Game Room ~ Road Fighter

Last week Microsoft launched its repackaged attempt to bring the golden age of arcades to the home and contemporary gamers. Krome studios have been tasked with a 3-year project to emulate a large number of classic (and of course not-so-classic) arcade titles for play on the Xbox 360 and PC. The service launched with a selection of 30 games, plucked from the vaults of Atari, Konami and Intellivision. Mana from heaven for gamers such as myself? Read on!

Upon loading you're presented with an empty arcade space to fill with purchased cabinets. 240 Moonbucks to play on a single platform, or 400 to play on either. There's also the option to pay for individual credits, but only a wealthy lunatic would go there. Various themes, decorations and props can be placed to clutter the whole thing up, with more unlocked as you reach goals within each game and 'level yourself up'. Your arcade becomes populated with the avatars of your Xbox Live friends. Or randomly-generated nobodies if you choose to play on PC.

Classy.

The real draw of this whole shebang is of course highscores. Microsoft's previous abortive attempt to bring the competitive spirit of classic arcades to Live stuttered and failed amid a lack of support and an unintuitive scoreboard system. Game Room does a sterling job of this part. Each game has score tables for friends and world rankings, while a handy news menu keeps you up to date with the triumphs of your rivals. Replays can be saved and uploaded, and specific challenges sent out.

This is exactly what I'd always wanted Live Arcade to be about, and indeed I've spent the past week engaged in furious highscore battles with my friends list.

On the technical side there's been a lot of grumbling from certain quarters about the accuracy of the emulation, with MAME being touted as the yardstick with which to measure. Let's never forget though that MAME itself is a work in progress, and is constantly being tweaked and changed. If someone is running Game Room side-by-side with a genuine cab and pointing out the differences then fair game. Otherwise, shut up and play.

On the subject of game pricing... there's a sense in the gaming community that old stuff shouldn't hold much value. I've been guilty of this myself sometimes. Where to draw the line though? For me, Gravitar is worth every... point... of 240 points, whereas I may baulk at being charged anything for Adventure on the 2600. Isn't that like saying I wouldn't want to buy a Blu-ray of an old film, just because it's old - regardless of any restoration work that had to be done? Sure, I can play all this stuff for free on MAME, but I like to think that given the opportunity to legitimately pay for a working version of an old game I'll take it. If keeping these titles alive in the face of endless military shooters means I have to cough up some dollars, I can live with that.

By the way, Game Room is exclusively about arcades as far as I'm concerned. You won't find any 2600s or Megadrives or whatever comes later bolted onto cabinets in my arcade.

Game Room nicely recreates the sights and sounds - though thankfully not the smells - of the old arcade scene. Only without bigger boys stealing your credits, or one guy staking an immovable claim to your favourite cabinet.

Road Fighter


I immediately gunned for Gravitar, Lunar Lander, Asteroids and Tempest, then I started looking at the other offerings. To say that this unassuming Konami title has taken me by surprise is an understatement. It's grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and refused to let go. It's absolutely tremendous.

I like me some top-down racing action. There's something really good about the feel of a road scrolling smoothly along beneath your vehicle, dodging and weaving through opponents. Road Fighter is a simple beast: you have a limited amount of fuel with which to clear several stages, all the time avoiding rivals and obstacles, and collecting bonuses. Crashing depletes your fuel gauge and when it's empty it's game over. Other road users range from harmless slow-moving traffic to dangerous drivers that actively try to shunt you into the barriers. Water, oil slicks and roadworks are thrown into the mix for good measure.


Taking a hit isn't neccessarily the end of the road though - steering into the skid can recover control before a crash, losing just a few seconds rather than a precious chunk of fuel. Stay clean for long enough and bonuses make an appearance - a jet plane, train and Konami Man himself. Bonus fuel cars can be driven into to add a little to the reserves, and serve as a stacking points bonus if you hit each one without a crash.

Road Fighter completely embodies the just one more go spirit of a great arcade game. Simple controls, colourfully attractive visuals and twitchy gameplay that begs to be mastered.

Final Fantasy XIII

Here's a thing: I spent a chunk of the evening earlier writing out an entry on Final Fantasy XIII, which I recently completed. As it went on, the points about it I wanted to make just got mired deeper and deeper into defending it against it's many vociferous detractors, and I couldn't be bothered any more. My intention to write positively about the game had been poisoned by the need to win hearts and minds.

