The Word of Ward

It’s been E3 recently. If you are unaware of what E3 is, you should have less of a life and embrace the beauty of gadgetry and gaming. It’s a huge Electronic Entertainment Expo (three Es get it?) in LA that attracts the likes of Paris Hilton, Redman, the god-like Stan Lee, and the still Vulcan-like Leonard Nimoy. If you think you are cooler than them, you are wrong. I’m not actually going to write about E3 (unless I get an invite to next year’s event) but will look at what new gizmos they revealed. This is the Expo where they do that kind of thing. You know, the geek on stage and the screaming nerds bellowing applause at every utterance. Like when Apple bring something out and people in the audience seem to have a mass sycophantic orgasm. Watch a video of one and see the over-reaction. It’s a bit spooky.

I work in TV and right now it is all about 3D. The new transmission suites I have seen have surround sound – something like 15.1 (15 speakers) it’s like being in an amphitheatre – and they have 3D. With the specs. When people in suits come to have a look it’s like a Roy Orbison convention.

At E3 the future all seems to be about leaping around your living room like an eager pillock having a happy spasm. This is all thanks to motion sensor stuff. Like with the Wii. Which is crap in my opinion. Sure it can be fun, for a bit, if you aren’t really appreciative of what modern games can be like. Games are evolving to the point where it is like an interactive movie with genuine characterization and plot twists. They are really coming to the fore as an alternative entertainment to sitting on your arse watching TV shows. The problem with all this motion stuff is that the games are rarely any good for more than 15 minutes and are purely on the market to meet the desires of families. Virtual tennis, virtual bowling, virtual baseball. These are all things you can quite easily do for real and are more fun in real life. I saw a game where you are throwing a virtual frisbee for fuck’s sake. If these aren’t banal enough, you get get some utterly lame attachments. Like a virtual knife that doesn’t actually cut food while you virtually cook.

This is fun apparently. Why not actually cook?

You rarely get to shoot a zombie in the head in real life, or drive a Ferrari through a crowded city at 150mph, or land on an alien planet, or whatever. This is what games should be! Escapist fun.

On the plus side, malcoordinated fools are having funny injuries thanks to the Wii:

Wii injuries

This is a trend that is set to continue. Playstation are bringing out the Playstation move, which looks a bit like a dildo blowing a bubble.

The big buzz at the moment is the new Xbox Kinect. The name is presumably a mix of connect and kinetic. Wow… clever. It looks pretty cool and maps your entire body in the way you see in movie effects when they make an actor dress in a bodysuit covered in ping-pong balls in front of a blue/green screen. This could make for some pretty great fighting games but I still suspect they’ll be pretty shit. Most games will be running or pointing or something.

A few years ago I had the Playstation Eye. It was similar to the kinetic in that it mapped your body. You could pop virtual balloons and crap like that. Fun for a short while but then you want to sit back on the couch and kill hordes of enemies or creep terrified through a haunted space station, the way God intended.

This new technology, coupled with 3D, might be a bit more fun. I still remain doubtful however. It will obviously get better and better as the technology progresses but right now its in it’s gawky nerd teenage phase. Literally, when you see people in the unfashionable glasses flailing around with no semblance of coordination. When it becomes more advanced with groin attachments or improved 3D with no glasses, we’ll be rapidly approaching adulthood.

Then my friends, it will be holo-suites or a brain attachment that makes the experience indistinguishable from real life. That will be the future of games. This might turn gamers who don’t have much of a life into gamers with no real life at all. I suspect they won’t care.

In case you are lazy and don’t want to read the rest of this review – this game is brilliant! I mentioned previously, elsewhere, that it was better than watching the new Indiana Jones film. I recently watched it again and it was actually pretty good fun. This game is still better though. You feel as if you are playing through a mixture of a book and film. The story begins with you waking up with a bullet wound in your stomach in a train carriage that is hanging over the edge of a cliff. How goddamn exciting is that? Once you manage to escape the tale cuts to chapter one and you see how you ended up in that situation.

