On The Way: Dynasty Warriors Gundam

Is it just me, or does Dynasty Warriors: Gundam sound like the greatest idea in the history of gaming, ever? It's like some kind of horrible curse that game developers keep creating reasons for me to buy an XBox 360. Damn you, game developers! Damn your eyes!

A Tale of Souls and Swords

My favourite fighting franchise makes its way to the next generation.

Someone must have felt that Ivy's wardrobe was too restrained last time around, because that's some totally ludicrous fashion that she's almost wearing. In any other case I'd suggest that it was a bit silly, but this is Soulcalibur, the franchise which can do no wrong. Dagnabbit, it looks like I'm going to have to buy a next-gen system that's not the Wii. By which I mean, of course, an XBox 360.

Stupid Feed

I've just realised that when I update old posts to fix their tags, Blogger re-publishes them to my Atom feed. If you read The Dust Forms Words via a feed, you should know that the last post before this one should have been The Sic-Bo Problem.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Can I turn off my feed prior to editing and turn it back on, or does that cause even bigger problems?

The Sic-Bo Problem

So here's a puzzle:

Last night we went to the Melbourne Crown Casino, which is a labyrinth of neon madness the likes of which mankind was not meant to comprehend.

In the midst of the roulette, blackjack, pontoon and far-too-many poker machines, there is a little game that the Crown likes to call "Sic-Bo". The rules of Sic-Bo are simple - three six-sided dice are rolled, and you bet on what the result will be.

There are all sorts of complex bets you can make, but relevantly to our problem the bottom area of the betting table allows you to bet on the results of single dice. The numbers one through six are shown, and you can place your chips on any of these numbers.

If you bet on a number, and that number appears on any of the dice, the game pays 1 to 1. (That is, your $5 bet wins you a further $5.) If the number comes up on two dice, it pays 2 to 1 ($10 for your $5). And if all three dice show the number you bet on, it pays 12 to 1 ($5 yields $60).

This, I have to say, initially confused us. Those are good odds. I believe the phrase "money farm" was used. As we saw it, this was guaranteed returns, such that everything we knew and understood about casinos was turned upside down.

Here's how our reasoning went. If you place a $5 bet on each and every one of the six numbers, you couldn't lose money. In a case where all three of the dice show different numbers, you'd lose on half the numbers and win 1 to 1 on the others, thereby breaking even. Where you got a double and a single, that was the same total win as singles, so you were even. And on in the 1 in 36 occasions on which triples came up, you pocketed a profit. Rinse and repeat; increase your stake to make the money come in faster. There is no dice result on which the house doesn't pay out; cocked dice results in bets off but no loss to the player.

Using this logic we started doing all sorts of interesting maths that suggested we should immediately quit our jobs and just work the Sic-Bo tables 24/7, happily raking in buckets of cash while the other players looked on in an intoxicating mixture of awe and admiration.

So I have two questions. The first, which we have now solved, is in the case where we bet evenly on all six numbers, how does the house make its money? And the second question, which we haven't finished the numbers on yet, is does it make a difference if you instead just bet continually on a single number?

At Convergence

So I'm at Convergence 2007, and I guess it's a pretty good convention. I mean, I haven't really been to any of the panels, or any of the scheduled programming, but my hotel room is nice. If by nice I mean "carpeted". Because it has carpet.

It's not the fault of the panels. Really, it's me. If I was publishing a book, or, um, publishing a book, then every last panel would be hitting right on target, and it would be like I was in some kind of book-publishing heaven where sweet nectar flows from every faucet. The wish to engage with science fiction on a level beyond "how to write it" is clearly a defect in my personality that can only be cured through the judicious application of electricity.

Non-concession entry at the gate was $260, which it is pleasing to know has funded free alcohol at each of several book launches. There's no gaming stream or media stream or masquerade, but I do have the distinct pleasure of standing around at these launches and picturing how much fun I would be having if I enjoyed champagne. In my mind I'm drinking champagne while surrounded by fine ladies and dancing a saucy jig. Yes sir, it sure is a noteworthy jig.

It turns out that bringing my DS was a good plan. (That's the only system I brought; as always, VG Cats turns out to be topical in this regard.) Getting to the Hard Rock difficulty in Elite Beat Agents unlocks not only the Elite Beat Divas but also this character who has the head of a cat, which I've been deploying in multiplayer to pwn fellow Elite Beaters right in the face. Good times.

Tonight I'm off to the Crown Casino in company. I'm making tentative enquiries as to exactly how much money one has to spend at the roulette table to unlock bonus content or at least some kind of Pokemon but as yet replies are slow in forthcoming.

Regular gaming related bloggings will resume once I'm off this merry-go-round of gambling and sub-par convention programming. Keep your RSS readers tuned for further details.

Little Birdy Live At The Venue

I just saw Little Birdy tonight live at The Venue, Erindale. Absolutely fantastic. They opened with After Dark (video below) which was totally made to be performed live (vastly better than the clip), and followed through with most every song from the Hollywood album plus some of their earlier stuff.



Support act Utility were incredible and worth the price of admission all by themselves (especially the drummer). They have a rather dodgy Myspace page, for those interested, which features all the things you despise Myspace for, including auto-loading music. Praise them for their art and forgive them for their near-terminal netiquette-illiteracy.

There was another support act, Gilf, whose pub-rock stylings didn't greatly enthuse me, but my escort for the night was impressed enough to buy an album. Go figure.

Custom Robo Arena Post-Mortem

As juvenile as it seems, consistently replacing the words "custom robo" with "penis" really does make Custom Robo Arena a better game.

In the world of Custom Robo Arena, "custom robos" are a big thing. They're odd-looking and they fit in your pocket, although they get larger when called into action. Anyone who's anyone has one, and those without are really nothing more than second class citizens suitable only for cooking and the raising of children.

Luckily, the sullen red-headed stepchild that you'll be playing is part of the custom robo crowd. Havingly only just hit puberty, you haven't been operating your custom robo for long, but it turns out that you're preternaturally good at swinging your custom robo up and down virtually any holosseum you care to name. It's no surprise that on your first day at a new school you quickly makes friends with the first people you'll meet - a boy named Daniel and a girl named Liv.

Daniel suffers from something of an insecurity complex and is disproportionately impressed by your custom-robo-related prowess. He has a custom robo of his own, of course, but he's not particularly good with it, and in any case yours is larger and capable of tricky maneuvers. Liv, being a girl, does not have a custom robo, but it turns out she's full of useful suggestions for how you can use yours.

Before long you'll be deploying your custom robo in a range of unlikely situations, ranging from winning local tournaments to fighting evil crime syndicates. You'll be constantly plied with custom robo advice from authority figures such as your dad, your friends, and discarded adult reading material. Even the local teacher lends a hand, despite being regularly reprimanded by his wife for playing with his custom robo in front of the schoolchildren.

Using your custom robo is a pretty repetitive process; one custom robo engagement is much like another. Luckily the basic gameplay is fairly enjoyable and any given scenario normally ends with a satisfying finish. It probably won't take you long, though, to get tired of the game's one-track mind. Most any problem in the game can ultimately be solved with a prolonged session of custom robo waggling.

Between matches it's important to keep your custom robo clean and shiny. The game will provide you with a polishing cloth for just this purpose, which you can apply using the DS touch screen. If you don't regularly give your custom robo a good rub-down, you'll find that its battle readiness will quickly decrease, leading to sub-optimal performance and premature weapon misfires.