So, here's my potted version:

Final Fantasy XIII is one of the best JRPGs I've ever played. At this moment I'm quite happy to say it's my favourite in the series after XII. It was a streamlined, action-packed, eye-popping experience that was more purely fun to play than almost any RPG I've tried. I loved the world, liked the characters, found the pacing to be perfect (I literally never tired of it or felt it dragged), and revelled in the gloriously entertaining combat system. It was a bold experiment that - for me - completely paid off.

Check it out. You might like it, you might hate it. I only ask that you go in without preconceptions or expectations of what you think a Final Fantasy should be.

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain is not a good videogame.

By almost all measures of videogame critique it falls way short. The controls are unresponsive and often abstract, the animation is stiff and awkward, 'gameplay' - nebulous term as it is anyway - amounts to nothing more than going through the motions of a scene until the opportunity to move on presents itself. Most of the time these sections deal in activities so mundane the only result is patience-trying tedium. You cannot fail, the plot moves on regardless.

This would be fine if the game were striding boldly into new arenas of storytelling. That, at least, would be something worthy of praise. Unfortunately Heavy Rain is hampered on these fronts by the dramatic quality of a made-for-cable thriller starring C-list actors delivering C-list performances, and a ludicrous plot shot full of holes.

The thing is, those cheap thrillers are often highly watchable. Maybe for the wrong reasons, but nevertheless - when time is ticking down and Frank Stallone, Don Swayze and Zeppo Clooney are closing in on their man, you're clutching the edge of your seat and munching on popcorn all the same. Of course, you've also spent the film laying on comedy commentary and pointing out every duff moment for laughs. Heavy Rain entertains immensely in the same way. Probably not what self-proclaimed writing genius and videogame auteur David Cage had in mind.

There's a lot of talk out there about how groundbreaking this is, how important it is. Did anyone play Fahrenheit? Did people conveniently forget that developers like Bioware and Bethesda have been spinning yarns where the actions of the player have far-reaching, game-altering consequences for years? What's more, games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 offer significantly richer writing and 'digital acting' than Heavy Rain ever manages. It may feature *glimpses* of truly photorealistic characters (in the right light, from the right angle), but toss in some robotic animation and a trip through Uncanny Valley and it immediately falls apart. Plus the fact that the decades-old output of Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls effortlessly trumps it in the script department.

As my good friend Johnny Beatdown remarked:

"if you're claiming that your story is the most important thing to happen in videogaming, that story had better be pretty damn good."

The lineage of Heavy Rain comes from text adventures, through point-and-clickers, mixed in with laserdisc games and FMV-driven 'interactive movies' from the heady days of the mid-90s, and of course Cage's own Fahrenheit. Videogame creators desperately trying to present a more traditionally dramatic experience, elevating videogame narrative to something more worthy, maybe something to sit alongside the best that literature and cinema could offer. Only with the twist that you were in control, manipulating the story and characters to fashion a unique kind of adventure.

I've spoken on this before. My unashamedly alarmist attitude towards this encroaching notion that videogames can only truly be accepted as art - or even a respected entertainment medium - if they strive to emulate the cinematic experience. I'm sorry, but I want my games to be games. What's more, I want them to be good games. Is that too much to ask? Changing a baby's nappy or scrambling some eggs may be something that my characters would do, but performing them via a series of button prompts will never be something that I want to do.

Heavy Rain does a couple of things very right, but only by default due to its nature as a videogame. What I mean is, it does deliver some genuinely pulse-pounding QTE moments thanks to the player's foreknowledge that it's entirely possible to lose any of the characters at any point. This lends certain scenes a true sense of urgency and desperation. I will happily admit to finding one particular sequence almost unbearably tense. Also, it presents some tough ethical choices that reverberate throughout the narrative. But, like I said - you can't lose as such, you can just end up at a very bleak conclusion. Even that isn't necessarily wrong. The ending of Seven isn't necessarily wrong, and indeed Cage has commented that players should really only go through the game once, accepting the consequences of their actions and having whatever they come out the other end with as their own experience of the game.

