The Gaming Gentleman

I fail at FIFA 12 because I play like a footballer, and not like a gamer

2012-01-29T17:32:00.002Z

I'm a huge football fan. I spend much of my free time watching whatever match I can find on TV, and a good portion of my gaming time is spent with EA's FIFA series. The FIFA games have strived, year-on-year, to improve the franchise and immerse players in an engrossing football experience. The latest instalment, FIFA 12, continues this trope but its improvements maybe too clever for its own good.

Overall, the game is a fantastic sports title. The game modes, gameplay, graphics and animation are all a step up from last year's title. The seamless transition from play to cut scene, as well as player gestures and reactions complement each other and make you feel like you're watching a match. Head-to-head seasons give new incentives for success in online gameplay with divisions to progress through and relegation to avoid. For the first time in the series, FIFA 12 introduces tactical defending to give players a greater degree of control when not on the ball. Rather than just running back alongside advancing opponents and trying to bully or slide the ball away from them, players are now able to turn and cover attackers if they can keep goal-side of them. This serves to draw you into the intricate tactics of defending and makes them think more like a footballer about covering and moving into space when not on the ball.

This is all well and good, football fans can emulate the sport they love more closely than ever before. We can see what our on-field hero's look like playing in a style we dictate and we're drawn more deeply into an experience that increasingly looks like what you'd expect to see at a real match. However, the shift in tactical thinking hasn't been supported by the AI programming, which lets me down regularly and causes me to fail at FIFA 12.

Off-ball players are controlled by AI and you can change which player you control with a quick tap of a button or flick of an analogue stick, however, doing so can have unexpected consequences. For example, an AI controlled defender may be running back just ahead of an attacker and you wish to take control of that player to see off the danger. Taping your button you stare aghast as the player who was so capably tracking his marker stops dead for split second, even if your aiming correctly for him to continue his run, and allows the opponent through for a shot at goal. The game's intricate defensive tactics have lulled me into a false sense of security, making me believe my AI controlled players will react exactly how I would expect a professional footballer to. This isn't the case. It fails to anticipate.

This is just one example, others include AI players failing to close down obvious loose balls in favour of maintaining their formation, to the detriment of their team's effort. The clever player animations that add depth occasionally cause a player on the break to raise his hands in frustration at a tackle rather than chasing down the ball and recovering it, like a professional would. When a number of the opposition are playing high up field and you get the ball, a quick counter attack can often be snubbed out by your strikers choice not to start a run while you still hold the ball with another player. This leads to frustration and, often, failure.

FIFA 12 is a great game, but the level of control it affords leads to an assumed empathy between the players that simply doesn't exist. When I fail to score or I defend pitifully it isn't for the want of trying, it's because I'm thinking like a footballer and not like a gamer. If I expect the avatars to act like computer controlled sprites, adjust my play style accordingly and remember that I'm simply reacting to on screen stimuli, then the gamer in me can get back to responding to the situation and shaping the game as I want it. I need to rely on my actions, not the assumed understanding of an algorithm. I must remember it is just a video game, and I should approach the play as a gamer, and not as a footballer.

Pre-owned re-moaned: gamers must use their economic power to prevent unwanted changes to how they pay for games

2012-01-27T12:43:00.005Z

Gaming sites across the Internet are reporting rumours first shared by Kotaku suggesting that the next Xbox console “may not play used games”. It rears an ugly and, in my opinion, pointless argument about pre-owned game sales and their effect on the video game industry. I can categorically prove that far from impacting upon sales, pre-owned games actually boost developers' incomes: I would never have paid full price for Mass Effect. I knew nothing about it at its release - as I was abroad and missed the launch PR drive - and it simply didn't appear on my radar. A friend tried to convince me to buy it so I purchased a pre-owned copy at a reduced price. I became hooked on what is still one of my favourite games of all time. It lead me to buy the second game at launch and my pre-order for the third instalment of the series sits on the system of my local retailer. Bioware didn't lose £20 by my pre-owned purchase, it gained £90. Preowned games aren't killing the industry, they supplement it; they boost it.

The argument is in vain though, because despite the awesome buying power of gamers – we spent $1bn in 16 days on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - we do not wield our influence effectively to prevent changes to the industry that we, as consumers, simply don't want. Pre-owned is one example. EA are dominating in the war against the pre-owned market, implementing online passes as a way to force pre-owned buyers to pay again to access online content that the original owner had full use of. Most of EA's flagship titles hinge on online content and gameplay. Without multiplayer access the FIFA, Tiger Woods PGA and Battlefield series are just shells of games. Having to purchase a pass after buying a game from the pre-owned section negates any financial bonus of the sale. Gamers might as well buy new. EA are winning that battle.

Another example of gaming taking a heading at odds with the wishes of consumers is pay-to-play. With multiplayer in games such as Halo and the Call of Duty and Battlefield series being such a big draw to the franchises, businesses – and lets not forget that is what developers are – are noticing a potentially lucrative revenue stream. Rather than giving gamers unlimited access to as many multiplayer matches as they want for as long as they own the game, there are worrying rumblings of a tectonic shift to subscriptions and pay-to-play. The first steps toward a pay-to-play future have been taken in the form of Call Of Duty Elite, a subscription service for more dedicated CoD players. The service isn't compulsory, or even necessary to have a great online experience, but it is a move in a direction which was being discussed by people like industry expert Michael Pachter two years ago. The crux of Pachter's comments was that multiplayer is such a huge portion of the game market, unlimited plays on games such as CoD and EA's sports titles are directly detrimental to new sales. You'll excuse me if I rile at this, but If I pay for a game and pay an annual subscription to use Xbox LIVE, I'm quite certain that I don't want to pay a further subscription to access online gaming within a franchise.

Video game sales may not be what they were in 2008, but nor is housing or anything else. We are still in the throes of a global economic crisis and consumers have less disposable income. This doesn't mean that gamers should be punished for finding cheaper ways to enjoy their chosen pass-time, or milked for more cash to supplement the industry's coffers in the bad times. Gamers posses a massive economic weapon and, if we choose to wield it, we should seriously consider using our right not to buy in order to prevent an irreversible change to how we access and pay for gaming.

Filibuster: Skyrim reveals my in-game political immaturity

2012-01-24T06:58:00.004Z

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda's latest mammoth title, has me reflecting on political choice in games and how that relates to real-world political thinking. I like to think of myself as a politically savvy person. I keep abreast of current affairs and try to weigh arguments before making judgements. I get my news from a variety of sources spanning the political spectrum to ensure I don't fall foul to party political bias or spin. I even allow myself to be swayed in my opinion by the weight of a convincing argument. However, as Skyrim has shown me, when it comes to in-game politics, I'm best described as immature.

Personal politics and voting tendencies are largely a compromise. Voters tend to align themselves to a party or an ideal that best fits their value system, or vote depending on which manifesto they believe will best benefit themselves. My game politics depart from this established, sensible mantra. In the gaming world, if my views don't completely align with the politics of any faction or character then I don't participate. My game ego doesn't allow me to settle for the best of a bad bunch - it causes me to strike out on my own, to shape the world as I would have it.

Although there are numerous political factions present in Skyrim, the story is anchored in the turmoil of the civil war waged by two major parties: the Imperials and the Stormcloaks. From the outset, the game has you choosing between the two and ushers you to pick a side as the story evolves. This is where my political immaturity came to light. I found it difficult to choose. Despite playing as a Nord character native to the land, and their separatist ideals being based on Skyrim for the Nords or similar rhetoric, I found it difficult to subscribe to the Stormcloaks' view of the world. I felt that the borderline racist rants of the faction's leaders and their unwillingness to compromise made it impossible for me to join their ranks. Yes, I'm a Nord. Yes, I think the Nords' homeland should be shaped by its natives. Yes, I believe people should be free to worship as they see fit but no, I cannot and will not abide prejudice on racial grounds – and in the case of the Stormcloaks, this prejudice runs deep.

So then, to the Imperials? I like that they are holding together an eclectic and inclusive society. I like that they see the Empire as stronger united than divided and I believe that a separated Skyrim would see both the diminished Empire and the lone province more susceptible to invasion or influence from outside parties. So surely my allegiance should lie with the Empire? Well, no. I can't make peace with the idea that they would give up their subjects' rights to worship to the demands of the Thalmor, the High Elf supremacist leaders of the Aldmeri Dominion. I don't like how they appear to be the puppets of these invaders. I can't reconcile their heavy-handed approach to those who would seek political change, but mostly, I can't forgive them for trying to hack off my head without trial or due procedure at the genesis of my quest.

This uncompromising gameplay trait has reared its head in other games too. Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series all stand out to me as examples of choice-driven games in which I have been unable to compromise my sense of right and wrong to align myself politically. In New Vegas, my choice seemed to be between the “evil” Legion, or the “meddling” republic; I chose neither and my god complex led me to find my own solution. In Mass Effect, my personal politics and sense of right and wrong lead me to unleash a deadly insect race upon a Galaxy it once threatened, whilst I myself struggled to save it from another great danger. My feelings on the warlike Krogan and the genophage plague used to control the species' numbers left me struggling to trust Krogan, Turian or Salarian characters on either side of the argument.

My experience in my first play-though of most games is usually a “how would I handle it” approach, and it is in my first play-though that I struggle with political immaturity. Subsequent plays will see me acting as a shining beacon of goodness, or a despicable example of evil, and in these games I care not for the worries of politics. But when I'm approaching the game as I would – or as I would like to believe I would – a real-life situation, I find myself hamstrung by my code, my compass and the overwhelming sense of self-importance that any game engenders when it makes you the protagonist.

Is this political immaturity though, or is my reluctance to compromise a result of the fact that I don't have to? In the games I've described, players have the luxury of choice and an abundance of avenues of action, and ultimately thats what politics is: a choice between different ways of interacting with and seeing the world. Games that afford less choice, or even no choice beyond “shoot the guy in your iron-sights, or don't”, have a much less blurred political landscape. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's campaign, there is little by the way of choice, but the plot is steeped in political intrigue and interactions on a global scale. Regardless of player politics, the game will play out the same way. In Batman: Arkham Asylum you adopt the politics of the costumed vigilante and you will bring down the Joker, or you simply won't complete the game. Your choice is limited to which tactic you'll use to pummel the bad guys as you close on your target. That's not to say the run-on-rails nature of games like these makes them bad - far from it - but the lack of player choice doesn't allow for player politics to add a new dimension to the game play.

When it comes to more open world, choice driven role-playing or sandbox games, the freedom of choice and action seeds my political immaturity - because to believe you can solve the world's problems on your own and not have to forge alliances to do so is naive. In any alliance there is compromise and my inability to do so in Skyrim would have major ramifications to the provinces' inhabitants. Skyrim won't run itself and for me to leave it suffering a civil war that I could end by picking a side is politically irresponsible.

My choice is the third way: I will shape Skyrim as I see fit. And why can I do this? Because unlike real life, my limitless respawns, vast power and moral compass won't let me settle for a less than perfect affiliation between my view of the world and that of a faction I support. I don't have have the maturity to compromise and am doomed to struggle against all factions in the game - at least in my first play-through.

**This article was written for Game Kudos and can be viewed in its edited format here**

We interrupt this silence...

2012-01-08T11:58:00.000Z

I have been criminally negligent with regard to my writing over the past few months. As you can see, this blog hasn't been updated for a while and I've submitted nothing new to any of the outlets I write for since August. This post simply serves to say that this drought will be ending shortly. My latest article is with my editor and when ready will be posted here and elsewhere.

By way of mitigation for my lack of content I should mention that I have spent a considerable amount time at sea during the past 6 months and 7 weeks ago my wife gave birth to our beautiful baby daughter – so it's not like I've been sat on my hands since August. Anyway, watch this space for updates shortly.

LA Noire Review

2011-08-12T16:17:00.004+01:00

My review of LA Noire has been published at Game Kudos. I found the game to be equal parts outstanding and disappointing. Overall, the technological achievements and the main game mechanics make for an excellent interactive gaming experience, however, the choice to root the game in Rockstar’s familiar formula of 3^rd person GTA style open world exploration detracts from an otherwise excellent adventure.

I think LA Noire could be a contender for game of the year but, unfortunately, I believe the game – as good as it is – promised so much more.

The kid’s aren’t alright: LA Noire’s children

2011-05-31T11:12:00.003+01:00

Rockstar have a habit of keeping kids out of their games. The trend is bucked slightly in LA Noire but, with only their toe in the water, perhaps they should have stuck to their guns.

For obvious reasons Rockstar’s hit games, which pride themselves on believable rendering of entire cities and landscapes, are notably lacking in one human element: children. Being the purveyors of the kind of video game violence and questionable content that anti-gaming lobbyists love to pounce upon, its choice to keep the streets of Liberty City clear of innocent ankle biters saves the developer that particular political pitfall. Somehow mounting the curb with your stolen vehicle and mowing down a group of innocent passers-by while evading the LCPD would take a turn toward the sinister if mangled prams were among the wreckage in your rear-view mirror.

I approve of this choice, as nothing freaks me out more in gaming than kids. Be it Little Sister from BioShock, the child-like necromorphs from Dead Space 2 or even “normal” kids like those from Fallout 3’s birthday party, their presence in games is unnerving to me and, with the exception of John Marston’s son in Red Dead Redemption, their omission from my Rockstar diet is greatly appreciated. That is, until LA Noire.

The streets and parks of 1947 Los Angeles aren’t filled with children, and their absence simply makes the free-roaming aspect of the game feel like a GTA title, but during your investigations the story sees you interviewing one child and hounding the father of two others in front of them after telling them their mother had been murdered. Their odd responses to the devastating and life-changing events unfolding around them are somewhat unnerving, especially when conveyed using the game’s MotionScan technology, and I actually felt a deep pang of guilt as I condemned one of them to a life of state care.

These child characters serve a purpose in the game; they add a level of believability to the family dynamic of some of the homes you investigate in the course of the game’s cases, they provide a focal point for the reactions of some suspects to help you make your judgement on their guilt. However, because there are only a handful of child characters in a city of countless sprites, their presence in the game is also to its detriment. It leads to a nagging thought in the back of your mind when playing: Why is it there are no kids anywhere else in the game but for the few cut scene encounters in those investigations? It’s not something that spoils the overall enjoyment of the game, but combined with a couple of other aspects (like the ridiculous body count) it picks away at the mortar of a superbly written story, which is delivered - for the most part - in a refreshingly new and exiting way.

Unlike GTA and RDR, LA Noire has heavy focus on protecting the population of the city and hurting pedestrians as you speed through the streets chasing down bad guys is heavily discouraged. Indeed, the game prevents you from un-holstering your weapon at inappropriate times and collateral damage is kept lower than in any other similar title I can think of. With that in mind, and Rockstar’s choice to use child characters in the main narrative, I feel it should have made the braver step to infuse the game with a more believable age range within the city’s population. Not doing so simply highlights how out-of-place the ones that are there feel.

Army of One or a cog on a wheel?

2011-04-11T12:05:00.003+01:00

To accurately represent warfare, games must engender a sense of collaboration toward an overarching strategic aim, not focus on the tactical weeds of individual effort.

Despite occupying a significant proportion of video game content, military titles of all genres fail to depict warfare accurately. FPS are fun and exciting, but ridiculous. The game pace, number of incidents and body counts familiar to FPS fans are to modern conflicts as Rambo movies are to guerrilla warfare: a cartoon depiction. In 2011, the average number of daily battle casualties per 100 troops in conflicts worldwide is 3 (source: The evolution of weapons and warfare, T.N. Dupuy). How does that compare to the attrition rate of 2010’s Medal of Honor? Players are divorced from the actions on-screen and are prone to taking extraordinary risk to achieve objectives. Without the fear that normally comes with danger, games simply can’t recreate the true feeling of being under fire. Even if players could somehow achieve empathy with their on-screen character, the way FPS single-player campaigns are designed results in players being constantly harried and channelled to follow pre-scripted actions to progress the story.

RTS military titles are engaging but outside of a despotic society no one person has so much control over the macro and the micro as is permitted by the genre. Even games like Civilization, Age of Empires or Command and Conquer, which incorporate the economic and societal elements of war, cannot give any player a faithful experience of commanding forces at any level. Although RTS games allow players to make the mental leap from the tactical to the strategic, the sheer scope of the faculty entrusted to them is unlike anything that would be experienced by any individual within any military or governmental organisation. To return to the emotional level, players simply don’t, and shouldn’t, care about the hundreds or thousands of units sent to their digital graves in pursuit of the overlord’s aims.

These are examples of the Army of One mentality of video games. Even in multiplayer focused military games the individual is king and players are out to clock up kills and demonstrate their prowess. The number of stakeholders in any military operation, not to mention a full-blown war, is mind blowing. From troops of all spheres of warfare to logisticians, planners and propagandists, politicians and media outlets, the list endless and all have an input to the effort. I’m not suggesting here that any game could simulate the complex nature of a conflict so accurately but highlighting the stark difference between the reality of such operations and how they are represented in our gaming entertainment.

Video game warfare is largely land-centric and it is for this reason, coupled with the individual nature of console ownership, that games don’t make the paradigm shift necessary to depict warfare as the collaborative effort that it actually is. One branch of warfare that is under-represented in games, but which by its very nature requires a collaborative approach, is naval warfare. Sea power is by far the most influential of military might. Navies can legally position aircraft carriers 12 miles off any coast on the planet and influence the area for hundreds of miles around the hull. Submarines can deny access to logistically vital sea-lanes by the mere suggestion of their presence and marines can be landed on any beach by amphibious units with little or no notice. The nature of naval operations means that fighting units – ships, submarines and aircraft - cannot be operated individually and require cohesive teamwork to effect such formidable and versatile weapons. However, from a gaming perspective, the largely individual nature of gaming precludes this vast and intriguing sphere of warfare from being fully explored.

Indeed, the most notable recent example of naval warfare in video games is that of Eidos’s Battlestations: Midway. The battle of Midway is a master class in the employment of naval air power and escort warfare. The world shaping exchange between the US and Japanese carrier fleets influenced the tide of the second World War and gave the US the foothold it needed to press its advance across the Pacific. The game representing these events was woefully below par, reducing the experience to a single-player, ultimate-control farce with one person effecting the navigation, gunnery and command of naval units all at once, so as to make the experience laughable.

The mantra of naval warfare - and indeed that of land and air warfare - is that each individual is a cog on a wheel, a small but vital component in the machine. Everyone knows their job and together they combine to fight the war as directed by those in command, who are in turn guided by the strategic aims laid out by an appropriate authority. Perhaps the only video game genre that could even attempt to replicate the intricate and complex essence of military operations is MMO. If players can make the mental shift away from the weeds of individual effort, and appreciate how fulfilling their role correctly - not for personal glory, but for the collective aim – can have a huge impact on the outcome of a conflict, then they would be much closer to understanding the reality of military effort than they would by running and gunning their way through a restricted shooter map.

As intriguing an idea as this is though, I doubt it would be a viable project. It can be argued that an accurate representation of the human mechanics of warfare is not the aim of these games and that escapist entertainment is the main goal. If players want to test their hand-eye co-ordination whilst enjoying an exaggerated - albeit entertaining - storyline and revel in impressive graphics and sound then the current crop of military titles meets this. However, if players want to experience war in accurately reproduced combat situations but without the physical dangers inherent in military service, then the selection of war games available fails to provide. The dichotomy is that any game that could accurately simulate warfare would be exactly that: a simulation. It would most likely be used to train military personnel and not to entertain the gaming public. After all is a more accurate understanding of the mechanics of war actually what gamers want? Probably not.

Falling out with New Vegas

2011-04-05T20:37:00.003+01:00

I hate that I hate the conclusion of Fallout: New Vegas. The immersive and deep Fallout universe has had me hooked for years. The franchise’s detailed back-story, the spectrum of quirky characters and the freedom of story development all combined to create the most entertaining time sink I have experienced for a long time.

