Gabbling Geeks

Quantum Immortality

2010-06-21T15:23:00.000+01:00

Well in a deviation from my usual direction of rant about something for several pages of size 11 font, I’ve decided to do a bit more of an informative post today, since I’m withholding judgement about the state of England’s chances in the world cup until after the match with Slovenia on Wednesday. Well not really, since I think a group of monkeys could have probably played better than England. But then again I don’t give two hoots about football anyway, so a group of monkeys could get through to the finals for all I care.

Anyway, quantum mechanics. The basic premise of this experiment is you have a machine gun trained at a scientist, and an assistant sat by a button. Every time the assistant presses the button a quantum flip occurs. A quantum flip is a truly random event. It has a 50% chance of being up or 50% chance of being down. If the result of the flip is up, the machine gun fires at the assistant, killing him. If the result of the flip is down, the machine gun remains inert. According to the theory behind this experiment, when such an event happens with several random outcomes, the universe ‘splits’ into several parallel universes, and each outcome occurs down a different branch. What makes this experiment so interesting though, is to consider it from the viewpoint of the scientist looking down the barrel of the machine gun. When his assistant presses the button, the universe splits. The scientist is killed immediately in one branch, the one where the machine gun fires, and in the other he merely hears a clicking sound as the gun fails to fire (and very possibly flinches and wets himself too). But from his own viewpoint, surely he could only ever witness the reality where he is not killed. After all, he is killed in the other reality, and therefore cannot witness anything. So, according to this theory, he can only ever witness the reality where he remains alive. In short he can never witness himself die. That’s pretty much immortality, from his own point of view anyway. No matter how many times the button is pressed, he just doesn’t die. He has to believe he is immortal. But what about all those other realities that also occurred every time the button was pressed? In all those realities, the assistant saw the scientist die. This presents an interesting concept. If we can never witness our own death that means we must all be immortal.

So, taking this theory to a wider area, how many realities must there be in total? Every time anything happens in the world, the universe splits into every possible outcome. Every possible action that every person, animal or atom could possibly have taken are all being played out every second, as well as all the combinations thereof. It’s a staggering number.

As far as the immortality goes, you might say “well people die all the time”. Well yes, they do, from your own point of view. Not from theirs in another reality however. And not from yours in another reality either. It’s a quite a hard concept to wrap your mind around this one. I’ll leave you to think about it.

“In a parallel universe I would have shot you by now”

E3 - An Overview

2010-06-18T10:27:00.003+01:00

Well, E3 finished yesterday and it’s actually turned out a lot better than I was expecting it to be, going on the past few years I was expecting it to be a total flop and the usual stream of 360 shooters, Wii shovelware and Sony bragging about their latest achievements in cramming more gigaflops into an oojamaflip then anyone else. How wrong I was.

For this article I’ll just talk about what was mentioned at the conferences, them being the more important/entertaining part of the event.

Let’s start with the bad, 360, simply because it’s hilarious. Anyone else see the irony that they actually announced more casual games than the rest of them combined? I never really saw natal, sorry “kinect” as being all that good, essentially just a glorified eyetoy. Nothing physical means swordplay and gun fights which be something akin to what you’d do in the school playground and all you’re really doing is flopping around like a fish. The fact that most of the “gameplay” footage they showed was blatantly pre-rendered and poorly choreographed at that. Either that or it’s SO advanced that it actually sees into the future and makes the movement before you do. The only note-worthy games they showed (as far as I know, I missed this conference due to internet issues and the fact that I lack the care to view it unlive) where Halo Reach, Gears of War 3, Fable 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Rising, 3 of which games we already knew about, 2 of which aren’t even 360 exclusive and 2 of which are pretty generic no-depth shooters. Sounds like a promising year for the “hardcore” 360 owners to me, he lied.

Then we had Nintendo, the very people who inspired Kinect and Move, the very people who brought casual gaming to the masses, the very people who created the bandwagon for “fitness” games that the others are now trying to fol—Oh cool new Zelda. And a new Kirby... and Kid Icarus... and Metroid... and Mario. The list goes on. So while Microsoft are flustering over getting peoples grannies to play Nintendo have gone back to what makes them good, their old franchises. I’m a huge fan of some of them, but at least they have gone back to their roots. Very good news for some. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg, there’s the 3DS too, and yes it’s a gimmick but this entire generation of games is a gimmick so let’s not point fingers. Plus it's 3D sans the stupid looking glasses. I was unsure at first, but then when they released the footage and the screenshots I was amazed by the graphics and with the announcement of a old-style Paper Mario, Saints Row and Resident Evil I was sold instantly. If the 3D effects are crap, I’ll turn ‘em off. Any console with that line-up I’ll buy regardless.

Finally, Sony. Now this has me worried at first, the majority of the first half of the conference was chin wagging and statistics and stuff no-one really cares about. But then they started showing off games. Move is even more blatant as a Wii rip-off than Kinect, but as a result, it looks a good deal better. You get the usual sports games that come with such a tool but with a significant graphical upgrade so you have a reason to use it over the Wii, whereas with the 360 it’s not really worth converting just to take a nail file to some of the edges. Plus move has promise with the hardcore audience too with games like Sorcery (which actually looks kinda fun), Microsoft announced nothing of the sort. Then we have Dead Space: Extraction coming with move controls (so glad I waited and didn’t get the Wii version now, purely for the sake of HD) which comes with the PS3 exclusive special edition of Dead Space 2, Portal 2 (Gabe is a legend) and to top it all off, Twisted Metal. I saw it coming, Jeffe had been teasing for ages but that doesn’t make me any less stoked one of my top 3 games on the PS1 is finally coming to this gen.

So who won E3? Well, I personally find it hard to call. Nintendo have a better line up if you’re a fan and are offering more to a larger audience, but Sony have more games I’m interested in personally. Let’s call it a tie.

One on final note, the new Zelda got me thinking. What we have here is a Triforce. Sony is power for obvious reasons, Nintendo is Wisdom seen as they have the best business concept and marketing, as proven by sale figures, and Microsoft can have courage because it takes some serious stones to pull of anything that mind-blowingly stupid.

Guess I need to replace #5 on my Top 10...

Games With Morality

2010-06-15T16:23:00.003+01:00

A while ago Sneeze wrote an article (When did right and wrong become so black and white?) where he discussed the choices held within certain games. I’ve been doing a lot of reading up about these sorts of games recently and the way in which a sense of morality has been created. I’ve actually got a bit of spare time before starting back at university and I have to think of an idea for my final project. Being a fan of Bioware games (such as Knights of the old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age) I’ve considered the idea of doing a project on alignment/choice systems in games.

I think the first time I really picked up on a game attempting to implement the choice system was Fable. I actually got very excited about this game because of its promise of freedom in developing your character and storyline. When I first played it I did enjoy it a lot, but I found myself playing the good side and wasn’t ever really fussed at replaying it for the evil side. That is because the choices in it didn’t seem to carry any huge implications and most were incredibly black and white. The most notable part of playing an evil character was the fact that they would change in appearance (i.e. sprout horns.) Changing the character is an interesting way to represent good and evil, and has also been done in Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect 2. I personally quite like this method, for I enjoy playing evil characters and I like mine to look like what they are (I especially loved the pale skin and creepy eyes in Knights of the Old Republic.), but some people who put a lot of time and effort into designing their characters don’t appreciate the game then messing up their appearance. This can put people off even attempting the evil side. Fortunately Mass Effect 2 gave you the option to correct your appearance, so that if you didn’t like the scars you could correct them and still perform dark acts (like defenestrating people.)

It was John who told me to check out Knights of the Old Republic and that it would put Fable to shame. He was right. Despite still containing the same Black and White system, the game overall felt a lot deeper and contained better choices and paths. Unlike Fable it seemed to be a lot more re-playable because of the different endings and consequences to your actions. The only problem was that the idea of playing an evil sith lord was more exciting than taking on a noble Jedi Knight. Being good meant turning down rewards and being nice to people, being Evil allowed you to shoot lightning bolts, wear black robes, wield red light sabres and reap a lot of benefits. Evil characters are also better at force powers, where as good characters are better with light sabres, so the style of play you choose may also effect what path you take.

The main problem with black and white systems is that you are probably only making one choice in your entire game play experience, and that’s whether you want to be good or evil, then you just continue to select the corresponding options - not really as free as they make out. It is also strongly based on the opinions of the game developers. Some choices can be quite bad or grey and if for example you wanted to play a good character but accidently picked an option with good intention for which you received dark side points, you’d feel a bit cheated. You could fix this issue by omitting the scale – after all a single scale isn’t really a very good way to represent the complexities of certain life choices (kind of reminds me of the tantrum Donnie Darko threw when told to divide life’s dilemma ‘s between Fear and Love.) Dragon Age is such a game in that there is no way to find out where your character lies. In fact the characters all have their own opinions of you, and even when selecting between an obvious right and wrong answer you will find supporters in your party for both sides (kind of like different factions in Everquest.) Dragon age succeeds in places at getting you to stop and consider each choice you make. Some of the choices work along the lines of, ‘would you kill one person to save many.’ They’re black and white in a sense, but with extra layers of depth and emotion added on top, which may cause you to sway from the more correct path. The only problem with Dragon age is that your party members will leave you if they disagree too strongly with your actions. This and the effect it can have on the game play will at times cause you to pick a choice for its mechanics rather than its meaning. I still like this method, but I think it could have been pulled off in a slightly easier way. Perhaps in a similar way to Knights of the Old Republic 2,where you could influence a character to see your side of things if they trusted you enough (resulting in a changing alignment.)

Consequences to your actions are still necessary as they add to the weight of your decision, but they also can’t be so bad that the player will be put off the game due to unfairness. If a consequence to an action is received instantly, the player will just re-load a moment before and pick the other option. Save-points can fix the saving issue preventing players from taking this liberty and adding depth to the game, but a lot of people also frown on the idea of not being able to save freely – I personally find it a relief as I can be a bit of a save addict at times. Having more drawn out consequences that impact the game in the long run are probably a better way of dealing with this issue.

Another problem with these games is also the fact that no matter whether you’re good or evil you still can’t seem to get out of the main story line which tends to involve saving the world or something. I admit, it’d be boring to play a game where you just refuse to help anybody and sit back with your legs up, but even on a smaller scale an ability to defy the flow of things somewhat would be better than nothing at all. I find the biggest problem is being evil because on a lot of occasions games have the illusion of choice such as refusing to help people, only to find that you can’t progress without doing so anyway. You then have to go back to the person you refused looking like a right jerk. (I was actually quite pleasantly surprised in Dragon Age when I refused to help Redcliffe as when I came back it had been destroyed.) The other problem is of course, refusing means less game play for you. Knights of the Old Republic is quite good in that the storyline kind of fits in a way that you can still end the game on a negative, become the evil sith lord and take over (unfortunately for me the game ended too suddenly. I wanted to continue having fun over my new empire.) I can’t think of many games, however, that allow you to strongly influence the main storyline. The problem is time and money, as you would need more assets for each possible branch within the game.

To make the game feel more free and open like it promises the best way would be to keep the main story a lot more simplistic. An example of this would be Princess Maker, an old life simulation game released in 1993. The game had a weak plot in which you were landed with a little girl that you are then placed in charge of. From then on there isn’t really any story but the way the game pans out each time is very different making it feel quite free and unrestrictive. You had to send your child to school, on jobs or out for adventures where she would earn skills that would affect her development (she doesn’t necessarily have to fight and kill people.) The game would then end when she reached a certain age and would tell you what she thought of your upbringing and what career she ended up following. There are a fair few endings considering the age of the game. Although some of the endings are quite obviously light or dark, it wasn’t really the only focus within the game. In fact a fair few endings were pretty neutral, such as becoming a soldier and marrying a dragon. Despite the incredibly simplistic game play it did actually feel quite free to me in terms of the choices I had to influence her development. The sense of morality in the game was that of needing to raise your daughter well. If she grew up to become a princess of darkness or a bondage queen (yeah it was a bit controversial) for example, you would probably get a telling off from the gods. The problem is, a lot of games dealing with choice and morality are RPG’s, and people expect big stories from these game. However the bigger the story the harder it probably is to make the game feel free and unrestrictive due to expenses.

Games with choices and morality have definitely picked up a lot in popularity and versions of the system can be found in many places such as the good/evil witch options in The Sims 2 which also affect your skills. Unfortunately, a lot of games also state that they are free and open by simply tacking on an alignment bar (for example Infamous), to make it look as if the game contains extra features. The ones that do try to focus on it often succeed in some areas but fail in others. Some of them like Dragon Age will present great choices that will get you emotionally involved, but can also cause you to pick your options based on the mechanics of the game over the implications of the dilemma in place. Getting the balance between consequence and reward seems to be a difficult one. I’m personally a fan of the Faction system, taking the sense of right and wrong away from the developers which is a matter of opinion and perspective. There needs to be a way to do this however without feeling a need to do something just so that you can make friends with people. Using terms like in Mass Effect ‘Paragon’ and ‘Renegade’ is also a good way to get away from the typical light/dark scenario. Even when I’m playing a good character I don’t feel upset when receiving renegade points as this is a part of building up their personality (my version of Sheppard for example wants the greater good, but is willing to take violent rebellious means to get there. She was always loyal to her crew, but hated the council.)

Unfortunately the games industry is run mostly on money, which means that takes precedence over the art and passion of games creation. Chances are most great morality games will get cut back because of the costs. It's a real shame, because each time a bad version of one of these games gets released it alienates people against the idea of creating games that focus on choice. When it is done right, however, it’s awesome to feel like your decisions are actually making an impact on the characters and the game world in which they derive.

Related links (random stuff I found interesting):
1) BITMOB - Spotlight: Deadly Premonition, ScreenBurn, and Alignment Systems
2) GAMASUTRA - Opinion: Mother Theresa Or Hitler? Designing for Ambiguous Moral Choice
3) FUTURISMIC - The Mechanics of Morality: Why Moral Choices in Video Games Are No Longer Fun

"It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost." - Stephen King

Come and have a go if you think your hard enough...

2010-06-07T15:15:00.005+01:00

Expanding on Jo’s post from a few weeks ago on cheating AI I’ve recently suffered a streak from it myself. I’d been looking forward to Modnation Racers for months; I’ve always loved kart racers and the idea of a one where you can create karts, characters and tracks sounded like an idea that couldn’t go wrong. Unfortunately, it did.

There’s a career mode you need to play to unlock parts and objects for creations which is fun and challenging at first but towards the end of it I was pulling my hair out and resisting the urge to put my foot through the screen out of sheer frustration. Each racer has 2-3 bonus challenges which can range from anything to a perfect lap (no wall hits, challenging but fair) to some that are stupidly situational and just becomes a game of sheer luck, one makes you need to sideswipe an specific opponent at a specific point in the track, this means being right at his side when you are in that area and having enough power in your boost meter to perform the sideswipe, and then hoping he doesn’t shield... And then finishing first. This is the most wearisome task anyone has ever conceived. Don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge on a game, as long is it’s a fair one, I want to have at least some control over my fate and not have it all bottle down to whether someone happens to be in a certain place at a certain time. By the end of the career I just ended up skipping most of the challenges due to not wanting to risk the irritation that might come with them. Unfortunately this just put me off the game and I haven’t even gone back for the creation aspect since, which is the whole reason I bought it.

Onto the main part of the topic, it really begins to annoy me when developers use cheap tactics to make a game more difficult on harder modes, just using cop-outs like enemies have more health or simply do more damage rather than actually making more aggressive or tactical AI and it sort of feels artificial. But even this is better than tasks that require you to wait for a planetary alignment to have any chance of them actually happening. I love a challenge, when I finally completed Resi 4 on professional mode for the first time and unlocked the Handcannon via Mercenaries, I felt a great sense of achievement and felt I had earned what the game rewarded me. When I finally nailed the take out one opponent with a devastator challenge on Modobahn on Modnation I just felt relieved it was finally over, which the attitude one would normally have about a prostate exam, not a game.

More recently, I’ve been playing Killing Floor, which is one of the hardest games I’ve ever come across, rarely managing to survive on even normal mode, and with hard and suicidal above that I daren’t think how insane this game can get. But, in spite of how crap-your-pants difficult this game is, it’s never once angered me enough to rage quit, swear, scream or smash anything, if I die, it’s my own fault, I learn and improve. Maybe I forgot to check behind me, maybe I wasn’t efficient enough with my ammo, maybe I stepped on my own grenade, it’s never been at fault of biased AI or just pure luck and chance (or lack thereof), just my own stupidity or misjudgement (or trying to take on a guy with drillhands with a weak weapon...) and much like with RE4 when I finally beat Farm on Long and Normal (and solo) I again, felt a sense of achievement, not relief.

Yes, Killing Floor is a bit cheap and goes against my earlier point about making games harder without significantly improving AI, but in all fairness, they are zombies so I’ll let it off, and above all else, it’s fun. And surely that’s the most important thing.

And besides, why does a game even have to be difficult to be enjoyable? Sometimes I love to just pick up Ratchet and Clank, Paper Mario or Wind Waker and just enjoy the game for what it is without feeling the needed to be challenged down to the very core of my skills.

One more thing that in my opinion all games should start implementing and that’s where the game recommends a difficulty level for you, off the top of my head three games come to mind. Both Modern Warfares and inFamous. It’s a nice feature, when it works but with the MW2 I played the training course a few times until it recommended me the hardest difficulty, by the half way point I’d turned the difficulty two levels because I was getting annihilated, and with inFamous I planned on playing it on Hard anyway so I could get the trophy without picking up any bad habits or normal beforehand. When done right this should be the standard in all games because it’s a really useful feature and will work for newbies and hardcore gamers alike, plus, I never know what to pick when starting a new game, one game’s veteran is another game’s easy. Or, better yet, instead of having set levels have a feature where the game gradually adjusts difficulty for you depending on how well you are playing making the enemies stronger or weaker (like in Devil May Cry 4) instead of taking a huge step forward to back (many times in games I’ve found normal to easy and hard to hard, this solves that).

Another (albeit less common) issue is when completing a game on normal or hard or above you don’t unlock the unlockables for the difficultly below it, If I finish a game the first time on hard why would I want to play it again on easy, most games are retroactive with this but there’s still a few examples that haven’t implemented this yet (John recently played Bayonetta and mentioned this) and there’s really no excuse for it.

Anyway, as much as I hate to say it, the best way to achieve a challenge from a game is to play on online, as good as AI can be sometimes it’ll never match the unpredictability and lateral thinking of another human. Plus, arguably, winning is a lot more fun when you can imagine a retelling of Angry German Kid happening on the other end or your sniper rifle.

The Differences Between Men and Women

2010-06-07T15:15:00.002+01:00

Firstly, I’d just like to apologise for my absence from Gabbling Geeks recently. I haven’t posted an article in a few weeks, mainly due to a combination of lack of time, the fact that I’ve just built a new computer and am now playing Dragon Age Origins as I’ve wanted to since before Christmas, and my own sheer laziness. Anyway, on to the subject of this article.

Now, before anyone thinks of making any jokes about this topic (hur dur hur penis lol...) I just want to point out that I’m talking about the way the different genders are treated, both in society, in the workplace and people’s general opinion etc etc. When I was growing up, I never thought there was any difference between men and women. I never thought either my mum or my dad was any better or worse than the other, I just viewed them both as parents plain and simple. As I got older I started to discover that this actually isn’t the case in the world. Women get paid less in the workplace, and men get less paternity leave than women get maternity leave. In fact according to Wikipedia, in the United Kingdom, women now get 52 weeks paid maternity leave compared to 2 weeks paid and up to 13 weeks unpaid paternity leave that men get. I personally think it’s utterly daft that the genders are treated so differently. We’re all human beings aren’t we? In my experience most of the women that I’ve met can do stereotypically male things just as well as I can, better in some cases, and I know some men who are just as good as women at stereotypical female professions. In fact, Jo is a much better programmer than me, she’s probably one of the best in our group at university, and games programming is a stereotypically male profession. There are genetic differences between men and women, men are generally stronger than women for example, but that’s no reason to say that women can’t do something. A man might be better suited for a physical job than a woman due to this, but women can still do the same job, there’s nothing stopping them. Also, women are more often considered to be the carers for children, but that’s not to say that a man can’t give the same sort of care and attention to a child that a woman can.

Going back to the subject of pay and parental leave, this is completely ridiculous. There’s absolutely no reason that women should be paid less for doing the same amount of work as a man. That’s just a completely archaic and chauvinistic view. It’s shocking to think that, even though we have so much political correctness these days, women still get paid less than men. Now imagine if someone got paid less because they were of, say, African American ethnicity. There’d be public outrage right? Where’s the difference?

On the flip side of this argument however you have the parental leave issue. Women have to go through childbirth, but 48 extra weeks of paid maternity leave seems a little excessive to me. I’m not saying women should get less maternity leave, but I’m saying men should get an equal amount of paternity leave. Childbirth is an emotional time for the father too, and I know I want to be there during my child’s early years at least. Why can’t parental leave be shared between the parents? Each parent gets every other week off, alternating with each other to look after the child, once the mother has recovered from childbirth. Maternity leave being longer than paternity leave is another example of an archaic view, this one being of women as homemakers. Today, you often find that both genders work just as much as each other, and it’s not uncommon to find a male homemaker.

The media doesn’t help matters either. If you look at adverts on TV, the internet and in newspapers for example you’ll be bombarded by adverts portraying one gender or the other in incredibly stereotypical ways. A recent example I can think of is the Tesco Clubcard one where the man wants a new TV and sofa to watch the World Cup on, and the women says he can have it because they got double points, or some such twaddle. Not every man in the country follows the World Cup like a religion. I personally detest football, and couldn’t really care less if we win the World Cup or not. I take offense to people assuming I give a rat’s arse just because I’m male. Then again, I’m not your usual male at all. If me and Jo didn’t look like our respective genders you’d have trouble telling us apart. A list of my favourite films would probably include Love Actually, The Holiday and Titanic, which are generally considered women’s films, whereas a list of Jo’s favourite films would include Transformers and Terminator, stereotypically male films. I prefer drinking wine, whereas Jo likes lager. I like MMORPGs which are generally considered to be more suited for women because of the social aspect (I know), and Jo likes FPSs, which are male dominated. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this though. Is there any reason why we should force ourselves to like or not like something because of the gender we were born as?

On the subject of FPSs, I’d just like to bring up the experiences Jo has had while playing some shooters. She generally goes by the name Gamezgoddess online, so it’s quite apparent that she’s female, and while using this name on public servers of games like CounterStrike, she’s had guys having a go at her because she “shouldn’t be playing a game like this” and generally just being dickholes to her. Everyone should be able to do what they enjoy regardless of gender, and I think it’s about time the world as a whole realised this and started to change its ways personally.

Final Fantsay 13 Putting Your Console At Risk

2010-06-07T14:55:00.005+01:00

Well... I made the mistake of entering the Game shop over the weekend, and I ended up with a Collector’s Edition of Final Fantasy 13 (PS3). It was really good value which was what gripped me into buying it, even though I was originally thinking of skipping such a purchase. I have always been curious to play the game, but from very early on John and I found out about a certain issue affecting the game and causing consoles to break completely. I’d decided at that point that maybe I shouldn’t bother as the experience probably isn’t worth risking my precious launch PS3 over. You may have heard about the lawsuit recently; a man named Daniel Wolf intends to sue Sony/Square for a lot of money which he then intends to offer to the people that join him so that they can replace their broken consoles. The problem is said to wear out the Blu-ray laser and after the game crashes, the console will no longer be able to read any form of media whatsoever. There are a fair few videos on you tube demonstrating the problem.

At the time of buying the game I had already convinced myself that the game had sold millions of copies, and so therefore surely if the problem was as bad as it was being made out to be there would be more pre-owned copies up for grabs and a lot more of an outrage going on. In fact most people haven’t even heard of this issue before. I asked at the Game shop before buying it whether they had heard anything for which they answered no, therefore re-assuring me that it would be ok; Only when I got the game back and put it in my console the threat suddenly became a lot more real. Despite the fact that the game has so far run smoothly with absolutely no issues whatsoever I can’t help feeling a knot forming in my stomach like I’ve just put a live bomb in the disk tray. It’s hard to enjoy the game experience when you’re worried that your console will crash and burn at any moment.

I therefore decided to have a search across the internet to try and re-assure myself so that I can play the game calmly and hopefully begin to enjoy the experience (after all aren’t games meant for playing, the whole idea that I’m afraid to do so is preposterous.) I found a lot of people discussing things, but no real definite answers. It feels like I’m bashing my head against a brick wall most of the time. Some people are saying it is the fault of the console, others are stating that it is because of defect discs. There are also no exact statistics for how many people this issue is in fact affecting. The problems don’t seem to be mainstream (for I know of many people who have completed the game with consoles still working) and yet it’s a regular enough occurrence to cause concern and awareness.

All I have heard from both Sony and Square Enix is that they are playing the blame game instead of actually attempting to correct the fault. Surly they could work together on this one and sort it out quicker instead of making fans feel rejected and angry. I did consider that maybe I could play the game by buying it for my 360 instead. It isn’t preferable because comparison videos show that it doesn’t look as good on this console plus it requires a lot of discs, still if it means not breaking anything it’s worth it right? Well, on my internet searches I also found a fair few accounts of freezing issues on the 360 version as well.

