Wow, I think I tired myself out with all the Game
City reporting. Had to take a month
off blogging. Anyway, as expected I've played a lot of games over the last
couple of months, but the one I've deigned to tell you about is XCOM: Enemy
Within. When this was first released, I was enraged at the prospect of having
to rebuy a whole game in order to obtain what was essentially gratuitous
amounts of DLC. But being the ginormous XCOM nut I am, I moaned for about two days and then bought
it anyway. And within moments of playing, the only thing I could find to
complain about was how goddamn orange all the UI was. And as someone who loves
a good moan, that says quite a lot. So, I give you:
5 Way Gross but Way Awesome New Additions in XCOM: Enemy Within
1. Chryssalids in Sharks
Something's fishy...
I bloody hate sharks. They're like the Michael Myers of the sea, pursuing their prey at a leisurely pace, confident in their own ability as homicidal bad asses. I also hate chryssalids, zombies and gaming against the clock, so it's like XCOM's designers assembled all my fears into one perfectly constructed nightmare fodder Recon Mission.
This level really is a triumph of minimalist horror storytelling, giving you just enough to make you shit yourself. And just when you think you've endured all the spewing zombies, and racing to beat an impending air strike you can take, a chryssalid bursts out of a shark THAT WAS DISGUISED AS SCENERY. Thanks for that designers. Thanks a lot.
2. Seekers
Sentinel or Seeker?
Okay, so they're easy to kill and quite blatantly ripped off the sentinel squid things in the Matrix, but that first encounter with these new aliens is sure to send a shiver down your spine. Cloaking and biding their time until you've forgotten they're out there, these tentacled beasties will then pop up and try to make your Rookies' eyes bulge. And not in a good way.
3. Exalt
Whaddya got under there, mister?
Now, I'm aware that a lot of the 'horror' I've described above is actually the product of my own fevered imagination rather than any genuine in-game scares. I accept that. And I also accept that what I'm about to say about creepy alien worshippers Exalt doesn't really help my case, but here goes. Exalt are inherently creepy because they're fanatics who shiv themselves in the neck rather than be taken alive, and pump themselves so full of alien parts they no longer know what size shirt they need, but that's not why they freak me out. They freak me out because of the imagined awfulness lurking beneath the perpetual bandana. These guys are identical, so they can't be wearing the bandanas for anonymity's sake. So what's so terrible about their mouths? (I might've thought about this too much.)
4. Augments
"I had regular feet before I joined the XCOM program."
So, on the one hand XCOM:EW asks you to look at the horror wrought by fiddling about with alien DNA via the cookie cutter Aryan extremists of Exalt, but on the other hand, encourages you to give it a go on your own soldiers to gain a military advantage. Your soldiers' eyes, skin, brains, bones and innards are now just extra ways to upgrade. Give them an extra heart, chameleon skin, and super springy leg muscles, but don't think about what happens when the war is over and your uniformed abomination has to go home to its family.
5. Cybernetics
"I'll never wear peeptoe sandals again..."
Perhaps the most horrifying addition is the Cybernetics Lab. When I saw previews of the Mechs, I thought "Cool, my soldiers get to be like Sigourney Weaver, fighting aliens in a mechanised suit." When the reality is: "Oh no, as a reward for her exemplary service I've amputated all my soldier's limbs and condemned her to never again knowing the touch of another human being." I feel better about Patrick Sutherland the Chameleon Kangaroo Freak going home to his kids now. At least he won't accidentally shoot their legs off with his mini-gun arm while telling them in a monotone they are down to 50% functionality.
"GTA V is a
MALE CRIME WORLD simulation, what do you expect? Flowers to
womans?" is a sentence that just appeared in my
inbox
— Cara 'Spooky'Ellison
(@Carachan1) October
13, 2013
I know, I know, Game City is now a distant memory, but I'm going to record every little ounce of gamey goodness, godammit! So, onward!
Cara & Keith's Power Lunch
I'd never attended a Power Lunch before and was a little apprehensive. The only Power Lunch I could envision was important men in starched shirts shouting at each other over a boardroom table. I arrived to find no such horrors. Cara "Flowers to Womans" Ellison (see above) and Keith "Keef" Stuart were actually presenting a friendly, chat-show style live stream and we were the studio audience!
First guests were Ed Stern (who's now kindly provided a link list for all the stuff he talked about here and in the workshop) and Tali Goldstein from indie developer Minority. However, as I attended another talk by Tali which I'll mention at length later, for now I'll skip to the remaining guests: pixel artist Paul Veer and RGCD's James Monkman. As the pair discussed the fact that retro is finally a valid stylistic choice rather than just an era of gaming, I drifted off a little thinking about the uniqueness of Game City and the strangeness it brings to my home city. Paul and James are both respected in their fields and yet spent their Game City week demonstrating their skills to members of the public who had no idea who they were. Paul spent the week in Market Square drawing pixel puppies for every child that asked. James spent his Game City in the Open Arcade, demoing games to kids more used to hyper realistic immersive worlds than simple 8-bit levels. And yet, neither they, nor many of the other talented individuals giving their time and effort to Game City ever seemed like they felt it was beneath them, or that they'd rather be speaking to fellow developers than kids who called them 'Mister Arcade Man.' I think that's pretty great and I hope it's an attitude Game City always retains.
