flibble_2000ad

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-12-13T00:48:00

2009-12-13T00:48:15Z

Today I finally got round to buying The Dark Knight and Watchmen, as well as the latest Harry Potter film. I've only watched one of them so far, but thought I'd post a bit about it. Well, it's something to do.

So, I've watched The Dark Knight tonight. It was better than I expected, but not as good as Batman Begins and was disappointing in some ways. Batman Begins is probably my favourite superhero movie, but this one didn't live up to it. The following will contain spoilers so don't read on if you're as late as me seeing the film and don't want to know about it.

Firstly, there's the Joker. Heath Ledger gives a good performance of a general psychotic criminal, but for the most part it just wasn't the Joker. There were a couple of scenes with him that worked well (his vanishing pencil trick and the brilliant hospital explosion scene both come to mind) but for the rest of the film, it just didn't quite work for me. To be fair to him, I think the problem was more to do with the script than his performance, but it does mean I can't really see where all the hype was coming from.

On the other hand, they have Harvey Dent become Two-Face towards the end of the film, making it look like he's being set up to be the villain in the next one. Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face is absolutely perfect. So what do they do? They give him about 10 minutes total screen time and then kill him off! Way to waste one of the best ever Batman villains.

Oh, and what's happened to Christian Bale's Batman voice? He deepened his voice for Batman in the first film and it worked alright, but here he's gone even further and often sounds completely ridiculous.

Anyway, I quite enjoyed the film despite this stuff, but it's nowhere near as good as it's been hyped to be, and the treatment of Two-Face was absolutely ridiculous. It's no classic.

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-07-15T22:22:00

2009-07-15T21:24:08Z

The first episode of Tales of Monkey Island was very good. Hard to comment too much before the other episodes, since they're direct continuations rather than stand alone episodes, but I'll have a review coming soon anyway.

And right now, the remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island is downloading on Steam. I've finally managed to get my order put through to buy stuff on there. I'm really quite pleased!

Books, films and games, as usual

2009-07-07T21:41:34Z

Finished reading all 3 volumes of Batman: War Games. I didn't know much about it before I read it, but since it was in the library I thought I might as well give it a go. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. There were quite a few characters I didn't know, but it didn't really matter, since they were clear enough to understand basically who they were from the context. The plot is mostly about a full scale mob war going on throughout Gotham City. The events are interesting enough, and although the ending felt a bit rushed, I thought it was very good.

Also watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tonight. While watching it, I couldn't help but wonder what someone like Tim Burton could have made out of the premise. Probably something that worked much better than this. Most of the film was incredibly dull and maudlin. The entire thing was completely humourless with not a single moment to lighten the depressing mood. The aging effects were good, as was the acting (mostly) but the whole thing is a wasted opportunity. I should have expected that really, the critics liked the film too much.

I'm posting this because I was planning on playing the first episode of the new Monkey Island games, since it was supposed to be out today. But because of ridiculous time-zone issues or something, it actually isn't. Which is bloody annoying.

Broken Sword

2009-06-27T23:24:08Z

Recently completed the DS version of Broken Sword, so here's a combined review of the original PC and director's cut DS versions of the game. Not all that happy with this review, but I can't be bothered editing it any more, so it'll do.

Game: Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars / Broken Sword: Director’s Cut
Developer: Revolution Software
Publisher: Sold Out / Ubisoft
Year: 1996 / 2009
Reviewed: 2009
Platform: PC / Nintendo DS
Genre: Adventure

This review is slightly different from the norm. That’s because it’s not just one review, but two for the price of one. Not much of a bargain since they’re free anyway, but there you go. I’m going to write about both the original Broken Sword and the recent DS Director’s Cut remake of it. I’ll start with the original and then discuss the changes made to the new version further down, culminating in a double score. Such innovation.

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (or Circle of Blood for the American release for some reason) was released way back in the depths of time, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and good adventure games were getting released more often, i.e. 1996. It’s one of the true classics of the genre and still stands up as one of the best games of its type years after its release.

Broken Sword begins with American tourist George Stobbart relaxing at a table outside a Parisian café when a killer disguised as a clown rather rudely blows the place up. As if we needed more proof that clowns are evil. So George decides to start investigating, and soon meets a photojournalist called Nicole Collard. The mystery becomes more complex and turns out to involve ancient manuscripts and the Knights Templar. Of course. Every mystery involves them. They’ve become a bit of a cliché in recent years, especially since the success of the Da Vinci Code, but that doesn’t take away from the quality of the writing here.

It’s not only the plot that is well written here though. More important are the characters. George is one of the most likeable heroes I’ve played in a game. The dialogue is sharply written and often very funny, as it is for all the characters. By the end of the game, you’ve become attached to George and Nico, and throughout your globe spanning travels, you’ll encounter a huge array of eccentric characters. There isn’t a dull one amongst them. The game also provides a lot of comments for trying different things. You don’t just get dialogue options (which are displayed as little pictures illustrating the topic) but you can also show all the items in your inventory to the people you meet, often with amusing results. After all, who wouldn’t be baffled by a stranger coming up to them and randomly showing them a grease paint stained tissue or a clown’s nose?

Even in adventure games, it can be hard to escape the obligatory sewer level.

Characterisation is aided further by the wonderful quality of the voice acting. Every character has a distinct personality that is enhanced by the brilliant actors portraying them. George comes across as a friendly, laid back tourist. Nico comes across as an initially suspicious journalist that grows attached to George over the course of the game. The dialogues between the two works brilliantly, building an interesting relationship that evolves as the plot develops.

The puzzles are mostly well thought out with only the occasional sticking point where something is a bit hard to fathom. Most of them are inventory based, with the occasional logic puzzle thrown in. But there is the infamous goat puzzle. A goat that blocks the way to where you need to go, and butts you every time you try to pass. A goat that has driven even the most experiences adventure gamer to madness. The problem isn’t the difficulty of the puzzle but rather that it is solved in a way different to anything that comes before it, meaning that there’s no reason to assume that you can solve it that way. Still, this one puzzle stands out because of the overall quality of the rest of the game.

The interface of the PC version of Broken Sword is fairly straight forward. Right clicking on anything is used to look at it and hear George give the description. Left clicking depends on the context. The mouse cursor changes depending on which hotspot it is over. If it shows a magnifying glass, then you can examine it in more detail by clicking, if it shows spinning cogs then you can use it, a mouth means you can talk to someone, etc. It’s simple to use and means that the interface never gets in the way when you’re trying to solve a puzzle.

I think we can all agree to that sentiment.

The DS version has a revamped interface that works perfectly with the stylus controls. Sweeping the stylus across the touchscreen reveals any hotspots in the area. You can then move the stylus over one of the hotspots, and lift it up to select it. If there are multiple actions you can take with the object, then moving over the hotspot will reveal the choice of actions. It’s better than the normal method of just touching the screen that DS adventures usually employ, eliminating the problem of not being able to find the hotspots due to the lack of any mouse cursor feedback.

The main change to the DS version is a new segment of game at the start where you play as Nico. This adds around an hour or more to the game, and gives some background on her character. For the most part, the style of this section fits in well with the rest of the game, with good writing and decent puzzles. Unfortunately, they do spoil it a bit by throwing in a couple of those hated slider puzzles for no good reason. There’s also a couple of cipher breaking puzzles, which are fine if you like that sort of thing, but anyone who has trouble with code breaking could struggle. It’s slightly less of a problem due to another new feature of the DS version, which is a built in hint system. Touching the hint button in the corner gives progressively more obvious hints the more you use it. (That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway, but I didn’t actually use it, so I can’t comment on the quality of the hints. Presumably they lead you through the puzzles if you use them enough.) The only problem with having this hint system on is that it can be easy to accidentally hit the hint button while moving the stylus around the screen. I did this twice near the start of the game, but then I remembered it could be disabled in the menu.

