#oneaday, Day 125: 3D Red Split Dot Dead Second Game Redemption Velocity Heroes

No, this isn’t another blog post about search terms that will find my blog, though it’s entirely possible that the phrase above can now be used to locate me. This is going to be a short post waxing enthusiastic about some of the awesome new releases us gamers have seen recently. And it’s not even all of the ones that are available.

Through some judicious trading-in and knowing where to go to get some decent deals, I managed to score copies of 3D Dot Game Heroes, Red Dead Redemption and Split/Second. And you know what? They’re all awesome. Here’s why:

3D Dot Game Heroes

This one is incredibly simple to discuss. If you liked The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past then you will like this, because it’s the same game. Well, actually, that’s not quite fair as there are a few extra bits and pieces that the old Zelda games didn’t do, such as the ability to customise how your sword upgrades and so forth. But overworld, dungeons, bombs, hookshot, boomerang, bow and arrow, empty bottles and all manner of other distinctly familiar things are present and correct.

The twist is, of course, it’s in 3D. Sort of. It still plays like the 2.5D game that LttP was, it’s just rendered in a gloriously different “3D pixel” look, where characters are still familiarly 8-bit in appearance and animation, but have some depth to their appearance. There’s also a gorgeous tilt-shift effect on the camera as your character moves from the foreground to the background, too, which gives you the impression you’re looking down onto a tiny, tiny world made of blocks.

One of the most entertaining things about the game is the character editor. You can build your own character one block at a time and animate them to be your avatar in the game. It’s great fun, and enormously satisfying to see your creation wandering around the game world wielding a sword which is about five times their size.

It’s a tough game, as the older Zelda titles tended to be, but never overly unfair, at least not in the part I’ve played thus far. There’s plenty to see and do and, in good Zelda tradition, there’s a ton of completely optional sidequests too.

Split/Second

Or Split/Second: Velocity to give it its full name, complete with unnecessary subtitle. How many people have wandered into a shop, seen that and asked if they have “the original Split/Second in stock”? Some people really are that stupid.

Anyway. If you’ve played the demo you probably know what to expect. Race cars, blow things up. What the demo doesn’t quite prepare you for is how utterly involving and terrifying the full game is. The whole thing is tied together with a beautifully-produced “TV show” aesthetic that uses graphic design, special effects and music straight out of an American version of a TV show such as Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares or the like. Only instead of dealing with an ailing restaurant, there are cars and big explosions. And the explosions are big. Many levels see you gripping on to the controller for dear life as, for example, a cruise liner in drydock comes sliding down towards you as you pray desperately you make it through to the other side.

Then there’s the non-race game modes. “Air Strike” sees you attempting to survive as long as possible while a helicopter gunship fires missiles at you, for example. It’s an enormous amount of very silly fun, and is a game that features one of the most consistent and stylistically-appropriate aesthetics that I’ve ever seen in a game. So hats off to Disney’s Black Rock Studios for that.

Red Dead Redemption

Aka “that cowboy game” or Grand Theft Horse-o. Red Dead Redemption is a spectacular achievement, with an enormous world to explore and ride around, tons of things to do besides the “story missions” and a real sense that you’re part of the twilight years of the Old West. The game is plain fun to play, whether it’s in single-player or the peculiar multiplayer mode, and there is enough stuff there to keep you busy for a very long time. Hopefully, though, this won’t mean that it falls into the trap Grand Theft Auto has traditionally fallen into, meaning that no-one will ever finish it. That would be a shame, as the writing and voice acting are very good and deserve to be seen.

The one thing I will say about this one, though, is that it’s one of those games that almost feels too big. Once you get to the stage where you can ride off freely, a couple of hours into the game, you’re confronted with this massive open world and your brain’s first reaction is to go “Which way? MAAAAAAAHHH” before dribbling out through your ears. Fortunately though, whichever way you ride off in you’ll find something to do, whether it’s one of the “challenges” that require you to hunt down particular pieces of wildlife, a “Stranger” who gives you a sidequest that you can complete at your leisure, a random in-world event such as bandits attacking a stagecoach or, indeed, the game’s story missions.

EDIT: Also, you can punch a horse in the face. How could I have forgotten to mention that?

EDIT: Also, this.