Stupid and Contagious: Games at the Turn of an Age
I attended a lot of Leigh Alexander's stuff, partly because she's great and her work interests me, and partly because I feel a duty to attend anything by a female speaker as they are still, unfortunately, something of a rarity in the industry. As Leigh discussed the film, music and culture surrounding early games development and the way that culture had affected games then and now, I was struck by the similarities of our childhoods, despite growing up on different continents. Leigh's exactly one week older than me, so maybe that closeness in age (plus a shared love of Nirvana and the Dark Crystal) is part of the reason I found her talk so intriguing. However, I was delighted to see the young man alongside me feverishly noting down the Riot Grrl bands Leigh mentioned. Obviously it struck a chord with him too.
Silent Enemy: Global Reveal
Speaking of striking a chord brings me nicely to Tali's second talk. I knew a little of Papo and Yo prior to attending. It's on my 'To Play' list, as when it was released, it was lauded as a triumph of storytelling, challenging the player to think about alcoholism and its effects on those touched by it. Watching the trailer in which a young boy escapes the reality of his world to move buildings and soar with a robot in the favelas of Brazil renewed my desire to play.
But seeing Minority's next game, hearing Tali speak about it, and seeing the audience's reaction to it did more than that. I didn't just want to play the game, I wanted to support Minority in their endeavours, because what they're doing is wonderful and important. Silent Enemy is, on face value, a simple puzzle game in which an Inuit boy must utilise his animal friends to cross the bleak and snowy landscape. But when the crows arrive and attack the boy, it's clear there's more to it than that. They beat him, take his stuff, taunt him and his friends, a rabbit and a bear, are powerless to stop them. The player can effectively choose how badly the crows treat him, but they cannot prevent the incident altogether.
After the brief video playthrough, I realised I was close to tears and not entirely sure why. I glanced around and saw several others sniffing, or dabbing their eyes. Tali went on to explain that the vast majority of the Minority team had suffered bullying and they wanted to make a game about that experience. How it felt and how they overcame it.
See the resemblance? Shut up.
About the only positive thing I can say about my bully is that he was creative. He called me Tosh
Lines (the implication being that he thought I had a bushy moustache. If he thought it was bad then, he should see it now. It's verging on lustrous.) and mocked me for the colour of my socks, the style of my shirt and the brand of crisps I ate. Utterly ridiculous trivial shit looking back, but at the time it mattered. It mattered so much I hated myself, hated every day I had to spend anywhere near him (But still stubbornly refused to change my socks, shirt or moustache. Because I may have been a kid, but I was still ME.)
Silent Enemy made me sad because it reminded me what it is to be helpless in the face of someone else's cruelty. But from hearing Tali speak, it seems Silent Enemy also seeks to remind players that the bullying is not all there is. There's friendship and loyalty and learning to be strong. How many other games can say they teach kids that?
A full and exhausting day yesterday. Here's what went down:
Broadway Breakfast
I realised while eating my fry-up that the grilled tomato was the first piece of fruit/veg I'd had in about four days. This made me depressed, but I wasn't able to stay down for long, as the effervescent Leigh Alexander arrived and showed us the video that had introduced her to the Ways of the English:
Leigh went on to take us on a nostalgia tour of games that had shaped her as a gamer, writer and person over the years. Beginning with Nei's permadeath in Phantasy Star 2, long before Aeris popped her clogs; moving via Greendog the Beached Surfer Dude's bizarre and uninspiring story; taking in the strange tile-stacking God-sim Klax (a personal favourite that I had never seen in that way before, but it's a surprisingly sensible description!) and ending on weird caveman platformer Legendary Axe. I could listen to anyone talk about games they love, and Leigh was particularly entertaining company.
Games Writing Workshop
I remember getting very excited by Brink's beautiful art and immersive world, and then dismissing it when I found it was a FPS. I don't mind watching other people play FPS's, but they aren't for me. I know my reasoning is a little weird, but rather than finding myself immersed in the game story, I find not having a visible character to roleplay makes it difficult for me to relate to the world and NPCs. I know it's strange, but I tried the recent Deus Ex and found that I just didn't care about any of the characters and I don't think it was the writing's fault - I think if I'd been able to 'be' Adam throughout, I would have felt far more engaged. Anyway, the point I'm clumsily attempting to make, is that unlike, say, GTAV, my reason for ultimately not buying Brink had nothing to do with the story.
Therefore, I was extremely excited to see the late edition of a writing workshop with Splash Damage's Ed Stern on Game City's schedule. If there's one thing I love even more than talking about games or talking about writing, it's talking about games writing.
I won't paraphrase his entire talk, but Ed was stunningly knowledgeable about a huge range of books, films and plays which he referenced in interesting, unique ways. Of the many things I learned from him, his catchphrases "The Fleets Meet" and "Exploit the Clunk" were probably the most memorable. With "The Fleets Meet" Ed pointed out that while in movies seeing this on a script would be a production team's worst nightmare, in games, it's not really a big deal. Crowd physics, particularly of things like spaceships or vehicles, aren't particularly complex, and generating tons of the things isn't either. Therefore, in games it's important to be aware of what the equivalent is. In this case, something that would be incredibly easy in film - a close up of an actor's face portraying an emotion. Because unless you're at a massive studio like Naughty Dog or Quantic Dream, it's unlikely you'll have the technology to do this effectively, and even if you ARE at one of those studios, they're going to try and cut as many of those moments as possible to try and keep costs down.