You could get arrested making remarks like that to a policeman!

Another less important change is the addition of a journal feature. George writes down notes in the journal about what has happened as you go along, and you can read them at any time. It’s not really an essential feature, although I guess it could be helpful if you’re returning to the game after a while and want to refresh your memory. It did add an amusing moment to another small change to the game though. For the DS version, the previously mentioned satanic goat puzzle has been removed and now works pretty much automatically. Checking the journal afterwards reveals the comment “For a moment I thought he was going to be incredibly awkward to get past, but in the end it was surprisingly simple. Who would have known?” At least the developer’s are willing to fix their flaws. There are other changes to puzzles too, and not necessarily for the better. One of the problems with the original game was that you could die. When you were in a threatening situation, you sometimes only had a few seconds to figure out what to do before you were killed. Obviously, this makes sense, but there was no option to retry the scene; you had to reload your last save. If you’re not the sort to save often, this could be frustrating. The DS version removes these puzzles entirely, making George basically solve them himself automatically. Removing the puzzle entirely isn’t really the ideal solution.

The Nintendo version features the same graphics as the PC version on the touchscreen, while the upper screen features a still image most of the time. It’s only during conversations when the new graphics come into the game properly, since the upper screen is replaced by a close-up of the characters in conversation. These are quite high quality, which is to be expected since they’re drawn by comic book artist Dave Gibbons. Balancing out these nice new graphics is the fact that due to the limitations of the hand held system we lose all of the fantastic voice acting.

Both versions of the game are well worth playing. It’s essentially the same game in both versions, so take your pick. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but they both provide a solid adventure game, and most of the negative points of the DS version simply stem from the limitations of the system rather than design choices.

Save System Review: Both versions let you save the game anywhere. 10/10 each.
Graphics: The graphics on the original game are hand drawn and still look quite nice, albeit at a low resolution. The characters graphics have dated more than the backgrounds. The DS version features the same graphics, although the smaller screen means there isn’t an issue with the resolution, and the new artwork by Dave Gibbons is of a high standard. 7/10 for PC, 8/10 for DS.
Sound: The PC version has superb voice acting throughout the game. Sound effects are sparse, as is the soundtrack, but is very well done. The voice acting is the main loss of the DS version, since some of the character of the game is lost with it. 8/10 for PC, 5/10 for DS.
Bugs: I didn’t notice any bugs in either version of the game. 10/10 each.
Gameplay: I’d say the interface is tied with both versions. Both have a well implemented system for the controls used. The puzzles are mostly the same, and the new content in the DS version balances out with the few puzzles that have been removed. 8/10 each.
Storyline: A solid mystery storyline, but some of the best (and funniest) dialogue to appear in an adventure game. 9/10 each.

Arbitrary Final Score: PC version: 85%, DS version 82%

If you like this, you might also like: The rest of the Broken Sword series, Gabriel Knight series, Monkey Island series

Gears of War review

2009-06-24T21:37:04Z

Finally finished Gears of War the other day, so here's my final review.

Game: Gears of War
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft
Year: 2007
Reviewed: 2009
Platform: PC
Genre: Third Person Shooter
Game Version: Whatever the crappy Games for Windows service might have decided to patch it to.

I have to admit to not being too optimistic about this game. I’m getting really sick of all these dark grey environments that seem to be the setting for just about every modern shooter, and it made the game look thoroughly generic. And the last time there was a console shooter people had been raving about so much, it turned out to be the rather mediocre Halo. So, without expecting too much, I loaded the game.

“You cannot run the game with modified executable code” is the message I was confronted with. So I had to go searching the internet, only to discover that there was some expired security certificate on it or something, making the game unplayable until I downloaded a patch for the problem. I guess I should have been expecting this. It’s running on the bloody awful Microsoft Games for Windows Live system, which seems to be purposefully designed to cause problems, since I can’t find a single use for it that’s actually worthwhile. We’ve had multiplayer games on the PC for the last couple of decades, and they’ve never had to have Microsoft’s permission for it before. So I installed the patch, and then spent an hour getting round all the login issues with Games for Windows before I could finally actually play the game.

Gears of War is strongly story driven. The story is that there’s a bunch of aliens, so you have to kill them. Sorry, I guess I should have posted a spoiler warning there since I’ve given the entire plot. You take control of one of the four members of Delta Squad. They have names, but I can’t remember them, since they’re all just generic muscled clichés. The only distinguishing feature is that one of them seems to have had Tim Russ’s head grafted onto his huge body. Despite their stereotypical tough guy natures, the dialogue is occasionally amusing. One particular segment I liked was when the squad split into two groups and the other group had to go through the sewer, with the characters joking about how awful it must be for them. It’s like it’s purposefully commenting on the fact that it isn’t including a sewer level. Fantastic. (Although thinking about it, if there’s four players in co-operative play, does this mean that two of them will have to go through a sewer level? Whatever.)

That creature has to be around here somewhere…

The gameplay is similar to most other third person shooters, with the exception of the cover system. The one that the manual tries to pretend they invented even though they copied the idea from Kill.switch. At first, I wasn’t sure of the value of the cover system. In the early parts of the game, when you’re just crouched behind a low wall picking off enemies over the top of it, it makes the game feel more like a glorified shooting gallery and seems remove the dynamic nature of most action games. It soon starts to become more helpful as you start having to defeat aliens over wider areas and find yourself dashing from one piece of cover to another trying to advance, or to defend the area you’re in. While behind cover, you can use the aim button to peer round the corner or over the top to take shots at the enemy, which is obviously very useful. You can also just fire blindly, which isn’t. The cover system is actually very well implemented and does change the feel of the game considerably. The only minor problem with it is that the sprint button is the same as the cover button, and occasionally I’d try to run and instead find myself sticking to the nearest wall.

There are some fun weapons to keep the action interesting too. The gun you’ll probably use for the majority of the game is the default assault rifle with a built in chainsaw. Putting the fact that this would make it probably more dangerous to the user than to the enemy in reality, it’s handy for the occasions when the Locust troops get a bit too close. Aside from this there’s the usual pistols, shotgun and sniper rifle that you’d expect to find in any shooter, but there’s a couple of weapons amongst them that stand out. Firstly, there’s the Hammer of Dawn, which isn’t a gun, but rather a way of targeting an enemy to be lasered from an orbital satellite. It can only be used in certain areas, mostly to take out a couple of large bosses, but it’s great while it lasts. The other unusual weapon is the Torque Bow, which resembles a crossbow, but with exploding bolts. Hold down the fire button a few seconds before releasing the shot, and it’ll stick to the enemy, before blowing him up a few seconds later. You also get the obligatory grenades, but they’re quite useful here. They can be used to seal up emergence holes that the enemy spawns from, and when you hold down the fire button before releasing the grenade, you can actually see the projected path, giving you a chance to aim it properly.

Tuvok put on some weight after Voyager got home.

Gears also makes a game mechanic out of reloading your weapon. Reloading can be quite slow, but as it is being done, a slider moves along a bar under your weapon icon in the corner of the screen. If you hit the button again while it passes over a small highlighted section then it speeds up the reloading process, and if you hit it in the tiny part that’s completely white, then you also get a damage bonus to your next few shots. This doesn’t really detract from the game, but I’m not sure it really adds anything to the experience either. Given that when you get the active reload right, the speed of the reload is only about the same as it would be anyway in most games, it can just get annoying when you forget about it and have to wait ages for the gun to be reloaded.

The game does manage to get a surprising amount of variety into the gameplay. To break up the normal combat there’s several brilliant set piece boss battles that require varying tactics. There’s also a vehicle section and even a level where you ride around in a mine cart. There’s even some diversity of the levels too, with one particularly atmospheric level taking place in the pouring rain with flashes of lightning occasionally illuminating the surroundings. Then there’s the final level, which is probably the best level taking place on and in a moving train that I’ve played. All the effects are very well done. In fact, the graphics in general are of a very high quality. It’s just that after a while, I start to wish the architects of the buildings I was exploring the ruins of didn’t have such an insane fondness for grey.

