A Tribute To My Xbox.

Today, just as I was due to finish off the last few bits of Red Faction: Guerrilla, my Xbox 360 Elite decided it wasn’t having any of it, and winked that moody three-ringed red eye at me. I’m devastated. I thought it’d never happen to me, but it has, and I could throttle someone at Microsoft right now.

It seems to be bouncing between three red lights, and simply just crashing and freezing whenever I try to do anything with it. I’m going to experiment over the course of the night, whilst putting up the Red Faction: Guerrilla review regardless, I’ll link to it as and when it’s up. Expect updates.

Update: It’s still not working, though thre three red lights are nowhere to be seen, it just crashes without fail twenty seconds into booting up.

On the upside, I’ve done two podcasts, some articles and I’m seeing Bruce Springsteen tomorrow, so all is not lost. Again, apologies for the lack of writing on the blog itself, but as you can tell from my previous work section I’ve been absolutely swamped with an average of around a thousand words of edited content written a day. Tired, but soldiering on.

2009
06/24
CATEGORY
News
TAGS


Write comment

I’m Not a Pig, I Swear.

I had the flu, or something like it, this week. It’s been horrid. On the upside, I did get a fair bit of work done, as you can see with the latest Plot Wholes here and a feature on Games Workshop and their respective videogame adaptations over at Resolution, found here.

Next week I’ll be recording yet another podcast on the Friday with Sinan Kubba, of Big Red Potion fame as our guest for the week (Jason’s off to Disneyland, bless him), a retrospective on Grim Fandango, and I’m off to preview a very exciting new title next Friday that I’ll turn into content later that evening. Aren’t I the little soldier.

Now to go run Oblivion and Fallout 3 at the same time, with Lex playing the latter and me finishing off the former. Epic. I’ll be posting tomorrow and Friday, with Friday’s articles of the week going up asap.

Update: I’ve just finished a retrospective for Resolution Magazine, featured here, and I’m really proud of it, I think it’s seriously hard to write about games you like, especially as a retrospective. Go team Christos. Have a look, and feel free to rant about whether it’s crap or not, I’m happy with any criticism I get.

2009
06/17
CATEGORY
Update
TAGS




Write comment

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Just a quick update, as you may have noticed my posts went from a fair few to zero this week. I was up in Coventry, and now I’m back.

There you have it. That was the update.

I’ve got a big bit of work I’m ploughing into tonight which will go live tomorrow, and that will be eventually followed by my biggest bit of work to date later this summer, I’m hoping. Expect a Resolution feature tomorrow, Plot Wholes on Wednesday, and a review of Red Faction: Guerilla for Ve3tro later in the month.

As for some weekly interesting bits to read:

This is an example of Shamus “Broken Pixels” Young’s new column (well, I say new, but it’s a few months old at this point), and for the most part, it’s fairly good stuff to read. Of course, whenever someone starts a new column they’ll cover the bases (DRM/piracy, videogame violence, and E3), and this is an example of his work post base-covering. Sometimes I think he’s about to segue into outright flamebating, but for the most part he makes some good points about some of the unrealistic expectations we have every year at E3.

Yahtzee makes some great points about moral choices in videogames in an off-on-a-British-scale-tangent rant during his review of inFAMOUS (I can’t stand writing titles like that). Worth a listen, as for those who have stopped watching him because he’s become too “samey” recently, his reviews have lately seen a huge return to the witty originality that made him so damn famous in the first place.

Enjoy your Sunday evening.

2009
06/14
CATEGORY
Update
Weekend Browsing
TAGS




Write comment

Addiction to Real Life: Resisting the Sims

Next to me, my wonderful beau sits playing The Sims 3, a title that has stormed UK and US charts in the past month. A title that is making me reconsider my carefully-budgeted month, forgoing financial sanity in favour of rocking out to the house design music and revelling in Simlish culture. But why is it so addictive? It’s essentially just real life, so why can we never put it down?

Because we’re not in danger.

Playing Bioshock last night with the lights off, I thought about what made games with combat as a major mechanic so intimidating, so scary. Even in a game where a Vita-Chamber will thrust you back into the land of the living within five seconds of your departure from said land, it’s still a daunting prospect to explore Rapture because you’re constantly in danger. Splicers, Big Daddies, the loss of Rapture’s structural integrity… all these obstacles between you and your freedom from this underwater hell will render you dead at the earliest possible opportunity. We shut down. We close off our emotional circuits, and as a result we are able to take on Rapture with a smile and a shotgun.