So these three are certainly plenty to keep me busy for a while. And there’s still a growing pile of shame to get through as well. Ye Gods, what have I done?

#oneaday, Day 65: Step into my Game Room

This post makes me sad, because I can’t help thinking a lot of people on that thread are missing the point somewhat. I’m hugely excited for Game Room. I wasn’t at first, but since hearing that there are not only arcade treasures in there but also Atari 2600 and Intellivision games too, my interest has been steadily growing until now I’m at the stage where it’s just after midnight and moments ago, I switched on my Xbox just to see if they released things at midnight, or in the morning. (It’s in the morning, for those who were curious.)

The arguments made in the first post are ones that we’re hearing a lot – not just in the context of Game Room, but also in the context of digital distribution in general. The biggest concern people have with digital distribution is that one day, your content will be switched off and, despite having paid for it, you’ll no longer be able to use it. This is a fair concern, as no-one likes splashing the cash on things that they won’t be able to use at some point in the future – but when you think about it, in the world of tech, this is nothing unusual. Products come and go, specifications increase, chipsets change – and at some point it’s necessary to leave the old behind. Did people complain that the Amiga wasn’t backwards-compatible with the Commodore 64? Do music enthusiasts complain that it’s getting harder and harder to find a cassette deck to play those old albums that you only bought on cassette because they were cheaper?

Well, yes, they probably do, but that’s beside the point. What I guess I’m trying to say is this: isn’t the “built-in obsolescence” of digital distribution the same thing? I have a stack of PC games in a box here, some of which it isn’t possible to run any more. Okay, maybe with some tweaking and playing with software like DOSBox it’s possible to get it going – but to a (for want of a better word) “casual” user, they’re defunct and obsolete. The only difference with potentially-expiring digitally distributed products is that there’s no workaround like DOSBox. Once the content’s gone, it’s gone. And yes, that’s not a great thing, but it’s not something to be surprised about.

The other objection people have is that Game Room will charge you again to play titles you already own Xbox Live Arcade versions of – titles like Gauntlet, Smash TV and the like. The simple solution to this is, of course, to not buy them again – but there’s also the fact that the Arcade and Game Room versions are actually rather different beasts. The Arcade editions of the games are generally enhanced with leaderboards, online play and in some cases, new graphics. The Game Room versions are exactly as they were all those years ago. It may be that some people will be more than happy to buy a game again for the sake of having a completely authentic experience – others should simply avoid those games that they have already purchased.

I think the most exciting thing that a lot of people are missing, though, is that Game Room represents possibly the first fully-legal console-based multiplatform emulator out there. The constantly-rehashed argument from Game Room objectors is that “you can get all those games for free online”. Yes, sure you can, but via means of questionable legality. Downloading a ROM for an arcade title is, legally speaking, only allowed if you actually own another copy of the game in question. Of course, people ignore this rule all the time – especially for the sake of hard-to-find games – but I for one think that it will be pretty neat to have these games available legally and without having to do any command-line or front-end faffing like you have to do with emulators like MAME. Again, it’s a point in favour of the casual users, many of whom probably haven’t even heard of an “emulator”. Let’s not kid around, either – it’s also going to be nice to play some of these from the comfort of the sofa rather than the computer desk.

So I for one am firmly in favour of Game Room, particularly if the rumours of there being over a thousand games set for release in it over the next few years have any truth. Yes, it is a means for Microsoft to make money – but this is just the same as a whole lot of things on Xbox Live already are, much as a lot of things on PSN make money for Sony, and the Wii Shop Channel makes money for Nintendo.

What do you think? Are you going to be downloading Game Room and any games? Or are you going to be leaving the past in the past?

#oneaday, Day 63: Act Your Age, Joanna

Late again. And I hold one thing entirely responsible for this: Perfect Dark. Actually, two things. Perfect Dark and Cody “NintendoTheory” Winn.