You can buy a large variety of customisations and accessories for your custom robo, but there's not much incentive to get any of them, because your custom robo works just fine straight out of the packaging. When it comes down to a custom-robo face off, it really isn't what you have equipped, but how you use it.

Between the unchanging gameplay and the lack of incentive to upgrade, you'll probably get quickly tired of the casual custom robo scene. That's when it's time to start moving in new social circles, and luckily if there's one thing the internet was made for, it's servicing your custom robo. A quick trip into cyberspace through the magic of Nintendo Wi-Fi will quickly connect you to a worldwide network of custom-robo enthusiasts, all of whom are eager to see what you're made of. Real life partners are significantly more exciting than computer generated ones, and it's here that you'll really get to demonstrate just what you can do with your custom robo.

Ultimately, Custom Robo Arena is quite obviously trying to be Pokemon-with-guns, but despite translating Pokemon's turn-based action into a real-time format, it never really succeeds in capturing any of the charm or addictiveness of its inspiration. There are many, many better DS games available, so if you're going to buy this, you'd better really, really love your custom robo.

Convergence 2007, Melbourne

By the way, I'll be part of the non-writer's-guild Canberra posse attending this year's national science fiction convention in Melbourne this coming weekend. I fly in Friday early afternoon and leave late Monday, and I'm staying at the Rydges for the intervening period. Guests include Megatokyo's Fred Gallagher, writer Isobel Carmody, and... well, me. (Note: I am not an officially sanctioned guest. Possibly because the organisers thought they couldn't get me.)

It's all taking place over the Greg's Birthday Long Weekend, a public holiday which I happen to share with Her Majesty the Queen. Celebrations will occur at some point on the weekend, likely accompanied by alcohol.

If you're also attending, drop me a comment.

Eledees Post-Mortem

If you've played Wii Sports, you've mastered Zelda, you're done with Excite Truck, and you're looking for something new to show off the potential of the Wii, then Eledees is DEFINITELY for you.

Eledees (known as Elebits in the US) is a game I got to see demonstrated at last year's Tokyo Game Show. I watched the Konami booth girls using the Wii remote to fling around heavy furniture, construction machinery, and the occasional house, and then went home to tell all and sundry how I'd just seen "Katamari with guns".

And I wasn't far wrong. Eledees takes most of the gameplay elements that worked so well in Katamari Damacy and its sequels and puts them into the context of a light-gun game. Some unfortunate design decisions and a lack of last-minute polish mean that it's ultimately not as good as any of the Katamari games, but as a novel and tactile use of the Wii control system it's definitely worth your time and money.

Eledees, for those not aware, are the nun-punchingly cute critters that live inside our electrical devices and make them work. Arriving on Earth from some kind of space-lightning-meteor many moons ago, Eledees have lived in harmony with humans for lo these many years. Unfortunately, something terribly vague has now happened, causing Eledees to strike en mass and hide under your couches, wardrobes and fine china instead of generating power like the subordinate slave race that they are.

It's (apparently) up to one exceptionally whiny kid named Kai to whip the no-good Eledees back into line with the aid of a trusty Capture Gun pilfered from his science-loving parents. The Capture Gun works a lot like the gravity gun from Half-Life 2, in that you'll be using it to pick up, rotate, shake, and otherwise zap the bejeezus out of absolutely anything that isn't nailed down (and some things that are).

Each stage is set within a fairly familiar domestic environment, starting with Kai's bedroom and ultimately working into the backyard, the city streets, and eventually a fairly over-the-top amusement park. You're given a time limit and tasked with capturing the heck out of the sundry Eledees hiding in the vicinity. Some Eledees are right there in plain sight, sound asleep and snoring gently, and you can zap 'em right there and then with your capture gun to add them to your collection. The majority, though, are hiding under or inside nearby items, so you'll be using your gun to pick up objects, shake them down for spare change, and eventually flick them out of your way with fairly explosive force.

Eledees come basically in two flavours. Some Eledees give you raw wattage when captured. Wattage counts towards the point total that you need to clear the level, so it's pretty valuable. Also, when your wattage reaches certain levels, items in the vicinity will power up, starting with the area's overhead lighting, and then moving on to things like microwaves, televisions and lawnmowers. You can switch on these powered items to trigger a flood of extra Eledees, which you'll want to quickly round up to add to your pool.

The other sort of Eledees will give you gun power. Your gun starts out at a pretty pathetic power quota each stage, but as you suck up power Eledees it levels up, giving you the ability to pick up progressively heavier items. Where at first you'll be straining to lift pizza boxes, it won't be long before you're shifting pianos, flipping bulldozers, and ultimately mucking about with the orbit of the moon.

The controls are mapped to a combination of the Wiimote and the nunchuk. You'll use the Wiimote like a light gun, hitting either button A or B to unleash your lightning-like capture stream. Zapping Eledees will add them to your captured collection, while hitting a movable object will lock the beam to the object. You can continue holding down A or B once you've locked onto an object to use the Wiimote to move the object around.

The Nunchuk uses the directional stick to facilitate your movement - up and down are forward and back, and left and right strafe. You can turn by aiming the Wiimote at the edges of the screen, which (by the way) works vastly better here than it ever did in Red Steel, although you'll still have some flaky moments. The nunchuk "shoulder buttons" let you crouch low to go toe-to-toe with ground-based Eledees, or stretch up to see over barriers and into drawers.

The basic gameplay of Eledees is fantastically good. Shooting Eledees and throwing around giant objects are visceral and rewarding experiences, and you'll be wanting more of both long after you've finished the game's 30 levels. Unfortunatley, Eledees throws some complications into the mix which work against many of its strong points.

For starters, some missions will arbitrarily challenge you to complete missions "quietly" or "without breaking things". These really amount to the same sort of gameplay - it means don't throw things around. Instead of cutting loose like some sort of gravity-gun-equipped-bull in a china shop, you'll have to gently lift items and then set them back into place. Luckily there aren't too many missions like this, because not only does it take the fun out of the best parts of the game design, but it's also ill suited to the controls.

Picking things up and throwing them around is easy, but you can also (in theory) rotate things by twisting the Wiimote left or right. In practice, you can really only turn things about forty degrees each way, because that's about as far as your wrist will go before your bones snap. As you have to pick things up in order to rotate them, and then put them down to allow your wrist to return to its normal position, rotating things in practice doesn't really work. It's fine for situations where the game asks you to turn doorknobs and taps, but when you need to turn a bin upside down to shake Eledees out it's just a pain.

Also, when you lock onto an object, the object will always remain as far away from you as it was when you zapped it, meaning if you want to bring an object closer to you you'll either have to back up, put it down, and walk forward again, or engage in some haphazard item-juggling with the Wiimote. The game blithely ignores this limitation by regularly tasking you to put one item inside another, or on top of another, or otherwise do something made difficult by the imprecise controls. When you hit the late-game level made almost entirely of these annoying puzzles you'll probably have a "Hulk smash" moment and end up just ripping the scenery apart with your grossly overpowered capture gun. What makes it doubly annoying is that it would have been very easy to set the D-pad on the Wiimote to allow you to draw in and push out captured objects.

The game ships with both a multiplayer mode and a level editor, which both seem initially promising but don't really pan out. The multiplayer mode lets up to four players share the same screen while competing to capture Eledees, but only Player 1 will get to control the camera angle and movement so it's not really a particularly fair fight. After a brief taste you'll probably wish that the possibilities of a split screen mode had been more thoroughly explored.

