Limbo's Silent Storytelling

Spoiler Alert: This article includes explicit references to the ending. This game has a fantastic conclusion and if you intend to play it I recommend you don't read on.

Last summer, Danish indie developers PlayDead Studios came out of nowhere to develop Limbo, their first game. It was a downloadable title that was hugely well-received and sold incredibly well, and quickly became one of the Xbox 360's proudest exclusives. However, I look back on my time with Limbo, and I don't see it simply as a 'good game the 360 had', like I would with Gears of War or Halo 3. Limbo was a step further, establishing a place in the 'art game' subgenre, and presented the same sort of minimalist experience people found in Shadow of the Colossus, or I found in Mirror's Edge. Wandering through the dark forest as this boy was no simple task and no ordinary journey, and the more I look back on it, the more I realise how hard it hits.

Looking at the opening titles of Limbo, I think of Lars' Von Trier's horror film 'Antichrist'. In black and white, the screen simply shows the word 'LIMBO', similar to the placards in the film that signal the beginning of the next chapter in the story. The game and the film also share a fondness for silence, and if not that, a lack of music. Where they differ however is in meaning, for while Antichrist tries (and in my opinion, fails) to offer a deeper meaning of morality and man's bloodlust and dominance over women, Limbo does not yearn to put across a message, but rather share an experience of a lost soul.

Let me put this bluntly: if you have not picked up on it already, the boy looking for his sister in the woods is a metaphor, and the word 'Limbo' is not used in vain. Many wonder what was the significance of the ending, and could not find the conclusion. In fairness, it is left fairly open to interpretation, but I will explain the way I saw it. The boy, after waking suddenly in a dark forest, has had to find his way through traps and escape creatures to find something or someone. Traps may best him, and indeed upon failure can lead to his gruesome end, but he keeps coming back until he overcomes such challenges (yes, I believe even the quick respawn after death is significant), and after one particularly large puzzle he smashes through an unseen pane as time slows down. What this pane is made of is not important, because it is not real. He once again opens his eyes, and finds his sister, standing next to an old ruined treehouse in the rain. She perks her head up without turning around, and the game ends. Because not a word is spoken in the entire game, nothing is openly explained, and as such many people do not realise: he is dead, and so is his sister. They both died falling from their treehouse some time ago, maybe minutes, maybe years. This journey has been through the titular limbo, on his way to the afterlife, and it has tested him. The things he has faced are things children see as hostile in a world that is much bigger than them - scary things like spiders and rats, violent kids (bullies), things we are taught to stay away from (dangerous machinery and electrical equipment), things we must learn to conquer as we grow (deep water) and, most importantly of all, loneliness. Not a single friendly life form has the boy encountered, but at the end he has ultimately overcome what he has faced, and he is reunited with his sister. The afterlife he has entered is irrelevant, heaven or hell, as nothing good nor bad is seen, but he finds his sister at the very spot they were separated, and to this end it is concluded.

Look around the internet and there are plenty of other interpretations, and this is fine. If there was a simple explanation, it would have been obvious, and PlayDead clearly wanted people to see the story's ending in their own ways. Some may say the girl has chosen to stay in limbo with him, some say he has entered a shadow world, where he can see his sister but not vice versa (which would explain why she does not turn around); but all involve him facing fear and solitude. What's amazing is that such debate is caused because of people having their own individual experiences with it, some considerably varied, but it is done without dialogue, without any music beyond ambient noise and without colour.

Limbo is an amazing title, one that has certainly broken the mould for Indie titles, and for storytelling. If you have read this and have not played the game, come to it with an empty mind, and take the game for what you will, because it is in giving you the chance to pick up the pieces that PlayDead have massively succeeded in offering a beautifully dark but touching tale.

Reactions to VGAs, and the elusive arrival of Gears of War 3

This is rather late now. I have been meaning to post this considerably sooner, as I actually got up the day after Spike's VGA awards and immediately checked them out on their website, but I have been too carried away either with college work or completing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow to 110%. If you credit the game for nothing else, there aren't many others that allow you to complete it more than logically possible. 

First of all, the one had previously mentioned in my earlier post: the overall game of the year, or 'goatie'. I had dreaded this as much as I had looked forward to it, fearing that either Halo Reach or Black Ops would win it due to popular appeal - though I enjoyed both, they are effectively repackaged versions of their predecessors. However, it seems common sense pulled through and Rockstar's rootin' tootin' six-shooterin' Red Dead Redemption took the title, and as far as I see it, it's well deserved. Sure, I enjoyed Bad Company 2 more overall, but Red Dead was a near-perfect game in just about everything it delivered (the same can't be said for BC2's lackluster campaign), as well as being starkly original in comparison to its entire competition. Rockstar may have stumbled a little on GTA IV, but in exploring fairly untouched ground with Red Dead they have more than made up for it.

Other titles were pleasing to see, such as Mass Effect 2 for Best Xbox 360 title trumping the shamefully broken and uninteresting Fable III, Limbo deservedly taking Best Independant Game and God of War 3 having Best Graphics. There was a perhaps a little bit too much of 'Red dead fever', with it also taking Best Original Score AND Best Song in a Game, and Undead Nightmare winning Best DLC. However more irritating was Call of Duty once again snatching Best Shooter, Halo Reach having Best Multiplayer (worse than Halo 3s, yet beat Bad Company 2's huge and tactical multiplayer experience) and Best Action-Adventure Game's winner being Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Call me a fanboy if you will, but personally I believe Lords of Shadow should have at least been a nominee for the latter, packing in 30-40 hours of an adventure/hack and slash-fused tale of fantasy and love lost, instead of Brotherhood which was in my opinion a worse version of AC2 with tacked-on multiplayer. 

Plenty of trailers took the stage, showcasing a new Portal 2 teaser and finally a trailer for a new Elder Scrolls. What didn't rear its head was Gears of War 3. It seems that after delay and delay Gears has stopped trying to breed hype, and for good reason. 

If you've ever talked to me about Gears of War, you'll probably have heard my usual speech about Gears 2 'going Hollywood' over Gears 1's depth and darkness. Sure, I enjoyed the game, enough to play the campaign several times and play over 60 hours of multiplayer, but I believe it was a step down for the series, leaving me to wonder whether it's willing to admit for its mistakes in the trilogy's conclusion. In the past, there have been good signs; I read in an interview with 'Cliffy B' in 360 Magazine that he himself admitted to being disappointed with the final product of Gears 2, being too open and lacking the intimacy of the first game. That said, other sources have not put across the same message, mainly in the form of game footage. At E3 2010 we saw Marcus and the gang fighting a Lambent Berserker - yes, looks like there'll be Lambent everything now. Macho and visually impressive though it was, it's not quite the same deal as the ominous first Berserker that Delta Squad meet, creeping through the city crypts. The atmosphere of that mission was unforgettable, but now we're exploring jungles under sunny skies. I've no doubt Epic will deliver in terms of a straight-up third person shooter, and maybe make the story a little clearer, but from the looks of things, we'll never have the grimy feel of the Gears' first outing again.

DICE, I have underestimated you again. Also, VGAs.

If any of you out there are sad enough to pay close attention to my Twitter, you'll know that this week I've been getting fairly irate with DICE refusing to give any dates for the new maps and the Vietnam expansion for Bad Company 2. Harvest Day and Oasis from one of my all-time favourite games, Bad Company 1 are making a return, and as such I became totally impatient with Community Manager Daniel Matros casually smiling and saying 'they'll come in good time'. As it turns out, I should have learnt my lesson from when I was waiting for the BC2 demo to come out for Xbox 360 - as last night Matros tweeted the new maps would come out... the following day. 

So it seems while every other developer around the world that isn't Valve is fumbling about acting as if games are all business and deadlines, there are some who are willing to have a little fun and throw in a surprise or two for their fans. And at the same time making me look like a moronic fanboy, which is fair enough.

They also announced Vietnam will be hitting the cyber-shelves of the XBL Marketplace in three weeks time (Dec 21), so to prepare I watched Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Verdict: FMJ is better, and Black Ops lifted various scenes straight out of Apocalypse Now, in one case word-for-word. There's tribute, and there's also plagiarism, Treyarch. 

In terms of other big game news, this year's VGAs are approaching. I made a post on it last year, but apart from that I usually wouldn't rate the awards too highly seeing as it's just a show on Spike and not anything too official. However, 2010 has been a hell of a year for gaming, the best I can remember (and probably the best for a long time...) so I'm quite excited to see who comes out on top. I heard on IGN UK's recent podcast that the nominees for overall GOTY, or 'goatie' as I like to call it, are:

- Halo: Reach
- COD: Black Ops
- Mass Effect 2
- Red Dead Redemption

I enjoyed Black Ops, but I wouldn't like it to win simply on principle. We get a new one every year and I don't think it's fair for Activision to swoop in for the millionth time to win it. Halo: Reach greatly disappointed me as a sequel for Halo 3, and I think it took too much of a step back to be a GOTY. That leaves Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead, both of which are fine by me to win. ME2 isn't really my thing, but I respect that decent, upstanding RPG players say it was an absolute masterpiece and I take their word for it. Red Dead I DID fall in love with, and I think it was a real boundary-pusher for an open-world market that's already getting pretty full, and I'd be more than happy to see a Goatie version of it come out next year with all the DLC packs included - no doubt Rockstar would make a sweet deal and make it super cheap.