The story is exciting and well told. There are more characters this time, as well as the ones from the original. For a game it is surprising how much depth and characterization can be squeezed in as you blow the crap out things. The voice over acting is impeccable and it’s fun just seeing how things pan out. The characters develop and all have their own believable motives. The story is epic and you jet all over the place robbing from Turkish museums, shooting it out in a warzone, fighting on trains going from jungle to mountains, discovering hidden temples, and so on. Ostensibly you are trying to find Marco Polo’s lost treasure but the story develops into so much more.

It's all so pretty!

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was the first game I played on PS3 and I was blown away by the graphics and story and gameplay. This sequel has astoundingly been superior in almost every way. The graphics are the best I have ever seen. There are times when you just stop and gaze in awe at the scenery around you. There is a sequence when you are on a train as it goes from lowland jungle into the Himalayas and the surroundings are so incredible I actually got shot by a baddie who had crept up on me. I really cannot say enough about how truly magnificent the graphics are.

Blow shit up!

The game itself is similar to the first in the you spend a lot of time climbing about, and a lot of time killing literally hundreds of people. There is more this time though. You have to take down helicopters, blow up tanks, escape falling buildings, and generally get out of dozens of scenarios by the skin of your teeth. The shooting and cover controls are perfect and so are all the little extras like sniping and chucking grenades.

I cannot stress enough just how awesome this game is! You will probably complete it in 10 or so hours, but you will probably then go back and do it all again on a harder setting and try to find all the treasures and unlock all the extras.

You won’t be done then though because there is more. Uncharted 2 has the funnest multi-player action since Killzone 2. It is superb. You have all the usual stuff like capturing areas, dragging treasures back to your base, elimination, death match and so forth but as there is so much you can do, it is frighteningly addictive. The element of climbing adds so much more. You can also sneak up behind people and take them out ninja style. You can hang off a ledge and pull people over as they walk by. It is just joyous fun to play and the incentives are there as you level up and unlock boosters and weapons and so on. On top of this you also have co-operative play, which I just started playing today. These are like mini adventures with their own cut-scenes and quests. You play with two others and work as a team as you chase down a treasure in a war-zone or lost temple.

Even the multiplayer is perfect

As you can tell, I loved this game. You will be hard pressed finding a review on the internet that doesn’t say it’s brilliant. In fact, you would find it difficult to find anyone that doesn’t think it should be game of the year. I think it should be.

Watch the trailer below. Then buy a PS3. Then get the game. (Even the trailer is awesome.) You can thank me later.

Batman Arkham Asylum

Holy game-playing brilliance Batman!

Sorry but I had to do that.

First, the plot. Batman has captured the Joker and is delivering him to Gotham’s legendary Arkham Asylum. The caped crusader suspects something is amiss as the Joker barely put up a fight and fuck is he right. The whole thing is a trap as the Joker is out to get him and Commissioner Gordon. The Joker releases all the prisoners – including the most mental, scary and famous ones and soon our plucky eponymous hero is battling hordes of henchmen and baddies like Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, Harleyquinn, the Scarecrow and more.

Killer Croc

The voices and acting are great. Batman and the Joker are voiced by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill respectively. These two did the same voices for the cartoon, so geeks and fanboys (obviously not myself) will know what to expect and how good it will be. The whole cast is great – which is nice when compared to some games I’ve played. The cut-scenes and action follow each other seamlessly. Which is something you would expect these days and not like 5 or more years ago when the difference between gameplay and pre-rendered scenes could often be glaring.

The graphics are superb. Arkham’s corridors are satisfying dingy, the well-known baddies are well animated and look like they should. Even the henchmen are scarred, tattooed and muscular. The game looks magnificent except for when you are in detective mode when you lose a lot of the detail. More on this later.

The game-play is fun. Really fun. You are Batman. Which is unbelievably cool. The controls are simple – a button for counter-attack, a button for attack, one for evade, and another to confuse with your cape. Your ability to use a grappling hook and fly up a line to perch above henchmen is easy and obvious, as is gliding down again.

For me this was one of the funnest parts of the game.

Beating up lackeys is awesome!

