Golden rules of gaming

Section 8 has inspired me to finally compile a list of absolute You Must Adhere To These Or Your Game Will Be Shit game rules. I'll even put them in order.


1) When the player dies, it must be because it was the players fault, not the games fault.

Platform games suffer from this the most, because they seem to think that jumping puzzles are only fun if there is a tiny tiny tiny margin for error. I've lost count of the number of platform games I've played where I've made a perfectly reasonable jump and missed the ledge or whatever by a whisker. FPS's do suffer from this as well but a game really worthy of mention is Zack and Wiki, where on several occasions you die from normal adventure game curiosity, which is a massive dick move.


2) Normal enemies should die from a headshot or 2-4 body shots. If we're talking melee games, they should die from one counter or 2-4 normal hits.

Easily the worst offender here is Oblivion, naturally, but pick any game where melee combat is the focus apart from the few exceptions like Assassins Creed & the Riddick games and you'll find yourself slashing at opponents until you're blue in the face and THEY JUST WON'T DIE.

Little ruins a game more than enforced repetition and this is especially true in the one activity you'll be doing the most in these games - killing.

This isn't a skill thing, either. Crysis' enemies are fantastic to fight against, as are the ones in Far Cry 2 and Dark Athena - all these enemies die from one headshot and they're all a challenge to fight against. More importantly, they're fun to fight against.

This rule especially applies to Boss Battles. PC gaming gave up on boss battles many years ago (with a few notable exceptions) but the consoles love sticking you in front of some gargantuan enemy with a massive health bar and watch you shoot the three weak points, then the fourth one that gets exposed, then repeating this sequence six times. Seriously, fuck boss battles, I hate them.


3) Don't pad the game

I'm preaching to the choir here, somewhat, but it does need saying. Adding in arbitrary goals to increase the length of the game is a staple of RPG's but at least RPG's have the decency to not force you to do them. Unlike, for example, The Legend of Zelda: Twightlight princess, where you couldn't start a mission until you had collected ten whatevers, every single fucking time.


4) Finish the game, guys

This one doesn't exactly break the game but in games that arguably don't end (like Crysis) and in games that literally don't end (Assassins Creed) you've got no real motivation to replay them to completion.

A very important part of any game is the atmosphere and story. I wouldn't have completed Portal as many times as I have were the atmosphere not top notch. It keeps me hooked right to the end, I get a fantastic pay off, I leave satisfied.

So when games don't end, I don't feel satisfied, I feel angry. Very angry. The developers have given us a completely unfinished product. Grrrr.


5) Have a colour palette that's not just brown and grey


A big, big reason why I gave up on Fallout 3 was because the world was so horrible to look at. I get that they were going for a nuclear wasteland but a nuclear war doesn't turn everything BROWN surely?

Seriously, look at this fucking game:



Brown and grey, grey and brown. I'm guessing most of you live in a city. Look out of your window. If you don't have a window, imagine you do have one and then look out of that. There is a very high chance that you'll see some grey out there. There's a also a very high chance that there will be at least one building out there that is red or white or black or painted some weird colour etc. etc. etc. I have been to many cities in my time, including London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, New York, Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Madrid etc. etc. and I have never seen a city anywhere near as grey, brown and dull as they are in Fallout 3, Gears Of War etc. etc. etc.

Oh, and by the way, no, it doesn't build atmosphere it makes things feel artificial. Real artists use colour to great effect. Portal, for example, is mostly white, until you get behind the scenes where the decay is starting to show. It also makes the red lights of the turrets more alarming and the pale pink hearts on the companion cube more alluring.


6) In open world games, make exploration fun

Fallout 3 is the worst offender here, I'd be wandering around that world, minding my own business, when I'd come across a massive pile of debris, blocking my way. Okay, I think, I'll go round it. I walk to the left. Building, building, building, building, pile of rubble, building, building, then there's another pile of rubble so I have to detour around my detour. I get fed up and try the right and find the same thing, but there's a subway tunnel for me to grind my way through. HUZZAH!

For an example of a game where exploration is fun, I simply have to point you at Far Cry 2. I love just driving around in that game. The scenery is stunning, varied and lovely to look at and the fights you get into at regular intervals mean you can never fully relax.

Section 8 - first impressions

So the trailer for Section 8 intrigued me. It intrigued me a lot. A super soldier dropping into battle, hallucinating about his childhood. That's interesting, that's mature, that sets up some nice conflict which may lead to some deep characters.

Yeah, like hell it does.

I'm being overly cynical - I've only played about an hour of this game and the plot hasn't really started yet but this game is very damn consoley and the day the consoles start producing deep games of their own volition... well, then I'll start taking them seriously.

But whatever, it's an FPS, they're supposed to be mindless fun. Is Section 8 fun?

Well.

Hm.

So far, yes and no. I think this is what Halo was desperately trying to be - it's a generic FPS with a lot of nice little features. You've got a jetpack, for instance, and unlike pretty much any other jetpack I can think of in a game, you're actually given a decent amount of fuel for it. You can customise your character loadout from the word go, which is nice, and you're given some fun little AI mates that follow you around the place.

The problem arises with... well this war you're fighting is against some people wearing red armor (as opposed to the blue stuff you're wearing) and they appear to be voiced by the Daleks. Anyhoo, these guys are really fucking tough. They've got the same armor as you so they take a LOT of shots to dispatch. So many that it's really not very fun.

Section 8 breaks one of the cardinal rules of gameplay: enemies should be killed with very few hits if they're well placed.

It's early days so I'm hoping this problem will go after a couple of levels but if it doesn't, it's going to be a game breaker as far as I'm concerned. I'm not exagerating, by the way, with the default assault rifle it takes about 10 seconds of constant fire to dispatch every enemy. That, my friends, is just too damn long.

But whatever, the atmosphere is good, there are some nice touches, the universe these guys have set up is different enough to warrent a proper explore... I'll give it another crack tomorrow.

What the hell is wrong with third person shooters?

So I was reading an article about an upcoming Obsidian RPG called Alpha Protocol. It got me pretty excited, to be honest but one bit did make me roll my eyes. I discover that all the gun play will be experiences in the trite over the shoulder third person style I've come to deeply distrust.

This got me thinking. When was the last time I played a third person shooter and I actually enjoyed it...

So I thought about this for a fair while and concluded: Max Payne 2.

Here's the thing- Gears of War, Kane & Lynch, Mass Effect, the Splinter Cell games - they all handle more or less the same and they are all deeply unexciting shooters. They may have other plus points that make up for it or they may not, that's not what I'm here to talk about. The fact is that first person shooters like Crysis, Far Cry 2 or Left 4 Dead are nail biting, exciting and exhilarating (in my opinion) and third person shooters are not (in my opinion) and I've been trying to work out why.

In theory, both of these game types should feel identical. They all have the same control system, the all handle... similarly... And yet, and *yet*, whenever I play a third person shooter, it feels cold, it feels numb...

Part of this, I think, has to do with what you see as a player. Most third person games are played from an over the shoulder perspective. This means you see every move the character makes. This is okay when you're heading straight for an enemy, guns blazing because the standard position for a character is having their feet shoulder width apart with their arms outstretched, pointing their gun dead ahead.

