Ian - Simple Pleasures

Having been granted permission to steal the family PS2 for my own private use at University (as I’m home for easter), I set about hooking it back up to my TV and playing whatever I had lying around. The only PS2 discs that I had available at the time were Gran Turismo 3, Half Life, Stuntman, and a recently acquired copy of Killer7 (Joe made me buy it). Having only gotten the slightly scratched Killer7 disc to work once, and having completed Half Life 1 and all available components of the Half Life 2 saga, I decided to make a beeline to Gran Turismo 3 (a copy of which I believe used to belong to David), a game series which I now see I’ve been too harsh about recently.

 I’ve slated Gran Turismo for being too realistic, the handling being not responsive enough, the license system being very unreasonably difficult, and generally the sort of people who play it tend to be Sony Fanboys, and Im not too keen on excessive fanboyism for a very good reason (I.e. If they start on your console, you defend your console, simple).

Having played from the start again, getting the B license, getting the A license, and then trying the first test of the International B license and screwing up, I decided to start the game properly, and headed for the beginner league - Sunday Cup. Sat at the rear of a starting grid in my cyan Mazda MX-5 on the Super Speedway circuit, I hear the conventional series of noises that accompany the start of a race. The AI revving their engines. Me revving mine in return. The jaunty intro music they play at the start of every race. The indescribable noises that are made at 3, 2, and 1, followed by the even slightly higher pitched version on 0 (aka: GO!).

 Considering the track I’m racing more is nothing more than an Oval that’s had a bit too much chocolate, and the sugar and fat has gone to its hips, the experience was rather compelling. The realism I had so criticised before was working very much in the game’s favour. As the first corner approached, I was extremely dissapointed that I had only reached 5th position, after I thought I was in a pretty awesome car anyway, but it turns out that the driver of the Yaris was slightly better at keeping the tight line at the bottom of the banked corner, and I was only in 2nd at the end of the first lap, which was the same for that lap as well, as I tried to catch the Yaris.

 After entering the final lap, my car kicked into fourth gear. I think I’m going to play on Manual Transmission next time, because (as knocking it up a gear does) this made my car go a lot faster, and I rapidly approached, overtook, and gained a lead on the Yaris, winning the race.

 This 3 minute experience, with graphics that were groundbreaking for a 2001 game, inspired quite a good feeling inside me, and I continued to play the other races out of the Sunday cup, and I won all 3, and acquired a Toyota AE86, retro as you like (ironically with a nominal amount more BHP than the MX-5), which again induced a good feeling.

 All this came from a game that was released in 2001. Similarly, the one play of Killer7 that I did get to partake in was equally stellar, I only got as far as meeting Travis and I was extremely impressed by the atmospheric gameplay, which again is a pretty good feat for a game that isn’t out on my beloved Xbox 360, and I’m playing it just as its successor is being released.

 Being a Rhythm Action game fan, Amplitude and Frequency have provided me with many hours of fun (and one broken controller, I believe), and Tekken 5 is currently one of the only games we play on the CVGSoc PS3. The PS2 is far from dead, and I can forsee many more hours of decent gameplay to be had on it (Not least because I intend to buy GT4 and Okami, the latter of which reportedly has 30 hours of gameplay).

 Do yourself a favour, go last gen for a day.

Ian - Everybody loves a sequel?

If you were to ask me about games I’m getting excited about, games I’ve played and enjoyed recently, chances are the decent majority of them have a number at the end of the title (Excluding any N64 titles). Even if you were to ask me about games I haven’t played and have little desire to play, they will still have a number at the end.

I make this post in anticipation for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 that is coming out in 4 days or something mental. I can’t wait. But extending this idea to the rest of my game collection, It dawned on me that there’s nothing I haven’t played the predecessor of. Ridge Racer 6. Call of Duty 4. Virtua Tennis 3. Project Gotham Racing 4. Guitar Hero 3.

Looking on my hard drive, I still have the Devil May Cry 4 demo on there. I was reading gamesTM and I noticed the immintent release of Dynasty Warriors 6. Even the Orange Box (which admittedly only has 3 new games in it) has Half Life 2, Half Life 2:Episode One, Half Life 2:Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2, and I’m all fairly certain you can’t wait for the release of Episode 3 so Valve can ditch that saga and start work on Half Life 3. Also, (as I’m sure Joe is blissfully aware) Manhunt 2 has finally been given a certification in the UK. I’m swimming in numbers. (I also noted the review of Omega Five but that doesn’t count since it’s not a sequel, that’s just what it’s called anyway)

I’m getting a little concerned that the videogame industry is running out of ideas. In a sense, it’s a very pragmatic way to run a business, which is what Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all are. If they can make the same amount of money by taking an existing game, rejigging it a bit, put in some new weapons, cars, levels, charachters or features, than by making a whole new IP*, they will.

