SparkiJ's Top Ten Compilations - Part 1: Top Ten Chicks in Games

I decided to start a little compilation before I go away for a while to make sure the Clockwork Manual isn't looking too empty for the next 3 weeks. It's something I've discussed with a few friends and so I decided to make a 3 part post on certain "Top 10s" in gaming. Tonight I'll start with the top pixelated or high-def ladies we wish were real sometimes. Remember this is as seen by me so don't be too offended if your dream anime babe isn't on here. Thoughts and comments are always welcome and now, starting of course in reverse order!

Note: This isn't entirely based on physical appearance, just general awesome points.

10. Princess Zelda - Okay fine! I'll admit it now. I only dislike Nintendo now after I feel they've sold out a bit but before I was a sucker for Nintendo exclusives namely the ones on the N64. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask remains one of my favourite platformers ever and really I see why Link risks his life fighting strange monsters all the time. Princess Zelda mixes in sophistication with natural beauty as the princess of Hyrule and has that certain magical feel about her. Also the fact that she has alter egos in Sheik and Tetra gives her that mysterious vibe that might prove to you what you see in the pink dress and blonde hair isn't what you get.

9. Lara Croft - Funny this. Tomb Raider fans will see this and start fuming but personally I find she's just about sexy enough to make the list but doesn't do enough for me to be higher up. The rich, perfectly curvy and big breasted brunette adventurer has to be on the list though! Born into a rich background, Lara walked away from that life to travel the world alone. Her bravery and confidence coupled with her ability to wield guns injected some much needed raw sexual energy into gaming, quite early on. Possibly the only reason she's not ranked higher is that I never really got into the Tomb Raider series. Always found the story too Indiana Jones like and a bit lacking in finesse.

8. Nina Williams - Again, a popular one for the lads out there. One of four Tekken characters that have appeared in every single installment. Namco seem to have caught on to their target audience. Although personally I only have 3 Tekken games, I don't know too much about her. Why is she ranked at 8 then you ask? Blonde hair, blue eyed, busty assassin. She's on this list for the pure fact that she's put on a bikini. One huge flaw though, not really any personality. I don't follow the whole Tekken story but it seems to be as she hardly speaks. Still would though.

7. Alyx Vance - Did you hear that noise? That my readers is the sound of my colleagues ejaculating at the mention of anything Half-life related. Alyx Vance, not the prettiest of the girls on the list but probably one of the most kick-ass. Proven as a skilled hacker, she's able to handle herself with a gun and in combat. Probably the most charming girl on the list and the most realistic we could relate to. Modest, smart and a good sense of humour. The only controversy would be why not to put her higher up. Unfamiliar territory for me, first off I haven't played a lot of half life and secondly I don't like it that much.

6. Meryl Silverburgh - Ah! Back to familiar territory. Now my friends in particular are going to be annoyed at me here. Meryl's quite the popular one in the Metal Gear Solid camp but why is she ranked at 6? Basically because of the ending of Metal Gear Solid 4. I won't go into detail as its a major spoiler but basically I personally didn't agree with Hideo Kojima's way of ending Meryl's story. The young ball busting red head not only strikes you with personality and cunning in Metal Gear Solid 1 but also in the fourth installment as the commander of the Rat Patrol Team. Meryl seriously takes no bullshit from anyone and everyone seems to be in awe of her leadership. Why? She could nail you with her desert eagle from 50 yards away square in the forehead and pretend as if you were killed by your own lack of awareness. Tall, sexy and stubborn. Meryl's the only person the legendary Solid Snake thinks twice about when it comes to who not to fuck with.

5. Kaileena (Empress of Time) - I am a huge fan of the Prince of Persia series and my stubbornness and love for Kaileena made me do all that extra stuff to get the water sword and fight the Dahaka instead as a final boss in Warrior Within. The mysterious woman in red in the Prince of Persia series gives you the advice that served as an advertising slogan for Warrior Within. "Prince, you cannot change your fate." Revealed as the Empress of Time herself, her sultry appearance drove the Prince of Persia to a state of confusion as to what to do. When it came to his life or hers, naturally he chose secret option no.3 and ran away with her to Babylon. She's ranked so highly in my eyes because of her sheer power in Warrior Within and untimely and emotional separation of the Prince at the beginning of Two Thrones. Sexy + Powerful + Good Gameplay and Story = Happy Gamer.

4. Trish - Oh my, here's where it probably gets hard for me. To me there's a clear favourite and winner but the next few entries are easily my favourite girls in games ever. Trish, from Devil May Cry. Physically stunning in appearance with her trademark black corset and tight trousers, she's the only one that could possibly be worthy "woman-wise" of the awesome-ness that is Dante. With long blonde hair and big breasts, shes the epitamy of that which is cool in gaming, I mean she rides a black motorbike too and has the ability to shapeshift! Seemingly immortal, having been sent by the demon Mundus in Devil May Cry 1, she manages to trick the son of Sparda himself and handles herself well anywhere. Not only that but her cocky and witty personality makes her the most deadliest and sexiest woman you don't want to go near.

3. EVA - Oh dear, another Metal Gear chick. EVA, also known as Big Mama in Metal Gear Solid 4, probably should have been ranked no. 2. My reason she's at 3 is because, well. I've played through MGS4 where she's an old lady. It put me off her enough to drop down a place I guess. Bearing a striking resemblance to a Bond girl, this blonde spy is not only beautiful and deadly but her persona in the Metal Gear series is that of a "good guy." Her sense of morals and the well being of the world is praised but don't take that the wrong way. She's no pussy. She manages to trick and manipulate just about everyone around her with her striking beauty and was also to save the life of Big Boss. Her elegance is shown in everything she does, even the way she shoots people in the face. Still don't agree with me? Unlock the peep show scenes in Metal Gear Solid 3 and then you might.

2. Joanna Dark - My Nintendo fanboy feelings are really coming out now huh? Still people that know me well would know that the N64 had some of my favourite games ever and this, up until the release of Timesplitters was my favourite first person shooter. The reason she's my second favourite video game chick of all time is because of how much I loved Perfect Dark. Backed by stunning visuals and creativity, Perfect Dark had a wide variety of weapons and was driven by a story that was a genre-blend. Aliens, secret agents, fit protagonist. It all just spells out awesome game before you play it considering this was released before every shooter was based on aliens or the army. Joanna Dark herself has big wide eyes that sort of remind me of a shy teenage girl but still dangerous at the same time. I think Rare made a good "less is more" quiet and beautiful character in Joanna Dark. Along with the fact that she's the star of such a great game, that's why she's at number 2.

1. Aerith Gainsborough - Well this isn't much of a surprise at all is it? Yes, my favourite girl in gaming of all time is Aerith, a character in my favourite RPG franchise, Final Fantasy VII. Although some prefer Tifa Lockhart for the obvious reasons, long legs and big breasts. Aerith I feel is a character you could really fall in love with. Her charm, elegance and natural beauty isn't one that would give a boy a hard on but make someone melt inside with her innocence. The next few sentences are gonna sound a bit wussy here but from my perspective the fact that she dies after falling in love is all very successful story telling in a game. Throughout Crisis Core you are made to love Aerith and all the little things she does. In Final Fantasy VII she does the most selfless thing in the world, putting her friends before herself and making the ultimate sacrifice. I guess why I find her so charming and sweet is because she's literally one of a kind in the world. Born as the last Ancient in the world, she's literally the loneliest person in the world because of her magic. Never does she cry or sulk. She takes everything up until the very end on the chin and led a short life. Yeah it makes it sound like I'm in love with her but also note I'm a fool for Final Fantasy VII. The most powerful and selfless being in Gaia. That's why she's number one.

