The Clockwork Manual

The Final Piece of the Gran Turismo Puzzle

2011-08-27T09:45:00.001+01:00

The search for greater realism with every entry in a series is a noble pursuit indeed, and it’s this dedication that has given Poliphony Digital an almost unique reputation in the industry. As rewarding an ambition as it is though, it does limit the amount of changes that can be made from game to game. Over the years they’ve added more and more tracks and cars to their seminal racing series, but short of changing the laws of physics, the basic driving experience remains very similar from game to game. The question then is this: Is there anything missing from the Gran Turismo formula that could be added to the core gameplay?

For the past few iterations the series has seen nothing on this scale. The addition of online as well as dozens of new race types has given series fans plenty to play with, but there’s been little in the way of game-changing additions.

This is a by no means a bad thing when your core game is as solid as Gran Turismo’s is, but it does make it harder to retain the interests of the fickle casual fans of the series. It’s an unfortunate reality that for many a big, marketable feature is needed for them to jump into your latest release.

There does however exist a part of the car which has somehow escaped inclusion thus far. It’s a control more important than any other without which you wouldn’t even get off the starting line in reality. It’s the thing every learner driver struggles with, almost without exception. Despite all this, it’s hard to recall a single game which has attempted its inclusion.

The clutch is its name.

Its addition would add another layer of complexity to all those who know Gran Turismo’s mechanics inside out. It would change the start of every race from an exercise in holding the accelerate button into a tense standoff as you try desperately not to stall. Most importantly of all it would just feel right to anyone who’s ever fallen in love with a perfectly executed gear-change.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Dualshock is already well equipped to deal with its inclusion. The pedal could be mapped to one of the triggers, and a delicate vibration could activate to alert the player when they’ve reached the so-called ‘biting point’ when the clutch is depressed just enough to engage the gears. Even more surprisingly is the existence of racing wheels which already have the clutch included, but then when your hardware costs above $100 an extra pedal is a fairly trivial inclusion.

In spite of this, it’s hard to ignore the fact that a large amount of people don’t drive manual cars. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it would be ridiculous to claim otherwise, but there’s no escaping the fact that it takes a great deal of time to learn to drive a manual, and a dedicated instructor too. With such a learning curve it’s likely many would be put off ever choosing the ‘MT’ option in the first place.

That’s even assuming they’d chose that option now, but the fact is that when faced with the choice a large majority of players will pick automatic without a second thought. If it’s the complexity that puts them off - and it almost certainly is - then making the option more complicated going is hardly going to entice them in. In a worse case scenario, a great deal of time and resources would get dedicated to a feature used by few.

Then of course there’s the stall, which every driver has experienced, usually at the front of a very large, and very angry, queue of traffic. Good game design practise states that you rarely, if ever, want to punish a player’s mistake so severely that they have to restart the level, but that’s exactly what a stall would do. Such a mistake at the starting line would be impossible to recover from, and it wouldn’t take too many to get a player to give up entirely.

These problems are large, but they’re not without a solution. First and foremost you’d have to give players a good reason to spend time learning your new mechanic. Enticing sports cars, trophies, anything to make their time and effort worthwhile beyond simply giving them personal satisfaction.

Secondly you’d have to tech them, and teach them well. An in depth tutorial would be a must, as would stabilisers for when the player heads out into the big wide world. Difficulty levels would influence how easy it is to stall, going from an essentially stall-less easy mode to a more realistic hard mode. When the teaching is good enough, a game can get even the most mundane player to master the most complex mechanics. There’s nothing to suggest this couldn’t be the case here as well.

If Gran Turismo 6 were to add the clutch to its already dizzying feature-list it would be the biggest step forward in the simulation racing genre since the original Gran Turismo arrived on the original Playstation. It would completely change how people race, reigniting the passion of GT fans, whilst dragging in many that have grown bored with the series. Perhaps most importantly of all though, it would prove once and for all that Gran Turismo is deserving of its crown as ‘the real driving simulator.’

Forza Motorsport? Never heard of it.

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First Picture taken by Delboydread for the EU Playstation Blog

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It seems like every article I write nowadays needs a note affixed explaining why it's been so long coming. Indeed this has been my quietest year yet, punctuated by just a paltry few articles when I've found the energy.

For once though I do actually have a valid excuse. For the past three months I've been travelling, starting in South East Asia before heading on to South America. It was eye-opening, unforgettable, and above all utterly exhausting. Somewhat intentionally I thus haven't touched anything more technologically advanced than a digital camera since the beginning of June.

I missed games, of course I did, and more than once I couldn't help but be reminded of the Legend of Zelda as I gazed upon a secluded waterfall or patch of forest. I'm at peace with leaving those times behind me now, and I'm eager to catch up on all I missed out on, the games, the news, and of course, E3. Somewhere along the way I'll hopefully even write an article or two.

So in summary, I'm not sorry I left, but I'm glad to be back.

The Conduit 2 and Pointy Shooters

2011-05-19T10:08:00.000+01:00

As is the case with many of the other games I think about nowadays, the Conduit 2 interests me not because of how it works, but because of how it doesn’t. Apart from its stale and unambitious design decisions - which I’ll admit, wouldn’t make for a good article at all - it suffers from much the same problem as many other shooters on the Wii; it simply doesn’t feel right.

This in itself isn’t much of a surprise. The problem of how to get as established a genre as the first-person (or indeed third-person) shooter working with the WiiMote and Move isn’t one that any developer has yet been able to solve, and High Voltage don’t seem to have brought any new thinking to the table in this regard. Infinitely customisable control schemes are all very well, but I hardly think throwing the problem into consumers hands is a valid solution.

Perhaps though I’m getting too ahead of myself. What exactly is the problem with the pointer-controller (henceforth used to refer to both the WiiMote and the Move)? First comes a problem of resting position. If you’re using a traditional dual-analogue control scheme and have no need to aim at any point in time, simply take your thumb off the right analogue stick. Through the magic of modern manufacturing you’ll find the stick returns to its resting position, and you no longer need to worry about your current view until you need to change it of course. With a pointer-controller you need to make a conscious effort to keep your view centralised, which over anything other than the shortest of periods is a complete pain. Lose concentration for even a small amount of time and you’ll find your view drifting as the cursor reaches the edge of the screen.

The second main problem involves the way you usually target enemies in a shooter. In using analogue sticks you’re controlling both camera and aiming at exactly the same time (since the reticule is always in the centre of the screen) and as such you never need to worry about one or the other too much. Simply get an enemy in the centre of the screen and fire away. However, when using a pointer, you’re having to first frame the enemy within the boarders of the screen, before then aiming at them manually. This is why shooters on the Wii can often feel so inaccurate and sluggish.

The only game to my mind that manages to solve this problem is Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. It’s odd that this should be the case, given that RE4 wasn’t originally designed with the Wii’s control scheme in mind, but at any rate the game’s existing design happened to fit in exactly with how the controller works best.

RE4 works for two reasons. Firstly, it only uses the pointer for aiming, never for camera movement. This gets around the problem of resting position, since when you’re not aiming the cursor essentially does nothing, and won’t change the camera’s orientation at all.

Secondly, because it separates camera movement from aiming, it allows the player to use the analogue stick to frame enemies and then the pointer to aim at them. This separation of function works brilliantly, since you don’t ever have to worry about having to do everything with the WiiMote. Here it’s very much the case that many hands make light work.

It is however, only half true that other developers could use Resident Evil 4’s control scheme for their own games. Capcom’s seminal survival horror title is a unique beast, one that controls unlike most other games out there. It is the very antithesis of a run-and-gun shooter, and as such its solution for the inherent problems with the WiiMote would never transfer into another faster paced experience where the Nunchuk’s analogue stick could never be used for camera in addition to character movement.

What we can take from it though, is a lesson that in order to get a new controller to work we need to change the game itself, in addition to just the usual mix of deadzone’s and other sensitivity settings. Halo - the game many feel was the first first-person shooter to work with a controller - didn’t succeed simply because of the refinement of its controls, but because it was a game whose design diverged significantly from that of most mouse-and-keyboard shooters. It was a much slower game, and one that relied much more on tactical play as opposed to sharp reflexes.

It’s not yet clear how, or even if, a traditional shooter can ever feel completely at home with a pointer-controller. What is clear is that the Conduit series is not the way forward. Rather than wrapping existing shooters in increasingly complex control options, developers should instead think about how they can change the makeup of the shooter itself, and in doing so maybe even move the genre into some much needed uncharted territory.

Portal 2, Puzzle Games, and Thinking Outside of the Box

2011-04-30T21:05:00.000+01:00

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. In terms of traditional game design, a puzzle which forces you to ‘think outside the box’ is not a good thing. Sure it might look quite nice down there as a bullet point on the back of your box, but a game based entirely upon such puzzles is going to end up frustrating and excessively difficult.

So what exactly do we mean when we say a puzzle forces you to think ‘outside of the box’? Usually it means solving a problem in a way such a problem has never been solved before. You might seek to raise tax revenues by lowering taxes (see the Laffer curve) or perhaps get people to drive slower to reduce journey times (think less accidents etc.).

The reason such thinking works in real life is because the real world - in terms of the language of video games at any rate - is entirely procedural, whereas even the most complex games are based around simple rules. What this means in essence is that every solution to a puzzle in a game has to have been programmed in there by the developer.

So you can use the painting to create a platform. Yeah....thanks for letting me know that was possible Jonathan

This is why thinking outside of the box is simply impossible (or at the very least challenging) when within a video game. You’re not thinking outside of the box at all, your trying to think of the obscure solution that’s been programmed in. The term ‘out of the box’ implies creativity, and a refusal to play by the rules. What it actually comes down to is little more than guesswork.

Therein lies the difference between a good and bad puzzle game. A good puzzle game will show you exactly the rules you need to solve every one of its challenges. A bad one will let you stumble across them yourself. If you ever find yourself screaming ‘I had no idea that was even possible!’ after solving a puzzle then you’ve probably experienced this. What distinguishes a good puzzle game from a great one then is how subtly it manages to do this.

This is exactly what makes Portal 2 a fantastic game. It is a game based around a very small number of mechanics, which are each individually taught to you before they’re then combined to create the fiendish puzzles for which the game is now known.

You may not realise it as you play, but Portal 2 is decidedly formulaic in this regard. Each mechanic gets its own puzzle dedicated to it, with no other mechanics around to complicate the learning process. You’re thus forced into working out how this mechanic works before you can proceed, and very little room for misunderstanding is allowed.

This effective teaching strategy is what allows Valve to make the puzzles so complex without having to worry about frustrating the player. They know every player has the tools at their disposal to solve their problems using logic, rather than it being the case that a mechanic needed to be employed that the player didn’t know about.

It’s a mark of just how tightly the game is made that you don’t even notice this is being done until it slips up just the tiniest amount. This moment in my game occurred when I first encountered the white gel. Since it was possible to get through the ‘white gel lesson’ without understanding how it worked, when the time came for me to use it in a ‘real’ puzzle I had little idea what it actually did. As a result it was the only frustrating half hour I experienced with the game.

Portal 2 manages to hit that sweet spot few puzzle games manage to find, hard enough to challenge, but easy enough to keep you from running to GameFaqs (or MyCheats...I guess). This spot is especially hard to find for puzzle games because of the uniqueness of the genre.

If you think about it, you can’t really get better that much better at solving puzzles through practise. If you get chewed up and spat out by a game like Halo, chances are you’re just not quick enough on the trigger, or you need to learn which weapon to use where. Both of these skills are going to get taught to you independently of whether the game takes the time to teach you or not. Get stuck in a puzzle game though, and chances are you’re going to do little more than bang your head against it for a spell.

So it’s a testament to the design talent at Valve that it manages this balancing act with such effortlessness. Portal 2 might be hilarious, atmospheric, and damn good looking, but at it’s core it’s an insanely polished puzzle game that’s impossible not to complete.

Dear Difficulty

2011-03-09T15:15:00.001Z

Difficulty is entrenched in the DNA of every modern videogame. Back in the days of arcades, where games were sold by the life, difficulty was needed to make money. You made your game difficult in order to drain the pockets of your audience. The less time you provided for their quarter, the better.

The time of arcades is now past. Cabinets are slowly but surely being sold off to nostalgic collectors or destroyed altogether. Surely then, the need for difficulty no longer exists? The traditional philosophy behind making money is gone – now the more entertainment time you provide the better.

But we still need it, we still crave the satisfaction of tussling with a game, the sense of accomplishment when we walk out the other side victorious. Whether we like it or not – and we almost certainly do – difficulty is going to be with videogames until Mr. Kotick kills them off completely.

There are two kinds of difficulty though, one which only hardens the player’s resolve in times of crisis, and another which has been known to turn the most serene of individuals into emotional wrecks. The latter is often referred to as ‘cheap’ difficulty; the former I see as being ‘dear.’ What exactly is it that divides the two, and how can games do their bit to safeguard the controllers of the world?

It’s your fault

The appeal of video games, not surprisingly, is rooted in control. Like it or not, control of our lives (our real ones that is) is constantly being wrenched away from us. A petty thief, an incompetent co-worker, an immoral politician, all of these individuals can exhort influence on our lives, often completely without our consent. Sure we have influence, we can vote, or work ourselves off our feet day after day, but in the end these are contributing factors rather than deciding ones.

That’s the difference between the real world and a virtual one. A real world is built upon chaos; a virtual one is built on mathematical rules. If you complete these puzzles correctly and then navigate that series of platforms flawlessly, then without a shadow of a doubt you can save the world, and even rescue your princess/son/cake in the process.

If there’s a point here it’s that failure needs to make sense, and this means making any immanent failure apparent to the player. Projectiles from an unseen foe, invisible traps, all of these things take control of the protagonist’s fate away from the player, and invariably harm the experience. No one likes to die, but its more bearable when you know it’s your fault.

Treat others as you wish to be treated

Nothing feels like a kick in the crotch more than when you manage to get completely decimated by an enemy. This can happen quite a bit in Bayonetta, a game I happen to be particularly fond of. It’s almost criminally easy to get caught by a lightening fast uppercut, and spend upwards of thirty seconds in the air, being batted backwards and forwards with very little regard for your own safety.

Given a little practice though, the situation will be entirely reversed, and you can spend literally minutes knocking an enemy senseless whilst it struggles to find its way back down to earth. The rules governing both Bayonetta and her opponents are largely identical; so anything that can be done to you can be returned in due course. In other words the bigger the punishment you go through, the sweeter the retribution will be.

This rule also covers any environmental damage that may occur to your character. If an enemy boss emits a wave attack, this should affect other enemies just as much as it does you. If ledges exist which you can fall down, then your opponents need to face exactly the same risk.

Making this a priority means making a game which feels difficult, but never unfairly difficult; a fact which will go a long way in frustrating your players.

It’s Not a Numbers Game

Spending ages whittling down the health of a single enemy is rarely much fun, especially when it’s not your skill but your patience that’s being tested. Equally, being bombarded with dozens of enemies isn’t fun either. Despite this, increasing enemy numbers and hit points is a primary method used by developers to increase difficulty.

If players choose to run through a game on a higher difficulty, you can be fairly certain they’ve already beaten the game on a less punishing difficulty. Unless they’re the kind of person who likes to ramp up every game to insane on their first playthrough – a problem easy solved with unlockable difficulty levels - they’re probably looking for something a little different for their second time.

Different enemies, player handicaps, alternate mission objectives, all of these things force the player to engage with the game differently in ways beyond simply being more cautious. If your audience are actually invested enough in your game to dive straight back in then you better serve up something new.

In a Perfect World

Were we to don our utopian hats for a moment and peer into the future, we might look for one devoid of difficulty levels entirely. After all, the thing which separates people who play on different settings is likely not that they wish to be punished more or less, but that they’re that little more accomplished at games, and really want the same level of challenge as everyone else.

It’s not too difficult to imagine how a difficulty-less game might work. It starts every player on a standard difficulty, taking stock of the amount of damage and time they take during each level. At the end, a nifty little script gets run to see if they’re finding the game too easy or too hard; and then silently moves the slider one way or t’other.

The first Devil May Cry did this, but in a very obtuse way. If you died too much within the first few levels, a screen would pop up asking if you might like to play on ‘Easy’. You never accepted this help though, because you were too proud, instead opting to die dozens of times in your frantic search for ‘coolitude.’

Such a system would be hard to implement without producing a constantly fluctuating difficulty curve, but it’s a topic worth mulling over at any rate. At a point in time where so many get so irate at the ‘dumbing down’ of modern games, putting more effort into modes just for them might be a way to keep an audience engaged that would otherwise leave for greener pastures.

At any rate it’s worth noting my first two suggestions apply whether difficulty levels exist or not.

Difficulty is neither a bad nor a good thing, the deciding factor is always down to the quality of the game. For anyone –let alone a blogger with no design experience - to claim the existence of an easy solution would be naive at best, but that’s not to say that thinking just that little more about such a staple of game design wouldn’t reap dividends.

Review Graphs

2011-03-06T20:22:00.000Z

Review scores have come under their fair share of scrutiny over the years. Many have claimed that any attempt to distil a complex opinion expressed over hundreds of words into a single number is inevitably going to lose a great deal in translation. Others take issue with the way publishers have reportedly been using Metacritic scores to determine a development studio's salary bonuses.

Numerical scores aren't going anywhere any time soon; they fulfil simply too many useful functions – chief among them being the automatic ranking of every game an outlet ever reviews. That being the case, would it not be beneficial to look at how scores can be improved, rather than simply threatening to eliminate them entirely?

For example, a review score is a very constant identifier of a game's overall merit, but as we all know, many games will waver in quality over time. Even the greatest games will trip up now and again, and even the worst will contain flashes of brilliance.

Let's start then, with a simple graph.

On the X (horizontal) axis we have the game's playtime, and on the Y (vertical) axis we have the game's relative score. Note here the use of the word relative. It would of course be ridiculous to claim that any review score has an absolute value. Thus, in terms of our charts, any position given, is given relative to those surrounding it.

Tangent time: a similar tactic is used in the field of Economics. Graphs showing the relative profits given by differing levels of production exist not to show a company the exact level which will grant them maximum profit, but instead in which general direction they should expect prices, costs etc to move should any one of the variables change. So we know that if we break up a water supplier (a natural monopoly) into several smaller companies, prices will rise, but we don't know by how much. Understanding this isn't really important in this context though, so don't think about it too much.

So what categories would our favourite games fall into?

An obvious first choice is 'The Grower'. Its review graph is shown below.

As you may have guessed, a grower is a game which well...grows on you. It starts off a little slowly, perhaps not explaining itself too well, or maybe just bombarding you with unfamiliar gameplay elements. Over time though you grow accustomed to its mechanics and intricacies, and end the game on a fantastic high.

Ocarina of Time filled this description perfectly for me. Since it was the first Legend of Zelda game I'd ever touched, playing through the opening few areas was a little daunting. I didn't understand very basic concepts such as needing to use a dungeon's new item to defeat its boss, and I found its lack of hand-holding completely at odds with my modern gaming sensibilities.

As time passed I began to lose myself in it. Dungeon layouts started to make sense, and I no longer needed to religiously run to Gamefaqs when an area stumped me. There were still moments of frustration as I progressed, but these all but disappeared by the time I came to rescue that poor Zelda.

Similar to the grower is the 'Penny-Dropper' shown below.

You'll notice that the general trend in the graph is the same, albeit far more severe. A penny-dropper is a game that all makes sense in an instant. Until that point it's very easy to give up, very easy to walk away with the knowledge that you made the right choice. You'd be missing out of course, as the second half of the graph so clearly shows, but that doesn't exactly make your decision wrong.

I can't help but think of Final Fantasy XIII when I think of this review graph, such was its unrelenting mediocrity for its first dozen hours. When the world opens up, when the combat system is finally unlocked, the game becomes good, even great, but that's not to say die hard fans won't agree the first part of the game comes close to being not worth the trouble.

On the more negative end of the spectrum we have 'The Gimmick', a game which bases its entire premise on a single mechanic, which it then manages to completely squander, and run into the ground through sheer repetition. Here's a graph.

I think Fracture falls into this category without much contention. Few would argue that basing your game around the ability to raise and lower terrain is necessarily a bad thing. In fact if Valve were to turn around tomorrow and announce its inclusion as a puzzle mechanic in Portal 2 you'd be utterly stocked to play with it. The problem with Fracture though was that – quite apart from the fact the rest of the game was beyond mediocre – it really failed to do anything new with this neat idea beyond the first level.

Fracture then, was a gimmicky game based around a gimmick. A traditional review would give little credit to such a game, since clearly a reviewer is going to have very little of his or her initial excitement left by the end of the game. Does the initial idea deserve some credit though? Probably.

Graph-porn aside, there's an underlying question here that needs answering. What would the perfect game look like? You could claim that the perfect game would look a little like this.

You might even go a little further, and claim that it should leave you wanting more.

The truth is though, that there is no perfect game, and this is something that review scores have managed to magnificently ignore over the years. A 10 score is so loaded I'd be scared to even stamp it at the bottom of a page, such is the weight and expectation such a label carries. A number requires so much justification, and then so much interpretation at the reader's end. One man's perfect arc might be another's hump.

We try and claim that readers should make their purchases based upon the content of reviews rather than the scores, but this really ignores the reason for scores being there in the first place. Reviews are dense pieces of text, with multiple pieces of information within each paragraph. It's impossible to recite every pro and con of a game after reading a review, and then you have to consider the fact that you'll read dozens of reviews over just one holiday period.

Easy to parse summaries are an essential part of games journalism, not because their audience are juvenile or stupid, but because there's far more factors which can affect your potential enjoyment of a game than your average album, not to mention the fact that the cost is that much higher.

So maybe, rather than dismissing the whole concept of scores entirely, we should be trying to work out how we can evolve them as a language. At the very least we can use them as a means to think about our favourite games a little differently.

So what games do you reckon would fit into the categories laid out above? Better still, are there any graphs I've missed altogether? Let me know in the comments below.

The Fight for the Shooter Crown: Halo vs Call of Duty

2011-02-28T21:51:00.000Z

Halo: Reach is a game in which you, an anonymous soldier, make your way through linear levels from a generally first person perspective. Your primary interaction with the world around you is through the barrel of a gun, which is handy because everything wants to kill you. Sometimes you come across men that want to kill things that want to kill you. This makes them your friends. You reach the end, credits roll, and then you head online to do much the same thing without the linearity.

Call of Duty is a game in which you, a largely anonymous soldier, make your way through linear levels from a first person perspective. Your primary interaction with the world around you is through the barrel of a gun, which is handy because everything wants to kill you. Sometimes you come across men that want to kill men that want to kill you. This makes them your friends. You reach the end, people rap, and then you head online to do much the same thing without the linearity.

Quantitively then, the two games seem identical, divided only by setting and a sales margin of $160 million at their last releases, but as anyone who’s played the two games will tell you, they’re both very different experiences. Is it possible to work out exactly how? Could doing so give us a new insight into which is the better game?

Call of Duty is in many respects a much faster game then Halo. Part of this is the nature of the engine: the former runs at 60 frames per second and the latter just 30, but it’s mostly to do with just how quickly the two protagonists get around the world. Call of Duty makes the sprint button an essential part of any player’s arsenal. When you’re not killing, the game teaches you very early on, you need to be sprinting. In contrast, Reach was the first Halo game to include a sprint button at all.

Halo is a much slower game by design, a choice that allowed it to succeed when console shooters were in their infancy. Without the precision of a mouse, a console game needed to be much slower, and have much more auto-aim to allow players to feel on top of the situation.

Call of Duty manages to be much faster because it is at once much more generous and much more subtle with its auto-aim. Whenever you look down your iron-sights the game is searching for a target nearby to lock your curser to, and when it does so you’ll likely not notice because of the guns animation as it fills the screen. Without a similar solution, Halo cannot hope to be as fast without being impossible, or frustrating to play.

It’s not just this that makes its pace quicker though, enemies will also take far fewer shots before eating it. It’s instantly gratifying, you line up a soldier in your sights, and within a second of pulling the trigger he’s down on the floor. Halo refuses to let you off that easily, putting enemies in your way which will take several rounds to down. It forces you to think about where you’re going to hide yourself in the meantime, since the act of murder will leave you exposed to their comrades for a far greater length of time.