Now, I don't know about you but were I in a combat scenario, that's not how I'd behave all the time. Particularly in something like Left 4 Dead, you'd be swinging around a lot, taking many anxious glances over your shoulder, pointing your gun and then moving your body around it. It feels natural to be skittish and make lots of quick turns from a first person perspective because your subconcious assumes that your characters body language changes according to your mood. Mine does at least. No-where in Left 4 Dead, ignoring those moments when the horde comes charging straight at you, do I imagine my character holding their gun at arms length. Not consciously at least.

This may seem like a very small thing but when you combine it with how immersion breaking it is to see your character on screen anyway, I think this must be the main reason why these games feel unnatural and numb - it looks so damn unnatural to have your character whirl around unrealistically whenever you make a sharp turn.

I then got thinking about why I haven't made this observation before... then I realised that... apart from Mass Effect 2, where this is far from the biggest problem, and Max Payne 2, I've only ever really played third person shooters on consoles... They don't whirl round at great speeds because the controls don't allow for that level of movement speed...

So why doesn't Max Payne 2 suffer from this problem? It's simple. The default stance of your character is having the guns at their sides or in a neutral position. Having the characters return to this feels so much more natural. It also helps that the camera is isometric rather than over the shoulder so the characters' movement looks more natural anyway because you can see more of it.

So, in conclusion, put these fucking games in the first person, please. If you need to go to third person for actions, do what the Riddick games do and slip into third person for those bits. If you have melee combat, go to third person for that by all means, just keep shooting in the first person. Please?

Great Game/TV sequels

Film sequels? FILM SEQUELS? Who fucking cares. Films are the past. Games and Television are where it's at now.

With that in mind... GAME AND TV SEQUELS! GREAT ONES!

I'm still quite asleep, that's why I'm talking like this.

Anyway. What game and TV sequels are both awesome and improve significantly on the original?

Games:

1) Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines

Granted, no-one played Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption except me but that shouldn't take away from Bloodlines' achievements... it's one of the best games ever made and improves on the original in every way.


2) Call of Duty 4

The fact that this game is fantastic is secondary to the fact that it's the only Call of Duty game that's worth playing.


3) Half Life 2: Episode 2

Now, I hated Half Life 2. The plot was completely absent, there was far too much scripting and Valve appeared to have forgotten how to set up a decent fire fight. All of these factors were sorted for Episode 2 after the frankly disastrous Episode 1


4) Dawn of War 2

Dawn of War was a fantastic strategy game because it wasn't about building as many squads as you could and then rushing the enemy. Dawn of War 2 improved on this by limiting you to four squads and adding RPG elements. As far as sheer naked improvement over a previous installment goes, this is the victor hands down.


5) Red Alert 3

Now, I know I've just said I hate build and rush strategy games... and I do... but Red Alert 3 isn't about the actual gameplay- it's about the sheer stupidity of the story, the units and the atmosphere. They all make up for the shocking gameplay in spades.


6) Hitman: Blood Money

This is also known as The Only Hitman Game Worth Playing. Seriously, the others are drab, dull and single note. Blood Money is vibrant, imaginative and hilarious.


7) Tie Fighter

Yay! A retro one! Tie Fighter improved on X-Wing by having you play as The Empire and getting to kill rebels, which is what all of us wanted in the first place. It merely helped that the gameplay, plot and characters were vastly improved over X-Wing

That's pretty much it as far as I know. Hopefully we'll get a few more later this year, though. We've got:

Assassins Creed 2
Which should be almost identical to the first game but minus the annoying bits

Call of Duty 6
I'm really hoping this one will be good but it may well not be, given how stellar #4 was.

Left 4 Dead 2
Is going to be fucking epic :D




TV:

1) Battlestar Galactica Series 2 & 3

This one has to be in here. Series 2 was twice as good as series 1 and Series 3 was twice as good as series 2. Series 4 was slightly weaker but had some absolutely fantastic story arcs such as the rebellion.

2) Gilmore Girls Series 3

Okay, okay, fucking bear with me. Gilmore Girls is froth but it's intelligent froth. It's one of the best feel good shows ever made, mainly thanks to Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel who ooze charisma. And other things. Dirty things. Anyway, Series 1 & 2 are good but it's series 3 where things really come together.

3) House Series 4

House is comfort television. It's exactly the same every week and that's one of it's strengths. It all changes in series 4, though, when the cast gets shaken up significantly, introducing a load of great new sub plots and characters.

Honourable Mention:

Doctor Who series 3

This is only an honourable mention because, whilst it is very good, Series 1 of the New Who was so fucking good and Series 3 had more than a few dodgy episodes, it couldn't quite beat it's younger self. How very Doctor Who.

TSLRP impressions

I've given up on TSLRP.

Completely.

I don't exactly know what I was expecting from this thing... I suppose after three years in development I'd hoped that KOTOR 2 would be significantly different. There are a couple of differences I've noticed (including one extra character) but the only major difference I've noticed is that the influence system now appears to be completely broken.

There are odd restored lines of dialogue here and there... the problem is it's quite obvious why most of them were cut in the first place. Most of them are either unnecessary exposition or mystical Star Wars bullshit.

As far as the actual game goes, nothing has changed. This isn't like the Wesp patches for Vampire Bloodlines where there are dozens of gameplay tweaks to make things more streamlined or pleasant for the player...

This does kind of vindicate everything I've been saying about how they should have released this damn thing incrementally. There's no way I would have given up on this mod two years ago, or even possibly a year ago. The problem is, now KOTOR has been so completely outclassed in terms of story, characters, atmosphere (which were the only real plus points to this game in the first place) by Portal, Call of Duty 4, Braid, Dark Athena etc. etc. etc...

KOTOR 2 is like a teenager who has a bunch of really witty jokes at school and TSLRP is like a friend who has been giving him a bunch of new jokes for university to impress new friends and keep old ones entertained. He's been working on the routine for absolutely ages but it's only when he finally trots them out that we all realise they're the same jokes as previously with a tiny bit of spit and polish, and is thoroughly outclassed by people who've spent their time thinking up new jokes.

I know that TSLRP is supposed to kick in properly when you get to the end part of the game (where most stuff was cut) but I was so disheartened by the lack of new material in the mid-game planets, coupled with the disappointing gameplay and irritating star wars universe, I'd rather play just about anything else right now.

So, in conclusion, TSLRP adds very little to the dialogue/atmosphere/plot but does break the game in several places. The combat is still bollocks, there are still a lot of bad gameplay decisions and all in all, it's a project that has been thoroughly outclassed by its more modern counterparts.

KOTOR 2 vs The Witcher

Hm...

So I downloaded the leak of TSLRP.

I've been playing it for the past three days.

Hm.

As far as the game goes- it's okay. Bits of it are really good. I love the characters, the story and so on.

It does have some pretty severe problems though.

The main one is: The Witcher.

I haven't blogged about it, but I recently bought and played The Witcher through. I thought it pulled off the trick of allowing the player to make genuinely moral choices better than any other game has.

The reason for this is... The Witcher doesn't have a morality scale.

