara bids farewell to Totec after a job well done and comments that the ruins she's leaving behind will likely never be found again. Famous last words, as the fantasy realm of Nosgoth shares an identical temple, and a meddling duo of Vampires once again releases the villainous Xolotl, who drags them to Earth with him, meaning that they must work together to return to their homeland. Or, if you like, Death Row's favourite miscreants Kane and Lynch will stumble on the temple a meager two days after Lara's departure, once again unleashing the demon unto the world, and adopting the heroic role to save the day.
The characters are fully voiced, bringing back the iconic double-act of Simon Templeman and Micheal Bell as Kain and Raziel, and Brian Bloom and Jarion Monroe are back as Kane and Lynch. There's also an air of humour to the game too, as every sentence that spews from the mouth of Kane or Lynch is littered with bleeped-out expletives for comedy effect, and Kain and Raziel's introduction is instigated with the Star Wars style line: 'Meanwhile, in another world... And kind of in the past...'. Made me chuckle anyway.
I personally can't wait to play through the LoK story, it's the closest I'm going to get to a new Legacy of Kain game for a while anyway. I'm a bit disappointed that they just re-used the character models from Legacy of Kain: Defiance, I was hoping to see how a proper, current generation Kain might look. Oh well, when it comes to being a Legacy of Kain fanboy, you get what you're given.
Last off, a glance to the right will show you our new Facebook page. Be sure to 'like' us on there. See you guys soon.
Friday, 28 January 2011
See, I knocked up this hot woman friend of ours that I fuck on the side so as to not be all the way gay, but my tubby husband here is 100% queer. He LOVES the cock.
Firstly, sorry about the late post. Truth be told, I've not really had anything to write about, all I've played in the last couple of weeks is Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition on PS3 and Fable: The Lost Chapters on the XBox 360, with the magic of backwards compatibility.
Dragon Age, I've gushed about enough really. My only new discovery this time through was the incredible 'Arcane Warrior' class for Wynne, effectively turning her into a battlemage that can not only heal my companions and myself, but she can also now don armour and a blade instead of firing that piddly little staff from afar, limiting herself to elemental attacks and fearing the inevitable badass enemy harbouring an immunity to the chosen element. If anything it was a relief to get her creaky old bones out of those hideously inappropriate mages' robes that I think were possibly designed for Morrigan. It was like having Kim Cattrall in the party. Uncomfortable.
Speaking of uncomfortable, in my quest for Trophies I decided to explore every romantic option for my male Grey Warden, which inevitably led me to the open tent of the Hispanic bisexual man whore elf, Zevran. Where the heterosexual and indeed the sapphic sex scenes in Dragon Age were very tasteful and gracefully made, well, there's nothing graceful about two male elves licking eachothers' nipples and, erm, 'sneaking in through the fire exit'. My character didn't even look to be particularly enjoying it. And so, for the second time (my first being the achievement for kissing boys in Bully), my reluctant homosexuality is recognised in a videogame.
Enough about that. Fable. Fable still holds up really well, the graphics are still great just as long as you excuse the close ups on the faces and the story and system are still accessible yet fresh enough to not be boring. Also, the magic system is a lot more in-depth than that of it's sequels, although when it comes to games of that nature I'm a sword-and-armour guy through and through. Well, sword, axe, club, warhammer, lump of wood with a nail in it (Final Fantasy VII for those who thought I was exaggerating on the last one). And it's very notable that I'm still finding new things out about the game so long after it's release, last night I became the Mayor of Bowerstone for the first time ever, after finally being bothered to investigate the villainous Lady Grey. Not exactly in the same league as becoming king in Fable III, but I got a nice big house out of it.
In other news, I finally remembered to try out the demo for Divinity II: The Dragon Night Saga, and quite enjoyed it. It merges the visual style of Sacred 2 with the combat of Fable and some of the more forgivable parts of Two Worlds (Speaking of which, I've tentatively put a preorder down on Two Worlds II for release next week, wish me luck), only with far better voice acting than the former and latter. And as a bonus the game comes packaged with it's expansion pack too, so I can probably see myself picking it up in my March/April spree.
I also downloaded the demo for Faery: Legends of Avalon on the PS3, which immediately took me back to my teens, when the demo disks on the Official Playstation Magazines had full games that users had created on the using Net Yaroze, a simplified PS1 developers' kit that was released commercially. One title, Terra Incognita, was a Zelda inspired RPG, and, for it's poor translation and sometimes awkward controls, the charm of this quaint game reeled me in at the time. A few years back, while toying with homebrew on my PSP before Sony cracked down on piracy, I discovered somebody had ported the game across, much to my delight. But I digress.
Faery has that same appeal, scruffy, poorly translated and unpolished but my god is it trying so hard to worm it's way into my affections. The main twist on this RPG is that you are completely airborne, flying around as fairies do with your wings. The conversation is ripped straight from Mass Effect, with dialogue choices on a wheel and even blue and red choices for if you want to please or antagonise people. There's even an option for a romance within the game. It's not all Bioware fanboyism though, the fights are traditional turn-based affairs, like in the Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire games of old. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I want to spend £11.99 on the full game (says a lot about digital downloads really, when I'm willing to pay £35 for Two Worlds II having already been stung by it's prequel). We'll see. Truth be told though, I'm not much of a fan of the fantasy genre, and with this, Divinity II, Two Worlds II, Dragon Age II, Skyrim and possibly Gothic IV: Arcania if it ever comes out, I don't want to overdo it and hamper my enjoyment of any of them.
And finally, Angry Birds. I've seen the game played on both my wife's iPhone and Raz7el's Android powered HTC, but until last night had never had the thing in my clammy paws, so I downloaded the PSP Mini version from the PSN Store. Just thought I'd try it out for a second before transferring it over to my PSP, and was still sat there like an hour later. It's absolute gaming Heroin, impossible to put down. Brings to mind a discussion that Raz7el and I had around the water cooler one day, that the Pigs, Angry Birds' prime antagonists are stealing the Birds' eggs, effectively moving in on their territory and raping them of their resources, and the Birds respond to this by, well, suicide bombing them and flying into their buildings. Hmm... So with that, I'm off. Managed to write a fair bit in the end, despite not having anything to write about...
Dragon Age, I've gushed about enough really. My only new discovery this time through was the incredible 'Arcane Warrior' class for Wynne, effectively turning her into a battlemage that can not only heal my companions and myself, but she can also now don armour and a blade instead of firing that piddly little staff from afar, limiting herself to elemental attacks and fearing the inevitable badass enemy harbouring an immunity to the chosen element. If anything it was a relief to get her creaky old bones out of those hideously inappropriate mages' robes that I think were possibly designed for Morrigan. It was like having Kim Cattrall in the party. Uncomfortable.
Speaking of uncomfortable, in my quest for Trophies I decided to explore every romantic option for my male Grey Warden, which inevitably led me to the open tent of the Hispanic bisexual man whore elf, Zevran. Where the heterosexual and indeed the sapphic sex scenes in Dragon Age were very tasteful and gracefully made, well, there's nothing graceful about two male elves licking eachothers' nipples and, erm, 'sneaking in through the fire exit'. My character didn't even look to be particularly enjoying it. And so, for the second time (my first being the achievement for kissing boys in Bully), my reluctant homosexuality is recognised in a videogame.
Enough about that. Fable. Fable still holds up really well, the graphics are still great just as long as you excuse the close ups on the faces and the story and system are still accessible yet fresh enough to not be boring. Also, the magic system is a lot more in-depth than that of it's sequels, although when it comes to games of that nature I'm a sword-and-armour guy through and through. Well, sword, axe, club, warhammer, lump of wood with a nail in it (Final Fantasy VII for those who thought I was exaggerating on the last one). And it's very notable that I'm still finding new things out about the game so long after it's release, last night I became the Mayor of Bowerstone for the first time ever, after finally being bothered to investigate the villainous Lady Grey. Not exactly in the same league as becoming king in Fable III, but I got a nice big house out of it.
In other news, I finally remembered to try out the demo for Divinity II: The Dragon Night Saga, and quite enjoyed it. It merges the visual style of Sacred 2 with the combat of Fable and some of the more forgivable parts of Two Worlds (Speaking of which, I've tentatively put a preorder down on Two Worlds II for release next week, wish me luck), only with far better voice acting than the former and latter. And as a bonus the game comes packaged with it's expansion pack too, so I can probably see myself picking it up in my March/April spree.
I also downloaded the demo for Faery: Legends of Avalon on the PS3, which immediately took me back to my teens, when the demo disks on the Official Playstation Magazines had full games that users had created on the using Net Yaroze, a simplified PS1 developers' kit that was released commercially. One title, Terra Incognita, was a Zelda inspired RPG, and, for it's poor translation and sometimes awkward controls, the charm of this quaint game reeled me in at the time. A few years back, while toying with homebrew on my PSP before Sony cracked down on piracy, I discovered somebody had ported the game across, much to my delight. But I digress.
Faery has that same appeal, scruffy, poorly translated and unpolished but my god is it trying so hard to worm it's way into my affections. The main twist on this RPG is that you are completely airborne, flying around as fairies do with your wings. The conversation is ripped straight from Mass Effect, with dialogue choices on a wheel and even blue and red choices for if you want to please or antagonise people. There's even an option for a romance within the game. It's not all Bioware fanboyism though, the fights are traditional turn-based affairs, like in the Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire games of old. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I want to spend £11.99 on the full game (says a lot about digital downloads really, when I'm willing to pay £35 for Two Worlds II having already been stung by it's prequel). We'll see. Truth be told though, I'm not much of a fan of the fantasy genre, and with this, Divinity II, Two Worlds II, Dragon Age II, Skyrim and possibly Gothic IV: Arcania if it ever comes out, I don't want to overdo it and hamper my enjoyment of any of them.
And finally, Angry Birds. I've seen the game played on both my wife's iPhone and Raz7el's Android powered HTC, but until last night had never had the thing in my clammy paws, so I downloaded the PSP Mini version from the PSN Store. Just thought I'd try it out for a second before transferring it over to my PSP, and was still sat there like an hour later. It's absolute gaming Heroin, impossible to put down. Brings to mind a discussion that Raz7el and I had around the water cooler one day, that the Pigs, Angry Birds' prime antagonists are stealing the Birds' eggs, effectively moving in on their territory and raping them of their resources, and the Birds respond to this by, well, suicide bombing them and flying into their buildings. Hmm... So with that, I'm off. Managed to write a fair bit in the end, despite not having anything to write about...
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
My top 10 games of 2010!
Foregoing the 2010 roundup (I'm going to stop unveiling my plans in advance, because I never keep them) as I found that writing about 27 different games and keeping the post down to a 'light read' size was proving difficult, I'm moving on to the official 24HG top 10 games of 2010! The only games that I've been halfway bothered about playing that have eluded my grasp last year are BlazBlue and CoD: Black Ops, but I doubt that either would have dented the list in any way (I do love fighting games but have trouble adjusting to new systems, and CoD really isn't my thing).
2010 has been an absolutely amazing year for games. I've revised this list a number of times, because the consistently great videogame experiences throughout the year, coupled with my tendency to back the underdog, have made choosing incredibly difficult. I think I've got it down though. So as with any great ranking list, I'll start from the bottom.
10: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - Climax Studios - Wii (PSP, PS2)
Shattered Memories was a game I played early in the year, close to it's release, and spent the rest of the year clinging on to the hope that there weren't that many games that beat it, because it deserves honouring too much. I know the number 10 spot suggests that I did take pity and slap it in regardless, but the game it beat to get this far was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and it is doubtless a much better game. Forgetting the Resident Evil inspired gameplay of the series so far, and adopting a Heavy Rain-esque approach to the series, this re-imagining of the original white-knuckle terror-fest succeeded in not only being the best Silent Hill games ever, but also one of the greatest Wii games to date. I just hope they can work the magic again with Silent Hill: Downpour this year, Homecoming was a travesty.
9: Darksiders - Vigil Games - PS3 (360, PC)
Darksiders is cruelly lumped in the 'God of War Clone' category too often, when in reality it takes the best bits from so many games and mashes them together into one expansive, original and utterly gorgeous work of art. Taking cues from Zelda, Soul Reaver, Fable, Portal and more, and throwing in a Mark Hamill led voice cast, Darksiders was something of a surprise for me, and had me hooked to the very end, despite the difficulty. An absolute must play, if you haven't already. It can be scooped up for less than a tenner now, you've no excuse.
8: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - MercurySteam/Kojima Productions - PS3 (360)
Before I get into the gameplay, LoS is by far the best looking multi-platform game there is. Reportedly no texture in the game was reused, making each new scene look breathtaking and fresh, also accounting for the game spilling over onto a second DVD on the 360 version. But aside from being a visual masterpiece, the game is also an incredible experience, bolstered by the strong double-act of Patrick Stewart (who's Oblivion references are hilarious) and Robert Carlyle providing the major characters' voices. The only thing holding it back is that the developers don't seem to have mastered the GoW formula in the way that others have, as the story and rebooted mythos have me craving more and the ending was phenomenal in the eyes of a gamer still pining for more Legacy of Kain.
