Now that it’s getting autumnal for us here in New Zealand (my son things that’s a great word: autumnal. He used the phrase autumnal leaves in a school essay) what better way than to spend a cool autumn evening than listening to me and Kiwi FM radio announcer Glenn “Wammo” Williams talking games, games and more games.

Today on is Radio Wammo breakfast we discuss the rumours surrounding the PlayStation 4, codenamed Orbis, chat about Angry Birds working on taking over the world (hold on: hasn’t it already taken over the world?) and briefly touch upon Kinect Star Wars, which embargoes lift for at midnight tonight, NZ time.

Grab a warm toddy, put on your slippers, pull up the rug and turn up the volume. That’s how I watch me on Radio Wammo.

There’s a few thoughts being bombarded at you in this post. Perhaps you should make a cup of tea/milo/cocoa/coffee before you tackle it! Settled, good: let’s begin (by the way, this posting is being serenaded by the lovely tones of Muse’s Supermassive Blackhole, Feeling Good and Uprising).

The new iPad

I loved Infinity Blade on the iPod Touch. It was great fun, if a little bit of a grind at times trudging through the same dungeons fighting similar foes. I’m now playing Infinity Blade 2 on the new iPad (I keep wanting to call it iPad 3 it sounds more natural) and it’s great fun, stunning to look at and an advancement on the original game.

OK, while the story in IB2 isn’t stellar (it seems to involve some shirtless dude who always wakes up in a laboratory when the lead warrior is killed at the end of every bloodline), it really shows off what the new iPad’s retina display is capable of, with vivid visuals that honestly rival what you’d find on a home console. It truly is impressive – although it uses up the battery life pretty quickly and runs hot (not that tech running hot when it’s working hard is just confined to Apple’s new tablet).

Infinity Blade 2 is really the only game I’ve got on the new iPad so far (although I’ve got the lite version of Draw Something, but to be honest, I got bored waiting for the other player to respond so gave up) but I really want to check out some other games. Perhaps Real Racing 2 HD or -dare I say it – Angry Birds Space HD! (Update: I just downloaded Jetpack Joyride).

Mass Effect 3 (spoilers so be warned)

Bioware’s latest sure has been in the gaming news a lot lately, much of it for the wrong reasons. Essentially a lot of fans are upset that the ending (or the variation of the ending) in ME3 isn’t in keeping with the game’s reliance on decision-making and choices throughout the series – and I agree with them. Throughout ME3 and the series  you’re constantly making decisions that shape the direction of the game and its key players. For me the most poignant moment in the game was having to decide whether to save the Geth or the Quarians. The Geth would bring serious technological knowledge and a huge fleet while Zora had been alongside my Commander Shepard from the very beginning, she’d survived the final assault on the Collectors in ME2 and here I was being asked to save one of the other.

It was a major crisis point for me: one that I laboured over for a bit. Who to save? Who to save?  In the end I decided to go with the Geth, much to my regret – but I digress: Decision making and choice plays a crucial part in  ME3 so for the final 15 minutes to take that choice away from you is jarring. Now, I didn’t think the ending was actually as bad as some people are making out (and from memory I only had one option anyway: perhaps my galactic readiness wasn’t up to scratch), and I’m not baying for Bioware’s blood. I actually thought it was a particularly fitting end for Commander Shepard. It went entirely with the character’s do- anything-at-any-cost stance, including sacrificing her self (I played as a female Shepard) for the human race  but I have a questions. A helluva lot of questions, actually, about what exactly was going on in that last 15 minutes (what the hell happened to the Normandy and why was it flying through space and not with the galactic armada around Earth? And where  the hell did the Normandy land?

Bioware’s co-f0under Ray Myzuka said in a blog posting last week that new content will provide more “clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey’. I’d like more clarity thanks, Bioware, but I don’t think I should have to pay for it. Just saying. Free DLC clarifying the ending ould be great, thanks.

Finally, chatting with Radio Wammo

In today’s session with Glenn “Wammo” Williams we chatted about the Humble Bundle for Android 2, the collection of independently-developed games where you get to decide how much you pay and whether it all goes to the developers, all to charity or all to the Humble Bundle dudes. I picked up the Android 2 bundle last week for the princely sum of, ahem, $US6.30, which netted me Android versions of Canabalt, Cogs, Avadon: The Black Fortress, Zen Bound 2 and Swords and Soldiers – and as an extra bonus, today I got an email saying that they were adding Snuggle Truck to the mix. An all round excellent purchase. If you want to check it out, you’ve got six days before it finishes.

