Digital Gigolo

Mario: Spot The Difference

2012-01-30T08:06:00.000-08:00

That's All Folks!

2012-01-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

Franz Kafka once said "Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly". And that's exactly what I did. Four years ago I launched this here videogame blog, Digital Gigolo. It allowed me to indulge my two greatest passions: writing and gaming. It's been a satisfying experience. Digital Gigolo now regularly receives over 14,000 hits a month (and rising).

But I feel it's time to call it a day. Don't get me wrong, I still love gaming. It's just that I've decided to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. I've not been able to fulfil my ambition of becoming a full-time games journalist. I've tried, really tried, but to no avail. I'll still write the occasional freelance piece, but I now see this as a hobby, not a career. And besides, you'll still be able to find me on twitter.

Just wanted to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who took the time to read my stuff. It still feels utterly magical when someone leaves a comment. I shall leave you with my favourite Shigeru Miyamoto quote: "Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll."

Casual Gamers Are Cunts

2011-12-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

I can finally settle the whole tedious hardcore/casual gamer debate. If you’ve ever crushed a SNES cartridge into fine dust and snorted it through a hollowed-out NES Zapper, you’re a hardcore gamer. If you’ve ever fucked a Master System, without using a condom, you’re a hardcore gamer. If you’ve ever wondered if games are art, kill yourself. Nah, just kidding. Have a wank instead, you’ll soon stop caring.

As for ‘casual’ gamers, well, you’re all cunts. Kind of like undecided voters. Either play proper games or fuck off. Mobile games don’t count. Don’t care what you say. Unless you’re holding a dedicated control pad, you’re not playing a proper game. Angry Birds has come under a lot of stick for being too shallow, too easy. And rightly so. I sneezed on my iPad and completed the entire game.

Skyrim. Now that’s a proper video game. A game I played for six days straight, in a moist bog of my own faeces and piss, until my legs turned green. To the exclusion of everything else. I lost my job, my girlfriend and my dignity, but it was worth it. I also had to have a few toes amputated, but it was a small price to pay for the right to call myself a hardcore gamer.

My Skyrim OCD

2011-12-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

I need help. The only game I want to write about is Skyrim. I started a piece about Assassin’s Creed Revelations but lost interest after the first paragraph. This is as far as I got: ‘Spent a few hours playing ACR. The sense of déjà vu is overwhelming. I stopped paying attention to the increasingly convoluted storyline after ACII. Truth is, I couldn’t give a toss about Desmond’s latest animus abnormality. I play the series for the beautifully realised grace and brutality of the protagonist. The double neck-stab assassination is still as satisfying as ever. Slinking about on rooftops and sinking slivers of cold steel into unsuspecting citizens is what keeps me playing.’ And that’s all I have to say about ACR.

I considered writing something about Skyward Sword too. I was going to say how much I love it. How wonderful the motion controls are. How effing brilliant the Beetle is. I was even going to say that Skyward Sword is the game that finally usurps Ocarina of Time as the best Zelda game in the franchise. Honestly, I was going to write about all these things, but Skyrim kept bullying them into the shadows. It’s hard to ignore a daedra-clad Dovahkiin.

So instead I gushed silly about why Skyrim is my game of the year. I talked in bewildered tones about the game’s world-conquering meme. I bitched about the achievement-breaking bugs and mused upon the absurd amount of time I devoted to its world. The crazy thing is, Skyrim launched in a year that is widely regarded as the best the industry has seen. And yet it’s Skyrim that hogs my every thought. I’ve been struck by a perverse form of writer’s block. All I want to do is talk about Skyrim, to the exclusion of everything else. I get a little too excited when Rock Paper Shotgun writes yet another blog entry about Bethseda’s Best Game, because I know they adore it as much as I do.

If I’m honest I’m not sure what to do about it. Has Skyrim broken me? Quite possibly. All I can do is ride this out until I – hopefully – return to normal. Until then expect a few more Skyrim blog posts or a prolonged absence from writing until I find another game that induces the creative juices to flow.

The Skyrim Experience

2011-12-14T10:21:00.000-08:00

I’m done with Skyrim. Having devoted over 128 hours of my life as a dungeon-spelunking Dovahkiin, it's time to call it a day. If I’m honest, I’m a little repulsed by that figure. It’s the same feeling I have after I’ve cum to porn. Shame and self-loathing. Did I really spend all that time pretending to be a dragon-slaying Nord? Yes. Yes I did.

Never before have I felt this dirty after completing a game. And what makes it worse – far far worse – is that I still haven’t achieved the goal I set myself. I’m still one achievement short of a full house. I’ve slain 41 dragons, discovered 257 locations, maxed out 6 skills and mercilessly slaughtered 2181 citizens of Skyrim. And yet there’s still one goal that eludes me. Oblivion Walker. It’s the achievement you unlock after collecting 15 daedric artifacts. Thing is, there are actually 16 artefacts in total. And I’ve bagged every single one of ‘em. But still no cheevo. What’s up?

In a game as vast and buggy as Skyrim, it’s a royal pain in the arse trying to pinpoint why this achievement remains unlocked. And the thought of another playthrough leaves me cold. There’s no way I’m doing it all again only for the game to arbitrarily decide that it’s going to withhold the achievement. Aint gonna happen.

You see, I’m the ultimate Nord badass, clad in deadric armour, a fucking surgeon with a bow and arrow. I stroll into a Forsworn encampment and decimate the entire tribe without a single health potion touching my lips. Trolls fall at my feet with a swipe of my sword. The undead stay dead when I’m in town. Yup, it’s fun being a blood-thirsty bully, but all this power means nothing when buggy coding blocks you from attaining your goals. The freedom of choice that Bethseda has worked so damn hard to achieve is shattered when these invisible barriers bar your progress.

So, there you have it. As brilliant as Skyrim is – yes, it’s still my game of the year – this unsatisfactory conclusion has left a sour taste in my mouth. And an arrow in my knee.

Skyim's Most Irritating Meme

2011-12-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

Disturbing news. Skyrim has a phantom knee-hobbler. Yup, lurking in the vast wilderness is a twisted pervert with a hatred of knees. Many an innocent traveller has fallen foul of this mysterious lunatic. They can be found all over Skyrim, and they all share the same disturbing tale: they’ve all taken an arrow to the knee. That’s right, the phantom knee-hobbler only ever uses a bow-and-arrow to carry out his cowardly attacks. I agree, it’s a very specific mania, but hey, it takes all sorts, right?

Wrong.

No such weirdo exists. I made it up. But if you’ve played Skyrim for any amount of time you’d be forgiven for thinking such a character exists. It seems as though every guard you come across in Skyrim has been forced into his menial line of work because of an arrow to the knee. You’ll hear it time after time: “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.”

This single innocuous sentence has become Skyrim’s most irritating meme. You simply can’t escape it. Browse the comment section of any Skyrim related topic and you’ll almost certainly come across some kind of arrow-in-knee reference. There’s simply no kneed for it.

An Interview With Jim Sterling

2011-12-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

Jim Sterling was born different. Some would say born perfect. One thing’s for sure, he’s not like you.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Jim’s first love was comedy. Before he even considered pursuing a career in games journalism, comedy was the muse that stirred his soul. Jim’s chief inspiration was Chris Morris, the controversial satirist behind the groundbreaking Brass Eye. For the uninitiated, Brass Eye is a series of spoof documentaries that mocks sensationalist media and the moral hysteria it generates. Those of you who tune in to The Jimquisition every week will be familiar with these themes. Jim relishes the opportunity to expose the manifold absurdities that lurk within the video game industry.

Deciding that comedy wasn’t to be his career path after all, Jim had a minor epiphany: “I love videogames, I love writing, why not try and make it work?” He set about emailing a few places and struck lucky with IGN. “I wrote a piece for IGN Insider about the failed arcade fighter Tattoo Assassins, since I knew someone who worked on the game. The piece succeeded and it opened a lot of doors for me”.

Keen to secure a regular gig as a games reviewer, Jim kept his eyes peeled for suitable vacancies. While reading an issue of gamesTM, Jim found an article about how to make a career in the games industry. Destructoid was featured as an example of a gaming blog that had become a success. “I heard they paid, so I emailed Niero (Yanier Gonzalez, Destructoid’s founder) with some samples and the usual patter. He put me through to staff writer Nick Chester, and they decided to take a chance on me. It was a bumpy start, but I got there in the end.”

Jim has been known to ruffle a few feathers as Destructoid's reviews editor. His provocative articles have cemented his position as the industry’s most outspoken pundit. Controversy is only ever a tweet away. Jim's hardwired compulsion to call it as he sees it has won him a loyal fan base. His ever-growing army of twitter followers attests to his increasing popularity. Jim has even been cited as one of the ‘The 25 Raddest Games Journalists To Follow On Twitter’. And it’s not hard to see why.

Sterling’s tweets are a spunky mosaic of pop culture references, click-bait controversy, and of course video games. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty either, often publicly calling-out his detractors with direct responses to their criticisms. The most high profile of these being his short-lived twitter-spat with Epic’s head honcho Cliffy B.

Yup, there’s never a dull moment when Jim’s about...

Hey Jim, what’s a born and bred Englishman doing living in America?
Quite a boring story, really. I moved to get married. I am fortunate enough to be able to do my job from anywhere in the world, whereas my other half has a lot more ties. Hence, the move.

What do you miss most about good ol' Blighty?
It'll sound bad for a fat man to say, but the food. Stuff in America is so artificial, and that nightmarish corn syrup crap is in anything. I can't even eat regular bread out here, I need to go to a special market to get stuff without chemicals in.

I'm dying to know, what's you Xbox Gamerscore? It's gotta be pretty epic, right?
Not sure myself! It's not hugely high, mostly because as much as I find Achievements fun, I don't go out of my way to get them. I certainly don't do the ones that require huge amounts of effort and grinding, because I really don't have time to do so.

The very first blog you set up – Morphine Nation – was devoted to social satire. Are you a satirist at heart?
I love comedy, it's always been one of my first loves. I don't know if I'm a satirist at heart anymore, though I used to be. I write a lot less satirical stuff these days, focusing on more straightforward editorials and “serious” reviews. Every now and then, I get a kind of nostalgic pang and think about trying my hand at normal comedy again.

You cite Brass Eye as a major influence. Do you have any literary muses?
In terms of game coverage, Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe is a bit of an influence. His heavy use of emphasis and surreal metaphors are something I find incredibly engaging.

What's the best book you've read about video games?
To be honest, I don't think many good game books exist. Grand Theft Childhood is the obvious, go-to answer, so let's just use that.

What’s you first gaming memory?
My childhood memories are too jumbled up for me to accurately say, so I usually go by the first solid time I remember purchasing a videogame – or rather, getting my grandmother to purchase it. It was a copy of Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk in the Bexleyheath branch of W.H. Smith. Crazy to remember a time when games still came on cassette.

As a youngster, were you drawn to console or PC gaming?
Half and half. A lot of my earliest gaming memories come from playing titles like Gods and Commander Keen on my grandfather's PC (he's always been pretty high tech for his age) but eventually we got a Sega Mega Drive and that took over.

What games do you enjoy playing with your kid?
I don't really play games with him. He's into a lot of single-player stuff, as am I, so while there will be conversations about the likes of Skyrim and Demon's Souls, there won't really be much multiplayer going on. That said, he did very kindly help me test the co-op on Kirby's Return to Dream Land.

When you’re not playing them in a professional capacity what video games hog your leisure time?
Skyrim at the moment. Infinity Blade (and its new sequel) are huge time sinks. I always have plenty of time for Dynasty Warriors, too.

Has a video game ever made you teary eyed?
I think the ending of Final Fantasy X came damn close, and the last big cutscene of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater still manages to get me every damn time.

When was the last time you rage-quit?
The new Shinobi for 3DS can be pretty damn rage-inducing. Surprisingly tight little game and pretty fun, but it is NOT shy about kicking your ass. I definitely needed a time-out after a session.

When you're suffering from video game burnout, what do you do to cleanse your pallet?
Funnily enough, I find that playing games actually reduces burnout. For example, after November's huge release rush, I spent a little time playing DOOM II with all weapons activated, just to remind me of the simple purity of a classic, fun game. It does wonders for the gamer soul.

Destructoid is a major player in the games industry. It must be a thrill to be a part of it. Ever have to pinch yourself?
I still believe it's all a trick and it's leading me into some sort of trap. I don't know what I did to get this lucky.

Do you carefully cultivate controversy or is it simply an inevitable by-product of reviewing video games for a living?
Here's the thing – I've been accused many times of planning my controversies in advance, carefully constructing social experiments and falsifying my opinions for traffic. However, when you look at how successful that's been, one would have to be a chessmaster possessed of such a great intellect that he'd be wasted on videogame reviewing. I am not a supervillain with the brains of Lex Luthor and the sociopathic will of Carnage. It's a compliment that people think me capable engineering other human beings into dancing on strings like puppets, but I am unfortunately just a guy who writes on the Internet, and is constantly surprised by how his opinions are received.

Do the trolls ever get you down?
I think any significantly well-known game reviewer is lying if he says it doesn't from time to time. It's dismaying to have one's opinions ignored or twisted to suit the arguments of people with an agenda, and it isn't exactly fun to be harassed. What starts as funny in the first hour gets tiring after the sixth. But there's not a lot that can be done about it. Just grit the teeth and march forth.

In hindsight, have you ever thought to yourself, ‘Hmm, I’m not entirely happy with that review score’?
I think every reviewer has moments of doubt. Exactly what games have been doubted, however, I shall keep to myself.

Where do you film the Jimquisition?
I have a home office from which I do all my writing and filming. I have the computer area on one side of the room, and the lectern/backdrop set up on the other side. It makes for a somewhat weird looking room.

I love those disturbing doodles you splice into the video footage. Any chance you could draw me a unicorn with tits? You know, just for the hell of it.

When was the last time you were shocked by something?
I think the Modern Warfare 3 review was the biggest shocker I've had in a while. I knew COD had earned some hatred over the past year, but I didn't realize it had managed to acquire Twilight status in just twelve months. A lot of people were apparently looking forward to me attacking the game for them like a hired thug, and reacted viciously when their expectations were betrayed. I was very surprised. It seems liking COD is now like being a McCarthy-era communist.

What’s your most cherished bit of video game memorabilia?
The Sonic 20th Anniversary statue I have is pretty neat. I think that's my favorite item at the moment.

Most underrated game of the year?
E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, without a doubt. Nobody will remember the game in the wake of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but it was truly something spectacular, in a very weird way.

It's clear from your twitter feed that you're a bit of a movie buff. Who's your favourite director?
Funnily enough, I suck at movies. I watch a lot of campy, silly films, but I've only recently been properly into watching a lot of them. I'd put up pre-LotR Peter Jackson as a top director though. Not that I dislike LotR, but to appreciate Jackson, you really need to watch his grotesque splatter efforts such as Dead/Alive and Bad Taste.

Okay, be honest. When the Wii U was unveiled what was your gut reaction?
I wasn't indifferent, but I wasn't enthralled. It looked – and still looks – intriguing. To be honest, I was more pumped about the Aliens: Colonial Marines and Darksiders II footage Nintendo screened during the Wii U game lineup trailer.

Is Nintendo losing it?
Nintendo had nothing to lose. They've always existed in a weird little bubble – cut off from normal thinking, yet weirdly able to resonate with a lot of people. It has its ups and downs, and I am skeptical as to whether the Wii U represents a potential up, but I don't think it's any worse now than it's ever been. Nintendo is just a very strange, anachronistic company, protected but also damaged by the strange bubble universe it inhabits away from normal people.

As a veteran games journalist you are uniquely placed to comment on the trends, fortunes and foibles of the industry. What did E3 2011 tell you about the future of the video games industry?
It told me that we're in the best and worst position of gaming history. Amazing, amazing experiences are being married to some of the worst business practices of our time. It's a time to be incredibly excited and incredibly worried.

Jim, you're someone who's 'made it' in the industry. You get paid to write about games. There are many people who want to follow in your footsteps. Can you give them any advice?
Don't try to be someone else and write every damn day. Many starting writers will try to emulate someone else, or scrabble to be “first” with news items so that they beat Kotaku or IGN. That's not happening. Focus first on finding a personal voice, with opinions and features that readers cannot get anywhere else. Also, carpet bomb every company you can with samples of your work. It can be surprising what companies take your bait, if you're interesting enough.

And finally Mr Sterling, where do you see yourself a decade from now?
Sleeping.

The Myth of Games Journalism

2011-11-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

Here’s some sound advice for aspiring games journalists. Give up. Seriously, don’t bother. You won’t make it. There’s a reason for all the rejections, silences, ignored emails and insincere responses from HR people that say one thing and mean another. The reason is this: you’re not good enough. It’s hard – practically impossible in this economically broken world – to get a job writing about games. And even if you manage to get a foot in the door, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to make a comfortable living from it.

And besides, why put yourself through the soul-crushing rigmarole of breaking into the industry? The hours are long and the pay is horrendous. If you’re hoping to make a name for yourself – perhaps you think you’re the next Charlie Brooker – you should seek help. There’s nothing more pathetic than a wannabe writer harbouring delusions of grandeur. The puddle of filthy piss-water that accumulates at the base of public urinals - that’s how much you mean to the games industry. The shitty blog you write – the one that no one reads or cares about – isn’t your golden ticket to paid work. Guys, it’s time to man-up and face reality – your dream job is just that: a dream.

A black cloud hangs over the future of the traditional print publication. Magazine sales are continually declining. Aspiring journos have to face the unwelcome reality of a ridiculously competitive marketplace. And as each year passes, that window of opportunity becomes increasingly smaller. But what about the internet? Surely you can ply your trade online? Wrong. No one is recruiting. How do you expect to sell your work when no one is willing to pay you for it?

There was a time when passion, determination and an unbreakable I-WILL-FUCKING-MAKE-IT attitude would have been enough to see you through. After all, talent will out, right? Not necessarily. Games journalism is a highly niche industry, bordering on the incestuous. It’s very hard for new blood to gain a foothold. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t waste time chasing pavements. Do something more constructive, like pissing into the wind.

Why Skyrim is my Game of The Year

2011-11-21T03:30:00.000-08:00

Skyrim should carry a health warning, something like, ‘May induce existential angst.’ Because, believe me, it is literally impossible to experience everything the game has to offer in one lifetime. As you trek through Skyrim's glorious wilderness you soon realise just how cosmically vast this game is.

Franz Kafka once said, ‘I am free, and that is why I am lost.’ I know exactly what he means. The undefined nature of Skyrim is both awe-inspiring and intimidating. I spent 8 hours last night doing approximately fuck all, just picking flowers and reanimating the corpses of wildlife I’d just slaughtered. Thing is, I loved every pointless second of it. The random adventures you’ll stumble across on your journey are often incredible. To illustrate this point, I'd like to share one such moment with you:

From the peak of a mountain, I spy a solitary hut in the canyon below. As I draw nearer, I notice the fallen tree that has smashed through the roof, killing the inhabitant within. The name of this unfortunate soul? ‘Lucky Donavan’. I search his corpse and discover a treasure map, which leads me to a sprawling underground catacomb. After fighting my way through booby traps and a horde of disgruntled undead, I discover a glowing hieroglyph etched into the wall. It begins to hum and throb, beckoning me closer. I’m enveloped in a blinding white light and imbued with the power to encase my enemies in ice. Keen to test my new skill I exit the dungeon and spend the next 3 hours freezing anything that crosses my path.

This, dear reader, is the joy of Skyrim. One random encounter has the potential to flourish into something quite memorable. No hand-holding required. All that's needed is a keen sense of curiosity and a few hundred hours to burn. Even the glitches are epic. Helium-filled mammoth? Check. A horse riding a dragon? Check. Gravity-defying snow bear? Check. It’s all here. But rather than detract from the experience, they somehow make it even better.

It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Cliffy B, but he gets it absolutely right when he says, ‘Skyrim is shaping up to be my favorite game since the original Legend of Zelda. That's right, I said it. This game is shaking me to my core.’ Me too Clifford, me too.

Related article: The Life And Death Of Skyrim’s Lydia.

Mario and Master Chief Appear in Epic Rap Battles of History

2011-11-18T21:10:00.000-08:00

Video game nerds rejoice. It looks as though two of gaming's biggest icons are to appear in youtube's Epic Rap Battles of History. For the uninitiated, this hilarious webseries pits two unlikely characters from history against each other in a no-holds-barred rap battle. It's kinda like 8-mile on LSD. Gotta admit, I'm pretty stoked about this. ERBH is consistently brilliant - a particular favourite of mine being the superb Einstein vs Stephen Hawking rap-off.

So then, what can we expect to see from two of gaming's greatest legends? Well, plenty of scathing insults and hella sick rap skills for a start. But what else? Let's have a little fun guessing...

Mario and Luigi
If you pause the video at 2.41 you'll catch a quick glimpse of the Mario Brothers. As is so often the case, Mario is the main focus, with poor old Lugi a green blur in the background. The question on everyone's lips? Who will the Italian siblings face off against? Could it be a traditional bust-up against Bowser and Kamek? Perhaps it'll be their evil alter egos, Wario and Walugi. Then again, who's to say they won't battle each other? Luigi's pent-up rage at playing second fiddle all his life will make for a spectacular showdown, that's for sure. Expect lots of Mushroom Kingdom references.

Master Chief
Yup, the Mjolnir-clad super-spartan, usually a man of very few words, is gonna spit some mad rap shit for y'all. Pause the vid at 2.42 and you can clearly see The Chief staring straight to camera on what appears to be a Covenant space cruiser. But who in their right mind would take on the baddest super soldier in the entire universe? Well, your guess is as good as mine on this one. Remember, Master Chief could be up against anyone - it doesn't necessarily have to be a character from the Halo cannon. Having said that, I'd love to see The Reclaimer go up against Cortana. Everyone knows there's a simmering sexual tension between them. It'd certainly make for an interesting rap battle...

Who would you like to see these legends of gaming battle against? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Is PETA Right To Target Video Games?

2011-11-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

PETA has become rather adept at drumming up publicity for its cause. The self-proclaimed 'press sluts' routinely attack video games for encouraging animal cruelty. But do they have a valid point?

Animal cruelty is wrong. Only a morally bankrupt thug would think otherwise. Sadly, the mistreatment of domesticated pets occurs daily. Unsurprisingly, tabloid coverage of such incidences never fails to provoke public outrage. I still remember the horrifying video The Sun posted on its website in 2010 that showed a young woman hurling six whimpering pups into a fast flowing river. Any organisation that helps prevent this kind of abuse can only be a good thing, right?

PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – is one such organisation. Its slogan is ‘animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.’ Those of you who are partial to the occasional Big Mac will likely disagree with the ‘not ours to eat’ sentiment. Nonetheless, the message is admirable: Cruelty to animals is unacceptable.

Thing is, PETA has been criticised for trivializing animal rights with its increasingly audacious media stunts. Co-founder Ingrid Newkirk says the organisation has a duty to be ‘press sluts’ in order to draw attention to the cause. And what better way to grab some easy publicity than attacking video games. Yup, even our beloved Mario has been drawn into the fray.

'Super Mario 3D Land encourages fur wearing'

According to PETA, “Tanooki may be just a ‘suit’ in Mario games, but in real life, tanuki are raccoon dogs who are skinned alive for their fur. By wearing Tanooki, Mario is sending the message that it’s OK to wear fur.”

PETA’s campaign against Mario even includes a rather gruesome 8-bit online game called Super Tanooki Skin 2D that looks like a variation of the Super Mario Bros. game in which you chase Mario to reclaim Tanooki’s fur. More than a quarter of a million people played Mario Kills Tanuki in the first 36 hours.

'Battlefield 3 guilty of cruelty against rats'

The German Branch of Peta released the following statement: ‘The realistic computer game 'Battlefield 3' treats animals in a sadistic manner. The game gives players the option to kill a rat with a combat knife in the back in order to then lift it by its tail, then toss it away. Killing virtual animals can have a brutalizing effect on the young male target audience. There have been repeated cases of animal cruelty in Germany, where young people kill animals. Inspiration behind these acts often came from movies and computer games.’

'Call of Duty trivialises the barbaric treatment of dogs'

An extract from PETA’s blog: ‘Not since we were pitted against Nazi attack dogs when we first escaped from Castle Wolfenstein 17 years ago have we seen such barbaric treatment of dogs in video games as we did in Call of Duty, World at War. During the course of the game, you are forced to shoot attack dogs and you can actually unlock a "reward" that allows you to unleash a pack of attack dogs on enemies. In a post–Michael Vick world, you'd think that Activision Blizzard, which publishes the popular game, would take abusing dogs for entertainment purposes more seriously.'

'Cooking Mama condemned for its overuse of meat dishes'

Mama Kills is an unauthorized flash-based web game that asks the player to cut off a chicken’s head, pluck its feathers and pull out its giblets.

