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[Jun. 23rd, 2006|09:01 pm] |
How
much?
When
Microsoft released the first wave of 360 titles, there was a lot of bitching
and moaning about how half of them were just ports from the original X-Box. But
did that bother me? No - in fact, I welcomed it. Because it proved, in a
stroke, that there's no reason in hell that Microsoft can justify charging
fifty quid for 360 games. After all, just what extra work was involved in
converting these games to the 360? Very little indeed, and yet somehow the
slightly higher graphical resolution justified an extra twenty quid on the
price? Cobblers.
Even those
games which have been developed from scratch don't merit such a high price tag.
Just because these titles are supposedly 'next gen', a term which in fact means
very little, we're supposed to accept they should cost more. Just what is it
the development of a next gen game which is so massively expensive compared to
a normal X-Box or PS2 title? Nothing, that's what. And you can expect the PS3
and Wii games to cost as much. Add to that the extra revenue to be made from
selling extra content over online services - something which Sony are
apparently also looking into - and the games companies must be laughing all the
way to the bank.
Stupidity in gaming #411
-Fahrenheit
Anyone can make a bad game - you only need to
peruse the range of sub £5 games you can find in most supermarkets for
proof of that. It's entirely another to take a game with a decent premise and
promising first few levels and utterly ruin it. Such is the case with the
hideous trainwreck that is Fahrenheit, also known in the US as 'Indigo
Prophecy'. It starts off well enough, with you playing as a guy who has,
apparently against his will, murdered a man in a diner's bathroom. As you'd
expect, it's not in your best interests to be caught, so you have to clean up
the evidence and so forth. So as to make it harder for the investigating
officers to catch you who are, by the way, also played by you. So in effect by
being a careful fugitive you make the game more difficult for yourself when
you're playing the cops. And vice versa.
The
trouble is, about four levels into the game, everything goes tits-up, and I'm
not just talking about the Dance-Dance Revolution style shagging scene, either.
Not only does it become clear that the game is linear as hell, but all the cool
point and click detective work goes away to be replaced by a bunch of tedious
button pushing sequences. Fahrenheit goes from being an engaging detective
story into a glorified reaction timer. And then it gets even worse. What's the
next thing to go? Why, the story of course. About halfway into the game, the
fugitive acquires The Matrix style powers, running along walls, punching out
police-men and dodging bullets. Characters appear and disappear for no damn
reason whatsoever and by the end nothing is really explained. It wouldn't be so
bad if it was a crappy game to start with, but to see such a promising title so
utterly demolished just pisses me off. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2006|11:09 pm] |
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Grand Theft Auto IV, starring
Clint Eastwood.
No, not really. I have no idea who Rockstar
are planning on booking for GTA IV. But you can bet they'll be big name
Hollywood stars, all of whom have no business being in a computer game. It
beggars belief why so many games studios feel the need to fork out huge sums of
money to get film or TV stars to lend their voices to their titles. Does it
lend credibility to the games in question? Does it bollocks. There are plenty
of perfectly good voice-actors out there. I doubt the added publicity outweighs
the cost of the actors salaries. And just because someone's a halfway-decent
actor doesn't mean they can pull off a decent voice-over - voice-acting is a
completely different kettle of fish. You only need to listen to David Duchovny
sleep-walking his way through XIII or Area 51 for proof of that.
Stupidity in gaming #410 - Castlevania: Curse
of Darkness
I like open ended games as much as the next
console-owning misery-guts. But it's generally accepted that you should at
least give your players an idea where the hell they're supposed to go next.
Trouble is, whichever jackass at Konami designed Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
for the PS2 thought it'd be a great idea to leave gamers with no idea what they
need have to do next. Or where to go. Which may have not totally sucked the fun
out of the 2D version of the games on the Gameboy Advance, but when you throw
in a third dimension it makes the game very goddamn annoying very quickly.
Quite why they bothered making the game anyway is a mystery, it's beaten hands
down by Devil May Cry. Tell you what, Konami. Next time, why not just mail
gamers a hammer and nails in a special 'Castlevania' themed box. Then they can
hammer nails through their balls and get the overall effect of playing whatever
3D atrocity you had planned without you needing to spend any money on cranking
out a game..
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 13th, 2006|11:26 pm] |
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Damn you, Mr No Entry
Sign.
There are a few things in games that can take you right out of playing and
destroy whatever atmosphere the game you're playing had. Having an in-game
character tell you to press a certain button is one. Having a character in a
game acknowledge that they're in a game is another - I'm looking at you,
Splinter Cell 3. But they're both minor offences compared to the bizarre
situation that I recently encountered playing Hitman Blood Money. As the name
suggests, you play a hitman, who is tasked with disposing of a number of
unsavoury characters. One of the levels has you infiltrating a rooftop party.