I am drawn into the style and themes of Fallout. I enjoy the 1950’s based b-movie aesthetic and the nostalgic homage to Americana shrouded in the grim realisation of cold war paranoia. I love the figurative tilt-of-the-hat to terrible sci-fi, the clunky and often ridiculous technology that could be lifted straight from Forbidden Planet or Flash Gordon. So much of the make-up of the game appeals to my inner geek. In both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the story is engaging varied and can be approached from various angles depending on player disposition. The main story, the seemingly limitless number of side-quests and the ability to roam and explore endlessly combine to provide longevity of gameplay that far outstrips most other titles.

New Vegas’s gameplay isn’t a leap forward from Fallout 3, but I still enjoyed the mix of RPG and 1^st/3^rd person shooter. The game allows players to approach combat in a variety of ways, employing stealth, strength or guile to achieve their aims, lay waste to foes and progress toward a player-choice determined conclusion. Unfortunately, despite the best part of 70 hours of gameplay and a series of excellent quests and encounters, glitches and plot holes in the ending have left me deflated.

In the story strand that I followed, my ending resulted in an encounter with a character I had not yet met in the course of the game, but who greeted me as an old comrade and referred to a previous meeting and conversation that never happened. To my great annoyance at the height of the final battle the graphics became glitchy, although I had experienced glitches in-game prior to this juncture and an internet search has assured me that it’s not a universal problem. It’s because of the excellent gaming experience leading up to the end that the below standard conclusion annoys me as much as it has.

I do not expect the game to be perfect; perfect probably isn’t possible. However, considering the time and detail put into the game, these few problems at the crescendo of the game should have been ironed out. I’m not sorry I played New Vegas – it was my favourite game since Mass Effect 2 – but I am disappointed that I hated the execution of my story’s conclusion, if not the content. I don’t feel the urge to revisit it immediately and follow the other possible conclusions, but when I do get around to it I hope they will lead to a more complete understanding of the relationship between my character and the random NPC I encountered this time. Hopefully my 360 will choose not to glitch at the critical moment too.

Don’t kill The Walking Dead

2011-02-27T19:45:00.005Z

Robert Kirkman’s ongoing, Eisener Award winning, epic comic book series, The Walking Dead, has thrilled and chilled readers since 2003. Recently, a TV adaptation secured a second series, and now Telltale Games has announced that the franchise is to be turned into a video game. We can only hope the transition to console doesn’t kill The Walking Dead.

I am a huge fan of the book and I enjoyed watching the TV series, although I did think it deviated a little too much from the comic. The main draw of the franchise has always been the great writing. In all good zombie fiction, the undead serve simply as vehicle for story telling. As terrifying as the flesh-eating fiends are, they are never the true enemy. They cause the downfall of human society, a situation so far outside of every day life that ordinary people are pushed to extraordinary limits, and thus we can explore the darker aspects of humanity. As with Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, World War Z and other great films and books of the genre, the most dangerous foe in zombie fiction is always us; the people whose weakness and actions in the face of adversity are their own undoing.

Telltale Games has an opportunity to create a great title from a great franchise, but my fear is that they may attempt to make the game challenging by introducing a variety of enemy types. In big release zombie games, zombies are commonly supplemented with “boss” enemies, such as Resident Evil’s dogs, crows and Tyrants. Left 4 Dead did an excellent job of representing a zombie horde (although the creatures are “infected” humans in the vein of 28 Days Later), but again relied on more ferocious creatures such as Boomers, Smokers and Tanks to add another layer of difficulty to the gameplay. Capcom’s Dead Rising managed to capture some of the Dawn of the Dead nostalgia by setting the game in a shopping mall and, for the large part, presenting the player with a zombie we would recognise from the George A Romero classics. Admittedly, the game was darkly comic and injected a great deal of fun into zombie killing, but even Capcom’s homage chose to modify the zombies, having them become faster and more dangerous at night than during the day.

The true horror of zombie fiction isn’t the graphic violence, the tearing of flesh from bone or the copious amounts of blood and gore, it’s the loss of individuality that results from being engulfed by them and the fear of becoming lost in the mindlessness of the horde. Kirkman’s creatures conform to the Romero paradigm of zombies - slow and lumbering, easy to avoid in small numbers but increasingly terrifying as their numbers swell. Ultimately, survival depends on groups working together in the face of a common enemy. It is my great hope for the game that it will remain true to this vision of zombies, and to Kirkman’s main narrative.

The greatest enemies presented throughout the comic book series are the array of psychopathic and self-interested characters that Rick Grimes, the series main protagonist, encounters, and this material provides a more than sufficient basis from which Telltale can draw. I look forward to the game, but very much hope that Telltale avoids creating other classes of the undead in an attempt to bolster gameplay, and represent such a great franchise in the manner it merits. My worry may be groundless, with Kirkman likely to work closely with the developers, but I truly hope they don’t kill The Walking Dead.

"Do, or do not. There is no try."

2011-02-25T17:34:00.005Z

I’m aiming to write more feature articles. Over the past couple of years I have reviewed many games and had said reviews published at various sites. However, the writing I have enjoyed most has been features. The last post published here was recently picked up by Bitmob and promoted to their front page. This gave me a boost, and my editor at Game Kudos, where the vast majority of my features have been published, has encouraged me to focus on this sort of writing. This doesn’t mean I’ll be dropping reviews; I still enjoy reviewing games, but the majority of my energies will be channelled toward features in the future.

With that in mind, I’m linking up two of my recent reviews that have been published at Game Kudos:

Fifa 11 is a stunning game that all football fans will love. Read my view on the game here.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 was a big letdown for me. As an avid Star Wars fan, and one who loved the first game, this half-hearted sequel has left a sour taste in the mouth. Read why here.

Social shaming: My fear of FarmVille

2011-02-06T09:18:00.011Z

The image of gamers is changing, slowly, and this is largely due to social networking sites. The stereotype of pasty mal-exercised social outcasts gaming for 20 hours-a-day in their mothers’ basement is being replaced by that of “normal” people from a variety of backgrounds, social groups and cultures who do their gaming on sites like Facebook, making gaming more mainstream; so, as a lifelong gamer, why am I afraid to play FarmVille?

Statistics show that social gaming is massive; FarmVille, the game that arguably started the social gaming revolution, has 52 million active users at present. This is dwarfed by the new hot title, CityVille, which has a whopping 98 million active users. To put this into context, that’s more than the population of the United Kingdom. So if gaming has become socially acceptable, as indicated by the sheer numbers of people gaming on one particular application on just one – albeit mammoth – website, should hardcore gamers feel a pang of shame for indulging in these pursuits?

I am a gamer; I have been since the early 1980s. I have owned an Atari 2600, a Commodore 64, a ZX Spectrum, an Amiga 500, a Microsoft PC, a Sega Master System and Mega Drive, a Gameboy, PlayStations 1 & 2, a PSP, an Xbox and a 360 in my gaming career. I have sampled most game genres and rank Real Time Strategy games highly. As one who has witnessed the evolution of video games over the past 3 decades I feel I should embrace the move toward social games, many of which are RTS based that I should enjoy. I speak here of FarmVille, although in reality I’d be more likely to play games like Kingdoms of Camelot or Mafia Wars, but their presence on such a widely used social network puts me off. My reasoning may be debatable, but it’s as follows: I don’t like the idea of everybody on my “friends” list, which includes work colleagues and people on the peripheral of my social circle, being updated every time I sew a field or request help to build a barn. The very nature of social gaming requires this sort of interaction with other users, but having been on the receiving end of countless requests to help others in their gaming efforts, and having been annoyed by the persistence of them despite my not having the same application, I am loathed to inflict this upon my “friends”. It’s the carpet-bombing nature of the applications’ update messages coupled with the lack of customisable privacy options with which I have an issue.

An immediate retort to this would be to say that the option exists within Facebook to ignore all such notifications, however, not everyone chooses to click on this option. This may be because they are happy to receive them, or eager to involve themselves in the game, but what if they’re not? It is entirely possible that people can simply skip through the endless updates spewed out by these applications and, although it could be argued that it is their choice not to get rid of them, I wouldn’t want everyone to see these updates generated by my gaming. I’m not alone in my frustration; an entire anti-FarmVille movement exists within Facebook, born of just this sort of complaint, sporting over 2 million disgruntled users.

For me, collaborative gaming should be about people who want to game together working toward a common goal. If users don’t want to be involved, or don’t have the application, then the system shouldn’t bother them with updates or requests. However, as Facebook and social networks like it have a mandate to expand, it’s not likely that social gaming will move into a less intrusive format any time soon.

I’m sure there are many very worthy games to play in the social gaming genre, but until the scope of who is informed of and involved in my gaming is more tightly controlled it will remain an area of the gaming world that I’ll avoid. I don’t play games on Facebook partly because of the privacy issue and partly due to a reluctance to have my pastimes scrutinised by everyone connected with my social media accounts. I don’t want everyone I know to see what I’m playing and how often I play it; for me, that privilege is reserved for those friends I game with on Xbox LIVE.

Move over DualShock? Killzone 3’s motion control integration

2011-01-14T19:14:00.005Z

Motion control gaming’s recent rise to prominence raises questions about the future of gaming interface and the lifespan of the traditional controller. Whenever a new technology is developed advocates rush to pronounce it as the way forward for…whatever, and denounce that which came before it as obsolete, or at best, past its heyday. But should we be so quick to turn away from our trusty traditional interface with the video games’ world?

At a Eurogamer Expo developer session in October, Guerrilla Games’ Steven Ter Heide demonstrated the upcoming FPS Killzone 3’s optional Move integrated control system. “Move, for us, is an option, obviously there’ll be DualShock lovers and there will certainly be people out there who want to play this with the Move controller.” He began demonstrating the Move controlled play-through by tracing his controller across the screen, showing how weapon targeting follows the point of the controller. When pointing at the extremities of the screen the camera began to follow, slowly. Ter Heide was quick to point out that the speed of camera movement, along with a lot of Move controller related options, are entirely customisable to the players preferences.

The motion controlled play-through of the game underwent heavy play testing to find out exactly what it was that players were looking for with this interface. “The book hasn’t been written yet on Move controls and what they need to do…there’s a lot of stuff we have to figure out.” As Move has all of the buttons that DualShock has, they can still be used to complement the motion controlled experience, but Guerrilla are attempting to enhance that with the integration of gestures, “This icon on the screen now indicates that I need to reload, and I can do this by just a quick twist of the wrist. We find this has an advantage in the fluidity of the gameplay.” demonstrated Ter Hide. Other functions such as gesturing the controller toward the player serve to pick up usable weapons. Having listened to fan feedback, Guerrilla have included the ability to carry more than one primary weapon in Killzone 3, using the D-Pad switches between them.

The feel of the demonstration was such that the developers seemed to be trying to find reasons to use motion control, and running into more than just a few problems doing so. Ter Heide highlighted this with an example of how grenades are thrown in Killzone 3, “You’d expect everybody to throw a grenades like this [demonstrates throwing motion] because it’s a natural motion, but as you can see what happens on the screen is that the camera starts rotating and I don’t see where the grenade lands.” Guerrilla’s solution here is to have the grenade throwing function relegated to a button push.

The test of motion control versus regular controller systems may come in their integration; can players compete in multiplayer with the different control methods on a level footing? In a modern, fast paced FPS, one that holds the draw of multiplayer at its heart, a multiple control system, player vs. player needs vigorous play testing, so says Ter Heide, “Move is available for multiplayer too, and right now we are doing a lot of play testing to find out whether we can have Move players in the same game as DualShock players.” Although he admitted that the new system is lagging behind, “Our core QA guys have grown up with DualShock and they’re very well versed in that and run circles around the Move players.” He added that choice of control method may become a basis of rivalry: “At some point I think it’s going to turn into your snow boarders versus your skiers, whether you’re a DualShock player or a Move player.”

A balancing act may be required if multi-control method multiplayer is to become a reality. Notwithstanding the camera control issues discussed earlier, certain functions of the game mechanics are unique to Move, Ter Heide explained “Because we now have auto-lock [with Move] we need to find out if we can rebalance that and see how that works.” Guerrilla aim to test a public beta of the multiplayer game, and to decide from that whether or not to separate DualShock from Move players.

From the demo at the developer session, Guerrilla Games has shown that big name developers are actively working to integrate peripheral devices into traditional game genres and top titles. Time will tell whether the experiment will work, but based on what I saw at the session - and my own preferences for game controllers - the Move integration appears to me to be a gimmick, more of a Wii Party toy than a serious gaming tool. It looks to have created problems in the developing process rather than having solved any great flaw in the current and well proven method of controlling an FPS game. Perhaps Guerrilla will prove me wrong.

* * * * *

This article was written for Game Kudos and this is the third draft. The finalised piece in its edited format can be seen here.

When I was 31, it was a very good year…

2010-12-31T20:25:00.004Z

2010 has been a very busy and very good year for me; I got married in the summer, flew to the Caribbean on honeymoon and a few weeks later acted as the best man at my brother’s wedding. We moved in to our new house in September and my wife and I got a lovely puppy a few weeks ago, which is conspiring to urinate on my lounge carpet as I type. At work I achieved the advancement I was hoping for within my career and was offered the job I have coveted for a number of years.

I have also been attempting to develop my writing, specifically with regard to video games journalism; this brought me to writing for an online publication, Game Kudos. Writing for GK allowed me to cover my first industry Expo in the form of EuroGamer in London, and gain valuable experience interviewing the lead designer of a top video game developer.

In the gaming world I have invested countless hours saving the Universe in Mass Effect 2, riding the plains of the Wild West in Red Dead Redemption, running and gunning my way through numerous FPS titles, the highlights being Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor (American spelling of Honour!). I’ve enjoyed surviving the post apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout: New Vegas and suffered through the worst game I can remember playing in the form of Deadly Premonition. I got sporty too, kicking around with some of the world’s best footballers in FIFA 11 and beating Tiger Woods in the Ryder Cup on Tiger Woods PGA tour 11. There were lots of other games, but those are just some of the highlights. I also laid my old trust Xbox 360 to rest after suffering the dreaded Red Ring of Death, and got a shiny new one in its place.

Next year’s gaming promises much, but in particular I’m looking forward to Dead Space 2 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (the long awaited sequel to the excellent Oblivion). After such an eventful year I’ll be glad of a rest and a chance for more gaming, but I look forward to 2011 with optimism and anticipation. Happy New Year everyone, see you in the future…

Worst. Game. Ever.

2010-11-30T18:54:00.003Z

Last month I was sent a promotional copy of Access Games’ Deadly Premonition to review in my capacity as writer for Game Kudos. The game’s concept is an interesting one; a murder mystery, survival horror title with an open world game mechanic. It’s based around an FBI agent’s investigation into the ritualistic murder of a young woman in the fictional US town of Greenvale.

When I first heard of the game I looked forward to its release, as the genre and story appealed to me. The game was released in the USA 6 months before Europe, so I had to wait a while to get hands on, while gamers over the pond got to grips with it in April. This meant that US reviews were available online months before the game’s release in the UK. Interestingly, Deadly Premonition polarised game critics; some claimed it to be the best game ever made, others condemned it as, literally, a console seller: "Once you play it, you'll want to sell your system."

Regardless, I looked forward to playing and reviewing it, but before the end of the uninspiring opening sequence I feared the worst. Despite the excellent concept, the game is flawed on every level. Poor graphics, awful sound, unbelievably slow gameplay, an un-empathic and randomly schizophrenic protagonist, a mind-bogglingly difficult and restrictive control system, ridiculous camera angles, bizarre enemies (zombie-type creatures literally bent over backwards, slowly trying to put their hands in your mouth???) and annoying voiceovers that feel like a badly dubbed foreign movie are just some of the lowlights.

Deadly Premonition is a good game concept executed very badly. It has gems here and there; the requirement to wash, shave, fuel your car, clean your windscreen, chat to Greenvale’s population and piece together the puzzle and capture the Raincoat Killer are some of the smarter aspects. Unfortunately, the below par performance of almost every part of the game vastly overshadow any potential the title may have had.

Sadly, Deadly Premonition takes the title of “worst game I’ve ever played on the Xbox 360”.

My full review, published at Game Kudos, can be read here.

You wait an age for one….

2010-11-23T21:18:00.007Z

Good games are like buses; you wait an age for one, then several arrive at once. Throughout the middle of 2010, I along with countless other gamers, suffered through a drought of decent titles. Between the release of the excellent Mass Effect 2, early in the year, and the recent release of the much anticipated Fallout New Vegas, only Red Dead Redemption stood out as a particularly spectacular game in mid-2010.

No sooner had Obsidian returned us to the world of wastelands, vaults and super-mutants, than we see the release of other big hitters; Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2, Fifa 11, Medal of Honor, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and what is expected to become the biggest selling game of all time: Call of Duty Black Ops, to name but a few. I left out Halo Reach from that ensemble for personal reasons, but if that floats your boat it could add weight to my argument.

With such a large selection of potentially excellent titles arriving within just a few short weeks of one another, I feel like the gaming equivalent of an emaciated captive presented with a banquet; I want them all but can’t have them all at once. The games industry seems to do this quite deliberately and it’s relatively obvious that the release timing is geared to exploit the lucrative Christmas market.

This appears to be a sound business model, being as how a vast majority of games are purchased in the run up to the holiday season; but is this market mindset counter-productive? Development schedules aside, certain titles can easily lay claim to the holiday market. Over the past 4 years the king of Christmas gaming has consistently been the Call of Duty series. So then, are other great titles that simply selling themselves short by trying to go in direct competition with such a massive title? Would there be more sense in releasing some bigger games 6 months apart from the biggest of the holiday titles, to boost sales and, most importantly, fill the gap of good games during the summer?

Only the developers, or perhaps marketing experts, can answer this, but it should be noted as a combat indicator that Game, the UK’s biggest games retailer - one that is supposed to be recession proof - has seen it’s shares plummet over the past year. Last year their share value sat at £1.60, however today it is hovering around 70p. The retailer actually blamed the lack of big title releases in the first half of the year for the slump, and expects to recover over the Christmas period. That said if this is to be the trend, then Game and other video game retailers could well see their share prices in a constant yo-yo. Meanwhile, gamers will continue to wait many months for another flood of great games.

The Gaming Gentleman at Eurogamer Expo

2010-10-20T17:51:00.004+01:00

At the beginning of October I attended the Eurogamer Expo at London’s Earl’s court in the capacity as a staff writer for Game Kudos. Over the past few weeks the content I produced from the Expo has been published at the website, and I’m linking it all up here in this post.

Whilst there I was able to attend developer sessions, get hands-on with preview demos of upcoming games and, most excitingly for me, interview some big hitters in the industry.

Today my interview with Tameem Antonaides, head designer at Ninja Theory and creator of the recently released Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, was published here.

I also wrote about several of the more important game demos I played. As I’m a big Fallout fan, I spent a little time getting to grips with life in a post apocalyptic Las Vegas. My preview of the much-anticipated sequel, Fallout New Vegas, can be read here.

I was able to play a 15-minute demo of the upcoming space horror sequel Dead Space 2. The first game scared the living daylights out of me, read about how the second game’s shaping up here.

I was also luck enough to play the multiplayer component of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Imagine a deathmatch game where whilst you hunt your target, a third party hunts you. The game boasts all of the free-running fun of Assassin’s Creed, playable online with your friends. Read all about it here.

That’s all of the links for now, but watch this space, as I’ll be writing about my experiences covering my first event as a games journalist.

