Climbing Games

The forgotten genre of "climbing games". I guess in 1982 pretty much everything was a platformer, a driving game or a shooter, so you could afford to discriminate based on which direction your character moved in. I personally was a big fan of vertically scrolling shooters but it's only with time that I've been won over to the horizontal variety.

Also, pardon my sudden abandonment of geek cred, but who's the character on the right supposed to be? I recognise Mario (or rather Jumpman) on the left and what may or may not be Donkey Kong at the top but the dude with the insect wings is a mystery to me.

Dial M For MODEM

This appears to be the opening page in an article from the December 1982 issue of Electronic Fun Computers (or possibly the "Computers" section of Electronic Fun). The text reads:

Dial M For MODEM

You've uncrated your machine, mastered BASIC and taken over the family TV set. But what do you do once you've played all the games and tried your hand at a few elementary graphic designs? You get a modem. Then - with the help of your telephone - you're ready to tap into remote databases and shop at Saks, research the family tree, play new video games and find out what the weather's like in Tanzania - without leaving your easy chair. The fun of personal computing has just begun.

I long for this idyllic age of proto-computing in which it was possible to "play all the games", and in which the receiver of a standard personal telephonic device was an important component of your MOdulator-DEModulator.

I'm also amused by how the computer comes in a crate, and the hypothetical operator is suggested to have mastered the BASIC programming language before hooking the computer up to a screen. This is a literal depiction of early 80s computing and not at all narrative licence.

For those who are interested, I've drawn this from a Flickr pool of similarly archaic early 1980s computing posters. There are lols to be had from its inspection.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go tap into some remote databases. Possibly in Tanzania. Possibly.

EDIT: Actually, I have to give this article props for spelling modem entirely in lowercase. They were well ahead of the literary crowd at a time when most people were busy reminding you that MODEM is a (stupid-ass) acronym.

Stardock To Helm New Star Control

It was going to take a mighty piece of news indeed to get to me to forget about all the triple-A releases that I totally can't afford this month. Luckily, such news has been delivered.

Gamasutra is featuring an interview with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock (Galactic Civilizations) in which Wardell says that their next games are going to be a new Master of Orion and a new Star Control.

Better still, the new games are going to be based on Master of Orion 2 and Star Control 2. The horrible third iterations of those franchises will be discarded like the chaff they are. ("We just pretend that never happened," says Wardell.)

But how, you may ask, will Stardock secure the rights? No-one cares! If big fistfuls of money won't let them put the Star Control name on a new box, then they'll go down the Bioshock route and make one of those "spiritual successors" that are all the rage these days. And, you know, that's fine by me.

Stardock is on my big list of developers worth trusting, a list notable for absences like "Midway" and "Sega", and this is pretty much the best news ever. Ever.

Now, take everything I've said above and go and blog it. And tell your friends. Your friends, and also strangers. It is not an over-reaction to use YouTube. I say this because wishing things sometimes makes them true, and candy-filled space unicorns only appear to people who believe in them, and suchlike. True story. And once you've done all that word-spreadage, come on back here, so I can mention that, actually, these appear to just be options that Stardock is exploring, or thinking about, rather than actual new game announcements. And you can hear that, and put on your pouty face, and we can all go drink ourselves happy.

This is the way news works.

(Read the actual interview.)

UPDATE: Zounds! I realised this article was totally lacking context. Some among you may not even know why this is great news. So, to fill you in, let me say this: Star Control 2 was the most awesome game ever made. I think it shot Hitler. With a crossbow. In space. A sequel would be like if it had done all that while riding a dinosaur. That should clear up the confusion. Thanks.

Stunts

Mentioning Ugh! the other day has reminded me of another excellent PC game from the era of ye olde VGA graphics, which is of course Stunts.

Developed in 1990 by Distinctive Software (Test Drive, 4D Boxing) and published by 80s legend Brøderbund, Stunts was excellent for a number of reasons and it's a mystery to me how it's escaped a more widely known place in gaming canon.

To me, good driving games have always been about capturing the fun of playing with toy cars, and Stunts nails this. Most of the game involves jumping gaps, looping the loop, zooming around at high speeds and crashing into things. Its mission in life is to string together as many "holy crap!" moments as possible, back to back with nothing in between.

Also, Stunts is simple. There's no messing around with cutscenes or pimping your car or changing gears - it's all zoom, all the time. The mark of a classic.

Third, and most importantly, Stunts comes with a track editor - a track editor which is incredibly easy to use, and yet rather deep. Even a monkey can come up with their own improbable collection of loops, jumps, and inconveniently placed windmills. I probably spent as much time in the editor as I did in the actual game.

Stunts apparently still has a crazy-active fan community, and the game itself is abandonware and can be downloaded at (amongst other places) Abandonia. (Click here to download.)

SHIFT

Another browser game for today. This one's called SHIFT and it's actually quite unique. Like every second casual game these days it rampantly burglarises a lot of its cool from Portal but it's all justified in the context of an absolute gem of a central game mechanic and some extremely solid level design.

Unfortunately explaining the core concept ruins one of the early moments in the game, so I'm going to let you discover it for yourself. However, I can say that it's a platformer (my arch-nemesis) and yet I loved it to pieces.

You should go investigate for yourself. It's really very clever.

Child's Play Remake

I post this photo (a) because it is awesome and (b) it reminds me of how hilariously ludicrous the Child's Play movie franchise is. There's not a plot point in the first movie that isn't stupid, starting with the dangerous killer who just happens to know a life-transferring voodoo ritual, and moving on to a doll-peddling hobo and ending with a hideously protracted final showdown in which a mangled Chucky refuses to die.

I also post it because (c) franchise director Don Mancini is apparently in the process of remaking the original Child's Play. Mancini will be taking the original story and "pushing it further" and "making a very terrifying version" of the first film, which "is pretty scary as it is".

Mancini, who not only directed but also wrote for the first film, has gone on record as saying that all that voodoo business wasn't in his script, and was added by other, apparently less talented, hands. Mancini says he envisaged Chucky as being "the living embodiment of the kid's id", and no disembodied serial killers were involved at all. That's a lot cooler. That's a movie I'd like to see.

Anyone else cautiously cheerful about this idea?

Hanna In A Choppa

Helicopter physics games have been around for millennia. Primitive cave paintings show neanderthal man struggling with the vagaries of WASD control configurations and floaty flying avatars.

Actually I might just be getting confused with 1992 shareware title Ugh!, possibly the best game about flying caveman taxidrivers ever made. That thing was where it was at. In fact, while we're taking a leisurely stroll down Nostalgia Avenue, why don't you go download Ugh! for free and get your cro-magnon on old-school style.