The level editor lets you play with a reasonably large number of objects, save levels, and share them with friends via WiiConnect, but ultimately the interface is fairly poor, and in any case the levels already included in the game are deep enough that you're unlikely to feel the need for additional challenges.

And the levels are deep - there's a staggering amount of different objects to toss around, about a zillion Eledees to find and capture, and a good number of bonus goals and objectives to complete, from finishing the occasionally devilishly hard Challenge missions to finding the three Pink Eledees hiding in each level.

Between levels you're shown what the developers laughingly refer to as a "story", involving Kai's quest to hunt the Eledees. The European release (redubbed to use the word Eledees instead of the US Elebits) features voice acting so awful that it will make you long for the masterful artistic talent of mid-80s anime dubs. Kai's voice in particular grates like nails on a chalkboard. The best bet is to skip these hideous outings and dive right into the gameplay.

Overall, Eledees is not without its faults (of which there are many), but as far as shooting-gallery-gravity-gun-sandbox games go, it's the clear leader in a field of one. It's a fantastic use of the potential of the Wii control system, and it's the sort of game that will leave all your friends wanting to have a go. As Wii releases continue to be more or less average for the foreseeable future, there's no good excuse to buy anything else for the system until you own this.

On The Way: Blue Charlie

I'm still working on writing up Blue Charlie into some sort of replicable format, but in the mean time here's a hastily improvised trailer to keep your appetite sharp.

On The Way: Pattern Recognition

Somehow until now I've managed to miss the news that a cinema adaptation of Pattern Recognition is on the way. Based on William Gibson's novel about mysterious film footage on the internet. To be directed by Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dead Poet's Society, The Truman Show) with a screenplay by David Arata (Brokedown Palace, Children of Men) - which is already a far better creative team than I'd generally expect to be attached to something like this.

Looks promising.

10 Underappreciated Games

Doing my post-mortem of Obscure yesterday has got me thinking. It's a game that got receptions from review sites that ranged from lukewarm to downright insulting, and yet it's without a doubt thoroughly unique in both its genre (teen horror) and gameplay (co-op survival horror). It escapes me why such a competent and memorable game hasn't picked up a cult audience. Certainly developer Hydravision has faith in the brand as a sequel is now on the way.

So in the spirit of games which deserve more attention, I'm happy to bring you 10 underappreciated games which you can play on consoles you own today.

1) Sprung (Nintendo DS)
In the rash of DS launch games, somehow the world failed to notice Sprung, a dating game from the studios of Ubisoft. Rather than treading the path of Japanese hentai games, with cheap vicarious thrills motivating the player to slug through repetetive gameplay, Sprung instead opts for an engaging character-driven art style and genuinely witty dialogue. The majority of gameplay consists of working your way through branching conversation trees reminiscent of The Secret of Monkey Island in an attempt to accomplish a variety of goals, most of which are tangentially related to dating. Although packed with adult references, the game stays tasteful and non-explicit and is a genuine joy even for those not normally inclined to the genre.

2) Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) (PlayStation 2)
I can't talk enough about how good Fahrenheit is, and yet it seems barely anyone has played it. No other game has blended narrative, gameplay and cinematic direction as seamlessly as Fahrenheit, and although the plot takes something of a left turn near the end it still stands out as one of the most memorable games you're ever likely to play. You still have time to get in on the ground floor before developer Quantic Dream releases their follow-up, Heavy Rain, on the PS3.

3) Azure Dreams (PlayStation)
Don't confuse the PlayStation version of Azure Dreams with its inferior GameBoy port. Konami mixes the best elements of Rogue, Pokemon and Harvest Moon in this fantastic RPG. Trawl through a massive randomly generated tower full of monsters and mayhem, seeking out monster eggs which hatch into minions who'll fight for you and level up, and then use the treasure you'll find to expand your home town, decorate your house, and woo the fine ladies you'll encounter. Fanastically addictive and unfortunately all too hard to find copies of. If you see one in a PAL format I'll pay you good money.

4) DefJam: Fight for NY (PlayStation 2)
Don't be put off by the DefJam branding; this is a solid and unique wrestling-slash-brawling game. The mechanics behind the satisfyingly brutal pitfights are only enhanced by the fact you'll be using a surprisingly large array of real-life hip-hop artists and celebrities to fight them. Trust me, nothing beats throwing Snoop Dogg in front of a subway train, or beating Ice T senseless with a metal pipe. A decent create-a-fighter mode is the icing on the cake.

5) Zone of the Enders (PlayStation 2)
In all the Metal Gear fan-stampede that goes on, it's easy to forget that Hideo Kojima made another series about giant mechs. Zone of the Enders features a tight character-driven plot, an absolutely stellar soundtrack, and more importantly it's one of the few mech-based games ever released which is remotely playable. It's short enough that you can finish it in a single day, but you'll regard that day as exceptionally well spent.

6) Loco Roco (PSP)
I've spoken in depth about Loco Roco previously, but it's worth pointing out again how absolutely unique this little gem is. It doesn't seem to have flown off the shelves with quite the celerity I'd hoped for, so the chances are there's a copy sitting in a bargain bin near you. Do yourself a favour and play what's probably the squishiest platformer ever to come out for a portable system.

7) ActRaiser (Super Nintendo)
It's available on the Virtual Console right now, people - you have no excuse. This is Squaresoft's once and only foray into the madness of crossing hardcore platforming action with a god sim. Trust me that the levels where you play as an arrow-shooting angel watching over the development of a small civilisation more than make up for the absolutely brutal side-scrolling interludes. If you can't hack the difficulty on your Wii, then try it on your PC with an emulator to make the going easier.

8) Clock Tower (PlayStation)
No one has ever claimed the Clock Tower series was perfect. In fact, a number of people have gone to considerable length to convince the world of the exact opposite. But there's no question it's absolutely unique. It's survival horror where you won't find a single weapon - when serial killer Scissorman shows up, the best you can hope for is to hide or to temporarily stun him with such handy nearby objects as fire extinguishers. It's absolutely criminal that this basic concept was never developed into something that reached beyond Clock Tower's small cult following.

9) Star Control 2 (PC)
It's like some sort of demonic injustice that there are still people in this world who haven't played Star Control 2. It somehow fell mostly under the radar when it was originally released, and to this day there are unenlightened cave-dwellers who haven't heard its name. This is possibly the greatest game ever made, and I don't use that phrase lightly. Absolutely first class non-linear plot, fantastic dialogue ranging from side-splittingly funny through to deeply creepy, scads of alien races, dynamic spheres of political influence, real-time 2D ship-to-ship combat, resource management, exploration, and a soundtrack that will make you want to punch people who haven't played the game right in the face. With all sorts of remakes and emulations floating around on the net, if you can't be bothered to go and play Star Control 2 right this minute then you, sir, are worse than Hitler.

10) ToeJam and Earl (Sega Megadrive/Genesis)
Another Virtual Console option, if you fire up ToeJam and Earl on your Wii I think you'll find it's one of the cleverest two-player co-operative games ever envisioned. Despite (or perhaps because of) its garishly loud graphics, it creates the perfect mix of cooperation and competition as two aliens attempt to reconstruct their damaged space ship and escape this crazy planet called "Earth". Isometric exploration-based gameplay has never looked so good.

