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...