For me, every time a game says DARK SIDE POINTS GAINED! or PARAGON +2 etc. etc. they are ruining the concept of moral choice.

In the real world
1) You don't get told when your character has shifted/people think it has
2) You often don't know what repercussions your actions will have.

This simply isn't the case in KOTOR - whenever you make a decision in the game world, you always know how it's going to affect your alignment. Things get slightly more complicated when you're considering how your companions react to you but the relationships system is more than slightly nonsensical.

Fitting things onto a good/vs evil scale of any sort removes one very important thing: complexity. Morality is an incredibly complex and arbitrary thing. One of the tag lines for The Witcher was that there were no good or bad choices, there were just choices. It was taken as red that your character was generally moral (in that he wasn't a cartoon villain - more on that later) so whatever choices he took, they were justifiable. Support the order? Support the Scoiatel? Neutrality? These are all perfectly valid choices.

Problem number 2 with KOTOR is... the Star Wars universe has no middle ground. You can't play a complex character - only a cartoon villain who steals from the poor and murders anyone he can - or a sickly sweet paragon.

I wanted to be a dark jedi this time around because I hadn't been previously. So I went around killing people. But I was nice to my companions. Why? I liked them. The game balanced these equally. Apparently murdering people is balanced by being polite when talking to someone.

I shouldn't be surprised, really. This game is American and the Americans do seem to have a genuine problem accepting that right and wrong are just ideas and that often it's just a matter of perception. Hell, this is even the case in Battlestar Galactica a lot of the time and that's one of the most mature and well written pieces of fiction ever created.

With that in mind, it's very clear that there are two ways the game is *meant* to be played. Either as dark or light. You can mix it up by being dark on some planets and light on others but then you run into the - which characters do you want to play with - problem.

With that in mind, I'm going to play the damn thing again as it wants to be played. I'm going to be a light jedi and see what happens. I can't get a good feel for the game if I'm playing it in a way it doesn't want to be played.

So, out of KOTOR 2 and The Witcher, which is better? Well that's fucking obvious, it's The Witcher. No contest. The Witcher's gameplay is better, the moral choices are more realistic, interesting and poignant...

It's a shame really. I was getting all excited by the prospect of the KOTOR MMO and then I played KOTOR 2. KOTOR 2 is, I think, as good as a star wars game is likely to get as far as morality goes. It's a bar so low you'd trip over it but I doubt any Star Wars product will ever beat it.

Greatest Sequels Ever

Empire Magazine have produced a list of The 50 Greatest Ever Sequels.

Now, Empire have been getting a lot better in recent years but this list is really, really shit. X Men 2 is at number 11, Batman Returns is at number 13 and, most perplexing of all, Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix is at number 15. Hellboy 2 is in there, as is Return of the Jedi. Reh.

It's not a completely worthless list but it does do that classic empire thing of having twenty decent films, twenty films from the 50's/60's/70's/80's that no-one actually likes but are "classics" so they put them in to make it look like they're high brow, (deep breath) and ten films from the last three years so people will believe they're modern enough to counterbalance the high brow choices.

But here's the thing, they used the word "greatest" in their article. This means that they must be talking about sequels that are not just good but GREAT. Ones that improved significantly on the original...

Taken in that spirit then the list is completely fucking worthless but I thought I'd put my money where my mouth is and try and compile a list of great sequels.

The criteria are:

1) It must be a great or, at least, a very good film
2) It must improve significantly on the original


So:

1) The Dark Knight

This is the obvious one. Not only is it one of the best films ever made but it takes a great film (Batman Begins) and improves on literally every aspect of it.

2) Terminator 2/3

Terminator 2 and 3 are both good films and both improved significantly on Terminator 1. Personally, I prefer Terminator 3 but that's because I'm not trapped in the past as many film geeks are, and I think Nick Stahl is a fantastic actor. Even though I can't spell his name.

3) Aliens

This is another fairly obvious one. It's very good and wins out over Alien because Alien is fucking aweful. Sorry, Ridley Scott and film geeks everywhere but it fucking is...

4) The Ring 2

I love The Ring (I'm talking Japanese versions here, obviously) but if I had to watch one or the other, I'd watch Ring 2. Why? It's much, much scarier. The Ring has one moment which is utterly terrifying. The Ring 2 has three. Three beats one.

5) Hot Shots Part Deux

This may be an odd choice but it's a hilarious film and improves significantly on the original... the one liners are better, the plot is more fun and it has Rowan Atkinson in it. And whilst we're on spoofs...

6) Scary Movie 3

I may be pushing my luck a bit by saying Scary Movie 3 is Very Good but I think it is, dammit. It's funny, quite witty and is very short. It's also miraculous in that it's the only Scary Movie film to be even faintly worth watching.


There may be others out there but those are the only ones that spring to mind immediately....

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc

I really am going to have to stop re-visiting old films. There are some films that have never been bettered. These are usually films that do something genuinely unique, or at least have never really been bettered. The Blues Brothers fits into this category, as does Hot Shots part 1 & 2. Top Secret fucking rules this category.

Sadly, action films tend to fare less well.

I just re-watched Raiders because I was interested to see if it was the seminal adventure movie. It's really not.

Let me just say something before I get to the meat of this... I don't care that Raiders was really ground breaking when it first came out. All I care about is what it's like to watch now. As a piece of history, it's invaluable but guess what, so's the original Star Wars and that doesn't stop it being incredibly lame when looked at next to the new Battlestar Galactica.

But anyway, Raiders.

It has several problems. The acting is really over the top, and not in a good way. Bits of it are supposed to be farce and these... tend to drift a little too far into pantomime for my liking. The serious bits are even worse. The Nazis seem to think acting either involves standing as rigid as possible or running all over the place waving their arms. The guy in the black mac is particularly bad for this.

The actions scenes are distinctly under whelming, with the exception of the scene where Indie shoots the sword wielding arab. That is still a fantastic moment. The fight choreographer really needed to be given a slap, though.

It's attitudes to women are also faintly disturbing. I'm going to gloss over the whole relationship with Indie and the love interest because whilst I think it's fairly clear that their previous sexual encounter was distinctly non-consensual on the part of the girl, I may be reading too much into things. What does definitely strike a sour note is how completely incompetent the female is. She can't even open a bloody aeroplane canopy.

Overall, though, Raiders has one massive problem that eclipses all others. That problem is The Mummy. The Mummy does everything that Raiders does a hell of a lot better. The story makes more sense, the acting is better, it's funnier, the characters are better defined...

The Mummy is to Raiders what The Good, The Bad, The Weird is to every western ever made. An update that takes the spirit of the original and does it with a 21st century attitude and budget.

Film making has definitely improved in the past thirty years and boy does it show. There are definitely films from the 1970's and 1980's that have never been bettered but there are far fewer than people think.

Fuck Team Gizka

No really.

Fuck em.

For those unfamiliar with their work, these are the chaps behind the Sith Lords Restoration Project. I've blogged about it previously here.

I mentioned in that post that the bug count these guys were supposedly working on was at 84, and had been for the past four months. This was in Febuary of 2009. It's now August. A quick bit of maths will tell you that they've been in the same position for ten months. Are they any closer to releasing their mod? No. Do they have a time frame for releasing it? No. Are they even working on it?

