A tweet by the game's creator Dean Dodrill announced the release date as May 24th. He's also confirmed that a patch for the 360 version is still on the way and will include all the updates from the pc version
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There's not a lot else to say about it. Hopefully it somehow finds its way over here, not that I have a WiiU or a burning desire to play through the first 2 Yakuza games again (although Yakuza 2 is probably the series highlight)
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Apr 03
Posted by Ben at 19:05
To call Bioshock Infinite a missed opportunity would be harsh, it’s a game that has improved on its predecessor(s) in just about every way, and in many areas has few peers. However, there’s things wrong with Bioshock Infinite, things both serious and numerous enough to make this quite an easy review to write, in fact it throws up so many talking points that the review could easily end up twice as long.
Lets start with the background though, you play as Booker Dewitt, a former Pinkerton detective, hired to recover a young girl from the floating city of Columbia (“bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”). You get to Columbia to find that it’s less wholesome than you imagined, rife with segregation and discrepancy with the threat of an uprising beginning to rear its head. And that’s where I’ll leave the story for now, as I don’t want to spoil anything.
Other than to say (sorry) you do eventually rescue Elizabeth, the girl locked in the tower, but getting off Columbia isn’t going to be easy, especially as the entire city is after your blood (which we’ll get to in a bit). Elizabeth is far from helpless though, while the plot has you rescuing her in gameplay terms you don’t need to worry about her. She won’t get directly involved in combat, but will throw you ammo, health, money and salts for your vigors (plasmids). She can also bring items in to aid you in combat, these range from turrets to ammo and health stocks, freight hooks to grapple on to, even cover to hide behind.
Unusually for a Bioshock game the combat is arguably the star of the show. When it comes though, and it takes a while to, it’s relentless for the next few hours. It’s odd going from pure narrative exploration to relentless shooting, but it also seems slightly at odds with the tone of the franchise, either way it seems to correct itself, I’m not sure whether I adjusted or the game did, but there seems to be more downtime as you progress.
The combat itself starts very basic, you’re armed with a pistol to shoot people and a vigor to control turrets for a limited amount of time. Once Elizabeth joins you though things begin to open up; as mentioned she can bring things in to the fight to help you, meaning you can make the environment suit your style or your needs. At points the sky-rails you occasionally use to traverse the city make their way in to combat, making you mobile, hard to hit, using them to avoid danger then leap and attack from on high. These moments are few and far between though, especially considering how prevalent they are in the trailers and demo footage.
My main problem with Bioshock Infinite is one that it shares with the original game, the design of the levels. You walk from A to B then back to A again, you do that in every area, and every time you take a backwards step new enemies have somehow appeared. Remember the bit in Bioshock where you have to go and see a scientist, to get to her office you have to go through her empty quarters, populated by dormant turrets, remember how you knew exactly what was going to happen? That’s what Infinite suffers from too often, there’s a section that literally leads you in a big circle, and the ‘Hall of Heroes’ really could have been lifted from the first game. There’s doors arbitrarily closed to you until you do that thing that takes all of 20 seconds, then all of a sudden they’re welcoming you in, the worst offender for this is probably if you go and explore in Fink’s district.
As mentioned, considering you’re on a floating city, and the promise of an abundance of sky-rail combat, it’s surprising how closed Columbia feels. Most of your time is spent indoors, which to be fair allows them to play with some design themes, but even when you’re outside it feels narrow, closed, almost like you’re inside with a sky coloured roof. There’s other small annoyances too, like enemies and turrets attacking you from beyond the depth of field blur, but they’re largely trivial when compared to what the game does right.
For me Columbia doesn’t reach the heights (shut up) of Rapture, and while I’m loathed to compare, the game does so I kind of have to. It’s probably personal taste but I prefer the dark, unsettling, decayed structures of the underground city to the bright, almost ethereal floating city of Columbia. This is true of the story too, I just didn’t get hooked the way I did with the first Bioshock, I think this is because the core story for Infinite is presented as being about racism, there’s no great mystery to it until later on. On that note I will just add that I found the motivations for some of the characters lacking, there’s a point where things shift, I didn’t really buy that I’d be an enemy to that group, especially given how I was greeted by one of them.
