GamesBurp

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.

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.

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