Sleeping Dogs and The Walking Dead

Last night the achievements page for The Walking Dead on Steam updated and I got all excited. It was 2am and I was considering whether I should stay up and play it or wait til morning. But it didn't matter - the third episode wasn't out yet. Steam, you tease. So I'm sitting here waiting for the next instalment of my favourite episodic-content-based game of the year... hold on, describing it that way doesn't do it justice. Taking the episodes as a whole, The Walking Dead is my second favourite game of the year so far (the highest honour goes to Journey). So when new content of your second favourite game of the year is coming out imminently, you get kinda excited. Not only that, there are yet more episodes to come. Also the TV series starts again in a little over a month. I love The Walking Dead. I should read the comics too.

The word 'game' to describe these episodes seems a bit thin, though. The first one was barely a game, and the second one, seemingly less so. But as an interactive story telling experience, they are unparalleled. You follow the linear path that the author has set out for you, but are given choices along the way. It's a bit like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books you had as a kid. Just having choices there isn't enough though, it's how these choices make you think. Not a single decision you have to make in The Walking Dead is a black or white one. They're all dripping in delicious grey, and most are going to make you feel bad in some way. Particularly the choices where someone's life is at risk. Can't wait to see which morally deprived choices I get to make later today.

While I'm waiting for that, I'll write about what I have been playing recently. And other than hours and hours of League of Legends, it has been Sleeping Dogs. Up until a week before its release, I wasn't particularly interested in this open world third person action adventure game. I saw the star studded cast, and though, eh, famous names do not a good game make. But then suddenly, it was a good game, people were talking about the quality gameplay, the excellent story and the pretty visuals. So I bought it, and I can indeed confirm all of these things, and more.

We spent a bit of time on the Hooked Gamers Podcast talking about Sleeping Dogs, so everything you hear on there applies here. I have played a good few more hours since then, and the game just seems to get better as you go. Having a GTA-style game where the main combat mechanic is melee rather than simply pointing your gun and shooting is very refreshing. Especially when the combat is as good as it is. It is nearly as good as the Batman fighting, and that's saying something. You don't get to stick dudes' heads in spinning fans in Batman though. Which I guess is a good thing and a bad thing - it's kinda nasty.

Having one good game like this per year is pretty awesome. Saints Row the Third last year, Sleeping Dogs this year, and inevitably GTA 5 next year. What's cool is that each of them brings something different to the table too. Saints Row brings the hilarity and ridiculousness that used to be synonymous with GTA. I don't agree with people saying that GTA has gone downhill since it became more serious, I think it's good to have a more mature game in that vein. And now Sleeping Dogs has brought a different style of gameplay to the format, so there's some excellent quality around for open world games at the moment. Let's hope it continues. Good games are good.

Thanks for reading.

A Game Changer

Recently I finished and talked about Braid. The ending got me thinking about how we view games, and what we come to expect from them. A fresh player, having no prior knowledge of Braid would go in to the game thinking "Yes, of course I'm going to save the princess at the end, because that's what the story is setting up for me". That feeling would be reinforced at the end of the first (or rather second) world, where they are told that "The Princess is in another castle". "Ah ha, just a little homage to the Mario games, frustrating me a little, only to make the reward greater when I actually find her later - a little clichéd, but I'll allow it".

The entire perception of the game shatters right at the last instant though, due to a seemingly simple, yet world-changing plot point. You're not trying to save the Princess, in fact she needs saving from you. It's not very often that we don't get a "happily ever after" ending, which makes sense, that sort of climax is tried and tested, but it's nice when we get something a little different from the norm. That's not to say I want more unexpected endings either, the industry would eventually just become a big parody of itself to the point where a plot meeting would result in someone saying "Hey, why not this time, have the good guy win at the end for a change?" That's not what anyone wants, but it's not just endings that could benefit from a little variety.

Take Spec Ops: The Line for instance. It's a standard third person cover based shooter game with squad control mechanics. It received average reviews, but there was one thing that the critics all pointed out as a highlight - the unexpected story twists. "The white phosphorous mission" became almost instantly infamous and controversial. The scene sees the player equipped with a mortar and is shown small white dots which are the targets to be blown up. Yeah, you've seen this before right? In the AC-130 sections of the Call of Duty Games. Perhaps that's the point. In those games you blow everyone up, they might be trying to escape, but they're still terrorists and they've still got guns which they're probably going to use to slaughter innocent people. So in Spec Ops, that's what you do, you blast those white dots to hell. But what if those white dots were innocent people? That's what Spec Ops: The Line explores, and it's not until later that you find out that you've accidentally murdered defenceless men, women and children. It's not a moral choice you're given in the game, it's just something you did, and it's up to you whether you can live with that or not. CoD explored a controversial moment with the airport massacre, although it lacked subtlety. "Hey guys your character is going to go in and shoot up this airport full of civilians - isn't that extreme and controversial?!"

So those are examples of unexpected plot twists and game moments, but what about a game that utterly changes in what it's asking you to do? Fez starts out as yet another indie platforming game with a twist. You are the only person in the cute little world that can perceive a third dimension, which opens up interesting puzzles involving multiple planes. It's not especially difficult, and you can reach the end of the game without much difficulty. But the end of the game is where the real game begins. It almost becomes a cryptanalysis game, needing you to solve an entirely made up language along with dealing with other entirely new puzzle mechanics. No mention was made of this before the game's release, and it's possible to 'complete' the game without ever encountering any of the new stuff. When people did find out this unbelievable amount of hidden depth, there was a certain amount of shock.

There are games out there trying to be different and add a little something to the industry, they just need to be praised more for what they are doing. Do this enough and hopefully developers will sit up and take notice - "People actually care about games and aren't just buying them to give us bucketloads of money? I suppose we'd better give something back to them, then."

Catching Up - Braid and Amnesia: The Dark Descent

A while back that ridiculous Humble Indie Bundle came out with pretty much every good game ever. Even though I already owned several of the games, I bought it anyway, gifted away my duplicates and set to playing two games I should have played already, but never got round to - Braid and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Spoilers await below.


Braid
Last night at around 2:30am I completed Braid.

I'd like to point out that I actually aided a friend in the completion of the game around the time of release on Xbox Live Arcade back in 2008, so I was up to date on the story, but enough time had passed for me to have no advantage when attempting the puzzles.

