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Well Played podcast #8: the cold weather edition

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As it has been in much of the South Island today, it was jolly miserable in Christchurch so perfect weather to catch up with fellow gaming writers Julie Gray (@GamecultureNZ), Siobhan Keogh (@SiobhanKeoghNZ) and Aylon Herbet ( @Aylon133) on the Well Played podcast, which you can find here . Our usual partner in crime Chris Leggett (@Leggetron) couldn’t make it this week.

I had very little to say today as I haven’t done much gaming this week  but we chatted about Path of Exile, a New Zealand-developed RPG from Auckland gaming studio Grinding Gear Games, Julie chats about taking part in the beta test of Call of Duty Elite, Siobhan talks about XBLA game Bastion and we talk about underrated indie games like those great ones you’ll find on XBLA and PSN.

Check it out if you want to listen to gaming podcast with a distinctive Kiwi flavour.

 

 

Game Junkie chews the fat with Glenn “Wammo” Williams

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Yesterday, during my radio slot with Glenn “Wammo” Williams we discussed those games that were absolute beauties that every gamer should play  – but sadly, probably hasn’t, meaning not enough people played them to make them a real commercial success. Great games, with lots of innovation, but just didn’t find favour.

You probably know some of the games I mentioned: Psychonauts, Child of Eden, Shadows of the Damned, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – all games that have received critical acclaim from journalists but just didn’t sell that well – and I’m perplexed about that.  Perhaps it’s through a lack of marketing on the part of the publisher or maybe the gaming writers really didn’t know what they were talking about. I find it unfathomable that games like Duke Nukem Forever sell better than games like Child of Eden and Shadows of the Damned in the United States – but then, realistically does that come as any surprise to anyone?

I’d be interested to hear from anyone on games they think every gamer should play – but probably hasn’t! Give us your list of games we all must play at least once!

Gamewise, I’ve been playing a few games lately. I’m making my way through American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns, and you know what? I’m actually enjoying the whackiness of it. You’ll find teapots with legs that shoot fireballs, gooey slug-like things, cages full of ducks (or are they dodos?), and all sorts of crazy goings on. It’s a mix of platforming and combat, with my favourite weapon so far the pepper grinder, which is used to not only shoot enemies but “pepper” flying pig snouts. See what I mean about it being whacky?

I’m also playing a wee bit of Child of Eden, the psychedelic “shooter” from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi. It’s a Kinect game – one of the very few good ones around. If you’ve got the chance to play it, give it a whirl. I’m also playing Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Cars 2, both games based on movies. They’re both pretty average – the Transformers one especially.

 

Well Played podcast: where I ramble a bit about games I’ve been playing

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In an effort to spread the influence of me around the ethersphere (not sure if that’s a word), over the weekend I took part in the Well Played podcast, a gaming audio tour de force featuring four other New Zealand gaming journalists – NZ Gamer’s Aylon Herbet, Game Culture’s  Julie Gray, Siobhan Keogh and former Game Console editor Chris Leggett – where we discuss all things pertinent in the gaming universe, with an New Zealand accent.

Topics discussed this week included  Thatgamecompany’s new PlayStation 3 game Journey,  which is in public beta at the moment and really is delightful, I talk about my time with Shadows of The Damned, Alice: Madness Returns and Kinect-enabled Child of Eden, we ask whether a good game is good enough these days and there are some gaming gripes at the end. I didn’t really have a gripe: I just complained about my poor internet connection.

This was my third attempt to join with the podcast after technical difficulties thwarted the previous two tries but all went well this time – although I’m sure I ramble a lot. In fact, I’m sure I ramble a lot – and my nasally voice will soon get on your nerves as it does on mine. For some reason, recording equipment always manages to  pick up the part of my voice I hate the most.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

The Tuesday usual: Game Junkie chews the fat with Radio Wammo

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Apologies for the infrequency of posts over the past week but I’ve only just managed to get my internet connection working properly after a week of “on again, off again” broadband.

Long story short but it seems that, somehow, my router’s VPI and VCI settings had changed to the wrong ones, meaning that my username and password wasn’t authenticating with my ISP. It seems sorted now, so fingers crossed. Hopefully it means that I can join in the Well Played podcast with some of my fellow (Auckland) game journos this Sunday.