And lastly I'm giving the honourable mention to Metal Gear Ghost Babel for the GameBoy Colour, also known as just Metal Gear. Though not really something you can play on a current generation system, it's just a terrible shame that this game was dismissed as an inferior port of the Metal Gear Solid titles. Packing in all of the deep plot, memorable boss fights, and surprise twists that made the PlayStation titles stand out, it manages to render an exciting and engaging Metal Gear experience on a portable platform, which I hasten to add is something that Metal Gear Acid never managed to achieve.

Robbie The Rabbit in Eledees

I'm about halfway through Eledees for the Wii (Elebits in the United States), and I'm amused to note that in what is otherwise an aggressively child-oriented title, Konami has seen fit to throw in a brief visual reference to Silent Hill. In the process of exploring Eledees, the player encounters an amusement park. Displayed prominently on statues and park maps is none other than Robbie the Rabbit, the terrifying creepy mascot of the Lakeside Amusement Park who appears in Silent Hill 3 and 4. In Silent Hill he's first encountered drenched in what appears to be blood. In Eledees he's shown holding a delicious hot dog, and the descriptive text reads, "He loves ketchup. (That's not blood.)".

Awesome.

Obscure Post-Mortem

Obscure is a game that lives up to its title. Developed by French studio Hydravision in 2004 and released in the Euro-Australian market long before it made its way to the US, the game never really made much of a splash. Which is a shame, because if you're into old-school survival horror, Obscure serves up a unique, if derivative, experience.

Obscure's really like a trip back in time to late 90s teen horror flicks. The first character you control meets a hideous fate before the opening credits roll, and then you'll find yourself leading a group of teens out to investigate their missing schoolmate. You'll end up traipsing the length and breadth of an American high school while simultaneously fighting off waves of darkness-spewing plant mutants.

Your team of groovy mystery solvers starts out with just three members, but you'll soon pick up some friends to round out the posse to an even five. Each character has a special ability, although none of the abilities are ever absolutely necessary. Stan, for example, can pick locks quickly and without needing to use the length of wire that everyone else requires. Shannon can advise you of where you'll need to go next to progress, while Kenny can run a little faster than anyone else. You can play as any character in your party, and you can take a second character with you as backup. The remainder of your group remain at a central "meeting point", which you can return to in order to swap people in and out of your expeditionary party.

It would be polite to say that Obscure references Robert Rodriguez's 1998 sci-fi teen horror romp The Faculty, but it would be more accurate to say that it steals from it wholesale. Entire level designs are taken straight from the film, along with large chunks of the plot, and the character model for Stan looks so much like actor Josh Hartnett that you'll be surprised to hear someone else's voice reading his lines. What it doesn't take from The Faculty it draws from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including a very familiar school courtyard and foyer, and a principal who bears an uncanny resemblance in appearance and character to Armin Shimmerman's portrayal of Principal Snyder.

The single player action isn't particularly inspiring. The game borrows gameplay elements from Resident Evil and Silent Hill, without really surpassing either of those classic franchises. You'll be moving through the interiors of school buildings, gathering ammunition and health items, duking it out with nasty critters, and solving simple puzzles. The two main innovations come from the use of light, and the second character.

It seems the monsters in Obscure are mutants created from a rare light-hating plant. Seeing as ammunition is brutally scarce even on the easiest difficulty, you'll be doing everything you can to pour light onto your enemies before finishing them up with a well placed bullet. Early on in the game, while the sun's still up, this involves smashing in windows to let the evening sunlight pour into classrooms. Some particularly tense scenes involve you working your way around the outside of rooms, near the windows, avoiding nasties waiting in the room's centre. Later, once the sun goes down, things become more problematic, but luckily the game lets you acquire flashlights, which can be sticky-taped to the barrels of your firearms.

The real genius, though, comes from the second character. In a single player game, your ally will support you with firepower, lighting, and the occasional bit of advice. You can switch between your active characters on the fly at the press of a button, and the two characters can even use healing items on each other to create healing support during combat.

But if you have a second controller sitting around, the game really begins to shine. Drop-in drop-out co-operative gameplay means that a friend can take control of that second character and turn an otherwise average survival horror-game into a fairly strategic social experience. The second player adds a whole new element to the game, allowing you to lay down covering fire, have one person providing light while another explores, or just have someone watch your back while you're working on a particularly tricky puzzle or door lock.

As far as I'm aware Obscure is the only modern survival horror featuring two-player co-op on a single console, and it's an absolutely fantastic idea. Everyone knows that horror movies are better when watched with friends, so why have we been consigned to playing survival horror alone?

The graphics are largely adequate to the job, although not special. The game makes extensive use of darkness, to the point where it occasionally becomes difficult to find your way around simple environments. Luckily a quick brightness adjustment on your TV will fix the problem.

The sound effects for monsters, weapons and suchlike are unexceptional, but the game makes fantastic use of ambient sounds including distant screams and breaking windows to suggest terrifying mayhem in progress just out of sight.

The music is even better than the ambient sound. In fact, it's absolutely fantastic. Opening music by Sum 41 and closing music by Span set up the teen-horror atmosphere, and the in-game themes feature rousing orchestral instrumentals and the creepy tones of a children's choir. You'll frequently want to stop and just bathe in how awesome the soundtrack is.

Is Obscure scary? Not in the same way as Silent Hill. The game makes use of very few scripted sequences, instead relying largely on the game's inherent difficulty and atmosphere to keep you on the edge of your seat. It's effective, but if you're looking for cat-in-the-locker or haunted-funhouse sequences you might be disappointed.

Arkem and I slogged through the easy mode beginning-to-end last night in about five hours, so it's not a particularly long game. There's a New Game Plus-type option which gives you access to new costumes and weapons, but none of that is very enticing. Even easy mode is pretty unforgiving, though - we did a lot of saving and loading - and normal might be a challenge for even survival horror veterans. When your characters die, they stay dead, and the game just teleports you back to the meeting place for you to continue on with whatever surviving teenagers you have left. There's also one bitterly stupid sequence involving a collapsing floor that can take several reloads if you're unlucky, but it's thankfully quite brief.

If you enjoy the survival horror genre, you should absolutely grab a friend check out Obscure, if only via rental, as a pleasant change from the genre kings. Or at least to tide you over until Silent Hill Origins finally makes its way onto store shelves.

Halo 2 - Install First Impressions

I have my copy of Halo 2 for Vista, and immediately upon inserting the disc in the drive Microsoft's master plan for PC gaming becomes clear.

First up, there's Live. Halo 2 comes with a free 1 month Gold trial of the Live service that XBox users are already familiar with. This means you can access Live through your PC, and (I assume) play Halo 2 against Xbox or 360 owners.

You get the full Live experience - and by that I mean that Achievements, previously an XBox specific feature, are fully available for the Vista release of Halo 2. You can rack up your 1000 points for the game via its PC release. I haven't had a chance to test it yet but it looks like Live is fully interoperable between the XBox and the PC, letting you use the same account et cetera.

More impressive still is the option that appears as soon as you jam the Halo 2 disc into your drive: "Play Halo 2". That's right - not "Install Halo 2" - just "Play". Apparently it installs in the background while you start playing.

Sneaky old Microsoft - while they've been busy making consoles look more like PCs, they've also been putting in the work to make PCs look more like consoles. I'm impressed, and hopeful for what this kind of approach will mean for future PC releases.