But, as those of you who have finished the game will know, Braid isn't about the puzzles. If you are under the impression that it's a quaint little indie Mario-style game with time bending mechanics then I'm afraid you've been horribly misled. I watched Indie Game: The Movie a few weeks ago (something which I would recommend to anyone at all interested in the industry), and learned that Jonathan Blow, the maker of the game actually slipped into depression not long after Braid was released. To an outsider, this would seem utterly ridiculous. The game is the highest rated title on XBLA ever, was the second highest selling game on the service in 2008, and made Blow very rich, very quickly. To him, people were enjoying the puzzles, and that was fine, they just weren't "getting" it. The philosophical and highly mature side of the story only reveals itself fully if you complete the entire game, and that is what a lot of people were missing.

As I say, I knew prior to last night's completion what happened at the end of the game, and I remembered the final level fairly vividly. It speaks to the game's quality that I remember this almost four years after its release, and yet I can't really remember much of what happened in Max Payne 3 which I played and reviewed about two months ago.

Braid is a simple story about Tim, a guy who is trying to save his Princess from an evil monster. To do this he has to solve puzzles while manipulating time. But the thing about time in Braid is that it isn't linear, and it certainly isn't simple. Not only does that relate to the puzzles, but also to the story itself. The final level in the game takes place in World 1. The level begins and Tim sees the evil Knight holding on to the Princess whilst holding onto a vine hanging down from above.

"I got you!" He sneers.

But the Princess manages to escape his clutches and jump up to a ledge above him.

"Get down here!" He shouts after her.

"Help!" She cries out to Tim who is watching all of this from below.

Just then a wall of flame erupts from the left side of the screen, engulfing everything in its path. Tim runs to the right in the lower section of the level, with the Princess above him, and they aid each other by pulling levers and lowering ladders to help each other escape their impending doom.

Tim finally reaches a ladder, and climbs up to his Princess who is on the other side of some glass. And then, whiteness.

The princess is asleep in the room behind the glass, and Tim can't reach her. The only thing that can be done is rewind time, and then everything becomes clear. Time isn't being rewound, but allowed to run forwards.

The Princess is fleeing from Tim, setting traps and blocking off routes up to her which Tim manages to narrowly avoid each time. She then sees her Knight up ahead, and knows that she is going to be safe.

"Help!" She cries out to the Knight, while Tim watches helplessly from below.

"Get down here!" He shouts to her.

The Princess jumps down to from the ledge and into the loving grasp of her Knight.

"I got you!" He soothes her, and they escape up the vine to safety.

The epilogue contains text ambiguously explaining the story of Braid. Blow has never revealed the true meaning, and that is the point - it's very open to interpretation. One of my favourite theories is the Atomic Bomb theory, which can be found by clicking this link. It posits that Tim is a scientist working on the first Atomic Bomb, and that The Princess is the bomb herself. This would explain several references in the text hinting at locations and quotations surrounding the development of the bomb, and the wall of flame at the end of the game, and some of the artwork which suggests a Manhattan setting. My favourite thing about the story though, is that we will never know the exact meaning, and that's how it should stay in my view.

Story aside, the final moments of the game are a masterpiece in level design. The fact that Blow can make a level work both backwards and forwards, and have two entirely different meanings is a very impressive achievement. I'm very much looking forward to the next game that can combine storytelling and gameplay in such a tight way.


Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Again, I've seen the majority of Amnesia being played, so I knew what to expect here. You would have thought that would negate some of the horror impact of the game. Nope.

I haven't really got very far into the game playing on my own. Conceptually I'm a big fan of the game, but then I can never bring myself to put myself through playing it, which is a shame. I did do the water monster bit though, which is no mean feat, as people who have played the game will confirm.

One day I will finish it. Maybe.

The new Amnesia game, A Machine for Pigs got delayed until 2013 recently, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I really want to play it, but at least now I've got more time to prepare for it. You can read my preview of the game I wrote by clicking on this link.

That's it for now, thanks for reading, have a good weekend whatever you're doing. I'm going to see Batman, can't wait.

E3 2012 Part 3: Sony and Nintendo

Sony Press Conference
Well, Jack Tretton has been the best and least awkward host so far, and definitely got the best crowd reaction - most people actually laughed at his jokes.

First up was Quantic Dream, the developer behind critically acclaimed Heavy Rain. They were showing their new IP: Beyond: Two Souls. The main character, Jodie, has some kind of link to supernatural beings, ghosts or otherwise, and is being portrayed by Ellen Page, with her likeness looking rather eerie with no hair. It seems as though Jodie will be on the run from law enforcement as we see a SWAT team, helicopter and all being utterly destroyed by Jodie's supernatural powers. It doesn't seem as though she's wholly malevolent though, perhaps she's just misunderstood...

Playstation All Stars was next, Sony's take on the much loved Smash Bros style of gameplay. It will be featuring a whole range of character's from the company's past and present, although some of them are less recognisable than the ones Nintendo have in its game. The main difference between the two games seems to be that in this one, the characters can level up super attacks by fighting. It certainly seems like fun, however I can't see it being as popular as Smash Bros itself.

Next up were some Vita games, with Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified and Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. AC3L will feature the first female assassin of the series, and will be able to link with the full AC3 PS3 game to unlock items that each character can use. CoD has similar functionality, but just looks like another CoD game to be honst.

Sony had some exclusive content about already announced games next. In Assassin's Creed 3 you'll be able to control a big old war ship, where you'll be handling navigation and cannons to fight off other ships. The water and changing weather effects look really nice too.

The Far Cry 3 exclusive announcement was that the game will feature a fully fledged four player co op campaign. There was a live demo of this, and it looks fairly interesting, although the graphics looked strangely lacking compared to the solo campaign demo we saw earlier. Perhaps this was due to the image being blown up for a big screen, but we'll see.

Then came Wonderbook, the new piece of hardware which looks like a physical book, which is recognised by the PlayStation Eye and functions as a piece of augmented reality kit. They showed Pottermore- which acts as an interactive spellbook from the Harry Potter universe. After a few failed attempts they eventually got the thing working and showed how to use the Move controller to act as a wand, and how you can interact with the Wonderbook to alter what's happening on screen. It'll certainly be popular with kids if the bugs are ironed out.

