Soulful Gamer

Majin, Venetica and Winter Voices

2010-11-23T05:38:00.000-08:00

Namco Bandai's Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom was a really interesting game to play. Not just because I enjoyed (eventually) the characters and the setting it sometimes struggled to portray but because it was the first time I'd played code well before its release. As well it being pretty damned nice to have several weeks before a deadline when I'm busy working in the day, it also meant I didn't have to tear my hair out at some of the puzzles in the game. I'm one of those gamers that will quite happily refer to a walkthrough to get past most of the gameplay elements so I can continue to experience the story or characters.

Majin doesn't give you much help with its puzzles and I shudder to think how foul my mood would've been if I'd had just a few days to play it. Anyway, what intrigued me most about Majin was how very reminiscent its tone and atmosphere was of ICO. It didn't achieve this by the same methods that Team ICO used - with subtle and almost near-silent narrative - instead it uses the developing partnership between Tepeu and Majin as the focus in gameplay and during moments of exposition.

By making each role essential to the other character you begin to rely on the Majin for all combat situations and he relies on you for guidance and instruction. There's not much in the way of groundbreaking mechanics here but I loved the way your role in the game wasn't to be the muscle-bound dude who cracked skulls and farted out one-liners like a crappy movie. This made Majin feel much more thoughtful and it's a slow and ponderous experience unlike most other games on the console.

My review is over on GamePeople right now along with another from Jon Seddon and I'll be reviewing it again for Strategy Informer in the next couple of days. Which comes with the added bonus of putting a score on it. Oh the controversy.

Soulful Gamer review - Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom.htm

Dressup Gamer review - Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom.htm

Venetica

I had hoped to cover ArcaniA: Gothic 4 as well but I've no idea if they actually released the game on the Xbox 360 yet. It was meant to be out in October but the last I saw was that it won't be out until March 2011. In the meantime I've dived into Venetica - which was out last year in Germany and just released last week in the rest of Europe and the US. After about 11 hours it's a fairly typical European RPG with some awful frame-rate issues and subtitles that are nearly always mis-spelt or wrong. Even an achievement couldn't spell 'Complete' correctly which goes someway to showing how rushed this port to the console was or how inexperienced some developers are away from their platform of choice.

None of that impacts the actual game too much and I'm vaguely enjoying it - probably because my lack of a decent PC means I'm restricted to what European RPGs I can try. Playing as Death's daughter and hunting down some undead nasties has nice ring of irony to it and I'm looking forward to seeing if it goes down a cliched path towards the end or tries to veer off and do something different. I say that because it isn't shy of killing off characters from the beginning and even though it wraps the whole experience up in typical RPG fodder I'm finding myself strangely intrigued.

Winter Voices

That could also describe the brief period of time I've spent with Winter Voices - an episodic RPG available on Steam for £3.49 for each chapter. I'm about an hour into the prologue and so far it's done a great job of presenting something completely different and unexpected.

Set in a frozen and snowy village the game opens with the unexpected death of your father and whilst in the house with his body, malevolent memories appear from the shadows and begin to attack. Sounds corny as hell but Winter Voices is presented in such a delicate and beautiful way that the threat posed by these Will'o the Wisp entities feels tangible and perilous.

Combat is a different too. The game is presented in an isometric view and a grid is overlaid for turn-based combat. But instead of using explosive magic to obliterate these enemies you have only evasion and suppressive skills to employ. It's a completely different way of dealing with the threats of old memories and evokes a very unique atmosphere.

It ain't perfect though and I've already come across two battles where my objective was to simply survive for 15 turns, with no real purpose or relation to the story. Ostensibly it's meant to portray memories creeping into your subconscious and threatened to engulf you - but it comes across in this instance as just damn annoying.

The best part to Winter Voices is the narration and writing in that first hour. It seriously sent chills down my back and if they can keep this up throughout all seven episodes then Winter Voices cold be a very special indie game indeed.

Oh, I almost forgot - I played Fable 3 as well. The very fact I almost forgot to put it in here says a lot about the latest title from a franchise I've always liked. Quite simply it's an unremarkable, unmemorable effort that feels half-mauled by the Kinect integration that appears to have been ripped out 6 months before launch. For all its accessible-focused design, Fable 3 lacks any soul whatsoever and portrays the same black/white morality system that made Infamous such a disappointment as well.

Getting Vanquished with viral marketing

2010-10-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

As much as I love my vidjagames I'm as cynical as the next guy when it comes to marketing and advertising. It's one of the main reasons why I don't watch TV as nothing gets me more riled up than the latest pretentious arsery of car commercials.

The recent Halo Reach campaign was also full of bullshit. Nothing stinks more than trying to make a product or game seem holier-than-thou or emotionally moving when you go around and shoot alien fools in the face.

But this recent gem from Sega that puts a personal slant on the trailer for Vanquish struck me as pretty cool and interesting. Type in your postcode and you should see your street appear towards the end of the trailer, being obilterated just like San Francisco is in the beginning of the game. Try it out below.

It's the first time I've been impressed with an advert about a videogame. It's nothing groundbreaking but by offering some interaction rather than smacking you in the face with its message, I feel a little more receptive to its presence.

Is this an indication of a new type of marketing? Or just a one-off by someone bold enough to push through a crazy idea to fruition? I bring this up because I'm intrigued as to the current trend of interactive content prior to a game release.

With Dead Rising 2: Case Zero we have a prelude to the main game and also the ability to transfer content over from to the main game once it's released. The same with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit - the demo allows you to begin levelling up and will transfer that progress on acquiring the full game. Could advertising be next on the agenda? What do you think?

Comic Jumper, Dead Rising 2 and moooovin'

2010-10-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

I hate these guys SO MUCH

It's been a while since Comic Jumper came out for XBLA and it's offensive presence in my mind has remained despite other, more important games, and real life stuff popping up in the meantime. I reviewed it for GamePeople and XBLAFans were kind enough to republish it on their site. I have to admit that it's not my best work by any stretch. When a game infuriates me so much, as Comic Jumper did, it can be very difficult to condense your thoughts into something readable and cohesive. I task I didn't quite live up to.

I know my problems with the game's attempt at parody and portrayal of women is in the minority (this is only a videogame we're talking about right? So those subject don't really matter...) but the core gameplay itself was so unbalanced, uninteresting and dull that I'm baffled as to how it could get such high scores across the board. Anyway, if you want to read a much better dissection of the game's problems then check out Jeffrey Sandlin's review over at Bitmob. It hasn't got anywhere near the attention it deserves - give it a boost and make him happy!

After that nonsense I was pretty much convinced that Dead Rising 2 would be an equally difficult experience. I'd played only a brief part of the first game and as much as I enjoyed Case Zero, I thought the long and winding road of a full Dead Rising game would piss me off something stupid. Well I'll be Betty Ford if it hasn't blown me away with its madcap play and surprisingly meaningful moments. I don't mean in any full on, Nier-like meditation about a father-daughter relationship and the bitterness of the apocalypse. Rather, the blend of sheer fun you can have within DR2's setting is contrasted wonderfully with some of the psychopath encounters.

Dressed up in gore, slapstick comedy and pathos, these moments can contain some bizarrely poignant scenes. Slappy the mascot springs to mind immediately and despite being an absolute bitch to kill unless you're at a high-level, his final few moments were surprisingly melodramatic. Elsewhere this theme is repeated with survivors and psychopaths alike. Others are more overt commentaries on America or the West in general and although laced with irony and humour, still have a subtle power to them (well, to me at least).

This is what I love most about Dead Rising 2. You can be hacking down zombies with an augmented chainsaw motorbike one moment and then taking on a load of anti-socialist Southern Hicks the next - all the time searching for the next dose of Zombrex that your daughter needs to stay alive.

My review is over at GamePeople and it will be the last frequent contribution I make for that website. I'm moving on in order to widen my experience at other sites and I wish the editors over there all the best for the future. I'll still be maintaining a presence, probably once a month at the most, so I won't be gone completely but my days of providing large amounts of content are over.

My new gig is with Strategy Informer and you can check out my review for History: Great Battles Medieval over there. It's strange to be giving a score to a game after years of writing for a site that doesn't deal with them but I'm enjoying the challenge of writing mainstream copy instead of more niche and focused material. Hopefully it will help me improve my writing and put a stop to the bad habits I'm sure I've fallen into (just count how many times I write 'certainly')

So what happens here? Well, I'll still be farting out more navel-gazing guff when I can and I'll be putting some thoughts together about Vanquish pretty soon. This won't be a usual review (cos that'll go up on Strategy Informer) but more likely concentrating on the Voltaire elements that the game does its best to hide. Yes, I can even try to find some soulful stuff in Vanquish - what madness. If I get round to it I may even try to spruce up this plain old blog to look something like a proper site. I hear animated gifs are all the rage these days...

Links:

http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/soulful_360_comicjumper.htm

http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/soulful_ps3_deadrising2.htm

http://www.strategyinformer.com/ps3/historygreatbattlesmedieval/1256/review.html

Jeffrey Sandlin on Comic Jumper:

http://www.bitmob.com/articles/how-is-comic-jumper

Vanquish - Review

2010-10-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

Vanquish is a fast and frenetic ride that barely lets up for breath or to explain its reasons to the player. Delve beneath the power-sliding acrobatics, bullet-time action and explosive set pieces though and you’ll find a backstory that hints at Voltaire’s Candide and tells a tale of good intentions gone badly awry.

This subtle narrative is easily missed and the backstory which explains the immense space station and the hostilities between the US and Russia is hidden behind the amazing gameplay and abilities of the ARS suit.

It’s a shame that this level of detail is obscured so much but understandable considering the Vanquish’s nature. You wouldn’t want characters or locations getting too heavy with exposition while giant robots stomp towards you and big chunks of scenery are flying all around. Every moment in the game is tuned perfectly to make it as entertaining as possible - these nuggets of story feel all the more precious if they’re chiselled out of the dark corners of the game.

Those gems can be hidden in plain sight - the Doctor you’re trying to rescue is called Candide and there are many parts of the game, some intentional and some by accident that draw parallels to that work by Voltaire. The French philosophers work criticised Gottfried Leibniz and his concept of optimism and did so by being sarcastic with an erratic, fantastical and quick-moving plot. Identical aspects to Vanquish’s gameplay and dialogue.

I don’t think the writers of Vanquish set out to directly pay homage to Voltaire’s work but it puts the ridiculous setting and story into an interesting context. From destroying Pangloss collectibles (Pangloss is Candide’s mentor indoctrinating him with the mantra of “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’) to the depiction of a corrupt government and the frailty of best intentions.

That last point is the most obvious in Vanquish’s story. The relationship between Gideon and Burns evolves and breaks down at certain points and the twist, though obvious and hardly groundbreaking, still shows conflict and politics ruining the best of Man’s achievements.

When you stop firing and look at the scenery it’s amazing where you find yourself. At first I assumed this was a generic space station with grey metallic walls and floors that did nothing to differentiate itself from one level to the next.

A few Acts in and I realised that the US space station was a giant, circular Halo-like world with massive residential and industrial areas. For all intents and purposes a huge world orbiting the Earth. This was the 51st state of America and it puts the gory destruction of the opening cinematic into perspective - an outer colony of the States used to destroy one its own. A poetic use of a superpower’s technology - collecting solar energy to fuel the population expansion - turned on itself.

The decision to use the Russians as enemies isn’t just a way of using a cliched action-movie rule-set to get laughs, it’s just logical. This is a future that’s a natural extension of the present - all wars or disputes are about resources and as Russia owns a large proportion of petroleum it’s not hard to see this eventually escalating into conflict. And yeah, having a bald, thickly accented dude that says ‘Dosvedanya’ can’t be beaten for dramatic punch and hilarity.

The dialogue is equally fascinating. It’s overloaded with clichés and grisly one-liners that could easily be interpreted as stupid but actually parody the entire genre of space marine shooter, including Vanquish itself. Gideon himself, during one of the final encounters asks Ivanova that the increasingly bizarre situation is starting to sound like a bad videogame - actually the only instance where the 4th wall is broken.

It’s a restrained approach and shows that Platinum thought about every part of the game with great care. Eat Lead layered the parody on with a shovel and lost all humour by such blatant acts. Vanquish allows itself one throwaway quip and concentrates on being a great videogame first rather than pushing satire into your face with a big neon sign.

As a whole this game comes together to create an experience on many levels. The one that everyone will enjoy involves power-sliding under massive robotic behemoths, taking down enemies while looking cool and enjoying the corny lines spat out along with a cigarette. What I enjoyed the most was peeking behind the curtain, seeing the bizarre references to a French philosophers work and the story which, despite its smoke and bluster, is all about the fallibility of good intentions.

That kind of hidden depth is what makes Vanquish one of my favourite titles of the year. Along with Dead Rising 2, it can appear shallow and exalt itself with explosive videogame features to the most ridiculous extreme - and yet both of these titles hold precious moments of insight and unexpected allegory that, hardly meaningful, was still a joy to experience. And that is what Vanquish is in a nutshell - a joy to experience from beginning to end.

That Reach thing

2010-09-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

My relationship with the Halo franchise has been as erratic as the fanboy ravings that accompany each review of every instalment in the series. Raising myself on first-person shooters on the PC and never touching one of those dirty consoles until the 360, I found the first Halo (ported to the PC by Gearbox) a strange and empty experience.

Skipping Halo 2 due to an international love affair (I'm not sure which was more anti-climatic) my next experience with the franchise came after giving into all the hype surrounding Halo 3. Thanks to a mixture of curiosity and peer pressure I caved in to see if I could understand what made so many people crazy about the Master Chief and all that jazz. Just as in the first game I enjoyed parts of the gameplay -- the well-documented open combat environments and variety of Grunt-killin' situations -- but ultimately the whole experience lacked anything approaching the meaningful tone the god-awful live-action trailers tried to convey.

The premise of Halo 3: ODST felt pretty cool and doing something different with the narrative - breaking up the missions and having a central lonely hub-world - gave me hope that this might be the Halo game to inject some meaning into its characters; if not its story. The problem this time came from the gameplay and I quickly found every combat situation dull or remarkably similar to the previous games. The story was pretty weak and the characters -- despite being voiced by some pretty sexy actors -- were flat and unconvincing.

Nothing about those three games gave me any sense of meaning, of characters that I should give a crap about or a story that was anything more than a mongrel of Norse mythology, Greek classical history and Larry Niven's Ringworld.

Then something happened to change all that - I read one of the fucking books. The Fall of Reach by Eric Nyland was written in 7 weeks and published before the first Halo game was released for the original Xbox. As science-fiction literature goes it’s a barely passable read but as a videogame tie-in -- as backstory to a franchise that was planned to expand as much as possible -- it changed everything.

Master Chief wasn't just some vacuous, American smart-ass super-soldier that the games portray him as -- he was a person with a history worth knowing -- someone whose childhood was awkward and tough but who eventually worked through pain and challenge to become humanity's last hope against a demonic foe. The war against the Covenant wasn't just some generic space-opera but a conflict that felt rooted in the desperate battles of ancient mythology and legend.

The book gave me what the games never did -- a firm base to experience what little story they were willing to tell. Even if they did it badly (which they did in my opinion) I could now at least go back and try to understand what the hell was going on in the games or make sense of the religious overtones layered over the Covenant hierarchy. Because of this I hoped, expected even, that Halo Reach would be Bungie's crowning moment. They would finally use the solid foundation that the book laid down to tell a meaningful story or create characters that I would want to know more about.

It didn't quite turn out that way.

Halo Reach represents Bungie's most polished work in terms of shooting Grunt fools in the face and taking yourself online to be crushed by a mouthy 12 year-old. When it comes to basic story, narrative and characters however, it treads the same path as before.

You’re never given a firm understanding of what’s going on and while I love the minimalist storytelling that Half-Life uses, Halo never builds enough into its world to support such a narrative venture.

What they got right this time was the main character. Noble Six is the faceless cipher that you customise and make your own. It makes this Halo game feel much more personal than before as Master Chief always felt like non-ironic cliché and The Rookie from ODST too bland to register.

The simple feature of being able to alter your armour makes this character feel... inhabitable. It was a chance, I thought, to finally experience a Halo story from a connectible perspective without crass or awkward writing getting in the way.

But Reach's attempt at capturing the same desperate feeling of a disaster film just doesn't work properly. Aside from the initial recon of the first mission the game pushes you to and from scenarios without any indication of what's happening outside of your combat area. Considering the entire planet is being kicked in the crotch there's nowhere near enough peril being conveyed -- only Exodus tries to shove the casualty rate up into the thousands and it stands as one of the few moments that could conceivably elicit an emotional response.

The other moments should have come with the death of your squad-mates. It's an inevitable part of the story that almost everyone on the planet dies and building the tension towards each sacrifice could've given Reach the kind of nervous energy Mass Effect 2 worked so well with during its final push.

Whereas Bioware gave you hours with each character that would accompany you into the dragon's mouth, Reach only has minutes and as such has to work harder in order to build those characters up to be likable. In order to do this it seemed like Reach fell back to portraying stereotypes that felt cut out of any stupid action game/film and even though some of their deaths feel meaningful (namely George, Kat and in the post-credits), the impact of them is nothing compared to losing Tali or Garrus to the Collectors.

If I hadn't read the book I wouldn't feel quite so aggrieved. Halo Reach is good entertainment from a pure gaming standpoint. Everything about playing it feels great and the formula -- on its last repeat before it wears the needle down to the arm -- still has the ability to give you a rush unlike many other shooters. Yet the book gave me the idea that this Halo nonsense could be a little more than that. The touchstones of ancient history and the ingrained sci-fi that all of us have in our DNA give Halo a blueprint, an opportunity, to create something special. It shows that the formula I came to enjoy so much by understanding more about the back-story won’t, or can't, mature enough beyond shooting aliens in the head.

Halo Reach continues that erratic relationship I have with the series and even though I'm still having fun with the daily challenges and the masochism of Legendary difficulty, it still fills me with regret. Regret that Bungie seemed unwilling to dive headfirst into storytelling that could be more than 'heavy-armoured dude kill alien. Insert zinger here. Repeat.' Regret that I read that damn book and got into all the pseudo-religious nonsense that the Covenant has got going on. And regret that I just can't enjoy a game without thinking about it in a meaningful way.

I mean seriously... What the hell is wrong with me?

Late Summer Review Round-up

2010-09-24T01:37:00.000-07:00

This summer seems to be more about the game I didn’t review rather than those I did. Skipping Red Dead Redemption and Alan Wake until after the buzz had died down discouraged me from writing traditional reviews. Instead I went on a word splurge and coughed up a load of nonsense about Red Dead last month and how it failed to use a single character as a monstrous antagonist - something missing from recent games.

More recently I covered Limbo – an interesting puzzle-platformer that really gripped me for about an hour until it wandered away from the large spiders and monstrous children.

I also enjoyed Deathspank for a time but it’s combat mechanics and general humour were never going ot be good enough to sustain its 12-hour running time. Glad I’m not covering the sequel, Thongs of Virtue, as that sounds like damn-near carbon copy of the first game. No thankee sir.

Kane & Lynch 2 was a headache to review, literally. I spent five hours with it on a rainy Sunday evening and by the time the shaky credits had rolled I had crushing headache. The way K&L2 presents itself was pretty interesting and the gnarly documentary style lends itself perfectly to a nasty gangster game. But the rest of the single-player campaign was so forgettable and boring that I can’t even stand to think about it anymore. Do check out the multiplayer though – it’s the only deep part of the game and gave me some serious chills trying to time my betrayal correctly or figure out who was going to stab the team in the back.

For some reason my Heavy Rain review didn’t go up until August on Gamepeople but I think the fury and disgust I levelled at it still holds true many months later. I don’t think I’ve played something that has made me so actively angry about it!

Finally, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light completes my late summer review spree. I liked it from a pure entertainment perspective and the co-op is very enjoyable. But as a game that features Lara Croft it just didn’t have the same atmosphere as the main Tomb Raider games. There was no sense of uncovering ancient ruins or artefacts, no crazy Atlantean story to get to grips with – just a twin stick spear-throwing shooter that you can throw away after a few hours.

What I have been playing that's been really enjoyable is Assassins Creed 2. It's been said many times before but its a true expansive sequel that blows the arse off the first game in spectacular fashion. The setting and the blatent anti-Church story are aspects worth exploring in another post, as is the Mass Effect 2 DLC - The Lair of the Shadow Broker - which reminded why Mass Effect 2 is still one of the best games I've ever played. Boom.

