All You Ever Needed to Know!

(About PC gaming.)

A Guest Article by Mr Party Hat

No-one wants to play PC games. Not really. Your mouse is covered in hand-jam, your keyboard is infested with bits of toilet roll from an attempt to mop up the latest batch of semen, the heat of your graphics card pushes the room temperature beyond the realms of human acceptability and, ultimately, it costs too much. But what if you want to sound informed on The Internet? How can you hope to be taken seriously by the people who really matter – forum geeks – if you don’t know your Empire: Total War from your Empire Earth?

You can’t. That’s how is how it is is how it is.

Which is where I come in! My mouse is hand-jam free, I rarely masturbate near my keyboard (I store it up for scientific experiments) I have a water-cooled graphics card that keeps my room cool and, crucially, I shop at Aldi, leaving mucho funds (that’s Spanish, keep up) for PC gaming. So sit back, take your hand off your mouse (that’s how the hand-jam gets there) and prepare to be enlightened by morsels of PC Gaming for the Educated Gentleman.

Liam, why should I buy a gaming PC? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on prostitutes?

That depends on several factors. Firstly, the sex economy in your area. If you live in a weak sexconomy, you can expect to pay as little as £20 for a blowjob in a KFC car-park. Poor sexconomies are determined not by demand, but by the physiognomic attractiveness of your area’s prostitutes. If they are rough [Latin name: Skank-ass-hos] then you can expect more bang for your buck. Examples of such regions – Milton Keynes, and other places as grim as Milton Keynes. In these instances, forget PC gaming. For the price of a decent gaming rig you can buy 35 blowjobs. If, however, you live in an area not populated by “skank-ass-hos”, PC gaming becomes a genuine alternative to paying for sex.

Liam, aren’t PC games just dodgy ports of 360 games?

If you had said this two years ago, I would have tracked you down and cum in your porridge. Unfortunately, [booming voice] The Recession [/booming voice] has brought about the apparent halt of console gaming. By the time the original Xbox was the same age as the 360 is now, it had already been dead for over a year. And there is absolutely no sign of the next generation. In-fact, Microsoft are readying a relaunch of the same hardware, with the help of paedophile trainer Milo and Natal.

This sudden halt has caused the PC gaming market to stagnate. Publishers have grown to rely on the homogenisation of PC and console games. Why create a gloriously cutting edge piece of wonderment exclusively for the PC when it’s only going to sell 30,000 copies in its first week (Crysis)? Much better if you simply port a successful console game, removing 80% of the work and quadrupling the profits. And so, PC gamers have been forced to wait. Crysis 2 (PC Exclusive, DX11) becomes Crysis 2 (360, PS3, PC). Cut down to portions manageable by the weakest link and then churned back onto PC, a shadow of its potential self. Our cutting edge rigs are sighing as they use an iota of their potential to render Resident Evil 5, Mirror’s Edge and Arkham Asylum. They grit their quad-cores as we connect to Xbox Live to upload our Gamerscores, sealing the homogenisation with one more sticky fanboy wank.

Liam, is PC gaming completely dead, then?

I’ve watched enough Lost to know that you don’t blow all your load in one go. Tune in next time I have a spare ten minutes to find out if I really think PC gaming is DOOMED!!!, and which developers are doing their best to salvage it.

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Review - Assassin's Creed II

• Game: Assassin's Creed 2
• Format: Xbox 360
• Other Formats: PC, PS3
• Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
  
• Publisher: Ubisoft
  
• Genre: Third Person Adventure

The first Assassin's Creed was a game with great potential - the Prince of Persia-style free running allowed you to climb any building then leap into a conveniently placed haystack at the bottom. Then there was the crowd-based stealth system that when used properly could let you walk right up to your target, stab him, and walk away before the guards even noticed he was dead. All this was tied up with a plot that could best be described as "The Da Vinci Code if Dan Brown wasn't a talentless hack" and the truly revolutionary concept of using a historical setting that was neither World War II nor ancient Rome.

Note the lack of Nazi gladiators.

Despite this potential, there were a number of major flaws that prevented it from being a truly great game. But now two years on, the sequel is here and provides one of the best examples in years of how to address the flaws of a game and bring the concept forwards.

The story kicks off right where the first game ended. Desmond is rescued from Abstergo by the modern Assassins and put into an upgraded version of the Animus. Once there he begins to relive the life of his ancestor Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a 15th century Italian nobleman who, much like Altaïr, is also a behooded Batman wannabe fighting to stop the Knights Templar from stealing the powers of Space Jesus. It makes sense in context. This change of character brings with it a new setting in the form of five cities in Renaissance Italy.

The dialogue è ormai casualmente switch between English e Italiano. Accendere i sottotitoli. Requiescat in pace.

The most obvious flaw in the original game was the dull mission structure, with constantly repeated missions involving such thrilling jobs as pickpocketing or sitting on a bench. The sequel does its best to address this problem, with much more variety in the missions and more cinematic set-pieces. There are also a number of underground tombs that allow you to make the most of Ezio's parkour skills. Having said all this, there are still too many "very slowly walk after this guy" missions (i.e. more than zero).

And the improvements extend further than the mission structure, to the point where it is hard to think of a single criticism of the first game that hasn't been addressed to some extent. Lack of reward for finding things? Collection increases the value of your villa and hence your income, plus there are proper unlockables for finding enough hidden feathers. Instant death water? You can now not only swim, but make sneaky takedowns from the water's edge. Not enough answers regarding the metaplot? Two sidequests give plenty of information about both the Assassins and Templars, and the ending is essentially a chain of massive revelations.

Non-instakill water. Really useful when you're in Venice.

There are still a few problems though. Having to keep returning to the villa to pick up money is a pain, especially as it involves a loading screen and usually a fairly long walk. In addition, despite improvements the combat still pales in comparison to something like Batman: Arkham Asylum. There are a number of new moves, but the all-powerful counter attack is still enough to defeat just about any enemy. This combined with enemies that politely attack one at a time means that battles often degenerate into holding the block button and waiting for an opportunity to counter.

