Violet Summer ... or her ass at least

So I’ve been meaning to play Velvet Assassin for a while now, and before you all decide to heave rotten fruit at me let me explain myself.  Firstly because I’m a big fan of the stealth genre, and secondly (and probably more importantly) because the moment someone tells me a certain game is absolutely crap, I’m always curious to find out why.

And there was no shortage of people to tell me that this game was absolute crap.

But just like a car crash on a highway, I was compelled to slow down to take a look … once the price had dropped to around $20.

The game is “based on” the real life experiences of Violet Szabo (renamed Violet Summer in the game), an undercover agent for the British Special Operations Executive during World War 2. I haven’t personally read Young, Brave and Beautiful, the biography with which Velvet Assassin has taken it’s liberties, so I’m a little unsure as to the validity of claims that Violet once killed an entire squadron of sadistic Nazis wearing only a silk nightie.  I’m guessing that’s what Replay Studios are choosing to call “artistic licence”.

The plot is standard stealth game fare, so I can’t really rip into it for being too ridiculous. Violet’s missions usually center around a singular target that needs to be killed, which for some reasons necessitates the violent murder of every other soldier in a five kilometer radius. The missions are told in flashback, recalled by Violet as she lays in a coma on a French hospital bed. Every now and then you’ll regain lucidity long enough to overhear discussions about your eventual fate, but the majority of the game is spent inside the memories.

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And possibly insulted his momma!

Another month, and we’re once again back on the trail of the Devil’s Playbox in Sam and Max: They Stole Max’s Brain! And with a title like that, the plot should be somewhat self-explanatory.  Sam, having left to go to the bathroom at the end of the last episode, returns to find Max’s head swinging open and his brain gone.  Consumed by rage and noir internal monologue, it’s up to Sam to discover exactly what happened to his friend and dole out some justice in the best tradition of the Freelance Police.

Telltale have obviously been having a lot of fun with genre this season, and They Stole Max’s Brain is no exception.  The first section of the game is spent with a hard boiled cop-on-the-edge version of Sam, helping him shake down witnesses and uncover the identity of the parietal purloiner.  To this end the game plays around with the typical conversation structure, introducing a new “interrupt” system where Sam can threaten, accuse or press his suspects for important information.  While it sounds kinda cool, there isn’t actually much change to the game’s usual mechanics, as witnesses will tell you the important parts of their testimony in uninterruptable segments, then leave you to choose which interruption to use while they babble for a while afterward.

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I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna eat the whole tub!

This week’s new releases is brought to you by the Council for Realistic Console Body Image.  Remember when consoles weren’t afraid to show off their curves?  Remember when companies enticed you to buy their only-slightly-different new console by inventively putting a bigger number after the name, rather than putting them on a water and cucumber diet for three months?

That’s right, those were simpler, happier times.  The CRCBI has voiced renewed concern this week and is demanding more action from console developers to return to more realistic console body sizes.  Microsoft has been the latest company to cave in to this trend with the Australian release this week of the 250GB Xbox 360 Slim (in stores July 1, RRP $449).

The following titles will be making their way into Australian stores this week, where much to the chagrin of the CRCBI there’ll be more room on the shelves as a result of svelte consoles pushing the older, plumper models out:

• Arma II: Operation Arrowhead (June 30, PC)
• Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (June 30, 360 / DS / MegaDrive / PC / PS2 / PS3 / PSP / Wii)
• Singularity (June 30, 360 / PC / PS3)
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior (June 30, PC)
• Singstar Chart Hits (July 1, PS3)
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 (July 1, Wii)
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 (July 1, 360 / PS3)
• Tournament of Legends (July 1, Wii)

In unrelated news, this week’s Equal Opportunity award (because I haven’t offended enough worthy causes in this post yet) goes to Lego Harry Potter for putting itself out on every single gaming platform known to man, dog and marmoset.  A’ight Harry!

And while it’s not really release date news, remember that Steam have a heaps-big sale on at the moment.  I’ve already got more games backed into a queue than my poor download limit can handle, reviews on a few of them coming soon.  Have a good week everyone!

Overlord is watching. He knows all your secrets.

I can’t help myself: I’m going to begin this review with a complaint.  Please bear with me.

I guess I can understand why Microsoft felt the need to implement the Microsoft Points system to purchase DLC on the 360.  Among other business-case related things I guess credit card numbers and billing information can be hard to enter when you don’t have a keyboard.  But we PC gamers have been blessed with the alpha-numeric keyboard since the day dot.  So, Bioware, when you make us buy points to buy your DLC when there’s no practical / technological reason for making us do so, and then don’t even offer us the option of buying the right number of points for any given pack … yeah, it makes us feel kind of exploited.  Or at least, that’s how I feel.  Can you just let us buy our games like grown ups in the future please?  Not even a bunch of leftover points will make me want to download that stupid sunglasses pack.

