Sprinting for your life hasn't been this colourful in a long time

Reimagining a myth is a classic launch pad for entertainment.  The evolution of story, characters and themes nurtures these myths, keeping them alive in a world that can have the memory span of a goldfish.  Sometimes it goes well (the God of War franchise and Dan Simmon’s Illuim books being fine examples) and sometimes it goes quite badly (Clash of the Titans or The Bible … not so much).  Thankfully Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a member of the former group. It’s not the first modern retelling of the myth of Monkey – you may remember the old TV show and might have seen the recent terrible movie adaptation starring Chairman Kaga from Iron Chef.  These kitschy retellings thankfully were followed up by Damon Albarn’s Opera last year.

Ninja Theory’s game leaves out some of the recognisable markers of the original story, but is thankfully no less enjoyable for it. There’s no Dragon-disguised-as-Horse, no demons, no overall journey to become a great immortal sage or collect scrolls. Monkey certainly can’t multiply himself or change into anything (except maybe from angry man who wants to kill Trip to an angry man who might be in love with Trip), but we do have the Cloud, the headband, the staff. We still have Pigsy and his lecherous ways, and we still have a story that ends in Enlightenment.

As the story goes, the nature of Monkey was … irrepressible.  In this version (written by Alex Garland) Monkey is a large, agile, brutish man, plucked by Slavers from the wasteland of post-apocalyptic North America and held in a an egg-shaped containment unit on a flying transport.  He watches an attractive and early 90’s fashion-inspired young woman escape, and then the ship begins to explode.  Nice timing, really.  Monkey escapes, just barely, in what is a rather nicely done spin on the Tutorial level, and crashes to Earth on the outside of the girl’s escape pod.  He wakes up to find that the girl he followed has now slapped a Slaver control headband on him.

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I wonder if the crown would like to hold hands for a while?

The strongest memory I have from the entire Fable series is way back at it’s beginnings.  My hero is old.  Very old.  Deeply wrinkled skin and baggy eyes stare out of a face framed with grey hair and a golden halo.  He stares down at a woman who appears to be around half his age … his mother.

In a title packed with innovative features, it was this moment that defined the game for me, and remained with me all the way through the sequel.  A prime example of a brilliant concept that’s execution was fundamentally flawed.

Which is the stigma that surrounds the series as a whole, if we’re honest, due in no small part to the over-enthusiastic promises of lead designer Peter Molyneux.  After long ago promising not to discuss ideas that he can’t demonstrate, he’s actually said some rather interesting things in the lead up to Fable 3‘s release, but the one that caught my interest the most was the fact that Fable 3 would probably upset a great deal of gamers, most likely because the game has been redesigned to be less of an RPG and more of an action-adventure.

Now although that seems like a very strange thing to admit pre-release, and even though I’m generally a fan of RPGs, I took this admission as a promising sign.  I figured Lionhead finally was sitting down to fundamentally rethink Fable and enhance what worked while fixing what didn’t.

But I guess I figured wrong.

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Tier 1: Here Be Hirsuitism

While I’m thoroughly sick of first-person shooters constantly returning to World War 2 for inspiration, I have to admit to feeling slightly hesitant when EA first announced they would be rebooting their Medal of Honor series and setting the first new installment in the modern day War On Terror.  After all, you only have to look at the still-definitely-being-released-oh-my-yes Six Days in Fallujah by Atomic Games to gauge the public sentiment about creating games set in current military campaigns.  What I can appreciate, however, is the gargantuan pair of cojones it must have taken both the developer and publisher to say “fuck it” and run with the idea anyway.

The new Medal of Hono(u)r represents EA’s first attempt to wrestle back it’s share of the modern shooter genre, a genre that Activision is still managing to dominate with Call of Duty.  Obviously not wanting to leave anything to chance, they split the game’s development in two, giving the single player to in-house studio Danger Close and entrusting the all-important multiplayer to it’s DICE studio, creators of the addictive Battlefield series.

The fact that EA split the game in two just to allow a “proven” studio to handle the online component should already tell you where the real focus of the game is going to be.  But being a traditional type of lad, I’ll begin with the single player.

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Of course, the most important part of any home run:

Anyone will tell you that I’m a fan of baseball.  Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and the pre-juice Barry Bonds: these are names I know well and careers I greatly enjoyed following.  Thus, it seems like a no-brainer that when a baseball game came out that I would jump at the chance to play it … but that’s not exactly how this game came to be in my possession.  For you to truly understand, I have to take you back on a trip through time and space: The year is 1998 and the place is my parents’ lounge room.  There, a young Moose is putting in a cartridge into his N64 that would forever change his life and bring out the horrifying OCD side of his gaming: Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr.  The moment I turned the console on and that baseball came flying at me, I was hooked.  I spent hours upon hours slogging through regular season mode, game after game to make my way to the World Series.  This game was heaven.  I played my way through the season mode 3 times; a painful exercise for even the most die-hard fan.  This was the best of times and it was the blurst of times.  The game made me so happy; however, it raised the bar to a level that (apparently) no other baseball game could live up to … until now.