Maybe because he knows that if you do play it multiple times the cracks start to show. Inconsistencies in the plot where the game isn't clever enough to adapt to things the player's characters have experienced or missed, for example. I'm aware of how impractical it must be to cover every possibility, to provide alternate paths for every decision (and on this point the designers of Mass Effect 3 must be in some kind of flowchart hell right about now), but if you can't do it don't do a half-arsed job of it anyway and hope people put the flaws down to stuff they missed.

Heavy Rain does have multiple possible endings, and gamers being gamers will generally try to see every single one of them. It's going to be a hard slog, though. This entry comes across as incredibly damning, but I did value my experience at the very least and I will play it again. If I seem like I'm raging against the game it's only because I'm feeling like the majority of mainstream opinion is misguided - they're using the wrong tools to judge it. Allow me to kick back a little.

Which brings me full circle to the statement that Heavy Rain is not a good videogame. It's an occasionally thrilling, very flawed, badly acted, often wonky-looking interactive movie which is very little fun to play, but nevertheless is kind of worth playing. Certainly worth talking about.

If only to know the enemy.

Top Ten of 2009 - Gravity Crash

Okay look, if you know me and you know videogames, you know this is on the list. I've gone over my love for this type of game many times before, and Gravity Crash is basically what happens if developers look into my head and pull out a blueprint for the kind of game I most like to play.

Perfunctory description: You carefully pilot a spacecraft through treacherous cave systems collecting gems and picking up fuel and stranded comrades, while fighting against enemy ships, gun emplacements and the occasional boss, and taking out specific targets in the environment.

Check: Glowing vectors. Chippy soundtrack. Smooth and precise control.

If this seems like I'm willing to give a free pass to any game of this type... it's true. However, Gravity Crash happily sits among the best examples of the genre. Its only omission is some kind of tractoring mechanic as in Thrust or Solar Jetman - that kind of interplay tends to engage me the most. Still, there is plenty of variety in the challenges as it is, and the built-in level editor ensures an unlimited amount of new ones.

This game tussled with the two fighters below it, but in the end it's not even a fair fight. The judge is biased.

Top Ten of 2009 - The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match

I was never lucky/crazy enough to own a Neo Geo AES, so the King of Fighters series mainly existed in a parallel universe I didn't have access to, not until I started dabbling in MAME anyway. Even then, a lack of human opponents and a fearsome hardcore reputation ensured that my occasional forays into it were brief and baffling. It's no fun learning a fighter on your lonesome.

Fate intervened, and a friend steeped in KoF gave me a thorough introduction to the series, explaining characters, chunks of storyline, and most importantly playing techniques. A couple of marathon sessions on '98 and 2002 layed the groundwork, but the release of 2002UM early in the year sealed the deal.

Without passing myself off as someone who knows a great deal about the series - I certainly don't - I can say that 2002UM is basically the best version of KoF out there. Call it a greatest hits, a distillation of everything that works. It's another 'dream match' type of game, like '98. No storyline to speak of, just a whole bunch of characters spoiling for a fight (a mammoth roster ensures that everyone's favourites are accounted for).

To a pixel art fan, the AES-based KoF sprites and artwork still look great and move with enough fluidity to stand alongside their polygonal rivals, and the new splash art strikes a nice balance between classic SNK stylings and a more modern Anime look. I've found the character art to be very hit-and-miss from this series, with some truly scary years in there. With XI, XII and this instalment they seems to have finally hit a stride.

And the gameplay? As you might expect from a fighter that places above SFIV in this list, the action is responsive, crunchy, absolutely rock solid. One thing I really like about these games is the weight behind the hits and the physical feel of the characters on the screen. A lot of fighting game wannabes fail in delivering that very fundamental aspect.

Once again, the two-player arcade experience triumphs. It caters for a quick fix but it can also consume your entire day. It doesn't matter if it's not the most visually flashy kid on the block either, because - hoary cliché be damned - great gameplay is ageless.

Top Ten of 2009 - Street Fighter IV

Or, The Cammy and Rose Show

After years of speculation Capcom kicked off an initially promising 'Year of the fighter' with this astonishingly assured piece of work. Since Street Fighter 2 took the world by storm nearly two decades ago the series has branched and evolved into multiple iterations, becoming somewhat arcane for the fighting fan who likes his games quite straightforward: Me. Counters, elaborate combos and -isms were jettisoned in favour of bringing the scrapping back to the accessible immediacy that sunk its teeth into millions of gamers in the early 90s.