7: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Ninja Theory - PS3 (360)
Bland at first, this Uncharted meets (once again) God of War soon becomes a masterpiece in storytelling and the importance of companionship. A retelling of the classic Chinese fable 'Journey to the West' (or the TV show 'Monkey' if you're a Sun reader), Enslaved puts you into the shoes of a loner known as Monkey as he is forced to escort a young girl named Tripitaka through a post-apocalyptic New York, all the while evading marauding robots and slavers. Led by the fantastic Andy Serkis, it's the unfolding narrative that pushed the game strongly into my affections, and it draws upon the tried and tested (yet surprisingly underused) Boy-meets-girl, blossoming friendship mechanic, as seen in the likes of Ico, Prince of Persia and to a lesser extent Resident Evil 4, which really endears you to the characters.
6: God of War III - Santa Monica Studio - PS3
And so the game that the last three have been leading up to... There's little to say about this game other than it carries on the solid gameplay of the first two games in the series (why fix something that isn't broken), augmenting it with breathtaking visuals and the most epic cutscenes and boss battles ever witnessed. Kratos is at his brutal best (some of the executions are stomach-churning to say the least) and this 'conclusion' to the story never once disappoints. I'm almost willing to put money on him making a comeback soon though, away from prequels and cameos, especially after the ominous ending.
5: Fable III - Lionhead Studios - 360
What came at first a slight disappointment at the changes made from the previous games in the series became a magical adventure that reeled me in like the original did years ago. With a refined combat system and a star-studded British cast with the likes of Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg and Jonathan Ross, the charming world of Albion has finally reached the industrial age, and tyrannical rule from a renegade King necessitates a revolution - and that's where you come in. Plenty of quests (every character in the game has the potential to send you on at least one quest, however simple), with far more variety than the last game, will provide the would-be adventurer with many a sleepless night, and the choices you have to make are far more impacting than any game before it. A 100% improvement over Fable II.
4: Red Dead Redemption - RockStar San Diego/RockStar North - PS3 (360)
I'll admit, the whole 'Cowboys and Indians' thing kind of put me off at first, and on their joint release day I opted to go out and buy Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands instead, but a few weeks later I subsided and my wife, in all her pity, bought me a copy of Red Dead. If I only had to say one thing about this game, it's this: IT'S BETTER THAN GTAIV. More likable characters, a more interesting open world, an even more shocking and emotive ending and more of the familiar RockStar humour and self parody make the game one of the most immersive and expansive titles this year. Couple this with the crazy-enough-to-work Undead Nightmare DLC that came out later in the year and you are on to an absolute winner. GTA needs an Undead Nightmare too though.
3: Mass Effect 2 - BioWare - 360 (PC)
The sequel to one of the best games of this generation came and, while it oversimplified the system and took the story in a direction that I wasn't too comfortable with initially, it still completely blew me and the collective gaming community away. The fact that it was the very first game I bought last year and it still holds such a prestigious place in the list is a testament to it's quality, and the fact that BioWare managed to make every single decision made in the first game impact the events of the second was nothing short of ingenuity. Looking back, the only thing I can think of that hampers the game is that the cast of characters aren't as fresh and emotive as those in the last game, and of the two that do return, why pick Tali? She's boring as hell. Still, incredible game, but with a sequel out later this year, I just hope EA can resist making it a yearly franchise.
2: Heavy Rain - Quantic Dream - PS3
Love it or hate it, you can't ignore the fact that there isn't a game in the world quite like Heavy Rain. Amazing graphics, a thrilling and brutally mature storyline and an outcome that nobody saw coming all make for a completely unmatched gaming experience, as down on his luck dad Ethan Mars struggles to find his abducted son Shaun, with the help of an investigative journalist, an aging private detective and Fox Mulder. The only problem I had with the game was with Mulder's magic future glasses, which dragged the sombre and engrossing story kicking and screaming back out of the realm of realism every time he put them on.
1: Fallout: New Vegas - Obsidian - 360 (PS3, PC)
Yeah, so what? So it isn't as good as Fallout 3, well, neither are Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption or REAL LIFE. Granted, FNV is absolutely infested with bugs, but not a single one made the game unplayable in my experience (well, apart from the one that corrupted all of my saves, but I only lost out on a few hours play), and it isn't a Bethesda RPG if it hasn't got more than it's fare share of glitches. Truth be told, no other game this year has swallowed up quite so many of my gaming hours all year. A lot of people were expecting more from the game, but it delivered exactly what I wanted: more of Fallout 3. The new party system was easy to follow too, and with such great companions (I opted for the robot dog/schizophrenic old lady trapped in the body of a Super Mutant combination) the fun was endless. Sure, getting stuck in the ground every so often is a bit of a ball-ache, but as long as you save often there's no problem. And if I learnt anything from Oblivion and Fallout 3, it's SAVE OFTEN.
So there you have it, I can hear the cries of disgust at my choices already. Ah well, life goes on. Looking to the future I can already predict that next year is going to see Bethesda snaffle the top spot again with the delicious-looking Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the horizon, backed up by future classics such as Uncharted 3, Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 3 and dare I say Mortal Kombat? Who knows? I'm looking forward to finding out, that's for sure...
And for those wondering where their games were, here's the rest of the games I played in 2010, in ranking order:
11. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - Crystal Dynamics - PS3 (360, PC, iOS)
12. The Sims 3 - Visceral Games - PS3 (360)
13. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - Ubisoft - PS3 (360)
14. Bioshock 2 - 2K Marin - 360 (PS3, PC)
15. God of War: Ghost of Sparta - Ready at Dawn Studios - PSP
16. Alpha Protocol - Obsidian - PS3 (360, PC)
17. ModNation Racers - United Front Games - PS3 (PSP)
18. Perfect Dark - RARE - 360
19. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Ubisoft - PS3 (360)
20. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom - Capcom - Wii
21. Limbo - Playdead Studios - 360
22. Alan Wake - Remedy Entertainment - 360
23. Super Street Fighter IV - Capcom - PS3 (360)
24. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - Neversoft - 360 (PS3, Wii)
25. Dante's Inferno - Visceral Games - PS3 (360, PSP)
26. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Ubisoft - Wii
27. Just Cause 2 - Eidos - PS3 (360, PC)
28. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - Beenox - 360 (PS3, Wii, PC)
29. Halo: Reach - Bungee - 360
30. Dead to Rights: Retribution - Volatile Games - PS3 (360)
31. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - LucasArts - 360 (PS3, PC, Wii)
32. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - Kojima Productions - PSP
33. Batman: The Brave and the Bold - Wayforward Technologies - Wii (DS)
34. GoldenEye - Eurocom - Wii
35. Metro 2033 - 4A Games - 360 (PC)
36. Bayonetta - Platinum Games - 360 (PS3)
37. The Whispered World - Daedalic Entertainment - PC
2010 has been an absolutely amazing year for games. I've revised this list a number of times, because the consistently great videogame experiences throughout the year, coupled with my tendency to back the underdog, have made choosing incredibly difficult. I think I've got it down though. So as with any great ranking list, I'll start from the bottom.
10: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - Climax Studios - Wii (PSP, PS2)
Shattered Memories was a game I played early in the year, close to it's release, and spent the rest of the year clinging on to the hope that there weren't that many games that beat it, because it deserves honouring too much. I know the number 10 spot suggests that I did take pity and slap it in regardless, but the game it beat to get this far was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and it is doubtless a much better game. Forgetting the Resident Evil inspired gameplay of the series so far, and adopting a Heavy Rain-esque approach to the series, this re-imagining of the original white-knuckle terror-fest succeeded in not only being the best Silent Hill games ever, but also one of the greatest Wii games to date. I just hope they can work the magic again with Silent Hill: Downpour this year, Homecoming was a travesty.
9: Darksiders - Vigil Games - PS3 (360, PC)
Darksiders is cruelly lumped in the 'God of War Clone' category too often, when in reality it takes the best bits from so many games and mashes them together into one expansive, original and utterly gorgeous work of art. Taking cues from Zelda, Soul Reaver, Fable, Portal and more, and throwing in a Mark Hamill led voice cast, Darksiders was something of a surprise for me, and had me hooked to the very end, despite the difficulty. An absolute must play, if you haven't already. It can be scooped up for less than a tenner now, you've no excuse.
8: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - MercurySteam/Kojima Productions - PS3 (360)
Before I get into the gameplay, LoS is by far the best looking multi-platform game there is. Reportedly no texture in the game was reused, making each new scene look breathtaking and fresh, also accounting for the game spilling over onto a second DVD on the 360 version. But aside from being a visual masterpiece, the game is also an incredible experience, bolstered by the strong double-act of Patrick Stewart (who's Oblivion references are hilarious) and Robert Carlyle providing the major characters' voices. The only thing holding it back is that the developers don't seem to have mastered the GoW formula in the way that others have, as the story and rebooted mythos have me craving more and the ending was phenomenal in the eyes of a gamer still pining for more Legacy of Kain.
7: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Ninja Theory - PS3 (360)
Bland at first, this Uncharted meets (once again) God of War soon becomes a masterpiece in storytelling and the importance of companionship. A retelling of the classic Chinese fable 'Journey to the West' (or the TV show 'Monkey' if you're a Sun reader), Enslaved puts you into the shoes of a loner known as Monkey as he is forced to escort a young girl named Tripitaka through a post-apocalyptic New York, all the while evading marauding robots and slavers. Led by the fantastic Andy Serkis, it's the unfolding narrative that pushed the game strongly into my affections, and it draws upon the tried and tested (yet surprisingly underused) Boy-meets-girl, blossoming friendship mechanic, as seen in the likes of Ico, Prince of Persia and to a lesser extent Resident Evil 4, which really endears you to the characters.
6: God of War III - Santa Monica Studio - PS3
And so the game that the last three have been leading up to... There's little to say about this game other than it carries on the solid gameplay of the first two games in the series (why fix something that isn't broken), augmenting it with breathtaking visuals and the most epic cutscenes and boss battles ever witnessed. Kratos is at his brutal best (some of the executions are stomach-churning to say the least) and this 'conclusion' to the story never once disappoints. I'm almost willing to put money on him making a comeback soon though, away from prequels and cameos, especially after the ominous ending.
5: Fable III - Lionhead Studios - 360
What came at first a slight disappointment at the changes made from the previous games in the series became a magical adventure that reeled me in like the original did years ago. With a refined combat system and a star-studded British cast with the likes of Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg and Jonathan Ross, the charming world of Albion has finally reached the industrial age, and tyrannical rule from a renegade King necessitates a revolution - and that's where you come in. Plenty of quests (every character in the game has the potential to send you on at least one quest, however simple), with far more variety than the last game, will provide the would-be adventurer with many a sleepless night, and the choices you have to make are far more impacting than any game before it. A 100% improvement over Fable II.
4: Red Dead Redemption - RockStar San Diego/RockStar North - PS3 (360)
I'll admit, the whole 'Cowboys and Indians' thing kind of put me off at first, and on their joint release day I opted to go out and buy Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands instead, but a few weeks later I subsided and my wife, in all her pity, bought me a copy of Red Dead. If I only had to say one thing about this game, it's this: IT'S BETTER THAN GTAIV. More likable characters, a more interesting open world, an even more shocking and emotive ending and more of the familiar RockStar humour and self parody make the game one of the most immersive and expansive titles this year. Couple this with the crazy-enough-to-work Undead Nightmare DLC that came out later in the year and you are on to an absolute winner. GTA needs an Undead Nightmare too though.
3: Mass Effect 2 - BioWare - 360 (PC)
The sequel to one of the best games of this generation came and, while it oversimplified the system and took the story in a direction that I wasn't too comfortable with initially, it still completely blew me and the collective gaming community away. The fact that it was the very first game I bought last year and it still holds such a prestigious place in the list is a testament to it's quality, and the fact that BioWare managed to make every single decision made in the first game impact the events of the second was nothing short of ingenuity. Looking back, the only thing I can think of that hampers the game is that the cast of characters aren't as fresh and emotive as those in the last game, and of the two that do return, why pick Tali? She's boring as hell. Still, incredible game, but with a sequel out later this year, I just hope EA can resist making it a yearly franchise.
2: Heavy Rain - Quantic Dream - PS3
Love it or hate it, you can't ignore the fact that there isn't a game in the world quite like Heavy Rain. Amazing graphics, a thrilling and brutally mature storyline and an outcome that nobody saw coming all make for a completely unmatched gaming experience, as down on his luck dad Ethan Mars struggles to find his abducted son Shaun, with the help of an investigative journalist, an aging private detective and Fox Mulder. The only problem I had with the game was with Mulder's magic future glasses, which dragged the sombre and engrossing story kicking and screaming back out of the realm of realism every time he put them on.
1: Fallout: New Vegas - Obsidian - 360 (PS3, PC)
Yeah, so what? So it isn't as good as Fallout 3, well, neither are Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption or REAL LIFE. Granted, FNV is absolutely infested with bugs, but not a single one made the game unplayable in my experience (well, apart from the one that corrupted all of my saves, but I only lost out on a few hours play), and it isn't a Bethesda RPG if it hasn't got more than it's fare share of glitches. Truth be told, no other game this year has swallowed up quite so many of my gaming hours all year. A lot of people were expecting more from the game, but it delivered exactly what I wanted: more of Fallout 3. The new party system was easy to follow too, and with such great companions (I opted for the robot dog/schizophrenic old lady trapped in the body of a Super Mutant combination) the fun was endless. Sure, getting stuck in the ground every so often is a bit of a ball-ache, but as long as you save often there's no problem. And if I learnt anything from Oblivion and Fallout 3, it's SAVE OFTEN.
