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Maptastic
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Mapgasmic
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Mini Reviews: Mutant Mudds
Chuff's back. He's our man on mobile which has been pretending to do games for along time. Over to Chuff_72.
Look at this shit, does this look like the sort of game a tough Role Playing Mother Fucker like me would be into?
So for some reason (for any reason - AMERICA), I’ve been attracted to these really tough, unforgiving platformers that have been creeping into the App store. I really got into a game called League of Evil, smashed it, then smashed up the sequel, three starring the shit out of it BEFORE they nerfed all the completion times so your Mum (Mom) could finish it too while she’s rubbing one out (rubbing, furiously, there’s a squeaky noise and everything).
It’s got some story. It’s about a boy who has an uncomfortably close relationship with his Granny who he keeps in the attic. Then Aliens happen.
The controls are pretty gross, a button* for up, down, left and right, NO DIAGONAL, because if the C64 taught us anything, it’s that pressing the Diagonal Button to jump is for Mugs. There are even a couple buttons for Actions. Jumping and the shooting.
Despite the fact that this is, in fact, a touch screen game in my opinion, the controls are incredibly accurate**. There is no double jump in this one, it is replaced by a limited hover ability, NOT EXPLAINED IN THE STORY (I understand if this is a deal breaker for some). The levels are your standard walking and jumping, interrupted by hammers and shit, there is a cute triple layer thing going on, leaping in and out of the screen, it’s cool, but on the iphone the back layer is pretty damn small.
You get the usual unlocks, hover further, jump higher etc, there are hidden “really hard” levels – made harder due to having all your buttons made out of one piece of glass, and there is a sexy Granny in it.
So yeah, a quality iOS exclusive platformer! It’s exclusively on DS too, with actual buttons and everything.
*THERE ARE NO BUTTONS IT’S TOUCH SCREEN AND THEREFORE WHY HAVE YOU MADE A RIDICULOUSLY HARD PLATFORMER THAT REQUIRES PRECISION CONTROLS YOU BASTERDS.
**This is lies, but we have to pretend or people will never believe us when we say it’s our primary gaming console because of all the awesome sauce, and not because we are ashamed of carrying a DS about in public.***
***Talking of being ashamed, I once sat in a park outside my office in 30 degree heat, and made a MAGIC: THE GATHERING deck inside a rucksack (backpack).
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An Apology
Chuff's back and he's backing down. He's compromising his principles and it's disgusting to watch.
I would like to take this opportunity to whole heartedly apologise to fans of Mutant Mudds and all members of the Galactic Senate (not you ET, never you). When reviewing the aforementioned game I confess I was under severe pressure due to missing a year of deadlines, and was suffering from depression due to flashbacks of not handing in book reviews on time in Mrs Lawrence’s English class. This lead me make glaring errors in my reporting and missed out on a key feature that Mudds has that truly elevates this game to another level, I did not appreciate this during my first play through. Once again, I apologise. I genuinely do not realise how I came to miss this, there is an idle animation. Mutant Mudds: 9.5/10
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Games you are supposed to play.
In ordered to be accredited with any kind of standing, or respect within the pseudo-community of gamers there is a plateau of geeky knowledge that is a standard, however as more and more niche corners become mainstream...
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On a side note I refer to this phenomenon as ironic-hipster-reversal; bringing to attention obscure elements of information to appear more knowledgeable in a subject, yet unintentionally bringing it to the foray for everyone i.e. Wearing a a T-shirt with the konami code. Pay attention to this people, this level of marketing and advertising is more powerful than social media!
...as I was saying as video-games-geeky-knowledge becomes more mainstream the level of knowledge to be respected within the community becomes more convoluted and obscure. There has always existed a level of this autistic desire within games culture, from the early days of imported rare japanese titles. But nowadays games culture has expanded to a respected and widely used area of pop-culture, that in order to stand out from the norm you have to "go deeper".
So bottom line, there must be a certain level/standard/number/knowledge of games to "qualify" someone as part of games culture beyond that of pop culture. So the question is, where do we draw the line?
I mean Mario Bros (1, 2, 3, Super Mario World) should be a line everyone should know/play that one, but again to what level? There are so many dimensions of secrets, glitches and hidden things in those games which are referenced, 100% completion is more a lifetime task rather than keeping up with your "peers"
As I mentioned before the bar has moved, as for game you are supposed to have played you almost have to assume that most people have played/know the standard 16bit fayre; Marios, Zeldas, Sonics and Final Fantasys. So what games "should" you have played to be considered part of gaming culture?
In modern culture these titles evolve every 3-6 months, and you pretty much have to buy on release to surf the curve, the big icons of the past year include Assassins creed, Borderlands 2, Sleeping Dogs and Mass Effect Trilogy. And you, as a gamer, should have 100% completed them and have your own formed options on them. But gaming culture does not put its blinkers on past 6 months. You need to have informed opinions on classic titles.
Now at this point I could list off a bunch of obscure titles from the mid-nineties only to have "OMG I cant believe you didnt mention [insert obscure japanese side-scrolling beat-em-up]" thrown back in my face. So I wont, instead i'm going to conclude this post with one game I think I wish I would have played, or more specifically a game I am "supposed to have played".