....And on Friday, Top 10 Protagonists!

Feel free to tell me any you think I missed out.

Dear Whoever buys game Movie Tie-ins, Kindly Desist with your Annoying Habit

It's a trend that's happily dying out with increased development costs of current-generation consoles but it's a problem nonetheless. The game tie in to a summer blockbuster, designed with all the good intentions of a Spiderman helicopter, filling game shelves and websites with a putrid mess of consistently low review scores and overtly mediocre gameplaying experiences, does its level best to kill my belief that gaming is the eighth art form. It's evident that the only reason they get made is to supplement the profit raked in by the film when it hits box office but more often than not these games are rushed, and lack any form of innovation or relevance to the source material to the extent that many could easily have emerged as mods for any number of established games.

There are several reasons why a tie in will often fall to its knees before critics everywhere. Firstly and most obviously, they're rushed to release at the same time as the movie. Bugs remain unfixed, controls untweaked, and all those things a developer needs to do with a game before pushing it out the door get left undone. It's hardly the developer's fault, they have a harsh schedule to keep to and even the best of them run over, more it's the fault of the men in suits at the film production company in charge of licensing such deals not giving the programmers enough time to get the game done. Marvel have recently decried that this is something they hope to change in the future, by arranging tie (cash) ins further in advance of a film hitting cinemas. It's a nice step certainly, but it does nothing to bypass the next few problems they have to face.

Like the fact that for around 90% of films, a tie in game should not exist. I could put forward hundreds of arguments why the likes of Fight Club should have never be thrown into the gaming spectrum but most of them can be summed up in one word, dialogue. Dialogue is never more than a pleasant novelty in games, when the most you want to get into a conversation is with the intention of getting a quest from it, preferably with as little dialogue in it as possible. Whereas in a good movie you'll expect to sit through a good two hours of conversation, do that in a game and people understandably start throwing hissy fits. How do you get around this unfortunate side effect of forcing a franchise into a medium it doesn't belong? Well you condense some of the best written dialogue around into around a thirty second cutscene (or better yet, have supporting characters yell it out during play, people love that) in favourite of massively extending action sequences, some of which may not even have appeared in the film. Path of Neo cannot be excused in this department (well apart from awful voice acting, that was present in the movies as well). Even such small set pieces as the Smith battle before reaching the door with the keymaker were extended to their logical extreme. Part of this fight was forced to take place in the White House.

Many of these reasons come due to the huge difference between the length of your average game and an equivalent movie. Developers have to fill all that extra time with something, and more often than not, sequences put in to lengthen the play time of the game won't add much or anything at all to the experience, but then this may not be a problem in itself. Many great games have sections in them which could be considered “filler,” but when you do the same in a game based on a movie you immediately draw comparisons to the source material, which more often than not is far better than anything the game developers could come up with.

It's not all gloom and doom though. When a tie in's done well it can be an amazing experience, allowing the player to be a a part of some of the greatest action sequences ever made and if any effort is put into a game by the movie's production staff, a game can even expand on the dramatic narrative, adding scenes which develop characters or plot events not fully explained in the film. Enter the Matrix is a prime example of this. Although the gameplay was mediocre at best, because you took the role of two fairly minor characters in the films the game was interesting to Matrix fans far beyond the novelty of “You've seen the move, now play the game!” It features extended scenes from the movie and filled in the back story of what was going on before and after the films took place. For that reason it was one of my favourite tie in games of all time.

In the end though how good a game is has as much to do with the movie studio as it does to do with the actual developers. Getting the film's actors on board to voice characters in the game as well as giving direction to the developers really make playing the game worthwhile for a fan of the film, and not just another embarrassing Christmas gift from a clueless relative.

Edit: I'm not saying that every movie tie in is inherantly a bad game, just that most of them are because they aren't compelling experiences. With every opinion their are exceptions, and this remains exactly the same in the realms of interactive entertainment. It is completely possible for developers to create an innovative experience based off the ideas of a movie, but many don't, and that's where my problem lies.

My point about Enter the Matrix being my favourate game does imply that I like it better than Path of Neo. This is true. I'm of the opinion that neither were amazing games in terms of gameplay (although path of Neo's controls were more refined it has to be said) but as a fan of the trilogy Enter the Matrix was more compelling for me because it filled in backstory. Whilst gamplay is the most important feature of a game, the story it tells can improve the experience.

Sorry for lumping things together, this should of course never be done.

What Do We Do When Game Developers Get Greedy? We Play Their Sequels and Prequels..

With a mixture of not being allowed the house and not wanting to, I felt myself being rapidly more and more occupied with a game that I only got a few days ago. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core on the PSP, prequel to the RPG classic, Final Fantasy VII released on the original Playstation. It was released a couple of a weeks ago back and personally as I found the Final Fantasy VII story one of the best storylines in gaming, I had to play this game. The answer to your question at this point is no. This isn't a review.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core tells the story of a young man called Zach Fair. It follows his own personal story before the events of Final Fantasy VII where the protagonist is Cloud Strife, a good friend of his. Okay, I changed my mind. This paragraph is going to be a very rushed review but it will come in nicely with the rest of the post! When I first started this game, I was immediately thrown into an action packed cutscene and combat situation. The new combat system is very impressive using real time battle and movement in a fight and commands that are acted out instantly. None of this RPG "staying still in fights" crapola. The environment is rather limited although graphically the game is beautiful. Unfortunately there isn't much freedom as I had hoped, for example there isn't a world map for you to travel and explore, the game is all quite linear but still it's not that bad. The cutscenes are immersing and just the right length. What really made this game stand out for me though is the story. Voice acting and the CGI cutscenes are absolutely beautiful and set the standard for what the PSP is capable of. Right, I feel like I'm stuck in a bit of a strut. Having just finished the game, there's an uncontrollable urge for me to share the ending with the world but I feel that would trigger off some fanboys throwing bricks through my window. I'll say this. If you've played Final Fantasy VII, you won't be disappointed. If you haven't played Final Fantasy VII, then you will want to after finishing this. Each character has a unique personality and what really impressed me was how well the two games fit together. You find out just about everything there is to know before FFVII from Aerith's pink bow to how Cloud got his famous and over-sized Buster Sword. Finally, the ending of the game, is perfect. We just had a detailed rant on what endings should be and the end of Crisis Core is emotional, beautiful to watch and links perfectly up to the beginning of Final Fantasy VII. Subtleties that people that have played Final Fantasy VII noticed are all in this game and there are parts where something in your brain clicks, and you have a moment of nostalgia from remembering something in FF VII which you couldn't quite understand. I guess it would be hypocritical of me writing a small review if I didn't tell you some of the bad points of Crisis Core.