So there you have it, I can hear the cries of disgust at my choices already. Ah well, life goes on. Looking to the future I can already predict that next year is going to see Bethesda snaffle the top spot again with the delicious-looking Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the horizon, backed up by future classics such as Uncharted 3, Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 3 and dare I say Mortal Kombat? Who knows? I'm looking forward to finding out, that's for sure...
And for those wondering where their games were, here's the rest of the games I played in 2010, in ranking order:
11. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - Crystal Dynamics - PS3 (360, PC, iOS)
12. The Sims 3 - Visceral Games - PS3 (360)
13. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - Ubisoft - PS3 (360)
14. Bioshock 2 - 2K Marin - 360 (PS3, PC)
15. God of War: Ghost of Sparta - Ready at Dawn Studios - PSP
16. Alpha Protocol - Obsidian - PS3 (360, PC)
17. ModNation Racers - United Front Games - PS3 (PSP)
18. Perfect Dark - RARE - 360
19. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Ubisoft - PS3 (360)
20. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom - Capcom - Wii
21. Limbo - Playdead Studios - 360
22. Alan Wake - Remedy Entertainment - 360
23. Super Street Fighter IV - Capcom - PS3 (360)
24. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - Neversoft - 360 (PS3, Wii)
25. Dante's Inferno - Visceral Games - PS3 (360, PSP)
26. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Ubisoft - Wii
27. Just Cause 2 - Eidos - PS3 (360, PC)
28. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - Beenox - 360 (PS3, Wii, PC)
29. Halo: Reach - Bungee - 360
30. Dead to Rights: Retribution - Volatile Games - PS3 (360)
31. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - LucasArts - 360 (PS3, PC, Wii)
32. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - Kojima Productions - PSP
33. Batman: The Brave and the Bold - Wayforward Technologies - Wii (DS)
34. GoldenEye - Eurocom - Wii
35. Metro 2033 - 4A Games - 360 (PC)
36. Bayonetta - Platinum Games - 360 (PS3)
37. The Whispered World - Daedalic Entertainment - PC
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Uhh, so this is your big day, huh? (24 Hour Gamer is 1!)
It's hard to believe, but today marks a whole year since my first post as a fledgling blogger, a three-paragraph effort with very very brief looks at 24: The Game, Assassin's Creed and The Punisher: No Mercy, which, quite understandably, nobody read. With a combination of no paragraph spacing, a lack of the html skills to add pictures (before Blogger improved the user interface) and nothing particularly interesting to say, things didn't exactly look rosey for 24HG, but I didn't mind.
See that right there? That's paragraph spacing. The extent of what I've learned is astonishing. So anyway, with the blog slowly picking up momentum, and readers of course, over the last year, I'm going to go over the good and bad times, some of which will be new to you guys.
Firstly, the most mentioned game over the whole year. I checked a few months ago, and the clear winner was Epic's erm... epic, Gears of War, obviously down to every game that involves a gun chiefly taking place mostly behind a waist high wall. But it has since fallen behind games like The Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, the latter of which I had actually assumed would be the most mentioned, as I've actually played both ME and ME2 twice each over the last year. But the actual most blogged about game, deservedly so, is Uncharted, with the series' second iteration taking the game world by storm just before Christmas. If I'd have known how terrified I would become of Dragon Age back then, U2 would have most definitely been my Game of the Year.
E-mails. I've taken the e-mail button from the site now, since 24HG is no longer a one-man operation, but for a while it was there and I had a few pretty funny messages. Firstly, an offer was extended to me, following my use of lyrics from 'Borderline' in the title to my Borderlands-centric post, to join a Madonna fan club. I quickly declined, as the version of Borderline that I had in my head throughout the whole 35 hours of play that Borderlands offered was in fact a cover by pop-punk stalwarts Showoff. But the offer was nice. I had an overwhelming amount of e-mails (like, three of them!) asking me to review Final Fantasy XIII, and I still haven't. And let's just say my treatment of Modern Warfare 2 didn't go down well. And finally, I had a very politely worded e-mail asking me to give up the name '24 Hour Gamer' and my login details for my Twitter account. Needless to say, I didn't.
Speaking of Twitter, I set up my account (@Pete_24HG, or follow Trev @TjStan if he ever tweets again) alongside the blog to whore my posts out to anyone who'd listen. It's seen me post about everything from Blockbuster pricing the first Fallout 3 Expansion disk at £40 to awesome fictional metal bands in Alan Wake, but perhaps most noteworthy was my 1000th tweet, which read like a Shakespearean sonnet: "@MarkySharky Kiss my ass :p".
So onwards and upwards then. Hopefully, with Trev on board, 24HG should continue to expand over the next year, potentially with Podcasts, video reviews and joint pieces, maybe even a forum or something, who knows? We're open to suggestions too, anything YOU'D like to see, just pop it in the comments box, tweet at us, or e-mail one of us at the24hourgamer@googlemail.com or thetrevstan@googlemail.com and let us know.
Finally, a big thanks to everyone who's helped out: To Trev 24HG for extending his hand in aid, like Elika catching the 2008 Prince of Persia as he plummets into a chasm for the 4000th time (one day I'll compare you to a male character). To Susie, my wife, who not only actively encourages me to game, but also soundly kicked my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade on our actual honeymoon. To MarkySharky and CtrlAltKill of Twitter, for drilling into me the need to space paragraphs and add images respectively. To Paul and Raz7el, for always offering good videogame chat. To 30-Something Gamer for being my first follower and providing a great blog for me to read. Imagine Publishing's Dan Howdle for inadvertently mentioning the site in his Podcast a few times. The guys at the NowGamer forums. Paul_LFC at VideoGame Space. And everyone who's read and/or commented here at 24HG. It's been a good year.
See that right there? That's paragraph spacing. The extent of what I've learned is astonishing. So anyway, with the blog slowly picking up momentum, and readers of course, over the last year, I'm going to go over the good and bad times, some of which will be new to you guys.
Firstly, the most mentioned game over the whole year. I checked a few months ago, and the clear winner was Epic's erm... epic, Gears of War, obviously down to every game that involves a gun chiefly taking place mostly behind a waist high wall. But it has since fallen behind games like The Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, the latter of which I had actually assumed would be the most mentioned, as I've actually played both ME and ME2 twice each over the last year. But the actual most blogged about game, deservedly so, is Uncharted, with the series' second iteration taking the game world by storm just before Christmas. If I'd have known how terrified I would become of Dragon Age back then, U2 would have most definitely been my Game of the Year.
Uncharted: Officially the most popular game on 24HG.
E-mails. I've taken the e-mail button from the site now, since 24HG is no longer a one-man operation, but for a while it was there and I had a few pretty funny messages. Firstly, an offer was extended to me, following my use of lyrics from 'Borderline' in the title to my Borderlands-centric post, to join a Madonna fan club. I quickly declined, as the version of Borderline that I had in my head throughout the whole 35 hours of play that Borderlands offered was in fact a cover by pop-punk stalwarts Showoff. But the offer was nice. I had an overwhelming amount of e-mails (like, three of them!) asking me to review Final Fantasy XIII, and I still haven't. And let's just say my treatment of Modern Warfare 2 didn't go down well. And finally, I had a very politely worded e-mail asking me to give up the name '24 Hour Gamer' and my login details for my Twitter account. Needless to say, I didn't.
I'll review it one day. Probably. Possibly.
Speaking of Twitter, I set up my account (@Pete_24HG, or follow Trev @TjStan if he ever tweets again) alongside the blog to whore my posts out to anyone who'd listen. It's seen me post about everything from Blockbuster pricing the first Fallout 3 Expansion disk at £40 to awesome fictional metal bands in Alan Wake, but perhaps most noteworthy was my 1000th tweet, which read like a Shakespearean sonnet: "@MarkySharky Kiss my ass :p".
So onwards and upwards then. Hopefully, with Trev on board, 24HG should continue to expand over the next year, potentially with Podcasts, video reviews and joint pieces, maybe even a forum or something, who knows? We're open to suggestions too, anything YOU'D like to see, just pop it in the comments box, tweet at us, or e-mail one of us at the24hourgamer@googlemail.com or thetrevstan@googlemail.com and let us know.
Finally, a big thanks to everyone who's helped out: To Trev 24HG for extending his hand in aid, like Elika catching the 2008 Prince of Persia as he plummets into a chasm for the 4000th time (one day I'll compare you to a male character). To Susie, my wife, who not only actively encourages me to game, but also soundly kicked my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade on our actual honeymoon. To MarkySharky and CtrlAltKill of Twitter, for drilling into me the need to space paragraphs and add images respectively. To Paul and Raz7el, for always offering good videogame chat. To 30-Something Gamer for being my first follower and providing a great blog for me to read. Imagine Publishing's Dan Howdle for inadvertently mentioning the site in his Podcast a few times. The guys at the NowGamer forums. Paul_LFC at VideoGame Space. And everyone who's read and/or commented here at 24HG. It's been a good year.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Buster bowl me over with your bogus dance, shuffle me off my feet, even though I'll keep on runnin', I'll never get to Orange Street...
Thought I'd have a bit of a catch-up on what I've been playing recently, as with all of the changes and what have you I've barely had time to post about the awesome, average and absolutely arse games I've been playing. So, for old time's sake, here goes.
Firstly, for the sole benefit of Paul, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. A sequel to last year's Umbrella Chronicles, TDC is an on-rails shooter that follows the events of Resident Evil 2, Code: Veronica, and the mission that was alluded to in RE4, the first meeting between Leon and Krauser. Firstly, it seems that Leon has a very selective memory, as the story is told through Leon's flashbacks, and everything seems to revolve around him. Even the bits of RE2 where he wasn't even canonically there, are retold with him as some sort of action hero. And he does it all in his husky Batman voice, not the pre-pubescent whinge that he actually had back then. And while I'm on it, he had nothing to do with Code: Veronica at all, yet still recalls it.
Okay then, good news first. The game is a far, far better play than it's predecessor. It's a lot more intense, and the fact that you can actually see your allies around you makes it feel far more cinematic. As a nostalgia trip it's unequaled. The graphics are absolutely astounding for a Wii game, and the Havok engine powering the physics makes the environment come alive in a way that the console isn't used to. But the visuals do have their faults: Both Leon and C:V sidekick Steve Burnside look identical (a lot like the tranny from Hollyoaks now you come to mention it), and probably shouldn't have been in the same game. But I suppose that's more down to poor character design than anything else.
But every silver-lined cloud is pissing on somebody somewhere, and none more than I. While the graphics are great, they push the Wii a bit too far, and as a result the shadows look awful. The dialogue is terrible, with characters repeatedly stating the obvious, spouting lines like 'I hate this' (no shit) and 'They won't let us through!'. They're Zombies, Leon, not fucking bouncers. The 'shakey cam' makes aiming a nightmare at times too, and the awful treatment of Robert Kendo, one of my series favourites, sent me into a rage. Lastly, for an on-rails shooter, the game is too long, a far cry from the throwaway 10-minute fun fests like House of the Dead and Ghost Squad.
Errrrrr... ModNation Racers! The PS3's premier kart racer is average at it's core, but saved thanks to it's user-friendly creation tools and fantastically creative and talented fanbase. I find myself spending more time downloading characters and karts than actually playing it, exactly how I was with M.U.G.E.N. on the PC. The create mode is easy and accessible too, which is great, because I never got to grips with LittleBigPlanet's tools at all. MNR had me creating like a pro within minutes.
So the game tries to be a perfect marriage of LittleBigPlanet and Mario Kart, yet fails to encompass the charm of either. It's relentless attempts at being 'street' alienate those who don't buy into that crap, and Mario's game engine is far simpler and accessible to a younger audience, with MNR confusing matters with drifting, stacking powerups and an accumulative boost meter. So for these reasons it stalls at the finishing line. Good, but not great.
Alpha Protocol then. Basically a merging of two of my favourite things, the gameplay of Mass Effect and the theme of 24, it stands apart from other games of the RPG genre by being set in a contemporary real-world setting, packed with espionage and action. Strapping on the shoes of Mike Thorton, you are the newest recruit of the titular government agency thrust into a world of combat and subterfuge when you are forced to go rogue.
Below average graphics and stereotypical characters and dialogue are the only tarnishes on an otherwise brilliant western RPG, with a twisting plot that genuinely does revolve around your every action. The developer, Obsidian, has constantly bragged about the game's ability to channel the 'Three JBs'; James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, but truth be told, mine was more like a very Torchwood-esque John Barrowman: morally ambiguous and shagging anything he can get his hands on.
I'll not go much further with this one, because my colleague Trev and I are planning a joint review, but I'll just say, I was greatly saddened when I read that Sega have ruled out a sequel thanks to poor sales. The Man wins again. Sigh.
Finally, I've been hopping, skipping and wall-running through the Wii version of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Far from a port, the Wii version is a completely different animal to it's HD cousins, with a whole new, unrelated storyline and different powers and a more strategic combat system more akin to that in The Sands of Time. And while it takes cues from the main TFS release and TSOT, it also has a few throwbacks to the 2008 PoP too, with the power plates helping you to traverse the environment, and a 'never die' mechanic replacing the time powers once more (although you can only be rescued a few times before being sent back to a checkpoint). It's great for fans of the genre like yours truly, but a lack of classic controller support harms it in a big way once your arm starts to ache.
