We don't speak anymore of War...

As an avid Mortal Kombat fan and an avid God of War fan, I saw last weekend's new trailer for the upcoming Mortal Kombat game unveiling Kratos as a guest character, and promptly went mad. Heading over to the old Mortal Kombat forum that I used to frequent a while back, I found that, to no surprise whatsoever, the franchise's 'fanbase' were less than happy, as they have been for every new MK release since I joined the boards, back in the days of MK: Deadly Alliance.

Upon telling them all they were overreacting, as a response to one guy trolling the threads with Kratos spam-hate and another hypochondriac claiming that this single character addition, who might I add has no bearing on the storyline whatsoever and is simply there as an Easter Egg, had sent the 'good' (obviously ignoring the sales figures and the fans' own reactions to the series for the past decade or so) name of Mortal Kombat 'down the drain', I was informed that I have 'no respect for the series' that I have followed since the age of seven, and have bought and still own at least one copy of each game in the series in some form or another. So, I feel prompted to write in support of Kratos' appearance.

Financially, we'll begin with. Kratos himself is a household name. He's starred in six of his own games over four systems (look it up, there was a GoW for Mobile Phones), and made cameos in others such as LittleBigPlanet, Modnation Racers, Heavenly Sword (in a fashion) and SoulCalibur. Despite being a PlayStation-exclusive series, each God of War game has drastically outsold the Mortal Kombat that was released nearest to it's own date. So really, it's an honour that such a high-profile name should make it into a series which has fallen so far, and the GoW fans it will draw into MK, which no doubt greatly outnumber it's own fans (who all seem to hate the games anyway), will help ensure financial success and spur WB Games into funding the continuation of the series. But of course, if Mr. Ed Boon wants to make any money out of the game, then he's instantly a sellout.

Right then, my second point. Kratos fits in with the Mortal Kombat universe. I'm hard pressed to think of another videogame protagonist that is as brutal and visceral as the War God himself, and MK seems to be trying to push the boundaries of violence and brutality with the new release. Not only that, but Kratos is on a mission to destroy the Gods, and MK features no less than three Gods as playable characters throughout the series. In SoulCalibur he was potentially wasted, because of the lack of gore, and he didn't fit in with the uber-clean and shiny look of an eastern-made game. MK has both bases covered.

It's come to my attention that since the Kratos bombshell dropped, Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein have showed interest in slapping a Gears of War character into the 360 version, which is sure to rub salt into the wounds of the pent-up masses. I'm hoping for the Cole Train, not only do I love him almost as much as Kratos, but his carefree, comic relief attitude is sure to ruffle the feathers of many a rectally clenched MK 'purist'. I can't wait.

So, as a little bit of fun, I set up a petition urging David Jaffe to include our beloved Kratos in every game he possibly can from now on. I would love to see him manually decapitating a Chimera in Resistance 3, applying sandal to Hig in Killzone 3, high fiving Lara Croft after helping her uncover some ancient Greek treasure or kicking back and relaxing after disemboweling the Grim Reaper for trying to interfere with his indoor barbeque in the next expansion pack for The Sims 3. You can view and sign the petition here, so go for it, just for a laugh. Get your pets to sign it too, and your gran, she loves a bit of dismemberment.

And to sign out, I thought I'd prepare a little something for you guys.

Not the biggest MK collection going, but not bad for someone who has no respect for the series. See you guys later.

I wanna be a Cowboy, baby...

John Marston. Rough rider. No, you don't want nada. None of this six gun in this, brother running this. Buffalo soldier, look, it's like I told you. Any damsel that's in distress, she'll be out of that dress when she meets John Marston.

That's quite enough of that. Yes, as I said last week, I've caved and brought home a copy of Rockstar's latest insta-classic opus Red Dead Redemption. It was the Sunday before last, I'd finished Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands in probably about five hours, and, despite enjoying it greatly, was stinging a little because I'd opted to side with the underdog, and re-home that from the shelves of my local HMV instead of Red Dead. My reasoning was that The Prince had a better track record, with The Sands of Time being fantastic, and the 2008 PoP and PoP Classic both being enjoyable too, whereas Red Dead Revolver was a steaming (but apt) pile of horse shit. Besides, between Calamity Jane, Brokeback Mountain and the Village People, cowboys are about the gayest thing in the universe. But I knew deep down, that if I had bowed down to Rockstar's invariably foul-mouthed, violent and morally ambiguous genius, I'd probably have barely scratched the surface by then.