It seems like a snobbish remark sure, but Halo does force you to think more whilst you play. It’s not a matter of just getting the enemy into your sights, but about positioning yourself whilst you do so in such a way so as to not get yourself serious dead in the process. It’s not a shooting gallery, it’s a warzone.

For the most part you’re not thinking about ammunition in Call of Duty. You start a level with a weapon, and its unlikely you’ll ever really need to put it down. This leads to a lack of variety, since you can pretty much play the whole game the same way if you want to. There’s no incentive to suddenly start hanging back, or get up really close mid mission, because with the same weapon there’s no real need to.

Halo always starts you out with the same two weapons, but it pretty much refuses to ever lay out enough ammo for you to complete a mission with just them. At some point your going to run dry, and its up to you to frantically loot an enemy’s body for salvation. Once this happens you might have to completely alter the way you play, you might have to keep very close with a shotgun, or hold back to compensate for a rifle’s slow firing speed. You don’t customize the game to best suit your play style, you’re the one that’s forced to change.

Call of Duty is a repetitive game that hides this with very well produced set pieces. Halo on the other hand has more variety in its moment to moment gameplay, but has less stand out moments. Both are great games, but one wow’s audiences with its budget, whilst the other does so with rock solid design.

So really it comes down to what you want to praise, a game made great from budget born out of the success of its predecessors, or a title made by some of the most genuinely talented designers in the industry (admittedly yes, with a quite large budget). A game designed to empower you every step of the way as you put in minimal thought, or a game which hides its enjoyment until you put in the effort.

Professional reviewers are tied to a requirement to state objectively which is more fun, and I’m thankful I’m not them because frankly; Halo: Reach is the better made game.

Keeping Your Game: The Threat of the Trade In

2011-02-24T21:34:00.000Z

Yesterday I returned to Bayonetta, a game which I consider to be one of the best ever made, and certainly the best to come out last year. I did not return to it because I’ve not finished it, nor did I do so out of sheer boredom. No, I returned to it because even though my total playtime stands at 30 hours and I’ve finished it three times, there are still new features of the game to explore, new weapons to unlock, and new scenarios to complete.

The war between publishers and retailers is a well-documented, and yet strangely ironic one. Publishers love the fact that retailers sell their games, but they’re not so keen on retailers annoying habit of reselling games. The publisher gets paid once, the retailer twice or more. What we’re left with is a conflict that’s still being fought today.

There are, as I see it, two solutions to the issue currently circulating in the industry. The first is ‘online passes’, a strategy mainly employed by EA. Games using this feature require a code to be entered in order to access their online portion. This code is free but, and here’s the catch – only if you buy the game new. In effect, the requirement of an online pass will increase the cost of a pre-owned game by a considerable margin. Retailers are thus forced to cut their profit margins if they want to keep the price of a second hand game below that of a new one.

The second trend is that of online components, the idea being that these will keep people playing for twelve months until the next game in the series rolls around. The thinking here is sound, but the execution is more than often lacking. After all, a tacked-on multiplayer component is in most cases worse than none at all. The games that people will play for months on end are invariably the ones designed with a multiplayer focus in mind, and as such this approach is ill-advised in games designed for solo play.

These approaches are worth mentioning because their existence shows how much publishers are worrying about the problem, a problem which Bayonetta seems to have solved in a way which is neither morally dubious nor costly, but simply involves some clever game design.

For Bayonetta may be tough as nails on its two higher difficulty levels, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. I’m not saying it’s rewarding in a rather circular ‘rewarding because it’s so difficult’ sort of way, but that quite literally the rewards it doles out are pretty sweet, new characters and weapons that actually have uses in the game, lightabers as unlocks, that sort of thing.

These rewards are certainly neat, but would be worthless if you’d already beaten everything the game had to offer. This is simply not the case here, with side events a plenty that actually let you use those rings you’ve spent hours working towards. It’s strange to think that this is a design choice that seems to have eluded other developers in the past. Completing everything GTA Vice City had to offer left you with a troupe of bodyguards to wreck havoc with, but with nothing more to challenge you, they felt a little redundant.

It’s also very helpful that Platinum Games chose to put more effort into difficulty than the usual ‘more hit points for enemies and less for yourself’ fare. Higher difficulty levels do mean these things in Bayonetta of course, but they also mean different enemies altogether, and even the removal of slow motion – a significant part of your arsenal - on extreme.

One thing the game doesn’t do is telegraph these highly desirable items - at all. It would have been criminally easy for me to miss then entirely, and retire Bayonetta to the shelf permanently. Some may like keeping these sorts of rewards as a surprise, but I’d argue that 90% of the people who end up unlocking them will have seen them on the internet before they bother doing so. Show me the item, tell me what it does, and then tell me how to get it. Get your marketing department involved if you have to, but make me want it.

As much as I’m picking up on these design choices, the simple truth might unfortunately be that I want to return to this one game over and over primarily because it’s good. Sure, it’s nice to know I’m working towards a great payoff, but I care about it because I’m already invested in the game.

So although I’d love to see unlocks dropped into every game this side of Tetris, it might be the case that in order to prevent people from trading in, you might just have to make better games. All the unlocks in the world wouldn’t stop you from trading in Superman 64, but then again, neither would online multiplayer. If you find a way of telling that to quick-fix obsessed executives though, then please get in contact.

Still, imagine Superman with a lightsaber and tell me that wouldn’t be sweet.

How Gaming Got me into Cambridge University

2011-02-15T12:28:00.000Z

I lied in my title. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. Games didn’t get me into Cambridge. I didn’t turn up as an applicant, yell “Do a barrel roll!” and proceed to wait patiently for my letter of acceptance. Although I may not have gone as far as yelling memes in my interview, I certainly mentioned video games. Looking back, I can’t help but think how invaluable this was at setting me apart from everyone else. After all it’s hard to believe the two professors interviewing people for Political Science turned to one another at the day’s end and said; “Hey, remember that one guy who talked about Politics? He was swell.”

Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself though. Let me explain.

At the beginning of December every year hundreds if not thousand of 18- and 19-year-olds flock to Cambridge to interview for a place at its prestigious university. This task is hardly the start of their ordeal — the past four months have been fraught with anxiety as the preparation for these interviews takes over, and students spend hours of personal statements designed to convince the university of their worthiness of a place.

Somehow I'd managed to secure myself an interview. Normally, interviewees will have a half dozen top grades at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education, or the compulsory exams every British child takes at the age of 16). I had just two.

I was surrounded by students from some of the best schools in the country. The first girl I spoke to had come from a school formally attended by the now deputy prime-minister Nick Clegg. At lunch, I sat with someone who'd attended a school where every single lesson was taught in French. Despite how friendly literally everyone there was, it was hard to not feel like something of an outsider.

The main event of any prospective candidate's day at Cambridge is the interview itself. This involves speaking to two or more professors of your subject. Doing a little background reading around your interviewers beforehand is advised, but absolutely terrifying. Mine were both incredibly well regarded academics in their fields, and I was fast becoming very intimidated at the prospect of having to prove my worth to them.

In addition to your academic background, Cambridge also likes to find out about your personality, and it was this that most terrified me. I had an image in my mind of what most people would be interest in: theatre perhaps, or maybe classical music. I, on the other hand, would rather spend an evening working my way through one of Mario's more fiendish levels. The only hobby of mine I'm truly proud of is writing, and so, even though I hoped I wouldn't get asked about it, I included it in my personal statement.

Two options crossed my mind when the inevitable question arose in the interview, “So what exactly do you write about?”

I could lie, pretend that I blog about something much more culturally accepted, perhaps films, or maybe politics. This would be risky. The next few questions would almost certainly revolve around my answer to this one, and unless I could do some quick lying (hint: I couldn't) I was going to trip up quickly and painfully. I decided to tell the truth, “To be honest, I do a lot of writing about video games.”

I shouldn't have been ashamed about admitting this. I know I shouldn't. Video game journalism has never been as good as it is now, with the likes of Randy Smith, Matthew Burns, Clint Hocking, and hundreds of talented Bitmob posters critiquing games in ways which would have been impossible just five years ago. They didn't know that though. As far as they were likely concerned, video games are, and have always been, nothing more than shallow entertainment, designed and enjoyed solely by children, the socially inept, and the sun-averse. Despite the widespread media attention given to pop games of late, classical games are still relegated to half page 'review' sections, and the occasional scare story in our national papers.

Their disappointment was obvious when they heard my response, but the line of questioning continued, if not out of their own curiosity the due to merely the requirement of the situation. At first, they seemed utterly perplexed by the idea. What could, they wondered aloud, anyone have to write about video games? I almost struggled to answer the question, its potential answers being as numerous as they are. There're the discussions on game design philosophy that go on for one, or the personal stories of peoples lives entwined with gaming. Would it be worth mentioning the 'games as art' debate (one which may have grown stale to anyone within the industry but might still interest an outsider)?

As is always the case though, all of these tropics flew right out of my mind the moment the question was asked, leaving me to stutter out a brief reply about how games can be critiqued in much the same way as books or film.

Amazingly, and against all my expectations, their interest remained. They asked for specific example, so I told them about Ico. They pressed further and I waxed lyrical about the wonders of blogs for bringing about so much aggressive debate.

The interview was soon over. We rose, shook hands and parted, but not before exchanging words of thanks.

“Thank you for the education,” one of them said.

“Well thank you for not dismissing it as a juvenile hobby.”

I don't know if there's a moral to this story. Maybe I'm still utterly floored after getting a place and wanted to perform the Internet version of the celebratory jump, or maybe it’s simply because over these past few months I’ve been able to play less, and thus have less to write about. Maybe though, the fact that two academics were willing to sit and have a serious discussion about video games has filled me with a sort of confidence that I hope others can share. Maybe the next time a strange asks what I like to do in my spare time I'll proudly reply, “I like to write about video games.”

2011 Takes the Stage

2011-01-29T17:44:00.002Z

Until I actually sat down to write this list I wasn't too excited about 2011 in gaming. There's a palpable sense this year (for me at any rate) of a generation that's fallen into a stride, a generation that's found the boundary of what modern consoles can do, and is quite happy playing within them.

I'll admit now that I still hold this view, but whereas before I was frustrated by a lack of any truly breathtaking titles, now, after having a look over the next twelve months, I'm eager to see the polish sticking to what you know can bring.

Killzone 3 is a perfect example of this. We've had waggle-enabled shooters almost since the Wii first appeared, but whilst many of these have certainly functioned, they’ve never truly been able to make a case for the replacement of the gamepad.

Killzone could change all this. By virtue of its existence as Sony's flagship shooter, it's hard not to get the feeling that Guerilla has received more than its fair share of calls from its publisher stressing the importance of well-implemented Move support. We'll probably get a good idea of the extent of their success as soon as team Move faces off against team Dualshock in the online arena, but even if this ratio falls short, at least other developers will be able to build upon these mistakes.

For the record; as far as I'm concerned the rest of that game looks like generic, ultra-violent garbage. I don't see that melee attacks involving shoving thumbs through an enemy's eyes is something any game should be proud of including, and I resent being treated like I'm twelve years old by a game's marketing material.

The opposite is true of LA Noire, the detective thriller that's been a long time coming from Team Bondi. In true Rockstar fashion all trailers thus far have been completely devoid of actual gameplay, which really speak to both the originality of the setting as well as the pedigree of this now legendary publisher.

As far as this writer is concerned the team behind LA Noire could dress Niko Belic in a suit and trilby and push the game's setting back a few decades and I'd be happy The work they're doing with facial animation certainly looks stunning, but whether they pull off such a ground breaking element is another matter entirely. At worst the game will have tried something new with a big budget, which is as good a reason as I need to include it on this list.

The term big-budget seems almost at odds with Journey, the next game from Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany. Details are spare on this idyllic piece, but what we do know is that it'll focus around a lone soul's journey (ah? See what they did there) towards a tower. Chen is also eager to make you feel small and insignificant, whatever that means...

Really though the reason I'm including Journey on this list is because of its art style. I mean just look at it...

I mean really look.

Go on, just once more for luck.

It would be almost criminal to lavish praise on le arte farte without mentioning Team Ico, who manage to not only indulge in the beauty so many other developers seem to be afraid to touch, whilst also capturing the hearts of even the most vehemently classical gamers.

The Last Guardian looks to build upon these themes, in a way which quite neatly builds upon the achievements of their first two games. Your companion this time around is a huge griffin-like monster who looks to be a nice cross between the beautiful-yet-useless Yorda and the utterly dependable but visually uninteresting Argo.

This year also sees the return of Team Ico's previous two titles, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus, repackaged into a single HD collection. Milking the franchise it may be, but it's hard to decline the offer of revisiting two of the last generation's greatest games, which may have in the process gotten a facelift far greater than the HD shunt promised by its title.

As for my most anticipated game though, nothing comes close to Portal 2. Though I'd be crazy not to be frothing at the mouth over more of one of the funniest, original, and downright clever titles ever released, it's not actually the single player that I'm most eager to get into. The original Portal was my go-to for showing off games to the unconverted. It was so far from what people generally assume video games to be that it became an easy target to point toward whenever the whole 'waste of time' argument reared its ugly head.

Previously I'd have to sit patiently whilst friends cautiously made their way though an entirely new experience, but with the second game's introspection of co-op I can quite literally hold their hand as they play.

My excitement for co-op is so great that it's almost easy to forget that Portal 2 will push PS3 and PC players together in a way never seen before, with its utilisation of Steamworks. If playing multiplayer cross-platform works as well as console monogamous play then only a fool would assume Portal 2 will be the only game to do so.

As much as I love spouting hyperbole about games based purely upon past releases and previews it's likely the game I end up enjoying most this year hasn't appeared on this list. It might not have even been announced. Such is the beauty of the games industry, that it will always have a surprise or two tucked up its sleeve, ready to blow you away with the meagerest of expectations.

2011, you have the floor. Show us what you can do.

---

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion
coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part
of this, please email him for details.

Other takes:
The Game Fanatics
The Clockwork Manual
Silvercublogger
Zath
Buttonmashing
Game Couch
Gunthera1-gamer

Stuntman, and the Anatomy of the Car Chase

2011-01-09T13:53:00.001Z

It has been remarked by some that Grand Theft Auto 4's best moments were in its car chases. Whilst the game's many intense shoot-outs certainly deserve a mention, it's hard to deny that Rockstar knows how to put together a good chase.

Generally the rule with action sequences in games is that the closer the player feels to failure, the more intense the scene. The moment a player feels safe behind a piece of scenery, or has access to a weapon which destroys the challenge, intensity inevitably drops.

It's important to note here that intensity should not be equated to fun. Undoubtedly, as fans of games such as Ico or The Legend of Zelda can attest to, there is fun to be had whilst proceeding at one's own pace, and likewise those few second proceeding your death in Pacman CE DX are invariably not a fun as when you tuck in to a delicious Ghost-train.

Keeping a sequence genuinely tense for any length of time is a difficult feat to achieve, and in no genre is this more obvious that the car chase.

The car chase is a set-piece so fraught with difficulties so as to present an enormous challenge to even the most adept of developers. Chief among these challenges, to my mind at least, is a sense of speed. They need to be fast to avoid becoming monotonous, but with speed invariably comes an increased difficulty. At high speeds the smallest mistake will send your car careering off the path you had intended for it, prompting a restart and repetition of the previous sequence of events. This is damaging for several reasons, the most important of these simply being boredom on the part of the player.

The appearance of danger is a very difficult trick to achieve. Having explosions and other stimuli happening all around the player's vehicle may seem like a simple feature to include, but there's a difficult balance to be struck before this feels right. If this presents too much danger you risk having the player's fate being taken out of their control, as danger comes at them whilst they're attention is focussed on keeping their car on the road. Too little danger however, and the scene feels cheap. You feel like you're racing through a film set as opposed to an action scene.

Inevitably the question arises of how exactly your going to control all these external factors; the explosions, gunfire and traffic that must be overcome if the player wants to keep up with his or her prey. It's certainly a tempting idea to script out the entire scene, ensuring the difficulty is just right throughout and that everything is optimised for maximum effect. As soon as this section is repeated however, the man behind the curtain is revealed, and events that would have previously had you on the edge of your seat can be seen to be mere charades.

Stuntman may not have been a great game, but it at least found a fantastic way around many of the problems described above. By setting the game not in an action movie, but on the set of one, the game quite literally embraced the fact that it was completely scripted.

It was a hard game, divisively so, but with levels playing out the same way after every restart, the challenge became one of pattern memorisation in addition to skill. The lack of freedom may have been offensive, but the satisfaction upon each level's completion more than made up for it.

Every gamer wants to show off, but most games leave this as an optional extra for the hardcore fans. You could play through Metal Gear Solid 3 whilst making it look amazing, by utilising all the extra features such as poisoning enemies with snakes or distracting them with dirty magazines, but after a certain point you're going to get lazy and just tranquillise everyone in your path (though I'm willing to admit this may just have been me).

It may not have been the ideal solution, but Stuntman would accept nothing less than the optimum run-though. If you didn't scrape that car just so as you passed it, or if you didn't plough through those boxes as you exited the alleyway, then you weren't going to make it through the level.

So yes, Stuntman was unforgiving. It was often infuriating and gave you no freedom at all aside from the freedom to fail. Its achievement though, was that once you'd finally made it through, you were eager to watch back your replay. My question to you then, is how many other games have managed to do that?

In Defence of Cutscenes (Eventually)

2010-11-21T16:07:00.000Z

Any narratalogical purist will vehemently insist that there should be no separation between protagonist and player. Every shot, every step, and every movement of the head should originate from the player and the player alone. In return the protagonist acts as a vessel for the player, their experiences merge and, if done well, the player becomes completely immersed in the game world.

As clichéd as it's become to mention Half Life in an article like this, it's worth doing since it's such an absolutest in this regard. It's hard to claim Freeman is a character at all such is the level of control the player has over him.

At first glance this approach to storytelling seems ideal. After all if we wanted to watch someone else's story, would we not just watch a movie? It's jarring to have choices made outside of your control and in effect we become what I can only think to describe as a fourth person to proceedings; too in control to be a third, and yet a little too impotent to truly be first.

The more you think about it however, the more you realise how few games actually go down this route. Half Life and Bioshock are literally the only two recent examples I can bring to mind (although of course feel free to bring up more in the comments). Some might argue that their rarity is as a result of a deficiency in a developer's skill, but in this writer's opinion the problem is actually far deeper.

Having a protagonist which can only act through the will of the player is constricting because it doesn't allow for a very strong lead character. You're always following someone else's orders, always a part of a group, but never in control of its direction. It would be impossible for a game to allow you to do anything you wanted, and thus when it can't take control away from the player and place it in the hands of a protagonist it's forced to delegate this to an NPC. It limits storytelling in a medium which already struggles to weave unique tales of its own.

More quantitatively it also forces games to be experienced from a first person perspective. This might seem like an odd statement to make at first, so allow me to explain. Utilising a third person perspective involves having a character on screen, this much is obvious. This character needs to react to the world around it, the events that it sees, and the feelings that it has. It needs to shiver when it's cold, gasp when it's surprised, and get fidgety when you leave it stationary for too long.

If it doesn't do these things it breaks the immersion. The first Dead Space struggled with this a great deal. Isaac Clarke what a completely human controlled protagonist, which meant that when he started seeing apparitions of his girlfriend he didn't respond at all. The fact that it left me as a player confused was perhaps intentional, but it didn't change the fact that at these moments it just looked plain weird.

Conversely the moment it does do these things you have an action which the protagonist is performing which did not originate from the player's control. The protagonist becomes a character in his own right, and no matter how small an action, that fundamentally alters the structure of the narrative. A 'dual-protagonist' has been created, if you'll excuse the attempt at phrase-coining.

Once a dual-protagonist exists, does this then excuse the use of cutscenes? After all, the character is already acting outside of your control, so would them doing any more be crossing any other lines? Since no matter how hard you try there's going to be both a player and a protagonist as separate entities, why not reap all the benefits of having control over the pacing and presentation of a storytelling moment.

I'd also personally be very interested in a game which visibly runs with this trait, by perhaps having a protagonist who's aware of the fact he has no control over his own actions. Such a game has the potential to be very comic, with a character who's taken places by the player whilst simultaneously through dialogue making his opposition to this very clear. There's more to be done with this idea, and I'd love to see it explored.

So does it bother you when a character makes choices which are beyond your control, or are you prepared to live with it if it leads to a better story?

Comment like your lives depended on it people!

The Video Game Library

2010-11-09T22:11:00.001Z

Paul Wheatley, a specialist in digital preservation at the British Library, expressed an interest this week in preserving our video gaming heritage. “At the very least,” he said, “I would like the British Library to provide support to the NVA based on this digital preservation expertise and I'm hoping we can collaborate further."

The implication here is a valid one; we simply don't do enough as an industry to preserve our past. The arrival of a new hardware cycle is all it takes for us to lose legitimate access to thousands of games which, for the most part, won't ever be 'legally' available again.

Take Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as an example. The game is a classic, one of the greatest to ever appear on the Playstation, and yet Europeans are stuck with a single option if they want to experience it once again. They must get their hands on an emulator with no official support, and download a disk image from a dark corner of the internet. This is a best case scenario, other games, such as the acclaimed Rogue Squadron for the Nintendo 64 aren't yet playable by this means.

The potential to dig out all the old hardware is there of course, but this becomes significantly harder when the various equipment necessary hasn't been on store shelves in a good long while. Even when people do put in the effort to do everything above board, their money is unlikely to to go anywhere near the people that poured their heart and soul into the game.

Teams of passionate individuals who work in their spare time on various console emulators are the unsung heroes of our industry. These people don't get paid (for the most part), they don't get supported, and every step they make is an uphill struggle against the closed hardware the majority of our games now run on. It is simply ridiculous that a commercialised industry for emulating old consoles doesn't exist.

The Wii's Virtual Console, as well as the inclusion of original Playstation games on the Playstation Network, is a noble effort indeed, but in the grand scheme of things it's little more than a drop in the ocean. Work to make old games available through this service has been hampered by bureaucracy at every turn, bringing serious doubt to the financial viability of each inclusion.

The final nail in the coffin is that the proportion of the gaming audience interested in playing ten or even five year old games is going to be tiny compared to the total gaming market as it now stands, and that's just for the blockbusters of yesteryear. Finding anyone interested in playing, let alone paying for AeroWings for the Dreamcast is a business endeavour only a fool would embark upon.

The capitalists amongst you might argue that this should be the end of the discussion; that if there's not enough demand to fund such work then it shouldn't be done. You have a point of course, but just because the majority of people aren't interested in something, doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. After all, the popularity of sites such as Gamespot and IGN shows us that most people want nothing to do with anything beyond news, reviews, and previews from their video gaming journalism but that doesn't mean we're wasting our time here at Bitmob.

My argument here is not that I want access to every retro game in order to play and enjoy them, but that it's important for our history to be able to. There aren't going to be many games made today that people will still want to play in fifty years, but that doesn't mean that they won't have contributed a great deal to the industry as a whole.

Take kill.switch as an example. When it was released it was a pretty standard third-person shooter with a nifty little thing called a 'cover mechanic'. It was fun, but nothing special, not special enough to warrant an HD re-release at any rate. Nowadays, with the inclusion of the cover-mechanic in dozens of games this generation, could anyone really claim that kill.switch wasn't a milestone?

The solution then - as I see it - is government intervention. If Sony and Nintendo's eagerness to fill their retro catalogues is anything to go by, there simply isn't enough financial incentive for any private individual to go about archiving old games. It thus becomes necessary for the government to step in and do the tasks that we may not want to pay for, but certainly need.

On its most basic level this could mean collecting together physical copies of games as they're released, as well as the hardware they run on, and storing them in a library of sorts, for gaming historians to peruse at their leisure.

Taking this idea step further however, in a perfect world anyone could access this library at any time from the comfort of their own home. Emulator teams need to be officially supported, and disk images made available by legitimate means. Some sort of public domain would be needed here, a stipulation that after a game has been out of print for ten years or so (so as to not harm present day sales), then the government should be free to force publishers to make it's source code available online.

This idea is utopian I'll admit. After all we haven't even been able to digitise the public libraries of the world yet, and those are all made up of books likely to take up a couple of megabytes at most in virtual form. Current copyright laws would also prove troublesome, since the lawyers wouldn't be too happy with all this information going out for free.