On Redemption

2010-08-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Full of abhorrent violence, harsh countryside, beautiful vistas, and the romantic fantasy that seems to have been created to mask the truth of such a evil time, the Western setting is a personal favourite of mine in film and books.

For this reason I was fascinated to what path Red Dead Redemption would take. Rockstar’s previous works with Grand Theft Auto gave me the impression it might be a cynical, parodying experience - lacking the grandeur, depravity and majesty that the Old West deserved.

In this respect I was pleasantly surprised. Red Dead is a sober tale - it has its humorous moments but these are dark guffaws rather than the bludgeoning satire prevalent in previous games. With this stable footing I expected the game to commit itself completely to a tale of the old frontier dying at the feet of the 20th Century.

As a videogame this seemed to be the case with a first third that introduced John Marston as a man with dark past seeking to atone for his history (ever-so similar to GTA IV’s Niko Bellic).

It’s a cliche to have a character like this but hell - Marston is a likable protagonist, bolstered by solid voice acting and a consistency that Niko Bellic never. With such a solid state of tools the American world of 1911 is built with care and beauty. The discovery of all the open-world trappings that Red Dead can offer - from hunting to random encounters - is only matched by the meaningless pleasure of watching the sun set over the rolling plains.

I’ll happily admit that I was swallowed completely by RDR’s creation of a West that seem to burgeon with potential. Random instances of brutal violence, the corrupt or ambiguous law-makers and Marston’s own journey to obtain his quarry via herding cattle and breaking horses all seemed to make sense in their own contrived videogame way.

That Lonesome Dove-style animal husbandry with Bonnie Macfarlen could have seemed out-of-place but the pedestrian pace of the opening allowed an exploration of all these aspects in a convincing way. I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the open-world challenges had the first act been a roller coaster shooter.

The stereotypical caricatures from Rockstar also made an appearance. Both Seth and Irish feel spawned from the same stallion as Brucie or Little Jacob - idiotic comic relief that’s as subtle as the bludgeoning satire of the closet homosexual or Jamaican pot-smoker.

I must admit to enjoying their presence. West-Dickens adds that spirit of deceitful endeavour and this first act shows glimpses of the overall metaphor the game puts forward - of the old giving way to the new in a bloody and resentful fashion.

It’s conclusion was satisfying and the promise of Mexico convinced me that the story would take a darker turn, show me the depraved violence of that ever-volatile state and turn towards a realistic West rather than a romantic one.

Those Mexicans

Every Grand Theft Auto that I’ve played is an over-long operatic experience that sags during its long journey, requiring patience and tenacity to reach the conclusion. This is nowhere more evident than here. Moving to Mexico promised much and delivered very little in the way of atmosphere and content. Looking back, it seems a pointless diversion to bridge a gap that might have been better served extending the land north rather than south.

In Cormac MacCarthy’s Blood Meridian the description of Mexico and the violence that takes place there is brutal and sickening. Set sixty years before this game it’s an unflinching portrayal of the Glanton gang that roamed the country during the 1850’s, murdering and scalping Apache Indians and Mexicans alike.

I did not expect Red Dead to try and reach a similar level of unforgiving violence but the tame nature of the power struggle between Reyes and the military offers nothing more than videogame tropes. It’s an unfair comparison to make between a classic American novel and a videogame - but Red Dead’s potential was there to create something evil, to dare the censors by showing what life was really like in such an unstable time. Instead we get turret missions to mow down Mexicans like an arcade game and the only melodrama is weak and predictable in the form of Luisa and Reyes.

To me it shows how videogames revert to type when faced with the potential that the medium can offer. RDR could have turned a corner here - showed Mexico with more bite and steel than just a series of repetitive missions that never strung a narrative together.

With so much emphasis on Marston’s past I would have thought it wise to include some of that as actual gameplay. A flashback, a reminiscence or even a whole Mexican-length section that enabled you to understand what Marston was trying to put behind him and what friendships he was sacrificing.

The Final Push and SPOILERS

SPOILERS BELOW

The last act almost redeems Red Dead for its middle-age frailties. The town of Blackwater is an example of the modern world encroaching on the wildness of the previous century. It’s disappointing that this isn’t explored in more detail with the series of McDougal missions the only time Red Dead touches upon the modern age and the past explicitly.

After the first climatic conclusion I was fascinated as to the path the story would take next. Spending time on your farm and performing the husbandry tasks learned in the first act gives a sense of symmetry that finally started to make these characters mean something to me.

Though the final conclusion makes little practical sense - why would the army use over 60 soldiers to take down a man who posed no threat? - it’s metaphorical meaning is plain. John Marston represent the old West, of horses, cattle and duel in the dust. The army and government agents with their horseless carriages represent the future and slowly erasing the past with their own blood-soaked methods and motives.

The sober end to the game shows that redemption was achieved by John, but in vain. The better life he seemingly sacrificed his life for ends with his wife’s death a mere three years later and his son exacts revenge as a killer (just like John) before the final credits roll. (If you decide to take on the Stranger quest at Blackwater station).

Stupidity

What stands out after these acts is how incredibly stupid John Marston is. After being betrayed by his original gang (a point that’s belaboured several times) he proceeds in being deceives by nearly every single character he meets. Twists and surprises make up the better half of a great videogame experience but when those betrayals can clearly be seen well in advance then it serves to only weaken the main character.

To have survived so long in America would have taken some level of awareness and yet because this is a videogame we have to suspend disbelief to the man’s basic intelligence.

This is where story and videogames have an unhappy marriage and I feel it will only be highlighted further as games develop. As a story Red Dead falls short of challenging literature in any way - maybe it shouldn’t even try - but I feel it has the potential to tell as bleak and as frightening a tale as Blood Meridian.

What it lacks is the directorial focus a vision requires. Such is the nature of an open-world environment. A linear game may perhaps lack the breadth and freedom that Red Dead Redemption achieves but it might create an impact I feel would serve the subject matter better.

It also lacks the kind of antagonist a strong story sometimes requires. Blood Meridian is full of monstrous characters - from Glanton’s bloodlust to Judge Holden’s dispassionate mastery over every man and beast he meets. Even the protagonist of the Kid is revealed to be the immoral centre of the novel that makes it so terrible and gripping.

The implication that Marston was part of a Robin Hood gang is ludicrous and it undermined my basic belief that he was a realistic character. Even if such gangs existed the real redemption sought by Marston should only come from someone who had been a common or monstrous criminal. Did Robin Hood seek redemption in later life? No, figure’s such as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment or, heaven forbid, Darth Vader are examples of meaningful redemption. Rockstar should have dared to make John Marston a stone-cold killer, maybe even letting you play as him during that time and then sought his peace within the frame of the main game.

Again, it is unfair to judge Red Dead by such lofty standards but I feel its a testament to Rockstar’s efforts that I’m able to refer to other media works in comparison. It had the potential, just like GTA IV, to tell a mature story and wrap that tale in an atmospheric setting that didn’t stumble or fall. But just like Niko Bellic and his search for redemption in America, John Marston’s Red Dead Redemption falls that cacti spine short of perfection.

Straight from the Tart(arus)

2010-07-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

The past few months have been a blur of Hit Points, levels and Mabufu. Mostly due to playing and reviewing two huge Shin Megami Tensei games - Persona 3 Portable and Strange Journey - while also giving the same treatment to Dragon Quest IX and Knights in the Nightmare. So yeah, RPGs from wall to wall. Far from being a laborious process I've found it oddly liberating and now, after 250 hours of battle music I'm still stoked to go back to Persona 4. I'm unsure whether this is clinical madness or not at this time.

The reviews for GamePeople are all here:

Persona 3 Portable

Strange Journey

Knights in the Nightmare

Dragon Quest IX

What I wanted to mention with regard to Persona 3 is how it worked into my subconscious so much. I don't usually play games for such a long period of time and in reality it's highly impractical to devote over 80 hours to one game in order to write a review. Enjoying the experience so much goes a long way to making those hours seem like minutes and I found myself dreaming about the game, having random thoughts about characters popping into my head while at work and then realising the most criminal of things... deliberately going to the loo just so I could steal five minutes of grinding when looking after my kids. Oh the horror.

In all seriousness I found this large amount of play-time doing something to my experience with gaming I hadn't previously realised. Namely that I was developing a relationship with the game rather than just consuming what it had to offer. I'd have days when all I could do was work on my social links because I was fixated on romancing a certain girl or firming up a friendship to the max - all to the detriment of my combat level. Then I'd happily devote hours to the grind through Tartarus and surprise myself by actually enjoying the repetitive combat until I passed out in bed.

I'd have days when I thought P3P was boring, annoying and dull down to its predictable elements always doing the same thing with little variation. Then, a single character would say something meaningful or I'd have a particularly gripping boss battle and all would be forgiven. I'd fall back in love with the experience and I pushed on towards the top of the tower and the end of the game.

Only after I'd seen the end credits and witnessed the bittersweet ending did I realise how much of a gap P3P had left. 86 hours isn't that long by most people's JRPG standards but for me its a megalithic anomaly. It'd grown into a friend, an acquaintance I'd conversed with on a daily basis and got to know intimately inside and out only to have that relationship suddenly end when 'Fin' appeared on the screen.

Yeah, I guess I'm being melodramatic but the following few days felt really odd to me. Nothing else videogame-based stuck with me except for firing on the PS2 and going back to a Persona game. It seems there's some secret formula hidden within P3P that my body's become used to and just like that time I tried to give up caffeine I've been rejecting every kind of substitute or watered-down replacement on the market.

Since I'm review-free for Gamepeople at the moment I guess I have the luxury of going back to Persona 4 and making some decent progress. Hey, maybe I'll actually resurrect those old diary things I started 80 years ago. Maybe I'll just be found 30 days later by my family unable to move from my own filth as I try to max out my S Link with Chie Satonaka and have to deal with divorce proceedings. Or maybe I'll write something about Dragon Quest IX in a couple days instead. Damn, so many choices for infamy.

Mario Galaxy 2, Nier - Reviews

2010-06-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

Covering Galaxy 2 after the dark and (slightly awesome-ly) depressing Nier reminded me how much fun games can be. It's the type of primary colour charged experience that made everyone in the room, well mostly my two kids, stop what they were doing and just gawp at what was going on. I was really interested to try and cover this one from a soulful angle, concentrating on all those happy playful memories you have from childhood and why Mario games have that certain Nintendo grade-A quality to them.

I'm not sure if I was successful in this regard or not - the biggest problem for me came when I honestly analysed how I felt about the game and more especially when I compared to the first Galaxy. It certainly looks and plays a lot better than the 2007 game but I really didn't feel the same magic was there. Most of those issues I raised in my previous post and in the review - all to do with the wrapper that goes round both Mario Galaxy games and how different they are. I imagine I must be a genetic anomaly or something but I really preferred the original. Or I'm turning into one of those insufferable people who cannot abide newness and change.

In any case the review is here - http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/soulful_wii_mariogalaxy2.htm and my Nier review goes up on GamePeople later in the month but is accessible via this once-in-a-lifetime link - http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/soulful_ps3_nier.htm

Oh yeah. I also managed to spew out a user review on my Giant Bomb profile page. If I'm honest I actually prefer this one to my GamePeople review but it really didn't have a place on the site as it's just a plain old mainstream-style bit 'o work. Also, it's completely unedited so I expect there's even more grammatical ineptitude present than usual.

Next on my plate could be Persona 3 Portable. A game I'm really looking forward to playing but also mortified at the time it'll take to get through. Given that Dragon Quest 9 is out next month I can see myself imploding with turn-based combat and cute Japanese characters. Not a bad to go if you ask a freak like me.

More Nier, less Mario

2010-06-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping my review for Nier will be up very soon on GamePeople and in many ways I've enjoyed that game as much as, say, Mass Effect 2. It has nowhere near that level of polish but in many respects it felt a far more intimate experience simply because it hasn't been a popular title.

There's a real danger of overstating and over-praising a game like Nier because of the erratic reviews it's received from major publications - and there's always the temptation to criticise universally received titles just to get attention. However cool it might be to act the contrarian you've always got to back up your opinion with some form of evidence or reason. With Nier I feel the positive emotional experience far outweighed the technical issues and the awkward dialogue moments it had.

This leads me on to Super Mario Galaxy 2. A game I wasn't expecting to write about under the Soulful Gamer banner until I was asked to. I had, coincidentally been playing the first Galaxy with my son for the past few months and really enjoying most aspects of it. It's been a perfect 30 minute filler before dinner time and the one aspect that I've really enjoyed is the hub-world and all the Rosalina story-time parts.

It's probably a very odd thing to say but the whole narrative of the first Galaxy was enchanting and full of personality and character that gave all that awesome platforming a point other than the exceptional gameplay. I can't say the same about Galaxy 2 and everything that made the first one special feels like its been thrown out to just add more levels. It feels more like an utterly awesome expansion pack that unfortunately contains none of the charm outside of those levels the first game had.

Before I return to Nier I also want to clarify the Alan Wake review that's currently on the Soulful Gamer section on Gamepeople. Being a website that has some diverse sections rather than specific writers it means that there's a generous amount of guest/ghost writing across sections. Which means that the Canabalt and Alan Wake reviews were both penned by other reviewers. I'm not saying this 'cos I believe the reviews to be crap or anything, far from it, I just want to be clear that those views on Alan Wake aren't mine. Why I'm sounding all snotty and trite about it is because I've just started the game and really don't feel it's up to snuff... yet. By the gods, I just love being the contrarian at the moment eh? God-damn opinions.

But back to Nier and I really wanted to highlight a couple of points I never had the room to put into my review. Firstly, the music is exception. It's full of highly produced songs and themes that give each character and place a distinct sound. Some of the tracks, especially those for Emil or Yonah, melt the heart with their beautiful melodies. Some of the tracks are a little chant-heavy that work well within the game but sound excessively odd when I listen with headphones. Maybe I'm just not LARPing well enough for those but the rest of the tracks make up one of the best soundtracks I've heard for a while. And yes, I am a videogame music nerd. Go on, point and laugh if you must.

Finally, I have to flag up a negative about the game in order to not sound like the religious fanatic that would see me deported. I recently began a new game + which puts you back into the game about halfway through the plot. It seems the four endings you can get require four playthroughs, which is fine, and each of them focuses on the main characters in turn, which is more than fine. However, the second playthrough seems to be conveying the backstory of Kaine with page after page of text rather than offering any gameplay differences or alternative cut-scenes. It's disappointing that they have to resort to a wall of prose rather than offering something a little more compelling, but I guess if you're as invested in the game as I've been then you're probably going to lap up the hermaphrodites backstory with glee. Lap up, urgh.

A Nier do well

2010-05-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

I really don't like puns. That is, I don't like them because I'm so revoltingly bad at them and Nier is actually a game I've having a rather wonderful time with. After many weeks of barely gaming at all and even less writing it's been nice to ease back into a game that isn't flashy or particularly gorgeous but still manages to give me an experience that feels... worthwhile. If I had my enthusiast gamer hat on then the list of concerns would be long and boring but none of them get in the way of the setting and characters.

Unlike Darksiders (which I did not like at all) Nier feels much more coherent and meaningful to me. The cornerstone of the entire game is the protagonist's driven desire to cure his daughter's fatal illness. The nature of this and the history of the post-apocalyptic future is yet to be fully explained even after seven hours but instead of feeling directionless, it helps Nier to brings its characters forward.

The main guy himself is immensely likable, and comes across as a gentle father who will do everything to save his daughter and help others along the way. He never feels like a wishy-washy Paragon Jedi and the gruff voice acting is a perfect foil for the generous acts and gentles dialogue he can deliver. In the process of saving your daughter from an early threat the game introduces Grimoire Veiss (sounding like a camp Alan Rickman, if that's possible) - a talking book that gives you the magic powers that make combat vaguely more interesting than just slashing your sword.

Inanimate objects always need strong personalities to bring them to life and Weiss is wonderfully sardonic, pithy, arrogant and yet also shows more humanity than many other videogame characters you'll likely to comes across. There's a great rapport between these two characters and it’s a testament to the translation team's talent that they make a relationship between a human and a book feel remotely believable and funny.

The only character that stands out for the wrong reasons is Raine. Not for her dialogue, which is brash and offensive in all the right ways, but the fact that her voice simply doesn't match the visual character model. It's the same problem I had with Splinter Cell: Conviction and it makes a striking difference to how legitimate she feels as a character.

Objectifying women isn’t the exclusive domain of Japanese developed games but Nier’s Eastern origins are pretty obvious with Raine dress-sense. The game even draws attention to this issue with a few disparaging comment from Veiss about Raine wandering around in her underwear. I often wonder if this gratuitous self-awareness is put in as an excuse for putting some young girls butt-crack on display, or whether they’re just taking the piss out of their own audience.

Regardless, I’m enjoying Nier far more than I thought I would considering my rocky past with most action-RPGs. It’s moments where the gameplay changes from a typical sword & sorcery setup into a twin-stick shooter or bullethell level seamlessly makes me believe this could be something special.

With bad things happened to good people within the story I have a feeling that Nier has a lot more depth hidden away during its latter parts. I can only hope my pun-generator can get produce something of mediocre value the next time I write about it or I’ll Nier hear the last of it. Ugh.

On holiday with Mother 3

2010-05-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

The only great thing about going on holiday with a self imposed ban on all “new” games and game systems means I’m forced to experience some RPG called Mother 3. Yes, it’s that time in every ‘I want to write meaningfully about videogames bloggers life’ to scrawl something about this un-translated work. Un-translated by official means that is. I won’t try to pull a righteous than thou attitude and say I bought the original cartridge or some shit – I torrented the ROM and downloaded the fan-made patch just like 99.8% of the player base.

After only three hours I can’t really say much about the story only that its first chapter does everything you’d want a sprite-based RPG to do. Children, family, happiness and light turning to death and despair, strange stuff going on, feelings that the world is changing – all essential RPG primer for a potentially epic tale.

What I love so far are the character sprites. There’s something so basic yet beautifully expressive about the way all the characters have been drawn in this game. And this is just the NPCs we’re talking about. Every one of them is so unique and individual that it puts every other sprite-based RPG to shame.

As good as these look on my crappy Game King screen (complete with three dead pixels ithankyou) it’s the manner with which they’re animated that makes them come alive. When Flint gets his bad news the stop motion animation makes it so easy to see exactly what he’s doing and what he’s feeling.

One of the most bizarre moments of the first few hours which proves you can still do epic on a handheld is the appearance of the massive character just outside of town. At the moment he’s seems to serve no purpose and only lifts his hat courteously when approached. But just seeing this tall man, four times the size of every other character scared the life out of me for some reason. It’s an odd inclusion that may or may not become clear later, but it’s a quirky bullet point that ticks the right box for me.

What I’m a little unsure of is the translation and the dialogue. By Thorin’s left testicle I’ve no idea how fans managed to take the raw Japanese and translate this entire game – and patch it back up to work. It’s a feat that transgresses the limits of my pitiful mind quite easily. Yet I’m not sure if the game itself was actually trying to be that dippy or if the translation team were. For the most part it seems to work fine but on other occasions, the moment when Flint receives his good news/bad news for instance, it feels a little cold and out of place. It’ll become clear after dozen hours and I could be ignoring a massive style of the Mother games due to my criminal ignorance. Yeah, it’s probably the latter. I guess I’ll shut up.

Splintering my Fragile Dreams

2010-05-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

I had hoped to be earlier with this post but... oh y'know, preparations for moving house, several deadlines, the baseball season or feeling burnt-out. They all conspired to keep me from being regular about anything.

So back to Fragile Dreams before I uncork Sam Fisher. There's no doubt I entertained this game a little too much during the first couple of hours and in my last post, mostly because it felt good to not play a shooter or a highly-involved RPG. The slow nature of Fragile Dreams was a welcome change of pace that papered over a number of bone-crunching flaws that eventually came to the surface after finishing all of its eight hours. Though I still like the setting and the melancholy atmosphere that pervades every part of the experience it just doesn't do enough with its premise and setting to make slogging through the combat worthwhile. It's a classic case of older game design ruining an idea that could've been something special. If it had followed (or led) Silent Hill Shattered Memories example by reducing the combat to just 'running for your damn life' then it would have made the needless backtracking feel a little less... well, needless.

When you have an awkward combat system and antiquated level design/direction then any story is caught up on those game-breaking barbs. I will say that Fragile Dreams had some beautiful moments in it. The entire level with Crow was fairly irritating but the underlying history of that character and the fact that he kisses the main character, on the lips, was a pretty special and hilarious moment.