And to make matters worse, as I sat sulking with my wallet running on empty, my wife had offered to buy it for me, and her two brothers and the girlfriend of the eldest (who, might I add, is not a fan of videogames at all) were all siding with her. Now, I don't like charity, which often causes animosity in my marriage, but after a couple of hours the temptation was killing me. I gave in, and let a higher power make the decision for me.

The Magic 8-ball said "Looking good".

So, as tradition goes, I'll start from the beginning. John Marston is an ex-gang runner, who has renounced his ways and settled down with a wife and sired a son and daughter, the latter claimed from him before the events of the game. All is going well in his new life (well, dead daughter aside), until some government types turn up and abduct his family and force him into picking up his shootin' irons once more and hunting down the very men he used to ride with. And that's where you, the player, comes in.

The game can be very atmospheric at times, it makes you forget that you're being chased by bandits.

Right from the outset the game's ties to Grand Theft Auto are obvious, with the HUD being virtually the same, and the look and feel being very similar too. So, in order to keep this post from becoming an essay, I'll avoid retreading old ground and focus on what's different from it's spiritual predecessor. First and most obvious is the fact that you're riding horses, not cars. The horses are controlled much in the same way as maneuvering your character, allowing you to gallop by tapping the X button (that's a PS3 X, A if you're on the 360) at the cost of stamina. I have seen a few rudimentary cars in cutscenes, but I'll confess I don't know if you get to drive any.

Commandeering a horse is far more complex than simply approaching them and pressing Triangle too, one must first lasso the beast, then approach it, mount it (with Triangle) and then use the analogue sticks to keep balance while the steed throws a tantrum for a minute or so. Then, once you hitch it to a post outside a property you own, it's yours, and will come to you whenever you whistle for it.

Next there's the setting. After GTA IV's sprawling city, RDR's wild west locale has more in common with Fallout 3, although there's a lot less to see. RDR's world is basically split into three categories: deserts, canyons and ramshackle shanty towns, so it does tend to get a little bit monotonous. So it's good that there are a lot more random encounters than in GTA IV to break up the tedium, from full-blown side missions with their own story arcs, to simple chase downs and protect missions. The first one I encountered was a guy in the desert who asked me for a lift. As I slowed down beside him, he lassoed me from my saddle and was off with my horse like lightning. My rifle put an end to that.

My one and only gripe is that the protagonist, John Marston, is a 'reformed character who's done a lot of bad things in his life and renounced his ways only to be forced back into them once more, even though he only wants to get along and not cause any trouble'. So that's Niko Bellic, Johnny Klebitz, Luis Lopez, Carl Johnson and Jimmy Hopkins, from the last few GTAs and Bully respectively, all over again. it's becoming a bit too noticeable now Rockstar.

In conclusion, the game is fucking brilliant. Redemption is a very apt title, as it improves no end over Revolver, and the atmosphere is great too, helped along by a soundtrack that's very reminiscent of that of Bully in places. Yet another contender for Game of the Year.

I've also had a bash on Lost Planet finally, and it's not bad. When I first played it years ago, I instantly hated the game for it's piss poor controls and aiming mechanic, but I've given it more of a chance now and am able to look past it. It feels very old-school, and indeed looks like it's been ported from a PS2 release, a bit like Phantasy Star Universe does. In fact, it has a very similar feeling to Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, only a fair bit better. Not bad at all.

 Vampires. They might do a lot of things, but they don't fucking sparkle.

And back to Oblivion (let it be known that at any given time somebody in my house will be playing Oblivion, at least until Bethesda get off their arses and give us a sequel). I've been struggling with the dreaded Vampire Cure quest this week, although the addition of The Wizard's Tower DLC made things a lot easier than the last time I did it. I still can't see any advantage to being a vampire in that game. And take heed: Shepherds Pie does not cure vampirism. Just in case you're ever struck down by it, in Oblivion or real life.