The buzz built slowly but surely around the title, positive word-of-mouth spread from preview builds, and lapsed gamers were stirred into enthusiasm once more, fuelled by the memories of mis-spent youth. This was a game you could put in front of someone who hadn't given videogames a second thought since the SNES days, and they'd play through the night.

A few new characters make an appearance, but when it comes to fighters I'm the kind of guy that latches onto a couple of favourites and doesn't budge. I learn a character and pretty much exclusively use them, and in this case it's Cammy. Light, fast, and rangy. Perfect for my in-out playing style. I also have no interest whatsoever in playing strangers online, so all my competitive gaming is done the way it should be: Two players, two sticks, one console, one TV. Favourite characters locked into epic sessions. Rematch rematch rematch. Much punching of shoulders and swearing. Occasional congratulations on particularly admirable wins.

It's not perfect. There are the usual balance issues associated with almost all fighters, and a hair-tearingly cheap end boss. I have issues with the art direction, specifically the character designs. While the ladies manage to escape any serious transgressions, the male characters aren't so lucky. Everyone's had a good thrashing from the ugly stick, particularly a distinctly un-Japanese Ryu. Seriously, this is Capcom we're talking about. Capcom effortlessly spits out iconic, stylish and beautiful character design... so what went wrong here?

Luckily everything else delivers. The stages are bold, colourful and filled with wonderful incidental details that complement the foreground action, and the music is uniformly excellent, particularly the theme for new character C. Viper and the 'Beautiful Bay' location.

My personal tastes in visuals aside, Street Fighter IV turned out to be not only one of the best games of the year, but a truly exemplary arcade fighting game and a damn near perfect two-player experience.

Top Ten of 2009 - PixelJunk Shooter

I'm writing less than a week after the launch of this game, which - knee-jerk reaction or not (time will tell) - has thundered into the upper tier of this list.

It's a goddamn twin-stick-cave-flying shooter.

Only it's not.

OK, if you've heard anything about this game you'll probably have heard how woefully inappropriate and almost misleading the name is. The decision on a title was thrown open to a competition, and for better or worse Shooter was chosen by the winner. You'll also probably hear that a more fitting title would be PixelJunk Fluid, or Elements. The reasoning being that this is more about manipulation of fluid-based physics than taking on hordes of enemies with white-hot laser death.

Physics done well in games can be a joy to play around with. Anyone who's played Half-Life 2 probably spent a good deal of time just messing about with the Gravity Gun, and LittleBigPlanet - while deeply flawed as a platform game - provided an incredibly fun and inventive play set. There's a feel to perfectly-pitched physical movements that is immensely satisfying, and PixelJunk Shooter nails it. So we have water, lava, ice, and magnetic liquid metal to manipulate in the service of rescuing stranded miners, solving puzzles, and dealing with hazards and enemies. Lava melts ice, water cools and hardens lava, and so on. There's a definite sequence of progression through each (rather small-scale) level, and it's the solving of this sequence in the most efficient way that makes the game so compulsive.

PixelJunk Shooter employs the very popular flat-coloured Flash style of visual, which I fully admit I'm not much of a fan of. Flash animation almost invariably makes me think of Monty Python, and my head equates that with a kind of half-arsed cheap 'n' cheerful effect. I can get over it with this game though, because the other elements are done so artfully. The music is lovely and the control of the craft is very intuitive and smooth.

Relatively short and very forgiving in its handling of failure, PixelJunk Shooter provides a wonderfully chilled and enjoyable meshing of old-school concepts and modern technology.

Top Ten of 2009 - Ion Assault

Preview footage of Ion Assault suggested it would be a fairly traditional twin-stick shooter akin to... well... every other twin-stick shooter out there. When it proved to be something different it critically suffered somewhat for it. Damned if you do, etc.

Whilst it does sometimes get very hectic, Ion Assault is more a game of precise movements and carefully though-out routes. The right stick is used for orientation and aiming rather than simply firing directionally, and the player has to absorb particles to charge their main weapon which can then be released to destroy rocks and enemies in the enclosed arena that each level presents. The movement of the particles forces the player to maneuver a lot - and sometimes put themselves in heightened danger in order to gather enough power to fight with. Destructible pods drop bonus weapons - homing drones, time-stoppers, boosts to the absorbtion power of the ship to name a few - and each set of stages in a level is capped off with a technical and exhausting boss fight.