I really don’t know what’s best in this scenario. I could continue and everything will be absolutely fine. I may have been lucky enough to get a working disc, and my console may be able to handle it (I always de-dust it and keep it in a well ventilated spot,) but there’s always the ‘what if’? What if I end up being one of the people who suffers from this problem? I know for a fact that I will kick myself if this happens because it’s not as if I haven’t received any warning signs. For what is suppose to be a major next-gen release this is ridiculous and I’m hoping that everything will be resolved so that I can go ahead and get on with the game. It’s just that while nobody is willing to acknowledge the problem there will also be no development any time soon in trying to fix it.

Tricky Job Interviews

2010-06-03T22:23:00.005+01:00

Is it just me, or does trying to get a job almost feel like trying to win the lottery these days? It just feels like an almost impossible thing for me to reach at the moment and I have to admit, at times I sit and worry about my future prospects. I’m not bad at what I do; I’m a hard dedicated worker with a lot of passion, but... and there is a big but... I have no previous experience and my shyness lets me down. Let’s explore the first part of that statement; how can I get experience if I need experience to get a job? This is an excuse given to me a lot but it’s really unfair. I’ve been a hard worker my entire life, come top of my class mostly and actually tried to get on with things unlike other people, so why not give me a chance? Now for the second part of the statement; this world seems to run off charismatic people. No matter how good your skills are, it feels like a dim loud mouth is more likely to get through than you are. Ok, I know that charisma is an important skill to have, but unfortunately were not all born naturals at it. Also, why is shyness so unaccepted in this overly extrovert society? (By the way, being quiet a lot doesn’t necessarily mean you’re afraid to talk to people, I’m often not talkative when my mind is occupied by another task at hand, and as often is the case the gobby person next to you tends to be the one who makes the most mistakes. Secondly, it is also often seen as a condition that can’t be helped – trust me, I never chose to be this way, I hate it and am continuously trying to break out of this problem. Despite being a condition people seem to be happy to bully shy/introvert people which makes the condition worse and yet other noted conditions are more respected and treated with care.) – Oh and I’m not a babbling wreck either, I enjoy chatting to people face to face and can be quite noisy at times, but my entire life I’ve always been classed as shy like I give off a vibe or something. Anyways, being introvert can be a good thing; they tend to be more creative and think things through better.

My point is, when I was younger I always thought that I’d have a good chance at getting a job, simply because I’m a passionate person and absolutely love what I do which means I practice a lot. Now I’ve lost that confidence, because what they look for when employing people seems to be a bit off. On my university course the 3rd year is suppose to be a work experience placement, which is the year I’m currently on. I’m actually self employed and running a business with John and Sneeze (selling custom-built computers), but I did initially try to get a job. Before attempting to apply for jobs we were given advice on what they look for when interviewing people. The thing is, a lot of people have probably also been told the same thing, so were all making our CV’s up to sound like were skilled in everything they need but also outgoing and cultured, but not to any extremes. It causes you to kind of twist the truth a bit, so they’re not really seeing the real genuine person are they? We were also told that we couldn’t apply for game development jobs because we weren’t yet good enough, but there weren’t many C++ jobs available so it was awkward trying to stretch our skills when applying for completely unrelated computing jobs. I was lucky in that I’d had a past interest in website design so I attempted to take that direction mostly. I ended up with a lot of interviews, so I guess my CV writing skills can’t be too off.

At a lot of the interviews I went to they were actually a bit off with me, asking me the question, ‘so you spend a lot of time sat in front of your computer then?’ in an accusing way. What am I suppose to say to that and why is it a bad thing? I’m applying for a computing job, isn’t it a good thing that I’m use to the idea of sitting in front of a monitor for long periods of time. Anyway, at no point in my CV did I state computing was the only thing I did. I enjoy being active; playing things like badminton, going canoeing and I’m soon to join the gym where I will probably spend much of my spare time. I could go further and list many hobbies and activities which I do that don’t involve a computer but I won’t bother. I also got told a lot of the time that I didn’t have the right skills, but this was supposed to be a learning experience job where they teach you the skills. Also it’s impossible to know every obscure program and language in computing because there are so many, usually programmers can pick new things up fast and that should be enough. (It should be about technique more than knowing each thing off by heart in my opinion.) If you want me to be good at everything I will need to spend a lot of time sat in front of my computer practicing - but oh no... That means you’ll accuse me of doing nothing but sitting in front of my monitor once again. That’s why I’d like to work for a software engineering company rather than a company that wants software, because I think they’ll understand you and the job involved better.

You can’t be good at everything, there’s not enough time in the world and I just don’t understand why being skilled at what they want you for isn’t good enough. I know personality will make a difference if you get two people with equal skill levels, but that whole needing to be cultured part of it, like computing people should go visit art galleries or something. Most of us just aren’t like that? The kind that really care about what they do, the kind that can genuinely do a very good job at your computing needs (i.e. the geeks) are also the kind that aren’t as likely to do less techy things. There’s a reason some people are whizzes at computing, they’re either born with it, or they do a lot of it. To expect less is unreasonable. I’ve also heard of cases though where people who aren’t as good at the skills required have gotten it over somebody more capable. This is outright unfair and I’m not even going to bother explaining why because I think it’s obvious. It is also often the case that you can be over-qualified to get a certain job, but it should be down to you to decide if you want to work there, not them. If you’re applying then you’re obviously happy to be working there despite having a lot of qualifications. I thought it’d be a good thing to have a lot of skills anyway, should I just stop learning when I reach a certain point to increase my chances of getting a job, or should I just omit some of my skills from my CV as if they don’t exist. How do I know when I’ve gone too far on my listed skill set? I wanted to work at a Game shop once, but have had no reply from them. They say you have to care about games (which I think it’s obvious I do), and I thought I’d show it by saying that I’m studying them. Now I’m wondering whether that makes me over-qualified and that’s why I’ve never heard back from them – You’d think it’d impress them, but no.

I’m also hard up against it being a white British person. I don’t have issues with ethnic minorities taking jobs or anything and I’m not racist. In fact it isn’t their fault at all, and if they earned the job I don’t really have a problem with them getting it over me. The problem arises because of the stupid pressures put onto companies to make it look as if they are making an effort to provide equal opportunities to all kinds of people; if a workforce consists of all white British it apparently looks bad (even though I have before seen a workforce that seems to only consist of black people). It has reached a point where I’ve actually seen job application forms stating that white people can’t apply even though the job doesn’t necessarily require a foreigner to do it. If you have the right skills you should be considered no matter who you are or where you’re from. I reckon that it’s probably quite condescending to a foreigner who’ll be getting a job because of what they are rather than what they are capable of. All this political correctness does is make it worse by driving a wedge further between the groups, leaving British people quite rightfully mad because they’re being shunned for no reason over people who didn’t originally come from here.

There is also a question of loyalty in jobs where sometimes people will get favours and will get in because they happen to know somebody who already works there, and then there’s the more negative side where loyalty lets you down, perhaps a place lays you off or offers a promotion to somebody with less experience there than you. Appearances and accents have also been said to make a difference, so basically if your ugly and don’t speak posh you have less of a chance even if you’re like as smart as Einstein or something. A lot of job interviews seem to have some sort of expected criteria for how you answer the trick questions they pop at you, and your suppose to read their minds on this one somehow.

I’m sure most of us have had negative interview experiences, or didn’t get a job for a reason that seemed unfair. The whole process feels like pot luck and there is so much competition involved nowadays. I guess recession didn’t exactly help last year and its left a lot of desperate people wondering what to do, but the least companies could do is to actually recruit people fairly and to give everyone an equal chance. The ones that put all the effort in should have the best chance of getting in, otherwise I might as well just not bother and sit on my ass all day doing nought for all the difference it will make.

The Geek Communication Barrier

2010-05-23T09:56:00.003+01:00

Sometimes it feels as if the world is divided into two categories; gamers and non-gamers. – In a blunt sense, of course there are many different types of people out there but for the purpose of this article I’m referring to the relationship between these two groups. There’s aren’t many gamers who don’t have a story to offer about how a non-gamer did something stupid on a game or their misunderstanding parents keep bugging them to give it a rest. It gets pretty annoying right, even after numerous times explaining that what they say on the news is wrong you still get told to go away from your console/computer. I use to get this a bit when I was younger, now I’m older not so much. The other problem is also the fact that I’m a geek who spends much of her spare time programming. I don’t know if others get this, but there’s often a communication barrier between computer professionals and everybody else, in the way that you’re expected to do more of the work coming down to their level than they are coming up to yours.

I don’t really mind the barrier being there as long as I have somebody like me to talk to. It seems a bit one sided though because often people make an assumption about you if you’re a geek – that you’re a poor person to talk to. The fact is we don’t always have to talk about computing or video games, but in non-tech gatherings I’m often sat in the corner feeling slightly bored because I feel like people are giving me a bit of a berth. I try to join in and take interest in what other people say and sometimes they’ll let me through. The problem is, I’m expected to let them talk about what they want, but then can I talk about what I want, often not. When you mention the ‘vg’ words or anything computing related you can tell it’s going ‘whoosh’ over their heads. You can try to complain that people don’t take an interest in what you have to say, but they’ll make out that they do even though it’s obvious they’re just trying to look as if they are (as you tend not to get much of a response.) There’s also the fact that they’ll blame video games for everything that goes wrong in your life (tends to make you think that they don’t care much about your interests.) How are you suppose to take their attempts at understanding you seriously if they just irrationally blame everything on what you care about? I feel people think that I have to do something else other than computing, but that’s my hobby and future career choice, don’t have much time for anything else. Why should I change myself anyway? They expect me to just switch that part of myself off, yet they can talk about their jobs, education or hobbies as much as they want. I can’t complain about it because my hobbies are to blame, not the way that society is or anything *rolls eyes...*

I often feel like I have to choose between people and my passion for video game development because it’s always made out to me that when I’m on my computer I’m shutting myself away. The fact is, games programming is one of the hardest subjects you can choose, and I want to make sure I practice a lot each day so that I can pick it up well and live my dream. I actually program on my laptop a lot so I’m sat around in places where people are anyway and sometimes I stop and have a chat. If it seems I shut myself out sometimes it’s because I’m sick and tired of having my passions put down, the very thing I’m striving to create. It’s no different to the passion an artist feels when they start to make that masterpiece, it’s the desire to make something brilliant that other people can enjoy. I don’t even understand how people can’t see the crafting of video games as amazing. It’s so exciting thinking that I can design and produce my own world with its own rules – each to their own I guess. Amazingly, I haven’t actually met many other people who share the same enthusiasm as me for this sort of stuff, which is a shame because you hear about how young computer scientists get together at university and make successful things such as Google. I really wish I knew more people to share my hobby with because it’s kind of frustrating not being able to talk about programming more often. I guess I’ve read too many game development books written by eager professionals and I’d really like to meet them and gabber about computing all day. (To get past that steep learning curve to become a professional I guess you’d have to be pretty eager.)

Amongst the gaming/tech crowd you often find that it’s much easier to bond. (I read a study once that stated that people who played MMORPG’s together often had a stronger bond with each other than people who don’t.) When I went to university and finally met some other genuine gamers like myself we just instantly clicked and got talking away. You find you hardly ever run out of stuff to say because games are plentiful and you’re both happy to sit there and talk about them all day; non-gamers looking on in amusement because once again they think your silly and incapable of talking about anything else. It’s true that gamers can also have lots of tiffs, like over camping or kill stealing, and we don’t all get on such as the FPS and RPG crowd, but overall, once you do meet another gamer with similar tastes you find that your friendship tends to blossom. It’s a shame that all those non-gamer folk will never understand how good it feels to have a friendship like this.

I know that you can’t expect non-tech people to understand every detail of what you do, after all, it’s incredibly complicated, but on the top level it’d be nice to know that some of those people could maybe lay off a bit and try to accept my interests. I’m always made out to be the bad person for having a hobby in computing, and yet I’m not the one going around putting down somebody’s interests and making them feel that they can’t talk about it, or even briefly mention it once. I sometimes even fear going anywhere near my computer because I think I'm going to be judged for it. I admit to the fact that I’m a little obsessive over what I do, but it’s what makes me who I am and I love being that crazy creative person who puts all into what they do (too many people these days don’t seem to put any effort into developing skills anymore.) I’ll be more willing to come down a notch to their level if they can just maybe try, for once, not jump to the conclusion that video games and computers are destroying people lives, because in actual fact it's the un-accepting people in this world who are to blame. Yup the story of my life – I’m interested in a subject in which girls are often not very well received, which in turn isn’t widely accepted by society, and people wonder why I sometimes cut myself off! Oh-isn’t-the-human-race-just-wonderful? -.-

Grand Theft Gameplay

2010-05-20T14:21:00.006+01:00

Since GTA III there’s been an increasing number of sandbox games all sticking with the same formula that Rockstar has been trying to perfect since 2001. Games like the Saint’s Row and Just Cause series’ and even the odd super hero game like Spiderman 2, inFamous and Prototype are going for the open worlded do what you feel like approach. The funny thing is, most of them are better than the very thing they are imitating. Don’t get me wrong, I loved San Andreas and would probably put it in my top 10 but having tried to get into GTAIII and Vice City several times each (even though the latter is often considered better than San An) and failing, I’ve just found other games to be more enjoyable. In this article I will be comparing a few sandbox games that have stood out for me, San Andreas, GTAIV, Saints Row 2 and the recently released Just Cause 2. I would include inFamous and Prototype but they don’t really involve cars all that much unless you count using them as a weapon.

Overall I can’t really pick a single favourite each have their merits but here’s a quick lowdown.

The only area GTAIV is the best for me is story, and even then it’s not brilliant, a little cliché and one or two of the characters are I want-to-punch-you-in-the-mouth-unlikeable, no names mentioned. Its good towards the end but takes too long to pick up. San Andreas and Saints Row 2 are ok, but they are too gang orientated which in my opinion makes it hard to sympathise, but that could be just me. As for Just Cause 2 the story is pretty much nonexistent, it doesn’t flow all that well and the (intentionally) bad voice acting doesn’t help but that doesn’t really matter.

Graphically Just Cause 2 is the best, the draw distance is incredible and standing on top of the mountains or climbing in a helicopter and looking towards the horizon gives you a real feel for how large the game world is, granted this is the most modern of the four but it’s impressive all the same. GTAIV is nice, but on HD resolutions it could have done with better anti-aliasing and there’s way too much bloom at times, all it suffers from is the same fate as a lot of games this generation, everything is grey. Saints Row 2 isn’t amazing but it’s bright, colourful and while not realistic still a nice looking game. It isn’t really fair to compare San Andreas here as it was released last generation but did look nice at the time so it is noteworthy.

When you spend a good majority of the game driving around you need to have a decent soundtrack to help you along or it can get a bit boring, and this is where Saints Row 2 is the better of the 4, plenty of variety with a nice selection of old and new tunes some of which are guilty pleasures but it just adds to the tongue-in-cheek mood of the game. San Andreas is also good, some may argue Vice City is better but I can’t personally vouch for that but most of the time I always ended up turning on WCTR. GTAIV is, well, terrible, I have a very broad music taste but there wasn’t a single station I could get on with, there was Integrity, the equivalent of WCTR but even that wasn’t as good as it was in San Andreas. Unfortunately, Just Cause 2 has no soundtrack to speak of, there’s (mediocre) background music but no radio stations, though, after GTAIV this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Gameplay, obviously the most important aspect of a game, there isn’t really much difference between all of them, get gun, aim, shoot, avoid consequences. Both GTAs have a lock on feature and IV has a Gears of War style cover system which is up there with QTEs and Zombies on a list of biggest clichés this generation, it was useful, but not needed, not in a game of this style. I never really cared for lock on anyway, makes is feel like the game is doing it for you. Just Cause 2 has an upgrade system which adds to the game but is almost compulsory as without it the weapons seem to shoot frozen peas.

Another thing all of these games have in common is collectables, things you run/fly/swim/drive around the entire map for to collect, which in my opinion is kind of annoying, it’s never been something I’ve really enjoyed and almost felt like a chore, San Andreas mixed it up a bit with having photo icons you collected with the camera and spray tags as well as the usual pick-ups but it still felt tedious as all hell but its GTAIV that really takes the biscuit. For those who don’t know, across the entire city are 100 pigeons, or “flying rats” that you need to kill, the main issue is that there is no silent way of doing the deed so 4 out of 5 times you shoot one, you get a wanted level which makes an already mundane task even worse because you need to lose the cops every time you kill one of them. Saints Row 2 has CDs, and these where incredibly hidden, in my entire time playing it I think I found about 10 (out of 50), I could use a map or guide but still, this is a little too secret. Just Cause 2 is nice and puts a blue spot on the map where all the collectables are but with 300 it’s still insane, and then there’s the 2000+ resource items that aren’t on the map, I can’t imagine completing this game 100%.

Then there’s wanted levels, another area where San Andreas is prime, bringing the FBI and even the army in at high levels to take you down, a misguided attempt because then you just steal the tank, maybe that’s why they didn’t do it in GTAIV, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, ey? Saints Row 2, not much can be said, kind of a medium between the one in San Andreas and IV, not quite heavy tanks but a bit more than SWAT. But my main qualm in this area is in Just Cause 2 where the wanted level (or heat as the game calls it) doesn’t really stand for much. Sometimes I can survive for 20+ minutes on level 5 without an issue, sometimes level 2 will completely obliterate me, it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Plus sometimes you will actually just gain heat for nothing, I mean literally nothing, I swear they sometimes come after you because they don’t like your face. I was doing a race once, in a small town, not restricted land or anything, just drove past and bam, level 4, out of nowhere, I don’t know whether this is a bug or known issue but when the game screws you out of a challenge because the feds simply don’t like you it’s a bit silly.

An area Saints Row really did well in was customisability; build your character from the ground up, gender, age, colour, voice, build, eyes, hair, size of cleavage/package even the way they walk. It’s arguably more in depth than the sims which is a little crazy. New clothes and accessories were available through my outlets in the game world which you could choose a colour and material for, car mod shops available too with a nice amount of options, really well done. You can sum up the system on this in San Andreas in 3 syllables. Oh-ver-kill. I know how much I just praised the Saints Row for the amount it had but you chose a shirt you chose a colour, San An would be green shirt, blue shirt, red shirt, black shirt, white shirt, green t-shirt, blue t-shirt; ad infinitum. When you're a completionist [Read: Anal] like I am, and you want to own everything and this is just annoying. IV once again went completely the other way and gave so little choices of attired I could count them on my fingers and toes, and then count the ones that looked half decent on my thumbs. Just Cause has well, nothing. You look the same from start to finish and your choice of colour of car depends on who you steal it from.

Finally, gimmicks and side missions, which is where Just Cause prevails, this is a game to get if you like destroying things, trust me. If you wanna blow crap up then there’s not much better out there, blowing stuff up gets you chaos which in turn unlocks story missions so you can progress. I actually spent the first 15-20 hours of gameplay exploring and blowing stuff up and collecting stuff and did maybe 15 missions in that time (including faction missions). Saints Row 2 has respect, which works in much the same way but you get that by doing side jobs such as assassination, drug trafficking, smearing people’s houses in poop, you then “spend” the respect to do missions. Neither of the GTAs really have a mechanic like this, missions are always available once you’ve unlocked them but will normally yield you money so you can make other missions easier.

In a perfect world we’d have GTA IV’s story and characters, Just Cause’s destruction and graphics, Saint Row’s taste in music and missions, San Andreas’ over the top wanted level system and general “feel”, and a healthy mix of all their gameplay aspects. Oh, and the collectable system from pong.

"Man, I gotta drive a taxi, next I'll be flying a remote control helicopter or some ****" ~ Marcus Reed, True Crime: New York City.

Ignorance and Video Games

2010-05-20T14:01:00.002+01:00

Following on from Sneeze’s article about violence and fornication in video games, I’d like to take a closer look at the people who complain about this sort of thing. Jo and I were watching some videos of Jack Thompson and some other people complaining about Grand Theft Auto IV last night, and it was honestly one of the most ignorant, scaremongering piles of crap I have ever seen in my life. I’ve never played GTA IV myself, but I have played III, Vice City and San Andreas, so I know the basic precepts of GTA games quite well. Apparently, in this game (according to the talk show we watched) your child can pick up a hooker, have sex with her, then beat her to death with a baseball bat to get your money back. OK, OK, OK, let’s get one thing straight shall we. Your child can’t do these things because the game has an ESRB rating of M and a BBFC rating of 18. If a child gets their hands on a copy of the game it’s due to negligence, either on the part of the store who sold them the restricted item, or on the part of the parents, to provide their offspring with a video game that has been deemed unsuitable for them. On that note, many people have complained that the ESRB rating of M should be raised to AO due to some of the game’s content. For anyone who doesn’t know, M is for ages 17+ and AO is for ages 18+. I mean seriously, is one year really going to make that much of a difference?

Right, now on to the point of this article. Many people complain that some of the themes in video games, such as violence, sex and crime have an adverse effect on people who play them, causing them to go on mad killing sprees in schools with an AK47 or something. As a side note, if I was personally gonna go on a killing spree I’d screw an AK47 and take a HK47 with me instead. At least it’d add some humour to the situation. “Query: Shall we start with the blaster rifle or plasma grenades master? I do so enjoy the sound of meatbags in pain. Except you of course master. Haha.”
Anyway, random Star Wars references aside, how many reported sales of GTA IV have there been? I can’t seem to find an up to date figure, but according to Wikipedia, as of the 16th of August 2008 (a few months after the game’s release) it had sold over 10 million copies. So I guess we can assume that that figure has increased dramatically since then. Now, how many cases have there been of people running amok in schools with rifles? Yeah, considerably less. Oh and let’s not forget that hardly any of these cases can actually be directly linked to video games. People just seem to think that since someone has played a violent game before, that must have somehow trained them to become psychotic killers. As Sneeze, said in his article, these people also tend to be quite fond of statistics, throwing them out like confetti at a wedding, so here’s one for you: let’s take a high estimate for the number of school shootings linked to video games. Shall we say 50? Yeah that sounds like a nice high estimate. Now how many sales have there been of GTA IV? Well there were over 10 million sales in August 2008, so in May 2010, taking into account additional sales in the past nearly 2 years, plus pre-owned sales on eBay and the like, shall we say 17 million? Right now let’s work out the percentage shall we? Notice I’m being lenient here and assuming that all these violent rampages were linked to GTA IV and not to other games like Counter Striker or Manhunt. So, 50/17,000,000 * 100 = ~0.0003%. Wow, that’s a low percentage. Plus I’ve been lenient with this percentage don’t forget. Now let’s consider, out of all the people who have played GTA IV, how many are likely to have had a deep rooted psychological problem that would probably lead them to become violent with the influence of something like GTA anyway. I don’t know about you, but I’d reckon it’d be higher than the previous percentage. So the only people who would have been affected by violent games are the ones who are quite frankly mentally unfit to play them anyway. I mean what train of thought would lead you to the conclusion “Oh, I just killed someone in this game, therefore it must be alright to do it in real life too”. Sounds retarded doesn’t it? Really, if someone can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, then it’s obviously a case that needs looking at more thoroughly right?

For all that people complain about violence in video games, surely it’s better that people do it within the confines of a fantasy world rather than in real life. At our core, human beings are just animals that have developed the confines of society, making many of our animal urges unacceptable, for instance the need to hunt and kill. Animals do it all the time, it’s a perfectly natural part of life, and the old hunter-gatherer instincts are still there in all human beings. Take a look at the Freudian model for example. (I apologise for any inconsistencies here, but I briefly studied Freud out of a textbook at college 5 years ago after dropping out of Psychology for being too boring and taking Physics instead. They just weren’t covering the stuff I wanted to learn in Psychology, and Physics was a much more black and white subject, which suits my style of thinking more, so I decided to just learn the stuff I wanted to know out of a textbook instead. So I apologise if I’m wrong about anything here.) The Freud model states that the consciousness is split into three parts, the ID, the Ego, and the Superego. The ID is the animal instinct, self-gratification part of our mind that tells us what we want and that we want it now. The Superego is the part of our mind that tells us what’s right and what’s wrong, and that we should always do right by other people. The Ego sits between the two, and keeps them both in check, making sure we get sufficient self gratification, but that we are still decent people. Anyway, dragging this back onto topic, the ID part of our minds tells us that we want to kill things. Surely, a place where we can satisfy these urges without doing harm to anyone else is preferable to going out and stabbing someone in the street or something. I know I’ve actually found games where you can be someone else for a while terribly relieving, not having to worry about the real life consequences of my actions actually de-stresses me really well. So in that sense, violent games are surely good for people, provided they don’t have any prior mental instabilities. Maybe instead of age ratings on games they should have mental stability ratings, ensuring the only people who play these kinds of games aren’t the kind who are going to go crazy and start eating their socks or something.

The Glorification of Violence and Fornication

2010-05-13T15:23:00.003+01:00

One of the main problems people seem to have with video games is that they “glorify” sex and violence and this makes children grow up corrupted and desensitised and they might stab people. Of course, there have been loads of studies that prove that games make children violent, they are just secret studies that only exist in a realm of reality that only anti-game enthusiasts can see, or at least that’s what I imagine because I sure as hell can’t find any. They just spout random statistics to get ignorant people like putty in their hands so they’ll buy their latest book or whatever they’re selling.

