low-res textures

A 1 hour 36 minutes worth of...

2008-12-23T18:19:00.001+01:00

V.R.S. stands for Very Random Stuff - a new column where the two of us contributors will deal with things connected with games, but not games themselves. So here we go.

After the blasphemous trilogy of the So-Called-Resident-Evil-Movies-Starring-Milla-Jovovich two of which I vehemently decided not to watch EVARR (FallingStickman did and look at him now) Capcom apparently decided to take the matters into their own hands and released a movie which is what every movie based on a video game should be: CG. Yes, C-fucking-G. You know, like the Final Fantasy ones - a movie which doesn't involve any dumb actor pretending to be your favorite game character, taking your everlasting childhood love and devotion and wiping his ass with it in a process they call "artistic interpretation". In most cases the dumbwit won't even take time to play the actual game. Oh please, why should he? We're not talking about any art: it's a video game for heaven's sake - a safe picture. The writer writes a script, the producer produces, the director directs, the actor acts and voila, where's my paycheck? So what that the big bucks are wet with tears of gamers who went to the cinema, foolishly hoping that maybe this time, maybe this one time they wouldn't fuck this up. All is good, as long as they pay for the tickets.

Nowadays it seems, the whole goddamn movie industry seems to be focused on making adaptations and while everyone at Hollywood seemed to curse the hell out of Uwe Boll, THEY'RE ACTUALLY FOLLOWING THE GUY'S FOOTSTEPS, making one bad game-movie after another bad game-movie. The world seems to have forgotten about one very simple rule, which I believe was even written on one of Moses' stone tablets. DON'T MIX GAMES AND MOVIES. Don't. It's wrong. Nothing good can ever come out of it.

The only game-movie I consider a good one is Silent Hill, but that's because from the half-of-the-movie marker, the plot goes in an entirely different direction than the original - a more movie-plausible direction with more dialogues and less aimless running around. So it's not really an adaptation - it's an interpretation and as such, a well done movie. But then again, I know SH fans who hated it just the same.
Likewise, the only movie-game I somewhat enjoyed is Terminator 3 Redemption which was tepidly acceptable, but only because of the two previous Terminator 3 games, which were so god-awful the developers had to at least try and redeem themselves with a third one, in order not to get crucified by the fans of the franchise standing behind the window with torches in their hands. In fact Redemption would be a pretty nice game were it not for the movie elements: the shamelessly inserted bits of the actual movie, properly cut down and mixed with the CG cutscenes so they don't interfere with the stupidly altered timeline, some very poor levels standing out like lumps of dog-fertilizer in your Viva Pinata garden, constructed this way "because we have to make a level out of every second of the original", and of course, the absolutely outrageous voice-acting of Arnold Sch., who, of all people, was the only original cast member to take part in the game's production.
Maybe Godfather and Scarface games weren't all that bad either, but probably because the original hardcore fans of the movies are now either dead or too demented to care.
[evil grin]

Considering all of the above, I feel I have a statement to make:
We, the gamers of this world, have to take a lot of shit. We struggle with cheap-ass media, who call us dangerous psychotics ready to kill off all our friends, because we play GTA4. We struggle with game and console companies, who constantly abuse our trust and feed us garbage (RROD, glitches in Fallout3, Home... take your pick, I could go on with this forever). We struggle with ourselves, fearlessly defending the piece of hardware of our choice against the opposite team, day and night posting increasingly idiotic arguments on why Xbox in better than PS3 or why PS3 is better than Xbox (when of course Crysis owns all). So please, moviemaking people, give us a break. No one should be subjected to the Hitman logo, which to me personally is a kind of a religious symbol, being mercifully blasphemised by Timothy Olyphant's face right next to it. Note that I don't really hate the actual living Mr. Olyphant (you were da bomb in Die Hard 4, yo!) but for Christ's sake, why 47? Why him? Nor do I dislike Mark Wahlberg, but for Christ's sake, why Max? Nor do I and so on, and so on. See? Games + movies = no go.

...

Hell, what was I supposed to talk about? Oh, right.

Well, I must say that I've waited very long for this title. Not only CG, but Leon and Claire with their original voice-actors (which smells of my beloved RE2), G-virus (RE2 again) and a plot related to the actual game, with no reference to the So-Called-Resident-Evil-Movies-Starring-Milla-Jovovich whatsoever (the six triangles of Umbrella logo are not joined together and they have one side rounded). Finally, I thought, a proper Resident Evil big-screen debut: a movie for the fans. And, well, it is a movie for Resident Evil fans. For better and worse.

It's really hard to say something substantial about Degeneration without spoiling it, but I'll do my best and keep it brief. First of all, it's entirely Nippon-made, so forget about the traditional western movie plan. The action is a little jaggy, the flow of events is very rushed (basically it's like watching a flow of cutscenes with no game in between). The climax is not very significant and the emotional bits (including the ending) are just too cheezy. Plus the obligatory, predictable "it's not over yet" sequence at the very end. The dialogues are anything but natural and so is the voice acting. Just like in, you know, Resident Evil. I was prepared for that kind of thing, but it was surprisingly more difficult to accept it in a movie than in the games. That sickly-sweet Power Rangers cheezines made me wonder if it's not just a kids movie, but no, there's gore, some blood and many juicy explosions. Well, I sighed, it's just your standard Resident Evil cheeze. Just like in the game. But wait, there's more.

We have Leon and Claire, but most of the time they are separated (like in the game). Claire watches over a little girl (like in the game), and Leon watches over some woman (like in the game). We've got everything from RE2: an evil money-loving lollipop-stealing politician, a Wesker wannabe, a cop becoming a zombie, a Birkin rip-off, an enormous, sinister laboratory... (there's one person NOT from RE2 and that's that Angela woman - and probably for that sole reason, I didn't like her one bit). We've got all these elements, yet they don't seem well connected. I dunno, maybe it's just the badly written script... Maybe it's the lack of Mikami-san that is to blame. Maybe for this same reason, RE5 PLAYS like RE4 but doesn't FEEL like RE4.

I really can't tell you if I liked Degeneration. It's very well animated and it's nowhere near as painful to watch as the So-Called-You-Know. Still, the only way to like this movie is through sentiments and pleasant memories from 1998, when the Nippon cheeze was still fresh and edible. On its own, Degeneration is pretty hollow. Fans like me will enjoy it, at least to some extent, but it won't gain the Resident Evil franchise any new audience.

PS
Too bad Leon is now permanently Paul Mercier Solid Snake, instead of Paul Haddad first-day-on-the-job cop. In RE4 he sometimes sounded like the good old R.P.D. officer (there was Ashley to shout at), but now he's more 2D than you can imagine. Plus, the model reminds me more of RE0's Billy Coen than the actual RE2 or RE4 Leon. And it's saaad.....

Mutants, zombies and infected villagers everywhere...

2008-12-21T14:43:00.002+01:00

Recently I had a chance to play the Japanese Resident Evil 5 demo – a demo of a game that I've been very much craving for after I got every unlockable in Resident Evil 4. Recently however the game totally vanished from my focus. Maybe it's because of all the videos I've seen that made the game look more like a remake of RE4 than a completely new title (an rightly so...to a degree), or maybe because the game is in development for so long (and games which are too long in development have a nasty habit of turning crappy). I don't really know, but it made me approach the game differently – more like a normal gamer and not a hardcore Resident Evil fan.

I will admit – the first impression was surprisingly underwhelming; the game felt like RE4, played like RE4 but lacked the atmosphere from the forth game and my initial RE5 experience was uninspiring. Maybe it's the setting – the concept of an African village seemed great, but the execution isn't. There is no sense of dread and terror – it feels and looks more like Call of Duty 4, which is not good for a Resident Evil game. Also the heavy HDR effects (you go into a house from under the bright sun and you can't see until your eyes get used to the new environment) that were supposed to make the game more intense are not implemented in the demo. The graphics are great, but there are some really bland textures (not many though) and there is terrible screen tearing that is really, really distracting. The explosions kick ass though. The framerate is fluid, which is great, but the animations, although obviously having a lot more frames than the ones from RE4 seem recycled from the previous game and are rather stiff and unnatural. Especially the zombie death sequences – most look like there were taken straight from RE4 – there are no physics involved and there are silly problems like clipping and poor collision detection. Honestly, in this day and age it should look a lot better. All the problems are probably due to the fact that this demo is a fairly early build of the game, but then I'm a bit baffled why Capcom decided to release that and not something more polished. Hopefully the North American demo that should be released at the beginning of 2009 will be something different (yeah.... right).

After playing the demo five or six time I finally got a good hang of the outdated controls (yes, they are almost identical to RE4, so I shouldn't really need practice, but I guess I got spoiled by „today's standards") and the game became more enjoyable. The fights can get intense, the general mechanics are still great and the infected enemies are more persistent than ever before. Still the game doesn't feel as well prepared and fresh like no.4 and I really doubt, that now, when Mikami-san „has left the building" we'll be as impressed as with Resident Evil 4.

The game is a good action game, and I'm sure that it will feature a lot of memorable moments, but the demo doesn't let you feel that.

I also have a problem with Sheva – the A.I. character that accompanies you (and according to all sources will do so through most of the game) – even though most of the time she's rather helpful and able there are moments when I can't help but clench my teeth because they annoy the hell out of me. Those moments include taking ammo to weapons that she doesn't have (and I do), often standing in my line of fire (and completely blocking my view) and getting ripped to shreds by the enemies in some really silly situations.

Something that I really hate in games (*Cough* Silent Hill: the Room Cough*) is the necessity to babysit an A.I. character. If that happens in RE5 (and there is a strong chance it will, because it always does) the game for me will be broken beyond repair. I do however see great multiplayer potential in this (only online though, the split screen is a disaster).

To sum up – even though I did enjoy the time spent with the demo I'm not as impressed as I should be (especially with all the hype the game gets). I really hope that the full game will have more to offer than what the demo suggest because the game could be a disappointment – and we really wouldn't like that, now would we?

But hey, at least the main menu is really cool.

Meh...

2008-12-15T21:46:00.003+01:00

I wanted to start out with NXE, but screw that, I will start with HOME.
When HOME was announced 200 years ago I wasn’t really interested. Sure, I thought the concept was nice; especially that Sony would let everyone enjoy it for free. I figured it would be a more mature and a bit less content-packed version of Animal Crossing focused on network aspects. It’s not. It’s a barren playground for idiots with absolutely nothing better to do with their lives than to stand around among other idiots talking shit or playing a fucked up version of Arkanoid.
Let me write this in big, capital letters.

HOME IS THE MOST DISAPOINTING, BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME, EFFORT AND MONEY I HAVE SEEN THROUGHOUT THE 25 YEARS OF MY GODDAMN LIFE!

It would be best if Sony had killed the project when it was still early in development. HOME is a disgrace, a slap in the face for every Playstaion 3 owner, every gaming journalist and everyone over the age of 3. Everyone responsible for this obscenity should be hanged upside down and whipped.
Let me explain.
First of all HOME is ugly. I’m not saying it’s not pretty, I’m saying it’s hideous. It’s has the worse graphics I’ve seen during this and throughout most of the previous generation. The locations are painfully simplistic and poorly designed – they have no interesting features and no attractive elements. Even the small waterfall and stream flowing through the Square don’t help. Everything is boring and mundane. I have no idea where all the screenshots Sony presented came from, but they couldn’t have come from this application – it’s simply impossible.
The avatars players can create are even worse – terrible, low-polygon models with faces even Quasimodo would be ashamed of. When you enter the character customization screen you’ll spend a few long moments waiting for stuff to load until you realize that more things won’t load, because THERE FUCKING AREN’T ANY! The first glance on the face customization menu will leave you with a wrong assumption that you’ll be able to tailor the looks of your avatar to your needs (maybe even make one that looks like you). You won’t. No matter how hard you try, how long you’ll spend tweaking the setting you will always end up with something that look either like a horse or a toilet seat – with no options in between. It’s hard to believe but the avatars in NXE have more customization options than the ones in HOME. That says a lot about this “app”. But wait, there’s more.
The quality of the graphics is lower than bar charts showing the current condition of stock markets. The textures seem to have been taken form a 3D game developed in the mid 90s, the objects consist of a number of polygons that a one-handed lumberjack could count on the 3 fingers of his good hand and the shadow system it as advanced as a screwdriver.
And the worst thing is the aliasing. Oh my God, the aliasing! I’m sure that if you would stare at this game for over 15 seconds your eyes would bleed. Even the title screen has it and the title screen is composed of a “plastic” block on a grid background… I know, it’s some advanced shit, - I’m sure the PS3 heats up like a blast furnace when it has to count all those effects used for that scene. Looking at HOME is like a trip to a lumber mill. HOME is an ugly, ugly thing.
Did I mention that it takes ages for everything to load? No? Well, it does. I was playing draughts with some dude and his character model became its hi definition version after about 60 seconds. It’s ridiculous, considering there is really nothing in there to load.
Just to add to the picture I will say that the static ads in HOME are presented in a resolution so low that it’s sometimes hard to tell what they represent, and the videos that are played on multiple screens in HOME are of YouTube quality – and yet those take ages to load as well. And those are not streams; they are downloaded to your hard drive. Why?
Ok, enough about the technical aspect. Let’s take a closer look at the features, or rather the lack of features.
What can you do in HOME? Not much. You can redecorate your apartment… but not really since you have like 7 or 8 objects to use …all of them white and ugly. You have a few wallpapers to change how your walls look – 8 of them, all ugly. You can also go out to the balcony and watch the view. The view is ugly unfortunately – well, the view itself is not ugly, but the graphics designers who modeled the environments made sure it will look ugly. They did a very good job.
Ok, so you are done not redecorating your flat. What else can you do? You can go shopping – buy new clothes, new furniture, even a new flat. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, guess what. It’s all fucking paid, with real fucking money! So Sony said that HOME will be free, but in the starting package they give you squat and make you pay for almost everything else. Free content my ass. I had a choice – buy a summer house or a PSOne game from the PS Store – the cost the same. Crash Bandicoot is one of my favorite platformers, I can tell you that.

I have one thing to say. Fuck you Sony! You’re not getting any of my money through HOME.