ARGH! WHAT’S THAT?! Oh… it can’t be… Colour!

Great as the game mechanics are most of the time, there are some questionable decisions. For example, it’s a squad based game, and as usual, if one of your squad members is taken down, you can run over and revive him. Not usual is the fact that if you die, that’s it. You can revive your team mates, but they won’t do the same for you. I can understand them doing it if that’s how they want the game to play, but it makes no sense at all. There should at least be some explanation. But no, if you die, it’s straight back to the last checkpoint. Which is another questionable decision. The checkpoints actually aren’t too bad in Gears of War, and you never have to redo too much of the game. They’re similar to games like Call of Duty most of the time, in that they’re very regular. There are some occasions where you might defeat one group of enemies, get killed on the next group and find you have to go back to the first again. It’s not too often, but it is a bit annoying when it happens. So mostly the checkpoints are reasonably well done, but it’s still a checkpoint system and if it causes annoyance even once then it’s a reason for including a quicksave.

In regards to the healing of your squad mates: it’s not really worth it. They’ll just stand up then be killed again within about 5 seconds, since the AI is hopeless, and you’ll have to get out in the open and most likely get yourself killed in order to do it. Most of the battles you’ll have to do yourself, since your allies will have got themselves killed pretty quickly. Fortunately, the game’s difficulty is just about right, giving a challenge without ever becoming unmanageable, so it’s no real problem when you have to do things on your own. Until the final boss that is.

Delta Squad take some time out from shooting monsters to prance through a field. Daisy picking scene not included.

Gears of War is another of the long line of games that decides that the final boss battle has to be ridiculously hard. I lost count of the number of times I had to reload to try and defeat the end of game boss. It doesn’t help that it’s probably the least interesting boss fight in the entire game. As usual, your team mate is usually dead within seconds, at the one point where he’d actually be useful, since it seems nothing less than 500 nuclear bombs directly on his head would take him out. Games need to stop doing this. It’s not the fact that the boss battle is hard that infuriates, but rather that it’s hard out of all proportion with the rest of the game. The difficulty should be a steady upwards curve throughout the game, not a curve ending in a sudden spike the size of Mount Everest. It spoils the finale of what was otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable game. Eventually I did kill the final boss, and it was satisfying to finally defeat him, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the frustration of how many attempts it took, and it seemed to be pretty much sheer chance that he took his time advancing and didn’t reach me as quickly as he did in all of the earlier attempts.

(Then after the final cutscene, you get one of the characters rapping over the end credits. I’m being generous and not deducting any marks for this.)

There were occasional bugs in the game too. For example, one of the cutscenes in the middle of the game played out with no sound at all for some reason, and I had to rely on the subtitles for the conversation. I got stuck in place unable to move near a gun turret near the end of the game, and at another point my AI team mates stood around firing at a patch of wall for no apparent reason. (I think an enemy was somewhere behind it and they were firing at it despite not being able to see it.) And simply using Games for Windows Live might as well count as a bug, for how useless it is.

This final boss is enough to drive anyone batty.

The PC version of Gears of War does add five new chapters to the game and they were so well integrated into the campaign that I didn’t know which levels were the new ones. I was quite surprised to learn just how much of the game was new. The five chapters add up to around an hour of extra gameplay, and it’s actually one of the best sections in the game, ending in probably the climactic battle. (Much better than the bloody bat covered final boss.) I’m not really sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I’m very glad to have the additional content, and it definitely improved the game. It just seems unfair to have additional content on one version of the game over the other, and seems like a marketing gimmick to try and get people to buy multiple versions of the same game. Still, as mentioned, the new content is fantastic, mostly revolving around trying to restore power to a bridge while being chased by and ultimately fighting a Brumak, i.e. a giant monster.

So Gears of War is a very good game, despite its flaws. Most of the flaws are minor but combined with the ridiculously awful final boss battle they do harm the game slightly. And please let’s have less grey in future.

Save System Review: Checkpoint save system. Mostly well spaced but occasionally causes annoyance. 7/10
Graphics: Very good graphics and brilliant effects, only let down by some rather bland environments through much of the game. 8/10
Sound: Very good voice acting, and the sound effects and score all work brilliantly. 9/10
Bugs: As mentioned in the main article. 8/10
Gameplay: Intense combat and a well implemented cover system which leads to slightly more tactical battles later in the game. The weapons all feel powerful and have the right amount of recoil to make the combat work very well. 8/10
Storyline: Aliens bad! Kill aliens! It gets by with a cinematic quality to the cutscenes and occasionally amusing dialogue to prevent it being a total failure. 5/10

Arbitrary Final Score: 80%

If you like this, you might also like: Gears of War 2, Kill.switch, Rogue Trooper

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-06-19T21:50:00

2009-06-19T20:54:18Z

I know I shouldn't get optimistic over a licensed game, but I can't help but think that the new Batman: Arkham Asylum game looks amazing. And after seeing the trailers for the first time tonight and realising that they have the proper cast of the Animated Series I'm even more hopeful about it. It's a game that's pretty much a must purchase for me, for it's style at the very least. I just hope the gameplay is good too. Here's the Joker trailer. (And I'm so glad that they've made the Joker actually looks like the Joker, and not like Heath Ledger in lipstick.)

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-06-07T22:20:00

2009-06-07T21:32:41Z

Every so often a corporation does something so ridiculously nonsensical that it's hard to understand how they get away with it.

Last year Activision said they were dropping the publishing of upcoming game Brutal Legend after they merged with Blizzard. So Double Fine, the game's developers, went over to EA, who agreed to publish the game. Now that the game is getting a lot of attention and looking like being a success, Activision is trying to sue EA, saying they have the rights to publish the game, even though they previously said they didn't want it. I can't believe how childish they can get. As someone at EA commented that it's like a man abandoning his family and then trying to sue his wife when she finds someone else.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

2009-06-02T21:10:58Z

Not much to say right now, but I had to post just to comment that the E3 gameplay footage for the next Call of Duty game looks spectacular.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-modern-warfare/50101

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-06-01T22:36:00

2009-06-01T21:37:31Z

The earlier mention of Monkey Island made me remember this video, which I thought I'd post here. It's the band Press Play On Tape, which specialises in covers of old computer game music, doing a live version of the Monkey Island theme.

New Monkey Island Games!

2009-06-01T20:43:55Z

Best gaming news in years! Where did this come from? I opened my emails tonight expecting the usual junk, only to find an email from Telltale Games announcing their next episodic series will be 5 episodes of Monkey Island, with the first one due on July 7th.

Telltale did a good job of making new Sam and Max episodes and their Strongbad games were very good too. I'm really looking forward to these. Especially as they've got the proper voice actor for Guybrush, since having rubbish voices was my main worry when I first heard the news.

Not only that, but Lucasarts are also releasing a new version of the original Secret of Monkey Island, with updated graphics and full voice acting. I thought they'd only be releasing crap Star Wars games for the foreseeable future.

Now I'm going to do something I usually never do, and preorder the episodes.

CSI Game Reviews

2009-04-23T22:33:04Z

Just posting my old CSI game reviews here, after an enquiry about them from sgt_detritus. I wrote these a long time ago, so I'm not sure if they're as good as my more recent reviews, but here they are anyway. I've written loads of reviews of all sorts of different games over the last couple of years, and I'd never realised I hadn't posted any of them at all here until recently.

Game: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Developer: 369 Interactive
Publisher: Ubisoft
Year: 2003
Genre: Adventure

CSI should be the ideal concept to be made into an adventure game. Investigating crimes, questioning suspects and gathering and analysing evidence, it seems about the most perfect fit for the genre. On the other hand, it’s a license of a TV show, and we know how these usually turn out. And unfortunately, the game leans more towards being a typical licensed game than the great adventure it has the potential to be.

CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation, as you will already know, unless you’ve managed to avoid anything related to popular culture in the last few years. And if that was the case, you obviously wouldn’t be reading this review. The game involves gathering evidence and analysing it to work out how the crime was committed. At least, it should be. What it actually involves is clicking on all the hotspots at the crime scenes, using the correct tool to examine and gather the evidence (usually just using what you’re told to), then dragging all the evidence you’ve collected onto a stiff low-resolution version of one of the cast members of the TV show so that he can analyse it. After which, a stiff low-resolution version of a different cast member will solve the crime for you. The main mystery of the game is usually why you bother tagging along at all.

Some guy whose name I’ve forgotten, seemingly investigating a woman’s legs.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, the game is incredibly easy to the stage that it almost becomes pointless. Gameplay mostly consists of moving your mouse arrow around the crime scene over all the interesting looking objects that you can’t examine for no good reason, until your cursor eventually turns green. Your cursor turning green isn’t a medical complaint, but an indication that there’s miraculously something in the crime scene you can actually examine. Clicking it takes you to a close up view of the evidence, where you can use various tools on the item. They consist of powders and sprays to take fingerprints, heat sensors, ultra-violet light, plaster for taking impressions of footprints and the like, gloves for lifting objects, and various other bits and pieces. Often, especially in the first few cases, you’ll be told what you’re looking for when you click on the item, simplifying one of the few places where you have to do something yourself in the game. Selecting something in the crime scene will often be accompanied by your partner commenting that you should see if there are any fingerprints. You’ll be so glad that they’re there, because we’re all obviously too stupid to work that out for ourselves.

With the crime scene examined, you can question any suspects or victims that might be around. Unless it’s a murder case, in which case you’re unlikely to be interviewing the victim. That would be a game with an entirely different theme. Questioning people consists of clicking all the options in the conversation menu until you’ve asked them all, keeping up the incredible challenge level of the rest of the game. After this, it’s off to the lab, to drag every piece of evidence over to some guy called Greg from the TV show. He obviously knows absolutely every fact about everything ever, since he can tell you exactly what things are the instant you show them to him. Except fingerprints. You have to scan those into the computer yourself, and click the search button to see if they’re a known criminal, or the compare button to see if it matches another print you’ve found. You don’t have to compare the prints yourself, simply click the button. There’s also a microscope where you can examine hairs or fibres, to compare two samples for a match. You can do this a grand total of two times in the game, and one of those seemed to be optional. And again, you’re told whether it’s a match straight away, leaving nothing for you to do. This is a missed opportunity to add some actual puzzles into the game.

Finally, when you’ve clicked every bit of evidence and Greg has analysed it all, you’ll be told how the crime occurred and the case will be over. The boss guy congratulates you on your remarkable ability to click on stuff, and a new case becomes available where you can repeat the same process all over again. There are five cases in total, and they do get better as they go along. The last couple of cases were actually quite interesting, with the final one tying together two of the earlier cases in a quest to find the aforementioned boss guy, Gil Grissom, who has gone missing. These plots save the game from being a total failure, given the lack of any real game-like aspects.

This is Jim Brass. His entire job consists of sitting at his desk doing nothing except answering the occasional question from you and getting warrants.

Graphically, the game is disappointing for the time it came out. The game runs at a fixed low resolution of 800 X 600, and the graphics for the crime scene environments are quite low quality and blurry. The close-ups of evidence aren’t quite so bad, but they’re still nothing special. The character animations are so sparse that the people you meet seem to be frozen into a rigid position, looking so stiff they’d make a plank of wood seem animated.

There are some good points to the game. Other than the crimes being interesting to solve (or watch being solved), the game does start with a tutorial which would be useful for new adventure players, or anyone who wants to see how the game works. It’s just a pity the other CSI members keep helping you so much even after the tutorial is over. It would probably only take a few minor adjustments in the gameplay to increase the score by a fair amount. As it is, it’s far from a great game, but for all its flaws, it is quite enjoyable for it’s very short length (there are five cases that follow the TV series in being about an hour each) and worth playing if you’re a big fan of the series or just want an easy adventure game to pass a bit of time.

Save System Review: The game autosaves as you go along, and it seems to do a good job of it. When you load the game you should be at the place you left off.

Arbitrary Final Score: 63%

Game: CSI: Dark Motives
Developer: 369 Interactive
Publisher: Ubisoft
Year: 2004
Genre: Adventure

It’s another CSI game! Wahoo! More TV cash-in goodness! Dark Motives, the second game based on the popular CSI series, carries on in the style of the first game, but thankfully, it does improve on the formula. For one thing, it seems to have made a greater attempt to turn it into an actual game.

The detective work started when I opened my triple pack of the first three CSI games and placed the CSI: Dark Motives disc into my DVD drive, only to have the CSI Miami installer start up. Using my deductive reasoning, I realised they’d put Dark Motives on the CSI Miami disc instead. Obviously, this must be a clever way to get you into the right frame of mind, and not some shoddy packaging. This trend continues when after the first case was completed, I discovered that all in-game text for the rest of the cases was written in French. I had to deduce to download the patch to correct this. After solving each case, you get access to some bonus content, consisting of concept artwork for that case, and one video of someone talking about something or other. I’ve no idea what they were talking about, since despite the people talking in English, the videos were overdubbed in Spanish. From this I deduced the people who made the CSI Triple pack are lazy gits who can’t even be bothered testing their product.

Other than this external detective work, Dark Motives has improved on the first game in almost every area, although the improvements sometimes don’t go far enough. Graphically, the game is still the same resolution, but the quality of the graphics has been improved. The animation is also slightly better. The characters no longer resemble planks of wood in stiffness levels, and actually occasionally move in a much more natural way than before.

After half an hour of careful study of the clues, I came to the conclusion that this was a motorbike.

“What about the gameplay?” I deduce you will be thinking, unless you aren’t. Well, in the main aspects it plays very much like the previous installment. Crime scenes are scoured for clues, which are clicked on and analysed or collected with one of the tools in your inventory. Unlike the first game, which seemed to do everything but take control of your mouse to make sure you choose the right thing, Dark Motives is slightly less patronising and lets you decide for yourself.

Once the evidence is collected, you take it to the lab, and drag it all over to the omniscient demigod known as Greg who played such a major role in the first part. This time however, he seems to have got fed up of doing all your work for you, so you actually get to do something for yourself. You get to compare fingerprints, tire tracks, footprints and DNA samples on the computer, as well as try to find matches for various other bits of evidence you pick up along the way. You can also use the microscope to analyse fibres or enhance photographs. The fingerprint (and DNA, etc.) comparisons have improved from the first game. Rather than telling you whether there’s a match automatically, it assumes you have an IQ greater than that of a stone and lets you match them yourself. It’s nothing complex, but it adds that little extra interaction that makes a big difference.

Unfortunately, analysing photographs proves to be a missed opportunity. One of the most fun aspects of the Blade Runner computer game was using the ESPER system to analyse photographs, zooming in on anything you thought to be a clue, and genuinely feeling like it was you doing the investigating. That might prove how well this can work, but the CSI game ignores that sort of thing in favour of the simpler system of dragging a picture to the microscope and then sitting there being told what clues are in the picture. It’s a relapse into the “you’re too stupid to work this out yourself” feel of the first game.

At the end of each case, you get a short five question quiz asking about various facts from the case. It actually means you get to show you’ve bothered to look at things yourself, although it doesn’t make much difference whether you get the questions right or not. Still, it’s a nice touch if you feel you haven’t had enough involvement in the rest of the case. It might be nicer to let you do more in the case rather than give an observation test at the end though. Perhaps the game is made by a group of high school teachers who just can’t get out of the habit of setting an end of module test.