Once I've played Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, I'll be sure to make a list of my top ten games of this year. There have been more than enough golden titles to have one hell of a countdown. That's all for now, folks, keep gaming.

Thoughts on Black Ops, and future reviews and rentals

It's that time of year again, as Activision release what is usually a disappointing equivalent of Christmas for casual gamers across the globe in the form of a new Call of Duty. After being disappointed to say the least at Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 I promised myself I wouldn't buy the next, but it being developed by Treyarch, makers of my former favourite CoD3 and the grizzly and atmospheric World at War, I decided to give it a rental. I'm happy to say that not only have Treyarch decided not to ride Infinity Ward's wave of success into multi-million dollar sales by rehashing either Modern Warfare title, but have given the series new life and a new edge in storytelling.

I won't go into a great amount of detail, as I'll save it for a review, but the campaign is for me the best yet in the series. It doesn't get off to the greatest of starts but the mission in which you escape from the Russian labour camp Vorkuta is where the action truly kicks off. The scale and the brutality of it is totally astounding, giving much-needed adrenaline to World at War's extreme bloodiness. Common appearances from Viktor Reznov (easily my favourite Call of Duty character) and great voice acting compliment a fantastically deceptive, unravelling plot, and the twist at the end was a great surprise.

The multiplayer is what people stay for when it comes to Call of Duty, and Treyarch deliver here too. The new COD points system for class customisation and the emblem creator, the Theater mode and the Wager matches are simple components that simply put Black Ops above any other Call of Duty in terms of content, and in gameplay hundreds of tweaks and fundamental changes have been made to balance the game. With the exception of the RC-XD killstreak and the long range of the knife, frustration in the game is at an all-time minimum, and that's really saying something in this series. Playing with friends is a total blast, and while it hasn't quite beaten the good times I've had in a party on Bad Company 2, it remains as a great multiplayer title of this year.

My review for the game should show up within a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'll be reviewing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which in my opinion is second only to Red Dead Redemption for a single player campaign in 2010. I also plan to rent Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, though I resent it for being a cash-in and a half-sequel, and I will buy Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Mixing the feel and freedom of NFS: Most Wanted with Burnout's aggression sounds like a good idea to me.

If you haven't already, check out my reviews for Fallout: New Vegas and Castlevania HD here and here. That's all for now, Failboat out.

Gaming's Great Decline

It doesn't take a genius to see that the gaming industry has begun to make huge changes this generation. For some it's only getting better; casual games such as Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and FIFA are being released once every year and are causing other companies to shape their products around these simple formulas. Gaming is becoming less of the hobby it once was, taken up by the dedicated and the enthusiasts, and instead is an easily accessible pastime. It's not just casual gamers that are being appealed to, either. Last month, the family-friendly Playstation Move accessory was released, and we now await the monolithic 500 million dollar release of Microsoft's Kinect, something that promises to make the humble Xbox 360 a home entertainment system that can be used by any and all. Regardless of the cynicism of many, I know there are a lot of families who will be happy to have a machine that needs nothing more than your voice and body to play games and movies, and in that respect I'm glad many minds will be opened to the prospect of gaming. However, it doesn't stop me looking at my old consoles and games and think, 'remember when companies made games for gamers?'

Take a look at who is, effectively, in charge of the gaming industry. One on hand is Nintendo; they tend to make games that are small, fun and suitable for everyone. This is fair enough, this has been their status quo for a good 15 years now. Mario, Yoshi, Kirby, Pokemon - these are kid-friendly franchises and people have become accustomed to them being Nintendo's staple. Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, aren't the same. They've been the ones to release games (supposedly) on par with PC games; more mature, more advanced and cutting-edge. Despite this, they have a major difference to Nintendo in that they are not gaming-centred companies. Sony makes electronic hardware in countless different categories, and Microsoft have made themselves the most successful software company in the world. These giants aren't just in pursuit of you, the gamer, getting the best experience, they're a business out for profit and will go in whatever direction brings in the green. The only surprise about Kinect and Playstation Move is how long it took for them to catch on to the family gaming market, considering the incredible sales of the Wii.

Taking a look at the movers and shakers in the production of games is even more grim. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision and aptly nicknamed 'the Hitler of the games industry' has openly admitted that he intends to endorse only franchises that are easily annualized and milked to the last penny. The results of this plan are evident and, most unfortunately, successful. Activision has published the Tony Hawk's skating games (14 releases), Call of Duty (11 releases, now annualized), Guitar Hero (12 releases, not including DS ports) and the Spyro games (13 releases). The quality of these games is no big issue, because the sad fact is that people will buy them regardless. For an example, one must look no further than Modern Warfare 2, Activision's diamond jewel. The focus here is cliched military FPS action, with emphasis on online multiplayer. This game did nothing new and has not advanced the genre in terms of mechanics one bit, but scored the biggest entertainment release in history and maintained the 'Most played game on Xbox Live' title all the way from it hitting the store shelves until Halo: Reach took the crown 10 months later. Why? Because it's a game people know, a safe option, one that doesn't require a great deal of thought or effort. Cheap, thrill-a-minute titles such as this are now everywhere, leaving plenty of thoughtful and original efforts in the dust.

Lastly is the issue of value for money, and this affects all gamers: casual, core and hardcore. We've become complacent with a £40 and $60 price tag per title, as this has been standard pricing for many a year now, and for the most part this has been reasonable considering the quality and playtime games usually offer. However, think about how much money this is relative to other entertainment mediums. Seeing a movie at a cinema is about £6, and about £10 to buy it on DVD. Even in Blu-Ray quality, prices won't usually exceed £20. A movie's average length is about 2 hours, and you'll probably watch it once or twice. So it strikes me as funny when I notice that the average length of a modern game is six to seven hours, and the rest of the content is online-only multiplayer which some players may not have access to. A particularly despicable act made by Activision was the pricing of the Modern Warfare 2's map packs, being priced at 1200msp and £10.79 for a meager 3 new maps and 2 remakes. Capitalising on the release price of the full game being £10 more than standard pricing, I can't help but think people are being given far less than they pay for. I could say the same for many other games, too, that are being released despite severely lacking where it counts. Alpha Protocol is a game fans waited 4 years for, only for it to turn out as a sub-standard, buggy RPG that looks and plays like it was made for the Playstation 2. Mafia II, a game that suffered delay after delay, ended up as a game that offered even less freedom than its predecessor, and was simply a 12 hour story that was hardly good enough to replay. Even the recently released Fallout: New Vegas, which I am currently enjoying, is so filled with bugs that I can hardly believe it has been playtested. 

The worst of it all is that no matter how much it pains me, and how much I write and complain and promise that I'll never fund such terrible fan service, at the end of the day it is the gamer population that makes the difference. The gamer population: a subculture that existed once, that cared about games. My £40 is a drop in the ocean, an ocean that is now hugely comprised of people who think 'multiplayer or no buy', who think Call of Duty is as good as games get, who think 'if I haven't heard of it, it's not good'. I fear that the direction of the industry is in the hands of those who are perfectly willing to ruin it. 

Radroaches aren't the only bugs in New Vegas

I've been waiting for New Vegas to come out for a hell of a long time. I racked up a ruinous 250 hours on Fallout 3 and was totally immersed in its post-apocalyptic world, and with all 5 expansions completed a sequel was, naturally, an attractive prospect. To some extent, New Vegas delivers. It's got a map even larger than Fallout 3, more guns, more enemies - this is a wasteland brimming with adventure, and I have no doubt it'll be a long time before I'm willing to leave. 

However, if you've read anything about the game, you'll have heard about the bugs. I cannot possibly overstate how poorly this game has been polished; for every amazing quest you have, the experience will no doubt be dampened by some stupid enemy stuck in the floor, an item disappearing from your inventory (I even had my armour disappearing off my own body), or a total game crash at that critical moment. It surprises me that a game that uses such a close template to Fallout 3 has suddenly become such a technical mess. Bethesda's title had its fair share of glitches, sure, but nowhere near to this degree. It's not just glitch issues that bother me either, but also things like that frame-rate can be truly horrible at times. The game often struggles horribly to process the number of enemies on-screen, even if there aren't that many - I remember being faced with five radscorpions, but the game became so choppy (with the frame rate dropping to what must have been about 5fps) that it was too painful on the eyes to even look at the screen. 

