Ah, the ubiquitous Final Fantasy artwork

Games like Final Fantasy XIII come from a pedigree not unlike a royal family. It has elements of all the JRPGs that have come before it, including the bastard children that are never really mentioned and improvements made through breeding out negative elements. You get duds and revolutionaries, bigger wars, bigger guns and prettier women in less clothing. But after a little while, you realise that you’re looking at breeding cousins and that the faces are starting to all look a bit samey. You start to notice grandiose loopholes in the history and it all gets a bit convoluted in parts, trying to figure out which country in what timeline affected which scantily clad lovestory.

FFXIII is trying to be an elegant game, with high concepts. It’s nonlinear story is rife with terrorists and freedom, enemies and victims, death and fear. We start off on a train of rounded up ‘tainted’ people (called l’Cie), who are undergoing a Purge. But that’s really all the information we get before being thrown into a fight, which crashes the train and sets in motion the events which lead to the main characters being infected with the brand of the mysterious and supposedly evil fal’Cie. They must now complete their focus or mission, or risk becoming Cie’th – twisted agonised creatures who were once human l’Cie. If they complete their focus, they have an eternity of being a giant naked crystal to look forward to.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

Novelists with shotguns? Fuck yeah.

For he did not know, that beyond the lake he called home, lies a deeper, darker ocean green where waves are both wilder and more serene.  To it’s ports I’ve been.  To it’s ports I’ve been.

Gamers looking to play Remedy’s new action/thriller Alan Wake will do well to remember this little poem, heard in the very first chapter of the game, because by it’s own admission this is a game of many questions and few answers.

But there are surprisingly good explanations for those lack of answers.

Alan Wake bills itself as a “psychological action thriller” and if that sounds more like a movie genre than a game genre to you, well there’s good reason.  The story plays around Alan Wake, full-time famous novelist and part-time moody asshole, who is plagued by writer’s block and decides to retreat to the remote mountain town of Bright Falls with his wife Alice for some much needed private relaxation.  Before he even gets the chance at the customary holiday shag, Alan gets into an argument with Alice and decides to storm out of their cabin, returning moments later upon hearing her screams to see her plunging into a lake.  Alan dives in to save her … and wakes up a week later in a crashed car and no memory of what happened following his dive.

Bright Falls has also apparently taken a turn for the worst.  Sure it’s odd enough during daylight hours, but when the sun goes down a peculiar dark presence actively stalks Alan, taking control of helpless bystanders and turning them into shadowy killing machines.

Sounds spooky, huh? (more…)

Two barrells of fun, coming right up!

In the unlikely event that Red Dead Redemption doesn’t pick up any Game Of The Year awards, then it must be a shoe-in for the Most Anticipated Title of 2010.

Before I kick this review off, I’d like to tell you about the craziness that was release day here in Australia.  To begin with, five of around seven major games retailers broke street date a day early, much to the delight of gamers country-wide.  When I went to pick up a copy at around 11AM, the Big W store I visited hadn’t even had time to shelve the game’s boxes, and had sold over half their stock just over the service counter.  Leaving the store, the 50-something gentlemen who validated my parking smiled when he saw my copy of the game and pulled out a copy from under his booth’s desk.  As he explained it: “My son wanted me to bring him home a copy, but I think he’ll have to wait until I’m done with it”.

Rockstar must truly be the kings of the hype machine.  Unsuspecting console gamers (who didn’t even know they liked Westerns) have been either playing this game recently, or broke.  They were apparently the only two options on hand.

So then, for a title that everyone simply must have, how is Red Dead Redemption once the hype wears off?

(more…)

I can't believe this name was shouted down by the press club

Xbox Australia has officially announced today a new official partnership with Foxtel (one of Australia’s major pay-TV networks) to deliver pay-TV via the Xbox 360 console.  Officially.

The move comes mere days after Sony’s announcement that they will be providing their own Movies-on-Demand service (spanning all the major movie studios no less) for the PlayStation 3 later in 2010.

