Happy Birthday Sonic!

It's Sonic's 20th Birthday today, so I want to send my best wishes. A true Gaming great and still probably my favourite character. He is my desk mascot and reminds me why I still love playing the original games to this day.

One day I want to be in charge of a Sonic game...I can only dream...

...Sonic...again...yeah, I know...

I don't dare to hope for anything good

Here we go with another round (probably) of terrible, terrible wrongness. When will SEGA actually do what Yahtzee suggests and put ol' Sonic out of our mutual misery. Sonic used to be my favourite; he is much cooler looking than Mario, and had better 2D outings to boot! (Preparing for storm of criticism) The first Sonic Adventure was a pretty good game, but since...well...we all know, and I don't need to say.

What I will say though, is that with a little bit of effort, a really great sonic game could be made...and if SEGA would like to sit down to a coffee with me, I would explain my grand vision!

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins- A Retrospective

  I recently finished a play through of 12 year old (some would say classic) Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. My rosy memories of Tenchu remind me of a game which allowed you to tackle the open plan levels however you wanted to, utilising a grappling hook to adhere to nearly every surface. The games extreme and bloody violence seemed almost comedic in its severity. The shameful truth is I never finished the game; so off I went to thoroughly enjoy myself and conquer a game I have long held a high opinion of.

Poetry in Arthritic Motion

One thing I did remember was how stiff the control was. One on one combat, though largely not the emphasis of levels, was difficult due to some real control issues. Your only blocking option was backing away from an enemy, which with a PS1 D-Pad sometimes meant veering left or right at the same time, leading to getting your arse chopped up. This is particularly off-pissing when you consider that the later levels feature fights against overly powerful bosses without a checkpoint system as a safety net. Challenging yes, but certainly frustrating at times.

The Meat and Potatoes

Despite the antiquated control schemes and issues very much relevant to the age, the experience of Tenchu is not to be missed. As a game trying new things, it certainly offers a great deal of very clever and unique mechanics which still get a 'wow that's cool' a decade after release. The game relies very heavily (and I add historically accurately) on the use of tools of subterfuge in order to silently (but absurdly bloodily) dispatch the guards. The patrol routes of your enemies also differ on playthroughs, so replaying a failed mission is not as simple as learning a routine. Such gadgetry as poison rice balls to distract your enemies right through to the unlockable decoy whistles make the stealth strategic; and the limit on number and type of item prevents a load out of game-breakers. The levels themselves are varied in both theme and design, testing your ability further as you progress, though on some occasions the exploitation of the poor controls can bring about fits of swearing.

The Tone of Theatre

One of the biggest draws of Tenchu is definitely its own enjoyment with the ludicrously theatrical. The soundtrack, if the game took itself seriously, would be totally out of place as it treats you to some pretty chilled out folk hits. The music seems more to frame a mood than the situation, and the inclusion of weather effects and pretty sublime vertex lighting paint a picture it is easy to involve yourself in. The voice acting is so bad its good, with the immortal line of "It looks like you chose the wrong party to crash," still making me laugh to this day. The dialogue is actually a consistent source of entertainment even at the close of boss fights. When you successfully clear a boss they usually take about a minute out of their schedule to tell you how noble you were (even when you do smash a grenade in their face) while they bleed great spurts of comedy blood all over their collots. The whole thing speaks of theatre and feels more and more deliberate the further you go.

 

I was completely enraptured by Tenchu: Stealth Assassins from start to finish, and beyond. It was a perfect blend of really good ideas and an execution which was neither pompous nor self aware. The characters and stories involved seemed rounded just by the fact they were so over-blown, and the rating system (and rewards) produce incentive enough to re tread the modest ten level offering. You can look past the ropiness not least due to its age, but because it is so artistically crafted. You believe in the areas and the purpose of being there. I would love to see a Tenchu reboot that offered as much craft as the original but fear we will never see such from a franchise that has become as tawdry as it has.

...Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (nearly)

After picking up Tenchu: Stealth Assassins last week, I found compelled to get through the game I had never really beaten. I had ideas for articles whilst playing which I thought I would write when I cleared the game. Alas, I have run into a roadblock in the final level in the shape of recurring antagonist Onikage.

He is a bastard.

When I finally beat him and his boss, I will write something about a game I feel deserves a retrospective. There is alot to learn from it, much more than from those that followed it.

...The Force Unleashed 2 (or Star Wars Episode 3.5.2)

This pre-review is based on the Demo, downloadable now.