Violence in media has always been around and video games are just the latest punch bag to emerge, 30 years ago, people would be complaining about violence on TV, 80 years ago people would have complained about violence in movies, 10,000 years ago, probably complained about violence in cave paintings. People are always looking for an excuse why someone stabbed someone and instead of blaming the child’s own free will, poor parenting or perhaps the person in question deserved to be stabbed, no its Rockstar’s fault because they “taught” him how to use a knife, I’m not even sure how this works, unless you’re unaware of which end made people bleed.

It’s pretty clear that these so called “experts” haven’t played a game in their life but people believe anything you tell them if you’re over the age of 50 and in a suit and stick some sort of percentage in there. No, you don’t get “points” for killing cops and the aim of the game isn’t to kill prostitutes.

Complaints were actually received about the advert for Heavy Rain glorifying violence, now, anyone with a brainstem can tell this game is in no way glorifying violence, on the contrary. It shows the after effects, the consequences, the problems that come with taking a life. Then, to bring up a point Jo made in a previous article you have adverts for joining the army. They show guns, tanks, airplanes, boats all the machines that where invented to kill a guy quicker than he can kill you, they make it all flashy and give it the “boy with their toys” appeal. This is for an invention, the sole purpose of which is for ending life. Now, which one of these is actually doing the glorifying? Which one is getting the blame for people getting killed?

Then there’s sex, which is equally as hypocritical, all you have to do is turn prime time TV on and see the latest advert for deodorant or make-up and have far more sexual content then you’d see in most video games, and even then, watch anything on Channel 4 post watershed and you’ll see stuff worse than pretty much all video games (well, all of the ones sold outside Japan anyway). Yet Mass Effect got accused of being a “porn simulator” (which when you look at it is a deeply flawed term anyways, how does one simulate porn?) yet it’s actually tastefully done, and shows the feelings and connection between the two characters and the most graphic thing you get is a sideboob. What kind of porn are they actually watching?

Granted this issue does seem to be getting less pressing, Mass Effect 2 didn’t get any stick to my knowledge and that was probably more graphic, and Heavy Rain (yes I know I keep using this game in examples, if it’s bothering you play a drinking game or something) didn’t receive much notoriety and that’s probably more graphic still.

One more point on sex in games, I found this link today: Click. Now, surely he must have known of Rule 34’s existence, by its very nature you can find porn of anything, Sonic, Pokémon, The Land Before Time and pretty much anything that will destroy your childhood in a few simple jpegs. None of these previously had any sexual context but the internet got hold of it and suddenly Simba has a foot long. So, you make a game like Bayonetta which is pretty sexual itself, you’re pretty much doing half the work for them, and then you had the stones to complain when porn of it emerges? If you’re going to make a highly sexual character expect the character to be highly sexualised, it would be like serving someone an extremely salty meal and complaining if they get a drink afterwards.

Video games are no worse than any other form of media, TV, film, music, all influence people to some extent but people are always in control, if someone “copies” a video game it’s not at the fault of the game but at the fault of the person. Some people are naturally violent regardless of what hobbies they do or don’t have (except maybe yoga) and these people should be dealt with accordingly instead of fighting against an industry and ruining it for all the people who have self control and the little voice that tells them what’s real and what isn’t.

The best idea is to educate people more on game ratings, people still think that the age rating is purely based on difficulty and nothing else and then complain when they find out their 8 year old is running over pensioners in a golf cart. I saw a mother and her kid in game a few days ago, the kid wanted Forza Motorsport and the mother said “No, it’s obviously a 12 for a reason” obviously having no idea that a simple flip of the case would tell her exactly why it’s a 12. (which as it turns out is bad language, why you need to effectively cut out a large percentage of your audience by adding a few swears to a racing game of all games is beyond me). PEGI should run a few adverts on TV, tell parents about ratings and leave it all up to them instead of letting the Daily Mail handle it.

In return, for gamers, have a rating on all talk shows when video games are the topic, with little icons that mean “contains people that haven’t the faintest what they are on about” and “contains an audience with a collective amount of less than 5 brain cells” just to give us a heads up on what to expect from the next 20 minutes that way and prepare accordingly, possibly by performing a lobotomy on ourselves beforehand so we’re on the same train of thought as the people on the program.

“Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.” ~ Unknown

Professionalism? Don't make me laugh

2010-05-13T15:11:00.000+01:00

I’m sure everyone who has reached around 14-15 years of age has probably had the concept of professionalism shoved down their throats at some point. Apparently, to get by in this world, you need to be professional and respectable in everything you do. But why? Where did these concepts of professionalism come from in the first place? Who first decided that if someone turned up to a meeting in jeans and a T-Shirt instead of a shirt and tie they would be considered as not being professional and giving a bad impression?

Personally I hate the very idea of professionalism. It’s so stifling. I mean seriously why is it needed? It’s not a necessary thing in life. People just tend to not challenge established concepts, like having a shave for instance. If no one shaved, it would be regarded as completely normal for people to be hairy and have wild tangled beards and the like. The same goes for professionalism. If people didn’t expect other people to treat them in a formal way and behave like robots, no one would have to act like that and in my opinion everyone would be much happier for it. Let me give you an example: I used to work in a cafe in Debenhams. We were allowed to get a drink of water from the tap, but we had to go into the back, out of view of the customers, to drink it. This was apparently to protect the company image and keep us looking professional. So let’s get this straight. People, human beings, drinking water in plain sight was apparently bad for the company image and unprofessional. So it seems Debenhams wants to give the impression that it employs robots, because who ever heard of a human being drinking water? This is the sort of thing I mean. Customers know that the people employed there are humans, and so it follows that they do other things that humans do, such as drinking to stay alive. Why the hell would it be considered unprofessional to be seen doing something that you need to do to stay alive, especially considering you’re on your feet for at least four hours at a time, constantly talking and moving around.

While I’m on the subject of customers at Debenhams, what is it with the way employees at these places are meant to treat awkward customers? During the approximately two years I worked there, hardly a week went by when I didn’t witness some customer or another complaining about the state of a table, or the service they received, or the fact that a member of staff spoke to another about something not strictly work related. Let’s tackle these issues in order shall we? A table being messy; well during busy periods it’s hardly possible to keep all the tables in the cafe clean. There were around 40-50 tables in the cafe, and at the very most there were only ever 5 people on tables at any one time. Usually there were only 2 or 3. So during busy periods, when there’s someone leaving a table almost constantly, it’s quite impossible to keep them all clean. The service they received; this could range from anything from the amount of time it took to get them a hot drink, the amount of time spent in the queue, or the fact that someone didn’t smile and look happy while serving. During busy periods, when there were around 4 people moving around each other in a small space all trying to make drinks on 2 drinks machines, it was pretty impossible to get every order done straight away, especially when the machines took around a minute to make the drink, and then there was another 30 seconds after that finishing the drink off by hand. As for the queue, it’s unfortunate but sometimes queues take a while, there’s nothing the staff can do about that when they’re already working as fast as they can, this just requires patience on the part of the customer, something which most customers seem to lack in my opinion. It’s also unfortunate, but after an hour or two of serving awkward customers, not all staff have the capacity to remain happy and cheerful when being treated like a piece of dirt in a lot of cases. Also, this complaint mainly came about people who were new at doing the job in question (I got it from the manager once when I first started serving hot drinks, after a 10 minute crash course from another member of staff), so they aren’t always capable of looking cheerful while concentrating on doing their job properly. A member of staff spoke to another; for this, I refer you to my earlier comments about members of staff being human beings. Admittedly, you can go too far on this one, ignoring a customer while having a detailed conversation about the state of electoral system in this country with another member of staff for instance, but just mentioning something of interest to a co-worker while there aren’t any customers around should be fine, since the members of staff aren’t robots and are unfortunately quite incapable of keeping their minds permanently on their jobs. I myself got it in the neck from customers several times for this, when I was cleaning a tray and talking as I worked, but apparently the ability to multitask is lost on most people. I suppose you could argue that there are some jobs where absolute concentration would be required, but a part time Food Services Advisor (my official job title) for £5/hr isn’t one of them.

The worst thing about it was, if a customer chose to be awkward to us, and even insult us in some cases, we had to be polite, stay calm, and treat them with respect. I’m sorry, but he just lost my respect the moment he called me a ‘long haired idiot’ (I don’t remember the exact wording here, but something similar to this happened to me once). My usual policy when a customer approached me with a complaint was to ever so politely say “I’m sorry, let me get my supervisor for you to speak to”, at which point I’d go into the back, tell the nearest supervisor that “we’ve got another one”, at which she’d roll her eyes and go out to deal with them. Hey, they got paid more than me so they can deal with these situations. This is a prime example of professionalism gone wrong if you ask me. Staff members in a cafe are not subservient to the customers they deal with. Customers are not worth more than staff members. They are all human beings, just the same. However, if you were a visitor from an alien world you could quite easily get the impression that we are divided by a strict class system where people are forced to serve those superior to them.

Another problem I have with professionalism is the way it’s shoved down your throat in the education system. From the time you start career sessions in around Year 10 at the age of 14 or 15, you constantly hear about this concept that you must act a certain way in society. It happened in school, at college, and again in university. In our first year of university we had a module called ‘Professionalism and Communication Skills’. In the second year, we had a module called ‘Asset Management’ in which we apparently got prepared for our placement year. In our final year (or right now in some cases, since those on placement year get a fast-track option) we have another professionalism module, where we have to write a 1500 word essay on professionalism. I wonder if I could hand this post in instead? I wonder how that would fly? In every educational establishment and university course you find something like this. A module tacked on that ‘prepares you for the world of work’. I’ve had two part time jobs in the past 4 years, and with that experience, as well as the experience some of my friends have had in the world of work, I can pretty much say that everything they tell you in these modules a huge pile of crap. They make you think that employers actually care about their employees. In my experience this is by no means the case. Employers care about their employees in the same way they care about a piece of machinery: a tool to do a job. They don’t care how you feel, or what your goals are in life, and they only give you the care required by law. All they care about is that you keep making them money. It would be much better in my opinion if these modules in education were replaced by something actually specific to what you want to do, like on our course for instance, Games Software Development, a module on game theory or the games industry would be much more useful than all this professionalism crap.

In summary, going back to what I said earlier, professionalism doesn’t need to exist. If people didn’t expect other people to behave like this, people wouldn’t need to, removing the entire need for professionalism. All it does is stifle individuality, and without individuality what would society become?

Logic Vs Creativity

2010-05-10T14:40:00.002+01:00

If you read my previous article (Can games be classed as art?) you’ll have noticed I have a fair few issues when it comes to the art community. I do actually really like art, but I tend to admire works from artists like Escher and Da Vinci (who were both quite clever and produced technical drawings, not just random blotches of paint like many others.) In fact the helicopter design was inspired by Da Vinci, and I’m sure were all aware of the famous staircase perspective drawings by Escher (inspiring many things; the PS3 game Echochrome and the final scenes of the Labyrinth to name a few.) Anyway, now I come to the point of this article, back when I selected Art as an option at school and college I found a lot of people also selected it, not because they cared but because they thought it would be an easy option. Despite the fact that artists like Escher used mathematical ideas within their work, people seem to think that art can’t be academic or involve any intellect – and if I’m honest, I don’t blame them when observing most modern day pieces. Still, most people would later come to realise that as a subject it’s one of the hardest, most time consuming ones you can take.

Now I move to the opposite side of the argument, logic. Apparently people who program like me are dull and nerdy because their brains are so full of logic they’re incapable of doing anything creatively. Before college I had to attend a few interviews to talk about what I wanted to do, and when I mentioned my choices of Art and ICT the interviewer would look at me gone out. They’d tell me that, ‘they’d never really seen it happen before,’ and that ‘it might not work.’ In fact most timetables at school and college were drawn up to have art clash with more logical subjects because people were less likely to combine the two. At school I use to always be considered the creative one, and I was treated differently because of it. Now I’ve started introducing myself more as a programmer I get treated differently once again with statements such as, ‘you need to try and be creative even though it might be a bit difficult for someone such as yourself.’

The first part of my life was dedicated solely to art. I got into it because my mum, sister and cousin all did it. For that reason I didn’t really choose to, it just sort of happened. It used to irritate me at school though because people saw me as the “Art” person, which I didn’t want to be. I can’t even remember how I came to decide I liked computing, I’d always had fun on my Amiga, and then I got my first PC and it just clicked. My Playstation was what inspired me to consider being a game designer, and on leaving school the art supplies went in the cupboard and the programming books came out. Not that I’ve given up my art, I actually find it to be a really useful skill to have for what I’m doing.

When I started my game development course at university, I found that there were a variety of people. A majority were more maths or physics minded, and when it came to the more creative modules such as Flash, they would complain, a lot. Then there were the more creative people, who enjoyed using Flash, and even began to consider that maybe programming wasn’t for them. Obviously it would be quite difficult to be a programmer and a 3D artist, of which I am most certainly leaning more towards programming, but I still find being creative helps a good deal. For starters, I tend not to have as much trouble thinking up ideas for what to make unlike some of the less creative ones. I am also able to create some decent looking games on my own. It’s unlikely you’ll make many games solo, but for the odd university assignment you don’t have much choice. Last time I checked it was being called Programmers art, where the game would be exquisitely made, but the aesthetics would be poor (unfortunately some lecturers are a bit critical on appearance as well.) Then when it does come to working on a team, I’ve read books stating that the programmers and artists have a tendency not to get along because they don’t understand where the other is coming from. The artists want the game to look pretty, but the programmers want good performance. In that case maybe it’s a good thing to have a programmer or an artist who has some idea of what the other wants. I also find that with creativity, comes attention to detail, which can be useful in any subject.

When I write my CV I always try to make a big deal out of the fact that I am a strongly creative/logical person and how this can be beneficial. I reckon it makes me stand out more form the crowd because I believe it makes me unique. Amazingly enough, I don’t actually want to be a graphics programmer, and I’m more leaning towards areas such as A.I. Despite being a difficult mathematical area, perhaps I can bring some creativity to A.I. to make it operate in a better way. Like I said in my pervious article, when I program I actually feel like I’m being creative because I have to design systems and come up with solutions to problems. I love game design because of its ability to combine both logic and creativity.

Who says you can’t be a little bit creative and logical at the same time?

Top 10 People I'd Like to Slap with a Wet Trout

2010-05-07T16:10:00.004+01:00

Due to a combination of writers block and possibly deeply rooted psychological issues regarding the combination of aquatic creatures with violence here’s something a little different, the top 10 people I’d love to slap with a wet trout.

#10 – Katie Price
Assuming the fish is long enough to reach over to her face. I almost question as to whether the breasts are actually some bizarre form of satire, at least that way I’d have some faith restored into humanity. Then there’s her and Peter having all them damn shows on ITV2 about their wonderful life together only to lead into a split-up that even John Edward could have seen coming. Also, am I the only one that gets the impression Peter was at home looking after the kids while she was out sleeping with anything with a pulse?

#9 – Charley from Big Brother 8
Do I even need a reason? I’m not being funny but she is possibly the most obnoxious, nasty, harsh, argumentative all around slut to ever be on reality TV, and that’s saying something. I don’t think there’s a single housemate she didn’t have at least one altercation with, oh, and did I mention she’s stupid?

#8 – Al Murray
Now as you know if you read my political correctness article jokes are fair game and shouldn’t be classed as offensive, but there’s one thing jokes should be and that’s where Al Murray fails: funny. I never found the whole “France sucks, Britain is great” thing funny to begin with, when you repeat this routine every Saturday evening coupled with the McFly version of Don’t Stop Me Now you are using the word “entertainment” very loosely, I might change the rules and slap him a System of a Down CD instead...

#7 – Amanda Holden
Three reasons. Number 1: Not everything under the age of 16 is “cute”, Number 2: Stop flailing your hands like the fish I’m about to slap you with every time anyone with abs takes their top off. Number 3: Stop crying every time someone from either of the above two aforementioned categories does something other than take breath.

#6 – Otis from Dead Rising
Stop calling me, seriously.

#5 – Shiguru Miyamoto
I’ve never really settled on one games company, always flitting between Sony and Nintendo over the past 13+ years so I guess in some ways I should be thanking him because he finalised my decision. I loved the Gamecube, as unsuccessful as it was but with games like Wind Waker, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Pikmin how could I not like it? The Wii came along and I was stoked, imagine all those great quirky games from the GC on the Wii but with nicer graphics and great motion control. Unfortunately, nearly 4 years down the line, I’m still left doing just that, imagining. Paper Mario was murdered, all Pikmin has seen is a couple of ports and him teasing us a couple of times with a Pikmin 3 but no news yet, at all, well, other than its existence and then the true sequels to wind Waker where... meh. Everything I loved about Nintendo is slowly fading away, bring back the quirks and stop selling out.

#4 – Peter Kay
10 years ago this guy was the newest comedian on the block with his jokes that everyone can identify with, observational humour and stories about his Mum that anyone can apply to their lives and take enjoyment and laugh because it’s all funny “because it’s true”. Now we are in 2010 and yeah... He’s no longer new, and nor is his content. New jokes or feel the wrath of my fish slap, kthx.

#3 – Piers Morgan
Everyone’s favourite journalist, Britain’s Got Talent judge and professional narcissist. If this guy’s ego was any bigger he’d have to actually have to declare it as a separate continent and then he’d probably only let people in if they paid a “Piers is awesome tax”. He just sits there on the panel of talent criticising everyone claiming he “could do that”. Really Piers? Do us all a favour and try it, with a bit of luck you’ll slip and land crotch first on to an active chainsaw, that’s on fire.

#2 – Noel Edmunds
No real reason for this guy other than the fact I don’t really like his face. Just to feel the satisfaction of removing that undeserved smugness from his face with an accelerating pre-moistened fish would be immensely satisfying.

#1 – Nick Griffin
You may have seen this coming and I can’t be the only one that feels this way but this man is just plain... creepy. I mean, even if you put the bigotry aside, just look at the man. He could save kittens from the violin factory for a living and he’d still look sinister. Imagine waking up at 4am just to see Mr. Griffin at the edge of your bed, with that smile of his... It’s not a pleasant thought, on second thoughts he looks like the kind of guy that would enjoy being slapped with a trout, probably while wearing the skin of a recently sacrificed virgin and reciting Hitler speeches.

Punsihment and rewards in schools

2010-05-06T15:58:00.002+01:00

Now I was always the ‘good kid’ in school. You know the one I’m talking about, the one who always stays in line, never plays up for the teacher, stays quiet in class and just generally behaves and respects authority. Needless to say I got a lot of trouble from the ‘bad kids’ for my approach. I had a few threaten to ‘deck’ me at times, and I left the school premises worried that someone was going to jump out from around a corner at me more than once. However, all of this, even though it went on in class a lot of the time, seemed to go largely unnoticed by the teachers. No one ever noticed that I was being threatened in the classroom or anything. But then again, they never really seemed to notice me at all. I just got down to work, did my work well, didn’t cause trouble and didn’t draw attention to myself. But did I ever get rewarded for doing well in school? Nope. Outside of the fact that I got good ‘qualifications’ (GCSEs cease to be important once you’ve got into college anyway), I never received one jot of support from the teachers for doing well in school. Nor did I receive anything for behaving myself.

Now the ‘bad’ kids, who disrespected the teachers, never did their work, disrupted classes, made it impossible for anyone else to learn and took up all of the teacher’s time, in our school anyway, were sent to the ‘report room’. This was apparently a punishment – to be taken out of the class with their work and sent to a room where they were watched over by a single teacher. So they were taken out of class and forced to do the work they would have otherwise had to do in class anyway. Well. Some punishment.

Later in my school career they introduced an addition to the report room. Repeated offenders, as it were, were taken out of classes completely and placed in a special class on their own with other students of similar behaviour levels so that they wouldn’t disturb other students. A noble objective to be sure. But let’s not forget the fact that this meant the ‘bad’ kids were being taken out of regular classes and placed in smaller classes as a punishment for bad behaviour. I don’t know about anyone else, but being in smaller classes with better and easier student to pupil interaction sounds like more of a reward than a punishment to me. Meanwhile, all the ‘good’ kids like me are stuck in classes of 20+ students, at the least, with teachers who, in my honest opinion, quite often really don’t care about the subject they’re teaching or whether they are giving their students the appropriate knowledge or not. Right. This sounds fair doesn’t it?

Just for the icing on the cake, our school THEN decided that, as a reward for their ‘improved’ behaviour, this special class got a nice shiny reward of a trip to Alton Towers. Hm. Something strikes me as rather odd here. Let’s weigh up what our school said to the two respective classes shall we.

To the special class: “Well, you’ve behaved badly, but since you’ve been behaving better recently we’re going to take you Alton Towers as a reward.”

To the normal class: “...” Yeah. Silence. That’s what we got. No recognition of good behaviour or anything.

This is just stupid in my opinion. Why should schools reward badly behaved pupils who then decide to act normal for a change. Why don’t the ones who behaved all along get the same treatment? The most we ever got was an extra revision book in History class and a revision/study residential weekend trip to Matlock in Year 11 just before the exams. I don’t know about anyone else but I’d take Alton Towers any day.

Join the army! - No Thanks

2010-04-28T14:46:00.001+01:00

I never really liked the idea of the army. To me it’s always seemed like the moment you join your individuality would be thrown out of the window, you’d become a number and would end up being shouted at and pushed to the edge according to the correct discipline. Never mind the fact that once signing up your kind of stuck until the end of your service which tends to involve you leaving your family behind to go and put your life in danger and to suffer from the guilt of ending it for others. Yet despite this you seem to get a lot of young guys who think it’s a really cool thing to sign up; that being behind the barrel of a gun will make you tough and the uniform/status will impress the ladies.

I’ve never liked those ‘join the army’ adverts. They seem to glamorise it, while not showing any of the negative consequences of being there. For example, there’s the one in the swamp where they’re sneaking through with guns. It makes it look really cool, but in reality it would take years of hard training and being shouted at to even get there, and then once you do, well you’re stood waist deep in a disgusting smelly swamp with the possibility of being shot at (not very glamorous at all in my opinion.) No, I think I’ll stay home and experience it through my games only.

Speaking of which, there was also a time when new recruits were found by using video game to lure them in. Personally I’d class that as manipulative and invasive. I don’t actually blame games or films for glamorising war a little, because they are built for entertainment purposes only, and as long as the audience knows this it’s not a problem, but to use them to target new recruits is just wrong in my opinion. I actually, personally, don’t find war games to be that entertaining anyway. For example, I recently tried out the highly praised Modern Warfare (the first one) after its price had been reduced. It feels like the game is trying to be flashy, but it doesn’t look pleasant to me at all. Everyone looks alike, wears the same stuff and are therefore quite flat and unlikeable as characters. They also boss you about way too much as they lead you through the level like some stupid wooden puppet. I guess in that sense it is quite realistic as I no longer feel like an individual within the game; it’s more about the team as a whole, but it does make for slightly less enjoyable game play. Mind you, I have played team-based games before and enjoyed them, because I’ve still felt like I stand out and get a say. In a war game I’d actually like to see more realistic dialogue between the characters to show their emotions and bonds, and to hint at an actual feeling towards what they are doing, (i.e. wiping out dozens of lives while putting yourself at risk.) They would therefore contain more depth and would show that war is not all about running around with flashy weapons and shooting people (as fun as that is in a virtual sense.)

I also remember when they tried to recruit people from my school. They came round to give a presentation and a lot of the boys and some girls got very excited over the fact that these big army dudes had arrived. I wasn’t too impressed having to sit there and watch them babble on about how joining the army would involve travelling around the world and meeting new people. Once again, it felt a little untruthful to me and our young minds at the time were happy to lap it up. I understand the fact that these things need to be done, otherwise nobody would ever join, but some people I’ve met just seem to be completely deluded about it. When something like that will affect your life in such a big way, I think it’s important for people to know exactly what they’re in for.

I once went out on the town with a couple of other female friends and we ended up being approached by these three guys. They seemed to try to hit on us by telling us they were leaving the country to go Iraq the next day. I don’t know whether this is true or not, if so I got the feeling they’d only joined up because they were too stupid to do anything else. I also don’t know why this was suppose to impress me, I imagine it would actually be quite hard for partners waiting back home while their loved ones go out to war, and preferably I’d like a boyfriend who isn’t into all that stuff (which John isn’t.) Anyway, they ended up asking us what we do and I told them that I was training to be a game developer (they also looked at me quite shocked when I told them I was a fan of Counter Strike). They started going on about how we wouldn’t be able to do those jobs if it weren’t for them protecting us, and that they didn’t mean anything compared to what they were doing. Ok, fair enough, maybe being a game developer isn’t a life saving sort of career, but my other friend said she wanted to be a teacher which I’d say is a pretty important role in society (especially if it keeps more people like that from being released out into the public.) But no, apparently what everybody else does with their lives is pointless and unbeneficial; in that case why even bother laying down your lives for our sakes.