Today, being Tuesday, is Kiwi FM day where I discuss all things gaming with announcer extraordinaire Glenn “Wammo” Williams. We chatted about why video games based on movies are usually so terrible today, why they are so hit and miss.

I said it’s because development companies have so little time to actually complete the game that it’s usually just a rushed mess released to coincide with a blockbuster movie release. Case in point was the game based on the first Transformers movie, Terminator Salvation and Enter Matrix, the game based on the Matrix movies. Those games were pretty bad.

We both agreed that probably the best game based on a movie – and it was loosely based on a movie – was Westwood’s Blade Runner, a four-CD game that came out in 1997 but still plays well today, even if the graphics look a little pants at times. I loved that game. I still do. It captured the feel of the movie so wonderfully (they need to do a remake using modern technology. I’d buy it day one).

Wammo said he loved the old Commodore 64 game Days of Thunder, based on the Tom Cruise movie of the same name. I asked if that meant he was a closet Tom Cruise fan – he laughed and muttered something. You’ll hear it on the video. I think he said he’s a great fan of Tom Cruise.

It’s a rubbish day outside, so get a warm drink, rug up and have a watch. As always, please, please, please leave some feedback if you like what you see or don’t  (I sound desperate don’t I?).

The Tuesday usual: Game Junkie chews the fat with Radio Wammo

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Yes, it’s Tuesday so you know the drill: that’s the day that I talk all things gaming with Kiwi FM’s resident tech god Glenn “Wammo”  Williams.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve being doing a more chatty segment, talking about game-related news rather than doing straight game reviews – and it seems to be working well (well, I think it’s working well but I don’t know what listeners/viewers think about the segment. Drop a comment and give your opinion).

Today, we talked about the Gears of War 3 leak that has apparently made its way onto torrent sites around the world. I just don’t understand why people do this sort of thing: upload not-yet-finished games onto torrent sites. Doesn’t it just ultimately penalise those of us gamers who get their games from legitimate sources in that publishers contemplate even more restrictive copy protection measures?

Anyway, Microsoft has said that the build that has been leaked isn’t a final build and isn’t indicative of the quality of the final game. Word is that it’s the single player campaign and much of the online component.

We also briefly discussed the new Kinect game Child of Eden from famed Japanese game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi (the man behind Rez and Lumines). I described Child of Eden to someone as “Rez on crack” and it’s a mix of rhythm game with shooter, I guess. I’ll be posting a review in the next couple of weeks.

Enjoy the segment. Remember, feedback on what works and what doesn’t will make the segment stronger.

I’m spending the rest of today writing up my Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo 3DS) review, which is proving more difficult than I first imagined, and my Fear 3 (sorry I’m not writing it F.3.A.R. as it just looks plain stupid) review (I’m also doing this one for the great folks at NZ PC World).

Should NZ have its own classification labels on games?

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Late last week, Stuff ran this story about the NZ Office of Film and Literature Classification suggesting that New Zealand had its own labels for all video games rather than just R-rated titles.

Under current legislation only games that contain restricted material have to be submitted to the OFLC, so if  a game is rated G, M, or PG then in Australia then it doesn’t need to be submitted to the OFLC for classification.

I wrote a blog about the OFLC’s  suggestion here, and said that I was kind of in favour of what the OFLC was proposing – but after talking to Sidhe Interactive managing director Mario Wynands on Thursday about the issue, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not sure requiring publishers to submit all games for classification is actually the right thing to do. Not for gamers and definitely not for small publishers.

Here’s what Mario had to say.

“While I support ratings standards and the work that the OFLC has done to date, I believe that requiring the OFLC to rate every title would limit the number of games released in New Zealand. “There are a couple of key reasons for this. “Certainly the additional costs cited for publishers would be a barrier, but the actual logistics of organising and liaising with the OFLC from overseas is going to be an additional disincentive.

“Publishers currently generally already have to deal with the ESRB (NA), PEGI (Europe), USK (Germany), CERO (Japan), and the Australian Classification Review board, each with different standards, submission requirements, response timeframes and costs. Preparing and managing an additional submission to the OFLC at the same critical stage of the project may not be worth either the time or the effort (much less both combined) compared to the small size of the market, especially for smaller publishers or independent self-publishing developers.