I know I wrote about Perfect Dark the other day but I feel I should enthuse a little more about it because my experiences with it over the past few days have been highly entertaining. First up, I played some online co-op with Calin Grajko (who was brave enough to interview several members of the Squadron of Shame a while back and has stayed in touch since) – specifically, through the first few levels on Perfect Agent difficulty. This was great fun, as Perfect Agent difficulty is pretty brutal in its difficulty – you don’t get much in the way of life, there are lots of (failable) objectives to complete and there are tough enemies all over the place. The best thing about playing co-op, though, is that it gives you the opportunity to have a laugh along with the game. Perfect Dark may appear at first glance to be taking itself rather seriously, but you only need to jump into a co-op game to see that really isn’t the case. This is a game that shines when played with friends, be it co-operatively or competitively.

Which brings me to the next point – Counter-Operative mode. This is possibly the most broken game mode I’ve ever played, but it’s brilliant in its stupidity. One player controls Joanna Dark, just as in single-player, and has to complete the missions. The other player, on the other hand, repeatedly respawns as random enemies around the level. Jo has one life. The Counter-Operative can keep coming back over and over again, and it’s their job to make life a pain for Jo.

It’s tempting for the Counter-Operative to rush in and confront Jo as soon as possible, of course, but if this happens the match can be over rather quickly. What is far more entertaining is when the Counter-Operative decides to play mind games with Jo’s player, as Calin did to me.

As I made my way down the dataDyne building, I noticed it was oddly quiet, and there seemed to be something of a trail of destruction, like someone had got there first. The building was completely devoid of enemies, until I got to the bottom floor. I stepped out of the elevator and headed towards the level’s exit when suddenly…

BIFF!

Jo’s vision blurred and I whirled her round to discover an incompetent-looking guard in spectacles punching me repeatedly. It was Calin. He punched me again and knocked my gun out of my hand and suddenly, we were engaged in the sort of cack-handed fistfight that only ever happens in first-person shooters. As Calin realised that the enemy characters weren’t capable of picking up weapons that had dropped to the floor, I seized my opportunity and grabbed my dropped pistol, shooting him in the head and escaping the level.

It’s not entirely clear whether or not anyone bothered to playtest or balance Counter-Operative mode, but one thing’s for sure – it’s so ridiculous it is one hell of a lot of fun.

The thing that’s kept me up tonight, though, is something which is always dear to my heart in online gaming: leaderboards. As anyone who battled against me in the Geometry Wars 2, err, Wars of last year will attest, leaderboards inspire great competition. And it so happens that Mission 1 of Perfect Dark on its easiest difficulty level provides an ideal arena for bitter competition to see who can clear it the fastest. Cody and I were ping-ponging times back and forth earlier until, as of this time of writing, I sit on the top spot of my friends leaderboard with a time of 40.95 seconds. I invite any of you to try and beat that – without using the apparently-infamous glitch that I’d never heard of before today which allows you to beat the level in 6 seconds flat. Challenge set!

As you can tell, I’m smitten with Joanna’s adventures. I was back in the N64 days and I am again now. Perfect Dark is such a complete package that it is almost without a doubt one of the best uses of 800 Microsoft Points on XBLA. There is so much to do besides the basic single-player missions. There are the various multiplayer modes. There is co-op. There is counter-op. There are tons of secrets to discover in the Carrington Institute that forms the backdrop to the main menu. There are challenges. There are leaderboards. There are Achievements. It’s a game that will keep you busy for a very, very long time.

The thing I’m most impressed by, though, is the fact that as a game it still plays brilliantly today – ten years later – with no modifications besides the resolution and framerate upgrades. It takes some adjusting to playing a game which doesn’t point out your objectives in gigantic neon-coloured HUD arrows, but I find it far more satisfying than any shooter I remember playing in recent memory – both in single-player and multiplayer.

So if you haven’t bought it yet, stop bitching about the N64, stop moaning about the framerate on the old version, stop complaining that it gave you motion sickness (at least until you’ve turned off “Head Roll” in the options to see if that makes you feel better), stop whingeing that the characters’ mouths don’t move when they talk… look, just buy it and enjoy it, okay?

Act your age, Joanna.

#oneaday, Day 60: Perfection

Downloaded Perfect Dark on XBLA today. I’ve been waiting for this for a while, seeing as how I had some very fond memories of late-night multiplayer sessions on the original. Funny thing was, once it actually came out, I found myself hesitating a bit, wondering if it was still good.