1. The environment and backgrounds looks rushed and lazily done as all the characters, combat, enemies and magic look very detailed.
2. The combat although should be praised, doesn't have the same strategy to it as RPGs should, i.e. using variety in attack and magic depending on who you're fighting.
3. The new "missions" option is a good idea but rather poorly executed. They should have made it more realistic in how to get to the place where a mission is and situations in which you've been sent, rather than just spawning at a random environment each time and fighting enemies that gradually get harder.
4. Rather linear, different to Final Fantasy VII where there isn't much to find out for yourself and there isn't a world to explore and to defeat the super-enemies and get the super "final" things. In that respect, it's a rather short game.
5. What the fuck happened to riding chocobos? I don't care if it doesn't link in with the story, it just isn't Final Fantasy without chocobos...

Please note, I think points 1,2 and 4 can be excused because it would probably be impractical to fit a detailed world map on a portable console and some things obviously must be restricted.

That was longer than I expected... But anyways Crisis Core is a fantastic role model for those game developers who are looking to milk it just a little bit more. The hate we see for sequels and prequels is probably justified. Most of them are in fact well received but that shouldn't be praised really... Okay imagine you're a game developer and you make a good game. Now you just take what's good and with the updated technology available make some adjustments and bam. A safe sequel, done and dusted. However bad sequels are rightfully condemned, the risk factor might be an issue but I personally think games are it's own worst enemy because of human greed. Crisis Core was good in the respect that it provided something for everyone, wether you've played Final Fantasy VII or not you can enjoy it, something all games should aim for. Another good prequel is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater where you play as Big Boss himself, who all the Snakes were cloned from. It doesn't link in as well with the story of the previous titles (unless you count the original Metal Gears that no ones really played) because of the timespan of the events. However what I liked about this was that it wasn't limited and it introduced new ideas in gameplay to the whole Metal Gear franchise even though it was a prequel. Finally Konami took things on board and made a fantastic sequel to MGS2 and linked in well with story and improvements in gameplay once again for Metal Gear Solid 4.

There we go! I'll have to go into a sequel that does suck to get out my pointing stick and floodlights to show the world what not to spew into gaming. The unfortunate Devil May Cry 2 is going to be subject of my hatred tonight, which probably a lot of people would have picked in terms of "shitness." I can honestly say I'm saying this from a non-biased view because this was the first Devil May Cry I played. I can explain to people in one sentence why it's awful and this is my theory. Any game thats last boss features the heads and body parts of the previous in-game bosses put together in a chaotic blob has "run out of ideas" printed all over it. In terms of a sequel it was appalling. Capcom seem to have the biggest, what I like to call, swing and a miss ever in terms of making Devil May Cry 2 as from the roaring success of the original Devil May Cry they decided to change the protagonist, Dante, and throw him in a storyline that was designed by a team of Tesco-value Hideo Kojimas... What made Devil May Cry 1 stand out was the brutal and effective combat and how it fit in perfectly with the darkness characters and the story. Suddenly Devil May Cry 2 decided to throw in some shiny stylish ways to slash a sword and ignore combat effectiveness almost completely. Basically a poor game in any respect but Capcom wanted to milk it from the original so in conclusion compared to the first game, Devil May Cry 2 was boring and rather easy.

What do you do when you make a successful game with an intriguing story? You work damn twice as hard if you want to make a sequel and take in exactly what made the original good in the first place. I think developers have a fear though which gets to them when making a sequel. It's true no one wants to see a repeat of a good game but at the same time you can't change it completely and go in a different direction altogether. Sequels are risky to make and even harder to completely pull off, just look at Halo (or read Trolleydude's more detailed review of it). Please though, game developers have brains. There's nothing more obvious than "use good parts of your original game in the sequel and focus improvements on them." It seems rather retarded though when we see such awful 2nds and 3rds to games of greedy game makers who don't care about their own creations. I can't speak for everyone but I'll say this on behalf of myself. Gamers like it when they see parallels in sequels and prequels. A good fitting story from a prequel has a certain niche if you will that makes you go "ah" out loud as if to say, "so that's why they had sex, to create a superhuman bear killer that would one day save humanity." Nintendo! There you go. Another idea for a new franchise from yours truly.

You'll Never Beat me! - The Ramblings of an Endgame Obsessed Maniac

I'm hard pressed to think of a completion message as infamous as "You're Winner!" from Big Rigs. Not that it was a popular game, or even a good game, but rather it had a weird habit of letting you win every single time, even if you didn't actually start the race. It was truly a magnificent ego boost I can tell you.

Award for the most off-topic introduction goes to me of course because I'm amazing, but I'm also a sucker for a good ending, one which can simultaneously give you closure on all that has gone before, whilst teasing you ever so slightly with what is to come. It's beginning to grate on my now that in this generation where every game is pitched as a franchise to publishers, that so many are now skipping that first crucial step and massively hugging the second. Notable perpetrators of this annoying habit include last year's Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six Vegas and Ratchet and Clank Future, all of which had conclusions which just screamed "To be continued!" at you before flipping the bird and riding off into the sunset. I don't want to have to invest in every single game to get one decent story out of a franchise - if I play a game for the story, it damn well better be resolved at the end, and no, a thirty second cinematic is not going to cut it.

It's not as if the step games have taken from single adventures to trilogies or even sagas even require endings such as these. There were three Ps2 Ratchet and Clank games, and each of them told a completely self contained story. Sure there were recurring characters from previous games, but I never reached the end of the credits thinking to myself "Damnit! What will become of Captain Quark!!" I was satisfied with just playing one game, and then when others came along I was happy to continue with the franchise.

I have no problem with a long, all encompassing story arc however. The Metal Gear games have always managed to walk this tightrope rather well, going back to the days of the first Metal Gear game on the MSX2 computer system. You destroy Metal Gear D and then Big Boss in turn before escaping Outer Heaven as it explodes into a million pieces. Only once the last designer's name fades off the top of the screen do you get a small post-script from the legendary soldier himself reminding you that he is of course still alive(yes an off topic link I admit). Oh and Portal from Valve did this magnificently as well, I want to play the next games, but if I don't there's nothing that I desperately need to know.

At the same time though, I want some sort of fanfare when I actually make it to the end of a game, and this leads me on to my rant about genres I just don't get, namely fighters and sports games. Not surprisingly part of my dislike for them stems from the fact that you never reach any satisfying conclusion. When you're playing a first person shooter or a platformer there's always a point when you finish the story and you feel like you're done with the game, but fighters in particular aren't designed with me in mind. There's always some other challenger you can face off against, and even if you make it the entire way through the core arcade battles you never reach anything more satisfying than a ten second cutscene of a character's death. Hence the reason why I never touch fighters (that, and the fact that I can never progress very far beyond the levels which sympathize with my button mashing tendencies).

Am I alone in my quest for some closure and reward? Statistics say I must be when eight million odd people pay a monthly fee to complete an endless series of quests in World of Warcraft, but if they decided to end WOW tomorrow and have an epic story conclusion bringing the entire history of Warcraft together would that excite you? Or would it just merely piss you off that your favorite money sink needs to be replaced? It will come as no surprise to you that MMORPG's are another genre that I "just don't get."

It's always hard to draw a satisfying conclusion from a seemingly endless rant, but if I can squeeze anything from these last few paragraphs it's that a somewhat lengthy conclusion can often be good for a game. It provides some closure to the story, and can justify the hours it takes to reach it. Above all though the final cutscene is often the last part of a game that the player will experience, and a bad ending inevitably leaves you with a sour aftertaste.

Peace out

Jon

"Would sir like boss battles with his hordes?", "Actually, could I just have the boss battles?"