By this, I mean the actual taking down of room-fulls of lackeys. There are generally two ways to go about this. The first is to leap among them and just beat the living crap out of the poor bastards. The combos and counters are easy to do but look brutal and cool and cinematic. When you deliver a final kick to the head it feels solid and satisfying. The other way, especially if they are armed, is to sneak around Dark Knight style and pick them off one by one. You have a ton of fun options to help you in this. You can crawl through the vents and spray your explosive bat-gelignite on a weak section of floor then blow it up as enemies walk over or under it; you can glide down and kick someone unconscious; you can sneak up behind a poor unsuspecting sod and take them out silently; or my favorite – drop down bungee style and pull some poor bastard up as he passes below you and hang him. As you take each guy out the others grow increasingly nervous (as shown by their heartbeats) and they run around in a panic occasionally firing at shadows. You really feel like Batman and it is bloody great fun.

There are a few flaws, but they are minor. The game can feel slightly repetitive. Mostly when you have to take out a room filled with bad guys. As mentioned above, this is so much fun it could hardly be seen as a flaw. The main gripe I had, and again it isn’t much, is with the detective mode. This mode allows you to alter your view so that you can scan for clues, follow trails, find flimsy walls, and see enemies from a distance through walls. It is unbelievably helpful. Too much so in fact. You can play almost the whole game in this mode and then you miss all the lovely graphics. If you are sneaking around taking out hoods one at a time it is easier if you can see them all, so you tend you stay in this mode. It is so cool taking someone down though, that you really want to see it properly and you might find yourself flicking back to normal mode just to watch the action.

Detective mode - too helpful for its own good

Once you have completed the main game, which will take a respectable amount of time, you have a load more options. You can go back through the game and try and find all the little extras like the Riddler’s hidden trophies or sound recordings of inmate interviews and so on. Or you can go for the challenge mode. This is where you take out room-fulls of baddies in either a stealthy way or a kick-ass way. You compete against an online leader board where people much better than you. I almost got in the top 75,000 the other day. It adds a lot more to the always important replayability factor. I think I have already mentioned that it is damn good fun so no need to say it again I guess.

So should you buy it? If you like Batman then GOD YES. If you like action and pretty graphics and a good old fashioned beat ‘em up then again with the same answer. This is a fun game.

You play a delivery man called Cole, who lives on a roof with an annoying friend and is dating a woman called Trish who whinges a lot. (Although this is kind of justified). One day there is a massive explosion in the city and you wake up in the middle of a huge blast crater with special powers. You can control electricity. Which would be pretty exciting. Although as far as I can see, he can never wash or drink liquid again.

There seems to be a disease that is turning people either ill, or mental, so the government blockades the city, declares quarantine, and shoots anyone trying to escape. A bit like Escape from New York but with less cool characters. (And there it was a prison.) Cue the rise of fairly unique gangs on each of the islands that comprise the city. As the story unfolds you learn more about yourself and the shadowy figures and groups behind everything. The story is actually pretty good with stylish comic-book cut scenes that really add to the superhero theme.

Another thing that develops are your abilities and your karma. You learn more skills as the game progresses and the learning curve as you master these new zappy powers is actually pretty easy. There are various city zones without electricity and each time you start up the generator you get a blast of electricity and a new skill. Some of them are very cool but it feels a bit artificial. I know it is a game but I find it mildly annoying when you gain a power in a game like this and suddenly it turns out to be the very thing that’s need right afterwards. It’s like a mini tutorial, which is handy, but it subtracts from the, er, reality. I won’t gripe about it here but this sort of thing seems to be a tedious unrealistic necessity in games (like in 1st person shooters when you find ammo and a drink that heals physical wounds in a clay pot or something).

Sliding along power cable never gets dull

At first you are limited to just one island and travelling around is slow – although you are pretty damn nimble. You unlock other islands as the game progresses (like GTA) at the same time as finding other ways to move about. Like zipping along train tracks and power cables or even flying. These are fun and easy and look fantastic.

In fact all the controls are easy and intuitive and by the end you truly feel mega-powerful. I just thought it was a shame there wasn’t more to destroy. Don’t get me wrong – there are cars and people you can chuck about and blast but if you’re nice, you have to be a bit careful.