I won't go into a great amount of detail, as I am saving my ideas on it for my review on ps3xboxreviews, but while I'd definitely recommend the game to anyone who enjoyed Fallout 3, I'd also be prepared for the worst in terms of production quality.

Another soundtrack sharing, and Lords of Shadow references

Keeping with the current Castlevania vein, I've recently tracked down the full soundtrack to Harmony of Despair, organised it and shared it on Megaupload. Includes all the in-mission tracks, menu themes, victory themes... all that jazz. It might be 'temporarily unavailable' for a couple of days after this post, but after then it should be fine.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O6ER6VFZ

Currently playing the new Castlevania, too, 'Lords of Shadow' and it has certainly exceeded my expectations. Of course, it's a departure from the previous games to fit in with modern games and appeal to a wider audience, and I think the best way to describe it is a cocktail of Dante's Inferno, Tomb Raider and Lord of the Rings. I won't go into much detail until I write a review of it.

What I have noticed, however, is a whole lot of references in the game. While some unfortunately seem to be fairly shameful rips out of other games (two puzzles I have noticed came straight out of Tomb Raider Underworld, meaning I solved them extremely quickly), the game also makes clear its inspiration from Tolkien's work. For example, the mysterious yet wise character Gandolfi is a play on the name of Gandalf, the bear/werewolves are named Wargs and bear strong resemblance to the film's portrayal of them, and many of the lines in the narration are written and pronounced very similarly to memorable lines from the books or films. These won't stand out unless you're a Tolkien nerd like me, but it was odd that a game with roots in vampires and gothic themes was associating itself with a work of classical fantasy. 

Also, bonus points for anyone who spots the Portal reference. It stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

Castlevania: Land of Dracula's Army of Japanese Gamers

The last month, between bouts of being disappointed with Mafia II and frustrated with Halo: Reach, I've been indulging in unhealthily huge doses of Konami's latest (and possibly last) throwback Castlevania game, Harmony of Despair. As 'throwback' suggests, it resembles in all but console the 2D Dracula-slaying platformers of old, only this time with a new co-operative multiplayer component. Instead of venturing into hell on earth alone as Alucard, Soma, Jonathan or any of the other protagonists, Harmony of Despair throws 6 classic characters all into one adventure, thus allowing for fun if not chaotic 6-player online co-op. 

Of course, regardless of the quality of the game, the people who play this online must clearly have a taste for games from the good ol' times when you weren't given any tutorials, you were expected to put in a lot of hours to get anywhere and what we now consider 'hard' difficulty was standard. So basically, the Japanese. 

I'm not saying there were no American or British players online, but even the most hardcore of these simply did not compare to the Japanese - or sometimes Korean - players in skill and speed. My man Ruairidh (LordDoUrden) and I struggled for hours of pure grinding just to beat Dracula by the skin of our teeth on Normal, but I will never forget joining a game with four Japanese players on Hard difficulty and seeing them beat him without Ruairidh or me in under a minute. I've always had a slight apprehension of the Japs due to their utterly baffling culture, but seeing four guys casually pummel through what seemed impossible in such a short time was something I had to admire, despite it being something I'd undoubtedly call 'a bit sad' if it was a bunch of Americans or Brits. It put me in my place as a Western gamer; we call ourselves 'hardcore' with our silly FPS games and our easy RPGs, but at the end of the day we'll always be beaten effortlessly by the people who invented the corn-flavoured KitKat.

I'm thanking my stars Konami dumbed down Lords of Shadow for people like me...

The Reach Report

I'm writing just over two weeks from my purchase of 'this year's most anticipated game', Halo Reach. The anticipation isn't exactly surprising, what with Halo 3 being easily the most successful and most played Xbox 360 game all the way up to Modern Warfare 2's release, but whether or not Bungie have truly delivered in their final Halo outing is another thing.

Most importantly, this isn't just Halo 3 with a few new things added. No, strangely for a sequel, the game takes us back to just before the beginning of the saga, literally days before the beginning of Halo: CE. As any Halo veteran will tell you, this was set just after the obliteration of the human colony Reach and, as you'd expect, the game takes this massacre pretty seriously. I can't really knock them for this - something would probably feel a little off if we were sauntering through a brightly coloured forest with grunts comically yelling 'I'LL KILL YOU, DEMON' in their 6-year-old voices - but it comes to question whether Halo can really function in this environment. A virtually invincible superhero's quest in the 3 original games can be taken with a pinch of salt, but surrounded by millions of innocent being glassed by the oncoming Convenant horde, I felt somewhat out of place. Just one title back in the series, I was having a laugh blasting through this with my friends, crashing into each other with warthogs, finding amusing little easters eggs and, despite having a great time, could never think of it as much more than a bit of sci-fi silliness. Now I almost feel guilty laughing.

My issue, I think, is this. I can have a lot of fun in Halo games, and put a lot of work into them multiplayer-wise, and I'm also aware of the huge hardcore audience, but at the end of the day Halo is really a casual game. The first game of its trilogy did a lot for the FPS genre, but it's also easy to pick up, play, and put down just as easily. Suddenly when I'm being shown brutes tearing civilians to ribbons, however, it's almost shocking. The soundtrack is also particularly unforgiving on the ears, replacing the trilogy's bouncy piano-based theme with a determined, military feel. Sure, it's well-composed as always by Mr O'Donnell, but what I want is mindless explosive fun, not Call of Duty in space.

The multiplayer, as always, is a different matter. Fear not, though; if you liked Halo 3 this will definitely suffice. Playlists have vastly improved, things like the daily challenges keep things fresh every single day and show Bungie's unrelenting service to the fans. As soon as I'd finished the story, I was hooked from the word 'go' for about three days... until I started noticing problems. Firstly, the ranking system has changed from Halo 3's combination of Highest Skill and EXP to just experience points, or 'credits' which can also be used to buy new armour parts. I can't deny that previously multiplayer was littered with boosters, to the point where there would be at least one literally every day, but nonetheless I still believe that Halo 3 had the best ranking system of all time. With just two types of stats, it defined what game types you played most, how competitive you were and, most importantly, how good you truly were. Now, Halo seems to have fallen in line behind every other multiplayer game by having an oh-so-simple experience system where you can only gain and never lose points, meaning in theory anyone can reach General with enough play. Maps are also a definite problem, and anyone who has played with me will have heard me groan 'Pinnacle... again', 'Reflection... again' or ' Countdown... again'. There are 9 maps for competitive multiplayer, even fewer than the previous 11. One of these is Forge World and, it being big enough to be a whole campaign mission, it has been split into 5 different smaller maps, but really they all strongly resemble each other and it's hard to count them as separate. All the maps are also cut-and-pasted directly from campaign missions so don't expect any new dazzling environments. The main problem is that they're all very heavily gametype-restricted, and with such a small number in the first place this limits variety hugely. 2 of the 9, for example, are only playable in Big Team or Invasion. Another 2 are remakes from Halo 2. We waited three years for this?

I can never bring myself to say any Halo game is badly made, because they're all very highly polished, and considering the package you get for standard price it's very impressive: campaign, matchmaking, firefight, forge and theater. However, I also think that it wasn't a very smart move for Bungie to go into a new direction for Halo in their last game, and until we get some map packs, matchmaking doesn't have a great deal of lasting factor either. If you like the previous games, go ahead and buy it because you will like it, but think twice before believing it will be the best in the series.

Acid Trip - The Game

No, I'm afraid despite the title, such a game has not yet been released. If it was, it would be developed by Oddworld Inhabitants and be the most horrifying game in existence. However, what I present to you is the next best thing: The Impossible Game.

I don't usually dip into the Indie Games section of the Xbox Live Marketplace a lot, usually because I resent buying Microsoft points so much that I only do it when absolutely necessary. However, with about 100 points to spare after buying both Limbo and Castlevania HD (both great buys, I strongly recommend to anyone who likes sidescrollers) I decided to buy The Impossible Game, it being on the Best Sellers list and because I had seen EnglishCarBomb playing it a while back. The title isn't quite untrue, but it comes very close. Nonetheless, if you want to file a lawsuit, go ahead. 

The object of The Impossible Game is very simple, and that's what makes the game quite so insanity-inducing. There is one button used, A, and you hit it to jump over approaching spikes and on top of black cubes. Easy, right? You couldn't be more wrong. Not only do they come much faster than you expect, but if you die, you start right from the beginning. Even the music starts again, and I actually found this to be one of my biggest troubles: after surviving for about a minute, the song changes from a light electro feel into blasting hardcore trance. It's so distractingly awesome to listen to that it often makes me lose concentration, but the temptation to get back to that one point where it drops is always enough for me to be willing to do it all again. Even regardless of the music, the game is incredibly addictive as it's so hard to believe that you can't do it due to its simplicity, and before you know it you will have racked up 200 attempts. 