In resent years the Japanese game development community has suffered a lot of criticism for a lack of innovation in next gen titles. Lost Odyssey, Devil May Cry 4, Gran Turismo: Prologue, all great games in their own right, but for the most part they're treading on a well worn path, taking the safe route if you will, with a formula that's proven to be popular. That's not to say Japanese game development is stale, it isn't by any means, but these developers tend to make a habit of reusing old ideas, adding a lick of HD paint and shoving them out the door.

Part of that was what made Shadow of the Colossus so amazing to me. Granted it wasn't unexpected - this is Team Ico, the people behind the magnificent Ico from way back when the Playstation 2 was knee-high to a grasshopper. It was a given that this game, when released, would be a good game, what was unexpected though, is just how great a work of art it was.

For those unfamiliar with Shadow of the Colossus, it tells the story of a young man named Wander who takes a woman named Mono to a temple to resurrect her. All we know about her is that she was sacrificed for "cursing destiny." She may be Wander's lover, sister, or just a good friend, this is left entirely up to the players own interpretation. What you do know for certain however, is that you must destroy sixteen colossi in order to use a "forbidden" spell to resurrect Mono.


Looking at the game from a gameplay focused point of view Shadow of the Colossus is a truly innovative game. Each of the colossi have weak points which need to be stabbed in order to kill them. The challenge is getting to these weak points. On a very basic colossus you may be forced to simply grab a passing leg and slowly traverse your way up to the glowing weak point, but on harder bosses this tactic is made ineffective by stone armour the colossi wear, which unlike hair you cannot climb up. This transforms the game into more of a puzzle game, forcing you to think logically about how you're going to get to your target. One example of an early boss is a bipedal colossus with a beard. In order to reach his head you need to hide underneath some form of cover and then grab his beard when he bends down to look for you. Working out these little puzzles really add to your sense of accomplishment, when you feel as though you haven't just had to get from point A to point B.

If we take a step closer and examine the technical aspects of this game we once again see the most incredible design in a PS2 game. The forbidden land the game takes place in is as vast and detailed as any city from Grand Theft Auto, but it manages to feel empty at the same time. whilst still interesting. Wander animates as you'd imagine a real person would, his body language emanates fear, and when he's being being thrown around whilst holding onto a colossus' fur, you really fear that he might fall to his death at any moment.


Take a step back however and you'll see a game which has the most subtle and yet most emotional plot you'll ever encounter. There are no cutscenes to illustrate Wander's love for Mono, but throughout the entire game you just know he's on a selfless quest to save her, with no regard for his own safety. Ultimately the game is as close as interactive entertainment's ever come to an epic love story, and it does it in a way which any gamer can appreciate. The star of the game however, is not Wander or Mono, but the colossi themselves. Throughout the game you often run into colossi who appear to have no interest in destroying you until you provoke them. Then, when you manage to finally get to their weak point and start stabbing away the colossi writhe and shriek in agony, in a way which makes you empathize completely with them, forgetting that they're hunkering stone giants.


Like any game Shadow of the Colossus isn't perfect. The camera can sometimes get overwhelmed by the frantic action on screen, and whilst Agro the horse is an amazing sidekick, using him in battle is more cumbersome than it should be, but then if you're looking at Shadow of a Colossus from a pure gamers perspective you're kind of missing the point. It is a classic in the eyes of anyone who has ever laid eyes on it, and if you haven't experienced this game yet then you're missing out on one of the best games ever released for PS2.

Cartoon Platformers, it's like giving LSD to your fingers...

I was going to do something on Call of Duty 4 because well.. Call of Duty 4 might just be the best online experience ever, (here's hoping for MAG though!). But alas! I'm writing this post to make myself feel a bit better. You see life threw a big fuck off lesson at me yesterday in the form of spending two hours asleep in a cell at 3a.m. in Paddington, so onto a cheerier note.My favourite franchise of all time without shame is Ratchet and Clank, a third person platformer about a cross breed between a fox and a midget that's apparently called a "Lombax" and his robot friend, Clank. There is a reason for this being my favourite franchise and I couldn't explain it in a simpler way. Right go onto google and search "define:fun". The first result that comes up is a list of four possible definitions:

- activities that are enjoyable or amusing; "I do it for the fun of it"; "he is fun to have around"
- verbal wit or mockery (often at another's expense but not to be taken seriously); "he became a figure of fun"; "he said it in sport"
- violent and excited activity; "she asked for money and then the fun began"; "they began to fight like fun"
- playfulness: a disposition to find (or make) causes for amusement; "her playfulness surprised me"; "he was fun to be with"

from the site: wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I can say without a doubt, Ratchet and Clank meet all the criteria above. I wont just write on Ratchet and Clank no but I'll use it as an example and take out the best points in hope Nintendo are listening in... Ratchet and Clank have had 4 console releases, (ignoring Ratchet: Deadlocked which is non-existent in my eyes because of the high points it scored on the "shitness" scale), and each individual game you can pick up and play without having to know about the storyline behind it. The writers and the voice actors really bring about the light-heartedness of a platformer and if any thing make the cutscenes and the story interesting and engaging. Couple this with the fact that each level design, weapon design, enemy appearances are original to a tee just like the storyline. Let me give you an example with the variety it has. In the latest Ratchet and Clank, you can throw a disco ball up into the air and every enemy on screen instantly become incapicitated due to dance. In the first Ratchet and Clank, the storyline is about some nutter who wants a planet so much, he's stealing bits of other ones and putting it all together. The second Ratchet and Clank is about an evil furbie, and the third is the really kick ass one with the really evil kick ass boss and everything about Ratchet is kick ass. The best thing about it, is that Insomniac made this game without taking it seriously. The cheesy "save the universe" fights are there to be fun and basically quite funny. Never does it try and send out a moral message or something weird about love to gamers who just want to blow things up in Looney Tunes world. With this said, I don't like the new turn it has in Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction and also what seems will happen again in Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty. Any cartoon platformer that takes itself seriously will make anyone cringe and it's because it defies the whole point of it.

The Jak and Daxter series I think is also amazing. It's different though, much harder and it is recommended you start with the first one to fully understand the storyline in the later ones. With that said the end of Jak III epitamises everything that is good about platformer storylines because the ending to the series is fantastic and very cleverly done. Here's something for Trolleydude! I remember when microsoft first released Xbox, I'd plead for my parents to take me window shopping at Toys 'R Us so I could play this game. Blinx: The Time Sweeper. The first thing I'll say about it is going to be that the storyline was weak... I felt there could be potential for something amazing here which could be resulting in us seeing something like "Blinx: The Intergalactic Space Time Continuum Transmorpher." Let's face it, a game based on working around time shouldn't have enemies called, "Time Monsters." Call them the "pedos" or something for dramatic effect but originality points are pissed away here. The gameplay however is rather... orgasmic. There are items that aid you with your time attacks and the time controls are very similar to that of a VCR, with Rec, Fw, Rewind etc. You actually have to use techniques cleverly and the graphics for such effects not only look amazing but are almost realistic in the context, which is strange for a cartoon platformer.

What do the games mentioned have in common? They're actually fun to play. Remember a time when gaming was more gameplay than who had better graphics or who has superior online multiplayer capabilities. I'm not being a hypocrite, although I love such things developers had that originality about them before which they could bring out in cartoon platformers rather than focus majority of their energy on how to make the water look realistic. Take out realism and physics and accurate graphics for a protagonist, you get a cartoon platformer. Spend the time developers are using now on the mentioned things on gameplay and hiring more original people for ideas and storyline elements and the 7th generation of gaming is really in for a treat in terms of platformers. They will blow that realism shit out your ass.