It’s a parody of Taito’s casual DS game Cooking Mamma. PETA has condemned Taito’s game for overusing a large number of animals in its cooking minigames: 'We're having a bit of fun at Mama's expense, but there's nothing funny about the suffering endured by turkeys and other animals who are killed for food. With all the delicious vegan alternatives available, there's no need to make the carcass of a tormented bird the centerpiece of your Thanksgiving table.'

The Red Ring Of Death

2011-11-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

How best to explain the gut-wrenching nausea that strikes all Xbox 360 owners when the RROD strikes? Well, imagine how you’d feel if you woke up to discover your loyal mutt, Fido, bludgeoned to death at the foot of your bed. Now multiply that horror tenfold. You’re still not close.

Today, my THIRD Xbox 360 conked out due to a ‘General Hardware Failure’, aka The Red Ring of Death. Every single 360 I’ve owned has succumbed to this fatal mechanical aneurism. That’s a one hundred percent failure rate. Totally unacceptable.

What’s most galling is how the gaming public have accepted this fundamental technical flaw as an inevitable part of purchasing a 360. The RROD isn’t a freak occurrence that plagues a few faulty consoles. It’s a statistical inevitability. If you own an Xbox you will, at some point, experience the Red Ring of Death. Exaggeration? Well, let me put this way. I know a hell of a lot of 360 owners and not one of them – not a single one of them – has been spared the sight of those flashing red lights.

Yes, the 360 has a three year warranty that covers this fault, but guess what? My Xbox is 3 years and 1 month old. No word of a lie. It’s like my Xbox was waiting for my warranty to expire before it decided to give up the ghost. I tweeted my dilemma in the hope of rousing a little sympathy from similarly effected gamers. Here’s a typical response:

“Quit moaning, you've done well for three years. It's a miracle it lasted that long to be honest.”

See what I mean? This problem is not only expected, it’s now ACCEPTED. Apparently, I’m ‘lucky’ that it lasted three years. It’s a ‘miracle’ in fact. How horribly resigned we’ve all become. A three year lifespan is simply unacceptable. Every single console I’ve owned since my very first NES still works. Except the 360, that is. And that’s broken down THREE TIMES.

What I’m telling you is nothing new. Like I’ve said, the RODD is an inevitable part of owning a 360. We’ve all heard the horror stories of people having to replace their Xbox a staggering five times. I’m just so very frustrated that there is nothing I can do about it. I have to bend over and let Microsoft shaft me a third time. The only alternative is to abandon my 360; not an attractive proposition considering the large volume of games I‘ve accumulated for it over the years.

I’ve decided to become one of those horrible assholes who phones customer services and insists on speaking to the manager. I’m pretty much going to demand that my Xbox is either replaced or repaired free of charge. I’ve already paid over £700 replacing faulty Xbox’s, and I’ll be damned if I pay a penny more. Here goes, I'm about to make that call...

Right, I’ve just finished my phone call to Xbox Customer Services. Despite my expired warranty I've been told that my 360 will be either replaced or repaired free of charge. Victory!

I'll admit, I'm pleasantly surprised. After speaking to a regular call centre guy and explaining my scenario, I was put through to a supervisor. There was no shouting, no tantrums. I was told in plain English that my console would be fixed with no additional expense incurred. They've even sorted me out with a month's free subscription to Xbox Live Gold.

I was advised to remove my 360's hardrive, place the console in a box and arrange a convenient time for it to be picked up from my home address. The courier service is part of the package and also free of charge. Sure, the 2/3 weeks I have to wait until my Xbox is returned is a bummer, but at least I'm not having to fork out any of my hard earned cash.

The only thing that concerns me is the 90 day warranty that my replaced/repaired console is subject to. If my Xbox experiences another mechanical failure after this time period I will have to pay for it to be repaired out of my own pocket.

Still, it appears that Microsoft is willing to appease disgruntled Xbox owners with minimal fuss. The quick and painless customer service I received is heartening. It doesn't excuse the 360's appalling failure rate but it certainly makes the whole sorry experience a little less exasperating.

Modern Warfare 3. Is the Campaign Any Good?

2011-11-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

Readers beware. There be spoilers lurking in this here blog post.

A confession. I'm a big fat loser who likes to play single player games on my own. Pathetic? No more so than the millions of adults who read Harry Potter books by themselves. Happily, Modern Warfare 3 caters for socially retarded hermits like me who shun all human contact. Yes, the single player campaign is really very good.

Love it or loathe it (I stand somewhere in the middle), no one does bombastic set pieces quite like CoD. The opening level is relentless, a breathless dash through the streets of New York, pushing back the invading Russian forces. It's true, you're still just shooting faceless bad guys while stuff explodes in the background, but no other war shooter does it better.

It looks gorgeous too. The panoramic vista of New York's under siege skyline is breathtaking. I literally had to stop and stare while the bullets whizzed past my head. Better yet is the fact that CoD still has the ability to surprise you with sights you've never seen in a FPS. There's a moment in the game that draws its inspiration from Inception's zero-gravity punch-up. Only this time you've got guns. Those who accuse Infinity Ward of simply rehashing the same old shit are doing the franchise a massive disservice.

Any complaints? Yes. Things get confusing as you constantly quantum leap from one character to another. One moment you're a yank soldier fighting on home soil, the next a Russian bodyguard protecting your President from terrorists. Each individual level is a perfectly paced, action packed romp. Unfortunately they don't form a cohesive whole.

I completed MW3 in just under 5 hours. It's short but it packs an almighty wallop. If you're like me and you buy games mainly for the single player, you'd be better off renting. Although I enjoyed MW3's heavily scripted campaign I have no desire to revisit it. Then again, maybe I'll give it one more go, just to see the Eiffel Tower come crashing down again.

Just one more thing. You may be wondering which game has the better campaign, Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3? The answer is, unequivocally, MW3. BF3's campaign is shit.

Why Blockbuster is Great for Gamers

2011-11-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

I adore my local Blockbusters. It allows me to indulge my insatiable appetite for games without leaving me destitute. As the lucrative run up to Christmas approaches, publishers are releasing a slew of must-play titles. November 2011 has been heralded as the greatest month in videogame history. Hardly surprising when you consider the mind blowing line-up: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Saints Row: The Third, The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

As these games slowly trickle into retail stores I become acutely aware of my lack of funds. Thankfully, Blockbuster helps take the fiscal sting out of my gaming needs. And that’s because I can rent them - £5 for 5 nights. And here’s a tip: when the guy behind the counter asks if you’d prefer £7 for 7 nights, politely decline. Always opt for the £5 deal. Why? Because of Blockbuster’s brilliant ‘no more late fees’ policy. If, upon returning your overdue game, you purchase another rental, your late fee will be wiped. I’ve returned games after ten days and incurred no penalty whatsoever. It’s fantastic value for money.

Better yet, should you decide you want to purchase the game, Blockbuster will knock off the rental price you’ve already spent. The only downside comes with titles like Battlefield 3, which requires a code to access the multiplayer. These special passes only come bundled with games that are purchased, not rented. Still, if like me you only want to sample the single player campaign (which incidentally is total garbage) it’s a cheap way to do so.

There are some pretty sweet pre-order deals to take advantage of too. American patrons were offered a free month of movie and game rentals for pre-ordering Batman Arkham City. I decided to pre-order Halo Anniversary from Blockbusters because of the £25 voucher that comes bundled with the game.

In 1987, Blockbuster won a court case against Nintendo of America, which paved the way for the rental of videogames. Ever since that day the lives of hard-up gamers around the world have improved. Cheers Blockbuster.

Realted article: Blockbuster: Publishers giving “an awful lot of support” to boost rental over pre-owned.

Zelda Giveaway Winner!

2011-11-07T05:09:00.000-08:00

And the winner is... John Pawsey! Congratulations fella.

Try not to feel too bummed out if you didn't win this time around. I'll be running another sweet giveaway in the near future.

Modern Warfare 3's Controversial Bomb Scene With Little Girl

2011-11-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

Infinity Ward has done it again. Following the controversial 'No Russian' level from Modern Warfare 2, the sequel ups the bad-tatse ante. But how exactly do you top a sequence in which an airport full of helpless civilians are systematically slaughtered by machine-gun toting terrorists? Easy! You kill a little girl. With a bomb.

Expect the usual moral hysteria and manufactured outrage from The Daily Mail tomorrow.

The video is below if you want to watch it. In the event that the footage gets taken down by Activision, I will briefly describe the video. Needless to say, avoid if you want the game to remain spoiler free.

(A father - obviously an American tourist - films his wife and daughter as they enjoy the sights of London. The little girl skips ahead of her mum to shoo some pigeons on the corner of the street. A large white truck pulls up beside her. The driver hastily exits the vehicle and disappears from shot. Moments later the truck explodes, instantly killing the mother and her child.)

GTA V Trailer

2011-11-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

The car-stealin’ prostitute-beatin’ crime-em-up is back. Revealed today on Rockstar Games' website, the trailer for GTA V introduces a new main character, an unnamed retired con who just can’t resist one last job. Ring any bells? The story of a reformed criminal seeking redemption in the American dream echo’s Niko Bellic’s move to Liberty City to escape his troubled past (GTA IV).

What else? Well, it appears we can expect the usual Rockstar mix of social commentary and satire. Scenes of homeless folks and homes being put up for sale are contrasted with vistas of luxuriant wealth and golfing. Not shown so far is evidence of the MotionScan-powered facial animation as used in L.A. Noire. Let’s hope this makes the final cut.

And what about the setting? GTA V returns to San Andreas (a whole state based on southern California and Nevada). Towards the end of the trailer we’re given a glimpse of the Vinewood sign, previously featured in the sprawling GTA: San Andreas.

My personal thoughts?

Convincing, open-world games are now standard fare. Just Cause 2 and Arkham City spring immediately to mind. Two astonishingly beautiful games that take the open-world experience to some pretty spectacular places. Can GTA V really make the same kind of impact in this overcrowded market place? With all the best will in the world, I doubt it.

I mean, think about it guys: GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, Saints Row: The Third – Rockstar will have to perform a miracle worthy of Jesus himself to make GTA V feel relevant. Sure, the prettier graphics alone will ensure millions of sales, but if I’m honest I was a little underwhelmed. Based on the trailer it looks as though Rockstar is set to continue with the same old GTA formula. Here’s hoping that I’m proved wrong.

Have to admit though, the voiceover and the music have a distinct Goodfellas vibe about them, which I totally dig. And just in case you were wondering, the music is Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by Small Faces.

Battlefield 3's Campaign is Shit

2011-10-31T21:36:00.000-07:00

BF3's single player campaign is a total shambles. The perfect example of style over substance. It looks pretty but it plays like a pig.

After a seen-it-a-billion-times-before opening level set on a train, you relive - via flashbacks - past events in which you shoot a load of faceless bad guys while stuff explodes in the background. Uninspired nonsense.

A particularly tedious level has you sitting in the back seat of a fighter jet while the pilot shouts incomprehensible army-speak at you for 12 hours before anything remotely interesting happens. When the action finally kicks off - shooting down enemy fighters - all you're asked to do is move your cursor over a target, wait for it to go beep, and push a button. I've had more interesting shits to be honest.

This sense of detachment, of not really contributing to the action in any significant way, continues throughout the campaign. I felt like a spectator rather than a participant during the action. I guess it's how a front line war correspondent must feel, in amongst the whizzing bullets and shrapnel but ultimately nothing more than an observer.

When fighting on open ground it's hard to suss exactly where enemy fire is coming from. And because it only takes a few shots to die, a real sense of unfairness and frustration soon creeps in.

I wonder, is the player's sense of detachment an inevitable part of modern warfare's impersonal methods of murder, or is it simply because BF3 is a bad game? I'm opting for the latter. Clocking in at a laughable 4 hours, it's clear that BF3's campaign was nothing more than a lazy afterthought.

My first clue came when I opened the box. This is the first video game I've seen in which the campaign has been relegated to the second disc. This should tell you everything you need to know about where Dice's priorities lie: the mulitplayer.

In a nutshell, the game plays out across countless, heavily scripted set-pieces, rubbish QTE sections and genuinely tedious on-rails moments. If you're thinking about purchasing Battlefield 3 for the campaign, don't. It's one of the worst single player experiences on the Xbox.

Zelda Giveaway!

2011-10-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

My humble little video game blog has just hit 10,000 unique views for this month. As a thank you to all my lovely readers I'm doing a little giveaway. And not just any old giveaway. This here is a ZELDA giveaway. Woo Hoo!

That's right, I'm giving you guys the chance to win the following Zelda goodies:

Link's Crossbow Training (which includes the Wii Zapper)
38 retro Zelda stickers
Two huge double sided Zelda posters
A 25th anniversary Zelda mouse mat
A Zelda Miscellany (a book of trivia and Hylian know-how)

For a chance to win all these sweet Zelda goodies, all you have to do is RT this tweet and follow me. It's as simple as that. The winner will be picked at random and announced on 07/11/2011. So get tweeting!

Good luck!

Is It Finally Gameover For Nintendo? Part 2

2011-10-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

Nintendo fanatics should stop reading here. Go on, get lost. I know you guys can’t handle the truth, so I’m giving you the chance to turn around and exit the premises. Still here? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Satoru Iwata has finally admitted what we gamers knew all along: the Wii is a shit console. Sure, he didn’t use those exact words, he’s far too dull. Instead, he hid behind a rather long-winded euphemism: “The company was unable to launch much-anticipated first-party titles for the Wii in a timely fashion in the first half of the term. In the game platform business, creating momentum is very important, but the momentum was once lost, and it has had a large negative effect on our sales and profits."

Nintendo effectively abandoned the Wii in preparation for their next console, the Wii U. And that’s why the only notable Nintendo-made Wii games of 2011 – aside from the long delayed Skyward Sword - are Kirby's Epic Yawn and Wii Play Motion. Be still my beating heart.

In a grovelling apology that spans five pages Satoru Iwata told investors he feels “greatly accountable” for Nintendo’s poor performance. He also confesses that Nintendo has learned “a bitter lesson” from 3DS’s failings and would do everything possible to secure a more successful launch for Wii U: "We would like to show the final format of the Wii U at the E3 show next year.”

Final format? It’ll be interesting to see what tweaks and changes Nintendo make to their new console. After it’s rather underwhelming unveiling at E3 2011 I’m sure we’ll see a last-ditch attempt to get the public on board. A next-gen Mario title perhaps?

Nintendo’s lacklustre performance this year has lost the company £578m. The Big N – once the greatest gaming force in the industry – needs a minor miracle to revive its ailing brand. All I know is this: the Wii U, more than any console before it, will prove critical to shaping Nintendo’s future.

Read Part 1 here.

GTA V? No Thanks

2011-10-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Rockstar,

The GTA series peaked with San Andreas. Every iteration since has been increasingly underwhelming. Sure, GTA V will outsell the bible, but we all know it’ll follow the same tedious formula: drive to point A and murder criminal B. So do us all a favour, focus your incredible talent on a completely new IP, m'kay?

I mean, think about it guys: GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, Saints Row: The Third - you’re gonna have to perform a miracle worthy of Jesus himself to make GTA V relevant. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan. I love your work. The gratuitous level of incidental detail you managed to squeeze into GTA IV was genuinely amazing. I’ll never forget the time I sat - slack-jawed with awe - and watched Ricky Gervais performing stand-up on a television in a seedy bed-sit in Liberty City. A virtual TV, in my virtual apartment in a virtual city teaming with virtual life. Incredible.

Thing is, convincing, open-world games are now standard fare. Just Cause 2 and Arkham City spring immediately to mind. Two astonishingly beautiful games that take the open-world experience to some pretty spectacular places. Can GTA V really make the same kind of impact in this overcrowded, cut-throat-competitive market place? With all the best will in the world, I doubt it.

And it ain't just little old me that feels this way. There are celebrity dissenters too. Take Peter Serafinowicz, for example: "I'm not really a fan - although it's an incredible achievement in some ways - of GTA IV. I hate all those missions and the scripted bits. If I want to watch a really shit film there are plenty I can watch". Okay, so it's not the most compelling of arguments, but perhaps the novelty is beginning to wear thin. Come on Rockstar, give us something new.

After all, once you've battered a man to death with a giant purple dildo, where on earth can you go from there?

Yours sincerely,

Digital Gigolo.

Why You Have To Play Batman Arkham City

2011-10-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

Batman Arkham City is a next-gen title on a current-gen console. It’s a genuine miracle that my beat-up old Xbox managed to run this game without succumbing to a mechanical aneurism. Then again, miracles are all part of the caped crusader’s repertoire of skills.

Arkham City is brilliant because it makes you *feel* like Batman. Gliding effortlessly from a vantage point on high into a gang of Joker’s henchmen below, before reducing them to a heap of broken bones, encapsulates all of the Dark Knight’s strongest attributes: grace, beauty and brute power. And there’s nothing more iconic than a fully stretched bat-cape silhouetted against the pale glow of the moon.

The open, free-roaming city is both spectacular and intimidating. Perched on a gargoyle overlooking the sprawling city of Arkham, it soon becomes clear just how tightly packed the game is with incidental side quests: a ringing phone, a desperate cry for help, a flashing green question mark– all of these sights and sounds will lead you further in to the dark, gothic nightmare of a city turned sour.

Thankfully, the World’s Greatest Detective is up to the task. Batman is a painstakingly modelled swiss-army-knife of justice. His improved grapnel gun - unlocked after completing four Augmented Reality tutorials – allows for even faster movement around Arkham City. The ability to glide, dive bomb and grapple - all in one seamlessly fluid motion - is one of gaming’s greatest thrills.

What else? Well, there’s Catwoman. And I’m not ashamed to say that her stealth-crawl animation is the sexiest conglomeration of pixels I've ever seen. Okay, maybe I'm a *little* ashamed I just said that. Still, she can also kick ass, seducing enemies mid-fight, luring them in for a kiss and then knocking them unconscious when they let their guard down. And the feline femme fatale is just as mobile as old Brucey too, using her claws to climb the sides of buildings rather than grappling.

Its predecessor, Arkham Asylum, is one of this generation’s best games, but Arkham City takes it to a whole other level. Yahoo Games even went as far as to award the game 6 out of 5 saying, ‘Batman Arkham City improves on the original so much that it feels like gluttony.’ It’s not hard to see why this game has garnered such fevered praise. It’s the kind of game you’ll dream about in your sleep, long after you’ve turned off your console.

Rocksteady Studios – a British video game developer based in Kentish Town – deserves a place among the industry’s great and good. They have after all, given us one of the greatest gifts possible: the chance to be Batman.

Why Dead Island Sucks

2011-10-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

Zombies are a crude metaphor for our collective hatred of other people. Be honest, human beings suck and you want to kill them. Curb stomping a downed zombie isn’t simply gratuitous fun. It’s also essential therapy for the misanthropic masses. Murdering the undead keeps us from going postal after another shitty day at the job we despise. In short, Zombie games save lives.

Unfortunately, Dead Island proves the exception to the rule. I was hoping for a thrilling romp through the zombie-infested holiday resort of Banoi. Instead, I'm lumbered with a glorified list of chores. Every surviving inhabitant on the island has a tedious errand for you to run: "Feed me", "Find my necklace", "Bring me my teddy bear", "Wipe my shitty arsehole". And they just keep on coming. Soon you're drowning in a maddening cacophony of inane fetch-quests.

The game becomes less about surviving a zombie holocaust and more about keeping these mewling, ungrateful, utterly useless sacks of flesh from choking to death on their own tongues. Dead Island isn't the cathartic escape from reality I was hoping for. Quite the opposite in fact. It simply served to remind me exactly why I hate people in the first place.

Staggered Release Dates

2011-10-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

Picture the scene. You’re sat at the head of a royal banquet. Exquisite delicacies from around the world are served on silver platters. The mouth-watering aroma of honey-glazed pork elicits an eager growl of anticipation from your empty stomach. The guests seated around you begin to eat, gorging themselves on the bountiful feast. At last, it’s time to tuck in.

But as you try to reach for the shredded duck, a terrible realisation dawns: you can’t move. You are completely paralysed; every limb immobile. You have no choice but to sit and stare as those around you cram their crumb-flecked mouths with food and drink.

This imaginary scenario is my overblown analogy for the excruciating unfairness of staggered release dates. Take Batman Arkham City for example, which releases TODAY in North America. European gamers are forced to endure the squeals of delight as their American cousins explore the grimy streets of Arkham City. As a long-suffering citizen of Europe I have to wait another three days before I get to join the party. Three fucking days. It took less time to create the universe.

Now I don't know about you, but sloppy seconds just 'aint my style. I can forgive obscure Japanese RPGs that require translation and localisation before they're released into the wild, but a game like Arkham City? No, no, fucking no. There’s no reason why this title couldn't have been assigned a single global release date. Instead, European gamers have to bend over and take it up the poop chute. With no lube.

Forced to endure three days of ceaseless, excited tweets about how Arkham City is the best game of the year, the best game of ALL TIME. Three days of pointless, cruel waiting. I could be hit by a bus in three days, snatched from this mortal coil before I’d even had the chance to ogle Cat Woman’s leather-clad arse. If I'd been at home playing Arkham City - like the rest of the fucking world - I'd have been out of harm’s way.

Don't you see? Abolishing staggered release dates will SAVE LIVES.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Halo 2

2011-10-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

Chris Butcher - Bungie’s senior engineering lead - described the game’s development as a “three-act tragedy.”

Bungie’s two founders had left the game – Alex Seropian had quit to return to Chicago, and Jason Jones was working on another project – and Halo 2 was instead being lead “by a committee,” said Butcher, “who were trying to deliver something impossible…we were standing there after E3 2003 saying, we can’t possibly build this game.”

The initial graphics engine used for Halo 2 was totally unsuited to the Xbox. “We had these levels that just really didn’t make sense with the Halo engine or any kind of shooter engine”, said Butcher. The new tech had to be considerably scaled back.

The experience of Halo 2 changed Bungie. The studio introduced new systems and processes from Halo 3 onwards, which enabled it to better coordinate development, and enable it to experiment without risking huge and complicated delays.

Halo 2’s multiplayer swallowed a huge amount of Bungie’s time and resources. Having to create multiplayer maps that looked as good as singleplayer contributed to its late running. In fact, Bungie’s input shaped the development of Xbox Live itself. The developers liaised with Microsoft engineers building the first - and still the best –console gaming network.

The multiplayer maps were enlarged from the original. They’re multi-tiered, labyrinthine and always offer several different routes to a single all-important location. Brilliantly, the best weapons are placed in the most exposed positions, creating satisfying risk/reward scenarios. It’s a design choice that’s been used in every Halo game since.

New species join the burgeoning alien congregation, most noticeably the Prophets and Brutes with their devastating melee attacks. Elites and Jackals are upgraded to have access to new weapons like the Covenant Carbine and Beam Rifle. Halo 2 also introduced vehicle hijacking, providing both balance and crowd-pleasing spectacle.

Having planned a final dramatic showdown on the surface of earth, Bungie had to cut the final act entirely just to get the game finished in time. We see Master Chief promising to “finish the fight,” then… the credits. It was a disappointment to players and Bungie themselves. Audio lead Jay Weinland admitted it “had most Halo players throwing their controllers at their TVs”. Chief Operating Officer Pete Parsons went further: “a gigantic flaming turd of failure, would probably be the right way to describe it.”

The month Halo 2 launched was the only month in the original Xbox’s lifespan in which it turned a profit. But its legacy was less the singleplayer campaign and more the multiplayer, which became the most popular game on Xbox Live on launchday and stayed there for the life of the Xbox, until it was dislodged by Gears of War on Xbox 360.

Which isn’t to say that Bungie was entirely satisfied with that, either. “Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right.” Chris Butcher told Edge in 2007. “It’s astounding to me. I cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it”.

Dark Souls: Initial Impression

2011-10-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

Believe the hype. Dark Souls is harder than a porn star on viagra. Before purchasing the game, I’d been joking on twitter about drinking raw eggs and shadow boxing in preparation for this sordid exercise in masochism. The truth is, I had been mentally psyching myself up. The word-of-mouth buzz, the breathless, reverential reviews, the ‘prepare to die’ marketing blurb – it all coalesced into something rather exciting. The last time I remember feeling this way was just before I watched The Exorcist. That same queasy thrill turned my stomach as I fired up my Xbox and prepared to play Dark Souls.

Like many action-RPG’s there’s a Character Creation screen to navigate before the game begins. Gotta confess, I’m not a fan of bespoke protagonists. The more choice I’m given, the more I’m convinced that I’ve made the wrong choice. After selecting my gender (male) and class (knight) I then had to choose a ‘gift’. Just to give you some idea of how baffling the choices are, one of the gifts available is a Pendant, which has ‘no effect, but fond memories comfort travellers’. Eh? After plumping for something named Twin Humanities - a ‘tiny sprite sometimes found on carcasses’ - I was ready to play.