Right.  I don’t actually feel any better for having said that, but I’ll move on regardless to the subject of today’s review: the new Overlord DLC pack for Mass Effect 2.  It’s about 1GB to download and will set you back 560 of the abovementioned Microsoft/Bioware Bison Dollars points.  Installation is dead simple, same as every other pack thus far.

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Remember when Billie Joe had really cool hair?

Harmonix is one of those developers that always seems to have made the right moves when it comes to their games. When they originally split from the Guitar Hero franchise and started Rock Band, they put a lot of thought into their product, introducing both the vocal and drum tracks into the music genre. They focused on bringing both quality and upcoming artists to their track lists, and built an expansive library of downloadable content that worked across multiple titles in the Rock Band series.

You’ve always been able to describe them as Guitar Hero‘s more mature older sibling. While Guitar Hero was releasing disc after disc of band or genre themed full retail titles, Rock Band continued to support it’s core titles with optional track packs and community events. And when Harmonix did decide to release a band-themed stand alone title, The Beatles: Rock Band, they put so much effort into making it a unique experience that the result was one of the most critically acclaimed music games of all time.

Which is why I’m a little bit disappointed this week as I play my way through Green Day: Rock Band, Harmonix’s second band-themed stand alone title, and surely the low-light of their development career to date.

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"Hmm, where is everyone? Oh well, I'll just leave their dinner on the floor"

Howdy y’all.  This week’s new releases are brought to you by the International Council for Chicken Dinners.

Chicken dinners?  Isn’t that a weird thing to have an international council for, I hear you ask?  Aren’t the benefits of chicken dinners (ie: deliciousness) immediately obvious?  Why do they need an international council to lobby for them?  Mads Armstrongsen from the Council explains:

“A lot of people know chicken dinners are delicious,” he says.  “But they don’t know about the other important functions they can serve, particularly in the health and hospital sector.  Studies have proven that one chicken dinner can have the same positive impact as a team of three ER doctors when it comes to removing slugs and patching up bullet wounds.”

“If you’ve been mauled by a German Shepard*,” he continues, ”chicken dinners have been found to be 93% more effective at getting you back on your feet than a stay in intensive care – patients found they didn’t even need rabies or tetanus shots, the chicken dinner had taken care of it for them**.”

So… you heard the man.  Eat your chicken dinners, they’re good for what ails you.  And while you’re eating it, check out this week’s Australian new releases:

• Puzzle Dimension (June 21, Mac / PC)
• Transformers: War for Cybertron (June 23, 360 / PS3 / Wii)
• Transformers: War for Cybertron – Decepticons (June 23, DS)
• Beach Sports 2 (June 24, Wii)
• Dance on Broadway (June 24, Wii)
• Naughty Bear (June 24, 360 / PS3)
• Demon’s Souls (June 25, PS3)
• Warrior: Legends of Troy (June 26, 360)

* Or a giant rat, if you’re one of those SNES latecomers…

** Armstrongsen admits, after some pointed questioning, that research is still being carried out to determine whether this is a natural product of the chicken dinners, a byproduct of the growth hormones the chickens were injected with or just pure bullshit***.

*** Something that’s not just bullshit: you can still get the Wolfenstein 3D shareware and it works fine on new computers.

So like all good games writers stuck at home this E3, I’ve been keeping my depression at bay by following the broadcasts of the major industry press conferences. 3D is once again under the spotlight, and the seemingly desperate race to catch up with motion control has come to a head with the release dates for both Kinect and Move slated this year.

But it hasn’t been all sunshine and flowers, with serious concerns arising about exactly who the big companies are looking to market themselves to. So I’ve selected a few memorable quotes from most of the major presentations that I thought summed up the entire event:

Coming soon: Kinect Corridors. You can go ANYWHERE.

Wow, look at the water! We can go anywhere!

-Shannon and Abigail demonstrating Kinect Adventures, Microsoft Xbox Conference

Two women jump and sway to steer a two-man raft down a river-rapids level, and this was the wittiest banter they could come up with? While I understand that the people on stage must be under tremendous pressure to make sure a product looks fun and technically proficient, this line was obviously supposed to reinforce what Microsoft had written as part of their Kinect press release.

The statement “we can go anywhere” especially smacks of PR, as every gamer knows that a game’s world is only as big as it’s designers make it. You can go anywhere you like in Grand Theft Auto IV too … provided it’s not inside most buildings or underwater.

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Art on loan (and "slightly" altered) from museumofchildhood.org.uk

We’ve been hearing a lot about hardcore and casual gamers this week and, for once, not just in forum flame wars. The defining announcements coming out of E3 have primarily been catering towards the family market. Microsoft’s controller-less Kinect, Playstation’s motion controller Move and the sans-glasses 3D of the Nintendo 3DS are all products geared with an “everybody plays” approach.