The Big Three's Press Conferences – E3 2008

So the big three: Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have all had their chance to show off their top games and new features for the coming years, and of course the Clockwork Manual is here to fill you in on what they covered.

Microsoft went first with their presentation on Monday. Of the three, Microsoft spent the most amount of time actually showing us games, along with quite a few “Exclusive to 360” stickers slapped on the front. Among the big games shown off were Gears of War 2 (of course), Fallout 3 (with 360 exclusive downloadable content), Lips (Microsoft's answer to Singstar), Resident Evil 5 (co-op, hell yeah!) and Fable 2 (we saw an in-game wife, but not a whole lot else).

Also shown for the first time (officially at least) was the new Xbox dashboard complete with brand new Mii's, I mean Avatars! Yes we all saw it coming but now it's official – 360 owners will be able to create a digital representation of themselves for use in-game. The new dashboard does look very cool, completely ripped out of Windows XP Media Center, but cool all the same.

Then came the news that every Sony fanboy had been dreading, the news that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming to Xbox 360 at the same time as the PS3 when it's released in Europe and North America. It's worth noting that this won't be the case in Japan, Square Enix it seems knows what platform its Japanese gamers want the play the game on first.

Apart from a surprise performance by Duffy, the press conference passed without any real fireworks being lit, something which again occurred this morning with Nintendo's hour in the spotlight. Aside from much gloating about how much of the market share Nintendo has managed to get its grubby mitts on, no games were revealed that would really appeal to the hardcore gamer.

Games announced were Wii Music (aside from the drums this looks pretty standard, you have no real input to the tune aside from deciding the rhythm with random button mashing), Wii Sports Beach Resort (making use of Nintendo's new peripheral for some...sword fighting?) and Animal Crossing - complete with online play. Also shown off was Shawn White's Snowboarding's use of the balance board included with Wii Fit to carve your way down the mountainside, complete with uncomfortable demonstration by Shawn White himself.

So the last two conferences failed to excite, but surely Sony's would come and really light up the sky with a whole host of games specifically targeting the hardcore. Whilst it managed to show off some interesting footage of games we already knew existed (Resistance 2, DC Universe) the real stand out moment of the show came with the announcement of Massive Action Game (MAG, don't worry, just a placeholder) from Zipper Interactive featuring, wait for it, two hundred and fifty six player online matches. I think we can say Resistance's multiplayer has well and truly been trumped. They plan to keep such massive games interesting with the use of eight man squads in the game, within which you can organize, and work together to rack up as many frags as possible.

So far this year's E3 has been quite the uneventful beast, with no really huge software announcements to report. Here's to hoping the week ahead will garner more surprises.

Society and Games, Life and Obsession.

Woo, we have our own domain name!!

Right okay, my turn to post yes? A few days ago I was made to feel bad by someone I knew for playing too much Grand Theft Auto, which suddenly struck me as a topic to write about. If you want something less broad, wait a few days, I’ve got other stuff lined up. (:

Games and life. It’s rather amusing how the stereotypical view of someone into games is a little nerd living with his mum and has no friends or social life. It’s seen as a rather geeky thing, I dunno maybe it’s because of this stupid Luddite society we live in where everything electronic is seen as “uncool” or whatever. I'm talking now about life and games because I feel I need to encourage it a bit…Okay fine that does sound puzzling, but hear me out. Games have evolved passed the Asteroids and the Pac-mans and what have you that people played in 80’s arcades. Game developers use it as a way of expressing themselves and getting a message across. Hideo Kojima does this wonderfully. Creating a colossal storyline that in a way brings across an interesting message with characters intertwining with the past and future. In a way, I guess we can call gaming a kind of art. However something which appeals to me more is that with the technology available they have made them addictive to the extent of need and obsession. Perhaps not quite as serious as that but you must have been jumping up and down too outside a shop when Grand Theft Auto 4 was about to come out…

I myself admittedly have gotten to the point where people may consider it sad to play games. I actually reached this stage quite a bit back but I managed to contain it slightly to a “non-nerdy” way. Let me show you what I mean. Having played GTA IV to the point of internal combustion of not going to the toilet for several hours, it’s rather obvious I’m going for 100%. For one of the requirements of 100% I needed to get the high score in an arcade mini game called QUB3D. Okay first of all, not knowing how to play severely disabled me and so getting the high score was not as easy as it sounds. It easily took 2 hours, if not more, off my life but eventually I did it. Niko Bellic, the protagonist of GTA IV, having spent over two whole game days on an arcade machine, ignored all his friends and girlfriends’ phone calls. Suddenly I saw parallelism to myself. For a second I saw myself as Niko, spending days on a game, and ignoring his girlfriend(s).

For those who don’t know. I love the whole Final Fantasy franchise and when FF XII came, I was hooked. I won’t go into it (even though right now I would love to...) but basically they got rid of the random battle encounters and they gave it a fantastic new battle element in which you actually controlled the party itself rather than wait for retard turn based events, stationary. This game was huge, there was an unbelievable amount to do and the storyline was beautiful. Each character has been designed with a personality and they discarded the whole “strong and silent” thing for RPG protagonists, (Yes that’s directed at Golden Sun and Final Fantasy VII). Suddenly when I played this game the obsession factor kicked in. It was literally like this game grabbed me by the balls and told me to he would let go once I kicked enough ass. It’s funny how I pretended to be ill to my girlfriend so I could continue playing this game. She actually had me wrapped round her little finger with the false pretence of a mixture of love and nice tits but for two weeks though I was free. Being stuck in a world of gaming is like being trapped in Disneyland at the age of 10. Of course I didn’t think about it at the time but this game made me the neo-saddo stereotypical gamer freak that people make fun of, because for some reason technology is “uncool” and girlfriends are more socially acceptable. So I thought about this now, concerning how I feel now with games. When me and my girlfriend broke up, I was rather devastated. I couldn’t really enjoy games. I stopped playing Call of Duty 4 online, I stopped playing Devil May Cry 4. I didn’t even care that much when GTA IV came out. Depressing times sort of dictate what kind of person you want to be in life and at that time I was stuck in this sickness phase of hating the generalness of life and cycles. If I forced myself to play playstation as much as I did today I really may have topped myself and there’s not even a reason for it really besides being genuinely upset and thinking that games are sad. What’s changed right now then? Nothing. Admittedly, life has gotten better without the pressures of a girlfriend but times when you feel like your balls are in a vice will always hit you. The point I’m slowly dragging myself to is no one has to feel that way when they play games because the “sadness” of it all is all in your head. If you genuinely enjoy doing something (…within boundaries) there shouldn’t be a reason why not to do it, especially if it’s society landing a big fuck off brick wall in front of you and happiness.

Illusions of what’s cool and what isn’t don’t matter. Playstation, Xbox and, tempting fate here, but the Wii are fun. Even better to play with when you’re with your friends and you’re cursing people online for no apparent reason. At the same time if you honestly don’t enjoy them because you have no thumbs or something then that’s fair enough, maybe you like flying kites or something. You don’t have to do what society deems as “cool” so no one should really stereotype those who play games a lot and those who don’t. “But maybe all gaming is pointless, just toying with the gravel on the side of the big road of life, but hey at least there’s violence and tits.” – Quote from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw.