I should talk here about being good. Like other games (eg Fallout 3 or Knights of the Old Republic) there is karma. You can be good or bad. This is a great idea and adds to replayability. When you are good there are posters of you everywhere looking heroic and noble. Everyone loves you and gathers around cheering and taking photos whenever you pause for a second. When you are evil a much cooler poster appears with half your face and half demon skull. Whenever you stop for a second people hurl abuse or stones. Which is a pretty dumb thing to do to someone who is evil and has mega powers – especially given how fun it is to throw a car at them. The more good deeds and missions you do the better karma you get. And vice-versa. There are three grades of good/evil until you are either famous or infamous and each grade unlocks even more abilities. Which is all well and good except that there is no point in being neutral. In Fallout 3, for example, there are advantages for whatever state you choose. People fear you or like you and do better deals. Too good or bad and some won’t deal with you, and so on. In inFamous you will miss out on a ton of abilities if neutral – it is only worth your while to be a goody two shoes or out and out bastard.

If you're evil your electricity goes red. Because that's what happens...

The game is sandbox with sidemissions and game missions and lots of other little tasks. There are also missions that are exclusively good or evil. They’re all fairly fun but unsurprisingly the evil ones are better. In fact, the whole game is more enjoyable when you’re a bad guy. You don’t have to care about innocent people, you can just blow the crap out of everything that moves. It also makes it easier.

InFamous is a great fun game but it lacks any real depth. You can’t alter the main character in any way, some missions are a bit repetitive, and you don’t feel as fully immersed in the world as other games manage to achieve. You can cause a lot of chaos in the city but there doesn’t seem much point. You don’t feel like you’re going to get anything out of it. There are no repercussions. In Grand Theft Auto you can go mental and crash cars into traffic, jump out and blow the resulting pile of automobiles up with a grenade. There would be a satisfying explosion, cars flying everywhere, and dead passers by. You take take all their money and occasionally weapons but at the same time become wanted and the police get called in. If you start shooting them the FBI and army and helicopters and so on turn up. There are advantages and consequences and escalation and thrills. Do this in inFamous and nothing happens except some burnt cars.

Don’t get me wrong. The game is great fun, looks fantastic and plays brilliantly. There’s no need to become the insane overly violent psychopath I tend to become in games like this. You will very probably love it. Just not for long. You will play the game as good, then as bad, then you’re done. The story doesn’t vary that much for each karmic state – just enough to warrant two play throughs. You will finish after your two 10 hour sessions and think “That was fun, what next?”

InFamous is recommended, great fun, good-looking, has an intriguing story, is stylish and definitely worth a go. It’s just a bit shallow.

KILLZONE 2

Let me begin…

Killzone 2 is fucking brilliant. Sorry if this sounds like a summary and you need not read further, but it really is. It is like lots of First Person Shooters but it just does everything so well, it sets itself apart. Read on to see specifically why this is the case. Or just trust me and go and buy it now. Actually, read this first – it may not be for you if this isn’t your cup or tea. Because you’re mental or hate fun or something.

It’s starts off in the mother ship and you are introduced to yourself as Sevchenko or ‘Sev’, a double hard Sergeant in the ISA Special Forces Alpha. You are then transported to the planet Helghast where the shit is really hitting the proverbial fan. You and your squad then proceed to blow the living crap out of everyone you come across. There is a bit more story than this, with some great baddies but the plot isn’t really up to much. Good guys vs psycho bad guys. It doesn’t really matter all that much as the game is so damned exciting you don’t really notice.

You are definitely the good guys. There is little doubt in that. You play on the side that are clearly the American forces of the future. So cue bad tactical planning, friendly fire, and cries of “Kick Ass!” as you charge forward with guns a-blazing and then the bafflement that it’s all gone tits up. The Helghast are a cross between Nazi’s, communists, and nutter fanatics. Their leader Scolar Visari is the first person you see as he gives a Hitleresque rant about how his forces will slaughter the ISA and blood will run in the streets and so on. Also like the Nazis, the Helghast have the better outfits. Just to give you an idea of how cool the enemy is, here’s an example: there is one particular type of enemy trooper you come across who is huge and carries a colossal machine gun. You are informed when you first come across one of these behemoths that it just took out an entire squad. You are also told in a loading screen that these are guys who are sealed in a massive powered suit of bulletproof armor, given a huge gun, are then fed aggressive psychotropic mind-altering drugs, and are then sent out against the enemies while constant propaganda is piped into their ears. Which is pretty cool.

