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.

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?

I fucking love the AC Brotherhood multiplayer. It’s easily the freshest take on multiplayer since Demon’s Souls. So I’m robbing this footage from the ever wonderful Machinima so that you peeps can view the excellent give/take pacing. Aren’t I nice?

Now make me a fucking sandwich, bitch.  I don’t do this shit to get paid y’know.

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010Biggest surprise of the whole expo was right here.

Ass Creed II polished the shit out of the first game and made it utterly enjoyable, even while hunting down those damn feathers for the Platinum Trophy. Despite that I thought that the upcoming Brotherhood was merely a stop-gap measure for keeping the franchise on annual release until they could be bothered to make a direct sequel. A feeling intensified when creative lead Patrice Desilets departed, though it’s since been suggested that he’s only on a break. A deserved one after number 2 released.[Ed's note - Tee hee hee hee]

As it happens it’s not numbered because it’s merely a continuation of Ezio’s saga. Think of it this way. The developers probably had a lot of story ideas with an era as rich as the renaissance and a subject as strangely period and sci-fi that they were unable to fit into Assassin’s Creed II due to time and budget constraints. So some were chipped off to form the DLC episodes and seeing as how the engine and assets were pristine and still had a lot of mileage in them, they opted for a spin-off game to keep the name alive and to produce a fully priced title at much less expense, plus the inevitable DLC and Ubisoft are laughing. Thing is it’s a quality experience so I won’t feel ripped off. Take note Activision.

I’ve only played the multiplayer section but I am impressed, it is simple and devious.

You pick a character and a secondary skill set which may be sprint boost and throwing knives as in the picture above but also there is morphing to appear like a different character, crowd blending to make a small crowd look like you, a hidden gun and so on. You get a target in the top right and a beacon disc bottom center to home in on your quarry. You must kill them but at the same time you are a target to someone else. As I say very simple but implemented with panache.

If you mow through the streets you make it easy for your pursuer to spot you, so you must walk and hide in plain sight and try to identify the person you’re sending to the afterlife. It builds a wonderful tension because you’re fighting for the higher kill score so you want to go quickly but you also want to avoid being seen. You may see your target but then be killed because your pursuer spotted you. You may see your target but then he begins to chase his target so you must decide whether to chase him and risk being eyeballed or wait it out. You may chase him but he may notice so he may start to evade you. If you get to assassinate him without him making you, your pursuer may see you take the kill and go right for you.

Sometimes a warning flashes up on screen telling you to run. I’m not sure yet if this is when your would-be killer enters your area and goes loud, or whether it’s when you do that in the same area as them. Either way, running is the order of the day. So you can evade then hide, flat outrun or lead them past gates which shut after you and ledges which break the second time they’re stepped on.

It is a fine balancing act in which you are constantly alert and leads to laughter and swearing as some fucker nails you before a kill without you noticing them behind you. And it can be the split second before a kill. And it can make you uproariously triumphant when you chase a scumbag across rooves, he bails but you get the jump on him and pop out on a strut right above his head, and pounce at him, two blades in the chest.

Whereas say Medal of Honour was all staring intensely at the screen, the line of players here usually included someone laughing with mirth at them killing or being killed because it wrenches the tension up fast and high then lets it all out in succession. You’re riding this tense-release-tense-release ethos throughout the match. It’s refreshing and great to see the idea of online multiplayer being expanded and really pushing things along.

Most of all it is a ball load of fun.

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

I love GoldenEye on N64. It is to this day the best FPS in existence. I was better at GoldenEye than anyone I knew was. At a sleep over two people made me stay up until past 3am trying to beat me at it, and failing. I knew the single player game backwards. I knew all the routines not from trying to memorize them but simply through playing it so much that they became ingrained. I love that game.

It is odd that they should choose to remake it. That it is updated with Daniel Craig bothers me not a jot. It may be that they want to spin out a few bucks based on nostalgia alone. I may buy it, but I will rarely have a chance to play multiplayer with other humans in person, and my Wii’s wi-fi connection is quite simply bollocks.

At the expo this was hidden right in the middle of Nintendo’s stand, between Kirby and Donkey Kong, with no branding and no notification this was GoldenEye, the greatest FPS of all time. Only a piddly little 19″screen. The rep told me it was displaying via AV lead and not composite. And it showed. It was jaggy, and ugly. It was multiplayer only and took me right back to the glory days. Partly because the character models don’t seem to have advanced at all.

It looked horrible. To play, it was standard. I beat the other two players 10 – 3 – 2. I can’t say I was disappointed because it was just one round and I didn’t see any of the game proper. I can’t decide whether to buy it for old times’ sake and possibly be disappointed, or just leave the memory untainted and roll out the N64 occasionally.