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Mother 2: Earthbound
Never played it, yet it gets referenced as one of the best off-the-radar stories with a unique atmosphere, art style and cult following. I have had this game recommended to me to me so many times. Yet, what about Mother 1, and then there is Mother 3 which has not even got an official English version. Chronological issues aside, why havent I just decided to sit down and play this? Is playing it to tick it off the "list" legitimised nowadays, after all the hype am I afraid that it will not live up to its "reputation". Or despite all the imaginary gamer rep I will get for this, am I just not willing to invest in an older game? Who knows. Anyone played it and got something bad to say about it?
Love and collect three warp whistles to warp while you are warping,
Richie X
As I mentioned before the bar has moved, as for game you are supposed to have played you almost have to assume that most people have played/know the standard 16bit fayre; Marios, Zeldas, Sonics and Final Fantasys. So what games "should" you have played to be considered part of gaming culture?
In modern culture these titles evolve every 3-6 months, and you pretty much have to buy on release to surf the curve, the big icons of the past year include Assassins creed, Borderlands 2, Sleeping Dogs and Mass Effect Trilogy. And you, as a gamer, should have 100% completed them and have your own formed options on them. But gaming culture does not put its blinkers on past 6 months. You need to have informed opinions on classic titles.
Now at this point I could list off a bunch of obscure titles from the mid-nineties only to have "OMG I cant believe you didnt mention [insert obscure japanese side-scrolling beat-em-up]" thrown back in my face. So I wont, instead i'm going to conclude this post with one game I think I wish I would have played, or more specifically a game I am "supposed to have played".
Mother 2: Earthbound
Never played it, yet it gets referenced as one of the best off-the-radar stories with a unique atmosphere, art style and cult following. I have had this game recommended to me to me so many times. Yet, what about Mother 1, and then there is Mother 3 which has not even got an official English version. Chronological issues aside, why havent I just decided to sit down and play this? Is playing it to tick it off the "list" legitimised nowadays, after all the hype am I afraid that it will not live up to its "reputation". Or despite all the imaginary gamer rep I will get for this, am I just not willing to invest in an older game? Who knows. Anyone played it and got something bad to say about it?
Love and collect three warp whistles to warp while you are warping,
Richie X
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On Henry
Living eating sleeping games. Sometimes it's hard to muster up the time and energy to actually play some games. As we are want to do we took a long hard look at our backloggery and became determined to turn some of those medals from bronze to silver and from silver to gold. The games industry and the marketeers that surround it are all but obsessed with making you crave the new, the shiny but often new games fail to build on what's gone before. We've been hoovering up a lot of the content created by the games community which actually goes a long way to celebrate the history of games and gaming like the industry fails to do. Here we tip our hats to Two Best Friends Play. Puerile, sometimes but what TBFP does and does well is celebrate games. It's connoisseurship coming from the stands which is odd considering that most other media play a part in celebrating the culture they create.
Anyway, one of the marks on our backloggery profile, whilst hunting for the easy wins is No More Heroes. Waaaay back when we consumed the game like a hungry rabbit loving nearly every minute of it. Now if you've played it you know that when you beat the top assassin you're taken to a menu screen that has two options: return to Santa Destroy or View Ending. Around this point our gaming sense completely left us. If you're ever given that option in a game YOU RETURN TO THE GAME BECAUSE THERE'S SOMETHING YOU MISSED. Instead we made the error of watching the ending and then on top of that saved over our game file with the new game scenario. A quick Gamefaq later and of course, obviously, it barely needed checking, there's a true ending you can get if you buy all the katana upgrades. So we had two options; play through the whole game again or watch the true ending on Youtube. Now, we ain't claiming to be progamers but watching the ending on Youtube is the coward's way out. We're not against watching playthroughs, hell there are some games where watching playthroughs is ultimately more fruitful than playing through a game. Again, we tip our hats to all those playthroughers who upload their videos plus commentary. It's yet another way to consume games and if you've taken a look at traditional Tellyvision all of a sudden watching 12 hours of other people play through Chrono Trigger seems far more compelling than watching endless repeats of Come Dine With Me and Pregnant Celebrity Farmers Dancing On Jungle Ice. Also all you young'uns who whine and whinge about there being not enough games on Wii/Xbox 360/PC and hungry for the next generation of consoles I say to thee a) Stop lying and b) cherish your time. Cherish the seeming endless hours you have to waste/invest in gaming when you're at school, college or University. Life catches up with you and months, weeks and days of gaming turn into minutes and hours at most. All of a sudden that replaythrough of No More Heroes, that replaythrough that you wouldn't have thought twice about in younger days equates to the next year of your gaming time. But like a cat bringing in a dead pigeon, we're here to show you that we did it. We went the full nine yards, we went the distance, we burned the candle at both ends and we almost turned that silver medal into a gold. Almost. There's just one tiny problem who goes by the name of Henry.