My full review is on GamePeople along with my Heavy Rain and Final Fantasy XIII musings as well. I shall probably put up my full 1,500+ words review of FFXIII on the blog, uncut and unedited. Not because I think my greatest words were cut by the evil hand of the GamePeople overlord (though that is an awesome thought) but because it was one of the games I seemed to think the exact opposite to everyone else.

Moving on, I also burned through Splinter Cell Conviction for a mainstream review and ended up finding a few interesting points to put into a soulful gamer critique. It's biggest impact on me wasn’t the overall story which couldn't be more typical of an 24-style action-film if it tried, but the manner with which it depicted the killing of civilians. I think the visuals of this game aren't exactly stellar but the sound and incidental voice acting (in parts) is incredible (the enemies still sound like a self-parody). Hearing the sounds of scientists and workers being executed was harrowing and there are a couple of specific scenes I mention in my review that stood out especially.

I think this is Conviction's best part. It's not pleasant or fun, but the way it portrays violence, death and interrogations is incredibly brutal but understated enough to stay within the realm of reality. Understated is the wrong word but I find most videogames closer to comic books with their 'realistic' violence than successfully being edgy or dark. Conviction doesn't fall into that trap and made the slaughter of innocent civilians feel uncomfortable and nasty.

Another kind of slaughter - that of monsters - is what I have to look forward to next week as Monster Hunter Tri takes up residence in my Wii. I have to admit that I liked the PSP versions, purely as a dungeon crawling game and I'm interesting to see what the transition to the Wii does for the series. I doubt it'll be anything meaningful but if all else fails I have a copy of Toyko Beat Down that'll let me focus on the existentialism of being a hard-boiled cop in the Shibuya district. Or not.

Weekly Round Up: Of Heavy Rain and Fragile Dreams

2010-04-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

So that weekly update thing? Yeah I screwed that up didn't I? I'm getting really good at starting something and never even getting to the second step of a small journey. Call it apathy, call it being overworked, call it... a failure of my humanity. I certainly will. No matter, the two weeks since I last updated saw me throw in the towel regarding Final Fantasy XIII. I actually had about 500 words or so ready to go last week moaning about all my problems with the game, but considering that 500 words also got cut from my review of FF13 I guess I could try and fuse the two together into something more... critic-like for a future post. (Let's just all pretend that I'll actually get round to doing that shall we? Please?)

In the meantime I chewed up Heavy Rain in two sessions and came away feeling really negative about the whole experience. My reaction to the game surprised me especially after all the great press and previews it had gotten over the past few years. In my eyes the game pushed the visual boundaries of 'realism' and subsequently lost most of what gives a game its soul in the process. I'd like to say it was a brave vision that died due to a thousand little cuts, but that would be an outright lie. I'm not even sure if it was a great vision after all, or a technical achievement for videogames. It seemed more misguided and insulting than anything else to me. I always felt David Cage himself was leaning out of the TV ordering me to appreciate his wonderful vision and all the emotional depth he had poured into the code himself.

But that's quite enough of the negative because I played a game this evening that really surprised me. This time in a good way and Fragile Dreams on the Wii has come completely out of the blue. I've heard nothing about it and knew even less until I started playing it this evening. From what I can gather it's a survival horror adventure set after a apocalypse-like event that's left most of the Earth's population dead or missing. This clichéd setting doesn't feel clichéd at all and that's probably due to the stunning visuals on offer and its quintessential Japanese style.

The first couple of hours are spent in a crumbling subway station but when you emerge from the tunnel into the open air, the visuals of the dawn sky are pretty moving. It also has an unsettling feel with typical Japanese enemies of abstract matter appearing in front of you. It even made me jump when I found writhing arms coming out of the walls and it shares more than a passing similarity with both classic Silent Hill and the recent Shattered Memories.

What sold it to me more than anything else was its indirect storytelling. I have no idea how the earth ended up like it has but by collecting certain items you can listen to memories of events in the past by your campfire. The first instance of this involves a mother and her daughter to whom a promise is made that she won;t leave her. There are shades of Bioshock's audio diaries here but more accurate would be the memories in Lost Odyssey as they seem to have the potential to be just as moving. Then of course I met the girl from the memories, now a ghost and demanding to play a game of "hide and go-seek" in order to obtain a key off her (some game design doesn't change!) After I successfully locating her there was a brief but moving reunion with her dead mother before they turned to light and rose up into the sky.

In just two hours I felt Fragile Dreams had done what Heavy Rain couldn't manage with the PS3's power and eight hours of my time. It's not a fair comparison but I know which I've enjoyed playing the most so far and I 'm truly intrigued to see what direction this unknown Wii game is going to take. I just wish I wasn't such a wuss when it comes to horror games.

Soulful gaming roundup - 24/03

2010-03-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

After 30 hours of play I am supposedly hitting the 'good' part of Final Fantasy XIII this week. As usual I'm finding the internet a mixture of lies and deceit when it comes to Square Enix's long running franchise. I've made no secret on Twitter that I'm enjoying the streamlined nature of FFXIII and I constantly find myself wondering what other players want this game to be. Reaching Chapter 11 this week has shown that FFXIII doesn't really do open-world stuff very well - at least not to me! The plains of blahdiggety-blah-blah look impressive (even on the 360) but going back and forth, running errands for long-dead l'Cie strikes me as, er, dull.

Of course, this is where the FF vets will grab their gunblades and tell me that this open-world, non-linear struture is A Good Thing™. I'm not averse to that type of gameplay in the slightest, but having a really good narrow experience for thirty hours and then breaking it open like this feels like bad pacing to me. Beleive it or not, I'm really interested in these characters, the world and the story that's going on around them and would rather push ahead than spend four hours grinding up levels just to access the next chapter.

It strikes me that the developers made a concious effort to make a very different and accessible Final Fantasy and then got cold feet about the whole business and opened it up again. Through the osmosis of the internet I know this is only a passing moment, but it still feels oddly thrown in to appease the kind pf players who would have thrown FFXIII in the bin by now.

Enough of the Final Fantasying. Also this week I've got my hands on... *adopts Japanese shouty voice* SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI STRANGE JOURNEY!! It's a DS game I've been looking forward to for months and one that seems destined to be ignored by most of the UK - mainly because Atlus has no plans to release it here. (Sad face).

After three hours I can confidently say that its a very SMT-like experience with traditional turn-based combat and its demon-adopting/taming/fusing awesomeness. It's way too early to pass judgement but when Jeremy Parish of 1Up infamy calls it the best RPG release in March it gets me all tingly for what's to come.
Don't laugh. Please.
On the opposite side of the spectrum I've finsihed ploughing through my copy of Rune Factory and a review should be hitting the GamePeople servers very shortly. Those Harvest Moon folks really do make games that are easy to slate from an enthuisiast videogamer standpoint but there's something amazingly additive about sowing crops, catching monsters and wooing Japanese ladies. Soulful? Well that remains to be seen and many of these games rely on the player to use their imagination for the best experience. Something I'm not averse to using every now and then.

On a similar note I've also been doing the same on my iPhone - a device I actively refuse to play games on normally - and raking hours into the free-to-play We Rule. Expect a post about that very soon also.

What I won't be writing about any time soon is Yakuza 3 which is sitting forlornly on my shelf why I try and get through Final Fantasy before the end of the month. That and Heavy Rain (the game that seems to have 'Soulful Gamer Will Cry!' written all over it) are just going to have to wait until I get Lightning and her crew to their finale.

Bioshock 2 -> Review

2010-03-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

[Originally posted on GamePeople]

Bioshock 2's essence feels somehow diluted by returning such a hallowed location. Although the atmosphere and environments conjure up the same rich experience, the story and revelations regarding Rapture's continued demise were not nearly as powerful as they could have been.

The most fascinating part of the original Bioshock for me was the journey through Rapture. The slow descent into this failed utopia, unearthing its brave vision and ultimate destruction, went hand in hand with the discovery of your own characters history and purpose.

The real star was Rapture itself and not the compelling personalities of Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine and Sander Cohen. In this sequel I found neither the new parts of the city or the characters sufficiently interesting enough to hold my attention.

Set ten years after the events of the first game you play as a Big Daddy, one of the hulking sea-suit wearing protectors of the Little Sisters. The premise for the game centres around finding the specific Little Sister you were bound to in the beginning. This girl also happens to be the daughter of Sofia Lamb - the game's deranged antagonist who's restarted the Little Sister project for her own disturbed philosophy.

At its heart the tale is about a father and daughter desperately trying to reunite even if the blood ties to them are a fabrication. It's a great motivator to get you to point A to B, pulling switches, throwing levers and generally causing more havoc and destruction to Rapture's continued demise.

Though the story was quick-paced and offered a few moral choices along the way, I never felt it breached the deeper subjects the first game paid attention to. There's no extension of the Ayn Rand philosophy that bled through the entire original, none of the revelations that made your encounter with Andrew Ryan or Sander Cohen so memorable or shocking.

It's easy to make these comparisons and portray Bioshock 2 in a less-than-flattering light. The game stands on its own as an excellent experience but I always felt the shadow of that first game hovering over my shoulder pointing out the cracks in this experience and nulling any emotional attachment I had for any of these new characters.

In many ways Bioshock 2 on PS3, 360 or PC is the greater videogame. All the technical aspects are superior in nearly every way; but with this advancement I feel many of the deeper considerations of the original have been lost. The addition of the Big Sisters - a lithe and acrobatic version of the Big Daddies - feel far too ‘videogamey' for a world such as this. The worst offenders were the Brute Splicers, the oversized and bloated enemies that felt totally out of character and looked like they belonged in Left 4 Dead rather than within Rapture's creaking walls.

This isn't to say that I didn't find pockets of true meaning. Bioshock is always at its best when Andrew Ryan is either speaking or being referred to and the entire level of Ryan's Amusements gives a glorious insight into the arrogance, genius and showmanship of Rapture's founder. Stumbling through the dilapidated museum exhibits and the broken funfair scenes evoked a real sense of history, doing a great job of making Rapture believable and more disturbing in the process.

The other moment which gave me an unexpected shock showed that the Splicers weren't always the deranged killers. In an early level I crept into a cabaret bar. On the stage, caught in a tender embrace were two Splicers gently dancing to the strains of The Ink Spots. It was an amazing moment. Here, amid the psychopathic terror of creeping around Rapture was a glimpse into the past, of when the inhabitants of this beautiful city were still human and unravaged by the addiction to ADAM.

Only after I saw their bodies lying next to each other did I realise that I had acted just as the rest of the deranged splicers would have done. Not thinking or reasoning - just succumbing to basic emotions and killing everything in my way. It made me question my motives within the game and whether or not I was just as brutal and soulless as everyone else in Rapture.

Though all these positive aspects come together to create a game worthy of the Bioshock name I couldn't help feel hollow at its end. The experience felt like traversing a huge Frankenstein's monster - all the parts were in the right place and a fresh life-force flowed through its veins - but Bioshock 2 ultimately lacked the same soul which made the original so unique and memorable.

Endless Ocean 2 -> Review

2010-03-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep brings a gentle and calming underwater adventure to the living room that, in spite of the Wii's awkward motion controls, succeeds in transporting you to a serene world.

[Originally posted on GamePeople]

I was surprised to find myself enjoying the peaceful moments of diving amid the coral reefs and following the hokey story to its gentle conclusion and even more surprised to find parts of the game fairly intense. The only aspect that threatened to ruin the experience was with the Wii's motion controls that frequently tried to eclipse the game's overall beauty and calmness.

I couldn't say that I looked forward to playing Endless Ocean 2. The first game appeared to be nothing more than a glorified diving sim that had you cataloguing endless sea-life with blocky graphics and a perpetual new-age soundtrack droning along. It certainly wasn't a terrible game but it lacked drive and purpose. But not for the first time I found myself completely wrong about a series of games. In spite of my snooty attitude to the visuals, I found Endless Ocean 2 a tremendously relaxing and interesting experience.

The changes from the first game are apparent within the first few hours and I was relieved to see that the job of Marine Biologist had been pushed to the periphery in favour of a more interesting, story-driven career. The option to scour the reefs and sea bed for unusual sea-life is still available but the game doesn't require that same level of commitment to the cause as the first one did. None of that naming and photography business interested me at all.

I felt I shouldn't really have been interested in the story either, but Endless Ocean 2 has a certain charm - a friendly Tomb Raider-like appeal - that saw me exploring and discovering Lapis tablets and mysterious messages with relish.

I described the story as hokey, and while that's true it still fits the overall vibe of the game. This isn't in any way an accurate portrayal of scuba-diving. There's no danger in dying and attacks by sharks or poisonous fish merely mean a depletion of your air tank - there's no health bar to worry about and even an empty tank simply transports you immediately back to the boat. The characters are oddly portrayed and I can't be the only person slightly uncomfortable with having a close friendship with a 15-year old girl as my diving partner. There's even a jive-talking black American among the cast that immediately made me think this was a Japanese developed game - and, it turns out, I was right.

But all of these video game tropes fit together nicely and I found myself getting pulled into the globe-trotting tale of ancient civilisations and the personal voyage of discovery my young companion was on. There moments during the exploring that I found myself comparing the game to Tomb Raider Underworld and more specifically the underwater exploration sections that game did so well. Unfortunately this only made me see the flaws of the Wii's controls and despite getting hooked on Endless Ocean's environments and story, the awkward way of moving and using items nearly broke the whole experience.

The real reason I love Endless Ocean 2 is because it has an environment, a heart and soul that gave me beautiful moments that no other game could ever hope to achieve. One such instance occurs early on when I discovered an ancient castle. I was swimming through a long resplendent corridor and as the fish swum amongst me the pale light of the sun came through the crumbling windows. I found the portrayal of such a long-forgotten place amongst the sea-life as the song 'Nella Fanstasia' echoed within the walls quite magical. The fact it was the good version of the song and not some Sarah Brightman warbling nonsense all the more moving.

The other instance that impressed me so much is down to a personal fear of water. I find the idea of being under the sea terrifying and the game does a great job of portraying a sense of depth and scale that effectively made me sweat on several occasions. Endless Ocean 2 tapped into my personal fear and made my experience far more meaningful than I ever thought a mere diving sim would.

Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep feels like a game I shouldn't like. It should appeal to the ultra-casual Wii crowd and serve as a reminder that Nintendo's console is a true family favourite that offers experiences for all types of gamers. But it has a certain charm and genteel nature that sucked me right into its watery world. The special moments I found the game providing were sublime and down to atmospherics rather than obvious story-driven events. This is a very different video gaming experience, and proves games can still surprise us.

Mass Effect 2 -> Review

2010-02-16T01:20:00.000-08:00

Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest video games that I have ever played. The subtle links to the first game, the standard of character writing and the universe detail gave me an experience I quite literally fell in love with.

[Originally posted on GamePeople]

What's more, recruiting old and new crew-members and the development of these characters made the journey of my Commander Shepard all the more special. I felt like I was interacting with proper people and meant the final act of the game was a brutal roller-coaster that left me drained and exhausted.

In this review I will be referencing plot points and story twists so if you don't want the game spoiled for you then refrain from reading until you complete the game.

Right from the start I was wrapped up in the fiction of universe. The spectacular destruction of the Normandy is arguably the strongest beginning of any game in recent memory. Not only does Mass Effect 2 continue the world seamlessly but then it suddenly destroys all that was precious to you from that game. Having a body count right from the start was a signal that this game is serious about its fiction and I felt nothing but a sense of foreboding about what was to come.

The subsequent manner of your death in space and resurrection at the hands of Cerberus is arguably the most effective means of transferring a character over from a previous game that I've seen. The sense of continuity is amazing - not only do the major decisions carry over but a lot of minor and seemingly throwaway choices also return in the most unlikely places.

These moments are peppered throughout the universe of Mass Effect 2 and give it a layer of detail and consequence that remind you there is whole galaxy operating outside your game bubble. It reminded me of playing Elite, Frontier or Freelancer. Mass Effect 2 doesn't quite have that level of freedom but the history is all the richer for its specificity.

In recent years sci-fi has become more allegorical than just the literal escapism I enjoyed when I was growing up. Mass Effect 2 certainly injects some modern issues - although I'm unsure whether it was intentional or not. Humanity is almost exclusively portrayed by Americans - there's little in the way of Halo's multicultural force - and the way humans (by the game's default) barge into the galaxy and throw their arrogant weight around draws telling real world parallels.

Usually I'd drone on, citing this as the major reason I find Mass Effect 2 so good, but the more pleasing truth is that I never felt beaten over the head by any of these issues. It was just there in the background for me to notice (or not) and then get on with the gameplay. This series does a great job of offering up interesting characters and an intriguing, space operatic stories because of it's expertly crafted atmosphere and social detail.

The world of Mass Effect could seem generic at first glance - a clean, hermetically-sealed sci-fi mash-up that hits stereotypes and archetypes without worrying about the detail. But in the detail of Mass Effect 2 I found a familiarity that made everything about the world feel believable. Even though the characters you meet in both games are usually alien, they have been drawn and crafted with such care that they exude more humanity than I ever expected. Ironically though, most of the human characters lack the same colour or detail and are often something of a weak link.

When the majority of Mass Effect 2 turns towards recruiting team members and scouring the galaxy for resources, it never felt like a video game conceit. I had been itching to immerse myself in as much of this universe as possible. In all honesty this sequel turned my slightly apathetic attitude towards the franchise into an all-consuming passion that had me devouring the books, iPhone game and comic series with relish. Not since Lord of the Rings have I had such a strong feeling about a fantasy reality and its wide context of lore, sub-stories and history.

Yet this immersion toyed with my feelings more than once. Once I had recruited a few new members to my crew, I found Liara on Ilium. This encounter changed the pedestrian pace into a blazing trail of heart-break and destruction.I remembered my Mass Effect 1 Shepard being smitten by this blue-skinned alien and made it my mission on Illium to rekindle this romance. But she had changed into this serious and obsessed information dealer, hell-bent on destroying the Shadow Broker who killed her partner. It was both shocking and awesome.

Amazing for her character as it lent a depth she lacked in the first game but it was also heart-breaking. I've never felt quite like a 5th wheel in a video game before (plenty in real life I can assure you), but seeing how Liara's life had taken a different turn and how independent she had become was pretty cutting. It was almost a case of unrequited love for my Shepard - taking me from the position of being able to romance anyone to now having no chance with the only one I wanted.

From then on I didn't care about the other characters, except for Garrus and Tali and their link back to those good-ol' days of the first game. My Shepard turned into a driven and emotional wreck of a Commander who couldn't think about anyone else other than Liara and herself. Instead of going through the loyalty missions like I should have, I drove as quickly as possible to the end game, ignoring the chance to upgrade my ship and personnel equipment.

And oh, what a mistake that turned out to be.

Though the attack on the new Normandy felt like a contrived happen-stance its effect was no less devastating. Seeing yet another crew killed or displaced is hard to take, even if those characters were only incidental. With Kelly and Dr. Chakwas gone though, I started to realise that maybe I should have done more preparation and not been a sullen, moody, love-torn Commander.

It set up the final 90 minutes as a blood-pumping climax which filled me with a nervous fear usually reserved for real-life struggles. I won't be as ridiculous as to say it matched the terror of a difficult child-birth, but ask me another day and I just might draw that parallel - depending whether my partner is in ear shot.

Subsequently, the decisions of whom to send on which particular part of the mission really began to eat away at me. Despite my lack of care for the other characters away from Tali and Garrus they had begun to mean more as the game got darker and meaner. I physically had to get up and walk away from the console before deciding who was go down a ventilation shaft to hack the security systems or who would lead the other diversion teams later on.

My fears turned out to be well-founded as the body-count grew and I zeroed in on the objective. The moments when I lost both Tali and Garrus I actually shouted out ‘No!' and nearly gave my cat a heart attack. It physically felt like I was taking a blow to the stomach and turned the blood-pumping final act into a somber, last-gasp attempt to avenge their memories.

The end was no less exciting as in my melancholic haze I wished my Commander Shepard hadn't survived. The final scenes where you stare at the coffins of your fallen companions was as depressing an end as I could have imagined.

The manner with which I've fallen in love with the Mass Effect universe and become attached to its inhabitants shows that this is a game worth savouring. I won't say this is the best game of 2010 - that would be pointless - but there's no doubt in my mind that it's the greatest game I've ever had the pleasure of playing and its emotional punch only leaves me more enthused about the final instalment.