Thank you for reading – and good night.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything (probably a week or so) so here’s today’s Kiwi FM segment with Glenn “Wammo” Williams where we talk about Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 and its controversial ending carry-on, with upset fans calling for Bioware to change the ending (endings) and one going so far as taking Bioware and EA to the FTC because the game doesn’t deliver on its promises.

That’s about all I have to say: watch the video, let me know what you think.

[Insert the usual Tuesday blurb here] Just joking. I’ve got several games piling up on my computer desk (The Last Story, UFC Undisputed 3, Tekken 3D: Prime Edition, Twisted Metal, Street Fighter X Tekken), I haven’t touched any of them: I’ve been playing 1995 point-and-click adventure Full Throttle.

I’ve always wanted to buy the game but was never able to find a copy until I found one on an online store’s Marketplace for the huge price of – get this – $5. It actually cost more to courier it to me!. I’m loving it, so far: it’s humour is infectious and the puzzles actually involve you having to use a little common sense rather than be signposted right in front of you.

Today, I talked about it with Glenn “Wammo” Williams on Kiwi FM.

Oh, and it’s Mass Effect week this week. The game is released in New Zealand on Friday. I thought I might have a review copy by now but I don’t so we’ll see how things go. I’ll just be avoiding the internet until I get it for, oh, I don’t know, the next week so I don’t see reviews that will spoil it for me!

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to start clearing space in your diary for all of  March. Mass Effect 3 is almost here. Oh happy days! Oh happy days!

The much-awaited sequel to Mass Effect 2, my favourite game of 2010, ME3 looks to be bigger, better, faster and stronger than its predecessor   but I’m in a quandary. Apart from a hands-on with an early demo last year, I’ve imposed a personal blackout of all ME3-related material until the game comes out. It’s been excruciating: my fingernails are short and I curse every time a new trailer is released, but I don’t have long to wait …

Robyn Theberge, who worked on DragonAge 2 before moving onto Mass Effect 3, tells me her main role was to oversee the game’s audio, graphical user interface and visual effects teams.

Many of the ME3 team had worked on the series since the first game, so they “definitely want to do their best and don’t want to let the fans down, as much as for themselves as fans as for those people who aren’t on the team”.

For newcomers to the series, Mass Effect 3 was a great starting point, she says.

“For those people who haven’t played an ME game yet, this is a really good entry point to the series. The game adapts and rewrites itself based on  whether a player is importing a save [from ME2] or not. In the case of a new player, the game adapts the dialogue to add more context to things, to give them [new players] more back story. But this is the breakout of the war in the galaxy so it’s a really good place to come into the franchise.”

Theberge said Mass Effect 3’s combat had been refined, something fans had been asking for, and the game was an even blend of role-playing and action.

“We wanted players to have a lot of choice in terms of the kind of experiences they have. We’ve also added game experience types in ME3, so players can select story experience  the traditional RPG experience or action experience, and that allows then to tailor how they play the game. In Action it’s more cinematic, with more difficult combat, in Story mode it’s more story-driven and you play through all of the dialogue, there’s lots of exploration and the combat is a little easier and RPG (mode) is kind of the middle ground for our traditional fans who want the dialogue as well as the challenging combat.”

Theberge said studio Bioware had listened to what its fans wanted. “We’ve taken up our different classes a notch and added new abilities and powers, so I think we’ve listened to our fans and heard what they thought about the different classes and what they were looking for. I imagine I’ll be doing several playthroughs but just trying the different classes alone can open up so many different play-through options.”

So, what is it about the Mass Effect series that gels with gamers?

Theberge believes it’s the characters and the narrative. “Like a good book, you want to keep going back and reading to make sure that your favourite characters are OK, you get connected to them and invested in them. The thing about ME is you have really good squad mates and depending on how you play the game, they can become your best friends or your enemies. So you want to go back and take care of them and keep them at bay if you’re going the renegade route.”

Many gamers completed the original Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 as a female Commander Shepard  known by fans as FemShep.  But was Bioware surprised that so many gamers wanted to play as female Shepard?

“No. We listened to feedback and listened to how many people wanted to play as female Shepard and that’s why for ME3 we have an iconic appearance [of her] that we’ve created after fans selected one on our Facebook site. That’s how she’s going to appear in-game. What the fans wanted was the opportunity to play as a female Shepard.”