The first Force Unleashed for me represented a missed opportunity. Promises of free flowing Jedi-based combat were all but obliterated by overly linear level/gameplay design, and often-rigid combat. Particularly restricting was the emphasis on flashy set pieces and quick-time events, which prevented the basic combat systems ability to tell its own story. The saving grace of the game was, for me, characters and a story which you could care about and become involved in.

My first impressions with the Force Unleashed 2 were that it was simply a much refined version of its predecessor. Whereas the design seemed to be in the face of its limitations in the first, the second game has apparently been tailored to better utilise its peculiarities to create challenging situations. Not a total overhaul, but that was never expected. However the game feels far less bloated than the first.

Visceral Combat

Enemies are far smarter in this outing, utilising their position and sheer numbers in an attempt to overwhelm you. They respond to your attacks, not only tactically, but emotionally: screaming in terror when they are in immediate danger, or taunting you when they are suitably backed up. Your combat powers are well balanced though still feel rigid when you employ the targeting button (an aspect which feels out of place in fights that often find you surrounded). This is not helped by a camera which does not track unless targeting is held, and is not easy to operate in mid-combat. The sheer power of the force does makes you feel unstoppable, but on harder difficulties your complacency means your demise, which creates a need for thought and care on your part. Features like dismembering your enemies are a welcome addition, as is the ability to mind trick a Stormtrooper into diving out a window…he assured me he had no regrets.

Quick Times for Set Pieces

The Demo contains several set pieces of varying interest, the opening diving-escape from the Kamino cloning facility is awe inspiring and fun, but others are less interesting and appear to serve only to pad the level out. The flavour of the month that is the quick-time event returns and once more does little other than indulge whoever animated it: they sucked in the first game, and they still do now. The game will no doubt be stocked to the gunnels with them though…yippee.

Audio Visual Splendour

If you are a graphics whore then get your Vaseline ready cos there is lots here for you. The environments are beautifully rendered (though still painfully linear) with brilliantly convincing weather effects which interact with the characters in them. As I walked inside from a brief trip in the rain I found Starkiller to be peppered with a few rain drops. Longer excursions outside left his clothes sodden and heavy looking. Effects like rain cascading down window panes and arcs of light from your force lightning help give a weight to the world, and the sound tracking pulls out a winner. The blending between action and ambience is seamless, literally beat perfect, and the scoring (I believe a mixture of Williams’ work and original material) lends itself well to describe your situation. Another notable facet is the well employed force-feedback which really helps you to understand the action and anticipate your surroundings.

Wrap Up

Positives:

-                      Refined control and better combat design

-                      Enemies are both more responsive and more challenging

-                      Exceptional Audio-Visual combined with sensitive use of force-feedback

Negative:

-                      Environments still overly-linear

-                      Targeting system seems ill thought out and leaves the camera loose

-                      Quick-time events

In closing, this seems to be shaping up into a much better all-round game than the first Force Unleashed. The storytelling, of which is there is a good chunk even in the demo, remains of good judgement and direction. I only hope that the action heavy nature of the demo is only indicative of the Kamino level, and that we are offered more pensive moments. Whilst this series will likely never become what it could (or should) be, it has at least began the path away from mediocrity. It might actually be worth buying.

...Dino Crisis and the path to a viable 'Reboot'

Onimusha/Dino Crisis not dead

The attached article speaks about the possibility of rebooting two key franchises in Capcom’s portfolio. I would like to focus on a proposition for a good kick up the arse of Dino Crisis in particular.

For those unfamiliar with the Dino Crisis series, it was essentially Resident Evil meets Jurassic Park. I don’t think that is an unfair description. It utilised the largely fixed camera angle of the former and its basic idea of survival horror adding a few interesting features in the form mixing items to create ammo types and new health combinations.

Whilst the story was run of the mill Spec-Ops-infiltrate-remote-facility-to-apprehend-mad-scientist fare; it was actually fairly compelling. This was not least due to the fact that ammo was sparse and going toe-to-toe with dino-foes was unwise. The scarcity of supplies actually intensified the feeling of survival, as if the Spec-Ops agents sent in were for once actually out of their depth. The focus on incapacitating your enemies rather than obliterating them was actually a nice twist on what otherwise would have been a standard run-and-gun tied together with simple puzzles.

Despite having a lot of pros, the game actually managed to bore me to tears. I was actually begging for it to end mid way through for want of running past the same two dinosaurs in the same passage for the thirteenth time, and all just to ferry part A- to destination B (One aspect where the Resident Evil formula didn’t pay off). If there had been a more thoughtful layout to the locations, it would have been possible to make the run and hide mechanic less of a chore and more of the real meat.