But with The Sims, bar our sims getting old and finally kicking the proverbial bucket, we have absolutely nothing to fear. Think about it. There’s work, and paying bills, but ultimately, it’s seriously difficult to “lose”. With no difficulty setting made obvious to the player, there’s only the small obstacles that come with you as a player. If you’re bad at making sure he goes to work on time, then by all means create a sim who’s a workaholic and they’ll have the drive to do it themselves. The ability to compensate for your organisational shortcomings as a player as early as character creation is a subtle attempt to make you comfortable. This is not the bipolar hardcore environment of Ikaruga, nor is this the lead healing role in a forty-man raid attempt at three in the morning.

Take, for example, the sims Lex created. If you’re familiar with Grey’s Anatomy, you’re familiar with the lead, Meredith Grey, and her eternal love-source Derek Shepherd (played by the now omnipresent Patrick Dempsey). She created them, appearance, lifetime goal (world-reknowned surgeon) and all, and placed them in the game.

Now, you’d assume this wouldn’t work out, that there would be some obstacle between you and instant fun in a game like this, where by and large you are as involved with everyday problems as it is possible to be, whereas the cast of Grey’s Anatomy are not. They do not take out the trash, make dinner, or mop up spilled water next to the shower. They do not buy new furniture for their houses, and they most certainly do not meet their neighbours. However, it seems with The Sims it becomes possible to expand a TV universe into the real world, to make real their existence as human beings more than characters simply by placing them in the game and playing out the parts of their lives that we don’t see on-screen.

As for danger, there are real dangers, but they can be avoided, not with planning, or skill-trees, but with common sense. Own an oven? Put a fire alarm above it, and you’re never in any real danger of your house being immolated before the fire department arrive on the scene. The amount of problems you can solve is only limited by how many you create. Personally, I’d like to see a clumsy, forgetful, lazy, messy sim be completely balanced out by a maid and a good enough job to pay for the items they break so carelessly.

The only real difficulty stems from keeping them happy. Hunger, bladder, energy, social, hygiene and fun are all bars on the GUI you’ll need to take into careful consideration, as if the sim is in the red, they’ll get angry with you (breaking the fourth wall somewhat, which is terrifying when you think about the sheer number of titles in which that never occurs) and probably end up losing their job due to lack of sleep and a poor mood.

As I write this, a new sim has just managed to set his house on fire because he can’t cook. Off goes the fire alarm, and he stands next to the fire and panics. The fire department do arrive, albeit in a tiny truck that doesn’t seem to have any kind of hose, and there’s a delay as more and more of his house begins to burn. Insurance coughs up 200 simoleans, and for some reason the fireman is hanging out in the bedroom. Sometimes The Sims struggles to make everything work without sacrificing logical events being the only events to occur whilst playing. Sometimes sims with stand and stare at the walls, and sometimes sims with mobile phones will stand in a room with no doors and die simply because they’re not independent enough to realise they could just call the police.

But to see the sims in Rapture? That, my friends, would be an experiment worth conducting. To see them panic as Jack runs past using an Incinerate plasmid to ignite the splicers around him who are simply trying to talk about work and rent. Atlas once speaks about the splicers and states that maybe the reason they all wear masks is because “maybe they remember who they used to be, and they’re ashamed.” Alternatively, they could simply just be masking their anger at the fact The Sims is geared towards people who enjoy everyday life, whilst sucking all desire to do anything but play it out of the person who buys it.

I still want it, and I will have it. But for now, I’m comfortable shooting splicers and saving Little Sisters.

 

NB: (In other news, I interviewed the CEO of Paradox Interactive (Stalin vs. Martians, etc) for Resolution last week. See it here.

2009
06/09
CATEGORY
Musings and Ramblings
TAGS




Write comment

This Little Light of Mine.

This is going to be the shortest post ever, but what the hell.

Kieron Gillen mentioned my article on culture in videogames today, in his weekly Sunday Papers feature.

I’m proud of myself, and it’s nice to have one of the people you really look up to say “hey, good work.”

2009
06/07
CATEGORY
News
TAGS

1 comment

Weekend Browsing

Every Friday, I finish off my writing for the week, sit back, and do some reading. So a la Kieron Gillen at rockpapershotgun, I’m going to select a few articles, give a few reasons, and link away.