Well the forums are pretty dead. One beta tester is still posting his experiences and there are a few feeble discussions about the politics of Star Wars but it's not exactly a vibrant hive of activity as you'd expect from a mod of this type.

I've been waiting for this mod for ages, I've been patiently putting off replaying KOTOR 2 until it was out but no more. Fuck them. I'm downloading the leaked version of their mod because I have absolutely no faith that they'll ever release the fucking thing or that they're even still working on it.

Team Gizka should be a warning message to anyone thinking of starting an ambitious project:

1) Be honest with people about how the project is doing or they'll just leave.
2) If it's a restoration mod, add content gradually so that when you inevitably lose interest, the users still have something to show for it.

Psychonauts: Not as good as everyone says it is

Yahtzee famously blew the Psychonauts horn in one of his early reviews. but more recently Daniel Floyd (who I have infinitely more respect for) did the same thing.

I then looked at Metacritic and found that all these guys were likewise saying it was the dogs bollocks.

Clearly, I had to check it out with that list of glowing references. Given that we're in the middle of a recession and I have no money, I decided to pirate it rather than shell out the £10 it was being sold for on steam and fuck me I'm glad I did.

Now if you're reading this, I'm assuming you've seen one or all of the above links so It's pointless me telling you what Psychonauts is so it's best to dive right in.

Psychonauts is startlingly original, very witty and absolutely no fun to play. The meat of the game is set in characters minds, which are all tarted up platform sections. They're very, very clever yes. You have to unlock emotional baggage, for example. See Daniel Floyd's video for more examples of just how clever the game is.

The problem is the gameplay consists of nothing but jumping from one platform to another, swinging on the occasional bar and using bizarely underwhelming psychic powers. The game has so much charm that this is quite well disguised but you'll play it for an hour or so and suddenly realised that whilst you've been quite engaged the whole time, you haven't enjoyed a second of the damn gameplay.

The developers should be applauded for originality and the game is often genuinely funny but the producers are absolute idiots - there's no way a game like this would sell becase it's not very good...

So if you've wanted to check out Psychonauts for ages because of all the hype, stay back. Play Braid instead, that basically does the same thing (minus the humour) but is actually fun to play.

Batman: Arkham Assylum Demo

The world and its dog has been getting very excited about this game of late.

I haven't. Partly because it's being produced by Eidos and they haven't brought out anything good since Thief: Deadly Shadows but mostly because it's a Batman game and many successive movie Tie-ins have proved it's extremely hard to do a Batman game.

But what the hell, there's a demo out for the PC version prior to release and so I thought I'd check it out for rarity value if nothing else.

It didn't start well, I have to say. You lead the Joker into Arkham and he escapes in the most predictable and preventable manner imaginable. You are then presented with several goons to fend off. The controls feel... okay. They're quite consoley but a Batman game is one of the few circumstances where this might be appropriate.

The fist fighting is... okay. It's rather like Assassins Creed in that it's based around striking, counters and take downs. This isn't a bad thing, by any means. It's not original but it's much better than most other games that have hand to hand combat in them.


Things got much better when the game opened up a bit... I was presented with three guards with guns. Obviously I couldn't take them head on so I snuck round the back and took them all down silently one by one. This felt briliant, but very linear.

Things improved again when I got to the climax of the demo - a huge room with four armed men in it. I had to take them all down.

Armed with my night vision goggles (which register weaponry, targets' state of mind from information such as their heart rate etc.) batarangs and my bat rope thing, I swung around on gargoyles, dropped down behind one guard and Ju Jitsu'd him until he was unconcious. I then hung from a gargoyle until a goon passed below me, I strung him up by his feet.

His cries brought his mates, though. I glided into one of them, classic Batman style but the other ones shot me a few times. I was close to death but I managed to escape.

I dropped down to the lower level. The guard didn't know where I was so I followed him all sneaky like, watching his heart rate sky rocket.

Here's where I first really noticed the AI and fantastic animations. The guard walked heasitantly, looked around and, at one point, spotted the movement of the chap I'd strung up from the gargoyle and opened fire at it.

That, my friends, is fucking cool.

I used this distraction to climb up behind him and remove him from the land of the concious.

I am now completely sold. It's probably not going to be a briliant game but it will be extremely fun and diverting if the demo is anything to go by. Check it out :)

Bioshock retrospective

I went to visit my parents last week. They have quite a large house so it's where I keep most of my crap from when I used to live there. A considerate son would throw it out but I have an aversion to throwing things out. IT MAY BE USEFUL LATER.

Anyway, one of the things I should really throw out is my collection of old PC gaming magazines. I do love re-reading them, though. Reading previews for games that turned out to be shite and, of course, reading rapturous reviews that didn't find any flaws with deeply flawed games like Half Life 2 or Oblivion.

It was in this nostalgic haze that I came across their review of Bioshock. It really made me want to play through that flawed masterpiece again because they highlighted the unparalleled atmosphere, graphics etc.

So This morning, I installed it, patched it and started playing it again.

And half an hour later I stopped because it was shit.

The thing is, everyone who played Bioshock through the first time (including myself) got sucked in by the incredible graphics, atmosphere etc. These are still there and still excellent.

What none of us noticed until a couple of months after originally playing it is - It's not any bloody fun.

It just isn't.

There are four main problems with is:

1) It's a shooter but you never have enough ammo.

There are supposed to be numerous ways out of every encounter but most of the time, the only sensible one is to start blasting. This is directly linked into:


2) It's too goddamn linear:

Corridors. That's what Bioshock is, corridors, corridors, corridors. Even the Corridor-tastic Call of Duty 4 had more open areas than this. The direct consequence of this is that there are few opportunities to avoid conflict - meaning you have to start shooting, meaning you run into problem #1

3) The shooting is no damn fun:

Even if you can cope with problems 1 & 2, you'll hit problem 3. The weapons lack feel, there's no real accuracy system and they're all pretty damn generic. This is the problem with all games set in the past, the guns really weren't very interesting. You'd think they would sort this with the pasmids but no. They're either far too powerful (lightning or incinerate) or completely useless (telekinesis, sonic boom, shooting bees from your hand).


4) There are no RPG elements:

So you're not even really given the opportunity to improve your character, other than by being given Adam by the little sisters. This means that there's no way round problems 1, 2 & 3. You HAVE to get engaged in gunfights. There's no Bloodlines style melee options if you get bored of the gunfights.


There are other problems, of course, but the fact that it isn't fun lands neatly at the top of the list.

This really disappoints me. I was hoping to get past the flaws of Bioshock and really get into the story again. Sadly, this has proved impossible.

Iron Man 2

A lot of news has been breaking at Comic-Con, which is understandable.

One bit which has really dismayed me, though, is that Scarlett Johansson is going to be playing one of the baddies in Iron Man 2.

If you're one of those deluded idiots who thinks that this woman is still one of the best actresses in the world, I suggest you go and watch The Prestige. That film is fantastic. Christopher Nolan even managed to get a briliant performance out of Hugh Jackman, who's not exactly the worlds greatest actor. But EVERY TIME that useless bloody woman walks on screen the charisma is sucked out. She kills almost every scene she's in, it's remarkable.