Now, I'll play any twin-stick shooter. Alongside cave-flying gravity games it's my go-to genre for zone gaming thrills. Still, I was more than pleasantly relieved when Ion Assault confounded my expectations. Aesthetically it completely does it for me - spaceships, funky colours, chippy music, particle effects. Gameplay-wise I find it tough and satisfying. I quickly grew to appreciate and enjoy what it set out to be, rather than disparaging it for not being what I expected.

Top Ten of 2009 - Shatter

I'm partial to the odd Breakout clone every now and again, but to be honest if someone makes a really good one there's not much else to do with the basic concept. Thus Batty on the Spectrum sits in my top 100 pretty much unchallenged.

Shatter isn't a threat to that game, because it takes the 'bat and ball' framework and twists it in all kinds of ways, resulting in a quite unique experience. Vertical, horizontal and circular levels - the latter restricting the player to a lower-third section, end-of-stage bosses that require quite a bit of precise and strategic play, and a push/pull mechanic that allows the player to draw in energy from the remains of destroyed blocks or influence the flightpath of their projectiles. Blocks don't simply sit waiting to be taken out either, and once hit entire sections of the formations will fall towards the player, forcing judicious use of every trick at their disposal and making things frequently quite overwhelming.

Thanks to all these extra features Shatter sometimes feels more like a hybrid of shooter and puzzle game. You have to think about much more than simply losing your 'ball', and the busier levels and especially the bosses become a tense back-and-forth of pushing/pulling, dodging, shielding and occasionally unleashing your collected energy in a barrage of destruction. Lives can fall away quickly during particularly chaotic moments - especially if you're enough of a gambler to fire out two or three projectiles at a time (each counting as a life).

Shatter plays wonderfully and is very addictive, but the icing on the cake is the soundtrack. Videogame electronica at its very, very best. In fact the soundtrack is without question my favourite album of this year and is probably responsible for a good 50% of my enjoyment in playing the game. That's not a strike against the gameplay though, as anyone who knows me knows how much importance I place on the music of videogames.

Top Ten of 2009 - Torchlight

From the guys that brought you Diablo - a game just like Diablo.

That might seem a little dismissive were it not for the fact that no-one makes Diablo clones quite as well as the guys that made Diablo. It's what they're good at and they know it. The path to Torchlight has been somewhat torcherous* but fledgling studio Runic Games delivered the goods on a light, fast-moving, loot-heavy action RPG that managed to sate the hunger for Diablo III - at least for a little while.

'Diablo Clone' sums it up more pertinently than would be legally comfortable in other circumstances, but I'm assuming it's all good buddies between Runic and Blizzard. So, we have a structure and layout mashed together from the first two Diablos - one town, one dungeon of many levels, unidentified objects, town portals, health and mana potions, skill trees, sidequests, and an art style heavily reminiscent of Warcraft. Oh, and a soundtrack from the Diablo composer that pretty much is the Diablo soundtrack.

But hey - it's all good because that's kind of what we wanted, and Torchlight kept me entertained for a couple of dozen hours. Not bad at all for a £15 effort from a small studio. It's biggest Achilles' heel in longevity terms is the absence of multiplayer, and after about 20 levels the grind of solo loot gathering does begin to set in quite sharply. However, mod tools were made available shortly after launch and good work is being done by dedicated fans already, so there's ample reason to revisit the town of Torchlight in future.

*sorry.

Top Ten of 2009 - The Beatles: Rock Band

The peripheral-based rhythm action genre burned incredibly brightly for me for a couple of years, and the zenith of it could never be anything less than a title charting the career of one of my favourite bands, featuring songs I'd grown up on and telling an inspiring, irresistable musical story.

Presentation is key here and anything less than total respect for the material simply wouldn't do. Guitar Hero: Metallica showed the world how to churn out a glorified track pack and charge a premium for it, whereas TB:RB feels crafted with care from the outset. It's a bona-fide standalone title that takes the polish of previous Rock Band titles and mixes in a few new elements - most notably a full vocal harmony - resulting in a worthy tribute and a dream come true for fake instrument wielding Beatles fans.