All in all, this is the game we should have got two years ago, and means the series now actually deserves the level of success it has received. There are a few things left to be ironed out, but if the inevitable Assassin's Creed III has the same dedication to addressing its failings then it could be a true classic.

Score:
8/10

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Why Do Some Games Scare the Hell Out of Me?

I’ve been playing games for almost as long as I can remember. I can distinctly visualise hassling my older cousin to have a go on Super Mario Land on his Gameboy when I was around 4 years old. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3, Punchout, Marble Madness and more on a friend’s NES every week for a number of years and a different cousin and I spent tens of hours playing Contra 3. I think it’s safe to say that I became well-versed in games at a reasonable level of difficulty and challenge.

These days I can safely say that I’m completely shit at a lot of games, almost entire genres. I find that games are throwing too many uncontrollable variables and obstacles my way and I’ve lost a lot of love for a lot of games because of this. Take for example Battlefield 1943; it’s a great game and I know that full well but it took me a good hour to get a single kill (and I think I fluked that) because I was apparently too shit at the game to survive for more than 30 seconds at a time. This was made even more frustrating that I had no fucking idea why I was dying so frequently even when I was utilising environmental cover, supporting team members and just staying out of sight. No matter what I did I kept dying without knowing why and I came to the conclusion that I was just very, very shit at the game.

On the other end of the scale is Serious Sam, an FPS of a different kind. I know what’s coming my way, I know I’m not going to die instantly (in most instances anyway) and all I really have to worry about is which direction my comically oversized weapon is pointing. In short, I feel in control of the situation that I’m in and I like it and any of my failings are due to my own fuck-uppery, unlike being killed by a single shot from westhamdave16x because I have no bloody clue what’s going on. Maybe it’s just a difference in leniency to how many hits I can take before I bite the dust, but I just don’t find such a large degree of uncertainty in games fun in comparison to games where there’s a low level of uncertainty in my environment.

Those examples would be extremes for me but I feel that I’m in a similar position with other genres too. Beat ’em ups are a great example. I’ve always been half decent at Soul Calibur and games which largely utilise a “Direction + button = different attack” system much like the Super Smash Bros. games. Street Fighter games too utilise this to a certain extent, but any inexperienced player would stay away from the likes of Zangief and his array of moves that involve full circles (or even two) on the stick to succeed. I find that Tekken and to a lesser extent Fighter’s Destiny on the N64 take this concept to the next level and create button combinations for certain moves that require you to press Up, Down, Up, Forward, Back, Heavy Punch, Up, Back, Light Kick, Wank, Down, Rotate controller 360 degrees, Forward and Heavy Kick which even then are only successful at 5pm on a Tuesday during the winter, this is of course after acquiring an encyclopedic knowledge of move lists. It appears that simplicity in success is something that I find attractive in a game (not in the way you’re thinking).

I won’t go into other genres, but it comes as no surprise to me that the Wii has become such a success story. If I, a seasoned gamer, am so reluctant to play the likes of Modern Warfare or any other game with a similar level of complexity then I dread to think what Mrs Biggins is thinking when she comes across these games. Anyone could conclude that I like simple games with simple interfaces, simple objectives and few extraneous factors that affect my progress. You could say that I was just a gigantic moron when it comes to certain games and you could well be right but the truth is that I like to succeed in the games that I play and I can personally only really succeed when I have a certain degree of control. When that level of control is gone then my personal success rate drops and I become shit at the game. I don’t like being shit at something because like most people I don’t like failure and that is why you could say I’m scared of some games.

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A Critique of Turn-Based Member Slapping

I have never really been one for RPGs in the classical sense – the inane ‘grinding’ to produce a team that can take on the next big-bad, of whom should really have taken into account that the player would generally be at a lower level by this point in the long-winded, over-drawn dross of what the developers profess to be a story. Or perhaps the inclusion of rooms measuring barely sufficient in diameter to hammer-throw the proverbial distressed cat, that yet take aeons to traverse thanks to a metaphorical roll of a dice after every footstep designed to drag you kicking and screaming into a circular room barely resembling where you were walking, in which good and evil both take turns to stand there while the opposition slaps them round the face with their dicks. By this time of course, I would have moved a grand total of 2 feet in half an hour and long since died in the real world from old age and contempt for my fellow man.

It is needless for me to say at this point that I have never garnered the will to play much more than an hour of all the Final Fantasy games combined, and the mere notion of forcing myself to trudge through the series’ myriad of numbers leaves me cold like an Eskimo’s genitals as he squats in the freezer section of Farm Foods subsequent to being dumped by his girlfriend*. Puzzling as that concept may be for a lot of you JRPG fans (the Final Fantasy bit, not the Eskimo remark), the notion is made even more the enigma as I explain my deep-seeded love for the Golden Sun games created for Nintendo’s Gameboy Advance.

All the hallmarks are there (much like a good card shop) that point to a pretty standard JRPG fare - from the levelling systems based on experience, the ‘random’ turn-based battles or the collection of equipment and items to aid you in your quest. What the developers, Camelot, have managed to do however is wrap it up in a tight package that doesn’t make me want to push my fist through my throat and poke my eyes out from behind with my bloody fingers. I’m not even entirely sure how they did it to be honest, even after all these years. It could be the sublime presentation – from the inspired musical score to arguably the system’s most impressive graphical flourishes. Or it could be the engaging story that gets to the point and actually keeps you on your toes like the fabled midget at a urinal, rather than throwing walls of pointless dialogue at the player for half an hour that simply explains through use of an elaborate arrangement of ‘ums’ and ‘ahhs’ that the princess is in another castle.

In order to set itself apart from the other mounds of mud in the sludge that is the JRPG swamp, Golden Sun brought to the already finely-furnished table the collection of Djinn. These elemental sprite-like characters are quickly comparable to Pokémon (a series of games of which I have purposely left out of the discussion as they goose-step in the no-man’s land between RPG and easily definable genres), but bare little resemblance with regards to function and gameplay. Not content with merely attaching themselves to party members in order to increase stats and change classes to your will, Djinn can be used in battle to attack, defend, make tea and summon fearsome deities to unleash a metric fuckton of pain down on the unsuspecting enemy team with their members out, expecting the regular ‘you slap me, I slap you’ affair.