And while I'm on the subject, I saw the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time movie to last week. It's enjoyable, but not particularly close to the source material in any way, save for three scenes which are nearly identical to key moments in the game. Jake Gyllenhaal is truly awful, with his sad puppy looks and dialect-hopping English accent, but fantastic turns from Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley and a surprise appearance from Richard Coyle (voice of Keats, the protagonist from PS3 RPG Folklore, and the infamous Jeff Murdoc in BBC sitcom Coupling) who absolutely steals the show, all is forgiven. And if it does anything right, it's the boy/girl chemistry thing that I loved about the TSOT game and the 2008 PoP. Good, disposable fun.
Right, back to my cave then. This Saturday 24HG hits it's first anniversary, so I'll see you then. Ta!
Firstly, for the sole benefit of Paul, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. A sequel to last year's Umbrella Chronicles, TDC is an on-rails shooter that follows the events of Resident Evil 2, Code: Veronica, and the mission that was alluded to in RE4, the first meeting between Leon and Krauser. Firstly, it seems that Leon has a very selective memory, as the story is told through Leon's flashbacks, and everything seems to revolve around him. Even the bits of RE2 where he wasn't even canonically there, are retold with him as some sort of action hero. And he does it all in his husky Batman voice, not the pre-pubescent whinge that he actually had back then. And while I'm on it, he had nothing to do with Code: Veronica at all, yet still recalls it.
Surely there are better ways to pierce your naval, Claire.
Okay then, good news first. The game is a far, far better play than it's predecessor. It's a lot more intense, and the fact that you can actually see your allies around you makes it feel far more cinematic. As a nostalgia trip it's unequaled. The graphics are absolutely astounding for a Wii game, and the Havok engine powering the physics makes the environment come alive in a way that the console isn't used to. But the visuals do have their faults: Both Leon and C:V sidekick Steve Burnside look identical (a lot like the tranny from Hollyoaks now you come to mention it), and probably shouldn't have been in the same game. But I suppose that's more down to poor character design than anything else.
But every silver-lined cloud is pissing on somebody somewhere, and none more than I. While the graphics are great, they push the Wii a bit too far, and as a result the shadows look awful. The dialogue is terrible, with characters repeatedly stating the obvious, spouting lines like 'I hate this' (no shit) and 'They won't let us through!'. They're Zombies, Leon, not fucking bouncers. The 'shakey cam' makes aiming a nightmare at times too, and the awful treatment of Robert Kendo, one of my series favourites, sent me into a rage. Lastly, for an on-rails shooter, the game is too long, a far cry from the throwaway 10-minute fun fests like House of the Dead and Ghost Squad.
Errrrrr... ModNation Racers! The PS3's premier kart racer is average at it's core, but saved thanks to it's user-friendly creation tools and fantastically creative and talented fanbase. I find myself spending more time downloading characters and karts than actually playing it, exactly how I was with M.U.G.E.N. on the PC. The create mode is easy and accessible too, which is great, because I never got to grips with LittleBigPlanet's tools at all. MNR had me creating like a pro within minutes.
That's right, creator, you stick it to the man!
So the game tries to be a perfect marriage of LittleBigPlanet and Mario Kart, yet fails to encompass the charm of either. It's relentless attempts at being 'street' alienate those who don't buy into that crap, and Mario's game engine is far simpler and accessible to a younger audience, with MNR confusing matters with drifting, stacking powerups and an accumulative boost meter. So for these reasons it stalls at the finishing line. Good, but not great.
Alpha Protocol then. Basically a merging of two of my favourite things, the gameplay of Mass Effect and the theme of 24, it stands apart from other games of the RPG genre by being set in a contemporary real-world setting, packed with espionage and action. Strapping on the shoes of Mike Thorton, you are the newest recruit of the titular government agency thrust into a world of combat and subterfuge when you are forced to go rogue.
Keep your gun on him, he's definitely a terrorist!
Below average graphics and stereotypical characters and dialogue are the only tarnishes on an otherwise brilliant western RPG, with a twisting plot that genuinely does revolve around your every action. The developer, Obsidian, has constantly bragged about the game's ability to channel the 'Three JBs'; James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, but truth be told, mine was more like a very Torchwood-esque John Barrowman: morally ambiguous and shagging anything he can get his hands on.
I'll not go much further with this one, because my colleague Trev and I are planning a joint review, but I'll just say, I was greatly saddened when I read that Sega have ruled out a sequel thanks to poor sales. The Man wins again. Sigh.
Finally, I've been hopping, skipping and wall-running through the Wii version of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Far from a port, the Wii version is a completely different animal to it's HD cousins, with a whole new, unrelated storyline and different powers and a more strategic combat system more akin to that in The Sands of Time. And while it takes cues from the main TFS release and TSOT, it also has a few throwbacks to the 2008 PoP too, with the power plates helping you to traverse the environment, and a 'never die' mechanic replacing the time powers once more (although you can only be rescued a few times before being sent back to a checkpoint). It's great for fans of the genre like yours truly, but a lack of classic controller support harms it in a big way once your arm starts to ache.
And while I'm on the subject, I saw the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time movie to last week. It's enjoyable, but not particularly close to the source material in any way, save for three scenes which are nearly identical to key moments in the game. Jake Gyllenhaal is truly awful, with his sad puppy looks and dialect-hopping English accent, but fantastic turns from Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley and a surprise appearance from Richard Coyle (voice of Keats, the protagonist from PS3 RPG Folklore, and the infamous Jeff Murdoc in BBC sitcom Coupling) who absolutely steals the show, all is forgiven. And if it does anything right, it's the boy/girl chemistry thing that I loved about the TSOT game and the 2008 PoP. Good, disposable fun.
He may look like a dejected Labrador, but he's still more attractive than Maggie.
Right, back to my cave then. This Saturday 24HG hits it's first anniversary, so I'll see you then. Ta!
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Yeah, that's right baby! Ergonomic management keyboard... (or Why PCs Suck for Gaming)
Recently, while surfing the net on my laptop, one of the hinges holding the screen on just dropped off. Sensing this was an indication of said laptop's imminent mortality, I dusted off the old credit card and fired up the Curry's website. A couple of days later I was the proud owner of a refurbished Packard Bell EasyNote TJ71, with a 500gb HDD, 4gb of memory and some kind of AMD gubbins or whatever. I was reliably informed by Trev that it was a good machine, especially for the price, a cool breeze under £400.
So, after a couple of days of getting used to it, I signed up to Steam. Eager to see what the machine could potentially do, I quickly downloaded the Mass Effect 2 demo, and fired it up. To my joy, and honest surprise, it played the game, out of the box so-to-speak, perfectly at it's default settings. Which is, to say, as good as the 360 version.
So yesterday I had a look on Steam again, and they were offering Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at 75% off, a meager £2.49, so I got my wallet. Now, the game ran perfectly, it has to be said. With the detail set to 'Very High', there wasn't a stutter. The problems came when I decided to try out my 360 joypad with it. The right analogue stick wasn't detected, the triggers didn't work, and the game couldn't differentiate between the left analogue stick and the D-pad. Tried out a PS2 controller through a USB adapter, the game didn't even acknowledge it.
A quick search on the Internet told me that GTA:SA was riddled with such controller issues, and downloading a program called SAAC would remedy it. So I did, but lo and behold, SAAC wouldn't work. Apparently it was made using Visual Basic 6, and when Microsoft brought out Windows 7, they decided that nobody in the whole universe would ever need to use that again, and thus got rid of it.
So I turned to a program called XPadder (which I had to download two versions of, thanks again to Microsoft making everything obsolete whenever they upgrade their OS), a program that allows you to map keyboard keys and such to another imput device, such as my XBox360 pad, which worked well enough. I fired up GTA once more, and entered the controller set up, and copied the PS2 control scheme to the best of my memory. Finally I was cruising around Los Santos without cramping my hands over the touch pad and forgetting the functions of endless keys.
But the fun came when it came to taking a corner, as XPadder didn't cater for analogue controls, and as such a simple tap on the left analogue stick equaled to full-lock on the steering wheel. Conversely, on foot I could do nothing but sprint at full pelt. The triggers, too, only functioned properly if I fully released them between shots, which sounds obvious, but I guarantee you never actually do.
So, call me over-precipitous, but PC Gaming sucks a lot of arse. A whole night wasted trying to get an ancient game to run in a half-decent way, when a decade-old games console can handle it without complaint. Sorry, but I'm a console gamer.
So, after a couple of days of getting used to it, I signed up to Steam. Eager to see what the machine could potentially do, I quickly downloaded the Mass Effect 2 demo, and fired it up. To my joy, and honest surprise, it played the game, out of the box so-to-speak, perfectly at it's default settings. Which is, to say, as good as the 360 version.
So yesterday I had a look on Steam again, and they were offering Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at 75% off, a meager £2.49, so I got my wallet. Now, the game ran perfectly, it has to be said. With the detail set to 'Very High', there wasn't a stutter. The problems came when I decided to try out my 360 joypad with it. The right analogue stick wasn't detected, the triggers didn't work, and the game couldn't differentiate between the left analogue stick and the D-pad. Tried out a PS2 controller through a USB adapter, the game didn't even acknowledge it.
A quick search on the Internet told me that GTA:SA was riddled with such controller issues, and downloading a program called SAAC would remedy it. So I did, but lo and behold, SAAC wouldn't work. Apparently it was made using Visual Basic 6, and when Microsoft brought out Windows 7, they decided that nobody in the whole universe would ever need to use that again, and thus got rid of it.
So I turned to a program called XPadder (which I had to download two versions of, thanks again to Microsoft making everything obsolete whenever they upgrade their OS), a program that allows you to map keyboard keys and such to another imput device, such as my XBox360 pad, which worked well enough. I fired up GTA once more, and entered the controller set up, and copied the PS2 control scheme to the best of my memory. Finally I was cruising around Los Santos without cramping my hands over the touch pad and forgetting the functions of endless keys.
But the fun came when it came to taking a corner, as XPadder didn't cater for analogue controls, and as such a simple tap on the left analogue stick equaled to full-lock on the steering wheel. Conversely, on foot I could do nothing but sprint at full pelt. The triggers, too, only functioned properly if I fully released them between shots, which sounds obvious, but I guarantee you never actually do.
So, call me over-precipitous, but PC Gaming sucks a lot of arse. A whole night wasted trying to get an ancient game to run in a half-decent way, when a decade-old games console can handle it without complaint. Sorry, but I'm a console gamer.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of graveyard, and it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Another month, another candidate for Game of 2010. After Mass Effect 2 a month ago, I recall expressing concern and doubt about playing a game that I would consider it's equal in the preceding eleven months. Yet here I am, four mere weeks later with a game in my clammy paws that I possibly like even more.
The game in question is Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive epic Heavy Rain, spiritual successor to the fantastic (if a little flawed narratively) Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy stateside thanks to the combined efforts of Micheal Moore and Osama Bin Laden). When I first played Fahrenheit, it was completely new to me. The only games I could even begin to compare it to were Shenmue, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, but even then the comparisons were vague and incomplete.
Heavy Rain goes down the same path in terms of delivery, but throws away the fantasy elements of Dreamfall and (to a lesser extent) Broken Sword and, taking the spiritual guidance of Shenmue, throws you into a very serious, very mature murder mystery. The story begins with a ridiculously perfect family living a ridiculously perfect life together, until one family day outing spells disaster for the father, Ethan Mars, when his eldest son of two, Jason, wanders off. Ethan eventually finds him, but their reunion is cut dramatically short when they are both struck by an oncoming car, sending Ethan into a coma and Jason into an early grave.
Two years later we rejoin Ethan a bit worse for wear. His marriage has ended and he's just picking up his remaining son Shaun from his ex wife's house. Instead of moving to Malibu with Charlie Sheen as some people do in these situations, he's got himself a shitty little house in the most depressing part of town. Shaun is quite understandably a bit pissed off at Ethan, obviously he never knows when he's going to get led into traffic by his dear old dad, and to make it up to him Ethan takes Shaun to a playground. Right about now seems a good place to mention that Ethan's coma rendered him a bit of a Schizo with a penchant for blacking out, and after placing Shaun on a merry-go-round (don't all playgrounds have them?), he promptly does just that. He wakes up later on to find his son missing, and a small origami figure in his hand, the calling card of a mass child murderer known as (wait for it) 'The Origami Killer'. So Ethan goes on a quest to find his son, along with FBI agent Fox M... sorry, Norman Jayden, lovable private dick Scott Shelby, his prostitute sidekick Lauren Winter and Madison Paige, a journalist who's clothes keep falling off.
Heavy Rain places itself in a very unique position in that it's not only one of my favourite games (I will go that far, I absolutely loved it), but also one of my favourite films too. A lot of the time I almost forgot I was playing at all, robotically hammering the quick time events in without even really noticing them even appearing onscreen. Another fairly unique thing about the game is that when a character dies, the game carries on without them instead of ending and letting you continue. Ironically, I can only think of one other game that does this and that's ObsCure, a game I only played a couple of weeks earlier.
Heavy Rain, like most PS3 exclusives, really excels in the graphical department. To say it looks beautiful is a criminal understatement. Even the graphical might of Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 doesn't seem to hold up against Heavy Rain. The only thing I don't like about it really is the creepy facial expressions from Fahrenheit occasionally crop up, as if the motion capture artists didn't smile when they should have and one was thrown in at the last minute, a shining example of this is during the nightclub scene where Madison dances on the podium. I am just nitpicking for the sake of it though.