Here’s the fellow:

Drugged-up Mega-Machine-Gun Man

Graphically, the game is gorgeous. Full of detail. Helghast is a shithole – like a giant run-down oil refinery in an especially shitty reddish desert. Think Planet Harkonnen from Dune but without the colourful characters. It is wind-swept and industrial and bleak. The lighting and sounds and music complement the whole effect and this in turn heightens and differentiates the various settings (spaceship, palace, etc). Most of the action takes place on the planet however and it almost feels like a real place. The details are superb and lifelike.  Occasionally you are at some gun turrets or in a walking upright tank thing (like in Aliens but with guns) and as the machine gets hit, more and more cracks appear in the wind-shield. The graphics are extraordinary and one of the best on the PS3.

Now for main bit. What’s it like to play? I played this straight after playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Which is also a corker of game, by the way. In that game your character is quick (especially when you are SAS), and as you storm a enemy strongpoint your gun snaps from one bad guy to the next. In Killzone 2, it felt a bit sluggish at first. The guns were heavy and it takes longer to turn and when you jump you just feel a bit slower, as if you have more mass. I then started to get into it and realised that this was a joy. It was just different. You are carrying a heavy load and the guns are bigger and heavier. It then became insane fun.

There are several huge set pieces where you are fighting not just with your squad but with whole divisions. The big guns are rarely sci-fi, just heavy bastard firing machines that are brilliant to shoot with. Chucking grenades can be annoying in some games, but again they got it right. There are just enough guns to keep you interested and the tasks are just varied enough to alleviate any chance of boredom. The AI on both sides is incredibly high and they are rarely passive. Enemy soldiers will hide behind cover until they think you have stopped shooting before popping their heads out somewhere new. They will scatter when you chuck a grenade, which can be frustrating but at least it’s realistic. You have to use grenades intelligently instead – throwing them where several Helghast are hidden behind cover and then you and your squad can shoot them as they run out. Unfortunately they do the same to you. If you hide in one spot for too long you will get flanked, so you have to be alert.

You are in serious trouble

The solo play took me about ten hours to complete, which is pretty respectable and as my heart was pounding for most of it, quite a relief. I then thought I’d give online a go. As I stated before, I had been playing COD 4 before this and there the online game felt difficult. I was always at the bottom of the kill list. Somehow, in Killzone2 I fared a lot better. Maybe it is because the game is newer and you don’t get 90% of players being hardened professionals who have spend 1000s of hours on it. Both games keep the multiplayer interesting by allowing you to level up and proceed through the ranks to general. On the way you win medals for achievements like killing the most people or taking out three guys with one grenade. These medals in Killzone are separate from the ranking system and immensely pleasurable to receive. Also, as you rise you get new weapons, abilities, even new classes. As you get promoted you are only placed in battles with other players of the same rank, so you never feel it is a bit unfair when, (as has happened in other games) you get shat on by players who are generals with better armour and more powerful guns.

The maps are also well designed and balanced. With up to thirty two players in each one, they always feel right and as they are multi-layered you have to think in several dimensions or an enemy will just drop a grenade on your head. In addition to all this you get the usual multiplayer options of capture the flag and body count and so on. But here they can be played one after the other in the same game. It adds a lot more fun than I thought it would have at first as each team competes to win each section and are awarded points accordingly. You also feel like you are working together a lot more in multiplayer than other games I have played. In one section a single player is picked as an assassination target and their position is broadcast to all the 31 other players. I was picked once and I found a relatively secure room and felt genuinely nervous as my teammates all ran to my location and stood guard as the enemy converged on us. As they neared I saw my team get slowly picked off, and as the gunfire got nearer I genuinely got alarmed. Eventually both squads guarding each door exploded in blood and the enemy appeared and I was shot. A lot. Plus blown up with grenades. It was fun though. I am completely addicted to multiplayer now and that is a first for me.