God of War Ascension is the new God of War game, basically. There doesn't seem to be much to it other than that. There are new moves and new enemy types, but that's what everyone would've already expected - a little disappointing.

Finally, Sony showed a gameplay demo of The Last of Us, which received the biggest cheer of the conference on account of its seemingly fluid and dynamic gameplay set in a post apocalyptic world inhabited by thieves and scavengers. It looks really interesting and if it can keep up the varied gameplay throughout the entire game it could become an instant hit.

Nintendo Press Conference
"The Wii U will change your life" apparently, so it seems like Nintendo are expecting big things from it. They showed a black console! It's black, not white! Also there's the much anticipated Pikmin 3, so that's cool for fans of that franchise, especially since it's been eight years since the last one.

Nintendo are introducing something called Asymmetric Gameplay, with many possibilities. Perhaps a player with a Wii U gamepad has a different gameplay experience to those using regular Wiimotes. The console will only support two gamepads though, which seems a shame.

The new home screen for the new console will be called the Miiverse - a screen populated by your friends, and further populated to represent what's trending on Wii U by the miniature Miis gathering around particular titles. You'll be able to send simple text messages which appear on your friend's consoles or create notes using the stylus.

It wouldn't be a new Nintendo console without a Mario game, and they haven't disappointed. New Super Mario Brothers U, the first in the line of many games with an unnecessary U added to the title was announced. The asymmetric gameplay was shown here, where a player with a gamepad can place blocks around the screen to help those with Wiimotes. Other than that though, it looks pretty similar to most other Mario games, funny that.

Third party software came next, and Batman Arkham City: Armored Edition, will be using the gamepad to scan things, and the touch screen will be used to interact with environment. The motion controls will be useful for controlling batarangs, and much more. It's a shame that interesting technology like this is being used on a year old game however.

Scribblenauts Unlimited made an appearance, and will be building upon the popular franchise by opening up the creation tools to create endless exciting objects. You'll be able to create any object, and then share your creations with your friends.

Everyone loves a fitness game these days, so they then showed a bit of Wii Fit U with multiple cleavage shots of an attractive woman and many angles showing off the muscles of an attractive man. Yay, fitness! Another type of game everyone needs these days is a karaoke game, so here was the unimaginatively named Sing to be a part of that.

Then there was what looked like a tech demo of something called Nintendo Land which is an almagamtion of their famous franchises in a theme park setting, with more antisymmetric gameplay being demoed.

Then that was kind of it, there was no big reveal like many of the other press conferences had, so that was a little underwhelming.

So that's it for the press conferences of E3 2012! Check back later in the week when I'll be writing about anything that catches my eye from the show floor, but until then, thanks for reading and have a good one.

E3 2012 Part 2 - EA and Ubisoft

Sorry EA, even though you were chronologically first, you've been relegated to second place in this post because Ubisoft absolutely blew your press conference out of the water. And all that in spite of the awful Ubisoft hosts for the second year in the row. Tobuscus should stick to making Literal Trailers on YouTube and Aisha Tyler should stick to... playing Charlie on Friends for like five episodes... has she done anything else? Terrible attempts at banter aside, Ubisoft had some really impressive looking games on show - here are my thoughts:

Ubisoft Press Conference
Microsoft had an Usher performance for Dance Central 3, so Ubisoft also had to splash the cash and get Flo Rida to come out live and rap and attempt to dance for Just Dance 4. The actual dancers were all fairly attractive women wearing tight shirts and short shorts (probably to make up for the fact that Just Dance is generally thought of as the inferior dance game).

And then, more boobs. This press conference was very uncensored, strange considering how early in the day it was, but hey ho. The Far Cry 3 trailer opened with a topless woman writhing on top of you, and then there were guns, bows and arrows, knives, tigers and fire. Damn Cry Engine is good at fire. Then there was a sequence where the character was injected with something, then started tripping out and was walking through a dream world on television screens and then he shot the bad guy, but his face changed just before he did it. I'm not entirely sure what was going on, but it looked interesting and I'm enough of a fan of the previous games to be pretty excited about this one.

Probably the most underwhelming trailer of the conference was for Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth. It showed some fights between some recognisable Marvel characters, but not much else, and it was barely talked about.

Rayman Legends was next, and suddenly became my most looked forward to game of the show so far (although that didn't last long, you'll find out why later). It was demoed on the Wii U, with a new character shown to be controlled using the touch screen controller, while two other characters used normal Wiimotes to platform. The touch screen was used to move around the screen and manipulate environments to help the platformers. Then there was a sequence when things on screen were happening in time with the music, and it was very impressive. Definitely something to look forward to on the new Nintendo console.

It's the Queen's diamond jubilee this weekend, so there was a trailer with the British national anthem playing over it! God save the queen! Oh God, zombies are killing everyone in London. Zombi U is the new winner of worst game name of the show so far (the previous holder of the title was Lococycle, although strangely that also held title of best named game), and apparently it's a zombie game, because that's a revolutionary concept.

Assassin's Creed 3 had a large segment of the show, and deservedly so, as it looks very (I'm going to use this word again) impressive. Being able to free run over trees instead of building is fresh and looks very cool. New mechanics such as firing squads and not being able to run as fast in deep snow and so on all look like they are going to make this game one to watch this year, despite my trepidation of it only being a year since the previous game. Also the shape of Connor's tomahawk is still awesome. His unexciting name is still not.

Trackmania 2 was one of my favourite games of last year, I love the speed, I love the craziness and I love how janky it is. So when Shootmania Storm was announced a few weeks ago, no one was more excited than me. Ubisoft had a live demo, with 'famous' names from the world of eSports taking part in a girls vs boys match of Elite Mode, where each round is 1 v 3, with the one person having the advantage of using a one shot kill gun. And the boys won, woo.