A short while back the Armchair team went to an Xbox event held at the State Library in Melbourne with the express intent of making the building explode with irony.  Once there, Matt and I sat down to one of the few games that had an available console: The Bigs 2. I sat down, safe in the knowledge that Matt was only playing this game to humour me and because there were no other free games.  Then the strangest thing occurred: we got into it.  There was yelling; there was shouting; and most of all there was enjoyment.  But I was wise.  I had been burned before.  So I played it cool, unsure of whether or not this game was actually the real deal.  So when I finally acquired my own copy, with much trepidation, I sat down and prepared to let myself love again.

OK, so love is a strong word, but I opened myself up to the thought of holding someone other than Ken Griffey Jr in my arms.

Actually, now that I think about it, that wasn’t even close to being better.

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LeChuck's Revenge is a dish best served cold

A year or so ago when I reviewed The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, I tacked a little comment on to my suggestion to purchase saying that we should all buy ourselves a copy to ensure that LeChuck’s Revenge: Special Edition was made.  Given LucasArts’ fine tradition of recycling their IPs I’m not sure what inside me ever considered that they wouldn’t deliver a special edition of the sequel, but a little over a year later and here I am sitting in front of a spectacularly re-rendered version of Monkey 2.

The game begins with Guybrush Threepwood (purveyor of fine leather jackets) stuck on the lawless Scabb Island, continuing his search for the mythical treasure of Big Whoop … but then you already know that story, and I’m sure almost 95% of people who end up buying MI2:SE do too.  The Monkey Island games are undeniably pure genius, but their continued creation relies on the fact that nostalgic gamers like myself will shell out the cash unquestioningly.  Luckily the brand new Monkey 2 will only set you back ~$10 however, a price that more than equals it’s value in lingering nostalgia alone.

But if the nostalgia isn’t enough then what you’ll be paying for is a completely voice acted, re-rendered, re-orchestrated, widescreen version of the original game, with a couple of neat little extras thrown in.  If you played Monkey Island: Special Edition then you know just what to expect … and if you haven’t played Monkey Island: Special Edition then why are you even considering buying it’s sequel? (more…)

Are you sure we got all the key points in the box art? Did you remember to add explosions? Very good!

The camera tracks a lone Agent, clad from head to toe in cybernetic armour, as he leaps across the deserted rooftops of Pacific City.  He jumps effortlessly, only seeming to graze the concrete surfaces before he hurls himself forward again.  Suddenly, wings snap open between his arms and he glides down to street level, bathed orange by the light of fire and flickering street lights.  Below, shambling mutants cover the ground like ants, moaning and baying in their lust for blood.

Cut camera to the ground.  The Agent slams into the pavement fist first, scattering mutants left and right with the shockwave.  Those unfortunate enough to break his fall explode into a green mist, the impact leaving no remnants.  The Agent stands, unhooks the machine gun on his back, and begins to fire indiscriminately into the swarm.  The mutants fall before the hail of bullets like wheat before the harvester, green blood spraying everywhere and staining the asphalt.

The scene continues for a few minutes, the only pause in the carnage comes when the Agent needs to reload.  When the last mutant falls to the ground, and the final tinkle of shell casings has echoed away, we hear the Voice of the Agency.

“Good work, Agent,” he says in a confident, authoritative tone, “now how about we see how many rings you can drive a car through?”

I’ve been struggling to write a review of Crackdown 2, because I’ve found it a little difficult to work out just what the game is trying to present to the player.  On the one hand it’s a very simplistic, fairly enjoyable sandbox game with a focus on exploration and experimentation.  On the other hand, it appears to want to imply a very deep, immersive experience that just isn’t there … and charge you accordingly.

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Your Kinect unit will travel to you in style, international gamer!

Microsoft Australia today delivered the official pricing plans for their upcoming motion controller Kinect (nee Natal).  EB Games have had the RRP estimate at $199 AU for a while now, and this announcement now makes that number gospel.  Still no release date available, but as the press release makes a big deal of talking about Christmas trees, so you can probably assume November/December sometime.

The standalone Kinect bundle will include the Kinect Adventures game, which is good news considering I’d have expected to pay a lot more for a game that lets you go anywhere you want.

America have lead the pricing announcements, stating that Kinect will retail over there for $150 US.   Which I guess leaves only one question for us non-US gamers to ponder:

Why the fuck is it so expensive for us?

Apparently Microsoft care so much about the release of Kinect later this year that they’re going to be shipping each Kinect unit in it’s very own air-conditioned shipping container covered in solid gold.  Or at least I assume that’s what they’re doing, because how else do we explain the ~$30AU price hike that seems to have attached itself to each Kinect somewhere over the Pacific Ocean?

I guess we should be used to it by now.  After all, we are the continent that’s expected to pay ~150% of a game’s original US RRP.  I suppose at the very least we can be thankful that we’re not the UK, who’ve been given the stunningly inflated RRP price of 130GBP, the equivalent of around $200 US.