There he is. You see even if you muster up the free evenings to re-plough through the game, beat all the assassins again and buy those two sword upgrades the 'true' ending is a fight against this guy. And it's really fucking frustrating. It's not frustrating in a unbeatable way it's quite clear what you have to do, after one or two tries you get a feel for when you can get some hits in but he has a ton of health to whittle down and at a certain percentage of health he busts out OHKO (well kills actually) moves. You can't afford to make that many mistakes but you can't play cautiously either. On top of that, there's nothing to be gained from beating him. We're playing the Wii version so there's no cheevos or trophies. At best there's a cutscene that's no more than two clicks away from me right now. It's a prestige thing. Except prestige requires an audience and I don't think both of you count as one. So is it a principle? Am I enjoying myself? Is it a (unhealthy) compulsion? We're already conscious of the games we probably won't finish before we die (read Too Many Toys over at the excellent Cardboard Children on the super excellent Rock Paper Shotgun) and every failed attempt to take down Henry is precious gaming time taken away from other titles. Newer titles. Older titles. Titles we actually enjoy just playing for the sake of it without stressing about 'completing it'. And it's totally a personal stress. Friends and families won't look down on us for not getting past this wall but leaving it undone will leave a black mark on our soul. We can feel it. When we get to gamer heaven (which actually exists) Saint Peter will check his clipboard, slowly shake his head and remark on how we never got the hand cannon in Resident Evil 4, how I gave up on the last 4% of Boom Blox, how Ruby Weapon stands undefeated, how I only got a Copper trainer card on Pokemon Sapphire, how I never unlocked Apocalypse Frank in Dead Rising Chop 'Til You Drop, how I never read all 100 books in 100 Classic Book Collection and how I never got the NiGHTS Wig in Project Rub. Those imagined virtual black marks get ever impossible to scrub, consoles conk out, reflexes dull, older control systems get harder and harder to return to (hi Fade to Black and Medal of Honour:Underground) online games get switched off, cheevos unachieved. Henry will not be on my list I've enough black marks if I never pick up a new game again. I'm determined to beat him even if it's the last boss I ever beat.
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A new challenger has arrived!
So, Pokemon X and Y announced and we at thatguys have kleenex on standby. And this latest Valentines video shows us the newest evolution for Eevee! But no-one knows what type it is! In the Previous Generations it looks like this:
Gen I
Flareon: Fire
Jolteon: Electric
Vaporeon: Water
Gen II
Espeon: Psychic
Umbreon: Dark
Gen IV
Leafeon: Grass
Glaceon: Ice
Which leaves Steel, Bug, Fighting, Poison, Ground, Flying, Rock, Ghost or Dragon. This Eevee evolution has been named Sylveon. Which rather annoyingly does not divulge the typing the prefix "Sylv" could refer to may things:
Silver, indicating it is a steel type, however it does not look very steel-like.
Sylvan, meaning foresty or arboreal, but we already have a grass type.
Sylph, which is a mythological air elemental, this could indicate a Flying or Ghost type, but nothing about it really screams either typing, except maybe a scarf that flaps in the wind. Or maybe a connection to Silph Co. the manufacturer of pokemon items in-game.
From the colouring alone you want to say "Normal type" as there are so many Pink normal types, and well Eevee alone is not that powerful a standalone pokemon so may just get a straight evolution, but why does the little brown dog turn into a big pink deer-like thing?
CONSPIRACY THEORY WARNING!
Ok yeah from all that I wanna take you on a Left-field, from downtown possibility, The name of the game is pokemon X and Y. The letters X and Y are mostly associated with Genectics, more specifically Chromosomes, and there is a possibility that perhaps there may be pokemon cross breeding going on in this game! Perhaps Sylveon is a crossbreed of an Eevee and a Skitty? This could be a new evolution method to crate hybrids of pokemon rather than the old formula seen in each generation of the game; where you turn up in a new area and find a whole bunch of new ones... Maybe?
Love and why does swift have stars,
Richie X
Gen I
Flareon: Fire
Jolteon: Electric
Vaporeon: Water
Gen II
Espeon: Psychic
Umbreon: Dark
Gen IV
Leafeon: Grass
Glaceon: Ice
Which leaves Steel, Bug, Fighting, Poison, Ground, Flying, Rock, Ghost or Dragon. This Eevee evolution has been named Sylveon. Which rather annoyingly does not divulge the typing the prefix "Sylv" could refer to may things:
Silver, indicating it is a steel type, however it does not look very steel-like.
Sylvan, meaning foresty or arboreal, but we already have a grass type.
Sylph, which is a mythological air elemental, this could indicate a Flying or Ghost type, but nothing about it really screams either typing, except maybe a scarf that flaps in the wind. Or maybe a connection to Silph Co. the manufacturer of pokemon items in-game.
From the colouring alone you want to say "Normal type" as there are so many Pink normal types, and well Eevee alone is not that powerful a standalone pokemon so may just get a straight evolution, but why does the little brown dog turn into a big pink deer-like thing?
CONSPIRACY THEORY WARNING!
Ok yeah from all that I wanna take you on a Left-field, from downtown possibility, The name of the game is pokemon X and Y. The letters X and Y are mostly associated with Genectics, more specifically Chromosomes, and there is a possibility that perhaps there may be pokemon cross breeding going on in this game! Perhaps Sylveon is a crossbreed of an Eevee and a Skitty? This could be a new evolution method to crate hybrids of pokemon rather than the old formula seen in each generation of the game; where you turn up in a new area and find a whole bunch of new ones... Maybe?
Love and why does swift have stars,
Richie X
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PS3 A Retrospective
With the hype train for the PS4 having left the station, we're going to take an opportunity to look back at the PS3.
The first couple of hours of Heavy Rain were alright.