And finally, after wading through an epoch of updates and faulty matchmaking systems, blogger Raz7el, regular commenter Paul and I managed to get a co-op game going on Resistance 2 yesterday, only for it to end up being an unplayable mess. So we then endured the same updates on Uncharted 2 and tried out the co-op modes that Nate and co had to offer, and they were an absolute blast, if a bit short on content. The competitive side of things wasn't that great, but the three co-op scenarios provided us with a couple of hours of thrills so all is not lost. I really should give that another playthrough sometime. But for now, I'm off to play more Read Dead, in hope that I might meet this lady. Wicky wicky wild wild.

Tibet is about the best co-op level, offering platforming as well as shooting.

Supplemental: I feel obligated to mention that I fired up Red Dead last night after posting and was immediately treated to lush forests and snowy mountain tops. I thought a week and a half was enough time to play this before writing, I was obviously wrong.

The power you're supplying, it's electrifying!

Once again I step up to the mantle with very little to write about. Who's stupid idea was it to make this a weekly thing?

Well, I had a bit more of a go with InFamous, and it still seems pretty shocking (pun intended). I noticed a very annoying game mechanic, where the main character, Cole, would automatically attach himself to the nearest ledge whenever I would jump. Yeah, this is standard in any vertical platforming game nowadays, but most usually just apply it to the ledges you're aiming at, not just any that happen to be near you. I was chasing some kind of visual memory of a target who'd been there previously, to find his current whereabouts, and when I jumped over a dumpster I ended up dangling from an adjacent bus stop and losing my quarry.

You'll survive that fall. Stub your toe and you're fucked.

Cole also has a bit of a Superfriends-era Superman thing going on, in that he seems to develop a convenient new power every time a scenario demands it. Upon finding a dead woman on the ground, Cole exclaims that he's going to try something completely off-the-wall, and touches her head. Hey fucking presto, he can read her memories, despite the fact that the brain is actually dead, holds no impulses and is effectively cat food now. Who would have known?

He also gets an ability where he is able to heal dying civilians by jolting them with his lightning powers. All well and good, if these victims are suffering from a massive cardiac arrest and need defibrillating, but they are mostly dying from a plague, and would probably actually not benefit at all from several thousand volts directly to the heart.

You know what, the more I write about it, the more I hate it. Fuck it, I'm shelving it. It's a ridiculous game, even for one of the Superhero genre. Cole, for all I care, can develop a hunch, and jump off a building, to see if he has a 'nosedive-into-concrete-and-survive' power. Oh wait, he did. AND IT WORKED. But about 3 bullets still kill him.

I also finally got around to trying my hand at the Borderlands expansion pack The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. Guess what? That's pretty dick too. I don't know if I've just tired of Borderlands or what, but the game that made it into my Top 10 of last year doesn't seem to hold the same charm any more. My main problem with Zombie Island is that it just seems like they've simply bogged you down with thousands of respawning enemies to add longevity to the game, as it seems to take hours to travel a few hundred yards.

This screenshot tells you all you need to know about Zombie Island

But the thing is, I can't remember exactly what I liked so much about Borders anyway. From what I remember it was simply just walking through boring, samey landscapes and shooting things, and that's exactly what's on show with Zombie Island too. Surely there must have been something more, but if there was, it's evaded me. Anyway, I think I'm done with Borders now, the rest of the DLC will probably go untouched.

Finally, I downloaded Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online on the PS3. It plays pretty much exactly the same as the PSP version, which is no bad thing as said version is just about the best Tekken in the series. Haven't tried it online yet, but I have had countless hours of multiplayer on the PSP version so I know to expect more of the same, just probably with more people who actually know what they're doing, and consequently more ass-kickings for me.

Speaking of PSP, I finally let go of my frankensteined PSP 1000 (Casing and inner components of a JP white console, screen and face buttons of a UK Black one) and upgraded to an absolutely gorgeous Radiant Red PSP 3000 (I'm boycotting the PSP Go, because it's shit). The console is taking some getting used to, with the tighter analogue nub and the smooth, handgrip-less back, and obviously it's a lot lighter and quieter than the Phat, but playing LittleBigPlanet on my TV was great last night, and the UMD movies are near DVD quality even on the 21" inch screen in my bedroom.

Isn't she lovely, isn't she wonderful...

So now, with the ability to play the games without squinting at a tiny screen and being able to hold the console in my lap like a controller, instead of enduring arm-fatigue from holding it in front of my face, some of my unfinished games like Resistance: Retribution, GTA CTW and Tales of Eternia might get some more play. And upcoming games like God of War: Ghost of Sparta and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will seem all the more special too. Bravo Sony.