That said… Gears of War 2 is based upon a really good IP that was from not so long ago, so the fact that there *are* new IPs about is surely a good thing. The mixed reactions for Assassin’s Creed, the not so mixed reactions given to Bioshock, at least there are new stories, new charachters, new weapons, at least to the extent that they can be considered “new”, as I am forced to accept the fact that we’ve explored most of the genres possible for games. It would just be nice if we didn’t have Ridge Racer 10 coming out any time soon.

It’s argueable the extent to which this could be considered a sequel, even if it doesn’t have a number in the title, even though it’s basically sega rally but jazzed up:

 *IP - “Intellectual Property, like music, poems, movies or other abstract property.” - Original Thought, basically.

Joe - Penny Arcade, watch your back

I had some downtime late night so I flicked through some webcomics, namely VG Cats and Penny Arcade. Then I thought I’d like to make a comic strip of my own so I did and it’s highly topical and hilarious. In a way. Here it is crushed into a link so you’re not automatically assaulted by it. If you’ve got an iron constitution and a lust for disappointment click below.

P.S. Little nugget of information that I just heard and was vaguely interested by: 1000 terabytes are called a petabyte.

David - Jurassic Park - A Retrospective Review

I’ve already mentioned in my ‘about me’ page that I’m into retro gaming. I’ve spent countless hours hunting down influential games from the past, or just those that I remember from my childhood. I find it really interesting to sit down to an old game with the benefit of hindsight and see how the industry has moved on. I also like pitting my (and various emulator’s) skills against Windows XP.

So, when my housemate started talking about a game he remembered from his childhood, Jurassic Park for the PC by Ocean, it sounded like a challenge to hunt it down and get it running. Actually finding the game was really easy. My first stop, Abandonia, had it available for download, a whole 4MB. Next task was getting it to run, also pretty easy with the help of DOSBox, though you have to crank up the game cycles to get it to run at a decent rate. Game on…

The game starts with a blue-shirted sprite man who I can only assume is Dr Grant standing by a crashed Jeep. We’re not given any particular reason why the car crashed, but there’s little time for breathalysers because several small brown dinosaurs are running towards him with sinister intent. Fortunately Grant is sporting some kind of gun thing, so I aim towards them and press space. Control. Shift. Alt-A-S-Z-X-enter. I’m having problems locating the trigger, so I leg it behind the car crash. This confuses the dinosaurs, and they go off to investigate a nearby cliff. I find a convenient pile of red pixels on the ground and am suddenly able to fire my gun. It seems Dr Grant forgot to load it. I let the lack of introduction slide - I guess it might have been covered in the manual.

At this point my housemate guides me to a bit of cliff that’s about half the height of the good doctor, and Grant proceeds to hop up it like a Mario wannabe. New dinos appear, this time the ones that spit (impolite) and so effectively dispatched with that actor who will only ever be know as “the fat guy”. Two shotgun pellets for these. We locate a computer which gives us out mission: find Tim and Lex in the park and take them to the visitor’s centre. I set off into the park.

Nowadays the best games extend our play time with tours of several varied worlds, different missions, impressive set pieces and so on. This is not the case with Jurassic Park; the length is purely down to the size of the area I’m searching. My housemate (not the game) told me that Tim was somewhere in the main map, and Lex somewhere in the sewers. After about half an hour I had wandered past countless trees, bushes and rocks that all looked exactly the same and had finally managed to find a box of tools to gain access to the sewer. I also found the exit door (requiring a keycard), but no sign of Tim. My housemate’s advice of “I think he’s standing by a tree” didn’t prove especially helpful. I entered the sewers.

The sewers, if anything, are even bigger and more confusing than the outside jungle. I probably spent over an hour in there. The puzzle this time is to find a keycard (for the aforementioned gate), then take a crate from somewhere on the left of the map to Lex, who was somewhere on the other side of the earth, for her to sit on. While Grant waded through the sewerage pushing it. You saw the pile that the triceratops made in the movie. That’s what my avatar is getting in his trousers, all for some stupid girl who ran as far as possible into a sewer filled with flying things, bug things and radioactive-mutant-crocodile-on-steroids things, and she won’t even walk back again.

