mashive

Animal Crossing: senseless bit of fun or fueling our capitalist consumer addictions? You decide...

2006-01-06T16:24:00.000+11:00

These web comics pretty much sum up the experience: Oscar and Nookie.

ps if this post was published successfully it was through the very cool firefox extension made by the people at performancing.com.

Fahrenheit: The temperature finally drops.

2005-10-24T12:39:00.000+10:00

Interactive Cinema as a genre rose and fell in the early to mid 90s, with (infamous) titles such as Dragon's Lair and Cyberwar that gave you superior graphics at the expense of gameplay - requiring you simply to press 'Left' or 'Right' at the correct moment occasionally. Now wacky Frenchman David Cage of Quantic Dream has made his attempt to resurrect the genre with Fahrenheit.

In their previous outing Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999), Quantic Dream employed instead "Sandbox" (I hate that definition) style gameplay for their "immersive experience": cutting the player loose in the city of an alternate dimension. Now they've changed their tack to Interactive Cinema (to read their gaming manifesto in handy point-form click here), although they still utilise their motion-capture studio to its fullest.

Being a big fan of Nomad Soul (as it was named out here in Aus), I'd been awaiting the sequel (which has just gone back into development) for some time; until it was put on hold indefinitely to complete their new project Fahrenheit. This game looked promising enough, especially with the interesting idea of playing it from multiple (often directly opposing) viewpoints; each bundled as a separate episodic module to be released (roughly) monthly - to give it the feel of a television series. Various things conspired against Quantic Dream, and the episodic structure was abandoned, as well as their original publisher. That it came out at all is miraculous to say the least; to be successful at all is the icing on the cake.

Nomad Soul was criticised for trying to be all things to all men: it attempted to integrate several genres into one (Adventure; FPS; Fighting), while leaving adherents of each genre unsatisfied. While Cage would no doubt try to defy categorisation of Fahrenheit under anything but "Interactive Cinema", the game has been all but offically adopted by the Adventure genre and community. It might best be viewed as one of several possible new directions for the ailing genre to take.

It starts out promisingly enough, beginning with a cinematic sweep over New York City with the main character providing voice-over that sounds slightly cheesy, but not unforgivably so. The first scene is suitably gritty, not to mention tense. The primary innovation on the branching dialogue trees typical of Adventure games is that there is a time limit to your choices, so everything you do is given an urgency, but unfortunately this urgency isn't always appropriate. From 'level' to 'level' you are given the option of controlling any one of the 3 main characters (not 4, despite what the game promises - if you're going to include Marcus' tiny part, then why not also The Oracle's?), however this choice is seemingly illusory, as all must be completed to advance (although this might not be entirely true, I've only played it through once, and it's possible that you might be able to skip less important sections depending on the choices you make).

And this is another claim the game makes for innovation: that the branching storyline choices provide for alternate endings. The autosave feature (which is activated virtually every scene) means that you cannot really create multiple savegames on the one playthrough to make different choices; instead, you must play the whole game through to see the different story branches (although it seems it may be possible to circumvent this feature with the help of a little inventiveness).

Somewhere around the middle of the game, the complexity and pace of the story speed up dramatically and, unfortunately, bottom-out somewhat. One is left with the feeling that this is the result of abandoning the episodic structure in favour of a single 'feature'. It seems that the story from this point was written, but not yet fleshed-out, and any subsequent 'fleshing-out' was cursory to say the least. The relationship between the two main characters is never really developed, and when it climaxes there are definite titters to be heard from the 'audience'.

This may not be a result of rushed development, however, and may instead just be bad writing. The same accusation can be made of the bizarre love-twist finale to Nomad Soul; indeed many elements of that game are included in Fahrenheit. In fact, at times it feels like someting of a 'Best-Of' of Nomad Soul (in the same sense that some of the best gags in Shaun of the Dead were just rehashed from Spaced), and certain story elements (such as the aforementioned relationship) come across as rather farcical. Come to think of it, there are more farcical elements than just the storyline: for instance, Afro-American character Tyler Miles is always accompanied by a funky, porn-ish soundtrack, even during the darker moments of the story.