So screw shopping. What else can I do in this stupid app? I can play some games – bowling, pool, some arcade games, chess and the afore mentioned draughts. All suck. Bowling is so basic is not even worth mentioning. The blowing mini-game in GTA4 is much better. Pool… same as bowling – GTA has a much better one, so don’t bother. Arcade games – all suck. I can’t be bothered to write about them save for one. A game called Ice Breaker which basically is an Arkanoid clone. When I first saw it I was like – “NICE, finally something for me, I love Arkanoid”. Four minutes later when the game finally downloaded (yes, you’ve read it right – you have to download everything) I was ready to eat my SixAxis. They actually managed to fuck up the controls in this game. Can you imagine that? Sony managed to break controls in Arkanoid – a game with a technical sophistication of PONG. What a bunch of cretins.
And chess and draughts? Well, they are what you expect – chess and draughts. Just ugly.
And people are sore losers – I’ve played draughts 5 times, 4 of which I would win if the people I played with wouldn’t leave just before the last move. I would like to send my regards to the nice Spanish dude who beat me in draughts and it was one of two normal encounters with other gamers in HOME.
So there you have it – playing games in HOME is not fun either so the only thing left to do is to socialize. But that’s no fun either – most people do not have a USB keyboard and even fewer have a headset. Writing anything with a gamepad is a bitch and takes ages and people with headsets sound like they are talking from behind a glass wall while chewing on a raw fish. So it’s not good. Oh, and the interface is unintuitive and ugl… well the interface looks ok, just doesn’t work well.
Oh, one more thing about HOME that is just so incredibly stupid - when someone plays an arcade game, uses a keypad etc. nobody else can use it, so when the person using a given device decides to eat a five course dinner, or take a really big dump everyone else is screwed – another great design choice Sony.

To sum up.

HOME is a piece of crap! The end.

HOME does have one good side though – the connection to the servers is so unstable that with a bit of luck you won’t be able to log in at all… or you’ll be disconnected a few minutes after you log in. As EXramp put it – “Thanks to Sony you’ll know how it feels to be kicked out from your own HOME”.

Now for the New Xbox Experience.
Let me start by saying that for me NXE is not as criminally offensive as HOME, but I do not have many positive thoughts about it.
First of all it pisses me off that M$ forces something on me that I don’t really want. Like Vista on Notebooks – you want to get one with XP, but you just can’t. Come to think of it NXE is exactly like Vista – it looks really good, has some cool effects and options that the original Dashboard didn’t have, but most of them are useless or unavailable and the whole thing is as user friendly as a hollow spoon. I don’t care how much practice you have – using it will always be a frustrating experience.
Honestly I can’t really figure out who the people from Micro$oft had in mind when they designed the thing. The 360 is supposed to be a platform for hardcore, male players, but they create cartoonish Mii-like avatars (which you HAVE to create and use) which seem rather opposite to “hardcore, male”. They want to attract casual players, kids, elderly women and lepers? Great, but they don’t have games for them. So then why? Why create something that has no defined function and is as intuitive to use as a hydron accelerator?
To be completely frank with you I can’t really experience everything NXE has to offer because according to M$ I don’t live in a civilized world and am not worthy – hence, many of the “cooler” NXE features are not available to me. That must be because M$ still thinks the Earth is flat and that civilization only exists on the piece of land from Washington to Florida.
NXE does have a few good features that I must (for the peace of my own mind) enumerate. First and foremost the ability to “install” games on the HD – every 360 owner probably loves that feature for a number of reasons the most important being the reduced noise that the 360 makes. And believe me it’s a significant change. Xbox is still a rather loud machine but now you don’t have to worry about permanent hearing impairment. Also, most games tend to load a bit faster. Of course not everything that shines is gold. There are reported issues with some titles – sound skipping, problems with cut-scenes, etc. A small price to pay if you ask me.
Unfortunately people with the 20GB model can only install one or two games and if they want to install more they will need to buy the in-fucking-credibly expensive 120GB hard dive – courtesy of Microsoft.
Come to think of it the game installation seems to be the only positive feature. How odd.
Now the negatives. First of all the NXE is much slower to use that the Dashboard blades. Also, a lot more has to load which makes it even slower. I don’t care how it looks – it’s an equivalent of an operating system of the console and it should primarily be fast and intuitive and it fails to achieve both qualities. Also, for some reason the swollen brains behind the creation of this deformed mutant decided it will be fun to add 500 additional pages to every section and make the users scroll though at least half of them to reach any executable function. Do I have to say it makes it even slower? Well, do I?
Another decision that doesn’t seem to be compatible with my cognitive processes is the necessity for absolutely every component to load before I can download anything from the Marketplace. It looks like this – you want to download a trial of a XBLA game, so you scroll through 237 “boxes to reach” it, you press the “A” button and the you think you will actually and finally be able to use the “DOWNLOAD” link, but you can’t, because it’s grayed out until every little picture and piece of text loads from the Marketplace. It’s extremely annoying. You can also take three guesses how that affects the speed of using the NXE. I will give you a small hint – it doesn’t make it any faster.
Oh, by the way – if you happen to have a long friends list be prepared to spend a lot of time scrolling through all the avatars that just had to have some stupid background elements behind them and are 20 meters apart from each other.

NXE seems to feature some better community tools, like parties to make chatting and exchanging pictures more… I don’t really know how it affects the community activities because every time I get to the part where I want to set up a party my thumb goes numb from all the scrolling so I turn off the console and go to sleep.
I must however admit that using the NXE is a pleasure for your eyes. It features many subtle animations and effects that really make it attractive. But again, it’s not the point.
Also, the new in-game menu that you get after pressing the “guide” button works very well (this is what happened to the old Dashboard – it was redesigned a bit and turned into the new “guide” menu). It’s clear, fast (surprisingly) and has more options than before.

In the end however I really find the NXE a pointless creation. Apart from the game installs it didn’t introduce anything useful and only made using the 360 a bit more annoying. Sure, it looks great, but I would rather have a faster interface than better looks.

Two words of comparison of the “community functions” of HOME and NXE.
Both introduced some new features for the users of PS3 and 360, but in this regard I must give Sony a plus, because HOME actually lets you interact with other players (both your friends and random people) – provided you are not constantly disconnected. NXE simply expanded your options to interact with people from your friend list and it did it in a relatively simple way.

Still, I find both HOME and NXE more than underwhelming and I like HOME more only because I don’t have to use it.

A game of dreams

2008-11-11T11:40:00.002+01:00

When you have a strong desire of sharing an experience to the others, you have already started your design concept.

Though you may feel it in a different way, in Cloud, we tried really hard to communicate and protect this experience. It is the feeling of youthfulness, of your memory and the feeling of imagination which we all enjoyed in our life.

Where did the inspiration come from? A lot. The beatiful sky with clouds and white moon, every dreams about flying including Miyazaki's films, true love, joyfulness and goodness from Katamari Damacy, childhood memories, ocean, mountains, etc...

I always wish to make a video game that makes you feel more productive and enjoy your life better. Most video game today is about addiction. But for Cloud, it is designed to be something you can put down and go back to enjoy your life at any time. No failure, no saving. You pick it up and leave it with no second thoughts...

Xinghan "Jenova" Chen, one of the game's creators

Many of you might have played flOw - a game which started its life as a piece of university thesis and ended up as nothing short of a legend among the Playstation Network dwellers and one of the most iconic PS Store's titles. Some of you might have liked the game so much, that they decided to check out thatgamecompany's homepage and may have noticed the other game called Cloud. Maybe even downloaded and played it. This review is for those of you who haven't.

I don't know Jenova Chen, but I know I admire him. He and his teammates are people who can see beyond the realm of consumer-driven rules of making video games and have the courage and determination to pursue their own, independent vision. Great minds with great ideas, knowing hot to both express them and share them with the rest of us. The true artists. And their creations are just what true art is supposed to be: subtle, gentle, not totally overwhelmed with flashy advertisement campaigns and psychological tricks to keep you glued to the screen, but honest and serene. Letting you submerge in the deep dreamworld it helped you create for yourself or, if you don't like it, letting you forget about it with no hard feelings.

I had planned to tell you about the game itself - what you do, how you are supposed to play... I think I won't though. Just go here and have a look around. See for yourself if that's the kind of thing you would enjoy.

Me, I just wish the graphics were a little more realistic, especially the occasional bits of land beneath. Should that be the case, if what I see on my computer screen looked a little more like what I see through my window, Cloud would definitely find its place on my top ten list on the right side of this text. Still, in case of games like this one, graphics are not the most important thing. The emotions and feelings are what truly matters. Besides, the cutscene images are mind-blowing.

This wasn't much of a review, because, if you think about it, it's useless trying to review true art. Or the emotions true art evokes. I merely wanted to tell you that there is a little game called Cloud, which that may change the shape of your mind for a couple of minutes. It's completely free and if you don't like it, it will quietly and painlessly remove itself from your hard drive and life. (in other words: they even remembered not to clutter our precious Windows registry upon installation) It can't hurt to try it.

PS
Thatgamecompany has currently one more title under development, again on PS3, called simply "Flower". It looks spectacular. I just can't wait...

To Hell With It

2008-11-03T14:36:00.003+01:00

What the fuck is this?

This was my reaction when I started up the PS3 demo of Alone in the Dark. The PS3 version was God-only-knows how much longer in development and it’s just incredible that not only they didn’t make the game better, but actually made it worse.
First of all the graphics are just… bad. There is no need for some creative adjective here. They are BAD. The textures are in much lower resolution that their 360 counterparts (let alone the PC ones), the screen tearing is just as bad as in the Xbox version and there is aliasing everywhere. Looking at Carnby standing in front of fire (which is the main theme of the game) is like watching a dancing wood saw –it’s that bad.

Second thing is the controls. Atari claims that the controls are “so incredibly, fantastically, very improved” over the original ones. Now that is bullshit. They took a rather bad scheme and made it worse. Did you people ever heard about content sensitive controls?! HUH?! You still have the silly system where you have one button to pick up a table and a different one to put it down. Two buttons change your perspective into 1st person (depending on conditions) and there are multiple buttons for different action when in fact there could be just one. Sure they decided to “free” the camera and give the player control over it, but it has absolutely no impact on the gameplay (actually, the fixed camera was better) and only adds another button to the controls (you have to press it to get into a combat stance).

I bet most of the bugs that were present in the original releases are still in the game.

It’s like giving a sculptor more time to work on his creation because it was ill-proportioned and all he could do is cut the head off.
Good job Atari, good job.

I love this.

2008-11-01T20:19:00.008+01:00

Before I indulge myself in a detailed review of the game in question, I shall take the liberty of expressing my feelings about the title in one, uncomplicated sentence:

THIS IS THE SHIT!!!

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. After the Homecoming misery which was all about Silent Hill breaking my high hopes, I got a game I had no expectations about, and it just blew my socks off. Yes indeed, Dead Space is a nearly perfect horror-shooter and you should buy it right about now. I mean it.

Just a couple of minor boo-boos, just to get them out of the way. First of all, loading of trophy-data in PS3 version is placed right in the middle of the juicy transition between the welcome "press start" screen and the main menu, which is weird and kinda breaks the mood a little. Second of all... Well, after watching the trailers with that haunting "tinkle tinkle" song and violent monster attacks, I got the impression that the protagonist will be all alone in the game, trapped in a derelict spacecraft and surrounded by deadly creatures. I was wrong - there are actually some NPCs - very cliched NPCs at that, which disappointed me a little, because at first it felt like playing Doom3. Fortunately, everything else in the game is absolutely marvelous, but still... were it not for the standard American Spacecraft Crew Complete With Your Standard American Black Guy Captain, Your Standard American White Panicky Chick Accompanied with Your Standard American I-Will-Be-The-First-Victim-And-I-Will-Be-The-Second-One Dudes and some very predictable plot-turns I would be singing hallelujah and this whole review would be rhymed. Well, nothing's perfect. The thing is - Dead Space is fun, fun, fun; full of great things I'd like to share with you.

Great thing number one: Everything is real-time, or actually, real-space.
Every auxiliary screen - including the 3D map, the inventory, the log storage, mission objectives, the communication interface and gameplay tips, is displayed as a hologram right in front of the protagonist. It moves when you do, it turn around when you move the camera - everything in real-time. Plus, there are no health-meters placed in the screen corners. Instead, this information is displayed by a set of colored indicators on the protagonist's back. Sure, it looks just a tiniest little bit unrealistic, but is really very effective and quite enjoyable. The holograms themselves were a brilliant idea - an excellent device for enhancing the realism and maintaining the heavy and scary atmosphere and perfectly fitting the game's Resident Evil 4 third person perspective.
Oh, there's one more great thing - the navigation device, which, upon being activated, flashes a blue line for a moment, showing exactly where you are supposed to go next. That same line is also permanently visible on your map.

Great thing number two: The Gore.
Hell yeah, there's blood everywhere. Mangled, dismembered corpses being "raped" and mutated by abominable alien creatures and brought back to unlife. People seemingly growing straight out of walls, whose purpose of life has been reduced to breeding more abominable alien creatures. Unborn human embryos transformed into wall-crawling predators. And more. I could tell you something more practical about their design, but I think the word "appropriate" will suffice. They are not very pretty and particularly interesting, but then again, they are not supposed to be. They are fast, agile and incredibly aggressive, which more than makes up for any design flaws they may have. None of them look silly or out of place - that's the crucial thing, and you won't have time to take a closer look at them anyway.
But oh, how they bleed... And oh, how they delightfully fall apart having been cut to bits by my ripper, making that lovely squishy-squishy sound... especially in zero-gravity. Splendid.

Plus, there are maybe two million ways of dying in this game. I didn't have a chance to experience that during my first playthrough (I had picked "easy"), but now, feeling insane, I decided to try out "hard" and... Stickman, my man... You were so right... ;-) The hell of it is - dying is actually part of the fun. Especially since there are many, many savepoints and even checkpoints to the rescue, you can pick up pretty much exactly where you were... "left off", so to say.