If typewriting monkeys can do it, so can I…

2010-09-26T17:39:00.006+01:00

I started this blog exactly one year ago this month. My aim was to portfolio my writing in the hope of making a career of it one day. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing in my spare time and interacting with those who comment here and follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks largely to the existence of this blog I have been writing for other sites (mainly Game Kudos) for over 6 months now. Next week I am to get my first taste of “real” journalism. The good people at Game Kudos have arranged a press pass for me to the Eurogamer Expo taking place in London’s Earl’s Court next weekend.

Eurogamer is one the UK’s largest video games expos and is expected to draw 20,000 visitors over the course of the 3-day event. With big name developers displaying upcoming titles such as Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Dead Space 2, Fifa 11, Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age 2 - to name but a few - there will doubtless be plenty for me to cut my teeth on. My Director is in the process of organising appointments and interviews and my Editor-in-Chief has spent some time imparting words of wisdom to help me prepare for my baby-steps into the world of video games journalism.

Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m far from a fully-fledged games journalist, but I see next weekend as a first major step on that road. I still have a lot to prepare and reams of research to read through prior to my first appointments, but I can honestly say that I am excited to be going. I’m aware that it won’t be fun, not in the traditional sense anyway. I’ll be there to work, not play, and despite this I’m certain I’m going to enjoy it. If nothing else, the Eurogamer Expo will serve as an invaluable experience and one I hope I'll look back on fondly.

After the event I’ll write here about my experiences and, of course, link all of the stories I’ll be writing for Game Kudos. For now, I must get back to my research. If the old saying is true and I work hard enough and type for long enough perhaps I’ll produce Shakespeare, or at least a decent game preview.

I just don’t ‘get’ Halo

2010-08-30T22:11:00.004+01:00

With the imminent release of Halo: Reach I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and explain why I won’t be buying it; I just don’t ‘GET’ Halo. And I have tried. I got a copy of the first game free with my first Xbox console. I played the second game through in a co-op multiplayer, but there my experience ended, for a while anyway.

Halo is huge, I understand that. Aside from the games, which have sold more than 34 million copies worldwide, the series has spawned 6 best selling novels, comics, toys and other merchandise making the Master Chief and the non-oiled-up Spartans icons of the modern gaming age. But, for me, Halo just doesn’t do it. I have had cause to consider why recently, and what I found has surprised me.

I love sci-fi. I enjoy StarTrek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica (old and new) and films like Serenity and 2001: A Space Odyssey rank among my favourites. From a gaming perspective I grew up playing Elite and other Space based games as well as early FPS games such as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. More recently tiles such as Mass Effect and Dead Space have sapped countless hours from my life so Halo’s setting, themes and back-story should have me gripped right? Sadly no.

Then what of the FPS genre itself? I have played and enjoyed more FPS games than any other genre I can think of. From Goldeneye to Wolfenstein, Band of Brothers, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Rainbow 6; there’s nothing I like more than running around a well-rendered map staring down the sights of weapon at my enemies and then ending them. Again, Halo ticks this box as one of the archetypal titles in the FPS genre, so why don’t I care about stopping the Covenant from overrunning Earth and destroying humanity the best way I know how?

One of my biggest complaints about a lot of FPS games is the formulaic nature of vehicle-based levels. Sitting on the back of a Jeep firing mindlessly at anything that moves tends to bore me and many excellent titles fall at this hurdle, in my opinion, but the Halo games don’t. They do vehicles well, with multiple vehicular positions, driver, passenger and gunner, giving variety to the portions of the game that they occupy. But it still doesn’t grip me.

So what about graphics? Is it that the colourful settings and characters, the brilliant blue skies and the bright green or purple vehicles have soured my perception? Again I don’t think so. Games like Borderlands have much more bright and cartoon graphics than any of the Halo series and yet I thoroughly enjoyed rampaging around Pandora’s bright wastelands.

And what of gameplay? Halo was one of the first FPS to integrate more complex console controls into an ergonomic and instinctive control system. It’s multiplayer, whilst not new, was a great addition and dominated Xbox LIVE for a very long time, even after Xbox 360 came along. I used to play Halo 2’s multiplayer on split screen with my friends and we had a lot of fun, but I still preferred Soldier of Fortune’s multiplayer, which seemed more considered and somehow less ridiculous. Recently, when trying to organise an online get together with my friends we discovered that of all the games we collectively owned Halo 3 was the top hit, and out of all my friends I was the only one without a copy, so I acquiesced and bought it from Amazon for a mere £10.

When it arrived I decided to give Halo another chance, not just for multiplayer shenanigans, but also on the single player campaign. This was when I had my epiphany. A mere two levels into the game I realised why it was that I didn’t love the other games, or care about the release of ODST; the missions seemed fake. I’m not talking about realism, I have written before about how I feel realism is not required or indeed possible in games, but a feeling of pointlessness and fakeness about the motions of the game. The player seems herded through the story rather than driven or lead, the voiceovers seem strained and unconvincing and you can’t aim down your weapons sights! It’s a minor thing, I know, but I ‘feel’ more involved in a shooter if my left trigger raises my sights to my eye so that I can take better aim. Halo’s weapons feel like toys too, with the colourful beams of light slowly causing damage to the enemies rather than short, sharp, loud explosive thumps hammering against your foes with thunderous impact. The sound distracts me, the weapon noises are dull and the enemy vocals are just plain annoying, especially those squealing little buggers.

For all of its individually excellent aspects, Halo just doesn’t come together for me or make me want to care. I don’t feel driven as I progress the game and I don’t get that feeling of achievement when I pass a particularly difficult section of the game. The drama of Halo is lost on me and I think it is mainly my fault. With so many fans of the series around the world I’m clearly the difficult one here, but I won’t apologise for it, and I won’t pay for something that I know won’t entertain me.

So this year while many of you are spending your time with Reach, I’ll be happily battling Dead Rising 2’s zombie hordes, enjoying some post-apocalyptic gambling fun in Fallout: New Vegas and giving more of my money to Activision for the latest Call of Duty, but I won’t be sharing in the Spartans’ adventures. I’ll still be playing Halo 3 multiplayer with my friends, mainly so that I can spend some time having fun with them, but I won’t be buying any more Halo games and I don’t feel that I’d missing anything anyway. I don’t hate Halo, I just don’t ‘get’ it.

Golf and War, together at last…

2010-08-19T17:40:00.004+01:00

As promised, I’m linking up the reviews and articles that I have had published at other sites. Today’s selection comes from Game Kudos.

I recently reviewed Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 on the Xbox 360. The full review is at the link, but the short version is:

A great golfing game; simply the best golf simulator I have ever played. The clever use of the analogue control system gives the player a level of “feel” and control usually only experienced in golf games on the Wii. Accurately rendered courses, largely great visuals (with a couple of below par aspects) and immersive gameplay. Clever XP system for character building that almost takes the game into the realms of an RPG. Ryder Cup mode gives the game an extra sense of competition and career mode will ensure game longevity. PGA Tour 11 has a superb selection of online game modes and competitions with up to 24 player multiplayer team matches. If you like golf, you’ll love this; if you don’t, you won’t.

Overall Score: 8.2/10

I also wrote a review of an older game, Call of Duty: World at War. Again, full version of the review is at the link, short version:

Good addition to the Call of Duty series. Familiar CoD game mechanics and graphically similar to Modern Warfare, World at War takes the series back to its WW2 roots. New “occlusion” sound technology creates a more immersive experience due to sound muffling (thick walls muffle sounds more than thin) and players can tell if a gunshot was fired nearby or in the distance. Good use of two-theatre story line, both of which have a feeling of retribution as the protagonists struggle to repel the invading forces of the Axis powers. It sports a great multiplayer mode that elongates the life of this game exponentially. Fans of Call of Duty will love it, as will FPS fans in general, but there isn’t much new except Nazi Zombies, an excellent sub-game that unlocks after the completion of the single player campaign.

Overall Score: 7.5/10

Both reviews were edited by Dennis Scimeca, GK’s editor-in-chief and writer of gaming blog Punching Snakes.

Realism in games? Be realistic!

2010-08-15T09:56:00.006+01:00

Much is made of the requirements for games to have “realism”. Realistic backdrops, realistic graphics and sound, with realistic weapons causing deadly realistic reactions in our realistic enemies, but do we really want true realism in games? What’s the point?

Take for example the hugely popular Modern Warfare 2. Many gamers would agree that it was a very realistic shooter. Excellent graphics, modern, accurately rendered weapons and absorbing gameplay, all of which lead to the argument that it is very realistic. But is it? I would argue no.

In the case of the single player game, despite the accurate physics and the detailed aesthetics, regardless of how much I enjoyed the game, not once during my experience of it did I feel in danger. I was not in fear of my life and was willing to take enormous risks regularly to progress the game. That is not realistic. The “Army Of One” concept can only go so far. What are the odds of engaging literally hundreds of armed, well trained enemies and coming out unscathed whilst their corpses lie in piles tens high? It simply isn’t feasible.

If one were to make an entirely realistic war game then players would spend months training in seemingly benign scenarios over and over until they react almost instinctively to expected stimulus and follow orders and procedure unquestioningly. They would then be given an idea of where in the world they would be fighting and then spend several more weeks training for that particular environment. There would be frustrating period of acclimatization in an area of the world similar to the conflict zone and then, finally their boots would hit the ground. Once there, players would have an entirely different outlook on the gaming experience, investigating and absorbing everything in the sure knowledge that one explosion, on roadside bomb, one stray bullet would end the game. There would be no re-spawning, no restarting from last checkpoint.

In multiplayer there would be no mindless running and slashing with combat knives so prevalent in the current online experience. Players pre-disposed to this sort of activity would find their game/lives cut very short. More thought would be had to the use of cover and unnecessary risks wouldn’t be taken. That would be more realistic.

Notably, games that have tried to be more realistic, like the realistic limb controls in Jurassic Park: Trespasser for PC, were not so well received. Trespasser aimed to use very realistic physics and make players control arms and wrists individually with very realistic control of movement, but it was difficult. This made firing your weapon effectively harder and often lead to death by Raptor. The game was considered a failure selling just 50,000 copies and receiving poor reviews, this despite the game’s aim to make the experience more realistic.

So perhaps when we talk of realism in games we are referring to the graphics and the sound and the physics engines, but not necessarily the social realism. If we were to act in games as we do in reality then titles such as GTA wouldn’t have such a large appeal. How many of us would actually steal a car, run down pedestrians or leap from skyscrapers after peppering a street full of innocents with a helicopter’s mini-gun? Surely there can’t be that many sociopath gamers. It is the inconsequential nature of games that allows us to act without moral reprisal that would normally be attached to such behaviour.

The mentality of gamers plays a large part in what makes games so popular and successful in the first place. Recently Sid Meiers, creator of Civilization, gave a keynote speech at the 2010 GDC covering the psychology of game design. When games are being made the developers must consider the way gamers think. Why do they play the games in the first place and why they would stop playing? As Meiers said at the conference, “I never received a letter that said ‘Hey Sid, great game but I win too much.’” What he says is true; gamers wouldn’t play a game that they thought was too hard, or which they constantly fail to progress. When you consider that the majority of games place players in situations and roles in which they would never find themselves in reality, then it calls into question whether gamers actually want games to be realistic. They want games they can beat, regardless of the odds and often feel hard done by or cheated if they lose to AI.

There is suspense of disbelief at work here. For an ordinary gamer to expect to be able to take down a special forces squad single-handed isn’t realistic, so surely realism isn’t actually what players want. That’s not to say that we don’t want to be challenged though; a game too easy to beat would be boring, or at the very least have a short shelf life.

So I would suggest that what gamers want is fantastic, not realistic. Fantastic graphics and sound with realistic physics that allows players to engage the fantasy of the game coupled with intuitive control systems. Actions without consequence in the real world are what draw people to games. You may not be a good footballer, but when playing a football game you can compete against and beat some of the greatest athletes in the world. Now that’s fantastic and that’s what video games provide: an escape from day-to-day reality and the ability to pit yourself against unthinkable odds and, more often than not, win.

This article was written for Game Kudos and can be viewed in its edited format here.

Red Ring Of Death! - Farewell to a friend, and hello to a sexy new model

2010-08-10T15:02:00.012+01:00

After 5 long years and countless hours of awesome (and some not so awesome) gaming, my trusty Xbox 360 slipped away to a better place last week. The dreaded “Red Ring of Death” left its mark on my otherwise happy home. For the uninitiated, the Xbox 360 has a ring of lights surrounding its power button that are generally green. Green is good. When those lights turn red then you have issues. It means that, for one reason or another, your console is dead or dying and needs repair.

The warning signs came a couple of weeks ago, when playing Borderlands the screen froze a few times. That was followed by one red segment of the ring being displayed. Panicked and confused I blurted my worries to the world in general over Twitter. Surprisingly, the good people at Xbox Support, who obviously trawl the social networking site looking for poor unfortunates like myself, got in touch with a solution to my problem. They sent me a message linking a help forum at their website dealing directly with “Red Ring of Death” and the solution described therein worked. I was pleased.

Sadly, one week later the inevitable happened; the screen froze again and this time it was accompanied by a full “Red Ring of Death”. Nothing in Xbox Support’s solution arsenal was effective and I had to accept the fact that my old friend was gone.

Ordinarily you can send your console off to Microsoft for repair, but only if you’re still within your warranty period, and as mine was a launch model my warranty had expired years ago. I was forced to submit to the inevitable, to lay my old friend to rest and to visit my local store for a replacement.

As timing would have it, a sexy new model, the Xbox 360 slim, was launched recently and has improved in many ways upon the original 360. With a smart shiny black veneer, the slim is more compact than its predecessor and has built in WiFi. The model I bought came with a 250GB hard drive, a vast improvement on the 20GB of my old launch model, and the cooling fan is nearly silent, quite unlike the sound made by my old console, which was reminiscent of Seaking helicopter launching. What’s more, the system makes a satisfying “Ping” noise when you press the eject button (simple things please simple minds).

However, I have cause for concern. When I bought the slim the helpful staff member at my local Game store told me that some people have been experiencing problems with the new console. She claimed that fans break, the laser disk reader burns the faces of the disks on occasion and many have suffered the same catastrophic shut-down that killed my old model. What worried me most was when she said “You don’t need to worry about Red Ring of Death, you don’t get them with this console. Oh, that’s not because they don’t break, Microsoft have just removed the red light bulbs!” A grim thought indeed.

That said, forewarned is forearmed and I’ll be on the lookout for any of these supposed problems. As it stands the new slim is occupying old-faithful’s plinth and is serving very well. Something about the whole experience has been niggling at the back of my mind though, and I have finally put my finger on it. Many who I have spoken to about the demise of my first 360 have expressed surprise that it lasted as long as it did. One of my friends told me he was on his 4^th model, having suffered “Red Ring of Death” 3 times.

I’m now wondering why we, as consumers, accept this. Surely something as expensive as an Xbox 360 should be expected to last more than a couple of years, and the general acceptance of regular breakdowns is infuriating. These things should work. Unless you drop them, spill something on them or leave them on too long and overheat them, why don’t they just keep working? It’s not for this post, as I intend to research this more and write about it more thoroughly and thoughtfully, but can you imagine if you bought a car and then after 2 years it catastrophically broke down only to hear from the world in general that that was expected, and have you checked your warranty? I wonder how many people would buy an expensive TV or other household appliance if the life expectancy were so low.

However, I have my entertainment for now, my gaming may continue. But I’ve got my eye on you, Xbox, and I will be far from pleased if this happens again.

Bad Journalism

2010-07-23T16:48:00.005+01:00

It is a sad state of affairs when a national “newspaper” resorts to inventing stories to fill pages. It’s sadder still when the story in question surrounds a murderer and preys on the emotions of the families involved. On 21^st July 2010 The Daily Star, a newspaper with a circulation of over 800,000 (the UK’s 4^th largest), published a story reporting that a book, movie and game were to be developed concerning the actions of murderer Raoul Moat. The game to which he refers is a fictional version of the hit series Grand Theft Auto, purportedly set in Rothbury, the scene of Moat’s demise.

The journalist in question, Jerry Lawton, claims in his story that gaming websites were showing pictures of the front cover of such a title. As far as anyone can see the first instance of the image’s publication was in Lawton’s story and games websites have only subsequently published it to underline the ridiculousness of his “journalism”. He has not produced evidence demonstrating that other sites did so first.

What is most reprehensible about the story is that Lawton approached the grandmother of Moat’s ex-girlfriend, who was shot and left for dead, and showed her the image to obtain a reaction for his article. He got what he wanted, an angry response denouncing the game as “beyond belief”. And it is, as it does not exist.

There was, as you would expect, a big backlash from gaming websites denouncing this as gutter journalism. Apparently “baffled” by the reaction, Lawton has hit back by reportedly publishing the following on his Facebook page:

“These are grown (?!?) men who sit around all day playing computer games with one another who’ve today chosen to enter the real world just long enough to complain about my story slamming a Raoul Moat version of Grand Theft Auto!”

and,

“You would think I’d denied the Holocaust!!!”

The post speaks for itself as to the attitude of this journalist and his contempt for the opinions of people rightly affronted by an unprofessional and abhorrent style of reporting. Perhaps they are right as the invention of such an inflammatory title directed the blame at their industry to begin with. The Daily Star has since removed the article from its website.

This incident does highlight an apparent hypocrisy; Video games journalists have long been accused of bad practice and poor or lazy writing, and in some cases this is true. However, a mainstream, albeit tabloid, newspaper allowing its reporters to produce such articles only serves to undermine all journalism and make the general public suspicious of news sources.

DLC: Elongating gaming experience or simple profiteering?

2010-07-20T22:01:00.014+01:00

DLC may now be an institution in gaming, but it is not a universally acclaimed practice. There are complaints about cost, and the deliberate withholding of content by game developers from the release of titles to ensure extra revenue streams shortly after the bulk of initial sales are made. DLC add-ons for games like Fallout 3, GTA IV, and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion are touted as a great value by developers and gamers alike, as they represent entirely new content created after the game's release.

Other "DLC," however, such as the downloadable costumes for characters in Street Fighter IV were not, in fact, downloads. They already existed on the disk. Players pay for unlocks, not downloads, and therefore many of them feel they are paying twice for content. Many gamers also feel cheated when add-ons are released shortly after the release of the game proper, for example the extra downloadable missions for Assassin’s Creed 2 and Mass Effect 2. If this content was available so close to the release of the game, why wasn't it included to begin with? Capcom faced criticism over Resident Evil 5, which had a downloadable Versus mode. When players paid and downloaded the content the file size was a mere 2 megabytes, leading players to believe that this mode was on the disk already.

When loyal fans discovered that the first batch of content for Bioshock 2 was already on the disk, they felt rightly affronted and expressed their anger on forums and with direct appeals to 2K Games, the developers. But is there a reasonable explanation for 2K’s choice to block content like this? They retorted to criticism in a calm and low-key fashion, explaining in a short post that the decision had been made due to the way that post-release DLC is made. 2K argued that if the extra multiplayer levels were developed separately at a later date then gamers would be separated from their friends in online sessions, if one set had purchased the DLC and the other had not. This is apparently due to how players are grouped in multiplayer. They seem to suggest that if you have downloaded post-release DLC then you will only be grouped with other players that have it, but if the extra content is present on the disk then players can be grouped together when playing the basic multiplayer levels, even if some had the DLC and others don’t.

So this begs the question: why not simply make the maps available for all? The customer had already paid a lot of money for the game, so why don’t they deserve to have access to all of the content? It brings us to the sad conclusion that developers do see DLC primarily as a way of generating cash. Even with 2K’s explanation, which if true could hold for the Street Fighter and Resident Evil examples too, then they are making a conscious choice to charge more for content available at the game’s release. From a business stand point this is understandable, as selling DLC can net vast sums of money. Call of Duty: World at War generated $70 million from its map pack sales alone; but there is a clear line between what people consider to be value for money and what is seen as simply profit generating extras within the realms of DLC.