But that's not what I'm posting about today. For those of you for whom 16-bits is just not enough bits, there's a fancy-pancy modern browser-based helicopter game which I just now this minute discovered. It is called Hanna In A Choppa and it is, in the vernacular, "rather good". The frustration of this type of game has always come from when you inevitably ram into things, avoiding which tends to be the point of the game. Hanna has a nice balance, failing you for only the most spectacular crashes, but rewarding you with shiny achievements if you go the extra yard for a perfect flight. It's also got a wide variety of missions, starting with predictable "navigate this tight corridor" levels but working up to rescue-at-sea scenarios and the provision of monster-sized hairdressing.

Hanna In A Choppa is available through Kongregate, and probably some other casual gaming portals. Y'all should go play it some. I'm not kidding. It's delicious.

PlayNC Support FTW

I've ended up getting an excellent response from PlayNC support which I'm highly satisfied with. Vastly better than my experiences with Blizzard customer service, and I'm now inclined to play whatever NCSoft serves up next.

Thus concludes my support experiment.

Support Experiment - Promising Results

I was all set to write an angry email about not getting an answer from PlayNC, but then I found that I had received an answer, it was a very promising one, and Gmail had for some reason decided to hide it from me.

So at this stage, bearing in mind my issue is not yet completely resolved, I am cautiously approving PlayNC support as being probably awesome.

UPDATE: Apparently my support ticket has now been "escalated". That's good, right?

Support Experiment

I'm doing an experiment.

Today I cancelled my City of Heroes subscription because, well, I haven't played the thing for at least three months and don't plan to ever return. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't excellent. I play most single player games for a couple of weeks; City of Heroes lasted me about that long, so it's not like it was substandard.

Anyway, the experiment. The same day I cancelled, my subscription unluckily came up and I've been automatically billed for the next few months. I've sent a polite, reasonable request to PlayNC support asking whether it might be possible for that amount to be refunded and my access to the game blocked immediately. I've noted that they probably don't have any legal obligation to do that, and they'd essentially be doing me a favour because they're reasonable people and value me as a repeat customer over many of their games, including Guild Wars, City of Heroes and a brief flirtation with Tabula Rasa.

So, will I:

(a) receive an unhelpful automated reply and have no way to contact an actual human? (I call this the World of Warcraft option.)

(b) be told that I have to ring an international phone number at 3 am in the morning to discuss the matter further? Or:

(c) get a helpful and personal response, prompting me to do a gushing post about how excellent PlayNC support is?

Let's find out!

Obama's Victory Speech In Full

Barack Obama's Chicago victory speech from yesterday, in full. A cleaner, tighter, but sadly non-embeddable version is also available from the BBC.

There's a certain feeling in Australia almost of guilt. Of guilt because we care. This is America's election; this is an election happening to other people in another nation, across international seas. It's an election we don't vote in. We don't pick the candidates, we don't run the campaign, and ours is not the privilege to turn up to the voting booths on the big day. But still, we care.

Obama's victory yesterday was hugely emotional for any number of people. I am sure it is very welcome for a great many people in America, but it is also possessed of a powerful significance here in Australia. This matters to us, possibly more than our own Federal elections of last year. We care

The reason we care is that, for better or for worse, our wagon is hitched to America. At the close of the 19th century we may have been bannermen to the British Empire but by the dawn of the 21st we were all but the unacknowledged fifty-first United State.

And it felt bad. It felt bad to go to war for America. It felt bad to be apologists for America. It felt bad to be the henchmen to America's foreign-policy mad scientist. It felt like we were on the wrong side. Nobody wants to be Mussolini to somebody else's Hitler. Nobody wants to be the sidekick to someone who is inescapably wrong.

Strife may come and war may come but if they do let us at least know that we are engaged because of what we believe in. Let us believe in our own rightness. Let us do it on our own feet because we believe it is the necessary thing.

I think this is why Obama's victory matters. It's a thing America can be proud of. They can be proud that they have voted for the possibility of something better. There are hard times ahead, and they may have successes and they may have failures, but they will be able to say that they tried.

And it matters for us, for Australians, because once again we can feel that we're on the right side. It's been a long time since we were the proud battlers, since we were the lucky country, and that's been a loss I think we've all felt, but if Australia is to remember its own excellence it starts with the quiet assurance among ourselves that we are the good guys. And I think that, finally, that has begun.

--
This is a victory for all of Obama's campaign team, but I'd like to especially mention Obama's speechwriter, Jon Favreau (no relation to the Iron Man director). Working in concert with Obama, who I understand is a pretty decent speechwriter himself, Favreau's speechwork has been some of the most continually electrifying political rhetoric I have ever heard and I'd like to congratulate him for bringing a return to this consummate height of political address. The "ark of history" speech above is but one example; I think the speeches of this campaign are going to remembered and quoted and drawn from for a very long time to come, and that is an excellent thing.

Thanks, Jon.

RIP Michael Crichton

Author Michael Crichton died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Crichton is most famous for his science-fiction novels, including The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere and Prey. He was also the creator of medical drama ER.

Crichton gained fame and notoriety in his later years for his fierce scepticism towards the idea of global warming, the dangers of second-hand smoke, and the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Whether or not you're a fan of his politics (I'm not), his books are highly entertaining, particularly his earlier writing. If you've never read a Michael Crichton novel, can I suggest you all go out and commemorate his work by reading The Great Train Robbery which (a) is excellent and (b) has the most consistently absurd misuse of period dialogue ever to appear in a novel.

Important Presidential Fact #1

In honour of the large number of Americans getting out today to vote in what seems to be a promisingly one-sided election, I'd like to bring your attention to this compelling presidential fact that I just learned right now:

You would think that 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft would have been happy to have an entire town named after him, and indeed that's what happened during the 1920s when a California municipality declared itself to be called Taft in his honour. He may have been less pleased, however, to discover that the town was formerly named Moron. Moron is today known for its annual "Oildorado" oil festival, which features the election of an "Oildorado Queen" and contests of skill at such pursuits as backhoe operation and beard-growing. Other town achievements include a nation-leading consumption of methampthetamines.

Also, here's a bonus "fact": legend has it that the corpulent President Taft once became wedged in the White House bathtub, requiring six attendants and a tub of butter to get free. Hilarious if real. Wikipedia lists this as God's honest truth but fails to provide a citation, much to my annoyance.

Anyone else out there got any Important Presidential Facts that need sharing? This sort of thing is of vital interest to the voting public.

Disco Stick, Again

In deference to the ridiculous number of people who have reached my blog from Google and then been soundly disappointed, I would once again like to use the phrase "disco stick".