Before Heavy Rain I returned to the macho, closely shaven world of Richard B. Riddick once more, with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Not so much a sequel to Butcher Bay, Dark Athena is more of an expansion pack. It plays exactly the same, which was quite disappointing to be honest. Even the main story seems completely plagiarised, with the prison planet that Riddick must escape from in Butcher Bay replaced with a mercenary ship filled with prisoners, that Riddick must escape from. It's considerably longer than Butcher Bay, but that's the only thing I can really say about it. If it wasn't for the first game being included on Dark Athena's disk, it really wouldn't be worth buying.
Thursday's PSN Store update saw the releases of demos for Darksiders and God of War III, both of which are bloody fantastic hack-and-slash kill-em-ups and like the earlier Dante's Inferno are both based on religious mythology, and have thus been locked in a friendly battle. There's no contest really, Kratos has made sure of that, but so far Darksiders seems to be superior to Dante's by a gnat's wing, mainly helped along by the bold imagery, great voice work (thanks Mark Hamill) and the fact that it's not shamelessly ripping off God of War in every way. But God of War III seems to be shaping up very nicely, losing none of what made it's three prequels brilliant. And it's just about the most violent game I've ever played: the demo sees you disemboweling a Centaur (raising questions about how their innards are arranged), yanking the eye from the head of a Cyclops (the stalk doesn't snap immediately like the previous games, it has to be pulled to it's elastic limit and then snapped off) and ripping the head from sun god Helios' shoulders with your bare hands, seeing the flesh tear bit by bit before it gives. Absolutely brutal, yet I would expect nothing less.
Finally, I finished my second play through of Mass Effect 2 this week. I didn't mention it so as not to give anything away, but the ending of my first attempt saw three of my crew in their graves: The Salarian scientist Mordin, Asari law enforcer Samara and Human/Llama hybrid Miranda. This time I was 100% successful, seeing all of my crew through the mission. I also went down the renegade route this time, essentially becoming a space Jack Bauer, and it made the game a lot more entertaining. Yes, there was a scene where I punched a woman news reporter completely without provocation, and I will admit I laughed out loud when it happened. It was her own fault, she was making disingenuous assertions, and Shepard had had enough of them. And for lack of anything to play on my 360 last night, I fired up Saint's Row. Big mistake. It hasn't stood the test of time well, with it's awful graphics and awkward humour. Don't think I'll play much more of that one. Anyway, I'm off to play Oblivion now, buh-bye.
The game in question is Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive epic Heavy Rain, spiritual successor to the fantastic (if a little flawed narratively) Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy stateside thanks to the combined efforts of Micheal Moore and Osama Bin Laden). When I first played Fahrenheit, it was completely new to me. The only games I could even begin to compare it to were Shenmue, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, but even then the comparisons were vague and incomplete.
Heavy Rain goes down the same path in terms of delivery, but throws away the fantasy elements of Dreamfall and (to a lesser extent) Broken Sword and, taking the spiritual guidance of Shenmue, throws you into a very serious, very mature murder mystery. The story begins with a ridiculously perfect family living a ridiculously perfect life together, until one family day outing spells disaster for the father, Ethan Mars, when his eldest son of two, Jason, wanders off. Ethan eventually finds him, but their reunion is cut dramatically short when they are both struck by an oncoming car, sending Ethan into a coma and Jason into an early grave.
Two years later we rejoin Ethan a bit worse for wear. His marriage has ended and he's just picking up his remaining son Shaun from his ex wife's house. Instead of moving to Malibu with Charlie Sheen as some people do in these situations, he's got himself a shitty little house in the most depressing part of town. Shaun is quite understandably a bit pissed off at Ethan, obviously he never knows when he's going to get led into traffic by his dear old dad, and to make it up to him Ethan takes Shaun to a playground. Right about now seems a good place to mention that Ethan's coma rendered him a bit of a Schizo with a penchant for blacking out, and after placing Shaun on a merry-go-round (don't all playgrounds have them?), he promptly does just that. He wakes up later on to find his son missing, and a small origami figure in his hand, the calling card of a mass child murderer known as (wait for it) 'The Origami Killer'. So Ethan goes on a quest to find his son, along with FBI agent Fox M... sorry, Norman Jayden, lovable private dick Scott Shelby, his prostitute sidekick Lauren Winter and Madison Paige, a journalist who's clothes keep falling off.
Heavy Rain places itself in a very unique position in that it's not only one of my favourite games (I will go that far, I absolutely loved it), but also one of my favourite films too. A lot of the time I almost forgot I was playing at all, robotically hammering the quick time events in without even really noticing them even appearing onscreen. Another fairly unique thing about the game is that when a character dies, the game carries on without them instead of ending and letting you continue. Ironically, I can only think of one other game that does this and that's ObsCure, a game I only played a couple of weeks earlier.
Heavy Rain, like most PS3 exclusives, really excels in the graphical department. To say it looks beautiful is a criminal understatement. Even the graphical might of Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 doesn't seem to hold up against Heavy Rain. The only thing I don't like about it really is the creepy facial expressions from Fahrenheit occasionally crop up, as if the motion capture artists didn't smile when they should have and one was thrown in at the last minute, a shining example of this is during the nightclub scene where Madison dances on the podium. I am just nitpicking for the sake of it though.
Before Heavy Rain I returned to the macho, closely shaven world of Richard B. Riddick once more, with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Not so much a sequel to Butcher Bay, Dark Athena is more of an expansion pack. It plays exactly the same, which was quite disappointing to be honest. Even the main story seems completely plagiarised, with the prison planet that Riddick must escape from in Butcher Bay replaced with a mercenary ship filled with prisoners, that Riddick must escape from. It's considerably longer than Butcher Bay, but that's the only thing I can really say about it. If it wasn't for the first game being included on Dark Athena's disk, it really wouldn't be worth buying.
Thursday's PSN Store update saw the releases of demos for Darksiders and God of War III, both of which are bloody fantastic hack-and-slash kill-em-ups and like the earlier Dante's Inferno are both based on religious mythology, and have thus been locked in a friendly battle. There's no contest really, Kratos has made sure of that, but so far Darksiders seems to be superior to Dante's by a gnat's wing, mainly helped along by the bold imagery, great voice work (thanks Mark Hamill) and the fact that it's not shamelessly ripping off God of War in every way. But God of War III seems to be shaping up very nicely, losing none of what made it's three prequels brilliant. And it's just about the most violent game I've ever played: the demo sees you disemboweling a Centaur (raising questions about how their innards are arranged), yanking the eye from the head of a Cyclops (the stalk doesn't snap immediately like the previous games, it has to be pulled to it's elastic limit and then snapped off) and ripping the head from sun god Helios' shoulders with your bare hands, seeing the flesh tear bit by bit before it gives. Absolutely brutal, yet I would expect nothing less.
Finally, I finished my second play through of Mass Effect 2 this week. I didn't mention it so as not to give anything away, but the ending of my first attempt saw three of my crew in their graves: The Salarian scientist Mordin, Asari law enforcer Samara and Human/Llama hybrid Miranda. This time I was 100% successful, seeing all of my crew through the mission. I also went down the renegade route this time, essentially becoming a space Jack Bauer, and it made the game a lot more entertaining. Yes, there was a scene where I punched a woman news reporter completely without provocation, and I will admit I laughed out loud when it happened. It was her own fault, she was making disingenuous assertions, and Shepard had had enough of them. And for lack of anything to play on my 360 last night, I fired up Saint's Row. Big mistake. It hasn't stood the test of time well, with it's awful graphics and awkward humour. Don't think I'll play much more of that one. Anyway, I'm off to play Oblivion now, buh-bye.
Friday, 26 February 2010
Lethargy and Gaming - every TUESDAY.
Just a small announcement, due to time constraints I'm moving the deadline for each post to Tuesdays. It makes sense, I don't have to go and do my real job on a Tuesday, so it gives me more time to write, and more time to play any new releases that come out on the Friday before I write about them.
So please, check back on Tuesday for a look at The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Heavy Rain and first impressions of God of War III and Darksiders, and probably a short bit about Mass Effect 2 cheekily squeezed in there. Hope to see you then.
So please, check back on Tuesday for a look at The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Heavy Rain and first impressions of God of War III and Darksiders, and probably a short bit about Mass Effect 2 cheekily squeezed in there. Hope to see you then.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Now, I like Tatsunoko, and I also like Capcom. But which is better?
This week I've been playing one of those games that defines a console, defines a genre, even defines a generation. It's an FPS that features a protagonist with a crisis of alliegance, a group of chemically altered warriors with golden visors on their high-tech armour. It's vehicular combat is second to none. If I say that it's title is a simple four-letter word, and the first two letters are H and A, then I'm sure you will be able to figure out what game I'm talking about. That's right, Haze.
And you'll probably also be able to figure out that the last paragraph is riddled with sarcasm, as Haze is one of the most offensive pieces of garbage I've ever had to play. For those of you lucky enough to not know, Haze is a below average PS3-exclusive shooter developed by Free Radical (who, with the Timesplitters series under their belts, and with ex-Goldeneye developers on the team, should have known better) that's major downfall was it's overhyped pre-release. Upon seeing the yellow visor splashed all over the promotional material, everyone and their gran made the Halo connection, and thus was born the "it's Halo on PS3" stigma was born, and expectations were raised to a level that Haze was never going to deliver. When put into words like that, the fate of Haze sounds quite sad, but the truth is, it would have still gotten those piss-poor reviews without the Halo comparisons. It just wouldn't have been pushed into the limelight as much.
Haze begins with you in the shoes of Shane Carpenter, who works for an American military group known as Mantel, who dose up on a hallucinogenic chemical known as Nectar before each conflict. Nectar dulls the soldier to the horrors of war, making things such as blood, injuries and even dead bodies invisible, and making morally wrong actions (like throwing babies in fires, as we find out) seem all in a day's work. On your first mission, naturally to rough up some ethnic minorities, your Nectar Administrator malfunctions and you realise that you're on the wrong side and that your enemy, a supposed vicious dictator and cannibal known as Skin Coat is actually quite a nice guy, and that the reason the Matel are invading their apparently very religious country (Somewhere in South America by the looks of things) is to harvest the plant that Nectar is refined from. So you set off and join him instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The story, as well as being a not-so-subtle dig at current events in the middle east, is actually one of the only redeeming features of Haze (the other being that you can switch it off), It kept me interested enough to put myself through the horror of the game. Texture pop-in is a term that really doesn't apply here, the textures fade in is if they were hoping that you wouldn't notice. Each scene starts off looking like a PS2 game, and gradually becomes a sub-par PS3 game. I have also never seen clipping issues quite so bad since the last generation either. Okay, so graphics don't really matter. What about controls then? The reload button, for one, is entirely in the wrong place at Triangle, when it should be Square. There's no dash either, so you have to saunter everywhere, meaning quite often I resorted to driving across some of the open areas to save time. Well, I wouldn't call it driving, not with the handling that's casually thrown into the game. The vehicles are controlled as they would be in a racing game, as opposed to the Halo/Mass Effect twin-stick driving method. But instead of R2 being the accelerator, it's R1, meaning you have two speeds: A billion miles per hour, or standing still. There's a nitro boost that can be activated with the X button that doesn't alter your speed at all, and the vehicles corner like a wet turd on a frozen lake. Just typing about it pisses me off.
Because I like to do things a little differently around here, I'm going to finish off my Haze rant by comparing it, and it's PS3 FPS brethren to, what else, the Baldwin Brothers. Killzone would be Alec Baldwin, strongest and most successful of the brothers. Resistance would be Billy Baldwin, still good, but lacks the edge of it's older brother. Haze, alas, is Stephen Baldwin: Short, ugly, boring and spouts religious nonsense at every opportunity. To perfectly sum it up, here's a video of a Mantel soldier being a very naughty boy indeed.
The week hasn't been all bad though, as my fantastic wife brightened up my Valentine's Day with a copy of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars on the Wii last weekend, and it is absolutely brilliant.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is the latest in a long series of fighting games putting Capcom's greatest warriors up against, well, everyone really. The series started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Capcom have since gone on to fight the expanded Marvel universe, SNK and (in Japan only) Namco, until most recently coming to blows with 1970s' anime label Tatsunoko.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I knew anything about Tatsunoko. I remember watching Battle of the Planets (the American dub of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) as a kid, so characters like Ken the Eagle, Jun the Swan and Joe the Condor are recognisable to me, albeit with different names to what I remember them as. But aside from that, I'm still learning. But I do love the Capcom vs. Series, and I love seeing characters that I know and love outside of their surroundings, and the Capcom side of the roster does not disappoint. Whereas every one of the vs. Series up to this point has been 2D and mostly made using recycled sprites from other games, TvC features fully 3D graphics, and has given Capcom and excuse to port some other under-used characters over, like Batsu from Rival Schools, and PTX-40A, the giant robotic suit from Lost Planet. But the real star of the show, for me anyway, is Dead Rising's Frank West, who comes with some suitably "Faaaaantastic" moves, from throwing a Zombie in a shopping trolley at his opponent, to slamming a Servbot mask on them and faceplanting them into the ground, all in the comfort of his own stage at Willamette Mall (the game actually prompted me to play Dead Rising for a bit this week. It hasn't stood the test of time very well). The game also features characters like Darkstalkers' Morrigan and Street Fighter III's Alex, featured for the first time in 3D.