Zero Punctuation: Console Rundown - Where I got the Yahtzee quote from.

I’ll post something a lot more specific and less broad in a few days, promise :)

General Housekeeping

There comes a time in every blog's life when it needs to really spread its wings and register its own damn domain name. So guess what? That's exactly what we did!

Hopefully you got to us by typing www.clockworkmanual.com into the awesome bar (and if you're still using one of those address bar things, well then you need to get yourself Firefox 3) and now you're sitting on the edge of something which all three of us writers are very proud of.

I've also added a couple of minor upgrades to the site in the form of a fancy logo up top (made by our resident Trolley....Dude), and a blogroll over on your left. I'm in two minds as to whether I want to remove the Blogger bar on the top of this page. On the one hand it looks unsightly and doesn't gel well at all with the colour scheme we're going for, but on the other it provides a means by which more people browsing blogger can find our little site. It'll probably disappear over time, but if I can change it's colour to brown we will have reached a nice compromise.

Edit: Wow, that was easier than I expected...

All that remains to be done is to check if all our behind the scenes stat counters still work, which I assume they will seeing as they're run by Google, but you never know.

As for what I've been playing - I've been loving (and hating) Monster Hunter Freedom for the PSP. After hearing what a huge phenomenon it's become in Japan I figured I'd get me a slice of the pie, and let me tell you, I can see the appeal, but the execution is a bit hit and miss. I'm not going to write a full review until I finish the game in its entirety, but I'm not going to finish it in a while, so I''m afraid the internet will have to wait.

Additionally I'm slogging my way through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Wii. I don't like it. Enough said.

So thanks very much for anyone who takes the time to read this blog.

Peace out

Jon

Why in the 21st Century Consoles Reign Supreme, and Always Will

"PC gaming isn't dead!" Roy Taylor preaches to his congregation as head of Nvidia, "The console is a baseline, the PC is going to be an improved version," he claims, in the face of mounting PC gaming piracy. But then why would he be worried? You can't pirate hardware.

For a while now PC gaming has been an untamable beast. Huge numbers of different system configurations mean that development for the platform is a tricky business and then add to that the fact that when a developer does finally release a game, no matter how good it is, the sales will only reflect a tiny proportion of the total number of people enjoying it. If developers go out of there way to try and stop this, a huge DRM-backlash ensues, to which many games reputations (and sales) often suffer.

But we're not developers, we're consumers, and yet still for us consoles provide a better overall gaming experience. With a console you're getting a much more games-centric device; you're not playing a game with peripherals intended for the average office user (read: mouse and keyboard) you're playing with a joypad, made specifically for the enjoyment of gamers. You can hold a controller in mid-air, whereas with a keyboard you're stuck to a desk, and a tidy one at that. How many times have you been forced to clear space to allow your mouse free reign over the workspace?

Then, when you do finally get games, they're late, often ported by a separate developer, and whilst they may feature small additions and marginally better graphics, the overall experience has been condensed down to work with control inputs that don't necessarily benefit the game as much as a joypad does.

Maybe I'm being stereotypical but the PC gamer is a lonely beast. He or she roams the lands of the Sims and WOW in solidarity, no one else in the room to encourage or to criticise. Try and get several people playing a PC game at once. It's practically impossible without some nifty control schemes put in place by the developers. It says a lot when the most fun I've had playing a multiplayer PC game locally with someone was when we broke out the 360 controllers. Get friends round to play a console game and it's a different story altogether. Sit down, pick up you're controllers and your in, with little to no hassle regarding space or comfort (couch size not withstanding).

It may be that soon one of the major selling points of PC gaming will gain greater influence over on the other side of the iron curtain. Mods, formerly the exclusive child of the personal computer have recently been enabled on the PS3 with the release of Unreal Tournament 3, allowing mods to be "cooked" for use on the system. True, the mod still needs to be developed on a computer, but when you can enjoy it in all it's glory with not a care in the world for the game not running smoothly, playing away from your couch just doesn't seem as appealing.

Ultimately though, migrating from PC to consoles is only going to happen so long as developers allow it to. Whilst the Sims and all it's expansion pack children is certainly possible on a console with the advent of downloadable content, developers (and publishers) never want to be the ones to test the water, and will remain on the safe side with continued releases of inferior ports to consoles in regards to PC franchises (but then when you have the best selling PC game of all time, why change?). Additionally, whilst the console has a huge variety of games, some of the best will only ever be released on PC (WOW, Starcraft, Diablo).

It's perhaps a small price to pay though when you consider that buying a console will secure your gaming for at least the next six years (and with Sony's promises of a ten year life cycle for the PSP and PS3 maybe more) whereas buying a top of the range PC may allow you to play games on maximum settings for a while, soon you'll have to be settling for second best, and thereafter not at all.

I'm not here to try and change your opinion. I know many people won't come to the dark side over such a trivial matter as cost and that the mouse and keyboard is something of a savior to some people. At the same time though, as a previous PC gamer I'm a person that wants to see developers trying new things on consoles that have previously only been possible on the PC platform, so that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to enjoy The Sims 3 when it comes out.

Peace out.

PC Gaming, and Why It's Great

Apologies for the lateness of this post, but it's been quite difficult arranging my thoughts into a comprehensible article this time. Unfortunately, master is cracking the whip, so here follows some words.

Before I'm misinterpreted, I don't think consoles are rubbish. They're an important part of games (I forgot to tell you, this article will not feature the brilliant wordplay I've lavished on you before) because they open it up to a wider market. Now, I'm pretty bad for simplifying issues, but I reckon the success of consoles is down solely to the fact that you can play them on the couch. You can't play on the computer on a couch. Have you tried? It's not much fun at all. That added to the joy of splitscreen co-op and you've got a recipe for success right there. I don't know why splitscreen left the PC; maybe companies have an alternate agenda with trying to isolate PC gamers so they can get more World of Warcraft players or something. That's why I love Cortex Command so much, but I digress a bit.

The problem with consoles is that, ever since their conception, they have been absolutely rubbish at immersion. I think I've whipped this dead horse before, but the problem is simple (feel free to stick your fingers in your ears if you found the last paragraph offensive, in fact you might want to skip reading this as well, since I'm not talking at you - I'm writing at you). When you compare a thumb/joystick to a mouse, the only real difference is that the mouse uses what I'm going to call 'absolute' tracking, while the stick uses 'relative' tracking. What this basically means is that to turn 360 degrees in a console FPS, you need to hold the stick in a certain position for a set amount of time and wait for your character to turn around. In a pooc feps, your motion perfectly matches the character's motion, and you turn around by swinging the mouse sideways. This correlates to the real-life action of turning a lot more than a joystick does, just like the Wii tried to do with bowling, but ultimately failed when people realised you got better results from waggling the remote in the air above you than you did actually bowling it.

The point of all this (yes, there is a point), is that analogue sticks separate you and the protagonist, making you feel more like you're giving orders rather than acting them out. The mouse connects you seamlessly to the character's eyes, letting you respond to whatever the game throws at you just like you would in real life (minus the hiding in a corner shitting yourself). If you don't believe me, go play the orange box on pooc then go play it on a pessthree. The mouse really does make a world of difference in making you forget you're sitting alone and friendless in a darkened room, continuing the futile battle started in Space Invaders, because you know that one of these days you'll finally defeat the ridiculous horde of pixel-aliens and take back your pixel-planet.