Which I am sure is not any kind of salacious double entendre, and instead refers to those glowy tubes you buy at a rave. Surely.

Once again: "disco stick".

That is all.

Read This

Picture: you're standing around with your friends, and you hand one of them a document, and go, "Here, read this." The response is pretty standard: "What does it say?"

I love reading, but there's a time and place. It's not a social activity. It requires concentration, it requires a relaxed pace, and it requires something inherently worth reading.

No wonder, then, that MMos do such a bad job of delivering story through flavor text.

As mentioned previously, I'm playing World of Warcraft again. Being a long time Horde player, the Alliance content is wholly new to me, so I just ran the Stockades for the first time yesterday. We killed a bunch of guys. Who were they? I don't know. Why did they need killing? Beats me. I turned in some quests and got given some money. The questgivers seemed pleased that I'd murdered these guys, so I guess it's all okay.

World of Warcraft has thousands of quests, each with a couple of paragraphs of introduction text. Some quests have great introductions that enrich the world, while others are little more than a series of puns and pop culture references. The only way to tell which is which is to read them. Or alternately, you can skip all the text and just click the "Accept Quest" button.

World of Warcraft is a social game. A lot of the time that you are playing, you are intended to be grouping. Other people's time is valuable. When you are standing outside an instance, and somebody shares you one of their quests, you do not have time to read. You can hear their virtual foot tapping.

Reading text is not gameplay. Time spent reading is time spent not killing. It is time spent not levelling. For that matter, it is time spent not chatting with real people.

Text pops up in a window. While you are reading, you can see time passing around you. You can see people moving past you and presumably having more fun than you. Your chat window is scrolling. MMOs are a distraction-rich environment.

For all these reasons, text is an inherently poor way to present story in an MMO. It is not a fault of the players. It is not a fault of the flavor text writing team. It is just a bad idea. If you want to immerse players in the lore and narrative of your game this is not the way to do it.

The acquisition of lore needs to be passive. It needs to happen while players are doing other things. Storytelling needs to be during gameplay, not between it. Players need to be learning while they're fighting, while they're looting, while they're exploring.

Flavour text doesn't have to be long to be deep. A look at collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering or Legend of the Five Rings shows that an intriguing world can be built using only one line of text per card. A lot of small fragments can go together to form a greater whole. Everyone who's played Alliance is familiar with the kobold line, "You no take candle!" This could as easily have been a fragment of lore or flavour text.

Story can be told in many ways. Imagine that you want to tell players that a great war is being fought in an area. World of Warcraft has done this several ways, and is slowly improving. One of their first tries is in the Horde side of the Desolace zone. Here, an NPC who is just standing there, doing nothing, tells you in flavour text that they're in a desperate struggle against the centaur-like Kolkar. It's not terribly exciting.

A later try was during the Ahn-Quiraj war event. Here, NPCs at capital cities presented you with flavour text about the war, and visitors to the Silithus zone would see roving warbands, catapults being assembled, and major factional leaders convened around a map table.

World of Warcarft's best attempt, though, is one seen by all players setting foot in Outland for the first time. Upon stepping through the Dark Portal, you find yourself overlooking a massive raging battle where Horde and Alliance soldiers strive endlessly against huge demonic entities. No flavour text, no quest - you know exactly how desperate the battle is because it's right there in front of you.

This is a long way of saying show, don't tell, which is a key concept of storytellling in any medium.

If you must have text, at least make it dynamic. I understand that Warhammer Online is taking steps in this direction with its Tome of Knowledge. Lore should be collected, and be accessible at any point, any where. It should be broken down into discrete segments, with links to other relevant content. Players in World of Warcraft can already put dynamic links in chat which refer to loot, skills, and other game content; they should similarly be able to link to quick lore summaries. Picture your group leader saying, "Okay, now we're about to do [Uldaman]; this is one of the [Titan] cities so it's all [golems] and [dwarves]." The lore is right there if you want it, which is much better than scrolling back through quest descriptions or running off to find in-game books.

Sound can do a lot of work, too; Blizzard have experimented with zone-wide spoken dialogue in a few areas, most notably outside the Black Temple in Shadowmoon Valley where you can hear Ilidan's voice whenever a raid group reaches the final boss of the Black Temple instance. This can be annoying if done poorly, but with a sufficiently wide variety of dialogue and a reasonable spacing between repetitions players could hear a lot about the world while they quest.

Look, I don't ask for much; just do it a little better. When I do a new instance, I'd like to hear from other players, "The end boss here is Gromsh Arrowsong, who found this cave system but then was driven mad by all the ghosts," rather than, "The end boss is a big orc with a bow." In fact, I'd like to know that for myself when I start the instance, rather than learn it from the NPC nameplate when I finally get to the end. And ideally, it would be nice to have heard about Gromsh and know who he is four to five levels before I even get to his instance, so the whole experience means something and feels like the culmination of a story.

I note that Bioware has promised a story-driven experience for their upcoming Star Wars MMO. I'm looking forward to seeing how they do that. I'm not expecting much, but it's alright to hope, isn't it?

Penny Arcade Episode 2

Regular readers will recall my review of the first installment of Penny Arcade Adventures was mixed; although the game was generally funny, the user interface was godawful and some bass-ackwards achievement implementation made finishing the game a tedious chore.

Penny Arcade Episode 2 fixes pretty much all of those problems, leaving the competent and genuinely entertaining core of the game to shine through.

First up, Penny Arcade is about murdering things. Last time around it was mimes and hoboes; in Episode 2 you'll get to go at it with crazy people and the obscenely wealthy. You wander from place to place and proceed to get your murder on with pretty much everyone you come across; in between all the good-times-killin' you can go searching for funny in the nearby scenery, and have hilarious dialogues with those few NPCs you come across who are non-murderable.

Being, theoretically, an RPG, levelling up is an important part of the mixture. If you've played Episode 1 you can import your level 15 character from that game, or if you're a newbie you can start afresh with a two-level penalty. Episode 2 takes you through to level 30, and replaces your boring old Episode 1 weapons with a new set of slaughtering tools, which are again fully upgradeable.

Surprisingly, the story actually begins to gather some steam in this episode. Two of the major villains are tied quite personally to your party members. This simple bit of character development does a lot to make things more immediate and relevant, and gives you a good reason to want to come back for the next round of goon-murdering.

Penny Arcade's real-time combat system is its biggest (read: only) innovation, and it's also its biggest problem. Once combat begins, it continues non-stop; while you're searching item menus for healing goodies, the bad guys are stabbing you. Minimising damage, and for that matter not getting killed by even the wimpiest of villains, requires blocking, which is done via button presses timed to your enemies' attacks. Your attacks also activate reaction-based minigames for maximising your kidney-punching. All that reactioneering makes combat stressful, attention-demanding, and occasionally frustrating. It's probably for the best, though, as without this gimmick it would be painfully dull.