In reality, it's probably a completely impossible proposition to expect companies to make their back catalogues available for free, even with an unlikely government push behind the movement. As much as I hate to say it, thousands of titles will likely never be legitimately available again.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't try and change things now. Perhaps legislation could be enacted to force games made from now on to be publicly released after they've gone out of print, ensuring that copyright documents written today are aware of this eventuality. It wouldn't do much for the hundreds of Dreamcast games that are impossible to find today, but it'd certainly be a start.

It seems like a small issue currently, but with console hardware getting as complicated as it is, it's only going to get harder and harder for emulator teams as time goes on. We need to start seriously thinking about video game libraries now, because with every year that goes by more and more games are released that could potentially be lost. In all likelihood, the issue isn't going to become apparent until it's far too late.

Hey! You Spilled some RPG in my Shooter!

2010-10-31T16:03:00.000Z

Is Ratchet and Clank a platformer or a third-person shooter? Is Prince of Persia an action game or a platformer? Is Mass Effect a shooter or an RPG?

The above three examples may all have obvious answers, but it's hard to deny that for some their appeal will be pretty equally split across the two genres. Though many love the role-playing aspects of the first Mass Effect, it's clear that there was enough interest in its more action-oriented segments to warrant their more prominent role in the second instalment. You may have approached Ratchet and Clank for some light-hearted platforming, but others may have been attracted to the games for the weapons they let you command.

Splitting a game across genres may, to some, seem like a cash-in of sorts. Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket by trying to appeal to just stealth-action game fans with your tale of subterfuge and political intrigue, why not work in some strategy elements to try and cash in on that X-Com loving crowd? Genre-splitting, if done well, will broaden a game's appeal, brining in an audience that otherwise wouldn't have touched it, and maybe even introduce a new genre to them in the process.

It wasn't always like this. Super Mario Bros never let you hop into a warthog for a brief vehicular segment, and nor did Bill and Lance find their skills magically 'levelled up' at the end of each stage of Contra.

Over time though, things changed. Our platforming heroes soon found themselves unable to simply squash enemies, but instead needed swords, guns, and an ever-increasing array of special moves to turn their foes into dust. Soldiers suddenly discovered the lairs of their nemesis' to be filled with gaps and lava pits only Mario had previously had to brave. Nowadays you can't think about releasing an online shooter without some sort of progression after each match.

No one ever sat down to try and make this happen. Like most things it just naturally evolved out of a desire to please more people, more of the time. Cherry picking your features from a plethora of different genres allows for a much broader experience, whilst filtering out the genre-staples some might take a disliking to.

So long as you don't half-ass the inclusion of these features, there's very little scope for them to harm the overall experience.

Let's put on our tin-foil hats for a moment here and consider this: has the industry's desire to do everything held developers back from their true potential?

Imagine for a moment that Super Mario Bros 1, 2 and 3 never existed. Super Mario World never became the best launch game ever, and as for Super Mario 64? Don't get me started. With the entire Mario legacy erased, would Super Mario Galaxy have been instantly green-lit?

The obvious answer is yes, of course it would have been. It is in the eyes of many the definitive platformer of this generation, but if we look at it from a revenue-conscious publisher's perspective, does it really seem as easy a sell?

For one it's cute, almost too cute. That rules out the teenage crowd. There's no deep-involving storyline here, which limits the potential for sequels. How does this guy fight? He jumps on mushrooms?! Get real!

I'm exaggerating here to prove a point, but I think there's something to this. Super Mario Galaxy is a phenomenal game because it takes one genre and pushes it as far as it will possibly go. It doesn't even glance at what it's competition is doing, because it's so focussed on getting the maximum about of depth out of Mario's ability to run and jump. The result is awe-inspiring, a game which doesn't just leave its contemporaries in the dust, but makes us wonder what they'd been doing for ten years.

Genre-splitting is a wonderful thing. It broadens a potential audience, deepens games, and nine times out of ten makes them better as a result, but there's a value to specialisation, and it's one we shouldn't forget any time soon.

Should Developers Listen to Their Fans?

2010-10-13T19:39:00.001+01:00

You'd be forgiven for thinking that had the deafening sound of applause not erupted at that exact moment then there would have been an audible sigh of relief from the audience. Here we were, guests at the prestigious BAFTA headquarters, being given a lecture by a man most of the internet, it would seem, wants dead.

Guy Cocker, editor at Gamespot UK, and our host for the evening, turned to his interviewee and smiled.

“Who'd have thought we'd get through an entire Q+A session without a single mention of DMC?”

I couldn't help but agree with him.

Announced at this year's Tokyo Games Show, the next entry in the Devil May Cry series has divided opinion. An initial teaser trailer, and a few meagre screenshots are all that have been publicly released, but already there's the smell of boycott in the air. The criticism, as it always does in these situations, started with something major; Dante, people complained, is no longer Dante.

These people have a point. Gone is the white-haired male lead we once knew, replaced by a brunette imposter who seems to have stumbled across his namesake's wardrobe whilst looking for his sister's eye make-up. It didn't take long for the mere minutes of footage to be pulled apart by the witch hunt. Apparently Dante isn't allowed to smoke now, and apparently a pre-rendered trailer has already exposed DMC's gameplay as a load of junk.

A single aesthetic decision by Ninja Theory has earned it the wrath of the internet.

As the world settled down to watch Sony's 2010 E3 press conference, a similar controversy was brewing, one that would go an entirely different way.

Infamous 2 isn't really anything like DMC. It's not a reboot for one, nor is it developed by a different studio than it's predecessor. No one really had any reason to complain when it's trailer faded to black in front of the world's games press, except for the fact that Cole - the protagonist of both Infamous and its forthcoming sequel – was, much like Dante, different.

Fans weren't happy. “Where's the old Cole?” they asked, the one they grew attached to throughout the course of the first game. What right did Sucker Punch, the developer of both games, have to change him?

Faced with an 'overwhelmingly negative' fan reaction, Sucker Punch retreated with their tails between their legs. They saw the negative press their decision had, and they went back on it, silently patting themselves on the back for being 'Oh so in touch with their fans.'

There's this lingering thought that still hangs in the air though. Did fans dislike 'New Cole' because he was 'worse', or did they just dislike him because he was 'different'.

Of course, in many respects a lack of change is sensible. If two analogue sticks work well to control a first-person shooter, then why should a game break this rule for the sake of being different?

The same could be said of other conventions. For example real life shotguns don't actually have a very limited range, but since that's what your audience will expect from your game then you'd be wise to make it that way, or else they're going to have to spend time learning your mechanics rather than simply enjoying them.

Then again, isn't variety the spice of life?

The Legend of Zelda is a series which has refused, to this day, to contain voiced characters. They'll whelp, gasp, and even sigh once in a while, but the only speech you'll get from them is through writing. Is anyone going to seriously argue at this point that a fully voiced Zelda game would be made worse as a result? Or would it simply be different?

There's a vocal minority of people who play games out there who hate with a passion the idea of change. It's these people who complained about new Dante, new Cole, and the fact that Sonic's eyes are green in Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

Faced with this response developers have two choices, they can have the courage to weather the storm, and stick to the decisions that they, as artists of a medium have made, or they can crumple under the weight of a reaction by an audience who, let us not forget, haven't even played their work.

London, like many other cities, is kept in a perpetual warmth by the thousands of motorists who plough through its streets at all hours of the day. It was this warmth which greeted me as I stepped out of the academy's doors into Piccadilly. I performed the three-tap ritual immediately, as one does when leaving any location. Thankfully phone, keys, and wallet could all be found in their correct pockets.

When I looked up it wasn't the crowded pavement that met my gaze which surprised me, but the man standing on it. Tameem Antoniades, lead designer at Ninja Theory met my eye, and extended an arm not out of compassion one assumes, but out of a desire to bring to an end the awkward silence which had replaced the plain silence that had hung in the air not ten seconds previously.

I'll admit now I couldn't help it. I should have turned into the suave 'freelancer', and thanked him for taking the time to do this talk. At the very least I should have become the adoring fan, praised him for Heavenly Sword, and told him how I couldn't wait to get a copy of Enslaved. Instead I assumed the snarky journalist persona, and without thinking asked, “So, how do you feel about the fan reaction to DMC?”

Tameen looked at me a moment and took a drag of his cigarette. Then without blinking, and without pausing to exhale the smoke from his mouth he said, “I don't care.”

And neither should any other developer.

Sell What?: How EA Should Get Rock Band 3 Into the History Books

2010-10-01T15:02:00.001+01:00

Rock Band 3 is shaping up to be the best rhythm game released in a good long while. Without needing to add tacky extras such as a story mode or celebrity cameos, Harmonix have managed to find a great deal more to add to the music game pie by including a whole new instrument - two if you include the real Squire guitar - as well as the required dozens of new tracks to play.

All of these extra features (and wise omissions) have made the game pretty essential for anyone who counts the genre among their favourites. Here however, Harmonix may find they have a problem, since amongst the gaming community the popularity of these games has been waning over the last year.

A genuine argument could be made that there's still very much a market for quality games, that recent iterations such as Guitar Hero: Van Halen, and Band Hero (noticing a trend here?) simply don't appeal to, but the fact remains that DJ Hero was released last year to good reviews, and failed to reach the popularity the genre experienced at its peak.

Rock Band 3 will likely sell fine to the kinds of people that already buy and play music games, but in doing so it would be fulfilling a mere fraction of its potential. There's already a huge demographic out there who're ideally placed to jump on the bandwagon with just a little clever marketing on the part of EA: musicians.

At a glance it seems strange that more musicians don't already play games like Rock Band. These are experiences which are after all crafted around a subject matter which this demographic is passionate about. Five buttons and a strum bar a guitar does not make however, and it's hard to convince a guitarest to start a game on 'Easy' difficulty when with just a little more effort they could use their existing skills to play the real thing. It's not snobbery at work here, just a time to satisfaction ratio that doesn't add up for them.

Deciding to market a game to a non-gaming demographic is all well and good, but reaching them with anything other than very expensive scatter-shot advertising is another thing entirely. This isn't a demographic that congregates around gaming websites, and thus will have most of your press release and preview events completely pass them by.

So if musicians won't come to Harmonix, then the only reasonable solution is for Harmonix to go to the musicians. Set up kiosks everywhere live music flourishes; gig venues, music shops, boutique record stores, and get your fantastic new instruments into the hands of the people who'll appreciate in an instant how different this is from all its peers. Don't just show them pretty pictures of guitars which for all they know could be three-quarter sized, but let them feel the Squire themselves. The MadCatz-produced Fender Mustang may be the default guitar, but showing that to people is going to do more harm than good.

The Fender Squire guitar has the potential to make learning songs on guitar a whole lot easier for guitarists since the Internet's biggest tabliture sites started getting shut down. Once musicians know that that's the case they'll flock to it, but it's a large investment for anyone other than a prolific gamer. Rock Band 3 could be the biggest music game success since the original Guitar Hero, it's all just a matter of making sure the right people know about it.

Sell What?: X-COM

2010-09-20T16:08:00.000+01:00

Welcome to 'Sell What?', the first in what will hopefully become a series of articles examining potential advertising strategies for upcoming games, focussing on style and innovation rather than bombarding customers with screenshots and heavily scripted PR developer interviews.

This time it's the turn of 2k Game's 'X-COM', a reboot of MicroProse's classic UFO: Enemy Unknown (also known as X-COM: UFO Defence in the US) released in 1993. More of a re-imagining than a re-boot, X-COM eschews the turn based strategy of its ancestors, in favour of a more action-oriented shooter experience.

Launching any new franchise into as competitive a marketplace as the first-person shooter genre is difficult for any publisher, especially this late into a console's lifecycle. 2K have ostensibly side-stepped this issue by acquiring possession of an existing property, but their choice really begs the question; “How many (especially younger) people have actually heard of X-COM?”

We could argue for days about X-COM's brand recognition, but we're really not going to get a very representative sample of the population from the users of this site. The claim here is not that “No one has heard of X-COM” but simply that its audience was not as broad as the market for games today.

The most obvious solution of how to market a modern day X-COM game then, is to remind people of how awesome UFO: Enemy Unknown is to this day. To coincide with the release of its big, modern brother, 2k games should produce a true-to-its-roots remake of the turn-based strategy game that started it all.

The idea of making an appetizer for an upcoming larger release is something Capcom has pioneered. With both Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Dead Rising: Case Zero, they showed that the profits gained from a smaller downloadable release can be large, even if the jury's still out on whether these can actually help the sales of the title it's supposed to promote. Bionic Commando sold badly primarily because it was a genuinely bad game, and Dead Rising 2 has of course not yet been released.

UFO: Enemy Unknown has great potential for this format because of how little work 2k need to do on the design front. The game's structure is endlessly appealing, and to this day many still spend hours building up the ultimate earth defence network.

It also helps that UFO's UI is already so flexible. Unlike many PC strategy games like Civilization or Command and Conquer, there aren't any complicated keyboard shortcuts to deal with when porting the game to a console, and the fact that the original was designed to be played on the early 90's low resolution monitor's means that its HUD need not be compromised when making it work on a TV.

Additionally the turn-based nature of UFO means that it would be ideally suited for a PSP or DS appearance, although such a move may not be as wise since XCOM is after all not receiving a portable release.

There's a risk involved with this strategy as with any release of course, but the costs involved shouldn't be particularly high. After all, so long as the original design formula is adhered to, there really shouldn't be much work to undertake from a design standpoint, merely a technical one.

Producing a remake of UFO: Enemy Unknown would produce numerous benefits for 2k Games. It would re-introduce the brand into the minds of gamers who may have long forgotten about it, as well as introducing it to younger gamers who may never have otherwise heard of it. Such a remake would also be very beneficial to gaming as a whole, ensuring that one of its classics doesn't disappear into the mists of space and time. Of course, there's also the distinct possibility that 2k might actually make a profit on the release, which I'm sure no one would want to complain with.

So would a remake of one of the best strategy games of all time interest you, or do you think that its entire potential audience can already get their fix from DoxBox and an old copy of the original?

Heavy Rain and the Destruction of Traditional Game Design

2010-09-13T14:48:00.001+01:00

[Spoiler Warning: I'd recommend you play through Heavy Rain before reading this article since I spoil quite a bit of its story in here. It'll also be a confusing read if you haven't played it.]

Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream is a game with lofty ambitions. “Games are immature,” it sneers, “here's how we can grow up.” Whilst it's certainly a noble ambition to try and move any medium forward, be it film, music, literature, or architecture, any casual observer would be forgiven for thinking David Cage's team is going about it in the wrong way.

Instead of pushing the medium forward into its own unique space, where the specific benefits and disadvantages of the 'ludios' in mind, the developers have instead employed the world of cinema as a crutch, and taken a huge step back in the process.

The theory behind this new game design philosophy seems to make sense on paper. Film, as an established medium, has already worked out how to tell a gripping story through decades of innovation. Thus, the world of film could be used as a basis for so called 'interactive drama' (which incidentally provides inspiration for the most pretentious trophy title ever conceived) with all the interactivity games allow roughly taped on top of it.

So let's start with the obvious, is the story told by Heavy Rain a good one? On the whole, yes. The voice acting though a little patchy in spots is mostly pretty good, and aside from a final scene twist the overall story makes sense and flows well. Then again, the quality of the story here isn't what's being examined, Heavy Rain could have told a story as gripping as the Wire and still fail fundamentally as a game. In other words, a game needs to justify its existence as a game, otherwise it might as well have just been a movie.

Heavy Rain's primary addition to the cinematic formula is that of choice, and ostensibly it seems to do a pretty good job of it. You can choose to let your clichéd loose-cannon sidekick beat the snot out of a witness, or intervene at the risk of losing his help. You can shoot a witness or choose to let him live. Within scenes there are many different options to choose from, each of which producing a specific outcome.

The problem is that with any illusion of choice in a game there a barrier that you can't escape from. One scene early on asked me if I was willing to drive the wrong way down a highway to save Ethan's son. I should note that he was asked, but I was tasked with answering on his behalf. Putting innocent people's lives in danger for the sake of a poorly acted son by the request of a serial killer who had given me no guarantee that I'd actually get what I wanted wasn't something I was willing to do, so I searched for the 'drive away' option. It wasn't present.

Providing the player with choice is all well and good, but it's also important to remember that that lack of choice is going to become that much more jarring when the player finally reaches it. I'd reached the barrier at this point, and the smoke and mirrors were revealed in all their glory.

Of course, if I was in Ethan's exact position I would have likely acted differently. The problem therefore is that my motivations don't match up with my character's. The player is introduced to Ethan when his son is ten. That's ten years of experiences that are driving him to want to save his son, but which the player was absent for, and thus cannot share.

An approach which relies upon events that have occurred outside of the experience's runtime work in films because the audience isn't an active participant. We may not share Luke Skywalker's wish to explore the galaxy because we haven't shared his boring rural existence but the film still works because we're not the ones making his decisions. A game works differently; we need to share the hopes and dreams of our protagonist or else we can't effectively empathise with him or her. We need to want the same things to make reaching the conclusion of the game satisfying.

A game cannot keep the audience in the dark in the same way a film can. This is made abundantly clear when we reach Heavy Rain's climax and it transpires one of the characters was the killer all along. The audience has been playing as this person for a good few hours, and whilst in a movie this revelation would be shocking, as it reveals what he was really up to in all those scenes, in a game it's just confusing when you've been making choices on the behalf of a character that you don't know the true motivations of.

On a moment to moment gameplay level Heavy Rain can be a bit of a chore to play. The strange control scheme may make characters look more realistic in their movement, but the trade off here is that they're awkward to control. It feels impossible at times to get in front of objects you need to interact with thanks to how characters seem unable to turn at angles any less than 90 degrees and the static camera angles the game employs don't help matters when they'll change without warning mid-scene.

Thankfully you never really need to control your character with much finesse because whenever the action gets the least bit intense the game turns into a giant quick-time event. These have proven to be a very divisive inclusion in past games; some love the way it allows events of a far greater scale than anything which could occur in normal gameplay, whilst others see them as reducing games down to a series of button presses, with little space left for the all important choices present in normal play. Much of Heavy Rain's quick-time events come off as feeling very non-interactive, which only serves to add more fuel to the 'why does this need to be a game' bonfire.

That last sentence really sums up the crux of the problem with Heavy Rain, in that it never really justifies its status as a game. The desire to tackle a more mature subject matter is certainly a sincere one, but the game never really delivers on this in a way which makes it seem proud to be a game. It's a movie with some rudimentary choices thrown in, but ironically because it's so scripted you end up making far less choices than you would do in your standard Halo firefight with the added disadvantage that you'll never get to see what would have happened if you'd taken the other option.

If video games want to move forward, then they need to do it on their own terms. They need to do things that simply aren't possible in other mediums, to provide an experience you're truly content playing through rather than watching or reading. The simple truth is, without the emotional presence provided by real actors, video games are never going to be able to match the visual storytelling of cinema: our princess is in another castle.

PS. Having to shake the controller at pivotal moments in the story is possibly the most immersion breaking thing I've ever been asked to do by a video game. It also looks ridiculous.

Mod My PS3: Does Anyone have a Right to Tinker?

2010-08-30T17:05:00.001+01:00

On August 27th, Sony won a court case in Australia to block the sale of a USB dongle which gives users the ability to 'backup' PS3 games to their hard drive. Importantly this wasn't the end of the battle, as it only prevented sales up until the 1st of September; in order to make this injunction permanent Sony must win another court battle.

Below the news article on this story posted on Edge Online were numerous comments, most of them in defence of Sony, but a couple supporting the rights of consumers to do whatever they will with the hardware they've purchased. Against all the odds, in between the mess of bad grammar, spelling an ad hominem arguments here we have an interesting point worth discussing.

Though the PS Jailbreak modchip is marketed as allowing users to backup their own games it would be naïve to think that this is all consumers want to use this device to do. In a completely innocent world it might be the case that PS3 users would buy this dongle to transfer their own games to their hard drives thus saving themselves the hassle of switching disks, but then it's also legal to buy bongs and crack pipes in the UK so long as you want them for purely decorative reasons.

Here in the real world it's easy to see the potential such a device has. At it's most basic the hack could be used to transfer rented games to the hard disk and thus keep a game for the price of a rental. More industrious users could take the process a step further and transfer games to an external hard drive, and then use that to get the games onto filesharing websites. If others were to then download these games, Sony would be denied even the meagre revenue from a rental.

Piracy harms the little guy. Whilst it's very easy to think to yourself that you're messing with the profit margins of huge corporations when you get around paying for a game, at the end of the day it's not going to be those at the top that take a pay cut but the humble programmers and artists whose games just aren't pulling in the revenue they need to.

The effects of piracy aside, there is a genuine argument here to allow consumers to do what they will with the products that they buy. If you purchase a PS3 then why shouldn't you have the ability to install Linux on it, or modify it to play 'Everybody Loves Doghnuts' whenever you start it up? Unfortunately the freedom street is two-way, and you also want to have the freedom to make money should you choose to start up a company. Sony want to make money on their (admittedly very well manufactured) products and if something prevents them from doing that as effectively then they're going to fight tooth and nail to stop it.

The OtherOS scandal was an interesting one because on closer inspection it wasn't really Sony's fault. PS3 owners initially had the ability to install Linux on their system, someone spent their time using this to pirate games, which resulted in the feature being removed. Don't blame the Japanese consumer electronics giant, blame 'Hotz' for the fact you now can't use a feature you were never going to touch anyway (Linux on PS3 was as slow as a decade old PC, and you had to view it at the resolution of your television – trust me, you were never going to take the plunge).

Perhaps the one morally sound argument for being able to mod a console is allowing DIY developers to make their own 'homebrew' games. It's interesting to see what people will make in their own time given a piece of hardware which is usually only available on a commercial scale. Being able to run home made games on a PSP is without a doubt a very cool thing to be able to do, because there wasn't really any other way to do that on a handheld before Android came along. The problem is that if you want to play homebrew on your TV, there's literally no reason you have to be using a console. It's much easier just to plug a computer into the back of your television and do it that way, and then use a bluetooth dongle if you just absolutely have to use a Sixaxis.

That's really what's at the root of my issue with the defence of this PS3 hack. People either defend it on the grounds that it lets you do things you can already do much easier on a PC, or on philosophical grounds which for 90% of consumers don't actually matter. Sure, it's not great that we can't do whatever we will with our own hardware, but the roadblocks that presents to your average consumer are slim to none.

When Sony announce that they're removing the ability for PS3's to play games with a firmware update I'll get worried, but until then there's very little practical reason to get self-righteous.

Fixing the Terms 'Casual' and 'Hardcore'

2010-08-23T15:51:00.000+01:00

Classical Game

See also, 'Hardcore Game'
(n) A game requiring a large time investment to complete once, usually made up of a detailed world which will be played by either a single or a group of players.
(n) A game played primarily by 'Classical Gamers' (See also: Hardcore Gamers)

Pop Game

See also, 'Casual Game'
(n) A more basic game requiring less time to complete once. Will usually feature more simplistic graphics and mechanics leading to it being player by a far wider group of people.
(n) A game played primarily by 'Pop Gamers' (See also: Casual Gamers)

As a relatively unestablished medium, critics have struggled with finding the correct terminology to describe games. Some terms such as 'gameplay' have definitions that are so broad so as to be almost indescribable, and others such as 'pacing' and 'arc' have been taken wholesale from the dictionary's of other mediums altogether. Most of these phrases work well in games journalism, but without a doubt there are two others that need to go: 'casual' and 'hardcore'.

There may have been a time when these terms fit what they were describing. The hardcore players may have fell into the gaming stereotype, spending hours upon hours playing enormously complex games which made up their only hobby. Casual gamers meanwhile, may have spent a dollar or two playing Pac-Man but would otherwise not consider themselves a 'gamer' in any sense of the word.

Though it may be easy to claim that it's only recently these categories have fallen apart, the fact is that the line between them has never been very distinct. Consider for example the game Tetris. Tetris has found a home on every platform ever conceived, from the first Gameboy right up until EA's version released on PSP next year. Everyone has played at least one game of Tetris in their life, and as such initially it seems to be clearly a casual game. At the same time though there are many people who've spent hours with this simplistic puzzle game, to the extent that dreaming about Tetris is a recognised phenomenon. Farmville players may be technically classed as 'casual', but that won't stop them from playing the game for far longer than the time it'll take you to finish Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.

