GamesBurp

Well it doesn’t get any nerdier than this. Not only is it a video game but it’s an MMO video game. Not only that but it’s based on comics. Simply by downloading the beta client I instantly became 30% less attractive to the opposite sex.

My average handsomeness aside, DCUO is a big deal not least because it requires a substantial investment from you.

First off the disc costs £30 at least. Next you must subscribe at a monthly price point of £9.99. Then you must invest your time, because if I’m paying a sub every goddamn month then I will play at every opportunity I’m given.

Cracking one out? That means you’ve got one free hand mister (or ms).

Taking a shit? Time to invest in a commode.

So what do you get for your money? Why exactly should you drop cash on DCUO?

First you must create a superhero that you will be unhappy with in some small way for as long as you can stand to keep them.  Then you must select a generic power and combat skill which will be mismatched and will underwhelm you, at first. Then simply witness your super being birthed into a world of other people whose pseudo-DC avatars are making them feel the exact same way.

But damn it I WILL enjoy this.

I chose flying and then wished I’d chosen super speed. Then a grew to like the flying animations, they’re pretty smooth and handy for carrying stuff. I mooched around Gotham and beat up some guys, smashed some stuff and rescued some people. The tasks themselves were just happening and I just kind of ticked the objectives off the list. So far, so pedestrian.

What it really needs to give it meaning is context and just as I was getting fed up, so Batman chimes in and wants me to put down some thugs. So now I’m part of a world and I have a purpose. So I take out some thugs, smash some stuff….

Then I need to rescue Batwoman because she’s too smokin’ hot to escape from the Scarecrow. So I go fight him and smash some stuff. Then I fly around Gotham to see if I can scare a civilian by taking them up a tall building but I don’t really see anyone.

DCUO has a huge stock of source material and a potentially neverending stream of content. Whenever I began to go through the motions there’d be a new quest thread or I’d level up and gain a new trait to expand my skill set. You’re flying can get faster, you can tag on an extra move to your combo or develop a new power.

As it’s the beta, it’s unfair to criticise it based on glitches so I won’t go into that. It did however, have an air of being a little bit, well, boring.

Everyone has their costume which looks like the kind of costume an ordinary person would come up with. Which it is. Then some powers, so I had flight and fire. No real reason for this combination. Just because. Then I knew martial arts. Again no particular reason why I would know martial arts.

In The Incredibles Syndrome said of his plan to give powers to all ordinary peoples “when everyone’s super…..no one will be”.

That’s kind of what DCUO does. It’s like a massive, un-licensed DIY superhero costume party.

I could live with this though, partly because that’s an awesome idea and partly because there is the promise of tons of adventures and you do get to fight with the big characters but then another thing gets stuck in the craw.

The subscription.

I understand it costs a lot to make an MMO and to continue supporting it with new content. But come on. £10 a month.

If you can buy your PSN cards cheaper than their value, which is possible, then it’ll be slightly less. For pushing into a new market on console I expected an innovative new payment plan which took account of the fact console gamers by definition and virtue of their machine, will by-and-large play many games, and will not want to be tethered to one indefinitely. A standard sub does this.

I want to play this game, I really do. But I can’t justify that price month after month, and the amount of time that is worth, plus the other games that I will want to play. Then I’ll feel I need to keep playing or I lose my character and everything I invested. Sony Online Entertainment also operate Free Realms, a micro-transaction oriented family MMO. It make huge revenue. Lord of the Rings Online just tripled their income by moving from subs to free-to-play. DCUO needs to get with the times to go mainstream.

DCUO is good, it just isnt…Super.

Hi cats and kittens, sorry I haven’t posted in a week I’ve been trying to make plans and I had a little time off and so on down the list of excuses but in my defence; your face!

So I won’t own GT5 for another month but I know a man who does and instead of a 200 page colossus flopping out of his package (is it ever impossible to insert a dick joke?)(Heh-heh….insert a dick heh heh heh.) he was greeted with a ten page misery.