So there we have it. The malformed son of the greatest console of all time, the PlayStation 2, really transformed the way we gamed. Roll on PS4!
The first couple of hours of Heavy Rain were alright.
So there we have it. The malformed son of the greatest console of all time, the PlayStation 2, really transformed the way we gamed. Roll on PS4!
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PSFore-play
Cock teases.
So the gist of that expo was:
So the gist of that expo was:
- There will be a PS4.
- It will have a controller.
- The Vita will be a hi-tech WiiU controller.
- There will be games.
Very little on the hardware, except that it can render an old man with eyebrow twitches. The share button is for uploading game videos/screenshots.
What does the damned box that sits under your TV look like?!? Will it be another kitchen utility a la the lean mean, fat reducing machine?
Pfft.
Love and Diablo 3 as well,
Richie X
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The next gen lack of imagination.
Yesterday I found myself trying to explain the origins of Puzzle Bobble, it went a little something like this: Well originally the characters are from a game called "Bubble Bobble" where little dinosaurs blow bubbles to trap enemies in them then burst them.*
And this started me thinking, where is this type of game nowadays? It seems to have been relegated to the smartphone medium. All main blockbuster titles are a "man shooting another man." I find myself thinking what happened? Somewhere between PS2 and current gen all main characters became human , or at least human looking: elf, dwarf etc. I wonder if this is a safe bet from marketers that people can identify more with a human protagonist.
I miss the abstractness the otherworldly environments, rather than the scant familiar distopyas emerging in all games. This atmosphere of breaking the rules of reality had existed in games for so long, creating characters and worlds within the constraints of the machine allowed for an unusual selection of protagonists, environments and art styles. However now rather than breaking the rules of reality, bending the rules seems to be the norm, simulations of "real-life" with added twists of being able to break the laws of physics or even just laws.
Is this the way we wanted to head with games? from the early days of protagonists such as kiwis, eggs, bandicoots, hedgehogs, bubble blowing dinosaurs, and ninjas from the nth dimension to generic "white american man". I think we need something more groundbreaking more abstract and surreal talents for a main title, at least from a break from the norm.
Love and THAT theme tune,
Richie X
*thankfully i never got to the point of explaining they have to traverse a 100 dungeons, which have portal like holes in the top an bottom of the screen, the last enemy standing will turn red and get faster, and there is a sidequest where you save your dino-girlfriends by collecting bubbles with the letters B, O, N, U, S in them. Oh and the dinosaurs were human to start of with. And can bounce on bubbles. And some bubbles contain power ups. And sometimes at the end of levels, depending on your timing, a load of fruit will appear.
And this started me thinking, where is this type of game nowadays? It seems to have been relegated to the smartphone medium. All main blockbuster titles are a "man shooting another man." I find myself thinking what happened? Somewhere between PS2 and current gen all main characters became human , or at least human looking: elf, dwarf etc. I wonder if this is a safe bet from marketers that people can identify more with a human protagonist.
I miss the abstractness the otherworldly environments, rather than the scant familiar distopyas emerging in all games. This atmosphere of breaking the rules of reality had existed in games for so long, creating characters and worlds within the constraints of the machine allowed for an unusual selection of protagonists, environments and art styles. However now rather than breaking the rules of reality, bending the rules seems to be the norm, simulations of "real-life" with added twists of being able to break the laws of physics or even just laws.
Is this the way we wanted to head with games? from the early days of protagonists such as kiwis, eggs, bandicoots, hedgehogs, bubble blowing dinosaurs, and ninjas from the nth dimension to generic "white american man". I think we need something more groundbreaking more abstract and surreal talents for a main title, at least from a break from the norm.
Love and THAT theme tune,
Richie X
*thankfully i never got to the point of explaining they have to traverse a 100 dungeons, which have portal like holes in the top an bottom of the screen, the last enemy standing will turn red and get faster, and there is a sidequest where you save your dino-girlfriends by collecting bubbles with the letters B, O, N, U, S in them. Oh and the dinosaurs were human to start of with. And can bounce on bubbles. And some bubbles contain power ups. And sometimes at the end of levels, depending on your timing, a load of fruit will appear.
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Okami Done?
We've mentioned before how we're slaves to progressing our Backloggery scanning the glut of games that we own but haven't beaten, let alone mastered. But we can't be alone in looking at 'the collection' and thinking "there's nothing to play". New games keep coming along and tempting us with their sexy new concepts, big graphics and face shooting shenanigans. But we've still got thousands of hours of untapped gameplay that won't cost us a penny.
However, some of those games we'll probably never finish. take Okami for example. Released over 15,000 times, Okami is a beautiful game. Virtually every screen (outside of the menus) could, nay should be printed and adorned on all the surfaces of abodes. But there's a problem.
It's too big! Back in the day, when we had hundreds of hours to dedicate to games, this wouldn't have been a problem but these days it is literally too big to play. Here's how my last couple of playthroughs have gone.
Load the game up, think gosh this is pretty, spend ten minutes working out the controls again (the combat in the Wii version isn't the best), spend ten minutes refamiliarising myself with what all the calligraphy powers are, spend 15 minutes trying to work out which direction I was headed. Spend seven minutes checking the area just in case I missed feeding some local wildlife, spend five minutes going through the menu keeping a list of all the macguffins I need to pick up. Spend two minutes contemplating if it's worth it. Spend three minutes cursing at the next to useless map.