The question remains though, why remake this?

Expectations are high. After more than 4 years in development Polyphony Digital need to produce the gaming equivalent of finger banging the audience to a post orgasmic climax. I like to think of it as a sexual finishing move.

But enough about your mum.

This pretty much needs to be a benchmark for quality. It wont be so great for a party time fun bash like you may think Burnout or Need for Speed is, but let’s be fair, it does have kart racing. What they’ve done with karts is let you know they don’t take themselves too seriously while still not making a popcorn racer, and keeping a game design pedigree.

It is painfully detailed and it pays off. All the little details that you perhaps cannot identify individually without some effort, collude to beam directly into your brain the feeling that you are watching something very realistic.

The lighting, the physics, the reflections, the dirt, the focus blur, the motion blur and the sound.

The sound.

I started off having accidentally chosen a manual gearbox. Now when I start off something like this, the most recent similar game being Forza 3, I like to get the feel of the cars and so put on an automatic gearbox to avoid having something else to think about. On a related side note the most annoying thing about a racing “simulator” is the propensity to completely misjudge your speed and turn into a corner only to oversteer dramatically going, in fact, in a completely straight line and crashing.

So I’m on the start line fully aware that I’m going to have to gear manually, also it’s a new game to get the hang of and I’m supposed to be paying attention so I can hack together some bullshit preview for my un-viewed blog.

Fucking love the R8

I hear the car rev and I nearly shit. I don’t care how prototypically blokey this makes me appear, how adolescently loutish but when I hear a big car engine roar it is heaven. Makes me feel ten years old again with models of Lamborghinis on my windowsill and pictures of Lotuses on the wall. From an intellectual standpoint it is the wonder of the progression of engineering genius that has led to the current range of motors. And personally I’ve almost come to accept the fact that I will probably never own a supercar, so this game is in all likelihood the closest I will ever get it.

So now all my points come together like a bukkakke money shot. (Four Ks in bukkakke, right?)

I’m off the line and I realise I would probably buy this game for the sounds alone. If the game has a soundtrack, and that soundtrack is racing noise I will not be disappointed. In fact I’ll probably play it in my car while I’m driving. Anyway, I clumsily start to get the feel of shifting the gears for which you must rely on engine noise and in the beginning, the briefest of glances at the rev counter. Oh shit there’s a corner so now where I’d usually hammer the breaks, try to gas through the turn and slide into the barrier what happens is I drop shift to a gear below where I need it out of panic pressing, slow right the hell down then advance a gear into the turn, my revs drop and I power out.

Turns out I should always have run a manual game, and you should too and I’ll tell you why. If you want just an arcade experience and that’s all you ever want then you can drive an automatic but to be fair, if that’s what you want there are a ton of other games you should be playing. If you want to be involved and get your teeth into this then play the manual setting from the start. It may be tougher at first but you will get better faster and more comprehensively.

When I was learning to play bass I decided to exclude using my little fingers because it was easier to just leave them out as they are naturally not as dextrous. This was a mistake because when it came time to play more complex licks I really needed to bring them in and re-learning to include them was a bitch. I still don’t use the pinkie of my plucking hand because it is ridiculously, disproportionately small but that’s another matter.

Please enjoy another screen to break up the article

So I’m riding pretty high throughout my lap. I’m taking corners better than I could have ever expected, the scenery is gorgeous, the car is absolutely pristine and the noises primal. The revs, the sound of the road, the bumps (you know, the red and white bits, what the hell are they called again……..?) everything just kind of marries up and satisfies you. Very impressive stuff.

3D

Right so exactly the same set up but in 3D. The 3D demos didn’t last a full lap even but I assume it plays the same.

The car was an image to behold. The way the glass and metal gleamed together with how the rear of the car was very discernibly closer than the back window showed how clear the 3D is. They obviously have put a lot of work into getting the dimensions of the vehicles just right. The environments move to fast to work in 3D though. It’s the same in even the best 3D movie. Quick scenes just don’t cut it, they appear choppy and jittery and it does not work. Which is a shame because the car in 3D looks near as perfect as  I can imagine.

So to summarize, you can keep your fancy third dimension, I’m happy to cream it on the sofa with my two thank you very much

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

This was strange because inFamous 2 was stuck in an obscure corner of the expo with only two active TVs which were facing away from the show floor. So unless you approached because you were interested in PixelJunk Shooter then chances are you wouldn’t get to see this. When we rolled around to it about halfway through the day barely anyone was loitering. And what a shame because like the first, inFamous 2 is shaping up to be a gem.