Great thing number three: The Environments.
Totally industrial. After all - this is a planet-cracking, mining spacecraft, we're talking about. Rusty metal and electric lights. Narrow corridors and giant engineering chambers. Dark and messy. All the same, yet somehow not overwhelmingly repetitive. What more could you possibly need? What? The decompressed "outdoor" areas? Sure, they're here, I was just about to mention them.
Once you enter the vacuum, a rapid decompression takes place, which is portrayed by a lovely pixelated blur effect. Then, as the vacuum can carry no airwaves, only the vibrating metal beneath your feet makes some sounds, which are muffled and barely audible. All except your screams and gasps for air.
Lack of air is good, but lack of gravity is better. Normally, the suit let's you walk over the surface, probably with the use of magnets. However, you may jump and fly all the way to the opposite wall or the ceiling, which is quite amusing. Unfortunately, the monsters can do that too, so don't be surprised if all of the sudden you'll see a one-legged (actually it's a tail) mutant slowly flying at you with its claws stretched out and ready to kill.
Speaking of the suit - just look at it. I have never seen anything like this... I can't even begin to describe it... I mean, if anyone asked you to imagine a space suit, would it look anything like this? (Don't tell me it would, because that means you're obviously lying.) Dear EA guys (EA?? Jesus, is this really EA who made this game??), I don't know what you are smoking, but it surely can't be bad for anyone's health.

Great thing number four: The Story.
Argh... Fuck, just go ahead and play the damn game already, because I would hate to spoil anything!! Well, as I have already mentioned, there are cliched NPC's and some predictable plot-turns. Additionally, I must admit that the basic concept of the game is also not very ground-breaking, (after all, the theme of alien monsters in space has been exploited over and over for more than twenty years) but again, it's appropriate. Not too simple, not too psychological either; overall, fitting for the game, except for... Yes, there are some elements which elevate the Dead Space Plot far beyond the seemingly infinite realm of horror-shooter mediocrity. For example, I really liked the game's take on religion: how people (especially rich people) can take something and start worshipping it, creating cults, spending massive amounts of money on God-knows-what... Once you actually think about the story, draw some conclusions and make some implications, the plot becomes a wonderful satire on human stupidity and the everlasting "come to think of it, we brought it down on ourselves" or even "maybe it is we who are true monsters" theme. There is more stuff I'd like to tell you about, but that would spo..... I THOUGHT I"VE TOLD YOU TO PLAY THE GAME!! C'mon! I'm dead serious! Stop reading and play it. Now, damn it!!!

Great thing number five: The Conclusion. (?)
Those of you who have already played the game will probably notice that I skipped quite a few things - like the telekinesis ability, or stasis, which "magically" lets you slow down the thing you are aiming at. I haven't even mentioned the store which lets you buy items with money you collect or the suit and weapon enhancement system. The fact is, these things just don't matter very much. What matters is the feel of the game. Dead Space is a great, gory space-horror-shooter. If you don't like things like that, feel free to skip it. Yet, if you do enjoy killing/being killed by scary, grotesque creatures, madly dashing through the dark maze of metal corridors, trying to steady your hand while being torn to pieces by bosses bigger than your hometown... WELL, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?!? PLAY THE MOTHERFUCKING GAME!!! NOW!!!

On a different note.

I don’t like EA, I really don’t. For me it’s a commercial monstrosity that only cares about what it eats. And let’s face it, before EA started to devour all the talented studios they could put their dirty little hands on they didn’t even make games. No, they were mass producing plastic, garden gnomes. The same ones every year too.
EA was an equivalent of an uncle you don’t like who visits once a year, pinches your cheek, blows his cigar smoke right in your face and tells you how much you’ve grown- even though you’re twenty eight – then ruins Christmas an leaves.

And then they announced their internal studio was making a game, and not some licensed piece of crap, but an original IP. Not only that – they had the balls to make it a survival horror (an action one, but still). They, of all companies, had the nerve to put up a fight with the likes of Silent Hill, Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark. “How delightfully absurd.” – to quote That Guy with the Glasses. And you know what? EA fucking ripped off everyone’s balls – all of them. Right now the only game that could be better than Dead Space is Resident Evil 5. Seriously.

Dead Space is one of the best, if not THE best game I’ve played this year. It takes a lot from other games, but has new ideas as well and those it “borrows” it makes better. The holographic line that shows you the direction you need to go, the vacuum sections, the zero gravity sections, the adaptive ammo system (you only get ammo to the weapons you carry at the given time), the wonderfully brutal combat (best design I’ve seen in years), great enemies (many types – all completely different), excellent music, fantastic graphics, well written plot… I could go on for a long time with this.
No, Dead Space is not perfect, but it’s bloody damn close.

I bow to you EA Redwood Shores, because you’ve made a game that I truly adore.

P.S.
Rumor has it, that the sequel is already being developed. It just can’t come soon enough.

The Bleeding Skies

2008-10-30T17:52:00.003+01:00

As a foreword I will confess than I’ve never finished the first two games released on the PS2. Hell, not only that – I actually only played like half an hour of the first one. I was hyped for the first game and spend countless hours browsing through the amazing website that promoted it. It was supposed to be a dream come true - a truly Japanese horror turned into a video game. But when my PS2 swallowed the DVD it was like getting your favorite soup with a dead, half-rotten rat in it. The game’s hallmark feature – the sightjack (the ability to see through enemy’s eyes) turned out to be a pain to use and the game was more unforgiving than your boss after crashing the company car. I didn’t touch it ever again and I didn’t even consider getting the second one.
However, during the absence of horror games, on a gaming session with EXramp we downloaded the Siren demo from the Japanese PSN. I have to say that when I pressed X over the Siren icon in XMB I was expecting the worst – the same clunky controls, the same silly level of difficulty and I was just so wrong. I won’t bother writing about the demo, because you had a chance to read EXramp’s impression and instead I’ll concentrate on the final product.

Siren: Blood Curse (or New Translation as it’s known in Japan) tells a story about a TV crew stranded on an island where people are killed and turned into undead monsters (the Shibito). The events are somehow connected with a blood rain the falls on the village. The story is not that different from the ones in the previous Siren games, but I can tell you it’s a really good one. There are some unexpected twists that made me blink twice to shed off the surprise. The plot is well written, very well executed and you will have doubts about that exactly is going on until the very end. I’m not going to tell you more, because I wouldn’t want to ruin anything, but rest assured that the (circa) twelve hours you spend with the game won’t be wasted.

Just like the story, the characters are well developed and the actors responsible for the voice overs should get a bonus in shape of pineapples and hominy for doing such a bloody good job. This voice acting with the very nice character models make the game feel more natural (giving the circumstances) and realistic – which greatly contributes to the experience. The Shibito are also excellently modeled and will make you very uneasy every time you encounter them.
The overall atmosphere is simply top notch mainly do to great sound (You want to have a nice surround system for this game, you really do.) and great graphics. You’ll fall in love with the dark skies with red clouds flowing on the horizon. It’s all very intense and somehow charming. The parts of the game that happened during misty days are also incredible with the deaf silence of foggy locales. However, considering the downloadable nature of the game some sacrifices had to be made. Some of the textures look more like someone’s smeared brain than anything else and no, it doesn’t add to the atmosphere – it’s just ugly. Still, most of the time you won’t notice that because you’ll be in the sightjack mode. And the sightjack mode is a completely different kind of shit – there are multiple filters layered on the screen and it’s much harder to move and even see, so even though you have an idea where your enemies are there is this sense of dread that you might make a wrong turn by mistakes and find your guts on Shibito’s knife. And believe me, it happens more often than you can imagine. The ability to look though Shibitos’ eyes can be nerve wrecking by itself as those creatures do not go to the kindergarten – you can take my word for it.
The game can be pretty scary at times but it’s mostly disturbing. I’ll give you my favourite example as it’s something that still gives me nightmares.
There is a part of the game where you control a small girl and you need to escape or hide from the Shibito (the girl can’t use weapons). At one point the only viable place to hide is an old furnace… you can’t even imagine how many times a Shibito was treading by my hideout and I was sure that the monster will light the furnace up and I will be burned alive. When you read this it might not sound like much, when you’re experiencing this in the game it does make you breathe in a very shallow and quiet way.

The gameplay is something a bit different as well. You will control multiple characters throughout the course of the game – some can fight, use weapons and items and some can only hide. There are puzzles in the game (save one), but rather natural choices. You come across a locked door – you need the key, but the key is guard by a Shibito with a rifle, so you need to distract the Shibito with something first.
This game is a lot more about survival and horror that any other survival horror. I can tell you that.
One thing that (at least for me) ruins the climate a bit is the whole game is objective based. You start a chapter and you get a set of objectives that you must complete – reach floor x, find a fuse, start the elevator. It does make the gameplay a bit more fluid and you won’t be going in circles wondering what to do, but on the other hand it feels as natural as eating rocks through a straw.
The gameplay itself is not particularly balanced either. If you don’t have a weapon there is no way to take a Shibito out (apart from a few scripted encounters), but when you do have a weapon there is no stopping you – you can take out almost everything on your path – unless it has a gun – if it does, you are screwed. And it goes on like this – you either hide all the time, or kill every Shibito you can find. It makes the stealthy parts sometimes a bit too hard and the action parts way too easy.

The game is great for collectors – there are many items to find (that includes weapons, documents, plot items and so on) and in most cases it will take multiple playthroughs to get everything. There are no bonuses for collecting all items, but for people who like to get one hundred pre cent out of their games it is an incentive to finish the game more than once. There is an “Archive” section in the main menu where you can browse through your findings and I bet you’ll be surprised how much work went into this game. For example all the videos you’ll find in the game are neither CG or engine based but actually recorded by hand with real actors (I’m not taking about story cut scenes here, but rather about video tapes you’ll find scattered throughout the game). I find it very cool and it’s something that adds to the immersion.

Siren: Blood Curse is without a doubt a great game with its own ideas and mechanics – something that seems more ambitious and less action oriented than what we are exposed to lately and it only makes the game better in my eyes. It’s also an excellent survival horror with thick atmosphere and great story. It may not be perfect, but it doesn’t really matter, because its flaws are minor and insignificant. If you haven’t played it yet, be sure to download at least the demo from PSN. And if you happen to live in Europe or Japan you can get a disc version (since today) as well as the downloadable version.

'I know all about Silent Hill.'

2008-10-23T20:29:00.011+02:00

If you were a moron, you could say the Silent Hill wheel has come full circle. The American games neatly wrapped the Japanese ones in a Zero-to-Five envelope. They dug their teeth into the original Silent Hill 1 magic, redefining and reshaping things their way, while at the other end they wrapped the series into chains and pulled it into the cinema near you. Is it right or wrong? Does it even matter?

Naturally, that full-circe, envelope thing is a load of bullshit. Origins and Homecoming were made by two different companies, with different ideas, goals and attitudes. In fact, they are two completely different games, having only two things in common: the title - or at least a part of it - and that they both carry a neat tag "Made In The U.S.A." Before I tell you that I think it's just wrong and explain that by "into the cinema near you" I meant Homecoming would make a great Silent Hill movie, but not necessarily a great game, let me ask you this: what do we actually expect from every incoming Silent Hill installment? The answer is - another Silent Hill 2. We want sheer perfection - impeccable atmosphere, truly disturbing monsters, filthy and disgusting and yet strangely charming locations and a set of characters thrown in a heartbreaking story, skillfully delivered into our hungry brains. And of course a perfect blend of action and mind-rattling puzzles, while we're at it.

Yet, at this point, it's obvious that this is not going to happen. Ever. Every later Silent Sequel did have some of the above features, but there was always something wrong. We felt disappointed with SH3's lack of innovation. We felt angry about SH4's tedious "do it again with Eileen" repeatedness. We weren't content with SH0's SH1-but-not-nearly-that-cool taste. So we waited in fear, watching teaser after teaser, interview after interview, beta version after beta version marked only by Alex's changing hairstyle. And now the wait is over. What about Silent Hill 5? Did the Double Helix Team Silent Next's anticipated child called Homecoming surpass all its imperfect predecessors and is ready to be called THE NEXT GREAT SILENT HILL GAME and A NEW HOPE FOR SILENT HILL FRANCHISE?

No.
Sorry.
That just didn't happen.

What should a game reviewer begin with while dealing with a Silent Hill game? The plot. And the story, once you actually get to uncover it, is good. Dare I say, it's one of the best things in Homecoming, saving it from the depths of games hell and the "total disaster" label. Sure, there are a little too many characters involved and the last stage of the game smells suspiciously of the dreaded Saw series, but I think that, no matter who you are, you'll agree with me that they could have fucked this up in an even worse way. The protagonist, one Alex Shepherd, is actually very likeable and if you manage to forget about his strange hairstyle being the result of years of wicked experiments, you may find controlling him a very enjoyable experience. Most of other characters are unfortunately not that likeable, especially his seemingly retarded brother Josh, but, well, you can't have everything. As you can see, I'm not going to spoil a single little fact from the story, but I will say that the plot is well-constructed and even manages to throw some unexpected turns at you. I liked that. Sometimes it made me forget about all the things I'm about to write about.

Straying away from the main plot and exploring the ominous town of Shepherd's Glen which apparently has misteriously found itself on the east coast of Toluca Lake somewhere after SH2 but before SH5, we'll come across some strange things like ash laying aroung in Silent Hill itself, of Pyramid Head's triangular pyramid head. At one point, I asked myself "is it actually a part of the games or the movie timeline?" To this day, the answer eludes me. I'm not sure whether asking if this or that is a part of the official Silent Hill timeline makes a lot of sense, because with all those multiple endings and the very surreal nature of the world presented make space for an awful lot of loose ends (like Frank Sunderland's son and daughter-in-law mentioned to have gone missing in Silent Hill in The Room - no matter how hard I try to make that work with SH2's possible endings, I fail miserably), but I suppose one would be right to ask "what is this smoke coming from the asphalt, when the town itself has never been deserted as there was no underground fire". These are just some of Homecoming's factual inconsistencies, which I believe are obvious effects of trying to combine the Silent Hill The Game and Silent Hill The Movie universes.

Coming to the more practical aspect of Homecoming, I have to say that playing this game can be a real emotional roller-coaster, but for all the wrong reasons. It is terribly unbalanced, unforgiving and cruel. The already famous fighting system with dodging and rolling on the ground does make a lot of sense in theory, although its execution is just... so very bad. Most enemies have means to reach and hurt you, even when you lie on the floor gathering your guts together, and knock you right down again. And again. And again. Until you die. And after you've respawned, you find yourself miles back, more often than not right next to glowing Halo of the Sun signifying a savepoint. There are checkpoints, but too few and too far between - the phenomena more than perfectly commented by FallingStickman: there are some places where it gets so hard, you wish to stop playing and take a break; you cannot however, because quitting the game means canelling the checkpoints and starting from the last save which happened so long ago, you think you've made it back on your PS2.