Speaking of Rock Paper Shotgun, their exclusive preview of Left 4 Dead 2 went up on their site not too long after the trailer made its debut during the Microsoft E3 press conference. You can check it out here once you’re done inscribing Doug Lombardi’s name onto that special-edition Episode 3 bullet.

Lewis Denby over at Resolution Magazine gives a great look into Red Faction: Guerilla. For a game that deals quite heavily with the concept of technology and other worlds, it seems to have retained a remarkable amount of solid gameplay. For the account of the title by a remarkable journalist, click here.

If you’ve been following the recent controversy surrounding games based on Guantanamo Bay, rape and terrorist activity in the Middle East, Andy Chalk has an interesting read for you over at The Escapist. Stick with the article until the second page; although it seems like he states rape and violence are just as censorable as eachother, this is by no means the case. I read halfway through, ranted, then realised he hadn’t made his point yet. Go here to experience journalism with balls.

–

In other news, I start my regular contribution to Resolution magazine this Monday with an interview of high caliber. Check back then for a link, and enjoy the weekend.

2009
06/05
CATEGORY
Weekend Browsing
TAGS

1 comment

The Ones We Left Behind

Are there any games that you’ve ever dismissed because of a fatal flaw, a bad review, or generally negative vibes only to return to it, weeks, months, years later and realise how brilliant it actually was? I’ve played my share of titles by now that I once relegated to my mental bargain bin, and they’ve surprised me. I was sceptical about a game like Restaurant Empire 2, at first, but to play it and experience a business sim that I wouldn’t have touched had it not been a review gave me access to a game I enjoyed far more than I thought I would have (said review is here).

At first, I laughed at Mirror’s Edge. Parkour? Cartoon-anime woman? Briefcases and red highlighting? You’re having a laugh, DICE, I said to myself, smug in the knowledge the game would be completely ridiculous and sell poorly.

Then I downloaded the demo.

Never have I been so excited to purchase the full game after playing the short demo that popped up one day on Xbox Live. I flew. I jumped. I slid, and I ziplined, and I couldn’t express the utter joy that was playing the demo. It was technically a tutorial, but I played it five times in a row, simply to enjoy the fluidity of movement and the wonderful soundtrack. Then I bought the full game, and I became even more exciting.

Visually, it was nothing short of breathtaking. The urban vista spanned miles in every direction, white surfaces glowing in the unrelenting sun. You could almost feel the weather, the sound of wind whistling past your face, as you looked down at the road beneath the skyscrapers you so relentlessly bounded between, and you could see your feet. Let me emphasise this again. You could see your feet. FPS titles fail hard in my eyes when I feel like a floating gun. Not here. I saw my hands, my torso, my legs, and not only when I picked up a gun. The gunplay was effortless, a simple addition that had no real place in the game, and though it made you drop the weapon simply because it stopped you advancing in most situations (needing your hands free to climb and so forth), it was rare that I ever would. The fact that there was no depth, no complexity to picking up a gun and flinging bullets at the various masked governmental antagonists coming your way, liberated the experience.

“This is such an amazing game,” I said.

“You’re an idiot, and you’re wrong, this is terrible,” said the majority of the gaming public.

I stumbled, that week. I thought it was so original that even the people who couldn’t appreciate Psychonauts but could at least appreciate Bioshock would love Mirror’s Edge. I’m no elitist, and I’m by no means saying that anyone who didn’t love Mirror’s Edge is a fool and deserves to be ridiculed. I’m just torn by the fact that there were people out there who saw a game, published by EA of all people, that completely broke the first-person genre into little pieces, and dismissed it as bad. What were you looking for, from the title, if not innovation? Yet, these same people will complain about the similiarities of Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA ’09.

Assassin’s Creed was another title that people tagged as “repetitive” before even picking up the controller. I’m fully aware it had about six different types of missions, but so did GTA IV and no one thought to call Rockstar North out on that. Why? Because any more than six would have been too thinly spread in terms of time spent developing the mechanic of each individual task and obstacle, and too little would have been something akin to lying brain dead with the odd achievement popping every fifteen to twenty minutes.

Creed was not about repetitive gameplay, it was about the engine, the concept, and the proof that yes, you could render an entire city at once, it was just a case of getting around to it. The physics, the narrative… so many things went right with that game, and yet the one thing that went wrong was just so game-breaking. They could’ve fluffed a lot of aspects, but damn, the missions? Some of us played MMO titles, and we’re used to the grind. We relish the grind, the satisfaction from a game making us work for our rewards, and not in a Ninja Gaiden way, more of a “kill ten thousand rats for one bone” way. But some don’t, and those people are, by and large, the people who’ll be spending money on your summer blockbuster. Think about that.