So with prices this artificially inflated consumers better take heed of Xbox AU’s David McLean advice, and “will definitely want to pre-order at their retailer of choice to secure their Kinect”.  Unless of course we discover there is no region locking for the Kinect, in which case I’m sure we can always find less lavish ways to ship ourselves a unit from the States.

Check out the full announcement over at InsiderX, and don’t forget to pre-order! We don’t want to all gouge ourselves stupid at once and cause a shortage!

New and improved, Colin McRae: Dirt 2

I’ve been thinking for the past few months that I don’t have enough decent racing games and I could really do with something to tide me over until F1 2010 finally rears its head.  I was tossing up a few options when Matt solved all my problems by shipping me half a dozen different racing titles on Steam.  Colin McRae: Dirt 2 is the first cab off the rank, so to speak.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that the game probably could’ve been called Ken Block: Dirt.  Colin McRae died tragically in 2007 so he obviously played no active role in the game.  Respect is paid to him at various points but it’s the current stars of the X-Games circuit that you’ll be racing and interacting with: Tanner Foust, Dave Mirra, Travis Pastrana, a bunch of others and of course everybody’s favourite sideways shoe salesman, Ken Block himself.  That’s right, there’s hardly a Finn in sight and it’s almost like the WRC doesn’t exist which makes you wonder, really, just how serious a rallying game this is?  We’ll get back to that question later.

I’ll get the main gripe out of the way first.  I had a lot of trouble with bugs in this game.  For the first couple of days it’d take half a dozen or more attempts at starting and then restarting the game to convince it to run without crashing in the first race.  This issue eventually sorted itself but ever since there’s been regular visual glitches and random crashes.  I consulted the forums, couldn’t find any reasonable fixes but did note with interest that plenty of other people were complaining about all sorts of different bugs of their own.

The whole thing is a massive pain in the arse, to the point where I almost chucked the game in.  I’m glad I didn’t though because once you’re finally behind the wheel of a car this game is a hell of a lot of fun.

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Marine, gun and gimmick? Check.

I’ve always had a little bit of a soft spot for Raven Software ever since they released Heretic, the fantasy inspired Doom clone.  The game established Raven as a company who weren’t afraid to make something original in an unoriginal format.  The Star Trek nerd in me enjoyed Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force too, another of Raven’s creations, which turned out to offer not only a good fan service but also a highly decent Quake-inspired shooter.

So I was fairly optimistic when I picked up a copy of Singularity, Raven Software’s latest first-person shooter, as it seemed to tick all the boxes for an interesting game.  First-person shooter, with temporal puzzles and effects, set in a mutant infested Russian military research facility.  Unfortunately, upon playing the game, I was left with the lasting impression that ticking boxes was all Singularity did in the hopes of creating an imaginative new title.

The story surrounds Captain Nathaniel Renko, your typical US space marine Black Ops soldier, who’s been sent on a recon mission to the supposedly abandoned Russian island of Katorga-12 after reports of a massive electro-magnetic pulse.  After crash landing, Renko finds himself thrown back through time to 1955, where the facility is self-destructing.  While in the past he saves a scientist from a burning building, and after returning to the present day finds that time has altered radically.  The scientist, Nikolai Demichev, has used the power of Katorga-12′s experimental Element 99 (or E99 for short) to overthrow the government and has proceeded to conquer the globe.

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Previously titled (Gears of) War for Cybertron

It’s a little difficult to describe the feeling you get when you first start playing Transformers: War For Cybertron, but it must be something akin to finding a $100 bill in an old pair of dirty underwear.  It wouldn’t have occurred to you to ever look there for a $100 bill, but when you accidentally find it you’re so happy that you don’t mind the company it’s been keeping.  The entire Transformers property has fallen on hard times recently, with some questionable movies and some truly hideous games based on those movies.  That’s why it’s such a delight to pick up War For Cybertron, a game I’d only been vaguely aware of up until the week of it’s release, and find out that here is a Transformers game that doesn’t suck.

Set before the original animated series, the game chronicles the ongoing battle between the Autobots and Decepticons over their home planet of Cybertron.  Although players can choose to play either the Decepticon or Autobot campaign first, the narrative begins with the Decepticon’s rise to power and concludes with the Autobot’s scramble to defend themselves.  You can play the game solo or online co-op, with each level offering a selection of three Transformers to control.  Transformers are split into different classes, each of which have their own vehicle form and selection of special skills.

The game plays out as an over-the-shoulder shooter, and to say that this game shamelessly plunders elements from Gears of War would be putting it nicely.  Many elements of the control scheme are identical, as is the feel of both movement and shooting, and both games share a penchant for oversized bosses.  During the section of the Autobot campaign where you take on a corrupted cyber-slug, all I could think was: “Hey! Sure is Robo-Corpser in here”.  But the brilliant thing about War For Cybertron is that you won’t care.  The Unreal Engine works so perfectly in the Cybertron setting that it’s almost impossible to feel any ill will towards recycled mechanics.  Personally I felt like they could have borrowed a little more, in fact, like at least a basic cover system.

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