You start in a tiny dungeon cell. A corpse is unceremoniously dumped beside you from an opening in the ceiling above. Searching the shrivelled cadaver rewards you with a key with which to unlock the cell door. As you proceed through the dimly lit corridors, you’re slowly drip-fed tidbits of information from engravings on the ground. For example, ‘Left Stick + Hold B: Dash'. You soon pick up a shield and a sword, and the few undead you encounter pose little threat: a few swipes and down they go.

That’s not to say the combat is easy. Hell no. Movement is slow and sluggish, as though your character is moving through syrup. Below your health bar is an additional stamina bar. If you so much as sneeze your stamina takes a severe hit. When it’s depleted, you’re utterly vulnerable to attack. Thankfully, stamina recovers as quickly as it empties, but it’s still something you’re constantly weary of.

The overriding sensation as you press on through the dank dungeon corridors and the empty stone courtyards is one of overwhelming loneliness. Everything wants to kill you. And they will kill you. Over and over again. It’s bleak. The first time you encounter an Asylum Demon is a humbling experience. This huge, green, club-wielding brute literally fills the entire room. There’s hardly any free space to manoeuvre. When one of his wide-reaching swings connects – and it will connect, over and over again – you’re sent crashing to the floor, health bar all but decimated, and before you’ve got a chance to dust yourself off, another blow, this time fatal.

That green bastard has killed me over twenty times, and I’ve yet to knock his health bar below the half way mark. Yes, it’s fucking hard, insanely frustrating and, if I’m being entirely honest, not particularly enjoyable. And yet, as I’m writing this, I know I’ll keep at it until, eventually, I fell that murderous douche bag. I just feel sorry for the poor bastards who had to review this to a deadline.

It’s Time For Men To Man Up

2011-10-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

What makes a man truly a man? I’d say a penis is a pretty important requirement. Anything else? Well, according to Mark Twain, ‘clothes make the man’. So far so good. This whole ‘being a man’ thing seems pretty easy: a pair of gonads, the ability to wear pants and - bob’s your uncle! – you’re a bloke. Cushty.

Things only get complicated when video games are thrown in to the mix. Why? Because video games emasculate men. That’s right, bopping Bowser on his scaly bonce will destroy your masculinity quicker than an appointment at a castration clinic. At least that’s what William J. Bennet would have you believe.

Bennet, a CNN contributor, was the U.S. secretary of education from 1985 to 1988, and is the author of "The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood." A man's man, if you will. He’s also the fella that wrote this article.

The article explains how ‘for the first time in history, women are better educated, more ambitious and arguably more successful than men.’ Is this true? Maybe. But what exactly is holding us men back from achieving our true potential and being, well, you know, proper men. Brace yourselves fellas, ‘cos you ‘aint gonna like this. Yup, it’s video games.

“The Founding Fathers believed, and the evidence still shows, that industriousness, marriage and religion are a very important basis for male empowerment and achievement. We may need to say to a number of our twenty-something men, "Get off the video games five hours a day, get yourself together, get a challenging job and get married." It's time for men to man up.”

That’s right guys, it’s time to man the fuck up. Get off your fat arses, get a job and get married. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Right after I complete Dead Island…

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Halo: Combat Evolved

2011-09-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

The idea for Halo was first conceived in a Catholic girl’s school in Chicago.

Halo’s very first press release in 1999 described the game as a “third-person perspective sci-fi action epic that takes place indoors, outdoors, in the sky and beneath the surface of a world of astonishing realism.” It featured both “epic single-player” and “role-based co-operative multiplayer…that is as much lived as played.” It would “release simultaneously on PC and Mac”.

Halo was originally called Solipsis, after the planet it was set on. Other oddball concept names included The Crystal Palace, Hard Vacuum, Star Maker, Star Shield and The Santa Machine.

Halo’s initial setting was a planet known as the ‘Dyson Sphere’ (built around a sun at its centre) and then a ringworld with a population that included sea monsters, dinosaurs and strange chicken-like creatures that could be captured and used for transport.

Before he was limited to only two weapons, Master Chief had a ludicrious arsenal at his disposal. This epic loadout included not only pistols and rifles but machetes, flamethrowers, spearguns, harpoon guns and even a gravity wrench.

For all it breathless hype, Halo wasn’t considered the jewel in the Xbox’s launch line up. That accolade was instead bestowed upon Oddword: Munch’s Oddysee.

During Halo’s first European press tour the demo computer blew up (literally there was smoke). Joe Staten, lead writer and cinematics director, remembers it well: “Having no computer made our first demo go, er, poorly. ‘Imagine if you will, there’s this green guy called Master Chief, and he’s fighting against some purple space aliens called The Covenant. Cool huh?’”

A huge amount of time was spent working out how to map the quintessentially PC shooter controls to the Xbox’s huge joypad. The analogue stick would never match the precision of the PC’s mouse, but auto targeting would be considered too easy, so Bungie built in a mild assist that helped the cross-hairs stay on target for an extra second.

Bungie spent the final months on Halo working until the small hours whittling down the game’s 10,000 bugs to the handful that survive today.

Halo arrived alongside the Xbox on November 15th 2001, the biggest game on Xbox and the first Microsoft title ever to carry a “Mature” rating signifying it was for adults only.

Once the Christmas season had passed Microsoft sold 1.5 million Xboxes and shipped a million copies of Halo, making it by far the biggest game on the console.

2011-09-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

"When I contemplate the complete collapse of capitalism, I feel like a minor background character in a video game – a faceless pedestrian in Grand Theft Auto, say – being told the powers that be have just discovered a fatal bug in the software and the whole thing may be deleted any second. I may not have enjoyed trudging through my dystopian city, but it was all I knew. Will the pavement now be deleted along with the walls? I have no way of knowing."

Charlie Brooker explains the global economic crisis using gamer-friendly metaphors

Is OnLive Gaming Any Good?

2011-09-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

If you listen carefully, you can hear the dark, prophetic mumblings of doom: ‘the home console is dead, long live cloud gaming'. But what exactly is cloud gaming? To the uninitiated, it sounds like something Lakitu might dabble in. To those in the know, it’s been heralded as the ‘future of gaming’. At this early stage, it feels a little naïve to be making such grand proclamations. But that shouldn’t stop us from having a look at what all the fuss is about.

Cloud gaming allows users to play games without the need for a console or a disc. This might sound like some kind of ominous, voodoo magic but the reality, sadly, is rather less interesting: games are streamed from powerful servers directly to the user’s PC or Mac. Yup, it’s as simple as that. Those of you with low-end computers needn’t worry - all the processing power required to run the games is built into the servers themselves. Not bad, eh?

OnLive is one such cloud gaming platform. It launched in the UK on the 22nd September. I was lucky enough to attend the Eurogamer Expo in London where OnLive were giving away thousands of their Microconsoles free of charge. This nifty bit of kit allows users to access OnLive via their shiny HD TVs. The Microconsole package (£69.99) includes the console itself, a controller, and all the cables needed to connect it to your TV. Instant gaming on the cheap. What's not to like?

Well, the thing is this: there's still an air of uncertainty among gamers as to whether or not OnLive is worth their time and money. Many of us already have an unused Wii gathering dust beneath the TV. And let's not forget the Wii U, scheduled for release sometime in 2012. What exactly does OnLive have to offer the dedicated gamer? Well, to help you make that decision, I've compiled a list of things I liked and disliked about OnLive:

What I like About OnLive

You can pick up Deus Ex Revolution for £1. Seriously, ONE POUND. As part of its launch promotion, OnLive is offering gamers their first OnLive title for the same price as a McDonald's cheese burger. Bargain of the year.

The Microconsole itself is very pretty, and the control pad looks like the Knight Rider when it's charging.

You can, at any time, press the record button on your OnLive control pad and record what you're doing. These are called 'Brag Clips' and can be viewed by anyone who’s signed in to OnLive. Here's one that made me lol:

You are given a free 30 minute demo of practically every game on offer. You can waste an entire day just browsing OnLive's generous catalogue of games. If you see something you like, simply click on the 'free trial' button and you're away: 30 minutes of free, uninterrupted gameplay.

You can watch what other people are playing, like a digital peeping tom. There's even an option to 'Cheer' or 'Jeer' the hapless player you've just hijacked. Trust me, this adds a whole new dimension to the game. When someone's watching you, you're notified on screen. I first became aware of this unsettling perk when I was playing my free demo of Tomb Raider Anniversary. I was being mauled to death by a giant bear at the time. Inevitably, some joker 'cheered' my disembowelling.

Click 'Arena' on OnLive's intuitive interface to access a digital patchwork of games being played by other people.

In a move that can only be described as genius, OnLive's Microconsole is compatible with Microsoft's Xbox control pad. The OnLive controller, while perfectly serviceable, doesn't quite match the comfort and quality of Microsoft's tried and tested control pad.

What I Dislike About OnLive

The current catalogue of games is hardly mind-blowing. Dedicated gamers will have already played most of what's on offer. And console-exclusive titles will remain just that: exclusive to their specific platform. You'll never find Halo or Mario Galaxy on OnLive.

A small selection of OnLive's better titles. Hardly mindblowing, but give it time...

The micro console tends to get very hot.

I know it's early days and there's bound to be teething problems but there's been a few occasions when I've had trouble connecting to OnLive due to the 'high volume of players'. This is a major problem for a service that promises 'instant access to games at any time'.

The very nature of cloud gaming means that you’re denied a hard, boxed copy of the title you’ve just purchased. As any gamer will tell you, there's a deep satisfaction to be had when casting a loving eye over an alphabetically arranged shelf of video games. The tactile joy of opening a brand new box is hard to beat. OnLive may be practical but it fails miserably on this front.

OnLive has unlockable achievements for its games. For many this is a welcome addition. But for an anal achievement whore like me, it's a constant worry. I like to have all my achievements in one place. Spreading them out over Xbox, PS3 and now Onlive feels like I'm somehow diluting them. Silly I know, but I bet I'm not alone...

Yet more achievements to obsess over! A welcome blessing or a nagging curse?

Compromised picture quality. OnLive's visual and audio performance is good, but there's a drop in quality compared to the eye-searingly gorgeous Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. If you're the kind of person who needs to see a game looking as good as it possibly can, you'll be disappointed.

What does streaming games mean for those with bandwidth caps? As an example, at the 5 Mbps OnLive requires for HD gaming, a Comcast user capped at 250 GB monthly could expect to get around 3.8 hours per day of game time - assuming they used their connection for nothing else. Heavy internet users with bandwith caps are going to burn through their monthly allowance in no time at all. This is bound to be a huge turn off for potenetial adopters of OnLive.

Conclusion

Registering for the OnLive service is free. You can then either buy games individually or pay a £6.99 monthly subscription to access a defined library of over 100 titles. If you want to use OnLive on your TV, you'll need to buy the OnLive Microconsole package, which costs £69.99 and comes with a wireless controller.

OnLive's streaming game system is a great concept, and the ability to access a library of games with no downloads, discs or storage worries will tempt curious gadget heads to give it a try. Discerning gamers will be put off by the occasional lag, though, and the list of available titles is underwhelming.

Still, OnLive is an exciting proposition, and it costs nothing to try it out. It probably won't suit you if you're pernickety about lag and image quality, but I'd recommend checking it out nevertheless.

Jim Sterling Vs Cliffy B

2011-09-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

Have you heard the latest scandal to rip through the video game industry? Cliffy B - head honcho at Epic Games - is a bit narked ‘cos Jim Sterling - reviews editor at Destructoid - gave Gears of War 3 eight-out-of-ten.

Okay I admit, I may have over-egged that opening sentence, but the steady stream of snarky tittle-tattle from both camps caught my attention. I found myself inexplicably drawn into the fray. Who would emerge victorious from this wholly underwhelming skirmish?

In an interview with VG247, Cliffy B revealed his feelings about the incoming review scores for Gears of War 3:

VG247: Were you pleased with the review scores this morning?

Cliff Bleszinski: Doing great, apart from a couple of haters.

VG247: And who are the haters?

Cliff: A certain gamer of the Euro.

VG247: And what was their problem with the game? I haven’t read the review.

Cliff: You know, I didn’t quite gather it. I don’t want to come across as defensive. How do I phrase this properly? When people rated Gear 2 higher than Gears 3, it kind of upset me because I know Gears 3 is a better game on every level.

Jim Sterling responded in his twitter feed:

‘His comments directly encourage the "anything under 9 isn't good enough" attitude that's shat all over the industry.’

Cliffy B then blocked Jim from his twitter feed, prompting this reaction from Jim:

‘So apparently @TheRealCliffyB blocked me from Twitter. Charming. #coward’

Now, while this may seem like a trivial bit of internet gossip I can’t help but agree with Jim when he says, ‘His attitude is a harmful one and deserved to be criticized…Clifford was unsatisfied by anything lower than unanimous praise and that's a horrendous attitude for a creative man to have…Never mind that the game's been getting rave reviews. He was so spoiled he focused first and foremost on his complaints…Attitudes need to change, above all else. Attitudes like his, where 8/10 isn't good enough, deserve lambasting.’

To be fair to Cliffy B, he never directly criticised Jim’s review, but his subsequent twitter block speaks volumes about his reaction to those reviews he deems ‘hateful’.

What do you guys think? Was Cliffy B’s reaction ‘bratty and entitled’? Is Jim right to lambast Cliffy B? Or is this silly kerfuffle simply the hollow sound of two egos clashing? I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts, so leave ‘em in the comment section below.

Pictures provided by Kira Walker and Gavin Mitchell

Charlie Brooker’s Favourite Videogames

2011-09-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

I picked up a copy of Charlie Brooker’s The Hell Of It All from HMV for £2. It’s worth owning this hilarious collection of misanthropic scribblings just for the Gaming Apendix alone. In this section, Brooker lists his favourite videogames of all time. Below are some of his entries:

Asteroids (1979, Atari)
Of all the early monochrome classics, Asteroids was my favourite, because it’s truly bleak. Rather than aliens or robots, your enemies are unthinking lumps of rock that are hurtling through space. Twirling somewhere in the middle of this cluttered void is your tiny, heartbreakingly fragile spaceship, armed only with a feeble electric peashooter. If Asteroids has a message, it’s this: you are insignificant, the universe doesn’t care about you, and you are definitely going to die. Brilliant.

Pac-Man (1980, Namco)
Pac-Man himself may be an ultimately unknowable yellow disc, but his spectral pursuers had proper googly eyes and everything. And nicknames. And blood types. OK, not blood types. But this was one of the first games with identifiable characters, which goes a long way to explaining its success.

Doom (1993, id software)
The king of all first person shooters. Doom represented a huge technological leap forward, with graphics and multiplayer gameplay options that were way ahead of their time, But, most of all, Doom was scary. Really bloody scary. Flickering lights, horrifying monsters, pitch-black rooms and blood-curdling sound design. The snarling bull-like ‘pinky’ beasts that galloped over and bit your face off without warning are the most unsettling enemy in videogame history.

Tekken 2 (1996, Namco)
In 1996 I spent weeks sitting hunched over a PlayStation controller in my living room, fighting flatmates and friends in an uninterrupted Tekken trance. It’s a hypnotic orgy of violence in which martial artists, thugs, robots, wrestlers and pandas knock 10 bells out of each other for no good reason; cue punches, kicks and harrowing acts of cartilage-grinding chiropractic violence that almost made you pity your opponent. Wonderful.

The Grand Theft Auto series (1997-2008, DMA/Rockstar)
Controversial series of ‘sandbox’ games that gift the player an entire city in which to misbehave. It began in 1997 as a cheeky mayhem simulator with a top-down, 2D viewpoint and a ZX Spectrum vibe. In 2001, it graduated to 3D and became an unstoppable block-buster. The sun-kissed San Andreas is my favourite GTA, at least until the next-gen GTA IV arrives in a few weeks. Few Brits realise these games are made in Scotland: we should be far prouder of this stuff than we are.

The Orange Box (2007, Valve)
Must-have compilation containing both Half-Life 2 (the best first-person shooter since Doom) and Portal (one of the most inventive brain-ticklers ever conceived). Playing Half-Life 2 is a bit like starring in a sci-fi horror remake of Die Hard, but better, while Portal is a description-defying 3D puzzle that folds your sense of spatial awareness in on itself. Utterly fantastic.

Super Mario Galaxy (2007, Nintendo)
All the Mario platformers are superb: Galaxy happens to be the most recent. A dizzying, challenging, ingenious romp, it’s like having joy poured into your head via the eyeholes. Anyone who believes videogames to be a mindless waste of time should play this. As surreal and inventive as Python; as much pure entertainment as 100 Tom and Jerry cartoons, it’s a bona fide work of modern genius.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Review

2011-09-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

The plot: kill all the Orcs. Stomp their pea-green noggins into the ground and rub the resultant brain-paste over your erect nipples. Trust me, there's simply no other way to approach this game. I was five minutes into Space Marine before I unlocked the ‘kill 100 enemies’ achievement. And that, dear reader, should give you a clear indication of the gratuitous levels of murder you're expected to perform.

Do you remember that epic battle from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, where the besieged inhabitants of Helms Deep have to fend off a gazillion Uruk-Hai? Well, that's pretty much what you'll be doing for the entirety of the game, except in this instance you'll be cutting swathes through hordes of Orcs. Wave after wave of 'em, each one baying for your blood in delightful barrow-boy cockney: "Kill those spayce mah-reens!"

Every aspect of the game is geared towards the relentless decimation of the oncoming hordes. Unlike almost every other third person shooter, Space Marine offers no cover mechanic. There's literally nowhere to hide. And so you'll adopt very specific tactics to stop those encroaching Orc blades from meeting with your flesh.

I whittled away the stampeding green bastards with machine gun fire and grenades before finishing off the stragglers with a frenzied bout of hand-to-hand combat. Run ‘n gun, hack ‘n slash – the ease with which you’re able to combine these two play styles is without doubt Space Marine’s greatest strength. The left and right trigger take care of the shooty action while the face buttons control the close quarter combat. And it works beautifully.

The brutal executions are worth a mention too. Stun an enemy for the chance to perform a deliciously violent finisher, a personal favourite being the body-slam-head-stomp. The impressive draw distance allows for some sweet sniper action too. Felling a fleeing Orc with a bullet to his spine is devilish fun.

But not as fun as the jetpack.

Oh dear sweet jetpack, how I yearn for thee. At certain points in the game you’ll happen upon this exhilarating bit of kit. Strap it on and you're instantly transformed from a lumbering front-line soldier into an aeronautical angel of death. Launch high above the marauding hordes of Orcs before propelling yourself at devastating speed into their fleshy green ranks. Death from above, fuckers.

Space Marine’s campaign mode is like the lifespan of an average Orc: brutal, short and crammed with wanton ultra-violence. Ignore Edge magazine's snooty 5/10 review and give this a try. At the very least download the demo from Xbox Live and make an informed decision. You never know, this could be just the thing to tide you over until Gears of War 3 launches.

8 Things I Dislike About Deus Ex: Human Revolution

2011-09-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

Now don’t get me wrong, Deus Ex Human Revolution is a brilliant game. The universally high review scores speak for themselves. But I’m not here to stroke the game’s already bloated ego. I’m here to deliver a brutal aug-enhanced body blow. The time for sycophantic gushing has passed. He may have metal arms capable of crushing steel girders, but Adam Jenson doesn’t frighten me. No sir. It’s time to get nasty. So then, here’s a list of things I disliked about Deus Ex:

Adam Jensen’s Voice
The lifeless, nasal drone that passes for Jensen’s voice is a constant source of irritation. Clint Eastwood was clearly the inspiration behind the protagonist’s gruff drawl, but that doesn’t stop him from sounding like a listless sat nav. Cheer up ya miserable bastard, you’ve got robotic arms for goodness sake.

The Hacking System
Hacking stuff is supposed to make you feel like an uber-cool secret agent, right? In theory, yes. In Deus Ex, no. I felt like an inadequate, perpetually bewildered idiot. Without the maxed-out stealth hacking augmentation – which effectively renders you invulnerable to detection - I’d have cracked. The majority of people I’ve spoken to love the hacking system, so I guess it’s just me, and this makes me hate it even more.

Bugs
The occasional bug is forgivable, especially in a game as ambitious as Deus Ex. But when those bugs interfere with the core gameplay mechanic, things start to fall apart. On more than one occasion, while hiding from pursuing aggressors, I’ve witnessed NCPs walking straight through closed doors. And more often than not it’s the very same door I’m cowering behind. What should have been a wonderfully tense game of cat-and-mouse degenerates into a comical farce. Like I said, the occasional glitch is pardonable, but walking through closed doors? C’mon already!

The Third Person Cover Mechanic
Okay, hear me out on this one. The third person cover-mechanic employed by Deus Ex generally works very well indeed. Darting from cover to cover, unseen, right under the noses of your enemy is empowering stuff. Slipping out from the shadows to brutalise an unwary guard never gets old. In fact, skulking around a laboratory and picking off unsuspecting lab technicians with a silenced pistol reminded me of GoldeEye's sublime Facility level. However, in the thick of an all-out gun battle, with enemies homing in on your position from every angle, flicking between the third-person cover-mechanic and the traditional first person perspective can be jarring and a little disorientating.

Character Models
The distinctive gold and black colour scheme that permeates Deus Ex’s cyber-punk environments is often beautiful. The same thing can’t be said for the storefront mannequins that populate the game’s four cities. Every character you encounter has the same hideous waxy pallor and robotic mannerisms. If I were feeling charitable, I’d suggest that these unsettling character models were a deliberate attempt by Eidos Montreal to convey the increasingly blurred boundaries between man and machine. But I’m not, so I won’t.

Loading Times
For a game that is so much about the delight of experimentation, with often fatal consequences, the loading times punish you. Even on a high-end PC, they clock up 20 to 30 seconds; running off disc on 360, I sometimes sat there waiting for just under a minute. Here’s a tip: if you install the game to the 360’s hard drive, the loading times become bearable.

Boss Battles
Gah! Those horrible fucking boss battles! The freedom to decide how you deal with the numerous denizens of Deus Ex is without a doubt the game’s greatest strength. So why in god’s name did Eidos Montreal think it was a good idea to strip you of this choice and force you into fighting some monumentally awful bosses? These confrontations add nothing to the game. Quite the opposite; they take away. They fall into the tedious category of ‘single enemy with a zillion hit-points’ that every shooter has employed since the days of 8-bit. Like the final boss of Bioshock, they feel completely at odds with both the tone, and the praxis of the game. See what I did there? Bosses should have been excluded.

The Dialogue
The dialogue leaves a lot to be desired. It’s functional, sure, but it comes across neither naturalistic, nor as proper drama should. This, plus the shonky facial animation – the lip synch is like a badly dubbed seventies kung fu movie – limited my ability to empathise with the characters in any meaningful way, which is why my usual ‘second time through, be an arsehole to everybody’ became the modus operandi for my first run instead.

Deus Ex Human Revolution: What’s Your Favourite Weapon?

2011-08-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

The votes have been counted and verified. Phone lines are now closed. The most popular weapon in Deus Ex HR is...

The freedom to choose how you carve a path through Deus Ex’s cyber-punk cities is without a doubt the game’s greatest strength. With the exception of those god-awful boss-battles, it is possible to complete the entire campaign without committing a single act of murder; a minor miracle for an FPS with over 25 hours of gameplay. So then, which persona did you choose to adopt? The cold blooded assassin or the angel of mercy? Personally, I dabbled in a little of both; an opportunist if you will...

Picture the scene: a secluded back alley in the heart of the city slums. I approach a dishevelled hobo, hoping to glean some information about the lay of the land. Disgusted by my prosthetic augmentations the rat-faced vagrant threatens me with violence. Bad move. Before he has the chance to guzzle another mouthful of booze from his can of Special Brew I unleash a flurry of brutal aug-enhanced blows to the head. One less bum on the streets of Detroit.

But the ability to choose how you deal with any given scenario would not have been possible without the right set of tools. Thankfully, Deus Ex delivers. The option to mod your weapon of choice empowers you to tackle crims in a way that suits your particular style of play. Some people I know operate manually, refusing weapons in favour of hand-to-hand combat. Others like to pick off their targets from a distance with a sniper rifle. And if stealth isn’t your thing, a couple of explosive rounds from a revolver will get the job done.

My personal weapon of choice? Easy. A fully modded pistol with ALL the trimmings: sound suppressor, armour-piercing system, laser sight, as well as increased damage output, ammo capacity and reload speed upgrades. It’s fucking lethal.