The battling is better in Episode 2 than it was before, though. You now get an on-screen indication of when you'll need to block. Your attack minigames are more entertaining as well. There's adjustable difficulty settings; "normal" difficulty seemed to me a little more forgiving than last time around, as I was able to make it from start to finish without seeing any of my characters knocked out.

Episode 2 is a lot more colourful than last time around. And I mean that as a metaphor for "foul-mouthed". The language in Episode 1 may have been reasonably restrained, but the dialogue here goes off the hook, starting with your basic healing item, which "fucks pain up the ass", and continuing uphill. This is a great thing as it makes the proceedings feel a lot more like genuine Penny Arcade but if you're of a sensitive disposition you should probably avert your eyes for the entire length of the game.

For XBox 360 owners, the gamerpoint system is much better. Last time around the achievements asked you to play the game against the grain and do things contrary to the way they were intended. That's all out the door this time, and instead the achievements encourage you to build skill and finesse, with focus on things such as timing perfect blocks. It's fairly easy to pick up all 12 in a single playthrough. This is a great example of using achievements to enrich the core gaming experience.

The weakest point of this episode is the final boss battle; in the grand tradition of other really bad boss battles over time, developer Hothead has opted for a final fight which features unique and poorly-explained game mechanics. This was the only point in the game where I had to go looking for hints, and it was exactly the point where I least wanted the game flow to be broken. Once again, developers, unique mechanics on the last level is a stupid idea.

All told, Episode 2 is a vast improvement over Episode 1. If you tried the first offering and were undecided, Episode 2 offers a great reason to come back for a second taste. However, there's nothing here that makes the series more accessible than it was before, so if you're not a Penny Arcade fan or you really hated the Episode 1 then this is still not the game the for you.

Lost Planet

There's a pretty decent game hidden in Lost Planet, but much like the icy planet it's set on, the end result will leave you cold.

This is a game from Capcom, who are responsible for such games as Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Dead Rising and Onimusha. Those games have a lot of things in common - confusing plotlines, horrible dialogue, occasionally clunky controls and questionable pacing. Lost Planet has all those things.

What Capcom are also fairly well known for is solid central concepts and games that are a lot of fun despite themselves. That, essentially, is what Lost Planet is missing.

The game sees you playing Wayne, who looks an awful lot like Keanu Reaves. Wayne lives on a frozen planet where the colonists are continually troubled by giant bug-aliens called Akrid. Much like the sandworms of Frank Herbert's Dune, the Akrid are both a menace and a resource, as their bodies produce the valuable chemical known as "T-Eng" which powers pretty much everything in Wayne's world. Wayne's father gets killed by an Akrid, and then... some stuff happens. There's snow pirates, and an evil corporation, but it's really hard to care, or even follow what's going on. All you need to know is that there's some bugs and some soldiers, and they need killing.

About half of the time you're running around on foot, which is pretty fun. Wayne's a dab hand with a rifle, and he's also got access to a freeform grappling gun which lets him quickly reach high places and get the drop on the bad guys. You collect T-Eng both from destroyed scenery and from downed enemies, and as long as you've got T-Eng in the tank you can heal from any injury within seconds. However, the freezing cold of the environment continually saps your T-Eng supplies so you need to keep moving.

These parts of the game are pretty good. Granted, there are occasional problems with targeting, and Wayne has an unfortunate tendency to fall over and get stunned if he's so much as breathed on, but by and large the on-foot bits work and consistently entertain.

But sadly Lost Planet isn't content with being a second-rate Halo clone and it tries to push the envelope. It does this with mechs. Early on you'll get access to a bunch of plodding two-legged "Vital Suits" which work like a Mechwarrior-style machine, letting you open up a can of whup-ass at the cost of some speed and agility. These things are slow, they're annoying, and they're completely incapable of hitting anything smaller than they are (despite the fact that computer-controlled mechs don't seem to have that problem). You'll groan every time the game forces you to get suited up - which is often.

Later, the mechs upgrade to speedy spider-tanks, and finally in the last stages of the game you'll get a Zone of the Enders-style sword-wielding flying machine. The tanks are actually pretty cool, mostly because they're a good deal faster than the other models. The flying mech, though, is an abomination and takes most of the joy out of the endgame. I'd like to say again how bad an idea it is to implement a wholly new control scheme entirely for the purpose of your final boss fight.

The mechs are a lot of what's wrong with Lost Planet, but they're not all of it. The levels, for example, are poorly designed. Despite the grapple gun being really kind of cool, you won't get much use out of it. Enemies tend to come in swarms that leave no time to get creative with the terrain. The high ground is usually already claimed by your foes, plus many Akrid can fly, climb or jump. The game also introduces the early concept of using the terrain to your advantage by detonating explosive barrels near enemies but this is poorly followed up in later levels where the game hands out rocket launchers every three steps in any case.

It's not always easy to tell which way to go next; most levels feature "waypoints" which show the path forward, which is great, but towards the end of the game they're few and far between, and the mapping system is next to useless. It's nowhere near as bad as the mazes from Halo but it's still a little frustrating. Also, early levels introduce the idea that enemies are either finite, or respawn from a node which can be destroyed or closed. This is abandoned about halfway through the game without warning, which left me struggling with one level for some hours before realising that it was no longer possible to clear out all the Akrid and explore. Endlessly respawning enemies are almost always a bad idea and this is no exception. Particularly if you don't tell the player that there's no end to them.

I've mentioned that the plot is terrible. It's really difficult to care about what's going on; it's really just a matter of killing some bugs, killing some humans, killing a boss, and then repeating. It's again hard not to compare it to Halo; the plot in Halo was very poorly told but it least it felt like something important was happening. That's just not the case here.

Some good points: the music is excellent. It's not the kind of thing you'll be humming after you stop playing but it's still very, very good. The graphics are also clean and sharp, and most of the main character models are good-looking (although the major enemy is so cartoonish as to be funny). The Akrid bosses are suitably impressive, and while they're not always exciting to actually fight they at least feel appropriately epic.

There's also multiplayer, which I played at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show prior to its release and adored. I can't say whether it's any good in the final version because no one's playing it; you can't find a game for love or money. I can't help but feel that valuable development time went into an online mode that no-one bothered with when it could have been spent making the single-player experience not suck.