That said, the awesomeness of the soundtrack is truly revealed upon unlocking it as one of the easter eggs (which is what those coupons you pickup through out the game are for), besides which it makes for some damned funny gaming. The downtime scenes such as where where the same character has a basketball shoot-out with a colleague to avoid paying back the 100 bucks he owes him is equally cool, as well as when the two cops have a spar in the gym.

I bought it on PS2 rather than PC, as for several years Adventure games had been simultaneously released on PC and console, and I'd never tried the console versions. Given that the controls were usually geared towards those platforms, it was worth a try. The graphics were decent for PS2, but not suitably improved from Nomad Soul to impress me overmuch. Everything is muted by the grainy filter and subdued colours, and this serves to disguise the lower level of detail: I'd be interested to see what the X-Box and PC versions look like. The motion-capture, however, has not improved enough since 1999, and the models still tend to exaggerate all their movements. Thankfully, characters no longer only mime wielding objects (as in Nomad Soul), and are now provided with appropriate props.

The control system has been discussed at length elsewhere; suffice it for me to say that my biggest criticism of it is that it means you can only watch the action set-pieces of the game in your peripheral vision, and most of them aren't unlockable as easter eggs. This can be slightly annoying, as they're quite spectacular in a Matrix-y sort of way. Indeed, the game manages to fall on the right side of the very fine line between homage and plagiarism/derivativeness; a fall that always seems to be inexplicable. Oh, and the sex-scene that was cut from the US release ISN'T interactive. At least in the Australian version. Or maybe I just hadn't made the right story-branch decisions earlier ...

This is a game that every serious Adventure gamer (and they all take themselves a bit seriously, don't they?) should play, if only to see one possible trajectory their beloved genre may take. It's also part of the gaming vanguard where developers are trying to make games for people who don't usually play them (see the above-linked manifesto). Interesting stuff; watch this space.

Nintendo Listen To Fan: Fan shuts the hell up.

2005-10-21T16:05:00.000+10:00

Well, they've gone and done it. In my review of Warioware: Twisted I suggested that Nintendo incorporate the motion-sensitive feature of the game into more of their library: specifically driving games. Now they've gone and done it. Now I'm all for innovative gaming and, if you'll reread my post, I in fact CALL on them to do use my idea. I seem to recall, however, asking for credit and millions of dollars for my idea. Is that too much to ask?

Not only that, but IGN have stolen my characterisation of the "rumble" feature of Twisted as more of a "rattle". I just discovered that they described the rumble of the DS rumble-pack bundled with Metroid Prime Pinball and Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time as a "chirp".

Is there no justice in the world? Who ever will save me?

Australia Gets Fahrenheit: Discards Celsius.

2005-10-03T22:22:00.000+10:00

I was finally able to pick up Fahrenheit last week and, maybe because I have been expecting a game from David Cage/Quantic Dream of (Omikron:) The Nomad Soul fame, I just don't feel that it's quite the Second Coming we were all promised. That said, I've only played it for a very short time so far. We shall see.

Another Code: Two Memories. Not one; not three; but two.

2005-09-29T13:56:00.000+10:00

Just bought/played/finished Another Code: Two Memories, from unknown Japanese developer Cing, known in other territories as Trace Memory. Being something of a closet Adventure gamer (I'm still in the closet!), I just had to have this when I saw it was coming out. Its pretty manga aesthetic (and I say manga and not anime because most of the pretty images are stills) and cosy gameplay make for some enjoyable playing.

The majority of gameplay is from a top-down (yet 3D rendered) view, and you drag protagonist Ashley through the woods and rooms of Blood Edward Island with the stylus: not as annoying as it sounds. Puzzles see the view switch to 1st person, and it is usually at this point that this view comes up on the touch screen and you can affect the object with the stylus - or microphone depending on the puzzle (the one puzzle where you blow the dust off an old painting is bizarrely satisfying).