Even after completing the first game and being subjected to the metaphorical kick in the scrote that was the finale’s cliff-hanger, the player is able to transfer their entire party and items over to the sequel by way of a password function – albeit featuring a biblical amount of gibberish text and numbers to commit to a notepad before attempting to type it in exactly. Regardless, it is still a kind of warm and fuzzy addition that is purely there for the fans, and a function that I personally hadn’t seen since the Sonic & Knuckles ‘lock-on’ cart for the Sega Megadrive.

I still can't figure out if this is a dude or a chick.

Either way, that's one poncy bastard.

I think what shines through the most with these games, what makes them seem so wondrous to me, is the blatant labour and love that went into their creation. These are the developers responsible for Mario Golf and Mario Tennis, dressed up in a gimp suit for Papa Nintendo and asked to dance around so that the giant can get its jollies off. Golden Sun is Camelot’s baby, and it shows. Roll on Golden Sun DS – maybe it will give me a reason to stop using the console’s touch screen as a coaster.
For my hot mugs.
Full of turds.
That frequently overspill.

* I also don’t care for Resident Evil or Metal Gear Solid. That’s right internet, come and get me.

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The Wildest Video Game Dreams of Our Youth

I would like to think that I'm the kind of person who doesn't take things for granted. When things are going well, I tend to reflect upon it as much as I can. When things are going bad, I feel I have no regrets as I truly got as much enjoyment out of the good things as possible and still try to think of everything that's still good. They say "you don't know that you've got till it's gone", but not me. Nuh-uh. I relish what I've got with gay abandon, sometimes with aplomb. So, whenever I turn my Xbox 360 on, I gaze in wonder at just what a fantastic machine it really is, especially when looking back at the consoles of yesteryear.

The first thing that greets me when I turn my Xbox 360 on is that crystal clear, gloriously HD logo. I haven't got the best HD TV by any means, but it still shits its entire ass onto any previous TVs I've owned. Then, it's onto the dashboard, and goddamn, if that isn't a wonder to behold, too. I mean, think back to a year ago, to a time when we never had any of this; we've now got streaming news vids, tips, interviews, and a pair of emo dudes trying to be funny. We've also got much better friend interaction now, what with the party chat and avatars. Even just having Live Friends is something we didn't have 4 years ago, now it seems weird to think back to a time when social console gaming was merely a footnote on the possibilities of future consoles. I didn't even have Xbox Live a mere 2 years ago, let alone 4. To say I couldn't live without it would probably be an exaggeration, but to say I would miss it awfully if I didn't have it is completely accurate.

While that last paragraph may have read like some kind of forced Microsoftian propaganda, I can assure you it's not. It's just me doing what I do and knowing what I've got. When I indulge myself in the solitariness of past gaming consoles, it truly feels like there's something missing. I miss the little announcements of people popping online and seeing that Isis88 is a Level 15 something-or-other on Fallout 3, or that ZZKoverts always seems to be playing Tales of Vesperia. It's just nice to know that you're all still alive and that you're not at work, you're just chilling at home playing some video games.

It's almost like something from the wildest video game dreams of our youth. I've recently been playing Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 and thinking back to playing WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64 and enjoying it immensely, but thinking of how awesome it would be to be able to give your custom wrestler his own custom tattoo, custom music, custom entrance, custom video, custom finishing move and all other kinds of shit that is actually in SVR 2010. If you'd have given me this game 10 years or so ago, I probably would have spaffed and shit my pants simultaneously. Due to the technical constraints of the N64, it was naught but a pipe-dream, but the tech has advanced enough to make it possible.

Say what you will about the Wii, but Nintendo's philosophy of 'technology doesn't equal better games' has been proved wrong by dozens of games on the immensely powerful PS3 and 360. It is not and has never been about the having the best graphics, it's about having the best game and then getting the best graphics you can muster out of the hardware, as done in the last generation by the GTA games. They're not the prettiest games of their generation, but they withhold a dizzying amount of content for the player and they sold by the bucket-load, also proving that amazing graphics won't guarantee you a number one spot on the sales charts.

With all this technology, we've got it incredibly good at the moment. It's easy to forget this when something goes wrong, when you get kicked out of party chat for the tenth time in an hour, or when your internets play up. I'm not saying whenever something like that happens you should sit back and quell your anger and just be happy with what you've got, because it's a fucking frustration when such a thing happens. I'm just saying that every now and then, just breathe it all in and try not to take it for granted.

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Review - Scribblenauts

• Game: Scribblenauts
• Format: Nintendo DS
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: 5th Cell
  
• Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive
  
• Genre: Puzzle

The premise of Scribblenauts is simple enough. You control Maxwell, your objective is to find the Starite hidden in each level, to do this you must use the tools at your disposal to overcome the obstacles in your way.

So what are the tools at your disposal? Well, "archaeopteryx", "water pistol", "lepidopterist", "Higgs boson", "giant enemy crab", "ROFLcopter", "El Chupacabra", "wedding dress", "razor", "Anubus", "jiaozi" and the 22,086 other objects that can be summoned from the game's insanely comprehensive vocabulary. It may well be the first game where the Oxford English Dictionary works as a stand-in for GameFAQs.

Somehow, "Cthulhu" seems less frightening after you shoot him with a "mind control device" and start riding around on his back.

There are a few limitations on what you can summon - trademarks are right out obviously, as is anything vulgar and drug or alcohol references. Also if you name a specific person, real or fictional, then you are likely to get nothing (and a good portion of the names included are just redirects to some generic character - "Einstein" gets you a "scientist", "Blackbeard" gives "pirate", and "Leeroy Jenkins" maps to "knight"). Stick within the rules however, and far more often than not you'll find that whatever bizarrely esoteric object you think of has been anticipated by the developers. You can and will stump the dictionary if you try (a few unused words include "hacker", "australopithecus", "man-eating plant", "crocoduck" and "grid"), but the point is that you usually need to actively look for pointlessly obscure nouns to achieve this, leading to the polar opposite of the old "I don't see any 'unlock door' around here" issue that plagued text adventures.