If those guys had been lying it was very disrespectful to the actual genuine people who go out there, if they had been telling the truth then they were obviously in the belief that joining the army would bring them attention and respect. If somebody signs up knowing the danger, because they want to stand up for their loved ones and what they believe in then they do get my respect (in that case war can actually be quite honourable), but people like those guys don’t. I find a lot of young people are like this, and they go out there and die way too young before they’ve even had a chance to experience life. I really don’t think it’s right to encourage this sort of behaviour.

Musings of the Musically Minded

2010-04-27T15:25:00.003+01:00

Why is it, whenever I tell someone I like rock/metal music they automatically assume I’m a narrow minded idiot that won’t listen to anything that doesn’t involve screaming like they have their balls caught in a vice and contains at least three quotes from Hitler speeches in the lyrics? Yes I do listen to mostly rock and metal but my library contains anything from System of a Down to Eminem to Johnny Cash. Then you look at their library and it’s anything that happens to be in the chart, which in the last few years or so has been a bunch of RnB and Dance, and not much else; well apart from last Christmas’ number one. The point is these people listen to a maximum of maybe 3-4 genres and only listen to what Simon Cowell tells them is good and yet, to them, I’m the one with narrow taste.

Then, if I try to explain this to them, I’m suddenly an elitist that refuses to listen to popular stuff on the sole grounds it’s popular just to be non-conformist (ignoring the fact that by being non-conformist you are conforming to the non-conformity but that’s beside the point). I listen to what I deem good, and that happens to be stuff that’s not as popular as the likes of JLS.

Or it can be the other way round, “You like metal, ergo you like Slipknot”, no, that’s not how it works. I like Powerman 5000 ergo I like metal (or industrial metal if you want to be pedantic), not the other way around. With the likes of the ‘popular’ metal bands, I don’t necessarily like them, Metallica have a few good songs but I don’t go mad yet when people find this out they give me a look like I just squatted down and laid a cable on their new shoes.

One more thing, ‘metalheads’ often get stereotyped to be an aggressive and hostile bunch, this is not the case. I’ve been to my local metal club a countless number of times and never seen a proper fight break out (discounting mosh pits, obviously), then I’ve been to my local indie/alternative club no more than ten times and seen at least two fights, following this pattern at a Hannah Montana concert you would actually get murdered, horribly, in the face. It’s actually full on genuinely friendly people in my experience, not exactly the kind of people who will strangle you with a bite chain, drink your still warm blood and use your genitals in a bizarre satanic ritual like society would have you believe.

And going back to Britain’s second favourite narcissist, Mr. Cowell (the first can be seen one seat over from him on Britain’s Got Talent) we have the X-Factor. Ok, I admit, I like it, I watch it every year despite complaining about it but I do question what would happen if someone auditioned and instead of singing Chasing Cars or You Raise Me Up they sung Empty Walls or Scars, both are arguably just as emotional but they weren’t sung by ‘popular’ artists. They’d get turned away at the first hurdle, or at the very least told to sing something else, even if they nailed it (on a side note, I’d love to see someone sing I Almost Told You That I Loved You, just because it would be hilarious).

Then it goes to the finals when the closest thing we get is ‘Rock Week’ which just turns into about 6 renditions of murdering various Queen songs and a preview of the butchery the Glee cast did to Don’t Stop Believin’. Any other week they will sing really obscure songs (Gummo anyone?) yet as soon as Rock Week comes around there’s a not a single song that everyone and their dog hasn’t heard.

Not to sound too pretentious here but music is an important aspect in life and an art form we’d all miss if it was gone, it defines culture, it puts across emotion and it’s a way of expressing oneself without the need for a deep and hidden meaning like with usual ‘art’ as Jo was talking about in her last post. We should appreciate music for what it is, not what’s its not. As the saying goes, music is the language of the soul, though; going by this then Dizzee Rascal’s soul must be sat at the back of English class eating the glue.

Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. ~Robert Benchle

Why is the general opinion of students so low?

2010-04-23T16:30:00.001+01:00

I’m a student at Sheffield Hallam University, and I’ve noticed a trend with people in the UK. The word ‘student’ seems to be a byword for ‘a lazy, unproductive little scumbag with no respect for rules and regulations’. Or so it seems to me anyway. I was on a forum a few weeks ago, and I noticed a thread titled ‘How important is the student vote in Sheffield?’ I checked it out, since I am somewhat interested in the upcoming general election, this being the first one where I am old enough to vote. A few posts down in this thread someone had said (from the profile I saw he appeared to be a middle aged businessman type) “Why should students care about the general election? They’re all too busy getting drunk and having sex”. I don’t know about any other students, but personally I find this quite offensive. Yes I am a student. I also have a part time job working as a cleaner for a cleaning contractor company, I co-own a business for my placement year, and, although I do enjoy a good night out as much as the next person, I go out drinking at the VERY most once a month, but it’s usually more like every three months.

So, I don’t fit into that category whatsoever. But, since I’m labelled with the term ‘student’, people seem to think that of me anyway. It’s really not fair to just lump everyone into one category based on a label. It’s like saying all black people are terrorists, or all catholic priests abuse children. Now if anyone made either of THOSE claims, I’m sure they’d get picked up on it almost instantly. So why not with students? People on the forum I mentioned seemed to be supporting this guy’s argument, just on the assumption that all students fall into this category. I posted a little later on, trying to put this point across, and I was more or less ignored. It’s completely unfair for people to be treated in this way, yet it seems to be happening more and more. It happened when I was growing up too. For being a young teenager, I got judged by the standards of the type who stand around on street corners menacing passers by and drinking while underage. People tend to judge based on assumptions made before they even meet someone, not on individual cases. Well that’s my rant for the day done. Thanks for reading.

Can games be classed as art?

2010-04-22T14:35:00.004+01:00

Another time old argument about games revolves around whether they can be classed as art or not. Films have their own category of titles that have been claimed to be art, yet every time games attempt to make advancement this way they get beaten back. Why is this? People who aren’t gamers seem to lack the capacity to be able to take games seriously, and if a game tries to portray a serious issue or get somewhere in an artful award ceremony you can bet a sea of complaints will follow.

I’m not really a fan of the “art community.” I use to be when I did Art and design at school, and attempted to continue it at college. In the end I quit in order to focus more on my programming and game design skills. I still enjoy drawing from time to time, but when I do I can now do what I want on my own terms. I remember in art being given a huge speech about how it was a creative, passionate subject, yet being present in that class somehow managed to kill my own interest in it. The fact is I feel like I can be more free and imaginative thinking through the logic of a program than I ever could be in art where I was constantly being told off for not wanting to take the modern approach. How can a subject be free and creative when everyone is expected to follow the current trend – that’s how it felt to me anyway. I didn’t want to make any of that naff talentless stuff you see in art galleries these days, like messy beds, signed toilets and block coloured canvases. It feels like it has no point, except to convey a meaning that you can’t really get without reading the sign, and even then it’s not very enjoyable to stare at for too long. It just feels like in order to get it you have to be in the exclusive art appreciation club yourself, otherwise if you’re like me you’ll find most art galleries to be incredibly boring places. (I apologize to any art lovers reading this right now, but there are a lot of people like me who would just rather sit home and play games over visiting a gallery any day – Louvre being the exception of course :P.)

Anyway, I started to think of myself as being the logical artist. When I design my games I think of it as a craft, and what I’m building is interactive art – a lot more exciting than any static painting. Designing a big game will involve a large number of concept artists, designers, script writers, programmers and sound engineers. That involves a lot of skill and time, but the end result should be fun, enjoyable and probably a lot nicer to look at than any of that modern art. If you look at the following definitions of what art is there’s no reason for why games can’t be considered as art themselves:

“The products of human creativity; works of art collectively; ‘an art exhibition’; ‘a fine collection of art’ – Google

I think it’s perfectly safe to say that a game is a product of human creativity, and I’m speaking from experience – well I felt like I was being creative at the time when I designed that RPG anyway.

“The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.” – Dictionary.com

In all honesty I don’t find most fine art that aesthetically pleasing. I go back to the messy bed example – why would I find that beautiful to look at? If I did I could just stare dumbly at my own bed every morning minus the gallery entrance fee. On the other hand games, graphically and through style can be very aesthetically pleasing.

“Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art (I’m glad to say games are actually mentioned further on down the article.)

I’d say games are capable of affecting the senses and emotions, be it tension, fear or distress (I wrote an article concerning this a while back, Are games deeper than films?) It states that music, literature, film and paintings are included in the category of art. Let’s just break that down a second. Games contain music (check), games contain literature(check – creative scrip writing/dialogue), games contain film (check – Animation in cut scenes) and games contains paintings (check – well they involve creating drawings and paintings for concept art anyway.) You could even say they involve sculpture in some way if you can include 3D modelling into that. Games overall involve more craft than all of those mediums put together, so how come some people still can’t accept them as art?

Art also feels to me like a realm of elitists. If you look at film for example, not all of them seem to be considered in an artful way. On numerous occasions popular films have lost out on awards to more artful, less heard of films, such as the biggest movie of all time Avatar loosing an Oscar to Hurt Locker. It feels like popularity and entertainment value means nothing compared to something that shows a meaning (same problem I had with fantasy art VS modern art.) It’s no different to stating games are artful and then being forced to give an example (thinking hard on the spot, most would reply with something like Okami or Psychonauts.) These are very good games, but in the crafting process I imagine they would take no more effort and time than any other game. By the very definition of art, there’s no reason why all films and games can’t be classed as art. I was actually forced at one point to sit through a showing of art films created by students, and I was left pretty unimpressed. Most of them were dark, depressing and pointless, plus I wouldn’t really ever watch any of them ever again – give me Avatar any day.

Games of course, will always overall be classed as an entertainment media first, but then so is film and literature. When it comes to discussions of art however, I see no need to dispute the fact that games are an art/craft in any shape or form. If people can’t accept that then I guess I’ll just say that they even transcend art to be something better that more people can actually appreciate over messy beds.

Stealthy Shenanigans

2010-04-21T14:10:00.001+01:00

Now, anyone who’s known me for more than a few microseconds will tell you I am not normally a patient (nor quiet) person, when it comes down to the crunch I like to get stuff done as quick and with as many explosions as humanly possible as a result my skill at stealth in games is somewhat... compromised.

Metal Gear Solid, Assassins’ Creed, Thief and the likes never really appealed because basing an entire game round, effectively, waiting, was never my idea of fun but these games have their place and I can see their appeal to those of us blessed with the ability to sit still for more than 7 consecutive seconds.

My problem lies with games that will add the odd stealth level/mission in the middle of an otherwise very unstealthy game and often this is done badly, off the top of my head I can think of at least three Zelda games that do this, none of which made it enjoyable and it just felt like a chore to get into the rest of the game. I want to stab things in the face when I’m playing a sword game, not go Solid Snake on their asses. Throughout my many playthroughs of Wind Waker I actually managed to devise a route where you only had to sneak past a grand total of two enemies, the real irony was this route involved getting captured because it started off at the holding cell, when you’re intentionally throwing yourself into the arms of the enemy, so you can escape, all integrity of the stealth situation goes swiftly out the window. I’ve often thought “Oh I fancy playing through Wind Waker again... oh, but that means I need to do the stealth part, I won’t bother” and when a game does that developers, it’s not a good thing

Another example is Fahrenheit (again, Indigo Prophecy if you’re in America) , I’m currently nearing the end of this and loving it, perhaps not as much as Heavy Rain but still a fantastic game. The issue is a couple of sections have flashbacks to when the lead character was a child and these involve possibly the most tedious example of stealth in the known universe. The AI is pretty poorly programmed and seems to detect you at random, the controls are clunky and while ok in a normal scenario they are god-awful when trying to weave around spotlights and it’s just, not really needed. The scene could have just as easily (if not more easily) been implemented by an action QTE-type sequence like every other action sequence in the game but instead they opted for something that would make a legitimate torture device.

The main problem with the above two examples is that you have no means of offence, my idea of stealth involves knives, suppressed weapons and tranquillisers, taking out people tactically and moving bodies to low traffic areas, not just playing ‘red light, green light’ with whatever enemies happen to be nearby.

Stealth is fine in games when it’s actually relevant and done well, and is at its best when it’s an option, you can choose to sneak around the level picking off targets with a silenced handgun and get by unnoticed and, if you’ve done it right, unharmed. But you always have the option to go all guns blazing if you mess up, or if you just feel like it, ventilate anything with a pulse and make it to the end of the level doped up on morphine from the numerous medikits you’ve had to use. It’s always nice to have the option then you can play the game how you enjoy it. A lot of the time a stealth game will spawn so many enemies on you after being spotted it may as well just skip all the formalities and skip to game over screen instantly and this, is what puts me off them.

A third example is Team Fortress 2 (hear me out here, ok?) now I love spy, and it’s my most played class with more than double the time of my second most played (solider). Somewhat contradictive given my last five paragraphs I know, but the main point is it has the choice for stealth (ok, technically this could be applied to any multiplayer FPS, TF2 more so as you have cloaks and disguises). If my urge to makes things explode reaches critical mass or I get bored of sneaking around I can switch classes and do something else, most of the time in this situation I’d have to switch games.

And that’s what it should all be about, choice, don’t force me into a specific tactic or type of play unless it’s absolutely imperative because the story forces it, give me the option to carry out the mission as I see fit. I have to be in the right sort of mood for stealth and if I’m playing an otherwise very action orientated game I’m not going to be in said mood so don’t force it on me. Stealth has a time and a place when done right, but when done wrong it can ruin a game faster than if it was published by Ubisoft.

"Here's what I have that you don't: a functioning liver, depth perception and a pulse!" ~ Spy (On dominating Demoman).

Political Incorrectness

2010-04-16T15:43:00.002+01:00

A week or so ago (at the time of writing this article) it was in the news that comedian and Mock the Week ex-panellist Frankie Boyle was being criticised for making a joke about Down’s syndrome as he offended a woman in the audience who had a five-year-old child with the condition. Frankie Boyle has never been the cleanest of all comedians and has a reputation for making rather blue jokes, knowing this why did the woman in question go to see him? She claimed to be a fan so it’s not like she didn’t know what she was letting herself in for and more importantly, what makes it ok to tell racist/sexist/homophobic jokes or jokes about other conditions but not Down’ syndrome? A joke is just that a joke, and should be treated as such, if you are easily offended don’t go to see comedians with a reputation for being offensive, and furthermore, don’t be a hypocrite about it. Either all jokes at the expense of a minority are fine, or none are. Let’s not start making a hierarchy of who it’s ok to rip-on and who it’s not ok to, because that’s when the bigotry does start.

This leads me to the topic that is the title of this article, political correctness. There are so many things we aren’t allowed to say because certain people might find it “offensive” but who actually decides what is offensive? The people who are part of the minority that the PC-enforcers are trying to defend or the enforcers themselves? Because in my experience it seems to be the latter. We apparently can’t say blackboard and have to opt for chalkboard because blackboard might offend [black] people. I’ve spoken to a few black people and none of them have agreed with this, “It’s the colour of the board” one reasoned, which is true so why can’t we say blackboard? Or Baa Baa black sheep? What next? Going to have to opt for white or “really dark grey” when picking out new hardware, which on that note, why isn’t whiteboard “offensive”?

Surely it’s the context a word is used which deems whether it’s offensive or not, not the word itself, homosexual can be just as offensive if not more so than queer depending on the context. If it’s used in a gay rights debate and someone arguing against says “Being queer is unnatural and against god and you’ll burn in the fiery pits of hell for it” how is that any different to if you replaced queer with gay, homosexual or bum bandit? It’s not, and it’s still just as offensive. As long as a word is used in a satirical or light-hearted manner I don’t see it as an issue, and if you think it is, you are the one with the problem. Stop being offended on behalf of minorities and deciding what is offensive to a group which you have no idea what it’s like to be part of.

I can tell pretty distasteful jokes; I’ll be amongst the first to admit that but that doesn’t mean I’m a chauvinist, it just means I know the time and the place for humour and I have a simple understanding of irony which most people nowadays seem to be deprived of. I don’t have a problem with any group (apart from maybe stupid people and Halo Fanboys, actually maybe they’re the same thing...) but I don’t see why I should change what I believe in to appease some bigwigs who didn’t quite make number 10.

If you start drawing lines between what can be said and what can’t that’s when you start separating people from the rest of the world which is exactly what people in minorities don’t want and that’s what bigotry is all about; treating people differently because of their differences and when you do treat them different it highlights their differences which again is not what they want. It’s political correctness itself we should be fighting, because it’s the exact opposite of what being “correct” is all about. The day we start calling gay people “sexually challenged” I’m moving to Iran...

“Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred” ~ Jacques Barzun

When Gamers Cheat!!!

2010-04-16T15:23:00.003+01:00

The last article I wrote related to A.I. and how a game can make you feel cheated (When A.I. Cheats!!!). Continuing on with the theme I have decided to cover the issue of when gamers cheat!!!

In single player games I never really quite got the deal with using cheats or walkthroughs. After all, why spend that much money on a new game if you’re not even going to play through it properly. (Same reason I like my games to be challenging. If I complete it too quickly it doesn’t feel like its been worth what I paid for it and I’ll end up sitting agitatedly before the end credits regretting that I ever became so hooked in the first place.) Admittedly, when I have had walkthroughs placed before me I’ve had a little itch inside my skull daring me to have a look. More often than not I will cave, especially if I’m not sure where to go next. (I hate it when a game is unclear as to where you should be at a certain point. It’s the worst kind of stuck; wasting hours running backwards and forwards for the right location.) Sometimes people will use guides and cheats in a game on second play-through, either for fun (exploding/naked characters... etc...) or to find anything that they happened to miss the first time through (Final Fantasy I’ve found is terrible for having a lot of hidden quests and items you just couldn’t locate without either luck or instruction.) I guess in this case, it’s more understandable, either way however, why should it bother me? Each player to their own and all that...

... but then there’s online games, in which I find cheating to be unforgivable. It seems to me that there’s always one player who wants to ruin it for the rest, and it’s very unfair after having paid for the game for someone else to then dictate and affect how it should be played. Besides, what’s the point in taking part in a competitive match if you’re just going to cheat to win; it’s undeserved and dishonourable; yet if you beat everyone by your own skill it gives you a much greater boost because you ‘actually’ earned it. Of course you shouldn’t really go to these kinds of extremes (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=239999), but it’s still enough to make decent players boil with anger inside. In such cases, I will exit the game and not enter another match with that player ever again, (tried complaining once to get people banned, but didn’t make an ounce of difference without proof.)

I use to be really into the multiplayer side of “Resistance: Fall of Man.” I had a clan and we were pretty good at it. I worked really hard on my profile in this game, getting my kill count greater than my death one, attempting to get more wins than losses. Yet the moment somebody cheats in this game is messes up some of your well earned stats, (as you tend to get randomly put into matches in this game, it’s not really possible to avoid cheats. It’s just a case of if you get suspicious, leave!) At the start there was mostly talk of how certain people were using lag switches, which cause them to look Skippy on your screen making them hard to hit. (unfortunately if your connections acting up a bit you can also be mistakenly accused of this.) I never really noticed that much of an issue here but later on in the games release, a bug was found that allowed people at certain points in the map to walk outside of the walls. They could still shoot you through the walls, but you could not see or hit them back. Soon after this announcement I found myself in this very situation. My friends and I kept dying really rapidly on the spot after re-spawn and for a while we just thought that maybe the other team were really good. As time went on however, it became more and more obvious that they were abusing the glitch as we never saw the other team members. Now I’m the kind of gamer who hates quitting even when losing so I attempted to continue for as long as I could; needless to say, it was a complete slaughter. My clan felt pretty down and angry afterwards; we’d spent time practicing and getting good at the game, all of which meant nothing the moment we entered that match. What was worse was the fact that there was also nothing we could do about it. They’d gotten away with it and would probably continue to ruin other people’s enjoyment of the game.

Tibia is an MMORPG in which I have also come to notice people cheating. They like to use algorithms on their characters, which controls them and gets them to attack monsters. This allows them to leave the game and to come back to a high-level character. It’s a risk as most people who spot these bots will kill them on sight (although the botters high-level friend may end up being sent out to hunt them down), but some are really advanced and will try really hard to create the illusion that there is a player involved (such as getting them to post ‘hello’ when another player passes by.) For starters, this really irritates me because what’s the point of playing a game and yet not being present at the keyboard; coming back to a powerful character, it’s like getting a reward without all the work that other players like John and I put into it. Secondly, these people then often use these cheaply created high-levels to power abuse other players. Botting has also caused suspicion amongst the community and several times I have been mistaken for it and been attacked; giving me no choice but to set their beards alight to teach them a lesson. Once again, like in Resistance, it’s hard to do anything about it. You can’t report them because you have no proof. (Silkroad Online also had problems with bots, to the point where a lot of fans including myself, turned their backs on it.)

In summary, I hate cheating in games! There’s just no point to playing a game if you’re not going to do it properly. In single player games it’s not so frowned upon, as some people deem it necessary to improve their experience, other times they can be useful or fun. In multiplayer games, unless agreed upon by all players present, it should be a definite NO! It’s selfish to go and ruin the experience for another person just to benefit yourself (not that I can see any fun in cheating; it’s not like you’ll get any bragging rights for doing so.) There should definitely be more ways in games to deal with these little pests and the developers themselves should put more care into maintaining good solid communities; having too many unruly players and cheats usually results in a game being abandoned by the very people who actually care about it.

Online Communities

2010-04-13T14:22:00.002+01:00

The internet really is a wonderful thing. It’s opened the gate for so much intellectual enlightenment and the spread of knowledge in the world has never been easier. You’d think we’d have a beautiful, shining bright utopia by now, since the internet has been around for decades. Unfortunately, every time mankind finds a wonderful new technology someone has to come along and spoil it for the rest of humanity. Look at TV. It was good entertainment for years. Then along came Big Brother and it turned into a mass of people watching a bunch of people sat around a table arguing over whether they want to have bread or eggs for supper.

Anyway, now that rather tangential opening is out of the way, to the point of this post: online communities. I was always shy in my early days on the internet, as I mentioned in my earlier post about communities in EVE Online. I never really bothered talking to anyone, as I wasn’t sure what to say to them or the correct etiquette for how you are supposed to behave when you meet people online. Then I started playing the online game Tibia. For anyone who doesn’t know, Tibia is a fully real-time non-instanced online MMORPG. The first thing that struck me when I went out into the hunting areas was that every time I approached a monster with another player nearby they would start yelling “MINE!11!1!” at me like some sort of crazed hobo in the centre of pretty much every major city in the world, wildly gesticulating and picking a fight with thin air. Needless to say every time this happened I turned around and ran the other way since I had absolutely no idea what was going on. In the first part of Tibia you can’t be attacked by other players, not until you reach level 8 and travel to the mainland. So I reached the mainland and started exploring, killing things when I found them. One day I was hunting in a dwarf mine and I started attacking a dwarf in low health that was running towards me from off the screen. All of a sudden this high level character came running after the dwarf, and seeing that I’d killed it he started attacking me with a huge sword or some-such. I was confused and ran. Luckily he didn’t kill me and stopped once he’d driven me out of the cave. I was like “what the hell was that for?”, then he explained that there is apparently a social rule in Tibia which means you don’t attack something that someone else is attacking, thereby stealing experience points off of them. Well excuse me for not instinctually knowing something that had never been explained to me before you know? As well, this rule only ever seems to apply to other people. If you enforce it against someone else, someone who is trying to steal your kills for example, and attack them, they will, without fail, bring their high level friend to wreak vengeance upon you. This is what bothers me about online communities.

It seems to me that people make things up as and when they need it to suit themselves. Take First Person Shooters for example. Once I was in a high place with a sniper rifle. I saw two people come round the corner, one chasing the other. I got a headshot on the one in front, then the one chasing him moved neatly into my scope. Needless to say I shot a second time and got another headshot. Then the second guy accused me of camping. Well excuse me for taking advantage of a situation. What in that split second of thought that I had when the second guy was in my scope was I supposed to think “oh, wait a minute, if I pull the trigger I’ll have taken two shots from the same place, and so I might be accused of camping, so I’d better not do it”? Besides, taking two shots from the same place isn’t camping. It’s called good strategy. It just seems to me that most of the people you meet on the internet are either bad losers with an ego problem (about 95% of the FPS players in the world from my experience)or complete idiots whose sole purpose in life seems to be to cause grief for others (the latter is your common or garden variety troll).

The subject of trolls brings me neatly to forums. Now I’ve had a mixed past with forums. For every intellectual person you meet on a forum who is actually capable of holding a decent conversation, you seem to get at least 5 idiots who want to infuriate you just for the fun of it. I’d be a much more frequent forum-goer if I could just ensure that I wasn’t going to come off feeling utterly frustrated and wanting to shoot the first person/animal/inanimate object that looks at me funny. The internet really could be a great place to meet people with similar interests. For instance, I’m in my twenties and I like Pokémon. I could go out there and try to find people of a similar interest and age to hold conversations about the subject with. But no doubt I’d also be bombarded with comments like “lol ur a fag cuz u liek pokemon”. Terrible grammar aside, I think they’ve completely misinterpreted the meaning of the word ‘fag’ there. But this is what I mean. I can’t go out and use the internet as it is supposed to be used, because I’ll just be bombarded with stupid comments like this.

