Stop! Think of my post-apocalyptic children!
Vogster Entertainment’s Crimecraft has become the latest in a list of games refused classification in Australia. The MMO, which was released earlier this year in the US, centres around gangs of thugs in a futuristic city without law.
The game won’t be coming to Australian shores, however, as the OFLC board has decided to deem it inappropriate for the MA15+ rating.
I found this slightly hilarious for a country that isn’t actually sure if they need to classify MMOs at all, but according to reviews out of the states I doubt anyone is going to kick up much of a fuss about such a mid-level title.
Of course being the full disclosure type, the OFLC hasn’t provided the exact reasons why the game was banned, but if you take a look at the ESRB’s rating in the US, you can probably guess what combination of elements offended so drastically.
Small splashes of red blood indicate successful hits, and bloodstains are depicted on the ground under some defeated characters. Achievements and mission titles sometimes contain profanity (e.g., achievement called “F**king Ridiculous”; missions called “I Ain’t Movin’ B*tch,” and “Poppin’ a Cap in Yo A*s”). Players can customize female avatars so that they only wear a bra and thong-style panties or outfits that expose deep cleavage; players can also trigger a brief dance in which an avatar caresses her body.
-Ha! Ha! Deep cleavage!
Alright, so this isn’t in a Left 4 Dead 2 class of gaming quality, but it still highlights the relative pick-and-mix nature of games that recieve bans in this country. Thanks for the heads up, Grow Up Australia!
The Brotherhood of Upended Buckets welcomes you
Welcome to a new series of reviews where I (and maybe the others) go trawling the bargain bins of my local games stores to see what kind of entertainment can be had for $20 or less. We’re going to be calling these “Rewind Reviews”, reviews of games that may have previously passed you by but warrant a second look.
First in the series is a doozy – Fallout, the post-apocalyptic RPG originally released by Interplay in 1997. For some reason I never got to play it then but it sure got a lot of positive attention from others. It’s featured near the top of numerous “best games ever made” lists and it’s been highly rated by pretty much every reviewer that’s ever played it.
But how does it hold up some 12 years down the track?
I’ll get a couple of practical matters out of the way first. The version I bought (for $15) also came with Fallout 2 and the spin-off RTS game Fallout Tactics on the same disc. I won’t get into those games in this review, but suffice to say that’s some pretty sweet value. The game installs in a couple of minutes flat, it loads fast and it hasn’t had any problems running on the two XP machines I tested it on. So far so good.
Character creation is straightforward. You can either choose one of the pre-configured characters or make your own from scratch. If you go for the latter option (as I did) you’re given handy prompts explaining exactly what consequences your selections will have and you’ll have to make some careful tradeoffs (less overall damage but more critical hits, for example).
Whoops, wrong Tesla
Hands up who’s surprised? No-one? Excellent.
Somebody over at MTV Multiplayer was being particularly observant this week (or simply Googling “Guitar Hero 6″ over and over again, MTV can afford people to do that), because they’ve uncovered a recent interview with hard rock band Tesla in which they state they’ll have music in Guitar Hero 6. Don’t believe me?
Guitar Hero seemingly receives equal amounts of praise and criticism. Rude offers his opinion. “I teach guitar when I’m not touring and a lot of people start in on that. A lot of people complain, but I think it’s a good thing. Even if people don’t learn to play guitar, it’s exposing them to all sorts of cool guitar-based music that they wouldn’t have ever heard otherwise.” As far as the actual selection of ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ for Guitar Hero 6 went, Hannon explains, “They (the video game makers) chose it. Honestly, there’s some pirate versions of ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ that people have made up for the game out there. They did ask us what we would request. That was one of our three that we wanted.”
-Guitarist Frank Hannon figures “oh, what the heck”
So apparently Neversoft have approached the band, which I’d say practically confirms the fact that the game is at least in it’s planning phase. But hey, it’s not really jaw-dropping news, is it? Captain Obvious is feeling a little emasculated by the whole thing.
Check out the whole Tesla interview over at Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, or peruse the MTV news post. Let’s hope the song list is better for the next installment!
Obviously we're not talking interactive Parkinson here
Sony announced the launch of its very own television recording device in Australia this week for use with the Playstation 3 and they’ve called it… *drumroll please* …the PlayTV.
This probably isn’t surprising news to our readers outside of Australia – the device has been available in the UK for over a year. But we’re catching up at least, and it seems we get the device ahead of America (due to NTSC adaption issues) and with the same name.