Not only are so many objects and characters included in the game, but they all have their own properties. Throwing a "toaster" in some water will electrocute anything nearby, "rope" can attach any two objects together, and activating the "Large Hadron Collider" will destroy the Universe. What's more, summoning multiple things will often cause them to interact with each other. Summon a "vampire" followed by "garlic bread" and the fiend will run away in terror, likewise "bigfoot" will run from a "photographer" and a "dingo" will eat any "baby" it sees. There are times when the illusion is broken as two items fail to interact in the way you want (one mission asks you to fix a car, but summoning a "mechanic" is no use), but given that there is literally not enough time in a human life to try every combination, 5th Cell probably deserve some leniency on this point.

Here, we see an "elephant" firing a "rocket launcher" at a "separatist". Buy Scribblenauts.

So far, it sounds like game of the forever, but inevitably there are flaws. The biggest problem is the control system which assigns both movement and item interaction to the touch screen. Touch any unoccupied area of the screen and Maxwell will charge over there with no concern for whatever deathtraps may be in his path. This problem is exacerbated by the camera which snaps back if left alone for a few seconds, causing you to miss whatever you were trying to click on.

Another problem is that unsurprisingly some items are almost game-breakingly powerful., to the point that the temptation is to rely on them almost exclusively. Summoning a "black hole" will get anything out of your path, "Death" can easily win just about any combat mission, and a switch-flipping "engineer" can often skip large sections of a level for you. In this case it could be argued that the game only becomes boring if you are boring, and indeed the game becomes a lot more fun if you avoid the quick and easy path to go for more convoluted solutions. Unfortunately this doesn't work for the annoyingly large number of "move object X to position Y" missions. Most of these only have one real solution - drag it over there with a flying vehicle, so the only real choice is what vehicle to use and how to attach object X.

Plan 1: Have a "termite" eat through the bark.
Plan 2: Shoot the tree with a "shrink ray".
Plan 3: "Glue" a "giant squid" to the "space shuttle" and crash it into the Starite.

Still, these flaws aren't enough to spoil a game where "Abraham Lincoln" can zombify "god" using the "Necronomicon". Learn to live with the controls and experiment with alternative solutions, and it really is an experience like no other.

Score:
9/10

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Life-Taking Horrors and Dog Shit

Gaming is a form of escapism - a chance to get away from a not necessarily unhappy but decidedly dull life. Not something to really moan about, but it's either that or you die. You risk your life every time you leave the house. Gap-year students always end up dead somewhere in Cambodia. Sky-diving? Fuck that. Pop down to the shops to get some Frisps? (Do they still make those?) That sounds more like it, but still, there's always the risk of getting run over by a bus. If you don't cross any roads that are on bus-routes, then that particular risk is reduced 100%, but, if you live in the Daily Mail's blinkered view of the world, you could still get stabbed by one of them hoodies what are found on every street corner, injecting heroin into the eyes of innocent children. Nope, stay inside, play games, 'escape' those four walls that keep you safe from the big bad 'outside'. When did anything bad ever happen to someone playing videogames? Can you get thumb-cramp?

The point is videogames are seemingly doing more and more to bring the outside inside without all of the life-taking horrors and dog shit that populate it. But is this a good thing? For instance, a lot of games nowadays seem to give you a very limited amount of weaponry you can hold at any one time, so much so that it seems a rather alien concept for a game to let you carry the arsenal of a small country in your back pocket anymore. The more realistic something is, the better it is, right? What if GTA IV was completely true to life; imagine having to steal a car, and whenever Niko breaks a window with his elbow, he'd be unable to use that arm for about 10 minutes because it caught him right on the funny bone. Imagine if getting arrested meant you'd have to sit through a cut-scene of Niko sleeping in a cell, being taken to court then getting roughly taken from behind in the showers by Big Phil.

Disregarding the fact that, in the Halo games, Master Chief is a super-human and, as well as being able to melee someone while dual-wielding without dropping one of his guns (like a big spaz), he should quite easily be able to carry more than two weapons but doesn't, and it's obvious to see why. When Halo first came along, it brought with it a revolutionary control system that became the unofficial industry standard, and the fact that its weapon management was assigned to a single button was the main reason for this. It liberates the player from having to either scroll through all the weapons they are carrying, or selecting them from a menu. This was often the bane of the average shoot 'em up fan's life; hastily trying to select the right weapon for the job whilst a group of enemies shoot the crap out of you. It also added a little strategy to the game as you had to think about whether the weapon the enemy dropped is worth swapping for one of your weapons, and whether it'll come good in use against possible upcoming enemies. Another thing this does is free up a couple of buttons to be used for other essential tasks and simplifies the control system. This is also quite realistic, as most soldiers in real life only really carry two guns with them; a big one and a little one, e.g. a rifle and a pistol.

It can only be a good thing when a developer takes inspiration from real life to make its game better. There's also the fact that the more realistic a game is – again, take GTA IV as an example – the more satisfying it becomes to do things we'd never do in real life, like go on a high-speed police chase or crash a helicopter into the sea. The better it looks the more immersed you become. But how come the ultra-unrealistic Halo only lets you carry two guns when the ultra-realistic GTA IV lets you carry around 5, as well as a knife or a baseball bat? Niko seems to pull RPG Launchers and the like from out of his kecks! This is all down to ease of play. GTA IV is quite a varied game; whereas one moment could see you having a shoot out with a group of enemies, the next could see you trying to take down a helicopter. You'll forgive this as a minor inconsistency and will thank Rockstar whenever Niko unloads his pocket rocket into the rear-end of someone's chopper.