Finally, Ubisoft had a new IP to tell us about, and God damn it looks cool. It seems to be a third person action game, where the protagonist has access to a wealth of technology, as well as guns. The tagline is that "the city becomes your weapon", and that certainly seems to ring true, as we see the main character hacking in to traffic lights to cause a car crash involving his target, being able to gain someone's personal information just be looking at them, hacking into phones or turning off all signals in an area to cause a distraction and more. Then there was a twist at the end of the gameplay demonstration as the camera switched to another character, who certainly had what looked like a multiplayer gametag above his head. On top of all this the city the player roams around looks gorgeous, with great lighting and weather effects, and there are some top notch long coat dynamics. Watch Dogs got the largest cheer I've heard so far at the show, and rightly so, we love new games that looks awesome! The one thing I will say is that I'm unsure whether Ubisoft are targeting current generation platforms with this game, but if they are, sweeeeet.

EA Press Conference
I didn't realise the finale of Game of Thrones was going to be longer than usual, which is annoying as it made me miss the Dead Space 3 reveal. Apparently they were touting a co op campaign and a new playable character. I loved Dead Space 2, and I hope this one will live up to that.

Do you know what else I loved growing up? Sim City. And EA are making a new one, super excited. Did anyone say "roads that aren't straight"? The one downer of this presentation was that it's not coming out til next February, booo.

EA then rolled out their sports games, Madden and Fifa, which I talked about in my first post, so go and click that link on the right if you haven't already.

Battlefield 3: Premium was announced. Right now you can pay the low low price of $50 and get access to 5 unreleased expansion packs! I'm not a fan of this whole "pay now and you can get stuff later!" payment model of late, but who knows, maybe the new stuff will be super amazing.

EA's other big war game came out next. Medal of Honor Warfighter showed itself, and damn it looks pretty, that Frostbite 2 engine is niiiice. Other than that though, it looks like...a war game. We've already got BF and CoD, and the new MoH doesn't look revolutionary, which is a shame.

Then EA announced a few year and multi game partnership with UFC, which I don't really have an interest in, even though they hammered home the point that apparently it's the fastest growing sport in the world. Good for them.

Criterion make some damn good driving games, and Need for Speed Most Wanted looks like it will keep up with the trend- wait a minute wasn't that the name of a previous NFS game? On the current generation of hardware? Weird.

They closed out the press conference with Crysis 3, what else? It looks nicer, but the gameplay looks veeery similar to Crysis 2, which is a fine game, but I'd like something a bit fresher like what Ubisoft are doing with Assassin's Creed. Also, I'm guessing that Cry Engine has some new bow and arrow technology, as both this and Far Cry are using them...

So that was EA and Ubisoft. I'll be back later with Sony and Nintendo! Thanks for reading, have a good day.

E3 2012 Part 1 - Microsoft

The biggest press event in the gaming calendar is here! E3 2012 started today and I'll be attempting to watch all of the press conferences and write about what has been sparking my interest.

Microsoft Press Conference
The entire theatre started awash with Microsoft's familiar green light, and then there it was - a FMV Halo 4 trailer! Now I've never been the biggest fan of Halo, and my hopes of something new were dashed when I saw that the first enemies to be seen were Grunts, Jackals and Elites. But wait, that Elite just disintegrated... wait, what are those glowing crawling animal robot things? Awesome, something new from the Halo franchise, perhaps I'll be excited about it after all.

Next up was Splinter Cell Blacklist. I remember when these were highly unforgiving stealth games, but not any more. This origin story sees Sam Fisher running and gunning his way through hordes of enemies, and scaling walls like a monkey. I haven't confirmed this, but I don't think Michael Ironside was voicing young Fisher, which made me a bit sad, but we'll see.

I know lots of "proper" gamers don't like sports games, but that's only because they're wrong. Fifa 13 will be the new slightly improved football game for this year, and will feature Kinect support for the first time. You can make substitutions without going into menus, can call for passes and so on. My favourite part was when they showed a player being caught by the offside trap and swearing at the Kinect (it was beeped out, kid friendly show). The Kinect picked up on this however and the commentator began saying how the player was unhappy about being caught out, very amusing.

Madden 13 too will feature Kinect support, and the presentation even featured legendary quarterback Joe Montana! I found it funny that no one seemed to be acknowledging that Sega made the largely unsuccessful Joe Montana football games back in the nineties, but anyway. Montana began to call plays using his voice rather than a controller and then proceeded to score a touchdown! Against the Seahawks, with the Niners, what a dick.

Fable The Journey is a Kinect Fable game. Yay.

Gears of War Judgment got a trailer too, sparking many debates about what the correct spelling of that word is. The trailer didn't show much other than confirming that it is indeed a new Gears of War game, so there's that.

Then there was dubstep, which can only mean one thing: a racing game! Forza Horizon was on show, and this time they're leaving the track and heading out into the open world, and it looks very, very pretty. I've never been drawn to the Forza franchise despite being a big racing fan, hopefully this will do something to persuade me.

Last year we saw the new Tomb Raider game, and this year we got to see a bit more! The gameplay looks incredibly fast paced, seeing Lara running, jumping, shooting and stabbing her way through the level at breakneck speed. I'm hoping that there will be more of an exploration element to the finished game, but I guess they have to show off the exciting sections here.

Then three new titles. Ascend New Gods seems like a fantasy beat em up, in the same vein as God of War, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it from what they showed. Then they showed a trailer for a game called Lococycle, and in the notes I made for the press conference it says "Wat???????", so there you go. Go and watch the trailer. Then finally 343 Guilty Spark was floating around a test chamber from Portal and apparently that's going to be called Matter. 


But that doesn't Matter because Resident Evil 6 was next, and much like Tomb Raider the action was fast and action packed, with explosions and fire and helicopters and quick time events out the arse. I wasn't particularly interested, but then I haven't been interested in a RE game for a long time now.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park then made an appearance to grant some much needed levity to the press conference. They were showing off South Park: The Stick of Truth, well not so much showing it off as showing a trailer which gave no indication of what the game will be. You will be playing as the new kid in town who is trying to become cool and be the fifth member of the group. It remains to be seen just how this will be done and whether it will be any good or not.

Then for some reason Usher came out and sang a song and danced. A lot. And then he left and apparently that was them showing off Dance Central 3, huh.