I've played both the XBox 360 and PC version and the 360 is definitely superior; the PC one is, essentially, an afterthought, right down to still referring to the 360 controller scheme when describing how to play. It had some stability issues for me as well, but that may have just been my PC.

Lost Planet isn't an awful game. For example, I played it all the way to the end, which isn't something I always do. On the other hand, it's distinctly sub-par. There are so many really, really good shooters out there on the market that there's just no reason why you should ever have to play something less than awesome. You're best served by spending more time with Halo, Gears of War, Resistance, FarCry, Crysis or something else of similar pedigree, and let Lost Planet remain lost.

Wrath of the Lich King - Game On?

I should mention that with World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King only ten days out, I'm looking for other players to help me wade through the new content.

I run a Kara-geared Troll Priest on Dath'Remar; I'm levelling a 30-something tank on the Alliance side of Doomhammer. Any takers?

You're welcome to post the usual round of WoW related mockery.

ALSO, in unrelated news: Lost Planet was not the game I was hoping for, Condemned is reminding me what good survival horror looks like, and Penny Arcade Episode 2 is a vast improvement without in any way becoming attractive to people who disliked the first one.

Mirror's Edge Demo

Yesterday I played the demo for upcoming EA/Dice parkour game Mirror's Edge. At the time I was impressed but not overwhelmed.

Things they got right:

(1) The controls are intuitive. Left bumper is "go high", left trigger is "go low", and that's all the buttons you'll use 90% of the time. Right bumper is a 180 degree turn, and right trigger is "hit things" which is equally appropriate for punching bad guys and bumping open doors. Face buttons are used for some specific moves including disarming enemies.

(2) Music. Which is gorgeous.

(3) Running. You will actually feel like you're running, not just floating across the environment. There's a real sense of physicality, of momentum, and of speed, which is good when you're generally navigating the environment but becomes awesome once you get some bad guys on your tail.

(4) Graphics are clean, sharp and uncluttered. They look good without getting in the way of your play.

(5) Physics. Faith falls at real-life speeds. That means it's a very short trip from the top of a skyscraper to the bottom, which is nice.

Things that aren't so good:

(1) Anything involving ledges. Shimmying on ledges is painfully slow and badly breaks up the pace, at least in the demo. It feels like this should be about twice as fast.

(2) "Failing" in the tutorial. During the intro level, any time you stuff anything up the game instantly takes you back before you tried. This has two problems; one is that you don't get to see the consequences of your failure. Attempting jumps is only exhilerating when it's understood that stuffing up means falling a really long way. Also the tutorial makes you watch your trainer do each move before you get to do it yourself, and these are effectively unskippable cutscenes you have to watch each time you stuff up.

Things I'm not sure about:

(1) Combat. It felt a little awkward in the demo but you don't get a lot of chances to use it so it may be that I'm just still learning it. It's very timing-based so it's probable that I'll eventually pick up the skill to make it work.

Anyway, having been impressed but not overwhelmed, I've woken up this morning realising that I must have more so I think I'll be buying this when it comes out.

Castle Crashers

It's been a couple of months since the thing came out and I got officially "over it" about two weeks ago but I should say a couple of words about the excellence of Castle Crashers.

This is probably only of interest to those XBox 360 owners who don't pay attention to what's available on Live Arcade. Those who read the occasional feed have probably, by now, already learned about Castle Crashers, downloaded it, played it, loved it, and put it out to pasture. But if by chance you haven't already spent time with the thing, the recommendation is this: you must play it now.

It's by developer The Behemoth. They're previously responsible for Alien Hominid, an old-school run-and-gun Contra-style shooter, most notable for its lovable art style, buckets of humour, and nun-punching difficulty curve. Hominid was cute but not terribly accessible; it's with great pleasure I say that Castle Crashers captures all of what worked in Hominid and makes it actually fun.

Castle Crashers is a beat-em-up in the style of Golden Axe or Streets of Rage. Very much in the style of: it in fact contains numerous references to its source material, including rideable two-legged lizards and little dwarves who will try and steal your gold. Gameplay consists of walking right, while beating things with your weapons. You have a pseudo-3D play field, but, in true old-school style, youl'll need to be vertically aligned with your opponents to hit them. Stand a couple of pixels above them or below them and you can flail ineffectually for hours without landing a blow.

This sort of game is best experienced with friends, and Castle Crashers supports full four-player multiplayer, either locally or online. It also brings a number of quasi-innovations to the genre, including RPG style levelling up and skill training (which, yes, I realise was sort-of kind-of in the classic River City Ransom). You can collect and choose from a variety of weapons, you can unlock "animal orbs" which are chubby little floating animals which confer passive bonuses, and you can find a range of inventory items including potions and ranged weapons. There's a bunch of alternate characters to unlock, as well - many, many more than you could imagine actually using.

It's mostly hilariously funny, with the exception of an extended "poop joke" in the second area, and the crisp sprite-based graphics are a visual treat. It's also backed up by a full orchestral soundtrack that's well worth listening to all by itself.

Right up there with Braid and Geometry Wars 2, this is one of the definitive Live Arcade titles. It's the sort of thing you can expect to see ported to system after system over the next decade or so, so you're going to get lots of chances to play it, but there's no good reason to wait - get it now, and have a whole mess of fun right up front.

Interactive Australia 2009 Report

Bad game journalists! Bad!

Apparently Dr Jeffery Brand, Ms Jill Borchard and Ms Kym Holmes of the Bond University yesterday published a little something called the "Interactive Australia 2009 Report" which contains a whole bunch of statistics that are very favourable to our gaming Australia. Kotaku's quoting the thing like mad; that's okay, as they're fairly credibly claiming to have an actual copy of the report in front of them. The Herald-Sun have done some reporting and they also appear to actually have the document.

The bad sets in because every man and his dog is on-quoting them without reading the report for themselves. How do I know? Because if they had read the report they would have linked to it. I've had to go and find the thing through my own researches instead of just trusting in the magic of the hypertext markup language. Thanks to the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia for, as I understand it, commissioning the report and providing the linkage above.

So - the statistics! And be aware that while this summary is nicely sound-bitey, you should go and read the source material for yourself before you start deriving conclusions and possibly looking like an idiot.

(1) Average age of an Australian gamer is 30. That's up two years from 2007, when it was 28, which means not just that the existing population is ageing but that we're picking up new gamers from older demographics.

(2) 88% of Australian households have at least one gaming device (meaning, conversely, that only 12% are going without). 61% have more than one gaming device. "Game device" is defined here to include PCs, consoles and handhelds. Mobile phones and PDAs are specifically excluded.

(3) Male/female player ratio is 54% male, 46% female, up from 59/41 in 2007.