The second DC totally abandoned the close-feeling subsistence of the original in favour of a more combat oriented gameplay. This was no bad thing either. You were once again tasked in the role of Spec-Ops agents but this time you were very much in your depth. The potential shallowness of the whole thing was supplanted by the ever popular Greed Factor™.

Killing dinosaurs resulted in brownie points, with consecutive kills and no-damage bonuses adding up to numbers which proved how much of a bad-arse you were. Bullets and Health cost money, which proved the subsistence mechanic had merely shifted from foraging to hunting. You wanted to go out and hunt the dinosaurs out of a lust for even bigger weapons, and more chances to cash in big.

Just like everything in life: somewhere between the Survival Horror Subsistence and Gun Toting Hunt-Mayhem™ lies the perfect recipe for a DC game.

Now to my Proposal…

I always felt that in the spirit of Dino Crisis was the ability to allow players to act out what they wanted to do when they saw Jurassic Park. That is: shoot some Dinosaurs in a pre-historic wilderness whilst waxing chaos-theoretical like Jeff Goldblum.

So I imagine a concept where an offshoot enterprise has spawned off of the dino-importing third energy technology explained in the previous games. Some enterprising people have sectioned off an island space, or national park, where they periodically pinch dinosaurs from yesteryear and slam them into the middle of a big game hunt.  You take the role of a paying customer who enjoys a spot of recreational shooting and the chance to make some apparel out of poor fluffy things. Perhaps you have got enough boleros and are looking for something a bit more water-resistant for those mid-winter nights out?

You pay a nice chunk of cash to spend a weekend on the range, where you get to drink with other blood-thirsty gun owners and revel in the myths and legends of T-Rex killers and men who went out never to return. Then you get to go out in your jeep and make some stories of your own, gun in hand.

The game would involve trekking across this open world, which would be limited only by your own ability to survive in any given area. Killing dinosaurs pays you in a currency that can be exchanged for new weapons, ammo and supplies which enable you to explore deeper into the world and face more challenging enemies. You would also be given a jeep with which to move more swiftly through areas, and serves as a place to store weapons and supplies either purchased or scrounged off of less fortunate customers (The ability to head rescue parties to find missing hunters might also present a nice little side earner). If you then have to keep your jeep fuelled and in good repair, you can create a balance between the gung-ho hunter and savvy survival expert that DC is capable of having.

If the emphasis is on hunting specific species as the main gameplay system, then you can dump the need for the usual sandbox ‘ferry from A-B ‘dross. If you just let the player know what species hang out where, then they can go and tackle them in their own time. The more daring might go after the T-Rex armed with nothing but a pistol and the aforementioned bolero. Others might be less cautious: opting instead to abandon the pistol and try instead to be as appetising as possible before allowing the lizard-king to swallow them whole; in an attempt to choke him to death with the now thrice mentioned bolero.

Now I joke, but imagine the ability to lure the beast you track to its death. One particularly intriguing but underutilised game mechanic in the previous titles was bleeding out. If the player suffered a laceration then a dinosaur could actually track them. It is less compelling in a room-room action shooter than it could be in say: an open world survival shooter where all you have is what you can carry with you (or store surplus in your jeep). Imagine sustaining a leg wound whilst out in the dense jungle and having to hoof it back to the safety of your vehicle; all the while being hunted down by a lithe, cunning, and elusive enemy. If that doesn’t make your heart pound, you suck at being a human.

If you wanted to add a more traditional story element you could include the presence of some Save the Dinosaur™ group who attempt to sabotage the ranch. This could lead to a fairly obvious ‘They made it all go to hell’ plotline, but then, if you wanted to spice it up, you could choose to maliciously show these people the error of their ways. It would be criminal to kill them yourself, but then again you could always clip them and let a dinosaur track their scent…if you were at all that way inclined. Or maybe you could smother them with bacon.

If you combine the idea of hunting and surviving in an open wilderness with the psychology of various Dino varieties you could create a rather compelling game. The possibility of stalking a creature one-on-one, only to discover it was a pack animal leading you to a point of vulnerability to ambush is one that creates its own drama. Isn’t that the point of sandbox anyway: to give you the tools to create your own story?

If any of you out there think this is a great idea, then why not write to Capcom? They said if the right idea comes along they would consider it. Please let them know that Bembo is the man for the job, for a modest fee.

...the Eurogamer Expo

I had not initially intended to visit this year’s Eurogamer Expo for two main reasons. The first being that I was without any new or shiny portfolio work to peddle, due principally to the fact that all electronic equipment has been dying around me as of late. The lack of useful career progression input made me feel cold and indifferent to the event. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of my attitude toward the ol' Games industry at the moment.