The argument here is not that there isn't a difference between Farmville and Modern Warfare – clearly these two games are in entirely separate leagues when it comes to the experiences they provide – but that calling one 'casual' and one 'hardcore' is incredibly misleading, not to mention patronising on both fronts.

As I've blogged previously, games are actually far closer to music as a medium than anything else. Could we thus take phrases from a vocabulary that suits our medium far better?

Could we say for example that 'casual' games are our medium's version of pop music?

Could we then go on to claim 'hardcore' games take the place of classical?

Before starting an argument as to whether these specific descriptions fit, let us first examine why exactly it is that games are like music. To this end we'll look at two highly regarded works; Super Mario 64 and Bethoven's 5th Symphony.

Both works are based around a single motif or idea. Super Mario 64's is Mario's ability to run and jump, Bethoven's 5th is it's first four iconic notes. Both works start by introducing this core idea, the music plays the tune in its most basic form, and the game puts you in control of Mario, with no obstacles to overcome, and just his core abilities to play with.

As both works continue they take their respective core ideas and mix them up in new and exciting ways. The symphony plays the four notes at different tempos and at different points on the scale, Mario enters different worlds and is forced to use his abilities in different ways to progress. The works may at points deviate completely from their initial ideas – putting Mario on a slide for example - but both return to it regularly to give a sense of completeness.

So a good piece of music won't just be based around a (for want of a better term) 'catchy riff', but will over the course of its run-time explore it in different exciting ways. A good game meanwhile needs to be both fun to control, as well as introducing new levels and abilities to you to keep it interesting throughout. No one wants to play the same Mario level over and over again, no matter how well he controls.

The popularity of games and music are also both heavily influenced by outside factors. As an example fighting games could be considered to be the jazz music of gaming.

The success of fighting games was made in the arcades. Though they're still enormously popular now, many believe their best memories of the genre to be outside of their own home, shared with other gamers in an arcade. The social aspect of these games is enormously important, best enjoyed with your opponent by your side and with nowhere to hide when you inevitably lose.

Similarly jazz is best enjoyed live. Recorded music may technically provide you with the songs, but so much of the experience is tied up in improvisation that its hard to appreciate it as much when you're hearing it after the fact. Jazz music is best enjoyed by listening to musicians play it, and as such it's never been as popular as it was before the days of recorded music, though that's not to say it doesn't still have a huge amount of fans today.

So what of the distinction between pop and classical music?

Pop music may be very different from classical music, but it's still based (in general terms) upon the same theory. Pop music still uses scales, and keys, and even takes tunes directly from classical music in many cases. It is however simplified, it's toned down, it's taken by a smaller group of composers and made more accessible. As a result of this simplification it's now far more popular than classical music, and to a certain extent is looked down upon by fans of classical music as being too simple.

Pop games may be very different from classical games, but they're still based (in general terms) upon the same theory. Pop games still use scoring, and levels, and even take gameplay ideas directly from classical games in many cases. They are however simplified, toned down, taken by a smaller group of developers and made more accessible. As a result of this simplification they're now far more popular than classical games, and to a certain extent are looked down upon by fans of classical games as being too simple.

The similarities here are hard to ignore.

From doing this we can see that it would be very easy to replace these two archaic terms with something much more suitable, but can this revelation do more for us than simply provide terminology?

Could we look at the history of music for possible hints about the future of gaming?

We could for example look at the meteoric rise of pop music. We could examine how at first it was shunned by the generations that had grown up with 'proper' music, but is now the most listened to type of music on the planet. We could look at how classical music is still popular today, but remains far too inaccessible for many people to grasp. We could even call into question whether the population at large could ever enjoy classical games...

...but we won't of course, because I fancy going to the pub for some crisps.

So, do you agree? If you do I suggest thinking about other similarities that exist, such as the shunning of bands who aren't 'Indie' enough, or the choices composers make between telling a story through music (gameplay), or through lyrics (cutscenes). If you're feeling super generous you could perhaps start referring to pop and classical games in your writing so we can get this revolution on the road.

If you don't agree I'd love to hear your responses as well, the more eloquent the better. Any uses of the word 'Fail' will of course be ignored.

It's Not Easy Being a Colonial Marine

2010-08-17T16:57:00.002+01:00

We Alien fans are a patient lot. It's been eleven long years since our last truly great game. Twenty-four years since our last good film. Sure, Duke Nukem leads the pack in cautionary tales from Development Hell; Sonic's death has been drawn out more excruciatingly than any other; Star Wars has been milked to the point of emaciation, but Aliens has punished its fans more than any other franchise in history.

It isn't the waiting. You get used to the waiting. It's the hope. Despite the countless – countless – abhorrences that the license has birthed, we have never lost faith that one day someone might come. Someone who knows why James Cameron's career is on the wrong side of its peak, why Rebellion Developments still exists, what it is that keeps Giger's creature lurching onwards, beaten down again and again, but still clawing its way towards the back of the unsuspecting entertainment industry.

1999. The Alien film franchise is on its merry way down the shitter and you've jumped ship already. You find yourself creeping down a pitch-black steel corridor. You're armed to the teeth, but you can't shoot what you can't see. Flares burst into the corner of your vision on a button press, blinding you and creating a tiny island of harsh purple light in which you can cower. You only have so many, and you still can't see more than three feet ahead of you. No good against terrible, spindly shadows that flit around ahead of you at a speed you've never seen in a game. A small radar gives off high-pitched 'blips' beside you.

Blip. Blip. Blip.

You see a single dot moving across the little readout. Numbers scroll at speed next to it. You don't know what they mean. But they're getting smaller.

30m. Blip.
25m. Blip.
20m. Blip.

You saw the film. You guess what's coming. Suddenly, your flare fizzes out, leaving you in darkness.

15m. Blip.

You fumble in the dark and find the image intensifier. One flick and suddenly the screen lights up in an eerie green shade. You wait for the blip and try to still your shaking hands.

...

Silence, save for a soft buzz. Night-vision comes at a cost. You glance down to check your ammo. Less than full. Suddenly, a blood-curdling noise blares through your headphones, rattling around inside your skull. A mixture of hiss, screech and bestial growl, you only hear it once before a black shape skitters into sight, ricocheting off the walls as it screams along the floor towards you. Years of playing Doom have conditioned you to backpedal as fast as humanly possible, spraying pulse-rifle rounds down the corridor. The muzzle flash whites out your vision and the weapon drones even louder than the creature as you rain lead everywhere. You can just about hear a wet impact as one of your bullets hits home.

You cease fire. Vision returns. There is smoke rising from the floor, where a small black claw lies, dripping acid blood. The creature is nowhere to be seen. Dropping your image intensifier, you watch the motion tracker for a retreating dot.

100m. Blip.

Looks like you scared it off. Wait, was that a decimal point?

1.00m. Blip.

There is just time for you to drop a flare before a loud snap announces your failure. What remains of your skull hangs from the jaws of your first alien encounter as it clings to the ceiling above you. Game: Over. Pants: Browned.

I mean it when I say Aliens versus Predator didn't redefine horror games. It fucking defined them. Scores of inadequate pretenders from the last decade crouch, shivering, in the dark shadow it casts over them. Cheap shocks fire off between them, complemented by overbearing musical scores and safe-haven cutscenes. Meanwhile, AvP takes place in oppressive silence as you try to hide from opponents that are infinitely faster, stronger and more numerous than you are. You will come across long corridors of absolute darkness, which pressure you to light your path either with wild gunfire, blinding flares or the night-vision which cripples your ability to sense danger. Maybe you'll sprint along it spraying your flamethrower everywhere like a real USMC marine? Enjoy standing in the dark – back against a wall – when the opposite door fails to open and a horde closes around you until your ammo runs dry.

Back in the days FEAR meant something other than slow-motion gun battles in office buildings and little girls with psychic powers.

We've waited a long time for another Aliens game. The frustrating thing is, there's loads of them. They get released all the time. Mobile phones see the largest catalogue, while the PSP follows up with tie-ins to the beyond-horrible AvP movies (I'd describe them as looking fan-made, but that does the fans a disservice). The most recent – and disappointing – was the 2010 'successor' to AvP 1999. My inverted commas are dripping warm sarcasm all over the floor, so let me qualify my point whilst the gimp mops it up for me. The main reason Aliens were such a terrifying prospect back in the day was not because they're so well-designed. It wasn't high-res textures of chitinous exoskeletons or procedurally-animated tail whip physics. It was their blistering movement speed. The films were terrifying because we couldn't see what was after the crew of the Nostromo and our imagination filled in the blanks. While that doesn't work in a first-person perspective, you can't see something that leaps from floor to ceiling and runs circles around you faster than you can turn your head. In 2010, the Aliens move like old people fuck. I had no trouble picking each one out with my motion tracker and flashlight – and disassembling them with my pistol. Not to mention how boring the Alien campaign becomes once you realise the only reliable way to kill something is by getting behind it and pressing the 'kill' button. In 1999 we could dismember an entire roomful of marines in seconds, or be embarrassed by a single civilian with a pistol, depending on whether we were fast enough with our claws and walljumps. It was simple: a game of hide-and-seek. Marines were tested by their nerves and caution. Aliens were tested by their cunning and speed. A brilliant layout for incredibly tense gameplay, where victory goes to whoever is least afraid. No game since then has understood this. Not AvP 2, not AvP 2010, not even the glorious AvP: Extinction (which, for the record, had real potential). But there is a painful twist in this tail as it buries itself in my chest cavity. Its name is Gearbox.

I don't trust them. They stole my heart in Opposing Force, only to crush it underfoot with the piss-poor PC port of Borderlands. They announced and canned a promising Aliens RPG. Now they have fallen silent, with only a few screenshots of their latest project – Aliens: Colonial Marines – floating around the internet.

They are spectacular.

We've been promised a character-driven storyline, marines with personality. A story set immediately following Aliens. A mission to recover Ellen Ripley and the squad that followed her into hell. Four-player local co-op where Aliens are fast, merciless and burst suddenly from the world geometry to drag you under. Sitting in a darkened room with your friends, watching the ammo counters on your sentries tick down to zero as the screams of pissed-off aliens echo from the other side of a sealed bulkhead. Acid blood that cripples players who touch it and burns through steel doors. AI that will outflank, outsmart and terrify us. Meanwhile, with news of an Alien prequel in the works, directed by the Ridley Scott, there is plenty to keep us on edge. We will wait for a return to former greatness, no matter how long it takes. If Colonial Marines ever does come out, it will have warped and decayed to the point where its genius is no longer recognisable. Alien 5 will be a Hollywood action flick with no depth and unlikeable characters, which milks the franchise for cheap thrills and commits unforgivable acts of fanservice, just as Predators did to its own series. There will never again be anything of worth that sports the Alien license, be it game, film or terrible cross between the two.

Sometimes I wish I could get out of this chicken-shit outfit, but I know that it's worth sticking around, just in case. Because if anyone ever does make a game that does this incredible franchise justice, it will be the best-game-ever.

"Headshots are ruining games" - Jeff Gerstmann

2010-08-16T16:13:00.000+01:00

“Headshots are ruining games. Think about the arsenal they give you in Splinter Cell. Think about the remote camera, the sticky mines, the grenades and EMPs and all this other stuff and shotguns and assault rifles and you went through the entire game using the default pistol and then the upgraded version of the default pistol cause it's silenced and you can shoot guys in the head with it really well...all of the spots where you are not being seen by anyone the right answer every single time is shoot that guy in the head...it is ruining games.” - Jeff Gerstmann

There's nothing quite like the a game's first perfectly executed headshot. That well timed squeeze of the trigger catching the crosshairs just as they light up an enemies dome creates an unmistakable feeling of mastery, bringing an end to your introductory hours, and relaxing you into the rest of the game. You may not have noticed it consciously, but that shot certainly mattered. “You're a big boy now,” the game's saying, “time to enjoy yourself.”

Headshots have been a part of shooters ever since Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, (according to Wikipedia that is, so take that with a grain of salt) giving the player the ability to instantly kill an enemy with a single shot, or - in the case of multiplayer - score extra damage. Headshots add another layer of strategy to a shooter, punishing inaccurate sprays of gunfire in lieu of precise bursts. On the face of it, the removal of a feature no modern shooter goes without would immeasurably dumb down many games.

So what's the problem then? The way a headshot will instantly kill a target is certainly realistic even if real marksmen avoid them due to the relative size of the targets. It's also, as previously discussed, a very satisfying way of getting an enemy out of your way. It even keeps the bloodthirsty happy with the incredible amount of work that's gone into the animation of a guys head getting blown off over the years.

Like many things, it's only once the feature's gone that you begin to realise just how it was affecting your play style. Resident Evil 4 would not have been as good a game if you had the ability to dispatch foes with one shot to the head from your handgun. Some of the best moments in the game come as you're being advanced upon by hoards of infected villagers. You have to think fast, take out the legs from under one of them to buy you enough time to slug a couple into the head of another. With the ability to kill with headshots added to the equation you'd shoot the first villager in the head, then shoot the second, then the third. It doesn't have the same thrill to it does it?

Though Fallout 3 would be a bit of an easy target since the gunplay clearly isn't its focus, it's still a very good example of the headshot detracting from intricate systems put in place by the developer. Fallout 3's VATS system allows the player to pause the game and select an enemy's bodypart to shoot. Aside from a cursory glance you'll never choose to shoot an enemy in the arm or leg. You'll shoot them in the torso when the head presents too small a target, but other than that you'll target the head every time and ignore the wealth of other options.

We have here a design decision with no clear winner. Making the headshot less effective eliminates much of the satisfaction of shooting, whilst leaving it as it is removes much of the need to experiment with a game's more obscure features. The familiarity of knowing a headshot is you're most effective means of attack is certainly comforting when you're starting a completely new game, but is it a good thing that so many titles are so similar in this regard?

Unusually I'm not even sure where I stand on this issue, so it'll be very interesting to hear your responses to the topic. Do you like it when an enemy crumples under the weight of a single bullet to the skull, or do you find yourself ignoring a game's expansive list of features because this one tactic is too effective.

Five Game Design Features You've Always Hated

2010-08-09T16:08:00.001+01:00

There are a lot of design features you'll end up cursing in a standard run through a game. We'd love to be able to claim that with development duties in our hands many games would end up being far better, but the truth is that the vast majority of these design ideas are there (or absent) for very good reasons.

Take as an example your inability to run and shoot simultaneously in Resident Evil 4. Sure, it's infinitely annoying not to be able to back away from the hordes of infected villages scampering towards you, but the upshot is that the game ends up being far more tactical as a result. You can't just jog into an area and expect to be able to get out unscathed, instead you have to think a little more, planning your escape route when the time comes for you to inevitably have to reload at the worst possible moment.

Likewise whilst it's nice to have the option to play the entirety of a game co-operatively, the sheer cost involved from a development perspective, as well as the design headaches, involved with having two players running around the game world far outweigh the benefits of an option many wouldn't even touch.

Some design choices though, defy any explanation. They exist as part of a tradition, included 'just because', and completely fail to justify their presence. Take as an example:

Having to sign player 2 into a profile:

I understand of course that this is a lovely feature intended to allow you to collect achievements whilst playing with a friend – at least that's the idea. Out of interest though, how many of you actually keep your Xbox Live profile on a portable memory stick? In addition to that, how many of you will then keep this profile on your person should you come into a position to play some multiplayer? If you answered yes to both question then congratulations; it's your obscure habit that's been eating into the rest of our playtime for years now.

That way a game will give you the name of your profile? I hate that. Just ask me to quickly enter in my name when I want to play split-screen Halo, and stop me wasting scarce conversation by reminding people who I am when I kill them. Then of course if I want to collect achievements with friends give me the option to sign in to a profile. Until that point comes though, assume I'm not bothered and don't make me waste my time creating profiles on friends' systems just so I can use my real name.

Quitting to the main menu when you die

There are some features of JRPGs that I love. There are others I hate, but others love and thus warrant inclusion. The way many games will kick you out to the main menu when you die however, is both an annoying and immersion killing feature that has no place in modern games.

Perhaps the practise is designed to be a noble attempt to force you to give up. “Look,” the game's saying, “You kinda suck at this. Why not go outside, get some fresh air, and then come back later?”

I don't want to of course. I want to jump right back into the game and beat that challenge that had me stumped the first time round. In addition, I don't want to have to rely on my saves as checkpoints, it means I spend more time worry about the next save point than actually enjoying the game, and can also result in entire half hours of game time lost when it could've been saved with a little automatic checkpointing.

The practise also wastes the player's time. Just load up where I was five minutes ago because I could really do without first loading your company logos, the game's introduction, the main menu, my list of saves, and finally the level. It's lengthy, it's boring, and above all it makes me seriously think about walking away from the console, and that's never a good thing.

Choosing whether to pick up mission critical items

A feature which seems in my experience to be exclusive to Capcom games is politely asking the player whether he wants to pick up that item necessary to finishing a level with. The issue here is not so much one of wasted time, but of the paranoid doubts it causes to enter my mind.

I may be alone in this, but whenever a game asks me if I want to pull a level I've just come across rather than just doing it for me, I immediately think I have some sort of a choice. Obviously this lever has to be here for a reason, but if the game's asking me whether I want to pull it or not than maybe there's a reason I shouldn't be pulling it. Maybe the lever's booby trapped, maybe it's going to open a secret passageway filled with puppets intent on turning Dante's body into mincemeat...and maybe I'll be kicked out to the main menu as a result.

I think I'll go search around a little bit more before I commit to a decision...

Agreeing not to turn off the console during saving

Us gamers are an impatient lot. We get that games have to load and everything, but whilst that's going on we're probably going to leave the room and do one of the other hundred of important things in our lives.

We might leave the room and make a sandwich for example, or possibly just a cup of tea. We might unload the dishwasher, or do some other menial task we've been putting off because let's face it, if it takes so little time then why bother? We might take a moment to punch a goat in the face, or maybe write a blog post about how much we hate waiting for games to load.

When we re-enter the room after a lengthy initial load we expect at the very least for the main menu to be sitting there with the 'Continue?' option happily flashing away. If you're Rockstar then you'll take this even further, and actually chuck us directly into the game, ready to unleash chaos upon the world.

So please, developers, the next time you're examining your game's interface, never make the entire booting up process come to a halt as the game waits for a button press confirming the fact that we understand not to turn off the console when the game's saving.

Letting everyone edit game settings in multiplayer

“Ok fellas, thanks very much for coming, and let's get into some Halo split-screen. Ok game mode? Alright we'll start with some Slayer...no...stop it...will whoever's pressing up please stop? Ok, Slayer it is. No, stop messing around with character customisation player three, let's worry about that later. Who's editing respawn times? What's the point? Let's just get into a game and change anything we need to later. Someone's pressing the up button again, kindly desist. Everyone ready? It's game time.

No! Alright, who quit us out to the main menu?”

Please, just give all the control to player one, because nine times out of ten that'll be the person in control, and you know what? If we need someone else to pick out options we can use this amazing feature called 'passing the controller.'

The point of this article is not to say that these minor niggles are the bane of gaming's existence, or even that they waste much time at all. The fact remains that they're still annoying though aren't they?

So what game features really hack you off? Can you work out the reason for their inclusion, and even then do you think this reasoning justifies them?

Who's to Blame for Nintendo's Loss?

2010-08-02T13:45:00.000+01:00

Digging through Nintendo's first quarter profit report released last Friday reveals few software surprises. Super Mario Galaxy 2 was, surprise surprise, Nindendo's biggest new release on the Wii, and its DS contemporary was Pokemon Heartgold/Soulsilver. So far, so Nintendo; extremely well crafted games from established franchises leaving much of the third-party competition in the dust.

More surprising was the revelation that from January to June 2010 Nintendo made its first loss – of $288.4 million to be exact - since the release of the Wii in November 2006. There were a couple of reasons for this according to the earnings report; first, a drop in DS hardware sales of 7.7 million units, and second, a drop in the value of the Yen against both the Euro and the Dollar, two currencies in use by a large majority of Nintendo's market.

At first sight this loss could simply be put down to seasonal change. After all, the first quarter of the year is traditionally the quietest in the world of video gaming, devoid of any major holidays to provide excuses for millions to shell out for that console they've had their eye on all year. Considering this, it's not hard to imagine this as the cause of Nintendo's setback, especially considering their stereotypically younger audience, who are much more reliant on Christmas to get their game on.

Whilst certainly it may be the case that the changing seasons are partly to blame for this drop in sales, it doesn't explain why Nintendo have suffered more than the other two console manufacturers. Indeed, Sony returned to profit this year thanks in part to strong sales from its gaming division. Their success thus begs the question – what has Nintendo done wrong?

Perhaps the answer lies with software. Sony's platform saw numerous exclusive releases over this period from both established brands such as God of War, as well as all new franchises like Heavy Rain. Likewise from Nintendo, there's been no break in the flow of big titles such as the aforementioned Pokemon Gold/Silver remake, and Super Mario Galaxy 2, one of the best received games Metacritic has ever seen.

As anyone who's been watching the video games industry for long enough will know, this is a business tied inexorably to the console cycle. A console's meteoric rise to sales prominence in its first month on sale will almost always be mirrored when its successor is released, sending it into a sales spiral few care much about. Sony's products seem strangely immune to this law of nature, but due to the enormous focus Sony places on supporting its past products, their success is the exception rather than the rule.

It could be then that Nintendo's revenue fall is because of something out of there control, a natural progression that only the best marketing teams in the world have any hope of solving. The impending release of the 3DS may thus be to blame, scaring away potential customers eager to wait a year to purchase a new handheld (or indeed the soon-to-be outdated DS) rather than pay full price now.

This may be true for the DS, but the Wii should in theory be immune. The end of the undisputed king of motion controls' life is nowhere near, at least not in the minds of Nintendo's executives.

Third-party publishers have long been blamed for failing to set the Wii's software sales charts on fire. When they initially tried to appeal to the mass market consumers who were responsible for the Wii's unprecedented success they were criticised for producing shallow titles, with little in the way of innovation or, well, fun. When they then turned to the hardcore for help, and put out games like House of the Dead: Overkill, Little King's Story and Dead Space: Extraction, they were praised by critics and yet still ignored by consumers, in favour of two consoles that already service the enthusiast gamers much better.

Big-budget Wii games then, are few and far between, especially from third-party publishers, and especially in the quietest quarter in the year, but whether this is the fault of publishers is another matter entirely.

There is just one party left who has a direct impact on the sales successes or failures of the video game industry, and by some Sherlock-esque deductive reasoning, through the elimination of all impossible explanations, what we're left with, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Nintendo are in an utterly impossible situation as I see it. No publisher, not even the manufacturer of two of the biggest consoles of all time, can produce enough titles to sustain demand in a piece of hardware indefinitely. The task is then left to third-party publishers who can either a) make games to appeal to established gamers, who can already get these games on the PS3 and Xbox or b) make games for an audience it's incredibly difficult to consistently market games to, an audience who only seem to get behind products with the brand recognition of the Mario factory behind them.

As utterly insane as it sounds, Nintendo has gotten too good at marketing games, and as such have left little room in the market for the very people they need to sustain their console with releases all year round.

But enough about me, who do you think is to blame for Nintendo's loss of momentum? Is this a short-term blip, or is it something much more serious? How do you believe publishers can find success on these elusive consoles?

Can the JRPG be Fixed?

2010-07-23T15:10:00.000+01:00

It’s no secret that the Japanese Role Playing game, once the provider of some of the deepest gaming experiences around is currently going through a period of stagnation. Like the rest of the Japanese industry - aside perhaps from the looming Nintendo - the JRPG is facing a very quiet and yet very real crisis, trying to broaden its appeal with western gamers whilst retaining what made the genre great in the first place.

There are naturally still games in the genre that are continuing to do well critically as well as commercially. Dragon Quest IX was recently released to a fanfare of praise, even from gamers who’ll admit to never having played a Dragon Quest game before. Persona 4 also found great success recently, with its unique setting and art style that really helped to set it apart from the crowd. Final Fantasy meanwhile, once the king of the hill, fell into something of a critical rut with its thirteenth iteration. It may have sold well, but notable critics such as EDGE Magazine and Giant Bomb’s Brad Shoemaker panned the game for its insufferable hand-holding and lack of innovation.