"Exploit the Clunk" almost builds on this point. It hinges on knowing what the weakest point of your game is, and making that endearing, relevant, or necessary through the story. For example, if you know animations are going to be a problem, ensure your protagonists are robots, so their jerky movements add to the characterisation rather than detracting from it. If you have a limited colour pallet, make it a relevant aspect of the game world, and not just because your artist's off on one.
I learned lots of other things that I'll be using in future projects, but I'm not telling you, because I don't want you to be better than me. So there.
Blue Monday
In the evening it was over to tiny but lovely bar, Suede, for sexy talk with real-life couple Leigh Alexander and Quintin Smith. As I've mentioned before, games have a hard time representing sexy times and that was the basis for this talk. Examining various games and platforms, from mermaid sex oddities to seedy sex-based virtual worlds, to modern attempts at injecting sensuality and responsibility into love and relationships, the pair examined why games get it so wrong and how they can begin to get it right. The ultimate consensus was that games are trying to run before they can walk, and attempting to convey complex relationships when even the basics of friendships are only nominally touched on in the vast majority of games. Until we've had more Animal Crossings, we can't have more... well, it was agreed there pretty much aren't any games with good sex scenes, so maybe that should be we can't have our FIRST sexy game.
*mumble* *mumble* Something about calibrations and flexibility *mumble* *mumble* *drool*
I've come over all unnecessary. I'm going for a lie down.
As Nottingham's wonderfully huge and varied video game festival is back for another year of fun and frolics, I thought I'd veer off message for a few posts and instead recount the fun to be had at GameCity.
Throughout it's 8 year history, I've had only minimal involvement with GameCity, mainly taking advantage of talks and social events held at Antenna, my personal highlight being Rebecca Mayes' talk and performance.
But now, through the power of freelance, I'm able to organise my schedule in such a way as to soak in all the gaming goodness I can take. This began on Friday night visiting the opening event with a bunch of my former colleagues.
Pixel Pyros
Pixel Pyros, a Brighton-based company, brought their huge, interactive digital firework display to a massive screen mounted in front of the Council House. As a hater of fireworks (there was a terrible mishap with a Roman Candle and a canoe that I'd rather not talk about) the idea of pretty coloured lights that couldn't fall off their makeshift launching platform and shoot flaming missiles of death directly into your non-fireproof body sounded really great.
And it was, although the laser element should probably have come with an epilepsy warning. Even more fun than the fireworks themselves was watching the members of the crowd playing at launching them. Feverishly waving their arms in front of the glowing trigger orbs, some turning it into a dance, some not even looking at the effect they were having, just hammering away like cavemen bashing on rocks, lost in primal noise-making. Just as our most curmudgeonly colleague was complaining that it was boring and the graphics weren't even very good despite just being coloured dots, Pixel Pyros switched it up by throwing in a massive game of space invaders. At this point, ol' moany piped up; "Ooh, shall we play?" and skipped off to join a sizeable queue of prospective button pushers.
I stayed where I was, preferring to watch and hurl abuse at those not pulling their weight than actually partaking myself. After my colleagues had laid waste to the alien onslaught, the game changed again to a frenetic multiplayer version of Asteroids. After a tense moment where a tiny asteroid circled the screen for what felt like a full minute with no-one able to shoot it, the level was cleared, and the game cycled back to fireworks to give those still waiting in line their chance to flap around dementedly. We took this as our cue to head off for alcoholic beverages.
Frogger
Day Two of Game City, I didn't have a whole lot of time, as I was enroute to a birthday shindig in Sheffield, but I managed to squeeze in a nosey at the big dance-mat controlled game of Frogger happening in Market Square and a trip to the Open Arcade (which I'll get to, calm down). While watching a small girl send the suicidal amphibian leaping between articulated lorries, I was horrified to hear a man in his forties remark to his son; "Look, you gotta get the green fing frew the traffic or summat. Y'wanna go?" I fought down the urge to grab him by the lapels of his jacket and scream; "HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW WHAT FROGGER IS?!" and instead proceeded to the arcade.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Filled with my natural enemy, the small child, Open Arcade was heaving with noise and movement. But for once, rather than being driven to an incandescent rage at all those sticky hands clinging to controllers, it made me smile to see a small boy tugging at his mother's arm as she was thoroughly engrossed in a game of Wonderboy, before heading off to play Micro Machines with a Game City rep while waiting for her to finish her run.
Apparently the enemies aren't bat-cockroach rats.
They're these.
The only game that was unoccupied was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I quickly found out why. I originally owned this game on the Atari ST, but this was the NES edition, and so I will blame my complete lack of ability on that. After getting Raphael squashed under a tank in a matter of seconds, I rapidly offed Donatello by taking too long to master the crouch/hit combo and being devoured by the bat/cockroach/rat things swooping about in the sewers. Michaelangelo fared a little better, but after approximately 500 attempts to clear a large gap requiring a double jump and successful attack, I was forced to throw down my controller in a temper quietly retire to the Coffee House.
Space Farmers
Today, nursing hangovers and with the Corporation's awesome setlist still pounding in our ears, my husband and I returned to the Arcade to experience it together. Today, all the consoles were in use, but the developer stalls were less saturated, so we sidled over to the wonderfully named Bumpkin Brothers to try out their co-op adventure puzzle game Space Farmers.