So how do you get to the roof? It doesn't take a genius to work out that there
should be two ways up there - the elevator, and the stairs. So upon seeing that
he elevator is fairly heavily guarded you might decide to take the stairs, as I
did. So you wander over the door near the stairs, and enter the stairwell. So
far so good. Except that the stairs are inaccessible. Have they been destroyed?
Blocked off with some sort of grill? No, there's a 'yellow' no entry sign lying
on the stairs. Yes, that's right - a tiny tiny sign. And this is somehow enough
to make the hitman refuse to go any further. Because it's not like he'd want to
break the law or anything.
This kind of thing is a fairly regularly
occurence in games and it bugs the hell out of me. You've got a hero, or in
this case and anti-hero, who can leap around like nobody's business, carry a
whole range of guns and take a barrage of bullets before dying, and yet he
can't get over a tiny obstacle? Even if you haven't played Hitman, you'll have
been playing a game where you found your path blocked by a four foot crate,
requiring you to take a long winding path around the obstacle. The sheer
absurdity slams home the fact that you're playing a game and takes you right
out of the experience that the designers have tried so hard to create. I
appreciate the fact that level design requires that gamers be restricted
somehow, but forcing players to circumvent some tiny obstacle is nothing short
of insulting. (also posted on Freeola)
Stupidity in gaming #409 - Resident Evil
4
Too much fun can be dangerous. At least that
must have been the thinking of one of Capcom's games designers since they
decided to suck all the joy out of playing Resident Evil 4 about a third of the
way through by having you play as damsel-in-distress Ashley. Thankfully, this
isn't a permanent situation, but it's still beyond stupidity. For crying out
loud, what's the point of putting you in control of the stupid bitch who's been
screaming 'help me!' for the last six hours? She can't shoot a gun, or even hit
anyone. In fact, her only real talent seems to be getting kidnapped more times
than Penelope Pitstop, having been abducted a total of four times so far.
Thanks, Capcom, what a lot of fun controlling that stupid bint was.
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 10th, 2006|10:39 pm] |
Stealth above all
things
The
Thief games have a hell of a lot to answer for. No, they weren't responsible
for sparking a crimewave, at least to my knowledge. Their influence was far
more insidious than that. Thanks to the worldwide success of the games, nearly
every shoot-em-up released since then has had some godawful stealth level
shoehorned into it. Apparently it's okay to force you, to drop the run-and-gun
tactics you've been employing throughout the majority of their game and start
sneaking around. No, it'd just be too easy to go up to that bad guy and smash
his face in with the butt of your rifle and then mow down every last one of his
compatriots.
It's as jarring as finding a wire-fighting
scene slap bang in the middle of Schindler's List. It's enough to make me want
to go back in time and sterilize the parents of everyone involved in the Thief
series. I mean, what brain-wrong makes a games designer thinks that someone
who's purchased their product in the belief it's straight shoot-em-up, and
hence a genre they enjoy, would want to find an entirely sneaking-focused level
forced on them. It boggles the mind, it really does.
Stupidity in gaming #408 - The
Getaway
And staying with a stealth theme, PS2
shoot-em-up 'The Getaway' may be best known for the allowing you murder
policemen dressed as a BT engineer, but it also contains the worst 'stealth'
system ever seen in any game. Because while the designers of the game gave you
the ability to sneak around and break the necks of enemies before they could
blink, they they decided it'd be fun to render this skill absolutely useless.
How so? By making ever damn enemy psychically linked, that's how.
This was a game set in modern-day London, not
some space-age future, yet still every character on a level shared some sort of
bizarre hive mind. You could go to all the effort of sneaking around beind a
foe, silently executing him in some dark corner, where you knew no-one was
watching and yet every damn enemy would know he was dead. The sound of his neck
breaking would be drowned out by the cries of 'Gertcha!' or whatever Jamie
Oliver style mockney exclamation the gamers gave each character. Infuriating
just doesn't cover it.
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|07:04 pm] |
Your next-gen console sucks
If there's one thing about the internet that
screams stupidity it's the endless number of 'Console X rocks! Console Y' sucks
arguments that crop up all over the place, especially when referring to
consoles that haven't been released yet. I mean, Christ, we're only now seeing
any real details about the PS3 or Wii, and even those are subject to change.
And as for the 360? It's still in its infancy and as any former 3D0 owner can
tell you, it doesn't matter how powerful a console is if it doesn't have a
decent games library to go with it.