Finally, Microsoft closed out their star studded show with the big guns, quite literally. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or CODBLOPS2 if you're feeling that way inclined showed the public what they've been showing press since the game got announced a while back. There's a female president and holographic devices, so you know it's the future. Also there's a gun which you can "charge up" which apparently means it can shoot through solid concrete to kill guys on the other side. The gameplay demonstration takes place in Los Angeles and shows the branching storylines and differing tactics you can use to approach your mission. At one point you can choose to either snipe from the top of the broken freeway or rappel down and shoot guys that way. Okay fine, it's not really revolutionary, but at least it's a step in the right direction for the ageing franchise. The most interesting part for me was the use of drones which could be controlled using a PDA thing on your wrist, and that there was a pilot-able jet. I'm unsure whether the jet is on semi- rails, as there didn't seem to be a way to alter your altitude when you wanted to, but I could be wrong about that. Also, the future is black, apparently.

So that was Microsoft's press conference. I'll be writing up EA and Ubisoft's respective press conferences early on tomorrow, and then I'll hopefully be able to do Sony and Nintendo's later in the day.

Excited about games yet? I sure am, and we're only a couple of hours in to this epic event. Thanks for reading, see you later.

Diablo 3, Max Payne 3 & The Walking Dead

It has been over a month since my last blog post, and I'm glad to be back writing again.

The reason for my hiatus was my university finals, and now that they're over I am no longer in full time education! How did I celebrate? By downloading the games I had been missing out on over the past few months of course.

Diablo III
This was the one. Of all the titles I wanted to play during my revision, this was the one that was tempting me the most, not least because half of my friends list on Steam were playing it 24/7, and that's only the ones that had bothered to add it to their non-steam game list. So, this morning, the morning after what I hope was my last ever exam, I downloaded it (very quickly, Blizzard have definitely upgraded their downloader since I last played one of their games) and logged in, after a minute or so trying to find the authenticator app on my phone.

Oh, this thing, I remember reading about this issue that was occurring over the first few days after the game's release. Maybe it was just giving me the full experience?

Nope, not working. Okay, I'll play that later.

The Walking Dead
Since Diablo was walking, I thought I'd jump into one of the other games I had been itching to play. I've never read the comics or seen the television adaptation of this series, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. After reading multiple favourable reviews I thought I would give it a go though, and I definitely wasn't disappointed. It also makes me want to at least watch the TV show, if the writing is up to the same quality as it is in the game - which will be another huge time sink, but hey, I'm technically unemployed now, time is one of the things I do have.

It's a game about zombies, which I continue to say I don't enjoy the idea of, yet still seem to keep playing them (Dead Island, Dead Space, Dead Rising, etc). Telltale Games, the masters of episodic adventure titles strike again (they kinda struck out with that Jurassic Park one, but we'll forgive them for now), with more item collection and quick time events! It's a lot better than it sounds though, as the entire thing is wrapped up in a great little story which really makes you empathise with the characters over the short play time with clever dialogue sequences and tricky decisions to make along the way.

There's only one episode out at the moment, but there are four more to come and I am very much looking forward to playing them, after the huge CLIFFHANGER at the end of the first. Spoiler: The woman says "I think everything is going to be okay" - and then all the lights go out. One of the weakest plot moments of the entire episode I must admit.

Max Payne 3
I was considering getting this for console, but now I'm going to be reviewing the PC version for Hooked Gamers, so I'm waiting a few extra days for it to be released on Steam. Check back for that!

For now though, I'm going to revel in my new found mountains of student debt - thanks for reading, have a good one.

What to do in Dota 2 - Part 3

I was scared again. I had managed to score my first Dota 2 victory, but it was only against computer controlled bots. Now I was joining a game against real life humans, who had most likely played a lot more of this game than I had. What if I messed up and they made fun of me? Oh, I remember, I couldn't care less what people on the Internet type in text chat to me. Although one time a guy said my story was cool, and then called me bro. He was nice.

Windrunner was my hero of choice this time. She's a feisty redhead with a bow and arrow with shots that can shackle enemies to each other or to trees, and an ultimate ability which increases the rate at which she fires at a target for a period of time. Within the first five minutes I had gotten my first enemy hero kill, FIRST BLOOD. I got an extra bit of gold and experience for getting the first kill. Either I was getting better, or this hero was good for the way I played.

I was paying more attention to the minimap this time, seeing where the enemy heroes were, and where my allies were. If an enemy hero was all on their own and a few of us were nearby, we could go and kill it, and it was working well. A couple of us got caught out though, and a group of enemy heroes made quick work of us.

"Stop dat feed."

Clearly someone on our team wasn't pleased with us for dying. Feeding is where you needlessly die to enemy heroes, thereby granting them extra gold and experience with no gain for your team. That's bad. Woops.

It was a close game. We were trading kills and towers were getting destroyed on both sides. Some barracks on opposing sides of the map had been destroyed, which meant that "Mega" Creeps had started spawning, which can sometimes even pose a threat to heroes if there's a large enough group of them. The game was nearing an end, probably all it would take was a big hero battle to decide it.

That battle soon came. I didn't feel like my ultimate ability was as powerful as a lot of heroes', who do massive area of effect damage. Mine simply allowed me to focus fire on one hero, which wasn't doing the battle as a whole much good. We lost all of our heroes, and three of theirs were left standing, this meant trouble for our remaining structures. Since most of us had a fairly lengthy respawn timer by that point, the enemies were able to destroy the towers surrounding our Ancient and start attacking it. We all managed to spawn just in time to drive them back with our Ancient barely standing on around 15% health.

While all this was going on, it became apparent that our creeps were making some headway on the other side of the map, unbeknownst to us, and more importantly the enemy. They had managed to destroy the towers surrounding the enemy ancient and were beginning to attack it! And the enemy heroes were either dead or halfway across the map.

Radiant Victory!

We had won the battle, and man was it close. Our team had all assumed defeat, and yet with no help from us, our creeps had won us the game. I was beginning to really enjoy this game now, and couldn't wait to join some more games and try some new heroes out.

Thanks for reading, have a good one.

What to do in Dota 2 - Part 2

If you haven't read the first part I posted yesterday, go and read it now. It's fine, I'll wait.

Surprisingly, considering the stories I had heard, there wasn't a lot of hostility towards me as a new player. Maybe I had learnt enough about the game before going in, or maybe the people I was playing with were just being nice.

Sadly, it turns out the latter was true.