Needless to say, as soon as you take your eyes off the screen, the room seems to shift around as you've been staring at fast moving objects for half an hour. A weird experience, something I don't even get from Kane and Lynch 2's cameraman with Parkinson's. 

The Impossible Game is a mere 80 Microsoft points, and if you want something cheap to be get addicted to for an hour a day, it's the perfect deal. 

The Complete Wall

Gentlemen, the wall is complete. The giant Assassin's Creed poster arrived from America, and is now dominating the wall and required me to move the Mirror's Edge poster down for everything to be visible above the monitor. Not long after, I got a Fallout 3 poster custom printed (also from 1clickprint.com) to fit in the last empty section. It does have 'FALLOUT 3' written in the classic font in the bottom left, but the monitor is in the way.

My Red Dead Redemption shirt also arrived, and I'm really happy with it. The delivery cost a bomb but it fits great and is very comfortable. My Fallout shirt however... well the eBay seller dispatched it TWO WEEKS after buying it. It still hasn't arrived. Safe to say, he will be getting negative feedback. I'll report back with a cheesy photo when it arrives.

In terms of the games currently in play, I have just finished playing through Hitman: Blood Money multiple times, and I was very impressed. The variety of ways to approach every situation is larger than most would expect, the tongue-in-cheek humour is always a good relief from seeing Agent 47's ugly, serious face all the time and it has one of the best game endings I've ever seen. Considering this is now available for under £10 anywhere, I would strongly recommend a purchase. 

Up next for rental is Kane and Lynch 2, and I will definitely have to turn off that horrible shaky camera...

Mirror's Edge: A Summary

I wouldn't usually describe myself as one of unusual taste when it comes to games. True, I'm one of those boring people who'd rather poke themselves in the eye with a stick than play Modern Warfare, but apart from that most of the games I really, really like are fairly popular. Fallout 3, Bad Company 2, Max Payne 1 and 2, Tomb Raider 2 - they didn't just go down a treat with me, they had great market success too. Mirror's Edge, it seems, is an exception. Just about everyone I know who has the game complains, usually about the brief story mode, but also about the small number of combat moves or the lack of lengthy free-running sessions. Believe it or not, I've spent longer on Mirror's Edge than I have Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV or Gears of War. 

Don't mistake this article for an endless list of praises of the game. It is as a tall Scottish acquaintance of mine would say, 'a flawed gem', and there are plenty of things I still grind my teeth about whenever I play it. The amount of vent-crawling and elevator travel, the mind-numbingly dull cartoon cutscenes, Merc always being needlessly impatient; the list goes on. I can't blame anyone for being let down by a story that lasts four hours either. However Mirror's Edge manages to connect with me in ways that most games don't, in an different kind of beauty. 

Personally, I think Mirror's Edge has the best art style ever made for a game. I don't mean 'it has pretty colours' - sure, the colour scheme is great, but I think for once the use of colour and light actually fits with the plot of the game itself. It's a police-ruled fascist society, and while this kind of dystopia is usually complemented with a palette of dark, dingy greys and browns (see: V for Vendetta, Schindler's List, Half-Life 2) Mirror's Edge is instead glistening and radiant. The city is a shining white metropolis beneath a warm blue sky, and while it appears to be a happy place to live, it's finding the deceit of this that hits the player so hard. It even goes deeper than that, think of what white represents - purity, but also monotony and the absence of free expression. In contrast, the striking red of the rebellious Runners. Red has often been the colour of defiance, often by left-wing rebels in Central American countries. It hits hard against its white background, without having the dead feel of black. You can say I'm reading too much into this, but after playing through the game plenty of times it's clear to see that Dice thought long and hard about using colour as a tool for storytelling. 

My second point might be more of a personal one, but it's not a technique that hasn't been used before. Players will probably notice that by the end of the game, they still know little or nothing about the context of the game. That might seem like a flaw on the surface, but think about other examples of gaming's artistic triumphs, for example Shadow of the Colossus and Limbo. Read any review and you'll undoubtedly hear how encapsulating the total ambiguity of the stories are. In one you're an unnamed warrior in an unknown kingdom, tasked with fighting mysterious giants to save your wife from death, in another you're an unnamed boy in an unknown forest, tasked with finding your sister and escaping from a horrifying situation you don't remember getting yourself into. The game doesn't need to tell you the whole story, because quite simply, the possibilities flying around in your head take you so much deeper. 

Less on the artistic side is Mirror's Edge mastery of the first-person view. Let's face it; this generation has flogged the FPS' proverbial horse to death, and by the time the next console turns up there will probably be nothing we haven't seen twice before. Here, Mirror's Edge stands totally out from the crowd. It's in first person, but you're not carrying a gun (unless you pick up an enemy's, but only to be dropped again promptly), there's no ever-present HUD reminding you that you're not really looking through the eyes of a human, and perhaps most impressively, you can actually see your body. This has been done a couple of time before, in games such as FEAR, Halo 2 + 3 and various military sims, but never with so much detail and with such brilliantly smooth animation. Everything from the biceps down is visible, and looking down to see your legs treading air whilst leaping across a 20-foot rooftop gap in slow-motion is truly stunning. 

Love this game as I might, of course I admit games are all down to opinion, and despite everything that strikes a chord with me, it's still not going to be everyone's cup of tea. As I said, amidst its peaks, it's not without its frustrations and for some they will be the game's undoing. Regardless, for what it's worth, I think that Mirror's Edge should truly be respected for doing something different, even if it perhaps didn't go as far as it should have. I might have triple-starred every time trial and mastered every speed run, but I know I'll be coming back to Mirror's Edge time and again these coming years. 

Demo-Down!

Well, the title certainly makes it sound more exciting than it really is. I won't lie, the lack of decent post flow on this blog is not due to laziness this time, it really is due to a lack of things to report. Sure, I could tell you I've been playing through Dead Space, Metro 2033 etc but nothing particularly spectacular happened. So out of boredom I, and out of wanting to buy a new game soon, I've tried a selection of demos. Quick report on each:

Blacklight: Tango Down: This is a very basic FPS, and does attempt to be anything more. Futuristic society, police vs rival factions, you've seen it all before and it skips straight to the chase. This sounds like a good plan for just a small, casual game, and for the most part the game delivers. It's easy to pick up and play, and considering the 1200msp price having a co-op enabled campaign as well as competitive multiplayer it's not bad, though I would say due to the lack of depth in the gameplay it's not exactly something I could play for hours on end.

Condemned: This, in short, was great. In the 20 minutes the game gives of gameplay, I could see that the game is incredibly innovative and delivers in many areas most horror games don't. It replaced Silent Hill/FEAR's supernatural and mysterious enemies with the gritty, psychopathic edge of SAW (without the hordes of dreadful sequels). Expect merciless, bone-crushing death on every corner.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days: They say that in the early stages of Mirror's Edge's development, playtesters got too motion-sick to play, hence the dot in the middle of the screen to keep the brain focused on one area. Unfortunately, this sort of good idea appears not to have occured to Io Entertainment, who have created the first game I have played to make me feel physically sick for the following hour. Apart from that nauseating shaky camera, I was also unconvinced by the seemingly invincible Lynch, and the overwhelming stupidity of the storyline ('RAAAGH IT'S MORRALY JUSTIFIED TO KILL ALL THESE POLICEMEN BECAUSE I HAVE A DAUGHTER'). The dirty feel of the city and the strained relationship of the two protagonists was impressive, though.

Limbo: Wow. This was a mindblower. Limbo is incredibly simple considering the vast bulk of modern games, but the atmosphere of the game, and the utter mystery surrounding your predicament raise it above the standard of hundreds of other titles. It's got the beautiful ambiguity of Shadow of the Colossus, the darkness of Fallout 1 and 2, and the genius of Portal in its platforming elements, even if it is in 2D. Will certainly buy when I have the funds.

Mafia II: Disappointment, in short. The shooting feels slick and the effects of bullets thudding into different materials was very nice, but I wasn't really wowed by the atmosphere, and the city didn't seem all that populated - we should be expecting a large-scaled achievement after all this time we've been waiting. If there's a big variety in missions and the city has much more exciting places than the ones I saw, then I'm probably sold. But as of now, I was definitely hoping for more.

Monday Night Combat: My man Azo is made the animations for this game (check his ninja skills out at www.youtube.com/azoazotube) and it certainly shows. There are plenty saying this is a copy of Team Fortress 2, and in a few ways it makes sense. The light-hearted feel of the combat, the cel-shaded graphics, the over-enthusiastic announcer and ridiculously proportioned characters make for a few similarities, as does the casualness of the game in general. However, it feels like a fun game to play a few matches of here and there, though probably nothing to get dedicated to.