When Bioshock Infinite puts the Elizabeth narrative front and centre in the back half of the game it’s much more interesting. Unlike the first game, Infinite boasts a number of characters that are likable, I like Booker, I like Elizabeth, and I like the Lutece twins. The story is wrapped up well, making you feel a little blindsided, sympathetically matching one of the characters. And it’s for that reason you should play Bioshock Infinite, it’s not perfect, in pure gameplay terms it’s got issues, more than I can fit in to this review, but equally I’ve not done the good things it does justice, and frankly, how often does a game like this come around?
Lets start with the background though, you play as Booker Dewitt, a former Pinkerton detective, hired to recover a young girl from the floating city of Columbia (“bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”). You get to Columbia to find that it’s less wholesome than you imagined, rife with segregation and discrepancy with the threat of an uprising beginning to rear its head. And that’s where I’ll leave the story for now, as I don’t want to spoil anything.
Other than to say (sorry) you do eventually rescue Elizabeth, the girl locked in the tower, but getting off Columbia isn’t going to be easy, especially as the entire city is after your blood (which we’ll get to in a bit). Elizabeth is far from helpless though, while the plot has you rescuing her in gameplay terms you don’t need to worry about her. She won’t get directly involved in combat, but will throw you ammo, health, money and salts for your vigors (plasmids). She can also bring items in to aid you in combat, these range from turrets to ammo and health stocks, freight hooks to grapple on to, even cover to hide behind.
Unusually for a Bioshock game the combat is arguably the star of the show. When it comes though, and it takes a while to, it’s relentless for the next few hours. It’s odd going from pure narrative exploration to relentless shooting, but it also seems slightly at odds with the tone of the franchise, either way it seems to correct itself, I’m not sure whether I adjusted or the game did, but there seems to be more downtime as you progress.
The combat itself starts very basic, you’re armed with a pistol to shoot people and a vigor to control turrets for a limited amount of time. Once Elizabeth joins you though things begin to open up; as mentioned she can bring things in to the fight to help you, meaning you can make the environment suit your style or your needs. At points the sky-rails you occasionally use to traverse the city make their way in to combat, making you mobile, hard to hit, using them to avoid danger then leap and attack from on high. These moments are few and far between though, especially considering how prevalent they are in the trailers and demo footage.
My main problem with Bioshock Infinite is one that it shares with the original game, the design of the levels. You walk from A to B then back to A again, you do that in every area, and every time you take a backwards step new enemies have somehow appeared. Remember the bit in Bioshock where you have to go and see a scientist, to get to her office you have to go through her empty quarters, populated by dormant turrets, remember how you knew exactly what was going to happen? That’s what Infinite suffers from too often, there’s a section that literally leads you in a big circle, and the ‘Hall of Heroes’ really could have been lifted from the first game. There’s doors arbitrarily closed to you until you do that thing that takes all of 20 seconds, then all of a sudden they’re welcoming you in, the worst offender for this is probably if you go and explore in Fink’s district.
As mentioned, considering you’re on a floating city, and the promise of an abundance of sky-rail combat, it’s surprising how closed Columbia feels. Most of your time is spent indoors, which to be fair allows them to play with some design themes, but even when you’re outside it feels narrow, closed, almost like you’re inside with a sky coloured roof. There’s other small annoyances too, like enemies and turrets attacking you from beyond the depth of field blur, but they’re largely trivial when compared to what the game does right.
For me Columbia doesn’t reach the heights (shut up) of Rapture, and while I’m loathed to compare, the game does so I kind of have to. It’s probably personal taste but I prefer the dark, unsettling, decayed structures of the underground city to the bright, almost ethereal floating city of Columbia. This is true of the story too, I just didn’t get hooked the way I did with the first Bioshock, I think this is because the core story for Infinite is presented as being about racism, there’s no great mystery to it until later on. On that note I will just add that I found the motivations for some of the characters lacking, there’s a point where things shift, I didn’t really buy that I’d be an enemy to that group, especially given how I was greeted by one of them.