Then again, neither is reason number two.


This is simply that there were no games I was even remotely interested in being displayed. I really get the feeling of 'seen-one-seen-em-all' from what is on offer at the moment. I should add from mainstream gaming. That is in itself to say what now passes for mainstream.


It was always going to happen eventually, but when Games started appealing to the wider market, an inevitable slide toward formulaic fluff initiated. Much like Hollywood, the quality of a modern AAA title lays more-or-less squarely in the realms of visual fidelity over quality of gameplay and storytelling. I know it seems like a fairly generic argument, but there is a point to it, honest.


You see, in the end I did attend the show. Influenced in part by the promise of meeting up with some old friends, and the hope that there might be a hidden gem, I stepped through the doors to the expo with my critical cylinders on standby.


For 'The biggest Games Industry trade show in England' it sure was sparse. Literally and figuratively. Granted it was the Sunday but that is not the point. There were large open spaces where lonely booths stood, bordered by large plasma-screen set ups surrounded by small groups. Alright, it was a good opportunity to get my hands on some games. I sat down; I played, observed, and considered. The end result was a once more largely uninspiring experience. It was pretty much all wall to wall sequels, or franchise reboots. Only a smattering of really intriguing offerings bobbed to the surface of this stagnant pond. Some quite surprising.


Formula one was one of those games. Now I don't know jack-diddly-switch about Formula one, aside from that one of its head honchos is a gnome, and one of its former bosses had a rather public exposing as a fan of WWII themed *cough* entertainment. A friend of mine does follow the sport though and knows more than I care to find out. We both played on separate cabinets and I instantly found the game fairly difficult to get to grips with. I crashed, and span, and drew nice big tyre pictures all over the place as I struggled to actually get how to control it. Let me be clear that I am not levelling this as a criticism...quite the opposite. What little of Formula One I have seen told me that I simply didn't get how an F1 car drives. If you ever see the in-cockpit footage during a race then you will see that it is literally a battle between man, car, and physics in every corner. When I applied this principal to my driving, I found I fared better.


When I stepped away, I was thinking how much better it would be with a steering wheel. It was infact my friends first observation when he stopped playing. He was, from an F1 fans perspective, extremely pleased with what he had played. I was extremely pleased from a game design perspective. This was a game which unashamedly was what it was. It would have been easy to make this an arcade impression of F1 to appeal to a wider market, but it stuck to its guns and makes perhaps a ruthlessly exclusive gameplay experience. It is not a game I would pick up personally (maybe I’d dabble if I had a steering wheel) but I feel positive about the game for F1 aficionados. Call me warm and fuzzy.


The next game play through I ventured into was Gran Turismo 5. It immediately made me ask what they were doing for 5 years. Let me add that I have never seen the appeal of Gran Turismo, and cannot really understand the fervent support it receives from its main audience.


When I played GT4, which came out at roughly the same time as the very first Forza: Motorsport, I found the games were technically identical but instantly worlds apart from each other, much to the detriment of GT. Aside from the obvious lack of car damage (at the time), GT simply felt cold, showroom polished, and lifeless by comparison to Forza's very personal and balanced racing experience. It really is a case of the same parts creating very different pieces. Ironically, like cars themselves, these games were made totally different by the finer details. I found the career mode of Forza rich and rewarding compared to what I have always felt was a grind-fest in the Gran Turismo mode.
The lack of soul is still very much evident in GT5 and in the 5 years it has taken them to produce one title, Turn 10, the developers of Forza, have nearly reached their fourth iteration and really found a groove. Unless Polyphony Digital have really done something outstanding, the mere fact that Forza has had more release to the public in the intermediate years than GT puts them in the box seat in terms of refining features. Having played (admittedly not that thoroughly) all the previous GTs I can say I have never really felt a truly extensive improvement from one version to the next.


I would like to add I am a total believer in the 'If it ain't broke don't fix' ethos. My query here is not with the quality of the gameplay, which is generally solid, apart from the always robotic A.I. I simply wonder what they have been doing, when the gameplay is synched in, that took 5 years to do? I was left indifferent to the driving experience I understood in GT, compared to the one I struggled to comprehend initially with Formula One.