The cute boxy art style (the characters are literally, in the proper sense of the word, boxes) won me over straight away, and after an initial embarrassing inability to co-ordinate my brain and hands between mouse and keyboard, I soon got into the quirky game play. Naturally the first thing my beloved attempted to do was shoot me, then on finding he couldn't do that, harassed me in various other ways before eventually playing as intended so we could solve the puzzle ahead. This involved shooting aggressive robots and blocking laser beams with a cubic pig, which I was very reluctant to leave behind, despite the developers insisting I really didn't need to take him into the end of level teleporter with me. Any game involving farm animals, lasers and a character with a beard and a monocle gets a big tick from me.
It shames me to say that my 'exhaustion' then overtook me with such force, I was unable to catch the name of the next game we played and after one round of fast moving, Wipeout-like racing, we were both left feeling rather overheated and queasy and had to beat a hasty retreat from the poor dev. Hopefully he'll be there tomorrow so I can have another go when feeling less fragile.
With XCOM: Enemy Within due to launch in November and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified looking like an embarrassing, poorly conceived mess, I thought it was about time I dusted off XCOM: Enemy Unknown for another round of heavy floater flushing. EU is that rarity in the console world - a RTS that works. Buggy and chuggy it may be (there are some crazy frame rates on some of the larger downed spaceships) but with just a few customisation options and neat little touches XCOM has succeeded in creating characters I have way more affection for than Niko Bellic or Nathan Drake. My Scottish Assault guy, Robert Hill, is nicknamed 'Mad Dog'. I like to think Firaxis did this on purpose. Whether intentional or not, his name, nationality and ginger crew cut tells me all I need to know about Rabbie 'Mad Dog' Hill. Like Ukrainian Heavy Mikhail 'Casino' Petrov, it's easy to imagine these soldier's lives and personalities outside of an alien invasion.
But as much as XCOM gives, it loves to take away. I'm excited by the forthcoming heavy mechs and the new squiddy-looking enemies, but I'm sure there will be more alien species they have yet to show us which will be insanely bastard hard. And that's why you should steel yourself to the
5 Inevitabilities of XCOM
1) Even if they are Colonels, your snipers will always miss that crucial shot...
Congratulations, you've doomed everybody
You can train them to have an advantage on higher ground then grapple or archangel them up to the highest point on the map, you can level them up til their aim is at max and then give them a scope so it tops 100, but when your rookie is at the mercy of a Muton Elite, or a trio of Chryssalids, or even just a Thin Man who refuses to die, your sniper will let their ammo fly uselessly into the ether, dispassionately telling you; "Shot failed to connect,"as if they didn't just cost the young blood of XCOM his life.
2) ... unless you kind of want them to
Yup, looks pretty big there
Like when you've spent a few turns carefully lowering a Beserker's health so you can sneak in and stun him, only to have him move and get taken out with that critical you needed earlier when the Sectopod was going around blowing everyone up and both your snipers missed even though they had an eighty-fucking-five-percent chance to hit, and it's also a RUDDY MASSIVE ROBOT. (Apart from when it's on the autopsy table later. As if autopsying a robot isn't weird enough, it's also now the size of an average horse. Check that out next time you replay. It's like some Lord of the Rings sizing continuity.)
Ewww... People are made outta snakes?!
3) When you get bored and decide to dash in, a fuckton of Chryssalids will show up and eat your soldiers' faces off
Even once you've beefed up your soldiers' defences, these guys run in packs and it only takes strikes from a couple of them before the third one is chowing down on tasty eyeballs.
So, after Just Cause 2 became unplayable due to freezing issues, and attempting to construct levels in Little Big Planet reminded me why I gave up last time around (no patience or artistic ability) I needed something to get my teeth into. I went for a game I've mentioned wanting to play a couple of times - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
Robert Carlyle as Hitler. Obviously.
Enslaved is written by Alex Garland, whom I have a love/hate relationship with. Dredd, 28 Days Later, Sunshine - all pretty darn good (although on a second viewing, Sunshine made less sense than I remembered), The Beach - a fucking abomination. One of the few movies I have actually considered walking out of at the cinema. Even Robert Carlyle on top creepy drug dealer form couldn't save that movie. So... I was a little suspicious, but had seen and heard good things, so was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Enslaved has possibly the best opening sequence of any game I've played. I'm trying to think of one that betters it, and I can't. Thrown straight into the action, you're on a spaceship, it's crashing, and you need to not die. That's pretty much all the exposition you get, and it works. My heart was thumping as I leapt through burning debris and scrambled along collapsing pipework. After surviving that ordeal, I was able to get to know the character I was controlling; Monkey.
It says a lot about the state of modern games characters that I found myself thinking; "Oh, well, at least he isn't classically handsome."At first glance, Andy Serkis's everyday mug is the only thing that distinguishes Monkey from the obligatory tall, white, muscle-bound guy that takes the lead in every game since ever. But, as ever with Serkis's performances, Monkey proves to be a more interesting guy than expected, with greater depth and sensitivity than most stacked games lugs can offer. Opposite Monkey, is Jolie-alike Trip, a voluptuous, wide-eyed engineer, who makes up for her lack of combat skills (at first) with a wealth of technical abilities.