Déjà vu! Jim Brass is actually permanently attached to the ground in this position by two foot long steel screws. He has slightly rearranged his desk in an attempt to ease the boredom of having to wait for the sequel before he was needed again.

There are a few difficulty settings in the menu. Nice in theory, but not much use in practice. It consists of allowing you to turn off helpful features like the cursor changing colour when you’re over evidence. However, like the first game, every scene is cluttered with items, and only certain ones can be clicked on. Turning off the highlighting just means you’ll end up clicking on every piece of broken glass until you find the one which is inexplicably the only one you need to look at. It’s not making the game any harder except by turning it into an irritating pixel hunt.

It’s in terms of plot that Dark Motives excels from CSI’s earlier gaming incarnation. The cases are longer and much more involving than before. Things are never obvious from the start, and the cases can often take you in unexpected directions, ending up investigating a very different crime from what was expected. This aspect on its own boosts the games rating significantly, and makes the game worthwhile playing. It’s far from a classic, but it’s an enjoyable way to pass a few hours. And perhaps with CSI Miami they’ll actually manage to make the whole thing into a proper game.

Save System Review: Autosaves like the first game. Whenever I quit the game, I was still at the same point when I reloaded, so it seems to work fine.

Arbitrary Final Score: 70%

Game: CSI: Miami
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: 369 Interactive
Year: 2004
Genre: Adventure

CSI: Miami is the third of the CSI games, being a sequel that is also a game spin-off of the spin-off TV series. Confusing sounding, but what does this mean in real terms? Basically, it means you get CSI stories, but in a sunny setting and involving more women. The whole series seems to be the creation of someone who had the idea “Let’s make CSI, but with women in bikinis!” So now, Al Robbins, the coroner from the previous games, is replaced by Alexx Woods, a female coroner with too many Xs in her name, and Greg Sanders in the lab has a female Miami equivalent called Maxine Valera (with the right number of Xs in her name). Jim Brass is still firmly attached to his desk in Las Vegas, and the Miami crime lab have Yelina Salas, his larger chested equivalent. All of these do exactly the same job, and have no discernable personality within the game, meaning that it makes no real difference in terms of gameplay.

The hazards on the golf course were getting a little too hazardous.

Dark Motives, the last CSI game, was an improvement over the first game and seemed to be on the way to making the series a worthwhile addition to the adventure genre. So how has CSI Miami improved on that? Well… it hasn’t. All the game mechanics are exactly the same. The previous game might have been a step in the right direction, but it still hadn’t gone far enough, so to find no changes here is a huge disappointment. There are some minor additions, they’re just not related to the core gameplay. A couple of times during the game you’ll find encrypted messages and have to break the code yourself. It’s just a simple substitution cipher, and you can even get hints to gradually reveal the letters if you can’t solve it yourself. The idea of decrypting messages is interesting and fits in with the theme of the game, but any criminal who thinks that the best way to encrypt a computer file is by a simple code that the average newspaper crossword doer could crack in 5 minutes doesn’t need an entire CSI unit on the case to catch. It might be interesting to investigate a crime where the criminal isn’t a complete moron occasionally. The other new addition is an even less fitting puzzle, involving piecing together pieces of torn up paper. In other words, you have to pause in the middle of a case to do a jigsaw puzzle. They’re fairly easy, so they’re not too much hassle, although on the other hand, that also makes them quite pointless.

Given that the gameplay hasn’t really moved on, the game really needs some interesting cases. It doesn’t have them though. Whereas the cases in Dark Motives usually started off with an investigation into a bizarre incident and moved on from there, Miami seems to almost entirely deal with fairly standard crimes that could have come straight out of a soap opera. The one place it does do well is in the final case. The previous games have usually included elements from earlier cases in the game, but Miami does this better than the others by bringing in suspects from all the earlier cases, linking them all together into one overarching plot. Unfortunately, even this isn’t especially memorable after the game is over.

Yelina Salas, the more mobile Miami version of Jim Brass.

Graphically, the game is about the same as last time; not bad, but nothing amazing either. The voice acting of the main CSI characters is fairly bland. I can’t comment on the TV series since I’ve never watched it, but I would hope the acting is better than this. The acting from the suspects and witnesses is nothing special either, and it doesn’t even seem particularly well recorded. One woman in particular has a voice that echoes as if she’s in a huge empty room, even when you’re talking to her outside. Unless the outdoors scenes were actually recreated in a Star Trek holodeck, this is just poorly done recording. Surely a game with a big name license like this can do better.

The extra that are unlocked at the end of each case are a bit more interesting now, since you get a couple of puzzles as well as the character and location sketches. But they’re still nothing spectacular, and a few pictures, a jigsaw and a cryptogram per case isn’t going to increase the quality of the main game. CSI: Miami actually feels like a step backwards from the previous game, with the less interesting cases, poor voice acting and complete lack of improvement to the gameplay. It’s entertaining enough to pass a few hours if you have nothing better to do, but there’s nothing to especially recommend it.

Save System Review: Autosaves like the other games. It seems to work fine, again.

Arbitrary Final Score: 65%

Game: CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Ubisoft
Year: 2006
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure

Despite the number 3 in the title, 3 Dimensions of Murder is actually the fourth CSI game. It is the third set with the original Las Vegas cast, however. Gone are the Miami cast and their awkward attempts at acting, and back is Jim Brass at his desk yet again. Hooray! What the title probably does refer to is the fact that the game’s scenes are now rendered in full 3D. This changes the gameplay in absolutely no way at all. It barely even changes the appearance, since you still can’t wander around the scenes freely, instead being stuck to one spot and rotating around. It does mean that when you zoom into a particular part of the location, such as a desk, you can move along it or rotate a few degrees around it, but that’s about it. Added to this is the fact that the graphics are well below the standards of the time it was released, and it’s a change that’s been pretty much worthless.

It’s not only in the movement that the game hasn’t changed. All elements of gameplay are exactly the same too. Back in the second game, Dark Motives, it seemed the games were going to be getting gradually better. However, any changes unfortunately stopped there. You scan the crime scenes by clicking on every bit of evidence as usual, and then drag everything you’ve collected onto the appropriate machines in the lab. Matching fingerprints and DNA is the same simple process as it was before and the photo analysis and audio analysis which could have potential to be interesting is still overly simplified to the point where you just drag the items onto the computer and that’s pretty much it.

How about this for a radical change to the game: Jim Brass might still be sat at his desk, but… he he’s wearing a different jacket and tie!

But at least I can say that the cases are much more interesting this time. Unfortunately, just because I can say it doesn’t make it true. It’s a lie. It seems the cases in Dark Motives were about the best we were going to get, and nothing here really goes beyond the standard murder plot. There is one case that has a reasonably interesting twist in it, far fetched as it is, but most of the rest of the game is rather forgettable. There are five cases as usual, and the last case again involves characters and locations from the earlier ones, but the plot doesn’t really relate to the earlier cases at all, the characters just being used to make it seem like there’s some sort of overall conclusion. One of the cases does involve the murder of a boss at a computer game company though, involving a bitter ex-employee who didn’t like the fact that his game based on two comic book characters was cancelled in order for the company to concentrate on violent games. It seems the people making this game were so unhappy with the cancellation of Lucasarts Sam and Max sequel they wrote an entire CSI case around it.

Actual puzzles are still pretty much absent, apart from one ridiculously awful attempt at one. In one case, you find a cracked vase, from which you have to remove the broken pieces so you can get at the object inside. When it seems you have removed all the pieces and can clearly see what is inside, you inexplicably still can’t get it. It turns out that it’s because there’s a practically microscopic fragment still left in one corner that must be removed before you can take the item out from the vase. Because a tiny, barely visible piece like that would stop you from reaching in and picking up an item in full view of course. It’s one of the most poorly designed puzzles I’ve come across in a long time, and the fact that it’s practically the only puzzle in the game other than the occasional basic jigsaw-style piecing together of a torn document makes it stand out even more. At other times there’s slight annoyances scattered around, such as the fact that you can’t seem to take any fingerprints at all from perhaps the most obvious place around, the computer keyboard. Oh, and I really didn’t need to see a close up video clip of a rat crawling out of the mouth of a corpse on first investigating one of the crimes, especially as it had no actual purpose within the game other than to be repulsive.