I started my second game, this time as the Dark Seer. He has abilities like being able to suck all the units in an area into a vacuum for a short time, dealing damage to them, and a handy support ability which cloaks the target in an ion shell, which does damage to nearby enemies. His ultimate ability creates a huge light wall, which, if crossed by an enemy hero, will create a copy of that hero which serves under the Dark Seer's will. Not only is it handy, it looks REALLY cool.

So, the game loaded. Apparently that day Blizzard had added a new class, the Brewmaster into the game.

"I'm just playing against bots to try and Brewmaster, why are you all here, lol?"

Oh good, some know it all veteran come to test a new hero amongst the plebs.

The game went much the same way as the first one, we were all levelling up, getting new items and so on, and at about level six or seven our resident expert piped up again.

"DS why don't you help?"

I checked all of the heroes that people on my team were playing, DS could only stand for Dark Seer, my hero. I had no idea what he meant... it seemed that everyone on my team had suddenly decided without any communication to group up on one side of the map and were engaged in a battle with a group of enemy heroes. Had I missed something? Perhaps there's a certain time when everyone groups up and starts the "team battle" phase, but I sure as hell didn't know when that was.

I trudged across the map to go and help, laid down my "Wall of Replica", and helped kill a hero or two. But then I got sniped, by the aptly named "Sniper". Two of the people on my team spoke this time.

"Omg seriously?"
"Got killed by a bot LOL"

Okay, maybe they're right, maybe I need to step up my game a bit. I decided to start following the more veteran players to see what they were doing.

The trick when the creeps are fighting each other in the middle of the map is to try and get the killing blow on enemy units, whilst also trying to scare away enemy heroes so they don't get the bonus experience and gold from killing friendly units. Sometimes an enemy hero would stray too close to our group, and everyone would use their stunning effects to give time for the gankers to deal the massive damage. I felt proud of myself for using my Vacuum ability to suck a few heroes in before they got finished off by our melee units. Clearly my allies weren't as impressed, maybe it's something they see every game, or maybe they just don't speak unless they're insulting you, who knows?

"I'm going for two Daedalus, lol"

Professor Dota was talking again. The Daedalus is one of the better weapons in the game, with +81 damage and a giving you a 25% chance to critical strike, which does 2.5x normal damage. They're fairly expensive, so getting two of them is no mean feat. This player was clearly good enough to rack up enough cash to do it though.

This game was a lot easier than the first. I reckon that there were a lot more new players in the first game than this one, and it definitely showed. We were destroying enemy structures like nobody's business, and eventually we were able to just walk up to the opposing Ancient and hack it to pieces.

My first Dota 2 victory! It felt good.

I figured it was time to do away with the bots, and start going against human opponents, that's where the real competition was to be had after all.

And indeed, it turned out to be the most exciting game yet, but that's a story for another day.

Thanks for reading, see you next time

What to do in Dota 2 - Part 1

Hey all, this is a mini series I'm going to do describing my experiences with the Dota 2 beta. I've never seriously got into playing games like this, so it's from the perspective of a relative noob... that'll probably come across...


Anyway, here's the first instalment: 

Signups for the Dota 2 Beta began all the way back in August 2011, at a time where Valve were targeting a release later that year for the follow up to Defence of the Ancients, a multiplayer online battle arena game which started life as a Warcraft 3 custom game. The wave of MOBAmania hadn’t quite swept me up at that point, so I thought I’d sign up and see what all the fuss was about. You had to complete a short questionnaire describing your experiences with the previous game. Alright, I thought, standard stuff... but there was no option in any of the questions for “I haven’t played the previous game”, so I just kinda...lied. “How many hours a week did you play Defence of the Ancients?” 1-2 hours, sure, that’ll do. There were only a few beta spots open at the time, so I wasn’t expecting to be receiving anything.

Now it’s April 2012, the game still isn’t out, and I had all but forgotten that I had signed up. Yesterday however, I received an email: “Congratulations! You have been selected to play Dota 2”. Great, a spam email telling me I had won a beta invite, similar to the ones I receive inviting me to play the beta for a WoW expansion that was released two years ago. But sure enough, I went to my games folder in Steam and there it was, Dota 2 just waiting to be installed.

If anyone has no idea what I’m even talking about, MOBAs are RPG based real time strategy games, where players on teams of five each pick a hero and do battle on a large map where the goal is to destroy the other team’s main structure. You level up your hero and earn gold by killing creeps, small weak enemies, which are constantly spawned and will run to the enemy base, meeting up in the middle with enemy creeps and fighting there. When you level up, you can upgrade your stats or unlock new abilities. The gold you accumulate can be used to buy special items which will improve your numbers or give you special powers.

I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive of joining a game straight away. I had heard multiple horror stories from people saying that the MOBA community is notoriously unwelcoming to newbies like myself. There was a tab on the start screen saying ‘Learn’, so I thought I’d click that and there might be some tutorials or something which would help me on my way. All that was on this page were pictures of the dozens of possible heroes you could choose, outlining what abilities they had. This was no help at all! All I was learning was that I was even more overwhelmed now than I was before. Oh well, there was no use putting it off any longer, it was time to jump into a game.

Luckily there was an option to play a game with people against computer controlled characters, as well as an option to team up with people who were also new to the game. Now to pick a character to play as. Each character has a ‘role’, such as ‘Ganker’ and ‘Support’, which I kind of understood, but there were also unhelpfully named roles such as ‘Carry’ and ‘Initiator’. I have since found out that a ‘Carry’ hero is one that usually sits on the sidelines for much of the first part of the game, accumulating experience and gold and will then be able to tons of damage later on.

I chose Enigma, because he looked cool and had an interesting name, and it turned out he was an ‘Initiator’, which means that he is good at teaming up with other heroes to take on groups of enemies in what are called ‘Team Fights’. Initiators have skills which affect large areas, and are good at getting the first blow in to disable enemies while your teammates do the rest of the work. I had no idea of any of that going into the game, maybe I should’ve spent more time on the Dota 2 Wiki beforehand.