Next Generation Is Portable

A lot of the time when I talk to game geeks these days, the debate is still whether the next-generation console of choice is the PlayStation 3 or the XBox 360. The answer, of course, is neither: it's the Nintendo DS. The debate has moved past them. The next generation is portable.
I refer you to the latest worldwide sales figures via VGChartz.

(EDIT: I originally for some reason put a dollar sign before these numbers; they should represent units sold and I have now correccted accordingly.)

Total units of console sold worldwide:
Microsoft XBox 360: 9.71 million
Nintendo Wii: 7.09 million
Sony PlayStation 3: 3.31 million

Nintendo DS: 42.50 million
Sony PSP: 21.33 million

Breaking that down in consoles first of all, the Wii has sold about two thirds as many units as the 360 in a third of the time, and outsold the PS3 better than two to one over the same period.

Looking at the portables, admittedly the DS has been out a year longer than even the 360, but if we assume growth for the 360 over the next year consistent with its showing to date, then the DS is outselling the 360 nearly four units to one. Bear in mind that the last generation winner (by sales if not profit), the PS2, has sold only 117 million worldwide over its entire lifespan. The DS is significantly outselling the PS2 over the same period since launch.

The real significance of this is attach rates. For those who aren't familiar with this term, it works like this. When a game is released for a system, the audience isn't an absolute figure, because not everyone who might potentially want to play the game owns the relevant console. Rather, it's expressed as a percentage of the total ownership of the console the game is released on. A good game might sell to 10% of owners of the relevant console; a bad game might only reach 1% or less.

It doesn't take a lot of maths to see that 1% of the 42.5 million DS owners (425,000) is a larger number than 10% of the 3.31 million PS3 owners (330,100). That is, it's more economically viable to release even a mediocre game for the DS than it is to produce a triple-A title for the PS3.

So why would anyone be developing for home consoles? When the leading attach rate goes to a portable system, where coincidentally development costs must also be significantly lower, you can expect to see more and more triple-A franchises jumping ship to portable waters. Dragon Quest IX is only the beginning. With so far only around 4% of PS2 owners making the jump to the PS3, sales figures for Final Fantasy XIII aren't going to be anywhere near as impressive as the staggering numbers for earlier titles, and it's my prediction that you're going to see DS iterations of the series taking the lead over next holiday season.

Lumbered with increasingly irrelevant and poorly supported hardware, console gamers are about to find out they have more in common with PC gamers than they think.

StarCraft II

Just thought I'd be the five millionth fanboy on the web to draw your attention to StarCraft II.

Playing Update

As astute Dustbunnies may have guessed, I'm currently working my way through Okami. It was giving me the feeling of a calligraphy-based Legend of Zelda, but with only overworld and no dungeons, which I thought was a vast improvement, until last night I encountered the first dungeon. Shame that. It's still an excellent game, though.

On the PC I'm delving into Command & Conquer 3, which has indeed managed to recapture everything that was good about the original C&C while placing the game firmly among modern RTS conventions. It doesn't seem to do much to advance the genre, though.

The cartridge in my DS is Custom Robo Arena, but I'm not playing it much. Every time I fire it up I just end up wishing I was playing Pokemon instead. Maybe it will grow on me when I get further in.

Also I'm slogging my way in spurts through ActRaiser on the Wii Virtual Console, playing a fair bit of multiplayer Mario Kart 64, and working on and off at the original Guitar Hero. I'm still stuck at Cowboys From Hell on Expert.

Five Licenses That Need To Be Turned Into Videogames

If there's one thing that the gaming world needs, it's more games based on licenses. It just makes sense - even when you make a very good game, it's logical that it would have been better if it had also been based on a comic book, movie, or TV show.

For instance Danger Girl. Or South Park. Or, um, Pimp My Ride. Artistic gems, every one.

So clearly as the keen-minded futurist I am, it's my civic duty to trawl the oceans of our shared cultural heritage for unharvested intellectual property to fuel the games of tomorrow. For your ease of reference, I've compiled a quick list of the five game licenses that absolutely need to happen.

1) Barbarella
Your mission, Barbarella: find Durand Durand!
Humanity's future is in danger... and only Barbarella can save the day! UNLEASH a huge array of questionable fashion choices! CASUALLY STROLL your way through implausible locales ripped straight from the hit film! Go head to head with evil scientist Durand Durand in RAMPAGING Orgasmatron battle sequences! Finally you can bring Barbarella home - in this brand new hit videogame!

2) James Joyce's Ulysses
If you liked The Da Vinci Code, you'll love Ulysses! Can YOU crack James Joyce's unintelligible literary cypher? Take control of TWO rugged heroes along with a host of memorable allies in your quest for a Gorgonzola cheese sandwhich, a backyard to urinate in, and the reconciliation of the history of the English language from Anglo-Saxon times to the modern day. The eighteenth and final level consists of eight massive rooms unmarred by walls, objects, enemies, or goals!

3) A Clockwork Orange
Fancy a bit of the old ultra violence? Then sobirat your britvas and your milk-plus, my droogs, and get ready to drat with a HUGE array of nazzes, millicents and chassos! Sod molodoy ptitsas! A bit of the old in-out, in out! Take jeezny by the yarbles! Get the bolshiest pan-handle as you viddy TWENTY ONE horrorshow levels full of crast, creeches and lubbilub, all to the zvooks of the old Ludwig van! You'll be smecking for sure!

4) Videodrome
At last David Cronenburg's masterpiece comes home to next-generation consoles, and puts YOU in the driver's seat! As Professor Brian O'Blivion, producer of renegade TV channel Videodrome, it's up to you to keep viewers literally glued to their seats by serving up a mind-destroying programme of televised torture, violence and rape! Use the Videodrome Signal to cause long term damage to television addicts! Maximise your converts - and your score - by stringing hallucinations and brain tumours into mind-rocking combos! Long live the new flesh!

5) The Brady Bunch
Forget The Sims! The ultimate blended-family game this holiday season is The Brady Bunch! Basically, it's the story of a lovely lady, who is bringing up three very lovely girls. ALL of them have hair of gold like their mother - the youngest one in CURLS! But the action REALLY starts when we introduce a man... named BRADY... who is bringing up no less than THREE boys of his own. Four men living all together - yet they are all alone... Use a revolutionary new game engine to help this lady meet this fellow! You'll soon know that it's much more than a hunch that this group will somehow form a family - and THAT's how they become The Brady Bunch!

There's no need to applaud my genius. It's just a matter of analysing market trend and seeing the almost inevitable next craze. My only hope is that these games come out for the Wii, because there's not a one of them that wouldn't be even better with motion sensitive controls.

On The Way: Obscure II

Okay, I've got something: news that Obscure II is on the horizon. PS2 survival horror ahoy! As someone who loved the original, I'm intensely pleased that they're keeping up the teen horror movie vibe, the co-op gameplay, and the rampant plagiarism from The Faculty.

Read more via Gamespot. And ignore their somewhat negative coverage. It'll be gold, I tell you! Gold!

In Spoon

Sorry for the lack of material. I'm a little short. On a totally unrelated note, I'm expecting to be able to declare tomorrow that I've finished the original Guitar Hero on Expert, and also that Okami comes from the Land of Awesome where fairies give out warm apple and cinnamon muffins to all and sundry.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for entertainment it seems like an impromptu round of Mornington Crescent might be starting over on The Angriest...

ZWOK!