Enslaved is relatively well-known for being critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful. Many felt that the art style was outstanding and the storyline mature and nuanced. While I'd definitely agree about the art style - Enslaved looks unique and every scene pops with colour and definition, I have to call bullshit on the storyline stuff.
As I said, Trip is initially pretty resourceful. She traps Monkey in a slave headband, reprograms everything in sight and constructs a handy little dragonfly reconnaissance fella out of junk. But the use of her as a gameplay 'tool' (Monkey literally throws her about in some sections because she's apparently incapable of jumping or climbing on her own) made me uneasy, and later my uneasiness was confirmed when Pigsy announced: "You stay behind, Trip. This is man's work." I couldn't decide whether this was some kind of Garlandy attempt at postmodern irony, but the reality is Trip WAS left behind, and wasn't considered capable enough to do the incredibly manly work of climbing up a crane, even though she'd already climbed numerous similar structures in earlier sections of the game. Up until this point, Trip and Monkey were represented relatively equally: Trip's outfit is unnecessarily skimpy, but then Monkey doesn't wear a shirt and is about as close to being sexualised as I've seen in a male character. Trip's not that strong, but then Monkey isn't that bright. Trip has a silly hair accessory, but then Monkey has a stupid scarf-belt. But now, we're told that an obese, elderly, disabled man is the better choice for climbing a crane than Trip. Essentially, ANYONE but a girl.
"Stay here Trip, this guy's better suited to climbing."
I've played on, and while I find Monkey and Trip's burgeoning romance mildly diverting, I've fallen so far out of love with the game, it doesn't have the impact that would've been possible if I hadn't felt alienated. The relationship has been soured by Trip bleating "Help, help, Monkey, HELP!" as she clung to the back of a runaway mech. (Just let go, you stupid cow!) I'll get to the end out of a sense of duty, rather than a desire for discovery, which is a shame.
While I'm far more Marvel than DC, Batman has always been one of my favourite superheroes. He's miserable and kinda messed up and reacts to the death of his parents by playing weird vigilante dress up. And he's not even really a superhero, he's just rich and smart and angry.
I enjoyed the old campy TV show, and the stylised Tim Burton movies and the gritty Christopher Nolan movies. I even enjoyed Arnie as Mr Freeze and George Clooney having a batsuit with nipples. I've only read a couple of the comics (I generally stick with non-superhero comics like Hellblazer and Preacher. All right, they're kind of superheroes, but not in the traditional sense.) but I liked those too. So it's no real surprise, that while I wasn't desperate to own Arkham Asylum, I got it eventually.
And it blew me away. I loved everything about it. Punching bad guys in the face, or creeping around in the shadows, sniggering as they lose their shit in fear. Scanning for the solution to riddles and finally managing to line up that elusive dot with the familiar question mark. Running into old favourite enemies and getting to know new ones. (I'd never encountered Zsasz before, but thoroughly enjoyed being creeped out by his increasingly deranged voicemail messages.)
So when Arkham City came around and it was billed as bigger and better AND YOU GOT TO PLAY AS CATWOMAN!!! I was mega-excited. I built it up in my mind to be the best thing evar in all the world. So it was kinda obvious I was heading for disappointment. I found the story somewhat below par (although I was impressed by the ending) as it appeared overstuffed with bad guys (within the first couple of hours, it's possible to encounter Penguin, Joker, Harley Quinn, Mr Freeze, Two Face, Black Mask, Hugo Strange and Ra's al Ghul) and the lack of sympathetic characters to speak to left me wondering what I was fighting for. Arkham Asylum managed to convey a sense of putting things to rights, whereas Arkham City felt too far gone for redemption.
However, on a second playthrough, there was more to appreciate. Catwoman's sections really are great, and playing someone more morally ambiguous brings a much-needed change in tone to the relentless bad guy encounters. (I tried to find a bad Catwoman cosplay to illustrate this point, but all Catwoman cosplayers are total badasses. There really were no bad ones. So look at Anne Hathaway instead.)
The sidequests and the stories they tell are actually far more compelling than the main storyline. The softer side of Mr Freeze conveyed in his side mission leaves you feeling like Batman's actually been kind of a shit to that guy all along. The Identity Theft killer is about as dark as Batman gets, and the desire to give Ellis what's coming to him (a desire that is denied) is overwhelming. Following Azrael around the city, at first intensely irritating, gradually becomes more and more intriguing, until his final enigmatic words. It was these stories that left me really wanting more. The Joker's demise had really opened things up, Crane's bits and bobs lying around indicated that the Scarecrow was going to be the next big baddie, and although I was hugely infuriated by some of his segments in Asylum, I also found them to be some of the best in the game. And that's before you even get on to finding out what Azrael was on about and giving Ellis a good kicking for being a weird face-slicing little nutbag.
Lion-o hasn't aged well
But then, it happens. First, the news Rocksteady won't be taking the reins with the third Arkham installment, instead offering advice to WB Montreal as they assume creative control. They don't seem very experienced, having only made a Scooby Doo game and Lego Legends of Chima, which seems to me to be a blatant Thundercats ripoff, but Rocksteady were unknown when they got Arkham Asylum, so it's not a big deal. Okay, okay, I can get over that.