I love game manuals, it’s part of the ritual; the smell of it, the quality of the paper, the blurb. The game manual though is on its way out. Why sure I can see why. For one it’s much cheaper to do without in terms of materials cost. For another games are much more accessible these days and so the general audience can easily pick up a well designed game just from playing the opening levels. More games use the method of “show don’t tell” and include tutorial levels, even if they aren’t named as such. Most people probably just don’t read the manual, preferring instead to just jump right in, and I can respect that.

For me the manual was what I had to cherish between getting the game and playing the game. Be it christmas or birthday mornings where I’d have all the presents unwrapped but not access to the machine, or getting bought one in town and needing to interact with the game in some way on the journey home. Like I say; ritual. I guess we as a gaming audience grew up and were able to buy our own games and even play on them whenever we want (whenever we want ladies, that’s right I set my own bedtime) so the manual becomes an obstacle.

The game manual just has less to offer, control schemes are by and large intuitive and similar across a genre (any FPS will handle more or less the same), nobody cares about the warnings and concept art is a whole other thing and can get more money as Special Edition addendums or art books in their own right. The one for Okami is fucking lush by the way.

The games which would be well served by a manual tend to go a different route. Civilization V is one of the last games I bought and contained a couple hundred paged PDF. They cited the reason of saving paper for this delivery method and as they had clearly put a lot of work and a healthy dash of charm into it, I found no reason to argue that this was the correct decision. I was going to be on a computer anyway, right?

So it’s just one of those things that gets left by the wayside when progress is made. I don’t disagree with it, it’d be stupid to include a useless manual for nostalgia alone. I guess I’ve got plenty of old ones hanging around though. And at the end of the day it’s ultimately the game itself which inhabits the memory. It’s just a shame that a habit dies.

You know how in crime dramas the detective usually makes slow progress to uncover the mystery? Sometimes though, right at the start he knows who did it and the rest is merely academics.

Similarly, let’s get right down to the crux of this thing.

Undead Nightmare is a post ejaculation blow job. Not strictly necessary to proceedings and you may not be able to get into it directly after the main thrust, but it’s very pleasant and welcome nonetheless.

Go play the main story in Red Dead Redemption if you haven’t already and I’ll see you in 20-30 hours depending on how sidetracked you get, which you will.

So after John Marston kills Dutch and returns to his family, Undead Nightmare drops in on the homestead and throws a plague of the undead down on the kitchen table. However inconvenient it is to the guy, it’s pretty entertaining for us and the placement of it within the main story is pitched just right. A time where several months elapse and many things can be assumed to have happened “off screen” as it were.

The family get bit so you have to tie them up, barricade them in the cabin and jolly well ride out to find a cure. John is nothing if not a man of action. Humanity was lovingly woven into RDR, no matter its leanings, disgraces, prejudices and triumphs and it is good to see that Rockstar have put the same effort into this content, and not just booted it out of the door armed with whatever they cut from the main story. Every person has a theory on the undead thumping about above ground. The government. The Jews. Gravedigger Seth. Mexicans. Sin. Anything people fear. Which is everything across the spectrum if you sample a large enough group.

Anyway John must ride back out west to see what the to-do is all about. He reconnects with various people from his main adventure, most unimportant to the plot but it helps to re-establish the neurons. It makes it feel as if it is a world, as surely these would naturally be places one would be drawn to.

Zombies are everywhere these days and the comfort is that we only fall over them in the street figuratively. This almost played out genre is thoroughly acceptable here because for one it is Rockstar, who we have come to trust. And for another because this western was so refreshing to us, by association the follow on content is as well. It exists under RDR’s graces for the most part but that is not to deny that it is a good piece of work in its own right. The application is the thing.

After all’s said and done most of the stuff is merely a skin. There are four types of Zombie and any animals are the same as their main game counterpart except for an “undead” prefix. Fine. My favourite part though, is how bodies of water on the map are displayed in red. Subtle but nice.

As with RDR the main plus is the lighting and environment. They’ve introduced a mist. A small alteration but you can see it floating over lowlands or while you’re in it at sunrise it will eerily illuminate the sky. It is the very faintest of nuances but expertly done.

The general mechanics are all the same. We have some new challenges for the journal; undead hunter, undead sharpshooter and so on. You may choose to liberate a town from a zombie onslaught for which you earn a new weapon and valuable ammunition, so we are encouraged to do so if we want to remain effective. A canny move to extend the play time, and far from un-enjoyable.