Controls are Homecoming's greatest misery. The inventory is split into two sections: one for items and one for supplies. Entering it with L1 and L2, while L2 and R2 are used for aiming and shooting (as you can see I own the PS3 version) is unintuitive. Choosing the desired item by carefully pointing at it with your stick is even more unintuitive. Using a healing object with pre-assigned buttons is just reckless. God knows how many times I wasted a health drink by pressing L1 and square, while all I wanted to do was to perform a force attack. If that's not wrong, I don't know what is.

The enemies design can be summed up in just three words: NO MASAHIRO ITO. Nurses straight from the movie. Skinned dogs which are just skinned... dogs. Schisms looking like sharks. Sharks? Godawful needlers which you might call disturbing because their heads dangle from their crotches. Siams which look like overgrown siamese twins, only with SH3's Closer's arms. Piramid Head... or actually Boogeyman or whatever the fuck they insist to call him... and the most idiotic thing of all: smogs - once you defeat one of them, please take a second to look down at its decaying corpse, with all of its pink and yellow-glowing bulges (I might have seen a similar thing in one of Electric Six music videos) and ask yourself "is this how a Silent Hill monster should look like?" If your answer is "yes", I loathe you.

There is no structure, no similar traits, no common theme. Just like in Silent Hill Origins, the monster design is just one big melting pot of ideas, some of which look promising and some of which are so ridiculously bad you feel like weeping watching them. I think the bosses are somewhat better - each of them neatly manifesting what they are supposed to (I can't tell you more, it would spoil the plot), yet even here - the common factor between them and the regular enemies is extremely elusive, maybe even it's just not there at all.

Moreover, the difficulty curve is actually non-existent. Instead, the level leaps and drops with each encountered monster, which leads to some very awkward, dismaying situations. Let's take the already mentioned needlers. These creatures are easily the biggest menace of Homecoming - with their ability to walk on walls and ceilings and effectively block your attacks with their long and sharp limbs. Every time you run into one of them - or more, which is usually the case - you pray. Or utilise some of the game's bugs to your advantage. Fortunately, the needlers disappear at about three quarters of the game, only to be replaced with actual human opponents: evil cultists dressed like town dwellers from the movie. You'd think that they would pose some considerable challenge, after all, they are real, thinking people, not mindless beasts. But no, once they see you they just dash in your direction, only to die having experienced some rapid yet violent encounters with Alex's dagger. In other words, you just have to tap X until they drop. Is it just me, or is there something wrong here as well? It is actually possible to learn how to play this game *right* and once you finish it - it gets quite easy on the next playthrough. But should honing your combat skills be the most important thing in a story-driven survival horror? Would adding an "easy" difficulty mode really hurt that much?

Thankfully, there are puzzles. Some of them are just laughably simple, some aren't - again, having SH2 puzzle difficulty selection would be a blessing - but after SH4 and SH0 I guess we should be just glad they're there. We have standard button-pressing, plate-moving, cable-switching ones, we have put-the-correct-item-in-the-correct-place ones and... Oh my God... There are also some riddle-decyphering ones, which I couldn't be happier about. I've missed them terribly since 2001.

The environments could be divided into two groups - differing significantly in quality. The "normal" world, if that expression may indeed be used, seems rather mundane. You can hardly see anything, even with the flashlight illuminating only the most immediate walls and the two colors seen most often are dark gray and darker gray. There is no trace of that "abominable but charming at the same time" quality, but it's not so bad either. Just, well, an empty town and a whole lot of fog. Still, the game makes up for that emptiness with the nightmare world. Blood and rust, rust and blood, ever so delightful. Let me tell you, that the only times I smiled while playing Homecoming was during the nightmare sequences. They are detailed, disturbing, reflecting SH1's environments and in a proper way. I might even say, that it's worth buying and playing the game just for them. (and the story, to some extent)

The music is Akira Yamaoka all over again and that's the only thing I have to say about it, because - honestly - I just didn't seem to hear much of it. Sure, I remember some stingers here and there, nothing really special, I remember the sad tune accompanying the second boss fight, which was good enough and I remember that McGlynn woman's voice singing another Yamaoka song during the credits. As I've said somewhere before, your standard Silent Hill music, nothing more and nothing less. I must admit I've grown tired of this same set of sounds game after game, over and over again, but maybe it's just me. On the other hand, I would be scared if they were to change it to something else. I've used the word "wrong" too many times already.

Before I end this review and let my dear friend FallingStickman post some of his thoughts, which he may be having, I would like to mention one more thing wrong with Silent Hill Homecoming. Something far less substantial than bad controls and awful monster design, yet not of a lesser importance. I namely think, that handing the series over to an American team was a bad decision. Silent Hill has lost its Japanese soul. Again, before you ask me what the hell I am talking about, let me ask you to try and imagine how it would be like if Rockstar let some Japanese game developer make the next Grand Theft Auto. Think about it. I dare you to visualise how this game would actually look like, let alone FEEL like.

The first step towards this dreadful nationality shift was the Silent Hill movie. You may love it or hate it, but the thing is - you can just ignore it, because this is just an adaptation. An unofficial spin-off. The second one was Origins - which painfully tried to mimic the atmosphere of SH1 and nearly succeeded, were it not for it's simplicity and weird alterations of SH1's characters. But then again - it was originally a PSP installment. You know, just like MGS Portable Ops. Your average PSP series compliment, which you might have ignored just as well, like SH Play Novel on Game Boy Advance. Yet, this time it's number 5. Another "big" installment and the first on the next-gen consoles, to make things worse. So while Homecoming gained something from this radical nationality switch - most notably better dialogues and more natural voice acting, it also lost the trademark Japanese polish, the evidence of which I've explained above and the trademark Japanese sense of strangeness, or more adequately: foreigness. If you don't know what this is about, try and compare Siren 3 with the most recent trailer of the everupcoming Alan Wake. Resident Evil with Nocturne. You'll immediately see what I mean.

That being said, I think it's high time to shut down the series. Why oh why, you ask? Yes, I would really like to believe that everything's going to be okay and there are better Silent Hills in development, maybe even I'll get to play a true SH2's successor, before the series turns 10.

Yet, at this point, it's obvious that this is not going to happen. Ever. Every later Silent Sequel will have some of the SH2's features, but there will always be something wrong. We'll feel disappointed with SH6's something. We'll feel angry about SH7's something. We won't be content with SH8's something else. So, especially with Yamaoka's revelations and two next movie sequels already confirmed and in production, we'll wait in fear, watching teasers, interviews, beta versions... And each time we'll be asking this same old question: what about Silent Hill X? Did the Team Silent X's anticipated child called XY surpass all its imperfect predecessors and is ready to be called THE NEXT GREAT SILENT HILL GAME and A NEW HOPE FOR SILENT HILL FRANCHISE?

No.
Sorry.
That just won't happen.

This won't be long, because EXramp pretty much nailed it. To my surprise no less, because I was thinking our opinions about Silent Hill 5 were much more different.

But just to add my five cents as Silent Hill is, next to Resident Evil, my favourite gaming series.
From my confrontation with Homecoming I came out a bit bruised, but more importantly surprised that I have enjoyed the game so much. It is a good game. Not only that, it actually is a good Silent Hill. I finished the game twice so far and I must say that I have a bit of an issue with the difficulty - on my first playthrough I was cursing like a drunken fisherman who lost his left eye in a bar fight just ten minutes earlier. I was dying every few minutes - the game is unforgiving to newcomers - and the fact that checkpoints and savepoints are scattered by the developers completely randomly doesn't help at all. However on the second playthrough the game became simply too easy. Before the last boss Alex's inventory was bursting with health drinks and first aid kits. Once you realize that unlike with other Silent Hill games
a bigger weapon is not always the better weapon the game becomes easier than picking your nose.

Another gripe that I have with SH5 is that there is just too much of the movie in it. I don't know, maybe Yamaoka just loves his bastard child so much that he decided to clone it, but since the first one was a girl and this one was supposed to be a boy he ended up with a violent hermaphrodite with emotional problems. Not only that. Instead of finding a a woman who would have a kid with him he went to a sperm bank and paid the janitor to take make the child for him.

Last thing - a note to people in Double Helix.
Learn your fucking craft or stop making games and start growing cabbage. After having a game so long in development you shouldn't release it with some many bugs and mistakes - however small they may be.

The game is full of inconsistencies - like you need to cut power to half a block in the town so you can get into a prison. You do it and the town goes dark, but once you get into the prison there is power inside and what is even more baffling in certain rooms you see rays of light coming through the windows even though there is night outside and there is no power. So where is this light coming from? God?
In the same part of the game some of the locations outside are shown during the day while others (just one loading screen away) are shown during the night. Now come on! You can do better than that, can't you?

Still, all those things are just minor blemished on an overall pleasurable experience. If you like Silent Hill, or survival horror games in general get this one, you probably won't be disappointed.

Little Big Beta

2008-10-10T19:48:00.002+02:00

I will be completely honest with you. I think Little Big Planet is the best thing that happened to video games industry since the first Playstation. Seriously.
I wanted this game ever since I saw the first footage and after spending a few days with the beta I can honestly say that this is one of the few games that will define this generation of hardware. And if it will succeed financially, and I’m sure it will, I anticipate a big comeback of classic platform games.

Little Big Planet’s roots are in all the great old-school 2D platformers that generations of players loved. Yes, the game may have 3D graphics (and damn good ones if you ask me), but the gameplay is 2.5D at most. It’s not bad by any means, far from it. Thanks to the fantastic physics engine and “materials” (simulating real-life materials like polystyrene, wood, stone, rubber, sponge and so on) used in the creation of all the stages the level of interactivity is beyond any platform game that I can recall (and I can recall quite a few).
The whole artistic design is created around that too and is just incredibly cute and adorable, but it’s not the cuteness of Viva Piñata. It’s something that appeals to a much broader audience - to my surprise actually. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary because I like silly, cartoonish designs, but when I showed the beta to EXramp, who is generally against putting into games anything that make little girls smile, he expressed an enthusiastic approval. I was shocked, shocked I tell you. It seems that Media Molecule really nailed the art design.

In the beta version of LBP there are only a few story levels designed by the developers. The function as both: tutorials and material/item storages. Before you’ll be able to build anything, you will need to get through those levels to acquire the “building blocks”. And LBP is about using those “blocks” in the most creative way you can muster. The level editor is unbelievably powerful – the possibilities are almost unlimited. Those who think that you’ll just see simple landscapes and some platforms are in for a big surprise. The amount of devices, triggering systems, switches and contraptions is impressive, but what’s even more impressive is what people can do with it. There is one level in particular that made my jaw drop all the way to the basement. I can’t really recall the author’s name (sorry bout that), but the level is called World of Colour (or something very similar) – it is one of the best levels I’ve seen in any platformer… ever. The person who created it should get a job in Media Molecule and a big pile of cash.
And yet the whole creating process is as easy as tying your shoelaces – by that I mean, that a 4-year-old might have a problem with it, but with some practice even he will be able to make helicopter out of it.
The only problem I have with the game right now is that it’s fairly easy to make a level that simply won’t work and player will not be able to finish it. That, however, is unavoidable and cannot be fixed. Still, if someone is diligent enough he will test his own creations for all possibilities of failure.
Another thing that worries me a bit is that a player can only publish five levels at a time. That is not a lot, but the again, if, let’s say, a million people will buy the game and everyone publishes those five levels it gives five million levels to play. Let me write it in capitals – FIVE MILLION LEVELS! Even if 1/10 of them are playable the potential is just mind-blowing.
And that leads me to the last thing – the community. Even in the beta the community is lively, prolific and helpful. Considering that everything (posting levels, comments and all sorts of interactivity) is completely done in-game I would have to say that it works extremely well.

The beta will end in a few days and when it happens I will be holding my breath until I die or get the retail version of the game. Because it’s worth it.

EDIT

Since I'm being subjected to constant nagging by my beloved finacee I should point out that Little Big Planet made a big and surprisingly positive impression on her. So big actually, that she WANTS me to buy the game and play with me, which is remarkable. That is something that doesn't happen very often even though she's not against games at all, and occasionally plays them as well.

et omnia vanitas...

2008-10-04T10:49:00.001+02:00

Longing for Still Life 2 (what's taking them so goddamn long?!) I decided to try out some other adventure games featured on Microids homepage, namely Dracula 3 and Sinking Island. While I haven't tried the latter, I've finished the former and here's what I think about it.

One big applause for not making the story painfully cliched - no, there is no Van Helsing on a blood hunt, no Jonathan searching for his beloved one, no Victorian Era. Instead, the year is 1920, the old Tepes castle, much like Transilvania itself, has been nearly leveled by the war and the protagonist is a simple, yet educated priest, who has been sent by his Vatican authorities to a sleepy village of Vladoviste in order to investigate the death of a certain female doctor who is to be made a saint. Needless to say, the investigation will take a few unexpected turns.

The setting is really promising - like in some good novel, the plot pretends to have nothing to do with the title, when, one by one, the disturbing details enter the stage, eventually placing the good Father right before the burning red eyes of the infamous undead voivode. However, a nice story is nothing if you can't sell it properly and even that does suffer from an acute case of anemia from time to time. So, as they say, let's get it on.

First of all, I must admit, that I've never played previous Dracula games, so the static "click-to-go-in-that-direction" first person gameplay was something of a surprise to me - not being a total adventure freak, I was quite amazed that they still make games like that. At least the interface is pretty intuitive with the cursor showing exactly where you can go, what can be examined or operated and how it is done. Too bad the inventory is a little worse - there's a standard set of empty slots and one "to go" stack, where every newly acquired item lands. You then have to take it out from the stack and place it in the normal inventory. Complicated and totally pointless.

From the inventory screen you also have access to the objectives list, the save/load menu, the dialogues section and the files department, which is really large, since there lot's of reading in this game. This includes the entire text of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (or so it seems, I didn't bother to read those 500 pages to be sure), many pictures, which you can inspect with a magnifying glass and many, many books and letters written in various languages and translated (nice touch). Finding your way through all this can get tedious, especially when you have to find a certain document or instantly switch between some of them; all the necessary icons and buttons are there, it's just not very comfortable to use them - I think spacing things out a little better might have done the trick.