That's all the demos I've been playing recently, as well as unhealthy quantities of Mirror's Edge (just tonight got that final, sweet 100g achievement to polish the game off) and, surprisingly, Call of Duty: World at War. My fondness of that game comes in phases, no doubt I'll go back to hating it soon.

As far as reviews go, I shall be writing Dead Space and Toy Story 3: The Video Fame (YEEAAHH) soon for ps3xboxreviews.com. Speaking of which, check the site within a few days from now and my Metro 2033 review should be up.

Thanks for reading folks.

Merch Purchasin'

Well I've decided that with a lack of games to buy (for now, until Halo: Reach that is) then I may as well buy some game-related cheap thrills. Risky business since I already owe money to EnglishCarBomb, three divisions of the Russian Mafia, and most dangerously my mum, but I'm kinda fed up of Ms McFarlane looking so alone on my wall. 

So I've decided that the wall above my monitor shall be filled with game posters. You may notice that there is a Mirror's Edge one there. This took a little effort as there haven't ever been official posters made for the game, except for the crappy 'Wanted' posters for Faith that were put up in American universities. So this one is actually a custom poster that I ordered off www.1clickprint.com and I'm actually really impressed with the quality of it. Just sent them that 1920x1080p image I found of Faith on Google and the rest is history. Would recommend seeing as it only cost me a tenner.

I've also ordered a huge Assassin's Creed poster off eBay. It's 36" by 24" and has a pretty nice, simplistic design. If you wanna see it it's here.

Aside from posters, I ordered a fairly cheap Fallout 3 t shirt from Hong Kong which has the old 'Prepare for the Future' flyer on it that you see around the game. I also attempted to buy the 'Outlaws to the End' t shirt that I saw the bassist of Atreyu wearing at Download, but shipping costs a bomb unless you use the shipping method only allowed for the US military, which I learnt you're not allowed to use the hard way... I'll get round to buying it when I have sufficient funds for the shipping.

Happy gaming gents, I have reviews for Red Dead and Bioshock 2 up on the reviews blog, and expect a Metro 2033 review on ps3xboxreviews.com soon. 

The beginning of something?

Afternoon readers, I come bearing news. Thanks to Sam Spencer who, at the mention of his name on my clearly world-famous blog, is without a doubt squirming and giggling in excitement, I managed to find a website that will take my reviews and rants on board. They're a small site just getting going called www.ps3xboxreviews.com. 

The idea is, as expected, that I write reviews of relatively new games and I will deliver in every way I can. Which does mean that the only reviews I shall post on my review blog will be of old games that the site has no need for, as they cannot allow me to post the same things on both the blog and their site which is fair enough as they want original content. SO, for the slower ones out there:

- This blog will now mainly consist of retrospectives (such as the Halo 3 and Bad Company 2 'summaries' and update posts, or mildly funny anecdotes like the glitch report of Red Dead.

- My game review blog will have a Red Dead review soon (as ps3xboxreviews already has one) and from there on out will contain reviews of old games I'm catching up on, such as Dead Space.

- ps3xboxreviews will have reviews of new games and articles concerning contemporary games.

Thanks to anyone who ever read anything on either of my blogs, probably wouldn't have had any confidence in my work if I thought I was endlessly writing to nobody, and while ps3xboxreviews isn't exactly a job, it might be the beginning of something bigger for the future. 

New setup and the mighty gaming all-nighter

Gentlemen!It has been too long. Summer has just begun and so has the gaming, bolstered by not only a couple of games borrowed from EnglishCarBomb and a rental of The Force Unleashed, but also my new 24" monitor. Finally, a 1920x1080 screen in my house. Sparing you the cheesy pose this time, the setup looks like this.

The laptop is gonna have to stay on a nearby chair as getting any permanent means is simply impossible. You may notice the Red Dead poster also; it's the beginning of a gaming poster-clad wall that I will fill to the brim with Fallout 3, Mirror's Edge, Alan Wake and maybe Assassin's Creed prints. Gonna need money for that though, as always...

You might on the off-chance have noticed the time of writing of this post. I'm currently taking a break in the midst of an all-night gaming session, repeating a high point of last summer. Admittedly, it's without a titanic task to work against like last instance's Call of Duty 4: Mile High Club on Veteran difficulty, but I'm playing a variety of my games instead. Currently experiencing a bit of a headache but am confident that, like last time, I'll feel more awake when the sun comes up in about an hour. Woo?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, I'll try to keep myself sustained...

Halo 3: A Summary

Halo 3 had a strange sort of fame, didn't it? If you're gamer and you were of conscious mind in 2007, you can't possibly have forgotten the hype surrounding the Halo trilogy's conclusion, and indeed the impact it had upon its release. News stations everywhere were astounded by the numbers of copies sold, and online matches being played at once, while games magazines and sites threw review scores of 9s and 10s, accompanies by the classic over-excited juvenile gamers shouting in comments, 'this is the best game everr!!!!!!!!!!'. It didn't take long before almost every Xbox 360 owner had a copy, and this is, arguably, the point which put console gaming on the map as one single project dominated the entire industry.

And while it would be foolish to say that Halo 3 is undoubtedly the best game ever to be created, it's also hard to say they're far from wrong in terms of what the game offers. Put aside arguments of the storyline not being finished, or the gameplay being 'slow', or the physics being 'dumb'. Bungie, in Halo 3, seek to give you two things. Firstly: everything. You've got a campaign which, while fairly brief, is brilliantly varied in its mission design and locations. It's available to play co-operatively with four people - online, split-screen, or both at the same time. This is presented with absolutely stunning graphics and an unmatched attention to detail, and an unforgettable soundtrack complementing every moment. After that, there's the multiplayer, featuring probably the most innovative ranking system ever, the perfect balance of competitiveness and silliness and, perhaps most importantly, admirable amounts of support from Bungie, with new playlists and updates on a regular basis.

Put together, this makes an incredible game. But then, you're given Bungie's second gift: more. Playing a few rounds with your friends in Custom Games is a blast due to the innumerable amounts of settings that can be tweaked. How about a game of Rockets with 50% gravity, or just Magnums with 25% health? Even doing this would just be scratching the surface of the possibilities. Playing these matches on normal maps is fine, but you're also given the option of creating your own. The community has shown the vast potential of this; a quick look at the Millennium Falcon map, or the flying Elephant troop transport on Sandtrap shows this well enough. Lastly, you're able to record your gameplay via the Theatre, capturing your funniest or most skilful moments from either campaign or multiplayer, and being such a well-built tool that it even kicked off the Machinima movement.

This surely sounds like pathetic Bungie worship from a fanboy, but think about it. This game came out at retail price, but gives you twice, perhaps threefold what your average shooter does. The first six months of my Xbox 360 ownership were spent on this, and I can scarcely remember a moment I wasn't enjoying it.

Yet given a month or two after its release, and the cynicism began. Damning remarks of 'boring campaign', or 'overrated kid's game' echoed across the internet, often from the ever-so-intelligent PC fanbase. Even fans of the Halo franchise expressed their disappointment in the ending of the story arc (no pun intended), and many gamers, wanting a faster shooting experience, turned to Call of Duty 4, giving no better reason than 'Halo 3 sucks'. So much so, that while it remained consistently played by millions every day, it was still commonplace to hear how the game was a waste of time, only to be played by kids.

I understand, to a degree, the kneejerk response of Halo 3 being 'overrated'. In fact, I think I agree it was. It's not the best game ever; it hasn't revolutionised the FPS, and isn't so much fun that I'm still able to play it for hours today. Half-Life 2's perfection of physics, graphics and characters still ring brilliantly true whenever I see it in play, but for me, Halo 3 says something different. It set a standard, a best possible benchmark for what we should be expecting of our games. Gaming is coming closer and closer to its place in mainstream media which, arguably, it deserves, and the development of games is a million-dollar industry, and yet we are accepting time and again games which offer a six-hour campaign and a tacked-on multiplayer. Halo 3, a whole three years ago, let me save a screenshot of me headshotting an enemy with a bullet that bounced off the floor, make a map that mimicked the Omaha Beach D-Day Landings, play hundreds of unique custom games and give me one of the most replayable campaigns and multiplayer experiences I've ever had. Like Halo or not, this is a package willing to be built and released by so few developers today.

I don't ask you to like Halo 3, but I believe it at least warrants a great deal of respect. I do ask that you look at what you're paying £40 for, and wonder if anything near the amount of time and effort has been put in in comparison, now that the Xbox 360's best-selling title has shown the potential. There are games I have enjoyed more, but there have been none that have been bigger.