The whole game is about excess. The special moves, similar to Marvel vs. Capcom, often fill the screen, and whenever a combo is executed on your enemy, instead of a damage percentage being shown, it will tell you you've done 12.874 billion points of damage or something, which is completely bonkers. Then there's the screen-filling enemies like the aforementioned PTX and Tatsunoko's Gold Lightan, who are so big the camera has to zoom out. I absolutely love it.
To complement TvC, I also picked up the new Classic Controller Pro for the Wii, which is a great controller. The arms and the repositioned shoulder buttons improve the controller to no end, and the glossy finish makes it look really smart. The lack of vibration places a downer on things, but I still hold it as the best Nintendo joypad I've ever used. Obviously a sentiment echoed by others too, as I think I picked up the last one in the whole of Sheffield.
Right, I'll drop it at that. I finished ObsCure, and after dragging my characters kicking an screaming through the game without a single fatality, one of them died in the climactic boss battle, much to my annoyance. And as I had read, the game took me little over three hours to finish, which is also a bit of a downer. And, for those who didn't know, Street Fighter III's Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley have been announced for Super Street Fighter IV. I've been wanting some SFIII characters for SFIV since it was first announced, so with that news I put in a preorder. Next week's post could be a little late, as I might be too busy playing Heavy Rain to write anything. I'll do my best.
No Baldwins were harmed during the making of this Blog.
And you'll probably also be able to figure out that the last paragraph is riddled with sarcasm, as Haze is one of the most offensive pieces of garbage I've ever had to play. For those of you lucky enough to not know, Haze is a below average PS3-exclusive shooter developed by Free Radical (who, with the Timesplitters series under their belts, and with ex-Goldeneye developers on the team, should have known better) that's major downfall was it's overhyped pre-release. Upon seeing the yellow visor splashed all over the promotional material, everyone and their gran made the Halo connection, and thus was born the "it's Halo on PS3" stigma was born, and expectations were raised to a level that Haze was never going to deliver. When put into words like that, the fate of Haze sounds quite sad, but the truth is, it would have still gotten those piss-poor reviews without the Halo comparisons. It just wouldn't have been pushed into the limelight as much.
Haze begins with you in the shoes of Shane Carpenter, who works for an American military group known as Mantel, who dose up on a hallucinogenic chemical known as Nectar before each conflict. Nectar dulls the soldier to the horrors of war, making things such as blood, injuries and even dead bodies invisible, and making morally wrong actions (like throwing babies in fires, as we find out) seem all in a day's work. On your first mission, naturally to rough up some ethnic minorities, your Nectar Administrator malfunctions and you realise that you're on the wrong side and that your enemy, a supposed vicious dictator and cannibal known as Skin Coat is actually quite a nice guy, and that the reason the Matel are invading their apparently very religious country (Somewhere in South America by the looks of things) is to harvest the plant that Nectar is refined from. So you set off and join him instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The story, as well as being a not-so-subtle dig at current events in the middle east, is actually one of the only redeeming features of Haze (the other being that you can switch it off), It kept me interested enough to put myself through the horror of the game. Texture pop-in is a term that really doesn't apply here, the textures fade in is if they were hoping that you wouldn't notice. Each scene starts off looking like a PS2 game, and gradually becomes a sub-par PS3 game. I have also never seen clipping issues quite so bad since the last generation either. Okay, so graphics don't really matter. What about controls then? The reload button, for one, is entirely in the wrong place at Triangle, when it should be Square. There's no dash either, so you have to saunter everywhere, meaning quite often I resorted to driving across some of the open areas to save time. Well, I wouldn't call it driving, not with the handling that's casually thrown into the game. The vehicles are controlled as they would be in a racing game, as opposed to the Halo/Mass Effect twin-stick driving method. But instead of R2 being the accelerator, it's R1, meaning you have two speeds: A billion miles per hour, or standing still. There's a nitro boost that can be activated with the X button that doesn't alter your speed at all, and the vehicles corner like a wet turd on a frozen lake. Just typing about it pisses me off.
Because I like to do things a little differently around here, I'm going to finish off my Haze rant by comparing it, and it's PS3 FPS brethren to, what else, the Baldwin Brothers. Killzone would be Alec Baldwin, strongest and most successful of the brothers. Resistance would be Billy Baldwin, still good, but lacks the edge of it's older brother. Haze, alas, is Stephen Baldwin: Short, ugly, boring and spouts religious nonsense at every opportunity. To perfectly sum it up, here's a video of a Mantel soldier being a very naughty boy indeed.
The week hasn't been all bad though, as my fantastic wife brightened up my Valentine's Day with a copy of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars on the Wii last weekend, and it is absolutely brilliant.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is the latest in a long series of fighting games putting Capcom's greatest warriors up against, well, everyone really. The series started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Capcom have since gone on to fight the expanded Marvel universe, SNK and (in Japan only) Namco, until most recently coming to blows with 1970s' anime label Tatsunoko.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I knew anything about Tatsunoko. I remember watching Battle of the Planets (the American dub of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) as a kid, so characters like Ken the Eagle, Jun the Swan and Joe the Condor are recognisable to me, albeit with different names to what I remember them as. But aside from that, I'm still learning. But I do love the Capcom vs. Series, and I love seeing characters that I know and love outside of their surroundings, and the Capcom side of the roster does not disappoint. Whereas every one of the vs. Series up to this point has been 2D and mostly made using recycled sprites from other games, TvC features fully 3D graphics, and has given Capcom and excuse to port some other under-used characters over, like Batsu from Rival Schools, and PTX-40A, the giant robotic suit from Lost Planet. But the real star of the show, for me anyway, is Dead Rising's Frank West, who comes with some suitably "Faaaaantastic" moves, from throwing a Zombie in a shopping trolley at his opponent, to slamming a Servbot mask on them and faceplanting them into the ground, all in the comfort of his own stage at Willamette Mall (the game actually prompted me to play Dead Rising for a bit this week. It hasn't stood the test of time very well). The game also features characters like Darkstalkers' Morrigan and Street Fighter III's Alex, featured for the first time in 3D.
The whole game is about excess. The special moves, similar to Marvel vs. Capcom, often fill the screen, and whenever a combo is executed on your enemy, instead of a damage percentage being shown, it will tell you you've done 12.874 billion points of damage or something, which is completely bonkers. Then there's the screen-filling enemies like the aforementioned PTX and Tatsunoko's Gold Lightan, who are so big the camera has to zoom out. I absolutely love it.
To complement TvC, I also picked up the new Classic Controller Pro for the Wii, which is a great controller. The arms and the repositioned shoulder buttons improve the controller to no end, and the glossy finish makes it look really smart. The lack of vibration places a downer on things, but I still hold it as the best Nintendo joypad I've ever used. Obviously a sentiment echoed by others too, as I think I picked up the last one in the whole of Sheffield.
Right, I'll drop it at that. I finished ObsCure, and after dragging my characters kicking an screaming through the game without a single fatality, one of them died in the climactic boss battle, much to my annoyance. And as I had read, the game took me little over three hours to finish, which is also a bit of a downer. And, for those who didn't know, Street Fighter III's Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley have been announced for Super Street Fighter IV. I've been wanting some SFIII characters for SFIV since it was first announced, so with that news I put in a preorder. Next week's post could be a little late, as I might be too busy playing Heavy Rain to write anything. I'll do my best.
No Baldwins were harmed during the making of this Blog.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Oh my God, they killed Kenny!
This week, as I said I would, I finally got back on track with my backlog of unplayed Christmas games. Hellboy: The Science of Evil was first on my pile, after I briefly touched upon it a few weeks ago, before Mass Effect 2 barged in and ate up my whole life for a week.
As I had said previously, Hellboy was perhaps under appreciated, below average review scores all-round. But it found a fan in me. Where it admittedly lacks in areas such as next-gen visuals (the polygon count is quite low and the size of the on-screen text shows that it wasn't meant for HD gaming) and the story is fairly hard to follow with the slightly below-par scripting, the gameplay is brainless fun, and it offers plenty of fan service in the form of more gas mask wearing Nazis and frog demons than you could ever ask for. And the final boss fight is genuinely a good fight, unlike a few very highly praised games, Uncharted 2 springs to mind. And plus, it's got Ron Perlman in it, which generally adds a few points to the overall score.
With Hellboy finished I moved on to the often ignored PS2 high-school horror game ObsCure, a 2004 release from french developers Hydravision Entertainment. The premise of a possible Canis Canem Edit plus Resident Evil with a pinch of the school section of Silent Hill made the game very enticing to me, and while that wasn't exactly what was delivered, I'm still enjoying it.
The game opens with panning shots of an ordinary American high-school, accompanied by the dulcet tones of Canadian pop-punk jerks Sum 41 (music that sets the tone about as well as Slayer would for Mary Poppins). The camera comes to a halt in the school gym, as a mismatched group of youth stereotypes play a game of basketball. Here we are introduced to our five 'heroes': Kenny; a 'roid monkey, Stan (I think somebody was watching South Park); an underachiever who seems to fail, as so many white American teens do, to understand that he isn't a black gangster rapper, Josh; school newspaper geek and Shannon; all round genius who dresses slutty to downplay her intellect (she's got her priorities right). After everyone leaves Kenny to work off his steroids, he gets a phone call from our last player character, his girlfriend Ashley; a laitina cheerleader with bizarre fighting skills. While he's distracted by the phone, his bag is taken by a mystery evildoer, and he naturally chases them into an underground lab filled with monsters, where he is captured. The rest of the group, upon realising he's missing the next day, neglect to call the police the next day, and instead hide in the school (where all of the teachers appear to actually live) until the evening and go looking for him.
And so begins our tale. I want to point out here, that for a game approaching six years of age, the graphics are spot-on. All of the backgrounds are fully 3D and the characters look great. And the real time physics are among the best I've seen on the console, things move realistically when you brush past them, in a generation of consoles where most objects are super glued in place. The music is great too, Canadian arseholes aside, it goes from an eery choir one minute to the next being quite reminiscent of the Shinra Mansion section of Final Fantasy VII. There was a dodgy bit during a puzzle involving acid, a paper cup and a padlock (ripped straight from Monkey Island), which sounded like a German Oom-Pah band, but it was over quickly.
The game is a bit Resident Evil Zero, in that you control two characters at a time, with the ability to swap between them at will and the AI taking over the rejected character. However, ObsCure does this better than RE0 in a few respects. Firstly, the game features drop in/drop out multiplayer, like a bastardized Lego game, although I haven't actually tried that yet. Secondly, if the AI decides the best course of action is to drop the secondary character in the shit, so to speak(And it does in both games), and they wind up dead, this doesn't spell Game Over in ObsCure, the rest of the gang go on without them (or even shedding a tear, it seems). So in effect, you have five lives, and each life has a unique ability, be it Stan's 'master of unlocking' (worrying that a school lists this as a plus point on his report card), Ashley's worrying level of fighting prowess, Josh's journalistic ability to know whenever anything is interesting in the room, Shannon's precognitive ability to know what to do next or Kenny's ability to erm... Run quite fast.
Not that you'll get to use many of these skills though, because the game's infuriating difficulty level means that your teen heroes will drop like flies within seconds of a monster making itself known. You have to collect discs to save, and the limited nature of these makes it difficult to judge when to use them. Couple that with the even more limited health items and the fact that your characters are more fragile than Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable and it spells disaster. When you find a pistol and subsequently a shotgun (always lying about in an American high-school), the game gets a bit easier, but the first half hour or so is very tense.
I have played (and replayed after dying without saving) for about an hour and a half now, and am actually really enjoying it, despite difficulty being a bit of a phobia of mine. I have read in reviews that it only takes 3 hours to finish though, which is a bit of a downer. But I do have ObsCure 2 in the pile too, this time on the Wii. In the words of our racially confused hero Stan, ObsCure is Hype, yo. I don't know what that means either.
Here's where I would normally put a lid on things, but no! I got an early demo of Heavy Rain through an online promotion this week. The demo puts you in the shoes of an elderly and overweight police detective named Scott Shelby at first, and makes you question a prostitute over a serial killer who happened to target her son. It's a bit odd at first controlling your character like a racing car, pressing the R2 button to control the speed at which you walk and steering with the left analogue stick, but you get used to it.
As with Fahrenheit before it, most of the scenes are played out in the form of Quick Time Events. Before you all groan and switch off, they are done really well in this, particularly in the demo's fight scene, once an unwanted guest of the prostitute gets a bit shirty and you have to sort him out. It's a lengthy scene, and the commands come thick and fast, and missing one doesn't fail you instantly, instead the fight takes a different course. And watching the fight is a treat too, the cinematics are fantastic.
The second scene puts you behind the wheel of FBI agent Norman Jayden, and you are charged with investigating a murder scene. At your disposal are a pair of high tech glasses and a glove (to be honest, they were the only thing that seemed to put a damper on the experience, it subtracted from the realism greatly) which help you find clues and evidence. A quick sniff round and you find out that the killer escaped in a car, and that's where the demo ends. I hope the next two weeks are short ones, because I can't wait to get my hands on that game.
Now I'll wrap it up. Tried the beta of Modnation Racers and the demo of Sonic and Sega Allstars Racing this week, and controversially I prefer Sonic in terms of actual gameplay. But truth be told, neither really have the charm of Mario Kart anyway. And placing Sonic in a car and Tails in an aeroplane is redundant. Bit like giving Luke Skywalker a baseball bat. Bye for now!