AND THAT'S IT FOLKS. That's my gaming allowance for a month or so (on the family TV anyway). According to the excellent Nintendo Channel stats I've played it 9 times and for a total of 13 hours. The average global play time is 23 hours but I can't see that this is enough time to play it to completion. Not when in my measly 9 hours I've barely picked up any stray beads or rare treasures, from the space on the save file screen it looks like I've still got another 9 celestial powers to pick up, tons more enemy types to discover, all but one of the named enemies to beat and a lot of animals to feed. There's also a tonne of areas I clearly don't have the tools to access to return to once I've got the appropriate tool technique.
I might have to book a week off of work just to play it through without forgetting how the game works and areas I have to revisit.
It's not like I want my hand holding all the way through a game but some concession to the score of gamers who don't play games for weeks at a time are nice. Xenoblade Chronicles managed to keep us going with its very helpful checklist of quests that still left a lot of exploring to resolve.
So it's one of those games we probably won't be finishing before out time is up. Which is a deeply depressing realisation to have. Most people don't obsess about the games they've never finished but a widely touted factlet is that most gamers don't finish games anyway. Shame.
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FFXIII-2 Done!
So I just thousanded FFXIII-2.
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I had been apprehensive about this title as FFXIII was a little too long winded, especially at endgame, specifically because the final few achievements required 100+ hours and creating a spreadsheet to complete. FFXIII-2 however was a bit more fun to play. I took the plunge over the holidays as it was £9 brand new.
The Good:
The Bad:
An overly teenage angsty theme; the younger protagonists with the usual coming-of-age story.
This Chocobo Remix:
The Ugly:
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A rather unconvincing bad guy with a camp purple headband.
In conclusion, it's really worth a punt for anyone who played FFXIII, at least the story line.
Love and YOU WANNA RIDE THIS CHOCOBO!
Richie X
I had been apprehensive about this title as FFXIII was a little too long winded, especially at endgame, specifically because the final few achievements required 100+ hours and creating a spreadsheet to complete. FFXIII-2 however was a bit more fun to play. I took the plunge over the holidays as it was £9 brand new.
The Good:
- A really fun storyline, jumping through different time periods, seeing how the events of FFXIII turned out and where they went.
- An oddly pokemon type mechanic where you recruit and level monsters throughout time.
- Though some of the areas are reused from FFXIII it doesnt feel like it, as they have been redone with different time-period themes.
- Feels like a classic Sqeenix game, A touch of final fantasy mixed with Chrono trigger but with a sleek new façade.
- The multiple "paradox" endings, where you can replay certain events and change their outcome.
The Bad:
An overly teenage angsty theme; the younger protagonists with the usual coming-of-age story.
This Chocobo Remix:
The Ugly:
In conclusion, it's really worth a punt for anyone who played FFXIII, at least the story line.
Love and YOU WANNA RIDE THIS CHOCOBO!
Richie X
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Super Scribblenauts
Along with the rest of the world, the potential of Scribblenauts blew our tiny little minds. Unfortunately, the first game had some control issues and we never picked up the second one.
However, we spotted a copy of Super Scribblenauts new for less than the price of a pint. This must be the long tail effect then yeah? a 91% price cut over two years is how the games industry maintains healthy profits beyond launch week. Surely. That's why the games industry seems to be weathering the recession and why development companies aren't shutting down left right and centre. Right?
Moronic business models aside, it benefits us well and we finally got around to the wonderful world of words. Why isn't this game in every classroom? Why isn't the media full of positive stories of gamers expanding their vocabulary through playing this lovely little game?
We're almost done with the challenges in the game and, like everyone who reviewed it back in 2010, Super Scribblenauts really highlights how we have absolutely no imagination any more. TV and games killed our imagination. There needs to be a word to describe that certain feeling, like when you've got time to kill and the Internet at your fingertips, more information than has ever been available to any of the great thinkers who shaped society, and within an hour you've ended up on Wookiepedia reading the pages and pages about Luke Skywalker's girlfriend and other pointless trivia. Super Scribblenauts gives us that exact same feeling. We can conjure up anything at all to help get through the challenges and within minutes we're struggling to think up alternative ways to navigate challenges without using a jet pack, light gun, crowbar and dirty space suit. Our failing of imagination isn't the game's fault, but the game does a great job of hammering this message home.
The death of our imagination aside it's a beautiful game. We genuinely haven't laughed at a game for a long time until a Scribblenauts wizard conjured up a pedophobic bridal woodchipper. Well played 5th Cell, well played. This game is yet another DS game that's slowly swaying us towards declaring it to be the de facto greatest gaming platform (outside of PCs) of all time. If only the next generation of consoles could deliver half the diversity and innovation that the DS has, we'd be mildly interested in what next generation is poised to deliver.
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The Queen's looking peaky must be all that horse meat
The media's gone a bit backward recently. With everyone now able to find the news that interests online and at their convenience they've become a desperate institution languidly reporting what Z-list celebrities are saying about other Z-list celebrities on twitter or making a meal out of stories that real world people just don't care for. Horse meat is just a labelling issue. I've not met a single person so outraged that they demand constant news updates about it. Now that Queenie's got a sniffle we hope she doesn't die. Not because we're a fan of her or anything but because we can't face the traditional media brownout as they run footage of the queen doddering about and waving on repeat. I can already see the faux-outrage at the distasteful jokes about the Queen's demise on twitter.