“As NZ is a relatively small market, publishers benefit from being able to leverage the benefits of aligning packaging, shipping, advertising and classification submissions with Australia, using NZ as an incremental revenue opportunity. Introducing additional packaging, advertising, and classification restrictions/requirements on top of what is already in place may drive up the cost and hassle factor further.

“To give a sense of the market, even top-selling games in New Zealand mostly only reach “thousands” rather than “tens of thousands” of copies, and runs of custom packaging and marketing materials that small become prohibitively expensive.

“The OFLC, to my knowledge, only has limited resources available for games ratings and currently only deals with a very small number of games out of the overall volume released here. I would question whether this would be able to be effectively ramped up to deal with an exponentially greater volume in a manner which did not produce either a backlog of products waiting for classification or a drop in standards of assessment.

“To be honest, I think the bigger issue is the existing usage of classifications in New Zealand. Parents aren’t well informed or choose to ignore classifications because their child is “mature enough” (supplying their kid with an age-inappropriate game is actually a crime), and I imagine the enforcement/standards at retail is inconsistent given the lack of policing of the issue.

“We should work out where the standards currently are, where we want them to go, how the market can be better educated, and how the law will be better enforced before we worry about or change how the games themselves are going to be rated.”

Mario has a point: perhaps more effort should be spent on actually educating parents who willingly buy R-rated games for their underage children (and it happens: I know of friends of my son who are allowed to play games such as God of War – and they’re aged 12), rather than forcing publishers to submit every game for classification.

What do you think?

Now, the news: no, it’s just some game reviews

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It’s mid-week so I thought I’d post some rather lengthy, text-heavy game reviews that I’ve done over the past two weeks – but then I had a brain wave: why don’t I just post the .pdfs of the pages containing my game reviews.

So I have. This way they’re easier to read and you get a bit of visual flair, as well.

Here you’ll find last week’s page, which featured reviews of Dirt 3 and iPod Touch game Mighty Finn from Wellington i-device developer, Launching Pad Games, and this week’s page, which included a review of the PlayStation 3 exclusive inFamous 2, Dead or Alive Dimensions and a story about Game Jam South, a 48-hour game event being held in July,  and the Winnitron NZ, a New Zealand-made version of the Winnitron 1000.

They’re a little on the large side so may take a few moments to open.

 

 

The Tuesday usual: Game Junkie chews the fat with Radio Wammo

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It’s  chewsday   Tuesday, so we all know what that means: it’s the weekly chat with Glenn “Wammo” Williams on Kiwi FM. Don’t tell me you didn’t remember?

Today, we sort of freestyled it: instead of a review we talked about the (Wammo’s words) “anti violent video game law smacked down in California” by the US Supreme Court yesterday, and some of the games appearing on the Winter of Arcade (Summer of Arcade in the US).

I lost the plot slightly in the second part, where we talk about games coming up in the Winter of Arcade, after my computer mouse dropped from my desk and I’m too embarrassed (and polite) to pick it up – despite Wammo telling me it was OK if I did afterwards. Some of the arcade games, such as Fruit Ninja Kinect, From Dust (which appears to be a god-game) and Bastion, look pretty good. Off topic, but I’m going to download Trenched tonight and give that a whirl (and the Uncharted 3 beta client tomorrow morning)

Enjoy and let me know what you think and what topics you liked discussed in future.

inFamous 2: letting the bad me come out

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In my review of inFamous 2 I open with the dilemma facing the game’s hero, Cole McGrath not long after he arrives in New Marais: do I get him to zap the street performer sitting before him with lightning, as Zeke suggests, or do I let him continue beating his upturned paint tin, unhindered by me?

At first, I let him live. He’s just trying to make a living for himself, right?  ‘Just trying to make a quick buck in the mean streets of New Marais while militia soldiers and ravagers  wander about the place, ripping stuff up’ – but after a while, as I stood there, the continual “tappity, tappity, tappity” just got on my nerves. So I fried him – and all as many of his buddies I could find as I guided McGrath around New Marais: the guys playing paint-tin drums on the street corners, the rooftop saxophonists, the people who pretend they’re statues. I zapped them and didn’t feel bad about it at all. I’m probably doing a public service, actually.

That was the only time I really went bad in inFamous 2 as I finished the game with the good ending (there are two to choose from) but it got me thinking: inFamous 2  lets you unleash the inner bad if you’re normally a good person. I mean, I wouldn’t normally attack a street performer with lightning. Really, I wouldn’t: I probably just either ignore them or drop in a few coins if the hat if I liked what they were playing.

inFamous 2 lets me reveal a side of me that doesn’t normally see the light of day.