Dark Void -> Review

2010-01-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

Originally posted on Game People

There's a moment in Dark Void when the mythos of the Void world, the history of the Bermuda Triangle and the shadow of World War Two come together and create a brief instant of epic storytelling. Unfortunately, that fleeting moment is buried under generic gameplay and a lurching narrative that led towards an unsatisfying and disappointing end.

It's easy to dismiss Dark Void as a derivative 3rd-person shooter with a single gameplay addition that distinguishes it from its genre bedfellows. The lazy sound bite that constantly echoed inside my mind for the first few hours was 'Uncharted with jetpacks'. Not only would that be unfair on Naughty Dog's masterpiece but it would also be unfair on Dark Void. Not that the vertical cover mechanic or jetpack addition elevates this game anywhere near the level of Uncharted, but it does share a similar Matinee-film feeling.

Set in 1938, you're on a routine courier flight that just happens to cross into the Bermuda Triangle and before you can say 'Nolan North is voicing the lead character again', you crash-land in another dimension. It's wonderfully corny stuff and taps into the same Buck Rogers or The Land That Time Forgot style that makes for a light-hearted Hollywood yarn. But this is Dark Void's high point - the voicing of Will Grey by the most Han Solo-esque actor in recent years gives Dark Void that same roguish charm that worked so well for Nathan Drake.

For the first four hours Dark Void never felt like it was going to be any more than a simple variation on the cover-to-cover, 3rd person shooter genre. The ability to hover and later fly mixes up the gameplay and suitably changes the pace of the experience so you're never slogging through levels of the same flavour. It's all pretty neat stuff and although the transition from ground-based combat to full-on flying is a little awkward, it fits the 40's sci-fi nature of the setting and adds a bit of variety to the core of the game.

This gameplay variety doesn't make Dark Void particularly interesting though. That epic-like moment I referred to earlier comes purely because the game tries to blend the fascinating fiction of the Bermuda Triangle, 30's sci-fi and the onset of World War Two. The world you find yourself in houses the malevolent Watchers - beings that have shaped human affairs from creation and seek a way back to Earth to continue their dominion. Your aim to return to Earth and close the portal that would allow The Watchers to follow you.

I loved this premise but Dark Void woefully underuses the myths at its disposal and the figure of Nikola Tesla is far from the central lynchpin the game says it is. The other figures from the Bermuda Triangle legend are even more undersold with Amelia Earheart and Flight-91 reduced to text journal entries that are filed out of sight in the menus and have no impact or importance in the game. Reading them gives a little more colour to the fiction Dark Void is trying to create but they feel more of an afterthought and badly implemented to carry any weight. Audio diaries are fast becoming a narrative cliché but if they are well voiced, as in Bioshock and Batman: Arkham Asylum, then they can enriched an experience and help to create a living, breathing world.

Without this the world of Dark Void feels empty, too clinical to carry the meaning or impact the game wants to achieve. At a certain point you come across a factory packed full of weapons and vehicles destined for Earth and the insignia on them carries huge significance as to why The Watchers must be stopped. Yet the visual design of the game at that moment is so cluttered that I couldn't make out a single symbol that was being pointed out to me. The breathtaking and chilling vista that the game needed at that point was absent and the impact of that crucial moment was next to nothing.

Similarly the enemies you face are painfully dull as well. A cross between the Trade Federation troopers in The Phantom Menace, the Geth in Mass Effect and the machines in Too Human, there's no explanation given as to what they are, how they came into being or why they talk and act like humans. Only The Watchers themselves are given a face and aside from the typical Roswell alien-look their motivations and implied effect on humanity was something I would have like to see more of. In a similar fashion the inhabitants of the Void world, both incidental and important characters alike, are badly underwritten and give little weight to the overall world.

Why this gets to me in Dark Void and why I don't dismiss the entire game as a play and forget, popcorn-thriller, is because it could have been more. I feel there's a depth here that the developers didn't have time to flesh out or didn't feel they needed to create. The Tesla technology that's underused, the obfuscation around the main plot and the way the game suddenly lurches to its anti-climatic conclusion gives me the impression that time ran out on a number of levels.

As a result a lot of the narrative and wider story feels set up for a sequel, but the climatic stages of Dark Void lack any kind of urgency and drama that make it worthy of a follow-up. It's a paper-thin experience that might be entertaining for a few hours but the awkward flight controls, the untapped potential of the story and setting mean that Dark Void is a crushing disappointment.

Bayonetta -> Review

2010-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

Originally posted on Game People.

Taking the base structure of Devil May Cry and turning it into a kaleidoscopic fruit basket of exorbitant gameplay, colour and style, Bayonetta is the ultimate videogame. The sheer indulgent delight of sampling its intoxicating mix left me breathless with adoration for its balletic combat, fantastical characters and intriguing plot.

I must admit the very mechanics that Bayonetta works from has never previously interested me. The action/adventure combat system nearly always defeats me with it complexity, difficulty level and the manner in which it often obscures the game world. But Bayonetta has changed all that. With its camp and overblown presentation providing the lustful eye-candy, the actual combat is as graceful and cathartic as the Kirov ballet.

I never felt like I did anything as mundane as walking or running with Bayonetta. In the same way as every movement in her cutscenes is deliberate yet beautifully smooth, the merest action within the game is like gliding through silk. Combat is easy - not in the ‘press one button to win’ way but due to the ease with which I found myself moving through opponents, mastering the wide variety of moves and relaxing into the game’s flow. That’s not to say it isn’t challenging - at times it felt like I was riding down a chaotic river and retaining control by the seat of my pants.

The difference between this and other action games is the progression of the enemies you face; they are all bursting with unsettling creativity and dispatching them into Hell becomes increasingly more satisfying. The mini boss fights have an allure about them, especially when more powerful attacks result in Bayonetta shedding her hair-made cat suit, and are a tease for the full-on end boss.

It’s easy to put this ‘feature’ straight into the male titillation box that many might feel the game deserves. Is it pandering to a largely male demographic to have a character that gets gradually unclothed according to her combat status? Probably. Is it empowering to women to have a strong female lead in the game. No. But Bayonetta is not an overblown, highly sexualised object that’s merely been dropped into male players hands. She’s a fantastical avatar, an artistic icon that isn’t to be taken in a literal visual way - not long legs and big breasts but a graceful and confident character that fits the world created around her. The truth is that none of those issues really matter in this instance. There are many other games that portray men and women in a stereotypical light, with no hint of irony or humour - Bayonetta just ices its incredible mechanics with camp and sexy goodness - and no malicious intent at all.

As a result each boss fight that concludes a chapter has a pace and pleasure that’s akin to another stage in the process to a world-ending sexual climax; Each fight has its own stimulating ending but each minor encounter becomes a tease, a deliberate delay to the ultimate climatic conclusion that leaves you breathless with pleasure. Does this sound fanciful? The kind of fantasy that's 'typically Japanese' and 'bat-s*** crazy'? That would be a clichéd and lazy appraisal of a game that doesn't just pour insanity around merely for the sake of its own visual effect. The world of Bayonetta is fantastical, like the inside of Terry Gilliam's head, but it makes sense within its own extraordinary boundaries.

The tumultuous story that barely contains all these features could similarly be dismissed as nonsensical; a melting pot of Japanese paradoxes and narrative circles that only serves to give Bayonetta more opportunities for cheesy dialogue, achingly stereotypical characters and yet more vagina shots. But while those charges could condemn Bayonetta, it’s actually very clever with what it does. Boil those combat scenarios away and you’re left with a story about the constant battle between light and dark; the Lumen Sages and Umbra Witches. With its fiction involving the brutal Witch Hunts of European history and using such distinct architecture to put faces on the enemies you encounter, Bayonetta is far more than just the crazy brawler many will describe.

Skewing the conflict of Heaven versus Hell closer to that of Phillip Pullman's The Dark Materials trilogy rather than biblical sub-text, it's clear that the concept of good and evil in this world is deliberately muddied. Even the defeated Angelic beings are carted off to Hell with blood-red demonic arms bursting into reality and dragging them into damnation. It’s an uncomfortable portrayal of Paradiso (Heaven), Inferno (Hell) and Purgatorio (Purgatory) if you stop and think about it. With so-called heavenly creatures having such a grotesque form - who really is the enemy in this universe? The answer, which comes at the end, is a lovely knock against organised religion even if the videogame wrapper blunts its meaning and intent.

The darkly religious overtones fade perfectly into the background when you don't pay attention - and many will gladly revel in the beautiful and balletic display of fighting that the game delivers with aplomb - but it’s there to add a canvass to the sensible insanity of the game. If you love your fighting games along the Devil May Cry route then Bayonetta works in delivering the pinnacle title that the series could never itself achieve.

The beautifully uncomfortable world the game portrayed was the magical key that made this title something special - as was the gameplay that came together in a perfect alignment of accessibility and challenge. This is more than the best action game I’ve ever played - the sense of awe, fear and elation that I experienced meant that every moment of play and subsequent replays has given me more pleasure than I could have thought possible.

The debate about the central characters sexual nature, the constant focus on her crotch and the suggestive dialogue that runs through the entire game will rage on regardless of critical success and adoration. But Bayonetta is a game that deserves to rise above that unnecessary dialogue and be enjoyed for the unashamed 'videogame' that it is.

Explaining my hatred for Darksiders

2010-01-20T03:45:00.000-08:00

Nothing that's what. Absolutely nothingOver the past few years I've noticed, along with other old-man stuff, that I've grown increasingly more intolerant towards certain mechanics or designs that games use. It started with the tendency of Halo games to make you replay a level backwards or put you through ever-increasing waves of enemies - for no reason other than to lengthen the experience of the game. Back-tracking is one of my pet hates and I feel it’s a hangover from ages past – a dinosaur of design that should be put in its coffin and buried six feet under.

My gradual career shift from gardening to videogame writing has meant I’m obliged to finish games I write a review for – that’s why this isn’t a review of Darksiders and more an explanation as to why my heart is filled with such bitter hatred towards it. Fortunately for me and fortunately for Darksiders I didn’t get a copy for review and I couldn't imagine a more excruciating assignment than making my way through this game. Maybe I should review it, maybe I should man-up and just get over my biased hate and figure out why it’s been given such glowing reviews from IGN and Giant Bomb.

But in many ways I don’t want to be constructive and fair. Darksiders gave me such a negative reaction that I want to try and figure why I had such a negative reaction to it. And the reason for this, I believe, comes on several levels. One is the art-style (or lack thereof), one is the gameplay and the other is the insistence of reviewers to compare it to Zelda and God of War.

Firstly, the game's presentation. There’s a certain visual style/quality that some games have that causes a negative reaction from me. From the very start I found the graphics to have a certain sheen, a metallic look and feel that felt totally wrong to me. It reminded me of Prototype and Legendary. I never felt my character in Prototype was connected to the world and the movement style and presentation just felt a little...off.

Unremittingly blandThe same visual cues seem to be present too – there’s something about both those games that hurts my eyes. Not in an allegorical or metaphysical sense but it practically makes my eyes hurt to look at the screen. Not because of overly vibrant colours but because the palette feels so flat. The colours all have the same grey or metallic hue that makes the world feel utterly dull and unwelcoming to be in. It’s a bizarre paradox but if the world had more grime, more dirt and greater sense of ruin and disaster then it might be more appealing to me.

The other comparison to Legendary is the fantastical array of creatures and demons that now inhabit the earth. In both games the depiction of these creatures is nothing I can fault technically. They are both creative, with Darksiders obviously having the greater degree of fidelity and detail of the two. But I simply can't 'get into' these creatures at all. I don't like fighting them because they're so outlandish and generic at the same time; they are completely typical Demonic designs. Fire, horns, forked tongues and deep rumbling voices are all used in a text-book way that leaves no room for originality.

I know how ridiculous that must sound, especially after my gushing review of Bayonetta which features some very unique heavenly/demonic entities. The main difference in this instance is Bayonetta's art style. Many will call its creatures over-the-top or fantastical, but the truth is that they work within Bayonetta's world by actually being quite understated. They are taken from classical architecture and the stone-gargoyle or angelic reliefs give the creatures an air of austerity and sadness to them. This the polar opposite to those in Darksiders which takes the classic demon interpretation and slaps fire, claws and blood all over it. That's probably the best explanation I could give about my aversion to the visual style of Darksiders - it's not particularly clear but I'm still figuring out why I dislike it so much.

So onto the gameplay and back to my origianl point about backtracking within Halo. In the short period I played Darksiders the repetition had just started to creep in and it's clear from what I've heard that the game only increases this mechanic as time goes on. Simply put - I hate it. The arbitrary nature of having to go back to a previous point in order to progress feels wrong to me. In an open-world game like GTA, Red Faction or The Saboteur it makes perfect sense to revisit the same areas or go back through a level. But when it’s a game that is built to be linear then I don’t' want any sort of - collect that, take it there, go back to that portal/door/dog kennel - in order to move forward.

Darksiders also has a difficulty curve problem and the first few levels after the prologue are just far too awkward when it comes to combat. Unblockable attacks by some of the mini-bosses or the huge sweeping blows that they make are simply inexcusable in a game like this, especially when it’s within the first hour.

Bayonetta's formidable bosses are far more meaningful and uniqueThe final part of my tri-force (oh the lols) of hatred aimed at Darksiders comes from the reviews I’ve read. This isn't some conspiracy-laden accusation that many tin-hatted fools on the internet like to make, but I honestly struggle with understanding some of the viewpoints offered by many reviewers. Nearly every review I've read has drawn comparisons between this game and a multitude of others. Some say the combat is taken from God of War and the structure from Legend of Zelda. Well, I guess it’s time for real internet honesty here and I admit that I've only played about eight hours of Phantom Hourglass and not a single second of any other Zelda. I've only just started playing God of War as I came from an exclusively Amiga and PC background when growing up. Whether or not this invalidates my opinion I'm not sure but the combat to me feels awfully un-like God of War so far. It feels heavy and unresponsive with a very limited number of moves from the start and clunky system of blocking or counterattacking that frequently left my dead rather than alive.

As for the Zelda comparison - I'm frankly at a loss. Irritating companion, tedious repetitive gameplay with arbitrary quests that require X amount of X to progress for no legitimate reason why? I know enough about Zelda to realise that Darksiders lifts gameplay conventions from Nintendo’s flagship series. But my problem is... why is this a good thing? These conventions appear to work because of Zelda’s endearing nature, the archetypes Link and Zelda represent and the history of the world the series has created. Transferring those mechanics into this setting highlights how antique they are and that modern games can’t rely on old methods to make them into ‘classics’

I know I’m in the minority with Darksiders. I know most people who see it through to its conclusion come back saying it’s a fantastic game and that it out-Zelda’s Zelda with its climatic end and dramatic narrative. But those three and a half hours felt more dull and painful than Shellshock 2 or the entirety of Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Just like the praise and accolades that Prototype and Crysis received on their releases, Darksiders will forever remain a mystery to me.

I'm sorry Darksiders... it's me not you.

Fallen Earth -> Review

2010-01-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Originally published on Game People

Taking a familiar setting and building a compelling world is just one of Fallen Earth’s many successes. I was blown away by the depth and attention to detail this post-apocalyptic MMO portrayed and the manner with which I was drawn into its world. For a long time I have argued that online games cannot give a deep and meaningful experience due to their very nature - but there’s more heart and soul here than in many other recent games. Whether I was delving deep into the crafting system, following the story or simply taking in the haunting environments, Fallen Earth took me on a journey into a world I’ll never forget.

Bleak wastelands, nuclear fallout and zombies are some of the most overused settings in videogames and other modern media. For every highly original drama or existential art-piece there’s a thousand Mad Max clones and Fallout tributes all vying for the same space. That was the attitude that I went into Fallen Earth with; that no amount of unique gameplay or well-conceived online structure could rescue the game from painful and familiar mediocrity.

What a fool I was - because Fallen Earth drew me into its post-apocalyptic world with its atmosphere, gameplay, deep crafting system and coherent story. All within an MMO template that turned my preconceptions about what online games are capable of on their head. Not only is Fallen Earth a tremendous MMO, but it’s a stunning single-player RPG that’s as deep and involving as anything in recent memory.

What worked so well was how the game covered up most of the usual MMO conceits in a completely logical and coherent way. You can survive death because you're a clone and the multiple cloning factories will happily spew out replacements when you fall in battle. This does wonders for making the world feel believable. Though that’s an odd statement to make about a game that's played exclusively online - it shows that Fallen Earth has a quality that surpasses even my anti-social gaming habits.

The main reason for this is simply the environment of the world. Starting off in an instance set within the Hoover Dam complex and attempting to escape from an insurgent attack serves as an excellent tutorial and as a compelling jumping-off point. I'll admit that the first hour isn't perhaps as thrilling as it could be, but the final moments of this section when you realise how well death is integrated into the game is awesome.

It was only when I stepped out into the wider world of Fallen Earth that the environment truly hit home. The attention to detail in every location is just as amazing as the wasteland from Fallout 3. Abandoned airports, villages pieced together from the rotting remains of civilisation and the general sense of an old-west frontier town purveys the game in a tremendous fashion. The biggest different between this and Bethesda's masterpiece is how the sense of bleak loneliness doesn’t overcome the experience. I struggled with Fallout because despite its black humour, its despairing vision of the future was so depressing to play in. That same environment and humour runs deep in Fallen Earth, but the world feels far more alive and much more compelling to play in when you can see and interact with other human players.

That last statement is important because I find interacting with other players a sure-fire way to take me out of any experience I'm having. Nothing ruins a perfectly crafted fantasy environment by being messaged 'Get ur Gold 'ere, PM HaxorrX for cheap gold' all the time. But I found my experience heightened and improved by the active community that resides there. Why? Well, similar to Eve Online, Fallen Earth operates within a single server - you’re all logged into the same world all the time. While that leads to some technical problems in highly populated areas it gives a real sense of existence and uniqueness to the world.

That same coherent logic is present throughout the areas of the game. There are horses for transport because hey, it's the apocalypse and fuel is scarce - you can obtain an ATV but looking after it includes refuelling and repairing broken engine parts. There are factions and a loyalty system because that's exactly the manner in which humanity would degrade under such circumstances.

And this is all before I discovered how deep the crafting system goes. I must admit to having a schizophrenic affair with crafting in most MMOs. Either it feels like an afterthought and a worthless pursuit, or I get sucked into the professions - a la Lord of the Rings Online-style - and end up playing as a woodcutter for the majority of the game. I was more than happy experiencing the bleak wilderness that Fallen Earth portrayed so well until I decided to change my 'Old Nag' for something more mechanical. The path to making an ATV is complicated and long, but the results are worth it and this lengthy excursion into mechanics suddenly sparked my interest in the game's crafting system.

To say its deep would be selling this aspect of the game short by several degrees. It's a massive and highly involving occupation that fundamentally shapes the way you want to play the game. Being a go-getting kind of clone I wanted the ability to make my own weapons and specialise in rifles. As well as gaining XP in the usual manner the game also gives you Action Points (AP) for spending on skills, mutations, stats and tradeskills. These points help you decide what path to take in the game - whether to be a high-damage dealer, leader, medic, trader, pistoleer, etc. All this ties into the crafting system as you level up each skill and get more proficient at your chosen craft.

Learning books and blueprints, collecting a wide myriad of junk materials and finally crafting a hand-made crossbow or rifle is an effort that leads to a great sense of accomplishment -akin to creating objects in the real world. It reminds me a lot of the early days of Star Wars Galaxies when the path to making a Lightsaber was a mystical and special process, when you could become a Beast Master or an Entertainer because it fitted the feel of the world rather than being an arbitrary system for earning more money and XP.

All these various systems and points blend seamlessly together in Fallen Earth and I'm finding it hard, even after spending so much time in its world, to stop playing. It's kept me from writing this review because I've become so embroiled in my character and living out a frontier existence in the post-apocalypse. What I've touched on has already elevated Fallen Earth to become one of my most compelling games I've ever played, but its overall presentation and sharp visuals deserve a mention too.

When I first started the game the edges were definitely rough and the initial instanced tutorial was a shaky affair that had me worried at first. But taken as a whole, this grimy start fitted the style of the game and the fidelity of the outside world makes a tremendous and deliberate contrast when you finally step out from the cloning booth. The distinct lack of stylised graphics and models, like those found in World of Warcraft or Borderlands, helps to support that sense of reality and has been recently bolstered by an upgraded grphics engine.