Perhaps the harshest criticism I could level at the game would be the lack of challenge, but even that in a rhythm action title is a moot point. It's all about playing and replaying purely for fun, a couple of hours of euphoric multiplayer here and there. It seemed a sure bet to woo the casual market and storm the charts, but unfortunately EA's woeful marketing put paid to that.

After this it felt like there was nowhere else to go. I'd gotten everything I could out of the genre and it was time to put aside the endless iterations and weekly DLC. Returning to vanilla Rock Band didn't hold the appeal it once did, and I realised the dream was over. But what a beautiful dream it was, and what a note to end on.

Top Ten of 2009 - Blast Off

I hadn't really given much thought to my PSP for most of its life. Mainly it was just something I had, that I occasionally played about with but generally regarded as a bit of a dead-end, games-wise. I'd paid even less attention to the minis lineup of downloadable games, believing some common consensus that they had little to offer and were regarded as something of an afterthought even by Sony itself.

Recently though, I've been finding an awful lot to like in that modestly-produced library (if this weren't strictly a list of new games from this year the sterling conversions of the Amiga classics Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies would be included).

Blast Off presents a simple scenario: Astronauts are stranded in space, and the player has a rocket ready to launch with a limited amount of fuel in which to rescue them. The problem here is the presence of planets, asteroids and black holes - each exerting their various gravitational forces on the ship. Veer too close or choose the wrong angle - or indeed run out of fuel - and it's curtains. Skillful maneuvering and constant correction of thrust is required to navigate the obstacles, often using the pull of gravity to slingshot out to targets before heading for the safety of the warp gate home.

Each level has a minimum number of astronauts to rescue before the gate will open, with anything above that falling into the realm of bonus points. The levels are scored on that, plus remaining fuel and the astronauts' precious air. Beating the game minimally can be done quite quickly, but it's the prospect of those highscores and 100% completions that promise to bring the player back time and again. Things get quite fiendish towards the end, with multiple objects following intertwined orbits. Here the game manages to balance fun and frustration perfectly - in failure you're always certain the next attempt will be a success.

So we're dealing with spaceships, gravity and delicate controls. A simple setup, unfussy front-end and the very essence of one-more-go portable gameplay. It's handheld nirvana, quite frankly.

Blast Off takes me back. Back to the immediate thrills and fun of the arcade, back to the homebrewed sensibility of 8-bit computer games. And it cost about the same as a cup of coffee.

Top Ten of 2009 - Resident Evil 5

"Sheva, I see a list... and we're in it!"

Here's a nice non-controversial choice to kick off my favourite games of 2009. I suppose I should start with the caveat that I give to anyone who asks about it: Play it in co-op with a friend.

I don't like Resident Evil 4. Yes, I'm the person out there that doesn't like it. The controls, the viewpoint, the setting... I've tried many, many times to 'click' with the game and sometimes I've almost convinced myself I've enjoyed it, but it's simply not to be. More than anything I want to like it because it's Resident Evil. I love the series, I love the characters. Unfortunately when it comes down to it I just don't like the way it plays.

Resi 5 looked to be much the same for me. Only the addition of what many considered to be a hindrance - the co-op focus - raised it from being another series footnote I took a pass on, to being one of my most enjoyable modern gaming experiences.

Resident Evil 5 is not a horror game. Sure, there are a few spine-tingly moments but they are more to do with the panic of running low on ammo and being cornered. There is never that sense of foreboding that certainly came with the first two games in the series. No, this is pretty much a straight-up action game. Puzzles are kept to an elementary minimum. There is little to no backtracking. Enemies come in fast-moving hordes and you absolutely must work together to prevail against them.

It's that co-operative element that for me makes the game shine. The moment-to-moment tactics that have to be decided and acted on, watching each other's backs, sharing out resources. Moving through a location with SWAT-like efficiency, covering doors, clearing out rooms. All the time piecing together the convoluted history of Umbrella, Albert Wesker's part in it, and the fate of an old friend. The game is punctuated with some quite impressive boss battles - some erring on the side of frustration as often happens with these things, but as with all good boss battles the way to victory can be worked out piece by piece in the moment, strategies adapting until the eureka moment presents itself.