Fortunately, we've got a reporter embedded in the roller coaster virtual world of Xenoblade Chronicles and she's full of much more interesting news HOT OF THE PRESS from the Bionis. We hand over now to our reporter for exclusive 24 hour non stop rolling coverage.
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International Women's Day!
So let's thank the new Tomb Raider for paving the way for more games with female protagonists in them. Before the new Tomb Raider there weren't any games with female protagonists in them at all*. This exciting new trend means equality for all!
* Except Koudelka, Urban Chaos, Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider 3, TOmb Raider Chronicles, TOmb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider the not very good one, Tomb Raider the remake of the first one, Tomb Raider LEgend, TOmb Raider Underworld, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Director's Cut, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil the GC remake, Resident Evil the Wiimake of the Gamecube remake, Parasite Eve, Mirror's Edge, Heavenly Sword, Haunting Ground, Silent Hill 3, Silent Hill 3 HD, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Stir of Echoes, Metroid Prime 3: Optimus Prime, DIno Crisis, Dino Crisis 2, Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, THOSE OTHER METROIDS, Beyond Good and Evil, Daikatana, Perfect Dark, Enslaved (sort of), Syberia, Syberia 2, Assasin's Creed: Woman's Hour, Gravity Rush, Xenoblade Chronicles (in our playthrough), Final Fantasy X, FInal Fantasy X-II, Final Fantasy XIII, Portal, Fear Effect, Fear Effect 2, Alien Trilogy, Bayonetta, Bloodrayne, Bullet Witch, Clock Tower, Charlie's Angels (x3), half of every game you can choose your character's gender in, Cluclu Land, Cooking Mama, Death By Degrees, All the Fatal Frames, Drill Dozer, Ghost in the Shell, Jurassic Park:Trespasser, ETC.**
** Super Secret Sub List: Games with fat girls as lead protagonist: Not Fat Princess. END OF LIST.
* Except Koudelka, Urban Chaos, Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider 3, TOmb Raider Chronicles, TOmb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider the not very good one, Tomb Raider the remake of the first one, Tomb Raider LEgend, TOmb Raider Underworld, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Director's Cut, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil the GC remake, Resident Evil the Wiimake of the Gamecube remake, Parasite Eve, Mirror's Edge, Heavenly Sword, Haunting Ground, Silent Hill 3, Silent Hill 3 HD, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Stir of Echoes, Metroid Prime 3: Optimus Prime, DIno Crisis, Dino Crisis 2, Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, THOSE OTHER METROIDS, Beyond Good and Evil, Daikatana, Perfect Dark, Enslaved (sort of), Syberia, Syberia 2, Assasin's Creed: Woman's Hour, Gravity Rush, Xenoblade Chronicles (in our playthrough), Final Fantasy X, FInal Fantasy X-II, Final Fantasy XIII, Portal, Fear Effect, Fear Effect 2, Alien Trilogy, Bayonetta, Bloodrayne, Bullet Witch, Clock Tower, Charlie's Angels (x3), half of every game you can choose your character's gender in, Cluclu Land, Cooking Mama, Death By Degrees, All the Fatal Frames, Drill Dozer, Ghost in the Shell, Jurassic Park:Trespasser, ETC.**
** Super Secret Sub List: Games with fat girls as lead protagonist: Not Fat Princess. END OF LIST.
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A Special Day
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Obligatory SimCity Rant
Well dear reader you gotta break it down. and look at it from the stand point of a corporate machine:
Point 1. The always online aspect was an immovable benchmark for EA and the Maxis games. The growing trend in the previous sim games was online connectability with growing focus on the origin community and microtransactions i.e. buying outfits and furniture in the Sims 3. To set a standard for "always online" games creates benefits that are at minimum two-fold: all future games will be online and monitored, thus less piracy and less association with the internet swearword "DRM", and secondly to generate a sim-community for milking cash-cow games with standardised sign-up accounts across all games.
Point 2. The quality and technicality of the online experience was BORKED from day one. With most things in life, and especially in the corporate world where things get pipelined, outsourced and micro-productions are multi-managed, there is a standard formulae of Time vs Money vs Quality. And in most cases you can only pic two of these, and unfortunately the corporate strategy is to only care about Budget (Money) and Deadlines (Time) thus sacrificing quality. So the game, as polished as it may be, was papped out, without a viable or solid online test strategy.
Point 3. Marketing, you could probably conspiracy-theorise that the launch was orchestrated to drum up press and awareness of the title. i.e. No such thing as bad advertising.
"Oh dear, look at our game, its so popular and awesome that we cant handle the millions of people who are dying to play such an awesome game"
Where this may have been true in the aspect that Diablo 3 and Blizzard. It was also sorted post launch and relatively speaking swiftly. But at this point in time and technology, the level of online and multiplayer exposure in games there should not have been an outage of this level. More than likely the possibility of launching without rigorous testing of the online experience, was "marketed" to corporate heads.
And there you have it, these are the major reasons for why the big company didnt produce a worthwhile launch experience, hats off to unethical production and gaming.
Love and that was a pretty "grown-up" post, remember the days of discussing Soul Calubur boobies?