It is possible that DLC is produced on a separate budget from the main game, and that it is developed in tandem. If this is the case the 2K’s explanation may hold some water, as the development costs would need to be recovered. It also leads to the conclusion that if multiplayer DLC is so difficult to integrate then the future of DLC may be on-disk. That being the case then I would suggest that the DLC tag be dropped and the term “unlockable content” may be a suitable substitute. This doesn’t make the players feel any better about shelling out cash for more game, but it doesn’t wrongly lead them to believe that what they are paying for is being downloaded separately either.

Judging from what is posted in the forums and chatrooms of the gaming world, gamers don’t mind paying for DLC if they deem it value for money. There are many examples of excellent DLC which adds so much to the gaming experience, but the large sums of money created by DLC has made the industry greedy it is now rare to find a game release that doesn’t have some form of DLC attached. Ultimately gamers are the judges in this trial and the only way for their complaints to hold weight would be to boycott the purchase of DLC considered below par, or which is obvious profiteering.

That all said, Xbox LIVE is the biggest online DLC provider and a business model that remains extremely profitable, so as long as we keep downloading it appears that they’ll keep charging. Perhaps players should take a look at what it is they’re paying for though, before they part with their hard earned Microsoft points.

I wrote this article for Game Kudos, a new web publication. It can be viewed in its edited format here.

Gaming, on a jet plane…I don’t know when I’ll be back again

2010-07-11T22:28:00.003+01:00

On my recent honeymoon trip to the Caribbean I flew on Virgin Atlantic. Imagine the feeling of joy I experienced when I took my seat and saw the entertainment system control that looked very much like a gaming console control. The shiny black plastic with the familiar yellow/red/blue/green colour coded buttons as well as left and right bumper buttons had my hopes raised high.

I had to wait a while to see what gaming gems were waiting for me as the entertainment system wasn’t switched on until a good 20 minutes into the flight. When I got to grips with it, I was slightly disappointed. I shouldn’t have been really, what did I expect? Xbox? The games available were simple and quite dull by today’s gaming standards. Titles included Backgammon, Blackjack, Chess and Cave Crunch (a maze based “action” game), not quite what I was hoping for. There was a multiplayer option so you could play against other passengers, but it didn’t float my boat. After a quick browse I quickly dismissed it and reverted to my iPhone (in Airplane mode, of course) and enjoyed some serious gaming including Championship Manager 2010 and The Settlers.

This got me thinking, however, that if Virgin Atlantic have an onboard system that allows literally hundreds of passengers to watch, pause, fast-forward and rewind nearly 50 movies at their discretion as well as play some albeit basic games, then it can’t be a large jump to having a next generation gaming console linked to the seat backs. And on a 7-hour flight I can’t think of a better way to pass the time. Considering that the average age of gamers is considered to be between 30 and 40, it’s not like it would be a feature that only kids would use in-flight.

I can but hope at the moment, but you never know, maybe in the future airlines may see that gaming, as an ever growing portion of the entertainment market, is a great way to help passengers forget that they are strapped into 400 tonnes of metal being propelled at 500mph through the air at 37,000 feet. Sobering thought.

“I’m going outside…. I may be some time.”

2010-06-18T23:47:00.004+01:00

The Gaming Gentleman is getting hitched.

This is just a quick note to say that I won’t be updating the blog for a couple of weeks. I’m off this weekend to get married to my long-suffering fiancée and will be loafing on a beach for a while, enjoying my new life as a married man. But don’t fret; I’ve no doubt that my mistress, video games, will be waiting for me upon my return.

Red Dead Review

2010-06-15T17:05:00.003+01:00

My review of Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox 360 has been published at Game Kudos.

I thoroughly recommend it to any fans of sandbox action adventure games and to anyone who enjoyed the GTA series. For me, the most surprising thing about the game was the very clever way in which the developers used the classic style of story telling, prevalent in the great western movies, to usher the game along. Playing Red Dead Redemption feels as close as possible to being in the toughest parts of the old west without the aid of Doc Emmett Brown.

In short, the game scores 8.2/10 and the single player game far outstrips the multiplayer. Utterly engaging and entertaining, a great buy that offers a bare-bones minimum of about 20 hours of superb gameplay.

The missing link(s)

2010-06-09T18:47:00.004+01:00

Over the last couple of months I have been writing for a new website, Game Kudos, which launched in May and which is truly one to watch. With great reviews, thoughtful articles and commentary on the gaming industry as well as a fledgling community, GK is making waves in the gaming world. We have been granted press access to E3 next week and our writers will be updating the site from the floor at the exhibition.

I have had several articles published there already and, from today, will be linking them to the blog whenever my work is published. Below are the articles and reviews available to read now:

I remember that! Rick Dangerous, 1983 - This is an article adapted from a post here at The Gaming Gentleman, discussing one of my favourite platform games on the Amiga 500.

Dragon Age: Origins - A review looking at Bioware’s RPG epic on the Xbox 360.

I remember that! The Elite series Part 1 - The first part of a two-part article covering the groundbreaking work of Elite creators David Braben and Ian Bell.

I remember that! The Elite series Part 2 - The second part.

The Settlers - A review of the RTS adaptation for iPhone.

The “I remember that!” series is a group of articles written for the Retrospective section of the site, which covers the history of gaming and looks back on some old classics. A couple of other articles are in the editing process at the moment and will be available to read shortly. There is, however, no need to wait for my updates, as the site is full of content submitted by a great team of writers. You can join our community at the website and also follow GK on twitter (@GameKudos) to get minute by minute, interview by interview updates from our team at E3. Watch this space!

The etiquette and idiocies of in-game chat

2010-06-04T20:35:00.004+01:00

With the advent of multiplayer networks, such as Xbox LIVE, a new level of interactivity in gaming has been possible. In the past the only way to enjoy a console game in the company of your friends was to do so together, in the same room using split screen multiplayer games such as Golden Eye (007) on the N64. This had its own charm, of course, not least because it meant you would be spending time with your friends whilst engaging in some co-operative team based mayhem or simply blasting each other into the Stone Age.

With Xbox LIVE came in-game chat. Players could now have the same joshing banter with their friends while enjoying a game, despite being geographically separated. This doesn’t mean an end to groups of friends convening at one place to play, just an addition to the gaming experience.

However, with in-game chat came a problem: strangers. It is entirely possible to converse, in-game, with people you have never met, and who aren’t even on your “friends” list of gamer-tag contacts. As you can’t see the person you are talking to, and don’t know them, this could open up a Pandora’s box of multiplayer problems. Although a vast majority of gamers are at least polite and congenial during heated exchanges of gunfire or whilst sneaking up on an unsuspecting guard from two flanks, frustratingly, some of the people encountered in the game-o-sphere can be most politely described as idiots. There are those who are simply abusive; who curse vulgarly and launch violent verbal assaults upon anyone they deem to be lesser gamer, or who has simply done something, in-game, that they didn’t like.

These angry shouting morons are one of the main reasons that many people choose not to use their console’s voice chat feature and play muted. This doesn’t entirely remove from their gaming experience, but they aren’t then able to interact with other human players, for the banter, for the tactical exploitation of information that they wouldn’t otherwise have, or just to gloat (in a Gentlemanly/Lady-like way, of course) after a particularly spectacular kill/stunt/crash. There are also idiotic tendencies with regard less experienced gamers playing co-operative games. Very often the infamous words are heard “Help me, I’m over here!” without reference to where “over here” is. Unlike in real life a comrade’s panicked voice doesn’t come from any particular direction that you can follow, it’s transmitted directly to the ear. Where are you? I want to help, but you aren’t helping me to help you!

Finally, although there are many other examples, one of the most annoying traits of uncouth chat fiends is the unacceptable practice of male gamers being abusive to female gamers on the basis of gender. Some male gamers seem to think that they have an inherent right to gaming and if they get “humiliated” online by the superior skills of a “mere girl” then they retort with a torrent of inexcusable insults.

The idiocy plaguing multiplayer chat can be stemmed with the judicial application of etiquette. Be polite, don’t be overly aggressive or abusive and treat other gamers with the same respect with which you would wish to be treated. Above and beyond all of that, even if you are losing, remember: It’s only a game.

Id like to tip my figurative hat to a gentleman friend of mine with whom I have spent countless hours enjoying multiplayer gaming using in-game chat, and whose drunken suggestion led to this article. I salute you, sir.

Booted and Spurred

2010-05-23T18:03:00.008+01:00

As you can see, The Gaming Gentleman is booted and spurred and ready for action on the frontier. I’m currently working my way through the treacherous terrain of the Old West, blasting my way through gangs of bandits and rescuing maidens, and hookers, in distress. It can only mean that I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Red Dead Redemption on Xbox 360. For the princely sum of £49 I purchased the limited addition version available from GAME stores in the UK, which includes not just the game itself but exclusive downloadable content.

The added extras are Golden Guns, weapons that increase your fame when kills are made with them, War Horse, quite simply the fastest, strongest horse available to you in the game, and the Deadly Assassin outfit, which allows your Dead-Eye metre to refill more rapidly after kills.

I am enjoying progressing the single player game and will shortly be reviewing it here at the blog and at a website that I am working for as a writer. The multiplayer aspect of the game, however, has me a little concerned. Despite being hailed as a new, greater standard of multiplayer experience, one which will allow players to explore the vastness of the Old West and team up with fellow Xbox LIVE players to create posses and take on other gangs, thus far all I have encountered are players more concerned with shooting you as soon as you re-spawn, before you can get together with other players and generally making the multiplayer experience a frustrating and deeply un-entertaining one.

To add to the multiplayer woes, it appears to be full of glitches, like disappearing characters, and the sheer number of people trying to log on to the servers seems to be overloading them and causing problems when connecting to a game. That said, the single player game is impressive and addictive and I hope to have completed it soon. Perhaps in the meantime Rockstar San Diego may have addressed the glitches and server issues on multiplayer, and the obtrusive players may have gotten sick of ruining the fun for everyone else, or fallen off a cliff. I can but hope.

Nobody Does It Better (Splinter Cell: Conviction)

2010-05-12T21:44:00.006+01:00

Ubisoft’s stalwart sneaky spy Sam Fisher returns in Splinter Cell: Conviction, the much-anticipated recent instalment in the series that is redefining a genre. The game begins with Sam having left Third Echelon after the death of his daughter in a hit and run incident. Sat in a Mediterranean café, Sam gets a phone call from an old colleague from his shadowy ex-workplace warning him of an imminent threat to his life. This kick-starts the story and Sam’s journey to find his daughter’s killer, which will drag the world’s greatest (non-British) spy back into the world of international espionage and pit him against his former employers.

Although still a 3^rd person stealth action thriller, the tone of the game has shifted from the constant shadow dwelling of its predecessors to a more open, upfront approach to the gameplay. It’s noticeable in Sam’s appearance too; rather than the skin-tight black-ops body suit he once sported his attire is more urban chic, in the Jason Bourne style. The action and story also seem to take influence from the Bourne series, with a gritty atmosphere and flashback storytelling projected onto walls as you progress the quieter sections of the single player mission. The cut-scene animation is breathtaking with very realistic rendering of characters; Sam himself has wrinkles, realistic eyes, individual strands of hair and a split-lip that doesn’t miraculously repair itself. Even his stubble grows as the game progresses giving it almost a “24” feel, and this is backed up by the clever, jerky camera movement during some of the more tense and sinister cut-scenes.

Sneaking is still a large part of the gameplay, but so is timely dashing from one place to another, tactically avoiding enemies or luring them into traps, separating them and taking them down one or two at a time. There are times when all out assault is required and the game utilises a mechanic whereby Sam can disappear into the shadows, leaving enemies shooting at his last known position whilst he flanks them. The “execute” function is also very useful, allowing players to mark and execute two enemies quickly after successfully taking down another by a hand-to-hand quiet kill. During interrogation scenes Sam can use the environment to punish those who won’t talk and convince them, with the use of things like sinks and pianos, to let him know what he wants to know. The weapon outfit is the standard expected; a mix of pistols (silenced or not), sub-machine guns, assault rifles shot guns and an array of devices including grenades, mines, EMP charges and sticky, exploding cameras to assist Sam’s progression.

For all of it’s impressive features, graphics and gameplay there are a few flaws. The camera angles, as with most 3^rd person games, often become obtrusive and cause difficulty for the player to see an area that would be clearly viewed through the character’s eyes. The sound track is largely in keeping with the game but sometimes descends into irritating techno-punk at inappropriate times, usually during intense action, probably intended to add to the atmosphere, but it seems only to annoy and detract. Strangely, Sam appears to have forgotten how to drag a body away from where it falls and to a convenient hiding place, rather remiss of a veteran black-ops agent. This means that players need to be extra careful when felling a foe in case their lifeless body should serve to alert other enemies to Sam’s presence.

However, despite the downsides, the game is overwhelmingly impressive, addictive and fun. The change of pace is refreshing and the lean toward a more beaten, gritty and weatherworn Sam Fisher is a welcome change from the previous formula. It’s cinematic, engaging and entertaining. Fans of the series will love it and new comers will find it easily accessible without the need to have played the previous games. A multiplayer option extends the life of the game beyond the completion of the single player campaign, the content of which will be covered in a future post.

Video Game Time Machine: Rick Dangerous 1989

2010-05-03T18:46:00.009+01:00

After a random Google browsing section I found myself being dragged in a figurative Delorean past 88mph and back in time to the land of gaming nostalgia. Thanks to a great website, I have rediscovered one of my childhood favourite video games: Rick Dangerous.

Rick Dangerous was a platform action puzzle game originally released in 1989, which not only toyed with plagiarism, but openly flouted it. Undoubtedly based largely on Raiders of the Lost Ark, even the Front cover of Rick Dangerous looked suspiciously like Indiana Jones. If the game had been made now Lucas Arts would be suing for copyright infringement, however, as it was made before the fiscal power of the games industry had been discovered, it passed by unscathed.

Much more cartoonish than Dr Jones, Rick Dangerous was a British agent who travels to the Amazon to find the lost Goolu tribe. His plane crashes and he parachutes into the jungle. The beginning of the game sees the fedora-sporting Rick running away from a giant boulder (just like the opening sequence of Raiders) and negotiating a maze of traps, triggers and Amazon warriors. The game was very clever too; although armed with 6 bullets, 6 explosive charges and a stick for stunning opponents, players would need to pick their battles, decide who to shoot and who to avoid in order to conserve the valuable arsenal, as reloads were few and far between.

A thinking kid’s game, Rick Dangerous played out over 4 levels; the Amazon, Egypt, Castle Schwarzendumpf (a Nazi stronghold) and a Nazi missile base, where Rick must stop a deadly missile attack on London. Some of the traps had no visible warning so the only way to progress the game in many areas was through trial and error, something that would annoy many but which I found to be one of the great draws of the game. The graphics and gameplay were in keeping with other games of its time, 2-dimentional and comic with individual screens that needed to be negotiated one at a time in order to progress the game. The music (midi files of course) was comic and, bizarrely, very appropriate to the gameplay and the setting.

I was ten years old when Rick Dangerous came out on the Amiga 500 and it was addictive. Like Super Mario Bros mixed with my all time hero Indiana Jones (was then, is now), it’s clear to see why it had such appeal at a time when video games were becoming a much larger part of our lives. Anyone who is interested and has some spare time should visit the website where a full version of the game is playable on your web browser for free.

Haunt (A Super-Ghost Story)

2010-04-25T15:39:00.005+01:00

In 2006 Spawn creator Todd McFarlane and Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman agreed to collaborate on a new title during a question and answer session at the San Diego Comic-Con. The result, albeit a few years later, was Haunt, a super-hero ghost story in based around two brothers, Kurt and Daniel Kilgore who are far from the best of friends. The brothers are very different characters; Kurt is an accomplished and capable Special-Ops agent working for a shadowy government agency, Daniel a less than perfect Priest who is first seen arranging his next appointment with a naked prostitute.

Daniel’s self-loathing and questionable lifestyle are in stark contrast with his brother, who seems to enjoy his work and have a perfect life outside of the shadowy world of espionage; however, fate conspires to drag Daniel into his brother’s life when Kurt is killed whilst being tortured for information. Assuming he is seeing things, Daniel initially dismisses Kurt’s ghost, who appears to be haunting him, as a figment of his imagination only to discover that the apparition is real and that Kurt is trying to stop the people who killed him from attacking his wife.

We begin to discover that the reason Daniel hates Kurt so much is because of Kurt’s wife, who Daniel was once in love with, so he acquiesces to Kurt’s request to stay with her for protection. It is here, when under attack that Kurt’s ghost tries to push his brother out of harms way only to find that he instead fuses with Daniel to become a symbiotic being of great power, Haunt.

The story mechanism is very clever, only when the two brothers are fused as one can they use the power that has been be bestowed upon them, and their uncomfortable personal relationship makes it difficult for them to use the powers to their utmost effect as they don’t always work together well. However, as the story progresses, the brothers will need to find a way to come to an understanding in order to combat the organisation behind both Kurt’s death and the dangers his living loved ones are now in.

The comic is very-much adult themed and deals with issues such as betrayal, dependence, love and loss in an intelligent way. The character of Haunt will make some comic fans raise an eyebrow, as the black and white “suit” looks very similar to Marvel’s Venom (one of Spider-Man’s regular foes), who is also a symbiotic being. The powers Haunt appears to wield, the ability to extend his body into writhing slicing tentacles and as a method of quick manoeuvre, both look very similar to Venom’s powers too and Haunt also has the standard “super” strength. But that aside, readers will forgive the similarity of the character because of the strong storyline and the fact that throughout the fusion into Haunt, both Daniel and Kurt’s characters are clearly independent and talk and argue with each other, even during battle.

The artwork is very good with a classic comic style subtly mixed with a more serious and adult overtone. Pencilled by the excellent Ryan Ottley and inked by McFarlane himself, the entire franchise has an aura of professionalism to it that can only be achieved when such giants of the comic world as McFarlane, Kirkman and Ottley collaborate so seamlessly. There is surely a lot more to come from this exciting twist on the superhero genre. Haunt is published by Image comics and is an ongoing title.

Wicky wicky Wild Wild West

2010-04-17T15:49:00.008+01:00

Have you ever wished you could go back to the days of the Wild West? To travel on horseback across the open plains and mountains of the new frontier, live off the land, trade in the towns and hunt down the bandits of so many childhood stories? Well, very soon you can. Rockstar San Diego are developing a new sandbox style game, Red Dead Redemption, on a scale comparable to that of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. And like the GTA series, Red Dead Redemption is set to bring a whole new meaning to in game freedom of action.

Set in at the turn of the 20^th century, during the death rattle of the old west, players will control the character of John Marston, a former outlaw who is given an ultimatum by government agents to hunt down his old gang leader or his family will be in danger. Marston must travel the vast gameplay area, encounter literally hundreds of unique, individual characters, visit countless towns and trading outposts over three distinct territories to find his man. Each unique area is distinct from the other, and one is based in Mexico with a revolutionary sub-plot. The vastness of the game is to be kept interesting by the random generation of encounters as the player explores, including ambushes, hangings, calls for help and attacks. There will be a plethora of mini-quests or side-stories and players will be able to hunt animals for their skins when in the wilderness.

The game will encourage exploration and an honour system will keep track of the character’s progress and moral compass. Good deeds result in increased honour; nasty acts will result in depleted honour. In the bounty hunting side quests players can choose to kill or take their target criminals in alive, with effects to honour of your choices.

The videos of the game that have been released show that, like Rockstar’s other big title, GTA4, Red Dead Redemption uses the R.A.G.E. engine and the layout is familiar to GTA fans. Several multiplayer game modes have been announced, including free-roam, deathmatch, team deathmatch and gold rush. Like GTA4, free-roam will allow the players free reign of the entire game map, but adds the ability to interact with other human players to form posses and take on other gangs. Multiplayer will allow character progression over 50 experience levels and an unprecedented level of freedom of action, with players able to act as vigilantes, outlaws and lawmen to name but a few.