And being the curious kinda fella that I am I tweeted the following question: what is your modded weapon of choice in Deus Ex Human Revolutions? Here’s how my followers replied:

Silenced 10mm with all three upgrades (AP+Silencer+Laser) and fully tricked out statistics mods. LOVE IT.
Sabin Figaro

The silenced pistol. It's a headshot machine and quieter than the supposed stealth takedowns in my experience
Dhomochevsky Static

Weapons? Who needs weapons!? Take down all the way, with the help of a Stun Gun if absolutely necessary…
Josh Gardner

Love the revolver with explosive rounds, crossbow and the laser rifle. The taser makes bosses a cinch though, so I’ll go for that.
Ryan

I'm quite the fan of the Combat Rifle, although never really used it since I was playing non-violent. So Tranquilizer it is.
Ryou Takeshi

I like the stun gun but the ammo is scarce. I've upgraded the pistol and put a laser sight on it, which is handy too.
Games Asylum

So far it is the laser sighted combat rifle, but the 10mm is pretty nifty as well.
Vask

I like the heavily modded assault rifle, silenced, damage mods, rate of fire, reload speed, laser sight ;)
Jason Susvidge

I'm actually a fan of the AR silencer and as much hand-to-hand as I can manage. I'm playing this Ghost Recon Style.
Andy Lunique

Revolver, Explosive Rounds!
Henry Tsang

I'm a pistol kinda guy when I'm not using my bare hands. Not found the silencer yet though :( I want!!!
Marc Davies

Stealth Pistol with silencer, laser and armour piercing. For hilarity, revolver with explosive bullets :D
John Pawsey

I've put every weapon mod into the 10mm Pistol so far. I love that gun.
Chris

I’m a PEPS man myself.
Bobby Graham

Pistol mainly.
Chris Pengilly

A fully souped up 10mm and revolver. 10mm for silenced kills, revolver for FUBAR moments where its explosive mod is king.
Alexander Lai

My weapon of choice is the silenced pistol. Gets the job done : P
Sonny

Quite simply, the pistol. Laser and silencer make life so much easier and the ammo is cheap.
Thomas

The Pistol with everything on it. The Combat Rifle with the heat seeking upgrade is also pretty good.
Jesse Curtis

I love hacking security and siccin’ the bots and turrets on the guards.
Sarcasm

Later on in the game the revolver is the only gun worth having, One shot kills anywhere on the body. BOOM!
Craig Armstrong

AND THE WINNER IS...

As you can see, the modded pistol seems to be the average gamer's weapon of choice. If you disagree, leave a comment below and tell me what really gets your kill-juices flowing...

Videogames: The New King Of Entertainment

2011-08-29T02:47:00.000-07:00

Gamers have known it for years. But it's time to bring the rest of the world up to speed. Here's why videogames are THE ultimate entertainment media...

Real life sucks. Ever since evolution saddled us with self-awareness, we’ve been wallowing in a mire of existential angst. Why are we here? What does it all mean? What’s the fucking point? Life is complicated enough without the added burden of unanswerable questions plaguing our every thought. Add to that our inherent ability to feel guilt, shame and paranoia and you begin to wonder how we ever make it through the day.

So then, how to cope with the problem of being a living, breathing human being? The answer, of course, is videogames. Of all the brightly coloured baubles we have to distract us from our slow slide into the grave, videogames are the most consistently engaging. Sure, HBO has been a worthy contender – The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Band Of Brothers – but it’s videogames that are the true king of entertainment. And here’s why:

Achievements and trophies provide a digital library of every gaming triumph you’ve ever accomplished. You simply don’t get that with films. Managing to quash an awkward boner when Jessica Rabbit saunters into view is surely deserving of some kind of accolade? But no, all I’m left with is a nasty pang of self loathing. Rubbish.

Mario will never place a shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger at the thought of his music becoming part of some bland corporate mechanism. And it's highly unlikey that Master Chief will ever be accused of child molestation. The iconic videogame characters who we love and cherish will never disappoint or disgust us like their real-life celebrity counterparts. Apart from Rayman. He’s a total cunt.

“If you don’t play games, you’re not just missing out, you’re wilfully ignoring the most rapidly evolving creative medium in history”

Ignore the naysayers. Videogames bring people together. And not just to shoot each other’s faces off in Call Of Duty. Bejeweled Blitz, Pokemon, Boom Blox, Animal Crossing – these are just a tiny handful of games whose creativity has enchanted all ages and crossed cultural divides. Videogames are even challenging the assumption that art is a passive experience for the audience. Beat THAT Tate Modern.

In no other medium can you realise your geekiest fantasies with such heart-pounding gusto. Every niche is catered for, from the heady heights of saving the universe (Halo), all the way down to your run-of-the-mill fishing simulator (Sega Bass Fishing). Wish fulfilment has never been so accessible.

Despite its rise in popularity, gaming is still a relatively esoteric pastime. Every cunt has an opinion on The Godfather, but only gamers can tell you why Beyond Good & Evil is an essential purchase.

One of the last and most explosive bastions of anti-videogame ignorance in the UK, The Daily Mail has often demonised gaming culture. But it’s okay. It really is. Being reviled by the Daily Mail has become a badge of honour. At least Ricky Gervais seems to think so...

The Evolution Of Mario

2011-08-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

The brilliantly named YouTuber "AnOrangePikachu" has uploaded a video compilation entitled "Evolution of Mario" which shows the iconic plumber in over 100 games he's appeared in over the years.

It's a staggering work of editing, and I suspect even the most devoted Mario fan will see some footage that's new to them. Enjoy! I know I did.

Portal Mini-Movie Is Mindblowing

2011-08-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

Filmakers, take note: THIS is how you make a movie based on a videogame.

The film - titled No Escape - is directed by Dan Trachtenberg. Dan premiered this short film at Comic-Con and, quite rightly, received a standing ovation. The film brings a grounded realism to the whimsical sci-fi concept of portal-hopping.

Some interesting facts about No Escape:

The movie stars Danielle Rayne, who has been working on tv for the last two decades, including a regular stint on All My Children.

If the strong female action character reminds you of Sarah Conner, it isn’t a coincidence — Rayne played Conner in the Terminator 2: 3D show at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Some of you might recognize director Dan Trachtenberg from his appearances on the /Filmcast. More people know Dan from his highly successful internet television show the Totally Rad Show.

Diggnation/TRS host Alex Albrecht has a cameo as one of the masked guards.

The film is scored by Mike Zarin, who is probably best known as the composer of the first Inception trailer (listen here). While Zack Hemsey gets most of the credit with his trailer song “Mind Hiest”, Zarin was the composer responsible for the now infamous “BRRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMMMM!!!” which not only the other Inception trailers built upon, but went on to influence Hans Zimmer’s approach for score for the film.

Dan’s brother David Trachtenberg edited the short. David has edited episodes of HBO’s “Funny or Die Presents…” and is currently working on the upcoming Will Ferrell/Gael García Bernal comedy Casa de mi Padre.

Visual Effects Supervisor Jon Chesson has worked on the television series V, True Blood, Falling Skies and the upcoming film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

*Snigger* If you pause at 1.54 you get to see a particularly well-toned bottom. *tee-hee*

How do the soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan unwind? Vidoegames of course!

2011-08-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

During his time as a soldier in Iraq, Captain Stephen Machuga (pictured above) received a care package full of second-hand romance novels donated by a library. In a matter of minutes those very same novels were used by his unit for target practice test-firing captured small-arms. Captain Machuga realised that, while people had their hearts in the right place, they were clueless as to what the soldiers really wanted.

And so Operation Supply Drop was born.

This selfless organisation donates videogame care packages for deployed troops in high threat provinces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Everything from Portal to Peggle is shipped over to the beleaguered soldiers to help keep them entertained during their downtime.

The photos below show just how awesome these care packages are. You can pledge your support for Operation Supply Drop by following them on Twitter.

Is November 2011 set to be the greatest month in videogame history?

2011-08-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Typical! You wait an eternity for a Triple-A title to come out and then seven of them are released in the same bloody month! Yup, November 2011 is set to decimate the bank accounts of dedicated gamers as publishers choose the lucrative run-up to Christmas as the ideal period to release their games.

Among the treasure trove of titles set to hit retail outlets this November are three console exclusives: Uncharted 3 (PS3,) Halo Anniversary (Xbox 360), and Skyward Sword (Wii). Staggeringly, every single one of the highly anticipated games listed below is either a sequel or a revamp. Still, when the quality on offer is this good, it's hard to complain. So then, you’d better start saving your pennies 'cos here's what's hitting the shelves in November 2011:

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception - November 1st 2011

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - November 8th 2011

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - November 11th 2011

Assassin's Creed: Revelations - November 15th 2011

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary - November 15th 2011

Saints Row: The Third - November 18th 2011

The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword - November 18th 2011

Five Bastard Hard Videogame Moments

2011-08-15T06:51:00.000-07:00

I consider myself a hardcore gamer. You’ll never catch me sobbing like a spanked child when faced with a challenge. Nope, not me. My dinkle twitches into life whenever I’m confronted with an awkward Xbox achievement. Cheating is unthinkable; the last refuge of a coward. Fuck you for even thinking about it.

Still, even gaming gods have their off days. And sometimes, on those super rare occasions when a videogame is, you know, a little too devious for its own good, I sometimes, but very rarely - almost never in fact - consult the internet, just to make sure I’ve covered all my bases. But I’m not cheating. Perish the thought. I’m simply moving things along. I’m a busy man and my time is precious. Yup, busy busy busy.

So then, below are five occasions when I’ve had to consult the internet for a quick information fix. Because I’m a busy man. Not because I’m shit at games.

Braid
Insanely bewildering, like a Kafka novel come to life. A super intense workout for the brain, guaranteed to have you weeping blood in frustration. The time altering mechanics coupled with some truly masochistic level design makes for a double hard bastard of a game.

Breaking point: Fickle Companion, World 4-7. Keys unlock doors, right? But what if the key you need has a mind of its own? How exactly do you unlock the door when the key you’re holding suddenly, and without warning, leaps from your hand and fucks off to the other side of the level? What then!?

Solution:

Saw 2: Flesh And Blood
Plunging your hand into a toilet full of used syringes in order to retrieve a rusty nail is just one of the ridiculous, counter-intuitive mini-games in this sordid world of torture porn. But pain, frustration and death are to be expected from a Saw game – it’s the franchise’s raison d'etre. Just don’t expect me to grin and bear it when nasty design flaws are the cause of my suffering.

Breaking point: Those fucking balancing beams. Yup, believe it or not, walking along a plank of wood proved this game’s toughest challenge. Following the onscreen prompts to push the trigger buttons only seemed to hasten my demise. Having fallen to my death for the 156th time I was convinced the game was broken. But no, after consulting the internet I found that as well as the trigger buttons, which moved my character forward, I also had to use the L-Stick to balance. After another 47 fruitless attempts at walking across that cunting plank the game took mercy on me and crashed.

Solution: Fuck knows; I shattered the disc into a million tiny pieces with a hammer.

Halo Reach
Completing the campaign on legendary is hard, but achievable. Trying the same feat with all skulls turned on and without help from a fellow spartan is truly a test of one’s gaming mettle, but still achievable. It’s only when trying for a 100% achievement record that I became unstuck.

Breaking point: For a developer with such a fond regard for its fans, it makes it doubly unpalatable that Bungie created such a painfully hard achievement. I’m talking, of course, about the ‘If They Came To Hear Me Beg’ achievement, where the player is asked to ‘perform an assassination against an Elite to survive a fall that would’ve been fatal’. And yes, it’s as hard as it sounds.

Solution:

Just Cause 2
For my money the best open world game on the Xbox. A massive, gorgeous game-space bursting with real-time potential. See that snow capped mountain looming in the distance, begging to be climbed? Well, you can climb it. And then you can jump off it, free fall for an age, and in what is surely one of gaming’s greatest moments, deploy your parachute and glide gracefully onto the sandy beach below. Magical.

Breaking Point: Trying to find the Vanderbildt Leisure Liner (VLL). In order to complete the ‘Try Everything Once’ achievement you have to drive all 104 vehicles. But guess what? The sodding VLL doesn’t actually exist! A glitch in the game code means that the vehicle never spawns!

Solution: I had to buy the ‘Black Market Aerial DLC pack’. The additional vehicles included in this package helped me hit the magical 104 mark.

New Super Mario Bros Wii
Roping in a couple of playmates is never a problem when you mention the ubiquitous Italian chubster. Faces light up and eyes mist over with childhood nostalgia. That mystical Mario allure has yet to wane after all these years. Sharing power ups, boosting a chum to reach a Star Coin, piggybacking a weaker player over tricky terrain - all these wonderful moments of teamwork are integral to the happy, shiny, let's-be-friends feel. Until, that is, you reach THAT level.

Breaking point: World 9-7. Lurking beneath the candy-coated exterior is the very essence of Satan himself. The pixel-perfect jumps required to navigate the level will cause many to self-harm and may even induce cancer. The icy terrain poses a twin threat. Not content with being a slippery bastard, it also has the infuriating habit of disintegrating under foot. Add to this the fiendishly placed Star Coins and you have all the ingredients for an aneurism. Trust me, this makes The Lost Levels look like a trip to Alton Towers. Not fun.

Solution:

Is It Finally Gameover For Nintendo?

2011-08-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

Who remembers the Gamecube’s unique selling point? If you’ve forgotten, let me remind you: it had a handle. So you could carry it.

Sadly, it’s been downhill for Nintendo ever since.

Advocates of the Wii are wrong. It's a terrible console, perhaps even worse than its purple predecessor. The initial excitement generated by the idiot-proof Wii remote soon turned to apathy and eventually hatred. In its current state, motion-controlled gameplay lacks the sophistication and accuracy enjoyed by those brought up on traditional control pads.

In short, it’s shit.

Rare glimpses of genius – most notably Mario Galaxy – were smothered beneath an avalanche of cheap and nasty third party titles. Only the prospect of another Zelda title - Skyward Sword - is keeping the Wii from total redundancy.

But it’s too little, too late.

With the Wii U on the horizon and - at last! - the promise of a full-on HD Zelda, anticipation for Skyward Sword has waned, even among the hardcore. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we jump on the fanboy bandwagon, let’s have a look at just what Nintendo’s next console is all about.

The unveiling of the Wii U at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo was a total balls-up. Even the tech-savvy journos that comprised the audience let out a collective ‘eh?’ after the Wii U was revealed. The source of confusion was Nintendo’s barmy decision to show only the controller. The actual console was nowhere to be seen. In an attempt to placate the bewildered attendees, Satora Iwata hastily tweeted a pic of himself holding both the console and the controller.

It gets worse.

Nintendo's share price hit its lowest value in five years following the Wii U’s calamitous unveiling. "There were high expectations from the new version of the Wii and this fell far short," said analyst Yusuke Tsunoda.

In fact, the Wii U is looking less appealing with each passing day. The console’s “unique” tablet-style controller will feel like yesterday’s news when it finally makes an appearance in 2012. Nintendo’s new console will be born into a world where tablets have already successfully established themselves as alternative gaming platforms.

It’s time Nintendo had a serious fucking reality check. Console sales used to make up 80 percent of the industry as recently as 2000. Today that percentage has halved due to the proliferation of ipads and mobile phones. The revolution is here. Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to be floundering in its wake rather than leading it.

The 3DS is a perfect case in point. Mere months after it launched Nintendo instituted one of the deepest and swiftest price cuts in its history. A whopping third of the retail price was lopped off to counter disappointing sales figures. Nintendo released the 3DS into an intensely competitive market – a market where the iOS platform is growing as a gaming destination at an exponential rate.

Times are changing and Nintendo needs to sit up and take notice or drown in the coming tide. Gamers can pick up their ipod, download several fun, high-quality games for free, almost every day. Nintendo continues to flog us shite like Xevious – originally released in 1982 – for over a fiver. It’s a total fucking shambles. Unsurprisingly, Japanese fund managers and investors have called on Nintendo to move, or buy, into smartphones.

Japanese newspaper Nikkei is reporting that Nintendo is set to report losses as much as ¥100 billion (£823 million/$1.32 billion) for the first-half of 2011.

So then, is this the end for the almighty Nintendo? Will the Wii U go the way of the Dreamcast?

I certainly hope not. My heart sinks at the thought of a world without Mario, Link and Samus. Come on Nintendo, pull your finger out and give us gamers what we want: an end to gimmicky peripherals and a Zelda game that finally tops Ocarina of Time. Preferably in HD. Cheers.

Halo Anniversary Interview

2011-08-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

Halo Anniversary is a smart and technically astounding love letter to one of the most important and accomplished games of all time, taking full advantage of today's visual supremacy and online functionality without compromising what made the original so very, very special.

Luckily for you guys Digital Gigolo got to grill Halo's franchise development director, Frank O'Connor, about Master Chief's tenth birthday bash.

How do you picture the audience for Halo Anniversary? Will it be the same people who were playing the original ten years ago and want to celebrate the game, or is it younger people who played the recent Halos but maybe weren't even gamers when the original came out - who's the ideal target?

Well it's sort of complicated, really, because the Halo audience is absolutely the least monolithic one that I'm familiar with. It spans a huge range of ages - to your point, there are a lot of kids who might be curious about this, and now that it has shiny new graphics they might want to give it a try.

With the Campaign mode remade, one of the things we thought is, you know, it's a ten-year-old game - the graphics are going to help, but will it still feel like a ten-year-old game. But the funny thing is, it doesn't, and that's in large part due to the qualities and the nature of the original Campaign. I mean, to this day - and I'm not boasting because it's not my software, it's Bungie's software - I can't think of another first-person shooter out there that does sandbox in its campaign mode as well as the original Halo does.

Still, to this day, you jump into a Warthog and you drive round in these vast open environments, and there isn't realy quite anything like it - certainly not in the FPS genre.

Things like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption definintely do that in a third-person game, but for a first-person shooter - Battlefield's awesome, but it's not the same type of game at all. And so the beauty of Halo Anniversary is, with the new graphics, it feels like it was made yesterday and it feels like a lot of the game concepts and the physics and the ideas and the controls were made yesterday as well. It feels brand new.

So it's hard to say who our audience is in terms of new people. In terms of old people, we all know who we are - we're people who had System Link games in basements and blew fuses as we plugged in too many TVs in someone's house. And it's also people who grew up on Halo 2 and 3 and heard the kind of legends of the Halo: Combat Evolved gameplay.

Combat Evolved really has held up amazingly well - many still regard it as the best in the series. Contrast that to the remake of Perfect Dark, which clearly needed a lot more that just a visual update. How careful are you being to "tart things up" without tinkering too much with that much loved original formula?

Yeah, we had to be super-careful about that. The technology behind Halo Anniversary's Campaign Mode is really interesting; it's the exact Halo engine and physics, right down to grenade-jumps that you used to be able to make and weird rocket-jump tricks that you used to be able to do. It is the Halo engine running under a second engine, which is handling the new graphics. So it's actually a really clever piece of technology, but it is sitting on this ten-year-old foundation. And that's an incredibly strong foundation - it still works.

The Halo physics, quite apart from sort of feeling realistic, have thier own charisma and their own personality, and people difinitely missed the way that the Warthog worked in the original. [Bungie] actually switched to Havoc for Halo 2, so it lost a little bit of the personality. It also lost a bunch of bugs and stuff, but it lost a little bit of the personality that hardcore Halo fans really enjoyed, and so that was super important.

The second half of it was the multiplayer part. Combat Evolved never had an online component on Xbox. It did on PC - everyone complained about lag and people remember the Rocket Hog shooting rockets in completely the wrong direction - but that was the nature of the way the game was built. And we knew that, with the time we had and with the sort of people and budget restraints that we had to build this project quickly and efficiently, we just couldn't go in and re-engineer that code and re-engineer a bunch of game design to make that work in a timely fashion.

So we made this decision to go with the Reach multiplayer stuff, and the decision was compounded by the fact that we didn't want to break up the matchmaking population. You know, as the game gets older and the population dwindles, the last thing you want to do is come in and disrupt that, especially with Halo 4 coming out next year. So we've made the decision to use the Reach mutilplayer engine, and the Reach multiplayer population, to make the two things fit indirectly.

Hence the title update for Reach.

After kind of teasing and hinting at it, we're going to do a title update for Reach later this summer. And that is going to add significant controls and functionality, and some changes in multiplayer that will better enable us to more accurately represent the original Halo: Combat Evolved multiplayer as you might remember on System Link. It's not going to be identical but it's letting us do some really significant things, instead of the little tweaks and slider changes that people are used to.

Would it be fair to say, while you're being authentic to the original Campaign experience, you're making the multiplayer side more consistent with the needs and expectations of today's gamers?

Yeah, and I mean there's a danger in trying to be all things to everyone. But certainly the multiplayer is a good compromise, we think, in that regard. It keeps a lot of features like saved films and screenshots and Forge, and of course the really awesome code in Reach multiplayer. But putting in the old classic favourite maps - including a bunch of small maps, which is a big complaint Reach gets, that it has a lot of big asymmetrical maps and not a lot of understandable smaller maps for Team Slayer - and also adding the features that this title update will allow us... the example we use is that you'll be able to turn off fall damage on a map like Hang 'Em High that people were familiar with back in their Combat Evolved days.

And that's just really a simple example - we're actually about to do much more significant things. But we're trying not to overpromise. Because what we don't want to say is, when we title update, that the Anniversary maps played in Halo: Reach will feel exactly like Halo: Combat Evolved. Because they won't. They'll certainly add some functionality that you haven't had in Reach, but we don't want to say it's going to be a verbatim experience.

Back to the Campaign and, while you're being true to the original, you're returning to a game that didn't know there would be sequels and novels and animated films. How much of that "future history" are you retconning into the original story, or is that something you're not doing at all?

Funnily enough, you're absolutely right. Halo 1 was built - I mean, I think everyone wants to make a franchise, right? When you make something new you hope it's going to be successful, but it was kinds built as a one-off. [When] it was very successful, that meant that is was a lot of work, a lot of heavy lifting to be done with canon and story to make it go forward - that's all been taken care of for years now. So we have a plan, here, that goes at least ten years in the future in terms of storylines, and we're lucky with opportunity to be able to go back and put some story in.

So we've put, sort of one of the Easter Egg-y features, is a thing called Terminals. You're going to find these Terminals scattered all throughout the Anniversary Campaign and they're going to add a layer of story that answers a lot of questions people had about Halo in the first place, but also hint gently at things that are to come in the future. So we're really excited about that and the Terminals themselves are actually beautiful.

And we're going to make them really easy to find - we think it's crazy when people really hide story. If the story is germane to the plot of the game then you should probably make it understandable or at least accessible. So if you play it on Easy or Medium they'll be fairly simple to find; we'll definitely make it trickier and add some bonuses for people who want to play on Heroic and Legendary, but this is a very easy to find and easy to understand story. It's absolutely not cryptic in any way, it's a very cool piece of the Halo universe.

Tell us a little about the so-called 'flashback mode' - the ability to flick back and forth between old and new graphics a la Monkey Island Special Edition. How big a pain has that been to intergrate?

It was a fairly simple thing when it was a menu item, and you went back into the menu and you reloaded. But once we made it a thing you could do on the fly, that introduced all kinds of crazy new problems - such as if you switch on the fly while a Warthog has just blown up off the beach, and is spinning through the sky, where is it in the sky when you switch back? And we have that down, now. The intitial switch takes about a second, something like that, and it gets a little bit faster each time you do it.

And it's really fun - we thought it was going to be just a cool historical bonus, but people use it all the time becuase your curiosity is never ever satisfied. You come round a corner and you go, I wonder what that bush looked like?' So people do it almost as a mania, at this point, even in internal testing and it's really fun. We still have to come up with a name for it - we're calling it Classic Mode for the moment, but we need to figure out what that's going to end up being.

Even though you knew the game intimately, there must have been one or two things you rediscovered that you'd either completely forgotten about, or perhaps didn;t even discover in the first place.

Yes an no. The first time I got in a Warthog in new mode, the guys were watching me - because they know I've got a long history with it and they wanted to see what I did - so I grabbed a Warthog and I drove it up to this tree and just started smashing into the tree. And they're like, "You can't take a Warthog up there," and I'm like, "Oh yes you can." And I just kept doing what I remember doing and eventually the thing just slides through it, thanks to a physics bug, and it just slides past the tree and they're like, "Oh, you can get past there."

So people are going to do all sorts of different things and people played it in so many ways, thanks to the sandbox. Some people just did the whole thing on foot, some people never got out of a vehicle if they can avoid it and it's going to be interesting to see what people discover. We're already starting in testing to try to recreate classic bugs - things like Warthog launching, where you could super-combine dropped grenades to make things blow up and fly really far - we're trying to make sure that those things still work.

And we won't guarantee that everything works exactly the same - I mean, apart from anything else, the game's in 16:9 aspect ratio now, which changes things. But everything that would in thoery have worked in a 16:9 version of the original Halo should work in this, and we're trying some of the more elaborate tricks - tower to tower is a very popular tricking video right now.

How crazy is it that we're a decade on, re-exploring one of the greatest games of all time, and you know that's going to be the first thing the hardcore fans look for: "Have they got all the bugs in?"

It' definitely a weird situation, and this happened in a really compressed schedule to get it out day-and-date for the ten-year anniversary. And we had to have these really bizarre conversations with our developers and say, "Look, when he gets up there, you can't have that be all beautifully decorated, because it was just flat grassy texture back in the day. So by all means make the texture nice, but you can't have bushes and stuff up here".