On that subject, there are these stupid internet abbreviations that wind me up too. You generally find most of them in the typical troll’s vocabulary. Words like ‘cuz’ ‘tonite’ and ‘dat’. I mean seriously. If you want to shorten because, use ‘cos’ not ‘cuz’. I’ve never even heard anyone pronounce ‘cos’ as ‘cuz’. As for the other two, is it really worth shortening tonight to ‘tonite’ 6 characters as opposed to 7? Or that to ‘dat’ even. 4 characters to 3? Is that even worth it? I mean seriously, what are you going to do with the approximately quarter of a second you save from not hitting that extra key?

Well that’s my rant for the day over. Pretty tangential, but oh well. That’s what this blog’s for. It does say general belligerence after all.

The Problem with Perfection...

2010-04-08T15:11:00.003+01:00

Nowadays games are getting closer and close to emulating real life, but it seems like the closer they get to achieving this goal, there more glaring their faults become. I often finding myself thinking “if they did this, then why didn’t they do this, this and this?” when playing these games.

First off is the graphics, which always seem to fall into the realms of the uncanny valley, people just don’t look quite right for reasons we can’t always put our finger on and they look rather creepy more than anything else. Not someone you’d want to wake up to see sitting on the end of your bed frankly. It’s not just with people though, environments and items too, I find some games look too perfect, everything is pristine and looks brand new. Everything is neat, tidy, straight and looks brand new and that’s just not realistic and in some sense ruins immersion.

Then we have actual faults in the gameplay, or the writing which is the main focus of this article. First up, GTA4. A lot of people tend to complain about this for the whole “friend” system that was introduced because you had people ringing you mid-gunfight to ask you if you wanted to see pixelated boobs, which I don’t, for a number of reasons. But, my main issue with this is it’s in no way realistic, why is there no option to invite more than one friend out? That’s both more realistic and more efficient to build up friendships, plus characters could interact with each other a la Mass Effect/Dragon Age for more fun times. Also, why are their only a handful of friends? Towards the end of the game [Spoilers Ahead] you meet up with an old childhood friend and do a few missions for him then at the end of one of missions phone him up, tell him to take care and that’s it – done. So you can go for a drink and be best friends with a guy you’ve known for about half an hour, 27 minutes of which was spent ventilating drug dealers but you can’t with a guy you’ve known since childhood? Maybe it’s just me but that seemed a little off and when GTAIV was trying as hard as it could to be realistic something as odd as that sticks out like a sore thumb for me [End Spoilers].

Second game to receive a verbal lynching is The Sims 3 which I find suffers a similar fate, I appreciate this could probably be fixed with mods but nevertheless it still feels a little off. The moodlets, a new feature added to Sims 3 that give a bonus or penalty to your Sims mood based on recent events or their environment but they don’t seem right to me. Getting married or having a child gives you a bonus for a day or two, can’t speak first hand here but surely after a wedding you’d be stoked for a big longer than two days? Having an accident in front of your crush gives you a negative one for a few hours (again not speaking first hand but if I did that I’d be livid for weeks). Splitting up with a partner will always yield the same penalty regardless of if your Sim has been with them for three hours or three months. I appreciate I’m probably nitpicking here but it’s just something that bugged me and it wouldn’t have taken much development time to make this a little more realistic, something Maxis where clearly trying to achieve. There’s loads of other things that bugged me too and it feels like for every step forward The Sims 3 took over The Sims 2 it also took one step back and this is the first thing that comes to mind.

On another note, more of qualm with a genre as a whole and not a specific game but shooters that pride themselves on being realistic when they are anything but. You get shot in the knee, you ain’t walking, simple as. Shot in the back? You’re probably going to be in too much pain to move, or worse. Of course, one bullet resulting in death or incapacitation would ruin the fun of the game so this is unreasonable to expect but how about we stop calling them realistic? People complained how Modern Warfare 2’s story was “farfetched” and “too Hollywood” yet no one raises an eyebrow when people will happily stand up after they’ve received a .50 sniper round to the stomach and start unloading into you. Seems a little silly to me. Yes, Modern Warfare 2’s story was very Hollywood, but so was every gunfight, bullet wound and knife injury.

With games like Ratchet and Clank, Saints Row and Pokémon then I find I don’t care about their faults in basic logic, because they don’t try to apply them in the first place. But the moment a game tries to achieve realism then all its faults seem to glow brighter than Christmas at Graham Norton’s.

When A.I. Cheats!

2010-04-06T20:02:00.004+01:00

You know that feeling, when you’re stuck on a game for hours on a boss battle; the sweat is pouring from your brow and your muscles are tense from frustration; you can feel your heart beating faster and you’re about to blow, possibly chucking your very expensive game controller to the floor or at the head of your best friend sat next to you. Know it well? Well I’ve always prided myself on the ability to keep calm; to not act as described above. I always brag about how I enjoy the challenge and I can keep trying over and over repeatedly until the task is complete. It’s mostly true, except, I admit, to nearly blowing a fuse during Pokémon yesterday. There is one thing in a game that I really can’t stand, and that’s when something happens that’s unfair because it’s weighted against you; when the A.I. cheats!

I bought Pokémon Silver on the day of its release and I had been enjoying it very much. It had felt a bit weighted here and there, for example, hypnosis used against me seemed to hit way more than it really should do (considering the fact that it has an accuracy value of 70), but it wasn’t enough to make me feel aggravated at all. My team isn’t the strongest team on stats or types, because on a proper play through of a Pokémon game I like to use what I like; I am however, a bit of a grinder, so I spent a fair bit of time strengthening them up. It’s not that I want to be overpowered, I don’t like my games too easy after all, but there’s something about the training aspect in Pokémon that I enjoy.

Anyway, I came to the elite 4 in Johto feeling pretty confident because I knew my Pokémon were a higher level than any of the ones I would be up against. The first 4 members weren’t too difficult. They were a tad annoying with their evasiveness, but in time I managed to take them all down. Then I came to the final, Lance, who uses Dragon type Pokémon. I had always really liked Lance since meeting him because of his choice of type, and that cool hairdo/outfit. Unfortunately my liking for him soon died; he was a nightmare.

I knew it was going to be a little tricky, because I didn’t have any ice/dragon moves, but it felt hard in a way that it seemed to be weighted against me. I had decided to give Furret the move ‘Me First,’ thinking that it may be able to help me to do the damage back to the dragons. I had been looking forward to trying it out to see if it would make any difference, but to my disappointment I didn’t get the chance to, for every time I tried I got paralysed. It seems a bit weird to me that they wouldn’t use that move for ages, and yet the moment I selected ‘Me First,’ it’d get used against me, as if they knew what I was doing.

It wasn’t that what started to make my blood boil however, for I could have simply been very unlucky, but the confusion in this game is starting to get on my nerves. My Ninetails knows the move ‘Confuse Ray,’ but I hardly ever use it because when I do they’ll either snap out of it really quickly, or it won’t affect them very much. Yet in contrast to that, almost every single time one of my Pokémon gets confused, they end up hurting themselves 4 to 5 times in a row. (Seriously, it’s practically every single time and there’s no way I’m putting that down to sheer bad luck as I’ve never seen it happen that badly to an opponent yet and I don’t remember it being that horrendous in Pearl.) So what has this got to do with Lance then? Well one of his Dragonites uses the move ‘Outrage,’ an incredibly powerful dragon type move with 120 base power, 100 accuracy and 15pp. Every powerful move tends to have a negative consequence to balance it out, and this one is no exception, causing the user to become confused if they use it for 2-3 turns. Well this Dragonite seems to spam it over and over again none stop and is almost permanently confused. You’d think in the entirety of that time it would have hurt itself a few times, giving me a change to get through and strike. Well, it only happened once, and the rest of the time I was using revives constantly until eventually all of my Pokémon fell and I failed. It’s pretty overpowered being able to use this move while virtually talking away all negative consequence from using it.

Second time through I did manage to get my vengeance on Lance. I gave Nidoqueen the move ‘Dragon Pulse’ and the hold item dragon fang (even so it didn’t do more than half damage to them, and as his Pokémon are incredibly fast it meant I had to use a fair few Full Restores before getting through.) It felt so good to finally take down that Dragonite. I really hate Lance!

I really think it’s stupid when they try to make a game hard by having it weighted against the player. (In Pokémon, for example, each move has its own stats, so stick to it from both sides.) Games with difficulty settings tend to only ever improve enemy damage or armour, and allow them to see more of what the player is doing. I always thought a game should be made harder by increasing the number of enemies and making them more intelligent. (For example, in Pokémon, Sneeze is a really hard player to beat; all our Pokémon are the same level and it’s fair, but he’s good because he uses strong Pokémon, picks his moves carefully and uses them in a tactful way.) I know it’s very hard to program A.I. to be quite as good as another human player, but surely instead of relying on cheats, it could have had more tactics programmed into it. On so many occasions I also see an opponent doing the exact opposite, doing something really stupid, like trying to make mine confused again when it’s already stood there repeatedly punching itself in the face – I just don’t get it. Cheating A.I. makes you feel like all your skills or efforts in training mean nothing. At the very least, if a game is going to do that, the designer could hide it a little better so that I don’t start to sense that something is up.

*Lucario was not hurt during the writing of this article*(Well, mostly)

French = Cultured?

2010-04-05T15:30:00.000+01:00

It seems to me that people in Britain (and America too by the looks of things, though of course I have far less experience of that being British) regard anything French as ‘cultured’. If something is said in French it’s automatically regarded as being a clever comment and wine is considered a more cultured drink than lager (Lambrini anyone?). I know wine comes from all over the world, but stereotypically it seems to be regarded as a French thing once again. This just all seems a little daft to me.

I work part time as a cleaner in a clothing shop. I was there this morning and I noticed two supposedly ‘fashionable’ (let’s not get into that one shall we? I could go on all day about ‘fashion’ – note the heavily emphasised speech marks and imagine I said that in the most sarcastic voice you can muster – but that’s not the subject of this article, so I’ll save that rant for later) T-shirts with French on the front. One said “Mais oui...” which, if my B-at-GCSE-level French doesn’t fail me means “But yes...” But yes what? But yes I will have sausages for breakfast? But yes I do like dancing the conga with Gordon Brown? But yes I did once drive around a Milton Keynes roundabout 23 times with a goat in the boot of my car while beeping my horn to the tune of the Rocky theme? You see? It sounds stupid in English doesn’t it?

The other one had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it and said underneath simply “Ville de London”, which means (if my French doesn’t fail me once again) literally “Town of London” or maybe “London town” taken a little less literally. Now correct me if I’ve got my geography wrong here but I’m pretty sure London has absolutely nothing to do with France, and the Eiffel Tower is nowhere near London. So what does that T-shirt even mean?! If it mentioned Paris, it may have been forgivable, since Paris is actually at least in France and the Eiffel Tower is indeed in Paris. But London? I mean seriously....

The point I’m trying to make here (if there even is one to be found) is the fact that French things being considered cultured annoys me. You don’t see German things considered as cultured, or Spanish things, or Japanese things even, not as often as you see French things anyway. In my mind it just represents society’s need to be told what to think instead of making its mind up for itself.

Sport Sorrows

2010-03-31T15:31:00.003+01:00

It may surprise you to hear, that as a self confessed geek I really hate sport. I never got the big deal about it. Back in school why did playing football (or ‘soccer’ if you’re from America where football refers to the sport in which you don’t actually use your feet, go figure) make you cool whereas playing a video game didn’t? Both involve enjoying yourself for the sake of enjoying yourself with no real benefit to the world or those around you, sure football gets you healthy but so I’d sooner die ten years earlier than having my nipples freeze off for the sake of passing a few hours a day.

Truth be told I was never any good at sport, whether I hated it because I wasn’t good or I wasn’t good because I hated it I’m not quite sure but every PE lesson would usually be the same story. The PE teacher (using the term teacher lightly because Physical Education is seriously lacking the education department) would fob us off and tell us to play football or hockey while he sat on his arse doing significantly less than naff-all. He’d choose 5 people to pick teams, I’d be one of the very last to be picked and get told to go in the net because it was no secret I was about as adept at football as Wayne Rooney is at making anything close to a coherent sentence. “I’m crap in the net” I’d try to reason, but of course, you can’t reason with an idiot.

I don’t know if it was just me, but I was always under the impression that football was a team sport yet it seems like a free-for-all to score the most goals with the complete lack of any form of tactics, last time I checked we didn’t win the ’66 world cup by having all the team in the forward position. A typical five-a-side game would consist of 2 people in their respective nets and the other eight all desperately trying to get the ball like it’s the last thanksgiving turkey at Wal-Mart. Eventually one person would slip past and with the absence of any form of defence they had a clear run to the net, normally by this point I’d be staring off into a world of my own or wishing I wasn’t surrounded be utter philistines. I’d end up reacting at the last possible second and sloppily trying to save only to let it go in and be told no more than five minutes after I said it myself I was “crap in the net”, and what did I learn from this endeavour the school tried to pass off as a lesson? I really hate sport.

Then there’s watching sport which eludes me even more, the World Cup I do enjoy, I’m not very patriotic but people representing their country in an international competition can be enjoyable. But, then there’s the football league which just bottles down to which club has the most money and thus can afford the best players. What’s the point in actually playing? Just have each club owner show the other their bank statements and be done with this pointless charade.

Then there are the fights between football hooligans which are the real life equivalent of an online flame war between Zelda and Final Fantasy, except alcohol fuelled and people who threaten to stab you actually will. People will shout and scream abuse at each other because the other person’s team won them at a game (Winners and losers, in a game? Whodathunk it?) Also why do people always have to come up with an excuse? They lost because the referee denied them a penalty or sent a player off that shouldn’t have been sent off, are you sure the other team just didn’t play better than you? Maybe you should consider your team isn’t as good as the one that happened to score more goals than you, that is the very nature of the game after all. Man up, accept defeat and put your time and effort into something more worthwhile like head butting concrete or biting fire.

“[...]at the end of the day.” ~ Every footballer EVER.

The Facebook Gaming Fad

2010-03-30T14:46:00.000+01:00

I resisted the Facebook fad for a long time. I point blank refused to set up an account, because I really couldn’t care less about it. “If I want to talk to someone”, I reasoned, “then I’ll do it in real life, or even over the phone. I don’t need some internet site to tell me that my ‘friend’ who I haven’t seen/spoken to/thought about in over 4 years has decided to have toast for breakfast instead of cereal”. Also, I was pretty much forced into setting up a Bebo account back in 2006 by my then girlfriend. The concept appealed to me at first, but within about a week I was bored with it, so when I first heard about Facebook I didn’t really pay much attention to it, and later avoided it like the plague because I didn’t want to get sucked into the social networking craze again.

I finally gave up in late 2009, when Sneeze and I started our placement year and founded our company Tyrant Computers, and set up a Facebook account for the advertising potential. I didn’t spend much time on the site myself, but Sneeze started investigating and discovered Mafia Wars. He introduced it to me at work the following day, and I liked the look of it. I played Mafia Wars for a couple of months before getting bored of it, and in this time Sneeze also found Farmville and pretty much forced me into playing that one too. I got bored of Farmville much faster than Mafia Wars mind.

Since I stopped playing Facebook games, the Facebook Gaming Fad as I like to call it seems to have skyrocketed. Even my parents are playing some of them now. The biggest offenders in this area as far as I’m concerned are Zynga. They seem to be largely responsible for the sheer proliferation of games on Facebook. The games by them that I can think of off the top of my head are Mafia Wars, Farmville, Fishville, YoVille, Zynga Poker, Café World and Petville. Then you have the ones by others like Social City and Wild Ones. I have one major problem with all these games: they’re all so similar! What’s the difference between playing Farmville and Fishville? I’ve played Farmville myself and I see my mum playing Fishville almost every night, and the only difference seems to be that instead of shoving plants into a field and waiting for them to grow so you can sell them, you’re throwing fish into a tank and waiting for them to grow so you can sell them. The two games even have an almost identical interface, with a slightly different style for the love of God! And another thing, why are ALL these games in beta? Can Zynga not finish one game before starting to create another? Do they all have ADHD or something?

I think the main thing that irritates me about all these games is their sheer popularity. I’ll go onto Facebook, and I’ll find 20 or so requests for games that I don’t even play, then have sit there clicking “No”, “No”, “No”, “I said no”, “For the love of God NO!”, “Are you DEAF? I SAID NO!!!” And yet, people don’t seem to get the hint. I don’t want to play these games and yet they keep sending me requests even though I refuse them every time. Sneeze told me the other day that he received 45 requests from 6 friends over the course of a day for one of these games. That’s almost 8 requests a person in ONE DAY! Do people really have nothing better to do with their day than sit on Facebook and wait for a timer to tick slowly away?
Well I think I’ll wrap this up now, since I could go on all day about the things that annoy me about Facebook, but they’ll get increasingly petty and I’m pretty sure you’re already getting bored of listening to me, so I’ll shut up now. Thanks for reading!

My Quarrel with JRPG's

2010-03-30T14:37:00.007+01:00

I look around the internet and I see articles and forum posts comparing JRPG’s to WRPG’S, (one in particular has pitted Final Fantasy 13 and Mass Effect 2 up against each other, even though they’re nothing alike.) The fact is, the two are completely different and have their own standards, to the point where I feel they should no longer be considered in the same genre.

As you might have guessed (being a Bioware fan) I have a strong preference for the WRPG. I’ve never really been that fussed on JRPG’s after my initial Final Fantasy experience. My sister and I, due to the popularity of the game, had been pretty keen to try one out to see what all the fuss was about. We got our hands on a demo of Final Fantasy 8, and needless to say, we were both left bitterly disappointed and never looked back to the series again for a long time.

Then I met John, self-confessed Final Fantasy fan-boy, who lent me Final Fantasy 7 and after waiting over a year for me to play it by myself, has given up and decided to come round and force me to play it instead. I still need a little convincing, but the whole experience has gotten a lot better since we got out of Midgar, a place I found too dark and boring to be encouraged to start it without that little persuasion (not a brilliant first impression of the game.)

I’m finding that Final Fantasy is one of those things that you either love or you hate. I’m not the only person out there who rolls their eyes when seeing the hype a new game hitting the shelves causes. There are many things I don’t like about the games and I’ll name a few; the battle system, the characters, themes and visual styles. I decided that maybe trying Lost Odyssey from the same creator of Final Fantasy (Hironobu Sakaguchi) would be a good way to warm myself up to it, for the game contains similar game-play but has a more western feel to it and characters that I actually like. Unfortunately I never managed to finish it. The story was interesting, but the battle system was still stopping me from feeling enthused, and those loooooong stories that keep popping up started winding me up (I’ve never seen so much text in a game before.) I know I could skip them, but something makes me feel guilty if I don’t try to read them, like I could be missing something integral to the story.

I later heard about the games Star Ocean and Infinite Undiscovery (both published by Square Enix but developed by Tri-Ace for Xbox 360 – amazingly I own more Japanese games for this console than I do on my other ones.) They piqued my interest because of the fact that they still had that Japanese touch to them, but have a completely different battle system. I haven’t played them for very long yet, but so far I’m enjoying them. The battle systems are pretty fun, although they still contain some of the annoyances I also found with Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy. The main problem they have is the fact that the characters in each of the games I play all seem quite similar (I’ve lost count of how many girlish blonde haired dudes with big swords there are out there, and the women tend to be squeaky and hyperactive.) I just find I can’t relate to these characters like I can to the ones from Dragon Age, for example. I’ve also noticed that all of these games force you to play a character, rather than letting you create one like in most WRPG’s. The level-up systems don’t seem to let you place attributes or skills after level up either, which gives you more control over the development of a character and feels like your reward after grinding them. It doesn’t feel like I’m role-playing much when such systems aren’t in place.

Now, I’m not the sort of gamer to give up (For example, I originally had an absolute hatred for the MMORPG EVE Online, yet now I’ve racked up a fair few hours and I own a copy of the art book and novel) - gamers who are too fussy and won’t try something for long enough to get a feel for it tend to irritate me slightly. So I haven’t stopped yet in my search to find the perfect JRPG for me. I ended up going back to Final Fantasy again after seeing Final Fantasy 12 in a bargain bin for £4.99. I had been interested because John had told me that they had completely changed the battle system in this one, and despite being one of the least liked in the series I thought there could be some hope here.

Well once again I was left initially disappointed. The start of the game makes you go solo for quite a while, and despite having a strong interest in A.I. I just didn’t get the point in setting it for everybody, as then the battles involve no clicking at all. When I got further into it however, my opinion started to change. I realised there was actually some skill involved and having more party members makes it feel faster and more exciting – waiting for the gauge to fill so you could attack was pretty frustrating. I guess I also like it because of the feel of it; I happen to like Final Fantasy Tactics which is set in the same universe. Admittedly a majority of the characters are annoying, but I did discover Balthier who is witty and likeable. Unfortunately a big let-down in this game is the story, which is kind of boring and hard to follow.

So, have I been converted? Not quite. I’ve realised that I can persevere with them and even enjoy them to a certain extent, but they’ll still never compare to the Western equivalent. There are just so many similarities between each game, and so for that reason they tend to share the same flaws too. Also, I don’t know if it’s just me, but certain concepts in these games just feel a bit dated and old fashioned to me, while WRPG’s are pushing the boat out and being a bit more varied. (For example, Dungeon Siege and Mass Effect are completely different.) I don’t like seeing myself as a Western gamer, and I do like Japanese titles such as Metal Gear Solid, ICO and Okami, but there is just something about JRPG’s that I don’t quite get. (Maybe somebody could suggest some to me that I might enjoy.) I am actually quite looking forward to being able to afford White Knight Chronicles however, which has a similar battle system to 12 I hear, and lets you create your own characters at the start.

The Legend of Zelda: A Retrospective

2010-03-25T16:30:00.004Z

John’s mentioned Final Fantasy once or twice so I reckon it’s only fair I do the same for Zelda. It’s a long standing debate in the gaming community which is better of the two, personally I prefer Zelda sure the story telling might not be as strong but I just prefer the gameplay, and since the release of XIII Zelda has one thing I really enjoy, and that’s the lack of Leona Lewis. Though, in all honesty there are plenty of games I’d sooner play over Zelda, but out of the two I prefer it.

My first Zelda game was either Links Awakening DX or Oracle of Ages, I forget which. Both are GBC games so are in turn very similar. More akin to the original or link to the past than the more recent additions to the series. I never owned any Nintendo console before the GB/GBC so they where my first opportunity to try out the series. I enjoyed them both fully, they made you think, the combat was simple but at the same time fun and the minigames, for the most part were enjoyable (let’s just not talk about the dancing one, ever).

Then I got the Gamecube, my first home Nintendo console, with which came Wind Waker. I was a little unsure about it at first, after having seen parts of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask the ‘cartoony’ graphics kind of put me off but eventually, after playing a bit of it at a friend’s I caved; and I’m glad I did. This may cause alot of debate, flames or possible even death threats but Wind Waker, in my opinion, is the best Zelda. Maybe it’s because it’s the first 3D one I played and I just feel more connected to it, or maybe it’s because of its charm. For the first time, Link had something close to what represented a personality, every other game he’s incredibly hollow this time round with his exaggerated expressions and funny eyebrows I just felt more of a connection and as a result more immersed. A lot of people complain about the sailing and treasure hunting but I enjoyed these just as much, if not more than the actual plotline.

Then I tried Ocarina of Time that came with the bonus disk with Wind Waker and in all honestly, I found it really, really boring. I can’t explain why, I just couldn’t bring myself to play it; I got a few hours and just lost what little interest I had. I probably should force myself to play all the way through it but I just can’t bring myself to.

Later, I borrowed the Collector’s Edition disc from a friend which had both OoT and Majora’s Mask on it. Now Majora’s Mask I loved, it had a much darker tone than other Zelda games, the moon approaching the earth slowly with a timer constantly at the bottom of the screen says impending doom a lot more than a fairy telling you “Oh Gannondorf is doing evil things somewhere, just trust me ok”, plus the final boss fight was pretty damn epic (why they didn’t make Fierce Deity Link Link’s Final Smash in Brawl is beyond me).

Then there’s Twilight Princess which is... ok. I played it, completed it and for the most part enjoyed it. Some of the bosses and items where creative but nothing makes me want to go back to it, not like Wind Waker that I have completed about 5 times including a 100% run and a Three-Heart Quest (Well, nearly). The Wolf Link parts were kinda fun but I felt they could have done alot more with them (saying that why wasn’t Wolf Link in Brawl... Did they design Link on the Monday morning after the Bosses birthday do?).

Then we come to Phantom Hourglass, a direct sequel to Wind Waker (and I mean direct, it takes place like literally 5 minutes after WW ends). Which was a good idea gone bad, the Temple of the Ocean King was nothing short of torture, the controls where fiddly and the tacked on Multiplayer was, well all in all pretty pointless. I finished it but I can’t actually remember that much of it at all which just shows how mediocre it was. Recently I got Spirit Tracks which unfortunately is the same story and I’m struggling to force myself to play it, it just feels... meh. Some of the areas have been improved on and I gotta say I do like the new boomerang it’s kinda gimmicky but fun nonetheless but the train riding is a chore and it just feels like it’s been created using a “How to Make an RPG for Dummies” approach. They’ve pulled off good handheld Zelda games before so why the decline now?