Richie X
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Mini Review: Punch Quest
Chuff_72 is our man on the Mobile. He's a fallen hero, once a proud gamer now weighed down by responsibilities and such. Where he once played all kinds of games for the betterment of man his gaming life is now spent hiding in toilets and bushes trying to squeeze the most out of mobile games. Games which some people are calling the future and others are saying, steady on pal, Angry Birds and Cut the Rope we're alright but the rest is a big bucket of clunge fodder. He's been tapping away at a little game called Punch Quest. Over to you Chuff, half man, shadow of his former self. This article was sent to us from inside a dustbin so low has the gamer fallen:
Turns out that running infinitely is fun times.
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*Spoiler spoilers. This isn't the next review from Chuff_72.
Turns out that running infinitely is fun times.
DINOSAUR ALERT. Looks shit, right? A budget SNES game. This is Punch Quest, it’s fucking great.
It’s an “infinite running” game, which is essentially a platformer where you don’t have to worry about pressing “right” on the d-pad, because we don’t have time for that shit anymore, we’re busy people. In an incredible twist on the formula you get to move a smidgen to the right when you punch, this is the major selling point of the game, and it’s a good one.
The small amount of movement they allow you, along with an innovative thing called a “Jump” button means you end up with a sweet cross between the running and the platforming genres, essentially removing the roadblocks that platformers usually have on the iPhone, like having to press one button to move and one to jump at the same time.
There are a ton of unlockables, yes that includes hats, is that still a “thing”? Just looked on SITE NAME REDACTED and I see that their top story is that Valve are retiring some hats. Jesus. There are more and better things too, like combos and special powers. Getting these lets you complete Quests, which then gives you more coinage to spend on fucking hats.
Just to bring this all back around and complete the circle of life and what not, I would like to point out that these motherfuckers need to start thumbing in some more graphics, come on guys look at what your class mates are doing (spoilers for next review*):
*Spoiler spoilers. This isn't the next review from Chuff_72.
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Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes: iOS Fudged Edition
Chuff's our man on the mobile. He's been playing some games on mobiles and some thoughts have struck him thensly. Note, there's a super secret ending to this post only available to those who have played the game:
Well shit, when did “Might And Magic” become “Might & Magic”? What a god damn shame, I guess that’s a pretty damning indictment of our life and times right there. I guess As, Ns and Ds and pretty fucking old school, we don’t want to alienate the Kids.
A little pre-amble; My first experience of the Might And Magic series of games was on the original Playstation, it was an incredible Third Person, True 3D extravaganza called Crusaders of Might and Magic.
Review: 10/10
WARNING IGN LINK Wait! Three out of Ten?
I guess my memories of the game are pretty muddy…
WARNING ANOTHER IGN LINK. Wait! WHAT THE FUCK! Five out of Ten?
Actually, I would just like to take this moment to bring up the phenomenon of enjoying something for what it is, in a vacuum. Sometimes, and I guess it’s the same with movies, books, and all art. You find yourself just enjoy the thing for what it is, completely unaware of the critical reaction. I was genuinely completely puzzled when I realised Warriors got a shit review, I thought it was good end to get to the end credits! A few other games when this has happened:
Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style (PS1)
RTX Red Rock (PS2)
Omega Force (Xbox Arcade)
Anyway, I have been waiting 12 years for the Sequel to Warriors. It appears my dreams have been answered, here’s a sort of review.
WHAT IN THE BLUE HELL IS THIS!
So, apparently this is some sort of fucking Columns RPG. I don’t know when they decided that Might And, sorry, “&” Magic would be better as a strategy game, I mean, I would understand if the other games in the series were similar but come on, what is this!?
First impressions are that nobody actually played the fucking thing on the iPhone, tapping on stuff rarely works the first time and since all navigation is achieved by tapping, because, you know, it’s A TOUCH SCREEN, this is an issue. After ten hours or so of playing, still have no idea where I’m supposed to tap to open a chest of gold, or if I want my character to go through an obvious doorway. I have just been fisting my phone until the chest opens or the characters go through the door.
Battle plays out on a grid, top half bad guys, bottom is for the good children, where you have to line up three units of the same colour to perform an attack, kinda like a puzzle game… but not really. It’s certainly different for me as I’m a born and bred ATB wanger, and I do love wanging some ATBs. Once again I have to bring up the controls and the fact that the iPhone is clearly a stupid platform for the game in its current state. All the sprites are slightly too small for comfort and on numerous occasions I moved a dude to a line without realising and lost a movement point, this is a BIG DEAL.
I have spent literal minutes of my super secret toilet time moving embarrassingly primary coloured dragons and shit about, setting up a super sweet chain of linked and focused badasses only for the last piece in the puzzle to be spaffed to completely the wrong place due to my fucking fingers. I think we call all agree that we have fingers and our fingers are not, in fact, shaped like styluses, and never will be. Given that this is a controller shape that has been locked in place for a few million years perhaps the developers could have spent at least 30 seconds testing their game to see if it was possible to play with them.
An illustration:
The story has some very nice presentation, completely wasted on an awful script, which covers all the usual clichéd plot points. Just for once wouldn’t it be nice to have someone spend more than 1% dev time on the story?
I admit to be highly dubious initially and in-spite of the terrible touch implementation, I have been completely won over, good job everyone.