The graphics change the gameplay a little bit in the Campaign, and we've used that as an opportunity in a couple of the levels that are sort of famously hard or confusing - the Library's always brought up as an example of that - and we've used lighting and textures and added some graphical features to make it a litlle more navigable. But without actually changing the gameplay; it's just that you're going to suffer less from being lost and turned aroundm and you'll pretty much know where to go. It's still going to be just as hard, but it should be prettier and a little more understandable.

The shooter genre is very different today than it was ten years ago, and certainly this game isn't competing with its 2011 rivals in the same way it was in 2001. But how do you think Halo Anniversary will compare to its contemporaries today?

I think the Campaign, as I mentioned earlier, it still feels modern - and bluntly, it's still doing a bunch of things that most FPS games haven't really figured out properly yet, and it's a testament to the original's strength. Multiplayer, that part is actually super-modern; really all we're doing is putting in maps. The irony is we're doing some retro-grade stats to make it feel like an older game! That'll all be corralled in matchmaking, so you'll absolutely be able to play old and new maps with the traditional and modern Reach ruleset and physics and speed and balance.

But we'll make matchmaking "hoppers" as we call them, with the kind of classic rules and things that you really, really enjoyed - without giving them away - about the original game. And some of those are a little archaic; there are some things in there that would be questionable in terms of modern gameplay balance. People like to create an approachable, even playing field in some ways, but you also want to give people power weapons and to feel strong and able in thier multiplayer games. So I think multiplayer's definitely going to feel like the most modern aspect, but with some retro flashback stuff thrown in. And as mentioned, Campaign still feels like this game could've been released yesterday.

We know you're not really talking about it yet, but you've got to give us something - tell us something we can look forward to in Halo 4 that fans might not have gleaned from analysing the trailer.

I will say this: everything in the trailer is there for a purpose. Everything from the music to the audio to even some gameplay features are all in the trailer - there bascially isn't a wasted pixel in the entire thing. A lot of people have asked us about things, like why does Master Chief's armour look different, and there's two parts to that one: one is the traditional 'we're moving into new technology and new artists are interpreting it', but there is actually an important story aspect to that, which will have some gampelay ramifications as well.

So all the internet sleuths with an unhealthy obsession with the codpiece - maybe they weren't wasting their time!

You know the funny thing is that there is actually a codpiece - it just isn't green. I mean, you don't want to go into an intergalactic battle with no protection for your cup.

Duck Hunt Confirmed For The Wii U

2011-07-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

The sequel to Duck Hunt has proven so popular that Nintendo is planning to release a limited edition 'Shotgun' pack for the Wii U.

Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that only 100 units will be made available to the public.

Shadows Of The Damned Video Review

2011-07-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my brand spanking new Youtube channel. I'll be posting all my video reviews here so be sure to stay tuned.

This here Shadows Of The Damned review is my very first attempt at this kinda thing so I'd appreciate your feedback. Leave your suggestions in the comment section below and I'll be sure to take them on board.

Cheers.

Shadows Of The Damned Review

2011-07-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Anyone who plays Shadows of the Damned will be wanked-off by Jesus in heaven. A divine handjob from the son of God. And who knows, if you're lucky you may even get to spunk in his stigmata.

I am, of course, kidding. I open with this sickening gambit because I want to set the right tone, and only a violation against The Almighty Himself will prepare you for the head-spinning cluster-fuck that is SoD.

Exaggeration? No. This game is FUBAR. Proof? Well, how about the 30ft stripper who's naked buttocks I had to traverse in order to progress in a level. Not weird enough for ya? Well then, how about the three-headed statue that vomits zombies? Trust me, this shit is stranger than Derren Brown on ecstasy.

And all those clueless cunts who cite linearity as a barrier to purchase are missing the point in the most spectacular fashion. Yes, the game is linear. And no, this doesn't detract from the demon-slaying fun. Who cares if the journey never deviates from its preordained path? It's FUN. And if you're a fun-hater you can fuck right off. Or in the words of one of the demented demons you encounter, 'FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOU'.

Still here? Good, 'cos this review is about to get even more idiotic.

The spectre-thin plot – Hotspur’s girlfriend is dragged to hell by the Lord Of Demons, and he goes after her – sets up the action. From here on in it’s an unashamedly puerile medley of cock gags, B-Movie references and, of course, monster dismemberment. And what delightfully grotesque monsters they are. Think Pan’s Labyrinth and you’ll have a good idea of the kind of outlandish beasties that await you.

Paula: SoD's scantily-clad damsel in distress. Her unfortunate 'Groundhog Day' death sequences border on the perverse.

SoD is the sordid love child of creative powerhouses Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami. If the names don't ring a bell, the games these guys have made certainly will. Their collective body of work is nothing short of genius: Killer 7, No More Heroes, Devil May Cry, Vanquish, Resident Evil. A collaboration between these two men was always going to produce a quirky, oddball videogame. And hey, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. That would be like teaming up Jospeh Fritzl and Fred West and expecting them NOT to rape and murder children.

But a game cannot live on lunacy alone. There has to be a solid game mechanic underpinning the joyful nonsense. Thankfully, SOD provides. At its core beats the heart of an old-school shoot-em-up. The game thunders along at a cracking pace and rarely deviates from its monster-killing agenda. And this proves to be the games greatest strength. There's no doubting that sandbox shooters like Halo are ace. The Silent Cartographer remains to this day a pinnacle of level design. But sometimes you just can't beat a bit of mindless carnage, especially when it's as well executed as this.

Your arsenal is eccentric but limited, a commendable design decision that suits the frantic corridor encounters. You never have to cycle through a burgeoning selection of weapons. A quick tap of the D-Pad and you're ready to pop demon skulls. Your pistol, shotgun and machine-gun are modified as the game progresses. Your Skullcussioner, for example, can be charged to fire off a cannon ball sized grenade, which at one point in the game must be used as a bowling ball in a particularly macabre frame of skittles.

Successfully line up a head shot and you're treated to a lovely slo-mo instakill.

Each gun also has a secondary firing mode called the light shot, which performs a twofold function: Illuminating darkened areas by shooting wall mounted goat-heads and blasting enemies veiled by shadow to stun them into vulnerability. And it's this day/night mechanic that provides the meat of Shadow's gameplay. Whenever Garcia is plunged into darkness his health slowly begins to deteriorate and enemies become invulnerable. A light source must be located before the walking damned and your ailing health-bar conspire to do you in. Sometimes, however, you must embrace the darkness in order to illuminate enemy weak spots and solve simple puzzles.

On your journey through the Shadows of The Damned you'll encounter a mind boggling array of oddness, as if the creative minds behind it were hell bent on freaking you out, haphazardly lobbing in idea after idea without any real regard for your sanity. A Marcus Fenix clone with only 30 seconds of screen time? Check! A turret section in which your gun calls a sex line to enlarge itself? Check! An eight foot demon called Christopher who sells you items amid the lurid glow of illuminated vegetation? Check! Random 2D side-scrolling segments? Check! It's all here, all jostling for your attention in this hyper-gothic world of the damned.

The 2D sections break up the relentless monster-slaying with, erm, more monster slaying.

Yes, there are criticisms to me made. Some will baulk at the innuendo and crude humour, the way in which the game's scantily clad damsel in distress is regularly ogled by the camera. And once you've completed it, you may feel there is little incentive to return. I managed to snag 45 out of the 50 achievements on my first play through.

But rather than piss and moan at the puerile idiocy of SoD, I embraced it. I enjoyed it. And I urge you to so the same. Ignore the snooty naysayers and treat yourself to a deliciously absurd slice of escapism.

How To Spot A Non Gamer - Competition Winner!

2011-07-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

Firstly, a massive thank you to everyone who took the time to send in a submission. I was delighted by the enthusiastic response.

I received a total of 117 submissions and read every single one of ‘em. The general consensus seems to be that ‘spotting a non gamer’ is an increasingly futile pursuit. We’re all gamers now thanks to the proliferation of ipads, mobile phones and social networking sites. Console sales used to make up 80 percent of the industry as recently as 2000. Today that percentage has halved. Unsurprisingly, many of you fear for the humble console, envisaging a bleak, dystopian future of mass console extinction, to be replaced with cloud and *shudder* mobile gaming. The revolution, it seems, is upon us.

Many of you, therefore, tried to distinguish between the casual and the core gamer. Countless submissions depicted the ‘hardcore’ gamer as a basement dwelling recluse who still lives with his mum. He can be easily identified from his calloused thumbs, gnarled fingers, oily skin and repugnant body odour. In short, the average core gamer is a ‘hideous, wretched, deplorable wreck of a human being’. One of you naughty scamps even suggested that spotting a non gamer was simply a case of gender identification: ‘if you’re a girl, you’re a non gamer’.

The casual gamer didn’t escape the clumsy stereotyping either. According to you lot, the less ardent gamer enjoys a dramatically healthier lifestyle when compared to their ‘hardcore’ counterparts. Hell, they even have partners and dare to venture outside their homes to ‘socialise’. Astonishingly, one of you reported that non gamers are blessed with ‘larger genitalia’. As for the actual games, the casual consumer ‘only ever plays Angry Birds, Farmville and, at a push, Wii Sports Resort’. Halo and COD are strictly off the menu.

The winning submission eschewed the easy cliché and approached the topic from a pleasingly unexpected angle. The writer’s inspiration was, believe it or not, Anne Frank’s Diary. The article is written from the perspective of a non gamer living under the brutal dictatorship of Mario and his ‘Gamestapo’ storm troopers:

We hid under the floorboards. The Gamestapo stood overhead, searching for us like QTE's in a move-tie-in. Just because we didn't go to Mario's rallies, or praise his meticulous moustache, we were forced to wear the blue armband and red shoes that portrayed us as outcasts. We quickly became the minority, ridiculed in the street, as the so-called 'next generation' reminded us we were no longer welcome.

As the creaking above our heads got louder, I opened my diary:

23rd June 1991

“The gold rings have been unleashed for the first time, our wealth will rule the world.”

Unfortunately, once the nation knew how much influence we had, chaos ensued. Mario's followers smashed up our shops with their waggle controllers, and burnt copies of our latest release because it was a crime against gaming. To make things worse, they even hijacked our next title, inserting a “Werehog” into the fray as a derogatory slur towards everything we stood for. In the glory days, our pockets were filled with every left-to-right journey we made. Now, we hide from the dictator and his loyal gang, cowering in the corner with the latest Angry Birds update.

We're the minority. We're the people who think “Tekken” is how a Scot would announce the title to a particular Liam Neesom film. Our interest has dwindled as time moves on, forcing us to plough hard-earned cash into rubbish apps, and anything that lets us control a scarred wizard. Put simply, spotting a non-gamer is simple; we're the ones who go against everything Mario has taught us. Just like our entertainment, the non-gamer attitude is firmly stuck in the 'it's not cool' stage of the '90s.

Nick Akerman

Congratulations Nick. You are the winner of the £10 cash prize.

For the curious among you, here’s a selection of some of the other entries.

And fret not, if you’re feeling a little bummed out that you didn’t win, or that you were too late to enter, I’ll be running similar competitions in the near future. So stay tuned to Digital Gigolo.

There are so many talented writers out there struggling to get their voices heard. Unfortunately, games journalism is a painfully niche career path to navigate. Which is a shame – but if you’re passionate, and you’re good, and it’s what you want to do, then talent will out. So keep at it.

Arkham Asylum's Most Memorable Moment

2011-07-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

The hellish hallucinations induced by Scarecrow’s toxins make for some of Arkham Asylum's most memorable moments.

At first, bewilderment – it’s raining inside Arkham Mansion. The decadent splendour of your surroundings melts away into the filthy back alleys of Gotham City. Disembodied voices beg for mercy. The unmistakable crack of two gunshots. A flash of blinding white light. You’re no longer Batman. You’re Bruce Wayne, 8 years old and sobbing over the rain sodden corpses of your murdered parents.

The scene dissolves into the emptiness of space. Fragments of Arkham Asylum float above a swirling vortex. A grotesquely colossal Scarecrow, with searchlights for eyes, scours the ruins with murderous intent. An eternity of insanity is the price you pay if caught. It’s a genuinely disturbing vision of madness. Each hallucination is an expertly crafted slice of psychological horror. The Scarecrow lives to exploit the fears and phobias of his adversaries and to this end he succeeds. Batman is forced to relive the brutal murder of his parents.

But the Scarecrow’s reach extends far beyond the walls of Arkham Asylum. He also pricks you, the player, with his toxin loaded syringes. The terrifying game of cat and mouse you're forced to endure after each hallucination taps into the atavistic fear we have of being hunted. Your flesh will tingle when that roving yellow searchlight skims just millimetres above your head.

And whatever you do, don’t unzip those body bags...

At Last! The Long Awaited Sequel To Duck Hunt

2011-07-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

Cor blimey, doesn't time fly? It's been 24 years since Nintendo released its duck-slaughtering masterpiece on the NES.

The game's sniggering mutt became an instant icon and appears in countless internet memes as a mocking symbol of failure.

Nintendo's decision to make the nameless pooch invulnerable to pot shots infuriated a generation of gamers and led to the cackling canine appearing in many people's top-ten most despised videogame characters.

I for one salute you Mr Dog. May your fuck-you attitude continue to blight the lives of all who set eyes upon you. In fact, I want to see this dayglow Muttley appear as an unlockable character in Wii U's upcoming Super Smash Bros game. Special move? Obvious - the ability to vomit half-chewed duck into his opponent’s cheery fizzogs.

Digital Gigolo Turns Saboteur

2011-07-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! The almighty Sabotage Times has just published an article of mine. You can check it out right here.

Wanna know what I'm most excited about? Well, aside from being asked to become a regular contributor, my name appears alongside fellow 'Saboteur' Irvine Welsh. What an honour! I've captured this historic moment for prosperity.

Exclusive Patrick Garratt Interview

2011-07-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

I’m going to let you in on a secret that’ll blow your mind: every sentient being in the universe writes their own videogame blog. Thing is, practically all of them are shit. And besides, competing against the likes of Destructoid, Kotaku and Joystiq is a waste of time. So don't bother. Do something more constructive with your life, like pissing into the wind.

Unless of course you are Patrick Garratt, in which case I urge you to blog until the tips of you fingers bleed. You see, Patrick owns that rarest of commodities: a UK videogame blog that people actually read. In fact, they flock in their thousands to suckle at the nourishing teat offered by VG247.

For the uninitiated VG247 is a gaming newsblog that launched in February 2008. Its strict news-only format was the first of its kind in the UK. Pre VG247 *shudder* the UK’s blogging scene consisted of the inane musings of that most pathetic of creatures: the aspiring games journo. These would-be wordsmiths sired a plethora of identikit blogs, each one regurgitating the same old shit from Kotaku.

It was, quite frankly, depressing.

After all, the UK publishes the best videogame magazines in the world. If ever the call arises to assemble an Olympic Squad of games journalists, our boys and girls would bring home gold every time. Thankfully, Garratt identified the need for a UK based games blog and VG247 was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

So then, here he is - winner of the 2009 Games Media Award’s Best Specialist Online Writer – Mr. Patrick Garratt…

Hullo Pat, let’s start right at the beginning. What's your earliest gaming memory?
It was probably playing Tranz Am on my friend's Spectrum. I can remember playing Pong on our black and white TV when I was really young, but that's pretty hazy. Tranz Am's the first proper memory.

Tranz Am: Pat's earliest gaming memory.

As a youngster, were you drawn to console or PC gaming?
When I was at school, there were no real "consoles" as such. Just Spectrums and Commodores and TVs and tape recorders. I loved the Mario games on NES and SNES, but I still played stuff like Quake. I was an all-rounder, really.

Did you ever dabble in the arcade scene?
Not really. I played a lot of arcade games, but I never really considered myself to be "part of it". I didn't even know there was a scene, as such. I just loved playing games. It wasn't really a social thing for me.

Whose games do you follow?
I love Epic's work. I do get excited when there's a new Epic game around. I'm 38, so that's saying something.

Pat is a fan of Epic's work. Aren't we all?

What was your first job within the games industry?
My first job was as a staff writer on a site called FGNOnline in 1998. I was working out of a bedroom in a small town near Manchester for a guy called Colin Campbell. We had 26k modems and had to wear coats at our desks over the winter. I did it for a year then moved to London to work on CVG.

Can you remember the first game you ever reviewed?
Blimey. I honestly can’t. Reviewing was never my forte, to be honest. I’m pretty much terrible at it.

Why did you start up a gaming newsblog? Surely the likes of Kotaku had that particular base well and truly covered.
When we started VG247 there was nothing else like it in the UK. Kotaku and Joystiq are both US-based, and both of them have their “schtick” - I love them, but I don’t think either of them takes a service approach to news. There was nothing out there that just answered the question, “What’s going on?” to people like me. I was in my mid-30s and had a very good knowledge of games in general, but no site provided a comprehensive daily output that kept me informed. Hard to believe now: that was only three years ago. VG247 was just a response to that.

At the time of VG247’s launch you were the only staff member. Did the pressure to deliver gaming news 24/7 ever come close to breaking you?
It was extremely busy, and it did exhaust me. I had a lot of help from a freelancer, Mike Bowden, in the early days. Without him putting in so much effort when the site was very small I think I would have found it hard to build it, yes.

Pat's homely workspace.

On average, how many unique hits does VG247 receive per day?
We’ve never gone public with our numbers, but I’m hoping to before too long.

VG247 won the Best Online Blog at the Games Media Award’s in 2009. In light of your success, other gaming sites sat up and took notice, namely CVG. In a thinly veiled dig, you highlight their recent copycat revamp. How would you describe your relationship with them – respected rival or sworn enemy?
I enjoy the fact that CVG’s placed so much emphasis on news recently. It shows there’s a need for it, and healthy competition means healthy sectors. I was CVG’s online employee number three, so I’ve got a soft spot for it. It was actually my idea to name it computerandvideogames.com in 1999, so it’s nice to see it worked. During my interview, the guy asked me what I’d do with the site in its current state: I told him to close it because the name was terrible. I think it was called Game-Online, as the print CVG chaps were so paranoid about it being associated with the magazine. They offered me the job as news editor, and when I started they’d changed it to the current URL.

It’s good that it’s still there, and I think Tim’s done a great job of reinventing it. I’m not sure we’re either enemies or rivals, although I’m sure there are those that think otherwise. We both have a news focus, but we’re very different.

You’re known for your no-nonsense opinions on the gaming industry. Has this ever landed you in hot water?
I’ve been shouted at on the phone a few times, but nothing more serious than that. To be completely honest, VG247 has been remarkably trouble-free. We report news in the main, and opinion pieces are very much a secondary thing. It’s opinion and reviews that tend to upset people. A few big issues have produced some terse emails and calls, but we’ve never been in a situation we haven’t recovered from immediately.

You once said that, “Print publishers are finding it incredibly difficult to survive, because everyone is getting their information from the Internet. Game magazines in the UK are dying, there's no doubt about that”. Do you think VG247 is contributing to the decline in magazine sales?
I’m not sure if VG247 specifically is contributing to the decline in sales of games magazines. It’s just a natural trend, similar to the one we’re seeing with people gravitating towards e-books over paper. People now have many entry points to games information, and most of them are digital. I think if you want to see where we’re going with paper, just look at the US. Game Informer’s survived (something of an understatement) because it’s owned by a huge brick-and-mortar retailer and has successfully tied its website into content deals, but everything else really has died over there. Gamers read free websites on computers, tablets, phones, consoles and whatever else, and have very little need to pay for general games mags: that won’t change any time soon.

You also said that only Edge and a handful of other magazines would survive. What makes Edge internet proof?
It’s one of the few magazines that focuses on what a magazine does best. I’m sure it’ll become challenged by the proliferation of tablets in the coming years, but Edge is a very strong brand for the 30-plus “serious” gamer and fan-developer audience. I think it’ll be around in some shape or form for years, both because it has a good understanding of the people that read it and it has a team talented enough to manage the transition to digital.

Edge Magazine: one of the few publications that appeals to the '30-plus serious gamer'.

Do you still buy videogame magazines?
I haven’t paid for a games magazine for a long time. There are some great mags out there - the two that spring to mind are Official PlayStation and Edge, both from Future - but I just don’t need to ever look at paper.

Followers of your personal Twitter feed - @patlike – will know you’re a keen gardener and aspiring novelist. In the latest entry of your personal blog – Misery Guts – you reveal how a book deal you’ve been working on for two years ‘ended in failure’. Can you tell me about your book?
I’d love to, but I’m afraid I can’t. I’m under NDA (non disclosure agreement). It was a deal to write a novel based on a games IP, but it wasn’t to be. These things happen. I’ll get there in the end, no doubt. I’ll keep growing carrots in the meantime.

I’m going to start working on securing another deal along similar lines, and I’m also about to publish an original novel for Kindle. I’ll be talking more about that soon.

When he's not blogging Pat likes to tend his vegetable patch.

Is there an aspiring novelist inside every games journalist?
Every writer’s a dreamer. I don’t think games journalists are any exception.

Which authors do you admire and who has had the biggest influence on you as a writer?
I used to read a lot of American novels, so authors like Hemingway and Burroughs inspired me in general. A friend got me to read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar recently, and I enjoyed that a lot. I like stripped back writing with purpose. I’m a total ponce, basically. I read Dostoyevsky and Sartre, then tell everyone I read Dostoyevsky and Sartre.

What’s the best book you’ve read about videogames?
I’ve never read one.

As a veteran games journalist you are uniquely placed to comment on the trends, fortunes and foibles of the industry. What did E3 2011 tell you about the future of the videogames industry?
E3 was really interesting this year, because I think it showed many of the industry soothsayers’ recent predictions have come to fruition. The publishing industry’s consolidated and we’re seeing obvious avenues of entry for tech outside of the console space, such as streaming and mobile. I personally didn’t go to the show, so I got the “general’s view” from the back of the battlefield, and it seems clear the big budgets are being pushed into dead certs like never before, but that huge tracts of the games market were ignored because E3 as a format isn't satisfying the needs of the market generally. “Games” is so much more than Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony now.

I’ve already said publicly that I thought E3 2011 was shockingly bad in terms of variety and innovation, and I haven’t changed in that opinion. What it told us about the future of the games industry was minimal - it was a duff year brought on by extended console cycles.

Is Onlive the future of gaming?
Streaming games will become far more widespread, but I think it’s only part of the future picture. I do think people with fast enough connections that live close enough to data centres will start to use streaming services habitually. I know I would.

OnLive: the future of gaming? According to Pat, it'll certainly play a crucial part in it.

Is motion control an evolutionary dead end for videogames?
No, not at all. Motion and gesture control in various forms will be with us for good. I think you only need to take a look at how swipe and tilt controls on touch-screens have re-invented mobile gaming to see how powerful an interface it can be. Kinect, Move and the Wiimote are just the first baby steps to us being able to interact with software on a personality level. Lionhead’s Milo gave a glimpse of the vision, I think, but it’s clear the market and tech just weren’t ready for it.

Which current gen console do you find yourself playing the most?
I use 360 and PS3 pretty much equally. It just depends on what’s out at the time. I’ve actually been playing games on my PC a lot more than either of them recently.

And least?
Wii. I can’t remember the last time I switched it on.

What’s your most cherished bit of videogame memorabilia?
It’s a shooting t-shirt from Las Vegas (see picture below). I’m not sure it’s “cherished,” but I think it’s funny. A PR company bought it for me on a trip to CES (Consumer Electronics Show).

As mentioned in the intro, everyone seems to write their own videogame blog. What advice would you give to people who want to make their blog less shit?
You have to seek to lead in whatever you’re trying to do. You have to constantly ask yourself the question, “Why would anyone care about this?” If you can’t answer that, do something else.

Sorry Pat, but it’s time for the obligatory ‘What’s your favourite videogame of all time?’ question.
I don’t have one. It used to be Super Mario World, but I think it’d be silly to say that now. I’ve had such amazing experiences playing MMOs, and FPS, and survival horror, and Pokémon, and whatever else, that I couldn’t peg it any more.

And finally Mr Garratt, what exactly is that tattoo on your arm?
It’s an octopus. My daughter’s name is Meredith, which means “defender of the sea” in Welsh. A German guy called Markus Lenhard did it for me. I love it. I want more.

Digital Gigolo would like to say a big thank you to the lovely Brenna Hillier for helping to secure this interview.

L.A. Noire's Most Awkward Moment

2011-07-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

When it comes to shouty interrogations, Cole Phelps is your man. However, the subtle art of small talk is definitely something he needs to work on.

If you thought The Office’s long pauses and awkward silences were painful to watch, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet…

BioShock Infinite's main character finally revealed!

2011-07-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

At last! We can finally put a face to the name. And what a handsome face it is. A rugged, stubbly, Indiana Jones kinda guy.

Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent, is the cover star of the most recent issue of US magazine EGM. And he’s striking a rather heroic pose, shielding the female lead Elizabeth from oncoming danger.