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.

No gun shooting, for Rudy tonight... No retributing, everything is alright...

I'm back!
Spent the last week in Scarborough, having been married and stuff. It was a great ceremony, and aside from a stupidly parked van and some obnoxious wankers in a pub, a great week. But oh, this blog is about videogames, and two weeks have passed!
The first week at home I spent mainly playing through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, trying to get it fresh in my mind before Uncharted 2 plops through my letter box in a couple of weeks. I don't care what anyone says, in my opinion it's probably the best current-gen game so far, speaking from a single-player perspective. In fact, only the XBox fanboys who are content to do the exact same things over and over again on multiplayer Gears or Left 4 Dead seem to have anything bad to say about it, and that's mainly about a lack of multiplayer, which will change in a few weeks. They seem to overlook the absolutely gorgeous graphics and animation, brilliant voice-acting and the fact that the gameplay, while doing nothing new, is among the best in it's field.
Anyway, ranting aside, I went to Scarborough armed with my PSP, and while I was there I got very much acquainted with Resistance: Retribution. At first I was unsure, with the frankly unconventional controls and Razzy-worthy dialogue and voice-acting, but it ended up dragging me in, and is actually more entertaining than Resistance 2. The main character, James Grayson, is a far cry from the solemn, heroic Nathan Hale: He's foul mouthed, racist and sounds like a mixture of Ray Winstone and Kano from Mortal Kombat. In the opening scenes of the game he stumbles upon his brother, Johnny, half way through being converted into a Chimera, and is forced to kill him for his own good. He then clicks his heels, tips his hat and sets off to kill all of the Chimera by himself, like a Cockney Punisher.
Well, a Cockney Punisher who occasionally slips into an Australian accent anyway. The accents are inconsistent throughout, at one point a soldier went from being Scottish to English and back again in one cutscene like an Oblivion hobo. The game was obviously acted out by a non-British cast. But the one-liners in the game did keep me entertained and had me struggling for a title to this post. My favourite was 'I will rape your skull'. God bless.
It also keeps the feel from the first Resistance, more of a wartime aesthetic, as opposed to the futuristic and very American feel of R2, which in my opinion was one of the things that lost the series' appeal. The other main things that R2 changed were the limited weapon capacity and regenerating health as seen in, well, every other shooter around at the minute, losing the series' uniqueness, and both are back to the retro styles in Retribution too, which is nice.
The game looks gorgeous too. In fact, if you have a PSP just buy it for fuck's sake. Unless you're french, that is; it's really quite racist in places. It's definitely one of the stronger titles on the handheld though.
One of the first things that my new wife did after the day was hand me my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade. Granted, she was playing on easy to my hard, but it was very one-sided. Realising afterwards that it is really just a port of Guitar Hero III, where the hard setting is slightly out of my comfort zone, we had two rematches with me on medium, both victories for me, and another on hard, hers again. Great fun. Afterwards we cooled down with a game on House of the Dead 4, which is strongly in need of a console port.
Also in the arcades we had a go on Outrun 2, which was great fun and reminded me that I still need to get Outrun Arcade on the PS3 or 360. Then we stumbled upon something else...
Paradise Lost is an arcade game from Ubisoft, sporting the artwork and environments from FarCry. You basically sit on gun emplacements and hold the trigger down while knobheads in Crocodile Dundee hats run into your line of fire and collapse into frankly weird shapes thanks to the sub-par ragdoll physics. The best part of the game, in fact, was the fact that in the continue screen you can alter the speed of the countdown by pressing the triggers and grenade buttons. And that is saying a lot. A bit of a read on Wikipedia tells me it is actually supposed to be an arcade version of FarCry. I suppose so. And Susie requests that I tell everyone that, for what it's worth, she had a higher kill count than me, and therefore won.
To wrap this up, my old XBox 360 came back, but the wife bought me an Elite anyway, along with Guitar Hero 5, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Ninja Gaiden II, Prototype, Red Faction Guerrilla and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which should keep me occupied for a while. Also got Halo 2 on standby too, as I have only played the first one up until now, and I'm quite looking forward to hopefully making a late discovery as to what the fuss is all about. Verdict next week.