When Bioshock Infinite puts the Elizabeth narrative front and centre in the back half of the game it’s much more interesting. Unlike the first game, Infinite boasts a number of characters that are likable, I like Booker, I like Elizabeth, and I like the Lutece twins. The story is wrapped up well, making you feel a little blindsided, sympathetically matching one of the characters. And it’s for that reason you should play Bioshock Infinite, it’s not perfect, in pure gameplay terms it’s got issues, more than I can fit in to this review, but equally I’ve not done the good things it does justice, and frankly, how often does a game like this come around?
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Mar 24
Posted by Ben at 18:14
There was something I wanted to talk about in my last God Mode On article, something I couldn’t for two very important reasons. The first reason is that reading a massive long piece of text on a computer screen is a pain in the arse. The second, and more important, we have a weird issue with the site where it reads text as code, and when the code (text) gets too long it can’t be uploaded. I mention this because I had to remove a segment of my article on Anita Sarkeesian’s ‘Tropes vs. Women in Gaming’, the topic of what a game is, namely a problem to be solved.
It’s not something I’ve ever really thought about before, I think I’d always assumed there wasn‘t a rule for it, but I’m starting to think that ultimately it is just the one thing. There’s you at one end, the protagonist, and somewhere off in the distance there’s your objective. The objective could be anything, it could be a high score, it could be to destroy the mothership, it could even simply be to finish the story. In between those two points are the problem and the solution. In Tetris these would be the falling blocks and clearing the screen, in 999 there’s literal puzzles and choices, in Gears of War there’s enemies, and not to sound too Death Wish, but killing is the solution.
It’s hard to see now that games really are that simple, I mean look at Journey, the objective is, I guess, to solve your confusion, to find out what the point of the game is. Heavy Rain and Spec Ops: The Line play about with the problem/solution. In both games the gameplay involves having to do things you wouldn’t want to do, you wouldn’t want your character to do. In Heavy Rain it’s about what would be going too far to get what you want, in Spec Ops it’s about seeing that there’s sometimes more choices than you think, and sometimes fewer.
It seems we’re getting to the point where we can do post-modernism in games regularly. Proper post-modernism of the medium, not just breaking the 4th wall and having a character speak to you (“I was in a computer game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of”), vibrating 2nd controllers, or even resetting the game (and it crashing nearly every fucking time!) a la X-men on the Megadrive. Gaming might not have had its Citizen Kane yet, but it has had a few Memento’s.
If the core concept of what is a game hasn’t changed over the years then what has? I think it’s the scope. The solution of Mass Effect is essentially the same as Space Invaders, well, ish. Space Invaders’ goal is score, Mass Effect’s isn’t, but the solution is to kill the aliens. Mass Effect though has cut scenes, a huge storyline that spanned 3 games, a level up system, conversation branches, choice. Compare classic Prince of Persia to the more recent ones, they’re fundamentally the same except one has more moves.
I’ve been trying to think of a game that doesn’t follow this rule, that there must be a start and an objective, a game that is just the problem/solution, a pointless game. I think it would have to be a toy, the modern equivalent of doodling on a page. There was Wii Music, but that was something you could play well, improve at, so the objective was to do it right and well. There’s Minecraft, although while you do have a blank canvas and free reign, you are supposed to build. Same with LittleBigPlanet’s level creation, you can pretty much do what you want but the point is to create something, ideally something that works.
I mention them though because both Minecraft and LittleBigPlanet’s level creation have been things I’ve struggled to get in to. Watching from the outside they look fun, it’s fascinating seeing what people are capable of creating, but I never get anywhere when I attempt something. I don’t know where to begin, I want to accidentally make something, to learn through experimenting and exploring, but I don’t. When I played Minecraft I built a house, a decent sized thing with glass, stairs, some fire, and then I stopped. I wasn’t satisfied or fulfilled, nor to clarify was I annoyed or dismissive of the game, but it just felt pointless (meaning absolutely no offence).