But then it all comes out. Arkham 3 is going to be an Origin story. Another bloody origin story. I'm sick of origin stories. I don't want to see heroes all weak and bumbling and pre-heroic, I want to see them kicking ass and taking names. I'm fed up of the Joker. We get a reprieve from Mark Hamill this time around (I am not a fan of his work) but he'll still be wisecracking and doing that laugh that sounds like he needs to clear his throat and being overly familiar. Oh, Bats again, is it? How do you like Jokes? How's that for a nickname? How about I call you Clowny JJ? Jo Jo the Clownface Boy? Little Joey Jokepants? Don't like that do you? No. So shut up.
There's also the stuff that doesn't make sense. Like how come, when he first started out, Batman's level of crime scene analysis was far more sophisticated than it is now? Did he just get jaded and think; "Yeah, this utilising hologramatic projections of crimes is too much like hard work. I'll just stick with plain ol' detective vision. What's a few people's lives and escaped criminals when compared to the effort of having to use technology that takes seconds and improves my chances?"
Hopefully Arkham Origins will prove me wrong and be something so amazing I'll overlook that annoying inconsistency and be waiting desperately for part four. As long as it's not another FFXIII, we're good.
It's no big secret that I don't like exercise. I was picked last for everything in PE at school and rightly so. I was more likely to score an own goal or incapacitate a member of my own team, due to a mixture of extreme inadequacy combined with a pathologically short attention span and a determined lack of enthusiasm for any sport that didn't involve a horse.
I'm one of those trick thin people, where I don't actually have any muscle and all the muscle I appear to have is actually cunningly constructed out of fat. Because of this, and my love for all chocolate and cheese-based foodstuffs, my beloved frequently worries for my health. He knows that while I'll consider 8 hours of tactically sniping aliens time well spent, I begrudge spending even 20 minutes doing exercise. (Unless a horse is involved, obv.) So he got smart, that wiley Northerner, and bought EA Sports Active 2.
Shut up.
At first glance, this is just one step up from a workout DVD. A chirpy fuckwit orders you around,
cheerily giving pointers to help you be the you you know you can be, or some other barely coherent motivational bullshit. You sweat, and you strain, and you get out of breath and at the end of it nothing's different except you hate the instructor even more than you hate yourself.
But then it throws in gamey stuff. There's trophies for things like burning more calories, or completing 2 hours of exercise, or trying one of each exercise type. The leg and arm bands it makes you wear monitor your heart rate and how well you recover compared to last time and plots it into a little chart, encouraging you to beat your last score. You can construct your own workouts with the handy tools and then get rewards for completing them.
And EA have done something really clever, though possibly unintentional, with their trainer. Rather than being comforting and encouraging, she's actually a patronising cow. Her praise ("I know you worked hard for that!") is just as infuriating as her taunts ("C'mon, you're going to have to run faster than that to keep up with me.") Even as I find myself in a sweaty heap on the floor, illogically waving the leg monitor in front of the TV so she can see it and screaming "I DID COMPLETE THE REP!!! I COMPLETED THE REP YOU BITCH!!!" I know I'll still do another workout on my next training day, because I don't want to give that pissy little cow the satisfaction of being able to say; "It seems like you missed a few workouts... never mind, I'm sure you'll catch up."
I'm not sure how I feel about demos. Jesse Schell recently suggested that demos negatively affect sales. In my experience, they have had close to zero effect on my purchasing choices. I hated the Mass Effect 2 demo so vehemently, I vowed never to buy the game. Bioware inexplicably chose a mission in which pretty much nothing happens, and it also froze my PS3 several times before I managed a complete playthrough. Fortunately, my dear husband forgot [zoned out] my moaning and bought it for me anyway, and it's now one of my favourite games of all time. The Heavy Rain demo took 12 hours to download on my shitty internet connection and confirmed what I already knew to be the case - that it felt like a playable movie, wouldn't be for everyone and that David Cage could probably make a game where you shoot puppies in the face for nine hours and I'd buy it because I'm a pathetic slave to Quantic Dream.
Enslaved was a great demo and I WILL buy it some day, and probably would have with or without the demo anyway as it's beautiful and story driven. In fact, the only reason I say close to zero rather than zero is Just Cause 2. This demo froze my PS3 repeatedly too, but there was no way I was gonna let that put me off buying it...
I never played the original, and I'm guessing it doesn't matter. Here is a game that really doesn't look like something I'd usually play. The story's a thin excuse for blowing shit up. The main character is a sleazy South American stereotype who swaggers around in a leather vest with a scorpion on it. The women look tough, but they all need Scorpio (Oh didn't I mention that? Yeah, his nickname's Scorpio. So he wears a scorpion jacket. Or maybe it's because of the scorpion jacket. As I say, didn't play the first one where this vital plot point will obviously have been explained...) to blow shit up for them, and call him their hero when he does. His main ally is an irritating Texan gasbag who likes anagrams, because the developers have mistakenly thought including this only mildly relevant fact would inject him with some much needed personality. The game is so packed full of stereotypes, it's like a Conservative Party handbook on racial profiling. The 'Panauans' (The game takes place on the fictional island of Panau) manage to be offensive to Koreans, Russians, Indians, French and Malaysians via an assortment of awful voice acting, terrible accents and cliched wardrobe decisions. In fact, some accents were so bad, I couldn't even identify the intended country of origin. I *think* there may have been an English guy and a German bloke in there, but I really have no idea. I expect the final showdown with Kim Jong Il... I mean... Pandak Panay will involve trying to kick him over a balcony while he sings 'I'm So Ronery.'