Sony expects to sell 150,000 of the imaginatively-named units by Christmas in Australia, making it a major competitor with established names like TiVo as well as newcomers like Telstra’s T-Box. OK, so maybe Sony aren’t the only ones choosing obvious names for their products.
The PlayTV box with cost $169 on its own, or you can pick up a PS3 bundled with PlayTV for $599.
Read more optimistic quotes from the Sony brass about expected sales at The Australian.
With the recent release of Dragon Age: Origins (which I’ve still yet to get my hands on, stupid poverty!), everyone is once again enjoying the splendid quality that BioWare brings to their RPG titles.
But where do they go from here? Mass Effect 2 is due out next year, but I think BioWare should consider teaming up with HBO to create a few choice TV show crossovers. And I think I’ve got just the place to begin:
Read more
We! Are! Faaamily!
Some of my fondest gaming memories from when I was younger involve the finger-crippling madness that was Tekken 3. For a group of dirt-poor students who barely had enough money to eat, the amount of time we’d end up drunk in front of our friend’s PSOne mashing buttons at one another could be referred to as “disturbingly frequent”.
So now I should say that up until Tekken 6 landed in my lap last week, Tekken 3 was indeed the last installment in the series I’d played. Although I’d always found Tekken’s control scheme to be perhaps the best layout in fighting game history, I’d been cruelly woo’ed by Soul Calibur and it’s offspring ever since I’d obtained an Xbox.
So I’d built up a lot of personal anticipation for giving Tekken 6 a try. From what I could read, not a great deal had changed in the Tekken timeline since the end of Tekken 3 anyhow, so that wouldn’t cause any problems. Most of the characters I knew were still in it (what is Heihachi now, like 400 years old?) and the controls were the same as they’d always been.
Now Tekken, for whatever stage in video game technology it inhabited, has always been a good looking game, and T6 is no exception. Character models, environments and FMV are all beautifully sharp and well detailed. The detail put into the animation is also off the scale, and is clearly making good use of the hardware that the PS3 was throwing behind it.
In case you're wondering, YES, the game is about sword-wielding cowboys
“You are the last remaining member of a clan that called themselves “The Protectors”. Slain by a fellow clan, calling themselves “The Jackals”, you found your way to safety and now hunt them down for vengeance. You are The Swordsman and you are all that is man!“
I wish that this had been the description of the game given by Ubisoft Paris, but instead they chose to surrender to the press conference and then eat some cheese.
At the “recent” iDef Expo I got my hands on a preview of Red Steel 2, part of the Ubisoft stall. Looking at this game it seemed to check off most of my likes: a Wii game with ninja’s and a slightly cowboy feel. At first glance one would think that this was a video game version of Sukiyaki Western Django (an absolutely boss movie, for all of you out there unaware of it’s brilliance) but it’s not. It’s Wii’s cell-shaded sequel that seems to have made changes for the better. I say that tentatively … tentatively!
‘Nuff said, really
Replace the cricket helmet with an armoured one, and you've got the box art for Rampart
Here it is folks, the review you’ve all been waiting for: The Ashes Cricket 2009. Yes, I know that it’s been three months since it’s release, but Matt only just caved in to letting me buy it a few weeks ago. Before we begin, I’ll have to apologise to any of you out there without much cricket knowledge, as some of my jokes may be lost on you. But basically, if you can’t understand something, feel free to simply assume it’s hilarious.
The Ashes tour in 2009 was a sad time for most Australians. Going in, we had the much stronger team on paper and were looking to banish the demons of 2005 … unfortunately, that didn’t happen. However, history be damned, because with the now defunct Transmission Games’ foray into the so-called “gentlemen’s game” all past wrongs can be righted! Not happy with Andrew Symonds off field “discretions” preventing his playing in the team? Not a problem. Feel that Simon Katich should have taken all 100 English wickets? Easy fixed. Want the English to be good at ball sports? Well, I suppose even this game has it’s limits!
Despite what you might think, this review is not going to be a love letter to Transmission and Codemasters. Still, let’s begin with the positives. I’ll have to start by saying that if you don’t like cricket, you won’t like this. Some games are able to bridge the gap between dislike of the actual sport and willingness to play a video game version (NBA Jam, anyone?), however this is not one of them. This has been something that Codemasters has been struggling with from the mid-90’s and have fought valiantly to achieve. This isn’t going to be the title that breaks that barrier.
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