I haven't seen her in a good film. Ever. Lost in Translation was hugely over rated, she was easilly the worst thing in The Black Dahlia and don't even get me started on The Island.

Admittedly, I haven't seen Ghost World where apparently her total lack of any talent or charisma is quite in keeping with the tone of the film but...

Seriously, people, I get that people like her because she's good looking but can we stop thinking with our dicks, please? She is not a good actor, period. Kate Winslet? She's a good actor, as is Maggie Gyllenhaal, as is Grace Park.

Hopefully she won't be in too much of Iron Man 2 because if Christopher Nolan couldn't get a decent performance out of her, there's no way Jon Favreau will be able to...

Gaming podcasts

Daniel Floyd appeared on a gaming podcast a few days ago so I checked it out.

I've always avoided gaming podcasts previously, mainly because whenever I load one up, they always start the same way:

"Hello"
"Hello"
"I'm Dave"
"I'm Charles"
"Welcome to The Awesome Gaming Podcast"
"Hi"
"Today we're talking about-"
"Yeah, we're talking about shooters today."
"Yeah"

Then one of them makes a crap joke and they laugh.

Gaming podcasts are one of the only things I can find online where people seem to genuinely think they don't need any form of editing. These damn things can stretch to over two hours.

But whatever, I thought. I need to go to the market, I'll stick it on my Zen and check it out. Floyd's on it, it can't be too bad.

So I listened to it. I got through the first hour whilst being very entertained. In this particular episode they had a bunch of industry podcasters on there. Most of them were pretty interesting. They were talking about things that annoyed them in video games.

It was a bit like intellectual masturbation but the guests were clever enough to properly argue. It was great to hear some real vitriol aimed at things such as quick time events and games that don't end properly. Hearing someone mention Assassins Creed and then have to compulsively yell "FINISH YOUR FUCKING GAME" is really cathartic.

Anyway, Daniel Floyd came on, he wasn't very good but whatever.

Then the podcast started to decline sharply. I eventually had to stop listening because it got boring and painful. I loaded up another of their Room 101 podcasts and found it to be even worse.

So I thought I'd detail what I don't like about the damn things. Why? It's my blog, no-one reads it and I like setting this sort of thing out.


1) They're all too long

In theory, there's nothing wrong with a lecture/discussion lasting for an hour and a half. But.... I'm going to have to illustrate this with an example from my own life

I've kept a diary for most of my life because I'm quite narcissistic. However, when I was very young (14ish I think) I kept an Audio diary where I talked at a tape recorder. This didn't work at all because if I lost my train of thought or I didn't have something to say, I'd pause and wait for something to occur to me. I wouldn't pause the tape though. In a pen and paper diary (or a Blog, to keep up the podcast comparison) If you haven't got anything to say, you don't write anything. Similarly, if you need to work something out in your head, you wait until you know what you're going to say before you say it.

Consequently, my audio diary, as well as every podcast I've ever listened to, consisted of about twenty minutes of decent material, surrounded by an hour of badly formed sentiment and people going "urr".


2) Peoples personalities come through

This guy came on the Podcast, called Chris O'Reagan from the Super Happy Funtime Show. Now, he did say some quite interesting things but the *way* he was saying everything and the belligerent way he approached the topics... it made me want to fucking punch him.

Here's where text wins again, you see. If anyone read this, they wouldn't really get a feel for my personality, they'd just get a feel for my writing style. The good part of that is- with the exception of annoying formatting stuff like italics and *putting* *asterisks* *next* *to* *words*, you're interpriting the sentences how you want to. That way, you decide if I'm being an arse hole or not.

If someone's just chatting with someone, their personality is there. And, I gather from my unrepresentative sample of the 12 or so guests on these shows, four are boring, four are interesting, four are complete dick heads.

Two Bullshit Sci Fi Stock Devices

Sci Fi is often the most inventive and interesting genre out there. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its fair share of lazy writing, though. What do the lazy writers do? They fall back on these:



1) Evil organisations that execute their own employees

Now, I'm not saying that no company has ever killed an employee of theirs but this device is never about realism. This device is used by extremely lazy writers as a way of saying: Look! Look! This company is evil! They're killing their employees! Bastards!

The thing is, it's usually totally pointless. It's always done when an employee has "served their purpose" or "seen something they shouldn't have". If an employee has served their purpose, get them to do something else. It's no wonder a company has to keep hiring assassins if they bump them off after every successful job. And if they've seen something they shouldn't have... good for them. These are Sci Fi films, remember? It's not as if they can ever go to the press or the police in these films...

Worst Offenders:
Prototype Scientists try to save a mans life, he wakes up and escapes. Solders ask scientists a few questions and then kill them. Those scientists probably had some useful information, you know. Now you'll have to spend days going through their research and working out where they were in their projects.
Cube 2 A covert operative goes through hell to retrieve some data from the ultimate hiding place - another reality. How is she thanked? With a bullet to the back of her head. She is probably the most talented individual in your company, guys. At least try her out at marketing or something first...


Are there any examples of this actually working?
Not in Sci Fi, as far as I know... Leverage had an episode called The Mile High Job which played with this concept very nicely though.



2) Ultimate Stop Anything Force Fields

What happens when a force need to invade a planet? They need to stop the populace defending themselves. Clever shows like Battlestar Galactica have the enemy infiltrate the humans for years in advance, learning about them and planning precisely where and when to strike.

Lazy shows have the enemies invent a force field that will stop any weapon in the world, including nuclear bombs.

Now, I can cope with the idea of a force field but what's important to remember is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If a nuclear bomb explodes on your fancy alien hull I don't care if you've got a fancy force field, you're still being sent flying a few miles in the opposite direction.

Worst Offenders:
The War Of The Worlds Remakes, Independence Day etc. etc. etc.: This is especially bad in War Of The Worlds. They hit the aliens with missiles, rockets, bombs... the damn things don't even flinch. That's not how physics works, guys.

Are there any examples of this actually working?

Oddly, yes. The Christopher Eccleston series of Doctor Who gave their ultimate death machines, the Daleks, a stop anything force field. It's different for two reasons, though. Firstly, bullets fired at this force field are not stopped in their tracks, they are slowly absorbed... the implication being the daleks are using the power and momentum of these bullets to power their own systems. Secondly, if you and several buddies concentrate your fire on one small are, you can break through the force field and do some real damage.

Granted, in series 2, 3 and 4 of the same show this rather clever sci fi device get's unceremoniously stomped on by Russel T Davies, one of the all time great Lazy Writers but it was good whilst it lasted.

Street Fighter 4

I have a long and patchy history with fighting games... I never really liked them for a long time - mainly because learning special combos is quite high on my list of things I have no time for.

This all changed at university when I discovered Super Smash Brothers and Soul Calibur 2. Leaving SSB on one side, let's look at soul calibur 2.

I love several things about that game.

1) It's in 3-D
This means that you can block and dodge - they're two different moves. So if you want to avoid a strike, you can move back. This means the game is far more tactical than most others as you can just avoid most attacks and then chose when to strike.