Most criticisms of Final Fantasy XIII revolved around its length.

When considering how a genre can be reinvented, it’s always very important to keep what made it great to start off with. Storylines and battles of an epic scope have always appealed to the hardcore JRPG fans, and as such it would be wise to keep these features intact when trying to broaden the appeal of the genre. Likewise the emphasis on loot collection and equipping characters with the best possible gear is something that’s made those 100 plus hour saves in Final Fantasy X something to be proud, rather than ashamed, of.

Finally - and I realise this may be a controversial choice here - turn-based battles should remain a part of the JRPG formula. Sure, it may be annoying to have all your battles take place in a completely separate arena in the main game, and many may find it irritating to not have full control of the movement of your characters, but by taking movement control away from the player, a game’s animators can really go to town creating elaborate attacks and moves for your party members. The presence of menus is also a very useful tool to have in battle, without it you’re having to rely on only as many actions as your controller has buttons to perform.

Persona 3 broke new ground in many regards.

With these crucial features ring-fenced, let’s move on to what’s holding the Japanese Role Playing Game back - the problem of assumed knowledge. There’s just too much in these games that the player is expected to work out, with often little to no explanation. Character stats are a prime example of this; I couldn’t begin to explain to you what my character’s ‘Endurance’ or ‘Luck’ ratings do for them in Persona 3, and I’ve been playing that game for fifteen hours now. I just about understand the stats of attack and defense, but beyond that it's just guesswork, and guesswork does not a fun game make.

A common method of trying to get all this information across is to include a character or shopkeeper with an encyclopedic knowledge of the game’s battle system. Theoretically the player then has access to all the information they could possibly want on character stats, weapon types, status ailments, and elemental attacks, but in practise these walls of text are uninviting, boring, and don’t deliver the information in a way you’re likely to remember for long.

Other genres have managed to work out how to explain their often complex mechanics to the player. Rather than bombarding the player with information from the outset, most games will wait until a relevant moment before explaining in as few words as possible what’s just happened. A JRPG could likewise wait until the player gets poisoned for the first time before having a character describe what being poisoned entails. Descriptions like this could ease new players in to a complex system, without the need for dumbing it down to appeal to the lowest common denominator. As always, players should have the ability to turn off these tutorial snippets, to avoid alienating the RPG literate.

Many modern JRPGs really haven't moved on much from the days of the SNES when you strip away their graphics.

As previously mentioned, a large part of the appeal of the genre comes from their huge storylines, often involving dozens of characters, and a plot that’s global in scope. Whilst these kinds of plots were once fresh and exciting, it’s hard to feel they’ve really moved on much in recent years. Yarns spun around the search for magical crystals or the quest to stop someone’s attempt to take over the world simply don’t cut it in today’s landscape of conspiracy and intrigue.

The same could also be said for the genre’s over reliance on cutscenes as a means to deliver its story. Final Fantasy XII’s story managed to break new ground in the genre by telling the story of a small nation trapped between warring superpowers, but its delivery method was frankly ancient, compartmentalising the game’s story and gameplay sequences into completely separate boxes. If we were to over-simplify the issue, we could claim the world needs to be struck by the Bioshock of JRPGs.

Finally, there’s the length issue to address. ‘Vanilla’ role playing games have, are, and probably always will be, long. This is especially true in role playing games of the Japanese variety, which manage to be long in an entirely different way to Western games. Whilst a player’s fifty hours spent with Fallout 3 likely saw them spending huge amounts of time exploring the game’s world, the same cannot be said for your average Final Fantasy save, made up of hours ‘grinding’ (running around the same areas fighting monsters purely to increase your own characters’ skill levels) as well as the inevitable slow start inherent with nearly every game in the genre.

Dragon Quest 9 is unlike any other game in the series, but this has lead to glowing reviews from the press.

Game length is not in itself a bad thing. Despite rumblings to the contrary, many gamers are still very happy to play a game for upwards of twenty hours. What is a bad thing is poor pacing and time that is for all intents and purposes ‘wasted’. Sitting through the opening hours of a game without getting to play anything is neither fun, nor does it serve any greater purpose. Likewise, having to fight the same monsters over and over again can very easily sour the best of games. Include these things if you must, but please have the courtesy to shield us ‘casual’ RPG fans from them.

The Japanese Role Playing game is a fantastic genre that more people should play. It has the potential to deliver the greatest storylines and battle systems in gaming, which is why it’s such a shame seeing this squandered on what are in many cases the same as what we were playing back in the nineties. A revolution is due, because this one won’t be going quietly.

Could Censorship Lead to a Different Kind of Maturity in Games?

2010-07-15T13:07:00.000+01:00

When I was younger, going to the toilet in the dead of night terrified me. Whenever my bladder awoke me a preparation period of at least five minutes was required before I could summon up the courage to go. It wasn't the journey to the bathroom that terrified me so much as standing with my back to the room. As far as I was concerned, practically anything could have been waiting there for me by the time I turned around.

This fear, like so many others children posses (and thankfully largely grow out of) is not based around anything physically being there, but rather a fear of what can't be seen. Monsters will always choose to inhabit bed's that are too dark to see under or closet's whose doors are shut; strangely they never choose to set up shop in the open – perhaps for tax reasons?

Our innate fear of the unknown is something that's been exploited much by horror games. Silent Hill's fog introduced the possibility of there being monsters right in front of you, and Doom 3 controversially had you hold a flash light independently of a gun, thus forcing you into moments of complete darkness if you wanted to keep your finger on the trigger.

Recently though, this design choice has crept into an action game, namely Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days. Players who get up close enough to enemies before unloading a spray of shotgun shells into their face are greeted with a police-tape style censoring effect over their bloodied head.

The effect of this feature is really quite stunning. Instead of merely seeing a model's head shaded red with computer generated blood, you're treated to whatever ghastly images your mind chooses to conjure up. It's literally as bad as you can imagine it to be.

The human mind is always going to be able to produce something infinitely scarier than anything a developer can show you on screen.

This 'less is more' approach is something that's been exploited in films for quite some time now, though in the past it could be argued that it came about due to a need to beat the censor in certain scenes. In Get Carter for example there's a scene where Michael Caine stumbles across a piece of pornography featuring his niece. It's a truly shocking scene, not least because it hardly shows anything of the video itself. Instead we as an audience are treated to her uncles reaction, as his eyes slowly well up with tears, and his rage overcomes his entire body.

Something like a character's eyes filling with tears is an incredibly difficult thing to model in any graphics engine, and that's exactly my point. By not showing a crudely animated crying animation or sex scene, we're not going to be taken out of the experience by laughing at virtual genitals. Instead our imaginations can do the hard work without the game's visuals getting in the way.

Of course, it's far easier for a film to selectively choose what the audience sees. In a game this is far more difficult; you have a player in control of the camera at nearly all times, and as such you're going to need to get creative with how you limit what they can see.

From a quantitative standpoint there's an obvious benefit here of lower ratings for games with potentially more adult content. Obviously something like Kane and Lynch 2 is never going to be appropriate for children, but it's not hard to imagine games whose ratings stray far closer to the dividing lines.

More importantly however, is that subtlety could lead a whole new side of maturity to games. Not maturity in the sense of 'Hey now you can blow off an enemies limbs dude!”, but maturity like a classical piece of music or learning how to drink in moderation. Can video games really be said to have 'grown up' when they delight so thoroughly in showing us absolutely everything?

Games on a Plane

2010-07-13T11:56:00.000+01:00

Flying with a budget airline seems like a great idea right up until the point you come to actually get on the plane.

I realised my mistake fairly quickly. Almost as soon as my arse entered into its three hour long embrace with the chair my knees started complaining, knocking and scraping against the seat in front of me with every effort I made to get comfortable.

It's not surprising then that for the duration of the flight my primary objective was to escape, if not physically than certainly mentally. To this end my tool was simple; a Gameboy Advance with a copy of A Link to the Past secured squarely in its cartridge slot.

The game - as is nigh on every Zelda game in existence - is superb, that much doesn't bear dispute, and frankly I'm just so glad I could play it legally. I could of course have installed a SNES emulator on my PSP - a path not exactly condemned, but certainly not condoned by Nintendo – but instead I dug out a dated console, paid money to a second hand shop, and got myself a legal copy of the game, without a penny of my expenditure making its way to the people that actually made it.

Funnily enough, the ridiculous state of the legality of retro gaming wasn't my biggest problem on the flight.

The first indication this wasn't going to be a pleasant gaming session was the in-flight safety announcements. Then came the shopping cart. Then dinner. Then tea. Finally the gentleman seated next to me decided an hour and a half into the flight to develop a hacking cough which sent a shotgun blast of flem onto the seat in front of him at regular intervals, and combined with the less than stable state of aircraft seating, quite literally shook me to my very core.

I almost began to envy those seated around me having their entertainment delivered to them by the likes of Dan Brown and Tom Clancy. Their ability to switch attention from book, to flight attendant, to the flemalomaniac behind them was something I so desperately craved. Instead whenever I paused to take delivery of a particularly well cling-filmed ready meal I well and truly lost my place. What followed would have sullied the pacing of the greatest of games. In the best case scenario a trip to the dungeon map was necessary, in the worst I had to retrace my steps around the entire place to find that locked door that I now had the key for, or that previously inaccessible cave entrance.

Though I'm at risk here of conforming to a stereotype which has dogged gamers since the beginning of time itself (which by my estimation must have occurred in around the year 1951) I crave solitude whilst I game. In a perfect world I'd be able to sink multiple hours into a single session, plugged into headphones that mute out everything short of a bomb going off in my house, completely uninterrupted by friends, family, or hungry cats.

I came away from my flight not just with an increased appreciation of handkerchiefs (unhygienic they may be, but they're better than nothing at all), but with an increased sense of frustration at this insatiable demand made by gamers for console experiences on a handheld. A Link to the Past may require a large degree of spatial awareness to enjoy, but it's nothing compared to modern 3D games. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who played through the vast majority of Liberty City Stories and Portable Ops whilst sitting on my bed at home.

The handheld gaming experience is one quite

unlike anything else gaming has to offer. It's one fraught with distractions, battery life, and a giant burning ball of hydrogen that will guarantee to put your screen out of action at the most inopportune times. Bearing this in mind in mind, rather than graphical power, or second analogue sticks, is what truly makes or breaks a handheld console. I just hope it's something that everyone remembers for years to come.

Grinding on the names of the Dead in Skate 3

2010-07-01T12:02:00.000+01:00

Skate 3 is in my opinion the greatest skateboarding game since Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3. It's taken everything that was wrong with the previous two Skate games, fixed them, and made pretty nominal improvements everywhere else. Its unoriginality may have turned off many reviewers around the time of its release, but this approach has lead to exactly the game I wanted, after having gotten caught up on the admittedly minor annoyances of past games.

The problem with Skate 3 however, is that it allows you to skateboard around a war memorial. It allows you to grind along the ledges of monuments which in real life would contain the names of those who died in the first world war, and although it's likely the names on this fictional structure have nothing to do with any real conflict, the imagery is too important to ignore.

Great lengths are gone to to ensure the connection is made in the minds of every gamer. Even if you miss the place name popping up on screen, it's obvious enough where you are when the rows of red flowers and bronze plaques come into view. There's even a gap positioned so that if you choose to, you can jump over the statues of three World War 1 soldiers. The ramp for the gap is provided by an angled memorial introduction, classy.

It's difficult to understand why Caverton Memorial Gardens have even been included in the game. You could argue that it makes Skate 3's virtual city more realistic; after all most cities have a war memorial in some form or another. There are however literally hundreds of structures that most cities have in common, and as such there's no pressing need to include this particular one.

You could of course point towards the hundreds of shooters released every year that turn historical conflicts into gameplay experiences. Why is it acceptable for these games to be physically set within the conflict, whilst it's not all right to even allude to them in a skateboarding game?

The difference is of course one of tone. Skate 3 is a really fun game, and it never tries to be anything different. Most shooters meanwhile will certainly be fun, but will always carry with them a serious tone which will at the very least make you think of the war as something more than a place to set up a cool skate line.

It's also important that shooters will use the presence of a real conflict to the benefit of the gameplay. Setting your game as a struggle against the Nazi war machine has a huge benefit to player agency as we know how evil the regime was, and so the game has to do very little to make us want to kill every enemy soldier we come across. Meanwhile I can't see a single gameplay benefit to having a war memorial in Skate 3. Sure, it's an excuse to put a load of large concrete structures in the game world, but the most you can do with them is skate along their low ledges. You might as well just include the stone structures without the names of the dead on them, which would have provided exactly the same gameplay opportunities.

EA Black Box certainly didn't set out to insult people, but they've been incredibly naïve including a location in which many believe you shouldn't even talk loudly, let alone skate. It is an offence in the UK to vandalise a war memorial, and although skateboarding is obviously not the same thing, it comes pretty close in terms of disrespect.

Of course, no one is forcing me to skate around the memorial. If I wanted to, I could spend the entire game avoiding that one area, or put down the game entirely. I won't though, because the rest of the game is so polished, and fun, and allows so much more creativity than many other games. It does make me uncomfortable though, and it's definitely something Black Box should have given a second thought to before putting it in the game.

Nige On: Minecraft and Emergent Storytelling

2010-06-29T16:28:00.007+01:00

Returning after a long absence, I saw how my comrade Jon soared through the gigantic mainstream clouds of modern gaming, admiring endless vistas of normal-mapped wall textures and high dynamic range lighting. Crawling soot-blackened from my cave entrance, I brushed the cobwebs from my face and tried to re-attach my dusty journalist hat.

It fits a little strangely, so let's see if it still works.

While waiting for Dan Tabar to reappear on the radar, I've had time to check out some other self-made developers. Ever since I came across Minecraft, I've been lurking far below, deep in the forests and caverns of my very own procedurally-generated paradise of adventure. It's an independently-made gem of a browser game, being developed by a Swedish gent who goes by the name of Notch (Markus Persson by day), whose dedication I have yet to see matched by any other indie developer – nay, any game developer, full stop. Inspired by the good ideas behind the less-ambitious Infiniminer, he set out to make a version that could be played in your browser. That didn't take him long, so he apparently just kept on going. At the time of writing he is working constantly on new features and ideas, taking just the right amount of input from the community. It has grown into something far more impressive than Infiniminer ever was, and is definitely worth the ten Euros it'll set you back if you pre-order.

The best way to explain Minecraft is through the form of a travelogue. Therefore, I present: The Crafty Mine Adventures of Nige!

Now, let's hit the “Generate level” button.

Oh yeah, everything in Minecraft looks like this. I was surprised how quickly I got used to it, but not nearly as surprised when I found myself wanting to use words like “beautiful” in describing the landscapes created with it. Like a towering 1:1000 GTVA Colossus made entirely from Lego blocks, the whole is far more impressive than the sum of its parts.

Anyway, that tower off in the distance looks like a good spot to build my death fortress. Onwards, to adventure!

But first, I'm going to need some tools. Watch, as I punch this tree down to harvest the delicious heartwood core! This is the first task of any canny Minecraft player. Collect wood, craft tools from it. Use wooden tools to gather rock and other materials, use rock to make better tools that can gather iron and so on. It's kind of like a testosterone-fuelled Harvest Moon in this regard, only you don't shear sheep to make clothes, you PUNCH THEIR GODDAMN WOOL OFF.

Scrabbling up the nearest hill, I get a decent view of pastures beyond. No mountain ranges in sight. A shame, since they're my favourite kind of terrain. No matter, we'll just keep on walking and the terrain generator will add more land to the map as we go.

Wielding my newly- crafted rock pickaxe and some torches, I reach the foot of the tower, passing through a large, interestingly formed cavern at its base. From the front it looks like some hulking colossus kicked the bottom out from under it, leaving it looking like a gigantic three-legged beast. This is small-time, though, compared to some of the incredible formations you'll see in your time playing. I once saw what looked like an eighty-foot high AT-ST Imperial walker made from stone, with a hat of soil and trees.

With no easy route up the tower, I decide to move on. I can see the ocean's edge just ahead and want to find a nice spot before nightfall.

Notch hasn't implemented boats yet, so it looks like a long swim out to that archipelago.

Some interesting sandy formations appear as I swim onwards. Looks like a vulnerable spot, though, so let's keep going.

Oh my. Just as night falls, I find this rather fascinating waterfall, leading underground. I don't want to fall in, so let me just take a peek before hunkering down for the nigh-FUCK

Okay, well I should try and make the most of my situation. I seem to have discovered a flooded underground cave. Placing torches to light the pitch blackness, I move carefully forward.

Notch's water physics are more convincing than the flat oceans above might have led you to believe. Better keep out of the river, don't want to get swept away twice in one night.

Spelunking further downwards, I discover a magma spring! Dynamic lighting means if I follow this, I won't need torches to keep the monsters away (that's right, frigging monsters haunt these tunnels in the dark).

I smash a hole in the ground for the magma to flow through, and find a huge cavern below. I can hear the sound of rushing water some distance away. Let's go and check it out!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! Breaking through a wall a little carelessly caused me to fall into a huge lake of fire on the other side. I tried to wade to the pond on the other side, but burned to death mere feet from safety. In my dying moments I hear something ahead of me, over the crackle of my sizzling flesh.

Hiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

I guess death is sometimes a mercy.

Now I respawn, ready for another adventure in the world of Minecraft!

Conclusion

The above documents maybe the first ten to twenty minutes of a Minecraft game. I've only shown you a satellite photograph of a crudely-drawn picture of someone pointing in the general direction of the tip of the iceberg. There's nothing quite like cowering in your tiny log cabin overnight while listening to monsters fighting outside, wishing you hadn't lost your sword and all your torches in that lava flood earlier; riding a mine-cart at breakneck speed down into the bowels of the earth, flashing through light and dark areas and flying past underground streams filled with hundreds of lost pigs; completing a month-long building project that connects your self-built villages into one gigantic mining complex with massive, valley-spanning bridges; even just turning the corner and seeing what the game creates for you is potentially a powerfully affecting experience. I've seen some genuinely unbelievable terrain. Emerging from underground in the middle of a dried-up lake, above the surface of which floats a self-contained island, easily a hundred metres in the air, made more of an impression on me than many professionally designed game environments.

All I can really do is list things that have happened to me, because there are limitless possible stories that can emerge as you play. This isn't the bullshit of Spore, where everyone experiences the same boring story, just with the main character having a different number of legs or something. It's the kind of storytelling which games like Dwarf Fortress and Sleep Is Death excel at, because it results in a highly individual, beautifully original tale with just a little imagination from the player.

To close, there are two things I'd like to see in the future of games:

-Truly open worlds, where stories tell themselves without being restricted by the imagination of the designer. Games where you're just plonked down somewhere and told to play, without being forced into someone else's idea of what is fun.

-More goddamn minecarts, they rock shit hardcore.

Nige be finished, yo.

Outside of the Kinect Box

2010-06-28T16:07:00.000+01:00

Far from being E3's defining moments, the motion controller demonstrations left me feeling a little disappointed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, both Sony and Microsoft (the latter especially) have divided their audience squarely into two. The casual audience, they've decided, are only interested in casual, motion controlled experiences, whilst the 'core' audience just wants more guns, more explosions, and generally more of the same.

It's depressing to me because these stereotypes have been proven wrong time and time again. Casual games will draw people in not if they're controlled with some goofy peripheral, but if they're genuinely fun to play (a la Peggle). Meanwhile there's not one 'hardcore' gamer out there who doesn't want a little variety with their bald space marines.

Microsoft's Kinect has the potential to add to existing gameplay experiences, but it's a shame the potential is all being used on games aimed at non-gamers. There's nothing wrong with these of course – more people playing games is a good thing no matter what – but I can't help but think there's so much more that can be explored. For example:

What if games took notice of your body rather than just your hands?

There are some people out there who'll jump at loud noises in horror games (myself included). Other gamers are braver, and for them playing a horror game is a much less tense experience. Jumping in fear is something that Kinect could register, and use to adapt the game's experience. A scared mess of a player could be given a slightly easier time than someone who's sitting there stoically playing through the game.

Similarly if someone's beating their controller to a pulp in frustration, why not subtly remove a couple of enemies in their path, or reduce the rubber-banding in your racing game by a couple of fractions to ease them through the challenge without making them feel like a cheat.

A more basic application of Kinect could be its use as a glorified pause button. Going to the kitchen for a sandwich? Kinect will notice you get up and pause the game for you. Switching controllers between players during a frantic split-screen session of Halo? Kinect will pause it until you're all comfortable.

What if Kinect put you in games that were actually good?

In your average game there are dozens of screens dotted around levels showing fake television shows, or mission co-ordinators. Kinect (or the Playstation Eye for that matter) could really mess with you by chucking your image onto these. Walking past an image of yourself gaming in a virtual shop window is a surreal experience I can tell you.

Ok, so maybe that suggestion's a little lame, but what about the potential for identifying your team-mates as something more than just a screen name and an annoying accent. Remember how in GTA4's multiplayer you could call up people on your phone to intimidate your enemies? What about if you were able to video call them, for that added terror of knowing your enemy can see you in your undies?

The characters of driving games are traditionally a very stationary lot. The most you'll usually get out of them is a movement of the arm to change gear, but aside from that they'll just sit there, much like you are at home. Hows about imbuing these static avatars with a little more character, directly from the gamer at home? Motorstorm had a taunt button which allowed you to shake your fist at other racers when on the back of a motorcycle. What if the character copied your own movements at home, giving the finger to other racers as the pass you online, or gloating as you left them in your dust. It would also be that much more menacing to see someone flick you the bird as they pass, knowing that the player at home had to take one of his hands off his controller to get it to work rather than just press a button.

The ability to scan objects was one of the potential features shown of by Microsoft at 2009's E3, there with the example of a kid holding his skateboard up to the screen to get the graphic directly into the game. Lame as it sounds, it might actually be fun to have more of that kind of thing. What if Niko's clothes were a replica of an outfit it your wardrobe? The feature could be taken further in games like the Sims, where it would become much easier to get your exact duvet design (snakes and ladders in my case) onto your sim's bed.

Kinect has the potential to make many of these games we're already familiar with into much more personal experiences, but it's a shame no one seems to have given the possibilities much thought as it stands.

Sex faces

Speaking from personal experience, gamers tend to make a lot of stupid faces whilst playing. This stupidity isn't limited to their countenance's however, as my heroic end-of-a-difficult-level dances will attest to.

Most of these things are pretty embarrassing, which means they also have the potential to be quite amusing. Much in the same way as Burnout Paradise, games could record you at key moments, to capture that heartbreaking moment you missed the last jump in a lengthy Prince of Persia sequence. On the flip side, I'd gladly watch back some of my victory dances weeks after getting a platinum ranking in Bayonetta.

Stupid though many of these ideas are, they do show that with a little out of the box thinking, a peripheral which has been passed on by most gamers as being 'not for them' could enrich their favorite games in ways they'd never thought possible.

We haven't even come close to seeing the dozens of Kinect enabled games promised to us by Michael Pachter, so to write the device off at this point could be excluding yourself from one of the most potentially interesting developments in console gaming this side of rumble.

As always, time will tell.

Mass Effect 2 Will Let You Dance Upon the Stars

2010-06-27T11:48:00.000+01:00

In many ways you already know what to expect from Mass Effect 2. The sequel to the flawed 2007 original sees pretty minimal changes to all areas of the game, which add up to a much greater whole, easily surpassing the original, and setting a new benchmark for how rpg-shooters should work.

Although in typical Bioware style the game never lets itself get stuck in one genre for too long, Mass Effect 2 is primarily a shooter, albeit one which always leaves one foot in the rpg genre. It's thankful therefore that this area has been the one to see the most radical changes from the first. In these sections the game manages to feel like a shooter first and an RPG second, bullets do differing levels of damage depending on their hit location, and you never feel like you're missing shots because your character stats decree this must be so.