So, how did this relate to ‘Tropes vs. Women in Gaming’, well because if games need objectives to work, a motivation and context for gameplay, then whatever the rights and wrongs of having a ‘damsel’, it’s easy to see why it became such a fallback.
It’s not something I’ve ever really thought about before, I think I’d always assumed there wasn‘t a rule for it, but I’m starting to think that ultimately it is just the one thing. There’s you at one end, the protagonist, and somewhere off in the distance there’s your objective. The objective could be anything, it could be a high score, it could be to destroy the mothership, it could even simply be to finish the story. In between those two points are the problem and the solution. In Tetris these would be the falling blocks and clearing the screen, in 999 there’s literal puzzles and choices, in Gears of War there’s enemies, and not to sound too Death Wish, but killing is the solution.
It’s hard to see now that games really are that simple, I mean look at Journey, the objective is, I guess, to solve your confusion, to find out what the point of the game is. Heavy Rain and Spec Ops: The Line play about with the problem/solution. In both games the gameplay involves having to do things you wouldn’t want to do, you wouldn’t want your character to do. In Heavy Rain it’s about what would be going too far to get what you want, in Spec Ops it’s about seeing that there’s sometimes more choices than you think, and sometimes fewer.
It seems we’re getting to the point where we can do post-modernism in games regularly. Proper post-modernism of the medium, not just breaking the 4th wall and having a character speak to you (“I was in a computer game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of”), vibrating 2nd controllers, or even resetting the game (and it crashing nearly every fucking time!) a la X-men on the Megadrive. Gaming might not have had its Citizen Kane yet, but it has had a few Memento’s.
If the core concept of what is a game hasn’t changed over the years then what has? I think it’s the scope. The solution of Mass Effect is essentially the same as Space Invaders, well, ish. Space Invaders’ goal is score, Mass Effect’s isn’t, but the solution is to kill the aliens. Mass Effect though has cut scenes, a huge storyline that spanned 3 games, a level up system, conversation branches, choice. Compare classic Prince of Persia to the more recent ones, they’re fundamentally the same except one has more moves.
I’ve been trying to think of a game that doesn’t follow this rule, that there must be a start and an objective, a game that is just the problem/solution, a pointless game. I think it would have to be a toy, the modern equivalent of doodling on a page. There was Wii Music, but that was something you could play well, improve at, so the objective was to do it right and well. There’s Minecraft, although while you do have a blank canvas and free reign, you are supposed to build. Same with LittleBigPlanet’s level creation, you can pretty much do what you want but the point is to create something, ideally something that works.
I mention them though because both Minecraft and LittleBigPlanet’s level creation have been things I’ve struggled to get in to. Watching from the outside they look fun, it’s fascinating seeing what people are capable of creating, but I never get anywhere when I attempt something. I don’t know where to begin, I want to accidentally make something, to learn through experimenting and exploring, but I don’t. When I played Minecraft I built a house, a decent sized thing with glass, stairs, some fire, and then I stopped. I wasn’t satisfied or fulfilled, nor to clarify was I annoyed or dismissive of the game, but it just felt pointless (meaning absolutely no offence).
So, how did this relate to ‘Tropes vs. Women in Gaming’, well because if games need objectives to work, a motivation and context for gameplay, then whatever the rights and wrongs of having a ‘damsel’, it’s easy to see why it became such a fallback.