I love First Person Shooters and play a lot of them. It sometimes worries my wife. Killzone 2 doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the genre but it does everything right. It is unbelievably good fun and if the plot is a bit second rate – who cares? You will barely remember it. The game rarely lets up and you will move from one massive set piece to the next in a frenzy of killing joy. The multiplayer is superb and you will spend a lot longer on it than the solo game, so it’s well worth your money. There are so many more elements to it than can be listed in a review, so my advise is to just buy it. If you like epic battles and big guns you will love it. I will see you online.

Check out the online play in awe!

(Thanks to gamespot for the photos.)

FALLOUT 3

This game starts with your birth. Literally. You are pulled out of your mother and see the doctor and your dad – who happens to be Liam Neason (the voice anyway). The first section then follows you as you grow up, make friends and choose a career and so on. It sounds drawn out but in fact it doesn’t take too long and really adds to the rest of the game. There has been a nuclear war and by the time you hit adulthood neither you or anyone else has left your underground bunker – Vault 101 – for decades. Then your dad buggers off without even saying goodbye. Things go a bit tits up in the vault and you decide to leave.

By this point you have probably been playing for at least an hour and it genuinely feels strange and exciting the first time you walk out of the Vault and see the open landscape and ruins of Washington DC before you. The area is vast and you can explore it all. You can do this exploration at your leisure and this freedom is one of the principal joys of the game.

The Capitol wasteland

As with such freewheeling games as Grand Theft Auto or Elder Scrolls Oblivion (the latter also by Bethesda), you will most likely spend half your time following the story and the other half exploring. A great deal of thought has gone into how all the various groups of people have survived and you will find communities dotted all over the place. I loved stumbling across some of these. There are normal-seeming villages where you start to suspect that something is wrong the more you chat (cannibals?), an underground group of vampire types, ghoul cities (like zombies but friendly and chatty), virtual reality towns, a mad Russian with hookers, a ‘Mad Max’ type survivalist type town, and shitloads more. Also roaming the landscape are huge green mutants, rapid dogs, humanoid crab-like creatures, punk bandits, and so on.

On top of having your choice on where to go, you can also dramatically change your character development, the way you deal with people (and vice versa), and even the outcome of the game. You can choose attributes – strength, intelligence, etc; perks – speciality skills; even your morality. Your actions also have consequences to yourself, those you meet, communities, the world, and companions you make. The variety and difference between how the game plays out for each player is genuinely vast and satifying.

Graphically the game looks great. By that, I mean the art and design of the landscape and the characters. In particular the armoured characters that feature so heavily in the advertising and pictures like the one at the top of this piece. It is pretty to look at and convincing in a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ kind of way. Nothing special though. There are games with more detail and realistic characters both on PC and other PS3 games. This is forgivable to some extent given the epic size of where you can go. A more linear FPS for example, can afford to pay full attention to the graphical experience.

I should mention the VATS combat system. This allows you to pause the game, select a body part of the chosen victim, and then fire. You then get a brilliant sequence where you follow the bullet as it zooms toward the target before, if you’re lucky, blowing said limb off in a spray of blood. As with all games that have ever featured guns, it is at its best when you get in close and blow the head off. The VATS system is optional by why wouldn’t you use it? It’s fun and slow-mo and gory. It is slightly clunky but the first time you blow a rabid dog to pieces, you realise you don’t care.

Fallout 3 is fun but not flawless. There are some great set pieces where you join together with others to blow the crap out of some mutated behemoth or other. There should have been more of this. The combat is cool but can sometimes lead to weird camera angles. The story is actually quite satisfying but I accidently finished it before exploring several large chunks of the map. This latter fault can be rectified by either replaying it or downloading one of the newer add-on adventures that are available. Mostly though I was saddened by the fact that I got a dog called Dogmeat that I really grew quite attatched to. I then got kidnapped and lost him. He is now wandering around a fictional game on his own. Poor Dogmeat. Maybe I got too involved.

Where are you Dogmeat?

I enjoyed Fallout 3 and if I didn’t have other games to play would be still exploring now. If you like First Person Shooters or RPGs you will probably like it too.