It's visually very impressive, often stunning. The texture range and quality is enormous, and there are moments that feel truly photorealistic, particularly towards the end with some eye-popping lighting. The character work in particular felt unrivalled at the time. Perhaps only succeeded by the likes of Uncharted 2. These characters feel alive, with totally believable expressions and body language.


I'm currently replaying it on the PC in single-player mode, and yes, some of the downsides to that defiantly co-op focus have reared their heads from time to time - specifically the actions of the now AI-controlled partner, but regardless of this I'm enjoying it again. Perhaps because I'd already been primed to forgive its faults by the multiplayer experience. It's not perfect by any means, but it manages to sit somewhere towards the top end of the pantheon of Resident Evil titles.

Capcom took a risk trying to move the series into fresh territory, and I think for the most part it pays off. Certainly Code: Veronica and "0" proved that the classic concept was outstaying its welcome, and it's highly unlikely that the giddy heights of Resident Evil 2 would be scaled again without a major overhaul.

I think they're stepping in the right direction.

Redirection

My blog is 'holding a pose' at the moment, but allow me to pimp a friend's project:

http://johnnybeatdown.blogspot.com/

100 games that are worth writing something about, be it good or bad. A work in progress, and very entertaining. Check it out!

Yellow Rose

I've been working on this for the past month or so, and I tried a bit of experimenting with Flemish layering techniques. I'm happy with how it turned out. It's got a kind of grungy look to it, which I really took a liking to as I worked more and more. Painting leaves is hard work! I had to find a fine line between going insanely detailed and losing my mind, and giving just enough of a hint of the fine details to achieve a high level of realism.

This was a lot of fun and very rewarding, so I'll probably do some more flowers in the near future.

Ingrid Bergman

Audrey Hepburn

Art mojo in full flow, everything else can get stuffed.

Except Rock band! Iron Maiden 12-track pack. Bliss.

It's Hedley!

I drew something!

OK, so... gaming hasn't quite taken a complete backseat. I've actually played a whole bunch of things in the past several months. The main thing that happened I guess is that I discovered the greatness of motion sickness wristbands which - while not 100% effective on everything I've tried - at least allowed me to comfortably play or finish several games that I've always wanted to check out.

Call of Duty 4 - The biggie. A game I've always been envious to hear about. Well, I'm very happy to report that this was completely successful. I hammered through it in about 4 days and it most certainly lived up to my expectations.

Portal - I was able to finish this, one of the previous worst offenders. Yes, it's great.

Gears of War - Another very acute sickness-inducer. Funnily enough on being able to play it comfortably I found it to be incredibly boring and repetitive. Ah well.

I was able to finish off Uncharted, check out plenty of Bioshock, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, more Half-Life 2 (until realizing I find it very dull), and complete Resident Evil 5 in co-op with a friend. More indepth stuff on some of those later.

Bullet points to round off this half-arsed effort of a post:

• I think Rock Band may well be my all-time favourite game
• Street Fighter IV is amazing, but not as fun as The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited match
• Resident Evil 5 is more fun than Resident Evil 4
• Realization of own Star Trek fandom
• There are a great many things in life that I actually don't like as much as I like to think I do
  

Three months?

How did that happen?

Er... I'm almost ready to write some stuff. So much gaming has happened since my last entry that it's going to take a whole bunch of entries to cover. Unfortunately this isn't the first of those entries. This is just me defibrillating the blog.

Folklore

I completed the Playstation 3 game Folklore earlier today, after a couple of days of fairly intense play. I've had it since the start of the year, but other things got in the way of me getting really stuck into it, and a silly bit of impatience and poor planning made me fall out with it for a while. I'm extremely glad I came back to it because it's become my favourite game on the system, and really one of my favourite gaming experiences overall.

The game is played through the stories of two characters, brought by circumstance to the sleepy Irish village of Doolin. Ellen, a young girl searching for her mother whom she believed died when she was a child, and Keats, a hard-bitten skeptical reporter looking into a murder story with supernatural overtones. Ellen and Keats are both drawn into the Netherworld, becoming crucial players and pawns in a power stuggle between the Faeries. At the same time, Ellen uncovers the truth behind her own past, and the dark secrets of the villagers are brought to light.