The graphics are tolerable enough, if you manage to convince yourself that it's 2002. The backgrounds and cinematics are atmospheric and fitting, yet their rather simple design is just unimpressive. It's hard to be scared in this kind of environment. Then the character design. During the end credits, you get to see all the rendered models together with their concept sketches in the background. You compare them and ask yourself "where did they go wrong?" I know it's a matter of personal taste, but the people in Dracula 3 are just... warped, deformed in a dismaying fashion. Especially the gravedigger and the little kid. Even the protagonist - Father Arno Moriani - looks like a young, cartoonized version of Gabriel Byrne's character in Stigmata. Plus their movements are way too slow - again reminding me of the good old, but long since gone, days when such a thing was normal. The voice acting and the music are also tolerable enough, though I've found it strange that the dialogue options chosen by the player are not spoken out - when they usually lead to dozens of other questions which are spoken.

Most of the time Father Moriani tells you directly where he should go or whom he should talk to next which, in close co-operation with the detailed objective list in your inventory, makes the game quite straightforward. So are the dialogues themselves - you get a list of questions and you just ask them one by one, until you run out of options and the conversation ends. You never need to worry about saying something inappropriate which might get you into trouble or getting stuck altogether. The only times when the game actually pauses and lets you do the thinking are the puzzles.

Yes, the puzzles... The heart of any adventure game, aren't they? Dracula 3 features many of them, so, as you can probably guess, some are great and some are just horrible. Most of them are somewhat complex and require more then one activity to solve them. I was completely mesmerized by the one where you have to take the sample of your own blood - before you grab the needle and the torniquet, you have to sterilize the tools, which involves taking a pot, filling it with water, putting it on a stove, taking a piece of wood for the fire, letting the water boil and so on and so on. Neat. Then there are some standard button-pressing and switch-flipping ones, some use-this-on-that ones, even some what's-wrong-with-picture ones - diversity is definitely there. Fortunately, while most puzzles are not overly simple and do require some neural activity, they rarely cross the unpleasantness threshold are are usually quite fun to solve.

Then again, some puzzles are just agony, for example the one with counting white blood cells. I swear to God I did everything exactly the way I was supposed to (the game wouldn't let me do otherwise) and I just kept getting wrong results. I've consulted some online walkthroughs and apparently sometimes you have to repeat the puzzle to finally get it right. Plus, the puzzle itself is very tedious - just clicking on the right things in the right order over and over again. Unforgivable. I can imagine someone suffering a similar pain while trying to decode letters encrypted with Enigma (did they actually have Enigmas back in 1920?) and there are more. Again, I'm not an adventure game freak - escpecially since they've seized to be a proud game genre and have become underdogs, with the underdog sales and underdog quality - so I'm not really sure if such brain-boilers are normal or not. Yet, I believe that any element which makes you angry and willing to throw the goddamn game out of the window is a bad thing.

Just one more boo-boo before I wrap this up - the entire game is operated just by mouse, except for one thing and that's skipping dialogues and cutscenes which is done by hitting your space bar. Sounds like an unimportant little thing, but believe me, having to reach for a keyboard from wherever your hand is resting can be annoying. It especially bites since even the Esc key, which you'd expect to take you to an in-game menu or something, doesn't work.

It's not the worst game ever. It's (moderately) atmospheric, (moderately) clever and (moderately) enjoyable. For once, I managed to finish it (that means something), but then again, I had no second thoughts about uninstalling it and forgetting about it. If you need to take a break from the next-gen craze and feel like drinking a tepid tea instead of hot chocolate or ice-cold cocktail, go ahead and play it. It won't bite much.

PS
The last cutscene suggests there's going to be a sequel, this time during the WWII period and maybe it will be (moderately) better.

Fears and Thrills

2008-10-03T22:13:00.002+02:00

Being a Silent Hill fan[atic] I was waiting eagerly for the first next-gen entry to the series… and then I found out it was being developed by an American team. What’s even worse I found out that it will borrow some elements from the not so great Silent Hill movie. Oh, the horror, the horror. From that day everything went downhill. I didn’t like that the protagonist looks like a member of Westlife, I didn’t like the monster designs – especially those taken directly from the movie, I didn’t like the fact that they decided to include pyramid head – and take the movie version and I didn’t like the fact that they were putting so much emphasis on the combat. I didn’t like what the developers were saying during the production cycle and most of all I didn’t like what Akira Yamaoka said – the only guy from the original Silent Hill team claims that the best thing that connects all the games are the silly bonus endings. Let me make a direct comment to Yamaoka-san:

You are making the best gaming music, but please, shut the hell up. You are making a fool out of yourself.

Still, despite all those things I bought a US version of the game, because I can’t wait until it will have its European release. Why? Because I love Silent Hill and I will play any crap with the name attached. Well, excluding Silent Hill Arcade – for that Konami should burn in digital hell. Yes, I have finished Play Novel. And even though I’m very scared about how the game will turn out I already know that I will play it, see all the endings and make the best of it. And I knew since the day it was announced that I will add it to my collection. But know this - if this game fails to deliver at least to some degree I will embark on a personal crusade to punish those responsible.

A side note.
Have you seen the official SH:H website? It’s the most pathetic videogame site I’ve seen in many, many years. Being a web designer myself I can tell you that I’ve made a similar thing about the Silent Hill series… nine years ago… in high-school… alone… in two days… after school… with one hand. Why did Konami agree to put up on the net a deformed monstrosity like that is beyond my understanding.
So an offer from me to Konami – I can create a decent Silent Hill Homecoming for you, if you will promise me that you will forbid Yamaoka to speak in public.

Have Some Decency

2008-10-01T14:11:00.005+02:00

I have to tell you that I must be getting old. I’ve been browsing the internet extensively lately, reading a lot of forum threads and gaming blogs, not too different than our own and I found myself frowning more often than usual. There seems to be a growing trend to include cheap vulgarisms in statements for no real reason. No, I am aware of the fact that that has been done before and I don’t really mind reading the “F” word every second sentence as long as it has merit. Vulgarisms are a part of our everyday language and even though in most cases they aren’t necessary I find them a good way to make a point or emphasize an opinion. I condone that kind of language use. I do.
The problem is that even though I don’t mind listening to the Angry Video Game Nerd swearing or "Yahtzee" Croshaw calling people bastards I do have a problem with people offending or mocking others because they are have no way to prove their point.
I’ll give you an example.
I’ve read a review of Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise on a polish blog – the text itself isn’t that bad, save for the fact that the author’s grammar and orthography are not particularly good, but the review’s conclusion made me want to find that guy and kick him in the groin hard enough so that he would be unable to pass his genes. Let me quote.

“I can recommend it [the game] to caretakers of young children or single mothers who got child benefits. However, the game is probably best suited for girls who are so ugly that they need something better to do than get scared while looking at themselves in the mirror. Even a stud and a real man like me can find the game to be a pleasant change.

P.S
I forgot about horticulture students… I recommend the game to them too.”

At first I was pretty sure that the ending was some sort of cumbersome irony, but after reading the whole text for the second time I knew that the guy actually meant it.
Now, it’s one thing to call people names when it serves humorous purposes, but that was beyond my tolerance. In a goddamn Viva Pinata review of all things. Was it really necessary? I may not be some sort of self-righteous morality protector, but one needs to have some decency. Or leave the gaming world and become a politician.
It’s not just the blog. It’s all over the internet. You don’t have to search too far. Go to GameTrailers, check the forums and tremble. There are a lot of gaming message boards that feature insecure, aggressive teenagers who call everyone a moron, but the forums on GT harbor the largest and most diverse menagerie of boorish and militant assholes (yes, I used the word for a purpose). And they come in all shapes and sizes. People with common sense are few and far between in there.
Chances that you could have a normal discussion on GT are pretty much non-existent. You would be better off trying to breathe in outer space.
I don’t get it. It’s not politics we’re talking here, it’s games - an entertainment, a way of relaxing, spending your free time in a creative way that doesn’t involve hurting others. If you offend people because of a trivial matter like this I don’t want to know how you can react during a heated argument.
And I’m not really worried that our humble, little blog will face an assault of negative, hateful comments from the GT community… or any other for that matter, because most of the people on those boards feel the same way as I do, even if they themselves indulge in this shameful behaviour. I can only imagine that this must be the internet “incognito” syndrome. Let me tell you this. Just because you’re under an anonymous nickname it doesn’t make you less of an cretin.
I would really like to think that it’s just kids who do that, but I don’t think that’s the case. You see, you can expect children and younger teenagers to become emotional and aggressive during a discussion, because they are too impatient to look for suitable arguments and because of that they can act nervously. It’s normal at some age. Now, when a grown-up calls you a f***er because he doesn’t agree with what you have said or written it mean he’s an idiot. It clearly shows his cognitive processes are not developed enough to participate in an exchange of ideas and arguments. And that is what worries me because it directly influences game developers. I’ve written about it in my earlier editorial so I won’t go back to the topic. The thing to add would be that more stupid people joining the gaming community is good for the industry but not good for the core gamers. A paradox in a way.
I could go on, bringing fanboys into the equation, but that is a pretty broad material better left for another editorial, so I will stop here. Treat this block of test as a prelude to a series of editorials about gamers’ etiquette.

Actually why not write down a code of gamer’s behaviour – something like “Screaming SCHEIßE! into the microphone during Call of Duty match is considered faux pas and will not be tolerated.”

I dare you gamers to come up with a code like that and write your examples in comments under this article. When we will gather enough, we’ll make a comprehensive guide and put it up on a website.

Life

2008-09-15T21:26:00.001+02:00

“There was a Player that created life and he saw it was good. So he fed the life with… stuff and gave it an electrical butt so that the life could protect itself and kill others. The Player watched the life grow and change. The Player saw the life walk out of the primordial sea into the lands of the world, but he grew tired of the slow evolution so he mutated the shit out of the life and turned it into a demonic, carnivorous cow. The Player taught the cow how to use fire so that it could burn every village but its own and rule the land. But the cow was ungrateful. All but one cow city turned their backs on the Player, and they build cities of gold and silver, and guano. And blasphemy was on their lips, and they started to feast on turnips and marshmallows. So the Player taught the last faithful city of cow to build war machines from plastic and cheese and gave them ray guns and megaphones. The Player spoke to the cows and ordered them to kick the living shit out of the heathens until they return to the Player’s bosom. And there was much rejoicing. And as a reward the Player made a space ship so that the cow could rule the space. And then the Player died of boredom. The end.“

That pretty much sums up the experience Spore offered me. Spore is an odd game to review – I really had fun on my first playthrough, but it was diminishing very quickly on my subsequent approaches to the game. The game is not bad by any means, but has a few very irritating shortcomings that make playing Spore not nearly as entertaining as it could have been.

When all the hype around spore started to arise everyone was talking about it like it was the second coming. It’s not.
The gameplay of Spore is a mix of strategy and RPG, with the last (the space) phase being something of a single player MMO (makes no sense, I know). Since the game was said to be about evolution of your creatures I was expecting that feature to be most pronounced, but I found out it’s not entirely the case. The evolution part ends pretty much at the beginning of the civilization phase (the 4th one), which is about at ¼ of the game. The rest is about conquering the globe and going into space and let me tell you - the space stage is more than half of the game. Sure, you’ll be advancing in the last stage, but it’s more like a strategy game advancement than anything else. It’s done through trade and combat.

The first four stages are very brief – you can get from the cell to the end of the civilization phase in four to five hours and while it’s fun it seems really underdeveloped. Sure, you’ll be utilizing many of the game’s creation tools - you’ll shape your creature, your vehicles, your buildings and some other stuff, but none of it significantly influences how the game plays. Even though you’ll have different stats depending on what parts your plane has the changes are insignificant, especially considering how easy and forgiving the game is.
Will Wright said that the game was designed in such a way because he wanted everybody to be able to play it. I think he went a bit too far.
First of all, the game is really simplistic. I mean really, really simplistic. Even the most complex of the planet stages, the civilization one, utilizes three types of vehicles (land, air and water) and three types of buildings, and that’s it. Oh, sorry… there are turrets as well, silly me.
Second of all, Spore doesn’t pose any challenge. You can die and there is no penalty for that. You can loose a battle and there is no penalty for that either.
That is all until the space stage. In a split of a second you will be swamped with options and mechanics that are disproportional compared with the rest of the game. It’s not hard to learn them all, but it can be overwhelming at first.
And what can I tell you? Even with all the available options I simply found the space stage boring. After six hours I found myself drooling on my mouse-wielding hand with my eyes fixed on my spaceship. In that respect it reminds me of MMOs as well. It’s a grind.
Just one more thing about the difficulty; I’ve played the game on all three settings and I have to say that none of them works very well. Easy is just too easy. You’ll be through all the stages in a matter of eight hours. The game could almost play by itself. Normal is also too easy, but the space stage seems a bit better. And on hard the first four stages are also very easy, but the space stage is ridiculous – I had my colonies constantly attacked and destroyed and found myself starting from scratch time and time again – it was not fun.

And still, maybe excluding the space phase, I found the game to be a blast to play. It just works for some reason. There may be no challenge, but it’s a great game to relax with. Keep in mind however, that it works best in moderation. Play one stage, go to sleep then play the next one on another day. Finish the game on one sitting and you may find that you won’t want to play it again. I blame the space stage – it’s tiresome.
Also, the constant need to create new stuff every time you play a new species gets old rather quickly and can get on your nerves.

There is also one thing that bothers me the most probably. Regardless of the way you play, be it a friendly, aggressive or a middle road, your experience will be pretty much the same.

Technically Spore is great. It may not be a flashy game with photorealistic graphics, but the art design and uses of perspective are excellent. It’s great to look at and it makes it a tad more fun to play. I especially liked that space stage in that regard. The planets are small and it’s really fun to fly around them, look at the catroonish surface textures and the multicoloured atmospheres. The space is charming as well. It’s not EVE Online, but still. A standing ovation should go to the creators for the animation algorithms. You can make an eight-legged creature and each leg could have six joints and it will still move like it could exist in real life. I understand where all that development time went; because it certainly wasn’t spend designing gameplay mechanics.
Not much to say about sound – it’s there, it works, but the alien voices can get a bit irritating.

Some people protested about the “use” of religion in Spore and I kind of see their point now. You see, you conquer a city by using religion in pretty much the same way as you would by using force. You don’t destroy anything, but it’s still an attack in a sense. A bit disturbing.

So there you have it. Spore - another game by Wright that actually manages to convince you that it’s better than it actually is. Just like SimTower. Something should have been a lot more complex than it is, but works well enough for people to blindly buy millions of copies. And I’m ok with that.