Red Dead Redemption focuses mainly on gunplay in combat, with an array of era-accurate weaponry and the ability to slide-to-cover, use your environment tactically, target a specific person, free-aim or blind-fire your way through any engagement. A deadeye targeting system will allow the player to target specific body parts in slow-time when the deadeye bar is sufficiently full, allowing the quick dispatch of multiple enemies.

Rockstar have managed to recapture the excitement surrounding the release of their flagship GTA titles in the build up to Red Dead Redemption’s May release date, with a clever promotional campaign and informative teaser trailers and videos at their website; gamers wait in eager anticipation to see if the game lives up to the hype, or dies a slow agonising death like it’s predecessor, Red Dead Revolver.

Just Cause 2 (Toppling a Tyrant, all in a day’s work)

2010-04-03T21:07:00.006+01:00

Jumping from a fast jet, freefalling 1000 metres before tugging the cord and parachuting into the path of an incoming attack helicopter, grappling said helicopter, cutting the cord to your parachute and reeling yourself in, shoving the pilot out at 2000 feet and taking the controls before turning the mini-gun onto the military convoy below? Must be Just Cause 2.

Edios, Square Enix and Avalanche Studios have come together to create the much-anticipated sequel to the 2006 hit Just Cause. Like the first game, Just Cause 2 is a sandbox based spy/stunt thriller that sees the return of the series protagonist, Rico Rodriguez, an “Agency” operative. This time the action is centred on the fictional Southeast Asian nation of Panau, where a dictator, Pandak “Baby” Panay (who in no-way resembles a certain Korean despot!) has seized power after assassinating the former president, his father. Rico must find his old boss, Sheldon, who has gone rogue, and bring down the regime.

The game is very familiar to players of the first instalment; a third-person open exploration game with playable missions for the main storyline as well as faction missions which all help toward causing enough chaos to bring down the corrupt dictator. There are over 100 individual vehicles usable on land, air or sea, a plethora of weapons and, importantly, Rico is outfit with a signature grappling hook and re-usable parachute. The hook can be used to launch Rico to hard to reach places, to pull enemies toward you or to attach objects to other objects; for instance a car to a truck, a soldier to a passing airplane or, very amusingly, a perusing vehicle to the ground beneath it with hilarious consequences. The most useful utility of the grappling hook is to “slingshot” Rico by grappling a distant solid object and, while being reeled in, deploying his parachute to create a very handy and quick mode of transport. “Slingshotting” can be used continuously to keep Rico airborne for an age, except over water.

The terrain is varied from tropical beach to barren desert and snow-capped mountaintops over more than 400 square miles of playable area; the scope of the game is truly enormous. In a way, the vastness of the game may be slightly to its detriment, as players can find themselves wasting hours exploring and having fun causing carnage and performing mindless stunts, flying fast jests and racing fast cars. It all sounds like a lot of fun but it keeps you from progressing the game. Because it is so big you can loose yourself in it and forget to carry on with the missions, which are the only way to advance the story.

The gameplay and combat have been improved markedly from the first game, rather than shooting mindlessly at enemies knowing that the computer will do most of the aiming, players now have a crosshair they can use to shoot more accurately, aiming at specific body parts in order to dispatch you enemy more quickly or to disable them as required by the situation. The graphics are ok, but are not mind-blowing. With the exception of the weather, sunrises etc, it comes across a little cartoonish. It is fast paced and adrenaline fuelled so lovers of a more considered, tactical or stealth combat style may find Just Cause 2 frustrating. The enemy AI is improved from the first game too; they wont just stand there allowing you to shoot them, but seek cover and try and flank you. They even run away if out numbered or on the losing side of an angry exchange of gunfire.

Overall Just Cause 2 is an edge-of-your-seat, fun and exciting ride that James Bond fans will love; it’s like all the best bits of a 007 movie, just without the plot, charm or wit, good for a few hours of entertaining gameplay, but a bit stagnant after that.

You are the controller…really?

2010-03-31T23:18:00.005+01:00

Project Natal, Microsoft’s new addition to the Xbox 360, was announced at E3 2009 last summer and is on track to be released in December 2010. With the tag “you are the controller” the Xbox is launching a direct challenge to Nintendo Wii’s dominance of the gaming interactivity niche.

The demo videos shown on the Xbox website and at YouTube show just how far Microsoft have taken the concept of gamer interactivity. Say goodbye to your controller, games that support Natal will not need them. The device is a sensor that measures approximately nine inches in length and incorporates 3D mapping infrared technology and a camera that incorporates advanced gesture and voice recognition at the core of the concept. Able to map the area it looks at, creating a 3D model of your room to then distinguish the player from the background, Natal will use its facial and voice recognition software to tailor the gaming experience to the individual and allow a much deeper level of immersion into a game. Even your desktop will become more interactive, greeting you personally when you log on and tailoring your experience to your preferences.

When it comes to actually controlling the games, your body becomes the controller. Kick, stop or trap an imaginary ball and it’ll happen onscreen. Playing driving games will see players holding imaginary steering wheels and shifting fictional gears. The whole idea is to make the player feel more involved in the game. Interacting with AI characters will become more personal with game characters reacting differently to variations in tone and emotion in responses. It looks very much like the future of gaming is about to be unleashed.

Where I feel the technology may fall short is that it could be seen as gimmicky. It’s all very well saying that players can interact more readily, but not everyone is David Beckham. How many Xbox owners can easily move from a standing to a crouching and then prone position whilst avoiding incoming grenades and knifing your enemies in the back, or can run and jump over a car before pulling an innocent owner out of it and speeding off with the police in hot pursuit? All right, some, but not all. I am looking forward to getting to grips with this next great step in gaming technology but truly hope it isn’t the end of my beloved controller; after all, I do enjoy loafing on my sofa whilst saving (or destroying) the world.

I’ve saved the Universe…you can thank me later

2010-03-23T19:52:00.005Z

I have done it; for a second time in three years I have saved the Universe from near certain destruction. As promised in an earlier post, below is a review of Mass Effect 2, which I completed after 40 hours of enthralling gameplay.

Mass Effect 2 for Xbox 360

Carrying on immediately from the events of Mass Effect, Bioware’s hit Mass Effect 2 takes graphics, gameplay and storyline up a gear. Setting itself up as a gaming rival to George Lucas’s Star Wars in scope and intricacy, the Mass Effect universe is a well constructed, cleverly thought out and detailed to an astounding level.

As with the first game, Mass Effect 2 may be played as either gender, with a customisable main character (so you can create yourself, or an idealised version thereof, if you should wish) and there is an option to import your character saved from the first game. The opening sequence of the game see the player character and main protagonist, Commander Shepard, killed in enemy action. But don’t fret, two years later Shepard wakes up to find an old adversary, the shadowy Cerberus organisation, has spent a ridiculous amount of money and expertise to bring him back from the dead, apparently in the belief that only Shepard can save humanity. And that is where this chapter begins. Players must overcome insurmountable odds to assemble a crack team able to confront the latest greatest threat to life in the universe: the Collectors. Billed as a suicide mission, players must use all their skill, diplomacy, grit and determination to best prepare their team.

With a vast galaxy to explore, peppered with star systems with hundreds of planets, a variety of alien species and a deep back-story, players can loose themselves for tens of hours with the side missions and exploration alone. Players can dip in and out of the main story as often as they like and the rich tapestry of the universe created by Bioware will make you want to do just that.

The main gameplay mode is very similar to that of the first game, where Shepard chooses two other characters from his team to accompany him on missions, which are displayed in the third person shooter format. The AI has been improved and the computer controlled characters are less likely to run into an incoming missile and more likely to take appropriate cover and assist you as you battle through the levels. The graphics have been improved and the cinematic sequences are visually stunning. As a form of interactive story telling, Mass Effect 2 is an absorbing gaming experience that only suffers from the odd glitch in the graphics and sometimes painfully slow loading times. Clearly a middle act in a story arc, Mass Effect 2 is challenging, fun and entertaining. Completion of the game will leave you desperate to play the sequel; sadly we’ll have to wait a couple of years for that.

The Beautiful Game (Pro Evolution Soccer 2010)

2010-03-14T21:47:00.003Z

Playing PES 2010, you could be forgiven for wondering just how much further football games can advance. Not very much might be your initial assumption. The graphics and gameplay in Konami’s latest footballing extravaganza are awe-inspiring. Players, famous and not so, are well rendered and are instantly recognisable by features as well as more subtle observance of gait and playing style. Non-player controlled members of your team will work intelligently, depending on their individual attributes, and will place themselves in appropriate positions for seamless passes and quick runs. The more flamboyant players, your Ronaldos and Rooneys will demonstrate their skills on the ball and the referee even sometimes gets in the way. The reactions of off-the-ball players to actions such as fouls, bookings and missed chances can leave you wondering if you are watching an actual match.

The intricate detail of the game has been so well thought out that I can only assume that the next step in football gaming would be a compete, real-life rendering of a match, only distinguishable from the real thing by a red arrow above a player’s head indicating who you are controlling at any given point. The gaming modes are as expected with PES: European Championship oriented with a Master league option, where you can take your team from nothing to the dizzy heights of the Champion’s League final. There is a “Become a Legend” mode, where you can create your own player and customise everything about him, trial him for a team and work your way into the first side before becoming a legend, which gives the game as a whole a new dimension as you play as only on player and not a whole team; The player must therefore think about positioning and passing rather than simply running single-mindedly at the goal, which will more often than not result in your being run down by the defence.

It is safe to say that on initial inspection PES 2010 is an extraordinary game. However, on closer inspection it is not as perfect as it may at first seem. Where PES 2010 begins to fall down is that it doesn’t have the image rights to use all of the major teams in Europe. The majority of English Premier League clubs have had their name and strip changed just enough that PES won’t get sued, although the players names are correct with their likenesses rendered correctly. The control system is incredibly intricate, which could be seen as a good thing by those who like to control the game intrinsically, but to your average player it’s over-complicated with too many incarnations of shot variation and pass style. This is not a problem on the title’s main rival, FIFA 2010, which has the sponsorship rights for all the major teams, not only in Europe, but also throughout the world including international sides. FIFA 2010’s control system is simpler and more intuitive and it also has another extra touch that PES 2010 sadly lacks: linesmen (who just add that much more realism to the gameplay).

All of that said, however, PES 2010 is still and excellent game that offers hours of enjoyment for football fans. Online multiplayer and player vs. player matches ensure that the gaming experience can live beyond the challenge of the games AI, although as always with football games, it can expect to have a shelf life of about a year before they release the next instalment. Overall PES 2010 is a great game that suffers a little from trying too hard and from the obvious comparisons to FIFA 2010. Having played both I can say that I now wish I had purchased FIFA instead, however I have a nagging feeling that if I did I would be saying the same about PES 2010. Footballing gamers will love it.

Malice in Wonderland (a grumpy review)

2010-03-07T12:34:00.006Z

What follows is a post in two parts; A rant and a review, in which our hero is frustrated by a lack of common sense of the management of a cinema and the rude idiocy of other film-goers whilst trying to enjoy Tim Burton’s latest lunge into lunacy.

The Rant

A nice Saturday night out to the cinema with my fiancée. That was the plan. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, a plan never survives first contact with the enemy. Having paid extra to see the 3D version of Alice in Wonderland we were told to turn up early to ensure we could get seats together. This set my mind racing. Surely getting seats together should not be such a hardship. When I looked at my ticket I saw the dreaded GA (General Allocation). What that meant was that the seats were not allocated and that there would be a rush for seats when the door opened.

What this effectively did was to cause a queue, which lined the length of the cinema, and forced punters to wait in line standing for up to an hour before the performance. This could have been avoided if the management of the cinema (my Gentlemanly values prevent me from naming the venue) had applied a modicum of common sense, not to mention the technology they already possess, to allocate seat numbers as the tickets were sold, thus removing the requirement to queue needlessly, safe in the knowledge that your seat would be vacant when you arrived at the showing on time.

Furthermore, the already frustrating and uncomfortable wait was made near unbearable by the idiocy and rudeness of a particularly loud mouthed buffoon who decided that the best way to pass the time, as we all waited for the doors to open, was to proclaim in his loudest voice how much his legs hurt, what a great football game he had seen that afternoon, why he was glad he had only had four pints of beer that afternoon and what he thought of the concept of 3D movies amongst other inane ramblings. He also laughed at his own (unfunny) jokes. Rant over.

The Review

In typical Tim Burton style, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (3D) dips its toe into borderline madness. But that’s to be expected from a film based on the famous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. And “based” is the correct term. Anyone who has read the classic will recognise the characters and the settings, but the story itself, whilst anchored in the book, diverges and follows its own path. The more astute viewer may notice that Wonderland is a darker place than you might think, and that some of the famous scenes, The Mad Hatter’s tea party for instance, have a more solemn and painful undertone.

Initially you may chalk this up to the film having been directed by Tim Burton, whose mantra is dark and disturbing, but that’s not the only reason for the shift in mood. The story unfolds to reveal that Wonderland, which is actually called Underland, has fallen under the dominion of the Red Queen (from Alice Through the Looking Glass and not to be mistaken with the Queen of Hearts) who has stolen the crown from her sister, The White Queen. The array of familiar characters are searching for “the right Alice” who is prophesised to kill the Jaberwocky (a creature that again features in Through the Looking Glass and not in Wonderland) and restore The White Queen to the throne of Underland.

A pedantic literary comparison aside, the film itself is visually stunning. The 3D option fills the frame and the wonderful colours and effects make it so that sometimes you forget to blink. Burton’s regular troop of Johnny Depp (who steals the show) and Helena Bonham Carter are superbly supported by Anne Hathaway, Alan Rickman, Mat Lucas and Stephen Fry to name but a few. With a compelling pace and an engaging plot, characters you care about and laughs abound (especially from The March Hare), Alice in Wonderland is a wonderful pass time that will see you leaving the cinema with a smile on your face. Although a Disney production, I would hesitate to show the film to younger children as, although the violence is cartoon, the dark setting and irregular jumps may be too much for a very young viewer. Overall, Alice is another showpiece for the emerging 3D technology to demonstrate exactly what cinema can be.

The Gaming Gentleman on Facebook

2010-03-01T21:10:00.003Z

I have created a page on Facebook. I will use it to regularly update readers on articles, news, thoughts and anything else that “tickles my fancy” between posts here at the blog. Like-minded souls can use the page as a forum for discussions on gaming, life, the universe or any number of subjects that come to mind. If you are one of the 300 million plus people who use the world’s most popular social networking site, then you are more than welcome to become a fan and keep updated. Click here to see my page. You can also follow me at Twitter, which I update on the go.

Regards

TGG

Adventures in post-apocalyptic America (Bethesda announces Fallout New Vegas)

2010-02-28T17:03:00.008Z

Visit Bethesda’s website and you’ll see a teaser trailer for the forthcoming Fallout New Vegas. Cue fans of the 2008 hit Fallout 3 around the globe rejoicing at the chance to delve deeper into the world of the Wasteland. When Fallout 3 first hit the shelves it took the gaming world by storm. Winning many awards, including Game of the Year in 2008, Fallout 3 quickly established itself as the one to watch in the first person RPG genre.

When Fallout 3 was released for the Xbox 360 I had never heard of the franchise nor played the series of games that came before it, but I found that this didn’t matter. Fallout 3 started in a way that allowed new players to fall into the Fallout world without feeling like they were missing anything. The layout of the game is very much like Bethesda’s other great success story Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In first or 3^rd person, the player can wander the vastness of the game’s map and explore to their heart’s contentment. The story is not linear and side missions and distractions are a-plenty.

The freedom of choice within Fallout 3 is one of its greatest devices. Your actions can lead you to become good, bad or indifferent, the choice is yours. You may choose to save the people of the wasteland or become their scourge. Regardless of your choices the vastness of possibilities open to players is highlighted by the great feeling of accomplishment you get from saving a group of slaves from their captors or the sadistic joy that comes from pick-pocketing a random stranger and leaving a grenade there only to watch their trousers explode.

What I enjoyed most about Fallout 3 was the intricately detailed world that it created. Although set in 2277, 200 years after a global nuclear exchange that effectively ended civilisation as we know it, the entire experience was that of a bad (read good) 1950’s sci-fi movie. The world is one where the ideals and the styles of 1950s America continued into the 21^st century. When, at the start of the game, the player emerges from a Vault (a nuclear fallout shelter, one of many populated prior to the holocaust of 2077) the world that confronts them is a wasteland where those living there struggle to survive in the irradiate ruins of Washington DC and the surrounding area. Strewn throughout the area are remnants of the 1950s style of which I speak, from diners to jingoistic posters, from clunky, retro-futuristic technology to the grainy pre-pop music that blares out from the countless radio sets.

Being the quintessential Englishman, and not having experienced the American Dream first hand (save for a few visits on holiday), the America portrayed in the 1950s ideal is very appealing to me and the overarching 50s theme present in Fallout 3 fills me with a yearning to return to the USA and experience another dose of Uncle Sam. The promise of further adventure in the same style set in that most glamorous and tacky of cities, Las Vegas, brings hope for a glimpse of the world of the Rat Pack and the smoke-filled lounge rooms of Vegas, with a post-apocalyptic twist.

Early indications are that Fallout New Vegas will employ a very similar playing style to Fallout 3, with the obvious improvements to some of the mechanics and graphics that advances in technology allow. It will be set 3 years after the events of Fallout 3 and will not be directly linked to the characters or events of the previous game. Las Vegas will have remained largely in tact having not been directly hit during the nuclear war. The game remains very much in development and is, at present, due for release in late 2010.

The kindness of strangers

2010-02-21T16:53:00.001Z

London’s Euston station is a bustling hub of activity, even on a Sunday morning. On my way from Hampshire to Liverpool my route took me through the capital and ultimately through one of London’s busier railway stations, where I had a half-an-hour wait between trains. Hungry and tired I decided that the best way to spend my short reprieve would be to visit a coffee shop and get a snack and a much-needed Americano (with room for milk). As I stood in the queue waiting to be served I saw that, ahead of me, a man was standing, hunched and nervous, next to an ordinary looking couple. He had tattered clothes and his hair and skin were caked in dirt. He was clearly unfortunate, probably homeless and, judging from the few words I heard him utter, possibly suffering from some form of psychological disorder. My heart fell into my gut. Don’t misunderstand my meaning, I am aware that there are countless poor, homeless and unfortunate people in the United Kingdom and around the world, but leading the relatively sheltered life I do I rarely see their situation first hand. It looks so much more divorced when you see it on television.

The ordinary looking couple were buying this man a breakfast sandwich and a large, hot cup of coffee. The lady who paid did so with no self-serving ceremony, just a kind smile and the man gratefully took his meal and wandered off. In the middle of teeming London, where people often don’t spare the time to apologise for bumping into you as they hurry past, the kindness of two people shamed me. I have a good life. I have a great job and a nice home and a car and all of the things that mainstream western people enjoy without ever really realising how well off we are.

One of the most fulfilling things I have ever done was in 2005. Whilst in Sierra Leone, West Africa, a group of colleagues and I spent several days working in an orphanage on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown. We were there to help renovate the buildings and to deliver classroom furniture and supplies that had been donated by various schools in the UK. The vast majority of the children there were orphaned in the civil war and violence of the late 1990s, many had been mutilated and were missing limbs, some simply so traumatised by what they had experienced that they didn’t speak and rarely interacted with the other children. Some of the younger children had not lived through the violence and seemed a lot more content with their lot in life, such as it was. There was a great deal of happiness there too. This, more than anything else about the orphanage, surprised me. I don’t know why it should have, but my naive expectation was that it would be a dour place filled with sadness. And there was sadness there, but it was anything but dour.