(4) Only 3% of gamers report never playing games socially; 97% report gaming at least occasionally with others in the same location or via the internet.

(5) 63% of Australians are unaware Australia has no R18+ classification for games; 91% of Australians, whether gamers or not, support the introduction of an R18+ rating.

(6) 17% of Australian households report being in possession of pirated games. 24% of those in possession of an illegal game report that they "often" or "usually" go on to purchase legitimate copies of those games.

There's also some analysis of games in parenting, and a bunch of fuzzy-wuzzy quotes and anecdotal stuff which doesn't exactly provide hard fact but does help non-gamers understand where some of the results are coming from.

By and large it seems like excellent research. It is commissioned research; it's not study for the love of study, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Do check out the methodology at the end of the report; it seems pretty reasonable to a non-statistician like myself. Sample size was 1614; a portion of the sample was surveyed online, which may mean a bias towards the tech literate.

Anyone who's got a criticism of the methodology or an analysis of the results please comment, or link me to your post elsewhere. And if you're quoting the survey please remember the different between what people report when surveyed and the actual fact.

Celebration System at Kill Ten Rats

Zubon's in fine form over at Kill Ten Rats; you should go and read his post Celebration System, mostly for the lolz but also for the truth. He makes the excellent point that once you accept that your standard MMO is largely built around stoking one's ego, most of the current crop really don't go far enough.

And, uh, once you're done there, come back here and read my stuff.

Amorphous +

Can I direct your attention to a little something I've been enjoying lately? And I'll warn you in advance that being free, flash-driven and browser-based it strays dangerously close to the dark provinces of the casual game.

It's Amorphous +; I'm playing the thing through Kongregate but you can probably find it on any number of game portals.

Basically, you're a little dude with a sword so ridiculously large it puts the cast of Final Fantasy to shame. Your job is to swing the sword, and splat jelly-like blobs before they splat you. It sounds simple enough, but the real skill is in earning combos by splatting multiple blobs in a single swing. That gets complex as the different blobs have interesting interactions - Glooples can merge to become a significantly more dangerous larger species, Inkies leave blinding ink that Toasties can set on fire, and Melties leave a pool of acid on death which kills anything that crosses it.

All these shenannigans should be run of the mill but somehow they're fantastically entertaining. Plus there's a whole mess of awards to get for doing any number of crazy things, which makes the whole thing start to get deeply addictive.

There's a good couple of hours of gameplay in this thing. And it's free. I highly recommend it. Go play it now.

New Alan Wake Trailer

Alan Wake has been skirting on the verge of vaporware for quite some time now, but it seems like the folks at developer Remedy (Max Payne) plus the mighty publisher-wheels of Microsoft have got the thing back on track. Seen here is the new trailer, which is five flavours of awesome, and reminds me why I absolutely loved the idea of this thing when I first heard about it. Back in 2005.

Do you know where the trailer comes from? The Finnish Max Payne convention. That's right: they have a convention. Ignoring the horrible movie which never happened I love Max Payne and now I have yet another reason to envy the Finnish.

Disco Stick

"Let's have some fun, this beat is sick. I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

Worst. Song. Ever.

I blame Laura for this. Also for this, which is the reason that we should all look at ball-jointed dolls as if they are odd.

Real post to follow shortly.

Real-Time Censorship

Disturbing news, everybody!

Microsoft have patented a technology for real-time audio censorship. The technology analyses recorded or live transmitted speech to look for "undesirable" words or phrases and render them inaudible. Which means you can swear all you want, and the person on the other end of the line will just wonder why you've suddenly gone quiet.

Microsoft obviously intends to turn the thing loose on XBox Live, so that young babies and suchlike will be protected from the ravages of the 14-year-old vocabulary, and as a togglable option that's probably something that everyone on that community can benefit from.

It's one of those technologies, though, that could have a lot of horrible, horrible applications in the wrong hands. Can you picture the thing being applied wholesale to our phone system? To our television networks? Ars Technica have already seen the problem in their article, and they draw our attention to the love that regimes like that in China would have for this process. Picture a world where the word "election" simply can't be communicated over a telephone line.

YouTube already uses something similar for automatically detecting copyrighted material in uploaded videos, whereby videos that the algorithm thinks contains visual or audio information belonging to another party are flagged, and the onus is on the video uploader to prove that their work is original. The algorithm is, of course, secret, so the precise method by which it brands you a criminal is neither known nor open to criticism.

Naturally, you can't put the genie back in the box, and the development of something like this was more or less a cultural inevitability. Ultimately the only way that we, as a society, can see that this benefits us more than it harms us is by strong privacy laws, a free and intelligent ongoing political debate on the issue, and through the vigilance of each individual citizen.

Non-Molyneux Syndicate

Ask and ye shall receive. Barely had I uttered my desire for a new Syndicate game free of the taint of Peter Molyneux when the news came through that the thing was in development.

And who's making it? Starbreeze, the fellows who crafted Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bay and The Darkness, two of the most criminally underappreciated games of recent years.

This is Very Good News (TM). Starbreeze have a track record of stylish atmosphere, tight narrative, and amazing attention to detail (albeit a fairly short track record). These are absolutely the people we want working on a project like this.

If the world keeps fulfilling my ridiculous franchise resurrection demands, I'm clearly going to have to make my wishlist more extreme. Where's my Blizzard-developed Alex Kidd real-time strategy, damn it?

ACT Election Result

The ACT Election is over and unfortunately I was not successful in winning a seat in the Assembly. However, Canberra got, on the whole, a good result. The count is not yet final but it seems fairly certain that the Assembly will be 7 Labor, 7 Liberal and 3 Greens, which is a major swing against the older parties and a fantastic and unprecedented result for the Greens. Most of the successful candidates across all parties were intelligent, competent people and with a little luck the ACT will be well served by their new parliament.

Just because the election's over doesn't mean I've stopped campaigning! Relevantly to this blog, I'm still fighting for an R18+ rating in games so stay tuned for more developments on that front.

And I now return you to your regularly scheduled game blogging.

DSi Region Locked

Remember how I was excited about the new Nintendo DSi?

Never mind.

The thing's region locked. No importing sweet, sweet gaming candy from Japan. Or America. In fact, I'd be pretty much just stuck with the distinctly lackluster game distribution network of Australia, which seems to largely involve seeing a game come out in America and then waiting for continental drift to bring it within my grasp. (Still a month till we get the original Rock Band!)