Realism is arguably at its best when it's mixed with something that is fantastical, impossible or imaginary. One of the biggest reasons why Harry Potter, Star Wars and books or films of their ilk are so successful is because they seem believable. The world of Harry Potter is hidden and runs parallel to ours, so there's an appealing sense that it might be true (even though it definitely isn't). Star Wars felt believable because, Tatooine in particular, felt rustic and lived-in and the Millennium Falcon was falling apart, something that would definitely happen to a space-ship that has been modified illegally time and time again. The same goes for videogames. Mass Effect goes into explicit detail into not only how the human race found the technology to be able to travel to distant galaxies, but it also goes into an almost obscene amount of detail about almost everything in the game from weaponry and space craft, to diplomacy between different space-faring races. There's an underlying sense that if or when the human race is finally able to travel to different galaxies, then Mass Effect is what would probably happen.

And that's what videogames do best. As big a cliché as this next sentence is going to be, it doesn't take anything away from the fact that games do allow you to do anything, possible or impossible, from the comfort of your own home. So let gangsters, criminals, aliens, football players with muddy boots, rock stars, plumbers, bears with birds living out of backpacks, blue hedgehogs, pink echidnas, robots, elves, goblins, wizards and warriors, dragons, eidolons, titans, gods and goddesses, tomb raiders, pirates, ninjas, and gays all into your home. Just make sure that when you do, you're firmly gripping a game controller and that the door is locked. Who knows what could be waiting for you… 'outside'.

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Review - Pokemon Platinum

• Game: Pokémon Platinum
• Format: Nintendo DS
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: Game Freak
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Genre: RPG

Pokémon… a series that has taken the world by storm, blasting it with tons of anime, 12 of its own movies, a countless number of games, (seriously, I tried, I lost count after a while…), and quite frankly one of the biggest merchandising bases ever to be seen, from bed sheets to cuddly toys, figures, watches and electronics. Platinum is the newest game to come out of the cellar of the Pokémon designers. This one is the third game in the fourth generation to come out, where it's the two first games combined. Now, usually they don't really change too much when making these; they keep the story similar and probably the most ambitious before Platinum was Yellow, as it changed how you got certain Pokémon and most memorably, you had your adorable friend Pikachu following you.

There is quite a big difference between Diamond/Pearl and Platinum, and you'll notice it almost immediately, how you meet Professor Rowan and get your first Pokémon is completely different. They've also changed how the Team Galactic buildings look and in my opinion it was definitely for the better. The whole game just looks and feels a lot better to play than D/P; there's more added content to keep you busy and it seems like they've put more focus into the parts of the game which weren't as exaggerated in the last ones.

Wait… isn't this the final scene of Ghost?

There's also, as has been the trend in most of the third games, a lot more double battles, which means more shared exp which means more levelling-up This is always a good thing, although one problem is with wild double battles you have to knock one Pokémon out to catch the other, which gets quite annoying but thankfully it doesn't happen often in the game.

Another new addition to Platinum over Diamond/Pearl is the fact they have thankfully sped everything up. This means that battling, move animations and talking is all faster making the game a lot more fluent nicer to play.

Overall this game is definitely worth buying if your a fan of Pokémon, and even if you already have Diamond and Pearl as it has new events which means more ways of catching Pokémon, for example the current event is the Rotom event where you get a key to a secret room.

Score:
9/10

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Retrospective - Kid Icarus

Featuring Frankenjam

• Game: Kid Icarus
• Format: NES / Wii (Virtual Console)
• First Release: 1987
• Developer: Nintendo R&D1
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Genre: Puzzle Thingie

Our second assault on gaming's past drags our puny minds deep into the recesses of Greek mythology as Frankenjam plays Kid Icarus! A little more well-known than Lolo, I'll admit, but who can honestly say that they remember it when it first came out?

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Retrospective - Adventures of Lolo 2

Featuring Frankenjam

• Game: Adventures of Lolo 2
• Format: NES / Wii (Virtual Console)
• First Release: 1990
• Developer: HAL Laboratory
• Publisher: HAL Laboratory
• Genre: Puzzle Thingie

Join us as we take our first dive, deep into the heart of gaming from yore, giving you our initial impressions of the games that made today possible... ish.
Our first plunder is that well-known masterpiece, Adventures of Lolo 2:

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How to Not Completely Fail… at Hexic

A Guest Article by Funk

OK, I don’t purport to be a Hexic master myself but I know there are a few people out there who don’t know where to start and might appreciate some pointers on how to get going. Hexic can seem more complicated than it actually is at first and if you’re having trouble making your first black pearl or even your first starflower, maybe my ‘common sense’ guide to maximising your potential might be able to help. I wanted to just write some basic tips that I know would have helped me when I started playing.

Contents:
My Philosophies
Strategy
Techniques

Funk’s Basic Philosophies
The following musings are I believe major factors in eventually becoming a master at Hexic. I am following these myself and my own skills have progressed. I look at a Hexic board completely differently now to when I started playing and although I do still make mistakes I am making consistently higher scores all the time.

1. Hexic is not a game you can play quickly. You must have patience, so take your time and consider every single move you make, like you would in Chess. Also, it can take hours to build a big score so don’t make rash moves. Take regular breaks if necessary. You can even quit the game and come back to it without losing your progress, take advantage of this feature as I find coming back with a fresh perspective can help you out in the long run.

2. While learning about Hexic keep it simple. Your first goal should simply be to know how to move pieces around in order to make a single starflower. So forget about high scores and black pearls for a while, just practice. Once you are adept at making one star you can move on to making and manoeuvring multiple stars. Then as your skills improve your goal will change again from making starflowers to producing black pearls. Then you can make some really big scores and win the game by making a black pearl cluster.

3. Never make a move unless it’s part of a planned sequence and you know or are at least 80% sure of what will happen next. Play the game in your head first. There is nothing worse than thinking you have your next star or pearl made and then when you make the ‘killer’ move in a sequence something completely unexpected happens and you’re back to square one. Avoid this catastrophe by planning carefully because being back at square one can often be more detrimental than you may think. Making a big mistake can knock your confidence. If that happens step back for a while.