Mass Effect 3 is the first game of the series to make use of the voice control offered by Microsoft’s Kinect device  and it makes the game so much cooler, says Theberge.

“Kinect for Mass Effect 3 makes it so fast, especially for people who are more into controlling their squad mates and are more hands-on with their squad. It’s so immersive  you forget that you can’t thank them [your virtual squad mates]. You can ask them to [provide] cover, which means you can run into more intense combat situations. You can change weapons on the fly without pausing the game and it really adds some intensity to the game play. It has really taken the game play to another level.

“Also, you can have squad mates cast [biotic] powers, whereas in previous ME games you’d have to use the bumpers on your controller to pull up the powers menu to get them to cast a power. Now you just shout out `Liara, singularity’ and she fires it to wherever your camera is pointing.”

Although, it sounds like the standard answer you’d expect from a game maker, Theberge said she is most proud of the team that has worked on the game.

“A lot of the team have been on it since ME1 and they keep bringing new ideas to the table and sink their heart and soul into it because they believe in what they are delivering.”

Mass Effect 3 is out in a stupidly short time on Windows PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In fact, it’s out next week! Hup, hup, huzzah!

It’s Tuesday (or Chewsday as I like to call it sometime when I’m feeling in a particularly good mood), the day that I chat games with Glenn “Wammo” Williams on Kiwi FM.

Today we talked about Asura’s Wrath, an anime-style action game from Capcom that I really, really liked but don’t know whether I’d want to pay full price for how much game  play there is: essentially it’s a little bit of combat during each episode and a fair amount of quick time events (where you have to press the right button at the right time, or move the thumb sticks in the right direction, at the right time) when you’re about to finish off an enemy. I’d rent it: no problem but would I pay full price for it? Probably not.

I enjoyed the story a lot: Asura, a great super being, is framed by some other great super beings for the murder of the Emperor.  His wife is murdered and his young daughter captured by one of the super beings, Deus, and Asura is banished. Naturally, Asura gets really, really angry (he shouts a lot) and goes on a rampage, exacting his revenge against the other great super beings. Along the way he’ll face off against deities that are bigger than a planet, fight on the moon (yes, the moon) and get skewered by a sword  that stretches all the way to Earth. It’s pretty impressive, actually, and each confrontation is done like an episode of an anime TV show, with “To be continued” at the end of each episode and a brief preview of the following one.

I talk about a few more things in the review and ultimately, while it’s not up to me to tell people whether they should spend their money on a game or not, I can just tell them whether I think it’s worth it or not. I think Asura’s Wrath is a great game but I’m just not sure it’s worth $NZ120 for the number of hours it’ll take to finish the main story (that said, people pay $120+ for games like Modern Warfare 3, and Asura’s Wrath was more fun that MW3 so, maybe I’m talking out of my arse and will shut up now.)

*Adding to that: when you finish the game there’s a hidden ending that you can unlock if you play through the game again, getting a better score card for each section. That might make it more worthwhile to people. You be the judge.

Here’s the story that I ran in The Press today. after a few days hands on with Sony’s PS Vita. Since writing this I’ve just about completed launch title Uncharted: Golden Abyss and then will start on Wipeout 2048. Enjoy.

To say PlayStation NZ was treating the few PS Vita units it handed out to gaming media last month with high security is an understatement.eip

When my review unit arrived for a few days hands-on, it came in a large briefcase carried with military precision by two burly security guards with name badges reading “Colin” and “Brian”.

Brian, the more gruff of the two, removed his dark sunglasses and grunted what sounded like “Gidday, sign this” as he thrust a PlayStation-branded paper on a clipboard towards me. Colin just eyed me suspiciously.

I signed the document and then Colin unlocked the handcuff on his left wrist, Brian the handcuff on his right one and, together, they handed me the case. “Don’t drop it or we’ll stop being so friendly,” muttered Brian, giving me what I assume was a smile. Then they left. In a small van.

OK, I made the bit up about the two security guards but the Vita did arrive in a large metallic briefcase with a combination lock. In fact, when I opened the thing, the interior was so cavernous that I’m sure I heard the Vita complain of loneliness.