By itself that'd be... manageable, but when you combine it with the dropped GBA port it's a big turn-off. About 75% of my current DS library is GBA or imported. Not particularly keen to buy a functionally identical new system that less of my games will work on. Oh, and I'd bet money that it also locks out R4 cards, so that's hombrew off the menu too. Plus the lack of the GBA port means I can't use the Rumble Pak, I can't use the cross-generation functionality from the recent Pokemon games, and in the unlikely event that the DS card reader or trackball games ever make their way out of Japan they won't work either.

Bad Nintendo! Bad!

You can still save the system by telling me that GBA games will be available for download. I know you want to tell me that. Just give in.

Secret of Mana on Virtual Console

In case you didn't read the title: SECRET OF MANA ON VIRTUAL CONSOLE!

Yes: it's available for download to your Wii. Yes: the three-player co-op is intact. Yes: Squeenix are finally releasing their SNES classic for your retro-gaming delight.

This is one of those games that's every bit as good today as it was when it was released. If you've (somehow) never played Secret of Mana this is a must-buy Virtual Console title. If you have played it, heck, it's still a must-buy.

So - who wants to help me complete this for, what, the fourth time now?

NOTE: I'm not entirely clear whether this is "out now" or "out come the next VC update, either this Friday or the Friday following". I'll check the VC store when I get home and let you know.

Can We Have....

While we're talking about my unabashed enthusiasm for a new Parasite Eve game, could I run through some of the rest of my gaming wishlist? These are games that desperately need to happen.

Vagrant Story 2: I'm not sure why Vagrant Story does not have memorial plaques installed in its honour in major cities worldwide. This is one of the most criminally underappreciated games every produced. In the absence of some kind of national moment of silence, it's clear that the Vagrant Story genius should be honoured in the manner traditional among the gaming industry - which is to say, by means of a sequel.

A new Blackthorne game: Whenever Blizzard want to remind people they've made games other than Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, they tend to drag out The Lost Vikings. That's a bit of a shame, because they should instead be drawing people's attention to Blackthorne, their 90s action platformer which worked a little like a cross between Abe's Oddyssey and Flashback. It's a property that needs some loving. And speaking of which...

A new Flashback game: Fade to Black never happened. Never happened. Which leaves Flashback sitting lost and alone with a "to be continued" ending that was never adequately consummated. This franchise is just ripe for a quality platformer in the style of the original to be developed for, say, XBLA or Wiiware. Providing, of course, that you can work out who owns the rights to it these days.

A non-Molyneux Syndicate game: Syndicate was full of great ideas. Cyberpunk corporate warfare, brainwashing crowds of people, tactical real-time lynch mobs. But it was by Peter Molyneux's then company Bullfrog, and their motto may as well have been "great ideas, woeful implementation". Much like other Bullfrog titles Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, Populous and Power Monger, Syndicate hid its good points under a mountain of dubious pacing, poor level design and horrendous user interface. I would love to see someone competent take a crack at this franchise; unfortunately I think the rights are still with Molyneux in his new company Lionhead.

A Bethesda-made Ultima game: I love Ultima. Yes, despite everything that happened to it after Ultima VII. The rights to it are languishing a bit now, and in any case it's kind of run into the ground. The style of Ultima greatly influenced developer Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games and I can't think of anyone better suited to getting the property back on its feet. Right as I write this Richard Garriott is in outer space so there's never been a better time to steal the IP while he's not looking.

A new Road Rash: Haven't you heard? EA makes good games now. Or so I'm told. They still have the rights to bash-em-up motorcycling franchise Road Rash so it'd be great to see them do something with it. I'd say a good place to start for updating it would be to look at Criterion's Burnout franchise. I'm really jonesing to beat some bikers with a length of chain.

A new Star Control: Give the rights back to the creators. They've promised that they'll erase Star Control 3 from continuity and give us a real sequel to SC2. None of that "the Precursors evolved into cows" rubbish.

A new Azure Dreams: Did you play that thing? It was like a Pokemon-Roguelike-dating sim. Better than crack. I'm talking the PlayStation version, not the GBC port.

Duck Hunt: ... as a survival horror. Because that would be awesome.

I live in hope. Developers and publishers, take notes. These ideas are all filled with win, and you must implement them immediately. I know where you live.

Parasite Eve - Good News / Bad News

Am I the only person in the world that thinks Parasite Eve 2 was an overlooked work of genius? Am I seriously the only Parasite Eve fanboi out there?

Specifically, why did no one mention to me Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday is on its way? This is the greatest news ever. We need a commemorative holiday.

This is the series that mixed classic Square-Enix roleplaying with a near future real-world setting and real-time gunplay. This is the series where the bad guys are your mitochondria. That's hard science.

Unfortunately, much like the upcoming Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, 3rd Birthday is for the PSP. So I guess now we all have to wait around until Squeenix sees fit to announce they're porting it to a real system.

No More Heroes 2 Trailer

Okay, sure, the No More Heroes extended ending finished with a "To Be Continued", but no-one thought they were actually serious.

Joke's on us, apparently. Travis Touchdown is back for No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, which looks to be just as wholly ridiculous as the original.

Go figure.

Prince of Persia Trailer

The world owes Valve and Jonathon Coulter a debt. Ever since the runaway success of Portal and its excellent closing music "Still Alive", it's like the game industry woke up and realised that a killer theme song is worth a year of development.

Here we have the Tokyo Game Show trailer for the new Prince of Persia, and by golly it's a thing to see. There is no possible way that playing this game can be more enjoyable than watching the trailers for it. A quick search has failed to turn up the artist / track info for the music but if anyone knows it drop me a comment and I'll update.

Also - and I've had some experience with the previous games - this still feels less like Prince of Persia than it does a free-running version of Ico. I'm intrigued. Intensely intrigued.

UPDATE: The artist is Sia, the track is "Breathe Me", and you can hear it in full on YouTube (link). Thanks Chris!

The Travel Agent

Can I sell you on this idea for a game I have?

In it, you see, you're this super-soldier. I mean, you're frikkin' huge. And you've got guns! Guns like you wouldn't believe! Anyway, there's some bad guys, and it's up to you to shoot them right in the face. What makes it cool is that you have some kind of a unique power. Probably to do with time.

No? Wait, I've got another one.

Get this - you're a guy with a sword. Or an axe. There are options. And anyway, you're in this world that's being menaced by darkness, which is used as a metaphor for evil. And pretty much you're the only one who can do anything about it. There's, like, a million quests you can do, and you can find loot. But - get this - you don't have to! You can be a jerk! Like, a really cool jerk, with glowing eyes. Or not. It's going to be huge.

It's just not grabbing you, is it?

Look, I'm as big a fan of shotgun-based hilarity as the next person, and my tolerance for levelling up is ridiculously high, but no matter how much I might like my gaming staples I get tired once genre devolves into generic.