4. Grasshopper say “Don’t try to run before you can walk. Patience and planning is the only way.”

Strategy
Some basic strategies
Always try to create your first stars in the centre or upper middle area of the board. This is a good springboard and makes it easier to keep control of the board and only destroy the clusters that you want to destroy. Obviously this will not always be possible - sometimes you will be forced to make moves lower down if only to change the layout of the board if you run out of good moves.

Try to avoid making moves and destroying clusters in the lower area of the board as this will have a knock-on effect at the top. More random pieces will fall and you might build up long strings of worthless combos that don’t do your score-making potential any good whatsoever. In the early levels, avoid chaining large useless combos by only destroying clusters at the upper area of the board.

Your best chance of making a really high score is by having a large number of starflowers on the board before you reach the level 4 - 5 mark. From there onwards it becomes more difficult to make starflowers and consequently black pearls are harder too. This is because there are more colours on the board (meaning less pieces of any one colour) and also more bombs to contend with. Once you start seeing pink and dark green pieces on the board, things begin to get tricky so if you only have a few starflowers (3, 4 or 5) on the board at that point, it’s going to be very hard work to build up enough more to make a decent score.

Don’t waste time when you see a bomb. A bomb at the wrong time can ruin everything. Focus entirely on getting rid of it. In the early levels you get nine moves to get rid of a bomb so you have slightly more freedom to move your pieces around whilst still maintaining control of the board. Later in the game it becomes more difficult to remove bombs in six moves or less so at times you have to sacrifice some of your hard work. Never think you can get rid of the bomb later, or ‘after I’ve done this first’ unless you have planned the moves carefully and are at least 80% sure where every piece will land. I say 80% because there will always be new pieces dropping down from the top that you can’t see yet.

Never mix special coloured star pieces with bombs. Removing all of one colour can ruin the whole layout of the board and set you back many moves. Only if you have already lost control of the board should you bother doing this, otherwise you risk dropping perfectly placed starflowers or pearls out of play and to the bottom of the board.

When you have a few starflowers reasonably spaced around the board, use them wisely to reposition more pieces and make more starflowers. Don’t rush to create a black pearl, wait until you have at least 10 to 16 starflowers on the board before you use up 6 to make a pearl, that way you can continue manoeuvring the other pieces around easily to continue making even more starflowers.

Wherever possible, make a new starflower around another starflower. The existing starflower will only drop down a little way while a new starflower will drop in from the top of the board. This is one of the easier ways of making starflowers because when you have two or three in close proximity you can use them like ‘cogs’ turning each one to exchange the coloured pieces from one ‘cog’ to the next.

Keeping between 10 and 18 starflowers on the board is the way to go. If you get to 18, try and make a pearl. The remaining 12 plus the pearl are more than enough to arrange pieces to create more.

Techniques
Basic starflower
Look at the board and try to locate three pieces of one colour together in a kind of U shape. There will always be one somewhere and if you’re lucky it’ll be in the middle or upper middle of the board. This is the ideal place to get a starflower because you have half of it made for you. Look around that area and see where the colours you need are and think about how you can go about moving them into position. Often there will be a piece that you need nearby but you’ll have no means to move it. Sometimes you have to destroy other clusters above the piece you need to bring down other pieces you haven’t seen yet. The important thing is not to rush into making a move without purpose. You can and will get those pieces you need.

Moving 1 starflower using another
When you have two starflowers together this is great. It is very easy to move them both to anywhere else on the board, just be careful that the path you take doesn’t destroy useful clusters or start chains of unwanted combos. You can use two starflowers together to go and collect a coloured piece from one side of the board and easily take it to another position where it can be used on another cog.
Choose which starflower is to become the centre of the cog, turn it until the one branching off is facing the direction you want to go in. Then simply highlight the branching one which now becomes the centre of the cog and turn again repeating the process until you get where you want to go. This is how to travel across the board. You can also do this with three and more starflowers but this requires more moves and takes longer to set up. I’ll add a picture for three or more starflowers next time I get into that spot.

Place starflowers equidistantly apart using the above method but so that they interconnect with either one or two pieces. This is your best tool in the game. It’s easily the best way to churn out loads more starflowers. Think of the starflowers like interlinking cogs, and by turning the linked cogs clockwise and anti-clockwise you can move a piece from one cog to the next.

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TGN - A Week in Pictures

A guest article/idea by Falco
Lets take a look at the past week or so of TGN, in picture form so our tiny minds find it easier to process.

So I was thinking...


Hip Flasks fo' sale


Drugs, do u do any?


Red Dwarf: Back to Earth


I can change your outlook on life.


Why are you still up?


Date a TGNer


Family Heraldry


The video thread


Dressed to Kill


TGN a week in pictures


Who needs hair cuts?


Bitchy Friend

Thanks to Republic Fairchild, Krystal, Switch, Baka, Jabroni and Falco for this edition's images.
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Review - Beneath the Ashes (Tomb Raider: Underworld DLC)

• Game: Tomb Raider: Underworld – Beneath the Ashes (DLC)
• Format: Xbox 360
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: Crystal Dynamics
• Genre: 3^rd Person Adventure

Not content with letting sleeping Tomb Raiders lie, we – the rabid excuse for a public – are once again force-fed another nauseating chapter from the life of the world’s most questionable archaeologist as she bends over in front of cameras in new and exciting locales. We are “treated” to an extension of Tomb Raider: Underwear in the form of downloadable content, as Lara ventures beneath Croft Manor for some reason or another that I shouldn’t give two green pasty shits about.

Quite why Crystal Dynamics decided to create extra content in the form of DLC that you actually have to pay money for – based on one of the most uninspiring chapters of the base game - is beyond me. Send Lara back to Thailand, or perhaps follow the details of her holiday in Tahiti as she plays Gears of War 2 with her rich friends for Christ’s sake. God forbid that we should have anything more visually stunning and appealing to look at than an upturned grey flagstone. Something that did raise a smile however, was how the much touted six extra costumes, created exclusively for this DLC, are simply a couple existing costumes with a palette change and four colours of bikini – made presumably on a budget, as there is a distinct lack of material covering Lara’s huge… personality. What kind of people do Crystal Dynamics take us male gamers for? I chose the blue bikini.