People: Multiplayer's Ultimate Nemesis

Having played the absolute holy hell out of the single-player campaign of Red Dead Redemption, I recently decided I tried out the multiplayer. I was fairly reluctant of this, as I had previously thought it resembled GTA IV's too much; in which you'd be able to run around doing nothing or join matches which weren't fun. Fortunately, I was proven wrong and discovered that when I had tried out the free roam earlier, and found myself constantly jumping off cliffs and thinking 'is this it?' I had been in ignorance of the mountains of things to do, and how surprisingly enjoyable the competitive matches are. Not quite sure how I missed those minor details out.

I had expected, albeit with rather odd logic, that Red Dead's single player was so good and so detailed that there was no way it would be a game that can indeed hold its own on multiplayer alone. The maps are great, weapons are balanced and while the game types are fairly standard, they do require decent tactics and teamwork for the most part, and it's been a good ride so far. The problem I have come across time and again, however, is right beneath our noses and it is something that Rockstar can never stamp out with patches and updates. It's the players.

Using insantiy-inducing quantities of advertising for Red Dead has unfortunately given the game blockbuster status, and this has brought the wrong crowd: the Call of Duty crowd. Everywhere you go, it's 'Xx ViiZiiOnZzZ xX' this and 'Io Kr0NiiKzZz oI' that, and without fail one of them has to ruin my fun in some way or another. Doing a sharpshooter challenge in free roam which involved killing certain types of wild animals proved nigh impossible the other day, as I was consequently faced with some utter buffoon I found wandering in the forest (on his own, I would like to add) who would not stop killing me. Being the altruistic turn-the-other-cheek lovely man that I'm not, I didn't retaliate in the hope that he'd stop too. Unfortunately, he took my moving away from him not as a message of 'I'm not deathmatching with you' but as 'I am running away from you as I am scared of your huge skills, please don't kill me, you're great at this game and I am not'. I eventually got lost my temper at the fellow and I was so awfully cross that I sent him a message to the modernised jist of 'Crumbs, I wish you would have the common decency to differentiate between a free roaming exercise and a match of Queensbury Rules with firearms. You utter cad.' He didn't take too well to this and we ended up in a long message-off -  in which I discovered that people from South London do in fact use the double 'i's and alternating capitals as standard form, in such messages I received as 'oK iiM GoNNa KiiL Yu' -and him following me around for the next half hour, shooting me in the back whenever he wasn't hopelessly emptying rounds into the floor. He didn't prove much of a fighter in the end, as when I at last took the bait, turned around and killed him six times in a row he left the session. Probably went back to terrorising old women at the park.

The problem is, this wasn't a unique occasion. I get angry post-match messages, kids screaming complaints on team chat, and these dreadful bloody gamertags all over the place. Soon enough, CoD kids will have not only spread onto every multiplayer game, but will begin to spread their influence into real life. People will be screaming 'NOOB TUBE' at tubes of Smarties, quickscoping with the binoculars you get at the Opera, and shouting 'ENEMY AC-130 IN THE AIR' whenever a plane goes overhead by, at the latest, 2015. They'll call it: The Apocalypse.

The Glitch Apocalypse?

Uhhh... wow. I think that's all I can really say right now. I have seen bugs in games, some annoying, a la Army of Two: The 40th Day, and some amusing, usually floating people in Fallout, but never so extreme, so funny and in such magnitude than I did in Red Dead Redemption earlier today.

It was an ordinary afternoon in the West. I had just had a grand victory in a game of poker in Blackwater and with the winnings I bought myself a new horse, and decided to take it to Tall Trees for a hunting session. 10 Elks, 6 bears and a handful of boars later I was riding back into Blackwater to buy some medicine before a journey to Escalera to sell the spoils of my hunt. I crossed the railroad, took a right along the road by the Telegraph station, and slowed. Something wasn't right. There was a cow walking along the pavement.

At first this didn't strike me as hugely odd. In many of the settlements in Red Dead, there are livestock, and it's not uncommon for these to sometimes wander around the outskirts of the town a little. However, not only was this buy a road, and not near the Blackwater stables, this was a cow. There aren't any cows in Blackwater. I chuckled at this, and mused at how a cow got to such a place. Despite the odd situation, I wasn't prepared for what happened next. The cow bumped into my horse, raised its front two legs as if to say 'give me some space' and then proceeded to actually talk. 'Excuse me, sir.' 

I burst into uncontrollable laughter and tears. I don't know if you've seen or heard of Laddergoat, but this was a serious Laddergoat moment. It turns out that the cow was in fact an ordinary human, but with the 'skin' of a cow as the coding clearly got confused on which skin to apply to which model.

What's more is that this wasn't all. After 10 minutes of laughing and recording it on my phone, I decided to go and watch the buffalo. Because I like buffalo. They're cute. Unfortunately, them being out in the Great Plains meant, inevitably, that I had one of the random encounters in which a man wants you to save his wife from being hanged, and being such a reluctant moralist I had to go save her. After doing so, I saw something very odd. You may have noticed that when the victim is hanged, they are tied to the tree whilst horseback, then the horse is bolted. Usually, when horses run, they run normally - that is, on the ground. Not so here. This horse was apparently Pegasus as it immediately took off and began to, quite literally, ride off into the sunset. At this point I was beginning to get worried.

After this short exploit began the last bug, and this was unbelievable. The cow swapping skins with a human is, whilst easily the funniest, at least believable, as both are ground creatures that have walking animations and such. This time, birds of all species had swapped skins with humans. The sky was littered with the almost embarrassing sight of humans gliding through the air, desperately flapping their arms as if feebly trying to teach an abandoned chick its life skills. If you can't picture it (and I don't blame you), try this video. Excuse the cliche song.

At this point, I decided I'd had enough of this total madness and switched off my Xbox, if anything in the interest of keeping my sanity. I'm still struggling to work out if I think at the time it was funny or sheerly terrifying.

Laziness Prevails!

Well I've once again taken one of these uncalled for holidays by accident in which I leave blogging for two weeks for no reason without realising. Well the things I have been doing in the meantime are threefold, some more interesting than others.

1. Download Festival! Well this is a gaming blog so I won't go into the copious musical details of it, but in short, Rage Against The Machine are incredible. The tiny amount of gaming references I could possibly make to it would be that I saw the bassist of Atreyu wearing a Red Dad 'Outlaws To The End' t-shirt. Also there was a strangely popular Gears of War hoodie that many fans were wearing. EA attempted to get their hands on some delicious additional fans to play their broken, unsupported games by having an 'EA Store' there were people could try out such amazing titles as Army of Two: The 40th Day and Harry Potter. Safe to say people didn't have their minds blown.

2. Horrendous amounts of Red Dead Redemption. Well it's been a long time since I've played a game so obsessively and been such a desperate completionist and in a way it feels comfortable to have my full nerdiness back. However, it did get me this delicious achievement.

Yeah it took 40 hours. 40 HOURS WELL SPENT.

3. Building my new setup! What with the recent demise of my ol' television I thought I may as well pool some money for a decent screen (finally, something with HD) and get hold of some good speakers. Having recieved the speakers, with a great subwoofer, for my birthday I now just need my new 22" Widescreen computer monitor which I will hook up with a VGA cable. This is the one I currently have in mind:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-P225HQ-22-inch-Monitor-50000/dp/B002PU9R7K/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1275746643&sr=8-3

Download put me back almost all my money so I'm in the process of getting hold of said £109, but with £70 in the bank already I haven't far to go. I've also found an old - if a little small and mildly damaged - computer monitor in my house which I am using in the mean time. The resolution I can get on it is still great and despite the size is a lot more enjoyable to use than my old TV. Here's a horrendously cheesy picture of it:

... I think you get the idea.

That's all I got for you for now. Well, having said that, I still haven't so much as started my Conviction review, which I owe to myself more than anything. Hell, I haven't even posted it back to LoveFilm yet. I need to get motivated.

Return of the laptop.

Mornin' gents,

I have my laptop back! Theoretically this means blogging and reviewing will get back to its regular pace. Also, due to my TV kindly breaking and me having to use my downstairs TV instead, I wasn't able to do my monstrous playthrough of Alan Wake getting all collectibles on Nightmare difficulty, because I didn't have my laptop next to me to find the locations. However, now that it's back, I'll get right onto it once Mr Wake gets back from his holiday at Bulky G's house.

This also means we can also begin working out the final few problems with the capture card. Yay.

I finished Red Dead the other day, and while the story isn't as lengthy as GTA IV's, it's definitely topped it in terms of characters and emotional scenes. Capturing Darko and finding out Michelle's identity were great in Grand Theft, but there were some cutscenes, notably the ending, in Red Dead where it really was cinematic by the very meaning. Onto the multiplayer now, and what I've already played of the free roam with a posse has been brilliant.

All for now folks, will get a Splinter Cell Conviction review up soon for your reading eyes. 

Emerging from my little Western cave

I can't deny it, I've barely left my Xbox for the last two days. Why? Well, in short, my Red Dead Redemption arrived.