Via Wonderland:

Anyone for some multiplayer online Worms / Scorched Earth gameplay delivered in the form of a Flash applet with simultaneous turn structure? It's called ZWOK! and for some reason it's by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Check it out here.

Do Not Call Register

Juffles has alerted me to the fact that the National Do Not Call Register for Australia is no longer an urban myth. Go forth, my minions, and make it illegal for telemarketers to call you.

https://www.donotcall.gov.au/

Viewtiful Joe Post-Mortem

I have to say that if you're the sort of individual who likes them their innovative 2D platformers, Viewtiful Joe is a particularly good one.

I'm not that guy.

Two levels in and I'm done. That's about how long it took for me to lose all my lives and discover that I'd have to replay the last twenty minutes or so of the game as punishment. The game was mocking me, so I had the last laugh by putting it back on the shelf forever. Take that, Capcom and Clover Studios.

But look, there's a whole bunch of good in it. The game's set inside a movie, and the visual style comes complete with projector flickers and filmstrip-holes at the top and bottom of the screen. You'll basically proceed from level to level busting up enemies and solving puzzles, within the confines of a fairly inane plot that would probably be better if it wasn't present at all. Controls are responsive, moves are satisfying, and the action is well paced.

The game's gimmick comes in the form of "VFX", which are a set of three powers related to cinematography. First up you get a slow-mo power. Attacks delivered in slow motion do more damage and give your enemy less time to get out of the way. Secondly, there's "mach speed", which is basically a speed up, letting you move faster and deliver attacks more quickly. And lastly you get a zoom in, which makes all your attacks more flashy, with wider hitboxes and interesting effects.

Where the game gets clever is how the powers affect the world. You see, when you use slow-mo, you're not just seeing everything going slower. Everthing is actually going slower. Against your average goons this won't be too noticeable, for if, for example, you're attacking a helicopter, you'll soon realise that it's very hard for a helicopter to stay airborne when its rotor is moving at one tenth of normal speed.

There are some very clever puzzles built around this concept, which are interspersed with the action gameplay in a very pleasing mixture.

On top of all this there's a shop/power up system, where you can exchange tokens collected during levels to buy new moves and stat upgrades. In my brief time with the game these felt pretty much irrelevant except for the life upgrades, but I'm really not in a position to give an accurate estimation of that.

Like I say, if platforming is even remotely your thing, you should really play Viewtiful Joe. It probably gets even better past where I got to. I hear the PS2 version (which I played) has all sorts of cool bonus stuff. Me, though, I'm still hoping I'm going to learn my lesson about platformers this time and stop buying shiny new ones just because they're in the $20 bin.

Trinity

Unless you're one of those too-smart-for-your-own-good bloggers who nobody likes, you've probably been wondering what the coloured icons attached to some of my last posts were. The answer is this:

I have in the past been a contributor to the Round Table of Bloggers, run by Corvus over at Man Bytes Blog. This month, Corvus challenged contributors to choose three of a set of nine Rorschach-like images and write a short passage of prose or verse about what they evoke in the writer. Like any good blogger, I've taken that idea and completely ignored what Corvus intended. Instead I've written no less than three articles on game design inspired in a very loose sense by Corvus' odd little pictures. They are:

Downhill



Hybrid Gameplay



The Player In The Box



Now, having taken the intent of the topic and done a merry tap dance upon its grave, I'm not at this stage sure whether my entry is going to be accepted, but really I wanted to write those articles more than I wanted to be on topic this month, so we can all wait and see with suspended breath what occurs. In the mean time, if you want to check out what else is going down in the Round Table, you can draw strength from the drop down menu included immediately below.

The Player In The Box

The absolute biggest problem, and by that I mean the 100 pound gorilla that cripples your pets and eats all your cereal, involved in writing rules, settings or scenarios for tabletop roleplaying is this: that you can't fit the GM in the box.

Lackluster systems and dry settings can be spun into gold by a talented game master (or dungeon master, if you prefer, or referee, or storyteller). Likewise literary gold can be churned into unusable muck by a bad GM.

You can load a system to favour storytelling. You can give GMing advice in the rulebook. You can shift some component of creative control to the players. But none of these address the fundamental problem that your game is only going to be as good as your GM, and if you're a player who has a bad GM you're out of luck, because you can't pack a good GM in the box.

Screw that. Who wants to be a player anyway?

Now, as someone who runs games more often than he plays them, I am not without a large helping of appreciation for the merits of a good player. A good GM makes a game good; but when you have good players as well, that's when art happens.

But while ideally every game would consist of groups of perfect people sitting down to play perfect games, if I have to short one side of the equation, it's the players. I want good players, but if I can't get them I'd be perfectly happy to settle for something pre-packaged.

So is there a way that we can put the players in the box? If you have an answer, then blog it. I want ideas, and there's a lot of very talented game designers out there. Think laterally. Can an offline solo roleplaying experience be designed which casts the consumer in the role of GM?

Blue Charlie

I recently ran a very successful systemless tabletop RPG called Blue Charlie. It's for one GM and two players, it runs for between 2 and 4 hours, it's set in a future/outer space environment of political suspense and horror, and I can pretty much guarantee you've never played anything much like it. It's been past three groups now with everyone rating it between "very good" and "exceptional". I'm wondering whether there's any interest out there in me writing up the scenario as some sort of text file so it can be recreated elsewhere? I'm mostly moved on to the next thing I want to run now so if I'm going to set anything down about Blue Charlie I'd better do it before I forget the key points.

Tori Amos v Bush

"In order to make her political statement, Amos called on "Isabel," one of the four archetypes she developed for the disc [American Doll Posse]. Each of these archetypes symbolizes a particular side of her musical personality, and each is based on one of the female constituents of the Greek pantheon. Isabel, Amos explained, is a photographer and a reflection of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Clyde, who was inspired by Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, embodies the singer's emotional and idealistic side. There's also Pip, the confrontational "warrior woman" based on Athena, and Santa, the sensual side of the artist, who was inspired by Aphrodite."

MTV News: Tori Amos Forms Anti-Bush Posse By Mutating Into Greek Goddesses

I love this woman, but really, she couldn't be more deeply strange if she tried. Her new album American Doll Posse was apparently released yesterday; will have to trawl music shops for it tomorrow. Here's hoping the tour is coming to Australia.

World's Best Hold Music

In the course of my normal conveyancing work today I was placed on hold with a Canberra law firm. It is with the utmost pleasure and surprise that I report that their hold music was the dungeon-crawling theme from the original Phantasy Star, in all its 8-bit glory. It seems that in the legal arena not only do you have to worry about amended pleadings and answers to interrogatories, but you'll also be going up against the evil Emperor Lassic and the mysterious Dark Force.

Hybrid Gameplay

While the rest of the world wallows in the sty of God of War 2, I’m sloughing my way through the original, and finding that the hype is very much overrated.

The action, it must be said, is superb. God of War takes everything that worked in the Devil May Cry franchise and ratchets it up a fairly meaty notch. Controls are responsive, attacks are spectacular, and enemy executions are blisteringly satisfying.

Where it goes wrong is that it does all this, and then thinks it can be a platformer, too. You’re expected to jump from moving platforms like some kind of rabid monkey, scale vertical walls, rappel along ropes, and tiptoe your way along razor-thin rafters. Mistakes generally result in instant death, and you’ll be doing it all under the view of a camera that changes angles like a schizophrenic Hitchcock. It’s small consolation that some even more intense platforming levels were wisely cut from the game prior to release.