2) There are hundreds of special moves.

The down side of this is that none of the special moves really feel that special. However, what it does mean is that it's incredibly easy to perform them. It's also fairly intuitive as different combinations of buttons generally mean the same thing.

3) Button bashers will always lose out to skilled players.

This is because skilled players know when to dodge, when to block and when to attack. These three things are far more important than the actual moves being performed. I like that.

4) The characters are all genuinely different.

Each character has a weapon and each weapon feels different. They all have different ranges, strengths and weaknesses. I know most fighting games have this but in the Soul Calibur games the weapon is a fantastic illustration of this.



So, with my parameters stated, what do I think about Street Fighter 4?

Plus points:
1) It's quite pretty.

Negative points:
1) It's not in 3-D so you can't dodge.
2) The characters all feel very similar to each other
3) You have to learn special move combos and they're much more powerful than the normal attacks so if you can't be bothered to learn them, you're fucked.
4) There seems to be very little strategy


It really does seem to be the anti Soul Calibur. It's what I hated about every bloody fighting game from Mortal Kombat to Marvel Vs Capcom. And it's got a metascore of 93. Now, I get that some people might like this sort of thing. If you like your fighting games to be about learning special moves rather than choosing when to attack and when to defend, it's probably very good.

I don't think this. I think it can fuck off.

Games what I have been playing (part 2)

We're in the traditional summer drought as far as games go but there have been a few interesting releases.

1) Overlord 2

I completed this yesterday and I do really like it. It has moved on a little from Overlord 1 in that it's less of a freeform RPG type thing. You move from area to area to area, there's a definite plot this time round and so on. This is good/bad if you ask me. I liked the general directionless evil the first game reveled in but there is a reasonable plot this time round as well as actual characters rather than standard fantasy archetypes.

As far as the rest of the game goes - everything's been tweaked. The graphics are better, the RPG elements are slightly better thought out... there are a few extra features like mounts for your minions which are entertaining if a little pointless.

What does annoy me slightly is- the moral decisions you take this time around are not to kill or not to kill, it's to dominate or to kill. To dominate someone, you use an evil presence spell until they lose their willpower and follow you unquestioningly. This may have been a good idea on paper but in practice, it's unclear which of these two options is more evil. As the game is supposed to be a cartoonish entertaining romp whilst being evil in many different ways, moral ambiguity doesn't quite fit in.

Anyway, it's not perfect, there are more than a few bugs as well as the above issues but I did really like it. I think I probably enjoyed the first one more as it was fresher but if you have to play one of these games, this sequel is probably the one to go for. And I do really recommend playing them, by the way, there's nothing else really like them at the moment.


2) Call of Juarez 2 - Bound In Blood

I've been faintly interested in this game for a while. I never played the first one but the previews all made it seem fairly interesting. I loaded it up this morning, though, and hit several roadblocks straight away.

I) The game is set in the American Civil War and your character passionately believes in the Confederate cause.

Morally, this puts them slightly above someone fighting passionately to preserve the Third Reich. I know the south weren't as bad as the Nazis but they were pretty fucking bad.


II) You can't turn the auto aiming off.

Thankfully, there is only auto aiming when you're using two pistols (for single pistols and rifles, it's normal) but it's still really, really fucking annoying when your cross hair follows an enemy literally half way across the screen. I'm playing on a PC, guys, I don't need you to aim for me, I have a mouse.


III) The engine feels artificial

This is harder to define - when your character walks around, you keep getting stuck on things that you should be clearing with no trouble... your sight line is a little bit low... it feels like you're playing a really short, fat guy. Everything feels really artificial.


So yeah. I don't like it.


3) Trine

I've only played the demo of this but it's a highly entertaining 2-D puzzle platformer thing. The graphics are lovely, the music is entertaining and it has three player local co-op which is fucking fantastic.

If you have a mate who lives near you who enjoys his games, get them around and try it out, it's great fun.


4) Unreal Tournament 3

I got this as part of the Unreal pack that I got mainly for Unreal 2 - which was one of my favourite games of yesteryear. Miracle of miracles, though, I actually found it quite entertaining. The single player game, this is. It may have great multiplayer but I don't really care.

The single player campaign has a ridiculous plot and over acted cut scenes. However, that puts it several dozen places above Half Life 2, for example, because at least Unreal Tournament 3 does have a plot. It's also got a clearly defined antagonist, goals and relationships for the player... you know, all that stuff HL2 dramatically failed to have.

It's not actually that fun, though. Warfare (territory control) is quite fun but UT3 seems to be really, really convinced that 21st century players enjoy Capture the Flag. I don't. I have never liked Capture the Flag and as I have grown older, my contempt for it has only increased.

There are also straight death matches, which are fun in a vague way.

Part of the problem is the guns - they're just not very fun. The minigun is entertaining but all the other guns lack feel and character.

One good side to UT3, though, is the vehicles, which are imaginative and often genuinely awesome.

UT3 is often good in spite of itself. I would never recommend actually buying it - partly because Epic are dicks who have all ready made far too much money from a vastly over rated game but mostly because the vast majority of the game is pretty damn underwhelming. Occasionally it puts a smile on your face but far too infrequently to be worth it. If someone buys it for you, though, enjoy.

5) Blueberry Garden

This is another of those indie games I like. It's an odd one. You play a bird/man thing who is in charge of this huge garden thing. You can pick up fruit from one location and leave it somewhere else and it'll grow. If you eat fruit, it will affect you or the landscape. Some make you fly more efficiently, some cause earthquakes. But in a good way.

It's a very hard one to describe. I did enjoy the time I spent playing it, but I have no idea why. The gameplay itself is basic at best. The graphics are good, the music is absolutely fantastic...

The best thing you can do is check out the demo, really.

Overlord 2

Given my current employment situation, I have to chose between comptuer games and regular square meals. Mind you, I do have 15% body fat, 5% of which I could stand to lose, so computer games it is.

I've played a couple of hours of Overlord 2, so far it's like the first one only tighter, prettier and much funnier. I haven't come across as many amusing moral choices and it's slightly harder to kill innocent people this time round but none the less, it's damn good fun.

Mass Effect has pissed me off

So I’ve been playing through Mass Effect again. Why, you ask. Well I don’t have the internets and I haven’t done for two weeks. You’d be surprised at how much you need the internets if you’re unemployed.

Anyhoo, I’ve been struggling through. The combat is balls but some of the bits are fairly entertaining – mainly the fun character bits. Having said that, I’ve just given up on it. Why? Because I couldn’t get a girl to shag me.

Part of the hype behind Mass Effect was you could cultivate relationships between characters and this is probably the best bit of the game. The problem arises when you don’t go down the beaten track. The first time round, I had my eye on someone, I forget who but because I was playing a girl and I didn’t tell Kaiden to fuck off at any point, the game decided I clearly wanted to ride him like a bitch from hell. This annoyed me and I had to start again, making the person I wanted to fuck extremely clear from the outset.