BUT
The game is so fun! It's a simple thing that a lot of developers (and yes, my hero Cage is also guilty of this) sometimes allow to fall by the wayside in favour of being emotionally affecting or demonstrating groundbreaking new development techniques.
Just Cause 2's determined ignorance of physics becomes endearing (although also dizzying) as you zing around with your grappling hook, pulling down statues of Panay and blowing up state owned petrol stations because reasons. Hearing the guards yell "Catch him laaaaaaaaaa!" is as funny as it is embarrassingly crass and stupid. Just Cause 2 allows you to be a spy in the most ludicrous, bombastic manner, racing speedboats, riding motorbikes off cliffs and then parachuting to safety, hijacking helicopters in midair and setting charges in munitions factory chimneys before basejumping clear as it detonates. I could literally do all that all day long.
Okay, so I gave in. Final Fantasy obviously didn't WANT me to finish it, or it wouldn't have been so goddamn tedious. I watched an ending video on Youtube to make sure I wasn't missing anything. It didn't make a whole lotta sense. I googled 'FF13 ending' and there are a whole host of forum discussions about what it all means. What I took it to mean is; the writers couldn't write for shit.
Cieth Fang - bringing sexy back
To cut a (ridiculously, unnecessarily) long story short, Fang goes Cieth and wrecks the place up, everyone else kills a Falcie, Cocoon turns to crystal and everyone from Cocoon, including people who were previously dead or crystallised, turn up on Pulse and all live happily ever after because presumably the massive killer creatures that dogged the party's steps for the entire game are no longer an issue. So, that would have been worth playing 80 hours for, right? Mmm. So sad to see a franchise die on its arse like that. No wonder part 2's down to £10 in Grainger already.
Should've seen it coming though. All the clues for abysmal storytelling were there pretty early on:
1. Sazh is a Danny Glover analogue
He even says, repeatedly, "I'm getting too old for this."
2. Brand placement
This guy made good life choices
Positioning of female's brands: Fang - arm, Vanille -upper thigh, Lightning - tit.
Positioning of male's brands: Hope - wrist, Sazh - collar bone, Snow . . . wrist. So, the writers could picture three body parts on ladies, two of which are rather saucy. And on men . . . two. I'm not saying they had to give Snow a scrotal tat or anything (although that would have evened things up a bit) but am I alone in wanting a big ugly brand right across Hope's pretty little face? Just think it could've added another dimension to his character is all. Giving him a healthy 2 dimensions.
3. They couldn't think of more than 4 vehicles...
In my version, he's called Grunzolo
So, the Eidolons are all transformers right? And all those transformers are based on modes of transport? The Shiva twins are a motorbike, Odin's a horse, Brynhildr's a midlife crisis car, Bahamut's a dragon/jet. But Hecatoncheir and Alexander? Let's leave their shitty names to one side, and consider that Hecaton is a ride-on gun, and Alexander is a walking castle. WTF? I can think of at least five things they could've been that would've been cooler and made more sense within the context of the other Eidolons. For a start, by settling on one or the other for Bahamut, they could've left themselves with a dragon or a jet. Then they've still got: griffon, tank, helicopter, truck, dinosaur, and that's without really going into fantasy vehicles, spaceships and animals. But nope, FF13's writers went to 'Castle' before they went to T-Rex. And I know a lot was made of Alexander representing Hope's desire for safety and stability, but if he couldn't feel safe riding a robot T-Rex then the kid's a fucking asshole.
So now, it's on to Just Cause 2, which is proving to be just the fast-moving, mindless antidote I needed to all this pseudo-deep shit. Round up on that in the next installment.
So, I'm still doggedly plodding through FFXIII. Just got to the top of Taejin's Tower and am now thoroughly stuck on Dahaka. Can't remember him being a problem last time, so I'm not sure where I went wrong on this playthrough. Forums are filled with helpful tips like 'Use Saboteurs to debuff and then heal when he harms you.' Oh, really? Because I was just feeding him cakes and holding the controller in my feet.
So, too bitter to blog about that, I thought I'd instead do a companion piece to the 4 Worst Horses in Games and bring you:
The 4 Best Horses in Games
1. Odin
My, what a big gun you have!
When I was a kid, I didn't have the usual crushes. Unlike my sisters, my choice of future husband wasn't Marky Mark or one of New Kids On the Block. Nope, for me it was a toss up between Adam Ant and Thirty Thirty from Brave Starr. For some of you, this may come as no surprise. Therefore, I guess it was obvious I'd love that other robotic man-horse, Odin. Not in a sexy way though. Thirty-Thirty's the only transforming equine mechanoid for me.
2. Ixion
Sticking with FF then, we have Ixion. As all craft aficionados know, the way to make anything cooler, is to put a bird on it. Games designers and fantasy writers follow a similar rule. Put a horn on it. If something usually has no horns, give it one. If it normally has two, give it four. Three horns? Put six on that bad boy. Good job nothing in nature has five horns. That would be getting crazy. Anyway, it's true Ixion looks kind of like a poodle with 'roid rage, but the guy shoots lightning out of his massive sickle shaped horn. What more do you want? I need to stop saying the word horn now.