For the Record.

The game uses an unbelievably ridiculous DRM. You can install the game a total of three (3) [III] times, because you’re only allowed to activate it three (3) [III] times. It’s just… WOW. EA should have delegates in the Polish parliament; they would fit nicely in there.

But in case of Spore the DRM is not a really big deal, because once you uninstall it, you probably won’t want to install it again.

Penumbra Level Pack

2008-09-12T15:49:00.004+02:00

One fine day I went to my local media store to buy some new cartridges my printer had been crying out for and, while I was walking through the PC games aisle, I caught a glimpse of a familiar cover with not so familiar subtitle.
'Penumbra: Requiem?' I asked myself. 'Could this be the third and final part of Penumbra? Hell, they've released it already and I didn't know anything... Damn vacation...'
The fact that the thing was bundled with Black Plague (the second part) was a little suspicious, but oh well... The things we do to maintain the review count...
About an hour later I started the game and about two (okay, so maybe three) hours later I finished it. Seriously, like, what was that all about? Confused like hell, I checked the official website and... Yeah, that's how utterly stupid I am.

All I had to do, was to check the box a little closer and I would have learned that Requiem is not, in fact, the third and final part of Penumbra trilogy, but just a bunch of levels the creators made to test out the game's engine. At some point they decided to try and make so more money out of it, so they released Requiem together with Black Plague, hoping that someone would buy it. Someone did...

There are 9 levels (more or less, depends if you count the cutscenes), all of which are about finding "keys" to open magic gates which teleport you to the next location. There are no enemies this time, but that doesn't mean you can't die - on a contrary, the opportunities to drown, explode, freeze to death, or fall to your doom present themselves. What's also lacking, is the Penumbra's trademark adventure element (pick up some item, examine it, then use it on some other item) - Requiem is more Portal-ish in nature, where you have to rely on running, jumping and limited interaction with the environment (throwing switches, moving around objects, etc.), so adventure game fans, who love spending nights figuring out how to make a jetpack from bubble-gum and some toilet paper* might be a little disappointed. On the other hand, Portal fans who happen to like Penumbra's dark atmosphere will feel right at home.

At this point I was going to write something about the story, but I think I'll give up, because the plot, if there actually is any, remains a mystery to me. According to the developers, Requiem picks up right when Black Plague left off, but sorry, I'm really unable to tell if that's true. The protagonist is on the run, trying to escape from the underground complex and that sort of makes sense, but the rest was just plain madness.

Speaking of madness, remember Clarence? No, he's not back, thank God, but this time, there will be as many as three voices speaking to us from within the protagonist's head. Thankfully, none of them is as terribly aggravating as that Clarence bastard and I must admit, I really got like the female one informing you about your progress with the keys (sounds like a cheap GlaDOS rip-off, but still).

Overall, Requiem is a pretty good game, even though it's a level pack, or a tech-demo, if you prefer. There are no monsters, but the music, the darkness and all that crazy-talking voices have a fairly good chance of keeping you on the edge. The levels are big and varied: caves, corridors, sewers, outdoor area and many more. The puzzles are interesting and, while some of them may get a little tedious, I guess you'll have at least some fun trying to figure them out. The bottom line - if Frictional Games includes some of these ideas into the third Penumbra (and, for heaven's sake - improves the goddamn monsters!!!) we're in for quite a treat.

* About that jetpack: add some antimatter and it will work.

Never Forgive.

2008-09-05T08:34:00.001+02:00

Seems that THQ really digs the Warhammer 40k universe – they made a very good strategy game (and are making a sequel), they are making a WH 40K MMO (at least they claim they are), they made the FPS - Fire Warrior (which I didn’t like because Tau suck ;) ) and now they are conjuring an action game.
The game is simply called Warhammer 40000: Space Marine and seems to be a shooter slash brawler.
I can’t really give you much detail about it, because THQ did not provide us with any details.

I can however tell you that there was a video from an early build of the game that showed a lot of promise. Even in that early stage of development the graphics look very good and the art style is grim enough to make a good 3rd person WH 40k game.
The game is fairly brutal and features sweet, slow-motion finishers. The video showed the title Space Marine fighting the forces of Chaos (with very nice Chaos space marines) in an abandoned city under siege by Chaos soldiers. I really hope they will put some Tau in that game so I can gut them with my chainsword. Oh, oh, and Tyranids. Can I please have tyranids? 

It seems that the footage leaked without THQs consent and is being taken offline as soon as someone submits it.

Ah well, seems we’ll just have to wait for something substantial.

Summer's not fun.

2008-09-04T16:50:00.001+02:00

The holidays are over and we are back.
During my time off I made a few observations about the summer in gaming context. First of all summer is a lousy time for gamers. Unless you like to reminisce or play old games that you didn’t have a chance to play before summer is the season of boredom because nothing comes out.
I can imagine it has something to do with the fact that people go on vacations and need to have money to buy pointless souvenirs so they are not willing to shell out a few bucks on new games, hence the publishers don’t want to risk lower sales.
I for one would be more than happy if I had a few new titles to play through during the only period in the year when I actually have some free time on my hands.

Second thing I’ve learned is that portable consoles are your friends when it rains and you happen to be away from home. Not only that – they are also your fiancées friends. Nothing like some collective brain storming while playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village (fabulous game by the way).
Another thing that I’ve learned is that the first DS is no good in the sun. If you ever wondered if you should sell your old DS and get the Lite one I encourage you to do it right away. I promise, you’ll be as happy as a clam.

In my infinite boredom I have decided that I will rather make another World of Warcraft character than play through Resident Evil 2 again. After playing a hunter for a while I came to a conclusion that WoW bores me to death and I would rather watch my nails grow.
I’ve been playing this game since open beta – that is about four years. I am pretty sure that the game started to bore me about two years ago. If anyone has an idea why I’ve been playing it since then let me know. I’ll be sure you’ll get a figurative coconut.
I will give WoW one more chance after Wrath of the Lich King is released, but I won’t hold my breath.

Another thing that, as a gamer, I don’t like about holidays is that when they are over there is an avalanche of new games. It’s not good, because I have neither time, nor money to play them all.

Oh well, at least I finally finished Resistance.
And tomorrow, a happy day – Viva Pinata 2 comes out ;) … Some impressions in the next few days.

War can't be THAT fun...

2008-09-03T17:37:00.007+02:00

Ladies and gentlemen, Red Alert 3 is almost upon us. Yeah, yeah, the legend among legends, 5 gazillion copies sold, le RTS extraordinaire, whatever... All I can say is - have you seen how damn colorful this thing is?

No, not that colorful like in the screenshot above - but you probably already know this; why, only 5 minutes ago you've been on the official website and followed the Three Steps. (Personally, I've completed two of them long time ago. I bought C&C First Decade.) Putting all the hype aside, I'm not sure if the creators have gone in a good direction with RA. I absolutely loved the first one. It was gray, serious, not totally overwhelmed with freak technology - it felt like war. After that, RA2 felt like a cartoon. Funny (not) characters, Tanya Adams wearing more make-up than ammo, the units being more hi-tech than their Tiberian Sun counterparts (I mean, really, whose idea was it to put two long-range siege cannons on a helicopter??) For me, Red Alert 2 was a damn comedy, not war. I didn't feel like an officer anymore - I felt like an actor playing in a cheap war flick.

What about RA3? The trailer looks promising enough - famous actors, decent CG, it looks like there may even be some actual plot. But then I look at the screenshots and everything goes to hell - wild, big-ass, unbelievable buildings, units likewise, more colors than the series has ever witnessed; sigh... a comedy after all...

Since Electronic Arts insists on making warzone look like Las Vegas at night, there must be many gamers out there who actually enjoy it. Well, yeah. I've heard MTV does this to people sometimes...

PS. No worries. I'll play the game. If only for Peter Stormare.

PS2. We are not dead! Just pretended! You guys are just so gullible...

Rise of the Dragon

2008-08-17T11:55:00.002+02:00

One of the most ambitious adventure games of its time. Released as early as 1990, Rise of the Dragon offered a somewhat primitive yet immersing cinematic gaming experience. For me.

The plot is not really that complicated (Legacy of Kain came much later) - the setting is the futuristic Los Angeles, looking awfully similar to the futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner. Here, however, the year is 2053 instead of 2019 - apparently the game's creators came to conclusion that 2019 was much too early for hover cars, video-telephones, etc... Anyway, the city is on the verge of being torn apart by a malevolent underground Chinese mafia planning on taking over the world by selling a powerful, mutagenic drug. You know, a typical Elexis Sinclair syndrome. Or should I say, SINdrome. After the mayor's daughter falls victim to the organization, a veteran cop-turned-private-eye, Blade Hunter (the name sounds familiar) is called to investigate.

Most of the time, you'll watch the ROTD's rotten environments through Blade's own eyes, or so it seems. You get the general overview of the area and the opportunity to click around an interact with objects and characters. The latter are usually very talkative and once a conversation starts, you'll see close-ups of their faces (their expressions change, depending on what mood they are in), along with available dialog options. Needless to say, your performance as a conversationalist will directly affect the relationship between Blade and a given character, so if you piss somebody off, he or she won't be willing to help you later on, and you'll get stuck. The objects are much easier to handle - through the simple inventory.

Rise of the Dragon also features a time limit. You have precisely three days to solve the case and bring the bad guys down, or you'll loose. The game is especially unforgiving with transportation. Traveling from one location to another obviously takes much time, so you cannot just move around freely, like in, let's say - Broken Sword. You have to plan ahead.

There are also some arcade sequences, where Blade finally uses his gun. Two of them are simple side-scrolling shoot'em-ups, with the opportunity to dodge enemies' bullets by ducking or jumping on platforms; and one is an even simpler mouse-aiming shoot'em-up. Fortunately, if you happened to suck at these, the game offered to skip them - very thoughtful of the developers.

A word about conversions. In 1991 the game made its way into Amiga (10 floppy diskettes) and in 1993 into SegaCD, in a very deformed shape. For once, it featured voice acting with Cam "I'm you! I'm your shadow!" Clarke himself voicing Blade Hunter and all of the subtitles got removed. Yet, the consoles of that time were less capable than home computers, so the color palette got narrowed down to 64. Apart from that, Rise of the Dragon was one of countless victims of early nineties video-game-brutality paranoia. Many things, from lap dancers in night clubs to ammo clip innocently lying on Blade's desk, were removed. Strangely enough, you couldn't skip the arcade sequences this time.

If you already know Rise of the Dragon, you might know Heart of China - a very similar adventure game, this time borrowing heavily from Indiana Jones series, released one year later. Both games are very important classic titles, offering a much more sophisticated approach to adventure genre than their predecessors and being an inspiration for many great later titles. For all of you vintage-fans out there - simply must-plays.

Norse Mythology...

2008-08-07T21:37:00.002+02:00

To tell you the truth Too Human wasn’t on my „Most Wanted” list. Actually, it wasn’t even on my “Interested in” list. Ok, it wasn’t on any of my lists, because it was one of those games I couldn’t care less about. Even though Silicon Knights is one of my favourite companies (Twin Snakes – yeah!, Legacy of Kain – Yeah!, Eternal Darkness – YEAH!) my initial thoughts about their new game were less than favorable. I don’t like the art design – all the screens and videos look way too colorful for a game of the type (action RPG…or is it a hack’n’slash?) and seem motley. I feel a particular distaste for the main protagonist – Baldur who is probably the worst character since Johnny Cage. Deprive him oh his blue face-tattoos and he could be a random goon in a GTA game. His design is so mediocre and boring the person responsible for it should be dressed in a silly suit, given a fake, red nose and a mustache and hung upside down as an example. When I think that I would have to play through three games (Too Human is almost certain to be a trilogy) with that monkey-man I can’t help to flinch. Also, the HUD is terrible in design. It looks like it was taken from a plastic watch for small kids. It should have a friggin’ Mickey Mouse on top of it.
Fortunately the locations look much better although there are some bland textures here and there (the ground in grassy sections – yuck). I particularly like the lighting that isn’t as over exaggerated like most of the art choices in this game. You can see that the game is made on the Unreal Engine; there is no doubt about it.
Next thing I’m not too sure about are the enemies designs – the main mechanical goblins look like a cross between DOG from Half-Life 2 and the Geth from Mass Effect. Actually, to me they look like a total rip-off, but whatever. In the demo the only other enemy (although there are a few types of the goblins) is some sort of a robot giant. Enough to say it looks silly.
Oh, I have to mention that I really like the sound in this game, especially during combat – swords clashing with metal enemies and energy weapons sound really cool. On the other hand the voice acting is not very impressive – it’s a bit too much a B-movie class which doesn’t fit the game.

Ok, I guess I’m done bashing the design, so I should move to the game mechanics. I must say that this game’s presentation is top notch. There are great camera angles not only during the well directed cut-scenes, but also during exploration and combat. Ok, that wasn’t about mechanics. Now I’ll tell you about mechanics.
From the playstyle point of view this game is a bit of like Diablo. You have a choice of five character classes which are supposed to be different from each other, but during the demo I couldn’t see much difference between them. Keep in mind though that the demo if relatively short so you can’t develop your character enough to see his more advanced skills.
The combat is fairly simple, but deep enough for a hack’n’slash to prevent itself from being boring. A word of warning - you won’t realty appreciate the combat unless you play the demo at least two or three times. At the beginning the combat seems very awkward and somehow “fake” and you’ll be constantly trying to change the camera angle with the right analog stick… which you can’t since the right stick is responsible for attacking. The concept seems strange at first, but once you get used to it you’ll be able to pull off some nice combos. Also, the camera might seem unruly at times, but it’s actually designed to give you more dramatic shots during combat, which it does. And you can always manually re-center it.

The item system is also similar to the one from Diablo. You’ll be collecting various pieces of randomly generated armor (which is nice) and many types of weapons – also randomly generated. There are two types of the latter ones – melee and projectile. The melee weapons include swords, hammers, staves, etc. and the ranged ones include pistols, shotguns, rifles and so on. Some of the projectile weapons even have alternative fore modes, which is great.

The demo itself is about 40 minutes long if you skip all the cut-scenes. You may thing that is a lot of time to get to know a game, but in case of Too Human it’s not. You will barely scratch the surface. I think it would have been better if Silicon Knights made the demo from a later portion of the game, with Baldur at a higher level as it would give more insight into the mechanics and combat.
Still, after checking all the character classes and playing through the demo a total of six times I must say that I am pretty interested how the final product will turn out. I won’t say that Too Human will find a place in my games collection, because I will wait for some reviews before I decide to buy it, but the demo did boost my hopes and interest.