Microsoft’s announcement basically continues the two consoles conflict as to who can provide the better media hub.  Xbox already has it’s own pay-per-view movie streaming deal in Australia, while PlayStation owners freely get to make use of ABC’s wonderful iView catch-up program.  Packages for the new Foxtel partnership haven’t been announced yet, but the announcement confirms that you will need both an Xbox Live Gold subscription and a seperate Xbox Foxtel subscription to recieve the service.  So if you’re staunchly a Silver account holder, you’ll have to go Gold if you want your new pay-TV.  Pricing is also yet to be announced, but I for one would keep in mind that these are the people who’d ask you to pay 200 wooden nickels MS Points for a single music video.  Something to consider.

The new Xbox service is creatively titled “Foxtel by Xbox Live”, as if that was seriously the best name they could come up with.  Why not BoxTel? Or FoxBox Gold?  Anyway, if you’re interested you can head on over to the official announcement for full details and PR approved quotes.  The word “innovative” will probably be used in there somewhere.

Both 360 and PS3′s new entertainment offerings will be available later in 2010.

What IS the square-root of Lost Planet, anyway?

Harry Nilsson once famously sung “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do”, and if you ever have the misfortune to play Lost Planet 2 singleplayer then you’ll discover all too well what he was singing about.

Yes, I’ve been having a mixed experience back on E.D.N III this week, homeworld to any number of warring humanoid factions and a wide variety of enormous deadly fauna.  Lost Planet 2 is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions, and features multiple protagonists from different backgrounds to tell it’s story.

What that story might be, who it pertains to and why we should be interested is a matter of debate at this point, as most of the game appears to be centred around not being squashed by a giant animal with glowing orange weak spots.  There were only a few chapters during the game’s campaign that seemed to book-end properly, and even then it was a little difficult to figure out who these people were or what they wanted to achieve other than survival.

But who cares, right?  This game isn’t about compelling characters or intriguing plot, it’s just about fighting sky-scraper tall beasts and living to tell the tale.

(more…)

Curse that Ripper and his snappy dress sense!

Take the greatest detective known to fiction and have him investigate one of history’s most famous unsolved crimes.  A great adventure game should come effortlessly, right?  Unfortunately, things aren’t quite that … elementary.

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Frogwares’ latest adventure offering Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper.  No, I hadn’t been hurtled a year back in time to when the game was actually released, more I was looking for a modern adventure game that hadn’t been brought to us via Telltale Games.

The premise is relatively simple:  Sherlock Holmes (rumoured pipe enthusiast and master of deduction) hears the news about the murder of a prostitute in Whitechapel, and decides to  “unofficially” assist the authorities in their investigations.  This lands him and his companion Dr. Watson right in the middle of the famous serial killings of Jack the Ripper.

See? Fiction and history are so easy to combine!

If you read about Jack the Ripper in school, then you’ll notice a whole cast of real life Ripper suspects crop up during Watson and Holmes’ investigation, although most of them are discredited as actual suspects quite quickly.  A few are most likely only mentioned to bolster the suspects board on the Baker Street wall (artist Walter Sickert, for example), but it’s nice to see that Frogwares had no qualms with setting up a host of era specific character for players to enjoy.

(more…)

It's wall bustingly good!

It is with a sad heart that Matt and I must announce that our band, The Afternoon Frolics, is breaking up.  We had a whirlwind time recording 5 albums and doing countless world tours since the creation of the band in mid-January.  Unfortunately, when living in close proximity with one another certain facts cannot be overlooked.  For us, it was that Matt, as band leader, refused an octopus the right to be our drummer.  I found this unacceptable and we have agreed to go our separate ways.  However, more about the break up of what many people referred to as “a modern day Herman’s Hermits” later.  Now it’s time for me to talk to you about what made our career possible: LEGO Rock Band.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of the Rock Band series.  Anyone that read what I wrote about it in our countdown of the best games of the previous decade would know my feelings about Harmonix and it’s rock creation.  From the outset they put out a strong product that showed that they were serious about what they were doing.  All the while LEGO had been turning it’s hand to games with the creation of the LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones thanks to the fine people at Traveller’s Tales. Harmonix, most likely to compete in the family friendly Wii market, teamed up with TT Fusion to create a LEGO rock spectacular.  Apparently only half of those at TT Fusion were on board with the concept, who wanted to make sure they “weren’t just skinning one franchise on another”.  Once their fears were allayed production was begun in late 2008, with release in November 2009.

And apparently we’re so lazy that we only bothered to pick it up in 2010.

(more…)