You still play Cole only this time in a fictional New Orleans (N’Orleans) city and he is still smashing heads using his electrical powers.

See?

Aside from me being annoyed that they use the word “Vortexes” instead of “Vortices” it plays very well and is a natural extension of inFamous.

First there was a melee sequence where Cole uses his new amp stick to channel his powers into blunt force. The camera pulls right up to him and sticks you in the action, when you deliver the final blow it slows down a little and almost crash zooms. As it does this you are able to maintain your orientation in the space and also instinctively know where the next enemy is. You can switch instantly between melee targets with fluidity and all in all it’s very wholesome.

Next there was a chase where Cole must grind the power lines and use static thrusters to run down a limo. This is one of those games where as a sequel it is leaving the fundamentals of the original unchanged but also adding story and enough new mechanics to feel as if something new is going on. It’s like the second season of a great television show. If you wanted something totally different, you’d change channel and watch something else, but you do want new plotlines.

Slick gameplay.

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

So I plain forgot to get pictures of this, which is probably a blessing considering my camera skills.

SOCOM 4 seems like a fairly decent and involved third person shooter (Thirps?). You’re some kind of guy and you are required to shoot people and blow things up and so on. In a demo hall all that stuff is kind of by the by.

This was present on regular controlled PS3s but half of those were crashed out all day so I only got to play this on Move. It was both good and bad in this respect.

My only motion control shooter experience is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and that was a damn fine experience. Pin-point accuracy the whole time, fluid and intuitive movements. It played exactly how you would want. PS Move has sub-millimeter accuracy so should be a blast too right? If I had ten minutes to dick around with the settings then yes, conceivably. I would eliminate the bounding box, the free movement zone your reticule has before it moves the viewable screen around, straight away. It moved too slowly horizontally compared to how it moved vertically so when you had to engage combatants on your plane and then shift to those above or below you, it was disorienting.

The targeting was very nice, it pointed exactly where I wanted and you can’t ask more than that. It’s better than auto-aim. The Move controller worked just fine and when a decent enough game can utilise it well I will be happy to buy one.

Make no mistake, I probably will not buy SOCOM 4 because I have better things to be getting on with than another shooter, but if I was given it I wouldn’t be sad about it.

Video from E3 of the section I demoed.

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

I’ll come right out with it; The Fight is shit.

The above calibration screen pops up for each new user so it was set up for my height and reach. I figured that the Move controllers should be able to excel where the Wiimotes so spectacularly failed to capture my exact intended punches.

I know how to throw a decent variety of punches and with good form but The Fight did not know how to translate them. It reacted very slowly and because the virtual hands could not snap forward any punches landed felt more like fist pushes.So when you are trying in earnest to muller your quarry into mush and fine powder he thinks that you are modestly encouraging him with shy machismo by gently placing your clenched mitt on his jaw and shoving slightly.

So you try some slowed down, deliberate moves and the thing just does not get it. It could not read a hook, uppercuts seemed only to go for the body unless the opponent was right in your grill and intended body shots just fell short.

This appeared to be a short sweet tech demo almost, showing just how far motion control has come. A little game which played perfectly and whet your appetite for what could be done.

In the cold light of day though, it is oh so disappointing. Bitterly so.

"I will fist push you into unconsciousness" The red neon reflection is the most exciting thing happening on this screen

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

If only your eyes were able to process visual information in 3 dimensions, loser.

Killzone 3 impressed the hell out of me. This pre Alpha build was solid and completely stable the whole time I saw it, on top of that the 3D was absolutely pristine.

There were two pairs of 3D glasses per TV so spectators could view without thinking they had a concussion. I duly put them on and saw the blurriness clear up, but I was still seeing the double image. My job enables me to view 3D content on an almost daily basis so I’m no newbie to the scene. My eyes adjusted 20 seconds later and the image just came to me.

A nicely interpreted depth solution exists in Killzone 3. This is a noncey way of saying all the planes blend seamlessly together, and importantly the cross hair stays accurate and true across whichever depth it encounters.

These guys are in a war zone right now

Onto gameplay, I’ve declared my lack of passion for the FPS genre numerous times but here they just have it right. Bodies have weight, they don’t take too many or too few shots. Also, jetpack. I almost bought Dark Void purely on the strength that it had a jetpack in it. Here it is short burst and more of an extended jump tool, but you can use it to advance your position and take the strategic upper hand in a confrontation so it has incidental use, making it more than just a gimmick.

This was overall the best of the 3 3D games there.