The laughter of the children surrounded the buildings and the playing fields. They played football happily and ran around screaming in delight, chasing each other and finding all sorts of ways to enjoy life. In class they were the most attentive students I have ever met. Each of them was desperate to learn, to work hard and become a doctor or a teacher and help others and escape from the poverty in which they found themselves. The Japanese nuns who ran the orphanage were wonderful people, whose lives have been dedicated to helping those less fortunate than themselves and they worked tirelessly trying very hard to help heal the deep scars that a civil war had left in the minds of some of the older kids.

While we worked, knocking down old walls and building new ones, painting classrooms and setting up the new furniture, the children played around us, some helped us and all were curious about us. Where were we from? What was England like? Did I know David Beckham? Those who were helping worked tirelessly, never complaining and not taking breaks, even though we instructed them to. We had enough food and water with us to last the 3 days we were due to be there, but seeing the mediocre quantities of food allocated to the kids we simply couldn’t eat and our food was shared out between them, some of whom had never tasted chocolate before.

Those three days, at that modest orphanage in that poorest of countries provided me with one of, if not the most fulfilling and humbling experiences of my life. On the last day as we packed up our gear and prepared to return to Freetown, the reaction of the kids and the nuns was stunning. They treated us like family, despite only knowing us for a few days. I have never seen so many grown men and women crying so openly as among my colleagues on that humid African afternoon. We were all affected in different ways by our time there. I realised that the suffering we see on television has a human face, that these people had overcome suffering many of us could not imagine, and that despite their situation they were filled with hope and excitement about the future. Although it is considered charity work, my time there was incredibly selfish. How could it not be when doing it had made me feel so good about myself?

Now I’m sat on a train bound for Liverpool, with my laptop on my knees and the dregs of my now cold coffee on the seatback, and I am determined to try and do more for those less fortunate than myself. I will think long and hard about what I can do, whether it comes in the form of charitable donations or spending some of my time volunteering or, if the opportunity arises, travelling to somewhere like Sierra Leone again, I intend to try again to help somewhere, somehow, even if my reasons are selfish. I would encourage anyone reading this, who doesn’t already, to think about doing the same.

Graphic Novel Review: DMZ – On the ground

2010-02-20T19:59:00.002Z

Brian Wood’s vision of a modern civil war in the United States takes shape in the form of DMZ, a DC comics Vertigo title that has received much acclaim. The story is set against a backdrop of division and ideological conflict that sees the USA as we know it split into two factions: The United States, consisting of the original federal government and the Free States, a movement intent on re-instigating the basic ideals of America. When the story starts the two forces have been in conflict for years and the USA is in tatters. The Free States were able to get a foothold in the heartland of America because the majority of US Forces were engaged in conflicts overseas and the lack of National Guard presence at home meant that, when the uprising began, huge weapons caches were poorly guarded in Barracks throughout the mainland and were scooped up by the Free States.

The stage for the piece is New York City, where neither side can gain an advantage, and so it has become a demilitarised zone (DMZ). The main protagonist of the piece is a photojournalist intern, Mathew “Matty” Roth, who is stranded in the DMZ after his news crew are killed in an attack shortly after arriving in Manhattan by helicopter. Having lived on the United States side of the sundered country, Roth finds himself completely unprepared for life in the DMZ and the struggles that ordinary people face just to survive on a day-today basis. The concept is a very interesting one. It throws up themes of community, survival and geo-political upheaval set against the development of an initially naive character whose experiences force a massive change in his personal maturation and, ultimately, the fortunes of those held hostage to a war within the DMZ.

The comic is intelligently constructed. The quick paced plot grabs the reader’s attention while a more slowly burning back-story begins to unfold. The politics and history of the conflict are revealed in snippets of information here and there and in the form of flashback to add depth to some of the characters. Wood does not give a full explanation of the circumstances surrounding the start of the war, and it isn’t needed. The main focus of the story is very much the characters, their relationships, struggles, hopes and aspirations for an end to a war that they can neither control nor influence.

The concept and writing are not the only gems to be found in DMZ. Riccardo Burchielli’s beautifully rendered artwork paints a sublime juxtaposition of the iconic images of the world’s most recognisable city and the devastation and despair of civil war normally associated with places such as Afghanistan, Chechnya and Sierra Leone. The fate of the city in the comic is simply shocking. DMZ: On The Ground is a well-written and wonderfully inked graphic novel and leaves the reader wanting more. The good news is that with over fifty issues in the series that have been reproduced into eight volumes (On The Ground consists of the first five issues of DMZ) there is plenty more to look forward to.

Notes from a doomed galaxy (Mass Effect 2…..so far)

2010-02-19T23:19:00.004Z

A couple of weeks ago I bought Mass Effect 2 for Xbox 360. I had been eagerly awaiting its release since I first discovered that a sequel to Bioware’s first instalment of the series was in production. After having spent a lot of time playing the first Mass Effect game in 2008 I was hooked. The sheer scope of the game was awesome and it incorporated some of my favourite themes and mechanics. I like exploring and a game that allows me to wander the galaxy and see what I can find is immediately attractive to the curious wanderer in me. The original game had an excellent storyline that developed into an epic heroic journey as the game progressed. It seemed to me to be the first game that truly bridged the gap between a book, a movie and something else, something that you controlled, the outcome of which very much depended on your actions. Players were brought into the game, made to feel like their every decision had consequences on the conclusion of the story. And they did.

Best described as a Space Opera, Mass Effect is set in a future where humans have discovered an ancient technology that propels spacecraft to other areas of the galaxy instantaneously. Using this Mass Effect technology, humanity had begun exploring the galaxy and settling colonies on distant worlds. Having encountered other races, humans discovered that they were not the only sentient life forms in the galaxy and that an entire galactic community had been forged by species that had discovered the same technology and used it to the same effect. As new members of the galactic community, humans are, at the start of the game, struggling to prove themselves worthy of a seat on the galactic council to have greater say in the workings of galactic affairs.

This is where the player character comes in and where the story really begins. You are tasked with achieving the aim of becoming the first human SPECTRE, an elite special operations agent working directly for the Galactic Council. Through your investigations into attacks on various colonies you discover that a horrifying enemy is at work, intent to destroy not just humanity, but all organic life in the universe. And this is not the first time. Many millennia previously the same enemy wiped out the race of beings that built the Mass Effect technology that the galactic community rely on so much, and seem to explain the sudden disappearance of the civilisation responsible for brining so many different races together.

As you follow the story and react to the challenges that face you, the player must use strength as well as cunning, intimidation as well as diplomacy and sheer force of will in the face of insurmountable odds to battle against an unimaginable force. The combination of third-party team shooter and real-time RPG gameplay made for tens of hours of entertainment and was, at the time, simply the best game I had played so far. Imagine my delight to hear there would be a sequel.

And now I find myself rediscovering the Mass Effect universe. The game, so far, has improved on certain aspects of the gameplay, notably the team controls and the combat in general. I have played 6 hours but feel like I have only scratched the surface and, without giving away the plot, it isn’t too much to say that you pick up where you left off. If you have a save file from the first game you can import it to the new one and continue your adventure, with your character and your actions from the first game seamlessly transferred into the new one. If you don’t have a save file you can still play the game from scratch. I am stunned by the graphics and by the acting (Martin Sheen voices the shadowy “Illusive Man”), which combine to recreate the feel of the first game, as well as improve upon it in many ways. I know there are countless hours of space hopping fun ahead of me and I can’t wait for a break in my schedule that will allow some more gaming time. Review to follow (although it may be a while).

I’d like to thank…

2010-02-07T11:55:00.003Z

I have been publishing my writing at this blog for over 5 months now. I had hoped, when I started, that this would be something I persevered with and, so far, so good. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing here and do it simply for myself. It never occurred to me that so many people would be interested in my writing and I am consistently pleasantly surprised by my growing band of followers as well as the hundreds of visitors that my counter tells me drop in every month. I was even more surprised to be given a “kick ass” award by Bendigo at http://bendigosrage.blogspot.com/ last week. I would like to thank him for his kindness and you for reading my posts.

I have never been given a blogging award before and am unsure of the etiquette, but judging from what I saw at Bendigo’s blog I believe the correct form would be for me to pass this on to a few blogs that I find to be, for want of a more Anglican turn of phrase, kick ass. So I submit to you, my dear readers, the following kick ass blogs for your consideration:

The mighty mind of Bruce Coltin, a superior wordsmith whose infrequent posts keep me eagerly checking my dashboard for updates: http://www.brucecoltin.blogspot.com/

Blogspot’s answer to Mary Shelly, Anne Rice and the chick who wrote Twilight: Tina at The Clean White Page, whose stories keep me from sleeping. Okay, the gaming keeps me from sleeping, but if it didn’t, they would: http://www.thecleanwhitepage.com/

For his amazing headers (he creates them himself) and his impressive posts (he is Greek, writing in English), a fellow gamer and blogger, Zomgas of Gaming Eden: http://gamingeden.blogspot.com/

I could carry on all day, but I think that might be overdoing it. Thanks again Bendigo.

Humbly yours,

TGG

Book review: World War Z, by Max Brooks

2010-02-06T19:34:00.003Z

An oral history of the Zombie War

What would happen to our society if the horrors of so many movies were to become reality and the rotting corpses of the dead began to roam the Earth, hungry for living flesh? Who knows? Max Brooks does, apparently. But wait, don’t stop reading, this book really isn’t all about zombies, it’s much, much more intelligent than that.

Set decades after the first outbreak of the walking dead, the book is presented in the form of a series of interviews conducted by a UN investigator after the end of “The War”, as humanity rebuilds the world. The narrator is largely silent, allowing the story to develop through the tales told by the characters being interviewed, only interjecting as required to draw out confirmatory points to their testimony. This mechanism for story telling is very cleverly used and the way Brooks personalises the crisis with the experiences and emotions of the interviewees makes it hard to believe that they were written by just one man.

The interviews cover all aspects of the two-decade crisis, starting with the first cases of a undead attacks, and the denial, fear and confusion that such an unfathomable incident would breed, through to ”The Great Panic”, when the world realised the magnitude of the threat facing it and, ultimately, to the post-apocalyptic fight back, or World War Z. The book is essentially a horror book, but not in the sense that you may initially assume of a zombie novel. The author doesn’t try and scare with gore or stomach wrenching descriptions of rotting corpses, although they are there; What Brooks does so well in the book is to horrify the reader by presenting the rapid deterioration of world society in the face of an unpredictable and massive change in the accepted order of things. Suddenly modern warfare is rendered useless in the face of an enemy that cannot be beaten with bombs or incendiary devices. Wild shooting and sheer force of firepower are impotent in the face of an enemy who can only be stopped by the destruction of the brain and whose numbers swell as yours fall.

The interviews span the globe and the social spectrum to give a wide back-story. Although not directly referencing one another, often-small snippets of information produced by one interviewee will add depth to another’s comments in a very subtle and intelligent way. Brooks doesn’t make the mistake of leading his reader by the nose and employs a modicum of restraint allowing his reader to work out some of the plot twists themselves and then not actually explaining them. A new world order is revealed as the story rolls on, with countries like Russia reverting to a Holy Empire and well placed Island nations like Cuba becoming the global economic and industrial powerhouse in the post-war world. What is most astonishing about the unrecognisable world Brooks describes is that, through his narrative, it is completely feasible.

Humanity is forced to use greener methods of transport and power generation, as so much of the population is wiped out the survivors cannot consume oil and other resources at pre-war rates. The fall-out from nuclear weapons used at the start of the war causes long, cold winters and the environment in general has suffered badly by the actions of mankind. What is hinted at throughout the book is that all of this serves as a warning of what may happen to our social order if we continue to consume at the levels we do now, and this is the genius and the true horror of the book: the idea that the world he describes is something our children may inherit, even without the zombies’ help. It is for that reason above all that I say that this book is more than just a zombie novel; it is a very intelligent social commentary that, sadly, may well be overlooked by many due to its genre.

Apple iPad revealed

2010-01-30T16:16:00.003Z

I am a massive fan of Apple. I am writing on my Apple MacBook Pro and I am connected to the web via Internet tethering on my iPhone. Apple seem to have a knack for inventing things that you never knew you needed until they showed them to you. A few years ago who could have predicted that one of their products, the iPod, would become so popular that entire waves of entertainment media would be created in the form of podcasts, a word which has found its way into everyday vocabulary as easily as googling?

With all of this in mind you may understand that I was more than a little bit excited about the much blogged about, rumour shrouded press conference given this week by Steve Jobs, Apple’s genius-in-chief. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely surprised by the look of the new device, I had suspected a large iPhone looking slab and that’s what we saw. What I was surprised at was that I ended up not really wanting one. I usually want any new gadget Apple churns out and the iPad certainly looks sleek and desirable. It has the ability to use iPad specific applications and games as well as those you can use on your iPhone. It has a multi-touch interface to manipulate the screen and any images or web pages. One version of the device comes with a built in 3G device to keep you permanently linked to the Internet.

Apple have even arranged a deal with top book publishers to create a iTunes-like online bookstore from which iPad users can download books to their device and read them on the go; a prettier and more versatile alternative to the Sony Reader. It looks to be a mid-way-point between an iPhone and a laptop and it is for this reason that I do not seem to have the enthusiasm for the iPad that I would expect. As I said, I have an iPhone and a laptop so it would appear that, for me, the iPad would be surplus to requirement. That said, only time will tell and I would not be entirely surprised to find myself in my local Mac store in a few months time, parting company with my hard earned cash after convincing myself that I really don’t now how I could have possibly survived so long without one. We shall see.

War!!!…What is it good for?

2010-01-22T17:10:00.003Z

Modern Warfare 2, Xbox 360

Activision have done it again. Their incredibly popular Call of Duty series has had another big release in the form of Modern Warfare 2; quite simply the best first person shooter I have ever played. With stunning and immersive graphics, cinema quality sound and all encompassing game-play, it is quite obvious why the game broke all sales records in entertainment media history in its first week of release.

Split into 3 sections, the game has a level of longevity that will make its rivals green with envy. The first is the story mode, which sees you taking on the roll of various characters as you are swept along the twisting rollercoaster of a plot. The story itself is a well-woven tale of international intrigue and political upheaval to rival even the most complex Tom Clancy novel. There are moments of sheer genius and twists that will leave you gasping. And all of this is simply to guide you from one level of gaming glory to another. The missions vary from all out assault against an enemy army to small two man special forces teams stealthily stalking mountainous bases in driving blizzards. From fighting drug gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to raiding SAM sites on oilrigs off Russia, the game is truly global in scope and infuses gamers with a real sense of the dire importance of successfully achieving the aims of your missions. Not to reveal too much about the story before you play it, I would go as far as to say that it continues from where the last game left off and raises the bar in all areas of the gaming experience.

The second section is special ops; a series of challenges based around the main game, which become available to play once you have successfully completed the main story on any difficulty setting. Hours of extra game-play is to be had here, with achievements galore available for the competitive warrior-at-heart. Some of the missions require two players and can be done co-operatively online or split-screen with friends, a nice little touch to break up the army-of-one mentality that first person shooters often engender.

The final section is the backbone of the series and has kept the previous titles selling for years due to the online community supporting their continued use: multiplayer. Playing against another human in place of computer AI is often a much greater experience and this is definitely the case with Modern Warfare 2. As with Modern Warfare and World at War before it, MW2 has an online army of players and games can be found at any time of the day or night, with often more than 150,000 players online at any one time. Missions vary from old school free-for-all to team death match and ground war, each with their own unique playing styles, aims and objectives. The only thing limiting the life of this game is the life of the platform it’s played on. The earlier games in the series still have a massive online following.

Weapons and tactics have been upgraded with beautifully rendered modern arsenals and the addition of such abilities as throwing knives and even Unmanned Air Vehicles available to the players to unleash hell upon their opponents. In all aspects MW2 is a step up from the already excellent titles preceding it. However, there are some downsides. Those with slower broadband connections will find it difficult to locate a multiplayer game to join, despite seeing 50 plus available games on your screen the system’s tendency to try and match download speeds (no doubt for the good of the gaming experience) can often mean that those players find themselves watching in vain as their system fails time and time again to match them to a game server. My only other major issue with the game is corners. Being a first person shooter, when trying to see or shoot around a corner the player is forced to move their entire body our to get a shot off and will often receive a bullet for their trouble. Games such as Quantum of Solace managed to incorporate effective use of cover and move into its otherwise first person shooter mould and perhaps Activision can look at doing this in future titles to further enhance the realism of the game-play.

Overall Modern Warfare 2 is outstanding, and despite having completed the game I know that its multiplayer and special ops sections will continue to entertain for the foreseeable future. If you own an Xbox then buy this game.

Where in the world is The Gaming Gentleman?

2010-01-22T16:55:00.000Z

I must relay my most sincere apologies for the length of time between my posts recently. I have been on holiday from work and spending some much needed time with my family, who I rarely get to see, as well as helping my fiancée plan our forthcoming wedding. For these reasons I have not been typing at my regular rate. That said, I’m back to my normal routine now and have, over the past few weeks, played several new games, read a couple of books and seen a few movies, some of which I’ll be writing about shortly.

For now I’ll just say thank you for your patience and your continued visits (stat counter tells me you are still visiting) and I appreciate your patronage.

Kind regards

TGG

Top 5 on Xbox 360

2009-12-30T12:14:00.007Z

As we stumble towards a new decade I offer up these 5 suggestions for gaming genius over the New Year period. All are in stores now and are currently draining hours of my life every week.

5. GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Spend some more time in Liberty City causing mayhem and making a profit.

4. Left 4 Dead 2

More infected annihilating fun, this time in the Deep South.

3. Assassin’s Creed 2

Continuing where Assassin’s Creed left off, this time Desmond’s adventure takes him to Renaissance Italy.

2. Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware’s outstanding RPG. Choose your background; build your character; save the world.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

The benchmark for First Person Shooters and gaming realism. Fight the good fight in story mode and have hours of fun online in multiplayer.

Have a very happy New Year.

Awestruck by Avatar?

2009-12-23T19:22:00.005Z

Last week I heard lots said about James Cameron’s new film, Avatar. In several publicity spots, on TV and in the printed press, members of the cast and crew as well as Mr. Cameron himself have been talking at length about the film’s use of 3D technology and how important this event is for the media of film. I wasn’t convinced. I had seen some advertisements for the film and I couldn’t escape the billboards everywhere with 20-foot high blue faces, but something about the publicity drive made me suspect that I would be disappointed if and when I went to see it.

On Friday night I took my fiancée out for a meal and, afterwards, to the cinema. As it happened, Avatar 3D was the next film showing; we paid for our tickets as well as an extra £3 for the 3D glasses then took our seats. I had an underlying sense of cynicism about the whole thing because of the hype that I had been subjected to in the week before and was not expecting very much. I was, in fact, prepared to be thoroughly disappointed. I could not have been more wrong and I have eaten a healthy portion of humble pie.

The 3D experience is awesome. Getting used to watching something that makes you feel like you are in the room with the action was one of the most absorbing experiences I have had in quite some time. Quite apart from the storyline, which is compelling if somewhat predictable after a time, the visual effects are quite simply breathtaking. Cameron has produced a visually spectacular masterpiece and it will, I’m sure, influence how movies are made in the future. With the 3D technology used so sublimely in Avatar, the film industry has a new benchmark with which to compare all future big releases. Cameron’s stroke of genius in the movie was not to let the 3D aspect drive the movie, but rather to fill it out and add, for want of a better phrase, a new dimension to the film. Avatar can be seen in standard 2D format, but viewers would miss out on the whole experience that comes with 3D.