The majority of the game takes place in a dilapidated mansion that was the scene of death and jealousy, in the company of a young boy's ghost. All of this should spell out "haunted", but take the creepiness out of a haunted house, and you'll end up with something like the Edwards' mansion here. There's probably about 6 hours of relaxed gameplay here (provided you don't get stuck on the obligatory illogical adventure game puzzle), and replay value is added (so I've been told) with the unlocking of an easter egg after the credits and added content upon recommencement of the game. I'd recommend anyone buy it, if it didn't cost $69.95. As such, I will only recommend it to anyone who likes adventure games or manga. This last category should include anyone anyway.

Nintendogs: even better than the real thing

2005-09-27T19:55:00.000+10:00

Got the new pink DS on the day it was released! It was packaged with the Nintendogs of one's choice: Chihuahua and Friends, Lab and Friends, and Dachshund und Friends. All the other dogs can be unlocked theoretically. Some require luck in finding certain items, most require winning lots of money in competitions.

I got Lab and Friends but the nice guy at EB threw in the cover of the demo Chihuahua because the (real) dog on it is sooo cute.

It's only early days now, but I've taught my Elliott how to sit, lie down, shake, wave (like shake only higher up), play dead, roll over, play (shakes his bum - so cute!), jump and back flip (get it to jump when it's sitting). It doesn't have the most advanced voice recognition so if anything has an "a" in it, it thinks it's saying "shake". Apparently the trick is to use two or three words for your tricks but I'm not that creative. When your pet does actually respond correctly, it is strangely rewarding. And patting the little fellow, surprisingly, doesn't get boring. It is so apparently happy and responsive (if you pat it enough, you can get little imaginary bones that the dog will eat) that it so hits the soft spot like a real animal.

On the first weekend home with my Nintendogs I also had to look after a real life Golden Retriever puppy. She ended up have a severe allergic reaction to an insect bite and had to be driven to the emergency vet at midnight which ended up costing more than the DS. Even before that incident, I was wanting her to go home so I could play with my Nintendog.

Waiting For Fahrenheit. Prophesy THIS.

2005-09-20T21:29:00.000+10:00

Where's Fahrenheit? It was due out last Friday, but there's no word on it yet. I hate living in the arse-end of the world.

Still Life the second: or, "Why I shouldn't post rants without first editing them."

2005-09-07T17:05:00.000+10:00

I have to retract some of what I said about Adventure gamers in the previous post. It seems that I'm not the only person in the world immune to the 'charms' of the game.

That said, they're still a bunch of hopeless no-hopers, who would step over their own mothers just to get their next fix of adventuring.

Still Life. Baffling you with unnecessary roman numerals since 2005.

2005-08-21T14:43:00.000+10:00

Heady from the excitement generated from Syberias 1 (2002) & 2 (2003), developer Microïds has moved on to the similarly astonishing Still Life. Continuing their extraordinary talent for innovation and genre-blurring, Microïds have mixed together both 'point' AND 'click' in a stunning combination, sure to revolutionise the usually conservative genre of Adventure gaming.

Now we all know that Adventure fans are generally backwards-looking; considering gaming to have reached its apex in the early to mid-90s Lucasarts games of lore. 2D graphic adventures are 'where it's at', in case you didn't know, and anyone who tries to revitalise the dead genre (and by "revitalising the dead genre" I mean tweaking it to sell to people other than the core fanbase who've been playing them since the 90s anyway) by, I don't know, doing something new ("Eew! He said a dirty word!") is to be spat upon as the corporate sell-out he truly is.

It's because of people like that we end up with games like Microïds insists on making. Games like Siberia and Still Life, that appear to adhere slavishly to the genre introducing nothing new, and instead going backwards. What annoys me most about such slavishness is that the genre of Adventure games is so damned stunted because it is supposed to sacrifice everything in the interests of a good story. Microïds' games, however, bizarrely lauded on account of "character development" (surely impossible without first the employment of "character"), are some of the worst writing seen in years. Siberia was perhaps an interesting idea that was unfortunately told in a most uninteresting fashion: over two long games. When I first began playing I was frustrated by the length of time everything took to accomplish. Moving from one screen to another was carried out by Kate Walker's snail-pace meander or, alternatively, her snail-pace trot. Unlike games such as The Longest Journey, there was no option to hold down the Esc button to speed up the process and, as puzzles often required you to retrace quite a bit of the ground covered, this was extremely annoying. But I must come back to the actually writing itself and ask the question: why tell the story over two games? It's not like a lot of the intervening filler was anything more than that - filler. We could have been saved the time (and money), and gotten through it in one game, if Sokal had ever heard of a little thing called 'editing' or, better yet, 're-writing'. But no, his game was perfect from the first.