While you’re at it, go play Mirror’s Edge. I’ll wait.

 

Mainly because the main story is ridiculously short.

2009
06/04
CATEGORY
Musings and Ramblings
TAGS


1 comment

Everything Settles, Equilibrium Returns.

E3 is beginning to simmer down, and GamerNode is finally working, as you can tell by the mental amount of content Jason, Eddie, myself and others have been uploading over the last few days. It also marks the return of my column on gaming narrative, Plot Wholes, the latest of which you can find here.

So… thoughts on various different bits.

Natal is revolutionary, and not only because it looks like something that came straight out of Minority Report. Milo, the game interactivity, christ, even the water was incredible, and I can’t believe it came from a peripheral that, right up until five seconds before they announced it, we’d basically passed off as another EyeToy. I was always jealous, as a 360 owner, of the Wii’s sensor bar, but now it seems slightly out-dated. I think Molyneux’s appearance during the Natal reveal had more to it than they’re letting on, and I think we might even see a Black and White title with the controls coming from you, the player, as it would fit so well into the hand-waving mouse-based concepts brought into the light by Lionhead’s previous two iterations of the franchise.

The PSP Go! is an amazing piece of kit, and I can’t wait to play the various different games on it, let alone simply just own one of the damn things. But, at the same time… I can’t help feeling like it’s seriously overpriced. At two hundred and fifty big ones, regardless of whether you trade in Euros or USD, it’s mad. I’m a pound sterling man myself, but let’s be honest, unless they’re taking off the region lock on that sleek little number, I won’t be getting my hands on one for anywhere near the same price as a DSi. Just when the pound to dollar rate finally swings our way, bam, two amazing consoles region locked and taunting us with it. As for Gran Turismo, I’m not that interested, though LittleBigPlanet PSP looks fantastic and something that would be hours of fun on a long plane ride until the loud child near you notices you’re God made out of felt.

The whole time Nintendo’s conference was in session (ooh, it sounds so much more stern now, doesn’t it?) I was hoping for a Metroid title. Then, not only was it announced, but it’s practically Metroid Gaiden thanks to Team Ninja’s involvement in the project. I can’t actually wrap my head around how amazing an idea that was, and how in the name of all that is holy and orange robot-suited they kept that under wraps. Team Ninja did a lot for Halo 3, and I can see them doing a lot for the Metroid franchise, so long as Ridley isn’t suddenly wearing a lot of dodgy leather and talking about honour.

Speaking of Halo 3, I was wowed by Halo 3: ODST, but not anywhere near as much as the revelation that Halo: Reach was real and actually being developed. To think that we’re actually going to see John’s origin story is mindblowing, as I’m sure anyone who read The Fall of Reach can testify. To think we’re finally going to see the process that turned Master Chief into who he is now, to see him as a child, and most importantly, without a mask, is something I’ve been crying out for since I played the progenitor to the whole Halo universe. I like the games, don’t get me wrong, but would giving Master Chief a little more humanity have harmed him so much as the faceless space marine we’ve all come to know (and for some, love)? Look what revealing Samus’ face did to the videogame community: she was the true woman of video game characters, and you can shove your Lara Croft, chauvanistic tight clothing and all. Samus was so terrifyingly cold, efficient and Nintendo rockstar-esque that we never thought it’d be a chick, and you know what? If anyone did females justice in the realm of sci-fi videogame escapism, it was her.

Is anyone else disappointed that FFXIV is an MMO title? I literally couldn’t speak for a long, long time after that announcement, and I think the shocked noises made by five thousand people in the audience probably underlined that a fair bit. But to see that amazing trailer, to see a handful of people fighting for their lives on a storm-tossed boat in front of a huge dragon-serpent coiling around them out of the waves, and then to know it was a god-damn MMO is something of a kick in the nuts. I’ve seen boats in MMO titles, and all they make me think of is World of Warcraft’s loading screen and ganking, though if you’re a gnome and his mate, irritating the big stupid Tauren in tier five armour was probably pretty damn tempting. I still feel that while FFXIII looks stunning and fun to play, that we’ve covered the whole technological era of the FF universe. For me, no industrial-tech game will ever come close to Midgar in FFVII, though the announcement that that came out on PS3 (and therefore the PSP) yesterday has basically sold the PS3 to me as a console, which is shocking when you consider some of the amazing titles coming out. Mod Nation Racers probably being my favourite, as that’s my sort of deal, being a child of Nintendo upbringing for the most part.