The storyline keeps the viewer interested and you do genuinely care about what happens to the characters. Its futuristic plot thinly veils the underlying themes of the movie, climate change, destruction of habitat and the arrogance of the human race, all of which are hot topics at present. The CGI is almost seamless and despite the alien landscape, creatures and environment it is rare, throughout the film, to spot anything that looks fake or out of place.

Avatar has made me acutely aware of the move to 3D technology in entertainment. Sky TV in the UK has announced it is launching 3D TV in 2010 and I am sure it won’t be long before more movies, TV programmes and the games industry follow in the footsteps of Mr. Cameron and his 3D pioneering predecessors. The cherry on the top was that my fiancée enjoyed it too, which is surprising as Sci-fi isn’t ordinarily her first choice. My thanks go out to Mr Cameron.

Dungeons and Dragon Age

2009-12-13T21:57:00.007Z

Bioware, the new masters of the RPG, have released their latest enthralling, engaging, story driven, action packed delve into the genre: Dragon Age: Origins. Like many RPGs, Dragon Age follows the route of the fantasy epic but with a focus on the background, or Origin, of the character that you play. Players are offered to start the game from one of six very different backgrounds, covering a variety of races, social backdrops, and genders. The player’s start position in the game very much effects how the game will unfold as you are ferried along the storyline, and your choices and moral decisions effect the game world and how characters interact with you. The initial part of the game is unique to each character type and, unless you choose to play the game through six times, players will experience only one Origin story before the game proper begins.

It doesn’t take long before the depth of the storyline is hinted at, with a rich back-story unfolding that includes suggestions of deep class and racial divides throughout the land of Ferelden. This complex background is the canvas upon which the main plot is painted. A dark threat to all living creatures, in the form of the demonic Darkspawn, is unleashing a Blight upon the land. Not long into the game we see humanity’s big stand against the monsters, and it goes horribly wrong. Unsurprisingly, despite the player character’s age and inexperience, we soon discover that you are the only person who can unite the divided lands and people to make a final heroic stand against the Arch-demon (a Dragon). Made a member of the Grey Wardens, an elite group of warriors sworn to destroy the Darkspawn, you and your band of warriors, mages, war dogs, elfs, dwarfs and Golems are sent off to finish what the armies of men could not.

The game is very long and engaging. Expect to lose tens of hours to the intricacies of the storyline, combat and character customisation. The combat itself seems to breach the gap between the needs of the hardcore RPG fan and those of the part-time gamer, with real time fighting that can be paused to choose and customise attacks and other actions from any of your player characters in order to achieve a victory. Moving away from the usual turn based combat that RPGs traditionally use, this form of combat interface allows gamers who are new to the genre to enjoy the game without loosing interest due to the intricacies of the character profile and the effects of attack, defence and chance upon the successful outcome of any action. It is all there for gamers who want it and can be ignored by those who don’t.

The game suffers slightly from long loading periods and on the Xbox 360 version some of the graphics and background textures can detract from an otherwise excellent gaming experience. On occasion some of the cut scenes suffer from glitches or missing segments of dialogue but these are very few and far between. Re-playing the section concerned often fixes the problem. Dragon Age: Origins is, overall, an RPG fan’s dream and Bioware’s efforts to make the genre more accessible to gamers not usually drawn to such titles is remarkable. With downloadable content available and more planned for the Christmas market the games longevity could well increase like other titles such as Mass Effect and Fallout 3.

Eddie Izzard, Live at the Brighton Centre

2009-11-29T17:07:00.007Z

Last night I had the privilege of seeing Eddie Izzard perform his latest tour, Stripped, live in Brighton. The Brighton Centre was an excellent venue for such a popular and well liked comedian and it was filled. As the crowd waited for show to start random images of people in the audience were shown on the big screen whilst Twitter messages to @eddieizzard scrolled up the screen (I even tweeted myself and saw my message appear).

Izzard appeared on-stage to the tune of “let me entertain you” and he certainly did from the outset. Dressed in jeans and a tailcoat, rather than his usual trademark cross-dressing, he immediately delved into his own particular brand of surrealist comedy. Painting a vivid picture for the crowd he ushered them along his story assisted, as always, by a band of anthropomorphic characters of his own making, to highlight the ridiculousness of some of the basic things we take for granted, for instance the pointlessness of human appendix.

The show’s aim, he stated at the start, was to talk about everything, and I mean everything, from the beginning of time to our modern condition. He did it sublimely with a wonderfully formulated story, which appeared off-the-cuff, but I’m sure it was not. Despite the tangential approach to his subject he consistently kept his array of themes and characters on-track and continually returned to jokes and points from earlier in the show to add depth to his ramblings and providing countless moments of side-aching laughter to his crowd.

Even when the odd joke stumbled he recovered cleverly by mocking the silliness of the comment in his “imaginary notebook” and always achieved a laugh. On the rare occasion when he was heckled he managed to get a laugh out of his quick-witted riposte. Eddie Izzard is one of the cleverest comedians touring today and his particular brand of educational madness will, no doubt, continue to draw crowds for years to come. It was an excellent night of entertainment with one of the world’s funniest men. A recent performance of this show was recorded in London and is available to buy on DVD.

The Gaming Gentleman gets his Tweet displayed on the Big Screen at Eddie's gig

Championship Manager 2010 for Apple iPhone

2009-11-27T19:48:00.007Z

The variety of applications (Apps) available for the Apple iPhone never ceases to amaze. Recently big-name game developers have realised the market potential of mobile versions of their games and acted accordingly. Eidos have released their latest instalment of their football managing series, Championship Manager 2010, costing £2.99 to download from the App store and taking up a mere 9.4mb of space on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Fans of the series and everyone who thinks they can manage their favourite football team better than real incumbent are in for a treat.

With three language options (English, French and Italian) and several major leagues from which to choose a team to manage, setting up the game feels very much the same as doing so in the computer version of the game. After entering a name and an age as well as selecting some personal characteristics, which will influence how the players, fans, media and Club’s Board will respond to you, the player is able to choose what league from which country they wish to be involved in and, of course, select a team to manage.

The interface is geared toward the touch screen technology that is at the heart of the iPhone and the scale of the customisable options and tactics menus is astounding. The player has control of the club’s finances, the players’ training, interaction with the media and, primarily, team selection, tactics and transfers. Build your team, train them and compete in the world’s greatest football leagues. The in-match action screen, however, struggles slightly and it is difficult to follow the progress of the ball and if watching at speed it is difficult to see when players are injured or if they are yellow carded as the game does not slow down or stop automatically.

The game does suffer sometimes from the clumsiness of the thumb operated touch screen interface but, overall, Championship Manager 2010 promises many hours of intense, interactive game-play and the save game option ensures that even if your gaming is interrupted (like by your train arriving at your destination etc) you can carry on when time allows (like when you decide to stay on the train anyway). Despite being designed for a mobile platform the game is as close to the full, computer version as can be expected on a telephone and it’s small glitches are forgivable when considered against the scope and longevity of the game.

Ministry of space: An alternative history

2009-11-24T19:43:00.010Z

Warren Ellis’s graphic novel, Ministry of Space, explores the possible result of an alternative timeline in which, at the end of the Second World War, the British secured the German rocket scientists and research that were, in reality, scooped up by America and the USSR. The story focuses around Air Commodore John Dashwood RAF who, being a veteran of the Battle of Britain, approaches Churchill with a plan to ensure that the British Empire is in the best possible defensive position for any future war by securing the rocket technology being worked on by the Germans and detaching the UK from the Cold War which was inevitably in the making. This would see Britain concentrating on her own development, and specifically on the new frontier of space, and allowing Europe to repair itself after the war.

Dashwood is passionate about his project and convinces Churchill that his is the only way to secure the future of the Empire. The story is set in 2001 and returns in flashback to the events leading up to the focus of the plot, a meeting onboard a British space station between the now aged Sir John Dashwood and the current hierarchy of the Ministry of Space.

Through the flashbacks we see the development of technology at a greatly increased rate than was the case in reality. The amazing artwork by Chris Weston produces a believable evolution of WW2 British design into the modern jet era and then beyond into the space age. The story is brilliantly juxtaposed against our timeline, with Dashwood achieving the first manned space flight in the 1950s and Britain landing a man on the moon in the 1960’s claiming “this territory in the name of Her Majesty” in a very clever commentary on the colonial British mindset.

The story has a very dark undertone that reveals itself superbly as the plot unfolds and throughout, despite the great achievements of the Ministry, the reader is made to think of the social consequence to the continuation of the colonial British Empire beyond the second half of the 20^th century.

The plot is compelling and leaves the reader wanting more. As a “what if” story, Ministry of Space has the reader truly considering the ramifications of subtle changes to history and the morality of decisions that are made with the best of intent but without due consideration to consequences. Ellis is a superb writer and Ministry of Space ranks amongst his best work.

A mile in their shoes (The appeal of role playing games)

2009-11-19T21:56:00.008Z

Entertainment technology is advancing at an expediential rate, with faster processing speeds and higher capacity gaming machines allowing developers to constantly improve on gaming experiences. One area in which such technological leaps are readily evident is within the world of first person role-playing games (RPGs). RPGs have been widely popular, especially in the Japanese gaming market, for as long as gaming consoles have been around. Setting the standard for many years, Japanese RPGs are formulaic but extraordinarily deep in both story and gameplay. Most RPGs take the form of either a space opera, for example the Final Fatasy series, or are middle-ages anchored Lord-of-the-Rings-esque fantasy epics. Most of these games were squad based, relying on a range of traits unique to each squad character to achieve the overall aim.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion set a new standard in Western RPGs

In recent years Western games developers have taken up the mantle from the Japanese market and begun to produce some of the most spectacular gaming experiences available. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was one of the first truly epic games to arrive on the Xbox 360 platform. It is a spectacular game in which the player can customize everything about the character they play. Their species, race, features, background and abilities are all editable allowing every player’s experience of the game to be almost entirely different from the next. Furthermore the game had a wonderful orchestral score and excellent voice acting (including Patrick Stewart as the Emperor) that immerses a player in a deep and intricate story.

Bioware’s Mass Effect is one of the finest games released on the Xbox 360. With many of the traits of Oblivion, character customization and a selection of backgrounds from which to start the game, the player is placed in the role of Commander Sheppard, a human upon whose shoulders the fate of humanity and, eventually, all life in the known universe rests. Again, the game is of epic proportions with a classic three-act story arc, which demands the player’s complete attention and dedication. Whereas Oblivion had taken RPGs into the domain of single player, Mass Effect included a squad based command system that allowed players to tactically command their compatriots in the real-time combat scenarios, although sadly the computer controlled friendly forces could often act rather densely and could detract somewhat from the combat experience. The cinematic cut scenes and interactive dialogue choices create an adventure opus in which a gamer can loose themselves.

One of many alien species which make up the galactic community in Mass Effect

RPGs in the modern format are a new generation’s answer to, although not a substitute for, a traditional movie/TV/book style of entertainment. With similar budgets, and in some cases casts, to Hollywood blockbusters, RPGs are more immersive and, more specifically, the player has control of the outcome. Unlike a movie where viewers are simply spectators to events, RPG games make players the pilot. They take the lead and decide where their story takes them. They make the decisions that influence the outcome and they guide the character’s actions in accordance with their own morality or, conversely, completely out of character and experiencing the results of actions they would never consider in the real world. The length of RPGs can vary from around 20 hours of gameplay to in excess of 80 hours and they can, of course, be played through again, differently with different characters to create an entirely new gaming experience a second time through.

The greatest appeal of RPGs is that they place the gamer in a role and a situation in which they would never find themselves in real life. Anyone can be a hero or a villain, regardless of their backgrounds, character or abilities, by taking on the guise of these fictional characters and acting out their responses to the on screen stimulus. Whilst gaming will never replace movies and books they are quickly becoming a longer and more immersive entertainment experience and should, over the next few years, begin to be recognised by the non-gaming public in general as a viable platform for story telling and a true rival, in terms of economic impact, to other forms entertainment media.

Modern Warfare Boo

2009-11-13T18:09:00.004Z

I am suffering terribly. I am an avid fan of the Call of Duty series and the latest release: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, was released this week to great acclaim worldwide. Breaking all records in its first week, the game has now generated more money in its opening week than any other form of entertainment media in history. No film, DVD, CD or game has made so much money, $310 million in its first 24 hrs.

The reason that I am suffering is that my dear fiancée discovered that I desperately wanted this game when it came out and ordered it for me…for Christmas. As lovely as this gesture is, the hardcore gamer in me is shaking like a crack addict going cold turkey. However, my overarching gentlemanly values stop me from running out and buying it, only to ruin the gift from my dearest. So I will have to wait until Christmas, but, on the bright side, I’ll have something to look forward to.

Achievement Unlocked: Points Whore

2009-11-05T16:11:00.006Z

Microsoft’s ever-impressive gaming platform, the Xbox 360, has brought countless hours of joy and entertainment to gamers the world over. Xbox LIVE has connected those gamers over the Internet so that they can play together and interact online in a way never before possible. The games produced for the console are constantly improving and pushing back the barriers of gaming with more and more realistic physics engines, smoother, sharper and more impressive graphics, and game-play which is more akin to a Hollywood blockbuster than mindless, simple, button-smashing fun. Microsoft has created all of this but there is a downside. With good there is evil, with matter anti-matter, with Clapton the Spice Girls. The Xbox has released a plague upon the gaming world: Point Whoring.

Point whoring is the practice of needlessly accruing vast amounts of Achievement Points simply for the sake of having a higher gamer score. Every Xbox user has a Gamer Tag, which displays their chosen name, a picture and details on the gamer’s reputation, as well as a gamer score. Unlocking achievements within Xbox games increases these scores. The achievements vary in their worth and difficulty to obtain and points range from simple things, such as successfully completing a level, to the plain ridiculous, such as hitting a flag 4 times with a golf ball or kicking a chicken.

Many (if not most) gamers now use these whore points to compare themselves to others and see a high gamer score as a symbol of gaming virility. Some are forced to continue playing games, even once complete, to squeeze out every last achievement and bolster their gamer score in the process. Gamers can become obsessed with that familiar “Blop-ping” noise that indicates your most recent triumph. Certain games are purchased purely because it is easy to get points by playing them for a short period of time. These points have no value. They cannot be exchanged for anything

The "Achievement" symbol has come to be used in all manner of places

Despite what I have said here I have to admit, like an addict confronted with his problem, that I have been points whoring. I noticed recently I was doing ridiculous things in the gaming world to get another achievement point. From spending time at Liberty City’s golf range trying to hit a flag with a golf ball four times instead of completing one of the story missions, to replaying games through to choose different paths and receive different awards. I once mocked my friends for chasing the Xbox achievement dragon, but I now find myself counted amongst their number. That said, and shame aside, hunting for achievement points in games can often lead to some of the most fun and amusing game-play, for example the occasion when I received an achievement point for placing a grenade in someone’s pocket in Fallout 3, just to watch their trousers explode. I resolve to continue my gaming, but to limit my point whoring to occasions when I am bored so as that the practice does not become the main driving force of my gaming, but a tiny sideline treat every now-and-then.

The Ballad of Gay Tony: Making golfing fun (First impressions of GTA4’s new DLC)

2009-11-01T23:30:00.007Z

On Friday night I paid the princely sum of 1600 Microsoft points on my Xbox LIVE account to download the latest episode from Rockstar’s GTA brand: The Ballad of Gay Tony (TBoGT). My broadband connection is not the fastest in the world, but is sufficient for my usual online gaming and downloading requirements. TBoGT, however, measures a whopping 1.8 gigabytes and my Feudal age connection simply couldn’t download it as quickly as I would have liked. I sulked a little and then resigned to leave the system switched on and downloading overnight.

On Saturday morning I woke up earlier than usual, without the aid of an alarm clock and bounded into the front room, hoping that TBoGT had completed its journey across the Internet to my Xbox’s hard drive. Success; with the download complete my latest gaming adventure could begin.

TBoGT is just as visually stunning as it’s parent game and from the opening sequence, weaved cleverly into a cut scene from GTA4, the old familiar GTA style is evident. It appears that the player character is, once again, smart and resourceful (let’s be honest, Rockstar aren’t going to insult their customers by making them take on the guise of a moron) and, once again, has a shady past which he seems keen on putting behind him. The game-play is familiar but with the promise of new tweaks such as the much-touted base jumping and parachuting as well as the ability to get behind the controls of an agile attack helicopter.

The story line, so far, has been filled with clever and witty dialog, a fair spattering of toilet humour and the obligatorily offensive content for which we all really buy these games. The addition of an underground cage-fighting aspect to this DLC gives the player another distraction to elongate the gaming experience and after every mission you get a percentage complete screen with targets which will allow you to compare your progress and skills against others around the world over Xbox LIVE (but only if you complete the mission without any replays).

So far TBoGT is living up to the hype. I am only a couple of hours in but I have already hit golf balls at a hapless goon tied to the front of a golf cart, engaged in a drive-by shooting and a car chase in the afore mentioned sporting vehicle, blown up a super-yacht with a prototype attack helicopter and killed a loan shark who had been harassing my dear-old mum. There are a few passing references and crossovers to GTA4 and The Lost and The Damned and this looks set to continue. More to follow…

A rock and a hard pace

2009-10-21T19:07:00.005+01:00

The rock of Gibraltar stands tall and proud, keeping a watchful gaze over the Straits of Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean. Situated at the far south point of the Spanish mainland, Gibraltar’s distinct formation is instantly recognisable to mariners the world over. With Spain to the North and Morocco to the South, the independent British overseas territory is at a strategic choke point as well as an attractive sightseeing spot for tourists. It has been in British hands since it was captured in 1704 by a combined British and Dutch Naval force of marines and sailors who bombarded the town and later invaded during the War of Spanish Succession. Despite many attempts to regain the territory, the Spanish have been unsuccessful. The rock itself is awe-inspiring. The peaks and sheer faces are rugged, coated with vegetation and home to the celebrities of the territory, Gibraltar’s Barbary Macaques Apes (or Rock Apes), who serve to delight visitors shortly before stealing and trying to eat their cameras.

After arriving here recently (hence the lack of posts lately) I decided to join a couple of friends in a ritual known as “The Rock Run”. For the uninitiated the Rock run can be described simply as running from sea level up to the two peaks of the Rock (1,390 feet high). Whilst it may sound insane I can assure you it is well worth the substantial effort. On Sunday morning, at 8am, 30 minutes before sunrise, my friends and I started jogging from an area close to the port. Following the winding roads up the ever-increasing inclines of the mountain we passed the waking town and left its white-washed buildings behind as we continued our ascent. The sun rose in the east but we were in the shadow of the rock and, although it was light, we could not yet see the new day beginning.

The light spilled over the Western Mediterranean and highlighted Spain the West and the dusty mountains of Morocco to the South. A steady stream of commercial shipping was silently slipping out of the Atlantic and into the Med, and vice-versa. Every now and again we would hear the high-pitched yelp of one of the rock’s furry inhabitants and occasionally we would see an ape lazing in the morning heat. As we puffed and panted our way to the top we were overtaken by a stream of mini-vans and taxis ferrying tourists less inclined to run up to the rock’s peaks.

After 42 minutes of hard work we reached our goal of the second peak and rested, admiring the panorama of the bright, warm October morning. A group of tourists came up to us looking puzzled. We had obviously been running; we were out of breath, dressed in sports kit and sweating profusely. One man asked what we had been doing and I answered, plainly “we ran up here.” He looked shocked and asked where from so I pointed out the harbour in the distance below and he looked back again and asked me why. I didn’t have an answer for him. Perhaps we did it to challenge ourselves, perhaps because we had enjoyed the exercise, but looking back now I believe my answer would be “Because we could.” What I mean by that is that despite the effort, the hard breathing and the now painful calf muscles, I wouldn’t have changed that Sunday morning for anything. The idyllic scenery at the top of the rock coupled with the great feeling of achievement having made it up there, as well as the camaraderie of doing it with your friends, combined to make a wonderful, if exhausting, morning, and one I won’t soon forget.