I was one of those people who, while agreeing that GTA IV was a monumental technical achievement in having what is probably the best realised sandbox environment ever, didn't actually find the game all that fun. The things available to do were great, but in the end, once the story was done, I struggled to find anything enjoyable to actually do.

Not so with Red Dead. This world manages to bustle with things to do, yet also manages to have the open, arid plains of the wild west. A favourite of these for me is definitely hunting. So much so that yesterday I saw a deer in a forest (in real life) and genuinely felt an urge to activate Dead Eye targeting and shoot it in the head, mid-leap. Pretty much the Tetris Effect.

Will have a full review of this up on the reviews blog soon, but for now I just urge you to buy it. Don't bother waiting for a price-drop, this is worth it.

Youtube Comment of the Week 26/5/10

Haven't done these in ages, as I haven't stumbled across many, but couldn't resist putting up this absolute gem from a Bad Company 2 video.

'this game is like... soooooo shit. you run and walk like a retard. pull out som massive gay knife....etc..'

-MW2RKOSniPeZz

Wow. We're all entitled to our opinion, and if BC2 ain't your cup of tea, that's fine, but I don't even get how this is an opinion of the game at all. If he thinks people in Bad Company run like retards, I really begin to wonder how he gets about. And massive gay knife? Gay comment aside, seeing as I didn't know knives could copulate anyway, since when was the knife big? It's not exactly a bowie knife, but it's not a penknife either... Whatever. I guess this guy can get back to doing his 'RKOSniPeZz' on Modern Warfare 2 where everyone seems to be doing a fast-forward waddle for a run.

Battlefield Bad Company 2: A Summary

I won't deny it; I talk about Bad Company 2 a lot. Too much, perhaps. Whether this is a result of the game actually being incredible or me being a lovestruck little fanboy is up to you, but I've decided to bring all the talk to a close with a final summary of what I think Bad Company 2 has cracked up to be, what it is in terms of multiplayer today and as a sequel to the original Bad Company.

There are two main aspects I can think of when I think about DICE's Bad Company 2. Firstly, it's a departure. A departure from its predecessor into what is a much more serious game centred around an authentic battlefield experience. Sure, we all know real warfare today isn't nearly as intense, and is based more on small urban skirmishes and the odd airstrike, but what we've been given here is a multiplayer game in which, unlike Call of Duty or other competing titles, there are things happening all over the map at the same time; people fighting their own skirmishes, tanks assaulting strongholds, helicopters raining lead from above. It's brilliantly cinematic stuff but, while I don't think Bad Company 1 beat its sequel in this sense, it brought something different instead. The light-hearted feel of the game was something completely new, something we simply don't have in shooters today, and it did it without being disrespectful to any of today's war heroes. I'll never forget losing a match as the American team, and hearing the classic comedy failure noise of 'wah wah waaahhh' played on a blues guitar, and having command say 'You lost our retirement fund, dammit!' or, when we won, hearing an upbeat bluegrass lick and getting the voice in the ear saying 'Yes! The gold is mine- I, I mean ours!'. It never wore off, even when the lack of polish in the game showed up.

The campaign is perhaps another issue. It's complained about a lot in reviews for Bad Company 2, for being too boring usually. I think it should be taken with a pinch of salt as the multiplayer is clearly the focus of any Battlefield game but, I can't help thinking that it is a letdown in what it was trying to do. I don't like to think about it but I know that the reason DICE made the characters and the storyline serious and related to 'saving the world' is because they were competing. They tried to step up the intensity of the storyline to be seen on the same level as Modern Warfare. But this was entirely unnecessary. The only reason it's taken so badly by the players is because this intention is clear and, when they look back to Modern Warfare's campaign, they remember it being better (for the record, I don't think it was, but it's the general consensus). This wouldn't be the case if they kept it like Bad Company 1's campaign. Going AWOL and accidentally starting a war with a neutral country to get some gold? Flying in a gold-plated helicopter? Driving golf carts and hearing Sweetwater desperately fail at flirting with 'Miss July'? Get another story as amusing as that, give it the amped-up gameplay of Bad Company 2, and it could have been a blast, and wouldn't have been so heavily compared to Call of Duty.

However, I also have to think about Bad Company 2 as an arrival. What it has essentially brought is, in my opinion and many others', the best multiplayer experience possible of this generation. The improved class customisation, destruction, big maps and everything that I mentioned early put together works seamlessly and DICE have truly achieved something, despite its few minor problems that I'm sure are being worked on. I feel that I know for sure DICE won't go back to Bad Company 1's style, in the same way I know Epic won't make Gears of War 3 as dark and not over-the-top like Gears of War 1, ditto for whatever lies ahead for the Modern Warfare series. They'll keep going in the direction they've gone in with the sequel because going backwards is considered too hard to do without making an oddly patterned franchise. Perhaps then, the answer is to simply enjoy Bad Company 2 and the fact that it has achieved what it wanted to do; get Battlefield's crown back and get it back in the public's eye. Players are already peeling away from Modern Warfare 2, naming it the 'disappointment' and 'hacker and bug-fest' that it is, and migrating right into DICE's welcoming arms. It's what the developers deserve and I, maybe, as a Battlefield player, should want.

I've let you all down.

Ok, it has indeed been 20 days since I last updated this and I don't feel good for it. It's been a mix of my laptop still being in repair and this crappy home computer having its problems, trying desperately to do some work for my AS exams and doing hideous amounts of gaming. But hey, I gotta do the gaming for the blogging right?

Well the predominant three games I've been playing in the last fortnight are Aliens VS Predator, Splinter Cell: Conviction and the much-anticipated Alan Wake. Respectively, the short reviews I'd give would be bad, good-and-bad, and very good.

Aliens VS Predators is, shortly, a good idea gone horribly wrong akin to a movie-to-game title like Wanted: Weapons of Fate. This isn't to say they're similar games, but the authenticity of the moves is bang on in the games, it's just not fun. Three diverse campaigns along with starkly original and pacey multiplayer was clearly too ambitious a task, perhaps not just for Rebellion but as a game in general. Great shame.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is, thankfully, a revamp for the series that was going dead with an unnecessarily dragged out storyline that was losing momentum, and giving you the same old Sam doing the same sort of thing in new places. Now, there's a bigger emphasis on cover and shooting (with an incredible cover system that trumps just about every other game), a brilliant art style and more mature feel due to Sam's anger and grief. However, I'm a little disappointed with the things other than the campaign, the co-operative modes simply haven't proven that fun.

Alan Wake, lastly, is the end product of a development cycle spanning into the last generation, and while I can't say it's a timeless classic in the same way as Max Payne 1 and 2, it's definitely an artistic achievement and one that shows Remedy's great strengths as much as it defines the Xbox 360's capabilities for visuals. Not to mention the brilliantly written storyline, as always by the genius Sam Jarvi. Pick it up, is all I can say. Sure, it's not over 8 hours long, but it's an unforgettable ride.

That's all for now gamers. Got an article cooking up summarising Bad Company 2 as a whole, and as a sequel to Bad Company 1, and look out for upcoming full reviews of the games mentioned above. Adios!

New Vegas news, Halo Reach beta, Bulletstorm looking awesome...

Well it's been quite the information flood recently. I guess it just seems that way because I've barely been paying attention to news of late, or blogging. I am a horrendous person.

However, hate me as you might, if you're looking forward to New Vegas in the least then you should get on the 'netz RIGHT NOW because Obsidian finally deemed it a good time to release some snippets of info about the upcoming successor - rightly or not - to Fallout 3. Companion commands? Upgradable weapons? And not changing the engine? Count me in sir!

Unfortunately, because I was wise enough not to buy the disappointment fest known as Halo 3:ODST, it appears Bungie have hit back because now that means I can't play the Halo Reach beta that came out last night. However, as if to give me one morsel of smugness, the beta almost completely crashed and died in a hole last night as thousands more than Bungie expected stormed online to get another hit of Halo into their veins. While I respect Bungie for almost always keeping things under control and understanding the community (even if I do despise their arrogant developers) this seems a bit of a schoolboy error of EA magnitude. How many you think would play it, Bungie, ten?

And for something I previously didn't care much for, Bulletstorm is actually looking damn good. I didn't play Black but from what I heard it was a defining FPS of the PS2 era, and this looks to be a good follow-up, even if it's not official. As well as having Killzone 2-quality graphics, the general style of the game looks great. How can you look at this and not think 'awesome'?

Wanna get a bit more in-depth to New Vegas than my pitiful dogmatic fanboyism? Take this link and leave me in peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hmKX3CmTg

I'll resist the urge to say 'God of Bore'...

I do my best, as a gamer, to try out and enjoy as many games as possible, and from as many genres as possible. I'll avoid sports games like the plague but, for the most part, will give everything a go. Shooters are becoming far too frequent and having seen far too many Call of Duty replicas (don't worry, none of them come close to reaching that absolute nirvana of dreadful gaming) I have tried to get into some hack and slash games. In short, the operation was a massive failure.