Both the main gameplay influences in action

Starting off the content in her father’s old secret study, Lara finds something that describes another thing that she wants for reasons that she doesn’t say, before jumping down a hole that I swear wasn’t there before in the main game. Sorry about those spoilers – I just couldn’t help myself. Eventually you will come across the ‘proper’ parts of Tomb Raider, and by ‘proper’; I mean the climby bits as no-one plays the series for its “in-depth combat system”. The good news is that these sections play very much like the main game and even come close to besting it in some respects, as the climbing is still enjoyable, albeit still clunky and forced in some places. You see, usually in a game like this, you get the feel for the character and their physical limits by now, but I’m still not entirely sure how far or high Lara can actually jump. Sometimes while grabbing wood (-en) beams, Ms Croft will flip towards her intended ledge with all the finesse of a Russian Women’s Shot-putter and end up 10 meters short with a face full of ground. Other times, under exactly the same conditions, she’ll have an epiphany and magnetically become dragged towards the target like a Ben and Jerry's van to a Weight Watchers meeting. Which outcome actually materialises when you play the game is left entirely down to Lara’s mood and whether she’s feeling pretty today, or something equally out of your control and fucking frustrating.

My initial concerns when I heard about this DLC was whether the catacombs of Croft Manor (of which, I’m still not entirely sure why they are there) would just be a depressing grey-fest or a slightly-not-as-bad-but-still-depressing-grey-fest. Thankfully - I think - it is the latter and I can think of at least one point where the game can actually be called ‘pretty’, as you ascend a giant waterwheel (again placed there for reasons unbeknown to me) and shafts of sunlight pierce through a fissure in the ceiling and light up the aqueous cavern below. Why then, would the developers insist on the rest of the level being a complete grey eyesore, rubbing your optic nerve with a metaphorical scabby flannel?

If there is so much natural light in these catacombs, why hasn't anyone noticed their existence before?

As a cop-out answer, I could say that Beneath the Ashes is ‘one for the fans’; something that you should get if you’re hankering for some action that’s more of the same. Instead I’ll just leave you with the thought of having to pay money to wade through gorilla faeces in order to obtain a rather nice cupcake. Sure the cupcake might be above average in texture and taste - and you can spend hours explaining that to yourself as you pace up and down the library in your smoking jacket – but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s probably not worth the entry fee.

Oh, and another thing! I think it’s absolutely wonderful when character dialogue kicks-in, just as an enemy is scripted to appear. I absolutely adore how I can’t hear what is being said over the sound of my shotgun. And I think it’s positively brilliant how I’m missing out on probably an important piece of key information in an otherwise incoherent mess of a story.

Single Player Score – 5
Multiplayer Score – N/A

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Review - Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box

• Game: Burnout Paradise - Ultimate Box
• Format: Xbox 360
• Other Formats: PS3, PC
• Developer: Criterion Games
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• Genre: Racing, Sandbox

Early 2008 saw the arrival of Criterion’s Burnout Paradise – a balls-to-the-wall, adrenaline-fuelled arcade racer that scrapped the menus for a free-roaming city with which to confound and annoy you. Upon lending yourself to the city for a few hours however, you soon found that navigating the twisty-turny streets like a twisty-turny thing became second nature, so fans of the game should feel right at home with the expansions as they are set once again in this ‘paradise’.

Wayne has already covered the core game and it’s assets in his review way back when, so I won’t go treading on his street-racing tippy toes… too much. The Ultimate Box contains the main Burnout Paradise game, with the inclusion of all the current updates and the free Burnout Bikes, in conjunction with the Party Pack – a pay-for add-on for offline multiplayer. From the offset you can see the transformation in the front-end menus as you are given the option to select ‘Burnout Bikes’ and the old favourite ‘Robotically-Controlled Driverless Cars’. As well as this, EA have jumped in with their big ‘online stick of internetz’ and offered the gift of a bulletin board detailing updates to the Burnout community and a nice little calendar detailing events to look out for – all while Paradise City loads.

Naturally, ever being the social stud that I am, I delved into the single-player Burnout Bikes as my first port of call, choosing the needlessly busty female rider in a fetching pink suit to tear some asphalt. What you notice from the word ‘go’ is the intense speed that is available to you from the off. The bikes pack a punch and it certainly gets the adrenaline flowing. It’s been a while Burnout, I’ve missed you like a fat kid misses cake. The good news is that the bikes handle very differently to their four-wheeled counterparts and it definitely feels fresh, even if you do miss boosting. You see, apparently the bikes go fast enough as it is, so there is no need for them to ever boost, making the ‘A’ button redundant in this mode. While perhaps leveling the playing field from wavy mounds to a smooth camber for those new to the genre, it does however render the tricks and stunts rather pointless as they only endanger your race rather than giving any sort of reward.

One of the biggest letdowns with the bikes mode that became immediately apparent is the lack of any sort of ‘oomf’ to the crashes. Instead of hurtling your twin-airbag parading avatar several miles into a particularly painfully placed lamp-post as your bike crumples to the size and texture of an Oxo Cube, you are left staring at an invincible vehicle sliding carelessly along the floor with your magical rider having teleported off-screen out of harm’s way. For a series that parades itself on sweet-ass crash physics, this came somewhat as a shock when all I wanted to see was some humorous ragdolls thrown into traffic when I ballsed up for the umpteenth time.

Overall, Burnout Bikes is exactly what Criterion says it is – an add-on. There are nice little touches - such as half the events on the map being available at night and the other half being available during the day – but the mode as a whole is weaker as a stand-alone game when compared to the majesty of Burnout Cars; especially when you can drive the Delorean (for a small fee of Microsoft Points). Each event seems more like a lonely time trial rather than a ‘race’ and you’ll find yourself coming back to the screeching tires of the four-wheeled exemplars soon enough.