I can never understand this modern art.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought after Dark Motives that the games had genuine potential to become really good. Maybe I was wrong, or maybe the makers just aren’t really trying, but the games certainly haven’t shown any signs of reaching that potential, having not even remotely changed since. It’s better than the CSI Miami game, by sheer power of not being based around CSI Miami, but it’s still not good enough to suggest that the games are now anything other than a lazy cash-in of a popular TV show.

Save System Review: Autosaves as you go along, always resumes from where you left off, no problems. 10/10
Graphics: The game was released in 2006, and the graphics are extremely dated and very low resolution for the time. Still 800X600, even now it’s in 3D? There’s just no excuse anymore. 5/10
Sound: Voice acting is varied, some good some bad. Some of the cast from the TV show play their respective roles, but some don’t, and the sound recording quality is very amateurish at times. 6/10
Bugs: None that I found. 10/10
Gameplay: The same basic formula of clicking of choosing the appropriate tool to collect the evidence at the scene, then just dragging it to the correct machine in the lab, and questioning suspects. It just hasn’t moved on. 5/10
Storyline: The plots aren’t bad, but most of them aren’t especially interesting either. They do at least make sense though, and are above the average mystery game storyline. 6/10

Arbitrary Final Score: 63%

Quantum of Solace etc

2009-04-19T22:00:02Z

I just finally saw Quantum of Solace today. I quite enjoyed it overall. But the directing for the action scenes was absolutely dreadful. Is anyone else sick of this modern trend to film action scenes with lots of quick cuts and shaky cameras so that you can never tell what the hell is going on? What's wrong with having the camera actually pointing in the direction of whatever is happening so we can appreciate all the excitement and actually see the stunts? I've noticed it in other films too, but usually there wasn't too much action in them anyway. When the film is a James Bond film, with all the action that entails, it comes close to ruining the film.

The theme tune was pretty bad too. Not Madonna bad, but not far off.

And Moore is still the best Bond.

On a completely different note, is the Nintendo DS screen specially designed to attract dust. It seems to constantly be accumulating there. I'm sure it somehow even manages to pull in dust when it's switched off and closed up, since I've opened it on occasion and it's been covered in dust, and I'm sure it was clean when I closed it up. What sort of black magic is this?

Mirror's Edge review

2009-04-12T23:48:18Z

Right, time for another game review I think. This time, it's Mirror's Edge.

Game: Mirror’s Edge
Developer: DICE
Publisher: EA
Year: 2009
Reviewed: 2009
Platform: PC
Genre: FPS Platform
Game Version: 1.0.1

After it was announced, I was never sure what to think about Mirror’s Edge. The idea of a first person game focusing on movement rather than combat sounded interesting, but plenty of good ideas have turned out bad before. On top of that, the developers’ only recent experience seemed to be the multiplayer only Battlefield games and it was being published by EA. It could go either way; a huge success creating a modern classic or a completely unplayable failure. As it happens, it went neither way, and we’ve ended up with an unusual concept turned into a middle-of-the-road game, even though it does do several things very well.

The game is set in a dystopian future where all forms of communication are closely monitored. Anyone wanting to transfer information from one place to another secretly has to employ a runner. Illegally, of course. Runners carry the messages across rooftops to avoid being seen. You play a runner called Grace, but unfortunately, you don’t get to do much message carrying, since fairly early on you get involved in a conspiracy and end up caught up in a lot of police chases. Frankly, the plot is a bit dull, mostly due to the fact that you don’t get to know the characters enough to really care about any of it. The characters certainly don’t show a great deal of personality to attach you to them in the very brief time the game lasts. The plot is basically just an excuse to get you into a lot of situations where you’re running while people shoot at you. Which is one of the games main problems, as I’ll mention in a moment. And for some inexplicable reason, they’ve decided to do the cutscenes in 2D, in a style that looks like it was made in Flash, when they have the great 3D engine they used for the rest of the game available to them.

I can see my house from here!

The main idea behind the game is to create realistic movement and allow parkour style movement across city rooftops. Perfect for anyone interested in trying parkour, but with an aversion to breaking their necks. This is where the game excels, allowing the smoothest, most natural feeling movement ever to grace (pun not intended, honest) a first-person game. You pick up speed, vault over boxes, slide under pipes, run along walls and generally get an amazing flow of movement going. When the game lets you, that is. For the first few minutes the game is incredible, as you leap from rooftop to rooftop finding your route from the start to your destination. But it isn’t long before the police turn up and start shooting at you, and that’s when things start to go wrong. As soon as the guns start firing, you don’t have time to actually enjoy the game any more. You can’t take the time to look around and plan your route, or just enjoy running around, since you just have to charge through the most obvious path so that you don’t die. And if you get stuck, then they’ll catch you and kill you, and you’ll have to try it again. You can attack enemies, but the combat isn’t great and there’s very little chance you could take on the vast numbers of the police single handedly. You do have to take out someone in your path at times, and it can be quite satisfying to just knock them down or disarm them by timing your attack correctly. But the combat just seems at odds with the general feel of the game, and takes away everything that makes the free running sections so entertaining.

The game isn’t without flaws in other area either. At times the precision required was rather annoying, as I jumped to grab onto a pipe on the side of a building, only to miss and plummet to my death because I jumped a millimetre too soon. And this probably only affects the PC version, but I had a weird sound issue where the background noise of the city was incredibly loud, and drowned out all other sound, including dialogue. It turned out I had to turn my hardware sound acceleration down in Windows in order to get the sound to work properly. Which has just reminded me that I still haven’t put it back to normal. This review will be resumed momentarily. In the meantime, here is some light music.

There has to be an easier way to check your reflection.

Ok, now that’s done, and I can carry on moaning. Because another major problem of the game is that it is ridiculously short. I’d completed the story mode in 5 hours, and that includes about half an hour trying out the time trials mode. These let you run through the levels from the game in an attempt to get the fastest time possible. You can compare your times in online leader boards, which is the closest you get to multiplayer with this game. Yes, this extends the playing time, if you fancy playing through the same levels again, repeatedly, but there was no real incentive for me to do that. I’d rather have a longer main game, not just be told to play the same stuff again. Especially as Mirror’s Edge had the most expensive new PC release price on the shelf.

Which brings me to my rant of the day. And today’s topic is: Downloadable Content. You see, when I heard that they were releasing a new pack of time trial levels for Mirror’s Edge, I was quite happy. While I didn’t have the desire to repeatedly play through the games levels again, some new levels would be very welcome, and the time trial mode would mean no police to dodge, returning the game to the experience it was supposed to be all along. Then I discovered what I should have guessed earlier. They’re charging for it. And they’re charging £6.99! What an absolute fucking cheek to charge above standard price for a game that’s too short in the first place, and then try and make us pay more for stuff that should have been included with the game in the first place. Sod off, EA. I’ll wait for it to hit the cheap shelves before I buy one of your games again. This trend of Downloadable Content in general is annoying, since it’s meaning game companies are holding back content just so they can sell it later and make even more money instead of just including it with the release. It must be stopped!