I’ve played a few other Zelda games like the original and LttP but none of them so far have kept me as entertained as WW did. Strange how the game that people commonly disregard as the worst Zelda is my favourite, given that maybe I should try Final Fantasy XII...

Probably should point out that the majority of his Final Fantasy experiences come from Crystal Chronicles.

Hacking key items in Pokémon

2010-03-24T14:41:00.004Z

Now I just want to get out from the start that I’m not a fan of hacking. I don’t like hacking or cheating in any sense, especially on online multiplayer games, since it’s not fair to other people. I didn’t used to mind so much, I used to own an Action Reply/Xploder etc. cartridge for just about every console I had, and used to use them on a regular basis. I guess I grew out of this as I got older. But there is one area my opinion on this wavers sometimes.

In Pokémon there are several items that let you unlock new areas of the games to catch rare and unique Pokémon. For example, in the 4th generation Oak’s Letter lets you unlock a new route to reach Shaymin, the Member Pass lets you enter a building in Canalave City to catch Darkrai, and the Azure Flute lets you unlock a secret area at Spear Pillar to catch the God Pokémon Arceus. The thing is these items are mainly given out in Nintendo Events. This isn’t so much of a problem these days with the addition of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to the 4th generation, allowing you to obtain these items over the internet, but in the previous generations it was a big problem. In those days events never even seemed to happen outside of Japan, and being a UK resident, getting a Mew in those days was rather problematic. However, even with the events that have been going on recently in the UK (I’ve been to two, an Arceus one and a Darkrai one) you still don’t seem to get the items. Instead, they send you the Pokémon in question directly, meaning that the in-game areas still stay off limits. The only key item I have ever managed to get hold of is Oak’s Letter when it was distributed over Wi-Fi for Platinum.

Now this presents a major dilemma: if Nintendo are never going to release these items to the public, is it really so wrong to hack them using a cheat cartridge? I personally wouldn’t like to do it, since I like all my Pokémon to be completely legitimate, but it seems to be a perfectly reasonable way to get the item if, say, you missed the Wi-Fi event because you were out of the country or something. It’d be just like you got them the legitimate way, so long as it affected nothing else in your game. Admittedly you wouldn’t get the Wonder Card, but since you can delete them anyway that hardly matters. This argument stood up far more firmly in the days of Red and Blue when there was absolutely no chance of getting a Mew for someone who lived in the UK. I’ll leave you to decide on this one.

Dragon Age: Origins Awakening (Expansion Pack)

2010-03-22T15:17:00.007Z

Well I went out on Friday and I bought myself Dragon Age’s new expansion pack, Awakening. It ended up being more expensive than I thought it would be, but I couldn’t resist getting it there and then on the spot despite knowing I could save money getting it elsewhere. I have to say, however, that it was well worth the price I paid.

Awakening is like a separate game in its own right. After installing it, in the menu on starting a new game you will be asked which one you want to play. Selecting Awakening allows you to either start a new character from scratch (they’ll come in at level 18), or to import one who’ll have all of the skills and spells they earned from before. You can select any save file you like from that character, importing them at any point in their development. Despite a few nagging logic issues with the story, I decided to start the game on my Mage, as my rogue hasn’t yet gotten to the end of the game – I don’t fancy skipping her forward in time.

The start of the expansion has you walking into Vigil Keep where you will be attacked by an onslaught of Darkspawn. These are different however, as they are more intelligent; plotting, planning and even talking. After clearing out the keep it is then your responsibility as Commander of the Grey Wardens to deal with the threat and to recruit new members. You are given the ability to put any of your new party members through the joining, although I'm not sure if there's a risk here, such as the possibility of them dying. I think it’s quite cool that the game places you in this position, as the first one makes you feel more like the pupil under Duncan’s wing, and then in this one you’re the one who’s in charge actually foreseeing the joinings – Ah, brings back the memories. People seem to treat you with respect (well mostly) and you’re given some responsibility over where the armies go to defend and who deserves punishment for various reasons. The plot is really interesting and keeps you wanting to play more.

The game-play is also fun. Everything seems to work at a faster rate, gaining experience and levelling up faster (I guess this is to balance it with the games length.) This allows you to get new skills and spells to try out quickly, which I guess is a good thing if you feel like trying a build out quickly or feel like a small dose of Dragon Age but don’t want to go in for the long haul. There are also new abilities and some of them are pretty good. Each class has new abilities/spells, and two new specialities. There are also three new skills; Runecrafting, Vitality and Clarity. The latter two are pretty simple in that they simply improve HP and MP, but Runecrafting, well does exactly what it sounds like, lets you craft your own runes. I haven’t yet used this feature, but it looks pretty interesting. There are a fair few new runes to choose from, and you can now enchant armour – something I had actually questioned the lack of while playing the main game. I’ve now gone for an arcane Warrior/Blood/Battle mage – quite a mouthful I know – and she uses Arcane Shield with Fade Shield, Rock Armour, Death Syphon, Fade Shroud and Draining Aura, so she’s pretty glowy to say the least. I’ve only got to the second skill on Battle Mage so far (Hand of Winter), which I’m liking very much. The only problem I’m having so far is that there are way too many spells to be able to fit them comfortably on my bar anymore and I most certainly don’t have enough A.I. slots to get her to use everything I want successfully.

Another special ability you also have in your arsenal goes by the name of Ser Pounce-a-lot, a random ginger kitty I found roaming around outside Vigil Keep. If you give the cat to Anders he names it and it gets added to your inventory with the new title. You can place this into your skill bar and use it when team members die. Somehow – don’t ask me how – this cat possesses the magical abilities of being able to revive dead party members. When using it you’ll also get some amusing quotes such as:

‘You know, mages created mabari hounds. Maybe I could make you just as smart as those stupid dogs.’ – Anders
‘Meow.’ – Ser Pounce-a-lot

Overall, I’d say this is a must buy for any fan of the original game. It still contains the same fun game-play, great story and witty dialogue. The new characters are interesting and the abilities awesome to use. The only real downside I can think of is that the original game doesn’t seem to have been updated with the new skills and specialities, but this is liveable I guess. It also seems to have a lot of content and things to do. I’m not really sure just how long it is yet, but looking around I’m finding a lot of additional quests to do on the side of the main storyline so I’d make a guess at saying it’s long enough for the price you're paying.

“All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools.” - Anders

Dragon Age: Origins Review

2010-03-18T15:39:00.012Z

Introduction

Well I went to bed early last night, finally started to get a good night’s sleep which doesn’t happen often with my over-active mind. Began to enter some weird dream that I really wanted to find the conclusion of, only to find myself startled awake by a series of shrill beeps; my rather imprudent alarm clock had decided to set itself “accidently” to wake me at five in the morning. Needless to say I am now very tired and I never did find out what the point of that weird dream was. Anyway, as I went back to bed I found myself thinking about Dragon Age and its new and upcoming expansion pack Awakening (out tomorrow,) and how I should review Origins before it comes out. So on that note I’ll stop trying to get sympathy and move onto what the title of this post promises, (I’m also doing it in a similar format to Sneeze who’s done a very good job of writing reviews so far.)

Gameplay

The gameplay has received a fair bit of complaint. I got this game for PC which gets a pause option (I’ve heard this isn’t available on console versions,) and I’m glad it’s there. The main problem with the game is the fact that it’s difficult and unbalanced. Mages are by no doubt the most powerful and easy to use. I’ve also had the problem that when you play another class you then only have two mage characters to choose from, Morrigan who is slightly dark and Wynne who is too up-righteous. I used an evil rogue on my second play through and spent a while getting Wynne haste so that I could attack faster with my dual wielded swords, just to have her abandon me based on one of my decisions. I tried to find a way around it but even a high friendship value didn’t seem to make a difference. (There’s also a tactic where two mages use cone of cold to keep a target permanently frozen, but I can no longer do that either.)

The battle system feels like it's in real time, however it's actually turn-based and works like Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic, in that it uses a dice to determine when you are successful. You may like this if you’re a fan of the other games, but I also know some people (Sneeze), who aren’t too keen due to the randomness and certain reliance on luck. You also have the option to set A.I which is a good feature, but it’s hard to get right and you’ll often find you don’t have enough slots to set states.

Despite some of the annoyances, I still managed to enjoy the game-play a lot. Some of the spells were fun to use; causing chaotic explosions and setting things on fire. Dual wielding is also an exciting feature. I like how the system works, with the right skills, allowing you to mix and match items in both hands. There are also options for Alchemy, Poison making, enchanting and trap construction, so as far as an RPG goes you won’t be feeling like it lacks on options. I also like how you can pick special classes alongside your main one to give you extra skills and abilities. These classes must be found to be unlocked so you have to have a good look around for them – Arcane warrior with the sword Spell Weaver is particularly cool.

The choice system is also one of the best I’ve seen. You can’t see a meter for good/evil so there’s nothing there to influence you, and characters have differing opinions on the actions you take. Most things are usually followed on as well. For example, there are six different starts to the game which have their own mini stories and characters. Later on in the game however, they do seem to get mentioned despite being slightly different on different play-throughs. I was also amazed to find that in certain places I was able to ignore a quest resulting in consequences. On other games I have often found while taking the evil route you're not really given the choice to refuse quests for help, and then looking like a complete moron you end up having to go back to accept the quest in order to continue the game(the illusion of choice at work here.) Yet in Dragon Age I refused to help Redcliffe and left; on returning it had been destroyed.

There are a fair few hours of game-play. You can find yourself easily racking up to one-hundred hours and still feel like you haven’t seen everything. The main story is of decent length and there are a tonne of side quests to get through. You do have to have patience to play it however, as this game contains a lot of dialogue. You may also want to try it on easy mode if you’re mostly interested in getting the story as the battle system does take some time to pick up.

The story

Dragon Age is about the rising of a threat called the Darkspawn, led by a fierce dragon like creature known as the Archdemon (the last time this happened was around 400 years ago.) The Grey Wardens are a force built to deal with this blight and recruit new members by forcing them to drink the blood of the Darkspawn; a ceremony called the Joining that could possibly kill. By drinking the blood the person becomes immune to the taint that they spread and is also capable of achieving another purpose (a spoiler I shall not mention.) The lucky player is dragged off from where they live to undergo this ceremony to join the Grey Wardens; luckily the player does survive to be given the chance to live out the rest of the story. A battle follows, which later goes wrong, resulting in a close shave for the player and another Grey Warden called Alistair, and the deaths of a lot of men. Alistair and the player are saved by a powerful witch called Flemith, who insists that her daughter Morrigan goes to aid them. Realising that there isn’t a force powerful enough to deal with the blight they decide to go and attempt to recruit an army; which involves going to the Elves, Dwarves, mages and Arl Eamen of Redcliffe. Doing this allows them to be selected in the finale of the game, providing you with extra backup.

The story is really good, although not my favourite as far as Bioware games are concerned (I personally place Mass Effect slightly higher on this one.) However, it keeps you very interested all the way through and some of the choices and consequences this game present are the best I’ve ever seen. I absolutely love the final choice presented to the player, which is incredibly deep and emotional. Before the end credits you also get presented with snippets of text that explain what happens next as a result of your choices, and it doesn’t seem to leave anything out. I would however, like to see a second game that carries it on in the same way Mass Effect 2 carries on from Mass Effect 1. The end of the game does leave you wanting a little bit more. I’ve heard, however, that the expansion pack will clarify a little bit on some of the story elements, like allowing you to rebuild up the Grey Wardens at Vigil Keep.

Graphics

Bioware games have never really been known for being on the cutting edge as far as graphics are concerned, and this is certainly no exception. A few people are also bound to be feeling slightly alienated after they released that wonderfully lush looking TV trailer. It still has some pretty visuals however and even if you are a graphics whore I’d say they’re good enough not to affect enjoyment of the game. I particularly like the visual style which is quite dark and gritty; it’s nice to see a fantasy game that actually has some blood and gore in it when you stab people.

Sound

I was very impressed with the quality of the sound in Dragon Age. The music is brilliant and reminds me of what you’d find a Lord of the Rings film - it’s very emotional and atmospheric. I bought the soundtrack for myself after playing the game, my favourite track being Leliana’s song, which you can only hear if you have her in your party upon completing the 'Nature of the Beast' quest in The Brecilian Forest. ‘30 Seconds To Mars’ also wrote a song specially for the game called ‘This is War,’ which isn’t normally my thing but sounds epic upon hearing it on the end credits. It really fits the game well.

The voice acting is also pretty good. A fair few voice actors have been used (at least over 100), meaning that it’ll take a while before you start hearing repeats. I was especially surprised to find Claudia Black doing a voice-over for Morrigan, who also happens to be in one of my favourite TV programs of all time Stargate SG1. (She’s also worked on game titles Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 2 and Crysis.) Other actors include Tim Curry, Steve Valentine and Kate Mulgrew.

Overall

I was left quite impressed by Dragon Age. Bioware have done it again and produced a game with a really good choice system. It’s not perfect and contains a number of flaws, but they seem to be forgivable because on the whole is a pretty solid game, (I also liked it enough to go straight through onto a second character straight after completing the first.) I guess a lot of people must be in agreement with this in consideration to the fact that upon its release in November 2009 it has managed to earn itself a fair few positive reviews and has won many numerous awards including best PC game. I realise I could have probably said a lot more about it, but I’m pretty tired and it’s getting incredibly hot here at the moment. I think I need to go play a game to take my mind off the heat...

+Great Story
+One of the best choice systems so far
+Lots of game-play (20GB in size) – good value for money
-Difficult/unbalanced battle system
-Not enough varied party members to choose from
-Graphics not as crisp as they appear in the trailer

"Now, let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?" - Shale

Why is Pokémon considered to be just for kids?

2010-03-18T15:04:00.002Z

Now I know a lot of people may laugh when they see this article. But seriously, why? I’ve just spent the best part of dinner today considering the base stats of different Pokémon, weighing up whether or not I could use them to kick Jo and Sneeze’s asses in battle. I’ll start with a brief (or maybe not quite so brief as past articles have shown), history of my experience with Pokémon as usual.

Like most 90’s kids I got into Pokémon around 98/99 when the Anime was first aired in Britain. I loved the show straight away, and of course I got the game for Christmas that year (in fact I got both Red and Blue, but I only ever played Blue, never got round to Red). Obviously I also collected the trading cards, even though I didn’t know how to play the TCG at the time. My fascination with Pokémon lasted until about 2001, when I was 12 and around the time of the 2nd generation games and episodes. I played Silver, Gold and Crystal, but I started to fall out with the anime at around this time, partially because I didn’t like the new Pokémon and partially because I had just started attending secondary school recently, and felt that I needed to ‘grow up’. Yeah, that seems remarkably stupid to me these days. I still liked the damn show, but I felt like people would look down on me if they knew I was into such a ‘childish’ programme. The games also fell prey to this ‘growing up’ soon after, and subsequently I ignored the release of the 3rd generation of games (Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald).

Along came 2007 and my friend decided that we should both import a copy of the new 4th generation games. With the full (and maybe questionable) wisdom of my 18 years I agreed. He got Diamond and I got Pearl (I wanted Diamond but he got there before me...) Anyway I figured by this point in my life that I really shouldn’t care what people thought about me, and if anyone had a problem with the games I enjoyed playing then they probably weren’t worth knowing anyway. I ended up really enjoying playing Pearl, but I didn’t get particularly far (I seem to remember I halted just before going to the town with the 8th gym, Sunyshore) and left it for a few months. I got back into it around Christmas 2007, when I’d started attending university and had met my current group of friends (including Jo and Sneeze). There were 5 of us to begin with, 3 who already owned the game, and 2 who got it for Christmas that year in order to join in. There are only 4 of us now, since one of the guys left the course, but since then me, Jo and Sneeze have been heavily into the deeper sides of Pokémon, like training them up for competitive battling taking Individual Values, Effort Values and Natures into account and trying to get the rarer ones that require a great deal of effort to obtain. In fact we have been to 2 events in Chesterfield and Sheffield together to obtain the legendaries Darkrai and Arceus (we went to the Arceus one just 4 days ago in fact). I personally love the fact that I can play Pokémon properly, as it’s meant to be played, with other people these days. I never got that chance when I was younger, and I don’t think there can be any argument that the Nintendo DS’s wireless capability makes things a hell of a lot easier (no more fiddling about with link cables, or even having to bring link cables with you!)

Now this is my major problem with the commonly held view of Pokémon: the system is incredibly deep. I’ll give an overview here:
Each Pokémon has 6 stats: HP, Attack, Special Attack, Defence, Special Defence and Speed. They gain Experience Points (EXP) as they battle and level up, increasing these stats. However these stat gains are influenced by various factors, one of which is Individual Values (IVs). This is a hidden number attached to each Pokémon, between 0 and 31 inclusive that determines what sort of stat gains the Pokémon will get in that stat. The higher the number the higher a Pokémon will advance in that stat. IVs can be calculated using online calculators and passed down through breeding. So, by working out a Pokémon’s IVs from its stats, you can use selective breeding (since two of the IVs are passed down off each parent) to breed the perfect Pokémon.

Next you have Effort Values (EVs). These are gained by fighting enemy Pokémon. Each Pokémon gives EVs for 1 of the 6 stats (the same species of Pokémon will always give the same type of EV), and the number is determined by their level of evolution (1, 2 or 3 depending on how many times the Pokémon has evolved). There are a few exceptions to this rule, such as legendaries which generally give 3 EVs, but since legendaries are normally one-off encounters, it’s not really feasible to EV train using legendaries. Each Pokémon can have a maximum of 510 EVs, and no more than 255 EVs in any one stat. For every 4 EVs in a particular stat, the Pokémon gains an extra point in that stat. So, a Pokémon can gain a maximum boost of 63 in any stat by being EV trained in that stat. Technically, it is better to give 252 EVs in 2 stats, and 6 in another, so that the last 3 (EV 253, 254 and 255) in each stat aren’t wasted, since these last 3 wouldn’t add up to another stat gain anyway as the number of EVs is rounded down. There are items that a Pokémon can hold in the game to boost the number of EVs they get from an encounter. These 6 ‘Power’ items give the Pokémon holding them a boost of 4 EVs of the stat to which they relate after battle, regardless of what EV type is given by the Pokémon being fought. There is also a very rare disease that Pokémon can catch, called Pokérus. This can be contracted by a Pokémon after any battle at a very small random chance. When afflicted with Pokérus, the afflicted Pokémon can pass on the disease to all other members of your active team as you fight. The important thing about Pokérus, however, is that it doubles EV gain after battle, including the 4 EVs given by the Power items. Consequently, a Pokémon fighting another Pokémon that gives attack EVs, equipped with the Power Bracer (which gives attack EVs), and inflicted with Pokérus will gain 10, 12 or 14 EVs after battle, depending on the level of evolution of Pokémon they fought, instead of the regular 1, 2 or 3, making EV training much faster. Pokérus fades from a Pokémon after a while, and after this point they can no longer pass on the disease, but they still receive the double EV gain after battles.

Pokémon also have base stat values. These are a set of numbers that give an overview of what that particular Pokémon is good at. For instance, a Pokémon with a high Attack base stat and low Defence base stat would reach a much higher value in Attack than in Defence. This must all be taken into account when choosing what to train a Pokémon in. Do you play to the Pokémon’s strengths, and try to increase those strengths, or do you compensate for the Pokémon’s weaknesses to try and make it a better all rounder?

Finally there are natures. There are 25 natures in total, such as Adamant, Modest, Hasty, Serious etc. These natures raise one stat’s final value by 10%, while lowering another by 10%. No natures affect HP, so there are 5 that raise each stat, while lowering one of the other stats. The 5 natures that both raise and lower the same stat have no effect on the stats overall. So, by manipulating this it is possible to give a Pokémon an even further boost to their stats. For example if you want a Pokémon that has a good Attack stat, but don’t care about its Special Attack stat, you would want a Pokémon with the Adamant nature, since this raises Attack while lowering Special Attack.

That’s it for Pokémon stat development (I bet you just breathed a huge sigh of relief didn’t you?), so now on to types and moves!

As of the 4th generation, moves are divided into three types: Physical, Special and Support. Support moves usually do no damage and cause some sort of effect (Poison, Paralysis, altering a stat up or down etc.) Physical moves are based on the Attack stat of the Pokémon and are defended against using Defence. Special moves are based on the Special Attack stat of the Pokémon and are defended against using Special Defence. As a side note, HP is the amount of ‘life’ a Pokémon has, when this is expended by taking damage from attacks it faints, and Speed determines which Pokémon goes first in a battle, usually the one with the higher speed, although this can be altered by certain moves. Both Physical and Special moves have Power, which determines how much damage they do, Accuracy, which determines how likely they are to hit and a type.

As I’m sure most people know, Pokémon can be of one or two of the seventeen types: Fire, Water, Grass, Flying, Electric, Rock, Ground, Poison, Normal, Fighting, Psychic, Bug, Ghost, Dragon, Ice, Steel or Dark. This has an effect on the Power of moves used by that Pokémon. If a Pokémon uses a move of its type, it gains Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB). STAB increases the power of a move to 1.5x its regular value. The type of a Pokémon determines how effective certain moves are against it. This can be 0x, 0.25x, 0.5x, 1x, 2x or 4x regular damage. 0x is when a Pokémon is immune to a type of move due to its type. For example, Ground Pokémon are immune to Electric moves. 0.25x is when a Pokémon has two types, and both are resistant to the type of move being used such as a Water move being used on a Water/Grass Pokémon. 0.5x is the same as above, but when only one type is resistant. 1x is regular damage, either when the type matchup is regular, such as Electric vs. Fire, or when a Pokémon has two types and one is resistant while one is weak, such as a Fire move being used on a Water/Grass Pokémon. 2x is like 0.5x, but when the Pokémon is weak instead of resistant, and the same goes for 4x compared to 0.25x. So taking STAB into account, a move can technically increase to 6x its regular power. For example, if the move Thunder, an Electric move is used on a Water/Flying Pokémon, both of which are weak to Electric, by an Electric Pokémon, the base power would increase from an already respectable 120 to a massive 720 (120 x 2 = 240 for the Water weakness, 240 x 2 = 480 for the Flying weakness, 480 x 1.5 =720 for the STAB). Yeah, nothing would survive that I’d like to bet.

Just as another side note, I’d like to direct you to this picture at Bulbapedia, the Pokémon Wiki if you will: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Pok%C3%A9RadarShinyFormula.png
That picture shows the formula, when using the Pokéradar, of obtaining a Shiny Pokémon (a Pokémon with a different colour to usual). A shiny can be found at any time when you enter an encounter with a wild Pokémon. The usual chance of this happening however is 1 in 8192. Don’t you just love base 2? According to this formula, if you plug all the numbers in, once you reach a chain of 40 Pokémon using the Pokéradar, your chances of getting a shiny increase to approximately 1 in 200, a massive increase. The chain number that can be used in that formula caps at forty, so there is no way to increase the chance further than this.

Taking all of these things into account, you can produce Pokémon that stand a good chance in competitive battling. But now, wrestling this article back onto topic, I’d just like to point out that I have now given a fairly detailed look into the inner mechanisms of the 4th generation Pokémon games. These are systems that allow you to get the most out of the game, but I can’t really imagine many ten year old kids grasping the finer details of how these mechanisms work, such as the shiny formula I just explained. These are really complex and sophisticated systems at work, which can be manipulated with the right knowledge, and this seems to suggest to me that the games are developed as much for adults as they are for children. Sure, the look and feel of the game can be quite childish at times, but that’s because it’s aimed at children. Strip that away and you have a really deep, complex system that is incredibly fun to play. Take films such as Ice Age for instance. These films are aimed at children, but there is a lot of humour in there that can only be understood by adults. It is the same sort of thing, except that in Pokémon it is the depth of the system in place that adults can really appreciate. Besides, if you’re like me in that you’ve really stopped caring what the world at large thinks about you because since they’re by and large a bunch of boring old farts trying to grow up too fast anyway, and you grew up with Pokémon, you can still appreciate even the more childish side of the games for the nostalgia they bring.

Well I’d better wrap this up now, since I’m once again on the 4th page of the Word document I’m writing this in (I tend to do that a lot when I’m writing about games). So congratulations once again for getting to the end of one of my incredibly tedious articles (I don’t know, maybe if you’re a Pokémon fan like me you might have enjoyed it) and have a picture of a Pikachu as a reward:

Single Player = Unsocial? Hang on a sec...

2010-03-18T14:56:00.003Z

A lot of people would probably accuse me of being an unsocial gamer because the majority of games I play are single player, but is this really the case? I have an active social life and I play the odd multiplayer game when I’m in the mood for it (TF2 beta comes to mind, 4+ hours a day for about a month) so what is it about playing titles such as Mass Effect 2 that suddenly brand me, and is it me or is “social” gaming not quite as social as people like to make out?

Let’s start with a little exercise, think of five solely single player games with brilliant storylines, easy right? Now, do the same for heavily multiplayer games... A bit more difficult isn’t it? Sometimes I’m in the mood for playing a game that has an engaging story and multiplayer games seldom, if ever achieve that. If I want to play a game with a good story how does that make me any less social than if I were to watch a film or read a book?

As of late it seems like there’s been a torrent of multiplayer games, with releases like Left 4 Dead and its sequel, Borderlands and MAG and they seem to be having a strong influence on previously solely single player titles such as Resident Evil 5 (which was almost compulsory to use given the abysmal AI), Bioshock 2 and the upcoming Dead Space 2.