Here we see 'Jez' driving up the brown slope

A quick flex of my thumb and forefinger to twist the volume up on my speakers instantaneously created a crowd of friends to huddle into my room – and so we come to the Burnout Party Pack. A mode for up to eight players sees you and your acquaintances passing the controller around and taking it in turns to beat each other’s score. For some reason the menu aesthetics have been completely revamped for this addition and the game suddenly looks even more colourful than before, resembling a scene from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and very aptly setting a ‘party’ atmosphere without killing-off small children in every scene. From the player-naming menu thingy, you are given the option of how many rounds you and your chums would like to compete in, from one to eight in three categories. ‘Speed’, being the obvious from a racing game; ‘Stunt’, having you rather unimaginatively clamouring through the air over an object; and ‘Skill’ seeing you showboating in any way possible to garner enough points to rub in the unsuspecting face of your compadres like the streaker at a sleepover.

Out of these modes, ‘Stunt’ is probably the weakest, as it just requires either a pass or fail attempt and, unlike the other two modes, completely trashing the expected score will get you no further than just getting by with the requirements. A problem that I find with the party pack is not so much a qualm with the formula, but that fact that I cannot choose a specific event to replay at my whim. A particular favourite of mine involved power-sliding round a monument for as long as possible, but as far as I can tell, this will only come up randomly out of the ‘Skill’ category for a round. While not a structural weakness in the building that is Party Pack, it would be nice to have a supporting beam or two in the form of extra options. As expansions go though, the Party Pack delivers a wealth of content that’s more perfect for playing with friends than naked Twister.

Overall, the Ultimate Box is exactly what it says on the tin. You take an updated version of an already great game, add in a couple expansions as well as a great little party mode, stick them into a bowl, and mix the funk out of them. What do you have? An updated version of Burnout Paradise with a couple of expansions and a great little party mode… in a bowl.

Single Player Score – 9
Multiplayer Score - 9

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Review - Street Fighter IV

Co-written with Boss Man

• Game: Street Fighter IV
  
• Format: PS3
• Other Formats: Xbox 360, Arcade
• Developer: Dimps/Capcom
• Publisher: Capcom
• Genre: 2.5D Fighting

Street Fighter II defined a genre and created an impression still felt today, a game known for great characters and great gameplay. After years of re-releasing it with new additions, Capcom released Street Fighter III - a great game in its own right, introducing the series to a parry system and an array of new characters. Many of said new characters had an almost cloned move-set of those from the previous game. As good as it was, it failed to draw as big a fan -base as its predecessor. Many games have even tried to imitate the series: King of Fighters and Dark Stalkers spring to mind, but none so universally accepted as Street Fighter. Nine years since the last game, Capcom have finally created a new addition to the already bloated series. So after countless pretenders, will this new installment prove itself to be worthy of its title, or will it be another impersonator and eventually be forgotten?

Street Fighter IV is purely a fighting game. If you’re hoping for mini-games, customisation of characters or anything other than a toe to toe brawl, then this isn’t the game for you. The fighting game staple that is Arcade mode is included - this is simply you going one on one against a number of computer controlled opponents until you eventually reach the final boss. On completing the mode you get the second anime bookend to your character's story. The more appealing mode is Versus, where you can play local, or online battles against real opponents. New to Street Fighter is Challenge mode, where you can find multiple tasks, like Time Attack (you are given a time limit to defeat a number of opponents), Survival (you have one life bar through a few fights) and Trial, which is very much like training mode but introduces players to moves and combos with increasing difficulty.

Kameh-hameh… wait a minute…

As for the game's graphics, it looks nothing less than gorgeous. Cel-shaded style not too unlike Prince of Persia's is used to stunning effect. For fans of the previous games it may take a while to get used to Ryu and Ken’s added bulkiness, other than that slight qualm the graphics are fantastic and even better in motion. Street Fighter IV keeps the gameplay strictly 2D, but allows the characters and levels to stray into the third dimension, in a similar way to Super Smash Bros.

Street Fighter IV returns to its roots, with the original twelve characters from Street Fighter II. As well as the returning 12 there are four completely new characters, all with their own fighting style, moves and inputs. These four new characters are welcome additions and fit the bill perfectly. There are also three playable boss characters you can unlock. Included with the console versions of the game, you also have six extra characters from updated versions or spin-offs from the original series. In total there are 25 characters in the home versions of the game. There’s plenty of variety so there should be at last one character that takes your fancy.

"And what do they call you? Wheels?"

Now for the online, the options here are simple; Player Match or Ranked Match. Player Matches allow you to invite a friend for some matches with the online system. Lobbies here are limited to two people so unlike a local multiplayer match you can‘t have a group of friends taking turns. Ranked Match is you versus an opponent of equal or higher skill, fighting to be the victor. As you win a ranked match you gain points depending on how strong your opponent is and these points are deducted accordingly if you lose. Through these online battles you can unlock titles and an avatar for your online moniker, these give your Street Fighter alter-ego a personal touch.

Being a 2D fighter, it can easily be looked down upon for being shallow, but as fans know, Street Fighter can be exceedingly deep in the right hands. Unlike many fighting games, Street Fighter's simple controls give ease of access to newcomers, allowing them to play the game and have a good time in the process. Veterans of the series will not be alienated either, controls have been left untouched, even though some systems have changed. An example would be the exclusion of the parry system found in Street Fighter III, something called the 'focus system' has took it’s place and has proven to be quite a good inclusion. A focus attack when charged is unblockable, and when used properly they can lead into devastating combos. Street Fighter IV is almost perfectly balanced. If you lose, you know it’s because the other guy played better then you, but if you win, you know you deserved to win.

So does Street Fighter IV live up to it’s predecessor? Of course it does. With awesome characters, great gameplay and fantastic balance, this is easily one off the best fighting games ever, if not the best. Like Street Fighter II before it, Street Fighter IV doesn’t just impress, it pushes the fighting genre forward in one redefining leap.

Score:
10/10

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