Seriously, it's been like thirty years. Haven't we run out of enemies yet?

Trolley out.

Why a one console future isn't as stupid as it seems

I will probably never play through the entirety of Gears of War 2. No matter how many dudes get sawn in half and no matter how much hyperbole is spewed forth I won't make it through the game. It's not because I have anything against Cliffy B (though his Metal Gear Passive comment didn't half piss me off) nor is it that I'll find the game too hard. The simple truth is that the game is being published by Microsoft and as such will be locked into console exclusivity with the Xbox 360, and as such me being a PS3 owner somewhat gets in the way.

It's a sad fact that many gamers have not played some of the best games to ever come out simply due to console exclusivity. Shadow of the Colossus, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario, Metal Gear Solid, all of these games console exclusives, and whilst that may be of huge benefit to the console manufacturers, gamers on the other side of the fence get left out in the cold.

Even games going multiplatform doesn't entirely solve the problem. Aside from the fact that often one version is better than the other(s) (Orange Box I'm looking at you) multiplatform development is an expensive decision, two teams need to work on one game, and techniques that may work on one system to render the graphics may not go down so well on the other. As was the (rumoured) case with Grand Theft Auto 4, the PS3 version lagged behind and was the reason the release date was pushed back into this year.

“But Hailogon you gangster what IS the perfect solution?” I hear you ask, and unfortunately my idea requires some sort of sacrifice on the console manufacturers side for you see, my solution is a one console future. First let me explain to you what I initially thought a one console future was, that one of the current console manufacturers would hold a monopoly over the console industry. However I cannot stress enough that this is not the case. Instead what a one console future refers to is a model similar to that of the PC platform in that anyone can produce the hardware, however unlike the PC it must meet certain performance standards. Such an arrangement would have huge benefits for both consumers and developers, and may be essential for the continued economic growth of the video game industry.

Essentially what this means is that there's a huge variation of the hardware for running games, but any consumer will know that if they buy a game it will definitely run on their system regardless of the manufacturer.

There are several reasons why such a system could work. Firstly it removes any confusion that exists surrounding consoles for people that may now know their 360 from their Wii. Grandparents will no longer face the look of utter disappointment as their grandchild opens their Christmas present only to realise their much sought after game has been bought for the wrong system.

A one console future also reaps huge benefits for console manufacturers who currently make huge losses on every system they sell. Famously the Wii is the only current generation console that is sold at a profit to Nintendo - both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are sold at a loss. Removing this profit drain from these companies, which are also admittedly huge publishers, means that they now have more funds to pour into actual game development, rather than hardware manufacture.

Let's not forget that gamers would benefit most from such a system. Suddenly the amount of games compatible with a system is tripled, and there are no longer any issues with cross platform play. Everyone has access to the same pool of great games, not to mention the barriers of the eternal console war would have a Berlin Wall pulled on their asses, and would be demolished once and for all.

Admittedly we're a long way away from such a future. The three big console manufacturers won't relinquish their grip on control of their platform any time soon, and the administrative task of setting up a committee to oversee the creation of the console standards is enough to make anyone fall to the ground and weep. Peripherals may also suffer under this new system with developers unwilling to create games to run with a certain accessory because not enough people own it, because not enough games support it. Can anyone truly claim that the Wiimote would come about within such a system?

At any rate, if a one console future came about it would do so out of necessity rather than a conscious desire, due mainly to the rapidly increasing costs associated with game development nowadays making it uneconomical to develop for only one part of the market (ie the owners of one console). I'm not saying that this will come about, only that it may be one possible solution to an impending crisis which may inadvertently reap huge rewards for the gaming community as a whole.

Peace out

Further Information:

1UP Yours featuring Denis Dyack

David Jaffe on a one console future

Why I may be talking crap

10 Reasons Why Your Playstation is Better Than Your Girlfriend..

Our favourite narcissistic cynical writer is back :D

I'm not writing this to show how gay I am by the way. Let's say my eyes were opened to how stupid my ex-girlfriend was and how much I love playing Grand Theft Auto 4 online.

Behold!

1. You only need to use one finger to turn your playstation on.

2. If you kick your playstation or break the controller, you're a passionate gamer. Kick your girlfriend and break her neck, suddenly you're a homicidal woman beater..

3. If you get bored of it, you can sell it for an Xbox 360 that won't judge you for being fickle. Sell your girlfriend and amnesty international come knocking at your door.

4. Your playstation isn't jealous of your PC or Xbox.

5. Playstations will accept anything you put in its mouth.

6.Meeting new people and doing stuff with your girlfriend generally costs money, Playstation Network is free. (:

7. If you tell or show your girlfriend something interesting to you, she'll probably forget. Playstations have 60GB of memory.

8. You can play with your playstation for over 24 hours without taking any breaks. It also doesn't want to cuddle afterwards.

9. Playing with your playstation with three other guys is awesome. Playing with your girlfriend with three other guys is gangrape.

10. Your girlfriend doesn't have rumble...and she never will. :\

Stumble It!

The Importance of Being Fair – Golden Sun GBA review…

SparkiJ here, writing for the first time for The Clockwork Manual. My colleagues who I have known for a very long time seem to have followed the footsteps of the reviewing games in the “7th Generation” which people have renowned as the golden era of gaming. To follow suit in writing of games we as individuals adore, I decided to go for a game probably hardly anyone has actually played especially as the vast majority of people owning Nintendo Wiis/Playstation 3s/Xbox 360s claim to be “into” gaming but have only gotten “into” it because they hit the age where they realised that they have a questionable social life, lack of or non-existent real friends and have bought a 7th generation console to fritter away the moments that make up a dull day. Okay, admittedly those few lines were a subtle scathing attack at someone in my school that claims to know about the story of Metal Gear Solid after only playing the most recent one…

But I digress! With trolleydude being part of the Xbox, foam at the mouth, death and destruction party and Hailogon at the shinier hardcore state of the art hardware Sony family, I feel Nintendo isn’t getting its fair share of… well, anything. Yes okay I own a playstation 3 and yes I may hold resentment for the Wii through no fault of the actual console but the fanboys who are sad enough to fight the wars of Nintendo through internet forums and being annoying gits. I always thought calling fanboys sad and saying they have no lives was a bit harsh, you see they are just like you and me who have an interest in gaming. Contrary to popular belief you can adore sitting at home playing Timesplitters or what have you and still have an active life that isn’t based on defending your console. Not to sound too nostalgic but I remember a time when not every Nintendo based product made me want to top myself or rather top someone else.