I encourage you to check it out. And do not be discourage with your first few minutes with the demo. This game requires some getting used to. I’m sure this game will the “love or hate” kind, but maybe you will actually be the ones to love it.

Oh, one more thing. Most of the character classes are on a timer, and are currently locked (right now you can play two), but there are ways to play all five. Try to google it and you’ll find it.

Games Make You Say "Ouch"?

2008-08-07T09:32:00.002+02:00

Nasty things can happen to you while playing games and I don’t mean destroying something with your Wiimote when you forget to put the “safety strap” on your hand. I mean injuries, sickness even death. Ok, Ok, I know the death part is overly dramatic and that only the Chinese MMO players can get to a point where they die from playing. Still, it happened a few times, so it’s worth noting.

Playing a game is generally a pleasant experience. Sure, some games cam be stressful or frustrating, but even those bring you a bit of happiness in the end. However, there are some games that can bring you pain and suffering. Those epilepsy warnings are there for a reason you know.
I bringing this up because one particularly good game that I have finished recently made me feel really lousy. Condemned 2 is freaking amazing, but I just couldn’t play it more than one hour at a time. Why? The answer is motion sickness. Motion sickness is a particularly nasty side effect of some 3D games. Condemned is in 1st person and features a lot of changing camera angles to represent Ethan’s (the game’s protagonist) view. That includes falling down the stairs, being hit with heavy objects and landing on your back after falling from high places. It all looks realistic and great, but add motion blur to that and some screen filters and you get something that your brain my find too “unpleasant” to process.
Not all people suffer from motion sickness during some games, just like not everyone gets seasick on a ship (which is also motion sickness). Also, not all games of a particular type make you sick.
I’ll make me my example. I get sick while playing Condemned 2, but didn’t playing Condemned 1, Halo 3, Call of Duty (any) or Doom 3. The worst case was with Alien Trilogy. I couldn’t play it for more than 30 minutes. I did finish it, but it was a very painful process. I even had motion sickness with the first Spyro (I know, it’s ridiculous) – I guess it was just too 3D for me back then :D

So, how do you know if you’re getting motion sickness while playing a video game? The first symptoms are heat waves. If you’re getting hot for no apparent reason you can be pretty sure in a few minutes you’ll be feeling dizzy, nauseated and in some cases you gonna get a headache. Ignore those symptoms and after a while somebody will need to hold your hair while you puke out your lungs.

I would really like to play Mirror’s Edge when it comes out, but after my “adventure” with Condemned I’m not sure my organism will tolerate my hobby.

Of course, motion sickness isn’t the only thing that can happen to you during your gaming sessions.
All dancing games are potentially dangerous not only for your health, but for you life as well. If you want to play in cluttered room full of sharp-edged furniture better go out with your dog, because you may be paving your way to ER.
Dancing games are cool, but the mats in most cases are fairly small (which makes confide your movement to a smaller space which can be awkward) and slippery. I myself fell a few times while playing Dance Dance Revolution and many of my friends sprained their ankles on Paranoia. Sure, you can buy a metal platform to lower the risks, but not many of us can afford that kind of commodity. And I can imagine that even fewer would have a place for it.

PC gamers are prone to hand and arm injuries. Let’s just say that the mouse and keyboard may be perfect to kick ass in Unreal Tournament 3, or make that tank rush in Command & Conquer, but you can be sure your wrists like it less that you do. Those kinds of injuries are quite common for pro computer scientists and designers but many gamers tackle with that problem as well. The biggest problem with using a mouse and keyboard is that you don’t see the negative effects of using them right away. It takes a few years to develop and then it’s much harder to fix. Still, having a proper position while playing and a keyboard and a mouse pad that support your wrists lower the probability of any dysfunctions.

This article is not supposed to scare you or discourage you from playing games. I’m not saying that you gonna get a heart attack after a five hour session with Samba de Amigo and I’m not saying that you’ll use your are while playing Wii Sports. All I’m saying that playing games, just like any other activity, should be approached with common sense. Play your games, play them a lot, but don’t do it at a cost of your health of well being.

A side note.
You know how all the hardware and software manuals tell you to make a fifteen minute break every hour? Common sense aside – I would like to see anyone who actually does that. If you do and are reading this, leave a comment. I would like to congratulate you and ask you some uncomfortable questions.

"Gitaroo Man" Original Soundtrack

2008-08-01T22:48:00.004+02:00

This is a game I've always wanted to play, but never had a chance. The thing with me is, I never really liked the Guitar Hero craze, complete with the Fisher-Price-Baby's-First-Guitar PS2/3 controller. I realize not everyone is able to operate the extremely complicated six-string instrument called "the actual guitar" but spending money on a fancy plastic miniature good for only one game is maybe a little beyond my comprehension. Now, Gitaroo-Man is how I actually imagine the music simulation video-game. All you need is a pad.

Okay, let's talk some music. The soundtrack is a mixture of the trademark Japanese light-hearted rock, with some trademark Japanese light-hearted electo-sound and The Legendary Theme. I can't really tell you how, but in most cases the commercial Japanese music has this very distinctive joyful, "don't take it too seriously" feel. The chords are not too sad, the melody is very lively and simple and the singing... Bleh, maybe my brain is rotting, but I just can't accept Japanese singing, sorry, I can't. :-) Things get even worse, if they throw in some English words like "Oh, baby, baby..." Well, whatever. Listen to Soft Machine and 21st Century Boy and see how you like them yourself.

Twisted Reality is pretty much what the rock-part of this whole disc is all about. Simple and strong, I believe this would be pure joy to play with your garage-band friends as a warm up. Once you do that, go ahead and play the wild Tainted Lovers next. And call me!

The electro part is pretty much covered by maybe VOID, a great usage of guitar in a crazy world of synthesizers. Speaking of great guitar usage - Born to be Bone will blow you out. I've never heard Latin music and techno in one song. Works great!

One little fill-in before I get to the true glory of this disk. Resurrection, which I believe is the final boss duel theme in the game is just... smooth. Drives right into your bowels and warms them up immediately. One simple chord sequence repeated over and over with every necessary rock instrument present, and the single guitar buzzing around like a mad hornet in a jar.

Ah, the beautiful Legendary Theme (I mean the acoustic version)... This is the song that I've first heard, fallen in love with and can't really live without playing it on my own guitar every now and again. The scene in the game is very fitting - the protagonist playing the tune to his girl next to the little campfire. Wouldn't be quite possible in the real life, because the song is played by two guitars, but who cares? If you haven't heard it, go ahead and search it out of youtube and listen (I'm sure about five hundred videos of people playing it will pop up as well). I guess one may start learning how to play guitar just after hearing it...

Okay, a quick summary. Gitaroo Man OST is full of curious musical experiments backed up the excellent instrumental workshop. As such, I would recommend it to every guitar, base or drum player out there as a moment or refreshment from the mainstream; and to you, my dear fellow gamers, I recommend it just the same.

Future Wars

2008-07-25T16:11:00.002+02:00

Future Wars is an early project of Delphine Software team, which involved both the creators of Flashback and Another World. That is the reason I bought it many years ago. It’s a straight-forward point-and-click adventure game.

I read the manual telling some science-fiction story about aliens traveling through time in order to invade our planet. The plan was cunning indeed – place the bombs (or some equally destructive alien technology contraptions) where the generators of Earth’s force field would be built. Excited, I watched the intro showing some people fried by laser beams, only to begin the game as... a window cleaner. A window cleaner? Where’s the future, where are the aliens, the laser beams?

Okay, okay... I know the protagonist gets to that pretty shortly. I just wanted to express my initial surprise at playing as a window cleaner, whose life’s pleasures consist of making pranks on his boss. In the end, the idea is simple; after all, what a sci-fi story can be about if not about – all together now – SAVING THE WORLD!!!

As you can see, if you scroll down a little, Future Wars is darn good looking, considering its release date: 1989. It features a lot of text, showed in pretty, shaded boxes (which in the DOS conversion got colored): some dialogues, but mostly funny comments coming from the faceless “narrator”. You get a feeling that the creators didn’t want the game to be very serious. The interface is everything you’d expect from an early adventure game: the action menu with a lot of options. Thankfully, it’s not very complicated and after a couple of minutes, it even gets intuitive and natural. Still, there are places where it can be a pain. For example, typing a code to a security keypad. Once you examine it, a convenient image is displayed, showing all the keys. You think all you need to do is click on them? Nossir. You bring up the action menu, choose “OPERATE” and then click on the first digit. Then you bring up the action menu again, choose “OPERATE” and then... You get the pattern? And all of this happens while the ceiling is slowly coming down on your head.

The game does commit two sins which the gamers of today won’t easily forgive. The first one is an enormous amount of pixel-hunting. Apart from some cases where you can clearly make out a pickable object, taking things (and figuring out places to put them into) usually takes some frustrating moments of moving your cursor across the screen, searching for the right spot, like one single branch on a tree which has at least twenty of them. Secondly, you can get stuck. All it takes is not to pick up a plastic bag from the waste basket and later, having traveled back through time, you’ll discover you can’t dispose of the vicious wolf guarding an area. In the past, the solution was simple: either being extra meticulous in scanning the screen or saving a lot, or both. While in the nineties many games offered a possibility to reach a dead-end (I remember one semi-erotic adventure game called Fascination where you had to replay pretty much the entire thing if you hadn’t picked up a newspaper or some shit at one point), today it would be considered an unforgivable blasphemy.

Moving around is another nuisance. How do you do that? Well, you move the cursor to the destination spot and left-click. Sounds simple and, in most cases, it is. Yet, there are places in which this can drive you bonkers. Take a look at the swamp on a screenshot below. Your task upon arriving there is to make your way to the left of the screen, to the mosquito nest. To do that, you have to walk precisely on the dark green pixels and if you make one step on the dark-gray ones, you drown and have to load your last save. It is perfectly doable, you just have to be patient, but is such an aggravating sequence really necessary in an adventure game? Plus, there are some arcade stages, one of which is making your way through the maze of platforms (in a Flashback style), with a timer counting. Twice. Boy, was that a bad idea.

Okay, the final paragraph. As most games in Press Play on Tape, Future Wars is a granddaddy and we tend to forgive our granddaddies a lot of things (even the smell). Especially if they still look kinda good. Besides, it’s still considered by many to be one of the best point-and-click titles of all times and, even though it took me a lot of nerves (and years) to finish it, I must admit I liked it.

The Weakest Link

2008-07-25T14:04:00.003+02:00

Only a cow doesn’t change its mind – it’s a saying we have here in Poland and I would like it to be the main thought of this editorial.

EVOLUTION

Evolution is a process of gradual change and development. Human beings evolve, a person’s identity evolves, the industry evolves and games evolve. It is a natural, and in most cases unstoppable process. The problem with evolution is that it doesn’t advance with the same rate for all nexuses in our system. This leads to discrepancies which can cause the system to degenerate or collapse altogether. Taking into account that there is no way to accelerate evolution, the only way a slowly evolving constituent can prevent a system failure is by…

ADAPTATION

Adaptation is a rapid change (at least compared to the process of evolution) to suit a situation or conditions. Adaptation is essential in evolution. If it wasn’t for the constituents’ ability to adapt to the various changes the system undergoes no system would prevail the process of evolution. However, not all constituents can, or are “willing” to adapt. In such case the number of “impaired” constituents and their strength decide if the system will prevail or not. If the “proper” constituents are in majority, or are particularly strong, the “impaired” constituents are disposed of and the system continues to function. If not, the system fails. This is a part of…

NATURAL SELECTION

Natural selection is a process in which the constituents best adapted to the changes within a system survive, and those that did not adapt are disposed of by the system. Here, I would like to note that since I’m discussing an artificial system, hence I cannot use notion of heritable traits. I will be discussing only traits developed by the constituents during the process of adaptation.

You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m writing about?

I’ll use this diagram.

As you can see, we, the gamers, are a constituent of a larger system. Unfortunately, we are the slowest evolving constituent, hence we need to adapt to the changes in the system. Bear in mind, that the system is not the electronic entertainment industry. I will not try to name it for the purpose of this editorial. If any of you does come up with a good name though, do not hesitate to let me know.
Gamers are the fastest growing part of the system, but the core gamers, do not adapt as fast as they should. We are very hesitant to change; we tend to keep to our habits a bit too much for our own sakes.

Ok, this is a bit confusing, so let me use myself as an example. I am a gamer since I was seven. Actually, I’ve been playing games before that, but at the age of seven I got my first machine (c64). That was eighteen years ago. That means that the games from mid 90s impacted my gamer perception the most. This is a case for many core, or rather statistical gamers (male in late 20s, early 30s). We’ve got an almost twenty year gap since 1990 and 2008 (I’m not even talking about earlier years which had many revolutionary games) – the industry, the technology, the philosophy and the cultural absorption of games changed tremendously during that period. I will even risk a statement, that apart from IT the EE industry made a bigger “evolutionary” leap that anything else. But did we?