And it’s not just me that’s being a little bad when playing as Cole McGrath. My son’s playing through the game as well and I noticed while I was typing this an orange glow emanating from Cole McGrath’s finger tips – indicating that my son is edging towards the bad side of things.

I liked that about inFamous 2 – it gives you the chance to dabble a little on the bad side while still be a goodie if you wanted to – and while whether you’re good or bad throughout the main missions doesn’t matter when the big decision came near the end of the game –  the fact that you could do a bit of both in the lead up to the finale was pretty satisfying.

In my next play through of inFamous 2 I’m going evil all the way. inFamous 2 lets me do that.

Getting all nostalgic: showing my PC some lovin’

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This is not my actual 486 computer but it's the same biege colour as mine was.For a long while, I’ve done most of my gaming on console: Xbox 360 here, PlayStation 3 there but it didn’t always used to be that way.

No, in the days before  I got a PlayStation 2, I pretty much played just PC games on our biege computer (the boxes always used to be biege) that had an incredibly powerful 486 CPU, a massive 2Mb graphics card and something like 16Mb of memory. In fact, before that we had an Atari computer and before that a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (I loved the Ultimate Play the Game titles like Knightlore, Jetpac and Underworlde)

I remember playing things like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake on it until the cows came home. I also remember playing some flight sim that took something like six floppy discs to install. That’s not our computer in the picture but it’s the same colour that our one was.

We upgraded to a Pentium 90 computer which let me play games like Blade Runner, Star Wars Dark Forces, the Jedi Knight series, Magic Carpet and System Shock, and a few years later I got an even more powerful computer which let me play the first few Battlefield games on PC and I’ve enjoyed Far Cry and Crysis on PC (not at maximum graphics settings, however). I always used to recommend Far Cry as a good litmus test for how good your computer’s graphics card was.

After a while though, the convenience of console gaming started to win me over. it just seemed so much easier to plop down on the couch and play a game than crouch over a keyboard, my face a few feet from the monitor. Also, I couldn’t afford to keep up with having to constantly upgrade my PC to keep it cutting edge.

In the last few years, though, we’ve heard the argument that PCC gaming is dead – or at, least in the decline. I’m starting to disagree with that argument: I’ve played more games lately on my PC in the last few months than I have for a long, long time.  At the moment, I’m playing Fable 3 on PC, have a Sims expansion pack (I’m reviewing it) on the go and am expecting Alice: Madness Returns on PC any day now from EA. It also seems that the PC version of Battlefield 3 will be the pick of the bunch – if, of course, you have a PC that is powerful enough to run it in all its glory.

I  raised the issue of whether PC gaming was dead with two developers in the last year – one of them was definitely Peter Molyneux during an interview earlier this year and I think the other was Bioware’s Greg Zeschuk when I spoke to him last year about Dragonage 2 and Mass Effect 2 – and both were resoundingly in the negative about PC gaming being in decline. I guess I’m starting to play more PC games because I’m sick of looking at so many washed out textures on some console games.

PC gaming offers both disadvantages and advantages over console gaming: one of the key advantages being that PC games, on the whole, should look a whole lot better than console versions thanks to more powerful graphics chips, more memory and hi-resolution textures. A main disadvantage for me is that I can’t guarantee that a game that a friend might be able to play on ‘maximum graphics settings” will look as good on my more modest PC, which is around four years old now: ancient for a PC.

Some games just work better on PC: certainly you get better accuracy and control with the mouse and keyboard on PC in a first-person shooter and I think games like Dungeon Siege 3, an RPG/action game that I’m playing on Xbox 360, are better suited to PC. It feels funny playing DS3 on console when I played the original (which came in a case that looked like it was made out of rock) on PC, using a mouse and keyboard. I guess, though, it’s what you’re used to: many gamers of today only know gaming on consoles.

I still play more games on console than PC but I’m enjoying getting back to my gaming roots, using the mouse and keyboard for navigation and combat rather than using a game pad.

So for the time being,  I’m going to split my gaming between PC and console – at least, until a game comes along that my computer can’t run and it turns it into a pretty slide show. When that happens I’m going back to my console for good.