There are clear graveyard missions and bounty hunts are now missing person side quests. A particular highlight is the addition of mythical beasts. We have Sasquatch in the mountains, Chupacabra in Mehico and the four horses of the Apocalypse. The four horses give you almost unlimited stamina to get around quicker along with a fiery offensive from War and head bursting goodness from Death.

This gets into a small problem I have, with this and RDR. I want to level up, so I try to complete side tasks before I complete the main story. I want to get all the outfits so that I can use their benefits while there is still an actual point to playing. I understand that there must be a fine line walked here. If it is too easy to level up too early in the main quest then the game becomes too easy or is subject to an enemy difficulty grading in accordance with your abilities. Part of the charm of Red Dead is that even with a boss, such as they exist here, a headshot is still a headshot so the grading does not fit in. This leaves the essential placement of the levelling up segments.

Here’s my problem, I’ve completed the story on RDR and Undead Nightmare before collecting all the additional skills and items. So now I have no reason to go for unfinished outfits except to be completist, but as they serve a function I want to get some function out of them. Thus I now feel no need to revisit either the main game or this DLC to really finish up.

That said, the way Undead Nightmare ends by  slotting back into the main story is inspired. Slipping back into John’s worn boots is great after the surprise of being forced to ride around as that little gobshite Jack Marston.

“Work ya damn nag”. Shudder.

So yes, you do want to buy this. It is one of the better DLCs out of any game you care to mention. You can enjoy it on its own and pretty soon you can buy the standalone version on disc but for the full enjoyment and appreciation you need to have played and completed Red Dead Redemption.

Team Bondi have used some wicked crazy facial capture on LA Noire and although it looks just a little bit off, like you’re squinting, it is also remarkably good at tying down a performance. The outstanding characteristic of this trailer, surpassing even the wonderful score and post -noire clichés is the breadth of character.

As you will be basing your investigation of the cases off how people act and react this efficient characterisation is essential. I’m assuming that we’ll be spending our game time trying to decipher the infamous Means-Motive-Opportunity triangle by squinting. And that’s why the faces look as though I am squinting at them.

I’ve only ever gone for arcade racers but growing some love in the lead up to Gran Turismo 5 and having played it at Eurogamer I can exclusively reveal I am very moist for this title.

In my underpants.

So even though the game has just gone gold, somehow, some people already have a copy and are being asked by Sony to take down their YouTube posts of screen caps. Because god forbid they should get free advertising.

So mooching around some I found this poor quality video of the game’s intro sequence.

It looks pretty legit but I will have to confirm its authenticity via my network of industry contacts.

*puts porn on continuous loop. screams at garden furniture mail order call centres. fails to realise phone is unplugged*

I guess the jury will have to remain out on this one until Sony forwards someone their review copy.

Ahem.

In the interests of whoring up some cheap hits I’m posting Black Ops content just one day before release.

So Hutch is probably the most famous if not the most successful COD player, being picked up by Machinima like some truck stop hooker only instead of receiving a bludgeoning and shallow burial they gave him a job. Thumbs up for him, and he’s a natural choice to forward a copy of Black Ops and have in what appears to be a press lobby. Here he is getting a bit of a hammering (like the truck stop hooker) but also giving back and coming out ok (unlike the lay by temptress).

The advance your weapon every time you score a kill match type.

And standard Team Deathmatch

Well there we are. I hope you weren’t expecting John Simpson quality journalism here.

There’s probably some kind of legal impediment to prevent me from actually recommending you get stoned on the 10th of November.

So in an unrelated matter I will use the term “fisting” and its variants and you can take that to mean whatever the hell you want it to mean. I wont judge.

When November 10th rolls around you’ll be thinking

“just another Wednesday, why bother with getting fisted today?”

then

“shit the bed, it’s time for the weekly PSN and/or XBL updates, exclamation point”

then you’ll stumble across a brand spankers title by the newly re-invigorated Atari.

Atari have been around forever, they went the way of Sega before Sega went the way of Sega and now back under the wing of original co-founder Nolan Bushnell, they are after the online download only short game market. It’s probably one of the gaming sectors with most potential for growth.