My answer is “no”. We’re still the same people, only a bit older. We had no choice but to get used to the new technologies – 256 colour graphics, 3D, surround sound and now HD, but that doesn’t mean that we perceive games differently than we did eight, ten or fifteen years ago. Even through we embrace the changes, we personally did not change that much. If you ask a 25-year old what is his favourite game he’ll probably name a title from somewhere in the 90s. Ask him about his favourite survival horror and he may tell you it is Resident Evil or Silent Hill. Ask him about his favourite platform game and it may be Super Mario Bros. 3 or Crash Bandicoot. Ask him about an RPG and it’s gonna be Diablo or Final Fantasy 6.
People do not like changes. Gamers do not like changes.
When we look at new games, we look at them through the prism of our old favourites and this is where we fail to adapt. And believe me, this is a way to a hell of boredom. I know, I do it myself. When I buy a new survival horror I always compare it to either Silent Hill or Resident Evil. If I see a new hack’n’slash I always wonder how it is compared to Diablo. It can have great graphics, cool idea and whatnot, but if it doesn’t have at least 5 diverse character classes and randomly generated weapons I always lose interest. When I want a new jRPG I always wonder if it will be as good as Final Fantasy VII… it never is; I lose interest. I remember how pissed off I was when they first showed footage from Resident Evil 4 (I mean the version that got released). I thought: “What the fuck is that? What the hell did Capcom do with my favourite game, it’s nothing like it”. It took me a while to get used to the fact that Resident Evil is evolving into something different. Now, RE4 is one of my favourite games, but it wasn’t easy to love it at first.
We gamers may cause the system failure ourselves without even knowing about it. It takes us way too much time to welcome new ideas. And don’t you dare bring Wii into this! I know you’re itching to do it. I know it’s selling extremely well, but how many core gamers play it a lot? How many CORE gamers? Wii is being bought by Sunday gamers and Sundays that play their Wiis an hour a week will not become core gamers… ever. They will get bored with games before they can get into them.
I will be even so bold to write, that Nintendo may be paving the road to a dark alley where hardcore gamers are screwed over with motion sensor controllers. Just look at what they are doing. The Wii sales stutter? Bring out another peripheral and make another silly sports game. That’s it. I realize that Nintendo was always a company that made games for the whole family, but all their previous consoles had at least something for cores. And now? Nothing. The Wii is successful and now the Big N is just cutting away the coupons. Will other companies do the same? Yes, but to what extent? Unfortunately for cores, Sunday are needed because games are too expensive to make. M$ knows it and we get cartoon-ish avatar in a console that is targeting 18-40 year old males. Odd?
There is one “glitch” in evolution. Sometimes, instead of slowly changing, a constituent of the system mutates. The mutant turns out very powerful and kills off all normal constituents and becomes a dominating one. The problem is the mutant is hyperactive due to high metabolism which means it is short-lived. It prematurely dies and the system goes to hell. For me, Wii, or rather Nintendo is such a mutant. The mutant can either be given gene therapy (hardcore games) or is killed before it goes on rampage. Otherwise we may face a future where in 5-10 years time games are made for Sundays and hardcores get served with small, independent games via PSN, XBLA or whatnot.
Am I exaggerating? Probably.

And now for the solution.
We need to keep an open mind. This is our biggest problem. We just can’t get around the though that a big change might be a good change. You remember when it was first revealed that Bethesda is making the third Fallout? I can tell you what I was thinking. “God, just don’t let them make it 1st person and the combat in real-time”. Does God hate me? Is it a test? No, I think God knows that if I don’t stop thinking about Fallout 3 as of Fallout 2.5 I will get no Fallout at all.
Similarly with games that I dismissed when they first came out for some stupid reasons. Take Ratchet and Clank for example. What the first one came out for the PS2 I immediately labelled as a “stupid game”. A 3D cartoon platformer with a lot of shooting involved was a travesty for me, a game that will contaminate one of my favourite genres. Well, after finishing Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction I realize how big of a moron I was. The game is excellent, the shooting is fun and the dialogues are hilarious. I sure will be getting the next one.

Now I’m trying to be faithful to the Keep an Open Mind rule. I finished Alone in the Dark (5) because I think it’s a game that will set new standards in gameplay for future titles. I didn’t mind shooting everything in Metal Gear Solid 4. I’m very much looking forward to playing Fallout 3. I accepted WoW-ish graphics in Diablo III. And I will not be upset if Silent Hill: Homecoming turns out to be a piece of crap.
Games will change, it’s inevitable. We should look forward to those changes. And the next time you will want to compare Final Fantasy XIII to Final Fantasy VII just turn on your PSOne and play FFVII and let the XII be its own entity.

Criminal Origins in space

2008-07-23T13:57:00.007+02:00

Usually when I ask people about Condemned: Criminal Origins they tell me something like: “yeah, pretty nice game; a little boring but the mannequins were cool”. Well, the mannequins are back and this time they’re just the beginning of this fickle and elusive thing called FUN!

“That’s a whole... That’s a whole new bunch of crazy shit... That’s... You’ll hate that shit...” – Prichett

If I were to describe Bloodshot in one phrase, I’d say “Criminal Origins in space” (hence the title). Why? Let’s begin with the protagonist. Agent Thomas was everything you would expect a criminal investigator to be. A nice clean suit, big eyes constantly widening from the horrors their owner experienced, a somewhat fragile personality. One thing that didn’t really match was the face you wouldn’t quite call handsome; to me, he looked like mixture of Tommy Lee Jones and a gorilla. For Bloodshot, the creators apparently took that very mixture and removed the Tommy Lee Jones element (and maybe added some more hair, while at it). Mister Thomas – and don’t you dare to call him “agent” anymore – is someone I’d be afraid of meeting in a dark alley. He’s alcohol addicted, he constantly swears (makes Edward Carnby look like an altar boy) and if you so much as look at him the wrong way, you risk some very close, fatal encounters with his giant fists. Jeez, is he a joy to play... What’s more, the evil forces have recently started gathering around him, so every now and then he hallucinates, which is an even greater joy to play... I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Combat. The greatest one which I’ve ever experienced in an FPS. All it took was to assign both triggers as fists: left and right. Play with that idea a little and you get combos, play a little more and you get fatalities. What more could I possibly ask for? The truth is, beating someone in Condemned 2 is pure fun: they scream, they curse at you, they run around, grab random things and throw at you. And after some skull-rattling rendez-vous with Ethan’s knuckles (or boots, as you can kick people as well) they drop down to their knees, at which point you can grab them and use something to end their lives with. Just take them to the nearest skull icon and enjoy the scene. Otherwise, you can just break their necks. There’s also the trusty stun gun for emergency use, and a lot of firearms. In fact, some purists might say Bloodshot features too much shooting, especially during the second half of the game. Even if that’s true (you can’t argue with purists), the ammo depletes very rapidly so you have to make every (head)shot count. If you get carried away with bursts, then whoops! Wait a second, mister bad guy, I have to go get some more bullets... Speaking about the guns, there’s one fun element attached to it: the booze. As you may remember, Ethan is an alcoholic, so his hands tend to get rather shaky when it comes to aiming. Fortunately, most levels feature dozens of scotch bottles which you can deplete with a few deep gulps to steady yourself.

Sometimes it’s really hard to tell if the creators actually did sit down to discuss how Bloodshot should be developed or if they just had a couple of shots of booze themselves and said “ah, to hell with it, let’s take the players for a ride!” Do you remember the coolest weapon in Criminal Origins: the paper cutter? Well, it’s back alright, but just in one level in the game where the secondary objective is NOT to kill anyone. Fortunately, there are many more fun things to use, imagine beating someone to death with a metal foosball table rod with plastic players still attached to it...

Okay, let’s come back to the supernatural. A lot of games tried to use vision distortion to enhance the horror effect, but none of them, not even Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, comes even close to Condemned 2. The effects are plentiful and beautiful as well: blurs, noise, TV screen flickering, desaturation, contrast manipulation, the “there was something there last time I looked” effect... All working seamlessly with sound effects to make you experience the limbo Thomas is undergoing. Cutscenes also make use of these tricks, especially the appearances of the masked guy, whom I really got to like.

“It! The thing! The evil! The thing that’s the rotten core at the bottom of this place! The thing that’s gonna kill us all! Death by corrosion! That thing!” - Pritchett

Let’s talk about the gameplay a little. All levels feature some secondary objectives which grant you rewards at the end of the level. Aside from specific tasks like “don’t kill any guard” or “photograph every torture device”, there are also constant elements, a reminiscent of Criminal Origins’ dead birds collection. Scattered around the stages are sound emitters which you must destroy (you equipment reacts to sound waves they produce, so it’s not that hard to pinpoint them) and TV’s and radios which you must adjust to hear the latest news (mostly just for fun, as they don’t seem to provide any crucial information, maybe except the first level of the game). One more element adding up to your rank is the forensic investigation. In the first game all you had to do is find glowing pieces of evidence and photograph them. Here, you have to use your brains a little, as well as some tools you possess, like the UV light. One of the first analyses covers a body with a gunshot wound. You have to determine what kind of wound is this (exit or entry?), if the victim was shot there on the spot, or if the body has been moved, etc. Moreover, sometimes people give you information and your task is to ask the most relevant questions or draw the most correct conclusions, or on the contrary, answer someone’s questions as accurately as possible. The system works pretty well, despite some minor inconsistencies: At one point I found one incredibly vicious looking torture table, smeared with blood and with some strange machines attached to it. I was told to take o photo of the torture device, so I did my best to capture it time after time, only to receive a “try again” message. Aggravated and ready to abandon the assignment, I noticed a small unremarkable electrified cage with a homeless locked inside. And THAT was the thing I was supposed to photograph. Oh well... A question of interpretation...

Speaking of inconsistencies, let’s move to the practical side of the game. The sound quality is impeccable: the effects are full and juicy, while the music is a curious mixture of casual horror soundtrack, Valvish resonating guitars and... oh, there’s even that weird noise from Not Tomorrow 2 during the museum boss-fight. The violin stingers during some punches are also a very clever idea, which, to my knowledge, has not been used in any game so far. Yet, I guess the graphics might be just a teeny bit better. Overall it’s a great-looking game (the shiny black goo...) but some levels look noticeably worse than others and some specific objects or location might have been polished. I guess the fall of the final boss might be a good example – I know the shaft is dark, but the scene (an important scene at that) looks just like a bunch of gray squares with a silhouette of a man flying somewhere in the middle. A similar thing happened with cutscenes directing. Some are perfect, some are just painfully American, like the ending itself, not really fitting into Condemned atmosphere.

“Pritchett? Are you currently under the care of a physician?“ – Doctor Blackburn

We come to the “in space” part, probably the most controversial aspect of Bloodshot: the story. In the first game, the concept was simple: one cop versus one psycho killer, chasing each other through a city filled with unnaturally hostile criminal elements. There was hardly any supernatural, except for the mannequins (obviously) and the end of the game, where we learn that there might be some sentient force behind what’s been going on. Here, the force is revealed to be some very evil organization making not exactly legal use of human hearing sense and vocal chords of all things. Oh yes, and our booze-loving, everything-else-hating Mister Thomas is imbued with the greatest vocal power of all, supposedly able to make or break empires, if properly tuned. Does that sound silly? You bet. And this time, the crusade is not about chasing a psycho-killer, it’s visiting the most fucked-up places the City has to offer in search for some cryptic clues. The bottom-line is: with Bloodshot, Condemned switched from "cop vs. killer" into something like "superhero vs. evil almighty cult", but not that cheezy. Now you know what I meant by “Criminal Origins in space”? While in my case it didn’t spoil the mood, because the organization members are deformed (or modified) in a truly disturbing way and some monsters created by them are even more so (I think Clive Barker could learn from the hanging “guard-dogs” they’re perfect), some people will almost definitely get turned off by the plot. If you haven’t played the game and haven’t gotten turned off by now, I guess you’ll be fine.

“Bouga, bouga...” – Pritchett

The end of Bloodshot promises an epic battle between Ethan and his nemesis SKX (it stands for Serial Killer X, but it should be Shit-Kicking eXperience, if you ask me) and an introduction of some other, even greater sentient force in the future. So I guess, Condemned 3 will be something like “Criminal Origins in hyperspace”. Well, only time will tell if the series will evolve into a known and respected franchise, but, since Bloodshot is indeed far better than the first game, I guess it’s a thing to look forward to.

On E3

2008-07-20T13:22:00.001+02:00

After prematurely coming back from my vacations I decided to check out what happened at E3. Now, in the past few years this particular even is going down a slippery slope to a pool of excrements. The press conferences are boring, people talk shit, less and less companies even appear on E3 and most of the games shown were either exploited so much before the show that anyone will lose interest in them, or are something not even worth paying attention to.
This year is no different I’m afraid. Actually, it’s worse then ever.

First of there are no big announcements, unless you think Square-Enix announcing Final Fantasy XIII for the 360 is something big. Still, I think anyone who can count saw that coming. Resident Evil 5 proved to me that even though I think it’s gonna be a great game it’s just RE 4.5, and when I didn’t mind Resident Evil 0 - 3 (including Code Veronica) being pretty much the same gameplay-wise (because they were survival horrors) an action game like RE5 should feature more changes.
What else? God of War III? That is a no-brainer; I think everyone was expecting it to be announced.
Fallout III seems to be ok, but they didn’t really show anything new.
Gears of War 2, Killzone 2. Resistance 2? We’ve all seen them before and E3 didn’t bring any substantial info regarding the bigger titles (and I’m not talking only about those three above).

How about the three big press conferences?
Microsoft did what they do every year. They said they are the best, have the most third party games (developers, developers, developers, developers…) and sell the most software. Not a hard thing considering they had a head start. Sure, they announced the new Dashboard which I think is pretty awesome. I even like the silly avatars, but I’m pretty sure that the typical 360 owner would like something that doesn’t look like a character taken out from a cereal commercial. And say what you will, but it’s a so obvious rip-off from the Miis that my liver hurts. The fact that they are more complex models and were designed by Rare doesn’t change much.
All the interactive games/shows/events shown are quite a neat idea, but since it’s M$ they will be only available in the countries that have their Live services, which means most of the world won’t be able to take part in them, and hence doesn’t give a shit. Good job with creating the global gamer community Microsoft. I guess some places are just not good enough to be the part of America Planet.

Now, a look at Sony. In their usual style Sony announced much, promised much, and then showed Buzz for the PSP. Yeah…
Ok, inFamous looks interesting, Resistance 2 seems ok, the Rachet and Clank PSN game is something worth looking into and the Little Big Planet presentation was awesome, but there was nothing that I would comment with “Wow”. I do admit that MAG (Massive Action Game) seems impressive from what they said (256 players in one game!), but as usual they just showed a CD teaser and gave little info. To be honest, I didn’t expect anything else from Sony, but I really hoped that they will show something meaningful. True, they announced the VOD service, but it’s only for the US at the moment, so I don’t care.

What about Nintendo?
For Nintendo I will be very brief. I think, Nintendo press conference was the most embarrassing thing on E3 I’ve seen in years. They made complete fools out of themselves and proved once more that they have absolutely no idea what to do with Wii, but to release a peripheral after a peripheral to satisfy the housewives and pensioners. They didn’t announce anything that would be even remotely interesting.
After watching all the people on the stage act like complete morons I’m pretty sure I suffered brain damage.

For me the 3 most interesting things of the show were the announcement of GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS, Portal: Still Alive that will be released on XBLA and Fat Princess – the multiplayer PSN game.
Pretty sad considering it’s one of the biggest electronic entertainment events of the year.