Mass Effect 2's shooting never reaches

the levels of its non-RPG brethren, thanks to its controls which can often fall apart in close-quarters, but if you're playing the game as a shooter, then you're doing it wrong. To make up for this, there are a great number of special moves for you and your squad mates to make use of depending on your class, and importantly these are the primary orders you can give. As such they add a layer of strategy to the game which gets very satisfying when you get skilled enough to have one squadmate throw and enemy into the air, another to deactivate their shields, whilst you can easily shoot away their remaining health.

As good as these sections are though, they're not likely to be what you remember after finishing the game. Moral choices pepper the beginning, climax, and even the middle of most missions, and their effects vary from having an extra wave of enemies to fight, to losing entire extra crew members. Most of these choices occur within dialogue trees, which allows the game's sublime voice acting to make those choices that much more personal. Although the game pretty clearly spells out which choice it deems to be the 'good' option, some choices are genuinely very taxing.

No matter how difficult, these choices would mean nothing were it not for both characters and a universe that you care about. Mass Effect 2 has both of these and so much more. Every character has a backstory, every planet a description, and then beyond this there are literally pages upon pages of codex entries for almost every alien and technology you come across within the game. There's more here than you could ever hope to digest in a single playthrough, but this is a good thing rather than a waste. It creates a sense of a universe that exists beyond your game, that keeps ticking even when you've left the area. The game doesn't really have to push you towards saving the universe, because you already want to.

This desire might just be as a result of how good everything looks however. Mass Effect 2's finest visuals are undoubtedly in its larger areas, where in the distance there's always a stream of hover-cars or an impossibly tall skyscraper. Fittingly the game's character's are visually the same way. Generally speaking, the more fantastical the creature design is, the better the graphics engine presents it. When it gets to the creature equivalent of the indoor corridor, the human, the visuals fail to impress. At these moments it's hard to notice though, because the quality of the acting is more than enough to pull through.

The game's backstory may be that of an expansive role playing game, but the inventory system is not. There's no need in this game to spend half an hour equipping your squad with the best equipment available, no need to flick between your inventory and a shop menu as you try to work out which rifle has the best armour piercing rating. It's not necessary in the game to even buy new weapons and armour, as it much prefers to let you upgrade what you've got rather than go shopping. Other games have taught us that there is a certain satisfaction you can get from tweaking the perfect loadout, but what Mass Effect 2 realises is that more often than not you just want to get on with the action.

It's such a shame then, that far from just letting you get on with the game – which it manages to encourage in so many other areas – it's resource collection minigame is slow, tedious, and will ruin a good few hours of the game's length. The problem is that the vast majority of the game's resource currency isn't available within its missions, you have to search for them in your ship. This involves scanning planets for various minerals in a time consuming minigame which never gets fun, even when you happen upon a mother load of resources. If you want to buy many upgrades for your crew, then you'll have to pay a pretty hefty price.

Even when you include the hours you'll spend mining, it's hard not to recommend Mass Effect 2. The game delivers in ways few other mergings of genre have been able to, and as such its easy for anyone with the slightest of interests in RPGs, shooters, or even sci-fi in general to get absolutely lost in this space epic.

Rock Band 3 is Everything Guitarists Have Hoped For

2010-06-25T13:00:00.000+01:00

Although I've never met them, it appears someone out there wanted a more realistic guitar rhythm game. Harmonix has revealed that as well as bringing a whole boatload more songs, Rock Band 3 will also feature a new 'Pro' mode which users will play with a real Fender Squire guitar.

I've never owned a guitar rhythm game. Part of this may be due to my house, which I doubt will ever have the capacity for more gaming peripherals, let alone a plastic drum kit. However another more significant part is that I play guitar.

Now I'm not going to get all snobby about Rock Band and its imitators. I appreciate that they tap into the music scene in a way almost no other games have managed, and are genuinely a huge amount of fun to play. They've just never really appealed to me is all.

Rock Band 3 has already changed all of this.

Whilst it would be nice to not have to by another guitar when I already have one sitting next to me, I totally understand why this has to be the case. Without MIDI, it would be nigh-on impossible for a game to take the analogue signals a guitar produces and turn them into game inputs. This in the grand scheme of things though, is a fairly minor niggle.

The fact of the matter is that tabliture, let alone good accurate tabliture, is incredibly hard to come by on the internet. Companies that produce sheet music have been shutting down sites for a while, and those few that are left contain a large amount of tabs that leave a lot to be desired.

The alternatives then are to either tab stuff yourself, or buy officially licensed sheet music. Getting what you hear down onto paper is an invaluable tool for every guitarist to learn, but it's a very hard thing to do, especially for more complicated songs with one, two, or even three guitar parts, as well as bass in there just to confuse you. Sheet music then could be your best option, were it not often as inaccurate as amateur tabs, as well as the fact it's only ever available for an entire album.

If you're telling me that I can buy Rock Band 3, crank the difficulty up to full, and actually learn real songs, then I'm going to be very excited here. It's not just the fact that the game could replace written tabs for me, its that it has the potential to do things that printed tabliture has never been able to do, namely giving the duration of notes (a very very important feature when some guitar solos will whip around notes at incredible speeds).

Rock Band 3 could also potentially make me a much better guitarist to boot. Put in practise routines to do on a daily basis, and I'll gladly play through them a couple of times to improve on my speed. Not only that, but the ability to rate your performance in these otherwise boring routines could revolutionise the practise schedules of millions of bedroom guitarists.

Let's not get carried away here. There are inevitably going to be things you can do on the Rock Band guitar that won't sound right on a real guitar, but will get you points in game. In these cases, you may not know you're doing something wrong, but you'll subconsciously take on this bad habit which may be very hard to break out of further down the line. Not everything about playing guitar comes out the amp at the other end; there are things like hand posture, and strumming fluency that I don't believe any software can teach you, and may make it impossible for you to get beyond a certain skill level.

So Rock Band 3 isn't going to replace guitar teachers any time soon. If however you can buy the game with the guitar, practise for a couple of months, and then go and get lessons without having to buy a new instrument, that's going to be a huge incentive for people to get learning.

Absolutely everything about the success of Rock Band 3 as a teaching tool rests on the accuracy of the guitar. If anything about it is off, if the frets aren't wide enough, if the strings don't react in the right way, if the strings are too easy to push down, then everything you learn whilst playing the game is going to be useless when you come to buying a 'real' guitar.

Harmonix is a development studio made up of musicians, and if anyone can pull this off its them. As soon as I get my hands on one of these guitars I'll let you guys know if a new generation of musicians is just around the corner, so until then if anyone from Harmonix is reading, send one of those bad boys this way!

E3 2010 In Review

2010-06-18T12:24:00.000+01:00

E3 2010, if it's remembered at all, will likely be recalled as being the year everyone followed up on their promises. For Nintendo this meant bringing back old franchises like Golden Sun and Donkey Kong, and for Microsoft and Sony it meant filling out the details of their respective motion controllers, Kinect and Move.

All three – with the possible exception of Microsoft depending on your interpretation – have finally made good on their promise of one to one motion tracking. The new Legend of Zelda game was perhaps the most obvious success story in this regard. You swing your Wiimote and yes, it certainly looks as though Link is swinging his sword the exact same way. There seems to be a small latency issue with Microsoft's Kinect, as well as some worrying reports about it having problems with seated players, but for the most part these issues can be overcome with some smart game design.

The downside of Sony's motion controller was made pretty obvious right then and there in Sony's press conference. The Move's wand, Tretton announced, would cost just $50. He then announced, in an appreciably quieter tone, that the Navigation controller would set users back a further $30. Even from my desk at home I could hear the audience's cheers dramatically subside. $80 for a peripheral many aren't even convinced by yet? That's a hard sell if ever I saw one. Even the news that emerged later about users being able to use a standard PS3 controller single-handedly in its place didn't manage to repair the damage done.

A fair amount of gloating was included in each press conference for good measure. Nintendo as always had the sheer facts to back their claims up. Those recited by Reggie apparently proved that both Nintendo platforms were still going strong despite recent industry buzz to the contrary. Sony chose to go for a more underhand, less classy, but ultimately more funny tact, by bringing out their latest advertising figure Kevin Butler to talk some smack about Microsoft's Cirque du Soleil event. Conspicuously absent from Sony's conference was any mention of hard numbers, but aside from a few angry shareholders there's not likely to be anyone losing sleep over this.

Whilst not faffing about with motion controllers, each of the three managed to find a fair amount of time to talk about games. Microsoft and Sony both chose to play it safe, and fill in the blanks of games that we more or less already know about. Killzone 3, Halo: Reach and Gears of War 3 all received on-stage demonstrations, but nothing mind-blowing was shown.

It seemed that in many respects these two have divided their audience into two parts: those who want 'innovation' and those that don't. For those that want 'innovation' they showed a wealth of motion controlled games, which, from the sidelines appeared to be providing nothing more than shallow casual experiences, fun – yes, but it's questionable for how long. The other half, the 'core' gamers as we're now known, were shown exactly what we've played before but (sigh) bigger better and more badass. “You like co-op?” they cried, “Here's co-op for more players!” There was no envelope pushing at E3 by the big three this year, games were either aimed at a casual audience, or at the change-resistant hardcore. Those in the middle were left with little to look forward to.

After a couple of years of meandering banality, Nintendo were finally on form this E3. Alongside the impressive 3DS – which we're now being told actually works – they managed to show off several unannounced games, the most interesting of which being Kirby's Epic Yarn, a 2D platformer with buckets of charm, a unique art-style, and some genuinely interesting gameplay ideas. Of the three, Nintendo was the best at walking the tightrope between the new and established gaming markets, though it could be argued that this is only because they've had the most practise.

Sony's show stopper came in the form of the GlaDOS introduced Gabe Newell, who took to the stage to announce a change of heart regarding the PS3. According to him, thanks to the support of Steam, Portal 2 on PS3 would be the best console version of the game. This was a welcome change for PS3 owners, who have until now received something of a raw deal from Valve, with either bad ports, or no games at all being released on their system of choice. Apparently this change of heart has resulted from Sony's much less draconian attitude to DLC on their system compared with Microsoft, which is very important to Valve considering their habit of releasing free downloadable content. Unfortunately no mention was made of the game that has benefited most from this, Team Fortress 2, which could now find a happy home on the console.

The award for most conspicuously absent game has to go to The Last Guardian, which didn't even get mentioned by Sony. After an incredibly debut trailer was shown at last year's E3, many were certain we'd see the game in a playable form this year. Unfortunately many came away from the event disappointed.

It almost seems inevitable that press conferences have become a bit of a mixed bag. In our opinion, there needs to be a competing trade show for mainstream outlets, where companies can show off their games not intended for enthusiast gamers. The alternative, as we've seen this year, is an E3 with some very interesting moments, buried within shows that could otherwise take up far less time. Digs at 'casual' content aside, it seems there may well be something for everyone to enjoy this holiday, no matter what system they decide to use.

Bringing Your Sprites Into the 21st Century

2010-06-12T23:05:00.000+01:00

There was a time when the satisfaction an artist gets from completing a piece of work would have been completely inaccessible to me. Now with the help of a couple of free pieces of image editing software, even an art illiterate nerd such as myself can produce something from almost nothing.

I shouldn't get up on my high horse too soon though. I haven't created something from nothing here, I've merely run pre-existing sprites through modern software. The results produced however are really stunning.

Hit the jump to see more.

Of course as with any newfound source of creativity, the rules of the internet have clearly stated that Mario must be the first thing to get the treatment. It happened with Little Big Planet, it's happened with Modnation Racers, and I'm going to do it now.

Unfortunately, as you can see the sprite resolution in this case really has been too big a challenge for the software. All the detail from Mario's eyes has been lost, and those two white dots (buttons?) on the front of his overalls have been turned into nipples. Not a great literal transformation then, but funky nevertheless.

Next up was Final Fantasy 6 and the Prince of Persia:

Out of all the sprites I toyed around with, I think this one of Sonic came out the best. All his limbs are nicely spaced out, and his distinctly colored body parts have made the algorithm's job almost easy.

Finally here's Samus and Alucard from Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night respectively.

If you can think of any classics that I've missed please let me know in the comments. If you want to know how I did this then I suggest you do likewise. I'm not going to post a tutorial tonight, because I want to spend the time writing something substantial, otherwise no one benefits.

If anything, this work shows the amazing artistry that went into making sprites back in the day if through some simple processes they can be made to look fantastic twenty years on.

The Politics of the Wild West

2010-06-11T15:41:00.001+01:00

Warning - Minor spoilers: If you're the kind of person that got annoyed at Nintendo for telling you Luigi would be playable in Galaxy 2, then this article will likewise 'spoil' Red Dead Redemption.

Warning – Pretension within: I like writing that over-analyses games. If you don't I suggest you hit backspace, because this article is one of those.

Red Dead Redemption's main star is the Wild West. Sure, there may be this guy named John Marston gallivanting around looking to put a bullet between the eyes of some former 'comrades', but the story of the demise of the 'Old West' – as it's referred to in the game – is a much more potent one. The ideals of the setting, of the freedom to do exactly as you please, is something that Marston collides with head on, and eventually becomes converted by; He sidesteps left politically, as a direct result of the events he witnesses within the game.

By the time the events of the game start John is already on his way to the political right, having been quite the socialist in the past. Whilst riding with his old gang, he sought to redistribute wealth more equally by “[stealing] from the rich, and ...[giving] the money to the people who needed it more." Marston's views directly equal that of left wing politics; the idea that a more equal distribution of income is beneficial to all. Modern day income redistribution takes the form of a progressive tax system, a century ago it was the task of outlaws – at least in the eyes of Red Dead's protagonist.

Even during the game's first half he still holds some of these ideals dear. When tracking members of the Ballard Gang back to their hideout Marston asks the sheriff why they don't just arrest them then and there if they're known gang members, but the sheriff disagrees. Marston believes they should prevent the crime in the first place, Leigh Johnson that they should punish it when it happens.

Later on John has a similar disagreement with the rebel leader. "Whilst there are guns and money,” he says, “there won't be any freedom." Again this highlights another crucial difference between the politics of the left and the right, where the left will favour greater state intervention at the expense of personal liberty with a view to giving people the 'freedom from' at the expense of the 'freedom to'.

Why do his views change though? An obvious reason is the actions of the Mexican rebels in the game's middle third. These rebels have support from followers who truly believe they're working towards a fairer, more equal Mexico. They hope to achieve this through a socialist government, which Reyes even tries to convert Marston to at one point (“You would make a fine socialist.”). To a certain extent the rebel leaders believe their cause is noble as well, though as with any politician it's hard to tell their beliefs from their rhetoric.

The problem Marston discovers, is that of the

corrupting influence of power. It's a problem all extreme left wing governments struggle to deal with, and in Red Dead Redemption this problem is portrayed by the Rebels turning into a mirror image of the previous government even before they get into power. Reyes sleeps with whores, he makes false marital promises, and he even boasts at one point about matching the government's propaganda with their own. Once they get into power the similarities get even more pronounced as can be seen in newspaper reports published after the final mission.

Although this may have pushed him over the edge, it's undoubtedly the government's control over his own life that he resents the most. Characters he comes across within the game often assume he's working for the government, which is only really half true. To claim someone's working for someone implies they have a choice, when in actual fact he's being blackmailed to do so. In this way John sees the flip-side of increased government intervention, its negative impact.

Here we have the crux of his belief system, in that essentially he believes in the right of government to control, up until the point that they're controlling him. As soon as that steps up in the latter half of the game, John starts preaching the importance of freedom and individual liberty. Some might call this selfish, when really it's just naïve. It's hard to imagine Marston gave any thought at all to the people's money he was taking when he robbed banks.

Coming face to face with his old gang members reveals how much his beliefs have changed. A key concept often used in the political broadcasting of the left is that of 'fairness', but Marston gives up on this utopian view, “Ain't nothing fair” he says, and also “It was just an excuse and we all knew.”

John Marston's time during the game changes him. He started out with a firmly held belief that a government (or in his case: outlaws) should intervene to restore fairness and equality, but drops this belief when he sees the dangers of too much governmental control in Mexico. By the game's end Marston wants one thing: freedom, and he's willing to put up with all of life's hardships to enjoy it. This is in my view the game's biggest achievement. It doesn't just take the Wild West as a convenient setting, it makes the central ideal of the West, that of freedom, its central theme.

Grand Theft Redemption?

2010-06-11T13:33:00.002+01:00

The Wild West is dying, and Red Dead Redemption is unlikely to let you forget it. It's not just its barren desert landscape, but its entire ethos, washed away by rapidly encroaching governmental control. It's into this landscape that John Marston is thrown with a single objective in mind, but as is always the case he's very open to getting sidetracked along the way.

Every horse in RDR is unfortunately limited to just 1 horsepower.

Cue running errands for every morally dubious grave-robbing, revolution-leading, bounty-chasing character you come across. Missions are incredibly varied and never lead you down the same route twice. Some have you racing horses, others burning down buildings and once you're even asked to jump on to a moving train, and although some tasks are inherently far more enjoyable than others, the game is designed with exactly the right quantities to play to its own strengths. You'd be forgiven for groaning at the mention of races in an open world game, but RDR point blank refuses to litter your map with these side missions, instead limiting them to a token inclusion in one or two story sequences.

Comparisons with GTA are certainly invited – the amount of time that passes when you save is exactly the same for example – but to do so would be doing Red Dead a huge disservice. Fundamentally the world could hardly be further removed from the city. Large expanses of barren land separate the shanty towns which house the majority of the mission start points, and although it would be easy to claim that horses are a like-for-like replacement of cars, the connection is far more personal. Indeed, it's possible to make it through large sections of the game with one trusty steed.

Although the West falls short of becoming as interesting a location as Liberty City due to it's large amounts of empty space, in other regards it improves on the formula set up by GTA4 earlier this generation. As previously mentioned the game doesn't include the obligatory racing side missions, and what it does include is tight, enjoyable, and above all relevant to its setting. There aren't endless collectables to chase after, instead there's buried treasure, found using maps rather than blind luck. Sitting down with a spreadsheet might alert you to the fact there's less content here than in other releases, but the difference is that here side missions are as compelling as anything the main quest has to offer.

When you've finally tired of chasing down horse thieves, cheating at poker, taming wild cattle and bringing in bounties, there's a lengthy story to plough through. It's well written, and incredibly acted (both in terms of voicing and animation), and beneath Rockstar's trademark layer of dirt and grime is actually an intelligent story of the death of the West. Granted it overstays its welcome in its middle third, and then noticeably rushes its end, but when it's at its best the game creates such tension so that you can't help but plough on through the story despite the distractions on offer.

The game has its flaws, make no mistake about it,

but at best they're faintly amusing, and at worst will make more risky fir e fight stratagems downright suicidal. Though graphically the game is impressive, it has its fair share of pop-in when travelling at high speeds, as well as other oddities. One poker game we played was almost ruined by the disappearance of both the table, as well as the textures of all the other players. Thankfully this didn't dissuade anyone, and they continued to balance their cards precariously on thin air.

The cover system will likewise not be winning any awards any time soon. It would be unwise of you to take cover behind a curved rock, thanks to John's inability to peek round its side, and tapping the cover button whilst near two barriers makes a good recipe for bullet sandwiches. The game's difficulty never forces you to rely on situations such as these with any regularity, but when it does, you'll remember it.

Rather than being reductive, placing Red Dead Redemption alongside its urban sibling would be quite the complement. In many ways it's so much more though, effortlessly transporting you back a century, complete with all the beauty and ugliness that time entails. Redemption is a sublime game, whose whole more than surpasses the sum of its parts. Considering the quality of the parts on offer then, that's quite the accolade.

To Read This Article You'll Need the Blue Key

2010-06-03T21:49:00.007+01:00

There are few things that annoy me more than backtracking in games. Never have I come upon a door locked by a key deposited half an hour back in my travels and exclaimed, “Yipee, that last thirty minutes of my life was a roller-coaster ride of epic proportions. I'm sure it'll be as fun – if not more so – in reverse!”. If that is indeed your reaction to being forced to backtrack, then I humbly salute you, because immunity to bad design decisions is something I think all gamers can be envious of.

Thankfully the trend seems finally to be dying out, the last game I remember forcing me to backtrack a considerable distance was Devil May Cry 4, when on reaching the last level (the last NEW level that is) you encountered a character change, and were then sent on your way back through the entire game. DMC4 at least earns some bonus points for not including the same enemies the second time through, but it's hard not to feel cheated by the presence of only half the environments you were expecting in your game.

As such I appreciate this article may be a little behind the times, especially considering as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the game that got me thinking about backtracking in the first place. That game, as well as Super Metroid and more recently Shadow Complex (though I failed to finish the former and never bought the latter) manage to make backtracking enjoyable to the extent that one could justifiably make the case that this is the core focus of these games. Whether or not that's the case isn't the point here, what's important is that these games make the process fun in a way not many others have managed.

For those unfamiliar with the genre (sometimes called 'MetroidVania' in reference to the aforementioned game series) here's a quick overview. MetroidVanias will generally speaking be made up of one continuous map, with no artificial barriers to constrain where the player can or cannot go. The hitch is that certain areas will only be accessible after obtaining certain items, which then forces you to play through this 'open' world in exactly the order the developer intended you to. For example, in Super Metroid you get the 'Morph Ball' upgrade for Samus fairly early on in the game, which then allows you to travel through small gaps.

What's important about these games is that you're never backtracking for a single-use device. Doom's system of red and blue keys is fine for its small levels, but when put into a larger game such as the original Devil May Cry it becomes not just irritating to wade back through levels, but unsatisfying when you finally present the lock with it's key, only to see the key disappear from your inventory, never to be seen again.

Contrast this with the aforementioned Morph Ball from Super Metroid, and the numerous places throughout the game where you can use it. It's not just some throwaway item you pick up once and then discard, it's an essential part of your arsenal which you use for hours to come.

It's also important that you've already been exposed to many situations where such an item would be useful, as opposed to just one barrier. During my early hours playing Symphony of the Night I was tormented by one vase on a ledge that try as I might I couldn't reach. When I finally came upon the double jump I didn't care I could now reach far more important parts of the castle; I headed right back to that ledge and used my new found ability to reach that vase. It ended up containing a sword less powerful than the one I currently had equipped, and yet reaching it was just so satisfying.

What we can learn from these games is that backtracking is a completely acceptable way of getting more mileage out of the environments you've already built. That said, it's very important that developers don't just put a barrier in your way, it's far preferable for them to place the objective clearly in your sight, which makes you curious as to what's up there rather than just making you angry that you need to jump through hoops to progress.

Done correctly backtracking can flesh out what might otherwise be a short game, and even make games of a decent length appreciably longer. I personally plan to spend some time making a clean sweep of the castle when I've got all my powerups, just to make sure I haven't missed anything. Like many other design choices (such as collectables, or an open world) backtracking does the most harm when developers don't go for it enough, and instead half-arse it in a way which is neither fun nor satisfying.

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A quick note: This article, which is typical of many others of mine, could (and in the past has been) criticised as being “overly-analytical”. People argue that games should just be 'fun', that if you examine them in too great a detail then you destroy this.

I can appreciate some would find articles such as this to be a little tedious at best, but that isn't to say over-analysing games is a pointless endeavour. Does anyone honestly believe Miyamoto walks into his planning meetings and goes, “All right guys, just make it fun. Don't think about it too much, because if you do it won't be.”? Of course he doesn't. It's important for every developer (and to an extent gamer) to understand what exactly it is about games that makes them fun, even down to the minutest detail, which becomes especially important when you're creating entirely new genres of games.

Feature – Seasons Don't Fear...In-Game Advertising

2010-05-28T15:14:00.005+01:00

The amount of people playing games is rising. This is good. The price of an average console game is rising. This is not so good. The cost of producing a standard retail release is also rising – due to the increased graphical capabilities of current generation consoles. This is bad. In an ideal world the expanding marketplace and increased retail price would make up for the increased costs developers are facing on their end, but if current evidence is anything to go by, this is not the case.

Many have blamed the recent influx of 'unfair' DLC – such as paying extra to unlock content on the disk, leaving a game story unfinished to get people to pay for it later or paying to unlock cheats – on greedy publishers looking to fatten their already overflowing wallets. This view is a little hard to believe. Such a practice sullies a publisher's reputation in the eyes of many gamers, and as such appears to be an act of desperation rather than a calculated business strategy.