In the beginning there was the word… and the word was AMIGA

2009-10-11T18:53:00.005+01:00

On the cold morning of 25^th of December 1991, my twelve year-old self bounded down-stairs at what I now consider the ungodly hour of 6 am, shoving my little brother out of the way in keeping with the seasonal spirit. We had been awake for some time before, but our parents had a strict “not until 6” policy that we were to adhere to on Christmas morning. My sister was approaching her second birthday and was not as exited about Christmas as my brother (who was 10) and I.

When we finally burst through the door of our front room and ran directly to the small pile of wrapped gifts strewn on the floor around the Christmas tree our focus was entirely on what our “Big present” would be. My brother and I always had a “Big present”, the one that was the centrepiece of our holiday. Most of the other gifts would be what my parents referred to as wrap-ups, books, videotapes, games etc. We would always have an orange and some hazel nuts in our stockings, as it was traditional in our house. We tore at the wrapping, which my mother had spent hours perfecting without regard for her labour, and revelled in joy at the gifts it hid. But something was up. My brother and I kept looking at one another after opening the larger presents and finding board games and books, socks and other things that Aunties think 12 year-olds would like, unable to recognise what was different.

Once all the gifts were unwrapped and there was, in-fact, no bike, pool table or such-like, my brother and I noticed our parents watching us with large smiles pasted across their faces. Behind them, on the dining table, which we had rushed past in our eagerness to get to the loot, was an Amiga 500, set up and switched on in all it’s 16-bit glory. Our parents were rightly amused and I look back on our behaviour that morning with a mild shame, but I was a child and knew no better at the time.

Despite our ordinary state of constant competitiveness my brother and I played for hours, and later days, weeks, months and a couple of years, together, fairly and with good humour. We played Lemmings, Rick Dangerous and Captain Planet to name but a few and there, on that cold Christmas morning, my real love affair with gaming began. I had computers before the Amiga. I’d had a Spectrum ZX, a Commodore 64 (with such ground breaking titles as Harrier Carrier and IK plus) and other, simple game machines, but they were slow to load and used cassette tapes. The Amiga 500 had a floppy disc drive and many, many games. I could never get bored with it and it only got better as time went on. Basic games made way for more and more complex games like Sensible Soccer and, eventually, mammoths of gaming experience such as Frontier: Elite 2. There was always something new and exciting coming out and that sense of limitless game-play and infinite possibilities is why I can trace my gaming career back to that Christmas day 18 years ago.

Those games seem very basic now and it’s almost a mystery why such games should have seemed so advanced at the time. I wonder if in 18 years from now I’ll look back at the Xbox 360, fondly, and wonder how I was so engrossed by simple 3-D graphics, surround sound and real-world physics engines that powered such “basic” games as Assassin’s Creed, GTA 4 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

A very modern friendship (How networked gaming helps me keep in touch)

2009-10-08T18:04:00.003+01:00

In my formative years I had a core group of 5 very good friends. Some of us had been friends since we were children and others were assimilated into our collective during our university years. We did everything together from procrastinating at one another’s homes when we should have been studying to nights out on the town and even holidays abroad. My time at university was special and the friendships cultivated there have lasted the decade since I left. My working career began in earnest shortly after graduation and my chosen profession has taken me away from my hometown and those wonderful people I call my closest friends. I am not the only one of our group to have moved on to new pastures and we are now spread out across the UK making the best of our lives.

We have, however, stayed close. We all reconvene, on occasion, back in our hometown and go to the pub to play catch-up. We often just go to someone’s house, sit on the sofa and have a drink and a chat or watch a movie, which we all talk over, and, more often than not, play some multiplayer video games which seem to get better the more inebriated we become. Sometimes we travel the length of the country to visit our respective new homes and adopted towns and cities. On these occasions the host will take great care to ensure that the others are entertained, fed and watered and above all that we can enjoy the rare and precious time we have together.

We are all big gaming fans and back in the days before wireless networks we used to go to incredible lengths to achieve some basic networked multiplayer gaming. I would often disassemble my PC, pack it into the back of my car, and drive down to my friend’s house where we would set up the computer next to his so that we could network the two via an Ethernet cable. This was all so that we could play a couple of precious hours of Soldier of Fortune or Star Wars in multiplayer. The idea of playing against another human, and your best friend to boot, in place of a mindless and, at the time, quite basic AI was worth the hassle.

Today I have Xbox LIVE. My friends also have Xbox LIVE. What this means for we merry band of brothers is that we can recreate those nights we used to spend together despite being geographically separated. With the use of an Xbox and a microphone headset we can spend a night chatting whilst playing against (or with) each other on the latest game that we all like. We can even play separate games but keep a chat room open so that we can still talk away the night while engaged in different activities. I find this to be amazing. What online gaming has done for me is to have brought me closer to the people I want to be around, but sadly can’t be. We have drifted apart because our lives have taken different paths but technology has matured to serve, for us, a purpose that I’m sure was not intended.

Xbox LIVE is a great link in our ongoing friendship and now, even though the majority of the group are married, getting married and/or have children, my close friends and I can still make time to join together in the fight against alien invasion, to rid the world of a zombie infestation, to battle Nazis in the streets of Berlin or to take on the guise of secret agents in a race against time to save the world. I get to do this with my best friends. Who says video games are antisocial?

I fought the law and the…law lost! (A return to Liberty City and the ridiculousness of scaremongering)

2009-10-03T11:29:00.004+01:00

In eager anticipation of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 4 add-on game, the controversially named: The Ballad of Gay Tony, I decided to pay another visit to my old stomping ground in Liberty City. It has been a couple of months since I last played on GTA4, even on multiplayer, and I thought it was time to get myself re-acquainted with Nico Bellic, the game’s primary protagonist, and his friends, in order to aid a more seamless switch to the new episode on its release (due 29^th October).

In 2008 GTA 4 quickly became the must-have game on Xbox 360, receiving high scores by most reviewers and selling out in shops the world over. Extra content in the form of a whole new episode, The Lost and The Damned, was released in February 2009 and was very well received, expanding the gaming experience by utilising the expertly mapped and coded Liberty City and weaving a whole new storyline into the main plot by following a sideline character from the main game, Johnny Kebitz. The sheer size of the game would have stood alone against other titles on the Xbox, but was shorter than the main game. Now, with the upcoming release of The Ballad of Gay Tony, the two episodic game add-ons are to be released in the shops as well as on Xbox Live Marketplace, grouped together in a stand-alone pack name Episodes from Liberty City.

The Ballad of Gay Tony will see the player taking up the role of Luis Lopez, an assistant to nightclub owner Tony Prince, or "Gay Tony" to his friends. As always Rockstar have set out to shock and offend as well entrance and entertain. There will, undoubtedly, be complaints and protests over the game’s content and the usual calls from ridiculous groups of busybodies to have it banned “for the sake of the children” and this got me thinking. There are always those who claim violent people are influence by movies, TV and games to commit violent acts. Pious politicians and people quick to grab headlines are forever banging the drum of fear, claiming games such as GTA4 are rotting the moral fiber of our society and are a bad influence on children. Such talk almost always angers me. To begin with the game is rated 18 in the UK. This means (and I’m talking to you, parents) that children shouldn’t have access to it in the first place.

On the second count, that such violent games cause violence in the real world, I believe there to be little that can be said for or against that except to describe my own experiences as an example of the ridiculousness of the argument. I have played violent and non-violent games most of my life. In the gaming world I have murdered, bludgeoned, stabbed and shot people, aliens, monsters and mutations. I have stolen cars and run-drugs. I have also piloted a space ship, fought in World War Two and survived in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the distant future. I have never done, nor have I been tempted or in some cases able to do, any of the above. I have what most would consider a normal life: A job, a car, a home, a wife-to-be. I have been exposed to violent material all of my life and I am not a violent person.

I am also not a psychiatrist and am unable to argue about the mental state of someone who would cause violence to others in the real world and how images on TV and in games may influence their behavior. However, I would say this in closing; as I believe in freedom of speech and expression, I find any attempt to censor the public-in-general in order to prevent the violent or anti-social actions of individuals (that would probably occur by some other trigger anyway) predisposed to such activity in the first place to be misguided. So I am going back to Liberty City, to steal cars, deal drugs and shoot gangsters, and then later I will take my fiancé out for a pleasant afternoon at the waterfront, perhaps to a movie or for a sociable drink. For, you see, I can define the borders between, and keep separate the worlds of, reality and gaming/fiction. Have a safe day everyone.

The marvellous coward Harry Flashman

2009-09-26T11:57:00.006+01:00

Having recently revisited one of my favourite books, Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser, I felt the overwhelming need to write a short review and to heartily encourage any who will listen to cease all other activity immediately and rush to the nearest bookshop and purchase a copy.

Flashman chronicles the misadventures of Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE, war hero, national treasure, gentleman, coward, bully and rascal. It is the first of a series of Flashman books which are written in the style of the memoirs of Harry Flashman who, writing in his twilight days, looks back over his life and openly admits and describes his cowardly, self-centred and down-right awful behaviour which has seen him rise from school bully to one of Queen Victoria’s most celebrated soldiers and highest ranking Officers as well as one of the British Empire’s most well known heroes.

Set in the Victorian era, Harry’s adventure begins as he is expelled from his school and is forced to join the Army. As a monied gentleman he, of course, buys his commission and embarks on the first of his adventures. The problem is that Flashman is a coward. He is massively concerned with saving his own skin and will literally do anything to keep as far away from danger as possible. He is adept at pulling the wool over the eyes of others and only very few people ever really see the true Flashman. To most he is a strapping, brave and honourable man destined to great things. And this is the pull of the book. He achieves so much, mostly by accident or happenstance, and yet none of his accolades are deserved. He is cruel and bullish, vile and cowardly and the reader loves him for it. We follow him into the Army, to his marriage and on his first overseas tour serving in Afghanistan at the height of the British Empire’s power. He is the quintessential Victorian gentleman, pious and proper in society, a scoundrel in private. His character flaws are the book’s great strength and the pace of the novel keeps the reader turning pages long into the early hours of the morning.

The first book is a triumph and sets the stage for the many sequels most of which are also outstanding works of comic fiction. Although written in the 1960’s and dealing with the 1800’s, the language and writing style is easily accessible and the book is truly timeless. Fraser’s Flashman is a witty, clever alternative view of Victorian Britain and the “heroes” who helped to make the greatest and most expansive Empire the world has ever seen. Skirting around and delving into some of the most influential historic events of the time, Flashman is weaved wonderfully into the history books.

Lost in the crowd (Left 4 Dead on Xbox 360)

2009-09-20T13:37:00.003+01:00

The idea of the undead masses mindlessly swarming the globe and forcing ordinary people to take extraordinary measures just to survive is one which has been at the heart of popular culture, film, TV, books, comics and games since at least the 1960s-1970s. There are many theories as to why zombies are our “favourite” monsters and why so many writers, directors and game producers continue to return to the macabre theme. People like to be scared, so of course horror movies and books are always popular. We like to be frightened in the relative security of the cinema, knowing full-well that all is well outside. Zombies play on our fear of what we could become. They are a comment on the mindlessness of the crowd and the surrender of identity. They are slow, lumbering and relentless, driven by instinct and not rational thought or reason. Becoming them is one of our greatest fears.

George A Romano’s zombie films rank above their peers as the blueprint for the genre. His work is not, however, simply a splatter fest of gore and violence, although gore and violence have their place within the films. His Dawn Of The Dead (1978) set in a shopping mall in the US saw a band of survivors struggling to make a life while ever-more walking dead congregate outside of the mall patiently waiting for a route in. It was a clear comment on the mindlessness of consumerism. The theme of the survivor is ever-present. Groups of unlikely friends from different walks of life and backgrounds are almost always forced to work together to overcome the unbelievably poor odds of survival. They need to rely on each other. Against these adversaries the individual would never survive.

I have never seen the execution of the survival, reliance and group synergy themes in zombie genre games so closely aligned with the fears and considerations described above than in Valve’s Xbox masterpiece, Left 4 Dead. Unlike it’s predecessors such as Dead Rising, where the aim of the game was to have as much fun killing zombies as you could, Left 4 Dead is a breathtaking experience which pits you against swarms of the undead in varying locations with one overall aim: for you and your friends to survive and escape.

The game is a triumph. It is primarily aimed at being played online over Xbox LIVE. This is so that you can play alongside other humans in your attempt to escape from the terror of the rotting corpses stumbling around and trying to eat you. This is a particularly clever device that makes you rely other gamers, despite their strengths and flaws, who you probably don’t know, to help you as you help them to survive your ordeal. Just like in the movies, you are dependant on a rag tag group of strangers for your very survival. There is a single player option for those without internet access and the other player characters are taken over by the computer AI to assist you, but it’s not quite the same.

The game starts after the four main characters, Francis (biker type), Louis (office worker), Bill (crazy old veteran) and zoey (until-recently-college-girl type), are attacked by a group of zombies and a “Tank”, a mutated zombie that looks like, well, a tank. The cut scene follows the survivors in their escape to a rooftop, where your adventure begins. Taking on the role of one of the survivors you must now try and make your way through the over-run city to an area of safety held by the army. The onus is on teamwork. Spit up and you’ll die. Work for yourself only and you’ll die. You really do have to watch each other’s backs.

The graphics are outstanding and immerse you in a dark and sinister world. The control systems are intuitive and the gimmick of teamwork really does add a whole new dimension to the game play. You are going to get into an un-winnable situation and you are going to have to hope one of your fellow survivors sees you and comes to help out. The action is fast-paced and frantic and there is a jump around every corner. It is intelligent too; set off a car alarm, you’ll attract the dead; use loud weapons, you’ll attract the dead; try moving more carefully and quietly, you might get away with it. But it won’t always work. You will have to hold off the hoard, you will have to deal with tanks, smokers, hunters and witches, the slightly more scary and difficult foes. The whole time you are on edge and you always have that unreachable goal of safety to chase. This game is awesome and is easily one of the best games on the Xbox. There is more good news; as Left 4 Dead has been around for a while now the good people at Valve have had time to develop a sequel. Left 4 Dead 2 will be hitting the shelves in the near future.

Half way to 60

2009-09-17T23:19:00.003+01:00

Today is my 30^th birthday. I was very amused by a card that I got from my good friend, which said “Watching TV, playing video games, reading comics…being 30 is like being 13 but with beer”. I laughed. It is quite true that despite being half way to 60 I still enjoy my childish pass times. I am not wholly irresponsible; I have a good, responsible and respected professional career. I am getting married next year too, so as far as I’m concerned I am quite grown up. I have travelled the world and seen great sights, met wonderful people and experienced a variety of cultures. I have seen deserts and jungles, mountains and ice shelves. I have set foot on islands almost untouched by humans and witnessed an array of wildlife so vast and varied as to defy belief. I have sailed though a hurricane and close by icebergs. I have hang-glided in Brazil, safaried in Africa and white water rafted in the USA.

I have done all this and lots more besides and today, between enjoying my day off work with my Fiancée and playing on my Xbox, I had time to think about getting older and my future. I had time to consider my chosen pass-times (gaming, reading, running, squash, football, playing guitar, scuba diving) and, thanks largely to my friends birthday card, ask myself if I am wasting my time with such things as games, comics and TV. I have come to the conclusion that I am not. I have never fretted about getting older, and I’m not doing so now. I enjoy gaming very much and I enjoy writing about it. I enjoy movies and TV and comics and books and a host of other things and I have resolved that if I can spend my time with such pursuits and still have had the amazing experiences I have in my 30 years thus far then I can’t be going far wrong. Here’s to the next 30…

Nazis…I hate those guys

2009-09-15T19:27:00.006+01:00

What better way to spend a rainy afternoon than running around the fictional German town of Eisenstadt (real one is in Austria) gunning down Nazis as they try to go about their insidious business of enslaving Europe? Well, what if you had mystical powers derived from crystals that harness the energy of an unseen fourth dimension? Doesn’t that sound better? Wolfenstein, for the Xbox 360, throws the player into the role of BJ Blazkowicz, serial spoiler of the naughty Nazis’ plots throughout the Wolfenstein universe. His gun-totting romp through war-torn 1943 Germany is visually impressive and immerses you in an atmosphere of oppression and fear. It gives the player a feel of the WW2 call of duty type games with a supernatural twist.

The weapons are fun and customisable; although you will not be able to afford all upgrades so your choices need to be tactical and considered. The single player game will take about 7 hours to shoot through on normal difficulty setting and multiplayer will make the game last a lot longer. The addition of Veil powers adds another layer and is, in fact, quite necessary to overcome some of the more difficult puzzles and opponents. The cinematic cut scenes are a triumph and greatly increase the gaming experience.

Unfortunately the WW2 theme is in danger of being overdone in first person shooters, with titles like Call of Duty: World at War leading the charge in the genre, and other worthy attempts such as Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway already marking out the territory as their own. Wolfenstein survives looking too same-old, same-old with the supernatural element coupled with not just a little nostalgia from the older games in the series for those of us who played them. But without that element I think Wolfenstein would slip into the average category and I fear the replay value won’t be that great. That said however, Raven’s latest instalment to one of gaming’s oldest institutes is largely appealing and will fill more than a few hours of your life with glorious Nazi shootin’ fun.

I have created a monster!

2009-09-13T19:27:00.005+01:00

We all have dark little secrets that we would rather no one knew about, and mine is this: I own a Wii. Yes I, a serious gaming fan, own a gimmicky toy which, despite its childish mechanism for game-play, is a lot of fun. This is not a problem as it doesn’t often tempt me away from my Xbox, but today this devilish device interrupted my more serious gaming. More worryingly is the reason behind it. You see after a brief walk along the local beach in the brisk wind I returned home fully intent on delving into my latest gaming melee on the Xbox, Left 4 Dead.

However, I have been thwarted in my attempts as, while my back was turned, my wonderful fiancée decided that this afternoon was the perfect time to get interested in gaming. Worse still she decided that the Wii was the better option and I have been forced to endure Wii sports and Wii fit in place of my preferred splatter fest amongst the rotting corpses of the walking dead. So, for now, I will have to wait a little longer to play through the so-far-amazing Left 4 Dead and post the subsequent review here. The only alternative is to try and wrestle the controller from my dearest, but the phrase “cold dead hands” springs to mind. Better leave her to it for now. Oh well, there’s always the internet…

The slow death of my language

2009-09-12T14:07:00.007+01:00

A little while ago I started noticing the slow erosion of good English in written and spoken formats. The most startling example of recent is the apparent laziness or “dumbing down” of the BBC. I noticed it the other day when watching BBC News 24 I heard the broadcaster say “Police have named a man killed in London.” I am sure that it is more likely his parents named him some years before. What she probably meant was “Police have released the name of a man killed in London.” A moot point you may think but it is just one in a series of instances of which I have taken note.

Why is it that people are “named and shamed” and not simply exposed or revealed? Why is it that every report is “damning” and that a government “U-turn” is embarrassing? Surely the ability to review your progress and correct a process gone awry is a good thing, not an embarrassing admission of inadequacy. I have been told of a “very unique” technique for something-or-other and I wonder how anything can be “very” unique. Surely something is either unique or not. No one is perfect. I am not a linguistic god and often use inappropriate words and phrases in conversation and writing. I make up words for effect in certain pieces and I split infinitives mercilessly. I do, however, know that I am doing this. I am simply aghast that a bastion of correctness and impartiality such as the BBC is falling into lazy habits. If you are at all interested in the preservation of our subtle, bold, complex and beautiful language then I urge you to read a wonderful book by one of the BBC’s finest broadcasters. The book is Lost For Words by John Humphrys.