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I'll gloss over some of what I've played this past week as it's been reviewed, but I have returned to Sleeping Dogs for some of the dlc I've missed. Year of the Snake is pretty good, it's got a bit of humour, a mix of styles, but more importantly, a decent amount of content. The same can't be said for the Wheels of Fury dlc, not that it's bad, but it's short. There was also Tupsu, which is ok, no better than that in my opinion
Another Android game is 10000000, a match 3 puzzle game cum rpg. It's very addictive, it's hard to say quite how good it is, but it is very hard to stop playing it. I do recommend it, hopefully there'll be a review by the end of the week
Mostly though I've been playing The Darkness 2, which is actually pretty good, although hard to play for long periods. I'm not entirely sure why, I think it's that the missions are enough of a chunk, with a defined end, I think it just encourages me to stop. It's quite an interesting game though, I just wish it'd let you go wild once in a while rather than wince from gunshots
Another Android game is 10000000, a match 3 puzzle game cum rpg. It's very addictive, it's hard to say quite how good it is, but it is very hard to stop playing it. I do recommend it, hopefully there'll be a review by the end of the week
Mostly though I've been playing The Darkness 2, which is actually pretty good, although hard to play for long periods. I'm not entirely sure why, I think it's that the missions are enough of a chunk, with a defined end, I think it just encourages me to stop. It's quite an interesting game though, I just wish it'd let you go wild once in a while rather than wince from gunshots
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Mar 17
Posted by Ben at 13:41
Tupsu is fairly easy to pigeon-hole if you’ve been keeping up with your ios and Android games recently. It’s the same kind of game as Contre Jour, a level traversal game where you must get a character in to an exit point using physics and touch controls. There are of course stars to collect to boost your score, and the play style is given a shake-up every few levels.
What Tupsu does that’s fairly unique though is not spoon-feed you, it’s not a particularly easy game, and it doesn’t give you a lot of help along the way. The reason Tupsu feels difficult is that while other games will show you a technique and then build the next few levels around that, Tupsu just expects you to work it out for yourself, then it never expects you to use it again.
Tupsu has a sticky eye stalk that you use to attach him to platforms and pull him along. As you complete each set of levels he’ll grow another eye, this opens up the complexity of what’s possible in the levels. There’s items to use in levels too, there’s balloons that you can latch on to that give you some elevation, an object that lets you pass through platforms (that must be carried with you), and boxes that can be placed to aide your progress. The boxes are also given as a reward when you level up, which you do by collecting enough stars and earning points, I don’t mind admitting that there were a couple of levels I only managed to do because I could place a block to help me.
Levels get mixed up further with the introduction of gravity blocks, where you go from trying to climb up things to trying to hold yourself down. Again Tupsu doesn’t spoon-feed how best to use this, sometimes the solution is quite elaborate. Later on spikes are introduced, they don’t feature in that many levels, but they add a layer of frustration to the route finding challenge.
Which is kind of where I’m at with Tuspu, I admire that it has a challenge, it’s certainly something Contre Jour was missing, but I’m not sure I was ever enjoying it. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s hugely difficult, I beat it in a few hours, it just feels a bit like hard work. The controls are fiddly, especially when you have to tap to detach an eye-stalk before quickly tapping again to reattach it. There’s very little leeway either, you can place a stalk a millimetre too high and be unable to reach your next target. Tupsu bobs and bounces when you aren’t expecting it, meaning momentum puzzles can require you to restart the level again.
Tupsu is a well put together game, it’s also free on Android (although I think the upcoming extra levels might come with a fee), so I shouldn’t be too harsh, but I can’t say I had a particularly good time playing it. That’s not to say you shouldn’t give it a go though, it ran nice and smoothly on the Galaxy S3, looks pretty nice, and is more involved than a lot of these types of games, it’s just not all that special.
What Tupsu does that’s fairly unique though is not spoon-feed you, it’s not a particularly easy game, and it doesn’t give you a lot of help along the way. The reason Tupsu feels difficult is that while other games will show you a technique and then build the next few levels around that, Tupsu just expects you to work it out for yourself, then it never expects you to use it again.
Tupsu has a sticky eye stalk that you use to attach him to platforms and pull him along. As you complete each set of levels he’ll grow another eye, this opens up the complexity of what’s possible in the levels. There’s items to use in levels too, there’s balloons that you can latch on to that give you some elevation, an object that lets you pass through platforms (that must be carried with you), and boxes that can be placed to aide your progress. The boxes are also given as a reward when you level up, which you do by collecting enough stars and earning points, I don’t mind admitting that there were a couple of levels I only managed to do because I could place a block to help me.