Equally stupid is the need that some people
feel to actually defend/represent their console of choice. Microsoft/Sony et al
don't need defending - they have millions of pounds set aside to spend on
incomprehensible marketing campaigns. They don't care about you, nor do they
need your to defend their name on the horrible mire of idiocy that is gamefaqs
or any of the other million or so games forums out there. And if you're
thinking word-of-mouth marketing counts for something, I'm not going to take
advice from someone who can barely string two words together and thinks 'sucks'
is spelt with two x's.
Stupidity in gaming #407 - The Elder Scrolls:
Oblivion.
'So there I was, chilling out with my fellow
pira.. er, freelance sailors on the docks just next to our ship. When I
suddenly this guy comes running out of our ship. Never seen him before, don't
know how he got on the damn ship in the first place, but there he is, blue
robes, wierd mismatched helmet, the whole lot. I'm wondering what the hell's
going on, when the captain charges through the open door screaming at the top
of his lungs, waving his cutlass. 'Come back here, you fetcher' he yells and
sets off after the guy in blue.'
'So what did we do? We did what any self
respecting ship's crew would do - we fell on the captain and cut him down. Why?
Well, I thought the captain had gone crazy or something. I mean, it'd ruin a
man's reputation to be associated with a mad captain. No-one would ever hire me
again. I mean, if I'd known the blue guy was wanted by the guard, we would have
gone after him instead. And yes, it was a pretty stupid thing to do when I
think about it. But I just assumed that bag of gold the blue guy was carrying
was his own. It wasn't just me, either.. the cabin boy got a few good stabs in
too. I just guess we'll have to find a new captain. The first mate seems like a
good choice - he's got more sea-faring experience than all of put together.
Although him being a Khajiit puts some of the guys off - I mean, you don't want
to rush into the Captain's cabin to warn him that there's a vessel closing in
fast, only to find him licking his own asshole.'
'Anyway, I guess we'll work something out.
Would I do the same thing again? I dunno. But I guess it's a probably a good
idea if I leave this whole sorry incident off my CV.'
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| Backwards Compatibility Backpedalling |
[Jun. 1st, 2006|06:57 pm] |
Backwards Compatibility Backpedalling
Are you
one of those people who splurged your hard-earned cash on a X-Box 360, knowing
that while the launch line up wasn't hugely impressive, at least you'd be able
to play some and ultimately all of your original X-Box games on it? Did you
think that as there were two hundred or so games on Microsoft's initial
backwards compatibility list, at least another hundred titles would be added
within the space of, say, six months? Only to be massively disappointed when
the list swelled by a grand total of about ten games? Well, tough luck.
Microsoft has given a hearty 'screw you' to anyone planning on playing more
than one in five games from their X-Box collection. And that's not just my
kneejerk reaction fo the crappy backwards compatibility support that has, or
rather hasn't, been forthcoming from Microsoft - it's their official line,
too.
Don't
believe me? Microsoft's head of entertainment Peter Moore recently took gave a
presentation/interview
and had the following to say about
backwards compatibility...
'.. nobody is concerned anymore with
backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on backwards
compatibility ... more are coming, but at some point you go “That’s
enough.” I like to think we’ve upheld our end of the bargain in
making at least what I believe are 200-some, maybe even 300 games backwards
compatible.'
Under promised and over delivered? Maybe Mr
Moore has forgotten just what Microsoft promised, which was that at the very
least, the top-selling Xbox games would be compatible. Which, going by the
various publicly available sales charts include Timesplitters 3, Soul Calibur
2, Project Gotham Racing 2, Def Jam: Fight for New York, The Sims and so forth,
none of which run on the 360. Others, too, like Half-Life 2 and Star Wars:
Knights of the Old Republic are so bugged as to be barely playable. There's a
hell of a long way to go before Microsoft actually deliver on their promise,
and yet it looks like they've completely washed their hands of it. Someone
needs to tell Mr Moore that screwing over your customers is not generally a
good idea.
Stupidity in gaming #406 -
Black.
Scuse me, there. Yes, you, the one who's
supposed to helping me through this game? Yes, you, the chick with the gun.
Think you could actually try taking out that guy who's apparently got an
infinite supply of rockets and is firing at me repeatedly? Yes, I'd rather be
playing alongside a human character but the total absence of any co-op or
multiplayer mode pretty much puts paid to that. You won't? Oh, that's right,
now I remember. You're a goddamn moron with the intelligence of a piece of
balsa wood. You just keep shooting at ants or rocks or whatever the hell it is
you find so fascinating about the scenery and I'll just do the hard work.
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