Game developers - listen up. You should not be in the business of selling us content. You should not be marketing hours of gameplay. It is not important exactly how many action packed levels you have included.

You are selling an experience. Sitting down with a new game is like going on holiday; you are our travel agent. If you want us to buy, you need to offer at least one of three things:
* a unique destination;
* a better journey; or
* a more stylish mode of transport.

I'm in danger of straining a metaphor, but stay with me here.

A Unique Destination: Take us somewhere new. Let us be someone unique. War ravaged cities have been done a million times, but Bioshock's submerged objectivist dystopia was one of a kind. You can be a kung-fu streetfighter anywhere, but if you want to be a licensed hip-hop superstar the only door is through the DefJam franchise.

A Better Journey: There's nothing about Half-Life's plotline that pushes the envelope. What makes it exceptional is the execution. It knows that it's not delivering a game so much as it's delivering an experience. It's the difference between buying product from a bargain bin and making a purchase through a sales consultant. Half-Life is speaking directly to the player, and is concerned with exactly what response it's provoking in the player. It's not offering content - it's targeting content.

More Stylish Transport: Atmosphere is everything. Something prosaic can be amazing when placed in context. Getting the atmosphere right is what makes Silent Hill effective and House of the Dead not so effective. It's what distinguishes Fallout from Outlander (who remembers Outlander?) and Wing Commander III from Wing Commander V. Knowing your strengths, playing to them, and making every aspect of your design subservient to the reaction you want to provoke in the player.

Gaming is a wide, wide world, but travel agents keep trying to sell me the same package again and again.

Frankly, I'd like something new.

Mirror's Edge Theme

Anyone want to hear the theme from upcoming EA/DICE free-running title Mirror's Edge? Here it is: "Still Alive" by Lisa Miskovsky, set to a fan footage compilation. Nothing to do with the similarly titled, and somewhat more awesome, theme from Portal.

Hey - how weird is it that EA are making original intellectual property that I actually want to play?

Must. Have.

It's official: the Nintendo DSi. My favourite gaming platform just got 100% more awesome.

- larger screens
- two built in 3 megapixel cameras
- SD card slot to store data and transfer between the DSi and the Wii
- built in web browser
- built in image editor
- on board memory
- ability to download games from the Wii Shop and boot from on-board memory
- music playback
- better audio support including the option to adjust pitch
- slimmer profile
- ... but no GBA slot (boo!) although if Nintendo are smart they'll start offering GBA games for download

Available in Japan in less than a month. Westerners unwilling to import get to wait till Spring next year. Announced Japanese pricing translates to around $180 AUD. Sign me up.

EDIT: On the less rosy side, Kotaku suggests the DSi will have a significantly worse battery life. As in, only half as much play before you need to recharge. Not sure what they're basing it on but it's a bit worrying.

Endangered Words

Some of my favourite words are in danger of extinction! The Collins Dictionary people have made a list of some otiose verbage they'll be dropping in future editions as part of a scheme to get some cheap publicity make their publication more relevant. Check out the story.

Periapt is on the list. Clearly these people are not gamers. The periapt is a vital neck slot item which serves as a much needed alternative to the "amulet", "necklace" or "pendant". Based on its historical origins, it is most likely to confer benefits to one's health or vitality. A robust thesaurus of medieval casualwear is the backbone of any good loot table.

The portmanteau terms compossible and embrangle are similarly in the line of fire. These are totally not real words but that's no reason to leave them out of the dictionary. The deliberate obfuscation of our own language is the only thing that separates us from the French. From the French.

Exuviate (to shed, in the manner of skin) is a word that I used in casual conversation just last week. True story. Possibly that says more about me than it does the dictionary.

Apparently muliebrity means "the condition of being a woman", which is absolutely something that needs its own word. I'm pretty sure that this is going straight to the top of "words my friends are immediately sick of me using".

In any case, you should definitely check the list and begin using as many items from it as possible. Levelling up your word-fu and confounding the weak-minded go hand in hand, and both those things are more fun than swimming in sherbert, so you've really got no excuse.

SBCG4AP: Episode 2

I've got a lot of love for Telltale Games, but I'm getting a little frustrated with their Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People series.

I mean, I'm having buckets of fun with the things. These are good games. You should buy them. It's just that they should be better.

Episode 2 (entitled "Strongbadia the Free") is out for PC and Wiiware. Actually it's been out for a few weeks. And while it's often funny and usually fun, it's full of little things about which, dammit, Telltale should know better.

First up is that, like the first game, there are a bunch of lists and collections to complete during play. Completing these side-goals increases your "rank", although doesn't do much else. That's all right - finishing a list is its own reward. Unfortunately, maxing out your collections involves doing certain things at the right point in the game. The game goes into an "extended play" mode once the story's over but that's not much use as you can't regain items you've used up, or revisit earlier states of the game. Starting a new game resets your collection, and besides, maxing out the lists isn't so inherently entertaining as to justify an entire second play-through.

The game also has the feel of being poorly planned. There are regular setups for quite extended puzzle sequences that look as if they were cut down for time and budget reasons. One area requires you to demonstrate your "dance skills and style", but upon solving the "style" challenge the dance skills are never really tested, despite there being the option to ask characters for dance tips. Another sequence, which involves Strong Sad drinking some dubious water, definitely feels like a puzzle was cut out.

The story revolves around the King of Town introducing an email tax, and the various inhabitants of Free Country USA subsequently rebelling by forming their own kingdoms. However, what one would expect to be the most dramatic and hilarious scenes are missing entirely; the rebellion happens off camera, as does Strong Bad's climactic assault on the King of Town's castle. It again feels like the developers simply ran out of time and money (which they probably did).

Lastly, there's no consistency in the "click for flavour text" area. Some items you can keep clicking on for more information (and occasionally plot progression) while others yield the same result every time. The game should have consistently implemented a "two results for every item" policy, so that once you've clicked on something twice you don't need to do it again. It's really irritating to be punished for experimentation with repeated dialogue.

Anyway, despite these gripes, SBCG4AP is still pretty fun. Hopefully Telltale will keep ironing out these problems as the series progresses. Fingers crossed.

Professor Layton 3 Trailer

So this is the Japanese trailer for DS puzzle title Professor Layton 3, also known as Professor Layton and the Last Time Travel. It's theoretically intended to bring the Professor Layton trilogy to a close, and there certainly seems to be plenty of exciting plot in the works. Even if none of that plot will have anything to do with the gameplay. It gets me all excited to go toe-to-toe with another 150 puzzles that I've seen a million times before.

Anyway, that's a great trailer and all, but do you know what would be even better? An English language version of Professor Layton 2. Japan's had it for almost a year.