Similarly, Still Life is some of the worst writing I have ever seen. Starring new character Victoria McPherson and her grandfather PI Gustav McPherson (star of Microïds' Post-Mortem, which I have not yet played), we revisit boring and offensive stereotypes we thought had died long ago. Supposedly spunky Vic Mac begins the game by bringing everyone at the crime scene a cup of coffee, and later she slides into fluffy slippers and makes her dad a batch of grandma's cookies (a particularly annoying puzzle) which he then eats all of. The first officer she meets at the scene is an Afro-American, who speaks like a white minstrel and swears more than any other character in the game.

Speaking of swearing, in my online adventures in adventure game forum-posting I have discovered an unusual quirk: adventure gamers have an intolerance of colourful language. Now this may be explained away simply as ingrained American Puritanism (the country founded on dissident religious extremism as it is), but undoubtedly in this game it would be accepted as in keeping with the painfully gritty 'atmosphere'. It's a paradox I don't think I'll ever understand.

So the writing is terrible, which doesn't even begin to go into the derivativeness of it all. The atmosphere is Se7en, the story is a mix of Jack the Ripper and Gabriel Knight (right down to going through Granddad's trunk in the attic - but not before solving an unnecessarily puzzling lock), and to commit a crime of spoiling: there isn't an ending! We have to bloody wait until the next game which - not because they're good games, but because it will be one of the only 2d Graphic Adventure games released that year - the core fanbase will buy.

What I don't understand about the Adventure genre is that there has been a growing underground movement for some time that produces games in the style fans know and love, a kind of online security blanket, that they can download for free. But they still bemoan the lack of games they can buy in their favourite (only) genre. I know this adventure fan, because I... *shudder* I used to be one.

And no doubt I'll buy Still Life 2: Animated Life. *sigh*

Warioware: Twisted! Not stirred.

2005-08-17T09:47:00.000+10:00

Having just recently bough a GBA SP (the limited edition gold Zelda one!), I thought I'd get a game my girlfriend would also like to play (she now has a ltd ed. Pokémon Emerald one herself), and she suggested Warioware: Twisted!, presumably in preparation for the DS and copy of Warioware: Touched! she plans to buy in a month or so, presumably in preparation for the Australian release of Nintendogs.

Despite the annoying bulge the cart comes with (only adding to Wario's burlesque persona) that makes it hard to store, this game is 'fun' with a 'ph' (i.e. 'phun'). The bulge is a necessary part of the game's twist mechanism, which imbues it with the ability to respond to your turning the GBA like a little steering wheel (indeed, this would be an awesome mechanism to exploit the unconscious gamepad-turning people employ when playing driving games).

In typical Warioware fashion, this feature is used to assist you in a series of minigames, involving such gems as shaving a man's face, ironing a shirt, or dunking a basketball. As the game progresses you may need to also employ the depression of the A button in combination with this feature. There is a slight "rumble" feature that adds to the tactility of the overall game experience (although it is so small it should be called "rattle"). Each level has a different feel, and allows you to unlock "souvenirs" that are usually non-game oriented (such as sawing a violin for no better reason than shits and giggles). One an area is finished and the next one unlocked, you can also replay an area to up the high score there.

I say: bring on more games with twisting! I say: bring on Warioware: Touched!, and the Brave New World of gaming it ushers in! I say: steal my driving game idea, but give me a whole lot of money!

SW: KotOR: Because sometimes once ISN'T enough.

2005-07-21T14:07:00.000+10:00

I picked up KOTOR for $19.95 the other day at EB and, I have to say, the graphics aren't quite as good as I remember them. In contrast KOTOR2, while maintaining the look of the KOTOR universe, is a vast improvement.