Anyway, this title called Undergarden may pop out at you especially if you have, mere moments before, dabbled in a spot of fisting. If you had not then seeing the link window on your screen will probably make you want to get fisted straight away.

“But Professor Robot” (that’s me kids) you’ll cry “I spend all my money on fisting and/or I’m far to fisted too access the buy screen right now”

Well fear not because those peeps over at Atari (who may or may not have been getting their fist on while developing this title) have decided to release some sweet, sweet Demo time for you. So if you’re like me and have no money then pop on and have a look. If you have money then get the Demo so you know whether to spend that money on this. It’s win-win and you cannot fail.

Unless you’re so fisted you can’t actually stand to get to your TV.

I will most certainly be hankering after the demo, I shall leave it to your imaginations whether I shall be getting fisted while doing so. It looks kind of like an HD flash game. Hopefully you can mook around with the settings because I’d really like to reduce the ambient light and push up the contrast to emphasize those neons going on, really make it pop. It’s actually a 20 level puzzler so you’ll be able to engage some of that left brain function as a bonus.

If you can imagine PixelJunk Eden lounging around getting fisted with PixelJunk Shooter on a beanbag with the water levels of Donkey Kong Country instigating the whole affair, then that’s pretty close to what we have here.

So how can you not want to at least check it out?

Check out Chelios’ excellent complete introduction to Black Ops multiplayer HERE

This is a few days old, because we are such bleeding edge reporters. This morning I even won an award.

True that it was an award for a delicious sandwich. And I awarded it to myself.

But how many awards have you won today?

No. No I didn’t think so.

I have a conflicting relationship with COD games. It’s fair to say that they are probably top banana when it comes to online multiplayers, in terms of popularity at least. In terms of quality at most, some would argue. As a person who wants gaming to be more progressive, to be about more than headshots I dislike what they are about when you get right down to it.

Then I punch myself in the arm, tell myself to stop being such a douche and just enjoy something awesome. It’s the same part of me that loves Commando, Crank and Rambo. It’s the part of you that’s still a ten year old kid playing war with your friends. The part of you which has no idea how to take something seriously. It’s like on these bullshit “best ____ movie/TV show of _______” programmes. An arbitrary panel tries to dissect in soundbites of 15 seconds or less how these movies/TV shows worked and someone inevitably pipes up with how He-Man was gay or some shit. Some people just try looking into stuff too hard and make something out of nothing.

So not gay.

COD is kinda like that. You’ve got to just enjoy it for what it is and stop being a nonce.If you have a pretentious side like I do, give it some mescaline and send it away for a little while.

Anyway I sometimes hate loving it because I play it so damn much that I tend to exclude playing all else. I reach for another game but then boot up to find I inserted COD. It’s a snappy arcade shooter so you think you can just get by with one match. Which turns into two matches and so on.

And god help you if you give it a rest for two weeks because you’ll jump back in at whatever level you got up to, only you will get a shoeing because you’ve lost the edge. You’ll need to spend a couple of hours getting back to your previous ability, and then because you’ve re-invested that time you feel you need to commit more time to make it all worth it. Then you’re hooked again.

Such is the genius of its design. My rounds tend to vacillate between super-human triumph, and shrugging whinge about latency. More often the latter. Either way, only Demon’s Souls can match it for booting your adrenal gland into your heart at every instance. This is what makes it, roundly, the most accomplished online multiplayer made thus far.

Beards of cool now, not creepy.

So I wasn’t going to buy Medal of honor. It came out too close to Black Ops for me to justify it but then the wife came to the rescue. She decided to trade in her Wii and all the games so she could get more Professor Layton games on the DS. I convinced her she should get me Medal of honor as well.

So here’s a quick review. It’s alright. End.

Ok so you want more detail. (I know you don’t just humour me.) The campaign is shorter, shorter than MW2 even. I think I did it in 5 or 6 hours, on normal. The game is stupidly easy. It’s dramatic and it’s cinematic but sometimes you just feel like you’re along for the ride, not actually knee deep in the shit.
There is a nice variety to the missions though so it never gets boring but it does feel like it’s all too brief. In the end I had fun for the brief time it went on but at the end I didn’t really feel like it had blown me away. (That’s what she said).