I didn’t need to worry. It is still good. Really good. Once you get over the N64-era level design, physics, character models and textures you’ll realise there’s still an incredibly solid game there, only uprezzed to HD and running at a frame rate the N64 could only dream of. I played a bit of the first level single player earlier and then went over to a buddy’s house to play some multiplayer. The single player is good, and it’s nice to play a Rare FPS again. They always were a pretty unique experience, with much more in the way of stealth elements and creative objectives than many other titles. But that’s not what I remember Perfect Dark most fondly for. It’s the multiplayer that I have the best memories of.

My God. How good is local multiplayer? It’s easy to forget in this online age that one time, the only way to play games multiplayer was to bundle around the house of whoever had the biggest TV, take your N64 controllers and try and shotgun the top-left corner of the screen. I always prefer local multiplayer, as there’s something about being in the same room with your opponents – who, by the very nature of the fact you’re playing locally with them, are people you know well – that takes it from a fun but ironically solitary experience to a proper social event.

I ranted about the “social gaming” phenomenon yesterday in terms of how it really wasn’t “social” at all, but this experience is true social gaming. Playing Perfect Dark on the Facility… sorry, Felicity level with remote explosives, rocket launchers and four FistSims on their hardest difficulty, and being surprised when the hand-to-hand only bots end up winning as a result of our collective ineptitude with anything vaguely explosive – priceless. Still fun, nearly ten years after we first did it.

So if you’re umming and ahhing about getting Perfect Dark and you’re the right age to appreciate it – i.e. you played and enjoyed it first time around – then stop hesitating and just get it. If you’ve been raised on Call of Duty you might be a bit shocked at the primitive graphics and seemingly simplistic gameplay, but give it a shot. You might just be surprised.

One A Day, Day 43: Synaesthetic

Played a bit of Chime tonight. This is a game I picked up from XBLA a little while back but it got sort of lost in the midst of Mass Effect 2’s marvellousness. I took the time to go back and play through the other levels in it tonight and wouldn’t you know it? It’s great.

If you’re not familiar with Chime, it’s “that charity game”, where 60% of the game’s royalties go to the OneBigGame cause, who in turn pass it on to Save the Children and the Children’s Starlight Foundation. And it’s only 400 points, which is not bad at all, especially considering it’s actually a good game, too.

It’s a puzzle game that initially appears to be very much like Lumines. You have a grid with a beat bar moving across it, there’s various shapes of increasing awkwardness thrust into your hands along with a hypnotic, minimalist, reactive soundtrack. It’s there the similarities end, though, as in Chime you’re not dropping things in a Tetris style, rather you’re sticking them wherever you like on the grid in an attempt to produce “quads” – rectangles and squares of at least 3×3 in size. When you create a quad, it gradually fills with colour and while it’s doing this, you can stick further shapes to it to make it bigger. Once it’s full, it becomes locked in place and will only disappear once the beat bar passes over it. When it disappears, it leaves a mark on the grid, and it’s your eventual aim to cover as much of the grid as possible in this manner.

That’s it. As all good puzzle games should be, it’s simple but addictive. Where Chime really shines, though, is in how the gameplay shapes the music. Where you put the shapes on the grid, coupled with how large the quads you produce are, affects the music. As time progresses, the basic backing of the music goes through its structure, but various melodic passages, stings and samples are triggered by the things you have stuck to the grid. All of it is completely seamless, too, meaning that there’s none of the “forced” sound that Lumines sometimes has.

One of the nicest things about Chime is that you can just use it as a musical toy, too. The game’s “Free” mode allows you to simply place shapes and create quads without a time limit pressuring you to cover as much as possible, and the game’s six tracks are all very different from one another, ranging from the artsy end of things with a Philip Glass track, through Moby, one of the guys from Orbital and one of the guys from Lemon Jelly, among others. Six tracks may not sound like much, but the replay value offered by the different “mixes” that your gameplay will produce makes them more than enough. Plus, for 400 points you really can’t complain too much.

I’ve been fascinated by synaesthetic (if that’s even a word) games ever since I first played Rez on the Dreamcast, and Chime is a more than worthy addition to that canon.

TWANG! Waggle! Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!