Folklore plays out in two distinct sections. The Doolin parts, where Ellen and Keats talk to the villagers, prompting memories and leads surrounding the mysteries of the place, and the Netherworld parts, where they engage in combat with a wide variety of Folks - creatures of myth and legend, spread over several different realms each culminating in an epic battle with the resident Folklore - the 'boss monster' of the realm.

The hook is that in order to fight against the Folks, Ellen and Keats have to collect Folks to use as weapons. There are over 100 individual Folks in the various realms, with particular strengths and weaknesses, and it's the exploitation of these that forms the backbone of the combat system. In order to add a Folk to their arsenal, Ellen and Keats must deal enough damage to it that it becomes weakened enough for them to absord its Id. This is done in a variety of ways using the SIXAXIS motion-sensing controller. Most basically, after holding R1 to ensnare the Id, the controller is flicked upwards, pulling the Id out of the Folk and into the players' collection. Other Folks require the controller to be shaken, carefully balanced, or rocked from side to side. Sometimes timing comes into play as well, and sometimes a combination of these actions is required.

Once a Folk is captured it can be assigned to one of the four face buttons and summoned at will (limited by an energy reserve). The Folk pops out, performs its particular action, then disappears. Folks can be strengthened by repeated use, by absorbing a certain number of the same type, or by using specific items on them. Throughout each realm the player will find pages of a picture book relating to the Folks of the realm and the Folklore. Here in pictorial form are clues to which Folks should be used on which for the best results. Most are self-explanatory; seeing a Folk that is water-based usually leads to the conclusion that a fire-based Folk would be good to tackle it with. However, there are some non-elemental Folks, and some that require charming to coax out their Id, for example.

Collecting and 'levelling up' the Folks becomes quite addictive in itself, and there's certainly a satisfaction in snaring a particularly slippery one. In fact, I found the combat as a whole to be very fun and engaging. While the game is a little on the easy side it does demand quite a bit of quick thinking and it keeps you on your toes - especially when you are faced with numerous Folks of different types. Costumes come into play with regard to the magical cloaks that Ellen wears. As she progresses through she acquires a variety of different outfits, each with specific properties (usually elemental protection). Some of these are found easily enough, but a couple do take rather more effort.

Perhaps a contentious issue is the fact that the game has to be played through by both Ellen and Keats, and they tread much the same ground. The Folks they collect and their particular attacks are often unique, and sub-boss encounters are different (as well as each characters' perspective on the unfolding story), but it is potentially offputting to essentially repeat each chapter. However, I found that by playing through exclusively as Ellen until the story paths merged, then taking Keats to the same point, I was removed enough from Ellen's experience in the early parts of the game for it not to feel stale with Keats. That, and the experience gained by Ellen in terms of what to expect in the realms made Keats' journey very swift.

Visually the game is a real treat. A lot of care and attention has gone into fashioning the Faery realms, each one very distinct. The use of colour and range of texture is breathtaking, and incidental animations abound. You really have to get in close and analyze things to see the seams, but it's a triumph of imaginative design over poly count. Away from the dazzle of the Nether Realms, Doolin itself is attractively rendered in its own way, particularly at night. It's undoubtedly one of the most visually appealing games I've ever played.

The visual beauty of the game is matched by a score that runs from haunting piano pieces to weird carnival nightmare music, and appropriately dramatic pieces to accompany the Folklore encounters.

After that there's the subject matter, and Folklore is right up my street in that regard. Myths and legends, folklore, and a murder mystery. What more could I ask for? The translation and vocal performances are well above average, and while the story concerns itself with enough flashbacks and half-glimpsed memories to befuddle you a lot of the time, by the end it comes together quite neatly.

It says enough about a game these days that not only will I finish it, but I will buy all the downloadable content available (extra quests to undertake in both Doolin and the Netherworld, and alternative constumes), but I will also go out of my way to collect everything in it.

Of course, being something of a hidden gem the game failed commercially if not critically (though some were very harsh in their criticisms). Maybe it's simply a hard sell, being very much a fanciful fairy tale on a system currently dominated by more hardline action titles. I would urge anyone to at least give it a try though, because if it does click it has the power to captivate and delight, and the journey into this Netherworld is well worth taking.