So multiplayer, it’s alright. The problem with FPS shooters is they seem to not realize why Call of Duty is so popular. In COD you have so much choice and variety. Lots of game modes, lots of maps, lots of weapons, lots of attachments, perks and so on. It’s what keeps you playing.
MOH isn’t a bad MP experience but I don’t know what would make me keep playing it. There are a total of about 12 weapons I think. You have to pick a rifleman class, a spec ops class or a sniper class. That’s it; you can barely customize your kit at all. So there is no drive to unlock things, once you’ve unlocked the red dot site for each weapon (or a better scope in the case of the sniper kit) there is nothing else useful to aim for.
The biggest problem for this game though is the spawn system and map design. There are several maps on the game where you can see from your side of the map all the way into the enemy spawn. Many a time playing over the weekend I found myself spawning and dying before I had a chance to move. I did the same thing if I’m honest. Found myself a nice little spot on the map and waited for people to spawn in.
It’s terrible, avoiding spawn camping should be a fundament of map design in a game of this kind. If you’re going to have fixed spawn points you shouldn’t be able to see them from across the map.

To sum up I’ll play this until black ops comes out but I doubt I’ll play after. It’s a good effort but too many fundamental mistakes take a way from the fun.

Weeeeeeeeeee. So I’m back from a week off, to my outrage Chelios has posted a football game review, but he balanced it out by sharing my Civ V addiction and putting together a comprehensive list of what to expect from the Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer that I can’t afford to buy. While I was off I hit up the PSN store and grabbed me some demos, realised I was too late for Playstation Plus’ limited time offer of free Fallout 3 DLC (Nooooooooooooooooooo), realised no-one gives a shit about The Sims 3 Barnacle Bay DLC on PC and celebrated a 1st birthday. Good times.

On with the show.

I have a lot of time for platformers.

Designers of successful games must pull off the extraordinary feat of getting you to repeat the exact same moves for ten to forty to sixty plus hours without it numbing the mind like when I saw an 8 year old fall head first into the frozen vegetable section of Tesco.

Platformers are in principle an easy way of accomplishing this because you have a basic skill set; run, jump, shoot and can graft those moves onto any environment to keep the pace motoring along. However, it’s not as easy as all that as proven by any awful platformer you care to mention. For some reason I can only think of Jurassic Park right now, I think the Mega Drive version.

Good gameplay, that all encompassing handle of vaguery, is essential of course. Mario 64 has the bare essentials as well as the blueprint for every game of it’s ilk you’ve played in the last 15 years. Story is fast emerging as the new staple. It is almost on a par with compelling gameplay as a motivation for beating the next enemy, getting to that ledge, grabbing that next item. Though it is story that propels you forward it is ultimately how the game feels that pulls you on.

And (yes I think sometimes it is acceptable to start a sentence with “and”) so in a roundabout way we drop in on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a game with the distinction of being co-written by screenwriter Alex Garland. While I think games should very much not try to be movies I have no problem with a professional screenwriter having a hand in dialogue. Games on the whole need an improvement in how the characters get over.

Also, there's a slinky redhead of course.

Having no money I must sate myself with the demo. A burly man lucks out of his pod on a flying prison barge. He chases a female escapee to an escape unit, through combat bots and a crumbling ship to be held against his will by the girl upon landing in a decayed future New York by use of a neural something, which puts the brain hurt on. So far, so fine. I’m perfectly happy for there to be a bit of mystery (why was the dude in prison (falsely or for rebelling against fascism I’ll wager) and why does the woman want to get to where she’s going and just how will their relationship ultimately develop (into a situation where they pork, I’ll wager)? And blah blah blah.

You can see where it’s going but the characters themselves actually seemed to have a little subtlety to them, overt and hammy but there nonetheless. Only time will tell if it turns out that way.

Gameplay then. It’s fine. It’s no Uncharted of course, but then what is? You leap from ledge to handhold and back again and fight almost exclusively in melee though there’s bound to be a ranged weapon later on. The camera gets right up front with the action and I didn’t once find it to screw around the way it so often can.

If I get some money I’ll buy Enslaved. If it costs up to thirty pounds, but chances are I’m effing skint for two months at least.