You get used to it. You shrug. Sometimes the fun will stop, and the platforming will begin. This is how life is.

But it’s what turns a potentially perfect game into one which is merely memorable. Hybrid gameplay. The developers wanted their game to be too many things and suffered as a result. After all, what’s an epic Greek adventure without a downfall brought about by hubris?

It makes me wonder whether diluting gameplay purity is perhaps by definition a bad thing. I’m looking at the games I’ve enjoyed the most this year, and there’s no question that they share something in common: Guitar Hero I & II, Ossu Tatake Ouendan, Elite Beat Agents, Excite Truck, Trauma Center, and Disgaea – they all have an unquestionable purity of gameplay. They take a central core concept and iterate it until it bleeds fun. They are definitive. They are archetypal.

There is no question that Disgaea is a turn-based strategy RPG. In fact, there’s no question that it is THE turn-based strategy RPG. It stakes out a space of gaming ground, and it does it better than anyone else. Excite Truck is a game about monster trucks flying through the air, and by golly never have there been more trucks flying through more air.

And that’s what these games do. They don’t need to muck around with minigames, or interludes, or pacing – they just serve up what’s on their stove in steadily increasing quantities until the player has some kind of culinary gaming orgasm.

If you’re making a hardcore action game, why on earth would you waste time on some half-assed platforming when you could be making the slice-and-dice festivities rock just that much harder? If leveling up is your goal, what possible use could there be in fumbling around in the world of dodgy rhythm-based extreme sports? Who wants a wide variety of mediocre instead of a single pinnacle of excellence?

It’s the traditional failing of movie license games, which feel the need to capture every element of a movie experience within a single game. It’s the failing of copycat games, which model themselves after a genre leader with no real ability to exceed the standards laid down by their predecessor. It’s the process by which good software is turned into unappealing crud.

I don’t need your hybrid gameplay. I don’t want my bloody haze of battle to rise while I navigate a platforming puzzle. Leave me to tremble in the ecstasy of non-stop over-the-top violence. I’m sure there must be a game out there like that.

Weren’t we due for another Dynasty Warriors game some time soon?

Downhill

One of the things that's been bothering me in playing Half-Life 2 is this: it's a great game - so why is it always so hard to get motivated to sit down for another session?

And I think the answer is this: that it's never downhill.

It's a matter of game pacing. Sure, it's great knowing that there's a massive challenge ahead of you. It's fantastic walking into a big, empty arena with lots of RPG ammo on the ground and then hearing the whining of approaching enemy helicopters. The moment of, "Oh shit, now things will be hard," is one of the best parts of gaming.

But you know what's also good? The moment when you know from here on in it gets easier. The downhill moment.

Anyone who's ever played a real time strategy knows what I'm talking about. Building up your base is good, repelling the enemy forces is just fine, but what you're really hanging out for is the bit at the end of each level where you steamroll anything standing in your way.

Or if you've played an RPG - the uphill grind through each level pays off when you get that level up and suddenly everything that used to be hard is now comparitively easy.

It's doesn't always have to be challenging. Sometimes it's fun when things are ridiculously easy.

In Half-Life 2, and for that matter Episode One, it's all uphill. It never gets easy. Even at the end of Half-Life 2, when you're wreaking havoc with the upgraded gravity gun, you're still in very real danger of falling to your death or being the victim of a stray explosion. It's never about what you've just accomplished - it's always about what's next.

It's just it would be nice if sometimes the path went downhill.

Ken Kutaragi Retires

Via Gamespot:

Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi is retiring June 19. He'll be fondly remembered as the intelligence behind the incredibly successful Playstation and Playstation 2, and not so fondly remembered as the man who shepherded the PSP and Playstation 3 towards their troubled and lackluster careers. He is to be replaced as CEO by Kazuo Hirai.

Women Persuaded By Direct Gaze

While I'm whipping up a little something-something for this month's Blogs of the Round Table, check out this hidden gem I found in Corvus' bloglines.

Cognitive Daily: If you want to persuade a woman, look straight at her

Some very interesting research in computer augmented negotiation environments, suggesting that women are more likely than men to be persuaded to a point of view by the use of direct gaze, even when the "gaze behaviour was often socially inappropriate". There's some corrollary findings about gender bias in substantive argument assimilation too but I'm not sure that really proves anything and there's probably more focused studies on that elsewhere.

I am, of course, playing the Half-Life 2 milieu at the moment, and direct gaze is something that's used very effectively there to add life to the NPC characters. It's also something that could be particularly powerful as we move further into virtual worlds. Stuff like this and Nick Yee's findings about avatar interrelationships really fascinate me. Anyone who comes across more of it should throw linkage my way. I'm clearly going to have to delve through Cognitive Daily's back catalogue, too.

Lowlife

Further to my earlier post, I'm now somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the way through Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and it seems that most of what I wanted has been granted to me. The first two chapters give you no weapons but the gravity gun, which is a good move. By taking away your ability to shoot enemies, it removes the traditional run-and-gun mentality and leaves you really free to be immersed in the world the game presents. Friend and ally Alyx Vance is with you pretty much the whole way, and she's got new items of body language to round her out for the extra screen time.

But the thing that's really just blown me away is a sequence that the game entitles "Lowlife". After a train crash, the player and Alyx must travel through a series of underground traffic tunnels in an attempt to reach their destination.

The original Half-Life 2 executed this idea numerous times, including a section riffing heavily on the tunnel breakdown from 28 Days Later. What makes this set-piece genius, though, is its execution.

The player begins the sequence with only the gravity gun (which makes for an unwieldy and ineffective weapon) and the ubiquitous flashlight. Alyx, by contrast, has some variety of semi-automatic pistol. The tunnel is so dark that you can see absolutely nothing except what the flashlight illuminates. In order to progress, you have to light the way ahead through an obstacle course of broken down cars and collapsed girders. The area is crawling with zombies and headcrabs, which Alyx can shoot - but only if she can see them. What's more, the flashlight battery runs down, and can only be recharged by leaving the flashlight off for a period. Some of the more crafty zombies will only begin moving when the lights go out - but luckily you can listen out for their trademark moans and groans. Alyx keeps up running chatter throughout the entire sequence, without becoming repetitive, and also takes the opportunity to reveal in a roundabout manner that she's tired, nervous, and a little scared of the dark. (She tells bad jokes, by the way.)

The role reversal, with the player as guide and the NPC as the muscle, is effective in and of itself, but the sequence also cleverly shows off some of the tech improvements in Episode One, include HDR lighting, which emulates the way the human eye reacts to extremes of darkness and bright light. The darkness-and-light gimmick creates some nice opportunities for clever level design, too. In one instance, your torch beam picks out a long fibrous ligament dangling across the path. Experience with the game will lead the player to visually follow the ligament to the roof to see the barnacle-alien that uses the long sticky tongue to bait prey - and this motion also reveals the nearby headcrab clinging to the ceiling, about topounce! It's a nice horror-style tease and reveal, and the designers obviously thought it was clever too, because they (unwisely) use it again five minutes later.