Golden Sun is a JRPG or (Japanese Role Playing Game) for the Game Boy Advance. This is the point where majority of people would have stopped reading because of the abbreviation, “JRPG” mentioned before. I’ll review this game in a different way then. Instead of pointing out first and foremost why the game is good, I’ll explain why it doesn’t suck. First of all the RPG style is that of a turn based attack sequence, much like some Final Fantasy games which is simple and fun. Okay, that’s opinion but I’ll tell you, the story and whole culture of the game is very, how can I put this... very un-Japanese in some respects. There are no oversized swords and hairstyles that make you moan and groan and think, “oh dear more characters designed by Japanese 40yr old virgins.” The story is not about defeating another oversized, overpowered, good looking Japanese dark character who has wronged the main protagonist many moons ago when the sun was still young, blah blah blah. If anything the game mixes culture and elements in a very successful way. For example there are references to Greek, Roman, Egyptian mythology. The names of the characters are not in any way “JRPG” like, unless you think Jenna or Alex are particularly Japanese. The main story is done in an original way in that it actually makes sense. You as Isaac, the protagonist, lead your party who are connected in different ways, to stop the lighting of the elemental lighthouses. Right I know what you’re thinking, “that sounds gay.” But come on, give it originality points for not following other RPGs. Along the way you meet elemental creatures called the “Djinn” that make combat more interesting. These Djinni change the elemental status of your character, i.e. Earth, Fire, Wind and Water so you can give each character their own specialising element, or you can mix and match and give them new and different abilities. For example giving a character Fire and Earth Djinni gives them abilities to summon giant thorns with supernovas and if you didn’t experiment and mix around, you would have just got the boring flares and earthquakes. These Djinni can also be used on battle and have their own special abilities. After using a Djinn to heal or attack or whatever, they are on standby and the more you have on standby, the greater the level of summon you receive. This is where the game really excels graphically. Having a 4 Wind Djinn standing by, allows you to summon an elemental God called “Thor.” Each summon for every level has its own unique cutscene during battle before unleashing a unique attack.

Instead of the normal “magic” system there is a more original take on it. Each player has “psyenergy” powers which is different to normal RPGs because they can be used also whenever you want outside of battle also. You can use the psyenergy “frost” in battle to perform an ice attack or you can use frost during the game to freeze a puddle to make it into a pillar for you to jump from. This really stands out for me because the makers of Golden Sun seem to hate the player. In RPG puzzles now, we are basically spoon fed the answers and told in tutorials or retardedly obvious hints as to what to do. Golden Sun seems to throw anything obvious out of the window. You are given the psyenergy techniques, sometimes you have to travel and learn new ones for yourself, and you are given a puzzle. Nothing else, its just you and a good puzzle to solve. Even the weapons are beautifully done. You get the normal weapons where you can buy in shops and there are those you buy in small markets that might be cursed but insanely powerful or weapons dropped by enemies. Special weapons unleash special effects to do additional damage, for example the Gaia Blade sometimes summons a gigantic piercing sword into your enemy. Its just good round violence! There’s nothing quite like it, its not just a normal stab and so and so takes -5 damage. Your in battle and you attack and suddenly A GIGANTIC SWORD COMES DOWN FROM THE AIR INTO YOUR ENEMY’S BRAIN?!

To round it off all the characters are well rounded and the storyline is gripping, although the long cut scenes make you feel suicidal sometimes with the constant pressing of the A button. The point I’m gradually making is that this is a game that I’ve played easily for over 80 hours. There are so many things to find, and puzzles to do. I also purposefully chose a Nintendo game that isn’t the jittering of a dying franchise to show Nintendo aren’t all a bunch of boring tossers who seem to think a steroid pumped blue hedgehog and an Italian plumber with the ability to jump on things is the way to go in gaming. New franchises are fun, and Golden Sun and its fantastic sequel prove this point. Stop forgetting why we all love games in the first place, its because they’re fun and that girl you like that you’ve been stalking for the past 2 years doesn’t actually like you, so instead you pretend you can summon giant swords into her boyfriend. Not me though, I’m made of awesome.

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Gamespot - The Fall Of

There once was a website called Gamespot, and for a time it was good. Yes I realise I just quoted from the Bible, originally I was going to quote from Star Wars as well because I watched the Family Guy Star Wars special last night. Whilst the jokes were wildly inconsistent (as I find is always the case with Family Guy) the art just blew me away with the 3D Star Wars ships done in a cartoon cell-shaded style. It just looked fucking incredible, and has really made me want to lay my hands on the original trilogy and watch it through once again, but I digress...

Up until about last September I checked Gamespot every single day. I checked the news, previews, reviews, video reviews and press releases. I downloaded and listened to their podcast “The Hotspot” every week, and I used to worship the Gamespot's editors. Jeff Gerstmann, Alex Nevarro, Brad Shoemaker, Rich Gallup, these were the people that almost dictated my views on games and gaming as a whole.

After E3 2007 Rich Gallup announced he was leaving Gamespot. Like many others I was of course horrified. Rich wasn't the funniest of the editors, but he always had a jovial quality about him that really made guests loosen up and become much easier to watch on camera. He'd laugh at everyone's jokes, no matter how lame, and gave shows an almost...stupid...quality that they've lacked since.

None the less, despite minor criticisms Gamespot soldiered on with Jeff Gerstmann now taking presenting duties on both On the Spot and The Hotspot, retaining the feel of the Gamespot of old, albeit with a lack of odd eyebrow...

To be honest as soon as you read the first line of this article you knew what was coming, Gerstmanngate, as it was dubbed, changed everything. Here we must deviate from cold hard facts onto the long and twisty road of rumour when I say that the reason for Jeff Gerstmann's departure came with the review of one “Kane and Lynch: Dead Mean.” Jeff didn't like this game, and his rating clearly displayed this. His review however was both two-sided and fair, and gave ample reasons for his distaste, citing bad dialogue (read: over using fuck) and crummy controls, leading to an overall shitty game.

The story goes that Eidos had a major advertising deal going with Gamespot that came into effect a few days after the negative review went up. Such a negative score certainly did not bode well for sales of the game, and subsequently the link to the video review was removed from the Kane and Lynch page. The text review remained, but Jeff did not. He was fired from Gamespot after being a senior editor there for many years, writing countless reviews, and becoming an internet celebrity off its shoulders.

It was the beginning of the end for Gamespot. A string of departures followed at intervals of a couple of weeks at the beginning of 2008. Alex Nevarro was the first to go, followed shortly by Ryan Davies and Brad Shoemaker. Even Vinny Carvella, the replacement for Gallup left, leaving Ryan MacDonald at the head of a group of ragtag journalists, with no sense of the Gamespot family that once was, and never will be again.

In a few short years Gamespot has gone from a leading reviews website, which maintained a high level of humour with decidedly amateur looking shorts, to a slick corporate machine, dishing out review scores which seem to always mirror what every other journalist is saying about a game, and bland editors, that couldn't be less of a part of the Gamespot family if they'd tried.

So where are they now? Rich Gallup ran Doofy Crap for a while but has “taken a break from the doofyness” recently to pursue other goals. Alex Nevarro is currently working at Harmonix, putting his amazing drum 'skillz' to use. As for the other four, well Gerstmann's in the process of setting up his new website Giant Bomb Giant Bomb along with Brad Shoemaker, Vinny Carvella and Ryan Davies.

Whilst a part of me is still in mourning from the loss of such a great assortment of editors, the breakdown of Gamespot allowed me to move on to what I now regard as one of the best games related sites on the internet, the 1UP Network. Generally it's just a much more mature site, with the likes of Shawn Elliot and Garnett Lee really taking gaming seriously as an art form, and discussing it in much more depth than in terms of just gameplay and graphics. Ultimately it's something that had needed to happen for a while – Gamespot had become a bloated bureaucratic beast, and as result it became very difficult for editors to try new things and push journalistic boundaries, exactly what any self respecting games site should do.