Levels get mixed up further with the introduction of gravity blocks, where you go from trying to climb up things to trying to hold yourself down. Again Tupsu doesn’t spoon-feed how best to use this, sometimes the solution is quite elaborate. Later on spikes are introduced, they don’t feature in that many levels, but they add a layer of frustration to the route finding challenge.
Which is kind of where I’m at with Tuspu, I admire that it has a challenge, it’s certainly something Contre Jour was missing, but I’m not sure I was ever enjoying it. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s hugely difficult, I beat it in a few hours, it just feels a bit like hard work. The controls are fiddly, especially when you have to tap to detach an eye-stalk before quickly tapping again to reattach it. There’s very little leeway either, you can place a stalk a millimetre too high and be unable to reach your next target. Tupsu bobs and bounces when you aren’t expecting it, meaning momentum puzzles can require you to restart the level again.
Tupsu is a well put together game, it’s also free on Android (although I think the upcoming extra levels might come with a fee), so I shouldn’t be too harsh, but I can’t say I had a particularly good time playing it. That’s not to say you shouldn’t give it a go though, it ran nice and smoothly on the Galaxy S3, looks pretty nice, and is more involved than a lot of these types of games, it’s just not all that special.
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Mar 13
Posted by Ben at 18:51
I have an awful lot of time for Sleeping Dogs, it was brilliant, on the face of things it was a straight-faced GTA clone, but it had a streak of the absurd running through it. It’s no surprise that Year of the Snake fits the same description. The problem is that while the main game kept you busy for hours, the dlc has, so far, been unfulfilling.
Year of the Snake has more in common with Nightmare in North Point than Wheels of Fury or Zodiac Tournament. It’s a story based dlc set aside from and after the events of the main game. It’s Chinese new year time and just as the rest of the city is starting their celebrations Wei is demoted for all the trouble he’s caused. Now back on the beat, Wei’s new mundane work life of handing out parking tickets starts to get a lot more exciting as he uncovers a suspicious cult, determined to make the new years celebrations go with a bang (I’m really sorry).
Unlike Zodiac Tournament, Year of the Snake has a decent mix of gameplay types. A lot of the early game will be spent getting in to fights and driving imminently exploding cars into the sea. This part of the game feels uncharacteristically restrictive, your moves and cars have been stripped away, but what they’ve been replaced with isn’t as interesting. For instance your grapples tend to either end in handcuffing or tasering the criminal (or random passer-by). It does open up later though, the nightstick moveset is particularly satisfying.
This is true of the mission types too, you start to get different types of car missions, including some vehicular combat, chase missions, and even a bit of gunplay. There’s a good sense of progress through Year of the Snake, things get more interesting and more explosive as you progress.
There are a few issues with Year of the Snake, it’s quite buggy, some fairly minor, some not. Wei moves his mouth while other people are talking at the start of missions, it’s a minor problem, certainly nothing game breaking. However, I had one mission that disappeared as an option because I failed it at the point where it started (rather than arresting the perp Wei snapped his neck). On another mission Wei was supposed to get in the passenger seat of a police car and begin a chase, instead I watched him fly across the district and teleport into the passenger seat of another car parked probably 400 metres away, there he was trapped inside the car and so the mission couldn’t begin. Both missions sorted themselves out after I exited to the main menu, but it’s still problematic.
To end on a positive note though, if you’re going to do all the missions, not all the collectable stuff, just the stuff that has an icon on the map, you’re looking at a decent sized bit of content. I can’t be exact but it took me over 2 hours, probably not as long as 4 though. There’s one or two moments where you’ve got a long drive across the map to start a mission, but those moments of game lengthening are few and far between, in fact quite often you’ll finish a mission right next to a couple of new bonus ones.