As I had said previously, Hellboy was perhaps under appreciated, below average review scores all-round. But it found a fan in me. Where it admittedly lacks in areas such as next-gen visuals (the polygon count is quite low and the size of the on-screen text shows that it wasn't meant for HD gaming) and the story is fairly hard to follow with the slightly below-par scripting, the gameplay is brainless fun, and it offers plenty of fan service in the form of more gas mask wearing Nazis and frog demons than you could ever ask for. And the final boss fight is genuinely a good fight, unlike a few very highly praised games, Uncharted 2 springs to mind. And plus, it's got Ron Perlman in it, which generally adds a few points to the overall score.
With Hellboy finished I moved on to the often ignored PS2 high-school horror game ObsCure, a 2004 release from french developers Hydravision Entertainment. The premise of a possible Canis Canem Edit plus Resident Evil with a pinch of the school section of Silent Hill made the game very enticing to me, and while that wasn't exactly what was delivered, I'm still enjoying it.
The game opens with panning shots of an ordinary American high-school, accompanied by the dulcet tones of Canadian pop-punk jerks Sum 41 (music that sets the tone about as well as Slayer would for Mary Poppins). The camera comes to a halt in the school gym, as a mismatched group of youth stereotypes play a game of basketball. Here we are introduced to our five 'heroes': Kenny; a 'roid monkey, Stan (I think somebody was watching South Park); an underachiever who seems to fail, as so many white American teens do, to understand that he isn't a black gangster rapper, Josh; school newspaper geek and Shannon; all round genius who dresses slutty to downplay her intellect (she's got her priorities right). After everyone leaves Kenny to work off his steroids, he gets a phone call from our last player character, his girlfriend Ashley; a laitina cheerleader with bizarre fighting skills. While he's distracted by the phone, his bag is taken by a mystery evildoer, and he naturally chases them into an underground lab filled with monsters, where he is captured. The rest of the group, upon realising he's missing the next day, neglect to call the police the next day, and instead hide in the school (where all of the teachers appear to actually live) until the evening and go looking for him.
And so begins our tale. I want to point out here, that for a game approaching six years of age, the graphics are spot-on. All of the backgrounds are fully 3D and the characters look great. And the real time physics are among the best I've seen on the console, things move realistically when you brush past them, in a generation of consoles where most objects are super glued in place. The music is great too, Canadian arseholes aside, it goes from an eery choir one minute to the next being quite reminiscent of the Shinra Mansion section of Final Fantasy VII. There was a dodgy bit during a puzzle involving acid, a paper cup and a padlock (ripped straight from Monkey Island), which sounded like a German Oom-Pah band, but it was over quickly.
The game is a bit Resident Evil Zero, in that you control two characters at a time, with the ability to swap between them at will and the AI taking over the rejected character. However, ObsCure does this better than RE0 in a few respects. Firstly, the game features drop in/drop out multiplayer, like a bastardized Lego game, although I haven't actually tried that yet. Secondly, if the AI decides the best course of action is to drop the secondary character in the shit, so to speak(And it does in both games), and they wind up dead, this doesn't spell Game Over in ObsCure, the rest of the gang go on without them (or even shedding a tear, it seems). So in effect, you have five lives, and each life has a unique ability, be it Stan's 'master of unlocking' (worrying that a school lists this as a plus point on his report card), Ashley's worrying level of fighting prowess, Josh's journalistic ability to know whenever anything is interesting in the room, Shannon's precognitive ability to know what to do next or Kenny's ability to erm... Run quite fast.
Not that you'll get to use many of these skills though, because the game's infuriating difficulty level means that your teen heroes will drop like flies within seconds of a monster making itself known. You have to collect discs to save, and the limited nature of these makes it difficult to judge when to use them. Couple that with the even more limited health items and the fact that your characters are more fragile than Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable and it spells disaster. When you find a pistol and subsequently a shotgun (always lying about in an American high-school), the game gets a bit easier, but the first half hour or so is very tense.
I have played (and replayed after dying without saving) for about an hour and a half now, and am actually really enjoying it, despite difficulty being a bit of a phobia of mine. I have read in reviews that it only takes 3 hours to finish though, which is a bit of a downer. But I do have ObsCure 2 in the pile too, this time on the Wii. In the words of our racially confused hero Stan, ObsCure is Hype, yo. I don't know what that means either.
Here's where I would normally put a lid on things, but no! I got an early demo of Heavy Rain through an online promotion this week. The demo puts you in the shoes of an elderly and overweight police detective named Scott Shelby at first, and makes you question a prostitute over a serial killer who happened to target her son. It's a bit odd at first controlling your character like a racing car, pressing the R2 button to control the speed at which you walk and steering with the left analogue stick, but you get used to it.
As with Fahrenheit before it, most of the scenes are played out in the form of Quick Time Events. Before you all groan and switch off, they are done really well in this, particularly in the demo's fight scene, once an unwanted guest of the prostitute gets a bit shirty and you have to sort him out. It's a lengthy scene, and the commands come thick and fast, and missing one doesn't fail you instantly, instead the fight takes a different course. And watching the fight is a treat too, the cinematics are fantastic.
The second scene puts you behind the wheel of FBI agent Norman Jayden, and you are charged with investigating a murder scene. At your disposal are a pair of high tech glasses and a glove (to be honest, they were the only thing that seemed to put a damper on the experience, it subtracted from the realism greatly) which help you find clues and evidence. A quick sniff round and you find out that the killer escaped in a car, and that's where the demo ends. I hope the next two weeks are short ones, because I can't wait to get my hands on that game.
Now I'll wrap it up. Tried the beta of Modnation Racers and the demo of Sonic and Sega Allstars Racing this week, and controversially I prefer Sonic in terms of actual gameplay. But truth be told, neither really have the charm of Mario Kart anyway. And placing Sonic in a car and Tails in an aeroplane is redundant. Bit like giving Luke Skywalker a baseball bat. Bye for now!
Friday, 5 February 2010
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel!
Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't want to read about Mass Effect 2, then don't bother going any further. It's just about all I've done this week, literally.
When I reported in last week, I had played for maybe two hours, and truth be told wasn't too impressed, but was putting on a brave face in hope that things can only get better. The RPG elements that I'd become accustomed to in my four play throughs of the first one had been neutered within an inch of their life, everything had got a bit sweary (which I've noticed has happened with a lot of sequels, Assassin's Creed II, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5 spring to mind), and the shooting mechanic has gone for the old copy-and-paste Gears of War method. Couple that with the still ridiculous reloading mechanic, and well, my first impressions were a bit testing, as much as I didn't want to admit it.
Things, however, did get better. 34 hours of gameplay better in fact. And I never once, in all of that time, actually wanted to set the controller down out of boredom. I actually scanned every planet, did every side-mission on said planets, all of the loyalty missions, everything.
For a bit of a story breakdown, after Shepard and his multicultural band of brothers saved the universe from a giant metal squid in 2007, they spent their days flying around the galaxy wiping out stragglers from the ranks of their enemies, the Geth. That is until their ship got ripped in two pieces by a mysterious new antagonist, and thanks to annoying pilot Jeff 'Joker' Moreau (who shows no sign of remorse throughout the game), things ended pretty badly for Shepard.
Then his body was recovered by Martin Sheen, who could rebuild him, He had the technology. He had the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Commander Shepard would be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. Sorry, lost myself a bit there. Anyway, after two years of being rebuilt, Shep wakes up to find out that humans everywhere are being abducted by crazy bug people, and naturally sets out to round up a bunch of hardasses and do some damage.
At first, as I was secretly not enjoying the game as much as I wanted to, I jumped headlong into the main story with little regard for anything else. I recruited the squaddies, of course, and when I first met Garrus, my joint favourite character (with Wrex) from the last game, and unlike all the other returning faces he actually wanted to join me, I could barely conceal a smile. But it wasn't until about half way through the story, when I was deep in enemy territory and the plot was beginning to unfold, that I got that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that I was in for something special.
And something special it was. I know there's a lot of people out there who are still knee deep in this, so I will go no further, but a special mention has to go out to my new hero, ME2's krogan, Grunt. He's bloodthirsty, wreckless and at times laugh-out-loud funny. And he's the only squaddie I used in the game that never once needed a medi-gel. I have a new Wrex.
I was a little annoyed that such a good game was out in January though, as I had very little hope of playing another game quite as good as that all year. That was until last night's teaser trailer of Fallout: New Vegas though, and it's ambitious predicted release date of Autumn 2010. The trailer opens with some bizarre TV-headed robot sifting through a mass grave in the Nevada desert, with a surprisingly well preserved Las Vegas in the background. As the camera pans out, a mysterious long-coated character with a New Californian Republic flag looks on. He then turns to the camera, revealing a mask that resembles that of one of Killzone's bad guys, the Helghast. It's going to be a long 7 months or so for me now. Well, I still have three achievements yet to get on Fallout 3 anyway, so I still have a bit of Fallout to keep me going. If they fire out a new Elder Scrolls this year too, I'll be happy as a pig in shit.
I'll try and have more to talk about next week, I'm in the process of trying to get my grubby hands on a Heavy Rain demo, and I'll hopefully get motivated enough to finish Hellboy and start on something else, more than likely PS2 survival horror ObsCure. Bye for now.
When I reported in last week, I had played for maybe two hours, and truth be told wasn't too impressed, but was putting on a brave face in hope that things can only get better. The RPG elements that I'd become accustomed to in my four play throughs of the first one had been neutered within an inch of their life, everything had got a bit sweary (which I've noticed has happened with a lot of sequels, Assassin's Creed II, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5 spring to mind), and the shooting mechanic has gone for the old copy-and-paste Gears of War method. Couple that with the still ridiculous reloading mechanic, and well, my first impressions were a bit testing, as much as I didn't want to admit it.
Things, however, did get better. 34 hours of gameplay better in fact. And I never once, in all of that time, actually wanted to set the controller down out of boredom. I actually scanned every planet, did every side-mission on said planets, all of the loyalty missions, everything.
For a bit of a story breakdown, after Shepard and his multicultural band of brothers saved the universe from a giant metal squid in 2007, they spent their days flying around the galaxy wiping out stragglers from the ranks of their enemies, the Geth. That is until their ship got ripped in two pieces by a mysterious new antagonist, and thanks to annoying pilot Jeff 'Joker' Moreau (who shows no sign of remorse throughout the game), things ended pretty badly for Shepard.
Then his body was recovered by Martin Sheen, who could rebuild him, He had the technology. He had the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Commander Shepard would be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. Sorry, lost myself a bit there. Anyway, after two years of being rebuilt, Shep wakes up to find out that humans everywhere are being abducted by crazy bug people, and naturally sets out to round up a bunch of hardasses and do some damage.
At first, as I was secretly not enjoying the game as much as I wanted to, I jumped headlong into the main story with little regard for anything else. I recruited the squaddies, of course, and when I first met Garrus, my joint favourite character (with Wrex) from the last game, and unlike all the other returning faces he actually wanted to join me, I could barely conceal a smile. But it wasn't until about half way through the story, when I was deep in enemy territory and the plot was beginning to unfold, that I got that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that I was in for something special.
And something special it was. I know there's a lot of people out there who are still knee deep in this, so I will go no further, but a special mention has to go out to my new hero, ME2's krogan, Grunt. He's bloodthirsty, wreckless and at times laugh-out-loud funny. And he's the only squaddie I used in the game that never once needed a medi-gel. I have a new Wrex.
I was a little annoyed that such a good game was out in January though, as I had very little hope of playing another game quite as good as that all year. That was until last night's teaser trailer of Fallout: New Vegas though, and it's ambitious predicted release date of Autumn 2010. The trailer opens with some bizarre TV-headed robot sifting through a mass grave in the Nevada desert, with a surprisingly well preserved Las Vegas in the background. As the camera pans out, a mysterious long-coated character with a New Californian Republic flag looks on. He then turns to the camera, revealing a mask that resembles that of one of Killzone's bad guys, the Helghast. It's going to be a long 7 months or so for me now. Well, I still have three achievements yet to get on Fallout 3 anyway, so I still have a bit of Fallout to keep me going. If they fire out a new Elder Scrolls this year too, I'll be happy as a pig in shit.
I'll try and have more to talk about next week, I'm in the process of trying to get my grubby hands on a Heavy Rain demo, and I'll hopefully get motivated enough to finish Hellboy and start on something else, more than likely PS2 survival horror ObsCure. Bye for now.
Friday, 29 January 2010
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
There's been a decidedly Sci-Fi feel to my gaming this week. As reported, I was attempting to gather up the remaining Achievements on Fallout 3, so it occured to me that I should download and play the 5th and final expansion pack Mothership Zeta. I'd not heard good things about it to be honest, but for the sake of my Gamerscore (which, as any self-respecting Xbox gamer will tell you, is a virtual extension to one's penis), I thought I'd give it a shot.
The add-on is triggered when you find Fallout 3's fabled UFO crash site, previously infamous for the ridiculously powerful Alien Blaster you find there, and are 'beamed up' so to speak, to the titular alien mothership where you are experimented on and placed in an induced coma. When you awaken, you are greeted in a cell by a lady named Somah. She throws the idea out there that if you stage a fist fight the guards will unlock the door, and then the two of you can fuck them up and escape, and surprisingly it works (although she neglected to mention that she's bricks hard and very good at unarmed combat, and that resulted in a crippled head for me). So begins a tale of survival and escapism, involving a cowboy, a samurai, about a million aliens and a 200 year old little girl, but I'll not ruin any of that for you.