Anyway, rant over. Let’s be a bit kinder and talk about the graphics. The game uses the Unreal Engine 3, but you’d never guess that, since the levels of Mirror’s Edge are the antithesis of the drab greys and browns of most of Unreal engine games thanks to the new lighting system it uses. The city itself is largely white, with large splashes of striking colour in various locations, and the rooms in the interior sections all seem colour co-ordinated in particularly vivid hues. It’s quite nice to see a game utilising colour in this way. The environments do often seem rather plain, but it seems to be a design choice to make a statement about the world the game is set in. I’m willing to accept that rather than just assuming the artists got lazy, especially since it does often look very impressive, if only because it’s so unique.

The future’s bright, the future’s yellow.

Ultimately, Mirror’s Edge is a game that did quite a few things right, and certainly had the potential to be a great game, but it has far too many flaws to be ignored. And no, calling the game’s theme tune “Still Alive” isn’t going to fool us into thinking it’s even half as good as Portal was. It’s certainly a game worth trying for the sheer originality of the concept, but once you’ve finished, you can’t help but think it was a missed opportunity.

Save System Review: No manual saves, just checkpoints. They’re usually fairly well placed, but there were times when I got fed up of replaying the same section again and again as I tried to work out where to go next while avoiding being shot. 6/10
Graphics: Simple but effective, with a striking use of colour, Mirror’s Edge certainly manages a unique appearance. 8/10
Sound: The voice acting is decent and the music is not bad, but nothing really stands out. And if I want to listen to Still Alive, I’ll go with GLaDOS every time. 7/10
Bugs: An annoying sound problem, but nothing else that I noticed. 8/10
Gameplay: It’s great when you can build up momentum and let your movements flow into each other, but too often it’s spoiled by awkward combat sections and constant police presence. 7/10
Storyline: A basic plotline that lacks interest due to never really allowing you to get to know the characters. Their motivations are a mystery. The details of the plot have already faded from my memory. It just didn’t grab my attention much at all. 5/10

Arbitrary Final Score: 70%

If you like this, you might also like: Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Portal

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-04-11T22:24:00

2009-04-11T21:28:07Z

Braid was apparently released for the PC yesterday, which I somehow failed to notice. Probably of no interest to everyone else who's either already played it or isn't interested in it, but I felt the need to post it here anyway. That's another expense for me, since there's no way I can resist getting that. I just have to decide where I'm going to buy it from.

It's available on Steam, which I've never bought from before, but admittedly it is a very good service and the download speeds I've got whenever I've downloaded patches and stuff from it have been the fastest I've ever had. I just don't know whether to go for it. I still don't like buying online really, but it's the only way for some things.

I guess I can try the demo on there first anyway.

flibble_2000ad @ 2009-02-10T23:47:00

2009-02-10T23:50:06Z

Just finished the latest Prince of Persia game. Not only did it remain good throughout the game, but the ending is one of the most powerful finishes to any game I've ever played. Very impressive. I'll probably post a more detailed review at a later date.

flibble_2000ad @ 2008-12-24T23:21:00

2008-12-24T23:40:24Z

Just to get me in a really festive mood, I randomly came across a free online flash game made by the PETA nutters. It's called Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals. They make their own version of the popular Cooking Mama games, but this time suggesting that Mama is an evil murderous bitch because her recipes aren't all vegetarian. Interestingly, according to this game, blood and feathers come out of eggs when you crack them. I'd never actually noticed that myself.

http://www.peta.org/cooking-mama/index.asp

I'm curious though. Surely this constitutes some sort of breach of copyright in some way. They even use the proper Cooking Mama logo and character. I've seen amateur stuff taken down for copyright and trademark issues, so how can something like this get away with it?

I find the game quite amusing anyway. Can't see how it would put anyone off eating meat though. None of the vegetarians I know feel the need to try and force their lifestyle on everyone else. I guess you get extremists in any issue.

Merry Christmas, and enjoy any festive slaughtered animals you may be having.

GTA4

2008-12-07T17:38:10Z

GTA4 finally came out on PC last week so I bought it on Friday. I've played for about 3 hours and so far, it's ok, but nothing spectacular. I don't see where all the 10/10 and 100% reviews were coming from. While the actual characterisation and story elemenents seem to have improved, I've got some severe reservations about other aspects of actual gameplay.

Firstly, for some bizarre reason the camera isn't locked behind the car like it was in earlier GTA games, meaning that when I turn a corner, I'm left staring at the side of the car with no idea where I'm going until the camera gradually lines itself up again. I thought this was a problem with the PC port at first, but it seems the camera worked that way on the console too judging from videos I've seen and reviews I've read. It makes driving the car rather awkward, with the only alternative being to use the car bonnet camera view which I don't like. What was wrong with locking the camera behind the car so you can see properly? I never heard any complaints about that before.

Then there's the fact that the car handling is pretty dreadful. In the earlier games I could zip around at high speed, dodging between cars and taking sharp corners perfectly. In the new game, the cars are more likely to either not turn quick enough or spin out of control if you try to take a corner at high speed. More realistic I'm sure, but nowhere near as much fun, and it makes the driving feel like more of a chore than entertainment. And the cars seem to have a stopping distance of about 5 miles.

Finally, I was on my way to a mission when I got a call from Roman asking me to come and help him. I thought I'd do the other mission first since I was almost there, and then go and help him after. After doing the mission, I got another phone call from Roman telling me he was in hospital and he'd been beaten up because I didn't go to help him. Well, thanks a lot for trying to make me feel guilty for doing the other mission I was told to do first. I got to do the mission later when he got attacked again, but that's not the point. Am I going to be at the other characters beck and call all the time? The best part of the GTA games was always being able to do things when you wanted to, and not when the game demands it. Has that changed now?

Anyway, despite those problems, I'm still quite enjoying the game, but they're pretty major flaws and do damage the quality of the game quite a bit. I'm sure the game will be fantastic if Rockstar either patches these issues (especially that bloody awful camera) or a mod maker fixes them. Until then, I still think the series peaked at GTA3.

flibble_2000ad @ 2008-12-03T21:42:00

2008-12-03T21:46:01Z

Just discovered this absolutely insane, ridiculously fast performance of Hocus Pocus by Focus. No other reason for posting. With this, I don't need one.

flibble_2000ad @ 2008-12-01T21:09:00

2008-12-01T21:27:23Z

I've now played about 4 hours of Far Cry 2, and so far it's quite promising. The graphics look great and run smoothly on high settings, the combat is satisfying and it's nice to be able to drive around and pick your next mission in an FPS. It's hard to see why they actually called it Far Cry 2 though, since it bares absolutely no relation to the original game. Just cashing in on the name presumably. You don't play the same character, and the storyline seems to have no relationship to the first game at all. And thankfully, this time the gameplay isn't near impossible at easy difficulty. I haven't played for long enough yet to know whether the missions will be good though, or whether they'll end up being repetitive. It's been enjoyable so far anyway.

I watched WALL-E at the weekend, without really knowing what to expect. I certainly wasn't expecting it to be the best film I've seen in ages. Which it was. As well as perfect animation and incredible art design, there's the best sci-fi movie plot in years. There's an environmental message in there, but sod it, it doesn't get in the way of a great story. I was surprised at just how powerful the film was.

This post has been all positive, which doesn't seem right. It probably means my next one will be full of complaints about something.

Left 4 Dead

2008-11-20T21:46:21Z

So I just discovered that the demo of the Left 4 Dead had been released on Steam. It's a game that I'm not really sure about for several reasons. I'm not sure how good it will be in single-player given that it's focused around co-operative play, and it's entirely about zombies, which I'm growing increasingly bored with after fighting them in nearly every single game ever. But it is by Valve, so I loaded up Steam to try the demo to see if it will be worth buying. And then I searched in vain for the demo.

Turns out, the demo was only available for a few days and then was deactivated once the full game was released. What's the point in that? If I tried the game, I might have liked it and bought the full game. Now I can't try it out, so I'm definitely not buying it, so they've lost a potential sale. I just can't see any sensible reason for having a limited release for a demo. Unless they think the game is so bad that playing the demo will put people off.

At what point did Valve become morons?