Dead Space was one of my favourite games of this generation and never once during the three times I played through it (more if you include the several attempts at the rather accurately named impossible mode) did I ever think “wow this game would be really great if it had multiplayer”. Not every game needs to have a multiplayer option; it just adds more development time or takes time away from what could be spent on the main article which in most cases is what I’m buying the game for. Also, after playing a single player game I discuss it with people, its good points, its bad points, its story, et cetera; did I not get the memo announcing talking to people is no longer a social activity?

It seems that single player games are often frowned upon by reviewers and the gaming community alike; presumably, to these people no gaming experience is complete without having some 12 year old calling you a n00b, rather ironically, because you are beating him.

Furthermore, on the odd occasion where I do play a multiplayer game and join a random game sever no-one ever talks unless it’s to accuse someone of hacking or having a small penis. What pray tell is the point in “social” gaming if no-one is going to be social about it, or even to go as far as being anti-social? Somehow, through some rather twisted logic, because I don’t verbally abuse people over the internet I’m the unsocial one. I would have an almost identical experience fighting against bots and that would be sans the maltreatment of both myself and the English language.

Then what really annoys me is a lot of games seem to be removing same-console multiplayer, do gamers not have real life friends anymore? I bought Quantum of Solace hoping it would be a similar experience to the multiplayer in Nightfire which was immensely enjoyable; only to find out the only multiplayer option is taking it online.

Let’s for a second assume that you invite a few of friends round for drinks, pizza and games, one of you suggests a game of Quantum of Solace. Now, in order to play this your friends would need to go home, boot up their consoles and meet you back online. Doesn’t sound quite so social when you have to kick people out of you house to do it now does it? There’s always the Wii, but the Wii is fun when drunk, not whilst getting drunk. Are we supposed to just sit round and talk about the weather until we’re drunk enough to find the masturbatory motions hilarious again?

Don’t get me wrong, I like multiplayer games but I feel they have a time and a place, that place should be your living room with your friends. Not in a darkened cellar with your console hooked up to a CAT5e and a pile of empty cans of Red Bull. Granted this doesn’t work for PC games unless you have a LAN Party but as for console games there is really no excuse to exclude same console multiplayer. I’m not an unsocial gamer or an unsocial person, it’s just my idea of a good time isn’t having complete strangers threatening to cut me because they can’t tell the difference between camping and tactical positioning.

To clarify I do not have a small penis nor am I a "camper n00b", I have however been threatened to be cut. This was several years back, I'm still knife free.

Heavy Rain - Review

2010-03-15T16:07:00.009Z

Introduction

Heavy Rain is the spiritual successor to Quantic Dream’s Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy if you’re from across the pond). I haven’t played Fahrenheit yet myself (thought I recently purchased it after having enjoyed Heavy Rain so much but haven’t got round to playing it yet) but if you have expect more of the same thing. If you haven’t Heavy Rain is an “Interactive Drama” think of it to be a bit like one of them create-your-own-adventure books you’d read as a kid, or like the extra that came with the Final Destination 3 DVD except actually worth the physical space it occupies.

The gameplay itself is fairly minimal, similar in some ways to the Dreamcast title, Shenmue. You have free sections where you walk around looking for evidence, clues or items and having conversations, and then you have the dreaded quick time events that seem to have been all the rage since Resident Evil 4 resurrected them although Heavy Rain actually does them pretty well (or at least as good as QTEs can get anyway). But playing Heavy Rain for the gameplay would be like eating Chinese food for the chopsticks, you play it for the story like you would watch a movie or read a book.

The story behind follows four separate characters all with their fates entwined by a serial killer dubbed the origami killer who kidnaps boys aged between 9 and 13 and drowns them in rain water then leaves their bodies on waste land with a orchid on their chest and a origami figure in their hand.

-Spoilers for the first hour or so of play-

The first and main character is Ethan Mars, a happily married and a successful architect, for the prologue at least. During a visit to the mall his older (and frankly stupider) child is run over a killed. The game then jumps to two years later after the accident where he is divorced, suffering from depression and black outs and is trying to reconnect with his other son, Shaun. Shaun is then kidnapped by the origami killer during one of Ethan’s blackouts, eventually leading Ethan (and the police force) to believe he is the origami killer whilst he is simultaneously trying to save his son.

The second character is an FBI agent from Washington called Norman Jayden who has been called to assist the police force with the capture of the killer. Norman comes equipped with a pair of sunglasses called ARI (Advanced Reality Interface) which help him identify and analyse evidence and aid him in capturing the killer. Unfortunately at the same time he is also suffering from drug problems which he has to fight in the process.

The third character is a Scott Shelby, a private investigator hired by the families of the victims of the origami killer and suffers from asthma (wow no-one in this game is actually well are they?).

The fourth character is Madison Paige, a photographer who is a picture of perfect health – ok that was a lie, she has chronic insomnia. Not much is known about her at first but suffice to say she ends up getting heavily involved in the case.

-End Spoilers-

One of the main aspects of Heavy Rain is that even the smallest choice can have a huge impact on the rest of the story, with multiple endings (18 epilogues with 4 for each playthrough) there’s plenty of incentive to replay. If a character dies, they die for good, what one character does can later on effect another there is no direct right and wrong choice and it just overall feels far less artificial than most other choice systems.

Another good thing about Heavy Rain is that it can appeal to a casual audience without slitting the throat of the gaming nation and drinking its still warm blood, á la the Wii. Several times while playing this I had my Mum of all people sat next to me just as absorbed into the story as I was (granted it made the sex scene a little awkward but that’s beside the point). This is a great game to play with other people just as you would a movie and makes it even more enjoyable.

Gameplay

As mentioned, the gameplay is minimal so there’s not much I can say here. Everything in the game is achieved by button prompts, be it in a free environment or a QTE, buttons will appear on screen and you will have to press, mash or slowly guide the stick/button to match the prompt to do whatever needs doing. Some require you to press multiple buttons at once but overall it’s really very simple.

Some of the QTEs and button prompt are genuinely challenging if played on the hardest difficulty (which I recommend if you are a regular gamer) and are akin to playing a game of twister with your fingers (one I had to resort to pressing a button with my tongue, no joke) but other than that there’s not really much to be said.

Story

Well seen as this game sells on the promise of a good story it’s a good job it delivers. It’s incredibly compelling, deeply emotional and one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played. There’s a few discrepancies in the plot and not quite all loose ends are tied up but that just leaves it open for debate which in my opinion makes it more enjoyable. It doesn’t feel the need to hold your hand and slowly explain every single aspect in detail and leaves some of it to your imagination. That said, a couple of the “plot holes” could have done with a bit more explanation but overall it’s done pretty well and is arguably as deep as any movie or book.

Graphics

Graphically this game is one of the best the PS3 has to offer. The environments are grim, dark and gloomy but that was the intention, this isn’t a happy pretty lets all ride unicorns across rainbows to the treacle fountain of ecstasy type game. They set the mood perfectly, the characters emotions are portrayed brilliantly and it’s just an overall brilliant presentation.

Sound

Without exaggerating this is probably my favourite game of all time, I come from a background of Zelda, Sonic and more recently Metroid, all are pretty renowned for their scores but none of these in my opinion set the mood quite as well as the soundtrack here. I’m sure a lot of you would like to play the Final Fantasy card here (John included) but I’ve never really played a FF game to compare but I would be pretty impressed if it surpassed this.

The voice acting is a bit hit and miss, but it’s not awful. Most of the characters are pretty believable, the odd line will sound a bit robotic but the only characters to really falter are the children and one of them does die in the first half hour so it’s forgiveable. The only other character to really suffer is Norman who can’t seem to pronounce his own name and apparently no-one in the entire cast can pronounce origami correctly. Other than that it’s passable, not the best ever but far from the worst.

Overall

I can imagine Heavy Rain being a marmite, I personally love it but if you’re the kind of gamer that can’t go long without cracking a few skulls then maybe it’s not for you. If you want a deep emotional experience then maybe it is.

+ Incredible Story
+ Brilliant Soundtrack
+ Incentive to replay
+ Good “social” game
- Voice acting can be a bit shoddy at times
- Some of the story could have done with a bit more explanation

"Agent NAHMAN Jayden, FBI" ~ Norman Jayden

Tedious Tutorials

2010-03-15T15:41:00.001Z

I guess you could say I’m not the most patient person when it comes to game tutorials. When I’ve gotten a new game I’m pretty excited and I just want to dig straight into it; so my frustrations tend to foster when I’m greeted by a long monotonous explanation of how to play it. I wouldn’t mind so much if I was just led through the elements that stood the game out from the others; system intricacies and all that, but how many times must I be told how to walk and move the camera.

I had decided to start playing Final Fantasy 12 last week, where I had to bear witness to a guy being told how to look around and move his feet using the analogue sticks. Imagine that in real life, if a person came up to you and said, “now try to move over and pick up your lunch by moving each leg and using your hands.” – See, it’s unrealistic, makes no sense and you’d probably tell them to stop insulting your intelligence. How is it any different in a game when these are the standards you’ve learnt to grow up with in the same way that you’ll never forget how to walk and talk? I doubt even if you hadn’t ever played a game before, it would take you that long to figure it out; it could either be the analogue sticks or the D-Pad; anything else and the game probably deserves to be destroyed.

There are different types of tutorials you will come across. Some are cut off from the main part of the game like Croft Manor in old Tomb Raider games, or the rather lengthy battle lecture in Star Ocean. These are good in that you can choose to ignore them, but first time through you’ll feel the need to take a look and there tends to be a lot of stuff to sift through. (Croft Manor was always fun though, and getting pistols at the end for which you could shoot the butler with were an enjoyable reward for all the effort. I’m sure most of us have all tried to trap him in the fridge as well.)

The other type of tutorial (my personal preference) is built into the game itself, so you can get straight into the story-line and game-play, like Final Fantasy 12. Sometimes they merely come up as small text hints either in loading screens or during game-play and are fairly unobtrusive, but when done badly they will keep repeating and continuing on for the entirety of the game - which is pretty annoying. Others require you to talk to certain characters for the information or you may be presented with – irritatingly unskippable – videos like in Final Fantasy 7. The more obtrusive method actually forces you to perform certain actions for characters within the opening sections of the game. A downside to this kind of tutorial is that some aren’t possible to skip, which means you have to see them every time you want to re-play the game. It also frustrates me when you’re told, for example, to look around, and it will refuse to continue outright until you’ve twiddled the stick violently several times just to prove you won’t forget it.

I’ve always thought it’s a design feature worth thinking about, as in almost every game the tutorial will be the very first thing you see, (which also happens to be where your first impressions are made.) I don’t have so much of a problem with the unobtrusive methods, or if something more intricate must be explained; but I often find that I’m being told about all the simple stuff and then the more complicated things are being left for me to figure out by myself. There are just some things that should either be left in the manual or be left to the player to work out; either by using that brain thingy and the powers of deduction, or if all else fails there’s always the button mashing approach.

X-Men - Canon confusion

2010-03-15T15:39:00.000Z

While sitting and trying to think of a subject for this article I was browsing the X-Men wiki due to a conversation me and Sneeze had just been having about how Sabretooth and Wolverine are supposed to be brothers, but there was no mention of this in the first film, and I ended up completely confused as to what is canon in X-Men. Just a quick word of warning, this article may contain spoilers regarding the X-Men movies. You have been warned.

Now just let me state from the outset that I have never been a big X-Men fan. I was a 90s/00s child, so I was never big into the X-Men thing. I never read the comics or anything, or watched that many of the cartoons, and my first introduction to the whole concept was really when the first film came out in 2000. Before this I had little to no interest in the whole X-Men thing. I loved the film though and that got me into the concept, although I still never bothered reading any of the comics or anything.

I’ve seen all 4 of the film releases (X-Men, X-2, The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine) and I enjoyed all of them (even though X-2 was one of the most confusing storylines I’ve ever seen, and I’m a JRPG fan!) I was particularly interested in Wolverine’s backstory, since in my opinion he’s the most kickass of all the X-Men, and thought the story portrayed in Origins was excellent, if a little contrived. That’s what led me to browse the X-Men wiki today while eating my lunch. In particular I was looking at the story between Wolverine and Sabretooth, and it left me completely confused. There seem to be about seven different canons for X-Men (slight exaggeration there, but that’s what we do at Gabbling Geeks) and I’m even less clear on the story now than I was when I started.

According to Origins, James (Wolverine) and Victor (Sabretooth) are brothers with similar powers of healing and retractable claws. Okay I added this sentence later, after I’d written the article, but it turns out that Wolverine and Sabretooth are step-brothers, which begs the question: why do they both have similar powers? Anyway back to the article... Wolverine kills some dude who he thinks is the groundskeeper, but is actually his father, after the groundskeeper/real father dude kills the person who Wolverine thinks is his dad. The groundskeeper/real father reveals this information to Wolverine as he dies. Confused? Yeah, me too. Wolverine then flees with Victor (who later becomes Sabretooth) and we see various events of his life...blah blah blah... Throughout the film Wolverine and Sabretooth fight over Wolverine’s dead wife...or some such, until the end when they team up to fight Weapon XI, after which Sabretooth disappears.

In the first X-Men film, Sabretooth is a mutant serving Magneto with feline-like grace and superhuman strength. His character is never explained and he apparently dies near the end of the film after being stabbed in the chest by Wolverine and knocked off the Statue of Liberty into a boat or something, although you never actually see his body (if I remember correctly). Now this is where I’m confused. Is this the same guy? I seem to recall reading something on the wiki about Sabretooth descending into some kind of feral rage so he doesn’t remember who he is, but I don’t recall his claws being retractable in the first film. Admittedly that would be an interesting plot development, Wolverine and Sabretooth meet up years later, neither remembering the other, but who knows? Besides Stan Lee I mean.

The sections that I read on the wiki about Wolverine (http://x-men.wikia.com/wiki/Wolverine) and Sabretooth (http://x-men.wikia.com/wiki/Sabretooth) seem to be derived from the comic books, and mention absolutely nothing about them being brothers, or even them knowing each other during Wolverine’s childhood. The groundskeeper dude Wolverine kills is apparently just that: a groundskeeper, with nothing being mentioned about his being Wolverine’s real father or anything. Also, according to the wiki, Sabretooth is Wolverine’s “deadliest enemy” who he meets during the time he lives in the Canadian Rockies with the aforementioned dead wife, who it turns out isn’t really dead at all, even though she was apparently killed by Sabretooth, and has nothing to do with him before this point.

In summary I’m going to wrap this up here before my head implodes or something. I know there are probably about 20 errors with this article, probably as a consequence of me not remembering the films properly or not reading the articles properly (don’t forget I was eating at the time), so if anyone wants to leave a comment explaining the “real” canon to me feel free. It’d be interesting to know. Anyway, thanks for reading this mash of text that can loosely be called an article, albeit a confusing one, and congratulations once again if you managed to get to the end of one of my articles without flying into a homicidal rage or something.

Arceus Pokemon Event

2010-03-14T19:44:00.010Z

Well, it finally happened. I got myself an Arceus, and not just any one, I found myself lucky enough to get one with a modest nature – unfortunately it also came at level 100 so I can’t EV train it. Arceus is a pretty important pokemon to have, as it’s the creator of the lake guardians and dragon trio, and currently the final pokemon in the national pokedex. It is also believed to be the god of all Pokemon, which John then thought would be funny to send out onto a poor unsuspecting Bidoof, (only he forgot he hadn’t yet earned the final badge in Platinum and Arceus ended up taking a nap instead. I'm sure the Bidoof was pretty relieved about that.)

For a long time I had given up hope of ever procuring one, after all, this is the UK, and events are slim on the ground. (The only other event I have been to was a Darkrai one.) My other legendary, Shaymin, was gained over the internet, which in some ways is better as they hold them for longer and it gives everybody a chance to get one, but on the other hand Pokemon is suppose to be a social game and events give people the chance to meet up, trade and battle. At least I got Shaymin the right way, having to capture it. I would have liked to have to have gotten Arceus and Darkrai in this way using the Membership Pass and Azure Flute, for it unlocks new areas and makes the game feel more complete. I don’t know why they just give you them straight out in these events, which isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

Me, John, Sneeze and a fourth friend all went to the event today, where a fair few people showed up; some were dressed up or wearing pokemon memorabilia; stood around in groups with DS’ open inspecting the new Arceus addition. There was a woman there who seemed to radiate the Pokemon, for my DS only seemed picked up the signal when she came over – pretty cool and I’m slightly jealous I don’t give off the signal myself, (but then again I guess that would result in a following trail of obsessive pokemon fans behind me.) I’d bought my EV trained team of level 100’s along with me, thinking that maybe I would meet a few people and battle them. To my disappointment, nobody wanted to; they were either unprepared or for some reason afraid of facing us. I didn’t really understand why because it wouldn’t hurt you to have a go, even if you did lose. Well, needless to say, we left and decided to battle each other instead over some tasty takeaways – the problem is we know each other’s teams and tactics, so the fun evaporates from it eventually. (At least I got to try out my Crobat in battle for the first time, and I’m proud to say it caused Sneeze and John some big headaches :P.)

On another note I’d also like to announce that I got my very first shiny pokemon on Wednesday. I had wanted one for a long time, as John had been lucky enough to get one, yet I hadn’t despite having played more hours. I had finally decided to try and force it, learning how to chain them up properly. If you get a chain of forty Pokemon you reach your max chance of getting a shiny which is about 1 in 200 - a huge improvement. I use to find chaining frustrating to do as it wouldn’t work for me, but I found this website, http://www.psypokes.com/lab/shiny.php, which gave some useful hints, allowing me to chain a grand total of one-hundred and eighteen Shinx before noticing that wonderful shaking patch of grass with that extra sparkle.

*TWELVE DAYS UNTIL THE RELEASE OF HEART GOLD AND SOUL SILVER*

Final Fantasy XIII: First Impressions

2010-03-11T13:44:00.002Z

Well I bought XIII on its release, as can be expected from a fanboy like me. I didn’t get much chance to play it that night though since I was busy. I took a quick look however, and I have to say the graphics impressed me. Maybe I’m looking at the game through rose coloured glasses, since it’s the latest instalment on one of my favourite series of games ever, but oh well, I need my little pleasures in life. Anyway I started the game properly on Wednesday evening (yesterday as of the time of writing) and have currently only racked up around two hours of play time. So far, however, I have to say I’m mightily impressed. The story seems to have much more going for it than XII did (I found the story of XII to be a fairly big disappointment), and I actually quite like the new battle system (a done-up version of the old Active Time Battle system, that really reminds me of the system used in X-2). I imagine a lot of people may have something to complain about by the introduction of the new Auto Battle system, which inputs the best commands for the current situation using AI, but I find it quite useful. Then again, a lot of people (including Jo and Sneeze by the way) complain that the gameplay of the traditional Final Fantasy battle system is boring, whereas I’ve never found that much of a problem with it personally, which is probably why I have more tolerance for the Auto Battle system. I’m looking forward to getting back to it tonight and you can expect a detailed review of the game to appear here once I’ve finished it. Much shorter than usual this time, but I thought I’d just share my first impressions of a new, big release anyway.

Thanks for reading.

When did right and wrong become so black and white?

2010-03-08T15:44:00.004Z

In my Mass Effect 2 review I mentioned how most games that implement a moral choice system seem to be incredibly black and white about it without so much as a single shade of gray. Do you save the drowning puppy or throw it into an even deeper pond, or just walk on by for the “neutral” option, I’m not quite sure how letting an innocent puppy die can in any way be considered neutral, assuming you’re not a character from an early GTA game and have the means the save him.

A prime example is inFamous, as much as I love this game, the choice system seemed tacked on and wasn’t even really needed, all it did was change how your powers upgraded and this would often make several of the powers useless whilst the other half remained viable in combat and if you played the opposite side they magically seemed to swap round and the previously shoddy powers where now pretty useful.

The problem is with inFamous is that the choices often don’t really pose that much of a choice and you would just choose the one you want depending on whether you are doing a good or evil playthrough, not what you would choose if presented with that situation in real life. Do you start a small riot and let innocents die just to save yourself the trouble of knocking out a few cops, or just go straight for the cops? The answer should be pretty obvious, really.

Bioware are known for the choice systems in their games and often they get it right but sometimes its feels more like a choice between humane and being well, a bit of a prick. Greet the new party member with open arms and a pat on the back, or accuse them of being a dirty alien in a xenophobic manner, even though in the previous scene you’re the one who convinced them to tag along, I’m sometimes not sure if my character is supposed to be a “renegade” or just someone with deeply rooted psychological issues. Additionally, no matter how paragon I’m trying to make my character appear if presented with the option to defenestrate someone, I will, though perhaps that’s saying more about me as a person and less about the game.

GTAIV kind of glossed over the choice systems, and this is a series it could really work in my opinion, do you kill everyone mercilessly in cold blood or just kill those that deserve to die? Sadly in the entire 20+ hours of GTAIV there are about 4 choices and all they seem to do is determine whether a character comes back in a short bonus mission that honestly isn’t really worth the trouble because by the time they do come back you’ll have enough money to buy a small island.

Another example for choice in games is the recently released Heavy Rain (expect the review in the near future), who ever said choice has to be good or evil? You make a choice completely unaware of the repercussions that will follow later in the game, there’s no right or wrong answer but it will often have a dramatic effect towards the end and this is how it should be; no clear correct way to go and you just choose what you personally would do in that situation, not which one nets you the points for your desired route, which at the end of the day seems to be what these moral choice systems are all about.

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” ~ Albert Einstein

Movie Adaptations of Video Games

2010-03-08T15:38:00.005Z

It’s a well known fact that movies based on games have a tendency to suck; leaving gamers with a very bitter taste in their mouths. It’s often an exciting thought, wanting to see your favourite stories and designs on the big screen. It’s also a chance to show others who don’t play games a little bit of what they’re missing out on, but, unfortunately, it happens all too often that the idea is taken, butchered, slaughtered and torn apart. It leaves us pleading them to leave our medium alone, so why do they keep releasing them and how come they always seem to have difficulties translating games to the big screen? I happen to have a small collection of these films: Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark, Final Fantasy, Doom and Hitman; most of which suffer from the same mistakes.

I excitedly ran out and bought the Doom movie after completing the game – I was for a short time, quite a big fan of the game, so I had to see more. Unfortunately, I’ve only watched it twice since its purchase; it is that bad! It did offer a little bit more insight into the story of Doom, for those (like me), who couldn’t be bothered to read the PDA constantly throughout the game, but that’s the only good thing I can say about it. It contains nothing but cheap action practically all the way through and most of it is that dark, it’s just one big fumble where you struggle to see what’s going on. Then it cuts off into the (badly animated) first person scene, which had been placed in there randomly for the fans; It feels incredibly out of place and contains more aliens than the rest of the film put together. Admittedly, the game never did really contain that much story and probably for that reason, wasn’t a very good choice for a film adaptation, however the main point of it was to be gruesome and frightening. The film on the other hand, is not scary one bit; not even trying to make you jump or catch you off guard. It’s not like most horror films have particularly great stories, but the edge of your seat thrill is the redeeming factor that makes them enjoyable to watch (for some of us at least.) Despite trying to appeal to the fans, it contains none of the essence for what made the game interesting in the first place.

Alone in the Dark is even worse than Doom in my opinion (then again it was directed by Uwe Boll who is quite well known for making bad adaptations.) It too suffers from a weakly told story caused by trying to cram as much action in as possible – oh and it wasn’t scary; I haven’t played that much of the game, but what I have seen was quite slow paced and suspenseful, which suggests to me that the film has failed to capture what it should have. If I had to say something good about this film, it would be to praise the end credit song (Nightwish – I Wish I had an Angel) that greets you when the experience is finally over.

Fortunately, some decent examples of adaptations do actually exist. I personally didn’t think they did a bad job on Tomb Raider, which at least tried to be appealing not just to a gaming audience; making a good attempt to tell an interesting story, (although giving Lara Croft bad taste in music.) The action was kept in moderation, to keep it exciting but not too much to the point where it would become boring again. I was also left impressed by Silent Hill. It too, actually tried to tell the story well, slowly providing clues towards the climax of the plot; keeping you wanting to watch more. It was also pretty well paced yet still stayed fairly true to the game, containing classic figures such as Pyramid head to entertain the fans. (Also contained Sean Bean, just thought I’d throw that in there :P.) The major two downsides to the film were the ambiguous ending which a lot of people wouldn’t understand and it also wasn’t scary (but unlike Doom it has enough positive points for this to not be a ruining factor.) I’ve been left eagerly waiting for Silent Hill 2 for a while now.

Recently I have been seeing trailers for the Tekken(straight to DVD release 2010) and Prince of Persia(Cinema release 28th May 2010) film, along with rumours of Mass Effect being a consideration – I can only hope that if it does happen they don’t massacre it. I think the major issue that adaptations suffer from is the fact that they are trying to make the films too much like the games they are based on, rather than sticking to what the medium can actually do. They are not built to support heavy action in the same way, and placing clips of the game in or random first person scenes just feels out of place. On the other hand, the film must also stay true to the game and provide the same feel and atmosphere intended for that particular brand. There are a number of games that I would actually like to see come to the cinema that I feel would translate well. For example, Eve, which has a really good back story –the book is well worth a read. I reckon with the right special effects it could look amazing, but only if they learn from their mistakes; otherwise, I think most of us would rather they would just keep their grubby fingers off our medium.