 

We did eventually make it out, and it was back to the hunt for Tim. 40 minutes later and I still haven’t found him. Maybe I can go through the gate with the card I found? I trek over there for 10 minutes. The game rewards me with a flashing picture of someone’s eyes. I trek halfway back across the map, then suddenly discover that I have an inventory key to cycle through my weapons and the card. Perhaps I wasn’t actually using the card? I trek back. Doesn’t work. I trek back. Its most definitely walkthrough time - I can’t quit now because there’s no save games. Apparently no one has played this game. After extensive searching I find level codes, but no advice on where to look for Tim. It is now rather late, and I almost give up when I spot a triceratops.

Not seen one of those before. Sure enough Tim is hanging around, seemingly unphased by his surroundings. 15 minutes later we’re finally at the gate. It swings open and I’m given a password. End of the level. Play time - over 2 1/2 hours.

Its something of a shock to the system, coming from an age when gamers are lead through tutorials and complicated story based levels to be dumped in the middle of a huge map with no clear objectives and be expected to invest hours of your free time (in one sitting) searching for two NPCs that give no clue to their whereabouts. And check out the helpful map you can access from a computer console.

The game does have a few things going for it though. The graphics are pretty nice (for the era), and the dino sounds are pretty well done. The music isn’t bad either, though it tends to drone a bit. The main problem is that, having worked so hard for the password to the next level, I really want to continue. And that makes me angry. I’m a firm believer that gaming should be fun or at least a way of getting points across (gaming as an artform), yet this compulsion goes againt all of that. My original purpose for playing the game was to get something running from my housemate’s childhood to show it him again. Then it was to experience the game. Then it was to get further than he did. Now its to play the level I’ve just reached. Pretty soon I’m going to be trying to finish it. It’s a slippery slope playing retro games.

If you made it to the end of this entry and fancy a go, you’ll need the game, DosBOX, and possibly a front end for DosBOX

(Actually I have to admit I also want to get to the bit later where it turns into a first person shooter)

Joe - Pay to play

I think we all have rather grandiose ideas of how online play should be. We picture moving in squads, barking orders at our friends through headsets, backing each other up, flanking, outsmarting, sharing in victory, becoming the best - playing as one.

Try and think of three times that this has ever happened.

Invariably teammates are uncooperative (Ian plays CoD4 like godmode will kick in at any moment), microphone delay makes tactics sloppy, the enemy is better than you or servers crash like test dummies.

We’re living under the shadow of how online games should be. I’m not here to wax lyrical about the future or what we’re heading towards. No doubt we’ll someday reach a plateau of online awesomeness and that’s just dandy. For now, though, I have my own online demons to deal with. Ian has previously made mention to our language when we play. If our mothers could hear us, seriously.

Personally, my rage doesn’t stop there. I’m sure that playing online against human opponents catalyses my anger faster, but yesterday while co-oping Army of Two offline with Rob I was prone to the same volatile outbursts of hatred towards NPCs, for god’s sake. I don’t know about it getting any worse, but it sure isn’t getting better.

Thus:

The ‘Flip out Jar’ - technically a glass - is a variation of the popular ’swear jar’. Every time I flip out, expel obscenities over a certain volume or toss my controller somewhere, money goes into the glass. I’m still working out the kinks, such as how much to put in for each outburst (maybe have a grading system), and what amount I cash it all in at. Also, I don’t know what to do with the money. I’ve been thinking maybe putting it towards educational things like books, or stuff I would usually not buy in favour of games, such as clothes. Or food.

I’m now looking forward to more forcibly docile online experiences. No doubt you are too.

Ian - Points make Prizes

The other day I was on my 360, and I went to the games blade, and went to click games library to play on Geometry Wars, Lumines, or something else which is nice and simple (after the complexities of Half Life 2: Episode 2), and I accidentally clicked “Achievements” which is the option underneath games library. I went back, but as i was doing so, I noticed that the 360 adds up my gamerscore, compared to the amount of potential gamerscore I could have if I got all the achievements in every game I’ve ever played.

 If you’re not already aware, it’s become something of an inside joke with me and joe, where he criticises the way I play games (sometimes working towards achievements, not all the time, obviously) and then I take the term and make a sarcastically self depricating comment like “I’m going to buy King Kong because you can get 1000 gamerpoints for completing it” (Which I have not yet done and will not ever do) or “I’m tempted to play Halo 3 on legendary so I can get some phat points for completing it”.

 Interestingly, my potential gamerscore was over 42,000g. My actual current gamerscore is no more than 17,000. With all the criticism levelled at the gamerscore system, why is it that gamers care so much about gamerscore? I personally never thought of myself as a gamerscore whore, but the fact that I jump through the hoops that developers set, is that a bad thing?