Those of you following me on Twitter may be familiar with my Jedi Health Kick blog. Perhaps you’re reading it already, in which case you’ll know I recently picked up a copy of EA Sports Active in my latest attempt to hammer and chisel my woeful body into a shape vaguely resembling human. It’s good stuff, and for anyone doubting the value of Wii Fit as an exercise programme, you can rest assured that EA Sports Active gives you much more of a battering than Wii Fit ever did thanks to the fact it actually takes you through set programmes (although, of course, you can create your own also) rather than leaving you to your own devices and relying on your own self-discipline which – let’s face it – your lack of is probably the reason you came to titles like Wii Fit in the first place!

The thing I like about it is how “videogamey” it makes the whole experience. Being a supergeek as I am, I like anything that rewards achievement in a noticeable way. I’m a sucker for slidey bars, percentage markers and trophies. Ironic, really, that I never got into sports, since sports are also filled with slidey bars, percentage markers and trophies. Anyway, the fact is that EASA is full of these things. You get trophies not only for successfully completing workouts, but for smaller things like doing a certain number of laps around the virtual track across all your workouts, doing a certain number of squats, burning a certain number of calories and the like. These are all goals that you would probably set yourself if you were one of those people who are “into fitness” and can motivate themselves, but for the gamers (or the lazy) amongst us, it helps to have something to remind us that even smaller achievements are worth celebrating.

Anyway, to cut to the tenuous link: there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding motion control and full-body control recently, particularly after E3. Some seem to think that it’s “the way that games are going”, with the idea of us standing up to play games and running the risk of hurricane-kicking our TV a very real possibility. Others are very much a fan of the traditional controller, believing that it is something fundamentally “gamey”. I’m inclined to fall into this latter camp, but the motion control thing has some obvious health benefits which are clearly demonstrated by titles like EASA.

The question is, of course, do you want something that is primarily an entertainment device to provide health benefits all the time? Look at other media. TV and books offer health benefits sometimes – you can watch a yoga DVD or read a lifestyle book – but for however many of these there are, there are an equal if not greater number of “junk” items to enjoy – pure, unadulterated enjoyment with no pretense of “doing it for your own good”. In this sense, while motion controls are cool and groovy, I’d like to hope that the controller isn’t dead just yet.

A key part of the experience is tactile feedback. While motion controls allow you to feel your own body moving, when it comes to actually touching or hitting something, you don’t feel anything. This is also a problem with touchscreen controls – a joypad on a touchscreen will never match a real joypad until a technology is developed where you can “feel” it. I also question how some genres would work with motion controls – take an FPS, for example. How do you look up? If you REALLY look up, then you can’t see the TV any more, so unless Halo Natal comes with some sort of 360-degree “vision ball” that you have to stand inside to play (which would be awesome, incidentally) then you’re resorting to flailing your arms around in some arbitrary gesture or pointing something at the top of the screen.

I think there’s work to do – and I just hope that people aren’t going to embrace these new technologies too completely. I very much like them and think they’re going to be a lot of interesting fun to play with – plus I think all of them provide plenty of scope for further titles like EASA and Wii Fit to improve gamer lifestyle, which can only be a good thing – but let’s hope the controller isn’t dead just yet, hmm?

Falling off the wagon

Starting to write this post feels somewhat like checking into rehab. For I have spent most of the evening, you see, in a semi-catatonic state staring into space listening to trippy music and watching the pretty lights. It’s an addiction I thought I had freed myself of, but then they come along and make it so much better.

I am, of course, referring to today’s release of Geometry Wars 2 on the Xbox Live Arcade. And by golly it’s a corker. Not only have they added the one thing that I thought they could have added to the original (having your friends’ high scores on screen as you play, rather than a meaningless “high score for this session” that was reset every time you quit) they’ve added a buttload of new modes to the game, each retaining the series’ signature simple gameplay but adding a twist. We have a time limited mode, a mode where you’re only allowed to shoot in “safe zones”, a mode where you’re not allowed to shoot at all… plenty of variation, but things never get more complicated than the dual-stick “move and fire” mechanic that has been around since Robotron.

And it’s addictive. Oh so very addictive. Particularly if your friends are playing it too, as each time you pick a game mode you see your Friends Leaderboard. And if one of your buddies has quietly slipped in ahead of you… well, that just needs sorting out. Immediately. However long it takes.

So I thank you, Bizarre Creations, for providing me with a means of getting even less done than I normally do.