Comic book fans may experience déjà vu. Irrational's Ken Levine confirmed on Twitter that the image on the EGM cover is a homage to Uncanny X-Men #141.

Unlike our previous leading man in the underwater BioShock adventures, Booker DeWitt is a fully fleshed out, talky protagonist.

You're able to hear his voice in the full 15 minute BioShock demo from E3, which is scheduled to be broadcast in America - and no doubt the internet, tonight.

For a hee-ooge interview with Ken Levine, click here.

Digital Gigolo Needs YOU

2011-07-04T05:06:00.000-07:00

Calling all gamers!

This is your chance to earn cold hard cash in exchange for your words.

All you have to do is write a 250 word article entitled 'How To Spot A Non Gamer'. The word limit is simply a guide, so don’t panic if you’re a little off the mark. I’m more interested in your style. You can be as silly or as serious as you like, as long you’re interesting.

The winner will receive £10 and be posted on this here blog.

So make sure your submission is a good ‘un, as it could lead to further paid work. And who knows, with your help maybe we can grow this quaint little videogame blog into a Kotaku killer!

Closing date for submission is: 24/07/2011

Please send your submission to gamesjourno@hotmail.co.uk and don’t forget to include your name and, if you have one, your Twitter account. This competition is open to absolutely everyone.

If you've got any questions or queries, leave then in the comment section below.

Good luck! I look forward to reading your work.

DG

The Perfect Shooter

2011-06-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

The shooters that inspired a gun-toting generation of games pros…

If it moves kill it. Sound advice, that. You’re about to delve into a series of dark, hostile worlds, where foes are numerous and friends are few. Best pack lots of health packs and… a fully loaded Fat Man Nuke Launcher!

The humble shooter has come a along way since the Nazi-killing days of Wolfenstein 3D. But the core gameplay remains pleasingly untouched: aim your gun and pull the trigger. Blast a hideous, mutated space-freak in the face and delight as its lifeless body spins gracefully in zero-g, pumping out globules of claret from its severed limbs. As glib as it sounds, shooting stuff is fun.

So then, what exactly makes the perfect shooter? We’ve tapped up some of the best writers and biggest names in the industry and asked them exactly that. Here’s what they said…

Resident Evil 4
“When it comes to third person shooters, Resi 4 reigns supreme. Not only is the gunplay zen-balanced and the armoury plentiful, but the intense horror aspects and variety ensures there are thrills around every corner. There’s still no finer feeling than lining up that red-dot sight of the handcannon and popping some skulls. Lovely stuff.”
Nathan Irvine, associate editor, GamesRadar

Gears of War
“The only shooter that makes me feel like a big walking tank made from a slab of impossible pantomime muscle and that arms me with a chainsaw and puts boots on my feet that can stomp heads into worm mush. That’s why I love it.”
Matt Cundy, UK editor, GamesRadar

Battlefield: Bad Company 2
“Being a console man, this is the only proper taste I’ve had of Battlefield’s unique brand of online, head-popping genius. But I’m hooked. Why? Unlike COD and its many clones, Battlefield asks you to work as part of a team – and rewards you for it. The classes are so well balanced and thought out, the game modes simple and effective, and it’s the team that pulls together and thinks before they shoot that inevitably wins. What’s not to like?”
Andy Hartup, associate editor, PSM3

Metro 2033
“Not the most technically refined FPS but I would consider it one of the bleakest and most atmospheric I’ve played for years. It portrayed the feeling of being a post-apocalyptic survivalist much better than Fallout and was filled with neat touches like your hand-held dynamo torch and oh-so-fragile gas mask. An interesting individual and massively overlooked title.”
Shaun Curnow, reviews editor, GamesMaster

Bioshock
“The prefect blending of atmosphere, storytelling and shooting wrapped up with a story twist that would make Hitchcock proud. Would you kindly go play it again?”
Cliff Bleszinski, design director, Epic Games

Doom
“I was a Marine going against the legions of Hell and it invented Deatmatch and birthed a genre.”
Cliff Bleszinski, design director, Epic Games (again)

Half-Life 2
“Still unbeaten in many ways for its pacing, variety and the seriousness with which it took its own world. Also: GRAVITY GUN!”
Cliff Bleszinski, design director, Epic Games (can’t make up his mind)

GoldenEye/Halo
“For showing the world that console shooters can be fun, accessible, and most importantly, highly controllable with analog sticks.”
Cliff Bleszinski, design director, Epic Games (will he ever shut up?)

Doom (vote 2)
“In terms of sheer number of hours invested in playing that game. It was also life-changing for me. Doom really converted me from one kind if gamer into an action gamer. I was more of a role-playing, adventure gamer. Wolfenstein was the catalyst, but Doom pushed it over the top. Doom changed everything in my world, and you can see my entire career’s been affected by that.”
Randy Pitchford, CEO and president of Gearbox Software

Prefect Dark
“I love its sheer malice. Sedating guards with a tranquiliser and then putting them to sleep with a lethal injection remains gaming’s cruellest takedown. Though unleashing the laptop gun on a platoon of brainless ‘meat sims’ comes close. An FPS lives and dies by its arsenal. Perfect Dark’s is the best.”
Mattew Castle, reviews editor, Ngamer

Duke Nukem 3D
“The best implementation of co-op, excellent action, scary like Doom, tons of monsters… and I love Duke’s character!”
John Romero, Wolfenstein impresario and co-founder of id Software

Quake 3 Arena
“It’s such a pure activity kind of game – more of a sport than a movie. For any player looking to test their skill, I think Quake 3 is the best there ever was.”
John Carmack, Daddy of Doom and co-founder of id Software

Far Cry
“Not the castrated console versions, mind. Played on a high end PC, Crytek’s sandbox vision swept me away on a tropical tide. Visually unparalleled, the sense of creative emancipation when deciding how to approach and accomplish objectives blew my mind, Crysis 2 may be mere months old, but this remains Crytek’s opus. And I haven’t even mentioned the Hang Glider!”
Rob Taylor, writer, GamesMaster

GoldenEye (vote 2)
“In its prime, nothing could touch it. Rare understood Bond, stealth and shooting, and they married it all to a sublime multiplayer, ahead of its time and still, in many ways, unmatched.”
Tim Weaver, editor, Xbox World 360

Quake 3 Arena (vote 2)
“Twelve years on, nobody has managed to nail online shooting quit as effectively as id. Q3A is multiplayer distilled into absolute purity, nothing but breathless speed and uniquely murderous weapons. Even today five minutes’ play leaves me wired and twitchy – it’s the gaming equivalent of a gallon of espresso.”
Jon Hicks, editor, Official Xbox 360

Sexy Videogame Retweet

2011-06-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

Leigh Alexander retweeted one of my tweets. That is all.

A Non Gamers Guide To Serious Gaming

2011-06-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Everyone has an opinion on The Godfather, but only gamers can tell you why Beyond Good & Evil is an essential purchase. But fret not, you too can blag game-savvy credentials with this handy ten point guide.

Non Gamers are a dying breed – a dusty antique from a bygone era. The Wii’s idiot-proof controller and gimmicky lifestyle peripherals suckered in a whole new demographic of gamers. Care homes across the country were kitted out with Miyamoto’s motion controlled console to help the elderly residents escape the crushing bleakness of their surroundings. Nintendo’s shrewd Blue Ocean Strategy helped them shift 86 million units and ushered in a new era of accessibility. Games for everyone! Huzzah!

But even in this brave new world there still exists a gaping chasm between this generation’s tech savvy youths and the parents who raised them. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than when Essex boy Ryan Cleary was arrested on suspicion of masterminding a global computer hacking operation from his bedroom. “I thought he was playing computer games in his bedroom”, said Ryan’s bewildered mum as cops swooped on her extended bungalow in Wickford.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: this guide won’t help you thwart digital terrorism. What it will do is make you look less of a clueless tit in front of your mates. And that, of course, is by far the weightier issue. After you’ve read this guide you’ll be able to feign knowledge on the topics that gamer’s truly care about; everything from the dreaded Red Ring of Death to the uber-loony world of Katamari. Hell, it even explains why you should hate Gears of War’s game designer, Cliff Bleszinski. Yup, it’s all right here, in easily digestible fun-sized chunks…

RROD
How best to explain the gut wrenching nausea that strikes all Xbox 360 owners when the RROD strikes? Well, imagine how you’d feel if you woke up to discover your loyal mutt, Fido, bludgeoned to death at the foot of your bed. Now multiply that horror tenfold. You’re still not close.

The Wii U Reveal
Aka the biggest balls up of the decade. Even the tech savvy journos that comprised E3’s audience let out a collective ‘eh?’ after the Wii U was unveiled. The source of confusion was Nintendo’s barmy decision to show only the controller. The actual console was no where to be seen. In an attempt to placate the bewildered attendees, Satora Iwata hastily tweeted a pic of himself holding both the console and the controller. Incredible.

Cliff Blezinski
The Cliffster. Dude Huge. Good ol’ Cliffy B. The head honcho at Epic Games. Whatever you choose to call the irrepressible scamp, one thing is clear: he's a bit of a tit. You see, Clifford is far too busy fellating himself to notice what the world thinks of his smug, self-congratulatory posturing. We don't like it Cliff. Please stop.

Rage Quit
In the grand scheme of things, what is a kill/death ratio? It’s a small number contained within a game that only you and a couple of your mates really care about. In the grand scheme of things, it's the lint from the belly button of life. No one dies because their kill/death ratio (hoho) dropped by 0.4%. So don't be a total douche rag and rage quit out of a game because your stats might take a hit.

Spawn Camp
I know it's tempting to march up to your enemy's spawn and repeatedly kill them as they appear on the map. But don't do it. It's a dick move. What are you hoping to achieve by spawn-camping? Does it make you more attractive to the opposite sex? Will everyone applaud your gaming skills and offer to buy you a beer? No. People will think you're a cunt.

Duke Nukem
If it took a craftsman thirteen years to make a teapot, you'd expect that teapot to be the best darn teapot around. If, however, that teapot spat boiling water into your eyes every time you poured a cuppa, you'd be justified in your apoplectic rage. You'd demand a full refund and compensation for your scarred fizzog. And the craftsman responsible would be laughed out of the National Potters' Guild. Got that, gearbox?

Katamari Damacy
Crazier than The Priory at full capacity, Damacy’s success is a load of balls. Big sticky balls to be exact; or to give them their technical name, Katamari. The aim of the game? To roll your adhesive orb over every object in your path, thus creating a chaotic ball of bric-a-brac. Yup, it’s as mental as it sounds; more so when you factor in the high-octane Japanese-pop soundtrack.

Videogame Blogs
Everyone in the world writes their own gaming blog. Yes, even your dead gran has one. Thing is, 99.9% of them are shit. The remaining 0.1% have a combined readership of seven people. Competing against the likes of VG247, CVG, Eurogamer and Destructoid is a waste of time. So don't bother. Do something more constructive, like pissing into the wind.

Staggered Release Dates
Aka sloppy seconds. Forced to endure the squeals of delight as those around you prod and poke their brand new toy is surely a breach of human rights. Any element of surprise or novelty is tweeted into oblivion. You've completed the game before you've even played it. Not fun. Worldwide release dates need to be mandatory practice, on pain of death.

L.A. Noire
How can a game be excellent and shit at the same time? 'Tis indeed a mind bending paradox, but something that L.A Noire manages to achieve. The gurning, squinting, shifty looking characters that inhabit L.A. Noire’s world are excellent. The mechanics that drive the narrative are shit. Conclusion? Flawed yet fundamentally likeable, just like Detective Phelps.

Bonus: A Non Gamer's review of Ocarina 3D

LulzSec

2011-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

"I thought he was playing computer games in his bedroom"

This quote, uttered by Ryan Cleary's bewildered mother as cops swooped on her extended bungalow in Wickford, demonstrates the gaping chasm that exists between this generation's tech savvy geeks and the parents who raised them.

For the uninitiated Ryan Cleary is the teenager who was arrested yesterday on suspicion of master minding a global computer hacking operation from his bedroom in Essex. The student is thought to be the leader of LulzSec - a group claiming responsibility for hacking into the databases of gaming giants Sony and Nintendo.

I can’t help but feel a perverse sense of pride that the ‘global cyber villain’ in question is a 19 year old lad from Essex. Looks like Britain really does have talent.

Ryan's Home in Wickford, Essex


Ryan has two computer monitors in his bedroom from where is alleged to have masterminded the cyber attacks. Note the two scantily clad women above his desk: the perfect muse for world domination.

Ryan's mother, Rita (right), said her son rarely left his bedroom. 'He's a complete recluse, he would only come out of his room to use the bathroom'.

Hacker group LulzSec brought down the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA)

LulzSec wasted no time in claiming responsibility for Monday's Soca attack on its Twitter page, see top right.

On the offensive: LulzSec announced its operation to bring down high-profile websites on Twitter.

Who are LulzSec?

Lulz Security's rise to prominence has been extraordinarily fast.

The hacking group first emerged in May and in the past few weeks has attacked the websites of some of the world's leading corporations and governments.

It is regularly abbreviated to LulzSec, which breaks down into two parts - Lulz refers to 'LOL' (laugh out loud), while Sec is short for security.

The group specialises in locating websites with poor security and then stealing information from them and posting it online.

The attacks do not appear to be financially motivated - instead, LulzSec seems content to receive international recognition for embarrassing some of the world's largest companies.

Not all the attention has been negative, either, as some cyber experts have praised LulzSec for exposing the inadequacy of online defences without maliciously exploiting these weaknesses.

The first LulzSec attack on record took place against the Fox.com website in late April - the hackers gained access to emails and passwords of hundreds of employees.

In a matter of weeks, the group has claimed responsibility for breaching the security of conglomerates including Nintendo, Sony, the NHS, the CIA and Soca.

How To Spot A Non Gamer

2011-06-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Next time you're on the train to work, take the time to observe the people around you. After a while something quite extraordinary will reveal itself. Two distinct groups will emerge from the anonymous huddle of grey suits: Gamers and Non Gamers.

On the surface, the Non Gamer looks like any other functioning member of society. But take a closer look. Concentrate on the eyes. You'll notice a distinct lack of humanity; a vacant, hollow stare. These empty husks, at some point in their lives, lost that mischievous spark of inspiration. Their childlike urge to explore, to touch, to play has been worn away by the grey calendar of existence.

Now look into a Gamer's eyes. That glistening black pupil is a gateway to a million different lives. The assassin within is sated when we sneak towards an unsuspecting foe and sink a sliver of cold steel into their neck (Assassin’s Creed). The borderline autism that compels us to collect and sort and classify is actively encouraged (Pokemon). Our inherent need to build things is given free reign with astonishing effect (Minecraft). Our lives are enriched by playing games.

Next time you’re on the train to work, surrounded by dead-eyed office drones, take comfort in the fact that in your pocket is a portal to Hyrule.

Bioshock Infinite Interview

2011-06-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

Bioshock Infinite creator Ken Levine discusses his vision for Columbia.

Many new Ips aren’t successful, so why do you think that Bioshock was?
You know, if I knew the answer to that question I’d be a happier man than I am! Let me put it this way, when I was a screenwriter somebody said to me: “Ken, why don’t you write something more commercial?” and I said: “If I knew what that was, I would write it.” Because I never really know what’s commercial, it’s not really my thing. I just try to do what I think is cool. Sometimes that works out, and sometimes it doesn’t work out. I don’t think I missed any magic formula to make it successful though. I think the only thing you can do is put your heart into it and believe in it and love it, because if you don’t love it first, nobody else is going to love it. But we loved Bioshock very, very much.

"Good girls gather, gather..."

Bioshock Infinite shares a name with the original, but what makes it a Bioshock game?
When we started working on this we tried to identify the elements that make a Bioshock game. There are two main elements that we came up with. One is that it’s set in a ridiculous and fantastic, over-the-top, but somehow still very grounded and believable world. You get to explore that world, and that’s a key part of the game.

An underwater "aerial" view of Rapture.

The other element is that we offer a broad set of tools, and the player decides how he approaches the problems of the game with that toolset. Everything else we determined was secondary to that, to those two elements. When we had it, when we understood those things, that was very freeing because when we knew what made a Bioshock game, we could move forward working on Infinite, confident that it was a Bioshock game.

There’s a lot of politics and philosophy behind Bioshock, which gives it an intellectual weight. Do you think this is a good thing for games to do?
I don’t like to see myself as an arbiter of what other games should do because I like playing stupid games where you blow crap up. One of my favourite games of all time is Mercenaries – I love blowing stuff up! But as a developer, I don’t really think that’s the kind of game I’m good at making. So I think games need to be diverse, I think that’s a fairer thing to say, and the more diverse team we have, the better it is. That’s why we’re able to service more and more people. I remember the first time I showed my parents Bioshock. They’d seen all my games before, and honestly I don’t think they ever really understood what it was I did until they saw it, because they couldn’t really relate to a lot of that stuff. They’re not gamers. And I started thinking there was something in Bioshock that people who wouldn’t normally be interested in videogames took notice of. I think it’s a good thing if you can reach out to people, but I think it’s also important to make a game that hardcore gamers are going to want to play.

Would you say Bioshock is an FPS or an RPG?
I would say that it’s an FPS. Even when we were developing it, I think it had to work as an FPS, so I think I’ve always thought of it that way. I like working in first-person games particularly because I think that’s the best way to explore a world, because it’s the most intimate, most immediate.

So what are the biggest technical advances between Bioshock and Infinite?
We initially thought about doing the game in the technology we developed for Bioshock, and that we used in Bioshock 2 as well - but it became clear that wasn't going to work. We wanted you to be able to move very quickly around the space using the Skylines; that's a streaming challenge. When you're walking around in the first Bioshock, you can stream the content at a very comfortable rate. When you're going at 80 miles per hour in these Skylines that we have in Infinite, that becomes a much more challenging proposition. The moving cities, they become a moving platform. In Bioshock you'd encounter perhaps three or four guys at a time. Well in this game we want you to fight maybe 15 or 16 people at a time sometimes.

The Sky-Line is a mode of transportation throughout Columbia. It was originally created to be the city's main freight transport system, and was adapted for personal travel.

The strong horror element to Bioshock, was one of its most compelling features. Columbia looks brighter, so are you going to achieve the same kind of feel?
I think that it's certainly obvious how you do horror, in a dark stormy night - the setting like we had in the first Bioshock. But we had quiet places too, because one thing we wanted to do is to make that Rapture was a beautiful place. People asked: "You're making all this beautiful art - how do you make this scary? So that was out challenge here. This time it was: "You have this city and it's sunny and it's beautiful, so how are you going to make that scary?" We just look at different references. One of my favourite horror movies is the Shining, which was quite fluorescent - it wasn't really dark at all. I'm not sure there's a dark scene in the entire movie. For me the scariest part of that movie is the scene with the little girls in the hallway. It's just terrifying! There a scene that I remember at the end of Carrie that scared the hell out of me and that was in bright sunlight. The opening of Blue Velvet where you see that ear lying in the grass - that severed ear. It's harder, but if you pull if off you'll have a much more unique space to stand in.

The iconic Shining twins, an unlikely source of inspiration for Infinite's scarier moments.

Was the idea for Columbia one you had from the very beginning of the project?
The first idea we had was the time period. We were really drawn to the art style of that era. And then the next idea was the city in the sky because a lot of science fiction artwork from that era portrayed cities in the sky. That was their vision of where their future was going. The other reason is since that time was compelling, because the pace at which technology was changing at the turn of the century, nothing has been seen like it before. I think if it this way; in the last 20 years, the only huge, earth shattering technological innovation we've had is the internet. You go back then, you have electricity - in the same kind of time, the 20 years round the turn of the century, you have electricity, you have cars, you have aeroplanes, you have radios, you have movies, you have photographs. The electric light bulb. The telephone. All of those had the same scale of impact that the internet had. We've had one innovation in the last 20 years that's changed our lives - can you imagine how much their lives were changing then? - their heads were spinning. It was a fascinating time from a technology standpoint, and that made people think about the future. And I always thought if you asked someone back then if they though we might be living in the sky in ten years, they'd probably say: Yes, that sounds about right".

The name Columbia refers to the female personification of the United States used in various forms of patriotic symbolism in the 19th century.

What are the ideological differences between Columbia and Rapture?
We've only talked about some of the ideology in Rapture, and that evolved from the initial founders, in that the city had very much the ideals of the founding fathers of America - you know of individual liberty, of rights that were granted, that were intrinsic in all mankind. Also the notions of individual initiative and industry that America was becoming so successful with. So what we wanted to explore, I think, was that if you show the same founding documents to different people they can walk away with two very different interpretations - or three people will have maybe three different interpretations of those documents, and that was a really interesting concept to me. I'll think you'll find in Columbia different groups with different points of view as to what it means to be an American. What those same set of principles and ideals mean, and I think people might differ so much of what those pieces of paper mean that they'll kill each other over it.

Columbia's xenophobic propoganda, which harks back to the dark days of not just Nazi Germany, but America's own history.

How will choice and morality come into the game?
You know the Bioshock games are outside the reach of any kind of specific morality system. We're not talking about anything specific yet for Bioshock Infinite. But I think the game is about the setting - it's certainly set in a context of moral choice and moral systems. The questions are asked to start with, so the very nature of these worlds has a moral underpinning. So we're going to talk down the road about how specifically, game wise, we plan to do morality from a morality perspective. But I think from a story perspective you're obviously seeing a world that has a lot of conflict that would naturally come from being in that world. There's not one clear direction, although we've only shown one side and I think you're going to find, the same way that people were both drawn to and repulsed by Andrew Ryan, you're going to find some of the same feelings here of not being entirely certain how you feel about the various players in this world.

Infinite's take on morality will prove a more complex affair than simply chosing to 'rescue' or 'harvest' a little sister.

Who is Booker Dewitt then and how would you describe him?
Booker is a former Pinkerton agent. The Pinkertons were one the first private security forms, and he was thrown out for being a little too rough - even for the Pinkertons. He's sort of a disgrace, but he's known as a guy who gets things done, and sometimes if you want something that's not particularly savoury or legal to get done, he's the guy you might turn to. He's approached by this man, this mysterious figure, who needs this woman, Elizabeth, recovered for him. So booker asks a few questions and it turns out this woman is in Columbia, this floating city that has disappeared from the radar. Nobody knows where it is anymore. Of course everybody knew about it when it was first created. Booker is the man that seems like a natural choice to find it. If you have a mysterious mission and need someone's who's not afraid to get his hands dirty, Booker is the kind of guy you turn to.

Just who is Booker DeWitt? Unlike the other BioShock protagonist characters, DeWitt has his own identity, and the player is aware of it from the start.

The girl will obviously add something to the gameplay. Can you tell me a bit about how she'll interact with the player?
Elizabeth has a bunch of roles in the game. We've closely looked at the history of companion characters from a range of games, and I think there's mixed degrees of success. We've looked at all those examples and thought very carefully about how to do that right. There are several principles that we've set out for ourselves. One was that Elizabeth should never be somebody who will die if you don't look after her. That's never fun. A full-game escort mission is not a fun concept. She can tale care of herself, which she does. Another place we've seen companion characters fail is when the character can run the game for you. I've seen videos recently of a game where it can pretty much play itself, and that's the last thing we want. So Elizabeth offers opportunities to you, and if you've seen the gameplay demo you can see that she offers up these huge, dynamic opportunities - but you don't have to take them.

Elizabeth is a twenty-year old woman who has been imprisoned in Columbia since she was five years old.

In the gameplay demo we put out there's a sequence where she weakens a bridge for you, and there's an enemy on the bridge - a very powerful enemy - and you can either take the opportunity she gave you to destroy the bridge using one of your powers or one of your weapons, or you can fight the creature entirely on your own and ignore the opportunities that Elizabeth has presented to you. There’s also going to be more systemic and more emergent things she does which we haven’t talked about yet, but which we’ll announce a little further down the road. Sort of dynamically generating an opportunity that she’s going to give you, Also she’s the centre of the story, she’s the reason you’re in the city, she’s the person you’re trying to get out, and she’s the centre – as it turns out – of this entire conflict that’s tearing the city apart.

Can you tell me about how customisation is going to be expanded in Infinite?
One thing we realised in Bioshock was that we thought there were two problems with the character growth system. One is that we didn’t there were enough items to grow. There weren’t enough moments of growth, there weren’t enough things to grow with, and they weren’t lethal enough. And another thing was that none of the choices you made had any kind of permanence, and I think we missed an opportunity there. I think it’s one of the reasons there’s some perception – and I think that it’s a legitimate perception – that the player’s personal choice is irrelevant, because it didn’t ultimately have a lot of meaning, because you could completely undo all those choices at the next station. So I think we want to sort of walk a middle line there. We want to both give some flexibility to the player, but we also want to say: “Hey, there’s a hard choice for you to make, so what kind of tactical choice are you going to make here? And you’re going to live with those choices: you live with them for the whole game, and I think that’s really important and we missed an opportunity in the original game. I think it might have been left on the table. Add to this the broad number of ways you’re going to be able to grow, the number of weapons, the number of powers, the number of passive powers, the number of ways you can tweak your character is going to be substantially greater than in the previous Bioshock game.