I should point out, by the way, that I am not in the least interested in seeing the grainy CGI sex scene. It’s just that the character arc is incomplete for the NPC’s if the relationship I’ve been cultivating for most of the game doesn’t go anywhere. It’s really annoying when films, for example, drop an unresolved character half way through and never bring them back. I was struggling with that sort of frustration.
So anyway, this time I was playing as a girl and I wanted to shag Ashley Wiliams. Why? Well because fucking the Asari is far too easy – the woman comes on so hard it’s like having sex with a stalker. I got Kaiden killed because he’s just a little bit too boring. Garrus, Tali and Wrex are out for species reasons.

It was with great surprise that I discovered – during the scene where my two characters usually meet and confess their love for each other – nothing. Not a sausage. Poor choice of words there. The game just skipped straight on to the next bit of story – which is landing on Ilos if anyone cares.

This *really* annoys me. The entire fucking game is about cultivating relationships and it doesn’t even let you do that properly. I forgave its rubbish combat, dodgy plot, lack of any interesting sub plots and so on because the character development system was brilliant. It seems that I had been playing the exact way Bioware wanted me to and as soon as I wanted to do something SLIGHTLY UNUSUAL, that was it.

Reh.

The second one had better be an improvement.

Terminator Salvation

Everyone has a moment from Star Wars Episode 1 where they realised that they were watching a cartoon, not a film. For me, this was in the big droid battle where Jar Jar Binks gets a blaster stuck to his foot and manages to execute four droids by waving his foot at them. There have been many truly awful moments of cinema that have come close to rivalling this moment. In Die Hard 4, for instance, when the car is driven into the helicopter. Or how about in Indiana Jones 4, where Shia LaBouf swings on those vines ala Tarzan... I’m pleased to report that T4 has beaten both of these moments and by quite a long way.

So two of our heroes are escaping the terminators when they are ambushed by a fifty foot tall giant terminator with a laser gun. At this point I actually thought some idiot had switched a reel with one from Transformers but apparently not. The characters perform some fairly entertaining escape manoeuvres and get away from the giant transformer. The giant transformer then opens two hatches on its’ legs and reveals two terminators on motor bikes.

It gets worse.

One of these terminators is taken down by liberal use of an oil slick, which is okay. The other is taken down by a wrecking ball on the back of a truck. Then a Hunter Killer – the flying terminators we know so well from the first three films – appears. It takes out a bridge ahead of the truck, which pulls a handbrake turn to stop. The chain, still dragging the terminator bike, whips round and slams into the Hunter Killer, blowing it up.

I haven’t seen anything quite that ridiculous since I last watched the Power Puff Girls. And that has a certain amount of self referential humour to it.

T4 is awful, really awful. The action scenes are nothing but extremely over the top cartoon sequences, like the ones I just described. The characterisation ranges from standard to hilarious. I lost count of the number of times someone yelled “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Several times it happened as the characters held their hands to the sky.

The script is... Well half of it is quite interesting – the stuff we saw in the trailer with the Terminator who thinks he’s human. That’s fairly entertaining but then there’s a load of utter rubbish involving John Conner and a secret plan to destroy the terminator base. It’s one of those plots where a lot gets said and discussed and yet nothing actually happens.

T4 has so many problems – even ignoring the characters, the acting and the action. The score is terrible (it’s a Danny Elfman one, which gives you quite a nice idea of how bad it is) the plot doesn’t really make much sense, there are too many loose ends, the terminators are nowhere near as dangerous as they should be and they appear to have made John Connor into a total dick.

It’s not as bad as Star Trek and Indiana Jones 4 – there are a couple of characters that I liked – but it’s really, really bad. Save yourself the time and money.

Overlord

Chris Livingstone has been waxing lyrical about the Overlord 2 demo. I’ve always been aware that Overlord existed in a faint way. I seem to remember Rhiana Pratchett reviewed it for PC Zone, which may be a bit unfair because I believe she helped write it. Anyway, if Livingstone likes it, the chances are that I will so I thought I’d try out Overlord as Overlord 2 isn’t out for a few months.

Oh boy.

Overlord is a weird hybrid of Action RPG and RTS. You play an evil emperor who has upgradable armour, spells, health and so on but you’re not exactly Altair in the combat stakes. For that you have your minions. You start off with five basic minions and you acquire more as you go on. I had thirty five minions of various types running around after me by the time I had finished and I’m sure I could have picked up more if I’d been paying attention.

Overlord’s big selling point was its knowing attitude towards high fantasy. I hate High Fantasy, I think it’s a dead genre that no-one has done anything decent with for years. Overlord takes the tired clichés that litter every example of the genre that I can think of and gleefully subverts them. You spend the first act gleefully clubbing hobbits to death, then move up to Elves, Dwarves and everything in between.

The game plays constantly with the nature of evil. There aren’t really any “good” options in the game. You are, for example, tasked with rescuing a supply of food for a nearby village. To do this, you work your way through a hobbit village, slaughtering everything you encounter. Once you find the food store, you can either keep it for yourself or return it to the village. Oddly, returning it to the village is the more evil thing to do as it keeps the villagers alive so you can enslave them more effectively.

Having said that, these choices are almost all cosmetic. Once you’ve decided to be evil or really evil, nothing really affects your progress. Characters attitudes towards you change (often hilariously) but you’re never presented with extra manna or anything, as far as I could tell.

I’m not sure that this is a bad thing, however. Moral choices, as Daniel Floyd pointed out, are never actual choices in games because they always reward one choice more than the other, thus negating the morality and making it more about economics. Here, you don’t gain anything by helping the villagers other than their thanks and you don’t really gain anything from stealing their food. It’s just fucking hilarious.

Overlord’s main plot is.... pretty reasonable and there are more than enough brilliant side quests to keep you entertained. The moral choice aspect makes keeps things interesting as well. I’ll definitely be playing it through again so I can see how things would have turned out if, for example, I’d abandoned my loyal wife for a goth girl I came across in a dungeon somewhere.

As far as the main quests go... there are a few very grindy ones. There are no objective markers so often it’s not entirely clear where the hell you’re supposed to be going. I spent half an hour wandering around a Dwarf Village before working out that I was supposed to enter a prison cell I’d opened to allow the game to progress. These moments are rare, but they’re bloody annoying when they do happen.

What does make up for the grind are the fun ways you can solve some quests. For example, I was charged with killing some feral unicorns by some elves because the unicorns were preventing them from worshiping at a sacred tree in the middle of a grove. I was a little short on minions at the time and so rather than charge in and risk death, I set fire to the meadow which burned up the unicorns as well as the sacred tree. The Elves cried. It was fantastic.

What else is there to say? Well the controls work very well (on PC at least, I’m told they’re quite badly broken on the consoles. Har har.) There’s a good amount of content so It’s good value for money... The graphics aren’t that good and I came across a couple of bugs here and there but overall, I’d definitely recommend it. Check out the demo on Steam.

Prototype

I didn't hold out much hope for Prototype and it turns out my lack of faith was highly justified.

For those who don't know, Prototype is an open world game that follows a young man who has had a genetic experiment performed on him and now he... mutates a lot. or something. He can run up walls, absorb people into himself, he's practically invincible, can superjump etc. etc. etc.