P.S. As it happens there is a solution to all of the above issues, but it does require some seriously drastic measures and is not a option for me on moral grounds, the game is on DS.
P.P.S. There is a multiplayer mode. I will never play it, I’m sure it’s riddled with the same shit controls but great mechanics of the main game.
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1001 A Good Start
We like to play games and we love to read about games. Sometimes it's hard to get the balance right so the reason why we've been quiet in past months is because it was all reading about games and snarking about games and very little actual playing games. We also like to read books about games. We've recently picked up Grand Thieves and Tomb Raiders: How British Video Games Conquered the World and it'll be a nice addition to the growing library of good books about gaming and Resident Evil novelisations. As ever it says a lot about the coherency of gaming beyond the insides of consoles and boundaries of the Internet in that there isn't a massive section in the biggest bookshop by you called 'video games'. Invariably, books from This Gaming Life through to critically under-read Replay the History of Video Games might be under the Internet or indoor games or computing or web/graphics. I'm not going to get on my high horse and say that all gamers are illiterate slobs but clearly enough of them don't go to bookshops to buy books enough that the dwindling chains of bookstores sort their shit out.
But that's besides the point, we picked up 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die (woah now two years ago) and we've been using it as a way to focus our Chi and start playing games that some of the best games journalists have said You Must Play. And it's nice. It's nice to have a source of information away from the Internet and to our mind a pretty fine selection of games without the malformed bunny-boiled down opinion of the Internet gaming community.
Some of the games we know we previously overlooked but others have been a genuine surprise. Bonsai Barber is a Wiiware game we remember getting rave reviews when it came out but this book inspired us to pick it up (and now get harassed on the Wii message board for missing appointments). The same goes for You, Me and the Cubes, Muramasa: the Demon Blade, Eledees, Mercury Meltdown Revolution and finally we've been guilted into buying Super Mario Galaxy.
This book is now getting on, frustratingly it went to press just as the Xbox, PS3 and Wii were getting into their stride. I'd love to see an updated version but wonder how many games from the last two years have earned a spot in the volume (and what games would be pushed out). As we sit on the verge of the next generation and absorb all the bullshit hype about what's coming next and watch the Wii U plough a very mediocre furrow we find it increasingly hard to work out whether games today just aren't going where we expected them to or whether we're just getting fucking old and nostalgic about the games of yesteryear. Not just the games though the people we spent playing games with the context is important to experiencing games. Whippersnappers can fuck off now but we remember glorious summers and after school gaming sessions with friends and families. Were the games that great or was it just the company? Now everyone's moved away, grown out of games (and who can blame them), sadly died or just got bigger priorities. Suddenly sitting in a room playing a game about throwing characters at cubes or chasing the last achievement in a game your boyfriend finds dull can seem lonely and a bit pointless.
But hey there's the gaming community right? We own the Internet. We're everywhere. There are people who work round the clock at Google who try to filter the Internet for non-gaming related images, memes and blogs. But much like games, the community needs to grow up. There isn't a year that goes by where there's some storm in a tea cup that show the true light of the community be it refusing to engage with the issues of violence or anytime a woman gets involved. It's a big boys club desperately trying to run away from real life responsibilities and vitriolic to anyone or anything that threatens the bubble by talking about the issues or problems that real life communities sort out because they're fundamental to everyone getting on. Online you don't need that so we go around and around bathing in the filth at the bottom of the barrel. We're still genuinely astonished at how many commentors who seem as nice as pie when talking about games but lift the lid on politics, gender, race, religion or art and there's some sick callow people out there we're surprised can manage the task of turning on a computer. A lot of them seem to be drawn to gaming. Are we like them? I guess we're having our Fuck Videogames moment.
But there's something about games that keeps us coming back, that keeps us wanting to formulate a way of legitimising the hobby and there are others. But why? Why the need for social acceptance? Other communities don't spend half their time legitimizing themselves. They get on with it. Also, we already won. So why is it that the selection of video game books in the book store is dwarfed by the section on conspiracy theories? Why isn't there a video game museum (this definitely doesn't count)? Why are the video game BAFTAs screened on obscure freeview channels in the middle of the night and not reported the next day? Why has Britain done a piss poor job at celebrating it's strength in making and writing about video games? Why is still a dirty word to fess up that you love games in polite company? Why don't video games soundtracks top the charts? Why do we read about gaming as a growing market on the same day as reading about sales dropping? Why do we keep putting up with shitty film adaptations? Why are game developers actively trying to erase the history of video games as it goes rather than cherish and celebrate it? Why are people doing significantly better job of celebrating and talking about games in their own free time through their blogs and podcasts than the so called professionals? When did On-line become hyphenated? Why do all the good writers give up or move on and all the shit ones go on and on and on and on? Why can't gamers be more discerning and less entitled? Why aren't there any secure jobs in making video games? Why is so much video game journalism essentially churnalism. Bad churnalism? How is still that many game companies put sweatshops to shame in terms of stability and working conditions? Why is our twitter gaming feed filled with absolute shit, marketing and ego melt downs?Why are games failing at retail relying on individuals or other companies to bring the products to market and keep them available beyond launch week? Why do we care so much to get annoyed by it all?
Wow. How did we get here? What did we start with? Oh yeah. Video games. Love 'em.
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