From uninspiring but admitted quality, to a simply awful game. Pro Evolution Soccer is, for all intents and purposes, as dead as its ISS predecessor. Konami have fulfilled a years-old prophecy that they would hand EA back the lead in the footy game ranks with a good few years of low quality pretenders to the throne. This year’s churn out feels like they took a bunch of world stars and placed them on the muddiest ploughed-field pitch they could find. Control is sloppy and unresponsive, feeling as though it is lurching between its old system and one it is trying to adopt. The fundamental issue of this series, for a while now, has been the absolute lack of footballing sense displayed by your A.I team mates. Things like a defence all chasing the ball, makes defending aggravating, whilst conversely your attacking players inability to make runs means attacking becomes needlessly one-dimensional. Let us not forget that the current FIFA is built, it would seem, off the basis of a long forgotten 2004 UEFA Champions League tie-in, so its own improvements lay in fairly old set ups.


Avoid Pro like the plague, or like an early 2000s FIFA game.


Now I move to what I want to call the real point of this piece. In describing what I saw gameplay wise, I have gotten off the topic I initially began with. That being that the new mainstream of games being driven by its visual power. This was never more evident than what nvidia offered up.


At last year’s Eurogamer Expo I was treated to a first-hand look and play of a game running on nvidias new 3D graphics technology, and was totally blown away by how truly pointless this all was! I spoke briefly to a programmer at SEGA, who explained that they had had the kits in their labs for a while, and had not felt it was an avenue really worth exploring, more hassle than anything else. However, a year later I found myself ready to be treated to a more mature, sophisticated technology which was sure to have found itself in the year it had had to learn from strides in 3D cinema.


I say that, but I knew already what lay ahead.


Reps from nvidia gave the assembled the super-hi-tech glasses that would propel us retina first into the breach. I thought at this point I would entertain this, as we were to be treated to a Rage demo from Tim Willits afterward; plus Willits had moments before given me a nice T-shirt, before I mistakenly took another one, in a moment of false 'but it's a different colour' confusion.


So the lights drop and a fancy nvidia logo pops up and dances a little before my eyes. I barely even notice the 3Dness and wondered what lay ahead. It kicked off with footage of 3D-Avatar:The Video Game (cos nothing says 3D like Avatar) where our lead character stands out in 20-20 clarity, whilst the entire subject of the view, the level and surrounding components, are all relegated to a hazy blur. Great Stuff!


Then they showed footage of a music video shot in glorious 3D. The big roll of bubble wrap, an incidental actor in the scene, pops out as though it is on the brink of dramatic soliloquy. It remains mute and lifeless. Great Stuff!


Then we are shown tech which can make even your pathetic holiday pictures interesting by making them 3D. Even greater stuff!


Then they tell us that we can stream and watch live TV in 3D and promptly show us a video package of a basketball game where two kids in the crowd pander to the camera, which promptly make them 3D. Only they don't appear 3D at all...they just look like they have been cut out and pulled forward a bit. When the video ended, it was met by luke-warm applause, more polite than anything else, from one corner of the room. Maybe they were nvidia employees.


You see, Humans have something which lets us see 3D...it's called depth perception.


The only thing '3D' does is force your natural ability to perceive depth in any given 2D image to break, giving you something that only advertising can tell you is '3D'. The problem lies in the fact that the image you are seeing IS 2D, the surface you see it on IS 2D. I turned to my left at the conclusion of the video and was met by a simple enough statement:


"What a load of bollocks." 


The illusion of depth works on a painfully arbitrary basis. Real 3D would give you a feeling of depth which ramped back like depth does, smoothly describing the shape of the surface and its properties. If 3D gave the ability to focus on what you choose to, then I would be impressed. What I saw was more-or-less what I have come to expect from depth of field in games. These are lens effects, which have nothing to do with the eye or how it works.


So why are they pushing this so hard?


From what I can tell, we have reached something of a plateau in terms of visual quality in games. The holders of major platforms (In this I only include PS3 and X-Box 360) are looking to extend the life of their consoles, not least because of the cost of R&D on the next generation. Along with this we have the fact that producing a game of 20 hours with hi-resolution everything is also a costly business. We could get to the place we are now because of time and space saving breakthroughs offered by programmable shader technology. These have allowed us to create wildly realistic visuals in reasonable time frames. There is no such major breakthrough on the horizon; you just have to look at how the industry has positioned itself. Emphasis has moved to gimmick control schemes and now even gimmick visual tricks. This predicament comes from the emphasis placed on visual fidelity in the run up to the current generation of consoles. Just think... how many graphics cards were released in the year or two prior to the X-Box 360s launch and beyond. PC gamers were hailing things like Crysis as the next big thing solely on how it looked. Think about how we currently judge a PC made for gaming: 'Can it play Crysis on highest settings?'


We find ourselves in a position where we are going to be sold the same stuff again, only this time it will be 3D...instead of HD.