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

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

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

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...

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

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

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?

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

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

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."

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

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

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 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.

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….

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

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…

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

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…

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.