Fallen Earth has been a revelation to me; not only has it been an MMO that's encouraged me to stay within its world due to the environment and setting, but it’s also shown me that the genre is far from the stagnant mess I thought it was after playing Aion: Tower of Eternity. Fallen Earth has come out of nowhere to become a game I can recommend whole-heartily, whether or not you're after a multi or single player experience. It has a depth and environment that most other usual releases simply fail to achieve; it's addictive, immersive and an experience I can't wait to get back to.

Aion: Tower of Eternity -> Review

2010-01-07T13:11:00.000-08:00

With the promise of a visually beautiful online experience and the unique ability of flight enticing me into its world, Aion: Tower of Eternity looked like it could be the MMORPG to bring me back into the fold after a two year absence. Unfortunately the excruciating banality of the first 25 levels meant that any promise of uniqueness was crushed under exasperation and boredom.

There was something magical about hearing the hype regarding Aion: Tower of Eternity. Its success in Asia and the distinct visual style evident in trailers and screenshots gave me the same buzz I experienced when waiting for Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) to release.

It’s that game which set the standard for MMORPGs in my mind. The balance of strong story-based quests and the right mix of additive game mechanics meant I came away with the same feelings a single-player RPG would elicit.

But my first impressions of Aion were not great - the initial cut-scenes were immediately confusing and the story-based dialogue and quest structure left a lot to be desired. When it wasn’t descending to generic fantasy trope #3 it was being nonsensical and doing its best to muddy the narrative completely.

Granted, the visual appeal of Aion is amazing and I was constantly amazed at how wonderful the world looked; whether I was gallivanting in the Elyos opening area with its oversized exotic creatures and verdant landscapes; or questing in the Asmodian areas with their dark and bleak scenery - the game is a beautiful spectacle of light and nature. But this visual feast really covered up the painfully dull start I experienced with both races. Not only was the story lacklustre, but the simple process of levelling up a character took far too long even with the bonus XP amulet I was given at the beginning of the game.

I'm no stranger to the grind in MMOs or RPGs, but where other games wrap interesting story or engaging narrative around these game mechanics, Aion doesn't seem to even try. I'm the type of gamer who reads all the quest logs and information about the world so I can get fully ensconced it its lore and setting. That's what I loved about LOTRO so much - that the developers respected the source material and put so much of that into the game. Aion obviously doesn't have that rich heritage, but even other original MMOs like Free Realms or Fallen Earth have a far superior atmosphere and quest structure than what I experienced here. Sometimes it felt as if it was down to poor translation, other times it felt like the original developers idn't have the time to make it the story interesting.

It certainly doesn't help when you quickly run out of quests and are left with the hideous process of killing environmental creatures until you pass a certain level cap. Levelling up in Aion is some of the most soulless gaming I have ever experienced - akin to playing Hannah Montana: The Movie just for the Xbox 360 Gamerscore points.

Aion is not without its interesting additions though, and the inclusion of mini cut-scenes for plot-central quests is a nice touch. It gave me the feeling that what I did in the world mattered a little more than usual and it’s a neat way to bring in some solid narrative into an MMO game.

The biggest draw of the game for me was the addition of winged flight after reaching level ten. Having gone through many hours of grind this carrot was all that kept me going. The chance for my character to ascend was an awesome thought and the possibilities of aerial combat gave me hope that Aion could still draw a unique rabbit out of its dusty old hat.

Again I was disappointed. Not because of the visual drama that the cut-scene evoked - if anything I thought this marked a change in the game's narrative for the better and I actually started to feel interested in the world and the direction the game was going in. It was the technical restrictions that applied to this event that really soured my mood. I didn't expect to be able to fly all the time but the small limit that the game introduced felt completely arbitrary. There's no fun and no joy to be had from such a restricted feature, especially when the crux of the game is built on its inclusion. The real freedom I was hoping for didn’t come until level 25 when you enter the Abyss. Here the restrictions on flight are lifted but to be quite honest, by the time I had struggled to that stage I was sick of Aion and all it represented.

I'm aware that most people use MMOs as glorified chat-rooms or social hang-outs, but there are many other games that don't feel like so much hard work and actually reward you for putting over 25 hours of your time in. The unique pull of Aion with its visuals and aerial combat feels completely false to me now - the plot and world are muddled and I rarely felt as if I was travelling along a well-thought out path that had care or attention lavished on it.

Aion seems to sit uneasily between Eastern and Western design philosophy with its harsh levelling procedures and dull quest structures. None of its visual splendour can hide the fact that its poor storytelling and boring narrative are at the heart of its gameplay. I went into this game hoping to be inspired, but after twenty-five hours of play I feel more discouraged about the MMO genre and what it can deliver than ever before.

Adventures in Aion - Easier to pull teeth

2009-12-30T07:06:00.000-08:00

When I first dived into Aion I had hoped to keep a journal of my time there to best explain its world and the mechanics behind its operation. I'd also hoped, above all things, that Aion would actually be a good game. Sadly both of those hopes of mine turned out to be false as Aion is anything but a good game and writing about dull and boring experiences would be just as boring as every moment I spent in the game.

Twenty five hours of my life I put into the MMO and it's hard for me to be anything but negative about my experience with it. I will say that the visual quality of the game is exemplary and the vibrant colours it brings to the screen certainly give it a unique style that helps to cover the poor gameplay. But that gameplay is woeful and the thought of logging back into the world makes me shiver in repulsion.

Aion takes all the systems, all the mechanics and all the structure I despise so much about the MMO genre and happily presents them as if I'm to expect and enjoy such things. The opening areas for both races are structurally identical and the grinding procedure is so painfully obvious that I wondered if the game was missing some part of the front-end to conceal its dull inner workings.

I'll save my specific complaints for the imminent review, but Aion fails because the first 25 levels are so excruciatingly dull that I couldn't care less about the world, characters or poorly executed narrative that held it all together.

The winged combat and the thrill of getting wings at an early stage was quickly shut down by the game's needless constrictions. It doesn't do anything remotely interesting with the unique aspects it has and lacks the finesse I was expecting and hoping an Asian MMO would deliver. Even the free to play MMOs of Shin Megami Tensei or Free Realms offer a much more coherent experience in their less-than-stellar looking worlds.

This experience showed me that I was right to stop playing MMos two years ago and I can only hope that Fallen Earth, my next review project, will offer something different to take the sour taste of Aion out of my mouth.

Adventures in Aion - Breaking my 2-year MMO absence

2009-12-21T14:47:00.000-08:00

Returning to MMO games after an enforced two year absence was something I never intended to do. But the ethereal nature of Aion and its Eastern aesthetics initially sold me on breaking my silent vow never to log back into a game after Lord of the Rings Online.

Yes, Lord of the Rings Online and not World of Warcraft. If there's any snobbery I have with videogames and fantasy settings then it’s how British they do (or don’t) feel - Turbine did such an excellent job with Lotro that I couldn’t stomach the more American-influenced nature of WoW.

This is what drew me to Aion in the first instance – the way it would be different from both of those games in its setting and environment. It seemed from the marketing that its Eastern roots would give the game an exotic air, reminiscent of Guild Wars and I hoped that this would mean Aion was something unique with a richness and individuality of its own.

My thoughts so far aren't that positive though. Bear in mind that I have barely begun to get out of the starting area and I'm well aware that I've barely begun to scratch the surface of this game. That being said it's pretty clear that the starting area in Aion is a very traditional take on the genre. Most of the quests are simple fetch or carry variations with a large amount of rat-killing strewn in-between to assist with the levelling up of my character. The way the game presents its story and the environmental minutiae feels really generic at this stage and I have to confess that I wasn't disappointed to log out of the game at the end of the night - coming across the Ent-like beings in the started forest were a bit of a breaking point for me.

It's slightly disheartening as the immediate premise of Aion, with its light and dark sides and the Abyss in-between them, sounded great before I started playing. Part of my problem has to be the baggage I carry over from Lotro and once I get over this maybe I'll find Aion opening out into its own unique experience. At the moment though, Aion simply doesn't have a rich heritage or a sufficiently interesting back-story to hold my interest even though the stunning visuals and verdant landscapes are pretty impressive.

Despite my negativity I'm still looking forward to seeing what lies ahead in Aion (honest!). The promise of wings and the aerial combat is still something I'm very eager to see and get firsthand experience of - as long as I keep my finger away from reactivating my Lotro account I'm sure I'll be fine.

The Saboteur review

2009-12-19T22:15:00.000-08:00

Using World War Two as a backdrop for its story, The Saboteur left me divided about whether its technical shortcomings obscured the dramatic setting of Nazi occupied Paris. I loved the vengeance-driven narrative and the use of colour to depict the city's oppressed state, but I found the game falling short of the epic open-world environment the first two hours had expertly setup. Those heights were never reached again but despite The Saboteur's many failings in execution and technical competance, I couldn't help but enjoy nearly every moment of this different World War 2 game.

Thanks to my personal interest in all aspects of World War 2, The Saboteur was already a game that piqued my interest before I even started to play it. The premise of playing as Sean Devlin, a vengeance-seeking Irishman based on the real-life war hero William Grover-Williams, in the streets of occupied Paris was a fascinating concept.

Using World War Two as a backdrop, rather than the central focus of the story also made a big difference to how I treated the setting. The absence of a clichéd Call of Duty-esque narrative was refreshing and the way the main plot wove into the rise of the French Resistance was an interesting twist. Even some of the unnecessary supernatural British Intelligence missions gave the game a bit more variety and Sean’s attitude towards his plummy English contacts was hilarious coarse. The only aspect absent from this setup was any mention of the collaborationist Vichy Government - a series of missions involving assassinations and pursuit of collaborators would've been really exciting.

It was this use of occupied Paris as the backdrop for the game that really made me fall in love with what Pandemic Studios tried to do. Cruising around in period cars, stopping at Nazi checkpoints and generally getting a feel for the city in-between missions gave me a similar thrill to that of GTA IV. The little touches, like German soldiers randomly interrogating groups of suspected resistance members, gave the city a sense of reality that complimented the authentic street layout and architecture. However, this feeling of immersion never lasted long enough for the game to carry as much meaningful weight as it could. Far too often the technical glitches and shortcomings took me out of the experience and exposed the inner workings of an open-world game.

In all honesty there's a certain amount of technical problems I'm willing to look beyond in order to have a good experience with a game. STALKER: The Shadow of Chernobyl was a game beset with critical bugs and errors, but the atmosphere of the abandoned city of Pripyat and its surroundings overcame all those problems to deliver a very unique experience. The Saboteur almost gets away with such deficiencies but the staged dialogue, floating enemies and the sight of characters and vehicles suddenly dropping into the world occasinally made the experience difficult to enjoy.

It also has a very stereotypical portrayal of its characters which oddly, feel entirely right for a game like this. Playing it too serious or with a sober perspective would no doubt of made the experience very boring and pretentious, but Sean is a walking Irish cliché complete with a 'top of the morning' greeting that is guaranteed to make any Irish native cringe. Every resistance member sounds like a variation on Pepe Le Pew and the Germans also have such thick accents that I was half-convinced dialogue had been taken from 'Allo 'Allo. But all of this stereotyping feels remarkably effective in painting a caricature of the occupation of Paris - it gives those darker moments a bit more impact amongst the jollity and showed me that the game was capable of some (admittedly lightweight) pathos.

One aspect that I appreciated the most was the use of colour. Occupied areas of the city within the game would be drained of all colour save for an unsettling red hue around the Nazi's and their crimson-blood armbands. These sections in black and white would only have colour restored to them after completing a series of story missions or subquests, like destroying a Zeppelin factory or assassinating a senior Gestapo officer.

Although the game promised that bringing colour back into the city would have a tangible effect I found it worked better as a visual statement of Nazi control than a gameplay changing feature. Being in those black and white areas for a period of time became depressing and uncomfortable, making the moment when a shockwave of colour blasts out over the city all the more meaningful.

This feature's greatest impact came in the game's prologue and showed a glimpse of the adult drama that The Saboteur infrequently delved into. In fact, the first two hours of The Saboteur contains some of its greatest moments and showed that beneath its goofy surface, a melodramatic story was at its heart. Showing the shadow of World War 2 in these beginning sequences was an excellent touch that gave the game a sense of deep foreboding. Going from the entertaining hi-jinks of running the German race-winner’s prize car off a cliff to a gruesome torture scene was handled well and it’s at this point, literally when the trigger of a gun ends the life that Sean once knew, that the colour drains out of the world.

The game never reaches those dramatic peaks again and even though echoes of melodrama occasionally crop up along the way, they don't quite scale in comparison to those first two hours. So I'd be lying if I though The Saboteur portrayed an occupied Paris in a truly dramatic or authentic way, but it still did enough to entice me into the world and enjoy my time there.

It would be very easy to criticize the game for its technical flaws but my own personal fascination with WW2 and the love I have for this setting means none of those concerns mattered in the end. The Saboteur shows that World War Two still has many epic and dramatic tales to tell if the narrative is spiced up and the setting is right. With its combination of melodrama and whimsical humour I was willing to look past The Saboteur's failings and enjoy its rogueish, open-world charms.

Borderlands - The Island of Dr. Ned

2009-12-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

I haven't been more surprised this year than with my compulsive love of Borderlands on the Xbox360. It just goes to show that despite my adoration for deep and meaningful videogames, I still enjoy the cathartic process of blowing stuff up (see Red Faction: Guerrilla) or shooting bad guys with a multitude of different weaponry.

This first instance of downloadable content - The Island of Dr. Ned - condenses much of the 30+ hour experience of the original game into a four hour romp through some very different landscapes and environments. It even addresses one major flaw of Borderlands by actually including a narrative to the experience, complete with an introduction and conclusion narrated by Ivan, Pandora's seemingly omnipresent weapons seller.

The premise of this expansion is excellent B-movie fodder - you arrive at Dr. Ned's island and find out that the good doctor has 'accidentally' created a never-ending stream of the undead. It naturally falls to you to help him correct his mistake by putting various bullet-shaped holes into the zombies and going on the typical stream of quests that Borderlands has at its core.

Gone are the bleached-out visuals of the Arid Hills around Fyrestone and instead you have the gloomy swamps and heavily wooded environments that bring a sense of claustrophobia and unease into the game.

This DLC adds around 50 of those new quests, but the biggest change I experienced was how different the look and feel of the game was. Gone are the bleached-out visuals of the Arid Hills around Fyrestone and instead you have the gloomy swamps and heavily wooded environments that bring a sense of claustrophobia and unease into the game.

Let me be clear, this isn't suddenly an early Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but I found the change dramatic enough to feel uncomfortable fighting against the zombies for long periods of time. The evil red eyes of the infected ravens and the way the zombie midgets fling themselves around in such a savage way started to get under my skin a little (although zombie midgets are pretty hilarious when I think about it). The game doesn't shy away from pitting a lot of undead enemies against you at the same time either. I frequently found myself overwhelmed and surrounded - a situation completely unfamiliar from the rest of the game.

Playing a lot of the content for laughs with several winks to the camera and a certain Brothers Grimm design aesthetic, I thoroughly enjoyed this add-on content for Borderlands. Changing the mood and the environment of the game completely gave me a much visually darker and, at times, an uneasy feeling when trudging through the zombie-infested swamp-lands. Even after release Borderlands continues to be my surprise hit of the year and this content furthers my adoration for its atmospheric setting and simple mechanics.

Dragon Age: Origins - Keeping it dark with sarcasm and blood

2009-11-27T13:14:00.000-08:00

As a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2, Dragon Age: Origins is an epic role-playing fantasy game that successfully blends the charm of an old-school RPG storyline with some sophisticated relationship and dialogue mechanics. It doesn't reinvent the Western Role-playing genre, but its presentation of a dark fantasy world with meaningful choices and grim consequences shows that traditional Tolkien-inspired games have plenty left to offer the modern videogame player.

The traditional Western Role-playing game has been well-represented in recent years, with The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion offering some impressive open-world adventuring in a typical fantasy setting whilst Mass Effect brought Bioware's RPG expertise into the realm of science-fiction space opera. Dragon Age: Origins, also developed by Bioware, is pretty much the most traditional and typical fantasy RPG you could wish for and follows the company's success in developing the Dungeons and Dragons-based Baldur's Gate series and the original NeverWinter Nights.

On the surface it would be easy to criticise Dragon Age for being nothing more than the epitome of the genre. But delve beneath the Tolkien-inspired fiction and the MMO-style interface and you'll find a game that's laced with knowing sarcasm but also serious enough to offer some believable dark themes. This is Bioware at their best and the over-arching narrative kept me constantly involved and itching to take on the next quest.

Though the class system of Dragon Age may be a little restrictive than what I've been used to when playing an RPG, it more than makes up for this with the six origin stories which offer unique, 1-2 hour beginning sections depending on which race or class you choose. These gave me a real sense of where the character I was playing came from, what their history was, and how they and their race fitted into the world. For example, choosing a Dalish Elf will put you in a small campaign deep in the Brecilian forest. Here the story focuses more on the forgotten Elvish culture and how your small community survives as a nomadic people.

Survival for my main character, a City Elf, was a very different matter. The Elves living in Denerim, Ferelden's capital, are subjected to prejudice, segregation and racism on a daily basis - all of which spills over during the Origin story that shows or implies the brutal treatment that your family and friends are subjected to. The dark themes continue and out of the six Origin stories, those of the City Elf and lower caste Dwarf are the most affecting. Maybe I've played too many generic games that put Elves above humans in stature and culture, but having these genre tropes turned on their head and giving Elves a history of enslavement is just one aspect of Dragon Age that elevates it above the usual fantasy schtick.

The manner with which these origins stories bleed into much of the main game gave me the kind of meaningful experience I've long been waiting for in Western RPGs. The one instance where this struck home came when I returned to the Alienage much later in the game - finding out that the poverty-stricken and grimy streets of my home had actually become worse thanks to my actions earlier in the game was one of many depressing story moments.

Many of the other origins stories intersect the main quest and it’s only after playing through all six does the depth to the game become apparent. Initially I was sceptical about this approach working to enrich the experience - but being presented with six vastly different beginnings rather than six unique endings actually made a great deal of sense. There's no way I can complete Dragon Age six times without going mad, but spending four hours or so with all the Origin stories is a much quicker and interesting way of building a depth that's much more accessible to more players. I know I experienced far more of this world and its characters than that of other semi-linear RPGs because I could easily dive into the origin stories and find out much more about the Mage's Circle, the Dalish Elves, the Dwarven City of Orgrimmar and the Human Nobility, all because I could experience them rather than just read about it in a dusty old Codex entry.

This approach enriched the whole narrative and, as this is a Bioware game, half of the experience and enjoyment comes from forging relationships with the variety of characters that you'll meet and recruit into your team. When some of those characters are ones you've already known from a previous origin story then it makes the interactions all the more meaningful. But it's here that I felt Dragon Age started to show its roots a little too much. Half of the characters I found to be nothing more than recurring characters from Knights of the Old Republic, NeverWinter Nights or Mass Effect. Sometimes this was a good move with Shale the Stone Golem fulfilling the cynical and detached role that the demented HK-47 served in KOTOR, but others only reminded me of when their characters had been done better before. Alistair was the typical good guy similar to Kaidan in Mass Effect, whilst Morrigan did a great job in portraying a sexy Sith lady with a revealing outfit and a biting wit to match.

Like I said, this isn't all bad as those personalities are necessary to frame the morality system Dragon Age uses for telling many of its side-stories and the narrative of the wider game. When it works well I felt myself honestly troubled as to what my next decision would be, at other times the cynicism of my colleagues turned the game into a sarcasm-strewn dialogue graveyard that raised a few smiles but did little to enrich the whole experience. Where the relationship system and the branching dialogue came into its own was during the darker moments of the game. Being faced with a decision that was measured in proper shades of grey rather than a simple light/dark choice meant my final course of action had more meaning. On several occasions I deliberated for several minutes about what I would do, make what I thought was the best decision and then many hours later wonder if I had actually done the worst thing possible. This is what the branching dialogue system has hinted at dong for so long and Dragon Age finally implements it to great effect - if only sporadically.

As the story picked up the pace and I began the final act, Dragon Age shifted into a far more linear experience. I lost a certain feeling of control but the dramatic tension of the game increased as it brought into play all the pieces I had spent hours setting in to motion. I feel this is what Bioware does best and in all my hours of playing a variety of RPGs, Dragon Age has the greater sense of place than many of the D&D-based/inspired games in recent years. I felt disappointed though in just how Tolkien-esque the final few cinematics played out. They were dramatic and conveyed all the right feelings that the story needed me to feel, but they aped the cinematic vision of Lord of the Rings a little too much for my tastes. It was also a shame how the epilogue played out in such a text-based way. With the entire game telling its story by means of cinematic cut-scenes, surely a brief montage would have worked better? It certainly would have given me a more satisfying ending the many hours I had poured into the game.