The current world leader (Gamertag: casinoguy) is on 261,269 (That’s at least 261 full games). I can hazard a guess that to do this he’s had to play some pretty terrible games in order to get achievements, and fair play to him. The question is, why has he gone to this effort? It doesn’t show he’s a better gamer. A person who is on level 55 on CoD4 is not necessarily better than a level 17, but it merely means they’ve been at it longer.

It made me wonder, what is it a better gamer to be? A gamerscore whore (who puts in endless hours to see that the job is done), a leaderboard topper (who puts in endless hours on the same game, on the same level, in order to top the leaderboards), or somebody who plays games for fun (who plays games to entertain themselves, with a gamerscore simply being collateral damage).

I personally can respect anybody who jumps through the nigh on impossible hoop in Ridge Racer 6 that would read as follows:

To get this, you have to complete all 235 races in the game, without hitting walls, or other cars (of which there are 13 in most races), while winning each race. All for 60 measly achievement points. I personally think that microsoft have the right idea with the achievement system, but some developers are too lax/nazi with their achievements.

 (Yes, this post was partially to tell Joe that I’m not a true gamerscore whore, and really it’s a self-validating rant, but there is a valid discussion behind it).

Joe - Playing to…

There’s one great thing about the misconception that games are a waste of time: you needn’t live up to any expectations, even your own.

When I play its usually because I have some goal, be it kill the opposite team before they kill me, or clear four lines of Tetris blocks at once (an analogy, I would never consciously try to do this). But I also have a lot of time for having no goal. I’ve spent countless hours dirt-biking through the purple hue of the San Andreas desert at night, or playing out social dramas on Coney Island in ‘The Warriors’, or - more recently - cavorting through Lost: Via Domus, which I would say is one big digression in itself.

Whenever I find myself in Cex I’m still assaulted by a wall of unclaimed, £10 copies of Crackdown; weathered ‘Contains Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta’ stickers still attached. I don’t think bodies piled in the streets could upset me much more. Even now I go back to Crackdown to do nothing at all. I co-op with my cousin, he drives and I crouch on the roof, shooting wildly at bystanders as the police tail us. Occasionally we have a showdown: we climb to the top of a tall building, turn Godmode off, give ourselves exponential strength, and see who can kick the other off the building to their death first. I was sceptical when the developers stated that the game is as fun as you are, but I’m finally starting to believe it.

To get to sleep I used to teleport to somewhere on Oblivion and walk the main road to the nearest town, observing the scenery as I went. When I got to town I bought a room for the night, and when my avatar slept so did I.

Or yesterday, after a long Frontlines session me and a guy just sat back and chilled ingame, talking about Tarantino films as jet planes shot overhead and off in the distance explosions pulsed against a red sky. When the enemy pushed the frontlines to our HQ we said our farewells and took up defensive positions. We got the shit carpet-bombed out of us and never met again.

Even my sister revels in videogame folly. She drives round San Andreas, keeping rigidly to the traffic system (which you can only really appreciate the complexity of when playing by the rules) or walking around the virtual houses, pretending she’s preparing dinner for people who aren’t actually there.

In conclusion: Little Big Planet will be awesome.

Ian - Does my bum look big in HD?

I went into gamestation today (to sell my copies of “The Club” - Difficulty is so inconsistent it’s infuriating, and Dead Rising - Ditto) and I saw a demo of Gran Turismo 5 playing on the Demo PS3 (with what appeared to be some sort of points based mode involving earning points for stylish moves. Project Gotham anyone?). Don’t get me wrong, it looked a-mazing, and having played the very very very very small demo that is available on PSN at the moment, it looked sublime as well.

Not to offend any of the Barker twins, but this is all that I’ve ever liked about the Gran Turismo series. The fact that graphically it’s looked so real and so pretty is one thing that Polyphony Digital have grasped the concept of perfectly. Unbeknownst to them, there is at least one person (yours truly, don’t you know) who dislikes the realism presented in the other aspects of the game. As the only of the 3 writers on this blog to play racing games regularly, I would like to express my dislike of the genre’s move towards realism. Obviously, to a certain extent, proper physics are in order, but making it so realistic that it’s like driving a real car is not the way the I like games going. To apply the same concept to a first person shooter, it would be like impairing your movement if you got shot in the leg by an enemy, or getting shot in the head is an instant kill (Yes, I know the whole getting shot in the head thing applies to real life as well, but that only serves to prove my point further). Sure, it’s realistic, but is it really that much fun.