So the game loaded up, and straight away someone said in the chat: “Sorry for any noob moves, this is my first game, lol xD”. Phew, at least someone else won’t know what they’re doing. I knew the basics. I had been told at the start of the game that you should buy regeneration items, which will help you survive and will allow you to gain mana quicker, which is used for your abilities. There are three ‘lanes’ which the creeps will run down, top, middle and bottom. Usually two heroes take each of the top and bottom lanes and one hero will go up the middle for the early part of the game, where the focus is on levelling your character. It looked like everyone had already chosen which lanes they were going in, so I took the remaining space at the bottom. The match began, and it was time to kill some creeps!

Thing seemed to be going well, everyone on my team was levelling up, unlocking new abilities and earning gold and buying new items. I decided to record some footage so I wouldn’t forget anything for writing it up later, so I quickly loaded up the capture software and hit F9 to begin recording. The game froze. Wait, people are spamming the chat with question marks. Oh, F9 is the key to pause the game. Great. Sorry guys.

Everyone on my team was around level five or six by that point. Level six is where you can unlock the first rank of your ultimate ability. I had just unlocked mine when suddenly, BANG, someone on my team got killed by Zeus, an enemy hero. How embarrassing, to be killed by a computer controlled he- BANG. Oh, I’m dead.

Zeus’ ultimate ability allows him to send a thunderbolt straight onto the head of all of the enemy heroes, no matter where they are on the map. I mean sure, my ultimate ability with Enigma creates a black hole, but I have to channel it, and unlimited range thunderbolts just seem unfair. He was getting kills left, right and centre without even having to see anyone, and every time he did get a kill, he would gain a whole bunch of experience, quickly making him the most powerful hero in the game.

My team got a few kills here and there, and managed to destroy a few enemy structures, but in the end the computer controlled team scored a fairly easy victory. A little disappointing for my first game. I had fun though, I can certainly see why people spend many hours in this game. It seems simple to get into, but has a real depth to it making it ideal for competitive play, and indeed, there are tournaments with hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars on the line. I’m not quite there yet, I probably need a bit more practice, so I jumped into another game.

The tale from my second game will be coming soon. It contains a lot more people complaining that I wasn't good at the game, so at least that will be entertaining.

Thanks for reading, have a good one.

PAX East + Alan Wake

The Penny Arcade Expo in Boston, abbreviated to PAEX East happened at the tail end of last week. It's pretty much the gamers' E3, where the atmosphere is a lot less "shut up and tell me about video games", and more, "hey guys, we love video games!"

Also I picked up Alan Wake when it was cheap on Steam a couple of weeks ago, and had more fun with it than I thought I would. Maybe that's because I got it cheap, and usually when I play a game I'm left thinking "damn I wish I held off on getting this til when it was cheap."

On an unrelated note, Giantbomb co-founder Ryan Davis just retweeted me, so basically I'm a big player in the video game journalism industry now.

PAX East
Borderlands 2

I wrote a preview for this game a few months ago, but they've come out with some new information about it this weekend. There's a new class called the 'Mechromancer', which is this female cyborg who can control this big robot called D374-TP (can you work out what that's supposed to mean?). There was also a demo that people could play where you shot things, you know, like in Borderlands.

Assassin's Creed 3

I was hoping they'd spend an extra year on this game, but it's coming out this Autumn, like it or not. Although, what Ubisoft showed off at PAX made me a lot more excited for it than I was. It seems as though the tree free running is going to be great, with Connor adapting to the tree shape rather than in previous games where there were obvious paths you had to take over buildings. 

There's a human shield mechanic, helping the up close and personal nature of the assassin against the more modern firearms, and they also showed off the "rope dart". Connor can fire this rope at an enemy, grabbing him round the neck with it, and then jump off a tree branch to hang him from it, oh sh-

Far Cry 3

The last Far Cry for me quickly went from a pretty cool game to just a beautiful fire and tree simulator. Somewhere where I could come to take a new screenshot for my desktop and occasionally set a fire in a bush and watch it spread through an enemy camp.

They were only showing off the multiplayer for the new game at PAX, but it looks kinda fun, especially the aptly named "inferno mode", where the action takes place on an island which is slowly engulfed in flames throughout the course of the match.

Alan Wake

So as I said, I bought this because I was bored and it was cheap, thinking I'd probably play a few hours of it and then get bored and never play it again (much like the vast majority of my Steam collection). 

But it turned out it was exactly what I was looking for in a horror game. I'm more into psychological thrillers than straight up, in your face, "I'm a monster and I'm going to eat your flesh" type deals, and Alan Wake is the former in abundance. 

The combat is a little fidgety, you have to shine your flashlight (which has a boost button for some reason) onto enemies to fight away "the darkness" before you can shoot them, and it works fine, just the mechanics remain the same throughout the game, so it gets a bit old after a while. 

What really keeps you going is the story, which is actually quite compelling, in a "this could never happen but is kinda interesting" kind of way. In classic horror story fashion, bad things start happening, no one believes you, then REALLY bad things start happening and everyone is like "oh, Alan, I'm sorry, what do we do??". Also Alan has never fired a gun before, but he's pretty damn good with them. He also manages to find light sources wherever he goes, which is quite handy considering the type of enemy he's facing. 

The game's use of light and shadows is fantastic though, and during the daytime, it looks effing GORGEOUS.

Anyway, it's fun, if you see it's cheap again, I recommend you getting it.

By the way, I did a video last week, but then the file got corrupted and I was too demoralised to start again.

Thanks for reading, have a good week.

Assassin's Creed 3, 3DS, Total War Shogun 2

Short post today:

Here's the third episode of Gaming News of the Week, check it out if you've got a few minutes free!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpSopvaf78&context=C41c3ef8ADvjVQa1PpcFMl0KRhfYw3MBgsDYa4DBpoJHtIpVCzSlI=

Thanks, have a good one

Steam Deals & Total War: Shogun 2

There have been some pretty sick deals on Steam this week. I picked up Total War: Shogun 2 for a mere £7.50, which is a bargain seeing as the game is barely a year old, and not only that, it was one of the better games of last year.

Total War: Shogun 2

I've played a good few hours so far, and am very much enjoying it. There's one niggling thing that annoys me about it though: I don't know anything about the setting. It makes me wish that the game was set in one of the other time periods the Total War franchise has visited, just with the mechanics from this one. I loved the Medieval, Rome, Empire and Napoleon games, and part of that was probably because those are some of my favourite periods from history. One historical setting I would like to see from the franchise is Alfred era Britain, close to the formation of England as a single country. That would be cool.