(Also, substituting the number 4 for the word "for" is bloody annoying, even if it is a pun on the fact that it's co-op for 4 players.)

flibble_2000ad @ 2008-11-17T22:50:00

2008-11-17T22:51:22Z

Got the new Bill Bailey Tinselworm DVD yesterday. Not quite sure about it really. It felt a bit off compared to his other three stand-up DVDs, which I loved. The first half of the show just didn't seem up to the usual standard, although it picked up a bit for the second half. The weird thing is, the funniest bits on the DVD are in the extras, with some clips from another live show from the same tour. A lot of it involved Bill improvising when things went wrong, and he was funnier there than in the prepared material on the DVD. I think it's a combination of the Wembley setting along with too much reliance on the big screen effects for the jokes that made it disappointing. Still funny though.

Fallout 3 is still brilliant.

Here's that game survey thingy. I never usually do surveys, but I was bored and saw this one was about games.

~~~~~~~~~
Genres/firsts.
~~~~~~~~~

1.What was the first video game you have ever played?
Hard to remember, since I’d have been about 4 or something using an old Tandy computer. One of the earliest games I remember is a weird game called Psycho Shopper on the Commodore VIC-20.

2.What was your first console?
My first console was a NES, which I only ever had the one cartridge with Mario and Duck Hunt on it, which came with the console. Years before that I had a Tandy computer though, followed by a long stream of various old computers before finally reaching the PC.

3.Have you ever visited a video game arcade?
I did when I was much younger and you could play the games for 10p. £1 would last me an hour.

4.What was your first handheld?
I’ve never had one… :O

5.What was the first game you've beaten/cleared completely?
That would probably be…. Space Quest 3, on the Atari ST, in the pre-internet days when there was no access to walkthroughs. I was so proud of completing that. Don’t think I’ve completed an adventure game without a walkthrough since.

6.Games based off of real sports: Yay or Nay?
I like some racing games, but I’m not really a sports fan.

7.Online games: Yay or nay?
They can be fun for a quick game, but I don’t like having to put up with other people. They have to be free for all games, or co-op with friends, I can’t be bothered with the team based ones.

8.Do you play any Massively Multiplayer Online RPG games?
Nope. Most of them are a con, making you pay every month for a game you’ve already bought, and you have to put up with other people. Plus, they seem to be all the tedious grind parts of RPGs with the bit that makes them worthwhile, the storyline, removed.

9.Do you play any virtual pet games? (Neopets, Teripets, Aftermathzone, etc.)
Nope. I did play The Sims for about an hour once though.

10. Puzzle games and Strategy games: Yay or Nay?
Puzzle games are great, and strategy games can be good, although I’m useless at them.

11. Do you play any RPGs?
Loads of them, they’re my favourite type of game. That’s why I’m playing through Fallout 3 now.

12. Do you play any Platformer games?
Occasionally, but most of them are dreadful. Psychonauts was an amazing game though.

13. What was the first game/console/handheld of yours that stopped working?
The disk drive on my Atari ST went wrong years ago and I had to get a replacement. And the soundcard broke not long after I got my first (second hand) PC. That’s about the only problems I’ve had with computers going wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~
Characters/Plot
~~~~~~~~~~

14. Do you actually care if a game has a plot or do you just play games for the gameplay?
The plot is the most important thing for me. Some games without plot can be fun to play around with, but it’s a good storyline that will keep me coming back to a game. I think games have the ability to tell stories in a way no other format can, but I think that the developers have barely even begun to realise that potential.

15. Name a few video game characters that are your favourites.
Guybrush Threepwood and Murray from the Monkey Island games, April Ryan from Longest Journey and Dreamfall, Andrew Ryan in Bioshock, Shodan in the System Shock games, GLaDOS in Portal, many of the characters in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines….there’s too many to keep listing them.

16. Name a few series that are your favorites:
Fallout, Monkey Island, System Shock, Space Quest, Knights of the Old Republic, Half-Life…

17. Has a video game ever made you cry?
Not sure if any have ever made me cry, but neither have films or anything. Dreamfall might have come close though.

18. Has a video game character annoyed you so much that you wanted him removed from the game?
Those annoying bloody mental patients in Assassin’s Creed who push you if you go anywhere near them, drawing attention to you. I’ve been in sections where I’ve been pushed around from one to the other, and inevitably ended up in a long chase down alleyways with half the city’s guards after me. I’d have given Assassin’s Creed bonus marks if they’d played the Benny Hill theme during the chases.

19. Do you "pair" or "ship" characters up with one another?
I don’t know what that means…

20. Do you write video game fanfiction?
No.

21. Do you draw video game fanart?
No, I can’t draw and I doubt I would anyway.

22. Do you come up with theories on how a character came to be/what he or she would do in a situation/why he or she is moody/etc.
Surely the game should do that itself, and if it doesn’t, then the writer isn’t doing his job properly.

23. Are you a "fanboy" or "fangirl" of any character?
No.

flibble_2000ad @ 2008-11-09T23:43:00

2008-11-09T23:51:06Z

Started playing Fallout 3 last night. So far it's amazing. Very faithful to the spirit of the old Fallout games, while Bethesda move it into a free-roaming world like their previous games. But it seems much more complex world than Oblivion, and the conversations have a lot more choices. Basically, it's a Fallout game moved into 3D, and it's fantastic.

And to all those Fallout fanboys who think that the new game should have been made using the same 11 year old 2D engine: stop being bloody stupid. The Fallout games were great despite their engine, not because of it. The engine was rather dated and clumsy even at the time it was released, and if a game was released in that engine now, it would sell about 5 copies.

I'm off to play some more now.

flibble_2000ad @ 2008-11-08T21:09:00

2008-11-08T21:20:35Z

My dad gave me the money to get Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 today, as a sort of early Christmas present. Once I was there I couldn't resist getting Dead Space too, and then when I noticed Brother's in Arms Hell's Highway had a reduced price I got that too. Lots of new games to try now.

In an example of bizarre pricing, Brother's in Arms: Hell's Highway was still £29.99 for the normal edition, but the version in the fancy metal case was £10 cheaper. I can never understand the pricing in Game. I've also seen things such as a collection of an entire series of games selling for cheaper than one of those games in a box on its own.

flibble_2000ad @ 2007-11-02T23:17:00

2007-11-02T23:40:42Z

Some random stuff from the last month or so.

I've now finished training at work, and have been doing the actual job of answering the phones for 3 weeks. It's not been too bad, I expected it to be a lot worse. I've not had too many nasty calls, although when I do get them I haven't a clue how to deal with them. Still, it's going OK.

I did get my new computer. It's been capable of playing everything I can throw at it perfectly at top settings, including the Crysis demo. I did play Bioshock and it was as brilliant as expected.

I went to see a show called There's No Place Like A Home today. It's about a retirement home for retired actors and actresses that is going to be closed, and in order to make enough money to buy it themselves, the residents devise a plan to kidnap Jeffrey Archer and hold him to ransom. I was surprised at just how funny it was. I really enjoyed it. Gordon Kaye was especially brilliant in it, but all the cast were good.

Earlier I treated myself and bought both the Half-Life 2 Orange Box and The Witcher, so now I have even more games to play. The Witcher looks really good. I only intended getting the orange box when I went into the shop, but when I saw The Witcher there, I couldn't resist it. Especially after seeing the 18 rating because it "Contains strong sex, violence and drug references." Hopefully it'll be a proper mature adult game dealing with dark themes. Of course, I could be wrong, but I'm quite optimistic.

flibble_2000ad @ 2007-09-03T22:49:00

2007-09-03T21:58:03Z

My nan had to go into hospital about a week ago because she couldn't move properly. She had to shout for my dad to help her, and we ended up having to call an ambulance. She'd been ill for a week or two before that. Yesterday she seemed to be getting better. She died earlier today.