Murder of Crows is the name of a Vigor in Bioshock Infinite that gives you control over groups of crows.

I notice that Elizabeth is extremely powerful, but she often seems to look tired after using her powers. Is this a way to make sure that the player doesn’t abuse her powers and just smash their way through the game?
There are a couple of good points there. Obviously we want to make it clear that Elizabeth is incredibly powerful, but she’s not arbitrarily powerful. There are certain times the world presents opportunities to Elizabeth she can exploit. She can’t arbitrarily decide I’m going to do X, Y or Z. There has to be this facility – and we’ll talk more about this later in the story stuff – but the world itself has some say in what Elizabeth can and can’t do, and what the opportunities are. But even when the opportunity is presented to Elizabeth, the effort that she has to take to exploit that opportunity is incredibly draining on her. I think one of the most important things about Bioshock games is that, if you’re some kind of superhero, the hero is fairly grounded and has some pretty human foibles and limitations – and we want to show that in Elizabeth too. Despite her having all the godlike powers, she gets hurt. It’s painful for her to use those powers, and we want to get these ideas across. We really want to create the feeling that you and Elizabeth are going through this experience together, and that you’re making sacrifices for each other.

Elizabeth bleeding from heavy use of her abilities.

You’ve talked about how Booker won’t get mission objectives dished out on his ear, and how you’ll act more dynamically. Can you give me any other examples of how progression has changed?
I don’t think we’ll have any radios in the ear in this game or anything like that, and it’s something I didn’t want to rely upon in the same way I relied upon it in Bioshock. Since then people have picked that notion up, and it’s very, very common now. So I wanted to move away from that, and while we were thinking about ways to do that, something occurred to us, which was giving Booker a voice of his own, I’d done this previously in a game I’d worked on called Thief. The main character in that game had a real voice, and he could interpret the situation around him, comment on what was happening in his world, and he could drive the action to some degree. He could say: “Oh here’s something I think I should do.”

Booker DeWitt is the protagonist of Bioshock Infinite, who you control throughout the game. Through his vocalization, you come to understand DeWitt's past experience and his ability to make decisions for himself.

That’s been very freeing as we work on Bioshock Infinite, it’s been like: “oh, wait a minute. Why doesn’t Brooker just say this, why doesn’t Brooker comment on this, why doesn’t Brooker comment on that?” In Bioshock it just wasn’t possible that much because Jack was the cipher. We tried to leverage that fact, to exploit that he was the cipher in the storyline. It was sort of a limitation to some degree and we tried to make it to our advantage, but we really want to rely upon this a lot more now. We want to push Booker into the forefront of the character you want to be playing as, but that’s challenging in FPS games. I think you have like a Master Chief or Gordon Freeman, you can have a lot of people speaking about those characters whenever they meet them. “Oh it’s Gordon Freeman! It’s Master Chief! There he is, I can’t believe I’m seeing him!” But I think we have an opportunity to do both that, but also to bring a voice to the character and say: “Here’s what I think I should do next.” And Elizabeth as well, of coursed

There’s a scene in the bar where not everybody immediately attacks you. So you’re not the focal point of everybody’s attention in Bioshock Infinite?
You know the first innovation I got? I was fortunate enough to work at an earlier time in the industry. Back when I was working on Thief, which was with the great Doug Church (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Tomb Raider: Legend), one of the first important guiding principles ha had on Thief was that he wanted a new way of showing who you could see, and who could see you but not immediately attack you. You know how in System Shock you’d have the guard say: “Hey is there somebody there?” because he’s not quite sure how he saw you. At the time, I was thinking: “Why has no-one done this before? Why have I not seen this in any other games?”. And so it occurred to us as we were working through, that we should try this with Infinite. The things that we love best from Bioshock are those moments where you observe these people doing their craziness – you know, the woman with the baby carriage, and the Big Daddy and the Little Sister walking around interacting with each other.

The citizens of Columbia are not going to give you a warm welcome.

One of the problems here was that with the Big Daddy and Little Sister as soon as anybody saw you they’d immediately attack you, so we thought, why don’t we have people going about their normal daily business in the city. I’m not really interested in saying here’s their schedule during the day. No. I wanted the player to follow them when they were doing something in sync. I wanted the player to catch them when we can really determine what’s going on at that moment… the craziest moments I can create. But why do they always have to attack the player right away? Maybe we should try to capture that feeling we had in the bar in some Western, when the lead character walks into the bar and comes into a potentially violent situation, and the question is: What’s going to happen here? Is this going to get ugly? What’s going to set these people off, if anything?”

The Skylines are quite a big focus of the gameplay demo. Are the intended to be the equivalent of the bathyspheres, or will they be more integrated into each area of the world? Can you use them to move around?
They could not be more different to the bathyspheres. Not only are they more than just a method for getting from one level to another like the bathyspheres were; not only are they more than just like the rail lines you see in a Ratchet and Clank game, where you’re just moving from one zone in a level to another – these are combat experiences primarily. They’re about… we’re actually working on them right now. I’ve been having meetings about it, every day, on the first kind of big Skyline battle that we’re working on finishing. And it really is this incredibly vertical combat experience. I always think of it as like being in the sky and you have a roller coaster stacked on top of a roller coaster stacked on top of a roller coaster, and you can jump from one level to another, and you’ve got guns. And the guys on the roller coaster with you also have guns. That’s what the experience is like.

Wii U

2011-06-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

Hey. Hey you. Yes, YOU. You're in luck. Nintendo’s new Wii U console was made just for you. Well, you and every other sentient being in the universe. Yup, Nintendo is continuing its push to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible. Forget the giddy whispers of a 'core' console for 'core' gamers. The Wii U is the Swiss army knife of gaming: something for everyone.

Ah yes, the Wii U. A Genuinely nifty bit of kit, despite the rubbish name. It's just a shame Nintendo made such a colossal balls-up of introducing it to the world at their E3 conference. Not even the tech savvy journos that comprised the audience seemed to know what Nintendo had just revealed. Inevitably, Twitter exploded in a frenzy of confused tweets. Is the Wii U a new console or simply another Wii peripheral? Wait...what? The Wii U controller can be used in conjunction with the Wii's original controllers? Huh?

After much uncertain deliberation it became clear that the Wii U is indeed a brand new console. Thing is, Nintendo only revealed the console's controller, NOT THE ACTUAL CONSOLE ITSELF. And get this. At the end of the conference Satora Iwata had to tweet a pic of himself holding both the console and the controller 'to help with any confusion' (see below). Total Madness.

Thing is, the absence of the console wasn't a glaring oversight, it was an informed decision. You see, the final form of the console has yet to be decided upon. In fact ,when pressed on the issue of the Wii U's techinical capabilites, Nintendo's CEO Reggie Fils-Aime, dismissed the actual console as 'just a box'.

Tit.

So, what DO we know about the Wii U? Well, it has a sensible amount of under-the-bonnet grunt (an area in which the underpowered Wii suffered from its inception) which means it'll be able to play games like Batman Arkham City and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. So even though Nintendo hasn’t announced any detailed specs, the Wii U is going to be competent within the current scene, it’ll be able to do what the other consoles can, as well as all the kooky Nintendo stuff on top of that. Don’t know about you, but I’m sold.

Not so sure about this guy though…

Assassin's Creed Revelations - World Exclusive

2011-06-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

Right, I think this may be a genuine Assassin's Creed World Exclusive. Not a ground breaking revelation, sure, but a tasty little extra.

As you’re no doubt aware, Revelations is set in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) during the peak of the Ottoman Empire, aka the Turkish Empire. At the height of its power, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Turkey controlled 4% of the world’s land.

The reason I’m able to marshal these facts without having to consult the internet is because I’m Turkish. Can speak the language too.

So I was utterly flabbergasted when, for the first time ever, I heard someone speaking Turkish in a videogame. In all honesty it was a real shock to the system. Imagine how you’d feel if your dog suddenly asked you, in perfect English, if he could hump your leg. Well, that’s kinda how I felt. Hard to explain why, but trust me when I say it felt particularly odd.

Anyway, about this ‘World Exclusive’ I promised you. In the video above, between 0.23 and .031, you can clearly hear some foreign guy chatting away. Well, he’s Turkish. Here’s what he says:

“She was exceptionally gorgeous, and I wanted to talk to her. I was in awe. She truly was a beauty.”

So there you have it. You are now 0.000000000000001% more enlightened than you were before you read this article.

You’re welcome.

Halo: Combat Evolved – The Silent Cartographer

2011-06-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

An entire island in one gaming mouthful. The Silent Cartographer is a barnstorming mission, a heady combination of beachhead assaults, warthog dashes, intense corridor firefights and panoramic vistas.

FREEDOM FIGHTER. The vast, open-ended island is the perfect sandbox environment, yet to bettered.

With Spielberg’s brutal Saving Private Ryan seared into collective memory, you’d think it hard for a game – inhabited by aliens that bleed gaudy purple gloop - to have the same impact. But it did. Dumped on a covenant-infested island with only a handful of marines to aid you, it was here, on the sand, that Bungie created one of the most memorable moments in FPS history. The overwhelming alien firepower always struck me as unfair, but then this was never going to be an easy encounter. After all, the stakes could not be higher. The very fate of the universe depends on your ability to infiltrate the Cartographer. This isn’t so much a fight, more a last desperate roll of the dice.

MARINE LIFE. Tiny creatures live in the lip-trembling ocean that surrounds the Cartographer.

Equally impressive is the glorious epiphany that you can, if your heart so desires, scarper in completely the opposite direction from the brutal intergalactic clash that rages on the beach. Yup, you can slink away to another part of the island while your men are cut to pieces by fizzing plasma rounds. I only tried it the once mind. Master Chief doesn’t run from fights. He finishes them.

Duke Nukem Forever Has Gone Gold

2011-05-24T06:20:00.001-07:00

2K Games has announced that Duke Nukem Forever has actually, properly, we're-not-lying-to-you "gone gold". After 13 years, it's finished.

"Duke Nukem Forever is the game that was once thought to be unshippable, and yet here we are, on the precipice of history," 2K president Christoph Hartmann said of the news.

"Today marks an amazing day in the annals of gaming lore, the day where the legend of Duke Nukem Forever is finally complete and it takes that final step towards becoming a reality."

Randy Pitchford, president of dev Gearbox added: "Always bet on Duke, I did.

"I bet on all of the developers who have ever been a part of this legendary project and I bet that none of us want to live in a world without the Duke. I've played the final game and it is an incredible experience - a once-in-a-lifetime opus of interactive entertainment that reminds me once again why Duke Nukem is our King.

"The developers of Duke Nukem Forever at 3D Realms, Triptych, Piranha and finally at Gearbox deserve our thanks and respect for never giving up and have truly shown us that they have balls of steel."

Duke Nukem Forever is out in the UK on June 10, with a demo due on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on June 3.

Beyond Sense & Stupidity

2011-05-12T04:32:00.000-07:00

It's happened again. Yet another brilliant game marred by the shitty control options.

Beyond Good & Evil, in what can only be described as a glaring oversight, has failed to include the option to invert the y axis.

Instead, we are given the choice to ‘reverse’ the ‘look mode’. Opting for this control set-up inverts BOTH the x and y axis. There is no alternative.

Criminally overlooked when it was released eight years ago, this was Ubisoft’s golden opportunity to reintroduce a classic to a new generation. The game combines elements from multiple genres, including stealth, platform action and detective puzzling, and even inspired Bioshock with its photography mechanism. There are some games that every gamer on the planet should experience. This is one of them.

My advice: trial before you buy. If you’re willing to re-educate your thumbs there’s a cracking game here. But for many the constrictive controls will be a barrier to purchase.

And, for me, that is beyond acceptability.

Never Mind The Bollocks

2011-05-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

Anticipating rumours is a mug’s game. I’ll take hard, empirical fact over feeble innuendo any day of the week.

Yes, gossip and guesswork can be fun in small doses. But when the speculation and hype become an all consuming obsession, I tend to vomit. Sensitive gag reflex I’m afraid.

So then, rather than feed into the rumour mill, I’m going to suggest five practical improvements I’d like to see implemented in Microsoft’s next console.

Silence. Remember the noise the SNES used to make? No? Well, that’s because it was SILENT. I demand a console that doesn’t induce tinnitus.

My Sega Master System is 24 years old. It still works. My Xbox 360 died after 3 months. As did the next one. And the one after that. Sort it the fuck out.

An internet browser. You’re Microsoft, remember? You know, the monopolistic cunts with enough money to buy God. Even the runty, inbred Wii has one. It’s time to remove your head from your arse.

A pad that still works after I’ve smashed it against the wall.

An end to intrusive adverts. Stop pushing your failed motion-controlled bullshit on us. Never asked for it, never gonna buy it.

Overgrown Hedges

2011-05-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

On my walk to work today I passed an elderly couple pottering in their front garden. They were both hacking away at an overgrown hedge. They looked frail and tired and clumsy.

I caught the eye of the old man as he struggled with his heavy shears. And what I saw in those world-weary peepers upset me.

I saw sadness.

Vigour, vitality and youth had deserted this man a long time ago. Even the simple task of trimming the hedge served as a painful reminder of his ailing strength.

And yes, I know.

I realise how out-of-place this post must appear on a blog dedicated to videogames, but hear me out. My wanky existential intro has a point.

Kind of.

After registering the old man’s look of weary resignation, my thoughts turned to videogames. I felt deeply comforted by the fact that when I'm old and brittle and unable to travel I'll still have virtual worlds to explore and conquer.

When my legs give out and my bladder betrays me I’ll still be able to run on the rooftops in Renaissance Italy before nose-diving into a bed of hay on the cobbled streets below.

And fuck the hedges; they can grow until they blot out the sun.

Ten Videogame Icons Gone Bad

2011-05-02T08:48:00.001-07:00

Me And My Portal Gun

2011-04-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Aperture Science has been kind enough to lend DIGITAL GIGOLO a portal gun. I think GLaDOS will appreciate the experimental nature of my 'tests'.

The Ten Best Videogame End Credits

2011-04-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

How do you stop gamers from slipping into a catatonic stupor during those dreary endgame credits? Simple. Keep ‘em entertained. Here’s how it’s done…

Admit it. When the end credits roll you instinctively hit the skip button. And who can blame you? The sluggish crawl of scrolling text was never intended to set the heart pounding with excitement. Even the prospect of a ‘secret ending’ or an additional cut-scene is paltry reward for the tedious name checking you’re made to endure.

Developers have had to up their game to keep us entertained, in some cases eschewing the traditional credits-accompanied-by-music for an interactive mini-game. As a consequence of this dedication to detail, gamers have been blessed with some truly memorable end credits. Below are ten of the best.

Rogue Warrior

Forget his Oscar nominated performance in The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke’s most memorable moment is to be found after completing Rogue Warrior. Composed entirely of phrases taken from in-game dialogue, Mr Rourke’s gruff voice lends itself surprisingly well to ambient rap. Typical line: ‘I’m over here fuck face/There’s gonna be fucking asses bleeding all over the place’. Genius.

Click here to hear Rourke swear some more

Zelda: A Link To The Past

Those beautiful 8-bit synths never fail to send a prickle up the spine. Only those with the hardest of hearts remained dry-eyed as the camera panned over the eclectic cast of characters encountered on Link’s epic quest to secure the Triforce and restore peace to Hyrule. Nintendo, always keen to imbue their core titles with a sense of familiarity and history, used A Link To The Past to establish the musical core of the Zelda series. While the very first Zelda game originated the "Hyrule Overture", many recurring motifs of the Zelda scores come from A Link to the Past.

Click here for a potent dose of nostalgia

Katamari Damacy

Ah yes, the undisputed king of the end credit mini-game. Crazier than The Priory at full capacity, Damacy’s success is a load of balls. Big sticky balls to be exact; or to give them their technical name, Katamari. The aim of the game? To roll your adhesive orb over every object in your path, thus creating a chaotic ball of bric-a-brac. Yup, it’s as mental as it sounds; more so when you factor in the high-octane Japanese-pop soundtrack. I've chosen Katarmari Damacy’s end credit mini-game for this top ten because it takes ball rolling to its ludicrous conclusion.

Click here to let a little sunshine into your life

Flower

Snooty film critic Roger Ebert dismissed Flower as nothing more than a glorified ‘greeting card’. If the sour-faced curmudgeon had actually played the game he so confidently criticized, his views may have been given some credence. Thankfully Ebert’s poisonous drivel has had no impact on the game’s deserving success. For the uninitiated Flower uses the PS3’s Sixaxis motion control to guide an airborne petal through the fledgling fauna that grows on the game’s beautiful grassy vistas. The interactive end credits are simply a seamless continuation of the game. Perfect.

Click here if you want to feed the troll

‘Splosion Man

It’s fun to blow shit up, right? It’s a sentiment that developer Twisted Pixel has taken to heart. ‘Splosion man, the game’s endearingly psychotic hero, has but one ability at his command: the power to explode at will. Chasing down evil scientists and turning them into sizzling hunks of charred meat is just one of the game’s many twisted charms. Despite the game’s ludicrously simple one-button control set up, ‘Splosion Mab is a rock hard platformer. And that self-canabalising end-boss is a quite simply a total bastard. It’s only fair then that we’re rewarded with such a barmy end credit video.

Click here to see what really makes 'Splosion Man blow his load

Silent Hill 2

Cor blimey. You really have to hand it to the Silent Hill team. They come up with the most out-there shit on both ends of the spectrum. True masters of the bizarre. To unlock the legendary ‘Dog ending’ players are required to play through the game a patience-shredding three times, while snagging specific items in the process. Those who took up the challenge were rewarded with what is surely the most unexpected conclusion in videogame history.

Click here for Maria’s celebrity doppelganger

God Hand

Any song that contains the line “God power keeps my pimp hand strong” automatically qualifies for this list. God Hand was directed by celebrated Resident Evil designer Shinji Mikami, which would explain the game’s inelegant controls, likened by one reviewer to a “Sherman tank trying to manoeuvre through San Francisco's twisty Lombard Street”. Despite the criticism, the game gained a cult following for its hardcore sensibilities and intentionally cheesy script. Oh yes, and that ending.

Click here for God Hand’s wince-inducing poster

Portal

How do you end one of the most unique games of 2007? Well, in Portal’s case with a song; a pitch black ditty as sinister as it’s funny. Sung by GLaDOS, Portal’s ominous, disembodied, antagonist, the hard part for developers Valve was finding someone who shared an affinity with psychotic robo-women to write the lyrics. Step forward Jonathon Coulton the lunatic genius who penned the words to Still Alive. When asked why he was the man for the job JC said, ‘I generally write about misunderstood monsters anyway, so it wasn't that much of a stretch for me to channel GLaDOS’.

Click here for an exclusive interview with Jon Coulton

You Have To Burn The Rope

Despite the game lasting approximately 40 seconds, Burn The Rope was a finalist for the Innovation Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. With tongue firmly in cheek, Joystiq praised the game for its "stunning character design and addictive gameplay". The true star of the show is, of course, the sublime end credit song, surely the ultimate feel-good finale. Altogether now, ‘you burned the rope and saved us all!’

Click here to burn the rope

Mass Effect

A suitably epic end credit song performed by a band called Faunts. The catchily-titled M4 Part II was originally released as a five song EP in 2007 and was only available via a digital download service. If you’ve ever wondered what Part I sounds like, click here – a word of warning though: the track is even longer than its follow-up at over 9 minutes, and that wonderful riff doesn’t kick in until 3.05.

Click here for the original crab-themed music video

Bejeweled Blitz - Con In Sixty Seconds?

2011-04-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

Beware Bejeweled Blitz. Lurking behind the candy coloured gems and the gaudy alien vista is something altogether more sinister.

Mike folds back the sleeves of his shirt to expose his elbows. “There!” he declares triumphantly. “That’s how you separate the men from the boys”. Both Mike’s elbows sport painful looking sores; a direct consequence of the hours spent leaning on his kitchen counter. It’s where he plays Bejeweled Blitz, alone. Having been banned by his wife from playing in front of their children, Mike, 31, snatches these precious hours of solitude whenever he can. ‘I love Bejeweled Blitz. I’d play it all day if I could. Once I’ve started I won’t quit until I’ve topped the high-score table. It’s a matter of personal pride’.

For the uninitiated, Bejeweled Blitz is a Facebook application developed by PopCap Games. The goal is to achieve the highest possible score, by matching three or more gems of the same colour, in one minute. Since its low key appearance on December 20th 2008, BB has quickly attracted a dedicated following, with over 4.5 million users per day. One of the reasons for its astonishing success can be attributed to BB’s seamless integration into Facebook’s ubiquitous social network. Before long, online acquaintances become bitter adversaries in the ongoing battle to top the high-score table. And once you’re entrenched in the sordid world of internet one-upmanship, it’s hard to break free.

Indeed, certain aspects of the game have been judiciously geared towards exploiting the brain’s natural response to a ‘near miss’. It’s no coincidence that players are invited to spin a slot machine for the chance to earn coins, which can be exchanged for score enhancing ‘boosts’. If the reels align to show three matched gems, the coins flow fast and freely. The more likely outcome however, is a ‘near miss’: the last reel just fractionally short of completing the required set of three. But it’s enough to tease the brain into releasing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that stimulates the reward circuitry, which in turn increases the desire and motivation to continue spinning those reels.

Thing is, you can’t; at least not straight away.

BB enforces a devious time restriction between spins. Every player must wait twenty four hours before they are given the chance to earn more coins – an intolerable period of time when you’re languishing in second place on the high-score table. Nevertheless, there is a way to gain an instant fix of coins. And rather sinisterly, it involves buying them. Yup, swapping actual cash for virtual coins. “On average I spend around £40 a week buying coins”, says Mike. “The coins I win on the Daily Spin are never enough to satisfy the way I want to play”

It’s a sentiment shared by many dedicated blitzers.

If one were to adopt the hysterical game-bashing platitudes of the Daily Mail, BB would no doubt be decried as a gateway drug to the coin guzzling slot machines of Vegas. But in the spirit of impartiality we spoke to BB’s Senior Product Manager, Heather Hazen and asked her if the game was intentionally engineered to manipulate the player into parting with their cash.

‘We didn’t intentionally program the Daily Spin to exploit the brain’s natural response to a ‘near miss’. Daily Spin was developed because we thought it was a fun way to give away extra coins. We added the bonuses to the Daily Spin to encourage players to invite more friends to play Bejeweled Blitz and to give players rewards for playing every day’.

Introducing incentives to keep the punters playing has no doubt been the key to PopCap’s growing success. The continuous tweaks and flourishes introduced to BB since its inception has transformed a simple Facebook App into a global phenomenon, and a lucrative one at that.

‘While we don’t actually disclose revenue figures, I can tell you that within two months of introducing microtransactions on Bejeweled Blitz, the game had its first million-dollar month, so it is very successful. To that end, the social games space is a very important part of PopCap’s global business and definitely one to watch going forward’.

Keeping the punters playing is clearly paying off. But what is the key to PopCap’s success? What keeps the gaming public coming back for more? It’s a question we asked Cindy Morrison, aka Julia Gemstone, the veteran blitzer responsible for writing BB’s strategy guide.

‘I used to play Bejeweled 2 for hours and hours. I played it when on conference calls and in airports - anywhere I could turn on the laptop. I always had to be alone while playing, and one game could go on for months. I wrote the Bejeweled 2 guide in 2007, because I thought I’d cracked the code for keeping the classic game going. Then came Bejeweled Blitz. I honestly didn't think I'd like it because I preferred the classic mode of Bejeweled 2 over the action mode. I wanted to play until I messed up and not because I was on a timer. But after the first few games of the 1-minute Blitz, I was hooked…it's mostly the competition, shortness of the individual games, and desire to beat my last best score that keeps me coming back for more’.

Served in bite-sized chunks of sixty seconds, BB fuels that nagging urge for ‘just one more go’. It’s a deceptive time-sink that converts minutes into hours and hours into days. And no matter how dismal your performance, each minute of gem matching mayhem climaxes with an explosive Last Hurrah, followed by the narcotically addictive aural cue of chinking coins. Failure to attain even the most rudimentary score – anything above 25K earns a ‘star medal’ - still sees the player increasing their ‘status’; so dedicated blitzers can gradually work their way up from humble ‘Trainee’ (level 1) to expert ‘Elder Bejewelian’ (level 130). This clever integration of basic RPG stat-raising means the player is rewarded every single time they play.

Speed and consistency are the secret to high scores. The subtle yet delightful crackle of burning twigs indicates a particularly successful run of skill; an uninterrupted frenzy of gem matching turns the screen bright orange while BB’s disembodied voice announces in its typically bombastic style, ‘BLAZING SPEED’. For the next eight seconds every matched set of gems explodes, destroying everything in its immediate vicinity. If a player has the good fortune to match five identical gems they are rewarded with a Hyper Cube. These delightful rarities can be combined with any single gem to destroy all those gems that share the same colour. Matching two Hyper Cubes clears the whole screen and is the most powerful combo in the game. But speed and skill will only get you so far. To stand any chance of competing with the best, budding blitzers must routinely purchase coins to spend on score-enhancing boosts, a practice that’s all too familiar to Cindy Morrison.