Sony’s answer to Natal and the MotionPlus was a little ridiculous. I liked how funny the presentation was, but the actual tech just didn’t do it for me that well. For one, the wand looked like something you’d find in an Amsterdam massage parlour, and secondly after seeing someone have a real-time conversation with a boy who was upset because the player was telling him off for not doing his homework really did blur the cool images being beamed into my head by Sony yesterday.

Final thought: E3 doesn’t need big names and celebrities, though the one person who should’ve shown up was Hannah “aim for the head lest she reincarnate as a greater daemon of the fifth hell” Montana, considering the amount of times her games popped up in conferences all through the weekend. That and Paul McCartney starting off Microsoft’s conference with “who thought we’d ever end up as androids” was a clear sign that arrogant, talentless (it was all John and George, you know it, I know it) musicians have no place on the stage. However, James Cameron does, and I’m at a loss as to everyone going on and on about him spoiling the film. He states, so clearly, the premise for the film, but not the end. Does a paraplegic getting to walk again sound like a spoiler? No, it sounds like the opening paragraph outlining a protagonist’s plight and motivation for success. The sort you find on DVD boxes. Oh, and Shepherd’s still alive, but apparently we can accidentally kill him prior to the final game in the (current, hopefully) timeline in various different ways. Permanently. Bioware, you’re sick.

2009
06/03
CATEGORY
News
TAGS













1 comment

Live Blogging Is Lethal.

I just finished my Microsoft Conference live-blog, and lemme tell you this. After 3,282 words written in just over an hour, not only is it the longest one you’ll find on the intertubes, but my god, it nearly killed my hands.

And I have EA’s in an hour and a half. Jeez.

MSLB link: clickity

EA link: clickity

Ubisoft link: clickity

Update: Last one now, so tired. EA’s was a slightly shorter 2481, but still.

Update 2: It’s all done. I’m exhausted. G’night.

Brazen I’ll reply tomorrow with my predictions in the morning.

2009
06/01
CATEGORY
News
TAGS






7 comments

Pre-E3 Roundup

For those wondering exactly where the hell I was blogwise Thursday and Friday, I was meeting Twiggy Ramirez and Marilyn Manson. Speaking of industrial music, me and Lex have just donated a ton of money (a thousand dollars, to be exact), to a man by the name of Eric De La Cruz.

Eric was denied a place on the transplant list because of the lack of transplant centers in Nevada. His sister, a former CNN news anchor, started an online donation service on her website in order to pay for the surgery manually. Trent picked up on this, and the result is what you see here. He’s raised almost a million dollars in a minute time period. He’s now awaiting heart surgery (Eric, not Trent, touch wood), and as a result, he’ll live. Surgery isn’t fun, I remember my cousin going through hell with bone cancer when he was a child, and I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like in the USA, having to pay for something that you need in order to stay alive.

Best of luck to him, and enjoy the Manson pictures.

Left to right: beautiful girlfriend, Manson himself, and Twiggy.

Left to right: beautiful girlfriend, Manson himself, and Twiggy.

 

Me arguing with security over getting a picture with the God of F*ck. Note my face is hidden, to preserve my air of mystery, and the fact I'm fugly (most especially in comparison to Lex).

Me arguing with security over getting a picture with the God of F*ck. Note my face is hidden, to preserve my air of mystery, and the fact I'm fugly (most especially in comparison to Lex).

 PS: An interesting bit of dialogue:

Manson: *notices Lex’s heart-shaped glasses hanging from her top* I like your glasses. Can I try them on?
Lex: Sure, if you’d want to.
Manson: *tries them on, looks hilarious*
Lex: Nice.
Manson: Shall I break ‘em?
Lex: *Coy* If you must.
Manson: *pretends to smash them, hands them back* There, you broke my heart.

I’m glad he had a sense of humour, I don’t think we did after waiting since 4AM. Friday = sleep recovery.

But tomorrow, I’ll be live-blogging the Microsoft conference on GamerNode, so I’ll post a link to my E3 coverage tomorrow morning. Adios.

2009
05/31
CATEGORY
Update
TAGS




4 comments