Armchair Diplomat

Mad Moxxi, the ... titular character

Amongst it’s many other accomplishments (well, depending who you ask I guess), Gears of War 2 can be lauded for the popularisation of the “Horde” style of multiplayer.  Allowing players to team up against a superior-numbered AI controlled enemy force managed to hit a real chord with shooter fans everywhere, and has since spawned many similar modes amongst the FPS genre.

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot puts it’s hand up and declares “us too”, by adding a completely new area based upon wave-style arena combat.

As the story goes, Mad Moxxi (the Underdome’s well-endowed, carnival-themed owner) has made her way through three husbands, all of whom didn’t seem to survive the relationship.  In the search for a suitable suitor for her fourth wedlock, Moxxi has constructed the Underdome, three huge arenas based upon different areas of Pandora.  There adventurers pit themselves against hordes of enemies, while the crowd watches on in the happy knowledge that, win or lose, violence will be plentiful.

The back-story sounds entertaining enough, but truth be told there’s surprisingly little Mad Moxxi to be had in Underdome.  After her introduction, she’s basically consigned to her role as announcer.  And although much of her commentary is amusing enough, it can grow old quite quickly for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Read more

Surprisingly few rats!

Let me preface this review: I’m not really a fan of this kind of game. In fact, frequent readers have probably heard/read about my flailing hatred of the RPG genre in general. Having watched Matt and various others walk through mindnumbingly boring landscapes, interact with dull voiced peasants while constantly being ’surprise attacked’ by various rats/mutant rats while searching for armour made out of a glass, for what seems like days on end, I have nursed extreme prejudice against all games of their ilk. I’ve tried playing them, but I can never get more than a couple of hours past character creation.

The one exception was Knights of the Old Republic, and even then I ended up quitting half way through because it was easier to watch Matt play than slog through leveling up and grinding. All I wanted to know was who the main character was, whether Bastilla was good or not and if you could hook up with Carth. This lead to my standard game playing trick of ’set it to baby-easy, play through, auto level up’. Weak as piss, right?

That’s probably what kills me. These games are meant to be immersing you in an interactive storyline that compels you to keep playing to find out what happens next. Nothing is more tedious to me than three seconds of storyline followed by twelve hours of collecting the hides from seventeen rats to make a rat blanket to warm a peasant who turns out to be a rat god with acne. Fucking … I don’t know. I just can’t justify putting in time into such a fruitless exercise. How does this help the story? It doesn’t, so I’m not interested. But obviously that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. I’ve seen Matt play Elder Scrolls: Morrowind for thirteen hours straight, with very little idea of what is going on around him, so it must be engaging on some level. There’s some kind of ‘hook’ that allows days worth of time to be squandered on finding every candle in the map and putting it in your house.*

Finally, with Dragon Age: Origins, I think I’ve found what that hook is.

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Before you ask, no, he doesn't kill people using origami

Low Level Spoiler Alert: While Heavy Rain can be quite easily ruined by someone telling you about plot elements before you get the chance to experience them first-hand, it’s almost impossible to give you my impressions without stating the situations to which they apply.  To this end, this review will bring up a few in-game situations characters find themselves in, but I’ll keep the character names and motives to a bare minimum.

I’ve found myself a little confounded at how best to explain Heavy Rain to anyone who hasn’t played it.  Quantic Dream’s new “interactive drama” for the PlayStation 3 manages to confound a great many base assumptions about games and on what level we judge them.  It’s probably easier to rule out a few things that Heavy Rain isn’t, rather than try to explain what it is.  It’s not an adventure game, as most problems that the game presents to you need little in the way of working out.  It’s not, in the traditional sense, an interactive movie, as characters rely on the player for both physical and psychological guidance.  It’s certainly not as revolutionary or as innovative as Quantic Dream head David Cage would have you believe, either.

Nor is it, as Sony head Jack Tretton may have you believe, completely unique style of game.  To better prepare myself with David Cage’s body of work before trying Heavy Rain, I purchased and completed Indigo Prophecy (also known as Farenheit) a few weeks ago to get myself in the mindset.  For anyone who wants to find out if they’d like Heavy Rain without the hefty price tag, I’d suggest doing the same.  For those of you who have played it, Heavy Rain is easily described as Farenheit HD.

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Such hunger that even a pie gives him wings

When it comes to indie games, there’s a rather mixed bag,
Of fabulous, so-so and unimaginably bad,
So when we heard of the game that we’re about to review,
We turned to a few trusted sources we knew,

It did look impressive, from all the screenshots on show,
But looks decieve easy, as all gamers know,
It’s a side-scrolling puzzler set in the silent movie days?
And conceived of by students, then co-opted by 2K?

But as the questions went out, friends were quick to reply,
And all answered back to say “Just give it a try!”
“Brilliant!”, “Thumbs up!”, “Original!” they cried,
So I forked out the points and set reservations aside,

The name of this game, in case you feel I’ve forgotten,
Is the Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom,
We take the role of a cad, a damn gluttonous thief,
Who’s penchant for pie stretches the realms of belief,

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It's like Fidel Castro in his Santa phase

There’s been a long running debate going through the community about the role of game demos.  One side (let’s call them “consumers”) are all for them, given that they allow a chance to try a game before opening their wallet.  The other side (tentatively labelled “most publishers”) usually see game demos as a threat, as they’d rather people purchase games first before discovering that they’re rubbish.

Well thankfully Haemimont Games had the forethought to offer a demo for Tropico 3, because if they hadn’t I probably would have missed this gem of a game.

Typically I’m not much of a fan of sim games.  In fact the last sim game I played and really loved was the original SimCity, where I cheated so often that my cashed-up utopia was frequently crushed by Godzilla.  But after countless hours of play, and several catchy calypso songs almost burned into my brain, I can honestly say that Tropico 3 has become one of my favourite games of all time.

The concept is quite simple.  In Tropico 3, you take the role of El Presidente, ruler of your very own Cold War banana republic.  In order to run a successful island you have to balance the happiness of your citizens with your financial and political ambitions.  Sound easy? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

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Piggybacks are fine, Little Sister, just don't ask for a helicopter

The 2010 sequel season (sequelganza!) continues it’s unstoppable march with the release of 2K Games’ BioShock 2.  The highly-anticipated “Deco ‘n Daddy” shooter has been a long time in the making, suffering delays in 2009 and requiring no less than five game studios to bring to fruition.  Has the result proved to be worth the wait?  Or does the sequel fall prey to the high expectations carried over from the original?

It’s been almost three years since we last descended into Andrew Ryan’s Rapture, and from the moment you stumble to your feet in BioShock 2, you’ll feel like you never left.  In-game, however, it’s been ten years since the events of Jack Ryan’s return and Fontaine’s fall, events for which our new protagonist was, for all intensive purposes, stone dead.  Subject Delta is an early model “Protector” Big Daddy, who’s line was genetically bonded to a single Little Sister to increase the effectiveness of the pairing.  Delta’s Little Sister is Eleanor Lamb, daughter of Rapture’s new leader Sofia Lamb.  In the game’s prologue Sofia gains control over Delta and forces him to commit suicide, reclaiming Eleanor in the process.  Ten years later, Delta falls out of a Vita-Chamber and discovers that he’s regained his free will.

From here Delta must make his way back to a now teenage Eleanor and effect an escape from Rapture’s grasp.  Along they way you’ll meet both new and familiar faces, and discover a whole new side of Rapture in the process.

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It's arrived!

I’m Commander Stu Shepard and this is my new favourite game on the PC. Guess I just gave away the ending of this review, huh…

Regular readers* will know the original Mass Effect was my pick for game of the decade and I know I wasn’t the only one eagerly looking forward to the next installment. That’s a lot of pressure, so have Bioware cracked or have the delivered?

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..

Relax people, they’ve delivered.

Mass Effect 2 picks up a short while after the end of the first game and there’s a new menace in the galaxy. A species known as the Collectors are attacking human settlements and it’s fallen to Commander Shepard to assemble his or her team and put a stop to it. I won’t go into detail, but the story is involving and fans of the first game won’t be disappointed.

As promised, choices you made in the original game carry over. They don’t really affect the main plot but it’s a great touch. You did keep your save games, right? Read more

Fracas of Forli would have sounded cooler

A short while ago I wrote an article praising Ubisoft’s new achievement based DLC system UPlay. It’s unique and promising way of allowing a player to earn extra content really impressed me. So imagine my disappointment when I downloaded the new DLC chapter for Assassin’s Creed 2 this week, only to find it short, shallow and devoid of charm.

For those who’ve played Assassin’s Creed 2 (and by now, most of you really should have), you’ll recognise Battle of Forli as DNA Memory Sequence 12 (I guess Battle of Forli was a punchier name) which was originally missing from Ezio’s memory. To hear Ubisoft’s Patrice Desilets tell it in a recent interview with Kotaku, both Battle of Forli and next month’s Bonfire of the Vanities were cut from the original release due to time constraints and were marked as future DLC.

To put it bluntly, it shows. Upon booting up Assassin’s Creed 2 with the new DLC, you’re treated to a little Rebecca and Shaun banter telling you that Sequence 12 has been restored. You’re then transported to Forli and, after a short cut-scene, tasked with hiding the recently acquired Apple of Eden. To this end, you have to meet up with Niccolo Machiavelli, who you may remember from Ezio’s initiation, and Caterina Sforza, who you’ll no doubt remember for being inexplicably trapped on a rock in the middle of a lake.

Sforza’s problems have grown far worse than lake strandings since last time you saw her.  While she’s happy to help Ezio conceal the Apple, it’s not long before you discover that Forli itself has been overrun and her family is now in danger. Read more

Metallica's latest concert DVD offering

People have called Metallica a lot of things over the years. Some of them have been complimentary and some of them have been less so*. But something they’ve never really been called is prolific. The band has been around for nearly 30 years and more than half of their studio albums were release in the first 10 years of their career.

Which makes this an interesting time for the band. They’re still touring their latest album and they’ve already released two new live DVDs. It’s the latest one, Orgullo, Pasion y Gloria – Tres Noches en La Cuidad de Mexico, that’s the subject of this review.

The DVD documents the band’s three-night run of shows in Mexico City in June 2009. Multiple versions are available – the two disc version includes video of every single track the band played over all three shows, and the list of songs that got left out is probably not much longer than the list of ones they included. You can also get the DVD with or without audio CDs of the gig, and it comes in Bluray too if you’re that way inclined. I’m reviewing the standard single-disc DVD edition though.

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Just bristling with Academy muscle

Recently we got our hands on a closed beta key for Cryptic Studio’s upcoming MMO Star Trek Online, and we’ve been exploring the galaxy since then kicking ass and taking comm-badges.  The beta test comes to a close tomorrow, so I thought I’d give you a few observations on how the game is shaping up so far.

Now since I was a kid I’ve been a fan of Star Trek.  Nothing fanatical, but I can tell you the difference between a deflector dish and a nacelle, so it was with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation that I booted up Star Trek Online for the first time.  The beta only gave access to the Federation races (Klingon allied races will be selectable upon the game’s release), so before long I was sculpting my own little Academy graduate.

The Federation includes all the races you’d expect; Humans, Vulcans, Bajorans, Andorians (with those adorable blue antennae), along with several others and each has their own advantages and stat modifiers.  Also, if you’re sick of seeing the same old faces, players can go ahead and make up their own species.  In typical Trek style, they’ll still end up looking human from the neck down (no Sheliak or gas monsters, folks), but this offers the advantage of allowing you to choose your own racial modifiers.  I don’t give it long before someone works out a way to troll with this option, but where would Star Trek be without oddly human looking species that are only seen once or twice?

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