‘I feel sorry for people who can't afford to purchase coins. Boosts don't necessarily guarantee a good game. Players have the option to accumulate coins for free, simply by playing the game and taking part in the Daily Spin. But this can be a slow and frustrating process. When a player has spent a solid week saving coins to purchase boosts, and still has an awful game, it must be intensely frustrating. I had to reach a conscious decision to purchase coins, and it was not easy. The draw of the game and the need for coins to play the way I wanted to play fuelled my decision. I justify my coin buying as my daily latte money. I don't have a Starbucks nearby, so I can afford a few bucks a day on Bejeweled Blitz’.

But it was the introduction of the Cat’s Eye Gem towards the end of 2010 that really captured Cindy’s attention.

‘When the Cat's Eye gem was introduced, it suddenly became possible to hit really high scores, based on the random destruction of 14 gems after the Last Hurrah ended. I didn't get my first million point game until after the Cat's Eye gem arrived. Now I don't want to play a game without it, because if I enjoy a particularly high scoring game, I’d want that extra ‘oomph’ at the end’.

There’s just one problem. Unlike boosts, which can be purchased after each game, the Cat’s Eye Gem appears at random. Boosts are also considerably cheaper, ranging between 3,000 and 7,500 coins, compared to the 25,000 coins needed to purchase the Cat’s Eye Gem. The infrequent and random availability of this rare gem is yet another reason blitzers feel the need to purchase coins. When a player is finally presented with a chance to buy a Cat’s Eye Gem, but is unable due to lack of coins, the opportunity is lost. The disgruntled blitzer has to endure a lengthy and uncertain wait before another randomly generated Cat’s Eye appears. The compulsion to acquire and accumulate coins can become a time consuming diversion for many, bordering on the obsessive.

After each Daily Spin players are given the option to share their coins. If they choose to do so, a post is automatically generated on their Facebook wall. Up to ten friends can claim these ‘gifts’ and enjoy free coins, but they are only available for 72 hours, so it’s a case of first come first serve. ‘I know people who haunt their Facebook home page each night at midnight to grab the Daily Spin gifts that are posted by their friends’, says Cindy. ‘There’s even a dedicated application that scans the Facebook community in order to sniff out any unclaimed gift coins. I've seen many posts from people who were angry and exasperated because they’d been too late to claim their free coins’.

The cynical will no doubt condemn BB as nothing more than an addictive gambling simulator intent on exploiting the player and filling PopCaps coffers. And they may well have a point. But there’s also a genuinely wonderful game here, a minute-long masterpiece. The millions of daily blitzers are no fluke. The playful, competitive banter between friends is part of the appeal. And with anything competitive there’s bound to be casualties, those who’ll use everything in their power to win, even if it means blowing the weekly grocery money on a few million coins. In light of BB’s huge commercial and fiscal success it was perhaps inevitable that accusations of greed and manipulation would rear their frothy-mouthed heads. However, the willingness and transparency with which PopCap Games operates when fielding enquiries about BB’s continued growth seems to come from a good place, a fact that Heather Hanzen is keen to promote.

‘As with all PopCap releases, we prioritise getting the game right first and making sure the experience for customers is fun. That comes before monetisation and in fact, despite introducing Bejeweled Blitz Beta at the end of 2009, we didn’t actually start monetising for 18 months - in May 2010’.

Whichever side of the fence you sit, there is one indisputable fact: BB is the most fun you’ll have in sixty seconds.

Bejeweled Blitz Interview

2011-03-23T04:17:00.000-07:00

Heather Hazen, Senior Product Manager at PopCap Games, agreed to a hearty chin-wag with Digital Gigolo. Bejeweled Blitz is the topic of discussion.

Can you talk us through the changes BB has undergone since its inception.
We launched Bejeweled Blitz on December 20th 2008. We introduced the first weekly tournament and the jewel Jabber early 2009, then the star medals, the friend comparison & scoring charts and the star medal collection in the second quarter of 2009. By the third quarter of that year, the game reached 2 million daily users and had attracted about 10 million monthly users in its first 10 months.

The game became Facebook’s most played Game Globally in October 2009. We added the Blitz mode to the Bejeweled 2 iPhone title and the game was the number 1 Apple App Store download in November 2009. At the end of 2009, we added the Last Hurrah, the Blazing Speed and the star gems. One year after its launch, Bejeweled Blitz was a record-setter:

•400 million hours of leisure time consumed by December 2009
•100 million games of Bejeweled Blitz are played each day
•More than 25 million players in the first year
•More than 3 trillion gems matched/destroyed since launch - and more than half a billion gems matched/destroyed each hour

In 2010, we gradually introduced new features to make the game even more exciting and to offer a great experience to Bejeweled Blitz lovers. We added boosts & coins, coins purchase, daily spin, rare gems to name a few. And at the end of last year, we added the Cat’s Eye Rare Gem. By the end of 2010, the game attracted more than 4.5 million daily users!

What was the inspiration behind the Cat's Eye gem?
After we tested the Moonstone Rare Gem and realized that people were interested in the concept, we brainstormed tons of other ideas (and ate lots of ice cream in the process). We decided that we liked the idea of creating a unique, eye-popping feature unlike anything else Bejeweled Blitz players had ever experienced. We wanted to create a spectacle. Following that brainstorm, I ran into Jason Kapalka (Cofounder and Creative Director of PopCap Games) in the office kitchen and he kept telling me we should make “Laser Cats”! So we started prototyping and Jason insisted that we use his cat, Snackers (even though my cat is much cuter). We kept adding sound effects and other ridiculous animations until we couldn’t stop laughing…then we knew it was ready.

Snackers. The fuzzball that inspired the Cat's Eye Gem

What's the highest score you've seen without the use of boosts or cheats?
According to Julia Gemstone's website, she scored 1.6 million just a couple weeks ago. That’s definitely the highest score I’ve ever seen but I’m not sure whether or not she was using boosts. We could probably query our database to determine the highest score without boosts but honestly, we actually encourage people to play with boosts because we think it’s more fun!

How much money does BB make for PopCap Games?
As with all PopCap releases, we prioritise getting the game right first and making sure the experience for customers is fun. That comes before monetisation and in fact, despite introducing Bejeweled Blitz Beta at the end of 2009, we didn’t actually start monetising for 18 months - in May 2010.

Ker Ching! Swapping actual cash for virtual coins. Madness!

While we don’t actually disclose revenue figures, I can tell you that within two months of introducing microtransactions on Bejeweled Blitz, the game had its first million-dollar month so it is very successful. To that end, the social games space is a very important part of PopCap’s global business and definitely one to watch going forward. Facebook take a cut in the form of 30% of revenues generated by Facebook credits. This is standard with virtually every Facebook application.

Assassin's Creed 2 Review

2010-11-29T12:36:00.002-08:00

Roof hopping wop stabs his way around Renaissance Italy. That’s all you need to know about the plot. The finer details of the storyline simply distract from the fun. If you want to ponder the existential implications of prolonged exposure to virtual worlds then go watch The Matrix.

Assassin’s Creed 2, stripped of its confusing narrative, is simply a big old climbing frame. The whole of Italy is your parkour-friendly playground upon which you are encouraged to free-run until the soles of your feet bleed. Every last square inch of concrete can be clambered up, swung from, and jumped off. You see that eagle soaring above that impossibly high cathedral tower? You can go and stroke him if you fancy it.

And while you’re up there why not take in the view. The town stretches out for miles in all directions, a boxy maze of rooftops and sky. The hectic hustle and bustle of the streets below are muted by the whooshing of the wind in your ears. You can spend hours without your feet ever touching the ground, simply watching the world go by. It’s intoxicating stuff. But it's the violence where Assassin's Creed 2 really shines.

Bloody murder is woven into every thread of the game. From the brutal intimacy of a hidden-blade gut-stab to the epic frenzy of warring factions, Assassin’s Creed 2 spills claret by the gallon. Murdered parents, horribly botched assassination attempts, religious genocide – it’s all here. Nothing censored, nothing hidden. And I can’t recall any other video game in history that shows the public execution of a young boy. The last video game taboo – the killing of children – has now been broken. How the Daily Mail missed that one I’ll never know.

It’s ambitious then, in both scale and subject matter. Possibly the most ambitious game of its generation. And it rarely places a foot wrong. The transition from balletic urban athlete to deadly assassin is seamless. You’re never impeded by poor level design or muddled controls. Canny visual cues - pigeons indicate jump off points for those stunning leaps of faith, while anything draped in a white sheet signifies the starting spot for a free-run – mean you never have to stop and think about which button to push next. It’s natural, free flowing and awesomely empowering.

For all its intuitive brilliance though, Assassins Creed 2 does have its faults. Missions where you shadow a specific target can be extremely slow-paced and tedious. Towards the end of the game you’ll have accumulated a huge mountain of cash. Having already purchased everything you'll ever need a fair while back, your accrued wealth is now entirely useless. It just keeps on piling up - a grotesque parody of our bank accounts in the real world. And it’s just a tad on the easy side too. Yes, it’ll take you a good solid week to complete, triple that time if you decide to collect all the feathers, treasure chests and hieroglyphs, but you’ll rarely find yourself suffering a fatal blow from a guard’s sword. But, again, maybe that’s just down to the solid controls.

The biggest bugbear for many however will be the game’s lethargic start. Indeed AC2 takes its own sweet time to get going. You can blame the devs for the slow pacing. In their desire for the player to spend more time with Ezio as a carefree adolescent, they’ve created an intro devoid of incident. The action hungry gamer is left champing at the bit in frustration – 'JUST GET ON WITH IT FOR FUCK’S SAKE!'

Not me though. Some of our best loved games have been slow burners. Take Ocarina Of Time. It took a fair old while for our hero Link to leave Kokiri Village and face the epic splendour of Hyrule Field. In many ways AC2 is the spiritual successor to the Ocarina Of Time: Galloping over vast green fields on a tireless stallion; locking onto enemies before clashing swords; plundering loot from beautifully designed dungeons, or simply watching the rising sun burn the morning mist away – AC2 ticks many of the boxes that made Miyamoto’s offering an instant classic.

So then, game of the year? For me, yes. In fact I’d go so far as to say Assassin’s Creed 2 is the best single player experience of this generation. Go buy. Now.

And, yes, that sarky English twat is indeed Danny Wallace.

Exclusive Ram Raider Interview

2010-11-29T12:36:00.001-08:00

In a time which celebrates fame, success, stupidity, convenience and noise, here is the perfect antidote, The Ram Raider, an anonymous blogger enraged by the vacuity of ‘new games journalism’ and the industry in general. The Ram Raider is ‘a gaming journalist looking from the inside out, wondering why all the joy has been replaced by bollocks'. His ‘quaint little rant site’ was set up in March 2005 as a means to vent his spleen ‘about the games industry, and all that is evil and ridiculous within it.’ Some will argue that all his adolescent anger and sweary angst is simply too easy, too shallow and too dull to warrant attention.

But they’d be wrong. Scratch the surface and you’ll find that beneath all the amusing profanity and creative harassment is a blog with relevance, humour and, yes, at times, the word ‘cunt’. The Ram Raider is a crusader, a man who likes nothing more than to puncture the inflated ego of pretentious journalism:

New Games Journalism is little more than an excuse for the writer to talk about themselves first, and let everything and everyone else be damned…if you write about yourself, you’ll alienate your readers and end up as one of the bunch of self-deluded pricks who waffle on about fuck-all in shite like Edge.

And that’s him being nice. God help those poor, feckless berks who really push his buttons. Because once the Ram gets Raiding, you’d better take cover...

Digital Gigolo: Before we begin is there anything you’d like to get off your chest? Anyone in particular who’s been making your blood itch?
RAM Raider: There’s not enough room on the net to list half of what makes my cock weep blood. The worst of it gets spurted across my Twitter feed.

Digital Gigolo: ‘Ram Raiding’ is defined by Wikipedia as ‘a variation on burglary in which a van, SUV, car, or other heavy vehicle is driven through the windows or doors of a closed shop, usually a department store or jewellers shop, to allow the perpetrators to loot it’. Your pseudonym suggests a ‘fuck you’ approach to who you criticise and damn the consequences. Is that a fair description?
RAM Raider: It’s a fair description of my style, as one of its objectives is to lay down some honest criticism without any blowback. But the real reason I chose that pseudonym is less interesting. It’s a slightly weak play on Random Access Memory (hence why I always capitalise the RAM part) which probably made perfect sense at the time I came up with it. Trouble is, I have little memory of that occasion.

Digital Gigolo: The cuddly world of Pokemon is a far cry from the acerbic rants of The Ram Raider. So why on earth have you chosen the protagonist of Pokemon Snap on the N64 as your avatar?
RAM Raider: Like the name, it wasn’t premeditated – I made a quick choice when the blog registration process asked for a picture. I have a soft spot for the sunshiney idealised world of Pokemon (less so for Nintendo flogging the shit out of it by re-releasing slight tweaks of the same game for over a decade rather than rewarding the faithful with something new), and the photographer lurking around in the turdy undergrowth seemed appropriate without being too recognisable a character. It’s worked out well, as people seem to associate that picture with me more so now than with Pokemon Snap.

Digital Gigolo: Pretentious journalism is clearly a bugbear. When did you first feel the rage surface? Can you pinpoint the article/magazine/journalist that finally caused you to snap and give birth to The Ram Raider?
RAM Raider: The blog was sired by a plethora of hateful events, such as getting severely bollocked for mentioning that I wasn’t impressed by a game that the mag I was on was paid to feature on its cover, but there’s one period in particular that sticks out in my memory. I’d been commissioned to write a massive preview for one of the major mags, and had been given something like a week to research and turn around about fifteen pages full of new releases. I had to source exclusive screenshots and quotes for each title I was covering (God forbid I should actually be sent to play any code) – considering it was one of those pissy supplements where you have to squeeze three or four games into a page, it was a fucking nightmare.

At least it would have been a mere fucking nightmare, rather than the raging shitstorm it turned into, had the PR scum I had to liaise with to get the assets from been able to do the unthinkable: their jobs. A few of them were great, and were more than happy to secure free positive coverage (thou shalt not speak ill of a game in a preview – it’s the law) for whatever they were hawking in a major mag with (then) excellent circulation figures in exchange for nothing more than a screenshot.

But this was obviously far too much of an ask for the majority of the screaming pricks who either ignored me, or lied directly to my fucking face about getting the assets to me. My editor really didn’t want to use screenshots from GamesPress, so a load of the pieces I wrote were spiked and I got paid about half of what I should have got. All because these anus faces couldn’t deviate from whatever fucking spreadsheet they’d been given that month, or what the fuck ever. Cunts.

Digital Gigolo: You seem to hold a particularly persistent grudge against Future Publishing who are routinely hectored and always on the receiving end of your nastier bouts of criticism. Edge, in particular, really takes a battering. Do you think Future is to blame for the decline in the quality of videogame journalism? You did, after all, award Nintendo Official Magazine (a Future Publication) the ‘Worst Magazine 2008’.
RAM Raider: Not all the blame’s on Future, but they take a pretty large portion of it. Things were better when Dennis were still in the industry and there was healthy competition in the shape of CVG v GamesMaster and PC Zone v PC Gamer, but now Future’s too much of a monopoly. The distribution of “exclusives” has become too artificial, and is there to principally serve advertisers. Readers are barely an afterthought now, which is probably why they’re all fucking off to the internet. There’s a lot more to it than that of course, such as issues of standards, but that’s for another day.

Digital Gigolo: Do you work for Future?
RAM Raider: They feature heavily on my CV.

Digital Gigolo: Are videogame magazines a dying format?
RAM Raider: The death of mags has been predicted for years now, but it’s still not happened. Nor is it happening as quickly as most people think. The truth is that, my personal gripes about the old boys’ network aside, mags do attract the best writers. The combination of their heritage and the way in which they’re put together means you’re far more likely to find a higher standard of writing when you open a mag than browsing around GameSpot and its ilk. Look at the journos with the most respect, and you’ll see that they mostly have a heavy mag background in common (a few notable exceptions aside, such as EG’s Tom Bramwell).

Add in the fact that you can’t beat a good shit with the latest issue of your favourite mag resting on your lap, and it’s hard to argue against them being around for a fair old while yet.

Digital Gigolo: Is the internet, as opposed to the traditional magazine, now the authority on videogames?
RAM Raider: In terms of pure information about the games, yes. Although the mags are still privy to the best exclusives and early hands-on previews because of their advertising clout, the fact that mags get scanned and info gets leaked by embargo-haters means the net has the upper hand.

Digital Gigolo: People you hate: Ngai Croal (writes for – shock! – Edge), Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw (Zero Puntuation), Dan Whitehead (Eurogamer). Who, if anyone, do you like? There must be at least one lonesome soul out there who inspires you?
RAM Raider: There’s a distinction between hating someone’s writing, and disliking them personally. Of the three you mentioned, I only actually hate Croal. He’ll never apologise to the Capcom Resi Evil devs for accusing them of using racist imagery, despite bringing the credibility of the games industry into disrepute and devaluing the cause against racism for his own self-love and promotion. He’s incredibly still flogging articles off the back of it to Edge right at this very moment. The sooner that cunt’s out of journalism, the better.

Whitehead went overboard with the bullshit in a review, so I took the piss out of him for it – I’ve got nothing against him personally. As for Croshaw, he sometimes gets a little ahead of himself.

As for who I like, there are a few out there. I’ve already mentioned Bramwell – he’s as solid as a rock and totally unpretentious. Jon Blyth injects so much humour into his work, which you don’t see much of these days thanks to over-paranoid editing (another reason I started the blog, incidentally). I still enjoy reading what Campbell has to say, for all his often misjudged bluster, and Gillen crafts some good stuff on those rare occasions when his flies are done up.

Digital Gigolo: Is The Ram Raider a single entity or a network of cynical and jaded journos? I only ask because you mention your ‘band of merry cohorts’ in one of your posts.
RAM Raider: The blog would sometimes include rants suggested by the few who knew my filthy secret, and Anonymous Knights would sometimes contribute to keep their identities hidden.

Digital Gigolo: Do you remain anonymous for fear of losing your job as a videogame journalist or to prove the point that your blog was created solely to air your genuine disgruntlement with the games industry and not just as a push for personal recognition?
RAM Raider: Anonymity serves both purposes. Many people accused me of starting the blog for self-promotion to begin with, but they were too feebleminded to realise how self-defeating that would be. By staying anonymous and never accepting advertising, I’ve been able to say exactly what I think without any outside influence. It means I can’t personally reap the glory from I’ve written as RR, but I’m truly not that fussed about that side of things.

Digital Gigolo: Has anyone correctly guessed your true identity?
RAM Raider: No comment…

Digital Gigolo: Apologies but it’s time for the obligatory ‘What is your favourite videogame mag/blog/ website/journalist?’ question.
RAM Raider: It always turns my stomach when I see interviewees sucking up to their interviewer for these kinds of question, so I’ll exclude NGamer and anything else you write for in this answer. It’s no secret that my favourite past mag is Amiga Power, and Arcade was fun for awhile. Keeping it current, I’ve got a soft spot for GamesTM. You could count the number of decent gaming sites out there on your bollocks, but I always read Patrick Garratt’s VG247. It throws in some occasionally frank opinion amongst the news, although I think Pat holds back a lot because of the advertising. As for journalists, I’ve already mentioned them: Blyth, Bramwell, Campbell and Gillen.

Digital Gigolo: When was the last time you were shocked by something?
RAM Raider: When I glanced in the mirror this morning. The games industry disgusts me more or less weekly, but I’m never shocked anymore.

Digital Gigolo: You have a facebook fan page, a twitter account and a blog that used to attract over a thousand hits per day? You clearly have an audience. So why did you retire your blog?
RAM Raider: It felt like the right time for several reasons, not least because I felt that it was demanding more of my time than I could afford to give it if the quality levels weren’t to start dribbling away down its own arse like so many mags I could mention. There’s also a limit to how much you can blow the whistle before you realise that most people would rather it didn’t pierce the delusory bubble they’re labouring inside. I don’t regret it, and I’ve kept an online presence for the hardcore. I love them dearly – fuck everyone else.

Digital Gigolo: On a scale of one to ten, how angry are you on a daily basis?
RAM Raider: On a good day, with breathing exercises I can bring it down to a nine. The day I stop being angry about the games industry being ejaculated over the dog’s back is the day I stop caring about it.

Digital Gigolo: What lightens your mood?
RAM Raider: Watching people I hate fail. (I’m joking, of course. Well, maybe half and half…)

Digital Gigolo: And finally, will you, once you retire, let your identity be known?
RAM Raider: I’m sure it’ll happen eventually, but not until I’m good and ready. And when nobody else gives a shit anymore.

Andy Mcnab Vs Modern Warfare 2

2010-11-29T12:35:00.001-08:00

"I sometimes play the last Call Of Duty with my godson, who wipes the floor with me, and I was already impressed. But this new game takes it to a new level. The movement of the characters is spot on. The way a trained soldier holds and fires a gun is very specific – and they’ve got the movement right, down to the last detail."

"Even the blood spatter and impact of a bullet on a human is correct. Some maps in particular are very close to the real thing. In the opening level you are fighting insurgents through rat runs, in and out of back alleys, mosques and markets in a city. That is exactly the sort of conditions our troops were fighting under in Basra, Iraq".

"The game really gets across the frantic chaos of a firefight. I’m sure this game will be on the receiving end of some stick – but its biggest defence is its realism. It isn’t glorifying war, it’s bringing it into living rooms and simulating it as closely as possible".

New Super Mario Bros Wii Review.

2010-11-29T12:31:00.001-08:00

Nope, ‘fraid not chaps. There’s nowt here to rival the brain melting riot of originality that burst on to the SNES twenty years ago in the form of Super Mario World. Twenty long years - a cavernous period of time that has seen Nintendo release the N64, Gamecube and Wii - and we are STILL waiting for a 2D platformer to topple SMW from its lofty perch in the clouds.

New Super Mario Bros Wii is by no means a disaster. How could it be? It’s the spiritual sequel to the best 2D platformer ever made. Yes, it lacks the traditional Mario charm and, yes, it’s too easy (okay, not the tear inducing 9-7), but you’ll enjoy it nonetheless, more so if you block out the giddy delights of its SNES forbear.

Unsurprisingly it’s the newest addition to the game that proves the most fun. Multiplayer, a mode I usually shun, got a thoroughly good seeing to this time round - a testament to Mario's universal appeal. Roping in a couple of playmates is never a problem when you mention the ubiquitous Italian chubster. Faces light up and eyes mist over with childhood nostalgia. That mystical Mario allure has yet to wane after all these years. And, yes, bouncing around the Mushroom Kingdom with a few friends in tow is as fun as it sounds. An air of happy cooperation illuminates the first 30 mins of playtime together. Sharing power ups, boosting a chum to reach a Star Coin, piggybacking a weaker player over tricky terrain - all these wonderful moments of teamwork are integral to the happy, shiny, let's-be-friends feel.

Inevitably the love does not last long. Mischievous tom-foolery soon takes over. Every tactic used in the spirit of collaboration is quickly turned on its head. Stop a pal from pinching a preferred power up by lobbing him into some lava, or force him to play catch up by zooming on ahead. Yes indeedy, there are plenty of ways to ruin it for everyone else and you'll try every single one of them.

Multiplayer is fun, no doubt. But without a few chums to share in the high jinks the levels feel soulless and empty. To truly appreciate the potential for mutliplayer mayhem take a peek inside Princess Peach's Castle. The jaw dropping 'super skills' locked within showcase the astounding tricks and acrobatics that four hardcore platform fans can pull off. Some of the stunts are truly mind blowing. Same goes for the 'endless one ups'. There are some ingenious ways to clock up extra lives, feats of digit crippling dexterity you'd simply never have thought of yourself. Watching these videos is like searching youtube for all those quirky 'look what I can do' clips posted by the public. They also draw attention to the meticulously planned level design and reveal a depth to the gameplay that might have otherwise been overlooked.

Some welcome additions then but nothing like the ground pounding triumph we've been waiting so long for. Me thinks a little context is in order here, a peek into the past to put this game in to perspective.

It took a decade for Nintendo to better Mario 64, but Galaxy was worth the wait. And after 12 years we’re finally due a Zelda that’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with the mighty Ocarina Of Time.

The Big N is renowned for lavishing its most cherished franchises with generous periods of development time. It’s why their end products are often modern day masterpieces. Bum numbing delays are tolerable if, at the end of it all, we have a Galaxy to gawp at. But twenty years? For this? Fuck me, no. Too little, too late.

Interesting NSMBW fact