I actually enjoyed it, not as much as Point Lookout but definitely as much as The Pitt and more than Broken Steel and Operation Anchorage. It appeased the latent Sci-Fi geek in me, and kept me occupied for pretty much a full day. There are a bunch of new weapons available, my favourite of which was the Alien Disintegrator, a sort of Laser Rifle with a clip capacity of 100 shots and a reload time of under a second. At the end of the story I came away with upwards of 1600 rounds for it, and that's after heavy usage throughout too, so it will most likely see me through the last four Cheevos that I haven't acquired yet. Also to note is the fact that all of the alien equipment is extremely light, most of it doesn't weigh a thing, so you can virtually bankrupt the Capital Wasteland when you get back with your loot, which oddly enough none of the merchants bat an eyelid at. Much recommended anyway.
Fallout 3 has pretty much taken up the bulk of my week, but the big story is today's release of Mass Effect 2, the collector's edition of which saw me £60 poorer this morning. First things first, the collector's content is actually really good. The double-thick cardboard sleeve houses both a steelbook and a cardboard case (a mere mortal collector's edition only offers one of either). The steelbook holds both game disks and a bonus disk (the contents of which are still a mystery to me), plus the instructions, obviously, and a download code for some GAME-exclusive armour, and the fold-out cardboard case contains a plastic wallet-size Cerberus Network membership card (Mass Effect 2's platform for downloading DLC, which costs a completely unreasonable 1200 MS Points for anyone who buys the game preowned), which then grants you access to a downloadable squad member and side-quest, as well as a hardback artbook and the first issue of the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series. It doesn't look like much, but it seems worth it when it's in your hands. It's safe to say that, apart from the Guitar Hero bundles, this is the most expensive game I've ever bought though.
On to the game. I can't say too much, mainly because I haven't had time to form a proper opinion on it just yet. I will say that it doesn't seem quite as good as the first one, it just doesn't feel as deep. The game is more of a shooter it seems, and less of an RPG. Your squadmates, for example, have a default look, which isn't changeable. And the guns have technologically regressed, and now need reloading, like every other FPS. They tried to explain it, something about the advanced weaponry needing extra coolant that needs to be changed, but any way you look at it it's still reloading, and you need to collect the coolant, which is still ammo. The graphics, which were my only gripe with the first one, have been improved tenfold, there's none of the scruffy shadows and the texture pop up is entirely gone. It makes my pasty, deformed Shepard look a lot, ahem, more noticeable. Another plus-point is the fact that you can sprint outside of combat now, and for a lot longer, so you don't have to dad-run around the Citadel anymore.
The new characters (who I won't go into in detail for risk of spoilers) don't seem as likable as the ones in the first game though. I've seen a few returning faces, Seth Green's abhorrent Joker is still around and even more hateful, and Dr Chakwas (an anagram of 'hacksaw', fact fans) is knocking about on the ship. There's also been brief appearances from everyone's favourite bigots Ashley and Navigator Pressley, Cpt. Arbiter (sorry, Anderson) and Udina, Tali and even that Asari I let escape from Saren's lab on Virmire the first time round. There are a few new races too, the only ones I've seen so far are called the Vorcha, who are very theatrical enemies with the way they bare their fangs and growl as they talk. They are basically the monster equivalent of Dick Dastardly.
I'll report more next week, after I've had a bit more time with it. In other news this week, I earned my first ever Platinum Trophy on the PS3, for Assassin's Creed II. For the XBox fanboys out there, a Platinum Trophy is awarded when you collect all of the other Trophies, which usually mirror the Achievements on a 360 game. So in effect, I 1000ed it. And on a similar note, I got that 490 point Cheevo on Band Hero. I'm not addicted to Gamerscore, I promise. I was very proud of myself for not buying Tatsunoko vs. Capcom today, opting to be the bigger man and actually get my nephew a birthday present. Mario Kart Wii, if you were wondering. Oh, and ask Raz7el what happened when we played Dead or Alive 4 today. Laters...
The add-on is triggered when you find Fallout 3's fabled UFO crash site, previously infamous for the ridiculously powerful Alien Blaster you find there, and are 'beamed up' so to speak, to the titular alien mothership where you are experimented on and placed in an induced coma. When you awaken, you are greeted in a cell by a lady named Somah. She throws the idea out there that if you stage a fist fight the guards will unlock the door, and then the two of you can fuck them up and escape, and surprisingly it works (although she neglected to mention that she's bricks hard and very good at unarmed combat, and that resulted in a crippled head for me). So begins a tale of survival and escapism, involving a cowboy, a samurai, about a million aliens and a 200 year old little girl, but I'll not ruin any of that for you.
I actually enjoyed it, not as much as Point Lookout but definitely as much as The Pitt and more than Broken Steel and Operation Anchorage. It appeased the latent Sci-Fi geek in me, and kept me occupied for pretty much a full day. There are a bunch of new weapons available, my favourite of which was the Alien Disintegrator, a sort of Laser Rifle with a clip capacity of 100 shots and a reload time of under a second. At the end of the story I came away with upwards of 1600 rounds for it, and that's after heavy usage throughout too, so it will most likely see me through the last four Cheevos that I haven't acquired yet. Also to note is the fact that all of the alien equipment is extremely light, most of it doesn't weigh a thing, so you can virtually bankrupt the Capital Wasteland when you get back with your loot, which oddly enough none of the merchants bat an eyelid at. Much recommended anyway.
Fallout 3 has pretty much taken up the bulk of my week, but the big story is today's release of Mass Effect 2, the collector's edition of which saw me £60 poorer this morning. First things first, the collector's content is actually really good. The double-thick cardboard sleeve houses both a steelbook and a cardboard case (a mere mortal collector's edition only offers one of either). The steelbook holds both game disks and a bonus disk (the contents of which are still a mystery to me), plus the instructions, obviously, and a download code for some GAME-exclusive armour, and the fold-out cardboard case contains a plastic wallet-size Cerberus Network membership card (Mass Effect 2's platform for downloading DLC, which costs a completely unreasonable 1200 MS Points for anyone who buys the game preowned), which then grants you access to a downloadable squad member and side-quest, as well as a hardback artbook and the first issue of the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series. It doesn't look like much, but it seems worth it when it's in your hands. It's safe to say that, apart from the Guitar Hero bundles, this is the most expensive game I've ever bought though.
On to the game. I can't say too much, mainly because I haven't had time to form a proper opinion on it just yet. I will say that it doesn't seem quite as good as the first one, it just doesn't feel as deep. The game is more of a shooter it seems, and less of an RPG. Your squadmates, for example, have a default look, which isn't changeable. And the guns have technologically regressed, and now need reloading, like every other FPS. They tried to explain it, something about the advanced weaponry needing extra coolant that needs to be changed, but any way you look at it it's still reloading, and you need to collect the coolant, which is still ammo. The graphics, which were my only gripe with the first one, have been improved tenfold, there's none of the scruffy shadows and the texture pop up is entirely gone. It makes my pasty, deformed Shepard look a lot, ahem, more noticeable. Another plus-point is the fact that you can sprint outside of combat now, and for a lot longer, so you don't have to dad-run around the Citadel anymore.
The new characters (who I won't go into in detail for risk of spoilers) don't seem as likable as the ones in the first game though. I've seen a few returning faces, Seth Green's abhorrent Joker is still around and even more hateful, and Dr Chakwas (an anagram of 'hacksaw', fact fans) is knocking about on the ship. There's also been brief appearances from everyone's favourite bigots Ashley and Navigator Pressley, Cpt. Arbiter (sorry, Anderson) and Udina, Tali and even that Asari I let escape from Saren's lab on Virmire the first time round. There are a few new races too, the only ones I've seen so far are called the Vorcha, who are very theatrical enemies with the way they bare their fangs and growl as they talk. They are basically the monster equivalent of Dick Dastardly.
I'll report more next week, after I've had a bit more time with it. In other news this week, I earned my first ever Platinum Trophy on the PS3, for Assassin's Creed II. For the XBox fanboys out there, a Platinum Trophy is awarded when you collect all of the other Trophies, which usually mirror the Achievements on a 360 game. So in effect, I 1000ed it. And on a similar note, I got that 490 point Cheevo on Band Hero. I'm not addicted to Gamerscore, I promise. I was very proud of myself for not buying Tatsunoko vs. Capcom today, opting to be the bigger man and actually get my nephew a birthday present. Mario Kart Wii, if you were wondering. Oh, and ask Raz7el what happened when we played Dead or Alive 4 today. Laters...
Friday, 8 January 2010
I only speak-a, how you say, "Fractured English". Is how my parents used to speak-a back home.
As planned, last Saturday I braved the Meadowhall shopping centre for a copy of the Assassin's Creed II White Edition, and found solace in the upstairs GAME store, and a quite needy-seeming sales assistant with a ginger beard who assured me that he had the White Edition on the 360 (As I had opted for the PS3 version) and it was a great game. If I'm quite willing to shell out £54.99 of my (wife's) hard-earned cash on a videogame, I don't really need the extra persuasion.
Firstly, the Ezio plastic statuette (as I'm going to call it, action figures have articulation) is of a really good quality. It's quite big at a reported 20cm (I haven't checked), Sacred 2's ended up being about 5 or 6cm tall, even though on the promotional pictures it was taller than the PS3 game case and judging by the size of the Collector's Edition casing I had felt a little cheated when it tumbled out of the box and into my lap, it's sword and wings bent out of shape. She's about the size of the Ryu and C. Viper models in the Street Fighter IV set, but then again there were two of those in the pack. Anyway.
As well as being a fair size, it feels substantial and is very well painted (I first thought his eyes looked a bit dodgy, but in all fairness they do in the game too). Every little detail is captured in a quality that you wouldn't expect from a GAME exclusive pack, way better than the Edward Carnby figure in their Alone in the Dark set. But saying that, I caught sight of the Soap MacTavish model from the GAME exclusive edition of Modern Warfare 2 while I was in the shop, and that was even bigger and just as well made too.
So on to the game. At first, I can't say I was impressed. You begin as Desmond Miles, behind-the-scenes hero of the series, and have to go through a lengthy intro sequence as you escape from your captors from the first game with assassin double-agent Lucy. Now Desmond happens to be voiced by one Nolan North, and it appears that since the first Assassin's Creed (hereby referred to as AC), the good folk at Ubisoft have played both Uncharted games and realised his potential, and have decided to basically make Desmond into a carbon copy of Drake. He quips and wisecracks in his Whedon-esque way, and I'm sure he never used to do that in the original. While (without the proper direction) that is slightly annoying, the real mind-melting irritant comes in the form of Danny Wallace, the jerk who made a career out of being Dave Gorman's mate and copying his brand of doing-something-stupid-for-money comedy, while not carrying it off as well as the other. Whatever he is anyway, he's not an actor, voice or otherwise. That's why they didn't let him play himself in Yes Man, because Jim Carey is both an actor and actually funny. So whenever he pipes up in ACII (luckily you don't see him often, his character is modelled after him and the graphics of ACII aren't great in close-up shots), with his sarcastic prickness, it makes me want to beat him to death with a copy of 'Are You Dave Gorman?'. I still might.
Well, after you finally get in the Animus again, the game goes from strength to strength. It's hard to say what makes ACII better than it's predecessor, but it just is. Everything, from the charismatic hero to the more fluid assassinations just feels 'right'. One thing I have noticed is that AC was very businesslike in structure, you're given a list of people to kill and you have to systematically find and kill each of them. That's it. ACII isn't all about assassinating people (although given the title, it's still the core theme), there are plenty of other things to do, and not just in sidequests too. The main story has you doing a range of things from beating up your Sister's cheating boyfriend to taking part in carnival games in a scene that actually reminded me of Bully in it's atmosphere, the city is decorated in banners and flags and such, quite like the Halloween segment of Rockstar's overlooked classic. There are also assassin's tombs to find, and while you're in them the game becomes more like a traditional platformer, a bit of a homage to games like Tomb Raider, or indeed Ubisoft's own Prince of Persia series. That brand of game has fast become one of my favourite genres.
It's a fantastic game. It's had me playing for just about a solid week, and that includes a pretty much all-day session on Tuesday while I was snowed in without my laptop for comfort (the power pack has died, and I've been forced to borrow a top of the range £630 Sony VAIO monstrosity on Windows 7 to blog for the last couple of weeks), and I'm yet to get bored with it. It's rare that that happens nowadays. I wish I'd played it before I'd written my 2009 top ten, because it deserves a place in there.
In other news, I actually was at the end of Butcher Bay last week, but the game had glitched and not given me a minigun when it was supposed to have, rendering me unable to get past the two walking tanks in the next room. I have tried reading guide after guide on the internet, and each one tells me I'm supposed to have a minigun so I'm just going to YouTube the ending before I start Dark Athena when I get around to playing it. Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond appeared on the PSN store last night and as I was actually quite excited to play it, I downloaded the trial version and was severely underwhelmed. If the developers had just copied Shadow Complex's right stick aiming and auto-aiming into the background it would work, but using the same stick to aim and move is just awful, and having to press a button to aim at background enemies is very inconvenient. Plus, the game is fucking hard too. And with three weeks to go to the sequel, I've started yet another playthrough of Mass Effect, but since the blog's conception this is the second time I've played it, so I won't go on about that too much. Forgot how awesome it is though, in gameplay and art direction, so it's boosted my excitement tenfold. Wonder if GAME are doing a midnight opening?
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