But I can't deny that I've fallen in love with this game. It has a solid heart and soul that's been built up through the years that Bioware has spent crafting the world and drawing on their experiences in previous games. It's not a revolutionary new addition to the RPG library, but Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best and I can't recommend it enough.

Modern Warfare 2 review - Watch out! Plot holes incoming!

2009-11-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

Delivering a bombastic, explosion-filled experience that would make Hollywood proud, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 certainly does its best to raise the level of action portrayed in first-person shooters to new heights. Unfortunately it also takes a needless mis-step towards controversy in its campaign and ultimately tells a muddled and outrageous story that acts as an uneasy sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Although many gamers and critics have already consider Modern Warfare 2 to be the greatest first-person shooter ever made down to its multiplayer and new co-op missions, I‘ve always played the Call of Duty games for their single-player campaign alone. This sequel to 2007's excellent, if morally-questionable, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, was always going to be a tough act to follow but I was curious to see if they would continue with their believable storyline.

In terms of immediate impact though, the game falls short of the ship-assault mission of the first game, opting instead for convoy mission through on occupied Afghani town. There's no shortage of bruh-ha moments however, and the depiction of the American war machine seems just as unflinching honest as the 'Charlie Don't Surf' level from Call of Duty 4. Just as in that level I was struck by an odd mixture of repulsion and enjoyment. On the one hand the game's sense of place is excellent and the set-pieces involved didn't fail to get my blood pumping. But on the other hand I felt uncomfortable as I watched my comrades celebrate the annihilation of an occupied enemy tenement - giving me an uneasy feeling of disgust.

In some ways I like the way Call of Duty does this. It replicates the perceived notion that American Marines enjoy their work a little too much and in some ways encourages sympathy towards those you’re shooting in the game. A feeling I'm not sure the developers actually intended. But this beginning is quickly curtailed and instead of delving into the interesting subject of the occupation of Afghanistan, the game moves on to other events, never returning to this environment to give it a purpose or a point. The levels in the first Modern Warfare felt a lot more cohesive, with themes running between them all, but this start seemed to raise the level of spectacle to a certain degree for its own sake.

Nowhere is this more blatantly achieved than in the infamous 'No Russian' level that has sparked a wave of reaction on both sides of the moral divide. I won't delve into too much detail, only to say that you have the option to shoot (or not shoot) civilians in an airport terminal as you fulfil your role as an American double-agent. By the time this level ends it's clear that the whole premise for this attack has been formulated because of your undercover status, but the manner in which this scene is portrayed and the mechanics involved are fairly reprehensible and unnecessary. There were better ways of getting this critical plot point across which could have given the game far more meaning and emotional weight that the overwhelmingly offensive feeling ’No Russian’ gave me instead.

From this point the campaign unravels even more. There are plot devices and narrative twists that make little or no sense when viewed in a wider context. Whereas Call of Duty 4 had a much clearer story structure as it followed the pursuit of two major enemies, this game sees the main antagonist barely feature at all except in that one controversial level. It's unclear about three-quarters into the game as to who that main villain actually is, and while ambiguity can work wonders in creating tension and mystery, its use in this game felt awkward and unprofessional.

Modern Warfare 2 also falls into the trap of taking what worked extremely well in the previous game and criminally over-using it. The way Call of Duty 4 made you play as an American Marine for nearly half the game before killing him off in a nuclear explosion was a stroke of narrative genius. It showed how pointless the actions of the military were in that part of the game and it portrayed a sense of mortality that I'd never experienced before in a game. It was the stand-out moment to that game but Modern Warfare 2 over-uses this theme so many times that the effect is virtually meaningless.

Instead of feeling like the actions of my fictional character or fictional army were pointless, I felt as if my actions as a player had been rendered worthless instead. What had been the point of playing this character when it was ended so suddenly and so illogically? I felt as if the game had been using me as a cheap way for getting a plot point across when it couldn't be bothered to do it any other way.

It reminded me of when I took part in National Novel Writing Month. The advice given to keep our word-count fluid and to make sure we completed our story was to include a momentous event whenever we got stuck. This feels like the exact process to writing the story in Modern Warfare 2. As if the writer hit a creative block every 30 minutes and thought that by dropping an exploding sun or flying saucer into the plot, they could help string along the nonsensical story. Using these big events with regular occurrence just made my experience of the campaign tiresome. As the game progressed the constant stream of money-shot moments made everything more confusing and tore the plot into pieces all for the sake of spectacle.

I'll admit that the set-pieces were exciting to play through and the journey to the end of the game gave me just as thrilling a ride that Call of Duty 4 did. But in terms of story and narrative, the last hour was an utter mess. There were monologues that meant nothing and I half expected a cameo from Solid Snake at one point in the vain hope I could pin this on a failed Metal Gear Solid parody.

If there was one part to the game that proved effective and moving then it was the visual spectacle of the American missions. Though the fighting of Russians felt a little staid, the scenes of white picket-fenced America, under the red skies of invasion didn’t fail in giving me the shivers. Coming up from a presidential bunker and seeing the White House, The Department of Justice and the Washington monument all ruined was a moment of eerie drama – a brief glimpse into an American nightmare come true.

But even these scenes ended up by feeling so artificial thanks to the ridiculous plot and the manner in which the levels felt so hermetically sealed from each other. No sooner had I defended these patriotic monuments then the game moved away and never returned to show what ultimately happened. There was no sense of closure or hint of continuation, even for what seems like the middle part of a Modern Warfare trilogy.

Once those final credits rolled I came away with a mixture of negative emotions. I realised that perhaps, in secret, I had put too much expectation on Modern Warfare 2 to continue the same coherent work it had started in Call of Duty 4. Sadly the game feels like a narrative mess, with needless controversy courted by an offensive level that will do nothing to show videogames as a progressive medium. I had expected Modern Warfare 2 to push the boundaries of first-person-shooters to some new level - yet all I found was a derivative work that made the franchise feel old and producing set-pieces for the sake of pure spectacle. Fine for the multiplayer or Spec Ops missions, but in the single player campaign it made Modern Warfare 2 feel like a pointlessly aggressive bully.

Borderlands review

2009-11-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

Spinning a successful and addictive formula than kept me playing for over thirty hours, Borderlands on 360 and PS3 is not the type of game that immediately comes to mind when thinking of a deep and meaningful experience. But the consistent presentation, the brief moments of harrowing drama and the lashings of black humour produced a package that was memorable and surprisingly effective.

This is not the most obvious title you'd expect me to be covering. After all, Borderlands is a pretty shallow experience all told and it's easy to sum up the game within a sentence as it rarely does anything deeper than feed into a Diablo-style addiction for loot. Indeed, you could argue that this could be a National Rifle Association's members wet dream come to life as the main driving force behind this game is the acquisition of a 'Gazillion' different type of firearms. It's about as soulless as Pandora, the bleak planet on which this human borderland is set on.

And yet I found something about this game, about the atmosphere it created, to be gr eater than the sum of its basic parts. Yes, on the surface it's nothing more than a first-person Diablo-style shooter with a few rudimentary role-playing components to help fuel the addictive loot-whoring nature of the gameplay. But the setting of Pandora and Borderlands art-style gave it a certain depth that I began to really appreciate after over twenty hours of play.

The cel-shaded visual style gives Borderlands a slightly different edge to many of the post-apocalyptic shooters than have recently sprung up. Although the character models have a cartoon-like quality, it takes nothing away from the bleak surroundings of the planet and if anything, adds a bit more humanity to a pretty wretched alien environment.

I say post-apocalyptic, but in truth Borderlands isn't anything of the kind. Pandora is just a frontier world, temporarily settled by major corporations in pursuit of a mythical 'vault' which promises riches and treasures like any good alien world should. What you experience is the aftermath, with bandit towns and corporation villages struggling to survive in the harsh environment. It's taken directly from the American West, with the same vibe of a frontier town under constant attack from Native Americans or battling the elements.

None of this is particularly obvious when playing the game, as I rarely found myself getting caught up in observing the scenery or feeling like the story was going in a deep and meaningful direction. The quests are only perfunctory levelling up exercises and excuses to kill more native creatures or grotesque variations on bandits. The main quest that veers closer into the mystical nature of the vault is easily ignored and the 'guardian angel' that infrequently contacts you, serves as just an intermittent narrative tool that can also be easily forgotten.

So why do I feel so enamoured with Borderlands on a slightly deeper level? In part it's due to the portrayal of this borderland world. Its Mad Max-inspired visuals and the deep vein of black humour that runs through the quests and characters give it a hook that Fallout 3 never presented to me. The wasteland of Washington was a powerful location, but the presence of super-mutants and the depressing depiction of post-nuclear holocaust never sat well with me. Fallout 3, in all its brilliance, was a little too bloated and inconsistent with mixing its FPS presentation with its true RPG roots.

In my experience Borderlands behaves itself and the bolting-on of a few role-playing stats works a lot better in the real-time presentation that both games operate. The aliens in Borderlands also feel properly native to their world and the game. None are remotely humanoid and feel more akin to the creatures out of Half-Life's Xen world than the usual zombie gene pool I've come to expect from any sci-fi videogame. Even the over-sized, one-armed bandits feel consistent to Pandora's world whereas the super-mutants of Fallout 3 did not. One-armed bandits? Like I said, black humour throughout.

The best moment that demonstrated a darker edge to Borderlands and even gave me the impression that the game was capable of more depth were the audio diaries of Patricia Tannis. She's one of the story's main characters and the diaries I uncovered in her various side-quests were hugely entertaining and added a great deal of character to the game. They follow her exploits as leader of a scientific expedition to Pandora. Needless to say it goes pear-shaped quite quickly and the diaries chart Tannis' mental state from haughty science-girl to stark-raving mad outcast in hilarious fashion. But they're also laced with a little of the harrowing detail that life on such on frontier planet would inevitably lead to.

It's a stretch to say that these are affecting in any deep way, but I found they added a little more colour to what is a fairly simple and obvious game. These diaries and a few quests that came up later veered the narrative very briefly away from the black humour I was used to and into more disturbing territory. These instances never lasted and sometimes it felt as if the game quickly covered over them as if it was embarrassed to delve into any deeper territory than the mere loot-grabbing it had been doing since the start.

In this way I'm a little disappointed that Borderlands didn't go as far as I felt it could. But I can hardly fault the game for sticking to its strengths and keeping the addictive gameplay going in lieu of any meaningful narrative. It has successfully spurred me on to return to Fallout 3 - and maybe there I'll find the right balance between a deep role-playing narrative and over-the-top combat.

Halo 3: ODST review - No Chief, no soul

2009-10-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Offering a different take on the war between Humans and The Covenant, I felt that Halo 3: ODST squandered its opportunity to tell a deep and rewarding tale away from the shackles of Master Chief. Using flashbacks as I crept around the ruined streets of New Mombasa felt like a sound concept, but the over familiar mission-style and poor delivery of the story sucked the life out of this Halo game.

My appreciation of the Halo games and their universe has always radically swung between adoration and complete apathy. I wrote not too long ago about what makes the world of Halo so transfixing for its huge number of its fans - me included. What I've come to realise is that I'm fascinated by the fiction of the Halo universe but less so than the actual games. But Halo 3: ODST offered a little twist to the previous releases by taking a hub-world approach to its level design and a narrative that moved back and forth through time.

Unfortunately ODST still felt constricted by the familiar mechanics all the Halo games had stuck to previously. This was nowhere more apparent than in the first half of the game with its brief flashback missions that were never meaty enough to get into. The hub-world should have been where I found the most meaning from this game. Skulking around New Mombasa and seeing the effects of the devastating Covenant attack is an opportunity to show the darker side of the Halo story. But where I expected tragedy and death to be on display, I only found boredom and loneliness. I really understand and appreciate the style ODST went for but these solo sections became incredibly tedious and the frequent Covenant encounters did little to add any other feeling than annoyance.

What was also an effort was getting used to playing as a mere Orbital Shock Drop Trooper, without any of the regenerating shields, superhuman strength and dual wielding abilities of the Master Chief. The tension of being a vulnerable human soldier fighting against the odds was effectively conveyed, but instead of being a positive experience I was frustrated by what the game wasn't letting me be. I felt neutered and constricted by not being a Spartan and the situations the game put me in felt more contrived than the authentic night crawl through a bombed out city Halo ODST wanted to be.

That same sentiment carried over into the story to begin with. The fragmented, flashback narrative was an awesome concept and one I couldn't wait to experience myself. In reality though, the first missions away from the Mombasa hub-world are weak and the characters of the squad are generic at best. No-one has a memorable personality and the celebrity voices (and likenesses) feel like complete nerd-service rather than effective story-telling devices.

So what the reason for this lack of connection or soul? Well, it goes against everything I usually consider when it comes to story in games, but the technical level of visuals and animation conspire to make the environments and characters feel completely unreal and, well 'videogamey'. I think its the tendency to take things slower in the hub-world that really highlights the limitations in ODST's technology. New Mombasa doesn't look or feel like a ruined city - it looks and feels like an artificial creation displayed on the screen.

This is, of course, the same visual style that Halo 3 used to great effect two years previously, but I believe the pacing of that game was so much better and suited to its universe. The corridor-shooting, with overpowered strength, shields and weapons pulled me along so quickly I didn't have time to see the technical flaws. Fortunately for ODST, the game picks up in the latter half, pulling together its narrative threads and reaching a satisfying ending that makes it worthy of the Halo name.

But with this change in quality, the heart and soul of the game evaporates completely. Yes it turns into a good shooter and hits all the Halo buttons the enthusiasts will enjoy, but the chance to portray Earth in this devastated and occupied state has gone. I had hopes that ODST would show a far more human side to the conflict with the Covenant than any other game had done before. Whilst the audio logs of Sadie and her quest to find her father give an interesting and sad perspective of the attack on New Mombasa, they feel too distant and too removed from the action to carry any powerful meaning.

Halo 3: ODST is by no means a failure for the series. Perhaps I had put too much hope into its release or expected a level of narrative that Halo games are simply incapable of. Either way, the fascinating concept was ultimately let down by its unbalanced execution that left me feeling too bored and apathetic to care for its characters. When those character include half the cast of my favourite sci-fi series, Firefly, then I know the soul of the game has gone.

Getting my emotion on - with Big Red Potion

2009-10-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I was fortunate enough to be a guest on one of my favourite podcasts - Big Red Potion. Unlike so many gaming podcasts Big Red Potion takes a single topic or question and devotes an entire show to it. This week the erudite and well-dressed hosts, Sinan Kubba and Joe DeLia (I'll leave you to guess which one is well dressed) set the question of 'What was your most emotional game, or game-related moment'.

I was joined by Paul Rooney, a friend of mine from The Gamer Scene community who's also an extremely talented artist. But the biggest guest was Kellee Santiago, the President of ThatGameCompany, responsible for such awesome works as Flow and Flower on the Playstation Network.

We talked for well over an hour on our chosen moments and it was a truly awesome experience to have a conversation with such incredibly interesting and intelligent personalities. Usually I'm quite modest about my audio appearances - simply because they've been awful in the past - but this one felt so much better and I hope it sounds as interesting as it was to record.

Both Kellee and Paul had some really unique moments they talked about and it goes to show that gaming has, and always was, a vibrant medium to elicit such a range of personal moments.

Big Red Potion #26 can be found here and I thoroughly recommend subscribing as each episode has great guests and some fascinating and unusual topics.

So until the Soulful Gamer podcast starts up (did I just suggest that?), this will be the only place you can hear me um and err my way through a subject close to my heart. Enjoy - and here's a Healslime for good measure!

Demon's Souls Review - A real brutal legend

2009-10-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Demons Souls is my nemesis in videogames. It's an excruciatingly hard game. Unforgiving. Seemingly vindictive with its level design and psychopathically joyous about letting you plunge hours into a dungeon crawl only to have all of your progress pruned back without a second chance. It will induce rage quits, controller violence and an urge to hate every counter-intuitive system it possesses until you swear you'll never touch a videogame, never mind a RPG ever again. It is, without doubt, the most challenging and difficult game I have ever encountered.

And I love it.

Let me be clear, I'm very intolerant of games that hinder accessibility and make it impossible to progress without having to learn intricate strategies or ninja reflexes. The one aspect of Japanese RPGs that I despise the most is the inability to save the game anywhere - there's been many a time when I've gone to bed many hours late because I was solely looking for a save point. In this aspect Demon Souls has itself covered - because you can't save anywhere at all.

So all these preferences and observations after hours of play should really make me despise Demon's Souls as any but the most hardcore gamer would. But where these faults would ruin any other game, it is their unique presence that makes Demons Souls one of the most progressive and rewarding games I've ever experienced.

It's the embodiment of a videogame oxymoron. So much of Demon's Souls in tied up in layers of difficulty that's its very easy to turn it off and forget it exists. But the pull of the game comes in its atmosphere. Not just because the world of Boletaria is full of dark and dank places, or that the enemies are a mixture of grotesque zombies and nightmarish creatures. It's the unrelenting feeling of oppression that sucked every part of my life into this game, whether I was playing it or not. Even the rare environments which bless you in clear sky and open air, still have a pallor of darkness hanging over them, a sense of bitter despair amongst the ancient stones.

This is in part down to the visuals and medieval art-style that permeates the whole game. But the most practical evidence of this oppression is the gameplay. Whereas most modern games lead players by the hand, Demons Souls contents itself with the most perfunctory of tutorial levels before planting you straight into the world. I instantly felt uneasy in the safe confines of the Nexus, the hub-world where I could upgrade my equipment and learn about magic and combat systems. Stumbling around in this way didn't actually put me off, it made me all the more curious about this strange world and the odd characters that inhabit it.

The levels themselves are equally as cloying, giving up their secrets and designs only after hours of play. Again, whilst this would usually result in a big fat off button being pressed, Demons Souls turns its harsh mechanics into a fascinating feature that changes the way I look at its world. As the weakest enemy can seriously threaten your existence, being knowledgeable about their locations and their behaviour becomes half the battle. I found wading in with the superhuman ambition of God of War or Viking: Battle of Asguard (which this game is most similar to, in terms of raw gameplay), to be utter suicide.

Only after many attempts at the first level did I come to realise that my perception of how games normally work would have to change. Instead of expecting to waltz through the opening levels and have the strategies of the game explained to me in a digestible form, I had to use each of my attempts as a self-styled tutorial - teaching me the intricacies of the environment and the methods which worked best to advance. It became, in many ways, a puzzle game - the further I progressed the more pieces of the puzzle I unlocked. Whether it was merely opening a side door to serve as a short cut or memorising the enemy locations, the way through would became shorter with each attempt until I nailed it down to an almost rhythmic level of speed and precision.

Taking on the game like this might sound tiresome or lessen the atmosphere that painted the world in such a convincing way. But spending eight hours on the first level of a game felt conservative compared to how many I wanted to spend in it before moving on. These scenarios through the five locations in Boletaria became home to me. Not a very nice or welcoming home, especially in the latter worlds, but the familiarity that I created by willingly devoting so much time them made it a special experience.

The pay-off from such involvement comes in the defeat of the Demons. These boss battles are harsh, just as the rest of the game is, but they yield a sense of satisfaction that rarely appears in my videogame history. Combining a gruelling run through tough enemies and having enough guile and skill to defeat these demons gave me such a buzz that letting out a truimphant war-cry was the only natural response.

Multiplayer is never an aspect of games I talk about. Quite simply because it lacks any soul or heart to its creation. The prime directive for most games is the wholesale slaughter of your opponent. Nothing too complicated or deep about that. But Demons Souls integrates a system that fosters such a sense of community, in a subtle and anonymous way that makes it worthy of mention. At any point during the game I was able to observe ghosts, battling unseen foes or just running alongside or through me. These are all other players on the server playing the game at the same time and there are only two ways of interaction. One is passive - by leaving a message on the floor of the level which could warn of an attack ahead or pointing to a danger elsewhere. But the other is much more active.

There are ways to invade other players worlds, and they to invade yours. Either as a co-operative measure, to assist each other in completing a level. Or, more disturbingly, to hunt you down and kill you. This is the option that fills the game with character and makes each session a nervous and exhilarating experience. I have never felt so in fear for my character in a game before. It's not as if death would destroy my game, but losing so much progress to another human player in this way takes Demons Souls to another level.