Which has lead, perhaps understandably, to a lot of backlash from gamers and reporters alike. There’s been no question in anyone’s mind that Nintendo made far and away the best presentation this year, followed by Sony and then Microsoft in a far-distant third. While both the 3DS and the Move both demonstrated some interesting and innovative applications for core gamers, viewers could only sit bewildered as Kinect showed off a series of upgraded Wii-style games and training regimes. Playing jump-rope with a tiger, running up and down on the spot, air-steering a cart, while the tech might be somewhat impressive it was content for casual gamers and if you weren’t a fan of first-person shooters then it was really the only thing on show.

Which has reignited the time-tested argument over core and casual gaming once again. But before we all start screaming “fucking casuals” at our E3 recaps once again, maybe we should stop and think about exactly how casual all of our games have become.

A couple of months back Moose discovered his old Nintendo Entertainment System covered in a layer of dust in storage and, Moose being Moose, decided to come and clutter up my ever shrinking lounge-room with yet another console.  He was interested to see if, as a gamer, I’d retained my ability to play retro games or if I’d continually adapted my playing style to whatever platform was currently in favour.  To this end he made me play several games he’d had bundled up with the console: Solstice, Terminator 2 and The Adventures of Bayou Billy, just to name a few.

Long story short, I didn’t fare so well.  Over time the ability to save your game’s progress has become integral to me, and to play games now without it feels like a strange and unusual punishment.  (more…)

Another advantage: plucking bags of money from the air during your commute

Mellow greetings, readers.  This week’s Australian new release list is brought to you by the A.Kidd Pedicopter Company Ltd.  We live in an age where it seems like everyone is becoming more and more concerned with carbon emissions, global warming and the Loch Ness monster.  People talk about emissions from cars, but have you ever stopped to think how much carbon helicopters emit*?

Fortunately the good people at the A.Kidd Pedicopter Company Ltd are providing solutions.  With their pedal-powered technology you can now have the same smug feeling of doing good for the environment** that regular cyclists get, combined with the convenience of air travel that up until now only the highest-paid of CEOs have enjoyed.  You know it makes sense.

When you pedal your own airborne vehicle down to your local games store this week, you should find the following on the shelves:

• Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (June 16, PC)
• Shrek Forever After (June 16, 360 / DS / PS3 / Wii)
• Club Penguin: Herbert’s Revenge (June 17, DS)
• Rooms: The Main Building (June 17, DS)
• Toy Story 3: The Video Game (June 17, every fucking system)

Happy gaming and happy peddling people!

* Please don’t, BTW.  Knowing my luck it’ll be a lot less than cars and I’ll look like a tool, or have to use big words like “embodied energy” or a bunch of acronyms to get myself out of the shit.

** Yes the same one that also, apparently, makes you feel you can run red lights with impunity.

Kitten pictures: One of Wire.VG's many aggregator innovations

So if you read us often, you’ll realise that we’re no news site.  When I first pitched the site to Mark I was always adamant that Armchair Diplomat didn’t need to be just another game blog, respewing news that we had no stake in just for the sake of attention.  We like to think of ourselves as a gaming opinion blog, and if there’s something going on in the industry that we genuinely want to talk about, that’s when we decide to make a post.  In this fashion, we very much hope to keep ourselves off GJAIF‘s radar.

But up-to-date news is still a very big commodity in the games industry, even if half of it seems to centre around rewording press releases and baseless rumour.  Everyone has their favourite site to check, but if you want to find out what’s really going on then you probably need to be monitoring many gaming news sites at once.

To this end, the founder of Negative Gamer NukeZilla and all round pretty cool guy John Kershaw (often better known as Wardrox) has started a gaming news aggregator site called Wire.VG.  As I explained it to a friend upon checking it out: it’s much like Reddit.Gaming except Wardrox rules it with an iron fist … so kind of exactly like Reddit.Gaming.  The key difference here is Wire.VG is not a user submitted aggregator.  It simply plumbs the RSS depths of the major players of gaming news, and delivers it to you in one easy to browse list.

The reasoning behind Wire.VG’s creation is a growing need amongst the community for news that’s free from spam and superfluous re-blogging.  I’m not entirely convinced that Wire will be able to live up to it’s aspiration of only delivering the source of news, as the big sites tend to source-link to each other before bothering with the actual source, but spam and re-blogging it can certainly take care of.

Simply put, it’s the complete RSS feed you couldn’t be bothered building for yourself, and now possibly one of the best and most concise ways of keeping abreast of gaming news.

At current the site is in it’s beta stages, so if you’d like to give it a try then you’ll need to apply for a beta code.  If accepted, then not onlu will it be up to you to assist with reporting any bugs and suggesting ways the service could be improved, but you’ll also have access the the site’s promotion features and play an active role in what Wire.VG features.  We’re not part of the feed itself, but our good friends at Gamer Limit are and I’m sure they’d appreciate any votes you sling their way.

No word as to when the site will be opened wide to everyone, but when it happens we’ll be sure to let you know!  Until then, check out Wire.VG, and if you dig it then apply for your own beta code.