Year of the Snake is perhaps not as funny as Zodiac Tournament, nor as tonally interesting as Nightmare in North Point, but it is probably Sleeping Dog’s best piece of downloadable content. It’s even priced below £5, which seals it as being well worth picking up.
Year of the Snake has more in common with Nightmare in North Point than Wheels of Fury or Zodiac Tournament. It’s a story based dlc set aside from and after the events of the main game. It’s Chinese new year time and just as the rest of the city is starting their celebrations Wei is demoted for all the trouble he’s caused. Now back on the beat, Wei’s new mundane work life of handing out parking tickets starts to get a lot more exciting as he uncovers a suspicious cult, determined to make the new years celebrations go with a bang (I’m really sorry).
Unlike Zodiac Tournament, Year of the Snake has a decent mix of gameplay types. A lot of the early game will be spent getting in to fights and driving imminently exploding cars into the sea. This part of the game feels uncharacteristically restrictive, your moves and cars have been stripped away, but what they’ve been replaced with isn’t as interesting. For instance your grapples tend to either end in handcuffing or tasering the criminal (or random passer-by). It does open up later though, the nightstick moveset is particularly satisfying.
This is true of the mission types too, you start to get different types of car missions, including some vehicular combat, chase missions, and even a bit of gunplay. There’s a good sense of progress through Year of the Snake, things get more interesting and more explosive as you progress.
There are a few issues with Year of the Snake, it’s quite buggy, some fairly minor, some not. Wei moves his mouth while other people are talking at the start of missions, it’s a minor problem, certainly nothing game breaking. However, I had one mission that disappeared as an option because I failed it at the point where it started (rather than arresting the perp Wei snapped his neck). On another mission Wei was supposed to get in the passenger seat of a police car and begin a chase, instead I watched him fly across the district and teleport into the passenger seat of another car parked probably 400 metres away, there he was trapped inside the car and so the mission couldn’t begin. Both missions sorted themselves out after I exited to the main menu, but it’s still problematic.
To end on a positive note though, if you’re going to do all the missions, not all the collectable stuff, just the stuff that has an icon on the map, you’re looking at a decent sized bit of content. I can’t be exact but it took me over 2 hours, probably not as long as 4 though. There’s one or two moments where you’ve got a long drive across the map to start a mission, but those moments of game lengthening are few and far between, in fact quite often you’ll finish a mission right next to a couple of new bonus ones.
Year of the Snake is perhaps not as funny as Zodiac Tournament, nor as tonally interesting as Nightmare in North Point, but it is probably Sleeping Dog’s best piece of downloadable content. It’s even priced below £5, which seals it as being well worth picking up.
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The DLC follows Daud, and kind of tells the story of Dishonored from the other side. By the sounds of it there's more to see rather than just a simple retelling, but in the interest of saving some of the story for when the dlc arrives I'll leave it there, other than to say that Daud's story will continue in the final dlc; The Brigmore Witches
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Well on loading up Steam this morning I had a 1.3 gig patch for Sleeping Dogs to download, when I checked the files it included 2 new videos for the Year of the Snake dlc.
That doesn't necessarily mean that we're getting the dlc in the next few days or anything, but it's a sign that things are progressing.
Unfortunately I can't capture the video to upload it to youtube, but I can tell you that something kicks off at the new years celebrations and the damage Wei causes upsets his superiors, which leads to a pretty funny montage of him being dumped back to a beat cop. Hopefully it's a substantial piece of dlc because it's looking pretty good so far
UPDATE: so it turns out that the dlc release of Year of the Snake was actually incredibly imminent as it's out now. I'm not sure what the psn price is, I'm guessing we wont know until tomorrow night, but it's 560msp and £4.39 on Steam
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As things stand this is only announced for the US Playstation Network, but I see not reason why Europe shouldn't get it too, nor why it wouldn't arrive on the 360 at the same time.
The US price is $5 (20% cheaper if you have PS+), it's up to you if you think that's worth it for a character and an online mode. There was a time I'd have jumped at it, now I'm not so sure
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