In Shogun however, it's feudal Japan, and you take on the responsibilities of one of the multiple clans in the country at that time and embark on your quest to become Shogun. In terms of strategy games in recent times, I've been playing Civilisation 5 and Crusader Kings 2, so it was kind of a shock to come back to the all out war scenario. The game lacks the depth of those other ones due to the fact that the campaign is basically kill or be killed, rather than being able to forge alliances and win through diplomatic or economic victory. But what it lacks there, it makes up for by making the war element so damned fun. 

What has always set the Total War series aside from other strategy games is the real time battle system. Shogun's is just as good as it's always been (it doesn't seem like they've changed it much), and although I don't know much about the setting, it's still pretty awesome to see samurai and the like battling against each other. 

Square Enix Weekend

Today (Saturday through Sunday), you can get 75% off all the Deus Ex games, which, like Shogun, is another steal. £7.50 for Human Revolution, which, while it wasn't as good as we were all hoping it to be after the precedent set by the original, was still one of the better games of last year, horrible boss battles aside. (Which the developer outright apologised for, which I thought was pretty funny)

Speaking of that original, it's £1.50. That's basically zero pounds, come on.

Looks like Thief, Lara Croft, Just Cause, Dungeon Siege, Kane and Lynch and Hitman will also be on sale over the next few days, so be sure to check out what's going on in the Steam store if any of those tickle your fancy.

Remember to check out my new video series, Gaming News of the Week on YouTube! 

Also I'm in the middle of writing a Trials Evolution preview, which I am hella excited about. So look for that over the next week or so.

Thanks for reading, have a good one

GNotW Episode 2

Hi, how's it going?

I've made a new video, it has more Mass Effect 3 news (yawn), Game, World of Warcraft, Minecraft and a bunch of games which I suck at playing. So something for everyone!

I've got more plans for this series, so stick with it as it's only going to get better and leave me some feedback if you want to see something changed.

You can click right here to get to YouTube, or watch the embedded video below. Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for reading/ watching. Have a good weekend.

Gaming News of the Week

...and now for something completely different.

I decided to try my hand at video editing and speaking into a microphone, and then somehow combining those two things into an interesting (hopefully) weekly (hopefully) feature for your enjoyment!

It will be a run down of the gaming related news from the past seven days, as well as a few extra bits here and there such as me talking about the games I've been playing.

So, here it is! The first ever episode of Gaming News of the Week!

(I'll hopefully get the video embedded soon, it's not showing up on YouTube search results at the moment, which is the only way to do it on Blogspot)

EDIT: There we go.

Thanks for reading/ watching, have a good day!

My ME3 Ending. Is the outrage from fans justified?

Just finished my first (and probably sole) play through of Mass Effect 3. I'll tell you what happened, go through some of the key (but limited) differences in the other endings, and will muse about whether the massive amounts of outrage from fans of the series is warranted. So obviously, spoilers are coming. Don't read if you don't want to know.

My Ending
You are faced with two (or three, depending on certain factors) choices in the final moments of the game. You can destroy the Reapers, or control them (or combine synthetic life with organic life in what sounds like some unholy experiment gone wrong). I chose to control them, which I believe is the paragon ending, I think this is the case because it was blue, not red.

Depending on your galactic readiness rating, which is pretty much based on how many side missions you did, there are a few different ways each choice can pan out. In mine, Shepard dies, the reapers retreat, Earth is saved, the Mass Relays are all destroyed and the Normandy crash lands on some remote planet where Joker, Ashley and EDI emerge unscathed, which confused me as EDI was with me moments before on Earth, but anyway, the credits roll.

Then there's an utterly pointless cutscene after the credits, which suggests that an old man far in the future has been telling his grandchild all the events which have happened throughout the series. Why? What does this add to the ending?

The Outrage
Well, one thing the child says is "Tell me another Shepard story." Uh-oh, DLC on the way, thanks for making sure we all know, Bioware. Then there's just a straight up message saying, "hey, well done for beating the game, but remember to buy the DLC when it comes out!" Apparently, fans of the series didn't quite like that their hundreds of hours spent playing these games culminated in a ten minute cutscene and a message telling them to spend more money. Who knew?

By the way, I looked up what the other endings were after I finished. Turns out they're all the same. Sometimes the shockwave that ends the Reaper threat is red rather than blue though, so that's something. It's a little more varied, sometimes Earth is destroyed and the survival of the Normandy crew is in doubt, but you will have had to have played a pretty awful game to get to that situation. Fans are annoyed that over the course of the three games, they have spent hours shaping their character to be what they want them to be, only to then find out that no matter what choices you have made, you will always be faced with the same decision.

Plot Holes?
Regardless of your choices and actions, the Mass Relays are always destroyed. These are the only means of travelling the galaxy, so that's going to make it difficult for the millions upon millions of alien species which have congregated in Earth's solar system to help defeat the Reapers to leave. Also, I haven't read them, but I'm reliably informed that in some of the fiction, we are told that the destruction of a Mass Relay causes an explosion the same size as a supernova, destroying the solar system it's in. Looks like Shepard just found a way to decimate all forms of life in the galaxy much faster than the Reapers could ever do. Oops!


Speaking of the Reapers, we're told by their creator, why exactly they were created. Get ready now.


He created them billions of years ago, to stop synthetic beings rebelling against their creators and killing them.


So he created synthetic beings, which every now and then would kill all organic life, so that the organic life wouldn't create synthetic beings which would kill them. JackieChan.jpg

I won't go into more details, you can find much a more informative article here about why people are so angry about it.

Are fans right to be annoyed by the ending to Mass Effect 3? Maybe. Probably. But honestly, who cares? Not me. Bioware consistently make fantastic games that we all enjoy playing. Sure, the ending was a little weird, but I still had a good time with the game and would recommend that anyone who hasn't played the Mass Effect games to give them a look as soon as possible. They are quite simply, a collection of the best games of this generation. Anyone who thinks they have the right to demand that Bioware change the ending to one of their games because they didn't think it wrapped up the story quite perfectly is absolutely crazy.

Thanks for reading people, have a good one.