Even though the MMO-style integration is there, and the visible signs of other players attempting the same objective in their world is obvious - it does nothing to break the feeling of being in this haunting world. There is a tenseness, a clawing feeling of claustrophobia that envelopes the whole experience when I play this game. It feels like a medieval nightmare brought to life and its harsh and unforgiving methods embellish its dark soul.

So is this experience fun? No, not in the usual sense of the word and I had to work through the difficulties that Demon's Souls creates to uncover how memorable it really is. But if any of the mechanics were 'fun' then it wouldn't be half the title it is. This is a game that only rewarded me after hard work. Every piece of equipment, every item and every inch of progress was a bloody battle that I had to fight tooth and nail to achieve - making the defeat of a certain enemy or completion of a level so much sweeter.

Demons Souls stands tall within a tired genre. It's dark atmosphere and grim storytelling create a masterpiece that has no equal and gave me the most interesting and affecting experience a game has ever tried to do. I've played many games that have tried to innovate in the role-playing-game genre, but none have made such a brutal, yet ultimately rewarding game as this. Thanks to Demon's Souls the RPG genre doesn't feel dead any more to me, it feels like its just beginning all over again.

Batman: Arkham Asylum review

2009-09-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Taking my dislike for superheroes and stealth, Batman: Arkham Asylum completely re-wrote my perceptions and gave me an astounding videogame experience that left me fascinated by the world of Batman. With its atmosphere and lively characterisation dripping off the walls I was found myself being put through a range of emotions - from being thrilled and empowered by the combat, to being scared and nervous at the unpredictable characters in Arkham Asylum.

Review for Game People

Superheroes have never really done it for me. Call it close-minded cynicism but I've never managed to get past any story that involves a character wearing a costume and talking in an overly gruff voice. I know that comic books serve a greater purpose than just telling a visually entertaining story or enabling the reader to escape into an alternative world. I know that they can serve as thoughtful allegories to the state of the world or social injustice but I've never been pulled towards them. Until now.

Batman Arkham Asylum not only delivered an excellent videogame experience but it so successfully created the intriguing world of Batman that I'm ordering graphic novels and scouring the wiki's to learn more about this branch of fiction I've so easily dismissed until now. The irony is that Arkham Asylum is the least allegorical superhero game I've played. But its sucked me into its dark world by presenting a coherent and page-turning game that more than shares some atmospheric similarities to Bioshock.

From the beginning cut-scene which led me down into the depths of Arkham's cells, I was firmly in the character of Batman - not as a superhero with any special powers, but as a mortal enforcer for good that's just as susceptible to gunfire and fear as the guards and orderlys of the Asylum. This realism to Batman as a character is, of course, obvious to anyone whose seen a movie or read a book, but the grimy and dangerous nature of this environment made this fact apparent at the start.

The storyline itself, chasing Joker through the Asylum and counteracting his many plans to destroy Gotham is reassuringly typical of any mad genius idea. As are the individual quests if I stopped to consider how generic they really were. What made going through the familar fetch, repair, take out five guys in a room approach so appealing was in the way they were all presented. It never felt like I was going from one kill-room to another or finding a platformer section in exactly the place I expected it to be - these were all so expertly crafted as to blend into one coherent and remarkably believable narrative.

The flamboyancy of Joker tied the whole game together for me and the slightly dull overarching story was a perfect vessel for the parade of Batman's villains to take over the narrative completely. I have no previous knowledge to Poison Ivy, Harly Quinn, Zsask, Bane, Killer Croc or The Riddler, but their appearence and individual involvement kept the game fresh and exciting. Their depiction also gave me a fair few moments of varying emotion. The archetypes of Bane & Killer Croc were those of typical superhero bad guys with more sci-fi enhanced brawn than brain, whereas Victor Zsask was a much more realistic and disturbed psychopathic killer than put a bit more edge into the game than I expected.

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy bring a highly sexual twist to proceedings and they are both characters I have mixed feelings for. The problem is that the way women are portrayed in the game works out to be one of two ways - either they are prudish scientists or alluring nymphomaniacs. Harley Quinn feels more well-rounded as she's more of a feature throughout the game, but the introduction of Poison Ivy is nothing short of pornographic and I felt there should've been a better reason for her inclusion - other than teenage titillation and a large boss fight.

But the biggest name I haven't mentioned so far is the character of Scarecrow and his sections provided the most memorable and affecting parts of this game. His weapon wasn't guns, knives or bulging muscles, it was the simple power of fear and the way it was put to use was incredibly effective. It was never immediately apparent that I was being preyed upon during the first instance - only the slow tilt of the camera and the quiet introduction of whispering voices alerted me that something strange was happening. These effects snowball into some truly memorable jumpy scenes. On several occasions I was honestly afraid of what was going to happen next and the way you experience what Batman's character goes through in these horrific sequences make Arkham Asylum all the more memorable. I'm sure the scene of Bruce Wayne's parents being murdered has been overdone in the films but the way its included here makes for some heartfelt and tragic pathos.

Straying into the gameplay discussion I must also admit that stealth mechanics in games usually leave me feeling neutered, weak and vulnerable. But this was never the case in Batman. I constantly felt empowered by my ability to grapple away into the shadows and pick my enemies off one-by-one. What changed the way I feel about this stealth mechanic is in part down to the enemies reactions. When I took one of them out, the others panicked. Their heart rate increased and they genuinely began to panic - not helped by the gleeful attitude displayed by Joker as he commented on what was going on. I can't overstate how unusual it is for me to enjoy playing a game that requires stealth and the fact I took on all of Batman's talents and style just shows how well-crafted this game is.

Because of its love and devotion for the Batman universe the game succeeds in making that love infectious. I eagerly spent a few hours collecting the audio interviews of the inmates because I wanted to learn more about this place and the characters involved with it. It takes this cue from Bioshock - another game that pushed atmosphere above all else. In that game Rapture became the living entity that housed the story just like the Asylum contains a tangible atmosphere that makes Batman so compulsive to complete.

Thanks to this effort and creativity I was never once taken out of Arkham's world. The connection I felt to the characters and my curiosity to how they all related within Batman's universe has me reaching for the online comic-book shops. Taking my attitude towards Batman and turning it from apathy to unbridled curiosity is just one of the victories of this game - the other is that Batman: Arkham Asylum is a fantastic work of videogame art and deserves elevating to that height.

Chronotrigger DS Review

2009-08-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

Chrono Trigger took great delight in throwing out the tired cliché of level grinding with a load of other design choices that regularly get in the way of telling a good story. It was this common sense approach to game design that enabled the real soul of the story to come out and give me, without a doubt, one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

Japanese Role-playing games have long had a tradition of being a little difficult for anyone new to the genre to play. I'm by no means a freshman to JRPG's anymore, but every once in a while it's nice come across a game that doesn't beat me over the head with its difficulty curve.

But first I must confess to never actually playing this game when it originally came out for the Super Nintendo System (SNES) in 1995. From what I can gather the DS version is a faithful reproduction of this well-loved classic that adds just a few extra dungeons to the end of the game but maintaining the essence of the original product.

I really wish I'd owned a SNES on its release as Chrono Trigger is one of the best Role-playing games I've ever experienced.

If that's the case then I really wish I'd owned a SNES on its release as Chrono Trigger is one of the best Role-playing games I've ever experienced. It gets this praise for several reasons and loathed though I am to talk about game mechanics as a Soulful Gamer, they deserve a special mention here.

Every JRPG I've played, both modern original or remade classic, has always sucked a large amount of my play-time to the grind of levelling up. This is a mechanic that deserves its own very special post but I'll say here that it does a great job of destroying the one aspect of RPG's that I love the most - their story. Dragon Quest, Persona, Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata, Final Fantasy - these are all great games that do their very best to obscure the stories that drive them forward.

To obtain this level of depth and complexity without falling into cliché or over-complicated plot twists made Chrono Trigger a real videogame page-turner.

Chrono Trigger never made me suffer through this type of problem until the very end. By which time I had mastered the combat mechanics and navigating these final sections was easily manageable. Because of this I found Chrono Trigger's story flowing in such a lyrical and perfectly paced way, free from the constant random battles of other games that interrupt the plot and destroy the atmosphere of any created world.

Thanks to this the journey of Cronos through his country's history and future succeeds in its ambition and delivery. It's no surprise that other games have struggled to show such a command of their narrative when you have several different time periods to juggle. What I found most affecting was how all the various threads revealed themself in such a satisfying way by the end of the game. I had several moments of revelation as I realised who certain characters were that I'd met during my 30-hour playthrough. To obtain this level of depth and complexity without falling into cliché or over-complicated plot twists made Chrono Trigger a real videogame page-turner.

I was also surprised at how subtle the game handled my journey back and forth through time. This is one of many features that sets the game apart from any of its contemporaries - the small choices I made, even in the lowliest side quest, would still have an effect many years later. Experiencing this, especially when it involved actions I didn't think would matter, was a truly magical moment. It gave deep meaning to many of the choices I made and I felt the way it was never explicitly signposted made it all the more special. It was this subtle take on the concept of cause and effect that made the game a personal journey through the world - an effect rarely achieved by many other games.

It was this subtle take on the concept of cause and effect that made the game a personal journey through the world - an effect rarely achieved by many other games.

The overblown melodrama of many JRPG's with their clichéd characters and dialogue tends to obscure the real message or feeling the story is trying to infer. With the usual tropes absent in Chrono Trigger I found the narrative explaining the plot in plain and uncomplicated terms. Rather than make the story infantile it actually gave it a more mature tone, reminding me more of a classic fairy tale than a five volume epic. In my childhood these tales seemed simple and naive - but as I've grown older I can see the depth hidden by the plain words and how an ordinary story, like saving the world, can turn into an epic & classic masterpiece.

This is the magic in Chrono Trigger's storytelling and it made the collection of characters much more believable and tremendously likable than their simple sprites should suggest. From Frog's melancholic pathos regarding his past, Lucca's intelligence and steadfastness, Marle's devotion, Robo's human-ness to Ayla's bristling prehistoric sexuality. They all combined to give me a sweeping story about the consequences of our actions and how decisions we make can affect the world. Although simplistic in form, Chrono Trigger conveys its idealistic message is such a presentable and moving way that it deserves to be played by anyone who likes games or stories.

Originally posted on Gamepeople

Revisiting a classic - ICO

2009-08-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Going back to a critically acclaimed videogame many years after it was released is always something that’s filled me with trepidation and concern. My worry is always the same – will I see it for what it was at the time of its release? Or will the ever-increasing technical improvements in graphics and accessibility ruin what is lauded as the most acclaimed and artistic videogame ever made?

My feelings as I started the game were squarely in the latter and it brought me back to earth with a bump at how spoiled and spoon-fed our games have now become. There was, of course, no tutorial to teach me the controls and no overt plot exposition to show me where I am in this oddly haunting world. It must be the first time in many years I stopped five minutes in to open the manual and actually read about the game I was playing.

This diversion into reading is what first triggered an unusual sense of immersion that many games have lacked over in recent years. The Witcher is the only other game that gives you so much sense of place when reading its manual before you play – thanks mainly to its unique and dark setting. Once I returned and started to explore the abandoned fortress, the game suddenly felt a lot more magical and ‘current’ thanks to this moment of separation.

From here it would be easy to sing the praises of Team Ico on how they’d created an artistic masterpiece of minimalist game design. It feels like heresy to conjure any criticisms for the way narrative is stripped down to a bare minimum, or to voice misgivings about the game mechanics reduced down to basic puzzles. But although I felt that sense of massive scale about the fortress I was escaping, I never felt connected in the same way to ICO himself. Yorda’s mysterious being and her origins weren’t the source of intrigue I thought it would be either. Although she possessed an alluring innocence I never felt as connected to her the way the game obviously intended. For this story to work I needed her to be a character I utterly adored and cared about. Although ICO the boy did, it became clear to me that she never cared whether she lived or died. If her body was used to extend the Queen’s life, then she was more than willing to lie down and let it happen.

Much as I hate to quote psychologists, their theory that in every relationship there is a lover and a loved is very true. In videogames when you can’t rely on the player to react with full and unbridled emotion, it would have made more of an impact if Yorda was the one devoted to ICO. I quite understand the design of making Yorda so reliant on me, the player, yet appear so aloof to her situation. It’s an interesting character design and plays with your emotions in a clever way. But it just didn’t work for me and I ended up feeling as ambivalent about Yorda’s fate as she did herself.

But I’m not saying I found ICO lacking in soul or emotion. Far from it. There are moments in this game when the visuals take your breath away – and I mean this now, in the midst of a full HD revolution. ICO might look badly pixelated by today’s standards but it still has the power to impress with its sense of scale.

Not many games can convey the size of a massive fortress by sticking to a fixed camera. Throughout every Tomb Raider there’s been huge ancient structures represented on screen and not one has seemed believable or epic. Only in the recent InFamous did I feel any sense of vertigo when ascending Alden’s Tower. But ICO has an incredible knack of letting its environment take over the screen and speak for itself. I found both the characters lacking in depth but it was clear that teh best character of all was the fortress and the world around it.

Even when trapped inside the claustrophobic rooms the game still gives you glimpses of what lies outside – and when you finally reach the points where you can see across all the horizon it gave me such a sense of distance and depth. It’s the way ICO uses its environments which gave me those emotional moments the story itself lacked. To spend so long figuring out the puzzles, operating lifts, switches or combating the shadows – and then spend a moment on a grassy outcrop surveying the land was a magical experience. It also evoked a sense of utter melancholy and despair – something the game constantly made me feel until the very, very end.

The manner in which the world was presented worked in just the right way to encourage my curiosity. Sometimes with a minimal design games can fall into the trap of not showing enough for me to take anything more than a surface interest in the world they create. In ICO I was enthralled with this abandoned fortress and my play-time was filled with taking visual note of the architecture and the nature of its curious machines. ICO’s world has that same essence of ancient reality that sparked my interest in Middle-Earth after reading The Simarillion. To me, both those worlds have a sense of history that makes them feel more a part of Earth’s timeline than their own creation. This is why ICO resonates so much with anyone who plays it – because it has its creative roots wrapped around some primal recognition of its environments and the world it inhabits.

So, was ICO the experience I expected? Not at all. I hadn’t expected the characters to mean so little to me compared to the majesty of their surroundings. Only in two spots did the game hit me with some emotional moments – one is obviously near the end when ICO & Yorda are separated and I was left hanging by my fingernails, clawing at Yorda just like she had done to me so many times before.

The other, perhaps also predictably, is at the very end after being washed up on the beach. I’m always in two minds about endings that give hope or tie the narrative strings up so neatly. But on this occasion I felt the game balanced both of those concerns perfectly. Most of my experience with ICO was full of melancholy and to have the very end of the game conclude with the image of Yorda, washed up on the beach and opening her eyes, is about the most satisfying conclusion I could wish for. Despite my misgivings about the characters, ICO was full of atmosphere and presented a world that I can’t wait to be told more stories of.

Extended look: Call of Duty 4

2009-07-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

Not many people would argue against the critical acclaim and public popularity that is Call of Duty 4.

Although it’s only two years old the game marked a major step away from the usual WW2-era shooter that the franchise had previously trodden. All Infinity Ward’s previous games, including the Medal of Honour releases, didn’t focus on storytelling or a particularly well rounded narrative. They operated around key set-pieces of the war and struggled to link these events together. Jumping around different theatre's also fragmented the story and these earlier efforts were little more than globe-trotting shooting galleries.

Modern Warfare's plot shows a far greater grasp of multi-perspective narratives, the previous year’s effort by Treyarch was held together by a similarly logical method. Call of Duty 3, attacked critically by many as the franchises low-point was actually the better game for a coherent story. There was no jumping across the globe from Stalingrad to Normandy with little or no point. Instead we saw a game that operated within a small part of WW2 that worked consistently with the changing perspectives.

In Modern Warfare this method was taken and then expanded on dramatically to great effect. The fragmented narrative was gone and in its place was a gripping story that took place across the Middle East and Russia. The slick and cool presentation of the game was one aspect that really stood out to me. Whereas mission briefings in the previous games had consisted of stodgy slideshows and stilted dialogue, CoD 4 broke out the guitar riff and the gruff British SAS voiceover instead.

Moral ambiguities

The modern angle of the game was something that bothered me slightly from the start. It’s acceptable to have a multitude of WW2 shooters that have you mowing down Nazi’s by the dozen. Your moral compass is immediately appeased as the Fascists are painted as pure evil along with any other generic space alien. But setting the game in the Middle-East, even thought the countries are not named, leads to a whole new moral quandary.

What worked so well in assuaging my concerns was the title sequence. Being driven around the streets of a city in the midst of a military coup, seeing your people gunned down and executed by rebels is a strong image that successfully, for me, made it ok to go on the traditional Call of Duty shooting gallery set in the Middle East. It’s a gripping start to the game and gave me hope that this version of the franchise wouldn’t shy away from showing the reality of war a little more than the previous games.

I can understand the decision to keep the countries and cities anonymous for political correctness. But wouldn’t it have been a more dramatic and charged experience if it was in Iraq, or Saudi Arabia? Even if it was set 5-10 years in the future or on an alternative timeline – surely the impact of a true modern setting would carry more meaning?

Screwing the pooch

As it is the game still carries a punch in its fictional version of the world. It also took the unusual step of showing the American Marines screwing up the assault of the country’s capital and trying to capture Khaled Al-Asad. The moment when you’re escaping on the Helicopter after a gruelling few missions and see the nuclear blast was another dramatic moment I never expected from Call of Duty. It essentially meant the progress you’d made up to that point was worthless – you hadn’t captured Al-Asad and millions of people had died because you tried to invade.

Added to this was the best moment of the game. Stumbling around after the nuclear blast, seeing a city disintegrating before your eyes as the radiation took your life was depressing, awesome and upsetting at the same time. Every time I play through this section the final few moments of Paul Jackson always end up looking over a school and the wrecked playground. The eerie sounds of children playing as the screen dissolves into a red mist give this game one of the most dramatic moments I’ve experienced. And what did it prove? It proved to me that at least one developer is prepared to kill you as a character for dramatic impact and show how un-heroic and bleak combat is.

Death from above

As the game moves on from this point it also seems to change its nature. The theme of retribution comes to the fore and takes this moral balance away. The most obvious sign of this is the AC-130 Gunship level. A level universally regarded as the most awesome part of Modern Warfare, but one I find the hardest of all to stomach.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the actual reels of Gunship attacks from the two Gulf Wars or maybe my sensibilities are just too sensitive? But the level of accuracy shown in that level is disturbing to me. Not just the destruction of whatever is on the screen but the commentary of your spotter and the crew. This is the point where modern war becomes a little too videogame-like for a lot of people and I think this is demonstrated aptly in this level.

I’m also confused as to why this was put together. Was it merely a palette-cleanser to break up the first person shooting levels? Or did Infinity Ward have another motive for its inclusion? Obviously the answer is the first – after all this is a videogame and not a political art house film. But where many parts of the game show an anti-war sentiment, this Gunship level thrives and revels in its bloodlust.

Killing your darlings

I found this bad taste sweetened slightly by the game’s finish. The heroic finish and jock explosion of an all-American army victory was nowhere to be seen. Seeing the characters you had come to love being gunned down or shot in the head (poor Gaz), was an encouraging sign that storytellers in videogameland know how to end things properly.

This was another example that armed conflict isn’t about the patriotism and glory many films, books and common opinion tries to justify. War is hell. It’s brutal, bloody and full of pointless and painful death. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare didn’t show enough of this but it made an interesting effort. Modern Warfare 2 has some big boots to fill for other reasons, but if the developers can build on the first game’s interesting narrative then it gives me hope for a more unflinching portrayal of real combat.

Red Faction review

2009-06-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

The open world nature of many games is a feature I usually struggle to enjoy. A story told in this environment invariably ends up fragmented into too many missions or diluted until it barely resembles a basic plot. These were my expectations of Red Faction Guerrilla but I was delighted to find that this basic conflict between oppressed settlers on Mars and their military overlords coherent and enjoyable.

I can't sit back and say that the story was amazing or left a poetic mark in my memory - it wasn't. But rather than overstretch its world, the game stayed within its own boundaries and showed me that even the simplest tales, when told well, are still meaningful and can give a sense of place. This is what marked Red Faction out to me more than any other recent game. Everything from the characters, the buildings and the general environments interacted and behaved together consistently.

Prototype Review

2009-06-22T03:06:00.000-07:00

Telling the story of Alex Mercer, Prototype caught my eye with its repulsive anti-hero and gratuitous violence. But instead of experiencing a gritty and fascinating super-hero tale that had something meaningful to say, the game concentrated on physical violence and an excess of super powers. I found brief moments of inspiration when absorbing other people’s memories and the faintest of emotional responses as well. But in all other areas Prototype lacked any true heart to carry off its story and left me feeling frustrated and bored by its approach.

As disturbing as it might sound, the chance to experience a darker character, with demons and issues that turn him into a brutal killer is something I can appreciate. Anti-heroes are usually far more interesting studies than a generic space marine, all-American hero. I personally find the most compelling stories are ones that follow an amoral character as he spirals down to humanity’s darkest depths.

Infamous Review

2009-06-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Telling a deep and involving story in a videogame can be a tough ask at the best of times. Telling one in an open-world environment is even harder and Infamous struggles to make use of its well-realised world and falls short of its potential. Although the core game mechanics and platforming aspects are fun with a lot of interesting and memorable moments, I never felt sympathy for any of the characters or found them believable.

This isn’t to say I found Infamous dull or didn’t enjoy it. From the very moment the game starts with a huge explosion in Empire City, it shows some impressive visual set-pieces. The nature of starting the game in a crater of your own making, with strange electrical powers and a devastated city at your feet is dramatic and enticing. I’ve always wanted a superhero genesis game with this amount of content and polish. Having a new character free from any graphic novel lore or canonical restrictions was refreshing and gave me hope that it would have a storyline to match.

Final Fantasy 7 - First impressions

2009-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most revered and beloved of role playing games to have ever been made. Regarded as a genre-defining work I’ve seen it regularly quoted as the game that brought real emotion into the medium. It's also a game I've never played.

Of course, thanks to the internet I already know the major factor that brought the game it famous reputation. The death of Aeris at the time must have been such a seismic event in the videogame space for it to still be talked about and discussed today.

Despite the knowledge of this major plot spoiler I've always wanted to play through the game and see how moving or affecting that moment is. Games have come a long way since it was released back on the original Playstation - at least in terms of visuals. Whether or not its impact over time has lessened or the story has been surpassed by more modern efforts remains for me to see. I really hope the plot and characters still resonate in 2009 as they did in 1997.

As expected the graphics are very dated and it’s hard to imagine this game being the revolutionary step forward it actually was. It was the first 3D game of the Final Fantasy series and playing it on a HD television did a great job of showing all its flaws off in gory detail. But I’ve had more joy with the PSP version despite the awkward controls.

The smaller screen sharpens everything up and it’s amazing what a little time can do to the mind with these older games. After a few hours I soon started to forget about the visuals completely and began to get wrapped up in the world and its characters. Instead of relying on the screen to convey high definition images my imagination took over. Thanks to this I ended up having the experience of the game inside my head rather than it being fed through my critical eyes.

I don't usually enjoy the over-Americanised localisation that most JRPG's go through. There's something fundamentally wrong in my mind about having a load of street lingo sprinkled into a fantasy setting. However, where a lot of similar games would've been switched off by now, the industrialised setting and ghetto backdrop seem to suit this style of narrative really well.

What's struck me, even at this early stage, is how well-written the characters are. There are distinctive qualities to each of them and although they sometimes fall into RPG and ethic stereotypes, I can't help but be curious about their histories and motivations. The early part of the story is encouraging too – playing what is essentially a terrorist and planting bombs gives it a darker edge. But seeing an entire section of the slums crushed just to eliminate the AVALANCHE group Cloud is working actually made me consider Barrett’s motivations.

But I really wanted to focus on Aerith. With so much of the buzz about this game being centred on her and her death it was a strange feeling interacting with her. From the very moment Cloud meets her she's a likeable and strong character. She has her own mind and senses of humour that makes me wonder why female characters haven’t progressed past this point. Whether its sentimentality clouding my view or not, she seems one of the most believable and interesting female characters I've seen in a game.

Of course, knowing what happens to her gives every line of dialogue and every scene a certain sombreness and I'm left wondering how different the game would feel if I had played it originally. That’s something I’ll never get to experience but I’m playing in a state of trepidation as to how she eventually meets her end. It will sound incredible soppy but I’m cherishing every interaction and moment with her.

Fable II review

2009-06-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

Having poured so many hours into the first Fable game I was finding it difficult to enjoy this sequel. Every aspect of the game appeared to merely iterate on the original and I struggled to see how it could be rated so highly. Only after changing my usual habit and playing as an evil character did the real magic of Fable 2 reveal itself to me. Having such a different perspective really showed me what effect my decisions had on the world of Albion. Although it wasn't perfect I couldn't help but fall back in love with Lionhead's fantastic and funny fantasy world.

When it comes to videogames with moral choices I always take the good and heroic option. For some odd reason I feel there's something illicit or dangerous about going over to the dark side. But I found that playing as a good hero in this game seemed very boring. Part of that feeling comes from spending so many hours in the first game doing exactly the same types of quest.

The Persona Diaries - Part three > Social links and combat walls

2009-05-25T03:40:00.000-07:00

You know what I said last week about grinding? Yeah it never happened. Not because I found that it wasn’t needed - later on I found that it most certainly was - but because the game suddenly threw some unexpected depth at me.

What I thought last week about the characters was barely touching the surface. After another four hours of just playing normal school life I’ve become so involved with my social links that I could happily forgo the combat side completely. It demonstrates the power of these beautifully crafted characters that I genuinely enjoy spending game time with them.

Not long after rescuing Yukiko I had the choice of socialising with Chie and leaving Nanako, my little cousin at home, or I could take her with us. Usually little girls in JRPG’s are schooled to be as irritating and obnoxious as possible. But Nanako is perhaps the most giving of all the characters in Persona 4 so far, being the cleaner and cook for her (and my) household. It’s not the biggest choice I’ll face in the game or the hardest, so taking her with me was immediately what I did.

But just this simple act and the positive effect it can have on her is incredibly rewarding. It deepened the social link between us, which has a practical use when creating persona’s, but it also provoked sympathy for her. Breathing a bit of life into a lonely characters world is always rewarding and being referred to big Bro thereafter always gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

The associations with the Tarot are also starting to get a bit clearer as well. Each new social link has its own specific Major Arcana card and there are a few similarities between their meaning and the person or group involved. It won’t be clear (at least not to me) until most of the links are formed but its proving a fascinating development. I’m not sure how commonplace Tarot cards are in Japanese culture but I hope the developers really did their homework with this and make it uniquely relevant.

But I couldn’t play social games forever and the next victim was soon whisked away into the TV world. At this point I realised that I probably should’ve been grinding, earning money for new equipment and levelling up. I dove straight into the rescue mission and was promptly spanked by the lowest enemies. So badly spanked that I went back to the first dungeon to remember how to win a battle.

This is the first part of Persona 4 that stopped me dead. I really hate it when overpowered enemies (or my underpowered party) get in the way of the story - it’s a testament to Persona’s over arching story that I’d forgotten about the combat. It’s a poor reminder to me that I’m really bad at levelling up in RPG’s.

Hitting my first wall in a game after nine hours is pretty good going though. With Persona’s friendly dungeon crawling mechanics I know I’ll get there eventually. Given my love of the Persona mechanic I imagine I’ll spend the next four hours creating and merging persona’s until the PS2 explodes.

The soul of Halo's universe

2009-05-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

What is it about the Halo franchise that gives it such universal appeal? Aside from the accessible nature of the games and their satisfying gameplay, is there a greater force at work that captures the imagination of all who play it?

Halo certainly defined the console shooter with its easy to grasp controls and competitive multiplayer integration. It wrenched the FPS crown from the PC and showed everyone that games requiring accuracy and hair-trigger reactions could be played in the living room. Taking an experience like that into a social space is what really struck a universal chord and broadened the game's appeal into a new demographic.

Thanks to this gaming no longer belonged exclusively to us unwashed nerds and geeks. Halo brought it into the realm of the casual guy who previously didn’t care about games.

But popularity alone hasn’t given Halo that magical essence I believe it has. Although the space opera storyline that the first game introduced isn’t particular unique, it had a hidden depth that’s been slowly mined since its creation.

This depth is partly due to the clever use of backstory throughout the games and novels. The original Halo gave very little away as it plunged the player into the action. Putting story behind content in this fashion, much like Half-Life 2, can create an enticing universe that captures the mind and fires the imagination.

All this was achieved without being particularly original or revolutionary. Drawing on so many different sources can lead to the end product having no soul at all – a zombified mash of different influences and inspirations.

Yet Halo pieced together its lore with care and precision - drawing on ancient mythology and history for the SPARTAN programme and the over-arching storyline giving it a certain authenticity. There are also obvious analogies with the parasitic and viral creatures The Flood, working the same effect as the cataclysmic flood of the Bible.

Religion is also heavily referenced, with the Covenant’s fanatic devotion to the Prophets being the source of their hatred for humanity. Interestingly the human side of the conflict never shows any religious leanings. Perhaps because the Covenant’s spiritual structure could be seen as an analogy for radical Islamic beliefs, despite their obvious alien nature.

Larry Niven's RingworldThere are also a host of modern references that load the games and backstory with more texture. Larry Niven’s ‘Ringworld’, Orson Scott Card’s ‘Ender’s Game’ and Iain M Banks ‘The Culture’ stand out the most. Nothing has been wholesale ripped from any of these sources - even the Ringworld series of books were not the first to describe a world on a circular ring.

It is these influences and the way they are used that make the Halo franchise such a strong and irresistible entity. Playing the games or reading the novels not only gave a great gaming experience but it also uncovers more of the entire Halo universe as well – if you look for it.

Of course, hitting the player with strong obvious characters helps to draw in devotees too. Although Master Chief is far too one-dimensional for my tastes, his cardboard personality allows players to inhabit his space and become him easily. In the books and especially the prequel –The Fall of Reach by Eric Nyland – the character of John is far more interesting and complex. But the decision to neuter his personality is completely understandable.

Along with the Master Chief, no franchise would be complete without a strong female character. Instead of a real love interest that so many stories compulsively put in, Halo made an artificial intelligence hologram the focus of pre & post-pubescent fantasy. Cortana was the sassy girl-next-door partner that we assumed would never age or die, betray the main character or even fall in love. Assumptions that the game successfully turned on its head and played around with in Halo’s 2 & 3.

These characters, along with the themes of duty and sacrifice, give Halo its core essence that stretches beyond the FPS trilogy. The far reaching consequence of this means the series can continue on even without its main character.

This has been demonstrated by the recent Halo Wars - showing that a successful Halo game could be made without the Master Chief and his familiar cohorts. Although it was a dramatic step away from the first-person shooter into the RTS-lite genre, it still drew on the same lore and backstory giving it that special Halo magic.

The next iteration will be Halo: ODST - a game that completely eschews the SPARTAN association for a less superhuman focus. Beyond that the novels will continue and the story will evolve and be made richer. When the Master Chief returns (launching Microsoft’s new console I would imagine) he’ll step back into a universe brimming with its own stories and experiences.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Halo is the Star Wars of the videogame generation. It will have its detractors and it will constantly be individually bettered by other media, but its collective meaning gives it a lasting legacy that ensures its continuation for many years.

The Persona Diaries - Part two > Rescuing Yukiko

2009-05-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

After the slow burn of last week’s introduction to Persona I felt like I was ready for some serious dungeon crawling. Thanks to Yukiko being thrown into the TV world the ominous Yukiko Castle beckoned for me.

For some silly reason I thought this first real excursion into battle would be a gentle and forgiving experience. Like I said, silly. It turned out that I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was. My armour and weapons were still the original equipment and a brutal first few levels of the castle sent me running back to town. After upgrading and feeling thoroughly ashamed that I’d forgotten that this was an RPG, the real battle commenced and the quest to rescue Yukiko was back on.

I was surprised to see quite a lot of variety in the monsters. Some looking very bizarre and reminiscent of a Rolling Stones album cover. Others were more typical of JRPG monsters although the aggressive babies were a disturbing enemy I wasn’t expecting to deal with.

If I’m honest I thought this opening dungeon was pretty generic and dull. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular but the environment was a little too plain compared to what I thought might be inside Yukiko’s mind. But once I encountered her shadow side none of that mattered. The fantastoic way the shadow side of each of the companions is shown was something I really enjoyed. It’s probably a lot to do with my own shamanic interests, but the process of facing the darker side of one’s nature and being at peace with it really showed the mature side of this game to me.

After rescuing her the next few days I spent interacting with my friends and joining the school clubs. Although the combat side of Persona is pure JRPG fodder, I still can’t get over how different this game is to anything I’ve played before. Putting such an emphasis on Social interactions in any other game would seem like a franchise suicide act. But here it’s an integral part of the whole experience and so far I haven’t been bored in the slightest.

Having friends in GTA 4 became a millstone round the game’s neck. There was something detached about those characters and they became completely uninteresting almost from the start. But in Persona 4 all the people I come across to build social links with seem far more real. From the mousey music student to the arrogant basketball jock; their lives and stories are what make the non-combat part of Persona so fascinating to me.

But before I get too involved with playing social games I better start the grind train. Even though it excels at characterisation, Persona 4 is still a JRPG. And JRPG means grinding.

Why do I play games?

2009-05-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Back in the days of yore when I played on the Commodore 64 it was always about fun. The escapism to other, badly-pixelated otherworlds was just the sort of food my imagination craved.

It wasn’t long though until I wanted more from these experiences. The ever-evolving Elite - reborn as Frontier - was the perfect canvas for my mind to draw on. This was the game that blended a fantastic space sim with the room to create your own stories. And I did. Every school day became a storytelling session about what my friends and I had done the previous night. Most of it made up and fabricated for dramatic effect! But that was the point – the game positively encouraged that kind of creativity and was all the richer for it.

I don’t have that amount of time to spend on a game anymore, but my desire to have an involving and creative experience hasn’t dampened at all. What’s changed is how much I want the game to tell me a story rather than my imagination.

But just like films I don’t want the same pulp recycled again and again. I want games to challenge me with their story and characters. I want them to make me feel emotions I’m not expecting to when I turn on my console or PC, whether that’s anger, fear or sadness.

This might sound as far away from fun as possible. And that’s perhaps because it is. I still enjoy blasting a few hours away with a mindless shooter but to me that’s the starter to my gaming night. Tackling something that elicits a multitude of reactions is what I really want from a game.

The complex social network and fantastical world of Persona is one game that’s kept me enthralled night after night. Its subtle and realistic characters bring that game to life more so than any big-budget release. The high emotion of Lost Odyssey or the contradictory nature of GTA 4’s Niko Bellic are both games that have flaws, but they have moments of real impact as well.

Sometimes those experiences can be awful – with hammy dialogue and awkward storytelling. Other times it can be life-changing and full of memorable moments that stay with me just as great films or books do. So why do I play games? To use the clichéd phrases when writing about videogames... I play them for compelling story and gripping narrative. The tight controls and solid gameplay I'm willing to trade.

But yes, on occasions, I play them for fun too.

Today I Die

2009-05-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

I must confess that I usually think of Flash-based games as little better than those annoying "feed the monkey a banana" type games. Thanks to my near-obsessive checking of Kotaku I ran across this little gem that's made me realise that Flash games are far more interesting than I initially thought.

Today I Die is a superb game from Daniel Benmergui that manages to tell a story in a creative and fresh way. By manipulating a few words in the on-screen Poem the game goes through a variety of stages that veer from the melancholy to elation. It sounds pretentious but as the experience is so short it's hard not feel moved by the journey you take.

The retro visuals are an interesting choice as well. Having that mix of 8-bit graphics and a deep poetic theme stops the game from descending into over-saturated artiness.

This surprisingly in-depth experience was something I didn't expect to find in a Flash game. Looking at Benmurgui's other work its clear that these games have a depth and creativity I really didn't realise until today.

It's a medium that I'm definitely going to investigate further and as all of Benmurgui's games are available for free - I highly recommend checking them out.

Ludomancy

The Persona Diaries - Part one >The first week

2009-05-11T03:18:00.000-07:00

It’s only dawned on me over the past few months at how fascinated I am with Japanese culture. This is hardly a revelation for someone who loves videogames, but it never seemed quite so obvious to me until I started Persona 4. That’s not to say it offers an authentic Japanese cultural experience – because it certainly doesn’t. But it offers a glimpse into that other world, one rich in honorific’s and tradition that is immediately intriguing.

So this is my first, and at the moment, only criticism with the game and is probably borne out of ignorance for the series. But I really wish the game had been totally Japanese rather than being a curious blend of Western characters and Eastern settings. If it had been set in Middle America then it’s quite possible I wouldn’t have noticed any difference. This is something I noticed the Yakuza series didn’t fall into. Everything about those games is unquestionably Japanese and the move to simply provide subtitles for a Western release is something I much prefer seeing, rather than a full English voice track.

Despite this I’m totally hooked by the game. Its accessible nature really surprised me and the first three hours were a thrilling and intimate introduction to the story. I say thrilling because every time something spooky happened I got a cold, chilling feeling going up my back. Not because my office is draughty (although it is) but the world of Inaba feels very real at the moment. Doing the mundane school-things gives it a real grounding in reality. So when the fog lifts and the murders start to happen it has an effect.

What I found more unsettling was the first journey into the TV world. After watching the midnight channel a couple of times (I’ve always found TV’s eerie things at the dead of night – turned off of course), entering this Otherworld was pretty spooky. Finding rooms covered in pictures with the faces cut out is reminiscent, to me, of far more deliberate survival-horror games. Only Persona achieves in making me feel far more unsettled by this.

Part of this is how connected I already feel to the other characters. Having such an emphasis on relationships strengthens the impact of what happens. Although the gruesomely toothy teacher (his name escapes me) is quite correct in accusing me of being a flirt, having the bonds of friendship actually mean something and strengthen my attributes is a great way to care about the characters. I’ve already grown attached to Chie and Yosuke. Having a guy who had the same bladder problems as me at school makes me immediately sympathetic. Although I would of gone through with urinating in the TV world no matter what!

At the moment the game has just opened up and I’m free to join clubs, wander around town and try to build my relationships further. Although it was nearly two hours before any combat happened, I was surprised how happy I was in just following the story as a silent protagonist. But when we got down to fighting the overblown nature of the Persona’s was a wonderful contrast to the ordinary grist of the real world. If I fall into a mysterious otherworld then I’d certainly want it as mad as possible.

The first time Izanagi throws up the Fool card and my Persona goes into battle was immense. I actually mistook the huge blade being wielded as a guitar and for a brief moment assumed that the Persona was in fact, a Rock God. After realising it wasn’t going to be a progressive rock, battle of the bands combat system, I was still happy with the turn-based nature of the encounters. I know many people feel that system should be left behind in favour for real-time and fully integrated combat, but I can’t help but love it. The way I can methodically plan attacks or switch Personas when needed would be a chaotic nightmare any other way.

To finish off this first entry in the diary I have to comment on the use of the Tarot. There have been a few instances of Tarot cards being used in videogames without any regard for their actual meaning. So to see their relevant use in various parts of the game was refreshing and intriguing. The few cards drawn out so far – The Fool & The Chariot suggest the game might well be following the path of the Major Arcana to its end. I’ve no idea if it will but it was another part of this game that has seduced me further.

Apologies for such a long post. I hope to be a bit more concise with future entries but sometimes, when you have such a good experience as this, you can't help but splurge the words out!

The Persona Diaries - Part 0

2009-05-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to being a snobby PC gamer for many years I never got round to experiencing many of the deep and interesting games on the consoles. One such series is Persona and I recently bought an old PS2 off eBay to restore some legitimacy to my gaming history and experience this critically acclaimed game.

But for some reason I’d always held that series in a mystical, hardcore regard that put me off until recently. I always thought it would be an impenetrable and baffling complex JRPG that I’d find impossible to get into. Thanks to some Twitter evangelising by Paul Rooney I finally caved in and booted the game up.

After only a few minutes all my fears about Persona were shown to be the foolish assumptions they really were. But rather than give a boring summation/review after I’d played the game I thought it would be far more interesting to keep a regular post going about my experiences.

Though I love my JRPG’s I’ve never played a game in this series before. So expect me to witter on about the most obvious features like it’s a revolution in design and get inappropriately excited about battle systems like a great big newbie.

I can’t promise this will be a cast-iron regular feature but I intend to keep updates going for as long as I keep playing. I hope to post once a week or at least several times a month depending on Real Life™ getting in the way, with the first entry coming over the weekend.