Some things I forgot to mention about KOTOR2. 1) Some of the menu layout is much better than KOTOR. For instance: inventory management in KOTOR was organised according to a bizarre taxonomy (you could organise according to recent items, etc.). 2) KOTOR had a feeling (perhaps somewhat illogical) that most things you were encountering in the game were new to the characters: alien races, planets, technology, and so on. This proved immensely satisfying for Star Wars nerds such as myself ("Ohmigod, Tattooine is barely colonised?!"). This wide-eyed innocence is lost in the second game: everything is old hat and nothing is explained. It makes a hell of a lot more narrative sense, but I miss that naïvete. 3) There is a y-axis, when you hold down the right mouse button. 4) The writing really is excellent.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. Revenge: Of the Subtitle: (s): .

2005-06-29T15:02:00.000+10:00

Obsidian's follow-up to Bioware's respectably subtitled Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), SW:KOTOR2:TSL is more of the same, although this is not in itself a bad thing. I hadn't bought a copy of KOTOR myself, so I was unphased when I read reviews of KOTOR2 which said it was no different from the first one. This way I could play the second one and (basically) own the first, at the same time. Diabolical!

And you know, at first my theory worked and I didn't mind. Then, as time - and the game - wore on, I began to get bored with the RPGness of it all. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the whole: "do this for me", "hack!/slash!", "thanks, now do that for her" way of life, and wish my real job simply consisted of doing a whole bunch of stupid little things for other people I barely know (... hey, wait a minute!). But the Art of RPGs is to fool people into NOT getting bored with their banal tasks. And it is here that KOTOR2 fails miserably. By the end you don't care that you had seen the 'twist' coming since the beginning of the game (because it was pointed out to you); or that the villain on the cover looks quite menacing despite seeming to have quite a large bust (it's supposed to be a man) and his vocoder voice makes him sound like a reject from a Daft Punk song; or that the main villain's name belongs in Chronicles of Riddick (but at least Crematoria had those evil-looking tendrils of sunlight going for it).

There are some good things going for it. The dialogue seems to read better, or at least more sophisticated. Kreia's grey-area philosophy is interesting (I'm yet to try and play it that way) and, unlike KOTOR which I also played immediately after Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (SWJKJA: Raven, 2003), I wasn't particularly perturbed by the fact that it had no y-axis (you can't look up or down). But Obsidian really needed to make the thing play, feel, hell - even look different to Bioware's one to make this franchise worth continuing. And with the latter developer's release of Jade Empire this year which, from what I've heard, is more or less the same as KOTOR anyway, there's some stiff competition for KOTOR2.

American McGee Presents: Scrapland. Claims: "I'm bigger than Jesus ... AND Tarantino."

2005-06-28T16:25:00.000+10:00

I can stomach Quentin Tarantino's "presentation" of Zhang Yimou's Hero, because I saw it 2 years before theatrical release on a Hong Kong bootleg. If he hadn't done anything, who knows when/if it would have ever come out. I can understand the rationale behind distributors not wanting to release something as out-there as a Chinese martial arts epic, what with the way Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - originally ditributed in Australia as art-house, then picked-up by mainstream cinemas - was received. God knows you wouldn't want to make money by cashing-in on a new trend. That's the last thing distributors like to do.

So when I saw that Spain's Scrapland had been released in the West - oops, I mean the Anglophone world - not long after its release but with the American McGee Brand stamped all over it, I was unsurpised, if a little annoyed. This annoyance was further compounded by an interview I read with Msr McGee, in which he said "I didn't just translate and distribute. I added shit to this game. It's mine now. Screw the Spaniards!" - or words to that effect. Yeah: and American McGee's Alice was such an original idea. I mean: who'd'a thunk of making Alice in Wonderland 'dark' and 'insane'? Little goth kids had been into that idea since the Disney film which, might I add, was a hell of a lot more sinister than American's. Now we can look forward to American McGee's Oz, and the no-doubt brilliantly titled American McGee's Alice: The Movie, starring Actress Sarah Michelle "I killed Angel!" Gellar, who's vast acting range has been described by van Brent as including both 'angry hands' AND 'sad hands'.