Related Link
List of films based on games

Final Fantasy: A Retrospective

2010-03-08T15:38:00.003Z

With the imminent UK release of Final Fantasy XIII looming just around the corner, I thought I’d share my opinions on the Final Fantasy series as a whole (well, from VII onwards anyway. I haven’t finished V or VI yet, though I own both, and I can’t remember much of II III and IV. I may do another article on the first six games some other time, once I’ve had chance to complete them all again). Just a friendly warning before we get started. As I hear often from Jo and Sneeze, I can probably be called a fanboy of the Final Fantasy series. Due to this, this article will probably be a few pages of me heaping praise upon Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu and everything else Final Fantasy related. If you don’t agree with my views, then, well, that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to that (I probably have similar views of games you’re fond of *cough*Mario*cough*). Anyway, now that you’ve been fairly warned, on with the show.

My Final Fantasy experience started in the late ‘90s, probably in ’97 or ’98, when I bought an edition of PowerStation magazine and received a small handheld Final Fantasy VII guidebook. I liked the look of the game (I seem to remember being enthralled by the concept of a World Map you could travel around freely) and decided to get a copy for myself. This was in the days when Final Fantasy VII was the latest big PlayStation release, hadn’t gone Platinum, and you couldn’t find copies floating around on eBay for over £50. Typically, I’ve just checked eBay now, to ensure my facts are correct, and the highest price I’ve seen for VII or VIII is around £30 on a Buy It Now, probably just to spite me or something, or as Sneeze just pointed out due to the recent PSN releases, but I swear I’ve seen eBay lists before where the lowest price I’ve found is £50. Anyway I got the game and started playing, and I fell in love with the experience within about the first hour of gameplay. This was the very first RPG I’d ever played (the PlayStation was my first serious gaming console, since I’m a child of the ‘90s. I did have an Amiga 3000, but I wasn’t such an avid gamer back then, being as I was about 3-4 years old), and there were so many new systems I’d never seen before, such as experience and levelling up, buying new items and equipment from shops and stat-based combat systems. I absolutely loved it. I must have played it through at least 4-5 times before VIII came out.

VIII was released in 1999 and I rushed out to get it instantly. My first reaction was utter shock and disappointment. Where were Cloud and co.? Where was the Highwind and Midgar? Don’t forget, my introduction to Final Fantasy had come with Final Fantasy VII, and at this point I had absolutely no idea about the non-sequential nature of the series. In hindsight, maybe it might have seemed a bit odd to me that I was thrown in at the beginning of a story in the seventh instalment of the series, but I was about 9 years old, and as we all know hindsight offers 20/20 vision. Being a child who didn’t acclimatise to change very well, I wasn’t too keen in the systems in VIII either, since it was so shockingly different from VII. I dutifully played the game through, even though I was a little disappointed, and found the experience significantly harder than I did with VII. Nevertheless I finished it and relegated it to my shelf before putting VII back in the disc drive and grinning like a loon.

2001 brought with it Final Fantasy IX. This time I was a little more prepared for the experience, since I had learnt a great deal from VIII. It took me a little longer to get into IX, probably about 5-6 hours of gameplay, but once I got to know the characters and the story I was feeling that familiar Final Fantasy thrill. Admittedly Tetra Master left me a little disappointed, as in my honest opinion Tetra Master does not compare in the slightest to Triple Triad, but I enjoyed the game nevertheless and was very proud that I could now truly call myself a Final Fantasy fan, since I owned and had completed all 3 PlayStation games.

In 2002, the release of Final Fantasy X completely snuck up and blindsided me. I had just returned from a holiday (in Rhodes, Greece I seem to recall) and went down to Meadowhall shopping centre with my parents to change my leftover cash back into pound sterling. While walking past GAME, I noticed a large sign in the window, proudly declaring the recent release of Final Fantasy X. I was gobsmacked, I hadn’t even realised Final Fantasy X was in the works. Luckily it was my birthday earlier that month, and I managed to appeal to my parents’ better natures and convinced them to buy me a PS2 (I had kind of ignored the big black monolith of a new console, as it appeared to me at that point, up until then. Imagine if I could have seen the PS3 at that point...I dread to think what the PS4 is gonna look like.) I immediately obtained a copy of Final Fantasy X and started playing it immediately. It was like playing VII all over again. I was hooked within the first hour of gameplay, and played it all the way through to the end. Admittedly I got kinda stuck near the end of the game, since I had neglected to grind and had to spend a good 10 hours doing so in order to progress. Final Fantasy X immediately became my newest favourite of the series, not in the least because of Blitzball (once I figured out how to play it that is, on my second playthrough when I actually managed to obtain the Jecht Shot early in the game).

When the news reached me that there was an actual sequel to Final Fantasy X planned, I nearly fainted from excitement. This was what I’d been hoping for since about ‘97/’98 when I first played VII, a continuation of one of the brilliant storylines. I immediately pre-ordered a copy online (being well versed in the use of the internet by this point) and received the game a day before its UK release (no, not from play.com, from gameplay.co.uk). I got into it immediately and loved it, especially the new dressphere system, since I’m a big fan of job systems in games (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance anyone?) The game received somewhat negative publicity I seem to recall, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless, and thought the story was an excellent continuation of the story of X.

I’ve never played Final Fantasy XI, since, as anyone who has read my article about EVE Online will know, I’ve had plenty of other MMOs to be getting on with. I do own a boxed copy of the game for PC though, which I saw in GAME for £5, and since I had £2.50 on my reward card at the time, I couldn’t resist the opportunity of owning every numbered Final Fantasy game. Maybe Jo and Sneeze are right...

In 2007, with the release of Final Fantasy XII coming closer, I pre-ordered a collector’s edition copy of the game at GAME (or rather my mum did for me). I collected it and brought it home, but that’s where my OCD side kicked in a little. I’ve always had an ambition to play all the main number series of Final Fantasy games back to back in order one day (I consider X-2 to be part of the main sequence, since it continues directly from X, and except XI from the sequence since its online), and I decided that XII was the perfect time to try this. Unfortunately I never got further than IV... The result of this was I never got around to playing XII until recently. I started it once, and got through some of the start of the game, the tutorial part, but then gave in and went back to Final Fantasy, submitting to my OCD side. My most recent attempt to play them all in order ended in disaster this February. I played Final Fantasy through, and started playing Final Fantasy II. I’m a big grinder these days, and I spent about 25 game hours building up my characters’ stats, spells and skills, since the system in II allows this right from the start of the game. I then proceeded to play the game. Unfortunately, I then found that the Final Fantasy Origins version of II that I have has compatibility issues with the PS3, on which I now play PSX and PS2 games, that stops you progressing through the main story. So that was ~30 hours down the toilet. Heed my warning. Always check compatibility issues of old games with the PS3 before you start grinding. It will save you many headaches.

Anyway, after that fiasco, and with the release of Final Fantasy XIII only about a month away, I decided it was at last time to firmly sit on my little OCD demon to stop him complaining and play XII. I finished it this Saturday, the 6th of March, with all 6 characters at level 99 and most of the side quests done. I’d have liked to have finished all the side quests, but I wanted to finish XII before I play XIII (more OCD demons) and I want to play XIII tomorrow when I get it (the first time I will have actually played a Final Fantasy game on its release date), so I decided to finish the game early, then go back later to 100% it. I thoroughly enjoyed XII, even though it seems to be regarded as the weakest of the series. I even quite like the new combat system, even though I am a fan of both the ATB system in VII, VIII, IX and X-2 and the turn based system in X, which seems to be the point of the game that most people complain about. I especially found the connections between the characters to be the best yet. For instance Vaan speaks to Fran, Penelo speaks to Basch, Ashe speaks to Balthier, Fran speaks to Penelo, Basch speaks to Balthier and so on. They all seem to have conversations, which in my opinion develops the characters well and makes you feel more attached to them (but maybe that’s just me), whereas most of the conversations in other Final Fantasy games are between the main character and the other characters (like in VII, most of the characters speak mainly to Cloud, and in X the conversations are usually between Tidus or Yuna and one of the other characters. Obviously there are exceptions, but it just seems to happen more often in XII).

So, which is my favourite Final Fantasy game overall? I said earlier that I relegated VIII to the shelf after playing it the first time, but after playing it a few more times when I was older (and perhaps wiser) than the first time through, I’d have to say that VIII is probably my join favourite along with X (I know that’s cheating, giving two answers, but I really can’t pick between these two, for many reasons such as the development system, typical experience and levels with the junction system, and the sphere grid, the main mini-games, Triple Triad and Blitzball, and the overall stories, which I won’t spoil here). I know VII is widely considered the best Final Fantasy, but I would probably put XII as my second, then VII , then X-2, then IX. In case you didn’t catch that, here they are again in a more logical fashion:
1. VIII and X
2. XII
3. VII
4. X-2
5. IX
All 6 of those games probably rank in my top 20 games ever mind, but that’s probably the order I’d put them in by themselves.

Anyway, once again this article has gone on far longer than I anticipated (I’m on my fourth page in Microsoft Word here) so I think it’s about time I wrapped this up. There have been a lot of relatively bad reviews of Final Fantasy XIII so far, but I’m fairly sure I’ll still enjoy the game, as will many of the other fans out there (even if Square Enix did make the god-awful decision of changing the original song to a Leona Lewis song that makes my ears bleed every time I hear it). Expect my first impressions of the game in a few days’ time. Once again thanks for reading (no kitty picture this time), and I look forward to sharing more fanboyism with you in the future.

Mass Effect 2 - Review

2010-03-04T14:20:00.007Z

Introduction

Upon seeing the initial trailers for the original Mass Effect way back before its release I was instantly intrigued, unfortunately I didn’t (and still don’t) own an X-Box 360. A while later its PC port was announced, unfortunately by that point I had forgotten about it and lost interest. Last December I noticed it was on offer on Steam so I decided I may as well try it. I was far from disappointed. Thoroughly enjoyed the game (save for the notorious vehicle sections) and by the time I’d finished it Mass Effect 2 was already on approaching fast, I pre-ordered the special edition without a second’s hesitation.

For the unenlightened amongst you Mass Effect is a series created by Bioware (Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age: Origins), the original set in 2183 and the sequel two years after. Humans have discovered the ruins of an ancient alien race dubbed the Protheans and using their technology have learnt how to achieve faster-than-light travel using a physics phenomenon called Mass Effect. Upon achieving this they have been able to discover another Prothean technology, Mass Relays which can transport you thousands of light-years in a few seconds (similar to warp gates on EVE: Online). After a brief war with a humanoid alien race called the Turians humanity achieved galactic status and access to the citadel, a gigantic space station also created by the Protheans and maintained by a mysterious race called the keepers. Being the newcomers humanity is prone to xenophobia by other races and is often resented.

You take control of Commander Shepard who you can customise from name, to gender, to class, to appearance and personal history, just a foreshadowing of how much depth this series has. Shepard has been put forward to become the first human spectre, an elite group of agents under the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance Branch of the citadel who are above galactic law and act as they see fit. Anyway, I’ll shut up now and get to the actual review before I get spoilerish.

Gameplay

For the most part, gameplay in Mass Effect 2 sticks with the old “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” and keeps very similar to the first, cover based fighting, it feels a tad more fluid and polished than the first which is a welcome change however. When not exchanging bullets you are likely going to be exchanging conversation (or insults if you take the renegade route), Mass Effect 2 is a very conversation heavy game, if that ain’t your bag then I wouldn’t advise this game for you.

True to Bioware, during conversation you will get an option how to respond, usually consisting of a friendly approach, a neutral one or an aggressive one, upon choosing the friendly or aggressive approach you will often be rewarded with paragon or renegade points respectively, these later unlock more conversation options. Some missions also present you with a choice, the choice often resulting in more of these points.

For the most part this works but sometimes it can feel a little bit black and white which is more of a fault of all games of this nature, not just ME2.
A welcome change is the lack of the vehicle sections, instead of the Mako you now launch probes to planets and scan for information and materials for upgrades to your ship, weapons and armour.

Another change, which in my opinion isn’t quite so welcome, is they have severely toned down the RPG elements, characters and significantly less powers, experience is now only gotten from missions and no longer from killing enemies and weapons and armour no longer have stats instead you can choose between a fully automatic gun or a burst fire (which could have equally been achieved with a alt fire button). While this may be a good thing in some peoples’ eyes I personally miss the more RPG feel.

Story

Very few games have a story quite as compelling as the Mass Effect series in my opinion, it keeps you hooked all the way through and you always have the incentive to play to find out what happens next. There are plenty of plot twists and turns to keep you guessing and the characterisation is fantastic.

Despite being from all manner of alien races the characters, ironically, all feel far more human than the characters you get in the likes of Gears of War and Call of Duty. They all have their own personalities, their strengths, their flaws just as any real human would. During the free time between missions you can wander your ship and talk to them, discuss the mission, their history, their feelings, you can genuinely really attached to them and when the “suicide mission” arrives you don’t want them to die and try to do everything in your power to stop that from happening. As with the first romancing is available and this just extends the connection more, often after romancing the character will open up even more to you giving them even more depth.

Graphics

Whilst the graphics are far from terrible, they aren’t the best out there. They’re nice and some of the areas have amazing landscapes and vistas, they get the job done nicely but they don’t quite live up to some other games out at the moment. The character models are detailed though, facial expressions seem as natural as they would in real life, overall a very nice presentation but nothing exceptional.

Sound

The musical score really sets the mood well, feels quite spacey and techno and suited to the game environment and it can really help you feel the heat during a battle; not quite as epic as something you’d expect from Final Fantasy or Zelda but still pretty good nonetheless

The voice acting is one of the areas the series really shines, with the big name actors like Martin Sheen as The Illusive Man and Seth Green returning as Joker right down to the minor characters you literally have a three line conversation with, every line is delivered faultlessly and seems perfectly natural. Truly fantastic performance.

Overall

Overall ME2 is without question a worthy sequel and a significant improvement on the original. Fully recommended if you enjoyed the first.

+ Excellent story and voice acting
+ Enjoyable gameplay
+ Brilliant characterisation
+ Well implemented choice system
- Might be a little too conversation heavy for some
- Lack of RPG elements can make it feel a little diluted compared to the first.

“I had reach, she had the flexibility” ~ Garrus

Are games deeper than films?

2010-03-04T14:03:00.002Z

Are games better than films in terms of depth and narrative? (I started to ask myself this question recently upon completing Mass Effect 2.) It is a known fact that games financially have overtaken the movie industry, however many still believe them to be incapable of creating the same depth and immersion as films; that they are incapable of evoking any kind of emotion or keeping a good narrative – a statement I strongly disagree with.

I have found myself leaving the cinema numerous times repeating the statement, “it was alright, but nothing I haven’t seen before.” One of the most recent notable films I’ve seen has been Avatar, which in terms of depth and emotion was good, but the story itself wasn’t exactly original. I also saw a film with a unique plot, and yet it felt stale and bland.

In comparison, on completion of Mass Effect 2, I was left feeling very excited and giddy; I had been emotionally immersed all the way, the plot was different and interesting, the humour kept me laughing and the end had put me on the edge of my seat; I have felt similar while playing other titles. Admittedly, the depth of a game is hugely based on its genre and style; some are just built for the sheer enjoyment of the game-play, but storytelling in games is still a large part of the medium and deserves acknowledgement.

How many times have you watched a film and thought, “why does the bad guy never win?” (Of course we wouldn’t want them to, but films are somewhat predictable in that sense.) In a game however, who’s to say they can’t, or maybe you are the bad guy, or maybe you made a bad decision that resulted in an entire civilization of people to be wiped out? – Who knows; Games have always seemed a lot more open to me in that sense. In a lot of titles you can often choose your alignment, good, bad or evil, which adds an extra layer to the possibilities in the narrative.

I have also found, at times, a game has evoked more emotion in me, especially in relation to another character. In a film, I don’t know that person; I’m not there; I am simply an observer. When I play a game I talk to those characters, I learn about their lives and sometimes offer them help. In return they will watch my back in battle. In some games they even have an opinion of me; some like me; others are snotty and will avoid me because they didn’t agree when I sacrificed that ancient artefact to save our skins. There is also the fact that games are generally a lot longer than films, so I am to be dealing with these people for much longer lengths of time. I end up feeling, overall, generally more attached to these characters, which then makes it all the more harder when they abandon me and leave my party based on something I did, or if they were to die – it would be a very emotional experience.

It’s not just role-playing games either that are capable of provoking emotions. First-person games make you feel involved by placing you behind the eyes of that character, as if you’re there in person. I found myself feeling particularly involved with Half life 2 –Alyx Vance was a character I felt particularly attached to as she was cool and down to earth. Half life was one of the first games to not use cut scenes, which added to the immersion of the game; it’s a rather satisfying experience to see the plot going on around you while still being in control. The main character, Gordon Freeman, was also fairly quiet and not particularly emphasized to any great lengths, allowing all different types of people to project their own personalities into the blank spot, so that everyone could feel more involved with the plot.

Don’t forgot the survival horrors either, which manage to evoke fear into the player, who must then react instead of relaxing back into their soft padded chairs. (You may not die in games but there is still more risk involved than what you would get from watching a film. For example, you may have to go way back and defeat that annoying boss again who occurred after the save point.)

There is no reason for why films and games cannot co-exist peacefully. Each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses they must play to when attempting to tell a good emotional story. Films have more control over the camera and so can use atmospheric shots to their advantage, but games take you personally into the story. I find it short-sighted and shallow when people claim that games have no merit in such feats, as there are numerous books and theories about the art of creating emotion in games – a subject I find fascinating myself. In the end, people who are incapable of accepting games because they think they lack emotion and plot are missing out. It’s their loss if they don’t want to partake in the enjoyment of games.

Corporations and alliances in EVE Online and my online gaming history

2010-03-04T13:39:00.003Z

Now I have quite a long history with massively multiplayer online role playing games. The first one I played was Tibia in 2003, when I had just turned 14, and I absolutely loved it. I loved the sense of belonging to an online community, and especially the feeling of having a second life where I could be a sword-wielding knight running around and stabbing things (I’ve loved swords since I was about 7 years old), but I was an incredibly reclusive person back then, and didn’t particularly get involved in the community until I convinced my friends to play the game with me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind talking to random people I meet online, I’m not quite that shy, and I wasn’t even back then, but I am a generally private person (you really have to question why I’m writing a blog and sharing my thoughts with the world don’t you?) and I prefer to keep myself to myself wherever possible. Also, as anyone who has played Tibia for any length of time can tell you, back in 2003 before the current player-killing rules were introduced the wrong word in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even being in the wrong place at the wrong time could get you killed (it’s not that much better these days, but at least now there are systems in place that prevent people from going on blood-drunk killing rampages and slaughtering every poor peasant they see). On top of that, the death penalty in Tibia wasn’t fun in the slightest (7-10% loss from total experience and skills, the loss of everything in your backpack and even your backpack itself, and a 7-10% chance of losing every piece of equipment you were wearing at the time). So yeah, I was quite quiet in the land of Tibia. I still play Tibia these days, and have done on and off for the last 7 years.

In 2004 I had a brief period where I played the Korean MMORPG Priston Tale (at least I think it was Korean...). I never got very far on this one mind, since once you reach level 40 you have to pay to continue playing. Not having access to my own credit card was a big barrier to this end, since convincing my parents that the nice shiny Korean site was a perfectly safe place for them to leave their credit card details proved harder than I expected. Anyway the theme still continued with me keeping to myself and not interacting with many people.

In 2005, I started playing Guild Wars, and this was a radical change for me. Instanced areas!??! No one trying to stab me, or bludgeon my face in, or set my pubic hair alight when I left towns?!?!? Hell yeah!!! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and since this was back in the days when Heroes (AI party members) didn’t exist, and putting Henchmen in your team was about as useful as covering yourself in BBQ sauce when going to fight big angry bulls, I was forced into interaction with other players. I got used to it, and actually started enjoying playing the game with other people, even if every so often you got a player in your party who decided who seemed to think they knew more about how to play Guild Wars than God himself. I even joined a guild towards the end of 2005, and started getting into Guild Vs Guild combat. We got our arses handed to us in nearly every battle we fought mind, but I was enjoying myself nonetheless. I still play Guild Wars to this day, once again on and off, but I now tend to play it on a smaller scale, usually only with friends and heroes.

In 2006, I had a brief spell where I decided I wanted to know more about World of Warcraft. I won’t go into too much detail here, but suffice to say that I never got past the 14 day free trial. Yeah, I was less than impressed.

And now, after all that spiel, to the main point of this post. In 2008, when I started University, I met some friends who played EVE Online, and they convinced me to give it a try. The first time I tried I wasn’t particularly impressed, and gave it up as a bad job after about a week due to the complexity of the system, but they convinced me to give it another go later that year, and I managed to get into it that time. I now have an EVE character with (at the time of writing) over 27,000,000 skill points. I’ve reverted back to my old ways somewhat while playing EVE, and tend to play it more as a solo game with other people around me than I do as a multiplayer game. Mind you, I’ve always wanted to get a group of friends together and start a corporation that can get somewhere in the game and perhaps become known within the EVE universe. But this is my major problem with the game. From where I’m standing, it just seems impossible for someone who plays the game like I do (as a solo player or with a small group of good friends) to get anywhere in EVE. I don’t want to join a corporation with hundreds, or even thousands of members. Where’s the individuality in that? You’re a number in a system, just like in the real life multi-national corporations, and why would anyone want to mirror that in a fantasy universe? The only corporations and alliances that seem capable of getting anywhere in EVE, however, are the massive ones where the individual members don’t matter, and if a small upstart corporation were to try and claim some territory they’d get their arses handed to them faster than you can say “warp drive”. It just really irritates me that I seem to be forced to play the game the way other people want me to play it, rather than the way I like to play it if I don’t want to be performing endless missions in the format of “kill ships belonging to faction X, and bring item Y to station Z”. Anyway that’s my rant for the day over and done with. It went on a little longer than I expected, but if you’ve managed to reach this point without giving up and going home (figuratively, not literally), then congratulations!!! You get a picture of a cute cat as a reward:

Thanks for reading!

Greetings Kupo!

2010-03-04T11:18:00.003Z

Hi I’m Jo, welcome to the new Gabbling Geeks blog. I’m looking forward to working on my first blog and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it too (also desiring to improve my writing skills during this endeavour.) I will probably be posting a lot about the games industry and all of my favourites. Be warned, I can be slightly opinionated, although not so much as John and Sneeze, who I often hear complaining about the differences between Final Fantasy and Zelda – yes it drives me insane (besides Mass Effect is better); however, this is a blog for general discussions and probably a lot of disagreements, so I guess we’re the right people for the job :P.
Let me get this out in the open, yes I am a girl gamer, no I don’t like pink fluffy things; I like swords and guns and I like them big – phew now that’s out in the open let’s talk about my favourite games. I’m a pretty open person and I don’t like to be fussy about genres, but I do like Bioware and PC/PS3 are my preferred formats. It’s hard for me to pin-point the best title of all time, but I’ve been left pretty impressed by Half Life 2 and Dragon Age.
When I’m not playing games I’m usually reading about them, getting my programming/design skills up to scratch. I hope one day to become a developer or to set up my own games company. Anyways, I’m going to wrap this up now that you know a little bit about me –I am known for writing too much after all- so enjoy!!!

Greetings mortals

2010-03-04T11:08:00.000Z

Hi and welcome to the blog, officially speaking I’m David but everyone calls me Sneeze, I got the nickname in college after a particularly loud sneeze in an otherwise dead silent lesson and it kinda just stuck. I’m at university studying Games Software Development and currently on the third year of study which is a work placement where I’m running a business under PYES (Placement Year Entrepreneurship Scheme) with John and Jo building and selling custom desktop computers.

This blog with delve into anything that happens to catch our attention, expect reviews, complaints, criticism, general banter and who knows, some of the stuff might even be good(!)

Disclaimer: If you have a low tolerance for irony, satire, hyperbole or sarcasm it is advised to consult your GP before reading any further.

Welcome to our blog!

2010-03-04T11:04:00.001Z

Well I’m John, and this is the Gabbling Geeks blog. The other contributors are Joanna, my girlfriend, and Sneeze (his real name is David), the hamster of the group. No seriously, he actually looks like a hamster. We’re all business partners and are running a business called Tyrant Computers, based in Sheffield in the UK, which specialises in building custom desktop computers with discounts for students. We are all students on the Software Development (Games) BSc course at Sheffield Hallam University, in our third year, which is the placement year and are running Tyrant Computers under the Placement Year Entrepreneurship Scheme (PYES), which allows students to run their own business for a year to gain credit for their course, while receiving free help and advice from the University such as access to business advisors and a community office space called the Hatchery.

Gabbling Geeks is going to be a blog of everything and anything, from game, book and film reviews to general commentary on life and the universe and me moaning about why everything in the world sucks (I tend to get those moods a lot). So, in summary, I look forward to sharing my little rants and indulgences with the world (or as much of it as reads this blog anyway). Happy reading!