We’re in danger of losing ourselves to graphical fetishism. There’s only so much about a game you can gather from a screenshot, because i’m sure that making your game in at least 720p is probably industry standard by now, there’s lots of pressure on developers to make their games look as pretty as possible, to woo the untrained eye. I implore you to take GT5 on its gameplay merits first and foremost. Do not let the graphics be why you play, let them be what draws you in. Failing that, buy a Wii because they couldn’t give a toss about decent graphics (apart from Super Mario Galaxy which actually does look pretty good)

David - The Rules of Engagement

…and on with the first post. Jumping in at the deep end I’m going to start by wandering down a different path to Joe and Ian, and talk a bit of game development, starting off with one of my theories.Have you ever played a game and really been sucked into its world? I’m not talking about people who live their lives in MMOs - that’s a completely different subject - but a game that you really feel part of, that gives you an experience of what it would be like to be living a different life? Its what gaming should be all about, yet its something that’s also rather elusive. One man’s Metal Gear Solid is another man’s Sonic Shuffle. So how do you make a game that really sucks the player in? Lets take an example. Despite huge sales and several sequels, Myst is looked down on by many people, citing it as boring, too hard or little more than an interactive slideshow. Yet I was a player that found it a fun and engaging game. Why did I get a different experience?

I guess you could say that some people just aren’t interested in that kind of game, and that’s probably true, but I’m going to suggest that some people just didn’t get it. That sounds like kind of a throwaway statement, but it rather messily brings me to my theory - in order to get drawn into a game you have to understand and play by the game’s rules. If you can’t do that you aren’t going to get anywhere and will go away frustrated. Ok, I guess that’s not quite the revelation you were looking for, but bear with me. The reason I liked Myst was because once I figured out how the game worked (solve a puzzle to get to another island, solve a puzzle to get a page, solve a puzzle to get back to Myst, insert page into book, repeat) I was free to experience the sights and sounds of the world that Cyan had built, a world that I understood and hence could feel part of.

Another good example would be the Hitman games. I remember being worried about trying things in Hitman 2 because while I knew whether they would or wouldn’t work in real life, I wasn’t sure if the game would let me or would set every guard in Russia jumping on my shiny barcoded head. Start to see what I mean? While a decision to play by the game rules is very much down to the player, if a game can show the player what works and what doesn’t work they can start playing with an idea of the consequences of their actions and hopefully start to be drawn into the world.

So how do you go about introducing a player to the rules of the game without making them seem constrictive? Its difficult. As usual Valve have got good ideas on the subject. In this case they use a method of training – a game mechanic is first introduced in a simple and safe-ish environment for the player to get a feel of how it works, then only later is it used under pressure. So that’s one idea for all aspiring game developers out there. The introduction methods will obviously differ from genre to genre, but as a developer its certainly worth considering setting the ground rules then letting your audience play around as freely as possible within them. People are always going to get annoyed at the restrictions (”Well why can’t I shoot my partner in the leg? If he doesn’t accompany me to the next level he won’t get kidnapped and I won’t need to go save him”), so as well as pushing the available options as far as you can, perhaps you could define the fence but concentrate on making the garden inside as good as possible?

Of course this is just one aspect of drawing people into a game, but I think I’ve said enough for the moment.

Random links of the post: The Video Game Name Generator, Scooby-Doo and the Case of the Diabetes

Joe - Space

When we were all in primary school, we used to play a totally un-gay game called ‘The Lucky Boys’. This was back when we were, what? Seven? Eight? When lunchtime was spent in the playground, and our imaginations were enough to entertain us and we didn’t have to resort to Worms Armageddon LAN games, or sketching aquatic murals on the wall of a sixth form study ro- I digress.

The premise of the game was we pretended that we were rich kids who could have anything we wanted, then we pretended we had it. It was awesome. One such time I made the bold statement that “Today I bought a PC with a 3GB harddrive!”

Ian’s eyes widened and he said something like: “Wow, that’s a fucking good PC (I’m pretty sure Ian had a dirty mouth, even at that age).” I think that despite how outlandish the concept of the Lucky Boys was, getting lots of money and buying houses and video games was a perfectly plausible thing to request compared to a 3GB PC. I think the fact that it’s stuck with me puts into perspective how freakin’ insane the idea was at the time. A gigabyte wasn’t to be tossed around in those days. The ‘me’ now - with my 200GB HDD, with another 250GB external one - would be deified by the old ‘me’. Plus I’ve become astonishingly sexy since then.

I think we’ve hit a milestone recently. I’m happy to say that Hideo Kojima laughed in the face of my childhood fantasies this week, as it was announced that Metal Gear Solid 4 is being trimmed of extras, due to no room being left on the 50GB Blu Ray disks. That’s a game disk twenty-five times the capacity of Ian’s old Packard Bell PC, and it’s struggling to fit one game on.

The future is upon us, people.

PS: Welcome David, our newest contributor. May you help weave the golden thread that is this blog.