3. Ponyta/Rapidash
Okay, so Ponyta (and his evolved form Rapidash) isn't my favourite Pokemon. That honor goes to Bulbasaur, who was doing the whole "My name is the only thing I say" thing waaaaay before Hodor. (I know, lots of the Pokemon do that, shut up.) But the other rule of game design is put flames on things. Flaming sword, flaming armour, flaming charity kitten. Rapidash follows both rules. Already had flames, so the only room for improvement? Horn.
4. Ruin
Ruin is actually my favourite game horse of all time. He turned up in Darksiders at a point where Mark Hamill's shitty acting as The Watcher had me on the verge of embedding my controller in the TV. Winning Ruin's trust is a brilliant and exhilarating part of the game. He brings in some much needed camaraderie and can be employed to devastating effect against enemies. He's fast, he's smart, he has flaming hooves. Horn? Ruin don't need no horn. He's got an armoured saddle with skulls on.
Three years I waited for FFXIII after completing FFXII. Three long years. Final Fantasy is one of the few franchises I'll break my 'never-buy-on-release-day' rule for. So when Edge got a preview, I rushed out to buy their hands-on review...
I couldn't believe it. It must just be some new reviewer trying to make a name for himself, I told myself. Their online critic was even harsher. I told myself they were wrong. I told myself that inspite of my earlier misgivings, Square Enix just wouldn't do that! So I went and bought and the game at launch and, as they usually are in the vast majority of their reviews...
FFXIII breaks so many rules of games and storytelling, I'm frankly astounded it got a sequel. I've been replaying it for the purposes of this blog (I would never have touched the thing again otherwise) and keep thinking that the three years I spent waiting for a new FF game didn't seem as long as the linear 'opening' section of the game itself. 25 hours! 25 hours until you can stop being shunted along through the dreadful storyline with all the usual emo dickweeds and actually do what you want. Although seeing as there are no towns and only one extremely long and tedious side quest, it doesn't really seem like much of a relief . All the most interesting parts of the story happen offscreen, so we're instead treated to lots of cutscenes of Lightning's only expression (brooding) or Hope's wide tear-tearfilled eyes as he tries to come to terms with the death of his mother or the seperation from his dad or his friend's debilitating case of I-don't-give-a-fuck.
The Many Faces of Lightning, The Kristen Stewart of the Gaming World
Another thing about Lightning that makes me very uncomfortable is how thin she is. At least she doesn't have ridiculous balloon breasts with a life of their own (although bit part player Jihl Nabaat has that covered anyway>) but something about her skinniness really nagsat me. I think it's because she's a soldier. Her wetter-than-a-tissue-paper-diving-suit sister Serah is equally skinny, but why wouldn't she be? She farts around in lacy stockings and clearly has daddy issues. But Lightning's supposed to be some bladegun-toting badass with military training and L'Cie special moves. She shouldn't look like she lives off salads and coffee fumes.
Having said all of that, I am at least finding it playable this time around, as I now have sufficient understanding of the crystarium and paradigms to not have to go through the deplorably dull tutorials. Maybe I'll even make it to the end this time. Maybe the end will be so revelatory and glorious, I'll be compelled to rush out and buy part two and spend even more time with Lightning's miserable fizzog. Who can say?
...so, what's happened during my long hiatus? Well, I joined the games industry, left the games industry and now just have a toe in it. And what better way to celebrate my triumphant return to this blog than the...
4 Worst Horses in Games
1. Agro in Shadow of the Colossus
I know there's a lot of love out there for Agro. He's your only friend in a harsh landscape populated with huge creatures. But my complaint doesn't really lie with Agro himself. It's not his fault he looks like that. It's the fault of a development team that spent many hours creating expansive vistas and mind-blowing bosses, but couldn't spend fifteen fucking minutes to check which way a horse's knee bends. Don't even get me started on when he's galloping around and all four limbs become jointless noodley appendages. If a vet saw him flailing about like that he'd have him shot in the face on the spot.
2. Any Horse in Skyrim
Skyrim horses on the other hand, look all right. They're not going to win any Best in Show rosettes, but their legs work. They're just total dicks. Sure footed to the point of ridiculousness when you're just messing around, as soon as you actually need them to not fall off a cliff and plummet to their doom, that's the first thing they do. They're also aggressive nutters, leaping out to take on armed bandits and dragons while you're hiding in a bush trying to snipe them quietly from a distance. Idiots.
3. 'Stealth' Horses in Metal Gear Solid 5
Another
logistical nightmare. Anyone who's ever ridden a horse knows they are
creatures incapable of stealth. When they're not freaking out because
the bush they've walked past a hundred times before is terrifying today,
they're farting loudly and unashamedly. And I know that's not really
the point in MGS5, but even taking into account that the horse itself isn't supposed to be the stealthiest, Snake's enemies must be monumentally thick to think nothing of a horse strolling past them in full tack keeping one side completely hidden from their view. Y'know, like horses do.
4. Jade's Horse in Pippa Funnell: Take the Reins
That's it, don't acknowledge my presence in any way, just how I like it
My husband bought me this game as a hilarious joke. Cos I like games and I like horses and I'm not opposed to Pippa Funnell, so obviously it was the 'ideal' present. The problem with Jade's horse is he demonstrates all the traits that are likely to put people off owning horses. He's disobedient, slow to react to aids, plunges into or refuses jumps, misbehaves in the dressage arena and requires constant, repetitive patting, grooming and mucking out, which he accepts woodenly with no discernible signs of appreciation. Or maybe I just wasn't very good at the game.
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