I found it really hard to get into this game. Part of the reason behind this is the total lack of plot. You're never really given an explanation as to who the main character is, who the company who've infected him are, why the hell we should care about his sister and so on.

The writing is incredibly lazy. For example, when your character breaks out, he is treated to the sight of the scientists who were supposed to be performing an autopsy on him being gunned down by soldiers working for the company. Why do they do this? Well, no reason that's evident. It's just a very quick and cliched way of getting across that the company are EVIL. As if doing genetic experiments on live human subjects didn't make that point clearly enough.

Problem number two with this game is the AI. Every cop and soldier in the game is looking out for you but you can disguise yourself as a civilian. This means that the AI has been programmed to ignore all but the most blatant signs of supernatural goings on. This boils down to you can jump across cars, superjump into the air and land right in front of a cop, shattering the cobblestones, and he'll just gaze at you. I punched a civilian once, several dozen other civilians saw me but a cop was looking the other way. The cop instantly ran over and looked at the civilians' corpse, ignoring me completely. Apparently me standing on top of the civilians body and several other people cowering at my feet pleading for me not to kill them wasn't a big enough clue for this flatfoot.

So apart from the AI and the plot is this game any good? I'm not sure. There's free running, which is okay, some faintly entertaining combat stuff. There's still far too much pointless running around and I'm not sure if I can be bothered to commit the sort of time to this game that seems to be demanded.

I will be playing a little bit more but after the first few hours of play, my impressions really aren't very good.

Left 4 Dead 2 update

Valve have confirmed that yes, they are going to continue supporting Left 4 Dead in spite of its sequel.

So, internet:

1) I told you so
2) Stop moaning about it
3) check out this gameplay video, it's going to be fucking AWESOME.

Although that gameplay vid does demonstrate quite nicely the main problem with console controls. They're so jerky, there's no fluidity, no subtlety.

Smug smug smug.

Grin.

Sleep.

Songs what I have been listenining to recentlyz

1) Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden

Normally I don't like Iron Maiden because they're one of those bands than encourage people obsessed with 80's hair metal to claim that no modern metal can match it. This is utter bullshit but anyway....

Fear of the Dark is a fantastic song. It's a lot shorter than most 80's metal songs (seven minutes, rather than the more usual nine) and it has a real progression to it. It also builds and builds in the way, for example, Telegraph Road does.

It's not fantastic by any means but it is a very good example of a genre which has been rather unfairly tainted by Aerosmith and the like.

2) 99 Red Baloons by Goldfinger

Now, as a musical purist, it does annoy me slightly to not hear this song in the original German. Particularly as I'm told the lyrics are completely different in English. Having said that, this song does beat the original in one all important way: It uses guitars instead of synth.

There is something for a trend at the moment for punk bands redoing 80's "classics". Orange did it with Karma Chameleon and their version is quite definitely better than the original.

Previously, I'd always assumed cover versions were attempts to grab quick publicity like Madonna's butchered version of American Pie. These versions are suitably obscure that they won't offend the people who legitimately love the original versions, though.

I love 99 Red Balloons for two reasons: Firstly, it is a lot faster than the original which makes it feel like it's got more energy than the original every had. Secondly, he slips into German for the third verse. This is awesome, and seems to increase the energy of the song even further

3) Jyosei Kashimashi Monogatari by Morning Musume

This one is going to be a hard sell.

Okay, so it's J-Pop, which isn't the most respected of genres (for good reason) but there are a few things I like about this one song.

1) The video is quite charming, in a really odd way.
2) It's *really* catchy
3) They do the same dance Mona does in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
4) Most of the girls are quite hot. Which I admit has nothing to do with the music at all.
5) It's got a *lot* of energy in it. If this came on in a club, if suitable amounts of alcohol had been consumed, the dance floor would probably collapse from overly energetic dancing.

So yeah. I got recommended this, by the way. I didn't go out of my way to try and find it.

Stop judging me.

Stop it.

4) That's What You Get by Paramore

Sorry, I couldn't find a studio version of that song.

I love this song mainly because of Rock Band - I've been playing a drum campaign through on expert and this is one of the only songs I can get all the way through. The drum line is really fun to play.

Taken on its own merits, though, it's a surprisingly charming song. The singer is charismatic and it's rocky without going into actual metal territory.

5) Dirty Little Secret - The All American Rejects

Now, normally I shouldn't like the All American Rejects because they're generally a little bit emo for my liking. This is one song though that transcends its emo roots.

One reason for this is the video - which contains Post Secrets. Anyone not familiar with that project, head over to their website right now. It's incredibly touching to see these secrets for you to see in a high budget mainstream music video. It also means there's a genuine reason for the Emo - rather than generic whining which a lot of the genre tends to fall foul of.

Secondly, there's the drum line, which is a lot of fun to play. Sorry, I'll stop getting my recommendations from Rock Band one of these days.

Then there's the guitar line which is really, really damn simple but very catchy. Listen to it a few times and you'll be humming it all day.






So that's it, pretty much. I've got to go to my Ju Jitsu class now but I should say one thing before I go.

Seriously, why are the RIAA trying to close down torrent sites? I found all the songs I was after bar one studio version withing a few seconds on Youtube, one of the biggest sites on the internet.

But you can't keep those songs, you tell me.

Yes, you fucking can. Insert the word "kiss" before any youtube URL so www.youtube.com/whatever becomes www.kissyoutube.com/whatever and BINGO. A downloadable version for you.

A gift from me to you :)

Mass Effect

I've been having another crack at Mass Effect. This is mainly because my three main activities at the moment are:

1) Packing
2) Agonising about whether job interviews went well.
3) Agonising about whether I'm going to be able to get any more job interviews.

And pretty much anything is better than any of those three activities. I say pretty much anything. They're still better than Resident Evil 5.

Anyhoo, it is better than I remember it.

Last time I tried to play it through, I got stuck on the first level. It wasn't too difficult or anything, it's just that I would always get to the bit where you have to disarm the bombs and I'd completely lose interest. As far as first levels go, I think it's actually worse than the one from KOTOR 2, which had my previous WORST LEVEL EVARRR award.

So anyway, I zipped through the opening level whilst chatting to my girlfriend, and actually found myself having fun running around in the citadel... Things only improved when I got to Novera - the level with the giant ant creatures. The combat was more fun than I remembered and the Biotic powers were turning out to be useful - although no-where near as useful as force lightning.

Then I got to Feros - the level where the plant creature takes over all the civilians and I remembered why I really didn't like this game the first time round.

Some of the levels are pretty good. A lot of them are *total* shit. The plant creature planet is all rubbish, as is the level where you're blowing up the Krogan Geophage factory thing.

What saddens me slightly is Bioware have clearly spent a lot of time placing hidden events in the game for the more dedicated players to find. I really, really wish, though, they'd made the main levels - the ones everyone was going to play - actually fun.

But the characters are well realised - much better and more likable than the ones in KOTOR 1, Jade Empire or Fallout 3 (which I know wasn't developed by Bioware but it's the only other RPG that came out recently that I can think of) the plot is... okay and there are a lot of things to do with yourself.

I just hope the sequel follows through on the strengths and hones the gameplay.