An alternative to forcing consumers to pay more is to get this extra revenue from advertising, by offering companies space in your game to promote their goods. Reactions thus far to this tactic have been negative, and understandably so. Attempts to sell goods to gamers have been unsubtle and patronising at best, and in worse case scenarios have actually negatively impacted a game's quality.

Longer load times as a result of advertising are understandably a very bad thing, but it would be ridiculous to dismiss the idea altogether. Load times during games are without question their worst feature, and at best simply provide banal 'Hints' or show off the game's art (Bayonetta's sublime loading screens notwithstanding). Why not monetise these moments when the gamer isn't playing, and thus place your advertising in a place which in no way affects gameplay?

In-game billboards are another route that can be done well if enough care and attention is taken. No one wants to see a Pepsi billboard whilst traversing the ruins of Washington DC in Fallout 3, but gamers are usually okay with seeing the same advert on the side of a Gran Turismo track, or on a football stadium. If the care is taken to fit ads in similarly well with non-sports titles, then could they not add yet another layer of realism to an experience?

Similarly, real products could be used as items in a characters inventory, in the place of something generic made up by the developer. Alan Wake's use of 'Energizer' batteries is a good example of this. The idea of having to pick up batteries to extend the life of your torch was always going to require batteries to be present in the game. The fact that they happen to be 'Energizer' doesn't change the gameplay experience in any way, and likely provided Remedy Entertainment with a little extra cash with which to keep the game's development going for as long as they did. Alternatively would anyone really care if caps in Fallout 3 were from Coca-Cola bottles rather then Nuka-Cola?

No matter how good a game is, nine times out of ten it's only going to provide money in one form: sales. If gamers look at an ad whilst they wait for their online matches to load, then this can provide developers with an additional incentive to keep their servers online for as long as possible, as well as providing them with income with which to put out free patches, and potentially even free DLC.

Gamers are right to get angry at in-game advertising as it stands. It can ruin a game for many people, and often leads to a feeling of exploitation when you've paid for a full-price retail release, only to be forced to look at obtrusive ads whilst you play. If adverts are unobtrusive and cleverly done however, they might just provide a valuable way of making riskier games more profitable, which will, at the end of the day benefit consumers like us.

Where Should Rockstar Visit Next?

2010-05-27T13:31:00.007+01:00

There's no denying that there's something about Rockstar's game worlds that make them special. Is it the NPC's that go about their day, with their seemingly endless amounts of character and explicit dialogue? Or is it the setting itself, which always manages to be as expansive and yet contain a level of detail unmatched by any of their competitors.

Regardless of what exactly their magic ingredient is, Rockstar it seems has done it again with Red Dead Redemption. As always both the critics, and consumers have found a special place in their hearts for the game, which has once and for all put to an end the belief that the Wild West will ever truly die.

Considering the game's success, it would be foolish of Rockstar not to continue what has turned into a successful partner franchise with Grand Theft Auto, but why should they stop there? Given that they've now proven that worlds other than the New York/Miami/California combination are ripe for open-world mayhem, where should they visit next?

In short: potentially everywhere.

England, 18th Century
England during the 18th Century was changing. The Industrial Revolution was just getting underway, sending the previously rural working class headlong into newly emerging towns and cities to work in factories which made use of the wealth of technological innovation going on at the time.

This period also encapsulated the heyday of the highwaymen, robbers on horseback often romanticised in folklore and legend. These men would pray on the stagecoaches carrying the wealthy from place to place, allegedly giving rise to phrases such as “Stand and deliver!” and “Your money or your life!” when they emerged from their hiding places to ambush them.

This rich history of folklore would make any game with this setting an incredibly interesting place for Rockstar to explore. The GTA and Red Dead series have played homage very successfully to cinema history, and with 18th Century England they could do the same thing for the written word. This could even potentially be more interesting, as there exists no de facto standard for the aesthetic of the era, allowing Rockstar to develop its own rich look of the time, without relying on a pre-existing template such as with the GTA3 trilogy.

Though from a historical perspective it doesn't quite work, there's also potential for overlap here with a cockney London, complete with a contrived appearance by Jack the Ripper of all people. Given the developer's refusal to shy away from the nitty-gritty, a date with the Ripper could be a truly terrifying experience.

What ultimately would make 18th Century England an interesting setting would be Rockstar's approach to it, seeing as there's very little precedent of how to do so. That said, the Wild West but greener might be a good start.

Tokyo, Modern Day
Asian culture has always had a significant role to play in the GTA games of the past, most notably in the handheld 'Chinatown Wars' but it's taken a back seat to American mob life for the most part, or been forced to operate in an American city.

The opportunities offered by such a setting are numerous. The GTA games have always at their core been about American pop culture, the films, television and music that make up the nation. Sometimes the games take satirical swipes here and there, but for the most part their games are lacquered with the infinite hopes of the American Dream. A foreign setting could be used to do exactly that, but for a completely different country, with its unique culture, stereotypes and ideals.

Vice City was fantastic for me personally because of how it managed to take a place I'd never been, from an era I'd never experienced, and put it together in such a way so that by the end of it I'd felt as if I'd been there, even if what 'there' was was a surreal pastiche of the real place. For those who've never been to Tokyo (myself included), a GTA game could do a similar thing, and transport us to a world we've never come close to seeing in the flesh.

The Caribbean, Early 18th Century

Much like the Wild West, the age of pirates is another criminally under-explored setting in the world of video games, especially in the action genre. Notable exceptions include the RTS Tropico, and of course Tim Schafer's Monkey Island series. Rockstar could take the setting grittier than it's ever gone before, as far removed from the child-friendly seven seas of the recent Disney movies as it's possible to get.

Without a doubt the biggest challenge to face any developer of a pirate-themed open world game would be sea travel. Almost without fail, sea travel within games manages to be slow and monotonous, lacking any of the excitement of pelting down streets filled with countless living and metallic obstacles. Worst of all is falling into the water, and being forced to swim for any length of time.

If Rockstar were to fix – or at least find their way around - these niggles then players could have a really unique experience, working their way up from the rank of lowly cabin-boy to captaining their own ship, getting into bar fights, and pouncing on enemy crews to steal their treasure maps and of course: rum.

Anywhere, The Future
Perhaps the most unlikely suggestion on this list (though probably not any less likely than the others) is the possibility of Rockstar going all science ficion on us for the first time in their history. My initial justification for heading to the future for some open-world mayhem is a little thin on the ground – think hover cars – but there are some interesting angles of such a setting that a developer with Rockstar's pedigree could explore.

Futuristic cities always tend to have more than their fair share of unpleasantness about them, and who else to better explore what directions our twisted human desires will take in a few centuries from now? Rockstar could really go wild with future crimes such as organ production, or alien smuggling, and in doing so shock people for the first time in years simply because these'll be crimes we're not used to seeing in popular culture.

So where would you like Rockstar to set their next franchise? Do you want something historical like Red Dead Redemption, or simply somewhere different, yet still set in the modern time frame of Grand Theft Auto? Do you even want a change of setting at all, or are the characters the real stars of Rockstar's franchises for you?

What's Stopping Good Video Game Movies?

2010-05-26T14:11:00.005+01:00

If recent news is anything to go by, it seems the critical panning received by almost every single video game movie adaptation isn't enough to deter people. Logically there must be some fans out there devout enough to sit through 90 minutes of cinema garbage or else these movies wouldn't continue to get made with what appears to be larger and larger budgets.

The latest video game movie reportedly entering production is Mass Effect, Bioware's expansive science-fiction epic. The game joins an ever expanding list of adaptations which includes Naughty Dog's Uncharted, Quantum Dream's Heavy Rain and a sequel to 2007's Hitman movie based upon the long running assassination series from IO Interactive.

Almost without exception video game movies are bad, regardless of budget, acting cast, or source material. Whose fault is this though? Is it the movie studios who'll save their A-list talent for projects lacking in a built in audience, or is there an inherent problem with trying to convert interactivity into a wild roller-coaster ride of a film experience.

To my mind a producer is faced with an incredibly tough decision whenever he starts work on a film of this nature. They can either make a movie that gets as close to the source material as is possible, and refuse to change characters, locations and plot lines, or they can go in the opposite direction entirely, putting together something that takes a few key elements from the game, whilst reworking or abandoning other features that don't work in a non-interactive medium.

The success or failure of a project depends on this decision, and ultimately both choices contain drawbacks that have so far not been surmounted by efforts made.

Option number one, to make a movie that acts more as an homage to the source material is risky because of the role original franchise fans play in any adaptation's success. Mess with the source material too much and you'll have fans hungry for blood, demanding to know why feature X, Y or Z from the game didn't make an appearance in the movie, and why the plot has been changed the way it has. This original fanbase is crucial to the success of these types of film, and the loss of them can be potentially devastating to the success of the release.

Taking this option also tends to make your reasons for embarking on the project look a little morally dubious. As soon as you've changed the source material as much as many films chose to, it really begs the question why this film needed to be based on an existing IP in the first place. This route has a distinctive stench of the cash-in about it. More often than not this approach leads to a bland piece of cinema with no real identity to call its own aside from a few elements cribbed from its namesake in the gaming world.

The second option is for all involved to stick as close to the source material as possible, taking wholesale the characters, events, and art style that made the original game great. On the face of it this approach seems ideal, as it justifies wholly its existence as a tie in, and could potentially give fans of the franchise exactly what they want.

This path is pitted with potholes even greater than the other however, when you consider the insurmountable difference between what makes games and movies great. A film is an enjoyable experience when the characters in it are strong, charismatic, and just appealing to passively observe. Gaming protagonists meanwhile are – aside from in a select few instances – blank slates, who are for the most part defined by your interaction with them.

Jack Carver of Far Cry fame, taken purely how he appears in cutscenes, is a boring boring man, who only seems to exist to deliver a few lines of expository dialogue before lapsing into silence for hours at a time. When playing him however, he's a far more interesting character, capable of taking out dozens of men at a time before jumping off a cliff and paragliding to safety.

The problem as I see it is that what makes a character like Jack Carver interesting is going to be completely different when seen through the eyes of different gamers, because everyone plays Far Cry at least a little differently from one another. My Carver, the sneaky assassin, is going to be the opposite of your gung-ho 'Rambo'-esque hero. Trying to translate these differing characters into a single cinematic entity, has thus far resulted in bland, boring, atrocities of characters.

That for me is why film adaptations of games unilaterally end up being awful, regardless of the talent attached to them. Mark Protosevich may have written the script for 'I Am Legend' - a movie which I couldn't help but enjoy - but unless he just so happens to be the visionary that makes this whole trend work, the Mass Effect film will likely make about as much noise critically as John Frusciante without the Chili Peppers.

Five Utopian Features of the PSP2

2010-05-25T14:29:00.005+01:00

The run up to this year's E3 seems to be proving once more that (in their own words) Sony is still an industry leader in leaks. It seems like every week that goes by sees more details emerge about a possible PSP2, such as rumours of an announcement at Sony's Press Conference as well as speculation that the console will finish what the PSP Go started with download-only releases.

The jury's still out on whether Sony has learnt what it needs to do to make the PSP2 a success, and the boring answer is most likely the accurate one. The PSP2 needs to be cheap it needs to have good games both at release and on the horizon to convince consumers its a worthwhile investment.

Let's get a little more idealistic for a second here though, and think to ourselves what the PSP2 could do to not just get sales, but to set the world on fire. What could a small handheld console provide to get itself a space in the pocket of every commuter the world over? With that in mind I present to you my five utopian features of the PSP2.

Don't just step on Apple's toes, trample them

I should make one thing clear right off the bat. If I get called on my PSP and am forced to look like I'm gaming whilst actually answering a phonecall you can count me out. I want a device that can play all the great games my PSP can, but can still do all my smartphone stuff without getting bogged down. Make it a PSP Go with a touchscreen if you have to, but don't force me to navigate a phonebook with an analogue stick.

I want it all, I want a phonebook, mobile internet, calander, Facebook apps, camera, music player and I want a movie player. Don't just make me consider leaving my phone at home, make me feel like an idiot for carrying around a second device that does everything my PSP does minus the games. If you can make sure people have their PSPs on them at all times, then that's half the battle won.

Download-only

Sony, if your listening, I didn't by a PSP Go. I'm not sorry for that I'll admit, but don't take that a sign I disagree with its digital-only releases. I love the idea of not having to wait a couple of days for my games to arrive through the mail, but I didn't like the prospect of having to give up my UMD collection for the privilege.

Retailers are understandably a little reluctant to devote shelf space to games that didn't do so well last generation, and you can easily circumvent this problem by making the storefront yourself. Just make sure you get that whole piracy thing sorted out or else you're going to end up with egg on your face for the second time running.

Embrace Your Past

Playing Metal Gear Solid on my PSP was an absolute blast. Not those PSP ones you put out mind, by the original PSX epic, with Psycho Mantis and more stupid Genome soldiers than you could shake a stick at. It's hard to get myself playing old classics when I'm at home with my trio of next-gen consoles, but out on the go it's perfect when I'm looking for a handheld shot of nostalgia.

Without wishing to sound ungrateful, I want more. I want more PSX games, released more frequently and...well admittedly the prices you charged for them were about right. Don't stop there though, as I see it every old console is ripe for the picking. I could go for Genesis games on the go, and hell, even a couple of Neo Geo games might be nice.

Yes I know licensing deals are tricky things to negotiate, but Sony you're a big boy now, and you've been in this game a long time. It's time to start pulling your weight and convincing third parties that their old games are more than welcome on your digital store.

Reward me

I've got a pretty nice gamerscore going on with my PS3. I spent a significant amount of time earlier this year chasing after a platinum trophy for Assassin's Creed 2, and when I finally got it the feeling was impressive to say the least. If I could get that same feeling with smaller handheld games then I'd certainly spend a lot more time with the PS3's portable little sibling, rather than wasting my time reading books on the train (which I might add don't even have the common courtesy to play a satisfying little chime whenever I finish a chapter).

On a more serious note, trophies would give people a very alluring incentive to connect their PSP to their PSN account. As soon as you've got PSPs talking with your central servers you've got an avenue for pulling all sorts of checks to make sure people are using legitimate copies of games in their search for trophy glory. If you make trophies appealing enough, then you can let human competitiveness take over, at which point losing a gamerscore would become quite a serious punishment for a potential pirate.

Make the PSP2 do Everything you Lead us to Believe the Original Would

I may have been the only one that thought this, but there was a time before the PS3 joined the PSP on store shelves when I really thought there was a possibility of using my PSP to control PS3 games. Developers tantalised us with demonstrations of the PSP acting as a rear-view mirror on racing games such a F1 Championship Edition but when both systems were on store shelves everyone went strangely quiet on the issue.

Personally I'd never want to use the PSP's tiny little analogue stick to play as precise a game as F1, but the feature could be invaluable in many other instances. Imagine if you will, a two player RPG experience. You've been sucked into a random encounter, and both you and one friend are controlling a party member each. The HDTV in front of you however, is completely free of any HUD, instead all the required menus for controlling the tide of battle are located on your individual PSP screens. You scroll through your characters' data individually, without needing to see your partner's information, and when your turn comes to attack, the animation plays out in beautiful high definition in front of you. That my friends, would be living.

Token Inclusion: A Second Analogue Stick

I didn't want to include this feature, because honestly I think anything that encourages developers to put a console experience on a handheld is a bad thing, especially when your going to be forced to control them with sticks not designed for ease of use, but to take up as little room as possible.

Ignoring that quite large hurdle however, there do seem to be a significant amount of people that are really pining after that second stick, which should generate enough sales to offset the cost of its inclusion. A small number of handheld games may work quite well with it as well, such as Super Stardust, so it's influence wouldn't be all bad.

If you do all of these things Sony, you'll be guaranteed to generate at least one extra sale, which should make it all worthwhile right?

What about you? What does Sony need to do to get that bad PSP Go taste out of your mouth and get you back on the bandwagon for its handheld successor?

The Monogamous Relationship between the PC and Mods

2010-05-24T17:24:00.004+01:00

For many the decline in the emphasis placed on the PC as a platform isn't much of an issue. The party moved on to consoles a while ago, leaving PC developers to face some very difficult decisions about the platforms their future titles would grace with their presence.

In many cases there's not been much lost in the transition. Games are designed now in such a way so as to feel as natural played with a gamepad as they ever did with a mouse and keyboard, and thanks to the mind boggling resourcefulness of console developers, there remains today the smallest graphics gap between PC and console that there's ever been. There's one part of PC gaming however, that will likely never be able to make it over to consoles, and that's the Mod.

Mods (short for modifications) are programs or files which will change either a small part of a game, or create an entirely new one based upon the initial groundwork done by the game's developers. A small mod might be an additional multiplayer map, or a new gun, whilst an example of an entirely new game created as a mod would be Counter-Strike, which started out as a mod of the original Half Life.

Mods are an incredibly important part of the industry. Not only are they a blast to play around with for the end gamer, adding literally months of fun to a title in the form of what would today be called 'free DLC', but they also provide a very important means for amateurs to release games, by simplifying the process of making something in your spare time.

Whenever any industry veteran is asked how to get into the industry, the answer given 9 out of 10 times is to get involved with a mod team. That experience of putting together levels, and creating art assets for a community project is invaluable when a person comes to working in the industry as a professional, and it's experience you can't really get anywhere else.

I'm not saying the mod scene is ever going to die out, but the shunning of the PC platform by publishers is driving people towards consoles, and reducing the potential market for amateur releases. This is unquestionably a bad thing to my mind when consumer feedback is really the only thing you have going for you when you're not getting paid to put something out.

The solution I'd advocate is to make Mods far more accessible to consoles, and hence console owners.

Epic Games had this same idea with Unreal Tournament 3. Their method however, was less than ideal. Soon after the game's release, they put out a tool which allowed you to 'cook' your PC mod and turn it into something that could be played on your console.

The problem was that getting mods onto your console was simply far to convoluted for your average console gamer, who had no means of browsing mods on their PS3, and had to either get seriously invested in the PC mod community, or else wait for knowledgeable journalists to point them in the direction of something worth trying. Without any form of marketplace for the mods, there was no way for the average consumer to find something to suit his tastes.

Titles like LittleBigPlanet have proved that if you make downloading other people's creations easy enough, then not only will gamers download the creations of others, but that creators will be incentivised to produce the best possible content.

Give console gamers the engine, and some substantial tools, and they'll produce more than you ever thought possible. They'll fill consumers machines with hours of the most creative entertainment ever made, and they'll become the great designers of the future with the experience they'll gain.

But of course, there's always going to be that piracy issue bogging progress down...

So what about you. Would you be more tempted to try out a mod if you could play it from your couch, or are you already getting your fix on the PC side? Do you think we'll ever see mod tools make it into console games, or is there just not enough incentive there for developers?

Why Games are Never Going to get Shorter and Cheaper

2010-05-23T21:43:00.003+01:00

VP of Namco Bandai Partners Olivier Comte was quoted as saying last week that video games are “too expensive for the audience”. Her words resonated with me in a way lots of industry buzz has been doing recently.

To my mind there's no question about it, video games are far too expensive for anyone other than the hardcore enthusiast, and even those individuals are paying a premium price for content which many could happily go without.

I realise much of this is personal opinion (though a couple of industry veterans such as Randy Smith and John Davidson seem to share my views), but personally it's a struggle for me to play a lengthy game to completion. Unless a game holds a massive amount of variety in its gameplay, holding my attention for longer than five hours is a rarity, and after that it feels like time wasted just to see the story wrap up.

Aside from this writer's own opinion though, is there really any reason for the industry to change?

Economically lower price points make sense. Games would be considered by many (though I'll go out on a limb here and guess this doesn't include many of Bitmob's readership) to be a luxury good. Usually consumers of luxury goods are going to be very responsive to a change in price, and as such a drop in price is likely to result in an increase in total revenue. Put simply, the increase in game sales would theoretically make up for the reduction of the price of every unit sold.

The second hand games market would also suffer a serious blow. How many people will trade in a £10 DVD to buy the latest releases? The temptation is understandably there with a £40 game, but reduce the cost and people are less likely to need to pawn off their collections to keep up with this week's must-haves.

Piracy may also be affected. A major excuse cited by pirates is that they'd buy games if they could afford them, but since they can't, their only option is to steal them. Morally ambiguous this argument may be, but if games are cheaper, then it would certainly act in favour of getting them into the hands of gamers by more legitimate means. That said, if a 'Pay What You Want' model for a DRM free charity release isn't enough for 25% of people that played the 'Humble Indie Bundle' then piracy may well persist no matter how cheap games get.

Despite all these very utopian ideas, games – or at least the big budget releases that make up the majority of sales – aren't going to get any cheaper any time soon. The reason for this lies in a little Economic theory called 'Economies of Scale'.

The theory of economies of scale states that as your total output increases, your long run average costs will decrease (until diseconomies of scale set it, but that doesn't really apply here). For example, a large supermarket can sell vegetables at a much cheaper price than a small corner shop because they can bulk buy and pull all those other neat tricks to pass the savings on to you, the consumer (at least in theory).

What this means in terms of games is that as a game's hour count increases (in other words, its output) the cost of producing each successive hour of content decreases. Getting a five minute demo up and running is a hugely costly endeavour for a developer, but once they've got a graphics engine chugging away, a character modelled, and enemy AI all implemented, its comparatively much cheaper to craft another hour's worth of content for the third quarter.

Why should this mean games are naturally longer? Well it means you can double the length of your game, double the price from that of a downloadable to a retail release, all without doubling your budget.

Downloadable games have exploded this generation to scratch the itch of time-strapped gamers everywhere, but for those such as myself hoping to see games such as Uncharted make their way to us in more bitesize chunks, it might be a long wait.

So over to you. Is it ridiculous complaining that games are too long at a time when games are shorter on average than they've ever been before? Do you find yourself lusting after more when you finish a game, or has your enthusiasm peaked well before the credits roll? Would you be willing to pay half the price for a game that's half as long? Do you have enough time to play games to completion in the first place?

The Fallacy of Scoring

2010-03-17T20:40:00.007Z

A common complaint surrounding the video games press is the over reliance on review scores as a means of determining a game's overall quality. Opponents of such a system argue that a reviewer's complex opinion is impossible to sum up in a simple numerical score whilst supporters point to scores as an easy way of summarising a length review. Is the importance of scores overstated? Is it right to compare games based upon single numbers? All things considered, does the industry need review scores at all?

To start with, we shouldn't forget that review scores play a vital role on websites with vast databases containing thousands of games. Scores allow sites to very easily rank games on a qualitative basis, placing better reviewed games at the top, and the very worst at the bottom. Such a general feature is invaluable to consumers that may not have the time to read through dozens of reviews to find the cream of the crop; they can simply select their platform of choice, perhaps a genre or two, and instantly find pages of games worth their attention. Scores are thus a very useful feature in themselves - essentially removing the need for a constantly updated 'Top Ten' list - but only when they're taken in a such a general context.

What of comparing reviews of the same game across multiple publications though? The website Metacritic – which provides an 'average' score across dozens of reviews - could be considered the hub of this practise on the internet today. It's influence is so wide ranging that even huge publishers are starting to take notice. There have been some terrifying reports over the years of bonuses being paid out based upon how high a Metacritic score the title receives.

The first problem with comparing scores in this way is the marked difference in scoring scales. 1Up for example, chooses to review its games based upon a alphabetical scale similar to what teacher's use to grade work. The best of the best receive As and A+s, which more average games have to settle for a grade closer to a C. Similar problems occur with 5-star scoring systems: Many, such as myself, would consider a 3-star game to be average, but on a ten-point scale the average tends to lie at around 7 instead.

Ironically the biggest problems come when comparing scores from ostensibly identical systems, of which the 10-point scale is the most popular. The British magazine 'Edge' regularly receives criticism from forum-posters for their seemingly low review scores. In recent years they've given a 7 to Killzone 2, and more recently a 5 to Final Fantasy XIII. Whilst admittedly part of the trend is caused by reviewer preference, the main issue is that Edge's scoring method is different from every other scoring system out there. Every review site is the exact same way, and as such comparisons between them are a little funky at best, and at worst a complete waste of time.