"Lowlife" is such a fantastic sequence because normally games divide their goals up into different sections - first suspense, then action, then a pause for plot and characterisation. Here the designers fire all chambers simultaneously, combining action, mood, puzzling, and characterisation, and this is exactly the sort of direction that gaming should be going. The icing on the cake is a plethora of small details designed specifically for this sequence, starting with Alyx's bad jokes and irritated comments on the flashlight's battery life, and going through to the way she'll shield her eyes if you shine the light directly at her. She comments on pretty much anything out of the ordinary you lay your eyes on, too.

It's some of the best cinematic gaming I've had in recent memory. Now I just hope the rest of Episode One keeps up the standard!

Half-Life 2

So I've finally joined the rest of the world in actually finishing Half-Life 2. I started it a year and a bit back but I got frustrated by a combination of the severe demand it placed on my system, the excessively lengthy vehicle sequences, and of course Steam.

When it's good, it's very good. The sequences that feature the other named characters are fantastic, notably the opening level and the set-piece towards the end of the game featuring Dog. It's really unfortunate though how often it fails to play to its strength. Half-Life 2 is notable for being genre-leading in plotting, scripted sequences, artificial intelligence, character development and its excellent physics engine. So how come I spend so much time crawling around sewers and ruined urban environments shooting at mindless zombies and headcrabs?

The Ravenholm level, for example, would be a wonderfully moody horror level in any other game, but in Half-Life 2 it feels like a chore you have to progress through in order to get back to the real plot.

Similarly, considering the amazing level of expressiveness in the major characters, and the top notch voice and motion capture used throughout, it seems a shame that the game pulls its punches when it comes to really exploring their relationship with the player. It's pretty clear all the way through that no-one's ever going to be in any actual danger of death, and even if someone were to fall by the wayside it's not something that the player would actually have to cope with or live with.

I've started Episode One, which promises a more intense look at, in particular, the character of Alyx Vance. I'm hoping that it gets it right in adding the elements which would turn a fantastic gaming achievement into a masterpiece of gaming history.

Gaming In 60 Seconds

Since the last time I've been blogging, I've finished an awful lot of games. For those who care, here are some quick summaries.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2): A fantastically addictive experience that will consume 100+ hours of your life - but if you like depth of gameplay, compelling plot, or interesting characterisation you're better off playing an earlier installment of the series. The later dungeon designs are downright idiotic, becoming repetetive, tedious slogs wherein you'll be forced to search for invisible paths and illusionary walls on a scale not seen since the original Might and Magic. Sadly better than most traditional computer RPGs but still not up to scratch for Square-Enix's mascot franchise.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS): Fun open-ended 2D platforming in the tradition of the Castlevania titles for the Gameboy Advance. This one acts as a direct sequel to the GBA Aria of Sorrow, and sees you once again leading white-haired pretty boy Soma Cruz in a quest against vague and unspecified evil. If anything, Dawn of Sorrow is even easier than its already undemanding predecessor, and you'll breeze through in a couple of days of gameplay. It's a decent ride though, and this time around Soma's ability to capture the souls of defeated enemies and gain their powers is put to better use in crafting puzzles to block your progress. Worth your purchase for the DS if game longevity isn't a major concern to you.

Gitaroo Man (PS2): Everyone who told me this game was good was full of filthy, filthy lies. A pox on their houses. Gitaroo Man comes from Koei, the makers of Dynasty Warriors, and features a similar hardcore guitar metal soundtrack, but that's where the similarities end. You're tasked with fighting the challenge, or challenging the fight, by using the analog stick to follow a rapidly moving line across the screen while simultaneously jamming out using the face buttons, in time to each level's music. In practice, this is eye-wateringly hard, deeply unsatisfying, and will likely just leave you wanting to go back to playing Guitar Hero. Avoid as though it had rabies.

Elite Beat Agents (DS): Every bit as good as Ossu! Tatake! Ouendan!, this extravagant tale of male cheerleading captures most of what made the Japanese original good, while at the same time turning down the difficulty to more realistic levels. Not all the new Western soundtrack will win gold medals, but the excellence of busting your moves to the likes of YMCA and Jumping Jack Flash more than compensates. Must-have for all DS owners.

Cooking Mama (DS): Real cooking, taught through the use of minigames. What's there is definitely strong, but it only took me about ten minutes to start asking, "But then what?" Certainly original; possibly a good buy for non-gamers and the very young. Hard to justify at full price for connoisseurs, though.

Another Code (DS): Aka Trace Memory in the US. Developer CING's first attempt at a DS point-and-click puzzler falls flat due to an uninspiring story and a largely sterile game world. While some obstacles make inspired use of the DS's unique features, on the whole this is likely to leave most consumers cold. Stay away unless you're a die-hard adventure fan and you see it on sale.

Hotel Dusk (DS): Where Another Code bit down hard on the suck pill, CING's second effort in the adventure genre is significantly more impressive. Hotel Dusk combines strong plotting, dialogue, and a unique art style to create a memorable and enjoyable romp through a 70s noir-esque mystery novel. The game sometimes moves on rails and makes you feel more audience than player, but this won't diminish your enjoyment of an all-round class act. Should be seen.

Excite Truck (Wii): Sweet Goat of Moses, this game is fun! Everything you liked best about the Burnout franchise, combined with motion sensitive controls and the sensibilities of the old-school PC classic Stunts. Never have monster trucks spent so much time flying through the air. For people I've shown this to, it seems to sell the Wii in both concept and execution better than anything except perhaps Wii Sports - and Excite Truck has a hell of a lot more staying power. Must-buy for Wii owners.

Well, that's all the things I'm done with since last we spoke. While I'm here, I'll mention that Wii owners who haven't yet obtained and played ActRaiser for their virtual console are uneducated philistines who deserve to be shot in the street. Right in the street, shot.

The Monstrosity

I got my new computer delivered today; the beast I call the Monstrosity. It's a new Dell XPS M1710 gaming thingy, with completely ludicrous "extreme red running lights". Most importantly, it's put me back online.

Now I need to go install things on the Monstrosity. Pretty, pretty things. I'll be back

Brief Update

Home from Perth and Swancon (back in Canberra). Still no computer. I've ordered myself a new notebook with technical specs of such awesome magnitude as to rival those of Deep Thought. Unfortunately it'll be 2 to 3 weeks till the machine I dubb The Monstrosity arrives so in the mean time still no blogging.

Thanks to everyone who was awesome in Perth; this time I give particular note to Wuffie, Wendy, Mel, Gilligan, Rick, Kandace, John, Jo, Fru, Caris, David, Jocelyn, Kirsten, and pretty much all the Pauls. Plus anyone I've forgotten.

The plan is to be at Convergence over the Greg's Birthday Long Weekend in June. Y'all should come.

If I'm lucky I'll be getting the Wii back online tonight so that should alleviate the internet drought some until the antichrist of laptops is constructed.

God Hates Bloggers

Yesterday my laptop died. It unfortunately suffered one more consecutive power surge in a short period than its surge protection could handle, and somewhere inside it some sort of vital memory component died. Now it boots up but can't actually run any applications, much like a digital Forest Gump.

So (a) I have to get a new laptop, (b) I get to find out whether I'm covered by insurance, (c) I have to rescue the old hard drive, and most importantly, (d) blogging will be back to intermittent until I get regular computer coverage again. This also means my personal email is offline so ifyou need me you'll have to beg, borrow or steal my phone number...

... which, by the way, might die soon because my contract with Telstra is about to expire and I haven't yet lined up a new network. Sigh.

XBox 360 India TV Spot

Because not everyone I know reads Wonderland, I here repost the XBox 360 India TV spot: