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…)

And the Lord spake: "This one! Saw this finger off!"

Spoiler alert: The following article contains a great many spoilers of plot points and choices someone can take while playing Heavy Rain. If you’ve not yet played the game, consider yourself warned. Also, if you’ve not yet played the game, well, you probably won’t be interested in what I’m talking about anyway.

When it was released, Quantic Dream’s interactive drama Heavy Rain received a wide range of reactions. While most reviewers (including us) were generally positive about the game and the experience it tried to create, it’s also quite well recognised that the game still had it’s flaws. One of those flaws, and the subject that I’d like to talk about today in this long, rambling diatribe, is the game’s slow pacing.

The game’s prologue puts the player in control of the most mundane of day-to-day tasks, like brushing your teeth, setting a table or even catching up on a character’s workload. Functionally, these rather dull acts serve as the player’s tutorial, giving them the basic run-down of how the game’s control system works and the variety of different ways that on-screen prompts have to be executed. Emotionally, on the other hand, what the game is trying to achieve is a crash course in bonding.

I’d argue that this bonding is actually far more important than the player’s introduction to the control scheme. When Heavy Rain is at it’s best, it creates a very deep empathy for it’s characters, and this means that the player’s reactions will be executed according to their personal feelings on a given situation. When the game successfully holds this empathy, it’s being played the way David Cage wanted it to be played, putting the player in the shoes of otherwise unfamiliar characters and asking you to make their choices for them.

(more…)

The greatest Bea Arthur lover to ever wear a mask ...

For those of you that are unaware, I like comics.  There’s no shame in it.  They’re awesome.  As such, from now on, I’m going to start writing about them.  Jess and I will also be doing a regular article regarding what’s new and what’s coming up in the world of the illustrated word!

Now, for those of you who did not see the Wolverine movie of late, Deadpool is yet another of Marvel’s anti-heroes.  He was created and grew to prominence in the late 80′s/early 90′s, right when The Punisher and Wolverine were at their violent peak.  Here’s a quick breakdown:  Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth (real name Wade Wilson) is a mercenary who has received a version of Wolverine’s much vaunted healing factor.  He was given this to counter a cancer which was ripping through his body.  The problem being that the healing factor is continually recreated cells to make up for the cancerous ones that are dying off … even those in his brain.  He is insane due to his brain continually growing over itself, but in a “cracks jokes whilst disembowelling people” kind of way.  He is, arguably, the best mercenary in the world, but due to his mental state is causing more problems than he should.

Okay, so now that you’re caught up I’m going to get straight to it: Deadpool is getting the biggest push of his franchise’s career, and it’s going to destroy him. As in the early nineties with The Punisher and Silver Surfer, Marvel is giving a multitude of titles to a character that simply cannot sustain them all.  Deadpool’s resurgance is due, in no small part, to the Cable & Deadpool series which was written perfectly by Fabian Nicieza.  It was a great title that worked well.  “Then why can’t the other titles?” I hear you ask.  First off, shut up.  This is my article.  Secondly, that title worked because the writer was perfect for the character.  Whereas, as is becoming very apparent, not every writer works quite as well with Deadpool.

Suited monkey with automatic machine pistols …

At the moment Deadpool is appearing in: Deadpool, Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth and Deadpool Corps (just released). As well as that there are plans for a Deadpool Noir series, which places him in depression era. On top of all of that he is currently the cameo of choice, and is currently has a regular appearance in X-Men. It’s at this point that I tell you that I am writing not as an impartial reviewer, but as an impassioned fan: CUT DOWN HIS TITLES! As a result of his over-exposure The Punisher did not return to his former glory until the mid naughties. To be fair, I don’t feel he has returned to his glory and won’t for still some time to come. This is, without a doubt, Deadpool’s future unless something can be done.

Will Marvel heed this warning? No, they won’t. They’ll milk this puppy dry. Yeah, that’s right, they’re going to milk a PUPPY dry. How’s that for a mental image? The other problem being Deadpool will have his own movie coming out in the future, starring the perfectly cast Ryan Reynolds. Once this movie comes out, there will be a whole new group of people willing to buy whatever Deadpool’s name is attached to. Slowly, the purity will die away and we won’t see Deadpool on our shelves for a few years.

So, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy Deadpool whilst you can. The newly released Deadpool Corps does not appear to hold much potential, but Deadpool and Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth are still solid. As I say this is the first of what should be many articles in regards to the world of comicdom. Until next time gentle readers … DC SUCKS!

Every copy of Imagine Horsez is doing a completely different kind of damage

Just when you thought this debate couldn’t get any fucking sillier…

First it was gamers being more dangerous than outlaw bikie gangs.  That was pretty hard to believe, right?  Well steel yourselves, because (a drumroll please) apparently the link between gaming and youth crime is even stronger than the link between smoking and lung cancer.

The abovementioned claim is made by Dr Wayne Warburton of the Council on Children and the Media in this news story aired on Channel 10 last night after he addressed a parliamentary inquiry on street violence.  He quotes a study claiming that “the average child in their childhood sees 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence”.  From this, we’re apparently meant to make the leap that games are more strongly linked to youth crime than smoking is to lung cancer.

If you go digging for a bit and pull out the Council on Children and the Media’s actual submission to the inquiry, however, you’ll find that the “gaming is worse than smoking claim” comes from one study done by an Amercian researcher that refers to violence in all media (TV, movies and music), not just games.  In fact pretty much every source Council references in their submission talks about television or the media as a whole, not games.

We also find that the claim about children “seeing 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence” is from another American study which refers specifically to television, not games.

(more…)

I enjoy playing games on a higher difficulty modes, it’s one of my many flaws. I say flaws because it’s this self-same trait in my gaming that has me hurling abuse at the TV screen while my wife shakes her head and quietly facepalms.

It can be quite frustrating in many games, being pinged twice then killed by someone you never noticed who seems to have pinpoint accuracy across amazing range. And there are many titles that you can be justified in feeling that the the game doesn’t offer you enough reason to go through that frustration. But I think I’ve finally discovered the game that deserves this kind of playthrough the most.

The Halo series, to an extent, popularised the health-bar free first-person shooter. And while the mechanic works well, allowing a player unlimited health as long as they can use cover to catch their breath, it does lend itself to a certain kind of gameplay. Tanking.

I did it myself in almost every previous Halo incarnation. If you played on a regular difficulty setting, there wasn’t much to stop you to just bum-rushing every group of enemies, then melee-bashing them into submission the moment you got close enough. This is fantastic fun, undoubtably, but it does remove the sense of caution and tactics that you’d exercise in a game like, say, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.

(more…)

Even Letterman is getting tired of these

So it’s a slow news week.  Everyone in the upper echelons of gaming (with maybe the exception of already afflicted Jim Sterling) has currently come down with a case of swine flu after attending Penny Arcade Expo.  On top of this, overwhelming popularity has seen The Beatles: Rock Band sell out of almost every major video game outlet before poor little old me could snag a copy.

So I was wondering, what does everyone else resort to when they’ve run out of creativity for any given week.  Content tables need to be filled, we can’t just let our readers go back to actually playing games, can we?

Then it hit me.  LIST ARTICLES.  I can’t believe it took me so long to remember what you’re supposed to do when you start scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Now, gentle friends, don’t get me wrong, there are many fine examples of list articles done well.  You may even notice that for all my bitchy sarcasm I’m guilty of writing them myself (inb4 “hypocrite!”).  But I’ll give you a quick example of what my main beef is.  Open up a new tab for me, and wander along to http://digg.com/gaming.  Scroll down, and I can almost guarantee you that at least half of the articles stuck to the front page are “Top Ten x We All y” or “8 Reasons x y‘s z With a Candlestick in the Dining Room”.

So rather than just keep recycling the same old topics, let’s try this one: Gaming’s Top Ten Kinds of Overused “Top 10″ Lists.

Shall we proceed?

(more…)

I found this image by googling fffuuuuuuuuuuu, which is also one of the phrases people have used to find our site. Who would've thunk it?

Okay, I rarely rant (don’t laugh). What the fuck is with tonight?

Every freaking game Matty and I try to play just will not work. And it’s a fairly even distribution of whose machine is the cause of lack of gameplay.

Matty came around after a bit of site work, and we hiked up to my place to play some gentlemanly games. We’ve been really keen to crack at Section 8 Beta, so we can review it… And a bit of DoW2. My xbox is still at his place (until the kindly return of his RRoD’d console), so it was a pc affair (even though, my pc, is secretly a mac in disguise, now with iMoustache and everything)

(more…)

Finally! "Real" proof!

I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I opened up the latest K-Mart catalogue, I was shocked beyond belief.

First of all, what the hell were those pamphlet people thinking?  Delivering to a “No Junk Mail” signed letterbox? And on a Sunday?  Something hardcore must be going down.

Then sure enough I was hit by yet a second surprise, a surprise so surprising, it managed to surprise attack my first surprise completely by surprise (and decimate it for critical damage!).

There was a listing for the PlayStation 3 Slim console in this catalogue!  No!  Really!  Take a look for yourself at the completely undoctored original catalogue that I “scanned” in to my computer!

Convincing, no?  Hot damn, that looks like one slim-ass console.

So you may have been reading around the web in only a hundred or so different places, rumours and “proof” of the PS3 Slim console.  It’s in production.  Contract have been signed.  It’s being announced soon!  Real soon!

You can even pre-order it now, if you’d like!

So we all know that the PlayStation 3 Slim is a real product, with real feelings, but we haven’t actually heard any official word from Sony themselves regarding it’s release.  But it’s being released really damn soon, like next Thursday, I heard, so why the secrecy on Sony’s part?  I can only assume it’s to avoid the havoc created by millions of old PlayStation 3 consoles simultaneously being flung out of windows and into the streets as soon as the announcement is made.

But we gamers want the details, right?  So using our top sources (asking weirded out strangers on a train), we’ve put together a comprehensive fact sheet of PS3 Slim details:

• PS3 Slim is thin.  Like, swizzle-stick thin.  No shit.
• This badass has not one, not two, but three God-damn Blu-Ray drives, God-damn.  Rays are so God-damn blue up in this sculpted Adonis of a console.
• Forget your 120gig model, this perfume-modelling beast crams 312gig into a hard drive the size of an gin soaked olive.
• It’s widely accepted that Duke Nukem Forever is being developed exclusively for the PS3 Slim, and unlike previous incarnations, Slim always has enough gum to go around.
• Sony is launching a PS3 Slim in a space probe, which will hopefully one day reach an alien civilisation and prove to them how much humanity would fuck them up at KillZone 2.
• PS3 Slim has more processing power than even God could count.  Does that make you uncomfortable?
• You can trade your old, outdated PlayStation 3 console in to your local EB Games or GameStop for a new PS3 Slim, provided you include at least 56 games (selected titles only).
• Slim takes interconnectivity to the next level, with lightning fast WiFi hi-fi Bluetooth 3.0+ connections for your HD-TV, PC, PSP and CC’s.  This allows you to game, watch television, download anime torrents and eat corn chips at the same time.  Thank almighty Xenu!
• PS3 Slim buyers can choose from a range of colours: Classic Black, Gloss Black, Flat Black, Pearlescent Black and limited edition Back In Black.
• Sony certainly won’t release the PS3 Slim for two weeks, then make it obsolete with the new PlayStation 3 “Muscle” console.  It’s BEEEEFIER®!  Oh my no.

Don’t forget to get your pre-orders in, kids!  Sure, we don’t know the price, what it looks like, or when it comes out, but why should that stop anyone?  And if you’ve got any more “known” facts about the PS3 Slim, be sure to let me know in the comments!

A GTA style game, based on Lock Stock?

Having just sat through the hilariously entertaining movie Crank, there’s something that’s been troubling me.

With the huge number of movie tie-in games, and their general level of mediocrity, how is it that we don’t yet have some games based on Jason Statham movies?

I mean seriously folks, take a look at the guy’s movie credits:

• The Transporter 1, 2 and 3
• Crank 1 and 2
• Snatch
• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
• The Italian Job

Now if there isn’t a movie in there that can be made into a kick-ass video game, tell me a better movie!  The guy was in freaking Death Race, for christs sake.  He’s voice-acted a few game roles, but none of his movies has managed to make their way console-side.

Given that  Crank was essentially one long video game cutscene to begin with, think about it: freakishly combine the automobile mayhem of Grand Theft Auto, the sprinting flow of Mirror’s Edge and the melee combat of Zeno Clash and BAM you’ve got Crank: The Game.  Players would have to keep themselves running, speeding or fighting to stay alive while trying to track targets down all over a city.  And if you’re not convinced yet, ponder this: a video game version of Crank would be the one and only concept that I’ve heard of so far that could make use of Nintendo’s new Vitality Sensor!  Remind me to patent this idea so I can heartily sue someone later, a-la the Xbox Live case.

Or hell, be lazy, just MAKE the updated version of Death Race!

Until then, we’re stuck with cash-in releases like Revenge of the Fallen.  Oh me, oh my.

Photoshop lacked a "Drunken Blur" filter

Since the conception of video games, humanity has longed to nurture two vices at once through the application of drink gaming. Drink gaming, the act of playing games while proceeding to get royally smashed, is an activity steeped in tradition going back to when the very first Pong arcade unit was installed in a bar. Groups of punters would gather to offer up useful advice to the player, usually along the lines of “Up! No, down! Down! Up!” and “Cor, you’re getting KILLED on this one, boy”.

Luckily, many years later, consoles became prevalent and no-one has to experience the local publican’s brains trust ever again. In this post, I’d simply like to wax lyrical about the games that we’ve probably all enjoyed (I know I certainly have!) playing through the bottom of a vodka bottle.  Pour yourself a drink in preparation. (more…)