So surely if we stick to comparing review scores from the same outlet we can avoid all these difficulties? Sadly this is also not the case, and this exact mistake way made by Ryan Paton on an edition of the late 1Up Yours where he complained (again about Edge) that Race Driver: GRID had been given a higher score that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots despite them being “in different leagues.”

In one sense he's hit the nail right on its head, they are in different leagues as games. One is, after all a fairly arcade-style racing game, and the other is one of the most expensive action games ever made. The point he's missing is that when considering review scores, each game's respective reviewer was considering different scales.

So the fact that GRID got a 9 and MGS4 got a 7 doesn't mean that one is a better game than the other. What it actually means is that one is a better racing game than the other is a stealth/action game. It's a fact that seems to pass many gamers by, Super Mario Galaxy isn't a better game than Assassin's Creed (at least not according to Gamespot), but it IS a better platformer than Assassin's creed is an action game. When Jeff Gerstmann awarded Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 a coveted 10 out of 10 all those years ago (though the unobtainable nature of this score has seemed to have gone to pot recently) he wasn't saying it was a perfect game, but that it was a perfect skateboarding game.

I think this is a point missed by not only many gamers, but also a large number of people on the other side of the fence who actually review games. I've lost count of the number of times a little PSN or XBLA title has received a lower score simply because of the unreasonable expectations of their reviewers who seem to want to compare them to the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Mass Effect. Thankfully in recent years this practise has, however, been in decline.

I hope what people realise is that there's no inherent problem with placing a review score at the end of your piece. They provide a pretty nice summary for skim reading, as well as enabling the ranking features of many of our favourite websites. It's important however, to not get too tied up with comparing scores at an individual level. They exist as an imperfect science, and as soon as you start treating them any differently, their flaws become starkly apparent.

Yoshi's Island is Really Messed Up: but only if You Think about It

2010-03-09T20:56:00.005Z

Inevitably my quest to complete (or at least play) every single game on Edge's Top 100 Games to Play Today has this week brought me to Yoshi's Island, the follow-up to Super Mario World on the SNES. If summing it up briefly I'd probably praise and condemn its lower difficulty level than the other Mario games I've played, praise because the series has at points brought me to tears, and condemn for almost the same reason.

Any comments I make with my reviewers hat on however, are simply going to feel outdated and a little redundant at this point in time, so instead allow me to wax lyrical about some of the finer points of the game, namely how messed up the whole thing is.

From what I can gather, the art style has divided opinion since the game's release. For what it's worth I like it. The hand drawn colouring-book art style is appealing to me just because of how unique it is, and whilst I could do without having to listen to Mario bawl his eyes out whenever I lead Yoshi astray I think the idea of a baby Mario is – in itself – not a bad idea.

In places however, the art style raises very important philosophical questions that I feel need answers. Firstly, why did Yoshi's Island change so much whilst the Mario brothers were growing up? According to this game, there was a time when the whole thing looked like it had been drawn by a four year old (albeit a very competent one), what happened? Did Bowser or one of his maniacal crew turn up in Mario's absence and bully the island into growing up?

If this was the case then why did Bowser leave? I can't believe that he would just redraw an entire state of dinosaurs and then bugger of from whence he came. Does this mean there is more than one saviour of Yoshi's Island? Is there some other blue-collar worker who works in tandem with Mario to keep the kingdom safe? Actually come to think of it, we don't know if the Island is a monarchy, or even if it's its own state. The Yoshiss clearly rule it judging by the name, but is there a head honcho who tells all the others what's what?

It could also be the case that Yoshi's Island is a living thing, and has over the years grown up exactly as Mario has. The mountains in the background have faces on several occasions, which frankly raises further questions. The fact that they have eyes I can deal with, but the mouths suggest two things, firstly that they can talk, and second that they can eat.

Now I don't know about you, but the concept of a mountain needing to eat is terrifying to me. Does it simply open its mouth and wait for unwitting hikers/Yoshis/Mario to fall in? Or is a more active roll necessary? Are there Yoshis who're tasked with the job of feeding these leviathans? What do they even eat? Are they carnivores? Also WHY ARE THEY SMILING? What could a mountain possibly have to be happy about?

I don't know about you, but the existence of narcotics in the Super Mario world simultaneously shocked me whilst confirming within me suspicions I've held about the games for quite some time now. You know the levels I'm talking about; the ones where if you touch the huge floating dandelion seeds the screen starts to pulse, and Yoshi finds it hard to control himself whilst his stomach bulges comically. Now I'm no politician Nintendo, but is comedy really something you want to derive from casual drug use?

Unquestionably the most messed up thing about Yoshi's Island is your ability to suck up enemies and then immediately turn them into eggs. I can only think of two ways Yoshi may be able to achieve this. The first involves him pushing the creature through his system at phenomenal speeds, and propelling him into an egg waiting happily in Yoshi's colon (another interesting point, is every Yoshi called Yoshi? Or is there one dinosaur called Yoshi, with all the others belonging to the same unnamed race?). The second, more disturbing explanation is that eating animals provides Yoshi with the energy needed to produce an egg. If this is true, it means that Yoshi's throwing his own eggs at enemies in order for baby Mario to pass safely. That's commitment, it really is.

Actually it could be the fact that this game reveals the existence of more than one Yoshi that bothers me so much. In retrospect it was crazy to think that every Yoshi you encountered in Super Mario World was the same guy, but why is he always the same colour? Was there some sort of plague that wiped out all the non-green Yoshis? Perhaps more disturbing is the thought that maybe the Yoshis had some sort of racial uprising in the time between Yoshi's Island and Super Mario World in which all the non-green creatures were removed from the island.

In any case I'll freely admit to having next to no knowledge of Mario lore, or at least not as much as someone who's prepared to write a 900 word article should do. If anyone has any answers to my questions, please do post them below. Admit it though, this game is really weird.

Jet Set Radio Future: A Review

2010-03-08T18:01:00.004Z

Note: I never owned an original Xbox, and as such never played JSRF as it was meant to be played. This review is one of the game played with the 360's less than perfect backwards compatibility. I'm fully aware some of the issues I experienced weren't present in the original, but I've only got my personal experience to go on when it comes to this. Taking such matters into account simply isn't possible.

If any game were to sum up the 'almost-retro' fashion stylings of the early double-0s, it would be Jet Set Radio Future. The florescent art style, the 'street' lingo characters use, and the omni-present radio DJ all point towards a style that was verging on the ridiculous even when it had a following. Perhaps then this distance from the culture it apes is a good thing, adding a layer of tongue in cheek to a game that would otherwise see its setting plunge into cheese so deep so as not even to be ironically enjoyable.

As it is however, the setting is pleasant, almost whimsical. In a not-to-distant Tokyo a fascist dictator has come into power, intent on making every citizen a slave to his unimaginative, generic take on what art should be. As a result of this several graffiti gangs – all of which sporting inline skates, a fact that's never really explained – pop up, intent on covering the city in paint and restoring its urban beauty.

Whilst the story does pave the way for many encounters with a very Nazi-esque police force later in the game, initially it tends towards the tedious, and sometimes even the frustrating. A very common task you'll be presented with is to enter a new area and cover predesignated spots with graffiti. The act of squeezing off paint cans and seeing predefined pieces of artwork pepper the walls is enjoyable enough by itself, but when you're asked to repeat this task several times over there's more than a little sense of the grind setting in.

Actually spraying the graffiti is only half the battle though, the other half being just getting to the place. Here, billboards and railings are your best friends, the former providing a means to wall ride and propel yourself around corners, and the latter allowing you to scale sets of stairs. Largely these actions are automated, so it's just a case of lining yourself up with whatever it is you need to hit, and this removes an awful amount of the frustration-factor, but can also add a host of other difficulties when you'd rather your skates land on the floor than be stuck in a difficult to exit grind.

An automatically adjusting camera causes problems for exactly the same reason. For the most part you can leave the camera alone, safe in the knowledge that it will center itself behind you once you start moving, but in cases when you're standing still, lining yourself up for a particularly taxing jump, it feels like it takes far too long to get the camera looking where you want it to. These problems pale in comparison to the 'set-piece' camera however, when the game feels it necessary to take camera control away from you. In one case (when you're skating around a cylindrical grind rail) the camera actually pans backwards, making the jump out of the grind much more taxing than it should otherwise be.

Minor annoyances simply cannot mar your entire experience with Jet Set Radio Future when the core skating component feels so right so consistently however. It feels good merely skating along the flat pavements Tokyo has to offer, and the fact that there's a basic trick system in there (along with a button that allows you to skate backwards) when high scores play next to no part in this game adds to this sense of innocent fun the whole game exudes. Ultimately there isn't a point to much of the stuff you'll end up doing in Jet Set Radio Future, but you have fun doing it anyway.

5 Films that Deserve Game Tie-Ins (but will never get them)

2010-03-03T19:49:00.004Z

Movie game tie-ins suck, there's no two ways about it. Development teams are given mere months to bring a project to completion, their control over the IP is minimal at best, and they have to suffer all the trials and tribulations of film editing, which at times can eradicate, weeks of work. A message will be passed down from upper management, “Hey,” they'll say, “Remember that water level you spend days programming, modeling, texturing and testing? Well they cut that scene from the movie.” This development environment is so hostile one designer who's had to work on such projects remarked that the best game developers are completely unknown to gamers, because these are the people that manage to pull an average game out of a project that should be utter garbage.

So let it be known that I'm under no illusions here. If these films were given games to their name, if some studio went out of its way to buy up the rights, and then put something out, it would almost definitely be awful, and would likely sour your memories of the original.

Don't let this deter you though. No one ever let reality interfere with their 'What if?'s before. Just think about it, if these games were made in the way we'd want them to be made, they'd be awesome.

Blade Runner

I'll admit right off the bat here that I'm not a huge fan of the original. I blame coming to it too late, having watched the reams of imitations over the years which have taken everything from the original, modernised, and then repackaged it. By the time I reached the original, the Blade Runner film itself, I wasn't watching the real movie, I was watching a flashback, something I'd almost seen before through the eyes of all the film makers who've since taken inspiration from it.

So the film for me personally, not so much.

But the world.

Oh the world is stunning. A bustling metropolis as tall as it is wide, unexplainable fashions, and crimes so fantastical you can't help be amazed. Of course I want to be a blade runner, I want to have my own flying cop car, landing anywhere I damn well please. I will not be Harrison Ford, I will not spend my days investigating a single set of clones that are running amok, but I will see him, I will be in his group, his precinct. I will do the everyday detective stuff that is only hinted at in the movie, and then I will become corrupt.

Yes I will become corrupt. I will engage with the criminal underworld, ferrying clone parts around the city in my cop car which will – did I mention this before? - fly. I want to solve crimes, not by shooting everyone in the room, but by chasing people, by running across impossibly high rooftops, leaping into my flying cop car (yes my FLYING cop car!) and chasing them through skyscrapers filled with more people wearing stupid, but undeniably cool outfits.

It's hard enough making an open world game with two axis of exploration. Alex Ward of Criterion Games summed the problem up perfectly when he said that for a standard game you have to build an engine that can render 'x' amount of environment, but in an open world game you need one which can render 'x-squared' amount of data. The player can change direction at any time, and the game needs to be ready to cope with this. Following on from this logic 'x-cubed' amount of environment would mean a huge amount more work, and make no mistake about it, if I'm going to play a Blade Runner game with my flying car, I want there to be as much to explore upwards as there is to explore across.

So the world will be too difficult to do justice, and once you're willing to compromise on the world, why are you even bothering to make a Blade Runner game at all? There's also the problem that after all this time there might not even be a sufficient audience for such a game, but then I wouldn't really be in the target demographic anyway so who cares what I think?

Serenity/ Firefly

Let's forget for a moment that an MMO based on the cripplingly short lived television series turned sci-fi flick has already been announced. That was over five years ago, and it's the future now, and us cool future people are having too much fun with our hover trousers to care about anything those dotcom fat-cats might have said all those years ago.

Much like Blade Runner, any aspirations to play a Firefly-based game revolve around one thing. We all want to be Captain Mal. Let's face it, he's ruggedly handsome, doesn't take crap from anyone, and even has time to own his own space-ship. He's Nathan Drake before Nathan Drake existed, but cooler, because yaknow...spaceship?

Other things about the series add to the awesome video game vibe of course. The ship Serenity is a magnificent beast, and the crew members Mal flies with are so conflicting and memorable that you can't wait to sit through hours upon hours of dialogue trees to find out all about them.

Discounting 'Serenity' the fact that the plot of Firefly was episodic in nature would make the transition to level-based gameplay much less jarring. Many episodes even come tantalisingly close to showing what a video game could make of the universe, with train heists, robberies, and spaceship chases that should have every gamer salivating.

It will never happen of course. It seems studios have learnt their lesson with Firefly, the TV show never got the ratings it needed to stay afloat and the film barely covered its relatively small budget. Putting the quality of the products to one side it's hard to see why a publisher would look at the franchise and think a big budget release would be a good idea.

Oh and let's not forget that Uncharted 2 has already been made.

Stay tuned for Part 2.
The posting of positive comments may or may not hurry the posting of the second part.

Today's Forecast: Heavy Rain with a Chance of Sunny Spells

2010-02-17T20:19:00.008Z

Much to my surprise, last week saw the release of the much anticipated - by this humble Bitmobber at least - demo for Quantum Dream's 'Heavy Rain'. It contained two scenes taken from the game's full release.

David Cage would be proud. I laughed, I cried, and I came away from the experience confident that THIS is the game developers need to ape if they want to tell great stories within their medium.

Or maybe not...

Forward: This will only make sense to you if you've played the Heavy Rain demo. If you haven't, I suggest all you PS3 owners out there go and download it from the PSN store, and all you 360 owners watch GiantBomb's fantastic quick look.

I'll admit I may have already been a bit harsh on the game. The demo is, after all, only a fraction of the total experience, and as such is never going to have the impact of the full title. Thus, it's important for you to realize I'm making these statements based upon the demo alon. There's a valid argument that says any opinion I hold is worthless until I've seen the full game; If you hold this view I can see where you're coming from, but I suggest you stop reading now.

Are they gone yet? Good. I hate those arseholes.

The demo's first faux pas is in its construction of the player's agency. Essentially this boils down to a question of motivation.

You see, in a movie, the set up of a detective arriving to interview someone about a crime we don't know has happened, works. It works because as a passive observer to the action, we as an audience can be perfectly content working out the purpose of the scene as it goes along, safe in the knowledge that by the end of the scene it should all make sense.

A game is different though. As an active participant in proceedings, it's important to understand just why you're doing what you're doing. Otherwise your only motivation for playing on is completing the game. This might come down to a matter of opinion, but personally I think that's a pretty bad motivation to have.

That might just be my opinion, but it's a fact that because you have no idea what it is you're doing, you're essentially just looking for anything in the level to interact with. Is this detective work, or just time wasting?

Take the second scene as an example. I had no idea why I was in this apartment block, so when a button prompt appeared, I pressed it, without any idea of the response the action would have.

So let's summarize. I had no idea why I was there. I had no idea what the effect my button pushes would have. I had no choice as to what button pushes to make.

Bearing all that in mind, ask yourself this, 'Why does this experience need to be a game?'

Pushing these doubts to the back of my mind I moved on to my next interaction. Aside from another couple of instances of not knowing what I was doing when pushing buttons, I thought this section of the demo was its strongest part.

Finally, during the interview, I had a choice. I could see the options I had open to me, and their descriptions were clear enough so as to allow me to make a clear choice. It made perfect sense for the scene to be interactive.

I also liked the fact that during the dialogue I had complete freedom to move around. Call me inconsistent, but I actually rather enjoyed being able to lean casually against the dresser or sit on the bed next to my interviewee. It may have been completely pointless, but I felt it added some character to a scene that would have otherwise been very dialogue heavy.

More mystery button prompts followed. Apparently that one made me leave my calling card on the table. That's handy. I didn't know I could do that. Would have been a bit of a bummer if I'd missed that one right?

Unusually for me, I've got nothing to complain about with regards to the next section. The fight, which sees you essentially engaging in an extended quick-time event, was tense, well choreographed, and especially well animated. The characters have just that, character, and the button prompts are arranged in a way which makes sure you've always got your eyes on the action.

Most of all, I liked this sequence because the game finally admitted that it was, of course, a game, and you know what? It was fun.

The next scene is likewise enjoyable. You assume the role of another detective, and turn up at the scene of a murder, in order to find clues to aid your investigation.

Weirdly however, you investigate the scene by putting on a pair of sci-fi sunglasses, which point out clues and DNA samples for you to inspect. It's not that I think these are a bad addition to the game - in actual fact I think they're what make the level work - but that their presence in such a serious game is jarring. Everything about this game is so realistic and mature, and now you're using sunglasses at night to help you solve crimes. It just doesn't fit together quite right.

This fact really sums up my thought on the Heavy Rain demo. Any 'realistic' game needs to make allowances for the fact that it's a video game. The harder they try to avoid making these allowances, the more out of place they seem when the game inevitably has to make use of them.

That's really the crux of it. Heavy Rain, from what I've played of it, seems like a good game, there's no doubt about it. What it's most certainly not however, is the future of video game storytelling. It should never have been billed as this, and I'm doubtful and critic will share this view.

Of course, I'm open to the possibility of the full game changing my mind.

Why Comparing Games to Movies is Doing Everone a Disservice

2010-02-16T20:04:00.004Z

You may have noticed, but I've been a bit absent from Bitmob of late. Work ramped up, exams closed in, and suddenly I just didn't have the time or energy to write articles that people would actually want to read (some would argue no amount of time and energy can change that, but that's a debate for another day).

A little bit of distance never hurt anyone though, especially with the amount of time I've had recently to devote to just playing games. This extended break has reinforced some old ideas, twisted others, and has completely eliminated any desire I once had to read one particular tired old argument, about gaming and a certain film whose name I won't care to mention here (though for the sake of those who may not have read the argument before, let's just say it concerns a man by the name of KANE, who was a CITIZEN of the United States.)

So I've been thinking, analysing, and gaming for these past few months, and have come to the following conclusion.

Comparing games to movies is going to get us nowhere.

So perhaps at this point I should rephrase. It's not the comparison between games and movies I resent - far from it, I think there's much games can learn visually from such a medium – but the way this comparison is innately attached to the whole 'Games as Art' thing. Whenever anyone brings up the fact that games can, and should aim for artistic merit, someone else will inevitably come along and claim games can never match up to movies as art.

Of course games could never match the artistic prowess of movies, in the same way that books could never 'match' sculpture, and paintings can never 'match' music. They're two very different mediums, both with their own strengths, and ideas about what they can accomplish.

So the idea of saying 'Games can never be art because movies will always be better at telling a story' is stupid, because games don't need to tell a story to be artistic.

I suppose the reason why this argument is so tired to me, is that a much better medium already exists for comparing with games, music.

I like the idea of music, because you don't listen to it in order to hear a story. It might tell a story, through its lyrics (similar to the way a game might tell a story through its cutscenes) or through the tune itself, harsh sounds creating the impression of violence, whilst subtler melodies conveying the emotions of love or happiness (or in video games, 'gameplay').

The point is that you never pick a song out of iTunes primarily because you want to hear the story the artist wants to tell. You might be interested in any story of course, in the same way that a big reason why I played MGS4 was to see the end of Snake's story, but if the sound isn't enjoyable to listen to, or if the gameplay isn't fun to experience, then you're never going to listen to an album, or play a game, in the first place.

Games should never try 'just' to be fun, but at the same time trying to imitate film is just embarressing. Most of this rant was brought on by playing through the recently released demo of 'Heavy Rain', which tries so hard to be a movie, and in many ways fails so badly. From what I can tell, it's not a bad game, but claiming that this is the future of interactive entertainment is pure self indulgance.

I like films, and I like games, but anyone that tries to mesh the two together is doing both a disservice. Games can have incredible depth, and can illicit raw emotion, but anyone trying to achieve this in the same way as film is going about it in a very wrong way.

Where Would we be Without Gears of War?

2010-02-15T15:59:00.005Z

It's easy to look back on Gears of War now and wonder what all the fuss was about. The story's fragmented at best, all the lead characters have the combined depth of a puddle, and in at times the movement was so clunky so as to be almost tank-like. At the time however, the game was as close to revolutionary as the game industry gets, and without it we'd be playing games very differently today.

For one, we'd still be playing most of our shooters in first person.

It's weird to think that in the space of a couple of years, most of the biggest games released now use an over-the-shoulder camera viewpoint as opposed to the first person. It would of course be insane of me to claim that every game has made this leap when this is clearly not the case, but on reflection, the biggest fps games released today, use this perspective because of a history with it.

Games like Call of Duty, and Killzone, have their gameplay systems so focussed around the close viewpoint afforded by the first person, that to change this for a sequel would alter the game so much so as to make it completely unrecognisable. Modern Warfare is, for better or for worse, always going to be a first person game, and Gears of War will likewise – in several years time when first person inevitably comes back into fashion – remain in third person.

So why did this shift occur? You could point towards the increased graphical fidelity afforded by this generation of consoles, and claim that developers have always wanted to work with an over-the-shoulder camera, they just couldn't make it look good enough until now. A cynic might argue that this change has only taken place so that marketing executives can cash in on the wave of appreciation for Epic's seminal shooter, and there's probably quite a bit of truth to their claims.

Of course, there's another argument that would claim the only reason you'd go for such a camera angle is to be able to jump on another bandwagon.

Cover systems

Again, it would be crazy to claim that cover systems hadn't existed before Gears of War. How many times playing Timesplitters have players crouched behind a waist-high object, only to stand up briefly to unload a couple of shots before crouching once more. Cover systems have existed for years in the minds and strategies of gamers, but it was Gears of War that took what we've always done with complicated strafing and crouching techniques, and mapped it to the 'A' button.

It was, needless to say, genius. Gone were the stalemates that often punctuated mid-level encounters, (and I'm sorry to say, still existed in Resistance 2) as were the – in retrospect – insane bouts of circle strafing that would feature against tougher enemies. The solution was simple, elegant, and – dare I say it – cool. Who doesn't love frantically sprinting for cover, only to be ousted by a well placed grenade at the last minute? It's almost ironic that an innovation revolving around hiding has the effect of making you feel like such a badass.

Subtle guidance

It's a small point, something that to my knowledge didn't exist before this game's release, but having a button you can hold to point out items of interest is a genius move on the part of Epic. Some might argue that having such a button is an admission of failure by the developer, that a level should be designed in such a way so as to make it obvious what you should be looking at, but not every studio has Valve's ability in this regard.

Even the best games have moment's where I'm lost as to where to look, and this problem only increases when large set pieces occur outside of cutscenes. It takes a huge amount of confidence to take camera control away from the player entirely, as as such the 'hold a button' method is the perfect half way house in such a situation.

The traditional health bar is empty.

Like many of the things Gears did, thinking about the way things used to be often illicit a response akin to, 'How the hell did we ever get by without it?' from me. Having a bar filled with colour to denote your life is such an arcane way of doing things that it's a wonder there are games that still use it today, especially now that recharging health is almost standard across games.

It's not that having the screen go all faded and bloody is any more realistic than having a bar denoting hit points remaining, but when everything's going to pot, enemies are closing in on your position, and you're close to death, don't you want the entire screen screaming at you with this information? Call me overly progressive, but I'm glad health bars have died out.

Now if we could just simplify ammo counters in a way that doesn't involve my gun having ugly numbers on it's hilt, I'd be one happy bunny.

Hello I'm the Unreal Engine, soon I'll be powering everything.

It's something of a given that the future always looks far shinier than the present. Looking at Crysis 2 shots today is like giving my eyeballs a bubble bath, but I just know that when it finally comes out, there'll be something even better on the horizon.

It's weird then that Gears of War managed to both show off the best of the present, whilst hinting at the great things that were to come over the next few years. Of course we had no way of knowing that the engine was going to go on to power damn near every other game released this generation, but when Gears loaded up on our shiny new HDTVs for the first time, there combined thought that reverberated around the world, 'Oh,' we said to ourselves, 'so THIS is what games look like now then.'

It would be impossible to try and list the games that have taken inspiration from GoW, so I won't even bother trying. Suffice to say that the gaming landscape would be very different today without it, even if chainsaws on guns didn't quite bring about such a plethora of imitators.

–

Oh, just so you know, I'm not dead.

But you already guessed that right?