Sony’s latest handheld  the successor to the PSPGo, which itself was the successor to the original PlayStation Portable  is sleeker and bigger than the original PSP but it’s a tad lighter and roughly the same thickness. It will come in two flavours: Wi-fi only (RRP $449) or Wi-fi/3G (RRP $549). I tested the Wi-Fi-only model

Gone are the UMDs (Universal Media Discs) of the old PSP, replaced with a new proprietary flash memory card called the PS Vita card. Memory cards range in size from 4Gb to 32Gb. Checking a handful of sites for memory card prices revealed that the RRP for a 16Gb “official” PS Vita memory card, which will fit between four and eight full games, is around $85, so it might pay to shop around.

Designwise, the Vita (it’s Italian for Life) improves on the original PSP in just about every way: It has two cameras (one forward facing, one rear facing, 0.3MP, 640 x 480 resolution), two thumb sticks  and they’re proper thumb sticks not the “nub” type found on the original PSP  two shoulder buttons, the PlayStation circle, square, X and triangle buttons, motion sensors, a D-pad and a PS Home button.

The most noticeable feature, though, is the 5-inch OLED capacitive touch screen  and it’s a beauty: It’s bright, clear and responsive. There’s also a touch-sensitive pad at the back.

The user interface has changed, too. Gone is the cross media bar user interface used by the PSP and on the PlayStation 3, instead replaced with a series of bubble icons that wobble gently when you flick through each menu page. It’s surprisingly pleasant to look at and more organic than the more clinical-looking cross media menu system used on the PS3.

While it’s not a smartphone, the PS Vita is embracing social media aspects, too, with a group messaging application that lets you instant message people on your PlayStation Network friends list, as well as an application called Near which lets you locate any other Vitas nearby  obviously, I couldn’t test that function. Pressing the PS Home button takes you to a tabs page that shows all open applications. Press it again and you’re back at the menu screen with the application “bubbles”.

The Vita is a gaming machine and while the demo unit didn’t come with any full games (just demos), late last week I got access to some full titles, including Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048,ModNation Racers and Unit 13, so look out for full reviews soon. Of the demos, Escape Plan, looks interesting but perhaps the most innovative is Gravity Rush. You’ll be able to buy full games at retail stores or download them off Sony’s online network, weighing in at between 500Mb and 1Gb in size, although Uncharted Golden Abyss is around 3.5Gb in size.

Perhaps the most high profile game is Uncharted: Golden Abyss, which sees hero Nathan Drake in his first portable outing, this time adventuring in the ruins and jungles of South America with a rogue general after his blood. It’s Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 3 series Uncharted gone mobile.

I’m about 60 per cent of the way through the game so far and I have to say I’m incredibly impressed. While it might not always look as good as its PS3 counterpart, it really does capture the feel of the Uncharted series and shows just what the Vita is capable of in terms of visuals. Even my non-gamer wife was impressed.

Having a second thumb stick means you can control the camera  a huge benefit in an action game  and the game makes the most of the front touch screen, too, letting you mimic on-screen prompts to do things like slash through cloth or bamboos using a machete or save Drake from a perilous fall. You can also use the touch screen to solve puzzles and the rear pad to climb ropes and paddle a canoe. Golden Abyss brings a love interest, the return of an old friend, shoot-outs, punch-ups and lots and lots of climbing, complete with crumbling handhelds.

Wipeout 2048 is the classic PlayStation series given a visual makeover and it manages to capture the speed and thrill of previous versions nicely and Escape Plan is a black-and-white game where you have to guide a stick-figure as he tries to escape a labyrinthine facility.

For me, gravity Rush is the game that intrigued me the most and the one that seems the most innovative on the Vita.

It’s a gravity-bending action game featuring a female heroine, Kat, who has lost her memory, and a magical cat that gives her powers to manipulate the laws of gravity.

Press the right shoulder button and our heroine floats above the ground. Point in the direction you want her to head, then press the shoulder button again and she’ll plummet to wherever she is pointed at. She can also hover mid-fall, walk up walls and perform flying attacks on enemies.

I’m excited about the PS Vita: It’s an amazing piece of kit that really is a portable PlayStation built for playing games but Sony needs to market it right and convince today’s gamers that in an age of smartphones and i-devices where you can buy games for a handful of dollars, that a dedicated handheld gaming device is still warranted.

If Sony can do that, and provide a must-have experience, then the Vita has a bright future indeed.

Sony’s PS Vita launches in New Zealand on February 23.