Taking back to late 2009, Dante's Inferno was on the horizon. I was clueless about the premise having not known anything about the Divine Comedy, despite my horrendous times at school studying classical literature, but safe in the knowledge it had been written by someone better than a failed movie script writer, and seeing early stages of a very dark and original art style I was looking forward to seeing how it turned out. I was wholly inexperienced at hack and slash games so upon browsing the Marketplace I downloaded the demos for Ninja Gaiden II and Devil May Cry 4. These had been applauded by just about everyone I know had played it, so with high hopes I went head first into them. Skip forward twenty minutes, and I was close to looking for a 'fun' button. Maybe I'm of a lower class of gaming intelligence and all this is going over my short head, but I really cannot get what the excitement is about hack and slash. 

My first impression of Devil May Cry 4 was not getting used to the sword and gun, in fact I thought that was pretty cool. It was more utter confusion of where I was and when. A guy who looks like he fell straight out of Time Crisis 3 sitting in a church, in the middle ages... listening to trip hop through headphones? Wait, what? Imagine a Backstreet Boy learnt extreme martial arts and built a TARDIS, then decided to unleash his anger at being called gay by going on a killing spree in medieval England, and you're somewhere close to the basic outline of DMC4. I was impressed by nice environments and framerate, but aside from utter confusion I was just bored at hitting endless buttons to do a combination that looks just like the last one. 

Onto Ninja Gaiden II. Being me, it took a while before I stopped giggling at the name and occasionally shouting GAAAYYYDEN, but when I eventually got round to playing the demo, I found almost the same result as with DMC4. Very convincing environment - which is actually set somewhere believable as a bonus - and a nice framerate... but still no fun. There's an absolutely horrifying amount of blood, gore and being a very mean man, but you see one limb flying off and you've seen them all. Also, some of the ways Ryu kills his enemies are so incredibly cruel and unnecessary I genuinely began to feel a sense of guilt for what I was doing. They're only enemies, leave 'em be! They just wanna stand there and look menacing! Let them go back to their spawn points and live a happy life with their enemy families.

When Dante's Inferno's release date eventually arrived and I borrowed it off EnglishCarBomb, my hopes weren't all that high after my lessons in hack and slash, and unfortunately this was one time I was to be proven right. It's definitely, in my opinion, a better game than my previous two experiences, albeit an absolute clone to God of War, but when it came down to it I could scarcely remember - let alone care - about all these combinations I could do with the scythe and crucifix. Great art style as expected, the cleanest and most constant 60fps framerate I've seen, but a diabolical amount of boring when it came down to it. Diabolical? Get it? I'm going to stop now.

Getting back into the swing of things.

Ok, unfortunately it was too easy for blogging to get out of habit, and I think it's time to get back into it. I'll try to get some more material down in between healthy portions of Just Cause 2 and... you guessed it, Bad Company 2.

In upcoming news, I may well be able to start capturing soon with my new Dazzle DVC 100. After months of it just sitting there and me being completely incompetent with software, I decided to hand it over to Uncle GC/Bulky G and of course he's found a way. Whether I can do it myself is something else, but if I can, all credit to him. 

Interested in Halo Reach? You'll love this. If you weren't interested much, like me, this might give you a kick up the backside, and perhaps reserve a nice £40 for the release in the winter.

At long last.

And I am BACK from Russia, not that I bothered to post that I was leaving. And not that anyone cares either way. I hate you all.

However, Epic have FINALLY decided to release a Gears of War 3 trailer. With the release date on 11th of April 2011 - which is far, far too late - we finally get to see some footage of some new characters and a bit more of Marcus. Doesn't really show anything new apart from the new faces and a mysterious huge monster being just as hostile to the Locust as to the Gears, but it's at least peace of mind that it's on its way, even if it is a year. Ugh...

EDIT: After doing some extra research, this is the info so far:
- The bearded guy is in fact Dom, despite him being virtually unrecognisable. The woman is Anya who has finally got off her ass it seems.
- The crazy huge tentacle monster is a Lambent creature. I guess it shows there will be a continuation of the internal battle between the Locust and the Lambent.
- This will be the last of the trilogy. This is oddly going back on what Cliff Bleszenski said about them wanting to have four games, and it will break the tradition of 'one Carmine per game' as there are 4 Carmines. Shame.
- 4 player co-op available!
- Couple new weapons added. Admittedly they don't seem too amazing.
- Improved server policies. Less lag is good news.

Another victory for DICE.

It's official: the Stimulus Map Pack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a disappointment. 2 old maps (which by rights should be free, if you remember EPIC released 5 Gears of War 1 maps for free for Gears of War 2) and 3 news ones, for 1200msp for Xbox or £10 for PC and PS-Triple. How much, you say? Yes that's 50% more expensive than most packs release at, and on top of that, there's been a bug reported on the map 'Storm', which namely is set in a town being battered by rain and high winds' in which the sky, instead of being dark grey and cloud-ridden, becomes covered in black lines and dots. In the words of IGN, it looks like 'it's been programmed in the 80s'.

In a gutsy and tongue-in-cheek move, DICE decided to release their new couple of maps on the same day. This is a reconstructed version of the Conquest map Laguna Presa made for Rush games, and a section of the huge Arica Harbor rush map cut down to make a Conquest map. Respectively, this makes for large scale Vietnam-esque guerilla warfare, contrasted with tight urban warfare in a sandy town. What's the best part? It's free to any VIP players. Which is about 95% of the Bad Company 2 population.

Upon reviews and general usage the consensus was that the Stimulus map pack wasn't just overpriced; it sucks. And, very satisfyingly for people like me, there was a great decrease in the players online on Modern Warfare 2 and an increase in Bad Company 2. Brilliant.

Wanna see the crazy 'sky bug'? Take it away, sister. 
http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14281102/call-of-duty-6/videos/mw2_gmp_stormgameplay_33110.html

Metro 2033 compared endlessly to Fallout 3, next stop Killzone and Viva Pinata.

If I was an internet bloody sensation and had thousands of readers, sure I'd enjoy having such a large fanbase, but you know what would annoy me? Nitpicking at articles. Sooner or later, someone would tell me that this article I'm writing is just the same idea as my post about Erik Brudvig, just about different games. And how they expect more. And how I won't accept their Xbox Live friend invites, and how deep down I'm just a dumb Bad Company 2 fanboy. I think, for now, I'm very much satisfied with having five consistent readers who couldn't give a monkey's whether I wrote now or next year. Stay casual.

I was browsing ol' IGN the other day, checking out how the horror shooter Metro 2033 has turned out. I was interested in how they could make a good FPS out of a book and, apparently, it is damn fun and often has moments of artistic genius. However, that's only according to the players, as reviews for the game have named it 'passable'. Frankly I'm annoyed at this seeing as there are quite so many people calling for it be a 9 or 9.5 instead of a measly 6.9, and because from what I've seen in gameplay videos, it's a success. Nonetheless, I don't want to endlessly protest against a review just because it scored lower than perhaps deserved, but I must say I really didn't approve of the constant referrals to Fallout 3 that it is given from reviews, news posts and fans. 

It seems that people have completely forgotten what Fallout 3 is. It's an RPG. An action RPG which has shooting in it. Not an FPS. I highly respect Metro 2033 whether it's fun or not as it is a shooter ported from a book, but I will not accept that it is a similar game to Fallout 3 entirely because it is post-apocalyptic. 

First of all, Metro 2033 and all the Fallout games are aimed at getting across completely different messages. The Fallout series was even inspired by American movies like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog and features satire about American life and the American dream, whereas Metro 2033 was written by a Russian, set in Moscow, and was at heart a horror story. I'm not criticising it for 'not being deep enough', but these are clearly fundamental differences. You don't compare Call of Duty and Mirror's Edge because they both have guns in them. The games have utterly differing focuses. 

Not to mention that Metro isn't even an RPG. Everything about Fallout 3 oozes RPG, in particular Oblivion, with just about everything having stats of its own and having the ability choose whatever missions you like whenever you like. Metro 2033 is a linear shooter, which again is not a bad thing because that's the genre of game it sits into. It was never meant to be like Fallout or any other RPG. 

It's a shame that we can't release games now without us instantly trying to think of the last 1000 games that resemble it, and these games are usually blockbusters. The first thing that happened after Bad Company 2 started releasing info was that it got compared to Modern Warfare. There are plenty of other modern military shooters out there - including other Battlefield games which actually came out before CoD4 - that resemble BC2 far more, but no, of course every dev team with a decent game has to be accused of trying to be like the contemporary sales victors. I can't imagine dear old Dmitry Glukhovsky likes his book being said to be like a game which insults Russians more often than I've had hot meals.